9 Responses to V. Make your own luck

1. markweiss86 says:

   September 29, 2010 at 2:29 am

   The theme music, incidentally, is by Brian Jonestown Massacre, who played the Cubberley Sessions, back in the day. In fact, maybe they played that song at that show.

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   • markweiss86 says:

     April 20, 2011 at 9:16 pm

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2. markweiss86 says:

   October 8, 2010 at 5:27 pm

   I then noticed in the new Ledisi cd that one of her collaborators as writer and producer is a Chucky Thompson — maybe he can remix some of the Lucky Thompson performances.

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3. markweiss86 says:

   November 10, 2010 at 4:40 pm

   Speaking of Roman numeral V, I am reminded that at the deVo concert, Terry and I ran into the famous iconoclastic punk publisher V. Vale and his friend:
   http://researchpubs.com/Blog/?cat=3/

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4. Mark Weiss says:

   December 16, 2010 at 7:04 pm

   Something today reminded me of Stevenson Palfi who made a great film called “Piano Players Rarely Ever Play Together” and so, among other things, I found this vimeo clip:
   http://vimeo.com/9919950
   you have to click through a couple times to make it work….

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5. Mark Weiss says:

   December 16, 2010 at 7:07 pm

   http://www.youtube.com/user/stevensonpalfi

   not sure who posted that, hopefully a friend or survivor or stevenson and not merely a well-meaning admirer

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6. Mark Weiss says:

   February 6, 2011 at 9:47 am

   This is a draft of the article I wrote in 2005 about Don Cherry at Dartmouth. They printed a truncated version.

   DON CHERRY AT DARTMOUTH:
   THIS SPECIFIC SILENCE, 1970-
   By Mark Weiss

   Don Cherry, African-American, avant-garde of the jazz avant-garde and
   Choctaw Indian from Oklahoma, taught two ten-week courses at Dartmouth
   College in the winter and spring of 1970. He came to the College at the
   invitation and instigation of Jon Appleton, a young music professor and
   early adopter of electronic music, who was interpreting and acting on a
   college-wide self-conscious and deliberate attempt to bring more black
   perspectives to the faculty and curriculum. Cherry’s stint was actually
   part of a jazz recruiting trifecta that also yielded short fecund
   sojourns on the rural New Hampshire campus from tenor sax legend Lucky
   Thompson in 1973 and bassist/French horn player Willie Ruff in 1974.
   Cherry’s visit was by far the most fruitful, leaving indelible
   impressions on his colleagues and students, who can clearly recall that
   intriguing chapter of Dartmouth (and American:
   think Woodstock, Kent State and Vietnam) history even decades later.
   Cherry’s offerings were by far the most popular music department courses
   in Spring, 1970, their enrollment surpassed the combined total of all
   other music classes combined.

   When questioned about the story, Appleton retrieves from a file the
   curriculum vitae that Cherry submitted at Dartmouth’s request. The two
   musicians had met the previous year at a recording session in New York
   of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra (Appleton was an
   observer). Suitably impressed, Appleton put the wheels in motion to
   bring Cherry to campus.
   DON CHERRY
   STUDENT OF LIFE UNIVERSITY OF LIFE
   headlines the document which is typed on a manual typewriter with
   charming hand-written addendum.
   Although 33 when he wrote it, Cherry’s 1969 c.v.
   recounts an already legendary career:

   In 1955 I won a scholarship to LENOX SCHOOL of JAZZ.
   (“Boston, Mass” is handwritten in the margin).
   Directors: JOHN LEWIS, GUNTHER SCHULLER, GEORGE RUSSELL.

   I moved to New York in the winter of 1959 with Ornette Coleman’s
   ensemble.

   In 1960 I began studies with Director, JOHN COLTRANE.

   The five-page document continues to list other accomplishments such as
   his recording contract with Blue Note – then, as now, the world’s most
   prestigious jazz label –, and studies or collaborations with a pantheon
   of jazz greats such as Sonny Rollins, Archie Shepp, John Tchicai,
   Thelonious Monk, Albert Ayler and Pharoah “Little Rock” Sanders. It also
   lists travels, studies or commissions in Turkey, Sweden, Denmark,
   Germany and France, and his co-founding of an elementary school music
   program Arbetarnas Bildings Forbunde in Stockholm.

