umum_cypher

Just seen a promotional leaflet from Northway Publications, a small UK house that put out Alan Robertson's bio of Joe Harriott in 2003. Hidden away in small print is an announcement of a forthcoming Mobley bio by Derek Ansell. Ansell is a UK jazz writer of long standing, though I don't know what kind of research he's doing for this project. I get the impression the book's not particularly imminent.

I always hear a lot of disco in Charli Persip's hi hat (Peckin Time esp). Not sure if the terms of reference here are reallly wide enough to support some of the grander prognoses. Don't want to get under some of the blanket statements either - someone like MF Doom, for instance, is the equal of most of those we talk about all day on here.

my point is that if 'jazz' ever resurfaces in popular culture, it will be so bastardized you and i wont recognize it.

Andy Hamilton's biog/interview collection on Lee Konitz, out in April (for review in the Wire).

That's a phenomenal recording for sure. And, music aside (which I know, one should probably never say!), it's an astonishing piece of saxophone playing, technically speaking. Was talking to someone who was at the gig (forget who), who said that Evan and John were definitely 'pushing' each other, musically speaking, and that this friendly competition - in this guy's opinion - really added to the playing of each. Was there, didn't really get that impression - did get the impression that Butcher had been sizing up the acoustic while listening to the earlier performances - his made by far the best use of the huge church reverb that day.

I played his 17 minute solo off of Hornbill (Matchless) to a class yesterday. They loved it. It's an amazing combination of musical/dramatic macrostructure and really testing microexperiments, where he tests the threshold between pitch/noise etc from note to note. It's a CD of an Ongaku concert (a regular London series). Also contains ace solos by Evan P, Lou Gare etc - highly recommended.

quoting- Among many options, my ultimate dream group would be: Freddie Hubbard - trumpet Joe Henderson - tenor sax Bobby Hutcherson - vibes McCoy Tyner - piano Richard Davis - bass Elvin Jones - drums Have you seen all the Youtube clips of 80s festivals in Japan with groups like this - they're boring as billy-o

A frontline of Booker Little and Greg Osby playing an all-Braxton book or Baby Dodds + Kurtis Blow, and on Side B Gerald Cleaver + MF Doom

AMM (any period) + Craig Taborn (kybd/electronics here, rather than piano) + Hannibal + Evan Parker

Merchant bankers splurging bonuses, perhaps? That's what I'm talking about! BTW that Sahib Shihab album up there - what a killer it is.

But it's really all about Fred Jackson, wouldn't you say?

I know Brit Jazz has always had an element of holding on, but that seems prevalent now. Simon Weil

Of course, Pizza Express on Dean St (Soho) has a venerable jazz club in the basement. Avoid: Ronnies, Jazz Cafe. Nothing to see here.

This one is a bit kitsch (esp the last track, an ace, pacy gospel choir/solo tuba face-off) but I love it. It's much darker because of the low brass, much brighter because of all the tambourines (these are really rich DP arrangements), and Herbie, Freddie R and Stanley T make up for DB's foursquare soloing. And what a cover - tho what could match that of A New Perspective?

Here's a bit of the transcription of the interview I did with Mabern for the Lee book: TP: Did they [Al Lion et al] get the artists help in an A&R sense, artists’ recommendations, why don’t we get this young musician and bring him into the studio? HM: Well they were like that, they had certain people that they would want on the dates. They would suggest, why don’t you use this person. Like when I was rehearsing for Hank Mobley’s date Dippin, Lee was on that. So we were at the rehearsal, me and Billy Higgins, Lee, Hank, Larry Ridley, so I was comping. So Lee Morgan, everybody, Lee always loved the way I comped. I think that’s my forte. So Lee was like, Ooh Alfred! Listen to Mabern, the way he’s comping! He said, I want Mabern on my date! He didn’t ask. He told. And Alfred said ja, Alfred had his little scrapbook [mimes note making], he says ja, ja, and the date he was talking about was The Gigolo. Cos Lee loved the way I comped, see he was very supportive of me. And I tell that to young piano players, and the old ones too – your forte is to be an accompanist. Your solo, in a group, that’s personal stuff, but learn how to be an accompanist, learn how to comp, because that’s the stuff that inspired people, like Wynton Kelly. TP: I’ve always perceived that Lee picked the best accompanists for his band, so Wynton Kelly, Cedar Walton, you, McCoy Tyner. What was it about your support of his solo lines, was it the voicings or the rhythm, cos it’s a very rhythmic comping style you’ve got. HM: It was a combination of both. Even Freddie Hubbard spoke about that on the liner notes of Blue Spirits, he said that because of the size of my hands I can get voicings that most people can’t. So Freddie spoke about that too, it was a combination of everything. Plus I knew how to, see I loved Wynton Kelly so I knew how to, you know, I think like a spark plug, I comp in a very rhythmic way. McCoy Tyner does too, Herbie. Almost like big band. But you can’t do too much, you’ve got to learn when to do it and when not to. A lot of guys they comp but it’s just bluuum, sustained comp. But the guys I named, we comp in a very rhythmic fashion, like big bands, you know. Accents, no accents, you know. And then inspires, especially if you’ve got a rhythm section where the drummer and the bass player are not hooking up. You need that kind of a piano player who can spark them. Because if you don’t, it’s gonna be, man, it’s gonna be very boring, and it’s not gonna make it.

