More Keepnews reissues

[jazzbo]

The most recent really great set of liner notes I've read. . . were Chris A's for the Basie Verve Mosaic set. Outstanding!

Very little else has been too impressive. (I'm pretty sure the Ellington and Berry Mosaics of recent times have really good notes, I've listened to the sets a lot but not really read the notes; just hard to get interested in liner notes like I used to).

I used to devour liner notes, pore over them. . . now I rarely spend too much time with them. That's more a change in me than anything else.

Edited September 7, 2007 by jazzbo

[mikeweil]

The thing I think is most revealing about the Keepnews notes in this series and others before the series is that he seems to have had more dumb luck than a Lottery winner throughout his career.

I’m not against the guy being proud of being involved in some great music during Jazz’s so called classic years, but come on, a lot of it, if not most of it, would have happened without him anyway. For example there is no way Monk would have continued to be ignored for the whole of his career, when so many musicians rated him so highly during the 50's, and he only really "made it" when he went to Columbia.

I'm afraid you're right, but I'm still glad he did what he did.

Edited September 7, 2007 by mikeweil

[CJ Shearn]

And they are releasing thew 2fers with those crappy 70's LP covers too.............. Thats really crappy the Burrell doesn't have the bonus tracks of the OJC

[skeith]

I picked up Ezz-thetics because I love that album. The sound is definitely clearer and brighter, may be too much so for some- but I like it.

[Niko]

surprised nobody but me talks about all those photos of Keepnews in the booklets... (only have the Dorham and that booklet got two... while in his liner notes there is something interesting here and there, the same isn't really true for the photos...)

[Big Al]

surprised nobody but me talks about all those photos of Keepnews in the booklets... (only have the Dorham and that booklet got two... while in his liner notes there is something interesting here and there, the same isn't really true for the photos...)

Oh, it's been discussed in other threads about the Keepnews series. I'm sure if you do a search on Keepnews, you'll find it.

Me personally, with the few Keepnews CDs I've gotten, I've replaced the clear tray with a black tray. Not that I want to look at OK's mug in the first place, but that is one butt-ugly picture of the man!

[Christiern]

It's still a neck and neck race between him and good old Ira for most pointless liner notes...........EVER. :rolleyes:

Are you kidding? They're ahead of Leonard Feather???? When did that happen?

I think it's a given that everyone is ahead of Leonard Feather.

Apropos the ego and exaggerated credit that mars Orrin's notes and has now been compared to Leonard Feather's. Here's an exchange I had with the latter when he took a dim view of me not mentioning him in notes for a Verve Dinah Washington reissue. I think some of you may have seen these letters a few years back, when I first posted them, and I apologize for the rerun.

[Larry Kart]

Chris -- I've heard tales of Leonard's, shall we say, personality, but I'd never encountered him in his own semi-private words before. Wow.

Actually, I did have one passing encounter with LF at work that matches up with his review of your Bessie Smith biography. Back in 1988 I wrote a very negative review of "The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz." Then, I don't recall from whom, I got a copy of the fairly thick, slick-paper program from the L.A.-based Playboy Jazz Festival. In the program was a piece (not written by LF but by one his young acolytes; LF played a prominent role in the festival) in which my review was quoted from extensively and was praised for its accuracy, wit, etc. This all seemed a bit odd and shoe-horned in -- why was there an article in a Playboy Jazz Festival program that focused on a book review written several months before for the Chicago Tribune? -- but after a minute, I figured it out. "The New Grove" was the chief rival of LF's "The Biographical Enycylopedia of Jazz," and LF wanted to take down "The New Grove," though he was aware that a direct assault by him on "The New Grove" in this context would be seen as self-serving. So he got this acolyte to write a piece in which abundant references were made to a negative review of "The New Grove" by a third party. Neat.

[AndrewHill]

It's still a neck and neck race between him and good old Ira for most pointless liner notes...........EVER. :rolleyes:

Are you kidding? They're ahead of Leonard Feather???? When did that happen?

