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jpbjazz · 17 days

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LÉGENDES DU JAZZ

JYMIE MERRITT, UN GÉANT MÉCONNU

“People like Miles Davis wanted him to be in his band. Art Blakey or Max Roach or Sonny Rollins or Dizzy Gillespie, whoever he was working with — the musicians knew who he was. But to the general public he was a sideman, because he never recorded anything under his own name as a leader.”

- Mike Merritt

Né le 3 mai 1926 à Philadelphie, en Pennsylvanie, James Raleigh Merritt était le fils de Raleigh Howard "RH" Merritt, un homme d’affaires, ministre du culte et écrivain, et d’Agnes Robinson, une institutrice qui était également directrice de chorale et professeure de piano et de chant.

Le père de Merritt s’était installé à Philadelphie quelques années avant sa naissance. James Raleigh Merritt avait étudié au Tuskegee Institute, où il avait eu comme camarade de classe le célèbre botaniste et agronome George Washington Carver. À Philadelphie, le père de Merritt avait travaillé dans le secteur immobilier. Il avait aussi participé à la fondation de la Vine Memorial Baptist Church.

Saxophoniste ténor à l’origine, Merritt était passé à la contrebasse au début de la vingtaine après avoir entendu un enregistrement de Jimmy Blanton avec l’orchestre de Duke Ellington. Il avait aussi joué brièvement de la clarinette.

Mobilisé durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Merritt avait servi en Afrique du Nord. Il avait aussi participé à la célèbre bataille d’Anzio en Italie. Après sa démobilisation, Merritt avait travaillé brièvement dans l’entreprise immobilière de son père. Sous l’encouragement de sa mère, Merritt avait décidé d’étudier sérieusement la contrebasse en prenant des cours avec Carl Torello, le contrebassiste du Philadelphia Orchestra. Il avait étudié par la suite à la Ornstein School of Music de Philadelphie.

DÉBUTS DE CARRIÈRE

Merritt avait amorcé sa carrière professionnelle aux côtés de John Coltrane, Benny Golson et Philly Joe Jones en 1949. La même année, Merritt s’était joint au groupe de rhythm & blues de Bull Moose Jackson. C’est dans le cadre de sa collaboration avec le groupe que Merritt était devenu un des pionniers de la basse électrique . Merritt avait d’ailleurs été un des premiers contrebassistes à adopter la basse Ampeg, une sorte de combinaison entre la basse électrique et la contrebasse acoustique. Au cours d’une entrevue, Merritt avait expliqué comment il avait fait l’acquisation de sa première basse Fender à l’automne 1951:

"Now all this time, I had been playing electric bass, from about the first year of service with the Bull Moose band. We were out in Oklahoma somewhere, when Benny Golson saw this Western band, what you call a hillbilly band, with a fellow playing what looked like a guitar and sounded like a bass. Benny got me over to hear this and we later saw one in a music store. Benny went in for some reeds or something, so I tried a Fender electric bass and that night I took it to work. The owner let me take it and I tried it out working and nobody raised any objection. I had been having trouble with my own bass, one of the assembly line types, so I was in the market for a new bass. Anyway, I got curious and bought the thing and played it for the next seven years or so. I guess at the time I was the only one in jazz playing an electric bass. Certainly, I’m pretty sure Monk Montgomery wasn’t playing one because we used to see him in Minneapolis and he was always interested to see the instrument."

Au début des années 1950, Merritt avait fait la tournée des clubs de jazz, de blues et de R & B dans la région de New York et de Philadelphie. Il avait aussi voyagé avec le batteur de rock expérimental Chris Powell. Merritt avait également fait partie du groupe de B.B. King de 1955 à 1957.

En 1957, Merritt s’était installé à Manhattan et s’était joint aux Jazz Messengers d’Art Blakey, qui comprenait à l’époque le saxophoniste Benny Golson ainsi que le pianiste Bobby Timmons et le trompettiste Lee Morgan avec qui il avait collaboré activement par la suite. Merritt avait continué de voyager avec le groupe jusqu’à ce qu’une maladie non identifiée l’oblige à abandonner les tournées en 1962. On peut notamment entendre Merritt sur les albums Moanin’ (1958), At the Jazz Corner of the World (1959), A Night in Tunisia (1960), Mosaic (1962) et Buhaina’s Delight (1963). Un album inédit de Timmons avec les Jazz Messengers, et mettant en vedette Blakey, Timmons, Hank Mobley et Morgan a également été publié en avril 2020 sous le titre de Just Coolin’. Dans le cadre de sa collaboration avec le groupe, Merritt avait collaboré activement à la création de classiques comme “Moanin’”, “Along Came Betty”, “Blues March” et plusieurs autres.

Après s’être rétabli, Merritt s’était joint en 1964 au groupe du trompettiste Chet Baker avec qui il avait enregistré un album au titre pompeux intitulé The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964-65. Merritt est d’ailleurs longuement mentionné dans l’autobiographie inachevée de Baker intitulée As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir.

De 1965 à 1968, Merritt avait travaillé avec le batteur Max Roach, non seulement comme contrebassiste, mais également comme compositeur. Enregistrée sur l’album de Roach, Drums Unlimited (1966), la composition de Merritt "Nommo" lui avait valu une nomination comme meilleur compositeur de jazz dans le cadre du sondage des critiques du magazine Down Beat. Le titre de la pièce "Nommo" était dérivé d’un mot d’Afrique de l’Ouest désignant “the power of the spoken word.’’ Devenue le symbole des compositions de Merritt, la pièce "Nommo" combinait des éléments de hard bop et de jazz modal.

Merritt avait quitté Roach à la fin des années 1960 pour participer à une tournée avec Dizzy Gillespie. Merritt avait aussi fait une apparition avec le groupe de Gillespie dans le cadre du Dick Cavett Show.

Par la suite, Merritt avait renoué avec son ancien confrère des Jazz Messengers, le trompettiste Lee Morgan, notamment dans le cadre de l’album double Live at the Light House (1970), qui avait été enregistré à Hermosa Beach, en Californie, et qui comprenait des versions prolongées de ses propres compositions, dont ‘’Absolution’’, qui avait été enregistrée précédemment par Max Roach.

Les disques Blue Note ont d’ailleurs publié un coffret des enregistrements des concerts d’Hermosa Beach dans lequel on entend le fils de Merritt, le contrebassiste Mike Merritt, interviewer son illustre père. Comme Mike Merritt l’avait expliqué plus tard: “He was very positively affected by hearing that music again after all these years. He really felt good about where that band was going, had Lee not met an early death [Morgan a été abattu par sa compagne Helen Moore dans un club de New York en 1972], and the ground that band was breaking.”

À partir de 1970, Merritt avait dirigé le groupe Forerunners. Le groupe tirait son nom d’une coopérative de musiciens que Merritt avait fondé avec d’autres artistes en 1962. Explorant le système d’accord et d’harmonies et l’approche unique de la composition de Merritt, le groupe avait publié plus tard un lexique dans lequel il avait exposé ses conceptions de la musique. Cette approche était particulièrement en évidence dans la longue composition de Merritt intitulée "Visions of the Ghost Dance".

Parmi les membres originaux du groupe, on retrouvait des vétérans de Philadelphie comme le saxophoniste Odean Pope, le guitariste Kenny Lowe, le batteur Donald Bailey, et la chanteuse September Wrice. Durant ses cinq premières années d’existence, le groupe s’était produit régulièrement dans la région de Philadelphie jusqu’à ce que Merritt et Pope se joignent au groupe de Roach. Le groupe avait refait surface périodiquement par la suite, dépendamment de la disponibilité de Merritt et de l’évolution de son état de santé. Le saxophoniste Bobby Zankel avait fait partie de la seconde édition du groupe lorsqu’il s’était joint à la formation en 1982. Parmi les autres membres du groupe à cette époque, on remarquait les saxophonistes Odean Pope et Julian Pressley, le pianiste Colmore Duncan, le percussionniste Warren McLendon et le batteur Alan Nelson. Principalement connu comme saxophoniste alto, Zankel jouait du saxophone baryton avec le groupe.

Le groupe, qui était devenu avec le temps une sorte de laboratoire, avait contribué à faire connaître les compositions de Merritt, même si les problèmes de santé du contrebassiste l’avaient souvent empêché de faire des tournées. Expliquant son désir de pousser sa musique plus loin avec le groupe, Merritt avait déclaré au cours d’une entrevue accordée au Daily News: “People like Lester Young, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie left an enormous trail of ideas that we were following. For me, there were a lot of threads to be pulled together from all over the place to increase the vocabulary that we used.” Merritt avait continué de se produire avec le groupe jusqu’à l’âge avancé de quatre-vingt-dix ans.

Diagnostiqué pour la première fois d’un cancer dans les années 1970, Jymie Merritt est mort d’un cancer du foie à Philadelphie le 10 avril 2020, trois semaines avant son quatre-vingt-quatorzième anniversaire de naissance. Merritt laissait dans le deuil son épouse Dorothy (Ave) Viola Small, son frère LeRoy, ses fils Marlon et Marvon, et ses filles Mharlyn et Jamie Reese. Merritt avait un autre fils, Martyn, mais il était décédé en 1989. C’est le fils de Merritt, Michael, qui avait annoncé la mort de son père sur la page Facebook de Leo Gadson. On pouvait lire dans ce communiqué:

“It is with great sadness that I share with you the news that my father, Jymie Merritt, one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, who was active during an era when jazz reached it’s most fertile peak in the mid-20th century, passed away at age 93, on the evening of Friday, April 10th at his home in Philadelphia, PA after a long illness. His death was not related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our family will release more information within the next few days.”

Plusieurs des enfants de Merritt avaient suivi les traces de leur père et avaient poursuivi une carrière musicale. Chanteuse et autrice, Mharlyn Merritt avait obtenu une bourse de la National Endowment for the Arts en 1988. Guitariste reconnu, Marlon avait combattu lors de la guerre en Irak. Malheureusement décédé, Martyn avait fait carrière comme pianiste classique et avait étudié avec le légendaire Leon Bates. Marvon était percussionniste et batteur. Quant à Mike, c’était un bassiste réputé qui avait joué avec plusieurs grands noms de la musique comme Levon Helm, Phoebe Snow, Johnny Copeland et BB King. Mieux connu comme membre du groupe du Basic Cable Band du talk-show de Conan O'Brien sur le réseau TBS, Mike avait co-produit en 2005 avec sa soeur Mharlyn un CD indépendant intitulé "Alone Together" mettant en vedette son frère Marlon à la guitare, Uri Caine, Al Kooper, Lew Soloff et les Vivino Brothers.

Commentant la mort de son ancien collègue, le saxophoniste Odean Pope, qui avait joué pour la première fois avec Merritt en 1959, avait déclaré: “Jymie Merritt, that’s a great loss. I’m very grateful that I lived during his time. In addition to him being an extraordinary bass player, he had his own sound. He had his own concept. He was just so fluent in what he was doing. To me, playing his music was like going to the highest university in the whole world.”

En 2016, l’émission Jazz Night in America avait consacré un épisode d’une heure à Merritt et à son groupe les Forerunners, dans le cadre d’un concert présenté au World Cafe Live de Philadelphie. Dans le cadre de l’émission, Merritt avait défini sa conception du rythme en ces termes: “Rhythm is very complex, because it’s the basis on which the entire universe is constructed. All life has a pattern, and once you can tap into that pattern, you tap into all aspects of life.”

Lauréat de plusieurs prix, Merritt avait notamment remporté en juin 2008 un Don Redman Heritage Award. Le prix avait été remis à Merritt dans le cadre d’une cérémonie organisée par la Harpers Ferry Historical Association et la division de la NAACP à Jefferson County. L’événement était organisé en collaboration avec la Don Redman Heritage Society de Piedmont, en Virginie occidentale. En 2009, Merritt s’était également vu décerner un Jazz Heritage Award. Le prix avait été attribué à Merritt conjointement par l’Université de Philadelphie et le Jazz Heritage Project. Le prix avait été remis à Merritt dans le cadre de la Philadelphia Jazz Fair organisée par le professeur et musicien Don Glanden. L’organiste Trudy Pitts était l’autre récipiendaire du prix cette année-là. C’est un autre grand contrebassiste de Philadelphie, le regretté Charles Fambrough, qui avait remis son prix à Merritt. En novembre 2013, Merritt avait aussi remporté, en même temps que son collègue contrebassiste et ami Reggie Workman, le Clef Club of Philadelphia's Living Legend, Jazz Award.

