JSngry

I'm particularly enjoying the Liszt. Not a composer I've really gotten bit by yet, but this feels different.

I'd like to think that he's gotten used to calling out bullshit as he finds it. May we all become so intuited. Remember, children are watching!

Any number of them, actually. Harder to compile a list of songs that weren't hits than of ones that were. "How To Succeed In Business..." had, if not exactly hits, songs that worked their way out into at least some part of the "mainstream" non-rock-exclusive audience. "I Believe In You" is not the standard it should be (imo), but it's not exactly unknown either. What about "Mame"? Can't stand it myself, but it got heard enough, didn't it, at least the title cut? Yuck. And to go later, A Chorus Line" must have been huge, hell, I had to play a marching band medley of songs from it. The point about decreasing frequency is a good one, but other than changing styles/demographic/etc not sure there's appoint to be made (if you want to look at hit shows/hit songs, maybe better to look at hit shows vs. non-hit shows and do THAT math first). But if there is any meaningful point, let Basie make it! Name me one shmoe under the age of 40-45 who doesn't recognize "Sunrise, Sunset" or "If I Were A Rich Man". This thing about "hits" being based on record sales alone is really not very bright. There were plenty of radio stations playing "adult pop" music in the wake to the rock explosions, and plenty of non rock-exlopdees listened to them. Songs still entered into the vernacular without necessarily having a "hit record" by just one artist, single or album.

Well, there has been one about impulse! so while you're waiting...

An otherwise excellent record almost ruined by Oscar Peterson. Not his playing, which is easily enough ignored, or would be if he hadn't been mixed so goddamned (a word I seldom use in these threads, please note) loud in the mix. How he plays is his doing, but how he's mixed isn't (I hope not, anyway). I see it was recorded at RCA, and I seem to recall that studio being potentially "hard" sounding. But this is not just sound, it's mix. Ray Brown, Mickey Roker, and the two trumpeters are all in fine form, on the boogaloo in particular, the beat is damn near sampleable. those two weren't faking it! Kinda imagining, say, Cedar Walton on Rhodes takes some of the hurt away from Peterson's non-stop bricking up of all the air in their groove, but geez, that would have hurt too if he had been mixed like this. But I tell you, maybe it's the cheap earbuds I'm using, but on every track, the trumpets are behind the piano in the mix, that's just wrong no matter who it is.

Same thing happened in the Olly Wilson thread, turned into a well-lathered ramp against serialism, but oh well, Olly Wilson is bigger than any rant, so was Buell Neidlinger, so is Cecil Taylor, so is Mary Lou Williams, so is most music. Music is bigger - and better - than the people who both make and listen to it.

It appears to have not only sold long, but well from the beginning. This all being in "jazz" terms, of course.

yeah, poor jazz, all those outcats drove the audience away. and to what? where? where are all these people that would have stayed if the music hadn't gotten so weird, or whatever it became. by now, many of them are dead, so...who cares? when the "avant-garde" was at it's peak, so were the "popularizers". Pretty sure that Ornette did not sell as many records as Cannonball, but also pretty sure that Ornette sold more than a few, and not just initially. Definitely sure that Cecil didn't sell as many records as Oscar Peterson, but there is an audience there, still, and there are plenty records. Hell, I tried to get standby tickets for a CT Carnegie Hall gig in 1981(?) and it soon became evident that that was just not gonna happen. SRO and I got there too late to S. Ornette did not destroy the audience for Cannonball, nor did Oscar Peterson destroy the audience for Cecil Taylor. Quit worrying about who does or doesn't like "your" music.

In 1956? Totally different methodology used. What that meant, that it was just #11 and for then just on the chart for one week, was that the thing was ordered well enough before release and sold well enough on in its first week of issue to have made a blip. It blipped once and then it was gone. A real hit would have stuck around for a litte while longer, or more. These Billboard charts from back when, you can't take them at face value, ever, and especially not in isolation. I'm not sure what the point here is, but my point is that Creed Taylor was already having success at ABC-Paramount before they spun him off into impulse!. Reading that recent-ish book about the history of impulse! shines a lot of light on how that all played out. There were several of taylor's ABC albums that got ported over to impulse!, a Quincy Jones, the LH&R, those + the Taylor MF, those are the ones that come to minc immediately, and they might have been it. But there were plenty more they didn't port over, so I'm thinking that those three came over due to expected future sales.

