Larry Kart

Clem -- I'm pretty sure it was the same Israel Young, the guy who was connected to Sing Out!, right? Don't know who did what at The Jazz Review, but I've always felt that Hentoff, for all his usefulness early on (at least to guys like me, reading Down Beat in the 1950s and looking for guidance and enlightenment) was kind of square in that his relationship to the musicians seemed a bit puppy dog-ish. (Martin, by contrast, I think maintained his distance and his dignity -- even if he arguably was over-invested in the dignity thing. I was the one who said you might not want to read Martin on Ammons or Arnett Cobb.) Back to Nat -- as time has passed, it seems to me like jazz has more or less become one of his many free-lancer meal tickets, to be punched when necessary. Likewise, after a certain point his liner notes became on-the-nod strings of quotes, from himself and other sources. I had an interesting encounter with Mr. Zappa, or so it seemed to me. It's in the book. Don't recall what blues Martin liked, but I do recall him pointing out in print on several occasions that the once fairly common belief that the blues was a folk music pure and simple doesn't hold up to examination -- rather, what we have is a fairly constant recycling and reshaping of popular music of many kinds and vintages and that, for example, what one might prize as deeply authentic and personal in a Blind Lemon Jefferson or a Leadbelly or a Fred McDowell or a Snooks Eaglin (different as they each may be) often turns out to have been a song that they first heard on the radio or on a record and then wrought into a shape they found pleasing. Allen Lowe is THE expert on this whole multi-faceted process. Martin, I believe, found the whole idea of "folk music" (or rather the ideology of it) wrong-headed, even pernicious. No, he didn't like Johnny Griffin (but then you knew that -- right?).

Ah, but does a baseball really curve? There were scientists who said for years that it didn't/couldn't and that anyone who thought it did was the victim of an optical illusion. About Martin and the jazz avant-garde, somewhere I have a late-ish (mid-'80s?) three-part piece he wrote that expressed what turned out to be (I think) his final printed thoughts on the subject. He made some shrewd, some disgruntled points and held up as his main sign of hope the World Saxophone Quartet, which seemed to me to not be a good sign. That is, I thought that the WSQ was kind of beside the point --especially in light of Roscoe Mitchell's incredible sax quartet version of "Nonaah," which came first by several years and was miles ahead of anything the WSQ ever did IMO -- and that Martin's singling out of the WSQ was a sign that he hadn't been paying enough attention lately, but then I think he was in declining health. I'll look for that piece later on and try to report in more detail on what it says.

Also, to quote the best sentence/thought I think I ever came up with -- History is always happening, and it's happening to US. It was the experience of listening to/running alongside jazz, more than anything else, that taught me that, and they can't take that away from me.

Please, though I guess it's hopeless -- don't forget THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE. It's simply (though what's simple these days?) so much more fun when you run into, say, Monk's "Little Rootie Tootie," to then make the acquaintance of Ellington's "Daybreak Express" and "Happy Go-Lucky Local," Luckey Roberts' "Railroad Blues," and so forth. (And it can go vice versa or sideways.) We should deny ourselves such natural horizon-expanding pleasures because Marsalis, Crouch et. al are using The Past as a club to beat their idea of the culture over its head? To let malevolent minds edge you off the ground you've been standing on since before they were born? Also and again, it can be really PLEASUREABLE to think about jazz as hard as it's in you to do so. It's never felt to me, and to most everyone else I know, like anyone was MAKING us do that. Geez, isn't it all one big steaming pot? Some of us, to use Jim's ball game analogy, are made to be more like Johnny Damon and some of us to be more like Bill James, but our paths and thoughts do cross, and we probably care about many of the same things.

Sorry, ZTraug -- I didn't mean at all that your sentence was ill-put or awkward. I meant that I could imagine many sentences that say ugly things and that literally began "You have to know Miles to understand..." -- for example, "You have to know Miles to understand" why he hit this woman or did any number of the other cruel or irresponsible things he did. Why should he get a pass when he behaved like an S.O.B. or a jerk? I think his remark that all you need to do was listen to Ornette to know he was all f****** up inside was either stupid or a fearful piece of politicing on his part. Any number of Ornette's recorded solos ("Peace," for one) spoke of and from an emotional wholeness that was rare in modern jazz. As for Miles' autobiography, it's generally acknowledged to be a highly unreliable document, littered with inaccuracies and fabrications -- both courtesy of Miles' collaborator on the book, Quincy Troupe.

"[Miles] also told that 'white critics' were praising the new thing on purpose so that white artists could be popular and jazz will be pushed aside." Well, that certainly worked out just as "we" planned it. Nany ugly sentences could begin with "You have to know Miles to understand"...? How do you put down somebody and respect what he's doing? Clem -- Those invisible signals are easy to miss. And I'm not so smart; it's these pills I take, plus the occasional use of a cloaking device.

No added tracks on "Very Saxy."

Clem -- It was Miles who said that Ornette was all f***** up inside. I know for a fact that this remark really bothered Ornette, long after the the fact. No doubt in my mind that Martin really dug Ornette; there are some latter-day reviews (e.g. of the concert that is on the album "Crisis") whose passion couldn't be faked IMO, and even if it could be, there would have been little or no political reason then for Martin to do so. As for Ornette and Trane, there are arguable reasons (can't say for sure they were Martin's) for thinking that the former had really "broken free" in some rich, fruitful sense, while the latter was climbing up and sliding down a steep glass mountain. My attempt to puzzle through that is in the chapter on the avant garde 1944-1967 I wrote for "The Oxford Companion To Jazz."

About Mike Charry's point -- maybe so in the long run, but I think that right at that time Ornette was a bigger stretch than Cecil, for several reasons. First, Cecil back then (i.e. at the advent of Ornette) was nowhere near as hairy as Cecil would become; and he still could be regarded as fitting into (albeit in a quirky way) some pre-existing "progressive" contexts. Likewise, to use a phrase I think I coined (do I really use "just thrilling" a lot?), except for 4/4 swing, Ornette's music violated virtually all of jazz's then prevailing "norms of craft professionalism," not that Ornette was necessarily interested in violating anything. In any case, a common response to Ornette from the pros was "He can't really play -- he doesn't know what he's doing -- he's all f****** up inside," etc. while with Cecil I think it was more "He's an over-intellectualized, would-be iconoclast" on the one hand, or, a la Gunther Schuller's approving response, "His main concern is to extend, bend, or even break the bounds of tonality" (again, a long-familiar "progressive" penchant, though not IMO the way to look at Cecil's music that makes the most sense). Finally, my memory is that even though Cecil was known of in the wider world before Ornette was, the relative size of the response to their music at the time was heavily weighted in Ornette's favor.

Hey Jim, I think you (and maybe I too) are making this all way more complicated than it needs to be. "Obviously, the deeper one digs, the deeper one digs, dig?" I agree. So why then, if you have the time and the inclination, would you ever stop digging? Only if you broke your tools or there was nothing left to dig, I guess. BTW, I don't think I said anything about finding out about the past BEFORE plunging into the now -- just that curiosity, some sense of obligation (if only to yourself), and above all the good old pleasure principle made engagement with as much of the music's past as you could your hands on a really useful idea. Two other things about jazz's now and then, from personal practical experience. For people of my age, the biggest "challenge" (if that's the way to put it) we've faced so far probably was the advent of Ornette. I mean, if you were in your late teens when he hit, the first question was, "What IS this shit? and the second is "Is it any good?" or alternatively "What is it good for?" (i.e. if it is good, why is it here and what role is likely to play). Certainly, with the exception of Martin Williams, none of us was getting much help from written sources at first, while the verbal reactions of much of the musical community tended to be hostile, and the musical reactions hadn't yet occurred. Well, I'll tell you for true, if you already knew and loved, say, Johnny Dodds (other names could be placed here, but Dodds made it click for me), then some of what Ornette was doing made sense right off the bat; you were over the hump. And of course, Ornette being Ornette, his now happened to be brimful of the personally modified past -- pieces of which "just happened" to be lying around on the ground for him. Scroll back to 1955, when I was just getting started. I liked blarey, athletic big band things a lot -- all those albums, like Manny Albam's "Drum Suite," that were being produced by the NY studio guys of the time. The more pounding, the more brass, the more punchy neo-Basie/Herman riffs the better. Then I ran across the first RCA reissue of the '40-'42 Ellington Band, with Ko Ko, Jack the Bear, Concerto for Cootie, Harlem Airshaft etc. Music that was made just before I was born, but it was an immediately obvious fact that it was (a) much better than anything I'd been listening to (b) of permanent value and © just thrilling. Aren't those two examples normal, natural things to happen? Haven't things like that happened to you? So what's the problem? Clem -- You say Jelly Roll's music is irrelevent. What the heck do you mean? If you mean that it's unlikely that any significant musician today is going to find that Jelly Roll's music is going to speak directly to him, all I can say is that if Morton spoke that way to Henry Threadgill and the rest of Air back in the late 1970s (and it did), then (a) it's almost certainly still speaking to him and (b) it's probably been (or will be) speaking to others of his stature. If you mean that Morton's music is irrelevant to you the listener, that's your call but only your call. And you don't need Tatum either? Again, in both cases, I'm not interested in setting up as a school marm and saying this stuff is good for you -- I'm simply invoking what seems to me to be the pleasure principle.

I think that the details were very important to Martin. He certainly dealt with them more than many jazz critics did or do, though saxophonist-composer Bill Kirchner, who knew him well, has told me that Martin's reach could exceed his grasp when it came to technically accurate musical description, though he was almost always grasping in the right direction.

Jim: Sonny doesn't have to get Jelly Roll (though he might well have). I believe that by and large jazz musicians (like all artists) pay careful attention to what they think they can use, and for them the rest is gravy or even sometimes a distraction. For instance, Willem de Kooning, speaking of the connection between his painting and the 'vulgarity and fleshy part" of the Renaissance, added that he had use only for Western art: "I admit I know little of Oriental art. But that is because I cannot find in it what I am talking about. To me the Oriental idea of beauty is that it 'isn't there.' It is in a state of not being here. It is absent, that is why it is good. It is the same thing I don't like in Suprematism, Purism, and non-objectivity. "And although I, myself, don't care for all the pots and pans in the painting of the burghers--the genre scenes of goodly things which developed into the kind sun of Impressionism later on--I so like the idea that they--the pots and pans, I mean--are always in relation to man. The have no soul of their own, like they seem to have in the Orient." So it's OK for De Kooning to ignore the Orient and for Sonny to not get Jelly Roll (if in fact he didn't), because it's their business to make certain connections in order to make certain things. Is De Kooning's account of the Oriental idea of beauty accurate? I don't know. But for his purposes it doesn't matter. To say that and think that played some role in his being able to paint his pictures. But it's another sort of deal for us (and course, you're a musician as well as a loving, aggressive listener) to ignore or not get the total warp and woof of this music, even if we decide that we finally don't like, say, the jazz equivalent of Suprematism or multi-limbed statues of Shiva. To put it another way, if Wynton Marsalis means nothing to me, I feel like I need to know why he doesn't. And not just to protect myself in the marketplace of talk; the total warp and woof (or as much of it as I can see) is something that to me is very interesting.

Re-read Martin's "TV, The Casual Art" and was reminded of how strong and sure the moral spine of his work was -- strong in ways that it would be hard for any of us of later generations to emulate. Not that we'd necessarily be less alert or level-headed at the crossroads where art and morality meet, but the flavor of our engagement would be/is a bit (sometimes more than a bit) different than Martin's was. Can't put further words to that difference right now, but it's one of things that came through very strongly as I read this book for the first time in a long while. Perhaps part of that feeling has to do with Martin's cut-off point for commentary (in a 1982 book) being the '70s era of the "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Rockford Files," about both of which he has shrewd things to say. Makes you really want to know what he would have said about both the Newhart sitcoms and a host of other later things, including "Seinfeld" of course -- which I can imagine he might have admired or might have hated. Along those lines, and perhaps to touch upon that elusive difference thing, I remember Martin's intense dislike of Albert Brooks' movie "Modern Romance." As I recall, he thought the grotesquely self-involved, narcissistic character that Brooks played in "Modern Romance" more or less was Albert Brooks, and that the movie was an attempt on Brooks' part to justify the behavior it depicted. I could hardly believe that Martin, as smart as he was, could think that, even if this was the first piece of Brooks' stuff he'd seen (I think it might have been). But even if Martin was in one sense factually mistaken about what Brooks was up to in that movie, in another sense -- one that stems from the nature and age of Martin's moral vigor (i.e. "age" as in the era in which it was shaped) -- he may well have been right, because there's a strain in Brooks' slippery, one millimeter removed from actual whining, actual self-indulgence, etc. humor that is potentially so evasive that our trust (make that my trust) in what I think Brooks' dramatic strategies are may be close to an illusion. Again, it would be good to talk to/argue with Martin about this -- and many other things -- again.

