At this point, just two days before Christmas, you’re probably waking up at odd hours with “O Little Town of Bethlehem” playing on that radio station inside your head.  Some songs never seem to go away.  And then there are those that really don’t.

This month, “Studio 360” has been featuring some of this year’s 25 selections entered into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress.  The Registry was created as part of the 2000 National Recording Preservation Act, which sought to address the steady loss of the country’s audio heritage.  Since 2002, the Library has chosen radio broadcasts, spoken word recordings, and plenty of unforgettable songs that it considers to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important” to be set aside for safe keeping.

The Jefferson Reading Room at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

But what determines the selections?  And who?

Well, the answer to the second question is that you do, at least to begin with.  Anyone can nominate up to ten recordings per year.  The submissions are then evaluated by the National Recording Preservation Board and the Librarian of Congress.  The answer to the “what” question is a little more complicated.  A quick scan of the list of selections reveals some no-brainers: what’s a collection of American recordings without Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land” or Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech?  But what about “Recordings of Asian Elephants?”  And not one but two versions of “Tom Dooley?”

It’s hard to look at this list and not wonder what some alien species would make of us if these recordings were the only evidence of our civilization left behind.  What would they think of Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?” or album titles that even we can’t figure out like “Mingus Ah Um?”  They’d also never know that anything postdated Seattle grunge.

Of course, there’s a lot more yet to be added to the Registry.  Every year brings new contenders, but there are also tons of classics from the last century-plus that deserve inclusion as well.  Guess you’ll have to wait your turn, Lady Gaga.

You can listen to our stories behind some of this year’s selections here.

- Jordan Sayle

Mingus Big Band @ Jazz Standard

Went to hear the Mingus Big Band @ Jazz Standard, finally . I’ve been curious about that one for a while. It was surprisingly packed over there, seems like Jazz Standard is doing great business. And they deserve it too – in my opinion they have one of the best bookings in the city, really great food, great service, nice atmosphere, very professional attitude, quite reasonable prices (with student discounts), none of that aggressive minimums policy. Which really makes it in many ways the best jazz club in NY. But I was a little disappointed with the actual big band. I enjoyed only a couple of the tunes. I thought quite a lot of it was actually disturbingly out of tune. And for some reason didn’t like the piano player, I thought he was showing some bad taste with all those elevator music clichés and not so classy christmas carols quotes.  So I wasn’t as much into the whole thing. But the lineup in general was amazing: Scott Robinson, Donny McCaslin – tenor saxophone, Jaleel Shaw, Craig Handy – alto saxophone, flute,  Lauren Sevian – baritone saxophone, Andy Hunter, Dave Taylor, Marshall Gilkes – trombones Kenny Rampton, Alex Sipiagin, Earl Gardner – trumpets, David Kikoski – piano, Boris Kozlov – bass, Jeff “Tain” Watts – drums.

Village Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

But yeah. I think as a big band they were also lacking a little with the dynamics and energy. So afterwards I went to the Vanguard for a fresh comparison between the two. I must say the Vanguard Orchestra sounded way better to me. They aren’t perfect either, though, at least not always . But Vanguard was almost packed as well, even the second set. Seems like holiday season is favorable for big band music. Speaking of that, I really wish I could have heard Joe Henderson’s Big Band live. I don’t think I would have had anything critical to say about them!

Discovered an inspiring quote by Charles Mingus on Jazz Standard’s website:

“Most people are forced to do things they don’t want to for most of the time, and so they get to the point where they feel they no longer have any choices about anything important, including who they are. We create our own slavery. But I’m going to keep on getting through, and finding out the kind of man I am,

Edmar Casteneda & Ari Hoenig @ Smalls

through my music. That’s the one place I can be free.” (Charles Mingus [1922–1979], from a conversation with Nat Hentoff)

Good point…

And then finally, saw Ari Hoenig @ Smalls with this interesting Columbian harp player Edmar Casteneda. Never heard seen or heard that kind of harp before, cool

Two biographies of jazz musicians have recently gotten much well-deserved media attention: Robin G. Kelley’s study of Thelonious Monk, Terry Teachout’s Louis Armstrong book. 

The Mercury Press has just published jazz scholar Mark Miller’s biography of pianist-composer Herbie Nichols.  It’s a small paperback, 224 pages, without accompanying fanfare. 

But HERBIE NICHOLS: A JAZZIST’S LIFE is, in its own quiet way, equal and perhaps superior to the larger competition.  It could fascinate a reader who had never heard Nichols on record or in person: Miller is that fine a writer and researcher. 

At this point, “full disclosure” is essential: I have admired Miller’s books before; my praise of his Valaida Snow biography is on the back cover here; I also tried to help him speak to New York musicians who might have played alongside Nichols, among them Leroy “Sam” Parkins and Joe Muranyi.  But if I had received a copy of this book with its author’s name erased, I would have been mightily impressed. 

But more about that later.  Who was Herbie Nichols?  “Dead at 44 of leukemia” is one answer.  “Brilliantly original but underacknowledged in his lifetime.”  “Peer of Monk, not a disciple.”  “Inimitable pianist and composer.”  “He could work with Danny Barker and Roswell Rudd and please them both.” 

Nichols rarely made his living playing the music he had created.  The paying gigs were with rhythm and blues bands or playing for cabarets, chorus lines, and shows, and most often “Dixieland.”  In fact, I first heard him on records with Rex Stewart and Joe Thomas.  (Nichols’ last record was the Atlantic MAINSTREAM session.) 

But Nichols knew a wide variety of music, and didn’t bring his own ideology to the gig, even though the jazz critics were busily pitting ”Dixieland” against “modern.”  He was a fine stride pianist, choosing Jelly Roll Morton’s THE PEARLS as his feature when he played with a traditional band. 

But he retained his identity, and the players who worked with Nichols understood that he was going his own way in the traditional ensembles of the time, not always easily.  Dixieland gigs proliferated, even though writers might now see the Fifties as the era of cool jazz or hard bop.  He worked in bands led by drummer Al Bandini (a friend of Pee Wee Russell) at the Greenwich Village club The Riviera, which may still be active, although without music, on Seventh Avenue South.  Buell Neidlinger recalled what I hope wasn’t a typical scene: ”I can’t tell you the number of times I trudged over there with my bass just to get a chance to play with Herbie, even with Al there — just to make Herbie feel better.  Al was nasty to Herbie.  Herbie’d be playing one of his tunes and Al would say, ‘Let’s stop that shit now!  Right in the middle of the tune!  Let’s stop that shit now.  Let’s play When the Saints Go Marching In.‘ He’d say that real loud and the audience would scream, ‘Yeah!  Go, man, go, go, go!” 

Nichols’ brief life, the scant recognition he got, and such scenes might encourage a writer to depict him as a victim.  One imagines the Down Beat headline: JAZZ MODERNIST FORCED TO PLAY “ROYAL GARDEN BLUES.”  Intrigued by Nichols the man, Miller avoids the conventional portrait of the suffering jazzman, and shows us that Nichols — refiined, intellectual, chess-player, poet, and painter – was not self-destructive, an alcoholic, an addict.  African-American, he was not victimized by racism — no more than any man of his race in those decades.   

Rather, Miller is sympathetic without being idolatrous, candidly describing the missed chances, the system of jazz-stardom that put Thelonious Monk on the cover of TIME but had Nichols playing the piano for female impersonators.  Nichols is a particularly challenging subject for a biography because the evidence that exists nearly forty-five years after his death is slim. 

However, readers who are intrigued by famous names and the people a working musician might encounter will be delighted by the players Nichols worked with or knew: Louis Armstrong, Jack Teagarden, Sidney Bechet, Dick Rath, Ed Polcer, Conrad Janis, Wilbur deParis, Illinois Jacquet, John Kirby, Charles Mingus, Roswell Rudd, Sheila Jordan, Dave Frishberg, Cecil Taylor, Max Roach, Art Blakey.  We find him on a Turkish cruise ship playing traditional jazz with Steve Swallow.  A Nichols melody caught Billie Holiday’s ear and was retitled, with lyrics, LADY SINGS THE BLUES.  He helps a ten-year old Phil Schaap negotiate the New York subway system. 

Miller knits together all these incidents, bits of hearsay and anecdotage without making his book seem like a banquet of crumbs.  The biography moves chronologically, but Miller isn’t tied to the calendar (some jazz books read as if the author wanted to follow the subject gig by gig, month by month); Miller is both expert and free, so the book moves sideways when the material needs it, without losing the thread.  The biography is compact (Miller considers that not every artist needs a five-hundred page monograph) but it is both dense and quickly-paced. 

And in the essential small things, Miller is splendid: he has a fine emotional intelligence that allows him to be fond of Nichols (as everyone except Bandini was, apparently) without idealizing him.  Although the evidence is often sketchy, Miller doesn’t hypothesize excessively; he avoids psychoanalyzing his subject; he doesn’t get irritated by Nichols, nor does he pad the biography by quoting large excerpts from Nichols’ prose.  His musical analysis is pointed but not over-technical; Miller captures the flavor and sensibility of Nichols playing, composing, and imagination.

Another writer might have made himself the subject of the book: “Look how much detective work I had to do to find out this shred of information about that neglected pianist — I forget his name.”  Someone might have shaped the facts of his subject’s life to fit a particular ideology.  Because Miller illuminates Nichols and gently stays out of the way, his subject’s personality shines through, even when the evidence is most thin.  I began the book with great eagerness because I admire Miller’s writing, his perspective, and his research — but very soon I was forcing myself to read it more slowly, because I did not want it to end.  That may be the best tribute a reader can pay — to Nichols and to his chronicler.       

COPYRIGHT, MICHAEL STEINMAN AND JAZZ LIVES, 2009
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.  Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Michael Steinman and Jazz Lives with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. 

(originally aired on August 06, 2007)

This one is dedicated to my friends at http://www.herejazz.blogspot.com
they make downloading good jazz easy! Enjoy!

Oscar Peterson – C-Jam Blues
Charles Mingus – Boogie Stop Shuffle
Miles Davis – Doxy
Charlie Parker – Funky Blues
Billie Holiday – Big Stuff
Sippie Wallace – Muhammed Ali
Dirty Dozen Brass Band – Down by the river

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The Art Ensemble of Chicago

With the black arts movement in the United States during the 1960s came politically charged performances by artists such as Max Roach and The Art Ensemble of Chicago, who were attempting to “take back” jazz for blacks from an industry they perceived to be under white control.  There is much controversy about the “free jazz” these men played.  Melodically and rhythmically it had begun to venture so far outside the traditional parameters of what was traditionally accepted that people began to question whether or not what they were playing really even qualified as music at all, much less jazz music.

Max Roach & Abbey Lincoln – Freedom Now Suite

What these artists attempted to do with their music was radical, but also completely understandable.  Jazz had always been about improvisation and innovation, so free jazz proponents saw what they were doing as a logical extension of the genre.  Turbulent times during the civil rights movement called for turbulent music, punctuated by hoarse screams (in the “Freedom Now Suite”) and flamboyant costumes (in the Art Ensemble).  But while these artists succeeded in blazing new trails in terms of what could be done with music both sonically and socially, it is debatable whether they succeeded in creating what the Art Ensemble termed “great black music.”

James Brown – I Feel Good

While some consider it great, and the artists were black and concerned with Afro-centric history and politics, it never became the music of the black race. In fact, it was artists such as James Brown the “Godfather of Soul”, who was enjoying great popularity during this time among the black community. Although the issues that jazz artists at the time were confronting were important to many black people, the majority failed to see the connection between the progressive politics and the progressive sound of free jazz music.

This divide continues today.  Almost everyone, black or white, has heard of Kanye West, but the majority of American youths can probably count the number of contemporary jazz artists they know on one hand.  This isn’t to say that the music is irrelevant, or not salvageable, but perhaps we must accept that for a popular audience, it has been subsumed under the umbrella of “rock music,” a term just as indefinable as jazz.

Sly and the Family Stone

Since Miles Davis pioneered jazz fusion after witnessing his contemporaries Sly and the Family Stone move the crowd in ways that even he no longer felt he could with straight jazz, jazz and rock have borrowed from each other freely.  I would submit that jazz still thrives, and that it is commercially viable, although perhaps it exists in a form that would appall the Art Ensemble.

Dirty Projectors – Temecula Sunrise

Artists like Dirty Projectors employ many of the elements of what made bop initially successful.  It takes the tried and true pop verse-chorus-verse pop song format and uses traditional rock instrumentation while introducing complex, virtuosic instrumentation, intricate time signatures, and drum beats that weave in and out of the melody instead of simply keeping the beat.

For the most part, the band uses drums, guitar, bass, and keys, instruments that are typically associated with rock music, not jazz, but all of the essential elements are there.  Their song “Temecula Sunrise” off of their most recent album Bitte Orca provides a good example.

Radiohead – The National Anthem

Similarly the band Radiohead, one of the biggest “rock” bands in the world, borrows heavily from Charles Mingus tinged hard bop on the songs “The National Anthem” off of their album Kid A (which won the 2000 Grammy for Best Alternative Album) and polyphonic early New Orleans influenced jazz sounds on “Life in a Glasshouse,” off their 2001 album Amnesiac.  If Radiohead were not packaged and sold by the industry as a rock band, it would be very difficult to categorize this music as such.

Radiohead – Life In A Glasshouse

However, we must note another important thing these two bands have in common: they both consist exclusively of white men.  Is this not just another recurrence of white executives and musicians copping a black musical form in order to appeal to a more mainstream audience and cash in on a black musical innovation?  It’s hard to say.

The music industry is different now, with black artists like Jay-Z controlling his own musical empire.  But in a lot of ways this certainly looks like a case of white artists “Benny Goodman-ing” jazz music to make it more palatable.  It’s certainly not the vision of the Art Ensemble, and so the controversy remains: Is the only way to make jazz music popular to Anglicize it?

STEVEN WAYE

Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.

That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.

Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964

**********

lagniappe

I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)

Charles Mingus – The Original Fables of Faubus

After Arkansas governor Orval Faubus decided to bar the integration of Little Rock Central High School in 1957, jazz bassist Charles Mingus wrote the tune “The Original Fables of Faubus” for his 1959 album “Mingus Ah Um.”  The controversial lyrics of the original version were left off the release by Columbia records.  Though the liner notes to the 1998 re-release of the album state that the piece started life as an instrumental and didn’t gain lyrics until 1960, when it was released in full form, with lyrics, on the album “Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus,” it seems entirely possible that Columbia records barred the lyrical version from being released on “Mingus Ah Um”.  “Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus” was released on a smaller independent label.  The fact that the song caused such controversy in its initial release shows what turbulent times these were and what touchy issues race relations and school integration were.

 The purity of the song’s form is striking.  It is a distinctly jazzy protest, in that it incorporates many of the ring shout tropes that make jazz music what it is.  The exhortation of Mingus and his drummer Dannie Richmond are shouted back and forth, with Mingus asking a question and Richmond responding with raspy exclamations.  There is no argument clearly laid out and broken down.  It is not an analytical study, but an exclamation of passionate anger.  Yet the lyrics themselves are thoughtful and thought provoking, dismissing the notion that jazz is a bunch of scattered sporadic noise.  This is clearly the work of men who value both inspiration and improvisation and deep thought, attacking taboo social issues and pushing the boundaries of jazz while remaining true to a jazz ethos.  He is not afraid to call out men of power (Eisenhower, Faubus, Rockefeller), forcing us to think of the struggle in terms that are less simple than Faubus defying Eisenhower and Eisenhower championing integration.  Both men got caught in a power struggle that made the whole ordeal about them instead of about the kids who were simply trying to attend school.  

As for the instrumentals, the main melodic line played by the trumpet is catchy and dissonant at the same time, never really resolving and leaving the listener with a feeling of unrest, fitting for a song that is meant to inspire indignation in its audience.  The vocals follow this line, until Mingus declares Faubus a fool and the melody spins into a wild hard bop run, only to straighten out and return to the original melody, marking the social confusion of the time, especially the confusion that must have been felt by the nine young black students that weren’t allowed to go to Little Rock Central.  Here they were told to integrate (which Mingus marks with the opening melody, stable but a bit wary) and then the chaos of being stopped by the National Guard (the part that follows). The Original Fables of Faubus is a 1960’s jazz protest in its rawest form, as it is also a defining contribution by Charles Mingus to the Civil Rights Movement.

Steven Waye

Jaki Byard foi um dos pianistas mais criativos no jazz. Tinha total domínio do piano e era capaz de tocar em qualquer estilo. Prova disso é esse fantástico disco gravado em 1960 pelo selo Candid, onde Byard explora diversos estilos, do antigo stride ao experimental tocando nove faixas em piano solo, todas composições suas. Este foi o primeiro trabalho solo do pianista que ficou famoso ao acompanhar o grupo de Charles Mingus e de participar de gravações memoráveis de Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

O disco é uma lição de piano e é difícil destacar uma faixa já que o disco é brilhante. Particularmente gosto da primeira faixa “Journey/Hollis Stomp/Milan to Lyon” que combina os estilos mais antigos do jazz no piano e é dividida em três momentos. “Pete and Thomas (Tribute to the Ticklers) lembra em alguns momentos o piano de Fats Waller e é outra ótima faixa. E o bom e velho blues, presente na faixa “Blues for Smoke”.

Apesar de não ser considerado um dos titãs no piano, acho que Byard ao lado de Bobby Timmons e Sonny Clark são pianistas geniais por sua ousadia e criatividade e não somente pela destreza no instrumento. Tenho certeza que este disco comprova isso.

1 – Journey/Hollis Stomp/Milan to Lyon
2 – Aluminium Baby
3 – Pete and Thomas (Tribute to the Ticklers)
4 – Spanish Tinge No.1
5 – Flight of the Fly
6 – Blues for Smoke
7 – Jaki’s Blues Next
8 – Diane’s Melody
9 – One, Two, Five

Jaki Byard – piano solo

(Jaki Byard não gravou muito como líder e é bem difícil achar seus discos. Como líder, um outro ótimo disco é “Jaki Byard Experience” que conta com Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Na mesma linha temos o “Rip, Rig and Panic” liderado pelo Kirk e com Byard no piano. Como acompanhante no grupo de Mingus, destaco “Black Saint and the Sinner Lady”)

Thema: “Leopoldi (Der Hl. Leopold)”

Anwesende: Thomas

Heute feiern wir (vor allem die Niederösterreicher) den Hl. Leopold. Wie man das mit Jazz kreuzen kann, und was für Pop-Songs mit Jazz gekreuzt werden können….. da hat man ja echt ein Kreuz damit!

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Musik von: Hank Mobley, Ray Bryant, Pink Turtle, Clark Terry, Charles Mingus, Steve Lacy & Don Cherry, Dirty Dozen Brass band, Chet Baker & Stan Getz

Bis nächste (!) Woche!

“In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am.“   — Charles Mingus

(I wonder if he was an influence of Edie Brickell’s?) —   YUR

Charles Mingus – Haitian Fight Song

Motto: “Humor vergessen”

Anwesende: Thomas

Heute habe ich meinen sorgfältig vorbereiteten Humor vergessen. Macht nix, weil ich ein selten gutes VIDEO im Anschluss für euch habe!

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Musik von: Chet Baker + Art Pepper, Sonny Clark, Sun Ra, Charles Mingus, James Hunter, Yusef lateef, Chet Baker & Crew, Elder Richard Byrant’s Sanctified Singers, Prince Lasha

Und hier ein selten cooles Video von JAMES HUNTER: Carina!

Bis Bald! Viel Spaß!

We're in the gutter, looking at the stars...

  Merci, Paris; Miles Davis in the house; Pablo Moses likewise…

It’s a cold morning in Paris, and the city is enshrouded in white gauze, the sun a pale white onion that offers little warmth and keeps its distance from the frosty streets below. Today, the members of Groundation woke to a feeling of gratitude towards the people of Paris, once again. Since our first tour in France we’ve played Glaz’art, Bataclan, The Olympia, and finally last year, the Zenith. I joked with our promoter that according to this progression I expected to be playing the Stade de France this year. He laughed uncomfortably.

La Cite de la Musique

Just across from the Zenith is the Cité de la Musique which is now hosting an exhibition on Miles Davis. Miles spent a lot of time in Europe, Paris in particular. He composed the score to the French film L’ascenseur Pour L’Echafault (Stairway to the Scaffold), had an with French actress Juliette Greco, met the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and other national celebrities.

The ghost of Miles Davis backstage at the Kinetic Playground in Chicago

On a personal level, Miles is the reason I started playing the trumpet. The sound of Mr. Davis inspired me to pull a cold, smelly coil of metal tubing out of a box every single day and blow into it until it either started sounding good or my lips started bleeding. From childhood I emulated Miles’ ability to convey the most fragile and private feelings through his horn: love, pain, hope. It wasn’t until much later that I learned that not everything in Miles’ life was worth emulating, and I eventually came to understand that while music may be very personal, it doesn’t tell us much about the person who’s making it.

The fact that amazes me is that Miles’ egocentric, angry personality can’t be heard in songs like his version of “Someday My Prince Will Come” or “Surrey with a Fringe on Top”. His sound was vulnerable and sensitive (more like Gregory Isaacs than Burning Spear), but Miles didn’t treat the people in his life with much tenderness, nor did he show his vulnerability to them, and by most accounts, he treated his wives and girlfriends as poorly as everyone else, probably worse. On the other hand, I know that legendary jazz musician Duke Ellington was a really, really nice guy, while his one-time bassist Charles Mingus would just as soon punch you in the face as perform his heartbreaking ballad “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat”*. There’s something strangely disquieting about this fact.

Pablo Moses on stage at Le Zenith

I’ve never read Pablo Moses’ biography. I don’t even know if one exists, but I’ve known him long enough to see that he doesn’t resent the world the way Miles Davis and Charles Mingus did. Generous, philosophical, funny and humble are the words that come to my mind in describing the composer of “A Song” and “Dubbing is a Must”, adjectives which also apply to Duke Ellington. But Pablo’s vocal performance is aggressive, dark and masculine, a little bit raw. Pablo sang with Groundation last night in Paris, and we’d been touring with him, German singer Sebastian Sturm and the Jin Jin Band who backed them both for shows in Strassbourg and Lyon. The people of Paris treated all of us (Americans, Jamaicans and Germans) with respect and great warmth, and I couldn’t help thinking of the amazing encouragement this country has offered to jazzmen (as the French call them).

Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Cannonball Adderley, and many, many others tapped into the ravenous and diverse cultural appetite of Europe, allowing them to develop their music even when American audiences offered a cold shoulder, or in many cases, a racist hand pushing them down despite their talent. Today, not only jazz musicians, but Reggae artists from Lee Perry to Burning Spear rely on European audiences. After playing in Paris last night, I’m sure I share with them a deep gratitude towards these fans and their hospitality. As a reader, I also appreciate that a great many foreign writers owe much of their best work to Paris: Hemmingway, James Joyce, Henry Miller and James Baldwin to name a few. At the very least, Americans probably still owe the French a nod for their ancestors helping our ancestors with a little spot of bother known as The American Revolutionary War.

The Miles Davis exhibition in Paris included a world-class concert series, forums, classes and lectures, including one on Miles as a fashion icon. With a music school right next door, the whole neighborhood was filled with the comings and goings of different styles and instruments. While Kelsey and I were enjoying a great meal across the street at a French restaurant on Avenue Jean Jaurès a bunch of old musicians tromped in with their cases and their wives (may they be rewarded in the afterlife for having put up with us in this one). I couldn’t help grinning: artists and people who love beauty feel drawn helplessly to the beacon of Paris the way a bee is drawn to a bright, fragrant flower. But in addition to being the city of light and taste, Paris is also the greatest example of what is possible when a people refuse to allow their culture to be dictated to them by some distant authority like the church or the mass media. As long as cities like this exist, artists with vision will always have a home.

“Diesel” Dave Chachere

*The very large, very short-tempered Mr. Mingus is famous for having taken a fire axe from the stage where Duke’s band was performing and chasing composer Juan Tizol around the grand piano with it.

1. The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady
2. Pithecanthropus Erectus
3. Cornell 1964 (Charles Mingus Sextet w/ Eric Dolphy)
4. Ah Um
5. Oh Yeah
6. Mingus At Antibes
7. Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus
8. The Clown
9. Blues & Roots
10. Tijuana Moods

NP: High On Fire – Live From The Relapse Contamination Festival

the BBC are really belting them out at the moment!

iPlayer Picks

Arena Cool | 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz | Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon | The Jazz Baroness| Trusadh-14. A Ghealach (The Moon) |

“Como una ópera clásica, nos propusimos celebrar el tercer aniversario de Cultura Etérea en dos partes; la primera fue el pasado número de septiembre, que incluía material nuevo de nuestro staff e invitados del último año y que tan afectuosamente fue recibida por todos ustedes, nuestros lectores consagrados.
Ahora llega octubre para darle un cierre a esta obra que tan bien comenzó. Pero la continuación/cierre no llega de manera simple (en contadas ocasiones las cosas son simples). Cuando nos decidimos por esta opción de Celebración Opera no tuvimos en cuenta el factor “intervalo” entre primera y segunda parte, lo que resultó ser el Mac Guffin de nuestra historia. … “

CULTURA ETÉREA – AÑO TRES
“Otra parte del aniversario…”

“GrrrrrlsGames. El bizarro mundo de las mujeres y los juegos” – Zeithgeist
“Sesga” – LMC
“Tengo bici” – Manuela Suárez
“Invisible” – YUB le
“Las extravagantes aventuras de Don Benito Lope” – Zeithgeist
“Colectivo Imaginario” – Tobías De La Torre

“Albert Camus 1957, un Nobel y un puñado de pasiones”

Además:
“LA INFLUENZA DE MINGUS”. Por Homero Ontiveros

REPORTAJE A ROBERTO ALIFANO. Borges, Neruda y otros gigantes de las letras Latinoamericanas desde una perspectiva privilegiada. Por Karolina Alarcón.

ENTREVISTA EXCLUSIVA CON DIE TOTEN HOSEN. A punto de desembarcar en nuestro país, un poco de libros, música y fútbol con la banda alemana más argentina.Por Lucas Mendoza Canalda

http://www.culturaeterea.com.ar/
http://www.culturaeterea.com.ar/
http://www.culturaeterea.com.ar/
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Dave Brubeck’s 1959 album Time Out is one of the landmark recordings in jazz history. For that reason alone, the 50^th anniversary of its release merits celebration. But, on a larger scale, Time Out represents a major development within American culture, one that was crucial to inducing the seismic shifts to occur in our country during the tumultuous 1960s that followed. While it is likely that such shifts would have occurred anyway, with or without Brubeck’s contributions, a strong case can be made that his group, and its most important work, helped accelerate progress on several fronts, advancing the cause of racial harmony while opening the door for later musical innovations.

It is further worth noting that Brubeck’s achievements represent, to a surprising degree, a triumph of conservative values: faith, family, hard work and self-reliance. His ideological compass has always remained pointed toward the California ranchlands of his youth—the kind of environment that was later famously embraced by President Reagan, who fully understood the symbolic value of his years of public brush-clearing and horse-riding. Reagan’s retreats to the ranch implied a desire to escape the Beltway’s rarefied air and reorient himself to the pioneer spirit which drove America’s development in its first century of existence. The simple beauty of such areas communicates an austere dignity that would surely impart perspective on the serious issues all Presidents must grapple with, and so it is make perfect sense that men as different in personality as George W. Bush, Richard Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt would embrace them.

For most of his early life—from childhood, through his years in the US Army and as a music student at Oberlin College—Brubeck existed firmly within the Tradition. Had he not caught the jazz bug early on, he might have ended up as a concert pianist working with symphony orchestras, or a composer of string quartets. He did eventually do a lot of work in these areas, but it was the worldwide acclaim earned as a jazzman that gave him the freedom to expand his musical horizons. Indeed, if his legacy could be summed up in one word, despite all his formalistic trappings, it would be “freedom”.

This legacy of freedom is being celebrated by Columbia Records, which recently reissued Time Out in a special three-disc package, on occasion of the 50^th anniversary of the album’s original release. Suffice to say that, if you have never heard this music, then you owe yourself the pleasure of doing so; likewise, people for whom this music is old hat will still find value in its enhanced sound quality and the wealth of bonus material, including photos, performance footage and eight songs recorded live at the Newport Jazz Festival between 1961-64. The highlight is an interactive tutorial in which Brubeck, now 89 years old, talks viewers through the melodies as he plays them.

The point of Time Out was to break out of the creative restrictions imposed on the jazz musician by strict adherence to the steady 4/4 beat that had characterized jazz since it first emerged from turn-of-century New Orleans. For the first 30 years of recorded jazz, that beat was maintained by the bass drum, replicating its role in the standard marching band, whose cadences and instrumentation were the basis of jazz early bands. Drummers of the 1940s New York scene, led by Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, shifted the burden of time-keeping from bass drum to the ride cymbal, which opened up the sound and set the standard for what modern jazz would sound like. (The upright bass, adapted from symphonic orchestras, evolved to replace the tuba as a rhythm instrument early on, and typically reinforced the 4/4 beat; its time-keeping role expanded in modern jazz, as the drummers went further beyond the beat, leaving its reiteration to the bassist.) By the early 1950s, all instrumentalists had unprecedented creative freedom in jazz, and the race to find the next great innovation was as competitive as the Space Race.

The introduction of long-playing (LP) records in 1948 quadrupled the amount of time available on an individual record, opened up song structures and brought a vaster range of material to the marketplace. Traditional American musical forms—jazz, blues, gospel, folk—predominated; rock was growing commercially, but did not become a creative force to rival the others until 1964.

The singer Ian Svenonius noted years back that the largest jazz groups are only a quarter the size of symphony orchestras, which are roughly 100 people; Swing Era bands could be half that size, while modern jazz groups of the ‘40s and beyond are usually between three and six people. Today, many artists do huge business as solo acts. Prince, for example, played all 27 instruments on his debut album and for years only used his bands for performances. Computers allow many pop singers and rappers to make albums without using any actual instruments at all.

Traditional European and early American music is labeled with the catch-all term of “classical” largely because of our nation’s record stores. It doesn’t seem to rankle so badly as certain artists who reject the idea of “jazz” as an organizational concept, maybe because the LP ensured that such music would remain in circulation as the country went more toward smaller (and logistically cheaper) groups. Most Americans today would know nothing of classical music if not for LPs and their CD reissues, particularly of the versions recorded in the 1950s and ‘60s. Likewise, although one can see top-notch jazz music anywhere in the world most nights, the closest that most jazz fans can usually get to experiencing serious big-band stuff is CD, or the occasional festival.

Brubeck, who studied with Darius Milhaud at Oberlin, did the industry a favor by wearing his classical affinities on his cuff-linked sleeve. His grounding in that tradition was the impetus to bust out of the 4/4. Max Roach had recorded an entire album, Jazz In ¾ Time, in 1957, and several songs on Time Out are rooted in ¾, as well as the standard 4/4. “Three to Get Ready” is in 3/4 and 4/4. “Kathy’s Waltz” starts in 4/4, then goes into 3/8, while “Blue Rondo ala Turk” starts in 9/8, with Desmond’s solo in 4/4.

Other tracks switch-up the rhythms more explicitly. “Everybody’s Jumpin’” and “Pick Up Sticks” are in 6/4. “Take Five” stays in 5/4 over its five-plus minutes, with Morello’s drum solo the definitive explication of that beat. “Strange Meadowlark” opens with a Brubeck solo running over two minutes with no set time whatsoever—a nod, perhaps, to the nascent free-jazz scene, or to Lennie Tristano, whose solo recordings “Spontaneous Combustion”, “Requiem” and “Turkish Mambo” anticipated much of this.

Take Five has no shortage of highlights, staring with “Take Five”, which is simply one of the greatest songs ever recorded. A masterpiece of dramatic tension, it was an instant classic when released as a single, becoming the first million-seller in jazz history; the album itself would soon follow. To this day, media references “Take Five” to invoke feelings of class and sophistication; it was famously used to launch Infiniti automobiles in America, with cool narration by British actor Jonathan Pryce.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet functioned as a unified whole, working together 16 years, yet each member has distinguished himself as a master of his own instrument. Bassist Eugene Wright is easily overlooked, as he played with little flash and almost no solos, but a close listen reveals how crucial his work was. He kept the group’s forward-reaching sound rooted in the fundamentals, which he learned from the best in hot spots like Kansas City and his native Chicago. Together, Wright and drummer Joe Morello comprised one of the all-time greatest rhythmic tandems, easily ranking up there with such towering twins as Walter Page and Jo Jones (Count Basie); Jimmy Blanton and Sonny Greer (Duke Ellington); Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones (Miles) Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones (Coltrane); Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins (Coleman); Mingus and Dannie Richmond; Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian (Bill Evans).

Naturally, a record built around rhythmic complexity puts special pressure on the drummer, and Morello attained legend status with his work on Time Out. His brush-work on “Everybody’s Jumpin’” anchors a brilliant piece that holds up just fine against its adjacents. “Take Five” is one of the rare examples of a major pop hit built around a drum solo; the other notable case would be “Sing Sing Sing”, an epochal Swing Era anthem by Benny Goodman (and a star-making vehicle for drummer Gene Krupa), recorded in 1937. Like Desmond’s earlier on the same track, musicians and students know their solos better than some know their best friends.

As for the leader himself, Brubeck’s playing is spare but efficient, each note pressed for maximum resonance. His solo on “Kathy’s Waltz” is strictly old-school, with hints of Ragtime, while those on “Three to Get Ready” and “Everybody’s Jumpin’” sound downright modernistic, with overt references to future label-mate Monk.

Ultimately, the real star of the album is alto saxophonist Paul Desmond (1924-1977), a fellow Californian whose musical partnership with Brubeck lasted over 30 years. His sound, which typically enters after a few bars’ introduction by Brubeck, dominates the quartet’s output. Desmond is often dismissed by purists for a coolness of tone that can sometimes border on the antiseptic, but the quiet intensity of his playing can be lost on ears trained to listen for strain, sweat and other signifiers of serious effect. If Desmond’s style sounds effortless, it is only because of rigorous practice. After his death, the author of “Take Five” left his split of royalties to the American Red Cross, which receives annual royalties in the low six figures.

1959 was a year of explosive growth in jazz, and Time Out was just one of at least three major events that year. Columbia also issued Miles Davis’ seminal Kind of Blue, which marked the emergence of a new approach to harmony based on modal scales; this gave the soloist—Davis himself, most notably, as well as collaborator Bill Evans—access to unprecedented emotional range, a major factor in the current perception of jazz as a “romantic” music. Due to the constant reissues over the decades, the prevalence of bootlegging and the pervasiveness of digital downloading, it may be impossible to determine which of these is, in fact, the most successful jazz album of all time; yet both helped shift the business model firmly toward the LP, which had only been around for about a decade at that point.

John Coltrane, who spent five years in Davis’ group, played on Kind of Blue, but his sideman work was soon eclipsed by the Atlantic Records release Giant Steps. After years of rigorous experimentation, 1959 saw the emergence of Coltrane’s mature sound, and he would go on to be, arguably, the last true giant of jazz music, a figure whose very name still inspires devotion that borders on the religious, over 40 years after his death. On the surface, it would be impossible to find two more different men, in terms of tone, technique and temperament, than Coltrane and Paul Desmond—but at the intersection of their styles, as heard on these three albums, one hears the future.

1959 also included major works by Ornette Coleman, who along with Coltrane helped bring Free Jazz to fruition, and Charles Mingus, who recorded three brilliant albums for Atlantic that year. Max Roach had already been first to record pianoless groups, and among the first to openly lobby for civil rights through his music; and Thelonious Monk, whose rhythmic and harmonic innovations made him, in essence, the father of modern jazz. The fact that all these men, with volatile personalities and deep-set musical tastes, all gave respect to Brubeck speaks to his chops and credibility.

Brubeck is rightfully lionized by the left for his role in helping to shape a world defined by JFK’s “New Frontier” and Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society”. In generational terms, the Baby Boomers’ collective self-definition is rooted in the 1960s, for better and for worse, and jazz artists like Brubeck, Coltrane and Davis are thus regarded almost as highly as the rock bands that would ultimately dominate the American music scene.

 The primary beneficiary of the commercial growth of jazz music was the African-American community, which got its first taste of the free market and was soon able to alter the widespread perceptions of the white majority, and ultimately obliterate many vestiges of racial prejudice in this country. Jazz was the wedge that forced integration; as more and more of the top draws—Goodman, Krupa, Artie Shaw—integrated, and others insisted on playing for integrated audiences, bigotry took a backseat to box-office. By the time of Time Out, integrated bands weren’t exactly commonplace in the US, but they were hardly unusual. Norman Granz’ “Jazz At the Philharmonic”, for example, toured the country with all-stars of all races.

The other major beneficiary of jazz music’s global presence was the United States government, which quickly recognized the value of a uniquely American cultural export. Brubeck, who served briefly under Patton in the Army, would become a front-line soldier in a war of ideas, spreading his vision of musical and personal freedom around the world, often directly in collaboration with the State Department.

The arrival of Louis Armstrong in Europe in 1927 basically introduced jazz to the world; a handful of devoted critics and musicians had imported stacks of jazz records from New York for distribution in London and Paris. By the time Duke Ellington’s band made the same trip, in 1932, jazz had become its own cottage industry, with magazine and radio shows catering to the market, as well as the first generation of European jazz musicians. For the first time, America had a cultural product to compete with Europe, and in this realm we remained well ahead.

The assault on jazz by totalitarian regimes—first the Nazis, then the Soviet Union—only enhanced its appeal to youth across Europe, many of whom risked death to continue playing such music. By this point, the old world had produced its own masters like guitarist Django Reinhardt, while American musicians like Benny Carter and Sidney Bechet had emigrated (not unlike the Japanese who brought judo to the west). World War II brought hundreds of current and future jazzmen into Europe and Asia, either as combat troops or in some musical capacity. The music of the war years deserves its own category in the lineage, but by decade’s end American jazz had become the new music of choice not only throughout Europe, but also in Japan.

Like rock and rap, which came along later, jazz began as an indigenous form of expression within the minority community, then “crossed-over” to become the primary vehicle of white rebellion—a means of drawing cultural lines between generations. Jazz was viciously attacked by the mainstream in the 1920s and ‘30s; such criticisms read now as time-capsule pieces of hyperbolic calumny. By the 1950s, the US State Department saw fit to give jazz its ultimate stamp of legitimacy by backing some leading musicians on international tours conceived as propaganda for post-war America. It was a textbook example of how “soft power” worked in the nascent Cold War.

Penny Von Eschen’s excellent 2002 book Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Harvard University Press) offers a definitive look at the program, organized in 1955 by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and US Rep Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY), whose district encompassed the epicenter of modern jazz. Dizzy Gillespie’s second great big band took the first trip in March 1956, covering parts of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. According to the program’s website: “In 1956, 1960 and 1961, Louis Armstrong [toured] Ghana (then the British Gold Coast), Congo, Senegal, Mali, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, and the United Arab Republic. In 1963, 1970 and 1972, Duke Ellington toured the Soviet Union, Southeast Asia, and Africa.”

These musicians and others—including Carter, Coleman, Davis, Goodman, Mingus, Charlie Byrd, Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Quincy Jones, Roland Kirk, Gerry Mulligan, Anita O’Day, Oscar Peterson, Clark Terry, Sarah Vaughn and Randy Weston—traveled to the far corners of the musical world before the program ended in 1978. Many such areas were suspicious of western interests, and sometimes openly hostile. George Wein, impresario of the Newport Jazz Festival, was enlisted for logistical support. Brubeck was, of course, a major attraction.

In 1958, his quartet toured Sweden, Turkey, Ceylon, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq. Brubeck’s gigs in Poland that year, repeated in 1970, are considered key moments in the spreading of jazz into the Soviet Bloc. Cadres devoted to “improvised music” began sprouting in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland and Hungary soon after, while at least one major group (the Ganelin Trio) made great jazz in Russia itself. He and Armstrong later collaborated on The Real Ambassadors, a musical and recording based on their experiences, in 1961-62.

The musicians and artists in Eastern Europe (with support from sympathetic parties in the west) drove the engine of progress away from Communism and became totems in the way Charlie Parker was for the Beatniks, or Coltrane was for the Black Power movement. Their records were being smuggled into the West long before the Iron Curtain finally fell, at which point those scenes exploded into the creative powerhouses they are today. When Brubeck and other older jazzmen appear in Europe today, they are held to a similar status as their own native masters.

Japan got its introduction to jazz from occupying American soldiers, and has never lost its taste. As domestic sales of jazz records slumped hard in the 1970s and early ‘80s, the Japanese (typically) provided a vital commercial lifeline, helping to keep it vital long enough for the resurgence driven by CD technology. CDs, of course, were invented by the Japanese, while companies like JVC, Polygram and especially Sony bought up all the major jazz catalogs (Verve, Mercury, Blue Note/Capitol, Columbia) to be reissued in their new format. Every American who values their native culture owes a debt of thanks to those Japanese who rescued all that music from likely extinction.

Leading the way among the reissues that began flooding the market, well past the point of cultural saturation, were Columbia’s valedictorians from the class on ’59, Kind of Blue and Time Out, each of which has been re-released in increasingly completist form at least a half-dozen times (including box sets), while their lead singles, “So What” and “Take Five” have become standards. Both retain almost all of its original freshness and potency, despite three generations of innovation that followed its release. In the case of Time Out, time itself has only burnished the luster of an album dismissed by many top critics upon its release; very few would bother to raise any objection now.

sdh666@hotmail.com

October 9, 2009

Hazel Scott was the first African-American women to have her own (short-lived) television show entitled The Hazel Scott Show in 1950, which was canceled later that year as she was accused of being a “Communist sympathizer” for her opposition to McCarthyism and segregation. Scott, a beloved pianist, procured a spot at the renown Juilliard School of Music after being granted 6 scholarships following a performance at the age of 14 (she started playing piano at the age of 2). By the time she was able to attend the prestigious academy (age 16) she had already become a radio star. 

Charles Mingus has been considered one of the most important figures in jazz performance and composition–and American music in general. Nicknamed “the Angry Man of Jazz,” Mingus not only was talented but also daring. A virtuoso bass player, he studied under the principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic  and performed alongside Charlie Parker and Miles Davis during his career. 

I’ve been rereading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, an anthology of reviews by Lester Bangs (Edited by Greil Marcus, Anchor Books, 2003) and came across this familiar masterpiece that anybody who cares about recorded music will relate to. For me, Bangs’ reviews in Creem were holy writ.  If you care about rock or writing you need to read him. Before the days of e-mail or blogs, I used to share this passage with  fellow vinyl junkies, they all understood. CD collectors will understand too.

“The real story is  rushing home to hear the apocalypse erupt, falling through the front door and slashing open the plastic sealing “for your protection,” taking the record out—ah, lookit them grooves, all jet black without a smudge yet, shiny and new so fucking pristine, then the color of the label, does it glow with auras that’ll make subtle comment on the sounds coming out, or is it just a flat utilitarian monochromatic surface, lie a schoolhouse wall (like RCA’s and Capitol’s after some fool revamped ‘em—an example of real artistic backwardness)? And finally you get to put the record on the turntable, it spins in limbo a perfect second, followed by the moment of truth, needle in groove, and finally sound.”

He  the speaks about the milestone  albums that “fried” his brain, “… the experience of the first few listening to record so total, so mind-twisting, that you authentically can say you’ll never be quite the same again. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady did that, and a very few others. They’re events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of this absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless moment. So it’s not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record. Because the best music is strong and guides and cleanses and is life itself.

Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
Lester Bangs

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