Lazaro Vega

Jazz From Blue Lake Tuesday, October 16, 2007 Artist—Song Title – Album Title – Record Label 10 p.m. Eastern Time Bennie Green, Blow Your Horn; Blow Your Horn: Decca Count Basie, Sent For You Yesterday; Best of: Roulette. Joe Williams, Night Time Is the Right Time; World’s Greatest Music: Roulette. Count Basie, Everyday I Have the Blues; Count Basie Swings Joe Williams Sings: Verve. Joe Williams, Ain’t Got Nothin’ But The Blues; In Good Company: Verve. Alvin Queen, There’s Blues Everywhere; I Ain’t Looking At You: Enja. Tony Bennett, Anything Goes; Sings the Ultimate American Songbook: Legacy. Tony Bennett, Alright, O.K., You Win; Sings the Blues: Columbia. P.J. Perry/Campbell Ryga Quintet, Ah Leu Cha; Joined at the Hip: Cellar Live. Charlie Parker, Now’s the Time/Confirmation; Now’s the Time: Verve. 11 p.m. Joe Williams, Until I Met You; World’s Greatest Music: Roulette. Count Basie, The Comeback/Alright, Okay, You Win; Count Basie Swings Joe Williams Sings: Verve. Joe Williams/Basie/Lambert/Hendricks/Ross, Goin’ To Chicago; World’s Greatest Music: Roulette. Joe Williams, Goin’ To Chicago; Live in Vegas: Monad. Joe Williams, Kansas City Blues; Havin’ A Good Time: Hyena. Bill Easley, Mentor; Business Man’s Bounce: 18th and Vine. Jon Mayer, Blues By Five; So Many Stars: Reservoir. Gerald Wilson Orchestra, I Concentrate On You; Monterey Suite: Mack Avenue. Jackie Ryan, You the Night and the Music; You the Night and the Music: Open Art. Thad Jones, Something To Remember You By; RVG Series Sampler: Blue Note. 12 a.m. Capp-Pierce Juggernaut, Joe’s Blues; Live at the Century Plaza: Concord. Paul Quinichette, The Hook/Samie/Shad Roe; The Vice Pres: Emarcy. Benny Goodman, Wholly Cats/Rachel’s Dream; The Essential: Legacy. Bobo Moreno/Ernie Wilkins Almost Big Band, Lil’Darlin’; Out of This World: Sundance Music. Art Hodes, Sobbin’ Blues/That’s A Plenty; Friar’s Inn Revisited: Delmark. Maria Muldaur, Handy Man/New Orleans Hop Scop Blues; Naughty, Bawdy and Blue: Stony Plain. Sidney Bechet, Jungle Drums; Chant In the Night; Mosaic Select: Mosaic. King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band, Dippermouth Blues; Complete 1923 Jazz Band Recordings: Off The Record. 1 a.m. Eddie Johnson, Indian Summer; Indian Summer: Nessa. Jodie Christian, Lester Left Town; Front Line: Delmark. Eddie Johnson, Eddie’s Boogie; Chess Anthologies: Chess. Joe Williams, You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To/Close Enough For Love; Then and Now: Sea Breeze. Joe Williams, April In Paris/In the Evenin’; The Overwhelming Joe Williams: Bluebird. Willie Williams Trio, Freedom Suite (Medley of Freedom Jazz Dance/Gingerbread Boy/CTA); Comet Ride: Miles High. 2 a.m. Antonio Sanchez, Solar; Migration: Cam Jazz. Melford/Dresser/Wilson, brainFire and bugLight; The Big Picture: Cryptogramophone. Rashied Ali Quintet, Thing For Joe; Judgement Day Vol. 2: Survival Records. The Rempis Percussion Quartet, A Night at the Ranch Part Two; Hunters and Gatherers: 482 Music. Lennie Tristano, Line Up; Requiem: Atlanic. Eric Rasmussen, FriendLee; School of Tristano: Steeplechase. Miroslav Vitous, Opera; Universal Syncopations II: ECM. Turtle Island Quartet, Naima; A Love Supreme: Telarc. Lazaro Vega Blue Lake Public Radio 300 East Crystal Lake Road Twin Lake MI 49457 WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9 www.bluelake.org

Jazz From Blue Lake Monday, October 15, 2007 Artist—Song Title – Album Title – Record Label 10 p.m. Eastern Time Bennie Green, Blow Your Horn; Blow Your Horn: Decca Freddie Cole, Love Walked In; To The Ends of The Earth: Fantasy. Freddie Cole, My Idea/Music, Maestro, Please; Music, Maestro, Please: High Note. Charlie Harrison, South Side of Chicago; Keeping My Composure: C3 Records. Ari Brown/Earma Thompson/John Brumbach, Madam Queen; Madam Queen: Sirens. John Scofield, Strangeness in the Night; This Meets That: Emarcy. Herbie Hanock, Nefertiti; River: The Joni Letters: Verve. Dave Brubeck, Autumn In Our Town; Indian Summer: Telarc. 11 p.m. Freddie Cole, Getting Some Fun Out of Life; Because of You: High Note. Freddie Cole, Nat Cole Medley; I’m Not My Brother, I’m Me: High Note. Freddie Cole, You Leave Me Breathless; Music, Maestro, Please: High Note. Evidence, The Message; The Message: Smitty Music. Deep Blue Organ Trio, Ceora; Folk Music: Origin. Rob Lockart, The Last of the Red Note Riders; Parallel Lives: Origin. Maria Schneider Orchestra, Aires De Lando; Sky Blue: Artist Share. Lazaro Vega Blue Lake Public Radio 300 East Crystal Lake Road Twin Lake MI 49457 WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9 www.bluelake.org