Malgré tout son talent de contrebassiste et de compositeur, Merritt était demeuré largement méconnu du grand public, probablement parce qu’il n’avait jamais enregistré sous son propre nom. Comme l’avait expliqué son fils Mike: “People like Miles Davis wanted him to be in his band. Art Blakey or Max Roach or Sonny Rollins or Dizzy Gillespie, whoever he was working with — the musicians knew who he was. But to the general public he was a sideman, because he never recorded anything under his own name as a leader.” Qualifiant Merritt de véritable géant, le contrebassiste Christian McBride avait commenté: “Phrases like musical genius and unsung are so casually and recklessly thrown out there describing just about anyone these days. Jymie Merritt is not only one of the great bassists of his era, but also one of the great composers.”

#jazz

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glenngaylord · 1 year

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Swoosh! - Film Review: Air ★★★★

I’m not the world’s biggest sports fan, although give me two weeks of Olympic Games and I’ll watch almost every solo event. I enjoy watching people push past their own limits, seeing the years and years of training right there in the focus of their hard stares and that beautiful release when they stick their landings. Team sports, however, trigger me, sending me right back to gym class where the dumb jocks would knock me down onto the basketball court surface for a rousing game of “Trip-A-Fag”. I’d always get up, brush myself off and adopt a “You guys!” attitude, but inside, I died just a little bit each time. So is it any wonder I can only stomach the halftime show at the Super Bowl or watch a graceful gymnast execute a perfect dismount as she vies for the gold?

Despite all of the past trauma, I still enjoy a good sports movie. When Jimmy Chitwood promises to make that final winning shot in Hoosiers, he’s swearing a blood oath to all of us hoping for a better tomorrow. Is it possible to look at the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s entrance steps without thinking of Rocky and the promise the title character represents?

The same feeling, I thought, must be true for any sports fan who first tried on a pair of Air Jordan sneakers and recognized what it meant to step into the shoes of the most legendary basketball player of all time, Michael Jordan. In Ben Affleck’s fifth feature as a director, Air, he, with debuting writer Alex Convery, explores the incendiary time in 1984 when Nike sought to sign the then little known basketball player to their company, changing forever the way athletes participated in the profits of products to which they attached their names. It may be your typical David vs. Goliath story, but it’s still a tremendously fun triumph nonetheless.

The story gets told through the lens of schlubby Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon, a far cry from his 2007 People magazine Sexiest Man Alive days, and relishing every bit of it), a sports marketing executive for Nike who we meet as he scouts players for his company’s flailing product line. He has a career going nowhere fast and needs to prove himself. Desperate to compete with the much more popular Adidas and Converse brands, Vaccaro faces an uphill battle when met with a dwindling budget and CEO Phil Knight (Affleck), who doesn’t think they have much of a future with basketball shoes at all. Vaccaro’s fellow marketing pals, led by the wonderfully deadpan Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) don’t seem to have one good idea, until one evening, Vaccaro watches footage of a young Michael Jordan, replaying a particular shot over and over. Something about the way Jordan handles himself clues Vaccaro into the fact that he was witnessing a once in a generation player.

Vaccaro springs into action willing to go all in on Jordan. He confers with fellow exec Howard White (Chris Tucker, delightful here) and decides to break some rules to get what he wants. That includes bypassing Jordan’s Agent David Falk (Chris Messina) and going straight to Michael Jordan’s parents, wonderfully played by real live spouses, Julius Tennon and Viola Davis. While Davis delivers a strong performance and gets to the heart of what really matters, that those who get taken advantage of, be they athletes, artists, writers, or any number or people who are not the 1%, deserve their share of the pie, for me, it’s Messina who nearly walks away with the whole film. His Falk, who spends most of his time on the phone, delivers some of the funniest and filthiest arias of anger I’ve heard since Paul Newman put on his hockey gear in Slap Shot. Matthew Maher also proves memorable as Peter Moore, the designer of the original Air Jordan prototype and who arguably came up with the name. His scenes crackle with the awe of a man who loves his own creativity.

Air has that uncanny ability to maintain suspense despite the audience already knowing the outcome. The entire film has a natural quality which feels like it was made back in the 1980s, like some long lost journalistic procedural. It has this understated aesthetic thanks to Robert Richardson’s unfussy cinematography, William Goldenberg’s well-paced editing which flies by yet allows for grace notes, Francois Audouy’s perfectly muted production design, and especially Charles Antoinette Jones’ costume design, which hilariously nails every pleat on Damon’s khaki’s and every shade of purple on Affleck’s track suit.

As we follow Vaccaro on his journey, I started to feel something for him and the other characters. Even though this is a story of a corporation trying to stay afloat and probably screw over a young fledgling athlete in the process, it spoke to me about the dream of excellence, of talent, of Black excellence, of breaking the rules to go after what you want. Every character in this films pops and has a chance to shine. Other standouts include Marlon Wayans in a brief scene as a former coach who dispenses great advice to Vaccaro, and Affleck himself, who brings a prickly yet bohemian quirkiness to his big boss character.

If I had to gripe about anything, and I hate to because this is one funny and sweet film, it’s the fact that it has a surplus of endings and still misses out on one. Earlier in the story, Bateman’s character sets up something so emotional, I was certain it would get paid off in the end. I imagined it in my head, knowing when I saw it, I would cry. In fact, I get teary-eyed thinking about it even now. Yet, the filmmakers decided not to include it, opting instead to overplay their hand with 10 other endings. Oh well, all is forgiven when you can get a guy like me to stand up and cheer for a sports movie like Air.

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floralmac · 5 years

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the gang in s14 + tinder bios

#ppl on there r so weird #and like we Get it You like the office #but now i have sonny ily bb thank u if it weren't for u id be trying to beat my record of how many ppl i can swipe left on in under a minute #the gang #iasip #it's always sunny in philadelphia

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dirty-ratboy · 5 years

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at the end of it chapter two, when pennywise is backing up as the losers yell at him, you can see how he is wearing a diaper. this proves that he is in fact, a baby, making him a literal Clownbaby. in this essay i wi

#clownbaby #pennywise #it #it chapter two #always sunny #its always sunny in philadelphia #it's always sunny in philadelphia #sunny #sonny says

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locke-writes · 3 years

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Current Inspiration

Here are the fandoms/characters I’m currently inspired to write for. Requests for all characters and fandoms are open but I’m particularly excited to write for any of the following:

Law & Order SVU: Rafael Barba, Sonny Carisi, Mike Dodds, Nick Amaro

Ted Lasso: Roy Kent

Criminal Minds: Aaron Hotchner

DC Extended Universe: Arthur Curry, Bruce Wayne

Fantastic Beasts: Newt Scamander

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: Cameron Frye

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia: Mac, Charlie Kelly

Little Women (1994 or 2019): Laurie Laurence, Jo March

Marvel: Yelena Belova, Carol Danvers, Bucky Barnes, Sam Wilson, Tony Stark, Scott Lang

Mad Men: Don Draper, Peggy Olson

Merlin: Arthur Pendragon, Merlin, Gwaine, Percival

Midnight Mass: Sheriff Hassan

North & South: John Thornton

Star Wars: Poe Dameron

Will & Grace: Will Truman

#current inspiration #as of Dec 24 2021

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itsjustmyfantasyroom · 4 years

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School Girl Attitude part 2

Master List

Warnings: SVU crimes, talks of SVU and Smut

WC:1695

Enjoy x

“Hope you two didn’t have any plans for Easter weekend” Liv looked between you and Sonny.

“I can always go by myself if Sonny is busy” you said back to Liv trying not to sound snappy.

You and Sonny hadn’t spoken since the undercover night. Amanda was with you most of the time to help with the girls. The two foster girls, you guys had managed to place them into good homes when they came out of the hospital and the two girls with the families, you were going to drive them back to Philadelphia once they were discharged. All the other girls were put into half way houses.

“Na I’ am good- I want to see this case through till the end” Sonny look over at you while you narrowed your eyes at him.

“Ok good. I have booked your rooms, you guys will probably be tired to drive back once it’s all over with. Y/N I spoke to your old Captain, he is getting all the paper work ready for you to close the cases”

“Thanks Liv” You gave her a nod as you walked out of her office.

Sonny walked out a moment later and you weren’t at your desk. He slowly made his way to the on call room and noticed the door was closed, he knocked and opened the door. You were on the phone and hadn’t heard him come in,

“Well less than impressed if I’ am honest, but it’s all been organised” You turned around and saw Sonny standing there leaning on the wall next to the closed door, hands in his pockets smirking, your eyes wide with surprised “Ah- Rafi, I’ll call you later” you hung up the phone and took a deep breath.

“So what time should I pick you up tomorrow morning? The girls are getting out around 9 yeah” Sonny was watching your face for your reaction.

“Ah yeah- I’ll just meet you at the hospital and we can go from there” a small tight smile came to your face “I better get back to work” you went to walk towards the door when Sonny stepped between you and it.

“Y/N what’s going on? You have been weird snice the sting”

“Nothing” you looked down at your feet.

“Don’t insult me by lying to me Y/N, I know ya well enough by now”

“Well Sonny, if you know me so well then you should know how you upset me”

The room fell silent, Sonny straightened up and put his hands on his hips, you still looking down.

“This is all about Barba’s message isn’t it? And the undercover sitting on my lap?”

You didn’t say anything, you kept looking down. Sonny closed the gap between you, using his pointer finger under your chin and lifting your head to look at him. As soon as your eyes met his crystal blues you sighed taking in a deep breath.

Sonny lent down, his lips landing on yours. He moved his hand from your face and wrapped it around your waist pulling you into him. You moved your hands to either side of his neck and melted into the kiss. Sonny’s free hand rubbing up and down your back. Sonny pulled back and rubbed the tip of your nose with his, smiling hard the crinkles coming beside his eyes.

“I’ am sorry for checking out those girls, I couldn’t believe how short their skirts were- and the undercover, we were just playing the part, I’ll never forget all 50 states after that.” Sonny lent down and kissed you lightly on the lips again “Please let me pick you up in the morning?”

“Ok” you nodded back leaning up to kiss him deeply.

****

The day had been long, busy and emotional. All your time as an officer and then detective, nothing had moved you as much as returning the two girls home. The girls hugged both you and Sonny thanking you and both sets of parents hugging and shaking both your hands over and over again. Finally all the paper work was done and your old squad asked you and Sonny to come out for dinner and drinks at a bar just down the road from your hotel.

You and Sonny both went into your separate rooms to shower and get ready. You straightened your hair, done some light make up with pink gloss, put on a pair of black skinny jeans, a navy lace peplum top and black slides. You had just slid your id, hotel key and some cash in your jeans pocket when there was a knock at your door. You looked through the peep hole, swung it open to Sonny in a grey long sleeve Henley, dark jeans, brown leather jacket and black runners.

“Ready?” Sonny smirked at you leaning in to kiss your lips.

“Yeah” you rested your hand on his hip.

You guys hadn’t spoken about the kiss that happened in the on call room, but the air was thick with tension of the good kind. You couldn’t wait to see how the night would unfolded after he kissed you hello. You closed your room door, Sonny wrapped his arms around your shoulders, yours around his middle, as you both started to walk towards the bar.

“One more shot and we will call it a night?” Sonny nodded back at you.

Most of your old squad had left because of work the next day and you and Sonny didn’t need to get back to the city till late not having work till the day after. As you waited for the waitress to bring your shot over, Sonny moved his chair close to you and lent in, leaning one arm on the table in front of you and grabbing your upper thigh with his other,

“You look beautiful tonight ya know that” Sonny looked down at your lips, you giggled back “Do we really need that shot?”

You lent closer and ghosted your lips with his, you shock your head no, standing to walk out of the bar, you turned back and looked over your shoulder at Sonny who was looking at your ass as you walked, he jumped up grabbing his jacket running to catch up with you. Sonny all but pulled you back to the hotel from the Bar by your hand,

“Sonny, babe you need to slow down” you said puffed out. You squalled in surprise when he let go of your hand, wrapping his arms around your waist to throw you over his shoulder.

“Sonny Carisi put me down” you screamed.

Not listening, Sonny was back at his room door. He pulled the room key from his pocket and swiped it opening the door stepping inside. Still on his shoulder, he closed the door and flipped the lock. He walked over to the bed and threw you on it just enough for you to bounce off it slightly. He ripped off his jacket, you spread your legs and he was on top of you between them kissing down your neck, resting his arms next your head. You wrapped your legs around his waist pulling his hips into you, you gasped when you felt his hard bulge. You ran your hands to the hem of his shirt and pulled it up over his head throwing it onto the floor.

“I have wanted you for so long Y/N” He brushed his thumb over your cheek looking into your eyes.

“Me too” you ran your palms over his naked sides.

“You have too many cloths on” Sonny winked at you.

You dropped your legs from around his waist, Sonny got up off the bed to stand. You knelt in the middle of the bed after throwing your slides off, making a show of slowly pulling off your top and then your bra. Once Sonny saw you bear chest he rid himself of his shoes, socks, jeans and boxers. Your mouth dropped open when you saw his size and your panties dampened even more.

“Take your jeans and panties off amore” Sonny said to you with hooded eyes while he stood there stroking himself.

You laid back on the bed, pushing your jeans and panties off throwing them on the floor with the rest of your cloths. You looked up at Sonny again opening your legs and he was back on top of you. Sonny’s lips came crashing down on yours again, you opened your mouth so he could deepen it, grinding his hard member against your wet core.

“Sonny please, I need you”

“So needy baby. I want to take my time with you. I need to get a condom”

“I have an IUD” Sonny smirked and grinded into your centre “Sonny” you whined “You have taken your time- 3 years of it” Sonny chuckled and moved his hips back slightly, you could feel the head of his cock parting your lower lips slowly.

“I shouldn’t have waited so long” Sonny slid straight in bottoming out, him grunting you moaning at the feeling “You feel amazing babe” Sonny started to roll is hips slowly.

“Oh Sonny-faster” you moaned out.

That’s all Sonny needed to start pounding into you, you bucking your hips up. You tightened your muscles around Sonny’s length, his jaw going slack.

“Oh babe just like that” he huffed “I- fuc-“

Your coil in your belly was the tightest it could wind, Sonny could feel your juices coating his cock and it turned him on even more. You bucked your hips and Sonny thrusted hard,

“Dominick” you screamed, your body on fire as your realise bolted through you. You screaming his first name sent Sonny over the edge as his release spilt into you, Sonny resting his forehead on your neck till he started to go soft, pulling out dropping to your side on the bed. Sonny pulled you into him and he kissed you all over your face, you resting your hand on his chest. He pulled back and rested his forehead on yours,

“Tomorrow before I drop you home, I want to take you to my parents- as my girlfriend” Sonny lent down and kissed you deeply.

Tags: @detective-giggles @the-baby-bookworm @thatesqcrush @permanentlydizzy @averyhotchner @infiniteoddball @fandom-princess-forevermore @wanniiieeee @shittanyy

#sonny carisi #sonny carisi x you #sonny carisi smut #sonny x reader #sonny carisi x reader #detective sonny carisi #dominick carisi #law and order svu #SVU fanfiction #SVU FANDOM #svu fan #nbc svu

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thisisember · 3 years

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my friend got me into Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia but i keep calling it Sonny With A Chance in my head, fucking hell

#iasip #it’s always sunny in philadelphia #this is ember

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themomentsalreadypassed · 1 month

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#will graham #hannibal lecter #hannibal nbc #hannibal and will #hannibal crack #it's always sonny in philadelphia #iasip #dee reynolds #dennis reynolds #will being frustrated because people suspected he was the one killing and burning Freddie

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chiseler · 4 years

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BUTTER KNIFE SLIDE

In the early ’90s, I was the Editor-at-Large at The Welcomat, a Philadelphia-based alternative weekly. I was living in Brooklyn at the time, but every Thursday I would hop on a NJ Transit commuter train for the three and a half hour trip to Philly. After arriving at 30th Street station, I’d walk across the river into Center City to the paper’s offices, which were housed in a building on the corner of 17th and Sansom. I’d make a right in the building’s small lobby, take the elevator to the Third floor, and walk to the back, where the editorial department was located. Even before saying hi to the other editors, I’d drop my bag on my desk, step over to the office boombox, sort through the small batch of cassettes stacked next to it, throw in Delta bluesman Cedell Davis’ debut album, Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong, and punch the play button. Without fail, once those first notes hit the air, an audible and pained collective groan arose from every throat in the room.

While my own aesthetic sensibilities were just as offended as my co-workers’, over time I came to have a real and solid affection for Davis, the same way you come to cherish a middle child with a droopy eye or a pet rabbit with the mange.

To the uninitiated, the first moments of the opening track on Davis’ album, “I Don’t Know Why,” might have been produced when a large bull walrus with a head cold and an untuned autoharp were tossed into an enormous blender together. Those same listeners might even cynically conclude the album’s title was a direct reference to the last thing Davis muttered before stepping into the recording studio. At the very least, Davis’ caterwauling guitar and his own strangled yelping vocals might be seen as proof positive there really is such a thing as an authentic Delta Blues singer who is absolutely godawful. As one friend put it, “If you’re bad enough, you get to be ‘authentic’.’”

That said, over the years Davis idiosyncratic style also earned him some fierce, high-profile defenders. Love and respect him or cringe at the mere mention of his name, no one can deny Davis had a legitimate claim to the blues.

Ellis Cedell Davis recorded Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong for Fat Possum Records when he was sixty-eight years old, but his career as a workaday delta bluesman began roughly half a century earlier.

Davis was born in Helena, Arkansas, in 1926. At the time Helena was a bustling Delta port town, where his father ran one of the city’s countless juke joints and his devout Evangelical mother, while working as a cook, was better known among locals as a faith healer. Perhaps on account of all the sordid temptations waiting around every corner in Helena—it was a town rife with bootleggers, gamblers and hookers—young Cedell was sent a ways upstream to live with his older brother on the E. M. Hood plantation. There he became friends with Isaiah Ross, and the pair, only seven or eight at the time, began playing blues. Davis’ mother insisted the music was the handiwork of Satan, but it was the music that surrounded them, it was the music they knew, the pair often sneaking into local juke joints to catch live performances. Davis began with the diddly bow, a single wire nailed to a wall and plucked, before moving on to harmonica and guitar. Ross, meanwhile, stuck with the harmonica and would later be signed to Sam Phillips’ Sun Records as Dr. Ross, the Harmonica Boss.

When he was ten, Davis contracted a severe case of polio which left him nearly paralyzed. He returned to Helena, where it was hoped his mother’s healing powers might be able to save him. Well, Davis survived, but the muscles of his legs were so deteriorated he was forced to walk with crutches. Worse for the budding musician, he lost a good deal of control over his left hand, and his right was gnarled and completely useless. Being a right-handed guitar player, this was bad news.

In the early ’80s, Davis told New York Times music critic Robert Palmer—a tireless champion of Davis’ music—that it took him three years to figure out how to play again.

He flipped the guitar around to start teaching himself to play left-handed, but even then, with his right hand unable to work the fret board, he knew he needed something to use as a slide, so swiped a butter knife from his mother’s silverware collection, using the handle to work the frets.

In 2017, shortly before his death, Davis told an interviewer. “Almost everything that you could do with your hands, I could do it with the knife. It’s all in the way you handle it. Drag, slide, push it up and down.”

To unsophisticated ears, the grinding shriek resulting from the butter knife slide working the strings might be reminiscent of a cat in heat caught in a ceiling fan, but Mr. Palmer, being a rock critic, recognized its virtues, describing it as only a rock critic could: "a welter of metal-stress harmonic transients and a singular tonal plasticity.” Palmer also argued that Davis’ wholly unique sound wasn’t merely the untuned inchoate noise so many claimed, noting the subtleties of the guitar work remained consistent performance to performance.

In the early 1940s, while in his teens, Davis started playing on street corners around Helena, sometimes working as a duo with Ross. Soon enough he found himself booked in the local juke joints, playing house parties, and appearing on local radio blues shows. He became friends with a number of the era’s most notable Delta Blues luminaries, including Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Joe Williams, Robert Nighthawk and Charlie Jordan. In 1953 Davis teamed up with Nighthawk, a famed slide guitarist in his own right, and the pair began playing all over the Mississippi Delta region, eventually relocating to St. Louis. Davis, it was said, had a Buddha like presence on stage, a radiant calm that seemed to defuse even the most unruly of crowds. It apparently didn’t always come through.

In 1957, while the pair was playing a gig at a bar in East St. Louis, someone in the audience pulled a gun. This sparked a panic in the crowd that only escalated when cops raided the place. Davis was caught in the resulting stampede, and trampled under lord knows how many feet. The bones in his legs weren’t merely broken, they were shattered, confining him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

Just as he was determined, for better or worse, not to let polio and a ruined right hand stop him from playing music, he didn’t let the wheelchair slow him down either. Shortly after he got out of the hospital, he and Nighthawk returned to Helena, where the duo continued performing together. When Nighthawk snared them a regular house gig at a nightclub in Pine Bluff, Arkansas in 1961, Davis picked up and moved there.

(As an interesting side note, Pine Bluff was home to an enormous U.S. Army chemical and bioweapons storage facility. It’s unclear if these two things are connected, but if you take Davis at his word, the town also boasted the fattest women in the world, an observation that inspired his song, “If You Like Fat Women,”)

Davis and Nighthawk went their separate ways in 1963, after ten years of playing together. Davis would remain in Pine Bluff for the next few decades, still playing the juke joints around the Delta.

(As another side note, throughout his career Davis remained adamantly vague when it came to questions about his marital status. He might have been married twice, or maybe not at all. It’s unclear. He knows he had a few kids, maybe even some grandkids, but he was no longer in touch with any of them.)

In the mid-’70s, like so many other folklorists inspired by Harry Smith and Alan Lomax, Louis Guida began trolling the Deep South with a tape recorder, hoping to make field recordings of some as-yet-undiscovered authentic blues legend along the way. In 1976 he stumbled across Davis playing in a bar, and those first recordings appeared on Guida’s compilation album, Keep It to Yourself: Arkansas Blues Volume 1, Solo Performances, which came out in the early ’80s.

And here we go. Robert Palmer heard that album and headed to Arkansas to catch Davis’ act, writing the first of many stories about him for the Times and other publications. Over the course of the decade, Palmer’s endless championing of Davis earned the man with the butter knife slide gigs not only all over the country (including a multi-night stand in NYC), but around the world as well. Suddenly Davis, who prior to that had ventured no further than St. Louis, was starting to get some recognition within the international blues community. Not all of it was as laudatory as Palmer, but still. In 1993, it was Palmer, not surprisingly, who brought Davis to the attention of Fat Possum Records.

The indie label had been launched by three white college buddies from The University of Mississippi in 1991, their goal being to promote (which sounds so much better than “exploit”) previously unknown bona fide aging black Delta blues musicians. Along with R.L. Burnside and T Model Ford, Davis became one of the earliest acts signed to the label. In 1994, with Palmer himself producing and assorted label mates like Burnside acting as sidemen, Davis went into the studio to record Feel like Doin’ Something Wrong, which featured a smattering of classic vlues covers mixed in with Davis originals, including “Murder My Baby” and the above mentioned “If You like Fat Women.”

Going back to the album now for the first time in roughly twenty-five years, it doesn’t seem nearly as comically awful as it did back in The Welcomat’s editorial office. In fact it’s pretty good, if you’re a fan of unpolished, dirty, gritty roadhouse blues. If you aren’t conscious that he’s playing with a butter knife, Davis’ guitar work merely sounds a little squeaky and rough, but not all that different from what you might hear from others of the time.

If there is a downside, it’s that the album’s a little one note and generic. Apart from the covers, Davis relies on the same simple blues progression for nearly every song, which, yes, can be a little tiring if you’re listening carefully. But if all you wanted was some generic roadhouse blues to put on as you go about doing other things, it fits the bill.

In a strange move considering he’d only put out a single album at that point, the following year saw the release of The Best of Cedell Davis, this time spearheaded not buy Palmer, but by popular jazz fusion bandleader Col. Bruce Hampton, one of Davis’ newfound fans. None of the album’s ten tracks appeared on Feel Like Doin’ Something Wrong, so I can’t say for sure if these are new recordings or songs taken from his appearances on earlier Delta blues compilations, but a couple, like “My Dog Won’t Stay Home” and “Keep Your mouth Closed, Baby,” are kind of fun.

