Michael Fitzgerald

Thanks for posting that - also, www.HenryGrimes.com is now more or less operational. There will continue to be some tinkering but it's good start, if I do say so myself. Please stop by - sorry we have no complimentary beverages or tote bags at this point. But we do have some gigs for those of you in the LA area. With some new big names you might recognize like Bobby Bradford, Bennie Maupin, Joseph Jarman - plus some others familiar from the earlier LA gigs that Henry did. Mike

Looks like a good old minor blues. Make that #329 in the books for the next gig. Mike

It's more the melody that's a mess, the vamp is way wrong - also wrong chords there. It says Dm7 to Dm6 - but the tenor plays A to B-flat, not B and there's no mention of the pedal point being on A - the chord should really be A7 to A7b9. I'm using the Miles version. There's also a significant melody note that Miles plays as D which is written as E. The book lists the Miles version only, but that is NOT any proof that it was what they were attempting to notate. I haven't compared the Getz version. But basically this has marginally better relevance to the Miles version than the sheet on My Favorite Things has to the Coltrane version of that tune. Mike

He definitely does have a stutter. Sometimes it's more or less pronounced, in my experience. Mike

Red plays the Miles solo from "Now's the Time." It's from Bird's first session as a leader, on Savoy in 1945. Mike

Nope - I do not now nor have I ever owned that album. Never heard it other than that 1 minute sample, I'm pretty sure. I would like to own it, though. I don't suppose anyone would be willing to trade the CD for a sweater and some ice cream? Haven't you ever seen those demonstrations of standardized tests where they show you the multiple-choice answers only and you can figure out the right answer without seeing the question? This would have been a lot harder if it were a free-response test. Mike

I will go with Ronnie Mathews on Breaking Point the track "Far Away." Mike

I don't have a problem with the sound, but I'm a musician not an audiophile. I can get past a lot of problems in sound that upset others. I have the Columbia/Odyssey Lp somewhere. Maybe I'll drag it out. I haven't ever heard any other complaints other than that one by Henry Schmidt. The Collectables 2-fer of the Blakey Hard Bop/Paris albums missed one track, I'm almost positive. I forget off which. I already had the Japanese CD at that point. Mike

I don't own Bearcat - any chance for an online mp3 of the example? Mike

Personally, it would seem to me that, as an artist, one would want to STAY with Columbia as long as possible. They were the pinnacle in terms of production and promotion. I'm not privy to the ins and outs of the contract, but drugs definitely played a part in the split-up and the successor bands (until Benny Golson) could be quite variable. I think the Atlantic album with Monk has some of their best playing for whatever reason. The quintet half of Drum Suite comes from the same sessions that produced the entire Hard Bop album - could be these were "leftovers" and the percussion ensemble session was set up to fill out the album. Maybe the label wanted to unload Blakey because the quality dropped. Pure speculation on my part. Shortly before the percussion ensemble session, the quintet recorded Ritual (aka Once Upon A Groove) for Pacific Jazz - part of a trade so that Columbia could record a Chet Baker album. Orgy In Rhythm was done less than a month later for Blue Note, then then following day, Blakey recorded for Elektra (Midnight Session, aka Mirage aka Reflections Of Buhaina) and then a few days later was recording for RCA. That didn't last long as he moved on to Jubilee, then to Atlantic, then to Bethlehem. Somewhere in there he recorded for Cadet (in Minneapolis!?). All this done in less than 12 months. The French CD of Drum Suite sounds fine to me - there are some points where Pettiford's cello distorts, but it's no big deal. The two halves of this album were recorded at different times (A in 1957, produced by Cal Lampley; B in 1956, produced by George Avakian) so different studios might have been used. Drag that the CD doesn't have the photos! BTW - the CD issue reverses the dates and producer credits, as far as I'm concerned. 99% sure that Avakian produced the Hard Bop album and it seems that he ought to be the producer for the quintet session. Unfortunately my Japanese CD of Hard Bop doesn't list ANY producer but Avakian personally told me he produced the Hard Bop album, so I'm trusting his word at this point. The quintet stuff was definitely done in 1956 not 1957. Mike

It's a tape from his collection. It has never been issued. Vee Jay went through a lot of craziness in the 1960s, legally and financially. I guess maybe their priorities were on the Four Seasons and The Beatles rather than jazz at that point. Mike

That's kind of apples and oranges - it was done in 1958, just over a week after Moanin'. It's NOTHING like Moanin', which is an all-time classic. So, I wouldn't consider it alongside the Messengers records. I have always liked Holiday For Skins the best of the primarily-percussion sets (Drum Suite, Orgy In Rhythm, The African Beat). Then again, Drum Suite is sort of an exception to the above rule because it's half percussion and half Messengers. Mike

The Willie Thomas session is listed in discographies (October 10, 1960) - it has Bunky Green on alto, Chris Anderson on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass, and Walter Perkins on drums. Willie is sending a copy of at least some of this material to me as we speak. Mike

If you are looking to fill odds and ends it will do just fine - do you already have all the other 1957 AB records? This one is interesting as a precursor to the Blue Note percussion albums. Art Blakey never made a bad album in the 1950s. But it's not in my top 25 AB albums, if that makes a difference. Mike

