JSngry

Hey, the dude's in Columbia. No paper trails allowed...

Call me Old School, but since the Prestige Earland was the one that I came up with, it's the one I'd recommend first. A bit of a hit in its day, part of the soundtrack of many an urban club for many a year, and just plain groove to spare. "More Today Than Yesterday" still gets played on local jazz radio today, and that doesn't bother me at all. Lee Morgan & Billy Harper turn up here, as well as on FUNK FANTASTIQUE, and are not at all wasted or minimized on either. My chronology might be off, but I remember this as being the last "real" organ record before the drought of the mid-1970s took place (yes, Virginia, there was a time when nobody was making swinging, small group organ records!). Some empty, fusion-y filler, but mostly good solid blowing, with the Freddie & Joe in very solid form. This is the Earland that caught my ear back in the day, and as such, it maintains an allure that his later albums don't, not becuase they are inferior, but just because they follow on in the same territory, with the horn players doing likewise. It's ALL a groove (Earland is Latin for "PARTY!!!!!", in case you didn't know... ), but Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Billy Harper, & Joe Henderson are pretty strong persuaders, if you know what I mean. The only REALLY bad Earlland records I know of are the Mercury sides and a soundtrack album he did for Prestige, all of which are full of synthisizers and dull "funk" rhythms. Everything else is of a piece, and a good piece it is. HOWEVER... If you do vinyl, look out for Earland's mid/late-70s Muse sides. A lot of them have George Coleman, Bill Hardman, and Jimmy Ponder/Melvin Sparks, and coming as they did in the middle of The Great Organ Drought, got overlooked. An added attraction on one (some? My memory's not so hot...) is Philly tenor great Bootsi Barnes, who plays some REALLY hip shit. So be on the lookout.

Still no mention of the role that sleep apnea played in his death? If anybody has a link to relevant info re:this particular case, I'd apprecaiate it.

Still working on that one myself. I think I get it but just don't like it, but maybe not.. Any help?

I started reading DB regularly in 1970, when Morgenstern was editor, and don't remember the type of staged confrontations mentioned above. As memory serves, they occured during the earlier part of the 1960s. I forget who the editor was then. But the Morgenstern-edited DB that I came to was a delight (and bi-monthly!). The very first issue I came across had Ornette & Captain Beefheart on the cover. A few months later, there was the Louis Armstrong tribute issue to commemorate his passing. Both issues were chock-full of artivles, reviews, commentary, etc. that I still refer to today, as is the case with most of the issues from that time. The magazine of that time also took full advantage of its being based in Chicago, and drew upon a significant number of local writers, which not only gave us some truly great writing (Mssrs Kart & Litweiler, for example), but also some early-ish "mainstream" media documentation of the AACM, documentation that would have been lost if Morgenstern had insisted on the NYC-centric perspective of his predecessors. The rock coverage was, uh..."intereting", but in both senses of the word. It's worth remembering that DB readers voted Jimi Hendix into the magazine's Hall Of Fame, long before a huge numberr of jazz greats had been so honored, and there were actually calls for Morgenstern to revoke the honor. He steadfastly refused, and continued to let rock have a place in the magazine. Considering the tenor of the times, musically as well as socially, I don't see how he could have done otherwise.

Indeed.

This bothers me, since I have pretty bad sleep apnea and am somewhat overweight. Has there been any further exposition of exactly what happened to kill him and how?

Try Sevin, and lots of it.

Don't ask once you know.

whoa... really? really? please tell us ** that ** story, dadd-i-o.

There go the dinosaurs.

Where you BEAN? HAppy Birfthay!

Just opened this up, and its there in black and white: Tina Brooks - tenor Not sure why people were talking about trying to identify the members of the band, and whether its Tina or not. It was a case of people who hadn't yet gotten the DVD relaying information from those who had. Sometimes accidents happen, and misinformation gets passed along as fact. Glad that that is not the case here.

And this...is a problem for me. Because where Williams went in his tone was that hiw opinions were authoritative, that he knew and it was your job to learn. Not that this was how the music struck him, but that this is what the music was. Well, cool, teach me. And I learned. but as I continued to learn more about the mechanics of music, the more I learned that sometimes (and sometimes uncomfortably so) the teacher was blowing smoke in a way that made me wonder - if this cat was so damn SURE about what he was hearing, and if what he was hearing wasn't really what was THERE, how much could I, no - SHOULD I believe that what he was telling me that I needed to hear in the music really was there, much less that it was what I needed to be hearing. Even when he was right, he was sometimes just half-right. Which is better than not being right at all, but hardly justification for me to be enamored of and with the authoritative stance that came with it, a stance that seemed/seems to be lovingly recieved in some quarters. Like I said, a problem for me that continues to this day. Maybe you had to be there...

I have some of those in my back yard but still don't quite know what they are supposed to represent. Any light in my dark yard? Try Sevin, and lots of it.

Indeed. To hear him, Big Joe Turner, and Sonny Stitt together, all getting on up there in years, and none in outstanding form, is nevertheless something to hear, even if it's not necessarily "good". It's too good to worry about whether or not it's good. Not what you're shouting about, I know (and I do know what you're shouting about) but still...

