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Mark Stryker

22 Dec, 16 tweets, 5 min read

1 A Twitter discussion yesterday led me to pull 5/29/69 issue of Downbeat off my shelf. A random issue, 51 yrs ago, & you cannot believe the picture it paints of the scene. Cover interviews w/Sonny Rollins (Ira Gitler), Dexter Gordon (Gitler) & Louis Jordan (Leonard Feather)

2 Here's the Dexter interview:

3 Here's the first page of the interview with Sonny.

4 And here's the second page.

5. Record reviews: Chick’s Now He Sings, Now He Sobs/Miles’ Filles de Kilimanjaro/JoeHen’s Tetragon/ Wayne’s Schizophrenia/Cannonball’s Accent on Africa/Marion Brown’s Gesprachsfetzen/Jackie’s Bout Soul/Mobley’s Reach Out/McPherson’s Horizons/Max’s Members Don’t Git Weary

6. Frank Strozier Blindfold Test

7 Live reviews of Cannonball, Stan Getz (Larry Willis/Miroslav/Joe Chambers) & and the Village Vanguard debut by the Tony Williams Trio w/McLaughlin & Young and soon to be known as Lifetime-- Ira Gitler, who’s all over this issue, writes an enthusiastic & perceptive review.

8 There's also coverage of a NY gig by Brew Moore with a curious band – pianist Dave Frishberg, bassist Jimmy Garrison and a drummer named Johnny Robinson.

@jimmymacx

9 Transcription of Ornette Coleman’s tune “Round Trip” with Ornette’s complete solo ("New York Is Now"). The magazine says the transcription is by “a young teacher-composer at the University of Illinois” – Jim McNeely. Anybody know what happened to him? cc: @jimmymacx

10. Page two of Ornette's solo.

11 News column item about David Baker at Indiana University beginning work on what would become a truly seminal book of interviews.

12 Other bold face names in various column notes: Bill Evans, Eubie Blake, Larry Coryell, Jim Pepper, Duke Ellington, Sheila Jordan, Thad & Mel, Albert Stinson, Earl Hines, Duke Pearson, Clark Terry, Kenny Dorham. And Horace Silver's new drummer is 18-year-old Alvin Queen.

13 My copy has two subscription cards still attached. Each others a free record with a new subscription -- either Ornette's New York Is Now or Lee Konitz's "The Lee Konitz Duets." 26 issues for $7; Pan American Union countries, $8; Foreign countries including Canada, $9,

14 Seriously, the entire issue is a mind fuck. I turned 6 in 1969. We can only live in the era in which we're alive, but this is the kind of thing that REALLY makes me wish for a time machine.

15 Coda: That important Baker book is “The Black Composer Speaks,” edited by David N. Baker, Lida M. Belt, Herman C. Hudson, published 1978 by Scarecrow Press. It deserves to be reissued & maybe updated. If any university press wants to commission me, I’m available.

@RLPGBooks

16. Coda 2: I now see that Scarecrow Press is a subsidiary of @RLPGBooks — seriously, you guys should consider a new edition, especially in our current moment. It would be a timely and valuable resource.

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More from @Mark_Stryker

Mark Stryker

@Mark_Stryker

19 Dec

1 I've spent an insane amount of time digging deep into the Sinatra discography, but after all these years, I keep discovering gems that had somehow eluded me. Here's a late-period ballad from 1974 worth savoring.

2 Sinatra was inconsistent in this period, still getting his voice back together after his 1971 retirement. Here, however, he's in command of his instrument.

3 The phrases aren't as long as when he first recorded this beautiful song (at a brighter tempo) 32 years earlier with Tommy Dorsey. But the storytelling is as rich as a novel, and the feeling of loss is almost overwhelming.

Read 8 tweets

Mark Stryker

@Mark_Stryker

16 Dec

@LukeEpplin

In honor of Beethoven's 250th birthday & with a nod to Peanuts historian & Charles Schulz expert @LukeEpplin, here are some relevant strips starring, of course, Schroeder. Beethoven's birthday was an idée fixe in the strip. Let's start with my favorite:

An early example -- maybe the first? -- from 1953 (I think).

This particular year it fell on a Sunday.

Read 5 tweets

Mark Stryker

@Mark_Stryker

15 Dec

1 The Sage and Soul of Detroit

Happy 91st birthday to Barry Harris, born 12/15/29 in Detroit. May this heroic pianist & professor of bebop go forever. Here’s an annotated playlist of 20 tracks & videos. It's in chronological order, except for a special closer.

2 “Hopper Topper,” 1950. Barry’s debut record. “Cherokee” changes with no theme. Striking confidence for a 20-year-old. The even attack, precise beat & jabbing left hand remind me of Horace Silver. The young Frank Foster comes directly out of Sonny Stitt.

3 “All The Things You Are" (1958). Will Austin/Frank Gant. Barry’s first LP as a leader opens with a ballad at a walking tempo. Improvised curtains of lovely double-time melody. All-Detroit trio, produced for Argo in Chicago by Detroiter Dave Usher

Read 23 tweets

Mark Stryker

@Mark_Stryker

17 Sep

1 Stanley Crouch, 1979:

"Coltrane had a black following while most of the avant-garde didn’t because Elvin Jones had orchestrated the triplet blues beat into a sophisticated style that pivoted on the boody-butt sway of black dance.

2 "In tandem, Coltrane and Jones created a saxophone and drum team that reached way back to the saxophone of the sanctified church shouting over the clicking of those sisters’ heels on the floor and the jingling, slapping pulsation of tambourines.

3 "The sound was lifted even higher by the antiphonal chants of the piano and bass played by McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison, whose percussive phrasing helped extend Jones’s drumming into tonal areas.

Read 14 tweets

Mark Stryker

@Mark_Stryker

7 Sep

@sonnyrollins

1. Thread

Happy 90th birthday to the greatest of them all -- @sonnyrollins. I have no bigger hero in or out of jazz. In his honor here's a playlist of 25 brilliant live performances that span nearly 50 years, from 1957-2006.

2. Caveat: Some of my absolute favorite performances --"Remember" from Newport in '63; an epic 48-minute version of "Four" & 32-minute "Three Little Words" captured in Copenhagen in '68 -- are not on YouTube. But what's here is choice. Like Bird, the best Sonny is live Sonny .

3 “Bye, Bye Blackbird” w/Miles Davis 5qt, Café Bohemia, NY, 7/27/57. Fun to hear Miles in this era with Sonny rather than Trane. Sonny sounds a bit sassy here, and he's seriously swinging. Red, PC. Art Taylor. (Note: Tape is running 1/2 step fast.)

Read 31 tweets

Mark Stryker

@Mark_Stryker

15 Feb

1. Thread.

Before there was "Mozart in the Jungle," there was, apparently, "Philharmonic," a 1971 novel I stumbled over at John F. King Books in Detroit yesterday. This is completely new to me. The authors are a husband-and-wife team, Herbert Russcol and Margalit Banai.

2. Russcol is described as a former French horn player who had worked with the Pittsburgh Symphony and Boston Pops and the author of a guide to classical records. The cover copy promises: "A great symphony orchestra -- its men, its women, it's passions."

3. Here's the extended flap description:
The violent clash of temper, the discord of conflicting passions, the subtle variations of romance in counterpoint to the fiery sexual encounters resound through the pages of this stunning, multifaceted novel of a great symphony orchestra

Read 15 tweets

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