oneofanotherkind

I really dig the tune Sunny , and I'm interested in all the great renditions that have been laid down. So far , I have Hebb's original, Benson's version off of Giblet Gravy , JB's live version, and this amazing ... Suggestions please !

I wonder if his eye became dislodged during the act of opening a can of peaches ? I suppose we'll never know.

From this interview with Turre : "There's a funny story about how I started working with Woody. Woody had a concert as part of a double bill on Long Island: the Dexter Gordon Quartet and Woody Shaw. It paid a little more than a regular gig, and so Woody said, "Come on. Let's make it a sextet." I picked up Woody and Carter Jefferson in my car. When we got to Queens, Woody and Carter got into a big argument. We stopped at a traffic light, and Carter said, "Well, if that's the way you feel, that's it!" He got out of the car, slammed the door and took his horn with him. The light changed, people were honking, and I had to move on. So Woody said, "Steve, if you play your ass off tonight, you got the gig." [Laughs] You know, I gave it everything I got. I was playing the tenor sax part and not the third trombone part. I was struggling by transposing the tenor sax part. I had heard the group play before, and so I knew the tunes. Woody said, "I'll give you a little while to get it together." I went into the woodshed and started to really, really work hard on the long-tone concepts that J.J. had told me about. During those formative couple of months when Woody was giving me a chance, I practiced all I could. When someone like J.J. or Curtis told me something, I didn't question what they said. I just did it, and I got results. You have to be patient. Growth comes in little increments. It's not as if you can take a short cut to get it all together. I went on to work with Woody for four years. What an amazing experience! It was during that time that I found my own voice. Woody encouraged me. We were friends, and he also was a mentor. He taught me so many different ways to deal with intervals and harmonic concepts. It was really an exciting time. Sometimes we did sextets with Dexter Gordon or Jackie McLean. Mulgrew was playing piano. Oh, man! Mulgrew's incredible."

Just throwing this in to break-up the consecutive posts with multiple quotes ... heh heh Seriously though ... how many of us can truly say that we've never been total assholes to complete strangers ? Might be tough to admit, especially if you've undergone serious personal change since long ago ... But if any of us bite our lip and think back a bit ... like I'm doing right now. Wow. Unreal some of the stuff I said to people I didn't even know. I think it had a fair bit to do with living in abject poverty and having little in common with the milieu that had money and used it to their advantage, but still ... I brought some ugly Karma into this world, because the rage was overflowing inside. Not to say that crushing a fan is cool. I've had it happen to me and it was not pleasant. But I can kind of see where the artist might be coming from. They might be explaining in the most direct manner that whatever utopian person the fan mistook them for based on their music in fact doesn't exist and the actual reality they do live in is a brutal and ugly one. I think in a certain longer-term sense this approach might actually have more of a real positive impact on the receiver than a (necessarily) canned friendliness would. Plus , I think we've reached the tipping point where only a minority of us were around in the bad ol' days of the music. I know that I missed that era, at least as an adult who could see it for what it was. From what I've read and heard it was a different world than today's upscale respectable jazz scene. Cats were usin', dealin', hustlin', getting beat-up, shot, murdered even. It was a dark scary world - especially if you were black. Perhaps difficult to relate to how that world framed someone who lived it night after night. I mean the stuff I've heard about Woody isn't even in the same universe of bad Karma as the stuff I personally heard Hub say to people, on and off the bandstand.

I hear you on the "coldness". Recently , I've been listening to a lot of Chris Potter, specifically this one and the uber-hipness of the proceedings does infuse a certain coldness all-around, from Potter to Rogers to Taborn. However, Sco is one of the last guys I'd hold up as emblematic or responsible for this "cold front". Honestly, if you want to blame someone , I think it goes straight back to Miles in the early 70s. And isn't it tough to single-out Rogers , Rosenwinkel , etc. when you have Stern & Bullock & Miller layin' down "no mercy" lines way back in the bad ol' days of early 80 Miles and then the 55 Grand scene -- and couldn't that be seen as sort of a lineage from Johnny Mac a decade earlier ? Sco to me is someone who infuses a heady dose of friendliness and humour into the perhaps way too hip scene favored by the younger generation. To my taste , John is like a trendy downtown restaurant that attracts all the pretty women while still servin' up a menu fimly grounded in wholesome homestyle cookin'.

Sound like you should pick up a copy of ...

Farrell with Mingus Dynasty : Remarkable similarity to Got The Spirit ! Anyone know how MD came to have two bass at that time ?

Todd Barkan's Unauthorized Keystone Korner Recordings

It's very clear ( to me , at least ) that the lower peaches were carefully positioned so as to resemble female breasts. And as for the eye , the implications are truly scary ... Killer Joe :

Yo , check it ! This one's still in print : Hub plays rather on well on this if memory serves me ...

