AOTW Feb 11-18

[randyhersom]

I'm a fairly reliable lurker, but dropped off the Blindfold Tests due to time difficulties. Scrabble going OK, dabbling in tournament poker also.

[Chas]

AOTWs often elicit unanimous praise , so for a change of pace I thought I would post this review of Africa Brass from Martin Williams . A critic who ' got ' Ornette Coleman early on , but who never really ' got ' John Coltrane , Williams is thought by some to be too cerebral or formalist in his criticism . Yet his criticism of Africa Brass rests on Coltrane's inability to communicate in a way that Williams finds emotionally satisfying .

I find this difficult to fathom . Coltrane always connects with me emotionally , viscerally , sounding like he has to play what he does ; his playing never sounds like an exercise , never sounds self-consciously avant-garde . It's this emotional directness that appeals even to those who otherwise eschew avant-garde jazz .

Anyway , here is what Williams had to say in support of his two-star review :

" Certainly no one could question Coltrane's particular skill as a tenor saxophonist . Nor that his ear for harmony , his knowledge of it , and his use of it , can fascinate . Nor do I question that his playing is honestly emotional , if , to me , somewhat diffusely so .

What I do question is whether here this exposition of skills adds up to anything more than a dazzling and passionate array of scales and arpeggios . If one looks for melodic development or even for some sort of technical order or logic , he may find none here .

In these pieces , Coltrane has done on record what he has done so often in person lately , make everything into a handful of chords , frequently only two or three , and run them in every conceivable way , offering what is , in effect , an extended cadenza to a piece that never gets played , a prolonged

montuna

interlude surrounded by no rhumba or

son

, or a very long vamp 'til ready .

Africa

is African by the suggestion of its rhythms . It has some brass figures that , for me , get a bit too monotonous to add variety and which are also in general too much in the background to add much of their own .

I must say that Workman and Davis , particularly when they work together , fascinated me , and that Tyner plays a good solo . These three also manage to swing , and they provide one of the few instances of real swing in this recital.

Greensleeves

is converted into a 6/8 Gospel-like meter , but once you have the hang of that , after a chorus or two , you have the hang of that .

On

Blues Minor

, which seems to me uncomfortably close to

Bags' Groove

, Coltrane again begins a kind of ingenious workout on a couple of repeated chords after a chorus or so .

The point is not that it is impossible to make high art out of very simple materials . Many a blues player can make fascinating music on three chords , two chords , one chord--even no chords really . Nor that it is impossible to make fine jazz solos out of arpeggios : Jimmy Noone did it , Coleman Hawkins does it , Coltrane has done it .

Perhaps my remark in the beginning about emotion does hold an answer . After all , Noone and Hawkins both have a directness and organization of feeling within each piece and a variety of feeling from one piece to the next . "

Downbeat January 18 , 1962 p. 29 , 32

[paul secor]

One of Martin Williams' blind spots was his music = logic mindset. "If one looks for melodic development or even for some sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here." And for all of his positive critical qualities, he did have that blind spot.

[Chuck Nessa]

Another observation about MW (not related to Africa Brass) was his "embarrassment" when humor was used in music. He was a huge fan of tv comedies but was uncomfortable with comic/entertainment tendencies of jazz musicians.

[Shrdlu]

This is a longtime favorite album. I love all the new takes that have surfaced, but the original album is just a classic!

"Blues Minor" is the best track, for me. A real cooker that makes the hairs stand on end. It stands out in the same way as "Vilia" and "Softly As In A Morning Sunrise" at the Vanguard. Makes you want a lot more!

(That "Vilia" track kinda frustrates me, as it's the only released cut from its session, and it makes you wonder what the other selections from that date sounded like.)

Re the comparison with "Ole", I much prefer Rudy's engineering. The Atlantics sound as if the guys are in cardboard boxes, especially the cymbals. If only Rudy had recorded that album!

[Larry Kart]

Larry or something might disagree but here's the deal abt Martin Williams-- he's not that bright. I ain't sayin' he was a dummy but he... a solid middlebrow. So when you say he's too "cerebral" Chas, I hear you but that's not exactly it. The other deal abt Martin Williams is he's not that hip either... I ain't sayin' he was a TOTAL square... so now you have a guy who achieves well within his environmental & self-imposed boundaries but outside 'em--

he fuckin' flounders. the quote you give Paul is great bc it's nonsense, tho' not unique to Williams nor to jazz "criticism." (see Lawrence Sterne, Delius etc etc ad infinitum, ad naeseum.)

