sgcim

Well, since you and Larry have anted up, I guess you both are off the hook. I remember our old friend fasstrack had the same opinion, but he put the year at 1962. He better ante up too, or Phil is gonna give him HELL... Allen (or Alan) has been through enough, so I'm going to have to hold a seance, and see if Phil can cut him some slack. I'm glad Dan remembered that 'circus back in town' comment, that should be worth a hardcover...

Sad to hear. I enjoyed the Bros' big band records. RIP...

The discog is just listed, not elaborated on, so it's not half the book like many discogs, about ten pages. Ken Dryden could tell you more than I could. As for Larry, Alan and Jim, Phil will be waiting for them down below to argue about his later style for all eternity... That's sad to hear, but probably Phil had written it already by then. On the brighter side, that might mean the lousy records he did with Vic Juris were hopefully left out, too. That may not true in all cases. I paid a little more for the David Raksin bio, and got something like 400 pages more for the Kindle edition I chose. It might have been a choice between two different E-book versions, though.

This just came out on Cymbal Press, available in hardcover, paperback or Kindle. I don't know if you get more material if you order the kindle version, but it says 252 pages for the hardcover and paperback versions, and 337 pages for the kindle version. I don't know the equivalencies between print pages and kindle pages. I haven't made up my mind which medium I'm getting. It was written with the help of Ted Panken, but apparently PW finished it before he passed. Somehow, they manged to have a 'pull the plug party' in the hospital, with 50 people in attendance. It has an incredible discography of his work as a leader and sideman. Just looking at what they provided of the index, it looks like PW went out with a fully intact memory.

Yeah, I loved hearing him in situations like that! He was probably the most adventurous sideman in the history of the art. Whether it was his incredible flute performances on "Stolen Moments" (Blues and the Abstract Truth), and "Django" (from Jazz Abstractions), both of which featured Bill Evans(!) comping for him, or on clarinet(!) on "Warm Canto" (from The Quest), or his work on bass clarinet and alto in the Mingus group, his solos brought a new type of power and expression to the mainstream idiom that had never been attempted before. As danasgoodstuff says above, his needless death in the 60s at such a young age was one of the worst tragedies jazz ever experienced. Eddie Costa's equally tragic death at about the same time period, was another major blow. I recently read he was hanging out at The Half Note with Ed Shaugnessy, listening to Al and Zoot, when he told ES he had to split to visit someone on the upper west side. Shaughnessy told him not to go, because there was a major storm outside, but EC said he had to meet this person. This conflicts somewhat with the story that he went to some jam session up there. The story said that he was driving a VW Bug, and was crushed to death because of the unusual way the car landed. He died immediately.

When I was a real little kid, I was a NY Yankee fan. I knew the whole line-up- Moose, Richardson,Kubek Boyer, Howard, Mantle, Maris,Tresh and Whitey Ford. I was aware of Linz as a utility infielder. One time my uncle Paul, who owned a liquor store in Brooklyn, took me and my cousin Raymond to a Yankee game. He said he had a special surprise for us at the end of the game. When the game was over, we went out to the parking lot, and there was Phil Linz waiting for us. Being a second baseman in Little League, it was a big deal to me. He acted very friendly, and gave me his autograph, which thrilled me to no end. Right next to us was Phil Rizzuto, wearing sunglasses, talking to a big crowd of people. It struck me as strange that my fave announcer had a big crowd of people, and Phil Linz had just me. I don't remember the harmonica incident, but looked it up, and came up with this: I remember Phil opened up a bunch of bars and restaurants, so maybe he met my uncle buying booze for one of his clubs. RIP, Phil... Another one of my Yankee heroes died recently, Whitey Ford. I used to see him when I was in the house band for a country club that Whitey was a member of. He imbibed a great deal when we were playing there, and you could hear that cackling laugh above the music that we were playing. I finally got up the courage to talk to him at the water fountain once, and I told him that I tried to copy his wind-up and overhand delivery when I was a kid. He just laughed his head off at me., because he was completely wasted. RIP, Whitey.

I don't know why it was done that way, but he whistled/played the flute throughout the entire documentary. Great lines, though.

I used to like him, but then I saw that documentary they made about him, and his sound was so small outside of the studio, he might as well have been whistling! It ruined me for ever listening to him again. His ideas are great, but I thought I was hearing things when he played in the doc. Maybe it was due to age. He's the complete opposite of his brother Abe, the clarinetist. Abe was such a great clarinetist, he could play with anyone.

I always loved Frank Strozier's flute solos on all of his albums. He kept the blues feeling intact and played great ideas, rather than just showing off his virtuosity. He also didn't play just jive licks like Mann and Humphrey. Bobby Jaspar got a nice sound, although a little out of tune, but always fine solos. Dick Morrissey played some great solos with If that were inspired by the great RRK.

He wasn't walking so well the last time I saw him live a few years back, but he was sounding beautiful. After hearing Grace Kelly, Randy Brecker, Brian Lynch and Vincent Herring all over their horns, Houston stumbled out on the stage, and made them all sound like techs with no soul. Like Prez said, "Yeah, but can you sing me a song?"

