Michael Fitzgerald

Yes, Coltrane mentioned being influenced by Gilmore (around 1961) in an interview. That has led to a lot of discussion. The problem you'll have with this record is that all (or just most? I forget) of the Gilmore solos are missing. At least one unedited track with a Gilmore solo was issued on a various artists LP - if Verve knows what they're doing, they'll include that in the CD reissue. Unfortunately, that's a big "if". Mike

I haven't read the Cadence piece. I'll get a look at it next week hopefully. I've had the pleasure of talking on the phone a few times with Alvin Fielder, and his brother is a very good friend of mine so I know the stories. What you wrote in the other thread doesn't surprise me a bit. Glad that you were able to check him out. Mike

There are a ton of classical themes, with added lyrics. Stranger in Paradise is Borodin from Prince Igor. I guess the idea was that the melody would be "great music" which would already be somewhat familiar to listeners, and it would be out of copyright, so the lyric writer could get all the royalties. Mike

As the writer of those Joe Gordon CD liner notes, it's my opinion that the musicians were not so concerned about the composers and probably weren't intentionally looking to mislead anyone - Rifftide had been out there as a commonly played line on Lady Be Good for a decade, whether as the melody or a shout chorus kind of thing. I could imagine the producer asking the musicians who wrote it and them responding, "I don't know" - at which point it suddenly became a new original composition called "Toll Bridge." Ditto for The Theme on the same record. The Stan's Blues thing is quite tricky, actually - because some Getz issues have a tune listed as Stan's Blues that is NOT Eleanor (the 1964 Carnegie Hall w/Gilberto, for one). But yes, the commonly known Stan's Blues is Eleanor. Originally recorded by Getz as a shout chorus thing inside his performance of Jumpin' With Symphony Sid. There are a number of other related things described in the Gryce book. Mike

Alvin Fielder is a master. He is from Meridien, Mississippi. Alvin and his brother William (trumpet) worked in Sun Ra's band in the late 1950s. When the AACM started in the mid 1960s, Fielder was right there in the thick of it. Recorded on the Roscoe Mitchell album "Sound" - Chuck Nessa ought to have much to say. He grew up studying the records of Max Roach and Shelly Manne, later with Ed Blackwell, and is a superb technician. Fielder is also a licensed pharmacist. His father, who died a couple of years ago at around age 100, was too. You might like this: http://www.shs.starkville.k12.ms.us/mswm/M...ns/Fielder.html although there are some minor inaccuracies (it was done by a high school student). Mike

Following up - The Blackstone project never got past volume one. Regarding the fatal flaw of the Raben books - I don't see it so much as the distribution issue. It was more the publication pace. Raben got off to a slow start - the project was announced in 1972 but the first book didn't come off the presses until 1989. I think a lot of people were already going with the Walter Bruyninckx discographies, which although quite problematic at first, got better - and were actually completed, several times, in fact). They also had the benefit of covering the entire history of jazz, not just post-war. Lord did take advantage of the distribution problems that Bruyninckx (and Raben) had. His books were readily available and kept on coming. Beginning in 1992, Lord almost immediately passed Raben - in 1993, Lord was up to Go-. Raben published vol. 7, Ell-Fra, in 1999, by which time Lord reached Tho-. The crying shame is that of all the people who have produced general discographies, Lord is the least qualified, does the least original research, and apparently is the least concerned with accuracy. But thanks to his marketing, his is the discography in widest circulation. The competition seemed to look at discography as a one-man hobby operation (and this approach has proved to be very successful in terms of accuracy), but wasn't prepared for the blitzkrieg. Lord seems to hire data entry workers, subcontract computer programming, etc. The work gets done - but it's not done well. Personally, I own Delaunay, Rust, Jepsen, Raben, several sets of Bruyninckx (including the CD-ROM), and Lord. Plus a number of the Michel Ruppli books, and numerous artist or label discographies - and ain't none of them perfect yet. But I think that even most people who are nuts enough to own *any* discographies aren't about to purchase multiple sets that ostensibly cover the same material (but maybe I'm wrong based on how people rebuy re-re-re-issues) . I completely understand why Raben lost the war - but I'd still pay good money for future volumes of his research. Mike

Still plays - did a gig a few months back at William Paterson University in NJ. Report I heard was not very positive. Mike

