sgcim

Who kicked you out?

He once described his music as bebop adapted to pop music!

Yeah, I always wanted to hear some of Vladimir Duchevsky's 'serious' music. Anyone who could write Autumn in NY must have written some interesting stuff.

TTK BACK IN DA HOUSE! Fascinating interview with a guy who was sideman on a bunch of records, who I always wondered about. Good to hear he hated Schoenberg's music when he was at Julliard. That chamber piece he wrote for Count Yorga sounded like a great piece of music. I was completely unaware that he scored the Yorga movies and the film that featured hippies treating a vampire as their guru, "Deathmaster", in addition to the Blacula sequel. I'm going to look for his autobiography to find out more. Thanks!

Here's another thing that Bill did on Contemporary that I never heard, and it's just one movement of four, with him playing clarinet! I don't know why he wasn't considered the next Buddy DeFranco PLUS Geo. Russell, Gil Evans, etc..This thing was done by Shelly Manne back in 1956. Some clarinet player named McGuiness recently recorded the whole thing and videotaped it. I asked my friend who received the Grand Prix in Rome along with Bill in the 60s, and he never heard of the chamber music LP you mentioned on Contemporary. Here's Mike McGinnis playing it live:

I was just talking to a trumpet player friend of mine who went on the road with Lionel Hampton ("Gates") back when Curtis was playing with the band. Gates would play all the well known crowd pleasing stuff on most gigs, but when they played Detroit, he wouldn't use any of the white players,except my friend, who had an Afro back then. Gates figured the people wouldn't know what the hell he was! They'd change their repertoire, and play stuff like "Moment's Notice", and my friend would have to play it with Curtis, scared as hell! He said Curtis paid him a compliment (kind of) by saying he had a weird way of playing, but it works. RIP, Curtis.

Yeah, Lennie and Chet were very close friends. When Lennie died ( police think that he was strangled and dumped in a pool) Chet couldn't even talk about it without breaking down and crying, as he did during the documentary on Lennie made by his daughter.

I never knew they did these things live. #1 I don't get involved in Middle Eastern politics #2 Disliked, I don't care who it is. #3- The great Lennie Breau. He went on the road with her, so this must be a tribute to her. Only Lennie could play those false harmonics so quickly in chords, so it's got to be Lennie. #4 - That's got to be Ray Crawford on guitar Benson couldn't play that well if a gun was pointed at his head, and it's not Burrell or Green. Great cut! #5- ATTYA There are so many great lines you can play on a fifth fall chain. Just listen to Bach. #6 Great cut! If Jim said JG, then it's either him or someone on his level. Masters all! #7- Who cares? #8-Definitely Quincy and all the NY boys. Phil and Urbie or Cleveland take no prisoners. #9- Some of the things he did with Emily reminded me of The Peacocks, so maybe Jimmy Rowles, or someone influenced by him? Very conservative rendition, but good.

Perry R. studied withTony Scott and used the same embouchure that Scott used; no upper teeth on the mouthpiece, just lips. But Scott had a freak, enlarged diaphragm. Scott used to play lying on the floor and tell Perry to jump on his stomach while Scott was playing the clarinet. Scott didn't even feel it! Perry had a normal diaphragm, so he couldn't get the same sound as Scott, or play those long lines without a breath that Scott could play. Scott was one of the first clarinetists to bring Bird to the clarinet, then he became one of the first to bring Trane to it; by virtue of his freak diaphragm.

CRI was a great record label.I used to buy their vinyl every week at Tower's budget LP store in the city. I know they went to cassette tapes at one point, but did they ever go to CDs?

That's probably it.

A friend of mine played a multi-movement piece WOS wrote for jazz ensemble (like "All About Rosie"),for us before a session, which I enjoyed tremendously. Along the lines of pre-LCC George Russell. My friend met and hung with Smith in Europe when they both won the Prix de Rome in their respective fields, so the piece could have been a European production.

It's funny everyone was raving about PRS guitars years ago, and a student of mine ran out and bought the Santana model. It was a POS. Then I tried other PRS models and they were fine. Maybe the Santana model had the old pickup in it.

Herb Ellis could be a real dick. He called the luthier that made both of my guitars, and told him he'd play one of his guitars, if he gave him it for free. The luthier told him to go screw himself.

