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gmonahan

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Posts posted by gmonahan

  1. On 9/10/2022 at 1:48 PM, AllenLowe said:

    funny and odd story - and true - I was walking around Brookline, Mass., where I then lived - circa1977 -  with my then girlfriend, and we walked past a man walking the other way on the sidewalk. I said to my girlfriend - "is that Neal Hefti?" She said, "who?" I didn't have time to explain, I turned around and went up to the guy (I was about 23 and had seen pictures of him) and asked "Are you Neal Hefti?" And it was, and he was quite shocked that someone recognized him. We talked a bit and I asked if I could interview him for a jazz mag I was working for. He was very pleased, and invited me over to his apartment in Brookline, where he was now living. I went there a few nights later. He introduced me to Francis Wayne, his wife, who was movie-star gorgeous. We had a nice interview (which never got published) and he told me that Francis Wayne had hated Hollywood, and had finally gotten him to agree to move East. They did so, and just a few months later she was sadly diagnosed with lung cancer. We talked, I left, and never saw him again, and was very upset to hear that she died just some months afterward.

    I'm smiling at the notion of going right up to the guy and asking "Are you Neal Hefti?"  That certainly took a little bit of journalistic chutzpah!! Thanks for the story!

     

  2. 16 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

    Fantastic. I have them as individual albums, the first I got was the Mating Call, but it had another cover, one of Tadd on piano in the studio, with a red cover and the title "Tadd Dameron with John Coltrane". The album with Fats is fantastic, that´s the great band from Royal Roost 1948, wonderful. Fontainebleau is wonderful but maybe not as strong as "Mating Call". There was another session for Prestige in 1953 but it filled only a half album, the fanstasI agreetic stuff with Clifford Brown, the so called "Atlantic City Band". 
    The last album "Magic Touch" disappointed me. Some remakes of old tunes, but the new compositions are to "smooth", I like the more tricky things like "Hot House", "Good Bait", "Our Delight" and so on. And the disappointment also was that Dameron himself was no longer playing himself. Bill Evans is not really an adequate replacement. Tadd was during the end of his life and to ill to play a piano. It reminds me of Mingus´"Me myself and I" where he couldn´t longer play the bass himself, and the two replacement basses can´t fit into the role Mingus himself had on bass. That´s what I think about the Magic Touch album, same impression....

    I agree with you, though there are nonetheless some nice moments on "Magic Touch." I think Tadd was trying to make some money with that one. I have to say Avid does a better job with these multiple album reissues than many other labels do.

    Meanwhile, some nice sound on this Japanese reissue:

     

    watrous.jpg

  3. 12 hours ago, bresna said:

    I picked up "Mess Of Blues" a few years back and I didn't like it much at all, mainly due to the poor audio. I'm also not much of a fan of Wild Bill's style of organ playing.

    To each his own. Always liked Wild Bill (he's wonderful on Ellington's New Orleans Suite). My favorites among the Verves were the albums with Earl Hines.

  4. 8 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

    See JSangrey's post at the top of this page.
    Little Pony and Beaver Junction were issued after the session, but the other two did not get a release until later in the vinyl era.
     

    Oops--moved past that too fast and didn't catch it. Thanks Steve. I have all four on the Definitive sets (presumably ripped off from the big French Columbia LP sets).

  5. On 8/18/2022 at 9:56 AM, Larry Kart said:

    More than once in DB record reviews of the time Nat Hentoff referred to the long stick with which Freddie Green would poke Sonny Payne when Payne rushed.

    I'm just catching up on this thread, but I really love this image!!

    Only four tracks were recorded at that '51 session: "Howzit," "Nails," "Little Pony," and "Beaver Junction." Presumably issued on two 78s? Or was Columbia doing 45s by then? Columbia did reissue two of them ("Little Pony" and "Beaver Junction") on its "America's #1 Band" comp.

     

     

    gregmo

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