thanks,

PB

1. It’s rarely really clever.
2. It’s not funny – this is what distinguishes it from “humor ” – quite the contrary, in fact; see #3.
3. It’s calculated to provoke a negative emotional reaction – anger or embarrassment – and thereby shut down discussion.
4. In my case, it tends to get me really fucking pissed off, even when I don’t have any particular emotional stake in the subject matter. This is a reason I rarely read conservative political blogs any more, and I feel that I should.

I heard Marc Copland in a strange double bill with Kurt Elling a couple of years ago and he did a curious solo piano version of Footprints in combination with All Blues. All Blues was given Copland’s two-thousand chord substitution treatment and the usually evocative and vaguely mournful head of Footprints was draped over the top like a fancy tablecloth. Cover heaven.

Bad versions of good tunes do not provide new listeners with a reason to seek out the originals. They provide listeners with the usual crap corporate jazz wet toilet tissue experience of bland, pointless, packaged and dare I say irritating semantic depletion.

Good versions of good tunes is another matter.

I agree with your assessment of Shorter, as represented by my original irritating comment. Again, not sure why you rise to Shorter’s defense in reaction to my unqualified praise.

As for not giving a rat’s ass about categories: It’s Stanley Crouch in Ethan Iverson’s living room who insists on forcing the issue of territories. Which is really hilarious, actually, because in fact if Wynton Marsalis could have welcomed David Murray to a session maybe something interesting *would* have taken place.

PB

Shipp says:
“The people that would go out to see the Wayne Shorter quartet, which I think our quartet is infinitely superior to, would not come out to hear the David S. Ware quartet”

I thought he meant that the Ware Quartet was infinitely superior to the current (or contemporaneous) Shorter Quartet. Whether your agree or disagree, it’s not quite the same as saying that Ware’s work was superior to Shorter’s.

That aside, interesting post, as always.

I expect that there are some execrable covers, but there are also plenty of intelligent and respectful interpretations by good musicians who have recorded it because they rate it highly as a modern standard. And Wayne gets a composer’s royalty either way, so I bet he doesn’t lose any sleep being judgmental about cover versions. And just imagine, mighn’t it be possible that bad versions of good tunes provide some new listeners with a reason to seek out the originals?

On the subject of the Iska tracks: many, many thanks for making them available. This is very fine music, and if it is a tad less ‘out’ than your normal fare, then all thanks also to Ethan Iverson for his very timely intervention in the listings debate. Blue Note’s policy on back catalogue releases is infuriating for people who care about the music, and it is open to anyone to tell them so by going to their web site and using the review sections for in-print titles to post requests for the release of out-of-print titles. At the very least, the out-of-print references will be picked up on Google searches for the out-of-print titles.

Irritated by Mr Breslin and emboldened by Mr Iverson, I will end this with a list of two CDs recorded in 1993 that are a long way to the mainstream side of my normal out-ish tastes in jazz but are hugely pleasurable listens none the less: Alto Memories by Gary Bartz and Sonny Fortune, and Stompin’ with Savoy by the Marc Copland Quintet. The Copland album includes versions not only of Footprints but (shock, horror!) of All Blues and Blue in Green. The Bartz/Fortune album includes versions of Capuchin Swing, Stolen Moments and Lonely Woman. (And yes, my record collection does include John Zorn’s take on Lonely Woman on the excellent Naked City album — the more the merrier as far as I’m concerned.)

Stanley Crouch is also amusing. He has made quite a career out of making unsupportable statements. It served him well and made him a brand and a commodity. Of all the folks in The Musician’s Compendium of Unsupportable Statements, Crouch would be indexed more than just about anyone else, except maybe Miles Davis. But I have never trusted that he’s really about the music. I trust Gary Giddins, for example, to be about music. Crouch has always sounded like he’s about…Crouch.

sorry for being irritating,

PB

I guess I should have said ” itâ??d be widely lauded as a masterpiece…by the sort of people who are apt to dismiss it out of hand.”

My point is that it’s actually pretty similar to the sort of thing that is promoted by free-jazz nationalists. aside from being really, really good.

Breslin, I’ve been in and out of the hospital for 12 fucking years. I’m looking at my 10th operation, hopefully soon. I get shit from some fucking asshole every time I walk down the street. Please don’t be one of them.

So I’m not entirely sure what’s being brought up here. It’s great to encounter confusion, becomes it usually means I’m about to be schooled.

Musicians seem to utter inscrutable and bizarre statements quite often. Shipp’s attitude toward Shorter is yet another example in a long line of such comments. Someone should compile a book of completely unsupportable statements made by musicians.

What I admire about Shorter is manifold: his compositions, arrangements, solos, stylistic range. Shorter on tenor is completely distinct from Shorter on soprano. He’s one of the nexus figures who seems to not give a rat’s ass whether he’s “innovative” or “mainstream.”

It’s funny that what Miles Davis heard in Shorter was Coltrane. He’s quoted saying that in, I think, the PBS documentary. Of course the influence is there but Shorter has poured so many other approaches through his funnel…or whatever.

The next time you hear yet another execrable cover of Footprints, race home and put the version from Miles Smiles on, immediately.

PB

There should have been an end-italics thingy after the word “Fields” above, which I added at the beginning of this post. Don’t know if it was necessary.

Anyways, I haven’t heard the Wynton album that Crouch played for Ethan, but I’ve long thought precisely the same thing about Blood on the Fields- that it’d be widely lauded as a masterpiece (not saying it’s perfect) if it had come under the name of somebody like Murray.Also, I’m not actually sure whether or not I’ve listened to that particular Branford album, but I really, really, like his late ’80s album Trio Jeepy (even though Branford himself saw its unprecedented positive reception as evidence of the cluelessnessness of critics; as is so often the case, with all due respect, I think he’s full of shit on this point).

Anyways, I think that both legitimate innovation and legitimate revivalism come from a sense that something essential is missing in the status quo.

You two are too much of gentlemen. I’d say that’s plain stupid.