HutchFan

Horace Parlan Quintet - Frank-ly Speaking (SteepleChase)

Sphere - Flight Path (Elektra Musician)

Ted Nash - Still Evolved (Palmetto)

Well put. Hooray for the mortals. We're part of the equation too!

medjuck, I was referring to some of Kenton's comments regarding race that can strike a person as... um, perhaps "racially insensitive" is the right word? After a quick Google search, here's an example of the sort of thing I'm talking about -- from an article on A Blog Supreme: Accusations of racism also plagued [Kenton]. Annoyed by the exclusion of what he felt were worthy players in the 1956 Down Beat critics poll, he sent a telegram to the magazine protesting on behalf of "a new minority, white jazz musicians." Though Kenton regularly employed African-American musicians and professed friendship and admiration for black jazz pioneers, he never fully shook the stigma. This Down Beat quote is just one example. The are others where he showed a similar sort of "tone deafness" (at a minimum) when it comes to race. I'm not gonna bother to dig them up. Besides, I'm not making a case that Kenton was a racist. I'm just saying that plenty of non-musical factors played into some people's distaste for the man.

Yeah. That.

You don't need it. But I think you might just enjoy it. Those Columbia sides (and his Savoy recordings) feature Erroll Garner at his best. At least in this listener's opinion.

Selections from: Enrico Pieranunzi & Marc Johnson - Yellow & Blue Suites (Challenge)

Exactly!!!!! It's nuts! ...I'm only repeating impressions that I'd gleaned from here and there. By the way, Jim, Peter Nero SUX.

He's no longer considered verboten, but I recall a time when admitting that you liked Ahmad Jamal was considered questionable. IIRC, the first time that I'd ever read about Jamal, it was in relation to his influence on Miles, and the author was talking about Miles' open admiration for Jamal's music. Whoever the writer was -- don't recall who -- almost seemed embarassed that Miles would have enjoyed Jamal's music and incorporated some aspects of it into his own playing. The writer seemed to go out of his way to point out that the "lesser" artist had somehow, oddly enough, influenced the "greater" one. Even as a young person, just dipping my toe into jazz, it seemed odd to me that the author felt like he had to defend Miles' tastes! ...Of course, Jamal is fully rehabilitated now. I think certain sets felt the same way about Erroll Garner too. For some reason, these folks didn't find his music "legit." Too florid, I guess. Too many pop tunes. ...But now, like Jamal, Garner has been admitted into the pantheon, his rehabilitation complete. Only poor ol' Oscar Peterson remains in purgatory. Loved by some, excoriated by others.... The polarizing jazz musician par excellence. To my way of thinking, Oscar easily wins the Top/Bottom Prize for these sorts of strongly-voiced arguments, both loudly pro and vehemently con -- because dislike for figures like Wynton and Kenton has as much to do with their personalities as it does with their music. With OP, on the other hand, it's entirely about his music.

Thanks, xybert, for this info! I really appreciate it. Would love to hear your impressions of Talisman too, after you've had a chance to take it in. BTW, I didn't realize that Nock was a New Zealander. I guess I'd always assumed that he was Australian -- since I know that he's spent much of his career there.

Spurred by jazzbo's post above: Weather Report - I Sing the Body Electric (Columbia)

Heh! Forgot about that role! NP: Art Pepper - Winter Moon (Galaxy)

More Verbal than Keyser Söze.

Fun. I like Hayes' drumming. I particularly enjoy the music that he made in the 70s while he was co-leading a band with Woody Shaw. But his sideman work with Horace, Cannonball, and Oscar Peterson is strong too.

Excellent! EDIT: Speaking of Mike Nock, I have a question for anyone who enjoys his music: Have you heard either of his solo-piano LPs from the late-70s? One is a called Talisman (Enja), and the second is simply titled Piano Solos (Timeless). I've never heard either of them, and I see that they've both been reissued in Japan. I was wondering whether I should take the plunge. Any comments much appreciated.

