Palletable swedes offer Alina diet

[Serial_Apologist]

Sun 9 June

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zvdb

Mon 10 - Fri 14 June

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001zwmt

[Tenor Freak]

Pleased that Alyn has done a tribute to Palle Danielsson on today's JRR. Must give it a listen later.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Another good JRR selection and tribute. And I was intrigued by the tenor solos on the two vocal tracks - Billie -Tony Pastor Peggy - Vido Musso?

But a sign of my accelerating age, I have gone right off that kind of Sonny Rollins playing. I remain a huge fan right up through RCA and Impulse, but the later stuff now seems to me overdone, overlong and often just ugly in tone and delivery. He actually cut Autumn Nocturn in the 60s (RCA) and it was far superior.

* I realise that I have now turned into the kind of jazz "critic" I used to despise! "Not like that Sonny, like this...and fire the bass player!'

[Ian Thumwood]

Tony Pastor was one of rhe star performers in Artie Shaw's late 1930s band and also served as a vocalist in addition to.playing tenor. I believe he later led his own band.

Vido Musso is more interesting as he was born in Sicily and Co led the first Stan Kenton band around 1935 before making his name with Benny Goodman. Musso was very much in demand and cropped up in the line up.of many bands in the 30s and 40s. I think Musso was underrated yet I would argue that this applies to so many saxophonists of that era. There are players like Julian Dash, Herschal Evans and Dick Wilson who enjoyed bigger profiles but who are largely forgotten these days. The same applies to Musso. Every band seemed to.have strong tenor soloists and I have even read of one critic singling out Georgie Auld as the greatest pre bop white soloist in jazz. I don't agree with that statement although I feel he was really effective in his performances with Berigan, Shaw and Goodman.

There are scores of really good tenor players between 1930 and 45 who were not only great jazz musicians but distinctive too. Some like Budd Johnson were able to adopt to more modern styles . It was certainly not the case that pre bop.tenor was dominated by Hawkins, Berry , Webster and Young. If you go back further, there are players like George Thomas who would have achieved more if he had not been killed in a car crash circa 1930. The only exceptions were the likes of Tex Beneke with Glenn Miller and Pat Davis with Casa Loma who could only have been retained for sentimental reasons from their halcyon days.

[Serial_Apologist]

Tony Pastor was one of rhe star performers in Artie Shaw's late 1930s band and also served as a vocalist in addition to.playing tenor. I believe he later led his own band.

Vido Musso is more interesting as he was born in Sicily and Co led the first Stan Kenton band around 1935 before making his name with Benny Goodman. Musso was very much in demand and cropped up in the line up.of many bands in the 30s and 40s. I think Musso was underrated yet I would argue that this applies to so many saxophonists of that era. There are players like Julian Dash, Herschal Evans and Dick Wilson who enjoyed bigger profiles but who are largely forgotten these days. The same applies to Musso. Every band seemed to.have strong tenor soloists and I have even read of one critic singling out Georgie Auld as the greatest pre bop white soloist in jazz. I don't agree with that statement although I feel he was really effective in his performances with Berigan, Shaw and Goodman.

There are scores of really good tenor players between 1930 and 45 who were not only great jazz musicians but distinctive too. Some like Budd Johnson were able to adopt to more modern styles . It was certainly not the case that pre bop.tenor was dominated by Hawkins, Berry , Webster and Young. If you go back further, there are players like George Thomas who would have achieved more if he had not been killed in a car crash circa 1930. The only exceptions were the likes of Tex Beneke with Glenn Miller and Pat Davis with Casa Loma who could only have been retained for sentimental reasons from their halcyon days.

I've long held Benny Carter to have been much more ahead of the game as an altoist (even more than in his place as band leader/arranger) than he seems generally to have been credited - a chromatic approach to improvising that in concentrating on line and continuity over timbre looked forward to Parker and even Konitz and was in some ways ahead of Lester Young.

[Ian Thumwood]

The two musicians who really opened the door for me when I was about 15 were Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter. It was at this point that I started to appreciate improvisation.

It is wierd that you say you admire Carter more as a soloist than an an arranger because that is how I originally perceived him too. I just think that many saxophonists were trying to play catch up with his saxophone playing from late twenties onwards but because he played alto he got overlooked when the tenor started to gain more status. Carter was also a decent trumpeter and I think he also played piano too.

