JSngry

This is good stuff. Frustratingly so, in fact, but a significant release, I think, and one that whets the appetite for further unreleased Hill BN sessions from this period (knowing full well that a lot of them probably ARE not even as remotely successful as this one). Of course, it's futile to play "what if" and "why didn't they" with a session that's over 30 years old. What happened happened. That time (and some of the players) are long gone, never to return. Still, this music is so tantalizingly close to being fully realized that I have to ask myself some questions. Like: What would have happened if there had been time and money for just a little more rehearsal time to tighten up both the ensembles and the overall group feel? Nobody really folds on the ensembles, but very often I hear that the "gel" factor is ALMOST there, but not quite, and that goes for the overall feel during the solos too. It's not like it's far off in the distance either, it's like it's ALMOST RIGHT FREAKIN' THERE! Just another day of concentrated rehearsals and this stuff would have been TOTALLY happening and probably could have been released at the time. I don't know if that would have happened if the-by-then-retired Alfred Lion had been running this date or not, too many variables, a lot of them economic, to say for sure, but DAMN, hearing how good this stuff sounds this far along just makes one drool at how it would have sounded with just a bit more preparation and comfort by all concerned. What would have happened if the bassist had been somebody besides Ron Carter? Or even more intriguingly, what if Hill would have gone the SMOKESTACK route and used TWO bassists on this date, Carter to anchor, and somebody else to poke and prod? The mind reels, it does. Carter is DEFINITELY more into the music than he was on GRASS ROOTS. He interacts and frames some, but it usually sounds to me like it's under duress or something, like he's got it stuck in his mind that this music needs a bassist to just hold it down and keep it down (and in fairness to him, we don't know if somebody - Hill or Wolff - told him to go at it like this. One never knows...) Not that I'm complaining - compared to his appalingly moribund performance on GRASS ROOTS, he sounds positively frisky here, and he DOES get into the spirit of things often enough. But it always feels like he's doing it in spite of himself. Nevertheless, he ruins GRASS ROOTS for me, and he does no such thing, not even remotely, here. I just think that another bassist, or ANOTHER bassist (imagine this music played by a fully rehearsed, totally comfortable unit that was anchored by TWO badass bassists!) would have kicked the whole thing up the notch that differentiates damn good from truly great. What would have happened if Joe Henderson had been the tenor soloist rather than Joe Farrell? Don't get me wrong, Farrell plays great here, a quantum leap from his work with Hill on DANCE WITH DEATH, and his doubling skills make him all-around MVP of this date (the first thing I thought when looking at the listings was, "Damn, by the time this cat got paid all his doubling fees (a requirement for all Union sessions), I bet he made more from this gig than Andrew did!"), but still, his solo work is not a little influenced by Joe (as was common with a lot of players of Farrell's musical and professional stature of the time, the guys who had the chops to play any and all studio gigs, but still kept their jazz chops alive, frisky, and ongoingly evolving), that I keep thinking that they already got a big band, what's one more cat, ESPECIALLY if it's Joe Henderson, even if it's only as a soloist? Farrell satisfies, but Joe would have sated. I'd make a similar comment about Joe Chambers vs Lenny White, but dammit, the young Mr. White came to play, and if he's part of the "not QUITE gelled" factor, he balances it out by refusing to give in to the elder Mr. Carter's ambitions of stillness, and that alone is reason enough to keep him on the gig in my fantasy redo. Brash has it's place, ESPECIALLY when playing with Ron Carter (see: Tony Williams...) But hey, enough of the pointless nit-picking and crying over spilt milk, such as it were. The album we have is all there is, and it's EXRTREMELY satisfying on its own terms. Hill's writing is superb, the soloists are all into it (btw, you can tell Dizzy Reese from Woody Shaw by their tones - Woody has the "brassier" tone by far), and as a document of a severely UN-documeted (so far) period of a major artist, PASSING SHIPS qualifies as a "must have" in my book, and should be cause for celebration by all fans of Hill, Blue Note, and creative music in general. The shortcomings (relatively speaking) are real enough, but so are the strengths, and so is the not inconsiderable significance of it's existance. I'll be checking this one out for quite a while, probably forever. Joe Bob says HELL yeah!

