JSngry

Theo Rudy Nessa

So, he writes this song, "Everything Must Change", that's damn near anthematic of a certain timeplacemindset, het pops up here and there doing this and that, and then what? He dies? Moves to Delaware? Finds god? ? Where he does show up is in some pretty good company, so the cat must have had something going on. So, what's his story?

The Farmer's Daughter Inger Stevens Bernard Ighner

Warne's about as heavy as you can get.

Bobby Boris Pickett Wilson Pickett Woodrow Wilson

Valerie, have you caught any of her recent NYC gigs?

Not sure if anybody cares, but... I've done a complete 180 on her lyrics. She believes in life, and so do I. Life's too short to let years of accumulated crust bury belief in life, even if it's a belief that begs to be crushed by "reality". So be it. And I've done a complete 175 on Delicious Poison after repeated headphone listening. It's not just Really Good Pop Music, it's DAMN Good Pop Music, with a lot of sonic detail and vocal nuances that I missed on previous, semi-casual listening. Also just got Epsiodes In Color, a flawed but ultimately touching record of intimacy with all the flaws intact. Some of the best Dave Kikoski on record here btw, that I've heard anyway. Makes you wonder what would happen if more jazz players and more pop artists would think for themselves, stop being afraid of just playing music, and stop being such damn tools of their own stupid notions of what they "ought" to be doing.

Houston Person Austin Crowe San Antonio Rose

Helluva fighter. Helluva sad way to go.

Yeah, but do you eat where you shit?

Fertilizer of one type or another is essential for a healthy life. It's nutrition.

Blue Note Fetishism is a syndrome with which I'm well familiar, having had a bad case of it from about 1976-1990. I still love the label, and yes, they did have something different going on. Maybe not always on a grand scale, but you know a BN side when you hear it, no matter what type of jazz it is. Having said that, I've always, from Day One, had a taste for other labels and other types of jazz, and pursued them with equal or greater vigor. But the Blue Note "thing" is something that is very, very real. It was a beautiful thing, and as the man said, beauty is a rare thing. Now, having said that, I also gotta say that history is history, and that once you get a good grasp of your history (which, of course, does take some time), it's time to move on. Truthfully, I think jazz as a whole is fetishized, especially since the number of living people making what is, for me, relevant music of now in the idiom is but a micro-percentage of what it used to be. Great music, my favorite "genre" bar none, perpetual nourishment for the mind, body, and soul, and when it's right, there ain't nothing better, at least not for me, but hey... Let that which is alive flourish on its own terms, and let the ashes of that which has died spread in the wind, providing bountious natural fertilizer for whomever (and I do mean whomever) & wherever (and I do mean wherever) they might land upon. Anything else just ain't natural, and if there's one thing the best jazz has always been and always will be, it's natural.

I can't afford it right now or else it would be sold.

Compilations are cool as an entry door, but if you walk throught the door and there ain't a house waiting for you, wellsir, I'm aginnit!

Tokyo Rose Daisy Yoakum Petunia Pig

When Rod (rostasi) ran his K-29, I bought everything from him, and even bought some things I might not otherwise buy, just because it was such a coolass store and I trusted him to carry good shit. The only time I was disappointed was with a Jim Hall MusicMasters side, which he took back and exchanged w/o any hassle whatsumever. Now, when K-29 ceased operations, I was cast adrift in the waters of the chains. Salvation was found only in the then-burgeoning used store market, when there was a used CD shop every quarter mile on every street in metropolitan America (every 5 miles in rural and semi-rural areas). It was mandated by law, and as laws go, it weren't bad. Then I discovered the Internet, and that, as they say, was that.

I've just heard tghe one released cut, and my first impression was that it was a bari player, that's how dark his tone was. I think his playing sounds like a rougher version of the style heard on Breakthrough, which, depending on how you feel about that session, may or may not be dissuasive from pursuing the Steeplechase cut. Myself, I think he sounds wholly Mobley apart from the tone (and that too is pure Mobley at its core, in spite of the surface cloudiness). His lines, phrasing, and timing could come from nobody else. But there is an air of combined sadness and desperation to the emotional vibe that is pretty gut-wrenching. Again, this is a lot like how I hear him on Breakthrough, but I'll readily admit that that's a totally subjective call.

That was a family member, iirc, mother, aunt, maybe even grandmother. Never really sure exactly when the embochure problems began. Late 70s or early 80s, wasn't it? I wasn't really surprised to hear about it, though. Every time I see footage of Shepp playing, it's like he's damn near swallowing the mouthpiece and blowing really forcibly. Couple that with what sounds to me like the use of a pretty stiff reed, and you got a recipe for some kind of physical distress at some point or another.

A groovy player indeed! Back in the late 1970s, a college buddy of mine and myself found out that the President of either the Tulsa or Oklahoma City AFM was a drummer named Hugh Walker. We thought about calling up the Local and checking out if it was this same cat, but we never did. This was when long distance was expensive for college students and all that. A Google search for "Hugh Walker" drummer Oklahoma turned up this hit http://don.munday.tripod.com/id4.htm which suggests indirectly that a Hugh Walker either lived/played in Oklahoma and/or still does.

There are no wrong opinions. The sound of the electric piano in R&B (can anyone imagine Marvin Gaye's "Grapevine" without it?) is great, but I'd rather have Bill Evans, Cedar Walton and Tommy Flanagan stick to the acoustic instrument. Walton I can kinda go either way on, but for the other two I'm witcha. Although Flanagan's "Good Bait" on Rhodes was SWEEEEET! But yeah, right hands, right place, like I said. I think of electric pianos, Rhodes in particular, in terms of texture and color, and it's a texture and color that isn't going to work for every player in every setting. But personally, I prefer George Cable on electric. Joe Sample too.

And not unlike the use of handclaps.

Understood. all I'm wondering is if over time (more time than any of us have, I'm sure), "history" turns "influential" and "great" into one and the same thing.

The beast killed itself, but there's still some good life left in the bones for anybody whose spirit is pure.

As somebody who's not particularly concerned with neither canon nor cognoscenti, all I can say is "oh well!" Seriously though, look at all the great creators whose music has changed as their lives have. Louis Armstrong, Lester Young, Bud Powell, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Ornette Coleman, Joni Mitchell, the aforementioned Elvis Costello, Paul Simon, the list goes on. And on. They all have had to deal with a certain fan element saying "yeah, I guess what they're doing now is ok, but it ain't like the old stuff", and they're not saying that as an objective critique. Of course, we're all entitled to our preferences. I certainly have mine. But let's be realistic - how many "greast" artists just all of a sudden wake up one day and aren't great any more? The shit just runs off into the night to find a new home. Oh well, that was fun while it lasted. It does happen, but usually what happens is that the greatness is still there, it just coimes out in different ways, ways that are often less obvious than before, and/or ways that allow for the middle-aged propensity for needing a little extra room for comfort. Now, tahnks to recordings, and the tendency of many people to "know" this music either whooly or mostly through recordings, it's real easy to locked into thinking that the guy who made such-and-such records back in the day is going to stay the same person forever, and therefore keep making the same type music. If you're an "act" who crates "product", well, yeah, I guess you can do that if you want. It's not that hard to do. But for everybody else, hey - shit changes. Your body changes, your mind changes, your desires change, everything changes sooner or later. An old man who plays like a young man is either a freak or a fool, dig? Not so much in therms of energy, but in terms of "point of view". After a while, burning down the house is not as appealing as building one, if for no other reason that as you get older, you kinda like having some comfort in your life, because, frankly...you need it! Shit starts to ache and pain and stuff like that. Raising hell is not nearly as much fun as it used to be, because the morning after starts lasting into the afternoon, and then on into the next night. I speak from personal experience... Now, some guys just don't give a shit. they're going to go all out until they burn out. More power to 'em. But that's a personal choice they make, and I'm not going to be the one to say that it's wrong or right, jsut as I'm not going to say that it's wrong or right to seek a little comfort. Coasting is one thing, a fundamentally different thing (and a fundamentally wrong thing imo), but "pacing" yourself (and your aims) isn't the same thing as coasting. I'm reminded of the story of the old bull and the young bull. They're up on a hill top, gazing down upon the herd, and the young bull says to the old bull, "My my my! Look at all those cows down there. What say we run down there and get us one right now?" The old bull says, after a long pause, "Why don't we walk down there and get 'em all over the next few days?" The old bull was not without wisdom...

That's precisely what's so disconcerting to me... cause I can't sense it, either. I'm of the mind that Shepp played through his limitations--and not because of them. It feels as if the negative implication of the 'Shepp always wanted to be a changes player' is the latter concern (that he couldn't), but I'm glad you put in your two cents--there's a dimension to that idea that's far more positive, more in line with what Shepp articulates emotionally (and not just technically). Dude - "limitations" are only there when they're there, and most in the 60s Shepp, I don't really hear them as being there, so there were really no "limitations" to play through! I mean, if you want to paint fruit, and can do so splendidly, how big of a limitation is it if you can't paint dogs, unless you decide that you want to paint dogs? And I in now way meant to imply that Shepp always wanted to be a changes player. Frankly, I think that it was pretty far off his personal radar for most of teh 1960s. Like I said, there were more "pressing priorities" in the 60s, musically and socially, than getting your changes together. So once again, the perception that there were limitations is based on the premise that he was doing something otehr than what he really wanted to do, and that's not a premise to which I subscribe. Before and after, yeah, probably. But during? I don't think so. The times when he did play changes in the 60s show him playing them just fine, using his vocabulary of the time, at times masterfully creating a whole new way of playing changes (a way that was certainly evolutionary, but also entirely his own). It was after the fire died down that I think he took stock and decided to go back and re-evaluate. And there was some rough sledding there for a few years, because he was trying NOT to play like he did before. Why that is, we can only speculate. but I'm sure he had his reasons. Definitely "musical", and probably personal as well. People change as they age, and I don't think it's really fair or accurate to judge one phase in terms of another. Goals, means, everything can be, and often is, different from one time to another in the same person, so you don't necessarily want to compare the apples of one phase of a person's life to the oranges of another. That works with some people, but not with others. And Shepp is one of those for whom I think it doesn't.