rostasi

Even tho I started reading about them a couple of years before, I couldn't possibly afford buying one until I was 26: Tina Brooks.

From Bill Reed: "The seeds for this release were planted in early 2009 when I introduced a music group from the stage of L.A.s Hollywood Studio Bar & Grill and in which I referred to myself as a jazz record producer. Afterwards, in between sets, I was approached by a pleasant and attractive woman who introduced herself as Dory, and in a somewhat self-effacing manner said to me: My late husband was a jazz musician and perhaps you might be interested in some of the unreleased recordings he left behind. Maybe you've heard of him. I asked his name, and when she told me, I made no attempt at concealing my enthusiasm: Richie Kamuca! Of course I've heard of him. We were off to the races. Dory and I made an appointment to go through Richies tape archives, and a few days later we got together at her pleasant Los Angeles condominium, with archives being perhaps not quite the right word. For while the boxes of cassettes and a handful of reel-to-reel were well taken care of, there was very little in the way of written description on the tape containers. Before departing that afternoon, Dory told me a little bit about her marriage to Richie. Until the end of her husbands unspeakably short life (he died in 1977 just before his 47th birthday), they had led an uncommonly comfortable life for a couple whose main source of income was his activities as a jazz musician. This, due to his more than a decade as a fixture in Merv Griffin's TV band, first on the east coast and then in Southern California when the tele-talker moved his base of operations westward. Dory entrusted me with the tapes and I spent the next few weeks listening to, and trying to suss out the audial contents of those dozens of tapes. Finally, the cassettes contained little that was releasable, due to poor sound quality. (Just put the mini-recorder down anywhere.) But WHAT was on the small batch of 7 inch reel-to-reel tapes? Needless to say, I no longer possessed such a creature in my small arsenal of audio equipment. At one time a near-common fixture in sound-oriented homes, the r-to-r tape machine has suffered the fate of 8-track, quad, and a panoply of other once-common audio novelties of recent memory since consigned to the Museum of Forgotten Formats (For BETA, turn right at the Selectavision room.). I was not even able to rent one from any audio supply houses in Los Angeles. But at just about the time I was ready to give up, I learned that my friend, vet jazz trombonist Dick Nash owned one. AND he was happy to loan it to me, for as he informed: I haven't used the thing in years. (Thanks, Dick!) I began to listen to the r-to-rs, and what I heard turned out to be well worth the all the tsuris I had gone through to secure a player. A box labeled Buddy Tate - Richie Kamuca - Dontes 1970 was exactly that: a blistering intergenerational late night jam session at the long-gone, legendary North Hollywood jazz spot Dontes. Overall, it was so good that the contents were issued in late 2009 by Japanese jazz label, SSJ Records. Equally rewarding, and with even better sound, was a box labeled Kamuca - Konitz Dontes 1974 and which serves as the basis for this release, a summit meeting of two giants of jazz sax, and a near-first for them. Donte's, where this album was recorded, opened shop in 1966 in North Hollywood, CA and ran continuously for more than twenty years, finally shuttering for good on April 3, 1988. During that time, there were very few stars in the world of jazz who did not appear there either on stage or else in the audience. For it was an especially favored hangout of musicians from the Tonight Show band which operated out of nearly NBC-TV studios. The club was the brainchild of former dancer and choreographer Carey Leverette, who was found dead in the club's cluttered office just three days after it had closed its doors for good. --- Bill Reed

Review: https://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2010/07/recent_listening_kamuca_and_ko.html

My wife occasionally drinks Waterloo. I've tried a sip a few times - different flavors - but I've just never developed a taste for sparkling anything. She does prefer water and ice tea tho.

... is a plaza in Tolochenaz, Vaud, Switzerland?

Oh, thank you for this (I guess? 😔). He was 91 afterall.

downbeat: March, 1982, page 21

Actually, it was a quintet with Byard, etc., but you have to wait a bit until I get where I can post the info.

Albuquerque - May 1, 1982

Abraham Laboriel's band in the 60s.

Didn't want to post something that I wasn't sure of, but has anyone seen info that Redd Holt passed away on Tuesday? I ask this because the Wikipedia entry shows this and the link they've provided doesn't go to an obituary. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redd_Holt

Hermeto...