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JSngry
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Posts posted by JSngry
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Yeah, he was Dave Frishberg's lawyer too.
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He's also a marvellously sick comedian. Guaranteed crackup whenever the guy speaks. Used to watch the first few minutes of the old Merv show just to see if Jack would get a few seconds.
I STILL wonder how this cat hooked up w/the Counce group. You look at all the social factors at play (race, substance use, etc,), and see this cat right in the middle of it, and some pretty interesting scenarios arise.
FWIW, Sheldon showed up on the Kenton album of songs from HAIR, and had a feature on "Sodomy" that must be heard to be believed. In a good way. Talk about grasping the essence of a song!
Yeah, I'll give it up for Jack Sheldon, one of the true subversives of our time. Gotta love him!
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Scour the pots instead - she'll cut you more slack.
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Jim: I hear where you are coming from. But the way that I think of the blues is a bit different. Certainly, it goes far beyond style. I nevertheless consider the blues to be a specific language, a medium, a way of communication, that is of time and place. You speak the language or you don't. Even if you do speak the language, there is often a noticable difference between a native speaker and a Johnny-come-lately.
Agreed, and absolutely. My point is merely that, at this point in time, more and more people are becoming multi-lingual, and the result may very well be a morphing of the mother tongue into a whole 'nother thing. And perhaps, eventually, the organic creation of an Esperanto-like universal tongue, musical or otherwise. But that's a looooooong way off, if it is indeed even possible. But trends seem to point that way to at least some minor degree, I think.
Me myself, I'm comfortable being a blues-based (in the traditional sense) person. The depth to with the language has penetrated, resonated, and perpetrated me is more than I can express. But I'm comfortable, not complacent, and I can see, as we all can, that there's "blues" everywhere in the world, and that as the world becomes smaller, it's probably both wise and inevitable to start to look at the meanings of the words rather than the grammatical specifics of the language itself. I'm probably too set in my ways by now to do TOO much in that regard, but a cat of Stefon Harris' generation isn't.
I still have this nagging doubt, though, that this isn't really what he's talking about. It's one thing to look towards tomorrow, but it's quite another thing to attempt to go from Point B to Point C without having first been at Point A. Point "a little less than B" doesn't count, not as much anyway. Harris is an American jazz musician, but was originally trained as an orchestral percussionist, and he continued that line of study, completing his bachelor's degree in classical percussion at the Manhattan School of Music. Certainly a good thing, and nothing that should discredit ANYBODY'S jazz "credentials", not at all.
However, it seems to me like if he's looking to lose, fuse, or refuse his blues, he should at least have them in the first place. America is SO blues-saturated at so many levels that you'd almost have to be a recluse not to have it in you in some form or fashion, even subliminally. Part of me says "take the music, any music, at face value, for what it is." "Another part of me says, "if it's lacking in some common root, some common experience, don't bother to make the effort." One keeps me open, the other grounded, and sometimes the attempt to balance is lost in either direction. When I hear an American jazz musician with an intensive classical background talk about how blues aren't THAT important to him/her, a red flag goes up, rightly or not. There's a place for academic objectivity/detatchment in any music, including jazz, but I don't know that that place should be at the table of honor. "America's Classical Music"? The phrase becomes more horrifying every day!
However, I went back and carefully reread the quote that Bev posted, and I think I know where he's coming from, and if it strikes me as vaguely indicitive of what seems to me to be the "broad but shallow" mindset that is seemingly everywhere today, that's no doubt my problem. Broad, narrow, deep, and shallow are probably pretty non-specific terms, so it's probably best for me to chill out, retreat to a bit of Lowell Fulsom and look into a burial plan.
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...the bridge cover mute that a lot of guys used at that time....
Yeah, what's the deal with that, anyway?
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DUDE!
Get BLACK HOPE while it's still in print!
Trust me on this one.
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"Youll never find..."
(BOM-bom-bom-bommm)
"A natural essence like mine..."
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...Django Reinhardt, doesn't really strike me as a blues player. I mean he was, I guess, coming out of the tradition of gypsy improvising.
Six of one, half-dozen of the other, after you allow for the exchange rate.