The more I work with the Lord CD-ROM the more disgusted I get at the complete incompetence. Either the entry work was done by helper monkeys or no one actually bothered to review/edit the material. Could be both, I suppose. I mean, when the same identical session appears CONSECUTIVELY (often times with one correct and one wrong) - what does this tell you? BTW, Lord's excuse to this kind of thing is "Well, better twice than not at all." I've found cases where even Jepsen includes information (issues, for example) that Lord omits. I think the updates to Delaunay you're talking about are actually a separate work "Hot Discographie Encyclopedique" (three parts, ending with He-) - in these Delaunay and Kurt Mohr moved away from the stylistic categories and into the alphabetical organization. I don't have a copy myself, unfortunately. And 1958 was the start *and* the end of the yearly updates to Jazz Directory. Those interested in some of the history might like this article: http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Essays/obsess.htm Mike

Yes, "Royal Roost" or "Rue Chaptal" is the "Tenor Madness" melody, recorded by Kenny Clarke in 1946. Dorham is on the date. KD later recorded "Royal Roost" at the Bohemia in May 1956 too. Mike

On a jazz bulletin board, shouldn't we at least include the Pete Rugolo album in the "discography"? Mike

BTW, have they ever fixed the botch job they did on "Equinox"? Some of the intro is missing. I called them up when it came out on CD and was told that it would be fixed eventually - has it? Mike

Tony Newton was the bassist in the Holdsworth/Pasqua version. First album (Believe It) pretty good with a monster solo by Holdsworth on "Fred" - second album (Million Dollar Legs) pretty much crap. These are on a twofer CD by Columbia. Lifetime name was used by Williams for a number of groups. Another one would be the 1971 band with Ted Dunbar and Larry Young - they recorded one album (Ego) for Polydor. Reissued by Verve. See the Ted Dunbar discography on my website for details. Mike

I think the Delaunay can still hold interest for the modern-day jazz fan because of how it is organized. It's not set up like later works (strictly alphabetical and chronological within that), rather, it is grouped by style and player, so all the Bix stuff is together with Goldkette, Whiteman, etc. then moving to Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, followed by the Chicagoans - and so forth. Now, as you well know, the problem is that other than the leaders, some personnel, and the song titles, everything in there is pretty much useless if you're actually trying to look something up. There aren't any recording dates and the issues are all 78s. The other way I find the Delaunay useful is for just knowing what records the book included as well as what was out there at the time and how it was considered - because Hot Discographie was so influential that some people swore by it and anything that wasn't included wasn't worth their time. All in all, it was a revolutionary effort and God bless Charles Delaunay for paving the way for everyone else. Mike

Yeah, but "Royal Roost" aka "Rue Chaptal" was recorded a decade earlier than either of those. Mike

He's already published one on small group arranging and he is in the process of completing his autobiography. Mike

Ha! "Chicken sal san" - a classic! http://www.filmsite.org/five.html Mike

Cecil Taylor was one of the others on the Cavett panel discussion. A little excerpt is included in the Ortiz Walton book "Music: Black, White, and Blue". Here's a bit from an interview of Art Davis, who was the bassist on the Merv Griffin show during the disruption. From Cadence interview (9/86). ===== The sad thing about it is all of these people knew me - I had recorded with them - and did not let me know in advance. Which, in a sense, hurt me, because I wouldn't have gone and told and said, 'They're gonna do this and I don't want any part of it, God help me.' I was on one of Kirk's first albums, We Free Kings, and I recorded with Lee Morgan. All those people knew me, so it wasn't a case of not knowing me. But I was portrayed as the organizer. Isn't that great? I was a powerful person. so what happened after that was a sort of slide, going downhill. [Did Merv fire you after that?] Well, it was very sophisticated. We heard that he was going to go to California, moving the band; however, certain musicians remained here. And that was the whole idea, as I was told by a certain musician that remained here, that the orchestra had to take certain people and to leave certain people here because of Davis. We know Davis would sue. Those musicians, however, got jobs. They were placed in the network. One person was on ABC. Another one got Broadway shows. They were placed in work. [so staying in New York meant that you were out of the Merv Griffin Show.] Exactly. Since I wasn't asked, Merv avoided me. I supposed to be the good little boy since I had a job working; I'm supposed to keep my nose clean. I'm not supposed to do as I felt that if others don't have work, I shouldn't just be the onliest one, as Muhammad Ali said. I did not like that position. Although many other people enjoy that position of being the onliest one, but it wasn't me. So in a sense, I was being made an example of. When that happened, everybody else closed ranks and I was what I call 'Whitelisted.' === (interview continues) In my opinion, the Ed Sullivan performance was a hugely wasted opportunity. The band is remarkably sloppy and it comes across as almost amateurish. If you've got one shot to show the millions of viewers what jazz is and why it's important to have it on TV, you'd better have something that will present your case well. Mike

