UPDATED POLL RESULTS: the 5 Best Jazz/Rock Fusion Recordings of All Time

Thanks to all of you who have been voting on this poll of the 5 best Jazz/Rock albums of all time.   I have updated the totals and realigned them, so just go to the link for a look at the new numbers.

Hundreds and hundreds of music fans from all over the world have been reading the results I published last week, and a new wave of votes have been coming in.  If you haven't cast a vote for your own favorite 5 recordings, it's easy.  Just log into the comments section at the bottom of this article, or you can also VOTE by sending me an email. 

There have been a few surprises, like Hiromi's favorite guy, Frank Zappa, who has been getting more votes.  Unsurprisingly, the two top vote-getters, Return to Forever's Romantic Warrior and Mahavishnu Orchestra's Inner Mounting Flame, have been holding on in the top positions.

Look over the list.  Do you see anyone or their recordings missing that should be there?

   

POLL (RESULTS) AND A NEW POLL: the 5 Best Jazz/Rock Fusion Recordings of All Time

On January 29, 2009, I posted a poll here with links to it on various online music discussion groups, asking people to nominate what they felt were the 5 best jazz/rock fusion albums of all time.  A good number of responses came in by email, while quite a few were posted on the online forums and here on my blog.  As the months went on I would occasionally think the survey had run its course, but then a few more responses would show up--so I just let the polling continue, and it went on.  It wasn't until September 6, 2010 that the last comment/vote was posted here on Jazz (Jazzers Jazzing).  I don't recall when the last vote was emailed in--it was months later.

Not all the responses to the poll were cheerful or constructive.  Some jazz/rock aficionados objected to the idea of such a list, saying that narrowing the field and using competitive words like "best" and "all time" was bad somehow, maybe even a way of bullying less appreciated works.  Ha!

At the other end of the spectrum, moldy-fig "purists" who still have not forgiven Miles Davis for plugging instruments into amplifiers, continue to be upset with all of this music and the people who listen to it.  What has it been now...?  Forty-five years?

At any rate, the purpose is to do two things here. One, I want you to see the results so far.  Some of these choices are fairly surprising.  The album Weather Report in the top 5?  Headhunters not?

Two, I want to re-open the voting.  A lot has happened in the last three and a half years.  Several of the musicians listed in the results below--Jeff Beck, Stanley Clarke, Josef Zawinul, Lenny White, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin and Chick Corea--have won Grammys (Joe Z.'s posthumously).  Others have made interesting new music, or gone into retirement to live on record royalties, or come out of retirement to play live music because they can't live on their royalties, or...  A newcomer not even on the list back then, Esperanza Spalding became the first-ever jazz artist to win a Grammy for Best New Artist, certainly a sign of something good.

After reviewing the list, or before, I want you to go to the bottom of this page to where it says "post a comment," log in and VOTE!  List the albums you consider to be the 5 best jazz/rock albums of all time; if you want to nominate fewer than 5, that's okay, too.  You can also vote by email at hager.carl@gmail.com and put "5 Best" in the subject line.  If you voted in the original poll, feel free to vote for another 5--but please don't vote for any album for a second time--this isn't a contest, it's a way of assessing the popularity of this great musical legacy.

Feel free as well to vent, rant, rave, critique, analyze, cogitate, glorify or otherwise opinionate.  This is a moderated blog, though, so don't get carried away with the expletives.  

Here are the results so far.  The first 43 of them are listed according to the number of votes received, most to least.  Any albums receiving the same number of votes are listed alphabetically:
 


22 Romantic Warrior – Return To Forever (22)
21 Inner Mounting Flame, The – Mahavishnu Orchestra (20)
18 Bitches Brew – Miles Davis (17)
12 Heavy Weather – Weather Report (12)
9 Believe It - Tony Williams Lifetime (9)
7 Head Hunters – Herbie Hancock (7)
7 No Mystery – Return To Forever (7)
6 Wired – Jeff Beck (6)
6 Birds of Fire – Mahavishnu Orchestra (6)
6 In A Silent Way – Miles Davis (5)
5 Blow by Blow – Jeff Beck (5)
4 Elegant Gypsy - Al Di Meola (4)
4 Black Market - Weather Report (4)
4 Trout Mask Replica - Captain Beefheart (4)
4 Where Have I Known You Before – Return To Forever (4)
3 Enigmatic Ocean – Jean Luc Ponty (3)
3 Hot Rats – Frank Zappa (3)
3 Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy – Return To Forever (3)
3 Light As A Feather – Return To Forever (3)
3 Metal Fatigue - Allan Holdsworth (3)
3 On the Corner - Miles Davis (3)
3 One of a Kind - Bill Bruford (3)
3 School Days - Stanley Clarke (3)
3 Spectrum – Billy Cobham (3)
3 Thrust - Herbie Hancock (3)
3 Tribute to Jack Johnson, A - Miles Davis (3)
3 Unorthodox Behaviour - Brand X (3) 
3 What If – Dixie Dregs (3)
2 8:30 - Weather Report (2)
2 Cosmic Messenger - Jean-Luc Ponty (2)
2 Devotion - John McLaughlin (2)
2Emergency! - Tony Williams Lifetime (1)
2 Inside Out - Chick Corea Elektric Band (2)
2 Jaco Pastorius - Jaco Pastorius (2)
2 Journey to Love – Stanley Clarke (2)
2 Live In Tokyo - Weather Report (2)
2 Mysterious Traveller – Weather Report (2)
2 Night Passage - Weather Report (2)
2 Pat Metheny Group, The - Pat Metheny (2)
2 Return to Forever ­– Return To Forever (2)
2 Smokin' in the Pit - Mike Mainieri and Steps Ahead (2)
2 Sweetnighter – Weather Report (2)
2 Temporal Analogues of Paradise - Shawn Lane, Jonas Hellborg and Jeff Sipe (2)
2 Time Control – Hiromi (2)
2 Turn It Over – Tony Williams Lifetime (2)
2 Visions of the Emerald Beyond - Mahavishnu Orchestra (2)

