Don't Miss David Meltzer, Michael Rothenberg & Spider Trio at Hideout, Nov. 19

Long-time west coast denizen David Meltzer will be traveling to Chicago with Michael Rothenberg for a show I coordinated with the Hideout here in Chicago. The Hideout is one of my favorite music locales and the perfect home for this word and jazz salad that promises to be high on the excitement scale. Dan McNaughton's Spider Trio will perform as well as Bob Malone and Dan Godston's band. Don't miss it. Meltzer, who is a poet, editor, and musician, has edited many an anthology including "Reading Jazz," which features contributions by Robert Creeley, Igor Stravinsky, William Carlos Williams, Norman Mailer, Mina Loy and many other luminaries.


Thursday, Nov. 19

Rockpile (David Meltzer, Michael Rothenberg & Spider Trio) with special guests including Terri Carrion, Art Lange, Dan Godston, Francesco Levato, Larry Sawyer, Ed Roberson & Bob Malone.


@ The Hideout
1354 W. Wabansia, Chicago
8:00 to 11:30 pm
Phone: 773.227.4433

The Poetry Center of Chicago & Milk Magazine present:


ROCKPILE (featuring David Meltzer, Michael Rothenberg, Terri Carrion & Spider Trio)

A leading poet of the Beat Movement, David MELTZER was raised in Brooklyn during the War years; performed on radio & early TV on the Horn & Hardart Children's Hour. Was exiled to L.A. at 16 & at 17 enrolled in an ongoing academy w/ artists Wallace Berman, George Herms, Robert Alexander, Cameron; migrated to San Francisco in 1957 for higher education w/ peers & maestros like Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Joanne Kyger, Diane DiPrima, Michael McClure, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Jack Hirschman, and a cast of thousands all living extraordinary ordinary lives. Beat Thing [La Alameda Press, 2004] won the Josephine Miles PEN Award, 2005. Was editor and interviewer for San Francisco Beat: Talking With The Poets [City Lights, 2001]. With Steve Dickison, co-edits Shuffle Boil, a magazine devoted to music in all its appearances & disappearances. 2005 saw the publication of David's Copy: The Selected Poems of David Meltzer by Viking/Penguin, a collection spanning over forty years of work that paints a vivid portrait of Meltzer's life as a poet through poems taken from thirty of his previous books of poetry. With a versatile style and playful tone, Meltzer offers his unique vision of civilization with a range of juxtapositions from Jewish mysticism and everyday life to jazz and pop culture.

Michael ROTHENBERG is a poet, songwriter, and the editor of Big Bridge magazine online at www.bigbridge.org. His poetry books include Man/Woman, a collaboration with Joanne Kyger, The Paris Journals (Fish Drum Press), Monk Daddy (Blue Press), and Unhurried Vision (La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press). His poems have been published widely in small press publications including, 88: A Journal of Contemporary American Poetry, Berkeley Poetry Review, Exquisite Corpse, First Intensity, Fish Drum, Fulcrum, Golden Handcuffs Review, House Organ, Prague Literary Review, Tricycle, Van Gogh's Ear, Vanitas, Zyzzyva, JACK, milk, and Jacket. He is also author of the novel Punk Rockwell. Rothenberg's 2005 CD collaboration with singer Elya Finn, was praised by poet David Meltzer as "fabulous-all [the] songs sound like Weimar Lenya & postwar Nico, lushly affirmative at the same time being edged w/ cosmic weltschmertz. An immensely tasty production." He is also editor for the Penguin Poet series, which includes selected works of Philip Whalen, Joanne Kyger, David Meltzer, and Ed Dorn. He has recently completed the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen for Wesleyan University Press.

Terri CARRION was conceived in Venezuela and born in New York to a Galician mother and Cuban father. She grew up in Los Angeles where she spent her youth skateboarding and slam-dancing. Terri Carrion earned her MFA at Florida International University in Miami, where she taught Freshman English and Creative Writing, edited and designed the graduate literary magazine Gulfstream, taught poetry to High School docents at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami and started a reading series at the local Luna Star Café. In her final semester at FIU, she was Program Director for the Study Abroad Program, Creative Writing in Dublin, Ireland. Her poetry, fiction, non-fiction and photography has been published in many print magazines as well as online, including The Cream City Review, Hanging Loose, Pearl, Penumbra, Exquisite Corpse, Mangrove, Kick Ass Review, Exquisite Corpse, Jack, Mipoesia, Dead Drunk Dublin, and Physik Garden among others. Her collaborative poem with Michael Rothenberg, "Cartographic Anomaly" was published in the anthology, Saints of Hysteria, A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry and her chapbook "Lazy Tongue" was published by D Press in the summer of 2007. Currently, she is collaborating on the translation of a Galician Anthology from Galician to Spanish to English, to appear in all three languages, in February of 2009, on BigBridge.org, for which she is assistant editor and art designer.


