Tom Storer

Thanks for the tip on Luis Bonilla, Larry. Checking out samples on his website, and those records sound real good. Quite a rhythm section on "I Talking Now!": Arturo O'Farrill, Andy McKee, and John Riley.

He's been playing in Taylor Ho Bynum's group, right alongside some ironic white people! Learn more about him here. And wasn't it he who just had a well-received large ensemble record sometime in the past year or so? Or was that another tuba/bass-trombone specialist?

Does it? Who do you see as present-day practitioners of hard bop who are dominant?

Saw "The Cookers" last night, a collective featuring Billy Harper on tenor, Craig Handy on alto and flute, David Weiss and Eddie Henderson on trumpet, George Cables on piano, Cecil McBee on bass, and Billy Hart on drums. This was at the New Morning in Paris. No false claims in the group title, they cooked. There was one problem that marred the concert somewhat, which was that it was uncomfortably loud. There were probably about 150 people in a club that seats 300 when it's jam-packed to the rafters, and given their energy, if they had played completely unamplified one would have heard the music perfectly clearly. Instead the blaring amplification made it hard to hear the organic unity of the rhythm section. This is not the first time this has happened to me at the New Morning. In addition, one could see from the musicians' gestures to the soundboard that their onstage monitors were not high enough. But the music itself was great. Solid and satisfying four-horn arrangements of original tunes, particularly by Harper, McBee and Cables, committed and energetic solos by all. Henderson in particular stood out for me for his imaginative soloing, and the others were no slouches. David Weiss, who served as the MC, had some fierce and crackling choruses. But I'm above all delighted to have caught the rhythm section of Cables, McBee, and Hart. They were flying. Monsters, all of them. A great night.

Thanks for the link, Michael, this sounds great as ever!

Meanwhile, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra continues, and it is fantastic. They have a new double CD, "Forever Lasting - Live in Tokyo," that is high on my list.

Saw the Mark Turner Quartet at the Duc des Lombards in Paris. Superb concert. With Turner were Avishai Cohen, trumpet; Joe Martin, bass; and Marcus Gilmore, drums. This quartet is a regular thing but Turner apparently has no recording contract at present, so it risks going undocumented. Boo! (New Yorkers, they'll be at the Village Vanguard Feb. 14-19.)

And Scott LaFaro, for that matter.

<rimshot> ;-)

Feed stores, huh? I'm afraid it's too late for me. Even if I could find one, I would only be discouraged.

I also ordered "No Maps on My Taps." It arrived a few days ago and I just watched it last night. Jim, you're right, it's fantastic. I'm going to see if "About Tap" is available...

not even toobluth? No, that's too bluth for me.

In the interest of preserving my hearing, I use no mobile music device.

I think what the big media companies are upset about is having their stuff looted, not whether or not it is done for profit. The fact that the MegaUpload people were apparently getting rich off it just makes it seem all the more villainous. They can hardly claim to be idealistic data-liberators.

Wynton was great (see post #2382 above). No surprises, but a warm, swinging set in a cozy little room. It was broadcast live on the radio and someone uploaded it immediately to Dime, for interested torrenters.

I'm going to see Wynton Marsalis on Sunday night. If he were playing in a festival or at a big concert hall with his usual group or the LCJO I wouldn't usually bother; I often feel he tries too hard to be sure to stay in character and is unlikely to surprise me. I've seen him often enough over the years, but it has been a while. But this, announced just yesterday, is a surprise visit to a small club, the Duc des Lombards here in Paris, with the trio of pianist Hervé Sellin, which includes Jeff Boudreaux, a New Orleans-born drummer who is based in Paris. So it'll basically be Wynton jamming with a good local trio. These are the circumstances I think are great for Wynton. He'll be able to just play in a cozy, relaxed and informal setting. The club probably doesn't seat more than forty people in front of the stage, with more seats in an adjacent room and upstairs (CCTV monitors let those people watch the musicians). I saw it when it was first announced, on Facebook, and got tickets for my wife and son and myself. My son is not a great jazz fan but does enjoy live shows when they're demonstrative enough (he loves Roy Haynes concerts, and really dug the Bad Plus); I'm sure he'll love seeing Wynton, who is such a ham. I'll let you know how it goes.

Olu Dara's original Okra Orchestra in the 80's had a front line of Dara, Threadgill and Craig Harris, with Jean-Paul Bourelly on guitar (I think), can't remember the bassist, and Coster Massamba on drums. That was a beautiful band. Later he made it a louder, funkier band with more musicians, and that was also great. Neither version recorded, and I've never even seen any audience recordings torrented. A shame.

Nothing wrong with this: But I can see preferring something like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hCoFKJWTls

Here's an exceptional performance by Tony Bennett:

In the either/or/both jazz+pop category, let's not forget Nat King Cole! <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bCln5vLI_zw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Hmmm... the embed from YouTube doesn't seem to have worked. No idea why. Try here.