Williams on TV, correction. Some of those pieces may be in "Hidden in Plain Sight" (Martin recycled a lot), but the core collection is his "TV, The Casual Art," which is available used. Need to read it again (I have a copy), but just opening it up I noticed that he has some shrewd positive things to say about "Green Acres," differentiating it clearly from "the simple rusticity of 'The Beverly Hillbillies' or the sticky, self-satisfied cuteness of 'Petticoat Junction.'" ["Green Acres"] "joins farce and whimsy, a difficult task.... Eddie Albert is superb. If he showed one more degree of exasperation and anger at his bungling but triumphant bumpkin antagonists, he would become a bully or a bore. But he never does." Also, a lot of these pieces were written for the Village Voice.

Clem -- Yes, I read and enjoyed (if that's the right word) "Sheeper" when it came out, still have it on the shelf. Didn't know Rosenthal though -- think he was a bit ahead of my time, either that or different circles. Another thing about Martin -- he really tried to ride the surf board of jazz's living history as far as it was in him to go, rarely if ever overrating anything merely because it was new (or claimed to be new) or disparaging anything because it was old and unfashionable. It's a simple principle, but for me if you don't get, say, Jelly Roll Morton, then I have big doubts about your ability to really get Monk, or Bird, or Ornette or whomever. Not that it's impossible to get the latter without getting the former, but the music is more or less of one piece, and I think that Martin felt that in his bones in a way that a lot of other good writers about jazz don't (or haven't), even if they pay lip service to the idea.

I know it's already been mentioned, but if you can find it, don't pass up "Very Saxy," with Coleman Hawkins, Buddy Tate, Lockjaw, and Arnett Cobb. The intensity level throughout is very high, especially from Cobb and Tate. Also, I love the zest with which the ensemble plays the tasty, functional charts. And George Duvivier is a rock.

Written in the early 1960s for the Evergreen Review, which is where I read them, Martin's popular culture pieces (or most of them) were collected in his "Hidden in Plain Sight" (Oxford U. Press, 1992), which can be found used through a good online search service, e.g. Bookfinder. I don't have a copy and should get one.

It's the George Russell material here that makes the album essential IMO. The same groove as Russell's "Jazz Workshop" album but a bit further down that road. Also, Bill Evans is in top notch first-period form on the whole album. Orin Keepnews, double faugh!

Hentoff and Williams were the co-editors of The Jazz Review. Martin had a big influence on a lot of people of my age group -- certainly on me -- for a lot of reasons. For one thing, there was the (mostly) earned, genuine, and forthright intellectual tone (which as Jim says could be a bit "stick up the butt" at times -- you wouldn't want to Martin to be the one to comment on, say, Arnett Cobb or Gene Ammons, but then again he might surprise you there; he had fine ears that were more unprejudiced than many, and he was eager to use them, though he had blind spots). For another, there was the role he played in getting what Ornette was up to right off the bat and writing well about him right then, when it really counted. From where I sat, this seemed to me like a critic's dream -- to be an honorable, useful, intelligent witness to/advocate of something that was new, great, and necessary -- and to some extent I found myself imitating or trying to imitate some of Martin's moves (or what I imagined them to be) when the AACM came along. (This was not entirely a good thing, because at times it led me to too aggressively sort out in print [a la Martin the imperious lawgiver] some things that I didn't yet understand.) By this time, I knew Martin a bit. He was, as some of the above suggests, a father figure par excellence, but there was a dark side to that, which I fortunately skirted for the most part. The son of a career military officer I believe, Martin damagingly bullied ( a la an intellectualized Great Santini) at least one of the bright young guys who worked under him when he was at the Smithsonian, and he tried to do that with a lot of people I think. I know that one of them, in the Smithsonian days, told Martin to fuck off in no uncertain terms and that Martin, as it supposedly goes with some bullies, backed down right way and stayed backed down. Martin was known for firing off angry postcards that told you where to get off if he thought you'd strayed from the path of righteousness. I've told this tale before, but my 1983 (more or less contra) Bill Evans piece led him to send a letter in which he "explained" that the reason I had these feelings about Evans' music was that I was "afraid of tenderness." This seemed a silly thing for him to say -- we didn't know each other THAT well -- but more bewildered/bemused than mad, I said in a longish reply that it seemed to me a mistake to equate lyricism and romantic moodiness, that I thought that lyricism in jazz (or in music in general) primarily had to do with the care and feeding of a relatively dominant melodic impulse, that I thought Evans (especially latter-day Evans) wasn't so much a true lyricist (at least in my sense of the term) but a harmonically based player whose melodies were essentially generated by highly patterned harmonic thinking -- and I offered Jimmy Raney as an example of a true jazz lyricist. To this came the postcard, which contained only these words: "Jimmy Raney is a bebopper!" (Apparently, Martin felt that "beboppers," by definition, weren't melodists.) Martin had a lot of other interests -- American comic strips (he was a scholar there), D.W. Griffith, television, etc. -- and he wrote about these things in much the same way, and as well as, he did about jazz. (His takes on what was good in contemporary TV were completely free from high-toned intellectual prejudice and really enlightening because as far as I know he was the only guy who was looking at TV in that way -- I remember some terrific stuff about "Gunsmoke"). Also, if he liked your stuff, he'd try to tell other people about it; he was very generous along those lines in my experience. At heart (whatever else was going on there), he was a man of deep enthusiams, many of them right on target IMO. Wish he were still around to talk to and argue with.

