sgcim

Okay, then hardcore easy listening. When Ogerman first came to the US, he was taking any gig he could get. He did Leslie Gore's "It's My Party" one day, this POS the next. Ogerman and Evans made up for it with Symbiosis.

Alright, then just an easy listening album.

It was a muzak album. He needed junk money, probably.

About time...

I loved the Steve Miller album "Born 2 Be Blue", despite the synth strings, and glossy production by Ben Sidran, It featured Milt Jackson and Phil Woods. Miller took songs like "Willow Weep For Me", "Mary Anne" (Ray Charles), "When Sunny Gets Blue", and Born To Be Blue, and used his natural, bluesy falsetto to make the songs his own, like Kenny Rankin, another great cross-over artist in this style. This kind of approach can go horribly wrong in the hands of someone like Sting, whose attempt to sing "My Funny Valentine" has left me severely traumatized for life. No amount of talk therapy, ECT treatments, and powerful psychotropic drugs can erase an experience like that, and I'm trying to spare you the horror of PTSD (Post Traumatic Sting Disorder), before it's ruined your life, as it's done mine...

I should add that Roy gave that student a free trumpet lesson, backstage at the gig! We're going beyond Ted Curson territory here (one of the nicest guys I ever met), who used to invite young musicians back to his hotel room after his gigs, to hang out and talk about music.

So sad to hear. Roy acted like a big brother to the best trumpet player in my HS band.A very encouraging, giving person- RIP, Roy.

Yeah, dat it!

Thanks for posting the other half of this session! The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'. Comparing him to Parker is very apt; he spent a lot of time listening to Bird live, and then adapting his lines to the guitar, which is insanely difficult considering the difference between a wind instrument and a plucked instrument. He did it by a combination of accents, slurs and a special type of picking, that enabled him to play Bird's lines at ridiculously fast tempos. And yet, there are still these warped 'shredders' on jazz guitar forums who insist that George Benson is the closest thing to Bird on guitar, even though Barry Harris was quoted as saying Raney "was the closest thing to Yard" that he'd ever heard. Thanks for posting the other half of this session! The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'. Comparing him to Parker is very apt; he spent a lot of time listening to Bird live, and then adapting his lines to the guitar, which is insanely difficult considering the difference between a wind instrument and a plucked instrument. He did it by a combination of accents, slurs and a special type of picking, that enabled him to play Bird's lines at ridiculously fast tempos. And yet, there are still these warped 'shredders' on jazz guitar forums who insist that George Benson is the closest thing to Bird on guitar, even though Barry Harris was quoted as saying Raney "was the closest thing to Yard" that he'd ever heard.

I think it was his first. I was looking forward to it, but was disappointed. By large ensemble, I just meant bigger than a quartet, and smaller than a big band. Criss Cross has some type of deal where you;ve gotta agree to buy a certain number of CDs, if you want to record for them. Peter bernstein got the in with them, because a photographer friend of mine was doing a shoot for the head of CC, and he needed a sideman guitarist who lived in Manhattan pronto for a leader's recording, and the photographer mentioned PB. i just heard the old Ralph Lalama CC record with PB, and PB seemed to be having some difficulty with the up tempo tunes. Another Buddy Rich story I heard involved two members of a band I used to play with. They were in Buddy's band for a short time, and they got a notice that they had to talk to the band manager. The first one went in, and the band manager said to him, "Buddy says you don't swing, you're fired. Here's your two week pay." The second guy went in, and the same thing happened, verbatim. A well oiled machine...

Oh my God, I didn't think he was that old or sick. I think I recently heard an interview with him on KCR. Another of the great masters is gone. RIP Sonny...

Yeah, Fusco was great with Buddy. I didn't know he was a lineman; maybe the Giants could use him. At this point, they'd probably do better with an alto player in his 60s than what they have now. I was thinking about your comparison of Dillon to WW. I'm sure they have a lot of contact in NY, so there's probably a lot of influence from his theoretical ideas and playing. I enjoyed WW in his stint with Donald Fagen, so I checked out that larger ensemble record he made for Criss Cross, and found it turgid and lifeless, more 'brain' music than 'ear' music. I'm sure he's done other stuff since then, hopefully more ear oriented, but I tend to not be interested in an artist after I've disliked a record they've made as a leader..

