We're being Gesamped - again!

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 17 Feb
4 pm Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton presents listeners' requests, including a classic piece of musical romance from Louis Armstrong and the All Stars.

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

Only a half hour long programme this week as the Wagnerian pantechnicon comes back to town, takes up all the local amenities and consigns Joseph and his many-coloured JLU to oblivion.

12 midnite
Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Geoffrey Smith showcases Duke Ellington's sidemen, including Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams.

Favourites of course with the pre-bopping Mainstream brigade.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b046cpx0

Mon 19 Feb
11 pm Jazz Now
Soweto Kinch introduces a concert given by American saxophonist Steve Lehman and his octet, recorded in November at The Old Customs house in Tampere, Finland.

I wonder what this will be like.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09rz9kj

People might be interested in Behind the Scenes, on Radio 4 next Wednesday 21 Feb, at 9.00 am, repeated in truncated form at 9.30 pm

:
The programme follows the work of leading concert pianist Joanna MacGregor, who is head of piano at the Royal Academy of Music and artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School.

I had the happy chance of meeting Joanna back in the days when Andy Sheppard was flavour of the Britjazz revival [sic] - she is an incredibly friendly person for one so gifted in the classical field, where stars can be a bit haughty in my limited experience. I asked her about the difficulties if any in performing complex modern scores of the likes of Boulez and Stockhausen, and she said that for her such music presented no more difficulties than any other - which rather shut me up!!!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Six hours of Wagner's Parsifal. A search for the Grail.

Of which Freddy "Spare that Donkey" Nietzsche (of Nietzsche's Big Swing Combo) said,

"Parsifal is a work of perfidy, of vindictiveness, of a secret attempt to poison the presuppositions of life – a bad work. The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to anti-nature: I despise everyone who does not experience Parsifal as an attempted assassination of basic ethics."

Well, I think I'll take Freddie's advice and turn that dial to OFF.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

[B]12 midnite
Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Geoffrey Smith showcases Duke Ellington's sidemen, including Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams.

Favourites of course with the pre-bopping Mainstream brigade.

I find this quote to be a bit condescending, not only because it demeans a coterie of musicians who produced an exceptional body of work between 1927 and the early 1970s but really fails to miss the whole point of Duke Ellington who was never "mainstream." I find the implication of the word "mainstream" in the context of pre-bop to be a catch all phrase which effectively demeans a whole generation of musicians who were still in their musical prime when Bop was very much in the ascendency. Most of the players producing "mainstream" records in the 1950s were middle aged at the time and frequently the same generation as players like Dizzy Gillespie. The differences in 1957 were far more pronounced then than they are nowadays.

The small groups recordings are fascinating and effectively fall in to two categories. The first of these show the sidemen as the titular head of various groups which are microcosms of the larger orchestra. Some of the 1930's groups are decent enough yet the material produced in the early 1940's are of no lesser quality than the material the larger orchestra produced at the same time. The sessions produced in the 1950's onwards are generally more informal affairs where the hand of Ellington is less prevalent in the writing. Sessions such as the Johnny Hodges "Back to back" record remains one of the greatest small group jazz records of all time and not markedly less "modern" than say Miles' quintet of the same time.

I grew up listening to Ellington. To begin with I found his music a bit foreboding but listening to Humphrey Lyttelton's tribute to drummer Sonny Greer as a teenager converted me to the Duke and although the sensation of discovering his music at the time remains one of my most exciting musical discoveries, the more I listen to Ellington the more modern and relevant he sounds. Instead of becoming modish, I feel that Ellington has become an integral part of the jazz DNA and his influence serves more to align music to all that is best about jazz.

[Ian Thumwood]

[B]12 midnite
Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Geoffrey Smith showcases Duke Ellington's sidemen, including Johnny Hodges and Cootie Williams.

Favourites of course with the pre-bopping Mainstream brigade.

I find this quote to be a bit condescending, not only because it demeans a coterie of musicians who produced an exceptional body of work between 1927 and the early 1970s but really fails to miss the whole point of Duke Ellington who was never "mainstream." I find the implication of the word "mainstream" in the context of pre-bop to be a catch all phrase which effectively demeans a whole generation of musicians who were still in their musical prime when Bop was very much in the ascendency. Most of the players producing "mainstream" records in the 1950s were middle aged at the time and frequently the same generation as players like Dizzy Gillespie. The differences in 1957 were far more pronounced then than they are nowadays.

The small groups recordings are fascinating and effectively fall in to two categories. The first of these show the sidemen as the titular head of various groups which are microcosms of the larger orchestra. Some of the 1930's groups are decent enough yet the material produced in the early 1940's are of no lesser quality than the material the larger orchestra produced at the same time. The sessions produced in the 1950's onwards are generally more informal affairs where the hand of Ellington is less prevalent in the writing. Sessions such as the Johnny Hodges "Back to back" record remains one of the greatest small group jazz records of all time and not markedly less "modern" than say Miles' quintet of the same time.

