sgcim

No, just my crap memory...

I emailed the sad news about Bill Smith to the above mentioned friend, and he corrected me on a few things: "It was Prix De Rome, and Bill won it for Musical Composition in 1958, four years before me. Bill never played with Romano Mussolini Romano's bass player, Carlo LaFredo, brought me into Romano's band At the time Carlo was playing with the American Jazz Ensemble, the quartet led by Bill and Johnny Eaton."

Sad news, his influence still goes on today. RIP...

Try a new battery first, and if that doesn't work, take it to a repair man.

Very sad to hear. A painter/drummer friend of mine won the Grande Prix de Rome for art the same time that Smith won it for music, and they had a lot of fun doing jazz gigs in Italy. They played in a band with Mussolini's son, and had a lot of great stories about it. He played me some multi-movement piece that Smith wrote for a large jazz ensemble, and it was dynamite! I also loved the Folk Jazz album he made with Shelly Manne and Jim Hall. RIP to a great artist...

Great to hear!

I liked the fact that they included Stanley Crouch's opinion of the Bitches Brew period. It was very negative. Too bad SC doesn't think whitey has anything to offer jazz; otherwise I agree with him on a lot of things about jazz.

Sounds too much like Bird to be Stanely, but the groove did remind me of Deodato's groove for for Salt Song like CJ mentioned. Genius arrangement and playing on SS by ED and SS.

I also went to the Tower on Broadway in the Village. I used to start out in the discount store, and buy a lot of CRI and other 20th Century Classical Music labels (Serenus, etc...), then go upstairs to the Tower Books and Tower Video floors, and then go to the main store on the corner of Broadway and 3rd or 4th St. to the jazz and classical sections. One time I did that routine in the afternoon, and spent so much time checking out books, videos and CDs, that it was after midnight when I got out of there. I felt like I got lost in a time warp! When they started to close, they discounted the store's contents progressively more and more. I worked out a scheme where I hid stuff I needed, like packs of guitar strings, guitar straps, and cables, in the magazine section, which no one looked at anymore because they stopped getting new magazines. I waited until they were reducing everything to 90%, and then got the guitar accessories out of their hiding place, and wound up getting all that stuff for 90% off. I pulled the same stunt in their store on Old Country Rd. in Carle Place on Lawnguyland, and wound up having enough strings, straps and cables to last me for years. Just part of basic musician survival techniques...

Milt Jackson and Ray Brown made an album with IMHO, the greatest gospel singer of all time, Marion Williams:

Alto sax player, Leo Ursini passed a few days ago at the age of 82, after a long battle with cancer. He played and recorded with the Louis Armstrong Society Jazz Band, the Birdland Big Band, and The Lew Anderson Big Band. He taught Jazz saxophone at Columbia University. He was well known for performing with Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett, and appeared in the motion picture "When Harry Met Sally', plus any Woody Allen movies featuring a jazz big band or small group,and countless Broadway shows. In short, he was the prototypical, successful NY sax player. I played many gigs with him in various bands, and he completely floored me once by an astoundingly perfect, 'night in tunisia'-like ' break on my big band arr. of "Motherless Child", the first time he ever saw it! Many other alto players underwhelmed me with their attempts at playing this break at a blistering tempo....

Irwin Chusid (the author of the books on Jim Flora's work, along with Barbara Economon on three off them) is a musicologist of sorts, who has a very good radio show on WFMU in New Jersey. He's also the author of "Songs In the Key of Z", an interesting book on 'outsider music', which includes a chapter on Robert Graettinger. During my recent fascination with Gerry Mulligan's journey across the US with Graettinger's ex- live-in 'lover' (she reported he was impotent), I contacted "The Mighty Irwin" (the name of his radio show), and he surprised me by returning my email in less than five minutes.

Jazz From Detroit was a great book! Important info on some greats who have never been featured in a book before, and new info on the others.

No, but VL is all over you tube.

They just played an interview Phil Schaap did with Jimmy Heath, and Jimmy said he had a recording date with Miles Davis, and they called him just before the date. and said that Charlie Parker was broke, and needed some money, so Bird was going to replace him. Jimmy agreed, but asked them to record a tune he just wrote called "The Serpent's Tooth". They picked it up, and recorded it, but Miles Davis took credit for the tune Jimmy wrote. heath described himself as naive....

