Michael Fitzgerald

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

I have that CD - there were no signatures printed on the cover. Benny & Phil did a bit of gigging together (there's a live set from the Regattabar in Boston on Benny's label Evening Star) so it probably wouldn't be too difficult to have gotten the autographs together. But I'm confused by your description - the cover that I have is ONE color photograph of both of them sitting together with their saxophones. You can see it at the dreaded allmusic site. Does your CD's cover differ from this? Mike

I am sad to pass on the news of the passing of one of the greatest musicians ever. Benny Carter - saxophonist, arranger, composer, trumpeter, bandleader, talent scout - died this morning in a Los Angeles hospital. His recording career stretched back to 1927 and he did it all. I can't begin to summarize what an incredible life he led and what an empty place this leaves in the world. www.bennycarter.com will be the place to check for details on memorial services. Mike

Do me a favor - I doubt she would, but ask if she remembers a bassist who played with her around 1957 at the Red Hill Inn in Pennsauken, NJ - name of Henry Grimes. Just so I can cross the t. Mike

I didn't think so - the date that was mentioned (January 19, 1960) is for the Turrentine. Did someone say that was the date for the Sonny Clark? That's not right. Now I *am* confused on what is being argued. Anyway, all the data I supplied is good. Never mind. ...and another thing - Mike

I have a hard time accepting just the handwritten date on a tape box - that could have been written any time in the past 40 years. The Tommy Turrentine session was not done until Tommy & Stanley had joined the Max Roach group. Do we accept that? Based on what I know, in January of 1959, they had NOT yet joined the group. That happened in early March of 1959 at the Ellis Hotel in Pittsburgh. The band then continued their tour, playing two weeks at Chicago's Sutherland Lounge in mid March. A friend of mine was there and the gig was mentioned in publications of the time. On January 22, 1959, Max was in the studio recording "The Many Sides of Max Roach" with the OLD band - Booker Little, George Coleman, Julian Priester, Art Davis. They then played a gig at the Apollo Theater in NYC in February, and traveled to Pittsburgh - where the entire band (except Priester) quit on Max. January 19, 1960 does make sense in the Roach chronology. This would be between the date of "Quiet As It's Kept" given by Chuck Stewart who photographed the session and when the band left for Europe. I'm not saying I have the definitive answer, but 1959 doesn't seem to make sense. Mike

Oh - sorry, I thought folks here knew. This was a radio festival, not a live performance festival if that's what is confusing. But there certainly was music being played live that was involved. At the end of May 2003, WKCR-FM broadcast 5 straight days of only Henry Grimes - 103 hours non-stop. They played every record he made and then some! Henry, who had just made his NYC performing re-debut at the Vision Festival, was up at the studio every day for hours. Ben Young had him talking, listening and commenting on his records, etc. Other folks from Henry's past like Andrew Cyrille, Billy Taylor, Ray Mosca, Carmen Leggio, and more participated with interviews. Henry also performed several times in the studio: if I am remembering all of them - a couple times solo bass, the reunion of the trio from The Call (Perry Robinson & Tom Price), and with William Parker. I was up at the studio for the last two days. It was a magical time. As things wound down, Ben asked Henry how he would like to end the festival - make a closing speech, play a certain record, whatever he wanted. Henry immediately said he wanted to play. About 40 minutes was allotted before the station would have to (finally) proceed on to other scheduled programming. Henry played and continued for about an hour. Only the first 40 minutes was heard by the public. Only the 10 or so of us at the studio heard everything. But now the recording of the *entire* performance has been put on CD and that's what is being sold. Information on the recent recordings of HG are in the discography at my (new) website - see URL below. There will be more to add since some, if not all of the Iridium gigs were recorded. Mike

It's just an announcement page right now. www.HenryGrimes.com Margaret Davis and I are coordinating it. Mike

I was there for the first night. I agree that there was a pretty big difference between the two groups, but it must be remembered that Ware has had almost the exact same quartet (only the drummer has changed) since 1990! That's over 13 years with Shipp and Parker. Compared to Henry who had a few days before the gig to rehearse with new guys that he had only met when he came to NYC in late May. He had played with Rob Brown at the Vision Festival in an impromptu moment, a trio with William Parker. The Ware quartet has a repertoire and is *tight*! Ware may also have had the benefit of better sound system, sound check, etc. There were some difficulties in miking Henry the night that I was there. He wasn't using an amp, while Parker was. As for the reception, Ware is far more established on the scene and has a following. I'm pretty sure his group was actually booked for the club before Henry came back. Henry is definitely a shy person - I think this was the first time *ever* that he'd ever been billed as the leader of a group for a NYC club. Please don't think that I am downplaying the fact that the Ware band played wonderfully. Matthew Shipp is so good. Important to know that Henry was selling CDs of the amazing finale of the WKCR-FM Henry Grimes festival - the *full* hourlong solo bass performance, not just the 40 minutes that went out over the air. This CD is an absolute collectors item and features hand-drawn art by Henry. Each copy is different. When Henry's website is a little more operational, these may be available to a wider market. I listened to it on the way home from the gig. It's remarkable. Mike

Best stuff in terms of Hill bio research was done for the multi-day Andrew Hill festival on WKCR-FM, NYC - this was maybe 1997 or 98? Andrew was there at the station a few times and Ben Young got a lot of details out of him. I may have taped some of it but finding it would be tough right now. Unfortunately nothing in print. Mike

I think you can find just about every 32Jazz CD issued out there in used bins or online lists. I've picked up many for $5-6. Dreadful covers. Someone figured that because they bought a computer graphics program they could be an art director. As I understand it, Dorn was just running 32Jazz and Label M. He wasn't the money behind them. Hyena is the new label. Not sure if it's the same deal or not. Mike