JSngry

With a new documentary about the often overlooked filmmaker about to hit theaters, we revisit the life and work of a true original whose vision hasn’t aged a day https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/9/6/17826818/hal-ashby-documentary-harold-maude-last-detail-hollywood-shampoo-being-there-coming-home

Dan August is the one I remember.

I,d be more enthusiastic about the book if there was a body of work driving me to read more of his writing. There just isn’t. Mileage’s will and should vary, no doubt.

It’s easy to be underwhelmed by Barry Harris if, for whatever reason, you have neither taste and/nor ear for the subtleties of bebop harmony. That was me until I really got into the specifics of playing bebop (a pursuit which never really took hold because as much as I loved being in the room with it, when I got into bed with it, I felt like I was with somebody who deserved different from me, they deserved deep knowing intimacy, not just naive worship). My casual impression was that he was “just” a really good Bud Powell disciple. But...even if that is ultimately true, his knowledge runs deep. Very deep. Very, very, VERY deep. All of which just to say, Barry Harris can play, really play, but if it ain’t for you, don’t blame him, because his shit is right.

Indeed!

I like the Command stuff (in small doses) better than some of the Verves from about the same time. I'm coming to realize that Chico O'Farrill had a knack for doing the really commercially-themed albums in a way that served all purposes. Or maybe it was the way they were recorded.

He was a cultural icon. They don't need to be good at anything except that.

It's called the can. As in "I don't know if I can. Sure you can. Ok, I think I can."

Recountings of women who worked with him. Recently read something by some actress whose name I forget, but the gist was that his attitude was old-school pig. I guess Dinah Shore might not feel that way, but in the post-#MeToo era, nothing surprises me about anybody.

yeah, you could get it at newsstands here too, from the mid 70s until? I've gotten the digital version via email for years, free. I've noticed a substantial decline in content over the last year or so, which was a drag. I liked the cartoons. actually, and they had better jazz coverage (when they had it) than most. + Greg Tate and Nelson George. But like Mike Pence said up there, NYC is no longer the lodestar of all that that it once was. Nothing is. Life sucks and binary thought is the reason why. But it's what we're willing to cumulatively tolerate, so suck it up and die in peace. We are The Borg.

Chico O'Farrill charts, made for the radio,with Ed Shaunessy as The Drummer (who at this point swung the band harder than Sonny Payne had gotten to) , it shouldn't work, and in some ether of esthetic, it doesn't, but otherwise, it does, depending on how much you like each individual sone, probably). These might be better than the Verves? Jaws aplenty, and Roy Eldridge here and there. Why should Fresh Sounds get all the money? Marshall Royal, y'all. Here was a baaaaaaaddddd motherfucker, make no mistake.

Too many commas.

This is a blower:

Seriously, never heard that expression before. Heard it called "the horn", but never the blower.

Sharkey's Machine was a good watch, and a good soundtrack. I guess overall he was a pig, but so be it. Many people are.

Horns, reeds, electronics, endorsement deals for musicians are, or can be, a big deal. Not what amuses me is thinking about Joe Henderson getting a bunch of new shit that he neither wants nor needs. How do you think he'd dispose of it?

Yeah, blowing a whistle and being in the navy...you don't know where that thing's been.

You mean it still works like that? I'm averse to water to begin with. This just reinforces that.

This.

It meant enough to Joe that he took the gig for a quick minute. Never got past rehearsals, but apparently there were endorsement deals out the ass as soon as he joined.

I've yet to hear a Mingus/Roy Brooks collaboration that really caught fire, probably owing to Mingus's medicated state at the time, but what with Don Pullen & John Stubblefield, this sounds transitional enough that I'm in, yessir.

I'm taking your word for that, but that doesn't look like anything I would blow into, ever. Not even.

I don't get it?