fasstrack

Apropos of your kids getting married...as nerve-wracking as the teen years can be, I don't know that there's anything more nerve-wracking than one of your kids coming home with somebody and having to pray to ANYBODY's god that this is not "the one"... My daughter actually asked me one time when she was, like, 12 or so, "Dad, is it ok to date for me somebody who's not the same religion as us?" (this coming after we'd not been to church for about 4-5 years...go figure...it must be Texas...) I don't know what that means, I really don't. Give me the guy's name. She gave me a name. Yeah, he's a good kid, good family, good character, nice guy, hell yeah it's ok. Good choice! "Well....uh....it's not him...." You see these gray hairs? Yeah.... Much as I like children I'm glad I don't have any. Hard enough just raising tunes....

I thought you meant yourself when I reread it. F*&k Jazz Corner. I like Lois, though. Too bad the posters are such morons. Not her fault and she's very nice.

Are you sure it wasn't Peter Falk he was talking about? Here it is: http://between-dreams.deviantart.com/journal/When-We-ll-Worship-Jesus-by-Amiri-Baraka-241368881 As a jewish atheist, I don't really understand why an adherent of one of the Abrahamic sects would kvetch about Jesus. I mean, can't you just replace Jesus with Mohammed in the poem? "we'll worship jesus when mao do," -- Is Baraka still a Maoist or pro-Mao? It was Carson. Sure of that. His point seemed to be that Davis was embarrassing black folks sucking up to Johnny on national TV. To be honest, although I know where he was coming from I thought that a pretty cheap shot b/c Davis took a lot of shit too, was a great entertainer, and a trail-blazer in a sense. Before he and Nat Cole you hardly ever saw blacks on TV---or in his case headlining at the Copa. To me a putdown like that would be like a bitter, pissed-off Italian called Sinatra a traitor for whatever wacky reason. It's petty, divisive, and doesn't advance black folks. It's just childish. I'm a jewish athiest, but I doubt my faith sometimes (; Christian friends pray for me a lot, and I even go to a Methodist church sometimes. I don't claim to have any answers. Got my hands full playing the guitar and learning tunes. I just have decided it doesn't take any effort to show a little class and not put down anyone else's beliefs. And if they come and tell you you're going to hell, etc., if you don't do like them just walk the f away. Let 'em stand there in self-righteousness. They'll find another pigeon any minute.

As long as they get to the point where they don't ever have to ask for money (and by god, I know that day will come...), I'm like, hey, go forth, don't get arrested, don't get trapped, and above all else, sleep where you live. And 'don't marry a shiksa---or you're excommunicated'. Sorry, couldn't resist. It's the other guy's fault for lobbing softballs. He's the instigator

Baraka has both a way with words, real and definite talent, and a way of (and obviously a love of) getting any kind of attention. Damn! Sounds like some musicians I know! I remember a poem back in I think the '70s, published in the VV. It was about Jesus or used the metaphor. One, well, less-than-flattering line about Sammy Davis Jr.: Jesus and his one-eyed self Tongue-kissing Johnny Carson From the backside How do you follow that? I guess with the WTC poem. If you want to make a splash---negative, positive, indifferent---get the hottest button around to push.

Not true---in the sense that it belongs to the world now. It's exciting that different and diverse places are using improvising and whatever forms native to their cultures to make their own music. They were inspired by us but now they are growing up. Some, probably many---since Americans are so godamn arrogant---preferred their own from the jump and never needed us. But musicians internationally don't want to play like 2nd-rate Americans anymore. I think the future of jazz or whatever it ends up being called is in good hands there, even though myself I'm happy to find little wrinkles in the SOS. For me the American Songbook ain't done yet and I'm still excited by it. I also think that, despite many people doing excellent work here, the US is not the center of jazz or 'creative music, anymore. As far as the US and this great gift to the world: maybe it's just time to let go? It's like being a parent and the kid grows up and into the world. Are you the kind of parent that says 'bon voyage and I'll always be here for you' or are you gonna be pissed because Baby grew up and left the nest? So the short answer: perhaps true once, in 1974 or whenever, not now IMO.