I grew up listening to Ellington. To begin with I found his music a bit foreboding but listening to Humphrey Lyttelton's tribute to drummer Sonny Greer as a teenager converted me to the Duke and although the sensation of discovering his music at the time remains one of my most exciting musical discoveries, the more I listen to Ellington the more modern and relevant he sounds. Instead of becoming modish, I feel that Ellington has become an integral part of the jazz DNA and his influence serves more to align music to all that is best about jazz.

[Old Grumpy]

People might be interested in Behind the Scenes, on Radio 4 next Wednesday 21 Feb, at 9.00 am, repeated in truncated form at 9.30 pm

:
The programme follows the work of leading concert pianist Joanna MacGregor, who is head of piano at the Royal Academy of Music and artistic director of the Dartington International Summer School.

I had the happy chance of meeting Joanna back in the days when Andy Sheppard was flavour of the Britjazz revival [sic] - she is an incredibly friendly person for one so gifted in the classical field, where stars can be a bit haughty in my limited experience. I asked her about the difficulties if any in performing complex modern scores of the likes of Boulez and Stockhausen, and she said that for her such music presented no more difficulties than any other - which rather shut me up!!!

I have heard Joanna MacGregor a couple of times - she struck me as very approachable (though I did not approach!)

Deep River featuring both Joanna and Andy Sheppard is an interesting listen.

OG

[Serial_Apologist]

I find this quote to be a bit condescending, not only because it demeans a coterie of musicians who produced an exceptional body of work between 1927 and the early 1970s but really fails to miss the whole point of Duke Ellington who was never "mainstream." I find the implication of the word "mainstream" in the context of pre-bop to be a catch all phrase which effectively demeans a whole generation of musicians who were still in their musical prime when Bop was very much in the ascendency. Most of the players producing "mainstream" records in the 1950s were middle aged at the time and frequently the same generation as players like Dizzy Gillespie. The differences in 1957 were far more pronounced then than they are nowadays.

The small groups recordings are fascinating and effectively fall in to two categories. The first of these show the sidemen as the titular head of various groups which are microcosms of the larger orchestra. Some of the 1930's groups are decent enough yet the material produced in the early 1940's are of no lesser quality than the material the larger orchestra produced at the same time. The sessions produced in the 1950's onwards are generally more informal affairs where the hand of Ellington is less prevalent in the writing. Sessions such as the Johnny Hodges "Back to back" record remains one of the greatest small group jazz records of all time and not markedly less "modern" than say Miles' quintet of the same time.

I grew up listening to Ellington. To begin with I found his music a bit foreboding but listening to Humphrey Lyttelton's tribute to drummer Sonny Greer as a teenager converted me to the Duke and although the sensation of discovering his music at the time remains one of my most exciting musical discoveries, the more I listen to Ellington the more modern and relevant he sounds. Instead of becoming modish, I feel that Ellington has become an integral part of the jazz DNA and his influence serves more to align music to all that is best about jazz.

If I may say so I think this post overlooks the huge impact of the bebop revolution on listeners as late as the early 1960s, when some of us started acquainting ourselves and breaking out of the Trad ghetto. Culturally this was an important distinction to embrace at the dawn of what seemed to herald an age of change which jazz was prepared and preparing for!

I wasn't saying that the Ellington subgroups were in themselves "mainstream", but that those for whom their music appealed certainly were, and remain so. Those subgroups established certain idiomatic characteristics and ways of playing that were the models of acceptable compromise for people either unable or unprepared to go "that one step further" and embrace bebop. Bebop may have been 20 years old when we discovered it, but it was the break it represented for, to our way of thinking, tired outworn idioms. With the benefits of hindsight we can of course today see the rich ways in which improvisation and its settings form an integrated picture in pre-Bop jazz, and appreciate that for what it was and represented in its time. We can also see how - unlike in the Swing and immediate preceding era when Ellington et al were expanding the compositional base, and this was driving improvisation in more sophisticated directions - the new improvisational content formulated by Parker and Gillespie had outgrown that received context, and a new one had to emerge that fitted their more complex formulations. In short, those of us who came into jazz at that time of change would always find greater difficulties than those coming later, who see the evolution of jazz more in terms of continuity than of disruption, in looking back. It's great to hear, for instance, the Buck Clayton recordings, but they don't resonate in quite the same way they would for older listeners and maybe younger appreciants.

