sgcim

Cassavettes used Mingus for Shadows.That was about it AFAIK.

I heard the Paul Shaffer one. I think he tried to play "Emily". It was pretty sad. He must have been relieved when Letterman told him when he was hired for the job to not play any jazz. Letterman hated jazz. You should get some type of organissimo prize for this Ken. You're the best!

It's been done a zillion times already.

My big band writing thing over the lock down went into covering things by rock cats in the 60s who were also jazz dudes. So I wound up writing charts on bands and people like Tandyn Almer, Bob Bruno, Ian McDonald (KC),If, Judee Sill (the female Brian Wilson), The Free Design, and Nick Drake. One thing by Nasciamento, too Four Yanks and three Brits. They have to lend themselves to improvisation. Brian Wilson just didn't write anything that went that way. Most pop and rock writers didn't. Just like Sondheim. I could have went to The Beatles, or something fagatronic like that, but it's been done before. One thing you can say about the 35 or so charts i wrote over COVID time is that they've never been done by a big band before, or they've never been done the way I did them if they were done by a BB.

Mainly for the Brits here, some hilarious stories of the British music studio scene, as Vic Flick gets revenge on everyone from George Martin to John Barry to Jimmy Page. https://www.amazon.com/VIC-FLICK-GUITARMAN-BEATLES-BEYOND-ebook/dp/B00N2Y2YAA

New film about one of the pioneers of free form radio on WBAI, Steve Post:

Because of your profile pic, I think I was confusing you with the author of that book on Crime and Spy Jazz, who worships the ground JB walks on. I was surprised to find out that he didn't write the Bond Theme, that Flick became famous for; it was settled in court that Monty Norman wrote it. JB and Flick got together and worked out an arrangement of it, but Flick didn't get a cent for the guitar lick. Norman made hundreds of thousands of pounds, JB made millions from the spin-off, and Flick made seven pounds ten shillings!jj In "From Russia With Love", Flick came up to a part marked "Solo, E minor", but the orchestra stopped playing. He asked JB what to do. "It's a Gypsy encampment- think of something" he replied, with that-leave-it-up-to-the-sideman-the-royalties-are-all-mine look in his eyes. Flick watched the scene and improvised something to it. Again, no royalties. In a film JB was writing called "Deadfall" the producers wanted JB to write a guitar concerto for a scene taking place next to a concert hall where the bank robbers were robbing a bank. He called Flick over to his pool, and JB was lying on a chaise lounge with his eyes closed, conducting with his right hand. Flick said hello, and after asking Flick how he was doing, JB handed him a little sketch. JB said, "This needs to be scored for guitar- make it last about five minutes with lots of variation and plenty of big chords." Flick worked on it for a few days, and gave it to JB. The film came out to good reviews, and the classical guitar soloist who played the part was interviewed in the paper. She said, "JB's score is beautiful, and he is a master of writing for the guitar. His guitar music was a joy to play." JB gave no credit to Flick.

BTW, I'm finishing up the book Vic Flick autobiography "Guitarman", and he has some very unflattering things to say about your boy John Barry. One time EMI wanted to make him the "next Duane Eddy", and JB told them, "No, he's under contract with The John Barry Seven", which was complete BS! He spends quite a few pages getting revenge on JB, as well as many other people in the UK music business. There are also some hilarious stories of the numerous blunders in the British recording studios of the 50s and 60s. He even lets "Sir" George Martin, The Beatles, Jimmy Page, Streisand, Shirley Bassey, CILLA BLACK(!), and many others have it- of course in a very gentlemanly way. I think he was quite upset about too many people saying 'Vic who?'

Da Shadow know...

Once those guys from Birdland, where Smith used to play (Bird was one of his biggest fans), got their mitts on you, you could never escape. Read "Moonlight in Vermont- The Johnny Smith Bio" for the whole story. One time Smith went over TR's house to pick up some money that TR owed him, and he watched as TR went into his closet and pulled out a few hundred dollar bills from a suitcase stuffed with them.

Thanks for the link and good review, Ken. I found his playing much more refined and less frenzied than his Virtuoso recordings, especially that lousy first one where he played an electric hollow body guitar into a mic without also using an amp or plugging into the board. He also let the time go, to the extent that you couldn't tell where he was in the tune on most of his improvisations. When I was in grad. school some idiot student thought he was helping the rep of jazz guitar by loaning the classical guitar teacher that album. The teacher hated Pass' playing so much on that album that,he let out a string of curses in a violent tone of voice to describe it. I made a mental note, "don't loan any jazz guitar albums to this boy..."

