Tom Storer

You make it sound like the nailing of the coffin is all but finished. Is there any evidence that Mosaic's business is not healthy?

Just back from this--a wonderful evening. Roy was playing brilliantly, as was his wonderful quartet (Martin Bejerano, piano; David Wong, bass; Jaleel Shaw, alto & soprano). Quiet as its kept, the Roy Haynes Quartet in its various guises over the past twenty years or so has been one of the great small groups in contemporary jazz. Aggressive, playful, virtuosic, with fantastic arrangements of a fine book of tunes drawn mostly from the musicians Haynes has played with--and that means a lot--and above all, a unique style of creative rhythmic interplay. I've seen them with Ralph Moore, Don Braden, Craig Handy, now Jaleel Shaw in the saxophone chair, and mostly with David Kikoski on piano. Bejerano is someone to watch, too. Tonight was the first time I had seen Shaw and I was greatly impressed. He reminded me of John Handy sometimes. On "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" and a Monk tune, can't place it, the band was just crazy good. Haynes reached peaks. Anyway, it turns out that at midnight, when it became March 13, it was Roy's 82nd birthday! He demanded champagne on stage for the whole band and kept the place in stitches with one of his long, ad lib monologues as he paced around the stage. Roy Hargrove was in the audience and he came up and played the second half of the second set, tearing the place up with fire-breathing solos. He got the band excited and the energy went up a notch. It was Hargrove who played waiter and served the band their glasses of champagne. At one point Haynes mentioned that he saw some young people in the audience, pointing to one kid in particular and asking him how old he was and if he played an instrument. He was 13, named Robin, and played the drums. Roy invited him up to show the crowd his stuff. After a split second of paralysis, up he went and started playing a very decent James Brown kind of beat. Roy stomped it out, singing "Shake it to the left! Shake it to the right!" and the band started playing along with the groove. The kid was even improvising some, keeping the beat and doing some fancy stuff. Naturally the crowd ate it up and gave him roaring applause when Haynes gracefully put an end to it. That's a moment the kid will never forget. As we left, Archie Shepp was hanging out with Hargrove near the entrance. All in all, a great jazz evening! And I had brought my son along and some friends, so it was all good. I should really get out more often.

Happy birthday (belated by now) to Tentacle Monroe!

Saw Pat Martino a couple of nights ago, with a trio of (I believe) Philadelphia dudes: Rick Germanson, piano; Craig Thomas, bass; Vic Stevens, drums. They're touring in support of Martino's Wes Montgomery tribute release. They spent the first set getting warmed up--nice, but coasting. Of course, Martino coasting is still top-level stuff. They were cooking in the second set, though. Martino ended with an especially inventive "Oleo" and then did "Sunny" as an encore. I was with a guitarist friend who was laughing with delight at Martino's prowess. Tomorrow night, it's Roy Haynes. Haven't seen him in six or eight years, I think. I'm hoping that at eighty-whatever he's still up to it--but I'm confident.

The other day I glanced at my account page on emusic and felt a pang of nostalgia when I saw "Member since Jan. 2002." Oh, those unlimited downloads! I too have scads of stuff I'm still getting through.

Maybe I haven't followed it closely enough. Is every critic who gave Hatto a favorable review now behaving this way? Or is the anger against a particular set of critics who are refusing to eat humble pie? Or were there only those few to begin with?

It's only because the nature of jazz is so different--performer-based rather than composer-based, with individualism such a big part of the mix--that the world of jazz criticism is not as vulnerable to a Hatto-style hoax. In what alternative universe can we find critics who are heroes of objectivity, uninfluenced by back-story, marketing, or their own settled allegiances or personal relations with artists? All of us are more likely to be stern and dismissive of music or artists we've already decided we don't like, and forgiving of those we've already decided we approve of. All of us can fall prey to "human interest" reactions that influence how we hear things. Critics are no different. It's not like the classical critics who were taken in by Hatto are the lowest of the low, utter frauds unmasked at last. They just screwed up due to perfectly ordinary failings, and for many of their peers it's only good luck that they were busy reviewing other things than Hatto. I'm sure there are more than one of them secretly thinking, "Thank GOD I never submitted that Hatto rave I have sitting on my hard disk!" Many of us here have gone through the humbling experience of the Organissimo blindfold tests. Those will make any would-be expert sweat a little. It would be interesting to have a panel of critics, jazz or classical, test their spontaneous reactions and assumed objectivity in a situation like that. (Say, if any of you are also posters on rec.music.classical.recordings, you ought to propose organizing a BFT set-up like we have here!)

A while back I had three tracks left over on my monthly emusic allotment, and I downloaded three tracks from a record called "Band Box Shuffle" that documents Bennie Moten's band from 1929-32, on the Hep label. The three tracks were "Rumba Negro," "The Jones Law Blues," and "Band Box Shuffle." I'm capable of listening to these three tracks in sequence about five times in a row. Ten, even. I love them. So, my question is: where should I start in acquiring Benny Moten records? Moten fans, come to my rescue with your passionate recommendations!

As I said a couple of posts ago, "I suspect the idea was not really to try to change Crouch's mind but to publish an interview that shows the debate in a different light." What is the audience of the Bad Plus's blog? Jazz fans in general: musician pals of the Bad Plus, Bad Plus fans, those of us who have learned that Iverson is a great blogger, and, via threads like this, a bunch of other hardcore fans. The idea, I believe, is to show, to people who are interested and may not have entirely made up their minds forever, an actual dialogue on these issues rather than a gunfight. In a gunfight people either duck or start shooting, while in a dialogue they listen and talk. I doubt that Iverson strained to remain in character or was wearing a mask. I've been reading that blog regularly for a few months now and that's who he seems to be: someone who is truly open himself, more interested in trying to find what's good in something than in squashing what's bad in it. He's also an exceptional communicator. To the extent that buttering up Crouch was a conscious strategy I think it was no doubt very sincerely motivated. Unlike don clementine, I don't think Iverson is a knucklehead, quite the opposite. I'm full of admiration for him. Read the archived posts if you're not a regular reader of Do The Math: this is a guy who's smart enough to be a free-thinker to such an extent that he's not constrained by one side or another. We've all seen how far one gets when one puffs out one's chest and fights Crouch with his own weapons--exactly nowhere. Iverson figured out how to debate Crouch with the weapons down. More power to him.

Yeah, maybe I'm just too earnest. I see your point. But I suspect the idea was not really to try to change Crouch's mind but to publish an interview that shows the debate in a different light. The rhetorical effect of that interview is to undermine the terms of the debate as Crouch defines them. Without slamming his own shoe on the table, Iverson gently refuses Crouch's sectarianism, but without defining his own position as anti-Crouch. He says he also values what Crouch values, but doesn't rule out all the rest. I've never known anyone in face-to-face conversation about jazz styles to raise their voice in anger and start hurling insults around. Unless you're Stanley Crouch or someone he's managed to enrage, it just doesn't happen, to my knowledge. But on the Internet it happens all the time whenever Crouch or Marsalis and their views are mentioned. Flame wars attract flame throwers, and the resulting impression is that there's a war on. But in real life? Musicians play all kinds of stuff. If some neoboppers want to bring hip-hop into their mix, they do. If some downtown free-jazzer wants to play bebop, he does. And so on and so on. How many musicians really make their choices based on what Crouch or Marsalis would approve of? Not many, I'm guessing. It's a false debate and if it were real, Crouch would already have lost it. What would be cool is if people could discuss these issues, on line and in print as well as in person, with the mutual respect that goes out the window when the flaming starts. On the Internet it's impossible to shout anyone down or to have the last word. Rather than trying to, Iverson smoked the peace pipe and, IMO, made that approach look a lot more attractive and interesting than fisticuffs. It remains to be seen what kind of continued dialogue, if any, it will stimulate. But of course, Stanley won't change. He'll be back with table-pounding slander in the wink of an eye. You're right about that. And the flame-throwing won't end either. So maybe I'm just a gentle dreamer. [sings: "Imagine all the people... Living life in peace..."]

