sgcim

Benny Golson was there, and describes the event in detail in his autobiography.

I liked the fact that a great guitarist like Dick Garcia only made one record as a leader. Then he got into a Zen Buddhism thing, and has been in seclusion for the last 50 years.

Cinderella was definitely the better player of the two, but Mecca was the 'go to guy' for a back adjustment. Cinderella appeared with Vinnie Burke and Matt Matthews on some record, maybe Chis Connors'. He got involved with the NYC studio scene, and did jingles, TV etc... I played with some organist who was doing a club gig with Joe in NJ. He switched to playing solo piano at lounges in Atlantic City. On the 2002 album, he plays an 8-string guitar that was tuned in 3rds and 4ths, and plays a lot of chord things that you could only play on piano. He passed a few years ago.

He became a chiropractor. ATTYA was good, but I don't remember, being too impressed with the rest of it.

I am back with a definitive answer from a jazz guitar website. Within half an hour the guys unanimously agreed that it was.................RON ESCHETE!!!!!

I'm taking this to the highest authorities, sir, and we'll have an answer for you very soon.

Yeah, that's gotta be Ulf. OP probably hooked him up with Bags and Ray.

Nervous breakdown. He was in charge of a very expensive apartment complex in Boston, and the pressure was too much for him. He became an alcoholic, and then was 'born-again' . My mother met him at church, and she used to get him to do stuff around the house. When he quoted the price to paint every inch of my co-op apt., I almost broke out laughing! I just signed his little contract as fast as I could. He wound up fixing a whole bunch of other stuff for free. To my credit, I did tip him. Yeah, NY.

From most accounts, Lenny's junk habit, and inability to deal with everyday life, prevented him from being known to the general public outside of Canada. He had a lot of help from Chet Atkins, Johnny Smith wrote a blurb for his first album (he never endorsed anyone back then), and people like Randy Bachman and Gene Lees tried to help him, but he showed up so messed up on H sometimes, that he literally couldn't play. He auditioned for Oscar Peterson in Canada, and OP wasn't impressed. He sat in with Bill Evans in Toronto, and they clashed harmonically. There's a recording of him playing a big concert in Vancouver, where he's so messed up, that he gets on the mic, and babbles on and on about some personal stuff. When he finally tried to play, he literally couldn't.

I guess you're kidding about hooking you up with their numbers, but the guy from Ghana was rec'd by a musician/business owner, who was 'connected', so I guess the guy did such a good job, because I used the 'connected' guy's name. I rec'd him to another musician, who can be a real hard-on, and he hated the guy so much, he left the job half-done, and never came back! The born-again guy also did a great job, but he has literally disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. Brilliant guy, though; he used to handle the huge estate of some billionaire that has a building named after him in NYC.

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.