The greed rampant in NYC will bury itself.

I don't know if this has been posted before, but I never knew that Getz tried to make "Sweet Rain" with Steve Swallow and Roy Haynes, but it had to be canned, because Getz was all messed up again... He blamed it on Roy Haynes(!), whom Creed Taylor fired, and Swallow quit, so Creed Taylor hired Ron Carter and Grady Tate: This comes up at 51 minutes and change into the interview:

There are many stories of serialists disrupting tonalists' concerts in those years. Stockhausen used to terrorize concerts of non-serial music at that annual German festival. It continued in academia. A composition teacher I studied with at the university I attended, premiered a piece for orchestra at a school concert, and one of his fellow teachers (who I also studied with) started booing and cursing during the piece, because it wasn't serial. The latter teacher was an eclectic composer, and wrote some Rags for clarinet and piano. One time he was rehearsing the piano part to one of his Rags, when the former composer appeared at the door of his office, and yelled out, "Can you stop playing that garbage!", and then slammed the door as hard as he could!

I haven't heard it since college. I'll try to find it and let you know. Yeah, that one!

Was that with the drummerless trio?

The single bar changes (BMaj7 D7 GMaj7 Bb7 Ebmaj7) was present in the Shapero String Quartet, so that could have been the catalyst for GS. Shapero had some connection with the jazz scene of the 1950s, as one of his pieces was presented along with George Russell's "All About Rosie" at the 1957 Brandeis University Third Stream Concert. Russell was friends with both Coltrane and Shapero, so it wouldn't be that unusual for Russell to introduce Coltrane to Shapero's String Quartet. The similarity of Coltrane's "Impressions to a piece by Morton Gould has also been pointed out.

The Faure had the ii-Vs rising in major 3rds, but I didn't hear much of the opening four chord pattern in it. I heard that pattern in Harold Shapero's String Quartet, and I almost fell out of my chair!

On his website, Bruno mentions playing with Novosel, among others in DC: " As his grandfather was very sick with cancer in 1964, he returned from L.A. to DC and in the summer of 1964 and played with Charlie Hampton and Harold"Philly" Chavis at "The Brass Rail" . Many nights they were joined by Buck Hill on tenor sax . It was that summer that Bob met bassist Steve Novacel ,who also would sit in with the band and experiment with two bass things

Bob Bruno got back to me about Andrew White and the DC jazz scene: , I used to go to the Caverns by the time I was 15 in 1960. Andrew White was in the local group I saw all the time , the JFK Quintet.They were a great little band. I have admit that I liked the trumpet player, Ray Codrington ,more than I liked White on alto. It was a ticklish thing listening to him play the oboe. I liked that. I never met him though I was around there all the time,so much so that I played bass with Dolphy and Ray one afternoon. I also wqas welcomed into the Jazz Workshop in San Fransisco ,1965,by Billy Hart who occasionally played drums in the JFK.Walter Booker was a regular on the stringed bass

The sound of Bickert's guitar, and chord voicings just worked magically with the sonority of great horn players like Tate, Desmond, Rob McConnell, Frank Rosalino, and others.

Thanks, CT, I guess I did have an early confusion between the two. White was playing wild even back with the JFK Quintet back in 1961. Switching to funk bass in the 70s was something I was never aware of before. Totally cool, wild dude. D.C. had an interesting scene going on, with super talented, creative people like Bob Bruno, Tandyn Almer and White living there. I emailed Bruno to see if he hung with White at all. Trane was Bruno's biggest influence. Ayler was also an intense influence on his both his painting and music. He had recurring nightmares when he was a kid that involved images that he uses for his paintings, and sounds that he finally found in Ayler's music. His father was a talented composer/trumpet player, who left the family to become a film composer in Hollywood.

I used to see his Trane transcriptions advertised in DB when I was in HS, and I vaguely remember seeing some of them somewhere. I somehow got him confused with Anthony Braxton- did Braxton have a zillion transcriptions of Trane. also? I remember hearing a Fifth Dimension tune a long time ago with a bass player cooking his brains out on "Aquarius (Let The Sunshine In") on a live performance somewhere. I wonder if that was him? RIP, Mr White.

Happy Birthday, Houston! You saved the Phil Woods Memorial Concert in Pennsylvania for me a couple of summers ago. Until you came on, the playing was technically very good, but musically lacking. You played a great up tempo version of "The Very Thought of You" that brought the spirit of jazz and Phil Woods back to the concert., along with the wonderful pianist Bill Mays, you two made the long trip worthwhile. You're a national treasure.

I recently emailed Bob Bruno about the recent death of his old buddy, Jerry Jeff Walker, fellow member of the band they were in, Circus Maximus. He wrote back with stories about their road trip together from Texas to NYC, which entailed three flat tires and other unpredictable events. He sent me a link to a recent thing he put up on you tube featuring him playing an electronic piano that he found in the garbage, and repaired himself. There's a lot of clicking noise coming from either the keys or the keyboard stand, but i guess It was Just One of Those Things: