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AllenLowe
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Posts posted by AllenLowe
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I'll give a little extra info on that cover posted by Dan - that's Percy playing at my wedding, September 12, 1982 - and the hidden bass player is Aaron Bell, who was the date of a friend of mine and sitting in with the band (the regular band was: Percy, Randy Sandke, Dick Katz, Skinny Burgan, Leroy Williams) - the hidden trumpet player is Randy Sandke -
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just to mention the West End Cafe, as Larry has - though run by the much maligned Phil Schaap (and I like Phil for all of his foibles), it was at the West End that I saw the following:
Earl Warren (best swing alto player I ever heard - I would take him even over Benny Carter, and he never recorded to advantage)
Sammy Price -
Joe Albany
Jo Jones
Warne Marsh
Dickey Wells
Willis Jackson (I sat in with the band; biggest asshole I ever met; scowled the whole time at the white boy playing tenor next to him)
Jabbo Smith - still had some trumpet chops, and the most beautiful singing voice I ever heard
Joe Turner - was a friend of Percy's, and he used to sing with a mocrophone from a side table. Everything in the key of C -
all for under $5.00. A great place -
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He's also on a Sir Charles Thompson Columbia release, where Thompson plays organ - I'll have to look it up -
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not a problem - Percy was really a great human being and a great musician, I'm thrilled that his name has come up. The two musicians I was closest to when I lived in NYC in the late 1970s were Percy and Al Haig, both of whom died suddenly and with little warning. I worry that both are somewhat forgotten today; and I find myself avoiding their recordings, which I find somewhat painful. Percy is particularly obscure and underappreciated - he frequently found himself in musical contexts that did not always bring out his true virtues - he was not really a revivalist, though he had plenty of that Don Byas feeling - he could play bebop with anyone, and I always regarded him as one of the greatest saxophonist I ever heard, bar none -
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Percy was a very good friend of mine who died in a very tragic way - he was suffering from cancer, recovering slightly, but was hit by a car and killed - one of the nicest people I've ever known, and a major influence on my own saxophone playing (he taught me more about mouthpieces than anyone else). I will say it is still hard for me to discuss him - I spent a lot of time with Percy when I lived in NYC in the late 1970s, he was a frequent performer at the West End Cafe with various groups, including one that I was proud to have put together - a trio with Percy, Bob Neloms on pianio, andf Leroy Williams on drums. What a group - Percy was an amazing performer, one of the hippest I knew, had a nice old-school feeling with plenty of bebop. The Endgame CD you are referring to was recorded for a jazz history class I taught in new Rochelle; it was something of a still-born release, a CD I put together and then withdrew because of a problem with the Japanese, so I have not made it readily available, through there are a few copies floating around. I have plenty in my basement and would be happy to sell for cost, say $4.00 with shipping first class.
Sir Charles Thompson (with whom Percy recorded on Columbia) loved Percy's playing, and he was something of an underground legend. Like some other jazz musicians of great ability he seemd to work hard at avoiding the limelight. He was an interesing guy; somewhere I have an untranscribed tape of an interview; he knew Gigi Gryce well, played in a late 1940s rehearsal band with Miles, also knew Sonny Rollins. A great man, both musically and personally. If you want a copy of the CD email me at alowe@maine.rr.com -
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don't know the klones - but I have burned literally thousands of tayo yudens with nary a problem -
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as long as you know your writes -
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Joe is a fascinating musician (and, as Chris mentioned, an incredibly nice guy) - what I like about his work is that's so personalized and localized - his solos are thoughtful and focused, never an extraneous note. And he has the complete courage of his musical convictions -
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it is annoying; I think newpaper journalists do this all the time, if in less radical ways. It has happened to me on more than one occasion. The result is to deaden the language, to take it out of context and wring the life out of it - and also, worst of all, to change its meaning. And that is what many journalists do not understand -
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let's not forget that Tommy Flanagan was Irish -
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I think it's in Voices of the Jazz Age. As I recall it was very interesting -
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per-Thornhill - read Mike Zwerin's aubiography - Thornhill was quite a character -
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and interestingly enough, according to a former student, Madame Chaloff was an anti-semite - I know there's lots of italians and jews who play jazz, but I'll bet if you did a study, there's as many Irish -
jewish-wise, however, let's not forget Len Garment, former Counsel to Richard Nixon, and excellent big-band saxophonist -
also, Bob Mover - and anybody named Schwartz -
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I like the Chilton/Hawkins - and while we're on the subject, we could use a decent Charlie Parker bio - and Chris, what do you think of the chapter on Wooding in - uh oh, can't remember the writer - Chip something or other, I think, used to write for the Post -
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the way this is going, maybe we need to ask if there are any jazz musicians who AREN'T Jewish -
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also, Mezz Mezzrow -
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don't forget Dave Schildkraut - as a matter of fact, in a Downbeat blindfold test, Lee konitz described him as having "a Yiddishe soul."
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the Wire story is ok, except that Braxton has said most of that before - I knew him a little bit when I worked with some of his Wesleyan students, and he's quite a nice guy and very interesting, accomodating and very good natured - somewhow I wish the piece had taken a different tack - like, maybe, his responses to some specific music -
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IMHO dont't miss the late 1940s (early 1950s?) stuff and the recordings on electric - brilliant accomodation to bebop - despite what has been said otherwise -
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you gotta love Django - one of the true certifiable geniuses of jazz - and a nice disrupter of certain sociological assumptions about the playing of jazz -
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well, there are different issues of aging - Barry Harris is a much more profound pianist at 75 than he was at 30, though he was great even than. Max Roach, however, lost his way as he tried to emulate younger drummers; he became stiff and unswinging. Even Al Haig, in his 50s, , was not the player he was in his 20s; he at times spent too much effort trying to sound contemporary, and wandered from the style at which he was best. Similar issue with Art Pepper, who was great unless he was thinking about Coltrane. Coleman Hawkins grew as a tenor saxophonist (before his very last sad years). Dexter Gordon changed for the better, than got too stoned to care. Personally I think I have better taste at 50 than I had at 20, it's just hard getting the damned walker onto the stage -
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to parpahrase an old joke, it's in the groove -
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didn't vandermark win one of those McArthur's?
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whatever happened to Chuck Nessa? Seems like his and his brother Elliot's crime fighting days are over -
Percy France - I SHOULD CARE (1980)
in Recommendations
Posted
whoops - now, Dan, I could edit my original post - but we don't want to start that again -