I think it's a given that everyone is ahead of Leonard Feather.

Apropos the ego and exaggerated credit that mars Orrin's notes and has now been compared to Leonard Feather's. Here's an exchange I had with the latter when he took a dim view of me not mentioning him in notes for a Verve Dinah Washington reissue. I think some of you may have seen these letters a few years back, when I first posted them, and I apologize for the rerun.

Was Leonard Feather really that full of himself? Unreal.

[kh1958]

Oh, to have been there when he read the reply letter.

[Cliff Englewood]

RE Leonard Feather, in the immortal words of Eric Cartman, "Jesus-Rollerskating-Christ".

[Kalo]

That Feather letter is flabbergasting!

An acquaintance once showed me a letter he'd received from the wine critic Robert M. Parker, Jr. that bore a comparable load of ego and umbrage. Wish I'd got a copy of it.

[CJ Shearn]

wow..... those were great, not unlike academic scholars going at it--well, jazz history for me and my interest in it approaches the academic, but wow. OK has a big ass ego, I don't doubt he's produced wonderful things like "Monk's Music", the Tyner Milestone stuff, but Leonard Feather whose liners I find entertaining, his ego there was nuts.

[Big Al]

wow..... those were great, not unlike academic scholars going at it--well, jazz history for me and my interest in it approaches the academic, but wow. OK has a big ass ego, I don't doubt he's produced wonderful things like "Monk's Music", the Tyner Milestone stuff, but Leonard Feather whose liners I find entertaining, his ego there was nuts.

At least OK earned a portion of his ego by helping start a label and actually work with the artists involved. What did Feather ever do, based on Albertson's letter, besides write a book and allegedly write some songs?

[Chuck Nessa]

Feather, an Englishman, came to the US and worked tirelessly to promote jazz. He did a lot of good. Sadly, and to his detriment, he never missed an opportunity to promote himself, his songs and his accomplishments. This took a darker side later when he tried to kill careers of folks not "playing ball" with him.

His memory would be a bunch kinder if not for his greedy personality.

I was banned from AAJ for commenting on the quality of his daughter's talent. Leonard is dead but I'm still banned.

[Larry Kart]

wow..... those were great, not unlike academic scholars going at it--well, jazz history for me and my interest in it approaches the academic, but wow. OK has a big ass ego, I don't doubt he's produced wonderful things like "Monk's Music", the Tyner Milestone stuff, but Leonard Feather whose liners I find entertaining, his ego there was nuts.

At least OK earned a portion of his ego by helping start a label and actually work with the artists involved. What did Feather ever do, based on Albertson's letter, besides write a book and allegedly write some songs?

That's a tough call, between LF and OK. As Chuck says, LF did a lot of good and other things that were not good. In the former category, in addition to his assiduous and often valuable journalism, LF produced a number of recordings, organized concerts, and played significant roles in the early careers of Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and (especially) George Shearing -- though how significant his role was in Washington's case is, as we know, a matter of some dispute. In the latter category, in addition to his bodacious ego and Machiavellian ways, LF's championing of modern jazz in the mid-1940s definitely had its dark side, because LF felt that championing etc. demanded that much so-called traditional jazz be sneered at. Thus, for example, in LF's scheme of things Jelly Roll Morton was an incompetent fraud, a "fact" that LF never ceased to proclaim. In the annoying "moldy fig" versus "progressive" wars of the '40s, which wasted so much energy, polluted the atmosphere, and were even hurtful to some musicians, LF was among the key figures. Oh, yes -- his Blindfold Tests (an idea that I'm pretty sure LF originated; he certainly claimed so, and I don't recall anyone weighing in to the contrary) were often marred by LF playing bad and/or unrepresentative recordings by musicians he didn't like and which he hoped would then be put down by the musician taking the Blindfold Test.

