Larry Kart

Soulful and quite individual but also somewhat Charlie Mariano-esque veteran altoist Kim Richmond (he also plays soprano) has a gem in "Ballads" (CMG [i.e Chase Music Group -- whatver that is], rec. 2000--probably available through Richmond's website). Utterly locked-in rhythm section -- pianist Reggie Thomas (a bit gospel-ish and/or hip R&B-like at times, a la Donald Brown), bassist Trey Henry, drummer Jo LaBarbera (who makes ballad grooves move in just the right ways) -- is a big plus, nice guest contributions by trumpeter Clay Jenkins, Bill Perkins, Vinny Golia, terrific choice of tunes (e.g Never Let Me Go, Young and Foolish, I Wish I Knew, Lazy Afternoon, Street of Dreams are the first five tracks) and tempos/moods. Maybe I shouldn't like this one as much as I do, but it knocked me out the first time I heard it and still does every time.

On the CD issue, it says: "The master tapes to this ... session have been lost." Sometimes lost things do turn up, but I'm pretty sure that Cuscuna, who was involved in the reissue, searched very thoroughly. It is quite an album. Of all the recordings made by that floating group of New York session samurai from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, this one IMO has the most esprit -- in part because Bill Potts' charts are as fine they are (mainstreamy by then currrent standards but fill of distinctive touches), in part because of the extra fire of the bass-drum team (George Duvivier and Charlie Persip -- not the at times rather clunky Osie Johnson, who was on so many of the dates from that time and place), in part because the sax section is THE sax section of that time etc. (Woods, Quill, Sims, Cohn, Sol Schlinger) and plays like they feel this music is really special, in part because the other sections have the top usual suspects plus a few apparently stimulating ringers (Marky Markowitz, Charlie Shavers, Harry Edison, Earl Swope -- Markowitz and Swope being Potts homeboys may have helped everyone get into the aspects of his phrasing that were a bit different than the norm, while Shavers and Edison draw a line of continuity to the pre-war big band scene, which was, after all, the source for this sort of music-making).

"Empty Room" is really soulful. Sal was a special player. A guy who reminds me of him a bit and is still around is another ex-Hermanite (I think), Frank Vicari. Don't know where to find much Vicari. He solos on an album I wrote the notes for a few years back -- (excellent) vocalist Anita Gravine's "Welcome To My Dream" (remarkable Mike Abene charts on the album's big band tracks) -- and a friend sent me a tape a few years ago of Vicari in a club with a local rhythm section.

Adding to the chorus -- I order more stuff more regularly from Berkshire than I should. It's mostly a classical outfit; the best I know for cutouts -- stock is vast (I think almost 14,000 items), new stuff pours in regularly, prices are great, and the good fast search engine makes finding out whether they do have something you want a breeze. Only caveat is that it usually takes about three weeks for your order to arrive (don't call and complain until at least a month has passed, if it does -- they can get snarky if you do, and over the years everything I've ordered has arrived). I think their slowness vs. outfits like Amazon (not really comparable, I know) is because Berkshire operates from an actual warehouse and adjacent store in the eastern U.S., and the typical Berkshire customer (that would be me, I'd guess) usually orders a bunch of stuff from different labels. I imagine aging Dickensian counterculture types (rejects from the Ben and Jerry's plant?) walking down endless aisles with long lists in their hands. Fitting that image, perhaps -- within the boxes (when they do arrive), the CDs are tightly wrapped and then taped in several layers of old newspaper, and if the order is large, say 10 CDs, there is no regularity (or particular logic that I've been able to detect) in how many of your CDs will be wrapped and taped into each of the various sub-bundles within the box.

The 3-cd set with Michelot and Humair is available here for $17.97: http://www.berkshirerecordoutlet.com/cgi-b...eth=Some&RPP=25

Sorry, I didn't mean the passage Deus quoted - -that was me -- but Chuck's account yesterday of his conversation with OP's musical colleague.

Deus -- "And?" The passage you quoted means that one of OP's distinguished partners whose presence alongside him you cite as undeniable evidence of OP's high musical worth in fact felt (and stated) that in his opinion OP's work was quite mechanical.

"Ray Brown, NHOP, Ed Thigpen, John Heard and the many, many other players didn't play with him because he's an ass or show-off. Just ask them (or read what they have said about playing with OP)." Deus -- Take a look at Chuck's account posted yesterday. He was talking to one of the players you mention above.

