JSngry

Being a Pip is a full-time trip! No man, this was in 1983, when I was living in Albuquerque, I went to Gunnison w/a group led by one Laney McDonald, an ex-Chicagoan pianist/singer who did a "lite" jazz/R&B trip. What club it was, I don't remember, but it was a "jazzy" bar. The hotel they put us up in shared a parking lot with the club. Walking from the room to the club was like being in a real-life Golden Circle cover. As for Quartet Out travelling, yeah, we'd love to. All it takes is a coordinated schedule so we can make enough along the way and back to not LOSE money, and that's where it gets tricky. To bring a band like ours into a club for one or two nights without having anything in between is most likely a losing proposition, unless the club has a really generous budget. But get a string of these things set up, a circuit, and it becomes more feasable. Of course, concerts and other venues are always alternatives. Bottom line - if we can do it w/o losing money, we're game if the scheduling is far enough in advance. If anybody has a plan, let me know. I'm reasonable, practical, and a real Pip to deal with... Sorry to throw the thread off topic, but you asked!

Very nice work!

How far is Parkertown from Gunnison? I played a weekend there in January once, and the warmest it ever got was -22F. The snow was up over everybody's head. I dug it for a weekend, but I don't know if I could live in it. OTOH, it beats the hell out of tornados!

People with a fuller awareness of prebop jazz than I can fill in the blanks, but there had been pianoless/chord instrumentless things done before Mulligan, if not that many of them. As for the Dorham thing, I really don't know what the impetus was it. I'd like to learn more about these things myself!

Well, I'm no Coleman expert, but I can tell you that the piano was absent in the two groups for different musical reasons (and remember, just for history's sake, that Ornette's first album DID have a pianist (whether or not that was the label's doing, I don't know), and the whole original Coleman Quartet sprung out of a Paul Bley gigging group). Going back to Mulligan's pre-Quartet work, it's quite apparent that he dug counterpoint and backgrounds to solos. QUITE a bit, actually. This manifests itself in how the guy constantly played behind everybody's solos. He didn't really play simple background riffs, and he didn't really do a collective improv thing either. He combined the two and did improvised background counterpoint. "Bopsieland", some called it. Having a pianist on hand would not just increase the density of the group's sound, it would result in the existence of another harmonic/rhythmic layer that would render Mulligan's penchant for melodic background counterpoint a little unnecessary and/or cluttered. In spite of Mulligan's persona today as a "cool" player and a "genial" West Coaster, by all accounts he was a very opinionated, dominant, sharp, and at times difficult personality who very much insisted on playing his bands' music his way, and his way only. (Gary McFarland told of bringing in some charts to the CJB, and Mulligan edited/rearranged them almost beyond McFarland's recognition, but McFarland willingly conceeded that the changes were for the better). The man wanted room to do what he did, and the man made it happen. Ornette, otoh, was all about playing the song without playing the changes or the pre-existing form. As his later recordings with Geri Allen show, his concept of music allows for a pianistic presence just fine, but at the time, who was around to deal with the piano as simply another melodic instrument in the ensemble instead of a time-keeping, change making, form demarcating part of the rhythm section that only soloed when it's time came? I think it's revealing that AFTER Ornette, a bunch of pianists came to reevaluate their role in the ensemble. No Ornette, no Herbie w/Miles, that's my guess. In both cases, the leaders found that a piano clashed with, or at the least inhibited, their overall musical conceptions. But the WAY in which it clashed, i.e., the musical reasons, was totally different. Not unlike the Tristano "free improvisations" of a decade before, somebody else got there first. But comparing what they did and why the did it with the whats and whys of Ornette's music suggests that parallel, not intersecting, paths were beng followed. If anything, I'd guess that Sonny Rollins' trio work might have had a bigger imact on Ornette's final path than Mulligan, simply because Rollins, not unlike Coleman, used the format to indulge and encourage his natural propensity for rhythmic and harmonic flexibility and elasticity. Listen to the occasions where Mulligan played w/a pianist - does he SOLO any differently than he does without one? Not much, I'd say. The same cannot be said of Rollins! And, as SOMETHING ELSE and to a lesser extent (Bley was not an agressive comper in this band), the Hillcrest Club recordings show, it cannot be said of Ornette either. None of this is to minimalize Mulligan - his innovations were real, significant, and stand on their own. No doubt, the openess of his quartet's sound set many wheels to turning and put the idea of a more "airy" sound in the, well, air. It is just merely to point out that the same thing can be done by different people for different reasons. If Ornette had his own distinct idea of what he wanted to do early on (and it seems that he did - anybody who has not already done so, PLEASE read John Litwieler's Coleman biography), the odds are that the elimaination of the piano was inevitable, Mulligan precedent or not, simply for musical reasons.

