Larry Kart

At some point you'll want to turn the tables and get James P. Johnson's "Snowy Morning Blues" (Decca), which includes his 1944 date of Waller tunes. To hear Waller's mentor pay sublime musical tribute to his recently deceased pupil is something else -- I always feel as though I'm eavesdropping on a seance.

Didn't North do the score for I'LL CRY TOMORROW? Yes.

Samples from North's "Wonderful Country Score" can be found here http://www.varesesarabande.com/details.asp?pid=SRS-2016-2

I looked around and saw that there was some stuff available, but not this one. Another one of the same vintage that caught my ear a few months ago was Alex North's score for an interesting Robert Mitchum western "The Wonderful Country" -- sort of Mexican Stravinsky at times, very witty and deep into the story.

Sorry --- Raksin, Raksin, Raksin, Raksin!

Caught a bit of this movie the other day -- starring Kirk Douglas, it's something of a sequel to "The Bad and The Beautiful"; both films are dark, inside-Hollywood tales; both directed by Vincent Minnelli, both starring Douglas, both with Raksin scores -- and the scene I came in on had some of the most striking, storytelling scoring I've ever heard. Director Edward G. Robinson is trying to lure the semi-washed-up Douglas into working with him on a film on the cheap; we're in a Rome hotel suite full of mirrors and long perspectives, and all we hear in addition to the dialogue is a floating choir of saxophones (a bit ala Bob Graettinger's "This Modern World," perhaps -- exquisitely played) that perfectly expresses/shadows Douglas' wavering, doubtful mood.

On the other hand, Joe Farrell unclothed vs. Josphine Baker unclothed is no contest.

Doesn't quite fit your dream, but I've heard reliable accounts of a jam session held on the U. of Illionois campus back in in the late 1950s where all three musicians involved (Joe Farrell, Percy Heath, and a drummer who shall be nameless), plus their girlfriends/female companions for the evening were unclothed.

Allen -- I'd forgotten about the musicians wives piece. Put that together with the Miles piece, and you definitely get the feeling of someone who wants to claim territory by mobilizing a currently fashionable political/cultural agenda. I recall, too, that he was a fervent advocate of Sherri Tucker's highly dubious book "Swing Shift."

I assume that this Robin Kelly piece about Miles Davis and the pimp aesthetic http://www.racematters.org/milesdavisgeniushustler.htm is among those Kelly NY Times effusions that gave Allen Lowe pause.

Dan Morgenstern has written that there's a lot of Irish soul in Bunny Berigan. Also, of course, there was a lot of whiskey in Berigan, some of it Irish too perhaps.

Shouldn't that be Clifford/Max at the Bee Hive? There are times when it sounds like he and Max have fused or Max is even playing both instruments.

There's an excellent 2-CD Naxos set of C.P. E. Bach's flute concerti (damn fine works) with Patrick Gallois. A bargain.

As a sometime friend and supporter of Emo (I think I gave him his first review, back when he was working at a comedy showcase under his real name, Phil Soltanek), I think he's something of a comic genius, though I still have doubts about his adoption of the Emo character. On the one hand, it obviously works for him commercially -- the broad clownish-geek vibe strikes a chord in England and Australia (he worked a good deal Down Under at one time); on the other hand, I once said to him that I'm worried when you come up with something that's really funny and you can't say it onestage because your character can't say it. (I believe, though, that he's broadly expanded the limits of what Emo the character can say.) Emo, in normal conversation, is at least as funny as he is in performance; he just thinks funny. Also, as far as I know, Emo does, as he would put it, "like the ladies."

I think I may have mentioned this before, but I did see Mobley (with Philly Joe) at the Tin Palace ("Your host, Stanley Crouch"), around this time, and it was impossibly sad -- he was virtually inaudible and quite uncoordinated. I remember thinking at the time that if I were a member of the band and knew what kind of shape Mobley was in, I wouldn't have let it happen. "Breakthrough," however, was not like that IMO.

