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Ed Bickert, RIP


sgcim

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On 3/5/2019 at 8:24 AM, Dave James said:

With all due respect to a great and under-appreciated player, my initial reaction to seeing this picture was this.  A road-worn musician with his road-worn Telecaster. 

That picture comes from a video that Ed did with his son.  Early on, he recalls an interaction I had with him about this guitar, then goes on to talk about his instrument(s).

 

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Now that I think of it, perhaps the whole series of chats with his son Jeff (from about 5 years back) should be seen.  You can see, even with his son, that Ed was a quiet and contemplative man...  Not really done as video, but as recording information from Ed as information for a possible book, so his hesitancy is 'amplified'...

https://vimeo.com/user25681287

Edited by Ted O'Reilly
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On 3/7/2019 at 0:21 AM, Ted O'Reilly said:

Steve Wallace worked with Ed from the time Steve was a teenager, and has written his remembrance, with Ed as a mentor and as a colleague and as a friend.  And an icon...

https://wallacebass.com/so-long-ed-a-remembrance/?unapproved=27366&moderation-hash=499672fe2b9e25d3d73b69b31458ec01#comment-27366

Wallace talks about the flimsy, cheap gig bag Ed kept his Telecaster in, which I confused with him having no case or gig bag at all. 

From the way Wallace describes the 'gig bag', it was probably the closest thing to having no case or gig bag at all!

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On 3/4/2019 at 5:36 PM, Ted O'Reilly said:

Someone sent me this Youtube link...  It was a CBC profile of Ed.  I was the off-screen interviewer for the talk bits, edited out, of course!

You could do a whole course on Ed's harmony alone:  

 

That was superb. RIP. 

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48 minutes ago, B. Clugston said:

RIP. Great guitarist. First heard him on the Paul Desmond live album from the 1970s where his masterful playing would quickly soothe anyone missing Brubeck. Lots of other great work on his own.

I agree with you that Ed was a great guitarist...  But comparing him in pretty much any way with Dave Brubeck is beyond my comprehension.  They're poles apart, I'd say.

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On 3/11/2019 at 7:33 PM, Ted O'Reilly said:

I agree with you that Ed was a great guitarist...  But comparing him in pretty much any way with Dave Brubeck is beyond my comprehension.  They're poles apart, I'd say.

Hey Ted, I read that you did an interview with Ed in Coda, 1984. Are there any links to it? Thanks.

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On 3/14/2019 at 3:30 PM, sgcim said:

Hey Ted, I read that you did an interview with Ed in Coda, 1984. Are there any links to it? Thanks.

 

20 hours ago, medjuck said:

Is Coda on-line somewhere? 

coda is not online that I'm aware of...  though it could be.  Not in my ken.

I did a jazz programme at CJRT-FM radio in Toronto from May of 1965 til April of 2002.  For the last couple of years, what had been a wide-ranging educational radio station turned itself into an all-jazz (well, y'know...) outlet.

I left, dissatisfied with pretty much everything, but left behind all the interviews and recordings-for-broadcast I had done for those 37 years.  (I had done 24 hours a week of live night time programming, never doing a re-run:  every show was new.  No repeats, other than the interviews:  heard live maybe on a Tuesday when the artist came to town and replayed on my Saturday AM show.

A couple of years after I left, the station got a grant to put that archive of interviews and broadcasts on a heritage website which the new management controlled.  Fair, because I was always an employee and the station owns the material and I guess they can do what they want with it.  But my name, and voice and all identification that it was me ( the only jazz person for 37 years there ) was the person who created all this material.  I was a touch p-o'd with that, so I have never gone to the site, but I'm told that NOT the whole thing, but someone's opinion of what was 'essential' is included, so perhaps Ed's interview is there.  You can check at http://www.canadianjazzarchive.org/en/interviews.html but I can't be bothered.  I'm just angered ( though after nearly two decades of retirement it's waning ) that current listeners are not getting the whole picture.

Rant over.

It's spring-ish here in Toronto today, and I've just spent a couple of days with both my youngest grandson AND the marvelous Guido Basso, and am trying to be happy.  Thanks for the reference to Ed Bickert, who was the object of so much of the dinner with Guido last night...

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3 hours ago, Ted O'Reilly said:

 

coda is not online that I'm aware of...  though it could be.  Not in my ken.

I did a jazz programme at CJRT-FM radio in Toronto from May of 1965 til April of 2002.  For the last couple of years, what had been a wide-ranging educational radio station turned itself into an all-jazz (well, y'know...) outlet.

I left, dissatisfied with pretty much everything, but left behind all the interviews and recordings-for-broadcast I had done for those 37 years.  (I had done 24 hours a week of live night time programming, never doing a re-run:  every show was new.  No repeats, other than the interviews:  heard live maybe on a Tuesday when the artist came to town and replayed on my Saturday AM show.

A couple of years after I left, the station got a grant to put that archive of interviews and broadcasts on a heritage website which the new management controlled.  Fair, because I was always an employee and the station owns the material and I guess they can do what they want with it.  But my name, and voice and all identification that it was me ( the only jazz person for 37 years there ) was the person who created all this material.  I was a touch p-o'd with that, so I have never gone to the site, but I'm told that NOT the whole thing, but someone's opinion of what was 'essential' is included, so perhaps Ed's interview is there.  You can check at http://www.canadianjazzarchive.org/en/interviews.html but I can't be bothered.  I'm just angered ( though after nearly two decades of retirement it's waning ) that current listeners are not getting the whole picture.

Rant over.

It's spring-ish here in Toronto today, and I've just spent a couple of days with both my youngest grandson AND the marvelous Guido Basso, and am trying to be happy.  Thanks for the reference to Ed Bickert, who was the object of so much of the dinner with Guido last night...

Yeah, Joey Goldstein told me about that situation. He said it was a huge blow to jazz radio in Canada.I don't even want to think about what the person's sensibilities of what is "essential" is today.They'll probably tie it in to hip-hop...:alien:

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I just got back from following your link, thank you by the way, and on the good side, they have an unbelievably great concert of Ed, Lorne, Neil and Terry at the Ontario Science Center from 1984, which you introduce. All the players are at their best, and every cut is just phenomenal! 

On the bad side, the 'interview' with Ed that they have is from 1981, and they cut out the interviewer (which I presume is you), and just have Ed's short answers to three questions!!!

At least they include your questions in the transcript, and the third question is a great one, asking him about Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow's influence on his playing, which he acknowledges, along with Johnny Smith, Kenny Burrell, and Jim Hall.

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14 hours ago, medjuck said:

I moved to Toronto in June of 1965 and presumed that your Saturday morning show as well established.  Didn't realize that you had just  begun.  Listened to you till I left in June of 1980. 

YOU were the one listener!  Thanks, Joe...^_^

Yeah, I started doing the evenings in May of '65, and the Saturday mornings were to be a fill-in for a bit, but by the end of May were 'left alone', rather than ever 'permanized'.  I just kept doing it, for 37 years, and time was added on and on, soon to be from 6 am to Noon, garnering the biggest audience on the station.  Who'da thought jazz would work on a Saturday morning?  But it's still there, though the station is having many many problems...

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I just found a Cornerstone CD on ebay that EB did back in 1999, that wasn't released until 2013 for some reason. It's the same group as the "Live at the Senator Club" CD, with just guitar, bass (Steve Wallace) and sax (Mike Murley). It's called "Test of Time". All different tunes other than "I Should Care" and "Golden Earrings". The clips sound great, with a lot of interplay between Bickert and Murley.

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