What are you listening to?

[smokinhiro]

Dear Happy:

Christian is a Los-Angeles-based pianist who plays a lot with the singer Tierney Sutton. I love his album called "Time Line" he recorded with Steve Swallow! I'm so determined to meet him on my next trip to US

www.christianjacob.com

Maria Schneider's so wonderful! I used to turn off my room lights and just listen through her "Evanaissance" album. I'll have to check out that new album, too!

Hiro

[vickihb2]

If Krallesque pics are the only way women can get their music listened to, go for it! Wait for the stunning new images from Fiona Burnett's latest CD (if you haven't seen them already). Taken by excellent photographer Jerry Gallea. NO PHOTOSHOP!

These women are all beautiful! Why shouldn't they share that with us? Ditto Scott Tinkler covered in gold (ahem, cough, cough). Stinkler you shouldn’t do that to perimenopausal women. It just isn’t fair.

Speaking of beautiful women, pre-photoshop makeup artists and lighting guys in the 80s made me look better than Catherine Zeta Jones in Chicago! So anyone can look bloody good with the right conditions.

If artists are comfortable with images used to market them, fine. (Except of course, if your first name sounds like Gate. Or if you are marketing yourself also as a Jazz singer in a country where jazz vocal artists who can actually do the job a lot better than you, are struggling to pay their bills. Then you should really stick to pop and stay out of Jazz festivals in solidarity with underpaid jazz artists. Or else Jesus won’t love you.)

Kylie is a knockout, the woman oozes sex, let's face it. That IS her talent! I love Beyonce, that woman's backside is so sexy and she can move and sing, oh my god! Gwen Steffani is fabulous, Erikah Baddhu, Lauren whatsername from the Fugees, Norah Jones is a goddess, Dianne Krall is attractive too. Gate, is sexy too, dear just drop the jazz thing babe. PLEASE!

These women are all well marketed but don't expect me to buy their CDs - we should leave that to Eddie MacGuire fans.

Jessica Williams doesn't use photoshop by the way Adrian, yet another reason for hiring her for Wangaratta and she's "one of Australia's most longed-for artists"

[isaacs]

I agree in general with VHB, although surely she is not being literal when she suggests that there might be a situation wherein the "only way" that a musically-talented woman could get her music listened to would be by marketing sex appeal. After all Ella Fitzgerald never marketed herself that way, and even in the considerably darker gender days of the 40s and 50s she was a household name, extraordinarly well listened to.

I think if, like Kylie, your only real talent is sex appeal then true enough you do need to market that or you won't be heard. For real musical talents like Diana, Fiona and Maria (nice assonances, as it were ;-)) I don't think it is the "only way" they would be listened to, but I see nothing wrong with it being used as an adjunct, to value-add when marketing is such a challenge in minority musics anyway, same with male musicians (not me, I'm old and ugly). But the idea that it is the "only way" these talented women would be heard is too much special pleading for me. While there are surely people living on this planet who would refuse point blank to hear a woman unless she was presented to them as a babe, the vast majority of human beings are not like that, particularly in non-mainstream musics like jazz.

But, hang on, even in the most basic mainstream stratum, it was refreshing to note that a woman who certainly was not presented as a babe won the recent Australian Idol.

[vickihb2]

Mark you are spot on. Of course - it isn't the only way. But it certainly makes a difference. Interestingly a lot of people thought Ella was white when she was first 'marketed' on radio. I always thought she sounded like she looked blonde when my mother used to play Ella's records (i.e. black discs of vinyl used in primitive times for purposes of storing audio data, Bud!) but I was only 9 or 10 at the time.

Yep the Australian Pop idol gal certainly didn't fit the usual version. Perhaps being fat is now becoming an advantage. Thank goodness, maybe I can now get a date with George Clooney after all. Sigh...

Magda Szubanski was recently voted the most popular person on Australian TV and she doesn't even play jazz. Go figure (no pun intended).

All we need now is to convince womens mags to feature normal people in images and they'll only lose all their advertising revenue.

Happy Easter everyone and Happy Passover (but I dont think that is happening until end of April?)

[Kenny]

[Kenny]

Ahhh, Good Friday - and blow me down coffee can still be had at Southgate, even if not at my usual joint. I wish I'd got 'round to making that walnut biscotti last night, but I got diverted by the brand new Elizabth George police procedural. Yum yum pig's bum.

And speaking of chicks in jazz ... one of my listening pleasures today is:

Gloria Coleman - Soul Sisters. With Grant Green (guitar) and Leo Wright (alto) joining Coleman (Hammond) and another chickadee, Pola Roberts (drums), in 1963. Just yer average organ album with some nice grooves going on. But it makes me wonder about who were these performers and what became of them. More than that, I wonder how life was for them on the chitlins circuit in the early '60s when this kind of jazz was still a popular part of the entertainment scene in the black neighborhoods. Shirley Scott is the only other women I can think of who was part of that scene, which was very much a man's man's world. Man, I bet those girls could tell some stories! That's Pola on the left and Gloria on the right.