I have a friend, last name Cooke, who named his son Sam. Not Samuel, just Sam.

His daughter has been running the shop for a while, and she does a fine job, arguably better than her father! She hosts readings and is passionately involved with the publishing world, seeming to know everyone and be on top of all the latest developments. So the place is in good hands. Good for George Whitman to have produced a chip off the old block.

Warning: long post. I persist in saying that all of our reactions to anything are conditioned by "culture", in the same way that fish are wet. Recognizing, interpreting, analyzing the cultural thing is important, as is deciding what importance we want to ascribe to it. What Payton and many others seem to fail to recognize, however, is that: 1) Culture is learned, not genetic. It spreads from generation to generation, from group to group, from place to place. This doesn't mean that anyone can lose everything they have learned as part of one group and completely assimilate everything there is in the cultural universe of another group; to some extent we are all outsiders and insiders in that we can hardly avoid belonging to overlapping groups. We can be attracted to another culture and go very far into it without ever being a total insider. A personal example: I've lived and worked in France for over thirty years, speak fluent French, have more French friends than non-French friends, and am more conversant now with everyday French customs and assumptions than with American ones, yet my American accent is still detectable and there is still a mass of cultural information that French people have that I lack or only know about rather than know, because I didn't spend my childhood here and my parents and grandparents weren't French. I'm Frenchified enough to be taken seriously when I argue about French politics or cooking, or correct the written French of my coworkers, but I will never be as French as the French. But that is not necessarily a problem. Insiders, if they are secure and wise, appreciate outsiders for having a fresh and different outlook, and for allowing them to learn about other ideas, attitudes and approaches. That's two overlapping national cultures. Within a national culture, there are many other groups, of which origins are the most visible. Were your ancestors from America, from Africa, from Europe, from Asia, from South America? In all those groups there are those who have inherited ancestral cultural traditions more strongly or more weakly. Modernization weakens ancestral traditions: more and more, in a given country, we all share a consumer culture, the same kinds of media, the same governmental institutions, we play the same sports, we eat the same food (because we all eat everyone else's food as well as "our" food). But many of us hold on to the things we inherit from our families and neighborhoods as uniquely "ours" and resent it when we feel that special bond is ignored or denied by others who want it to be theirs too. Not because they're dirty thieves, but because they have fallen in love with those traditions, internalized them, and have let themselves be defined by them. These "outsiders" don't feel like outsiders, they feel natural and fulfilled when they participate in these traditions. So naturally they resent it when they're snubbed and made to feel like outsiders. Culture is not a thing to be owned by any one group, it is a web of learning, action, response and transmission. A Frenchman could say to me, when I miss a cultural reference or misinterpret a gesture, that I'm too American to ever really get the French thang; he would be right, on one level. On another level, I have chosen France and made my life here. My son is French. I'll never be as French as the French, but it's my culture too. It's one of my cultures. Belonging does not have to be total or unadulterated to be real. Same thing with jazz and all the non-African-Americans who join it. Purity is a chimera. 2) Culture evolves constantly. The African-American culture that was behind the first jazz is emphatically not the same culture it is today, despite many continuities. Nor is the music or any other cultural output the same. How could it be? The very success of jazz, the brilliance of its founding innovations and the irresistible appeal of its greatest practitioners, has caused it to be swamped by "outsiders" who adopt its characteristics and whose own stuff is also taken into the mix. Each generation creates new things, looking all over for inspiration, as original practices get further away in time. Even swinging, mainstream jazz players don't swing the way their grandparents' generation did. They swing differently. It's inevitable. Everything at the origin eventually disappears, replaced by other things, even if the origins leave their imprint. Each generation does it their way, and by now the current generation is worldwide. It's worth mentioning that it's been said in this thread that jazz is not black or white, it's American. But it's not even that anymore. Some American black musicians from New Orleans seem almost to feel that New Orleans jazz is the core, and everybody outside New Orleans is an outsider. Others say the core is black, non-blacks are outsiders; some American whites say the core is American, implying that others, non-American, are outsiders; but jazz musicians making their own mix in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America, would say that they are not outsiders, either. The important thing is that if you love it as a listener, it's yours to listen to. If you love it as a musician, it's yours to make.

With all due respect, if you think people are saying foolish things or just repeating themselves, you don't have to keep reading the thread. I'm just saying. Eventually it will die, like all threads. What's the hurry?

The "Max Roach without the chops" refers to an earlier recording, 1956 if I recall correctly. When he says, of the Vanguard recordings, that the best parts are the parts Motian leaves out, I think he meant this: some criticize Motian for a lack of chops, but that relative lack of chops (and lack of concern for chops) is of a piece with his creative spontaneity. I thought he meant that "the parts he leaves out" are the automatic, learned licks that come with "chops"... he leaves out the predictability that comes with standard good technique. In other words, a relative lack of chops is not always good but not necessarily always bad either, and in Motian's case his art is served by a certain technical naiveté.