6 - Supersilent (1)
Adventures of Astral Pirates - Lenny White (1)
Agharta/Pangaea – Miles Davis (1)
A Go Go - John Scofield (1)
Alivemutherforya - Billy Cobham (1)
All Kooked Out - Stanton Moore, Charlie Hunter (1)
American Garage - Pat Metheny (1)
An Evening of Magic, Live at the Hollywood Bowl – Chuck Mangione
Anti-Social Club, The - Alan Pasqua (1)
Arbeit Macht Frei - Area (1)
As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls - Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays (1)
Assembler - Bill Connors (1)
Atavachron - Allan Holdsworth (1)
At Fillmore - Miles Davis (1)
At Fillmore East - Allman Brothers Band (1)
At the Mountains of Madness - John Zorn & Electric Masada (1)
Awakening - Pharaohs (1)
Badfoot Brown and the Bunions Bradford Funeral & Marching Band - Bill Cosby (1)
Beneath the Mask - Chick Corea Elektric Band (1)
Best Laid Plans - David Torn (1)
Belladonna - Ian Carr & Nucleus (1)
Big City – Lenny White (1)
Big Picture, The - Adam Holzman and Brave New World (1)
Black Sheep - Jan Hammer (1)
Black Rock - James Blood Ulmer (1)
Blue Nights - Bill Bruford, Tony Levin, David Torn (1)
Blue Train - John Coltrane (1)
Breezin' - George Benson (1)
Bright Size Life - Pat Metheny (1)
Buena - Morphine (1)
Burnt Weeny Sandwich - Frank Zappa (1)
CAB - CAB (1)
CAB 4 - CAB (1)
Captain Marvel - Stan Getz (1)
Caravanserei - Carlos Santana (1)
Casino - Al Di Meola (1)
Cellar Door Sessions, The - Miles Davis (1)
Chasing Shadows - Tony Grey (1)
Chicago Transit Authority - Chicago (1)
Chicago (AKA Chicago II) - Chicago (1)
Chicago III - Chicago (1)
Chicago VII - Chicago (1)
Chick Corea Electric Band - Chick Corea Electric Band (1)
Children of Forever - Stanley Clarke (1)
Chinese, The - Janne Shaffer (1)
Close to the Edge - Yes (1)
Consequence of Chaos - Al Di Meola (1)
Coup de Tete - Kip Hanrahan (1)
Court & Spark - Joni Mitchell (1)
Crossings - Herbie Hancock (1)
Crossings - Steve Khan (1)
Crosswinds - Billy Cobham (1)
Crystal Silence - Gary Burton / Chick Corea (1)
Dancing In Your Head - Ornettte Coleman (1)
Dinosaur Swamps - Flock (1)
Double Nickels on the Dime - Minutemen (1)
Double Up - Bill Connors (1)
Dr. Hee - Scott Henderson and Tribal Tech (1)
Dragon's Head - Mary Halvorson (1)
Dropper, The - Medeski, Martin and Wood (1)
Dry Humping the American Dream - Gutbucket (1)
Eat A Peach - Allman Brothers (1)
Elastic Rock - Nucleus (1)
Electric Rendezvous - Al Di Meola (1)
Electric Bath - Don Ellis (1)
Electric Byrd - Donald Byrd (1)
Electric Guitarist - John McLaughlin (1)
Escalator Over the Hill - Carla Bley (1)Evolution - Tony MacAlpine (1)
Expresso - Gong (1)
Extrapolation – John McLaughlin (1)
Farewell Shows - Seattle, WA - Zony Mash (1)
Feels Good to Me - Bill Bruford (1)
Filles de Kilimanjaro - Miles Davis (1)
First Album, The - Ella Guru (1)
First Light – Freddie Hubbard (1)
First Seven Days, The - Jan Hammer (1)
Five Hundred Miles High/Live at Montreux – Flora Purim (1)
Flesh on Flesh - Al Di Meola (1)
Floating Point - John McLaughlin (1)
Flock, The - Flock (1)
Focus - Jan Ǻkerman (1)
Fourth - Soft Machine (1)
Free – Airto Moreira (1)
Freefall - Dixie Dregs (1)
Full Circle (Coming Home) - Bon (1)
Funky Serenity - Ramsey Lewis (1)
Gary Burton and Keith Jarrett - Gary Burton, Keith Jarrett (1)
Gazeuse! - Gong (1)
Gil Evans Orchestra Plays the Music of Jimi Hendrix, The - Gil Evans Orchestra (1)
