Reading from Christmas Week

I’m going to start reporting on my non-scholarly reading here regularly, in order to kick some life into this blog thing. So, backing up a bit, here’s some of my reading from Christmas week.

John le Carré. A Most Wanted Man. He once again has his spy world snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. His books have been bleak indeed since the invasion of Iraq.

From LRB: 4 December 2008

• Neal Acherson. “A Chance to Join the World: Neal Ascherson imagines a future for Abkhazia”

On the small ethnic Abkaz region on the Black Sea, in danger of being swallowed up in the conflicts between Georgia and Russia. It’s a beautiful place, and “if the outside world were to consent, it could become a prosperous, credible Black Sea micro-state.”

• Donald MacKenzie. “An Address in Mayfair: Donald MacKenzie on Hedge Funds.”

Explains how hedge funds work: essentially betting on the decline of stocks to “hedge” against a depressed market.

• Adam Phillips. “Self-Made Aristocrats.” Review of Alexander Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War.”

Of the nine Wittgenstein children, three of the philosopher’s brothers committed suicide. Paul moved to London with the rise of the Nazis. The Wittgenstein’s part-Jewish heritage caused the Nazis to relieve the family of much of its fortune.

• Michael Neill. “Old Dad Dead?” Review of Gary Taylor and John Lavagnino, ed., Thomas Middleton: The Collected Works and Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture: A Companion to the Collected Works.

The new standard edition of Middleton. Imitates the Oxford Shakespeare, which Taylor also co-edited. Taylor continues his old pitch for making Middleton, if not Shakespeare’s equal, then at least his rival.

• Elizabeth Lowry. “That Roomful of Words.” Review of Jenny Diski, Apology for the Woman Writing.

This review made me want to immediately go out and buy this novel, but it seems that it’s not available yet in the US. It’s a fictional account of Marie le Jars de Gournay’s “fan-worship” of Montaigne. This passage suggests a fetishizing of books similar to my own:

She opened the book again and lifted it right up against her nostrils to inhale the smell of new leather and freshly produced rag. The sharp scent of paper hit the back of her throat, then deepened and darkened into the complex smell of treated hide, chemical and animal, and finally she caught the special high note of newness.

Oh yeah, baby.

Son House: John the Revelator

I haven’t been able to get this tune out of my head in recent days. It’s simple, hypnotic, urgent, and beautiful. It’s not a blues, but rather a traditional, call-and-response gospel song, which House sings accompanied only by his own hand-claps. The chorus:

Who’s that writin’?
John the Revelator.
Tell me, who’s that writin’?
John the Revelator
Tell me, who’s that writin’?
John the Revelator wrote the book of the seventh seal.

The verses narrate Adam’s shame, Christ in the Garden of Gesthsemane, and Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the resurrected Christ. Despite the song’s simplicity, the parataxis is theologically sophisticated because it suggests the connection of these moments through salvation history and the eschatology of Revelation.

This song is especially moving if we consider Son House’s profound ambivalence about his blues singing. Though one of the most influential and powerful of the Delta blues singers, he considered the genre sinful, while he spent much of his life in an alcoholic haze, yearning for the life of the church.

One can feel that yearning in the performance of this song… though for the next tune he would inevitably pick up his “devil’s instrument,” the guitar, and sing of more worldly yearnings…

Shout-Out to Alex Ross and Ted Gioia

My heartiest congratulations to Alex Ross! His great book The Rest is Noise has won the Guardian First Book Award.

I’ve lately been thinking about Alex’s book as I have read Ted Gioia’s brilliant account of the Delta Blues. The highest compliment I can give to any writing about music is that it makes me want to listen. Both books by that standard rate as resounding successes… my wallet is considerably lighter from the recordings I’ve bought because of them.

The two books make for interesting comparison because of the radically different yet parallel stories they tell of the twentienth century: one plays across a vast geographical and cultural canvass, while the other narrates the insular and obscure; one gives us music that is relentlessly pushing forward into new terrain (and often, in the process, alienating much of its audience), while the other describes a genre that greets innovation with trepidation and is constantly looking to the past for authenticity. Perhaps most surprising is that one tells the story of music of great refinement and sophisitication, much of which (always with important and significant exceptions) becomes culturally marginalized, while the other relates the emergence of a music that would become culturally dominant and ubiquitous in its influence from the poorest, least educated, and most systematically marginalized regional population of twentieth-century America.

I’ll be writing more about this comparison later. But for now, I’ll just say that both of these books will repay multiple readings and will inspire much thoughtful listening.

Watching Herons

My favorite aspect of holidays is the unhurried passage of time and the chance to watch: to watch the turkey brown, to watch football, to watch herons out the window.

Heron, as seen from the back window

Delta Blues

I’m delving into Ted Gioia’s exciting new book on the Delta Blues. A passage:

Put a pin in the map for every early citing of blues music in the United States before 1915, and you find a strange, almost unprecedented pattern. The blues came to life in the poorest parts of the country, in communities almost completely cut off from the hustle and bustle of city life, in groups largely untouched by outside influences. Tracing the early history of the blues takes us to places seldom visited by music historians… to plantations and prisons, and townships so small that even the mapmakers sometimes forgot they existed. (15)

Gnome from Robert Frost

‘One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.’

Quote for the day… ah, Byron

Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away;

A single laugh demolished the right arm

Of his own country;—seldom since that day

Has Spain had heroes. While Romance could charm,

The World gave ground before her bright array;

And therefore have his volumes done such harm,

That all their glory, as a composition,

Was dearly purchased by his land’s perdition.

—from Don Juan

Jazz Compilation 4: Early Miles, part 1

I must deal with Miles in small bits, because otherwise I’d be writing a post of Proustian scope. I’ll start with early Miles—meaning before the first great quintet. We might call this his “open-horn period” since on these recordings he rarely, if ever, uses the Harmon mute, which would become his signature sound from the late fifties on.

Miles’s first session as a leader was unconventional: a nonet (including a French horn!). It also marked the first collaboration in his long, fruitful association with the great arranger Gil Evans. Evans, along with Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis, wrote most of the charts for the recordings that would later be named The Birth of the Cool, and the results are unique in Miles’s voluminous catalogue: tightly arranged numbers rich in harmonic color with relatively short, melodic solos. His later records with Evans (particularly Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, and Sketches of Spain) would create a similar aesthetic with a larger ensemble with only one featured soloist. It’s a cast of all-stars: in addition to the aforementioned, the credits include Lee Konitz (alto), J. J. Johnson (trombone), and the great Max Roach (drums). I nominate two tracks from this beautiful record:

• Jeru (1949): This Gerry Mulligan composition is a perfect example of the nonet’s sound, with its beautifully arranged horns on the opening theme. Miles and Mulligan (baritone sax) provide solos, both of which are succinct and relaxed but melodically inventive.
• Boplicity (1949): This was the first Miles Davis track that I really fell in love with. The statement of the theme, with its flowing triplet in the opening bars, is gorgeous, as is Mulligan’s solo, which comes before Miles’s. On his own solo, Miles demonstrates the lyrical economy that he would deploy for the next forty years.

More early Miles to come . . .

Jazz Compilation 3: In Memory of Johnny Griffin

As noted in the last post, Johnny Griffin recently left us. The Times obit informs us that he was swinging to the end: he played his last concert just a week ago.

In 1957 he recorded a pair of great albums for Blue Note Records: A Blowin Session, and The Congregation. Both are straight-ahead hard bop, and I recommend both highly. The former featured a front line of three tenor saxes and trumpet: Griffin, Coltrane, Hank Mobley, and Lee Morgan.  Oh, and by the way, the rhythm section was composed of Wynton Kelly (piano), Paul Chambers (bass), and Art Blakey behind the kit.  Not bad. The second album was a quartet date with Sonny Clark (piano), along with Chambers and Kenny Dennis (drums).

A couple of nominations from these relaxed, free-swinging sessions:

• The Way You Look Tonight (1957): This track kicks off A Blowin’ Session, and it immediately warrants the album’s title. Griffin, Trane, and Morgan thrive with the fast tempo. Poor Hank Mobley—whose lovely, bluesy tone I could listen to all day—seems out of his element and bows out after a single chorus of soloing.
• It’s You Or No One (1957): From The Congregation. Griffin again chooses a relatively fast tempo for this number, but his solo is relaxed and inventive, as is Sonny Clark’s. A highlight here is Chambers’s bowed bass solo.

So listen to some Johnny Griffin this week; his music offers warm, happy consolation.

Rest in Peace, Johnny Griffin

From The New York Times:

Johnny Griffin, 80, Jazz Saxophonist, Dies – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.

I will listen to A Blowin’ Session and The Congregation today. A moment of silence for the esteemed Mr. Griffin, please.