Fisk Jubilee Quartet: ALBUM OF THE YEAR

[MomsMobley]

http://www.archeophone.com/product_info.php?products_id=104

Moms knows best.

And yeah, it was real tough to choose between this and, say, "Bitches Fucking Brew" in mono etc ad nauseum.

Biggest collective goddamn LIE-- either by commission or ignorance-- in American musical history is about "jazz" and "blues" primacy etc.

Allen "78 & 1/2 Won't Do" Lowe has been among the few to INSIST on contemporaneity and continuum but how many others have faked it, over and over and over again? Granted, access was long lost or-- often-- denied to recordings of 1890s-1910s but even the slightest thought should have revealed the duplicities.

Nonsense blather about Robert Johnson as anything special ** except ** a superb musician/performer being best known example but there are many many others--

Most interesting, perhaps, are the Wilbur Sweatman acolytes (I am one) versus the ODJB buffs (I'm one too), both of whom are largely ignored or discredited by, say, the Giddinsite dipshits-at-large.

Pha Terrell greater than Sharon Jones funkytown criers can ever imagine also but that's discussion for another time.

p/s: Marc Blitzstein + Paul Robeson >>>>>> pretty much everything

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBqPFb9YorI

[J.A.W.]

And yeah, it was real tough to choose between this and, say, "Bitches Fucking Brew" in mono etc ad nauseum.

I wonder why native English speakers so often use the wrong spelling of ad nauseam...

[cih]

Thanks for the heads up - it'll be in my Christmas stocking for sure. just received today Document's Bryant's Jubilee Quartet, Biddeville Quintette and Dunham Jazz & Jubilee so I'm revved up for this one

Edited October 14, 2010 by cih

[papsrus]

http://www.archeophone.com/product_info.php?products_id=104

Moms knows best.

And yeah, it was real tough to choose between this and, say, "Bitches Fucking Brew" in mono etc ad nauseum.

Biggest collective goddamn LIE-- either by commission or ignorance-- in American musical history is about "jazz" and "blues" primacy etc.

Allen "78 & 1/2 Won't Do" Lowe has been among the few to INSIST on contemporaneity and continuum but how many others have faked it, over and over and over again? Granted, access was long lost or-- often-- denied to recordings of 1890s-1910s but even the slightest thought should have revealed the duplicities.

Nonsense blather about Robert Johnson as anything special ** except ** a superb musician/performer being best known example but there are many many others--

Most interesting, perhaps, are the Wilbur Sweatman acolytes (I am one) versus the ODJB buffs (I'm one too), both of whom are largely ignored or discredited by, say, the Giddinsite dipshits-at-large.

Pha Terrell greater than Sharon Jones funkytown criers can ever imagine also but that's discussion for another time.

p/s: Marc Blitzstein + Paul Robeson >>>>>> pretty much everything

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBqPFb9YorI

Good call, Moms.

Can't speak from any informed point of view on Mr. Work, but I hear you. And I'll hear this.

[AllenLowe]

thanks, Moms, and I do get annoyed when jazz is called America's classical music.

[Chuck Nessa]

Me too.

[JSngry]

Definitely something to file under Be Careful What You Ask For...

Then again, it's all old music by now, so I really don't see why at this stage of the game the Fiskers are intrinsically more "essential"/"important"/"interesting"/whatever than Bitches Brew.

Methinks the math doth protest too much...

Pha Terrell greater than Sharon Jones funkytown criers can ever imagine...

Why?

I mean really - why?

What does "greater than" really mean as a quantifiable quality?

[Jim Alfredson]

Because music is a competitive sport, Jim. Don't you know that?

[JSngry]

Life is a competitive sport, Jim. I just want somebody who declares a winner to tell me what the rules are, and to show me how they apply equally to and in balanced consideration of all contestants.

Then again, you don't get that in life anywhere else, why should you in music, eh?

Life is a competitive sport, Jim. I just want somebody who declares a winner to tell me what the rules are, and to show me how they apply equally to and in balanced consideration of all contestants.

Then again, you don't get that in life anywhere else, why should you in music, eh?

[MomsMobley]

Actually, I meant >>>>>>as QUANTITATIVE statement tho' I dame sure mean it qualitatively as well. But let's take Sharon Jones, a second-rate soul/funk has-been who stayed spry long enough to get her picture taken with snappy dressing white boys. Or let's be generous and say she got better-- it happens, sometimes. But no matter: enjoy it or don't. I don't.

Now take Pha Terrell. What do we know of him, by comparison? A fucking halfwit like Will Friedwald can openly mock him (in "Jazz Singing," the other half of which is pretty good). Dozens of other people cringe if they recognize his name yet if you wanna talk "soul"-- and you, Brother Sngry rarely shy from such discussion-- Pha was, if not THEE man, one of 'em.

"Le jazz smooth" as Hugues Pannassie called it didn't start with Nat King Cole ** or ** Henry Burr.

You might be alive tonight but you live, intellectually and aesthetically, in ALL TIMES. That is why Sal Nistico qualitatively >>>>>>>>>>> all Branford combined, ever, and that's why Pha Terrell matters more than EVERY Miles Davis re-re-re-re-re-issue from now until the heat death of the omniverse.

If you can, for even an hour, try to imagine what Pha Terrell's life was like (it was very interesting), or the joy his listeners felt, or how big his eyes bugged out the first time he saw Mary Lou Williams' lusciously secular organ grinder--

The rules are we live in an age where history is grander and more accessible than ever before; that has its perils-- lack of concentration being one-- but the old bullshit "verities" are just that, and pleasures of convenience (Sharon Jones) really ain't that pleasurable by comparison with MANY possible others.

Moms

Life is a competitive sport, Jim. I just want somebody who declares a winner to tell me what the rules are, and to show me how they apply equally to and in balanced consideration of all contestants.

[JSngry]

If you can, for even an hour, try to imagine what Pha Terrell's life was like (it was very interesting), or the joy his listeners felt, or how big his eyes bugged out the first time he saw Mary Lou Williams' lusciously secular organ grinder--

Oh, so it comes down to projecting one's self into A Dead Negro Fantasy Involving Sex. Again.

Or some other Dead "Other" Fantasy Involving Sex. Again.

Nothing that can't and doesn't happen anytime there's a scene of anybodies doing anythings. I imagine there's been quite a bit of that in Daptone Land.

So far, nothing but eternal = = = = = = = = = = = =

[MomsMobley]

Guess again, crazy legs. Have you read Frederick Douglass' 4th of July speech? A. Lincoln's letter to John Conkling? Louis M. Gottschalk's memoir?

I'm just goosing the tiresome Mary Lou Williams scholars who wanna take her god bothering, sincere as it mighta been, out of the context from which it was born, whether by inspiration or reaction against.

"Race" has nothing do with it, sex less, although I'll put Gottschalk, Joplin, Fritz Delius, James P. Johnson and William Grant Still (for starters) against any five of your break beat friends. (If this was Iowa we could go girls six-on-six.)

Again, I don't want to throw a scholar and a gentleman like Allen Lowe on to the fire but his work and others like it makes a WHOLE LOT of people uncomfortable because all their loud and precious opinions-- once in a while salable ones even, cf. "King of the Detla Blues Singers"-- are demonstrably proven to be so much loud-mouthed horsehit.

Any individual can and will make their own aesthetic decisions +/- this that but go on denying Pha Terrell and you deny more of yourself-- or your potential self-- than you seem willing to admit.

Now if you wanna make something "sexual" about that, I won't tell a soul I love you; the records go round and round.

If you can, for even an hour, try to imagine what Pha Terrell's life was like (it was very interesting), or the joy his listeners felt, or how big his eyes bugged out the first time he saw Mary Lou Williams' lusciously secular organ grinder--

Oh, so it comes down to projecting one's self into A Dead Negro Fantasy Involving Sex. Again.

Or some other Dead "Other" Fantasy Involving Sex. Again.