Good - Morphine (1)
Grand Wazoo, The - Frank Zappa (1)
GSM3 - Frank Gambale, Steve Smith, Stuart Hamm (1)
Hatfield and North - Hatfield and North (1)
Hapless Child, The - Michael Mantler (1)
Hard Normal Daddy - Squarepusher (1)
Heaven and Hell - Shine (Bill Laswell, Buckethead, Shin Terai) (1)
Heavy Metal Be-Bop - Brecker Brothers (1)
Hejira - Joni Mitchell (1)
Imaginary Day - Pat Metheny (1)
Improvision - Alex Machacek, Jeff Sipe, Matthew Garrison (1)
Industrial Zen - John McLaughlin (1)
Infinite Desire - Al Di Meola (1)
Innervisions - Stevie Wonder (1)
Introducing the Eleventh House – Larry Coryell (1)
I Sing the Body Electric - Weather Report (1)
It's A Beautiful Day - It's A Beautiful Day (1)
James White and the Blacks - James White and the Blacks (1)
Jazz from Hell - Frank Zappa (1)
Jewel in the Lotus - Bennie Maupin (1)
Jing Chi - Robben Ford, Vinnie Colaiuta, Jimmy Haslip (1)
Juju Street Songs - Gary Bartz (1)
Kamakiriad - Donald Fagen (1)
Kinesthetics - Scott Kinsey (1)
King Kong- Jean Luc Ponty (1)
Kiss My Axe - Al Di Meola (1)
Land of the Midnight Sun - Al Di Meola (1)
Last Train to Hicksville - Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (1)
Larry Carlton - Larry Carlton (1)
Lawrence of Newark - Larry Young (1)
Light Years - Shin e (1)
Like Children - Jann Hammer/Jerry Goodman (1)
Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It's About That Time – Miles Davis (1)
Live at the Greek - Stanley Clarke (1)
Live at the Baked Potato - Greg Mathieson, Abraham Laboriel, Michael Landau and Vinnie Colaiuta (1)
Live at the Rainbow - Focus (1)
Live from Elario's (the First Gig) - Chick Corea Electric Band (1)
Live On Tour In Europe - Billy Cobham - George Duke Band (1)
Love Devotion Surrender - Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin (1)
Mad Hatter - Chick Corea (1)
Man-Child - Herbie Hancock (1)
Masques - Brand X (1)
Merry-Go-Round - Elvin Jones (1)
Michael Brecker - Michael Brecker (1)
Miles in the Sky - Miles Davis (1)
Milestones - Miles Davis (1)
Mind Transplant - Alphonse Mouzon (1)
Mint Jam - Yellowjackets (1)
Modern Man - Stanley Clarke (1)
Moon Germs - Joe Farrell (1)
Moonshadows - Alphonse Mouzon (1)
Moonshine - Dave Douglas and Keystone (1)
Moroccan Roll - Brand X (1)
Morph the Cat - Donald Fagen (1)
Mountain in the Clouds – Miroslav Vitous (1)
My Spanish Heart - Chick Corea (1)
Mystical Adventures - JeanLuc Ponty (1)
Napoli Centrale - Napoli Centrale (1)
Native Dancer - Wayne Shorter (1)
New Grass - Albert Ayler (1)
Nightfly - Donald Fagen (1)
Elastic Rock - Nucleus (1)
Octave of the Holy Innocents - Jonas Hellborg, Buckethead and Michael Shrieve (1)
Of Human Feelings - Ornette Coleman (1)
Oh Yeah? - Jan Hammer (1)
One Size Fits All - Frank Zappa (1)
Out of the Woods - Oregon (1)
Overnight Sensation - Frank Zappa (1)
Overtime - Lee Ritenour (1)
Pachuco Cadaver - Captain Beefheart (1)
Panthalassa - Bill Laswell (1)
Passion and Warfare - Steve Vai (1)
Personae - Jonas Hellborg, Shawn Lane, Jeff Sipe (1)
Picchio dal Pozzo - Picchio dal Pozzo (1)
Pieces - Matthew Larkin Cassell (1)
Planet End - Larry Coryell (1)
Polytown - David Torn, Mick Karn, Terry Bozzio (1)
Powers of Ten - Shawn Lane (1)
Preludes and Rhapsodies - Deodato (1)
Present Tense - Lenny White (1)
Primal Scream - Maynard Ferguson (1)
Progressivity - Tunnels (1)
Pyramid - Eef Albers (1)

