Carla Bley - C or D/S or D?

the carla bley band "live european tour 1977" record is really, really great. that would be my OPO (not counting "liberation music orchestra" which is probably my all time favorite "jazz" record).

Tropic Appetites is more collab. with (the late) Paul Haines, "poet" and Gato & smaller jazzish ensemble, so the songs have words and cover all sorts of ranges (more singing from Karen Mantler now aged aprox. 6, deep bass singing from Howard Johnson also playing bass clarinet, tuba, bass sax, Julie Tippetts vocals qua Linda Rondstadt) -- a mini-Escalator .. with it's Indian noir scene-through-Bombay-gin-bottle

3/4 orchestral comp. shared lp with Mantler's heavier 13, pretty cool "serious" music

(Karen Mantler's "KM and her cat Arnold get the flu" is a bit frivolous musically, and lyrically KM is still in her early twenties)

i kind'a agree with what Marcello is hinting at re Carla in this thread

after carla bley stopped collaborating with myriad mutually influencing people from paul haines through to gato barbieri those extreme left-field elements of her work lost their broader sense of fun, as she qua composer/ conductor/ dictator began to stick to just her own ideas, and maybe she'd exhausted the possibilities of trad. Spanish and Austrian elements in her work that produced a fine, slight, subtle humour
too many romps and swirls, heavy handed waltzes and all those imported recycled elements, her music began to sound the same -- so did she just have a few key ideas of how to achieve things with medium-sized ensembles ? and were (as is so often generally the case) all here good ideas all pretty well accomplished and realised on Libration Orchestra, Tong Funeral, Escalator .., 3/4 and Tropic Appetites anyway, given that these were here first opportunity to record her ideas as whole big scale works, and that these ideas must have all gestated to fruition over a five year period '67 onwards ? (Escalator .. was an on/off three year work in progress, depending on who was available, acceptable recording studio etc. i suppose)
i think it was when carla bley abondoned the method of active cooperation and collaboration with as many other guests as possible that her music started to seem like the same joke being told once too often
maybe the influence of her supposedly serious-minded partner mantler and their collective baby "WATT records" left her feeling like a "composer" ? (like frank zappa's unfortunate "one man's vision against a world of unifomity and conformity", panned elsewhere recently here on ILM, and definitely an example of how _not_ to attempt humour in music)

really she was at her best as a band leader

maybe it's that the musical jokes don't stand alone -- ie the accompanying narrative from haines in some of these projects provides the right measure of absurd/surreal glue to allow them to work as a whole

OK the landmark Jazz Composers Orchestra double lp of '68 had elements of humour in the sense of "everyone is having a seriously good time playing on this session", and it also had all those beaut extra frills, giving it that momentous "bomb has landed" feeling of event, an over-the-top feeling of momentousness that has been referred to as Wagnerian -- the serious-side, the _new_ _academy_ of new york, evidence of the cohesion of the Jazz Composers Guild, "the new thing", the consequences of the "October revolution" etc..

so husband Michael Mantler "produces" and "composes" these lavish orchestral bedrocks for some of the most accomplished "improvisers" of this new scene, a 2lp event, on Jazz Composers Orchestra (on JCOA, that's Jazz Composer Orchestra records) and in 1970 wife Carl Bley lets Escalator Over the Hill out of the studio after three years out there, three years of on off seesions, that 3lp album again on JCOA, as a complimentary walk on the wild side/ psychedilc freak out/ top-class improvisers & session musos of nyc respond to the beatles, the east, the new dawn of consciousness eminating from Haight/Ashbury, hippies yipies mystics poets students activists politics "freedoms" etc.. etc..

well with the Jazz Composers Orchestra project providing such a useful, almost popular/ contemporary music jumping in point for so many people into "free jazz" (i've always assumed this was the reason people like Sanders, Cherry and Taylor allowed Mantler to be "composer" at all) it's probably even cooler than Escalator .. -- what do you think of it Marcello ?

