Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!wayback!wjh
From: wjh@wayback.UUCP
Newsgroups: rec.music.misc,rec.music.classical,rec.music.folk,rec.music.makers,rec.misc,news.misc
Subject: Re: Not all West Coast Jazz is "cool"
Message-ID: <1194@wayback.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 14-Sep-87 19:38:33 EDT
Article-I.D.: wayback.1194
Posted: Mon Sep 14 19:38:33 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 16-Sep-87 05:43:20 EDT
References: <7917@shemp.UCLA.EDU> <3306@sdcc6.ucsd.EDU> <810@cod.UUCP> <2000@sfsup.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ
Lines: 46
Xref: utgpu rec.music.misc:5585 rec.music.classical:1043 rec.music.folk:585 rec.music.makers:739 rec.misc:369 news.misc:787
Summary: stereotyping?

In article <2000@sfsup.UUCP>, mingus@sfsup.UUCP (Damballah Wedo) writes:
> 
> I reject blanket statements condemning West Coast jazzers as a bunch
> of white wimps who, in Sonny Stitt's phrase, "don't even sweat." First,
> they were not all white; see Hampton Hawes and Harold Land and Buddy
> Collette, for starters. Second, there is nothing wimpy about Mulligan's
> sound. You can have Chet Baker, and you can definitely have Dave Brubeck,
> but you absolutely can't have Art Pepper, a brilliant alto saxophonist.
> Pepper is not too well known because heroin addiction and subsequent
> prison and hospital stays kept him off the scene for 15 years.
> 

Marcel, I'm surprised at your continuation of the stereotyping of 
(geographically) west coast jazz musicians as musicians who play "west coast
jazz." Although Hampton Hawes and Harold Land were geographically west coast
musicains, I don't think either usually played west coast jazz: Hawes was
one of the finest straight bop pianists in jazz (check out his 3 volume All
Night Session, a quartet date featuring Jim Hall, just released on a 2 CD
set); Harold Land was a member of the prototype hard bop quintet, the
Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet.

What about LA's Chico Hamilton? the early quintets were definitely west
coast, but the groups from the early-mid sixties with Charles LLoyd
certainly weren't.  What about LA's Dolphy, who could play west coast with
Hamilton, but certainly wasn't when he was with Mingus or Coltrane?  
What about our mutual favorite, Mingus, who grew up in LA? 
Some of his rare, very early "experimental" music was related to west 
coast jazz, but not much of the later work was west coast. What about Stan
Getz (geographically, east coast), who played some good (althoough derived)
bop in the early fifties, but later played a lot of the best west coast jazz?

The point is that west coast jazz as a jazz style is distinct from bop, hard
bop, avant garde, New Orleans, etc., but the musicians who played
"west coast jazz" are not the same as west coast musicians. West coast, like
bop, avant garde, etc. was played by easterners as well as westerners,
blacks as well as whites, musicians who came from bop as well as musicains
who went into bop. The distinction was looked down on by many musicians in
the 50s (heyday of west coast jazz): the real distinction (as has been said
ever so often by the best jazz musicians) is between good music and bad
music.  As you pointed out, there was a lot of bad west coast jazz, just as
there was a lot of bad bop (why aren't the bad beboppers put down the
way the bad west coasters are), but there is also some great west coast jazz
(not necessarily from west coast musicians: weren't Miles Birth of the Cool
recordings really the first west coast recordings).

Bill Hery