Seriously, I'm with Braxton - there's blues as manifested in one particular style or projection and then there's what the blues is really affirming, and that's manifested on many different levels. If "the blues" are ceasing to have relevancy as a STYLE to many people, that's one thing. The reason so much of what passes for "blues" these days sounds outright STUPID is because its NOT about the meaning anymore, it's about the style above all else. We see this in jazz, rock, country, pretty much all "styles" of music where aping the mannerisms takes precedence over dealing with the meaning, when what gets played is more important than why. That's a recipie for empty sloganeering, musically, and makes perfect fodder for commercials, movie soundtracks, and other media where the object is not to convey true meaning and feeling, but just to seduce the consumer into a false sense of "hipness". EVERYBODY likes to feel hip, especially if they can do so without having to confront the possibility that they just might, in fact, not be!
But style so very often has nothing to do with substance, and that's where proclaiming the lack of relevancy of the blues starts down a slippery slope. Anytime you laugh to keep from crying, anytime you feel like a stranger in a strange land (especially if ti's home), anytime you can muster being at once totally invincible AND mortally vulnerable, anytime you feel everything and nothing at the same time, you've got the meaning of the blues, and these are all conditions that do not depend on a certain geo-chronological setting to exist, nor can they be expressed through only one musical medium. If, in distancing one's self from the blues, one seeks to convince somebody/anybody (even/especially one's self) that the time has come when these life-conditions no longer exist, then one is very much being the fool, and I pity the fool. Hell, Shakespeare was one of the greatest blues lyricists of all time. Seriously. Ellington figured that one out, didn't he? The Blues ain't nothin' but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
I certainly have no trouble believing that there are a great many people across the globe, and perhaps, especially, youngish middle- and upper-middle-class African-Americans (the current American bull market for illusions of escape, or so it seems to me), who in fact HAVE convinced themselves (or allowed themselves to be convinced/seduced) that they, either as individuals or as a culture, have somehow moved beyond the dynamics that create the blues. Free at last, and a mighty tempting thought it must be. But if you ask me, it's a long fall that comes off a high horse. Especially a Trojan horse.
The blues - not the temporal style, but the eternally relevant fundamental dynamics that create them - will die only when humanity does. I just hope that that death is by natural causes, not the mass suicide of a Faustian bargain with a self-congratulatory delusion. But, the blues being what they are, it probably will be.
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Anthony Braxton's comments, quoted from "Forces In Motion", are relevant to me:
BRAXTON: People say I don't play the blues - I've always played the blues, but I never argue about those kinds of things. What we call the blues is not just notes, it's a vibrational understanding that's been transmitted and encoded, and it's manifested in various forms of music in various different ways. Still, there's a science to different periods of blues playing and that information is important. It just depends on how you want to look at it: there's blues as manifested in one particular style or projection and then there's what the blues is really affirming, and that's manifested on many different levels.
LOCKE: How long do these cycles (of any particular music's evolution, discussed earlier in the interview; it is specifically the blues that are under discussion here) last?
BRAXTON: Oh, that's complex Graham. Normally the mystics talk in terms of 7-year cycles, but it's complex: I don't know wxactly when a given information focus becomes stylistic or traditional information. We can look at the lineages of, say, the last 2000 years, the routes... interview changes focus.
So, if you think you can lose the STYLE, fine. You can. I'm not much interested in doing it myself, but that's cool. I'm of a certain age, in several ways.
But if you think that what caused that chrono-specific style to become necessary has miraculously been removed from the menu of the human experience, you're just setting yourself up for some even DEEPER blues than the ones you think you've left behind.
There's always going to be the blues. Maybe not THE BLUES, but you know what I mean. What form they will take is uncertain, but their existance is not.
There's also perhaps of level of socio-political self-deception going on here, but that's too complicated and nowhere near monolithic enough to discuss with any certainty. Best to just leave it alone until we get reports from some more precincts.
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The thing that sucks is our manager booked us three nights instead of the usual two. So we're thinking, "Cool! More money!" Yes more money overall but she accepted LESS money per night. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Oh well... she's just trying to get us more work.