but i think both projects worked because the old pyramid shaped scheme of having a "composer" thinking up the whole thing was sacrificed, and all this collaboration with improvisors, poets, creative people providing all sorts of different input was allowed ..

yet Mantler and Bley respectively ended up picking up "composer" credits, and so i suppose entitlement to royalties and the like, but maybe that was simply to make the "red tape" on two such awesome multi-person collaborative projects go smoothly

that this creative couple went on to set up "WATT Records" which like "JCOA" seemed to be a part of ECM records as umbrella organisationm, well i guess that meant they could afford to do that, that they had patrons, that they had the respect of lots of people (they set up the "new music distribution" service, a forced exposure type distribution system for all the new sorts of category of records that were appearing (I don't know much about this service, but books speak highly of it -- anybody know anything about that ? )

that few of these improvisors collaborated with Bley and Mantlere again, well i dunno what that means (and Mantler did collaborations with Harold Pinter (narrative), and musically with Jack Bruce, Robert Wyatt et. al.) -- these two enormous collaborative projects can both be labelled successes, both artistically on their own feet and in providing exposure for so many really intreresting new musicians that represented the 'tommorrow' of music in 1970)

but it's not disputed that Mantler's projects in the '70s became serious affairs (OK Sam Beckett has absurd qualities as source of words, and the glumness of the sound of that words/music project, well there's humour in the insistant unrelenting glumness i suppose, a black humour of the Mike Leigh variety perhaps), and the supposed levity in Bley's stuff, well that is the humour of pomp and outrageous excess, but humour confined to instrumental music

my conclusion : once the get-down jam-session methods of the collaborations with jazz improvisors were dropped, the humour in Bley's work seems a bit forced, as though, to take an example of an early lp of hers from the '70s, reading the titles to the instrumentals on her Social Stuies is meant to add point, context, and maybe "is this funny or ironic or sarcastic or serious" subtext to her music, music which still bumps and grinds and wheezes like Austrian beer hall or English music hall bands

I once spoke to Jimmy Knepper - who I see passed on a couple of weeks ago, RIP - about the sessions (and also those for Genuine Tong Funeral & Escalator). He was a big Bley fan and a friend/patron of Roswell Rudd, both of whom persuaded him to play on the JCOA album. He admitted to feeling somewhat bewildered by the whole thing ("it was tougher even than Mingus") but recalled that the orchestra fell about in stitches when Beaver Harris inadvertently started playing 4/4 time halfway through a take. "Don't be fucking playing tempo in my fucking band!" yelled Herr Mantler (Knepper: "He [Mantler] could get far too intense about things").

As it happens, I reckon Communications is, like Don Ellis' big band work, one of these possibilities for large-scale improvising/composing which the artist never really followed through. The crucial thing was that the record went against the grain of soloist plus accompaniment; each was fully integrated into the other, each depended on the other to propel the music/playing along. Except of course for Cecil T, who was wisely left to do his own thing, and brought Lyons, Silva and Cyrille with him.

Rudd and Sanders' solo features (on Communications No 10 and Preview respectively) might well be the best and most concentrated playing either achieved on record. And Cecil is in enjoyably belligerent mood throughout the second half, Cyrille thrashing and rattling to keep up, Silva doing rather a better job of keeping up. The only question mark I have is Larry Coryell's feature; his weird blend of Wes Montgomery and Hendrix makes him sound at times like a prototype Mike Oldfield, and significantly he's the only soloist here who is at times actually drowned out by the orchestra (then again, look at his poses on the sleeve, feedbacking like mad, losing his hat in the process).

As for Mantler's subsequent work, I admire No Answer (with Jack Bruce and Don Cherry) and The Hapless Child immensely, the latter involving perhaps the best small group he ever assembled (Robert Wyatt on vocals, Bley, Terje Rypdal, Steve Swallow & Jack De Johnette) but felt that he kind of lost his way thereafter, or I lost my way with him.