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/books/re...amp;oref=slogin October 28, 2007 Music Issue Favorite Things By PANKAJ MISHRA COLTRANE The Story of a Sound. By Ben Ratliff. 250 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $24. I regret Coltrane’s death,” the English poet Philip Larkin wrote in 1967, “as I regret the death of any man, but I can’t conceal the fact that it leaves in jazz a vast, blessed silence.” In his last years, John Coltrane, who began his career with a Navy band, had moved through modal improvising to what the New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff, in this engaging study of the jazz saxophonist’s artistic influence, calls the “music of meditation and chant.” Coltrane would often discard the principle of harmony in order to produce a trancelike effect on his audience; his later compositions recall the scalar complexity of North Indian classical music more than anything in the Western tradition. But they didn’t impress Larkin, who reviewed jazz records from 1961 to 1971 for The Daily Telegraph and could barely tolerate even Coltrane’s most accessible late music, like the devotional suite “A Love Supreme.” Entranced in his youth by Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman and Fats Waller, Larkin believed jazz had lost its ability to give pleasure by going “modern” — a word that, for him, usually signaled extreme pretentiousness and boredom. Jazz performers, he asserted, had no business embracing (as Coltrane did) Indian, African and Latin music. Grumpily counter-countercultural as the 1960s progressed — he didn’t have much time for Bob Dylan either — Larkin became convinced that everything that had gone wrong with jazz reached its grim apotheosis with Coltrane, who offered “squeals, squeaks, Bronx cheers and throttled slate-pencil noises for serious consideration.” Collecting his jazz reviews in 1970, Larkin asserted that “it was with Coltrane that jazz started to be ugly on purpose.” One can only wonder what Larkin would have made of the African Orthodox Church of St. John Coltrane, established the next year in San Francisco. Coltrane’s last years (during which he pursued new musical styles with the intensity and purity of an ascetic) and his early death (in 1967, when he was only 40) ensured his canonization. Still, it’s surprising to learn that Coltrane, as Ratliff claims, “has been more widely imitated in jazz over the last 50 years than any other figure” and that his recordings, “particularly from 1961 to 1964,” sound “like the thing we know as modern jazz, just the way that Stravinsky sounds like the thing we know as modern classical music.” How did this happen? Afflicted with the modernist longing to make it new, Coltrane read widely, from Aristotle to Krishnamurti, and borrowed from ancient Indian ragas as well as Western atonal music. But he was reticent about analyzing his own work. His occasional attempts to explain it were tinged with the self-regard and sententiousness commonplace among many artists in the 1950s and ’60s who, like Coltrane, almost lost themselves to drugs and alcohol before finding religion. Ratliff patiently explicates Coltrane’s legend, writing in short, aphoristic bursts, often as elliptically as his subject played tenor saxophone, but never less than lucidly. Coltrane’s reputation, which traveled as far as Carlos Santana and Iggy Pop, turns out to be easier to explain than his intentions and motivations. He played both tenor and soprano saxophone with a highly individual big-toned sound; he was always likely to exert as much influence on later generations as Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young had on him. Then, too, his improvisational style, which often allowed him to endlessly play predetermined chord sequences, was a boon to less talented performers. As Ratliff points out, in one of his book’s many clearsighted moments, “lots of musicians” could adopt Coltrane’s modal playing, especially in a minor pentatonic scale, and “sound good.” Ratliff succeeds in rescuing Coltrane from adherents who disregard his strenuous work ethic (even his endless and apparently aimless solos were carefully rehearsed) but adopt the easiest bits of his legacy — the yowling and shrieking. And he’s gently skeptical about Coltrane’s ambition to turn jazz into a bridge to the divine. (It seems clear that program music, however sincerely motivated, can mean anything to the listener when Ratliff quotes the lead singer of the Byrds saying he was interested in “the angry barking” of Coltrane’s saxophone playing.) Ratliff is too young to fall for the strident 1960s interpretation that Coltrane’s more maniacal music reflected black rage and frustration. Instead, he suggests, intelligently and persuasively, that Coltrane had, among other attributes, a “mystic’s keen sensitivity for the sublime, which runs like a secret river under American culture.” “Coltrane,” Ratliff writes, “was acutely self-possessed in his identity as an artist, at a time when a lot of celebrated American art had become seen as a kind of sanctuary, an escape from military conspiracies, war and television.” Certainly Coltrane was serenely indifferent to the easier commercial and political temptations of the 1960s. It was after acquiring a mainstream audience with “My Favorite Things,” a big radio hit in 1961, that he expanded his experiments with modal music, which he then interrupted to record some beautifully melodic ballads. Anyone committed to confronting a white middle-class audience with the musical equivalent of Bobby Seale’s speeches wouldn’t have recorded “Lush Life” with Johnny Hartman or so wonderfully and definitively reconfigured “In a Sentimental Mood” with Duke Ellington. Tracing Coltrane’s tentative first steps, the early refuge in standards, the religious conversion, the casting around in other cultures and languages, the change of instruments and the final preference for pure incantation, Ratliff’s book seems to describe an odyssey that’s primarily spiritual rather than aesthetic or political. In this light, Coltrane’s last recordings, which make few concessions to a conventional audience, now appear to be a final push for inner freedom, a flight from the dwindling possibilities of jazz itself. Ratliff outlines only faintly the broader context of what seemed, by the mid-’60s, to be a private and eccentric journey. Jazz, a minority interest even during the heyday of swing, suffered in the postwar period from the rapid disappearance of its social setting, a diminishment only heightened by the flight of the young to rock music, a brash new rival that, paradoxically, also derived from American blues. Jazz’s turn to the avant-garde and the exoticisms of the 1960s now seems as inevitable as the rise of atonal classical music after the breakup of the stable societies of 19th-century Europe. Of course, jazz, which emerged from post-Reconstruction black America, wasn’t like any other art. Its primary promise — which attracted Larkin, among millions of others — was to entertain a paying audience, and its avant-garde could only flourish in the bourgeois security of what Ratliff calls “the jazz curriculum, the postwar black-studies curriculum and the punk-rock curriculum.” Coltrane, Ratliff writes, “was moving a little too fast for most of his audience.” It could also be said that Coltrane was trying to escape the impasse of antiquarianism in which so much of jazz finds itself today, or that he was working out, in his most inward quests, the melancholy logic of obsolescence. Pankaj Mishra is the author, most recently, of “Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond.” Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

