Lazaro Vega

Wow: every drummer in the area was there last night, with good reason. Great job, Randy. Taking it out with Machen as an intro really caught Werf's attention. "Juniper Bear" was as good as everyone hoped. Their rep sort of out ran their life as a band and they became legendary. That show vindicated Mark Larsen, too. I always knew he could do that but the majority of musicians I've spoken to through the years said they only knew him from r&b and funk bands. As a band, though, tight and clean. As Bill Vitts said, "Zappa would have been proud." Great contrast in styles as bands, too, from Turning Point (which the crowd really loved) with your mile wide grooves and Mach's singing melodies, to Juniper Bear's wild juxtaposition of complex time signatures and heavy arrangements. Hope the recordings came out ok. Very much looking forward to them.

Review from Crouch: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-sto...:originalslist5

My word what a technical mess o'stuff for that session in New Orleans. Amazed that it even worked! Have you written to Concord about that fading from the old recording to the same guys playing in the present? You know who does that now? That Jim Cullum band on Riverwalk, Live From the Landing. They do that all the time on their program. I bet they'd get a kick out of knowing about your having done it with those musicians so many years ago.

It was put back in on the Phil Schapp production for Columbia.

I've been playing that almost every night. Rodney Whitaker is the head of jazz studies at Michigan State University, a former student of Marcus Belgrave's and a former Blue Lake Camper (he was in the International Exchange Program, touring Europe as a high schooler). The piece that really does it for me is "Jabali," which is loosely based on one of Herbie's tunes from "Maiden Voyage," but taken through Ornette's aesthetic and punched up with the energy of Billy Hart. Hall played Grand Rapids in the 1990's with Malachi Thompson's Freebop Band featuring Billy Harper -- great version of "Persuance," as I recall. Very creative within the chosen style.

http://destination-out.com/?p=474

So Kate Smith is working this for radio, eh? Good to have it -- looking forward to plugging Von into the electronic media.

Blurb from Mark: The new piano trio "Oleo�" features bassist Mark Helias, pianist Orrin Evans and drummer Gerald Cleaver. �New and old pieces for this archetypal configuration. Friday Nov 20, 2009 At: The Cornelia Street Caf� 29 Cornelia Street, NYC 100142 Sets at 9pm and 10:30 pm Reservations recommended Mark Helias "Helias' music--painstakingly precise in organization, yet spontaneous in execution -- makes use of the best of modern post-free-jazz possibilities." Steve Futterman, Jazziz Magazine Orrin Evans �The clear-cut best pianist of his time...� is how Hot House Magazine� described Orrin Evans in 1998, praise which was echoed again in the summer of 2002. Gerald Cleaver �Gerald Cleaver is a most important figure in improvised music. He is not only a drummer but an orchestrator who reshapes a composers work in ways unimagined. A truly brilliant musician, composer and bandleader�

All five hours. Please join Blue Lake Public Radio via http://www.bluelake.org/radio or http://bluelake.ncats.net/

Reading this has me curious about the band with Monk, Dave Holland and T.S. on drums. Anyone heard that era of Monk's music?

Well, given everything we talked about the program could have easily been a special on late Coltrane. Opting for his earlier music was more about the time of day the program was broadcast, Sunday night, than the narrative of the interview. About 10 minutes of me fact checking him was also left off the air. Plan to revisit the interview late night and dig deeper into, say, "The Night Has a Thousand Eyes" into "Venus," etc.

How did your station do? We ended up 10,000 above what we did last fall which, given the state of the economy in Michigan, was a nice vote of confidence.

