Whitney Balliett

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I've just heard from a friend who says there's an unconfirmed report that Whitney Balliett passed away today.

Anyone any ideas whether this is the case?

We've had a couple of bad months and February isn't starting out any better.

MG

[Larry Kart]

It's true.

[Randy Twizzle]

Balliet's first published piece in the New Yorker was in the Jan. 26, 1952 issue. It was was a poem entitled 8 A.M. He published 10 more poems and some "Talk of the Town" pieces before his first jazz article appeared in the May 25, 1957 issue. It was a favorable review of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 album on Atlantic. Here's the first poem. [thanks to the Complete New Yorker Hard Drive]

[brownie]

Balliett's passing is very sad news!

I learned a lot from the articles he wrote in 'The New Yorker' after I started getting interested in jazz. Beautiful writing.

I have reread some of these articles in in Balliett's collected works recently. They stood up very well even if I was not in full agreement with some of his statements. He will be missed!

[Guy Berger]

Balliet's first published piece in the New Yorker was in the Jan. 26, 1952 issue. It was was a poem entitled 8 A.M. He published 10 more poems and some "Talk of the Town" pieces before his first jazz article appeared in the May 25, 1957 issue. It was a favorable review of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 album on Atlantic. Here's the first poem. [thanks to the Complete New Yorker Hard Drive]

I liked that poem. (I'm not a poetry connoisseur.) Randy, do you mind posting some more?

Guy

[brownie]

Will Friedwald's article on Balliett in the New York Sun today

WHITNEY BALLIETT, 80, DEAN OF JAZZ WRITERS

By WILL FRIEDWALD

Special to the Sun

February 2, 2007

Whitney Balliett, who died yesterday at 80, was the longtime jazz reviewer for the New Yorker.

A reporter, historian, and expert interviewer, Balliett's greatest gift was as an astute listener with the rare ability to capture the sound of the music in words. He wrote with a cadence and rhythm that mirrored the music itself, and was as witty and fun to read as he was serious and scholarly.

He wrote that Blossom Dearie had a voice so small that "without a microphone it would not reach the second floor of a doll's house"; he described another singer, Betty Carter, as being so far out that she "makes Sarah Vaughan sound like Kate Smith." He once compared the midperformance moaning of pianist Keith Jarrett to that of a woman giving birth. Balliett also likened jazz drumming to tap dancing: "a great drummer dances sitting down, a great tap dancer drums standing up."

Balliett's favorite kind of jazz was intensely melodic, the style he had grown up with in the '30s and '40s; he tended to favor the great swing players and their latter-day descendants. He also had a fascination for the Great American Songbook, and the more traditional singers of both the jazz and related pop variety who sang it.

Yet he also had a special proclivity for drummers and did not neglect the many equally essential modern and postmodern players who flourished in the decades of his tenure at the magazine. Some of his earliest columns focused on Jimmy Giuffre, Sonny Rollins, and even the extremely avant-garde Cecil Taylor.

Balliett was raised in New York. Soon after graduating from Cornell University in 1951, he began submitting poetry and Talk of the Town entries to the New Yorker. After a four-year stint at the Saturday Review, he began writing a regular column on jazz for the New Yorker in January 1957. His last article in that magazine was published in 2001; he spanned an even half century at the magazine.

"I think the role of any critic is, first, to explain or describe what it is that he is criticizing, and then make his evaluation," Balliett said in one of his last interviews. He preferred to let the music come alive in the reader's head rather than dwelling on what he thought of it.

He continued, "I think you waste time by battling and sending out sharp opinions and dumping on people. It's a waste of effort and it's also destructive."

Although Balliett had been writing his column for a scant two years, his first book was published in 1959. Like most of the dozenplus books he produced, "The Sound of Surprise" collected his New Yorker columns.

