Interesting quote by Michael Cuscuna

[Hot Ptah]

I find Mr. Cuscuna' quote troubling in that he is taking an event, the opening of Studio Rivbea, and grafting onto it a broad, very generalized historical context which it may have had nothing to do with. It could have been just Sam Rivers opening up a new place to play. It did not necessarily "stand for" any grand historical sweep.

It reminds me of people who write things like, "with the breakup of the Beatles, the stage was set in America for the resurgence of the conservative movement which arose out of the ashes of the Goldwater defeat in 1964. Ronald Reagan's election in 1980 sprang from this period of doubt and dissatisfaction of young people with their music as they realized that the Beatles were not going to get back together and they were left with such noisy charlatans as Grand Funk Railroad as the soundtrack to their political and cultural lives. Many became brutally realistic about the world and the end of the 1960s revolutionary ideas, and found the Republican party a hospitable place to rekindle the excited spirit they had once felt from the release of each new Beatles album."

Such writing takes an event, the breakup of the Beatles, and links it to broad historical trends--all written about long after the fact. Actually, the breakup of the Beatles and Reagan's election have nothing to do with each other, or at best there is only a faint linkage in a very limited number of people. I find Cuscuna's quote to be like this.

[Tom Storer]

In other words, Cuscuna is guilty of sloppy thinking as well as sloppy writing. Quite possibly. That quote, just read like that out of whatever context it came from, sounds like Stanley Crouch could have written it--and at the time, he actually did write things just like it (cf. the liner notes to L. Jenkins/R. Ali's "Swift Are the Winds of Life"--from memory, something like "it is becoming quite clear in this music just who can play and who can't"--sounds a lot like "shoving a lot of the screaming pretenders off the stage").

But give him a break--Cuscuna is not Wynton in disguise.

[paul secor]

Jim, I hear what your saying/writing, and I know where you're coming from because I've read what you've posted over the years. The problem is, I don't know where Cuscuna was coming from when he wrote that. And I just see what he wrote as a smear tactic - not much different from what Ira Gitler did a lot of during the 1960's - not much different from the anti-jazz attributed to Trane during the early 60's. There is a difference though. Gitler hated what he heard and named names, and the people who accused Coltrane of playing anti jazz and hate or anger - this is early 60's Trane, mind you - at least said that they were writing about John Coltrane (and Eric Dolphy). If you don't talk about individual musicians, to my mind you're engaging in smear tactics.

As far as "anger and a lack of musicianship", that's a quote from Cuscuna. He put the two of them together.

There were some "dark days" immediately following Trane's death, especially as far as the recording of the new music went, but all of the musicians I mentioned in my previous post were still playing during that time, and not just "venting" and screaming.

The AACM, BAG, and loft musicians brought new aspects to the music, and that was a welcome thing - tho Cuscuna does neglect to mention that Sam Rivers was around for a long time before the loft scene - but there were cats on the NY scene who were doing more than just ""venting". I heard a number of them play live during that time but there are recordings too. You know the records, but in case others don't:

Any of Ornette's records from the mid 60's on

Ayler's Lorrach/Paris recording and his Greenwich Village Concerts

Roswell Rudd's Everywhere - Giuseppi Logan's finest moment, by the way

Don Cherry's Complete Communion, Symphony for Improvisors, Eternal Now, Human Music, Mu 1 & 2

Archie Shepp: Mama Too Tight, The magic of Ju-Ju, The Way Ahead, Yasmina, Blase

Charles Tyler Enemble

Noah Howard at Judson Hall

Cecil Taylor: Unit Structures, Conquistador, Student Studies

Jimmy Lyons: Other Afternoons

Bill Dixon: Intents and Purposes

Marion Brown: Three for Shepp, Porto Novo

Jackie McLean: New and Old Gospel

All 1966 on - some recorded just before Trane's passing, but some of the AACM stuff was recorded before Trane passed too. If the "jazz public" perceived things differently, that doesn't deny the fact that the music was there to be heard. I know - the tree falling in the forest. Hey - sometimes people have to take a walk in the forest.

