JSngry

Here's hoping you already have...

Oh yeah, about Chevy Chase - anybody see one of the earlier episodes of SNL where, at the end I think, the cast members were each singing a chorus of blues, and Chevy scatted "Billie's Bounce'? Seems like I saw him do the same thing once in tandem with his ex, Blythe Danner (who LOOKS like she'd make a GREAT jazz fan if you know what I mean... ).

Orson Welles, if we can go deep, as in 6 feet under deep.

Nina Simone's "My Baby Just Cares For Me" was in a spot for something a few years ago. Something else - in 1982, I was in the position to wake up early every day and watch the Today show. There was a commercial for Mazola oil that sounded very much like it was the work of Jon Hendricks in both musical style and performance. Not a sample of one of his records, but an original jingle. 8 bars - the first 4 being either scat syllables of else scatted ways to use the product (hey, I wasn't THAT awake...), the last 4 being the hook - "MaZOla...has no..choLESterOL at alllll". Anybody ever hear this jingle or hear of Hendicks doing some annoymous jingle work? Some good buckage there...

Well hell, I'm a asshole, a jerk, a fat fuck, and an Internet whore all rolled into one, so what would MY gripe be?

I think that REAL blues of today, the direct descendant of all the tradition of ambiguities of emotion and the use of time and pitch to express them, as well as the feelings that come from being a stranger in your own home, are to be found in certain rap/hip-hop artists. Not the top-40 ones or the cartoon gangstas, but the ones who are serious about their craft and their content. Don't ask me to name names, because I really don't follow that scene. But I hear my son playing some stuff, and listening to it on the radio, and I hear and feel the connection quite easily. A lot of people knock a cat like Roy Hargrove for working with rappers, and they look at the attempts at jazz-hip-hop "fusions" as purely commercial ploys, but I'll tell you what - if I was in my early-mid 20s now, that's EXACTLY what I'd be doing, and entirely of my own volition. It SHOULD have happened a long time ago - remember Max Roach's pronouncements on the subject, and his performances with breakdancers and rappers back in the early 80s? Unfortunatley, there were all these "distractions" in the jazz world at the time, and a lot of "Big Chill"-ing went down as far as keeping the music's street heritage a set quality rather than allowing it to be whatever it needed to be. Hell - the ESSENCE of blues/street/whatever is taking the RIGHT NOW and finding the eternal truth in it. It damn sure ain't about holding up what your parents and grandparents did and claiming that as the absolute standard for time immemorial. BIG difference there. I fail to see the logic in claiming the street as your lifeblood while at the same time attemtping to turn that same street into a manicured thouroughfare. Discomfort with a/the current vibe is one thing, but the solution there is, and will ALWAYS be, meeting the situation on it's own terms, not a distanced attempt at reclamation for something that is long gone. Gentrification isn't necessarily victory... Time moves on. Athletes have limited careers, but broadcasters can last seemingly indefinitely. Who sets the standards and makes the action - the player or the commentator? You go to the booth when you can't hang on the field anymore, not when you should be on it. Jazz should've kept this in mind.

With the exception of Shameless Whore Weekly (a trade publication for working musicians), Tom's hunch is correct.

My copy seems to be pretty plowed, fwiw. I agree that the idea of 60 second tunes ain't too thrilling, not at all, but you never know...

Did you see Harold Vick?

I think of BLACK RENNAISANCE as a Strata-East-esque take on one of those hip CTI sides where Don Sebesky wrote arrangements AFTER the fact, and weaved them in and out of the already performed small group jams. Only in this case, instead of brass and strings, it's the voices that weave in and out. Don't think of it as a CTI side where Sebesky wrote the charts up front, though. THOSE were pretty much a drag. As for the comparison to the Gale, BNs, well, yeah, sorta kind of, maybe, just a little, not really, but ok... If you get my point.

Dude, as long as you got the gift, you should really set your sights higher! But hey, thanks.