Lovin' it still. Gladden & Young were one, and any/all mental and physical blocks had been removed. This stuff flows like few things do, straight from inspiration to execution, no middle man. Trip Merchants INDEED!!!

Better than I remember it, actually, although Lee is probably the leat interesting player on here (which IS how I remember it). George Coleman is in excellent form throughout, better than usual, I think, and the rhythm section kicks nicely as well. Still not a standout, and the material overall is no cause for celebration, and it STILL pales to it's companion session (although not as much as it did in the previous grouping), but I'll bump this one up a notch on the ol' estimation-o-meter. One thing that helps, I think, is that they seem to have removed a LOT of the reverb that was on the old LP release (based on my memory anyway, so it's probably EXACTLY the same, but I don't think so), and that gives the playing more presence, more up-front immediacy. Since the playing isn't so superbadass that it transcends all sonic liabilities, the removal of a layer of distance makes a crucial difference, at least to me. I found myself enjoying and feeling this session in a way I never have before. So hey - mission accomplished Blue Note!

All but THE FLIP arrived yesterday, and it should be here tomorrow. Is it just me, or are they using smaller type on the back covers and the part of the back insert that you see through the front? If the audience for this stuff is mostly middle-aged guys, the only thing I can figure is that Rudy's going back into optometry and this is a way to round up business.

This was a group that ws greater than the sum of its parts, I'd say, and perhaps most importantly, a true group, due to Mulligan's arrangements. He was a fine player, but I've always enjoyed his writing more than his playing. The writing for this group is superb - inventive, daring in its use of dissonances (check out the ending tag to "Makin' Whoopee" for a good example), and quite often rule-breaking (such as having the bari voiced above the trumpet). Nobody really got more variety of sounds and textures out of a simple two-horn front line than Mulligan, at least not for quite some time. Factor in Chico Hamilton's minimalistic yet sometimes totally wack drum punctuations and the willingness to let the varying bassists stand totally alone in spots, not for a solo, but for a part, and you get a sound that was pretty radical for its day, and onethat still sounds distinctive. Chuck's "sewing machine" comment is dead-on - this was not a group of heavy duty improvisors who pushed any improvisatory boundaries. If anything, they were somewhat retro (I believe the term "bopsieland" was used on more than one occasion to describe them), and yeah, the whole thing just chug-chug-chugged along. But that's not what draws me to this music - it's the sounds themselves, the way that the whole group weaves in and out of itself within that constant chugging. Nobody leaps out, they just kinda jog back and forth, yet within that sameness, there's a LOT of movement going on internally. A very "wholistic" group, I think. Again, the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. I don't find it to be anything life-changing, but there's more than enough going on to intrest and entertain me for any number of pleasurable stretches. It's real, and it's still different, and that's enough to make me grin. Favorite tune? "Walkin' Shoes". Why? Just because. It's that kind of music, and that kind of a band.

Shorty Petterstein?

New Reissue copy of the LP for 12 bucks: http://www.dustygroove.com/jazzlp2.htm#43985

The thing about Rouse I've often pondered (and for no good reason, really), is how much of his true self he found in Monk's music, how much of it he sacrificed, and is there really a difference? I mean, the guy was in NO way the "best" or most inventive tenor player Monk ever had. He had a comparitively limited vocabulary, and was prone to repeating entire phrases during the course of a solo, especially when he stretched out (there are, of course, exceptions to this). Taken at face value, he could often be called boring at times. Yet somehow, SOMEHOW, it works. There's an organic quality to Rouse's work w/Monk that the other tenorists didn't always have, like this was as much HIS music as it was Monk's, that in spite of his "limitations", he still got the core of the music and that THAT mattered more than what he actually did with that core. It's weird, and I don't claim to even begin to understand it. Personally, when I want to hear a Monk record, I'll usually go for something with Rollins on it first and go from there. But when I HEAR those tunes in my head, away from a record, it's invariably Rouse that I hear playing them much more often than not. Wierd. There's SOME kind of mojo going down there. It figures. Monk...

