sgcim

I went on a Kenyon Hopkins frenzy a few weeks ago, after listening to all the out takes featured in the Jazz In the Movies that featured Phil Woods, Billy Bauer and others in some fantastic music that never made it into the movie. I wanted more! He was another composer/arr. from that period that included Oliver Nelson, Manny Albam, Michel Legrand, Quincy Jones, Gary McFarland, Gunther Schuller, George Russell and others from NY who were lucky enough to be able to still use Phil Woods, before PW fled the studio scene in NY for Europe. Hopkins wrote a wonderful feature for Woods in 'Lillith', and features him consistently in Hopkins' LP 'The Sounds of NY'. He also wrote the theme song for a TV series about a lawyer(played by George C. Scott) that featured Woods playing the melody. There's an interesting re-issue of the 'Sounds of NY' LP that also has another LP from 1959 called 'Rooms', that is nothing like any of his other music. It's written for a quintet in a kind of neo-primitive bag, and features Teo Macero and Bobby Collins on piano, and is way out there. Here's the best summation of his career I've found: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/kenyon-hopkins-mn0000086822/biography

I'm just finishing Jann Wenner's biography, 'Sticky Fingers', and anything having to do with RS creeps me out! I don't know who was worse, Ertegun or Wenner... I think the most common phrase in the book is, "Ralph Gleason is turning over in his grave...".

After over 40 years of looking for this, I just received the Oscar Pettiford 'Discoveries' CD from a seller on Discogs in The Netherlands for only $10 and change. I only bought it for one cut, 'Taking a Chance on Love' which featured Costa on piano. I have EC playing this on the Newport 1957 Live LP, and on the Tal farlow lp, The Swinging Guitar Of..., but this recording is much more enjoyable, because the sound is better than the Newport LP, and the tempo is much more conducive to swinging than Tal's faster tempo. Costa uses his descending alt. chords harmonization on the melody, as he does on the other two LPs, but starts it with a rubato statement of the melody. His solo is classic EC, with the repeated lines, off beat attacked and sustained notes, double octaves chorus, and humorous content, but most important, it all swings. The only quote I know from EC was his comment, "GOOD JAZZ MUST SWING", and this lives up to his one demand. The rest of the album is OP playing pizz. cello on many cuts and other groups with Matt Matthews, Hank Jones and Paul Quinichette. I was surprised to hear a bass clarinet solo by the late Chasey Dean, an old gigging mate of mine. The liner notes unfortunately are by the verbose Phil Schaap, who true to form, doesn't even mention Costa's name once! If you listen to WKCR, this won't surprise you...

Wow!! I'm extremely envious of your experience with Ed. Guitarists everywhere never tire of discussing what gauge (thickness) of strings he used. Do you think you could put thousands of us out of our misery by asking Ed the next time you speak with him if he used tens, elevens or twelves? And tell him we worship the ground he walks on, too. Why did he retire? Was it his wife's passing? Some injury? Tell him we want him back!

When I went to Milt Hinton's estate sale, I was surprised to find that he had a bunch of Farnon CDs in his collection. I snatched up as many as I could. He also was a big fan of Frank Mantooth. I gobbled those up, too. I've never heard anything like the way they interwove the band and the SU on that album. On top of that, you had a third master of harmony, ED BICKERT on guitar! Did you ever have any dealings with Bickert, Ted?

The collaboration betwixt The Singers Unlimited and The Boss Brass was the best thing I've ever heard in that bag. Gene Puerling meets Rob McConnell- that pretty much says it all...

RIP. From Magma to jazz to composition, he sounded like an orchestra with the loop pedals.

Gil Melle

I was just listening to that album, and i agree with everything you said about it. GB didn't keep his foot on the sustain pedal most of the time, like he did on most of his later recordings (my only complaint with GB). Maybe it was due to the fact that a fellow vibes player, GM, did the arr. on half the tunes, and may have had some input on GB's playing. Even though GB was a genius vibes player, I prefer listening to players who didn't lean on the sustain pedal, Bags, GM, Cal Tjader, Eddie Costa, etc... as much as GB did. GB talked about that session in his autobiography, coming down hard on Jim Hall for not letting him know beforehand that he couldn't make the session, and sending Joe Puma (who does a wonderful job) without letting him know. Burton also lets everyone else he played with have it; Getz (I don't know where to start!) Metheny (made little fixes in the studio on all his solos), MJQ( couldn't sightread), Coryell (stoned), Sam Brown (same as Coryell), and so on. Brookmeyer has a great solo on 'My Favorite Things', but he limits Woods to the clarinet(!) throughout. GB's solo interpretations are fantastic. He manages to sound like Bill Evans (his stated biggest influence) with four mallets! The best thing about the LP is that they took tunes from TSOM like 'Do Re MI, Climb Every Mountain, The title song, and made them into blowing vehicles in a very organic fashion; something only harmonic geniuses like GB and GM were capable of doing.

Eddie Costa seemed to have listened to him. I have the Sal Salvador Quintet/Quartets CD on Blue Note, and both Costa and 'Johnny' Williams play piano on it. On 'Get Happy' Williams comes up with a low, rumbling drone in the lower register that I could've sworn was Costa's. Costa's got a great thing on Get Happy where he plays it fast with those low octaves and best of all, in the parallel minor key!

Thanks!

Between hundreds of records by Star Wars Boy, and the classical guitarist, not to mention Johnny Williams the bass player, it's very difficult to do a search on the jazz pianist without having to wade through those other guys.

