sgcim

I liked Stan's quote when he got sick of playing the modern stuff he was playing in the 70s," I'm through playing that "Chick Corea and his space monkeys" music..."

Wow, thanks! That may be the only video of Frank Strozier available anywhere. JSngry-

I loved that movie!!! Does anyone know who the guitar player was in the club scenes? TIA

yeah, it's on the "Shining Hour" CD with Hod and Red Mitchell. I used to catch them at Gregory's whenever I had a gig in Manhattan, although Frank Luther was the regular bass player. Now I just stand outside of the Bar Next Door, and puke on people as they walk out...

As I was looking at JALC's ad in the Times Sunday, which featured a very 'trendy-looking" photo of WM and very little else, it occurred to me that JALC is really not even about jazz in the first place; it seems to be about marketing a certain type of image for well-heeled NYers. The Sondheim concert is quite consistent with this. I love the Cleo Laine Sings Sondheim LP, and have found the sheet music for the songs of his I like, but I just don't find it compelling to do instrumental versions of them. Joe Puma did "Lovely", so it can work, but they seem to be hard to divorce from the lyrics... BTW Chris, I just saw the Bill Evans feature on "Jazz Set" on youtube the other day. Was that a NY TV Show? When and what channel was it on? Great show!

I loved his earlier shit- the first two or three LPs + Nilsson Sings Newman, and the standards LP with great Gordon Jenkins arr. After that, it was all downhill... i thought his best stuff was with Geo. Tipton as his arranger/conductor. If you saw the doc., Tipton didn't even appear in it, and was only mentioned once. I researched that, and it turned out HN tried to stiff him on some of the writing credits for "The Point". Tipton was also reportedly upset about his escalating drug and alcohol use. HN had intense stagefright; never toured and only did one concert (in the UK), though he did appear on TV a few times. "Arial Ballet" was my fave.

That's the kind of chick you try not to run into until the sun is shining... I'm lucky i made it out of that one alive- the pianist wasn't as lucky; I read his obit. in DB. The last time I saw her, she was on the hood of my car, trying to kick my windshield in.

I guess that's better than the story this chick I knew told of Miles trying to bf her boyfriend(a pianist) at the time, at a party. i don't know how reliable her stories were; she claimed to be there when Lee Morgan was shot, had screwed Carlos Santana and Duane Allman, etc...

Oh, yeah! Thanks for the reminder. i'm gonna look for ITHOTN. Jon Faddis had a nice feature in the opening scenes of "The Gauntlet". Live scenes in clubs don't count-eg. "Screaming Mimi", "Play Misty For Me", etc... There's something about integrating improvisation, the score, and the drama on the screen that really gets me off. The closest I've come to it is blowing during some scene in a musical. One of the most exciting gigs I ever did was jamming on some completely improvised funk things at an Iona State college basketball game at the Nassau Coliseum with some black dudes I never met before or since. I don't think you're supposed to be playing while they're dribbling the ball- especially loud with electric instruments, but nobody stopped us!

I just saw this last night, and Quincy did the music for it (I think he did all 3 movies in the series), so naturally, there was a lot of blowing in it (maybe so Q. could have a little more "face time' with Peggy Lipton? ). One scene that stood out was the one where Sid goes into the apt of the "heart of gold' hooker. There is an incredible tenor sax solo that followed the cheesey blues guitar and organ solo that made the whole movie for me. I looked it up in the Meeker book online, and it only IDs the omni-present (and great) trumpet player Chuck Findley and Emil Richards on percussion. Anyone have any idea who it was? It occurred to me that while there's a lot of examples of great writing in film scores, it's relatively rare that you get to hear a musician play a great solo in a movie. Another example is Phil Woods' solo in "Lilith", and Jim Hall's short solo in "Odds Against Tomorrow". Anybody got anymo'?

I generally agree that you can't tell what a musician is like solely by their playing, but that musician I mentioned before literally could not listen to many musicians, because he was convinced they were absolute wretches by the way they played jazz. The scary part was that he turned out to be right about some of the musicians (the ones I can remember) he "judged"... Some people have a very different way of seeing (or in this case, hearing) the world.

I seem to remember a story about Stravinsky singling RD out for praise when he conducted an orchestra with RD in it. Some musicians have complained about RD overplaying on a lot of sessions, but I thought he sounded fine on his first NY gig, the Kenny Burrell LP, "Men At Work" with Roy Haynes, live at the VV. RD was notably the only cat who didn't get into the race thing in "Notes & Tones". I also dug his "Epistrohy/Now's the Time" LP with Hannibal and Clifford Jordan. My sister had his "Philosophy of the Spiritual" LP with Sam Brown, and that morbid sound of the title cut featuring his arco bass used to make me think the world was coming to an end...

I played a couple of gigs with this sax player who said he could tell what type of a person someone is solely by their playing. I mentioned Phil Woods to him, and he said,"Horrible person". I mentioned Getz to him, and he said, "Even worse!"

In the Roland Kirk bio Kruth lists it as Sonny Red Kyner. He tells the story of RRK sitting in with SRK and taking it over to the extent that Sonny got so mad, he packed up his alto and went home in the middle of the gig. RRK finished Sonny Red's gig!