VOLUME, VOLUME, VOLUME!!!
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The "Charleston" rhythm in the Globetrotters version of "Sweet Georgia Brown"
The beginning to the solos on Sonny's studio version of "Sonnymoon For Two" (recorded the day after the Vanguard version!)
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I picked up SO DOGGONE GOOD on LP a few months ago. Great cover, good but not great music. It's almost a parody of a Sonny Stitt album - blues and rhythm changes, very little else. Good players, but if you wonder how Stitt bot a reputation in some quarters as a journeyman player who "went through the motions" on a lot of records, this one is a good example. Stitt's "motions" are better than many folks' inspired moments, but DAMN. the lack of variety in the programming is almost funny.
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You, Sir, are my hero. Welcome to the board. Your first name isn't "Pete" by any chance, is it?
You ever play Gillette, Wyoming? I played a week there back in 1981, and the town was in the middle of an oil boom. The male-to-female ratio was, literally, 25-1. As travelling mistrels, er..., musicians, many of the local women were, shall we say, "interested" in some new blood, but you couldn't DO anything about it because they all had this squadron of horndogs surrounding them everywhere they went at every hour of the day (and night). You think a rendezvous at 4 AM in the local diner would be safe? Nope - the guardogs were camped out in full force. I think they had assigned shifts. Never has so much potential had so little opportunity to be realized.
Ah, the road. Something everybody should experience. If it doesn't kill you...
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The camaraderie among tenor players seems to defy any limit.
It is more than camaraderie. It is a sacred brotherhood.
We are doing God's work.
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Thanks, Mike.
I agree, the Feldman show is much cool. Don't know if it's like this everywhere, but on our local NPR affiliate, we got a KILLER 1-2 punch of Car Talk at 10 AM followed by Whad'ya Know? at 11. Switch over to KNTU for Hazen Schumacher's (sp?) Jazz Revisitied at noon, and it's a morning well spent, especially if you're driving around running errrands or working outside. The beauty of radio!
The problem is, my Saturday mornings don't usually start until Saturday afternoon...
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Is it just me, or does the bassist on some of those early Tyrone Davis DAKAR sides, especially "Can I Change My Mind?", sound like James Jamerson?
Some questions - DAKAR was a Chicago-based label, right? Did they record there? Is it Jamerson on these records, Carol Kaye (a noted Jamerson inflencee) or somebody else? If so, who? Anybody know? Anybody care?
Whoever it is, the cat is GROOVIN'!
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Yeah, Harold, and I'm also digging checking out how some people hold on to the BN sentiment (pro or con) and "traditions" longer than others, how some take the lead in setting up shop elsewhere (catesta was AWESOME in reforming/reshaping AAJ in a matter a days, and Dan Gould has been a leader in initiating new, serious discussions over there. And the fact that we're HERE is a testament to B-3ers willingness to go underground and set up an "alternative" apart from the AAJ "mainstream". Jazz Corner is a world of it's own, but there's good stuff to be gotten there if you can tough it out in the early phase of newbiedom. Cyber NYC (from a musician moving to "the city" standpoint) it indeed is!
), how some people follow along and some go off on their own, etc. None of which is meant as excess praise OR criticism. It's just revealing, I think, and a fascinating (I need to learn another adjective...) case study of the dynamics of diasporadom, which has been one of the major factors in shaping the global politics of the last half-century (or longer).I've said it before, and I'll say it again - circumstances change constantly, but people don't. Watch and learn, as they say.
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I've yet to be able to catch G.T, w/Marchel, schedule/gig conflicts, but I get reports from Lyles West, Marchel's bassist. G.T.'s playing fine, a tad rusty occasionally, but still a solid, hard bop drummer, and definitely a "personality". He's not Marchel's regular drummer though. That would be Andrew Griffin. The article you quote is from 1999, and I don't know how often Marchel uses G.T. these days. Not often, it seems, and not here in Dallas. The show referenced was in Austin, part of SXSW, a regional "industry showcase".