"in his time," i have to give it up for those who say Williams influenced them in a positive way but he's always-- always-- hit this comedienne as a goddamn stiff. not UNinteresting bc his subjects were so dynamic but he didn't really rise to the level of his subjects either.

it's called empathy, baby--

edc for coroner

There's some fascinating information about Williams, which pretty much dovetails with what I knew and felt about the the man, in John Gennari's "Blowin' Hot and Cool: Jazz And Its Critics" (U. of Chicago Press), an otherwise deeply flawed, if not flat-out reprehenensible book IMO (I've gone into that at length on other threads). In any case, almost all of Gennari's information about Williams is taken (with acknowledgement) from unpublished interviews done with Williams by a scholar named Bryant Dupre.

About Martin "not being that bright," I wouldn't say that at all. He certainly was no middlebrow -- Whitney Balliett among jazz writers of note might define the top end of the middlebrow crowd, with Leonard Feather and maybe Gene Lees resting at or near the bottom -- although you could fairly say that Martin's highbrowness was more or less willed. That is, he had a more or less positive and somewhat acquired vision of what highbrow behavior was and what highbrow attititudes were (though this vision also was quite personal, shrewd, and critical for the most part), and he tried to bring that behavior and those attitudes to bear on jazz criticism. You could argue that there was some status-mongering involved here, but nobody's perfect. Also, while Chuck is right about Martin's blindspot about humor in jazz, and almost any trace of showbiz as well, the breadth and accuracy of his taste (positive and negative) was almost with parallel among jazz writers during what might be called his on-the-firing-line years. Without doubt Martin was not that "hip," but 1) he certainly didn't want to be in a good many (though perhaps not all) of the interlocking senses of that term 2) I'm not aware that he presumed to be hip, in part because 3), as I'm sure he knew, given the rest of who he was, a would-be hip Martin W. would have been absurd. One more thing about the height of Martin's brow: He wrote a whole lot of things about American popular art and its place and value in the scheme of things that were sound and novel and still are important. He had a strain of willed elitisim in him, but other deep, wise, even loving strains as well. I wish he were still around to argue with.

Edited March 8, 2007 by Larry Kart

[Larry Kart]

i can rarely read Williams like i do, say, Hugh Kenner or-- oooh, do you know this book Larry--

Generation of Vipers

edc

Funny -- when I was in sixth grade or so I tried to check out a Philip Wylie book from the public library -- maybe that one, maybe a novel of his that seemed to have a science fiction flavor (I dug SF then, or what SF was then) -- and the kind librarian, whom I knew quite well, didn't let me do it, saying that it was an "adult" book, with a special and new-to-me emphasis. So instead I looked on the new books shelf and checked out Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man," which I liked a lot (though no doubt I didn't fully understand it then). I think I came out ahead in that exchange.

BTW, Ellison was a visiting professer when I was a second-year college student and lived in our dorm. At a casual roundtable one night, he was talking about/being quizzed about "Invisible Man" and made a point that he'd made or would make elsewhere -- that whatever else the book was, he intended that much of it be very funny. I was able to then truthfully say that that's the way many scenes (e.g. the paint factory scene) hit me at age 12 or 13, which I think he beleived and was glad to hear. Also, a friend of mine during that time was walking to class one day with Ellison, discussing something or other, when my friend, suddenly realizing he was late, said goodbye and left the sidewalk to head diagonally for his destination. Ellison grabbed his arm and said quite firmly, "Don't walk on the grass." My friend was kind of astonished at the time -- thinking, he said to me when he told what had happened, that Ellison had to be a rebel at heart who certainly wouldn't care about whether someone stayed on the sidewalk and similar "minor" social rules -- but when he thought about it a bit, he realized that Ellison was, in this regard at least, not at all who my friend thought he was.

Hugh Kenner? A smart guy for sure, and a great source of enlightenment up to a point, but talk about gaping partialities and limitations!