It only takes a small leap of faith to apply the analogy to Obama getting it from all sides*. Post-racial? Gimme a break. We've learned nothing, made no progress in the department of race relations. It's worse b/c people resent him all the more b/c he's both smarter than them and squeaky clean, so mud won't stick. As Bill Finegan told me we're 'a nation of barbarians'. *To clarify: not from 'owners', as such, but from everyone dying to see him fail, some of whom I believe are more racist than they'd admit---even to themselves.

Didn't mean that at all. I meant that having money, some real money, not just some spare change (in the pocket or in the bank), can go a long way towards erasing a generalized anger and the need to lash out in the hopes of hitting something. A lot of "your own kind" having the same thing can do the same thing, probably more so. Putting money back into your family, your community, etc. beats the hell out of feeling like you're basically there to be somebody else's cash-crop. Having your own economic "there" to which you can go (or at least feel like you have a chance of going) instead of somebody else's. OTOH, money can turn decent-enough people into vile, loathsome, dangerous creatures. And yeah, this holds true for everybody. Either way, it's a hell of an eraser, this money thing is. Too late, I learn this lesson for myself. Oh. OK. Thanks. What a missed opportunity for an argument, though.... 'Is this the department of arguments'. 'No, sir. Afraid it isn't'........etc. Monty Python sketch

BTW, Jim, in complete seriousness I'm so sick of that canard about money corrupting art (if that's what you meant). Bullshit. Artists deserve to live like human beings. The shit is hard work, the life harder. Bad art will corrupt art.

Is that true? I can't stand the stuff, but why would anybody buy anything bigger than a tall if that's the case? Screw that. Get me his # so they can bankroll my CD and put it on the shelf next to Paul McCartney's. For that privilege I'd gladly pay 55 cents...

Damn, and all these years I thought it was rubber. Uh oh..... Damn, and all these years I thought it was rubber. Uh oh..... We must be intellectual. Half of us don't believe in God... Me, I'm glad Cosby and Oprah are wealthy. They deserve to be. Now if only only I could be. Are you listening, God? Oh, oops. I forgot... Guess I'll have to go out and make it myself........ Men are such big babies. (It's always men doing the chest pounding). I remember Warne Marsh telling us at a jam session at Jared Bernstein and Rob Shneiderman's place how men 'always go out and start wars b/c they're so jealous of women being able to give life'. And beat their chests and claim to have invented stuff. Big babies........

Also, just to clarify, by no means am I being simplistic by inferring that Semitic and African influences are the summation of jazz. Just that this is hitting me for the reasons stated. We'd be naive to ignore these things. But the miracle---and the lesson---is that the music finds a way to sidestep all the shit and rise above. Art is a great teacher.

Explain....

Probably because he's the head of Starbucks! Overpriced coffee, but they do let you hang out. And refills are only 54 cents. Which is probably the main reason I always have to pee. Way to go, Howie!

I wouldn't want to derail your thread unduly, Joel, and obviously I wasn't there either so suffice it to say that what I remember from those various jazz mag reports on the Newport festival and the entire "Youth band" tour really was fairly shocking to read. Swedish sax man Bernt Rosengren wrote an article where he bitterly complained about the way the musicians were treated like kindergarten kids, how several musicians had plans of immediately returning home after ONE week of that U.S. stay (and only stayed on board after Willis Conover intervened) and how Gerry Mulligan was so smitten by the band that he not only wrote a chart for the band but also volunteered to come along to the Youth Band's projected appearance at the Brussels World Fair to appear with them there, only to be turned down because Marshall Brown "found him too poor a musician to be part of that project". Nuff said? Guess so. Other reports published at the time more or less went into the same direcion. No doubt he was a teacher in the right place and for the right purpose to further your musciianship at the time you were in his class, and by all means do hold him in high esteem for what you have learnt from him - but, please, don't do it for that 1958 Newport band project. Well, Marshall was a pain in the ass. Misogynistic, too, as I remember. One of his jokes was 'I've always been married. Just not to the same woman'. But I stand by what I said. It was great knowing him, nasty mouth and all. Hell, my mother could put him to shame!

