ghost of miles

OK, I think I’ve found my source, though I did read the Early book while I was working on that show. On pg 43 of the booklet to Sony’s Seven Steps box set, Bob Blumenthal writes, “Sonny Stitt filled the slot in the closing months of 1960, playing tenor and alto saxes, then Hank Mobley, Rocky Boyd, and even Sonny Rollins (as he worked his way back from a two-year performing sabbatical).” Blumenthal’s notes are dated May 2004, so I suppose it’s possible that he’s basing that statement on Early’s book—though Early makes no reference to Sonny’s sabbatical. And Jsngry’s speculation that it may have been a one or two-time thing certainly merits consideration as a plausible explanation for such accounts.

This may have been my source, but I honestly can't remember--and even so, this could be wrong and certainly doesn't settle the question. From Gerald Early's 2001 book Miles Davis And American Culture (pg. 123): >>Between 1960 and 1962, Miles tried different combinations of musicians in his working band, all fine musicians and some even great. But soon the band became like a turnstile, with players like Sonny Stitt, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins, George Coleman, Frank Strozier, J.J. Johnson, Jimmy Heath, Victor Feldman, Frank Butler, and Harold Mabern moving in and out of it.<< Might be one for Mike F.'s listserv. I have to do my live show in half an hour, but I'll try to dig a little deeper on this after work this evening.

Larry's referring to the early 1960s, after Hank Mobley departed from the group. EDIT: yikes. Your post, Larry, triggered a faint sign of recognition on my part, and I went back to the script for the "Miles Between" Night Lights show that we just re-aired this past week. I make reference in that post to Rollins briefly playing with Miles after returning from his sabbatical. I originally put the show together several years ago and will have to dig into my notes to see if I can find what source I used for that statement. If it proves to be inaccurate or unverifiable, I'll remove the reference.

The biggest hothead in the world is currently in charge. And last night they teargassed peaceful protesters and shot rubber bullets at them so that he could have a photo-op in front of a church. One of the teargassed was a priest from that very church, who was also removed from the property. How f'd up is that? In a long, long list of very f'd-up shit that's been pulled. George Will of all people, Mr. leading-light-of-the-Reagan-Revolution, just published a piece for the Washington Post that I guess I won't link to, since it's overtly political--but the gist of it is that this guy and all those who've enabled him need to go.

Once more around the broadcasting circuit last week for Miles Between: Miles Davis 1961-63.

A member of the Jazz West Coast listserv is reporting that Lennie Niehaus has passed away at the age of 91.

That is usually the case, yes. Excited for you to hear this set! I may be doing a Night Lights drawn from it for Hank's 90th birthday next month.

I've heard a few stories about the hazards of riding with Indiana bandleader and saxophonist Al Cobine. Trumpeter Dominic Spera told me that they were once en route to a gig somewhere in a blinding snowstorm, and that the road began to seem strangely bumpy. Domininc or one of the other passengers was able to discern through the enveloping whiteness that Al had at some point left the road and was now traveling along a riverbed that ran beside it. "Al, we're driving in a riverbed!" they informed him. Al said, "Oh, whoops--no problem!" and swerved his vehicle back up onto the roadway.

An O-member who shares the same city as me, by any chance?

Re the Mercury compilation, it’s Hoagy Carmichael’s “Washboard Blues” (from the Truck Parkham duo session that Chuck mentions) and I just played it on the radio last week—it jumped out at me while I was listening to the Mercury set (The Mercury Records Jazz Story, well worth checking out). Several months ago a friend who’s doing some collection downsizing gave me his vinyl ediion of the Hodes Mosaic Blue Note set... man, is it good! Great notes by Dan Morgenstern as well. I’d already heard quite a few of the masters via the also-excellent Hot Jazz on Blue Note box-set (another buy-it-if-you-see-it item), but it’s great to hear all of Hodes’ Blue Note material presented in Mosaic fashion. Developing a whole new appreciation for Hodes as a pianist.

Not sure about hardcovers in general, but the relaunched Modern Library series uses glue bindings for its hardbacks. Also not a fan of the olive-green jackets they adopted for the contemporary volumes.

