Cornelius

"I suspect by now that you may just be dicking around with me here [...]" Oh please, it wouldn't even occur to me to waste my own time "dicking someone around," whatever that might entail. The purpose of my posts is to express my thoughts and to be elucidated by the responses. [i just saw your last post, but I'll leave this in anyway.] "In a typical Mobley solo there is no drama external to the developing line..." If you mean drama in the structure of the solo, then I don't agree. Though, extraordinarily great structure is not what I usually seek from Mobley anyway. "[...] his music seems to mull over multiple possibilities in the moment far more than, say, Rollins or Dexter Gordon do [...]" I don't think of it in those terms, but I would agree that Mobley usually doesn't have the kind of resoluteness that Gordon has. "Mobley builds into his lines a sense of how open, or ambiguous, an act it might be to choose one possible path over another." That doesn't capture my own sense of Mobley, but, again, I do hear a kind of tentativeness, maybe a shyness, sometimes. On the other hand, Mobley used a hell of a lot of pat material in his solos, and fairly long stretches of it sometimes. I guess you can hear this as an achievement of making himself sound shy even when he knew pretty much right where he was going. It's a tough and interesting question. However, that manner of his doesn't strike me as expressing adventurousness, though I do find adventurousness in other aspects of his playing. "[...] my writing leaves you cold [...]" I wrote that passages such as I quoted leave me cold. I didn't make a flat judgment of your writing. "[...] you don't think that the Donald Byrd of, say, "Off To the Races" was brassier than the Byrd of "Senor Blues" or "Nica's Dream"?" As I mentioned, I grant that one can hear Byrd going in and out of brassy. However, your overview suggested increased brassiness during the period his lines got leaner and blusier. That's not so much 'Off To The Races', which is some of his fastest (hence, many notes) playing, but rather starts decidedly with 'Fuego'. On that album he plays pocket trumpet, so that complicates things, but on succeeding albums there's a lot of playing that turns from brassy towards softer edges, rounder and mellower sound.

Thanks, Larry. I better see your point now about "stylistic upheavals." I had read it in a different sense. Duke Jordan was a '40s bop player, but he was also a '50s hard bop player (the difference sometimes not being great), so I'm skeptical about the trope you used only because it doesn't ring well in my ear to say that "X is the Y of Z", when Y is his own "of Z." Maybe Roll Call also was before Davis (I don't know.) Allen, "I'm not sure what the problem is [...]" I went in to some detail about the problems I find, even posing non-rhetorical questions about them. "I, for one, had no trouble discerning Larry's point -" I must take your word for it that you didn't. However, I can usually get the gist of most writing, while passages such as the ones I quoted strike me as unnecessarily opaque. Moreover, they didn't ring a bell sympathetic with my own sense of Mobley's music, upon pretty extensive listening to him for many years. "10 paragraphs of so-called "technical" analysis could have" Why would it be [only] so-called and "technical" (in quotes) if it were indeed technical? Anyway, I don't think that all jazz writing has to be strictly technical, but a lot of jazz writing could use some technical stuff woven into the kind of impressionist accounts we usually get. If the writer mentions technical considerations, then I think some followthrough is helpful, otherwise it often reads to me as arm waving.

