ghost of miles

Yeoman's work, my friend... thanks so much!

There are a ton of holes in this guy's analysis (not to mention his recommendations), and I'm not impressed by his citing somebody from the "Government Accountability Institute" (NOT the GAO, but rather a Steve Bannon outfit funded by loony rightwing oligarch Robert Mercer) telling us "nothing to see here!" about LeJoy's overt conflicts of interest. I'll come back to this later, but so much of this take is either disingenuous or naive--and yeah, yeah, I know he declares that Trump is a "malicious, authoritarian jerk." That doesn't change the gist of the article, which goes way out of its way to justify a lot of malicious and destructive outcomes from what LeJoy is doing at DT's behest. Time is short for me right now, but just a couple of things that jump out: >>The U.S. Constitution creates the post office and requires Congress to fund it. False. Several people seem to be under the belief that the Constitution mandates the existence or funding of the United States Postal Service. The U.S. Constitution does mention the postal system in a sense, but doesn’t create the post office or require its funding. Article I, section 8, clause 7 of the Constitution gives Congress “the Power […] To establish Post Offices and Post Roads.” It requires nothing; it merely permits Congress to act, if Congress so chooses. The clause gives Congress the ability to create post offices and the implied authority to create and provide services through the United States Postal Service. And Congress has.<< OK, I haven't seen anybody citing the claim that he's "debunking" here, but it's sort of like saying, "Hey, there's no Constitutional requirement to fund the military. Yes, the govt is authorized to create and provide a military to defend the country, but there's no obligation to fund it." WTF?! Also, Congress is *trying* to help fund it right now, but Trump is refusing to sign any bill that provides any assistance. I haven't checked on what the Senate GOP is up to in this regard, but ultimately it doesn't matter if Trump vetoes any spending bill--unless there are 20 GOP Senators willing to buck Dear Leader. There's a better chance that the Red Sox win the World Series this year. >>People have claimed that Trump wants to slow down mail delivery through DeJoy in order to rig the election. Trump, being who he is, proved them right by admitting it in public. He stated that he didn’t want to give USPS money because it would enable them to deliver mail ballots more efficiently. Trump is a malicious, authoritarian jerk; I’m not denying that. But Trump says a lot of stupid things, like Mexico will pay for walls and COVID-19 will be over in a month. And he technically has no control over DeJoy; only the Board of Governors does.<< A Board of Governors now dominated by a majority of Trump appointees, NOT the 5-5 split it's supposed to be. (Would love to hear an accounting of why those vacancies currently exist.) Given the way DT fires inspector generals right and left and wants anybody who doesn't follow his every wish booted out of their job (do I need to cite the many, many examples of this?) and often succeeds in having those wishes fulfilled, all with nary a peep from Republican politicians, this is a null argument. It's all right out in the open--Trump has stated his goal and has his guy in place to carry it out, however it's rationalized. >>Let’s assume that USPS is an essential public service. (Geez, generous of you to assume that! Maybe you should have mentioned the many seniors who are dealing with ??delays in receiving their medications as a result of all of this suddenly-necessary disruption?) This is a relatively safe assumption since Americans think it’s the most important role in our current COVID-19 world. 91% of Democrats and 91% of Republicans favorably view the agency. And USPS is heavily relied upon by business, including Amazon, UPS, and Fed Ex, to carry their package the last mile to residences and rural businesses that aren’t served by other parcel carriers. Should Congress fund it? I think that’s a double edged sword. I think it’s smart to keep such a crucial, independent agency sufficient with its own funding. I would hate to see USPS slowed or shut down due to severe budget cuts or a government shutdown. On the other hand, one time emergency funding wouldn’t be a bad idea. Regardless, DeJoy doesn’t have control over that. His job is to balance the budget. Only Congress can decide whether and how to provide USPS any funding.<< Is it DeJoy's "job to balance the budget"? Where is that stated, exactly? That's a policy goal, not a legal mandate. And no, it doesn't matter what Congress decides if Trump refuses to sign legislation helping to fund USPS. See above. Oh, and I love his rebuttal to "the USPS is removing many mail-collection boxes and destroying machines that are used to sort ballots." He says, "True, but they've now stopped!" Yes, they stopped because there was such an uproar over it. Thank you, loony left and social media! I get that this guy is not an "Always-Trumper," but this still strikes me as a lot of weirdly strained rationalization. He also cites several DT administration or ideologically-aligned officials without offering any perspective from the carriers' union or on-the-ground USPS employees... and they have plenty of perspective that's being reported, nearly all of it not good. More to come tonight.

That was a lovely and moving documentary--watched it in a single sitting. Thanks so much for hipping me to it.

Looks as if it is—thanks so much, I’ll watch later today! Young uses that trip in part to set the stage for his book.

Highly recommended for anybody interested in late 1960s/early 70s UK psych-folk (Fairport Convention, Incredible String Band, Pentangle, etc), its roots, and its subsequent influence on later artists and bands such as Talk Talk:

Reading Rob Young’s remarkable book Electric Eden, a comprehensive overview of the late 1960s/early 70s UK psych-folk scene and its roots, has sent me back to this album:

Upping this today in honor of Evans’ birth anniversary, and as a prelude to the Miles Davis/Bill Evans show that I’ll be posting tomorrow: Very Early: Bill Evans 1956-1958

Apparently this performance actually comes from Moore's audition for the trio and was recorded at the Village Vanguard in January 1978--released in 2003 on the Milestone label as Getting Sentimental, a release for which Moore contributed commentary that alludes to his leaving the group five months later over the very issues that you cite, Larry. This comes from Charles Ralston's review on Amazon: "Aberration of Starlight" a review of the Bill Evans Trio recording _Getting Sentimental_ (Berkeley, CA: Milestone Records, 2003) (MCD-9336-2) recorded at the Village Vanguard, New York, NY, 15 January 1978 by Mike Harris. Bill Evans, piano; Michael Moore, double bass; `Philly' Joe Jones, drums. 14 tracks; TT 73:19; AAD / Stereo; "all selections previously unreleased" This surreptitious recording was made by Mike Harris, whose other `secret' recordings of the pianist in performance between 1966 and 1975 at New York's Village Vanguard were issued as _Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions_ (Milestone, 1996, 8 CDs boxed). It was another Sunday at the Village Vanguard and bassist Michael Moore was the last of several bassists who throughout the past week had auditioned for a position in the trio. George Mraz and Rufus Reid were two other bassists who had auditioned. It is not a good recording technically with noticeable drop outs, thud-like drums, crashing cymbals, and muffled bass. Also, the re-mastering seems to have overlooked the need for concert A-440 pitch - everything seems sharp. This CD would be of interest to anyone who wants to know what the Evans trio sounded like between `Eddie Gomez- Eliot Zigmund and Marc Johnson-Joe LaBarbara. Both Evans and Jones rush the tempos on `I Should Care' and `I'm Getting Sentimental over You'. Jones plays loudly throughout overwhelming Moore. With ballads like `Quiet Now' and `The Peacocks' the trio is more successful (Jones' brush work was always superb). On `Song from M*A*S*H (Suicide is Painless)' the drums are acoustically out of balance, probably due to the location of Harris's recording machine, but then again probably also because Philly Joe is not in full control of tempos or volume. Moore's playing is conservative with good intonation and thoughtful melodic lines, appropriate for an audition. His best performance is on `Gary's Theme'. We learn from Peter Pettinger's Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), a chronological review and analysis of the recordings of the pianist, that following the departures of Eddie Gomez and drummer Eliot Zigmund in the fall of 1977, Bill Evans was without a trio for the first time in over a decade. Despite having secured the bassist chair in the trio, Michael Moore himself reports in the program notes to this recording that after five months he resigned disenchanted with the pianist's shift toward what Moore saw as a fascination with fast tempos and lots of notes. In January 1978, these (then relatively recent) Evans `non-trio' LPs were available for fans to buy: * Intuition (Evans-Gomez duo) - recorded November 1974 * Tony Bennett-Bill Evans Album (duo) - June 1975 * Montreux III (Evans-Gomez duo) - July 1975 * Alone (Again) - solo - December 1975 * Quintessence (with K. Burrell, R. Brown, H. Land, `Philly' Joe) - May 1976 * Together (Again) - Evans and Bennett duo - September 1976 * Crosscurrents (with W. Marsh, L. Konitz, Gomez, Zigmund) - March 1977 Bill Evans was searching for something new - duo, solo, quintet - in spite of his always challenging trios. In the end, he returned to his tried and true trio format with bassist Marc Johnson and drummer Joe LaBarbara. It was this last Evans trio that will be compared most often to his first with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. _Getting Sentimental_, both technically and artistically, is an aberration of the starlight clarity and inventiveness of Evans' other recorded trio accomplishments.

So glad it's piqued your interest! There were several more groups that I thought about including and ultimately didn't or couldn't--Bob Crosby's Bobcats (wasn't able to track down any of their recordings when I was working on the show nine years ago), Cab Calloway's Cab Jivers (the late 1930s/early 40s edition with Chu Berry--didn't seem to have actually recorded), and the small groups of personnel primarily from Basie's band that recorded in the late 1930s and early 40s (really agonized over this one, but the informal nature of those groupings--as far as I could determine, not generally presented or recorded under the rubric of a Basie-connected moniker, or performing live as a breakout unit with the band--led me to omit them).

Man arrested for breaking 72-yr-old veteran’s jaw in mask dispute I don’t know what Washington’s public mask mandate is—but I do know that I read far, far more stories about anti-maskers getting violent than I do stories like the one about the woman throwing her coffee at the dude in a Trump hat. And that to me is just another symptom of how f’d up this country has become. Pretty much ready at this point for a Blue Zone America and a Red Zone America.

On to MJQ at Monterey, 1963:

Yeah, definitely—Russell was actually the guy who recommended Evans to Davis, and of course, Jazz Workshop, “All About Rosie,” New York, N.Y. etc. And modality was already underway before KOB and would have proceeded without it. But I’m having a hard time thinking of another pianist who could have brought what Evans brought to KOB in 1959. There must have been somebody—names eluding me at the moment, though. I mean, that’s why no Red, Wynton only for “Freddie Freeloader” (I always loved David Baker’s story of encountering Evans shortly after KOB’s release and praising BE’s piano playing, “especially on ‘Freddie Freeloader!’” Honest mistake on David’s part, but he said Evans took it in bemused stride). I mean yeah, you’re probably right—George R could have done it, though the end result is still going to have IMO a pretty different vibe than what we have with Evans in the piano chair. (And we wouldn’t have “Blue In Green” and quite possibly no “Flamenco Sketches” either, which Evans and Davis put together after Davis suggested the sextet do “Peace Piece” for the KOB sessions.) Plenty of people had that “Bill Evans sound” later on, but not in 1959. Btw iirc Miles had been interested in Russell’s thinking for quite awhile by KOB, hadn’t he? Didn’t he visit Russell while Russell was in the hospital years before KOB? I know Russell’s ideas had been of interest to other musicians since his time with Gillespie in the late 1940s. (EDIT: overlooked your comment about Birth of the Cool and GR/MD)

We re-aired The Big Bands’ Little Bands this past week on Night Lights, and it remains archived for online listening.

Been wanting to pick up the CDs of these for some time, but hard to find at a decent price. Revisiting this beauty right now:

Aw, damn. Horace Clarke, oddly enough, is one of the reasons I became a Yankees fan in the first place—his card was at the front of a deck of Topps cards that I bought in 1974. And yeah, definitely an emblematic player from that late 1960s/early 70s era of mediocrity.

