Larry Kart's jazz book

[Guest youmustbe]

Larry Kart, is one of the few, perceptive critics, writers, on Jazz. In his case, he really can 'sing about architecture'!

[Lazaro Vega]

Nelson Algren and Charles Bukowski. Not trust fund babies. And Kerouac was from a working class background, Lowell on the railroad earth and all that.

[SNWOLF]

I don't know much about Nelson Algren, except in a broad contextual sense, but as for Kerouac he was certainly from a catholic, working-class, french-canadian background. His stolid background, a dominant - and domineering - mother who seemed to disapprove and actively reject his every waking moment, his inability to break away fully from the levelling depredations of hearth and home - all these contributed to a conflicted and self-destructively passive character.

However my remarks directed towards to "counterculture", as such, were aimed more at the spoilt, vapid scenesters doing a bit of look-at-me slumming before they turn into their parents. The inspirations of these people were often artisitically and intellectually valid, usually because someone in authority said so (but of course, they didn't believe in authority, did they).

In terms of literature, I believe Kerouac had the raw talent to be a good, even great writer, but his maudlin self-pity, his alcoholic self-indulgence and incoherence in both life and art, his adolescent emotionality (he makes Thomas Wolfe look wise and self-contained) and his defensive, petulant inabillity to accept criticism and feedback, even from those close to him, militated against the full development of his gifts.

As to Charles Bukowski: I agree with Hank that Ginsberg never wrote anything worth a damn after a Howl. I like some of Bukowski's work, but he was not really part of the Beat generation, he really came into prominence in the '70s, which was fortuitous for him, since the jaded romantism and sour disillusionment evinced in much of his writing is more suited to an age of hedonism and cynicism than quixotic flower power fluff. Bukowski put out an enormous amount of material, and some of it is just rent-paying, uninspired crap; but some, despite the hard-drinking, hard-man posturing and general anomie, is written with a strange, discordant, lyrical beauty and harsh economy. He can write, an unsettling frisson of tough and tender.

[Cornelius]

When I wrote "conservatives today call themselves 'libertarians'" I was being breezy, using 'today' to suggest the trendiness of conservative "libertarians."

/

I strongly doubt that counter-culture leftists became consumerists (some won't admit it, some admit it sheepishly, and some real assholes proclaim it) because of the self-seriousness of the left. That sounds more like a rationalization. It's more likely that these people, being human, just couldn't resist the temptations.

/

Searching "Coltrane beautiful person" or "Coltrane pure heart" gives pretty much the same results as just searching "Coltrane"! Anyway, please don't look for it on my account. But if you do happen upon it, I'm interested.

Edited January 23, 2005 by Cornelius

[Randy Twizzle]

Here's some early Kerouac from the Lowell Sun in 1942. Ain't much bop prosody here

[Guest youmustbe]

The thing about Ginsburg...he was part of a scene, he WAS the scene. It was very 'important' at the time. For Art, for New York City, for Manhattan, for the Lower East Side.

He had a 'Platinum debut album with his first record', so to speak. After that it was downhill, because that's all he had, not really very talented. His politics were naive at best, infantile at worst.

But, what he had was generosity for days! Always willing to help a struggling, upcoming writer. I never met him, or wanted to, even though I saw him in the hood a lot, but he definately deserves his props.

Sometimes, one should look past an artists work, and look at the man himself and his worth. You know, sometimes you gotta make a living the only way you know how.

[Joe G]

Searching "Coltrane beautiful person" or "Coltrane pure heart" gives pretty much the same results as just searching "Coltrane"! Anyway, please don't look for it on my account. But if you do happen upon it, I'm interested.

I remember a story in the local paper about a trumpeter (I don't know who - maybe Louis Smith?) who was cutting an older player while Coltrane happened to be in the audience. After the set, the guy greeted Trane, who said, "It ain't about making people look bad. It's about loving everybody."

That was the gist of it, anyway.

[johnlitweiler]

Re debauchery:

As Richard Rand reminded me recently, the Beats actually were cultured people who were knowledgeable about a lot of ancient and modern literature. The Beats wrote fiction and poetry. The Hippies wrote comic books. Did Charles Bukowski consider himself a Beat or a Hippy before he got rich and Hollywoodish?

/

Interesting that some music lovers get indignant about Art-Laurie Pepper's book Straight Life. Even if most of it is true, we should expect jazz musicians to be as diverse a bunch of characters as any other folk.

