sgcim

I just read on FB that the West Coast Arranger/Composer Gordon Goodwin passed about two weeks ago. Ironically, it was on Arranger/ Composer Sammy Nestico's page, who must be many years older than GG.

see my message I sent you.

I heard an interview with Chuck Wayne that was interesting, if only to hear what his speaking voice sounded like. I saw him live with the duo he had with Joe Puma many times, and even played a tune with him at a clinic the duo had, live on the air on WBAi, but he rarely spoke. I can only describe him as sounding like a well-spoken, 1940's Hollywood actor; not a trace of a Bronx accent like his buddy Puma. Phil mainly dealt with his connection with Coleman Hawkins, via the Joe Marsala group, and the cuts Phil played must have had Wayne squirming in his seat. Wayne was VERY young at that time... Another odd interview I listened to was with the great Frank Strozier, a week before he was going to make his piano playing debut with a trio featuring his old buddy Curtis Boyd at Carnegie Recital Hall. Frank is a very quiet, thoughtful person, and Phil would ask one of his long, rambling questions, and it would be met with complete silence! Phil would have to re-word his hyper-active question so Frank COMPLETELY understood it, and then Frank would succinctly answer it in a few short sentences. An example would be Phil spending five minutes summing up some of Frank's great accomplishments, and then asked Frank, so what are you doing now? and Frank would simply say in his slight Southern accent, "I'm a sixth grade teacher." LOL! I'm annoyed that there's barely anything on Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow, two ground-breaking Bop guitarists, but it doesn't really surprise me...

Great to hear Billy Taylor play with Russell Malone! Good Phil Woods interview, too. Thanks for the link!

I know Nothing!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, the collaborations were mainly with Robert N. Bruno (Bob), leader of CM. JJW and the other guys followed Bob's lead. Here's all you need to know about Bruno: https://www.soundclick.com/bobbruno

Yeah, Byrd was a wild guy! A student of Barney Childs starting a rock band! Kind of reminds me of the experimentation going on in the 60s with Bob Bruno and his band Circus Maximus. To quote Wiki, "In late December 1967, the band performed in an unusual pair of "Electric Christmas" concerts together with New York Pro Musica, an ensemble that performed early music. There were two 80-minute performances. The material performed included a reworking of 14th-century composer Guillaume de Machaut's "La douce dame jolie" as an English-language song "Sweet Lovely Lady" arranged by Robert M. Bruno for the ensemble, and Bruno original "Chess Game" that, unbeknownst to Bruno but noted by John White, director of the Pro Musica, strongly echoed the "Romanesca", a piece that first appears in 16th-century Spanish lute books."] Then you have Phil Woods recording "Love Song for Che" on his "Round Trip" album.

I wasn't sure where to put this, but The Times had an article on him which was probably taken from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Byrd Phil Woods even recorded one of his songs.

See an EN&T doc ASAP! I had blockage in one ear earlier this year and intense sinus pain, so I made an appointment to see my EN&T guy to get my ears cleaned, and after he used that electronic tool to clean out my ears, he said,"Now isn't that much better!" I couldn't hear any difference. Thank God, the guy gave me two scripts; one a strong antibiotic, and the other a Fluonase generic nose spray, I had a big band gig that night where the band was gonna play one of my charts, so I didn't fill the scripts that day. I got to the gig and noticed I was having a hard time getting a good sound out of my guitar and amp.Then we play the first tune, and it sounded like a bunch of banshees screaming! I realized I couldn't hear any of the low pitched instruments; all I could hear were the altos and trpts. For some reason I was able to finish the set without freaking out or anything. Then on the break, I calmly told the guys in the rhythm section that I couldn't hear the bones, Bari or Bass. they just shrugged their shoulders, and the bass player had to open his mouth. He asked us if we ever heard of this well-known bass player, saying that he just got a bunch of sub gigs for him, because he lost the ability to hear pitch, and couldn't play music anymore. That's when I started to freak out. I told the drummer/leader about my problem and asked him if he thought it was like the bass player's problem. He said the bass player's problem was neurological, and mine sounded like some type of ear infection. That mellowed me out, and a bunch of the other guys in the band started telling me about their similar problems with their ears. One revealed that he had a hearing aid. The next day I filled the script, and made slow, steady improvement. Everything's been fine until this week, when we lost the heat in the co-op building I live in. I've been hearing ringing in my left ear, but it's not that annoying. Can the intense cold we've been having in NYC cause ear infections?

