Larry Kart

I may have mentioned this before, but my only in-person encounter with Stanley, aside from a weird phone call from him in which he tried to get me to agree that Lester Bowie was a charlatan, then rang off abruptly when I said that I didn't think so at all, was at the Village Vanguard back in the mid-1980s, on the night Thad Jones the then-new director of the Basie band had made his debut in that role. (I was in town to interview Jones on that occasion, and it proved to be one heck of a long strange funny evening, but that's a story I eventually hope to tell in full, along with other similar ones, within the pages of a book.) In any case, Kenny Burrell was at the Vanguard, Thad wanted to see his old Detroit buddy, so we went. Between sets, Burrell spotted Thad, his face lit up and he began to make his way to Thad's table, but he was intercepted by Stanley, who avidly embraced Burrell and began to shower him with loud, grandiloquent praise while he continued to held Kenny in a vise-like hug -- all of this, it seemed clear to me, designed to proclaim to all present, as though his goal were to assemble a living billboard, that Stanley was on the most of intimate terms with the likes of Burrell. Certainly, Stanley's words of praise were pitched at a level that brought the ears of just about everyone in the room into play. Kenny, I believe, found this scene annoying and embarrassing; I know for sure that Thad and some others at our table (among them Tommy Flanagan) did.

Relyles -- It's been up and down since then for me with Stewart, but I'm still on board. I found a recent Criss Cross from him with Joe Cohn to be almost unlistenable because it was suddenly full of overt Rollins-isms -- I can't take much of that. Not because I don't like Rollins but because certain of Sonny's magniloquent burps and chortles are so totally his that you'd think it would be obvious that they can't be borrowed. On the other hand, Stewart is in very good form on two Ryan Kisor CDs -- "Awakening" (Criss Cross), rec. 2002, and "This Is Ryan" (Video Arts), rec. 2005. I also like Stewart's own "Tenor and Soul" (Video Arts), rec. 2005, though here Joe Cohn sounds rather blatant-obvious to me. Stewart also is in a good groove on the group Planet Jazz's "In Orbit" (Sharp Nine), rec. 2005, with Joe Magnarelli, Peter Bernstein, et al. playing music written by the late drummer Johnny Ellis, but there's an alternate world/retro feel to Ellis's writing and to the playing of pianist Spike Wilner and bassist Neil Miner (like "It's 1958 again, but we've got more chops than the guys who were playing this back then, so should we flaunt that or disguise it") that kind of creeps me out. As I said before, it's the more Mobley-esque side of Stewart that attracts me, because that seems to lead him in more personal directions that his Sonny-ish side. The main thing is that he's a relaxed/vigorous maker of real, swinging melodies -- one feeding into the next and building, and with little or no sense that he drawing from a bag of licks.

And what's a "jazz canon"? Does he mean anything canonic (i.e. music in which one part imitates note for note and overlaps another part at a particular pitch e.g. canon at a fourth) that happens to occur in a setting that's more or less jazz-like (which would be a possible but fairly useless and/or really sloppy thing to say). Or does he mean that there is a particular way to play canonically in jazz that's different from the ways one might play canonically elsewhere? What a maroon.

"Ben Watson, music journalist and longstanding contributor to The Wire, Hi-Fi News and Signal To Noise, is well known for his deviant and polemical music criticism." That would seem to explain it.

20 -- for the usual reason. It is fun when you go from 19 to 20, and the price of your order drops. I enjoyed that so much when I went from 9 to 10 that I had to see if I could legitimately (hah!) get to 20. No problem as it turned out, though 30 might have been.

To complicate things further, Richmond also was known as Richman (his given name, I suspect).

A Richmond solo with Dorsey can be found here, on "Puddle Wump": http://www.rhapsody.com/tommydorsey/thecom...dtranscriptions

Yes, but Taylor's ballad mode was big-toned, out of Hawkins-Webster. This solo is, as Alexander said up top, rather Getz-like in its lightness of tone and somewhat wispy agility. And if you've heard Boomie Richmond, it sounds exactly like him. He was, again, a very distinctive player -- that neo-Bud Freeman/Eddie Miller "gargle" of his is the giveaway.

"Car wrecks," exactly. And I share Jim's apprehension that (to use a pompous phrase, but it's the only one I can think of) the tone of discourse at work on that JC thread will somehow inadvertently infect this place. At times you can almost feel it happening, as when that "uppity" thing flew over the transom. It's like part of your brain starts to fry.