And if people wanted to hear compositions/arrangements rather than just blowing, they could have listened to Cecil - Into the Hot, Unit Structures, Conquistador;

or Ayler: Greenwich Village Concerts;

or Roswell Rudd: Everywhere;

or Archie Shepp: NY Contemporary Five; Fire Music; Four For Trane; On This Night

or Bill Dixon: Intents and Purposes

or some of George Russell's recordings

If the "jazz public" had listened, they might have heard the New York Art Quartet forshadow (at least to my ears they did) some of what the AACM and BAG brought to the music a few years later.

The music was there - in stores - that's where I bought it. There was no internet or anything like it then.

"Variety" was there before the coming of the loft players (tho they brought more of it). The "jazz public" didn't hear it for various reasons, and that's been a loss for all of us.

The bottom line for me is that, whether intentionally or not, Cuscuna smeared a whole generation of musicians with his statements.

Edited May 7, 2007 by paul secor

[clifford_thornton]

I might be with Paul Secor on this one.

I'm not a player, nor is Cuscuna, and who are we to say that anybody - Jemeel Moondoc, Arthur Doyle, Phill Musra, Bob Ralston - are emotionally excessive or screaming pretenders? I'm into this music at this level because I feel things, and I think, and I have an identification with cats who express similar things to what I know/experience/feel.

Yes, it is a Crouch-like quote. Is that just part of being a critical child of the late '70s/early '80s?

The not naming names thing is pretty unhip, too. Clement Greenberg, in his art criticism of the 1960s, and LeRoi/Amiri Baraka in his writings of that time, certainly named names. Maybe to a fault (did Burton's career suffer? I know Frank Smith's did). But art critics like Michael Fried in the later '60s and into the '70s, only mentioned names when praising. When damning, it was a broad and impersonal swath. Same goes for Crouch and, evidently, Cuscuna (in this case).

Edited May 7, 2007 by clifford_thornton

[sheldonm]

Now I can smell some shit. Same old variety.

[JSngry]

This is going waaaay overboard.

Look - Cuscuna was NYC-based in the late-60s/early 70s. The Mid-Western influx didn't begin unitl, when? 72 or so? 73? NYC being the eternal NYC, I have no doubt that the immediate post-Trane years saw a lot of "empty noise" being made locally, music that was stuck in 1965 and had no vision (or ability) to move beyond that. That's a depressing notion even now, so you can imagine how depressing it was then. (point of historical reference - you hear similar tales about NYC in the early 50s, after the Bop Revolution had cooled off, smack use didn't, and everybody was basically hanging out high playinghte same old Bird shit into the ground. Of course that's not the whole truth, but it's far from being untrue eitehr...)

Ok, now let's look at some names, courtesy of Mr. Secor:

Roswell Rudd's Everywhere - reissue produced by Michael Cuscuna, paired with the material from Cecil - Into the Hot

Archie Shepp - numerous Impulse! reissues produced by Michael Cuscuna

Marion Brown: Three for Shepp, Porto Novo - both reissued/issued in America by Michael Cuscuna

And let's not forget the Albert Ayler Impulse/Freedom sides that Cuscuna was directly/indirectly involved in reissuing/issuing in America

To go beyond that - The AEC's two Atlantic albums - both produced by Michael Cuscuna

Countless Arista/Freedom & Muse (yes - MUSE) new releases by "avant-garde" players either produced or licensed for US release by Michael Cuscuna. In fact, Cuscuna at one point promised (to me, in a letter) to do an Ayler ESP box. This was in 1991 or so, and he was looking for Bernard Stollman.

The whole glorious Anthony Braxton run @ Arista - all produced by Michael Cuscuna.

We could go on...

None of this strikes me as the work of a man who would intentionally "smear" an entire genre of music that he himself has been so invested in over time (in fact, I seem to remember him saying that he was racing/fighting against the "powers that be" to get the more "avant-garde" Impulse sides reissued. Seems to be the story of his life, from the Braxton/Arista series, to the BN LT series, to the Verve material, etc.).

No, I think that this is simply a case of sloppy/lazy writing (as Clem noted very early on, Cuscuna's never been much as a "writer", and besides, when will the cumulative number of BN reissue typos reach four figures, if it hasn't already?). The guy was encapsulating a sense of malaise that was "in the air" at a particular place and time and pimping how Sam's Studio Rivbea was a breath of fresh air to counter that malaise. Reading anything more into than that by anybody who know's Michael Cuscuna's history, past & relatively recent (why would he be getting the Shepp Impulse! sides reissued if he didn't think they still mattered? They sure didn't sell as well as any other number of other things could/did) is just kinda....too much. Waaaaay too much.

