Al in NYC

I recently saw this fascinatingly strange '70s movie. Where does this information regarding the players of the music in the jazz scenes come from? The music sounds quite well-played, so it certainly could be the cats cited. However, they are definitely not the band that appears in the movie itself. The guys in the film (except for actor Zalman King) do all look comfortable enough on the stand and in handling their instruments to be professional musicians though, and the bass player looks like he could be Leroy Vinnegar. I actually came here to see if anyone who has seen this movie and is more familiar than I am with the early '70s L.A. jazz scene could ID the musicians shown in the film.

Just catching up with this sad news now. Strangely, had just been listening after Christmas to one of my favorite recordings of his, Open To Love, from the early '70s. Goodness he was wonderful. I was fortunate enough to see him a few times, including a memorable duet concert with Charlie Haden. He will be truly missed. Bye Paul.

Good to see that Sonny could make it out, even if he couldn't play. I understand he's been in somewhat rough shape recently. Also nice to see Jimmy Heath there, who's actually older than Sonny!

There are 2 different Ted Harrises. Both born in Detroit in 1934, and apparently both friends of Barry Harris, but not related to him (or to each other). The Ted Harris who is the subject of this thread is Theodore E. "Ted" Harris, who was (is?) a multi-reedman who seems to have spent most of his active career in Teaneck, NJ. He recorded a number of albums, with pretty impressive personnel, on his own H & D label between 1978 and 2001. His fate is apparently unknown. The other one is Dr. Theodore "Teddy" Harris Jr., who I refer to in a post above, and who I believe Peter Friedman is referring to. A pianist and reeds player (primarily soprano), as well as a writer and arranger, Dr. Teddy was a mainstay on the Detroit jazz scene for many years as a performer, teacher, mentor, etc. He was also involved with Motown, going on the road for several years as The Supremes' musical director, and spent some time in Paul Butterfield's blues band. In his later years he recorded sporadically for a small local label. He died in 2005. Ted Harris: Dr. Teddy Harris:

It appears that this Ted Harris was born in Detroit, but lived in Teaneck NJ for many years and ran his recording career and record label out of there. All of his recordings seem to be self-produced on his own label, H&D Records, with some pretty top-shelf sidemen. He and the label were active up to 2001, when he put out what seems to be his last recording, Ted Harris With Strings. https://archive.org/details/iuma-harris_ted Bio: http://prabook.org/web/person-view.html?profileId=384195 Harris seems to have been heavily associated with the shadowy jazz figure of Wilbert 'Bugs' Dyer (the "D" of H&D), who wrote the arrangements for Introducing Ted Harris, and died back in 1977. Dyer was an apparently excellent alto player who came out of Hartford with Horace Silver in Stan Getz's band, and played/recorded with Howard McGhee, Illinois Jacquet, Harold Mabern, George Coleman, Grady Tate, and Phil Kelly (!). He also suffered from "personal problems" that kept him playing in the (in)famous Lexington band for some time. A background post on Bugs Dyer: http://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?195775-Bugs-Dyer Phil's story: http://forums.allaboutjazz.com/showthread.php?31020-Drummers-How-is-your-technique/page2&p=382307#post382307

The years seemed a little off, but the instrumentation and the appearance of so many Detroit area players made me wonder if this may be Dr. Teddy Harris Jr., who was a longtime mainstay of the Detroit music scene and an important jazz educator and mentor (and not a relative of Barry). But looking closely at a larger and clearer version of the cover I found through an image search, the Ted Harris pictured there really doesn't look much like him. His was a big musical family though, so maybe a relative? Detroit's Teddy Harris: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3494000050.html

Man, I wish this wasn't always the same weekend as my hometown Detroit Jazz Festival. Ran into a bunch of people from Chicago in Detroit who preferred the lineup here to the one there, and had friends in Detroit who split for Chicago to see the AACM tribute and the rest of the lineup there. But since the festival in Detroit has been such a labor of love for so many of my family's friends, I know where I'm going to end up every Labor Day, even if I might slightly prefer to be down the road a piece.

What can I say... Ornette was one of those artists you knew would be gone someday soon, but who you still really couldn't conceive of a world without him. Well, that inevitable world has come to pass today, and we are a little less for it. Since I first saw the obit in the Times today I have been spending my slow, hot workday looking through some of the other obits first, an interesting interview reposted by Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press, and especially going over a few old articles from Ornette's early appearance on the scene. It's amazing just how controversial his music was then, and almost as amazing how important that controversy seemed in a time when jazz was more widely heard. It's also astonishing to me how many jazz fans I run into for whom Ornette's work is still a flashpoint of controversy and a breaking point of acceptibility, over 50 years after it came out. But I do think, with reflection of all that came after Ornette, that the box that Atlantic put out on him back in the early '90s served to open a lot of ears, even of people who had previously dismissed him, to the essential beauty of his music. I will listen to much of this beautiful music later, and over the next few days. Digging Ornette's Shape of Jazz to Come out of the dusty backfiles of my father's record collection was one of the most important moments of my own development as a listener. I literally played the grooves off of that record, and it led me directly into my early love of the freer paths of jazz. I was fortunate to see him several times over the years. And although the results were sometimes uneven, his performances were never less than absorbing, and often completely transcendent. The thought that we will never see him again is a tough one to accept. Bye Ornette.

Such sad news. The last time I saw him last summer at the jazz fest in Detroit his breathing problems had clearly gotten much worse, but he still played well and was the soul of joy in person, as usual. I said to him "you just keep on keepin' on Marcus" to which he replied, gesturing to the oxygen tanks he was pulling around on a little cart, "yeah, but now I'm rollin' on". He played a very moving part in the closing number of the festival's civil rights tribute, roaring beautifully through "Let it Shine". It's really hard to overstate how much Marcus WAS jazz in Detroit for several years. Of course, many many people have been involved in keeping the jazz scene going in Detroit, but almost always Marcus was involved in some way in whatever was happening. My earliest memories of Marcus are as a teen in Detroit, in the days of Tribe and Strata, Seeing him looking all hip in beard, sunglasses, and 3 piece pinstripe playing into the late nights at the semi-sketchy and wonderful Cobb's Corner bar on Cass. An excellent hangout in the days of 18 year old drinking and very lax ID checking, where I spent a lot of time getting my primary education in live improvised music, and not just the stuff on my dad's records. Marcus was the one there who was always willing to talk to some young fans, and engage them with some fun stories and insights. But my playing friends who were taught/mentored, or even just observed, by him knew first hand that he didn't mess around. The music was serious and you had to get it right. My mother worked with him during her time on the local arts council, while Marcus was always seeking funding for his various projects. Later on my dad bonded with him over drinks discussing dad's friendship with Thad Jones, and Marcus' deep love of Thad's music. Thank you Mark for the wonderful, insightful and sweet, piece on Marcus' passing. And for that great list of videos as well. Damn, he will be missed. Bye Marcus...

I have to add my voice to the chorus here. What a wonderful musician and person he was, in every respect. One of those people I am so glad I met, if only for some fleeting moments. He was one of my father's favorites (not much younger than Clark at 89, and very saddened by this news), and Clark was exremely nice to dad when they met and laughed with him about the old days playing in Detroit. Even though he was in his 90s, it's hard to think of him gone. Goodbye Clark.

I was never that much into his music, but Dave Brubeck was literally the nicest person I've ever met. I sat next to him on a plane from San Francisco to Detroit and he was just friendly, open, fascinating, full of stories, and even invited me over to his house. He later sent me copies of some old newspaper clippings to illustrate some things we had talked about. Whenever I saw him thereafter in NYC or Detroit he would always wave at me and, if he had some time, come over and ask me how I was doing. I've had the good fortune to have great experiences with some musicians who, in other contexts, were sometimes seen as cantankerous, difficult, or standoffish. Clifford Jordan, Lee Konitz, and Max Roach come directly to mind. Milt Jackson, Dizzy Gillespie, and the Jones Brothers were all people I met through my family when I was a kid, and they were all great to me. Thad Jones particularly stands out as a man who was open, funny, and genuinely friendly and interested in you, and Dizzy never failed to make my little kid self split a gut laughing. Through Bags we met John Lewis and Percy Heath who were a couple of other guys who were just great with children. As so many others have said, Clark Terry stands out as a particularly wonderful man. Don Cherry, at least to me, was another one.

