Larry Kart

It might be Alice McLeod, later Alice Coltrane.

A favorite was the Wally Wood-Harvey Kurtzman parody of "Superman" in which the caped hero, Superduperman, runs into another caped hero, Captain Marbles (as in Captain Marvel) -- or rather he runs into annoying little Billy Spafon, boy reporter, who transforms himself into Captain Marbles by saying "SHAZOOM!" (as in "SHAZAAM!"). In any case, Superduperman says, "Shazoom? Vas ist das Shazoom?" -- to which little Billy's reply is: "Strength Health Aptitude Zeal Ox, power of Ox, power of another Money."

Apparently Bill Clinton is a tad promiscuous in this respect too. This is from Russian tenor saxophonist Igor Butman's website: "Clinton described this performance [involvling Butman] in his book 'My Life': 'Before I left Moscow, Putin hosted a small dinner in the Kremlin with a jazz concert afterward, featuring Russian musicians from teenagers to an octogenarian. The finale began on a dark stage, a haunting series of tunes by my favorite living tenor saxophonist, Igor Butman. John Podesta, who loved jazz as much as I did, agreed with me that we had never heard a finer live performance."

I have "Convergence Zone" and enjoy it; will look for this one for sure.

Definitely "At Ease." Hawkins is in fine form on both, but I recall Dan Morgenstern complaining (and, having listened again, I agree) that the drummer on the "The Hawk Relaxes," Andrew Cyrille, often plays for some damn reason in an arch, almost businessman's bounce, "two"-feel manner -- as though he thought Hawkins's music were some kind of tired old man proposition. Either that or at this relatively early stage in his career, Cyrille didn't have enough experience to comfortably handle a walking-ballad groove. I'm not normally a big Osie Johnson fan (he's the drummer on "At Ease"), but he knows what to do.

Chris -- I always felt that Hentoff's notes, after a certain early period, were compiled from clippings. On the other hand, when I was an adolescent reading Down Beat in the mid 1950s, Nat was about the only guy reviewing records for DB then who was trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Even if some of his opinions were second-hand (I think I suspected that even then), he was going to the some of the right people to find out what to say. When Martin Williams came on board at DB for a while a few years further on, it seemed fairly clear that he was one of Nat's gurus, as their later association at The Jazz Review would suggest. And I agree with Allen that Hentoff has been running on empty for a long, long time.

Robin Holloway (b. 1943) is an interesting, quirky British composer, best known for his Second and Third Concertos for Orchestra (both on NMC), and an interesting, quirky critic, best known for his “Debussy and Wagner” (Eulenberg Books). I just got my hands on his collection of critical pieces “Robin Holloway on Music: Essays and Diversions, 1963-2003” (Continuum), and was pretty much stunned by a passage from the essay “Haydn: The Musician’s Musician.” [The part that stunned me comes at the very end, but I’ll have to quote at length to give that coda some context.] Haydn, Holloway writes, “is the most self-conscious... the purest of all composers; his art has the fewest external referents, is more completely about itself than any other…. Haydn alone gives no handle, there is nothing to latch on to, biographically or in subject matter…. This music is pure because it cannot be translated. Despite one’s ready recognition of a ragbag of tropes…it owes less than any other to metaphor, simile, association… He is music’s supreme intellectual. Yet every lover of Haydn recognizes within the cerebral power many characteristics difficult to name without absurdity, so wholly are they musicalised. Highs spirits, all the way from physical brio…to jokes, puns, games of surprising intellectual and even expressive weight .. touching on rarified places which no other means could reach…. There is serenity and hymn-like calm; Enlightenment openness, sage and humane; radiance without shadowlike tempera, pure colors on a white base. Their opposite -- twisted strangeness, contortion, mannerist extremity--is almost as frequent, and this too is shadowless in that is never morbid…. Then there is deep still contemplation, simultaneously remote and glowing” etc. etc.…. "How are we to take music that seems to evoke such ambiguities and contrarieties as these, but that certainly supersedes their merely verbal expression—that offers, in its own intrinsic terms, a play of mood, as of material, simultaneously so straightforward and so ungraspable…. "This is the area at the heart of all the arts where structure and process fuse inseparably into expression; the total result is an emanation, however direct or oblique, from the unique individual who is doing the making and summoning into being. "Music is about notes, whether the upshot is Tristan’s delirium, Tchaikovsky’s floods of passion, cardiac convulsions in Mahler and Berg, or any sonata, trio, quartet, or symphony by Haydn. If it’s not good composing, then neither is it good expression of an emotion, or depiction of a character, or evocation of sunlight playing on the waves or all the rest. If ‘words, not ideas, make a poem,' how much more true for the relatively unconnotational art of music…. "Yet music does render all of those extraneous things. If it were indeed just ‘pure music,’ something—the main thing—would be missing…. So...how can unmitigated concentration upon the process of composition be at the same time a quest for what Debussy called ‘the naked flesh of emotion’? It must be that the materials of music themselves not only convey passion, pictures and so forth, but that they actually ARE passionate and pictorial—intrinsically, of their nature.” I don't know about you, but I'd been standing when I first read that last sentence, I would have had to sit down.

