Defending Bob Dylan

Here are columns by Jon Wiener (The Nation) and Sean Wilentz (New Y0rker) defending Bob Dylan's recent concerts in China from lame whining by various liberal media elites. Enough said.

Passings ~ Billy Bang (1947-2011)

Billy Bang, Brussels, 2005. Photograph © Daniel Theunynck.

Tonight npr reports that the extraordinary jazz violinist Billy Bang has died. This is a terrible loss. I was privileged to hear Bang play numerous times and found him not only an extremely talented but a fundamentally decent man.
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P.S.: Here is the obit from The New York Times.

Among The Many Things To Look Forward To This Spring, Here Is Something (yet again)

I have in the past been pretty clear in my admiration for drummer Paul Motian and his music making endeavors. Motian now is 80 and has not one but two new recordings (both on the Winter & Winter label) set to appear. Information on Windmills of Your Mind is here and on Live at the Village Vanguard, III is here.

Mstislav Rostropovich (27 March 1927 ~ 26 April 2007)

Rostropovich by Salvador Dali.

Cello Politics

Pablo Casals performs at White House Dinner for Governor and
Mrs. Munoz-Marin of Puerto Rico, November 13, 1961.
Photograph: Cecil Stoughton/The White House (Public Domain).

This morning npr ran this report on the concert that Pablo Casals gave at the Kennedy White House in 1961. It focused on the intersection politics and art. Casals, an exile from his native Spain, refused to play in any country that officially recognized the Fascist government. What is it about cellists and politics?

Enthusiasms (31) ~ Rebecca Martin

I first encountered singer Rebecca Martin several years ago on the fourth installment of the "On Broadway" series that Paul Motian has been issuing since the late 1980s. Her voice was a remarkable feature of the recording. Over this past Labor Day I was in Washington DC for the APSA convention and walked with Susan down to Dupont Circle. We stopped in at Melody Records where, among other things, I bought Martin's newest CD When I Was Long Ago, recently released on Sunnyside Records. On the recording it is just Martin, Larry Grenadier (bass) and Bill McHenry (tenor). The tunes are all "standards" with a twist.* Martin researched early performances of all the numbers in order to peel away some of the historical accretions that surround the way we have heard these tunes over the intervening decades. The sparse instrumentation and Martin's voicings make the recording a startling achievement.
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10 Tracks: For All We Know (1934) J. Fred Coots/Sam Lewis; But Not For Me (1930) George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin; Lush Life (1938) Billy Strayhorn; No Moon At All (1948) Redd Evans/David Mann; Cheer Up Charlie (1971) Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse/Walter Scharf; Low Key Lightly (Lucky In Love) (1959) Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn; Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams (1931) Harry Barris/Ted Koehler/Billy Moll; Someone to Watch Over Me (1926) George Gershwin/Ira Gershwin; I Didn’t Know What Time It Was (1939) Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart; Willow Weep For Me (1932) Ann Ronell.

Local Event - Tony Malaby at ROCO Sunday

Saxophonist Tony Malaby will be playing in town this Sunday (14 November) at Rochester Contemporary 8:00 pm. Malaby has played with the best - Paul Motian, Charlie Haden, etc.; this will definitely be worth getting out of the house for!

Passings ~ Marion Brown (1931-2010)

When I lived in Amherst, Mass. briefly after graduating from college, I had the chance to hear saxophonist Marion Brown play live. Among my favorite records (well before vinyl was the 'retro' medium for hipsters) at the time was a solo recording by Brown. In any case, Brown has died. You can find a notice here in The New York Times. (Thanks Patrick!)

House Where Nobody Lives

From: Interiors (Foreclosed Homes) © Todd Hido.

The other day The New York Times ran this column and an accompanying slide show on photographers who have sought to document economic crisis in the past and of folks who are trying to do so with our current disaster. The strategy among those working today seems to be to concentrate on houses rather than people. The hope, it seems, is to generalize away from the plight of this or that particular person or family. That strikes me as an interesting approach. In any case, it brings to mind this song:

House Where Nobody Lives
Tom Waits

There's a house on my block
That's abandoned and cold
Folks moved out of it a
Long time ago
And they took all their things
And they never came back
Looks like it's haunted
With the windows all cracked
And everyone call it
The house, the house where
Nobody lives

Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong?

Well the paint was all cracked
It was peeled off of the wood
Papers were stacked on the porch
Where I stood
And the weeds had grown up
Just as high as the door
There were birds in the chimney
And an old chest of drawers
Looks like no one will ever
Come back to the
House were nobody lives

Once it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did they throw it away
Did they know what it means
Did someone's heart break
Or did someone do someone wrong?

So if you find someone
Someone to have, someone to hold
Don't trade it for silver
Don't trade it for gold
I have all of life's treasures
And they are fine and they are good
They remind me that houses
Are just made of wood
What makes a house grand
Ain't the roof or the doors
If there's love in a house
It's a palace for sure
Without love...
It ain't nothin but a house
A house where nobody lives
Without love it ain't nothin
But a house, a house where
Nobody lives.

Of course, in our current crisis the question "did someone do somebody wrong?" has a more complex and different implication than Waits likely intends. And while there is lots of heartbreak, it is caused by forces well beyond personal family hardships. Criminal perhaps?

Thelonious Sphere Monk (October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982)

Thelonious Monk, 1959. Photograph © Herb Snitzer.

I've said it here before. I surely will say it again. Today ought to be a national holiday - a celebration to mark the birthday of Thelonious Monk. Straight, No Chaser.

Sunday Morning Lessons ~ Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger. Photograph © Andrew Sullivan for The New York Times.

