The Blogger's Update

Well, it’s been a busy few months here at Stolen Moments world headquarters. I retired from my job at the Government Printing Office (GPO) at the beginning of July and was almost immediately hired back as a contractor, working three days a week to continue the Government Book Talk blog. Since it ramped up at the end of March, Government Book Talk has had almost 80,000 page views and acquired more than 900 subscribers. It’s also won a Silver Inkwell from the Washington DC chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

Then there’s the comic book. Last fall, our Managing Director asked me to create a script for a comic book about the history of printing. To me, it was just another writing job, but the results have gotten a lot of press:

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/artsdesk/books/2010/09/21/meet-a-local-comics-writer-a-chat-with-the-gpos-jim-cameron/ (From DC’s weekly paper on culture, politics, etc.)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/comic-riffs/2010/09/book_of_the_week_gpos_squeak.html (The Post’s comics blog)

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/squeaks_the_mouse_channels_gut.html
(Ed O’Keefe’s Federal blog at the Post – he was kind enough to post the YouTube video done by GPO)

http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=15&sid=2058315 (radio interview with me and Nick Crawford, who did the terrific art work.)

Well, enough shameless self-aggrandizement. Molly and I are expanding (we hope) our freelance editing and writing business, so “retirement” is not quite the word, at least not yet. We’ve been really busy for the last few months. Her major back surgery (scheduled for November 19) may slow us down, but we’re not looking at it from that angle. If it goes the way we think, she will be pain-free after years of increasingly difficult back problems and trying every other treatment under the sun.

Okay, end of sermon, as my 8th grade science teacher used to say. I have lots of jazz reviews planned, including a look at some of the great reissues of music recorded by the Japanese Why Not label in the 1970’s, a bunch of Prestige mainstream and soul jazz, and more. Keep looking at the skies!

Paquito and Mr. Jelly Lord

On Sunday evening, I attended the world premiere of Paquito D'Rivera's Jelly Roll Morton Latin Tinge Project. With D'Rivera on clarinet, Michael Philip Mossman as arranger, musical director and trumpeter, Akua Dixon's Quartette Indigo, Curacaoan percussionist Pernell Saturnino, and dancer Matye Vicens, this remarkable concert concept produced some really excellent music, not the MOR NEA grant-type stuff that often comes out of the arts world these days. The arrangements of Morton's unusual long-form compositions were executed with fire and precision. The band really started moving with Black Bottom Stomp, executing the complex lines with ease and panache. After sustained audience applause, an obviously pleased D'Rivera said, "You should be glad you came to the second concert. We finally got our sheet together!!" Other highlights included Morton's renowned piano solo piece Finger Buster and a rousing King Porter Stomp.

I was a little worried about having a dancer on the program, picturing some tedious modern dance fluttering, but Vicens, who comes out of the flamenco tradition, was an outstanding interpreter of the music -- it was a treat to watch her react to and explicate the sounds of the band. The verdict: A+!

John Mayall: Moving On

I've been a huge fan of John Mayall's Moving On album for about 35 years. My old roommate Tom could tell you that. It was one of the albums he added to his tape system, and we played it a lot. I still have my vinyl, but it's now out on CD and well worth a listen. The liner notes have interesting comments by Mayall. Fascinatingly, although the original notes say "recorded live at the Whiskey A Go Go, Los Angeles, 10th July 1972", the real story is a little more complicated. It was recorded there originally but, according to Mayall, the tapes had a buzz that rendered the whole date unusable. He reassembled the band in the studio and recorded the whole album again, splicing in applause from the original tapes. As Mayall note wryly, "We didn't just decide to lift the audience from someone else's show, if you're wondering!"

