Her show comes on my local NPR station on Sundays when my wife and I sit down to dinner. They haven't been recording new ones for a few years, but the old ones still hold up. I hope they keep it on for a few more years.
Used to listen to it on the local jazz radio station (Alabama A&M's WJAB, before they went 90% blues and smooth jazz). Billy Mays died in 2009, but continued to appear on TV selling shit until at least early 2012. If the talent gods have any heart at all, McPartland's show will continue to be aired.
Aw crap. I was just talking about her on BS last week. She was old as hell, so it had to be coming. But still. She was a national treasure. A younger picture of her with a few of her friends:
Per Wikipedia, there are only three people from that photo who are still living: Horace Silver, Sonny Rollins, and Benny Golson. Wow.
Well, yeah... There was a lot of drug addiction in that genre. I mean, a lot- almost like you had to be a junkie so it would look good on your resume. Seems she managed to avoid that, at least.
Especially, though of course not exclusively, sax players. I think Sonny Rollins is in his mid-80s, which makes him something like 173 in jazz-saxophonist years.
Sure; but what I guess I meant was that given the photo was taken 55 years ago, and was a photo of people who'd already been around long enough to establish themselves as significant figures in jazz, to my mind it's kinda cool that any of them are still alive now. It really bums me out that nearly all of my musical idols are long dead. If I had a time machine, selfishly devoting it to personal musical tourism would perhaps be at the top of my list of things to do with it.
My father alternated dean's list semesters at Colgate, which earned him the right to keep his Packard at school, with less than dean's list semesters, which lost him that right. When he had the car he spent too many nights driving all over upstate New York to see jazz gigs. His favorite band was her husband's... Later he saw Jimmie play someplace in England just before D-day. He never really took to her though-- said her playing was "too florid." (Not the only thing we disagreed about :-( )
Very, very cool. Well, she's female, and she's English. That didn't help. It's tough to find a woman whose gender hasn't had an impact on what she finds attractive in sound. In some ways, she reminded me of a piano bar kinda player, but in an "only the most upscale bars" sorta way. The jazz I enjoy the most has very little or nothing to do with the blues (which I can take or leave), but it does have a reckless, arrogant "We can pull this shit off and you can't" smirking quality to it. The attitude of a great jazz combo isn't significantly different than the one you'd see from a great rock band. Think about that image of Jimmy Page slumped in the chair with a cigarette and his Les Paul (I can't find it)- jazz swagger isn't really any different musicwise. Simple and well-known tune, "So What" from Kind of Blue, redone by Ron and Herbie with Wayne Shorter on sax, Tony Williams on drums and Wallace Roney on trumpet. From 1:36 to about 2:07 is one full run of the AABA form, and Tony is making every drummer in the auditorium get his coat and his hat and slink away in shame. Florid is a very good way to describe those polite but note-y players who fit in but don't necessarily stand out. Bill Evans played as pretty as Marian, but --and I don't know any other way to describe this-- when you heard him, you knew he was someone who lived jazz and not just played the gig and then went home to a comfy existence. Bill stood out. This is in no way intended to demean her- I liked her playing, just didn't love it.
That's pretty much just right, that is... Always wondered-- if Tony Williams had to play with Bo Diddley, would he get drunk first, or read a book the whole time... Fair enough. I never turned her off, but I don't own any of her stuff...
I think he'd stay sober and play what Bo wanted to hear. There were and are some guys who frowned on musicians who crossed genre boundaries (think of Wynton Marsalis berating his own bro for playing with Sting), but Tony was a consummate pro, AFAIK. Of course, he could read a book and then scribble moving flip pictures in the corners of the pages while playing Bo's material if he wanted to... that's how good he was.
Whenever I think of that guy I always think of this show that my dad loved when I was a kid... There's a lot of British stuff, (obviously!), but some American as well, together with religion and politic targets.
True. And however tragic Morrison's fall was it points to how almost miraculous Mike Tyson's renaissance has been.
"Hollywood Bags." Greenwood Manufacturing made "packing materials." Always wondered if that included sacks...
Clancy was a favorite for a bunch of years. The first 6-7 books were great. After that, dreck and sub dreck. Without the USSR as a foil he had nothing.