One for Grew

The world is a less musical place in the absence of one of the greatest and most underrated jazz pianist. Mr. Mulgrew Miller departed this life last week and somehow I missed it.

I briefly heard one station make mention of a tribute to Grew, but in the haste of a busy workaday world I dismissed it as nothing more than folks starting to wake up to his greatness. Maybe, subconsciously I knew what they meant and I just wasn't ready to process it. Sadly, I must now acknowledge that Mr. Miller has passed from this life and no amount of self deception will change that. This blog would not be worthy of its namesake if we did not pause to acknowledge the passing of this great jazz lion.

I cannot tell you technically what it is that makes Mulgrew Miller such an enjoyable purveyor of this music but the proof is always in the listening. His playing had the uncanny ability to consistently remain sonically in the background while simultaneously always being front and center. Upon discovering that he was the pianist on a particular piece of music (and he was the pianist on quite a lot of jazz) my reaction would always be of course he is, who else could it have been. He made it sound easy but no one else has perfected that sound. He was almost single handedly leading the charge in finding the new sound of contemporary jazz piano and for me was the definition of what modern jazz should be. No disrespect to the many fine jazz musicians of the world. There are many great jazz piano players but there was only one Mulgrew Miller. And now he is gone.

Do yourself a favor and familiarize yourself with his music both as a leader and as a prolific sideman. You will actually hear what many other jazz piano players are trying to do.

The jazz community has two consistent and enduring tendencies that I have observed while indulging in this music. One is to have really great one syllable nick names for the best players; Satch, Byrd, Diz, Monk to name a few. And the second tendency is that we gain full appreciation for the great ones only after they have made their mark on the music and permanently layed out.

I think Grew can be added to the list on both counts. I hope I am around long enough to see Grew get his full measure of appreciation.

RIP Mr. Miller

Go East Young Man

Those New York cats can really play

This week, The New York Times, boldly following in the footsteps of The Wall Street Journal, instituted a new "pay us or we take our ball and go home" policy.

Again!

Apparently rejecting the age old adage about no education in the second kick of mule, they appear to be going for their doctorate degrees in mule asswhuppins. One source close to the deliberations who was unnamed because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the paper indicated that this change was made because the market has prematurely abandoned this business model. "Not only are we going to do this but we are also going to bring back the buggy whip, eight track tape players and videocassette recorders (beta).


Both the Journal and The Times have carefully sprinkled enough loopholes in their firewalls to twitter-pate readers with enough access such that they aren't supposed to notice that they are now charging readers hundreds of dollars for what used to be free. What is really strange is that Journal is mostly charging for the crap and leaving the actual news articles of value on the socialist side of the firewall. Go figure.

On a related note, The Washington Post, apparently eschewing the crass capitalism of paygo, is maintaining all of their content on the web free of charge, opting instead to drive their subscribers away by annoying the hell out of them with their new revised display format. Nothing is where it used to be anymore and all their writers, both the brand names and the up and coming nobodies apparently now all have the same access to be ignored by their inevitably diminishing reader base.

Geniuses all!

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Are Some Jazz Writers Republicans?