BillF

Google tells me Armstrong wrote an autobiography in 1936 called Swing That Music.

Well, there are so many jazz biographies nowadays! Unimaginable when I first started reading them. There were very few indeed and my first was Alan Lomax's Mr Jelly Roll which I read in 1957 (loved the David Stone Martin illustrations) and which was first published 7 years before that. That was a library copy. The first I bought was Ross Russell's Bird Lives! which sits on my shelf with 1973 inscribed in it. Raymond Horricks' Count Basie and his Orchestra (1957) was another early one, but I guess that's a monograph rather than a biography. Armstrong has been mentioned and I can see 7 books about him listed on Amazon.

Seeing you mentioned Dunlop, I should add that his drumming was really noticeable - it had a real bounce to it and was different. And you could hear it in the Free Trade Hall with its terrible acoustics, which means that it wasn't particularly loud. The first set at that concert had been by the Jazz Messengers with Morgan, Shorter and Timmons. Poor guys - they just couldn't be heard. Blakey's thunderous drumming in that hall drowned them out.

I saw them at Ronnie Scott's. Perhaps they weren't on form - the music wasn't very exciting. More exciting was the word that went round the club that the woman with the kids on the front row was Charlie Parker's widow. And of course she was! This may be getting repetitive, but I also saw the Monk quartet with Frankie Dunlop. It was in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester and there was difficulty at first at getting Monk out on stage (Robin Kelly wrongly locates this in Milan) and an awkward-looking John Ore was sent out to play two lengthy bass solos alone until the maestro could be persuaded to budge.

Well, I do listen to a lot recorded in recent decades, though it's always derived from music first heard not in the last half century, but in the half century before that, which for me is the key period of jazz creativity - the Armstrong to Ornette period, if you know what I mean.

My favourite Hayes album!

The Getz influence is certainly mentioned in Spillett's biography of Tubby. I don't recall if Tubby acknowledged it or whether Spillett just reads it into his analysis of Hayes's style, but the appeal of Getz's fluidity is remarked on. Have you heard the lengthy discussion between Hayes and Nistico? Fascinating stuff! It's included in the Hayes Inventivity album.

Yes, the band's really on form on that one! I may be biased, but I thought the British rhythm section "done 'im proud".

Now listening to:

Welcome to the retirees club, Tom! I've been a member for 20 years. It's a great existence!