sgcim

I probably posted here about how Aaron Sachs gave me the record with that Tiny Kahn tune, and asked me to transcribe it, to see how close it was to "DL". I told him it had strong similarities, but it wasn't a ripoff. Phil Schaap had Aaron on his show, just to talk about the evolution of Donna Lee. When we used to play it on a gig, Aaron would say, "Let's play that line they wrote on Donna Lee." This fostered the impression that they might have started out with Tiny's tune, and then each player would subtract or add parts to it over time, until they arrived at what we now know as Donna Lee. Jazz was a more communal, jam session art back in Aaron's time, and everybody played with everyone else after their commercial gigs, and would come up with contrafacts in that manner. Those cats used to jam in The Bronx over Aaron's parent's house.

There was a tradition of the leader taking all the credit for any tunes a new sideman wrote if they wanted to play on their first album with the group. In his autobiography, Charles Fox talks about his career as a jazz pianist. He was playing for Dizzy's group, and it came time for them to make an album. Dizzy wanted to record a suite that Fox wrote, and Fox was overjoyed. Then Dizzy told Fox that he wanted credit for Fox' Suite. That was the end of Fox' career as a jazz musician...

But the general audience is whom I'm addressing. If it just sounds like a stream of notes with nothing they can relate them to, who's going to want to listen to it? They don't need to know the changes, just have something they can latch on to so it won't be so abstract to them, and they dismiss jazz as "just a bunch of notes".

That's why these horn players and guitarists that post themselves soloing over changes without a chordal instrument playing changes or playing the head while they're playing at some club, are just turning people off to the music, rather than offering something that at least some people might appreciate. They have a barely audible bass (on my JBLs), and drums as the only audible accompaniment, and people are supposed to hear the changes?

No matter what that You Tube User/ Nurse with a PHD (so he calls himself a "Doctor") John Campbell says, masks are the only things that offer some protection from infection.

Nobody wants to wear masks anymore. At the rehearsal last night, where I conducted one of my pandemic arrangements, I was the only one with a mask. I've got thirteen horns spewing out covid germs in my face and I'm not gonna wear a mask? The saxes payed it perfectly-a transcription and harmonization of a 60 bar gato solo. I was dancing around happy as a lark, and I woke up with no COVID-19- same as the last three years.

RIP, Mr. Coe.

By his last interview in DB, Puerling was sufficiently disgusted with pop music that he sounded like he was more than happy to be exiting the planet. Usually, you hear an artist being interviewed having something positive to say about current music, because they want to ingratiate themselves with their audience and sell the product they were trying to sell, but GP was finished with trying to sell anything. When I mention GP's name to musicians I play with, they have no idea who I'm talking about. Even when I post his name on a music forum, people have no idea who I'm referring to. Well, at least he'll live on at college football halftimes, when college marching bands play that nauseating marching band arrangement of his "One More Time, Chuck Corea".

I always liked that song, but I never knew it was a white singer. I don't know who I I thought he was, but RIP.

Well said! They don't give a sh-t about jazz.

We just played a big band arr. of Black Nile Tuesday night. RIP...

Whoops, Jimmy Ponder died in 2016, but maybe they could've found an old interview with him talking about Wes...

It's another one off those Gary McFarland deals, a limited time only, and it's part of a fund raiser for a Public TV station, so there are a lot of interruptions, but there are some cool photos. It's persented as Wes' son searching for the 'real' Wes Montgomery. Of course they pack in every popular guitarist they can find, Skunk Baxter, Slash, and the self-proclaimed genius of You Tube, Rick Beato. Even Sweetwater gets involved Strangely absent was Jimmy Ponder, the best Wes interpreter there ever was, IMHO. https://indianapublicmedia.org/wesmontgomery/

He was going to some gig in Jersey with another musician driving, and when they hit the toll lane DJ started shaking like mad. The next thing you know, he bolted out of the car without his trumpet and never came back. He was supposed to play the trumpet part for the Jackie Gleason Show theme, but couldn't handle the anticiipatory anxiety about the panic attacks he'd suffer from going over bridges, through tunnels or even worse, taking a plane. I don't know if he just didn't show up, or if he turned the gig down.

I never heard anything about that. 🤮 A keyboard player/composer was a close friend of his on SI, and he never said a word about that. He would describe to my friend in rapturous terms about using H. That was one of the reasons why I never hung with DJ, though he kicked it, and became an alcoholic, and then got into some religious thing to kick alcohol. I thought that maybe he used drugs to self-medicate against the panic attacks he got when he was faced with phobic situations, but my friend said it was all about the rush he got from it.

No way! I already got in enough trouble with what I said in the Raquel Welch thread (I actually received a warning on another site , and they deleted itl I deleted it on this site). If I posted this one, it could cause WWIII!

Good point, but do you know what he said?

Heaven!

Don't tell me you know what he said over the mic at a 'catered affair'?

My sources say it was a guitarist named Don Roberts. They made an album together called Teddy Cohen and His Trio. They were trying to do a copy of the Red Norvo Trio sound, but the arrangements were poor, and Roberts was no Tal Farlow. TC plays nice on a few straight ahead cuts The album is re-issued under the name "New Directions", with some other material with Jimmy Raney and Hall Overton.

One of my faves! I talked to the bari sax player George Barrow on it about it when I used to work six nights a week with him playing shows. He said that Jimmy Raney used to act like a tough guy during the sessions, so nobody would bug him about his reading issues!

I'll have to listen to that Passport album again. I don't remember much of it. I don't know which keyboard he plays on the Rendell album, I just found out about it today.

Thanks, Discogs has him on an album with The Don Rendell Five- Live at the Antibes Festival 1964-68

Yes, Mealing could make anything sound good. I tried to find any jazz things that Mealing did before If, but the only thing I could come up with was a record or two that he did with Passport, which wasn't that memorable. It may have been after he left If. He became a very successful pop/rock producer. It was funny to hear how Morrissey described J.W. Hodgkinson as a "wide-eyed kid who was completely in awe of of working with these incredible jazz musicians,"