"Blues" is fine with me, and truthfully, it's the music and language nearest and dearest to my heart and soul (although I think that even "blues" is an offshoot of something else, just as jazz and gospel are). But I can't pretend that it's the only language that "goes deep". There was a time when I could and did, but that time has passed. If my appreciation of these other languages is more intellectual than primal, well, that's just my personal evolution. The world is "getting smaller", and I thnk it's inevitable that commonalities will find each other and morph into mutually accomodating forms and such. I'm probably too old and too "set" to get into it 100%, but otoh, thee's a reason why, usually, young folks playing older styles just doesn't "click" - it's not the reality of the times. The reality is that things are coming together, and if there's some awkwardness involved along the way, that's just how it goes. We only know jazz from the recordings. we have no real idea how it came to be - plenty of theories and lots of anecdotal informational bits, but the process no doubt took a long time and wasn't accomplished effortlessly or overnight, or even intentionally, probably. Times are moving on, obviously, and something new is forming, something that will speak to, for, and of the people who live in these different circumstances. I'm sure that it will communicate the truths of the blues, but I don't know but that its eventual language will be a mixture of God knows what, of which "blues" may or may not be a dominant part. I hope it will be, because that will make it a LOT easier for me to understand! Nothing to do really, but watch, learn, and when possible, participate. But at 47, the odds are that my life is more than 1/2 over, so....

Wayne!

Something completely different... Two live John Mayall albums, JAZZ BLUES FUSION and MOVING ON, although not earthshattering in even the least, capture Blue having a funky good time. Fellow sidemen include Clifford Solomon, Victor Gaskin, Billy Mitchell, Ernie Watts, and Charles Owens. Not anywhere near a "super jam", but it happened, and Blue actually sounds like he's having a blast.

Performing the Magic Ritual right now, even as I'm typing this. Let me rephrase that... Well?

Will PRIMAL ROOTS ever be reissued?

Oh hell, if it's CHEAP, get it. Just don't expect anything "great". If you're curious enough to ask, you probably owe it to yourself to hear it at least once, so get it. But only if it's cheap. Not every side we buy has to be a masterpiece or even close to it. I had/have it on LP. and finally got a CD when I found one cheap. Some things are worth hearing just because. So get it. But only if it's cheap...

If you GOT to have it, get it. There's moments. But otherwise...

"Unsettled" is not an innacurate description, imo, but that's kinda what makes it is what it is - unsettled, but often enough frighteningly real. Maybe it "helps" to know the history of what happened to Hank after this album, maybe that's the context one needs to really "get" it. He sounds as if he had already turned the corner to his ultimate fate, but only recently, so he's on the way to be going, not yet actually gone. Of course, if somebody isn't concerned with those things, then it may just very well sound like a session that is a bit "off" by the standards of all concerned. In one sense, I suppose it is (although the Mobley/Walton/Higgins triangle has never been more on the same page, imo, it might not a page that evrybody wants to read). There's no real "right" way to approach music, but for the type who listens for the personal stories being told, and is willing to accept that an unsettled person is indeed likely to tell some unsettled (unsettling, even) stories, this holds the potential to be some pretty gripping stuff.

Only good ones! And, that "Boogie Woogie Waltz" is a dangerous, DANGEROUS piece of music. You yhink yhere's nothing there, but you keep coming back to it, over and over. Finally, you don't CARE if there's anything there or not, you just gotta have it, whatever it is or isn't. That's my experience anyway...

I remember a Honda car commercial from ca.1990 tha had original music VERY much in the style of a "softer" Lee Morgan-esque Latin flavor. Always wondered who wrote it. Honda for a long stretch featured original music in their ads that made subtle but unmistakable references to the "Blue Note Sound", so I'm thinking the same guy was doing them all (writing & producing them, that is). Anybody know who this jazzy jinglemeister might have been? Oh yeah, Sonny did a Pioneer stereo commercial that used "God Bless The Child" from THE BRIDGE. This was in the later 70s, I think.

