ghost of miles

Don't know if the audio for this story is up yet--heard it on the way home in the car. Evidently NY state is redirecting the club sales tax towards a pension fund for musicians, which sounds groovy, but evidently it's not for some folks.

Just heard the latest from Camera Obscura, a Scottish band that's been around for awhile (sort of sponsored by Belle & Sebastian, evidently). It's called LET'S GET OUT OF THIS COUNTRY, and it's the first new cd I've heard in awhile that made me go, "Hmmm, who's that?" Kind of a mix of Mazzy Star, B & S, Felt, the Smiths (w/a strong dash of Lloyd Cole, a guy I used to love & hadn't thought about in years)--but somehow uniquely compelling.

Oh yeah!! Had no idea... I'll be picking that one up as well.

Yup. Along with the Mets, methinks. I know it's unlikely, but I'm still pulling for another Subway Series.

I just got the SINGLES box through a BMG sale a couple of weeks ago & feel confident saying (even though I'm only halfway through it) that any P. Lee fan would not regret picking it up. Eager to read that new bio as well. I wish DREAM STREET would be reissued, even though much of it is included on the 2-CD BLACK COFFEE Decca anthology. The 1999 twofer that paired it with MISS WONDERFUL is OOP.

Heard this several weeks ago & have been meaning to post the news--evidently Bob's decided to give up doing the show. Hope all's well with him.

I can't remember who wrote the Hodges notes, but I remember having the exact same reaction--surprised Mosaic went ahead & used them. I'm going to revisit all of that Hodges small-group material for radio next year, as it will be his centennary.

There is a solo piano version of The River on the recent Ellington Storyville CD THE PIANO PLAYER. The liner notes allude to Ellington orchestra recordings of The River being made as well--I think these came out on THE PRIVATE COLLECTION V. 5. (A friend told me that THE PRIVATE COLLECTION is being reissued, which I hope is true--I'm missing most of those volumes.)

I've listened to about half of the 40 or so that I got--have the Mulligan-Monk 20K on right now.

I checked both of these out of the IU School of Music library recently while I was working on an Afterglow feature for the Webster/Joe Zawinul album Soulmates. I read only the chapters concerning summer & late 1963, when Webster was Zawinul's roommate, but boy, a coin toss on which book was "better"--both sections seemed pretty good & were certainly helpful in giving me some background. Been listening to Ben a lot lately, so I think I'm going to order one or both of these bios.

I hear a fair amount of grumbling about the steroid scandals from baseball-loving friends of mine, but looks like it hasn't had a negative impact at the gate. In fact, we're back to 1993, pre-lockout (something that certainly did have a negative impact) numbers:

Jason (owner of Landlocked) is usually on top of things, esp. avant-jazz (strong interest of his), but I think it may just be a problem with his distributors. He told me it was OOP a few months ago when I tried to order it through him, based on his efforts to get a copy for in-store sale. I know jazz titles can go OOP fairly fast, in the grand scheme of things, but EXPLORATION seemed a bit too recent to already be unavailable. I try to give my business to his store whenever possible, but looks like I will have to go the online route for this one.

Just got it in the mail & looking forward to reading it later today. Is it true that his most recent CD is already OOP? That's what the owner of Landlocked Music here in town told me... going to have to pluck a copy online somewhere.

Some of the oldies stations have switched to the "jack" format, which is basically a mishmash of 70s/80s/90s... or basically "new oldies," I guess. I've plugged this show elsewhere on the forum, but my friend Greg Adam's program Rhythm Ranch is a great alternative to the same ol' oldies (example of recent show: "From 50's Rocker to 70's Honky-Tonker"). It airs from 7-9 p.m. EST Monday evenings on our community radio station WFHB.

Thanks to all for the great suggestions here. I taped the program Thursday evening and was able to incorporate several of them. This will be an annual feature, so I'll return to the thread next year when I'm compiling the 2007 show. On a somewhat related note, I wish IU would do something with the old Book Nook/Gables where HC allegedly wrote "Stardust" (Mark probably knows this already, but it's currently a "Buffalouie's"). They own it and could turn it into quite a nice Hoagy museum/visitor's center, but I guess it's just easier to rent the joint out to restaurants and collect the $$ each month.

