ghost of miles

There's gotta be a Steven Wright joke in here somewhere.

I lost about 1500 posts, but regained the signature that I was using about a year ago... a Wes Clark Memorial Day quote about veterans. What the hell, it's about that time of year again... guess I'll keep it!

Upwithcavemen

The big bands are never coming back. Know what I mean? The best jazz today, as Joe M points out, is on the margins, and that's not an entirely bad thing. We should buy it, go see it, and do word-of-mouth via the Internet (Jsngry way ahead of us as usual). I think even people who are mostly into historical jazz may eventually veer into the modern, sheerly from having mined most of the past, if nothing else. Or maybe not. But jazz won't stay alive by emulating the past that we're so in love with (me included) and may sound very different from what we now think of as "jazz." I think there's a place, sure, for repertory--just that it shouldn't be the only place at the table (in which case you'll get slim pickings indeed).

This program is now archived. A102, I have very little of ON's Flying Dutchman material, but I really like what I've heard. Calling Mosaic?

Thanks--I was fairly happy with how that one turned out and would like to do more along those lines. Chris Albertson and some other jazz folk on the Internet were a tremendous help with that particular program. Thanks for the Ornette suggestions as well.

Didn't he do the famous 52nd St. photograph?

Belated b-day greetings from a fellow Hoosier. Keep up the great jazz photography, and here's hoping we can meet for lunch again soon.

This week on Night Lights it's "Full Nelson," a program devoted to the 1960s studio big-band recordings of saxophonist, arranger, and composer Oliver Nelson. Nelson is best-known in the jazz world for his small-group Impulse LP Blues and the Abstract Truth; outside of that world he's been heard by many more people who don't even know of him, through the scoring he did for 1960s and 1970s television shows such as The Six Million Dollar Man. Nelson died young, at the age of 43 in 1975, and many of his 1960s big-band records, which demonstrate the wide scope of his writing abilities, have been out of print. This program will draw on a recent Mosaic Records collection of those albums, including tracks from Full Nelson, Jazzhattan Suite, and Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz All Stars, as well as Nelson's collaborations with artists such as Pee Wee Russell, Jimmy Smith, and Ray Brown and Milt Jackson. "Full Nelson" airs Saturday, April 22 at 11:05 p.m. on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. It will be posted to the Night Lights archives Monday afternoon. Note: Nelson's 1961 Prestige LP Afro-American Sketches will be included in a forthcoming program. For more of Nelson's big-band work with Jimmy Smith and guitarist Wes Montgomery, you can listen to the June 17, 2005 "Jimmy and Wes" program in WFIU's Big Bands archives. The January 14, 2006 Night Lights program, "Dear Martin," includes several selections from Nelson's Martin Luther King tribute album Black, Brown, and Beautiful; it can be heard in the Night Lights archives.

DJ friend of mine writes: Hey Jim, I hear ya--I'll have to check out the later records. I remember a biographer once quoting an exchange between a journalist and a scholar--referring to a certain poet, the journalist asked, "But isn't he sentimental?" and the scholar said, "Well, yes, but that's his inspiration. If he weren't sentimental, he wouldn't be a poet." Or something like that.

Have three wise guys shown up yet?

Mike Mainieri? (Vibraphonist on some of the Buddy Rich Mosaic set... love his playing, although I understand he later traveled a rather commercial path.)

Happy b-day, AM!

I think it's Deveaux who quotes Mary Lou Williams quoting Monk as saying in 1941, "We're going to create something that they can't steal." But when did MLW say this? Every generation wants to forge its own style. I have little doubt, though, that certain issues of race and alienation also played at least a subconscious role in the rise of bebop. And I doubt that many black musicians would have been willing to go on record in the mainstream jazz media of the time with any such quotes. Cultural & career considerations aside, such overt declarations in a public setting seem somewhat at odds with the coded language of bop. (What Monk might have said to Mary Lou in private is another matter.)

Yeah, but how many people in the US watch "free" TV now? Aren't we all paying for cable or satellite these days? I was wondering the same thing. Is there some sort of secret free TV that we don't know about? :bwallace2:

One more reason for me not to watch the damn tube! So it would basically be similar to what you encounter now at the beginning of most DVDs, when you're not allowed to skip to the menu.

Putting together a Night Lights program and came across this site... Jazzbo What a character! I've heard of him, caught his voice on some records, but hadn't ever bothered to read up on the whole "Purple Grotto" trip (or the later "Collins on a Cloud" scenario he used out in San Fran...)

Many happy returns (to the Organissimo board, we hope)!

Very good, long-running show that a friend of mine hipped me to a couple of years ago; somebody else has recently mentioned it over at Jazzcorner, which put me in mind of posting about it here: The Big Broadcast I think posters such as Jazzbo & Berigan in particular would be drawn to this program, if they don't know of it already.

Anybody have a track & personnel listing for MALLETS-A-PLENTY? I have a CD-R of it, but nada info.

Hope your birthday ruled!

Lloyd at Mosaic says four of the Singles will ship in the next 1-2 days... and the Blakey and Charles Lloyd ones will go out at the end of the month.

This program is now archived. Thanks for the comments, ep1 and aolC. I'd like to do more with Ornette; he still doesn't get enough airplay on jazz radio, IMO... and that may be the first time that I've played him on Night Lights, so I guess I better rehab my own damn glass house before I start casting any stones, eh?

Upping this thread for the historical heck of it.

Very compelling critiques of the book being offered here; I'm hoping to find time to re-read it. I think Jim's "part of the puzzle" nails it pretty well. It's been eight years since I read the book, but my memory is that DeVeaux set out to explore the economic and racial factors behind the rise of bebop because he felt they'd been generally ignored--and I do think there's some validity to the argument that for too long we simply had the "Bird and Diz descended from the clouds and bestowed bop upon us" narrative. From what I've read it was more difficult for black bandleaders to make a successful go of it in the early 1940s, for many a reason (as I recall, DeVeaux posits this as one of the motivations for the popularity of the small-ensemble setting that favored bop). From the vantage point of 2006, and the insightful remarks offered here, it seems possible that DeVeaux may have inadvertently crafted a response somewhat guilty of the very scholarly sins that he's critiquing, but I'd still agree with his thesis that previous histories have neglected important aspects of the story. Larry, what airchecks of the Eckstine band exist? All I have is a single CD with 11 tracks, AIRMAIL SPECIAL on the Drive Archive label, which purports to be from February and March of 1945. Are there more?