As for OK, Chris's accounts here and elsewhere of OK's work at Riverside make it clear that in his view, which I trust, Bill Grauer, not OK, was the key figure there, and that at recording sessions in particular OK was seldom a significant party and sometimes a person who hampered things. It's my impression that OK's later career in the jazz record biz has been in tune with that estimate.

[Randy Twizzle]

Back in 1988 I wrote a very negative review of "The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz." .

Twenty years later it still remains very negative:

Copyright Chicago Tribune Co. Dec 11, 1988

All we ask of a reference work is that everything be included that should be there and that none of that everything be wrong.

Of course, measured against that simple standard, all reference works must fail-not only because one person's "everything" is another's mass of useless detail, but also because one expert's fact or shrewd conjecture is another's dubious assertion or outright lie.

Yet if no reference work can be perfect, we do expect relative virtue- especially when, as is the case with the just published, two-volume, 1,360- page "The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz" (Macmillan, $295), we are assured of the work's "consistency and accuracy" and told that it is the "one authoritative reference source . . . you've been waiting for."

All right, let's not mince words. "Jazz Grove" (as it will be referred to here) is a near-total disaster, a job so horribly botched that one winces at the thought that it might be taken as "authoritative."

But that is the gist of the problem. However bad it is, "Jazz Grove" is almost certain to be purchased by many public, high school and college libraries-given the longstanding need for a reference work that does what "Jazz Grove" purports to do and the praise that has been accorded its predecessors: the sixth edition of "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians" (published in 1980 in 20 volumes) and "The New Grove Dictionary of American Music" (which emerged in four volumes in 1986).

Edited by a young musicologist named Barry Kernfeld-who is based at the State College of Pennsylvania and who himself contributed 179 of its more than 4,500 entries-"Jazz Grove" is such a mess that one hardly knows where to begin. But let's start with the some 3,000 biographical entries that are (or ought to be) the heart of the work.

In the realm of exclusions and inclusions, what is one to make of a dictionary of jazz that has no entry for Peggy Lee but finds room for Tom Waits and Maria Muldaur? Or one that does not include pianist Hasaan Ibn Ali, baritone saxophonist-composer Gil Melle, bassist Ray Drummond, cornetist Don Joseph and soprano saxophonist Jane Ira Bloom but does make us aware of Estonian guitarist Tiit Paulus-whose "compositions include 'Simmanilugu' (Tune from a village party) and the well-known 'Bluus kahele' (Blues for two), which he has recorded in a duo with the tenor saxophonist Arvo Pilliroog"?

But leaving aside such oddities of choice, by far the most disturbing aspect of "Jazz Grove" is what is and isn't said about the figures who are included.

The format for a useful biographical entry in "Jazz Grove," or any music dictionary-encylopedia, would seem to be simple enough: a chronological account of notable events in the artist's career, followed by an accurate description of his or her music and a sound critical estimate of its historical significance and esthetic worth-the latter two factors determining the entry's length. And that is the format followed in "Jazz Grove" by such knowledgeble writers as Max Harrison, Michael James, Dan Morgenstern and Martin Williams.

Here, for example, is the conclusion of one of Harrison's entries: "(Serge) Chaloff was an important figure of the bop movement and one of the most significant improvisers on the baritone saxophone. Early performances such as 'The Most' (1949) show him to have been a virtuoso, while others, for example 'Gabardine and Serge' (1947), demonstrate the logic of his improvising and its often somber emotional content. Despite illness he continued to advance during the 1950s, adding to his style an integral use of dynamic and tonal shading and carefully varied degrees of intensity."

But because writers of Harrison's sort appear all too seldom in "Jazz Grove," decent biograpical entries are few and far between. More common are those that (a) make no attempt to assess a musician's historical and esthetic importance or (b) do it so ineptly that one wonders if the writer even knows the music of the person being written about.

Useless and frustrating though they are, entries of the first sort (the ones on soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy, tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray and trombonist-composer Grachan Moncur III are typical) don't lend themselves to detailed condemnation. One merely notes the absence of what ought to be there and moves on.

