AllenLowe

this is a different one on some weird bootleg - and Niko, I've wondered myself about the Bill Triglia in that article - Bill did live near Paramus-

just gonna bump this to keep Bill in the public eye -

have not - thanks, will check it out -

I was just listening to Blues For Amy, maybe 1959, great Phil Woods solo. Beautiful arrangement by Teo-

well, in one of my crazy impulse moods I called the White House yesterday - spoke to a secretary named Alice in the VP's office, got right through, strangely enough - I left a detailed message for Bernstein, indicating Triglia's difficult situation, and said how nice it might be if he got some kind of letter on White House stationary. She said, believe it or not, that she would hand Bernstein a note, though I'll be quite surprised if I hear from him. It would be a nice gesture, as Triglia was the kind of guy who always went out of his way to help and hire young musicians. Though I'll be VERY surprised if I get something - anybody else here feel like calling? I can supply phone number etc -

I agree; he was also a terrific saxophonist with perhaps the most beautiful altissimo sound I've ever heard - check him out on Mingus's Elegy for Rudy Williams -

I may still be on Fasstrack's ignore list, but as I recall, when I booked Bill Trilglia into a restaurant call the Charcuterie, maybe 1977 (it was a restaurant in the CBS building on 52nd Street) Jared played bass with Bill in a duo -

well, Macero was an ego maniac and my conversations with him were somewhat comical - he would answer the phone, I would tell him why I was calling, he would mumble and growl a bit, and then I would tell him that I regarded his recorded work of the 1950s as some of the most interesting music of that era, and he would say, "oh, yeah," and relax a bit and talk - this exact same scenario occurred on about 4 occasions. I hate flattering people, but I meant what I said and it was the only way to get him to stop growling -

I gotta start doing that - but I think I'll do it directly on the vinyl - maybe carve my initials with a hunting knife - on cut three of every record -

that's Mike Fitzgerald's site -

Melle was an artist for the last years of his life - I called him up out of the blue and he was very friendly if a bit guarded. He told me he was the first to use electronics in jazz and had done so in the 1950s - and according to Teo Macero, he and Melle and some others participated in some concerts in the 1950s that not only used electronics but which had Varese as a participant. I assume this is true as I see no reason that Macero would make this up (he was crotchety and only semi-friendly but forthcoming once I got him interested in the topic). The idea of a Varese/Macero/Melle collaboration is quite fantastic, but I don't know if I'll ever be able to get much documentation -

I will - I'll probably print this out and send it to her, as she doesn't have internet. She asked me if I'd ever heard his stories about Fruscella; I remember an amazing one Bill told me about going up to Fruscella's place, and hearing a saxophone as he went up the stairs- when he got to Fruscella's apartment, he and Rollins were playing together - things like that do not happen anymore -

thank you - that's a real Triglia story, that's the way he was - I actually have a long taped interview with him somewhere, if I can find it. Just a great guy, who really knew everybody and who had great stories. I remember him telling about encountering Sonny Rollins at, of all things, a jam session out in Jersey some time in the 1950s - about how Sonny waited out about 10 different tenor players, and than got up and wiped the floor with them all - he really was the fly on the wall during that era, and it broke me up when his daughter put him on the phone this afternoon and he had no idea who I was. Just an amazing man, and he could really play.

Tril-lia -

they both had that deceptively light touch -

he has a few nice spots on the unedited Tijuana Moods; his most representative playing is on the Knepper group recording on Debut; Bill, in my opinion, was a perfect synthesis, in his playing, of Hank Jones and Bud Powell - a very lyrical player with a slight percussive edge. He slipped away from the scene in the 1960s, started teaching and playing lounges, so he's particularly obscure. One of my favorite people, very outspoken and honest; he was also one of the most interesting witnesses of that era because he was completely straight - no druges and no alcohol so he had incredible and acurrate recall. He heard everything and everyone, and was everywhere, from Mintons to Birdland. Knew Bird well, also, and seemed to have had some interesting extended conversations with him. He was working a Jewish wedding and Bird showed up (can't remember the circumstances) and started playing. It was a Hasidic wedding and, as Bill told it, the families loved it; "one old man started dancing on the table." (Wilbur Ware, by the way, was playing bass). I think we can figure that anyone hired by Sonny ROllins, Lester Young, and Charles Mingus must have had something going for him - he also told me, by the way, about bailing out Al Haig from jail -

I just had a nice talk with Bill Triglia's daughter Antonia. Bill is an old friend, and I've been out of touch with him for some time. Sadly he is suffering from dementia and wasn't really aware of who I was. But as I told Antonia, I consider Bill to have been one of the greatest pianists of the bebop era. I can cite his work on Tijuana Moods,with the Jimmy Knepper group on Debut(with Joe Maini), with Fruscella on the Open Door recordings (and various studio recordings), on a Xanadu LP with Fruscella, with Don Joseph on Uptown, and more. I thought of Bill because I recently heard a recording of a Broadcast he did with Lester Young; he also worked with Sonny Rollins; actually played a Jewish wedding with Bird (it's a great story, even better than the jive one in the movie Bird about Red Rodney); was house pianist at Birdland for a time; knew and worked with Wilbur Ware (whose playing he loved); was Dave Schildkraut's old and loyal friend; knew Bud Powell and Al Haig well (and told me a funny story about Bud which I can recount later). Bill is/was a wonderful guy, mentored a lot of young musicians in the last 30 years of his career, and even used to work a small lounge in Queens where I saw him, circa 1976, bring in Dizzy Reece as a special guest! I know Antonia would appreciate any recognition we can give Bill here; I'm very saddened by his current condition and see this, unfortunately, as another side effect of my move North, from which it got harder and harder to stay in touch with people like Bill, whom the jazz world has forgotten. But I think of him all the time; he was a genuine nut, which I mean in the nicest possible way. He also, now that I think of it, survived the horrendous sinking of a ship he served on in WWII (told me a long story about it once, and was still haunted years later by the deaths of so many ship mates after the Kamikazee attack) - One of the truly Lost Generation of the second wave of beboppers -

well, you can forget about the pre-nup.

any guy who wants to marry me can't be all bad -

Helen Keller: Out of Sight

Helen Keller -

yes, but it's Mingus's, not Santoro's -

Beneath the Underdog was Mingus's own autobiography and a brilliant mix of fiction and non-fiction; more true than truth, if you know what I mean. I found the Santoro book to be absolute junk - not only factual errors but some of the worst writing I have ever seen, bad grammer, incoherent sentence structure. Somewhat shocking. I have seen some other of Santoro's work which was ok, but not this one.

yes, we're talking Europe and 50 years - hoping to get this out by late this year or early next year - but I'm just the guy who works in the sweat shop turning out the goods - and we shouldn't be too righteous about all this; without the end runs of jazz and blues reissues, we would know next to nothing about the music - and people like Bob Koester would be out of business-

pretty sure it's Hebrew not Yiddish - reading through a little bit I don't see any Yiddish words (and actually the hebrew lettering is standard use for Yiddish; anything else is alliteration) -