That's no more practical than that "real jazz" musicians should have a path for "free" musicians to sit in. It can happen, sure, but it doesn't make sense to say it's a kind of obligation. I think Crouch means to say that jazz "needs" a community in the specific sense of a widely shared repertoire and shared musical goals and practices, and to the extent that some music becomes more dependent on idiosyncratic systems or processes, ignoring traditional methods, and thereby excluding musicians who haven't made a specific study of the more idiosyncratic music, it is outside the "community" and no longer jazz. He wants "jazz" to be a genre in which everyone can be judged by the same criteria. Having a single community with a single set of standards is a nice and cozy idea; everyone likes to be part of a group and share in what the group is all about. To an extent (but only to an extent) jazz had that up to the late 50's or so. But it's long gone. On the other hand, there remains a very large and vibrant community within the larger jazz world that meets Crouch's criteria. It's not like swing and changes aren't still the focus of a majority of jazz players in the world. The more insecure members of that community, such as Crouch and that other guy, the trumpet player, resist any expansion of the definition of "jazz" as if it were a criticism of their own preferred style; but of course that isn't the case. Most aficionados of "free" or non-traditional jazz that I know are in love with the whole tradition, and the musicians involved, whether or not they could play convincing bebop themselves, are usually knowledgeable and appreciative of what Crouch calls "real jazz." Likewise, many straight-ahead players love a lot of "free jazz," whether or not they play it. Crouch would have it that jazz is made up of two rival camps, viewing one another with anger and suspicion, and in fact his writing tends to encourage such tendencies when they are latent. But Iverson is right: "it is high time to put this issue--which has fragmented the jazz world terribly--onto the table and look at it in a serious way."

I appreciate Iverson's diplomacy. He bent over backwards to be complimentary and deferential because, I believe, that's the only way to have a conversation rather than a fight with Stanley Crouch. Of course, that's a choice--to want to have a conversation rather than a fight. Many if not most Crouch detractors prefer to trade insults with him (as long as they're not actually in punching range). But I'm glad he did it. It's not a surprise to anyone who knows Crouch's history that yes, he's a highly experienced jazz listener with no little insight, and his tastes are more eclectic than one might guess. He's also dead wrong in some of his basic conclusions, IMHO, and as Jim points out is an opportunist. Iverson, whose own insights I find more penetrating than Crouch's, takes the risk of seeming sycophantic in order, without making the interview into a boxing match, to complain to Crouch about his aggressive, disrespectful side; defend Dave Douglas; deny Crouch's claim about Cecil Taylor ripping off Messiaen et al.; and most importantly, to say I don't think you can have the word "jazz," Stanley--you would make too many people upset if you took it away from them. Now that's class. He could have said, "You insufferable arrogant blowhard, who the fuck gave you the right to decide for everybody else what jazz means and doesn't mean??" and lots of people would have cheered and said, "That's giving it to him!" But instead he made the same point in such a clear but gentle way. I think it's important to keep communicating even if you disagree with someone, even if they piss you right off, so I say three cheers. And of course the point Iverson makes is a good one: Crouch's insistence on claiming the word "jazz" can only be used with his approval tends to obscure the fact that swing and changes and blues are good things, worthy of being celebrated and continued. They're just not the only good things. But in the context of this sterile semantic quarrel over "what's jazz and what isn't", the conversation in the jazz community about the ways "the tradition" can be blended with all the other stuff--a conversation that was so absorbing and so fruitful up until the end of the 70's or so--has been made more difficult to carry on in a calm and easy way.

