ghost of miles

Ahhhhh, you know he's got a copy, buried in a closet somewhere... waits till the wife & kids are asleep and then sneaks a few pages every night.

James Naremore, MORE THAN NIGHT: FILM NOIR IN ITS CONTEXTS. Naremore's a professor of English and film studies here at IU, and a jazz buff as well; I'm going to have him on as a guest for my jazz in post-WWII French cinema radio program.

Here's a Boston Globe article on the documentary to which the earlier post alludes: Film will aim spotlight on a free-jazz legend By Steve Greenlee, Globe Staff, 12/6/2002 In life, tenor saxophonist Albert Ayler never got his due. He was a leader of the 1960s free-jazz scene, and today he's considered one of jazz's most influential artists, one of the forefathers of the avant-garde branch. Although the critics liked his work, it didn't have many fans at the time. His 1964 recording with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sunny Murray, ''Spiritual Unity,'' was so different from everything else in jazz - even free jazz - that it frightened people. It still frightens people listening to it for the first time, but now it's recognized as a masterpiece. It's not hard to find jazz artists today who claim Ayler as an influence. Yet, he's still a mysterious figure; no one knows, for example, whether his 1970 drowning in New York's East River was the result of suicide. Brian Carpenter is trying to shed some light on Ayler's life, in filming what is apparently the first documentary about the saxophonist. Based in Boston, Carpenter has crews here and in New York working to assemble a feature-length work about Ayler and his legacy. In conjunction with this project, Carpenter has been producing concerts - and filming them - to illustrate Ayler's impact. The next one will take place Thursday at the Tremont Theatre, where the Other Dimensions in Music group (trumpeter Roy Campbell Jr., saxophonist Daniel Carter, bassist William Parker, and drummer Rashid Bakr) and guitarist Joe Morris's trio (with bassist Timo Shanko and drummer Luther Gray) will perform. ''The Other Dimensions group, we definitely wanted to get them in the Ayler documentary,'' says Carpenter, 30, who moved to Boston two years ago from Florida, where he grew up and went to college. ''Not only because of their tenure - they've been around for 25 years - but because of their telepathy. They make it work. I've seen a lot of bands in free jazz not work. It's very hard to do.'' Carpenter is something of an authority on Ayler. While studying the history of the jazz saxophone years ago, Carpenter was stopped in his tracks by Ayler's music. ''Where in the world did this come from?'' he wondered. ''It didn't seem to fit in the lineage.'' ''Everybody has their first experience listening to Albert Ayler,'' he says. ''You can't listen to it as background. You have to sit down and listen to it. The first record I heard was `Spiritual Unity.' I was frightened by it. I couldn't listen to it. At the same time, I was intrigued. I was moved. ... Now I find it accessible. It's an emotion. It's raw nerve. It's more accessible than bebop, in a lot of ways.'' Today, Ayler is viewed as a prophet who foresaw a new way of presenting jazz and expressing naked emotion. Such respected saxmen as David S. Ware, Ken Vandermark, and Fred Anderson are considered disciples. Guitarist Marc Ribot recorded a solo album last year, ''Saints,'' on which he covered three Ayler tunes. This is the legacy that Carpenter wants to get at. (Carpenter, by the way, moonlights as a trumpeter, playing in a local free-jazz sextet called Beat Science.) He and his crew have been in production since last spring, and they already have 70 hours of film - concert footage, biographical material, and interviews. The documentary will alternate between sharp pictures of concerts and grainy black-and-white segments that tell Ayler's life story. In Boston, Carpenter has been interviewing and filming just about every relevant artist who comes through the city: Roswell Rudd, John Tchicai, Ribot, Vandermark - those who played with him as well as those who are influenced by his work. The film is a long way from completion. Carpenter hopes to wrap it up in 2004 and then start taking it around to film festivals in hopes of finding a distributor. ''Who knows what will happen after that?'' he says. ''We'd like to see it on DVD eventually.''

I'm excited, because I'm pretty sure I don't have any of the music associated with the tree. It's also heartening that another avant-garde artist is getting a box (coming on the heels of the news about the Jimmy Lyons collection). Went on a big Ayler kick a few years ago when I first discovered his music (me and a few thousand other listeners, right?), and this news makes me want to pull out a few CDs that I haven't spun in awhile (listened to WITCHES AND DEVILS about two months ago). I'll be interested to read the book, too. Have any of you ever read the Ayler bio that's posted online? AylerBio

Just posted on the Coltrane list: caught evan parker recently which was a real treat -- news for this group is that we found out there that revenant is planning a big ayler project. i found more in the american-statesman: "the next giant revenant project is box set focusing on the late free jazz pioneer albert ayler. 'this is definitely as big as the (charley) patton box for us,' blackwell says. titled 'holy ghost' -- and penciled in for a fall 2004 release -- the projected eight-cd collection is slated to include extensive liner notes, never-before-seen photographs of ayler and his bands, and hours of never-before-released material, including ayler's legendary performance at john coltrane's funeral." the revenant ad in the parker program called it a "multi-disc set" scheduled for summer of 2004. perhaps a revenant set, along with the documentary also planned for 2004, will help bring ayler more of the attention he deserves. and get me those ayler fridge magnets i've been looking for. btw i have a couple of extra programs from the parker show. will be happy to mail 'em to whoever emails me their addresses first -- off-list please.

All right, enough with the dreary debates about petty matters such as SACD and U.S. foreign policy--here is the news of the day! Can a duets recording be far down the road?!? ElvisDiana

Python is classic, of course. Our local PBS station used to run it late at night when I was a kid, followed by a really acerbic, funny British show called Dave Allen at Large: My best friend in junior high & I really dug that show. We always talked about it the next day at school. The religious humor was pretty strong stuff for some people, though.

Ornette Coleman & Charlie Haden covered the Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman theme on SOAP SUDS. Just my odd note of jazz trivia--it was a really good show.

I'm hoping to pick up the two DVD sets of Peter Gunn later this year--ED! sparked my interest on the old BN board with a thread about that show, and I'm really interested in the portrayal of jazz in film and television. I'd be curious to see All In the Family again, wondering if it's aged badly. That show seemed to be to the 70's what I Love Lucy was to the 50's. I also watched a lot of reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show as a kid--hell, I watched a lot of tube, and I read a lot and played a lot outdoors too. On top of school, I can't figure out how I had so much time on my hands.

I was perusing the jumptheshark site tonight as work slowed down and looked up a favorite childhood show of mine--The Six Million Dollar Man. Funny that I always made sure to catch the opening credits, as I loved that sequence, and only recently found out that none other than the great Oliver Nelson wrote the music for the show. God, I'd forgotten how ludicrous some of the plots were, though! Like the classic two-part Sasquatch/space aliens show, with Sasquatch played by Andre the Giant: Here's the description of the plots: Wow! As an adolescent, I watched Hill Street Blues religiously. I also caught many, many reruns of Sanford and Son. My wife and I have deliberately lived without cable for several years now, but I tell ya, I feel myself weakening sometimes, particularly whenever I see a TVLand schedule (or TMC, when it comes to movies).

Today I listened to the legendary Ellington-at-Newport-'56 performance of "Crescendo and Diminuendo in Blue," for the first time in a couple of years. I played it for my wife, who had never heard the famous 27 chorus Paul Gonsalves solo, and hearing it again whetted my desire to seek out more Gonsalves. The only CD I have with him as a leader is ELLINGTONIA MOODS AND BLUES--any other recommendations that fall outside of his work with the Ellington orchestra?

