JSngry

Yet more proof that God rules his creation with supreme love and omniscient grace!

Hell, if I knew what I was reading, I'd not need a chart!

Add to the list: Jackie Paris in the late 40s/early 50s. Johnny Desmond with the Glen Miller AAF band. Ray Charles. Billy Eckstine, under the right circumstances (both his and mine) Dick Haymes.

Of course it does and of course it is, but that instrumentation and those charts are only sometime fully compatible, in my opinion. If everything is heavy, then there's no chance for light. If everything is thick, there's no room for thin. Etc. At some point, too much is too much and you get diminishing returns. For a probably wholly irrelevant yet nevertheless instructive comparison, consider Gil Evans, who always balanced elements. If there was tuba, there was flute. If there was dark, there was light. If there was coma, there was hyper. There was always room to breathe, room to think, room for options. Kenton seemed to get off on claustrophobia. The more crowded the sound, the more "intense" it seemed to him, and therefore the more "modern" it was. Of course, Kenton did not want his band to sound like Gil Evans, nor should he have. But there's still the matter of palate, and how much variation there is within it (variation within the palate, not of the palate). I find Kenton's band's music, even the very best of it , to ultimately be limited in this regard (except for Mathieu, who I swear was "tuned into a higher power" when he wrote those charts and managed to get them played that way). Even the "soft" is still "loud" due to the sheer density that results from the number of instruments playing. Or take the Buddy Rich bands of the 70s onward, the classic Higher/Faster/Louder big band of our times. Buddy's bands were always...driving and intense, with charts that pretty much demanded In Your Faceness. But Buddy's band didn't have so many damn instruments to not be able to be nimble when needed. And of course, Buddy himself was about as dense as the rest of his band combined! Kenton's bands were like having each section as dense as a Buddy Rich, and yeah, that was something you could use, but only for certain things, and even then, for only a limited amount of time before it got to be...too much. Just too damn much. Maynard's bands...all the noise of Kenton, but none of the claustrophobia. And significantly fewer instruments. 5-5-5 vs 3 (or 4)-2-4. I've no doubt that Kenton had a vision. I've no doubt that he was sincere, and I've no doubt that he inspired a lot of people with both his vision and his sincerity. But at root, he seemed to be neurotic and impositional. Of such things great music can be made, but he also seemed to allow for only a few possible outcomes, and that doesn't result in great music nearly as much as it does a never-ending loop of catharsis without liberation, trying to free yourself from your prison by building bigger rooms inside it, or even worse, painting its walls to get the illusion of a change of scenery instead of tearing them down and actually getting one. Subjective indeed, but there's been so much music, even "bad music" that is....better than that in terms of what it presents as options. Monstrous, no, probably not. But a little creepy? Uh...yeah. And not necessarily in a healthily "disturbing" fashion like Graettinger. Just creepy, like a kid eating his own boogers, or something like that. Let's just say that I have no problem with "liking" Kenton. I do have a problem with anybody trying to make him into some kind of a Giant Of Jazz, neglected or otherwise, for anybody other than themselves. It gives me the willies to think of a world where The Creative World Stan Kenton is The Best Possible Outcome, or even One Of The Best. I also don't like Heavy Metal music, and for just about the exact same reasons.

Hell, I'm fretful by nature, so no problem!

Wendy's used to have a really good, basic, inexpensive, all-you-can-eat salad bar. That was COOL!

We can differ on the relative meaning of words such as "good" and "great". This is just splitting hairs. While I don't lean in the direction of Kenton's world very often these days, I still hold him in pretty high regard for the enjoyment his music provided me in my formative years. I still think that "New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm" and "Contemporary Concepts", to name two, are GREAT albums. The disciplines of musicianship that he stressed are still important today, and should always be, in my opinion. As much as "third stream" music may be out of fashion these days, Kenton can be cited as one of its founding fathers, and the idea that written music in the jazz idiom is valid still holds true for me. I'll agree that we can agree to disagree on the relative meanings, but not that it's splitting hairs. "Great", like "awesome", is just one of those words that doesn't really mean anything any more, so often has it been used without thought. I was actually greeted with a semi-orgasmic "AWESOME!!!" last night after giving the last four of my SS# to a mail-order pharmacy rep over the phone. The Grand Canyon is awesome. Me knowing the last four of my SS# is pretty damn mundane. But I digress... "New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm" and "Contemporary Concepts"...just listened to them both last night, actually, in reflection of this thread, and...eh...I can hear what they're trying to do, and may actually be doing, but it just doesn't grab me. It's too heavy texturally, ensemble-wise (I mean, the whole 5-5-5 thing serves a very specific purpose, and unison ensembles swing is not one of them, nor is providing delicate shading...), and the tonal character of the band does not appeal to me that much. Russo's Cuban thing grabs me really hard at first (I can certainly understand why Ran Blake covered it) but then lets go...too much buildup, not enough payoff, unless Maynard beeping those punches at the end is supposed to be a climax. Fussy for the sake of fussy, writing for the sake of writing...trying to damn hard to be more than it is. Butt the good parts are definitely good. So for me, good, but not at all great. But again, file that under "different strokes". "Disciplines of musicianship", eh? I'd like to think that those were in place long before Kenton, as was the idea that written music in the jazz idiom is valid. Last time I checked, they still were valid.

