robertoart

Spot on.

An Australian classic. The thinking man's Skippy.

I'm with you fully on this. A lot of Muse sessions clearly suffered from lack of rehearsal time, and could have/should have been done a lot better (a number of Clifford Jordan and Carlos Garnett sessions come immediately to mind), but there was a lot that was not going to get recorded at all if it was not recorded by Muse, and some of their stuff is classic (Roy Brooks 'The Free Slave', a couple of those Carlos Garnett albums, Woody Shaw 'Live at Berliner Jazztage', and there are others). Much of the Black Saint catalog is reasonably unlistenable to me, but what about that first Billy Harper album the label was named for? And no viable American companies were knocking down the doors to record him. Black Jazz made those incredible Doug and Jean Carn albums, and I can't begin to describe what those albums have added to my life over the past four decades. So I am incredibly thankful for those labels, for Strata East, Tribe, Horo, the whole scene. Yep. And for anyone not able to experience the music live - or as it unfolded on the bandstand - these labels kept the story going, although, I suppose, some will gladly argue these artists were propped up by a 'false qualitative economy' and championed by 'ideological critics'. In Australia, at the time, BS/SN and Muse had good distribution (mostly), so a visit to certain record stores meant you could keep learning and appreciating where the music was at and going. This was especially important in an era where someone like Ornette was not releasing lot's of sessions, at least before and after the Caravan Of Dreams time anyway. When a label like DIW began to record many of my favourite artists, it became much harder (and more expensive), to track things down. Your post also reminds me how deep a lot of these catalogues go, and how much more great music I've yet to get to. So from a pre-digital age, it all represents a significant historical archive now.

Does Chick Corea and the Church Of Scientology count? That stuff will reinforce your Atheist spirit.

And I suppose not many people on this board are Brice Marden fans - though I'm just going on the assumption, since he's not nearly as well known as his peers in the world of modern painting. He's well known enough. Possibly more well known than Agnes Martin. Thank God for that. Although they both might be neck and neck. Maybe Zorn could get involved.

Well those shows - Cavett, Douglas etc. certainly had intellectual and creative pretensions. Especially in the Radicalized world of the late Sixties/Early Seventies. Whole shows were devoted to the most elite of public creative types. So Morgan is far from speaking bullshit. If your talking exclusively about a 'pop-comedy talk show' like Carson, MG, you might have a point. Who's Merv anyway? Is he that bloke Kramer turned into a turkey on Seinfeld? It would have been pretty good to have a great Network TV performance clip or ten from most of those people in your list MG. Blue Mitchell and band on Cavett? Didn't Blue Mitchell end up playing with John Mayall in his Fusion projects around this time?

In that case, it's probably a good thing the Beatles didn't request Armstrong to be included on the cover of Sgt. Pepper.

Yeah, pity the social conditions of his life probably retarded that somewhat.

Sculptors are often the best draughts-people. Working with all that form. Terrible colourists though

Anyone know who's playing the sax solo on this? No idea, but he's got a lovely left hand, and quite possibly an expensive watch. Most likely a studio musician. Anita is my favourite Stella.

'The West Coast Allen Lowe Band' Actually her music sounds like Abba making an album with Sting's Jazz band.

Could be worse. He could have teamed up with Lou Reed. At least this singer can sing in tune when she wants to.

Grohl played drums behind McCartney's second number on SNL this evening and was not fucking around with it. Grohl's intensity meant I had high hopes for the song for the first ten seconds or so. By the end I realised it was only Grohl's drumming that sustained my interest. Although this was the live performance from the 12/12/12 concert.

So, McCartney's Liberace to you? , He's Macca to his friends. I wonder if Ayler was still alive, would McCartney have asked him to play on his Jazz album. and would Ayler have acquiesced. Ayler and Dianna Kral, thats a bit more cognitive dissonance for you. Good old McCartney...always trying to push his avant-garde credentials/pretensions.

Can you expand this to maybe three words at least.

This is so much bullshit. If your talking about great, good and less good players, maybe you have a point. But that is to also sidestep the facts of the creation, sustenance and development of the musical language as a whole. It can't be reduced to an argument about 'this speaker was a better speaker than this other speaker'. To deny the social and intellectual context of their (musicians) times, is a fake out for people who want to push some regrettable agendas. Unfortunately the history of Jazz can provide a lot of enticing social and creative worlds for some Academics to attach their Historical projections into, but it doesn't deny the even more regrettable need to fight against misplaced revisionism. As for Schildkraut how much of an influence was he on Coltrane. A GREAT BIG ONE or a somewhat less tangential one. I suppose we can also say Slominsky's scalular phone book was a big influence too.

Yeh, Warne Marsh. So how many White Tenor players in the times this panel took place can be compared to the 'multitudes' of Black Tenor giants then. Obviously I'm talking about multitudes in terms of critical mass not derivation. Marsh and Tristano etc.al were an anomaly compared to the all cultural expression of Jazz as a Black music language. And Marsh, Tristano, Pepper, Bix, Trumbauer, Pee Wee Russell, W. Breuker, J. Adasiewicz, etc. etc. express Jazz as their own musical languages. Xlento!, as Hank Mobley might say. Nobody is denying that jazz was originally, and remains in terms of expressive, etc., aspects, a basically African-American tradition. They don't express Jazz as their 'own musical languages', they express the musical language of Jazz with their own voices or accents, the language is the key thing, the voice or accent the individual thing. It's also more than 'in terms of expressive etc., aspects'...it is down to notes, scales-diminished, melodic minor.. harmonic substituitions etc. From where did this musical thinking and structures emerge? From dominant musical thinkers from Black bands and communities. As far as Free Jazz, there was no Free Jazz in Europe before Ornette, Coltrane and Ayler. Derek Bailey or no.

If "they" "reject" (or at least don't rush to embrace) "us", why...how can that be? Do they not see how worthy we are? Do they think that they are better than us? Everything gets viewed through the lens of "me/us" being the center of everybody's universe. The assumption is that it is true for me, therefore it is true for all. The notion that one can be basically different without surrendering full/essential equality of legitimacy is still a difficult one to grasp in a lot of places, and not just in the area of race. I suspect Marsailis is retreating back onto the fence the further this clip goes. He makes the point about European audiences, re-Coltrane and Brecker, but he surely was also meaning any audience faced with the reality of Coltrane's social cry as opposed to Brecker's tenorisms. And don't forget there are still people claiming Brecker was critically neglected because he was White (believe it or not). Re Euro-pean-ess/Whiteness and 'something they can do'. The meaning is probably closer to 'something they can participate in and influence on their own terms'. Anywhere in the Western World (including America) this hardly seems an issue now. When was the last truly all-Black intersubjective Jazz movement? - the Loft scene/Harmolodic Seventies, and the New Lions Marsailis early Eighties. although I suppose some will be glad to say this was all falsely propped up by White Critics with an ideological agenda.The Loft scene became the Downtown scene - whose legacy has chiefly been to free Free Jazz from an essential African American Aesthetic into an Avant-Noise Improv one, where White musicians can now participate 'on their own terms'. Who are the sentinels/beneficiary's of this movement - Zorn/Douglas/Vanderwhatshisname/Ribot/Frisell etc.al.

Yeh, Warne Marsh. So how many White Tenor players in the times this panel took place can be compared to the 'multitudes' of Black Tenor giants then. Obviously I'm talking about multitudes in terms of critical mass not derivation. Marsh and Tristano etc.al were an anomaly compared to the all cultural expression of Jazz as a Black music language.

Well no actually. The point Marsailis is making re-Coltrane and Brecker is exactly as the point you make about Cecil in the first paragraph. Just trade White panelists circa 1964 for the Brecker audience. Marsailis is saying the feeling of the music as produced by the lived experience of Coltrane - and the band - can't be distilled down to an essence of skilled notes and sound. It was too confrontational for that, (and correspondingly more sublime).

Yes, so there is also sound and notes. But those sounds and notes are reflective of an intersubjective experience. What White tenor players in the late Fifties and Sixties had a sound to compare to the multitudes of great Black tenor players of the time? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xyvdXUixo2o

Interesting how the debate of the times - and the one Cecil Taylor is fighting here - that Jazz was not a legitimate Canonical music - has now made way for another kind of debate. The one these days driven by embittered 'reverse racist' bemoaners.

Calabro: The idea that in Western culture we are concerned with developmental music... There is implied in this comment, that Western (notational) music is 'a part of history', while 'improvisation' is a lesser, in the moment 'expression', somehow outside of it. It seems inevitable that in the next sentence Calabro rehearses the accusations of 'the angry Black man'. Taylor then digs in, about 'George Washington', and his (Taylor's) Indigenous heritage, Taylor equating improvisation with 'oral history' and socialisation, as opposed to 'history' as written, or metaphorically 'notated'. Taylor: I agree with you. You don’t want to spend that time. You have that prerogative, you know, and also that license, but, unfortunately, me, you know, in my entirety, living in America, I don't have the same kind of licenses that you have so I have to know, like, as much as the history books allow…and they don’t allow me to know too much. Fortunately, there is a thing – folklore – so there are certain things I know about my historical predecessors, if you will, that is not written in history books. Like um gee – I can’t exactly say that my great great great great grandfather was George Washington…

Reading the Dean discog, I noticed a vocalist from the '50's by the name of Jewel Belle. I wonder if this could be the same vocalist Blood Ulmer mentions in his early interviews called Jewel 'Brenner'. Before his time with Hank Marr, Ulmer played for three years with Jewel Brenner And The Swing Kings. According to Ulmer, "This girl, Jewel Brenner, asked me to play in her band...She was very good and she had an act. She shaved all her hair off and had a wig on. She'd come up and sing four or five numbers and on the last song she'd take off her wig and that was her act. I think she was the first Black woman to shave all her hair off her head. And that amazed White men. So, she was more famous for that". http://www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/imageview.aspx?image=26542&irn=19246 Jewel Brenner wearing strapless lace dress and shaved head singing with five piece band, possibly including Gordon "Slick" Jackson on piano, Billy Stewart on guitar, J. C. Gordon on tenor saxophone and electric bass http://www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/details.aspx?item=19246

I enjoyed reading the opinion on Do The Math. http://dothemath.typepad.com/