Carla - there are irritating isolated moments of potential greatness in her post-Tropic Appetites work, but too often it's overwhelmed by unfunny stock gag routines (especially on Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports, where she tried to re-establish a relationship with "pop") and/or substandard musicians. I've never thought Gary Valente as anything other than a dim substitute for Rudd, and she needs musicians with rather more fire than overly polite Andy Sheppard, Lew Soloff etc. The same problem Mike Westbrook has, more or less - a band full of well-behaved NYJO graduates, but not a John Surman, Mike Osborne or George Khan amongst them.

I remember Mark S doing an interesting "she's subversive on the quiet" attempt on reviewing one of her mid-'80s muzak albums - "Night-Glo" I think it was - and it was a nice try but to me it still fundamentally sounded like complacent muzak rather than subversive stasis. I kept waiting for Peter Brotzmann to walk in and blow the whole smug structure to pieces (and the Brotz did work in the Bley/Mantler Jazz Realities band on their '67 European tour - Bley was apparently very traumatised by Brotzmann's playing and never quite lost her suspicion of free jazz thereafter).

Also, compare and contrast "Liberation Music Orchestra" with "Ballad Of The Fallen" - despair had snuffed out any fire.

I'd like to know more abt Don Ellis, he seems interesting

Send it to me!

(I like Night-Glo a lot: though I certainly can't blame anyone else for not being a fan, it gave me some very real insights when I needed them badly [8th grade] and I'm still quite attached to the record...but I still don't own it!)

Main reason I'm posting here is to clear out something I saw above; the CD version of this DOES come with a book, not a regular jewel case booklet either, but a separate one that's held together with the jewelcase in a slipcase (see: Sgt Peppers Lonely Buns Club Band)

Also, I bought this brand new from ECM, so it should be quite in print, at least here in Europe.
Anyhoo, back to listening and scrambling around the board to read about it.

Yes the thread was about Carla, but it seems unfair to exclude someone with the same hairstyle.

never did get this, but i did get dinner music

What did you make of it (don't say "dinner")?

only played the first track so far, it sounds very...slick, pastichey? it makes me think of Surrey, for some reason

It comes across to me as a satire on fusion muzak which doesn't quite come off but "Dining Alone" is a great song and "Ida Lupino," featuring CB's Jonathan Richman-style saxophone playing, was obviously heard by Smokey Robinson (cf. brass harmonies here and vocal harmonies in the verses to "Being With You").

have you seen the cover of the new emily haines album, marcello?

http://www.discogs.com/image/R-792756-1159304909.jpeg

have you read the extensive review of the new emily haines album which i posted on my blog six months ago, alex?

not yet. is it that old? anyways i always try to save the good things for later...

shit, now i realise that i know that album. at least parts of it. i hadn't seen the cover though. this is a rare case where the internet made me focus on the music without being distracted by images.

Actually I posted that review eight months ago - doesn't time fly etc.

Since this pathetic fucking retarded system won't let me link TO MY OWN BLOG go to CoM, look up Oct 2006 archives, why should I do all the work...

sorry for the hiccup when (re)loading this thread. i guess that is the discogs website telling me that i shouldn't try to link to their album cover images...

maybe the system knows it is your site, marcello. and it doesn't allow shameless self-promotion. but i as a third party can link there. ;-)

I fucking LOVE Carla Bley.

Faves are:
-Escalator Over The Hill
-Music Mechanique
-her compositions on some of the early paul bley LPs (esp the "Closer" LP on ESP.)

Just listening to Escalator Over The Hill again today and it really smokes my bacon.

EOTH is awesome, my favorite opening of a jazz album next to saint & the sinner lady

I love Carla Bley

She just turned 82

I just played a show with the guys from 0ingo B0ingo and Slugg0 told me Carla and Ann3tte Peac0ck hated each other back in the day

Another heart-stopping thread revive.

Fuck you!
S - Tropic Appetites, Dinner Music, Musique Mecanique and Social Studies. That Michael Mantler album with Robert Wyatt and Edward Gorey lyrics is off the hook too.

... in the sense that I thought she was dead, you lunatic.

haha sorry. happy bday CB!

