sgcim

I just got out my 'live at Bourbon St.' double CD set, and read your liner notes about testing out the new digital recorder. Wasn't Randy Bachman the owner of Guitarchives? Did he have anything to do with the digital masters 'mysteriously disappearing', and you not getting paid? He was really 'taking care of business...' Thanks for the great, historic recording of someone who was probably the greatest jazz guitarist in the history of the music. Nobody's even come close to him since.

I got a guy from Ghana to do the tiling in my co-op apt's bathroom for about 1 or 2k. He had to sneak in the tiling and his tools, because he didn't have a license, and he didn't think the co-op board would approve him. I got my entire apt. painted by an ex-engineer who had an NBD and became born again, for $900. He came in whenever he had the time and took a few months...

Yeah, that's the schist! who said ya can't dance to jazz...Swing that mother!

No, it was Kenny Seymour. Speaking of Harold Wheeler though, I'm going to be doing his Hairspray off and on through October.

I worked with Billy Butler for two weeks playing 'Hair', ten shows a week back in the mid 70s. Back then, he was involved in Galt McDemott's various bands and shows. I was still in my teens, and the look he gave me when I walked into the first rehearsal, would've put the fear of God in even the most confirmed atheist. He never let up on the competitive thing, even when i had him over my parents' house for dinner. I took him down the basement, and I played him the reel-to-reel tapes I had of him playing with Stitt. That, and some booze my father gave him seemed to mellow him out a bit. I was in my heavy Johnny Smith solo guitar phase, and he made an intriguing statement about these masterworks. "Hell, when that stuff came out, we knew that he was taking some piano arrangements, and adapting them for guitar using a D tuning." I read the recent Johnny Smith biography, "Moonlight in Vermont' multiple times, and it never mentioned anything about piano arrangements, but playing though some transcriptions of them, there's no way any guitarist could've come up with some of those harmonic ideas, so BB was probably right. The band was pretty hip, with players like the great George Barrow and Charlie Fowlkes, and was led by a hip pianist/conductor. We had spontaneous funk jams for a half hour before the show started every night, and I felt like I was in heaven. BB played some groovy blues licks, and I went into my Grant Green bag. Then the harsh realities of the NY music business poured cold water on us, when the contractor told us no more funk jams before the show. BB was always working with the Hindemith book 'Elementary Training For Musicians' on breaks. He told me he spent a lot of time chopping wood on his farm.

Compare the sound on an LP like 'Down Here on the Ground' recorded by Creed Taylor, to these recordings. The decay on the attack is quicker when you use your thumb to strike a string than it is if you had used a pick, so you need reverb to give the sound more sustain. The titular track is Wes at his best, with Herbie Hancock playing tasteful things behind him.

I listened to the sound on the promo, and it has the same sound problem as "Smokin' at the Half Note". Wes is way down in the mix, and he sounds kind of 'plinky'. That's always been my one complaint with Wes' records, they don't record him with enough reverb. There were some exceptions, but that thumb needed as much 'verb as possible without sounding like The Ventures.

Wes only plays on six of the ten cuts, but any Wes is invaluable.

Wow! Too bad I'm retarded. I mean retired from teaching; I would've loved to play that one for the kids. I'm glad kids are being exposed to stuff like that.

Now that i remember back to those 16 years of CD day (one day a week, I'd turn the classroom over to the kids), and some of the brighter, more creative ones would bring in something like that (wesley D.) once in a great while, and get extra credit for sparing their teacher the agony of listening to an A minor chord for three straight minutes. I liked one artist that put together these collage-like, episodic things that offered a lot of contrast, that I'd always use for listening tests- changing meters, textures, tempos, dynamics. etc...Forget his name. One of the kids was 'making beats' for the Roughriders and other people, and still involved with jamming at his church. I brought in a Grover Washington Jr. video, and he sat there spellbound saying, "That's what I want to do with my life!". Another kid, also an organist for his church, who could walk bass lines with the foot pedals,also did some hip-hop sessions. He could blow away me and other professional jazz musicians i used to bring down to the school with just blues scale licks. I got him lessons with Roy Ayers pianist, Mark Adams, and now he's playing more than blues scale licks. Hopefully kids like that will change the music for the better

It's no use Dmitry, the pod people have taken them over. We stand as much chance of convincing them as Kevin McCarthy in 'IOTBS'. Just keep repeating like I have through this thread, "I for one, welcome our electronically programmed percussion Overlords. It is the 'Perfect Beat!"

