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Tadd Dameron centennial celebration at the Smithsonian


bertrand

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Tonight in DC, Tadd Dameron biographer and saxophonist Paul Combs discusses Tadd's life and music as part of the JAZZForum series at UDC, from 7-9 PM. FREE! Then, tomorrow 4/20, from 5-7, Paul will present a concert of Tadd's music including a lot of rarities as part of the Take 5! Series at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Chinatown. He will be joined by some great DC artists: Danielle Wertz (vocals), Steve Herberman (g), Eliot Seppa (b) and Ele Rubenstein (d). Swing by if you are in DC! The concert is FREE!

Bertrand.

 

Edited by bertrand
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Too bad that I´m not in DC. Love Tadd, his compositions, his voicings, and damn yeah, his piano playing. One little thing we wore out when we were kids was that Royal Roost stuff with Fats Navarro.

It´s strange I "discovered" him only after I had purchased that Miles Davis - Tadd Dameron Paris 1949" when it came out. Hadn´t heard of Tadd but read on the liner notes that whole Paris eagerly awaited him to show them those "new chords".

Heard his stuff and purchased that "Tadd Dameron-John Coltrane" and next day I went to school and told them guys "hey you must get to know Tadd Dameron, he played with Miles AND with Trane, and the youngsters said "well, then he must be something", and we all got together and listend and learned to hum his tunes.

We were a crazy bunch of guys, gee boy that was some high school......, imagine it today, kids comin together to discuss that music.

And well someone said "but he´s not so sharp on piano like Bud !" Others, the more moderate guys said "well he´s NOT Oscar Peterson or Errol Garner (the guys who liked more "happy easy listenin jazz").

And we spread the word: Look, Tadd knows better than all them others, he led bands with Miles and Trane playin in HIS band, so he damn knows better, he just doesn´t care and plays those short and chordy solos just cause that´s him". I even tried to copy some of his solos, but it´s harder to play than some Powell runs......

Hope somebody who loves Tadd Dameron might read this, the view of a kid of the 70´s about Tadd Dameron......., I think he himself might have liked that.....

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2 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Too bad that I´m not in DC. Love Tadd, his compositions, his voicings, and damn yeah, his piano playing. One little thing we wore out when we were kids was that Royal Roost stuff with Fats Navarro.

It´s strange I "discovered" him only after I had purchased that Miles Davis - Tadd Dameron Paris 1949" when it came out. Hadn´t heard of Tadd but read on the liner notes that whole Paris eagerly awaited him to show them those "new chords".

Heard his stuff and purchased that "Tadd Dameron-John Coltrane" and next day I went to school and told them guys "hey you must get to know Tadd Dameron, he played with Miles AND with Trane, and the youngsters said "well, then he must be something", and we all got together and listend and learned to hum his tunes.

We were a crazy bunch of guys, gee boy that was some high school......, imagine it today, kids comin together to discuss that music.

And well someone said "but he´s not so sharp on piano like Bud !" Others, the more moderate guys said "well he´s NOT Oscar Peterson or Errol Garner (the guys who liked more "happy easy listenin jazz").

And we spread the word: Look, Tadd knows better than all them others, he led bands with Miles and Trane playin in HIS band, so he damn knows better, he just doesn´t care and plays those short and chordy solos just cause that´s him". I even tried to copy some of his solos, but it´s harder to play than some Powell runs......

Hope somebody who loves Tadd Dameron might read this, the view of a kid of the 70´s about Tadd Dameron......., I think he himself might have liked that.....

Strange .. this brings back memories from my own start in jazz, though I never was a musician and was sort of an outsider digging swing and bop in those days (others among my age peers who claimed they liked "jazz" in those mid-70s were - predictably - all about "jazz rock" and "fusion" - plus some "free" -  as being THE latest (and - to them - sole) word in jazz ... ho hum ... ).

