JSngry

I know that Rance Allen's been well covered by Fantasy reissues. I have some Violinaires, but not that one. I'd love to hear it! This is definitely a niche-product, whose purpose seems to be to collect/issue stuff that nobody else would. Hell, most people probably don't even know about it. I wish that Gospel would get the quality reissuing that it so richly deserves, but until it does, I'll take whatever I can get, by whoever puts it out. If I get what I'm expecting, I'll be getting a collection of mostly "local" acts whose passion might well exceed their skill. I'm ok with that, especially with Gospel music, where the passion is really the object of the game. There's probably going to be gems and duds side-by-side, and not necessarily in a favorable ratio. I'm ok with that too, because with this type of compiling, getting access to the gems is really the object of the game. This is a good set to get if you're into "obsucurities", and enjoy pondering the stories of the people who came to make records such as these. There's also some really good music here as well. Nothing "essential", but very, very few duds. Far from "essential", but definitely enjoyable, and at many levels.

Thanks.

The flip side of The Fantabulous Johnny C's "Boogaloo Down Broadway" was the same rhythm track with different words and title. Stan Lewis repeated that trick a while later with a Big Joe Turner side on Jewel, using the same backing tracks for several "different" songs. I'm surprised he didn't get Stitt in to blow!

Well, I have. Not sure that I do now, though. I've survived, let me put it that way. What I mean is that Graettinger's "objectivity" resulted in a music that effectively captured the essence of what the Kenton band was really "trying to do" in a way that the more self-consciously "progressive" writers for the band were unable to accomplish. To me, his was the truest portrait of the Kenton World, capturing what it really was (or wanted to be) rather than what it thought it was. And like most unvarnished truths, it proved to be a bit more than the objects of it were ready to handle.

Yet, Bird regularly played dances as well as clubs & concerts. Quite well, too! When jazz tried to confront rock, the uproar was fierce. When jazz tries to deal with hip-hop, the uproar is even more fierce. The uproar only sometimes has to do with the quality of the resulting music. The idea of jazz being a "siperior" music is all well and good, but it begs the question - superior to what, and why? The obvious answers are easily dispensed, but after that, there's a lot of layers of little things that are killing the music. The notion of "superiority" too easily morphs into "seperation", and once you get too seperated, bad things happen. There's got to be some connectivity, some relevance to something other than yourself. Look, it's a bit of a stretch, but the typewriter was a wonderous invention that was used to tell many great stories. Yet other than a few diehards, who uses a typewriter anymore? Why should they, other than personal quirkiness? I know that's "means" instead of "results", but still, you gotta wonder, at some lvel, about the "qualities" of a story written by somebody who insists on using a typewriter, who refuses to confront a computer. What's going to be at the root of the stories told by somebody like that? Is it going to be a story of engagement, or a story of a willful seperation from "regular" life? And at what point does the seperation change from "apartness" to "disconnected"? Which is not to say that a bit of seperation is not a good thing. Leaders lead by being in front, not in the middle. And a leader can still be waaaaay out in front if there's a chain of people behind him still going the same way. But once you get out there all by your lonesome, with nobody in sight, what's left other than to either keep going your way and hope that you might bump into somebody else along the way or else just keep on keepin' on, content to be alone and, in your mind anyway, "right"? TYhe thing that cracks me up about jazz (or more specifically, many jazz musicians) today is that they want it both ways - they want to insist that they are a breed apart, superior beings playing superior music that's not fit for the ignunt masses. And then, they want to be accepted and rewarded by at least some factions within those same ignunt masses. It's like, "I hate you. Love me! Or at least give me your money. What have I done to deserve it? Hey, I'm better than you. Isn't that enough?" If there was a real connection to the people and the times, things wouldn't be that insanely dysfunctional. But too many jazz musicians and idealogues are so busy damning anything and everything that's changed since their "Golden Era" that I've reached the conclusion that they are at some level suicidal. Sure, there's people doing good work today. There will always be people doing good work. But what we're seeing too much of today isn't "music for the sake of music", or music to confront the now and offer a better way, it's music for the sake of stubbornly refusing to accept that typewriters are no longer the ultimate in storytelling tools, and by god, you can take mine when you can claw it out of my cold, dead hands. Wynton is a symptom, not the disease.

