sgcim

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.

My list of four pieces were composers who were not ashamed to admit that they were followers of Debussy/Impressionism. I don't know about the inclusion of a composer like Hovhaness in the category of lush harmony. Most of his music avoided lush harmony in favor of mainly monophonic and some polyphonic texture.

That reminds me of one of Ray Charles' bands that went over to Europe in the 70s with Marcus and bob harris playing second keyboard for Ray. Harris was most influenced by the Detroit jazz musicians, and Marcus was probably his only contact with the real thing. I wonder if they ever recorded together?

Honegger- Pastoral D'ete Chas. Koechlin- Las Bandar Log Howard Hanson- Symphony #2 Arnold Bax- Tone Poems (Tintagel

Phil has a lot of recent jazz history stuff on you tube that I haven't checked out, but he appears interviewing Joe Albany in "A Jazz Life" here:

There's definitely some weirdness going on at KCR. They had a fund drive recently that came only about a year or so after their last one. Phil said on the previous fund drive that they don't have annual fund drives, but they had an equipment repair emergency, so that convinced me to donate some money. The recent fund drive didn't mention any specific reason why they were having it- just some desperate survival pleas. Schaap has been hinting that he's not going to be around much longer on his shows in the last year, and mentioned that he's been training some people to carry on his legacy. I don't think they can eliminate jazz from KCR, because it is part of their charter, but it seems like they might be planning to cut back on their jazz programming for whatever reason. Twelve years of the ultimate, 'true believer ' of capitalism, Bloomberg, has created a city where nothing survives unless it is turning a constant profit, so nothing would surprise me at this point...

Sounds like the time I heard Wynton speak at an NYC arts teachers' meeting five years ago.

I had the Starfingers LP and remember being disappointed with Salvador's playing on it, but enjoying all the sidemen on the date. He sounded sloppy and got an annoying, overly treble sound, but the sidemen sounded fine. At least back in the 50s and 60s, he was an excellent technician, but lacked the swing , creativity and subtlety of Raney, Farlow, Bean, Garcia, Kessel, Ellis, Bauer, etc... On Starfingers, even the great technique was lacking. I was discouraged from getting "Juicy Lucy" because of Starfingers, and the horrible fusion LP he made "Crystal Image" (OSLT) made me give up on Sal altogether.

I studied composition in college with a guy who studied with Milhaud. He said that even though DM was in constant pain from his illness, he was always in a cheerful mood, and cracking jokes. He said that Milhaud's method of composition was completely contrary to the classical method of composition. Instead of conceiving the composition as a whole, and then orchestrating it, DM used to start writing it on score paper and writing the flute part first entirely through, then the oboe, then the clarinet, then the bassoon, etc... through the entire orchestra! As a result some of his scores sound kind of sloppy, but some of them are ecstatically funny, like the latin influenced "Le boeuf sur le toit" (OSLT?), which is hilarious! I like many of the French composers of the 20th century, who ignored the 'abomination' of Schoenberg, and wrote music that lifted the human spirit, instead of slavishly adopting the 'ball and chain' of the twelve-toners.

Not too many of the great Detroit musicians left. RIP, Mr. Belgrave.

Very sad to hear. RIP.

Man, Bob Belden is only 58. Very sad...

Very sad to hear. he played flute on a lot of those Red Norvo Quintet LPs, and had a long career as a composer for TV and movies. RIP.

I have the 2 CD Chandos set of his Chamber Works; some great music there. Looks like he was right thankfully about it being a phase. His work and the work of his contemporaries, Bax, Walton, Delius, Britten, Warlock, Vaughn-Williams, etc.. weren't just 'phases'.

Bye bye Blues Boy, RIP.

I'm afraid that we have today, John, is too many people writing about the arts whose likes and dislikes are based upon unrelated factors. I have read a plethora of anticipatory pieces on the Latifah movie, written by people who "can't wait to see it," "know it's going to be great," etc. Their premature enthusiasm is sparked by ethnic and/or sexual considerations—nothing more. We have had reviewers like that for decades, but the internet has escalated such meaningless nonsense. Apropos insincere praise, I recall a middle-aged lady who reviewed films for After Dark magazine. She was a familiar figure at press screenings and parties and she never saw a film she didn't love. In fact, she always included some line or paragraph that she knew was likely to be quoted in an ad... it often was. Sounds like Paul Wunder of BAI fame. Still waiting for you to jump into the Bill Evans/Gunther Schuller thread, Chris,,,

Very entertainingly put (as usual), but my brother and I made the pilgrimage into the VV to see Bill in about 1979-80, as I mentioned before, and his playing then made Art Pepper's late phase sound like Paul Desmond in comparison. I remember Red Rodney's pianist was in the audience, and he came up to me and said, 'Wasn't Bill great?', and I just looked at him with my mouth open. I felt like I was just assaulted by Cecil Taylor for a few hours.

Yeah, Diz was very intolerant of drug or alcohol use by guys in his band. I'm reading Jimmy Heath's autobio right now, and he talked about the time Diz caught him and Specs Wright shooting up on a break in a club in California. He told them, "You junky motherfuckers. You're fired." I'm guessing he might have done the same with Les. Les apparently blew his teaching gig, also. When I read your stories about hanging with Les in WSP, I figured he was a retired teacher in his 70s, rakin' in the bucks with his Tier 1 pension. I was shocked to find that he passed at the age of 59...