ghost of miles

This week on Night Lights it’s “Later: Bobby Hutcherson in the Mid-1970s.” Bobby Hutcherson made his first appearance on a Blue Note date in 1963, playing on saxophonist Jackie McLean’s LP ONE STEP BEYOND. In the next 14 years Hutcherson would record 22 albums as a leader for the label and appear as a sideman with musicians such as Joe Henderson, Grant Green, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, and Herbie Hancock, becoming a prominent figure in the avant-bop landscape of the 1960s. The Blue Note label went through big changes after founding owner Alfred Lion sold the company, and Hutcherson was one of the few classic 1960s artists to stay, along with pianist Horace Silver and trumpeter Donald Byrd. The success of Hutcherson’s tune “Ummh” from his early-1970s album SAN FRANCISCO led to a renewal of the vibraphonist’s contract with the label, and he went on to record five albums that have now been collected by Mosaic records in a single set, after having been unavailable for decades. During the mid-1970s Hutcherson was able to maintain and lead a strong working group, and to also bring in talented colleagues for studio dates; these albums feature players such as trumpeters Woody Shaw and Freddie Hubbard, saxophonist Harold Land and Manny Boyd, and pianist George Cables. Although Blue Note’s glory days were already past when these records were made, they reflect the intensity of the label’s best work. “Later” airs Saturday, April 14 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It will also air Sunday evening at 10 p.m. EST on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. The program will be posted by Tuesday morning in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Slide at 75."

A singer I've liked more & more over the years; Mosaic was going to do a set of her Capitol recordings, but decided not to because of the Collectables reissues. Posted to Songbirds today:

I suck at searching. Sorry. Hey, many, many worse things in life than another thread on V.S.O.P. releases could happen! Just thought you'd want to check out what other posters had said there. I'm partial to the Costa myself--and isn't there a Warne release on the label as well? I can't remember which ones I have & don't have, and I'm at the office, but yeah, I like the Feldman too... got it not long ago, along with Bill Holman's JIVE FOR FIVE. I know I still have quite a few in this series that I'd like to pick up. Doesn't True Blue carry most of these titles? Not the greatest prices, but easy enough to toss in a couple if you're ordering a Mosaic...

Great label--some previous discussion here.

How do you pronouce: (1) Ahmet Ertegun's last name? (2) Joachim Kuhn?

"Jazz, Spiritually Speaking" is now archived.

I found a copy of Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby stories and spent much of last night reading them. Wonderful, short, incisive and funny takes on the Hollywood of the late 1930s--highly recommend them for any fans of FSF or of cynical fiction about Lotus Land. I'm not sure how many precedents there were for such writing when Fitzgerald wrote these stories; he was surely aware of his friend Nathanael West's DAY OF THE LOCUST, which had come out in 1939, but I'm hard-pressed to think of other examples before 1940.

Just to throw in an extraneous quote of my own, "Why so much shuck for so little nubbin?" (I always thought this came from Sherwood Anderson's first sight of the smallish William Faulkner wrapped in a huge overcoat, but it turns out Anderson lifted the quote from Abraham Lincoln.) By nearly any journalistic standard, the article does indeed seem far too long to me. Part of the problem is that it's hardly surprising that nobody in a subway anywhere would know who Joshua Bell is. Fellow Bloomingtonian Mark Stryker can certainly attest to Bell's high profile in the world of classical music ever since he was an adolescent, but "the world of classical music" is nearly as culturally circumscribed as a cultural world can get. Bell is undoubtedly one of the best-known--perhaps the best-known--musicians from that world, and still it's relatively meaningless in the world at large. Not that jazz is much better... if you stuck Wynton in a subway, a few people might recognize him, but that would be because he's been so successful at getting his mug all over PBS. Do classical musicians busk in the East Coast subways? I mean, maybe they should. Why keep the music as exclusively a concert-hall experience? Larry, that "frame" of which you speak stems, I think, from the perception among some that jazz is a hip, sophisticated experience... that by conducting one's social activities in a jazz setting, one is showing that he/she is more culturally in-the-know. Not saying that on some level these folks don't have some kind of appreciation for the music, but it's ultimately superficial. When I was in my early 20s I worked in a downtown Indianapolis restaurant, and on Friday and Saturday nights we'd close the kitchen at midnight and head down the street to a local jazz bar called the Chatterbox. We went there primarily because it was open till 3 and we wanted to build on the momentum of our shift drinks, but also because it was a jazz club--and it made us feel even better to be drinking at such a place. So that "frame" was definitely part of the picture. I was not a jazz fan then, had the same five or six jazz LPs that many an indie/hipster kid might have, and I shudder to remember how much WE talked, how much everybody talked, at that bar while the musicians were playing.

Thanks for pointing that out. Suffice to say that I continue to lobby for the power/authority to do the site updates myself.

Hope it fulfills the promise, B. I'm probably going to do a sequel next year around Easter--had to leave a lot of good material sitting on the studio desk.

