sgcim

I'm 169 pages into Carol Easton's "Straight Ahead: The Story of Stan Kenton", and the portrait she paints of Greattinger, from the quotes of Bill Holman, Kenton,Jan Rugolo, and especially Art Pepper, is fascinating. Graettinger didn't use music staff paper to write his scores, he used large pieces of graph paper(!), with tiny squares; 100 to the square inch, the top representing Maynard Ferguson, and the bottom representing the baritone sax player. "In many of the squares, he drew infinitesimal numbers, letters, circles, squares and hieroglyphics. decipherable only to himself. But the bulk of the squares reflected his life-long preoccupation with color; varying intensities of blue, orange,violet,red,green and yellowformed abstract pictures of sounds." Kenton's presentation of City of Glass at the Chicago Civic Opera House in 1948, is worthy of Citizen Kane."When the last dissonant, nerve-jangling notes died away, the capacity audience sat thereas though turned to stone- baffled, confused, silent. After a long, frozen moment, Stan jumped up from the piano, gestured for the musicians to take a bow, and turned to the audience with both armshigh in the air, indicating that what they'd heard was something great, and it was over. Obediently, they stood and cheered." Kenton is quoted as saying (about Graettinger's music): "His music is great! I know it's great! No doubt in my mind!" But he'd confess to friends, "I don't know if his music is genius, or just a bunch of crap." Yeah, but all this shit would make a great Coen Brothers movie.

I'm 169 pages into Carol Easton's "Straight Ahead: The Story of Stan Kenton", and the portrait she paints of Greattinger, from the quotes of Bill Holman, Kenton,Jan Rugolo, and especially Art Pepper, is fascinating. Graettinger didn't use music staff paper to write his scores, he used large pieces of graph paper(!), with tiny squares; 100 to the square inch, the top representing Maynard Ferguson, and the bottom representing the baritone sax player. "In many of the squares, he drew infinitesimal numbers, letters, circles, squares and hieroglyphics. decipherable only to himself. But the bulk of the squares reflected his life-long preoccupation with color; varying intensities of blue, orange,violet,red,green and yellowformed abstract pictures of sounds." Kenton's presentation of City of Glass at the Chicago Civic Opera House in 1948, is worthy of Citizen Kane."When the last dissonant, nerve-jangling notes died away, the capacity audience sat thereas though turned to stone- baffled, confused, silent. After a long, frozen moment, Stan jumped up from the piano, gestured for the musicians to take a bow, and turned to the audience with both armshigh in the air, indicating that what they'd heard was something great, and it was over. Obediently, they stood and cheered." Kenton is quoted as saying (about Graettinger's music): "His music is great! I know it's great! No doubt in my mind!" But he'd confess to friends, "I don't know if his music is genius, or just a bunch of crap."

Another fascinating aspect of Duvivier's life was the jazz band that he and the members of his African-American community in NYC formed when they were still in their teens, The Royal Barons, which included a young Herbie Nichols(!) as their pianist. They modeled themselves after the Jimmy Lunceford Band, and they were so good that when they played opposite the Lunceford band at the Renaissance Casino at 138th and 7th Ave, the Lunceford band, although they were finished for the night, were back up on the stage, all listening to The Royal Barons. Billie Moore Jr., the RB's arranger, later went on to become a very important part of the Lunceford organization. George himself was hired as an arranger for the Lunceford Band after he came back from service in WWII. All the members of The Royal Barons went on to become successes, some in the music business, and some outside of it. George Parker went on to become a piano teacher at Julliard. Herbie Nichols and George went on to become Herbie Nichols and George. Bob Shoecraft went on to become a D.A. in Ohio, Jocelyn Smith became a Superior Court Justice, and so on. Unfortunately, there are no known recording of The Royal Barons. They broke up due to the War.

Panama Francis: "George and I had similar ideas about proper deportment, unlike some of the "problem children" of the bebop era. It seems that the intellectuals just love to see bad behavior on the part of black musicians. The worse you act, the more they seem to like you. They just adored Miles; that's their image of how a musician should act! That's not the way George and I were taught to behave. We always tried to be role models for the young musicians coming up." How far can you extend this? To rappers? What does it say about why people like this type of thing?

