white englishman explains Coltrane '66

[Joe]

Why was this published in the NYRB at all? (I suspect it has to do with Dyer's personal connection there.)

Something rather Larkin-like about GD's weak-tea protestations. Back to the future, I suppose.

[Steve Reynolds]

Yeah, that's the thing: whether or not one "likes" this recording (or any recording) doesn't matter if the artist's conviction comes through. There are things I don't particularly "like" or "get" that I completely respect and feel no reason to denigrate.

Very important point.

It took me over a decade to get through 20 minutes of music that had Derek Bailey playing on.

I picked up Topography of the Lungs at the 9/9/14 Evan Parker show.

I havn't been able to grasp it to any extent as of yet and I've been seriously listening to EP for about 15 years. My first impression is that it is bruising awkward improvisation that has the musicians sounding nowhere near as good as they would a decade or two later (at least Parker & Bennink).

So I either give up and move on or I revisit when I feel the time is right.

And this is regarding Evan Parker - maybe my favorite saxophonist

We get this GUY making comments (the ones that Larry copied) when he has shown no inkling of understanding what else was happening then (AAOC, AACM, Little Theatre Club in London, the circle of musicians in Germany - Brotzmann, Von Schlippenbach, etc.)

I realize at that time, very little was known or heard about regarding any of the above - but if one is writing NOW, one should be informed.

Let alone the great history of post-Coltrane free jazz/avant-garde.

[JSngry]

Just finished going over the original owner's manuals as well as all subsequent service bulletins and nowhere is it as much as implied that a critique of a record review must or even should be in the form of an alternate record review, especially when the record review being critiqued contains so damn little reviewing of the record of itself in lieu of a boorish, turdish smuggery of the sort generally borne from clipped-wing tools gladly being so toolclipped and then flexing their grounding in celebration thereof.

[clifford_thornton]

I don't think I grasped Evan Parker when I first heard his music, either. But I've come to greatly admire his work.

Topography is a great record, although I don't put it in the same category as later releases (Parker/Guy/Lytton forward). It's REALLY uncouth music! Like I said, put it alongside Nipples and the first few ICP records, they're of a piece.

[Steve Reynolds]

I don't think I grasped Evan Parker when I first heard his music, either. But I've come to greatly admire his work.

Topography is a great record, although I don't put it in the same category as later releases (Parker/Guy/Lytton forward). It's REALLY uncouth music! Like I said, put it alongside Nipples and the first few ICP records, they're of a piece.

I love Nipples and More Nipples

Less condensed and more open than TOTL

[Larry Kart]

Not with you on reading of 'the' ,,,

What reading of "the"?

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Just finished going over the original owner's manuals as well as all subsequent service bulletins and nowhere is it as much as implied that a critique of a record review must or even should be in the form of an alternate record review, especially when the record review being critiqued contains so damn little reviewing of the record of itself in lieu of a boorish, turdish smuggery of the sort generally borne from clipped-wing tools gladly being so toolclipped and then flexing their grounding in celebration thereof.

Just finished going over the original owner's manuals as well as all subsequent service bulletins and nowhere is it as much as implied that a critique of a record review must or even should be in the form of an alternate record review, especially when the record review being critiqued contains so damn little reviewing of the record of itself in lieu of a boorish, turdish smuggery of the sort generally borne from clipped-wing tools gladly being so toolclipped and then flexing their grounding in celebration thereof.

Well, please don't forget this is an Englishman. English jazz criticism has always left a VERY great deal to desire (especially if one likes something like soul jazz, of course).

MG

[clifford_thornton]

I don't think I grasped Evan Parker when I first heard his music, either. But I've come to greatly admire his work.

Topography is a great record, although I don't put it in the same category as later releases (Parker/Guy/Lytton forward). It's REALLY uncouth music! Like I said, put it alongside Nipples and the first few ICP records, they're of a piece.

I love Nipples and More Nipples

Less condensed and more open than TOTL

Fair assessment, though I'd nitpick and say that a tune like "Dogmeat" is very much in line with 1969 Bailey/Bennink music. The recording is a bit crisper/not as "hot" as some of its ilk. Certainly of a more unruly bent than Oxley's CBS dates from the same period. I love hearing Parker on tenor and these early works are a great example of what he was up to on the instrument at that time.

Speaking of Oxley, kind of amazed that Ichnos hasn't been reissued - surely his best LP, no?

Edited October 22, 2014 by clifford_thornton

[colinmce]

Wouldn't know! I lucked into a copy of 4 Compositions For Sextet. Baptised Traveller is terminally troll-priced.

Why was this published in the NYRB at all? (I suspect it has to do with Dyer's personal connection there.)

Something rather Larkin-like about GD's weak-tea protestations. Back to the future, I suppose.

Really part of a larger problem at this echelon. Nobody knows any better so anyone in the circle who wants to speak, can speak. It's no coincidence that those in the circle are artistically conservative, no moreso than when it comes to jazz. How else did a guy like Stanley Crouch become so esteemed?

[clifford_thornton]

yeah, Crouch definitely made friends where it politically suited him. Then again, Outlaws & Gladiators never came out, nor did his early '70s LP with Bobby Bradford and (IIRC) Arthur Blythe, so it's hard to tell how severe the pendulum's swing truly was. Reading his liner notes on the avant-garde records of the period, he was trying to connect that music with an earlier tradition. He certainly - in between bouts of homophobic ranting - seems to be on a similar linear trip with his UCLA lecture album (Ain't No Ambulances for No Nigguhs Tonight). FWIW I actually kind of like that album in a weird way.

I had a CD copy of Baptised Traveller. Gave it to somebody for free I believe... have had a few vinyl copies over the years, they all sound like crap.

[Homefromtheforest]

I'd second the crap motion; I've had 2 noisy copies of "baptized traveller" that both looked perfect visually. I was lucky to find a Japanese pressing on Sony a year back that is dead silent. I have it on CD as well of course along with "4 compositions". "ichnos" is very excellent and is thankfully on RCA so it sounds good...is it his best? Dunno...his two Incus albums from the 70s have got to be up there quality-wise.

[B. Clugston]

New Yorker writer explains Geoff Dyer 2014:

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/coltranes-free-jazz-awesome

"He writes like a club patron who insinuates himself into the company of the musicians between sets, extracts their confidences, observes scenes of intimate horror, and then passes them along—using first names and nicknames—as if to flaunt his faux-insider status. But, when the musicians are back on the bandstand, he never lets them forget that they’re there to entertain him."

[clifford_thornton]

okay, Dyer sucks, but what amazes me is that we're basically still having the 'anti-jazz' debate in 2014/2015.

[Chuck Nessa]

I'm not.

[Larry Kart]

A pretty good line from Richard Brody's piece in the New Yorker that could apply to a lot of people besides Geoff Dyer:

'He asserts the centrality of “tradition” in jazz—as if it needed his defense—and relies on this principle to justify the limits of his taste.'

[danasgoodstuff]

A pretty good line from Richard Brody's piece in the New Yorker that could apply to a lot of people besides Geoff Dyer:

'He asserts the centrality of “tradition” in jazz—as if it needed his defense—and relies on this principle to justify the limits of his taste.'

What he said.

[Big Beat Steve]

A pretty good line from Richard Brody's piece in the New Yorker that could apply to a lot of people besides Geoff Dyer:

'He asserts the centrality of “tradition” in jazz—as if it needed his defense—and relies on this principle to justify the limits of his taste.'

What he said.

This is the sort of discussion that runs in circles and does not really lead anywhere anymore.

I can understand the above statement (certainly also aimed at the Marsalis faction ) but (admittedly because I certainly am far from "all avantgarde" in my own tastes ) it seems to me there is another side of this very coin:

For every one at whom the above statement is aimed there has been at least another one who goes all overboard when it comes to free, avantgarde, post-"you name it" and considers this beginning and end of ALL jazz in a kind of "If you don't dig avantgarde you are nowhere in jazz" attitude to justify the limits of HIS taste.

