Penstemons, Poppies, Flax in Sage and Scrub Oak

Eugene Richards The Blue Room

Eugene Richards' book The Blue Room, photos of and in abandoned houses in New Mexico and Nebraska and Wyoming and North Dakota, has thrown me into a downspiral. A beautiful and melancholy downspiral.

After "reading" the book of photos, one beautiful image of death and loss and decay after the other, after the bonechill induced by the house cornered by barbed wire gone slack followed by the photo of a double bed drifted with snow through the broken window, after gasping at the prosthetic leg abandoned but still wearing its white shoe, I'm more certain than ever that the thing of which I'm most certain is absolute. Ordered systems tend to disorder. Without fail.

The photo I've found in a National Geographic article by Richards and Charles Bowden again lays the ordered systems of industrious human beings -- plowed field, barbwire fence, graded road, framed house -- against a cold and merciless nature.

Entropy is the law in North Dakota. And in the house of my brittling bones and sagging flesh.

Fred Anderson

A long time ago, I heard Fred Anderson play at the Velvet Lounge in Chicago. It might better have been called the linoleum lounge, for there were no frills. The music was disturbing. It loosened up my certainties. I left there with a double CD of his work, which I play often. Free Jazz, contemplative improvisation over time that flattened out into timelessness, squeaked and puffed and blared and whispered by a man doubled up over his tenor sax, comped by a Japanese bass player of prodigious talent, and a drummer who left no real memory in my limited brain. I left the Velvet Lounge a different and better, because more complicated person.

CHICAGO (AP) -- A saxophonist whose Chicago club is known as one of the cradles of contemporary jazz has died. Fred Anderson was 81.

His sons, Eugene and Michael Anderson, said their father died Thursday but declined to offer additional details.

The Louisiana-born Anderson performed in relative obscurity until the tenor saxophonist's rise to prominence came in the 1990s. Music companies began to release recordings of his work to favorable reviews and he became a regular on the jazz-festival circuit in the United States and Europe.

Anderson opened the Velvet Lounge in Chicago in 1982. At times, he did everything from collecting the $10 cover charge to jamming on stage to taking out the garbage.

December 21-June 21

Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice. When your state of mind depends on sunlight, when depression lurks in the darkness, when natural sunlight is your friend, you pay careful attention to the length of the days. And today, as opposed to the day the sun set in the first photo, or the day halfway between, was the year's longest.

World Cup: Who is German?

Serbia lost to Ghana this morning. I wrote to Zarko after the game, the way we did when we were writing our books "Repetitions" and "Vampires + A Reasonable Dictionary." He and Peter Handke will be hiking in the Fruska Gora National Park in Serbia next week. Wish I could put on my boots and walk with them.

The U.S. team tied England yesterday. Plenty of anxiety for both goalies!

And Germany is about to play Australia.

The German team is made up of players with these names:

Manuel, Per, Aogo, Serdar Tasci, Jerome Boateng, Piotr Trochowski, Marcell Jansen, Mesut Özil, Sami Khedira, Miroslav, Cacau, Podolski, Mario Gomez – you can tell by the names this is an all-German team.

Times change. This feels good. Glück auf!

An invigorating climb

May 23

Woodland Hills, Utah

Near the top of the switchbacks, 60 minutes from my driveway to here -- almost at the top of what was once a jeep road but is now only a trail up the side of Loafer Mountain.

Breathing hard at this point -- a tough climb at above 7000 feet.

The photo is posted for the kind of bragging rights a guy needs in his 60th year.

Sonny Rollins Plays the Brecht/Weill "Moritat: The Alienation Effect

Driving through central Utah the other day, feeling loose and even easy, I listened to Sonny Rollins' album "Saxophone Colossus," recorded in Hackensack, New Jersey on June 22, 1956 (not long before my seventh birthday).

Critics all agree it's a breakthrough album by what Ira Gitler called a "colossal" talent.

And this critic (driving between snow-capped mountains and blooming orchards) shivered with a sense of the sublime -- according to Kant a combination of irrational awe and rational understanding -- awe and understanding in the presence of overwhelming nature, and in the presence, as well, of the Colossus and his side men Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins, and Max Roach.

"St. Thomas," first, Rollin's own calypso melody repeated twice and then investigated thematically (-- the thematic variation Rollins admired in Thelonius Monk being the basic modus of this album). The second tune is a jazz standard, "You Don't Know What Love Is," a plaintive ballad that evoked in me what my dad used to call "cogitation." Then Rollins' percussive composition "Strode Rode," named after a Chicago jazz place, drew my close attention especially when Rollins and drummer Max Roach start trading thoughtful fours and I thought how like a saxophone the drums can be, and how like drums the saxophone.