Jim -- I think I know what you mean by "glorification of the obvious," but I'd say it almost amounts to, when comping, to a simple refusal/inability to pay sufficient attention to what's going on around him. That Hampton disc is such a good example because you'd think it would be almost impossible not to respond to Hamp's thinking in a like-minded manner -- not only because his thoughts are so damn groovy and (in this instance) freshly minted but also because they're so irresistibly logical/tuneful/rhythmically compelling, a la those of Hampton's one-time boss, Louis Armstrong. Now that I think of it, some of Oscar's most successful work IMO (e.g. the Stratford album) seems to have been more or less worked out, worked up. No blame for that; it really works, but maybe he wasn't always that comfortable without his guys and their routines around him.

In the back of my mind, I knew there was a spot-on Jim Sangrey thumbnail description of what it is about Oscar's comping when he's in his autopilot bluesy mode that makes it so hard for some of us to take. JS wrote of OP: " Twangity-splangity-fleep-floop-doo. Leave no third or fifth unflatted and/or unbent, it's the house rule."

Oscar as a comper is an interesting subject -- somewhat different from, but also akin to, the Oscar as a soloist theme, and one that to my knowledge has never been adequately explored because the only people who would want to look at the evidence that closely (and wading through a shitload of recordings probably is what it would take) are those who have already decided that Oscar is a comper par excellence, plus maybe one or two anti-Oscar semi-nutcases. (I'm more or less in the anti-Oscar camp but not a nutcase I don't think -- by and large I just take a pass on him whenever that's possible, with a few exceptions, e.g. the Ellis-Brown trio on fire at Stratford, the trio backing an inspired Getz, etc.). As it happens, though, I do have a pocket example of what I think the problem (or one of the problems) is -- the 2001 Verve reissue of the two 1954 Lionel Hampton Quintet Norgran 10-inch LPs, with Hamp, Buddy DeFranco, Oscar, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich. There's some very good stuff here -- Hamp esp. is in topnotch form -- but Oscar IMO wavers between being a help and a hindrance in perhaps revealing ways. From track to track, even within tracks, his comping seems to shift from a relatively supple, relaxed, harmonically alert, Nat Cole-based approach to that kind of grinding, one size fits or tries to fit all bluesy (or in Miles' opinion) pseudo-blues manner, even when (or especially when) blues changes aren't involved. What's particularly striking when Oscar gets into the latter vein is how great the gap/clash is at times between where Hamp (a far more sophisticated though gut-level harmonist than one might think, and a gut-level melodist too) wants or seems to want to go and where Oscar's comping is trying to take him. This is especially apparent (almost amusingly so at times) because you can't bully Hamp -- once he's on a roll (and I don't neccessarily mean in terms of external excitement, though that often plays a part, but also or mostly in terms of his genuine musical thinking), he's going to get where he's going; the momentum (akin to Monk on a roll actually, as on the Prestige "Little Rootie Tootie" for example) just won't stop. DeFranco, on the other hand, can be deflected or pushed around, and Oscar does that a fair number of times, nudging Buddy into shorter, twittier, less interesting IMO phrasing than he might have come up with otherwise, or so it seems. I realize that I haven't cited particular portions of particular tracks, and probably I should -- but it's been several months since I last listened to the album, and I don't neccesarily feel in the mood to listen again and take notes. I probably will do that though if anyone is curious enough about this and/or says that they think I'm just full of shit here. Again, I know that we're talking about questions of taste (as in "I like"/"I don't like") here, not matters of holy writ. I'm just saying that I think the "evidence," however one wants to read it, is present in pretty stark form on this disc, which is also full of a lot of interesting music. (A final thought: dig the difference between Oscar's comping here and Lou Levy's on "Hamp and Getz" from the following year.)

He got the worm.

He liked to get high.

I remember John playing at sessions around the U. of Chicago in the 1961-3 period. An OK player but not, as I recall, at the level of Clyde Flowers, who also was around a good deal at that time and place, let alone some other guys who showed up from time to time -- Donald Garrett, the ungodly Russell Thorne, even once Wilbur Ware. Years later, in my club reviewing days (late '70s or early '80s I'd guess) I caught John in the rhythm section of the Pointer Sisters band. What's he been up all these years?

