sgcim

Kern had very strict training at what was called The New York College of Music (which later merged with NYU). His father didn't want him to become a musician, and made him work at his retail store when Jerome dropped out of high school.On his first day at work JK messed up and ordered 200 pianos for the store instead of what the order called for, which was TWO! His old man gave up on him after he found the store flooded with 200 pianos, and sent him to NYC of M. I was surprised to find out that Kern wrote "Up With the Lark", at a session we were having with the great bass player Frank Tate. We all thought it was a Bill Evans tune, but Frank started bellowing it out in an operatic voice, which is how it is performed in the show it came from. Bill Evans changed it so radically, that we were astounded at its original form.

Something else.

When is WM gonna realize that we're living in the Post-Truth Era?

I was lucky to have a few screening resources before I plunked down my allowance for records. One was Ed Beach on WRVR. This was when NY was actually the center of culture, and not whatever the hell it is now. Ed Beach would play whom HE considered to be the most important musicians of jazz, and what HE considered to be their most important work, chronologically through their whole career, and you didn't argue with Ed Beach, because he was Ed Beach. So I'd tape his shows with our Sound On Sound reel-to reel recorder, and decide if I liked it. When some corporate idiots took over RVR, and started to tell him what to play, poof!- he was gone in a second. Then there was the library, which I had no use for whatsoever until I got interested in jazz. I don't know who got their records for them, but they seemed to have everything. Again, I hooked up the phono to the Sony, and taped whatever I liked. When those two sources were exhausted, I was driven to Times Square Store, the big dept. store on Lawnguyland. I remember buying all my Larry Coryell records there, until one day this weird looking guy with a long beard who worked there heard me and my friend talking about jazz, and he said "Psss...you're not gonna find anything good at this place, let me turn you on to this guy in Malverne who's got a basement full of the real sh-t." He turned out to be talking about the guy known as The Record Hunter, and we'd get our parents to drive us out there, and wait for us until we bought what we wanted. He was one of those guys that advertised in DB, saying he had RARE RECORDS, and sure enough, it was all down there in his basement. He had the Tal Farlow record that I had to have, but I couldn't believe it when he said it was $40!!!! This was the early 70s, and I was still in HS. He wouldn't take a penny less, no matter how much I begged him to go down. It wiped me out, but I bought it. I think he felt sorry for me then, because he got his son to tape all his TF records for $5 a reel of tape.

Man, that really hit me when I just read the announcement. I can't imagine NY without PS. You think he'll always be there, and then you see the RIP, and it's over. Sure, I've posted about his excesses as a DJ, but it's like losing a NY institution, and a valuable resource. To give an example of what a great resource he was, two friends of mine were hanging out, talking about Eddie Costa, who was a close friend of one of the two. They couldn't remember the date that EC died, and this was before anyone even had a computer. One of them said, "Hey, let's call Phil at KCR." They phoned up WKCR, and Phil answered the phone. They asked him the question, and he immediately replied, "July 28, 1962", and hung up the phone. That was Phil Schaap. He's got a tape of an album I was going to do with the great Joe Dixon, whom Phil had on his show. I was going to buy it from him, but he was asking a lot of bread for it. An interesting fact is that one of Biden's economic advisors, Jared Bernstein, was playing bass on it, and wrote two songs on it. I wrote and arranged the others. I don't know how I can get it now. If, as DG said, Sid Gribbetts is involved in saving his tapes, that's a positive sign. SG is a lawyer in the Bronx, and I'm sure he'd be able to figure something out.

No, the letter I was talking about was about Issac Hayes and Shaft, but I can see the similarities.The music to those Blaxploitation movies had some nice funk scores, and a film scholar I know online is writing a paper about the use of the wah-wah in them! Stay safe, bro.

Maybe they both wrote letters into DB. I was way into the wah-wah thing on Shaft back then, and I really dug that soundtrack.

Could've been Johnny Allen, but I don't remember the letter writer's name.

Thanks! Sounds like a great book. It's funny that they make a big deal about Issac Hayes' "Shaft". I remember when it first came out, a composer/arr. wrote an angry letter to DB saying that IH took credit for all of his writing, and that IH did very little actual score writing for the film. I just did a search on it, and my public library has it. It also lists what seems to be the same book, with the title, Crime and spy jazz on screen since 1971 : a history and discography

The great West Coast bass player, Bill Plummer, played on the French Connection soundtrack. Plummer also played bass with Paul Horn, Judee Sill, Miles Davis, and even the Rolling Stones on :Exile on Main Street". https://buckrail.com/bill-plummer-turns-80-reflects-on-incredible-music-career/

I'll send you a PM, also. SHHHHH...

