Nate Dorward

I actually wish Braxton would do more free-improv albums: a number of them are really special--aside from the one I've picked here, I also think the one with Evan Parker on Leo is remarkable (haven't heard the trio with Rutherford). And, more recently, the very "open" quartet album with Matt Bauder is remarkable stuff--it's compositions, but many of them so interdeterminate that it's essentially free improv, mostly in a quiet "lowercase" style. I think that people often overvalue Braxton's "standards" albums & contrarily undervalue his totally free outings. (Same might go for Bailey, in a way: he got far more press for Ballads than for just about anything else he recorded in his later years.) Incidentally, two "rehearsal extracts" from 1974, the day before Braxton & Bailey played their first public concert together, were released on Bailey's Fairly Early with Postscripts.

The Live at Taktlos is well worth getting--some terrific music on there.

My AOTW pick might be of interest to Funny Rat denizens: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=28849 Not sure how much participation it'll get but I thought it worth throwing a curveball at the AOTW, & it's an album I wanted to spend some time with again.

I've been thinking hard for the past week about which album to select. I could have gone with a "safe" selection of an older mainstream album (my shortlist came down to Clifford Jordan's Spellbound, Sheila Jordan's Portrait of Sheila, the Armstrong/Ellington sessions & Sims/Rowles' If I'm Lucky) but given that the recent run of AOTW selections has been mostly in this vein I thought I'd pick something different. So the selection is an album I've wanted to revisit for a while, a notable encounter between one of the great American jazz conceptualists & a UK musician who insisted that what he played wasn't jazz at all. And of course with Bailey's passing last December I thought it was an appropriate time to have a Bailey pick for AOTW. (Victo CD02) Recorded live in Victoriaville, 2 Oct 1986. Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey had encountered each other in the 1970s several times: apparently their first encounter required a lot of negotiation: Braxton brought lots of his compositions to the gig, whereas Bailey refused to play pre-written structures; in the end they organized the concert around set "territories" (loosely defined kinds of sound & style) as a compromise. Braxton also participated in the 1977 Company Week in an extraordinary transatlantic lineup that also included Leo Smith and Steve Lacy--a key event, I think, in bringing together US avant-garde jazz musicians with European free improvisers. -- I believe that Moment Précieux was Braxton and Bailey's last public performance together. It was released on Victo, the label's second release; as far as I know it remains in print (Cadence lists it as in-stock). This is not the most "typical" encounter for either musician, & there are those who think that Braxton & Bailey just don't share enough common ground for it to work (the Cook/Morton guide cruelly called it "a dialogue of the deaf", though oddly enough gave it a relatively high rating anyway). I don't really fathom this skepticism: maybe if your head's full of opinions about transatlantic differences &c it gets in the way, but in terms of moment-to-moment surprise and interest and dialogue the disc is exemplary, IMO. Anyway, I've started this thread a few days early so those who want to pull out their copy or get hold of one can do so. As one of the earliest North American releases of Bailey's work it should be relatively common--it was, for instance, the only Derek Bailey album in the LP stacks at the radio station where I briefly DJ'd in the 1990s.

Well go to the Bagatellen review/discussion (www.bagatellen.com) of Topography if you want a fuller discussion of the re-crediting.......

Oh I don't care about the original artwork (it was, if memory serves, a yellowish mosaic) but I would like to know a little more about the technical aspects of the disc if possible...! The original Hat Art covers were quite colourful & charming--witness the difference between the original Morning Joy & the reissue for instance!

There's actually a piece I did on Topography of the Lungs in the current issue of Paris Transatlantic (www.paristransatlantic.com), FWIW. Just been listening to Pauline Oliveros' The Roots of the Moment in the new reissue. Maybe folks here could help me: I no longer have the original version but I remember it as having some useful information on the accordian/electronics setup (including a diagram/flowchart), which is omitted in the new version. Also, are the track-titles new? I don't remember them from the original version. -- One of those albums that tends to flicker in & out of my attention--basically, after a fairly active opening 5-8 minutes, it settles down to long droney slowly-twisting soundscapes, ranging from a dissonant patch in the middle to a major-key conclusion. I gather in some quarters it's considered a classic; never did a lot for me which is I guess why I got rid of it the first time round. I now wish I kept it just for the liners & the original cover (I hate the new Hatology covers--b&w shots of desolate boring urban architecture, in this case a bridge).