Yeah, I actually agree with JSngry on something, although I don't see Pass in a negative light. Pass was an incredible guitarist, who had different influences than a hard-core bopper like Raney was. Raney talks about how Bird used accents on the off-beats in his straight 8th notes, while the Swing conception was uneven 8th notes with accents on the beat..Barry Harris was quoted on Raney's 'Live in Tokyo LP as saying Raney was "the only guitarist who could do things like Yard did". Also, there's a big difference between the types of lines guys like Raney and Farlow played compared to Pass'. Raney's were more involved melodically than Pass'. Pass' lines tended to be much more straightforward, ordinary lines with less chromaticism than Raney's or Farlow's. Tal came out to see me when I was playing at a club, during the time that Pass was at the height of his popularity, and I mentioned to him when we went out for breakfast that as great as Pass was as a guitarist, I still preferred the Raney/Farlow school to the Pass and Herb Ellis style. Pass was more influenced by Django than Raney and Farlow were, which is why he was a better choice to team up with Oscar Peterson than they were.

I thought that earlier JP would be hipper with the time thing, but he was always like that. Although he played bop-type lines, he always used a Swing-era rhythmic conception. Jimmy Raney described JP like this: "He sounds like Charlie Parker, all straightened out". In Grad school, I wanted to loan my classical guitar teacher some solo jazz guitar records, to hear what he thought of them. He said, "Okay, but I refuse to listen to Joe Pass". Then he let loose a string of epithets to describe JP's Virtuoso albums that scared the hell out of me. I didn't loan him any records, but he fell in love with a Geo. Van Eps piece for solo guitar that I played at my recital. He ordered me to xerox a copy of it for him. I wrote an arr. of Stolen Moments for the school's Guitar Ensemble that he loved also, but when he ordered me to xerox all of that stuff for him, I pretended to forget to do it... I'm the only guitarist I know of who can play SM as a solo guitar piece with the exact ON original voicings. I've listened to all of them, and only one guy came close.

Heard this last night on the Fresh Sound two-fer, which also features Flute Suite. Each player is featured on a blues by A.K. Highlights- Nat Adderly, Seldon Powel, Eddie Costa doing a Monkish thing on his feature, an early Phil Woods, and Sahib Shihab. After the high note trumpet feature, there's a few seconds of the band's reaction to it!

I think Glasel used Garcia on a quartet LP' obviously not this one.

I love Raney, but that LP is all double tracks.

I just heard this last night, and was astounded by Schildkraut's playing on the whole LP. I had heard him on other records, and even ran into him once when we were playing wedding gigs in different rooms in Brooklyn, but I had no idea he could play like that. I like Handy, but the use of violin, flute and oboe with the trumpet and two saxes didn't knock me out. Schildkraut brought that record to a much higher level.

Hey Fer, I stumbled on to your Eddie Costa you tube collection. Some great stuff, but some of it wasn't EC. I think it was Don Abney(?) on the Lucky Thompson cuts, and Johnny Williams doing that great bass drone thing on the Sal Salvador version of 'Get Happy. Sounded like EC, anyway. Have you ever heard the version of 'Taking A Chance on Love' EC did with Oscar Pettiford on 'Discoveries? Is it worth getting? He did that tune with Tal and on the Live at Newport LP. One musician said that he was booked to play on a soundtrack that Q was scoring, and Q walked into the studio with no music! He just gave them some riffs and grooves to play, and that's how they did the entire score.

Make that Jack Kreisberg, and the album is 'One', which is excellent. The Cal Collins album is 'By Myself'.

Yeah, some great writing on that one! Those two guys, Aaron and Vinnie kept gigging into their 90s. I miss Aaron a lot. His solos were great works of art. I'll have to check out the Glasel album. Was Dick Garcia on that one?

George Van Eps put out a few solo guitar LPs, Soliloquy, My Guitar. Harry Leahey made one, but it's hard to find. Lenny Breau has two other than Cabin Fever, 5:00 Bells and Last Sessions. There's a CD called 'Legends' that has both Johnny Smith and Geo. Van Eps doing solo performances, but JS plays Spanish classical guitar pieces with a pick. Peter bernstein, Howard Alden and Jack Kreisman(?) have fairly recent solo guitar albums. Pasquale Grasso just put one out that is pretty scary. Bucky Pizzarelli made one a while ago. Kenny Poole made a great one before he passed. I think Cal Collins made one before he passed...

All those great SA Tonight Show episodes were erased...

I got this message yesterday, and ran home screaming like a little baby. I had just went through something like this with my Roku box. I was having trouble getting Roku, so I went to the Roku booklet, and did a search it recommended. I wound up on a Roku site with a beautiful looking operator who asked me if I wanted to chat about it. I explained my problem, and she asked me for my phone number associated with my Roku account. She said a Roku tech would call me back and walk me through the fix to my problem. A second later, the phone rang. It was the promised Roku tech! He led me through the process, and my Roku was magically fixed. He then told me it only cost me $499!!!!!!! He told me if I didn't pay, he'd undo the magic fix, so I paid. Then I looked up the company I paid, and it was some scammers located in New Dehli. I contacted my credit card company, and they told me to uninstall the files they loaded on my hard drive, and they'd take care of the charges. That's why I'm reluctant to do anything that asks me if I want to make changes to my computer, like Lipi suggested. You can't trust anyone...

I never thought of The Hustler as being a West Coast film, because it used all East Coast musicians on the soundtrack- Roswell Rudd, Phil Woods, Billy Bauer, Kenny Davern and Jimmy Cleveland- but it was filmed in both LA and NY. They probably recorded the music at Edison Studios in NYC. Hopkins used Woods on another film he scored, 'Lilith', which had some nice sax session things with Woods playing lead alto.