Larry Kart

A bit self-serving for me to mention it, but the review of my dreams finally got posted on the website Classical Net: http://www.classical.net/music/books/revie...300104200a.html

Lazaro -- He struck me as a bit ... I don't know ... dour and preoccupied on that album. Also, even though the estimable Jim Anderson was the engineer, I wasn't too crazy about the sound either -- both on Von's horn and on the group as a whole. As I recall, the stereo spread struck me as rather wide for a one-horn-plus-trio date, and as for Von himself, it sounded like a good deal of effort had been expended on trying to capture his sound but perhaps from the point of view that there was a problem there -- that is, that Von's sound was problematic -- which certain recording techniques/strategies (mike placement, etc.) might lessen. All I know for sure is that yesterday afternoon I was two-arms-lengths or so from the bell of Von's horn, and he sounded fantastic -- while the Von of that album sounded a fair bit airier (if that's the right term) than he does/did in real life. I was almost reminded of the sound ECM got on Konitz on that Kenny Wheeler-led album he did with Holland and Frisell. A real horn in real space -- it didn't sound that way to me, though I know that "real" is a tricky word to throw around when it comes to recorded sound. BTW, I think that Wheeler album and Von's album were recorded in same studio, Power Station.

Actually, I think Von's not a whole lot taller than Gillian Anderson.

Von was in superb form, I thought, in a glowing-mellow mood for the most part. (That most recent album, with Jimmy Cobb and Richard Wyands, had me a bit worried about the current state of things. Oddly enough, that's the album that Dan Morgenstern recently told me had finally convinced him that Von was really good; he and Ira Gitler could never get past Von's intonation, as I recall -- too bad for them.) In a Pres mood, he began with "Lester Leaps In," went on to "In a Little Spanish Town" (!) at a gorgeous amble (he said that he'd heard Lester play this on clarinet, or at least I think that's what he meant) Like Chuck, I don't know what that tune was that started off like it might be "Lover Come Back To Me." Could it have been a heavily disguised "Avalon"? But who plays "Avalon" anymore? Von can think ahead further than anyone alive, maybe anyone ever -- he's like a man laying down what will be potentially the world largest living mosaic. Swear to God, if you wanted to lay out one of his better solos and subject it to the strictist formal analysis imaginable, there wouldn't be one false move, yet it hits in the moment like a landslide of boulders, rocks, and trees. At one point I began to think of this in purely physical/mental terms, trying to imagine the computational skills/storage capacity/what have you of the mind that's housed in Von's head.

For more Wilkerson as a soloist, check out the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's "21st Century Union March." Samples can be heard here: http://www.fred.net/jbowie/ehe.html It's not as successful an album overall IMO as "Light On the Path," but Wilkerson holds up his end as I recall. I wish there were as much of Wilkerson on disc as a soloist as there is of, say, Chris Potter -- hell, even one-tenth as much Wilkerson on disc as there is of Potter would be a blessing.

I've listened to the first two discs -- which includes material I've heard before but never owned (the "Little Niles" album), stuff I've never heard (the Five Spot album), stuff I do have on LP (the Jubilee trio date), and stuff that's out for the first time (the Roulette date with Cecil Payne, Ron Carter, and Roy Haynes) -- and I'm delighted. Melba Liston's charts on "Little Niles" are so good and sound like no one else's writing, though it's hard to tell where her conception leaves off and that of Weston's compositions begins. And the band sounds like it's really committed to the music; this was no "another day in the studio" recording. The live Five Spot album has some fierce Coleman Hawkins, plus a deep Hawkins reading of Strayhorn's "Star-Crossed Lovers" (great to hear Hawk with Roy Haynes, and does he get into Weston's tunes and comping), and Kenny Dorham is in fine form too. The Jubilee trio date is the best Weston trio/solo album, I think (a wonderful stately-solemn-deep solo reading of "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," but every track is strong). and the remastering is a big upgrade. Finally, the quartet date may have the best improvising Cecil Payne ever did in front of a microphone.

Despite his reputation as the fastest 'bone in the East, Cleveland, I thought, was at least as good on ballads, where his attractively "veiled" tone could come through -- e.g. "My One and Only Love" on EmArcy and "If You Could See Me Now" with Gil Evans. BTW, there was guy around Chicago in the '60s, don't remember his name, whose goal in life clearly was to play faster than Cleveland -- and he did too. But musically he made as much sense as a fire in a popcorn factory. Guys used to cringe when he'd get on the stand at sessions.

