JSngry

Yeah, I think this is the math that has any number of people feeling all, like, hell, why not, anything can happen!

And I got ANOTHER shipping notice today...this time with a tracking # link, which shows an ETA of Monday, 08/28/2017, By End of Day I'm going to make allowances for "circumstances", but if this was the way they'd always done business, they'd not be doing business today, if you get my drift. Next Scheduled Event: Thursday,08/24/2017 by 5:00 P.M. Location Date Local Time Activity Stratford, CT, United States 08/22/2017 11:07 P.M. Departure Scan 08/22/2017 9:33 P.M. Origin Scan United States 08/22/2017 10:01 A.M. (ET) Order Processed: Ready for UPS Departed - Stratford, CT, United States, Tuesday, 08/22/2017 Shipper: UPS Ground RESIDENTIAL Ship Date: 2017/08/22 ITEM DESCRIPTION QTY 240-MD-CD BENNY GOODMAN 1 Oh, this is interesting, today's shipping notice was sent to me by ofweb@williambmeyer.com Which is these guys: http://www.williambmeyer.com/ Any of you long-term Connecticuttians know of this outfit? Are they new to Mosaic or what? Since 1915!

Wow. Didn't see this one coming. RIP, he cut a broad swath.

Rainier! Is that stuff any good?

I think Jerry Lewis' reputation will only grow now that he's not around to make people what the fuck is wrong with that guy? Seriously, he still makes me laugh, quite often reflexively (which is the truest laugh, right?) except when he has my jaw dropping open about how weird and...uncomfortable he could get. But now that's over, so let's all laugh.

Impositional!

Slow. Shirley Horn-type slow. The slower the better for hearing the inner parts and the bass/tuba interaction. Let's talk about how the absence of vibrato is a really effective way to change the perception of time, how vibrato is usually almost always faster than the tempo, so when yoiu take it away, you have fewer anticipation points of where the next beat goes. Let's also talk about how the tenisons that result from a really tight voicing can create an illusion of vibrato, and how natural overtone bumpings are NOT vibrato, and then let's talk about being a smart enough writer to realize that, and then to get the band to play it just so. And let's also talk about how high brass is definitely a color to paint with, was is vibrato and all sorts of other things. And really, I don't think that much of either "Stan Kenton" OR Stan Kenton, but writers, that's something else entirely, and give a dog his bone on the day it's due for him to have it, this piece of Made-For-MOR tickles me pink the way it fuses Ahmad Jamal, clockmaking, Gepetto-like will-imposition, and an overall sense of story arc with some pretty lightweight source material...darkness where there should be light, BIGHT BLINDING FUTURE LIGHT, to sell the record and/or the image. Is it neurotic? Oh hell yeah, but it's a neurosis that is happy within itself and makes no attempt to overcompensate. Would that all Stan Kenton music was this way, and there is enough "Stan Kenton" music from various writers over the years that I'm no longer going to be the blatant reflexively RUN AWAY! NOW! that I was for a good long while. I have done the work, listened to the music (a damn whole lot of it, a few years ago, had to do it just to get closure) and have realized that although Stan Kenton was pretty much a guru for a cult that had to create itself, he sure couldn't do it just by himself,. within "Stan Kenton" (I refuse to say The Creative World Of Stan Kenton, that's part of the deal, non-negotiable), there is enough (some days more than enough) delightful music to be found, sometimes in spite of itself, sometimes, as with Willie Maiden, just because that was where that greatness was living at the time) hey, I'll take it and like it. And sometimes, the goofiness is too rich to ignore! 1941 Kenton, the guy crtainly sounds like he means business, as does his band. Howard Rumsey on bass, iirc, and he was playing amped iirc. However much Kenton had to go to other writers to create the tree, I think it's fair to say that the notion of faster/louder/higher, nos a stunt, but as a real expression of whatever it was he had going on inside himself, that was Kenton, and damned if it still doesn't get my attention for willing to be that much....that.

RIP. I could feel the love she had for life, no matter where it took her.

I've found that I've tended to receive the "received wisdom" that has best fit my emotional bent of whatever time I'm in. Trying now do separate emotion from objectivity in order to fully value things on their own terms, not on my. A lot of times, that means going back to things I've rejected for emotional rather than purely empirical means. And once that gets cleared up, it's so much easier to identify the emotional connections and rejections as such. Some of the things I've had no use forI've embraced fully or at least in part, and some I still have no use for. But just examining "fact vs. fiction" is a fun thing to do. There's been a lot of "guilty pleasures" as well as "irrational fears" in my engagement of musics over the years, and I don't know that I believe that guilt or fear are building blocks. Irrationality sure as hell isn't! Another thing - the socio-political climate keeps evolving. The resentment I felt against, say, "Stan Kenton" still remains, I mean, the "big thing" that he had made around him as a Leader Into The future and all that bullshit was just that - bullshit. But for me it's now balanced out (or at least reconsidered) by all the really good, occasionally great(!) music that people other than Stan Kenton can now be more clearly received as NOT being "Stan Kenton". "Stan Kenton" no longer means shit one way or the other because that world has evolved into a whole other one with new enemies, new battles, the more things change, etc. Agendas, always, but real creativity, not always. Just looking at old music of any type (including Duke!)...you can't "receive" the wisdom of the mythologies alone, you need (imo) to look at all of this in terms of people/place/time/etc, sure, but also as plain, simple, human activity, shaped by chrono-specific forces but not immune from eternal human impulses and verities . "Stan Kenton" was marketing, but Stan Kenton himself was a dude who believed in that concept, and in true manner of his time/place/etc. he set about hiring people to flesh it out - a LOT of people, and some of THOSE people actually found a personal voice there and made truly unique music. " Some played to the image, but such is life, right? Not just music, life. There will be those who seek and find, those who at least seek, those who find accidentally and then either do or don't take it someplace, and those who just don't bother. If there's a truly universal truth about all this, that's probably gonna be it. That, and yes - individuality is the ultimate enemy of the generalization.

And I knew that...apparently not well enough to think it in real time, though. Andre Previn seems to me a uniquely qualified individual to have noted what "studio arrangers" would or what not have been able to "know what it is". Seriously, when I was a kid, that quote of his (which I believe I first came across in Jazz Masters Of The 1950s) made me go all YEAH, you slick studio guys don't know shit about the REAL JAZZ MUSIC, but then I got a little older, a little less dogmatic, listened to a few more Andre Previn records, and the pulled up a bit and realized, no, that's not a profound statement, that's a defense mechanism, that's avoiding owning his own lack of understanding by casting what he doesn't understand as some kind of mysterious voodoo shit. I don't mean that as a knock on Previn, who has an exceptionally gifted musical mind. Nor do I mean to oversimplify Duke/Strayhorn because those cats did some really, uh...unconventional writing that frequently defies easy transcription. But it gets easier once you do indeed realize that "what it is" and "how it's done" for a "studio arranger" and for a working self-contained ongoing history-in-real-time Ellington band are not the same thing. Case in point - that Ellington/Sinatra album with Billy May charts. That thing is ragged as hell (and recorded even more raggedy, at least the stereo LP) but the raggediness serves a purpose - you can hear the individual parts quite well, and you can tell that Billy May did know "how it was done", knew quite well in fact. He knew that it wasn't just about voicings, it was about giving the right note to the right voice to get the right sound, the Ellington sound. So ok, Andre Previn was mystified. Billy May wasn't. Andre Previn is a smart guy, as was Billy May, so I gotta think he's saying more about himself than he is about Stan Kenton (whoever/whatever that was supposed to mean), studio arrangers (some/many of whom would know what "Stan Kenton" was up to because they wrote it!), and/or Duke Ellington.

Yeah, I was totally ignorant about where the vocals were coming from, had to look the guy up to learn that it's a Flamenco thing. Always something new to learn, always.

You guess wrong, you're not "supposed" to be anything. You will have the response you have for the reasons you have it. As for Kenton vs. Ellington, yeah, sure. But the gap between "Stan Kenton" and Willie Maiden is immense. "Stan Kenton" was ultimately a concept. Willie Maiden was a real, honest to god talent, not a concept, a realization. I'd go so far as to state with no uncertainty (since it's just my opinion) that Willie Maiden & Bill Mathieu are the two people who really "got" that whole Kenton thing in a way that so many other, and so many more greatly lauded) writers did not. They heard real personal possibilities in that music. Which is not to say that somebody like Johnnie Richards didn't, but Johnny Richards was a freak and was going to be a freak with or without "Stan Kenton". Gene Roland, that's another one, but go figure THAT guy out. And of course, Bob Graettinger. But that's a whole 'nother world. Hell, universe. Dee Barton, very narrow but deep within himself. Besides, the Schuller quote is too easily appropriated by people who just hear names like "Maynard Ferguson" and/or "Stan Kenton" and automatically think Loud Brassy Cheap White Music and then superimpose all their personal moral projections about why they don't want to be associated with That Type Of Thing, and poof, end of thought process. Especially people who can't engage with the music from either a technical or emotional standpoint because they don't have the tools or the curiosity. That's just lazy. Fuck lazy thinking. I mean, if you can't hear the difference between Pete Rugolo, Johnny Richards, Bill Holman, Slide Hampton, and Willie Maiden, that's not their fault, there are plenty of distinctions to be had. That's like saying that everybody who speaks Spanish sounds the same. And when somebody says something like " Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don't know what it is", well, that's bullshit. I can tell you what it is - it's somebody in total command of a full tonal and intonational palate making very specific decisions, that's what it is, and you best believe that a writer like Willie Maiden is taking the tonal and intonational palate of his performers into consideration as well, in Ferguson's band, with the reduced instrumentation, and with Kenton's the expanded instrumentation. You don't play a Willie Maiden chart the way you do a Bill Holman chart...well, you can, but that does neither writer any favors and everybody else no favors at all. All you have to do is just listen to the music itself,. Not you "impression" of what you hear, but what is actually there. Anybody with an ear can tell you how that's done. What nobody can really tell you is how somebody thought like that in the first place, because there is no formula here, there is just imagination, palate, and decisions. Formula would have been to just do this for a bigger instrumentation, but that's not what happened, is it. Individuality is the ultimate enemy of the generalization!

Come to think of it, I do like Chris Connor with Ran Blake, and that's a lot more recent. Wait, did that ever happen?

More "cleverness".

Kellen Camus

At one point, Monk says that somebody is a "dumb motherfucker". Is he prodding AT?

That for me is the most fascinating part of this fascinating issue. I mean, AT really does seem to not want to get it, either that or else he was so locked in to thinking just one way about time that this simple yet non-standard pattern just fucked him up altogether. The whole thing is interesting, though. Tempos are a little different, Monk's comping is REALLY interesting (even by his standards), Sam Jones in general, even Rouse sounds, for lack of a better word, fresh.

Sorry to hear this. I heard him speak in 1974, it was memorable. He was a true iconoclast. RIP, bretharianism now totally viable.

Good luck to you Mr. Loud and Wrong, you ain't gonna be drivin no airplane.

ala.ni no idea what to think, much less what i feel, it's equally entrancing and creepy, but it's not something i can easily walk away from once it starts. that's not necessarily a good thing.