sgcim

I met Jack Wilkins once, and he claimed that he played in that band!.

Sonofabitch! That's him. Don't mention his name; he might do a search and kill me or something.

No, that's alright. A well known jazz pianist I used to be in a band with played in a rock band in the 60s that had an album cover with the whole band nekkid on the cover. Later on he became a college professor at a well known music school. I wonder if any of his students ever saw it?

Yeah, I cracked up when I read that on Wiki! As far as the Sam Most four CD set was concerned, Most's playing is great on the other albums included in the set, the arrangements by Bob Dorough and Teddy Charles aren't as good as the ones by Woellmer. Jimmy Raney has a good solo on one tune on the record he's on, and Davey Schildkraut has some nice solos on one of the other records.

AGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I need Help!!!!!!!!! Charles Albertine seemed to be the equivalent of Bob Graettinger to Stan Kenton! I liked that alto sax stuff towards the end.

Interesting stuff! I was under the impression that Les and Larry Elgart was a dance band. You're totally messing up my mind with this album TTK. I'm going to have to report to Wikipedia for re-education.

Someone I know was so overwhelmed by the CD, he contacted the person in charge of putting out the album, and he says that the bass player on the gig taped a lot of other gigs the group did, and he's obtained legal approval to release all of it! This stuff is JS at his best, with a group that is smoking.

I never knew that. You can tell that the group had a lot of stuff worked out in Colorado, where they played live. Smith got burnt out on NYC sometime in the early 60s. He could see where the music biz was going. He said he never looked back in his rear view mirror as he approached the Geo. Washington Bridge.

He was only 49 and still playing his ass off. This just came out yesterday and the bass player taped a lot more. There's some distortion when they get loud, but a lot of spirit and swing. The piano player is good, along with the rhythm section. https://dickpatterson.bandcamp.com/album/the-last-night-at-shaners

Finally got the Sam Most "Four Classic Albums" from Ebay. It's from that Avid Jazz series of four albums by one artist on two CDs, and it only cost me twelve bucks and change. The album I was looking for, "Sam Most Sextette- "I'm Nuts About the Most-Sam Most That is!" with a picture of a squirrel munching on a nut on the original cover, didn't disappoint at all. As mentioned in my previous post, all of the arrangements were done by an ex-trumpet player who was a DB poll-winner until he got his teeth knocked out in an accident named Ronnie Woellner, who I did a few months of gigs with years ago. He astounded me with his changes on his new instrument, the keyboard, as he controlled the entire arr. of tunes because he played left hand bass, being that there was no bass player. The unusual instrumentation of the Sextette was Most on flute and clarinet Marty Flax on Bari Sax Barry Galbraith on Guitar Bob Dorough on piano Oscar Pettiford on Bass Bobby Donaldson or Osie Johnson on Drums All the arrangements were swinging, imaginative, unaffected charts that made the album a delight to listen to, especially compared to the second album in the set, "Musically Yours" which was anything but, due to the fact that they had no arr's and featured the piercing sound of Most's clarinet on too many cuts. He's a great improviser on the clarinet, but the piercing sound he got out of the instrument made it clear why he stuck to flute as his main instrument. His brother, Abe Most, is much more pleasant to listen to on the instrument. Woellner's arrangements used the unusual chorus of Bari sax, Guitar and Flute or clarinet for most of the lines, and the wonderful use of counterpoint, substitute harmony, swinging ensembles and silence, gave the music a clarity that I find lacking in most West Coast small ensemble jazz of that time, and lacked the boredom of East Coast writers like Manny Albam, Al Cohn, and the overdone exoticism of Gil Evans. The only writer I could compare him to of the 50s would be the underrated Rod Leavitt. Woellner stays out of the way of the soloists, and there's wonderful playing by Most, Galbraith and Flax. Dorough plays his parts well, but is not the strongest soloist. I'm looking forward to the other two albums featured, "Sam Most Plays Monk, Bud, Bird and Miles" and especially "The Amazing Mr. Sam Most" featuring Jimmy Raney in the quartet.

I used to check out all the record stores in the downtown area of NYC, and there were a few strange owners who I only went to once, and that was enough for me. Bleeker Bob was the most uptight dude I ever met, and I ran out of there with a cheap copy of Woody Herman's Sextet "Live at the Roundtable" as fast as I could. There was an older British guy who seemed to be a rock dude, who was some type of maniac or something..LOL! He made a sale of a record to someone, and it was so draining for him, he had to rush me out of his store with an overpriced copy of Grady Tate's disappointing album with "Sackful of Dreams", so he could unwind with a bottle of booze. He said I could come back in an hour or two...LOL! It turned out that another guy had a deal with TSS where he'd sneak into their warehouse, and pick up their jazz records after midnight and get them in bulk for a very low price, and sell them for 10x what he paid for them. And so on...

RIP. He was great in everything he was in, even playing Major Major in Catch-22. He was in "Cold Turkey, too.

"America Tonight" with him and Jerry Willard got me through the worst summer of my life. All I looked forward to was that show every weeknight. Then I heard this song on a comedy show on the radio, and I had no idea who it was. I finally found out it was from one of his albums. There are three versions, but this was the best one. RIP MM.

I heard on the radio that she didn't even want to be an actress. She was asked by an artist friend of hers to speak at his art show, and two guys came up to her afterwards and told her they waned her to be in a movie. She got frightened because she thought they wanted her to be in a porn movie, but it turned out to be Robert Altman's "Brewster Mccloud. RIP, Shelley

Just found a Sam Most "Four Original Jazz Classics Albums set online that contains one of Most's albums where he features Ronnie Woellner's arrangements on the entire album! A search on him now reveals that he played with Claude Thornhill's Band back in the 50's. One time I asked him what type of stuff he listens to, and he surprised me by saying that he likes some of the Heavy Metal stuff he's heard.