Lazaro, Gennari does talk at length about record-collecting as a social activity (esp. in regards to the early hot-club groups and societies). (And I want to distinguish Gabbard's clinical language from Gennari's style as a writer, whatever others think of it--while Gennari is somewhat sympathetic to Gabbard's way of thinking, he does not generally write in such high-theory terms). I guess it depends on how you define homosocial--Merriam-Webster Online says this: And many jazz listeners/record collectors are men--this board is an example of that. Regarding Gabbard's quote about completism, well, completism is a rather neurotic fetish, and hell, I've got the bug myself. What is the underlying explanation for it? Maybe Gabbard's explanation is b.s., maybe a cigar is just a cigar in this instance, but what's wrong with investigating it? I don't particularly want to dwell on it, but there's something going on there (and how the hell could Mosaic overlook those two Hodges tracks on the 1955-60 Verve set? ) I agree w/Jim (pretty much agree with ALL of his post) that the sociological approach should not supplant either the music itself or other ways of writing/talking/thinking about it. But I think that when it's well-done, especially by people like Deveaux and Gennari (who each have an obvious passion for the music itself), that it certainly deserves its place on the shelf. (Much like the Hobsbawm quote that I alluded to earlier in his review of Schuller's THE SWING ERA.) I don't want to rehash the Downbeat quote argument, except to say that I wasn't saying that Downbeat's motives were pure (far from it!). Yes, Deveaux should have drawn on more to substantiate his case, but the case he was making--that for a variety of reasons it was tougher for black swing bands to make it, and that racism was a large factor--is IMO almost impossible to dispute. Exactly--and that's certainly something that underpins some of the NJS approach to jazz history. I also think it's interesting that (as Gennari points out) many of the old-school, first-generation jazz critics were academics themselves. Edit: Larry posted while I was writing this, so don't mean to sound redundant about "homosocial."

This week on Night Lights it’s “When Betty Met the Duke.” “Betty Roche was an unforgettable singer,” Duke Ellington wrote of his former vocalist in 1973. “She never sounded like anybody but Betty Roche.” Roche, the so-called “blues specialist” whom some consider to be one of the best vocalists Ellington ever had, replaced the popular Ivie Anderson in Ellington’s band in late 1942, just as the American Federation of Musicians ban on commercial recordings was about to take effect; it was the first of several bad breaks that gave her an undeserved low profile on records. In this program we’ll hear nearly all of the live, transcription, and studio recordings that Roche did with Ellington, including her landmark performance of “The Blues” from Ellington’s famous January 1943 Black, Brown and Beige concert at Carnegie Hall; her 1952 scat-vocal interpretation of “Take the ‘A’ Train”, and broadcasts from the Hurricane nightclub in New York City. We’ll also hear Roche with Earl Hines and some Ellingtonians in 1944, as well as her post-Duke solo takes on “Rocks In My Bed” and “All Too Soon.” “When Betty Met the Duke” airs Saturday, September 30 at 11:05 p.m. on WFIU and at 10 p.m. Central Time on WNIN. It can also be heard at 10 p.m. EST Sunday evening on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. Next week: "1959" on WFIU & WNIN; "The Jazz Scene" on Blue Lake

I love that Sheila Jordan version of "Oriole." Not long ago I played another version I really like--the one Helen Merrill does on her Milestone album with Dick Katz. Thanks much for the suggestions.

Hey all, I'm working on a Nov. 24 Afterglow of all Hoagy Carmichael songs... a little annual Hoosier tradition I'm starting this year (it will always fall on the Friday closest to HC's Nov. 22 b-day). Some of the recordings I've picked so far: Anita O'Day, "Ivy" Buselli-Sifferlin (IN duo), "The Nearness of You" Bix, "Riverboat Shuffle" Jack Jenny, "Stardust" ...and I'm featuring a kind-of-rare 1958 Kapp LP that Hoagy recorded (reissued in 1962 by, believe it or not, Eli Lilly ). Will be tapping HOAGY SINGS CARMICHAEL (the '56 Pacific Jazz album) as well. Would like to run down some more modern recordings... any suggestions?

Classy, Chuck. If you don't want to talk about it anymore, at least spare the rest of the board.

Actually, that just makes it sound more interesting to me, Larry. Just last night I read a review of Daniel Mendelsohn's THE LOST: A SEARCH FOR SIX OF SIX MILLION in the new NY Review of Books. The book's about Mendelsohn's attempt to learn the fate of six relatives murdered in the Holocaust, 60+years after the fact. (Link here.) In some ways what you're saying about Gushee's book makes me think about (& want to read) the Mendelsohn as well.

