sgcim

Who knows what goes on in the choices they make for film soundtracks. Maybe DR told them to play the melody like that, maybe a film executive told them to play it like that, maybe Cassavettes wanted it like that, maybe it was the musician's choice. All I know is that I have the original Dot recording of DR's music for that and other film music he wrote, and it sounded nothing like that. In the case of the Dot record, it was not from the film; it was Raksin's LP, so everything is exquisite. The New Wave II album has many versions of that, and the only one they used in the film was that horrific version where they got some opera singer to vocalise the melody! They played that twice- the recording studio scene, and the corny ending scene where Stella Stevens returns to Ghost (Bobby Darin) and the group when they're playing in that club. You can hear Uan Rasey doesn't use that schmaltzy vibrato on the Chinatown Theme (which I hear as Goldsmith's homage to the great DR). Sure, he does use some vibrato, but not that fast, tasteless vibrato he uses on TLB, which makes me feel like I'm playing a wedding gig with some fat, smelly trumpet player with a waxed moustache playing Peg of My Heart 100x in a row. That was a great segment of that anthology. The trumpet player/leader of the group stole some sacred voodoo melody, and arranged it for his jazz combo. When he performed it at the jazz club, the voodoo gods were not happy...

I just heard an interesting record called something like 'Jazz in the Movies: The New Wave Vol.2', where they had every cue from movies like The Hustler. You get to hear stuff that was cut from the movie for whatever reason, but is still some great music. In The Hustler, Kenyon Hopkins wrote some great cues featuring Phil Woods, proving why people like Oliver Nelson, Quincy Jones, Michel Legrand, Hopkins, Gary McFarland, and others, used PW whenever they were lucky enough to get him. There's other interesting stuff from European movies featuring writers like George Gruntz, Michel legrand, and some Eyetalian film composers I can't recall. The West Coast film music featured I found painful to listen to, because all the soloists who improvised or played melodies, played with this horrible, corny-assed vibrato that made me want to puke. I prefer film composers who managed to integrate jazz into the score, rather than just tell guys to play a tune and blow, because you can hear that on any jazz record Few film composers and jazz musicians were capable of handling something like that, but the soundtrack by Eddie Sauter to 'Mickey-One' used Stan Getz to great advantage.

Well said!

RIP, Coco.

Good to hear!

KCR plays Jobim's music all day on 1/25, which is Jobim's birthday. They had some great live performances in the studio (with a slightly out of tune piano) with some Brazilian artists in NY that I've never heard of, playing Jobim tunes. It goes on to till midnight.

Thanks!

I know Jimmy Raney played as a sideman on one Most LP. Is he on any of these four? I saw the documentary on Most a few years back. He was a tremendous scat singer! His ideas on flute were fine, but I was surprised how small his sound on flute was in the documentary.

From what Jill said in her email to me, they wanted one of the major publishing houses to put it out, or they were going to put it out on their own. Scarecrow would've been fine, but they wanted one of the bigger houses, and you know what they're interested in... I bought the DVD of 'Life in Eb', and it didn't offer anything new to me. Chan's memoir with a similar name had some stuff on Phil that I'd never read before.

Thanks for the info, Ken! Jill emailed me after the great Stroudsburg Memorial Concert last year saying they were still looking for a publisher. Hopefully, she'll email me when the autobiography is available as an e-book. I'm looking forward to hearing the recordings Bill is releasing. I'm still reeling from Phil's performance of 'Cheek To Cheek' on one of the North Sea jazz Festival recordings. Scooby, I'm looking forward to playing through all those great Cherokee transcriptions. Thanks again!

Thanks for all the great stuff on Phil! On Judgement Day, we faithful in Phil will spend the rest of eternity trading fours with Phil and Bird in the promised land. Have you heard any word from Jill about the availability of Phil's autobiography?

WKCR just played this Hicks LP. I can't imagine it getting much better than this. Watson, Hicks and crew are on fire!