Shortly after the Best of came out, Palmer died, and Davis lost his most influential benefactor. But Palmer had gotten Davis on the map, and it was up to Davis to carry on as he always had.

In 1998 he released Horror of It All, an album whose title once again played right into the hands of the Davis naysayers. In fact, It’s an album, despite promising song titles like Chicken Hawk,” “Keep on Snatchin’” and the mind boggling “Tojo told Hitler,” that seems determined to prove the naysayers were right all along. With the exception of a new iteration of “If You Like Fat Women,” there are no drums, no side guitars, nothing but Cedell and the naked glory of his butterknife slide. It’s Cedell laid bare, and it can be painful, especially as Davis keeps playing those same simple blues progressions over and over. Yes, he has an absolutely unique sound, a bit like Joseph Spence, but ouch. It really is godawful, but like the equally godawful Godzilla vs. Megalon, may be the album that cemented his reputation among blues critics and fans who weren’t Robert Palmer.

(Oddly, Horror of it All is the album I keep returning to, as it best captures my initial impressions of the Davis sound.)

After Horror of It All came out Davis decided to take a break from recording to write more songs and return to playing the juke joints where he was most comfortable.

It’s a funny thing. If you don’t know the back story, Davis’ music, while perhaps not as awful as I once maintained (and countless blues critics still insist), doesn’t get much beyond the merely adequate. When you do learn his story, though, well, that elevates things, right? Knowing he’s confined to a wheelchair and using a butter knife in his crippled right hand, it’s really something he plays as well as he does. It also sure makes for a swell and effective marketing gimmick. He may not have been the worst bluesman who ever lived, but without that gimmick he was nothing. If he’d merely been blind it would’ve been no big deal—blindness just comes with the territory—but Davis was all messed up, and never let it stop him. Again, for better or worse.

As has happened so many times before, if you have a performer whose abilities make at least a stab toward the adequate, then add a mental or physical disability on top of it, all you need do is step back for a few moments and wait for the hipster celebrities to start lining up, hoping to get their claws in him. Consider the cases of Larry “Wild Man” Fischer or Daniel Johnston.

Sure enough, when word of Davis’ condition began circulating along with those first couple Fat Possum discs (the label having become quite popular among white hipsters), the white hipster celebrity musicians began clamoring to get on board.

Davis’ returned to the studio in 2002 to record When Lightnin’ Struck the Pine. The accompanying press release claimed he had personally signed R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin to be in his backing band. Why do I find it hard to believe a 76-year-old black bluesman from Arkansas had ever heard, let alone heard of, R.E.M. or the Screaming Trees, or that he would personally sign a couple white hipsters to be in his band?

Well, whatever. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it really did happen that way, and there wasn’t some heavy conspiring between Buck, Martin, and the white boys who ran the label to get them in on those sessions.

Well, however it came about, the resulting album was, much to my amazement, um, pretty good. The sound is as grungy as ever, but much fuller than it had been on his earlier albums, with the addition of organ, piano and sax together with Buck and Martin. And as it should be, Davis vocals and butter knife slide are front and center. The energy level’s been ramped up considerably, and best of all, Davis, both in the songs and a few candid recordings from the studio, seems to be having a fine time of it.

Three years later in 2005, Davis had a stroke and was forced to move into a nursing home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This time it was definite and final—he could no longer play guitar. But if polio hadn’t stopped him, and crushed legs hadn’t stopped him, it’s little surprise a stroke and no longer being able to play the guitar wasn’t going to stop him either. He could still sing, and so kept writing songs and recording. And the hipsters kept piling on.

His 2015 album, appropriately if ironically entitled Last Man Standing, featured an 88-year-old Davis working through a greatest hits set in front of a backing band that again included Barrett Martin, as well as Jimbo Mathus and Stu Cole from the Squirrel Nut Zippers and noted blues guitarist brothers Greg and Zack Binns.

The resulting album, as you might expect, was a far cry from his debut. The production was clean and sterile, with the all-star band’s three guitars pushed to the front of the mix and Davis’ butter knife clearly absent for obvious reasons. At least none of the involved made the mistake of trying to recreate his trademark sound. It sounded like a bunch of white hipster musicians playing standard blues riffs behind an eighty-eight-year-old mumbling bluesman.

If you hadn’t smelled it already, to drive the Bad Faith of the whole project home, the album also contains three or four tracks of Davis just talking to the band in the studio, clearly trying to tell stories about his life and career to these youngsters who not only don’t know who the hell he’s talking about, but can’t understand what he’s saying. While similar tracks had been included on Lightnin’, this, unlike those, had been recorded after Davis stroke. The clear intention was to say to listeners, “Hey, get a load of this crazy old mumbling Southern black bliuesman! Is that authentic or what?”

Somehow, the following year he released yet another album, Even the Devil Gets the Blues, this time with someone from Pearl Jam in his backing band. Then in September of 2017, Davis had a heart attack, and died from complications a week or two later at age 91. Not surprisingly, at the time of his death, he was still scheduled to play a gig at the end of the month.

I’m not sure who the final Great Cosmic Joke is on, those hipster musicians who thought playing with a bona fide authentic Delta bluesman would bolster their street cred in some way, or poor Cedell—whom I adore and admire more with each passing day—who might have been conned into believing all that support from white institutions from the NY Times to R.E.M. would push him over the top. Whatever it may be, a mere three years after his death, and after seventy-five years of making a go of the blues against all imaginable odds, Cedell Davis remains virtually unknown and forgotten, even among serious blues aficionados. In fact it seems, and this may be the saddest thing of all, he’s only remembered nowadays by people like me.

by Jim Knipfel

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equalpay4betterplay · 5 years

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The next time the USWNT plays in Philly, I don't care what it takes, I'm going and I'm bringing a sign that says, "It's Always SONNY in Philadelphia" and I won't watch a single second of the game cause I'll be too busy laughing at my own joke

#uswnt #us womens soccer #us women's national team #emily sonnett #woso #womens soccer #iasip #its always sunny in philadelphia

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timeless-hollywood-classics · 4 years

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Veronica Lake (born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman; November 14, 1922 – July 7, 1973) was an American film, stage, and television actor. Lake was best known for her femme fatale roles in film noirs with Alan Ladd during the 1940s and her peek-a-boo hairstyle. By the late 1940s, Lake's career began to decline, due in part to her alcoholism. She made only one film in the 1950s, but made several guest appearances on television. She returned to the big screen in 1966 in the film Footsteps in the Snow (1966), but the role failed to revitalize her career.

Lake's memoir, Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake, was published in 1970. Her final screen role was in a low-budget horror film, Flesh Feast (1970). Lake died in July 1973 from hepatitis and acute kidney injury at the age of 50.

Lake was born Constance Frances Marie Ockelman in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Her father, Harry Eugene Ockelman, was of German and Irish descent, and worked for an oil company aboard a ship. He died in an industrial explosion in Philadelphia in 1932. Lake's mother, Constance Frances Charlotta (Trimble; 1902–1992), of Irish descent, married Anthony Keane, a newspaper staff artist, also of Irish descent, in 1933, and Lake began using his surname.

The Keanes lived in Saranac Lake, New York, where young Lake attended St. Bernard's School. She was then sent to Villa Maria, an all-girls Catholic boarding school in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from which she was expelled. Lake later claimed she attended McGill University and took a premed course for a year, intending to become a surgeon. This claim was included in several press biographies, although Lake later declared it was bogus. Lake subsequently apologized to the president of McGill, who was simply amused when she explained her habit of self-dramatizing. When her stepfather fell ill during her second year[vague], the Keane family later moved to Miami, Florida. Lake attended Miami High School, where she was known for her beauty. She had a troubled childhood and was diagnosed with schizophrenia, according to her mother.

In 1938, the Keanes moved to Beverly Hills, California. While briefly under contract to MGM, Lake enrolled in that studio's acting farm, the Bliss-Hayden School of Acting (now the Beverly Hills Playhouse). She made friends with a girl named Gwen Horn and accompanied her when Horn went to audition at RKO. She appeared in the play Thought for Food in January 1939. A theatre critic from the Los Angeles Times called her "a fetching little trick" for her appearance in She Made Her Bed.

She also appeared as an extra in a number of movies. Keane's first appearance on screen was for RKO, playing a small role among several coeds in the film Sorority House (1939). The part wound up being cut from the film, but she was encouraged to continue. Similar roles followed, including All Women Have Secrets (1939), Dancing Co-Ed (also 1939), Young as Your Feel (1940), and Forty Little Mothers (also 1940). Forty Little Mothers was the first time she let her hair down on screen.

Lake attracted the interest of Fred Wilcox, an assistant director, who shot a test scene of her performing from a play and showed it to an agent. The agent, in turn, showed it to producer Arthur Hornblow Jr., who was looking for a new girl to play the part of a nightclub singer in a military drama, I Wanted Wings (1940). The role would make Lake, still in her teens, a star. Hornblow changed the actress's name to Veronica Lake. According to him, her eyes, "calm and clear like a blue lake", were the inspiration for her new name.

It was during the filming of I Wanted Wings that Lake developed her signature look. Lake's long blonde hair accidentally fell over her right eye during a take and created a "peek-a-boo" effect. "I was playing a sympathetic drunk, I had my arm on a table ... it slipped ... and my hair — it was always baby fine and had this natural break — fell over my face ... It became my trademark and purely by accident", she recalled.

I Wanted Wings was a big hit. The hairstyle became Lake's trademark and was widely copied by women.

Even before the film came out, Lake was dubbed "the find of 1941". However, Lake did not think this meant she would have a long career and maintained her goal was to be a surgeon. "Only the older actors keep on a long time ... I don't want to hang on after I've reached a peak. I'll go back to medical school", she said.

Paramount announced two follow-up movies, China Pass and Blonde Venus. Instead, Lake was cast in Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels with Joel McCrea. She was six months pregnant when filming began.

Paramount put Lake in a thriller, This Gun for Hire (1942), with Robert Preston as her love interest. However, she shared more scenes with Alan Ladd; the two of them were so popular together that they would be reteamed in lead roles for three more films. Both had cameos in Star Spangled Rhythm (1942), an all-star Paramount film.

Lake was meant to be reunited with McCrea in another comedy, I Married a Witch, (also 1942) produced by Sturges and directed by René Clair, but McCrea refused to act with her again, reportedly saying, "Life's too short for two films with Veronica Lake". Production was delayed, enabling Lake to be reunited with Ladd in The Glass Key (again 1942), replacing Patricia Morison. The male lead in I Married a Witch was eventually played by Fredric March and the resulting movie, like The Glass Key, was successful at the box office. René Clair, the director of I Married a Witch, said of Lake, "She was a very gifted girl, but she didn't believe she was gifted."

Lake was meant to co-star with Charles Boyer in Hong Kong for Arthur Hornblow, but it was not made. She received acclaim for her part as a suicidal nurse in So Proudly We Hail! (1943). At the peak of her career, she earned $4,500 a week.

Lake had a complex personality and acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with. Eddie Bracken, her co-star in Star Spangled Rhythm, in which Lake appeared in a musical number, was quoted as saying, "She was known as 'The Bitch' and she deserved the title." However, Lake and McCrea did make another film together, Ramrod (1947). During filming of The Blue Dahlia (1946), screenwriter Raymond Chandler referred to her as "Moronica Lake".

During World War II, Lake changed her trademark peek-a-boo hairstyle at the urging of the government to encourage women working in war industry factories to adopt more practical, safer hairstyles. Although the change helped to decrease accidents involving women getting their hair caught in machinery, doing so may have damaged Lake's career. She also became a popular pin-up girl for soldiers during World War II and traveled throughout the United States to raise money for war bonds.

Lake's career faltered with her unsympathetic role as Nazi spy Dora Bruckman in The Hour Before the Dawn (1944), shot in mid 1943. Scathing reviews of The Hour Before the Dawn included criticism of her rather unconvincing German accent. She had begun drinking more heavily during this period, and a growing number of people refused to work with her. Lake had a number of months off work, during which time she lost a child and was divorced.

In early 1944 she was brought back in Bring On the Girls (1945), Lake's first proper musical, although she had sung in This Gun for Hire and Star Spangled Rhythm. She was teamed with Eddie Bracken and Sonny Tufts. The movie was not a financial success.

