Larry Kart Posted January 21, 2011 Report Share Posted January 21, 2011 I just merged these two recent Clark and Clark-related threads; sorry if that causes any confusion, but it seemed like the thing to do. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christiern Posted January 21, 2011 Report Share Posted January 21, 2011 Weizy: "...Note to self: must text eldest daughter this afternoon and ask her why her teacher is still perusing my copy of 'Bessie' a full year after she brought it to school? " Sounds like a job for Evelyn Wood! " Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JSngry Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 A sincere question: has a really good, honest account of heroin's role and function in the world of modern jazz been written? Read the porton of Ira Gitler's "Swing To Bop" that deals with the subject and see what you think. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Joe Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 A sincere question: has a really good, honest account of heroin's role and function in the world of modern jazz been written? Read the porton of Ira Gitler's "Swing To Bop" that deals with the subject and see what you think. Ah yes; I've not looked into that book for a long time. Ditto Spellman's 4 LIVES, which is another one I've been thinking of returning to lately. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bertrand Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 This reminds me of Woody Allen's take on Evelyn Woods. I paraphrase: 'Took a speed reading course once. I read 'War And Peace' in an hour - it's about Russia'. Bertrand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jostber Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 An article on the Parisreview story: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/01/sam-stephenson-on-sonny-clark.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 An article on the Parisreview story: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2011/01/sam-stephenson-on-sonny-clark.html Borrowing a line from S.J. Perelman, I should set myself up as a reverse weather vane, to show which way the wind isn't blowing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 More odd, dubious moments from Sam Stephenson's "The Jazz Loft Project": p. xii: "Among the tunes played is 'I Got Rhythm,' composed in 1930 by George Gershwin." How helpful. p, xvi: "Among the tunes played is is the 1926 composition by Ray Henderson 'Bye, Bye Blackbird'"... See above (such instances are present throughout; won't mention them again). p. 3: "Ornette Coleman went there to play the beat-up, idosyncratic Steinway B piano...." "beat-up," yes, but how so "idiosyncratic"? p. 43-4: A matter of taste and strategy, I suppose, but here, as in many other places in the book, several large-format pages are devoted to an account (with substantial quotations from the tape) of what Smith recorded on a particular reel -- in this case a World Series broadcast, a reading on a radio show of William Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, a bit of an opera, and a newsman reporting on the results of the presidential election. Probably we do need to be told with specificity at some point what Smith's taping habits were, but once that's been established, why do we have page after page of this? One suspects that those numerous passages are there essentially to fill out the book, to set off the photographs with text of some sort. P. 167-8: "Late September 1961 "Suddenly someone on the sidewalk ... whistles a distinctive, piercing call from his lips. "Smith: 'Frank [Amoss], there's a chuck-will's-widow out there. "There is the whistle call again. It's a near perfect mimic of the chuck-will's-widow, a nocturnal bird ... that inhabits the swamps of the South in the summer. [Reasonable speculation follows that Smith knew this call from his youth in Wichita, Ks.].... "Frank Amoss: 'That was Walter Davis Jr. and Frank Hewitt trying to get in here [i.e. one of them was the whistler]. "Davis and Hewitt were both African-American pianists....Davis was born in Richmond, Virginia, and Hewitt in New York. Davis probably whistled the bird call, given his Southern childhood, but Hewitt could have visited Southern relatives as kid, too. [OK --NOW GET THIS, WHICH FLOWS DIRECTLY FROM THE ABOVE.] Ironically, on September 29 Robert Shelton published in the New York Times the first-ever notice of a young new artist named Bob Dylan, who performed at Gerde's Folk City that same week. Shelton wrote: 'He is consciously trying to recapture the rude beauty of a southern field hand musing in melody on his porch.' Surely, Minnesota native Dylan wouldn't have known firsthand the call of a chuck-will's-widow." Surely... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 P.S. I believe that Dylan also was not present when the Versailles Treaty was signed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Gould Posted January 22, 2011 Report Share Posted January 22, 2011 What I think needs to be remembered is that Smith was famous for his photography, and that the jazz connection simply gave another hook, or a second audience, for what is meant mostly as a book of photography. I totally agree with Larry about the lack of serious attention paid to the music on the tapes, which is why after I received this book two Christmases ago, I sold it here. Seeing the photos was nice, but there was nothing in the text that made me want to keep it and of course no accompanying CD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Denis Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 This is what makes this board so great. We can commiserate on our music library. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 23, 2011 Report Share Posted January 23, 2011 Links to a 2009 NPR-WYNC radio series om the 6th Ave. Jazz Loft: http://www.wnyc.org/shows/fishko/jazzloft/ So far, to my tastes, of course, I found episode four, which focuses on Hall Overton, to be the most interesting and effective -- not only because Overton is interesting in himself but also because it has less of that "celebration of randomness," "here's a zoo of far-out bohemians" feel than the other episodes do. The passage toward the end of this episode where Lee Konitz speaks of how he visited the dying Overton in the hospital just to hold his hand is very moving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Kart Posted January 24, 2011 Report Share Posted January 24, 2011 Another little gem from "The Jazz Loft Project," p. 231: "But those bars [in which jazz musicians played "in the so-called golden age" of jazz] were hellholes, and the musicians, especially the African-American musicians, were jerked around. The clientele for these dingy joints were posing hipsters or disappointed men who hated their bosses and took advantage of their secretaries, like the characters in a Richard Yates novel." "...posing hipsters or disappointed men who hated their bosses and took advantage of their secretaries, like the characters in a Richard Yates novel." -- well, that's it then; case closed. OTOH, I don't doubt Sam Stephenson's ability to detect a posing hipster at twenty paces. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Christiern Posted January 24, 2011 Report Share Posted January 24, 2011 What a ridiculous observation. I suppose he went around interviewing the patrons--how else, in those pre Psychic Friends Network days, would he know. Does he mention the dressing room? That's what immediately struck me as an insult. I recall Cecil Taylor having to change clothes between racks in the cloakroom at Slugs, and the one at Pep's, in Philadelphia, was a dump. Even the Apollo Theater had filthy, uninviting dressing rooms. They were not even fit for posing hipsters with unfulfilled expectations. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllenLowe Posted January 25, 2011 Report Share Posted January 25, 2011 I sure wish I had a secretary - I didn't realize they were so easy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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