sgcim

Didn't Tandyn Almer have something to do with that album? He was a friend of Brian's.

I Ifinshed This is Hip. Jones is a jazz singer himself, so he's very critical of Murphy. He pans so many albums of MM's that I'm surprised he decided to write it at all. I've always liked the timbre of MM's voice, but hated when he would ruin my fave tunes by overdoing the scat and emotionality of his interpretations. Jones agrees with me on many of his records. Then he gets into MM's career when he reached 40, and claimed that MM hit his stride, and produced mostly good work. A strange anecdote involving both of his subjects, Fagen and MM involved MM trying to get the music to "Do it Again" by Steely Dan. He called them up at their Malibu home, and they told him to come over their house. When he got there, Becker answered the door and yelled out to Fagen, "Mark Murphy's here, Donald" Fagen said, "Let him in, I'll get the music". Inside were a bunch of hippies, stoned out of their minds on something or other. Fagen walked in with the record, a pencil and a sheet of musical manuscript paper. He gave MM the paper and pencil, and told him, "I'll put on the record, go ahead".

His family came from Sicily, so maybe he had some influence on someone like Dino. Sinatra tried to deny it all his life, but he had a Sicilian background, also. They came from the same town as my mother's side of the family, Lecara Friddi. I wonder if Laine hung out with Sinatra at all?

I just did a search on it, and I did play in the Ray Abrams Big Band. What confused me is after RA died in 1998, they kept it going under the same name. I played with them in the 1980s. It's now a band that celebrates brooklyn jazz musicians.

Then there's the great keyboard player Dave Stewart who played with all the different Canterbury bands, and Dave Stewart , the pianist for the Eurythmics. There were two Black musicians (three counting Rudy Williams who lied about being the Savoy Sultans Rudy Williams) who I'm not sure who the hell they were. I recorded an album with a pianist named Al "Jabaz" Williams, who used to work for Motown, and then the jazz pianist Al Williams. Then I played in the Ray Abrams big band, and I still don't know if he was the more well known Ray Abrams. Bernard Purdie was the drummer. Maybe someday I'll find out who was who...LOL!

What was the story about Red Norvo wanting to get Red Mitchell in his band and mistakenly winding up with Red Callendar? Then there was Whitey Mitchell to further confuse things. Then there was the time I played a concert at a school on LI, and I asked a teacher what his name was, and he said "Lee Konitz". He was a bass player! Then there was a band that called themselves "Alexanders the Great" with Ray Alexander vibes and drums and Mousie Alexander Drums

There was a George Russell jazz guitarist, too. There was Bill Smith the clarinetist/composer and Bill Smith the jazz guitarist. There was George Handy the great arr/composer/pianist and and the bunch of Handys already mentioned. There were two alto sax players Vinny Dean and Chasey Dean There was Eddie Costa and Don Costa and Johnny Costa I used to work with Rudy Williams (cousin of Mingus) and there was the Savoy Sultans Rudy Williams, who the first Rudy Willams claimed he was, both alto sax players. Everyone still thinks Dick Garcia was really a pseudonym for Hank Garland when he recorded in NY. It wasn't. There was Joe Carbone (sax) John Carbone (Bass) and Joe Carbone (guitar)

My first guitar teacher used to talk about working with him on the phone during lessons. He was always like a mysterious figure to me.

I was listening to an interview with Danny Thompson on his time as a bass player for John Martyn and Nick Drake, and he talked about the session for "River Man". He talked about the violin section, and said that the leader of it was David McCallum. It turned out he was talking about the actor's father. He said that his son became a big actor on the American TV show, I Spy. We all know what series he meant.

Thanks!

Sylvia Marlowe specialized in 20th Cent. Harpsichord music, and knocked me out with a recording of a piece by Henri Sauguet.

They definitely played a cut or two from the tape when PS was interviewing JD on the Swing show. Other than that it listed for sale on PS' website. So I might have to go to Nashville to search for it if it's not listed in the search engine? A friend of mine went to a jazz club in Nashville, and got stopped on the street it was on, just because there were a lot of hookers there, and they thought he was looking for one! He had to explain to them he wanted to hear a pedal steel guitar player who was playing in one of the jazz clubs, and they didn't want to believe him, and gave him a hard time for about 15 minutes!

So, Phil was selling a cassette tape of my close friend Joe Dixon's album we had recorded of a quintet with me on guitar, playing a bunch of my compositions and arrangements for something like $50 on his website. Joe, a star soloist with the Tommy Dorsey band with Sinatra and Buddy Rich (he was Joe's roommate on the road, and knocked Joe out with one punch when they had an argument), the Bunny Berrigan Band, the Stan Kenton Quintet, and many others, was also a guest on Phil's show, and they played one of my tunes on the air, with the meticulous PS pronouncing my name perfectly, something rarely done on the first try. Anyway, what I'm getting at with that tl;dr paragraph is: Is there any way that I can purchase that tape of my tunes, or is the tape now in the custody of Vanderbilt U, and I have to trudge my way down to Nashville (like the Gene Puerling Collection at N. Texas State) to buy it? I tried a search on their Aviary Search Engine, and that came up with nada. That's what we were just discussing. Sometimes it seems like there's no connection between what college winds up obtaining someone's collection, and they just get them to add prestige to the school.

Yeah, well you never got stuck in a band where a cornball keyboard player who as Art Blakey said, 'couldn't swing if he was hanging from a rope', chose to play RIB as his featured piece EVERY NIGHT. I asked him who his fave jazz pianist was, and he said in his Bullwinkle J. Moose voice, "Why George Gershwin, of course!" He never even heard of Oscar Peterson! That was the straw that broke this camel's back. I took some Mus. Ed. courses and that was that.

It's all rooted in the one thing that California is known for, in the commercial I just heard; California Psychics. They've got all the answers. How else to explain the 49ers comeback in the second half?- they called a California Psychic from the locker room...

On the Tal Farlow album "Fuerst Set", the trio (Farlow, Costa and Burke) are playing Opus De Funk by Horace Silver, and Farlow quotes the horse racing bugle call, and ends on the flatted fifth instead of the normal 5th, and you can hear Eddie Costa yell in the background, "Are you serious?!"

Eat Your animal crackers So the children in Europe won't starve anymore. RIP

Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no! RIP. My sisters used to listen to her all the time. Back then girl groups were the big thing everywhere. My older sister was part of a group that did a song called , "What's Wrong with Ringo?" It was a local hit. The lyrics were something like this: "What's wrong with Rin-go? Why won't he sing a-long? What's wrong with Ringo? Etc.. Why won't he fall in love with me? I looked it up and they weren't The Bon Bons. They just did a cover version of the Bon Bons' hit.

he was a close friend of Bernard Herrmann's, and did films like Dr. Strangelove, Capt. Kronos Vampire hunter, The Maids , and many other UK movies.He used a very hip drummer on he last Avengers series Does anyone know who that was? Maybe Randy Jones or someone like that? RIP

I read about his "meeting" with Bird in the after life. I'm glad Bird is so well dressed over there...

Hey Allen, great tenor playing at Small's! What a band. Aaron Johnson's last solo on alto was as close to perfection as anyone's going to get. He played incredible clarinet, too!

I found the book in the library, but I'm reading Jones' book on Donald Fagen, which is fantastic. Maybe if MM didn't overdo his improvisations on the great songs he sang, he would've won a Grammy

Aaron Johnson completely killed on his last alto solo of the night! He stayed inside, and every note was perfection!

I got a ton of wax removed from my ears last year by an ENT, and I was hoping it would make a big difference in my hearing, but when the ENT asked me if I heard the change, I had to say no. He just said, "You're probably so used to it that you don't hear the difference. Then his nurse gave me a hearing test, and the results were I had mild hearing loss. That was a relief to me considering the thousands of gigs I played throughout my life. I was afraid it was going to be much worse.

Yeah, listening to that now. Allen sounds great on tenor! The alto player's also great, but I prefer his clarinet playing to that wild Dolphyesque stuff. The rhythm section is excellent. The guitar player shreds a lot, but I can't play that fast so I can't criticize it. Very enjoyable, turn on YouTube and dig it!