Billy Mitchell settled down on Lawnguyland in the 70s thru 90s. We all used to go down to Sonny's Place and hear him play. He came into one of our rehearsals with hale Smith to hear us play his arrangement of "I Remember Clifford". A piano player I play with sometimes used to play with him a lot. He had some funny stories about working with him, but I can't remember them right now. Something about a guy calling up the club looking for a coat that he left at the club, and Billy answered the phone with the coat on, and said he hadn't seen it... The clarinet player Joe Dixon was good friends with him. He said that some oil sheik from the Middle East liked Billy and his playing so much, that he gave him a jive job, sitting in an office a few days a week, signing stuff for him. I saw BM for the last time at Joe's house. He and Sonny were both on dialysis, and had not much time left...

I'm always careful to criticize AS' Strict Twelve Tone Method, and not Arnie himself. Warne was a bit less careful...

I just posted it as an amusing anecdote involving Warne. Imagine Warne pausing ten seconds after being asked the question, and then coming out with that! However, I can't deny my hatred of the strict Twelve Tone Method. As Honegger said of it, "It is as if one was attaching a ball and chain to oneself!" It represents the collision of Ear Music (which a composer like Honegger, and a musician like Marsh represent) with Eye Music (Schoenberg's strict Twelve Tone Method).

According to Peter Ind, the author of the book, and an intimate of Warne's, Warne was a man of few words, and when he calls AS "the worst crock of them all", you can best believe it is no 'yawn'. AS didn't 'ruin my life'; the 'fad' in the Universities with his Twelve Tone Method of Composition in the 70s convinced me that I didn't want to spend my time there writing a type of music that didn't speak to me in a special way. I call it a fad, because the very composition teacher that insisted that his students must write Twelve Tone music, today is writing an extremely tonal, triadic New Age type of music that is the exact opposite of Schoenberg's music.

I didn't listen to the whole Tapp song, just the beginning, and she was singing some short rhythms in the beginning, but when I listened to the chorus the second time, she brought out her whiteness pretty clearly. Nancy Adams was double tracking her voice on the beginning of her version, and then I turned it off. Give me Tracy Nelson over those two, any day.

She sound black... She probly going whitefaced for the publicity photo... At least the first one had a more R&B feel to it. When I was growing up on Lawnguyland, a bass player friend of mine was taking lessons from a guy who said he wrote "Only in America", and we all thought he was a local boy who made good. When I looked it up, his name doesn't appear as the songwriter. Maybe he played on the JATA session...

Tubbs and Louis Stewart! I think I'm in heaven. great playing by both on a great Coleman/Leigh tune.

White people wanna be kissed, too...

Thanks for the suggestions, Ted!

Yeah, but they're just people, this is Warne, man, WARNE!!!!

From Peter Ind's book "Jazz Visions': "In a lecture to the Norwegian State Academy which prided itself on its modernity, Marsh gained the enmity of many in the audience when a student asked his opinion of Arnold Schoenberg. After a motionless interval of ten seconds, he said, “Schoen-berg was probably the worst crock of them all, because he was the rst composer that managed to write music to death.” MLA (Modern Language Assoc.) Ind, Peter. Jazz Visions : Lennie Tristano and His Legacy. Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2005. APA (American Psychological Assoc.) Ind, P. (2005). Jazz Visions : Lennie Tristano and His Legacy. London: Equinox Publishing Ltd.

Devil's Brew and Moe Koffman Quintet Plays both have Bickert on them. Devil's Brew and Moe Koffman Quintet Plays both have Bickert on them. I'm sold. Thanks!

Gee, I wonder who the corporate heads of JALC were trying to appeal to when they came up with the idea for that concert/album? And they they use the compositions and arrangements of some vocalist/banjo player?

I listened to all his Pacific Jazz stuff, and he still had the same swing based rhythmic conception. Jimmy Raney made the comment on Pass that, "He sounds like Charlie Parker, all straightened out". Life on the road, and all the booze and drugs involved, could f-ck up anybody. As Casey Stengel once said, "I've seen the road make bums out of even good men". Look at what it did to Tal Farlow. If you compare his 50s stuff to the stuff he did in the 70s and afterward (although Larry claimed he saw him on a really good day), it sounds like two different players. The same thing with Lee Konitz. He told a friend of mine that he was never the same after his experience on the road with Kenton. It boils down to an individual's nervous system. That type of life has no effect on some people; with others, it really messes them up. As far as Pass is concerned, he once told an audience in the 80s, "Where the hell were you people in the 50s when I could really play?" but i don't think junk messed with his technical ability; he was probably referring to something else.