Up for tonight. LV

"No jazz musician ever worked harder to master his craft than John Coltrane. When appearing in nightclubs, he retreated to his dressing room to practice between sets. He played his saxophone until his lips bled, then studied philosophy, international music and the finer points of music theory to develop a fuller understanding of his art. So why did such an intellectual musician exert such a strong... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) influence on, of all people, Iggy Pop, the shirtless, leather-lunged screamer whose proto-punk group, the Stooges, Ben Ratliff rightly describes as 'the wildest, loudest, even dumbest band going'? That's part of the mystery that Ratliff, the erudite jazz critic of the New York Times, tries to unravel in his critical study of Coltrane's powerful, endlessly influential music. 'Coltrane: The Story of a Sound' is not a biography but an extended, deeply informed analysis of the qualities that make Coltrane and his music so meaningful to people today, four decades after his death. Coltrane was only 40 when he died of cancer in 1967, but during the final 10 years of his life, he became the last great innovator in jazz. After him, the music has devolved into two opposing factions: antiquarian classicism and a squawking babel of noise. In some ways, both camps can trace their inspiration to Coltrane. 'Like all great artists, he embodied multiple, often contradictory, aspects,' Ratliff writes, hinting at a comparison to Walt Whitman that he elsewhere makes explicit. By this somewhat strained formulation, the multitudes that Coltrane contains reach far beyond music and include — besides Iggy Pop, of course — such well-known jazz artists as John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Lou Gehrig and John Henry (the steel-driving man, not the owner of the Boston Red Sox). Ratliff claims to see in these disparate figures a confident but stoical American archetype that Coltrane embodied: someone 'who found ecstasy in his labor but otherwise was difficult to excite.' Coltrane showed little emotion onstage, beyond the swirling, hurricane-force 'sheets of sound' that became his signature style. Ultimately, his playing reached an incantatory, trancelike state, with fervid solos that roared on for 45 minutes without pause, sending his more dedicated listeners into a delirious frenzy. It was this side of Coltrane, more than his masterly musical technique, that broadened his reputation beyond jazz. 'He helped people freak out,' as Ratliff pointedly, if inelegantly, puts it. What Iggy Pop, the punk band the Minutemen and Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters so admired about Coltrane, it's safe to say, wasn't his inventive chord substitutions or his nuanced use of the Aeolian musical mode. It was the flurry of sound, the sheer, inexhaustible force of his presence and will. 'What I heard John Coltrane do with his horn,' Pop said, 'I tried to do physically.' Coltrane's intensity came to be seen by many as an unfettered expression of the African American soul. His tune 'Alabama' was written in response to the bombings and strife of the civil rights movement and represented what Ratliff calls 'an accurate psychological portrait of a time, a complicated mood that nobody else could render so well.' Some listeners attached religious significance to Coltrane and his music, making him 'a kind of martyr... a kind of seer,' as if he were shaking the walls of Jericho and breaking the shackles of bondage with the sound of his horn. But other onetime admirers began to complain that his music had grown opaque and self-indulgent, as Coltrane came to view his performances as sensory experiences that transcended mere music. In trying to explain what made Coltrane so remarkable, Ratliff puffs his cheeks and blows as hard as he can. He pulls names at random off the cultural shelf, from Herman Melville and Susan Sontag to Gertrude Stein, Clint Eastwood, Waylon Jennings, Immanuel Kant and Wilt Chamberlain (who once scored 100 points in a basketball game, not 102, as Ratliff writes). And it's all too much. This may be the most original book on jazz since Geoff Dyer's 'But Beautiful' in 1996, but like Dyer's half-fictional tour de force, 'Coltrane' can be a maddening thing to grasp. Ratliff can be exhilarating in one passage, baffling in the next — which, come to think of it, is not unlike Coltrane himself. In the end, I wish Ratliff had paid closer attention to Coltrane's ballads, which he played with a poignant delicacy that only Stan Getz came close to matching. A whisper, after all, is more interesting than a shout and reveals more of the human heart." Reviewed by Matt Schudel, a Washington Post staff writer who often writes about jazz, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)

Ben Ratliff talks about his 2007 critical biography of John Coltrane this Sunday evening from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. over Blue Lake Public Radio. The entire three hour program will feature John Coltrane's recordings. Please join Blue Lake Public Radio via http://www.bluelake.org/radio or http://bluelake.ncats.net/ For information on Ratliff's book, which was a finalist in the Book Critic Awards, please see: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/books/review/Mishra-t.html Following Jazz From Blue Lake Sunday please stay with us at 10 p.m. for "Night Lights" with David Brent Johnson and "Dolphy '64."

Have you read Paul Bley's autobiography that Lee helped with?

Lee listened to the broadcast Sunday. His only comment was about how great all that music was. Had a nice note from a listener in Colorado, too, who said he learned a lot about the scene surrounding that music history. That said, Nate, for the program I did end up quoting from Litweiler, especially on chronology of events in Coleman's musical life from early 59 to 61, as well as Kelley's Monk bio about the 5 Spot before Coleman, and Monk. Have sat on this interview since 2007 -- the conversation was more than an hour long. But the idea of 'positions, position takers' and 'consecrators' is very interesting re: the white power figures having to be seen and have their opinions heard around Ornette at the Five Spot. One very interesting thing about the book is how talking about how Ornette was able to sort of get around the traditional methods of breaking in to New York (thank you John Lewis, Gunther Schuller and the Terminis) which Cecil had to try and make and was set back a decade in getting his music heard on a regular basis. The idea that Norman Mailer proclaimed Taylor to be "it" and Monk passe, according to the new Monk bio apparently cost Taylor his gig at the Five Spot as the Temini's were still in love with Monk (he was working for them at the time at their Jazz Gallery). That's the type of thing Lee's looking at -- the audience and their reaction. Probably not essential but an interesting look at one of the most critical club engagements of the 1950's (after Monk at the Five Spot).

It seemed like the Monk at Monterey record (1964) went under the radar -- came out in 2007 and was expecting a nod to Thelonious Monk Live at the 1964 Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival Records, in the foot notes. Thanks for the correction on the "Four In One" transcription for big band.

Up for now.

This came across Lovano's twitter account: "I'm okay. In a freak accident, I fell and somehow broke both arms. Had to cancel all gigs through the end of the year. I'll be back soon!"

Yes, he's a bassist who played in the Bill Smith Ensemble on recordings with Joe McPhee and Leo Smith on Sackville. Lee wrote a biography of Paul Bley and in the course of working on it was struck by something Bley said. That the writers and critics surrounding Ornette at the Five Spot did a yeoman's service to the public and other musicians by explaining the music. This book came out of that comment, as well as Lee's academic work.

Allen, I enjoyed the book. It was enlightening, though I'm also using the new Monk book and John Litwiler's "Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life" to fill in chronology more carefully, as well as the liners to Coleman's complete Atlantic recordings on Rhino. Lee's book looks at Ornette's time at the Five Spot through the lens of the French philosopher and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as much as it does a musical breakdown (a pivotal moment in jazz). Lee uses Bourdieu to check out the scene from "positions and position-takings" and the influence of "consecrating figures." There's a lot to that (95 plus pages worth, anyway). See: http://www.svirchev.com/features/l/lee-5spot.html Thanks for checking it out, Ghost. We had a very nice sized on-line audience for last weekend's Shipton/McHugh marathon. Did you catch any of that? LV

Please join Blue Lake Public Radio this Sunday evening at 7 p.m. for recordings by Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis and John Coltrane setting up the year 1959, followed by several interview segments with author/musician David Lee as he discusses his book "The Battle of the Five Spot, Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field." Ornette Coleman's quartet will be heard from "The Shape of Jazz to Come" and "This is Our Music." In the 9 p.m. hour we'll hear recordings made live at the Five Spot by Thelonious Monk, Kenny Burrell, Randy Weston and Eric Dolphy. For more information on David Lee please see: http://www.themercurypress.ca/?q=books/battle_five_spot To listen live from 7 to 10 p.m. this Sunday: www.bluelake.org/radio or http://bluelake.ncats.net/ And please join us Sunday evening at 10 p.m. for Nightlights with David Brent Johnson as he explores the mid-century jazz scene on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. Lazaro Vega Jazz Director Blue Lake Public Radio

Updated today: http://www.bluelake.org/datebook.html

To write a letter of protest, the programs manager at the Jazz Institute of Chicago says to contact Alderman Burnett, who's the point person for out of town complaints. . His contact info is: http://bit.ly/1ecn9u Please write a letter in support of The Chicago Jazz Festival.