JSngry

Still perplexed at the lack of love for DIPPIN'...

http://www.dustygroove.com/jazzcd4.htm#359469 Buddy's in Miami -- but that doesn't mean he's on vacation -- as the set's a hard burner that ranks as one of his best sides for Verve of the 50s! The set was recorded live at the Dream Bar at the Johnina Hotel in Miami -- and Buddy's leading an interesting groove that includes Verve wailer Flip Phillips on tenor sax, plus the much more understated Peter Ind on bass and Ronnie Ball on piano. The combination of players in the quartet makes for a very interesting sound -- as at some points it seems as if Phillips and Rich are taking off entirely on their own -- making for a tenor/drum groove that's mighty nice! Tracks include "Lover Come Back To Me", "Topsy", "Undecided", "Broadway", and "Jumpin At The Woodside". Buddy Rich, Flip Phillips, Ronnie Ball, and... Peter Ind? What would Lennie say?

Don't know. I only have the OJC LP.

Like I said, I stand by my statements and will not be drawn into a debate on them. Think what what you want. I've said all I am going to say on the matter. If you want to have the last word, post now. It's yours.

Well, yeah. First of all, you gotta find the Flyiong Dutchman BLACK BROWN & BEAUTIFUL (NOT the Bluebird reissue of the same name). That one is....whew. Then there's THREE SHADES OF BLUE, also on FD, w/Nelson, Leon Thomas, and Johnny Hodges. A lot of this one is on the Bluebird BB&B, so if worse come to worse... But hey - you've not heard "Yearnin" until you've heard Rabbit play it. Then there's the recently reissued SOUL ON TOP, by the Godfather & Louis Bellson, arranged in and for full glory by ON. Hell yeah. And also w/Hodges, there's a Verve side by him called THE ELEVENTH HOUR, which tries to fool us into thinking it's an "easy listening" date. Nelson plays along, but breaks every rule imaginable in the process. Priceless, and to my knowledge, LP only, at least in Nonjapania. LIVE FROM LOS ANGELES on Impulse has its detractors, but I'm not one of them, not even slightly. I'll pretty much take a chance on Oliver anytime on somebody else's date if the price is right, and if it's his own date, the right price can be a little higher. I've been disappointed often enough, had expectations met more often than not, and been delighted enough to keep on going for it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

I think it would be cool to give the answers (song titles and leaders only) before sending out the discs and let the challenge be to figure out which cut is which. But it's not so cool that I'M going to do it. Promise.

Just curious which of Oliver's big-band charts you've heard that were "campy". I mean, I'm a HUGE fan, but I'll be the first to admit that he overextended himself and wrote a lot of things that were somewhat perfunctory and/or skeletal, but "campy" is not an adjective that has ever come to mind. Except for maybe some of the TV scores he wrote, and even then, that's camp by context, not content. Not looking to pick a fight or start a debate, just curious about that choice of words, that's all. The thing about his writing and playing alike that I really dig is that it's all "polite" on the outside (usually), yet seethingly, broodingly, dangerously even, tense/intense on the inside. His playing's like that "figuratively", and his writing is like that explicitly - if you just pay attention to the lead lines, sometimest it'll seem kinda "eh...". but listen to the inner voices underneath those lead lines, and WHOA NELLY, we got us one unsettled mofo here! And when he did let the mask fall (which wasn't really all that often - you gotta wonder if that was a contributing factor, besides the oft-cited "overworked", to his death at the tragically young age of 43), you got the power head on. And it was not a gentle power! Yeah, Oliver Nelson is always good with me. Another good OJC is the three tenor side he did w/King Curtis and Jimmy Forrest: Yeah Buddy!

Pete Christlieb came to prominence in the 50s?

For somebody whose childhood in the 60s was frustratingly spent as an Astros fan, this is getting kinda good...

Just in time to be ignored for the holliday season!

Even worse is that I have that cd...

Yes, let's.

A distinguished career deserves a distinguished birthday greeting. Unfortunately, the best I can offer you is sincerest wishes for a great day, and a continued healthy and productive life. Keep on keepin' on.

#4 fascinates. Obviously a "swing to bop" configuration". Note how the clarinetist doesn't even attempt to deal with the chromatic thing. The trumpeter doesn't either, but he's using lots of passing tones in his solo. The tenor player eats it ALL up, and the pianist just gets the bridge. There's also the walking bass and the comp of the piano. I'm guessing that this was recorded for one of the small indie labels that settled w/the AFM before the majors did in when, 1944?. It's definitely got that "in-between" stylistic thing going on. In fact, I could almost guess a very early Lucjy Thompson as the tenorist, but I have no idea who it would be with, especially since everybody but the ppianist was in the same band when this was recorded. The tone's not quite "hard" enough to be Byas (but maybe this is earlier Byas than I know...), the accents are not regular enough to be Hawk, and Chu Berry didn't live into the era. Maybe it's somebody like Georgie Auld in his early days, but the tone sounds a little bit like some very early Lucky that I've heard once or twice. Hey - I'm stumped w/o some more hints. But the more I listen to this one, the more fascinating it gets. That chromatic thing in the A-section really is really a trip, as is the way that the tenor player seems to love it and everybody else just sort of finds a way around it. Shades of Mintons! Which would suggest Byas...

Is that Charlie Shavers on #4?

So we don't like the models on HAPPENINGS & THE NATURAL SOUL, eh? Just goes to show you that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Different strokes, I suppose.

Those were Bruce Lundvall's doing, bless him.

Absolutely. I think it just hurts more when the money's being made by somebody who just uses it as an "effect" and doesn't turn it into something personal. I have no problem w/imitation early on. It's how we learn to do pretty much everything we do, including walking and talking. Now, you take this lady from Chicago I asked about a few days ago, Nicole Mitchell. she does the "singing/speaking while playing" thing too, but she's come up with some new twists on it. I don't think that anybody would be indignant if she ended up getting rich and famous by doing it (not that there's a chance in hell of THAT ever happening, but hey, we can all dream, can't we? ) becasue she's not imitating. She's taking the "influence" and building on it, which is how we all like to see it go down, right? As far as I see it, Ian Anderson's flute playing is NOT what made Jethro Tull the band that it was. I've never been much of a fan, but, hey, they did what they did in a way that I could "appreciate" it. Then again, I'm not the one confronted with hearing my style imitated (not particularly well) by guys making all the dough while I'm stuck playing a lot of club dates. In other words, I'm able to appreciate the "whole" while at the same time taking a somewhat derisive attitude towards one part of it. Kirk, on the other hand, didn't have the luxury of that distance, and I can feel what he's saying to a pretty fair extent. If somebody steals my car, it gives me little comfort to know that they eventually repainted it and customized it. ESPECIALLY if they financed that work be winnings from racing my car in its original (or perhaps even worse!) condition!

So the whole thing was an aid to insertion, nothing more? I had NO idea. Thanks.

Amiri Baraka did a live album on India Navigation backed by David Murray and Steve McCall that migh interest you. A bit more hardcore than Langston Hughes, though. And there was a Strata-East side by Jayne Cortez backed solely by Richard Davis that might be up your alley as well. Good luck finding it, though.

Hey, let's face it - Kirk no doubt felt "robbed" simply because a white guy (an Englishman no less) took somehting that he had broght to the forefront (Sam Most notwithstanding) and got rich doing little more than "imitating" it. The reality may or may not more complex than that, but given the Great American Heritage of black artists having their creations brought into the mainstream at a great profit by white people, often enough not credited or at best merely paid lip service to, I don't think that the emotion behind Rahsaan's statements should be discounted. I remember reading an interview in the old Jazz And Pop magazine where Rasaahn was going totally ballistic about Dick Hecsktall-Smith's playing of two horns simultaneously, and, especially, the then-recent invention of an effect that created octaves out of an electric guitar. "Wes Montgomery busted his ass to perfect that, and now any sorry motherfucker can just push a button and sound just like Wes Montgomery" is a rough, to the best of my memory, quote. These types of things hurt, especially when it's been as commonplace and institutionalized as it has been in the popular music industry. "Get over it" ain't exactly good enough. Not that anybody here has been so callous. But, hey, you got to respect the indignation at at least some level, I'd think.

Dear Dr. Rat - Chill out, man. It's a disgrace and you know it. Or maybe you don't, in which case you should. The ready availability of new Max Roach "product" to American jazz consumers for about the last 35 or so years has been pitiful. He was effectively "blacklisted" from the American recording industry for his political stances and how he brought them to the music. Atlantic gave him a shot, and for his final album with the label they "suggested" that he do something "familiar". So he did LIFT EVERY VOICE AND SING. That, as they say, was that. Now, if he had have just rolled over and died, or gone commercial (relatively speaking), or something like that, it would be easy enough to say "Oh well, them's the breaks" and let it go at that. But he didn't. He continued to grow as an artist and as a bandleader, In fact, his work in the 70s and early 80s may very well be his most brilliant of all. But you'd not know it if you were your average American jazz fan in the pre-Internet age. The records were all on European and Japanese labels with distibution that was highly specialized, to put it mildly, and they were not getting reviewed in the mainstream jazz press. I remember the first time I went to NYC in 1980 and going apeshit because at long last, HERE were record stores that had all these Max sides that I'd been hearing about from the cognosenti (and some that I hadn't). Yeah, it's real easy to say that all jazz musisicans have it hard, and that this is a human tragedy first and foremost, blahblahblah, etcetcetc. It's easy to say because it's true. But it's ESPECIALLY tragic, and yes, disgraceful, becuase in Max Roach, we're talking about one off the major artists of the 20th century, and we're talking about a man who systematically had his career stymied by the American "jazz industry" (again, Bruce Lundvall is a notable and noble exception) because of his outspokenness regarding his political views. It's precisely his willingness and abilty to stay strong and forge ahead (and GROW as an artist) in the face of such bullshit that has made him such a hero to me over the years. Now, if you can't see it as a disgrace that the man achieved nowhere near his full and rightful earning potential (earning potential that may very well have prevented his family from being forced into doing today what it is that they apparently have to do) for no other reason than he steadfastly refused to play ball and tone it down to make the powers that be less, uh... "uncomfortable". well, that's your perogative. But if the life of somebody like Frankie Lymon or Janis Joplin can be called "tragic", and if the rank exploitation of so many blues & R&R pioneers can be called "disgraceful", then SURELY the deliberate marginalization of Max Roach for the last 35+ years can and should be viewed in the same light. That's my story and I AM sticking to it. No room for "debate" on this one, not from me.

I can confirm that I've heard the same thing more than a few times over the years.

What's the deal? Doesn't seem like this practice came along until the late 60 or so. MAybe even early 70s. Was it to keep records from falling out, or what?

I can't really compare Jethro Tull to Brothehood of Breath as far as the "ethics" utilizing influences. "Influnce" to me means using something and turning into something, if not entirely different, at least recognizably different. BOB did that w/Ayler, but did Ian Anderson do that w/Kirk's flute style (not the context he put it in, but the actual style itself)? I can't hear it if he did. Seems to me that Anderson basically took Kirk's style at face value and incorporated it into his overall package (a package that certainly involved much more than just that one thing) as an "effect". No knock on that, to be sure, but let's call it what it is. "Robbery" might be too strong a word, but "influence" is certainly too weak a one. "Appropriation", perhaps?