fasstrack

Yes, that's why there is a gap in his recordings. He spent 5 years in prison. He talks about in the late 40s while in Dizzy's band snorting heroin with Coltrane. Coltrane over dosed and Jimmy revived him. But they both kept using heroin. One fact he did clear up was, Dizzy was clean. He didn't didn't use heroin and would fire anyone in the band if he found out. It must've been January of last year, since I myself bough it in March of '10.

I read it and pretty much dug it. It's an insider's contribution to the lore. Jimmy's a great guy, a real talent, a resource for NY musicians, and he was there and can tell the tales. As jazz autobiogs go, it's better than some, especially the first two thirds. It bogs down for me when his career as educator begins, but maybe I just like the 'sexy' stuff like every other guilty pleasure junkie. Also repeated itinerary summations may be valuable as historical footnotes, but after a couple get tedious to read. I'm glad Jimmy remembered them, just wished he'd put them in an appendix. As far as the storytelling, there are some raw moments when he recounts his career frustrations, but he doesn't blame anyone but himself and you cheer for him in the end when it all turns out alright. Some other stories, like the one about Pops, the hotel,and the racoon, are hilarious. The story of the way the Heath Brothers saga on Columbia went down is so typical, well-told, and a good read. As also are the reflections on sideman gigs with Dizzy, Miles, and the early one w/Nat Towles. His bad-guy stumbles are rendered without self-pity. I found the italicized commentary by fellow musicians and others a disruption. This is a conceit used in many books of this ilk and I find it annoying because it interrupts the narrative flow and when you finish reading it you have to regroup and look at the Roman type and wonder 'where the hell was I?' Let the cats give testimony, just put it in the back of the chapter with footnotes or asterisks---do us all a favor. Good book, good cat, good (great, actually) life. Read it.

After reading this I bet he couldn't keep up. Wow, did he embarrass himself. I jumped ship when his 'lesson' referred to Charlie Parker as a 'bebop innovator of the '30s'. 'Nuff said...

I would like to hear your expanded explanation of this - since they "are the facts". Maybe tomorrow. Me go beddy-bye now....

http://www.myspace.com/joelfass fixed. You da man...

Two Guitars, a Bass, and a Locke, A DVD of a 2002 Mercy College Black History Month event of a concert and Q&A will soon be permanently housed at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. A highlight of the recording (which was made by a student and is of less-than-optimum video and audio quality)is several short, plain-spoken, and sage speeches on jazz, jazz musicians, neighborhoods, music education, and more by the late Eddie Locke. (I, as bandleader, asked Eddie to address the students, who really needed to learn about their history and culture and would be getting it from someone a big part of both). The other players are James Chirillo, Joel Fass guitars; John Beal, bass. The concert itself was fun, nothing unusual for workaday jazzers, good feeling, short rehearsal. (I thought we spanked Topsy pretty hard). There is a Q&A of us all by event initiator Linda McKinzie-Daugherty Details and location, hours, etc. of the Museum (plus a complete audio version of Topsy---James Chirillo is first guitar soloist) can be found here: www.myspace.com/joelfass Go to events. I've been to the Museum and love it. Curator Loren Schoenberg is a real friend of and advocate for jazz. He also has known all of us for years and will be especially thrilled to have this oral history from his friend Eddie Locke. (don't know why the web page didn't hyperlink....copy&paste, I guess. Sorry)

'Goodnight, Chet'. 'Goodnight, David'. Time to play music. 'Music speaks louder than words' Charlie Parker

