Liner Notes

I'd love to see a jazz liner notes archive. Somewhere on the internet. I've always enjoyed reading them. Good liner notes put an album in context. They're a little piece of history like the music itself. Pretty frequently it happens that a piece of music was approached or received differently when it was made than it is now. The notes preserve that. Yeah, sometimes they're formulaic or otherwise uninteresting -- this song has a 5/4 time signature, that one's a slow blues (aka stuff we can figure out ourselves) -- but sometimes you get a cohesive, thoughtful essay on the artist (or by the artist) and his work.

It's one things that's been lost with the shift to digital music. I always wished apple would include original liner notes with their downloads, but I guess there was never much demand for it and certainly no money in it.

I understand they're including liner notes with they're new 'lp' format, but i can't see too many old jazz records finding the light of day that way. Maybe they should though, decked out in that classic Francis Wolff photography or slick Impulse design..

I don't know what the deal is with copyrights on that stuff, but I'd certainly love to see it go up somewhere. I'd even buy it in a nice coffee table book.

Someone please get on this or tell me it's already been done. Anyway, I'll leave you with an excerpt from a classic (grammy nominated, in case anyone gives a shit), courtesy of Charles Mingus:

I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around. But there is no need to compare composers. If you like Beethoven, Bach or Brahms, that's okay. They were all pencil composers. I always wanted to be a spontaneous composer. I thought I was, although no one's mentioned that. I mean critics or musicians. Now, what I'm getting at is that I know I'm a composer. I marvel at composition, at people who are able to take diatonic scales, chromatics, 12-tone scales, or even quarter-tone scales. I admire anyone who can come up with something original. But not originality alone, because there can be originality in stupidity, with no musical description of any emotion or any beauty the man has seen, or any kind of life he has lived. For instance, a man says he played with feeling. Now he can play with feeling and have no melodic concept at all. That's often what happens in jazz: I have found very little value left after the average guy takes his first eight bars-not to mention two or three choruses, because then it just becomes repetition, riffs and patterns, instead of spontaneous creativity, I could never get Bird to play over two choruses. Now, kids play fifty thousand if you let them. Who is that good?

Trane

Love this Trane post at Brilliant Corners. This is one of so many earth shattering Coltrane moments it can get lost in the shuffle. Don't let it.

Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G. Kelley

Jazz history is mired in myth. Storyville to Minton's; Buddy Bolden as pied piper to Bird as tragic hero; kings, dukes and dark princes. Thankfully, a number of diligent scholars have disentangled some truth from the myriad tall tales (Garry Giddins and Scott Deveaux are the latest to offer up a substantial work, titled simply Jazz.)

Still, there's that Monk, the enigmatic high priest of bop. Monk's endured as more of a hazy archetype than flesh and blood. Impenetrably hip, indecipherably eccentric, with a born, black musicality, Monk is both the ultimate hipster and an unadulterated artist. Of course, that Monk is largely just an amalgam of everything from played out racial stereotypes to misunderstandings about mental illness. Here, Robin D.G. Kelley tries his hand at retrieving Monk the man from the heap of reductive and often demeaning stories that give us Monk the legend. He succeeds.

First thing's first, we're lucky to get a Monk biography from a practiced historian, rather than a critic or hobbyist. That Kelley's painstaking research and sourcing is the work of a pro is reinforced on every page. He proves that it takes more than passion or a way with words to do justice to a subject like Monk. Kelley shows the judgment of a person who's made a career, not just an occasional go, of poring over documents. At least this reader believes we're getting close to the best construction possible from the available material. And Monk certainly deserves the treatment Kelly gives him. Starting with the book's title, the straightforward and definitive Thelonious Monk, rather than some cliched song title, Round Midnight maybe, or Monk's Dream, we get a work that treats its subject as a matter of serious scholarship. Kelly distances himself sufficiently to give us that scholarship, but not so much that we can't enjoy it. There's a healthy reverence, to be sure, but happily, it falls short of that tired worship that gave us a lot of the bullshit to begin with.

We're all familiar with Monk's place in the pantheon of jazz composers, as well as his singular style at the keys. What struck me over and over again in this book is his legacy as both a teacher and ally to so many of his contemporaries, especially the younger, rawer talent around him. Monk tutored to varying degrees the likes of Bud Powell, Elmo Hope, David Amram, Gigi Gryce, Jaki Byard, Trane and Miles of course, and on and on endlessly. The story is always the same: he didn't say much, just let you know when you were playing it wrong. He was especially keen on the great, sometimes under-appreciated pianists of his day; besides Powell and Hope, Monk was close with Mary Lou Williams, Herbie Nichols and others. When a bunch of journalists hounded Monk for word on injuries he sustained when a stoop on which he was sitting collapsed, he offered only, after a long silence, that Elmo Hope is the greatest pianist in the world. He confounded not only the questioners, but Hope's mother, who was in the room at the time. That was Monk's sense of humor, but also his fierce loyalty.

Monk may not have invented bebop, but he certainly disseminated it, at the retail level that is, like none other. When the trumped up tales fall away, the most common recollection of Monk by people who knew him best is as a great fountainhead from which the language and posture of modern jazz flowed.

The importance of Monk's own teachers weren't lost on him either. One of the more touching episodes in the book is Monk's reaction to Coleman Hawkins's death. Of his many fallen comrades, Monk seemed to take Bean's death particularly hard, no doubt in part because he looked to Bean as one of his few teachers in a life full of students.

Rather than unpack the whole book, I'll just recommend it highly. If there's one trouble I had, it's that for all of Kelley's efforts to humanize Monk, it remains hard to get into his head. Kelley succeeds more in giving us Monk through the eyes of those around him. I guess the fact is that Monk did suffer from a debilitating, often untreated or mistreated mental illness, so his head is simply hard to get into. Some events like, for instance, Monk's mental breaks, his sudden separation from his wife Nellie snuck up on me, because we're not fully along for the psychic rides that led to the events. Kelley most succeeds in relating deeply personal and revealing moments in his descriptions of the home recordings of Monk at his piano with Nellie, or arranging his music for a big band with Hall Overton. Kelley puts those moments to paper beautifully and it's just a pleasure to live with Monk at those times. I'd love to hear the tapes myself.

So many artists deserve a proper bio like this (anyone want to tackle Mingus, I'd be grateful). The portrait of Monk here is full, fair, and warm but honest. I recommend the book.

Chicago Jazz Festival

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent last weekend in Chicago soaking in some outdoor jazz. The festival was pleasant, well-attended and the music was enjoyable. I won't give any extensive reviews here--I'll leave that to someone else--but I do want to mention my favorite set of the weekend. That was Archie Shepp's.

Archie Shepp plays with an incredible pathos that is most definitely the product of years of total immersion as a musician, educator and activist. He is one of these former radicals who has seemingly turned inward in his old age. Specifically, he played a version of Steam completely lacking the despair and seething anger that pervaded the original version on Attica Blues. Attica Blues itself is actually a remarkably reflective and subdued album, given that it's inspiration was the Attica Prison riot. Still, it feels to me like a sort of collective reflection, still a purposeful and forceful record. The Chicago Steam, on the other hand, was very much personal, introspective, and despite the subject matter (Shepp's murdered cousin), somehow nostalgic.



In a way, it makes me think that those troubled times in the 60s and early 70s were somehow the good old days for guys like Shepp, because at least there was a genuine feeling that things could change. Jazz at that time, whether it was Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Cecil Taylor, Trane, Max Roach, Mingus, Miles, exuded a certain rage, and an implied, if not direct, call to arms. Some of those guys who are still around, Shepp among them, now play a wistful, almost dreamlike music whose power is not of this moment, but derived from another time. It's a beautiful and sometimes sad music, powerful in its implicit lament of what could have been.

Archie oozed that feeling with Duke's Don't Get Around Much Anymore, which he sang ("Oh, Darling I guess my mind's more at ease, but nevertheless, why stir up memories"). It was fitting that he worked in a more explicitly reminiscent tune, whose themes ran through his entire set. It reminded me, although it was far more earnest, of Lou Donaldson's Things Ain't What They Used To Be, which I described a few weeks back. The same Archie Shepp who, in a more radical time, notoriously berated white audiences with his friend Amiri Baraka (Baraka famously told a white woman who asked what white people can do to help the black civil rights struggle, "You can die"), ended this set by demanding that his overwhelmingly white audience stand up, turn around, clap your hands...It's true that things ain't what they used to be.

I hope to have to pictures I took from this set up soon.

P.S.: For contrast, compare this set to Cecil Taylor's that I caught at the Highline Ballroom recently. Cecil has not backed down one inch musically. The guy is something like 82 years old, but if my eyes had been closed, I wouldn't have been able to tell if I was listening to Cecil Taylor 2009 or Cecil Taylor 1969. I have no words for his set except to say that seeing him in full force was something very special.

(Best I could do--no cameras allowed)

#Jazzlives (barely)

The results are in from this week's #jazzlives twitter campaign. They are...well...troubling:

the number of tweets...hasn't touched the number that who attended Woodstock 40 years ago but isn't bad as far as getting folks to independently raise their hands (or rather, use their thumbs) to shout 'Yes, I love live jazz' in 140 characters or less.

What is the number? 812.

Eight hundred twelve? I'm pretty sure I know single people who tweet more in a week. Somehow, Howard Mandel interprets that as

pretty encouraging, representing a hard-core eager to identify themselves with the idea, and a sign that it might grow legs.

First, he defines the hardcore as those willing to dash off 140 characters on their phone--basically anyone willing to send a text message. Then he celebrates when that group clocks in at 812 people, or rather some indeterminate number of people no higher than 812. I'll tell you right now, 2 of those tweets were by a friend of mine, who I dragged to the Chicago Jazz Festival, who couldn't care less whether jazz lives or dies, so knock one off that total. For comparison, consider that double that number have reviewed the Ashlee Simpson album Autobiography--actually thought out and wrote, in some cases, hundreds of words--on Amazon.

To put it another way, here is a list of terms that were tweeted more often than Jazzlives in the past week:

Iphone
Beatles
Jay-Z
Larry King
Bob Barker
Chick-fil-a
Oregon
Giant Octopus
Mega Shark
#sex101
#chrisbrownbowtie
#uknowufromqueens
#happybirthdaypink

and my favorite:

#adamfarted

OK?

Stolen Moments

Some shots I snapped at a jam session at Spotted Cat in New Orleans in February:

Paul Motian Trio @ Village Vanguard

Paul Motian, Bill Frisell and Joe Lovano played a spectacular set at the Vanguard last night. I loved the Bird references on the man's birthday -- thanks Joe.

Paul Motian's distinct style isn't my favorite, but he's someone I'll always go see, especially at the Vanguard, because he leads such great groups. This one, of course, has played as a unit for about thirty years. The last time I saw Motian was a few months ago with the similarly base-less trio of Motian, Jason Moran and Chris Potter. Paul Motian can be fairly heavy handed on his kit, and uses a setup that emphasizes crashing, metallic sounds over much else (the rivets in his ride cymbal, for instance, ensure that ever-present clang). To me, that kind of playing, combined with his loose conception of the drummer-as-timekeeper, seems to call for a bass, first for a rhythmic frame of reference, and second, for a fuller, more grounded sound to inject a bit of dynamism into the band's overall tone.

No matter, these guys don't need it. Motian didn't need it with Potter and Moran either. This trio's strength, to me, is not in their forward drive, but in their vertical construction of thick sound on top of thick sound, or jagged rhythm on top of jagged rhythm. They create wonderfully elaborate musical landscapes and can build a lot of tension for a long time that way. It has you fiending for a resolution, but not a simple harmonic resolution; more like a deliberate, brick by brick deconstruction of whatever musical house they've just as painstakingly built. Bill Frisell is especially adept at that sort of construction and deconstruction, as he does it solo with his myriad loops and effects. He didn't use too much of that last night, but those pedals were just a kick away the entire set.

A great set.