Here's my question - if Wynton were to drop dead today, what difference would it make to the future of jazz? To the music, none, obviously. And to the business, none, I'm afraid, not really. Look around - who's got the goods (and I use that term with no little disdain) to be the next "face of jazz" to the "general public" (which is to say, "the powers that be")? I'm looking hard, and I'm seeing.....nobody. And I'm thankful for that. Yeah, the little gigs might come back, but for how long? And on what scale? People really don't care that much any more. If anybody thinks that jazz as it now exists has a future of being anything other than an ongoing cult music (of many cults and many musics), hey, good for you. Don't forget to leave some milk & cookies out for Santa! If you want a really healthy music, you gotta have a healthy scene. And what's the scene today? "Jazz education", taxidermy, reissues, and rabid cults for the most part. Yeah, that's got "healthy future" written all over it... I knew jazz when jazz was still alive, and I know jazz now. Ain't the same creature. And I don't think it ever will be again, unless it's something that comes up from the roots and makes people have to either listen to it or else risk being left behind (and those who are already miles behind being interested in/obsessed with catching up doesn't count). Here's to hope!

Bret - All quibbles & kinks aside, a big thank you for bringing Sonny into the cyber age. This may well be the homestretch, if you know what I mean, and it's encouraging to see that he's got somebody around him who both cares and knows. Doesn't always happen that way, now or then...

Joseph Smith Louis Smith Buckshot LeFunke

Graettinger sounds natural to me, perhaps the most natural music that the Kenton band ever played, even if it might have happened without them realizing it. Which is, perhaps, what that band needed to sound natural. And I will say this - there's really no such thing as writing that can't sound natural in the hands of the right players. Even the worst writing can sound natural if played by players for whom that badness comes naturally (no wiseassness intended). And Tatro's writing is far from bad, to put it mildly. I think you hit on something when you said that this was hard music to play. Indeed it is. And with this group of players, getting it right (which is one form of respect) might well have taken precedence over making it sound "natural" (which, of course, is another). Of course, what "natural" is is such a subjective matter, not in the least shaped by one's individual experiences and expectations, that to debate whether or not these performances are or aren't such is futile. I'll just say that I'd like to hear the material revisited by a group of players from whom all the "outness" wouldn't be out at all. That might be interesting.

Billy Root Little Rootie Tootie Rootie Kazootie

Jermaine Jackson Livingston Taylor Mike McGear

Well, can a place be useless that usually yields nothing of interest, but then coughs up an $80 copy of the Mosaic Nat King Cole Trio set? Sometimes persistance in the face of overall uselessness yields a gem....... I see you're in Houston. I have not had good luck at HPs in either Houston or Austin (other than getting Unity @ the Austin HP back in 79 or so). Maybe it's a DFW thing. This is where the company began (I used to shop in the original store back in the day), so maybe they keep it more lively here. I dunno...

Pontificational, eh?

A few years ago, we stayed at a B&B in Jemez that was located in a hummingbird sanctuary. WAY cool! This is it: http://www.canondelrio.com/ but it appears to be on at least it's 3rd managment now. It was the Jemez River (the river does indeed run right beside it. Very peaceful at night) Bed & Breakfast when we stayed there. Not at all good if ytou plan on a sexual evening (there's no soundproffing in the rooms at all), but still, very romantic. Hell, take a walk out into the woods, if you know what I mean. Also, if you're driving between Albuquerque & Santa fe, be sure to go through Madrid. Trust me (unless things have changed...).

What's your opinion of him overall? I mean, I really dig the voice, but if there's not much else going on, I'm not interested.

That's pretty damn funny if you ask me.