Michel, the RVG Rumproller's previously unreleased version of Venus de Mildew has one of my absolute favourite Lee solos. Everyone else, Joe H especially, sounds like they know it's a rehearsal take, but Lee cuts in so hard as if to say no such thing as a rehearsal, we're doing it now ... Tom

It's one of the great trumpet solo beginnings. But the middle and end are uncomfortable for me to listen to. Play it to a trumpeter - they often wince in sympathy when they hear chops going like that. There's plenty of what I think is great music from something like this period - both Procrastinators, the rejected Lift Every Voice session (on which Lee is brilliant), bits off the Lighthouse/Both-And/whatever (I prefer the Fresh Sound), Last Session - but these are all after what I think of as Lee's late 60s turn. I maintain that musically and personally, in 66/7/into 8 he was in some trouble. Tom

I'm not sure that's what my book says - a smoothing of one argument here, a gloss of another there, and my points are changed somewhat! What Lee was trying to do, what he was required to do, what he was instrumentally capable of doing and what he was at all interested in doing are four different things, all of which I consider in the text. There is, as Lee himself said, a generational difference between what he and Maupin, Harper et al were up to in the late 60s, but IMHO the real question is not one of relative 'advancement' but of how far LM was prepared to deal with the saxophonication of jazz, under way since (when?) and well complete by then. But come on, Charisma and Caramba aren't his best are they? 'Last Session' is something else entirely tho. Tom

Then it's one of Duke Peason's best compositons! It was said to me, by an old girlfriend of Morgan's, that the track titles on Taru - some of which are a bit weird - offer some kind of anagrammatical message. I spent several Philly-NY train journeys staring blankly at those titles, but I'm not the man for that kind of job. Enjoy, Bertrand! Tom PS I'll have to think about my favourite sessions.

Also, in the book you describe Lee getting his teeth knocked out by a hammer behind the Apollo. You go on to say "Whatever led Morgan back to Philadelphia, the trumpeter arrived with little to show for his five years of top-flight playing, not even-it would seem-any teeth..... Apparently the trumpeter's priority was to have constructed a set of false teeth that might allow him to play again. But Morgan was broke.... I don't recall you resolving in the book how he fixed his mouth. Did he get false teeth? It says in the next sentence who paid for the care! He had to set up with braces again later in the 60s. But I think you can hear that, chops wise, he's almost on borrowed time - if medium-term borrowed time - after that. And yet, for my money, his best playing was still to come... This particular story is, I think, quadruple-checked - i.e. four, maybe even five people (who should know) said the same things. But in the text I still treat it with a bit of caution. Re: surprises - there are only a couple of things that surprised me, but I couldn't really put them in. Nothing scandalous, but no-one's business I thought. This documentary film trailed in David French's January DB article - the closest my book will get to an extract in that magazine - may refer to them, though. Tom Look at this ... a dozen posts after saying I wasn't talking about the book I'm doing the full Yanow

Thanks very much, glad you liked it. The temptation is to always try and get one more interview, or find one more document, but sooner or later you just have to write up and publish (or else it can’t be called research). It was indeed a labour of love, and even though I definitely wanted to get Maupin, and didn’t want to stop doing fieldwork – I had had to move to the US to do that bit – my credit cards made the decision for me. It’s a question of priorities, and the interviewees you name had already given me plenty about the period that involved Maupin. I came back to London and did 18 months of archival stuff instead. If there was one interview I would have wanted, it was Wayne. But you have to go through formal channels for him, and I couldn’t get anything back. He was involved though: when I was 18, I got something signed after a gig on the High Life tour, and he poked me in the chest (quite hard, I thought) and said, or rather pronounced: ‘if you are to write a book on Lee Morgan, the inspiration will come from the everlasting flame that’s there within each of us’. Tom

The 1972 stuff is a dub of Lee's appearance on the Al Haizlip-hosted show 'Soul!'. Horace Silver and Andy Bey were on it too.

Yeah, but they call it a thread. Keep up, veteran groover...

Harper tune in a Maupin band hey - that's interesting. Also, I don't remember the question about Lee's live repertoire being specific to pre '68 or post '68.