Have just read Stanley Dance's original liners notes ... Coleman was (is?) George's wife. Worked with Green, Sonny Stitt, Tiny Grimes, Harold Vick. Roberts worked in an outfit called the Jazz Maidens with Melba Liston, and also Rusty Bryant, Jimmy Forrest (my man!), Jack McDuff and George Braith. Hoooeee, them's some good credentials.

[vickihb2]

Hank Mobley at the mo. Bass is way too loud in the mix,
But you can't have everything.

Unfortunately they didn't use women on mixing desks in those days, the sound would have been perfect if they had then. The piano is also out too (meow) Horace Silver playing.

Speaking of women with talent: I have a CD of a singer from the 60s called Lorez Alexander who played with some well known jazz musicians. I have only one recording and no one I know in the UK or Australia knows her but they all think she is very cool when they hear that recording. Any information from the jazz nerd gents on this forum would be most welcome.

[vickihb2]

Now they have really LOST the art of the strip tease, sadly. Pole dancing is just plain dull.

Those girls in the 50s/60s could dance and it was so much more fun as they took so long to get the gear off. If were a dummer then you had better watch out as they'd cut your throat in your sleep if you screwed up, according to my mother who used to work in some if the illegal night clubs my Dad used to perform at. They had mixed cabaret in those days.

Bev has some great jokes about jazz drummers so if you ever run into her at Wangaratta you should ask her about the jokes.

I used to work the lights and sound at a strip club in my teenage years but that was by the late 70s and they were using pre-recorded music then. Some of those girls had great things in front of them too. The pay was very good for a teenage student. And no I was never any good at dancing live onstage with no clothes on myself, since you are asking.

Great image Kenny, but, I don't remember posing for it though. Hmm...

[Kenny]

Vicki, I think have one track - Balitmore Oriole - by that dudette, a double disc of Chess (the label) jazz stuff. Great tune, great version. I have seen her name mentioned a few times over the years.

Here's AMG on her:

Biography by Scott Yanow
A solid singer who is superior at interpreting lyrics, gives a soulful feeling to each song, and improvises with subtlety, Lorez Alexandria was a popular attraction for several decades. She sang gospel music with her family at churches starting in the mid-'40s and worked in Chicago nightclubs in the 1950s. With the release of several albums for King during 1957-1959, Alexandria became popular beyond her hometown, and by the early '60s she was living and working in Los Angeles. In addition to the King label, her earlier recording sessions were for Argo and Impulse, while her later albums were for Discovery and Muse. Despite a long period off records (only a few private recordings during the 1965-1976 period), Alexandria survived through the many changes in musical styles and could be heard in excellent form up until she retired in the mid-'90s. Not long after retiring, Alexandria suffered a stroke, and her health declined until her death in May 2001.

[aj]

Lest it be said I ignore great female talents : I've recently been enjoying 'True Blue' by Tina Brooks.

Then there's Connie Kay, Sal Nistico, Ruby Braff.........

[vickihb2]

Dolly Parton. How could we forget Dolly?

Mark Isaacs, Sir, we got the pun, you bad, bad man!

So many Jazz people are funny perhaps because they'd be crying if they weren't laughing? (i.e. crap pay?). At least you guys don't sink as low as aid workers telling sick jokes about starving babies, or do you?

[Kenny]

AJ, whaddya make of True Blue? Maybe I'm just out of the Blue Note loop for a while, but just sounds to me like just another average hard bop session.

I've also, reluctantly, come to the conclusion that Jackie McLean belongs, for me, to that sad category of "major artists who just don't do it for you or even make you grind your teeth". I've got a handful of his leader dates for Blue Note, and dozens more on various labels a side guy, but ... there's just something about that cool sound I find a little creepy. Let Freedom Ring and Destination ... Out I like a lot tho'.

Funny thing about playing music at work: For the first time in decades, I have a pretty good sound system in my living room so in-office-headphones-on listening has lost some of its appeal.

But I still have some goodies:

*William Parker Quartet - O'Neal's Porch. Geeez, got this after reading so much about it, but ... it's a fine record that I'm really enjoying, but it don't sound anything more special than what the likes of Ishish, Paul Williamson (tpt) and so on are pumping out. Honestly, for all its great music, I think the NY thing is over-rated. Emperor's clothes and all that.

*Ike Quebec - Heavy Soul. Gave this a 3-star review a few months back, which was a mistake - as at that point I HADN'T PLAYED IT AFTER MIDNIGHT like I did last night. Haven. Nirvana. Bliss. Yum yum pig's bum.

*Don Fagerquist Octet - Eight By Eight

[Kenny]

VickiHB said:

Kylie is a knockout, the woman oozes sex, let's face it. That IS her talent!

1. Wrong.

2. Nope.

3. Try again.

[me]

Tina Brooks is a bloke.......

[Kenny]

Guest-me said:

Tina Brooks is a bloke.......

AJ, please take note. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D