sgcim

Goldblum just released his first jazz album, The Capitol Studio Sessions, recently, and while I don't hear anything special going on musically, he did say on NPR that he was interested in presenting jazz in a manner that would make it appealing to a wider audience. This includes using a large dose of his spontaneous humor, and playing simpler jazz that stresses the fun aspect of the music. He features the vocalists and trumpet player more than he does his own piano playing, so he doesn't seem to be on an ego trip... Is this going to be a good or a bad thing for jazz? What sayeth thou?

No, as I mentally survey my HS and college stage bands, I just come up with a very talented electric bass player with the physical traits you mention, who gave up all his talent and ambition when he became born again. The drummer in my first rock band had those traits, but as soon as he got out of Catholic school, descended into a pattern of degeneracy that could only come from receiving daily beatings by nuns for eight years.

Ultimately, the blame with any financial decisions with Evans career falls on Helen Keane. After becoming a junkie, he let her take over all his decisions concerning his playing career. She told him who to record with, what to record, where to play and probably tied his shoes for him. How else would you explain the record with Herbie Mann? OTOH, if not for HK, he would've wound up dead before the age of thirty. It was a miracle that he made it to the age of 50. She brought his music to a wider audience, even if she did get him crap record dates like this one, where it was decided that he make what was meant to be the epitome of an anonymous easy listening record. There's no mention of Evans trying to take his name off the record, or stopping the release of it (like he insisted on with the first Stan Getz record, and the first solo record), so he might have figured that it would never hit the jazz buying public, and would be marketed to the easy listening crowd. There's also a possibility that it was made during the period when Evans' hand was so swollen up from infected needles, that a friend of mine saw him play at a club in NYC with his left hand left on his lap for the entire gig.

Evans just wanted to get money for his next fix. He didn't even look at the music Gary McFarland gave him for the LP they made together. He just came in and sight read the whole thing. They have tapes of him practicing classical pieces when he was a kid. He'd play an entire piece sight reading, then turn the page (which you could hear) and sight read the next piece. And so on... Gunther Schuller said he was the only musician who could sight read Milton Babbitt's "All Set' with all the dynamics, out of the entire band, and we're talking about top readers like Hal McKusick, Art Farmer, etc... When he made that POS LP with Ogerman, he was probably completely junked up, and looking forward to spending the paycheck on some more. The whole session probably took less than an hour. IMHO, they were probably going out of their way to NOT provide a note's worth of interest, so they could sell it to the supermarket/elevator music people. I liked that arr. of JSM. I agree that they were trying to provide some interest there. The moral is, "stay away from drugs kids, m'kay?'

Here's a real oddity; Arthur Lee of the band Love with Chico Hamilton (a distant relative of his) singing "What's Your Story Morning Glory?" Here's a real oddity; Arthur Lee of the band Love with Chico Hamilton (a distant relative of his) singing "What's Your Story Morning Glory?"

He should be shot for those square triplet lines.At least he started on the bV-7-5 on the last eight. Sounds like we should be glad we got Sunay in Nueva York out of him, and leave it at that.

Okay, then hardcore easy listening. When Ogerman first came to the US, he was taking any gig he could get. He did Leslie Gore's "It's My Party" one day, this POS the next. Ogerman and Evans made up for it with Symbiosis.

Alright, then just an easy listening album.

It was a muzak album. He needed junk money, probably.

About time...

I loved the Steve Miller album "Born 2 Be Blue", despite the synth strings, and glossy production by Ben Sidran, It featured Milt Jackson and Phil Woods. Miller took songs like "Willow Weep For Me", "Mary Anne" (Ray Charles), "When Sunny Gets Blue", and Born To Be Blue, and used his natural, bluesy falsetto to make the songs his own, like Kenny Rankin, another great cross-over artist in this style. This kind of approach can go horribly wrong in the hands of someone like Sting, whose attempt to sing "My Funny Valentine" has left me severely traumatized for life. No amount of talk therapy, ECT treatments, and powerful psychotropic drugs can erase an experience like that, and I'm trying to spare you the horror of PTSD (Post Traumatic Sting Disorder), before it's ruined your life, as it's done mine...

I should add that Roy gave that student a free trumpet lesson, backstage at the gig! We're going beyond Ted Curson territory here (one of the nicest guys I ever met), who used to invite young musicians back to his hotel room after his gigs, to hang out and talk about music.

So sad to hear. Roy acted like a big brother to the best trumpet player in my HS band.A very encouraging, giving person- RIP, Roy.

Yeah, dat it!