It be a bad day for R&B and/or soul jazz guitarists; first Cropper, then Upchurch. RIP. The king of NY, Cornell Dupree and Melvin Sparks both passed in 2011. Seems like a fourteen year cycle.

He was a major dude. He even had his own orchestra, the PHIL-Harmonic:

The Billy Bauer one in the archive achieves the impossible; someone who can out-talk Phil! I sent a link to two friends of mine who studied with him, and they're spending hours listening to it. BB's studio was located above a bar, so his tongue was very loose. One of my friends said he could write a book just about the lessons. The one with Joe Dixon is pretty special to me, because it's got 1/8th of a session i played on with Joe. I did most of the arranging,, and wrote some tunes for it, too. Phil was selling it on his website for a lot of bread, and then he passed. I wonder if the archive will include stuff like that? At least I got part of it.

At least Sangrey and his buddies...LOL!!!!!! https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo241107617.html

I guess the future of that series was uncertain, and its end was always near,

This seems be a sampler of the artists featured in the British Jazz Explosion series. As usual, DM's "Storm Warning" is my fave.

Dick Morrissey's son just hipped me to this new bunch of re-issues. I can finally hear "Storm Warning"!. https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/decca-launches-british-jazz-explosion-series/

The Architect of Desire: Beauty and Danger in the Sanford White Family by Suzannah Lessard. I studied Composition, Orchestration and Tonal Counterpoint with the author's father, who was a renowned US composer, and wrote some great works in the Neo-Classical style, but then switched to Serial music by the time I studied with him. He was accused of coming in to five of his six daughters' bedrooms in the middle of the night, and doing some naughty things with their bodies when he was drunk. He claimed he didn't remember doing it. He's given the pseudonym of Frank Rousseau in the book, but here was his real name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lessard I asked him what he thought of jazz. He said "I don't; I don't think of jazz". Now I can say the same of Serial music.

A bass player friend of mine has a cousin whose last name is Corbisiero, who used to be a Rugby player in England, till he got cancer. He recovered, and now he works for CBS covering Rugby games. I'm gonna ask him who I should pick when go over his house to jam tonight. He said Montreal 40

Did he tell you about the time Brookmeyer said to Phil Woods "Come on Phil, be a man, sell out! He was trying to get Phil to move to the West Coast and be a studio musician so that he could play dance music for Jim Sangrey to dance to.

Wow! I've gotta get that Brookmeyer book!

But i like to play da songs, and the songs have changes. Should I just forget about playing and just learn to dance? I could do The Jerk pretty good when I was a wittle boy.

I just finished Johnny Dankworth's autobio, "Jazz in Revolution" (1998), and came across JD's explanation for why Jazz isn't and will never be popular: ......."jazz is a music for the minority. It can only be truly understood and evaluated by people gifted with 'chordal ears'- IOW, those lucky folk who can listen to the improvisational skills of a soloist and still hear the underlying chord structure. So jazz music can only by luck become popular in the wider sense.,and can rarely enjoy the financial security and mass acclaim which goes with that phenomenon. Thus most jazz musicians remain skilled, dedicated and poor, and even a jazz world-star name like Dizzy Gillespie's was and still is for that matter-unfamiliar to most people in the country of his birth." He used Diz as an example, because he was working with him at the time, and was a very close friend of his. This explains a lot.

RIP.

He even recorded and gigged with the Bill Evans Trio back in 1967-68. RIP.

Sam Brown was on that album; a dude whose involvement with all types of drugs led to his suicide at the age of 39. RIP.