umum_cypher

We aren't talking about Billy Harper's interpretation of history here, we're talking about White Lightening's report of his interpretation, with no primary evidence before us, but with that in mind - Surely there's a kernal of truth to pretty much everything Harper reportedly says, but it's surrounded by such a thick husk of bullshit that the truth value is hard to get at. For instance, segregation and the resultant dissipation of black capital was certainly a factor in the lessening of work and in/formal education opportunities for black jazz musicians ('The White establishment used its funds to move the venues away from the Black Neighborhoods into the white ones'), but that overlooks how important white capital (indie labels, clubs) were to jazz during its boomtime, and doesn't explain why other forms were able to flourish in jazz's place without (supposedly) those kinds of black-owned resources. 'Jazz needs subsidy to survive as much as the opera - but the White establishment never subsidized Jazz': opera is expensive as hell to put on (this is not an argument for opera's subsidizing, it's a fact). But why should jazz have needed subsidizing in a way that hip hop didn't? Why could a jazz quartet fail because of a lack of subsidy but three MCs and One DJ succeed, in the same place, at the same time, before the same audience? The patronage and subsidizing needs to come from a core audience first, that's why. My money's on Freelancer. One of the most difficult things for historians to explain, after as many social and material influences as you can think of have been evaluated, is the fact that styles and tastes simply change. It's frustrating not to be able to pin that on anything particular (education policies, material resources, concentration of demographics, socio-political influences), but there you go - it's vague even beyond the need for 'immediacy'. Has anyone read Brian Ward's Just My Soul Responding? It's very dense and very good on this, as I remember. One of the worst things about this kind of cult-nat derived rhetoric (the 'white man' made us do this, educated us to do that) - and if I'm wary of the report it's because in two long interviews I did with BH he didn't talk or even seem to be conceptualizing like that - is that it allows black Americans in history and in the present no agency whatsoever, and there's nothing more depressing than someone denying their own power to resist or influence events, even in the knoweldge that they themselves have put up such resistance and had such influence, in order to solidify in their own minds and those of their audiences a simplistic historical explanation based on emotive and attractive racial alliegences. Though, eventually, I take his points! I would write more here but I have a policy document to present at my meeting with the White Establishment this morning. (We're going to make 50 Cent do an album of Bellini arias). [edited to increase verbiage]

Look, I don't want to come across as a total prick, but there's a recent book about all this ------ My favourite treatment of the subject is in Chapple and Garofalo's brilliant Rock and Roll is Here to Pay. The book's long out of print, but I liberated all the best bits for mine. Was that terribly annoying?

That tone thing doesn't really come through on the Lonehill airshots CD. The (uncredited) announcer cracks me up though. Does anyone recognise the voice?

We'll agree to differ.

Pah! Name 'em!

London trumpeter and flugelhornist Gerard Presencer would be world famous if he was American and if his recorded output wasn't so uneven.

Where was this published?

Of what seem to be three different sets from the Jazz Messengers concerts at the Olympia, 13 May 1961, Lee is IMHO in charge on two of them. But the third is Wayne's sick joke at the expense of everyone else who ever played tenor. He is so far beyond everyone else (on stage) it's incredible.

BBC's alternative logo contest yielded this:

He was a prodigy in Philly, and he played with plenty of stars when v young. I've got the Diabelli Variations disc here - my favourite of the classical bugger-abouts. I've seen him a couple of times in a straightahead trio context, and I found him a bit cut and paste, though good at it of course. He's good on the early Dave Douglas stuff too. All these 'goods', but I gave him a bad Wire writeup once, when I was young and bitter.

Tom, Are you sure it is Lee you are hearing, or perhaps Collins or Shepley? I've heard this once - I agree it's trash. Bertrand.

Yeah he does, but no solo. Several flugels a la Tijuana Brass. It's a piece of trash, the theme to another UA movie, see IMDB. (There's a reason for this repertoire choice - and there's a book you should read ...).

Cool

Not at all. She's just an anti-'liberal' ranter like the other neo-con pundits isn't she? It does Hitchens a disservice to describe him as any of those things. He was, for instance, a signatory of this. And until he gets onto the war, he's still pretty much his old-left self - I'd be interested to hear him on K.A.

Clem, MG, but have you heard any of the London is the Place For Me series (4 vols so far, on Honest Jon's)? Not the roots of reggae as such, wrong island (I mean Trinidad, not GB), but London-recorded calypso (Lord Kitchener the star turn, but many other great calypsonians present), high life, jazz, etc etc. - a lovely collision of styles and personnel, lots of jazzers (Harry Beckett, Shake Keane) sessionizing for Nigerian drum corps and so on. IMO 1 and 2 are the best 4 is strong too, 3 less so. Not within a hundred nautical miles of being an expert, but I've always prefered calypso to the mento I've heard (that really is the roots of reggae) - Trinidad had the Spanish tinge since 15-whatever, and it was still there in the 50s.

I'll have a look at the interview transcript when I get home, but I don't think I got a date or anything else out of my interviewee, who was really rather cagey about the whole thing, quite possibly for the reasons Bertrand alluded to - I'm not being mysterious, but I'd rather not name him on the board (that's why it's not sourced in the book, like most of those kinds of details). He's one of Cuscuna's faves too, isn't he - can't say I find him very thrilling. Maybe, if it happened at all, he copped it around the end of 67 - LM was recording with him all the time and playing with him at Slugs (I have a photo of Lee and the back of FM's head - what a mystery he is - at Slug's from Sept 67), but was recording with Maupin by early 68 - not much to go on tho - FWIW Those post-BN mid-60s Blakeys are really ropey IMO - as already mentioned, surprisingly so considering who's involved. Have you heard 'S Make It? CF Indestructible and weep. I watched the Wizard of Oz the other day (don't ask), and it reminded me of a story with Judy Garland, Curtis Fuller and Lee Morgan in it, which I'll post tomorrow but I've got to go right this second ... (it's not very good, don't hold your breath)

I have a feeling that 46th St address was were Mobley's father lived, with Hank in and out of town. (6 blocks from U Penn - but another world) I heard that those matinees, which were required in Philadelphia (Peps, Showboat also) but not always elsewhere, meant that some musicians resented travelling to the city. Big market tho, obviously.

As parochial and colonial cringe-worthy as only the US press can be. A writer who will co-sign (in the name of woe-is-us, hell-in-a-handcartism) such flagrant, hyperbolic bullshit as '"Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor ... is not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history', is asking for it.

Billy's lovely, there's one great Lee solo. Sound is duff on the Applause, production is dodgy in general: you can hear the bleed-through from the solos the horns tried before the final overdub.

'L'Arrache-Coeur' as it is titled in France is a surprising work of fiction. Imaginative, intriguing, disturbing. No idea how well it was translated into english. One of Vian's most absorbing book!

I know Jim, I was adding rather than replying.

Well, that he would now have been 80 rather than 79 isn't going to give us any more insight into his music, because it's always the same kind of investigation, the same questions, the same rhetoric, the same walk-on co-signers, etc etc.

Is this really necessary? I often wonder how documentary-worthy players like Tyner feel about having to participate in these wallow-ins, especially after 20 consecutive banner years for the Coltane heritage industry (see Ashley Khan hanging round and you know you're in that particular industrial area).

Thanks, both. That sounds like my kind of thing. BTW I have Vian's 'Heartsnatcher' here ready to begin once a couple of others are out of the way (in English). Opinions on that, if it doesn't replicate the Vian thread from a while ago?.

What do you have already, and which is the best?