What..are you on drugs over there? Or are you just getting older, and "mellowing" as they say? This new "calmly", "objectively", "let's not ruffle any feathers" writing style of yours is really starting to bore the hell out of me! If you can't, won't, don't return to your old opinionated writing style, well just cancel my subscription!

RG

I love it.

I am just happy that there is still music being made that I can like, or learn to like. I look at the pop music scene and wonder "when did I get so old" that little if anything interests me any more. I did not intend to turn into my parents or grand parents, but it has happened. The current music scene has left me behind. Which, quite frankly is fine with me.

I found Steve Tyrell, Tierney Sutton, Christy Baron, 15 year old Renee Olstead, and others still churning out vocal music for my tastes. I can't expect Tony Bennet to live to 150. 50+ years of great music making is remarkable for any field, especially the music business. I like Krall, Renee Rosnes, Fred Hirsch, and Janis Seigel from Manhattan Transfer to name some others. It will just take me longer to full understand all the Miles did. KOB is remarakble and easy to love. The rest will be an acquired taste for me, but I am trying.

*Disclaimer: I am considering this to be a party thread.*

One of my favorite bits of biting humor is when a woman is striving to succeed in this world, to have her opinion carry the appropriate weight, to be taken seriously...and then to have someone summarize her by saying, "Hey, she's hot!"

Example: "Naomi Wolf? Oh, yeah, the feminist writer. She's hot, I'd do her."

That being said, feel free to take this however you like...I like Diana Krall.

Now, hmmmmmm, I'm left with no comfortable segue that enables me to safely say that I like Wynton!

Typed myself into a corner there, didn't I?

Wynton is great. Listening to Wynton is fine. His lectures on "what is jazz" are interesting and he obviously loves and respects jazz.

He is technically proficient.

Maybe he's the A-Rod of jazz. You know,really pretty damn good, but too gentlemanly. Dare I say it, could Wynton be too white for us? Too A-Rod-y or Donovan McNabb-ish?

Maybe we secretly root against Wynton because he's so non-controversial. Could Miles be the Terrell Owens of jazz to Wynton's Donovan McNabb?

Does he seem to lack a little of that internal fire that drives some other artists? Maybe - he's Miguel Indurain to Miles' Eddy Merckx.

Wynton has done some classical work that I've really enjoyed. I like that multi-disc set he did at the Village Vanguard. I even like the Marsalis Standard Time discs. He's trying to keep this jazz thing going, that's great.

Wynton is Paul McCartney to Mile's John Lennon.

Paul doesn't get the respect, either.

Wynton cares about the quality of his recordings. He also wants kids to learn to appreciate jazz.

Miles is the "dangerous" guy who the chicks go after before they start to want security and settle for marrying Wynton because he'll be a good dad.

I hope Wynton tries to record a remake of Kind Of Blue. That would absolutely kill a ton of jazz pundits and then I could swoop in a buy their records after the estate sales people have taken away the piles of old yellowed newspapers.

(Edited for spelling)

This is an alert to Jazzfan, whereever you may be. Someone has gotten hold of your password and is posting under your name. He's included absurd assurances about being reasonable and non-combative. Perhaps you should consider changing your forum ID. We'd all be glad to have you back and will recognize you by your style.

Incidentally, you know I question both Miles and Wynton but I do give a fair amount of play to a CD which features Wynton and Kathleen Battle. Now there's a singer.

I'm with Jim. I'm just happy there is still music being made that I like. I will also say, for the record Jim, that pop music has passed me by as well, and at a considerably earlier point in my life than it did you. Oh sure, every once in a while a band I listen to gets a big break, but the pop music machine has always kinda nauseated me.

Buddha, I would agree with you as well, Wynton is kinda the safe choice. There is an interesting thesis to be explored in the Wynton as technical master / Miles as innovator, but suffice it to say, it has never impressed me when someone can copy note for note, what someone else invented. It's all about thinking of the line first.
Mr Marsalis is a role model of interaction and caring in education. I can't tell you how much I respect and applaud his efforts to raise the level of music education in the country.

Jazzfan, what do you mean Kenny G doesn't play jazz? He plays the saxophone, right? It must be jazz! (sorry, couldn't help myself)

Anyway, I'm off to irritate my twenty year old neighbors by blasting a Woody Herman big band album (Woody's Winners) loud enough that Bill Chase drowns out their incessant domestic disputing. Wish me luck!

Jazzfan, Bill Chase didn't drown out the neighbors, so I moved onto John Zorn's "Spy vs. Spy" If that doesn't work, I may need a copy of your new acquisition.

HEEEE's BAAAACK!

RG

As I've said elsewhere at this site, if you want to better understand the life and artistry of Miles Davis, read Miles: The Autobiography.

Read this book, and you will learn that very early on, Miles was acutely aware of his physical and technical "limitations" as a trumpet player, limitations which he candidly discussed with the likes of Dizzie Gillespie, Clark Terry, Duke Ellington, and others.

Miles was a rather petite man, and his lung volume was rather small compared to other horn players. Physically, he just couldn't put as much "air", speed, and raw dynamic range into his horn playing compared with most of his contemporaries.

Read the book, and you will learn many interesting things about how Miles found his own unique style and voice in his early years, including the following:

1) While the young Miles Davis was initially enthralled by the blazingly fast chops and soaring high-notes of "bebop" jazz as invented by Diz, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, etc., he (Miles) came to realize that in his mind, he simply didn't hear his inner musical ideas with this degree of manic speed and enormous, soaring range of musical scale. Again, Miles was a very petite man, with a rather limited and somewhat weak lung capacity compared to many of his contemporaries, and his addictions didn't help matters here. Thus, Miles heard his musical ideas more in the MIDDLE registers (where he could most naturally and easily blow his horn), and he also came to realize that he heard his inner musical ideas at a much slower tempo and more narrow dynamic range than classical bebop.

2) Largely driven by his own physical/technical limitations as a horn player, as well as his own artistic sensibilities, Miles soon began to develop his own unique style in which he arrived at a new form of jazz (i.e. modal jazz) in which an often slower and more "hummable" and easily memorable melody was what he was after, and he credits lessons he learned from singers such as Sinatra and Billy Holiday for this. Miles also realized that (rather like Mozart), it is the musical space and silence between the notes that's often most expressive.

Thus, Miles often eschewed mere flurries of musical notes and wide pyrotechnic traversions of musical scale, in favor of slower, more introspective, more melodically memorable, and more indellible musical compositions. Kind Of Blue is a case in point.

Quote:

" And you want to how something else, I also like Hank Williams, Bob Dylan, Bob Willis and Bob Marley with nice big helpings of Duke Ellington thrown in for good measure."

Me too, and throw in two great mono sides of Janis - before the Holding Company - with minimum accompaniment. She should have lived to be 100.

Clearly, you get to a better class of yard sale than I do. Must be all that clean living. Try Bogle Old Vines Zin at $13 - great with Reggae.

Miles - hands down.

Miles = The Inventor.

Wynton = The engineer who can recreate the invention but didn't dream it up in the first place.

Diana Krall = The cute show model who stands in front of the product at shows in a slinky dress and takes people's minds off the original invention. Even guys who don't know what the invention was can still apppreciate the show model.

If you really want to take your neighbors truly out, play Songs Of The Humpback Whale. Do it late at night with a full moon showing.

All I know is I would love to be Diana Krall's Piano Technician. I am still waiting for someone with the looks and the chops to top her abilities. If that makes me Jazz challenged so be it!