Miroslav VItous - First Meeting (ECM)

Supersax Plays Bird (Capitol) Hank Crawford, Jimmy McGriff - On the Blues Side (Milestone) Sphere - Four in One (Elektra Musician)

Miroslav Vitous Group - S/T (ECM) This is the second LP from Vitous' band with John Surman, Kenny Kirkland, and Jon Christensen. I'd always preferred First Meeting, the group's first recording, over this one. But suddenly it's as if someone flipped a switch, and what was opaque is now very clear. Not sure what I was missing before! Oh well. I'm glad to be hearing it & enjoying it now.

Hugh Masekela - Home Is Where the Music Is (Blue Thumb)

Completely understood. And NO disrespect intended. And besides, I'm sure that my way of thinking about this stuff is colored by the fact that I'm just a listener -- not a musician. I don't have to muckety-muck with the practicalities of music-making like you do!

Well, I think you're taking my point to its logical extreme. I'm not saying that all things are subjective in an absolute sense. That would be silly. Just because I believe in a largely subjectivist perspective in the arts doesn't mean that I don't believe in objectivity in other spheres. For example, everyone judges politicians based on non-subjective factors -- things like the rate of unemployment, the condition of the economy, their ability to pass legislation that betters the lives of the citizens that they represent. Similarly, we can easily argue about sports -- because sports are overflowing with statistics and data to prove (or disprove) our point. In both of these cases, there are readily agreed upon sets of data that constitute success or non-success. I would argue that art is different precisely because there are no pre-determined rules. There are conventions and traditions. But these are often overturned by revolutionary artists. Consider: the very things that we love about Van Gogh would never have been understood by the generations of artists who preceded him. They would have thought he was a charlatan or worse. The same could be said about Ives or Schoenberg or ... many, many artists. Another reason that I think that the world of art is different -- and requires a more subjective point of view -- is that art doesn't serve an external, secondary purpose. We can judge a doctor's actions by asking ourselves, "How well does this doctor heal patients?" We can judge an athlete's performance by how many wins she get, or a batting average, or how many tackles he makes. As I mentioned above, we judge politicians based on many objective criteria that measures their success in governance. But I think we have to evaluate art differently. By what secondary or external criteria do we judge a piece of music? Or a novel? Or a film? All of the objective stuff that we use is based on things within the world of art itself. There's no secondary or external result. The meaning of art comes from our experience of it; it's not the thing that matters, as much as our reaction to it. And this sort of meaning is -- by definition -- subjective. Having studied Charles Ives and his music, I hear one thing when I listen to his music. When my daughter hears the exact same music, she hears something very, very different -- much more dissonant, much more off-putting. Even though we're hearing the exact the same music, our fundamental experience of the music couldn't be more different. And it's factors inside my consciousness and inside her consciousness that make the experience of Ives' music so different for each of us. I know I'm running on and on -- but I think this is missed again and again when we talk about the music that we love so much. We speak as if music were like chess or sports or other things with pre-determined rules and external measures. But it isn't. So... to bring it all back around: For me, there's a HUGE difference between saying "Oscar Peterson's music is bad" and saying "Oscar Peterson's music doesn't do anything for me." Then again, others may think that I'm making a mountain out of a molehill.

Regardless of what I think of Oscar Peterson's music personally, I am confident that Oscar played like Oscar wanted to play. We may not like it. We may even think that it's "bad art." But -- from my point of view at least -- trying to judge or rank any artist relative to any other artist -- in an objective sense -- is a nearly pointless exercise. On the other hand, talking about artists that we like or dislike from a subjective point of view is an entirely different kettle of fish. As long as we recognize that our preferences are really just that -- preferences. Nothing more, nothing less. My 2 cents.

David Friedman ‎- Of The Wind´s Eye (Enja) Miroslav Vitous Group - S/T (ECM)

Pepper Adams - Julian (Enja)