sgcim

During my two year Judee Sill obsession, I did a lot of research on her and her jazz pianist husband, Bob Harris. I wound up correcting a lot of the mistakes they made on both of them.

She's certainly come a long way from her days as a law professor and feminist theorist! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharine_A._MacKinnon

I'm sure someone has mentioned this before, but is it a coincidence that Donald Byrd wrote a tune named "Omicron" that was recorded on a Paul Chambers LP as well as a Donald Byrd album? Even worse, could this have anything to do with Mark Stryker's accusations of Byrd selling out in the book he wrote about Jazz From Detroit"?

or maybe not; 90 replies for a kenny g thread and 13 replies for a new book on BE?

Yea, Joe still misses playing with Bill every day- even 40 years later!

Yeah, towards the end, Helen, Laurie and even Joe La Barbera would carry him to the stand, and then to the ER. There's ten pages on Ronnie Scott's, and actors such as Peter Sellers, Marty Feldman and John Mesurier attended, as well as numerous local musicians. During one of the gigs, a man who was a friend of Evans' came up to the stage and asked Evans if he could tape the gig with his reel-to-reel tape recorder. He promised Evans it would be just for his personal use, and never see the light of day. The recorder was set up on the table in front of the piano, and JLB thinks three mics were used; for the bass, drums and piano. JLB said the sound was decent, but unfortunately, the piano was out of tune. The fellow promised it was just for his personal use, and would never see light of day. It was later released on Dreyfus Jazz- "Letter To Evan" July 21, 1980. Another album was released on the same label, recorded August 2, 1980, called Turn Out The Stars.

Yeah, towards the end, Helen, Laurie and even Joe La Barbera would carry him to the stand, and then to the ER. There's ten pages on Ronnie Scott's, and actors such as Peter Sellers, Marty Feldman and John Mesurier attended, as well as numerous local musicians.

Finally finished this book, and as you can probably guess, it's not the 'feel-good' book of the year, but it is covered with Joe La Barbera's never ending love for Evans' music, and how thankful he was to be a part of it for the two years they played, and practically lived together. JLB tells his and Evans' stories very simply, and though he had one of his former drum students turned writer help him (Charles Levin), it's pretty clear that JLB had the final say in the editing of the book. It should be pointed out that other than the short period of time in the last two years of his life when the influence of coke addiction caused BE to rush tempos, BE's time was perfect on all of his non-bootleg albums. The problem was, there were 26 albums (mostly bootleg) recorded in the two year period this book covers, and you have to make the judgement on rushing yourself, or use JLB's judgement if you want. When I saw the trio play at the VV for the last time, I didn't enjoy BE's rhythmic/harmonic displacements, but that was 40-years ago, and maybe someday I'll listen to the bootleg album of that night. I play with a pianist who has based his style and BUILT on BE's playing since the age of eleven (he's 67 now) and I love every note he plays, so chances are I wasn't ready for BE's displacements when they first came out. There's a lot of interesting info on BE and JLB that was new to me, and that's another plus the book offers. Joe Puma, one of my fave players, turned out to be the person that recommended JLB for the group, and one of BE's closest friends. They used to go to Yonkers Raceway together, to bet on the horses. It turned out that Puma had suffered a stroke that affected his left arm, forcing him to make his own guitar at Jimmy D'Aq'isto's shop that would work for his disability. One of the central questions JLB brings up over and over again is whether BE wanted to die. He weighs the evidence, and concludes that BE did not fear death; he felt that he was happy to accept death as the price he had to pay for living the way that he chose to live. If death was the price that he had to pay for succeeding in bringing great music to the world, he would pay that price if he had to. He could have seen a doctor sooner, and perhaps lived longer, but he chose to keep shooting dope, because he felt that quitting would have been impossible at that point in his life. BE's friend Gene Lees described BE's life as one long suicide, and one could look at it in that way, but it was more accurately described as Evans' saying, which is constantly brought up again and again,"I follow my code, and am at peace with myself" ( meaning willing to die).

https://rhythmforsale.com/

I forgot about a musician who I posted about before, Charlie Rosen. He's done big band jazz arrangements of a number of Sondheim tunes, and although most of them feature singers, there are also jazz solos on most of them. I found out about them just before the pandemic, and was thinking about seeing them live. A few guys I've worked with are in the band and have released jazz recordings of their own.

Oh no, this is turning into a horrendous year- first Pat Martino and now Barry Harris. RIP, Maestro...

Broadway and jazz may have fed off of each other at one time, but once Jesus Christ Superstar opened up (an old friend of mine was on the scene at the time, and he likened it to "Springtime For Hitler"), it was pretty much over. For a concert I recently played that involved the influence of Broadway on jazz. I was able to find only one song from the 70s that had a strong enough melody and harmonic structure that could ,IMHO, inspire a jazz adaptation, and I had to change it from a basically rubato ballad to a med. tempo swing tempo. The songs they write for the shows of the last 40 years simply lack that type of melodic/harmonic flow/forward motion that I feel are necessary for a jazz adaptation. Sondheim's influences were classical music and songs from shows and movies, so from the latter he absorbed the influence that enabled him to write songs that you could make a convincing jazz performance out of, but he'd only write maybe one per show, and that's only taking into account the early shows; the later ones dealt with plots that didn't need any songs like that. Also, the absence of any type of Black music influence doesn't help.

Terry Gross played three interviews she did with Sondheim on Fresh Air this week The first one was a general interview about his entire career, done in 2010. Gross asked him how jazz influenced his music. Sondheim's reply was that he never listened to jazz; as a kid or even now. Gross was astounded, and asked him why. Sondheim said he only listened to music from movies and musicals, and the only jazz he would hear would be if it was part of a show or movie. He then said that he didn't like improvisation. he said he was trained by Milton Babbitt to work things out very precisely, and that was the opposite of improvisation. He was surprised that Babbitt liked jazz, because it was the opposite of how MB worked. To his credit, SS said that he thought Raksin's theme to The Bad and the Beautiful was the greatest movie theme ever written. The second interview Gross played was one that focused only on lyric writing. That's where he reamed even his teacher Hammerstein. His main complaint was that lyrics should advance the plot, and too many lyricists just played word games. Then he played recordings of examples of how he did this in his shows, and most of the recordings were done by mediocre singers who were better actors than they were singers. Surprisingly, he said Ethel Merman was a better singer(!) than she was an actor, so he tried to have her mostly sing in "Gypsy" rather than act. I found myself nauseated by most of the music from his shows, and yet "Cleo Sings Sondheim" is one of my favorite vocal albums. The reason for this is that all SS cared about were his shows. The fact that Jonathan Tunick wrote exquisite arrangements of SS' songs, and CL sand the schlitz out of them. I wonder what SS thought of that album. I wonder if he even listened to it... As far as using SS tunes as vehicles for jazz improvisation, they tried that on the album Color and Light: Jazz Sketches of SS, a collection of various artists' jazz interpretations of SS' tunes. I've done some of his tunes as jazz vehicles, and they work, if you choose the right songs.

They misspelled my buddy Aaron Sachs' last name (Sax!). Those three guys SW mentioned that played in his big band were under recognized, great players. None of the kids can play like Aaron, Johnny Amoroso, or Eddie Bert, and now they're gone. We still have their records, but nothing can replace the excitement of playing live with Aaron Sachs on the tenor. In that bag, only Getz was on that level.

Thanks for posting this interview TTK! It inspired me to email DA about a guitar transcription I made of one of his tunes. He got back to me, and said he wants to play with me sometime.

Sondheim dead at 91

Man, I envy your parents. You don't work for people like Gordon Jenkins and ray Charles without being one of the best. For some people, the Ray Charles gig was a lifelong dream come true. A pianist I've mentioned before, used a Wurlitzer just like his hero, and was also a lifetime junkie like his hero. He had the gig for three or four years. They must have really been a riot together. He's on one of the live shows in Europe, along with that Detroit trumpet player Ray used.

I did a show where Johnny Mathis was the headliner, and I was playing for one of the other acts. All I remember is Johnny Mathis carried his own guitar player with him, and the guitar player was always barefoot. JM had great taste in guitarists. He once had Buddy Fite as his guitarist, until BF couldn't take the air travel anymore.

Yeah, there is the hope that you can play it and some beautiful chick like Jessica Walter with BPD will fall MADLY in love with you, stalk you, and kill people that stand in her way, until you have to blow her away with your Smith and Wesson before she hacks you up with a pair of scissors, but I've played it so many times on gigs, that I want to punch out the jerk that calls it on a gig as a ballad. It might be fun if it were done as a medium tempo, like Houston Person did with "The Very Thought of You", but if I have to hear another male singer say that he feels "as helpless a kitten up a tree", I'll puke mu guts out on the stand. It's just been overplayed to death.

The last days of the Bill Evans Trio. https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781574418446/times-remembered/

On the IMDB he gets credit for "Music by" and "Music Adaptations by"

The lack of reverb on Wes Montgomery's Riverside recordings was the only thing that stopped me from buying that boxed set.

Yeah, in the interview in the book, he said that "Touch of Evil was the score he was most proud of out of all his scores, definitely not light comedy or light suspense. He felt that Peter Gunn owed more to Rock and Roll than jazz.His time writing for the Tex Benecke version of the Glen Miller band got his big band writing chops together. He studied composition at Julliard, and studied privately with Krenek and Tedesco, so he was capable of writing in most styles.

AB used to work in 'the mountains' playing piano with this trumpet player I worked for. I asked him if he'd introduce me to him, but he wouldn't for some reason. The same guy also said Charles Fox was going to be at a gig we played, and then the jerk forgot to introduce me to him, when the gig came up! I just heard a Baxter score to an old horror film that knocked me out!

Yeah, there was a ton of crazy stuff going on in soundtrack LPs. You never knew what you were going to get until you saw the track listings. If the composer wanted to add some of his other tunes, he could do it for whatever reason. Then there were a number of 45s made from the score that could turn out to be hits, that were recorded by the composer, or someone like Herb Alpert, The Ventures, etc... There could be some great cues that were cut out by the director from the film, that appeared in full on the LPs. The composer could choose to use a completely different set of musicians than the ones that played on the original soundtrack. And then there were rejected scores that no one ever heard, as well as films and TV shows whose music was never heard again-for all time, because they didn't make a soundtrack LP out of it. I just read in the book that "Chinatown" had a complete score written by a different composer, that Polansky decided not to use. That left Jerry Goldsmith two weeks to write the score that was used for the film. JG didn't think the film needed a jazz score, and the only reason it was included in the book was because the trumpet player (Uan Rasey) decided to interpret the theme using a bluesy sound, which Goldsmith said was "interesting".