Last edited by Russell_Street (2009-02-13 01:20:16)

Elsewhere JS has name-checked Bird, Mister Chet & the MJQ. He also famously loved/loves the West Coast school, but I was talking to Ian & John Lally.

Agreed on Chet & Mulligan together.

The wilder stuff... Not sure. It was either hard or cool I think back in the day. Nothing too experimental maybe?

Must drag myself up into the attic...

Some more stuff on that Chet Baker debate.

From allmusic guide: "Baker was hailed by fans and critics and he won a number of polls in the next few years. In 1954, Pacific Jazz released Chet Baker Sings, an album that increased his popularity but alienated traditional jazz fans; he would continue to sing for the rest of his career."

It's a shame I can't find the David Thompson piece that sparked off the following editorial. Thompson's a very divisive critic period. I really like his movie writing but his colleagues like to take turns bashing him for his biographical dictionary of film and his Welles biography. He has a tendency to take strong opinions on issues that more reasonable people would feel call for a more balanced view (as reasonable people are apt to do). His book on Hollywood and why it is the beast that it is--The Whole Equation--is solid reading. 

http://www.jazz.com/jazz-blog/2008/5/12/could-chet-baker-play-jazz

Also, another piece of interest.

http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/feature/49455

I see that all of a sudden Evans has appeared on Chensvold's Facebook page. He's never mentioned him before...

I wonder if he ever reads our stuff? 

Last edited by Russell_Street (2009-02-14 10:57:30)

Interesting posts from Decline & Fall there (he's gone quiet?), I've read Ted Gioia's book on West Coast Jazz, well worth a read, shame its not in more depth though.

I was listening to Bill Evans stuff with Miles over the weekend, maybe if Richard Twardzik had not over dosed he would have delivered some equal works of merit. Twardzik never had that junky genius cool though, I've seen one photo of him, he looked like the devil with heavy eye lids and wasted. Whereas Bill Evans, looked like a clean living nerd.  The rumour is that Twardzik was Chet's lover.

Both Evans and Mulligan grew beards and did a lot of coke.  Mulligan in the end eschewed creativity and decided to go full on classical musician style, by concentrating on ever more perfect versions of his previous works. I've got the rerecording of Birth of the Cool, one of his last recordings, pointless, a vanity project by a faded genius.

Just put some Mulligan on, 'Line for Lyons' live at the Haig in 1952 with Chet Baker, Carson Smith and Chico Hamilton.

Few musicians can keep the muse of genius throughout their careers, even Miles lost it after 1981.

The poppier side of jazz does make you want to groan a bit - all those film themes from the 60s - Alfie etc. etc.  Brubeck bores me to tears.  I can see why Strachan and Lally might have shrugged over Lee Morgan.  Coltrane becomes more like a religious experience.

Dave Brubeck wanted to classicize jazz and his music is heavily indepted to Baroque counterpoint - and that's what his distractors always argue, that his music is not jazz.

I'm reading 'Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music' by Frank Kofsky, a Marxist interpretation of 'Trane. All white musicians are dismissed as banal practictioners of third-stream and the West Coast school is dismissed as utterly effete and talentless.  Contemporary and Pacific Jazz labels are similarly disregarded.

The one exception is Bill Evans, who he regards as the only white musician to create music of significance and influence in jazz. 

Coltrane went all the way, into the mystic, something that no rock musician has ever achieved.

Kofsky, eh?  Is he black?  Marxists aren't wrong about every issue in economics, but when it comes to cultual analysis...  sheesh...

if youre on a communist jazz theory kick, hobsbawm's Uncommon People-rebellion, resistance, and jazz  has a few interesting chapters on the subject, even touching on the ivy league crossover to an extent (mostly in the person of that producer whose name i forget). the man is a completely unreliable stalinist (and intentional liar it seems) as far as any political/historical analysis goes, but i find some of the cultural /anecdotal material to be pretty good. he also wrote an entire book on jazz, which i have not read.

I can't help wondering if Ian was being a bit uber.