sgcim

The fact that Garcia worked so closely with Hambro on Message From Hambro (a lot of times they're playing intricate lines in harmony, blowing at the same time, Garcia blowing at the same time Hambro is playing the melody on flute or alto) really surprised me. I didn't think much about the title until I recently heard Hambro's record on this re-issue. They must have felt musically very close to each other for Hambro to use basically the same title as Garcia's fine LP. Garcia used Quill on alto on his album. It's also notable for being one of the first(if not the first) Bill Evans sideman albums. Your 'buddy' Tony Scott also plays on the LP using his real name A.J Sciacca. The Salinger-like existence of Garcia was a mystery to even NY musicians like Aaron Sachs, whose first question to me on our first gig together was, "Whatever happened to Dick Garcia?" I already posted the answer to that question here previously, but albums like this make we want to disturb his seclusion. 'Fourmost Guitars' is a great LP, with primo Raney with John Wilson, and a great guitar duo with Puma and Garcia. I probably posted what Puma said when I asked him when Garcia died, but it's worth repeating. "Dead? Yeah, he might as well be dead. He was in here (Gregory's jazz club) a few nights ago, leaning on the juke box with that same dead look in his eyes. Some people are dead, but they just don't know it." Remarks like that probably explained why there was no Memorial at St. Peter's for Puma...

There's a reason why 72% of the music of today sounds so mechanical...

Yeah, I knew that, but what is a Message to Hambro about?

This is basically the two Hambro Quintet albums Hambro did for Epic, 'The nature of Things' and 'Message From Hambro', plus an overseas session and a latin session he also did. Hambro gets a nice, full sound compared to most jazz alto players of the time, but I don't like the excessive vibrato he uses on the ballad cuts here. I was more interested in the sidemen he used , who include Eddie Costa, Sal Salvador, Barry Galbraith, but especially Dick Garcia, who really shines on the 'Message From Hambro' LP. Salvador is his usually glib, unswinging self, but Costa and Galbraith are solid. The real surprise is the mysterious Dick Garcia, who continually surprises me as a sideman as being a stronger player than he was on his only LP as a leader, whose title 'Message From Garcia' was either an influence on, or influenced by Hambro's title, depending on which came first (I think it was hambro's). While Garcia's playing on his own LP was fine, he seems to be on fire here and his other session with Tony Scott ('Both Sides of Tony Scott'), and gets a much stronger, Johnny Smith-like sound on the Joe Roland re-issue 'The Vibes Players of Bethlehem, Vol. 2. Wade Legge is also very strong on this LP, bringing a much hipper feel to it than 'The Nature of Things', plus some nice tunes.

He said that was the album that made him form his working quartet/quintet featuring Steve Gilmore and Bill Goodwin, which stayed together over 35 years, up to Phil's death.

As I posted in another thread, Phil told a student of his that that session never got off the page!

Wow! I never heard Waxman write in this idiom. At one point he wrote a thing for accordion, harp and piano; you're not gonna hear that very often. Too bad they don't have any Raksin in their catalogue; I love his noir writing. I just looked it up in the Meeker. That was Maynard on trpt., John Williams on piano, and Joe Mondragon on bass.

Yeah, that's it. Maybe this will start a new trend; jazz musicians writing musicals about their lives. Imagine if Monk, Miles or Mingus had done this...

Does Garcia get much blowing time on cuts 1-11?

Geller's strangest album was a musical he wrote about himself. It's got a Lenny Bruce routine in it, a song about Chet Baker, another one about Al Cohn(!), and another one about Bird. There's a very strange song about fusion that starts off with some really loud, obnoxious sounding distorted guitar riff, and then some lyrics about the market place and music, and then he trades fours with his soprano and the distorted guitar. Another song bemoans the fact that people don;t listen anymore to his 'favorite songs' written by Porter, Berlin, Jobim, etc... Some actress/singer plays his wife, Lorraine, and he writes some other songs having to do with art ("something that must be done") and jazz. The music and his playing are good, but did i mention that it's strange...?

Yeah, that was Ellaine. She threw herself in front of a subway when BE decided he wanted to breed with with a healthy blonde, rather than a fellow junkie.

There's a very cool video of Herb and Bill Evans (plus rhythm) rehearsing for a concert in Europe. I saw it over a friend's house so I don't know the name of it. Herb doubles on flute.

The only time I ever heard her was on a video tape where she played with four other pianists, including Bill Evans. A friend of mine who worships BE kept telling me about how bad she sounded compared to BE. Finally he played it for me, and I thought she sounded okay. She went over with Quincy's big band to France.

Wow!! Shades of Chris Dedrick and Gene Puerling! I knew that the jazz/studio guitarist Stuart Scharf had something to do with Spanky & Our Gang, but I never knew Bob did, also. Did Bob do the vocal arrangements? Did they also write and arrange, 'I'd Like To Get To Know You'? I love finding jazzers involved with some of the groups of the 60s, like I mentioned in the Tandyn Almer thread about that guy from the Hi-Los doing the vocal arrangements on the Association's album. I loves me dat 'sunshine pop'- Free Design, High Llamas, Judee Sill, etc...