I don't care what any written or on-line "source" says -- if you've heard Boomie Richmond (b. 1921, former Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman sideman, active in the studios from the '60s), and I have, that sounds exactly like Richmond -- a kind of pleasantly gargly offshoot of Bud Freeman and/or Eddie Miller, with an admixture of Pres. Also, it doesn't sound a bit like anything I've ever heard from Sam "The Man" Taylor, who was a big-toned R&b-ish player, sort of an older version of King Curtis. Taylor had several hit singles in the '50s and made commercialy succesful albums as well. About Richmond (Given name Abraham Samuel Richmond), as fate would have it, I just picked up on Monday for 99 cents one of his rather few moments in the jazz solo sun -- a mid-1950s six-tune date for Jazztone under clarinetist Peanuts Hucko's leadership in which those two, plus trumpter Billy Butterfield, guitarist Mundell Lowe, pianist Hank Jones, bassist Jack Lesberg, and drummer Morey Feld attempt to recreate the sound of the Goodman Sextet with Cootie Williams, George Auld, and Charlie Christian. I don't usually care for re-creations, but there's some fine playing here. Othe side of the LP, title "Dedicated Jazz," is in the same spirit -- a Rex Stewart-led neo-Ellington small group date with Hilton Jefferson, Lawrence Brown, Danny Bank and rhythm. Also fine stuff, and it's one of the very few times on record when Bank takes a solo. In any case, I'll bet anything that the tenor soloist on "True Love Ways" is Richmond. He is/was a very distinctive player.

Some very good stuff here, but don't miss the Hampton-Granz date that's not on it, "Hamp and Getz." "Cherokee" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside" in particular are on fire, and the rhythm section -- Lou Levy, Leroy Vinnegar, and Shelly Manne -- is, in case I haven't said it before, on fire. BTW, am I the only who hears some passing kinship or overlap between Hampton and Monk, on what, for want of a better term, could be called the rhythm-melody level?

What he does with vowel sounds on "Willow Weep For Me" -- how he colors them both timbrally and emotionally and links them up in long storytelling lines (the latter in ways I tried to write about once and failed, but or because the things he's doing are so subtle and powerful)!

Writing that, from where I sat, was perhaps not wholly unlike (albeit in a reactive mode) what you were doing in the studio. Sort of (as a White Sox fan since 1951) an A.J. Pierzynski moment -- you're at the plate, the game is on the line, the ball is on its way, and now's the time. The answer to the song titled "Why Was I Born?"

Glad to be of service, though it took me a while to figure out how and why I'd confused things there. And to clear up any lingering confusion, I did mean to say that L-R-G and The Maze are as important as music gets. (I still remember how it felt to hear those recordings for the first time. Excitement, awe, the dawn of a new world, you name it -- probably like being at the premiere of "Le Sacre." I thought the top of my head had come off. Likewise for the sax quartet version of Nonaah.)

Well, here's one source: http://www.samburtis.com/forum/viewtopic.p...87964f89ab1f86d but I don't think that's the one I ran into. BTW, the poster here is Danish trombonist Erling Kroner.

I knew someone was going to ask, Lazaro, and I don't recall -- except that the source was definitive. Also, if you listen closely and know Persip's style, there are some definite Persip touches. He was one hell of a drummer, especially behind a big band. If you can find it, check him out on Bill Potts' "The Jazz Soul of Porgy and Bess."

Yes. But even so, it's hard for me to imagine Stanley (or anyone who's not certifiable) actually sitting down and writing that, then thinking, "Yeah -- that's cool, I'll send it."

Sorry for confusing things. I was replying to the post on that thread by Blake and the reply to it by Parkertown, which I thought meant that Parkertown was saying that L-R-G, The Maze, and S II Examples were on the AEC box. Those three pieces are on Chief CD 4. Numbers 1&2 are of course on the AEC box.

Crouch's post can't be real -- right? It's far beyond parody.

Don't know if it's come up here before, but the main thing about the personnel on "Out of the Cool" is that the volcanic drummer on "La Nevada" is not Elvin Jones but Charlie Persip.

My guess on the piano player is Jimmy Jones. I'd try next the Emarcy album she did with Clifford Brown. It's been reissued on CD. Another great one for Sarah, though you'll have to put up with some string-laden orchestras and soupy charts, is "Great Songs from Hit Shows," a 2-CD set that I hope is still available (I wrote the notes). In in a similar vein, there's her 2-CD set of Gershwin material -- all these from the Emarcy period.

Buddy Bregman?

No, it's not. It's on CD on Chief, issued in 1989. Don't know it that's still available. In any case, it's about as important as music gets.

No, but "The Saga of Jenny" is all true.

Hey, the leader of our high school jazz band -- Bill Brimfield among the trumpets, Steve Bagby the drummer, Ann Margret (!) the vocalist -- was bassist Bruce Anderson, son of the then-head of Illinois Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, the Rev. O.V. Anderson. The Rev. Anderson was one fearsome dude -- a dour, towering figure who loathed jazz and, so it seemed, any form of pleaurable activity. BTW, Bruce, who was and still is a darn good bassist, went on to become a Lutheran minister himself; his church is in Morton Grove, Ill. Also BTW, when I say high school jazz band, this was before the stage band thing and school sponsorship -- it was just the guys from New Trier H.S. (and some from nearby Evanston H.S., like Brimfield) who wanted to play jazz.