JSngry

I can semi-guarantee you that if there were gigs (and a buzz about them) that the issue of repertoire would become a lot more pressing. As it is now, it's either all original "projects"/bands where you expect/hope/pray that people will show up because you're offering them this glimpse of CREATIVITY AND ORIGINALITY that will grab their souls and get the Right With God (been there, done that, for several decades, and boy wasn't THAT ongoing set of non-profit ventures fun! actually, it was...) or else essentially jam gigs where you show up to give the people what they come to hear (see above), in which case, hey, why bother getting too hip and representing? Best to just put on your minstrel shoes and do the Jazz do. There are of course exceptions, and Chicago seems to be a city with a scene built on them, but "the norm" is not particularly vigorous right now, and damned if I can see what will make it so again, not this far into things.

What basically happened is that this "notion" was used to facilitate a power grab by those who had influence (and those who had access to influence), who then put their people front & center in "the industry". Then, whatever luck/success was had in terms of introducing/selling "jazz" to the public was had with these guys representing, which means that a lot of people got introduced to jazz as a basically fixed set of "styles" of music instead of an ongoing evolutionary life form. Anything/everything else pretty much had the oxygen sucked out of its room. Now, there are those who would argue, and not without a fair amount of merit, that the whole 4/4 Swing With A Touch Of Latin & Gospel style(s) of jazz was destined to become the popular norm, just because that's what most people can relate to, if they can relate to anything about jazz at all. Fair enough. But now it's being presented and received as an artifact, a fixed quantity, rather than as something living and growing. I mean, that's ok if you like that kind of thing, but a lot of us don't. Fortunately, the last few years have seen an upsurge in various "counter-jazzes", but the whole scene is so fucked up now, so dysfunctional & fragmented, that I'm afraid it's pretty much Game Over as far as ever again having a jazz scene with a lot of different vital things happening all at once in an even semi-viable economic arena. People now know what jazz "is", they either like it or they don't, and outside of a small network of freaks and geeks, they really don't have any interest in anything that contrasts and compares. Time to move on, I say, see what else can be put to use to get a/the message across, but I'm not necessarily in anything even remotely resembling a majority on that one. But imp, the whole Marsalis/Crpouch/Murray/L@LC thing really has killed jazz in order to save it, and to my nose, the stench of death (which is most assuredly not the same as the aura of ghosts, holy or otherwise) gets just a little stronger with each passing day.

Oh yeah - Esther Phillips - All About Esther. Whether it's a jazz album or an R&B album depends on what song is playing, but that's the only way to tell the difference, and that is all you really need to know, no?

I was rather taken by Devorah Day's Light of Day a few years back, but it doesn't seem that that many others were. But hey. Strong Seconds on the Patty Waters You Thrill Me disc as well. Some of that stuff is as cut-to-the-quick real as it can get. Sarah Vaughn - Swingin' Easy This is what Sarah did, done about as well and as unencumbered as she ever did it save for maybe some of those Musicraft sides. Billie - All Or Nothing At All At the end of the day, this is the one I keep coming back to. The fifth? Whatever is handy (and right) at the time, when the time comes, if it does. some good people already mentioned, too many others not to narrow it down to just one.

Very nice! Ya' know, if the various Gospel shows on KNON are any indication, there's still lots of this stuff happening on a "local" level. And from the plane of the functional, you know, the "what this music means to me spiritually" place, I'm sure it fills the bill quite nicely. But from a more "objective" musical plane, it just doesn't sound the same. It sounds good and everything, mind you, but there's that level or two of distance... Not that that's necessarily "important", depends on what you're looking for... Anyway, yeah, it's good to hear stuff like this while it's still out there to be heard. That era is indeed gone, and its remnants should not be taken for granted. Thanks for sharing.

Perhaps the narrative of minstrelry will get a reconsideration/redirection when the perceived ending of the story changes...

Flo is cool and all that, but it's the other lady that makes me laugh. Brilliance!

That Progressive.com commercial with "big tricked out name tag" Flo (Stephanie Courtney). I mean, we're talking facial gestures & body language to rival Chaplin. And yes, I'm serious. I have no idea who Stephanie Creel is, I mean I just found her name by doing some targeted Googling, she doesn't appear to be anybody I should know (nor does Stephanie Courtney, but I see that she came out of the Groundlings, so there's a good lineage there, right?), but DAMN, this Monica Creel chick cracks me up every time I see this commercial.