   The last page – “1969*” – is written in quite legible cursive prose and
   mentions more Ornette Coleman (Cherry’s original collaborator and
   band-leader, acknowledged as a pioneer of “the new thing”, still with us
   and gigging at age 74), and lectures at Long Island University and at
   five elementary schools “with small children ages 7 to 10.” The “essay
   section” here ends with a note:

   Jon-
   I hope this information is satisfactory. So sorry I was so long. Have a
   Happy summer. Don Cherry (the signature includes a trademark doodle of
   three doves over the Y.).

   Although Appleton had his secretary, reformat the document, it augurs a
   jazz course akin to having a religion course taught by someone present
   at the Last Supper.

   Cherry was accepted and came to campus. The following people have
   offered vivid and animated recollections about the course:
   Fred Haas, ’73. He is a professional musician, a saxophone player,
   living and teaching in Vermont. He actually took all three of the
   courses offered by this initiative, those of Cherry plus Lucky Thompson
   and Willie Ruff. He remembers practicing individually with Cherry in
   Cherry’s office. Cherry would make him play a piece of music then flip
   the score upside down and make him play it backwards. Haas remembers
   hearing that Cherry was coming to campus, going to the record store,
   buying Symphony for Improvisers (1966) and being blown away by the lp.
   “It was the first jazz music I had ever heard that did not take a
   traditional song format.”

   Nelson Armstrong ’73, who has worked many years in the alumni office of
   the College, was an undergraduate football player and music major, as
   well as one of the fews African-Americans in the student body. Armstrong
   says that Cherry had a “Pied Piper” effect on students – he developed
   quite a following. He said that Cherry was like “apple in a bowl of
   grapes” among the other Dartmouth faculty of the day.

   Steve Herzfeld ’73 took the course as a freshman, and eventually dropped
   out College to travel to Europe with Cherry. He is either by far the
   best example of Cherry’s students, or the worst. He, too, took
   Thompson’s course. (Thompson, by the way, recently passed away at age
   81. He was a legendary sideman, accompanying a dizzying array of
   luminaries like Count Basie, Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie. He is
   famous for his disgust with the music business – and American society in
   general. After leaving Dartmouth he taught one year at Yale then dropped
   out of society completely. In the last ten years before his death in
   August, 2005 he was said to have lived as a squatter in Seattle;
   music-community members there rallied to get him preferential treatment
   in Seattle social services and adult day care, but he died pretty sad
   and lonely, and disoriented. Herzfeld remembers several outbursts and a
   terrifying account of racism that Thompson claimed he and his band
   including his pregnant wife experienced touring in the South in the
   1950s. Herzfeld recalls these classroom sessions as if they were
   TiVoed).

   Jonathan Sa’Adah, ’71, is a professional photographer based in Vermont
   and Montreal who others remember as copiously documenting on film
   Cherry’s course as well as several public performances. He too traveled
   to Europe either with or for Cherry. Many people, if they don’t know
   Cherry, may have heard of or heard songs by his children Neneh Cherry
   and Eagle-Eye Cherry, both of whom had Top 40 pop hits on commercial
   radio in the 1980s and 1990s. The Dartmouth Cherry students and Appleton
   remember the very young Cherry kids crawling around on stage during
   classes and during performances, or banging on the drumkits. Cherry
   moved to Europe in the sixties, part of a larger trend of jazz
   musicians, especially blacks, who received better treatment there, and
   wished to protest Vietnam War by their absence. Cherry married Moki
   Cherry, a Laplander from Sweden (i.e. She was indigenous minority in her
   country; Neneh is actually Don Cherry’s step-daughter, while Eagle Eye
   is the child of Don and Moki).