Balliett's wrote in two modes, reviews and profiles, some of which were not, strictly speaking, on musicians, such as "Alec Wilder and His Friends" (1974) and "Barney, Bradley, and Max: Fifteen Portraits in Jazz" (1989).

In his profiles, Balliett let's subjects speak for themselves, at length. In his reviews, he offered witty, vivid verbal-paintings such as this typical description of Ray Charles in action: "One waits for the shout that falls in a beat to a whisper, the flashing falsetto, the pine-sap diction, the pained hoarseness, the guttural asides, the spidery staccato sprays of notes, the polysyllabic explosions, the faster-than-the-ear dynamics."

On the pianist Dave McKenna: "His eyes are deep-set and close together, and his wide face has eagle lines. His long arms end in banana fingers."

More than any other critic in the genre's history, Balliett captured the *feel* of jazz. He wrote of the clarinetist Pee Wee Russell: "Russell's blues were an examination of the proposition that there must be a way to make sadness bearable and beautiful."

He was a profound influence on the next generation of jazz critics, including Gary Giddins, Francis Davis, and Stanley Crouch.

Apart from his writing, Balliett's other best-known achievement was serving as a musical consultant, alongside fellow reviewer Nat Hentoff, on the 1957 CBS-TV show "The Sound of Jazz." This program is among the finest hours of the music ever televised (and possibly ever recorded), but is also the most celebrated all-star gathering in the history of jazz. Indeed, Balliett would go on to write at length about such iconic figures as Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Count Basie, Gerry Mulligan, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, and many others who appeared on "The Sound of Jazz."

I once asked Balliett how he got so many jazz greats in a single production, and he answered, "Easy — they needed the gig!"

Whitney Balliett

Born April 17, 1926, in Manhattan; died February 1 at his home in Manhattan; survived by his wife, Nancy Balliett, his children Whitney Balliett, James Balliett, Julie Rose, Blue Balliott, and Will Balliett, his seven grandchildren, and a brother, Fargo Balliett.

[Lazaro Vega]

I don't know, Clem: "Even his feet looked sad" is about it with Pee Wee Russell. Describing an Anthony Braxton performance as sounding like he was trying to push a piano through an empty room while everyone upstairs was sleeping was an effective way in. His range of coverage was great for a general interest column (as opposed to academic). He was an imagist which is more about writing than music yet he made it work with the subject. Red Allen's face DID look like a pepper. So Phil Woods hated him. Because Balleitt turned me on to so many classic jazz artists....W.B. is a first person witness to jazz in the music's capital. One has to deal with what he wrote, the profiles and first person accounts of concerts, as primary source material. Build from there, but thanks for his years of service to the music.

[brownie]

brownie, Balliett's douchebaggery (from the medieval french, i just learned!) goes far beyond any simple disagreement to the repeated arrogant assertion that he somehow "knows" what artists intend(ed).

From the medieval french?!? Doubt there was any douche in the Middle Ages!

This would have to be proofchecked by one of those New Yorker specialists from way back

Clem, I can see your points about Balliett but I stick to my goodfeeling opinions on him. I was reading The New Yorker magazine when I was a teenager. Balliett's writing style was a lesson for me and my highschool english.

His writing on jazz happenings then had a you-are-there touch which made me feel like I was almost part of the scene. He has my forever gratitude for this!

[Simon Weil]

I thought he was a real writer with a proper style. Yes, he was conservative - but so what? If it worked it worked and you just walk round the holes. There's a kind of integrity to his work, which is aesthetically based, eschewing the society based stuff (I've said this before). For me the main problem was his followers - all of whom want to be "real" writers and have the facade of it.

I can't say I particularly read his stuff, but I admire it. RIP.

Simon Weil

[JohnS]

Sad news, I always enjoyed his writings.

[Lazaro Vega]

Clem: "it was his J-O-B, baby. how many others would have liked to do that for a living but found the doors closed at The New Yorker as a result? it's like with Giddins-- sure he did some good things. gimme 30 years w/o having to worry abt $$$-- give it to anyone--- they damn well BETTER have at least a few hits."

