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Jackie McLean's Post-1975 Recordings (All Labels)


Mark Stryker

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I'm sure the discussion has been had here, but it is interesting that so many jazz fans resent artists who become commercially successful. Not that this unheard of in so many other spheres, but is seems particularly common in jazz. I should say "successful" even to a modest extent, and in some fashion--like just getting your life together, as noted above. Sometimes it seems nothing beats a jazz artist who is hungry, desperate, and suicidal.

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I remember another album from around 1985 for BN , an encounter with McCoy Tyner. Didn´t like it as much as the earlier albums.

I heard Jackie McLean several times after 1975 and loved what he did "live", but prefer to listen to the earlier albums.

The "New Wine in Old Bottles" would be nice to try. I love Tony Williams so much, and would love to hear it.

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I'm sure the discussion has been had here, but it is interesting that so many jazz fans resent artists who become commercially successful. Not that this unheard of in so many other spheres, but is seems particularly common in jazz. I should say "successful" even to a modest extent, and in some fashion--like just getting your life together, as noted above. Sometimes it seems nothing beats a jazz artist who is hungry, desperate, and suicidal.

If being a dedicated follower of an artist, it`s sometimes hard to follow certain turns of the artist`s career - collectors are sometimes endangered to be trapped in a romantistic view.....to me it was priceless to witness some of my "heroes" simply being glad to be served some quality food, raising my awareness they are doing this for living (beneath an artistic merit)...

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I'm sure the discussion has been had here, but it is interesting that so many jazz fans resent artists who become commercially successful. Not that this unheard of in so many other spheres, but is seems particularly common in jazz. I should say "successful" even to a modest extent, and in some fashion--like just getting your life together, as noted above. Sometimes it seems nothing beats a jazz artist who is hungry, desperate, and suicidal.

If being a dedicated follower of an artist, it`s sometimes hard to follow certain turns of the artist`s career - collectors are sometimes endangered to be trapped in a romantistic view.....to me it was priceless to witness some of my "heroes" simply being glad to be served some quality food, raising my awareness they are doing this for living (beneath an artistic merit)...

Thanks for the previous explanation. It's very helpful, though painful to read.

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As in, ok, you lived your live one way for a long time, not necessarily the way you wanted to, but, you know, and then finally a chance comes along to not be in a perpetual state of panic/uncertainty, you can live like a "normal person", or at least your best facsimile of one, and ok, probably coulda have happened some other way in some other time, but it didn't, so, why not?

Indeed, why not. So you get away from the panic/uncertainty and maybe your "art" "loses" something. Big fucking deal, you're alive doing good work in another world, passing it on, and maybe not everybody who got off on your personal struggle being translated into music keeps buying your records. "Professional" Jackie McLean sounds like somebody who's no longer in a panic, so...thrills to be had elsewhere for those who are looking for that kind of thing. In the meantime, survival is boring once you start taking it for granted?

Who gives a damn for losers? Jazz fans! But they don't love a winner, especially when he's thinner.

Having said that...yeah, sure, later McLean does not, in generally, rip your balls off. And I have been relatively casual about acquiring the catalog. But I have acquired it, and I can't really say that my reaction to any of it has been some variant of, oh, Jackie's got his life together, fuck what that sounds like, gotta run, you understand, call me if you ever get fucked up again.. I'm just like, hey, J-Mac, glad you made it, nice to hear from you, Stay strong, ok? And then, later, RIP, much love and just as much thanks.

Or are we saying that the only merit in McLean's playing has ever been the element of it that was driven by personal problems? If so, then he was fatally flawed as an artist and did us all a disservice by continuing to live and record. In that case, hey, fuck him, the selfish prick.

Sometimes - sometimes - I think that "jazz fans" are jazz fans because they're too chickenshit to take the beating themselves.

Without doubt, so-called personal problems had something to do with early McLean, but unless I misread you, you seem to be pretty sure that BN Jackie also was "in a state of perpetual panic/uncertainty." Obviously I don't know about that directly, one way or another -- do you? All I can go by is my memory of what McLean himself said from time to time (e.g in A.B. Spellman's "Four Lives in the Be-bop Business") and also by the recorded evidence of the Prestige era and the BN era -- and the latter doesn't sound to me like that of a man who was "in a state of perpetual panic/uncertainty," not at all. Rather BN era McLean sounds to me like, if you want to put words to it, a man grappling with and quite often mastering the circumstances of life. Yes, those life circumstances weren't mine in detail, but that's one of the things that art can do -- express and communicate beyond the bounds of individual distress and states of being, for the artist and all other parties involved.

