Cecil Taylor S+D

The most puzzling implication is that it was only the distraction of Ornette that prevented Cecil Taylor from having greater mass appeal!
The book seems to have a grudge against certain elements of the free jazz scene: "it attracted a number of charlatans and inferior players". The writeup on Pharoah Sanders is dismissive of his career arc, and apparently Sonny Sharrock "actually boasted of his musical ignorance". At least it has a lot of detail about UK jazz musicians that wouldn't be in other reference works.

The book seems to have a grudge against certain elements of the free jazz scene: "it attracted a number of charlatans and inferior players".

Critics who fling around shit like this are, for whatever reason, utterly incapable of further articulating their point. What makes a certain player a "charlatan"? "Inferior" to whom/what? If Sharrock "actually boasted of his musical ignorance" why no quote backing this up? The answer to that is likely because what Sharrock has said -- "People used to get mad at me because I’d get hired for a gig and I’d say, ‘I ain’t gonna play chords. That’s guitar. I’m a horn player. I just play a fucked-up horn'" -- was deliberately misinterpreted to bolster that critic's agenda.

You know whose career Ornette killed? The Benny Golson-Art Farmer Jazztet.

I wouldn't say Ornette killed their career. He absolutely got a lot more publicity on that engagement than Golson/Farmer, but they had very long and fruitful careers. They knew they weren't playing the new music. But Farmer toured and recorded right up until his death (including for such prominent labels as CTI and Contemporary), and Golson is still alive and playing at 92 (and was apparently a significant influence on Coltrane, particularly Golson's recordings with Blakey).

And the pianist in the Jazztet, McCoy Tyner, went on to have a pretty decent career.

Here's the full sentence from the book:

Sharrock claimed to be the first guitarist to play free jazz, and so topsy-turvy had values become at the end of the 1960s that he actually boasted of his musical ignorance, saying he could write ‘but not read music. Do not know any standard tunes or any other musicians’ licks’.

Incidentally, Jazz: the Rough Guide has a blurb on the back: "Written by musicians rather than musicologists - and it shows!"

I haven't read a ton of Carr's work -- he wrote a serviceable but largely unnecessary Miles bio some years back -- but he sounds like someone for whom what Cecil and Ornette did was the absolute limit of what he would accept (or accept as "jazz"). And when a movement comes along that appears to dismiss tradition so forcefully, someone like Carr is ultimately going to be lost: his reference points no longer apply.

Can anyone recommend a good Cecil biography?

just to catch up on the ian carr stuff (sorry raymond)

— carr's original version of the miles book came out in 1982: "the definitive" (1999ish) was a later reworking and possibly was by then unecessary but i think the 1982 , and was possibly at that time the first book-length detail study (viz carr was a professional musician himself and dutifully slogs thru the musicology)
— my guess re the snidey stuff on charlatans blah blah is that this is a british critic struggling with the political wing of the new thing (musicians like shepp, even more so critics like baraka and kofsky) and riffing off on the notion (which i certainly recall encountering in the 70s) that some militants considered cecil too academically inclined to be making properly black music? hence that -- despite ornette's approval -- he encountered undeserved resistance? (and i mean the scene was not an uncomplicated love-in… )

it's worth stressing how very *distant* much british jazz commentary was from black US life even in the 70s -- really only val wilmer had good direct contacts and information, everything else was arriving second or third-hand, thru quite biased filters (and as serious as your life was only published in 1977: tho of course some of the interviews that feed into it predate this)

(i shd add that a relative i'm very fond of was close to carr and fond of him so i'm inclined to cut him a little slack just bcz family but he's not a sparkling writer lol)

s/b i think the 1982 , and was possibly

Can anyone recommend a good Cecil biography?

There isn't one. Ben Young has supposedly been working on one for about 15 years but I don't know if it'll ever be published. A.B. Spellman's Four Lives in the Bebop Business has a long and very good section on Cecil, but it's from the 1960s so it's all about his early years.

Also: Clark Coolidge, poet and drummer, has always been v. tuned in to Cecil: https://www.google.com/search?q=Clark+Coolidge+Cecil+Taylor&oq=Clark+Coolidge+Cecil+Taylor&aqs=chrome..69i57j33i299.18708j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

Howard Mandel’s book Miles, Ornette, Cecil features about 60 or 70 pages of interview and analysis of Taylor, like a very long magazine article. It’s from 2008, so provides a different view to the Spellman book.

Mandel and I have had beef in the past so I never checked the book out, but I'm idly curious. Is it any good?

It's no Bobby's World.

wondering if anybody here has a .pdf of the liner notes for the "cecil taylor in berlin '88" box set. wouldn't be a bad place to look for info after the spellman and mandel books.

Found a used copy of the Mandel on ebay for $7.50, so I'll check it out when it arrives.

I remember enjoying the Mandel book; as I recall, the best section was on Ornette. The Cecil section was largely an interview, and as I suggested above, reads a little like a gossipy magazine feature: "I met Cecil at dawn on the subway, looking like he's much the worse for wear", "Cecil sweeps the white powdered residue off the coffee table before he answers", etc.

wondering if anybody here has a .pdf of the liner notes for the "cecil taylor in berlin '88" box set.

