I've heard a lot of different opinions on KBJ, and certainly there've been plenty of complaints. I have my own. But I am still absolutely loving this program.
Like Steve, I've been inspired to go buy a ton of music I'm just hearing or exploring or learning about. I must tell you all about an incredible opportunity. EMusic (www.emusic.com) , has a 'subscription' deal where you can pay $19.95 a month (I think for 3 months), and you can download all the music (in 128kps mp3 format) you want that they offer. They haven't been tremendously successful with this offer, because their offerings are primarily indie label rock, but their jazz selection is pretty extensive. They've got Ubiquity, which of course is nice, but recently they've added Fantasy, and they've got a ton of fairly obscure stuff. But let me tell you how good a deal this is (full disclosure--the company I work for, Listen.com, has close business ties with Emusic, but I do not work for them):
I've so far paid $39.90. I've downloaded 159 full length albums. My 20 gig harddrive is full (my cdr crapped out or I'd've transferred onto cdrs by now). Some of the artists, and # of albums:
Art Tatum - 6 (including the Masterpieces)
Billie Holiday - 4
Duke Ellington - 3
Basie (I'll stop counting)
Dizzy
Django
Earl Hines
Jay McShann
Fats Waller
Lionel Hampton
McCoy Tyner
Ron Carter
Charlie Parker (the CP Story--10 discs worth)
Tito Puente
Celia Cruz
Louis Armstrong
Cal Tjader
Erroll Garner
Sarah Vaughn
Fletcher Henderson
Louis Jordan
Thelonious Monk
Oscar Peterson
Sonny Rollins
Reuben Wilson
sooooo many more. And remember, all this and 114 more. I couldn't not tell y'all....
-kevin
kkiernan@listen.com
mrfliz@rcn.com
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Catanzaro
To: acid jazz
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 2:07 PM
Subject: Jazz Part iv: Art Tatum
OK, I'm weighing in again to say the 4th installment was not quite as slick as the second or third, imnsho.There seems to be alot of repetition between episodes, kinda like "In 1927, Louis Armstrong played sounds that had never been heard..." and 45 minutes later, "In 1929, Louis Armstrong played a music that people in his day found unbelievable..." and in the next episode "By 1931, Parisian audiences heard from Louis Armstrong a soulful music they never knew existed..." blah blah blah and so on and so forth.
And yeah, they're laying it on awfully thick. Werner Heisenberg developed his Uncertainty Principle because of listening to Louis Armstrong in Germany? Louis' tempos aurally demonstrate Einstein's theory of General Relativity? OK, I surrender, Louis is the greatest! Now who else was out there, already?
As for the portions on Duke Ellington; well, I just find it hard for pictures and stories about Duke to do anything but attract people to him and his music. I find it more credible to keep checking in with him, because his music underwent such a tremendous evolution over the 60 (!) + years he stayed at the jazz pinnacle. It was great to hear "Reminiscing in Tempo," a fully composed piece of "jazz," (an oxymoron?) that, along with other of his more popular songs, caught the ears of some of the esablished music cognescenti at Juiliard and the like. A lot of change going on from 1920-30.
But the thing I liked best was the all-too brief part about Art Tatum. Damn, even in a showpiece for jazz, the "Invisible Man" remains almost invisible.
What kind of a genius was Tatum? Well, I have the belief that if he and Charlie Parker did a jam session, and Bird laid some of that heavy shit on him, Tatum would have smiled and played it right back at him, and then some, at an even faster tempo!
Then, I realized I didn't own any Tatum CD's. I guess I kind of felt about Tatum like Abraham Lincoln did about guns... safer not to have it around, in case you start to really doubt yourself.... Art probably turned more self-aware pianists into dentists, accountants, and and doctors then anyone in the history of music.
So, , the moral of the story is, despite all the wankering about in "Jazz," I bought 4 Tatum CD's this morning. Viva la "Jazz!"
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Thu Jan 25 2001 - 16:12:37 CET