Red Clay – Freddie Hubbard (1)

Return of the Brecker Brothers - Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker (1)
Return to the Emerald Beyond - The Mahavishnu Project (1)
Rip, Rig & Panic - Rashaan Roland Kirk (1)
Road Games - Alan Holdsworth (1)
Rocks, Pebbles and Sand - Stanley Clarke (1)
Rotters' Club, The - Hatfield and North (1)
Sad and Tragic Demise of Big Fine Hot Salty Black Wind, The - Universal Congress Of (1)
Safe As Milk - Captain Beefheart (1)
Sand - Allan Holdsworth (1)
Save the Robots - Conrad Shrenk and Extravaganza (1)
Secrets - Allan Holdsworth (1)
Seven Songs - Fredy Studer (1)
Sextant - Herbie Hancock (1)
Shack Man - Medeski, Martin and Wood (1)
Shangrenade - Harvey Mandel (1)
(sic) - Alex Machacek (1)
She's Too Much for My Mirror - Captain Beefheart (1)
Sky Train - Barry Miles (1)
Soft Machine, The - Soft Machine (1)
Soul Experiment, A - Freddie Hubbard (1)
Song X - Pat Metheny (1)
Soul Vaccination: Live - Tower of Power (1)
Spaces – Larry Coryell (1)
Spice of Life - Kazume Watanabe (1)
Splendido Hotel - Al Di Meola (1)
Staircase - Keith Jarrett (1)
Stanley Clarke - Stanley Clarke (1)
Step It - Bill Connors (1)
Still Warm - John Scofield (1)
Super Nova – Wayne Shorter (1)
Tales from the Acoustic Planet - Bela Fleck (1)
Tales of the Exonerated Flea - Horacee Arnold (1)
Tauhid - Pharoah Sanders (1)
Tennessee 2004 - Praxis (1)
Then! Live - Allan Holdsworth (1)
There and Back - Jeff Beck (1)
Third - Soft Machine (1)
Thunder - Stanley Clarke, Marcus Miller, Vic Wooten (1)
Timeless - John Abercrombie w/ Jan Hammer, Jack DeJohnette (1)
Tolonen - Jukka Tolonen (1)
Total Eclipse - Billy Cobham (1)
To the Bone - Bon (1)
Touchstone - Chick Corea (1)
Tour de Force Live - Al Di Meola (1)
Toys of Men - Stanley Clarke (1)
Trio of Doom, The - John McLaughlin, Jaco Pastorius, Tony Williams (1)
True Stories - David Sancious (1)
Tutu - Miles Davis (1)
Ultimate Adventure, The - Chick Corea (1)
Uncle Meat - Frank Zappa (1)
Unspeakable - Bill Frisell (1)
Velvet Darkness - Allan Holdsworth (1) 
Venusian Summer - Lenny White (1)
Vertú - Lenny White (1)
Vitalization - Steve Smith and Vital Information (1)
Vital Tech Tones - Scott Henderson (1)
Volume Two - Soft Machine (1)
Waka/Jawaka - Frank Zappa (1)
Wardenclyffe Tower - Allan Holdsworth (1)
Warszawa - Praxis (1)
Way Up, The - Pat Metheny (1)
Weather Report - Weather Report (1)
Yes - Morphine (1)
Zawinul - Joe Zawinul (1)
Zoot Allures - Frank Zappa (1)
Zurich - Praxis (1)

Cheryl Bentyne & the City of Hope All-Stars: Live at Catalina Jazz Club in Hollywood, August 11, 2012

After kicking off Saturday night's festivities with a hard-charging version of Cole Porter's "It's Alright With Me," a beaming Cheryl Bentyne welcomed Catalina Jazz Club's capacity audience by effusing over the wide array of talent that had assembled for the occasion.  Event musical director Ted Howe was poised at the grand piano and ready to swing, with performers like singers Lorraine Feather, Gina Eckstine and Mark Winkler, and trombonist Bob McChesney waiting in the wings.

The up-tempo, finger-snapping atmosphere Ms. Bentyne had created in the space of four minutes was uniquely indicative of whose life was being celebrated.  Her long recovery from serious illness hadn't diminished her legendary drive a bit, and that's saying something--since January of this year the multiple-Grammy-winning soprano had been undergoing treatment for Hodgkins lymphoma, and tonight she was celebrating having successfully dealt with it at the City of Hope, a cancer research and treatment center north of Los Angeles.  Was the vivacious song stylist looking wan and sounding like a shadow of her former self?  Would this be a solemnly serious occasion?  Forget about it...