Yeah, he's Trane obsessed alright. You might be interested in his friend, an alto player named Andrew Gould. I played a show (Smoky Joe's Cafe) with him a number of years ago, and he's got that same do-or-die attitude. He recently released his first album, also. http://www.andrewgouldmusic.com/audio.html

I can't mention names here, because the parties are still alive, but I was talking with one veteran player about his day hanging out with a guy who is known for having a great attitude on the stand, and even today, is still doing the top gigs, jazz or otherwise. He mentioned the fact that the guy with the great attitude just got a great Broadway gig, because the guy he replaced was fired for playing practical jokes on members of the band. The guy who got fired is a player who was on most big band jazz records recorded on the East Coast from the 50s onward, and had a rep for shoving things in players' horns, untuning instruments on breaks, hiding drumsticks, etc... Apparently, it developed into a type of mania that he couldn't control, and despite warnings to cut it out, the conductor couldn't take it anymore, and fired him.

That's good to hear. He used to jam at a loft in NYC that a friend of mine owned, and he sounded great. It would be a shame for a player like that to stop playing.

I'd heard that Phil Dwyer has become a lawyer, and retired from the music biz. Is he still playing?

Out of the younger guys I've heard. Sam Dillon, has went through the insane discipline, sideman credit accumulation, and whatever else it takes, to earn the admiration of Ray Drummond, Joe Chambers, Jimmy Heath and a lot of other people of that caliber who he works with. He just released his first album, "Out in the Open", and from what I've heard of the previews, every note swings, the notes come popping out of his horn like Trane's did, and he wasn't afraid to include a jazz version of Hendrix's "Third Stone From the Sun" that doesn't pander to, uh, pander bears? I've had the demoralizing experience of having to follow his soloing in a big band we played in, and the only excuse I can give is that I was working an exhausting day gig during that period, and on the one day I had off, I did earn a nod from him after my solo. I think he's in his late 20s, or early 30s.

When I heard one of those versions of Nardis it scared the hell out of me. I had no desire to hear it again. The same with his coked up version of "In Your Own Sweet Way". Unfortunately, the Evans fanatic I play with insists on playing at that coked-up tempo. It should be pointed out that regardless of the experience with the "Explorations" session, there are a lot of CDs that have been put out after Evans' death that Evans insisted not be released. Add to that the numerous bootleg live CDs that have been released, and the only sure way of assessing Evans' legacy is to go by recordings released prior to his death.

Yum, Mike make a good fillet!

When you google 'marches to a different drummer', and come up with a lot of images of Doomberg, the apocalypse truly is nigh, and the anti-Christ is circling your house... Buckley and Nyro were similar in that they both rejected the music of their earlier successes, and just did whatever the heck they wanted to do, but Buckley took it way further out improvisation-wise than Nyro. Bass, Marimba, jazz guitar and percussion, no song structure, one chord, improvisational vocalise...

I don't know about filleting PS; I usually throw the little ones away. AG and EC are another story, though...

Houston qualifies for living legend status. It was like a breath of fresh air hearing him play after everyone else seemed to be competing with each other over who could play the most notes at the Phil Woods Memorial concert. Houston swung more, got a better sound out of his horn, played perfectly in tune, played better ideas and played with more soul than guys and gals half his age. In Grace Kelley's case, 1/4 his age!

No direction ho-me I don't know what the croaker things are about. Must be a Texas thang...

Yeah, I always wondered how those two snot noses would feel when they hit 70. We should wheel them over to a park bench sometime and shoot a video of them, and ask them ,How Does it Fe-el?

Yeah, he plays a lot of that type of stuff. Gives him a very West Coast sound, where he used to live. He used to play in Papa John Creach's band, in another life.