My wife enjoyed hearing this through dinner last night. Fire place, kids playing, trombones doodle tonguing. Those duet sections, especially on "Just Friends" are something else. Rosolino with Zoot on "Hawthorne Nights" and his great Sackville recording, much expanded on CD, were also pulled out for a spin. Rosolino's "Round Midnight" from the Sackville record -- didn't think I'd hear playing on that level again from him, but here 'tis.

Yes. Listened to the 1953 "Lover Man" about five times last week, as well as Clare Fischer's arrangement of it, from Clare's self released "Jazz Corps" CD.

I thought this week was Willis Connover?

Lazaro: Did the "cult of the solo" begin with Lester Young? Well, something started with Lester Young, something quite important to an entire generation of musicians. "Cult of the solo" may be the wrong moniker. I don't see this as being colossally important--what's important is what was it about Lester Young that got under the skin of so many jazz musicians in the 1940s & 50s? I'm fairly sure it didn't stop at music. Pres was/is one of the important sounds/approaches in jazz who deeply influenced Dexter's early work, and early Trane. Yet when you're writing about jazz and mention the development of the solo out of the collective the figure to sight is Louis Armstrong. And the New Orleans pioneers of jazz are the musicians who made pushing one's individualism forward from the group, of changing one's inherited musical part in the group, a strong and important aspect of the music's evolution. That's the a.b.c. of it. To have such experimentation excized from early jazz and dismissed as the hippy myth of change for changes sake that swirled up around Coltrane misses the Fate Marable, so to speak. In conversation Ratliff agreed. Of course there were hippies who herded towards Trane, yet the music's evolution occured because of Buddy Bolden's individual approach that forced a change in the given: in ragtime, in written music, in acceptable sonorites, in standard rhythms. That seems more akin to an artistic truth than the neo-romantic utopian ecstacies that welled up in the 60's. The way Ben writes it, which I haven't read for a few weeks now, puts that idea in jazz in the 1960's, which he then pretty much dismisses as a generational blip, when in fact it was fully part of the earlier dynamic era that set this music in motion. That isn't trivia.

Wu Tang Clan's cool. Why not? I don't listen to much rap. Just don't follow it. Your rec on Naz was worthwhile in as much as he appeared on this Miles Davis re-mix project and sounded like he knew what he was doing, which is something that crossed the path as opposed to getting out a map and gone exploring. Right now Fred Anderson's appearance with the Territory Band has my attention, as well as two new records by Dave Rempis, Ben Webster's first recording in Europe (playing those Bird tunes with Stan Tracy), and William Parker's Little Huey playing tribute to Percy Heath. Being immersed in jazz and improvised music is why. If there were people close by in my life listening to this genre with enthusiasm and disernment I might be more up on it. As it is there's a radio station out of Muskegon, Michigan, that I hear and groove with sometimes, though they don't announce the music they're playing. Clem -- celebrity. You have to come to terms with celebrity, or at least marketable people. The writers, musicians, film-makers, bloggers who you hold in highest intellectual regard can have some light shown on their brilliance if you sneek a sip of that gawd awful meade to your intended target's kook aid. The Nation just did a little piece on how web sites dedicated to a more just criminal justice system, for instance, were linked, on their front page, to Paris Hilton. Paris's little tiff with the law drew a lot of attention to their cause and they jumped on that to draw more people into how deeply unjust the system is. It sucks, but this is us, U.S. And you had better fire up the computer tonight at 7 so you can hear your three hour request show. We finished up the funder with a $25,000 day Friday, and for the first time in a fall on-air funder topped $90,000. In this State, at this time, it speaks to a need we're filling.