With that in mind, it was very difficult, note at that time, to back-track and see in what had preceded Bop, apart from the progenitors of its changes, Nat King Cole, Lester Young, Charlie Christian etc., as being of value and worthy of continued attention - something the "Mainstreamers" could not or were not prepared to take on board.

I hope that clarifies my intended-to-be lighthearted comment, directed at a certain generation of listeners.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Well, I'm a Bebop Wino and I think the Duke is no fluke. Although when I entered jazz via the Van Gelder Avenue I was not always so aware. Being more into Wilbur than Blanton. Seriously I took the comment to be light hearted, non Po faced, and a bit Tinky Winky (RIP).

Coincidentally, I have been reading Terry Teachout's "Life of Duke Ellington (Robinson Press 2013 : 482 pages). It may be a bit light on musical analysis, but it's an informative read. Recommended.

Also, on books, Val Wilmer's "Serious as your life" is being reissued in March with a new intro by Richard Williams. I remember her saying that if she was writing it now she'd be far more critical of the personal relationships and the assumed role of women. "My woman works so I can concentrate on my art" (sic). Yep...

BN

[Serial_Apologist]

Well, I'm a Bebop Wino and I think the Duke is no fluke. Although when I entered jazz via the Van Gelder Avenue I was not always so aware. Being more into Wilbur than Blanton. Seriously I took the comment to be light hearted, non Po faced, and a bit Tinky Winky (RIP).

Coincidentally, I have been reading Terry Teachout's "Life of Duke Ellington (Robinson Press 2013 : 482 pages). It may be a bit light on musical analysis, but it's an informative read. Recommended.

Also, on books, Val Wilmer's "Serious as your life" is being reissued in March with a new intro by Richard Williams. I remember her saying that if she was writing it now she'd be far more critical of the personal relationships and the assumed role of women. "My woman works so I can concentrate on my art" (sic). Yep...

BN

When at age 16 I made the Trad > Mod "transition", my school mate, a v good drummer who to his credit did credit Max Roach as having a big influence even on Trad drummers such as he, refused to speak to me for 6 months! Before that, in '63 I think we went and saw the Ellington orchestra at the Hammersmith Odeon - Robin parking his Mini under the M4 flyover, which would be impossible today. I remember myself snootily deriding what was on offer as "Mainstream" before actually hearing the band and noting how modern were some of the soloists as well as the arrangements, as Ian rightly appreciates. When we did eventually make it up, he said he had considered my desertion from the "cause" an act of betrayal, but had since been "persuaded" that some "modern jazz", qv the Mulligan quartet and sextet, and the Jimmy Giuffre 3, was "okay" because there wasn't "too much of that clever-clever stuff going on in it". Differences were that serious back then, that any advance in taste development could be considered an apostasy virtually on a par with taking the wrong side during the English Civil War! - we knew of the vandalism at the 1961 Plumpton Jazz Festival when Johnny Dankworth was set to take the stage. Robin only really changed his mind when some of the erstwhile Traddies followed Alexis Korner into Blues domain, and he got involved in some of that and managed to make a living out of it, (as one did) for a time.

I must get that "Serious as Your Life" re-issue now that you mention it, thanks - I have AB Spellman's "Four Lives in the Bebop Business" (1967) which I picked up a decade ago second hand; significant that a writer such as Spellman, credited in the community, used Bebop in his title.

[Quarky]

I enjoy the Ellington sub-groups, Johnny Hodges is a fabulous musician, BUT what transforms the music from Mainstream to a music which goes above any style or period is the presence of Duke. The latest example in my mind is Caravan with Mingus, Roach (I don't think that qualifies as a sub-group).

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yep, the wars were fierce. My school friend c 11 - 14ish, was Nick Evans of UK trombone fame. Nick was fiercely into trad at a early age and I remember him trying to learn "The Chimes" from a Chris Barber record. I lent him my Gerry Mulligan in Paris ep (with Bob Brookmeyer) which I like to think set him directly on the "mature" road to Keith Tippett, Westbrook et al. But probably he got there himself. Re Val Wilmer, there's a very good interview with her on line where she talks about the early days, meeting Hoppy Hopkins, going to the States for the first time on a Ronnie Scott club member "expedition". She really has seen it all. Fascinating.

Btw, another not many people know "fact" but...I recently got the box set of "The Wicker Man" (Directors full cut) 1973. Britt Ekland's part as the seductive "Willow" who drives Edward Woodward to distraction, was dubbed by ... Annie Ross! Again. As Britt couldn't get the Scottish accent. Also, Britt's bottom was "dubbed" but that's another story...

BN..

[Jazzrook]

Six hours of Wagner's Parsifal. A search for the Grail.

