Larry Kart

Another choice Brando line from "One-Eyed Jacks," directed at fellow outlaw Ben Johnson, who had said something tauntingly disrespectful about Brando's girlfriend: "You scum-sucking pig!" (As Brando says this, he turns over and dances backwards from the table at which they've been sitting, all the way to the far wall of the room--an incredible piece of business.) The girl I going out with at the time the movie came out (my first love, as they say) had an interesting history with the Brando clan. Her folks were friends of Brando's parents from way back, and they also were tight with a very good painter, Richard Loving, who had been Brando's roommate (along with Wally Cox!) when Brando first came to New York. So she was heavily invested in "One-Eyed Jacks" being a great movie, and perversely I was eager to poke holes in it -- which wasn't hard to do, because it is kinda incoherent and pretentious at times, but also very very good I eventually came to realize. Anyway, we almost came to blows over it. True love.

I caught Bruce once at Mr. Kelly's in Chicago, in 1959 or '60. Got in with a friend -- we were were both way underage (a senior [me] and a junior in high school), but my friend was well over six feet tall and looked pretty grown up. Unless my memory is playing tricks, this was a night when Lenny made up or debuted a routine -- the "Jean Laffite is bombarding the Capitol!" one about Gov. Earl Long of Louisiana going batty -- because the events that gave it point had happened that day. Not the greatest thing Lenny ever did by any means, but the "nowness" of it was exciting. In fact -- and I'm someone who went on to write a shitload of reviews and think pieces about comedians over the years and interview lots of comics (from Sahl to Andy Kaufmann) -- the "nowness" that Lenny could create was without parallel in my experience. I remember in particular some interplay he launched with one of the club's Latino busboys. The sense that a norm was being at once casually and threateningly violated was overwhelming -- if only because we knew that Lenny was stepping over a line, and that neither we nor he know how far he was going to go. The phrase that I came up with at the time or soon after, and that's stuck in my head is: "Being with Lenny is like being in the same room with a ticking time bomb." BTW, the idea of Lenny as some kind of crusading civil libertarian strikes me as nonsense. Not that his work didn't bring up such issues -- and to the degree that his work became preoccupied with his legal problems, more's the pity for the most part, in terms of the quality of his work. Pauline Kael, of all people (I'm not normally a fan), wrote by far the best piece about Lenny I know, her essay-review of Bob Fosse's sanctimonious biopic "Lenny" (it's in her collecting "Reeling"). A sample: "Lenny Bruce was on nobody's side. The farthest-out hipster, like the farthest-out revolutionary, has an enormous aesthetic advantage over everybody else: he knows how to play his hand to make us all feel chicken. Bruce's hostility and obscenity were shortcuts to audience response; he could get and hold audiences' attention because they didn't know what or whom he was going to attack or degrade next; and they could sense that he wasn't sure himself.... The scriptwriter of 'Lenny' must have thought that Bruce's material was so good that an actor can say it and this will be enough. But those routines don't work without Bruce's teasing, seductive aggression and his delirious amorality. If they are presented as the social criticism of a man who's out to cleanse society of hypocrisy, the material falls flat.... [bruce] went to the farthest lengths he could dream up not out of missionary motives but out of a performer's zeal."

Andy Fitz probably is Andy Fitzgerald, onetime member of the Joe Mooney Quartet. Didn't we have a thread on vocalist/accordian player/organist Mooney a while back?

As fate would have it, some of the tracks with Herman vocals also include superb work from the band and its soloists (e.g. Sonny Berman on "That's What Uncle Remus Said").

I'm sure that Brooks' career is very much on the plus side, but I recall some controversy (can't cite chapter and verse, but I'm sure Chris can enlighten me--perhaps it involved Billie Holiday material) over Brooks' penchant for salting reissues with previously unissued takes of performances--this in some cases in lieu of (not in addition to) the originally issued takes. This, as I recall, was motivated (or such was the claim of those who protested) by Brooks' background as a collector of 78s, but clearly (so the protesters felt) the originally issued takes ought to take precedence, provided reasons of economy precluded the use of all musically valid takes. Certainly it would be bizarre if the company that owned the rights to the originally issued take of "Me, Myself and I" (to take one possible example) allowed a reissue producer to remove that recording from circulation and substitute an alternate take for it. One case of that of which I'm certain: the 1988 Columbia LP "1940s The Small Groups: New Directions" (produced by Brooks), where the originally issued Woody Herman Woodchoppers recordings of "Fan It" and "Lost Weekend" are replaced by previously unissued alternate takes.

