Seymour Wyse

4 days ago May 19, 2018Simon Pettet

[Seymour Wyse, Horace Mann School, 1940 (courtesy of Dave Moore)]  

Returning to the extraordinary trove of tapes of Allen now in the archives at Stanford University, here’s a recently-discovered gem – Allen, in 1981, at Leicester University, in England, in conversation with the figure who turned on the young  Jack Kerouac to a rich and life-long appreciation of jazz,  his old Horace Mann schoolmate – Seymour Wyse. 

Edie Parker Kerouac (remembering Seymour Wyse, in Boulder, the following year) : “Yeah and he used to scat, and he and Jack used to do this together. And the first time, … Read More

Charlie Parker’s Birthday

August 29, 2017Simon Pettet

WKCR and the irrepressible Phil Schaap are the essential custodians of the great “Yardbird” Charlie Parker.   Tune into their Charlie Parker Birthday Broadcast today (August 29) – A few of our  past birthday-postings- here , here and here.

A few scattered videos to celebrate!

From last year’s (2016): New York City Charlie Parker Jazz Festival: 

From 2015, Graveside Ceremony by Charlie Parker’s grave in Kansas City:

From the 2014 The Gravesite Salute:

And one more homage (from 2010):

& Here (once again and forever) is the man himself (improvising with / after  Coleman Hawkins ):

Charlie Parker and Coleman … Read More

Robert Creeley – 2

February 7, 2017Simon Pettet

creeley

[Robert Creeley – Photograph by Allen Ginsberg – © Estate of Allen Ginsberg  – caption: “Robert Creeley, one-eyed poet at Naropa Institute poetics commune house, summer session, July 1984, he sat patient with me across supper table before his lecture, old friend”]

AG: Where were we? Oh Creeley? So Creeley.  (Robert) Creeley. Each syllable is a thought. That’s a good way of (describing it), actually. That’s an aphorism for Creeley – “One thought per syllable” (in the sense that each syllable seems to be like a new thought) – opposite from my kind of writing, or, say, somebody else, … Read More

Charlie Parker’s Birthday

August 29, 2016admin

Charlie Parker‘s birthday today. We salute, as before, on The Allen Ginsberg Project, “the creator of the cool sound, the most modern of all horn men…”

Bird-fanciers (ornithologists) have plenty to be grateful for this year with the release this past month of Unheard Bird – The Unissued Takes, a new double-CD, featuring 58 previously-unreleased recordings made between 1949 and 1952 for Norman Granz, foumder of Verve Records, showcasing Parker in a variety of settings – in a Latin-jazz orchestra (spotlighting Afro-Cuban rhythms), leading  all-star quartets, quintets, and septets, (and we do mean all-star!), solo-ing over … Read More