ghost of miles

Well, now I am too, so we should make for swell company. (If only you meant it in the British sense of the word.) Frankly, some of the attitude against NJS reminds me all too much of Louis’ infamous “Chinese music” comment. I am simply saying that it’s my belief that a true history of any art form includes the social, economic, and political circumstances from which it emerged as well as the “aesthetic” aspects of its evolution. That notion comes under attack from some quarters, here and elsewhere, as somehow “falsifying” history, and my point is that ignoring factors such as racism and the economic impact of racism on jazz history is a falsity to match any distortion produced so far by NJS. And I’ll argue that point relentlessly, though I think I’ve already spoken my piece too much in this thread, and have no desire to resuscitate my debate w/Larry (which ended up revolving more around a pretty narrow scholarship/research aspect of a larger question—and my sense is that Larry, while vigorously and rightfully demanding of historical inquiry, is still open to some of the notions that NJS puts forth.) If you think “NJS sux” then you, even more so than all or most of us here, have earned that opinion. Somehow, though, that opinion won’t piss me off, nor should it. I’ve never gone to grad school. I came to this music out of a passionate love for listening to it, and still come to it that way every day and night—I sure as hell don’t listen 5-6 hours a day out of “sociological curiosity.” I sure as hell don’t need to defend that love to anybody either, or to shut down my mind to new and fascinating ways of looking at jazz history (hardly new at this point, I’ll grant you, as NJS has been around at least since Deveaux’s 1991 essay on the making of the jazz canon). I go where passion and intellectual curiosity drive me, and for the past few years it’s driven me to, among other places, books and articles by NJS writers. Some of them, like Deveuax, are musicians themselves, or at least know how to play reasonably well, and I find myself more attracted to such writers because they are more likely to have that same passion for the music, and an ability to talk about it in an aesthetic and a cultural way. Yes, some academics can exude attitude and unearned authority—just as those who despise them can exude prejudice and unearned contempt. When it comes to jazz reading I couldn’t give a damn where somebody went to school. I have books on my shelf right now by Martin Williams, John Litweiler, Whitney Balliett, Frank Kofsky, Val Wilmer, Art Taylor, Rex Stewart, Ted Gioia, Mezz Mezzrow, Sherri Tucker, Scott Deveaux, Larry Kart, Dan Morgenstern, Steven Isoardi, John Hasse, Lewis Porter, Nat Hentoff, Horace Tapscott, David Rosenthal, Dizzy Gillespie, Allen Lowe, John Gennari, Ashley Kahn, Chris Albertson, and many, many others. If you ever end up writing a book or memoir it’ll be there too, even if it’s titled Hoosier Jazz Jocks Who’ve Pissed Me Off. So, let’s see, three people I really respect, like and admire—Mr. Kart, Mr. Lowe, Mr. Nessa—what other worthies can I honk off with this thread? If I can just figure out a way to agitate Sangrey or Chris, I’ll have a grand slam.

After three days? You must be working on a hell of a hangover.

Hey all interested south/central Indiana posters, Dave Liebman will be playing at Bear's Place in Bloomington next Thursday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 in advance, $12 at the door; as far as I know, they're only being sold at Bear's Place, so you might want to give 'em a call (812-339-3460). BP is near the corner of 3rd and Jordan, right across from the southern end of the IU School of Music. Smoke-free bar, burger/fries/pizza kind of menu. Let me know if you're coming down/over and maybe we can all sit together.

This program is now archived.

The Rolling Stones' Get Off Of My Cloud. I remember hearing this song on a jukebox in Rogers City, Michigan, of all places, in the summer of 1977, when I was 11 years old and had just discovered the first two Ramones' records. This single completely hooked me on the Stones... dig Keith's glasses in the video.

Completely agree with this--the first tune that came to mind when I saw the title of this thread was "I'm Only Sleeping," probably my favorite non-played-to-death Beatles song. ("She Said She Said" too, though I've heard this one more & more in the past 15-20 years.) "Yes It Is" is an early favorite, as is the whole LP Beatles For Sale. ("Every Little Thing," "I'm a Loser," "What You're Doing," "I'll Follow the Sun," etc.) A friend of mine used to argue that Elliott Smith derived much of his musical aesthetic from the George Harrison song "Long, Long, Long" off The White Album. Quite possibly true--ES was certainly a Beatles devotee and a George Harrison one in particular, and I think I've even heard a bootleg with him covering "Long, Long, Long."

I assume this means recordings of John Coltrane with Red Garland, and vice versa? I hope? Yep. It's up in the archives (ran 9/23 for Trane's b-day), but looks like the webmaster forgot to create a RAM file for it. I e-mailed him, & hopefully the audio will be available by late Tuesday a.m.

Aloc, feel free to send ideas my way--two of the shows in December will be the result of suggestions from White Lightning and from a listener in Manchester, England. I have a list of 200+ possible programs of my own but am always on the lookout for others. Glad you liked the Disney (so much material left over from that one that I may do a sequel at some point); I'll be interested to know what folks think of the upcoming 9/30 "When Betty Met the Duke."