Still working on THAT. There aren't too many writers of his generation that the masses read who had the ability to cover concerts by Cecil, the AACM and other far flung musical styles as well as the unique figures of the 1920's and up without going into the whole "is it jazz?" side street. And his opinions changed on some of the more challenging forms of jazz as he became more familiar with them. W.B.'s value as one of the first writers to be encountered on such a widely read level who at least understood the individual nature of creativity served as a gateway to the music. That is hard to demean even if it arose from the worn paths of hackdom. Combining journalism with such a personal writing style is about impossible to get past the editorial class with their fetish for style book rules. It's up to the listener, then, to dig into the depths you're describing. W.B. in my experience was not a harmful start. As a writer his ability to paint with words was tight. The unforced metaphore on a journalistic deadline is a skill to envy.

So, who kicked/kicks his ass?

[danasgoodstuff]

"more about writing than music" I think that says it all about WB and the NY'er in general, which has most certainly never been for "the masses", just the middling bunch...

So, yes, he had a wonderful way with words but, at least as often as not, they didn't really even make sense. viz., if Lester Young's tone was "wheaty", what was Ben Webster, oatmeal?

That said, he did perfectly capture the ways in which jazz was appreciated by those well educated souls who loved it but who stood outside it, like most of us here...which might well account for the vociforusness(sp?) of this little pissing match.

[Randy Twizzle]

Balliet's first published piece in the New Yorker was in the Jan. 26, 1952 issue. It was was a poem entitled 8 A.M. He published 10 more poems and some "Talk of the Town" pieces before his first jazz article appeared in the May 25, 1957 issue. It was a favorable review of the Jimmy Giuffre 3 album on Atlantic. Here's the first poem. [thanks to the Complete New Yorker Hard Drive]

I liked that poem. (I'm not a poetry connoisseur.) Randy, do you mind posting some more?

Guy

I'm no judge of poetry myself, but in consultation with the executor of Mr Balliet's literary estate, some dude named clementine, I've chosen these poems"

[BruceH]

Sorry to hear about Balliett's passing. His first book, The Sound of Surprise, remains my favorite.

[Lazaro Vega]

Dan,

I already went. Clem's points are well taken. Just trying to discuss what's it all about, Alfie.

There are many musicians who have said there's no clarity in implied comparisons between image, words, music. It is a frustrating endeavour to describe music in words, to communicate how music sounds without going academic or into specific musical language, which itself falls short in replicating on paper the way jazz sounds. Lockjaw Davis transcriptions anyone?

Jazz on the radio is the answer, yet tens of thousands more people would have read one jazz article written in the Grand Rapids Press, for instance, than would tune in to the area's classical and jazz radio station over the course of an entire week. And the station is doing well with 40,000 listeners a week. More people read than listen.

Jazz writing needs to be taken in its entire scope not just one person at one magazine with one audience in their imagination. The sophistication of marketing predicates limits on a single source of information, which is why the marketing models don't do well with jazz, per se, because the jazz audience is more a mind than a social or economic strata or even gender strata. You'll see magazines dedicated to jazz seeing a primarily male, middle age audience. Yet there are many, many women who listen to jazz on the radio, I'm hear to tell you. Lawd lawd a mighty, Hello Betty: Yes, Ray Charles singing "Come Rain Or Come Shine" IS romantic, innit? Humm? What does "Fathead" mean? I'm sorry, time to read the weather. "Cold showers in the forecast for...."

In answer to the rhetorical -- by the way wasn't it W.B. who described Young's sound as "feathery"? -- if Young is "wheaty" than Ben is "meaty." Of course for a clearer "real" answer of the comparison I'd trust Budd Johnson over W.B. or, as WB not doubt intended, hear them both for oneself and "you make the call."

[danasgoodstuff]

Lazaro,

Thanks for the thoughtful reply(?)