Were you there at the same time as Howard Schultz? Based on your birth date you probably overlapped. And did you know Harold Bakst? I graduated in '72---and the first name sounds familiar. But we didn't hang out.

After reading of the cited poem on the thread on Baraka in jazz in print, after the passing of my longtime friend Wade, a black guy I, a middle-class jew,started trying to play jazz with in the early '70s today I came upon a book by one Jeffrey Melnick: A Right to Sing the Blues. Oddly enough Amiri Baraka found his way into the introduction when Melnick recounted a panel discussion at the Village Vanguard also including Archie Schepp and Larry Rivers that got, well, heated. It was hard to get through the book due to Melnick's heavy handed prose style, but he had a fascinating premise in exploring that nexus. (And, damn, how that Baraka gets around!) These dovetailing experiences are the reason for me to ponder this stuff---the exchange, the songs by Arlen, Gershwin, etc. songs played by jazz musicians, the influence of jazz on them to write the way they did, and so many more things. As a teen in Canarsie I rebelled against my middle-class Jewish family partly by hanging out with Black kids (capitalizing both in a rare deference to PC) and getting into their music. It changed my life, and one time I was even able to head off a potential incident at the high school by picking up the guitar (I was 17 and not very good, but something bigger than me was coursing through my fingers evidently) and playing with members of a black R&B band called Qualified Funk (later Exit 9). We cooled everything out. That was an eye-opening experience in the curative powers of music. In my years I've yet to have another as powerful--but, in the back of my mind I think, am always trying. But we live in the real world. I see from the Baraka thread that the raw nerves around in the 60s are very much alive, especially on the Jewish side. I haven't seen input from Blacks on that here. Anyway, my intent is not to instigate controversy, conflict, or anything, just---by recounting my experience---to spark discussion on the similarities of two peoples with remarkably similar histories, even similarities---which I can hardly be the first to point out---between klezmer and jazz and blues in the bending of notes, microtonal qualities, emotional plaintiveness---existing in a diaspora together. We overlap like crazy, do we not? In short, I can't imagine jazz without either black players or Gershwin's songs. Yet bickering and mistrust outside of the bandstand persists. Well, this is America. But, as a therapist once said' how did we get so fahblunged? And can that beautiful crossroads that made jazz and much else in American popular music unique be the foundation and lesson for people actually growing up and acknowledging each other's contributions and the realization that we are all human and the similarities are worth more than the differences?

No doubt Marshall Brown has rightfully earned credentials in various fields but please try not to mention his "fame" in connection with the "Newport Youth Band" (I assume you are referring to the INTERNATIONAL Newport Youth Band of 1958, not to the Farmingdale band) - that is, unless you want to incur the ire of many, many European jazz musicians and scribes who witnessed that band project in connection with the Newport festival (those who still are around anyway). I won't quote from reports about that Stateside trip of European jazz musicians (all of whom had been looking forward to that event though they by no means were still "young"sters anymore) published throughout Europe but by all accounts most of the musicans really were bitterly disappointed by the condescending treatment and straitjacketing they received during that trip, mainly due to Marshall Brown's attitude which might probably best be described as "patronizing". In short, an opportunity was missed and many feelings were hurt. I never knew if it was Marshall or Marshal, Steve. I guess the former. Never had to spell it. I'm not sure what happened on that trip, not being there. All I know is, yes Marshall was pushy and egotistical. But he also took me as a 'scholarship student', a fact he announced to visitors, and I gloated internally as he did. At the time I was playing guitar duets in guys' apartments. They were good players. A few, like the late like Tim Breen and Sam Brown, were among the best. But I had no ensemble skills or experience, and that's what I (we all) got at Marshall's Wednesday sessions. Guys like me and Wade played Marshall's book with regulars like Hod O Brien and Gene Allen. I remember Beaver Harris coming by to play. After a couple of horn players showed up Marshall would say 'we got enough' and we'd start. He taped everything, and that was the basis of his after-session critiques. He had phenomenal ears as a critic and everyone in that joint got the Marshall treatment, Hod and Gene included. So it was worth him rubbing you the wrong way once in a while with his brazenness. It was a great experience I was lucky to have, and definitely 'real-world'. I was ready to be a pro after that.

