Gangsta burnt me out, so much hate, so much casual misogyny. I ain't hatin', but the music did not move me. So when the GeeKid got into rap, I challenged him. I said, bring me some fucking love. He brought me, among other things, Gang Starr.
This is the metaphysics of a jazz thing.
I got better. :)
"his conception . . . was recondite . . ."
I could make some cases against this history. But, c'mon, play for keeps or don't play, any demurral I might have made would be a fucking quibble.
This is a good song in and of itself, and it's an incredible homage to a tradition I know very well and honor very highly.
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This is not news, but folks tell me just the same that my stance on Bob is not clear to them, and further, that it is of some benefit for someone with my particular position in our community to say clearly. I will keep it very short.
I do not follow Bob. I do not quote him. I do not recommend the study of his work to geeks. This is the direct result of his repeated and conscious decision to deny the accuracy and significance of the trade's ongoing and valuable self-critique around its own sexism and racism.
I stan Teddy The Gentleman Wilson, who is possibly the most underrated arranger/bandleader in the history of jazz.
Billie was good, I mean, she was really good. She was the first female vocalist in American pop to *sing* like a jazz instrumentalist, like, in fact, an impossible clarinet.
But she was no Ella. And every astonishing take she ever did was backed by a Teddy Wilson arrangement. Diamond? Yes, of course she was a fucking diamond. But a diamond on black velvet is just a potential. A diamond *set*, *framed*, is wealth beyond belief. Teddy Wilson set her.
The trouble with Otis Spann is that he will never ever fit into a tweet.
Spann represents the late flowering of Chicago style. He played behind the great Muddy for several years into the '50s. He had a lovely voice, and was a great arranger and bandleader, and his piano is one of those "could recognize it anywhere" things.
I meant to play another stunning take of it John Hurt, with his beautiful playing and tenor and his way of projecting kindness across all his work.
But in quest of it, I was reminded of the astonishing life of James Booker.
Classically trained Booker, imagine him, at Angola, black and gay with one great skill, the keyboard. I can't, really, even conceive of it, only guess.