Nothing that can't and doesn't happen anytime there's a scene of anybodies doing anythings. I imagine there's been quite a bit of that in Daptone Land.

So far, nothing but eternal = = = = = = = = = = = =

Edited October 15, 2010 by MomsMobley

[JSngry]

You might be alive tonight but you live, intellectually and aesthetically, in ALL TIMES. That is why Sal Nistico qualitatively >>>>>>>>>>> all Branford combined, ever, and that's why Pha Terrell matters more than EVERY Miles Davis re-re-re-re-re-issue from now until the heat death of the omniverse.

Seems to me that if I live in ALL TIMES that Pha Terrell only matters more than Miles if Pha Terrell has what I'm looking for at any given moment. It also seems that if I live in ALL TIMES that there might be something in that Daptone bag that speaks of today simply be being of today in today, and if that's the case, and if that's what I'm wanting at any one minute or two out of ALL TIME that I'd be a damn fool to not check it out and work myself up into loose-bowels attack about how could I be such a fool, I could be listening to Pha Terrell for half an hour unstead of Sharon Jones, hell, I can feel the joy just stampeding to make its way out of me, but then thank god the record's over and I can go back in the house and put on some Pha Terrell and pray for the salvation of my poor weak soul.

Seriously?

I love it how you're trying to "expand the continuum" by beating back the present. And yet we're touting the Fisk Jubille singers, who inspired Miles' mom to insist that he attend that august institution, and a whole "vibe" that I think was perhaps one of the ground-stones for Marsailisism. ALL TIME should make you free, not all paranoid and stoopid and shit.

Branford = Sal Nistico - a full-bodied jazz scene in which to apprentice + residual cultural aspirations no doubt fuelled directly or indirectly by Fiskotosis * Branford >>>>>>>>>more prepared to live in his world than Sal Nestico was in his.

And Pha Terrell=Sharon Jones + 21st Century reality - 20th Century necessities./the power of two entirely necessarily differently necessary cult audiences.

The next time anybody hocks a loogie on "black middle class values" I wanna see how quick come the Crisco gets when the talk turns to Fisko.

This is all silly, ya' know. All of. The thought that any of this old shit actually MATTERS TODAY AND BEYOND as anything too much other than one more category of individual cutural signifier. Like we don't have enough already.

Ain't nothing new, ain't nothing old. But there is NOW and there is THEN.

and ther's too damn much math for none of it combined.

Guess again, crazy legs. Have you read Frederick Douglass' 4th of July speech? A. Lincoln's letter to John Conkling? Louis M. Gottschalk's memoir?

I'm just goosing the tiresome Mary Lou Williams scholars who wanna take her god bothering, sincere as it mighta been, out of the context from which it was born, whether by inspiration or reaction against.

"Race" has nothing do with it, sex less, although I'll put Gottschalk, Joplin, Fritz Delius, James P. Johnson and William Grant Still (for starters) against any five of your break beat friends. (If this was Iowa we could go girls six-on-six.)

Again, I don't want to throw a scholar and a gentleman like Allen Lowe on to the fire but his work and others like it makes a WHOLE LOT of people uncomfortable because all their loud and precious opinions-- once in a while salable ones even, cf. "King of the Detla Blues Singers"-- are demonstrably proven to be so much loud-mouthed horsehit.

Any individual can and will make their own aesthetic decisions +/- this that but go on denying Pha Terrell and you deny more of yourself-- or your potential self-- than you seem willing to admit.

Now if you wanna make something "sexual" about that, I won't tell a soul I love you; the records go round and round.

I have to wonder why you are so desperate to "find" your life...has it not yet found you?

[JSngry]

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=MoOGIOQbdPA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8AEou1mAoM

I fail to sense an inherent, non-romanticized "superiority" in either. They both do their thing in their place for their own, but other than that, hey I got ALL TIME & I'll take what I want when I want it, period.

Edited October 15, 2010 by JSngry

[JSngry]

Now, if you want to save people from themselves, put out a hit on these whiny-ass crapatoons and the yahoos who think they're something there that's got more nutritious than a thimbleful of kitten puke.