No, I am not referring to key forumists here, but if you look around and observe closely, those of you who feel concerned by my assertion, isn't it so that in all the decades since the avantgardish late 60s/early 70s there have also been more than enough of those to whom anything that came before hard bop is old hat (there even was a time when even anything that came before fusion, etc. was lumped into that bag, with the possible exception of some fashionable Trane etc.). To this circle of the jazz audience Bird generates maybe some fleeting interest but is not in the center of their radar at all, and whatever styles of jazz existed before bop were definitely considered "moldy figs", and even some listening to Pops or Duke could hardly offset their somewhat unbalanced perception of jazz and their lack of interest in the wider fields of the more "traditional" styles of jazz, regardless of the fact that the evolution of jazz has not only progressed towards free, avantgarde, post-whatever but has evolved concurrently in different directions ever since.

In short, Scott Hamilton and Warren Vaché etc. have always been just as much a legitimate part of a LIVING evolution of jazz as Ayler, Brötzmann et al.

It takes both streams to jazz to form a whole, and while it is understandable that not everybody can and wishes to embrace ALL forms of jazz, each faction ought to be very, very careful when it comes to dismissing as irrelevant or inexistent whatever one doesn't like.

Just my 2c.

[Larry Kart]

A pretty good line from Richard Brody's piece in the New Yorker that could apply to a lot of people besides Geoff Dyer:

'He asserts the centrality of “tradition” in jazz—as if it needed his defense—and relies on this principle to justify the limits of his taste.'

What he said.

This is the sort of discussion that runs in circles and does not really lead anywhere anymore.

I can understand the above statement (certainly also aimed at the Marsalis faction ) but (admittedly because I certainly am far from "all avantgarde" in my own tastes ) it seems to me there is another side of this very coin:

For every one at whom the above statement is aimed there has been at least another one who goes all overboard when it comes to free, avantgarde, post-"you name it" and considers this beginning and end of ALL jazz in a kind of "If you don't dig avantgarde you are nowhere in jazz" attitude to justify the limits of HIS taste.

No, I am not referring to key forumists here, but if you look around and observe closely, those of you who feel concerned by my assertion, isn't it so that in all the decades since the avantgardish late 60s/early 70s there have also been more than enough of those to whom anything that came before hard bop is old hat (there even was a time when even anything that came before fusion, etc. was lumped into that bag, with the possible exception of some fashionable Trane etc.). To this circle of the jazz audience Bird generates maybe some fleeting interest but is not in the center of their radar at all, and whatever styles of jazz existed before bop were definitely considered "moldy figs", and even some listening to Pops or Duke could hardly offset their somewhat unbalanced perception of jazz and their lack of interest in the wider fields of the more "traditional" styles of jazz, regardless of the fact that the evolution of jazz has not only progressed towards free, avantgarde, post-whatever but has evolved concurrently in different directions ever since.

In short, Scott Hamilton and Warren Vaché etc. have always been just as much a legitimate part of a LIVING evolution of jazz as Ayler, Brötzmann et al.

It takes both streams to jazz to form a whole, and while it is understandable that not everybody can and wishes to embrace ALL forms of jazz, each faction ought to be very, very careful when it comes to dismissing as irrelevant or inexistent whatever one doesn't like.

Just my 2c.

Can't speak for others among those who have responded positively to so-called "free jazz" in the various "nows" of the '60s until the present, but I can say that my own positive responses to what I liked/have been moved by there over time was inseparable from my pre-existing and still fervent love of the entire range of jazz, from Harlem Stride piano to Jelly Roll Morton on up through the Swing era and Bop, Cool, Hard Bop, you name it, not that I don't have my favorites and a few bete noirs (sp?). Further, I've found that among a fair number of "tradition huggers" -- sorry for that sarcastic term, but it just popped into my head -- the tradition that they often have in mind is a quite artistically worthy but somewhat narrow slice of the overall jazz tradition, namely the warmer, mellower side of the Swing Era up to the advent of Bop, or what Stanley Dance and Albert McCarthy dubbed "mainstream jazz." In particular, Dance and McCarthy came up with the term in an at once defensive and aggressive mode, in an attempt to both protect and celebrate worthy figures (Vic Dickinson, Buddy Tate, and many others) in a jazz climate (circa 1955) that in their view, in both critical and economic terms, was riddled by various forms of musical harshness, preciousness, and "progressivism," though the avant garde was yet to come to be (this was before Ornette and the Coltrane we came to know).

