JSngry

"Oh What A Beautiful Morning". Ray Charles did the verse, and.....NICE!

Oh yeah, Cole Porter's verses are genreally magnificent. "Night & Day", hell that's one that can easily be played as an instrumental introduction with no "adjustment" made to tempo or groove. "You're The Top", that's another one with great lyrics that really sets up the chorus quite nicely. This is quite the Pantera's Box you've opened up here, Paul. I'm gonna have to rack my brain and search my collection in order to come up with some more answers.

Yeah, friendship, the opportunity to voluntarily share lives, is a true blessing. Sorry to hear of your loss, indeed, but also heartened to hear of the opportunity that preceeded it.

Sinatra, on Sinatra & Strings, recorded just the verse to Stardust I miss the "chorus" (the actual "rest of the song"), but maybe that's just becuase Frank sang the verse so damn well that I didn't want it to end just yet. To the best of my knowledge, the verse was indeed a transitional device, a way to move to shoe from "text" to "music" mode. The verse seems to encapsulate Our Story So Far and then set up an expansion of Where It's All Going from the specificities of the plot to a broader reality. What I don't know is if, in the earlier days of musicals, the main "attraction" was the songs (and or song/dancing, the "production numbers"), or the stories themselves, and if the songs were just ways to make the story seem more..."spectacular". If it's the former, I can see the verse serving to let those who weren't really all that keen on following the plot that hey, wake up, it's your turn now. Or if it was the latter, I can see it serving to ease people into the song by showing the relevancy of what they are about to hear now, before they actually hear it. Actually, aren't arias in opera & solioquies in drama often set up in somewhat the same ways? I mean, action just doesn't all of a sudden stop and then one guy pops up and takes control, ya' know? That shit gets transitioned into. And seeing as how songs in musicals are often, but not always, "feature numbers" for a character, it would be somewhat the same deal, no? But if not, still, the concept of transition is key, I'd think. Now, as for verses, I think they usually tend to be more fun lyrically than musically. Usually. To that end, I can very much enjoy the verse to "I Can't Get Started" when delivered without too much Braodwayisticality. And speaking of Rosemary Clooney & verses puts it in my mind that "More Than You Know" has a very nice verse, musically and lyrically. That' s one that I think should be played even if the tune is being done strictly instrumentally, so organic is it to the overall vibe of the song in every regard.

I also think that for most critics, writing about a music such as jazz, a music that for the most part has become "past" either literally or by implication, that it's almost impossible not to include some "nostalgia" one way or the other, to pursue the path of one's initial impressions deeper and farther. and since the past does not evolve, only our perception of it, then it's too easy to develop an "outlook" that is really nothing too much more than a scrapbook that one refurbishes on occasion. And not just jazz, but any personal intercourse with any series of real-time events that eventually become "history". That's certainly not ignoble, nor is it shameful. Certainly not, in that it is all but unavoidable unless one exerts a truly....focused, perhaps even abnormal or even detrimental effort into doing so, and given the aforementioned impact that the rest of life has on all of us, hey...good luck on that one! I'm just saying that it's one thing to write about, say, Warne Marsh or Jackie McLean or Duke Ellington or Albert Ayler or...anybody, when they are alive, functioning, and still hold the potential to pose real-time challenges any minute now, and another thing to write about them 25-50-100 years after it's all over and they have done all that they are going to do. One dynamic all but requires in reality a sharpness, a level of deep engagement, that the other only calls for in principle, and really, one that might be all but impossible to attain for "normal" adult human beings with real, multifaceted lives built up over years of deep engagement with other things, all of which are important, but not necessarily "musical". So in one sense, yeah, it's all good. But in another sense, some is better than other, and for me, it's that which is "in the moment" (to cheesily use a Davis reference...), not manufactured upon reflection. And yeah, true reflection is a grand thing, but in all honesty, in these days and times, in this culture, in this system of risks and rewards, true reflection, deep reflection that is the product of long, solitary self-confrontations, is an all but lost art, especially as a commercial enterprise.

