Now Playing: Charles Lloyd, Gabor Szabo, Albert Stinson and Pete LaRoca
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Sunday, 19AUG2007 R.I.P. Max Roach "We'd known, through Connie, that he was in the hospital and then a hospice, and so were expecting him to go. But still. Hard to see our forefathers go." 
Ed. note: In reading a few Max Roach obits - better known in Jazz as continuing
reviews - I got to
thinking about the
Coltrane discography you sent in Summer'05. No matter the computer
crashes between then and now, and thanks to the magical data recovery powers of our Mac
doctor,
who has managed to rescue stuff, stuff, stuff over the years, I found your original e-mail
message on Coltrane, and it really muishes the mynd, as in just suppose the juxtapose
which I was able
to do with relative ease because
At the Beginning was Max Roach. That's what everybody sez,
and as I was telling me dear wife this or that about him, which she knew he died before I
did, and is there an echo in here? I told her, he was at the very beginning - of what was
happening in New York, and in LA, and in the 1960s.
Under the dragonwyche masthead, I have been putting together a "Jass was always about the struggle, and hard love-making" story. Just a few days ago I made a note to see (hear) the drummer's bands, and a few days before that I added painters and assassins (hashish smokers of the Sheikh al Jebal variety), to those attracted to the "Passin' Thru niche and exedras of Jazz. I had in mind, Art Blakey and Max Roach, and Frida Kahlo. Frida above all other painters because she articulated gravity better than anyone. By contrast, Elvin Jones defied gravity better than anyone. It was as though he was floating and his hands and feet and arms and legs were his only contact with the realms of earth while he was playing. His playing spontaneously sparked a kind of levitation. I have some vague recollection of writing something along these lines (to you) when Elvin died. [Through Googling "elvin jones oregon coast news geeze" I found]: Last Gig for Jazz Drummer Elvin Jones Heavyweight Light - for Elvin Jones What was amazing to SEE was his drumming so intense that his arms and hands and legs and feet generating all that percussive energy and sound carried the weight of his whole body up off the stool in a state of near-levitation. I will never forget it. Neither will I ever forget the trance-like nod he sent me into unto this day and brought me out of because in those days he always ended the tunes on time as still the Elvin echo reverberates and pulses through the infinite light years... Anyhow, back to Frida, and the dragonwyche. Georgia O'Keefe* too knew in her day and painted the essence of Jass; the visualized, imagined and sculpted curve. It is that understanding that I try to bring to The Geeze, to continue answering a question once asked about cleavage and that Elvin kind of defiance that ultimately translates as peace for some who are so attracted or say or sing it out. Thanks for sending along what you knew. It makes it all the easier to accept somehow that after a lifetime of struggle, the Maestro's comfort in his last days was seen to. *Coincidentally, Georgia O'Keefe painted in similar pastel tones and hues as Charlie Parker blew (notes) around the room. There are a hundred Max Roach stories out there on the Internet. I liked this one because I am old enough to remember it came down exactly that way. Pioneering Jazzman Roach Dies By Natalie Finn [SNIP] "I will never again play anything that does not have social significance," Roach told Down Beat magazine after the release of the experimental We Insist! Freedom Now Suite in 1960, one of the first jazz albums to arise in direct relation to the burgeoning civil rights movement. "We American jazz musicians of African descent have proved beyond all doubt that we’re master musicians of our instruments. Now what we have to do is employ our skill to tell the dramatic story of our people and what we’ve been through." MORE Another good one: Max Roach in LA. |
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Sunday, 19AUG2007 American Voices ON/OFF SUBJECT: Juan Cole said, "This is of no great significance - unless, like me, you believe in the power of words and music," and he posted a World Jazz organization link on his new Informed Comment Global Affairs blog. If McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken or Starbucks were to set up 1950s-style coffee house art galleries with Jazz to match, the music (as The Music) would capture the imagination of potential mischief makers before they get so stupid and dangerous. That is not to say the US policy makers and enforcers don't need to change their ways. They do. Or else, as they say... What this country needs is a Juilliard kind of FDR to recruit and train-up armies of pre-Quiet Nights composers, arrangers and musicians, and turn them loose as a Peace Corps to play in the aforementioned 1950s-style coffee houses throughout the world. Anyhow, the Cole-Jazz URLs: American Voices, Jazz & Blues, and Festivals. Thursday, 19JAN2006 Beat Museum Opens in California Thanks to BBC 
Jack Kerouac
A museum dedicated to literary giants of the Beat generation has opened in the San Francisco neighbourhood where the movement took off 50 years ago. Manuscripts, letters and first editions from Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg are among the items on display. A rare copy of Ginsberg's poem Howl, which is said to have ignited the Beat movement, is also housed in the museum. The literary style is thought to have influenced the counterculture which prevailed in the 1960s. The museum, in San Francisco's Grant Avenue, also features an 11m long portion of Jack Kerouac's renowned novel On The Road, which was published in 1957, 12 years before the writer's death. The opening ceremony was dedicated to Carolyn Cassady, the widow of Neal Cassady, whose travels with Kerouac were the inspiration for On The Road. "There's something powerful that speaks to every new generation," said Ms Cassady. "We never ever thought this would happen. I had hundreds and hundreds of pages of letters that I let go of for peanuts," she added. "This is Beat central," said museum founder Jerry Cimino. "North Beach is where it belongs." The Beat museum was formerly housed in Monterey, California, some distance from the San Francisco neighbourhood which was at the centre of the movement. "I see the Beat movement as an enlightening movement because they followed their dreams and changed the world," added Mr Cimino. Ginsberg's epic poem Howl was viewed as controversial, and a reading of the work resulted in the arrest of book shop owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti on charges of obscenity.    ingest about 500 micrograms of LSD, and memorize How to Speak Hip - not necessarily in that order. |
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