Lorraine Feather & Cheryl Bentyne

"This is like one of those old variety shows that aren't around anymore," Bentyne declared after finishing her first song, grinning that famous grin as she opened the combination fundraiser and release party for her new CD Let's Misbehave: the Cole Porter Songbook (Summit, 2012). "But they're back, and here to stay."

Cheryl and Gina Eckstine

With that, the artist delivered on her promise by sailing into another pair of tunes from the recording, "It's Delovely" and "Let's Misbehave," caressing Porter's famously fun-loving and life-embracing lyrics with an enthusiasm and energy that sent a warming frisson of electricity through the crowd.  It is certain no one in the audience was left thinking this would be just another polite jazz concert, suitable for the hardwood floors of a recital hall.  All who knew her for the sensation she had created with The Manhattan Transfer in 1979 when she joined Tim Hauser, Janis Siegel and Alan Paul  and helped usher in a decade of the most memorable vocal jazz since Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and again with her solo debut on the Mark Isham-produced Something Cool (Columbia, 1992), were treated to the best news possible.  Cheryl Bentyne was well and truly back.

Mark Winkler and Charmaine Clamor

Frequent Bentyne collaborator Mark Winkler and Charmaine Clamor, a notable L.A.-area singer, did a memorably campy version of Winkler's composition "Sweet Spot," a nice piece of writing that the duo played for all it was worth.   

Gina Eckstine

But it was Gina Eckstine, daughter of iconic singer and big band pioneer Billy Eckstine, who got the show revved up into a higher gear and rolling in earnest.   Not only did this mysteriously underrated singer take command of the stage as she embraced the audience, her power and control were something to behold.  She is that rare vocalist who can find a note and sustain it without losing a bit of steam, and without the wavering pitch problems that overcome many a lesser singer.  Quite aside from her technical skills, Ekstine's performance was reminiscent of a bygone era when the blues was not an intellectual exercise, but a feeling, when jazz was a music that gave people emotional release and made them happy.  So when she grabbed the microphone and took on her father's "Prisoner of Love" and "I Apologize," she did it with the authority and presence of big band-era singers like Ella Fitzgerald.  With more exposure this singer could easily be trumping the pale offerings of the thin-voiced waifs who struggle to find middle C.

Andrea Baker and Steve Wilkerson

The dynamic seesaw of the evening's program dipped and slowed a bit with the man-and-wife duo of the Andrea Baker and Steve Wilkerson, with tunes like Baker's cool, throaty rendition of "I've Got the World On A String" and Wilkerson's variously fiery, albeit unobtrusive ascents on the clarinet, music played with a gracious gentleness that worked well in leavening the many high-powered performances.

Lorraine Feather

What Baker and Wilkerson were also able to accomplish artistically was a sideways introduction to Lorraine Feather's inimitable songwriting and singing.  Feather is a recording artist whose skills as a raconteur are on a par with Dave Frishberg's or Mose Allison's, and in live performance is a naturally facile improvising storyteller and word-player. Devoted fans know this from a few of her recorded musings, but listeners who have heard nothing but the "radio hits" selected by programming directors might not know the treasures to be heard in a live setting.  With her typically lazy-eyed sotto voce, she led off her performance with a wry, understated preamble to "Antarctica," her hilarious lyrical collaboration with Duke Ellington's composition "The Ricitic," that left the assembled alternately smiling and laughing out loud.  Her classic commentary on the frozen tundra of love's Idatarod was followed by another Ellington lyricization, "Love Call," based on the Duke's "Creole Love Call," and while the original has doubtless gotten more airplay, it would be tempting to say that until one has heard Feather's heart-rending soprano and lyrics paired with the master's composition, one really hasn't heard it all.

Bob McChesney

The evening continued with the meandering gutbucket-to-bebop ruminations of Bob McChesney, a busy session trombonist who has played with everyone from Horace Silver to Ray Charles, then went on into the night with a raffle, a solo appearance from Clamor doing Leonard Cohen's "Halleluja," a standup comic, L.A.-based singer Dolores Scozzesi (known for her interpretation of Bob Dylan's "One More Cup of Coffee"), and even more--those who were able to stay for it all said it ended as well as it had started.  The evening's emcee, beautiful radio personality Elizabeth Zero, kept the proceedings moving along with wit and energy, and thanks largely to the tireless work and promotional skills of producer/publicist Rob Lowe and his wife Brinka Olberding, whose organization Casting New Lives is home to a number of jazz artists, the event was a confirmed success.

Elizabeth Zero

All the proceeds from this and the Friday performance went to benefit the City of Hope, an organization whose efforts helped save the life of a national treasure, and those in attendance were treated to a style and quality of music sorely absent from today's music scene.  The soaring soprano range and chutzpah of Cheryl Bentyne melted our hearts once again, and more than that, assured us that she would be back to melt them again.