   Appleton claims that more than 100 students took Cherry’s courses. In
   his letter to the dean of faculty Leonard Rieser on January 23, 1970 he
   asks the College to extend Cherry’s stay an additional term. Appleton
   pointed out that Cherry’s course had more students than the other music
   courses combined.
   “I feel that the retention of Mr. Cherry is highly desirable for the
   following reasons: 1) The number of students enrolled in his courses
   during this term exceeds the total enrollment for all other courses
   presently being offered by the department. 2) Having visited two of Mr.
   Cherry’s classes I feel that he brings an entirely new dimension in
   musical instruction that should figure prominently in the way all
   colleges and universities approach the teaching of music in the future.”
   Rieser wrote back to Cherry (cc:
   Jon Appleton) on March 5 stating that he was “delighted” that Cherry
   would extend his stay, and that beyond their popularity the courses
   “enjoy the high regard of your colleagues” in the music department.

   Beyond his voluminous stories and expertise regarding Don Cherry,
   Herzfeld recalls his relationship with a Cherry sideman, the South
   African bassist Johnny Dyani. Cherry pre-arranged then used some of his
   teaching stipend to lure his international trio to perform and teach
   clinics on campus. Herzfeld recalls Dyani making a point of
   extinguishing a cigarette with his fingers to highlight the callouses
   that a committed bass player would grow on his fingers.
   Summing up what is obviously a special memory to him as mentor, Herzfeld
   said of Dyani: “What made him unique is that when he heard hoof-beats he
   naturally thought of zebras.”

   Another musician who Cherry brought to campus for his combo is the
   Turkish percussionist Okey Temiz. An avatar of “world music” Cherry
   studied in Turkey with a trumpet player with the irresistibly
   mentionable name of Muffuka Fallay (better known as Muffy Fallay
   — Dizzy Gillespie met Fallay in Turkey and implored him to come to the
   U.S. Saying “People will book you just for your name.”). Cherry was also
   known for travels in, an music mastery of, Asia and Africa.
   Cherry’s relationship with the percussionist Temez came out of his
   studies with Fallay but truth be told I only walk this factual tangent
   because I cannot resist that name, again, that Muffuka Fallay.

   Herzfeld remembers Cherry teaching a new way of listening. He would
   train his students to continue listening to the “specific silence” that
   followed that particular sounding of an in-class Chinese gong.

   While on campus, Appleton and Cherry cut an album together that featured
   Appleton on Synclavier and Cherry on horns and percussion. The two men
   gathered every morning for two weeks for 15-minute improvisational
   sessions, eventually releasing a four-song album culled from the
   sessions. Appleton described the session in a July 1971 article in Music
   Journal. He said that he wanted to contrast the world’s most modern
   music – from a recently invented electronic keyboard, a synthesizer that
   he helped design – with the primal sounds that Cherry had studied
   worldwide and could bring forth. They also borrowed from Dartmouth
   collections a rare African xylophone and a Native American flute from
   the Hood Museum collection.

   Cherry was so taken by the sound of the Hood wood flute that he borrowed
   it from the college and took it with him to Europe in the summer of
   1970. Appleton has correspondences in which Cherry is apologizing for
   taking liberty with the loan:

   Dear Carol:
   We have finally arrived and all are well.
   Yes, I do have the Taos flute. I borrowed it to use in radio shows in
   Europe.
   I plan to return it in the fall for I am to return to the USA in
   September.
   I hope that Mr. Whiting of the museum would understand How important it
   is that I can play the flute and it must be heard and that the flute
   will be returned and taken care of.
   If necessary I will send it back immediately.
   Miss you all.
   Much love,
   Don Cherry
   June 25, 1970

   In New York City, in October, 2005, there was a three-week, 20-show
   tribute to the music of Don Cherry marking the 10th anniversary of
   Cherry’s death. Blue Note in 2005 re-issued re-mastered versions of
   Symphony for Improvisers (1966) and Where is Brooklyn(1966). Appleton is
   negotiating the reissue of “Human Music”, done at the Dartmouth computer
   music lab for Flying Dutchman label. Although not an essential part of
   the Cherry’s catalog, it is inimitable and unique and a sonic
   encapsulation of Cherry’s visit to Dartmouth, and the era. The gong that
   Cherry struck years ago for Herzfeld, Haas and the other Dartmouth
   students – and for many other musicians, fans and people – reverberates.

   “Human Music” was re-issued shortly thereafter via Pat Thomas and Water Music. I also remember suggesting to the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine that they should put out a jazz cd insert featuring parts of “Human Music” plus the Dizzy cd recorded live at Dartmouth, plus various other Dartmouth related tracks.