A fair number of jazz "refugees" end up in Texas. Carlos Garnett is in Houston too. Trumpeter Martin Banks is in Austin. Keyboardist Bernard Wright is here in Dallas, and arranger Onzy Matthews made Dallas his home in the last years of his life. Roy Hargrove, of course, still pops up here, usually unexpected and unannounced. His family is still here. He actually showed up and sat in on a FUNK gig I was working a few years ago! Same w/Cedar Walton - he's got family here too, and sometimes just comes by to visit, not to gig.
Not too much interaction between the various Texas cities jazzwise, however. Seems like we've all hunkered down in our own bunkers, trying to just stay alive on our own turf.
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I'm with Harold - each board has it's own collective "personality", and I like being able to cruise around, drop in, hang for a little bit, take a penny, leave a penny, etc, at each one. The BN board kinda had that "all under one roof" thing going on, but hey, as many have said, it's gone, so move on, adjust, and thrive in the New World of Polyboardogomy.
I still think, however, that this whole "refugee", "diaspora", etc. phenomenon is a fascinating sociological study, and following it in detail reveals a lot about human nature as it pertains to similar historical events. What's happened through all this is probably none too different from other diasporas, albeit in a cyber-way. Watch and learn, as they say.
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Isn't the "rule" that if you give an answer that contains a part of the correct one, or is more than the correct on but still gets the idea across, you get credit? Didn't used to be that way, especially in the Art Fleming days, but times change...
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Not a day job!!
Worse - a night job (long story of the laughing to keep from crying variety). Flexible scheduling, so I can still gig, but....
Man's gotta do what a man's gotta do, right?
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It's in a Steeplechase Tete Montoliu CD, I WANNA TALK ABOUT YOU, where Hank guests on one cut, "Autumn Leaves". Here's the cover of the CD, which is still in-print.
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Has anyone ever gotten an e-mail from them about the whole fiasco??
No, but I got one yesterday about the new Soullive album, with an option to preorder no less.
See, they DO care!
Do the blues mean alot to you?
in Miscellaneous Music
Posted · Edited by JSngry
When you say "blues" to non-hip-hop-centric African-Americans in the Dallas area, odds are that their first thoughts will be of so-called "Deep Soul" like Johnny Taylor, Denise LaSalle, etc. In other words, the sound that keeps Malaco Records in business. These folks don't care too much about Muddy Waters, never mind Robert Johnson.
Anybody heard of Marvin Sease? He's considered "blues" by much of this same demographic, and so are a lot of the more recent Jewel/Paula acts like Vickie Baker, Peggy Scott, etc. There's still QUITE a market for this music in the deep South, and if some of us find it over-produced, cheaply manipulative, and under-emotional, it's worth remembering that we might not be the target market!
:D
But the blues ain't gone anywhere. They've bought a new wardrobe and had a ton of cosmetic surgery, but they still live.
Another thing, about the universiality of emotions vs the specificity of the stylistic language. How many times has C&W been called "The White Man's Blues"? How many times has the similarities between blues and certain cantorial works been noted? Same for many Eastern European folk musics. Even though I, personally, can DEEPLY relate to the issue of language-specificity, I can also dig the issue of universiality, quite apart from geo-/chrono- considerations, and I think that that's what the world is coming to, whether we like it or not. The Marsalis/Crouch/Murray school of demanding literal exactness is ill-fated to me for precisely that reason. There ain't too may illiterate, itenerant sharecroppers or Creole musicians forced into ghetto life by Jim Crow laws left in the USA today. Not TOO many, anyway - you'd be surprised at what you can find if you look in the right places, though (Anybody heard Henry Qualls from Elmo, Texas?). But the psychological legacy lives on...
That's also the point that I'd like to hear Harris (and others of his generation and background) elaborate on - are they in fact "going beyond" the demands for stylistic specifity and embracing the universalist esthetic, or are they ignoring it altogether and attempting to create a music that denies what some of us see as inescapable facts of life, regardless of one's place (in many ways) in the world? If it's the former, well, then, cool. Go for it - that makes perfect sense to me. But if it's the latter, I still say that they're kidding themselves, and that they're setting themselve up for some REAL blues (sooner or) later on in life.
El tiempo lo dira, no?