He was a Detroit native, born in the old mixed black, Italian, and Irish Black Bottom section as Umberto Ballentino. His very mixed-race heritage, in a highly race-conscious country, meant that he was forced to "pass" at various times as either white or black, but not really allowed to be both at the same time as he actually was. What a fascinating life he lead, on a number of levels. He was also reportedly married 5 times, including to burlesque star Tempest Storm. And he continued performing into his 90s. Here he is in part an interview taped for the occasion of his 100th birthday last year singing his part from Ellington's Jump for Joy and talking about the maestro himself, the mounting of the show, and what was done to make him look more "black".

I loved the part about the Gulag and about ethnic cleansing and its valued tradition from tsarism to present ... as for the "thought", its gist was likely: some dude built Petersburg ... some other dude built Sochi. Y'know, they didn't put the part about the genocide of the Native Americans, centuries of slavery, or the Vietnam War in the Atlanta opening ceremonies either. And the London ceremonies somehow completely missed that brutality of British colonialism thing too. Anyway, I've decided to boycott all opening ceremonies (and the terrible history lesson they provide - shame on them for trying to have a mildly entertaining show!) and, tough as it is, to try to just pay attention to sports during the Olympics.

Well, I apologize for calling Larry a McCarthyist earlier. This is a true McCarthyist hit piece. I figured it wouldn't take long...

Nice to see you too Scott. I'm still hanging in there. Due to certain life events I don't have all the time I used to to engage in random bulletin board argumentation, but I do have a look in here occasionally, and I have browsed a time or two over at your place too. I love that picture of you that is your avatar over there. Despite the fact that it's only a fair album, my avatar here is a little bit more personal to me than just my own geographic history, since Thad was a friend of my father's, and I think you know my family's history with Elvin. Now, back to our regularly scheduled RIP thread (and rather tortured parsing of what exactly constitutes political discussion).

I agree that any lengthy discussion of Pete Seeger is unlikely to be able to wholly avoid the political and historical backdrop to his work and life. Oddly though, this thread only took this turn because Larry seems oddly hung up on Pete's original opposition to American entry into WWII way back in the late 1930s and very early '40s. Part of what makes this a rather strange focus for looking back on Seeger's life is that a majority of Americans, of pretty much every political persuasion, were against American entry into the war right up to the day of Pearl Harbor. Beyond that is the fact that, as Larry himself notes, Seeger changed his mind on this issue months before December 7 1941, and, of course, the fact that he served in the Army during the war. On the other hand, the brief Clancy Sigal article about the John Doe album that Larry linked does provide some quite interesting musical and historical background for that period in the work of Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers and the American left. But it hardly amounts to anything beyond that, and certainly not anything damning or that wasn't already known.

One of the biggest parts of the soundtrack of my childhood years, gone. He was really just about the last of them too, and in many ways, both related and unrelated to music, among the most important. I was fortunate enough to get to meet him a few times as a child, and even though he was the center of attention of hundreds or thousands he had that knack that some people have of making you feel that you were of interest to him, and that you were, if only for a minute or two, getting his undivided attention. In short, that you were important and you mattered. it was really a reflection of his wider conviction that everybody had a voice and everyone mattered, a concept that we still seem to have some serious problems with. This notion was really constantly at the heart of his work as an artist. I moved on in my musical interests quite a ways from that 1960s folk music world, but I always remembered and respected Pete Seeger. Beyond his music was the strength of his convictions and his constant work on the behalf of others. His belief that something should and could be done to change things, and that power and privilege should be challenged. But also that anger was corrosive, and that a lightness of spirit, persistence, and patience were what stuck and would win the day. Nothing embodied this more than his ongoing work to rally support to clean up the Hudson River, to oppose the big corporate polluters and bring their practices to light, and to maintain and preserve it for the future. If for nothing else, everyone here in this area should be grateful to him for this work alone. I see that, even here, where one might expect better, the inevitable McCarthyist has crawled out from under his 60 year old rock. The funny part about that kind of dead-letter crap is that Pete himself was quite open about his past. He stated more than once that one of his few regrets was sticking with the Communists a little too long. Mind you, he was not sorry about his association with the Communists in the U.S. in the first place, since they were about the only force fighting for real, meaningful social, economic, and racial change in the U.S. at that time, He remained engaged with these struggles throughout his life, but he had also moved on and evolved, which is apparently just not possible for some people.

