JSngry

When teamed w/Stepney, oh hell yeah. The shit's all over the map, from psychedelic doo-wop to borderline wack vocal jazz to deep grit South((ern) (Side)) Soul to Power Funk, but its always got them voices, and them voices is good. This is what them that only know their music as Popular & Soulful nowadays call "grown folks music" in the best possible way.

yi!

Now, how 'bout them comedy records? Berman (hits, right?), Sahl, etc.? Granz-era, right?

ooops....

Blues Project, Laura Nero, The Hombres, Janis Ian...

Also, and this is a generalization which I might need to retract upon further reflection (or not), I think there was a tendency amongst "boppish" players to "pull back" a little, if only subconsciously, when playing with "older" style players. I think it has to do with the tendency of the older players - and Hawk in particular - to have a more "straight" 4/4 feel to their basic rhythmic impetus. The younger guys's rhythm was more naturally...subdivided, and I do think that some "accommodation" was necessary. Gladly taken, usually, but necessary nevertheless.

Buddy Terry's Prestige side Natural Soul features a core group of Terry, Larry Young, & Eddie Gladden. On two tunes, this core trio is augmented by Woody Shaw, and this quartet (I like to think of it as Pure Newark Unity...) forms the group for the album's highlight/centerpiece/whatever, a cooking 12:28 jam called "The Revealing Time". If that makes you drool, don't feel bad. It is that good.

Remember, Ben hit L.A. first, before moving to Europe. Why? Hopes of more giggage. Getting away from the racism motivated a lot of cats, but simple economics - i.e. gigs - was the cold hard facts of life, one way or the other.

Al Bolton, the KSLA-TV (Shreveport, La) weatherman who also played drums.

That's a very interesting remark, but I'm not sure what it means. The jazz that was "in fashion" in the fifties seems to have been mainly revivals of big bands - Harry James, Les Brown etc - or easy listening jazz - Sinatra -> Les Baxter, via Gleason, Freshmen, Shearing, Fitzgerald - very little "hardcore" jazz appears to have been "in fashion" - Ahmad Jamal and Garner are about the only exceptions. If you mean "in fashion" with the jazz public, well I don't really know what was in fashion with the jazz public in the fifties. I think white audiences were probably going for West Coast stuff, as well as the output from Verve. Possibly black audiences were more focused on Hard Bop, though honking sax men remained popular until the mid-fifties. Gross generalisations these and I hope they'll be read as approximations. If something like this is what you intended, then I can see your point. MG Cats like Hawk, Eldridge, Webster, etc had a hard time getting gigs in the 50s. Fact. Not "modern" enough.

Damn dude, err...ma'am...that leads me to wonder what else you haven't done in your 64 years... Seriously, lay off the Metrecal & eat some fish!

No, not unless you feel a need to get deeper into that whole out-of-Detroit hardbop thing and all that it spawned. And if you ain't felt that need yet, don't force it, I'd say. OTOH, it's probably best not to go off on tangents about it that are based more in theory than in reality either...

When you're right, you're right and funny. Whe you're wrong, you're wrong and funny. I like it better when you're right and funny. This ain't one of those times. Oh well!

...and Barry Gailbrath - George Russell = ? "Barry's Tune", which = how you hear Burrell and...what else of note? Gailbrath was playing parts. And well. But the # of players who could approximate the whats/hows of how he did that then is exponentially greater the $ of players who could do what Burrell did. What, you gonna put fuckin' George Van Epps or Howard Roberts on a session w/Trane? Tina Brooks? Yeah, and Lester Young needed Elvin behind him instead of Jo Jones. Of course. Sometimes I think you don't hear the peoples unless they scream at 'cha... In that case, you hear what you wanna hear, which is not necessarily all that is being said.

Very true, that. I personally saw it go across about three generations (technically, two generations spread very widely). Kenny, Wes, and Grant was The Big 3, with Pat Azarra (sic) in the bullpen, at least, in my neighbor's hood. Again, if all you hear is the slick and none of the grit, you ain't hearin' Kenny Burrell the way that many others do.

No, what killed Our Music was the Decline And Fall of The Bringers Along, of whom Burrell was never one. He was an Assistant To The Bringers Along and a damn good one. you need both. You need the middle as well as the top (and bottom). Ferinstance - why were Gil's bands always so killer? Because he had strong solo voices and strong section players, which is why Hemphill's big band record, as great as it is, falters ever so slightly - not enough good section players to play the parts. It matters, because that's how the music is built. Sure, if I had to choose....but - I'd rather not have to. And yes, this translates to small group music as well. The dynamics of a successful group play to both obvious and subtle qualities alike, and does anybody ever stop to think not fucking something up and making a positive contribution are 100% not the same thing? If it's New York in that day, and I'm putting together a hard-bop-ish blowing date with a guitar in tow, and I want somebody to do more than just not fuck it up, if I want it to be slick and flay-va-full, Kenny Burrell is on my very short list. Dis on that all you want, but good luck on making that dis come true.