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=_ujF2sZP8O0

Yeah motherfuckers, we got THIS shit for ALL TIME. Bring on the death! HURRY!

Edited October 15, 2010 by JSngry

[medjuck]

Moms is not proclaiming the superiority of one musician over another but of his taste over yours and that of any writer/critic who actually has a paying gig.

[cih]

The Fisk release, for me, is valuable for various reasons - the notes/book are written by Doug Seroff, who I would love also to write something big on quartets after the 1920 period (his current books frustratingly stop just where you can begin to listen - I know that's kinda the point but he's got so much info..). Also the importance of the group for recording, according to Tim Brooks, the first widely distributed 'serious' African American music (is this what is meant by 'Marsalisism'? genuine question!), with spirituals being parodied at the time - though it depends what is meant by serious I suppose - some of Bert Williams seems pretty deep now!. Thirdly, preservation - John Work's group was (I think...?) kind of a protection of a reputation in peril for the original Fisk singers... and today the large corporations are sitting on a lot of early recordings letting them rot because they're not commercially viable (though not especially for this particular group as I believe Document have done them already)... It'd be interesting to know how much of a market there is for this kind of re-issue, what with Yazoo gone (not really their thing anyway) and Document putting out CDRs

And, most importantly, I like their sound! judging them only on a few records - including the sample on Really The Blues?... speaking of 'album of the year'...

Edited October 15, 2010 by cih

[AllenLowe]

actually Document put out some of the small group Fisks a while ago - also, the regular Fisks (meaning the actual-sized group) recorded for Folkways, I think it was, at some point, in the 1950s, maybe.

And let me point out that Seroff is good, but the definitive book on the Fisk Jubilee Singers was written by Andrew Ward, who just happens to be my brother-in-law.

it's a terrific book and should be read.

Edited October 15, 2010 by AllenLowe

[AllenLowe]

by the way I gotta add that Moms keeps saying the things that need to be said - especially vis a ve the Dap Kings and Sharon Jones, which is really second-rate soul.

[cih]

actually Document put out some of the small group Fisks a while ago

Indeed (like I said )

And let me point out that Seroff is good, but the definitive book on the Fisk Jubilee Singers was written by Andrew Ward, who just happens to be my brother-in-law.

it's a terrific book and should be read.

Noted - thanks, I hadn't heard of it but will go for it...

Edited October 15, 2010 by cih

[JSngry]

the Dap Kings and Sharon Jones, which is really second-rate soul.

You like Jill Scott better? Ledesi? Kem?

Or are you talking about that old soul music that sprang from a time and a place and a social dynamic that really doesn't exist any more? There ain't bonna be no more of that.

As a "retro" act, and nothing else, you can cetainly question the Jones/DapTones. But oddly enough, they've become part of the contemporary pop music palate, which makes it something else altogether different than "just" a retro act. I'm hearing their shit played in dance mixes, alt-rock mixes, all kinds of weird places.

It's the kind of world my folks did not - could not -get their heads around, how what used to mean this now means that. And it keeps on going.

(is this what is meant by 'Marsalisism'? genuine question!)

Simply means putting forth "nice" "middle class" visions as the ideal instead of an ideal.

[jostber]

You also have this great previous collection with John Work III:

http://www.artscenterofcc.com/Spring-fed/JohnWorkIIIRecordingBlackCulture.htm

[Jim Alfredson]

What's funny is that artists don't worry about any of this shit. They just create.

You like it or you don't. Who gives a fuck?

[jlhoots]

What's funny is that artists don't worry about any of this shit. They just create.

You like it or you don't. Who gives a fuck?

Rationality finally enters the discussion.

[cih]

What's funny is that artists don't worry about any of this shit. They just create.

You like it or you don't. Who gives a fuck?

Rationality finally enters the discussion.

sometimes... but there's some pretty bewildering theory written by artists - the trouble comes when it's decided upon before attempting the 'art'