I'd argue that whatever the Velvets & Lou Reed were on to in their first several albums was just as authentic, in its own fucked-up way, as whatever Brian Wilson was on to. How it was used/misused & heard by fans is another issue... but a song like "Heroin" kicks the door in when it comes to depicting "life" as sure as "Caroline No" or "Good Vibrations" does. I'd say that early VU depicts the anti-BBoy people that Jim's talking about, but that's authentic, too... we define ourselves as much by what we aspire to, by our gestures, as we do by what we "are." It's darker, it's certainly less concerned with maintaining innocence, and it risks just as much in terms of possible self-delusion and self-absorption as does the vision of Brian Wilson. In a twisted way it's spiritual, too... I mean, some people may think "Jesus" (from the third album) is a joke, but I've never heard it that way. I think it's a very lost, very modern cry for purity, a rock n' roll leap of faith that knows it probably won't get an answer, but hopes for salvation in the very act of asking. In the end, I think speed helped Lou Reed write some very good songs for a couple of years, and then it fried his brainpan shiny, leaving behind enough residue of talent for him to chug along for awhile, occasionally turning out halfway-decent work, but never at the level of what he did in the late 1960s.

I've had a hard time coming to grips with the Beach Boys (beyond PET SOUNDS, which really does transcend most cultural noise), partly for the reasons Jim cites above. And partly because every time I flip over to the oldies station on the car radio, they're playing one of the surf songs, which I've just come to loathe as an adult. I had ENDLESS SUMMER (as a friend once said, "ENDLESS SUMMER, they really meant it, man" ) on 8-track when I was a kid and loved it... and props to the BB's surf sound for inspiring the Ramones, the Jesus & Mary Chain, and a # of other fine groups to come down the Highway 1 of rock 'n roll ever since. But I really can't take "Little 409" & "I Get Around" etc. at all anymore and have to flip the dial before I start screaming. That said, I think Brian Wilson was one of the first to write songs that were genuine attempts to convey what it's like to be a teenager. There's something genuine there that I don't hear in most of the 1950s/early 1960s rock 'n roll I've encountered, or even in the Beatles' early work, for that matter. (Exceptions made primarily for some Lennon tunes like "Yes It Is," "I'm a Loser," maybe McCartney's "I'll Follow the Sun" and "I Saw Her Standing There" as well.) Not familiar enough with the post-SMILE (1967 version) material & this thread has given me some leads to follow up... an interesting flipside to what Jim says would be looking at the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed's post-VU work (pretty much ersatz-Velvet, counterfeit-decadence, though I'm certainly not the first to level that judgment)... how much of white suburban kids' love for the Velvets (and it still exists... I know a # of 20-22 yr olds who love 'em) is a somewhat similar attempt to transcend their origins? Is digging early VU just another way of slumming? I mean, I love that music, all the way through LOADED, but how much of my reason for loving it in the first place was that throwing "Sister Ray" on at a party when I was 19 made me feel as if I was living, ah, "dangerously"? Later on, when I got to know some people who truly lived a "Sister Ray" kind of life, didn't seem quite so cool or fucked-up glamorous, and the "danger" that was there was somehow of a pettier, but maybe ultimately more sinister, nature... of seeing people get their lives sidetracked badly, maybe forever... by their own twisted patterns that they couldn't break out of, more than a sailor-bursts-into-room-shoot-'em-dead-on-the-carpet variety.

This week on Night Lights it’s “Jazz, Spiritually Speaking.” Spirituals were African-American religious folksongs that grew out of the slavery experience and the introduction of Christianity into slaves’ lives. Rooted in African musical tradition as well, they reflected life in a strange and terribly oppressive new world. They were often improvisations upon older hymns that became entirely new songs, and in some ways they foreshadow the birth of American jazz. In this program we’ll hear jazz interpretations of spirituals by John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Grant Green, Louis Armstrong, Archie Shepp with Horace Parlan, and more. “Jazz, Spiritually Speaking” airs Saturday, April 7 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN, and at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. You can learn more about spirituals here and here. The program will be posted Tuesday morning in the Night Lights archives. Next week: "Later: Bobby Hutcherson in the Mid-1970s."

So, can I call you GOM-er? Not till Memorial Day, when they wheel me out to sing "Back Home Again in Indiana" at the Indy 500.

Don't know much about him, but I found this interview online.

Hey, I'm just a dumb Hoosier hick from southern Indiana... that's the way we talk, dig? Especially when we forget to take the straw out from between our teeth. Lighten up, man.

Say, suh, pass me that Don Redman platter... "Chant of the Weed," baby!

Chuck & I had a blowup over a misunderstanding about one of my shows, but he's no champion of drug addiction in jazz, and I know he's seen the damage up close. The whole history of drug abuse in jazz is messy & complex and difficult to talk about without lapsing into cliches of one kind or another. Everybody has to bear his or her cross differently.

Along with Will Friedwald's STARDUST MELODIES, in an F. Scott rereading mode--picked up GATSBY again last weekend. I pretty much reread that one every couple of years. Going out tomorrow on the prowl for a copy of his Pat Hobby stories, which I read as a teenager... very short, satirical short stories about a failed screenwriter in Hollywood that Fitzgerald wrote near the end of his career.

All hail the mighty bean! They'll have to pry my coffee mug from my hot, trembling fingers, etc. To quote the owner of L.A.'s 5th St. Dick's (coffeehouse in the Leimert Park area): There are three things in the whole world I love to do most... sit on my ass... drink coffee... and listen to jazz.

Been revisiting the Andrew Hill--the first Mosaic I ever got. Amazing to me how fresh & wonderful this music still sounds.

"Emily Remler: a Musical Remembrance" is now archived.

Could be wrong, but I predict it will ultimately backfire on them--esp. given what Jim says in the post directly above. I'll also be curious to see how WBEZ's dual news/info/talk signal works out in the long run.

Best wishes to you, LV. Long may you broadcast!

Hey, those all look good to me!