Larry Kart

I'll never forget the time Nigella deep-fried a Mars bar on her show. She's Jewish, too -- a nice parley there with Lauren Bacall -- and has had a rather colorful life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigella_Lawson

Good point about Hayes -- what he did there, in effect IMO, introduced a certain level of conceptual independence (or, if you will, abstraction) into the drummer's role. I remember at the time thinking somewhat inchoate thoughts along those lines about Hayes' glassily even (yet also rather behind the beat, no?) cymbal work with Horace Silver when he joined Horace and, an especially extreme example, on the Coltrane-Wilbur Harden album "Mainstream '58." Whatever, it sure struck us as interesting-weird at the time. (My best friend back then was, and still is, a very good drummer.) I'd add that the glassy evenness and the behind-the-beat aspect were a big part of what contributed to the feeling of abstraction (or, if you will, controlled disassociation of parts), in that behind-the-beat playing implies or is associated with relaxation, while Hayes' glassy evenness placed a high level of (I think) tension on top of that. In any case, it seems to me that Tony grasped what was at stake here conceptually and where it could be taken far more so than Hayes did and/or wanted to do. In fact, though I'm no Hayes scholar, I believe that he's pretty much dialed down that aspect of his playing over the course of his career.

Here's a link to the second Horenstein Mahler First: http://www.amazon.com/Mahler-Symphony-No-1...TF8&s=music

Here's a link to as thorough and sound a survey as one could wish for: http://www.musicweb-international.com/Mahler/Mahler1.htm If the second Horsenstein is still available, I vote for that one.

I can't imagine wanting to see nekkid pix of Carmen McRae of any era, unless you're into the M side of S/M.

The former is what I thought. Nice stuff.

Based on what I've heard of Alan Dawson -- mostly the stuff he made with Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, and Richard Davis -- I'd say that he was Tony's main inspiration; I don't hear much of anyone else in him. On the other hand, the earliest Tony on record seems to me quite daring and different -- beyond anything that Dawson, to my knowledge, ever attempted or even would have wanted to attempt. A different sense of the drummer's role is involved; I believe that Tony, when he was able to, thought of himself as (and played as though he were) a co-composer. This was over and above (or at least ran alongside) all of his dazzling tricks. About Max, I believe that what was special about his drumming kind of came to an end with Clifford's death. After his playing on the "Live at the Beehive" set, I'm not aware of anything on record from him -- as a drummer per se, not as a band leader -- that approaches that peak. For one thing, the sound of his kit (ride cymbal especially) become a bit dour -- almost self-consciously so at times, as though he were in mourning.

Larry -- I'm not judging it as an interpretation, I'm judging it as music. Right. But you said in a previous post: "I think their interpretation is really nice." Not every musical performance is an interpretation of a piece of music. A world where reasonable distinctions are made and preserved is a world where people have a better chance to understand each other.

Hope I'm not playing language games with you (that's not my intent), but you can judge a performance as an "interpretation" only if you know the original, i.e. what is being interpreted.

Yes. Bud, one of the world's great narcissists (there are many tales about Bud's intense fondness for mirrors, one amusing episode of which I witnessed) suffered at one point in the late 1940s of a loss of confidence in his playing (perhaps feeling that he wasn't modern enough) that was so total he couldn't produce a note. He studied with Lennie for three months -- "we just reviewed what I had known as a kid, scales and intervals" -- and his confidence returned.

Also, don't miss Bud opposite Coleman Hawkins on the 1957 Cootie Williams Jazztone album "The Big Challenge." Everyone there -- Cootie, Rex Stewart, J.C. Higginbotham, Lawrence Brown -- was up for that one, but the Freeman-Hawkins thing was serious.

Bud was so locked-in rhythmically. Yes, he was not unwilling to repeat a phrase and use swatches of pre-fabricated material, but all in the service of driving swing. Check out the Mosaic single "Chicago/Austin High School Jazz in Hi-Fi" for some top-drawer Bud, as well as fine Teagarden, George Wettling, Jimmy McPartland, Billy Butterfield, probably the best Peanuts Hucko ever, etc. Pee Wee Russell, on the first two of the three dates collected here, sounds a bit less than his best solo-wise, but on date one (where there's no trombone) he's marvelous in the ensembles -- go figure. Another fine Bud album from the LP era that seems not to be available right now is Something Sweet, Something Tender, with guitarists George Barnes and, I think, Carl Kress. Sudhalter's "Lost Chords" extols Bud's 1937 radio broadcast solo with Tommy Dorsey on "You're a Builder-Upper" (on a Sunbeam LP). He's right about that one.