RIP, that's beyond sad....

It's like Charlie Calello said when asked what made for great music. "It,s three things: Number one: The song Number two: The Song Number Three: The Song" I'm doing BB arr's of some of Strozier's Jazzland stuff, and Frank had a way of playing stuff that no one would touch, and making it work. Also, because of Larry posting it. I did Joey, Joey Joey. Thanks, Larry. The song.

I liked the title tune more than the others. Then I heard the epilogue, "Lady Day" which I'd heard before, and it really hit me hard. Since it was recorded in 1969, and appeared on other Sinatra albums, I wonder if it was just added because it was a better song than the others? It doesn't fit in to the story, and people interpret it as tribute to Billie Holiday. One guy that has a website called "meaning behind the lyrics" claims it was written by Rodgers and Hart in 1956! The album was a flop in 1970, so maybe adding the epilogue to the 2022 re-mixed version was a way for Gaudio and Holmes to increase sales of the re-mix. The version I heard had a powerful arr. by Don Costa in 1969. Sinatra attributed the failure of the album to the way it was recorded. It was the only album he made where he sang to all pre-recorded tracks. The 1969 version of Lady Day was probably done with a live orchestra, because it was a year before Watertown. Another strange thing I noticed was that Calello's name doesn't come up in any of the interviews with Gaudio about the Four Seasons, and Jersey Boys. Gaudio mention the influence of Stan Kenton in writing "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You!"

Never heard the Four Seasons like that. Gaudio was an excellent songwriter and had studied piano with Sal Mosca as a kid! That album has some good stuff on it that stands up to Brian Wilson. I'm looking for Charlie Calello's autobio "Another Season" but even Columbia U doesn't have it. Frankie Valli walked into a club where Calello's band was playing, and immediately asked who the arranger was, and was introduced to Calello. I'm gonna have to see the movie version of Jersey Boys, but it was directed by Clint Eastwood, who made a complete mess out of "Bird". Thanks for turning me on to the Gazette album. It's got enough good songs in it to make it worth getting.

Charles Callello has a cue in "Who Killed Teddy Bear" that has the timpani going crazy and some Stravinsky-like WW parts coming in. No wonder he never got another film scoring gig till Pia Zadora's "Lonely Lady" 30 years later. Which is not to say that he wasn't extremely busy in the years in between the two films

JM plays the detective who insists on taking Juliet Prowse's case, which consists of some guy making pervy phone calls to her. JM seems to take too much interest in the case, and makes JP sit down and be interviewed about the calls, which he tapes on his cassette player. Then JP gets another call from the 'bad man' and JP goes back to the police station, and JM reveals that he's been following her around, everywhere she went. CC provides some dissonant, creepy music as JM then offers to drive JP home and makes her stay over his apt. with his young 12 year-old daughter. When they get to JM's apartment, she discovers JM has reams of cassette tapes of women talking about being stalked, raped,etc..., and his young daughter is listening to them(!). Then JP sees all the books JM has laying around about every 'preverted ' thing you can imagine, pedophilia, necrophilia, headophilia, bedophilia- you name it! That's it for JP, she freaks out and starts punching the schist out of JM and accusing him of being the 'prevert' who's been making all the piggy phone calls to her. JM restrains her, and orders her to sit down while he tells her the reason why he's so obsessed with all the 'preverts' in the city, and wants to clean the town out (Taxi Driver style)of all of them. It turns out that his wife wqas raped and killed by one of them, and that gets JP all mellowed out about him. But JP isn't through with being afeared of them preverts. It turns out that Elaine Stritch (playing the manager of the discoteque where JP has a job as a DJ, playing the same two records over and over, as the people freak out on the dance floor, doing the most insane dances you've ever seen) takes her under her wing, and takes her home to JP's apt., where she tells her that nothing is gonna happen to her, and starts hugging her and whispering sweet little nothings in her ear, causing JP to have another freak-out, and kicks Stritch out of JP's apt with Stritch insisting that she's one of 'them', but JP ain't havin' it and Stritch goes flying out the door, acting like the 'queen of da nile'. I won't give away any spoilers to what was one of the important learning experiences about sex in my kidhood on TV, but the main reason I wanted to see it again was one of the two songs JP kept playing over and over in her challenging job as a club DJ. It turns out it was written by Gaudio and was about a guy who was dumped by his GF and complains that "It shoulda been me". 'You were my one and only girl, I was your boy and you were my world We shoud've had fun But he was the one, It shoulda been me" It turned out the other song JP played was much better, but my young brain wasn't developed enough yet to appreciate it.

There was an interview with him by 3 You Tube bozos, and he said that his father was a club date trumpet player. His father had a gig where they needed to play some new tune, and he asked CC if he had the sheet music to it, and CC said no, but he just heard it on the radio, and he'd write it out for him. So his father plays the tune on the gig and he said that the piano player said that CC did something with the changes that was much deeper than what was on the record. It was then that CC realized he had a different understanding of harmony than most people. He also claimed that it took him one or two hours to write charts for any tune he ever got recorded. A friend of mine went to MS of M with him , Donald Byrd and Chris Dedrick, but my friend can' remember what he did an hour ago, so... But he said CC had something to do with some group in the mold of BS&T. I didn't know CC had anything to do with Lightnin' Strikes, but he did play bass, so maybe it him on the record playing that great bass line. Here's my fave use of that song in a movie:

I just saw Who Killed Teddy Bear last night, and couldn't believe the score! Charlie Calello threw everything he could into it, but it overwhelmed every scene. He went on to become The Hit Man, but what a wild score.

Yeah I took it one day after my symptoms started, and Paxlovid removed all my symptoms the next day. The doctor's office told me to stop testing myself.