I also don't care if Mosaic's done a Four Freshmen set, and/or any other number of sets that run directly counter to the whole "Fire Music" ethos. That's business, and if "we" don't like it, then let's do it on our dime and see how it goes. Good luck!

[Guy Berger]

None of this strikes me as the work of a man who would intentionally "smear" an entire genre of music that he himself has been so invested in over time (in fact, I seem to remember him saying that he was racing/fighting against the "powers that be" to get the more "avant-garde" Impulse sides reissued. Seems to be the story of his life, from the Braxton/Arista series, to the BN LT series, to the Verve material, etc.).

No, I think that this is simply a case of sloppy/lazy writing (as Clem noted very early on, Cuscuna's never been much as a "writer", and besides, when will the cumulative number of BN reissue typos reach four figures, if it hasn't already?). The guy was encapsulating a sense of malaise that was "in the air" at a particular place and time and pimping how Sam's Studio Rivbea was a breath of fresh air to counter that malaise. Reading anything more into than that by anybody who know's Michael Cuscuna's history, past & relatively recent (why would he be getting the Shepp Impulse! sides reissued if he didn't think they still mattered? They sure didn't sell as well as any other number of other things could/did) is just kinda....too much. Waaaaay too much.

[JSngry]

And oh yeah - Arthur Doyle as anything other than a "curiosity" and/or "character" is a figure of comedic proportion & Jameel Moondoc's playing would be infinitely better if he'd simply practice enough to get the unintentional sloppiness out of it. Yes, I can tell.

[JSngry]

Exactly.

[Larry Kart]

...why didn't Larry git more of those gigs?)

edc

ozona, fla

Well, from 1976 or so to 1988 I was writing fulltime about jazz and other things for the Chicago Tribune, which was lots of fun for the most part but also meant that not that many people who didn't read that paper (that would include the whole East Coast, I think) seemed to know or remember who I was. Michael C. and Charlie Lourie did; they asked me to do the notes for the Mosaic Tristano-Konitz-Marsh set. So did my friend Bill Kirchner, who asked me to write a chapter for his "Oxford Companion To Jazz." So did Bob Belden, in his Miles fanatic guise, who remembered a 1969 Down Beat review I'd done of the Lost Quintet at the Plugged Nickel (I think he kept it in his wallet!) and got Sony to ask me to do the notes for the reissue of "Filles de Kilimanjaro." And so did Jim McNeely, who asked me to do the notes for a Vanguard Jazz Orchestra album and a Danish Radio Jazz Orch. album because he liked a review I'd done of an earlier VJO album and also, way back when, what I'd said in a club review about his piano work with Stan Getz. I've also done a few things for some of the younger Chicago guys -- Keefe Jackson, Josh Berman, James Falzone -- whose music I really like. But you can't do liner notes if someone doesn't ask, and I haven't had a writing perch in journalism for a long time now.

Edited May 7, 2007 by Larry Kart

[paul secor]

This is going waaaay overboard.

Look - Cuscuna was NYC-based in the late-60s/early 70s. The Mid-Western influx didn't begin unitl, when? 72 or so? 73? NYC being the eternal NYC, I have no doubt that the immediate post-Trane years saw a lot of "empty noise" being made locally, music that was stuck in 1965 and had no vision (or ability) to move beyond that. That's a depressing notion even now, so you can imagine how depressing it was then. (point of historical reference - you hear similar tales about NYC in the early 50s, after the Bop Revolution had cooled off, smack use didn't, and everybody was basically hanging out high playinghte same old Bird shit into the ground. Of course that's not the whole truth, but it's far from being untrue eitehr...)