Not saying that Bill Evans’ contributions to jazz were as significant as George Russell’s. I am saying that just as it’s hard to imagine Kind Of Blue without Russell’s harmonic thinking, it’s hard to imagine KOB without the influence of Evans. And that’s not to take away Miles’ accomplishment as a leader—no Miles Davis, *definitely* no Kind Of Blue. But even Miles himself said that “I built that album around the piano playing of Bill Evans.” And of course that’s one of the things that made Miles so great—using the right musicians to help create whatever sound he was after, or letting what they were doing help determine that direction in the first place. No Wayne or Herbie or Tony Williams, no ESP/Miles Smiles etc. This can turn into a diminishing-returns line of thinking that ultimately boils down to no things-exactly-the-way-they-happened = no things-exactly-the-way-they-happened. But I’d say Evans’ contributions to KOB, compositionally and otherwise, are pretty key to how that record turned out.

Big Ten votes to cancel fall football season ... following on the heels of the Mid-American Conference. I doubt they’ll be the last, either. Maybe spring football instead—around the time we hit the 300,000 deaths mark in this country. (Actually we’ll probably pass that number well before the spring.) As the Washington Nationals’ Sean Doolittle has so aptly put it, “Sports is the reward of a functioning society.” Ironic that the same bombastic blowhards who constantly wrap themselves in the flag (sometimes literally) and their ideology in general are doing so much to accelerate this country’s decline.

Not as close as your suggestion, but I've also thought about revisiting Tony Scott's Sung Heroes, which offers the only example I can think of off the top of my head of the Evans/LaFaro/Motian trio playing with or backing another musician. Wonder if Miles would have done "Nardis" with them? (He never actually recorded it himself, iirc) I tend to lean towards concurring with your statement re KOB. Russell is also the one who suggested that Miles hire Evans in 1958--not as significant as his thinking on harmony, but another bridge to KOB. I'm inclined to also say that No Bill Evans = no Kind Of Blue.

Working on a Night Lights show about Miles and Bill Evans, and came across a remark by Paul Motian that I somehow completely missed the first time I read both of the following texts? In John Szwed’s So What biography of Miles, he alludes to a comment that Paul Motian makes in the booklet to The Complete Bill Evans On Verve. Here’s the quote: Motian: Well, you know, we were supposed to make a record with Miles, the trio with Bill, myself, and Scott LaFaro. Bill Kirchner: Really? Motian: Yes, we were going to record. We were talking to Miles about it, it was all set up, and then Scott got killed and the whole thing got forgotten. ?! What label would it have been on? I would assume Columbia—that they wouldn’t have been willing to let Miles do a one-off for Riverside (Evans’ label at the time), and that they would have carried more weight as a bigger entity than Riverside. More importantly, what would it have sounded like? Motian doesn’t mention a specific timeframe, but the quote seems to imply that any discussion of such a date was going on not long before LaFaro’s death in a car accident in the summer of 1961. Intriguing to think about what would have resulted from what I presume would have been a quartet session. Wondering how LaFaro and Davis would have got on, musically speaking. (Did they ever record or perform together? Nothing’s coming to mind at first thought.)

Beginning to dip into a recent Jazz Oracle order from Tommy’s Jazz. Always a pleasure to get reacquainted with Jimmy Dorsey’s alto sax playing, and some Bunny Berigan to be heard here as well (probably also included on Mosaic’s Berigan set, which I’ve been meaning to revisit for some time):

As a kid in Indiana in the late 1970s, I got hipped to a lot of good music by Creem Magazine. My girlfriend and I watched this excellent documentary last night—highly recommended for anybody interested in the music and music journalism of that era:

Did any of the alternate takes show up on the non-Mosaic individual CDs that came out such as Cell Walk For Celeste, etc?

Just arrived, listening to disc 1. I have some of this material on individual CD reissues, but very happy to have the complete Mosaic treatment, with Buell Neidlinger’s commentary in the booklet... and this is some of my favorite Cecil, period:

An excellent British psych-folk collection: