22 May 2009

Out There...

Eric Dolphy
Out There

Sun Ra gets all the credit for fostering an Afronaut aesthetic within jazz, but one look at this cover from Eric Dolphy's 1960 album Out There shows that other musicians were also thinking about boldly going where no man had gone before. The metronome weirdly foreshadows the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, don't you think?

Elsewhere in the jazz world...
  • Howard Mandel ponders the dearth of female jazz fans, asking men to perhaps be a bit more inclusive and less misogynistic when it comes to jazz.
  • Groove Notes posted an audio interview with Billy Hart on the murder of Lee Morgan.
  • Philip Stein, an artist who created the mural that graces the back wall of the Village Vanguard, died last month. He was 90. He was the sister of current Vanguard owner Lorraine Gordon.
  • You can now listen to archived performances from Smalls Jazz Club online (h/t All Music Blog).
  • NPR has started its own jazz blog, and came up with a fantastic name, A Blog Supreme.
  • Coming Soon! Kind of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute To Miles Davis.
  • ESPN.com Special Correspondent Paul Shirley on basketball and jazz. The basketball/jazz comparison can be a bit tired, but Shirley adds new depth to the relationship. Now I have an excuse to post one of my favorite quotes from the American version of The Office. In a deleted scene from episode 1.05 ("Basketball"), Michael Scott ruminates:
    And basketball is like jazz, you know. To like pertipify it there's a jazz musician, a guy, you know... if you know jazz you know who I mean. He's uh, God what was his name? Um, he plays one of those curly horns, like those really shiny curly horns that's used in jazz a lot.


Image via Monthly Top Ten

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear David,
I find correcting-comments like this irksome when I get them on my own blog -- and I do! But no one seems to have pointed out that P. Stein would have a hard time being Lorraine Gordon's sister. No need to post this! With every good wish from a fellow sufferer, Michael Steinman

Unknown said...

Thanks for the heads-up, the error has been corrected.

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