I think the only way to get that now is by purchasing it on FMP’s Bandcamp. I flipped through that book years ago and it’s mostly about the residency. Which, to be sure, is a significant part of Cecil’s career, but I don’t recall much in the way of biographical/historical detail. There are many, many photos, and recollections from the musicians he collaborated with during his residency. I don’t think any of it is duplicated in the individual CD booklets.

Thanks all.

My question was inspired by this Taylor interview from the early 1990s:

https://writing.upenn.edu/epc/authors/funkhouser/ceciltaylor.html

woah. i did not know there was (color!) footage of the '69 band with sam rivers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8esrU0T_J5Y

watched that last week there is a different longer one too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxk-mK-uQsU

short one from 69 in Maeght too
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKmhOO-0Kyw

i dremt cecil was scheduled to give me a piano lesson but we kept being interrupted before it began (which on waking i feel is for the best)

A doc I helped edit in its early stages is now up on YT. I remember meeting CT a couple of times during the process and he was a gracious, sweet man.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atu8dab3atc

Sure, it's on YouTube now after I paid like $35 for a DVD of it last month.

I think the ‘Complete Return Concert’ could be my favorite Cecil release period

Can’t believe anyone who likes Taylor wouldn’t like his poetry. It’s an essential part of setting the mood and I always found his poetic introductions led fluidly into the music.

I’m a fan of it, and it’s something he worked very hard at. The original plan for the Bill Dixon/Cecil 1992 duos set was to release a 2CD box (both artists preferred CDs to vinyl) with a large folio containing Cecil’s poetry and Bill’s artwork. Obviously, that set didn’t materialize until decades later, and in a less elaborate presentation. But Cecil’s poetry was something he very much wanted highlighted in that package, something more than the typical liner-notes treatment his poetry had usually been given on his releases.

I know he published some poems in small literary magazines here and there, too. At various points he talked about publishing a book but never did obviously.

Unperson, is that new Taylor/Dixon record available legitimately as a download. All respect to Rob Young but his insistence on making these expensive physical objects is annoying.

Nope. $95 for the vinyl or nothing! I was amazed he was willing to send me MP3s so I could review it for The Wire, and even then they were vinyl rips. He's a fanatic.

what release are you talking about?

Might have to troll the dark web

what release are you talking about?

Sadly, I think this is where things are heading..

Ten years from now you’ll go to watch a movie at one of the few movie theaters left for like $100 a ticket

xp yeah okay i'm scratching my head here thinking ... who tf is rob young lol

actually, i'm still confused. what is the new taylor/dixon release?

OK, to clarify: Triple Point Records is a label run by Ben Young, longtime WKCR employee (no longer there, I don't think) and author of the "bio-discography" book Dixonia (a very valuable resource if you're super into Bill Dixon and his role in the 1960s NYC out jazz scene in particular).

Duets 1992 is a double LP of studio duos between Cecil Taylor and Bill Dixon, recorded in France in 1992 and never released at the time. It came out on Triple Point in 2019 after much delay (I saw the cover art at the Whitney exhibition dedicated to Taylor in 2016) and sells for $95 plus shipping. Vinyl only, no digital (you don't even get a download with your purchase). The music is amazing and deserves to be much more widely available, but whatcha gonna do.

OK, i knew all those things but to be clear the post was referring to a "new" release put out by somebody named rob young so pardon my confusion

i appreciate the breakdown though, since folks may follow the thread and not know and i don't want the free jazz threads here to be cryptic or insular

i appreciate the breakdown though, since folks may follow the thread and not know and i don't want the free jazz threads here to be cryptic or insular

My feeling exactly. And to be clear, the reason this discussion cropped up is because I wrote in my Substack newsletter about a Cecil/Bill concert that I spotted on YouTube this weekend, which was the day before the studio recording session. Here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVc3qMW1fSY

There’s pro-shot video of both that and their performance in Verona.

I probably posted this before, and it’s mentioned in the liner notes of the Triple Point set, but the original plan in 1992 was for a 2CD box (Bill and Cecil preferred CDs to vinyl) with a book of Bill’s artwork and Cecil’s poetry. Unsurprisingly, no label wanted to release it at the time, at least not on the artists’ terms. It would’ve been incredible if the eventual release was what was originally intended, with the addition of a DVD of the filmed performances, and maybe contemporary reviews of those shows (Bill and Cecil were on the cover of France’s Jazz Hot that summer, and that photo was used in the artwork unperson saw at the Whitney).

As irritatingly cumbersome, pricey, and gatekeepy as the Triple Point set is, at least it has the full backing and approval of the artists’ estates, and that the direct representatives of those estates are being compensated fairly.

my only musical controp is that Love For Sale is one of his best albums

not controversial in my household

I'll try and make it more controp by stating it his best then! Been reading the Thelonious Monk book and was amused that Cecil was initially barred from the Five Spot for breaking an already fragile and dilapidated piano. I love this guy so much.

RDG Kelley's book? i still need to read it, sadly

yeah, it's a tremendous read. I'm taking it slowly and listening to stuff referenced in it. It has taught me a few things and is so good.

Thought this revive would be for unperson's Cecil Taylor book, when's that out?

Not sure yet. Publisher's working on it. I just sent them back cover copy and an author photo today, in fact! I've seen a preliminary page layout, and I know they're talking to the folks at FMP and the Jazzinstitut Darmstadt about including some photos. They're also designing the cover using a painting I sent them. It'll definitely be out this year, though.