"Would I question the judgment of someone who read it and started to talk to me about errata?" In my estimation the work Larry Ochs has done in developing the later period of John Coltrane's music, specifically "Ascension," is more germaine to the book's thesis of how John Coltrane's music has continued to be important these many years than Ratliff's inclusion and discussion of Iggy Pop. If you want to call that errata or fetishization of the trivial that's your red wagon. During our interview I mentioned several fundemental principles of jazz which I feel he misrepresented or that I had a different point of view on. When the transcription of the interview comes out you'll see. He, basically, agreed with the arguments I brought up. For instance, his assertions "there is very little form in jazz after Coltrane"; or that the view of jazz as an ever changing expression is a "hippie myth"; or that the "cult of the solo began with Lester Young." These are not errata. What was errata was calling Tab Smith a tenor player, or missing Joe Williams early records on Savoy with a band leader Ratliff said made few record of much impact. Those two things I didn't bring up for the reasons you mentioned, but these others are points holding up the book's proported intent. It isn't if I agree or disagree with what he's putting across in the book, but how well that is done. I don't care how many times Iggy Pop listened to John Coltrane he didn't, as far as I can tell from his masochistic stage presence, internalize the salvation radiating from the core of Coltrane's music, no doubt because other influences were far more important to Iggy's music. Same can't be said of Ochs.

There's, of course, the Bird and Diz set to recommend.

I have it as October 30, 1930, too. Been celebrating it on the 30th for years. Where's it listed as the 28th? New research?

Playing the featured artist for 20 minutes or so of each hour and then new records or other ideas that might not have anything to do with the featured artist for another 40 minutes of each hour is how we've rolled since 1983. The kind of across the board programming you're advocating actually puts more focus on the featured artist, in this case one you don't like. If you look at playlists from jazz radio programs from all over the country, see the Jazz Programmer's List, you're as likely to see new music by Wynton or Branford being played on local radio as you are Mark Elf. Despite the fact that Wynton is on XM, and television, and has so much of the national media attention as the corporate/institutional face of jazz, his music does not dominate radio playlists. The new record was up on playlists for about 2 weeks or a month, then gone. And the amount of airplay he gets when you get away from his partisans on air diminishes even more. It's true. So, where do the high school music students in Spring Lake, Forest Hills Northern or any of 30 or 40 other high school music programs with jazz turn to hear it? Because, to them, he's the guy. First, to radio. Then, if they don't get it, to the net, just like the rest of their friends who don't listen to radio at all. The only aspect of youth listening to radio today are music school kids. All of their friends are Ipoding it. So, Wynton is to them what Grover Washington was to me: a bridge figure. What you're doing is screaming, Grover's no Johnny Hodges! Actually, you're not. You're not dealing with an individual's right to express themselves in music, at all. You're only talking about economics and saying because one person has more economic reward than another that invalidates their individual right to have their music reach their fans. And you've expressed that as an unassailable fact. But what you're missing here is the very thing you say we lack: this is non-commercial radio. It is not about, on a daily basis, selling music. It is about ideas. Individual's ideas. And there are a lot of them. And the people listening to the station from the Manistee National Forest deserve to experience them. What you call obsufication was my attempt to show you how to deal with an artist's output, especially one you don't enjoy, from a musical point of view (a goal that I often fall short of, but none the less, a goal). Same with the Lee Konitz set. You threw out the Nonet, but you missed the point that the set wasn't just about Lee, it was about "Angel Eyes." Did the Nonet record "Angel Eyes" or "Kary's Trance"? I don't know. But I wanted to play the new Bobo Moreno CD, and the new Eric Rassmussen CD "School of Tristano" and put into airplay some of the ideas coming out of Lee's new book (published by The University of MICHIGAN Press) and, voila. Thing is, there's plenty of room in the pool. Everyone does radio differently. And this isn't "my" station. It is Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp's. They set the tone: educate. But I knew, yes I knew, how well I knew the meaning of posting a playlist with Wynton's music would bring about all this fuss, while many, many others attract maybe 13 hits. That's why you play him, so there's enough wake behind the boat for the ski pyramid to get up and wave their flags over the sparkling waters. That's why you pay attention to the multi-million dollar marketing activity that the record companies put out and tap into it: for momentum so a more obscure musician from the faculty at Grand Valley or Western Michigan will have a chance of being heard by a larger audience. So, Clem, listen Sunday night and you tell me what you think of the local musicians from West Michigan. I'd be interested to know what you think of Dave Spring's tune, "One for Lazaro," too. If you don't, then this thread is a failure, a busted valentine. We've been streaming for a couple of years. "Going national" is not the right term for streaming. What I do know from monitoring the traffic on the stream that if we play Benny Goodman or Duke or Basie we'll double our on-line audience. And when we did the Muhal show, we doubled the on-line audience. This Wynton program was listened to by the core. The economic discussion and justification was in response to your unclear writing, which is how we were crossed up. Attacking Chuck for being aphoristic is like telling Basie to play more like James P. And you missed the point. Discuss YOUR life. Justify YOUR economic rewards, etc. Stop with the Peggy Fleming routine.

16 minute "Well, You Needn't"! Looking forward to checking this out. Thanks Chuck. Will be putting it on the air immediately.