Also, do you really believe that my love for all the McLean I love amounts to my "getting off on [his] personal struggle being translated into music"? I'm baffled and kind of disappointed that you could think that, if in fact you do.

Yes, I see that "a man grappling with and quite often mastering the circumstances of life" could be taken as another way of saying "getting off on [his] personal struggle being translated into music." But, trust me, I don't take Beethoven, or Chopin, or Mahler et al. in that "getting off on [their] personal struggles" way, and I don't take McLean that way either, beyond a certain not unreasonable point -- where one isn't blind to the artist's life circumstances to the degree that one is aware of them but accepts and responds (submits?) to the act of translation and expression. The audience for "Oedipus the King" is not limited to people who have killed their fathers and married their mothers.

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Don't think that at all, but did think that "professional Jackie McLean I don't need" was a rather flip phrase with implications far beyond a mere relativization of enjoyment.

I don't think that you were thinking along those lines, not at all, but...I mean, jeez, I don't need Oscar Peterson either, but the last complaint I would have against him is that he's "professional"...that's not a valid bitch against any working musician, not in my world. I mean, no matter with whatever else I might find not to my liking about anybody's work, being "professional" is not going to be one of them. Hell, that's the one thing I go to to find respect when all else fails, and it's not a complaint. So the choice of the word in your assessment seemed wrong-spirited to me, although I would be equally baffled and disappointed if it in fact was. It seems, perhaps, careless.

But as far as Jackie's personal situation in the 60s....I know the picture that Spellman painted, but Jackie himself has made some perhaps low-profile statements (plural) that he really didn't get fully away from drugs and the related disturbances they bring until right around the time that he decided to take the Hartt gig, that that was when he cleaned up once and for all, and decided to pursue a normal economic life, which in turn became a rewarding life for him.

Me myself, I have no problem with the earlier urgency being replaced by a more objective approach to his vocabulary, because that's where his life was, just as his voice from earlier times was informed by where his life was then. I think that in the earliest Steeplechases, you get the playing of a man just feeling his way back, and that in the recordings being discussed here, you get the sound of a man who has come back - as well as the sound of a man who has left some things behind quite willingly and knowingly.

Does it rip one's guts out? Well, no, not usually. Does it need to? Again, no. Is it understandable that by not doing so we have less of an immediate visceral reaction? Of course it is.

But is it correct to dismiss/dislike it on the grounds that it is "professional"? The unspoken corollary to that is that it's better when it's "unprofessional", and not unlike wishing that people would play more "sloppy" (like whoever the old R*B producer was who made the horn players untune so it would sound "blacker"), that's a slippery slope that leads to bad places for all involved.

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Larry's points are really interesting and will probably take me back into that music - and the Euro recordings that I used to like very much but have not listened to in a long time (Das Dat, etc).

I repeat my previous; I'd be willing to bet Jackie is playing a Yamaha, which gives a sound that a former repairman of mine once referred to as a "kazoo."

In a way this is the "professional Jackie;" a lot of players were switching to those horns because they played so easily, great action, easier to execute. Big difference sonically from the Selmers, Conns, Bueschers, etc. and I still think this is one of the reasons later Jackie satisfies a bit less.

Let me add something about Jackie's later career, which was a mess - not due to substance abuse but bad management. He was sorta teaching and sorta involved in the black arts scene in Hartford Connecticut - I say sorta because he deferred to his wife's poor choices and cliquishness, and she had made a conscious decision to keep him only sporadically available for bizarre amounts of money. So he rarely worked (though he also told me he was ok with this, and he was still bitter about his Prestige years). And he farmed out a lot of the educational work (he offered me a job doing some of it, which I declined). it was just a bad scene of misguided non-professionalism, fake community, lots of not-so-good feelings. And I don't know, but maybe this rubbed off on the work, this world-weary, 'if I can't sell it I'll sit on it' sense. Also I should add, that whole b.s. clique scene was Hartford in the '80s and '90s and, from what I have heard, remains so.

And I liked Jackie, btw, a warm, smart guy. I just think he was getting bad advice.

Edited by AllenLowe
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I remember talking to Bryan Carrott at a recording session many years ago about the Ralph Peterson Fo'tet recordings he played on. I mentioned that I found Don Byron's playing to be more interesting than Steve Wilson's in that group. He didn't comment at all, good or bad, about Byron, but praised Wilson as someone who was gaining a reputation as a guy who you could count on to come in and take care of business in any situation. So there is also that to be said about professionalism.

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OK, I think I see the problem -- my use of "professional." I wasn't thinking of "professional" versus "unprofessional" (as in sloppy) but professional in relation to personal. Perhaps some examples -- one of mine, one of yours -- may add some light. Any complaints I might have about Oscar Peterson's music don't have to do with his apparent near uniform professionalism per se but with the seemingly rote appearance of IMO too many familiar figures and patterns, and figures and patterns that for me just aren't that interesting anyhow. Also, I'm far from the first person to feel that in the midst of a good many OP performances, it's not easy to tell what piece he's playing -- those patented OP figures and patterns crop up time and again and kind of mow down whatever in one piece he's playing might distinguish it from the next one. And yet there are times, not many of them but times, when OP works for me. I guess I should go back and try to figure out what the difference there is, for me.

Then, as I mentioned in passing in a previous post, there's Johnny Hodges, at once I would say utterly personal and utterly professional. Utterly personal in that his musical-emotional vocabulary -- with an early assist from Bechet and also shaped of course by Ellington and then Strayhorn -- is virtually unique. Utterly professional in that his music emerges with great consistency, with room for many peaks of "inspiration."

I went on to say that the nature and location of the "life force" of Hodges's music seems to me to be somewhat different than the the nature and location of the "life force" of McLean's music. I'll try to go a bit further. The fact or (if you wish) the illusion of personal involvement and immediacy is in both cases at once intense and more than sufficient. That Hodges can do that within the bounds of, by and large, quite similar pieces and patterns has to do with his musical background and history, the settings he had, and his temperament as well. In all those areas, it would seem, McLean was dealing with different sets of circumstances -- musical, social,and personal -- and while his emotional-musical vocabulary was as individual as Hodges, the fact or or (if you wish) the illusion of personal involvement and immediacy on McLean's part

was unlike Hodges' in that IMO it seemed to rely to great deal on the immediacy being about as immediate as could be for McLean himself, on a note-to-note, in-the-act basis. (Not that this also wasn't ultimately true for Hodges in some sense, but I'd have to write a book there.) But If that is roughly how things worked for McLean at one time (or times), a shift from a quest-discovery mode to something arguably different (I've tried to describe in a previous post how I think it worked and how it hit me) led to different results. Yes, a life is a life and one lives it as best one can, but what I had in mind when I said "professional McLean" was his musical vocabulary of (direct or illusionistic) immediate emotion being ironed out and kind of normalized. At least that's what I heard and felt.

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OK, I think I see the problem -- my use of "professional." I wasn't thinking of "professional" versus "unprofessional" (as in sloppy) but professional in relation to personal. Perhaps some examples -- one of mine, one of yours -- may add some light. Any complaints I might have about Oscar Peterson's music don't have to do with his apparent near uniform professionalism per se but with the seemingly rote appearance of IMO too many familiar figures and patterns, and figures and patterns that for me just aren't that interesting anyhow. Also, I'm far from the first person to feel that in the midst of a good many OP performances, it's not easy to tell what piece he's playing -- those patented OP figures and patterns crop up time and again and kind of mow down whatever in one piece he's playing might distinguish it from the next one. And yet there are times, not many of them but times, when OP works for me. I guess I should go back and try to figure out what the difference there is, for me.

Then, as I mentioned in passing in a previous post, there's Johnny Hodges, at once I would say utterly personal and utterly professional. Utterly personal in that his musical-emotional vocabulary -- with an early assist from Bechet and also shaped of course by Ellington and then Strayhorn -- is virtually unique. Utterly professional in that his music emerges with great consistency, with room for many peaks of "inspiration."

I went on to say that the nature and location of the "life force" of Hodges's music seems to me to be somewhat different than the the nature and location of the "life force" of McLean's music. I'll try to go a bit further. The fact or (if you wish) the illusion of personal involvement and immediacy is in both cases at once intense and more than sufficient. That Hodges can do that within the bounds of, by and large, quite similar pieces and patterns has to do with his musical background and history, the settings he had, and his temperament as well. In all those areas, it would seem, McLean was dealing with different sets of circumstances -- musical, social,and personal -- and while his emotional-musical vocabulary was as individual as Hodges, the fact or or (if you wish) the illusion of personal involvement and immediacy on McLean's part

was unlike Hodges' in that IMO it seemed to rely to great deal on the immediacy being about as immediate as could be for McLean himself, on a note-to-note, in-the-act basis. (Not that this also wasn't ultimately true for Hodges in some sense, but I'd have to write a book there.) But If that is roughly how things worked for McLean at one time (or times), a shift from a quest-discovery mode to something arguably different (I've tried to describe in a previous post how I think it worked and how it hit me) led to different results. Yes, a life is a life and one lives it as best one can, but what I had in mind when I said "professional McLean" was his musical vocabulary of (direct or illusionistic) immediate emotion being ironed out and kind of normalized. At least that's what I heard and felt.

More or less what I meant by this:

...professional Jackie McLean I don't need.

Maybe he needed it.

McLean made a lot of personal decisions along the way, and the whole "professional" thing was one of them. Him having never seemed one to make such decisions lightly or frivolously, I'll give him the respect (or if we want to be careless, "benefit of the doubt") to allow for him making this one too, and for having made it without carelessness or frivolity.

"Professionalism" is a tricky thing anyway. Hodges could be drunk as fuck - and play like it too. Some of those live dates, he's pretty damn sloppy, and is getting by on reflex. But such reflexes!

Lockjaw, geez, this guy worked in the office as an agent for crissakes. and by all accounts, was excruciatingly profession as straw boss of the Basie band. and was not above playing by rote, his rote, but still, sometimes you hear him coasting in that uniquely Jaws' way. But sometimes, holy shit, blood WILL be spilled.

Sonny Stitt, geez, that guy was all kinds of a mess, yet there he was, always there, and always playing something that made the audience feel they got their money worth. The guy had more coast in him than North, Central, & South America combined, but when the mood struck him, knives out, teeth bared, we're on.

Oscar Peterson...just not relevant to my lifestyle, but when I call him a professional, it's with the highest regards, because like it or not, he was doiing his thing, which was doing that thing. So my lack of usage for him is just because that thing does not particularly resonate with me.It's not with Oscar Peterson being safe, predictable, and professional. To be honest, there's nothing wrong with Oscar Peterson at all. He just doesn't reach me, period. Different strokes, etc.

My point just being...there's more to a musician's life than making records and playing gigs. There's the same everyday responsibilities and pressures that most all of us have, food, clothing, shelter, family, self, etc. So if a player I respect decides to deal with all of that, hey, go ahead on and do that, handle your business, have a life you can live. Don't be another cliche. Be a professional at life, too, dig?

I would just rather frame the evaluation in terms other that "professional", because that seems wholly irrelevant to the point of is somebody reaching me or not.

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Having a life you can live in terms of "the same everyday responsibilities and pressures that most all of us have, food, clothing, shelter, family, self, etc." and having a life as an artist may not always be the same thing. As for "professional," you mean one thing by the term and I mean another, as I've tried to say in post #37. Now when you say "personal" in 'McLean made a lot of personal decisions along the way, and the whole "professional" thing was one of them,' it looks like were at another semantic crossroads.

By "personal" I was referring specifically to the emotional springs of his music-making; you're referring to personal (as in private?) decisions he made about how he wanted to live his life. Yes, those decisions I'm sure had an effect on his music, but the ways in which McLean's music once was, it seems to me, so personal were not I think the result of the kinds of decision-making he engaged in later on.

BTW, we may have reached the point where we're going around in circles here. If you agree, let's stop.

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By "personal" I was referring specifically to the emotional springs of his music-making; you're referring to personal (as in private?) decisions he made about how he wanted to live his life. Yes, those decisions I'm sure had an effect on his music, but the ways in which McLean's music once was, it seems to me, so personal were not I think the result of the kinds of decision-making he engaged in later on.

Different decisions, different results, that's all I'm saying. Not just about drugs, but about "place". In fact, mostly about "place", geographic, occupational, and, yes, personal/self - I once was this, I will no longer be that, I will now be THIS. The "emotional springs of his music-making" have always seemed to me to be very much about that - who am I, where am I, why am I, and what am I doing with/about it. In that regard, nothing changed. What changed - as I hear it - was different answers to those questions brought about by the decision to answer them in a different way than before, to not look for new outcomes from the same answers.

For that matter, we had different answers to those questions in the '50s that we did in the '60s. Not as dramatic of changes, but definitely a progression out of/away from NYC Junkie Jazzman. Aspirations not yet realized, but definitely in the mix, final break eventually made, and never really re-paired. "Quest" perhaps realized/ended, but plenty of meaningful life left.

Don't know if we're going around in circles or not, but I'm not looking for an argument. There was a change, we both know it, we both hear it, you're less compelled to listen to it after it happened than me, nothing to argue, really.

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Having a life you can live in terms of "the same everyday responsibilities and pressures that most all of us have, food, clothing, shelter, family, self, etc." and having a life as an artist may not always be the same thing.

Perhaps McLean's deepest/ultimate "quest" was to reconcile/resolve that?

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Also I should add, that whole b.s. clique scene was Hartford in the '80s and '90s and, from what I have heard, remains so.

