Nate Dorward

Hey thanks for the kind words on the review--it's a pleasure to try to get Hewitt's music down on paper & I'm glad people are catching onto his work.

Didn't Bennie Wallace do the music to that film?

1: One celebrated Tristanoite on the sax, two underrated ones on piano & 2nd sax. This is the “bonus” session on the recent reissue of Tristano’s _Intuition_. What can I say? These guys were all great, & though Warne's the one who's a real cult figure the others are worth close attention too: I wish I knew why the pianist recorded so little, he doesn’t get his due. If you see his Savoy date GRAB IT. 2: 1950s Lestorian cool. I find the 2nd tenor solo much more intriguing, with a beseeching quality I actually associate also (in a completely different context) with Tina Brooks. I have no idea who these guys are, but it’s a very nice track. 3: aside from noting that the 1st tenor solo's Hawkins I don't think I have anything terribly interesting to say. S'OK. 5: This sounds very familiar, esp. the no-quarters-taken drumming which is surely Elvin? Hm, the pianist sounds like Andrew Hill, maybe Richard Davis on bass; perhaps as a result initially this was making me think a lot of Roland Kirk though it’s not Kirk. Oh, of course, this is probably Jimmy Woods’ _Conflict_ which I haven’t heard for about 15 years. Sounds good, maybe not brilliant but hey, it’ll wake the dead & put a smile on their face. I like the alto solo most, Woods himself. What happened to him anyway? Why didn’t he record more? 6: Hot minor blues which sounds a little more contemporary (1980s?) than some of the other hardbop stuff here. I think I’m missing something about why this is here, I mean it sounds fine but it’s very curtailed & the horn solos in particular aren’t doing much for me. Jolly enough. 7: Time to play guess the standard. Um.... “Come Rain or Shine”.... hang on, “Solitude”.... no, “Tenderly”.... no, it’s “Solitude”... no, it’s “Tenderly”. “Solitude” wins! Yow, this has got to be the most hard-hitting “Solitude” I’ve ever heard. If you want to hear magic, try Chris Anderson’s version on _Solo Ballads Two_. As for this one.... well it was worth hearing once. 8: “East of the Sun West of the Moon”. The altoist has the peculiar quality of reminding me a lot of players I really like like Desmond & Pepper while meanwhile kind of annoying me, though the way he goes off every so often on an odd tangent is I guess at least interesting. The bassist is Wilbur Ware & the drummer sounds very familiar. I wonder if I’d like this more with a less abrasive studio sound? Odd track. Are these players who regularly play together? 9: Interestingly unguessable opening, I was expecting a straightforward blues line & it turns into what sounds like three tunes rolled in one, with a Monk flavour. Unmistakably Clifford Jordan on the sax, sounds like he’s absorbed a little Coltrane at this stage which I didn't notice in his earlier work. Noisy recording & the piano’s no hell, but it’s lots of fun. 10: Well I have this one, V.’s most recent one. Nice disc; the rhythm section is a class act but sounds conventional behind V. in his freakiest form. 11: Odd context for some Ellingtonians??? This would have been nice if it were shorter but it does go on...and on....and on...... I sincerely I hope I can get the darn tune out of my head now. 12: Nice piano trio blues opening up into some horns, I like the tenor solo best, surely Jaws? Wow, so it’s actually a full-band track? Maybe some Granzy thing from the 1970s. 15: Surely Garner. Yow, that’s so mannered I don’t think I could take another minute of it. It’s fine, but not my thing. 16: More contemporary stuff than much of the rest of the BFT. Hm, I guess it’ll be a challenge here to figure out who each trumpeter is...... The 1st trumpeter.... hm, just possibly Clark Terry on the first solo? Certainly sounds like an older player. The 2nd solo is someone younger & (rather selfconsciously) impressive.

Just been listening to ROVA/Orkestrova's Electric Ascension. Definitely one of the more stunning rackets I've heard this year. Anyone heard it & their earlier (acoustic) take on the piece? I should pick that one up too, obviously..... Anyway, great to hear folks like Nels Cline & Otomo Yoshihide let loose on the Coltrane classic. My ears are still throbbing..

I've always had warmest feelings about "Teeny's Blues" on this one, probably one of the less celebrated tracks? Great line, & the solos too. It was something my old piano teacher taped for me early on to study. Incidentally if you listen to Hubbard solo on Jackie McLean's Bluesnik you can hear him play a snatch of one of the Nelson themes here. The McLean album was recorded several months earlier I note.

I keep hoping Zorn'll reissue that one in a remastered version--the Power Station sound is so wretchedly tinny. Great "Mob Job" on there.

Just got it--thanks. [edited out a bit as I'd mis-i.d.'d the 1st track, though I also have that album--nearly identical lineup to the one I'd had in mind except for the 2nd tenor]. Anyway, I look forward to digging into the rest of the compilation.