It's been seeming like when I first get on that everything moves fast, but after the first 5-10 clicks, it starts going slower and finally comes to a halt. If I exit the site, it might take a few times to get back on, but when I do, the pattern more often than not repeats itself. So I'm wondering if somwhere in the chain there isn't a "traffic controller" of some sort that's inadvertantly been set to discourage people from just staying on all day and taking up whatever it is that viewers take up- bandwidth, server connections, or what not. Wish I knew enough to make a more educated guess.

I dunno, man. CORNBREAD's a bitch!

Just curious, Tony - do you listen to much opera? And even if you don't, do you hear the operatic qualities of ISKA? I guess to be more accurate, I'd have to describe it as a series of arias, or perhaps a song cycle, but given the programmatic nature of the music, and the way the whole ensembles frames Wayne's "singing" (and DAMN does he sing on this album) with music totally in sync w/the themes of each piece, the whole thing somehow just strikes me as operatic in essence.

Well hey, the gist of the original post seemed to be "why did people say that you couldn't dance to bebop?", a question that seemed more about public perception of the music than the music itself, so my comments were made in that context. If anybody wants to think that there was not a xocially relevant "angle" to early bebop, not necessarily the music itself, but to the overall "culture" surrounding it, the extra-musical environment from which it sprang (and by extension crept into the music at least, AT LEAST, subliminally), they can be my guest, but I don't think the evidence supports such a position.

Simular problems here.

I'm thinking early to mid-50s, yeah, 52-54, somewhere in there. I'd have to look it up to be sure. But he definitely played for Da' Bums. I think he played into the early 60s w/various teams. Pretty sure I used to have baseball cards of him as a player, but I'd not swear to it.

No, that's definitely not what it was ALL about, but that was a part of it. Not the actual musical developments, but the actual presentation and "attitude" that created the popular perception (check out the Life magazine spread, preferably in its original context for maximum "flavor". Time also had a piece that was similar in message, but w/o all the photos. Guess the Luce folks couldn't dance to it either, which wouldn't surprise me in the least) that this was some kind of "exotic" "cult" music that could not be enjoyed by "regular" people. Too many first hand accounts (and that video clip of Earl Wilson w/Bird and Diz) to deny that. "Mainstream America" was getting it's first postwar look at the "New Negro", and THIS time, the attitude stuck, gained momentum, and changed a nation. The resistance to that change and the resistance to early Bebop is linked, I believe, although it would be a huge oversimplification, an outright error even, to say that they were one and the same. Bubbles Whitman was no longer needed, shut my mouf, and for that we should all, especially "Diddy Galippy", be glad! :D The music itself, of course, wasn't really "about" this, it was "about" a natural evolution as the musicians gained greater tools and knowledge, and a similar music to bebop was going to happen, inevitably. Living music always evolves. But I do think that the socially aware (perhaps even at times "militant") attitude of the early bebop musicians, and their unwillingness to mute it TOO much for consumption by the extant entertainment machine gave the music a character that a lot of people on both sides of the fence picked up on. How that attitude was recieved very often seemed to depend on what side of the fence you were on. We as a culture saw it again with the free jazz of the 1960s, as well as with the rock-and-roll of the 50s. Maybe even again, although from a totally 180-degree different perspective, in the Punk of the 70s. Music rarely evolves in a social vaccuum. I definitely don't subscribe to the theory that music is first and foremost a weapon of social change, but I do believe that any music that exists in a social environment cannot help but be affected by that environment to some degree, and can sometimes even serve as a catalyst within that environment. I think that the full reality of bebop is one such instance. Developing the music is just part of it. After you got it, what do you do with it, and how? Do you function within the status quo, do you go counter to it, do you seek to subvert or to overthrow, what DO you do? If you percieve yourself and your music as STRICTLY a product for disposable consumption, well, the world's pretty much your oyster if you get the right hookup. Otherwise... Not that the boppers were the first to take such a stance of self-respect, FAR from it. But I do beleive that they were considerably less subversive and more directly revolutionary than nearly all their predecessors as it came to seeing their "place", and proceeded accordingly. Some, like Dizzy, were superb manipulators of the system. Others, like Monk, jsut didn't give a rat's ass and figured the the truth would win in the end. Most didn't have all the tools to function as independent businesspeople and ended up as revolutionaries in search of a gig. And some just said "fuck it" and killed themselves one way or the other at various paces. None of that has anything to do with the music, but it has everything to do with the musicians, and if it's wrong to make those things out to be one and the same all the time, it's also wrong to attempt to disregard the various overlapa. Lots of grey in this picture, LOTS of grey. So what was it ALL about? Life, I guess. Nothing more than that. But that's enough, ain't it?