It may not need to be said, but a whole life went into Jerry/Jamil's writing that.

That Chuck hates to write is I guess definitive for him, but anyone who can come with this sentence -- "They exhibited the spare elegance of money" -- and place it where he did can really write.

Well, that Friedman/Zoller "Darn That Dream" now sounds a bit tepid to me. Two topnotch "Dreams," though, are Jimmy Raney's on "Jimmy Raney in Tokyo" (Xanadu) and the shorter of the two versions on Lars Gullin's "Stockholm Street" (Dragon).

That Carisi RCA Jazz Workshop material is a revelation. I'm going to check it out again in a minute to be sure, but I have fond memories of a Don Friedman/Attila Zoller "Darn That Dream" from Friedman's 1965 Riverside album "Dreams and Explorations."

Got that Hyperion CD of De Severac songs from Berkshire yesterday. Music and performances are excellent.

Dana: I've wondered about that "too demanding" thing over the years; all I can say is that Sonny Rollins once was, as I think I've said before, probably the most important living artist to me -- and "most important living artist" probably understates the case; Rollins and his music "knew" things about the world that were crucial, true, and seemingly unknown to or unspoken by others. And then Rollins IMO kind of lost heart, at the very least began leaking a lot of oil. Here's a brief allusion to what I think was going there from the intro to my book: "The rich complexity of Rollins’s musical thought, and his ability to at once dramatize and ironically comment upon virtually any emotional impulse that came to mind, led him to express multiple points of view--one could even say summon up multiple selves or characters--within a single solo. This was, however, not an approach that Rollins could sustain during the 1960s, in the face of rapid stylistic change in the surrounding jazz landscape. Responding to those changes in his own work, as he did quite strikingly up to a point, also meant that the broadly shared musical-emotional language of romantic sign and sentiment that had so deeply stirred Rollins’s own sentiments and wit was now becoming historical. It was a language that could still be referred to and played off of, but for him apparently not with sufficient immediacy." Being a great player, there was a lot of fine playing left to come (amid evidence of leaking oil or air), but urgent contact between Rollins, his material and preoccupations, and most crucially (for want of a better term) The Living World began to be a rear-view mirror phenomenon. And this, to exaggerate just a bit, broke my heart -- because I had so much more I needed to learn from that man, and he'd stopped speaking to us in that way and from that vantage point (or so it seemed). About Rollins albums, "Worktime" is essential. One that may leave people uneasy at times but that I think captures something of what was going on in Rollins' soul that can't be heard as vividly anywhere else is "Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders" (OJC) from 1958 -- "In the Chapel in the Moonlight" and "You" (perhaps not by accident the Art Linkletter Show theme song) in particular. Don't know if it's on CD, but the Swedish label Dragon has/had an LP "Sonny Rollins Trio in Stockholm 1959 (with Henry Grimes and Pete LaRoca) that's to die for. I think this was just about the last Rollins before the retirement from public view that ended in early 1962 with "The Bridge." Also from that time, taped a few days later (March 11, 1959) at a club in Aix-en-Provence, with Grimes and Kenny Clarke, is "Sonny Rollins Live in France 1959" (Landscape) probably OOP, where he sounds like Jacob wrestling with the Angel of God (or is it Jehovah himself?) -- which may be close to what was actually going on.

David Allyn -- an out-of-Bing crooner by voice type, a jazz figure to his toes. His version of "Dearly Beloved" is to die for. He can be heard with Teagarden and Boyd Raeburn in the '40s (where he made his name) and later on some albums under his own name that probably are OOP: three (I think) in the '60s for Discovery with big-band or band-with-strings charts by Johnny Mandel and others (that's where "Dearly Beloved" is), and one on a Don Schlitten label in the late '70s, backed only by Barry Harris. Allyn also is one of the key interview subjects in Ira Gitler's fascinating "Swing To Bop." I heard Allyn live in the early '80s in Chicago and did an interview with him. Still a terrific singer but a pretty complicated guy -- though no longer a user in the way that got him into so much trouble.