How's Flo? I don't know. I just got back from a vaudeville show! Seriously, I've not heard the album, just seen the album at DG. But apparently, Flo was Ella Mae Morse's siter,, the former Mrs, George Handy, Mrs. Al Cohn and composed classical music besides being Intimate with Smoky... http://people-vs-drchilledair.blogspot.com...handy-cohn.html

The thing he did with his daughters (The Braith Family singers, is how I think he billed them) is the eptiome of this, I think.

aka The Zapruder Sessions...

Btw Allen, nice discussion we're having.

Word. I mean, I'd pay $20.00 or so for a regular 33 1/3 RPM LP Record Album of Genuinely Good Quality if the source material is really all that. And I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Yeah, but with the Target of browsers... That counts for something, doesn't it?

And I think it should be recognized, and in some ways is beginning to be. I mean, you see a little, a very little, "coming around" on Stepin Fetchitt even, who was a lot more, uh, "problematic" than the type of things you're bringing up. But yeah, these were lives, human lives, and they were lives not without a good amount of compelling "life-ness" (sorry....). They are indeed African-American tales, and as such, American tales. Atention must be paid where and when it is viable. To not do so is, as you say, an insult, degrading. I would only state, just as opinion, not as attack, that Wynton (or even "Wynton", I'm lovin' my "" today...) is not the route through which this should go, or is going to go, hell, could go. best intentions notwithstanding. Never has been, never will be. There's too much ambiguity (even minstrelry at it's "best" was not completely without its..."issues", right?) that can never be resolved without agreeing to let it be unresolved. And I really don't see any other way of that happening aprt from a wholesale "post-racialization" (hate to keep using that term, but it seems to fit both this subject and these times right now...) of America (hell, the world, really, France & Japan in particular have percieved (in some wuarters anyway...) historical/cultural... "positions" regarding the "romanticizing" of the whole minstrel mojo as it pertains to ongoing "Black Music", so it's really not just America...) , and that is going to require a willingness to let go. Wynton's thing is, has been, and probably always will be, the antithesis of that, of letting go and just letting the ambiguity be what it is. His thing is all about putting it in a bottle, calling it what he wants it to be, and selling it to people who want nothing else besides what is in that bottle. Sure, you got interested (and disinterested...) bystanders, but the core audience is there to buy what's in that bottle, because dammit, they know that it'll cure all their ills. Cure them so well, in dfact, that they gotta keep coming back for more... Braxton somewhere called (or compared, not sure which) this whole Wynton/JLC mindset the New Minstrelry or words to that effect. The irony is striking, don't you think?

http://www.dustygroove.com/item.php?id=vss...p;ref=index.php

So, if Barnes & Kress are "Smoky", does it follow that Handy is "Intimate"? TMI, as the kids say....

What's the deal w/this Google Chrome, and why should I not continue my sneaking suspicion that Google is trying to become, like, the Wal-Mart of the internet?

... any discussion not specifically set up to address the specific issue, is pretty much doomed to be perceived as talking about the "benefits of segregation to African-Americans" or some such. Yeah, you can have the discussion, but not anywhere, not at any time, and definitely not with just anybody. It requires a nuance of perception, depth of knowledge, and perhaps most importantly, a consensual clearness/cleanness of conscience that just ain't gonna be found in a random sampling of Americans, if you know what I mean. While I'm guessing you are right here, Jim, and understand I am speaking as someone who is very much on the low end of the learning curve on all this, I might err on the side of assuming that the topic was approached thoughtfully. Furthermore, one might hope WM's awareness of the topic would rise above that of a random sampling. But your larger point is well taken. The story of Wynton Marsalis, at least from my POV, is one of reasonable hopes repeatedly not being met... And all I meant by all that about context of discussion and such was that I don't think that the interview was set up to be specifically about this particular subject (which is not to imply that Allen planned an "ambush" of him or anything). It just came up as part of the normal questioning, and Wynton di what he's pretty much always done, spout thoughtless dogma (as opposed to thoughtful, well-reasoned dogma, I suppose...) I'm just saying that the number of people who could spontaneously have a thoughtful, spontaneous, even halfway informed discussion about the reverberations of minstelry (and "minstelry") w/o relying on the dogma as a shield are really not that many (and I'm sure as hell not one of them, at least on the informed part, as I know just enough to know that it is indeed a complex, deeply layered and nuanced area). That Wynton is definitely not one of them does not at all surprise me.