Now I love much so-called mainstream jazz, though I don't accept the term for reasons I alluded to above -- that is, it's a real "stream" in jazz but not the main one; there are too many other real ones, and earlier real ones in particular; "mainstream jazz" I believe is a more or less rhetorical, cultural-political device. (I wrote about all this at length in my book FWIW.) Finally, if I love, say, Don Byas or Lucky Thompson or Ike Quebec, as I do, that love and (I hope) understanding of their music does not allow me to regard Scott Hamilton as a wholly "legitimate" (to use your term) artistic continuation of the impulses that flow through their music. Hamilton does have his moments IMO (I particularly like the album he did with Gerry Mulligan some ways back), but for me too much of his music too often takes place between quotation marks. Vache, however, I've come to feel differently about for some reason I can't quantify -- perhaps it's that there seems to me to be a fairly distinct, evolving Vache-ness to him, despite his legitimate (if you will) fondness for his early models, while with Hamilton the models have been virtually omnipresent from the first and, again for me, usually override much sense of who Hamilton is. Likewise, perhaps, a player like Eric Alexander strikes me as beside the point musically, while a Grant Stewart, who certainly has his models and is in some sense "in the tradition," also feels quite vital and fresh, and in the "now."

Just my 2c

[Big Beat Steve]

Thanks very much for taking the trouble to reply in detail, and I will hand it to you anytime that you in your position and with your background have a more in-depth perception of the finer points of all these artists so if I may explain ... I mentioned Hamilton and Vaché only as two examples of jazzmen who played throughout their jazz careers in a jazz style that was no longer at the modernist forefront of the evolution. Pars pro toto ...

Other jazzmen could have been named as examples for the same purpose ... Bob Wilber/Kenny Davern, maybe?

Also, "legitimate" (due to its multiple meanings) was maybe not the most fitting term I used to hint at the "rightful" place (IMHO) of this group of musicians in the evolution of jazz. No connotations at all meant with classical music ...

As for "mainstream" jazz, I understood this always to refer to jazz that was neither among the most progressive forms of jazz of the 50s (when the term was coined) nor among the most nostalgic forms (traditional jazz) but somewhere in between to describe the style of those who still were around from the swing era but had not jumped on the bop bandwagon (nor gone all "trad").

"Mainstream" in the sense of NOT being part of the stylistic extremes in either direction therefore appeared quite fitting to me but maybe "MIDDLE JAZZ" would have been more apt if that term had been used more widely? (Some have doubted that term here when I mentioned it in an earlier debate but that term WAS used to describe this jazz in many FRENCH publications throughout the 50s and certainly beyond so must have had some background in jazz circles).

As for the "tradition huggers" and their preference for the warmer, mellower side of the swing era, this is something I cannot judge and cannot confirm from my own experience (which may not be representative one bit), but in TODAY's discussion of whether one wants to embrace the "far out" styles of jazz, I feel that a lot more than just "mellow swing" is relegated to the traditionalist camp.

Looking back over my close of 40 years of involvement in jazz, there have been those to whom jazz rock and/or fusion was all that jazz (ALL jazz!) was all about, then there were and are those to whom anything free and "avantgarde" is the epitome to the exclusion of most everythign that came before, and of course there is a larger group of jazz fans (including today) whose own STYLISTIC jazz preferences by their own admission seem to START with hard bop (maybe even the end of hard bop, who knows ...). Mention Fats Navarro or early Howard McGhee (or even early Chet or Jack Sheldon) to those hardbop-and-beyond fans and you draw a comparative blank. Stylistically it is all Lee Morgan and onwards to them ...

