More Favorites: Reflections on Jazz in the 1980s

[HutchFan]

16 minutes ago, JSngry said:

That other guy...that was a "good record" for him, maybe his best, but time has shown who the real clown is, and it for damn sure isn't Lester Bowie in a lab coat playing a Flamingos song. Not even. 

I intended no comparison between Bowie & Marsalis.  It was just a coincidence that the two records were recorded around the same time -- so they both show up in the survey around the same time. That's it.

With my blogs, I have continually reminded folks that the records I've selected represent music that I enjoy. It's a very subjective thing -- and I have no interest in making cases for "greatness" or "importance." ... That said, it's not hard for me to understand how Bowie's music has a sort of life-transforming power that you've described, Jim -- and the other guy has made a couple good jazz records. The fact that they're side-by-side is just a function of the "flat"/non-hierarchical way I've built the survey.

I hope that makes sense.

 

[JSngry]

What's you take on the Flamingo's version? 

Or your other guy, the Bowie is his pick. I want him or you to speak to that too.

Of course, your blog, talk about what you want to talk about 

[HutchFan]

The three albums I posted today were my choices, not Dan's.

My take on Lester's take on the Flamingo's "I Only Have Eyes for You"???  I think Lester is demonstrating that our ideas about "high" and "low" art are all turned around and backward. I think Lester is showing us how the ordinary materials of life can be a gateway to grand and cosmic vistas.  But people get so hung up on labeling things that they miss out on the transformative power of things right in front of them.

So Lester is tweaking our "ordinary existence," so we can be re-introduced to it and re-reminded of its power. (That's why "Brass Fantasy" is perfect name for his band.)  Bowie is doing the same thing that Ives did. Or Sun Ra. Or Hendrix. These artists are all different, of course.  But what they all have in common is that they show us how the seemingly "old, ordinary" stuff of existence can be mind-altering and fuel a trip across the cosmos.

Of course, that's just how I've made sense of Lester's music, how it has impacted me.

Sounds like you have ideas about it too.  What's your take?

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by HutchFan

[Chuck Nessa]

I believe to really "get" Lester you need to understand his first (and maybe only) hero was Louis Armstrong.

[HutchFan]

6 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I believe to really "get" Lester you need to understand his first (and maybe only) hero was Louis Armstrong.

Could you elaborate?

 

[Chuck Nessa]

7 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Could you elaborate?

 

Not really. "I meant what I said and I said what I meant".

Edit to add; Lester understood and appreciated many factors of Armstrong. I just realized it is too late at night to explain, so remind me later.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Chuck Nessa

[JSngry]

25 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

The three albums I posted today were my choices, not Dan's.

My take on Lester's take on the Flamingo's "I Only Have Eyes for You"???  I think Lester is demonstrating that our ideas about "high" and "low" art are all turned around and backward. I think Lester is showing us how the ordinary materials of life can be a gateway to grand and cosmic vistas.  But people get so hung up on labeling things that they miss out on the transformative power of things right in front of them.

So Lester is tweaking our "ordinary existence," so we can be re-introduced to it and re-reminded of its power. (That's why "Brass Fantasy" is perfect name for his band.)  Bowie is doing the same thing that Ives did. Or Sun Ra. Or Hendrix. These artists are all different, of course.  But what they all have in common is that they show us how the seemingly "old, ordinary" stuff of existence can be mind-altering and fuel a trip across the cosmos.

Of course, that's just how I've made sense of Lester's music, how it has impacted me.

Sounds like you have ideas about it too.  What's your take?

 

So, that's your thoughts about that Lester Bowie record. What are your thoughts about that Flamingos record itself? 

[HutchFan]

7 minutes ago, JSngry said:

So, that's your thoughts about that Lester Bowie record. What are your thoughts about that Flamingos record itself? 

Jim, you obviously have lots of ideas and strong feelings on the topic.  Maybe you could share them. 

I've written enough.

 

 

18 minutes ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Edit to add; Lester understood and appreciated many factors of Armstrong. I just realized it is too late at night to explain, so remind me later.

OK. 

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by HutchFan

[Gheorghe]

On 4.5.2022 at 10:13 AM, EKE BBB said:

 

 

 

Don´t know how to remove that quote up there, since I had posted already but when I write something else it´s still here. But whatever......

My question: What is a "Flamingo´s " song. I knew the ballad "Flamingo" and could it play right now. Sure I also know "I Only Have Eyes for You" ... a Billy Eckstine thing isn´t it, I got it in my head .....

About the other records, at this time I can´t say much. Wynton......I liked to hear him with VSOPII or what it was, at least three original masters and the two young brothers to play since they couldnt afford to book Freddie or Wayne or Freddie and Wayne didn´t want to do that for more years.....Heard him once again in the same year 1983 with his then quintet, young neat guys, some kind of acoustic 60´s jazz, not more....

