Klarinet Archive - Posting 001043.txt from 1999/12

From: Ken Wolman <ken.wolman@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] Don Byron?
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 12:02:28 -0500

gdubac@-----.com wrote:
>
> Dear Ken:
>
> Several weeks ago I cut a Barnes and Noble advertisement out of the New
> Yorker magazine and I put it up on my refrigerator. It is for a CD
> called "Tribute ot Ellington: Daniel Barenboim and Guests." It
> features vocalist Dianne Reeves and clarinetist Don Byron. I bet that
> you heard a cut from this CD. The small print says, TELDEC 25252, 1999
> The Atlantic Recording Company. They have a website at
> www.atlantic-records.com

I bought it. It is perfectly fabulous, all of it, not just the two cuts
Byron plays.

He seems to have some interesting political takes, as someone else
noted: I also picked up an earlier recording, Tuskegee Experiments,
which alludes to those black men who were deliberately infected with
syphilis earlier in the century so the doctors "could see what happens"
while charting the progress of the disease. Perfectly obscene: in that
context I can understand why a lot of Byron's songs on other CDs seem to
reflect an admiration for Al Sharpton, James Ramseur (the guy who was
crippled by Bernard Goetz in the 1984 subway shooting), and a lot of
other people that some of us white folks have a problem with. It IS a
little offputting, but it turns out the man is a fabulous musician, and
if you don't know the names of the tunes, you are not going to be
particularly offended.

I didn't get the recording of him playing Mickey Katz klezmer tunes.
Yet.

Ken
---------------------------
Kenneth Wolman Deutsche Bank, NA 212-469-6494
1251 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020

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