My error above - pianist Andrew Bemkey was most certainly present. It was alto saxophonist Rob Brown who was not. So, the band was: Perry Robinson-clarinet, ocarina; Roy Campbell, Jr.-trumpet, pocket trumpet, flugelhorn, flutes, recorder; Andrew Bemkey-piano; Henry Grimes-bass; Michael Thompson-drums (and glass of water); joined on the last of three selections by bassist Chris Sullivan. I videotaped the entire afternoon. Henry will again return to WKCR to host the "Musician's Show" on Wednesday, July 30, 6-9 PM. The concept of this show is that the musician decides what records to play. Could be a nice chance to hear Henry's favorite bass players and other influences on his music. www.HenryGrimes.com will be the place to look for Henry's activities. Hopefully it will be kept fairly up to date. Also check there for info on Henry's new CD of solo bass. Mike

The biographical article that I wrote to accompany that interview can be seen its original form on my website. You can see some photos I took of Henry here: http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Artists/Grimes/Photos/ I will be seeing him tomorrow afternoon as he will be playing live on WKCR-FM (again!) with most of the group he led at Iridium, but with Perry Robinson instead of Andrew Bemkey. 3-6 PM EDT. www.wkcr.org Mike

Yes, Bill Hardman. The Brian Priestley book lists this as from August 18, 1956 at Cafe Bohemia with Hardman, McLean, Waldron, Mingus, Al Dreares. Mike

Tiny Kahn photo shot by Bob Parent at Storyville 1951 can be found in the Mosaic Getz set. Mike

Yes. The guys from The Fourth Way are on the hit list. Mike

Dewey Redman's name does come up. It remains to be seen how big a role he will play. BTW, if there are SF residents who were seeing gigs from that period (1967-70), I'd be interested in hearing from them. Drop me an email. Mike

No, it is like the full size (A4) Bruyninckx print editions - each letter of the alphabet is a separate .pdf file and the version of Acrobat Reader with Search allows for cross-file indexing so you can do a global search in (for now) 20 alphabetical letters. Those mini-books were a bit odd in their forced stylistic division of the music. As I understand it, they were done by and at the specific request of the Japanese. I don't believe they were an update of the full-size edition, just a dividing and size reduction. Mike

You're going to get a whole 'nother view of San Francisco jazz when my book on Henry Grimes comes out. Don't hold your breath, as I've just started it and we're not talking months, but years. There is a world out there that has never been documented and is *amazing*. I'm speaking about the 1967-70 period. I've done several interviews over the past week of SF musicians from this time and they were doing remarkable things. There may even be recordings. Stay tuned. Mike

Easily searchable - for what? Lord limits what you can search for, Bruyninckx is just a set of .pdf files and you use Acrobat to search for *anything*. Lord hides the contents of the database, Bruyninckx lays the info out there. Lord may seem quicker but only if you do what it wants you to do. I have both of these CD-ROMs as well as other discographies (2+ sets of printed Bruyninckx, Raben, Bielefelder Katalog CD-ROM and books, various label and artist books). I use them all, and consult many other sources too. There is no end-all, despite what some of the Lord reviewers say. Unfortunately, all those reviews that I've seen are done by people who are not discographers and who don't have any experience with the Bruyninckx CD-ROM (as Les McCann said, "Compared to what?"). They're done by jazz fans. Lord seems to have targeted fans as his market, and I can't really blame him since he's out to make some money. His PR machine is on a whole 'nother level from that of Bruyninckx. The following is an old (2 years now!) comparison. I wrote a more detailed one for an Austrian publication. I haven't updated it since the Lord 3.3 and next installment of Bruyninckx came out. Some things I mention have been fixed, some haven't. Some probably never will. Lord 3.3 has some additional features such as multi-search, which can be very useful. http://www.jazzdiscography.com/Essays/cdromdiscog.htm Lord 3.3 has the entire alphabet, Bruyninckx now has all letters from A-T. Happy to answer any further questions on the subject. Mike

Several of us here are big fans of those groups - we talked a lot about it here: http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...78&hl=pentangle A search on "Pentangle" in all forums will turn up a couple of other threads as well. Late 1960s/early 1970s is what I think of as the best period for both groups. Mike

I haven't done that much research on Sonny Clark, but it appears that he was fairly inactive in both 1959 and 1960, doing fewer than 10 record dates in those two years combined. I don't know about his live gigs - any ideas on who he was working with? January 6, 1959 is certainly possible for Max and of course, Duvivier was recording non-stop in NYC. March 23, 1960 would also be possible if the Roach band had returned from Europe by then (last date I show at this point is March 5 in Germany but surely there were more). If they hadn't, then that rules out March 23, 1960. I'll see if I can dig up some more European dates for that tour. It's a very tough call - either date is plausible for the Sonny Clark session at this point. However, the other thing is that this exact trio is the backing band for Stanley Turrentine's LP on Time. Only date I've seen for that is "1960." Were these two albums done at or around the same time? I can't say. If they were, then January 1959 is not possible. Only starting in March 1959 (and going to at least March 1960 but definitely not into July) was Turrentine hooked up with Max. Mike