Cuong and Raney have both played live on the air here (Raney twice now) but I've never heard them together. Sounds like someone to be checking out!

John Sinclair played the Howmet Playhouse in Whitehall two weeks ago (right down the street from Chuck's house) in what was probably the third concert in as many years that the station was used -- almost exclusively as regards electronic media --to help promote. Came all the way from France for that one. We're local as hell. There's just no getting around that. During the Wynton program we were running our "Jazz Datebook," which is also on-line, mentioning in calendar form the jazz coming up in this area, from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids to Pentwater and Baldwin. However, there could always be more as intellectual drift does occur. So, as mentioned, this Sunday night you'll hear from our local working musicians. 7 p.m. Tune in, see what you think.

What does Mark O'Leary play?

Jim, I'm sorry I don't know but can find out with some digging. Clem, no. Those are good records you recommend. I say no because hearing the original is more valuable to a general audience than comparing interpreters. The King Oliver/Jelly Roll version from 1923 is what Wynton was basing his duet from. I would build a completely different program around the recordings you mentioned. But you should follow your line of thoughts and elaborate. It will be edifying. I'm reluctant to go on the air to prove a negative. It is what it is; let listeners decide for themselves. Buzzkill doesn't fly in a society tenuously remembering culture. It is just too easy to push people back into entertainment programming by being negative. Writing, sure. But you don't want to have a jazz program giving listeners the same emotional terrain created by listening to Rush Highball -- this haz to be different. For what it is worth the Neil Tesser program, which I really enjoyed, did not fly here: the listeners complained about that face off, talk driven format. Also, think about 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. -- what do you think our listeners are doing then? That's right. "Bach Up To Me." The programming at the ideal is music led. Simply put Wynton is a musician, I'm not. He goes. Now, looking back at this, "Laughing and Talking With Higg" is an Ornette Quartet instrumentation dedicated to Billy Higgins -- saxophone, trumpet, bass and drums -- and putting that next to where Ornette is now is interesting. Because Ornette's taken his own music so much farther into a personal collective improv. Wasn't this made shortly before Wynton caused himself some nerve damage to his lip for playing so crazy high? There's extended examples of improvised spontaneous counterpoint (or it sounds that way, anyhow) on this CD. They get Ornette, or the part of him they're comfortable with. Their fans want to hear that...And the stuff that isn't influenced by the Miles Davis, and the trad stuff, and some extended writing, and something that could possibly someday be played by others (Free to Be). I don't know, juxtaposing a song critical of hyper consumerism with a song sung from the point of view of a slave dealer (Jon Hendricks in the role interpolating Summertime -- what do you make of THAT?) was, ah, not exactly Fred Thompson's version of neo-con. Yes Carter, Roach and Abby hit me harder. But it wasn't their birthday. As to being above reproach, no: it's called "taking requests." So this Sunday night you better listen in to how Lee Kontiz's "Lover Man" was transcribed by Clare Fischer, who went to South High School in Grand Rapids. Following that the first hour of the program is dedicated to West Michigan jazz musicians. 7 to 8 p.m. this Sunday night. You'll hear a spiritual adjoined to Ra's "Lullaby for Realville" by The Wonderland Ensemble because this is, after all, where today during our walk as the toddler laughed and petted at my 100 lb black lab's soft girl dog ears his mommy bent over the stroller and said, "See, Jesus made the doggie say 'woof woof.'" "Michigan Water Tastes Like Sherry Wine"

Sorry, Jim, I was responding to Clematoe.

Sure, face. The new big band Lee would be nice to have, too. Omni Tone. Paid to post? I'm not sure what that has to do with the price of a blue note. Need to pay Jim, jim. Paid to play, yes. Started working 6 days a week at Blue Lake in 1983 for 10,000 a year plus medical benefits and generous vacation time (a month a year at this point). They've sent me to Europe twice, too. Recently built me a studio in the basement of the radio station and moved the jazz cd library down here (the lps come down after the funder). It's the lower level. I'm taken care of though often encouraged to play boring music. This is the artist driven or radio professional driven conflict of programming: Is the radio furniture that fits the decor of your lifestyle or an idea transmitter? Fortunatly musicians run Blue Lake so you know, ultimately, that not selling out is an option, though staying alive keeps getting in the way. By the way if I don't like the pay level I'm welcome to %25 comissions on selling airtime. Selling is hard but managed to contribute $10,000 to the $200,000 the station sold in air time last year. This year is not going to reach any where near that for me, though the station is doing o.k. $805,000 annual budget. WEMU in Ypsi just put a news director in the program director's position and his advice to the staff was to no longer play Duke Ellington, because it only appeals to old people, nor John Coltrane, because it is too abrasive. Panic button.

