Pete C

Interesting. He's on my list of the all-time worst singers!

I was on JCS from '97-99. Ron & Lon were indeed voices of sanity. Too bad they split up (unless Ron posts here under a handle I'm unaware of). I never did rec.music.bluenote. It's apparently alive, though on life support: http://groups.google.com/groups/search?q=rec.music.bluenote&scoring=d

The Louvin Brothers Patty Loveless Lyle Lovett

We're all right: Campbell read the poem on Lester's program... http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/2/27/wbais-problems-pwbai-fm-new-york-citys/

I didn't know Shirley Horn before 1991, when I saw her at this star-studded event: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/27/arts/jazz-festival-some-friends-pay-tribute-to-sarah-vaughan.html She was the highlight, and blew me away. I saw her many times after that.

John Legend I Am Legend The Last Man on Earth

Sorry, I thought I remembered your extremist anti-choice stance of some years ago as coming from an R.C. perspective (the same era as your support for the Iraq war).

Lulu Alban Berg Alben Barkley

FWIW, just a general statement (I haven't read the book), but "well written" and "mediocre writer" are not mutually exclusive concepts. Are the "literary classes" a monolithic cabal?

Ronnie Ball Thelonious Sphere Monk Tony Shaloub

Mr. Sloane Joe Orton Gary Oldman

All right, I'll grant you a multitasking exception.

We shouldn't, but in this thread he deserves our undivided attention.

When one is finished with examples of Baraka's antisemitism, one can move on to his sexism...

A few years ago at the Chicago Jazz Festival Baraka and his wife went to sit in the VIP section. A security guard, a young African American woman, went to check their credentials, which they didn't have, and told them they couldn't sit there. Howard Mandel, who was nearby, went over to her and lectured her about who Baraka was, how important he was to her people, and that she should know her history and show him respect. She wasn't impressed, and got her supervisor. Ultimately they were allowed to stay in the VIP section. Still, I found it amusing watching this white guy lecturing this black woman on what history she should know, not to mention the assumption that by dint of who he was he was automatically entitled to preferred seating (though I'm sure he would have gotten the credentials if he had asked).

Nonetheless, I wouldn't call Elis Regina a jazz singer. Leny Andrade, yes.

Unfortunately. Is that a Baraka poem or is it the poem by a young African American girl that the Julius Lester uproar was about?

I was making a compressed statement about the assumptions and agendas underlying all aesthetics. Were you familiar with Baraka's work in your earlier right-wing Roman Catholic extremist incarnation, and if so, how did you view it then?

That's good, because if you felt otherwise it might jeopardize your standing in the post-colonialist academic left.

If it's the same Joe Christmas as on Jazz Corner (Al), I recently asked after him of someone who keeps in touch and he's doing quite well from what I hear.

I wondered whether the Duberman reference quoted above was some homophobic thing, but apparently Duberman called him out in the sixties for being a boring lunatic.

Perhaps there would have been no controversy if Baraka had been named the Ranter Laureate of New Jersey...

I suppose Howl is a rant too, but it can be judged as poetry.

Do you consider it a good poem?

Irving Caesar Saladin Leroy Vinnegar