"Weed, Jazz and the Cultural Shift" By Steve Provizer

Last year, I began a post this way: "No one seems happy about the fact that consciousness-altering substances have been at the center of American popular music for the past 100 years or so."

Since that time, I've seen cracks appear in the staunch American moral dam. Multiple states have moved toward legalization of medical marijuana and many others have essentially decriminalized end-use.

Clearly, the shift has a lot to do with money. Overloaded jails and courts cost plenty and there's all those bucks we're not getting by taxing cannabis use, but out-and-out legalization advocacy is still touchy. While states move forward, Obama and the Justice Department push back hard. 


This legal conflict is no surprise. It reflects the ambivalence we have as a culture with alteration of consciousness. 

We're not ready to mainstream even the more mundane behaviors of high-ness: giggles, munchies, auto-transportion, uber-horniness, labyrinthine-desultory thought patterns. Nor are we ready to widely accept use of psychedelics as a spiritual tool (aside from those weird Native Americans and their peyote). Then, there's the nettlesome bohemian thing-choosing art-making over money-making.

Historically, in the jazz world, drug use has been perceived and used as a legal cudgel, a palliative, a panacea, hidden, vaunted, flaunted, rejected, seen as a straying from the True Path, and leveraged as a romantic selling point. 


Since the 1960's, hard drug use has been a very small factor in jazz. So, if the rest of the country is catching up with the pot smoking that jazz musicians have been wont to do, why care now?  


Because, the cultural struggle about drugs plays out in the realm of choice and acceptance and reverberates in our general over-identification with labels and in jazz bifurcations, such as that between "free" and "mainstream" jazz. 


Broadening the parameters of acceptance may mean less reactivity. If there's no mileage in being a rebel, or a technical over-achiever or identifying with either one, why bother?  I know people will find other ways to judge, but-call me Pollyanna-it may mean one less hindrance to a musician who would move freely between sub-genres of jazz-or other genres completely-and, to an audience that would accept same.

"Grace Kelly and Walt Kelly" By Steve Provizer

Maybe I should don the churl's mantle for this.

19-year-old saxophonist Grace Kelly has been voted Best Boston Jazz musician for the 4th year in a row.  As I have often said, there are no Golden Ages and that includes a Golden Age of jazz audiences.  However-and I hope the talented and charming Ms. Kelly doesn't take it personally-this development bespeaks an Age marked by a baser metal.

Boston voters have made their priorities clear: Entertainment over artistic challenge; standards sung and played, audience by-play and mini-skirts. Believe me, I'm a long-time advocate of relating to the audience, love standards and have absolutely nothing against mini-skirts, but the fact that these have been "privileged" over musical originality and daring by Boston jazz audiences for the last 4 years is not heartening.

It feels to me like the cuddly prodigy phenomenon in full swing, deftly promoted. Good grief, Grace has been getting significant ink and showing up on Youtube for years, with the likes of Frank Morgan, Phil Woods and Russell Malone, playing at all the major festivals.

This isn't quite the hoary "selling out" discussion that follows Chris Botti or, say, early-versus-late George Benson. Nor is Grace, in her sylph-like fashion, a 900-pound jazz guerilla, as she is not really displacing other young musicians-and that's part of the problem. Lacking her demographic appeal and effective promotion, no other musician is likely to contend for her spot-on the bandstand or in the polls.

Maybe this is wolf's elitism in sheep's clothing. No one's being swindled here. This isn't the Hunt brothers cornering the silver market. But there are so many great (albeit admittedly scrufulous) jazz musicians in Boston, that it just doesn't pass the smell test.

Live Group Recording-the Dave Lambert Singers Film

Just want to note the terrific 1964 D.A. Pennebaker film of the Dave Lambert Singers auditioning for RCA. Lambert was a very early practitioner of vocalese and bop vocals and, of course, a member of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. The other singers are Mary Vonnie, David Lucas, Sarah Boatner and Leslie Dorsey, none of whom acquired a much larger reputation. Dorsey was killed driving a gypsy cab in 1988.

It's kind of extraordinary to hear 5 singers standing in a circle, all singing into a single mic, wearing no headphones. The singers make constant eye contact with each other, modulating their performances on the basis of a number of audible and physical signals, overt and subtle. The rhythm section plays in another side of the studio, with minimal sound baffling.

In the ongoing discussion about "live" versus "layered" recording (it is ongoing, right?), this film chalks one up for the naturalists.

A New Jazz Glossary of Tempos (Super Bowl counter-programming)

I offered "Tempo de Chet: as a substitute for Lento. Others:

Larghissimo=Ray Charles
Adagio= Pee Wee Russell
Andante=Benny Carter

Moderato=Red Garland
Allegro=Fats Navarro

Presto=Lionel Hampton
Prestissimo=Bird   

Frank Foster Quartet-4.10.85

Another in a series of videos I shot in the 80's and 90's, which have never been seen.

Foster, longtime soloist with (and eventual leader of) the Basie band, is a guy who devours changes. The rest of the group are no slouches.
Frank Foster-sax
Rufus Reid-bass
Kenny Barron-piano
Terri-Lyne Carrington-drums


It took Foster a long time to find his way to Wellesley College for this concert, so he improvised this title:"The Leaving New York On a Rainy Friday And Arriving at 5:15 at Logan Airport in Boston On a Rainy Friday and Having One Heck of a Time Getting to Wellesley Blues."

Raphe Malik Quartet at the Willow-Pt 2

See Part 1 for complete information.