You can't reverse 'progress', although you'll be able to still hear that music on shows like 'Across 110th St.' on WKCR. It amazes me that I can enjoy the most mediocre song from back then, and am repulsed by most of today's over-produced music. The Netflix series 'Luke Cage' had some very 'groovy' music in its soundtrack, but the inferior theme song (written by some hip-hop 'genius') reminds us where we are now. As to whether Hip-hop has done more harm than good, for BAM, a book-length argument about that subject can be found in the book "A Hole In Our Soul". I read with glee an essay by one of the white music critics who championed Hip-Hop, bemoaning the fact that everything has become 'hip', and now we're regularly hearing hip-hop grooves and rap in most TV and radio commercials! He ends the essay wondering if 'maybe we got it all wrong...' As for the future, you can't go home again, and I for one, welcome our technological overlords...

I knew the war was over when Stevie Wonder came out with, 'I Just Called To Say I Love You" in the 80s. It was like he fell asleep, and the Pods did their body snatching. After that, 'it was all theater'. I had my fun; I played with Bernard Purdie, Melba Moore, Sister Sledge, etc... I just feel sorry for the kids who want to play today. 'Let My Children Hear the TR808?' , I listened to HOT 97 everyday for 16 years- there's nothing there. I'm retired from enabling and engaging, I've got gigs all the way through Oct., but there are no TR808s involved.

I agree with that, but Marvin Gaye didn't use drum machines, so it was part of the tradition of black music, not the goose-stepping dance music that people want to hear today. Prince is okay, too.

All I know is that i can listen to a radio show like across 110th Street on WKCR for four hours without changing the station, but when the hip-hop show comes on, the radio goes off. I taught music in inner city high schools for about 20 years, and the first question I'd ask a kid who wanted to play drums in the band was, "do you play in your church?' If the answer was yes, he was in. And the results were always great. If the kid never played in the church, and just listened to Afrika Bambadboy (who was the leader of a street gang called the Black Spades in The Bronx, and had no musical background) and hip-hop, he played stiff as a board. Oh yeah, you can get the people on the dance floor with that, but do you really want to listen to it? Getting away from 'Black music', record producer John Simon is most proud of the fact that he has never used a drum machine, or even a click track on one record that he has produced. Real music has rhythmic nuances that are part of the expression of the artist. A programmed drum machine can't read a musician's mind and react to some nuance in time. Drum machines have their use, but it's one of expediency; some continuous complex rhythm in a film score that lasts for an entire scene, techno music, etc... But when you remove the drummer from R&B, and replace him with a soulless drum machine, you wind up with the corniest, stiffest music that has no tie to real black music, i.e. Gospel, blues, jazz, Soul, This really hit me when they played the record of the year on 'Hot 97', the top 'Hip-hop and R&B station in NYC ten years ago. It sounded as stiff and square as some mickey mouse band playing the charleston. And that's all the kids wanted to hear then, and that's all kids are ever going to want to hear from now on, because we've let tech run the music, instead of the other way around. YMMV...

I completely agree with this. The drum machine has destroyed the beauty of Black Music forever. I for one, welcome our robotic percussion Overlords!

RIP, to a great bassist. I still remember seeing him dancing around with that percussion instrument he used to wear on his feet when he played with Clark Terry. Whose album is "Impressions of a Patch of Blue"? Oh, I just googled it. It was Walt Dickerson. Too bad he used Sun Ra on it. With the right pianist, it could've been a great LP.

Fascinating documentary, thanks for posting. From what I had read of him, I thought he was a much older guy, because he had so much influence on Polish musicians. Dead at 37, after becoming an E,N &T doctor, and then scoring 65 films. There's a good doc. on the composer William Walton on you tube called "At the Haunted End of the Day" that I tried to post a link to, but it wouldn't paste for some reason. WW scored all of the Olivier Shakespeare films.

I agree; I was just saying that I admired Burton's honesty when talking about the musicians he worked with, and listed a series of comments he made concerning them. It wasn't intended to be a description of the entire book.

