Probably no sector of American capitalism displays more cutthroat competitiveness than the recording industry. Entry into the field is, unlike the case in basic industries such as auto and steel, still relatively unrestricted. Any adventurer with a couple of thousand …
JOHN COLTRANE LIVE AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD AGAIN! (Impulse 9124) just might be the greatest work of art ever produced in this country -not to mention the greatest selection of jazz music ever to get set down on wax.
Nothing demonstrates more clearly the intertwined nature of politics and the new music than a concert that I had the good fortune to be able to attend over the recent holidays. The concert was in New York’s Village Theatre, and …
In his recently published book FOUR LIVES IN THE BEBOP BUSINESS, A.B. Spellman relates that Buell Neidlinger, former bassist with Cecil Taylor, told him: “I think Cecil Taylor is potentially the most important musician in the Western World … And …
Critics (II) In my last column [FE #21, January 1-15, 1967] I enumerated some of the more outstanding malfeasances on the part of the leading representatives of the jazz critics’ Establishment. In what follows I intend to go beyond …
Why the critics? That is a question I get asked fairly frequently, by friends and correspondents who want to know why I expend so much energy on this particular aspect of the jazz Establishment.
Editor’s note: Frank Kofsky’s byline was inadvertently left off his piece, “End of Jazz Clubs?” in the last issue. Joseph Jarman, whose picture ran with the article, is a young altoist from Chicago. It always comes as a distinct pleasure …
When Cecil Taylor spoke at a panel discussion at the University of Pittsburgh prior to his concert there, it apparently came as a shock to his collegiate audience that he and his fellow musicians no longer wish to undergo the …
A few weeks ago the New Yorker’s man in jazz, Whitney Balliett, went out to the Coast to catch the Monterey Festival. While he was there he spoke with some of the “workers’ aristocracy” of jazz, the white musicians who …
The men who play the new styles in jazz frequently tell me that they don’t like to call their music that—they see nothing desirable in having their art identified with the gin mills, criminal activities, hustling, and ruthless entrepreneurship and …