My father used to buy space age bachelor tomb jazz at some discount record store, "The Keating Sound " led by Johnny Keating, the British Stan Kenton? I'm reading the autobio of Vic Flick, guitar player for the John Barry 7. Some really funny stories about their TV days on "Drumbeat". It was a long road to 007.

Yeah, Lynch would be great!

I really liked the change in timbre on that one. I got back to thinking about a film on that whole scene with Mulligan, that whacked out chick that he did the cross country trip with, and her other BF, Graettinger. There's got to be a lunatic film director who's a jazz version of Ken Russell, and instead of making warped films about classical composers, wants to make warped films about jazz musicians. Just imagine; Mullligan and what's-her-name, acting out Ayn Rand novels- that's worthy of Ken Russell himself, if he was still alive.

I would have liked to have seen a bachelor's pad cult around Graettinger's City of Glass. They would have to adopt BG's special liquid diet of only hard alcohol and have several eggs a day as their only solid food, supplemented by every vitamin under the sun in a serving plate on one of the Space Age tables. They could wash down handfuls of the vitamins covered in egg yolk with the hard liquor of their choice, as they enjoy the Space Age beauty of Graettinger's music. After a bunch of years of this Space Age Graettinger Diet, their gatherings would give new meaning to Jim's 'Bachelor Tomb' designation.

Are there enough Phil Woods improvised solos on TNB to make it worth buying? Here's the only KH discography I've ever seen: http://www.dougpayne.com/khdisco.htm

I posted here that they should make a movie about SG, and this book above supplies a perfect title. Gary Burton's autobio supplies a lot of info about the monster at this time, and talks about how Getz treated Astrud during their touring together. Getz seemed to like reaming young musicians for everything he could get out of them. He had GB acting as his freaking tour manager at the time, taking care of everything, and GB happened to take a peek at how much Getz was getting paid for the gigs they did, and how much he was getting paid, and he found out Getz was making an astronomical amount, and he was getting paid 1/4 scale! Add Astrud's name to the list of victims of Getz- Billy Bean, Gary Burton, Mel Lewis, Charlie Byrd Jimmy Raney, and who knows how many more...

Amen to that, like most things you post, Ken

OP gets his revenge on the noses slightly out of joint crowd of Organissimo!

Here's what the first band with Ian on alto sax were like in 1969:

I was listening to that album yesterday, and it reminded me how great a drummer Giles was, The light touch, the crisp sound, the creativity in his fills, he's got to be one of my fave drummers of all time. They get into some great uptempo grooves on that album, and Stevie Winwood plays keyboards on the first tune. I looked back at Chris Albertson's review of ITCOTCK, and he gave it five stars in DB. He had been handed a press kit, and Ian said that his two biggest influences on sax were John Handy and Eric Dolphy.Then Chris went to the Fillmore East (my tone deaf B-I-L was also at that show), and he caught KC opening for Joe Cocker and another big British band. He said that KC blew Cocker and the other band away. The show was completely different than the first album. Albertson said it was like Ian was leading a free jazz group with McDonald taking most of the solos on sax, He said they added improvisation to every tune they played from the first KC album they played. I also agreed with Albert's assessment of "Moonchild" being the weakest track on the album, with that twelve minute long free section being pure BS. However, the rest of the album was largely Ian's compositions- ITTW was recorded on the Giles, Giles and Fripp album, with Judy Dyble doing lead vocals, but everything else basically the same as Ian's arrangement on the KC album, and the middle section of 20th Century Schizoid Man was composed by McDonald when he was in the British Army. His woodwind writing and playing and Lake's great vocals were the best part of "Epitaph". Of course, Fripp will take credit for all of it, because he survived both of them...

RIP, Ian. His flute solo on I Talk to the Wind was beautiful, and his role as master producer of ITCOTCK made the album the great work of art it still is, 50 years later. It was too bad he and Dennis Elliot got involved with Foreigner,

They have the new one on Netflix on Blu-ray. I recently saw the old documentary they did on You Tube. Enjoyed it quite a lot.

The four Farlow cuts are also on all the 12" releases of the originally 10" "The Tal Farlow Album". the four 12" releases are: Norgran MGN in 1955 Verve MGV-8124 (1957) Verve V-8124 (1961) Columbia 33CX 10051 (UK) The CD release of the four Farlow tracks (besides the Mosaic release) was: "The Tal Farlow Album" Verve POCJ-2572 [Japan 1999] One of the Oscar Moore cuts, "A Foggy Day" can be found on The great Guitars of Jazz record I mentioned before. It's a great rendition.

Verve released a great album called "The Great Guitars of Jazz" featuring cuts by Farlow, Kessel,and Moore., as well as Howard Roberts, Wes and Herb Ellis and Kenny Burrell. I don't think that made it to CD, at least I've never seen it.