I am not sure whether it was the Miles Davis-Tadd Dameron Paris 1949 LP on CBS or the "Mating Call" LP feat. John Coltrane on Prestige-Bellaphon that I purchased first at that time (I did not manage to get my hands on the records with Fats Navarro until sometime later). I had read about Tadd Dameron's importance within 40s bop before and I remember I bought the Paris 1949 LP when it came out too, and when I bought the Mating Call LP I figured this was about as far out within hard bop as I'd dare to venture at that time (you have to EASE your ears into the music after all ;)) but Tadd Dameron's tunes and scores made it all immediately accessible. At any rate, what struck me about Tadd Dameron from the very first moment (and still does) was how he kept coming up with those little melodies and catchy turns and twists that made you almost hum along. "Bop with a melody" in a way ... The impression this made on me was not totally unlike the Gigi Gryce tunes and scores with Clifford Brown on those 1953 Paris sessions (which I had gotten at roughly the same time and spun a lot too).

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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Really interesting to read what you say, Big Beat Steve.

Yeah, the 70´s. A lot of guys where into that fusion thing and some into the free jazz thing, but it´s strange music, or LP collections allways had some Bird and 50´s Miles, and I´m talkin about the hard core listeners, those who where involved in Free Spirit Projects and stuff. Bird, Diz,  Bop, and that includes Tadd Dameron was considered "hip". It even didn´t care how badly it was recorded. Each long-haired and beardy "freak" like myself had to have that "Bird is Free", the one with that white bird on blue sky. Badly recorded, little or wrong liner infos, but you had to dig that and say wow that´s got the same power like Dolphy, like Shepp, like Albert Ayler and what was considered music not for the merrygoround folks....

So, listening to some lousy recorded stuff, broadcasts from Birdland, from Royal Roost was the thing, and Tadd Dameron was a key figure of it. I think most of the stuff was reissued on a Milestone CD , but sorry to say minus the tracks with Kenny Pancho Haggood, listed as "unknown" on the original Musidisc LP. 

"The Kitchenette across the Hall"....... I think Tadd not only composed it, he rote the lyrics too. At school we had been taught about the difference between a novel, an anecdote and a joke (long reading, shorter reading, and .... just a very short thing, a joke).So, this little thing run´s only a minute and a few seconds. Stuff like "Naima" on Trane´s "At Village Vanguard Again" runs a whole LP-side. So that was the novel, and "Kitchenette" was the "joke". Other boys might come to my place and sip some beer and say at one point "hey Geo´, play the "Joke", which meant "Kitchenette". We sang along with it, ....... than one day she lost the key, gee that was a drag for me...... hahahaha....... but look, that kind of arrangement behind that little tune, and that boppish closing from the band.

And oh boy....... the way Dameron played behind "Pennies from Heaven". That´s pure beauty, if I could sing, that might be the way I´d like to have the piano to support me....... 

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I remembery buying "Bird Is Free" on Charlie Parker Records (along with Bird Symbols) around that time too - and guess what? "Sly Mongoose", of all tunes, left a particular impression on me - due to its catchiness.

Cannot recall Bird and Diz getting attention beyond their status as "forefathers" of (then-current) jazz among my age peers, and to them Miles was "Electric Miles" (etc.) only anyway. IIRC the Paris 1949 LP was my first Miles leader LP I ever bought (yes, I often explored artists chronolgically). Apart from that - not much hanging out with long-haireds here ... by that time others had started growing some DECENT hardo again :g, and I always did my own thing anyway.

"Kitchenette Across The Hall" - Google brings up Tadd Dameron-Fats Navarro only, but that is only half the story IMO. The Navarro-Dameron version really comes to life only after you have heard one of those "real", STRAIGHT-pop vocal versions that must have been out there in the 40s. When I first heard a straight rendering of the tune years later I was sort of dumbfounded, I must admit ... I may even have a vocal version by one of those chirps or warblers on 78 somewhere but for the life of it cannot remember the artist and where to search for it now.

 

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