[Dixielandjazz] Pat Metheny on Kenny G. and Louis Armstrong

[Robert S. Ringwald]

Steve,

Do I read this correctly?  "30 year old Louis Armstrong doing WWW?"  Does
this mean he recorded it in 1931?  What am I missing here?

--Bob
Placerville, CA USA



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Barbone" <barbonestreet at earthlink.net>
To: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 8:08 AM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Pat Metheny on Kenny G. and Louis Armstrong


> Just in case we think Modern Jazz musicians don't dig the contribution
> that Louis Armstrong made to the music. Be warned, a couple of "X" rated
> words.
>
> Cheers,
> Steve Barbone
>
> "Hey Pat, what do you think of Kenny G?"
>
>       "Kenny G is not a musician I really had not much of an opinion
>       about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he
>       played that interested me one way or the other either live or on
>       records ... My impression was that he was someone who had spent a
>       fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players
>       of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not
>       really an advanced player, even in that style."
>
>       "....Not long ago [2000], Kenny G put out a recording where he
>       overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong
>       record, the track "what a wonderful world". With this single move,
>       Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I
>       really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance
>       to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to
>       share the stage with the single most important figure in our music."
>
>       "This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing
>       on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird
>       when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few
>       years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with
>       Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the
>       greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same
>       level of artistic accomplishment."
>
>       "....But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to
>       defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz
>       musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo
>       bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all
>       over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser
>       ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible.
>       He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and
>       calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of
>       musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past
>       and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the
>       road for years and years developing their own music inspired by
>       the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every
>       single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician."
>
>       "By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who
>       has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and
>       what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern
>       culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed
>       about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own
>       peril. His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this
>       crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only
>       reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong
>       (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the
>       money it would bring."
>
>
>
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