Here's a comparison by Ray Charles and some other guy:

Yeah, it's pretty much the highlights. Like Allen, I love that stuff. It's the opposite of an autobio like Benny Golson's, where he refuses to talk about jazz musicians using drugs. Right... That's why he'll discuss Bill Evans' drug addiction, and not Trane's, Bird's etc... That speech at NT cracks me up! I could picture him saying that. He reams Coryell, too, but I can't remember the specifics. He talks about a recording session, where Sam Brown brought a combo of uppers and downers, and wouldn't (or couldn't) play until he found the perfect balance! His tenure with Getz was one long nightmare, but it could also be adapted by Hollywood as a sit-com: the mean old veteran and the young country boy, touring the world together... He has nothing but good words to say about Chick, and that kid he discovered on guitar. But the one thing I really wanted to find out about isn't mentioned at all in the book; What's the deal with the pedal, Gary...?

I thought it was a great read, because Gary laid it on the line about every musician he worked with. Hell, he even put down Jim Hall(!) for sending Joe Puma on the recording sessions for "The Groovy Sound of Music" without calling GB about it! He also criticizes Gary McFarland's poor arrangements on the LP. His time with Getz was described in lurid detail, I was surprised to find out that GB considered Getz a poor sight reader, despite all his years with big bands.. He also said that "Focus" was not the spontaneous affair it seemed to be. The story about Coltrane ceremoniously walking out on Getz at Birdland after listening to only one tune, revealed another side to the 'holy one'. GB even got down on musicians he didn't play with. He criticized Gabor Szabo for being too high to play well with Lena Horne, when GB caught them in Vegas. He said that Milt Jackson was also a bad sight reader, and told about how he had to replace him at a Gunther Schuller rehearsal, because the whole MJQ couldn't read their parts.. On a bad tour with Joe Henderson, he described how JH fought with Jimmy Owens about being taped at a gig, and walked off the stand. He provides more evidence for Q. being a jive ass when it came to film composition, and said that he arrived at one of Q's film scoring sessions, and there was no music(!), just suggestions for grooves. Even 'holier than thou' Pat Metheny isn't spared. GB fired him for playing too loud, taking too long with his solos, and constantly arguing with GB's suggestions on how to to handle the songs they were playing. PM was very angry about having to leave GB's group before he wanted to leave. GB also said that when they recorded the 'Like Minds' album, PM would go back into the studio after the group finished playing, and make 'small fixes' on most of his solos... GB was witness to the disastrous first Getz/Bill Evans recording session, and said Evans was so messed up, he could barely get through a song without getting lost halfway through the song, playing wrong chord changes, or going to the wrong sections of the tune. Years later, GB talked about making a record with Evans, but when they jammed at the Newport at NY Festival with Marty Morrell and Eddie Gomez in 1979, GB couldn't settle into their time feel and play freely. They forgot about making the record together. Six months later, they played together at Carnegie Hall and nothing felt comfortable to GB; he couldn't lock in to BE's time. GB asked EG about it, and EG said that anyone who sat in with the BE trio had trouble playing with them. GB speculated that 'it must have been something about how they played together".

I'm sure he admired OP at some point, and stated it, but a friend of mine told me a story about BE and OP being on the same bill at a jazz festival. BE was waiting for OP to finish before he went on, and BE was saying some uncomplimentary things about OP that I can't recall specifically. He told me another story about a pianist who lived in the same building as BE, but was unaware that BE lived on the floor beneath him, so BE heard him practicing every day. The pianist was introduced to BE one day by a mutual friend, and was asked if he ever heard of BE. The pianist felt sick when he realized who had been listening to him practice every day. BE proceeded to recite a long list of what the pianist was doing wrong. He never touched the piano again...

It also has to do with the aesthetics of particular artists. Monk was the complete opposite of OP's aesthetic sense of what jazz piano should be. OP was the complete opposite of what Dick Katz, Fred Hersch and Bill Evans' aesthetic sense of what jazz piano should be. Ray Charles loved OP. Fred Hersch hated and belittled Jaki Byard when he was studying with him at NEC. Thousands of jazz pianists worshipped OP. Thousands of pianists hated OP. And on and on... I'd rather listen to Bill Evans, Eddie Costa Dick katz and Phineas Newborn than OP, but I still respect OP for what he accomplished. Hell, even Dr. Cornell West loved Oscar!!!!!!!!!!!!!