Thanks, Chris. I've never done that AMG search, didnt even know it existed. Weird feeling. Actually, I've written plenty more liner notes than are on that list, but the reason I got the "Filles" gig was that Bob Belden was the producer/compiler/whatever of that reissue, and back when he was in college he read a club review I'd written for Down Beat in '69 or '70 of the so-called "lost" Miles Quintet (the one with Wayne, and Corea, Holland, and DeJohnette in the rhythm section) and thought it was on the money. Belden, being a Miles fanatic, filed that away in his head and later passed on some bootleg Miles tapes of that vintage to me. We've had intermittent contact over the years (at first I didn't even know he was a musician), but he knew who I was, I knew who he was, and voila! It was a lot of fun. And thanks, Greg K, for the compliment.

I wrote those notes, and Jim's name is there because I bounced a rough draft off of him, he had some very shrewd comments, I wanted to use one of them and thought he ought to get credited for it. After all, it was his idea.

May have mentioned this the last time Nordine's name came up: Dutch pianist-composer Michael Braam (correct sp.) has an album out called "Colors," with each track based on one of the Nordine poems. Interesting stuff, with that typical Dutch eccentricity -- sort of Teddy Wilson meets Cecil Taylor.

Hey, Double M -- "Bob Belden has lied to me on many occasions about these recordings" made me laugh out loud. What I remember most about the band's Chicago gig was how crisp Mickey Roker sounded and how unexpected his rather tight (almost Swing era) time feel was in the context of that band playing that music. (By "tight" I mean nothing negative BTW--just a different approach than I was used to from, say, Billy Higgins.) Another thing I recall is that I came up to Lee between sets and asked him if he knew what had happened to Tina Brooks -- who was still alive but long gone from the scene. Don't recall exactly what Lee said, but my recollection was that while he was verbally noncommital, his facial expression (maybe a wince, then pursed lips) was a three-act play.

I'd say Chuck, easily, but Gould reminds me of that knight in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" -- rendered limbless, even headless, he doesn't/wouldn't know the difference.

Is there any reason to disbelieve Bob Belden's account, in the BN "Live at the Lighthouse" booklet, of where the Fresh Sounds material came from? Belden, who's reliable on such matters to my knowledge, says (per Bennie Maupin) that the Fresh Sounds material came from a San Francisco gig at the Both/And (broadcast over the radio), two weeks prior to the Lighthouse gig. Thus, the FS performances are airchecks and do not duplicate the Lighthouse performances. Haven't heard the FS discs, but the sound on the Lighthouse performances has always seemed plenty beastly to me (clotted, distorted, you name it). Who was the idiot, one Dino Lappas, who recorded them -- or was Lappas working under weird restrictions? (Belden speaks of the source tape problems, more gently than he should have IMO.) I did hear the band live in Chicago, and somewhere in my brain there's preserved a decent sense of how they really sounded.

Yes, but at times there's a price to be paid for Conyers' "Congressman from the Land of Jazz" role. See Terry Teachout's piece "The Color of Jazz" (originally printed in Commentary magazine, now collected in a book, "The Terry Teachout Reader") about Conyer's bullying attempt to get the racial composition of the Smithsonian Masterworks Orchestra changed when it turned out to include too many white musicians to suit him. (The orchestra was, and I assume still is, a jazz repertory ensemble, a la the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra.) Teachout has something of an axe to grind in that piece, but Conyers did too. Take a look if you can find the piece, and see what you think. In that vein, I love Conyers' condescending, gratuitous "I've always argued that white guys can learn to play jazz" -- particularly that "learn."

Brownie -- Don't know about Buena Vista, but I'm looking right at my Disneyland copy of "Tutti's Trumpets." You're right that some of it is more than a little schamltzy, but the section work is pretty staggering, as you might expect given this personnel: Conrad Gozzo, Pete Candoli, Shorty Sherock, Mannie Klein, Ray Triscari, and Uan Rasey. Some tracks with strings, some with saxes, some with full orchestra.

