Larry Kart

At perhaps excessive length for this forum (but I'm too lazy to boil it down), here's a review I wrote last week of the new Jazz Icons DVD series: Why not dream? The ideal jazz DVD would have topnotch performances by great artists in topnotch sound, shot in a relaxed, unobtrusive manner, and with the visuals revealing something interesting, important, perhaps even essential, about the artist at hand. The new nine-DVD Jazz Icons series meets that ideal at least twice and doesn’t go far below it, with one or two possible exceptions. But before talking about what each DVD contains, a little background. What we have here – carefully produced, nicely packaged with 16- to 24-page illustrated booklets that include thorough notes by the likes of Ira Gitler, Michael Cuscuna, Chris Sheridan and Don Sickler – are European TV broadcasts (mostly of concerts, plus a few audience-less studio performances) shot from 1957 to 1979 by government controlled and subsidized stations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway. (Not dependent on advertising revenues, these stations were able and willing to present jazz more appropriately than American television networks did -- when American commercial networks did so at all, the glorious exception being “The Sound of Jazz” -- and more often than National Educational Television or PBS were able to do.) How one of these tapes was unearthed is interesting; the 1958 Art Blakey Jazz Messengers concert, taped in Belgium but never aired and then incorrectly catalogued, was discovered by accident when it was sent to the producers of Jazz Icons instead of a 1965 Jazz Messengers show that they had requested. But the music is the main thing, and “Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Live in ’58” (55 minutes) is a good place to start. This is the version of the Messengers (Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt, and Blakey) that made only one studio recording, “Moanin,’” plus four live albums recorded later in the European tour that this Belgium concert was part of. I would say that these DVD performances, captured in very good sound, certainly equal and may well surpass anything else from this great but rather short-lived band (Golson left after six months to form a quintet with Curtis Fuller, which eventually would evolve into the Jazztet). In particular, Golson – the Messenger’s music director – is in inspired, explosive form here, and the visuals naturally highlight the nature and quality of everyone’s playing. To see Morgan digging Golson’s fierce solo on “Moanin,’” Golson responding in kind to Morgan’s brilliant outing on “Just By Myself, ” the galvanic, locked-hands, two-chorus climax to Timmons’ “Moanin’” solo, the perfect match between Blakey’s drumming and his radiant, masterly physical presence, the rhyme between Timmons’ sly, seemingly vulnerable hipness as a man and the hair-trigger sensitivity of his comping – these are the kind of things a jazz DVD can clearly convey and that no recording can quite reveal. Equally important, but in a somewhat different way, is “Thelonious Monk, Live in ’66,” (62 minutes) , two performances shot two days apart in Norway (in a concert hall without an audience) and in Denmark (in an audience-less studio) by Monk’s regular quartet of the time – Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley. Sound quality is again very good, the program will be familiar to anyone who knows Monk’s repertoire of the time (two versions of “Lulu’s Back in Town,” “Blue Monk,” “’Round Midnight,” an unaccompanied version of “Don’t Blame Me,” and “Epistrophy”), and some of Rouse’s solo moves will be familiar as well. But Monk’s level of inspiration is quite high, and the band is with him. What ought to make this DVD a cornerstone of any collection is the extended opportunity it gives us to watch Monk’s hands on the keyboard (and, at times, his feet on the pedals, too). As Don Sickler explains in the booklet: “In person, I saw that [Monk] played the piano very differently than I had ever seen it played before. He attacked practically every note, mostly with an unorthodox flat finger approach…. Sometimes he would even cross hands (left over right) attacking his melody notes usually with either a stiff first or second finger of his left hand, while his right hand fingers comped the sparse harmonic elements. Now I could see why his piano playing sounded so different. The way he approached the piano allowed him to give a different weight to each note, whether in a single line melodic passage or in a chord voicing.” (My emphasis.) Actually seeing what Sickler describes here – and he adds further shrewd musical insights to what has been quoted – is both enlightening and thrilling; if you have never before seen Monk’s hands at work on the keyboard for an extended stretch of time, you owe it to yourself to take in what’s on this DVD. On now to one of Monk’s bebop colleagues, “Dizzy Gillespie, Live in ’58 and ’70” (85 minutes). The first concert here, shot in Belgium in rather airless sound, pairs Gillespie with Sonny Stitt and Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanists of the time – Lou Levy, Ray Brown, and Gus Johnson. It’s a promising lineup, and everyone seems to be in a mellow mood, but while Gillespie is in very good form (his ballad feature “Cocktails for Two,” of all things, is full of striking harmonic wit), Stitt tends to run through his Rolodex of licks more than one would wish, and the aforementioned lack of sonic presence tends to dampen the impact of what might have been nice or better