First, if the "mountain top," "saw God" images imply something other than the greatness of Sonny's achievement(s) -- if for instance they mean that he was an unusually ecstatic-type artist in search of revelations (or "revelations"), a la Coltrane perhaps -- I don't see things that way. Sonny I think was a multiple-consciousness artist, with an emphasis on the consciousness of it all (albeit within a "blowing" context), that was almost without precedent in jazz on the part of a horn player. "if you really DO want to live a sane and functional life for your remaining days, that you'd find what it is that gives you joy. and in Sonny Rollins' case, I believe that that is playing the tenor saxophone. NOT looking for new heights every time out (that WOULD drive you crazy, because as we all know, you can't go home again), but just playing because it is the one true joy in your life, the way that you achieve that metaphysical/spiritual/whatever state of "completeness. Just playing the damn thing as often and as well as you can." Joy I don't hear much of, haven't for some time. And one of the questions that the shape of Sonny's career may raise -- as does W. Shorter's in a some ways similar, some ways different way -- is the relationship (for such figures) between living " a sane and functional life" and functioning as an "in the 'one'" jazz improviser. I'm saying/guessing that from Sonny and Wayne's vantage point in the 1959-'66 period, something important changed attitude-wise. For instance, who promised any of us, and improvising jazz soloists especially, a state of "metaphysical/spiritual 'completeness'"? That is -- not to get too cute about this -- what those and other jazz voyagers of that time were exploring was how much and what kind of 'incompleteness" (aesthetic/metaphysical/spiritual) they could fruitfully accept or endure (or make, by God, into new "wholes") while, in the act, they told us about all this. I'm all for full bank accounts, maximum mental and physical and spiritual well-being, and due honors for jazz's elder statesmen, but let's not forget why they and we bothered in the first place.

"The bear went over the mountain to see what he could see." Glad you said that, Jim, because it sums up what most jazz musicians do or are obliged to do whenever they address their instruments in the present tense and what I think Rollins more or less stopped doing some time ago -- again (if so) for reasons that I think may be important beyond the boundaries of Rollins' personhood or reputation and that are very much worth talking about. As you probably recall, I did weigh in a bit on that subject in the intro to Ye Olde New Book.

Jim Sangry wrote: "It's a miracle/blessing/whatever that he's still out there doing it. I heard the tone start to "hollow out" on GLOBAL WARMING, and it had me wondering if maybe the end was near. Luckily, it wasn't, and still isn't, hopefully. But it's WORK, genuine hard physical labor, to play like Sonny does. How Von Freeman does what he does at HIS age is even more miraculous...." I certainly haven't heard every Rollins record and live performance in recent decades, but I don't think of his career over that time as " a miracle/blessing/whatever" but as a slow-motion train wreck. Look, a lot of us apparently have a understandable human/humane investment in Rollins the noble giant remaining noble and gigantic; I've felt those waves of feeling myself (for me Sonny was once maybe the most important artist on the planet). But to keep saying (believing?) that he's playing at a level that the evidence suggests he's not is not a good thing for him or for us either; for one thing, it more or less removes from our consciousness the perhaps important question of why and how any musician of Rollins' stature doe swhat he does when he manages to do it and why -- again, perhaps, quite understandably -- he no longer is able or no longer chooses to do it, if that is so. The mention of Von Freeman is telling. Von still does it, has never stopped. However miraculous that fact may be, I don't think it can or should be hauled over and wrapped around Sonny's neck. Whatever is or has been going on there, for many years it seems, is not a cause for celebration IMO. In particular, Jim, while we're all aware of what age does/has done to any number of great saxophonists, from Lester Young to Coleman Hawkins to whomever, it's always been my gut feeling that Rollins is a very different case -- that whatever role age and bouts of infirmity have played in his latter-day career, something pretty basic changed in his whole attitude toward making music as an improvising jazz artist a long time ago, as long ago as the end of the Cherry-Grimes-Higgins band. I'm not saying I'm automatically right about this; what I'm asking is when can we try to talk about Rollins in terms of his art and its actual trials and triumphs (whatever they are) and the whys and wherefores of same (all of which might involve "issues" that are of importance to the whole course of this music in recent years and down the road), rather than get ourselves all caught up in maintaining/gilding the Sonny Rollins statue?

A very hip drummer. His ride cymbal beat was unique, as was his at times glassily laid back feel for where "one" was. A bit reminiscent in both respects of Louis Hayes at the time, but Hogan seemed to me to be definitely his own man.