Music . . .

https://sites.google.com/site/kimmorenteacher/music

"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again."
-Eric Dolphy


Hidden Agenda
OHO (duo-Jay Graboski & Ray Jozwiak) recorded live in Ocean City, MD, March 2020)

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Ah, the critics . . .

. . . gotta love 'em. . .

2012 marks 50 years of the Beatles. On Jan. 1, 1962, the Beatles flunked an audition at Decca Records in London. Label executive Dick Rowe’s brush-off: “Guitar groups are on the way out.”

Tommy Dorsey claimed, "Bebop has set music back 20 years."

Louis Armstrong complained that beboppers were playing wrong chords.

A prominent New York critic said, "Bebop sounds to me like a hardware store in an earthquake."

"He plays like somebody is standing on his foot." Miles Davis on Eric Dolphy

One critic said that Monk's music was "like missing the bottom step in the dark."

Critics called Thelonious Monk "the elephant on the keyboard."

Emperor Joseph II on Wolfgang Amadeus Mozars's The Marriage of Figaro,  "too many notes, Mozart"

Diana Krall is this decade’s Harry Connick Jr., Krall is popping up everywhere these days at festivals, in clubs and on CD sales and airplay charts. An adequate pianist, she’s a tentative, dry-voiced vocalist whose torpid, sorority-girl versions of classic songs barely measure up to hotel piano bar standards. Her eminence must seem like a slap in the face to vastly more gifted and creative singers, like Rebecca Parris and Ian Shaw.

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AMBIENCE & WINE

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And now, back to our regularly scheduled program. . .

. . . This break from over five years of regular performance was welcome, and for more reasons than one. During that period I was listening to music that I loved and that inspired me to want to make music of my own. Well, at least music more like what I was getting into than what was popular to sing along with, dance to in a drunken stupor or simply ignore while you ate, talked and generally celebrated some special occasion in your life or just a Saturday night's social event. This I was not getting. And I have myself to blame primarily. I had the freedom to leave my musical situation at the time and seek something more to what I envisioned. But alas, freedom is one thing and drive, determination and action are three others. These, quite sadly for my then musical disposition, I lacked. It really comes down to the fact that I really didn't want it badly enough.

In addition, while thoroughly enjoying the sonic antics of my art/prog/jazz-rock favorites and desiring to play things like those they played, I simply did not have the ability to create like they did. At least not on any substantial or meaningful scale. I wrote things sporadically before my retirement (my Sonata In No Particular Key is appropriate to mention here) but there was no consistent force, or inspiration for that matter, fueling the creation of much original material. I would have loved for a million new, creative musical ideas to flow freely and bountifully from my heart, mind and fingers, but it just didn't happen.

So I went happily and peacefully about building a new, married life together with my bride. My Farfisa Fast Four and Leslie 145 were setup in a prominent location in the den of our apartment for quick and easy access. Truth is, I'm not sure if I even played once a week at that time. But I was building my vinyl record album collection of my favorite jazz cats during the period and joyfully and effortlessly soaking in their music as often as I could. My Coltrane, Dolphy, Adderly and McLean collections grew with much less reliance on the old Tull, Gentle Giant and Yes for musical satisfaction. This too combined with sounds exemplifying the musical tastes of my significant other, sometimes not so willingly or graciously.

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Words sometimes fail. . .

. . . to describe what music can express. . .

There may be several more, but this song by Frank Zappa (and LAURA by Eric Dolphy from the Live in Europe Sessions) are two songs that absolutely MOVE ME! I can't describe how or why. They just DO! And I don't NEED to describe how or why, or try to convince ANYBODY else that they should move them, because that's NOT what it's all about. What it's about it is, enjoying WHAT MOVES YOU!

(But give it a listen anyway. It's quite wonderful.)




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The blessing and the curse. . .

. . . of aging is perspective. Although I choose to concentrate upon the blessing (and I use the term in purely secular fashion) aspect to be sure. That aspect was vividly, yet unexpectedly brought once again to my attention when pondering the talents and the moving music produced by Eric Dolphy.

In case you're not familiar with Eric Dolphy, he was a (chronologically) post-bop, jazz reed virtuoso, equally skilled and emotionally proficient on flute, alto saxophone and bass clarinet (which has, since my acquaintance with his music, become one of my favorite reed instruments). Born in 1928 in Los Angeles, he died in Berlin in June of 1964 of complications of a diabetic coma and sheer neglect. It seems the hospital staff, after Eric collapsed on stage, succumbing to the stereotypical view that all (or most) jazz musicians were drug addicts, left Eric in bed, unattended, to allow the alleged drugs to run their course. A brilliant, but tragically short, life.

My first exposure to Eric Dolphy is to the credit of my old school chum Bob Z., who had sometime around 1973 purchased an Eric Dolphy LP, which I cannot readily now identify due to record companies' haphazard practice of issuing unrelated and insufficiently documented recordings as an 'album', which contained mostly live material and a seminal performance of the old standard LAURA. The recording, now available as one of three "Live in Europe" CDs, still gives me goosebumps when I hear it.

The 'blessing' and the 'aging' to which I previously alluded come into play as follows. The pieces to which I was listening were recorded around 1960. I was hearing them in the early seventies. That means that music was made about thirteen years prior to my discovering it. In my innocent youthfulness, I perceived that mere 13 years as "A LONG TIME" ago. And the 36 years of age Eric had attained was really very young by most objective standards, but old to one of fifteen years.

Now, at fifty-three, listening to this glorious music and looking at photos of Eric Dolphy online, the apparent truth of the matter is that, when Eric passed away, he was only a kid. But what a BRILLIANT kid!


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Ray Jozwiak - Gonzo Piano opens the May 23rd Monday Night Songwriters Showcase at Brewer's Alley Restaurant & Brewery with 30 minutes of solo, Gonzo, Fractured Jazz and Improvisational Terror Tactics at the Piano. (take the elevator on the right to the 2nd floor) 124 North Market Street, Frederick, MD 21701, tel: 301-631-0089, Fax: 301-631-1874
www.brewers-alley.com
Frederick Acoustic Music Enterprise (F.A.M.E.)



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