Oh yeah, I'm fine. Never been better actually. Saving a parking place for you, in fact! Dig - there has been blues since the beginning of humankind. What WE call "blues" today is a culturally specific manifestation of a combination of attitudes, perceptions, and feelings that have been around since the who knows when. Blues is not a "style, blues is a fact of life. "Blues", otoh, IS a style, but like all styles, it bears the stylistic trademarks of the culture that produced it. But the style is not the substance, it's just an expression of the substance, just like a word is not an object (or anything else, really, besides a word), but merely an expression of whatever it is that it is representing. The "problem" that we as humans have is a tendency to limit our receptiveness to that which we "know" at at least some level. But would anyboy argue that what we "know" is all there is? I hope not! And also - we LIKE styles, we LIKE categories - they make processing information a LOT easier, and that's nothing to scoff at. But again, if we allow ourselves to view the "style" as being identical to the substance, then we are missing out on a whole range of interconnectivity in human experiences that only serves to keep us isolated instead of bringing us into the greater "one"ness of life. Easy and comfortable, yes, but not necessarily the path to anything other than back to ourselves. Nice place to visit, but... Anywhere and anytime that people live lives that are not totally programmed from without, anywhere and anytime that people are confronted with unresolvable ambiguities /contradictions of any nature, anywhere and anytime that people laugh to keep from crying, and cry because there ain't words adequate, there and then you have the essence of blues. Most of us know them through their African/African-American manifestations and those idioms which have been touched by same. Cool, that's where and who most of us are to one degree or another. But to think that that is the ONLY manifestations of such realities is hopelessly naive, and not something that I think that any person with soul (another one of those universal words that have taken on a geo/chrono/socio/cultural specific meaning) would argue for more than the time it took for them to think about it. For those who want and/or need the words, help yourself. Words ain't real to me. Let me have some of whatever it is that makes the words necessary, THAT'S what I want! Houston, do you read me?

I don't know, but I found this album used a few months ago. Haven't yet listened to it, but the "gimmick" is revealed in the title. All the cuts are about 60 seconds long!

Well, ok. if you look at "blues" being "essential" to "jazz" from a strictly stylistic standpoint, then you draw a line that some people, both of today and of yore, have crossed, sometimes to the point of no return, and there you have your box, geometry be damned . It's a big box, plenty of room inside, but still a box nevertheless. But if you look at what "the blues" are expressing, and not just at how they are expressing it, you can see that most every culture has, or has had, it's own "blues", and THAT leaves a lot of room for expressions that can resonate across stylistic and cultural barriers. For example, King Lear was a bluesman, and so was Hamlet. Damn fine bluesmen too. And Shakesepere was their Willie Dixon. Those are just two examples. Some will call this approach nebulous, or too broad to have any real "meaning". Maybe that's true, but fuck it. That's where I'm at now, and going back to more narrow definitions for reasons that I don't relate to anymore just doesn't interest me. ANY music or other expression that has a "meaning" ONLY within certain parameters is pretty much by definition not "universal", and if one is of the opinion that are certain facts of life that are true, and are indeed universal, then I think it behooves one to look beyond one's own immediate point(s) of reference every once in a while, just to see how "it all fits together". I suggest this to those who demand a blatant "blues flavor" and to those who find "blues" to be a limited, stifling medium alike. And to anybody in between. I have no shame. There's only so many different stories humans can tell. What diferentiates them is indeed the "flavor" of the teller, the culturally specific nuances, but what ultimately gives them their TRUTH is their commonality. Style is cool, meaningful even, but substance is where the action is always gonna be once you leave home. And as anybody who has ever left home will attest, no matter where you go, you WILL find some kindred spirits, even if they seem like totally unknowable strangers at first. So for me, all this talk about "blues being essential to jazz" is kinda redundant. OF COURSE it is. But there's a LOT more to "blues" than 12 bars and a flatted third, if you know what I mean. Like Anthony Braxton said when asked about the various cycles of the blues (and I apologize for repeating this quote, I used it on Board Krypton), "We can look at the lineages of the last 2000 years..." Now THAT'S an understanding of the blues!