This leaves out a LOT more than just "mellow swing" (and what was around before swing) in the "tradition hugging" camp.

Which IMO is quite a lot of blind spots when it comes to appreciating where one's (chronologically more recent) idols came from.

Anyway ... all I meant to point out is that when it comes to belittling certain styles of jazz one doesn't like in an attempt to justify one's limits of taste then this is a door that swings both ways ... because for each traditionalist who denigrates avantgarde there is one avantgardist (or "post-whatever-ist") who denigrates, say, most of what happened before Hard Bop or Trane or KOB or whatever.

Not ideal, either way ...

[Steve Reynolds]

Thanks for the post, Larry

As I grew up late in this music - starting to listen about 24 years ago starting with Miles, Monk, Evans, Mingus, Coltrane - and then exploring Ellington, Armstrong, Parker, Gillespie, Eldridge, Hawkins, Young, Tatum, etc.

Started with the big names - the ones I heard about or read about - and I liked some musicians or eras more than others. I like Ellington's sound from the mid to late 50's onward - I liked Coltrane or Rollins more than Parker.

Some of this because of sound quality, but I liked the hard bop drive of the 50's and early 60's music. I had never heard anything with the energy of Mingus' At Antibes or Blues n Roots.

Of the swing era musicians I found a soft spot for Ben Webster, Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge and the atomic era Basie Band. I've never developed an affinity for Lester Young for whatever reason.

I never planned on listening to anything but the above because I didn't know it existed. Sure I listened to the Ornette Atlantics and then a couple of 50's Cecil Taylor records. Then some of the inside/out mid 60's blue notes. The. I saw a Mal Waldron recording on tutu @ Crazy Rhythms in Montclair and I found a quartet from the 80's that was different. Then I saw a few black saint and soul notes - then came David Murray - then back to Albert Ayler and then Thomas Chapin, etc. I still loved Hank Mobley and Art Pepper - but when I heard something like Hemphill's Flat Out Jump Suite or DKV Live in Wels and Chicago - or many others, I found a music that really captured my interest more thoroughly than anything I had heard before in some ways - not better than A Love Supreme or Far East Suite or Soul Station - but new, current and made by musicians playing now - and much of it was very challenging - AMM, Evan Parker, Misha Mengelberg, Anthony Braxton, Art Ensemble of Chicago,etc. Or very unique to my ears and special - Gianluigi Trovesi or Thomas Chapin.

But like music to be challenging, gritty, unpredictable and I have always loved high energy music - so in a broad way - the avant-garde in most of it's guises - was and is the music that I'm most attracted to - more than the rock of many stripes that I grew up with and still like or love - or newer rock - or Wayne Shorter's great blue notes of the 60's - I loved rebuying Adams Apple to hear it for the first time in ten years - but getting the new 5 CD DKV box or when I got the Barry Guy Mad Dogs 5 CD box - more than love.

Then I started going to see the music live - and although I had a gap from ~ 2004 through 2009 when I saw little live jazz - but now it's quite often for me - and it reinforces how vibrant and in the moment the current music of this sort is.

[Larry Kart]

Neither Wilber nor Davern has ever done much for me. As evidence though that the real thing (at least IMO) can crop up at just about any time in just about any place, here is the red-hot French so-called revival (though I think they're far more than that) band Charquet & Co. from 1978. I love the whole feel of the performance and especially the solos by tenor saxophonist Michael Bescont and clarinetist Alain Marquet. This is not "within quotation marks" playing:

Leader Jean-Pierre Morel eventually went on to found Le Petit Jazz Band and Les Rois de Foxtrot. Worthy CDs by both bands are on the Stomp Off label. If you see anything there or elsewhere by Charquet & Co. (originally Sharkey & Co.) don't hesitate.