Yesterday, I finished what I hope are the very last changes in a boo manuscript entitled The Priority of Democracy: A Pragmatist Approach; assuming my co-author Jack can track down four obscure citations we will be able to ship the manuscript off to the publisher tomorrow or the next day. In any case, although he never actually uses the word democracy in this interview Pete Seeger offers us some final advice that comes very close to the core: "It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with."

I am not always good at what Pete suggests - if someone is spouting foolishness I tend to say so and look for more productive uses of my time. An example - Susan was watching one of the talking heads shows on TV this morning where the debate was broadly over whether we Americans should 'fear Islam'; my response was, - as opposed to what? fearing Hindusim? fearing Christianity? We are not debating those questions - despite ample historical and current reason to do so. I came downstairs to read The Times on line instead. Life is way too short. But then, having escaped the TV Lunacy, Pete was there to remonstrate with me.

Coming Up ~ Black Dub

Here is something to look forward to - a CD due out in about a month by a band called Black Dub. The members are Daniel Lanois (guitarist and producer extrordinaire), Brian Blade & Daryle Johnson (who play drums and bass respectively here and, among many other places, on Emmy Lou Harris's classic Spyboy), and Trixie Whitely (daughter of the late, lamented Chris Whitely and possessor of a wicked good voice). I've only heard some teasers on line, but will track the disc down once it actually appears. With this cast of characters it is difficult to imagine this one not being a keeper.

Passings ~ Herman Leonard (1923-2010)

Photographer Herman Leonard, perhaps most famous for his iconic images of jazz musicians, has died. You can find notices from the L.A. Times and npr here and here.

Passings ~ Benny Powell (1930~2010)

Photograph © Jos L. Knaepen.

Trombonist Penny Powell has died. I had the true pleasure of hearing Powell play with Pianist Randy Weston on two occasions in NYC several years ago. You can find a brief obituary here in The New York Times.

Enthusiasms (30) ~ David Murray

This post is well over due. To say that David Murray plays tenor sax and bass clarinet is a bit of an understatement. He has made many dozens of remarkable records over the course of three-plus decades, mostly on small independent labels - Sound Aspects, Black Saint, Justin Time, Delmark. While he records in a wide variety of contexts, I especially like his recordings with his Octet (in various incarnations) and in Duet settings. The two covers I've lifted here from his Octet were recorded two decades apart but both are very good. I had the pleasure of taking my two (more or less wholly unappreciative) sons to the duet concert with Kahil el Zabar at the Bop Shop. But I'd been hooked on their earlier CD, Golden Sea, for years. What prompts this post is that my son Douglas gave me a border's gift card for Father's Day. And I finally used part of it to buy the Murray-Waldron duets recording, mostly because I wanted to see how it compared to his much earlier session with Randy Weston. In any case, if you don't know David Murray's music you should.

Passings ~ Fred Anderson (1929-2010)

Fred Anderson sits on the edge of the stage at the Velvet Lounge
before opening for the evening (February 2006)
~ Photograph © Jeff Robertson/AP.

Fred Anderson has died. You can read obituaries here and here and here and here. Anderson was a musician, entrepreneur, mentor and, by all accounts, a genuinely decent man. His passing is an immense loss to the jazz scene in Chicago especially, but very far beyond as well. I commented on a recent Anderson recording here just about this time last year.
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Thanks for the heads up!

Local Event: Rochester "Jazz" Festival

Today is the start up of the Rochester Jazz Festival and I feel obliged to mention it. I do so, though, with pretty systematic ambivalence. While the city is desperate for anything to liven up the dead streets and deader economy, I have a couple of serious complaints.

First, the organizers' definition of "jazz" is so indiscriminate as to be meaningless. This festival is a tool for attracting suburbanites into the city and making them feel comfortable. So, any music that might actually challenge popular tastes is off the agenda. Bland is the word. I couldn't find a single performance on the schedule that I'd want to drive into town to see. That, in fact, is part of the problem: you cannot remedy the problems of the city simply by getting people like me to drive in from the countryside. The festival model of urban revitalization seems to me to be a mistake, I have posted pretty often on the need to foster spaces of creativity rather than just spaces of performance as the scaffolding of a vital urban culture.

Second, by my casual count the festival reflects a typical pattern. Most of the black performers (who I'd bet are a distinct minority) are playing R&B or something. Most of the nominally jazz performers are white. It is much like checking out the jazz section at Barnes and Noble. Jazz is an overwhelmingly African-American art form (I'm not just counting numbers of performers; virtually every notable innovation in the tradition was produced by African Americans) but you'd surely not know it from the way it is peddled, whether in the stores or at events like this one. I am not just complaining about effacing history. This pattern denies the active careers of a large number of amazingly talented and creative musicians. This pattern cannot be an accident. Ask the organizers what is going on.

Local Event! ~ Hot Blues for the Homeless (2010)

Yet another iteration of this terrific undertaking, great musicians playing for a worthy purpose. Details here.

Passings ~ HANK JONES (1918-2010)

Jazz pianist Hank Jones has died. You can find the obituary from The New York Times here. Among the music I especially like - and I am hardly a religious soul - is this set of duets Jones did a number of years ago with Bassist Charlie Haden. Here is the title track:

Hank Jones & Charlie Haden, "Steal Away" (1995).

Pittsburgh Jazz Noir ~ W. Eugene Smith

White Rose Bar sign from the fourth-floor window of
821 Sixth Avenue (c. 1957–1964). Photograph ©
W Eugene Smith Archive at the Centre for Creative Photography,
University of Arizona/Heirs of W Eugene Smith.

In the late fifties and early sixties W. Eugene Smith devoted eight years to what has become known as The Jazz Loft Project. What started as a chronicle of Pittsburgh spiraled into a massive photographic and audio undertaking that, until now, seems to have remained something of a mess. Sam Stephenson has recently edited a book from the materials; you can find an accompanying web page here.