I have him on Conrad Herwig's "Unseen Universe," with some of the same players who crop up on his own Criss Cross albums, so I assume his playing there is pretty representative. He's got chops and fingers but seems fairly faceless. In that general bag -- if it is the same bag -- I prefer, say, Scott Wendholt. Sipiagin sounds to me like a guy whose melodic lines, such as they are, are almost wholly determined by his favorite "hip" harmonic patterns. Herwig, by contrast, tends to push ahead on both fronts simultaneously and aggressively, though I could see where a reasonable person might find him a bit blatant or flashy at times.

Handel's "Israel in Egypt," cond. Frederic Waldman (Decca). Terrific choral singing, sound has remarkable punch. HIP or not, I'm tossing my John Eliot Gardiner "IIE." "The Marriage of Figaro," cond. Leinsdorf, w/ Tozzi, Roberta Peters, Lisa Della Casa, George London, et al. (RCA). Leinsdorf is a bit brisk, but there's some fine singing here, Tozzi esp., and it's great to be reminded again what an amazing work this is.

Here, toward the end, is another, somewhat contrary view of the Marsh-Chambers encounter from the booklet notes I wrote for the Mosaic Tristano-Konitz-Marsh set (they're reprinted in my book "Jazz In Search of Itself"). The opening passage refers to the Konitz-Marsh Atlantic date: If Marsh is, as mentioned above, a compulsive structuralist, and Konitz is a compulsive melodist, the consequences are vividly evident here , against Bauer, Clarke, and Pettiford’s dark pulsating backdrop. One doesn’t want to sound mystical about this, but Marsh proceeds as though silence were a kind of space, a blank neutral medium--almost a void--that comes to life only when (and because) his lines, his living thoughts, adventurously stretch across it. For Konitz, though, silence is alive, a creature or being--each note he plays almost literally touches its flanks, and the resulting dialogue of message-bearing pressures will increasingly become one of his chief sources of inspiration. Thus, in 1961, Konitz would seek out and successfully record with the most aggressive drummer in jazz at the time, Elvin Jones; while in December 1957, Marsh will almost come to grief in the company of Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones. Describing the partnership between Chambers and Jones in the liner notes to Hank Mobley’s Poppin’, which was recorded less than two months before the first of the two dates that make up the Atlantic Marsh album, I wrote that the drummer and bassist “shared a unique concept of where ‘one’ is--just a hair behind the beat but rigidly so, with the result that the time has a stiff-legged, compulsive quality. The beat doesn’t flow but jerks forward in a series of spasmodic leaps, creating a climate of nervous intensity that was peculiar to the era. Either the soloist jumps or he is fried to a crisp on the spot.” Well, Marsh did survive the encounter, and he is a bit more at ease on the next date in January 1958, when Paul Motian takes the place of Jones and pianist Ronnie Ball drops out. For even though Chambers’s broad rhythmic impasto, so full of directional energy, still threatens to ride right over the nodes of rhythmic ambivalence that Warne must leave exposed, the absence of a chordal instrument makes just that much more space available to the soloist, who is especially fluent on “Yardbird Suite.” One wonders, though, what this album would have been like if Pettiford and Clarke had been present.

IIRC, the four girls in Four Girls Four at that time were O'Connell, Rose Marie, Rosemary Clooney, and Margaret Whiting.

I mention this only because she gone now (d. 1993) and because I have some personal, anecdotal semi-confirmation, but I've heard that one of the most so-inclined of the prominent band singers of that era was that cute little All-American girl Helen O'Connell. I ran into her in the late '70s or early '80s, when she was member of Four Girls Four, gave the act a good review, and was then approached over the phone by O'Connell in a coy, "I MUST thank you" manner that I chose not to follow up on. She was still pretty cute, too, albeit in a slighty wacked-out, Blythe Danner manner. Hey, it coulda been Rose Marie.