There was also a story about some company supplying BG with a new mouthpiece to test out sometime during the tour, and PW slipping a busted second joint on BG's clarinet while he was getting the new mouthpiece from the company's rep. When Benny tried out the mouthpiece with the band, he was messing up all over the place, and he thought it was the new mouthpiece! I don't think Phil started out with the clarinet; he just used it to get into Julliard, because they weren't taking sax majors back then. The old story he told a million times was that he inherited an alto when his uncle passed away, and he was trying to melt it down to use it to make toy soldiers, when his mother made him take sax lessons. He turned out to be, in his words, "a natural". I went to a clinic that he gave in Brooklyn at a college that mainly consisted of inner city kids, who weren't too proficient on their instruments. It turned out to be pretty hilarious, with the kids unable to play any of the tunes he wanted them to play. He finally got fed up with the rhythm section in the middle of one song ('Laura') that someone from the audience requested, and put down his new Yamaha, and took over on the piano, calling out the changes to the bass player and pianist. He tried playing it on sax again, but the kids kept screwing up the changes, and he wound up playing the whole song on piano, still calling out the changes. They had a Q and A with the audience, and I stepped up to the mic and asked him what he thought of Eddie Costa. He was visibly startled by the question, and started to say something like, "What the hell would you ask-", but then regained his composure and said, "Good pianist, first call on vibes". I then followed up with, "Are you ever gonna put out a book of transcriptions of your solos? I heard there were a few attempts..." This time he was visibly annoyed with the question, and he gave me a dirty look and said, " Yes, there were as you said, a few 'attempts' at putting out a book of my solos, and NO, there's never gonna be a book of my solos!"

Yeah, he made some lousy albums in his time. I'm glad I never heard the Testament album if it's worse than Chromatic effing Banana! I liked his double-time, long lines on the bridge to the title song of Round Trip, but other than that, there wasn't much there. He even did an album called Greek Cooking which I never got anything out of, but maybe people who like Greek music liked it. One thing that held him back was that he never was able to play the flute, probably because he was such a natural on the alto. In the end, the work with Michel Legrand was the big break that ignited his career. He was so well known by the late 70s, my ex GF called me up out of nowhere to go to a PW concert at a local college. It was packed, and the people went nuts over the group. From then on, he had it made.

Woods said to one of his students that Musique Du Bois never got off the page, so I'd put the blame on the band rather than the leader. It was that record that convinced him he needed a steady working band, and he kept his rhythm section of Gilmore and Goodwin together for over 35 years. Just by the cover of Testament (wtf, a headband, shoulder-length hair!!!), I know I don't wanna hear it, but I think it was re-issued as 'Chromatic Banana' a total POS that a friend bought back in HS, and we used to make fun of it every time he put it on. The failed period in LA probably did do a number on his head, but he was always known to drink, or as Wayne Wright (who went on the road with him) said, "He just 'sinned', in general". He had a rep for being a wild dude even back when he was part of the Benny Goodman band that made the historic trip to the USSR, where he responded to BG's 'ray' by being caught by BG at a drunken party yelling out, "The King (of Swing), expletives. Some older dudes that knew him back in the 50s said that he and Quill used to get wasted, and start picking fights in bars. Quill's life was pretty much ended by an incident like that in Atlantic City... IMHO, I think the Emphyzema was the cause of his musical slide. Ironically, as his playing declined towards the end, he started getting 'warm and fuzzy' as a person.

Woods had a deep admiration for Benny Carter and Johnny Hodges when he was studying with a private teacher as a kid. His teacher would bring him transcriptions of both Carter and Hodges, which he ate up, so his early period sounded like a guy trying to imitate Carter and Bird. I've never been crazy about Carter's playing (too much vibrato and dotted 8th 16th note rhythms), so that might account for my preference of his breakthrough playing from 1957 onwards. BTW, I didn't mean any criticism of you in my quote from my sax player friend; I just wanted to point out the general admiration that most sax players have for Woods. I remember one time asking Aaron Sachs what he thought of PW. He looked at me astonished, saying that, "Of course PW is at the very highest level of musicality in the jazz world", and then told me that he had the honor of playing in some rehearsal bands with PW in NYC. Again, I realize as you pointed out, that most aspects of music are subjective, and your informed view on PW is just as valid as mine, Ramsey's or my sax player friend's, but on the few aspects of music that are objective, most people (even Sangrey!) agree that PW was a master.

Very sad to hear. I saw him at the Phil Woods Memorial Concert in Penn., and I had no idea he was in his 90s. He was jumping around all over the stage. RIP.