In June 1944, Lake appeared at a war bond drive in Boston, where her services as a dishwasher were auctioned off. She also performed in a revue, with papers saying her "talk was on the grim side". Hedda Hopper later claimed this appearance was responsible for Paramount giving her the third lead in Out of This World (1945), supporting Diana Lynn and Bracken, saying "Lake clipped her own wings in her Boston bond appearance ... It's lucky for Lake, after Boston, that she isn't out of pictures".

Lake had a relatively minor role in a film produced by John Houseman, Miss Susie Slagle's (also 1945), co starring Sonny Tufts; Lake was top billed but her part was smaller than Joan Caulfield. In November 1944 she made a third film with Bracken, Hold That Blonde (1945). She liked this part saying "it's a comedy, rather like what Carole Lombard used to do ... It represents a real change of pace".

Lake then made a second film produced by John Houseman, The Blue Dahlia (1946), which reunited her with Ladd. While waiting for the films to be released in 1945, she took stock of her career, claiming, "I had to learn about acting. I've played all sorts of parts, taken just what came along regardless of high merit. In fact, I've been a sort of general utility person. I haven't liked all the roles. One or two were pretty bad".

Lake expressed interest in renegotiating her deal with Paramount:

The studio feels that way about it too. They have indicated they are going to fuss more about the pictures in which I appear. I think I'll enjoy being fussed about ... I want this to be the turning point and I think that it will. I am free and clear of unpleasant characters, unless they are strongly justified. I've had a varied experience playing them and also appearing as heroines. The roles themselves haven't been noteworthy and sometimes not even especially spotlighted, but I think they've all been beneficial in one way or another. From here on there should be a certain pattern of development, and that is what I am going to fight for if necessary, though I don't believe it will be because they are so understanding here at Paramount.

Since So Proudly We Hail only The Blue Dahlia had been a hit. She made her first film outside Paramount since she became a star, a Western, Ramrod (1947), directed by her then-husband Andre DeToth, which reunited her with Joel McCrea, despite his earlier reservation. It was successful.

Back at her home studio she had a cameo in Variety Girl (1947) then was united with Ladd for the last time in Saigon (1948), in which she returned to her former peek-a-boo hairstyle; the movie was not particularly well received. Neither was a romantic drama, Isn't It Romantic (also 1948) or a comedy The Sainted Sisters (1948). In 1948 Paramount decided not to renew Lake's contract.

Lake moved to 20th Century Fox to make Slattery's Hurricane (1949), directed by DeToth. It was only a support role and there were not many other offers.

In 1950 it was announced she and DeToth would make Before I Wake (from a suspense novel by Mel Devrett) and Flanagan Boy. Neither was made.

She appeared in Stronghold (1951), which she later described as "a dog", an independent production from Lippert Pictures shot in Mexico. She later sued for unpaid wages on the film. Lake and DeToth filed for bankruptcy that same year.

The IRS later seized their home for unpaid taxes. On the verge of a nervous breakdown and bankrupt, Lake ran away, left DeToth, and flew alone to New York.

"They said, 'She'll be back in a couple of months,'" recalled Lake. "Well I never returned. Enough was enough already. Did I want to be one of the walking dead or a real person?"

She performed in summer stock theatre and in stage roles in England. In October 1955, she collapsed in Detroit, where she had been appearing on stage in The Little Hut.

After her third divorce, Lake drifted between cheap hotels in New York City, and was arrested several times for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct. In 1962, a New York Post reporter found her living at the all-women's Martha Washington Hotel in Manhattan, working as a waitress downstairs in the cocktail lounge. She was working under the name "Connie de Toth". Lake said she took the job in part because "I like people. I like to talk to them".

The reporter's widely distributed story led to speculation that Lake was destitute. After the story ran, fans of Lake sent her money which she returned as "a matter of pride". Lake vehemently denied that she was destitute and stated, "It's as though people were making me out to be down-and-out. I wasn't. I was paying $190 a month rent then, and that's a long way from being broke". The story did revive some interest in Lake and led to some television and stage appearances, most notably in the 1963 off-Broadway revival of the musical Best Foot Forward.

In 1966, she had a brief stint as a television hostess in Baltimore, Maryland, along with a largely ignored film role in Footsteps in the Snow. She also continued appearing in stage roles. She went to Freeport in the Bahamas to visit a friend and ended up living there for a few years.

Lake's memoirs, Veronica: The Autobiography of Veronica Lake, which she dictated to the writer Donald Bain, were published in the United Kingdom in 1969, and in the United States the following year. In the book, Lake discusses her career, her failed marriages, her romances with Howard Hughes, Tommy Manville and Aristotle Onassis, her alcoholism, and her guilt over not spending enough time with her children. In the book, Lake stated to Bain that her mother pushed her into a career as an actress. Bain quoted Lake, looking back at her career, as saying, "I never did cheesecake like Ann Sheridan or Betty Grable. I just used my hair". She also laughed off the term "sex symbol" and instead referred to herself as a "sex zombie".

When she went to the UK to promote her book in 1969 she received an offer to appear on stage in Madam Chairman. Also in 1969, Lake essayed the role of Blanche DuBois in a revival of A Streetcar Named Desire on the English stage; her performance won rave reviews. With the proceeds from her autobiography, after she had divided them with Bain, she co-produced and starred in her final film, Flesh Feast (1970), a low-budget horror movie with a Nazi-myth storyline.

After purchasing an airplane for her husband, André de Toth, Lake earned her pilot's license in 1946. She later flew solo between Los Angeles and New York when leaving him.

Lake's first marriage was to art director John S. Detlie, in 1940. They had a daughter, Elaine (born in 1941), and a son, Anthony (born July 8, 1943). According to news from the time, Lake's son was born prematurely after she tripped on a lighting cable while filming a movie. Anthony died on July 15, 1943. Lake and Detlie separated in August 1943 and divorced in December 1943.

In 1944, Lake married film director Andre DeToth with whom she had a son, Andre Anthony Michael III (known as Michael DeToth), and a daughter, Diana (born October 1948). Days before Diana's birth, Lake's mother sued her for support payments. Lake and DeToth divorced in 1952.

In September 1955, she married songwriter Joseph Allan McCarthy. They were divorced in 1959. In 1969, she revealed that she rarely saw her children.

In June 1973, Lake returned from her autobiography promotion and summer stock tour in England to the United States and while traveling in Vermont, visited a local doctor, complaining of stomach pains. She was discovered to have cirrhosis of the liver as a result of her years of drinking, and on June 26, she checked into the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington.

She died there on July 7, 1973, of acute hepatitis and acute kidney injury. Her son Michael claimed her body. Lake's memorial service was held at the Universal Chapel in New York City on July 11.

She was cremated and, according to her wishes, her ashes were scattered off the coast of the Virgin Islands. In 2004, some of Lake's ashes were reportedly found in a New York antique store.

For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Lake has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6918 Hollywood Boulevard.

#veronica lake #classic hollywood #classic movie stars #classic cinema #old hollywood #1940s cinema #1940s hollywood

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sheetmusiclibrarypdf · 1 year

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Kenny Barron - Calypso (sheet music transcription from "Kenny Barron at the Piano" Noten, partition)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSdF1s-uoQ

Kenny Barron

“Every time I sit down to play, I try to challenge myself to see if I can come up with something new. If it doesn't happen, fine, but it's the goal I always try to achieve.' Kenny Barron Honored by The National Endowment for the Arts as a 2010 Jazz Master, Kenny Barron has an unmatched ability to mesmerize audiences with his elegant playing, sensitive melodies and infectious rhythms. The Los Angeles Times named him “one of the top jazz pianists in the world” and Jazz Weekly calls him “The most lyrical piano player of our time.” Philadelphia is the birthplace of many great musicians, including one of the undisputed masters of the jazz piano: Kenny Barron. Kenny was born in 1943 and, while a teenager, started playing professionally with Mel Melvin’s orchestra. This local band also featured Barron’s brother Bill, the late tenor saxophonist. While still in high school. Kenny worked with drummer Philly Joe Jones and at age 19, he moved to New York City and freelanced with Roy Haynes, Lee Morgan and James Moody, after the tenor saxophonist heard him play at the Five Spot. Upon Moody’s recommendation, Dizzy Gillespie hired Barron in 1962 without even hearing him play a note. It was in Dizzy’s band where Kenny developed an appreciation for Latin and Caribbean rhythms. After five years with Dizzy, Barron played with Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine, Milt Jackson, and Buddy Rich. The early seventies found Kenny working with Yusef Lateef, who Kenny credits as a key influence in his improvisation art. Encouraged by Lateef, to pursue a college education, Barron balanced touring with studies and earned his B.A. in Music from Empire State College, By 1973, Kenny joined the faculty at Rutgers University as professor of music. He held this tenure until 2000, mentoring many of today’s young talents including David Sanchez, Terence Blanchard and Regina Bell. In 1974 Kenny recorded his first album as a leader for the Muse label, entitled “Sunset To Dawn.” This was to be the first of over 40 recordings (and still counting!) as a leader. Following stints with Ron Carter in the late seventies, Kenny formed a trio with Buster Williams and Ben Riley which also worked alongside of Eddie Lockjaw” Davis, Eddie Harris, Sonny Stitt and Harry “Sweets” Edison. Throughout the 80s Barron collaborated with the great tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, touring with his quartet and recording several legendary albums including “Anniversary”, “Serenity” and the Grammy nominated “People Time” Also during the 80s, he co-founded the quartet “Sphere,” along with Buster Williams, Ben Riley and Charlie Rouse. This band focused on the music of Thelonious Monk and original compositions inspired by him. Sphere recorded several outstanding projects for the Polygram label, among them “Four For All” and “Bird Songs.” After the death of Charlie Rouse, the band took a 15-year hiatus and reunited, replacing Rouse with alto saxophonist Gary Bartz. This reunion made its debut recording for Verve Records in 1998. Kenny Barron’s own recordings for Verve have earned him nine Grammy nominations beginning in 1992 with “People Time” an outstanding duet with Stan Getz followed by the Brazilian influenced “Sambao and most recently for “Freefall” in 2002. Other Grammy nominations went to “Spirit Song”, “Night and the City” (a duet recording with Charlie Haden) and “Wanton Spirit” a trio recording with Roy Haynes and Haden. It is important to note that these three recordings each received double-Grammy nominations (for album and solo performance.) His CD, “Canta Brasil” (Universal France) linked Barron with Trio de Paz in a fest of original Brazilian jazz, and was named Critics Choice Top Ten CDs of 2003 by JazzIz Magazine. His 2004 release, Images (Universal France) was inspired by a suite originally commissioned by The Wharton Center at Michigan State University and features multi-Grammy nominated vibraphonist Stefon Harris. The long awaited trio sequel featuring Ray Drummond and Ben Riley, The Perfect Set, Live At Bradley’s, Part Two (Universal France/Sunnyside) was released October 2005. In Spring 2008 Mr. Barron released The Traveler (Universal France), an intoxicating mix of favorite Barron tunes set to lyrics and newly penned compositions. For his first vocal based recording, Barron invited Grady Tate (who sheds his drumsticks for this special appearance), Tony award winner Ann Hampton Calloway and the young phenom Gretchen Parlato, winner of the Thelonious Monk International Competition for Jazz. On “Um Beijo”, Mr. Tate’s warm, leathery voice balanced by Mr. Barron’s poignant touch make for a beautifully textured conversation, underscoring their longtime onboard collaboration. Another Barron original, “Clouds” is a lush vehicle for Ann Hampton Calloway’s romantic pitch-perfect yearnings matched with Barron’s trademark mastery of subtlety. The dramatic “Phantoms” intertwines Parlato’s ephemeral intimacy and syncopatic rhythms in an emotional escapade between Barron’s haunting notes, the West African stylings of guitarist Lionel Loueké, drummer Francisco Mela (who also adds a Cuban flavor to the vocals) and the driving bass of Kiyoshi Kitagawa. The journey continues with the aptly named “Duet” an improvisation with Benin-born Loueké who also joins the trio for a rousing version of Barron’s “Calypso”. A composer who relishes at the moment, Barron’s modern approach is highlighted by alto saxophonist Steve Wilson’s open musings on “Illusion” and “The Traveler” who also brings an urgency to the fun-paced “Speed Trap”. After a successful musical meeting of the minds with bassist Dave Holland, the two masters decided to collaborate on a duet project to be released on Impulse/Universal records in 2014 followed by a tour. Barron consistently wins the jazz critics and readers polls, including Downbeat, Jazz Times and Jazziz magazines. The famed Spanish ceramist Lladro honored Mr. Barron with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012, and he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from his alma mater SUNY Empire State in 2013 and from Berklee College of Music in 2011. In 2009, he received the Living Legacy Award from Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame and won a MAC Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He is a six-time recipient of Best Pianist by the Jazz Journalists Association. Whether he is playing solo, trio or quintet, Kenny Barron is recognized the world over as a master of performance and composition. Read the full article

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dustedmagazine · 4 years

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Listening Post: Sun Ra Arkestra

On May 22, 1914 a child named Herman Poole Blount arrived in Birmingham, Alabama. He grew up in a home that nurtured his musical talents and did its best to protect him from the harsh consequences that often befell African Americans who did not see things quite the same as anyone else. In 1945 he moved to Chicago, where he found work playing piano and arranging for the band Fletcher Henderson led for the Club DeLisa.

