Maxim Gorky on…Buddy Rich?
Gorky didn’t like jazz; in a 1928 article he described it thus:
“An idiotic little hammer knocks drily: one, two, three, ten, twenty knocks. Then, like a clod of mud thrown into crystal-clear water, there is wild screaming, hissing, rattling, wailing, moaning, cackling. Bestial cries are heard: neighing horses, the squeal of a brass pig, crying jackasses, amorous quacks of a monstrous toad…this excruciating medley of brutal sounds is subordinated to a barely perceptible rhythm. Listening to this screaming music for a minute or two, one conjures up an orchestra of madmen, sexual maniacs, led by a man-stallion beating time with an enormous phallus.”
Did Gorky have a premonition of the Buddy Rich (b: 30 June 1917; d: 2 April 1987) Orchestra?
Belated hat-tip (from 2002): Dan Augustine
Dr Paul said,
March 31, 2008 at 3:01 pm
A jazz musician dies and goes up to heaven. St Peter recognises him, and takes him for a stroll. ‘We’ve got them all up here’, he said proudly, pointing to a vast reeds section. ‘There’s John Coltrane, Dexter Gordon, Tubby Hayes, Eric Dolphy, John Gilmore…’
The two of them strolled along for hours listening happily to so many of the musician’s heroes, but from around a corner came an horrendous din.
‘What on earth’s that?’ asked the horrified musician. St Peter replied:
‘Oh that’s God; he thinks he’s Buddy Rich.’
Jim Denham said,
March 31, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Listen to Mr Rich giving his band a gentle pep-talk in the bus in the interval during a gig:
http://www.rockandrollbadboy.com/audio/BuddyRich.mp3
daveinstokenewington said,
April 1, 2008 at 8:59 am
On a drummer-related note; anybody know whatever happened to Tommy Chase, the UK sticks merchant who led rather a good hard bop outfit in the 1980s?
Dr Paul said,
April 1, 2008 at 11:36 am
Jim D: ‘Did Gorky have a premonition of the Buddy Rich?’
Perhaps he had a premonition of John Coltrane’s Ascension.
Jim Denham said,
April 2, 2008 at 8:29 pm
Dave: I’ve been busy searching for information about Tommy Chase and can’t find any trace of him since his success during the short-lived British “jazz boom” of the mid-to-late 1980’s. He really does seem to have disappeared into the night. His ex-sideman Alan Barnes is, however, still very much about: perhaps *he* knows what’s happened to the one-time king of British hard-bop.
Paul: you’re pobably right that Gorky’s description applies better to latter-day ‘Trane than to Rich; Larkin wrote of ‘Ascension’ : “I can thoroughly endorse the sleeve of John Coltrane’s ‘Ascension’, (HMV) which says ‘this record cannot be loved or understood in one sitting.’ In fact I played it twice, but the double-sided carpet of bellowing and screeching laid down by Shepp, Hubbard, Marion Brown, Pharaoh Sanders , Tchicai, Dewey Johnson and the Master himself, patiently propelled by Tyner and Jones, held little appeal. Soloists appear and submerege like Titanic passengers.” That was one of Larkin’s less caustic comments about Coltrane, btw.
Jim Denham said,
April 8, 2008 at 11:18 pm
The superb British drummer and arranger Allan Ganley died on 29 March. he was a musician’s musician: as well as being a supremely subtle and swinging drummer. He mastered all aspects of music and studied musical theory at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. He was the ultimate refutation of the stereotype of the drummer as a moronic, thumping shed-builder. Which is why John Fordham’s obit in today’s Graun, begins with a drummer joke I hadn’t heard before:
Jittle Johnny: “Mummy, mummy, when I grow up I want to be a drummer.”
Mummy: ” Don’t be daft: you can’t do both.”