Heard Roscoe at Hothouse Friday night, preceded by almost hour-long live interview with Roscoe (in a genial, informative, statesman-like mood), a fine set by Ted Sirota's Rebel Souls (with Steve Berry subbing for Jeb Bishop and Jeff Parker in fine form). Roscoe was with Corey Wilkes, Harrison Bankhead, and Vincent Davis -- not my favorite Mitchell associates but none of them got in the way, and Wilkes at odd moments showed signs that he might become more than a circus musician. During the interview, Roscoe said something about how on some nights you can do whatever you want, and in some nights you have to work at it. This seemed like a night of the first sort. Wide variety of approaches from Roscoe on various horns -- flute, piccolo, sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass saxes. I was particularly struck by how much time he spent on note-wedded-to-note linear playing rather than on circular firestorms (though "circular" is just shorthand on my part, don't think it's the right term.) In the linear realm, Roscoe is incredibly lucid-compositional -- beginning on flute, it seemed like he could have sustained the skein of his thinking forever; it was like watching a painter who never needs to lift his brush from the canvas. Linked to this (partly because Roscoe lines were relatively exposed in this setting) is something I've never felt as strongly before: For a supposedly "free" player, Roscoe is a potent, novel harmonic thinker -- a la Bach in the solo cello or violin works, his lines (when he's in a linear groove) always imply a bass line that exists in meaningful dialogue with the horn line we actually hear. In fact, as John Litweiler pointed out when we were talking afterwards, this is in part built into Roscoe's sound, on alto especially -- the way most of his notes, timbrally, have a top, middle, and bottom (at the very least). And all of this is linked to Roscoe rhythmic concept(s), which to coin a term I'd describe as "anti-fluid." That is, he likes to build musical machines whose workings always expose the fact that they are doing the work that they're doing, that explain themselves in the act. Thus perhaps, his penchant for finding what I'd call "offbeats of offbeats" -- where Roscoe places his accents (this is especially clear in his solo percussion forays, though there none of them last night) are places where no music I'm aware of has ever gone before; it's as though, in the melodic realm, he had discovered twelve new notes in the octave, ones that somehow didn't seem like variations on the pitches we know. Though we do feel to some degree the "offness" of the these new places, especially rhythmically, it's mostly ( or more like, or wants to be) another centered world (a la Monk). As with Monk, perhaps, the drive on Roscoe's part is not only simply "This is what interests me, and maybe no one has been here before" (i.e. exploration rather than upheaval--at one point during the the interview, he wryly said that if he had to start all over, he'd want to be an astronaut) but also (as implied above) exposure of the workings to himself and to us; he makes a completely lucid music that at once moves like crazy and stands there like a building, a music you can be overwhelmed by (if you're so inclined) and think about at the same time.

As good as it gets from that period. Can't imagine what the thoughts on the other side of the divide might be, unless they're from people who just don't like late Pres in general. Don't hesitate.

Speaking of Jim R's reference to "some very advanced Tal," I heard Farlow at a club in Chicago in the mid-1980s I think -- after the final Concord album was made I'm pretty sure -- and was astonished by what I heard. This was a whole other level of mental and physical agility; Tatum was the comparison that leapt to mind. In fact, in a longish life of listening, the only times I've ever felt that the sheer intensity of musical thought/execution was clear beyond my ability to grasp all that was going on in real time were recordings by Tatum, Bird, and this live Farlow. (Perhaps Cecil Taylor too, but Cecil's a somewhat different story.)

I'm pretty sure that it came out originally on Pacific Jazz. I believe that label didn't mutate into World Pacific until 1958 (supporting that memory is another one -- PJ albums were thickish and kinda heavy, a la most sleeves of the time (BN for example), but WP sleeves were lighter and thinner, and the copy of "Jazz Guitar" I had was of the first sort. Thus, I'd say yes to (1) and (2). Dick Bock's dicking around with the material probably began with a later WP issue. Whatever, you're a lucky man.

"Little Old Lady"? Maybe a bit, but then there's no Trane solo on that track. Do you think the coy/droll mood of that theme statement would have lasted if he'd soloed? Actually, in her liner notes to "Coltrane Jazz," Zita Carno detects some "almost Monkish humor" in the theme of "Harmonique," but then says that Trane "goes right into his 'typical Coltrane blues stuff.'" Actually (Part Two), these brief touches of humor may have something to do with the title of another track from the album, "Like Sonny." Also, later on, there's something a bit impish in the theme statement of "The Inchworm," but that's probably built into the tune (and/or its associations), and again I don't think it lasts through Trane's solo.