Another few additions to my opening remarks: Since I was talking about musician attitudes and their affect on the audience, why not dive a little and see what Mr. Freud and meshpucha (sp)might have thought. Attitude--personality type--neuroses--presence/lack of mommy's hugs=who is attracted to a given undertaking and why. NO BRAINER, and again I couldn't have been the first one to have commented on this.... So why did solos and the kind of person attracted to soloing get to be so much in the forefront (remember, old Lee's book was about soloing exclusively)? Some well-known history: solos occured before Louis, Bix, etc. were recorded playing them and probably by some great unfortunates who remain undocumented. Solo length on recording was short, owing to limited space on 78s, more importantly the communal,. collective nature of jazz performance, period (specifically improvised or even set counterpoint and ensemble playing generally being much more prominent in jazz groups. Also the importance of composer-arrangers from the '20s on who relied (and to beautiful effect IMO)much more on thorough-composition and small solo sections. Remember there weren't even documented tenor solos before Hawk in the late '20s. One earlier masterpiece of thorough-composition, Nat Leslie's Radio Rhythm, recorded by the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1933?)had, if memory serves, no solos at all, or maybe a few bars tops. Fast forward to the post-war era and the conflagration of several things: introduction of the LP and longer allowable recording times, including solos---and contemporaneously: Bebop and its virtuosity, the advent of a soloist-driven music though with great ensembles, the great intellectual leap forward it was, attracting thinkers, and all the followers it spawned, the social force it was as its progenitors were tired of being entertainers---all that and more... The end of the big band era by the later 40s-early 50s and the change from a dance music to a listening one with customers turning their attention to these great soloist now coming out in droves. A thing that hit me also yesterday was the killing of progressive thought and acts culminating in McCarthyism, the Rosenberg executions, etc. by the earliest '50s, the general repression and conservativism in the air forcing weirdo, thinking, creative types that were going to anyway to find venues for expression where they would at least be left alone. It (the new post-war jazz scene) was definitely one of the only shows in town for black musicians to protest or act anti-social even and be somewhat ignored by Whitey (I mean power structure Whitey) who wasn't all that tuned in to bebop, thereby looking the other way. And while he was looking the other way, to our eternal gratitude, acts of both protest and genius were taking place. Truth and passion will always out and besides it just feels so good to play... I'll leave it to you all to broach the effect on the audiece, good or bad. But to me, and I suspect many others, these are the facts.

GOD HELP US ALL, I HOPE NOT... I'm very sorry you read that into what I wrote. It is indeed a flawed premise and if you read again what I wrote it is not mine. FWIW, mjzee, everything else you said I couldn't agree with more, and well-put.

You sound like Lee now in the book. Are you sure you guys don't have the same writer? Seriously, that is his philosophy, and the book is a provocative read. Sure as hell got a rise out of me---and that beats the alternative. No, it ain't either, and I do believe you're yanking me. You...jokester, you.

Of course I do, just in a different language. I said don't think about the effects when playing, b/c it can distract. But, thinking about it, the energy coming back can also inspire. I don't know, like everybody else I myself am a work in progress. I try to focus on the music only in performance, and shut out 'white noise' like my own self-criticism or vibes I might think I'm getting from someone on the stand or in the audience that aren't the greatest. But in so doing I might miss something coming back that will make me feel good and play better. It's weird how the hypersensitivity that makes you a creative type can also do in said creativity if you let it. I don't know that you should shut out anything while you're playing, not if the goal is to play freely. The more you shut out, the more you risk playing by rote. And I don't know that audiences always enjoy that so much. Of course, you then run the risk of letting bad stuff interfere, but the trick there is to let it in w/o engaging it. Otherwise you're expending energy on blocking, and that too is a distraction. Can't really fault an audience for being distracted when the players are distracted too. You won't play by rote if you're listening. Dialog w/the band to feed off each other. If I play a solo gig I'm the band so I have to sort of trade with myself. That's easy to do on guitar if you're playing long enough. It's a small orchestra. If it gets lonely up there then I can get into patter, or a tap dance . I may engage them to let them know I'm listening to them, but it won't affect what I play. Maybe if they piss me off by being loud or stupid I'll play a B list tune just for spite. Nah, I won't either. Hey, how's that for self-involved commentary? And now for penance: OOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM.......

Gotta love it. So NY, and written in snappy prose, too. That last line's worth the price of the ticket (wait, there is no price for the ticket...) http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/05/nyregion/05loosie.html?_r=1&src=ISMR_HP_LO_MST_FB

Of course I do, just in a different language. I said don't think about the effects when playing, b/c it can distract. But, thinking about it, the energy coming back can also inspire. I don't know, like everybody else I myself am a work in progress. I try to focus on the music only in performance, and shut out 'white noise' like my own self-criticism or vibes I might think I'm getting from someone on the stand or in the audience that aren't the greatest. But in so doing I might miss something coming back that will make me feel good and play better. It's weird how the hypersensitivity that makes you a creative type can also do in said creativity if you let it.