Alright, if you're going to play hard-to-get, I'll trade you your ADM pigeon crap story for a PM on another ADM story that I've been sworn to secrecy on, but you can't tell anyone about it, or I'm through.

Do tell!!!!

If you think Pat Metheny is a nice guy, you should read Gary Burton's autobiography "Learning To Listen". He devotes a page to why he fired PM from his band. Tal came down to hear me at a club I was playing at in NY. We went out for breakfast afterwards, and he was the most easy-going, mellow guy you'd ever meet. Not even a hint of egotistic manner about him. Considering he was, at one time, IMHO, the greatest mainstream jazz guitarist living, I could only think that he practiced Zen Buddhism. Tough job assignments. I can imagine!

Thanks. Originally I was going to do a solo performance, because the grant was worded misleadingly, but it will either be G,P,B &D or G,B &D, depending on whether the P wants to learn my arr's and some new tunes. I don't know if they're going to record or stream. Thanks. I don't know if they're going to record or stream it.

All I know is I just got a grant from NYC for 5K to play a concert whose theme is the influence of musical theater on Jazz, and I'm not going to play one tune from any of the 40 musicals that I've played in the pit band for for the last ten years, because they don't lend themselves to jazz well, and suck also. The only tunes I'm going to play are some of the tunes people mentioned in this post that came from shows.I re-harmonize them to the ideas of the masters of harmony I've studied, like Oliver Nelson, Gene Puerling and Bill and Gil Evans.I'll make an announcement where and when the concert is going to be held at a later date. Thanks to Clifford Thornton it will also be announced in The Jazz Record.

People like Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Vernon Duke, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and others were great, trained composers. Their songs came from full length musicals which contained full music scores for orchestra.. Did you know that Cole Porter wrote a Ballet that premiered in Paris the same night as Milhaud's "Creation of the World"? If jazz musicians stop playing songs that people still know from musicals and movies, how is the listener going to be able to understand the musicians' improvisations?

That won't do for my bachelor's tomb at all. Some nice things on Vocal Shades and Tones, though.

I played a musical where the bass player had his freaking phone out whenever he had any rests. The drummer and I would crack up whenever he missed cues and entrances because he was too busy looking at his stupid phone. After a few nights of this, he noticed we were making fun of him, because we were hysterical with laughter at all his mistakes. He never spoke to us again. Later, I found out that he had been fired because he couldn't handle Les Mis.

Although I liked some of the earlier Stones things, and I always thought CW was a good rock drummer, I never realized he had jazz chops until I was gigging with the late, great Keith Copeland. KC had done the tour with Stevie Wonder and the Stones, and he told us the story of the time that the two bands had a big jam session. He said that other than Charlie Watts, none of the Stones could play worth a damn, and he had developed a friendship with CW as a result of that tour. That was enough for me. RIP, Mr. Watts, you were a class act.

Very sad to hear. He had a fantastic career, and was quite a character. He played bass on Jimmy Raney's "Suite For Guitar Quintet", and with Warne Marsh, Konitz, Tristano, and even wrote a very good book on Tristano -"Jazz Visions of Lenny Tristano", which I enjoyed very much. He operated his own club The Bass Clef, and produced some great albums in his own loft. RIP, Mr. Ind.

Hugh McCracken and Eric Weissberg played guitar on "Circles".. Maybe he used them on Born to Win, too?

Yeah, I remember the film. I think George Segal plays a junkie. I always remembered that the score had a guitarist that sounded like Larry Coryell. Interesting funk-fusion type of thing.

That Nancy Steele is pure corn, corn vibrato, corn arrangements, corn rhythmic approach. Even Galbraith couldn't save that LP. BG did a lot of commercial dates, too. This is one of them.No relation to Russell's crew. There's another Nancy Steele album, but she's a brunette singing 'sophisticated songs' presumably written by her. The 'sophisticated' aspect is in reference to the 'risque' lyrics, but musically just a bunch of rubato non-songs with only triadic piano accompaniment. Painful stuff.

To the Chorus of Shocking Blues; "Venus" to Mr. anti-mask mandate Abbott! "He's got it Oh baby he's got it He's got COVID He's got COVID and now he's crying..."