[AllenLowe]

in the field of jazz criticism Williams did it first, and for many of us my age and older (I'm almost 53) he showed that it could be done - he was a major influence on my early tastes and listening habits and it took me quite a while to shake off some of his blind spots. One thing I always remembered was his analysis of one of Bird's first recorded McShann solos, Hootie Blues (I think that was the title) - Williams says that Bird plays a great and futuristic solo and than spoils it in the middle with a trite blues phrase - well, at the time I said to myself, this guy Williams know more than I do so take his word for it (I was about 16); now, of course, I hear that phrase - a five note descending figure that is probably older than the blues - and understand how important this is to Bird and to jazz and how it represents not some lack of taste on Bird's part but rather who he was and where he was from. And Williams (like, also, I would say, Gunther Schuller) is not really in touch with this aspect of the music. I accept his limitations because he was usually quite perceptive - and, as I said, he really was the first to point the way toward this kind of serious jazz criticism.

Edited March 10, 2007 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

just to add, when I started listening to jazz - ca. 1967 - the jazz world was really a critical desert. Some books, maybe, but most of them not very good. No web sites, very little in the way of re-issues, not much of a critical community. One grabbed what one could, and Williams really stood out as an important and central critical figure. Another was Dan Morgenstern; there was also Nat Hentoff but I always thought his jazz stuff was shallow. And as soon as I started getting to know people like Al Haig, who regarded Hentoff as an exploiter, there was really only Williams and Morgenstern - of course, if I had been reading Downbeat (which I was not doing very much) I might have noticed this guy Kart - thoough I do remember Alan Heinemann (sp?) who was kind of the magazine's counter-culture jazz guy, as I recall.

Edited March 10, 2007 by AllenLowe

[jlhoots]

Lots of bulls**t & pontificating in this thread.

FWIW, I started listening to "jazz" 50+ years ago.

Williams & others (Hentoff, Max Harrison & yes, Ralph J. Gleason among others) were very helpful in providing guideposts.

Anyone remember the original Jazz Review magazine?

I also recall that Williams was among the first to "boost" attention to Ornette Coleman.

Good enough for me.

We all have our "blind spots".

[Larry Kart]

Lots of bulls**t & pontificating in this thread.

FWIW, I started listening to "jazz" 50+ years ago.

Williams & others (Hentoff, Max Harrison & yes, Ralph J. Gleason among others) were very helpful in providing guideposts.

Anyone remember the original Jazz Review magazine?

I also recall that Williams was among the first to "boost" attention to Ornette Coleman.

Good enough for me.

We all have our "blind spots".

Read the Jazz Review at the time when I could, got a fair number of back issues, wish I had them all. Not perfect -- what is? -- but the best jazz magazine I ever saw. And Martin was its guiding spirit and key contributor. His interview/discussion with George Russell about Ornette was a landmark and damn smart on both their parts.

[paul secor]

Lots of bulls**t & pontificating in this thread.

FWIW, I started listening to "jazz" 50+ years ago.

Williams & others (Hentoff, Max Harrison & yes, Ralph J. Gleason among others) were very helpful in providing guideposts.

Anyone remember the original Jazz Review magazine?

I also recall that Williams was among the first to "boost" attention to Ornette Coleman.

Good enough for me.

We all have our "blind spots".

Since I was the one who posted the phrase "blind spots", I guess that I'll respond. Yes, we all have blind spots, but not all of us have reviews published in national publications. Martin Williams did, and in his review of Africa Brass he shows that he didn't "get" Trane's music at all. The sentence I quoted - "If one looks for melodic development or even some sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here." - misses the sense of what John Coltrane's music was about. (I tend to wonder if anyone has ever come close to capturing the sense of Trane's music in words.)

As far as pontificating goes, Martin Williams was pretty good at doing that - and much of the time he was right - just not this time. I learned a lot from Martin Williams' writing, starting back about 45 years ago, and I'm thankful for that. But his writing about John Coltrane wasn't good enough for me.

[felser]

Lots of bulls**t & pontificating in this thread.

FWIW, I started listening to "jazz" 50+ years ago.

Williams & others (Hentoff, Max Harrison & yes, Ralph J. Gleason among others) were very helpful in providing guideposts.

Anyone remember the original Jazz Review magazine?

I also recall that Williams was among the first to "boost" attention to Ornette Coleman.

Good enough for me.

We all have our "blind spots".

Coupla thoughts on this.

1 - Often, the only thing that makes another person's opinon "bulls**t" is that it disagrees with ours. These are some incredibly knowledgeable guys you're dissing here. One of the reasons I come to this site is to read their "pontifications".

2 - 1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that.

And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

[Chuck Nessa]

1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that.

And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

Things could be very different if you were there witnessing this stuff as it happened.