About the not strictly jazz related Mambo ....I don´t know it. I heard some non jazz latin music at some peoples places and it is nice, but I couldnt say who played, When I was asked once about other genres like "Blues" (I don´t mean a jazz blues tune) or "Latin Music" I usually said look I like to eat a gulaș , it has meet, pepper, onions and all in it, so I like it. But I don´t have to eat separate the onions only , or the peppers only or the meat only.....

 

[Rabshakeh]

The LB Flamingo's a hell of a track. One of the few bits of music for which I remember exactly the experience of hearing it for the first time. 

[Rooster_Ties]

Some live footage of Lester and that Flamingos song, from 1984 (if the YouTube upload is accurate) -- and a comment to the video says it's from the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland.

 

[HutchFan]

Anyone who enjoys Latin Jazz should check out that Mambo Show record -- if you haven't already heard it.  Like his work with the Alegre All-Stars, Cesta All-Stars, etc., the music director is Charlie Palmieri, a vastly underappreciated figure, IMO. ... Plus Mongo, Chombo Silva, Barry Rogers, and all the rest.

I only discovered it while poking around, doing "research" for the blog.  The record (undeservedly) seems to have a low profile even within the world of Latin Jazz, much less the bigger Jazz world.

 

Edited June 18, 2022 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

Forget about "doo-wop" or any marketing IDs. Just check out the zone on this thing, the pocket, the time, especially the phrasing of the vocals. Even without the cosmically perfect reverb, that record is in a zone that transcends "pop music". It gets to a place that comes from deep inside human experience, dare I call it "spiritual". A slow 12/8 like that is either float or mechanize. this one floats beyond mundane human expectations.

So yes, Lester called that out, but it's not like he was creating something that wasn't already there. He knew what he was working with and why he was working with it. He was reconnecting with it for our enjoyment and edification. And that's the difference between people who can feel things from inside a culture (theirs or others) and people who only "know" about them. 

[Rooster_Ties]

That Flamingos clip looks like the same set designer as this Miles clip from barely two years before!!

 

[Rabshakeh]

I know they're time intensive but it's a shame no write ups this week. I always enjoy them, particularly the additional recommendations. 

[HutchFan]

1 hour ago, Rabshakeh said:

I know they're time intensive but it's a shame no write ups this week. I always enjoy them, particularly the additional recommendations. 

Lately, I've found it difficult to muster the energy to write in the evenings after spending all day writing corporate copy for my paid gig.  Ugh.  Back in the day, I could easily write all day and then do my own thing late into the night.  Not any more.  The energy just isn't there like it used to be.

The good news: Two weeks off from work coming shortly.  I'm hoping to do some back-filling then.

 

My replies above re: Lester Bowie will become the gist of that write-up.  As far as additional recommendations: EVERYTHING by Lester's Brass Fantasy is worth hearing.  Along with I Only Have Eyes..., I'm especially partial to Twilight Dreams:

 

Another 80s recommendation for Charlie Palmieri: A Giant Step (Tropical Budda, 1984).  Even though it's much more well-known than Mambo Show, I think Mambo Show is the better record.

Wynton's J Mood is very good.  Probably my second favorite by him.  My interest in his music falls off steeply after those first few records. ... The gist of my post about Wynton is that he's in a strange position in jazz.  If a "regular Joe" on the street can name one living jazz musician, it's likely to be Wynton Marsalis.  (Just like they might know one classical musician: Yo Yo Ma.  Not coincidentally, both recorded for media behemoth Columbia.)  But, ironically, it seems like people who actually listen to jazz largely IGNORE Wynton's music -- except for maybe the stuff from the beginning.  He's much more well known for his conservative musical politics/polemics than he is for his music.  And that's because his music has become less and less interesting over time, IMO.

 

EDIT -- To add some thoughts:

Writing about Lester Bowie and Wynton Marsalis has made me think about an essay I read a long time ago by poet Pablo Neruda, in which he asserted that poetry must be "impure" -- that is, mixed up, wrinkled, down in the messiness of life.  Here's what Neruda says:

Let that be the poetry we search for: worn with the hand’s obligations, as by acids, steeped in sweat and in smoke, smelling of the lilies and urine, spattered diversely by the trades that we live by, inside the law or beyond it.  A poetry impure as the clothing we wear, or our bodies, soup-stained, soiled with our shameful behavior, our wrinkles and vigils and dreams, observations and prophecies, declarations of loathing and love, idylls and beasts, the shocks of encounter, political loyalties, denials and doubts, affirmations and taxes.