That's only because you've taken a course in JSangryology in University. If it had been phrased as clearly as you so eloquently did, we wouldn't have needed your translation. That doesn't surprise me. I'm considered a pariah on one jazz guitar forum, because I pointed out that fact about Pass (which Jim also was also aware of), and the fact that he 'borrowed' Jimmy D'Aquisto's plans for his guitar (without his knowledge), and gave them to the Ibanez guitar company, so they could make a "Joe Pass Model Guitar", modeled on the very D'Aquisto that Pass gave to Ibanez to copy. When Jimmy found out about it, he sued Ibanez, and their aborted D'Aquisto rip-off (they placed the pick-up in the middle of the space between the neck and the bridge!!!!) was taken off the market. D'Aquisto didn't speak to Pass for many years; even when Pass needed Jimmy on bass for a gig in NY, Jimmy played the gig without saying a word to Pass, pulled his cable out of the amp they provided for him, and marched out of the gig, without saying a word to Pass the entire night. When Jimmy got the contract with Fender years later, he and Pass started talking to each other again. Pass is considered a MAJOR deity of the jazz guitar world. To say anything negative about him is considered heresy.

There are two unwritten laws: 1) Whether it's alto or tenor, if you gush for an extended time period about another sax player to a sax player, at some point, he's going to find something wrong with said sax player, no matter how ridiculous it is. Corner me and tell me about how great Joe Pass was for a longish period of time, and I'll say the same thing your friend said about Warne, but in my case, I'd be right. 2) A Jim Sangrey post, by it's very nature, must have some cryptic quality to it.

Thanks! That's the best price I've seen yet, but they get you on the shipping.

Maybe he was referring to his Lester Young influence, if he listened to some old Warne, but it really makes no sense if you listen to the vast body of his work.Your friend probably fell back on the Lester Young thing after you bombarded him with your praise of Warne. This is a common reaction when you tell another saxophonist (or any other instrumentalist) how great another saxophonist plays. His ego could only take so much. I'm surprised he didn't resort to violence. You're lucky he just resorted to irrationality, like I'm prone to do. There was a cult-like attitude on the part of Tristano-ites that was so intense, that one apostate created that hilarious computer-generated stick finger series on You Tube, lampooning their dogma.

A lot of sax players put Warne down for his sound back then.

Yeah, fuck him, if he's gonna mock Warne- he was just tall. another genetic anomaly.

According to a search I did on Desmond's height, he measured 1.63m., which converts to a about 5'4. Some other alto players I worked with who were decidedly small were Chasey Dean, and Lenny(AKA Leo) Sinsgalli ). Lenny was a great player, and extremely talented arranger, who ghost-wrote Tony Bennett charts for Torrie Zito, and many others. Torrie showed up at the Memorial at St. Peters for Lenny, playing piano in the big band that played Lenny's great charts. I've went to memorials for musicians there before, but Lenny's was the only one that was so heavily attended, we had to stand in the back. Lenny was loved by every musician in NY back then. He wrote the jingle for Shaefer Beer ("Shaefer is the one beer to have, when you're having more than one").He was featured on a Claude Thornhill album from 1959 as alto sax player, and co-composer/arranger of "Texas Blues", and also played on a 1951 record of Buddy DeFranco in the sax section with Gene Quill, on alto. The archetypal small alto player in my mind would have to be an excellent player named Chasey Dean. He played on some of Matt Matthews records for Dawn back in the 50s, and was with Phil Woods in the Charlie Barnett band. He put up Phil and Chan for a while after they got off the road with Barnett. He also played with on an album called "College Jazz" in a group that featured Sam Brown on guitar, and Dave Frishberg on piano. Chase must have been about 5'2 or smaller, and reminded me of a Scottish Terrier, because he always seemed to be 'barking' about something. he put out a few self-produced jazz CDs before his death. "Chasin' The Dean" was the title of one of them. I can think of a few tall alto players (Richie Tabnik), but they were obviously just some genetic anomalies that should be encouraged to switch to tenor, to support my theory...