Yea, the only CB things worth listening to are the ones Almer wrote. CB wanted co-credit for 'Along Comes Mary, because he sang on the demo! Yeah, right... Then CB didn't give credit to Almer on his Sagittarius LP for one song Almer wrote, probably to get revenge. Another great Almer song is 'Little Girl Lost and Found', which brings out another heavyweight from this scene, Ruthann Friedman, who sang it on a single. Friedman wrote 'Windy', and was able to live off the residuals till the Internest ruined that. She retired in 1972, but made a comeback in 2006, probably because she needed the dough. Both she and Almer were also inventors; Almer designed some special bong that became famous, and she designed some type of stationery that you could also use as rolling papers! She made one LP that features her songs, with only her doing a great job accompanying herself on the guitar, straddling both folk and jazz.influences. They did another compilation LP, 'Hurried Life' which features some tunes with Van Dyke Parks playing and producing.

Thanks for Poor Old Organ Grinder! I managed to find the other cuts and Sleepy Hollow People on YT, but Poor Old Organ Grinder was a nice surprise. I like the psychedelic, episodic tempo changes he throws in there; very inventive guy. He had another tune on The Association's first LP that he co-wrote with Curt Boettcher, a ballad called 'The Message of Our Love' that was pretty nice. I checked out a bunch of Boettcher things, and wasn't impressed with his songwriting; pretty bland, unimaginative stuff. The Association dragged in Clark Burroughs of The Hi-Los for the great vocal arrangements on things like Cherish, Never My Love and Windy, although I don't know who was responsible for the vocal charts on 'Requiem For the Masses' . I checked out samples of 'And Then Came Tandyn', and there didn't seem to be anything on the same level as 'Along Came Mary', or 'Poor Organ Grinder', but they were only 20 second samples... Is there a full version of that interview of Tandyn and Lenny? They only show a very short exchange between them, but it looks like Tandyn is seriously bugged with Lenny, and it could get really good!

In one big band I play in, we always start our concerts with Toshiko's 'tuning' blues chart. It just goes on and on, chorus after chorus. There's nothing wrong with it, but it just feels like it goes on and on, no transitions, no interludes, no contrasts, just on and on till the end...

I had never heard of this pianist/songwriter until a few days ago, when someone mentioned that he wrote the song 'Along Comes Mary' for The Association in the 60s. Wiki and some other online articles said that he was born in 1942 in Minnesota, was able to play classical pieces by ear when he was four, went to a conservatory as a kid, but then started listening to Trane, Miles and Ahmad Jamal, and dropped out of high school to move to Chicago and become a jazz pianist. He then moved to LA, where he roomed with fellow jazz pianist/upright bass player Bob Bruno, and they gigged as a duo in clubs, until Almer got involved with the pop recording scene in LA of the 60s. After doing some things with Brian Wilson, he went to Washington DC for a film score, which fell through, and wound up staying in DC for the rest of his life. Anyone familiar with his music?

Yea, I meant I didn't hear Marsh in Turner's playing.

I agree with that, but I don't hear Turner's claim that Marsh is his greatest influence.

Well said! That kind of sums up Chekhov's famous quote, "There is nothing new in the arts except talent".

And yet, Warne ignored all the fads jazz went through, and stayed with the tradition of spinning off masterful improvisations on tunes with a solid musical architecture, like Pops, Bird, Brownie,Prez, Bud, Sonny Rollins, Bill Evans, Lee Konitz, Jimmy Raney and others. The fact that players like Ted Brown and Mark Turner lack his creativity and imagination says more about them than the tradition. Even Warne needed to work on some things that he was deficient in (sound being the main thing).

That's what I was saying. Rather than hiring a funk rhythm section and playing things in straight 8ths in 17/4 on three or four sus chords, Warne was still creating beautiful, original lines on the same chord sequences he and Konitz had been playing for 50 years. He was being original, within the jazz tradition, rather than going outside the jazz tradition to be 'original'.

Maybe to you...

I'm talking about the compositions and changes he played on. Warne didn't have to write things in 17/4 and play things in straight 8ths and play free/modal tunes. He could (and you could extend that to other players) get as complex or as simple as he wanted to, and still play off the changes to tin pan alley tunes like It's You or No One, and sound original without adding non-jazz elements. In short, Warne was one of the greatest jazz improvisers that ever lived!!!!!!!

I was saying that the fact that Warne was still playing the same tunes that he was back in the 50s (Konitz, too) that he DIDN"T fetishize 'originality.

Warne went down swingin' and playing the same standards he played back in the 50s. So much for the fetish with 'originality'. Some great Larry Koonse as well. When I heard him first with the LA Jazz Quartet, I knew I had to get a Borys B-120, his guitar.