I told one of the sax players I played with tonight what you said about Phil's playing after 1957-58. I chose this sax player, because he's the most calm, relaxed, nicest guy in the big band, and I've never heard him say a bad word about anyone in all the years I've known him. His reply was: "He's nuts." Phil played with Oliver Nelson post-1957-58, at least when ON featured him with the Jazz Interactions Orchestra in NYC. So did Gary McFarland, Michel Legrand (he featured PW on a piece he wrote for him that lasted an entire side of the record they made together called 'Images'), Kenyon Hopkins, Gunther Schuller, and on and on... His discography is seemingly endless. If you want relaxed playing, go to Getz or Desmond. PW played like his personality, which was anything but relaxed. The first time I met him, an obnoxious friend of mine had been bothering him during his break at a concert he gave at the short-lived NYC Jazz Museum. When my friend told me he was going to introduce me to PW, I reluctantly walked into his little makeshift dressing room, and PW greeted me with, 'Get the f--- outta here!", and threw a beer can in my general direction.

I can only quote from one of my fave jazz critics, Doug Ramsey who wrote about Woods' 'coming out' session on the 1957 LP Herbie Mann's 'Bebop Synthesis' (AKA 'Yardbird Suite') The Savoy Sessions: "The co-star of the album, or possibly the star, depending on the orientation of your ears, is Phil Woods.He was 26 when the date was recorded, five years out of Julliard, deep into Charlie Parker, and a formidable alto player. Phil had worked with Charlie Barnet, George Wallington, Friedrich Gulda, Dizzy Gillespie and others.he had studied with Lennie Tristano and formed extremely pleasing recording partnerships with Jimmy Raney and with fellow alto saxophonist Gene Quill. There were few alto men in 1957 who played with Woods' fire and melodic daring. even in those days, there was no Bird disciple who made more effective use of the Parker tradition than Woods. He has continued to build on that tradition and to introduce even greater passion and lyricism, and in the mid 1970s he is clearly a giant of his instrument. It would be useless to detail Phil's best moments in this collection. He was having a great day, and there is such life, depth, and edge to his playing that he comes near to overwhelming the occasion." The point was that PW's playing was fine before this session, but he began exhibiting the qualities Ramsey indicated above on a regular basis, rather than intermittently. But don't trust me, hold a seance and ask Oliver Nelson why he faced death threats from the black musicians in his big band for having a white musician (PW) as star soloist in his band, and wrote an essay on how Woods was one of the few white musicians who could hold his own with any black player on the scene in the 60s. Or Dizzy when he featured him in his world-touring big band, as did Quincy Jones; or Hall Overton when he had PW play first alto in the Monk Big Band Concert at Town Hall; or Manny Albam when he featured Woods on all of his albums of the late 50s and 60s; or Gary McFarland when he featured him as a soloist in his live Big Band album; or Kenyon Hopkins when he featured him as a soloist in much of the film music he wrote for The Hustler, Lilith, and other films; or Rob McConnell when he featured him on an album celled 'Woods and Brass'; or the many sessions and concerts with Michel Legrand, where PW got a standing ovation(I was there) at Carnegie Hall for his astounding solo feature on 'You Must Remember Spring'. Or ask Scooby, one of the members of this board, why he has spent countless hours transcribing many of Woods' solos. Woods refused to settle into the non-creative role of the non-jazz studio musician,or Broadway show player, and established himself in Europe with albums like The European Rhythm Machine's 'Live at Montreaux' album featuring musicians like Daniel Humair, Gordon Beck and, George Gruntz . When he returned to the US, he was able to play uncompromising jazz for the rest of his life. Woods refused to let a life ending battle with Emphezyma stop his declared mission as a "Jazz Warrior " and I witnessed him playing Cannonball Adderly's part in the "New Bottles, Old Wine' album in a concert at the Manhattan School of Music, dragging his oxygen tank along with him.

Are you talking about Woods or Ver Planck? If you're talking about Woods, go ask Peter King what he thinks about Woods...

FS put out a reissue of BVP's entire output as a leader. I was always interested in checking out his albums because he used good sidemen, i.e. Phil Woods, Eddie Costa, Frank Rehak, Pepper Adams, and Bobby Jaspar. BVP was a trombonist /arr. who admired Bill Harris, and arranged in a mainstream, Woody Herman style.He was the husband of Marlene Ver Planck, the vocalist. Basically, you get about five good Phil Woods solos from 1957-58, when he made the break from being just another Bird imitator to finding his own voice, two good Eddie Costa solos, and some good playing on one album that featured three flutes and a wind doubler, plus trombone and rhythm playing Bird tunes, by Bobby Jaspar. You also get a few good Pepper Adams solos from a horrible LP called 'The Soul of Jazz' that tried to blend white, cornball gospel and jazz, with disastrous results. Thankfully, they swing on the solos, and only play the jive-ass triadic 'gospel' garbage on the heads. If you can find some way of just getting the six or seven cuts that have extended Woods, Costa Jaspar and Adams solos, that's about all that's worth hearing from this reissue.

They ain't happy with da hip-hop getting the Pulitzer. NPR is doing a program on it sometime this week.

Love that one! Yeah, I like his piano playing more than his vibes playing, but I'm beginning to appreciate his vibes playing for its simplicity compared to the excesses of other vibes players. On this LP, he plays only vibes, with his buddy Bill Evans playing piano. I finally found EC's trio recording with Oscar Pettiford. I had hoped there was a full record of the trio, but they just play one tune, 'Taking a Chance On Love'. It was recorded during the session for the LP 'Winner's Circle, but not included on the album.