A retired big-band singer gets an offer from a record producer to lay down some of her old hits for a nostalgia album. She brings her charts to the studio and is surprised to see only the producer there. "Where's the band?" she asks. "No need for a band any more," smiles the producer. "Everything is computerized." "No piano? No conductor?" she asks. "Nope, everything is in this synthesizer. Your charts are already in there. All we do is press a button." "How about clarinets, sax, horns?" "Right here in this machine, never tell the difference." "How about a drummer," she asks. "Nope," says the producer, "this rhythm machine takes the beat and runs with it all by itself." "Well," says the singer, "then who do I sleep with?"

There was some spirited back and forth about "Interstellar Space" beginning at page 11 on this thread: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...%20space&st=150

It's a different kind of thing, plucked not bowed, but Oscar Pettiford.

Here's the passage, from an interview Perkins did with Steve Voce: "Warner Brothers at that time had their offices in the United Studios and I worked for Reprise. I was involved with the Ellington sessions for that label and even played on one, the soundtrack for Assault On A Queen. Watching Duke score a picture, which he did practically ad lib, was an experience! I was supposed to be up cutting masters and I'd drift away down to where he was because it was so fascinating. They were always searching for me to come back to work! "Duke had come out with a nucleus of players. I think he had Hodges and Carney with him, four or five of his men, and the rest were studio players. By the time he got through with us it was the Ellington band. I can still remember the influence because the studio players were all used to doing everything by numbers, exactly as we were told. Ellington was so free. "We asked him how he wanted things played and he said 'Oh don't worry. It'll come together.' And of course it did. I'll never forget it. "I also played baritone for him once on a show called Happy Times, a television show where they had different big bands every week. I thought 'oh boy, I'm going to get to play those marvelous Harry Carney parts.' Well, the fact is, there were no Harry Carney parts—they were all kept in Harry's head. We were all terribly disappointed at first because we had It Don't Mean A Thing and there was no chart for it. We thought how can we possibly play that with a 17 piece band live on the air without charts? "But by the time he was through with it, it swung as hard as you could want, and I'll never forget it. He had an instinct for what mattered and a certain amount of sloppiness. if you want to call it that, was beneficial. Many a time I've been to hear the band and it wasn't running on all 16 cylinders until after half an hour or so, but it didn't matter because that spirit was there." As I recall now, the parts that were challenged, I believe by Dan Morgenstern, was "Well, the fact is, there were no Harry Carney parts—they were all kept in Harry's head," and that there was no chart for "It Don't Mean A Thing." Dan, if indeed it was Dan, said that both of these statements were nonsense.

From a Perkins obit: "He landed occasional film work, including a job with Duke Ellington's band on the soundtrack of Frank Sinatra's now-overlooked 'Assault on a Queen.'"

I think I've heard the story, though I don't recall where. IIRC, Perkins did take the gig, and the main thrust of what he had to say was there were NO parts to play from, that everything was a blend of "You know what to do," based on prior communal experience of the band members, and elliptical oral guidance from Ellington as to what was going to be different this time. It was this way of working that left Perkins kind of freaked out. On the other hand, I also recall that Perkins' account of things on this date was challenged pretty authoritatively by someone who had lots of direct experience of how the Ellington band functioned in the studio in that era. Let me see if I can find out more about this.

Right -- the other half of the Meat House team.

"Pete" is Christlieb?

The best latter-day Perkins I know, very much in the groove of "Frame of Mind," is on Lennie Niehaus' "Patterns" (1989) and "Seems Like Old Times" (1997), both on Fresh Sound. Niehaus and Perkins (Jack Nimitz is added on "Seems Like Old Times") were a very well-matched pair -- when they improvise simultaneously, it sounds like Niehaus is reading Perkins' mind, which I would guess was not an easy thing to do.