Hey, one man's french fries is another man's hash browns. Either way, it's all potatoes in the beginning and in the end. What happens in between is pretty much personal.

Bitter? Dude, I'm so sweet that sugar puts me in its coffee!

There's some footage of him playing w/Illinois Jacquet that is deep in the pocket. Couldn't find it on YouTube, alas....

I hear what you're getting at, but I've never known it to be ascribed as anything other than Gillespie's own creation.

Similarly (sorta) & locally, Roger Boykin will sometimes play "A Night In Tunisia" and solo only on the changes of that set-up interlude.

Re: Davis, I think his earlier writing was - and remains -superb. In The Moment & Outcats remain "must reads" in my estimation. But then he started....getting "soft" or something. I found Bebop & Nothingness to be essentially a casual, "breezy" read, and Like Young to be thoroughly disposable, not because it was "bad" or "wrong", but just because it was....disposable. Since then, I've read a few Atlantic items that have been well-written but not particularly insightful, certainly not as much as the earlier writings. I've not read the liners to the new KOB, simply because I've not bought it yet, probably won't, jsut don't reel the need, but really, what is there left to be said about it anyway at this point? I think that what's probably happened with him, as it has with many people, including most of us here, is that as life goes on and as other interests and responsibilities take hold, that near-obsessive passion that drives so so many of us into thinking/believing that THIS MUSIC IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN THE WORLD kinda gets tempered by the influx of parallel truths and realities that are usually pretty damn hard to ignore. The edge gets lost. And it's not just Davis, it's damn near everybody who puts their opinions and interests on display as a matter of professional ambition (as well as those who don't, for that matter...). Stanley Dance, Dan Morgenstern, maybe a few others are the rare exceptions. Everybody else, it seems that they lock into a "postition" fairly early on, and spend the rest of their lives reiterating it without a whole helluva lot of variations of either nuance (Morgenstern) or perspective (Dance, who in his non-American writings shows peeps of not being nearly the ideologue that one might believe based on his usual American output). To put things in perspective, I have long marveled at how Larry Kart has usually managed to keep his edge over the years. As I've gotten to know him better these last few years, I realize that for him, jazz was but one of many things to which he applied his unique gifts of dissection and analysis. So it's not like he became this "jazz critic" who locked into one narrow POV early on and kept it as his Personal Brand Identification. If he had/has a PBI, it's as The Man Who Always Thinks About Everything. Not just jazz, EVERYTHING. I thinking that between his natural inclinations and his career/ongoing requirements with a daily newspaper, that the kind of drifting off into PBI Protectionland (you know, the type of writing where everything is presented through The Lens Of What You Know The Writer Already Thinks And They Never Let You Forget What That "Is" Is Or That That's Why You "Care" About What They Have To Say In The First Place) just was not in the cards for him, and that neither he nor us are not at all bothered that it wasn't. Maybe it's because that with music in and of itself, there's really not that much to say once you've figured it out. Plenty to do, mind you, just not that much to say, not about it as a unique entity not relevant to the greater flow of life. And that's where a lot of "critics" run out of gas - they either can't/won't make the connection to the "bigger beyond", or else their view of it is as confused/simplistic/naive/doctrinaire/idiosyncratic as that of the rest of us, and suddenly they become no different than the rest of us, and hell, there goes the window of opportunity for imposing Awe In The Face Of Genius, if you know what I mean. I do think that Davis has lost his edge as a critic, somebody whom I feel compelled to read to give me something to consider that I would otherwise not have. Apparently life has been very good to him and his, and hell, what kind of an asshole would I be if I wished it hadn't if it meant him keeping that critical edge & continuing to produce the penetrating writings of those early years. Which is not to say that he has lost his natural smarts or his stylistic gifts as a writer, or that he can/should be dismissed as never having been all that in the first place. Clearly he was. But I'm just not compelled to give too much of a damn about what he has to say any more. And I mean that totally without rancor or disrespect, and with the most sincere congratulations and best wishes for whatever time on earth he has left.

As I understand it, Mingus walked out over Max' drumming because he felt it was not respectful of Duke's style. There was also some residual resentment between the two about the way the dissolution of Debut went down. Duke performed "The Clown" at Monterrey(?) one year during Mingus' "lost years" of depression and over-medication. I believe Mingus was in the audience for the performance? Anyway, if the two weren't bosom buddies or anything, I don't think there was any type of a "feud". If the Carney story is true, it's far more likely a case of Duke being "possessive" of a truly irreplaceable voice and thoroughly reliable part player in his orchestra at a time when there weren't all that many left of either quantity.

My favorite Bellson on record is perhaps atypical, but both albums show sides of him not readily available otherwise: A long and certainly distinguished career & life has finally come to a close. RIP, and thanks.

Problem solved: http://www.spike.com/video/around-world-in-80/2537685

Well, there's always "filet ass", but that's probably not the route you want to take...

Pick one: http://www.google.com/search?q=Could+not+e...lient=firefox-a Looks like a common, and fixable, problem but damned if I have a clue as to what it's all about...

I too wish you well. This sounds like something that many people here would be most eager to hear.

Phil Spector uses Hal Blaine to destroy the world and rebuild it in his image: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF-5HpMhJtk Spector doubled/tripled/whatevered everything. Except for drums. Except for Hal Blaine. Nothing to do with the passing of Estelle (who I always found sexier than Ronnie, fwiw), but once The Ronettes stopped having hits, some of their records got really interesting. This one & "Paradise" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7vpet4O_k0 ) are really on another plane. Really.

L-R: Estelle, Nedra, Ronnie

Well, that was a book that needed to be written, and it said some things that needed to be said. I jsut don't know that Kofsky was the person to say them, or that the way he said them was the way they needed to be said. Mr. Albertson has recounted some first-hand experiences with FK that certainly make one wonder about his motivations, and, perhaps even his basic sanity, at least later in life.

The arrangements are simply not up to the standard of some of the more adventurous orchestral mood music of the period. I concur. And I know I've read interviews with Herbie Hancock where he mentions both Robert Farnon & Nelson Riddle as influences on his harmonic thinking, as far as opening up the harmony of standards. There's an inherent limitation to writing functionally when the function is to provide backdrop for soloists who are basically ii-V-I players. Not that Bird was somebody like that, hell Bird went all over the place over standard changes when he really got in that zone, I'm just saying that the kind of insertions of harmonic detouring that is feasable in a setting where the intent is not providng backdrop for improvisation become less practical when it is. We've come a long(-ish" way since then, though. Robert Freedman's charts for Wyton's Hot House Flowers album are marvellous example of this, and the Herbie and/or Farnon/Riddle/etc and/or whoever else you want to submit influence has been greatly felt over the last 4 decades or so, so it's not that big a deal any more, although it's still not as commonplace as would be nice, in my opinion.

That's the way the world ends - Not with a whim, but a banker. Paul Desmond

Seven parts to the Kofsky interview! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43vST-auKQ4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsTbwQmQAmQ...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWEAQcsLAVo...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0kruibXqU4...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=519L1Hdp2GY...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TanbyCO9Rg...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZAE740sppU...feature=related Hearing this is interesting, because Kofsky "framed" things a certain way in print, and Trane's "tone" here is not necessarily that way...

The Jamal Impulse! albums are very interesting, but very different than the "classic" Argo trio material. A lot more "open" in both concept & execution. Since "soloing" per se is not really what Jamal is "about", you really gotta be on board from jump if you wanna get the full ride, I'd say. I'd also say that this more "open" concept has been brought to better fruition in later years, which is not to say that the Impulse! sides are "failures" or anything like that, just that it got better as time went by.