Deep, shrewd thinking, Jim, IMO. I find it hard to believe that anyone (as Cornelius does -- and, please, I'm not trying to start a fight here) could take "Breakthrough" as "downright ugly" (hard though it may be for some to take) and then more or less stop right there -- as though "downright ugly" meant "merely downright ugly" or some kind of accident or abberation -- like a record someone made while dead-drunk or gravely ill. Dislike it if you will, but this was music that Mobley found it utterly necessary to make -- and that, combined with its nature and his history as an artist, makes it one of the most fascinating artistic statements I'm aware of. Guys who get to that point usually don't send messages back.

Jim -- that actress is Virgina Gregg. Don't see any Jerry Lewis credits for her, but I think I know who you're confusing her with; that actress is also somewhat masculine but much bulkier. Gregg, BTW, has an interesting credit -- she was the voice of Norman Bates' mother in "Psycho."

"Joan O'Brian is quite alright as well!" Yes, indeed. I believe it's her bra, when it floats to the surface, that inspires the line "The Japanese have nothing likes this!"

Very enjoyable movie. Think of the Tony Curtis character as a variation on the guy he plays in "Sweet Smell of Success." Also, I think I've read (and it seems clear anyway) that Curtis got a huge kick out of playing off of Cary Grant and vice versa. It's like Vic Dickenson and Dickie Wells trading fours. Also, don't know if this one was made before or after "Some Like It Hot" (both released in 1959), but Curtis's performance in that movie seems to be based in part on his vision of Grant. I vaguely recall finding Dina Merrill quite decorative. Also, I think that she and Grant were friends off-screen. Finally, don't forget that Blake Edwards wrote the script for another fine WWII comedy, Richard Quine's "Operation Mad Ball."

I kind of like "urban hum" but meant to type "urban hub."

Yes, McKie's was a few doors south on Cottage Grove, but that corner was a teeming urban hum in general -- the Trianon Ballroom was one block north on Cottage Grove, and I can only imagine how intense the scene was around there in its heyday. (I knew it some in the mid-1960s, when it was still intense but intense in other ways too -- Blackstone Rangers time).

Von's brief (maybe two bars each) demonstration of the difference between "running the chords" and "making a statement" was so vivid that the "statement" part almost brought tears to my eyes. It was kind of mysterious too, because there are moments in a good Von solo where you'll hear passages that sound pretty much like his "running the chords" demo, but they don't sound at all like filler in that context (because they aren't...there). Likewise, the ease with which Von came up with that storytelling "statement" demo might raise doubts, just because of that ease, about Von's and the listener's relationship to those statements -- that is, are we being manipulated a bit by the ready presence of what are in effect "shapes of feeling" that might not really be inhabited by their maker to the degree we (or at least I) feel they are? Again, I don't think so -- when Von handles/finds/refinds those shapes in the course of a solo, it's an entirely different matter. An analogy that comes to mind: Someone asks you what the corner of 63rd St. and Cottage Grove Ave. is like and you haul out a map and some photos, maybe a sociological study of that part of Chicago's South Side. Second answer: You remember all the times you yourself have been there, all the things you've done there and seen there, and you sum that up. Final answer: You add answer one to answer two, but you're also at the corner of 63rd St. and Cottage Grove Ave. right now -- alive, moving, and feeling.

Happy Birthday to a man of exquisite musical taste ... by which I mean that I think we like a lot of the same things.

I'm no Sanborn scholar, should there be such a thing, but I recall once catching a performance on the radio like "Try A Little Tenderness" (it may even have been TALT), and it was so damn riveting along just the lines that Jim mentions that I stayed in the car for some time after I got to where I was going in order to find out from the DJ who had played that thing.

Remember the "In a Coffee House" routine from the Mel Brooks-Carl Reiner "2,000-Year-Old Man" album, where Reiner's roving reporter approaches one of the more flamboyant coffee house denizens: Reiner: "Are you an actor?" Brooks: "Yes, I'm lesbian." (Laughter) Reiner: "I think you mean 'thesbian.'" Brooks: "Oh -- I'll never make that mistake again."