sgcim

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't listen to the stuff he did in the 80s till his passing. He suddenly turned into some horrible type of jazz cocktail pianist, leaving the pedal down too much, playing flowery lines and chords, playing at tempos he couldn't cut anymore, and losing the great rhythmic drive he once had. But his earlier stuff, while not uniformly to my liking, had some playing that is the essence of rhythmic drive in jazz, and unlike many jazz pianists, he always completed his lines, rather than dropping off in the middle of a phrase like many boppers. He never deserved the treatment Fred Hersch gave him in that 'Do The Math' interview. A musician I play with who went to NEC the same time FH went, said that FH would come out of his lessons with Jaki Byard making fun of Jb and putting him down!

It could have been Golson's autobio; I read both one after the other.

I'm glad you're finally coming to your senses...

I was another one who didn't take EB seriously, until I read Jimmy Heath's autobio where he mentioned that whenever they had any technical difficulties, they always went to EB, and he would straighten them out. Shortly afterward, the co-leader of a big band we had started and I were celebrating a successful first concert at a diner, when a funky looking dude saw my friends sax gig bag, and invited himself to join us at our table, telling us that he was also a sax player. The interloper turned out to be an R&B sax player, and he kept raving about EB's playing on a particular tune. Since Jimmy heath raved about EB also, I checked out the cut the 'dude' was raving about, and here it is:

The highlight of the score is Phil Woods' altissimo high note to end the movie. One could read that as symbolic of 'Fast Eddie's' vengeance on George C. Scott's character for his treatment of Piper Laurie and/or Fast Eddie's overcoming his character flaws to beat Minnesota Fats. Hopkins used Woods on many of his film scores, and there was a good reason for that... Sadly, with Hopkins and Woods gone, we'll never get anything even approaching the greatness of those film scores again...

Very sad to hear. Those guys got me through HS. RIP, Phil.

That concert has been bootlegged on a couple of labels over the years, and is probably not too hard to find. Thanks for the info- I'll do a search.

Phil Schaap just played a recording of Ornette when he was a student at The Lennox School of Jazz (AKA The Music Inn). OC was playing in two ensembles on the recording, one led by Herb Pomeroy, the other one led by MAX ROACH(!). This was 1959, so I don't know if it was before or after the incident at the Five Spot. OC sounded okay until it went to the bridge; I think he could still only play in one key at that time. That must have been a wild scene back then. The instructors were Bill Evans (his only known teaching gig), Connie Kay, Jim Hall, Pomeroy, Roach, Jimmy Giuffre and Bob Brookmeyer. Brookmeyer was so turned off by OC, that he threatened to leave his teaching position, but eventually adapted. Don Cherry and OC goaded Giuffre into his first free jazz playing experience. Some other students also attending with OC were Gary McFarland, Steve Kuhn, Don Cherry, and the pop songwriter Margo Guyan! RIP, Ornette.

One guy was upset about the price of a book he wanted, and tried to chew the worker down on the price. The worker lost his patience with the guy and said, 'You're not just buying a book- you're buying a book owned by someone very special!"

Medjuck was quite right about the photos. It turned out Milt's family didn't include any of the photos, or much of anything with Milt's handwriting in the estate sale. Earlier in the day someone found one record with Milt's writing on it, and went into an ecstatic attack that could only be alleviated by a direct infusion of chlorpromazine... By the time we arrived, the frenzied battles for Milt's record collection had subsided. One of the workers there told me how some lunatic dove off the top of the basement stairs at precisely 9:00am when the sale began, so he could have first shot at the records. The head of the Community Association where Milt lived made a big scene about not being notified by the estate sale company that the sale was taking place. The hapless worker told him to speak to the family about it, and leave him alone... We got 7 CDs, 5 LPs and 2 cassette tapes for $25. I found one of Milt's amp covers lying around, and the guy had no idea what it was, so he gave it to me for $2 I was surprised to find that it was only about five miles from where I live, and the street sign says, "Milt Hinton Drive" on it!

I just read an article about how people and investors are starting to buy houses again in Detroit because the prices are so low. Hopefully jazz will come back, also.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll be there.

Yeah, that worked out much better than I thought it would.

Lee proves that you can play as free as any of the 'free' players and still stay within the tonal system. He seems to have made a living out of playing "ATTYA". Here's more from the same session:

I dunno who he is, but he's got to be a better jazz player than Paul Schaffer and his lame-ass band( except the horns). Schaffer was on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz Show, and I've had HS students who could play better jazz than he could.