sgcim

I think I've managed to find the worst book ever written on jazz in the history of mankind. I stumbled on to it during a search, and was excited by its title, so I ordered it from my local library. The title is "NYC Jazz". I abbreviated the city involved in case the author is out there and wants to murder me. Has anyone ever uh... read this? It's mainly pictures with unbelievable blurbs written underneath the pictures.

I went into NYC for the first time since the pandemic to see the world premiere of the documentary on Judee Sill that I had contributed some home recordings of the jazz pianist she married, Bob Harris. https://www.docnyc.net/film/lost-angel-the-genius-of-judee-sill/ The two directors of the film worked for NINE Years(!) on the doc, and it showed it. It was done very well, considering that she died back in 1979, and they had no footage of her speaking. They used a voice actress to simulate JS' voice on the two interviews that she did for Rolling Stone and some other periodical, and she also read the letters and diary entries by JS, that her family had contributed to the directors. They went over the tragic stories of her life; child abuse, robbing liquor stores, jail, prostitution, drug addiction, back injuries,etc.., which I had heard before, so I didn't find particularly affecting. But then they played some of her music through the incredible sound system of the SVA Theater, and when they reached some of the string arrangements done by Bob Harris (the first album) and JS (the second album), I felt the tears welling up in my eyes. Her music could be very powerful emotionally, even though the lyrics dealt with her weird theosophy that audiences pretty much ignored back in the early 70s. Then the credits rolled, and I was surprised that they included my name in big letters under the "Thanks to" part at the end. I was so surprised, I burst out laughing. A young woman from Rolling Stone interviewed the two directors and the singer/songwriter Shawn Colvin, who had covered one of JS' songs. Since I knew most of the things in the film, I decided to ask about the incident in which David Crosby was bugging her and JS took off his belt, and started running after him, whipping him with it as Crosby fled for his life. The director I emailed about it said he had heard that there was a rubber chicken involved, so I asked him about the David Crosby "Rubber Chicken Incident", and the packed theater started laughing. The director seemed kind of embarrassed about the question, and said he couldn't discuss it publicly, and they ended the Q&A session on that note. Anyway, the audience concluded that not enough people knew about JS, and the directors urged them to spread the word about her. You can still see the doc streaming on the web through the link I posted above, so I've done my part.

Jim Hall played "Skylark" for Jimmy Raney's Memorial service at St. Peter's. I'm pretty sure he played it at some other guitar player's service also( Atilla Zoller's?). I played "Nancy With the Laughing Face" at my mother's wake. I started singing it at the part where her name is mentioned, but then I burst out crying

Good to hear that security features are being updated. I read something online that showed you how to delete your caches and cookies, so I tried it, and got knocked off of every website that needed a password. That was no big deal for every website except this one. I forgot my old password and when I tried to set a new password, I got an ominous message that I would be compromising all personal information in my account if I reset my password, so I ran for the hills with my tail between my legs. I tried to reset my password this time, and it seemed like this website was more secure when I went up to the symbols in the address bar, so I reset a new password, but after I did that I got a new message in the security images in the address bar with a triangle on my padlock which means: "A padlock with a triangle indicates that Firefox is not blocking insecure passive content, such as images. By default, Firefox does not block mixed passive content; you will simply see a warning that the page isn't fully secure. Attackers may be able to manipulate parts of the page like displaying misleading or inappropriate content, but they should not be able to steal your personal data from the site." Which is better than the previous message, but is this website going to be totally secure come Dec.1st, or will it be the same as it is now (which seems to be okay, except for insecure passive content such as images)?

Thanks, guys.

Does anyone know what happened to the merchandise Phil was selling on his website? He had a tape of a recording session I did with Joe Dixon that had a bunch of my compositions and arrangements going for $25 for sale. I came into some big money ($27.50) last night when I dumped all my pennies, nickels and dimes into one of those coin machines, and I'm looking to spend it somewhere...

He was also another house drummer for CTI. He's on one of those Turrentine records mentioned in the Creed Taylor thread.

Bob Bruno told me he used to play at a club in LA in the early 60's where MTM would be sitting right in front of him. Imagine Laura Petrie within touching distance for four hours! Rob was probably out doing Millie... Bob Bruno told me he used to play at a club in LA in the early 60's where MTM would be sitting right in front of him. Imagine Laura Petrie within touching distance for four hours! Rob was probably out doing Millie...

They never showed the Petrie's bedroom, just that same freaking living room, where he trips over the furniture every week, so we can only assume the Petries were celibate throughout their entire marriage.

Hey, little girl, Comb your hair, fix your make-up. Soon he will open the door. Don't think because There's a ring on your finger, You needn't try any more For wives should always be lovers, too. Run to his arms the moment he comes home to you. I'm warning you. You're telling me that Hal David warning women that they should behave like obedient little dogs is not dated and cornball. Even Michael Bourne (RIP) put this one down on his radio show as hopelessly outdated and anti-feminist! LOL!

