sgcim

I had a dream that I went to NJ and hung out with some Org. members and had a good hang. Strangely enough, there was no one that I knew from here. Maybe they were from another dimension Hey TTK, I got the new book on Nick Drake, Nick Drake A Life by Bruce Morton Jack. By interviewing everyone from ND's life he basically gives a day to day accounting of ND's existence from Cambridge to the end. He was a 6ft 2" dude, who was an athlete in school, and played the sax and piano. He started his own jazz band. then he discovered the steel string acoustic guitar and I think he tried to make it into a piano by using insane tunings that enabled him to play chords with seconds in them, but he never strummed like Joni Mitchell. He practiced up to 12 hours a day, and developed the technique of a virtuoso classical guitarist, but used all five fingers on his right hand to play a constant stream of arpeggiated 16th notes with a concept of 4 part S-A-T-B harmony and the MFer was able to sing at the same time as if he was doing nothing! Here's a BBC John Peel radio session he did with no accompaniment: There are 4 or 5 other tunes from the set also.. including the cello song, here played by a flute: He'd ignore his work at Cambridge, and spend his time practicing all day and night. listening to music on his headphones, and smoking a potent type of hash that may have eventually messed up his brain. I'm up to p.337 of this 500+ page bio. and he's fed up with sharing the bill with loud rock groups like Atomic Rooster, Genesis, etc... coming out there with only his acoustic guitar, and being largely ignored by rock fans. His first two albums aren't selling, and he did his last live performance, running off stage in the middle of a song. With no live performances, there won't be any more record sales. He's on the escalator to hell...

I'm deep into RMJ's latest book on Nick Drake, and even if you don't care for Drake's unusual style, it offers an excellent picture of the London Folk scene of the late 60s to early 70s. Joe Boyd is featured prominently throughout, including all of the artists involved in the Witchseason offshoot of Island Records. RMJ tracked down and interviewed over 200 musicians and Cambridge friends of one the least talkative subjects for a biography that ever lived. Somehow, he managed to get over 500 pages (including footnotes) on an artist who only lived to be 26 years old.

No drum machine= real music!

I never knew much about any musicians' life before the internet, but reading about MG , the cover of that album says it all. How could such a talented musician wind up with "his dying words, which were, "I got what I wanted ... I couldn't do it myself, so I made him do it."

This whole thing is flipping me out. I never knew MG was into stuff like this. Reading his Wiki entry, he did want to give up on R&B in 1961, and concentrate on jazz and standards. He played the drums and later keyboards and idolized Sinatra. His father was a cross-dressing minister who beat him for years. He transforms Shadow and Why Did I Choose You into his own songs based on Scott's evocative arrangements, and does some great layering of his voice on almost all of his different versions of the tunes. Amazing.

That's all Hollywood seems to be interested in anymore. It even supplied a Ken Russell moment, with the scene of the coke party towards the end.

i don't know where you find these things! I never heard MG interpret a standard like that. The Scott arrangement was pretty powerful, with hints of exotica in the winds that would bring a smile to the face of TTK. The other one with the overdubbed voices sounded like it was overdubbed by a DJ who knows nothing about counterlines. They didn't release the first version MG did in '67, because they claimed MG kept the orchestra waiting because he was doing drugs in the bathroom of the studio and wouldn't come out. When he did come out, they claimed he was slurring all his words, so they decide not to release it. Bobby Scott died when he was only 53, so I doubt he wrote ant memoirs, but there should be a bio written.

He seemed to be going through an Oscar Peterson phase back here. I listened to the rest of the record, and they play Fine and Dandy and Serenata off the metronome. I can understand Fine and Dandy, but Serenata? Who plays a tune like that fast, and without a drummer? He couldn't connect his lines like Oscar, and just winds up making Dick Garcia (the reason I wanted the album-I have every note he played as a sideman now) look good. I did a bunch of gigs with Ronnie Woellner, who used to be a trumpet player with him (until he had an accident and lost his front teeth) and also arranged or him. RW became a pianist himself, who played great changes. I was so busy trying to steal his changes that I didn't ask him about Bobby Scott. Scott wrote Taste of Honey and "He Ain't Heavy, he's MY Brother", and had a hit singing "For Sentimental Reasons", and then did a lot of sessions. I'll have to look him up on Wiki. BTW, a friend told me that Clint Strong (as if he didn't have enough problems) suffered a stroke earlier this year. Did you hear anything about that?

