JSngry

Well, it's not that Carter CAN'T paly funky or lay down a solid vamp that grooves, it's just that I don't hear him doing it here. Might have been an off day for him, maybe he just didn't feel it, maybe the personal vibe in the studio got funky, who knows? Stuff happens. My bad in stating that Freddie Waits was on the unreleased session as well. Of course it's Morris/Muhammed. But what does it tell you that Idris Muhammed cops a better groove on an Andrew Hill date than Freddie Waits? Muhammed is a fine, often great drummer, that's not what I mean, but Freddie Waits was a FIREBREATHER, and I don't even smell smoke here. Regarding Ervin, I think that Chuck's (?) comment somewhere else a few weeks ago to the effect that Booker Ervin's accompanists made him sound interesting (or something like that) comes into play here. I don't necessarily take that as a slight (not a full one, anyway), becasue it takes a really confident player to hang w/a rhythm section like Byard/Davis/Dawson or the Mingus/Richmond whirlwind. But the fact remains, Booker's gonna play what Booker's gonna play, and if the accompaniment doesn't offer either some active rhythmic interplay or a REALLY strong groove (as was the case w/the Parlan/Tucker/Harewood trio), Booker's not gonna do anything different, and given his penchant for exclamatory playing, if there's no heat backing him up, as I feel is the case here, the net result is akin to a Sanctified preacher delivering a sermon to a Vermont Espiscopalian congregation - one guy's trying to get all worked up, but he's in it all alone, and the void is uncomfortable to experience. I actually feel the same way about Lee's work on this album, albeit to a much lesser extent. Still, the "crackle" that makes Lee Morgan such an unforgettable voice seems missing on this date, and I don't hear it as him just being "mellow". That, of course, is entirely subjective though. The thing about GRASS ROOTS that intrigues me, though, is that it was Hill's "comeback" album in a sense, made and released after a stretch of for whatever reason "failed" sessions. One wonders how much control Hill gave Wolff on this album, and how comfortable each of the players were with that control,especially seeing how the earlier session, which to my ears DID have some spunk, was rejected. Who knows what tensions were in place as the players tried to make a "keeper" for Hill and Wolff? Maybe Hill really, REALLY wanted an album with what he perceived as "popular appeal" and made that known going into the session. Maybe the "big chill" was there as a result of everybody consciously playing it safe for just that reason. Or maybe not. Maybe the original GRASS ROOTS is one of those albums that I just don't "get" the way it was intended to be got. Seems like enough people like it well enough, so that just might be the case!

Hmmm...I've got some Wallace Roney albums that I bought just to hear Geri Allen, so this is a rule I'd have to bend on occasion. Then there's Louis & Lil, Stanley & Shirley, John and Alice... And what about T-Bone Burnette & Sam Phillips? Or John & Michelle Phillips for that matter? Jackie & Roy? (not my bag, but still...) Now if you're talking Steve & Irene, count me IN!!!! :D:D:D

Yep. Classic. And not for the naive.

What's the deal with Charles Sullivan's Strata-East album? Seems like ther was a "custody battle" between the label and Sullivan after the label folded, with Sullivan winning and releasing the album on Inner City. Did the label retain rights to sessions that were self-produced/financed as a matter of course, or did some artists in fact get financial backing to one degree or another from the label itself?

Heard it, don't have it. It's interesting, as are all those American Clave releases. I also have him reading one piece on a Broadside LP called NEW JAZZ POETS. We used a slight sample of it on WELCOME TO THE PARTY, on "Hip Bop". Listen closely and you'll hear a voice repeating the phrase "Burning lakes of fire". That's Reed. The jazz/spoken word thing was a small but interesting part of the Strata-East scene. Various albums had passages of poetry and/or spoken word, usually of a political/Nationalist bent (see ALKEBU-LAN) and Jayne Cortez did a REALLY interesting album for S-E accompanied only by Richard Davis called CELEBRATIONS AND SOLITUDES. If it ever gets reissued, snap it up, if only for "How Long Has Trane Been Gone?".

That was the intention, no doubt, but I'll go out on a bit of a limb and say that the Leroy Vinnegar/Donald Dean tandem would have served the purpose MUCH better than the Carter/Waits one, on THAT day anyway. (on that note, and off topic altogether, rememberering that "who would you like to have heard Lee Morgan play more with" thread. how about Les McCann, in Les' less guarded/less commercial moments? I'd mention SWISS MOVEMENT, but that might be a dis to Benny Bailey, and that would be wrong!) And by all means, DO disagree. Half the fun of having a strongly held opinion (and on this one, it is VERY strong) is in the bluster and faux-"superiority" of expressing it! It's fun to be a blowhard sometimes!

Well, we have a difference of opinion here, Lon. I'd never really cared for GRASS ROOTS in its original form, and its all because of Ron Carter. One of the most appealing things to me about Hill's music has always been its rhythmic dynamism, the constant churning underneath. The original session just dooesn't have this - it's the most rhymically static Hill I've ever heard. This has always perplexed me, since Waits is a great drummer, always interactive, and more than willing to stir the pot. The choice of Booker Ervin seemed a bit "off" to me too, but it wasn't him that caused me such unease over the years, it was just how the whole thing just laid there and didn't move. A very un-Hill like trait. (and, Lee & Booker are BOTH players whose strengths come out over an active rhythm section rather than a static one, Booker in particular) After a couple of years of trying to figure out what was missing, I finally heard it - Ron Carter is making no attempt whatsoever to interact. He's just contributing these really limp bass lines and is content to let them flounder flaccidly. Musta been a bad day, or a bad vibe, because in those days, Carter was involved as a player. But on this one... Just because you're vamping, no, ESPECIALLY if you're vamping, that's no excuse for letting the pulse go all to hell, which is what Carter does here - there's just no "OOOMPH" in his playing, at least not to my ears (and feet). The time stays cool, but the BEAT...Waits sounds like he occassionally tries to get a thing going, but Carter just seems oblivious to anything but his own little zone of doing nothing. Every time I hear it, I get more and more frustrated, and wish that somebody would have reached over and slapped Carter out of his stupor, or at the very least given him a bump or two. There's really no excuse for being THAT listless in THAT company. So for years, I wrote GRASS ROOTS off, pulling it out every few years or so just to see if there was something there I had missed. Alas, there wasn't. Then, shortly after I had discover the BNBB, I wrote a post expressing my disappointment with the album, and some kind soul responded that I should check out the CD version instead of the LP version, because the CD had a whole 'nother session that might, MIGHT cause me to reconsider. I had kind of lapsed on the whole BN reissue trip then, so wasn't really aware of it, but saw Woody Shaw and Jimmy Ponder in the same band, an ANDREW HILL band at that, and thought, "Well, THAT'S something you don't see every day!" and checked it out. Long story short, I have a significant preference for the unreleased session to the "official" one. It's got all the spunk and verve that it's predecessor lacks. Freddie Waits sounds like Freddie Waits here! And no wonder - Reggie Workman does everything Carter didn't. He plays the vamps but doesn't get straightjacketed by them and keeps things lively and frisky, the way a good Anrew Hill session ought to be. I really wish I could say that the original GRASS ROOTS album is one of those that grew on me little by little over the years, but it just hasn't. There's really no "cutoff point" for such things, of course, but it's 25 years now, and if anything, I like it LESS now than ever, having heard, roughly, what the album COULD have been like. A very rare misjudgement on Mr. Wolff's part, I must (reluctantly) conclude. But at least he didn't erase what he didn't use!

You mean there's bootleg DVDs to look forward too now? Damn, I'm gonna have to work 3 jobs now...

There's little to choose from, but check out DRUMS UNLIMITED, and even the two impulse! albums, PERCUSSION BITTER SUITE and IT'S TIME.

So ya' think you know colors, eh? Nah - THIS guy knows colors!

You guys are making me blush! I'll try and answer e-mails tomorrow, ok? Time's gotten tight again.

Yep. A third, fourth, and fifith, too. Several hundred listenings are in order. several thosuands, perhaps. As John L noted, there is a LOT going on in this music, none of it readily apparent on first listen. At least it wasn't for me. I never disliked it, but it took me several years of bothe musical and audio growth to begin to get a handle on it. It ain't easy music, that's for sure. Stockhausen-meets-India-meets-"There It Is-era James Brown, all filtered through the Miles/Teo expereience is KIND of what it is, and that for damn sure ain't easy, nor commerical. "Red China Blues" is commerical. You may never actually LIKE it. But I'm the type that believes that you should at least know as exactly as possible what it is you don't like when it's musicians of this caliber and music that has had such a profound, albeit stelath, influence. This is one album where the essence is DEFINITELY beneath the surface. WAAAAYYYY beneath...

Unless it's in a voting booth....

For all Krall's vaunted "sexiness", I find her a bit "cold", frigid even. Elvis' first post-breakup album? "Almost Blew"?

"Hawk and his wings" - THAT works! Or "Pops when he sings"...

NOT SO FAST!!!! There's some awfully good live stuff on that box, and..... there's VIDEO!!!!!!!