I posted a Morricone song yesterday and ppl got mad cux they thought he was dead. I gotta calm down.

just off to revive the Sonny Rollins thread:p

She did some awesome arrangements on Haden's The Ballad of The Fallen as well.

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

Searching that out now

I discovered Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports this year and it's up there with my favorites of hers.

Inspired by Downtown Music Gallery's enewsletter LP sale, I checked several listed albums featuring Bley, sale list and comments here: Rolling Jazz Thread 2018, little bit here too: Robert Wyatt: Classic or Dud?

Spotify has a bunch more.

Or some more, at least.

Gary Burton, "Genuine Tong Funeral"

― Poisoned by Johan's pea soup. (Tom D.), Thursday, 24 May 2018 18:28 (thirty-eight minutes ago) Permalink

Gary Burton Quartet's "Dreams So Real" as well

such dedication to a hairdo.

this is really good by the way. if you want something more current.

https://www.discogs.com/Carla-Bley-Andy-Sheppard-Steve-Swallow-Andando-El-Tiempo/master/1037191

also best birth name: Lovella May Borg

I get pathetically teary when I play Silence (off The Ballad of the Fallen), to me it's a profoundly sad and moving piece of music and it also makes me think of people who are gone for some reason. But anyway, basically Carla Bley is definitely classic and I should catch up on some of her newer stuff.

► Pre-order Carla Bley Trio: ‘Life Goes On’ and listen to the title track here: https://t.co/MRioVypy9p

A striking album of new music from Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. pic.twitter.com/QNLqRjY2Y0

— ECM Records (@ECMRecords) January 10, 2020

https://ethaniverson.com/interview-with-carla-bley/

great interview, thanks for posting

this is something, re: don cherry on escalator:

CB: It was a miracle because he didn’t have any music. And even the words, when he says the syllables again and again and again, those were words from Escalator. Again it was one of the main songs, and he didn’t even know that. Everything was mystical like that with Don. He was from a different planet, definitely, god.

Pianiste, organiste, leader de premier plan et compositrice aux œuvres protéiformes, autant inspirées par le jazz que la musique classique, religieuse et folklorique, la jazzwoman américaine Carla Bley est décédée ce mardi matin. Elle avait 87 ans.https://t.co/jXM5upZGrI

— France Musique (@francemusique) October 17, 2023

wow. a true giant. RIP.

oh shit, one of the greats :(

rip!!!! :(

Couldn't say it was unexpected, just that her music means so much to me.

RIP legend

one of those titanic artists whose music I’ve never been sophisticated enough to appreciate but whose interviews I love reading. and the best hair.

sorry if that sounded flippant, I admire her a lot

I'm a grunting troglodyte and love loads of her music! Not just Escalator Over The Hill or one of the best ecm albums ever with Haden, Ballad of the Fallen, loads of her late period stuff was great as well.

You want flippant? I've always meant to listen to more of her albums but the covers were so uniformly terrible that I never took the plunge. I've only heard about half of Escalator Over The Hill and her three most recent ECM releases — Trios, Andando El Tiempo, and Life Goes On. Those last three are all really beautiful, though.

she composed the Ida Lupino tribute on Paul Bley's Closer, just one of the most beautiful things ever.

The Lost Chords one with Paolo Fresu is another beauty.

RIP Carla. Responsible for so much great, and diverse, music.

Nick Mason's Fictitious Sports is one of my favorites albums ever. It's her album all but in name.

Really horrible news. R.I.P.

I think in interviews she said Ellington was a freeriding parasite feeding off Strayhorn's talent. Not something I'd agree with - but still v funny!

Which of her other records come closest to Escalator, Tropic Appetites and the Nick Mason album, in terms of being song-based and "rock-friendly"?

If Marcello still posted here he'd probably have a few answers, but Night-Glo but would probably be among them.

I think it’s mostly Michael Mantler’s album but it think she had something to do with the Edward Gorey tribute The Hapless Child .

