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Lou Mecca


Larry Kart

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Having long admired his work with Gil Melle, and that of fellow Melle gjuitarist Joe Cinderella as well, I just picked up a Fresh Sound compilation of Mecca's 1953 Blue Note ten-inch LP, with Bill DeArango's EmArcy 10-incher, and the Chuck Wayne material with Brew Moore and Zoot Sims  that came out on Savoy. Have listened so far to the Mecca -- boy do I like him:
 

 

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I''ve always been curious about him (to complete my range of 50s modern jazz guitarists). Too bad I missed out on opportunities to buy an affordable copy of the Japanese 10-inch reissue LP about 15 years ago.

I have all the others that seem to have been compiled with him in one package (Sal Salvador and Tal Farlow on the one hand and Bill DeArango as well as Chuck Wayne/Brew Moore onn the other) so would be stuck with tons of overlaps and duplicates which is annoying. Oh well, one day maybe .... :huh:

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And do not miss out on Joe Cinderella. I'm not aware of any Cinderella on record apart from Melle, but what is there is choice. Interesting that Melle could hook up with two such individual and talented guitarists. Must have been New Jersey; I think both of them hailed from there. Mecca, as the track linked to above suggests, was very much into Tal Farlow, though I would never mistake him for Tal.

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re Cinderella: He released another album in 2002, see here

which was apparently never really easy to get hold off, (reading my old posts it apparently had Gers Yowell on sax and Doug Yowell on Drums), by now, all or most of it made it to youtube

https://www.youtube.com/user/numdud/videos?view=0&sort=dd&shelf_id=0

(discogs also suggests that he played on quite a few albums as a studio guitarist)

 

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12 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

And do not miss out on Joe Cinderella. I'm not aware of any Cinderella on record apart from Melle, but what is there is choice. Interesting that Melle could hook up with two such individual and talented guitarists. Must have been New Jersey; I think both of them hailed from there. Mecca, as the track linked to above suggests, was very much into Tal Farlow, though I would never mistake him for Tal.

Thanks for the reminder about Joe Cinderella. I have the "Patterns In Jazz" LP. It must have been ages since I last spun it. About time again ... (later today ;)).

 

 

 

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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Cinderella was definitely the better player of the two, but Mecca was the 'go to guy' for a back adjustment.

Cinderella appeared with Vinnie Burke and Matt Matthews on some record, maybe Chis Connors'.

He got involved with the NYC studio scene, and did jingles, TV etc...

I played with some organist who was doing a club gig with Joe in NJ.

He switched to playing solo piano at lounges in Atlantic City.

On the 2002 album, he plays an 8-string guitar that was tuned in 3rds and 4ths, and plays a lot of chord things that you could only play on piano.

He passed a few years ago.

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I just wondered why the name sounds familiar to me but I don´t have no idea who it might be.

That´s it: Saw the name on some BlueNote album , this one with "Gil Melle". I remember I bought it just to fill a hole in my BN discography.

The music never really became very familiar to me. I´m sure it´s good and hard to play stuff, but it really sounds strange to my ears, somehow more like some "western avantgarde" or if some students who are into western 20th century music, want to try out what they think is "jazz".

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