That's how I remember it as well.

Besides, I don't think that Cranshaw could hang with Cecil either. Why should he, or he with him, that's some Disney-esque Small World After All fantasy bullshit. Those were two guys of the same time, but different time, same places but different places, yeahyeahyeah it's all the same, but only after it's not. It wasn't on any of those people to be able to cross across the lines, hell, they were too busy making their mark on their own lines. But Max had NO problem with Cecil, gave as good as he got in that one, so, Bob Cranshaw, yeah, sure, whatever, but that does not account for Max Roach, does it now. As for Buell Neidlinger, RIP. We need line crossers as well as line makers, otherwise a line might as well be a fence instead of a point of reference.

ooh la la...the new price in France is even crazier than the American one! https://www.amazon.fr/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0742VSHG9/ref=pe_386181_37038101_TE_phd_tex_dp_1 fully expecting the original order price to be honored.

Forgive me for confusing him with Rent Romus?

Geez guys, we're past serialism and about far enough into minimalism that it's getting moldy. This is all a "debate" about what shouldn't have happened instead of a look at what is happening. If you want to replace Glass with Schoenberg as the poster child for "where it all went wrong", feel free, I'm totally unconvinced about his overall merit. But, as with serialism, the principles are here to stay, I keep hearing very interesting newer music that refers to all of that.

I think the key to that first phrase is "strict", not "method" To the best of my knowledge, no non-retro composer is unaware of, or unwilling to use, serial methodology as a tool. Not as a "strict method" (which is indeed "slide rule music" and is indeed irritating, and ultimately, imo, useless). Case in point - Stravinsky. Serial until the end, was he not? After 100 years, I think it's safe to say that it's integrated itself well enough into the normalcy of both theory and practice to say that once we rid the hall of all those half-bit/wit "academic" composers and practitioners who would be tinhorn tyrants of some system, no matter what (they have always been among us, i recall feeling very ill towards the "NO PARALLEL FIFTHS!!!! bunch who glared all over elementary theory classes, no context or winking for this bunch, the MEANT it, they were like the Mommy Dearests of learning), serial methodology is just one more way to go about looking at possibilities and architecture in service of a final product. Means to an end, not necessarily the end itself. Anyway, RIP Olly Wilson.

That Taylor thing seems to have been "popular" enough, seeing as how long it stayed in print and/or made the transition over to impulse! Can't say that I've ever been inclined to go there, but ABC ported a few thing over to impulse! but not that many, so I'm thinking it sold well enough to stay alive for a while longer than its original release. No matter, check that signature in the lower right corner of the back cover of the original:

I'd not consider any of that to be reflective of a hit. A "hit", at best and in the case of that Previn, hardly a hit at all. If you're going to rely on Billboard, rely on all of it, not just the charts: https://books.google.com/books?id=ICkEAAAAMBAJ&pg=RA1-PA1&lpg=RA1-PA1&dq=shelly+manne+my+fair+lady+billboard&source=bl&ots=c3j1WfUIeF&sig=0Px7Oo148Lh0rqK02CMNXVq1LvY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjMy8-eqvbZAhWSwFMKHVszAw44ChDoAQguMAM#v=onepage&q=shelly%20manne%20my%20fair%20lady%20billboard&f=false

I'm nowhere as concerned about Fake News as I am Fake History. The 1956 Contemporary LP by Manne/Previn/Vinnegar was a hit.

god, i hope i'm remembering correctly...apologies to both you and Allen if I'm not. also seem i remember somebody sending me a copy of at least one Sir Charles Thompson record that had Lester on it, some really low-visibility thing, a live recording put out by some book store or something? Ok, disregard that, I'm thinking about Percy France on all of that. So sorry to raise false hopes.

There is one Conrad Lester leader album. Ask Allen Lowe about it and then proceed accordingly!

Houston. Laws was from Houston. Played with the Crusaders when they were in Houston. I think they were, if not childhood friends, old friends at least.

the Atlantic amd Cadet years require some, uh..."adjustment of expectations" to deal with the "market intentions" of those records, but still, ther are gems that transcend, such as this one with George Coleman(!) and Danny Turner on saxes.