sgcim

I saw him come out with the tank twice- once at MSM with the MSM Big Band playing Cannonball's part in a recreation of the "New Bottles, Old Wine' album, and it was the same thing; gasping for air when he wasn't playing. The second time was at a clinic he did at LIU in Brooklyn. he walked in late, dressed like a lumberjack, dragging his tank behind him on a little dolly.

I remember talking about PW's emphyzema, with Wayne Wright, who himself was undergoing an experimental treatment for the disease at the time (he passed away six months later). When I told him Phil also had it, he wasn't surprised. He had been on the road with Phil, and he described his behavior as "sinning". I asked him what he meant, and he said, "Oh, you know, just sinning in every possible way he could; smoking, drinking, gambling, cussing- just sinning in general!" When I told my devout, Lutheran brother that story, he came up with a nickname for him; 'Filth Woods'.

But That's A Queer Trait Just Mine?

I'm pretty much depending on the royalties from my OSLT patent to fund my early retirement...

Or Something Like That; I believe that is my own creation, and I am currently involved in securing a patent for it, so I can collect royalties every time it's used... Joey Goldstein told me you showed up at his gig Monday night. He laments the fact that you're not on the air anymore, as I'm sure anyone who digs jazz in Toronto also does.

I just saw an interview with PW from Hamilton College on you tube. The interviewer asks him if there were any albums he regretted making (OSLT). PW answers: "Well there's always 'Greek Cooking'..." and then they both cracked up laughing.

I played 'Borderline' on 100s of gigs. Little did I know that an ex MD sideman wrote it. RIP.

Whoa, man! Thanks for that! Great arr. by CB, and yet more superlative PW. Was that from a record PW made with CB, or was that just made for the compilation? I'm sorry, but PW didn't engage in 'bells and whistles', and after 1957, there was no 'period' where he got worse. It was straight ahead till the disease made it impossible for him to play at that level.

Back in college, I was warned not to go down to the first floor by my teacher; she said there was a student who freaked out, and was attacking students with his trombone.

RIP. I was playing at a NY jazz club years ago, and I met his ex-wife hangin' at the bar.

Yup, that's her! In the book, she mentions one ad in which she was shot as four different Vietnamese soldiers; one shooting a gun, another brandishing a sword, etc...

I'm reading a book a book by Alice Denham, 'Sleeping With Bad Boys', because she has a chapter on William Gaddis, my fave writer. In the book, she mentions that she posed for many jazz LPs, and shows her posting for an album called 'Four Lessons in Jazz',featuring Art Blakey, The Australian Jazz Quartet, Johnny Richards and Charles Mingus. She's shown on the cover in front of a blackboard, smiling and letting it all hang out. I've always wondered who these beautiful women were in real life, and she had quite a story: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/arts/alice-denham-ex-playboy-centerfold-dies-at-89.html Here's the album I was talking about: https://www.discogs.com/Art-Blakey-The-Jazz-Messengers-Charlie-Mingus-Australian-Jazz-Quintet-Johnny-Richards-4-Lessons-In-J/release/6027382

I remember his famous quote to Phil Woods during that period, "Be a man, Phil; sell out!"

By the time I had him as a teacher in a harmony class, he seemed pretty burnt out on everything. He never wrote another piece of music after that period that he wrote the String Quartet. I don't like the second movement of that quartet. It sounds like Webern on 'ludes... He wrote another piece for clarinet and piano that he described as featuring virtuoso passages for the clarinet of the type that a bebop player would play in a dance band combo. I can't find it on you tube.

One of the composers i studied with in college was a former jazz saxophonist and clarinet player who would incorporate some TZ jazz into his compositions. In his most famous piece, 'String Quartet in Two Movements' he has a section about two minutes into it where the cello starts walking like a bass, and then the 1st violin wails a solo, while the viola and 2nd violin lay down a mellow comp.

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...?