JSngry

Yeah, I feel bad for Good O-Board Citizen Greg M who might yet someday get confused with Cyber Stalker/Bad Egg/Banned Member ("It's ok, I'm with the banned!") GregM.

My sentiments exactly.

That would be...me.

http://www.texasmonthly.com/magazine/willie

Doug & Jean Carn. I can't help but think that if Lee would have lived that he would have incorporated some of the "message" type vocals/vocalists into his music, & as far as the "post Hard Bop" thing that Lee & others were getting into, the Carns were doing that about as well as anybody at the time.

http://www.ehow.com/how_113341_repair-leather-goods.html

Yep, that's him, I think: http://mccartyart.com/music_page.htm

Garner's regular bassist around the was one Ernest McCarty, Jr, if memory (and liner notes) serves.

No problem. We are all men of passion. We all gush.

The bonus material is nice but...non-essential. It does give the benefit, however, of more (and more detailed) documentation of the David Lee/Mtume hookup, and that, Dear Friends, is cause for celebration indeed! Sure wish that The Cutting Edge had been recorded worth a damn...

Whew. Almost went with "J-Glo" for my publishing company. Well, hey, "J" ain't "Jo". At least you're not thinking GlossLip or something like that.

Oh man, thanks. I've been wanting to say that for years, but a combination of love, respect, and itdontmatterallTHATmuch-itness has prevented me from doing so. Maximum Love Points to both y'all, just because.

Happy Birthday to a great guy, and here's hoping that you never change to "Jo-Glo" for stage appeal or for any other reason.

Delores!

I could see that type of audience reacting to Pryor that way at that time. Folks just weren't ready. By the mid-70s things had changed. The various Mudbone riffs are right up there w/Mark Twain as far as trenchant social observation, imo.

Pictures? Hell, I've got VIDEOCASSETTES!

Texas? Maybe 50-60 years ago. 80 years ago, definitely. Now? Hardly worth it. Personally, I think we should colonize the sun.

I know what you mean. it's like his top lip is very "foward" and I can't tell what's happening on the bottom. Still, I think the way he tongues his notes is even freakier (in a great way). Like the articulation of the melody on The Three Marias -- that's super bad. He's got the "stillest" embrochure of anybody I've ever seen - corners in place yet seemingly totally relaxed, and nothing, nothing, on/in the face moves. Ever. It's all throat and tongue and diaphragm (and probably nasal/sinus as well). If there's any jaw/facial action at all, it's so...subcutaneous (and damn, that's the first time I've ever used that term in a musical discussion...) as to remain invisible from the outside. I mean, just look at him, does he even appear to be blowing, to be putting air through his oral cavity into an instrument? No, he just looks like he's got it in his mouth and is holding it deadpan. There's other players who have accomplished this as well, but none to the degree that Wayne has. and looking at archival footage/photos, he's always had it like that. Amazing.

Yeah... One of many reasons why I try to stay home as much as possible these days...

In where? I mean, it's "tight", it's "together", but they play the chart the way that all of "those type" bands play it. Years of forced exposure to this type of "lab band"-ish interpretation has ;left me permanently wounded, I guess. And the way the violins seem to...lunge into every ensemble hole is kinda...comically unsettling to me. I've seen seats on a bus contested with more finesse. Sex with anybody who feels music like this seems to me like it would be like a bad acid trip - you start out thinking it's gonna be fun, but pretty soon you realize that not only is it not going to be fun, it's gonna be sheer hell, and the fact that there literally is no end in sight for what at the moment seems equally literally like all eternity is enough to make you wonder if life really is worth living.

My sentiments exactly. And speaking of embrouchures (we were, weren't we?)....Wayne's has always freaked me out.

I think there was no small amount of tongue-in-cheekness involved.

Relaxed? Is that some Branson gig or something?

I think that Joe played a D*, and I think that maybe - maybe - the bore had been hollowed out just a little to let the low end speak fuller & fatter. Me myself, I play a C* that's had that modification done to it (long story how I ended up with it, never mind actively playing it...) & the work on the bore makes all the difference in the world. Having a fatter low end just opens up the resonance of the entire range, which makes the setup malleable for good jazz playing. Without that, you're trying to play jazz w/a straight-up "classical" mouthpiece & that's waht it's going to sound like. The thing is though, you really gotta have one of those old short shank mouthpieces. The ones that they (Selmer) changed to with the longer shank suck in general, but especially to try and adapt to jazz playing. RE: Teal vs Allard, I read/studied/obsessed over Teal's book upon beginning of formal instruction (college), & later got hip to Allard's concepts through exposure to them thru Dave Liebman @ an Aebersold clinic about 5 years later. The big thing they both stress is strong, well-supported air flow w/o interruption from the throat - always keep that throat open! Allard seems to stress using the thorat to direct the airstream in a more register specific manner (like a vocalist does) than does Teal, but it's not too much of a stretch to look at the basics of either one and infer the extrapolations of the other. Like you said, it's all about sound production & breath support, and that's something that is crucial for any genre. What those guys were putting down is stuff that every player should know about, if only to make variations on it knowingly instead of unknowingly.

I heard Joe twice, once @ UNT in the mid-80s w/a student rhythm section (doesn't count, although he played fine) & at Fat Tuesdays in 1979, w/Fred Hersch, Ivor Gett Hu on bass, and the amazing Motohoko Hino on drums. Both times he was unmiked, and both times he played on the "soft" end of the volume range. Yet - and this is key - there was never any problem hearing him, down to the subtlest detail. That's because he projected like a mofo, and that comes from having a focused sound and a focused airflow and a focused "sense" of sound. Recordings can and do distort this. I know that I was shocked that Joe was not some paint-peeler volume wise. But after that shock wore off, I realized what was going on in the club, and what had been going on on the records. Volume is deceptive, a cat can be loud and not necessarily be "heard" in detail. Similarly, a cat can play ppp and cut through a noisy din simply by projecting his sound above and past it. Joe fell in the latter cap all the way. I realize that there is a divergence of opinion on Joe, a lot of it "generational" & "temporal", and I respect that, but make no mistake - no matter how you feel about the ultimate merits of his playing, there is no question that he was a consummate virtuoso of the instrument, at a level that very few before or since has reached, and I mean that in the sense of minutae of nuance & execution as well as the obvious "finger" stuff. And yeah, there are certainly different "types" of virtuosity. But Joe's "type" is definitely one of them. A name relevant to all this "saxophonology" - Larry Teal. Mark, you seem like a player yourself, so surely you know the name of this Michigan "guru"?