sgcim

My main issue with the Bradster was his dissing of Evans. I have no problem with him saying BE wasn't a direct influence on him, but he goes a lot further than that. And Gil Evans, as great as he was, had nothing to do with "Kind of Blue", but BE had everything to do with it. George Russell claimed to have been responsible, but it's been argued that his style of modal writing had nothing in common with the music on KOB. Speaking of GR and BE, I just came up with a score of "All About Rosie"- maybe I'll give the Bradster a call and see how he stacks up to "that guy's" solo in the last movement...smiley's ain't workin';- )

The amazing thing was that then he said that he was more influenced by the Miles Davis Group(!). Who was responsible for the sound of the Miles Davis group if not Bill Evans? Miles even said that Bill was his favorite pianist, and he specially hired him to change the sound of the group. Even Herbie Hancock admitted (probably under threat of waterboarding?)that "that guy" (as the Bradster called him), Bill Evans had a strong influence on him. This goes under the heading of re-writing jazz history by the darlings of DOWNBEAST; Pat Metheney, the Bradster, Ornette, etc... because they're obviously the greatest living jazz musicians (my DownBeast tells me so) and Bill Evans was just some washed up cocktail pianist, who should have stuck to playing piano bars...

Fast forward nine minutes into this to hear the Bradster's opinion of Bill Evans.<iframe width="474" height="54" frameborder="0" src="http://www.studio360.org/widgets/ondemand_player/#file=%2Faudio%2Fxspf%2F106894%2F;containerClass=studio360"></iframe>

Not sure I get the "in the 50's" part, but yeah, KB sang, and sings. Got "Weaver Of Dreams"? Very solid, to my ears. Maybe it wasn't in the 50s when he made that largely vocal LP(early 60s?), but he sang in a straight, Billy E. style back then, and his more recent vocal things are much looser, with some "beboppin' and scattin'"like the one I posted.

Metheny is practically all KB when he plays off of min7th chords on all his jazz/latin tunes. I'm sure the other two would admit a serious KB influence, but I'm not a fan of either of them, so I couldn't point out any specifics. KB strongly influenced rockers of the 60s like Hendrix, Coryell and Jorma Koukenen. Hendrix says to the organist on one of his "mellow" Woodstock jams, "Now you make like Jimmy Smith, and I'll make like Kenny Burrell..." I remember reading an interview with Jorma in Rolling Stone where he said he saw KB in Sweden, and Kenny was doing somersaults(!) on the stand while he was playing at some club. Any jazz guitarist of the 70s and beyond that has any blues influence in their playing most likely got it from KB. Did I mention that KB also sang like Billy E in the 50s? To his credit, he never did a girly-man version of "The Greatest Love", or any disco, but here he is evoking Betty Roche on "Take a Train"

TM used to start pounding his foot on the floor when he got into his solos, so loud, it would drown out the drummer. That was my cue to leave.

I think it would have been a miracle for Burrell to have emerged at that time with that tone (and lines), and not been from a Black music community. Does the choice of guitar/amp change a great player like Burrell's sound that much, or was it rather a change in 'conception or approach instead, kinda like what jsngry was saying earlier in the thread? Even the difference in 'era's' for instance, as Mark Stryker refers to, might have an effect on the way we perceive tone and performance? Kenny definitely changed from a more generic bop approach in his early LPs, to his own style by the time he led dates on Verve. The same way Phil Woods went from a Bird imitator to his own man on that Herbie Mann date in 1957. In fact you can hear both of them on KB's LP "A Generation Ago Today". Phil sounds like he's making fun of Kenny when they trade fours on "Stompin' At the Savoy". It could have been the superior recording facilities at Verve compared to the funkier sound of his Blue Note LPs, but his sound on that Night Song LP is clearer, rounder, fuller and warmer than any guitarist I've ever heard. We can probably thank Kenny (and Johnny Smith) for making the D'Angelico New Yorker sell for $40,000, and the pickup he used, the DeArmond 1100 Super Chief, $1,000.

Very sad to hear. He managed to combine humor with good songwriting. RIP Kevin.

My sister used to work at a well-known music hall(1971), and she said they saw Miles snorting coke in a rest room. When he came out, some guy asked him excitedly, "Miles, what do you think about the four valve trumpet?" Miles answered, in that hoarse voice, "Fuck the four valve trumpet!"

Damn, I forgot about that one. How is that LP? I had a chance to buy it at a used record store, but it was kind of pricey. I think there was a Phil Woods feature on it. How is that? I remember I was working with George Barrows the day ON died; he was shocked. According to a book I was reading, ON got a lot of grief from black musicians because he used white guys like Woods and Ed Shaughnessey on his records. They used to slide pictures of slave ships under his door. ON said he just wanted to use musicians who could play his music the best it could be played. Jazzhattan Suite is an exceptional album. "A Penthouse Dawn" has some sweet and beautiful moments in the writing and in Phil's blowing. I always felt that Oliver and Phil had a spritual connection in their playing...a beauty that surfaced when Phil was blowing lead alto on Oliver's charts or the respect Phil payed Oliver whenever he soloed in Oliver's band. Jazzhattan Suite, is for me, the big band Nelson album where everything came together beautifully - not like "Full Nelson" on Verve where you wonder what's at the heart and soul of it all or why the session didn't really impact. Ohh- how could I pass that up? Oliver must have loved Phil, if just for the reason that he seemed to be the only cat in the band that came out okay at the end of the title cut from "More Blues and the Abstract Truth" Jazz Interactions was such a hip thing. It's hard to believe that this is the same NYC as it was back in the 70s. What is the eqivalent of JI today- JALC? Beginners (such as I) were allowed to have free group lessons with the best players in NY. I still remember the first day when some guy with a bad eye stood in front of the class and gave us our introduction to the program. It turned out to be Howard McGhee! The thankfully late Mayor Kochsucker can go to his grave happy that his legacy of destroying "communism" in NYC has been preserved by all his "suckcessors".

Kenny da man!!! My fave Kenny was when he played his D'Angelico back in the 60s and 70s on LPs like "Night Song". I don't know why he had to go back to those coarse, un-pedigreed Gibsons. There's no other guitarist who can touch him on ballads, and his sense of groove on medium tempoes is perfection. I recently read some self-appointed 'genius' pontificate that Kenny sounds "white". That's how out of hand things have gotten with the younger generation of jazz "artists". How can you come out of the Detroit jazz scene of the 40s and 50s and sound white? I've caught Kenny live a number of times, and he was always the best. He even owned a jazz club in NY which he named The Guitar, which featured the top players in NY of the late 60s and early 70s till it folded after a few years.

I was just listening to the sides he did with Jimmy Raney back in 1949. Man, those guys could play even back then!

Damn, I forgot about that one. How is that LP? I had a chance to buy it at a used record store, but it was kind of pricey. I think there was a Phil Woods feature on it. How is that? I remember I was working with George Barrows the day ON died; he was shocked. According to a book I was reading, ON got a lot of grief from black musicians because he used white guys like Woods and Ed Shaughnessey on his records. They used to slide pictures of slave ships under his door. ON said he just wanted to use musicians who could play his music the best it could be played.

In "Cats of Any Color" Gene Lees writes about hearing Evans play "hard,funky,dark Southern blues" late one night at the Village Vanguard. When Lees asked him about it, Evans replied, "I can really play that stuff when I want to."

I just remembered another tiny story. That friend of Don's and I were talking about Bill Evans on a gig once, and I asked him what Don thought of Bill, and he said that Bill invited Don over to his place one day and they played together as a duo for a few hours. Let's hope that's all they did... Must have been an extraordinary musical experience.

I don't know where you're going with this, but Benson was among Farlow's biggest admirers. Maybe he wasn't as subtle as Bickert and Raney, but I think he and Costa (and Burke on Yesterdays) sound excellent on both cuts, but the sound quality on ATTYA is lousy compared to the vinyl and CD recordings I have of it. The Yesterdays solo is better than ATTYA, but what is your complaint about Farlow on these cuts? Benson plays a lot more pentatonic (major) than Farlow does.