Run, do not walk, to your keyboard to order this CD. (Well, you're probably already at your keyboard if you're reading this...) There is a lot of bone and sinew to this band. "Allnette" will put you in mind of another Texan saxophonist & and the fluidly tight quartets he led... "Cannon's Blues" kicks with an avant-gutbucket feel--I live near a hospital, and just as the track really started to howl I heard the sirens that I often hear a few blocks away, and they blended beautifully with the music. "Island Party" begins as a Rollinsesque Carnaval romp that turns fierce, and by God I hear a "Rhapsody in Blue" quote right before the drum solo. Muscular hooks aplenty here, too, as evidenced by "Oh Boys Try to Get Along" and "Donkey Dix"... The ghosts of Ayler/Murray collaborations are hovering about as well. Music with sass & swagger, playful but with just a hint of menace that lets you know these guys have a little more funk, a little more dirt on their hands, than the Vandermark clan from Chicago. It's aces, Jim--CD of the week, anyone?

Contact Jim directly. I bought one from him several weeks ago & shamefully have not set aside time yet to spin it--a situation I'm rectifying tomorrow. I'm going to feature it on my May 7 radio show.

I was at a Borders the other day, listening to some audio samples of Gloria Lynne (the Collectables re-issue AT THE BASIN STREET EAST/AT THE LAS VEGAS THUNDERBIRD). She seems to fall into that jazz/soul/pop genre that I associate with singers such as Dakota Staton & Nancy Wilson--a genre that I happen to enjoy. Anyway, I'm thinking of picking this one up, and wondered if there were any Lynne fans around these parts.

Wow, thanks for the rundown, FrancoisD. I'll have to nab that Andy Kirk disc as well--hoping to do a show on B. Calloway sometime in the future.

I loved that book, Alan, and I think you'll enjoy the rest of it as well. Chabon did a marvelous job in recreating NYC of the 30's/40's/50's; IMO he's one of the most entertaining literary-mainstream writers around these days.

I've read that too, which is one reason why I'm intrigued. I will definitely pony up for the Classics, since it seems to be the only disc available.

I've been getting increasingly interested lately in bandleader Blanche Calloway, Cab's sister, esp. since I started listening to the Cab JSP set THE EARLY YEARS. AMG lists only one compilation of her work: but there's no review or biographical information. Has anybody else heard her music?

Ronald Morris' WAIT UNTIL DARK: JAZZ AND THE UNDERWORLD 1880-1940. Morris, so far, seems to be positing that gangsterism was actually a positive force in the development of early jazz. Interesting thesis! I'll probably start a thread on that topic after I finish the book.

I found the McCoy a bit disappointing, actually. I really enjoyed his earlier book, THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY, but found KISS sketchily implausible at times. I'm prepared to accept that to some degree in mid-20th-century pulp noir work (otherwise I wouldn't read David Goodis), but crazy breaks just happened too much to the protagonist in KISS for my taste.

Yep, one & the same (the new Everyman translation changes the title). I still haven't started it--read MISS LONELYHEARTS first and then got sidetracked with Horace McCoy's KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE--but it's now about to step up to bat in my literary reading game. I can definitely empathize with any book about a guy who continuously vows to quit smoking and then fails; it took me a long, long time to succeed. You know the old Mark Twain joke--"It's easy to quit smoking--I've done it hundreds of times."

Well, I feel a bit like Hardbop on the old board here, following myself on the now-reading thread, but I just finished Flannery O'Connor's novel THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY and wanted to recommend it to anybody who enjoys her short stories. A very familiar O'Connor motif at work here--the adolescent protagonist with a dark side who truly believes in God at odds with an "enlightened" adult intellectual who preaches a doctrine of rationalism. (If you've ever read her story "The Lame Shall Enter First," you might find the novel very similar, right down to the inclusion of a holy-goof child character.) O' Connor is a powerful and sharply observant writer, whether one agrees or not with her rather brimstone-ish view of religion.

Just had an exchange of PMs with White Lightning in which our ol' fave J.J. Johnson came up--what are your favorite J.J. records? I love most of the Mosaic set, PROOF POSITIVE, and THE TOTAL J.J. JOHNSON. And is it true that he wrote the theme to "Starsky and Hutch?"

I know he's posted lately on Jazz Corner... did he start another job recently?