In the years that followed, “Sonny” Blount legally changed his named to Le Sony’r Ra, which he then simplified to Sun Ra. Ra began leading the bands that developed into his big band, the Arkestra, in 1952. Originally they played music that derived from swing jazz, albeit with some unusual structural elements. The Arkestra played in outer space-themed costumes, and over time Ra’s compositions absorbed, digested, and re-broadcast elements of doo-wop, blues, 20th century orchestral music, electronic music, exotica, free jazz, disco and Disney soundtracks.

Ra and his musicians moved to New York City in the early 1960s, and again to Philadelphia between 1968 and 1971. Beginning with the move to New York, Ra lived communally with many of his musicians, some of whom devoted their lives to playing his music. When Ra left the planet (he vehemently objected to notions of birth and death) on May 30, 1993, the Arkestra continued to operate under the leadership of two of those long-term devotees. John Gilmore’s tenure was short, as his health was already compromised. After his passage on August 20, 1995, Marshall Allen took over.

A quarter-century later Allen, who is 96 years old and plays alto saxophone, oboe, flute, piccolo, EVI (Electronic Valve Instrument), and percussion, is still at the helm. The Arkestra still travels whenever and wherever earthly circumstances allow, performing Ra’s compositions with pageantry and zeal. In October 2020, Strut Records will release Swirling, the 21st century’s first studio recording by the Arkestra. News of its release instigated the following discussion that Dusted’s contributors, which include people who had barely heard the Arkestra before this year and others fortunate (and old) enough to have seen them with Ra in the 1980s.

[Intro by Bill Meyer]

Swirling by Sun Ra Arkestra

Jennifer Kelly: Is anyone else finding this new Sun Ra Arkestra release kind of dull?

Michael Rosenstein: Haven't heard the new Sun Ra release. I'm assuming it is the upcoming studio release on Strut. While it is a tribute to Marshall Allen that he is keeping the legacy going, the magic was starting to wane even in Sun Ra's last years. I was glad to have had a chance to have seen the Arkestra in the 1980s but sure to wish I had seen them in the 1960s.

Bill Meyer: I might be warmer on it than some. I thought it avoids some of the pitfalls of other post-Ra Arkestra recordings — there's no inappropriate keyboard sounds, for example. And they didn't half-ass the actually making of the record, it sounds decent. This is probably the Arkestra's version of a good record. How good is it? Hard to say from one listen. Since it relies on old tunes, you can always compare it to the 40 to 50-year-old versions. But what should we expect from a repertory band led by a guy who you want to applaud just for still being alive and on stage?

[A week or two passes as some of us frantically try to absorb a massive amount of shared archival Sun Ra recordings which have magically appeared in the Dusted drive.]

Bill Meyer: After another listen, I continue to find this record pretty likable. It includes tunes that are close to my heart, the Arkestra plays them decently and the recording quality is contemporary without yielding to flavor of the month missteps. Does it sound like the Arkestra under Ra? I’ll answer that twice, first with a question: which Arkestra? There have been a few over the years, unified only by Ra, his compositions, and the commitment of Ra’s successors to keep his music and cosmic view circulating. Second answer: no, it does not. But since Ra left the planet in 1993, and had abandoned radicalism in favor of repertoire and Disney covers in his last years, it probably should not.

Jennifer Kelly: I'm glad I had the opportunity to delve into the Sun Ra catalogue a little bit after hearing the new one. I've been listening to a lot of the Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra set, plus the Magic City, and it's wild stuff, especially for the mid-1960s. "Cosmic Chaos," indeed.

I'm really curious about that Disney album though.

But I am a newcomer to all this and very eager to hear what you jazz guys are thinking about the Sun Ra catalogue and this newest Arkestra entry.

Derek Taylor: Nice intro, Bill. I still haven't sat down with Swirling yet and remain kind of reluctant to do so. Not to begrudge Allen or his admirably tenacious leadership, but albums feel kind of beside the point without Ra at the helm. He was such a lodestar for the Arkestra that it's really seemed only viable as a performance-only venture for decades and an inevitably inferior facsimile at that. The costumes, the pageantry, the space chants and improvisation-inclusive arrangements are still there, but again with a hollow center. That probably sounds bad, but it's honest. Nate Wooley's recently published Sound American (#25) centers on Sun Ra and does a decent job delineating what's missing. All of the entries are worthwhile, but especially the anecdotal introduction by Wooley, and a lengthy essay by John Corbett detailing his archeological excavation of erstwhile Ra associate Alton Abraham’s Chicago residence. The latter treatise is a sustained hoot and captures colorfully how Ra can inspire monomania in even the most eclectically-minded of music aficionados. Don’t know if it’s kosher to switch gears so soon, but in the interest of opening up other avenues of conversation here are a few more orbital arcs.

Jazz in Silhouette is a widely acknowledged masterpiece, but my ears have also gravitated to its less ambitious and aggrandized sibling, Supersonic Jazz, which feels less like a grand Arkestral voyage and more like a satellite ensemble launched set list. The writing and band are not as polished, baritonist Pat Patrick has sporadic reed problems, and the sequencing of tunes is sometimes jarring, but everything else, from the hand drawn album cover(s) on down is aces. Here’s what I wrote about way back in September of 2003…

Take your pick between covers- garish blue or gaudy pink- this early tome of Arkestrology includes some of the band’s most succinctly stated music & emblematic melodies. Light years distant from Magellenic maelstroms like The Magic City and Atlantis, the album is instead a thoroughly entertaining embodiment of Ra’s Windy City tenure with the maestro fronting a healthy twelve-piece incarnation of the ensemble that includes then-jazz oddities like Jim Herndon’s trampoline tympani and Wilburn Green’s febrile electric bass. Ra’s early electric piano also receives prominent billing, most marvelously on the miniature “Advice to Medics,” which sounds like Fred Rogers beaming friendly-neighbor beacons from the far side of Mars. Marshall Allen had yet to join the ranks, but mainstays John Gilmore and Pat Patrick lead the horn roster alongside such brass aces as Art Hoyle and Julian Priester. Together they rollick through Ra’s customarily quixotic charts, blending big band swing and bop with hints and traces of later obsessions including radical rhythmic shifts and percussion heavy panoplies of sound. The albums notes, presumably penned by Ra, are equally endearing and contain expressions of the cosmic axioms that would serve as the band’s ontological fuel for decades to come. There are arguably better and more representative Ra records in the Saturnian canon, but this one rates as my favorite of the lot.

John Gilmore took innumerable solos as lead (& often only) tenor in the band, but it’s his extended improvisation on “Thoughts Under a Dark Blue Light” from Cymbals (1973) is him at his loquacious best.

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Derek Taylor: Quick note on the Disney album (Second Star to the Right). It gets a lot of traction as an anomalous entry, but in terms of repertoire, arrangements, shambolic energy and overall feel it’s not all that removed from other Arkestra efforts of the time. Ra’s Disney fixation grew out his participation in Hal Willner’s Stay Awake project and a cover of “Pink Elephants on Parade.” Dumbo (and reported repeated screenings at the Arkestra’s then-Philly HQ) became a catalyst for more expansive forays into the songbook. June Tyson’s participation brings it up a notch and balances out the much less polished vocals by other members of the band.

Bill Meyer: Re the early Ra records that Derek recommends, I’ll second his opinion that they are well worth investigating, both as very strong works in their own right and as a foundation worth understanding in order to make sense of the Arkestra’s evolution in subsequent decades. Some of my favorite Ra music is the stuff recorded between 1956-60 in Chicago.

Regarding the hollow spot at the center of the post-Ra Arkestra, I think that Derek accurately identifies a potentially problematic aspect of legacy big bands. Whether it’s the Ellington Orchestra, the Basie Big Band, Mingus Dynasty or the Arkestra, each exists partly to perpetrate the music of a dynamic, creative personality. Since that dynamic, creative personality is no longer involved, their day-to-day and song-to-song influence is also no longer present. That’s a lot to lose, and I can’t blame anyone for choosing not to follow such bands. But I also think that the while the Arkestra could not have come into being without Ra, it wasn’t just Ra. It was a commune that included a core group of people such as Pat Patrick, John Gilmore, and Marshall Allen, who from the 1950s on saw in the Arkestra an opportunity to frame and make full use of their personal talents that they could not find anywhere else. It was also a commune of people who found a practical solution to how to survive personally in the Arkestra and in the row house in Philadelphia where I believe that some of them still live. The Arkestra was a community while Ra was alive, and that community has persisted since his passing. Every community needs means to survive, and this community has the band.

But the hollow spot is definitely an issue. I also think that Ra, unlike Ellington, Mingus, and Basie, proposed a model of spiritual as well as musical inquiry and of separate independence. In the early Chicago days, Ra was part of a milieu of people gathering and speaking at Jackson Park on the south side that also included soapbox preachers, Black Muslims, and many other varieties of leaflet-passers and idea-propounders. The Arkestra was his way of putting the stuff he used to talk about into action. The contemporary Arkestra no longer has that presence; it does have disciples, and while Marshall Allen is not Sun Ra, he has proved to be a very effective band leader and focal personality.

On the Disney tip, here’s a clip of the Arkestra’s version of “Pink Elephants On Parade”:

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I think it’s delightful, and a whole album of the Arkestra could be a load of fun. The whole album that was released was kind of murky sound wise, and while it accurately represented with the full Disney program sounded like, it didn’t present it in its best light. Which points us in the direction of considering what the points were for making albums during Ra’s lifetime and what the Arkestra’s point might be in making the album that they have made to sell in 2020.

For Ra, albums could be many things. Some were major artistic statements, maybe understood as such at the time, but often so identified years after their recording/release. Some were documents of the exploration of smaller, one-off musical ideas (i.e., Strange Strings). They were all commercial products, some of which were traded to labels in order to fly the Arkestra back home after some trip that didn’t pay for itself, and many of which were made as cheaply as possible (low-end pressing plants, sleeves decorated in magic marker by Arkestra members) and sold from the stage at concerts. And they could be means of sowing confusion (some of those albums sold at concerts were hybrid pressings, i.e. an a-side from one record and a B-side from another) that served to increase mystery, possibly intentionally, or possibly in order to not lose money on a production error.

In 2020, it’s less likely than ever that a record album is going to pay the living expenses of a large band. The Arkestra actually has control of a large part of Ra’s discography, so they can sell or co-release digital and physical reissues of the old stuff for money, and they do. So, they don’t need Swirling to pay the bills. But this is a band that has continued to tour, and has really developed a life for itself beyond Ra’s life. How well is that band documented? Not very. There are three other post-Ra albums, and two of them are live recordings that serve more as snapshots. This studio album presents the best version of aspects of what they are now.

Jonathan Shaw: Like Jenny, I'm not particularly well versed in jazz's history or the massive amount of music Sun Ra and the Arkestra have given us. But I know what I like, and I like a lot of the Sun Ra I have heard. No surprise that I gravitate toward the darker, stranger stuff: "Adventure-Equation" or Side 2 of My Brother the Wind, Vol 2 or the noisiest passages on Live at Montreux. But there's so much music.

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Conceptually, I respond strongly to Bill's point about the collaborative, collective element of the Arkestra's artistic praxis. Ra was hugely charismatic, but the whole ensemble creates the otherworldliness of the sound. And it's a sound with scale — galactic, even. Beyond the music, the collective might have mattered even more. Not for nothing did Ra refer to Philly as "Death's headquarters." As I understand it, the Arkestra got along well with their neighbors in Germantown. But they arrived in Philly just in time to endure Frank Rizzo's tenure as police commissioner and the raid on the Philly Black Panthers' HQ; then Rizzo's terms as mayor and the first violent confrontation with MOVE. Being black in Philly was no fucking joke, even if you claimed Saturn as home base.