than nice to hear. It’s particularly frustrating to see Johnson dig in behind Dizzy on a swift “Blues Walk” and not be able to hear that much of what the drummer is doing. The 1970 segment, shot in Denmark in front of a good-sized studio audience, finds Gillespie backed by the vaunted Clarke-Boland Band. Sound quality here is very good, but initially the band is in surprisingly ragged form – probably because the first two pieces, Gillespie’s “Con Alma” (in a strident Lalo Schifrin arrangement) and “The Brother K” (dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.), are new to the band and have not been rehearsed enough, perhaps because there’s an odd vibe or two in the studio, as though the camera crew, the director, and Dizzy are not on the same page. Whatever, Gillespie himself is in top form – as with Monk’s hands on the keyboard, it’s enlightening to see the relationship between his unique bulging-cheeks, slow-release-of-air technique and the way that enables him to phrase – and “The Brother K” is a noble long-lined melody that he decorates with deep feeling and typical harmonic inventiveness. Eventually, on “Manteca,” the band pulls up its socks, perhaps because Dizzy is now galvanically conducting them, and from there to the end, “Things Are Here” (a re-titled version of “Things To Come”), we hear much intense communal music-making, with Dizzy to the fore. Not quite the experience it could have been, this DVD still ends up on the plus side. Sticking with big bands, we come to a welcome surprise in the Jazz Icons series, “Quincy Jones, Live in ’60” (80 minutes), which preserves two concerts, one in Belgium, one in Switzerland, by the band that Jones formed to perform in the Harold Arlen musical “Free and Easy” and that he kept going in Europe for almost a year after the musical folded during its debut run in Paris. Much better represented here than on its few commercial recordings, this was a very hip, well-rehearsed ensemble with its own warm sound, somewhat reminiscent of the band that Oscar Pettiford led in the late 1950s. It was filled with fine players – Clark Terry, Benny Bailey, Phil Woods, Budd Johnson, Jerome Richardson, Jimmy Cleveland, Melba Liston, Julius Watkins et al. – and brimming with esprit de corps. Here, as on the Blakey/Jazz Messengers DVD, it’s a kick to see band members really digging each other’s solos; during the first concert, Terry, Woods, and Johnson are especially inspired. The second concert is slightly below that level, as though three months of further touring through Europe on a shoestring had worn everyone down a bit. Also, Johnson had returned to the U.S. in the interim, and one misses his take-no-prisoners solo presence. On balance, though, this set is a definite winner. Esprit de corps also is a hallmark of “Buddy Rich Live in ’78,” recorded at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands (75 minutes and in color – except for the second half of the Chet Baker DVD, all the rest of the Jazz Icons series is in black and white). Rich dubbed this edition (1976-78) of his big band the Killer Force, and with good reason. Intensity and a considerable amount of nervous tension were among Rich’s key traits, both as a drummer and bandleader, and the mostly young players of the Killer Force look and sound as though they have bought into Buddy’s ethos completely. Even when Rich is doing some some relatively light, laid-back time-keeping, one feels as though the lid were about to blow off and that every member of the band knows this. On the other hand, even those who have little taste for Rich’s technically awesome solo displays (on parade here most notably in the long “Channel One Suite”) ought to pay attention to how musically (albeit fiercely) he can interact with a strong, rhythmically gutty soloist. Captured here in very good, nicely balanced sound (after electric bassist Tom Warrington adjusts his amp), such passages are among the highlights of this disc – especially Rich’s byplay with altoist Andy Fusco during the latter’s blistering ten-chorus solo on “Grand Concourse” (Fusco plays with the strength of an NFL lineman, which is what he once was), and Rich’s multiple similar encounters with stalwart tenormen Steve Marcus and Gary Pribeck. (By the way, this set’s liner notes, by former Killer Force trumpeter Dean Pratt, are full of interesting inside information about Rich the man and what it was like to be in his band.) To my mind, only two of the charts the band plays here, the late Herbie Phillips’ original composition “Little Train” and Mike Abene’s arrangment of Joe Zawinul’s “Birdland,” are interesting, coherent examples of big-band writing – but Rich’s music seems intended to be largely a matter of showpieces and thrills, and this DVD provides those things with genuine zest. The liner notes for the Rich DVD mention his great admiration for the Basie band, but the contrast between Rich’s tense-intense music and what can be heard on “Count Basie Live in ’62” (56 minutes) could hardly be greater. Captured at a concert in Sweden in perhaps the best sound of any of the Jazz Icon series, this edition of the Basie band was an ensemble of gorgeously relaxed timbral warmth and unanimity, with each section perfectly in balance with the others. This is particularly evident on the opening number, Frank Foster’s “Easin’ It,” which features a series of short solo exchanges among the trombone section (Henry Coker, Quentin Jackson, and Benny Powell) and then the trumpets (Al Aarons, Thad Jones, Sonny Cohn, and Snooky Young). The mature, mellow, family circle intimacy of this is something to hear and, thanks to the DVD, behold. And the same could be said of the fine Basie sax section of that time, led by altoist Marshal Royal. Phrasing of that order may be a lost art. Up to a point in this DVD, everything proceeds quite handsomely – a tasty ballad feature for tenorman Eric Dixon (“You Are Too Beautiful”), “Corner Pocket” (with a brilliant Jones solo), a lovely, pure-toned reading of “Stella By Starlight” by Chicago-native Cohn, Foster’s “Back to the Apple,” and Quincy Jones’ slow-blues setting for Basie’s piano, “I Needs To Be Bee’d With.” But then it’s time for vocalist Irene Reid, who is in rather detached, blaring form on three tunes, though the band play wells behind her -- after which we are treated to a ridiculously fast “Old Man River” (a showcase for flashy drummer Sonny Payne), a perfunctory “One O’Clock Jump” and out. Having had the table set the way this DVD does, one can’t help but feel a bit frustrated that things couldn’t have continued in that vein, but on balance one comes out well ahead. A mixed impression also is left by “Chet Baker Live in ’64 & ’79” (71 minutes). The first part is an audience-less studio performance shot in Belgium with altoist-flutist Jacques Pelzer, pianist Rene Urtreger, bassist Luigi Trussardi, drummer Franco Nanzecchi, and Baker on flugelhorn. Pelzer, a pharmicist who owned his own drug store, was one of Baker’s close friends (fill in your own punch line) but not a very talented player; while Urtreger, who was a fine soloist, seems rather under wraps here, perhaps because the bass-drum team is tepid. But Baker is his unfailingly lyrical, logical self on every track and contributes a remarkable vocal on “Time After Time” – shaping the tune into one continous thought – after which he plays a solo in which suspended melodic ideas tread off eerily into darkness. After a brief interview with Baker comes the 1979 segment, shot at a concert in Norway. It finds Baker in vigorous form on trumpet, with vibraharpist Wolfgang Lackerschmid, pianist Michel Graillier, and bassist Jean Louis Rasinfosse. The problem here is that Lackerschmid’s stiff, clangy playing more or less dominates things, even when he isn’t soloing, and Baker understandably seems unhappy about this, though he does persevere. Rob Bowman’s liner notes claim that the second group’s final performance, a 15-minute version of “Love For Sale,” is the highlight of the DVD. I’ll take “Time After Time.” Oddly enough, some might think, the Baker DVD leads logically to “Louis Armstrong Live in ’59” (55 minutes), shot at a concert in Belgium. In one sense this is just Armstrong’s standard show of the time, but it also may be, according to Bowman’s notes, “the only complete performance by Armstrong that exists on film,” which gives it obvious importance. Oh, yes – the Baker connection. Well, if you can listen through some of the perhaps familiar routines, and the noisy, plodding drumming of Danny Barcelona, and focus on Armstrong, one hears every time he picks up the trumpet an unfailing flow of logical, swinging melodic-rhythmic invention. Of course, the tone of Armstrong’s proud, bold musical voice differs from Baker’s introspective melancholy, but the clarity and commitment of thought, the drive to play on through in accord with the dictates of one’s inner ear – these things they have in common. Armstrong’s band here is Trummy Young, Peanuts Hucko, Billy Kyle, and Mort Herbert, with Velma Middleton on vocals. Everyone seems to be in a happy mood, and Armstrong is particularly brilliant on “Indiana” and works meaningful variations on “Basin Street Blues,” while his vocals, at least in my experience, seldom if ever fail. Check out, for one, the way he manages to fully inhabit the familiar “Mack the Knife.” “Mack the Knife” also crops up on what for me is the disappointment of Jazz Icons series (though it does have its virtues), “Ella Fitzgerald Live in ’57 & ’63” (56 minutes). Fitzgerald, in my view, was not a gifted interpreter-dramatizer of the lyrics she sang until the late stages of her career; rather, her forte was crafting deeply swinging, at best subtly shaded variations on the melodic material at hand – as though she were the vocal equivalent of, say, Benny Carter. A certain centeredness – rhythmic, melodic, and emotional – was of the essence here, while her vaunted scat singing was more work than fun and not that inventive. Having laid my cards on the table, I can leave committed Fitzgerald fans to sort out the opinions that follow. The 1957 concert in Belgium, in front of an audience that fills the large hall and much of the stage, finds her backed by pianist Don Abney, Herb Ellis, her ex-husband Ray Brown, and Jo Jones. It’s an ideal rhythm section for Fitzgerald – she and Brown agree wholly on where “one” is, and Jones’ feather-light drumming is magical – but the story of “Love For Sale” is non-existent in her hands (better perhaps if she had handled it as an uptempo exercise in swinging virtuosity). “Tenderly,” a dramatically static song, fares much better and has a lovely coda, and “Just One of Those Things” finds a nice groove – Ella’s long-lined rhythmic “centeredness” is particularly evident here. But when the same tune crops up in Sweden in 1963, something seems to be awry, as is the case throughout this shot in the studio set (again in my view). Fitzgerald pushes hard on every tune, backed by Tommy Flanagan, Jim Hughart, and Gus Johnson, and increased effort brings diminishing returns. No Fitzgerald fan should be deterred; others may want to sample or think twice.

Satin Doll -- though I can imagine that, given McCoy Tyner's harmonic predilictions, his version of it on Impulse (which I've somehow never heard) might solve that ditty's inherent problems by upping the ante on them. Red Garland, in his way, might have done likewise.

Just ran across a 1999 Plas Johnson quartet album, "Evening Delight." (Johnson, of course, is the man who played the "Pink Panther" theme and has been working in the L.A. studios for decades.) Produced by Johnson himself, with two very together rhythm sections (one with the late Ross Tompkins on piano) backing him, the program is all standards and is drenched (so it seems to me) in the sensibility of vintage Ben Webster-Don Byas. Johnson's tone is almost unbelievably dark and rich, a la Byas specifically I think, and there's a lot of genuine thought and commitment in his playing, within certain stylistic boundaries of course. Don't know how much else stuff there is out there that features Johnson to this extent (I recall some sideman work with the big band that Frank Capp co-led with someone else), but I found the playing here to be quite personal and foxy, not quite like that of anyone else I know from that stylistic bag. There's some in-passing resemblance to Flip Phillips, but the player Johnson most brings to my mind is Chicago veteran Eddie Johnson, who can be heard on a tasty Nessa LP, "Indian Summer," and on one or two Delmark CDs. Check out, if you can, the slow motion reading of "Take the A Train" on "Evening Delight." Plas has his own stories to tell.

Either Charles I or Louis XVI -- because they got their heads cut off. (Sorry, I got up on the wrong side of bed.)

The series of albums that Sam Most recorded for Xanadu in the late 1970s -- mostly (so to speak) on flute --are all worthwhile IMO: "Mostly Flute" (with Duke Jordan, Tal Farlow, Sam Jones, and Billy Higgins); "Flute Flight" (with Lou Levy, Monty Budwig, and Donald Bailey); and "Flute Talk" (with Joe Farrell, Mike Wofford, Bob Magnusson, and Roy McCurdy). Most is also on Sam Noto's Xanadu album "Noto-Riety" (with Dolo Coker, Budwig, and Frank Butler). Most is a technically and musically very agile/clever bebopper; the only problem some might have with him is that it seems like his lines are almost conceived the way a whistler would do so -- that is, the actual physical flute participates a bit less in the process than one is used to. (I know that's imprecise, but whjen you hear him, you'll know what I'm referring to.) In line with this, Most is credited by Roland Kirk with being among the first flutists to do the "humming through the flute" thing that Kirk popularized.

I like of "Dig It" -- Lee and Ted are in fine form, though I can see that some might find aspects of Ron McClure and Jeff Williams's playing a bit intrusive (the former's lines tend to wander into the soloists' register; the latter favors a stop and start time feel). I don't have "Sound of Surprise" and should track it down.

Another review: http://www.bagatellen.com/archives/reviews/000176.html Note the comment by Ted's daughter, Anita, who is a fine bandleader-composer. Her album "27 East" is excellent.

Brown Steeplechase info: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=12898 I love the record, but I know of one veteran Brown admirer who has reservations, though he's never explained to me what they are.

A lovely autobiography by a musician who was not that notable himself in the history of things but saw things acutely is "Thirty Years With the Big Bands" by Arthur Rollini (tenor saxophonist with Benny Goodman when that band broke through and younger brother of the great Adrian Rollini).

Allen -- The pianist whose album Wellstood wrote those fine notes on stride for was Donald Lambert.

Care to share? No, Jim -- in part because it wouldn't make much sense without my doing a whole lot more good writing than I could come up with. It wasn't really a booga-booga bad events nightmare as a passle of very bad feelings that I''d never experienced before in real life but now was experiencing full bore one. Randy Twizzle -- Where the heck did you come up with that Eddie Fisher review?

Sorry -- couldn't make it last night and almost certainly can't make tonight either.

Am in the midst of the new P. Lee biography, "Fever." It's good (better than I thought it would be -- convincingly detailed and not a so-called "pathography" in tone), but the facts of Lee's wounded/needy emotional life are terribly sad at times. A few nights ago the book (which I'd been reading it just before I went to sleep) inspired one of the most ghastly nightmares I've ever experienced.

Just to make things clear, I mean Ornette's solo on "Turnaround" on the new "Sound Grammar" album, not his solo on the orginal recording of "Turnaround."