Actually, they're not the original album notes, which as Cuscuna says in the booklet were "brief and superficial," but notes that Cuscuna asked Welding to write for 1989 reissues of this material. I have no beef with Welding, except for what he said about Sheldon here, nor with Cuscuna -- I just wanted to make sure that anyone who was inclined to take Mosaic notes (even Mosaic select notes) as gospel was aware that what's said about Sheldon here strikes some minds as odd and mistaken.

On the autobiography theme, some people with West Coast connections (Welding perhaps, even Martin Williams by way of gossip?) may have had a less than positive attitude toward Sheldon as a human being that they then brought to his music. Sheldon was something of a hipster wildman at the time (moved in Lenny Bruce's crowd, I believe -- there's a story about Lenny discovering him in bed with Lenny's wife, Honey -- and similar bust-out circles), and it would be easy to link negative attitudes toward such behavior, which damaged or destroyed so many lives (e.g. Lorraine Geller), with the music that guys like Sheldon and (on the East Coast) Tony Fruscella actually made. But whatever your moral compass might be, you've still got to use your ears.

A very nice man, too, so I've been told. BTW, Bank has said that the greatest sax section he ever played in was that of the 1949 Artie Shaw band: Herbie Steward, Frank Socolow (altos); Zoot Sims, Al Cohn (tenors) and Bank. Hell of a band -- too bad there aren't many recordings; interesting charts (Dameron, Johnny Mandel, George Russell, etc.), Shaw in great "modern" form; Jimmy Raney on guitar, Don Fagerquist the featured tpt. soloist, Irv Kluger the swinging drummer, even a very musical female vocalist, Pat Lockwood. In fact, perhaps Mike Fitzgerald or someone else can help me solve a mystery here. On an album of transcriptions by that Shaw band, which I have on a cheapo Brit label, Prism, and which now skips so much that it's almost unlistenable, there's a Lockwood vocal on "He's Funny That Way," wrapped in an a handsomely performed, remarkably subtle arrangment by I don't know who (the coda in particular is gorgeous and more than a bit mind-bogglingly far out). As far as I know, this piece was not recorded commercially by the band. In some ways, it's Gil Evans-like, but I'm sure it's not his -- no record of him writing for the band, and the musical fingerprints are someone else's anyway. Of the guys who are listed as regular contributors to Shaw's book, I'd guess it was either George Siravo or Paul Jordan, but Siravo and Jordan are mostly just names to me.

The piece is a delight. Metheny is a natural man with a big heart -- smart and somehow still innocent, in the best sense, after all these years. On the other hand, dig Ratliff's explanation of what "rushing" is. Ooops.

FWIW, I think that Martin Williams' whack at Sheldon came in a Down Beat review from the 1950s (probably of one of the Curtis Counce albums) in which Martin referred to him (this is close but not an exact quote) as one of those West Coast Miles Davis imitators who puts the climaxes in all the wrong places. Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure I know just what Martin was thinking of here -- there are some typical Sheldon gestures that sound like '50s Miles cliches played upside down, or inside out, or out of sync (in particular, the way Jack would juxtapose shouts and whispers, with the whispers usually coming right after, or in between, the shouts). But I'm sure that Sheldon, who certainly knew his Miles, also knew exactly what he was up to here, and that these moments were personal offshoots of his own soul and outrageous wit rather than failed attempts to sound like Miles. But then, if I were given the task of inventing a good jazz musician that Martin couldn't get in a million years, I might have come up with Jack Sheldon. P.S. If I remember Chuck's Sheldon story correctly, what Jack said was "I've been f***ing a lot lately" etc. If so, "lately" is comic genius.

Vinyl -- Do you know/have you heard anything about Cleveland being able to get around on the instrument with such incredible facility because, in part, he played a so-called "pea shooter" trombone (the phrase is Gunther Schuller's, I believe. I assume that would be a smaller than standard instrument?

While the music is great, as is the refurbished sound, I'm pissed all over again at the way the late Pete Welding pisses all over Jack Sheldon in the liner notes (reprinted from a 198Os compilation of this material): "simply outclassed by Pepper ... his solos have a meandering discursive quality, and too often he indulges in gratuitous effects ... overindulgence in the spurious" etc. (How much "indulgence in spurious" would be OK?) This point of view toward Sheldon is not exclusive to Welding -- Martin Williams once took a whack at Jack -- but it's dumb IMO, based on a failure to grasp what a witty, often deliberately bordering on the whacky, very hip player Sheldon was (and I'm sure still is).