Seems there is absolutely nothing under Farrell's name available on any modern media. Does this mean Joe's out of favor with the recording industry gods ? Yes , ok , specifically I was looking for Is there anything wrong with that ?

Though I have to say that the night I saw him on that tour, it was some of the best playing I've ever heard from him (for reference, I've seen him about 7-8 times starting in '92). That might be because John just keeps on getting better & better with age. At this rate , by the time Sco hits 60 no one will be able to listen to him ! He's already so freakin' good sometimes I have to turn off the music ...

Maybe he was a little of each. I only had the one experience, and he was on a downhill trajectory of which we all know how it ended. I love his music, too, BTW, glad we got to play once, and am sorry he was in such bad shape when I ran into him. Re this 'genius' bit: Don't know if he was a genius. Depends on one's definition, I suppose. The only one I encountered in my life as a professional to date was Jaki Byard. He was really ahead of the curve in his thinking and I saw him in action as a band member for 1 and 1/2 years. Nothing short of brilliant, I am convinced. I guess Tom Harrell probably is one, I met him a few times and never worked with him, but I know what he can do, and he probably does qualify. To hear Phil Woods tell it, there's no question. Joe Cohn has amazing ears and is a thrilling improvisor and can put thirds under a fast complicated melody he's hearing for the first time. He can play back what you just played, the exact voicings. Every musician in the know in NY knows what he can do, myself included. Does this make him a genius? Not sure. Woody Shaw was a powerfully creative and vital musician. And he was very advanced at a young age. Isn't that enough? How to define genius ? This is an interesting question ( to me , at least ). One can look at it either quantitatively or qualitatively. Quantitative is a much easier analysis , because it's really a search for clues/evidence of potential genius , not for the product of genius itself. In music , this would involve looking for abilities such as : a) perfect pitch & instant key transposition b) photographic memory ( live/recorded music , written music ) c) real-time aural transcription onto one's instrument ( faster the better ) d) hearing orchestrally ( more parts the better ) e) pattern recognition and transformation f) other stuff I don't know about because I'm not much of a musician From Mikowski : <<< At a daytime audition , ( musical director Charlie) Brent whipped out the C.C. Riders book of charts , put it in front of Jaco , and counted off the show. " We went from one tune straight to the next , " he recalls, " and Jaco just burned it to pieces ! I mean fucking burned it -- played every note I had written. " The next day Brent called the full band in to rehearse with Jaco and ended up enjoying yet another revelation about the young bass player's unique talents. " I put out a chart I had written especially for that rehearsal. Jaco looked at it and then came over and told me he couldn't read. I said ' Then how the fuck did you play all those tunes yesterday ? ' And he says ' I caught the show a couple of weeks ago, ' which just simply fried me. The kid had total fucking recall !" >>> I can't find it right now but somehere out there is a recounting of how Woody when playing sideman gigs would come on stage a few minutes early and sit with the charts up close to a candle and quickly perfectly memorize them ( his eyesight being too poor to read them from a music stand during the set ). And Max's well-publicized quote on Woody : "One of the most amazing things was his uncanny memory. I was just flabbergasted. After one look he knew all of the charts, no matter how complex they were." Maybe I'm overly impressed by photomems because I have a purely "trained" memory ( having realized rather late in life how important it is to success to try and memorize every action that you take -- which is also a damn good way to avoid doing stupid stuff that'll you'll regret later big-time ! ). On the purely quantitative side , we have "Rain Man" Kim Peek's ability to read 8-10 books per day , two pages simultaneously , one with each eye , both pages in about 8-10 seconds total , with 99% recall. This is surely impressive , but the end-result perhaps is not ( unless you're a huge Jeopardy fan ). Qualitative is much more difficult and I won't even go there except to say that I consider both Jaco & Woody to be jazz geniuses . Here's Braxton speaking of Woody as a "nice man" who "helped me inside myself" :

I remember when Sco put out his Ray tribute ... I was like oh man first Sco ever I don't get a copy of. Eventually I broke down and bought it. This one will probably be the same !

Free Jazz for Dummies Kenny G Blender Recipes Photographic History of the Rectal Thermometer Jazz in Pornos : The Art of the Climax Bernie Madoff's Kozy Jazz Korner Sex Mob Christian Rock Covers

I assume that many/most (?) of you have read Mikowski's bio of Jaco ? I know that Jaco's family and Metheny and others discredited Mikowski a bit , but nevertheless Bill & Jaco were friends for many many years , and the book has an amazing amount of small detail , so I tend to give Mikowski credit for understanding and having Jaco's best interests at heart , even after his demise. Anyway , if we accept the book as more-or-less accurate , then we have a picture of Jaco in his later years who frequently behaved very badly , taking advantage of those who loved and trusted him , asking ( and quite often receiving ) extraordinary amounts of help from friends ( both lady and non-lady ) , colleagues , business associates , etc. on the basis of his image ( past image more accurately ) and not making much of an effort to return the favors. The standard reason given ( not just by Mikowski but most people ) for Jaco's behavior is a mental illness ( bipolar , maybe other syndromes ) was evolving & gradually gripping hold. And no doubt Jaco displayed many traits indicative of mental illness. My own take is a bit different ( and this is with no first-hand knowledge whatsoever , just my analysis of what's publicly available ) ... I think what brought Jaco down more than anything else was his towering ego. Egos that big require a constant feeding and Jaco couldn't cope with the downswings that occurred when he made mistakes ( road/party scene , leaving wife & kids , getting involved with heavy alcohol & coke , not playing the political game with the recording industry & club owners , misunderstanding his role in other people's enterprises ( Zawinul ) , taking advantage of fans' implicit trust in him as a professional entertainer , etc. ). In other words, Jaco never learned to adjust his ego-needs to the reality of where he stood vis-a-vis the other elements in the game ( i.e. family, wives/girlfriends, friends, colleagues, associates , fans ) once he was no longer undisputed reigning heavyweight champ of the world. I know much less about Woody's dealings with other musicians , friends , family , etc. ... but I've read some bad stuff ( although I suspect the motives of some of the sources ). I might be stating the obvious here , but could it be that true innovators like Woody & Jaco require towering egos to achieve what they did ? Egos that continually tell them they are the best no matter what others may say or think -- neither on the way up , nor on the way down ? Further, that these types of egos are not subject to compromise and in fact eventually lead to their unravelling specifically because they either partially misunderstand or downplay in exaggerated fashion the delicate underpinnings of a healthy spirit & mind -- namely, bread-and-butter bi-directional human relationships where both sides must always be benefitting from the other ? Please note that in no way am I trashing Jaco here. Jaco is one of my music heros , and from everything I've read he was an outstanding human being as well , until the demons showed up.

Not that it matters , but I don't think Shaw's death was a direct result of the train accident. I read somewhere long long ago that Woody was even playing trumpet one-handed for little while. Of course , by then he was so sick that the end was near irrelevant of the amputation. Still , a tribute to his spirit.

http://www.guitaralliance.com/guitar_lesso...ne_a_guitar.htm

Wow. Silent onstage tuning. Not sure I understand the rest. Actually , I'm a beginner on acoustic guitar ... would this even be appropriate for tunin' my six strings ?

Can anyone recommend a guitar tuner ? I know zilch. The last time I played an instrument ( 20 years ago , not a guitar ) I used a tuning fork. Now the world has gone ultra high tech.

I find this discussion interesting because it takes us back to a time when society had real problems that readily translated into day-to-day existence for some and to which we could all relate. Nowadays, society has problems like how do we stop criminal bank CEOs and investment managers from stealing/squandering billions in taxpayer monies ... but the cause-effect is complex and tenuous, hard for most to understand, the solutions as byzantine as they are unclear, and most have little raw interest in the subject matter.

Very sad the way Friday went out. What I didn't understand however was why Hub chose to persist with trumpet once his chops were clearly irreparably damaged to the point meaningful playing became impossible ? Freddie was a very talented composer/arranger/orchestrator and played a little piano. He could have put the horn down and with some work might have resumed contributing to jazz at the highest levels in one or both of those areas. I know , I know , easier said than done , but remember that the chops problems started what , about 15+ years ago ? Those concerts where he couldn't play a lick just didn't seem right to me. People kept on hoping he'd magically recover ( and I'm sure some attended not even realizing how bad it was ) , and that set the stage for endless disappointments.

Barack's invited Esperanza to play at The White House in the Stevie Wonder Library of Congress Award tribute concert ... ... anyone know how to score some tix ?

What an insane bummer. This really knocks me down. From everything I've read and heard and experienced , Louie was a truly extraordinary person , not just as a musician , but on the higher level that jazz music speaks of and to. When Louie was in the hospital I tried to add to his site's guestbook but it was broken at the time , so Louie never got to read my thoughts. I guess I'll post it here now : Dear Louie, I have not written before, but perhaps this reminder of life's fragility suggests I better do it now. I'm one of your biggest fans ever ... and I'm not even a drummer ! Since I was 14 , I have loved every note of your music. More that loved, your music has been a near-continual positive energy force for nearly my entire life. That's 31 years man ! To me , your music has always stood for finding the way to be positive about life ( no matter what ! ) To truly be positive, we must find a way to love our brothers ( or at least as many of them as possible ) and not isolate ourselves in a narrow small world, excluding whomever doesn't make sense to us. Anyway, that's what your music has always meant to me. Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Hang in there Louie !