Quite true. Also true. All Gramaphone is guilty of, it seems to me, is having been taken in by the swindler. It seems normal that they would start out with an attitude of "innocent until proven guilty." They did ask for people to step forward if they had any proof of monkey business. And what happened when they were presented with evidence that can stand up in court? They accepted it immediately and announced in their own magazine that they had been made fools of. This could be denounced as profiting from the scandal after having profited from the scam, since both sell copies, but what choice did they have? Imagine what people would have said if they had refused to give the scandal major coverage. They were made fools of but that's not the same thing as having had fraudulent intent.

What a damn shame. He was a unique and moving musician. I saw him a couple of times back in the day, solo and with the Revolutionary Ensemble. I bought "Swift Are The Winds of Life," his duo with Rashied Ali, from a table at Ali's Alley. RIP, Leroy Jenkins.

I have a dedicated mad-money account which I feed to the tune of 75 euros per month. That has to cover CDs and various other purchases. I typically spend 30 to 50 euros per month on CDs, which I usually buy online from the US, since even with shipping it's cheaper than record stores in France.

Can't complain. And yourself?

Tell me about it. A hearing check recently revealed that I have lost more hearing in the upper registers than my fiftyish age would normally explain. The doc told me to give up the iPod before it's too late, so I did. My wife said, "You've been sticking those things in your ears for twenty-five years. You're surprised?" When she put it like that, I was surprised. But it's true, ever since cassette Walkman days I've been using these things. The chickens have come home to roost. I can almost hear them faintly clucking.

They're from the same era, would have known the same repertoire, both lovers of bebop; they're both lyrical players; I think their individual sounds would have blended well. Hall's inclination has been increasingly to quiet, concentrated music, whereas Jackson's preference was on the bluesier side. But Jackson also excelled in the MJQ's chamber-style jazz, even though he complained, and Hall could play with Rollins without flinching. I don't know how it would have worked out, but I wish my curiosity had been satisfied.

I've always thought Jim Hall and Milt Jackson should have made an album together. Maybe with Ron Carter and Billy Higgins. Or maybe Jackson could have made a quintet out of the Desmond/Hall quartet...

I think Copeland's real sin in the eyes of us jazz nerds is that he isn't taking jazz seriously. He says as much himself. Daddy was into jazz, so he becomes a rock musician and thumbs his nose at jazz. Plus he's a rock star, so he can condescend to whoever he wants to. Nyah nyah! I heard a few of those Police songs on the radio back in the day. I guess if you like rock enough, it makes a difference if he's a really good rock drummer or not. But to not even know enough about Miles's career to realize that the band with Tony Williams wasn't early Miles--sacrilege! Blasphemy!

In the 60's, "Poindexter" was commonly used as a disparaging playground epithet for bookish boys who wore glasses. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Personally I'd say that that's true of hackneyed, unimaginative metaphors, but not of metaphors in general. And I'd be very skeptical of any writer's confidence that he or she assists a reader on the way to "true experience." "True" anything, for that matter.

Ethan Iverson is a big Westlake fan, and mentioned in Do The Math recently that Westlake came out for The Bad Plus's recent gig at the Vanguard. Surely someone has written a thesis on relationships between crime novels and jazz.

I'm willing to allow someone else's description of Pee Wee Russell's feet to enter my own constructed mental image of a man who died long before I had a chance to actually see him play with my own two eyes, without feeling that I'm running any terrible risk of corrupting my perception of the music with unverified information. The Real Truth of Russell's feet, sad or not sad, is forever inaccessible to me, and in its place I willingly accept what seems to me a useful hypothesis. So there!

Having read the description of him, I think of sad feet when I think of Pee Wee Russell. And I think of Pee Wee Russell when I hear Pee Wee Russell play. So, in an indirect way, yes. Is that a good thing? Well, it's not a bad thing. Having seen Woody Shaw live on several occasions, when I hear his playing I think of the tai-chi exercises he would do on stage during other people's solos (if that's what those movements were). Is that a good thing or a bad thing? How to judge? I think more information about the physical human being doing the playing does help us hear the musical personality more fully on some level.