JSngry

I don't know that I'd agree w/that about Mulligan, though. I've gone back and forth with that guy over the years (never too strongly one way or the other) & have reached the conclusion that just as some people play "arranger's piano", so does he play "arranger's bari". His solos usually come out like something you could/would play as part of an arrangement. He being a very adept arranger, that ultimately makes sense to me as a way for him to play (and a perfectly valid explanation for why he does it). It seems integral to "who he is". That doesn't "bother" me nearly as much as does Wynton's repeated attempts to show us postcards and convince us that they're Polaroids...

Nope. Direct bass, but done right. Pretty clean recording, w/o any gimmickry. Just a straightahead quartet date w/the occasional sax synth to create a section effect. Frank Strazzerri on piano, Joel DiBartolo on bass, and and a wholly situational-appropriate Peter Erskine on drums. The internets used to have it, but you know how them internets can be, here today, not here tomorrow.

It's all "straight ahead", not pop/fusion, if that's what you mean. And the sax synth is used very sparingly. But Perkins in 1984 was not playing like Perkins in 1954, not even close. This has caused consternations of sorts for some, but not for your writer, who finds it all wonderfully goofy (in a good way, of course).

I have heard it, and I very much enjoy it. He sounds like Wayne Shorter more than once, and w/o the aid of any synthesizer!

Yeah, that was a good one. But the first good one in how many years? So I'd have to say that this Cherokee solo was much more representative than not.

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are. That's my point, exactly. That friends get more leeway than non-friends, simply because we know them. So if this wynton thing comes over as is, as by Wynton, we think "ugh" w/o qualification, and without qualification, because Wynton has not been the musical (or otherwise) friend to most of us here. Whereas if we get it as if by somebody who is our friend, we're much more likely to think "WTF happened?", cut slack, allow for shit happening (as shit does) and then come to an "ugh" that is decidedly more tempered than the one we do for Wynton straight up. Well, it's not my point -- which is that it's not because we know them per se that we'd surprised and dismayed if Little or Morgan played this "Cherokee" solo but because we know who they are when they play the damn trumpet. To put it another way, I have a friend who is an all-round great guy, but the initial and lasting basis of our friendship was that I loved his writing (mostly, but not exclusively, about jazz), which clearly is an essential expression of who he is as a human being. If he suddenly began to write like, say, Ben Ratliff, I would give him a pass to the extent of trying to find out what had gone wrong, but the nature of our friendship would if anything deepen, not lessen, my sense that something had gone wrong here. In other words, no leeway, only concern. Giving him "leeway" would amount to treating him as though he were something less than the person I'd known him to be, and that wouldn't be good for either of us, or anyone else. I guess I have a pretty high tolerance for friends who go left w/o warning, rhyme, or reason. Hell, I've pretty much had to, the bunch I've taken up with over the years... I just think that people who are explorers by nature have every right to explore into areas that I find dismaying and/or unfathomable. I only get concerned if/when things take a turn for the dangerous (literally). Otherwise, hey, you do what you feel the need to do. Your life, your needs. I'm your friend, I'll hang unless/until it gets too ugly to go on. And along the way, hey, maybe I'll learn something I'd not learn otherwise, if only about what makes people tick not being what I thought it was. And I grant them that prerogative as a friend because I expect it in return. Nothing turns me off/out of/away from a friendship than the feeling that I've been ultimately been accepted because I provide some kind of "product", some kind of fixed "known quantity" that fills a need on somebody else's human needs shopping list. Anybody who wants that kind of friend should just get a pet, preferably a fish, something that can stay put and always be there on call when needed. So if Little or Morgan played this "Cherokee" solo, I'd just say, oh well, the cat's trying something different, I know he's got his reasons, and let it go at that. Unless of course, they began to always play that way (and by always, I mean years and years and years), in which case I would wonder what those reasons were, and if I could figure them out, cool (whether or not those reasons appeal to me is besides the point, all I'm looking for is a "why?" that makes sense, not one I personally dig), and if not, well, they'd still be my friend, I just probably wouldn't pay that much serious attention to their playing any more. And dig - Wynton gets none of this slack from me. Ultimately, though, this is all too much math for R&B!

