sgcim

I have a record by a classical music saxophone concerto (20th century) played by a sax player named Walter Benton. I wonder if he was the same guy?

That's probably Charles Stepney's arr. of that old gospel tune. Beautiful changes. He gets to play that wild synth solo on the first one! We should've done that gospel tune back when I was teaching, but I didn't know it. We played some of their other stuff, and the kids played the schist out of it. One of the bass players (they all played bass and drums) formed a EW&F Tribute band called Hearts Afire. Great stuff, thanks! The drummer in the Association Ted Beuchel plays great on Snow Queen!!!! There are a bunch of different versions. Jim Gordon really lays it down on the version by The City, Carole King's first band. The rest of the album sucks. Roger Nichols does a muzak version of it, and a few other bands do mediocre versions of it. I like The Association's and The City's versions, but BS&T do more than I could do with it.When they lost that psycho DCT, that was the end of the hits.

Great stuff as usual, Dave!

One would think so, but I mentioned this song to my two older Baby Boomer sisters yesterday on the tenth anniversary of our mother's death, and neither of them ever heard of it, and they were huge CK fans. For this big band project, I only chose songs that I loved, songs that were not played to death,, or that I had something very distinct to say in them, and had an architecture that enabled jazz musicians to blow on them. This meant in some cases I had to add a tempo change, a meter change, a harmonic change, a groove change or a completely new section that would fit in with the song that would enable said blowing to take place. During the course of the pandemic, I've now written 42 jazz big band arrangements that fit these criteria. Nine of them are originals, and the rest are songs written by musicians as diverse as: The Association George Russell King Crimson David raksin John Williams Cal Massey Nick Drake Alex North Tommy Wolfe If An obscure 60s rock band Traffic Nilsson Another 60s rock band The rest of them are standards that I have added something interesting to i.e. I added part of a Howard Hanson symphony to one song! My audience is whoever digs jazz and good tunes by the aforementioned artists. I played some of them at a concert with my quartet that I received a 5K grant for from NYC, and the audience (of normal people as far as I could tell) enthusiastically applauded after each tune. I've also had some of them played by the two big bands I play with, and had a good reaction from all but one trumpet player, who said, "Can we play something with a melody?". and one bratty sax player who completely messed up his solo on the same tune, and said. "It's too dissonant". It should be pointed out that of the eight rock bands' tunes only two of them have rock beats, and they were all written by someone that had some serious jazz background.

Turned to Carole King. Was tempted to do "Snow Queen", but BS&T covered that a long time ago. CK did a swinging version of it when she was in a band called The City. Jim Gordon was a great jazz drummer; he really grooves on it. He even made his own LP back in 1969 when they were calling him 'Jimmy' Gordon.."Hog Fat"

That's pretty much half of If!

Eddie Costa's modal version of "Lean On Me" makes that my fave Shelly Manne album ever. He kept growing each record he made. His death at 31 was a real tragedy.

Yeah, they list Billie's Bounce as the second tune instead of Oleo

Just finished the two hippest songs from Traffic's Barleycorn album as a medley. Winwood uses some compositional/harmonic ideas in the climax of Freedom Rider that are worthy of Gene Puerling. It was supposed to be a Winwood solo album, but he called in Capaldi and Wood to help out, so they called it Traffic. Wood does some great things on the flute (they even double track the middle of his solo), but his tenor playing is out to lunch, as usual. Winwood is smoking on the bass (which was tuned down to Eb!) and Capaldi is right there with him.

Had to be the mid 70s.

RIP. A friend of mine did Borscht Belt gigs with him!

A friend of mine was playing a Borsch Belt gig back in the 70s, when they were told that they had to play for a vocalist who brought charts with him and a pianist/conductor. The singer turned out to be Johnny Hartman! My friend is a trumpet player, and he played Trane licks behind JH. The idiot audience hated JH! Thy all walked out on him. No record.