Ok, now let's look at some names, courtesy of Mr. Secor:

Roswell Rudd's Everywhere - reissue produced by Michael Cuscuna, paired with the material from Cecil - Into the Hot

Archie Shepp - numerous Impulse! reissues produced by Michael Cuscuna

Marion Brown: Three for Shepp, Porto Novo - both reissued/issued in America by Michael Cuscuna

And let's not forget the Albert Ayler Impulse/Freedom sides that Cuscuna was directly/indirectly involved in reissuing/issuing in America

To go beyond that - The AEC's two Atlantic albums - both produced by Michael Cuscuna

Countless Arista/Freedom & Muse (yes - MUSE) new releases by "avant-garde" players either produced or licensed for US release by Michael Cuscuna. In fact, Cuscuna at one point promised (to me, in a letter) to do an Ayler ESP box. This was in 1991 or so, and he was looking for Bernard Stollman.

The whole glorious Anthony Braxton run @ Arista - all produced by Michael Cuscuna.

We could go on...

None of this strikes me as the work of a man who would intentionally "smear" an entire genre of music that he himself has been so invested in over time (in fact, I seem to remember him saying that he was racing/fighting against the "powers that be" to get the more "avant-garde" Impulse sides reissued. Seems to be the story of his life, from the Braxton/Arista series, to the BN LT series, to the Verve material, etc.).

No, I think that this is simply a case of sloppy/lazy writing (as Clem noted very early on, Cuscuna's never been much as a "writer", and besides, when will the cumulative number of BN reissue typos reach four figures, if it hasn't already?). The guy was encapsulating a sense of malaise that was "in the air" at a particular place and time and pimping how Sam's Studio Rivbea was a breath of fresh air to counter that malaise. Reading anything more into than that by anybody who know's Michael Cuscuna's history, past & relatively recent (why would he be getting the Shepp Impulse! sides reissued if he didn't think they still mattered? They sure didn't sell as well as any other number of other things could/did) is just kinda....too much. Waaaaay too much.

I also don't care if Mosaic's done a Four Freshmen set, and/or any other number of sets that run directly counter to the whole "Fire Music" ethos. That's business, and if "we" don't like it, then let's do it on our dime and see how it goes. Good luck!

Jim - You make a good defense of Michael Cuscuna the producer/reissuer. I too appreciate what he's done with Mosaic, Arista Freedom, Impulse, etc.

But - let's just look at the words he wrote:

QUOTE

...Sam and Bea opened a performance space within their loft which they called Studio Rivbea. The emotional excesses of the sixties had subsided. The influx of creative technically proficient musicians from Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit shoved a lot of the screaming pretenders off the scene. Freedom was no longer equated with anger and lack of musicianship. Studio Rivbea became an incubator for a lot of serious, new developments in experimental jazz and the forerunner of an alternate way of presenting music in New York.

The man used a number of inflammatory and mean spirited phases and sentences to make implications about a group of musicians without naming any names. Where I come from, that's called using smear tactics.

I might add that you don't have to slam one group of musicians in order to pimp another group of musicians. Jim, I don't recall you ever having done that in your posts - generally if you don't have something positive to say about a musician, you don't say anything - and I don't see why you give Michael Cuscuna a free pass to do it.

Probably this whole thing is going "waaay overboard", as you put it. You see what he wrote as sloppy writing, and I see it another way. I do hope that we can agree to disagree. In the end, only Michael Cuscuna knows what he intended.

I'll end my part of this here. I do appreciate what Michael Cuscuna has done for the music over the years, and I've perhaps overreacted to one paragraph that he wrote. I have a tendency to do that when I feel that a person or a group of people have been treated unfairly - part of my nature.

[Tom Storer]

Paul, that paragraph brings one up short, and it's understandable that you should feel somewhat indignant. But to illustrate the pitfalls of reacting to one paragraph quoted out of context, you said...

The AACM, BAG, and loft musicians brought new aspects to the music, and that was a welcome thing - tho Cuscuna does neglect to mention that Sam Rivers was around for a long time before the loft scene

Since the paragraph comes from the liner notes to the Sam Rivers Mosaic set, it's more than likely that Cuscuna did indeed mention the rest of Rivers' career.

Edited May 9, 2007 by Tom Storer

[Guy Berger]

Jim - You make a good defense of Michael Cuscuna the producer/reissuer. I too appreciate what he's done with Mosaic, Arista Freedom, Impulse, etc.