But breathtakingly wrongheaded entries of the second sort abound in these "authoritative" tomes. And, again, one winces at the thought of how much misinformation "Jazz Grove" may spread.

For instance, editor Kernfeld contributes the following to his entry on tenor saxophonist Flip Phillips: ". . . on tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic (1946-57), he acquired a reputation for his energetic improvisations (notably on 'Perdido'); despite his rather tasteless, honking tone, these performances were popular with audiences. . . ."

But Phillips' performances were popular because of, not despite, what Kernfeld refers to as "his rather tasteless, honking tone." And by no means is that an obscure fact; it is the first thing anyone writing about Flip Phillips ought to know.

An isolated instance, perhaps; a case of a writer momentarily overstepping the bounds of his expertise?

Well, one could go on for pages listing Kernfeld's sins of omission and commission-the entry on alto saxophonist Art Pepper that says nothing about his autobiography, "Straight Life," but does tell us that he was the subject of a documentary film; the entry that claims trumpeter Kenny Dorham "rivaled his greatest contemporaries in technical command" (a gifted melodist, Dorham never was a notable technician); the delirious entry on bassist Ron Carter ("his playing in rhythm sections represents the zenith of improvisation in the bop and modal-jazz styles"); and the egregious armchair-psychoanalyis of the entry that says pianist Bobby Timmons' career "declined rapidly because of alcoholism, possibly brought on by artistic frustration."

When it comes to retailing the inane, the inadequate and the just-plain bizarre, Kernfeld-author of the Ph.D dissertation "Adderley, Coltrane and Davis at the Twilight of Bebop: The Search for Melodic Coherence (1958-59)"- has many cohorts, most of whom, apparently, are fellow academics.

There is Steven Strunk on composer-arranger Manny Albam ("his compositions appeal to a broad public"), Andrew Waggoner on trombonist Curtis Fuller ("his rhapsodic sense of rhythm is inspired by the pulses of language"), Leroy Ostransky on tenor saxophonist Al Cohn ("he played in an uncomplicated style, employing regular phrase lengths and idiomatic bop figures") and trumpeter Joe Newman ("the energy and quiet strength of his playing have been praised by critics and musicians alike"), Lawrence Koch on bassist Wendell Marshall ("notable for the ingenious use he made of rising and falling lines"), James Lincoln Collier on Louis Armstrong ("scarred with a deep-seated, lifelong sense of insecurity") and Scott Yanow on alto saxophonist Joe Maini ("He died after losing a game of Russian roulette").

But a special spot must be reserved for Marty Hatch, who informs us that the work of bossa nova singer Astrud Gilberto "often has an economy of melodic line and a steady momentum akin to that of Basie." Right-and did you know that both Pee Wee Herman and Sir Laurence Olivier use the English language?

On the plus side are the occasional entries by Harrison, James, Williams et al., most of which were picked up from the two previous "Grove" dictionaries, strong new entries on Charlie Parker (by James Patrick) and Art Tatum (by Felicity Howlett) and an ambitious, worldwide list of "Nightclubs and other venues."

But why is there no entry for "Jazz publications," surely an important topic? And why was Collier's stolid account of the history of jazz picked up from "The New Grove Dictionary of American Music," when "The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians" contains Harrison's brilliant survey of the same ground?

The answer to those questions, and to almost everything else that's wrong with "Jazz Grove," would seem to be that incompetent people were asked to do an admittedly difficult job-presumably by people who themselves were not competent to detect the difference between actual and would-be jazz expertise.

It's understandable that the series editor of the "Grove" music dictionaries, Stanley Sadie, and the consultant and managing editors for "Jazz Grove," Alyn Shipton and Rosemary Roberts, would think that the academic world was the place to look for the experts that "Jazz Grove" required. After all, that is where "Grove" had sought and found most of the contributors who had made its previous publications successful.

