sgcim

They actually have all of Lynn Blessing's only album "Sunset Painter", on You Tube, and it turned out to be produced by our boy, Paul Horn. It's the kind of commercial crap they were doing in 1969 on the West Coast. He does songs by The Beatles, The Who, and country crap like this. I don't think I hear anything beyond a triad on most of the LP. It sounds more like decadent Now Sound more than New Age to me:

Lynn Blessing and Bill Plummer were sidemen on all the albums of Judee Sill. Blessing may have influenced Horn's entrance into the New Age field, as he had one of the largest library of books on the occult in the US. He only made one album under his own name, but it was an early example of the New Age genre. Sill's music was filled with elements of New Age music.

I always wondered how CB's music was put together. Tripp cleared it up.

I used to work with a singer who was also an NYPD LT. He told me that during the 60's civil rights riots in Harlem, they used to take pot shots at black people on the roof of their tenement buildings. His son became a cop, and he blew some guy away on the first day on the job. They transferred him to the FDNY the next day.

Back when they used to hire bands to play for dancing, we were always able to fill up the floor with The Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited". This went on for ten years, and I started to get tired of playing the song, and while the two lead vocalists were singing the regular lyrics, I used to sing alternative lyrics to the drummer: "I'm su-i-ci-dal, and I just can't hide it, I'm about to kill myself, and I think I like it", RIP, Bonnie.

Even if Kern were alive at the time of the 'recrod', it was a well-known fact he hated jazz musicians' versions of his tunes, so he would've tried to have it banned anyway. BTW, a RECROD was a measuring device that was used back in the 1930s and 40s to determine the exact amount of deviation jazz musicians inflicted upon the actual scores of the early, Operetta-derived American musicals composed by the European immigrants of the time. If more than nine bars of the melody, harmony or rhythm are altered, a Wilhelm Scream-like alarm would go off, and the jazzer's version would immediately be placed on the avoid list. It was derived from the name WreckRod, an invention of a failed German show composer Hans Castorp, while he was recuperating in a sanitorium.

That's interesting; I thought they had just met during Eastwood's research for the "Bird" film.

He used to be known as the French Horn player named Robert Northern, on all those Miles and Gil Evans albums. RIP...

Sad news to hear. All his arrangements were solid. Eastwood used him to compose most of his soundtracks. RIP..

To tell you the truth, I never listen to anything other than the a Capella records, because that was the medium that GP's taste and imagination was not hindered by any outside forces, other than the three other members, who couldn't have been more perfect for his writing. In GP's last interview, he had nothing good to say about anything going on in the music biz.

Yeah, those college professors could be incredible jerks sometimes. To be a GP devotee, and not like the SU is beyond stupid. I just finished a ten minute arr. based on GP's work, and also included it in my Symphony in One Movement. One time a friend of mine loaned a Zappa LP (the one with "Yellow Snow) to our Arranging teacher, and the freaking idiot took the album and flung it across the room at my friend, with the record falling out of the record cover! This was the same friend who got decked by a Jazz History Prof., (with over 20K worth of dental damage) for asking him repeatedly about Bird's use of the pentatonic scale! Another composition teacher, who hung out with Nadia Boulanger and Stravinsky, used to slam the door of a fellow teacher's office when he heard him playing Piano Rags, with comments like,"Could you stop playing that garbage!!"

Can you imagine people with slightly 'eccentric' styles like Pee Wee Russell, Monk, Jimmy Giuffre, Jim Hall, Sonny Sharrock, Elvin Jones, Gato Barbieri, Don Joseph, Tony Fruscella, etc..going to 'Jazz School'? Pee Wee Russell- "Student fails to show any improvement in technical ability in the time he's spent in this institution". Grade-F Thelonious Monk- "Student constantly violates laws of harmony in his piano voicings, i.e. maj7ths and min7ths in same chord, major 3rgs and minor 3rds in same chord, etc..".Grade-F Jimmy Giuffre- "Student fails to use negotiate register break in his solos, highest note played in his solos usually Bb." Grade-F Jim Hall and Paul Desmond- Students fail to make sufficient use of double time in their playing." Grades-F Sonny Sharrock- "Student refuses to use any notes in his solos. Only uses bottleneck and distortion at ear-splitting volumes." Grade-F- Elvin Jones- "Student unable to play with other students, who complain they can't find 'One', when he plays in ensembles." Grade F Gato Barbieri- "Student fails to produce 'clean' tone out of his tenor saxophone".Grade-F Don Joseph and Tony Fruscella- "Students fail to use high register in any of their solos. Latter student fails to play at a volume above mp. Both have significant alcohol issues." Grades-F-

Ha! You're right, That cat that had Herbie Hancock on his CD had HH playing on only ONE cut!

