ghost of miles

In honor of what would have been jazz artist and educator David Baker’s 90th birthday today, I’m posting an extended interview that I did with him in 2007. In part one, David talks about the early days of the Indianapolis jazz scene, playing with Wes Montgomery and with George Russell at the Five Spot in New York City, why he had to abandon the trombone for cello, and the beginnings of the jazz-studies program at Indiana University: The Basics Of David Baker: A Conversation, Part One

We re-aired Jazz His Way: Frank Sinatra this past week, and it remains archived for online listening.

Glad you enjoyed it, Eric! The late-1970s show is tentatively slated to air at the end of next month.

A near-mint copy of the DeFranco-Clark set that I found online last week for less than three figures arrived today... and a friend gifted me his Commodore V. 3 last year, so I think I’m done seeking OOP sets? 🤔😄 Though the Edmond Hall/James Johnson etc tempts me, as does the Green-Clark box—even though I have all or nearly all of the music in those two compilations.

Wow--much appreciation for the timing of your post, Mark, as I'm beginning work at the end of this month on a Night Lights show about jazz on Columbia in the late 1970s, as a kind of sequel to the Great Columbia Jazz Purge program that I did a few years ago. Only able to skim the article right now, as I'm on air, but it looks as if it will be very helpful for depicting the state of things at the label circa late 1970s. (I also bought Bruce Lundvall's memoir, which should provide even more background.)

Up today in memory on what would have been Barry Harris' 92nd birthday: Bud's Buds: Barry Harris And Toshiko Akiyoshi

Not bad for a guy who'd been dead for 40 years!

"Summertime" and "My Funny Valentine" are two songs that I always think of in this regard, and then inevitably I hear versions that somehow seem to breathe new life into them.

We re-aired Soul Eyes: The Early Mal Waldron Songbook this past week, and it remains archived for online listening.

I've listened to about 3/4 of this Jazz Night In America episode and it's quite good--interviews with Charles Tolliver, Billy Harper, Cecil McBee, Dee Dee Bridgewater, and Greg Tate, plus some Strata-East recordings I hadn't heard before. I've had a Night Lights Strata East show on the drawing board for years, but this one is more wide-reaching than anything I would've been able to put together: Strata-East At 50: How A Revolutionary Record Label Put Control In Artists' Hands

NY Times obit

Hope that Allen stays on the upswing—that’s enough to take the wind out of anybody. Found myself wanting to revisit some excellent live late 1930s Artie Shaw:

Statement from Michael Weiss: Today, with sadness we mourn the loss of a great man. With joy we celebrate the life of a great man. Background: I met Barry Harris in 1979, receiving a piano lesson while Barry was in Indianapolis for a concert. After moving to New York in 1982 we established a close musical and personal relationship. Over the years he would call me or I would call him with a musical challenge, an investigation, or a conundrum – he at his piano and me at mine. In the 1980s I performed several times at Barry's Jazz Cultural Theater as a member of the Junior Cook/Bill Hardman Quintet. We collaborated on numerous projects, including concerts in tribute to Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, and an extensive co-interview recorded and transcribed for the liner notes to the Complete Bud Powell on Verve. In 2012 Barry commissioned me to transcribe his complete compositional output. Despite a thirty year difference in age, there was a bond, a kinship, a sharing of the same musical aesthetic and values. Barry was my musical soulmate. As a pianist: Barry orchestrated melodies and constructed his improvisations in an easy-going, unhurried, free flowing narrative – a lyricism delivered with a laissez-faire attitude, never resorting to virtuosity for its own sake, yet complex or as simple as needed. But his rhythm was profound – he grabbed the beat in his phrasing that tugged at your very soul. He was a brilliant and effective musical orator. As an educator: Barry’s own codification of the bebop language stands alone, apart from most of the trite attempts at jazz theory in the academic world, because it goes to the heart of what makes a melody melodic. He married the horizontal and the vertical in a unified whole of tonality: melodies existing inside chords and chords existing inside melodies. As the best practitioner of his theoretical concepts, Barry mined extraordinary beauty in exploring all the harmonic and melodic possibilities he could derive. To the very end he remained curious - always looking for new answers and looking for new questions. As a person: He gave tirelessly of himself as a teacher and as a human being, always wanting to help others. For this he was revered and loved throughout the world. Anybody who has known Barry well over the years, probably feels like they had a special and unique relationship with him, and I'm no exception. But he was just Barry.

