sgcim

Garfunkel completely lost his voice a while ago, but claims in his book that he's almost got it all back. I don't know, I haven't heard him in years.

We were just talking about Vince Guraldi's influence on us as kids on a gig this week. One guy just picked up a two month road gig playing the Charlie Brown Christmas Show, and thought of it as a great gig playing "sweet jazz" every night, rather than the typical Broadway stuff he had to play to make a living. The pianist said Guraldi's music had a strong influence on him as a kid, and I can hear it in his use of those chordal fills Guraldi played in some of this pianist's solos. I fell in love with "Christmas Time is Here" as a kid, and loved the mood that it created with chord progressions I'd never heard before (bVII+11, the #ivm7b5 descending thing), and starting the melody on the maj7 really knocked me out back then.

Garfunkel once called him a little shrimp (or something like that) and said he would always be taller than him. I don't think Paul ever got over that... In the recent bio he's always complaining that he should be happy, because he's rich, talented, has written hit songs, etc..., but he keeps complaining that he's not happy, and has to keep seeing a shrink about it. Then he thought marrying Edie Brickell finally made him happy. Next thing you know, they're in court with EB telling the judge that she can't live with him anymore because he's such a dick...

To get a good understanding of who exactly Smith was, I'd recommend reading his biography "Moonlight In Vermont", written by a British guitarist a few years ago. The difference in Smith's approach to jazz was his very different approach to rhythm in his single line solos.You don;t really notice it until you hear his recordings with his old buddy from the NBC Studio Orchestra, Hank Jones. Smith invariably takes the first solo on most songs, and everything seems fine, until Jones comes in for his solo. All of a sudden, it sounds like you're listening to a completely different style of music. The eighth notes become the tied triplets that all boppers used, instead of the almost classically even eighth notes that Smith was playing. and the syncopation boppers achieved by accenting the offbeats of said eighth notes appears, instead of Smith's accenting eighth notes on the beat. \ The 'troublemaker' Jones finishes his solo, and we're returned to Smith's world of even, unaccented eighth note lines that sound as if they were written out beforehand. On most of Smith's Roost recordings of the 50s, he uses the pianist Bob Pancoast, who sounds like a pianistic version of Smith, so we don't notice the difference in Smith's rhythmic conception as much as we did when Jones was playing with him on some of the Verve recordings of the 60s. When a writer informed Smith that he wanted to put out a book of transcriptions of Smith's single line solos, Smith's reaction was reportedly, "Why the heck would you want to do a book of my solos? Why don't you do a book of Jimmy Raney's solos? His lines were much hipper than mine." One of Raney's students claimed that Smith used to sit incognito in the back of clubs when Raney was playing in NY to figure out how Raney 'did it'. That would have to be verified by Jon Raney. The other side of Smith was his literally perfect technique, incredible beauty of sound, and astonishing solo guitar performances, all of which pretty much establish him as probably the greatest plectrum guitarist that ever lived. Van Eps switched to finger style playing from his early days of plectrum playing, and developed what he called his 'lap style' of playing the guitar, taking advantage of the contrapuntal aspects of the guitar, in addition to a very advanced sense of harmony. He added a seventh string to his guitar to give a fuller, almost pianistic range to his guitar playing. Smith accomplished this on a smaller level by tuning his lowest string down a whole step, from E to D. In addition to playing his great solo arrangements of standards, Van Eps was also an accomplished composer of solo guitar pieces.

Smith's amazing accomplishment on those recordings was being able to perform those classical guitar staples entirely with a plectrum, rather than the standard finger style practice. They came out too late for me to loan the CD to my classical guitar teacher in graduate school, to get his opinion of Smith's heretical use of a pick on those pieces. The last time he had anything to say about a jazz guitarist was when a hapless student loaned him some of Joe Pass' 'Virtuoso' albums. He let loose a string of epithets, which had me shaking in my shoes, Ironically, I chose a Van Eps piece for my final jury, and the guy loved it, and made me xerox a copy of it for his own use.