The holy canons of madrigal, the mandates of touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing, the passion for justice, sexual desire, the sea sounding—willfully rejecting and accepting nothing: the deep penetration of things in the transports of love, a consummate poetry soiled by the pigeon’s claw, ice-marked and tooth-marked, bitten delicately with our sweatdrops and usage, perhaps. Till the instrument so restlessly played yields us the comfort of its surfaces, and the woods show the knottiest suavities shaped by the pride of the tool. Blossom and water and wheat kernel share one precious consistency: the sumptuous appeal of the tactile.

Let no one forget them. Melancholy, old mawkishness impure and unflawed, fruits of a fabulous species lost to the memory, cast away in a frenzy’s abandonment—moonlight, the swan in the gathering darkness, all hackneyed endearments: surely that is the poet’s concern, essential and absolute.
Those who shun the “bad taste” of things will fall flat on the ice.

In my recollection, the final line is translated as "... will fall flat in the snow."  And like that image better because it implies a sort of suffocating purity and whiteness, rather than the hard flatness of ice.  But I'm not sure which translation is more accurate.  

In any case, I think Neruda's ideas here are as relevant to jazz as much as they're about poetry.

 

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by HutchFan

[danasgoodstuff]

I've owned both the Bowie and Marsalis albums in question since they were more or less new, couldn't tell you when I last listened t even a bit of either.  Maybe sometime in the '90s?  The Flamingos I listen to all the time; often just IOHEFY, but other things too.  It's great that LB dug the Flamingos, but he's not really telling me anything about them that I didn't already know.  That clip of them on TV is priceless.

[medjuck]

Friend of mine used Lester's "The Great Pretender" in a short film she made.  (I warned her that it might be really expensive but as usual I was wrong.)

[danasgoodstuff]

14 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

I believe to really "get" Lester you need to understand his first (and maybe only) hero was Louis Armstrong.

Didn't Lester say that if Clifford Brown had lived then he (Lester) would be working at the Post Office and Miles would be his supervisor?

[JSngry]

5 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

It's great that LB dug the Flamingos, but he's not really telling me anything about them that I didn't already know.  That clip of them on TV is priceless.

And therein lies the real profundity - he's not telling us we anything didn't/shouldn't/couldn't already know. As you suggest, it was all self-evident. But "modern markets" would (and still do) think about it like the Flamingos were from another world of music, humanity even than Lester Bowie. Therefore, Lester Bowie was putting us on by covering that song. And Lester Bowie was calling bullshit on that notion. Great Black Music includes The Flamingos, especially that record.

Lester Bowie, always a man of the people and not afraid to show it, regardless of who "the people" were perceived/supposed to be. It's not a better world with him gone, let's put it that way.

 

[HutchFan]

12 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

I've owned both the Bowie and Marsalis albums in question since they were more or less new, couldn't tell you when I last listened t even a bit of either.  Maybe sometime in the '90s?  The Flamingos I listen to all the time; often just IOHEFY, but other things too.  It's great that LB dug the Flamingos, but he's not really telling me anything about them that I didn't already know.  That clip of them on TV is priceless.

Interesting  I think Lester's version is even trippy-er than the Flamingo's -- but also, clearly, a homage.

 

[JSngry]

Just now, HutchFan said:

Interesting  I think Lester's version is even trippy-er than the Flamingo's -- but also, clearly, a homage.

 

Dude, have you ever listened to that Flamingos record from inside the reverb? That's about as trippy as you can get, there's an unusually vivid infinity there.

[HutchFan]

15 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Dude, have you ever listened to that Flamingos record from inside the reverb? That's about as trippy as you can get, there's an unusually vivid infinity there.

O.K., I gotcha, Jim.  Maybe it's a song that I've taken for granted, that I just know because it's always just been there.  I'll listen again.

 

I still feel like the "everyday-ness" idea (or what Neruda calls "impurity") is also part of Lester's equation. Or at least it is for my understanding of his music.  In other words, many things have great value that other people ascribe little (or even no) value to because it's perceived as ordinary -- even when it isn't.

 

Edited June 15, 2022 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

Reverb is a powerful tool in the right hands. It stretches time and can loop it back on itself. There are "cosmic" implications to this when used with intent. I don't know how it happened on this particular record, but I think it's the tempo, the beat, and the deepest imaginable pocket of same. Microseconds make a difference. 

To say nothing of having a two note piano figure repeat literally the entire song, even when it clashes with the changes!  This isn't a ballad, this is a trance, a trance of intimacy 

It really is a "magic" record. Just because it's been trivialized by an at-best semi-comatose population is no excuse for not recognizing it. 

[felser]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

 

It really is a "magic" record. Just because it's been trivialized by an at-best semi-comatose population is no excuse for not recognizing it. 

I've always considered it THE classic record in the genre.  It does sound and feel like it's from another universe, one I'd like to visit.  It is truly one of a kind magic.  It is one of those rare records I will sit in the car until it finishes on the radio.