Eloe Omoe

No, not yet! Lately a run of Jim Thompson novels (Killer Inside Me, The Getaway,, &c). So you should try Sallis' Difficult Lives, which is a wonderful essay on Thompson, David Goodis and Chester Himes. Great stuff. Luca

The guitarist and piano player from Leucasia (Stefano Micarelli and Marco Omicini) have a long standing partnership with Garzone since 1990. They've recorded together quite a bit under the name of B.S.A.A., whose two CDs have been released in Italy by Via Veneto. The group here is an octet, with George Garzone, tenor; Sandro Satta, alto; Claudio Corvini, trumpet; Francesco Lo Cascio, vibes; Stefano Micarelli, guitar; Marco Omicini, piano; Steve Cantarano, bass; Maurizio Rizzuto or Bob Gullotti, drums. Quite different records from Leucasia, of course, more on the Mingus side of things. Luca

Have you ever read James Sallis, Nate? Luca

Foots Thomas must've been a peculiar character indeed. I'd love to see those Correspondence Courses on Improvisation... Luca

Late 2005, I think. Luca

I think that they've been knowing each other for a long time. Leonard is not a young guy anymore (he's 81) and he grew up in Oklakoma in the '30s. Anyway, since Leonard will come over to Italy next December, I'm going to ask him in person... There's another novel of his (The Switch) where a couple of crooks' favorite music is a tape of Groove Holmes... Luca

Riccardo Del Fra - who was born in Rome but has been living in Paris for more than twenty years now - was one of Chet Baker's bassists of choice in Europe (they played together for a long time, and he can tell some of the most incredible stories about Chet's last years). Luca

Here's part of a review that appeared on the Toronto Star: "Something odd and distracting occurs half way through The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard’s new novel: a living person, as opposed to a fictional character, turns up as a figure in the story. The person is Jay McShann, the Kansas City jazz and blues pianist who still performs today at age 89 (in fact, he appeared at the Montreal Bistro in Toronto just last month). The Hot Kid takes place in Oklahoma, with side trips to McShann’s home territory in Kansas City and other nearby spots of lively interest, during the decades between the two world wars. Most of the action, of which there is plenty, centres on Carl Webster, a U.S. marshal who kills a lot of people but is fair-minded about it. When he arrests bank robbers and other villains, he leaves his gun in its holster, warning the bad guys, “If I have to pull my weapon, I’ll shoot to kill.” Carl’s major rivalry in the book, the enmity that drives the plot until the very last page, is with Jack Belmont, a truly nasty piece of work. Like Carl, Jack is the son of a rich Oklahoma oilman. Unlike Carl, Jack is spoiled rotten and a psychopath who enjoys killing for its own sake. Even his girlfriend says of Jack, “there’s something wrong with his head.” It’s partly to track down Jack that Carl travels to Kansas City. The other reason for the journey is to look for Louly Brown, the pretty little thing Carl is sweet on. His first night in town, Carl falls into a conversation in a club with a black guy who introduces himself as Jay McShann the piano man. In four pages of dialogue, McShann tells Carl his life story. How he grew up in Muskogee, Okla., taught himself music and jobbed with bands around the southwest; how he now works with his own trio in K.C., the great jazz town. Then McShann tells Carl about the drinking club where Louly Brown is employed to wait on the gentlemen while wearing only a skimpy teddy. When McShann exits the scene and the book, he leaves behind puzzlement. Readers ask themselves, what is a real person doing in this novel? The first question is soon followed by a second: If one character is real, is that the case with others in the book? Or, putting the second question another way, which people are real and which are made up?"

Me too, I've also reviewed it for Musica Jazz, when it came out...

No, under Milt's.

Don't know if you have ever read Elmore Leonard's novels, Dan. He's a great writer, in my opinion (but I'm a little biased, since I am his Italian translator...). Anyway, his latest, The Hot Kid, is set in KC and Tulsa in the Thirties, and is full of music, particularly jazz. Among the characters, there's also a long cameo by Jay McShann (one of the few examples, as far as I know, of a living jazz musician in a fictional literary work). Luca

I think it's the only one. Waterbirds came out for Nocturne. Luca

It would be nice if AAJ'd endorse Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing... "These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over. 1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2. Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday,” but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.” 3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary. 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . . . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.” 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful. 6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points. 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.” 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight. 9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things. Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill. And finally: 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.) If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character—the one whose view best brings the scene to life—I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight. What Steinbeck did in “Sweet Thursday” was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.” “Sweet Thursday” came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue. Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word."

