Larry Kart

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.

I posted the Gabbard quotes because they seem to me to be a typical in inclination (though also fairly extreme) example of the often pseudo-solemn, highly judgmental tone (as in, "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat") that I think runs throughout Gennari's book and in many other texts that spring from the NJS. I believe that you yourself noted the somewhat bizarre disconnect between Gennari's scene-setting description of John Hammond and Leonard Feather at the Savoy Ballroom and the next paragraph, where Hammond and Feather are suddenly hauled before Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice -- "Two young white man without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience etc...." BTW, surely that passage of Gennari's is "informed" as they say, by the some of the same sort of thinking that runs through the Gabbard passages I quoted. Well, if you scan Gennari's home page at the University of Vermont, he's an Associate Professor of English. So that deconstructive paragraph probably comes out of his experience of literary criticism - I mean it would be an absolutely standard bit of criticism in that area. I'd say it's sociology-based. As I was trying to explain, Gabbard's is psychoanalytically based (his brother's a psychoanalyst). One looks to the outside world (society) for explanation, the other to the internal world (the psyche) for the same. You're actually [con]fusing the two, when you say "Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice". I get the impression that you think there's one mode of thought running through NJS into Gabbard and Gennari. But, if you look at Gennari's home page he has an article "Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies," in BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE FORUM 25 (Fall 1991). This is likely to be the article that generated his book. As it was written 15 years ago, his core way of thinking must presumably have been in place then - and probably a few years before. I can't see how NJS can be made responsible for it, unless you want to place NJS as a recognisable movement back in the late 80s. The closest thing I can think of to "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat"" is Tom Piazza's take on primitivism. Is he an NJS writer? Simon Weil Gennari's "Jazz Criticism: Its Development and Ideologies" and Scott DeVeaux's "Constructing the Jazz Tradition: Jazz Historiography" both date from the same year (1991) and were printed in the same issue of the same journal, BLACK AMERICAN LITERATURE FORUM 25. DeVeaux's essay is commonly regarded as the text that launched/announced the NJS movement with its concluding exhortation: "But the time has come for an approach that is less invested in the ideology of jazz as aesthetic object and more responsive to issues of historical particularity. Only in this way can the study of jazz break free from its self-imposed isolation, and participate with other disciplines in the exploration of meaning in American culture." No doubt, though, before the movement crystallized and/or became visible, it was latent or developing in quite a few minds. In any case, assuming that the gist of Gennari's essay is incorporated in his book, I'd say that DeVeaux and he are coming from much the same place, though I'd judge DeVeaux to have a good deal more intellectual candle power (at his best, DeVeaux is much better than that IMO rather gassy passage I just quoted). As for the similarities I see among Gennari, Gabbard, DeVeaux, and many of the other NJS writers I've come across, the main negative one is a matter of tone and intent -- too often, as I said above, "interests" are rather freely detected or imputed and then used to dismiss arguments that one might prefer to see ... I suppose, argued with. As for Gabbard's psychonanalytic background, I've spent a fair amount of time around one prominent analytic institute and am aware of how readily in that profession some people can use "insights" and rankings of the psychic health (or lack of same) of other people, especially one's analytic colleagues, as tools in less than intellectually legitimate power operations.

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.

I posted the Gabbard quotes because they seem to me to be a typical in inclination (though also fairly extreme) example of the often pseudo-solemn, highly judgmental tone (as in, "our novel 'insights' expose and thus devalue/trump your covert 'interests,' placing us in the catbird seat") that I think runs throughout Gennari's book and in many other texts that spring from the NJS. I believe that you yourself noted the somewhat bizarre disconnect between Gennari's scene-setting description of John Hammond and Leonard Feather at the Savoy Ballroom and the next paragraph, where Hammond and Feather are suddenly hauled before Gennari's bar of psychic-social justice -- "Two young white man without dates, in a room full of good-timing cheer and ecstatic bodily release, position themselves between the musicians and the audience etc...." BTW, surely that passage of Gennari's is "informed" as they say, by the some of the same sort of thinking that runs through the Gabbard passages I quoted.

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).

Lazaro -- Obviously we're on the same side here about all or most of this insidious nonsense, but "homosocial" doesn't mean the same thing as "monosocial." A "homosocial" relationship is a social relationship among members of the same sex. Gribbard is saying that male jazz record collectors tend to interact only with other male jazz collectors -- and from there, he gets into his "wink,wink, nudge, nudge" bag. But a gathering of 150 male jazz record collectors would be a homosocial one.

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.