"After giving up the church to immerse herself in roller skating at the age of fourteen, she moved to New York at seventeen and became a cigarette girl at Birdland."

is this amazing origin story common knowledge?

her own recordings, her work with mantler, the haden collaborations (& yes ida lupino!) so much great music.

Which of her other records come closest to Escalator, Tropic Appetites and the Nick Mason album, in terms of being song-based and "rock-friendly"?

more a mantler joint than strictly bley though she's a big part of it, but maybe SILENCE (though not the biggest fan of it myself tbh)

RIP. Would also highly recommend A Genuine Tong Funeral by Gary Burton, where Carla wrote all the tunes and plays piano alongside an incredible band. V much a trial run for Escalator.

I saw her live once, playing with Charlie Haden and a late version of the Liberation Music Orchestra during Ornette Coleman's Meltdown Festival in London. It seemed significant that she was the only musician on the night who didn't take an extended solo - a sign of reticence, even then? Or a commitment to thinking always as a composer/arranger first and foremost?

If Marcello still posted here he'd probably have a few answers, but Night-Glo but would probably be among them.

RIP. Would also highly recommend A Genuine Tong Funeral by Gary Burton, where Carla wrote all the tunes and plays piano alongside an incredible band. V much a trial run for Escalator.

Seconded.

It's basically the opposite of song-based and rock-friendly, but my favorite Carla piece is 3/4, her relentless sidelong exploration of triple meter from the 1975 split LP with Michael Mantler's 13. Somehow it's never been released digitally (on CD or otherwise). Hopefully someone steps up to reissue, though original vinyl copies are still pretty cheap for now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fAJ3z293GA

xp re: song-based stuff, check out the first (live) half of I Hate To Sing if you have a high tolerance for whimsy/goofiness.

Time/Life, a tribute to Charlie Haden mostly made up of her compositions, with her arranging and on piano is absolutely beautiful and i hate it never got a vinyl release. In my top 5-10 ECM releases.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj_Z2nhDlh4

realised i'm a dummy and its not actually an ECM release! feels like it should be?

Regarding 3/4, while working on the archive for Glasgow arts space the Third Eye Centre (now the CCA), I came across a copy of the reduced score alongside a letter from Bley on JCOA headed paper. One of those amazing moments in a researcher's career when you stumble across gold. From the letter, it seems that there were plans to perform the piece in Glasgow with Scottish musicians, but it never came to fruition - mostly likely the usual logistics and funding. Bley's humour really comes across in the letter. She had visited the Third Eye in 1975 when touring with Jack Bruce, but didn't play Glasgow as leader until 1992. Photos here:
https://thirdeyejazz.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-third-eye-carla-bley-connection.html

wow

*applause*

Nice one Stew. Now where can I get some of that JCOA stationery...

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HgaUYa9wwcA/YUnuA7UOkYI/AAAAAAAACX8/Y7GDd4-3YcgfCWmQ_gxjjyJxdC6_NMj7ACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/carla%2Bbley%2Bpipe.jpg

When the kush hits

RIP to a giant. i discovered carla bley via emily haines of metric; the artwork of her heartbreaking solo piano album 'knives don't have your back' is a homage to 'escalator over the hill', one of the most mystifying records in the world, to which her father paul haines (magic jazz poet who WROTE IN ALL CAPS ALWAYS) wrote the libretto. <3

Marcello Carlin, writing for Stylus Magazine, considers the album to be "the greatest record ever made." He said: "No protest, no social commentary. No expression of love, of grief, of hope, of despair. It is literally whatever you want to make of it. It is devoid of every quality which you might assume would qualify it to be the greatest of all records. And yet it is that tabula rasa in its heart, the blank space which may well exist at the very heart of all music, revealing the hard truth that we have to fill in the blanks, we have to interpret what is being played and sung, and our interpretation is the only one which can possibly be valid, as we cannot discern any perspective other than our own.

Dave Douglas/Riverside also did a Carla Bley tribute album with 3 of her compositions in 2017.