Of which Freddy "Spare that Donkey" Nietzsche (of Nietzsche's Big Swing Combo) said,

"Parsifal is a work of perfidy, of vindictiveness, of a secret attempt to poison the presuppositions of life – a bad work. The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to anti-nature: I despise everyone who does not experience Parsifal as an attempted assassination of basic ethics."

Well, I think I'll take Freddie's advice and turn that dial to OFF.

BN.

Imagine the outcry in the unlikely event of a 6-hour jazz concert wiping out several regular classical broadcasts on Radio 3.

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yes, I was thinking that when I saw the timeline. Surely Wagner could have edited down to a broadcast version of say fifteen minutes? Couple of good tunes, some Germanic heroics and then a final big roll on the kettle drum. Then all down the beer keller with that shouty bloke with the weird moustache. "Drinks on the National Workers Party!"

BN.

[Serial_Apologist]

Yes, I was thinking that when I saw the timeline. Surely Wagner could have edited down to a broadcast version of say fifteen minutes? Couple of good tunes, some Germanic heroics and then a final big roll on the kettle drum. Then all down the beer keller with that shouty bloke with the weird moustache. "Drinks on the National Workers Party!"

BN.

Wagner's Ring in One Minute - courtesy non-athletic doyenne of Kevin Ayers and Lol Coxhill association/composer, David Bedford:

http://www.morgan-fisher.com/miniatures/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/M1-11-Wagners-Ring-in-One-Minute.mp3

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Wagner's Ring in One Minute - courtesy non-athletic doyenne of Kevin Ayers and Lol Coxhill association/composer, David Bedford:

http://www.morgan-fisher.com/miniatu...One-Minute.mp3

Well, that was very painless! Although the penultimate chord sounded a bit "bop" for Bayreuth.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

SA

I agree with you totally that the changes between Mainstream / Bop don't seem quite so severe in 2018 and I am appreciative of the divisions at the times between respective adherents of the two styles of jazz. I am not convinced that this division really manifested itself with the musicians , many of whom who made a living out of "Mainstream" jazz having previously been employed in a number of big bands in the 30's and 40's where they would have been fully appreciative of the changes happening within the music and which had been underfoot since the mid thirties.

The example of Ellington is a good case in point because by the late forties he had employed more advanced-minded soloists like Jimmy Hamilton, Dizzy Gillespie, Shorty Baker, Louis Bellson and Paul Gonsalves and whilst the Duke had little interest in Bop, I would strongly recommend an early LP such as "Masterpieces" (CBS) which demonstrate that Ellington was not less innovative albeit exploring form and structure as opposed to adding flattened 9th's and raised 11th's to the chord structures of standards.

Many of the musicians described as "Mainstream" were actually middle-aged at the time they recorded in the 1950s and that style of jazz was far from exhausted. It is intriguing to listen to seminal recordings like the Buck Clayton jam sessions where soloists were allowed to stretch out an express themselves. Conversely, there are a number of so called "Modern" groups like Shorty Rogers, for example, whose approach took it's cues from Basie.

Out of interest, I have been listening to a collection of V-disc recordings made by Basie's orchestra in the 1940s and at a point when Lester Young had returned to the stable. Listening to Basie's output in the 40's is salutary because it presages the 1950's band more closely than you might suspect and whilst not and out and out be-bop band, it had established a blueprint for a particular type of jazz that has endured and remains influential even today with the likes of the Clayton Hamilton band for example. Only Miles Davis' 2nd quintet had enjoyed a similar long-term influence over successive generations of musicians. In summary, these are two templates which have stood the test of time more than any others in jazz. The influence of Basie is manifest, not only in the countless Kansas City style jam sessions which became a staple of the Mainstream era, but also in respect of many other big band from the 40's onwards and in the body of players like Sweets Edison who enjoyed a recording career up until the 1990's.

With regard to music resonating with younger audiences, we are fats approaching a time when the likes of Rollins and Coltrane will be pretty meaningless to a generation who will not have had the opportunity to hear this music live. I wonder what Millennials call "old school" these days with band like EST having their origins some 20 years ago! ( i.e. The distance between Armstrong's Hot 5/7 and Charlie Parker's recordings for Savoy / Dial.)

From a 2018 perspective these categories are irrelevant because jazz now has a 100 year old pedigree from which to take it's cues. It is interesting to hear jazz evolve and push the envelope but I am more mindful these days of criticising an older generation of players for not keeping up with new developments when you have to look much harder these days to find musicians whose music is not quite as cosmetic as the "go to" favourites of many critics. Thinking of bands like Go-Go Penguin, for example. I sometimes think that listening to jazz is like cooking. If you can read, you should be able to cook. If you can dig Josh Berman, you should be able to dig Bix too.