SST Blog

[10 or 15 years ago, my buddy, bassist and composer Chuck Israels was in New York for a few days visiting. We discussed writing a book about jazz. We sat around my coffee table in my living room one afternoon and turned on a cassette recorder. I’ve divided the conversation into 6 parts to make it less imposing, or as Groucho Marx said, “Just the right length to take into the bathroom .”]   Part VI   David Berger: Jazz music makes me move in a way that Americans move. It’s natural to me. When I hear The Rite of Spring, I don’t move that...

[10 or 15 years ago, my buddy, bassist and composer Chuck Israels was in New York for a few days visiting. We discussed writing a book about jazz. We sat around my coffee table in my living room one afternoon and turned on a cassette recorder. I’ve divided the conversation into 6 parts to make it less imposing, or as Groucho Marx said, “Just the right length to take into the bathroom .”]   Part V   Chuck Israels: If I’m exploring the broader aspects of popular music, I have to say that there are occasional elements of music which is sufficiently fluid and sufficiently...

[10 or 15 years ago, my buddy, bassist and composer Chuck Israels was in New York for a few days visiting. We discussed writing a book about jazz. We sat around my coffee table in my living room one afternoon and turned on a cassette recorder. I’ve divided the conversation into 6 parts to make it less imposing, or as Groucho Marx said, “Just the right length to take into the bathroom .”] Part IV   Chuck Israels: The forms in jazz happen to be European forms – it doesn’t bother me that they’re European forms, it doesn’t make the music less American to me...

[10 or 15 years ago, my buddy, bassist and composer Chuck Israels was in New York for a few days visiting. We discussed writing a book about jazz. We sat around my coffee table in my living room one afternoon and turned on a cassette recorder. I’ve divided the conversation into 6 parts to make it less imposing, or as Groucho Marx said, “Just the right length to take into the bathroom .”] Part III   David Berger: Pop music in the fifties made a turn. It went from music where the music was the most important thing and the lyric supported the music; where...

[10 or 15 years ago, my buddy, bassist and composer Chuck Israels was in New York for a few days visiting. We discussed writing a book about jazz. We sat around my coffee table in my living room one afternoon and turned on a cassette recorder. I’ve divided the conversation into 6 parts to make it less imposing, or as Groucho Marx said, “Just the right length to take into the bathroom .”] Part II Chuck Israels: Is jazz dead? It is a hydroponic plant or a hot-house flower; it’s disconnected from its roots because for many years, since the time in the late sixties...