So, What Are You Listening To NOW?

[soulpope]

3 hours ago, jazzbo said:

Great showcase for Barney Wilen ....

[JSngry]

3 hours ago, paul secor said:

I guess I'm supposed to be impressed, and would like to be, but I'm not.

When I hear these sort of things, I'm reminded of reading a quote - can't remember where or who said it - but something to the effect that Stan Kenton can be on stage and make dramatic gestures, and every arranger in the audience can tell you exactly how it was done. Ellington can wiggle a finger, three horns will play, and the same arrangers will say - how did he do that?  I know that there was only one Ellington, but still the point was made.

You guess wrong, you're not "supposed" to be anything. You will have the response you have for the reasons you have it.

As for Kenton vs. Ellington, yeah, sure. But the gap between "Stan Kenton" and Willie Maiden is immense. "Stan Kenton" was ultimately a concept. Willie Maiden was a real, honest to god talent, not a concept, a realization. I'd go so far as to state with no uncertainty (since it's just my opinion) that Willie Maiden & Bill Mathieu are the two people who really "got" that whole Kenton thing in a way that so many other, and so many more greatly lauded) writers did not. They heard real personal possibilities in that music. Which is not to say that somebody like Johnnie Richards didn't, but Johnny Richards was a freak and was going to be a freak with or without "Stan Kenton". Gene Roland, that's another one, but go figure THAT guy out. And of course, Bob Graettinger. But that's a whole 'nother world. Hell, universe. Dee Barton, very narrow but deep within himself.

Besides, the Schuller quote is too easily appropriated by people who just hear names like "Maynard Ferguson" and/or "Stan Kenton" and automatically think Loud Brassy Cheap White Music and then superimpose all their personal moral projections about why they don't want to be associated with That Type Of Thing, and poof, end of thought process. Especially people who can't engage with the music from either a technical or emotional standpoint because they don't have the tools or the curiosity. That's just lazy. Fuck lazy thinking.

I mean, if you can't hear the difference between Pete Rugolo, Johnny Richards, Bill Holman, Slide Hampton, and Willie Maiden, that's not their fault, there are plenty of distinctions to be had. That's like saying that everybody who speaks Spanish sounds the same. And when somebody says something like " Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don't know what it is", well, that's bullshit. I can tell you what it is - it's somebody in total command of a full tonal and intonational palate making very specific decisions, that's what it is, and you best believe that a writer like Willie Maiden is taking the tonal and intonational palate of his performers into consideration as well, in Ferguson's band, with the reduced instrumentation, and with Kenton's the expanded instrumentation. You don't play a Willie Maiden chart the way you do a Bill Holman chart...well, you can, but that does neither writer any favors and everybody else no favors at all.

All you have to do is just listen to the music itself,. Not you "impression" of what you hear, but what is actually there.

 

Anybody with an ear can tell you how that's done. What nobody can really tell you is how somebody thought like that in the first place, because there is no formula here, there is just imagination, palate, and decisions.

Formula would have been to just do this for a bigger instrumentation, but that's not what happened, is it.

Individuality is the ultimate enemy of the generalization!

[Bluesnik]

Hall with Carl Perkins, a pianist I like very much, and Red Mitchell on bass.

[BillF]

[duaneiac]

[HutchFan]

[Larry Kart]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

You guess wrong, you're not "supposed" to be anything. You will have the response you have for the reasons you have it.

As for Kenton vs. Ellington, yeah, sure. But the gap between "Stan Kenton" and Willie Maiden is immense. "Stan Kenton" was ultimately a concept. Willie Maiden was a real, honest to god talent, not a concept, a realization. I'd go so far as to state with no uncertainty (since it's just my opinion) that Willie Maiden & Bill Mathieu are the two people who really "got" that whole Kenton thing in a way that so many other, and so many more greatly lauded) writers did not. They heard real personal possibilities in that music. Which is not to say that somebody like Johnnie Richards didn't, but Johnny Richards was a freak and was going to be a freak with or without "Stan Kenton". Gene Roland, that's another one, but go figure THAT guy out. And of course, Bob Graettinger. But that's a whole 'nother world. Hell, universe. Dee Barton, very narrow but deep within himself.

Besides, the Schuller quote is too easily appropriated by people who just hear names like "Maynard Ferguson" and/or "Stan Kenton" and automatically think Loud Brassy Cheap White Music and then superimpose all their personal moral projections about why they don't want to be associated with That Type Of Thing, and poof, end of thought process. Especially people who can't engage with the music from either a technical or emotional standpoint because they don't have the tools or the curiosity. That's just lazy. Fuck lazy thinking.

I mean, if you can't hear the difference between Pete Rugolo, Johnny Richards, Bill Holman, Slide Hampton, and Willie Maiden, that's not their fault, there are plenty of distinctions to be had. That's like saying that everybody who speaks Spanish sounds the same. And when somebody says something like " Duke merely lifts his finger, three horns make a sound, and I don't know what it is", well, that's bullshit. I can tell you what it is - it's somebody in total command of a full tonal and intonational palate making very specific decisions, that's what it is, and you best believe that a writer like Willie Maiden is taking the tonal and intonational palate of his performers into consideration as well, in Ferguson's band, with the reduced instrumentation, and with Kenton's the expanded instrumentation. You don't play a Willie Maiden chart the way you do a Bill Holman chart...well, you can, but that does neither writer any favors and everybody else no favors at all.

All you have to do is just listen to the music itself,. Not you "impression" of what you hear, but what is actually there.

 

Anybody with an ear can tell you how that's done. What nobody can really tell you is how somebody thought like that in the first place, because there is no formula here, there is just imagination, palate, and decisions.

Formula would have been to just do this for a bigger instrumentation, but that's not what happened, is it.

Individuality is the ultimate enemy of the generalization!

Good points above, but some facts got garbled. The person who said that thing about Kenton and Ellington was Andre Previn, not Gunther Schuller. Also, in the post I linked to from Darcy Jame Argue 

http://musicalexchange.carnegiehall.org/profiles/blogs/arranging-ellington-the-ellington-effect

Argue shows in detail how, in the specific case of "Mood Indigo," no less a talented musician than Schuller (who certainly had an "ear"), both in his transcription of  the opening of "Mood Indigo" and in his explanation of what Ellington was doing there, inaccurately described the specific decisions Ellington made.

[HutchFan]

Cal Tjader - Huracán (LaserLight, originally released on Crystal Clear Recordings)
with Clare Fischer, Gary Foster, Poncho Sanchez, a.o. 

 

 

3 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Good points above, but some facts got garbled. The person who said that thing about Kenton and Ellington was Andre Previn, not Gunther Schuller.

I thought it was Michel Legrand who said that . . . 

Could easily be mis-remembering! 

 

 

Edited August 21, 2017 by HutchFan

[soulpope]

5 hours ago, HutchFan said:

My favourite late(r) Bill Barron outing ....

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, soulpope said:

My favourite late(r) Bill Barron outing ....

Mine too.  

 

NP:

Dannie Richmond Quartet - Ode to Mingus (Soul Note)
with Bill Saxton (ts), Danny Mixon (p), Mike Richmond (b) 

Powerful Mingus tribute.

[soulpope]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Mine too.  

 

NP:

Dannie Richmond Quartet - Ode to Mingus (Soul Note)
with Bill Saxton (ts), Danny Mixon (p), Mike Richmond (b) 

Powerful Mingus tribute.

Bill Saxton being an interesting but unfortunately underrecorded reedman ....

[sidewinder]

Vocalion CD

[soulpope]

[kh1958]

Christian Scott, Diaspora (Ropeadope)

Edited August 21, 2017 by kh1958

[sidewinder]

[HutchFan]

Mongo Santamaría - Mongo at Montreux (Atlantic, 1971)

[HutchFan]

Bill Barron - Modern Windows Suite (Savoy)
Despite the title, this CD does not include all of the music from Modern Windows -- only side A (4 cuts) from the LP.  On the other hand, all of the music from The Tenor Stylings of Bill Barron LP is included on the disc. So Modern Windows Suite seems like an unnecessarily confusing choice for this reissue.   

. . . Oh well. The music is good! 

[mikeweil]

 

3 hours ago, HutchFan said:

Mongo Santamaría - Mongo at Montreux (Atlantic, 1971)

That was a smokin' band Mongo had at Montreux. Only bummer is they didn't restore the percussion track for the CD issue - Saoco, a tune by Armando Peraza. (You can watch it on YouTube, search for the title.)

Edited August 21, 2017 by mikeweil

[Buddha the Magnificent]

Mal Waldron - All Alone (GTA Records, 1966).  Mal Waldron - piano.

[HutchFan]

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

That was a smokin' band Mongo had at Montreux. Only bummer is they didn't restore the percussion track for the CD issue - Saoco, a tune by Armando Peraza. (You can watch it on YouTube, search for the title.)

Absolutely. I love the dynamism, the thrust of that record.

And thanks for the heads-up about "Saoco."  I had no idea.   

[mikeweil]

 

[soulpope]

1 hour ago, mikeweil said:

 

Dynamite .... and Carter Jefferson ....

Edited August 21, 2017 by soulpope

[JSngry]

15 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Good points above, but some facts got garbled. The person who said that thing about Kenton and Ellington was Andre Previn, not Gunther Schuller.

And I knew that...apparently not well enough to think it in real time, though.

Andre Previn seems to me a uniquely qualified individual to have noted what "studio arrangers" would or what not have been able to "know what it is".

Seriously, when I was a kid, that quote of his (which I believe I first came across in Jazz Masters Of The 1950s) made me go all YEAH, you slick studio guys don't know shit about the REAL JAZZ MUSIC, but then I got a little older, a little less dogmatic, listened to a few more Andre Previn records, and the pulled up a bit and realized, no, that's not a profound statement, that's a defense mechanism, that's avoiding owning his own lack of understanding by casting what he doesn't understand as some kind of mysterious voodoo shit.

I don't mean that as a knock on Previn, who has an exceptionally gifted musical mind. Nor do I mean to oversimplify Duke/Strayhorn because those cats did some really, uh...unconventional writing that frequently defies easy transcription. But it gets easier once you do indeed realize that "what it is" and "how it's done" for a "studio arranger" and for a working self-contained ongoing history-in-real-time Ellington band are not the same thing.

Case in point - that Ellington/Sinatra album with Billy May charts. That thing is ragged as hell (and recorded even more raggedy, at least the stereo LP) but the raggediness serves a purpose - you can hear the individual parts quite well, and you can tell that Billy May did know "how it was done", knew quite well in fact. He knew that it wasn't just about voicings, it was about giving the right note to the right voice to get the right sound, the Ellington sound.

So ok, Andre Previn was mystified. Billy May wasn't. Andre Previn is a smart guy, as was Billy May, so I gotta think he's saying more about himself than he is about Stan Kenton (whoever/whatever that was supposed to mean), studio arrangers (some/many of whom would know what "Stan Kenton" was up to because they wrote it!), and/or Duke Ellington.

 

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, mikeweil said:

 

That's stinkin' fantastic! THANK YOU for sharing!!! So cool to SEE them perform!

Has this entire concert ever been released on DVD?

 

 

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

And I knew that...apparently not well enough to think it in real time, though.

Andre Previn seems to me a uniquely qualified individual to have noted what "studio arrangers" would or what not have been able to "know what it is".

Seriously, when I was a kid, that quote of his (which I believe I first came across in Jazz Masters Of The 1950s) made me go all YEAH, you slick studio guys don't know shit about the REAL JAZZ MUSIC, but then I got a little older, a little less dogmatic, listened to a few more Andre Previn records, and the pulled up a bit and realized, no, that's not a profound statement, that's a defense mechanism, that's avoiding owning his own lack of understanding by casting what he doesn't understand as some kind of mysterious voodoo shit.

I don't mean that as a knock on Previn, who has an exceptionally gifted musical mind. Nor do I mean to oversimplify Duke/Strayhorn because those cats did some really, uh...unconventional writing that frequently defies easy transcription. But it gets easier once you do indeed realize that "what it is" and "how it's done" for a "studio arranger" and for a working self-contained ongoing history-in-real-time Ellington band are not the same thing.

Case in point - that Ellington/Sinatra album with Billy May charts. That thing is ragged as hell (and recorded even more raggedy, at least the stereo LP) but the raggediness serves a purpose - you can hear the individual parts quite well, and you can tell that Billy May did know "how it was done", knew quite well in fact. He knew that it wasn't just about voicings, it was about giving the right note to the right voice to get the right sound, the Ellington sound.

So ok, Andre Previn was mystified. Billy May wasn't. Andre Previn is a smart guy, as was Billy May, so I gotta think he's saying more about himself than he is about Stan Kenton (whoever/whatever that was supposed to mean), studio arrangers (some/many of whom would know what "Stan Kenton" was up to because they wrote it!), and/or Duke Ellington.

 

Total thumbs up on the idea that we should always be skeptical of the "received wisdom" regarding music -- and art in general!  No sense in accepting others' judgments without first giving it an honest, fair shake and then deciding for ourselves whether it's dross, gold, or something in between.

Edited August 21, 2017 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

I've found that I've tended to receive the "received wisdom" that has best fit my emotional bent of whatever time I'm in. Trying now do separate emotion from objectivity in order to fully value things on their own terms, not on my. A lot of times, that means going back to things I've rejected for emotional rather than purely empirical means. And once that gets cleared up, it's so much easier to identify the emotional connections and rejections as such. Some of the things I've had no use forI've embraced fully or at least in part, and some I still have no use for. But just examining "fact vs. fiction" is a fun thing to do. There's been a lot of "guilty pleasures" as well as "irrational fears" in my engagement of musics over the years, and I don't know that I believe that guilt or fear are building blocks. Irrationality sure as hell isn't!

Another thing - the socio-political climate keeps evolving. The resentment I felt against, say, "Stan Kenton" still remains, I mean, the "big thing" that he had made around him as a Leader Into The future and all that bullshit was just that - bullshit. But for me it's now balanced out (or at least reconsidered) by all the really good, occasionally great(!) music that people other than Stan Kenton can now be more clearly received as NOT being "Stan Kenton". "Stan Kenton" no longer means shit one way or the other because that world has evolved into a whole other one with new enemies, new battles, the more things change, etc. Agendas, always, but real creativity, not always.

Just looking at old music of any type (including Duke!)...you can't "receive" the wisdom of the mythologies alone, you need (imo) to look at all of this in terms of people/place/time/etc, sure, but also as plain, simple, human activity, shaped by chrono-specific forces but not immune from eternal human impulses and verities . "Stan Kenton" was marketing, but Stan Kenton himself was a dude who believed in that concept, and in true manner of his time/place/etc. he set about hiring people to flesh it out - a LOT of people, and some of THOSE people actually found a personal voice there and made truly unique music. " Some played to the image, but such is life, right? Not just music, life. There will be those who seek and find, those who at least seek, those who find accidentally and then either do or don't take it someplace, and those who just don't bother. If there's a truly universal truth about all this, that's probably gonna be it.

That, and yes - individuality is the ultimate enemy of the generalization.