sgcim

RMJ is a busy boy. He just came out with a recent book on Nick Drake that I've got to read.

I've been listening to Todd Rundgren with The Metropole Orchestra, an hour and a half concert, and was very impressed with him and the great arrangements the orchestra performed. I think I might include something from him in my my big band rock project, since it's an orchestra not a big band. "Hello, It's Me" has the most jazz content, so I can most easily steal- I mean incorporate, some of that arrangement for BB. His voice is not the same as it was of course, and its ponderousness can get unpleasant often, except on a masterpiece like "Mammon" where it fits perfectly in a frightening, powerful performance. A lot of his music ventures into musical theater, and having just completed a two week gig playing "Footloose", I could do without that, but his music is on a higher level than that. Like Scott Walker, he does a fantastic job of singing with just the strings, and showed what a great musician he is by being perfect in pitch and time. He knew the charts backward and forward, and even performed Onomatopoeia twice in a row, because he felt the first time wasn't fast enough!

The thing was, he was no Wes. His rhythmic approach has always been on the funk,soul, Blues, Country, and R&B side of things, while Wes was all about swinging. GB's fave guitarist was Hank Garland, while Wes came out of Charlie Christian. There's nothing sordid or insidious about it- as you said, everyone got what they wanted.

Yeah, Doug was homeless for a while.

Doug was a great jazz guitarist like his father, but he was a long time junkie. That's why he looked like Chet.

I guess that confirms the Creed Taylor story.

He was the greatest 'gateway drug' for rock guitarists getting into jazz. A lot of them never moved on, but there's no problem with that. People like what they like. I'm at peace with that. Listen to hip-hop/rap 24/7. No problem with that.

The story I heard from one of Attila Zoller's students was that at the time of Wes Montgomery's death, Creed Taylor was desperate to find another jazz guitarist to replace Wes on CTI, so he went to Attila, and every other jazz guitarist in NYC, and every one of them turned it down out of respect for Wes. The only one who agreed to do it was GB.

Nice Carpenters bossa nova.

After playing "The Greatest Love" hundreds of times on gigs, I decided to take out Benson's version from the library. I couldn't believe how corny and saccharine it was. If it wasn't a library record, I would've smashed it into pieces. Then I played "Masquerade" with the blues drummer/vocalist Charles 'Honeyboy' Otis, and it was literally a religious experience. So I checked GB's version out again at the library with the same result. I bought GB's albums "Giblet Gravy, and it sounded like a mediocre R&B album, and the one he did with Joe Farrell, and it sounded like a bad New Age album. His earlier stuff was much better, but I read his autobiography, and it ends with him talking with a fan of his talking about how Charlie Parker killed jazz by alienating people with its complexity. He then reassures the reader that HIS music has taken the harmony of Bird and made it palatable to a larger audience with whatever the heck he's doing, and that the future of jazz is safe in his hands....or something to that effect.

He also had a severe problem with alcohol. I was working with the Austrian vibes player Vera Auer-Bouchet at a club once, and on the breaks she'd tell me how he was "climbing the walls" trying to go cold turkey from alcohol. She was amazed that even though he was so out of it, he sounded as great as he always did. I've still yet to hear a better guitarist play live.

Alright, Richard Cook gets an F, and you get an A+!

Ron's classical training was a big part of why he got called for so many great dates. He plays in tune on an instrument that Gunther Schuller said was impossible to play in tune on; especially on the low F. And then he always plays the right notes in his bass lines; even if it's just a root and 5th thing; it's the appropriate thing to do in that situation. Bass genius.

The kid was born in 1944. In a later interview in the 90's he describes himself as the poster child for Ritalin. Agreed.

Jorma Kaukonen said in an interview that he used to see KB doing somersaults in the 60s in clubs when he was soloing when rock started getting big. Of course that was nothing compared to my new idol, Larry Collins. I now base my entire performing routine on this young master of the instrument: