NWR: Miles Blind Tasting Jazz -- Blasts From My Teenage Past

originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Here's what Miles said: "Stan plays good on that. . . . And I like Stan, because he has so much patience, the way he plays those melodies - other people can't get nothing out of a song, but he can. Which takes a lot of imagination, that he has, that so many other people don't have."

We can agree that he's talking about Stan G, but in my opinion, the reference was to Getz, not Gilberto, because neither João nor Astrud was named "Stan." :) ;)
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He says "As for Gilberto, he could read a newspaper and sound good! I'll give that one five stars."
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So if Gilberto was white and was being praised by Miles, and you say that Miles only praised one white guy, then which is it that you see: Getz wasn't white or wasn't being praised by Miles? I don't see either position as being tenable, Oswaldo. To my view, he praised both Gilberto and Getz.
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I conceded in my first reply that I had overlooked Getz, the other white dude he praised, and was pointing out that the Gilberto that Miles was referring to was not Astrud Gilberto, who also recorded with Getz, but Joao Gilberto. Capice?
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Capisco. You apparently had misunderstood me, but, anyway . . .
 
Cool stuff. Airto Moreira tells the story of meeting Miles for the first time and saying "Hi, I'm Airto, I love your music, and would love to play in your band." Miles replied "Nice to meet you, now fuck off." Miles would have been a good fit here.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by John Roberts:

And Gil Evans, and Al Hirt, and Bobby Hackett, and Barry Goldberg, and Mike Bloomfield, and Zoot Simms. What's the point?
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This was my mistake of memories nearly fifty years old. It was Roy Eldridge, not Miles, who had said that he could tell just by listening whether a player was black or white -- and was proved mercilessly wrong in a famous blindfold test by Leonard Feather in which Eldridge couldn't correctly identify the race of the musician even 50% of the time.

For further entertainment, here is Mingus undergoing a blindfold test.
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Thanks again. I was looking for that one and couldn't find it.
 
originally posted by Oswaldo Costa:
Cool stuff. Airto Moreira tells the story of meeting Miles for the first time and saying "Hi, I'm Airto, I love your music, and would love to play in your band." Miles replied "Nice to meet you, now fuck off." Miles would have been a good fit here.
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Miles is right up there with Caravaggio and Destouches (Céline) in proving that you don't have to be a decent human being to be a great artist.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
Destouches (Céline)
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Though it's funny how his talent overrides his personal beliefs, whereas a Drieu la Rochelle, you can just chuck him out part and parcel, even the apolitical fiction.
 
originally posted by Sharon Bowman:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
...you don't have to be a decent human being to be a great artist.
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This whole board should read Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau.
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But that would make us the only board on the planet all of whose members have read Le neveu de Rameau. Wouldn't that make the other boards feel threatened?
 
Remember hearing Miles in the late fifties in a Hollywood jazz joint shortly after he had made Kinda Blue. He played everything in the album that night, we had not heard it and were so fucking impressed words could not describe the evening. But he did turn is back on the audience at times and even walked off the stage while Trane was soloing.
 
originally posted by Lou Kessler:
But he did turn is back on the audience at times and even walked off the stage while Trane was soloing.
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This is one criticism of Miles that I never understood. So what -- the audience should have been focusing on Trane, and thus impervious to what Miles did.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
originally posted by Lou Kessler:
But he did turn is back on the audience at times and even walked off the stage while Trane was soloing.
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This is one criticism of Miles that I never understood. So what -- the audience should have been focusing on Trane, and thus impervious to what Miles did.
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Claude, I came to the conclusion a long time ago that some greatly talented people are not paragons of virtue or even have reasonable manners but I never the less enjoy the fruits of that talent. Beethoven, Mozart, Picasso etc.
 
You know, looking through the way these guys (especially Miles) analyze the recordings and thinking back to Feather's column from when I subscribed to Downbeat in the 1960s and early 1970s, I feel (which I've concluded before, too) that the fact that I'm a musical illiterate (in the distant past, I have been taught to read music, but I can't do anything more than call out the notes, rather like calling out the letters of a text and not the words) makes me more open to what's going on and lifts a set of blinders. (Not, of course, that I don't have my own critical standards.). Comments?
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
You know, looking through the way these guys (especially Miles) analyze the recordings and thinking back to Feather's column from when I subscribed to Downbeat in the 1960s and early 1970s, I feel (which I've concluded before, too) that the fact that I'm a musical illiterate (in the distant past, I have been taught to read music, but I can't do anything more than call out the notes, rather like calling out the letters of a text and not the words) makes me more open to what's going on and lifts a set of blinders. (Not, of course, that I don't have my own critical standards.). Comments?
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I have much the same reaction. These guys are hearing things in the music that I can't really appreciate, despite my time spent studying violin long ago. I feel the same about restaurant criticism, where the nuances often evade my ability to discern.

Mark Lipton
 
originally posted by Brian C:
Love it!
Mingus kills it on Money Jungle. Such an instigator throwing down the challenges. I love how the trio plays at each other as opposed with each other on that album.
As for Dolphy, come on Miles, his solo on "Out There" is benchmark for alto.
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Totally agree and..
The New Yorker article makes a great case for why Miles would put Dolphy down.
 
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