Dana

[Larry Kart]

for those of you playing at home, turn to page 236 of the Morgenstern antho. regardless of yr final feelings re: Bill Evans, someone comes as pretty groovy, & someone comes like an arrogant little prick. Hint: it weren't the junkie.

Jordu Am A Hard Road To Travel,

Elder Don Clementine

Circuit Rider

Clem -- If you mean Dan's disparagement of the avant-garde in 1964, when the piece was written, I say no big deal and/or what else do you expect from him at that time. On the other hand, I find Evan's remarks on that page about "freedom" re: his duet with Paul Bley on George Russell's "Jazz in the Spaceways" album to be .. not arrogant but very revealing, and not in a good way. Here's something I wrote about that passage from Dan's interview with Evans in my book:

Quite articulate about his music, in a 1964 interview Evans said this: “The only way I can work is to have some kind of restraint involved, the challenge of a certain craft or form and then to find the freedom in that…. I think a lot of guys…want to circumvent that kind of labor….” Then there is this Evans statement: “I believe that all music is romantic, but if it gets schmaltzy, romanticism is disturbing. On the other hand, romanticism handled with discipline is the most beautiful kind of beauty.”

Plausible words, perhaps, but the value that Evans seemingly places on restraint in itself leads one to ask, What is being restrained and why? Evans’s “challenge of [working within] a certain craft or form” is not merely an account of his own necessary practice; it lends to that practice an aura of moral virtue (“I think a lot of guys …want to circumvent that kind of labor….”). In other words, for Evans certain sorts of musical labor are not only valid but they also validate. And should an aesthetically valid outcome be reached in a seemingly non-laborious manner, that can be disturbing. Thus in 1964 , after acknowledging that the brilliant, lucid, and “completely unpremeditated” two-piano improvisation that he and Paul Bley played on George Russell’s 1960 album Jazz In The Space Age “was fun to do,” Evans says: “[but to] do something that hadn’t been rehearsed successfully, just like that, almost shows the lack of challenge involved in that kind of freedom.”

That last sentence from Evans seems really weird to me, for reasons that I try to explain in the paragraph above that one.

[Tom Storer]

From the evidence on this thread, it's just as well Balliett didn't try to make it as a poet. His jazz writing, on the other hand, was very good indeed, and there are few who did it or do it as well. He wasn't a musician and he used careful but finely drawn images to describe musicians and their methods. The result was fascinating, insightful, accessible and memorable descriptions that made you want to hear the music you hadn't heard yet and gave a little shock of recognition of the music you had. Complaints that he didn't give enough kudos to one musician or another are without merit, I think--every reviewer has personal tastes which by definition can't be all-embracing. They're not there to reveal the truth, but to share their own reactions and analysis. Balliett's were always interesting and the man could write--more than can be said for all but a handful of jazz journalists, now or ever.

[JSngry]

He had some neat turns of phrases. I'll gladly take those and leave the rest.

[Larry Kart]

Clem -- You confused me 'cause you said p. 236, and that Balliett remark is on p. 237.

[Larry Kart]

LK, make sure you peep that Francis piece on Creeley, it's NUTZ. (Black Mountain who?)

Ouch.

[paul secor]

He had some neat turns of phrases. I'll gladly take those and leave the rest.

Well said.

Thanks and RIP, Mr. Balliett.

[Randy Twizzle]

I think Pee Wee Russell brought out the best in Balliet:

[Tom Storer]

He had some neat turns of phrases.

A bit of an understatement, in my humble opinion.

I'll gladly take those and leave the rest.

What is "the rest" you would reject?

[JSngry]

The musical "insight" which come from those neat turns of phrases.

Classic example - Miles being "the sound of a man walking on eggshells". Delightfully original & evocative phrase on its own terms, and I love it as such, but wtf does it have to do with Miles' music? Not a damn thing that I can hear.

And so it goes...