   In a quasi-related matter: I saw in NY Times last week the obit of Milton Babbitt the composer and inventer, at Columbia and Princeton, on another early synthesizer. During research on this topic I also would look for or run into the name John Chowning, from Stanford (whose daughter was classmate of mine).

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7. Mark Weiss says:

   March 7, 2011 at 9:43 pm

   This is Steve Herzfeld’s recollection sent to me in 2005 about the course he took from Lucky thirty-five years prior:
   Lucky Thompson was a very interesting teacher. He was very focused on the unfair conditions in America for black people and he told his class that he had hesitated to come to Dartmouth to teach because he had heard it was an elite school for rich white kids and he had no interest in trying to teach us to play jazz music. This came out one day in class when a fellow challanged him as to whether he was “good enough to teach at an Ivy League school since he didn’t have a PhD” Lucky never lost his composure, he never appeared to me to be bitter or vindictive only he knew he was a brilliant artist and knew that many rich kids especially white kids had no idea what life was like in America for blacks or artists or for poor people in general. He simply told the fellow that he considered him ignorant about life in the USA and although the particular student continued to try to heckle him Lucky completely won over most of the class. His final comment to the troublemaker stayed in my awareness all these years. He said, “You know maybe what you said needed to be said here today… and if that is the case then it is a good thing you were here because we could have waited around here forever and I never would have said it.” Another class I remember clearly was the time he talked to us about Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday and Dizzy and others that were his friends in the 40s and 50s. He explained about Billie’s heroin habit and how it effected her and everyone around her and how it killed her. Clearly he was talking about a person he knew and loved and it was obvious that it pained him tremendously even to share it openly like that. He told us he had decided that opening our hearts and minds was his mission at Dartmouth and he was not at all concerned with playing for us or jamming with us or teaching us to write arrangements. His stories about Duke Ellington focussed on the way that his manager/publisher took credit as co-writer on his compositions and took a good sized commission on all his bookings as well and how this was standard because in those days a black man could usually not negotiate his own business arrangements without being cheated at every turn. So the answer was to get someone who could make demands on your behalf and let him cheat you. Ellington was a rare and great genius and many people (like Ken Burns in his fabulous video series Jazz) tell us that Ellington’s manager made a successful career for him that he would not have had otherwise. Lucky didn’t dispute that but he wanted us to face the truth of the exploitation and how wrong the situation was. To be able to feel it and imaging ourselved having to live with that type of injustice. He never raised his voice in anger that I can recall. Actually he maintained the sweet tone that he was famous for on saxaphone. However, those of us who hung on his every word in class often felt like we had been put through the wringer. One day he started to tell us what seemed like a simple story about going out on the road with Dizzy in a big band and how his wife was travelling with him. The story progressed with details about the band and the music. He enthused over how it felt to be dealing with such fresh ideas musically and the joy of working with such talented and creative people. He mentioned some of the itinerary and how he always enjoyed seeing the different parts of the country and seeing the way different people lived. This was in the 1950s. He explained how they slept on the bus and sometimes didn’t get paid for whatever reason etc. He told us how midway through the tour his wife became ill and after a few days they scraped together enough money to take her to the doctor in a small Southern town. The doctor examined her and told Lucky that his wife had a tumor in her abdomen and needed an operation to remove it. Lucky told us that if he and Dizzy had held the whole band upside down and shaken them they wouldn’t have gotten more than a few coins. The doctor insisted on payment for the operation so they decided to just pray that she would make it back to New York where they hoped they could organize for her care. He waited a moment and then continued telling us how some months later the tumor had come out and how it was still around since in reality it turned out that his wife was pregnant and it was his daughter Jade. Lucky was a master of timing and phrasing and I will tell you that not one of us in the room saw the ending of the story coming and nobody doubted the veracity. The truth that some doctor in America would not only try to make him pay for unnecessary surgery but wanted to abort his child in the process silenced even those in the class who often accused Lucky of being overly critical and anti-American. So as those of us who knew Lucky Thompson reflect on his passing I offer this thought. Lucky accomplished his goal to teach some Dartmouth students all about something which in those days of the early 70’s we simply called “soul”.

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