When he has time, that sounds like a good idea. Yeah Larry: Hearinga is just incredible. Listened to the whole thing again last week and just LOVE it. Muhal's translation from detailed march rhythms directing all those conducted ensemble parts into the collective improvisation of the solos and ensemble solos gives the music such tremendous expressive breadth, not to mention the shift in instrumental arrangement -- ensemble with synthesizer and playful, Ornette inspired "nursey rhyme" theme, piano solo, drum solo..the last three movements, though, what was side 2 on the lp, with Oldfotalk, Find It Now (is that the title?) and Bermix -- this is where his ideas are most accessible to anyone trying to make big band music. For what it is worth that new Rashied Ali album with "Multi-Culti" opens with a piece called "Skain's Refrain." Greg Murphy wrote it after hearing something Wynton played in Chicago. (Wanted to drop in on Don Cherry collective improv, though). Still completely disagree with the perspective on Konitz: what alto saxophone players living today other than Ornette improvise on his level? Doug Horn here in Michigan is more of a Phil Woods guy, and local musician Bob Nixon comes more out of Paul Desmond. When I had the chance, when an agent was looking to fill a couple of dates for Lee as he toured America, I was able to get him here doing what he often does, playing with a "local" rhythm section. Played Grand Rapids (Sunday afternoon of Mother's Day at The Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts) and Ann Arbor (the Saturday night before Mother's Day at Kerrytown Concert House) with drummer Pete Siers and bassist Jeff Halsey. That was an exciting encounter. They all seemed excited by the Kerrytown hit, especially. We had 100, 150 people at the matinee in Grand Rapids. It was excellent to hear Lee play a solo alto version of "Lover, Come Back To Me" which he prefaced by saying, "This is for the Mothers...of course that's all of you." You want to talk about local, Maria Muldaur's "Naghty, Bawdy and Blue" with James Dapogny's Chicago Jazz Band on Stony Plain Records (recorded in Ann Arbor). He came to Michigan State with Sippi Wallace and did these arrangements in the late 1970's. She had on a foxhead stole and a mouth full of gold singing "Empty Bed Blues" and "Up the Country Blues" and it was as close to a 1920's era theater show I'd ever encountered, and a pure taste of classic blues. She sang her old heart out in front of the professors in tuxes with their bass sax on wheels. The place went ape shit. She did that show at The Ark and Michigan Theaters in Ann Arbor (perhaps?). This new album is some of that music, those arrangements with Maria singing. "New Orleans Hop Scop Blues." Pete Siers, who went to Aquinas College in Grand Rapids and studied with Randy Marsh's teacher, too, one Rupert Kettle, is on Maria's album. Kim Cusack from Chicago and Jon-Erik Kelso on trumpet are more well known names in the band.

Right. It is open to criticism. Putting up the playlist, too, is a way to hopefully find a few more web stream listeners. John Carter aired, again, last Friday during the Fred Hopkins program. Of course, Carter's music could have been on this program, too. We have, in the not too distant past, paired Marsalis and Carter's music in a back to back set, I think prompted by a comment from Larry Kart. At the time when Gramavision was issuing his Roots of Folklore series of albums, the label told us we were the first station in the country to play them and the first to devote an entire week's programming to the entire 5 lp production. Yet where it mattered more was much later mentioning in passing the music of John Carter to a lead trumpeter in one of the military big bands, this fireplug of a dude who worshipped Maynard. "Oh yeah, I know that. That's great." I asked how he knew it and he said he heard it on Blue Lake. The kid grew up on Montague, Michigan, and listened to it on the radio. The Konitz comment -- what the hell is that? That is akin to the media going after John Edwards for trying to help the poor. He can't help the poor, he's rich. What? The listeners shouldn't hear one of the greatest improvisers of our time so they can experience Ginny Dusseau singing "Whisper Not”? There's plenty of room in the pool, Clem, and "Kary's Trance" is a variation on "Angel Eyes." Musicians driving home from the gig, the most important group of listeners in our late night programming, love shit like that. Just love it. I'm all for local, Clem. This year we presented, with a budget of nearly $20,000, a series of five jazz concerts on the radio featuring local, Michigan, musicians. Ed Love at WDET runs a larger ($100,000) series on WDET. Of course all summer long there were "Live From Blue Lake" radio concerts organized by area drummer Tim Froncek. And I wrote liner notes for the new album by Evidence as well as pianist Steve Talaga in collaboration with West Michigan poet Linda Nemec Foster (the later for free). Saturday our afternoon classical music host Foley Schuler went to a reading by David Sedaris at the Frauenthal Center for the Performing Arts in Muskegon. Foley is a writer and very involved in writing at a local level here. He waited two hours in line for Sedaris to sign a book -- 11 p.m. or later and Foley was one of the last people in line. When he got there he mentioned to Sedaris that he worked for Blue Lake Public Radio (we're fundraising this week). Sedaris pulled out his check book and wrote the station a $500 contribution saying, "I listened to that station today. I like it!" Sedaris also marveled at the Cheeseburger Soup he had for lunch, so there you go: Muskegon. The other side of localism. When introducing Muhal et al in Ann Arbor this Saturday my friend Michael G. Nastos, bless his heart, ran down the musician's relationships to the Ann Arbor scene since 1972 when Muhal appeared with the Art Ensemble at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. At intermission I mentioned to him that George Lewis is now at Columbia University, and that Roscoe is in a new position out west. The local angle was cool, especially because this was the first North American appearance by this group since the recording, but these appointments are also part of the larger activity of the musicians. I do what Michael did, too. The point is that localism is sometimes a blinder to a broader narrative. And when you say "Michigan musicians" what does that mean? If it means Geri Allen, Rodney Whitaker, James Carter, Regina Carter, Brad Goode, Bob Hurst, Xavier or Quincy Davis then please know they all at one time attended Blue Lake. I feel closeness to Chicago AS WELL AS Detroit as we're mid-way between the two jazz centers. I mean, the last time I talked to Tommy Flanagan I brought up Earl Van Riper. Tommy stopped me, turned my shoulder towards him and said, "People ask me about influences all the time" (he seemed annoyed by this) "but if you know Earl VanRiper's music than there's nothing else to say." Blue Lake has included jazz in the summer school curriculum since 1966 when there was only one or two jazz programs in the secondary schools of West Michigan (though today there are enough high school and Jr. high school bands for a full, noon to 9 p.m., two day festival at Western Michigan University every year). As it is, with 31 hours a week to fill, if something gets missed or not emphasized enough on this night, there's always tomorrow for dreams to come true.