THanks for the info. I think I'll have to get hold of that Intakt album.... -- Yes the drummer & bassist on Nomis are outstanding, & very distinctive. The album itself is sort of like Paul Bley's Footloose filtered through a more "European" sensibility. Besides the Voerkel tune, there's a lovely version of Jimmy Rowles' "The Peacocks" on there, which sounds more or less like an elegy for Voerkel. They start by scribbling all over it with little tufts & wifts of sound but then at the end it's given an ultra-slow reading that's like some dark 19th-century romantic composer.

I was wondering if anybody knew much about these players, or could recommend some recordings. Voerkel was born in 1949 & died in 1999. He has a few releases on labels like Intakt & FMP, which I haven't heard yet (I don't think the FMPs are in print but the Intakt is). Fredi Luescher, who's a bit older (b.1943) did an album of Carla Bley tuens a couple years back which I thought was terrific; I recently got his new one, Nomis, a trio album of Voerkel tunes with Voerkel's rhythm section, Daniel Studer (bass) & Marco Kaeppeli. Among other things I was really struck by how good the bassist & drummer are there. Anyway, I know little about the Swiss music scene so was wondering if anyone could tell me more (in particular, had some follow-up recommendations).

Yeah I've seen New York Eye & Ear Control..... but can't say I was all that impressed. I was much more taken by the Stan Brakhage/Phillip Corner film that was on the same program. -- That said, the footage of the musicians is great--Murray looks like he's from Mars, & Gary Peacock's incredibly hostile expression says "**** off" so clearly that no words are needed!

I dunno--I just heard that weird track of Sinatra sitting in on "Sweet Lorraine" with Nat King Cole, Coleman Hawkins & miscellaneous Doresyites & Ellingtonians & it mostly just sounded like a stylistic trafficjam. Kinda wonderful to hear, anyway, though....!

Yeah, but jazz doesn't have linebreaks.

A few things: 1) Larkin's most objectionable comments on jazz are contained in the preface to All What Jazz, which among other things states bluntly that jazz went wrong when black folks stopped trying to entertain the white folks. -- Individual reviews can be shrewder & less doctrinaire, as Allen Lowe notes above. 2) There is a collection of Larkin's uncollected writings on jazz that appeared a few years ago--I forget the title but it was something nondescript (something like Uncollected Jazz Reviews). This is part of the general scraping-the-bottom-of-the-barrel that's been going on with the Larkin legacy in recent years, which among other things saw the publication of his dabblings in lesbian porn. -- The collection includes his obituary notice for Coltrane, which is unrepentantly vitriolic about Coltrane's legacy; the newspaper that commissioned it from him refused to publish it at the time. 3) For a good, subtle account of Larkin & jazz, there's a recent book called Larkin's Blues, I forget the author, which I read around in a few years back & remember as being quite good. Adorno is a whole nother ball of wax, or heap o' shit. People have tried to defend his remarks by saying that he was largely talking about the watered-down (white) pop-jazz of the day, but that's nonsense: the piece in Prisms for instance specifically singles out the beboppers & Louis Armstrong for negative comments.

Going back to the 1970s, the belated issue of Mingus at Antibes must've been quite the revelation at the time.

Hamid Drake playsd as much hand drums as drumkit.

Yes: get Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley. Same arranger (Marty Paich), & many of the same musicians, including Pepper. Great disc. & Helen Humes' The Songs I like to Sing is again arranged by Paich & features Pepper, though the album is split between the full band & some small group+stirngs tracks. Ben Webster is the main soloist, but Pepper & Teddy Edwards are also featured. There's a thread I started on the album here: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=14629

Well, the publication of the Chambers piece was ill-advised, but otherwise I've very much enjoyed the latest issues of Coda. But I'm probably prejudiced, having contributed two of the articles & several reviews.... The current issue by the way has a lengthy feature on Denny Zeitlin, stuff on Fred Anderson, free jazz in Beirut, avantgarde bigbands, Frank Hewitt & Smalls Records, &c.

All that said, has anyone actually found out why Blue Note went to the trouble of getting Brooks' later albums so close to release, then pulled them? It'd be nice to counter Chambers' sloppy insinuations with some hard facts.

Aha, I was wondering where you were (on this board, I mean). Good to see you here again--a virtual guarantee of some interesting online discussions!

The Blue Morocco may still have been around but what kind of shape was Brooks in by 1966?

Right, that was the one.

Re: live shows, I seem to recall that a DVD featuring a live performance by...was it an R&B or Latin band?--with Tina Brooks in the band was recently released. I forget the details, though.

But relative to 99% of other jazz musicians Vandermark gets plenty of press, most of it positive to boot.

Never really gotten a big charge out of Gillespie's own contribution to this session (especially on the companion volume, which is a bunch of blues + "Con Alma") but, yeah, Stitt & Rollins are in excellent form here, esp. Stitt.

No, the Gabler edition's something else again--Gabler's procedures were just indefensible on any grounds at all; the textual scholarship of the edition is completely wacky. If you want a good precis of the whole story Bruce Arnold's The Scandal of Ulysses is a good primer. I'd agree that DVD editions of re-edited films should really include both the original & "new" versions so the viewer can choose which one he/she likes & compare the two.