And get the Just Jazz All-Star concert, both with & without Lionel Hampton. Everybody shines on them!

Well, yes, but I still say that if a friend of yours came up to you with his hair dyed green and a nail stuck through his tongue, your first reaction would not be to judge those choices on aesthetic grounds and maybe cut him some slack because he's your friend but to wonder what the heck was going on here (unless that's how your friend looks normally). Play Wynton's "Cherokee" and tell me that it's Booker Little or Lee Morgan, and I'm thinking, "What happened [to them]?" I'd feel the same if you picked, say, a really good Bobby Hackett solo and told me that the player was Little or Morgan -- "What happened?" Your friends are your friends in part because you know who they are. That's my point, exactly. That friends get more leeway than non-friends, simply because we know them. So if this wynton thing comes over as is, as by Wynton, we think "ugh" w/o qualification, and without qualification, because Wynton has not been the musical (or otherwise) friend to most of us here. Whereas if we get it as if by somebody who is our friend, we're much more likely to think "WTF happened?", cut slack, allow for shit happening (as shit does) and then come to an "ugh" that is decidedly more tempered than the one we do for Wynton straight up.

Them Bijari brothers knew that there was money in the barrio too!

No doubt it depends on how honestly the person on the receiving end listens to music, but as several of us have said on this thread, the simple, honest answer (and we do tend to be honest about our musical tastes; otherwise, why bother to spend time at a place like this?) is: "Yes, it would receive the same criticism." Do you not believe us? Also, your question omits the fairly obvious factor that would render your implicit false labeling test an impossible-to-mount abstraction. If one were told that any number of trumpet players one admires were playing this solo, the first and probably the only question that would arise would be: "Why the heck does so-and-so sound like this? He never did before." Well, ok, my answer is that it would probably not receive the exact response. I mean, if you played that audio for me and told me it was, say, Booker Little, I'd cut it some slack because Booker Little has a well/hard-earned reservoir of musical/spiritual/all the things he are goodwill that Wynton simply has not earned/established. So, no, I would not have the immediate sense of off-putting that I do with Wynton. But - along Larry's lines (and thanks for sharing, dude!) I would also not consider it to be one of Booker Little's finer moments either, and would surely say so right off the bat. Because it's not a sterling example of the improvisatory art, it just isn't. Not even close. What you're dealing with here is the judging of friends vs non-friends. Friends get slack in the face of their fuckups because we know that on the whole, they are better than those lapses. Non-friends don't simply because A) Life is short and you gotta go with what you get and/or B)The individual in question is a non-friend because they have proven themselves to on the whole not be better than their lapses. Does this amount to a double standard of sorts? Well, maybe, but I'm of the mind that if we allowed ourselves total objectivity in every aspect of life we'd never really become anything other than a camera that records activity and does nothing with/about it. If you want to have a life, you gotta form relationships, and in order to form relationships, you gotta make judgments. Hopefully those judgments don't get too random, or too severe, or too anything, but hey, really, "objectivity" is on the whole something to be talked about in the abstract much more than lived in the concrete, at least when it comes to people.

As for the clarinetist, if this was 63-64, I'm reasonably sure it would be Peanuts Hucko.

...but still.... I used to think this song was cool and teenage mysterious/ethereal/hip and all that. But seeing THESE guys kinda takes all that away.

No shit. I've played significantly "harder" music that wasn't nearly as much work, if you know what I mean. Had to be on your toes every, and I do mean every second with that stuff, especially sight-reading it. I'd be lying if I said I walked away unscathed...

