JSngry

And I ran out of money at the table just as I was getting ready to get a Full House, 4 Queens, and a Royal Flush.

Great as it may be, it's still Wal-Mart.

Actually, this was the beginning of the Ellingotn "resurgance". Johnny Hodges was back, and that wasn't all. Duke was always redoing his older material. Examples abound. He also did two sides of other big band leaders hist in the early 60s. Even on that Bethlehem side, there was a new piece or two. I often wonder how Duke felt about being on Capitol. The years he was with the label soincided with on of Stan Kenton's peak periods of popularity. Kenton's music was being hyped as "modern", "progressive", and all that, whereas Ellington....well, if Kenton was "now" for the label, what was Duke? I wonder...

I think it proves that there is genuine communication going on. It's pretty easy to mock a Kenny G audience, most of whom we'd rather not spend any time with under any circumstances; less so a Cannonball audience... And I know what you mean about jazz' liberational qualities, but I look at it like that's just one quality that jazz can have. It can also be, in the right hands and in the right circumstances, and extremely comfortable "social" music as well, and for that, it needs nothing more than to just be what it and its audience both are. I'm not at all bothered by that, and actually think that the overall health of the music is served by having that "social" sector of the music functioning as actively as possible. Like the macrobiotic cats say, the bigger the front, the bigger the back. Sometimes just being able to connect with your own natural self is all the liberation you need. Be it Cannonball or Kenny G, the possibility does exist that there's no communication going on in some cases simply because the message has no real relevance to us. But that doesn't make the communication that does exist any less valid, nor does it mean that those who do get communicated to by those musics are gullible or unsophisticated (I hate to say that about a Kenny G audience, but if I'm honest, I'm going to have to admit that there ae fans of his who are otherwise rational, intellegent human beings. But I still wouldn't want to spend any time with them ). I really do think that "jazz criticism" as a whole would be better served by starting on the inside and working outward, at least in terms of why certain things have been so popular in certain communities. Cannonball, Lou Donaldson, Gene Ammons, the Crusaders, none of these people were as popular as they were because they "dumbed down" their music. There's more to it than that. That music had a flavor, and it was the flavor of everyday life for the people who dug it. And out of that flavor came the more "refined" (in the eyes of the "outside world") flavors. It's not the other way 'round! It was made for "them", not for "us". Those of "us" who dug it soon discovered a world that many "jazz fans" don't come into contact with on a social basis, a radically different world than that of the "hardcore" jazz world, but those two worlds have a helluva lot more in common than they have differences. You already know this, dude, you have to know this. Like the Dexter thing, you're opinion is perfectly valid, but your "sociology" is a little skewed, I think. Certainly not malevolently so, as you have been accused of, but I wonder if you've ever enjoyed a fine bottle or twenty of Champale or made love to Major Harris? Well, not actually to Major Harris...

More interesting to whom? Liberate it from what? Gentility has no place in funk/jazz? I know that it's damn near impossible not to bring our own perspectives/wants/needs/expectations/etc into our evaluations, but aren't these the doppelganger equivalents of the criticisms that Anthony Braxton's music isn't "black enough" to be "real jazz"? It's like "funk(y)" only comes in one form. I can't buy that. Funk(y) is people, not a theory or a formula (in spite of industry attempts and rewards to make it otherwise).

Nothing faux about Cannonball's funk, imo. If anything, that was more who he was at root than anything else - a fat, bass fishing, unhealthy food eatin' (check pout Nat's recipe for Souse in Jazz Cooks and marvel that he lived as long as he did...) Southern cat who just happened to have really big ears and phemominal chops. A true "man of the people" in a way that few post-bebop jazz musicians have been. Although there's certainly been (and continues to be) plenty of posing going on in the jazz-funk field (which is fundamentaly a different beast than the jazzz-rock thing, and in more ways than one), I never got even a hint that Cannonball was faking it. Ask youself this: which was more of a construct - "Fiddler On the Roof" or "Why Am I Treated So Bad"? On which one do you think that he had to "come to from the outside" more? Where was he from first - New York or Florida? I'm hip to all the "sophisticated" (and often enough, justified) complaints about funk-jazz, but jeez, these cats didn't live in a vaccum, and I don't for one second doubt that in at least some instances, some people played it because they enjoyed connecting with the people - their people. In fact, on Black Messiah, when Cannonball introduces the horrid (to my ears anyway) rock stylings of Mike Deasy, he makes it clear that going this far into a rock bag was not what him and his band were usually about. So the blanket assumption that it was all done to compete in some form or fashion with "rock" is not necessarily an astute assessment of the situation. No doubt, some cats went the way they went for the money (if only just the extent of being able to keep working). But I don't think that Cannonball was one of them. I think that he was a truly hip cat who dug playing for people. "Populism" always seems to cause problems of one sort or another amngst the cognoscenti, but good god, what the hell is wrong with giving "the masses" some good, honest, soulful "simple" music, especially if you can bring the other stuff along with it? Seems like a win/win to me - the musicians get to work, the people get sastified, the musicians get a little somthin-somthiin for themselves here and there, the people get their ears stretched a little bit here and there, and a good time is had by all. Everybody goes home happy. If that's totally alien to who you are, well then yeah, don't try to go there. To thine ownself and all that. But if you dig people, and dig playing for people, hey... That might not be "art", probably isn't in fact, but if it's not a valid, organic way to make music of at least some intrinsic merit, if it's all bullshit all the time, then fuck art. Art will have done got too big for its britches.

No - "classsical" material on one side, "jazz" on the other. The jazz stuff is all big-band save for a quartet last cut. I'm wagering that BMG never gets to this one. Call me a cynic, but I bet that they don't even know about it any more...

As much as I don't want to, if Washington gets past Seattle I'm going to have to seriously start thinking "Team Of Destiny"...

Should be mighty fine, based on their previous collaboration.

I'm using my son's computer until my replacement fan gets in, and on his monitor, I swear that this thread looked like "Dean Martin". I kid you not. I was fixing to say, you're a brave man... So, how did the Nelson stuff grab you?

The Capitols are in serious need of re-evaluation, not for what they present on the surface, but for what they provide by implication, which is glimpses, sometimes fleeting, sometimes fully exposed - but never at album's length - of Cannonball's evolution. I included the title cut from The Happy People on my last BFT, and judging by the response, if I hadn't have left in the spoken introduction of the band, not that many people would've guessed that it was Cannonball. That's how much he evolved. And then you got the even later "Stars Fell On Alabama" from Phoenix - try that one on somebody who stopped listening after the Riversides and see what the reaction is! The version from the album that prompted this discussion is a stone classic, but this one is a whole 'nother thing! The thing is, none (or very few) of the post-Riverside albums have as their goal Showcasing The Evolution & Musical Growth Of Cannonball Adderley. They're coming from someplace else, which is totally cool and all that. There's some really fine stuff in there (the best stuff on Black Messiah is a total motherfucker), but the're geared towards the "total presentation" bag, and that was (and is) a beautiful thing in that it gets the vibe out to a much broader audience. But if you're listening, you can hear it anyway. It's in there. As for that other thing, I really don't know what purpose it would serve, or what would be done with it after it was compiled, but if there's a genuine demand (and that's a huge if, I think), far be it from me to get in the way of that demand being met.

Princess Di Bud Collier Kitten Natividad

After so thoroughly (and sincerly) bad-mouthing Ms. Crothers' work, it would be dishonest of me not to mention that I have since heard this pleasurable album: Crothers herself still raises more questions (not necessarily good ones) than she answers here, but I do hear something that I hadn't heard (like, a conscience...) in previous encounters with her music. So I'll back off the previous diatribe. At least somewhat. The real trip on this side though, is Richard Tabnik, whose alto playing combines a Dolphy-esque sound and sense of attack with lines and shapes that recall, of all things, Teo Macero's tenor playing w/Mingus. How's that for a stylistic link - Teo & Dolphy? Wow.... Poet Mark Webeer also contributes a few things here, and they are all quite nice. There's a tribute to Warne that is all Beat just like you'd (probably) expect it to be, but it works, and it's true. Quite moving, actually. I lived in Albuquerque for a couple years in the very early 1980s, and there was nothing like this going on ("So What" was considered "modern"!). But this side has me wondering if I should move back. Probably not, but.... Anyway, this is a good side, recommended with considered enthusiasm. You gotta be into Tristano, and you gotta be into post-Tristano Tristano-ites for what/who they are, and you gotta dig a little poetry here and there. But if none of that isn't a problem, I can safely say that this one will bring at least a little pleasure. It certainly don't suck!

Hugh Brannum Bunny Rabbit Hugh Heffner

I'd even argue that "technical mastery" is imperitive to creating great music. But (and this is a big but...) "Technical Mastery" in this music means having the ability to make the instrument do what you want it to do how you want it to be done, and at any time you want to do it. It does not mean being able to play the instrument according to a pre-ordained set of criteria that may or may not have anything to do with the message needing to be expressed. That's a big difference.

I really like the implications (all of 'em) of the title "Not So Unusual blues".

I think that Ball was profoundly affected by Trane during their time together. Hell, who woudn't be? I also think that it took him quite a while to fully and comfortably assimilate Trane's vocabulary and to find a way for it to fit within his personal tonal and rhythmic character. We all listen to Milestones and Kind Of Blue like they're "perfect" records, maybe because in the end they are, but if you want to look at it really objectively and put yourself inside the mindsof the players instead of "receiving" the music as a listener, I think that you can hear Cannonball "scuffling" in a sense on these albums. Not in a "lost" kind of way, far from it. But you hear his normally fluid rhythmic pulse being broken up/down as he attempts, in my mind consciously, to get inside what Trane was doing. I don't hear it so much (hardly at all, infact) on the non-modal material, but on things like "So What", it's like he's wondering "Where's the goddam changes? When's the next one coming? What am I going to do until it does? How does Trane do this shit? Help me, John, HELP ME!" And really, there's no shame in that. There would have been shame if he'd just did like a lot of players in the immediate post-KOB time did and string together cliches that fit and offer up a winkingly faux version of Modal Jazz Ain't It Hip Y'All!?!?!?!!!!!! But he didn't do that. He was trying to deal with it, and he didn't seem to be afraid to step on his dick more than a few time in the process. And in the end, he did deal with it, although by the time that he seemed to have fully gotten a personal grip on it - mid-60s is what seems right to my ears - he was making the type of records that didn't have as their main goal showing that he had. But good lord, listen to something like "Chocolate Nuisance" off of Black Messiah, or any other one of those Capitol cuts where the music gets out unfiltered, and you're hearing a guy who had gotten it all under control. It took him a while, and he did it sort of "on the sly" career-wise, but bygod, he got it done. And that's why I love Cannonball Adderley.

Spoken like a man who has never been touched by the grace of inspiration. You have my sympathy. I know you don't want it, but you have it anyway.

Not even if the adaptation is being used to promote, say, Christmas in Mississippi? Intent and effect are not always synchronious...

Dude, you really don't get it, and I think that you don't want to get it for what are shaping up to be "personal reasons". Diiferent strokes, and all that. But I gotta wonder - if the "little things" don't matter, what makes the "big things" come to pass? I guess they just happen all at once without any help. Evolution is a series of randon cataclysmic upheavals, eh? There are no canaries in the mineshaft along the way? Ever? Unless they're Boomer-related?

Oh. Bummer.

A good friend just hipped my to poet/vocalist/whatever (mostly poet, I guess) Tyrone Henderson - two sides on Konnex, and one on Atonal. I dig this cat. The timbre of his speaking voice reminds me of that of Joe Lee Wilson's singing voice, and his poetry is African-American-centric (as opposed to Afro-Centric) from the jazz tip, if you know what I mean (he actually gives thanks to Hank Mobley at the end of one of his pieces, not that that's meaningful in and of itself...). The music's good too, the Konnex sides have Wadada & Fred Hopkins, and the Atonal is a really nicely musically quirky funkjazz groovething. There's some really joyous stuff here, the kind of thing you'd suspect that Gil Scott-Heron would do if nobody was looking (if you, again, know what I mean...). The guy pulls no punches, but dourness seems to be antithetical to his being. Anybody who does a thing called "Jazz & Jesus" which has the lines "I got jazz and Jesus....not necessarily in that order...." and then goes on to talk about nothing but jazz puts a smile on my face, just because. And then there's a thing called "Grandmama" which could easily slip into cliche. Maybe it does, but the guy turns the word into a badass drum rhythym and just dances with it (as does the band). If there's any cliche in the poetry, I was too busy dancing along with everybody else on the record to get stressed by it. Thing is, I'm just now finding out about this Tyrone Henderson cat, and I feel as if I should have known about him long before now. Educate me, please!

I'm still wondering how we can all unite by giving up 50% just to get in the door... Shouldn't he say Musicians of the world half-unite?

Jeremy Irons James Woods Ann Wedgeworth

Jack Johnson vs Cellar Door is studio constructions (and all that implies) vs live sets (and all that implies). Apples & oranges, really, I think.