Other than Graettenger & Mathieu, where is the great musical value? The Holman/Russo charts are certainly good, occasionally very good, but great (exception - Holman's marvelously fluorescent chart on "Malaguena", which is now a staple of drum and bugle corps everywhere)? Rugolo was a formula writer (with a formula that was sometimes more engaging than other times), Richards a buffoon (albeit a skilled one), Niehaus a skilled craftsman, etc etc. Dee Barton got some play, but he too was pretty much a one-trick pony (exception - his "Here's That Rainy Day", which is a totally gorgeous work, and the slower it's played, the more gorgeous it can become..more than once I heard the band play it verrrrryyyyy slooooowwww and god, it was goregeous!). I'll give Gene Roland "interesting" for sure, but "great"...file that one under "different strokes", I guess. Oh yeah, Willie Maiden. But Willie Maiden was always Willie Maiden. "Great" is like "genius", a convenient word for casual conversation, but when it's used in a serious way, it should mean something other than "pretty damn good". What's not being discussed here at all is the overtly commercial work under his name, of which there is a lot. It's...not good. Let's also consider the arrangements he did himself. They too are not very good. Competent, but entirely formulaic and limited in imagination. This is why he needed other writers to give him not just a book, but an identity beyond what he was able to conjure up on his own. Believe me, I know Kenton's music, from the pre-Decca Balboa airshots to the final days of mostly student-populated bands that served a truly meaningful place in the development of a lot of young players, but just didn't have that much of interest to offer musically (for my tastes, anyway) other than being energetic vehicles for young players getting out on the road and such. Kenton was a big deal when I first came to jazz, what with the inroad he made into the early jazz education/stage band movement. He was presented asvery much a "contemporary jazz hero", and until I found out what all else was going on in "contemporary jazz" outside of his orbit, I ate it all up. All of it. But now, I've spit a huge chunk of it out, and with no regrets. Taken as a whole, counting the bad and the average and the really good and the great, the totality of the Kenton output is convincingly weighted towards the whole thing being not too much more than a triumph of style over substance, the exceptions very much being the rule rather than the exception. It gets excited over devices, not substance, and it is always pleased with itself for having simply done something "different", even as it is displeased with itself for now needing to do something else "different". Yes, there is a "voice", and yes, there is definitely sincerity. But it's the voice and the sincerity of the car salesman who is fervently pitching next year's model to the customer who thinks that next year's model is the only model worth a damn, even while he's not yet broken in this year's model (which was at the time the only model worth a damn), and they both believe that things will forever progress and it will be good and it will be good because they made it so. That's all good within itself, but...I'll be damned if within itself is anyplace I'd want to live, or visit more than a few minutes.

Valerie Bertinelli

I don't wear hats, no.

It's one of my worries...the other being the whole "it's a different game here" thing...but with both Maddux brothers in tow now, there's room for at least some cautious optimism.

Yeah, I know. But I'd rather actually get somewhere if there's work involved. Otherwise, a nap for me, thanks!

But hobby horses never really go anywhere...

To Herman Leonard, it's about the shoes: Me, I'm a country boy, and in a perfect world, I'd just as soon go barefoot at all times. If you know what I mean.

And how he would say it...

Hope you're right!

How so? And more to the point, how is that Kenton's legacy, other than in the same sense that, say, All In The Family is CBS's legacy more than it is Norman Lear's? Me, I'll pass on Richards altogether (too damn loud, too damn silly, just...ridiculous) & Russo (too damn somber for my tastes, although the intellegence is unquestionably there, to me it too often sounds like a man looking for the dark at the end of a tunnel). Just doing something does not make it intrinsically important...it's only important to whoever it's important. "Hot Dog" is infinitely more important to me than is Johnny Richards, although at the end of the day, if I had to choose just one, I'd save the trouble and take neither. As far as "extremely" important, in jazz, that's Armstrong, Parker, Prez, Ellington, Trane, Ayler, a few others...Rollins, Warne...a few more, at least for me. If it's Kenton, then it's another world entirely afaic. I like "other worlds" as much as anybody, but that's one that doesn't have a lot of "there" there, although not for a lack of extreme exertion...

And a lot easier than, say Lennie Tristano, because by and large, there's just not that much there musically to defend. A relative few exceptions to the rule, but really - how much can you defend the predominant reality of The Creative World Of Stan Kenton (loud and shallow!!!) rather than the idea of it (A Fertile Laboratory For Writers And Other Constantly Dissatisfied Probing White People, None Of Whom Are Racist, And None Of Whom Wrote The Them To Jony Quest But Could Have, Most Of Them, Anyway)? It's silly that this Hajdu guy attacks the man rather than the music, because once you get through looking at all the music instead of just cherry-picking the outliers, the music pretty much renders the man irrelevant. Mission accomplished without any help. Let's just leave the both of them to their own silly irrelevance. Life will go on, and for the better, without either of them.

If you listen to a lot of white musicians today, it could have been this afternoon. But really, the telegram and all that comes with it is irrelevant today. What is relevant is that...uh...mmm... Sorry, I can't think of anything about Stan Kenton that is relevant today. Carry on!

By the time it gets to that point, I've left the room. I'd suggest others do the same as well. Do not feed the animals, etc. And oh, btw - the flip side of that bag of self-righteousness is the bag of self-pity that is the whole "new minority" and "Crow Jim" thing.

Really? I'd reckon him to be one of the more difficult. Relative to anything "modern" of the last 60 years or so, his tone is so hard, and his time is so "non-swinging"...I know I appreciated him long before I really dug him. But now, hell yeah!

Of course, there is the option of still having a good time at 90 and being thankful for not doing all the stuff that probably would've killed you at 65, but nobody ever talks about that until they get there...

I have even less use for Hajdu's bullshit than I do for most of Kenton's music. He wrote a biography of Strayhorn. Big Fucking Deal, thank you for that, now just go away. Strayhorn mattered. Hajdu doesn't.

Of course he did, but that doesn't invalidate what I said: "...whacking the Kenton pinata is a handy, calculated way for a white writer to cover his flanks in the game of racial-cultural politics." But you knew that already, right? What I don't know is where "whacking the Kenton pinata" ends and simply calling bullshit on Kenton's bullshit (and there is plenty of it, musically and otherwise) begins, or the other way around. I mean, does every white guy have to stand up for the guy every time out in order to not be thought of as a traitor in the "game of racial-cultural politics"? Who then, will be our Murray/Crouch/Marsalis? And can we kill them now before they get their footings too firmly planted? The guy was, at best, a sponsor who didn't really know what he wanted nearly as much as he knew what he didn't want. In the process, some pretty good, occasionally great, writers produced some (but only some) pretty good, rarely great music played by a band that more often than not played that music waaaaaaay louder than it needed to be played (although, when it really did need to be played that loud, and on occasion it did, they answered the call quite adequately). Bottom line - Kenton, by the accounts of those who were there, didn't even remotely "get" Graettinger. all he got was that it was "modern", and therefore "important" and therefore he wanted to be associated with it. He honestly had no idea if it was genius or junk, none whatsoever. That's your "giant" right there. A fanboy with an opportunity and a band. I mean, it's nice that he gave those he gave a chance that he did, seriously, it is, but...yeah. Pinatas aside, racial politics aside, all his old sidemen and Anthony Braxton liking him aside, the good writing that got done in his self-proclaimed "Creative World" aside (and make no mistake, the Standards In Silhouette album that Bill Mathieu did for the band is intensely brilliantly "Kenton-esque" in a way that Kenton himself could never get to himself) , the guy was not in any way "important" to any kind of music that is truly important to me. If there ever comes a time when I'm supposed to "reconsider" that he even might be, then hey, fuck it. I'm not living in that world.

Damn...