Thanks for that, Ghosthouse; nice. I know I posted this not all that long ago (or, at least something from this great record), but was listening to it again today and thought I should post it again. For me, one of the very best examples of this great music. Andrew Hill (sideman here) is a piano player that doesn’t get discussed much anywhere; although he was, to my ears, one of the most unique and interesting piano players ever. There were times when first listening to him that I just didn’t "get" him and felt his playing was downright weird and unpolished; and other times it was pure genius. I think I get him now. Lee Morgan sounds simply unbelievable. He had an unusually expressive and natural way of using note inflections (those little note bends that give the tone a wonderful vocal quality).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=koov4dDz5nIhttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u57C4lot-gohttps://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i47n7dby-ZII’ll be turning 60 in a couple of weeks and as I suppose is natural when nearing age milestones I have been thinking about "stuff". It occurs to me that one of the things that I dread most is the idea of ever getting to a point when I shut down to learning about things I care about and instead seek validation and identity by trying to take down others who I would let make me feel threatened; instead of recognizing the opportunity to learn something about that which I am always patting myself on the back for. Sad.
If one thinks that driving on the wrong side of the street is fun, let’s try doing it while driving backwards. Shall we?
For those genuinely interested in an interesting previously discussed (and disputed) little footnote in the story of this music and for those not interested in simply spewing bs:
- From a PBS interview with Stanley Crouch:
++++ SMITH: You were born in California, you grew up there. As you were growing up uh, how big was West Coast Jazz for you and how big was the San Francisco group, Dave Brubeck?
CROUCH: At that time I was coming up, everybody knew that there was a West Coast sound and it was supposed to be this cerebral, cool glass of water, if you will, version of jazz. And at the same time, though, there was this movement in New York that was rejecting that. It was called ’the hard bop group.’ So you had these guys with these light tones playing at the Pacific Ocean, then, at the Atlantic Ocean, you had these guys who were playing this hard, powerful kind of stuff. So in some sense, one group thought of the East Coast sound as a masculine sound and the West Coast sound as a feminine sound. The guys from the East Coast, they also thought of it as a white way of doing it ++++
(
http://www.pbs.org/brubeck/theMusic/westCoastJazz.htm )
- ++++ Brubeck was a major exponent of West Coast or "cool" jazz, a style that was (and is) often accused of being a whitewashed version of jazz, played by and for white guys, a lite-swing alternative to the knottier and greasier styles being practiced by hard-bop musicians like Dizzy Gillespie, Horace Silver, and Miles Davis on the East Coast. ++++
(
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/the-excellent-paradox-of-dave-brubeck/2659... )
-
https://books.google.com/books?id=iCvmBwAAQBAJ&pg=PT154&lpg=PT154&dq=west+coast+jazz+too...- Wiki:
Some observers looked down upon West Coast jazz because many of its musicians were white, which some listeners, critics, and historians perceived as resulting in music that was too cerebral, effete, or effeminate, or that lacked swing.[12][13][14]
-
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/white_jazz.htm