He was also a major presence on the Detroit scene in the '60s and '70s before he departed for the Bay Area. After leaving Michigan State Univ., he worked with several of the big figures in Detroit jazz, like Kenny Cox, Phil Ranelin, and Marcus Belgrave, and was a producer and engineer and did other behind the scenes work for Detroit's Strata and Tribe jazz recording collectives. His drummer nephew R.J. has played a lot and led bands around the Detroit area for many years now.

I'm talking about the real oldtimers. People who would have been around in my father's time like Billy Mitchell, Terry Pollard, Sunnie Wilson, etc. (my Dad certainly would have known more names, including those who went back into the late '30s when Kersey was around Detroit). But I do vividly remember my Dad playing those Minton sides (he's a huge fan of Charlie Christian) and Dad and his friends talking about Kenny Kersey's playing on them and Kenny coming around Detroit and Windsor with Andy Kirk, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, etc.

Sadly, not a surprise...

Maxine Powell was related to a very close friend of my family, so I had the pleasure of meeting her several times. A wonderful woman, who was, of course, dignified in the extreme, but could also be very funny and tell a darn good story or two. She was a legend in Detroit, and lived a long and very full life, but she will certainly be missed.

If I threw away my obis, my hakama would fall down.

I've always understood that pianist on the Charlie Christian Minton's recordings was Ken Kersey, who was from one of my hometowns, Harrow Ontario (about 25 miles south of Detroit). Certainly many of the oldtimers on the Detroit scene thought that was true, as did Kenny's family, who were well-known around Harrow. The recordings certainly sound more like his uptempo late swing style than they sound like Monk's stride-ish proto-bop work of the time. Kersey came to NYC with the Lucky Millinder Band (a conduit for a lot of Detroit players to NYC) in the late '30s and played as a house pianist all over town for many years into the early '50s.

Just saw him on Saturday night in Detroit and he absolutely killed it. Had the Hammond-loving Detroit crowd on its feet.

Didn't even see ths topic down here before I posted on the general thread. Here's what I got to see this past weekend in Detroit: Bill Charlap & Renee Rosnes, Mack Avenue Records Suberband - with a very cool vibes/marimba duet between Gary Burton and Warren Wolf, JD Allen trio, Charles Lloyd with Bill Frisell, McCoy Tyner (with Savion Glover tapping along), Tony Monaco & Fareed Haque, 3 Baris (Gary Smulyan, Howard Johnson, Frank Basile) with Mike LeDonne, a Bill Frisell group playing John Lennon tunes, Warren Wolf quartet with Benny Green and Carl Allen, Dave Leibman and Richie Beirach (sublime), Danilo Perez & Geri Allen, James Carter playing Don Byas on Don Byas' old sax with an all-Detroit band, Karriem Riggins with Orrin Evans, The Cookers (David Weiss, Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, George Cables, Cecil McBee, Billy Hart, with Gary Bartz added - great stuff!), U of M jazz band with Lee Konitz, Quest reunion (Dave Leibman, Richie Beirach, Ron McClure, Billy Hart - exceptional and deeply absorbing), Terrell Stafford quintet, Lee Konitz quartet with Dan Tepfer, Ray Drummond, Matt Wilson (cantankerous, in a beautiful way), Marcus Belgrave with several Detroit-raised trumpeters, a Miles Davis tribute with Wallace Roney, Rick Margitza, Larry Coryell, Ralphe Armstrong and Alphonse Mouzon. Of course, I also missed a lot too...