I've learned some of his tunes, played and studied a few of his solos, enough to get a feel for what he's up to, but I'd never immerse myself in anybody's music too much past that point. I've always aspired to play like ornette the same way I've aspired to play like Prez or any body else - as honestly and spontaneously as possible, to tell a story and convey expression, not just "follow the rules" - ANYBODY'S rules! The best jazz (hell, the best MUSIC, period) is "free" in that it follows its own logic and rules and does not aspire to fit into a mold. Louis Armstrong is just as free as Albert Ayler in my book! What Ornette's major contribution was/is, in my opinion, is to show that jazz musicians didn't HAVE to be limited to a cyclical, recurring form in order to create. Think about this - in the developement section of a symphony, does the composer limit his writing to the exact harmonic progressions of his opening themes? Of course not - he develops them by taking them on an imaginative "journey" through various keys, major/minor "games", motivic malleabilities, and any number of devices that suit his needs. Ornette seems to have intuited that jazz could be played the same way - that after you played the theme, you could variate it any way you wanted to. The guy's always "playing changes" in his solos, they're just not following a predictable pattern of repetition. What John L says/asks, Is that to say: "just invent melody, any melody, and the harmony will follow in step?" is inevitably true - harmony is inherent in melody. The question is, WHAT harmony are you going to put to your melody? The most advanced boppers (Bird in paarticular) came up with such elaborate substitutions that it was inevitable that somebody would eventually say, "Why not just make it up as we go along?" Tristano's two Capitol free improvisations from the late 40s do this, even if their "perspective" is coming from someplace entirely outside the "jazz mainstream". But they show that the idea of 100% improvisation as a true life philosophy was already in the air, which follows perfectly with the spiritual/scientific teachings/discoveries that what we can immediately see/experience is but a fraction of what actually "is". Opening oneself to the myriad possibilites and implications of simultaneous/parallell "realities" (or, if you like, "dimensions") could only lead to a broadening of options for concieving of form. The fact that the person who crystallized all of this perfectly in the jazz realm was a self-taught, semi-rural African-American from Fort Worth, Texas makes perfect sense for any number of reasons, too. The deepest blues have NEVER been about succumbing to the demands of rigidly impost linearity, musically or lyrically, and definitely not philosophically in any regard, social or otherwise. It's that intuitiveness, that so-called "naivete" that give Ornette's correct (in my opinion) assumptions about the fluidity of time and harmony (and life) such true power - his was no intellectual theory that created the music as a demonstration of it. His was a music that created the need for a theory, one that, if you ask me, is a LOT more philosophical than it is musical, after its creation. In other words, his music explains his theory rather than the other way around. That's pretty much the way its always worked in music - the visionaries create, "just because", and the theorists come along afterwards to explain the "hows" and "whys" in "technical" terms, to codify the products of the imagination. Anytime the theory comes before the music, I need convincing of the music's actual "truth". Well, almost anytime - George Russell gets a pass, a BIG pass. But honestly, I think that his theory was formulated on an intuitive basis also, at least in its earliest phases, and the end results, in practice, are not TOO terribly removed from Ornette's less "academic" concepts. Different roads to adjoining cities, you might say, with more than ample transportation between them to provide ample opportunity for crosstown copulation, even if producing mixed offspring on a regular basis might prove genetically impossible, or at least highly difficult.

Pretty sure that "I Can't See For Lookin'" was out on COOL COOKIN', a early 70s Cadet 2-LP commapullation, which also included "How Could You Do a Thing Like That to Me" (aka Ellingon's "Sultry Serenade"), a Vanguard track that to the best of my knowledge ahs never been released ANYWHERE else.

Trifecta time. Not really my "favorite" per se, but DAMN that sucker hits a groove unlike any thing else I know of. It's vote worthy for "I Wish You Love" alone!

As a leader? The obvious choice for me would be Max Roach, since he sorta bred that whole vibe w/his mid/late 60s bands. Woulda like to have heard Kenny Dorham do a leader date for Strata-East. The Last Poets. Bartz, obviously. Frank Mitchell. Joe Lee Wilson. Betty Carter. Hannibal. DEFINITELY Hannibal. Ishmael Reed. Andy Bey. K'atetta Aton (still looking for somebody who's heard of her and/or knows where she is today...) Cannonball. Imagaine Cannonball on Strata-East throughout the early 70s instead of Capitol and weep for what was not. Oh yeah, the whole Black Jazz roster. But they had their OWN label. And believe it or not, the very earliest Earth Wind & Fire. Seriously. Those were the days...

Shirley Scott did a beaut of an album for Strata-East: ONE FOR ME. Sorta/kinda has a Young-ish vibe to it w/o being explicitly Youngish. REASONABLY ACCURATE AMG REVIEW HERE!

The "Dimenuendo..." interval in the original ELLA AND DUKE AT COTE AZUR" is mind boggling, as is "Happy Reunion" from the TOGA BRAVA SUITE album. There are many, MANY reasons for pursuing the Ellington live documents, and catching Gonsalves at moments like these (and others) is one of the better ones. Another vote for TELL IT LIKE IT IS - "Body & Soul" from that album is so out that it's in, or vice versa. The rest of the album is pretty badass too. Absolute MOST favorite Gonsalves moment though has to be "Naidni Remmus" from the Musicmasters NEVER-BEFORE-RELEASED RECORDINGS (1965-1972) disc. Whoa....................

There was a Down Beat interview made shortly before his death and published shortly after it.