Wait till you hear them play "Send In The Clowns." It's like watching someone try to wash a pile of dog poop. I'm not sure if this phrase equates to the oft used, 'trying to polish a turd', but, yes....if the song is a bit cheesy this band's attempts at giving it credibility have to be admired. Or you think not? I think not, because the hook progression in the song is so annoying/nagging that any "tasteful" attempt to play "Send In The Clowns" must attempt to significantly modify that phrase or skate away from it altogether, but when you do that, either there's nothing left or you're not even playing the song. I have a copy of "Goodbye" (don't ask why), and, as I recall, the interpretation there is close to both of those alternatives, but that damn phrase finally turns out to be unavoidable. I'd say that the only way to handle it is the way Albert Ayler might have.

This is a new idea of Eicher's? Haven't most, or a good many, ECM records been mixed this way from the beginning? On the other hand, maybe there was a point when it began to get even weirder than it was initially. I recall the first time I listened to Kenny Wheeler's "Angel Song" -- rec. almost exactly ten years ago, in Feb. 1996 -- and wondering whether the players were hanging from guy wires in the studio.

Yikes -- it's the Jazz Police!

Wait till you hear them play "Send In The Clowns." It's like watching someone try to wash a pile of dog poop.

Chewy uncovers the hidden link betwen Lew Watters and Shorty Rogers.

"Soulville." And I agree, was disappointed when I got it at the time it came out. Just compare it to the way Webster sounds on Harry Edison's "Sweets," from about the same time.

Chewy -- I said: "There was no West Coast jazz, IN THE SENSE YOU MEAN, in 1946." The capitalized phrase refers not to ANY jazz made on the West Coast but to the style or styles of jazz that commonly are labeled West Coast jazz, which is the music that you've said you love in post after post here and the music you were alluding to in the post that began this damn thread. And now you're saying "if its recorded on the west coast it can qualifty as some type of west coast jazz." Wonderful.

Chewy, your chronology is all screwed up. There was no West Coast jazz, in the sense you mean, back in 1946. The influence of the Brubeck Octet on the Birth of the Cool scores was almost certainly zero; I'm aware of no evidence that anyone connected with the Birth of the Cool band was aware of Octer recordings at the time. (Besides, there's plenty of recorded evidence that Gil Evans had his concept going when Brubeck was still in high school.) On the other hand, to be fair, the opinion held by more than a few that the Brubeck Octet stuff was inspired by the Birth of the Cool recordings may be no less a canard. Members of the Brubeck Octet, Bill Smith in particular, have said that it was an independent phenomenon, and listening to the recordings suggests to me that that is so. The predelictions of Brubeck and Dave Van Kriedt, plus the influence of Milhaud, are enough to account for that music, which IMO is fairly tepid and precious. BTW, what's the evidence for a Brubeck-Miles friendship at or before the time of the Birth of the Cool band?

"Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" from "Ellington at Newport." I love Paul Gonsalves in other settings, and I admire the piece itself, but IMO those fabled 27 (or whatever) choruses are mostly a lot of huffing and puffing. Maybe if the album came with an inflatable version of the blonde who got up and started dancing.

And it represents (beautifully) a period in the music in general and Horace's music in particular that was to be fairly short-lived. Not that I don't like Silver in all phases through the years (the vocals, though, not so much), but there's some handsomely complex writing here, and Mobley and Farmer are all over it.

Historically, yes. Not sure if the writers will stick to that in the series. Guy Don't recall it exactly, but I believe there was a brief bit of dialogue in the last episode that foreshadowed an eventual Octavia/Antony union.

You know that Octavia is going to marry Marc Antony, right? About the British accents, this time for once I think that works nicely because they're not all upper crust British accents; rather, the accents high and low are carefully parcelled out on that basis. Given that kind of care, the parallel between Roman Empire/British Empire seems just right to me. I particularly like the Kipling-esque bond that unites Pullo to Verenus. Or would you prefer they speak Latin?

I think it might have been more of a "cutting" session if it had taken place a year or so later. In May 1956 Sonny could have had little doubt that he was the superior player.