Jack De Johnette RIP

[clifford_thornton]

3 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

Love that one. Have the Japanese LP pressing with that cover as well. Probably the first place I (and most people outside of Japan) heard Hideo Ichikawa.

[felser]

37 minutes ago, clifford_thornton said:

Love that one. Have the Japanese LP pressing with that cover as well. Probably the first place I (and most people outside of Japan) heard Hideo Ichikawa.

Definitely was for me.  I need to pull that one out and re-listen, it's been a long time.  Looong album sides on that one, 29+ minutes each.

[Guy Berger]

Incredible drummer.  Hard to imagine Miles’s music evolving from “Directions” to On the Corner without his presence, and his appearances on ECM as a sideman/leader were usually of extremely high quality.

Strong agreement on Special Edition and Album Album being the best of that band’s work, though all 4 of the ECMs are worth hearing.

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, clifford_thornton said:

Love that one. Have the Japanese LP pressing with that cover as well. Probably the first place I (and most people outside of Japan) heard Hideo Ichikawa.

Got it when I was 16 or so, a cutout. Only kinda got it then, time took care of that.

Interesting now to hear the title track alongside some of Chick's SS material with Maupin sound like the goings on of the Lost Quintet - which at the time unless you had heard them live you HADN'T heard them!

You HAVEN'T?

Seriously don't that that was the intent, but history makes it's own jokes sometimes.

[BFrank]

4 hours ago, Milestones said:

Special Edition and Album Album, in particular, are excellent records.  

For sure

[Pim]

He was among the greatest. RIP

[ghost of miles]

Hank Shteamer on The Infinity of Jack DeJohnette.

Hard to imagine the jazz world without Jack DeJohnette in it anymore. 

[sgcim]

He even recorded and gigged with the Bill Evans Trio back in 1967-68. RIP.

[mhatta]

RIP.  Papa Joe, Buddy, Klook, Roy, Art B, Art T, Max, Sherry, Philly Joe, Elvin, Tony, Billy, Paul, and now Jack... each had their own distinct personality, and you could tell who it was just by hearing them play. They're all gone now. Am I the only one who thinks drums have become so bland lately?

 

I also quite like Jack as a modal pianist.

 

[clifford_thornton]

I quite enjoy that Jackeyboard album.

“Jazz” is in a weird place and it’s not only one instrument (or set of instruments) that has a blandness problem. But that’s another thread!

[T.D.]

After spinning the "Special Edition" box I'm listening to some more offbeat recordings with Jack:

The duet with Foday Musa Suso

Bill Evans Trio At the Montreux Jazz Festival

Nick Brignola On a Different Level (my favorite Brignola album)

[JSngry]

And then there was Compost...

[Milestones]

Yes, Jack was great for his amazing skills and his unique style--that's why he is up there with Max, Tony, Elvin, Art, and those true greats.

There are some fine drummers our there, like Joey Baron and Bill Stewart.  But I think they are a level or two down from Jack.  

[clifford_thornton]

11 hours ago, JSngry said:

And then there was Compost...

Never connected with them, but that’s probably on me.

There are definitely a lot of fine (at a minimum) drummers on the scene! But the working situations leave a lot to be desired and I think that has a detrimental effect on the “feel” of the music. It’s not so lived-in, nor is it particularly cutthroat.

[Steve Reynolds]

15 hours ago, mhatta said:

RIP.  Papa Joe, Buddy, Klook, Roy, Art B, Art T, Max, Sherry, Philly Joe, Elvin, Tony, Billy, Paul, and now Jack... each had their own distinct personality, and you could tell who it was just by hearing them play. They're all gone now. Am I the only one who thinks drums have become so bland lately?

 

I also quite like Jack as a modal pianist.

 

Not listening to the great drummers of today. Blessed to be seeing Gerry Hemingway tonight at The Stone. It’s actually a golden age for drummers. The older guys like Hemingway, Hamid Drake, Paul Lytton, Han Bennink & Andrew Cyrille still playing at a very high level. 
 

the slightly younger drummers than the old dudes like Randy Peterson, Gerald Cleaver, Tom Rainey, Mark Sanders & Steve Noble are incredible. 

then we have Tyshawn Sorey, Ches Smith, Nasheet Waits, etc.

the real gap is we don’t have many under 40 drummers making their mark. Not sure why a few have not emerged as of yet. Especially here in NYC. 

Edited 16 hours ago by Steve Reynolds

[clifford_thornton]

I agree with the names you mention.

Nasheet I first saw with Andrew Hill and Peter Brötzmann (separately) almost 25 years ago. He’s excellent. I don’t know that recordings always capture these artists’ work well, but that has always been the case.

[HutchFan]

44 minutes ago, Steve Reynolds said:

the real gap is we don’t have many under 40 drummers making their mark. Not sure why a few have not emerged as of yet. Especially here in NYC. 

Marcus Gilmore?  He's 39.

 

[clifford_thornton]

I really like Joey Sullivan, who’s based in Philly. I don’t believe he’s even 30.

[Steve Reynolds]

2 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

I really like Joey Sullivan, who’s based in Philly. I don’t believe he’s even 30.

I’m a fan & a friend of Joey. He’s well under 30. He’s getting better too. He’s very good with his assorted cymbals. Got a bit of Lytton in him. 

3 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

I agree with the names you mention.

Nasheet I first saw with Andrew Hill and Peter Brötzmann (separately) almost 25 years ago. He’s excellent. I don’t know that recordings always capture these artists’ work well, but that has always been the case.

Nasheet for one is never well served on record compared to live. Rainey is another. Hard for their dynamics & sound to shine on record. Ches Smith is another. His astonishing power live in a small room never translates to recordings. Plus as I’ve seen lots of the NYC based drummers up to dozens of times, I get very very spoiled. Certainly Drake, Hemingway, Sanders & Peterson come across better on recordings than the above 3 examples

[felser]

I know I saw Beaver Harris live twice in the 70's (once with Shepp, once in a group with Hannibal Peterson and George Adams), and he blew me away in person to a degree that never happened on the dozens of recordings of him.  So I don't think it's a totally new phenomenon.

[ep1str0phy]

DeJohnette was a giant. I saw him live only once - in a transcendent trio with Ravi Coltrane and Matthew Garrison - and I marveled at his ability to make a large hall sound small. He had an uncanny time feel, but more than anything else, I appreciated his talents as a texturalist. Considering the fact that he came out of that Miles/Jackie McLean continuum of shredding post-bop drummers, it's amazing what he could do with space and timbre. That final Special Edition record with the AACM guys is pretty extraordinary in that way. (I also like Wadada's The Great Lakes Suites, with Threadgill and John Lindberg, as a recent example of DeJohnette's work in freer contexts.)

I second what Steve says about appreciating our giants while they're still here. Cyrille is my hero and a friend, but I sincerely believe that people still don't understand how remarkable he is. There are a host of elder statespeople, like Hamid, Michael Zerang, Gerald Cleaver, Donald Robinson, Chad Taylor, Suzie Ibarra, Marc Edwards, and so on who are still issuing relevant and powerful work. 

More of an implicit part of the conversation, but the calculus of the music has just changed a lot. Things that seem "new" or woefully contemporary, like the drumming of a Chris Dave or Thomas Pridgen, have been well and truly digested at this point. In the age of new media, music moves incredibly fast. IMO the biggest issue is that art moves too fast, and kids now are tasked with internalizing innovation without accumulating the lived experience that gives that innovation meaning. 

Edited 11 hours ago by ep1str0phy

[Holy Ghost]

Sad, sad news, RIP.  

Edited 7 hours ago by Holy Ghost

[clifford_thornton]

4 hours ago, ep1str0phy said:

 In the age of new media, music moves incredibly fast. IMO the biggest issue is that art moves too fast, and kids now are tasked with internalizing innovation without accumulating the lived experience that gives that innovation meaning. 

THIS. 

And yes, I agree that Rainey, Ches Smith, and Nasheet haven't been well captured on disc sometimes. Seeing them in person is another story. I remember the first time I saw Tom play live, at a coffee house in Austin with Malaby and the trombonist Brian Allen (Brian was the leader), my socks were completely knocked asunder.

[Steve Reynolds]

Fwiw Gerry Hemingway was incredible tonight. Mark Dresser seems to be still amazed at his playing and they’ve been playing together for over 40 years. 
 

As per usual I was with 7-8 feet of the master drummer. 

[JSngry]

13 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

Never connected with them, but that’s probably on me.

Compost was highly erratic but, hey, Harold Vick, and the occasional genuine groove. Jack got a full page article in DB to talk about the band. Columbia muscle in action, no doubt.

He remained "eclectic" after moving to ECM, but before then he was ECLECTIC, if you know what I mean