That's right at the cusp of the Burrell Gets Boring period, but the way he phrases that first bridge on "Just Squeeze Me" stopped me dead in my tracks the first time I heard it on the radio late one night back in the day. And lets just say that what I was doing at the time was something in which I didn't normally get my tracks stopped, dead or otherwise. Ok, compare the two Turrentine/Scott versions of "Trouble". Which one grooves harder? The one on Hustlin'. Why? Burrell's co-comp with Scott. Perfect? Yes, absolutely. Something that any # of players could do? Yes, but only if the any number is quite small. In other words, there's a lot that goes into why I dig Burrell other than just his "solo voice". In his time/element, he was one of, as one of his albums was called, "the cats". Not that many peoples was one of the cats, ya' know? Especially cats who was non-users/abusers/etc. To be that and still be one of the cats, you had to bring some music to the game, and that is what Burrell did. I'll make no attempt to defend his Concord and beyond years. If you like 'em, fine, if not, I'm with you there (although, come to think of it, there's a Concord version of "Second balcony Jump" live at the Vanguard that made me buy it right there in the store. That cut was really good, but now as then, it's the only cut off the album I go for). And if you want to look at what he "wasn't", then you have as much of a case as I do for what he "was". And then it simply comes down to are you going to judge somebody's talent by what they didn't do or what they did do. If os, fine, that's a personal call, but to make it anything more than that is nothing short of delusionality masquerading as discernment.

Fair enough. His vocabulary is, mostly, "communal" (which is decidedly not the same as "generic"), but I quite often find interest in his tone and phrasing, his "personality". Subdued yet substantive is how I hear it.

This is all good, fiesty, rhetoric, but unfortunately it doesn't hold up to most of the music under question, unless you've recently bumped your head & are are now confusing Kenny Burrell with, say, Barry Gailbrath.

No, I'm not ignoring that. Burrell is as distinctive as any of those guys in my book, if by that you mean "readily identifiable". As you correctly stated earlier, YMMV on that, but this is where mine gets me.

I don't find Burrell "faceless" at all. Readily identifiable tone & articulation. One of the more easily identifiable guitarists of his time, actually, imo. Now as for "greatness", hey, it is what it is, and it ain't what it ain't. But it's not all that there is either way.

Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, Mort Sahl...all on Granz-era Verve, right? And Doodles Weaver!

Burrell up until about the mid/late'70s is mostly fine with me. When he was good, which wasn't always, but was usually, he hit that urbane-with-more-chops-than-Grant-Green zone that many think is where Grant Green actually resided but didn't (and no dis to either man, not by a long shot). The BN, Prestige (both times around), Cadet sides range from good to dandy to, occasionally, superb (the Vanguard trio w/Davis & Haynes in particular), the Verves get kinda bogged down in "concept", but the one CTI is GROOVY. So, for about 20 years, ca. 1957-1977, his batting average was pretty damn good, and his slugging percentage, tho not HOF caliber, was not unrespectable. After that, and probably not coincidentally, Helen Keane took over his career, Concord, a.o. beckoned, and that's the stuff that I can (and do) live just fine without. And that's been more than 20 years. But hey, the cat was a voice in/of his time - Detroit, hard-bop/blues player committed to his craft, ready for any and all calls in/of his time, ready to deal (and in context, he always dealt, and dealt well) and if now that that time/context has passed means that he shoulda' been thinkin' about that then, well, hey, wtf is that all about anyway? If I'd been doing that, I'd have invented Microsoft instead of spent my time just being me. But I didn't, so hey. I'm glad like a mo that Sonny Sharrock was Sonny Sharrock, and I'm just as glad that Kenny Burrell was/is Kenny Burrell. I kinda wish, though, that Charlie Byrd had been somebody else. But that's just me. Also, me being a hick and all, urbanity is a quality which I do appreciate. I know that to some, it's just a synonym for boring, but for me, it means...urbane. Slick on top, grit underneath. And KB, yeah, that cat was urbane during that 20 or so year run. Slick (in massive quantity) and grit (which sometimes you gotta know to look for, but if you do, you find it rather easily). If you can't hear it, you can't hear it, hey, ok, fair enough, don't bother adjusting your set. But I can, and in my world, that's really all I give a fuck about.

Also worth remembering how commercially "out of fashion" many of those 1950s Verve leaders were outside of the Verve/JATP contexts. In that regard, Granz could be seen as much patron as employer, if one doesn't get too..."sentimental" about it.

Excellent sources there, seeline, thanks for the pointers! On the strictly Nonesuch Explorer trip, and to be honest, the Balinese gamelan per se was something that I "got", said "ok" to, and then moved on (that Monkey chant, though, hey...). But there was a NE album of Javanese gamelan that was like the ultimate narcotic music. This stuff was chilled out to the max, ultra mentholated and syruped, and you didn't need no smoke or no nothing if you had that one playing. If ever there was musical opium, this was it. Unfortunately (and probably predictably), I can't remember which one it was...