If I recall correctly, "The Horn" is the book in which, at a jam session, the soloists exchange sixes instead of fours. Another vote for "The Bear Comes Home." The first time I tried, I didn't get it (the bear and all). The second time I liked it a lot.

Also, without any doubt, the two-tenor frontline of Quartet Out: Pete Gallio and Jim Sangrey. If they're still available, check out the band's "Welcome to the Party" and "Live at the Meat House."

Ron is still there.

Say hello to my son Jacob if you drop by -- he works there (and plays guitar in the rock band Crush Kill Destroy). Other musician-JRM employees at this time are cornetist Josh Berman, tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, drummer Frank Rosaly (they have an album coming out on Delmark toward the end of March) and singer-songwriter Steve Dawson (of the fine alt-country band Dolly Varden).

Among the musicians Kerouac mentions are Allen Eager (in "The Subterraneans" under the pseudonym "Roger Beloit"), Richie Kamuca (in the same place, K spells it "Ricci Commuca"), Shearing (in "On the Road") Getz and Warne Marsh (in "Desolation Angels"), Miles Davis (in "Mexico City Blues") and, perhaps above all and most intimately, Brew Moore (in "Desolation Angels" -- K calls him "Brue").

Not that sure where the line between "inside" and "outside" can or should be drawn (I can see that some might feel that a player like, say, Ernie Krivda never really goes "outside," while others might feel that he's never really quite "in"), but I'd add: Ab Baars Tobias Delius (both of the above are Dutch) Ernie Krivda Rich Perry Mark Shim Walt Weiskopf

Check out Argentian writer Julio Cortazar's long short story/novella "The Pursuer," about the relationship between a Charlie Parker-like saxophonist (Johnny) and a Leonard Feather-like writer/promoter (Bruno). (It is or was in his collection "Blow-Up and Other Stories" -- Antonini's film was based on a Cortazar tale.) Perhaps Cortazar's reach slightly exceeds his grasp in "The Pursuer," but his Parker figure's monologue about what he heard/felt/saw inside his head between two stops on the Paris Metro seems to me to be damn close to what might have been going on inside Bird's head at times. Jazz often crops up in Cortazar's work. Paris-based, he was definitely hip, though perhaps a bit too concerned with being hip for his own good, at least literarily. I'll bet Brownie ran across him from time to time.

Don't mean to rain on the parade, but without denying the grave injustices that led him to that position and place, shouldn't we at least mention Robeson's longtime role as a key-in-the-back Soviet spokesman? For example: "....So here one witnesses in the field of the arts -- a culture national in form, socialist in content. Here was a people quite comparable to some of the tribal folk in Asia -- quite comparable to the proud Yoruba or Basut of East and West Africa, but now their lives flowering anew within the socialist way of life twenty years matured under the guidance of Lenin and Stalin. And in this whole area of the development of national minorities -- of their elation to the Great Russians -- Stalin had played and was playing a most decisive role... But in the Soviet Union, Yakuts, Nenetses, Kirgiz, Tadzhiks -- had respect and were helped to advance with unbelievable rapidity in this socialist land. No empty promises, such as colored folk continuously hear in these United States, but deeds. For example, the transforming of the desert in Uzbekistan into blooming acres of cotton. And an old friend of mine, Mr. Golden, trained under Carver at Tuskegee, played a prominent role in cotton production. In 1949, I saw his daughter, not grown and in the university - a proud Soviet citizen.... They have sung -- sing now and will sing his praise -- in song and story. Slava -- slava -- Stalin, Glory to Stalin. Forever will his name be honored and beloved in all lands. In all spheres of modern life the influence of Stalin reaches wide and deep. From his last simply written but vastly discerning and comprehensive document, lack through the years, his contributions to the science of our world society remains invaluable. One reverently speaks of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin -- the shapers of humanity’s richest present and future...." -"To You Beloved Comrade," New World Review, Vol. 21, No. 4, April, 1953, pp. 11-13.

That semi-innocent foxiness! The shot of her with Igor brought back memories of certain scenes in "Blow Up."

"Why would I want to read an essay trashing one of my favorite players?" Encounter only views I already agree with, listen only to music I already like -- hey, it's a recipe that's always worked for me.

Amplifying a bit, it seemed to me that, for one, Ed Wilkerson Jr. -- as a player, composer, and bandleader -- was everything that Murray wanted, or was pretending, to be but was not. As someone once put it: Behold -- The Clothing's New Emperor.