it's totally masterful music, there's no question of it. the first trumpet bit and later the clarinet outbreak especially, to me. it's alive and it's the best kind of music for the street there was back then.
I'm just grateful the language got infected by... here our terms are dodgy, 'serious music', art music (stuff people out for a good time are not real interested in)... John Birks Gillespie don't look to an intellectual to most people but musically, come on. And Bird of course, I just want to give Diz his due, he gets left out too often. Bird wanted to talk to Stravinsky and he was right to.
By my time... serious genius literally on the street. My life wasn't about Stravinsky in Beverly Hills and I caint git in (be knockin the jockeys off the lawn just before dawn)...
I saw Sonny Simmons on the street inventing like it's nobody's business, stunning, literally incredible lyrical melodic invention, and like it would never end... and finally I wanted to talk to him, 'what is this, I don't know about this'. How much the world had changed... but here's the sign, about these days (it went on for more than a decade, SS homeless in SF) "I couldn't sell out, they didn't want me". "San Francisco, the home of homeless people, worst place I've ever seen."
... during that period, he told everybody his name was Jack Pleasanton, or Blackjack Pleasanton.
He tol' me who he was, SONNY SIMMONS and I said, I know you from Eric Dolphy CONVERSATIONS and he warmed up to me some. He said 'give me twenty dollars and I'll write it out for you (he knew just what I meant even without really going into it), have it tomorrow for you.'. I was a bike messenger and I had a twenty on me, so yeah. And he was there the next day with a score pad and had the lesson all there, in neat copy too. At some point we walked to the financial district McDonald's and some suit became fascinated enough to ask his name: Jack Pleasanton.
Some Frenchwoman out of LA got ahold of him and his comeback happened, it couldn't have been too much later than this.
Long story, which my good buddy Jack Chandler has more to say about. Including: I will right now for the record say that Sonny Simmons is the most compelling alto player I've ever heard in person (and that includes Kenny Garrett from Miles's band). Sonny's breadth of ideas, immediacy of vibe and distinctive tone are in a category alone, not to mention his Olympian command of the altissimo register.
https://www.facebook.com/Tigress00/post ... 2303314704
^Firsthand acct. of some of it. Jack quite the storyteller so check it out.
Odd that Jack and I encountered Sonny independently of each other. I was supposed to show and join the group for the DNA Lounge show but I had problems of my own. Sonny in Europe since, as so many of 'our' genii done went and stayed.
(Rant) One reason I prefer even bad old movies to most good new movies...
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- KVRAF
- 4727 posts since 25 Mar, 2006 from The city by the bay
Some periods in film music seem to correspond better to one's own tastes and sensibilities. There also seems to be more risk-taking during certain eras. For example, when Pier Paolo Pasolini worked with a young Luis Bacalov in 1964s The Gospel According to St. Matthew, they used music from not just the usual liturgical tradition.
...and even managed to sneak in a little bit of Webern's arrangement of Bach's Ricercar from the Musical Offering.The score of the film is eclectic, ranging from Johann Sebastian Bach to Odetta, to Blind Willie Johnson, to the Jewish ceremonial declaration "Kol Nidre" and the "Gloria" from the Congolese Missa Luba. Pasolini stated that all of the film's music was of a sacred or religious nature from all parts of the world and multiple cultures or belief systems.