A beautiful card--and a beautiful family! Best wishes back to you, WL, from the Land That Begat J.J.

Any word on this? I recently got the Granz Jam Sessions box through BMG & noticed mention of the forthcoming book in the credits (under a different title--LET FREEDOM SWING). Look forward to reading it, whenever it comes out.

Disc 4 of the Dizzy Mosaic. I think--although I haven't listened to a great deal of Dizzy's post-1960s recordings--that this is my favorite period for DG's trumpet playing, and find myself turning to these sides more than the big band material (which I also enjoy a great deal).

Fair enough--any protracted gaze into the hillbilly Zen of Mr. Berra always helps to restore a sense of clarity and balance.

Chuck, in regards to "false," I'm simply saying that a manner of approaching jazz history that omits what I mentioned seems to me just as distorted as any NJS approach that arrives with a predetermined "outcome". In the course of my discussion w/Larry this evening I went back to re-read "Constructing the Jazz Tradition," and this passage might provide more elaboration (the essay was written in 1991, hence the reference to Schuller's THE SWING ERA as "recent"):

From a (now) fellow 40-year-old...

But Deveaux is writing about what was going on with black swing musicians and their economic situation in that chapter--not about the culture of Downbeat and its readers. And I don't quite get the Berra analogy, humorous as it is on the surface--that the DB article is guilty of only pointing out the obvious? I thought that a lack of obviousness was exactly what was at question here... and again, it wasn't Deveaux's primary "evidence," but a fleeting allusion in a larger chapter. And I've already said that yes, perhaps Deveaux's research could have gone deeper (even though I still agree with his analysis and conclusions)... and you raise interesting questions as well, the kinds of questions which--I hope--Gennari's book will raise as I get further into it.

Please explain this. I think you just really pissed me off. I mean a narrative history that makes no allowances for any sort of political, social, or economic forces at work in how people came to create certain forms of music, or any kind of art, for that matter. I have no idea why that should piss you off.

Larry--Of course I understand what the sentence means in a literal sense, but it's no great leap to interpret it as also meaning that Armstrong had great crowd-pleasing/entertainer skills. Because you're essentially saying that you know more than the DB journalist, even though he/she lived through that era and you didn't--and yet you're taking Gennari to task for giving a different interpretation of an era through which you lived and he didn't (not as a perceiving adolescent/adult, anyway--not sure how old Gennari is). Living through an era, of course, does not give one carte blanche in interpreting it, or prove that one is automatically a trustworthy source (and I DO consider you a trustworthy source; your writings always seem grounded in solid, penetrating thought & research), but the DB article, general as it is, is not at odds with other parts of the historical record from that era.

Of course--I just mentioned that he is a musician because of your earlier remark: ...simply that Deveaux is a NJS scholar who's also a musician, and who certainly incorporates analysis of crystallized musical choices into his work. Deveaux cites more than the DB article in the section, "The Wages of Discrimination"--inability of black bands to get prominent hotel gigs, high-profile radio spots, etc. And I took the phrase "high-note appeal" to convey a more general meaning that's somewhat in line with what you say about Armstrong. DB journalism is, as you say, not to be taken as gospel--that's for sure--but it's indicative of what people who were around then were thinking, to a large degree, and DB did exert influence over its audience. (And Ellington was one of a kind, in more ways than one--how many black bandleaders could afford to have their own train, so as not to have to endure the indignities suffered by so many black musicians while touring the South?) And if we can't give any credence to journalism of the era, then the earlier complaint against Gennari: seems at odds, at least indirectly, with the critique of the DB article citation. Which again is NOT to say that DB journalism of the time can stand on its own, etc., but I'm surprised to see it dismissed so readily when there's plenty of other evidence that discrimination affected black bands in many ways. Yes, perhaps Deveaux could have substantiated his argument more thoroughly, but I find it difficult to disagree with his conclusions. I'm really interested in that Gushee book--thanks for mentioning it. And while I understand your not wanting to discuss the Gennari book too much before writing your piece, I'd be eager to read any thoughts you have on Deveaux's "Constructing the Jazz Tradition" after you read it.

Wow--really? Ticket prices too high, poor choice of venues, declining interest in Ornette, or some other factor? (I wouldn't think that it would be declining interest.)

How long till the "Scott Deveaux is here" thread starts?

I guess I just don't see (or read) Deveaux in the same way. Deveaux actually is a musician (one of the reasons why I enjoy his writing--he brings that level of awareness to the table as well), and THE BIRTH OF BEBOP is fairly studded, in some sections, with musical examples (I just pulled out my copy to glance through it). I don't think Deveaux's being as reductive as you suggest re: aesthetical choices & presenting them as evidence, but again, I need to sit down and reread the entire book. I just glanced through the "Out of Step With Swing" chapter, in which he quotes a 1940 Downbeat article that proclaimed, "The truth is that the public will accept only a limited number of Negro bands." That gives a pretty fair sense of what the climate was like for working musicians circa 1940 (Deveaux goes into much more detail on the difficulties that large black bands encountered). I don't think he's saying that those difficulties CREATED bebop, but that they did play a part... because even those crystallized choices are coming from a personality that's been shaped by historical/political/economic forces. Again, I think Deveaux does a good job of finding a balance between the "evolutionary style" narrative of jazz history (which strikes me, especially at this late date, as just as false as any excesses of NJS) and a Marxist-style interpretation that leaves no room for discussion of individual aesthetic choices. And an "after-the-fact political rationalization" may simply be a later articulation of something that was unconscious at the time. I think we both agree that what we ultimately want is as accurate a representation of jazz history as is possible--perhaps we just have slightly differing views on how to get there. Have you ever read Deveaux's essay, "Constructing the Jazz Tradition"? For some reason Krin Gabbard did not include it in his JAZZ AMONG THE DISCOURSES anthology; rather puzzling, as it really set the stage for the book itself. It's been collected in Robert O'Meally's THE JAZZ CADENCE OF AMERICAN CULTURE. It's an insightful piece on how the ideological agendas of previous critics, who claim not to be ideological at all, have shaped jazz history in powerful and distorting ways.

I wouldn't argue with any of the above, but I would strongly argue against the notion that race and racism had nothing at all to do with the music, and would say that such an attitude is a form of blindness itself.

Hey, you two, it's a floor polish and a dessert topping! Larry, I understand your discomfort if you feel a jazz historian has set out with a predetermined conclusion and is somehow fitting "the facts" (a fuzzy area in jazz or any other history) to match his or her predetermined conclusion. I haven't read enough of the Gennari yet to comment in that regard (hoping to get back to it next week when I go on vacation), but for me a big problem with pre-NJS jazz history is that it so blithely ignores contextualization (outside of some fine early efforts--see Finkelstein--and some rather shrill ones--see Kofsky). I guess some of this boils down to how one sees art; and while I'm not a Marxist, I think that music, or any other art form, for that matter, is rarely simply "about itself." Nor do I think that an artist is always consciously aware of how those social/economic/political influences may be shaping his or her work. I'm sure Roscoe Mitchell didn't sit down to write an Afrocentric manifesto--and there are folks here with direct experience of that time--but how can any discussion of the AACM take place outside of what was going on in the 1960s? Perhaps some of the NJS writers do go too far in an attempt to overcompensate for the previous deficit to which I alluded--or perhaps some are indeed motivated by the dread academia disease of forcing a "new" viewpoint. For me, they've brought something refreshing and new to the conversation. I fell in love with jazz because of the "music itself," but as I got more into it, I became more and more fascinated by the music's relationship with the times/history/places from whence it came. NJS explores much of that in a way that I haven't seen much of before. To take Deveaux's book, for instance, had anybody else ever suggested that the difficulties black big bands faced in touring--particularly the South--might have contributed to the small-group format which bop favored? Maybe somebody had--and anyway, that's surely not the whole story, but I don't think that Deveaux was suggesting that it was. We've just already had so much "Great Men of Jazz" history that posits bebop as having arrived from the winged messengers of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. I won't contest Bird's genius or the enormous impact that his breakthrough had, but there was more to the story than that--even geniuses don't come out of a void. I'll have to go back and reread Deveaux, in light of what you've posted here. And I greatly look forward to reading your expanded take on Gennari in the Annual.

http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000000YGA.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg This week on Night Lights it’s “Red Trane”, in celebration of tenor saxophonist John Coltrane’s 80th birthday. Coltrane and pianist Red Garland, who had both worked in Eddie Cleanhead Vinson's late-1940s sextet, began playing together again in 1955 as part of Miles Davis’ quintet. Davis sought Garland out for his relaxed, block-chord style and his ability to impart an Ahmad Jamal-like sound; Coltrane, nearly 30 years old, was at a troubled juncture in his personal and professional life, still dogged by a drug addiction that would force Davis to eventually fire him. In 1957 Coltrane turned his life around, kicking drugs and joining the Thelonious Monk quartet. He also began to record prolifically as a leader for Prestige, the same label for which Red Garland recorded. The two men made many records together throughout 1957 and 1958, resulting in a popular and accessible collaborative jazz legacy that’s just one of several achievements from this early and significant turning point in John Coltrane’s career. We’ll hear recordings from the albums Soultrane, Traneing In, High Pressure, and All Mornin’ Long. http://mclub.te.net.ua/images/alb/cover690_15599.jpg “Red Trane” airs Saturday, September 23 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU, 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN, and at 10 p.m. Sunday evening (EST) on Michigan's Blue Lake Public Radio. Next week: "When Betty Met the Duke"

This program is finally archived. Apologies, as our webmaster was having a lot of trouble with the file.