There might be some difficulty in keeping the bad connotations and restoring ambiguity. One doesn't easily facilitate the other -- which might point toward the heart of the matter. Dunno. I'd think that keeping the bad connotations would be 1/2 of the very definition of ambiguity, the other half being that there was also some good (or at least "non-bad" elements as well?

Did they say Side 4? Is this going to be one of those SUV-priced 45 RPM jobs? They get the best sounding source materail since Day 1 and that's all they're putting out? Dude, I'll get mad about that!

The tradition continues!

It ain't so much the back of my head that's the problem. No man, it's TJMaxx that's the problem. Don't you know that their mirrors are seconds too?

Indeed, and this information is not unobtainable,as you are so properly/usefully proving. My only point is this - the word "minstrel" itself has acquired - and not unfairly - such a loaded set of connotations that attempting to even suggest the possibility of such a nuanced view of history into anything even remotely resembling "general" discussion, which is to say, any discussion not specifically set up to address the specific issue, is pretty much doomed to be perceived as talking about the "benefits of segregation to African-Americans" or some such. Yeah, you can have the discussion, but not anywhere, not at any time, and definitely not with just anybody. It requires a nuance of perception, depth of knowledge, and perhaps most importantly, a consensual clearness/cleanness of conscience that just ain't gonna be found in a random sampling of Americans, if you know what I mean. This is not to say that the discussion is not worth having, or that the examination is not without immense reward. But it is a questioning - not of you or your work, please believe that - of what the "most" that can be accomplished is. The bad connotations of "minstelry"" can never be erased, nor should they be, imo. What I would like to think can be accomplished is the restoration of the ambiguity (which, really, is the truth of the matter) and the final (or, considering the long-term arcs that humanity takes, "final") acceptance of that ambiguity as just that, an ambiguity, something that can never be "resolved" one way or the other, and more importantly, doesn't need to be. The irony is that the present (and near-term future) might accomplish this more readily than any examinations/debate about the past (and again, that statement is not meant as an "attack" on you or your work). Here in the heart, neigh, the bowels of Racist America, there are more and more interracial marriages going occurring, and not just in urban areas. It's far from a "trend" or anything, but I am seeing things happening now in places that as little as 25 years ago would have been the instigation for all kinds of ugliness, and evidence (anecdotal and otherwise) suggests that how it is happening is that the people who are doing it are basicaly just looking at the "legacy" and saying, yeah, ok, well, uh..... y'all want that, you can have it. It's your problem, and you seem to really really enjoy having it since you hang onto it with such relish. Don't let us spoil your party, ok, and, uh, we'll be over here if you want us. The jury's still out on how well that's going to work, but it certainly bolsters my hope that the notion that these things only have power by us allowing them to have power is not a fantasy...

So race is emerging as a major hangup here, not surprisingly, I guess. That both WM and the Wesleyan professor would shut down a discussion of music using basically the same kind of retort (you're white and, therefore, don't know what you're talking about) is ... I don't know what it is -- confounding, but hopefully not an insurmountable pattern. It's astonishing to me that highly intelligent people can be unwilling to discuss their differing views about music and its history. It seems to me the more intransigent someone is, the more suspect their positions, right? It almost comes off as though both WM and the professor are trying to hide something from view. Like the Wizard of Oz. What they are trying to do (at least if my past encounters with similar "attitudes" are any indicator & if/when there is no overt attempt at "bullying" going on) is to try and claim "ownership", or at least "validate" the "blackness" of the music, and thereby their individual "stake" in it and the culture which it creates (enough "" yet? ) . Which, god knows, is not a wholly illegitimate or otherwise nefarious want/need/claim in and of itself. The sad (and not too hidden, if you just think about it objectively for half a second) is that such an "exclusivist" mindset (which is damn near always how such things end up as being) creates a humanity that is extra-universal, and therefore either superior or distorted or otherwise apart from the Universal Eternal instead of being a great, vibrant, era-defining example of it. Post-Racial America, if/when it gets here, will stop this and a whole bunch of other pendulums as they start to swing back and keep them squarely in the middle, which is where the truth damn near always lies. Until then, there was a lot of bullshit that pushed it to where it is now, and there's a lot of bullshit keeping it where it is now. It'll be interesting to see what happens when people get tired of the bullshit in general, if indeed they ever do (and even if it's not in most of our lifetimes...) Here's hoping.