Clem has every right to assert his taste. But, damn, Muhal Richard Abrams is the most diplomatic musician I've ever met. He sets an example that anyone, in any line of work, could follow. He is a great leader. How else does one set up a group of musicians that will include both John Stubblefield and LeRoy Jenkins, or Amina Myers and Anthony Braxton? All under that one roof? By recognizing, as he says, that when you reach a certain level, a high level, in music, "It's all good." Now, we didn't talk about Wynton. We talked about playing on changes, songs, big band forms, swing time, and not playing that way, improvising everything. Muhal marvels at how high the bar has been set in music, and how to a great degree the styles of music have been mixed into one, great music. What a thing to hear. I want to amplify that through BROADCASTING in the Johnny Appleseed sense. But you have to be in a position to do it, and you have to be free to do it. The way I look at it is there are many constituencies in the audience, and they're active: mainstream and traditional jazz societies, jazz in schools, concert presenters, and many musicians, and then the fans who are, generally, old. To appeal to one at the expense of the other is not going to work. There has to be some way to at least touch the bases. That way is to hit the highlights of jazz's evolution musically while simultaneously playing the dismal nadir of American culture that is Paul Anka's big band record. That summer, the summer of '06, will be, among many other things, remembered for the repeated airplay I gave his interpretation of "True." To some that might mean I loved it. But to me it is akin to Anthony Braxton's comment along the lines that "Sinatra is now in his senile phase and I want to see it." Radio reflects things like that. Current marketing models, the most sophisticated ones, are not able to deal with "selling" the diversity of jazz, just as the corporate ideal does not market democracy at all, but sidesteps it. One "thing" to a million people, as opposed to 100 things to 100,000. This is one big reason why jazz is not getting across to a wider audience in our time. You could argue it is the music itself, but we're living in the twilight of the gods, and the non-demographic nature of the best jazz audience, young/old, multi-cultural, schooled/everyman etc., is not an audience that fits the current marketing models. Radio does not in any way lead culture. If you think just because you're on the air you can play only what you like or judge artistically worthy and only give the audience that under the impression they'll change, you're wrong. They'll just turn on the game, or listen to a cd, or try to find something they DO want to hear, and they won't come back. But if you're able, somehow, to bring the core audience what they expect, gain their trust as a companion, gain their respect as an honest programmer, and intrigue them, then it's about a journey of discovery together. Despite what I might think of Wynton's music or more importantly the limitations of his own tastes I can't ignore the fact that nearly every trumpeter that's been in the station in the last 10 years at some point, whether it is Roy Campbell or the band director at Gross Point middle school, has said something about Wynton. Good, bad, critical, praiseworthy -- he's a topic of conversation as it relates to how they approach their instruments or how they approach jazz and jazz history. Clem's right to point out Wynton sucks up just about all the air left in jazz, and he has every right to hate on that. Just realize not everyone sees it that way.

Not unexpected, Clem; nor do I request Clemency. Thanks for bringing it up. It was his birthday. 46. And it's not just Winetone: Norah Jones, Diana Krall, and whatever other act you want to name that commands a quarter million dollars per performance, gets on the air. They just do. Your buddy Tony Bennet. I play these things. Some of this music is the flavor of the day and that's what radio does, among other things. We live in the era of Wynton's giant commercial thing and the era of the jazz, or, more acurately, 'jazzy' singer. He has an audience, especially with young musicians and listeners. It's a take it and run with it situation. If younger jazz nerds like Wynton and come here for that every once in a while then hopefully they'll have their horizons opened up. And, it really helps to hear his music alongside of, for instance in this playlist, King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. His version with Eric Reed, I think it was, played alongside the original says more than I could ever about both of them. Last Friday we did a night of Fred Hopkins and Air's view of the tradition is where it is at for me. But it isn't that way for everyone. I don't think you can program a radio station with broad audience appeal without playing the music that appeals to a broad audience. We're a 100,000 watter. And, for what it is worth, Wynton's music has proven very un-commercial during funders. Couldn't move the Marsalis Family Band CD at all a couple of years ago at all, not even one. You're welcome to ask about the Michigan artists. This is the way I look at it, though: vertically. This is a single five hour show, standing up from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. on a Thursday night. Next night, Anita O'Day. Verticle programming. The "horizontal" programming is where repetition comes in and it is in repetition of airplay that music becomes ingrained and I have 31 hours with which do to that each week. Each night there is a single artist on the jazz retrospective and that takes up about 20 to 30 minutes of each hour in a five hour program. Saturday morning and Sunday night (three hours each) are more mix shows with less of an historic perspective. And we do A LOT of programming in support of local arts organizations presenting music, as well as talk about local artist's live shows on The Jazz Datebook. It matters more to me personally that Blue Lake was the first radio station in the country to program "Streaming" by Muhal and Company, and that we were the only radio station in the country to develop a three hour radio program around Muhal's music and conversation, and that Muhal said talking to Blue Lake was different than the majority of other interviews he does, than the fact that you get mad because I spent a night compromising my personal tastes to recognize the audience that Wynton has here, and the respect in which he's held by local jazz trumpters and jazz educators. Musicians, educators and fans have expectations. Ignore them at your own peril. Congo Square played here this summer, for instance, and filled DeVos Hall, again. To ignore that, completely, is just crazy in this day and age when WBEZ in Chicago and WDET in Detroit BOTH cut their jazz program schedules to nil or nearly nil thus making it much easier for smaller station managers to justify getting rid of jazz. Believe it. Pee Wee and Hawk were on Saturday morning at noon, "What Am I Here For." Rollins with on Friday night at 10:45, "Nia" is it? from his new one. You're welcome to look at one segment such as this Wynton playlist and say what you will. But have a look at our Jazz Retrospective featured artists for the entire month of October, please, before jumping to conclusions. The focus was on bassists, including Detroit's Bob Hurst. Two weeks ago we were all over Straight Ahead, the Detroit band that brought the world Regina Carter, as they appear on this side of the state. Long form programming. Long, long form.....

When broadband is as available as "regular" radio waves are there will probably be something akin to an Internet tuner in your car. That seems to me to be the most plausible future for radio -- that it will be distributed in general via the Internet and delivered locally by broadband Y-Fi or a more advanced version of that concept which is, of course, wireless.

Jazz From Blue Lake Thursday, October 18, 2007 Artist—Song Title – Album Title – Record Label 10 p.m. Eastern Time Bennie Green, Blow Your Horn; Blow Your Horn: Decca Wynton Marsalis/Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, All Aboard; Big Train: Columbia. Wynton Marsalis, Supercapitalism; From the Plantation to the Penitentiary: Blue Note. Wynton Marsalis, Free To Be; The Magic Hour: Blue Note. Wynton Marsalis /Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Soul For Sale: Blood on the Fields: Columbia. Jazz Datebook www.bluelake.org/datebook.html Benny Carter Centennial Project, I’m In the Mood For Swing; Centennial Project: Evening Star. Leonard Feather’s All Jam Band, Twelve Bar Stampede/Featherbed Lament/Tempo di Jump (Men of Harlem); 52nd Street Swing: Decca. Pee Wee Russell/Coleman Hawkins, If I Could Be With You; Jazz Reunion: Candid. 11 p.m. Jelly Roll Morton/King Oliver, King Porter Stomp; The Pianist and Composer: The Smithsonian Collection. Wynton Marsalis, King Porter Stomp; My Jelly Lord: Columbia. Wynton Marsalis Septet, In the Court of King Oliver; Live at the Village Vanguard: Columbia. Branford Marsalis, J Mood; Romare Bearden Revealed: Marsalis Music. Jazz Datebook Herbie Hancock, Edith and the Kingpin; River: The Joni Letters: Verve. Jentsch Group Large, Outside Line; Brooklyn Suite: Fleur de Son Classics. Marty Ehrlich/Myra Melford, Night; Spark!:Palmetto. 12 a.m. Wynton Marsalis/Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Night Train: Big Train: Columbia Wynton Marsalis Septet, Black Codes from the Underground: Live at the Village Vanguard: Columbia. Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Pursuance; A Love Supreme: Palmetto. John Coltrane, After the Crescent; Dear Old Stockholm: Impulse. Rashied Ali, Multi-Culti; Judgment Day Vol. 2: Survival. Don Cherry Quintet, Neopolitan Suite: Dios & Diablo; Live at Cafe Monmartre 1961: ESP. 1 a.m. Jazz Datebook Gerry Mulligan, Five Brothers; Jazz Profile: Blue Note. Keith Jarrett Trio, Five Brothers; My Foolish Heart: ECM. Bobo Moreno/Ernie Wilkins Almost Big Band, Angel Eyes; Out of This World: Sundance. Lee Konitz, Angel Eyes; It’s You: Steeplechase. Lenny Tristano, Turkish Mambo; Requiem: Atlantic. Eric Rasmussen, Kary’s Trance ; School of Tristano: Steeplechase. Wynton Marsalis, Donna Lee; Live at The House of Tribes: Blue Note. Branford Marsalis, Laughin’ and Talkin’ With Higg; Romare Bearden Revealed: Marsalis Music. Ornette Coleman, Jordan; Sound Grammar: Sound Grammar. 2 a.m. Wynton Marsalis, Blue Interlude; Blue Interlude: Columbia. Wynton Marsalis/Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, Home: Take My Hand (from “Sweet Release”); Sweet Release & Ghost Story: Columbia. Lazaro Vega Blue Lake Public Radio 300 East Crystal Lake Road Twin Lake MI 49457 WBLV FM 90.3 / WBLU FM 88.9 www.bluelake.org