sgcim

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...

OK -- but what's the musical/expressive point of radically displacing the harmonic rhythm of "All of You" or any such Broadway piece of material? First, there is an obvious organic connection between the song's harmonic rhythm as Cole Porter conceived it. Alter that if you will, and if you can, but why? Only, one would think, as Martin Williams once said of the way jazz musicians typically alter the melodies of standard tunes, "because they can come up with better melodies (e.g. Charlie Parker on 'Embraceable You.'") But are the displaced harmonic rhythms on standards that BE would come up with musically/expressively "better" in any sense or are they just trickier, more difficult to grasp and execute? Further, is the resulting musical/expressive relationship between those displaced harmonic rhythms and what remains of the original tune all that coherent? I think of the early BE piece that was (I believe) built around such displacements, "Five," where the piece itself and BE's solo work were close to one thing. Looking back on the passage from that 1964 interview with BE, I finally came to think that for him the attraction to romantic material per se and 19th Century musical Romanticism (two different things, the former implying "imaginative, visionary, idealistic," the latter referring to a movement in the arts whose hallmarks were the anti-rational, a belief in the values of intuition, instinct, and private expression and a search for transformation and transcendence that would go beyond the limits of human society) were one thing and close to omnipresent. Thus he introduces rational disciplined "labor" (e.g. tricky displacements of harmonic rhythm, left-hand figures based on the "Erwartung" chord, etc.) to undercut/transform the potentially "schmaltzy" nature of the romantic material to which he is drawn and come up with "... the most beautiful kind of beauty ... romanticism handled with discipline.'" For me, both the musical results and the thinking that seemingly underlies it are kind of f---ed up. Maybe BE is jazz's Franz Schrecker? Evans' displacement of the harmonic rhythm of a song like "All of You" created an almost dizzying effect (that Marian McPartland experienced first-hand) that greatly added to the expressive nature of his improvisations on the tune. That his displacements were initially hard to comprehend, didn't mean they were just attempts to be 'tricky', because after repeated exposure to said displacements, I found the sense of tension and release created quite profound. Unfortunately, I can't find this sense of profundity after exposure to music not based on the tension-release emotional experience that Evans would create in his music; it seems that subjectively for me, there is no 'there' there. In that same interview with Marian McPartland, Evans said the most important requirement of a tune he would choose to perform would be that it had to have a solid architecture. Without said architecture, the results would not be satisfying, musically.

Evans could have a sentimental side, but many of his decisions were made for him by Helen Keane. While she probably saved his life and career, she also made some choices for him that he didn't necessarily agree with... I've never heard his recording of "People"(and don't look forward to), but he did manage to make something interesting out of that schmalzy POS "Make Someone Happy". I saw BE the second to last time he played at the VV, and his displacement of of the harmonic rhythm of the tunes he was playing was so beyond me at that time, I had no idea what the hell he was doing. He demonstrated this displacement technique on Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz show on the tune "All of You", and MM had great difficulty playing with him on it. She was so unnerved by Evans' displacement of the harmonic rhythm of the tune, she called out, "I feel like I'm swimming against the tide!" I thought his choice of playing "Suicide is Painless" towards the end was due to his fondness for Johnny Mandel tunes, but as Steely Dan put it in their song "Jack of Speed" BE had a 'one way ticket on the shriek express"...

LOL! Two different worlds collide. GS described his and Evans' in depth discussion of the Erwartung Triad, and hinted at his influence on Evans' use of it in his left hand voicings.

I find it hard to believe that at this late date in GS' life, and given how much experience he must have had with jazz musicians over the years, it could have been news to GS that the BE who showed up at his door was a junkie on the mooch. Further, how could GS in 1963 not at least have heard through the grapevine that BE was an addict. He had been since at least 1959. GS described himself as being very naive about the drug scene at that time. He was more involved with the NY classical scene than the jazz scene at that time. He was explicit in describing two different Bill Evans'; the articulate, well-groomed young man, who came for bi-weekly four hand piano get- togethers at GS' apartment. and the second Bill Evans three years later; an unkempt, mono-syllabic guy that just asked for money and immediately left, with just a gruff, 'thanks'.

GS described him as a talented photographer and poet. When I was doing student teaching in Brooklyn College, my mentor told me that Sticks had just quit teaching for the NYC public school system after a very short time.on the job. I took this as a warning of some type, because my mentor had just found out I was a jazz musician... Les Spann had also taught in the NYC system, but I haven't found any info about it. Gigi Gryce also taught chorus in the Bronx, under his Muslim name. Yusef Lateef mentored in the Bronx under a friend of mine. They had some very memorable experiences...

Was reading through the GS autobiography today, and happened on a few pages dealing with the friendship between GS and BE. They were kind of brought together by Tony Scott and Geo. Russell, and first collaborated on Russell's "All About Rosie", whose piano solo GS calls one of the greatest in jazz history. They got together in 1960 at GS' apt in NYC, and would play four hand versions of Wagner's operas, in addition to Scriabin's Poem of Ecstasy! Though GS had a long and close relationship with John Lewis as his jazz pianist, he said that BE was the only jazz pianist who could improvise on his third stream music and stay within the spirit of the piece. He then recounted how BE SIGHT READ Milton Babbitt;s "All Set"- dynamics and all... They lost touch with each other for a few years, and then BE knocks on his door in 1963, and asks to 'borrow' some money. GS notices BE looks a little out of it, but gives him $15. The next day BE is back, asking him for more money, and the next day, and the next day... until after a month or two of this, GS' wife tells him to turn BE down, or they're going to go broke. GS finally realizes what's going on, and sends BE on his merry way- and never sees him again... You have to admire GS' ability to recognize the ability of lesser known players such as Eddie Costa ('phenomenal talent') and Sticks Evans (could sight read difficult polyrhythmic parts, and then serve as house drummer for Atlantic Records' R&B artists). And then there's the story of how Don Cherry and Ornette first got Jimmy Giuffre to play free jazz at the Lenox School of Jazz.... Fascinating reading.

I had to pay my favorite hooker to put me in a strait jacket so I would be restrained from buying the four or five CD Tubby Hayes set for only $8 being offered here, but now I know I did the right thing...

Rod was a big influence on me as a kid. I played in a kid's big band that was sponsored by the County, and led by a guy, who was a good friend of Rod's. He got the County to commission pieces by guys like Rod and Manny Albam for performances at County sponsored concerts. He wrote a great piece for the band called, "Babylon" which was similar to Tickle Toes. I wrote a tune based on the sax soli in it. He showed up for the concert with his blonde bombshell wife, and seemed to be having a great time, laughing his head off. He made a lot of money writing the theme song for Irish Spring soap. "42nd St" is as good as the other LPs, and it even features a short vocal by RL at the end, bellowing out, "About a quarter till Nine!!!" It comes out of nowhere, so it's pretty funny.

Thanks for the info! I'll stream it today.

I agree with your assessment of Lowe. Even when he was in his prime, he was no match for the many other guitarists on the scene back then, IMHO He was a good accompanist, and had a successful career as an arr./composer, but as a jazz improviser wasn't in the same league as Raney, Farlow, Billy Bean, Chuck Wayne, Herb Ellis, Dick Garcia, Rene Thomas, etc...IMHO.

Good, put me on Ignore, like I'm doing with you.

Strange film; Central Park in the 60s, before inflation ruined everything...

Phil Schaap is the only one I know that has a copy. It's on his website under Joe Dixon's name. He played it on the air when he interviewed Joe for his show. He even pronounced my name correctly. It's pretty expensive, or I would've bought a copy. Joe was ecstatic about my solo on it; he said to the group in the studio that it was the greatest jazz solo he ever heard. The piano player started yelling at Joe, saying that it wasn't that good! I used to have a copy, but I gave it to some commercial music library that was looking for instrumental music. There are a few of my compositions on it. Joe played my stuff beautifully.

A funny story about that LP, I transcribed "Lake In The Woods" from SIHH and the clarinetist Joe Dixon (T.Dorsey, Bunny Berrigan,, Stan Kenton sideman) fell in love with the tune, and wanted to put it on an album we were doing together, so I arranged it for him and a jazz quintet. He had to contact Mundell Lowe to get a release to record it, and ML's reaction to it was, "Why the hell do you want to record that lousy tune?" I freaked out, because I thought it was a beautiful waltz ballad (I listened to Satie a lot back then), and that began a lifetime of hate for ML. My guitar teacher said that ML used a ghost writer for a lot of his things. I have no proof that that was true, but that planted the seed in my mind that maybe he didn't really write that tune, and it was written by his ghost writer. Who knows, who cares?

This should tell you where he was at: http://www.allaboutjazz.com/bernard-stollman-the-esp-disk-story-by-clifford-allen.php I first heard the Fugs on an ESP sampler. RIP, BS.

Oh, come on, no one's mentioned Eric Dolphy's "God Bless The Child" on Bass Clarinet? Shame on youz!

I stumbled across this hilarious interview while searching for something else. It concerns the NYC Jazz Loft Project. You have to scroll down to ORAL HISTORIES, and then down to the Halls'. They seem to have forgotten most of what was happening there, and proceed to interview the interviewer! There are interviews with Brookmeyer, Dick Katz, Bill Crow , Ron Free, and some other people who thought of it as a special place, but the Halls seem very blase` and seem to think that those other people are 'idealizing' the loft. This is not the main Loft site: http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/jazzloftproject/

Wow!! never knew that - always had a soft spot for The Left Banke - liked their "baroque" rock sound - "Walk Away Rene" one of my favourite tracks from the 60's Why the difference in surnames? He didn't think Lookofsky sounded American enough.