BTW, when I typed out the sentences below this morning ... The latter quoted passage above, like much else of its sort on the book, is heavily informed (as they say) by New Jazz Studies-type thinking. For a real treat along those lines, check out the citation on page 398 from if only because Gabbard himself "disproves ... [that] stereotype... by living a life that happily accomodates both his copious vinyl collection and his wife...."

Real men use 45s.

BTW, I'm not saying that there's nothing to any of the stuff from Gabbard and Gennari that I've quoted above. Rather, I'm bothered most by its finger-wagging, pseudo-solemn tone, and the eagerness to judge and dismiss that seems to underlie it (or perhaps more, the eagerness to adopt the role of those who get to judge and dismiss).

And then there's his analytic schtick: Gennari seems to move pretty abruptly between the two, which makes this an odd concoction - in that no way does the preceding stuff justify the abrupt leaping to conclusions of "the Ur-stance of the jazz critic" lines. The problem is not that he leaps to a conclusion (he might have a point), but that by couching it in this analytic language, he presents it as kind of scholarly and disinterested. If he'd wanted to do that, the preceding paragraphs would have had to have been analytic casebuilding instead of storytelling. I don't know... Simon Weil The latter quoted passage above, like much else of its sort on the book, is heavily informed (as they say) by New Jazz Studies-type thinking. For a real treat along those lines, check out the citation on page 398 from NJS maven Krin Gabbard about record collecting -- "...like all homosocial activities, a serious devotion to collecting may even hinder a man from acquiring the regular company of a sympathetic woman, and not just because so many record collectors end up with the unkempt look of the nerd...." Gennari himself then adds: ...."the stereotypical record collector struggles -- according to Gabbard and other scholars writing under the influence of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory -- with anxieties over the completeness of his maculine inventory. On this theory, the completist mode of collection ... is the displacement of an anxiety over the wholeness of the body (and of the psychosexual emotional balance that goes with it) within a symbolic order: "the man [Gennari is quoting from Gabbard now] whose collection is complete has no gaps and thus no anxieties about what is not there. The serial collector seeks plentitude, the warding off of castration." Aieee! Then on the same theme, on page 65, again incorporating a quote from Gabbard, Gennari writes: "As long as the white male jazz fan stands by his claims of a purely artistic appreciation, he 'need not concern himself with the homoerotic and voyeuristic element of his fascination with black men as they enact their masculinity with saxophones, trumpets, guitars, and other phallic instruments.'" Then, down the page, Gennari writes that he is "not quite as ready as Gabbard "to explain jazz's art discourse as largely the product of the repression of interracial homoerotic desire," if only because Gabbard himself "disproves ... [that] stereotype... by living a life that happily accomodates both his copious vinyl collection and his wife...."

No, not a word, except for mentioning that the late adolescent Howard Mandel went down to Hyde Park on weekends to hear some "head-changing" things. Then Mandel is said to have wondered "if the effect was all that different from when, during the same period, he took in concerts by the Jefferson Airplane, Vanilla Fudge, Jini Hendrix, Cream, the Doors, and other rock/pop acts."

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).

Sorry -- that's George Baquet.

Gushee's book is about the seven-piece Creole Band -- whose best known members are Freddie Keppard, George Bacquet, Jimmy Noone, and bassist Bill Johnson -- that played vaudeville circuits from 1914-18, often to great acclaim, but made no recordings. Gushee's contention is that the the band -- given its likely high musical quality and high jazz content (considering who its members were and what the band's repertoire was), plus the fact that band usually was well-received (indeed often regarded as a sensation) by mass audiences across the country (they often played major vaudeville houses, remember, and often were headliners too) -- had a crucial impact in disseminating jazz. Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was a different bunch of guys, though the marvelous Bill Johnson would play with him, and came later.

Only Mandel is mentioned of those guys, but that part of the book kind of dissolves into more or less inconsequential "can't we all get along" talk anyhow, plus the issue of Marsalis/Murray/Crouch/JLC is framed almost exclusively in racial terms. That bothers me less, though, than the air of "I just give up" that this final portion seems to radiate. For example, the final three sentences of the book are: "Jazz criticism ... is nothing less than the rowdy conversation that gives jazz its incisive edge in shaping the contours of America and New World modernity. Jazz criticism is the noise -- the auditory dissonance -- that gives the music cultural meaning. May the noise forever clamor, and may we listen and learn." Sounds like a university president addressing the graduating class. BTW, I love "...the noise, the auditory dissonance...." It's like "the dirt, the unclean matter that soils."

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)