Mm, actually, Brubeck was an interesting study...the DB
Quartet that had been the best-selling jazz group of the
early '60s had just broken up in
'68, after years of controversy in the jazz community for a
variety of reasons, not least being so damned popular with
white listeners...and Brubeck was playing third stream music
and starting to introduce extended free-jazz solos into some
of his concert performances. DB was "safe" the way Spillane
was "safe" at this point...Coltrane and Dolphy had gotten
much more thoroughly free (and others, of course, who'd even
survived to continue playing and evolving), but I'd suggest
that the fusionists were becoming much more Safe, and reaped
the commercial benefits of that. Meanwhile, the DBQ playing
Cole Porter was perhaps dubbable as MidCult back when, but to
appreciate it still bespoke of a certain PLAYBOY-level of
hipsterism.
Last week I read the 1957 (iirc) MacDonald THE PRICE OF
MURDER, a fine Gold Medal standalone with a deft
multiple-perspective approach and flawed, if at all, with a
distinctly un-noirish set of too-competent cops. Another
establishmentarian thread to be traced? Also, the attitudes
toward women expressed by the more sympathetic characters,
without any countersuggestion from anyone, suggest that JDM
was growing in maturity and egalitarianism by the time McGee
would more gently condescend to his womenfriends.
-----Original Message----- From: William Denton [mailto:
buff@pobox.com] Sent: Saturday, February 22, 2003 2:06 PM
To: RARA-AVIS Subject: RARA-AVIS: 1960s: Pale Gray for
Guilt
PALE GRAY FOR GUILT (1968) by John D. MacDonald is the ninth
Travis McGee novel.
| I switched the FM-UHF marine radio to the commercial
frequencies
| and tried to find something that didn't sound like somebody
trying
| to break up a dogfight in a sorority house by banging drums
and
| cymbals. Not that I want to say it isn't music. Of course
it is
| music, styled to accompany teen-age fertility rites, and
thus is as
| far out of my range as "Rockabye Baby.... As I was about to
give up
| I found some pleasant eccentric, or somebody who'd grabbed
the wrong
| record, playing Brubeck doing Cole Porter, and I caught it
just as
| he opened up "Love for Sale" in a fine and gentle manner,
and then
| handed it delicately over to Desmond, who set up a witty
dialogue
| with Joe Morello.
This is classic McGee. There's the technical detail that it's
an "FM-UHF marine radio," not just any old radio, and there's
the snobbery about crass popular music. McGee's too
experienced and intelligent to dig rock and roll, though it's
fine for the kids. But who does he admire? Dave Brubeck, who
played very nice but quite safe jazz. McGee didn't even like
the way jazz had changed.
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