Larry, Regarding the Hank Mobley chapter: * You wrote that Mobley was "relatively untouched by the stylistic upheavals that mark the work of major contemporaries, Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane." But Mobley's work in the sixties was very much influenced by ("addresses," one might say) developments in Coltrane's music, especially modal improvising and Coltrane's hard tone. Modal improvising might not be a stylistic element, but if it's not, then what are the stylistic developments that don't reach Mobley? And the advent of Coltrane's tone is probably not an upheaval, yet your comment seems misleading even if not literally untrue. * Sonny Clark is suggested as the hard bop equivalent of Duke Jordan. But wouldn't Duke Jordan be the hard bop equivalent of Duke Jordan? * You wrote that Mobley recorded Soul Station while with Miles Davis. My recollection might be incorrect, but I somewhat recall seeing a Miles Davis chronology that lists Mobley joining Davis after the recording of Soul Station. * Mobley's career as a recording artist is divided by you into "three rather distinct phases": '55 - '58, '60 - '61, and '63 - '70. This omits 1) Recordings as a sideman beginning in '53 (and even earlier if some discographers' listings of Mobley as having recorded with Paul Gayten are accurate), 2) 1959, 3) the 1972 date with Walton, 4) The 1980 date with Montoliu. I offer these periods: '53 (or earlier) - September '54. Formative. Nov '54 - '58. Classic. '59 - '61. Resurgence. '63 - '65. Extensions. '66 - '72. Late. '73 - '86. No commercial recordings except '80 date with Montoliu. For me, the three periods spanning Nov '54 - '65 are prime Mobley. * You wrote that Mobley offers a "melancholically quizzical musical universe." You mean that Mobley suggests curiosity that is imbued with sadness? I've not noticed people having that kind of curiosity, so I'm not able to imagine it in Mobley's music. Or do mean that Mobley's music is odd and imbued with sadness? I feel sadness, wistfulness and bittersweet in some of his ballads, but don't think of his music in general that way. * If you think this quote is too long for fair use, I'll delete it: "As James [another writer] suggests, [Mobley's] best work of the period is so spontaneously ordered and so bristling with oblique rhythmic and harmonic details that its sheer adventuresomeness seems inseparable from the listener's - and perhaps the soloist's - burgeoning sense of doubt. That is, to make sense of Mobley's lines one must experience every note - for there are many points of development, each of which can inspire in Mobley an immediate response, that the ambiguities of choice become an integral part of the musical/emotional discourse. And that leads to the genius of stage two for as Mobley gained rhythmic and timbral control, his music became at once more forceful and uncannily transparent - as though each move he made had its counterpart in a wider world that might not exist if Mobley weren't compelled to explore it." Say what? What is the "as if" counterpart of each move? How can the existence of a world be contingent on one's compulsion to explore it? Do you mean that by exploring, Mobley created? Okay, but how is that a metaphor for greater transparency? Why must one experience every one of Mobley's notes to understand his music any more than you'd expect to have to listen to every note of any jazz musician? Because the listener has a sense of doubt? A sense of doubt about what? About the adventuresomeness of the music? Do you mean that the music is so adventurous that there's doubt whether the musician's choices of notes will turn out to be good ones or what adventurous gambit they'll embody? But what is meant by "ambiguities of choice"? Is there an ambiguousness after the choices have been made? I'm not necessarily averse to open-ended, free-associative writing about jazz, nor even to bringing ontology into an appreciation of a soloist, nor do I expect unreasonable literalness, but writing such as quoted above just leaves me cold: I don't know what it means, what I'm supposed to take from it, and, without cogent (or even any) discussion of specifics regarding the rhythms, harmonies, and musical choices mentioned, I don't know whether it's even worth my effort trying to figure it out. Regarding the chapter that includes Donald Byrd: You wrote, "The first Donald Byrd was a clear-toned trumpeter with a gift for light and graceful playing over the chords [...] in succeeding years Byrd used fewer notes, a brassier tone, and attempted to assimilate more blues feeling, but these were changes of costume rather than changes of heart." He didn't just try to bring more blues sound into his playing, he did bring more of it into his playing. And you might find certain passages in his later playing as brassy, but, overall, I think his playing became less brassy in the early sixties (which, I surmise, is the period you have in mind, since this is when he began to simplify, slow down, and express more blues feeling). You wrote that Byrd was unable to find a musical voice. I think he had a clear and beautiful musical voice. I don't find his stylistic development in the early sixties to be at all phony. I don't like the particular album (Slow Drag, recorded in '67) that gave rise to your review of his career, but he made a bunch of fine albums in the early '60s, as well as magnificent work in the '50s. I think you've underestimated a beautiful musician.

My copy: Atlantic SD 1412, stereo, copyright 1963. "Loads Of Love", no "My Kind Of Love". I rank this as one of the great albums of jazz. Indeed, the interaction is at an extraordinarily high a level of beauty and artistry. Years ago I had this album (to the exclusion of all others) playing continually for several months. When I A/B'd a few years ago, it seemed to me that some of the distortion from the original recording (especially Hall's solo on "My Little Suede Shoes") is even more prominent on the Collectables CD release than on the LP.

"[...] Verve was doing string records for just about all of its star horn players of the time: Bird, Clifford, Webster, Eldridge, Hawk, Flip Phillips, etc.." [John L] Clifford Brown? When did Granz record Clifford Brown?

Is there anyone around here who knows Glenn Barros from Fantasy well enough to find out whether he meant on-demand download or on-demand disc?