Thank you all. It was heavy indeed and I'll never lose the image of Wade's gaunt face (he had a great, smiling face, though emaciated with his body from illness) facing me at the bar as we shot the shit that last time last week. I didn't realize how much he meant to me---growing up as jazz players all this time---until he was gone. But I chilled at Smalls. Didn't play, just listened, and the power of music and communion washed over me and basically healed my pain. As we all know it can do that. And in a purely selfish way, losing someone so close in age just like that made me determined to get my own shit together and do what I want to and some good on this planet while I still have time. It'll run out for all of us when it will and only the ledger book of deeds will be left for perusal of those we leave behind.

I remember it well (like Chevalier...). 'Relevance' and 'self-determination' were the watchwords. The Jewish teachers didn't want to be pushed out and the black folks in the community were doing the pushing. It got pretty ugly. I remember having a leaflet someone gave me with prose of the first paragraph quoting neighborhood agitators: 'You are a faggot. A white (can't remember). You will be dead in 1 year'. A loose paraphrase but only of the letter, not the spirit. I remember even the students were using words like relevant re their education, and they were not wrong. (A black girl named Yvonne who I had a slight crush on used it, but pronounced it 'revelant'. Who cared? I still had the hots). The 60s were on big time! Wisely, and setting the course of my own future I got into music instead of radical politics. The black and white kids were drawn to each other and forming bands, mostly R&B and soul. I was in 2 briefly: Exit 9 and The Dynamic Souls---who soon became Brass Construction and had a few LPs out. I went to Tucson, Ariz. that summer ('72) instead of joining the band, though I made it. Exit 9 preferred my lifelong friend Dave Lavender to me. I believe they made at least one LP too. I'm tempted to tell the story of stopping a potential race riot at a dance in the Canarsie High School cafeteria by playing. Another time. Suffice it to say among us kids cooler heads definitely prevailed and we wanted to play music, smoke weed, and 'make love, not war'. Music was the way in.

From Ocean Hill-Brownsville? Or am I conflating that with another local then hot-button issue?

Thanks. Tom was a good player. Maybe he could've been great. Got into flying planes. He had some hits in the early '80s. I didn't really know him except for one time in that kid band. But Wade is a real loss. But I went out and listened to the singers at Smalls today, didn't play, just communed. Very therapeutic. Also made a rare foray into church, a Methodist church with a jazz saxophonist who is my friend as pastor. It helped, too.

So big of you to acknowledge that. I'm sure they'd both be pleased as punch to hear it OK, that's all I got on this waste of bandwidth. Good luck with that..... The series was worth it. Unlike this thread. No wonder jazz (the music, not the film) is in the shithouse. The series was worth it. Unlike this thread. No wonder jazz (the music, not the film) is in the shithouse.

That's the poem I mentioned that Julius Lester read on WBAI in '68. A hard rain soon fell, with the hardest pellets landing on Lester.....

The whole poem? Or just those words? Yes, but it works both ways. Anti-Semitic people sometimes try to take cover by claiming they are only anti-Zionist, and at the same time pro-Israeli people sometimes try to paint people who have legitimate disagreements with Israeli policy (or with Zionism in general) as anti-Semites. It may be a fine line between the two that gets abused on all sides all the time, but it does exist. Sure.