sgcim

He laid out Ornette twice in one night, when he saw him live for the first time.

DH seems to be on every one of my fave albums from France. This is the only video I've ever seen of him. The guy's a force of nature.

Sad news. He was a great person, too. If you read "Notes and Tones", he's the only one in the book that doesn't have a bad thing to say about anyone. How many jazz musicians can say that they performed under Stravinsky, and was singled out by Igor for his great virtuosity during the curtain calls! RIP.

I heard an interesting story about Benson that confirmed something I read in DB a long time ago. This guy was studying with Attila Zoller at the time that Wes died. and Creed Taylor was looking for a new 'cash cow' to carry on the great Pop Sellout that Creed initiated with Wes. Attila was pretty hot at that time, getting a lot of airplay, so Creed approached him and asked him if he wanted to take Wes' place, and play some mellow pop tunes' melodies in octaves. Attila was disgusted at the crassness of the offer, and the notion that Wes could be replaced by a guy simply playing Pop music in octaves, and he turned Creed down. Creed went to every prominent jazz guitar player in NY, and gave them the same 'Faustian' offer. Every single one of them was repulsed by the idea, and turned him down. He was about to give up the idea, until he found the only guitarist who was overjoyed at the offer: George Benson! Benson took singing lessons with Stevie Wonder and Donny Hathaway, and the rest is history.

Sounds good, but he's already dead. Does it kill any other jazz drummers?

Yeah, either that or the same old Thad Jones, Maynard, Basie, Woody Herman, Bob Mintzer, etc... that is fine music, but when you play two straight hours of it , like we did the other night, you wanna cut your throat!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's just the same progressions, the same licks, the same tempos, the same everything over and over. Even when they try and play funk, it sounds like college, white funk that uses the same cliches over and over. Rhythm changes and blues, over and over. They just don't want to play any good songs. Duke Ellington at least could write good songs, and more interesting music.Same thing with Gil Evans, and Gary McFarland

Nilsson's GAS album was not like the Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, etc... atrocities, which were by artists whose original material was not selling like they used to, so they figured they might as well try a different genre and see how it sells. Nilsson had practically blown his voice out on a session with John Lennon, and he realized he had to make the album of his dreams before he completely lost his voice. He was a serious singer/songwriter that had his mind blown by The Beatles, but he loved the GAS, and showed his seriousness about that album by hiring Gordon Jenkins to conduct and arrange. Commercially, it flopped, but he didn't care. I was a huge fan of his early stuff, which featured great arrangements by George Tipton, but it didn't appeal to a larger audience, so he fired Tipton,(by telegram!), a man that spent his life savings on HN's demo tape, and started doing crap that appealed to a larger audience.

Thanks, guys! It sounds like a cash grab CD that was reissued called "The Best of Dennis Budimir", which was in actuality the Worst of DB!

Is it worth getting for DB's blowing, or does he just play the melodies and rock out?

It had mostly rock tunes on it- "Like a Rolling Stone, Eve of Destruction etc... Must be a pisser!

He was probably a sideman on it. Sounds familiar. I see it on Wiki from 1965. Maybe it was a re-issue of a Revelation session?

I think you're thinking of Jay Berliner's "Bananas Are Not Created Equal". JB was like the DB of the East Coast.

Jimmy?

No, I copied and pasted from Wiki.

A Whole slew of Manny Albam records: er The Drum Suite (RCA Victor, 1956) The Jazz Workshop (RCA Victor, 1956) Manny Albam and the Jazz Greats of Our Time Vol. 1 (Coral, 1957) Steve's Songs (Dot Records, 1958) Jazz Horizons: Jazz New York (Dot Records, 1958) Sophisticated Lady (Coral, 1958) With All My Love (Mercury, 1958) A Gallery of Gershwin (Coral, 1958) The Jazz Greats of Our Time Vol. 2 (Coral, 1958) The Blues Is Everybody's Business (Coral, 1958) Double Exposures (Top Rank, 1960) West Side Story (Vocalion, 1960) I Had The Craziest Dream (RCA Victor, 1961) More Double Exposure (RCA Victor, 1961) Jazz Goes to the Movies (Impulse!, 1962) Brass on Fire (Solid State, 1966) The Soul of the City

Yea, all the NY albums like that are great. Manny Albam made a bunch of albums that are fine. They always had Phil Woods or Gene Quill on lead alto, Eddie Costa on piano and/or vibes or Hank Jones on piano, Clark Terry playing trumpet solos, Bernie Glow playing lead trumpet, and of course the NY rhythm section, Milt Hinton and Osie Johnson with Barry Galbraith on guitar, and Urbie Green on Bone.

Yes, maybe he suspected that the contaminated water there resulted in causing his senseless violence. Astute observation Mr. N.

Whitman left a note before his rampage asking that an autopsy be done on him to find out why he had these homicidal compulsions. The autopsy revealed the brain tumor that some believe caused his homicidal activity. He knew something was wrong with him, but he never found out what it was.

Peter Bogdonavich also made a movie about the Charles Whitman shooting spree called "Targets". Roger Corman told him he could make any movie he wanted to, but it had to use the set Corman just shot a movie on, and had to use Boris Karloff(!) in it, because Karloff was still under contract to Corman for two more days from the movie Corman just made, "The Terror". So PD made a movie a retired horror movie star (BK) receiving an award for his horror career at a drive-in Movie theater, and making a speech about how useless horror movies are now, because real life is much more frightening than horror movies. As he accepts the reward, a real sniper starts shooting people in the audience from a tower. It was so soon after the Whitman shootings, they had to do some editing to to get it relesfed. Recently, someone did an animated documentary about the Whitman shooting spree.

Sadly, the bass player Ellis used on The French Connection", Bill Plummer, died this past year. I found out about it when I saw the premiere of the documentary on Judee Sill in the city. He was Judee Sill's bass player on all her LPs. I was just laughing my head off, because the filmmaker put my name on the credits at the end (special thanks to..) for some research I did for the film, and then the film ended with a dedication to Bill Plummer. I was shocked.

Thank God he got that song away from her husband. CS made it a great song! You can have the original TTK! This one gives my brain a buzz whenever I hear it. There are a lot of names on it, but they don't say who arranged it. Do you two know if Stepney had anything to do with it. Everything is great, except that operatic interlude in the middle. Otherwise, Pop Perfection! The great Henry Lewy was listed as one of the producer/engineers. He did both of Judee Sill's albums, and some of Joni's stuff. A legend.

They were a pretty trippy band. That's why they called her Minnie Tripperton.

Speaking of Les baxter, I was just reading Brian Wilson's 'odd' autobiography, where he said that he loved listening to Les Baxter, because he did all these big productions that sounded sort of like Phi Spector productions"(!) Everything to Brian was either Phil Spector or The Four Freshman.

Thanks for posting all the Percy France stuff. I would have never heard of him if you didn't. I like the way he plays. He's got a lot of felling, and there's not a superfluous note in his solos. As I mentioned before, I worked with Leonard Gaskin in a band, and he had a friend who also played in that same band, and he tried to play in that same style, but he just couldn't pull it off. I never knew where he was coming from until I heard France.

It says that it's out of stock right now, but you can buy it new for $16 and change from Oxfordshire Records. Thanks for the alert!