Bill Meyer: I think that the move to Philadelphia was a move of opportunity. Ra had a chance to get a house, and he took it. The Arkestra was still a train ride away from NYC, and I understand that they took advantage of that to get to the Monday night Slug’s Saloon residency c. 1970.

Tim Clarke: Due to my lack of familiarity with Sun Ra's oeuvre, I suspect I'll be sitting on the sidelines learning from Derek and Bill for the most part, but I will chime in and say that I love the new Arkestra single, "Seductive Fantasy," which primarily piqued my interest thanks to Chad VanGaalen's extraordinary animated video.

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Bill Meyer: Well that’s a trippy video. It nicely matches the performance. What do you think of the music, Tim?

Tim Clarke: In the case of "Seductive Fantasy," I enjoy the balance between the repetitive elements, such as the rhythm section and horn refrain, versus the synth and piano darting around on top. Hypnotic, but also perpetually nudging you awake. On the album version, I lose interest a bit once the babbling female vocal comes in towards the end — the instruments themselves are saying enough. It reminds me that I have heard the odd Sun Ra album in the past and enjoyed that feeling of hearing what sounds like two radio transmissions overlapping each other, slightly out of synch. If I weren’t so time-poor at the moment, I would definitely investigate Sun Ra's discography with more vigor. Based on my appraisal of "Seductive Fantasy," which album would you recommend, Bill?

Bill Meyer: Hmm, given your appreciation for the in and out of synch quality of a fairly rhythmically solid piece, it sounds like you could enjoy the late Ra recording, Purple Night. I’d also point you to early records like Nubians of Plutonia, Interstellar Low Ways and Discipline 27.

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Jonathan Shaw: Seems to me that the first half of Swirling is a lot heavier on the vocal parts than most of the Sun Ra stuff I'm familiar with, but those records are from earlier iterations of the Arkestra and Ra's music. I don't know well any of the studio records from the late 1970s to the present. I like it, but having so many voices so present throughout creates a specific vibe. Different from the abstract, nearly non-representational terrain of Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy or even Angels and Demons...

Derek Taylor: The Arkestra was definitely more than just a conduit for Ra’s musical and philosophical ideas. It was regularly filled with strong and distinctive players, but there were also plenty of “red shirts” in the ranks over the years. Hangers on who sooner or later couldn’t hang with the rigors and vicissitudes of the membership requirements that could border on the ascetic. In this respect, Ra was like a more extreme variation of Mingus rather than Ellington or Basie, tailoring his tunes to the specific talents of his sidemen, but often in a manner of taskmaster where overall content and direction were very much enforced as his own.

The Arkestra operated like commune in certain respects, but it was also very hierarchical with Ra most definitely at the top of the societal pyramid. Anecdotes are ample, some admittedly apocryphal, of him exerting his will and influence on the band and exercising exacting standard of dedication and discipline not just in musical matters, but in the conduct of daily life. Those who violated these standards could face consequences determined by Ra’s moods and whims including being locked in cupboards or forced to sit silently in a “dunce” chair in front of the band during gigs and dressed down to audiences.

This top-down pecking order led even staple band members like John Gilmore and Pat Patrick to pick up stakes on occasion and take gigs with bandleaders like Art Blakey and Mongo Santamaria, respectively, to escape what could conservatively be construed as bullying. But to Bill’s point, they did come back, and they, along with Marshall Allen, Ronnie Boykins and a select few others became the linchpins of Ra’s enterprise in terms of importance and longevity.

Derek Taylor: The Arkestra as commercial venture both with Ra and after makes for another interesting juxtaposition. Ra was (in)famous for making on the fly deals and contradictory financial pacts. He owed $8K to Studios in New York at the time of his death for sessions done on credit over the years and while money was a constant concern, his public persona(s) would often declare otherwise. It’s still a source of solvency and survival for band members but albums seem to be of ancillary importance to getting the music to the people through touring and performance. That’s definitely changed with the pandemic and all that it’s evaporated in its wake, but I guess I just question how much the current aggregation brings to the legacy in recorded form when there are dozens of concerts with Ra available that feature the vessel intact and at full muster. Documenting the band now is arguably important, but the shadows of Ra-piloted history loom large for comparison and in commercial competition. Although, to be fair, there are also plenty of examples of Ra steering his crew into music rife with indulgence, excess, bombast and diffusiveness, too.

I'm curious how folks see different sidemen in the Ra-led band(s) and players in the Allen-led iteration specifically shaping and influencing the music. That varies from album to album, of course, but on Heliocentric Worlds, Vol. 2, for instance, Ronnie Boykins bass is even more of a fulcrum than Ra for much of the program.

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Bill Meyer: The vocal-heavy content corresponds to what the Arkestra is like live. I think this change was well under way before Ra died. During the Arkestra’s last decade, recordings were mostly either concert recordings or fairly conservative. In concert, the pageantry persisted, and the music became more of a widely known property. The period of adding new, radical musical compositions and concepts pretty much ended by 1980. After that, it was more about all the things the band knew it could do.

By the way, the latest issue of The Wire published electronically this morning. The Arkestra is on the cover.

A little more about the vocals. If you go back to the 1950s, Ra accompanied and wrote songs for doo wop singers, the Arkestra had singers who performed fairly standard material, and it also had original space chants that were sung en masse. The space chants were always an aspect of performances, but perhaps because of their crowd pleasing nature became more prominent in the Arkestra’s last decade. But they are even more prominent in the post-Ra Arkestra. Circling back to my point, the Arkestra often challenged and confused audiences up to around 1980. After that, the Arkestra was more likely to give audiences what they expected. The current Arkestra’s intent and decisions about what it performs derive more from the last ten years with Ra than from the previous decades.

Jonathan Shaw: That's useful info for me. It also seems to complement the organization of Swirling, which is front-end-loaded with the vocal-heavy stuff. The second half of the record sounds more adventurous to me: "Infinity, I'll Wait for You," the slightly off-kilter swing of "Queer Notions."

Bill Meyer: “Queer Notions” is a good example of something that Ra started doing later in the Arkestra’s evolution. Sometime in the 1970s, they started doing mini-sets of big band tunes. The first time I saw them in 1981, that was a mindfuck all its own, to go from massed percussion to massive free jazz blow out to Ra’s regal entry, regaled by June Tyson, to a sequence of tunes by Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton. If memory serves, Derek recently reviewed Sunrise In Different Dimensions, a well-recorded concert from around that time. I think "Queer Notions" is on that record, too.

Derek Taylor: Composed by Coleman Hawkins for Fletcher Henderson's orchestra of which he was a member, "Queer Notions" has been part of the Arkestra book since around 1980, I think. It's also been included the more recent touring repertoire as this Tiny Desk concert on the occasion of Ra's Centennial in 2014 attests...

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Jennifer Kelly: I’d be interested in hearing more about this band’s spiritual practices if anyone can elaborate?

Derek Taylor: Jen, that's a sticky wicket since describing a unified theory of Sun Ra's philosophy is kind of like herding cats. He cast a wide net in drawing in components including the Kabbalah, Egyptian mysticism, Gnosticism, numerology and Afro-futurism before that last was even a codified thing. He also despised the application of the appellation "philosophy" to it, preferring instead the mathematical assemblage "equation." The central tenet was that worldly religions were inadequate in explaining things and representative instead of inferior and even evil approximations of larger cosmic truths. The end goal for humanity was essentially immortality in a higher state of being free from all of the terrestrial ideological baggage it had accumulated over the ages. In reference to the Arkestra, they treated his many existential musings and aphorisms as something akin to gospel and Ra would often do his best to remain (at least in part) inscrutable. Practice was a big part of their daily routine and Ra would often wake them up at all hours to debut and rehearse new music. Good works were part of the paradigm, too, and the band was frequently involved in community improvement and cultural awareness projects even outside of performances. That's really just the tip of the asteroid though.

Bill Meyer: It’s many years since I last opened John Szwed’s Sun Ra biography, Space Is The Place, but he went into considerable detail on this point. If I recall correctly, in addition to everything that Derek mentions, Ra was also very prone to quoting the Bible, which he read in an idiosyncratic fashion. One notion that he shared with a lot of other folk who stood on soapboxes in Jackson Park was an understanding that conventionally received knowledge was corrupt. But he also seems to have felt that you could decode truth even from corrupted sources.

Derek Taylor: To Bill's point about Ra and the Bible, he had a pretty deep-seated distrust of it as a text due in part to viewing as a document historically used to validate slavery, both in a literal sense and a mental one. His response was to regularly subvert and subsume its contents by rearranging and rephrasing its passages, sometimes in non sequitur fashion to "decode" hermetic meanings. Ra's distinctive brand of Black Nationalism tied into this as well, as one his core tenets was personal empowerment and emancipation. He was part of the October Revolution collective along with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Alan Silva, Paul Bley and others, which organized an independent free jazz festival in 1964 out of the Cellar Cafe in NYC. The name was a purposeful riff on the Bolshevik rebellion of 1917 and led to the creation of the Jazz Composers' Guild and other artist-run avenues of promotion and distribution. Ra didn't stay long though and he increasingly grew disenchanted with the Black Power movement, too, viewing it as reductive and counterproductive to larger cosmically-aligned goals. There's also a bit of hypocrisy in his personal liberation divinity given the rigidity and orthodoxy that he applied to running the Arkestra. Members were encouraged to be and actualize themselves, but under the larger rubric of Ra's rules and reach.

Jonathan Shaw: I haven't read anything about Ra's life or ideas. Could jazz itself be one of those forms of "conventionally received knowledge"? Is the experimental nature of much of the music from the 1950s and 1960s an example of the band's "idiosyncratic reading" of the form?

Derek Taylor: Jonathan, Ra went back and forth on "jazz" as a signifier for his music and disliked "free jazz" as a qualifier for it consistently, viewing the phrase as a dismissal of the immense amount of thought and order that went into his designs. As Bill noted above, that changed in the 1970s with a realignment with the jazz tradition and the integration of Fletcher Henderson and Jelly Roll Morton tunes into the Arkestra repertoire.

More than a few Arkestra members were jazz musicians outside of the activities of the band, and Ra had a few sideman appearances himself over the years, most notably to my ears with vibraphonist Walt Dickerson. Footage exists on YouTube and the Transparency label released a five-disc set of a 1983 tour that teamed him with an all-star band comprised collectively of Lester Bowie, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Richard Davis, Famoudou Don Moye, Philly Joe Jones, Clifford Jarvis, and stalwarts Gilmore and Allen that illustrates the sometimes uneven and aloof fit that he had with established icons of the idiom.

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Bill Meyer: I believe that Ra actually told his musicians that they were in the Ra jail.

Hey, has anyone else listened to the new Arkestra record? Any thoughts about it?

Derek Taylor: I still haven't and I don't want this to turn into the Bill & Derek Show, so I'm going to spectate for a bit. Very curious about folks' reactions/opinions to/of Ra-led albums, too.

Justin Cober-Lake: I'll jump in, being one of the less well-versed listeners in this conversation. I've been trying to think through what it is about Swirling that might make Derek's take on the current group accurate. I like the album fine, but I'm not falling for it, and I think that lack of center that Derek suspects comes through for a reason. The other Sun Ra I have aren’t necessarily concept albums, but there's a vision guiding each record. Even "Space Probe" of My Brother the Wind seems to finish what precedes it in some way. The central conceit of Swirling seems to be "Let's play a bunch of cool tunes" rather than "Let's send this particular weird message for 40 minutes." The performances on the new one are fine, but they do have an archival quality to them that doesn't appear (for obvious reasons, including possibly my own position in receiving the music) on anything else I've heard.

Michael Rosenstein: Sorry to be late to the game here. Bill and Derek have covered the background well so there's not too much need for me to add to that. I'm working on a full response to Swirling but it's gotten me thinking about the Arkestra and what role it might play almost 30 years after his death.

Looking at the personnel, this band includes some musicians who've logged some serious time with the Arkestra. Allen, Danny Ray Thompson and Stanley “Atakatune” Morgan were part of the group on and off since the late 1960s. Michael Ray, Knoel Scott and Vincent Chancey joined in the 1970s. And Cecil Brooks, Tyler Mitchell and Elson Nascimento joined in the 1980s, the last decade Ra was at the helm. The rest of the group seem to have mostly come up in Philly and got exposed to Ra and crew at formative points in their musical upbringing. That's some solid collective commitment.

Sun Ra managed to carve out a prodigious legacy for himself through a serendipitous combination of dogged self-determination, shrewd decisions and luck. Few musicians managed to navigate their way from swing bands to extensions and abstractions of jazz orchestration to the musical actualization of self-created cosmology to pageantry and appropriation of popular culture. And few managed to keep a band going with such a solid group of committed musicians. And all of that with a staggering discography that still continues to see reissues, repackaging and discoveries from the vault. Just last year, Enterplanetary Koncepts (Ra's publishing company) released four solo piano records, a previously unissued live set and a handful of reissues and Modern Harmonic issued a compilation focusing on vocalist June Tyson's features in the Arkestra. As others in this conversation have attested, that makes it pretty tough to know where to jump in.

Everyone has their own impetus to take the dive with the Arkestra. My starting place was Heliocentric Worlds, Atlantis, and The Futuristic Worlds of Sun Ra because those were floating around the cutout bins pretty much everywhere in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Somehow in 1982, Y Records (home to Maximum Joy, The Slits, Pop Group, Pigbag...) put out a 12" of the tune "Nuclear War" and by the mid-1980s it seemed like every college radio station was putting that into heavy rotation along with the Jerry Harrison/Bootsy Collins jam "5 Minutes". Who would think that Ronald Reagan's rants would seem mild. The Arkestra was touring very regularly through the 80s and the shows I saw were always packed with a mixture of rock kids and grizzled jazz fans. Swirling is absolutely not a canonical entry in the Ra discography. But if it serves as a jumping in point for a new batch of fans, that's OK.

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Jennifer Kelly: I feel like I should come clean after inadvertently starting this whole endeavor by asking if the new Sun Ra Arkestra disc, the first one in 20 years, was a little dull. I was excited to get it, because I've been hearing about Sun Ra for a long time and a number of bands that I like a lot (mostly in the psychedelic area, I'm not a jazz writer) cite the band as a touchstone of all that is wild and free and in touch with the cosmic. And then I play the disc and it's fine, but unexpectedly Big Swing Band-ish, without really any of the untethered experiment that I was expecting. So I asked what else I should listen to and various people uploaded about a month's worth of continuous play and I found that, yes indeed, 1965-ish Sun Ra was exactly what I thought it was, full of skronk and turmoil and eerie celestial interplay. As I said, I got through the Heliocentric Sessions and spent some time with Magic City and found myself enamored with its daring. I liked A LOT the bowed bass work on Heliocentric Sessions (I think disc 2?) which made it sound like a chamber orchestra had set down on Mars, and I enjoyed the percussion, which is complex and multilayered, and I didn't hear any vocals at all, so perhaps this is a recent thing?

And now I'm going back to Swirling and again, it's fine. It sounds nice, but it is way better behaved and melodic and harmonic, and the title track, particularly, has a woozy swagger to it, but it sounds like Benny Goodman compared to what I was listening to before. I kind of like the "Batman" cover, but why are they doing a "Batman" cover?

It is never a good look for the least knowledgeable person in the room to go negative, but what can I say? I don't like it. I am, however, really glad I had an excuse to listen to the earlier stuff and if I ever catch up, I might take a few other items from the back catalogue for a spin. (I'm intrigued by the singles.)

Bill Meyer: They are doing the Batman theme because in 1966 Sun Ra played a session with a bunch of guys who later became Blood, Sweat & Tears. Originally credited to The Sensational Guitars of Dan and Dale, it had Batman on the cover, and was entirely Batman-themed. For many years (and possibly still), it was the best-selling thing that Ra played on. Ra subsequently wrote and sang a boogie-woogie song, “I’m Gonna Unmask the Batman,” which appears on the Ra 45 rpm collections that have been released by Evidence and Strut.

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This is another example of the later Arkestra’s emphasis of crowd-pleasing singalongs.

As far as the big band content, I’d point more to Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie than Benny Goodman as predecessors for what Ra and the Arkestra have played through the years. But I would say that big band jazz is definitely foundation of Ra’s music, although he certainly cut loose from it many times over the years.

Regarding the bass playing on the 1960s records, you are hearing one of the greatest musicians to join the Arkestra. That’s Ronnie Boykins, who was a core member from the 1958-1966, and played with him sporadically into the 1970s. He had a very distinctive sound when he bowed, and a really unshakable capacity to assert rhythmic and arhythmic centers in the music, no matter how tricky or far-out it became. There were times when Ra played without a bassist after Boykins left, because no one else could do what he did as well as he did it, and sometimes Ra played the bass on keyboards to fill the gap.

As far as untethered experimentation, I have to ask, how many people sustain that throughout their careers? I think that even the most successfully challenging experimenters, and Ra is definitely one of them, achieve their formal paradigm shifts within one part of their career, and spend much more of it elaborating upon or reacting to those radical shifts.

In Ra’s case, the radical musical experimentation fit into a larger spiritual-social mission, which was to show that whatever you though were the limits could be transcended. The space age themes grew from the major hope-inducing technological shift of the mid-20th century (space travel, which was first shown to be possible while the Arkestra was getting it together in Chicago) and the speculative fiction of the day. Ra’s engagement with pulpy paperbacks, exotica, and pseudo-African elements that probably derived more from b-movie soundtracks than ethnographic recordings or first-hand knowledge of African music are all in keeping with being open to non-mainstream cultural content. If you sniff around, you will find cheese throughout the Arkestra’s timeline, and it’s at least as important to the mission as the episodes of experimentation.

Jonathan Shaw: And I think evidence of Swirling's desire to be a record that sells. It's hard to fault the band for that, given current economic conditions. Perhaps there's also an impulse toward spreading the word about Ra to increasingly mass audiences. As I noted, I can get next to the vocal-heavy stuff on Swirling, that grants songs a recognizable form as song for mass consumption. "The Sky Is a Sea of Darkness" even manages to create some interesting contrast between the thematic and the sonic textures. But more often, the desire to please issues in a safer listening experience. Perhaps that's a useful thing, right now, in the world into which the record has been released. I don't know. I think heavy times need heavy sounds.

Bill Meyer: The Arkestra’s performance schedule in the immediately pre-COVID years corresponds to what the Arkestra was doing in the years before Ra’s death. They play jazz clubs, multi-genre musical venues like Constellation in Chicago and jazz festivals, and they’re a pretty reliable good time. The band sustains itself, and it also puts the Ra message out to people who aren’t just record nerds. Swirling represents what they sound like now.

Jennifer Kelly: That all makes sense.

Justin Cober-Lake: It all sort of makes sense to me, but Jenny's right in calling it "better behaved," and that's where it loses me a little bit. Can we talk about the jazz market? Jonathan — maybe accurately (I'm genuinely trying to learn and not argue the point) — says it points to the desire to make a record that sells. Is there an audience for a Duke Ellington-style CD of music formerly made by an experimental troupe? It seems to me that the Arkestra name would draw people who want to hear experimentation. If you want something that sounds more like a descendant of trad big band music, would you turn to anything connected to Sun Ra rather than something with a more standard reputation. It seems like a weird sort of gap to fall into from a marketing point of view.

Michael Rosenstein: My sense is that this record is about spreading the word about Sun Ra to a broader audience who, like Jenny mentions above, have been hearing about Sun Ra for a long time and seen the Arkestra name-checked but have never gotten around to checking them out. Not having ever seen or heard any recordings from the current iteration of the Marshall Allen-led group, I'm not sure how much they were trying to make something with broader appeal and how much they were just doing what they do in the confines of a studio. Keep in mind that in the last decade that Sun Ra was at the helm of the Arkestra, they toured and recorded incessantly but made somewhere around six studio recordings, none, other than maybe Mayan Temples being all that memorable.

When I saw the Arkestra in the 1980s, they were all about playing Fletcher Henderson and Ellington charts, with Disney covers, cosmic chants, percussion interludes and tons of theatricality thrown in. The shows were shambolic for sure, but always full of spirit. What held all of this together was Ra's charisma, a crack band and June Tyson's powerful voice for many of the vocals. There's not one of the tunes on Swirling that would have been out of place at one of those shows. Every time I saw them, the venues were packed and the crowd went away happy. None of those shows stand out as close to the most memorable things I've seen. But they were always fun.

I'm not quite seeing this as a marketing ploy but more of a group of musicians somehow trying to keep the spirit of Ra alive. As to how well that succeeds is a valid point. Has anyone seen the Arkestra live in the last few years? I wonder if their shows capture more of the energy and spirit of the 1980s. Sorry I missed them last summer when they played around here or I could weigh in.

Bill Meyer: Justin asked if there is an audience for big-band music made by a formerly experimental troupe? I’d say, that’s all that the Arkestra has made since the late 1980s, going back to before Ra died. People have been deciding not to buy new Arkestra music because it operates on the same risk-taking level as Swirling since George Herbert Walker Bush was president. I’d also argue that people who want music that really does sound like Duke Ellington aren’t going to settle for the Arkestra anyway. My impression is that a lot of jazz fans don’t want to hear anything new.

I think Swirling exists for two reasons. First, it documents what the current band sounds like. Since documentation has always been part of Arkestra practice, if they didn’t do it, at some level that would be a surrender on a more fundamental level than their failure to innovate at the level that Ra did 40 to 60 years ago. Second, it exists for people who like what the current band does enough to buy a CD of it. There seems to be a reasonable number of people who like the show, based on how many in the audience cheered the Arkestra when I last saw them at the Chicago Jazz Festival a few years ago. It remains to be seen how many of them will purchase a CD, double LP or download.

Michael Rosenstein: I'm so out of touch with what pretty much ANY music fans want to hear that I can't even begin to guess what jazz fans want. I would expect that any fans of classic swing bands are going to look for reissues or previously unreleased air checks. (I suppose someone must be buying those Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra recordings but I have no idea who.)

One thing I think we are forgetting is that when this was planned and recorded, the Arkestra was touring pretty regularly. So, I'm sure this was envisioned as something to stock the merch table at those shows. That, of course, has all changed. But at some point, bands will tour again, people will come out, there will be merch tables to stock...

Bill Meyer: Yeah, the Arkestra would have had this at the table, along with a bunch of reissues. I was actually looking forward to seeing them Easter Sunday, they had two shows at Constellation planned for that night.

Derek Taylor: Bill's two reasons above pretty much hit on why I'm not interested in Swirling. I've seen the Arkestra twice, the second time almost 20 years ago, and have fond memories of both occasions. But I've also viewed them since as a concert/touring band, and the handful of recordings released post-Ra just don't hold a ray gun to really anything in the vast catalog that precedes them. COVID-19's curtailing of live performance makes the new album's importance as a money-making venture more pronounced, but to Justin's (& others) observation, what sort of music consumers are going to go for it exactly? It's a good question and one that Marshall Allen and others in the band are likely pondering.

Riffing on the overlapping components of exotica and cheese threaded through the music across Ra's tenure, the Afro-futurism advanced by the band wasn't ever limited by ethnographic authenticity. Ra routinely went on safaris to pawnshops and flea markets, searching for "exotic" instruments for the band to play. Sometimes he'd modify his finds or just attach new cosmic-themed nomenclature to them most commonly on the percussion side (Egyptian sun bells, spiral percussion gong, astro space drums, sun harp, etc.), although the prize probably goes to the Neptunian libflecto played by Danny Ray Thompson on "Friendly Love" (1973). "Strange Strings" and its lesser known sequel are probably the archetypal example of this practice of integrating "found instruments" where Ra distributed a cache to the band and banked on the musicians' ignorance regarding how to play them properly. The resulting pieces are almost all texture and synchronous atonality, which was precisely their point.

Jonathan Shaw: I don't find Swirling nearly as interesting as the Ra records I'm most familiar with--late 1950s and 1960s sides like Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy. But I'm glad that Swirling exists. Its vitality isn't conceptual or rigorous in its weirdness. It's more oriented toward song as a source of pleasure. Maybe the advanced age of some of the players provides context in itself. It's pretty great that they still want to play, and that the resulting music is so full of delight.

#dusted magazine #listeningpost #sun ra #sun ra arkestra #jazz #free jazz #swirling #strut #bill meyer #michael rosenstein #jennifer kelly #jonathan shaw #derek taylor #tim clarke #justin cober-lake

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