You are selling Jim's defense of Cuscuna short. Jim's point is that interpreting Cuscuna's comment as a blanket smear of the musicians you listed in your earlier post makes no sense, because the guy has been a consistent advocate of their music.

The man used a number of inflammatory and mean spirited phases and sentences to make implications about a group of musicians without naming any names. Where I come from, that's called using smear tactics.

That said, I think this is a legit criticism.

Guy

[RDK]

The man used a number of inflammatory and mean spirited phases and sentences to make implications about a group of musicians without naming any names. Where I come from, that's called using smear tactics.

Technically, I suppose, you are correct, but would you really have preferred if MC actually wrote that he disliked such players as Doyle or Moondoc or Gayle or whomever? Would that have accomplished anything in a piece written in praise of Sam Rivers?

[JSngry]

I really don't see it as a "smear". I see it as one guy carelessy describing a/the "malaise" that was, by many accounts, on the scene at that time. I mean, we now can pull out selected records A, B, & C, put them on, and think, "Yeah, that's the shit right there." But it's a different thing to go out night after night & hear that same thing over and over w/o hearing it really going anywhere. And that thing, that blow-it-all-out style of venting w/o any real compositional contextualization really does not, as a rule, hold up over time as too much other than a totally "in the moment" thing, and after a while there comes a time when enough of those moments is enough to last for a good long while.

"Emotional excesses"? Well, yeah. Venting for the sake of venting is an "emotional excess" if it goes on and on. I think we all appreciate passion and intensity, but let's face it - if it doesn't eventually get "tempered" by something "esthetic", it eventually wears us down. Point of diminishing returns and all that.

"Lack of musicianship"? Well, yeah. There were and all plenty of "free" players who couldn't/can't navigate their instruments in a conventionally "technically proficient" manner. And there are many who can. But if you can't, you had better be able to navigate it in a musical way that posits the existence of an alternative/parallel "technical" universe. And using the instrument to simply vent through honking, squealing, etc. with little or no attention to "finesse points" ain't the way to do it, at least in my mind. Call me a latent reactionary, but "spirit" by itself, no matter how powerful, is not enough to sustain you over the long haul. sooner or later you gotta learn your instrument or else your "spirit" will end up getting stifled by the inability to find its fullest expression.

I'm very much of the impression that the New York "free jazz" scene in the days following the deaths of Trane & Ayler was pretty much a disspirited mess. I've not hear a body of recorded evidence that suggests otherwise, nor have I read contemporaneous accounts that paint a picture of an energetic, healthy creatively evolving scene. It took the influx of the Mid-Westerners to get that going again.

NYC in 1965 was a cauldron of revolutionary creativity. NYC in 1970 was anything but, and it's that scene, that whirlpool turned stagnant, to which I think Cuscuna is alluding, not some blanket condemnation of an entire school/era of musicians. I have absolutely no reason to think otherwise.

[ep1str0phy]

Attempting to remain on the sidelines for this valid v. invalid freedom debate, I've got a couple of notes:

(1) Jim, I think we've had differing opinions on this topic before (re: Arthur Doyle, for example), but a general issue regarding the alleged charlatans (or some less aggressive synonym thereof)--of course there hasn't been much scholarship/historical documentation done on the post-Ayler/Coltrane, pre-loft renaissance NY free scene (some documentation, but not nearly as much as has registered for, for example, the Ornette/Trane/Cecil triumvirate), and I'd like to imagine that my perspective here is a little skewed because of that fact, but I'm of the impression that the scene wasn't that big.

Now, re: who is being talked about whenever someone mentions the excesses of the energy scene--I can't imagine that too many of these folks are off the radar, though it's clear that at least some of them are. Oral and record documentation hasn't exhausted what the free scene was about, but at least the major players are in order--and who else would be worth the criticism than the most prominent voices in the movement? If someone can point to some phantom menace--someone who isn't Doyle, Wright, Cross, Logan, A. Jones, B. Allen, Watts and the like--please tell me, because I'm honestly curious.

(2) Love it as I do, history seems to show that the energy thing was a dead end--come a few years after everyone attempted to digest Ayler, it's either reiteration or new types of construction. The Europeans verged into either jarring reconstruction (involving Eurospecific, nationalistic elements) or total demolition (free improv/non-idiomatic music going into the electroacoustic thing). The midwesterners infused the music with a bent of catholicism--and, after the technical extremes of the energy guys, I think it might be fair to say that the most crucial innovations of the AACM, BAG, etc. were intellectual/stylistic/idiomatic.