I had this in the musicians beating covid19 thread, which made no sense, because he didn't beat it, so I decided to put it here. I never knew he played with BS&T! When reading the NY Times listing of a thousand people who died of COVID-19, I was deeply saddened to find the concert clarinetist Paul Shelden listed among the many people that died of this terrible plague. He was the head of the Brooklyn College Music Dept. when I went there, and led the Jazz Ensemble there. He was a nice and intelligent person, and a great clarinetist. https://www.msn.com/en-us/music/news/musician-and-educator-paul-shelden-lifelong-new-yorker-dead-at-age-79-from-coronavirus-complications/ar-BB13tLkG

I got into jazz at a young age, and when I was in Jr.High and HS, I was militant about jazz being recognized as a serious art. I had no plans to go to college, because the few schools that had jazz programs were too expensive, and I had to pay every cent myself. I wound up going to a Community college where I caused a major scene by playing "Jitterbug Waltz" for my recital instead of a 'classical' piece. My classical teacher yelled out from the back of the room, "NO, I DIDN"T GIVE HIM PERMISSION TO PLAY THAT!", and everyone was freaking out. I didn't give a schlitz and just played it till the end. When I got my AA in music, I transferred to a SUNY school that was completely classical, because I started to get interested in classical composition, and wanted to write extended pieces for jazz ensemble (which is all I do today) like early Geo. Russell, and others. I was learning jazz on the stand, anyway. When I got my Masters at a CUNY school, they also didn't have a jazz program, but I played in the jazz ensemble, and attended a joke of a clinic given by a well-known jazz musician who wrote some jive book on jazz performance. As I hear the stories here, and from my friends about schools like NEC, N.Texas, Bezerklee, and a few others, I'm glad I didn't go to a 'Jazz' school, and taught music my own way, in a NYC public HS., until Bloomberg destroyed the education system in NY. At least I got a pension, TDA and benefits out of the deal.

The only album I have of an obvious example of a guy that 'had issues' in playing his instrument, but hired fine sidemen was Cecil Gregory "Nova Guitar". He got Jack Six on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums, and basically just played the melody to the tune, then for his solos just kind of comped. I searched for his name, and came up with this review of a live 'concert' in a place he rented out for a night, using the same players: THE perennial problem of the jazz musician of finding an audience has no pat solutions. He may scuffle in obscure clubs for years hoping that someone may notice him. Or he may take the bull by the horns and invest some money — his or friends’ — in a showcase for his talents. That is what Cecil Gregory, who has • been playing guitar for more than 20 years, has done. Mr. Gregory made two grabs for the bull. First he made record, playing with a quartet. And then, on the basis of the record, he gave a concert Monday evening in the Jade Room of the Waldorf‐Astoria, using the same quartet he had on the record two established jazzmen, Jack Six on bass and Frankie Dunlop on drums, and a friend, Howard Williams, on piano, along with his own guitar. • Mr. Gregory's program was a mixture of pop standards that have been taken up by jazz musicians (“Indiana” and “Just Friends”), jazz standards (Charlie Parker's “Yardbird Suite,” and Horace Silver's “The Preacher”) and his own compositions. He made no pretense of being a virtuoso guitarist, but instead, played in a pleasant, straightforward style, mixing flowing, single‐note lines and chorded passages. It was an approach that would make for a pleasant, low‐keyed evening in club but did not have the substance for a concert presentation, especially when virtually every number was played in the same sequence of solos." I've got many albums of fine players who never got well known, who used well-known sidemen, but that wouldn't be as fun as this one album.

Let's just say it became a ploy to get on a label.

Sonny Igoe- great jazz big band drummer. Sonny Land- trumpet player/big band leader

When I was in the Jazz Police, NWA didn't even exist, and even if they did, that was not our jurisdiction. We only dealt with 'jazz pretenders'.

There must be a million of them. When I made my only CD as a leader back in 2004, I asked for advice from a well known musician on how could get it put out on a decent label. He told me to hire a well-known player as a sideman. He said one of his students just hired Herbie Hancock as a sideman, and it got picked up by some label. I decided not to follow his advice, because I didn't like the song order he insisted I use.

Anyone hear the albums Albam made with O'Donel Levy, "Simba", and "Dawn of a New Day"? I used to see them in record stores when I was a kid, but I was a rabid member of the jazz police, and they looked too commercial for a proud officer such as myself. I heard some stuff by Levy after I retired from the 'force', and realized I made a big mistake.

Congrats, Mark! It's been my reference book since last Fall for the real info on many of the greatest jazz musicians of jazz' most creative period. "Before Motown" was good for sociological facts about what was once the center of jazz in the US; "Jazz From Detroit" went as deep as you could go with the music and musicians. NYC has always just been about the money; Detroit was about the music.

Yeah, that's a good one. I used to do a lot of gigs with this weird chick singer that specialized in songs like that. She did "When the Sun Comes Out", in addition to "I'm a Fool to Want You". She'd come out half-crocked with make-up that made her look like Norma Desmond, and hit on all the young musicians in the band. She'd wear dresses that emphasized her cleavage. On her card it said "Vocalist with Woody Herman, Stan Kenton and Tommy Dorsey", but she never recorded with them as far as I can tell. The only thing I found was a TV appearance with Frank Sinatra. She was actually a pretty hip singer, who did a lot of hip things with the time.:

Which is pretty much where they belong.

Check out the lyrics on the bridge, "Put the Stan Getz record on".