Cheryl Bentyne

As a footnote to the night's events, there is the lingering feeling that Bentyne's prediction while making introductions earlier in the evening--that the variety show is back and here to stay--might be prophetic.  Or at least a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Could this resilient redhead be right?

Crazier things have happened.  Who would ever have predicted that smack in the middle of the often bleak synthesizer-and-drum-machine landscape of 1980s music, Manhattan Transfer's two girls and two guys would ride to the rescue by doing bop-inflected vocalese, and be the hottest thing in jazz?

Variety is the proverbial spice of life.  It's why a festival still works even in economically depressed times.  Whereas someone might hesitate to purchase a $35 ticket to see a big act, that hesitation often evaporates when it means seeing six of them.  Moreover, what sums up those concepts that define jazz--the mixing it up with inclusiveness, innovation, unpredictability, improvisation and an unbridled joie de vivre--better than the idea of variety?  What if the spectacular stage and television variety shows of the 1960s, jazz's answer to the rock-and-roll invasion, really were to stage a "comeback" because they had been here all along, and here to stay?

The divine Ms. B. could be onto something.

Photos:

The two snapshots of Cheryl Bentyne taken at the club sound check, first with Gina Eckstine and then with Lorraine Feather, are by Bob Barry.  The very last shot of Cheryl laughing as she stands by the window, is by Robin Layton.  All other photos were taken by yours truly, Carl L. Hager. 

Jumping the Shark: IAJA Bans Use of 13 Words

Manhattan, Kansas - In an unprecedented move, the International Association of Jazz Advocacy (IAJA) announced Wednesday that it has banned the use of 13 of the most offensively trite words in jazz journalism.  These are:

1. soaring

2. screaming

3. wailing

4. scorching

5. burning

6. incendiary

7. sinuous

8. muscular

9. angular

10. jagged

11. ragged

12. funky

13. gritty

Chevy Prefect, president of the newly formed IAJA, a non-profit corporation whose membership is rumored to be comprised of a reorganized group of former members of the IAJE (International Association of Jazz Education--which filed for bankruptcy and finally dissolved in 2009) issued this statement:

"These words constitute the most egregiously abused clichés in music writing.  Of particular interest to the IAJA, of course, is their overuse in jazz writing.  Journalists, in their never-ending search for the perfectly purple adjective, invariably choose the same 13 words that have been beaten to death for the last twenty years and rendered utterly meaningless. If you want to know why more people don't listen to jazz, just look at the way the music is repeatedly described in print.  In the interests of both forwarding the music that is this country's greatest indigenous art form, and preserving the English language, writers are encouraged to immediately cease all use of these turgid, lifeless terms, and urged, if it isn't too late, to buy a dictionary or thesaurus."

Prefect went on to say that the IAJA's research had discovered material for further exploration of jazz journalism's language abuses in several other areas.  "In the pocket," he noted, though currently not particularly in vogue, and not always employed as an adjective even when it is, is possibly the most confusing phrase in jazz journalism. He also stated that the list of fire-related adjectives is not limited to the ones cited above as 4., 5. and 6., since such words seemingly go on forever.  Newly in fashion, he said, but already on the IAJA's Endangered Specious List, is "tattoo," which in current parlance can take the place of "ostinato" or any number of other musical terms.

Prefect concluded by saying that the IAJA's research committee has indicated an interest in immediately investigating one of the most unusual findings in its language survey.  In a sampling of 100 working jazz musicians with active or recently active recording contracts, 78 of them favored an indefinite ban on any use of the word "jazz."

When contacted and asked for comment on the IAJA's announced list of banned adjectives, Nate Chinen of the New York Times, Will Friedwald of the Wall Street Journal, Bill Milkowski of Jazz Times, Don Heckman of the Los Angeles Times and Paul de Barros of the Seattle Times, did not return our calls, although Nat Hentoff is rumored to have said to the manager of an East Village newsstand late yesterday afternoon, "What, they need to ask?"  A Manhattan (NYC) cabbie also emailed me late last night to say he'd picked up the Wall Street Journal critic as a fare outside Dizzy's--and that when he asked what the writer thought about the ban, Friedwald had struck an Austin Powers-like pose and laughed quietly to himself.

Radio Killed the Roneo Star?

 

Recently I began doing a series of short CD reviews with WJSU-FM 88.5, a station broadcasting from the campus of Jackson State University in Jackson, Mississippi.  The opportunity to do it came along within days of hearing that KABC's parent company, Cumulus Media, Inc., had pulled the plug on the last remaining AM radio jazz programming in Los Angeles (yes, the same town that nicely fills the Hollywood Bowl each year for the Playboy Jazz Festival).  It seemed like a chance to stop complaining about the lunacy and do something. 