They are very nice recordings indeed. I have the old Prestige LP you show in the photo and I have been enjoying it for a long while. BTW, it looks like Foots Thomas was one of the saxophone teachers of Jackie McLean (according to Eugene Chadbourne in the All Music Guide). Luca

Seeing the Mitchell-Beck duo CD has made me think of their Gryphon double album, Empathy, which I have always been very fond of. I wonder if it has ever made it on CD, maybe on Jazz Heritage or DCC? Luca

Miguel "Anga" Diaz was one of the hottest Cuban congueros on the scene. I say "was" because he died just a couple of months ago. He was only 45. His World Circuit CD, "Echu Mingua", which the Love Supreme cover is taken from, is very, very good. Luca

In the Seventies, Mitchell started a long collaboration with Italian pianist Guido Manusardi (they were both living in Sweden then). They recorded many times for Amigo and Carosello (as a quartet with Lennart Aberg and Petur Ostlund) and as a duo for Produttori Associati/PaUsa, Soul Note and a couple of other labels. Some months ago, Splasc(h) records put out an excellent Mitchell-Manusardi 1974 live recording at a Stockholm jazz club. Luca

I have both. Mindscape is nice, but nothing more. Waterbirds is far more interesting. Luca

Minichillo has recorded as leader in 1999 for the Italian label Red ("Baires Blue", an excellent CD with Argentinian guitarist Pablo Bobrowicky and a couple of different bass players). Still available, and recommended. He also appears in Bobrowicky's "South of the World" (Red, 1996), with Luis Agudo, Bobby Watson, Sam Newsome and others. Luca

In your own words, "get this box set, you won't regret it!"

It was recorded in Milan (not Rome). Piazzolla and Mulligan were accompanied by: Angel 'Pocho" Gatti - keyboards (who's Argentinian, BTW) Bruno De Filippi and Filippo Daccò - electric guitar Pino Prestipino - electric bass Tullio De Piscopo - drums plus a string trio and a string orchestra luca

Ah, yes. #9 is Gerry Mulligan's Walk on the Water, from the DRG big band album. But who's on soprano? Maybe Gerry himself?

Very soon I've recently moved, and my life is in a bit of a mess... luca

#1 - Far too easy! Both the vibraphone and the bass player are impossible to miss. It's track 17 from this CD: link #2 - Tapscott, I guess, with Arthur Blythe and Teddy Edwards. Nice performance of a well-known tune from Sonny's Dream. #3 - If it's Abdullah Ibrahim playing, the tenor could be - who knows - Ricky Ford, or Charles Davis. Don't know why, but the transition during the tenor solo made me think of a Don Grolnick/Steps thing #4 - Maybe Tapscott again, with the same band. Not bad, not at all. #5 - A very good track. I keep thinking of Sam Rivers on flute, with Doug Matthews and Anthony Cole, but who knows? #6 - Tenor sax sounds suspiciously like Joe Henderson (or Mike Brecker in a Joe Hen incarnation); the bass player sounds like Eddie Gomez. So the piano player could be Chick Corea. Not a particularly great performance, I've heard better things. Wild guess: Bheki Mseleku on piano. #7 - It's Saving All My Love for You, of course, and I think it comes from the Iain Ballamy/Stian Carstensen duo CD. #8 - Hmmm... Don't think it's Cecil Taylor. Drummer could be Tony Oxley, of course (even if in places he sounds like Daniel Humair, a fact that made me think of the Kuhn- Jenny Clark-Humair trio); if it's Oxley, the piano player could be Paul Bley. Anyway, I liked it very much. #9 - I have the original version of this tune, but I cannot remember what it is In any case, it's a lovely performance. #10 - Really no idea. I'm gonna think about it some more. Good performance, anyway. Many thanks, Tom, for this music

Ornette will be performing Skies of America tomorrow evening in Bologna, Italy, with his quartet (Al McDowell, Tony Falanga and Denardo) and the local Symphony Orchestra. In 1990, there have been two Italian performances of Skies of America, one with the Quartet (Ornette, Cherry, Haden, Higgins) and one with Prime Time. The Orchestra conductor was John Giordano. luca