/

The story Art tells about seducing a lady who worked in the prison -- this story pops up in a number of ex-con's tales. Typically she's rich, a volunteer of some sort, beautiful, a nymphomaniac. It might be interesting to put together an anthology of stories by ex-cons about the ladies they had affairs with in prison.

Dirty John

[Cornelius]

The beats listened to great jazz. The hippies created some great rock.

Based on that, I'd say, musically (cultural score 0 - 1000):

beats 300, hippies 10

Edited January 23, 2005 by Cornelius

[7/4]

In terms of literature, I believe Kerouac had the raw talent to be a good, even great writer, but his maudlin self-pity, his alcoholic self-indulgence and incoherence in both life and art, his adolescent emotionality (he makes Thomas Wolfe look wise and self-contained)...

So what's the word on Thomas Wolfe? I've tried to read him, but could never get into his work. Where should I start with my 5th cuz? His mother was my Grandmother's Great Aunt.

[SNWOLF]

It's been a few years since I've read Straight Life, so I may be wrong here, but I don't think Pepper seduced any women in prison. He retails earlier in the book his sexual obsessionality and voyeurism, which he claims later was only cured by junk. But in prison he seemed to be mainly concerned with being "righteous" a "stand-up guy", not letting people think he was queer, and thus not becoming a girlfriend of one of the cons.

What he DID do, in terms of sexual relief in prison, was sniff women's panties. He worked in the laundry, had full access to panties of various pungent grades, and went to sleep with them over his head, fantasising. So if that answers your question?!

With regard to Kerouac, I'm not denying his intelligence, wit, or level of culture at all. Kerouac, Burroughs and (soon to be deceased, William-Tell fashion) his wife, Ginsberg, and others were highly educated, artistically hungry people. And I think the person with the most innate artistic talent of all of them was Kerouac, except his mamma's-boy immaturity and passive, egocentric dependency, a lack of toughness and endurance, combined with a lack of objective, aesthetic scrutiny, ruined a stellar potential. His addiction to alcohol put him in a morbid timewarp and prevented him from growing up, both personally and artistically. Ultimately he reacted in a hostile, self-loathing conservatism, which he never really fully escaped from, try as he might. He was always tied to Memiere's apron-strings, just as some young people make a lot of noise proclaiming freedom and champing at the bit for the simple reason that they're still in harness.

As for Bukowski - a mysanthrope, a mysogynist, a lush. An extremely intelligent autodidact. A lover of classical music. An arsehole; a lover; a fuckup. An exquisitely sensitive temperament coarsened by hard times, callous and stupid people, too much booze, and his own self-destructive intransigence. People like that live in their own world, to escape the pain of the real one. They don't engage in dialogues, just humourous and embittered monologues. Imagine if you got Charles Bukowski and Herbert Huncke together and clicked "rec" on a tape recorder. I don't think you'd get much dialogue. They would instantly despise eachother, recognising themselves in the other, and they'd have nothing to say anyway: two perpetual raconteurs who need a perpetual audience.

As to the inference that Bukowski sold out in some way to Hollywood. Christ - he was always a hustler on the make, if money comes knocking on your door you're not going to turn it down in the service of precious artistic ideals. He was near the end of his life, had paid serious dues, and he was going to enjoy the time he had left. Artistic purity is a game played by those that can afford the rent. For all the crap that oozed from Bukowski's pen so he could keep fed, clothed, housed, and boozed as a self-supporting writer, there were pages, stories, occasionally a book, that were so well-written, so uniqulely grizzled and off-kilter poetic, that it's worth ploughing through the considerable dross to get to it.

As far as that Coltrane quote; I had a brief look on the net, still can't find it; but here's something along similar lines.....

My music is the spiritual expression of what I am — my faith, my knowledge, my being … When you begin to see the possibilities of music, you desire to do something really good for people, to help humanity free itself from its hangups … I want to speak to their souls.

- John Coltrane

"There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror."

"My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am - my faith, my knowledge, my being."

And that's just a sampler, I'm sure, of many similar statements by Coltrane in relation to spirtuality and music; it' annoying that I can't find his direct quote about being a good person = great music, but oh well. I think everyone benefited more from Trane smashed on spirtuality than intoxicated on alcohol and smack.

[SNWOLF]

To 7/4. Don't bother with Thomas Wolfe. Rambling, overheated, hyper-effusive juvenilia. Kerouac loved hum, and you can tell. Kerouac got into Dostoevsky, for the usual youthful reasons: heavy, dark, portentous. But to stylistically run after Wolfe in search of aesthetic sublimity was a huge mistake. Wolfe is more to blame for "Spontaneous Bop Prosody" than any number of "Buddha-like" Bird solos..

[Cornelius]

I really didn't want you to schlep for quotes on my account. I know about Coltrane's spirituality. What interests me is his saying that good jazz requires a good person, just as you too raised an eyebrow at that.

/

In another thread you wrote:

"I honestly believe, in a completely biased and subjective fashion, that [Art Pepper] is the most sensitive, most deeply-felt interpreter of ballads in jazz history, on any instrument, in any historical period. His playing is so profound and gut-wrenching it says as much about the conflicted sadness and fugitive joy of being human as the greatest art, period."

I don't have the Straight Life album, which you highly praise, but I do have most of Pepper's major albums from the '50s and '60s. Would you suggest an exemplary ballad track that might be among those albums?

/

You've posted some quite enjoyable letters here. I hope you'll post a lot more.

Edited January 23, 2005 by Cornelius

[AllenLowe]

Well, let's not forget that the hippies wrote some GOOD comic books. I still love the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, and read them often. Extremely funny stuff. As for jazz versus rock and other kinds of music, well, I must admit, over the last five years my ratio of rock and roll listening to jazz is about 4 to 1, hillbilly to jazz about 5 to 1. It's easy, as a jazz lover, to forget the power of "simpler" forms, but give me Kelly Harrell over most young lions, The Chocolate Watchband over just about any academic composer -

[Guest youmustbe]

I remember in early sixties, the Hotel Albert, now an apartement thouse, on University Place betwwen 10th and 11th, or maybe 11th, 12th, anyway they had this restaurant. It was a French restaurant, with a miniature Eiffel Tower in front.

For a special price, I forget what it was, you could get, besides a full course meal, a tour of the Village. There was a school bus, and it was driven by this small black guy, who wore a beret. Get it? French AND Beatnik!!!

It used to go up Bleeker Street, slowly, so the folks, mostly tourists in the bus, could gawk left and right at the coffee houses, filled with Beat 'Artists' 'Poets' Painters' and most shocking of all, inter racial couples, including black men with white women. Wait til they tell the folks back home about that!

Nice chapters about that time in Pete Hamill's new book, 'Downtown My Manhattan'

[wolff]

Would you suggest an exemplary ballad track that might be among those albums?

If I may chime in...

I think the ballads he's referring to would be from the 70's-80's period.

Try Ballad Of The Sad Young Men and My Laurie from No Limit

Over The Rainbow from Ballads By Four

Any of the ballads from the Village Vanguard dates.

Patricia from Today

I do not know about the rest of the description and assumed knowingness on why he played this way, but gut-wrenching applies IMO.

Edited January 23, 2005 by wolff

[SNWOLF]

To Cornelius, who was in search of some great Pepper ballad playing:

Lost Life, and Here's that Rainy Day, from Living Legend album.

Ballad of the Sad Young Men, and My Laurie from No Limit album

Goodbye, Valse Triste, and Over the Rainbow from Village Vanguard box set, or individual CDs.

The Summer Knows from The Trip album

Patricia, from Laurie's Choice

Goodbye, and Sad, a Little Bit, from True Blues, and Blues for the Fisherman - both albums recorded live at Ronnie Scott's and out of print, unfortunately.

Nature Boy, and September Song, from Straight Life

Angel Eyes, from the Hollywood All-stars album

There's more of course, the above is from the seventies to early '80s; but here's one track from an earlier album, Smack Up, that I enjoy: Maybe Next Year. It's a ballad, but has a strange, swinging pellucid confidence to it. Quite haunting.

[Cornelius]

In the summer of '66 my family took a vacation to San Francisco. My father, a "buckle down" Republican, made it a special point that we should visit Haight-Ashbury just to see it firsthand. We crawled the length of Haight Street in my dad's blue '61 Chevy Bel Air as we took in every detail we could. It was all very strange. But what struck us most was just how many of the hippies were eating chips wrapped in newspaper. Later my dad remarked that he could tell that there was a very special sense of sharing and humanity in what the hippies were doing.

Edited January 23, 2005 by Cornelius

[Cornelius]

Bummer, I said that the albums I have are mostly from the '50s and '60s. But I'll look out for the ones just mentioned by wolff and SNWOLF (thanks). It's been a while, but the last time I listened to any '70s or '80s Art Pepper, I didn't like what I heard. So many people whose opinion I respect love him, so I should reassess.

Edited January 23, 2005 by Cornelius

[brownie]

I remember in early sixties, the Hotel Albert, now an apartement thouse, on University Place betwwen 10th and 11th, or maybe 11th, 12th, anyway they had this restaurant. It was a French restaurant, with a miniature Eiffel Tower in front.

For a special price, I forget what it was, you could get, besides a full course meal, a tour of the Village. There was a school bus, and it was driven by this small black guy, who wore a beret. Get it? French AND Beatnik!!!

I stayed at the Hotel Albert during my first visit to New York in the midsixties just before it was turned into an apartment house.

A very interesting place! Wish there was an equivalent nowadays.

The location was perfect. But I can't remember having seen the French/Beatnik bus driver. Or a bus there!

And the restaurant was French only by name...

[AllenLowe]

Personally I find Pepper's late ballad playing self-absorbed and maudlin, though many people have disagreed -

[Guest youmustbe]

My brother lived in the Albert from 58-60 or so. Then he and then I in 62 moved to 13th and University. A whole floor in a brownstone for 90 bucks a month.

I think they canned the bus tours in 64 or so, the hotel was starting to get run down, and a whole lot of things were starting to change in Manhattan, and the Village, for that matter.

One of the reasons that Slugs' opened where it did, 3rd, between B and C, is that a lot of artists started moving there. Practically every Jazz musican that was on that contemporary scene seemed to live between 3rd and 8th, between1st and 3rd. Rents were incredibly cheap. And Acid was hip in that scene and that area.

This is before the Fillmore and the hippies. That's another story.

(It was always difficult for me put up with the hippies. Coming back from Vietnam in 67, they seemed infantile to me. Going to the Fillmore to hear Miles was always a chore, what with that audience. Maybe in Frisco it was intersteing, but in NY, the legacy the hippies left in that neighborhood, after they, like Jerry Rubin, got over it, and listened to Mom and Dad, and went to work on Wall Street, was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods, in all of NY. They had their fun 'slumming' and left someone else to pick up the mess after them.

[Guest youmustbe]

Re the Beats, Bohemia and all.

You have to remember that back then, post WWII and in particularly after Korea, the people that gathered in what can loosely be called 'Bohemia',were the people that, whatever their faults, sensed the racial injustice in America. They were the ones, in many instances that pushed the boundaries that led to the Civil Rights struggle. A lot of them were still Commies. And not just in New York. Going to High school in Chicago, I remember the same folks that gathered in basements to listen to Monk, were the ones that would upbraid people for using the N word. (Ironic today, when 8 year old kids, both black and white call each other nigger).

Anyway, read Pete Hammill's book, he can explain better than me.

[SNWOLF]

Allen Lowe. I can appreciate your perspective on a self-involved and maudlin aspect to Pepper's ballad playing. I think, at times, that emotional valence does lurk within the music's hermetic lyricism, and if you're not in the mood, those pieces can sound self-indulgent. If you're in a particularly active and positive and purposeful mood generally, ballads by anyone have a bit of a "Oh, poor little baby; mummy will kiss it better" quality.

I remember one day, I'd been doing hard physical work all day, was newly in love, and drunk a strong coffee, opened a beer, turned on Fun House, by The Stooges (my secular, rock 'n' roll version of A Love Supreme) really loud, felt fucking great. And then, I put on a Pepper record.

What a downer.

All I could think at the time was, harden-up and get over yourself Art, and stop looking for bitches to feel sorry for you, affirm your tortured genius, and play surrogate mother. Stop being a dependent softcock.

So, there IS in fact a weakness, a maudlin quality, a bleary junky torpor to some of his music. But within that is an incredible artistic hunger, vitality and originality. In the wrong mood, you'd probably wish he'd OD'd in some scungy roadstop in the 40's. In the right mood, you are grateful for the musical poetry.

[AllenLowe]

good points - funny thing is, for me, when I heard him in person (in Boston, near the beginning of his comeback, can't remember what year) he sounded great on everything, ballads, tempos. Than I remember listening to the Vanguard recordings and thinking, "this is a different guy" -