Subbed a few times in a band that had some old Pell Octet charts in the book. Wasn't that much of a fan then, still am not, but DAMN was that some hard reading. Weird-ass keys, lots of accidentals in the inner voicings, clever/crafty dynamics you name it, if it was an arranging tool that put a demand on a player, it was in there. What it lacked for me in emotional appeal it certainly made up for in musical/technical fascination. Still not my "thing", but respect due for some serious writing skills. It was definitely an education playing that stuff. TTK - will that Singers album gonna tickle my late-60s Lost In A Echo Chamber Of Groovy MOR/EZ bone really good?

It's kinda like going to church on a whim, and finding out that after church there's one of those pot-luck dinners were all the ladies have prepared several bajillion buttloads full of indescribably delectable dishes of all types, ranging from salads to meats to vegetable dishes to desserts with a bunch of "none of the above" stuff thrown in just to make it interesting, it's like eating at a meal like that and eating well, eating a taste of everything, several tastes of lots, eating until you've tasted damn near everything that was there but not getting overstuffed and all bloated about it, it's like doing that and then showing up at work the next day and talking about the food like you cooked it all yourself. That's what it's like to me, this Wynton Marsalis Cherokee solo, like pigging out at the potluck and then telling everybody how all the ladies' food was made. I'd rather hear it from the ladies myself, especially the old ones and the young ones who got that life force flowing straight from their groins to their kitchens, but hey, this guy's found a market for people who are perhaps not as discriminating, or hell, who maybe don't even like women who cook like they fuck (and brothers - if you ever find a woman who treats eating food and cooking it like it's an act of making love, PAY ATTENTION. and sisters - if you pour yourself into a meal and the man just scarfs it all down and doesn't linger and savor every bite - LOSE HIS ASS BEFORE DESSERT), hell (pt 2) maybe they don't even have much use for women or food or fucking as anything other than Lifestyle Accessories, oh well, either way, he's found a market, Wynton has, and better them than me, I think is the verdict on that, at this time.

I really liked this one, too, with its fine Shorty Baker solo. I received the record when I joined the Columbia Record Club back in high school days, many years ago. I notice that the current reissue has an alternate take of Willow. I'm tempted. That's exactly my story! BTW That Lp meant so much to me that I recently got the nicely packaged Spanish "import" that contains all alternate takes as well as 2 tunes omitted from the Lp for a total of 19 tracks. Unfortunately most of the alternates are not in stereo. If one of those tunes was "The Sky Fell Down" (gorgeous tune, btw...) then know that it was only omitted from the stereo version of the LP, even though it was mentioned in the stereo liner notes (hey, two eyes, why not?). Go figure that.

But they are very good choices for when the wife tells you to put on some dinner music for the guests to enjoy. Although I almost always go with the MJQ 'Last Concert' or the solo Kenny Barron set 'Spiral' in those cases. I try Turrentine's Salt Song first and then see if it evolves or devolves from there... Funny story though, kinda. I was over for dinner to a friend's house a while back, great cook, even greater bassist, and I brought along the MJQ's Space, you know, the one on Apple that gets a little trippy on Side One. Well, ok, I put it on. The guests are all musicians, some (too many, I'd say now, with the passage of time...) tragically hip, and sure enough this one guy starts mocking, "Oh great, we get invited over to eat, then here comes the goddamned MODERN...JAZZ...QUARTET. Now we're at a freakin' DINNER PARTY!" Well, we get into that Side One (which is where all the trippy stuff happens), & I shoot this guy a look and a raised eyebrow. He catches the gesture and says, "Hey, we're still at a freakin' dinner party. But it's a pretty hip dinner party, at least for now". We both shared a laugh, did a line or two, and went out and shot pistols in the air at random intervals to celebrate our unbridled virility and unfathomably superior taste. A passerby or two might have gotten winged, but a life without surprises and random dangers is not worth living, right?

That's a lot of years, those years in particular. RIP, and thanks.

Wow, how old was he?

Gotta say, though, that "I like the reharmonization, but find the soloing quite pedestrian" sums up how I feel about a lot of both Evans & Guaraldi, allowing for a tad of conversational color & such.

I heard that...