[Steve Reynolds]

Another point that may not be well received

When the new "mainstream" or "neo-bop" guys make recordings with names like "Cookin" and continually record the same or similar standards and have the same theme-solo-theme format and have the same drum rhythms and same walking bass lines and even album covers that try to equate to the famous iconic covers of the 50's and sixties, it screams in quotes.

It's almost a deliberate (maybe it is deliberate) attempt to make a statement that anything even associate with the "out" or "avant-garde" never existed or doesn't exist and us somehow outside of that "mainstream".

And I've listened to a whole bunch of it back in the 90's and early 00's - and I never heard anything from the Eric Alexanders or the Joe Magnarellis or David Hazeltines that was anything except what I had heard on records from the 50's and early 60's. It sounds like time stopped and then we hear technically accomplished musicians playing something that already has been done.

Maybe something has changed in the past ten years? The album covers and the instrumentation and song titles look just like they did in 1998 to me.

[Big Beat Steve]

Thanks for that info, Larry ... apart from the solos you mentioned,this must be some of the fastest baritone sax playing on record in more recent decades ... will certainly be on the lookout, though I had not intended to go that far back style-wise.

And if so, then that recent thread on the Anachronic Jazz band has aroused my curiosity from a different angle and made me purchase their 2-CD reissue. Amazing ... but that will be a matter for that "'other" thread ...

[jeffcrom]

Neither Wilber nor Davern has ever done much for me.

This discussion interests me, but I don't have time to write at length right now. But I did want to say that Wilber and Davern are pretty good if there's someone there to kick their asses.

[Big Beat Steve]

Another point that may not be well received

When the new "mainstream" or "neo-bop" guys make recordings with names like "Cookin" and continually record the same or similar standards and have the same theme-solo-theme format and have the same drum rhythms and same walking bass lines and even album covers that try to equate to the famous iconic covers of the 50's and sixties, it screams in quotes.

It's almost a deliberate (maybe it is deliberate) attempt to make a statement that anything even associate with the "out" or "avant-garde" never existed or doesn't exist and us somehow outside of that "mainstream".

And I've listened to a whole bunch of it back in the 90's and early 00's - and I never heard anything from the Eric Alexanders or the Joe Magnarellis or David Hazeltines that was anything except what I had heard on records from the 50's and early 60's. It sounds like time stopped and then we hear technically accomplished musicians playing something that already has been done.

Maybe something has changed in the past ten years? The album covers and the instrumentation and song titles look just like they did in 1998 to me.

I am far from being sufficiently famliar with that stream of jazz to make profound assessments but I do think I see what you mean.

A bit like what had been said in arecent thread about many jazz recordings that came after KOB and quite obviosuly trie4d to recreate a KOB mood throughout.

If you talk about "quotes" found in latter-day recordings that clearly refer to earlier ones then you might find such examples wherever you look closer.

I remember quite a few years ago I caught a lengthy piano concert recording of Michel Petrucciani on TV and by coincidence not long afterwards I spun some 50s hard bop records and upon listening to the piano player's comping and soloing my immediate thoughts were "you heard this just the other day", and sure enough when I closed my eyes the TV images of Petrucciani came floating back.

And now certainly nobody will question Petrucciani's place in the annals of jazz ...

Just personal influences coming through? Or is a lot just much closer together stylistically than you'd imagine upon first hearing?

I'd vehemently disagre with THIS statement of yours, though:

It's almost a deliberate (maybe it is deliberate) attempt to make a statement that anything even associate with the "out" or "avant-garde" never existed or doesn't exist and us somehow outside of that "mainstream".

I think I know what you mean but I'd see this rather as a statement that DESPITE "far out" or "avantgarde" there is a place for a continuum of other (non-free, more "traditional", relatively speaking) forms of jazz to go on after all. Not to pretend avantgarde had never existed but to insist that avantgarde is not the only and mandatory course of jazz once avantgarde had started. And IMHO they got a point ... (but OTOH this does NOT detract from avantgarde, it just says avantgarde isn't all) There's more than one way to skin a cat, as they say ...