Tell it to Steve Isoardi and all of the musicians he interviewed for CENTRAL AVENUE SOUNDS (they, in fact, tell the story--it's an oral history). Tell it to Deveaux and his friend Howard McGhee. Who's getting shoved to the side to fit the philosophy of who here? Sherri Tucker went out and interviewed dozens and dozens of women swing musicians from WWII, most of whom had never been approached by anybody else. Are you going to cast her book on the bonfire because you've read some negative comments & decided that NJS stinks? Fine--there goes a lot of history that would've otherwise been unrecorded. Huh, I thought it was crimes in the name of "ideology" that was the Big Problem here. I say to-MAY-to, you say to-MAH-to. I guess in the end we all get our "truth" differently. If you can make race, racism, economic pressures, and everything else cultural vanish from the history of 20th century jazz, let alone art, congratulations. That's not what you're saying, I suppose, but I don't know what you are saying, beyond a distilled rehash of other folks' critical remarks. (insert metaphorical throwing up of hands in exasperation) Whoever said anything about judging music by books? Current or otherwise? I don't go running to David Rosenthal's HARD BOP (1992) to tell me what to think about whatever Lee or Jackie I'm listening to. I don't go running to Finkelstein's JAZZ: A PEOPLE'S MUSIC (1948) to tell me what to think about whatever Louis I'm listening to. I'm not going to go running to Deveaux's THE BIRTH OF BEBOP (1998) to tell me what to think about the Hawk or Howard McGhee that I'm listening to. I'm not going to go running to Gennari's BLOWIN' HOT & COOL (2006) to tell me what to think about whatever Sam Rivers record that I'm listening to. Damned if I'm not afraid, though, to learn more about the culture & times from which all of that music emerged, and to augment the listening experience with history of all sorts. Not like that's some sort of g.d. heroic act, but apparently it's some sort of heretical one, judging from the tone of your posts. I mean, if you want to go the late-Coltrane no-text route and say, "No liner notes--let the music speak entirely for itself," be my guest, but I for one sure enjoyed and benefitted from reading the notes by Larry Kart and Jim Sangrey that accompanied the ALL MUSIC cd. What kind of writing about music isn't "contextualization"? All due respect to those who would simply say, "Shut up and listen," but then if they really believed that, I doubt they'd be posting here.

I don't think I'm missing anybody's point but Chuck's (an issue, whatever it is, that I'm not going to discuss in this forum). I think it's surely safe to say that we all desire honest, rigorous scholarship when it comes to history and/or attempts to reconstruct it. Jazz history, regrettably, has been littered with error and myth, much of it committed by overzealous fans who never went never a university. Your remarks about the beboppers are interesting, because (if I understand your previous posts on Org. correctly) much of your association with them came in the 1970s and 1980s, long before NJS had even arrived on the scene. I'm sure these guys did get burned, but it couldn't have been at the hands of NJS writers. And one of the people you mention (Howard McGhee) was a primary source for THE BIRTH OF BEBOP--Deveuax befriended him and spent a great deal of time with him. I don't have Tucker's SWING SHIFT on hand--I'm still at the office--but I do have Ogren's book here, and I disagree with your representation of what she's saying. She talks about it quite clearly as a dance (a rather lascivious and notorious one at that) and the alleged origin of the term in late-19th-century African-American railroad labor. She then concludes with, "...slang allowed other meanings that were less technological and more physiological." No kidding! The primary fault I find there is an obviousness so apparent that I'm not sure she even needed to state it. Take away that line of thought & you drain the juices out of about two thousand old blues songs. If one wants to play "Gotcha!" with NJS, by all means, go ahead, but I could sit down with any # of books, some of them by writers that we all esteem, and find all sorts of similar intellectual renderings, guesswork, and shaky leaps in logic. In fact, part of what I've seen as the mission of NJS is to apply a kind of unsentimental discipline that jazz history has all too often lacked. Like you, I prefer to read it when done by people who genuinely love the music (I count Deveaux among them), because that's how I approach it too--and when it's done accurately and well, by somebody like Steve Isoardi or Deveaux, it gives the musicians the very humanity that you say previous writers--academic or otherwise--have stripped away. It's not perfect, by any means, and it's not the only way of approaching jazz history. I've found enough revelations in its better efforts, though, to be glad that it's here, and I look forward to future efforts. (Just as I'm very much looking forward to the literary successor to THAT DEVILIN' TUNE.) And yes, based on your & Larry's recs, I'm ordering the Gushee book right now.

Thanks for the heads-up, Steve! Liebman's going to be here in Bloomington next Thursday night.

Completely forgot "Rain," but you're absolutely right--that is a hell of a song. True that it was the first to use backward masking? (The Beatles are often credited as having done things "first," & it's often not so. They were certainly, wonderfully innovative, but they were also extremely rigorous listeners who absorbed nearly everything coming out, and they were good at nicking from the competition.)