{"id":456,"date":"2006-04-20T01:07:00","date_gmt":"2006-04-20T08:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=456"},"modified":"2006-04-20T01:07:00","modified_gmt":"2006-04-20T08:07:00","slug":"comments_john_williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2006\/04\/comments_john_williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Comments: John Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

COMMENT 1<\/strong>
\nHere’s a message from Bill Crow following the recent Rifftides<\/em> piece about pianist John Williams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is a recent release on Hep Records of a Spike Robinson CD, The C.T.S. Session<\/em><\/a>, on which John is the pianist. I am the bassist, and Peter Cater of London is the drummer.Louis Stewart plays guitar on a few tracks. We made it in 1998 after our appearance at the Cork Jazz Festival, but it sat on the shelf for a few years after Spike died. Johnny Williams was a great pleasure to play with on that tour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Jim Wardrop for also calling the Robinson album to our attention.
\nCOMMENT 2<\/strong>
\nThe critic Larry Kart sent this:<\/p>\n

Thanks for the heads up on that John Williams CD and the neat (sorry to sound like a ’50s teenager, but that’s the word that came to mind) profile of him. I’ve always enjoyed Williams’ playing, which was, as you say, a unique personal offshoot of his influences; no one could mistake Williams for anyone else. Percussive and rollicking, but there were times when he got so rumbustious that it seemed as though he were about to throw some furniture around the room. In that vein, he sounded to me like a modern Joe Sullivan. Wonder if Williams knew Sullivan’s stuff. Speaking of which, here’s a remarkable (I think) poem by Englishman Roy Fisher (b. 1930), who’s also a jazz pianist. It’s in his new book The Long and Short of It: Poems 1955-2005<\/em><\/a>:
\nTHE THING ABOUT JOE SULLIVAN
\nThe pianist Joe Sullivan
\njamming sound against idea
\nhard as it can go
\nflorid and dangerous
\nslams at the beat, or hovers,
\ndrumming, along its spikes,
\nin his time almost the only
\none of them to ignore
\nthe chance of easing down,
\nwalking it leisurely,
\nhe’ll strut, with gambling shapes,
\nunderpinning by James P.,
\namble, and then stride over
\ngulfs of his own leaving, perilously
\ntoppling octaves down to where
\nthe chords grow fat again
\nand ride hard-edged, most lucidly
\nvoiced, and in good inversions even when
\nthe piano seems at risk of being
\nhammered the next second into scrap.
\nFor all that, he won’t swing
\nlike all the others;
\ndisregards mere continuity,
\nthe snakecharming business,
\nthe ‘masturbator’s rhythm’
\nunder the long variations:
\nSullivan can gut a sequence
\nin one chorus–
\n–approach, development, climax, discard–
\nand sound magnanimous.
\nThe mannerism of intensity
\noften with him seems true,
\ntoo much to be said, the mood
\npressing in right at the start, then
\nrunning among stock forms
\nthat could play themselves
\nand moving there with such
\nquickness of intellect
\nthat shapes flaw and fuse,
\naltering without much sign,
\nconcentration
\nso wrapped up in thoroughness
\nit can sound bluff, bustling
\njust big-handed stuff–
\nbelied by what drives him in
\nto make rigid, display,
\nshout and abscond, rather
\nthan just let it come, let it go–
\nAnd that thing is his mood:
\na feeling violent and ordinary
\nthat runs in among standard forms so
\nwrapped up in clarity
\nthat fingers following his
\nthrough figures that sound obvious
\nfind corners everywhere,
\nmarks of invention, wakefulness;
\nthe rapid and perverse
\ntracks that ordinary feelings
\nmake when they get driven
\nhard enough against time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

COMMENT 3: WELLSTOOD AND SULLIVAN<\/strong>
\nWhen Dick Wellstood<\/a> was a young man beginning to play piano around New York in the mid-1940s, he was so thoroughly under Sullivan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spell that he handed out business cards reading, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Perhaps you can help me to meet Joe Sullivan. My name is Dick Wellstood.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d With a tip from cornetist Muggsy Spanier, he finally did meet Sullivan. The story, told by clarinetist Kenny Davern, is in Edward N. Meyer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s valuable biography of Wellstood, Giant Strides<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mugsy looked at him and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Well, he lives right around the corner.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Muggsy gave him the number and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Why don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you knock on the door and tell him Muggsy sent you, as a way of introduction, kid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d So Dick said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not too late?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He looked at his watch. It was 1:30 in the morning and Muiggsy said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, no, no. Sullivan is up all the time, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s up at all hours.
\nSo Dick goes over there and rings the doorbell. Soon this disheveled figure in slippers and a bathrobe comes shuffling through. Joe opens the door and says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yeah?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dick says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hi, my name is Dick Wellstood and Muggsy Spanier said to say hello.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And Joe Sullivan said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Tell Muggsy Spanier to go f____ himself,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and slammed the door right in Dick\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is a reasonably comprehensive short biography of Sullilvan<\/a> on the Red Hot Jazz<\/em> website, and a batch of MP3 tracks of his playing. They include Gin Mill Blues<\/em> and Little Rock Getaway<\/em>, two of his most famous\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand most imitated\u00e2\u20ac\u201drecordings. This CD<\/a> has those tracks and twenty-two others from 1933 to 1941.
\nCOMMENTS 4 & 5: WILLIAMS AND COSTA. GREAT MINDS WITH….Well, you know<\/strong><\/p>\n

Doug:
\nSpeaking of “rumbling boisterously in the basement of the piano”, as you did in reference to John Williams on a Stan Getz recording, it reminded me of how few pianists explore the left side of the keyboard and how, done properly, it can be an additional arrow in the quiver.
\nEddie Costa <\/a>was a very special practitioner who rumbled about as boisterously as I’ve ever heard. He is missed.
\nJohn Birchard
\nDoug,
\nAlthough I’m “not from the discographers” (as my grandmother might have worded it), I can offer a little more info on the recorded output of the unique player John Williams. (BTW, his lower register rumblings and his general attack always, to my ear, have brought Eddie Costa to mind.)
\nBut wait a sec: practically unknown is a CD issued by the ever-resourceful Japanese (the imprint is Marshmallow, #MVCJ 30061, recorded October 20 and 21, 1994). This gives us ten tracks by Williams, Jeff Grubbs and Frank Isola; on 5 of the tracks Spike Robinson on tenor is added. Title of the side is Welcome Back<\/em>.
\nGeorge Ziskind<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Speaking of ever-resourceful, the Rifftides<\/em> staff went on a googling expedition into the darkest recesses of the internet and tracked down (heh heh) the mysterious Marshallow in its lair, a Japanese website<\/a>.Welcome Back<\/em> is the third item on the page. A click on the button quaintly labeled “Listen More” will bring up a box with audio samples of three tracks. The page gives the price, 2,800 yen, but, alas, nary a hint about how to acquire this CD, so perhaps the staff is merely semi-ever-resourceful. A message to info@marshmallow-records.com<\/em> may bring ordering information. If you try, please let us know what happens.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COMMENT 1 Here’s a message from Bill Crow following the recent Rifftides piece about pianist John Williams. There is a recent release on Hep Records of a Spike Robinson CD, The C.T.S. Session, on which John is the pianist. I am the bassist, and Peter Cater of London is the drummer.Louis Stewart plays guitar on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-456","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}