Based on what Allen said above, I'd be eager to read what he had to say about Armstrong and minstrelsy -- because I'm sure that his take on the latter is as rich and complex as his view of the former, and because I'm unsure myself just how the two fit together. It's unclear to me just what Appel had in mind when he said: "And what do we make of Armstrong's persona of joy, ebullient and ingratiating? This minstrelsy aspect of Armstrong is crucial, although ignored or de-emphasized by friendly critics like Morgenstern." My guess is that whatever Appel is thinking of here, it wouldn't be akin to anything that Allen or most of the rest of us would agree with. Don't have Appel's "Jazz Modernism" around anymore, but I recall some really crude passages (intellectually crude, that is) equating Armstrong's playing and personality with literal sexual arousal or the like. That's why they called it "hot" jazz, right?

Eric: I'll be doing a signing/reading Jan. 6 at the Highland Park Library, in conjunction with two sets by a trio of young Chicago musicians I like -- cornetist John Berman, guitarist Matt Schneider, and bassist Joel Root. It will last from 7 until 8:30 p.m., it's free of course, and I'm planning that it will be light on the reading (maybe 10 minutes worth) and long on the music, while I listen and quietly sell and sign copies (should it come to that) in the back of the room. Highland Park is where I live, so it's a short trip for me; hope others can make it. The library is close to the center of town, at 494 Laurel Ave., corner of Laurel and St. Johns.

Missed it myself, but I'm told that on "Fresh Air" today Kevin Whitehead said that it was one of the two best jazz books of the year and read a juicy excerpt from the Oscar Peterson piece to Terry Gross, who reportedly approved. Also, I took a copy to our local Upscale Mail store yesterday to send to a friend. The clerk took the book and the addressed padded envelope I'd just bought there and held the former out at arm's length with a kind of speculative look on his face. I explained that I was the author; he said that he was interested in the subject and wanted to buy a copy. So today I took one over there. Probably should travel around with crate of them in the trunk of my car and a sign on the roof, like the guys who deliver for Pizza Hut or Dominos.

Chuck mentioned Ammons' "Preachin.'" I'd add his "Live in Chicago," with organist Eddie Buster and drummer Gerald Donovan. Jug was on fire that night. As Bob Porter says in the liner notes, sound quality is kind of blarey, but that doesn't really matter much. Also picked up, among several others, the Bobby Jaspar. An interesting date for a number of reasons -- raw early Elvin (1957) meets latter-day George Wallington is really strange (that two such gifted musicians seemingly not that far apart stylistically could in fact be so distant from each other timewise that they almost have to communicate by messenger); Jaspar going in and out of focus on tenor but in an often moving, groping manner; and Idrees Sulieman is plenty strange all by himself. Wonder what Alfred Lion would have made of such a collection of players, though he certainly wouldn't have assembled them. Lord, would a little Blue Note rehearsal, plus RVG (rather than Jack Higgins at Reeves Sound), have made a difference here! Elvin sounds like the hauled out the blankets they used to muffle Gene Krupa in the late '20s. Orin Keepnews, faugh! But it's still an interesting musical, human document.

Is this the same Horsecollar to whom either Jackie or Herbie refers to in A.B. Spellman's book as "a ruined musician who chewed Benzedrine all day" and who had a somewhat out philosophy re: music? The same.

Stan had one of the nuttiest ride cymbal beats I've ever heard; it sounded like the cymbal itself was about the size of a pie pan, maybe even smaller, and while the results arguably were a bit tic-tocky in terms of size and preciseness, the time feel was also unique and very hip -- remarkbly even and also laid-back in a way that had its own flavor.