Occasional Jazz Conjectures

On Ornette Coleman’s Pulitzer Prize
Life is full of surprises. Suppose I told you that the best way to understand the wild music of avant-garde saxophonist-composer Ornette Coleman begins with an appreciation of beloved French Impressionist Claude Monet. You might call me mad.
I’d be in good company. Both the painter and the free-jazz musician faced decades [...]

“Tradition is the passing on of fire and not the adoration of ashes.”—Gustav Mahler

“There are as many unisons as there are stars in the sky.” —Ornette Coleman

There are some folks who think that the nature of the universe is permanence; there are some who will argue that surely the nature of the universe is [...]

Many moons ago a demi-semi-hemi-student asked me if I could recommend some things for him to listen to that would help with jazz vocabulary and conception for drums. Not content to say listen to Philly Joe, Elvin, or Ray Bauduc, I jotted down the following highly subjective list of selected masters that should be [...]

[Liner Notes for VISITS by Triadė]
“Enough of clouds, waves, aquariums, water-sprites and nocturnal scents;
what we need is music of the earth,
everyday music…music one can live in like a house.”
Jean Cocteau
Long ago, different city, different century, the recordings on VISITS were first released. Back then, in the liner notes I noted that, “Revolution is always a [...]

A giant among jazz drummers, with a rich legacy of sharing his talents
In “The Drummer in Our Time,” Ghanaian poet A.W. Kayper-Mensah wrote of the need to celebrate ancient braveries as heartily as the noise, pulse and distilled beauty of life’s present: “May your drumming, music, meaning/Turn our heads to look about us.”
Resonant words. [...]

[on John Helmer, Haberdasher and the near-death of the hat] 
During the 18th century, it was a capital crime in England to forge the stamp of a licensed hatter. Rich or poor, we once all wore hats, caps, lids, toppers, or chapeaux of some sort. Gone are the hat-check girls, tipping the hat (or passing the [...]

The movies and jazz—two shiny pieces of modernity that once shocked the masses. Two art-forms masquerading as entertainment. Both, once upon a time, offered up the idea (perhaps for the first time in this country’s history) that pleasure was indeed a worthwhile quest. One is like the other. Jean-Luc Godard once said, “The cinema is [...]

A rare interview with an excavated, partly imagined Rock-n-Roll Near-miss
I’m boring, I’m boring, boring
It’s a natural fact
I’m an opening act
—Doc  Pomus
“Street girls bringing in sailors must pay for rooms in advance,” was the admonishment that greeted me as I walked through the double doors of the Biloxi Stay-Rite Sho-Tel Inn. Following a terse Dixie interchange [...]

The world’s greatest jazz singer lives right next door.
Many of us have never had the opportunity to experience in person the vulnerable sense of heartbreak in Billie Holiday’s voice, the soaring elation of an Ella Fitzgerald scat solo, or the sophisticated ennui of Mabel Mercer in person. Why to we continue to return to these [...]

I’m from the old school
The proper and the prude school
here it’s stiff upper lip
stay quietly hip
—Dave Frishberg, The Hopi Way
Portland, Oregon takes great pride in its hipster indie-cred, packing a low-slung holster of free-and-loose, artistic frontier-justice ideals—sporting a certain, cool DIY ingenuity. To many in the younger ranks, a 73-year-old, four-time Grammy-nominated, songwriter with a [...]