"Bass Notes- Jazz in American Culture A Personal View" by Chuck Israels Chuck was the bass player for the Bill Evans Trio, after Scott La Faro (25 years old) died in a car accident, for six and a half years. This is the third book written by a Bill Evans sideman in the last few years. There was a book written by Evans' 23 year-old girlfriend, there was a novel written that deals with the time when Evans' took an "Intermission" after LaFaro died, now there's going to be a movie about that book, there was a documentary made about Evans that I went to the New School to see the premiere of, and I got in an argument with a friend of Denny Zeitlin's, and finally there were two bios of Evans that came out at the same time. There was also a recent book called "Three Shdes of Blue" about three musicians who played on the most popular jazz album ever, "Kind of Blue", Miles Davis, John Coltrane and of course, Bill Evans. And yet there are people here that think that BE had nothing to do with the greatness of that album. Anyway, Chuck is about 90 now, and he is not going gentle into that great dark night. He takes down everyone in this book, even Bill Evans.  This is an autobio of sorts. He talks about his one great fault; when he was young, he never thought that people studied or practiced to get good at what they do; they were just born with that particular talent.  He was good at math, so he wound up getting into MIT majoring in engineering. He had a natural talent for the cello, so he became a cellist in his HS orchestra, and later switched to bass. He found he had a natural  ability for playing bass in small jazz groups, and he fell head over heels in love with jazz. So much so, that he realized he had to study for the first time in his life at MIT and couldn't catch up and flunked out of MIT  He was a "Red Diaper Baby" so his family had connections, and Eleanor Roosevelt wrote a letter that got him into Brandeis, where he happened to meet Bill Evans at the famous 1957 Third Stream Concert featuring works by George Russell, Gunther Schuller, etc... and impressed Bill a great deal at a jam session they had in the cafeteria. In early 1958 he became friends with the famous producer Tom Wilson and made a trip to NYC with him to play on his first jazz recording session with Cecil Taylor. On the session were Kenny Dorham, Louis Hayes and John Coltrane. They warmed up with a few standards, and it became obvious that Cecil was in one place rhythmically, and the other four musicians were in another place. Thus begins the observations of CI which make this a fascinating book. Check it out.    

Inspired by BFrank's playing the Mosaic box...

Wadada Leo Smith -- Central Park's Mosaics . . .