I think this album is as good a way to get some people into jazz as Kind of Blue. With a lineup of Blue Mitchell, Clifford Solomon, Charles Owens, the legendary Fred Jackson, Ernie Watts, Freddy Robinson, and Victor Gaskin, all from the worlds of jazz and blues, plus Keef Hartley on drums, the music rocks and swings like a mother but also has moments of subtlety (check out the flute work of Charles Owens on Christmas 71). The recording culminates in a coruscating tenor solo by Ernie Watts on High Pressure Living. Blue Mitchell is superb throughout, and Freddy Robinson demonstrates his ability to play blues guitar in any setting.

You can find this CD for sale on Amazon, although I got mine via Dusty Groove, that indispensable source for obscure jazz, R & B, funk, and miscellaneous soulful sounds. For a taste of Moving On, go here.

The Sonny Rollins Conundrum(s)

I’ve attended two Sonny Rollins concerts at the Kennedy Center during the last year and a half, which gives me at least some ability to discuss those vexed questions: How good is his band and why is he notoriously inconsistent in his live appearances?

I think these problems are interrelated. All of the band members are excellent players. During the second half of the earlier concert, in spring 2008, Clifton Anderson took several excellent extended trombone solos, as did Bobby Broom on guitar. Bob Cranshaw is a strong bassist, and the percussionists and drummers (different at each concert) were most impressive.

The problem as I see it, is that the band lacks cohesion overall because everything hinges on Sonny. In the first concert, he played well but, especially after the intermission, seemed to recede into the background. The other musicians took up the slack via the aforementioned extended solos, which were individually accomplished but more or less strung together rather than parts of a whole.

In the concert in December 2009, Sonny came out and blew us away on the first tune. He then grabbed the mic, talked about visiting Annapolis when he was a kid, reminisced, joked, and generally seemed to be having a good time. That’s the way it went for the remainder of the night. This time it was the band that receded before a force of nature. To the extent that they played, they played well, but Sonny was overwhelmingly dominant, soloing aggressively, trading fours with Cranshaw, even “singing” a bit on his tribute, “J. J. Johnson”. It was a thrill to hear how Sonny can still reach down and play chorus after blistering chorus, seemingly a repository of an endless stream of ideas and energy.

So for the Sonny Rollins band, it’s feast or famine. Play a lot when Sonny isn’t out front and back off when he’s on – and maybe there is no middle ground. As Whitney Balliett once said about the older Roy Eldridge, his band acts as a buoy when he’s off and as ballast when he’s on. As to why – would a more cohesive and challenging band get more out of him? For whatever reason, he doesn’t seem interested in finding out, and that’s his prerogative.

George Wein and Jazz

I’ve been reading Myself among Others: Life in Music by George Wein with Nate Chinen. It’s an engrossing read about the business side of jazz over the last 60 years, told by the founder of the Newport Jazz Festival, the New Orleans Jazz and heritage Festival, and many others. Wein has had his fair share of criticism for exploiting musicians and compromising the integrity of his productions by the inclusion of various crossover artists but, as someone who works in the cost-recovery publishing racket, I have some sympathy. Authors are sometimes as temperamental as musicians, although I haven’t yet run across a Miles or Mingus, so I do have some understanding for Wein in that area. Also, what is commercially viable is not always the acme of artistic perfection. I can see that an hour-long concert by Cecil Taylor is a harder sell than one by Dizzy Gillespie. Kenny G, though? – really, George!

Compared to characters like Louis Armstrong’s longtime manager Joe Glaser, Wein comes off pretty well. As a musician himself, as a man who married interracially when such a thing was rare indeed, and above all as someone who clearly loves the music and respects the artists, Wein strikes me as a person for whom musicians could have respect and affection even though he was the Boss, his own version of things aside. After all of these years, one would expect the book to have some grat stories, and it does. The vignette of Charlie Parker soloing on Royal Garden Blues in a pre-bop style on a stage full of swing-era musicians and playing so much that Vic Dickenson almost dropped his trombone – that in itself made Myself Among Others a fascinating read. Also, Nate Chinen, now with the New York Times, did a fine job of working with Wein to craft a book that holds up well over its 500+ pages. (I would say, thiough, that some background in the music helps.)

In 2010, Wein is still producing jazz festivals at age 84 and, according to the Times just a week or so ago, often hangs out in small clubs scouting the talent. Let’s hope he continues to do so for many more years.

Joe Lee Wilson: Livin' High off Nickels and Dimes

I don’t remember exactly where or when I picked up Joe Lee Wilson’s Livin’ High off Nickels and Dimes. It was sometime in the mid- to later 70’s, I’m sure. I knew about Wilson from reading about his involvement in the New York loft jazz scene and his Ladies’ Fort on Bond Street. Vocalists weren’t too prominent on the free jazz scene, so I suppose I was curious about how he fit in.

The first track, “The Theme/Aquarian Melody,” was a revelation. Wilson projects tremendous gusto as he shouts out the very of-their-time lyrics. I was much taken with the line “I must be free/we must be free.” The album was recorded in 1972, early enough in the Me Decade for those sentiments to still have some currency. Livin’ High off Nickels and Dimes wasn’t released until 1974, and by the time I was listening to it, the lyrics were poignant – it was great to hear someone talking about individual and collective freedom as a battle cry, but the war was over in more ways than one. Wilson gives it everything he’s got – at the end of the track, you can hear him go “Whew!”

The other tracks were just as good. Jazz Ain’t Nothin’ but Soul” was a big indie hit in NYC when the album came out, although according to the label’s co-founder, Oblivion Records didn’t have the wherewithal or experience to handle it – the small label record biz never changes. “It’s You or No One” is a beautiful ballad that shows Wilson’s roots in the Billy Eckstine/Earl Coleman/Johnny Hartman tradition of big-voiced baritones. “You Make Me Want to Dance” is a great high-energy whew-inducing closer. Horace Silver’s “Strollin’” and a heartfelt “God Bless the Child” round out the program. Sidemen Ray McKinley (piano), Bob Ralston (tenor), Stafford James (bass), and Napoleon Revels (drums) lend solid support, but it's Joe Lee's show.

My overall view of Livin’ High off Nickels and Dimes is that Wilson, with his terrific range and ability to imbue his singing with such passion and verve, was trying – and in my opinion succeeding – in creating a vocal style that paralleled the attempts by John Coltrane and others to reach an almost ecstatic transcendence of emotion that characterized the best “spiritual jazz” of the era.

Joe Lee Wilson is a shamefully neglected artist in this country. He left the U.S. in 1977 and has carved out a career in the UK and France, and what does that tell us about the American music scene? Thanks to the producer and owner of the master of Livin’ High off Nickels and Dimes, who owns the rights, you can hear this great music here. There’s more Wilson on CD, too (ignore the out-of-date allmusic bio that’s floating around on the Net). I own a couple that I hope to review soon, and his Shout for Trane has just been reissued on the Japanese Why Not label – the title alone has convinced me to pick that one up. Joe Lee Wilson, please come home!

Azar Lawrence: Prayer for the Ancestors

John Coltrane's furious musical progress in his last years left a lot of territory unexplored. Azar Lawrence, an explorer of that terrain since his 1970's days as a sideman with McCoy Tyner and on a number of dates with Prestige, has emerged on the scene again. Prayer for the Ancestors is a dazzling outburst of jazz as a spiritual venture. On the title tune and "Swinging in Exile", Lawrence soars on tenor, while meditating on soprano on "Under Tanzanian Skies" and "Ode to Pharaoh.". "Thokole" features Ibrahim Ba on vocals and guitar and Amadu Fall on kora in a mode reminiscent of the 60's folk era. The criminally underrated Nate Morgan on piano, Henry Franklin on bass, and Alphonse Mouzon and Roy McCurdy on drums all contribute immensely to one of the best new CD's I've heard in quite a while. I got my copy from Dusty Groove, that redoubtable source of all things soulful. Check it out.