[Larry Kart]

jean-louis-- so Martin was "ok"-- sometimes better, sometimes worse. a man of his time, who liked jazz. it was also-- he made it-- his j-o-b, baby. that ain't to diminish what us old coots got outta all this sittin' on tha' throne, the subway, the bus, the propeller airplane, none of that but fact it is precious little Martin stands up as writing today. to the extent it has value, it's documentary & also due to a lack of serious competition. just cuz things ain't got much better does NOT mean they were so great then either--

the troof, baby! one coot to another--

ELDER don clementine

Don't know what you mean by "precious little Martin stands up as writing today." If his thinking about things still makes sense -- and IMO if often does (and when it doesn't so much, what Martin had to say often still raised key issues) -- his writing was the evidence of that thinking. Surely, you don't mean that he wasn't poetic enough for you? BTW, on the "key issues" front, Martin's ""If one looks for melodic development or even some sort of technical order or logic, he may find none here" response to "Africa Brass" Coltrane, while wrong in my and your view, is a good example. That is, one has to in response realize that the kinds of "melodic development ... technical order or logic" that Martin expects to find in Coltrane of that vintage is not there but that other, new and significantly different kinds of development, technical order and logic are at work, the nature of which it was then up to us to explore and describe in our words and talk. In other words, when Martin shied away or got grumpy or worse, his underlying seriousness and acuteness still remained in play. In effect, you argued with him and in the process educated yourself. Usually.

[jlhoots]

The term "blind spot(s)" is all over this thread, & I was not referring to any one poster in particular.

I also am not disrespecting anyone, just disagreeing with some viewpoints.

BTW, I believe Africa Brass is just fine but so is / was Martin Williams.

[AllenLowe]

as wrong as I think he was about Trane, I still think he made his points in a convincing way - and I have to admit his and my tastes coincide somewhat, especially in a preference for Rollins over Trane. But that's the sign of a good critic - you understand and agree even as you disagree; it is not unlike my own response to Larry's pieces on Bill Evans -

Edited March 13, 2007 by AllenLowe

[Chas]

1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that.

And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

Things could be very different if you were there witnessing this stuff as it happened.

Agreed . Some of the comments here evince an innocence of hermeneutics ; if we're going to engage in meta-critiques of earlier critical writings let's be mindful of the pitfalls of ahistoricism .

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The notable thing about Williams' review is , as I said , how his reservations are rooted in his failure to connect emotionally with Coltrane's music . Resting his critical opinion on that failure implicitly acknowledges that ratiocination is always handmaiden to the affective experience of music . Now to be sure , there are passages in Williams such as the one Paul cited , that seem to stand this on its head , but his criticism of Africa Brass does not ultimately rest on perceived shortcomings of 'technical order or logic' , but rather , Coltrane's inability to communicate emotionally to him through sound . I can wish that he would have said more about this , but writing expressively , and personally , about one's feelings , for a public , is more difficult than detailing the technical aspects of the music . Music critics are often uncomfortable with the inherent subjectivity of their criticism , hence their sometimes inordinate discussions of the technical aspects of musical performance in a misbegotten attempt to establish some objective stance thought to reliably yield 'truths' on which to establish their credibility .

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Another observation about MW (not related to Africa Brass) was his "embarrassment" when humor was used in music. He was a huge fan of tv comedies but was uncomfortable with comic/entertainment tendencies of jazz musicians.

In this I should think he would have had plenty of company among contemporaries with 'progressive' political commitments

and among those desiring that jazz be treated with the 'seriousness' accorded other Kunstmusik .

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Clementine , reading past your ad hominem attacks on Williams , you acknowledge the constraints of " time/place/economics " on his critical thought , yet express frustration that he didn't transcend these limitations . Yet you failed to articulate what critical social theory re: the role/function of 'aestheticians' would make such a misgiving comprehensible . Instead of fleshing this out , your latest post seemingly shifts your critical focus away from content and on to form , in the shape of an attack on Williams qua writer .

[paul secor]

1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that.

And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

Things could be very different if you were there witnessing this stuff as it happened.

Part of my problem with Williams re. Coltrane is that I have the sense that he never was able to hear John Coltrane's music - at least post 1960. And That's ok - I just don't think that he should have written about it if it didn't speak to him. I stopped reading his stuff after 1966 or 1967, so perhaps he didn't write much about Coltrane's music as time passed. He must have had the sense that other listeners/critics he respected were moved by Trane's music. (Did he respect other critics?) Perhaps he should have accepted the fact that it just wasn't for his ears.

