JSngry

Are you sure about those being the cuts?

Raul Julia Eddie Louis Richard Dreyfus

That's "gentlemens", if you please.

I'm glad to see the Nance, if only so you - the Jazz Public - can help me decide if that is or isn't a pre-Aunt Esther LaWanda Page on the cover. I'm serious.

Won't that be part of the Mosaic? ← It's got a string quartet, so I don't know...

Have you seen that Jazz Casual spot of Lloyd's? There are gyrations and facial expressions worthy of the very worst rock bands of the time. If Spinal Tap was to ever hire a tenor player, they'd use this set as a role model of how the guy should behave while playing. And Jarrett ain't no better... I'm somebody who'd always liked that era Lloyd as "good music" of a usually smaller scale than a lot of other things from the same time, and felt, like you, that the backlash was mostly a combination of reaction against his popularity relative to the overall "heaviness" of the music. But frankly, after seeing those tortuous (and less than convincing) stage moves, I understood the backlash much better.

I agree to an extent...I just find that some players end up like 'painting by numbers' imitations of the innovators. Running the same scales, licks, etc...Sounding like the innovator becomes a guiding principle, from there a set of rules, and ultimately hinders freedom of expression (a freedom which is presumably the core attraction of the innovation in the first place)... ← Sure. But imitators are going to be imitators no matter what, don't you think? It's a character flaw of sorts, and if they didn't have something new to imitate, I thiink they'd just end up imitating something older.

Cy Young Ransom Eli Olds Tommy Agee

What are the tunes? There's a private tape of Joe doing a loooong version of "Invitation" that is freakin' hypnotic...

Fair enough, but for me, the most personal aspect of his playing was always his tone and articulation, neither of which really changed. What did change was his approach to harmony and the shape of his lines as a result. The different intervals required a somewhat different phraseology. I do miss his loose, natural swing of the earlier days, but I feel that it's compensated for by a different type of swing, one that's not as loose, but in the end just as propulsive. Mileages will vary on that one, obviously, and yeah, there were certainly some awkward moments along the way. But overall, I think he came out of it ok. I really don't think, though, that "trying to be "hip"" does justice to what he was going after. No varitones, blatant/overt Trane-isms, or other "popular devices", mechanical or otherwise. I just think that he was a serious musician who wanted to continue to develop his knowledge and continue to grow as a player rather than stay in the same one bag all his life (which, as you say, was a damn good bag to begin with). It's not like he totally abandoned his core approach, he just continued to develop and modify it as he learned new stuff. A "restless conservatism" if you will, and if that's as ultimately futile as trying to move to a new city be simply redecorating your house, so be it. That's just how some people are wired, don't you think?

That's the one!

Sonny Stitts Art Blakesly Wayne Marsh

Well, yeah. The Polydor contract (huge, iirc) started of w/"Hot Pants" and yielded a lot of good singles as well as some dynamite, if at times "sprawling", albums (Hell in particular stands out as one that is equal parts masterpiece and crap, although the cover is about as classic as it could be), but I agree that in retrospect you can hear the decline beginning pretty early on into it. The cat was seemingly releasing a new single every thirty minutes, and radio was playing all of 'em for just about as long, with the good/great ones sticking around. But LORD was there a bunch of filler getting hyped. Sooner or later, the trance was bound to burst.

Hell, I don't even like playing alto and bari, much less flute and clarinet. Dabbled in oboe and bassoon long enough to say "Fuck THIS" . So a guy like Penque gets my respect. No love, but plenty of respect.

Rest. Rest in peace.

Well, I've got most of the original LPs from this period, and the compilation, which I also have (dorry, just the one copy, had no idea it was such a "hot" item, I'll keep my eyes open for another copy for you) is actually a godsend in terms of culling all the good stuff from the period. I think that the best of it is pretty damn fine, anf that there's more of it than just a few cuts, but the point that this was a pretty damn depressing period for JB is well taken nevertheless. Some of those albums, entire albums mind you, are pretty awful. How did it happen? I think it was a combination of Brown's oversized ego not letting him accept the fact that the music he helped spawn was becoming more sophisticated musically, the natural evolution of public tastes, and just plain ol' running out of ideas. Put them all together, and you a classic case of "loss of direction". Brown was pretty vocal during the latter part of the 70s in blaming his record label for forcing him into some kind of different bag, but the evidence suggests that he was still calling the shots, and that he mostly didn't have a clue as to what he needed to do to respond to the changing market. On the occasions when he did get it right, the results were either a hit ("Get Up Off That Thing" was a pretty big hit as a single) or else too rawly produced for the market's tastes of the time. I mean, 70s albums like Sex Machine Today & Take A Look At Those Cakes will groove you to death as much as the old stuff, but they're still full of the same old same old - nonstop vamps with next to no "literal" lyrics other than a few catch phrases and JB rapping to the band. At first, this formula worked because it was some intense shit - you got the feeling that you were listening to a man harnessing the power of the universe in real time and then doling as much of it out at once as his mind and body coud stand at any one second. But as time went by, it sounded more and more like he had gotten comfortable with the routine, and what once was a burning slice of spontaniety had become a formula, and a pretty basic one at that. Truthfully, I think you can hear the ennui beginning to settle in towards the end of the Fred Wesley era, but there was still enough residual mojo to make it work for all concerned for a little while. But once the edge was fully gone, so was the magic, and people began to laugh at the simplistic nature of it all (Franklyn Ajaye had a brutal bit about JB on one of his albums back in the day. Not as brutal as his bit on Barry White, though...). In a few short years, James Brown had gone from Force Of Nature to Laughing Stock in the eyes of his community. Other bands were bringing the funk just as hard (well, harder than JB was, not harder than JB had), and they also delivered the "pleasures" of real lyrics and musical diversity in terms of arrangements and production values. Brown at first responded by not responding, and then by grafting the most superficial elements of disco/new funk onto his same basic formula. Whatever the reasons - his own musical ignorance, his own personal stubborness (which I suspect to be the main reason), or a lack of budgetary support from Polydor (unlikely at first, but more likely as the decade wore on and sales continued to plummet), Brown's output in the 70s was mostly a series of one album after another of poor material equally poorly executed. "Dire" doesn't begin to sum up some of these albums... Still, there were moments, and a (very) few really fine whole albums, such as the two mentioned above and most of Jam/1980's, that made up for in cold stone groove what they lack in edge. This compilation collects most of them. Find yourself a copy of it and the severely overlooked live set Hot On The One, and you'll have pretty much all you really need from this period of Brown's career.