As this conversation seems to be getting at/has been getting at, the most onerous element of Cuscuna's words speaks more to a value judgment (i.e., musicians A > musicians B) rather than it's historical understanding--which says a lot about what remain salient, emotional issues in this music (that is, validity and skill).

Edited May 9, 2007 by ep1str0phy

[JSngry]

In the context of what was being discussed (the creation of the "loft scene") I really see nothing "onerous" about it. Sorry, I just don't. He's just saying that the scene was getting tired, that's all, that the "first wave" had run its course. And I have no reason to doubt that that is an accurate enough assessment, no matter how clumsily it's worded. I don't see it as a "value judgement" of an entire ethos or anything like that.

Y'all are free to extrapolate whatever else you want to out of it, but again I say - look at who it is saying this before you presume to assume.

And ask yourself this - was somebody like Byron Allen "equipped" to create a body of work even remotely comprable to somebody like Julius Hemphill? Or Roscoe Mitchell? Or Anthony Braxton? Or even, bumping it down several notches, Luther Thomas?

Yeah, I'm all for "appreciating the individuality of the individual" and all that. But at some point, like it or not, the "big picture" does come into play, and at some point, like it or not, it does matter.

You can bet on it.

[ep1str0phy]

If not onerous, then at the very, very least piquant. For whatever reason, those with the resources and the time to listen really don't seem to have reached the point where A really is > B--and that's not a rip in any direction, and not a reflection of how I think about it--it just seems like a fact granted the hordes of folks who would still (apparently) champion Wright, Doyle, etc. on a level platform with Mitchell, Braxton, etc. I think that contingency exists, which is why this is at all an issue here or anywhere.

For whatever it's worth, I think it's more important that the historical picture makes sense rather than who is painting the picture (although that clearly matters in some cases)--which is why, if our understanding of music of the vintage we're dealing with is going to make any sense, it's more important to evaluate the situation itself than why that situation pisses us off (which is where I'm at, anyway).

[clifford_thornton]

Big picture = bad, vs. Big picture = good.

Small picture = bad, vs. Small picture = good.

Depends on who's painting, and where they dip their brushes.

Byron Allen is "pretty good," but I'm glad he was there...

Explain, though, E, what you mean by the most crucial innovations of the AACM being intellectual/stylistic/idiomatic. I'm not sure yet whether I'd agree with that as not being equally limiting.

[ep1str0phy]

I'm of the mind that the Jostian generalizations regarding the AACM don't really hold water in the long run. Those technical elements that seem particular to the early AACMers, or that they at least popularized--little instruments, improvisation in a rhythmically static environment, extreme dynamic contrast, among others--and, in addition, those perfomative elements (theatricality, certain programmatic elements, the co-optation of dramatic farce) so central to the group ethos, appear in largely variable forms throughout the org's history.

It's to the degree that, if you're going to say something general about the Association--and not specific to Mitchell, Braxton, Lewis, etc.--it's inevitably couched in the idea of an aesthetic/cultural "pan"ism--and this, to a degree that arguably no one (save maybe Rahsaan, who had perhaps purchased too deeply into his jazz crusading to go to some of the outer reaches of where the Association went) had entertained prior. True, certain musical elements seemed to pop up in the AACM psycho-culture some ways before anywhere else, but while other folks (Rahsaan, Bill Dixon, Ornette) had mined similar territory some ways before, the AACM was probably the first to take the idiomatic ideas latent in the final stages of innovation in the energy music sphere (re: Albert Ayler breaking down the basic elements of jazz form, recombining that with obscure folk elements, and recomposing that into something new) to their logical conclusion(s).

"Breaking down barriers" and then doing something with the new living space--asserting beauty, integrity, quality ("Great"), and, simultaneously, identity, self-awareness, and possession ("Black")--is something you can quantify as unique to the AACM in improvised music at that juncture. What makes that lastingly innovative is that it happened after a period of exhuastive innovation, and swelled the music forward--not so much, I'd say, for particular musical ideas rather than the notion that "yes, we can go there"--and, more importantly, that "we can make there there".