I think -- though this may be obvious -- that one of the things that puzzled us (though I'm only speaking for myself here) at the time about VeeJay Wayne vs. early BN Wayne was his apparent "submission" to the prevailing Trane weather front. It seemed like Wayne on VeeJay was on an alternate path -- that having already taken full account of everything Trane was up to, he had decided, "No, I'm going to go this other way." And not only was there then this sense of "going back" on Wayne's part (though because VeeJay Wayne was the first recorded Wayne, I guess we didn't have anything but anecdotal evidence plus sheer likelihood [we knew that they'd played/practiced a lot together] to back up the feeling that Wayne already knew his Trane close to inside out), but also their paths were pretty different or so it seemed: Wayne's wide-eyed, fully conscious play with angles of style and stance, a la Rollins' taste for the sentimental absurd (Sonny's "In the Chapel in the Moonlight," "I'm An Old Cowhand" etc. vs. Wayne's "The Moon of Manakoora," "June Night," and "Mack the Knife"), while Trane on the other hand climbed night after night toward ecstasy and release. Not that it could or should have been otherwise, but is there a moment of humor in Trane's music? That Wayne the magical trickster (or so we thought) should for a time have become similarly solemn was at the time a puzzlement.

I'm also getting an Angie Dickinson vibe here. Whatever -- they don't make 'em that way anymore.

Chuck's account of how that music was received back then was the way it was -- also the puzzlement at the early Blue Note Shorter and the wondering about where the VeeJay seriocomic master of space, time, and dimension had gone to. Here's something I wrote about the VeeJay Wayne from the intro to ye olde book: "A good example of Shorter’s early, fruitfully disruptive approach to improvisation is the solo he took on 'June Night' from the album Kelly Great, made in 1960 under the leadership of pianist Wynton Kelly. The tune is a lightweight pop ditty, and it’s performed by the group with a coy, two-beat stroll. But as Shorter slides into his solo with a vast languid swoon, his listeners suddenly find themselves in a surrealistic fun house, dropping through unexpected trap doors and on the receiving end of some ghostly musical shocks. At one point, for instance, Shorter rises to a pitch of apparently genuine ecstasy, spitting out a rapid-fire figure like a man who has been plugged into a light socket. A moment later, though, Shorter repeats this phrase with the delicately miniaturized grace of a music box, as though he were letting us know that the appearance of soloistic ecstasy may be just that--not a take-it-to-the-bank emotional fact but a cool, even cold-blooded, act of the will that then can be toyed with or even mocked."

A possible sidebar to this question is that for a few year after jazz hit me on the head, I contineed to think of all classical music as a form of Mantovani, nothing but soupy violins and guys with long white hair waving a baton -- yuck! Then I began playing a Vox Box of the Mozart String Quintets that my Mom had around, and another door suddenly swung wide open.

Either 49 or 50 years ago at age 12 or 13; can't say for sure because my birthday is in mid-May, and it hit me at some point in the spring of seventh grade in 1955. Very fortunately, my eighth grade teacher was a jazz fan, and he took me and a friend to a JATP concert and suggested that I buy a Charlie Parker record. Bless you, Bob Zwetz.

A pair of Tristano-influenced trumpeters (a rare breed) --Don Ferrara and Sweden's Jan Allan. Also a guy who's been around for a good while but is just now emerging -- Steve Lampert. He can be heard in striking form on a relatively recent (2002) Steeplechase album under Rich Perry's name, "Hearsay," though it's really Lampert's date it seems; he wrote most of the tunes. Muted throughout, Lampert (no youngster, b. 1953) sounds like he's improvising the sort of lines that George Russell would have written out in the late 1950s, except that the surface is more complicated than that. One hell of a linear thinker. There's also a new Lampert on Steeplechase that I haven't heard but a bit of; most of it's a suite, and there's some synth plus trumpet work from him that sounds like he's worked electronic Miles and even Hendrix into the mix.

And don't forget -- if he hasn't already been mentioned -- Joe Wilder.