By the "Manne at the Blackhawk" dates, Kamuca had really gotten it together -- not as wispy and choppy as he could be early on, and not queasy-awkward, as he is on a Fresh Sound live date with Scott LaFaro from, I think, '58, which captures him trying and pretty much failing to work Rollins and Trane into his pre-existing style. (BTW, I like the early wispy-choppy Kamuca, in part because that was the genuine state of his soul at the time). He's even better IMO on the "Manne at the Manne Hole" albums from 3/61 than he is on the "Blackhawk" series. Kamuca's latter-day Concords are excellent, and his tribute to Bird album on Concord on alto is a shock. He may get closer to Bird's rhythmic mobility/ fluidity than anyone this side of Dave Schildkraut. I wouldn't be surprised if one of Kamuca's key models, in addition to Lester Young of course, had been Allan Eager, one of the Pres disciples who was most attuned to Bird and bop.

Fasstrack -- Of course, it is or can be different for players. But while many who play feel the way you do, others who play don't. It seems to be both a function of what you do and what your temperament is. Some guys can, and really like to, spend a lot of time thinking and talking about all sorts of things that are connected to the music and then still manage to stay in the moment when the moment is upon them; others can't do that or just don't like the feeling of talking about what they and other musicians do at all, let alone listening to other people talk about that. And there are also people who don't play who are deep into the music and don't like how it feels to pore over it verbally either. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

Fasstrack -- I'm not sure I'm following you here about "probably just a fun day in the studio." I was taking the presence of Cohn, Perkins, and Kamuca on this date to talk a bit about how and why two of those three undeniably Pres-based players changed over the years, which they surely did. I mean, to take two of the most obvious examples that stare any jazz fan of our era(s) in the face, aren't you interested in how and why Coltrane or Bill Evans' music changed so much over the course of their lives? Also, I don't think of it as "picking things apart" -- I think of it as thinking and talking about stuff that I love and that fascinates me, which I couldn't stop doing if I tried. I could see, though, where someone would say, "That's too much talking about this for me -- you have picked it apart." If I felt that way myself, I'd stop -- and there have been times when I have for a while. About Perkins (and as proof that I'm not making this stuff up) here are some excerpts (slightly edited) from that Nov. 1995 Cadance interview: "[Asked about Whitney Balliett's notes for "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West," on which Balliett praises Perkins and compares his playing to the "bad tone" and "ugliness" of Sonny Rollins, Perkins says: "[M]y playing was based on a beauty of sound, Pres, and so forth, and that was a very lyrical period in my life. Ironically, in recent years, I've come much more to appreciate people like Sonny Rollins; I don't consider it ugly. I don't think I might have [then], it's just that I didn't understand it in those days, but people like Sonny Rollins and Wayne Shorter have become favorites of mine... When I think back on those years, my so-called peak years back in the '50s ... it was rarely that I was pleased with what I did. I was usually either just once in a whole happy but most of the time disconsolate, and that's not a good way to go through life. The sound, I guess, was my main objective, and I just worked endlessly with reeds and mouthpieces to get a sound. I must admit, although I've completely done a 180 from that approach to playing now, the sound I got was quite amazing. Even I look back on this and say, 'My goodness how did I achieve that.... [W]hen the conditions are right ... I can play that way [today]. But normally the world doesn't play that way anymore. The surroundings -- political and otherwise -- are such that, and we do respond quite a bit to what goes on. I hear too many tough tenors. I [would] feel like a fool to go up there and play like I did 30 years ago.... "I had a big opportunity. [Dick Bock of Pacific Jazz] set up a chance for New York City with Bobby Brookmeyer, and I chickened out. This was about 1956 or '57, and I think it was just fear.... The one time Dick got pretty disgusted with me was when he set up an album for me in 1958, and in essence he wanted a repeat of what I'd done before. Now at that time I'd started to veer away from that approach to playing.... I was too stupid. I should have said [to myself], 'Bill, play good music within this thing, don't try to play like Sonny Rollins.' But I sort of played a half-baked imitation of Sonny Rollins without getting into Sonny Rollins, and Dick was really disgusted.... And the album never came out.... I was starting to hear the Sonny Rollinses of this world, well actually there's only one, and trying to play like that, but I had no idea what they were doing. Now I think I have a very good idea of what they're doing.... "I admired [Richie Kamuca] a great deal, and I think he admired me; he admired my sound. Richie had the fingers, I had more of the sound. I was inept compared to Richie when it came to playing the instrument.... "Bob Cooper is a total hero of mine. Almost saint-like gentleman, totally mature. His playing just kept getting better and better, right up until the day he died.... He chose to follow a different path in his playing, he just perfected what he had, whereas I sort of went out into left field and a lot of times didn't make it."

You're right -- it is James Gavin, not Haskins.