But if Kernfeld and Co. are the norm, academic jazz scholarship in the United States must be in ghastly shape; the two hefty volumes that make up "Jazz Grove" being littered with errors so gross they should be obvious to most jazz fans of any breadth of experience-although one fears for those who will consult "Jazz Grove" under the assumption that whatever it says must be fact.

So "let the buyer beware" hardly seems an adequate response to the advent of "Jazz Grove." "Let there be no buyers" is more like it.

CAPTION:

[Big Al]

wow..... those were great, not unlike academic scholars going at it--well, jazz history for me and my interest in it approaches the academic, but wow. OK has a big ass ego, I don't doubt he's produced wonderful things like "Monk's Music", the Tyner Milestone stuff, but Leonard Feather whose liners I find entertaining, his ego there was nuts.

At least OK earned a portion of his ego by helping start a label and actually work with the artists involved. What did Feather ever do, based on Albertson's letter, besides write a book and allegedly write some songs?

That's a tough call, between LF and OK. As Chuck says, LF did a lot of good and other things that were not good. In the former category, in addition to his assiduous and often valuable journalism, LF produced a number of recordings, organized concerts, and played significant roles in the early careers of Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and (especially) George Shearing -- though how significant his role was in Washington's case is, as we know, a matter of some dispute. In the latter category, in addition to his bodacious ego and Machiavellian ways, LF's championing of modern jazz in the mid-1940s definitely had its dark side, because LF felt that championing etc. demanded that much so-called traditional jazz be sneered at. Thus, for example, in LF's scheme of things Jelly Roll Morton was an incompetent fraud, a "fact" that LF never ceased to proclaim. In the annoying "moldy fig" versus "progressive" wars of the '40s, which wasted so much energy, polluted the atmosphere, and were even hurtful to some musicians, LF was among the key figures. Oh, yes -- his Blindfold Tests (an idea that I'm pretty sure LF originated; he certainly claimed so, and I don't recall anyone weighing in to the contrary) were often marred by LF playing bad and/or unrepresentative recordings by musicians he didn't like and which he hoped would then be put down by the musician taking the Blindfold Test.

Thanks for that; I honestly didn't know.

[Big Al]

Getting the thread back on topic, though, has anyone heard the new ones?

[Christiern]

Many years ago, the late Carl Jefferson asked me how he was doing, so far. I told him that I liked most of his Concord releases, but there was one that puzzled me. "I bet I know which one," he said, "Lorraine Feather." I told him that he was right, so he explained that he had been blackmailed into doing that album by Leonard, who regularly used his column to get work: no work (liner note assignments, etc.) no mention in the column. "You know how that goes with Leonard," Carl added. I did.

Now, to answer Big Al's question: Not yet.

[BruceH]

Now I know what all those bad rumours about Leonard Feather are based on. Yikes!

[jazzbo]

I'm hoping to get a few in the mail in the next few days. . .

[DMP]

You wouldn't go wrong with any of them. Especially glad to have the Tyner again. The Monk and Russell should be part of any collection, and I assume most people here already own some version of them, although you might want to get them again for the sound (and, in the case of Russell, the extra tracks). The notes (and I appear to be the only person who likes them) are the usual horn-blowing with some good stories.

[bertrand]

Are those extra tracks on iTunes? Too fucking tired to look right now - work is killing me.

[ejp626]

You wouldn't go wrong with any of them. Especially glad to have the Tyner again. The Monk and Russell should be part of any collection, and I assume most people here already own some version of them, although you might want to get them again for the sound (and, in the case of Russell, the extra tracks). The notes (and I appear to be the only person who likes them) are the usual horn-blowing with some good stories.

I am waiting on the Tyner, which I never owned. I have the rest in one form or another, though I am having trouble finding out much about the two bonus tracks on Ezz-thetics, specifically the personnel. As already noted if this is left-over from Stratus Seekers it isn't quite as interesting as a version with Dolphy, which would be worth seeking out. Ah well, I guess all will be revealed soon.