Sunsets and O'Neill plays were better than what a tenor player told me he was like before that. He said he used to see PW picking fights in bars like his crazy buddy Gene Quill did, and that's what left Quill a vegetable for the last decade(s?) of his life. Woods made up a story about Quill being mugged in AC, but the truth was a lot uglier than that, but you're not going to hear it from me- publicly or privately.. As William Gaddis said, 'an artist is just the ***** mess he drags around behind his work', and PW probably should have stopped playing when he had to drag around an O2 tank behind him, but that was his choice. Whatever the case, you're not going to hear a lot of his 'bebop pole dancing' or 'formalism' anymore, which was exemplified at his memorial concert in PA. The player they chose to represent Woods was a great technician, but the only 'feeling' I got was when Houston Person and Bill Mays were on the stand. YMMV.

Sorry, Phil Woods Police here. Don't get out of the car, keep your hands where we can see them, and listen to this: Now if you can still say that PW played with "not much feeling", we're going to have to write you up.However, if you can amend that statement a bit, I don't see why we can't let you go with just a warning. It's up to you. As far as Richie Coe goes, he studied with Phill Woods, and at his best, he came up with stuff worthy of The Master. I just transcribed his solo for MT's version of "The Shaker Song" and wrote it up for big band as a sax soli, and AFAIC Cole's solo is a great work of art. You're lucky you reconsidered your actions in your first sentence. I've heard the Phil Woods Police have been on the prowl...

Wow, I never heard of that Duo album Budimir made with Gary Foster. I'll be looking for that one. Thanks!

Phil kept it real to the very end. I love the crack about Norah Jones! Too bad he mellowed out so much when he wrote his autobiography, but he was still playing to eat in his 80s, carrying around an oxygen tank! He never took a steady teaching gig, Broadway show, or any type of non-jazz gig after getting sick of studio work on the East Coast, and he never became one of the walking dead of the West Coast studio scene, except when people would want him to play on their albums. Thank God we have music critics like Ken that could hear the truth, and still recognize the greatness of this great artist. Windbag Phil Schaap barely knew who he was, and embarrassed himself by only having one of Phil's albums for Phil's Memorial broadcast on KCR, that he played something like five times over and over! Luckily, Oliver Nelson, Quincy Jones, Thelonious Monk Dizzy Gillespie, Budd Johnson, Johnny Griffin, and many other great Black musicians featured him on their records, so Schaap played those all day..

Don Burrows and George Golla made a duo recordins down under with DB playing TS and flute called "Duo" A friend gave me a great duo of Warne Marsh and Larry Koonse playing a concert in Chicago that he got from the web somewhere and burned me a copy. Zoot Sims made that album "Nirvana" with Bucky Pizzarelli which Buddy Rich purposely spoiled for this thread by sneaking in on drums. Lenny Breau made an astounding album with Brad Terry playing clarinet called "The Living Room Tapes". You can tell your friend that Brad terry is playing a skinny black saxophone; I'm sure he won't mind... On the album "Buck and Bud, Bucky Pizzarelli plays six duets with Bud Freeman. The rest have a rhythm section. Phil Woods and Vic Juris made a duo album called "Songs One" just before they both died.

I just finished the Harvey Brooks autobiography, and Mama Cass needed the most help of all, according to HB.

He doth bestrode the world like a giant! Genius songwriter, IMHO., and great singer/guitarist. Played the alto sax, too.

The Dominican Republic story took place in Queens NY, and the Irish one took place in Brooklyn NY. The only time I've been out of the US was when I went to Expo'67 with the Boy Scouts, where some French speaking Canadians tried to buy my Boy Scout uniform from me.

Uh, yeah uh that's what I wrote.