Yes, there are some real good tracks. The musicians play with wonderful fluency in the idiom - with beautiful feeling and some originality. One of the very best hard bop albums I've heard in the last few years.

I'd love to see a list of all material owned by Fantasy not in the current catalog. I wonder how big a list it is. Also, it would be interesting to find out whether it has been Fantasy's objective eventually to issue everything (or virutally everything) it owns. I don't know why one would assume that that is not the goal.

At the IAJE conference last week, Bob Blumenthal briefly interviewed Glenn Barros, president of Concord Records. Barros said that (as I am paraphrasing as best I can recall) there won't be any deletions from the Fantasy catalog but some titles might not be available in the usual form; Instead, these titles might be available "on demand" from Amazon. He didn't specify whether 'on-demand' means on-demand download or on-demand disc. Later I spoke with someone from Fantasy. He hadn't heard of the on-demand plan, but he said that as far as he knows the plan is to continue the availability of all CDs, for the Fantasy catalog to be administered still in Berkeley by the same staff, and for the product to be warehoused where it is now. He said that he could not conceive of Fantasy damaging the catalog by deleting from it. And he said that even more warehouse space was recently acquired for both the existing Fantasy catalog and more product being developed.

Two thousand if you count both songs.

Red Rodney?

Teenie Harris was a great photographer. Some of his best is right up there with Weegee. It's good that there's a web site for him, but the small digital renderings there don't even hint at how beautiful his pictures are. I highly recommend the published book of his photos for anyone interested in this kind of photography.

I don't find the engineer's name in the booklet for the LP set. One drawback of the CD set is that it doesn't include this booklet with Leonard Feather's essay. There's not a lot of musical analysis in the essay, but there are some nice personal details. For example, I was disappointed to read that though Basie loves to play the horses, he's not a smart player. He doesn't know how to handicap a race but instead bets hunches and from the names of the horses. That conflicts with my notion of Basie as hip and shrewd. Also, the LP booklet indentifies the soloists as the CD booklet does not. I wish they had recorded "One O'Clock Jump" as part of this project, just for the sake of having all of the most famous tunes included. The sound of the CDs is great. If you look at the wav files, they're real fat. However, this necessitates care in programming these tracks next to tracks from other CDs that have less dense audio, since they tend to have less perceived volume.

This is a great reissue. A ton of great Basie. Also, Basie Land, On My Way And Shoutin' Again, and Basie's Beat, came out this year. Basie's Beat, with five Eric Dixon arrangements and five arrangements by other Basie regulars, is a giant of an album.

Point well taken about parallelism. Thanks. I'm interested in both views: 1. The more practical approach you describe and 2. The exact-match extensions/scale approach. I think this "stereo" view can enrich one's understanding of the music. If nothing else, I don't think it hurts just to know that there are other options, especially that of collecting all the extensions into an easily remembered scale.

I understand that. I'm just suggesting that if you're going to arpeggiate a triad pair, why not just choose a triad pair that best fits the extensions of the chord? All other things being equal, it's just as easy to use G augmented as it is to use G major, and be spot on doing it. So I'm just pointing out an advantage of another option. I'm not arguing against anyone playing or practicing anything they want to play, especially since, as your quote suggests, historically, actual jazz practice can't be accounted for by any one theoretic framework - ultimately, the greats just play whatever they want and make it sound good by, if nothing else, rhythmic momentum and the stand-alone logic and direction of their own melodic ideas.

"D7 - play D, F#, A and C, E, G." I would think that the C augmented triad, not the C major triad, would be the one to concentrate on here, since the G# gives an augmented 11th, which fits the chord much better (and is much more frequently voiced) than the perfect 11th that is usually felt as too dissonant to voice with the major third. That reminds me that along with the circle of fifths, one might consider the following observation to be a useful summary: Except for the b9 and +9 played for a dominant chord, it is rare that a "straight ahead" jazz chord has a minor 9th formed betwen any of its intervals (including internal intervals) in the strictly upward construction of the chord, even if the chord is not voiced in strict upward construction. This is especially true since locrian half-diminished is increasingly replaced by half-diminished with major 9th. One could take it pretty much as a rule: Virtually any stacking of thirds or any intervals up through the 13th will make the chord notes/scale notes (not necessarily the voicing) of a jazz chord if no minor 9th is formed in the intervals (whether reckoned from the root or internally) in upward construction. And no construction that entails minor 9ths will work (except for b9 and +9 on a dominant). The sus with a perfect 4th might be an exception, except that the major 3rd is usually absent or at least somewhat supressed.

"Do you mean to say that contrary to everything I've ever read about Kind of Blue, it[']s not (aside from 'Freddie Freeloader' which Wynton Kelly plays on anyway) the breakthrough modal album?" [Dan Gould] "Freddie Freeloader" is not the only tune on Kind Of Blue that's not a modal tune. "All Blues" is a blues, and "Blue In Green" has detailed changes. So only two ("So What" and "Flamenco Sketches") of the five compositions on the album are modal.

I don't get it. How could Desmond tell (speak) the story of being arrested while he was soloing? He was quoting melodies while he was soloing, but the melodies related to the driving incident? I'm confused. / Dr. Rat I don't mean to endorse any particular outlets, but I just had in mind the usual places like half.com, amazon.com, et al.

Hope Is In The Air: The Music Of Elmo Hope - New Stories (Origin Records) Marc Seals, p; Doug Miller, b; John Bishop, d Guests on certain tracks: Roberta Gambarini, vo; Don Sickler, tp, flgh; Bobby Porcelli, as; Bertha Hope, p; Ronnie Matthews, p; Peter Washington, b; Kenny Washington, d Sikler, prod; Van Gelder, eng Elmo Hope tunes:. "Carvin' The Rock", "Barfly", et al. (And I don't remember if there's a dedication tune or two also.) Bertha Hope plays on three tracks. Release date: Oct 19. It's not bad. I only listened to it "other-tasking" though. I'll try to listen to it this weekend and let you know more.

"Basie? I don't follow you..." [Jim R] I was asking Dr. Rat if "April In Paris" is an instance of "Pop Goes The Weasel" that he dislikes. "Favorite quote: Cannonball plopping Fascinatin' Rhythm right into his solo on Miles from Milestones." [jazzypaul] Oh my lord, yes! This is such a sublime moment on a sublime solo on a sublime track on a sublime album. Just that solo, even just that one moment in that solo gives me hope, makes me feel it's a blessing to be alive. Cannonball Adderley on "Miles" is the very air on a crisp, blue spring morning. / Dr. Rat, Thanks for that story and for a fond glimpse of Benny Carter. As to your (rhetorical?) question about buying the Desmond box for your station, I think that if your library has gaping holes in it, then it would be better to spend your public station's money on used CDs online or elsewhere. With a modest budget you could scoop tons of monumental music for a few bucks a CD rather than going after Desmond at $17.00/disc. We all love Mosaic of course for what they do, but a public radio station has to look out for itself too. I'd first get as much great music on the cheap as I could.

Dr. Rat, Would you give some examples that irk you? (Other than "Pop Goes The Weasel", by which you mean Basie?)

Apologies for having misstated that the session is not listed. Should we think there is something amiss, some unwarranted "revisionism", in changing from 'unissued' to 'rejected'? How was the session marked in '59? / People naturally use terms differently, but it seems to me that 'squeek' and 'clinker' denote two very different things, since a clinker is not a squeek but rather an actual wrong note. / A Blue Note side note: The new album Hope Is In The Air by New Stories (produced by Sickler, w/ Sickler, Porcelli, Bertha Hope, and others guesting) has a Wolff photo that I don't recall having seen: Elmo Hope, Philly Joe Jones, and Percy Heath at the piano in the living room, by the shuttered blinds. The composition - the way they're sitting and standing together - is beautiful. Just another little thing to make your heart glad. By the way, do other Blue Note nuts sometimes wonder, as I do, what the rest of that living room looks like?

"[MV 6] is the only one with the great trio with Paul and Art that isn't on CD." [shrdlu] I too await that release. Of course, Garland and Chambers are like chops and onions (can't say which is chops and which onions, though). On the other hand, one of the felicities of MV1 is the gorgeous interplay between Garland and Sam Jones. They're just so clear and natural and elegant. You know, you just marvel at the beauty of these guys.

This is not in the first edition of the Blue Note Discography, even though rejected takes and sessions are listed. Is it in the new edition? If not, why not? If the session is a stinker, then nonetheless it would be nice if it were available for study in a library or archive, but I don't think it would do the art(blakey)form any good to make a commercial release of it. Also, the analogy with sessions like Search For The New Land doesn't hold since that session was shelved not rejected. "Hank squeaks a lot [. . .]" So vat elze is new?