Mark Stryker's NPR obit. This has been a rough couple of days. Never got to see Harris perform, but did get to hear him talk at Jazz Congress a couple of years ago. The term "master" may tend to be overused, but not for him. A grandmaster, in fact, of jazz knowledge and of life. Glad that he had such a long run, and was teaching till the end.

Tate’s 1999 review of the Red Hot Chili Peppers Californication: Californication

Pitchfork obituary

Shocked to learn through Nate Chinen's tweet that Greg Tate has died. In the pre-Internet days of the late 1980s/early 90s, I used to buy the Village Voice semi-regularly, and always enjoyed his writing there. Somewhere I've got a copy of Flyboy In The Buttermilk... will have to dig it out for a revisitation,.

Anybody happen to have chatted with the Mosaic folks on the phone in the past week or so regarding this release? Just wondering if the Dec. 20 release date still holds.

OK, this Washington Post article includes the owners’ legal justification for image removal.

Very cool, Jim. No quality-control issues with that playlist!

I’ve read four of Kevin Starr’s California history volumes—the ones covering the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and 1950-1963—but never realized until a phone conversation with a friend several nights ago that there was a second 1930s entry that serves as an interstitial piece in Starr’s narrative. Now eagerly diving into it, as I’ve greatly enjoyed the four that I already read in the early aughts:

Why is it ludicrous that each team have a player representative to vote on the the commissioner as well? Why shouldn’t the commissioner represent the sport overall, as opposed to basically at this point being a stooge for the owners? As for the MLB.com website, I invite anyone to take a look at that “FAQ about the CBA” and tell me the site’s not in the bag for the owners. Or the prominence given Manfred’s statement, which reads like a broadside from a political candidate. Have they given equal weight to the MLBPA’s response? Happy to be corrected on this if I’m wrong. I’d also like to see any legal or contractual evidence that MLB.com had to scrub the site of all existing players. One last item—as the MLBPA’s response pointed out, the lockout is not required by the end of the previous CBA. It’s simply the owners exercising leverage. Mind-boggling to me (but not really) that the oligarch owners, in baseball and all other professional sports, are presumably big advocates of free and unregulated markets in general, but are all about salary caps and other market-intervention measures when it comes to sports. Another item on the MLB site that really annoyed me—can’t recall if it was in Manfred’s statement or elsewhere—dismissed the issue of “alleged” service time manipulation. That in itself is laughable. I’m firmly on the side of the players for this CBA round, as I’m sure is clear by now. Revenues and profits have gone way up in recent years, and yet the players’ share of that money has declined—both NBA and NFL athletes bring home a higher percentage of revenues than MLB players do. Curt Flood for the Hall of Fame!

Didn’t realize that MLB.com is a propaganda site for the owners: MLB.com Not just Manfred’s already-well-circulated letter, but take a look at the “FAQ About The CBA” page. Not to mention that all current player info and images have been scrubbed... what, pray tell, was the point of that? As some commenters at PSA noted, Selig and then Manfred have distorted the commissioner position, which was supposed to be at least ostensibly neutral in the past, into overt partisanship on behalf of the owners (and why do the owners get sole say in electing the commissioner? Seems like each team also having a player representative vote would make it much more likely that we’d get a commissioner who represents baseball’s interests in general, rather than a corporate mouthpiece for the owners). Let’s be very clear about what’s going on here