I wonder what happened to Bill Smith also, the guitarist on the Bell LP?

I've read that essay by Wallace before, and was impressed by his honesty. How often do you read or hear something from a musician admitting their weaknesses? His point about playing with musicians who seem incapable of playing BS, Bickert, Desmond, and others like Bill Evans, Don Joseph,Jimmy Raney etc... struck me as true, also. In a sense, it's a relief that there are no more players like that anymore; they're very intimidating. Everyone else is playing so much BS that they've just copied from records, that you don't have to worry about looking bad when you follow them! We should be thankful these geniuses are dead, and we should probably try to kill the few that remain!

Ed just gave up when his wife died seven years ago. IMHO, his best LP was titled "Ed Bickert", a live trio date on Sackville Records with Don Thompspon and Terry Clarke. I think it might have come out on CD this year, but it was from the 1970s. Here he is on the street of dreams:

After reading someone describe Ed Bickert as a "snoozefest", I did a search here and found no thread for him. I could go on and on about his harmonic and melodic genius, and lack of BS in any of his solos, but if you can't hear it in this old video of him, nothing I say is going to matter:

I think the Lockjaw LP has a recording of "Stolen Moments" for big band that pre-dates "BATAT" . There's also a video of him at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in the 60s leading a big band playing that tune, featuring Gato Barbieri(!)

As mjzee said, Benson fanatics are fascinating. I knew it was a mistake to say anything less than that the Almighty GB is not the greatest jazz guitar player that ever existed, but here are some African-American guitarists I like: Wes Montgomery (of course!), Kenny Burrell (one of my faves!), Henry Johnson, John Collins, Irving Ashby, Russell Malone, Grant Green, Ray Crawford, Freddie Green, Jimmy Ponder, Mark Whitfield, Sonny Greenwich,Anthony Wilson, Ed Cherry, Charlie Christian, Les Spann, Billy Butler, Phil Upchurch, Sonny Sharrock, Bobby Broom, Rodney Jones, Earl Klugh, Bill Smith, Al Casey, Calvin Keys, O'Donal Levy, Lionel Loueke, Ted Dunbar, and last but not least the Almighty GEORGE "BAD" BENSON himself!!! YES! I dig Benson, and many others who don't play with the same rhythmic feel as Raney,Farlow, Hall, etc..., but I think I made it clear that this was just my personal opinion, and that Benson and Jones are incredible jazz guitarists. The Pat Martino comment about Benson was made to a private student of his, and wasn't in your little Downbeast magazine, or whatever rag you read. I hope you're not a guitarist, because your comment about Ed Bickert being a "snoozefest" would indicate a very sad state of affairs on your part. Tal may have lost it after the 50s, but his recordings of the 50s are the best representations of Bud Powell on the guitar of that time.

I always liked this bossa nova version of "Melancholy Baby" featuring Warren Bernhardt on organ:

I never heard him play, but I remember that he used to have a "club date office" on LI back in the 1970s, and he used to get gigs for a jazz pianist friend of mine, who was completely whacked out and unemployable back then, so the gigs were very loose, and we just played jazz on them, whether the people liked it or not. He talked like a "hep cat", so we thought he was cool. I've seen one of his LPs at a used record store I go to, but it didn't look like a jazz LP to me.

I've got to agree with this. There are plenty of jazz guitarists I find more subtle and swinging than GB- Ed Bickert, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow (1950s), Jim Hall, Rene Thomas, etc..., however this is all just my opinion. I know you GB supporters can be a very vocal lot, and i wouldn't want you to strain yourselves needlessly. Benson lays more on the funk/blues spectrum than the swing spectrum rhythmically to my ears, and he and Rodney Jones can't be beat in the jazz/funk idiom. Even Pat Martino was quoted by someone when asked what he thought of GB, as saying, "I think he's a pretty good R&B player."