Playing and talking are two different things. And they both have their effects on the listener. You shouldn't think about the effect when you play, it'll just drive you crazy, distract you and hurt the music, and the chips will fall where they may anyway. You should think about the effect of your words.

So what's the problem with Paul Bley's "fuck the audience" attitude, then? It's that if people get turned off by comments like that they in turn might just turn off the commenter and consequently the music. And we can't afford to lose any of the paltry 3% CD market share we have or any audience generally. And while I agree with the comment my scribe friend made that Bley made the statement b/c he works mostly in Europe where it's supposedly accepted that you on the bandstand are more important than anything or anybody else, I still dpn't excuse it. I don't live in Europe, though I have and did see a different kind of interaction. I'm worried about the damage done by remarks like that in kicking what's already down back here. Everyone involved that has any kind of fame should realize that their utterances are going to be magnified and it's probably a good idea to think more about the effect of one's remarks before opening that pie-hole.

Thanks, gents, for a thoughtful and cogent discussion, as I expected. I'm already chewing over what everyone has written and on a personal note special thanks to Hot Ptah for validating many things I feel and giving me hope. FWIW I heard back from the journalist I alluded to initially. He felt jazz's chances of regaining popularity were dim, owing not to musicians' attitudes or playing but (as Alec Wilder also strongly lamented)the fact that the onset of rock and roll's popularity brought with it a 'cult of amateurism' that lowered the standard of songwriting particularly to the point where no self-respecting jazz player or composer could find any use for the songs to improvise, recompose, etc. on---as Ellington, Monk, and others did with Porter, Gershwin, etc. My own feeling as player-composer and lately songwriter who cut his teeth on Woodstock (not the movie, I was there) is that there was and is indeed amateurism in much of pop writing and playing, but also a lot more good than he seemed willing to look for. I myself will be delighted to play Stevie Wonder's ballads or Donnie Hathaway's and other various tunes of my youth that helped formed my musical core, as did Charlie Christian and others---right along with jazz fare, American Song Book, or more challenging and unpopular fare as they may appeal to me. But one thing that is a definite turn-off since I've rubbed shoulders with the pop world more since undertaking songwriting is an appalling lack of bandstand standards. Competence is regularly thrown overboard in favor of an everyman party-animal everybody join in mentality that would never fly in the jazz world. If you can't play your ass gets kicked off the bandstand, end of story. Maybe this is all obvious, but I guess maybe 'populism' in jazz and pop are two different things. Pete Seeger is one of my heros for a variety of reasons and I admire that he wants to get people to sing together---but, hell, not on my gig. But, as I told this guy, nothing's all good or bad (also obvious) and even the golden era of the ASB had its share of crap moon-june songs (Smile, Darn Ya Smile, anyone?). Also give me Johnny Cash telling a story over some poor jazzer. It's how you do it as much as what you do. And in the end, as just about everyone here has noted, the music is all that matters. What it means to others is on the others, though what I said re attitudes stands. Musicians play, first and last.

I always found them posturing and pretentious, lyrically. (Now and Zen?) But well-crafted and intelligent for pop of that day. They were big jazz fans, that's for sure. Don't know if they influenced jazz, I don't know enough about them and which jazzer listened/copped. But for me, anyway, as a player and lover of good melodies from wherever give me Stevie Wonder or Donny Hathaway from that period. Just straight-up beautiful snd soulful w/o trying to be hip or show their smartness. And musically Steely Dan tried to be (and succeeded in being)more involved than appeals to my taste as improvisor. Not enough daylight between the changes to want to park anything. Just my opinion. Anyway, they are talented and creative.

Thought this would make a bigger bang. I guess it's more important to me, like a lot of things in life are important mostly to ourselves. Or maybe, as our friend Jim says, it's talked out. I'm cool with it in any case, so I'll thank the people who did respond for their thoughtfulness and accept the vox popular concensus. Maybe I should've been a politician. Oh, wait. I'm an honest man. Never mind. And the money I could be rollin' in, Velma I hate when that happens.... Movin' on...

We're on the same page there, buddy, and thanks for that. Melody is what I live for.

Wow, that is a great shot of one of my early heros and mentors. If there was less shadow we would see exactly how in love with playing Chuck was. But then the shadows add a bit of mystery....