I never bought the Smithsonian jazz box, but I believe that he only included one recording from Coltrane's post 1960 recordings. (I may be wrong about this. If I am, please correct me.) For me, that's the same thing as if he had written a negative review of Coltrane's music. He might have allowed someone else to have made the choice(s) as to what Coltrane recordings would be included. To my mind, there should have been more than one included.

I find that I'm writing mostly negative things about Martin Williams' writings, and my feelings about his books (at least my memories of them) are much more positive than negative. I don't have any of his books anymore, but I'm going online today and see which of his books my local libarary has and do some reading and rereading.

[Larry Kart]

1961 Coltrane is a pretty huge blind spot for a jazz critic. I don't see a way to overlook or trivialize that.

And I don't see championing Ornette, admirable as that may be, as cancelling it out.

Things could be very different if you were there witnessing this stuff as it happened.

Part of my problem with Williams re. Coltrane is that I have the sense that he never was able to hear John Coltrane's music - at least post 1960. And That's ok - I just don't think that he should have written about it if it didn't speak to him. I stopped reading his stuff after 1966 or 1967, so perhaps he didn't write much about Coltrane's music as time passed. He must have had the sense that other listeners/critics he respected were moved by Trane's music. (Did he respect other critics?) Perhaps he should have accepted the fact that it just wasn't for his ears.

I never bought the Smithsonian jazz box, but I believe that he only included one recording from Coltrane's post 1960 recordings. (I may be wrong about this. If I am, please correct me.) For me, that's the same thing as if he had written a negative review of Coltrane's music. He might have allowed someone else to have made the choice(s) as to what Coltrane recordings would be included. To my mind, there should have been more than one included.

I find that I'm writing mostly negative things about Martin Williams' writings, and my feelings about his books (at least my memories of them) are much more positive than negative. I don't have any of his books anymore, but I'm going online today and see which of his books my local libarary has and do some reading and rereading.

Personal note: I'm more or less responsible for the sole Coltrane recording that's in the Smithsonian set (at least its first edition; more may have been added down the road). Martin and I were friendly at the time; he got in touch, admitted (not that he needed to) his lack of sympathy for Coltrane's 1960-and-beyond work, and explained that he also had a severe space problem with the Smithsonian set because so many well-regarded later Trane performances would have consumed most or all of an LP side. I suggested "Out of This World" if he had room for it, "Alabama" if he did not. He went with "Alabama."

I don't agree that Martin should not have written about Trane; his lack of sympathy for that music was honestly arrived at position, and, as I said in a previous post, what he didn't hear there and what he said about what he didn't hear there arguably helped one to define better define/understand what was there. He certainly wasn't part of the reactionary crowd who referred to Trane as "anti-jazz."

[felser]

He certainly wasn't part of the reactionary crowd who referred to Trane as "anti-jazz."

I forget the guy's name, but the first jazz criticism book I ever read, in the early 70's from my local public library, was some British guy who considered Coltrane and the Miles Davis Quintent with Hancock/Carter/Williams to be "anti-jazz". It was just awful stuff to read, as 'A Love Supreme' brought me into the jazz world.

[Larry Kart]

He certainly wasn't part of the reactionary crowd who referred to Trane as "anti-jazz."

I forget the guy's name, but the first jazz criticism book I ever read, in the early 70's from my local public library, was some British guy who considered Coltrane and the Miles Davis Quintent with Hancock/Carter/Williams to be "anti-jazz". It was just awful stuff to read, as 'A Love Supreme' brought me into the jazz world.

Might have been poet/jazz fan Philip Larkin's "All What Jazz." Those were certainly views that Larkin held. Here is his "For Sidney Bechet," which conveys a fair bit of Larkin's, quirks, fantasies, prejudices, and affections regarding jazz:

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes

Like New Orleans reflected on the water,

And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

Building for some a legendary Quarter

Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,

Everyone making love and going shares--

Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles

Others may license, grouping around their chairs

Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced

Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,

While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed

Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.

On me your voice falls as they say love should,

Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City

Is where your speech alone is understood,

And greeted as the natural noise of good,

Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.

Edited March 13, 2007 by Larry Kart

[Larry Kart]

Another from Larkin, "This Be The Verse." Not a nice man, by most accounts, but not without wit.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.

They may not mean to, but they do.

They fill you with the faults they had

And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

By fools in old-style hats and coats,

Who half the time were soppy-stern

And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

And don't have any kids yourself.