About SPIDER TRIO: Earle Brown, tenor saxophone; Joe Williams, drums; Dan McNaughton, bass and leader. Dan formed Spider Trio in 1997 in New Orleans, in order to perform his jazz compositions which express his love for a wide range of music, from funk to modern classical. The band is now based in Chicago, and the current lineup consists of Dan, Bryan Pardo on reeds, and Tim Keenan on drums. Another recent project of Dan's is the modern klezmer band Into The Freylakh, led by Bryan, whose self-titled first cd is also available through CD Baby. Into The Freylakh's repertoire ranges from traditional songs to original compositions, among them Dan's "Lenox Road." The second SPIDER TRIO cd, Presences, with Bryan and Tim, is out and for sale at CD Baby .


WITH GUESTS INCLUDING: Art Lange, Dan Godston, Larry Sawyer, Francesco Levato, Bob Malone, & Ed Roberson

Born in Chicago in 1952, Art LANGE is the author of hundreds of essays, reviews, articles, and interviews on music and poetry. His work has been published in publications as diverse as the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik and the Village Voice, New American Writing and the Partisan Review, and he has written program notes for over 200 jazz and classical recordings. He also published and edited Brilliant Corners: a magazine of the arts, from 1975-77. He is the co-editor (with Nathaniel Mackey) of Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (1993: Coffee House Press), and is the author of five books of poetry, including Needles at Midnight (Z Press), Evidence (Yellow Press), and The Monk Poems (Frontward Books). Lange was editor of Down Beat magazine from 1984-88 and currently he teaches at Columbia College, Chicago.

Dan GODSTON teaches poetry and other art forms to young people and adults in the Chicago area. His poetry and fiction have appeared in Chase Park, Versal, 580 Split, Kyoto Journal, California Quarterly, after hours, Edgz, Kyunghyang Shinmun, and other publications, while his articles have appeared in Teaching Artist Journal, among other publications. Godston also co-curates the interdisciplinary arts series, Chicago Calling.

Larry SAWYER curates the Myopic Books Poetry Series in Wicker Park, Chicago. His chapbook Tyrannosaurus Ant (mother's milk press) was recently included in the Yale Collection of American Literature. His blog is Me tronome. His work was also recently included in A Writers’ Congress: Chicago Poets on Barack Obama’s Inauguration (anthology, DePaul Humanities Center Press, 2009). Larry also edits milkmag.org (since 1998). His publications include the Chicago Tribune, Babel Fruit, Vanitas, Jacket, MiPoesias, The Prague Literary Review, Coconut, 88, Hunger, Skanky Possum, Exquisite Corpse, Court Green, Shampoo, Van Gogh's Ear, and elsewhere.

Poet, translator, and new media artist Francesco LEVATO is the executive director of The Poetry Center of Chicago and the author of Marginal State (Fractal Edge Press, 2006) and is a contributor to Witness: Anthology of Poetry (Serengeti Press, 2004). His poetry has been published internationally in journals and anthologies, both in print and online, including The Progressive, XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics, Versal, and many others. His awards include two consecutive poetry fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center. His poetry-based video artwork has been exhibited in galleries and featured at film festivals in Berlin, Chicago, New York, and elsewhere.

Bob MALONE grew up in the wilds of New Jersey, where he started piano lessons at nine – within a year he could play anything put in front of him – and dreamed of being a classical musician. For years he listened only to classical music, but hearing Billy Joel in a Sears store was a revelation for him, and within a few years he was writing his own songs, and playing with rock bands. He studied music at Berklee in Boston (though he was already gigging regularly both solo and with bands, as he has ever since), after which he moved to Hollywood and embarked on an endless tour, playing an average of 100 shows a year. “Blazing and beautiful. Burning and elegant. Subtle and expansive. Unique and timeless. Malone contains multitudes of rhythm, soul, jazz, blues, smoke and magic.” — American Songwriter Magazine. For more information see BobMalone.com.

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Ed ROBERSON studied painting in his youth and was educated at the University of Pittsburgh. His extensive travels inform his work,which is also influenced by spirituals and the blues, and by visual art, such as the mixed-media collages of Romare Beardon. Poet and critic Michael Palmer has called Roberson “one of the most deeply innovative and critically acute voices of our time.” Roberson is the author of numerous books of poetry, including City Eclogue (2006), Atmosphere Conditions (1999), which was chosen by Nathaniel Mackey for the National Poetry Series and was a finalist for the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Award, and Voices Cast Out to Talk Us In (1995), which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Words and phrases in Roberson’s experimental poetry actively resist parsing, using instead what Mackey has called “double-jointed syntax” to explore and bend themes of race, history, and culture. “I’m not creating a new language. I’m just trying to un-White-Out the one we’ve got,” said Roberson in a 2006 interview with Chicago Postmodern Poetry. Roberson’s honors include the Lila Wallace Writers’ Award and the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Award. His work has been included in Best American Poetry. Roberson lives in Chicago, where he has taught at the University of Chicago, Columbia College and Northwestern University.

____________________________

ROCKPILE @ HIDEOUT: A CELEBRATION OF THE TRADITION OF POETRY & JAZZ IN THE CITY OF CHICAGO. FROM THE FIRST STORIES OF KENNETH REXROTH READING HIS WORK WITH MUSICAL ACCOMPANIMENT BY JELLY ROLL MORTON, JAZZ & POETRY HAVE ENJOYED A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP. THIS NIGHT OF POETRY & JAZZ WITH DAVID MELTZER, MICHAEL ROTHENBERG, SPIDER TRIO & SPECIAL GUESTS WILL CERTAINLY BE A NIGHT TO REMEMBER. HIDEOUT INCLUDES A FULL BAR AND HEMP CANDY BARS WILL SERVED. DOORS OPEN AT 7:30. $8 COVER.

FOR THE FULL SCHEDULE CHECK Hideoutchicago.com .

Do I ever get tired of watching old jazz clips? A final ruling on this is expected this summer.

Artistry

Art Pepper's D Section (recorded just after he was released from San Quentin in 1964) shows that at this time in his career Art was strictly business. I love how his solos are never muddy or superfluous and always build in intensity--nothing is extraneous and it all serves the larger purpose of the tune. That's artistry.

Thanks to YouTube once again for another nice clip I'd never noticed until this morning--Happy Holidays.

Art Lange on Anthony Braxton.

William Claxton, RIP

(Jazz) photographer William Claxton has died.

Fake Authenticity

...Hey, Johnny, what are you rebelling against?

...What’ve you got?

—Marlon Brando, The Wild One (1958)

“In a period when the youthful innovations of rock and roll were in the ascendant, it is fascinating to observe the continuing popularity of jazz on both the large and small screens, belying any comfortably linear history of popular music that regards the advent of rock and roll as a decisive historical break, in which jazz is finally and categorically displaced from the category of ‘popular’ at a point in the mid-1950s—a perspective fuelled by movies such as The Blackboard Jungle (1955) which featured Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” on its soundtrack and, in a telling transitional ‘moment,’ presented the smashing of a teacher’s prized jazz record collection by leather-jacketed punks as the ultimate act of rock and roll rebellion.”
___________

Alan Stanbridge of University of Toronto raises some interesting points in his essay and made me think of the intersection of jazz music and its successor in pop culture ... rock 'n roll.

Stanbridge's provocative spiel had me thinking about English blues singer Amy Winehouse, for some reason, and the fascination we as a society seem to have with rebellion. Does the fascination with blues singer Winehouse’s public descent into addiction represent the unconscious fetishization of an archetypal period in jazz history? The rock ‘n roll youth of the 1950s couldn’t identify with jazz as the more cerebral side of the latter became much more evident. These days the somewhat talented, who also represent anti-authoritarian currents in our society, are raised to absurd levels of notoriety because the sheer inertia of these societal trends is unstoppable. Singers like Winehouse (or in a bygone day musicians like Keith Richards) represent a genuinely dark side of mainstream music—an easily consumed brand of rebellion. Rebellion is easy to understand. Everyone can relate to frustration. Everyone wants acceptance and attention. (After Miles Davis had capitalized on Cool Jazz, he nearly single-handedly invented another new genre, Fusion, after snuggling up to the playing of Jimi Hendrix. On a certain level, Davis craved acceptance, and his move toward a more loose and funky sound, after the tight experiments of the album Bitches Brew, was designed to appeal to the masses, not to critics and intellectuals. Davis craved a little understanding, because he won over the critics years previous and winning over the people marked a challenge for him and his work.) The lure of acceptance by the masses is sometimes too strong to be ignored and otherwise innovative artists become self-imitators as a result. Winehouse doesn't seem to be imitating herself just yet, but she's making a career of mediocrity. Think about Billie Holiday (1915-1959).

Billie Holiday's art wasn't considered esoteric in the time when she was alive, because jazz was extremely visible in the 1940s and 1950s. That's not to say it was socially acceptable.

The spotlight always shines brightest on works that define the next wave of artistic innovation. Works firmly entrenched in a pre-existing and long-standing order, although displaying technical or conceptual virtuosity, often receive far less press than the works that mark the cusp of two genres. Amy Winehouse can sing, but she ain’t no Billie Holiday and she may never be. Unresolved social issues that are in constant need of exploration aren’t being addressed by most contemporary pop artists. Winehouse is “outside” the mainstream because of her lifestyle, so she could delve into particularly difficult subject matter unscathed if she so chooses. Winehouse acts like a derelict, which gets her a lot of attention, but she sells out her own talent by not taking it farther. The content is lacking, because ultimately she’s only interested in herself and her consumption. Compare her work and its “message” to seminal tunes like Strange Fruit as sung by Holiday. After the monumental message of the song’s lyrics (written by Abel Meeropol) hits home for the first time it’s indelible. Artists like Winehouse revel in their addictions, which is sad but telling. The irony is that our consumerist tendencies value an authentic fake nearly as much as the original: at least in the short term.

Using addiction as a marketing tool for music is what Winehouse’s tabloid nonsense really advertises. Whether she’s aware of that is another matter, but the main ingredients missing, despite her solid voice, are grace and compassion. Holiday leapt the crushing hurdles of racism and addiction and achieved the highest levels of musicianship while Winehouse gleefully wallows in a cliché.

Wayne Shorter in a vintage clip laying down some jazz goodness.

It's a little strange to see this Sonny Rollins footage mainly because he's stuck on a variety show attempting to play the crowd pleaser, but rather reluctantly. The other thing that seemed to draw my attention was the difference between Rollins with his crisp delivery and the somewhat slack soloing by Don Cherry, an otherwise brilliant improviser. These two paired offer a glimpse at the subtle chasm that existed between those who became more known as free players and those who relied more on harmonic structure and were more a part of the previous well-established tradition--bebop.

Klactoveesedstene

My friend, the poet Steve Halle, asked me via e-mail the other day about Ornette Coleman’s album “Sound Grammar,” and I remember hearing bits and pieces of it online a while ago. It’s a great album, but I found myself really thinking about it again because of Steve’s comment, so I dug around online a bit and stumbled upon this Slate article that raises an even larger question. I really like this article (sure it’s a little dusty but who cares) because of its embedded links. Putting these two riffs side by side is genius (one of Charlie Parker laying down a long solo in the song “Klactoveesedstene” and Ornette Coleman playing nearly the same but in his unique way). [Here’s an interesting side note found on a Portuguese jazz blog about theories as to what “Klactoveesedstene” might mean.]

Listening to both shows how different Ornette’s sound is, even in 1958. Not being a musician I can’t define it in musical terms, but I’ve always thought that Ornette’s solos seem to spread out instead of building. Ornette uses sound in a really nonlinear way, and not to just fill space in a song. His solos don’t rise to crescendo or logically unfold, they burst forth in rivulets—fits and starts. It’s obvious that the journey itself is the destination. One reason that Ornette doesn’t often play with pianists in his combos could be that the piano, as defined in those rough terms, is limiting to a certain extent. There are spaces between the keys on a piano whereas the saxophone is a much more liquid instrument. Even so, Ornette paired with a player like Thelonious Monk would seem to make sense, but Monk’s playing was also much more angular and structured, though in an offbeat way.

I'd never seen the above photo of Charlie Parker before, so I thought I'd post it.

In other news, Stop Smiling has put out a relatively recent, jazz-theme issue and I've just found out that the headliners at the 2008 Chicago Jazz Festival are Sonny Rollins and Ornette Coleman. Thank you, Chicago!

Yakov Lotovski's The Sound of Jazz translated from Russian by Dimitri Lotovski at Exquisite Corpse has some interesting imagery.





"There is also this huge saxophone.
It sounds like a piece of antique oak furniture that’s being moved.
There is a man attached to it.
Serving."

Much "jazz poetry" doesn't fit the bill. In the sense that Vachel Lindsay, Carl Sandburg, Mina Loy, or Hart Crane could be considered "jazz" poets because they made reference to it in their work, which isn't the same as producing work that enacts the rhythms being described or uses imagery that evokes convincing portrayals of jazz artists and their compositions, we'll have to come up with a more useful definition. Many writers of the Jazz Age (i.e., 1920s) wrote about the decadence or instability of the times but their writing wasn't jazz influenced per se. True poets influenced by jazz take language and make of it something malleable and molten. Poets such as Amiri Baraka in "Ka'Ba"

call across or scream or walk across
defying physics in the stream of their will[.]

Ray Bremser, Jack Kerouac, and Ted Joans wrote poetry with an oral component that sometimes mirrored the syncopated rhythms of jazz. Poets such as Bob Kaufman often wrote lines that verged on the nonsensical in his flights to mimic the sounds he heard in jazz. In the experimental "Crootey Songo" he wrote,

Derrat slegelations, flo goof babereo
Sorash sho dubies, wago, wailo, wailo

Or, as he wrote in "Jazz Chick"

From the alabaster pools of Jazz
Where music cools hot souls.
Eyes more articulately silent
Than Medusa's thousand tongues.
A bridge of eyes, consenting smiles
reveal her presence singing[.]

The Sopranos

I hate to keep tapping into the old-school (wait a minute, no I don’t) but one of the defining moments of my experiences as a jazz listener is the first time I heard a recording of Coltrane playing “My Favorite Things.” Beyond the virtuosity of his treatment of the tune, I was intrigued, too, by the instrument he played. I’d heard recordings of way-out musicians like Yusef Lateef playing oddball instruments like the oboe, shenai, and argol (check out the Impulse! recording Yusef Lateef Live at Pep’s from the 1960s), but hearing Coltrane play the soprano sax on “My Favorite Things” added to its mystique. (to be continued)

Coyote

One of my favorite films is Martin Scorcese’s The Last Waltz. If you’ve never seen this film run don’t walk to your video store or else put it into your Netflix queue. After 16 years of touring, The Band (Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson) decided to film a final appearance in 1976 on Thanksgiving Day with friends including Dr. John, Neil Young, Muddy Waters, Eric Clapton, Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Ron Wood, and Joni Mitchell. As one of Scorcese’s finest films, in a career of masterpieces, The Last Waltz is one of the more interesting music documentaries of all time. Others in that list would have to include Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser, Don’t Look Back, The Filth and the Fury, Gimme Shelter, Wild Man Blues, Buena Vista Social Club, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, and Monterey Pop. The performances of Dr. John and Joni Mitchell show how jazz music seeped into the rock world and became another ingredient in the gumbo that the music of New Orleans became. Joni Mitchell’s offbeat, and sometimes improvised, singing style and Dr. John’s performance especially are proof of jazz music’s subtle influence. Joni Mitchell isn't a jazz artist per se, but it's interesting to see the way she handles the vocals to her song, Coyote. I've always loved her lyrics, too.

No regrets Coyote
We just come from such different sets of circumstance
I'm up all night in the studios
And you're up early on your ranch
You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail
While the sun is ascending
And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...
There's no comprehending
Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes
And the lips you can get
And still feel so alone
And still feel related
Like stations in some relay
You're not a hit and run driver, no, no
Racing away
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down
In the middle of nowhere
In the middle of the night
And we rolled right past that tragedy
Till we turned into some road house lights
Where a local band was playing
Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor
And the next thing I know
That Coyote's at my door
He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!"
He drags me out on the dance floor
And we're dancing close and slow
Now he's got a woman at home
He's got another woman down the hall
He seems to want me anyway
Why'd you have to get so drunk
And lead me on that way
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a Coyote right in the face
On the road to Baljennie near my old home town
He went running thru the whisker wheat
Chasing some prize down
And a hawk was playing with him
Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes
He had those same eyes - just like yours
Under your dark glasses
Privately probing the public rooms
And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors
Where the players lick their wounds
And take their temporary lovers
And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, Coyote
I just get off up aways
You just picked up a hitcher
A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop
He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs
He picks up my scent on his fingers
While he's watching the waitresses' legs
He's too fat from the Bay of Fundy
From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides
And the air conditioned cubicles
And the carbon ribbon rides
Are spelling it out so clear
Either he's going to have to stand and fight
Or take off out of here
I tried to run away myself
To run away and wrestle with my ego
And with this flame
You put here in this Eskimo
In this hitcher
In this prisoner
Of the fine white lines
Of the white lines on the free, free way

Piero Scaruffi's jazz pages are worth a glance.

ESP

I had to listen to some early Miles Davis this morning. By 1957 when Miles Davis started working with Gil Evans on an album called Miles Ahead for Columbia Records, he’d already had an amazing career working with some of the best artists in the business including Charlie Parker and Lester Young—the two men most responsible for shaping modern jazz and taking it places that Louis Armstrong never envisioned. The Miles Ahead sessions included an army of talent with Johnny Carisi, Bernie Glow, Taft Jordan, Louis Mucci, Ernie Royal, Miles Davis, Joe Bennett, Jimmy Cleveland, Frank Rehak, Tom Mitchell, Jim Buffington, Tony Miranda, Willie Ruff, Bill Barber, Edwin Caine, Sid Cooper, Romeo Penque, Danny Bank, Lee Konitz, Paul Chambers, Art Taylor, and of course Evans as arranger and conductor. All of this is old news, but I still like to think of this moment in the history of the music because Davis was set to embark on an excursion as important as the discovery of flight.

The Miles in the Sky sessions though are some of my favorites with Wayne Shorter (ts) Herbie Hancock (p), George Benson (el-g -3), Ron Carter (b), and Tony Williams (d) recorded at Columbia Studios in New York in 1968. I like this line-up even better than the John Coltrane mix, because Miles seems to be at his reflective best. It may be that Coltrane put him on the edge and Shorter, Hancock, Carter, and Williams allowed Miles to dig deeper into introspection because there isn’t the sense there that Davis may be overshadowed by the talent in his own band, which seemed to be the case when John Coltrane stepped up to the mic.

When I think of the Miles Davis records, tapes, and Cds I’ve owned over the years, like Kind of Blue, Bitches Brew, On the Corner, Birth of the Cool, ESP, Workin’, Sorcerer, Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, In a Silent Way and others I’m still in awe of his output and ability to break with tradition and redefine the zeitgeist—-owning it entirely, and then throwing it back at the world and inventing new genres with such laconic gestures.

Later in his career Miles still cut groundbreaking tunes with the likes of Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin, and Chick Corea but it started to become obvious that R&B and rock music had cast a spell on Davis that affected his entire conception of the music. He became much more interested in jamming and much less interested in breaking new ground on a technical level. This later music sold records but didn’t satisfy many of the critics, who rightly saw that some of Davis’s new soupy concoctions were barely jazz. For whatever reason, Davis never really grasped the burgeoning free jazz phenomenon and dove straight into funk, which ironically downplayed his abilities and left a bad taste in the mouths of many listeners that lingers even still. Davis also became such a cultural icon and scenester that this aspect of his personality obscured some of his earlier musical achievements. When taken in its entirety though, it’s easy to see that the Miles Davis discography is an amazing EKG of the Twentieth Century.

Also, an interesting read: Charlie Haden on Mingus, Miles, and what jazz means.

Open Country

After Ornette Coleman played one of his first big gigs in New York, bop drummer Max Roach met him after the performance and punched him in the face. At least that’s how the story goes. Coleman made huge strides in jazz but with a price. Those with a long view of the history of jazz might notice that this story is somewhat similar to the anecdote involving Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie. Once when asked about the new music, bop, as it was just entering the public consciousness, Armstrong quipped that he didn’t have a lot of interest in “Chinese music.”

The album to me that defines the innovation made by Coleman more than many others is the Blue Note album “The Ornette Coleman Trio Live at the Golden Circle Stockholm” recorded the nights of December 3rd and 4th 1965 in the Gyllene Cirkeln club in Stockholm, Sweden. Moreso than albums like “Free Jazz” where Coleman “competes” with the sounds of so many other improvisers, with “Golden Circle” he’s really out on a limb almost entirely on his own. The experiment, as a trio, is sink or swim when the stakes are raised. Coleman’s Dizzy—Don Cherry—who often served as a creative foil for Coleman (although Cherry on pocket trumpet was a million-dollar improviser in his own right), is noticeably absent in this live session. Especially on the tune “Faces and Places” the listener is confronted with the sound of Coleman’s horn and the sound of a single cymbal keeping frenetic time and nothing else. Coleman shines through in this song and the intensity rises until he reaches a creative high water mark, then the storm passes and after restating the opening the song levels out and ends. That song single handedly illustrates more than many other avant numbers exactly why free jazz is so unlike the styles that preceded it. Simplicity and a certain minimalism allow the listener to focus on how Coleman still swings as he detonates the entire jazz pantheon with a shrug. Coleman, it should be mentioned, never stated that he held any animosity toward those who kept playing more trad jazz even throughout the 1960s, when so many innovators were taking over.

Some would immediately claim that Coleman does without harmonic structure (he mostly does without even the modal structures that the post-bop players found as their liberating force) because he simply couldn’t master the nuances of such music, so was forced to move into atonal territory. Somehow that argument is similar to an observer implying that Picasso didn’t paint like Rembrandt because he was unable to. Coleman and the more trad players are merely speaking two separate languages—equally valid. Coleman’s discoveries don’t necessarily refute the groundwork laid by Lester Young. Without the support of harmonic structure, the “Faces and Places” amazes by sheer rhythmic brilliance and force of will. Although Coleman does indulge in a chorus or two, beyond that it’s a no man’s land of wide-open country. This probably proved frightening to some listeners when they first heard it. More than just playing with the net down, Coleman plays world-class tennis with no net—and in zero gravity.


Have a look at this list of 100 Best Jazz Drummers. I'm a fan of lists like this. Is Chico Hamilton even there? That's not right. I think Ed Blackwell should definitely be in the top ten, too.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah

The music of the Beatles has been covered ad nauseam but the version of “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” played here by guitarist Marc Ribot is really worth a listen. Ribot somehow makes the listener forget that he or she is hearing a Beatles classic because of all the harmonic rivulets he discovers inside each phrase of the original.

Also, try to catch the new Albert Ayler film if you can. If the goal of being a musician is originality, Ayler did that better than most. Ayler’s music is symphonic noise and an acquired taste, sure. But you’ll never hear anything else like it.

Prez

Eric Dolphy was so outside he had a cot set up out there and probably a magazine rack, too. I’m listening to Eric Dolphy and Booker Little’s “Ode to Charlie Parker” and meditating on the line of tradition that exists with jazz music. In the other arts, appropriation is not always made with reverence or respect for those who came before.

One of the admirable qualities of jazz music and musicians is that homage is usually paid where it’s due, whether in the middle of a solo as a musical aside, via song titles, or else in its most malleable form—its spirit. Most jazz music is a continuation. My meaning doesn’t extend to mimicry, however. Copping someone else’s style in jazz is the cardinal sin. Musical asides in the midst of a solo can serve to acknowledge many things. Respect would be the first reason for a soloist to break into a few recognizable bars of someone else’s tune, but soloists also name-check other musicians in the middle of a solo for comic effect or as an inside joke. Sometimes a few bars of someone else’s solo inserted in a strategic way also provides a counterpoint to the ingenuity and skill being demonstrated. When a soloist like Dolphy was on the stand, however, he would rarely make an acknowledgment to another player within a song. He was far too original to spend even a moment walking in another man’s shoes.

Most callouts made by jazz soloists are the realm of the bluesy crowd-pleaser, though. Avant-gardists would find it outré. The free-flights of Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Marion Brown wouldn’t have been possible without the likes of Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins.

RIP Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson has passed. My Verve LP "Very Tall" stands out (and up) as one of the most listenable LPs I own. Milt Jackson's accompaniment to Peterson's elegant, staccato ballads really grow on the listener. Peterson was tall indeed. He was one of the world's most influential pianists.

Paco

Some of my favorite guitarists are John McLaughlin, Gabor Szabo, Django Rheinhardt, and Paco de Lucia. Paco holds particular sway over my interests because somehow, even more than Django, his playing strikes such a chord (I know) with my aesthetic sensibilities. Paco's playing represents the best combination of intellect and emotion.

Paco's blinding speed on the classical guitar is unparalleled and he is a master of rasgueados and picados.