A review in Saturday's Globe and Mail. Stupid copyediting: the 1st sentence of the 2nd paragraph should have "before" rather than "when". *** While his guitar not so gently wept STEWART BROWN One Long Tune: The Life and Music of Lenny Breau By Ron Forbes-Roberts University of North Texas Press, 325 pages, $33.95 If Lenny Breau's life was one long tune, it was by all accounts a sad song, according to One Long Tune, the first extensive biography of the late jazz guitarist, by Vancouver writer and musician Ron Forbes-Roberts. Call it a lament for Lenny, the Maine-born Canadian prodigy who left an indelible mark on the jazz and guitar world when he was murdered at 43 in 1984. His swimsuit-clad body was found at the bottom of an apartment rooftop pool in Los Angeles. An autopsy showed no water in his lungs and strangulation marks on his neck, suggesting he'd been killed before immersion. Though police suspected Jewel Breau, his wife -- who'd displayed abusive and violent treatment of her husband during their marriage -- the evidence was considered insufficient to lay charges. The case remains unsolved. That was the dramatic climax of Breau's life, fuelled by 20 years of alcohol and drug abuse. Forbes-Roberts does not skip lightly over the destructive elements. But he's also a guitarist and clearly an admirer of Breau's musical talent and unrelenting dedication to the music and his instrument. In compiling this thorough and fascinating biography, which includes a discography and analysis of Breau's recordings, Forbes-Roberts interviewed more than 200 people, many of whom shared his enthusiasm and virtual reverence for Breau's innovative guitar style. One of them was country-and-western star Chet Atkins, whose finger-picking technique intrigued Breau early on. Atkins used his right-hand thumb to play rhythm on the bass strings of a guitar, while one or more fingers plucked a syncopated melody on the treble strings. It was Atkins who arranged for Breau to make two LPs for RCA, and who later recorded a duet album with him. In 1979, Atkins pronounced Breau "the greatest guitar player in the world today." Lenny Breau was born on Aug. 5, 1941, to country-and-western singers Hal Lone Pine (né Harold Breau), of Maine, and Betty Cody, of Sherbrooke, Que. Within four years, the boy was part of the family show, singing high harmony in a pint-sized cowboy outfit complete with toy six-shooter and holster. Breau took up guitar at 7, and by 14 had quit school to be with his father's band full-time. In 1957, the family moved to Winnipeg, doing daytime radio, with area dances and shows at night. Sixteen-year-old Lenny -- a fastidious dresser, looking like "a cross between Sal Mineo and Tony Curtis" -- was the star of the package. Winnipeg introduced Breau to jazz, though he'd always keep his affection for country references, along with flamenco, classical and folk, in his jazz playing. It also introduced him to his first wife -- Valerie St. Germain, sister to pop singer Ray -- whom he married when both were 18. Breau couldn't read music in those early Winnipeg years. He was also a stranger to improvisation, relying on imitating solos and licks he'd memorize from LPs. However, he started learning musical theory from local pianist Bob Erlendson, and in time would become first-call guitarist for CBC studio work in Winnipeg. Toronto beckoned in 1962. Breau worked with tap dancer Joey Hollingsworth and joined singer Don Francks and bassist Eon Henstridge in a hip, musically esoteric trio called Three. But Breau was also getting into substance abuse -- marijuana, LSD, heroin, methadone, alcohol -- and dependencies would plague him the rest of his life. Breau periodically tried to get clean of drugs and booze. But he kept weakening and, rather than face a marijuana-possession charge in 1975, fled the country for Maine. He would not return to Canada for six years, and only then when Don Francks paid the $1,000 fine for Breau's marijuana possession and $5,000 of the $15,000 he owed in back income taxes. In drug-and-alcohol-free times, Lenny Breau was in control whenever he had his hands on a guitar. Away from the guitar, away from the bandstand, Breau was a little boy lost. Ray Couture, a country guitarist who knew him from childhood, sums it up in the book: "You just couldn't help but love Lenny, but if you loved him, he expected you to look after him because he couldn't look after himself." Winnipeg vocalist Mary Nelson, like other "handlers" in Breau's life, felt protective of him: "We knew that the world had hard edges and Lenny couldn't handle hard edges," she says. "He couldn't handle them personally: as a musician, as a father, as a husband, as a friend. It wasn't that he didn't want to; he just couldn't." Breau's drug dependency contributed to the breakup of his marriage to St. Germain and of an engagement to Edmonton vocalist Judi Singh. All told, Lenny fathered four children, two with St. Germain, one with Singh and one with Jewel, his second wife. Ironically, it was Chet Atkins who introduced Breau to Jewel, a sometime singer born Joanne Glasscock. It was a meeting, Forbes-Roberts writes, that "marked the beginning of a toxic relationship so characterized by hostility and violence that Lenny spent the remainder of his life desperately trying to flee it." They were married in 1981, the same year Breau returned to Canada for a series of appearances at Toronto's Bourbon Street, a jazz club on Queen Street West. That's where Ted O'Reilly, of radio station CJRT-FM, taped a performance in June, 1983, by Breau, with his seven-string electric guitar, and bassist Dave Young, a recording now available as a two-CD set called Live at Bourbon Street. Within a year, Breau would be dead and buried in an unmarked grave in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, Calif. Funeral expenses were covered by a memorial benefit at Nashville's Blue Bird Café. From its east-coast intro to its west-coast coda, One Long Tune is a mournful dirge. Forbes-Roberts would give Breau's ballad a hallelujah refrain for the purity of the guitarist's musical vision, but the everyday-life verses are tinged with a lingering sadness. Stewart Brown is a Hamilton journalist who is writing a nostalgic book about the Brant Inn, the big-band showplace of the 1930s, '40s and '50s in Burlington, Ont.