Edited May 9, 2007 by ep1str0phy

[AllenLowe]

a few semi-relevant thoughts on this whole debate. THere is a conservative position that says you cannot break the rules unless you know them; what this means is, well, I cannot issue an opinion on that LP until I hear the OTHER Lp of that guy playing "inside;" of course this makes little sense. Is an abstrtact expressionist painting of less value if the painter cannot do a still life? On the other hand, I'll bet that Pollock drew very well in a representational way. But Duke Jordan could not play stride and neither could Al Haig. So not everyone can do every particular style in a comfortable way. And one of the most interesting things in this realm was told to me years ago by Dave Schildkraut, citing another musician, and I quote:

"he told me 'I never felt comfortable with bebop, never felt I could play that style and never felt I could be a jazz musician until I heard Coltrane and realized there was another way I could fit in'."

HE was....Joe Henderson. Certain not a guy weak on fundamentals.

Edited May 9, 2007 by AllenLowe

[Dan Gould]

THere is a conservative position that says you cannot break the rules unless you know them; what this means is, well, I cannot issue an opinion on that LP until I hear the OTHER Lp of that guy playing "inside;" of course this makes little sense.

I may be wrong, but I could swear that Jim Sangrey was just called "conservative".

[JSngry]

No, not at all. I don't believe that you have to be a master of the old to delve into the new, or even that you have to know the old to do it. You can, however, save yourself a lot of time, energy, & unnecessary duplication of labor by doing so, but at the same time you can also waste a lot of time, energy, & get caught up in a helluva lot of unecessary duplication of labor by focusing on what's already been done damn near perfectly. So no, I'm not a holder of that "conservative" position, although I will say that knowledge in and of itself never hurt anybody. Tools is useful.

All I ask of anybody is that they know what they are doing, and that includes why they are doing. If that's in place, then it's all fair.

What's also fair is if/when musical/societal evolution reaches a point where it's time to move on/beyond and you get "left behind" if you're not "equipped" to do so. That's not a reflection of the "value" of what you have relative to the time you got it, it's just a fact of life, and not just in music.

[paul secor]

And ask yourself this - was somebody like Byron Allen "equipped" to create a body of work even remotely comprable to somebody like Julius Hemphill? Or Roscoe Mitchell? Or Anthony Braxton? Or even, bumping it down several notches, Luther Thomas?

I've said what I have to say about the Michael Cuscuna quote - where I stand on that is where I stand.

I can ask myself, but I think that it would be pretty presumptuous for me to decide who is "equipped" to create a body of work. I will say to my ears, Byron Allen could play. I bought his ESP recording 42 years ago and it still speaks to me today. And I didn't realize that creating a body of work was a prerequisite to playing, or that a musician had to create a body of work before listeners could appreciate, enjoy, or love their music.

[AllenLowe]

ah, Gould is trying to stir up trouble again....

as I understand Jim's post, he was saying nothing of the kind. My own feelings on this are complicated - I often find musicians who produce some wonderful things and than seem to fade out creatively - and it often occurs to me that an "uneducated" musician will often have this happen to him/her becaue they have so little to fall back on for development or inspiration. In other words, one listens to all that other music and one learns the "literature" not for "legitamacy" but in order to nourish one's own sources of inpiration and change. Without these other resources to fall back on there is often a very sudden artistic failure (and I won't name names here; I'm with Cuscuna on this); when I look at some of the geniuses I admire in other forms I see how they approached history - take George Buchner, who was one of the greatest dramatic geniuses ever, comparable to Shakespeare IMHO - and he literally invented a new form of theater - and he was completely steeped in the classic forms. For a musician, this does not mean he/she has to play in those forms, but it certainly helps to know they exist. I am regularly discouraged by a current generation's a-historicism. Every time, for example, I listen to the radio show This American Life I am astounded by the repetition of ideas and forms I have heard before, but which those who are doing the repeating think are new and novel.

the problem in this age of Marsalis/Crouch is that "tradition" has become a means of regression instead of progress. But I think of Jaki Byard, who was truly forever young, always listening and always absorbing things. One has to get older, but one does not have to become "old" -

Edited May 9, 2007 by AllenLowe