For fun, nostalgia, and maybe even some educational value, I think you need to tour the pages of Down Beat for the series of articles by Charles Graham - here's one from May 11, 1961: ======== "Stereo Shopping With George Russell" George Russell is one of a small but growing group of avant-garde jazz composers. He started his big-time career playing drums with Benny Carter and has done arrangements for Earl Hines, Claude Thornhill, and Artie Shaw, among others. In 1957 [sic], Dizzy Gillespie introduced two of Russell's arrangements, Cubano-Be and Cubano-Bop, at Carnegie Hall, and they since have come to be well-known examples of Russell's talent. He's taught at the School of Jazz in Lenox, Mass., and was commissioned by Brandeis University to compose a "serious" jazz work. His application of the Lydian chromatic concept has been called by the Modern Jazz Quartet's John Lewis "the first profound theoretical contribution to come from jazz." Among Russell's albums on several labels, his Decca New York, New York, narrated by Jon Hendricks, and his Riverside Stratusphunk are best known. Riverside has also commissioned him to do a series that is expected to include six albums, to be issued over the next 18 to 24 months. Acutely aware of the sound of music, Russell has had a medium-size monophonic components setup for a couple of years. It included a Bogen 10-watt amplifier, a Webster-Chicago changer, and a modest loudspeaker in a small cabinet. Recently, he decided to convert to stereo. In his words, he wanted to get a system "good enough so that spending more money won't materially improve the sound." Russell said he wanted to get a top-grade stereo disc-playing setup including a changer, an inexpensive tuner, and provision for adding a tape recorder. As a take-off point, it was decided to play a couple of stereo discs on the studio setup. He'd brought some of his own records, and put on his New York, New York. He worked the controls of the Fisher 400-CX stereo control unit to get the sound the way he liked it. After he found the best balances of bass and treble (the machine has four separate bass and treble controls, one for each of the stereo channels), he put on a stereo record of the Count Basie Band with Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Buck Clayton, Dickie Wells, and Lester Young playing Dickie's Dream. This extraordinary record, The Sound of Jazz on Columbia, was taped in stereo, even though when it was first released by Columbia after a broadcast in late 1957, stereo discs were still a novelty. By setting the stereo function switch and watching the row of five different colored lights that shift off and on according to the position of the controls, it was possible to show Russell how various parts of the ensemble sound could be suppressed or emphasized. For example, after the introduction, Young takes a typically languorous tenor saxophone chorus. Playing only the right channel first and then only the left, Young could be heard equally well, indicating that he was recorded in midstage. Later though, when Hawkins took a driving chorus, he came through the left-hand speaker quite clearly. This indicated that Hawkins was recorded on the same side with the other reeds. Switching to the right-channel-only position the brass punctuation and rhythm could be heard, but Hawkins was almost inaudible. The same thing happened in reverse a moment later when Eldridge took a chorus from the side where the brass was located. Russell was struck by this graphic way of showing what each section was doing and commented that it would make it easier for him to dissect an orchestration in listening to records. But he found that the Fisher, priced at $199.50, with its associated dual 60-watt power amplifier, at a total cost of $399, would be too expensive for him. Next he listened to a Scott 299 amplifier, a dual 50-watt unit costing $210. He liked the sound and the very flexible controls and decided to get one like it. A number of good loudspeakers of various manufacture had been set up in the studio, so Russell listened to each of them. One of the so-called high-efficiency types, which has a separate horn speaker for the middle range and a horn tweeter for the high notes, delivered extremely clear, crisp sound, but Russell was particularly concerned with the bass reproduction. He said he wanted bass sound strong and loud, yet firm and tight. He said that this, along with the clean highs was best delivered by the Acoustic Research AR-2As and ordered two of them. Having selected the amplifier and tuner, he next compared the sounds relayed by three different cartridges. Listening through the Scott amplifier and the Acoustic Research speakers, he was able to compare them by plugging in first one and then another cartridge in the removable shells of the Electro-Sonic arm. This arm has shells supplied in natural chromium finish and in red, white, and blue, marking which cartridge is which. Although he noticed slight differences in the sounds conveyed through the cartridges, he found that by a slight resetting of the tone controls on the Scott amplifier, he could adjust the tonal balance of any of the three cartridges so that it sounded right to him. Finally, he chose a Shure stereo pickup. This will play both mono and stereo LPs. He said he so rarely plays 78s that he'll wait until later to get an inexpensive GE mono pickup with a sapphire stylus. Because he has no need to synchronize piano playing at home with phonograph records, Russell decided he need not go to the added expense of having a turntable with speeds that can be adjusted faster or slower to match the piano's pitch exactly. He did want a changer, though, he said, "if I can get one that's as good as a turntable for sound. If the sound will suffer, I'll give up the convenience of a changer." He was assured that the current Garrard RC-88 ($59.50), which he'd seen and liked, wouldn't rumble when used with the other components he'd picked. Russell said he had tried several tuners in his home when his system was still monophonic, but he'd found that some of them wouldn't separate all the weaker stations out of town from stronger ones nearby. He'd ended up with a Leak FM tuner that incorporates an electric eye for tuning. He'd found this feature useful in tuning the weaker stations and so decided to get another Leak tuner. Russell's equipment: Scott 299B amplifier - $210. Shure M-3 pickup - $47. Acoustic Research AR-2A speakers @ $109. Garrard RC-88 changer - $59.50. Leak FM tuner - $149.50. ======= All sorts of big name jazz folks got some extra press coverage through this column. Mike