And I think you're mistaken if you think that the whole "gotta play IN THE TRADITION" trip hasn't infiltrated the whole structure of jazz to the point that it affects the people who spend the money, and since the (mostly) demise of the organic jazz community (at least in America) has made these cats a significant source of income and opportunity to get some "exposure", the music's being framed accordingly. Not cool, not good musical focus, and to the extent that efforts are being directed towards producing music that fits a to one degree or another imposed philosophy, over-intellectualized. Yes. I think I can tell the difference, and that's what I'm so pissed at - the over-emphasis on bad intellectualism. If you think that I have any reservations in principal about the mingling of jazz and intellectualism, think again. But the music must always be the source of the intellectualisation, not the other way around. Good theory stems from contemplating successful practice, not the other way around. I mean, it ain't like Lincoln Center is producing The Harlem Renaissance II (or III). And not just because Lincoln Center ain't in Harlem either.

To what do you attribute the shift, Jim? Bereneoboppers of all stripes and all occupations who wanted the times to represnt them rather than vice-versa. Them and Reagan kinda were made for each other, loathe as they'd each be to admit it.

Of course it can. You think I'd post this much about stuff like this if it wasnn't? But... but... I thought we were paying you! We should be, anyway. Cash?

Actually, the full quote was Maybe the other pasts don't mean anything to you, but they do to me, becuase they are the gist of my point - namely that jazz was once music that existed as part of everyday life first and then fodder for intellectual speculation (in both creation and appreciation), instead of what it has now quite often become - intellectual fodder first and foremost. I don't like the shift. And if that's "anti-intellectual", so be it. I don't think it is, simply because I have no problem with the intellectual component of the music and the culture. None whatsoever.

Of course it can. You think I'd post this much about stuff like this if it wasnn't? Although, it was the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that caused The Fall...

Wow...

Yeah, but they're going to try thier damnsdest, aren't they...

Larry, I couldn't agree more, in spite of the turn my writings in this thread have taken. I wish I could have known Martin Williams personally, at least in passing. The "stick up the butt" aspect of his writing that I noted earlier is what sets me off, and from what you and others have said, this was not really the dominant aspect of his love of the music. If it's the part that I react most excitably to, it's probably because the writings are all I have, and the writings do inspire admiration and suspicion in (roughly) equal portions. I've always operated on The Pleasure Principal first and foremost (sorry , simon, if that translates to "anti-intellectual" to you), and Williams' various writings seem to, at times, run counter to that, at least in underlying tone. From what you've written about your experiences with him, it seems that sometimes he did run counter to it, but sometimes isn't always, or even usually, and that's where I think the advantage of having known him personally would have positively affected my mixed perceptions of his writings.

to be one that can be, and is, being used in more malevolent minds than yours, mine , and ours (saw it on cable a few nights ago!) to create this smog over jazz that has too many players and fans alike worried about what it is and isn't and who MATTERS more than who, not on a personal level but on a "historical" level, which is all well and good, but geez, don't you miss the days when jazz was just what it was where it was when it was just because that's just what it WAS? Could this be a sign of the times? Going back to the question of Sonny Rollins and 1949, might it be that the state of jazz was such in 1949 that all young artists really needed to do was tune into the here and now. After all, Bird had most of the (relevant) past, present and future summed up in one. Since the 1970s and (especially) the 1980s, the outlook has been increasingly backward looking, toward finding something somehwere in the past that can bring back the magic of the golden age. The extreme realization of this is the artist who makes a conscious effort to embody the entire history of jazz from Jelly Roll Morton on up. Personally, I think that the difference between Sonny's 1949 and our now is that Sonny came up in a time and a place where the music existed, literally, as a part of the fiber of everyday life. On the radio, in the clubs, in people's houses for recreations, so on and so on. The art sprung out of the realities of everyday lives of the people making it. Now it seems that too often, the art is attempting to spring out of the realities of the glories of the past, which is a whole 'nother proposition, one that I feel is doomed to get you only halfway, at best, to where you want to go. Could it be that the reality of the everyday life of today is just too damn ugly for many to even attempt to find the glory in it? Perhaps, but that's conceding the battle before it's even fought, which is what I think is happening far too often these days. And really, that's a piss-poor excuse. Because it allows for the ugliness to spread unchecked, which really DOES lead to the destruction of the beauty that struggles to coexist alongside the ugly. I mean, there's really no good reason for a young jazz musician of today to not be looking at elements of hip-hop as an ingredient of their music. No good reason whatsoever. It's an unavoidable ingredient of today, period. But when you got folks all up in arms about "preserving the tradition" and all that stuff, the emphasis shifts to building museums for the past rather than creating something for the musems of the future to have something to put on display. And when the people building the museums seem to be more than willing to accomodate this impulse... Yuck. The problem is not that Martin Williams played a big part in creating a codification of the jazz tradition. Not at all, it needed to be done, and he did the best he could, which was pretty damn good. The problem is that people who should have had their priorities elsewhere decided that perpetuating that tradition was simply a matter of codifying it and replicating it in myriad forms. NOT the same thing.... Because the tradition was doing just fine perpetrating itself, as evidenced by the abundance of various and varied riches that Williams had to write about. The good news is that his writing helped many to better realize some of what it was that they had seen. The bad news, which is not really his fault, is that it sent many off looking for the same thing all over again, and they set out to find it where they thought it should be in the form they thought it should be. Which is, I'm afraid, a path to finding more of what you already know instead of more of what you don't. It would be the cruellest of ironies if Martin Williams was the unintentional "father" of Wynton Marsalis. But this is a possibility that I think has to be considered to at least some degree, and at no expense to Williams' very real positive contributions. I know that Albert Murray gets the "credit" for the ideologies of Marsalis and Crouch both, but maybe, just maybe, Williams helped till the soil that they have so "effectively" sown. That certainly wasn't his intent, I'm certain, but the road to hell...