KCR is a special case. Other college radio stations don't "cater to commercialism", yet play little jazz (WFUV, Hofstra, NCC, Stonybrook, etc...). According to PS, WKCR has something in its charter that says it has to play so much jazz, so much classical music, etc... Comprende?

I should have mentioned that what I said was my opinion based on listening to KCR's on-air people mispronounce jazz musicians' names for many years now, and cracking me up by saying things like, "and playing the drum set on the last song was...". Basically, they sound like very intelligent people who don't know too much about jazz. They don't take anything away from the music that they play, and almost always tell the personnel on every cut, which is more than I can say for WBGO DJs. So, despite your snotty tone and inability to spell the word incorrect correctly, I'll keep on listening to KCR. My partially tongue-in-cheek last comment reflected the fact that, because KCR's board (or whatever) ignores market forces (unlike every station in the tri-state area), it often plays more interesting music (IMHO) than most of the other stations. As for my last statement- you don't know me from Adam, so what makes you think I'm a "working musician who'd like to make money in a free marketplace"?

I listen to KCR constantly at home, and I think most of the DJs other than PS and a few others, are Columbia students who either don't have anything better to do, or are getting partial credit for DJing. The only reason KCR is still playing jazz (with probably 75% of it being "Free Jazz") is that it's stipulated in their broadcasting contract with the University, according to PS on one of their recent pledge drives. If the students had their way, they'd probably be playing hip-hop and the stuff you hear on WFMU, 24/7. One reason why I support a Socialist Jazz State Gov't.

My unk was born in 1928, so it was probably late 40s to early 50s. I don't know if they ever got someone to sing them; my aunt used to sing my dad's tunes, but after they all got married, they stopped doing music. Imagine crazy Papa Joe writing pop tunes...; - )

Very sad to hear... "Mixed Bag" was one of my fave LPs of all-time, every track a masterwork. He was a very kind and generous human being according to my childhood BF's parents, who worked with him at a Summer Camp in upstate NY. There's nobody to replace people like this... RIP, Richie... "And don't mind me, cause I ain't nothin' but a dream..."

Paul Bollenback recently told me that he played at a concert where PS was gushing over his playing the whole night, and then he met him on the street the next day and PS didn't even know who he was and ignored him!

Here's an interesting story about Joe Maneri: My uncle used to be buddies with him back in the old days in Bushwick, when he played clarinet and sax at Greek weddings, where he specialized in compound time signatures. He remembered one time he had to pick him up in the middle of the night after one of his gigs, because his car broke down. Anyway, my uncle collaborated with him on writing "pop tunes" of that time (maybe the late 40s?) with my unk writing the lyrics, and JM writing the music. I wish I could say I have some of those tunes, but my unk never seems to know where they are now...

Yeah, Gerald's was a hip club. I used to play in the big band they had there led by Ray Abrams. Bernard Purdy was the drummer. Don Blackman sounds great on that second video in the link. I didn't know he was also an excellent vocalist. I read that he was supposed to be the next big thing back when he released his first LP, but it didn't catch on like they thought it would. He still did very well in the fusion/R&B field, and played jazz regularly at that club I mentioned before. According to that trumpet player who used to play a lot with him, he was the equal of any of the top guys playing today.

Shit. I never got to hear him, but a trumpet player I know used to sit in with him at a club in Queens, where DB was in the house band, and said that he was an incredible jazz pianist, who played in a very hip,Herbie Hancock-style bag. A great loss for jazz in Queens. RIP, DB.

Yeah, he mentioned Carmen Leggio a lot. He's lived in Yonkers all his life, so he's worked and recorded with all those cats in that area; Eddie Bert, Aaron Sachs, Joe Puma, Herb Bernstein, all fine musicians I've played with on occasion. Aaron Sachs was an important musician in the history of jazz from the 40s up to the 60s, and he's still playing beautiful solos; he must be about 90! He was a sideman on Red Norvo's Sextet sides in the 40s, played and recorded with Earl Hines in the 50s, appeared as a sideman on most of the Terry Gibbs recordings of the 50s, and then released at least three LPs as a leader in the late 50s, one of which featured Hall Overton and Jimmy Raney. Like a lot of the hipper NY musicians back then, Aaron studied arranging with Hall Overton, and we used to play some of his charts in a big band I played with him in for many years. He also played on the John Lewis LP for a large ensemble ("The Golden Striker"?). Back in the 40s, he described himself as being groomed as the "Great White Hope" of early bebop, and told me he once ran into Bird on the street, and Bird said, "I know who you are, don't go thinkin' you're so cool" (OS LT) !

I've done my best to document some of the best obscure jazz musicians for Organissimo, and what do i get in return? Does larry give me that gold watch and chain he promised me? No, man- I'm lucky to get severance pay and shit,,, Anyway, in my long and undistinguished career, I've had the fortune to work with some great musicians who will never be featured in your Down Beast magazine, cause they're not under 30, or the right color, or some shit..., but I did a gig with this cat yesterday, and he's still playing beautiful alto sax at the age of 87!!! He's played with a lot of people in his time, but here's the only LP he recorded under his own name as leader. Enjoy! He told me he did the arr. on it, and I asked him who he studied arr. with, and he pointed to himself!