Culture Icons... R.I.P

Cecil Taylor died on the 5th.
He was 89 - that is good, that he lived to be old. Not all the great jazz lives are tragedies.
I moved his piano a couple of times, when he came to town - he traveled with it, a Bosendorfer with the full extra octave. A ridiculous thing to haul around cross country, but they were new then and he couldn't count on the local supply. Great concerts, if you like intense free jazz - he'd hand the room that piano.

Buell Neidlinger, Taylor's bassist for seven of his best years, died a couple of weeks ago. A classical cello prodigy, teenage nervous breakdown, picked up the bass and - eventually - the musical world of America. The good stuff, anyway. He owned a standup bass that had played on the very first performance of Handel's Messiah (King George III owned and played it) and on the recording of the Eagles's "Hotel California" (Buell owned and played it). He played with Bill Monroe, he played with the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony (principal bassist for years), he played with Frank Zappa, he played with Billie Holiday, he played with Thelonius Monk. He formed a bluegrass-based band that played Thelonius Monk standards. He recorded Schubert's "Trout" Quintet.

I first knew the name from two of Leo Kottke's better albums, which he produced and arranged for and played cello on. (They were Leo's first after tendinitis forced a change of sound on a player who had always been focused on sound, and a rehab that lasted three years for a player who made his mark via virtuosity - the producer played a key role.)

 
iceaura said:
Cecil Taylor died on the 5th.
He was 89 - that is good, that he lived to be old. Not all the great jazz lives are tragedies.
I moved his piano a couple of times, when he came to town - he traveled with it, a Bosendorfer with the full extra octave. A ridiculous thing to haul around cross country, but they were new then and he couldn't count on the local supply. Great concerts, if you like intense free jazz - he'd hand the room that piano.
Click to expand...

Not quite new, but rare--and extremely expensive. Busoni commissioned the design of the 97 key Bosendorfer Imperial in the early days of the twentieth century, in order to accommodate certain arrangements of organ pieces for piano which required a fuller bottom end.

Any idea when Taylor started using the Imperial? From what I can tell, he was using it almost exclusively by the '80s, but I can't place his earliest usage.
 
Harlan Ellison died.

A writer. I've heard him use "inveigled" in an interview.
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-harlan-ellison-20180628-story.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlan_Ellison
The obituaries generally go light on Ellison's broader cultural influence - not just writing a well-known script for the original Star Trek but heavily contributing to the establishment of the main characters as we know them, by that script, for example. Not just combatively suing people he thought had robbed him, but using the suits to publicize the cause of paying writers in modern culture. "Pay the effing writer" came from Ellison.

They also go light on his various political involvements - he marched in Selma with MLK, he maintained a policy of refusing to hold readings etc in States that had not passed the ERA, that kind of thing - and enthusiasms - he reviewed (professionally) jazz and related music, hung out with the musicians, and owned a famous collection of jazz vinyl (no word on what will happen to it).

This interview is worth the time, partly because it's set up and edited so that the interviewer asks concise questions and then stays out of the way, and partly because the interviewer has a remarkable voice. Seriously - that voice you might think is a special effect for introduction is the man's voice, throughout.
 
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Joseph Jarman died, on the 9th.
https://pitchfork.com/news/jazz-musician-and-buddhist-priest-joseph-jarman-dead-at-81/
The Art Ensemble Of Chicago was always worth a hearing, and significantly because that guy was in it. The hyperlink through nests a couple of examples - the first is of a well known composition of his (Non Cognitive Aspects Of The City) that was just performed on the 7th, in England, by a group including a vocalist, two days before Jarman's death. (A little more "accessible":
)

Among the "simple minded" public Buddhists. Fourth Degree Black Belt Aikido practitioner. And another in the list of American black musicians who spent time in the US Army Airborne.
 
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The sun is unfortunately not going to be shining anymore on Scott Walker:
 
The great Daniel Johnston died the other day - https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/daniel-johnston-obituary/ In certain respects, he was the quintessential Outsider Artist; in others, well, maybe not so much "Outsider"--he was championed by everyone from Kurt Cobain to Sonic Youth, and was covered by Beck, Pearl Jam (!?), and Tom Waits. Still, he was institutionalized--for long stretches--multiple times, and lived most of his life with his parents.

His music, and his art, is quite raw, artless, and painfully sincere--even songs like "Caspar the Friendly Ghost" evoke a powerful emotional response. Some listeners may be turned off by his... unusual form of Christianity, which was at the forefront of much of his work, and his obsession with the Devil--who was very much real for Daniel.

He collaborated with a number of friends of mine over the years, all of whom were very much enamored by both his sincerity and his ability to craft powerful songs, howver crude and primitive. There weren't nothin' phony or affected in any of his endeavors.

 
Damn.

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Musician and Artist, Dead at 70 <<<

14-Genesis-Breyer-P-Orridge.w330.h330.jpg
 
Max Von Sydow - 8 March 2020.
A rare case in the news of a 90 year old not dying from the Coronavirus (too soon?).

“Klytus, I’m bored. What plaything can you offer me today.”
Rest in peace, Ming the Merciless.
 
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