If you're a "deep" (as in Brooklyn) Dodgers fan, then you got a connection w/Zim. BTW, just because I like the cat doen't mean I condone his action in this instance. That was just TOTALLY wack. Like I said, the guy's a trip, so wack shit's gonna happen with him. But fersure, he was wrong.

Zim is a trip. Has been for as long as I can remember. If there was true justice in the cosmos, he would still be managing the Cubs as they prepare to meet their destiny, whatever that proves to be. And Ryne, Dunston, Grace, & Andre would be his coaches. So would Billy Williams, Ron Santo, Don Kessinger and Ernie Banks. But not that damn Bob Buhl!

Hell, ODYSSEY OF ISKA is my favorite opera too.

Unless God wants to get into the record business, in which case you're REALLY gonna have a mess on your hands. You thought that KOESTER was hard to work for...

If there was a revolution (and there was), it wasn't about "we don't want anybody to dance to and otherwise enjoy this music", it was about "we are most assuredly NOT the grinning, subservient Negroes you've gotten accustomed to seeing on stage who are there to cater to your every inane whim. We are serious musicians making serious music." In other worfds - we are fully adult MEN & WOMEN functioning as such. Deal with it, because that's the way it's gonna be. Big difference, I think. Hell, MONK danced like a motherf---er! The only time you don't dance is when you're afraid, or otherwise crippled. The actual music of bebop might have scared some people (mostly musicians, I'd guess), but I'd imagine that the IMPLICATIONS of it scared even more. I mean, if you were into the "comfort zone" of "Swing" and weren't really paying attention to the world around you (including the musical rumblings, a lot of which were missed due to the recording ban), a record like "Shaw 'Nuff" or "KoKo" must have sounded like a cattle prod up the ass, and not TOO many people are going to feel comforted by that (unless they had requested it...). "These Crazy Colored Folk! What the hell are they DOING? I CAN'T DANCE TO IT!" No, mutthaphukka, you don't WANT to dance to it, because it's not all about YOU anymore. It's not gonna be all YOUR world anymore. Make room for Daddy. Who plays the horn. In a Caddy, no less. "Things To Come", indeed! And yeah, GOM, that is Jones' quote. One of my favorites, along with Cecil's "I don't play for the people who leave, I play for the people who STAY."

DOH!!!

As an infant, did cats nibble at your head when you tried to nap?

Hell, mine is ODYSSEY OF ISKA (of the BNs, anyway), so don't feel like the Lone Ranger.

I viewed this game as a test for Dallas. Granted, the Eagles aren't firing on all cylinders right now, but the talent is definitely there, and we all know that on any given Sunday, etc., so I figured that if we just played a close game all the way through and didn't get a total butt-whuppin' that it would be one of those "moral victory" things, and there would still be reason for optimism about the direction in which this team is headed. Well, it turned out better than that, didn't it? !!!! (Note to all NFL players, broadcasters, etc. - the above message did not use the word "football" one time. Get a clue...)

ADAM'S APPLE - the most purely melodic Shorter BN in my opinion. No "licks", just pure melody, straight from wherever melody comes from (head? heart? both? neither? If I knew, I could always be and/or go there...). It's more than "just" "cerebreal" or whatever, there's a pretty mystical thing going on here. Not necessarily "spiritual" (but not necessarily NOT spiritual either), but just the mysticism of melody, of hearing, feeling, and playing such sustainedly melodic music. There's definitely some "zonage" going on here. Emotion is indeed subjective, for this one moves me deeply. But that's just me. ODYSSEY OF ISKA moves me even more, and how many people like THAT one? So, like, whatever. I'll take it where I find it.