Can you clarify or elaborate on the above?

Full disclosure - I am involved with one of the organizations that presents two concert series in Hartford. I disclose that just in case my inquiry is taken as defensive (which it is not intended to be).

If you feel it is more appropriate, feel free to respond to me privately.

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http://articles.courant.com/1994-10-19/features/941019040_1_bird-s-death-charlie-bird-parker-alto-saxophone

This article describes an event which I attended in the fall of 1994. Jackie McLean, Richard Davis and Max Roach played two songs together as part of an event to promote the planned jazz museum at 18th and Vine in Kansas City. The City of Kansas City, Missouri, had just purchased the white plastic alto saxophone which Charlie Parker played at the Massey Hall concert. The saxophone was going to be part of the attractions at the museum, which then existed only in the imagination of some city leaders. No new development had ever been built at 18th and Vine despite many years of discussion. The purchase of the saxophone with city funds was controversial. Many thought it was an irresponsible waste of the city's scarce funds, when infrastructure, law enforcement and other needs were underfunded.

There was a reception in an office building at 18th and VIne, open to the public. Politicians gave speeches, and then the musicians played. Jackie McLean played one song on his saxophone, and then played one song on Charlie Parker's white plastic alto sax. Before playing it, McLean said to the audience that the saxophone had not been repaired for many years, and that he may not be able to get a sound out of it.

Then he played, and it sounded just as good as McLean's own saxophone. There was a slightly different sound quality, but McLean played intensely on the white plastic sax. It was a compelling performance.

Max Roach was on fire in his performance. He was loud and intense and compelling. For what this was, a sort of pick up group for a non-musical event, it was quite good.

Edited by Hot Ptah
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whoa. I do remember that controversy in KC but did not make the reception/performance (probably too young, now that I think of it - sometime in the 90s?)

It was in October, 1994.

The expenditure of the city funds to buy Charlie Parker's saxophone was directed by Mayor Emanuel Cleaver II, (now the U.S. Representative for the district which includes Kansas City, Missouri). He did not go through all channels with the City Council that he could have, according to news reports at the time. Some people seemed more upset at the procedure used to purchase it (or lack thereof) than anything else.

One of the great comments I heard at that time came from my barber--an older Italian American man who owned a barber shop right out of the 1950s, an old fashioned men's barbershop. He said to me as he cut my hair, "and so the Mayor spends over $100,000 of our money on this white plastic saxophone ! This is terrible! A waste of money! He could have just gone out and bought any saxophone from a music store and spent much less!"

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Might as well finish out the story, right? After the SteepleChase years comes lots of stuff for lots of labels domestic and foreign, ranging from pick-up studio dates with peers, reunions, concert performances, working bands with mostly young cats. Generally, Jackie's chops are much stronger during these years, and there's a marked increase in his authority both technically and conceptually, especially in the late 80s and 90s on Triloka and Birdology.

"Dynasty" (Triloka) is as great as anything Jackie ever recorded, a real synthesis of all the ideas and styles (bebop, modal, inside-out expressionism, multi-horn front lines, compositions and arrangements) he was associated with throughout his career. The follow-up on Triloka, "Rites of Passage," isn't quite on the same level but it's still strong. I also really like the Birdology discs, especially "Rhythm of the Earth" but also "Fire and Love" and "The Jackie Mac Attack Live" -- all of which conceptually descend from "Dynasty." Going back to the late '70s, I've always been fond of the bebop/standards date with the Great Jazz Trio (reunion with Tony Williams).

Interested to hear other folks opinions, especially of the harder to find Japanese things and any bootlegs that might be out there....

I appreciate your appreciation of Jackie, which I share, but the statement I put in bold above just strikes me as a vast overstatement. Revisionism is fine, I suppose, but at a certain point, it can be carried too far. I think it does a disservice to the many undeniably great albums he did record. Just my 2 cents.

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I might also add about that Jackie McLean/Richard Davis/Max Roach performance in Kansas City in October, 1994: as I had known Richard Davis as his jazz history student at the University of Wisconsin years before, I went up and talked to him.. He had me walk with him as we talked. Finally he said that he would have to stop our conversation because "we have to figure out what we are going to play." He went into a small room with Jackie McLean and Max Roach. They came out a few minutes later, went out onto the stage and played. There was no rehearsal, and literally two minutes of discussion. But you could not tell it from the performance, which was just great!

The only other time that I ever heard the Charlie Parker white plastic alto saxophone being played was at an outdoor festival in Kansas City the next year, at 18th and Vine. Paquito D'Rivera played it in front of a big band. It sounded really good when he played it too.

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