Jazz Populism? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Posted first to Jazzcorner's Speakeasy) I sent this to a noted newspaperman I'm friendly with. It's the first time I've been moved to write anything here since reporting on John Hicks' funeral, the content of which also touched on music as a social force.To be brutally honest I really wanted Ethan Iverson to maybe put it on DTM, since I first heard about Lee's interview book there and I like it generally. Couldn't get a contact email for him to save my life. Maybe someone could forward it? I'm just putting this out and will step aside. I already gave my opinions and the issues raised are, I think, way bigger than me or any one person---which is the point. If anyone wants to contact me privately go ahead. I only hope this gets people to thinking. I hope this doesn't devolve into a discussion about Lee, his thoughts, or his playing, both of which I highly respect. I hope he sees this and accepts the spirit it was written in. Finally, reference to Paul Bley's comment is just that: a reference to his comment. In fairness the whole thing should be quoted and in context, but I don't have the book anymore. And I definitely hope Randy Weston gets to see this. He's a great man. I'll wager the following has been already been broached by thinking jazzers, scribes, and wags. I recently read a book of interviews about approaches to improvising with Lee Konitz, whose contributions as player and thinker have been---and should be---duly noted. I agreed with some of Lee's conclusions about playing and the varied approaches of its practitioners and disagreed with others, and fair enough. But the book's tone and tenor really rubbed me wrong because, acknowledging it was a book of reflections on improvising, it was to me inbred and even even elitist in that in some 300 plus pages the only time the listener is deigned to be mentioned is in a postscript interview with Paul Bley, who says 'fuck the listener'. Lee himself, for all his thoughtfulness and analytical postmortems about his own improvising and that of his peers and betters never included even one observation on the idea that improvising might be other than a private conversation between player and bandmates. The idea that energy bounces back and forth between player and listener and that the result can, for better or worse, effect a performance's outcome is never broached. The notion that all-important listening might extend to doing so beyond his own thoughts or those of the band seem unimportant in his thought-world. Way to go, gentlemen. IMO arrogant (In Bley's case) and self-absorbed postures like this kick the already slim chances of the music we love regaining any portion of its onetime popularity in the ass--and HARD. Thankfully by contrast I also recently attended a lecture by Randy Weston in conjunction with his own autobiography. Without delving into too much detail here about his book I'll just summarize that Randy's viewpoint on playing and its effects seems opposite to Lee's. He is inclusive and a communicator while not sacrificing quality or his own playing journey where Lee, at least in the book, seems solitary and perhaps tunnel-visioned. Randy's more selfless and IMO evolved view of the purpose of music and the path he's taken through life really were eye-opening and inspiring. Hearing and reading Randy, particularly after Konitz, straightened my spiritual spine and validated my own beliefs. Also in my own work I had a nice recent experience taking one of my songs to collaborate with R&B veteran Jimmy Norman to give something back to the Jazz Foundation, of whom we were both clients. A CD and a nice DVD about the project came about, which had other clients sing lead and in the gospel choir. As a guy who's composed music his whole life, have I written pieces musically deeper, less 'quotidian'? As the late Tommy Turrentine would say, 'indubitably', yet I'm prouder of this thing that brought folks together, as you can doubtless tell. I am a jazz musician, and damn proud to be. Ain't about to water down what I play or believe in or start singing We Are The friggin' World to get over anytime soon. I don't know that I want to cease improvising and composing jazz on the level I want for myself and whoever's listening to begin a career as inspirational songwriter. Me and jazz are kind of stuck with each other. So I appeal to you, musicians, fans, gentle readers: What are your thoughts? What, sans 'water', can folks like us do to make this music inclusive, reflective of life's larger picture, and---yes---beloved again?

Chris Anderson: The Inverted Image Also, Tony Zano was a very interesting and under-appreciated pianist, cerebral and with some great ideas. I can't think of any titles except for a very early release: Everything Swings.

I believe he also arranged Wes Montgomery's first date with strings on Riverside (reissued years ago as part of a two-fer called Pretty Blue. Unless it's a totally different Jimmy Jones.

I heard a J.J. Johnson big band CD the other day that had Never My Love, by the Association, on it. Presumably, arranged by J.J. Pretty nice.

Exactly. Especially the Conan part. Lame. I liked Leno's standup, though.