True, a short radio program on a Mississippi radio station might not do much right away to offset the misguided thinking about jazz programming here in the City of Angels, but you never know.  Radio waves are magic.  In addition to carrying some NPR programming as part of their affiliation, WJSU distinguishes itself by being the Magnolia State's most devoted jazz station. If John Grisham is ever driving south of his farm in Oxford out on Highway 61, or on I-55 as he heads toward Jackson (the state capital) and wants to listen to some music from fellow Mississippians B.B. King, Lester Young or Mose Allison, as he mulls the plot line of his next novel, his best bet is to tune in WJSU.  Sure, he could spend hours loading his iPod with all his faves, after spending other hours online finding them.  He could spend even more time compiling an All-Hank Jones or All-Milt Hinton playlist.  Or he could just flip on his car radio and tune in WJSU-FM.

There he could listen to the big, wide world of jazz, including podcasts of the CD reviews I've been doing for WJSU's "All Things Social" program with Gina Carter-Simmers, and maybe hear something new:

Podcast - Frank Walton's CD The Back Step

This is my review of Frank Walton Sextet's The Back Step (HanWal, 2011) recorded in 2001 with the fantastic pianist James Williams, shortly before his death.  
Frank Walton Sextet's page on Amazon.com for The Back Step


Podcast - Lorraine Feather's CD Tales of the Unusual

Here is my discussion/interview with the host about Lorraine Feather's Tales of the Unusual (Jazzed Media, 2012) -- I contributed liner notes on the project, so this one is not really a critical review.  In fact, Bay Area readers will note that I take her song "Traffic and Weather" so personally that I told the host the song is a commentary on life in Los Angeles (certainly true for me and many Angelenos) when it actually describes a slice of Lorraine's life in San Mateo County.   

 Lorraine Feather's web page for Tales of the Unusual

Radio Killed the Roneo Star?

A "Roneo" was not a competitive series of events like sword-fighting, hojo-roping and horsemanship for rogue samurai.  Nor was it Nabisco's first attempt at creating the bestselling cookie in U.S. history.  It was, instead, the nickname given to the Roneograph, a trademarked name for the best-known brand of a crude little office machine called a mimeograph.  Mimeographs, or mimeos (or Roneos) for those of you born after 1970, was a type of copying equipment developed when A.B. Dick licensed the patent in 1887, and subsequently produced one of the million things Thomas Edison had invented, as a cheap, simple solution to a problem (at least until someone else could figure out how to solve it Nikola Tesla's way, without going broke or crazy).  The mimeograph eventually came into widespread use around the turn of the century, and for 80 or more years was a smelly-but-inexpensive alternative to offset printing for people who wanted to produce handbills or schoolchildren's homework assignments.  For Bill James, it meant the freedom to disseminate the graphs, statistical charts, and wittily incisive analysis bound into his handmade copies of The Bill James Baseball Abstract, a publication that ultimately revolutionized the game.  For the rest of us writers, the machine provided a way to fill the world with our sentences, couplets, sonnets, essays, articles, stories, tracts, tomes, novels and novelettes.  Historically, you could place its significance in terms of written communication approximately between Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in 1440, and the Xerox Corporation's introduction of the photocopier in 1959.  

Somewhere in the mid-1980s the price tag on the new copiers started dropping as Mssrs. Jobs and Gates came along with their personal computers and those glorious delete keys, and a few years later dropped again, precipitously, when reliably functional computer printers started appearing.  

But it was in 1995 that the proverbial shit hit the fan.  When the internet was finally commercialized, this blue little planet tilted on its axis until our culture reached several tipping points at once.  The most important, of course, being that point when writers--Percy Shelly's poetic fifth column of unacknowledged legislators--realized they could finally write, print, distribute and take over the world. 

Nobody told them they should hire a few editors and fact-checkers to lend a hand, but that's a different story. 

In 1885, at the same time he was developing the rudiments of mimeography, Edison was also applying for a patent on an electrostatic coupling system for elevated terminals, for which he was granted U.S. Patent No. 465,971 in 1891.  His buddy Nik Tesla, along with Englishmen Oliver Lodge and Alexander Muirhead, Russians Alexander Popov and Dmitry Lachinov, plus a slew of others, very nearly killed each other in the race to achieve liftoff.  But it was Italian Guglielmo Marconi who was granted a British patent in 1897 for the first working wireless communication device, and after he eventually obtained the other necessary rights from Edison and started the Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company, the world shortly had its first radio and began its inexorable ascent into the telecommunications Cloud.  

Understandably, when the starter's pistol went off in 1885, the ensuing radio race was a lot more exciting than the mimeograph race.  There was a big trainload of money coming down the track for radio communications, and they all knew it.

The world changed

Then it changed again.

And then it changed again.  But Radio did not kill the Roneo Star, after all.  It got killed.