I guess like Felser, I was reading too much into it. With that info from the re-issue's liner notes, it does make more sense that it was just wackiness. If it had been like his work for Ramsey Lewis, all instrumental, the issue wouldn't come up, but Hal David's lyrics are so cornball, giving them a hip treatment just comes off as comical, trippy,satirical, whatever. It's just hard to take the part where the Dells are going ba ba ba ba, and the lead singer is testifyin' in a gritty voice seriously. in a song like "Close To You". I mean, WHO DOES THAT? LOL!

He does some great Puerling- like things with it, but at the same time, he's making fun of most of the songs. The Dells were in on it, too.

I agree with you. It sounds like they/Stepney were making fun of Bachrach/David songs. The out of tune whistling, the weak sounding vocal on Raindrops, The morbid sound on Planes. the cornball stops on a few of them, the weird ending on Alfie, the mocking (probably deserved) of the demeaning lyrics of Wives and Lovers, the overdone dynamics, the snide comments that went by pretty fast, and as you said, the fact that Warwick didn't even sing a bunch of those songs, and they called it "The Dells Sing Dionne Warwick's Greatest Hits". Even the record cover has them laughing, not smiling! It's too much to be a coincidence. I wonder ho Burt took it? Hal David was already put down by some lyricists, but they were going after both of them here.The Dells got a new producer after this album...

I almost forgot about that Gilberto and Turrentine album, which IMHO was more consistent than Salt Song (other than the title track, of course) Stanley kills on everything, and there's always Astrud and great Deodato arrangements again. The pairing of Stanley and Astrud worked a lot better than the ridiculous pairing of Astrud and Gil Evans. He wrote back and said it's coming in the future. I hope we're not going to get another Al Haig drama...

No, that quote was from a post he made to me.I asked him where I could read about it, but he never got back to me.Maybe he's saving it for a future installment on his site. He could even be planning a bio on KH.

Sadly, just after he posted a story about Bird's birthday on Facebook, the Alto/Tenor sax player Lou Caputo suffered a fatal heart attack. I knew he had had a heart attack a long time ago, but had been doing well since then. He recorded a few albums with his own small big band, which worked a lot in NYC. He hired some great arrangers to write charts for the band, and he played lead alto and all the alto solos on them. I was used to hearing him on tenor on all the hundreds of gigs I did with him, but he was a fantastic alto player, out of the Bird/Phil Woods school: http://loucaputo.com/about/ RIP. old friend...

On the CD I bought, they had Vera Cruz, another Nascimento song that wasn't on the original LP.

The title cut is pure genius on ST's part and Deodato's arr.. And those great bass slides by Ron Carter!!!!! I was so inspired by it that I wrote a big band version of it, but I featured trombone playing ST's part, so it wouldn't be the same thing.So far, it hasn't been played, because none of the bands i play with have a percussionist, and that tune is all ST and percussion. We did an earlier version I wrote for my HS Concert Band, but just as we were getting somewhere, the percussionist (a member of the Latin Kings) took out a kid who took out his brother with a baseball bat, so he went for a little stay at Riker's Island, and never came back. But I trascribed ST's genius intro and solo (Jeepers Creepers!) and someday soon... Here's a thing on CT's Jet Set/specialty phase: https://www.ctproduced.com/the-abc-of-specialty-recording/ The writer claims that "There is a whole fascinating story about Hopkins and especially around his divorce which includes using binoculars to peep on neighbors, hitting his wife and more. One day."

Never heard him play a bad note, RIP.

It listed the tomorrow the 26th as the day of death on Wiki, and now it's today, the 25th. I hope this was a mistake. 51 years old? What is going on?

I went in there at about 3:00pm and wound up leaving after midnight! They had weird hours; I didn't know when they closed, but I felt like I went into a time warp.

Yeah, Back when I had to have it, it wasn't on CD yet, so I got it through the mail on vinyl. I transcribed the whole thing and had my HS band play it. They loved it! I never understood RW's hatred of it. I think it had to do with him playing the Rhodes on it, but it got such a great sound, and Freddie was smokin'. CTI was a great gateway drug to get those kids from the church into jazz. We did Red Clay and as much Grover and Stanley T. as they could handle. One kid was transfixed by a Grover video I brought in and said,"Man, that's what I want to do with the rest of my life."

He seemed to be fixated on bringing some great jazz artists to a wider audience by having them play material that didn't sound like straight-ahead jazz. He was even turned down by Mel Lewis for wanting to put out the first Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band in a much different form than Mel wanted it in. CTI was built around Ron Carter as the foundation of the label, and would be built up from RC as the foundation with sidemen like Hancock and Cobham, and arrangers like Sebesky and Deodato adding strings to the horns His formula also included newer sound technology than other jazz labels, resulting in a more glossy sound than jazz records were used to being known for having. When the formula worked, which IMHO it did on one Wes cut, one Turrentine cut and the "Pure Desmond album, the results were fabulous. All three of those artists (plus Ed Bickert and Freddie Hubbard) never got such a strong,full sound out of their instruments (except Hubbard) than they did on that label. The two main controversies were the material he had Wes record, and the denunciation of the Randy Weston album by Weston himself. I liked Blue Moses, myself. RIP.

More sad news. RIP.

RIP, to an enthusiastic supporter of jazz.