Nature Boy is on the 1955 Miles album "Blue Moods" on Debut. For all such TC questions, please see the discography by Noal Cohen at www.JazzDiscography.com I had the pleasure of seeing TC almost exactly a year ago in a trio with Perry Robinson and Ed Schuller. Also spent some time hanging out with him (and schlepping his vibes). The Tentet stuff is set for a rare performance at the Springsville festival in Los Angeles at the end of May. Mike

Some info here: http://www.geocities.com/solukmavi/sd-fotheringay.html Also I have a track by Stefan Grossman reportedly with Fotheringay called "A Pretty Little Tune". Mike

This is true - according to http://www.riaa.com/gp/database/default.asp ALS went gold on January 3, 2001. If I understand it correctly, KOB is triple platinum (it has received 4 awards). Mike

If you think "Buttercorn Lady" is the worst Blakey album, then you haven't heard "Hold On, I'm Coming" - I like the story that Jack Woker tells about it (posted on rmb 12/31/97): "I remember seeing Blakey back around 1966, when this was his latest release. The club was playing the album through the sound system in between sets, and I saw Art Blakey go up to the record player and take the album off!" And actually, no, "Buttercorn Lady" was not the only album that Mangione made with Blakey. He was in the band a full year, staying through several other personnel changes (Keith Jarrett, Lonnie Liston Smith - twice, Mike Nock, Chick Corea came through on piano). The other album he made is the aforementioned "Hold On, I'm Coming" - and Mangione's presence is by no means the problem. Mike

Ear is the only real answer, but there are basically 7 slide positions (later you will learn this is a gross oversimplification). The easiest to learn is first position - all the way in. Then comes third, with the cross brace of the slide equal with the edge of the bell. Then there is fourth, with the near end of the slide just past the edge of the bell. Notes in first position (low to high): B-flat, F, B-flat. There are many more higher notes, but we'll stop here. Notes in third position: A-flat, E-flat, A-flat Notes in fourth position: G, D, G Low C is in sixth position - for a 10 year old this is arm all the way out and even turned a little to the right. Yes, there is a seventh position (for B, F-sharp, B, etc.). Eighth position is when the slide falls off. A method book is an inexpensive and vital reference. $8 or so. I use "Accent On Achievement" but any of them will have a position chart and will progress page by page. Mike

I am sure there is a market for 3-CD anthologies like "Dizzy's Diamonds" - although, no, I'm not part of that market. But what I can't fathom is why "Greatest Trumpet of Them All" has NEVER seen CD reissue while such things as "Dizzy Goes Hollywood" or "Jambo Caribe" have - I mean, they're not complete dreck, but comparatively, they're small potatoes. And having known some of the folks who were once involved with Verve reissues (who would LOVE to put this stuff out), there must be someone in a higher position who squelches the idea. Mike

Yes, Gigi Gryce and Benny Golson. It's a phenomenal record. What the boneheads at Verve have been thinking all these years I don't know. Please, sir, may I have another Ella Fitzgerald compilation? Mike