Here it is, July of 2012, and the only jazz radio programming available to Los Angeles' 10 million plus listeners are KKJZ, a publicly supported FM station owned by Cal State University in Long Beach, plus KCRW and KPFK, the NPR affiliates in Santa Monica and North Hollywood.  A few other grace notes are broadcast here and there like breadcrumbs scattered for dedicated and hungry listeners to find where they can, but most jazz fans are busily creating their own internet-based listening stations.  In April of this year, Doug McIntyre's employers at Cumulus informed him that he was to remove the tasteful, far-ranging selection of old and new jazz he had always used as his long-running KABC talk show's bumper music, and replace it with more acceptable pop/rock.  Fun like the in-studio interview I heard one night with John Pizzarelli--complete with a live display of improvisational ingenuity as the multi-talented musician did his signature unison scatting/guitar soloing--had to go too, of course.  Thus does endeth the history lesson on the short, happy life of jazz programming on AM radio in Los Angeles.  

Something about this news felt darkly apocalyptic.  Your humble correspondent is growing restless. 

What can be done about this tumble down the slippery slope into a solipsistic oblivion of self-designed musical programming?  Where is a person to turn for musical adventure in the midst of all these incestuous, social media-driven choices based on a porridge of earlier choices?  Not that I don't appreciate being able to create my own "radio" stations online, but the illogic inherent in this approach is obvious.  If the people who are trying to venture into realms of new musical experience are choosing the music with which to create their customized radio station, how far will they venture?  The availability of millions upon millions of choices helps a small percentage of inquisitive people, but overwhelms far more of them.  Desperate to hear something enjoyable without spending an entire lifetime looking for it in the MP3 Sea of Anonymity, it is easy to choose something familiar.  The inbreeding of the closed system inevitably kills it.  No matter how big your iTunes library gets, you've heard it all before.

The solution?  Easy.  Get more people like the pre-April-2012-KABC Doug McIntyre--people who listen to music that you or I might be unfamiliar with--to share it in a broadcast on a public forum.  People like the late, legendarily great Chuck Niles of KKJZ (nee KLON) in Los Angeles, or Michael Bourne on WBGO, or the ubiquitous Bob Parlocha on NPR.

I know, I know.  You can't turn back the hands of time, right?  You can't un-ring the bell.  You can't go home again.  Right?

Wrong.  Technology can be steered in any direction.  Anything that could be accomplished in the past can be accomplished again.  Our 21st Century technology has not killed commercial radio.  Commercial radio has slowly been killing itself, through its own slavery to the bottom line and criminal neglect of long-available broadcast tools.  By trying to make their shareholders happy in controlling the marketplace and creating programming that appeals to everyone, radio marketeers have managed to create a product so bland that few people want it or are willing to pay for it.  And to appease those grumpy shareholders, they've stupidly told someone like Doug McIntyre to play inoffensive pop music when he goes to a break.  When that defeatist strategy fails, then what?  Muzak?

Every single one of the opportunities to use any telecommunications technology or any approach that was ever available is--of course!--still available in the Digital Age.  New and improved developments have arrived, too, beyond anyone at Cumulus' wildest dreams, apparently.  But, no longer a way to return to Eden, no longer a chance to repair the damage and wasted opportunities and make it all succeed again?  Hardly.  Not even close.  The marvelous developments of the last 20 years are readier than ever to be used. 

Get ready.  Market corrections are never easy.  Sometimes they're fun.

Buggles - Video Killed the Radio Star

The Limousines - Internet Killed the Video Star

Did Video kill the Radio Star? 

Did Internet kill the Video Star?

Will Something Else kill the Internet Star?

These questions and many others will be answered on the next episode of Soap.  

Unfortunately, ABC Television cancelled the Soap series in 1981.  More importantly, many of the principal actors have died or retired, or have been brought out of retirement to MC the annual Academy Awards broadcast.  If another episode of Soap ever airs, I'll be one of the very few people who see it.  You'll likely miss the announcement and not even DVR it.  So I'll just tell you what happens...

Life continues.  Civilization is not wiped out, not for quite awhile.  KABC stays on the air and due to Doug McIntyre's ratings, lets him play jazz occasionally and signs him to a lifetime contract.  There is so much money in Hollywood that they never stop making movies, even at times when they should.  Nothing kills the internet because, in fact, it is not alive.  Like a virus, it has no intelligence and is entirely animated by its host--mankind--which is the problem, and solution.  Apple rolls out roughly twenty more versions of the iPhone, each more impressive than the last, while Japanese and Korean phone designers scramble to keep up (Blackberry is long gone, of course).  Bicycles and streetcars make a big comeback as forms of transportation in all the major cities of the world.  The United States Postal Service maintains Saturday delivery and is not privatized, because everyone wants the service but nobody wants the problem.  Some new guy becomes president, then a woman is finally elected to the office.  NPR remains on the air. Jazz lives.