All of them were great, along with his Symphonic Mouvements for Orchestra.Never understood his neglect, unless the French were using him as a scapegoat...

Then there was the interview with Chas. McPherson where he talked about his first gig with Mingus. Eric Dolphy told Mingus he wanted to leave the band, and Mingus pulled a knife on him, and told Dolphy to pull out his knife. Dolphy said he never carried a knife, so Mingus went across the street to buy him a knife. When Mingus returned with the knife, Dolphy refused to pick it up, and just said. "Mingus..." The other guys in the band managed to talk Mingus out of having a knife fight, while CM sat there wondering wtf he was getting himself into...

Vaccines ain't 100% https://www.businessinsider.com/ The Super of my co-op building just came down with COVID. So much for repairs for a while...

I When I used to have Black students with red, blonde, purple, green, orange, white or blue hair, I used to call the Science Dept. head in, and he used to perform experiments on them so I could find out if they were aliens or not. One of my best students did the US road tour of Hamilton. She had orange blonde hair, and I called up the contractor and warned him she might be an alien, but he hired her anyway. Curtis Amy was mentioned in the Times Sunday in a big article they did on his ex-wife, Merry Clayton, who lost both of her legs up to the knee in a car accident. She's putting out a new album.

Maybe, but Perry had black hair. I know Perry Blackwell and you- I mean THAT is not Perry Blackwell!

Fauci just said the vaccines don't reach their full strength till two to SIX weeks after you receive them! Just the other day he said two to two and a half weeks. I'm glad I turned down a drummer friend's invitation to work on playing some arrangements he just bought for $40. I listened to them online; they weren't worth 40 cents, IMHO.

Wow, I didn't know she played with Stitt. BTW, as you probably know, that blonde on the cover isn't Perry. Perry is a very attractive African-American woman. She and Kenny Dennis were really playing on the scenes in the club. They were in the scene where Bette Davis' landlord tells her she'll have to get rid of the musicians that play in her club, because she's three months behind in her rent. Like a true pro, Perry keeps smiling while she's playing, but Kenny looks a little concerned...

As good as Meeker's book is, he didn't bother to find out who the woman jazz organist was in the Bette Davis movie "Dead Ringer" (1964). It was on today, and I found out on the IMDB, that it was a singer /vocalist/actress/organist named Perry Lee Blackwell. She's featured throughout the movie playing in a duo with drummer Kenny Dennis at the club Bette Davis owns. She plays very well on a few uptempo swingers, and Kenny Davis trades fours with her nicely in one scene.

Thanks for the enlightening interview. It's funny that he doesn't mention the DeArmond RC1100 pickup of his D'A, in many people's opinions the greatest pickup ever invented. Guild paid a Korean company a lot of money to try and replicate it, but I bought one, and they failed IMHO. Harry DeArmond was an electronics genius. Kent Armstrong tried to make one, and while it's better than Guild's, it's still not as good as the original.The humbuckers might be quieter than the DeArmond, but if you're playing loud with Jimmy Smith, who's going to notice it? He also doesn't mention why he got rid of his D'A. I emailed him once about it; he never got back to me.

KB used his D'Angelico New Yorker on both of those albums with a DeArmond RC-1100 floating pickup. IMHO, he never got a fuller, smoother, more nuanced sound on any of his other records, when he used mass produced Gibson guitars. D'Angelicos were made by one man, John D'Angelico, who had a shop in Little Italy from the 1930s till his death in 1964. My father was a guitarist/songwriter back then, who lived on Elizabeth St. and used to hang out at his shop on Kenmare St.. He bought a D'Angelico from his best friend Duke, who was an excellent guitarist and jewelry designer, and designed the Art Nouveau design of the building on the headstock of the New Yorker model guitar. My father paid something like $400 for his D'A guitar, which was an early model made in 1935, which I inherited when he passed. When I went to the Felt Forum to see KB play at the Newport in NY Festival, Kenny was using that guitar, and when he played the first two quartal chords of his version of "People", numerous spontaneous orgasms were reported to have broken out through the capacity audience- both male and female! He played the guitar through his Twin Reverb, and filled the huge auditorium with the sonorous sound of his D'A. Kenny sold his D'A through Mandolin Bros., an overpriced guitar store in Staten Island for something like $86K in the late 80s.