However, if there was ever an elephant in the room with regards to the evolution of jazz composition, it was Benny Carter who was right at the forefront starting with his involvement with Charlie.Johnson. Don Redman is often cited as the prime moving force in Fletcher Hendersons mid twenties band yet Carter was also helping shape the identity of the band and at a time when Henderson was still finding his feet as an arranger. Carter was pivotal in what he contributed to Henderson whilst also writing for Chick Webb, Mckinneys Cottonpickers and his own band which existed from the early 1930s when we was already something of a veteran and before Henderson reached maturity as an arranger. I feel Benny Carter should not be underestimated in the role he played as a jazz composer and arranger as very much served as the bridge between Redman a d Henderson. I don't think Henderson came into his own until the early 1930s and then blossomed when emoloyed by Goodman.

Furthermore, Benny Carter continually evolved as both a soloist and composer. He was the equivalent of Coleman Hawkins as he was open to new ideas. I love the Chocolate Dandies tracks from 1940 which are a great example of how far jazz had developed by then. Furthermore, Carter's own big band started to include the likes of a young Max Roach and he would go then on to include scores for the New Testament Basie band of the 1950s. His writing was always I demand. Even in the 1980s his writing still sounded fresh and relevant in its Modern / mainstream style. I wonder if you ever heard hid Further Definitions album which features Hawkins? Charlie Rouse and Phil Woods which came out on Impulse? In my opinion this is a marked contrast to Henderson whose writing had been eclipsed by more modern arrangers by about 1941. It is interesting to read about Carter's reputation as a writer. It was already formidable in the Swing Era when he provided scores who all sorts of bands including Tommy Dorsey but he also managed to be fully employed as a writer / composer in Hollywood .
In recent years, Carter's true value as a pioneering arranger has become more recognised and is often credited as being responsible for teaching big band reed sections how to articulate and sound more modern. Reed playing was a weakness in the early days of jazz and I have understood that Benny Carter was largely responsible for solving this problem. It is fascinating just how often his name comes up in history books addressing jazz in the pre War period.

In my estimation Carter was as exceptional as a soloist as he was as an arranger. He was someone I think cannot be underestimated. By all accounts , he was a true gent too. I would love to have heard him explain just how he was thinking about improvisation and composition in the late 20 s and early 30s. He was one of the most sophisticated musicians in jazz's history and sophisticated at point when jazz was still in it's infancy. Benny Carter was universally admired by his peers. His role in European jazz should not be overlooked as well. Benny Carter was someone I would have loved to heard speak about how jazz worked from a purely theoretical, dots on the page perspective.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Carter was Art Pepper's first major employer & influence and even later referred to Art as a "fine young man"! There's still a lot of Benny in Pepper's 'first half" career, a mutual admiration. He was also apparently one of the very few guys who could reason with Ben Webster in his cups. No mean ability.

[Ian Thumwood]

Art Pepper was a pupil of Benny Carter

[Tenor Freak]

Another good JRR selection and tribute. And I was intrigued by the tenor solos on the two vocal tracks - Billie -Tony Pastor Peggy - Vido Musso?

But a sign of my accelerating age, I have gone right off that kind of Sonny Rollins playing. I remain a huge fan right up through RCA and Impulse, but the later stuff now seems to me overdone, overlong and often just ugly in tone and delivery. He actually cut Autumn Nocturn in the 60s (RCA) and it was far superior.

Hard agree. Sonny seems to have sat back in the 70s and 80s and lost the need to explore. For me the Impulse! years are the peak. In my opinion he wasn't best served by the highly compressed sound he has on those later recordings with that transducer pickup he used. Great for recording when he's weaving about, but at the loss of a lot of frequencies and harmonics that made up his "sound".

[Ian Thumwood]

I have seen Sonny Rollins perform live on a few occasions but the first around 2002 was stunningly brilliant. The concert at Vienne was captured on a dvd. Around the same time he made a record called the 9 /11 concert which seemed like a return to form at the time.

I concur that the stuff he made in the 50s and 60s was better. In the 1980s there were so many other tenor players such as Brecker , Murray, Lovano and Branford on the scene let alone players like Joe Henderson at the top of their game that I never listened to Rollins' contemporary efforts at the time. Critics always seemed harsh when analysing his records as the bands were never up to the same level as the leader. I feel he lost interest in jazz in the 1970s. Not convinced the issues were down to recording techniques.

