What's the deal with 60's jazz liner notes?

It's really bad writing, at least by the standards of "On Writing Well" or (name your favorite style guide). High-school students write that way, before they've learned how to communicate more clearly and effectively.

― i’m still stanning (morrisp)

sometimes obfuscatory bureaucratese is what's called for

seldom in jazz liner notes, mind

Did we have a thread for those 1970s copy-heavy music magazine ads where it would start like "Tangerine Dream doesn't want you to get high before listening to their music. The music alone will get you high enough"? I feel like there's some overlap here.

Vintage seventies (or sixties and eighties) magazine ads for albums

pulled out “quiet nights” and found this classic opening paragraph to the liner notes:

The nineteenth century French painter Eugène Delacroix once observed: "Talent does whatever it wants to do. . . . Genius does only what it can." So it is with Miles Davis—Miles the man and Miles the dedicated and instinctive musician. An aura of moody mysteriousness has been planted around Miles by writers and critics who desperately try to put the paradoxical pieces into place. But to the fiercest and only critic that matters to him—Miles himself—all is clear: "I am one thing, a musician; I only can do one thing, play my horn."

Yes, good riddance to all that and thank god we are living in the golden age of music criticism in which we are always kept abreast of who threw shade at who on twitter

i wouldn't want to do without 60s jazz liner notes for the typography alone

If someone on Pitchfork could shout out Eugène Delacroix while discussing musician Twitter shade that’d really be the dream, though

geez lighten up, paul

sorry. Over the years I've enjoyed and learned a lot from the kind of music writing being ridiculed in this thread. Sure, there's a lot of purple prose, but there's also genuine passion for the subject(s), good information and deep analysis. 50s / 60s liner notes were definitely instrumental in my learning to love jazz.

totally agree- one thing I have always loved is the feeling of reportage coming from them when you consider how short the turnaround time between recording and release could be

Yes! And those writers were in many cases well acquainted with the artists, many of whom likely approved of those (frequently hagiographic) essays.

I've enjoyed my share of these things. But it's weird saying Miles isn't talented.

the critic paradoxically continues

In this album, as in all his performances, Miles is an artist whose main concern is for the artistic. He has a fine ear, is a musician's musician, and knows what he is doing each minute. And yet, with his high sophistication of style and well-disciplined direction of talent, Miles still speaks with a simplicity to which a child can respond. A nine-year-old girl, after listening to one of his records for a moment, quipped, "That's Miles Davis!" How did she know? "Because it sounds like a little boy who's been locked out and wants to get in."

> the feeling of reportage

were some of these guys actually "reporters" and not "critics" because they sure refer to "critics" as some outside group... in basically every one of these things

I think they just mean other critics

That nine-year old girl was Ken Tynan's daughter, iirc. At least, it was in his profile of Miles that I first read the line.

Unrelated, but this got a laugh out of me yesterday, from an LP by vibraphonist Gary Burton

...a collection of nine of the loveliest tunes ever written as interpreted by one of the foremost singers of our time. Singer? Where's the singer? Listen, he's right there, front and center...

WHAT, you say??

Gary Burton is a singer. It just happens that his voice is the vibraphone

Touché, 60s jazz album liner notes. Touché.