I read Garfunkel's recent memoir, and he doesn't take Simon's treatment of him lying down. When I finished the book, I felt like I should go to the next Garfunkel concert just to spite Simon. Simon resented any of Garfunkel's accomplishments, a graduate degree from Columbia (when Simon dropped out of Queens College after one semester), a great film role in Catch-22 (when Simon's attempt at acting was left on the editing room floor) , and finally a starring role in a Nicholas Roeg film, which was the final straw, and Artie was kicked out of the duo. Garfunkel's listening habits listed in his book were very sophisticated, dismissing Simon's hinting that AG was a musical simpleton. I'm afraid to watch Simon's performance of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water". As Kevin said, his choice of that song was a final F-You to Garfunkel, probably after reading Garfunkel's poetic memoir...

If it's as good as the duos Kenny used to do with Howard Alden, it should be well worth the trip. I played on two jazz records with Kenny back in the 80s, and was honored to give him rides to the gigs that we did together. One time he came up to me and said out of nowhere, "I really like your playing". I thought I was dreaming...

Let me know why you think Simon didn't mention the duo he had with Al Kooper to the writer of his bio. Here's Simon on SNL last weekend doing a re-arrangement of one of his songs. It has his close friend Phillip Glass written all over it, considering that PS has admitted that he can't read or notate music.

A good companion piece to read with the Al Kooper book would be Steve Katz' autobiography, 'Blood Sweat and Rock and Roll'. The amount of hate that went on between Kooper, and Bobby Colomby, and Steve Katz was astounding. Their differing accounts of the day Al Kooper was fired from his own band (BS&T) is confusing, until you hear an actual tape on you tube of how bad Al Kooper's singing sounded live back then in a BS&T concert on the East Coast. Kooper's singing improved after that, but he butchers almost every tune they played. I can understand a guy like Colomby (whose father was Monk's manager) being embarrassed to be on the stand with Kooper, after growing up on Ray Charles, Ella, Sarah, etc... That was some beautiful Peter Green playing on that video Dave posted. It's nice to hear a blues/rock player with a light, sensitive touch for a change. Nice simple, swinging drumming with an equally light touch, too.

Speaking of Al Kooper, I read, Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards, and he talked about how he and Paul Simon got their start in 'show biz' by playing pro gigs with Simon's father's band at catered affairs. Simon and Kooper (who were neighbors in Queens) would unplug their guitars when Simon's father's band was playing standards, and make believe they were playing (they didn't know the changes). Then, when the band took a break, Kooper and Simon would play and sing their little rock and/or roll songs for the kiddies, and make a nice buck for their little set. I recently read the new, Authorized Paul Simon bio, and Al Kooper's name didn't come up once! What was that about? There were other problems with the Simon bio; glossing over the fact that the IMHO genius arr. of Scarborough Fair was actually stolen from a UK folksinger Martin Carthy with no credit or renumeration given to Carthy for years, until Carthy started to make a big stink about it. Carthy still didn't get a cent till for it for years, with Simon claiming that "it must have gotten lost in the mail". As far as EC, I was recently told by a keyboard player, who was involved in that type of music, to check out what he believed to be EC's best playing, that of his work with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and just heard some of his regular pentatonic stuff played faster and louder, IMHO. I'd rather hear BB or Duane Allman any day. In the words of Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, they thought of Cream as being an electric, group improvisation, jazz-type trio, with Clapton taking on the Ornette Coleman role in the group. Clapton hit a new low in songwriting with the nauseating 'Wonderful Tonight', which I was forced to play in a band I was in, triggering episodes of pukitude immediately following said rendition...

Clark Terry also did The Flintstones. I worked under the arranger/conductor/pianist, Leo De Lyon, a pisser of a guy, who did the voice of Benny in the cartoon 'Top Cat'. He could whistle and sing at the same time, and used to entertain the guys in the band by whistling and singing Bach Inventions. There was a lot of big band swing influence in TC and other cartoons like The Jetsons. Hoyt Curtin was the composer of a lot of that stuff for Hanna-Barbera

Mundell Lowe did a whole LP of them called TV Action Jazz We're playing a pretty hip arr. of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood as a samba in a big band I'm playing with. I don't know which band recorded it.

I've never been able to find a recording of Rene's Theme played by its composer, Rene Thomas. Larry Coryell and John MacLaughlin played an acoustic guitar duo version of it on Coyell's 'Spaces', but I've got all of Thomas' recordings as a leader, and most of his sideman things with Getz, Jaspar , Rollins, and Chet Baker, but RT never turned up.

You should've waited till Halloween to post that. He look like EL Diablo!

Great stuff! Imaginative arrangements and yet more great Phil Woods and Clark Terry sideman solos, plus french horns! Put me down for a copy.

I heard he was suing the hospital that caused him to lose his voice just the other day, and now I heard he passed away today.

A drummer i recently played with recommended the sessions he played with Richie Cole on as having that quality. I think he called it Richie Cole Alto Madness, although it has four horns. The George Russell Smalltet's great Jazz Workshop album had only McKusick and Farmer on horns. Most of the Phil Woods Quintet and Sextet albums had that type of writing going on. Rob McConnel's Jive Five also had it. Hal McKusick's Triple Exposure LP had Billy Byers writing and playing for the Quintet.

There might be some info on that in all the research that's went into The Jazz Loft, where Overton lived, and the Monk Big Band rehearsed. They have a web site where they have recorded interviews with the people involved in that scene, and there's a lot of dope on HO. His piano playing never struck me as anything special, but his 'serious' compositions are very interesting, especially his String Quartet in One Movement.

Up until he started doing some jazz production, I only knew of him as a rock and/or roll DJ on WABC FM (now WPLJ). They told us young boomers they were an 'underground' rock radio station, and there was a guy who called himself 'Brother John'', who told us how much he loved us... Upon doing a little searching, Brother John was also a Lutheran Minister, who was part of a syndicated format called 'LOVE', which was some sort of unholy mixture of Lutheranism and 'progressive' rock. Back then they called new, unheard rock music 'progressive'. It wasn't what's now known as PROG.

Was this interview included in the collection of interviews that was published as "Coltrane on Coltrane"? I came out of that book with the impression that JC was a saint. Any interview on a Pacifica radio station is going to be heavily slanted towards the Left. I think they blew up the Pacifica station in Texas!

That video just shows that Sebastian wanted to get rid of Zal, because Zal didn't like the stuff Sebastian was writing, and was clowning around, which everybody actually enjoyed (including me). He didn't want to fire him himself, so he called a meeting, and let the other guy fire him. Rolling Stone magazine found out that Boone and Zal informed on the drug dealer who sold them the dope. Then the cops said their records would be clean if they would introduce a member of the law enforcement to the dope party that they were going to, as a music industry friend of theirs', so he could bust the drug dealer, and some more of those evil drug-taking hippies. The Lovin' Spoonful were then branded as Finks by Ralph J. Gleason and Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone. It all sounds like the plot of a bad B movie from the 60s, directed by Roger Corman!

According to the book "Hotter Than a Match Head: Life on the Run With the Lovin' Spoonful" by Steve Boone, the bass player for the LS, "It had been John (Sebastian) that instigated Zally's firing in 1967. He'd never explicitly admitted it, but I know he was regretful". P.287 Later on, JS and ZY played a reunion concert on the Isle of Wight in 1979, where ZY yelled at him, "You fired me!", and JS jokingly responded, "I thought you quit!" The infamous drug bust situation prevented ZY from being deported back to Canada, so it had nothing to do with ZY leaving the LS. We've decided to settle the situation non-violently, by emailing JS a link to the disco version of 'Summer in the City', so I can avoid having to drive up to Woodstock. This would be punishment enough for JS' cynical statement on not falling into the "Jazz Trap" when the LS recorded their many hits in the 60s. As an extra treat, I will include a story Boone included in his above-named book. The LS found themselves on a plane flight with Miles Davis seated right near them. JS got up and went into a long spiel about how much he loved Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, and how much Miles had contributed to the arts in the US, etc... Miles responded to JS, "I don't talk to honkies" Js went back to his seat...

I thought the article said that he still lived in the West Village. That's just one long subway ride away on the A train... I'll try and find the nonsense he wrote on the "Jazz Trap". It will change your opinion of him as "a truly nice guy", and you'll probably want to get in on the sucker punch scheme. With you holding his arms for me, it will make the sucker punch much easier to land. Eddie Diehl worked at that Folk Music Center in NYC during the 60s, repairing guitars for guys like JS. JS was probably picking up one of his guitars from Eddie when you saw him at Eddie's gig. If he idolized Eddie so much, why didn't he hire Eddie after he fired Zal? Imagine Eddie Diehl in The Lovin' Spoonful? You're right, just listening to that felt like I'd just been sucker punched.

Whoops, he's only 74. I'll have to stalk him for the next six years; then I'll give him the sucker punch he deserves...