I play guitar. Your English writing is great, considering how you learned it. The last word in your post should have been vain instead of vein. A former student of mine played alto sax in a Meringue Typico band, and he said the Dominican Republic audience usually gets so juiced towards the end of a gig, fights break out almost every time. One gig, so many of them got juiced they were randomly picking fights with anyone. Then, a group of them decided to go after the band, for no freaking reason! Something like 20 people charged the stage, and my student with sax in hand, and his brother carrying his accordion with no case, went tearing out of the back exit to the hall. They thought they were alright when they hit the city streets, but the MFs chased them for blocks outside till the crowd of drunks just ran out of steam and gave up. Sounded like a scene from a zombie movie. I played an Irish-American wedding where a the groom and the Best Man started beating the schist out of each other, because the bride was already fecking around with the BM during the wedding party. There was blood all over the floor. Then, there's the whole other topic of musicians getting into fights with each other on the stand during the gig. I've probably told some of those stories here before, so I'll leave them for another time.

A piano player friend of mine got us a duo gig at a large restaurant in NY. I won't even mention the borough, because I don't want to go into specifics for reasons that will be apparent as you read. I found out at some point that the owner was very 'connected'. I just hoped that the guy wasn't going to be there that night. We played for a while when all of a sudden I looked up, and there was a guy sitting at a table with a sick looking smile on his face, and the words L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E written on his fingers, staring at us. I knew that had to be the owner, but I asked my friend anyway. "Yup" was all my friend said. I had seen Cape Fear recently, either the Mitchum or De Niro version, and I knew this was not a good sign. We were towards the end of the gig, when all of a sudden, the owner was chasing after his girlfriend, smacking the crap out of her each time he caught her. My friend said pack up, and wait for me in the car while i get paid. I told him, "Forget about the money, let's just get out of here". I didn't wait for an answer, I just packed up as fast as humanly possible, and ran out of the place. Somehow, my friend got paid and met me in the car. I told him I was never going to play at that place again. Unfortunately, he got a call for that gig again, and he had to turn it down because he had a gig playing for someone who was even more 'connected' than the owner was. He had to turn the owner down, and got a threat from the owner that used language I can't use here. He was so afraid of the owner, he wound up not leaving his house for a month. He finally came out of his house when he heard that the owner was going away for a long, long time in a case that was so famous, that I can't even mention it here, so don't ask me. I might have posted this here before, but I hate to see a thread without any posts.

Just finished Harvey Brooks' autobiography "View From the Bottom" which was a wild look at the 60s music scene in NY and LA as told by a bassist who played with everyone, from Miles Davis (Bitches Brew), The Doors, Richie Havens (MIXED BAG!), Paul Butterfield,The Electric Flag, Mama Cass, Al Kooper ,(Supersession), Bob Dylan, Fred Neil, Tom Rush, John Cale, John Sebastian, Jimi Hendrix (two jam albums) Jim and jean, and others. HB, talks in depth about the actual sessions of records like Highway '61 Revisited and Bitches Brew and reveals that no music was used- not even a chord sheet! Miles would just say, "This is on C7", and they'd just jam, and leave it to Teo Macero to edit it, and play around with the three days of sessions. As a result, Brooks is listed as playing on six or seven other Miles albums, because Teo would just shove stuff from those three days of jamming, and put it on MD records made years later! With Dylan, HB would have to make his own little chord sheets while Dylan would just start playing and singing in the studio. Brooks was in the band at Forest Hills, when Dylan went electric with Levon Helm, Mike Bloomberg and Al Kooper, having to face the angry folkies rushing the stage, as Dylan was escorted into a limo and went untouched. Though Brooks lists Scott La Faro, Ron Carter, Milt Hinton, Charles Mingus, Paul Chambers and Ray Brown as his influences, the electric players like James Jamerson, Duck Dunn, Chuck Rainey and Gordon Edwards he also lists are more representative of his recorded output. Besides the disaster with Dylan at Forest Hills, HB goes into the dark side of his gigs with The Electric Flag, Mama Cass, Paul Butterfield, Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield, Crosby, Stills and Nash, David Clayton-Thomas, The Doors, Tim Hardin and tells the true story behind the filming of "The Trip", Roger Corman's B movie about an LSD trip. In the 70s, he formed his own band, The Fabulous Rhinestones, who made three albums of dynamite funk/R&B/Rock, but never caught on with a wider audience. He wound up leaving the insanity of NYC and LA for Woodstock, and then emigrated to Israel..

Hell is other musicians....