Thanks for posting the other half of this session! The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'. Comparing him to Parker is very apt; he spent a lot of time listening to Bird live, and then adapting his lines to the guitar, which is insanely difficult considering the difference between a wind instrument and a plucked instrument. He did it by a combination of accents, slurs and a special type of picking, that enabled him to play Bird's lines at ridiculously fast tempos. And yet, there are still these warped 'shredders' on jazz guitar forums who insist that George Benson is the closest thing to Bird on guitar, even though Barry Harris was quoted as saying Raney "was the closest thing to Yard" that he'd ever heard. Thanks for posting the other half of this session! The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'. Comparing him to Parker is very apt; he spent a lot of time listening to Bird live, and then adapting his lines to the guitar, which is insanely difficult considering the difference between a wind instrument and a plucked instrument. He did it by a combination of accents, slurs and a special type of picking, that enabled him to play Bird's lines at ridiculously fast tempos. And yet, there are still these warped 'shredders' on jazz guitar forums who insist that George Benson is the closest thing to Bird on guitar, even though Barry Harris was quoted as saying Raney "was the closest thing to Yard" that he'd ever heard.

I think it was his first. I was looking forward to it, but was disappointed. By large ensemble, I just meant bigger than a quartet, and smaller than a big band. Criss Cross has some type of deal where you;ve gotta agree to buy a certain number of CDs, if you want to record for them. Peter bernstein got the in with them, because a photographer friend of mine was doing a shoot for the head of CC, and he needed a sideman guitarist who lived in Manhattan pronto for a leader's recording, and the photographer mentioned PB. i just heard the old Ralph Lalama CC record with PB, and PB seemed to be having some difficulty with the up tempo tunes. Another Buddy Rich story I heard involved two members of a band I used to play with. They were in Buddy's band for a short time, and they got a notice that they had to talk to the band manager. The first one went in, and the band manager said to him, "Buddy says you don't swing, you're fired. Here's your two week pay." The second guy went in, and the same thing happened, verbatim. A well oiled machine...

Oh my God, I didn't think he was that old or sick. I think I recently heard an interview with him on KCR. Another of the great masters is gone. RIP Sonny...

Yeah, Fusco was great with Buddy. I didn't know he was a lineman; maybe the Giants could use him. At this point, they'd probably do better with an alto player in his 60s than what they have now. I was thinking about your comparison of Dillon to WW. I'm sure they have a lot of contact in NY, so there's probably a lot of influence from his theoretical ideas and playing. I enjoyed WW in his stint with Donald Fagen, so I checked out that larger ensemble record he made for Criss Cross, and found it turgid and lifeless, more 'brain' music than 'ear' music. I'm sure he's done other stuff since then, hopefully more ear oriented, but I tend to not be interested in an artist after I've disliked a record they've made as a leader..

Yeah, he's Trane obsessed alright. You might be interested in his friend, an alto player named Andrew Gould. I played a show (Smoky Joe's Cafe) with him a number of years ago, and he's got that same do-or-die attitude. He recently released his first album, also. http://www.andrewgouldmusic.com/audio.html

I can't mention names here, because the parties are still alive, but I was talking with one veteran player about his day hanging out with a guy who is known for having a great attitude on the stand, and even today, is still doing the top gigs, jazz or otherwise. He mentioned the fact that the guy with the great attitude just got a great Broadway gig, because the guy he replaced was fired for playing practical jokes on members of the band. The guy who got fired is a player who was on most big band jazz records recorded on the East Coast from the 50s onward, and had a rep for shoving things in players' horns, untuning instruments on breaks, hiding drumsticks, etc... Apparently, it developed into a type of mania that he couldn't control, and despite warnings to cut it out, the conductor couldn't take it anymore, and fired him.

That's good to hear. He used to jam at a loft in NYC that a friend of mine owned, and he sounded great. It would be a shame for a player like that to stop playing.

I'd heard that Phil Dwyer has become a lawyer, and retired from the music biz. Is he still playing?

Out of the younger guys I've heard. Sam Dillon, has went through the insane discipline, sideman credit accumulation, and whatever else it takes, to earn the admiration of Ray Drummond, Joe Chambers, Jimmy Heath and a lot of other people of that caliber who he works with. He just released his first album, "Out in the Open", and from what I've heard of the previews, every note swings, the notes come popping out of his horn like Trane's did, and he wasn't afraid to include a jazz version of Hendrix's "Third Stone From the Sun" that doesn't pander to, uh, pander bears? I've had the demoralizing experience of having to follow his soloing in a big band we played in, and the only excuse I can give is that I was working an exhausting day gig during that period, and on the one day I had off, I did earn a nod from him after my solo. I think he's in his late 20s, or early 30s.

When I heard one of those versions of Nardis it scared the hell out of me. I had no desire to hear it again. The same with his coked up version of "In Your Own Sweet Way". Unfortunately, the Evans fanatic I play with insists on playing at that coked-up tempo. It should be pointed out that regardless of the experience with the "Explorations" session, there are a lot of CDs that have been put out after Evans' death that Evans insisted not be released. Add to that the numerous bootleg live CDs that have been released, and the only sure way of assessing Evans' legacy is to go by recordings released prior to his death.

Yum, Mike make a good fillet!