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Glad you are back Allen.

NP:

I just got a call from a white alto player, who leads one of the big bands play in, and occasionally write and arrange for. We've got a gig coming up, and he asks me to write an alto feature for him. He doesn't mention money, so I gave him the alto part to an old Strozier chart I wrote, and told him to practice it, cause it's too hard to sight read, as he proved when he tried to play it, and gave up after a number of bars. He owns an entire block in NYC, so I know he needs time to work on it... Of course, he forgot that he tried to play it already.  So he calls me and tells me that it sounds too classical to him (?) I said Classical? What the hell sounds classical about it? Now, I had given it to another band, and because Strozier sounds bluesy, I wrote the word bluesy at the beginning. The white alto player, who is a great Phil Woods-type player, took the word too literally, and started growling and moaning at the end, marring what WAS a perfect performance. Unfortunately, the trumpet section added to my misery by ignoring the word "MUTE" and played OPEN, drowning out the poor alto player's stellar performance. I even yelled at them to put on their effing mutes, but they ignored me. After it was over. I asked them why they didn't use mutes. They said I didn't write MUTE, so I point to the word "MUTE" on the most annoying guy's part. He said, " you wrote it in the wrong place." I said, "that's where they put it in MuseScore"  The guy says, "that's not the way it's supposed to be". I gave up. I took the trumpet parts home and wrote MUTE on each one. Then I took the 1st alto part out and wrote the name "Phil Woods' on it, because I know this guy never heard of FS. So  the leader said to me on the phone, that's why I said it was a classical piece, because Phil used to play the Ibert and Glazunov pieces, and it sounds like that.  I said "But this is jazz; it's with a big band not an orchestra. So he said, "bring it down. We'll check it out.' I pretty much live to hear my shit played, so I said, okay. BTW, to name a white alto player, I was thinking of naming Sheila Cooper, who I mentioned in the "Artists" section, but then found out she had passed, so I did an RIP on her. ,  

😎 Great record. One of Grant's best solos, IMO, is on Idle Moments.

A roommate in 1976 had an lp set of the complete Savoy masters.  That was my first serious exposure to Bird.  Somewhat later I bought cassette tape versions of some of the older lps.  These were like sacred texts to me and I had backup copies of the cassettes!  Later I got most of the Denon cds and eventually complete sets in several reissues including Japanese and finally the big Savoy and Dial complete set.  Plus the live stuff and the Mosaic.  Etc, etc. I would say if you don't have anything get the complete master takes.  But if you are really into it eventually you get them all because he would spin off interesting and different ideas in every take.  It's hard to listen to every take one after the other but in small doses it's worth it.