May be of interest to some Funny Ratters: http://www.dispatx.com/issue/05/images/syn...tacticsLash.pdf --an article by the bassist Dom Lash on Derek Bailey.

If you want to know about any of the recentish issues (since about 2002) I have most of them around here....

I've heard of Al Neil too. But that's all!

Only other one I have is Solo Ballads II on Alsut--it's extraordinary music (the version of "Solitude" particularly).

Yes, I hope to check out some of his earlier releases. Though I hope to avoid that one Larry mentions with the heads trimmed off! -- What struck me most, listening to the disc, was that without being a craggily idiosyncratic grand-old-master kind of tenor player Hill still has a knack for taking each tune at a perceptibly different angle, so that (for instance) the pacing, tone, degree of ornamentation are quite different from track to track. It's a very subtle reshaping that's going on. & yeah, "Flamenco Sketches" is lovely!

Hill is not a figure I know well--in fact I think the only recording I have is his sideman appearance on a Shirley Horn disc. The Penguin Guide notes that he's one of the US's most notable "regional" jazzmen (in his case Washington DC). The rest of the band's unfamiliar to me--John Ozment on the Hammond A100, Paul Pieper on guitar, Jerry Jones on the drums. I guess what I like most about the disc is that, in an unfussy way, it's not easy to pin down to a period style--there's a modern, post-fusion spin to the organ trio at points, with a certain Scofieldishness to the guitar at times too, but Hill doesn't sound out of place. Perhaps you could best compare the disc, in a way, to the intimacy & jazz-period-collapsing feel of Joe Henderson's So Near So Far--in fact, there's a run of 3 Miles Davis tunes on here ("Flamenco Sketches", "Prancing" and [the first] "Milestones"). There's a modern-sounding "Little Bossa" which might have pleased Larry Young, an "Old Folks" which would have pleased Jimmy Smith. Hill doesn't go in for spotlit oratory or craggy grandeur--it's more about gracious but quiet self-expression, a kind of unfussy stillness and deep exploration of mood. (It's got "character", not in the sense of "lots of quirks" but in the sense of "strength of character".) Lovely music, which I think would be of interest to Organissimo denizens as an instance of a no-frills but strong and ultimately rather haunting tenor+organ combo date ("Sad Ones" at the end in particular).

The 8-yr-old here has methodically worked through all the Tintin books. She tells me she likes The Seven Crystal Balls + The Prisoners of the Sun best. I devoured them as a kid. Nowadays, though I get a nostalgic blast out of them, I find the endless pratfall humour a bit much. But they're still great just to look at--that distinctive visual style.

I heard (reviewed) the Petrucciani tribute album. Sounded like a 13-year-old with a lot of Bird under his fingers, but not a lot of taste or experience, & the approach was all wrong for Petrucciani's tunes.

Yeah it's great stuff. I should add that I really, really, wish a boxed set were available of Waldron's 1970s Enjas--that was a great run of stuff. I played Hard Talk over & over as a teenager. (It's got a classic version of "Snake Out" on it. Those who don't like Lacy's "outside" stuff might find it hard going though--his solos are amazingly singleminded in their focus on all the kissing, squeaking, growling sounds he can muster!)

Sempre Amore, the Duke/Strayhorn album, is definitely one of their peaks (& a good one for listeners who find Lacy a little dry). The only other duo album I have is Hot House, which is good though not on the same level.

it's a pity they didn't let that guy write the article, might have been very instructive (more for Louis Sclavis and John Surman, however, than for the reader...) Haven't seen the issue but isn't that the dread pianist/polemicist/hoaxer Jack Reilly?

Hey Matt--hm, well, I've tried your updated links several times, & have created a younsendit account, & so far no dice: it always says it's expired. Would still be happy to hear the music, so maybe try sending the files via yousendit to ndorward / at-sign / ndorward / full-stop / com.

Sorry to hear that: he's one of my favourite living "old-school" pianists. "Solitude" on Solo Ballads Two is a killer.

It is Watson, not a phony, yes--I think it's a reprint from one of his Hi-Fi reviews.

The Eneidi/Ellis/Valsalmis disc is OK--actually it'd be great if it weren't for the prolonged downtime in the long final track (esp. the squelchy electronic interlude from Ellis).

Yes it's a B-flat m9 on the original record--I assume the difference is because Jim plays on a transposing instrument?

Yes, I'm just talking about the labelling of the physical CD.