I'm a bit bemused that only one person, Chalupa, has responded so far to the two posts below, which were on "New Releases," so I'm putting them up here in the hope that someone thinks this is as interesting as I do. Of course, I could be wrong on both counts or either one -- that Ornette is quoting from "If I Loved You" here, and that if he is, this is interesting. But what the hell: 1) Anyone else notice that Ornette's solo on "Turnaround" begins with a quote from "If I Loved You" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" (as opposed, I guess, to somebody else's "Carousel")? It's the opening phrase of the Rodgers' melody, the one that goes with the words "If I loved you/Time and again I would try to say..." I stopped listening to post this, but so far I'd say that Ornette sounds almost overcome by joy (with a twinge of melancholy). His sound is caught nicely, too. And the horn seems to be doing his bidding as much as or even more than ever -- a lovely air of ease and fludity at age 76. 2) Speaking of that Ornette quote from "If I Loved You" at the beginning of his "Turnaround" solo, I just checked out how Hammerstein's lyric continues: "If I loved you, Time and again I would try to say All I'd want you to know. If I loved you, Words wouldn't come in an easy way Round in circles I'd go!" "Round in circles I'd go" on "Turnaround" -- pretty neat if that's part of what stirred the allusion into being in Ornette's mind. Also IIRC (I don't have a version of "If I Loved You" at hand, so I can't be sure), what's happening musically in the phrase "Round in circles I go" bears a fairly intense, at once circular and somewhat off-center, resemblance to what's happening musically in "All I'd want you to know."

Wish I could be there, and that just might be possible. My wife and I have hoping we could get to NYC this fall. I'm a big fan of Sadownick (though based on less experience of his playing, and only on recordings, than I would like) and can imagine how well you, he, and the rest of the band would interact.

News to me too, but Alun Morgan is a very credible fellow in my experience -- been around a long time (was writing for Jazz Monthly before Brown's death), knows the scene from the inside, and has no axes to grind, or least none that I've ever seen.

There's a brilliant and shrewdly titled 20-page essay on Thompson -- "When Backward Comes Out Ahead: Lucky Thompson's Phrasing and Improvisation" -- by Tad Shull (himself a talented tenor saxophonist) in the "Annual Review of Jazz Studies 12, 2002 (Scarecrow Press).

I did an interview with her once, in about 1988. She seemed to me to be a class act as a person, absolutely -- and a relatively "unarmored" one too, for a celebrity -- perhaps a bit too unarmored for her own good in the worlds in which she moved. Talking to her was a pleasure, though.

Speaking of that Ornette quote from "If I Loved You" at the beginning of his "Turnaround" solo, I just checked out how Hammerstein's lyric continues: "If I loved you, Time and again I would try to say All I'd want you to know. If I loved you, Words wouldn't come in an easy way Round in circles I'd go!" "Round in circles I'd go" on "Turnaround" -- pretty neat if that's part of what stirred the allusion into being in Ornette's mind. Also IIRC (I don't have a version of "If I Loved You" at hand, so I can't be sure), what's happening musically in the phrase "Round in circles I go" bears a fairly intense, at once circular and somewhat off-center, resemblance to what's happening musically in "All I'd want you to know."

Anyone else notice that Ornette's solo on "Turnaround" begins with a quote from "If I Loved You" from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Carousel" (as opposed, I guess, to somebody else's "Carousel")? It's the opening phrase of the Rodgers' melody, the one that goes with the words "If I loved you/Time and again I would try to say..." I stopped listening to post this, but so far I'd say that Ornette sounds almost overcome by joy (with a twinge of melancholy). His sound is caught nicely, too. And the horn seems to be doing his bidding as much as or even more than ever -- a lovely air of ease and fludity at age 76.

Bechet Select, Hodges small groups, Johnny Smith. My ship came in. Music is excellent (so what else is new?), but I was bit disappointed in the bland, relatively insight-free Hodges and Smith booklets, especially when compared to Bob Wilber's fine notes for the Bechet (or for that matter, Stanley Dance's fine biographical essay from the first Hodges Mosaic, which is reprinted in this one).

Sinatra IIRC.

Louis Armstrong's "Lazy River" Aretha Franklin's "Skylark" Sylvia Syms' "Skylark" Sheila Jordan's "Baltimore Oriole" Sarah Vaughan's "The Nearness of You" Jo Stafford's "Ivy" Benny Goodman's "Ballad in Blue" Claude Hopkins' "Lazybones" (vocal by Fred Norman)

I find myself asking the first question more than I probably should -- which is in effect a tribute to what (or part of what) Clementine is up to. No answers, only guesses, but then that's a big part of the "what." Whatever -- why he writes that way can't I think be separated from the "who is he?" question, which again is in effect a tribute to etc.