Well, ok then. I suspected as much, but this openness is something of which I was not aware. Any leads as to where I can read/hear about all this? I'm not trying to be sensational or voyeuristic, not at all. I have a genuine curiosity of the "sociological" type. The guy's career/life fascinates me.

And perhaps this is the golden lining inside the silver cloud of recent Verval actiontivities? One can but hope that somebody with some sense has an ear over there now. Maybe Mark got a promotion! (Is there justice in this world, even though it be fleeting? Tell me no questions and I'll ask you no lies...)

Dude, you live by the Eb, you die by the Eb. Simple as that. Hell, if Art Pepper had played tenor, he'd have probably gotten through all his mess and still be alive. AND deep! Don't let the few fool you - God is a Bb kinda God when it comes to horn players. He just lets the few special ones through the gate so it's not TOO easy.

Given their current holdings, Fantasy could make an "essential" (and probably best-selling!) catalog item by putting out a compilation of announcements/introductions by Cannonball Adderly & Duke Ellington. I may yet do it myself and offer it as a freebie. But don't hold your breath, not just yet. Let me get my kids graduamated first...

I suspect tha many of us here were alive and cognizant when Ball passed. Surely it wasn't just me who felt it to be a heavier than usual blow, not so much to the music as to the overall culture? Has time proven that gut feeling accurate? I myself think it has.

I hope that is true, in many different ways, on many different levels.

Thank God for ".org" & the preconcieved notions of the "general public". Thank God for Organissimo Forums. I'd not raise this issue anywhere else. But the crowd here can hang, at least I HOPE they can. To wit: Nobody's anwered this yet, so I'll be blunt. How the hell does somebody who's spent most of his career doing music and projects that can crudely, but best, be described as having a "white" estehetic show up playing TOTALLY badass hard bop trumpet with a bunch of African-American junkies? Flame away. but only if you really grasp the implications of what I'm saying.

Re:Waldron - Wow.... Re:Grimes - WOW! I suppose I could look it up, but where does SPEAK BROTHER SPEAK fit into the Waldron story?

Any thoughts on the RETURN OF DON PETERSON album (that's how I have it) w/Eddie Daniels (still sucking Joe Henderson's jimmy, but doing it in such a self-respecting way), Ted Dunbar, & Freddie Waits? For me, it's worth it to me for "Love Story" alone, And what's up w/Don Schlitten & that tune anyway? Cedar did a trio version of it on BREAKTHROUGH. It's a better tune than whoever had the hit on it (Mancini?) cared to reveal, but it's not THAT good. One has to wonder, one does...

Checked in over there this morning and all was well. Went back a bit later and my non-framed link didn't work. Went there through the JC homepage, got the framed link, and all there was was a cryptic message about temporarily shutting down due to heavy spamming. What did I miss?

I think Soul Stream was referring to Yanow's calling the Varitone a baritone.

All that needs to be done now is to get Alvin Queen to reissue SOUL CONNECTION on CD. That badboy's NICE!

Bizarre indeed! The album might be called UNDERSTANDING, but the review is severely MISundertanding!

Grasshopper, Kung Fu was set somewhere in the late 1800s-early 1900s, I believe. The saxophone was invented around 1840. But you must watch all the episodes and learn, not ask before knowing. Such is the way the master teaches.

A few years ago, NPR (or American Public Radio, can't remember), had a New Years Eve broadcast of live jazz gigs from across the country. The PST segment was of a Jack Sheldon gig, and the guest vocalist was freakin' JONI JAMES! WHOA! How many cats have played with Curtis Counce AND Joni James? It boggles the mind, it does...

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?

Yeah, he was Dave Frishberg's lawyer too.

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!

Scour the pots instead - she'll cut you more slack.