[Tenor Freak]

I saw Sonny once, a one-off gig at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon in October '86. Back then he had a workmanlike band with Mark Soskin on keys and Cliff Anderson on 'bone. Might have been Bob Cranshaw on bass guitar. Sonny played his socks off, of course, but it was lacking something. Perhaps if he'd been in a club setting with drums and bass on a par with himself (for example de Johnette and Haden or maybe Christensen and Andersen) things could have been more interesting. IIRC he had a radio mic on his tenor which was great for moving about the stage but sacrificed a lot of harmonics and complexities in his sound. Still, I'm glad to have caught one of the legends of this music in a live setting. I also saw Brecker at Bracknell in '87, now that was a legendary gig.

[Serial_Apologist]

I saw Sonny once, a one-off gig at the Fairfield Halls, Croydon in October '86. Back then he had a workmanlike band with Mark Soskin on keys and Cliff Anderson on 'bone. Might have been Bob Cranshaw on bass guitar. Sonny played his socks off, of course, but it was lacking something. Perhaps if he'd been in a club setting with drums and bass on a par with himself (for example de Johnette and Haden or maybe Christensen and Andersen) things could have been more interesting. IIRC he had a radio mic on his tenor which was great for moving about the stage but sacrificed a lot of harmonics and complexities in his sound. Still, I'm glad to have caught one of the legends of this music in a live setting. I also saw Brecker at Bracknell in '87, now that was a legendary gig.

It sure was! I have that on a D90 as a broadcast with Charles Fox introducing. IIrc that was the year of exceptional heat. People half dressed in the beer tent, where Foxy was sat in a deckchair in a three-piece suit, drinking warm beer! We chatted about David Murray, got on well but disagreed over my criticisms, him saying he liked Murray whose playing brought back memories of hearing Coleman Hawkins many years previously. I remember him saying he was off to the centenary celebration in New Orleans of a famous early jazz figure he was honoured to have been invited to, but adding that he just happened to know that the organisers had got the wrong year! .

[Tenor Freak]

Nice recollection, S_A. I'd like to hear that gig again, for sure. My own little anecdote from it was that as Brecker was last on, started around 10pm and I was going to miss my train back to London, I got a lift from Philip Watson who I knew from the jazz workshop run by Roland Perrin in Richmond (Upon Thames). Back then he was working at The Wire but now he's in Dublin and just published a biog of Bill Frisell (even though back then he was more of a Scofield fan).

[Serial_Apologist]

Nice recollection, S_A. I'd like to hear that gig again, for sure. My own little anecdote from it was that as Brecker was last on, started around 10pm and I was going to miss my train back to London, I got a lift from Philip Watson who I knew from the jazz workshop run by Roland Perrin in Richmond (Upon Thames). Back then he was working at The Wire but now he's in Dublin and just published a biog of Bill Frisell (even though back then he was more of a Scofield fan).

That's right - Brecker made hasty nervous announcements about limited time for his final number. Later in the hotel lobby he passed by where I was sitting. I just had time to grab his hand and say how brilliant it had been, to which he said nervously, "thangyou thangyou, you're very kind". People commented on him being actually quite shy, person-to-person - such an apparent contrast with the bold musical persona presented onstage. Mentioning the hotel sounds iffy, but the all-inclusive festival deal with Holiday Inns was extraordinarily reasonable and offered wonderful opportunities to meet leading jazz personalities, who were almost always charming, open and generous to chat, even with the likes of me! I would count my five Bracknells among my top life experiences in conviviality terms, with the subsequent move to Crawley almost as high. Such a shame it all came to an end!

[Ian Thumwood]

The only gig I can recall going to in Bracknell was Willem Breuker but this was sometime after the jazz festival had ceased to exist.

I encountered Michael Brecker at Vienne I felt that he was a real gent and extremely professional. Personally, I am not too fussed about meeting my musical heroes as they are not all amenable. There were a few I encountered who were really poorly behaved. Kenny Werner was probably the least agreeable and was banned afterwards due to things like using really inappropriate language in front of kids amongst other issues. I also stayed in the same hotel as some musicians but never mixed with anyone of note. Lesser known musicians were usually more friendly but I would single out Stanley Cowell and Dennis Irwin as the nicest musicians I met.