The notion of a "consumer" wanting to buy unreleased ECM master tapes (which I've never heard anybody here even remotely suggest) is funny no matter who it is. The notion that anybody who would want such things would be disappointed by not finding them at a HP is just cracko-wacko. Whether or not the dryness of the humor is intentional, the mere premise breaks me up! Now, Tzewie, here's you chance to crack on me - I passed on a bunch of BN 78s at a HP back in the 70s. All Trad stuff, and I wasn't interested at the time. I also passed on some Bird Dial 78s in the same store a few years later because I had the stuff on LP. Bust me. I deserve it.

Shelley Carroll for under $10.00, y'all: http://www.cybermusicsurplus.com/online_ca...sku_tag=LHR3BB3 Carpe diem!

I was reminded, in different ways, of early Gil Melle & George Russell. But whereas Melle's struck me as a naive-ish goofball whose naiveness almost inadvertantly led to hipness, and Russell as a man who didn't so much find himself as he did find some sort of parallel universe that was waiting for him to move into it (and wondering what took him so long to get there), Tatro's writing struck me (admittedly after only three listenings) as somewhat Geppetto-ish. I will say this, though. I hear in Tatro's writing a keen grasp of the implications of the more "out" elements of the dissonance heard in the Mulligan-Baker front line, a dissonance that is there more often than one might think, and with more implications than most heard at the time. It's what he did with it that hasn't reached me yet. But whether or not I personally get it is neither here nor there. I would like to hear the material played by a group of players who might be able to breathe more life into the charts. No matter how "advanced" the guys in that band might have been as writers, as players, I'm not sure that they (or anybody, really) was equipped to do anything more with music like this that play it "correctly". I definitely hear "reading", not playing, and that's understandable enough. But... There may well be a life/world existing in this music that I'm not hearing yet, and I'd certainly be more than willing to listen to the charts again, played by people for whom this type writing is more "natural" after the passage of so many years and evolutions. Any ideas as to who such a group might consist of today?

We got a bunch of 'em. Most are interesting, if highly variable from visit to visit. I'll put it this way - I'll never not stop at one if I haven't been inside it for a few months.

Besides, jazz, "real" jazz, is all but dead. Plenty of great music ha escaped from the body and is out there keeping the gene pool active, but it's not "real" jazz any more. And thank god for that! Again -fear not the dead nor the necromancers. Unless you yourself are dead (or on the way), they can't hurt you unless you let them.

Sounds like the "type" of people who support JLC wouldn't have much of an interest in supporting something better anyways. So fuck all of'em, let them have their museum. Let the rest of us have some living music the way we've always had it - through word of mouth, throught the underground, through anything but institutionalized musical taxidermy. Problem is, nobody except the JLC "type" goes out & spends the buckage too much any more (or so it seems). So that one's on us, even if there are a lot of mitigating circumstances. But there's always been money in preserving an image of the past. It's an easy way to get glory w/o having to earn it. Just claim it for your own once it's already been created and left available thru death. There's a huge market for that, always has been, always will be. So let them have it. Ours is not to be feted by the powers that be, for we oppose the powers that be. You want the jizz, you gotta hang around the tip, prime the pump, and be ready to catch it when it spurts. To think otherwise is nonsense. Now, somebody tell me this - is there anybody, anybody, who could make truly creative contemporary jazz and get the same deal that Wynton's got? Hell no. Because truly creative contemporary jazz doesn't hang around the tip unless it's to bite it. Otherwise, it's all about going after god and/or pussy. Ain't no "cultural institutions" gonna subsidize somebody going after their god or their pussy, much less both. Eunuchs are not to be feared.

Mr. Grossman was not always in the "best of health" even in his youth...

Playing... alto Exactly!

Yeah, I got it in the sale. Seldom do I not get what Larry says in relation to any music, but such is the case here. I hear the "devices", but they just don't engage me at all beyond the "intellectual" level. I listened 3 times last night, and was left with a "well, ok, there it is" feeling and nothing more. Maybe it's the band, maybe they were so busy reading/interpreting the charts "correctly" that they didn't have time to put some flavor into them. Holman plays very nicely, though. Maybe in time...