Thanks, but someone read my message on another form, and put up a copy on You Tube.

Interested in any form it's available in, cassette tape, burned CD, vinyl. I don't think it ever made it to CD. Forget above post- the world's leading authority on jazz guitar, Dave Gould, put it on YT!

RIP, great grooving drummer.

Sad news to hear. I used to love The Smothers Brothers Show until CBS took it off the air. Great musical guests, too. RIP, Tommy...

Coryell's autobiography ended with him in a very depressed state, probably because he felt responsible for Emily Remler's (who he lived with) OD death.. They were both junkies at that time. The luthier who made one of LC's jazz guitars, said LC was a very complicated guy. Although he admitted he was not a mainstream jazz player until the late 70s, I still enjoyed his modal playing before that. I saw him live once wen he did a park concert with Vic Juris that was interrupted by rain.

It probably never existed in the first place. Just the deranged delusions of another schizophrenic cat owner...

They never stop! Every day they're correlating two completely unrelated things. Now cats causing a brain disease! LOL!

Sounds like it should be a pisser. I'll check the Libraries first. Thanks! Jones also came out with a Donald Fagen bio in 2022. He's getting like that other guy who wrote the Nick Drake bio- just churnin' them out!

What about Lutherans, man? It don't mean doodly unless you can get those Lutherans grooving! Beer, Bach and the bible, in that order.

Tonight on the gig, I learned from both the trombone player and bass player that a keyboard player that we used to work with, Roy Gerson, died a little over a week ago. I was gonna put it under an RIP thread, because he got kind of well known in NYC as a swing pianist, but it works just as well here. When I worked with him back in the 80s, he was playing his Crumar organ in a group that had no bass player; he played left hand bass with an astounding independence that made it sound like we had a funk bass player playing in the band. He was only 64 when he died of a heart attack, which would seem to be the way that someone as hyper as he was would pass. At the end off a typical four hour gig, he would be so exhausted from all the wild bass lines and wild changes he'd play, he would just sit there at the organ, staring at the keyboard for a good fifteen minutes, while the rest of the band would be packed up and ready to leave! I drove him somewhere once, and passed a car that was double-parked on a narrow two-way street, and he was so freaked out that he yelled out, "I CAN"T DIE NOW- I'M GOING TO BE A FAMOUS PIANO PLAYER!!!!" To say he was kinda high-strung would be understating the case a great deal... RIP to a pianist who used to play the organ.

A friend of mine who played in the sax section with SG in the Elmont, LI band said that he was always first and foremost a great bop player. He said the Coltrane thing was just a short detour. SG used to freak people out by transcribing whole solos with only one listen!

RMJ is a busy boy. He just came out with a recent book on Nick Drake that I've got to read.

I've been listening to Todd Rundgren with The Metropole Orchestra, an hour and a half concert, and was very impressed with him and the great arrangements the orchestra performed. I think I might include something from him in my my big band rock project, since it's an orchestra not a big band. "Hello, It's Me" has the most jazz content, so I can most easily steal- I mean incorporate, some of that arrangement for BB. His voice is not the same as it was of course, and its ponderousness can get unpleasant often, except on a masterpiece like "Mammon" where it fits perfectly in a frightening, powerful performance. A lot of his music ventures into musical theater, and having just completed a two week gig playing "Footloose", I could do without that, but his music is on a higher level than that. Like Scott Walker, he does a fantastic job of singing with just the strings, and showed what a great musician he is by being perfect in pitch and time. He knew the charts backward and forward, and even performed Onomatopoeia twice in a row, because he felt the first time wasn't fast enough!

The thing was, he was no Wes. His rhythmic approach has always been on the funk,soul, Blues, Country, and R&B side of things, while Wes was all about swinging. GB's fave guitarist was Hank Garland, while Wes came out of Charlie Christian. There's nothing sordid or insidious about it- as you said, everyone got what they wanted.

Yeah, Doug was homeless for a while.

Doug was a great jazz guitarist like his father, but he was a long time junkie. That's why he looked like Chet.

I guess that confirms the Creed Taylor story.