My mind relaxed when Rollins slipped into a song I know well from my German studies, Bertolt Brecht's and Kurt Weill's "Moritat" from "The Three Penny Opera." In fact, I sang along as Rollins stated the theme: Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne, Und die trägt er im Gesicht / Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear, And he shows them pearly white (Marc Blitzstein's 1954 translation).

And then there was trouble! Swinging the tune, even bouncing it, Rollins adds (or rather forgets to subtract) a note at the end of the the line that ends with Gesicht/white. Where the rhythm had been bouncing along with two unaccented syllables followed by two accented ones (>>!!, >>!!, >>!! >>!), the phrase is supposed to end with a single accented syllable. That's how the lyrics are. That's how the original music is. That's how it has to be sung.

And then more trouble. Rollins repeats the four bouncing bars, as does Brecht/Weill's original, and again adds, or fails to subtract, the note leaving "sight" the last sound: Just a jack-knife, has Macheath dear, And he keeps it out of sight.

Rollins keeps bouncing on: Sight Sight?

Now I'm perplexed. And when I'm perplexed about jazz I often turn to my son Tom, a professional jazz saxophonist and band leader who lives in Brooklyn (click HERE for his BigBangBigBand), or to my favorite jazz singer, Kelsey Jillette (Merrow), another professional from Brooklyn (and my daughter in law).

Kelsey,

A question about Sonny Rollins' "Moritat." When he plays the head he swings it in a jazzy way, even makes it a little bouncy, but it's still straightforward enough that a singer like yourself or Louis Armstrong or Lotte Lenya could sing along, in German or English -- could sing along, that is, till he adds a bouncy beat where the lyrics and original music break off. None of the other versions I can find do that ‑‑ Sinatra, Armstrong, et al. Rollins, in later performances, continues to play it his way, which jolts me every time I hear it.

I don't think I'm talking about thematic improvisation here ‑‑ that comes immediately after he plays the head. But maybe I am and just don't know it. Which is why I turn to you: what the hell is going on here?

thanks,

Scott

Kelsey replied almost immediately:

Scott,

I think you are talking about when he plays the melody and then starts to improvise early.

Basically, when the melody ends, there are still 2 bars (eight quarter note beats) before the top, or beginning of the song starts. those two bars are called a turnaround, because instead of the song resolving in a final and consonant way, the band plays chords that turn the music back to the beginning again. Instead of waiting for the top, he begins his solo early, and plays through the turnaround and on into the form of the song. Doing that gives a soloist a lot of momentum heading into his solo.

Kelsey

And I emailed right back:

Kelsey,

I'm talking about before he starts to improvise. He plays four bars and the lyrics require that in the fourth bar there are only three beats + a silent one. The last word of the lyrics in English is "white" and then four bars later "sight." The way he plays it, it might as well be "whiteness" and "sighted." He adds a beat. Then he plays the next four bars, and again adds the beat. Only then does he head into the improvisation.

If you listen to Louis Armstrong play the same head, you'll hear the difference, although there's a bit of talkover in this London performance (like the Rollins recording, 1956) which you can find HERE

And there's an early recording in German of the Brecht/Weill song HERE

I'm not trying to be a purist, but could you possibly sing the lyrics while Rollins plays his version, a live version of which you can hear HERE? What would you do when he continued while you cut it off?

And while we're at it, here are the lyrics with music (click on the music for a larger version) and also a link to a 1955 recording by

Louis Armstrong with Lotte Leyna HERE

thanks,

Scott

Kelsey and Tom and the rest of the Kelsey Jillette Group had to drive from Brooklyn to Ohio for a performance at Shawnee State University, so I haven't received a response. (There's a link to Kelsey's group HERE)

Left to my own thoughts, I turned to the effect the break in what I was expecting had on me. "Disruption" was the first word I thought. And from there, especially in the context of Brecht, it wasn't far to the idea of "alienation." In the service of making audiences think as opposed to feeling, to break them out of their trances, Brecht kept trying to think of ways to disturb expectations. When two characters, for instance, begin to kiss on stage, Brecht was apt to drop a sign in front of them telling the audience to STOP GAZING SO ROMANTICALLY AT THESE LOVERS!

Maybe Rollins is trying for the same thing here. And even if not, even if he's just loosely quoting the tune, he certainly achieved alienation with me.

I've listened and listened again. Thought and rethought. And I'll never hear "Saxophone Colossus" the same way again.

What the hell was he doing?