John Litweiler

One of my few encounters with Roger Ebert was the day ca. 1990 or so we both reviewed the Thelonious Monk movie. His review, then, included several things that weren't true and weren't in the movie at all. I mentioned this to a regular Trib movie reviewer (not Siskel) who sd, "That's how he's so prolific." A valuable and very decent guy, though. For one thing he articulated his politics very well. He also quietly did a lot of good around here, good things that probably won't go into his biography. Incidentally he was famous in Chicago for being in theaters and screaming at the movies, for ex., "Don't open that door, lady, the ax murderer is there!"

Too bad the govt. forced HD-TV on us. I can't get the local CBS and 1 of the 2 White Sox stations any more, plus now that today is windy I can't get ABC any more. On a real windy day I can't get any TV stations here.

Don Cherry and Ornette Coleman

Kevin Whitehead emphasized to me that Misha and Alzheimer's is only a rumor and that Misha, after all, is frail and getting up in years. He was not with ICP the last time they came to Chicago, either, and the group still sounded wonderful. The name ICP, on the others hand, sound like something you'd find in Arctic outhouses.

And the year after he went 5-19, he won 20 for the only time in his career - 5 for the Browns and 15 for the White Sox. Next year he won 19 for the White Sox.

As a hack who did not have to pay to have a copyright renewed this year, I like the current copyright law. Surely the heirs of Philip Dick, Ian Fleming, Billie Holiday, etc. feel as I do.

The Jazz Foundation has been helping Kalaparusha in recent years. Are they helping to pay for his surgery and recovery now?

Not a meeting, but: When I was a college sophomore in 1958, some older students went to the city (Chicago) to hear Miles (w/Coltrane, Buddy Montgomery, vibes) at the Sutherland. One of them was extremely offended by what he heard that night. Because during a piano solo Miles said to Wynton Kelly, about a lady listener, "How'd you like to have those legs around your neck?"

Recently I read 2 "literary detective stories" (a hateful term) by Michael Collins that really capture the bleakness of modern, small midwestern cities after all the industry moved out. "Lost Souls" and "The Keepers of Truth" are the titles and dammit, these people are people I used to know or else the sons and daughters of the working people I grew up with. Along with the sense of emptiness I get now in Indiana. Never mind the plots, which are sort of pulpish. The sense of people and place are what make these interesting. Collins is not an American, he's an Irishman who went to school at Notre Dame. "The Keepers of Truth" seems to take place in a city much like Elkhart, my mother's city, but Elkhart long after Conn and Selmer and Buescher and the rest of the musical instrument industry, and other industry, vanished. The protagonist works for a newspaper, the "Truth," which seems like the trash that the Elkhart Truth (once a decent daily) has turned into in this post-Gannett-etc. era. Collins apparently wins lit'ry prizes in the UK but I wonder if anyone outside the midwestern US reads him.

The desperate intensity of his singing - it's as if his very life is hanging on every phrase - is amplified by the heavy guitar reverb and the brutal simplicity of his guitar phrasing and sax-harmony accompaniment. Slow James songs and some minor-key Otis Rush Cobras are the most noir Chicago blues.

Hoyt Wilhelm

Does the oldie "I Want to Live" count as a crime film? Gerry Mulligan music there IIRC.

Aha! Thanks, Goldberg. For about 55 years I knew the popular song "Windy" by Paul Gayten (of New Orleans) was based on a South African song. Now because of you and Youtube I hear that Gayten's recording was a direct imitation of "Tom Hark." (I may have written this sometime before.) As a boy I loved rock-and-roll music, the real stuff, as on for ex. Atlantic records. When I read hype about this new white performer Elvis Presley, and then finally heard his first record, I was convinced that he would be the death of rock-and-roll. I was right.

Congratulations, Pete. Break a leg on Sunday.

Jim, great thanks. I've sure discovered and enjoyed a lot of music, and some history and politics too, on Organissimo forums.

In LA there was Lloyd Reese (Dexter, Mingus, Dolphy all studied with him), but I believe he gave private lessons and was not affiliated with any particular school. Maybe (Thomas) Jefferson HS in South-Central? Don Cherry attended Jefferson - who and how many others? DuSable HS in Chicago is now a 300-student school, one of 2 or 3 or more stuffed into the campus of the original DuSable HS. The way Chicago public schools have been reorganized is amazing, not in a good way. The tenor player David Boykin was teaching music at DuSable a few years ago, I think another jazz musician teaches music here now.

If intense, complex creativity reveals the joy of music, then the young (Chicago) Louis Armstrong and pre-1940 Lester Young are among the most joyous in the jazz tradition.

The old Lonnie Johnson-Eddie Lang duets are wows. There are several terrific Roscoe Mitchell a cappella works, for ex. most of the "Nonaah" collection on Nessa and his several solo sax albums beginning with the AECO reissue. Of the hundreds of goodies on overseas labels, two favorites are Paul Rutherford's "Tromboleneum" and "The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie," quite different from each other. Check out the ROVA sax quartet, Lester Bowie's solo pieces on ECM, Leo Smith's "The Burning of Stones," Hemphill, Lacy, (list goes on and on and on...)

I'm sorry to see this, Guy. He was a marvelous photographer.

There's so much good music, Face, and some of the best is on Little Walter's recordings of the early-to-mid-1950s. He could manipulate the harmonica and hand-held microphone together to make thoroughly original sounds, and creative music with those sounds. "Blue Lights" is an especially wild example of electric harmonica and other period pieces like "Juke," "Blues w/a Feeling," etc. sound like nobody else (apart from a few fleeting Little Walter-influenced guys). Nicely structured harmoica solos, too, partly vbecause of drummer Fred Below's interplay. Dave Waldman, the blues d.j. at WHPK, points out that a lot of Walter's phrasing and repertoire originated in big-band swing recordings of the 1930s and early '40s. Beware later Little Walter recordings, though. Dave said that one day (late '50s? definitely 1960s.) engineers began telling Walter to stand back from the mike. From then on his harmonica sound was like other guys' harmonica sound.

if he was that good, i'm sorry you et him

Congratulations, Chris.

By all means check out Paul Oliver's books including "Savannah Syncopaters," in which he speculates on the possible African sources of blues. About half of "The New Grove Gospel, Blues And Jazz" is an excellent Max Harrison survey of 20th-century jazz; the rest is Oliver's survey of 2 other main African-American musical traditions. Both these books are probably hard to find by now. Robert Palmer's research in "Deep Blues" is admirable but his Mississippi-delta-centric book has axes to grind and he gets carried away too far by his enthusiasm. Gayle Wardlaw, often with Stephen Calt as co-author, has done fascinating research in books and articles. Gayle Wardlaw

Jeff, thanks for posting and Jim, thanks for analyzing the sound (I'm not a sax player but what you write makes sense to me). Paul Gayten was a brother-in-law of my Chicago neighbor Little Brother Montgomery.

3rd movement of Schubert's 9th symphony, esp. the slowed dance in 4 in teh middle