Penque's niche was that of the all-purpose woodwind doubler (he even played oboe/english horn), not jazz soloist. Need a guy to play 3-4, maybe even 5 axes on a session date, somebody who could play the parts with the necessary interpretation(s)? He was your guy, or one of them. Seems like every album I have him on, he's doubling (or more!). Saved the contractors the expense of hiring an extra guy (or two), and put money in his pocket as well from all the doubling fees he collected. Win/win! Judging by all the sessions he did, I suspect that he was one helluva reader as well as a fine section player - then as now, time is money in the studio, and if he didn't have the skills to get it right ASAP, he'd not have gotten the calls. That's a talent unto itself!

We have a vinyl set of it here at the station and you're right, Jim, it's excellent. ← Just to make sure - you're talking about the FD original with the "full frontal" cover, not the RCA/Bluebird reissue of the same name but totally different contents, right?

I'd be more enthusiastic about this set if it included the Flying Dutchman Black Brown & Beautiful. Does Cuscuna have ANY pull w/the RCA folks? Are there any left to pull?

Juniper? That's not beer, that's GIN! And what's up w/all the old-timers talking about gin putting lead in your pencil? Never worked that way for me.

Although I've gotten good haircuts from men (barbers & stylists), I have to say that I've been most consistently pleased with the haircuts I get from women, all things being equal (I've been butchered by both sexes as well). Although I enjoy the male-bonding ritual aspects of barber shops, it seems that every time a barber gives me a haircut, I leave out of there looking like I'm on my way to an audition for a role in Gil Thorpe or some such. Not my bag... Anyway, not trying to stir up any shit or anything, just curious where you go to get yourself looking like you want to look in terms of tonsorial splendor. The floor is open, and not least of all for sweeping up.

Joe Gordon Joe Morgan Joe Mondragon

I do consider Woody Shaw an "innovator". Not for moving the music ahead per se, but for coming up with a trumpetistical "answer" to the harmonic challenges posed by Trane's early-60s music. It's not sufficient to say that he found a way to "play Trane on the trumpet", because he really did more than that - he really did forge a new language for the instrument, a language that Hubbard only hinted/flirted at. It's a type of innovation that perhaps is best appreciated by musicians and musically knowledgeable fans, but an innovation it is. It's a distinctive vocabulary, and one that didn't exist before he invented it. Based on Trane, certainly, but certainly not wholly imitative. So now we have different degrees of "innovation". Where does that leave us? Same place we always end up - listening to a bunch of different stuff and liking/disliking it for all sort of reasons, only some of which we can easily defend.

Oscar Schindler Elisha Otis Joseph Dart

Of what good are innovations if people don't try and catch up to them? And even if they don't/can't/whatever fully make a permanent leap, isn't the effort still useful in terms of moving the overall "mainstream" ahead? To use a tenor player as an example, I think that Harold Land is a perfect example of somebody who was perpetually "behind the curve", yet his distance behind the curve remained pretty much constant as the curve moved ahead (at least up to the Post-Ayler zone, which isn't so much a curve as it is a whole new world springing out of the old), and his playing remained organic as his vocabulary shifted. He was never an innovator, yet he continued to grow as a player. for every Hubbard, who experimented often (and sincerely) but ultimately reamined true to his original style, there's a Land, who moves ahead and never goes back, always behind "the curve" but still ahead of where they used to be. Well, maybe there's not a 1/1 equivalency, but you know what I mean... Innovation is not everybody's destiny. But surely the opportunity to grow is. Lots of wasted opportunities, retrenchment, etc. follow, sure, but that's life, for better or worse.