They just played an excerpt from an interview Phil Schaap did with Heath,24 years ago on WKCR. Some great stories of his times with Miles Bird and Trane. Heath said he was supposed to do an album with Miles once, but Bird was broke and needed the money, so he let Bird take his place. He asked them to include a tune he just wrote called "The Serpent's Tooth", so they picked up the music from him and recorded it. I don't think he got credit for writing the tune.....Miles stole another tune.!

I just got a huge book written by Stephen Thrower, a rock musician (Coil) out from the library on Franco's films. Since JF made close to 200 films(!) it's in two huge volumes of about 500 pages each. The maniac spent ten years watching JF's films, and he analyzes each film according to their music, connections to other films, etc... Franco was a jazz fanatic, and always used jazz in his films, even if he could only afford film library music on some of his cheapo films. However, on films where he had a decent budget, he used various Spanish jazz composers, and would sometimes feature himself playing jazz piano solos in one of his infamous nightclub scenes. His main composer was Daniel White, who was able to write in any idiom, and according to the author, has some interesting stuff available on you tube. Thrower has written another huge, two volume work on US exploitation films of the 1970s called American Nightmares. Since he is a musician, and goes deeply into the music of all the films he analyzes, who knows what he came up with in that exhaustive study. He convinced Clive Barker to let his band Coil score the music for Hellraiser, but it turned out to be a disaster, and they had to hire a film composer to do the score.

Very sad to hear. I loved the sound of the rotary trumpet when he played it. RIP. Claudio...

Yeah, Gene Orloff (nice Jess Franco reference!) was a real operator. He acted as their producer, so he could get those poor four kids to sign anything. Cool story about Caro!

RIP. One of the members of The Left Banke, who wrote Pretty Ballerina and Walk Away Renee was the son of the famous studio violinist Gene Orloff. Orloff helped them with string arrangements, and even had his own studio where they recorded. Orloff even recorded some jazz violin albums of his own. They had some internal struggle in the band, and kicked out Orloff's son, who had changed his name to Brown.

RIP, Little Bird...

Mark Stryker wasn't too excited about the commercial part of Byrd's career in "Jazz From Detroit". He generally treats most of it as sell-out, after a very successful jazz career. His career change received a much 'softer' treatment in the "Hard Bop" book. I confess to being completely oblivious to the fact that i was playing anything that had to do with Byrd when i was playing :Walkin' In Rhythm" on the many gigs that they called it on. Groovy little flute solo there!

A friend of mine worked with Moody for several years in Vegas, and he said if you ever wanted to get a rise out of him, all you had to do was mention Ornette's name. he'd get up and preach about what a jive-ass he thought Ornette was!

That was the point, they didn't take it anywhere, it stayed on the page. We all thought it was a fine album at the time, but he was so bugged with it, according to a sax player I knew who was studying with him, he stayed with Gilmore and Goodwin for more than 30 years. He had gotten a taste of the freedom of playing with the ERM, and he had to get it back. When you compare it to the Goodwin/Gilmore/ Melillo/Galper (and Leahey) groups, you know what he's talking about. Charlap completely destroyed that band on that awful Hollywood, Love Songs POS. album.

Phil Woods never had much luck on the West Coast. He refused to play flute, so he couldn't get studio work. His attempt to go electronic earlier on Chromatic Banana was an abortion, IMHO, so I never checked out the Pete Robinson album. He had just come back from Europe, which went pretty well for him, and he thought the rep he had from The European Rhythm Machine would propel a solo carrer for him, but it didn't work out like that for him. His big break came when he was staying with Jerry Dodgion in NYC, and Michel Legrand called Dodgion for a gig, and Dodgion was on the road, so Phil took the call and talked his way into the gig. Legrand was knocked out by Phil's playing (he was a better improviser than Dodgion), and the albums and concerts he did with Legrand put his name in front of the public, and he was finally able to launch a solo career in the US. His Musique du bois album in Phil's words, 'never got off the page', so he formed his own band with Goodwin, Gilmore and Melillo, and toured relentlessly,.Melillo could take things pretty out, so I don't think the characterization of the music his quartet played in the 70s as only 'bebop' is correct at all. When we saw them at the short revival of The Half Note in NY, Melillo took things so out, tempo and tonality disappeared so completely at one point, that there was a long moment of silence, before they started playing the tune again!