I don't think they've done The Sun Also Rises, but for single works (as well as story collections) I'm a big fan of the modern-day Everyman series, which often includes an in-depth introductory essay. Sewn bindings, too, which I much prefer to glue (see the contemporary Modern Library series--I *love* the original Modern Library series and have about 200 volumes from it, but not a fan of the relaunched version). Everyman does some author omnibus editions as well, but they're generally not as geared towards the more completist approach that LOA often employs.

Not sure. I can't recall--are you a member of that FB Goodman group? If not, you should be! Loren's always posting interesting recordings + commentary there.

ejp626's response is on-target, I'd say--I know in the case of Fitzgerald it's been an estate issue. With copyright going back 95 years on works published before 1978, a lot of mid-to-late 1920s material will be coming into the public domain in the next few years. Here's a rundown on copyright from a Stanford.edu site: For works published after 1977, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years... All works published in the United States before 1924 are in the public domain (as of Dec 2019, when this article was posted). Works published after 1923, but before 1978 are protected for 95 years from the date of publication. If the work was created, but not published, before 1978, the copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. Copyright basics So I'd say there's a good chance we'll see a second Fitzgerald volume in the not-too-distant future that would include Gatsby, The Vegetable (FSF's flop play which I still have yet to read) and All The Sad Young Men, plus other short stories from the 1923-late 20s period. Or maybe they can reach a deal with the estate and publish all of the remaining novels (Gatsby, Tender Is The Night, and The Last Tycoon) plus The Vegetable in one volume, and all of the 1923-1940 short stories in another. It'll be interesting to see how they compile his writings; there's quite a lot of excellent non-fiction for them to draw on as well. LOA definitely wants to do more Fitzgerald; I had some correspondence several years back with the guy who edited the first volume, and he indicated that it was a matter of estate/public domain issues holding them back. Re Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises is due to fall into the public domain next year, so the EH estate probably figured they might as well sign off on an LOA volume that includes pretty much everything leading up to it.

Ernest Hemingway: The Sun Also Rises And Other Writings 1918-1926

Interesting post by Loren Schoenberg to the Facebook Benny Goodman Appreciation Society page--Loren's given me permission to share it here: There are only two Goodman versions of what sounds very much like a Jimmy Mundy arrangement of MEAN TO ME, both coming from late 1936. You'll hear both of them here - the first (slower and more groovy) played at the Manhattan Room on 11/25/36, and the second (faster and smoother) originating on the 12/8/36 Camel Caravan broadcast. Hearing them this morning caught me by surprise. There was something in the air, something new in the swing they achieved. The band's beat has loosened up from where they were only a few months back, and there's a new unanimity between the arrangement and the soloists and the kind of swing that the great majority of white bands (and to a lesser degree, the black ones as well) rarely approached. Add to that the originality of the conception - this could be no other band than Goodman's - and you have the makings of a vital evolution of the big band era. Not Henderson, not Hines, neither Dorsey, Haymes, Calloway, nor Mills Blue Rhythm achieved this marriage of blend, technical polish, or swing (remember the musicologist's caveat - from the recordings we know). Only Ellington and Lunceford could be talked about in the same league, in their sui genesis idioms. Let's pause for moment just before Harry James joined the band in January, 1937. Yes, it's been correctly noted that his was the missing piece of the equation that set the Goodman band off into its unparalleled year of brilliance. But let's remember the components that made that explosion possible, without which James would have been unable to ignite the fuse. First and foremost there was Gene Krupa, who for this listener was reaching his zenith as an ensemble drummer. He was playing INSIDE the band, for the band most of the time, not on top of or in front of it. Indeed, it was the coming of James into the band that fed Krupa's exhibitionism (to be clear, a natural tendency for him that existed side by side with his sincere desire to be the best he could at all times), or so it seems to me. Throughout 1937 the band evolved into one of the greatest jazz ensembles of all time, before tipping over into a tendency to let flash and volume win out at times over taste. Krupa was correct in realizing that his desires as a musician couldn't be expressed playing in someone else's band. Hear him on the first Mean to Me, especially - it’s a textbook example of superior big band drumming, with its steady changes of texture and timbre. There are flowing hi-hats, press rolls, breaks, possibly some ride cymbal work, plus the usual clicks and clacks and fills. Throughout the second version, Krupa takes advantage of the brighter tempo to tighten things up, with clipped hi-hat accents behind BG, and fewer fills. Secondly, there was Ziggy Elman, who found his own voice after James' arrival by incorporating a large schmear of yiddishkeit into his already blaring style. Elman was also a superb lead trumpeter, who raised the volume level of the brass section way beyond what was the norm at the time. This I learned from Zeke Zarchy, who came into the band to play first trumpet shortly before Elman arrived. James was a more brilliant soloist and a nonpareil virtuoso, whose technical skills far eclipsed his section mates, but in terms of sheer mass, couldn't match Elman, so it fell to Chris Griffin to hold things together and somehow regulate his section-mates through his clear and determined efforts to strike a sonic blend. Also playing a role in the band's evolution towards brilliance was Vido Musso. He was the first member of the band to lack the basic professional and harmonic skills that had been the norm for both the ensemble and solo players in the band. The stories of Musso's learning to become a competent sight-reader are the stuff of legend (along with his Anglo-Italianate malapropisms - think of him as a jazz Sam Goldwyn), alongside his equally intuitive reaching for chord tones in his early solos, and you have something new, something inspiring for a band of players who knew chords and who read around corners like the back of their hands. What is so interesting to contemplate is what might have happened if James had not joined the band, for clearly they were already onto something extraordinary. Probably best to stop the hypotheticals there; we might as well ask what we'd be listening to now if Benny had been handed a shofar at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue!

Matthew, I went on a renewed Fitzgerald kick myself last year after reading The Basil and Josephine Stories, which are some of the most vivid fictional studies of the social economy of adolescent culture that I’ve ever encountered. Brad, would love to hear your thoughts on To Have And Have Not after you finish it. It’s always seemed to have a bit of a footnote status in Hemingway’s oeuvre as his purported entry in the annals of leftist 1930s literature and remembered primarily as the springboard for the much-more-famous movie, but I’ve always been curious to read it. Library of America is bringing out its first Hemingway volume this autumn, btw (and maybe we’ll see a second Fitzgerald volume as the mid-to-late 1920s works begin to fall into the public domain). On a trashier pop-culture note, just starting this book, which arrived in today’s mail:

Jackie in a sax-and-drums duet setting:

Yes, when he was an undergrad at Syracuse University he hosted a radio show called "Excursions on a Wobbly Rail," title nicked from Cecil Taylor, of course. Not aware of an Ornette collaboration, but Don Cherry played and recorded with him in the mid-to-late 1970s.

Yeah, sorry, I was already thinking that I had used too broad a brush-stroke... I actually think the majority of Americans have done a good job and get the significance of what’s going on, out of concern for others and concern for their own wellbeing. But the idiots, or the willfully/defiantly ignorant or deluded, are a loud and large minority (non-Frank Foster edition), and it takes only a few of them to put us right back to square one in each state. EDIT: the science is still apparently out on how warmer weather will affect transmission of the virus. This Washington Post article points towards a possible slowing of transmission rates, IF people observe social-distancing and other health protocols. Autumn and winter will be a whole ‘nother deal.

👍👍👍 Speaking of veterans, the U.S. death toll is not just past 100,000—it’s more than the combined number of U.S. deaths in the Korean and Vietnam wars. So three months of the virus > 11 years of war. And yet people all over the place were acting this weekend as if it was V-Covid Day. WTF?! More dead in three months than Korea and Vietnam combined, and more dying every single day. I’m not here to argue a return to complete shutdown—I’m here to argue that any reopening plans based on “encouraging” people to behave responsibly are bullshit. Thank God this particular generation of Americans didn’t have to fight WWII. They’re doing a great job of helping to kill off some of the remaining ones who did, though.