sgcim

Back when they still had vinyl in libraries, I used to take out all of Stan's comedy records, and enjoyed them very much. RIP Mr. Freeberg.

This was my fave Left Banke song when I was a kiddie- note the arr. and the lydian melody

Michael Brown, songwriter and keyboard player for the rock band The Left Banke passed away last month at the age of 65. It turned out that he was the son of the violinist Harry Lookofsky, and Harry actually manged and produced the band when they had the hit records "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina". Harry owned a recording studio in NYC, and probably helped the band achieve their 'Baroque-Rock' sound that they became known for, but Michael wrote all the music, and played the harpsichord and piano on all their early records. Harry and Michael had some type of disagreement with the rest of the band, which led to Michael leaving the band and forming other bands that also did some interesting rock music.

For BH's 100th birthday, WKCR has been playing all BH on their jazz shows all week. Today and tomorrow, they'll be playing BH 24/7. They've played a lot of her early stuff with neanderthal rhythm sections, and she seemed to react to her rhythm section, causing her to sound much less nuanced then her later stuff. Then they played her later stuff with Tony Scott as her musical director, and he hired much hipper musicians like Kenny Burrell and others, and you can hear her genius as she reacts to the hipper changes and sings some incredible things.

LF screws up the last eight on the first video, but gets it right on the second video (or at least gets to the iii chord at the right time). Those pictures of HM are getting me excited , Aaron Sachs was a lucky man, until he woke up one morning, and both the piano and HM were gone!

One pianist I knew went to Berklee, and there was a Scientology office right down the street, and they were always trying to recruit musicians. He and his friends used to get drunk on Friday nights, and then go over to the Scientology office and tell them that they wanted to commit suicide. They'd give the suicidal guy a test, and the suicidal guy would rip up the test papers and run out of there laughing his head off.

I think everyone knows that Scientology only established itself as a "religion" so L.Ron wouldn't have to pay taxes. There were many jazz musicians who got involved in it, and as a previous poster said, it was sad to watch some of them living in poverty because they were giving what little money they made to the Org. One musician told me the sales pitch they gave was: "You can either spend tens of thousands of dollars going to a psychoanalyst, or you can just give us a thousand bucks, and get the same result." The Org was basically in a vicious fight with psychiatry to get people who had psych issues to come to them, rather than a shrink. One Org musician proudly showed me the letter he had written to some newspaper, backing the effort to close down mental hospitals. The Org probably helped some of the musicians I knew deal with issues that were not solely biological, but those who who had mental disorders of a purely biological nature just got worse. The last time I saw one musician like this, he was trying to stab another musician in the band with a fork (they had an argument about dynamics on the stand), and after he was disarmed, proceeded to have his head banged on the pavement repeatedly. As he was restrained by an off duty cop, he repeatedly defended his actions by exclaiming, "I had to defend my integrity!" The first time I met this musician was around the time that L. Ron had passed. His first comment was, "He's not dead; he's just away on research."

OMG! I just got this POS from Netflix by mail and couldn't believe it- it was like a two hour (almost) skit by SCTV! I was laughing at every scene- even the car accident was funny as hell. Best comedy I've seen in years.

Very sad to hear. I still listen to "Reflection" whenever I want to get into that spacey folk/jazz vibe. RIP John.

No, he bought that with his own money. Mario stopped making them after Sakashta was murdered, so there's not that many around anymore. I guess I'm just fixated on that one axe- the rest of his prices are probably cool.

I don't know about John's prices at Golden Age. I fell in love with a Beauregard MB there, and he said he wanted $9,800 for it. He wouldn't go down a buck on it, and he wouldn't take anything for a trade, to bring the price down a little. I even went out and bought another MB for 7K, and he wouldn't accept that for a partial trade. I was able to get my bread back on the MB I bought, but i gave up on the MB at GA.

They're all good guitars, but I hate Gretsch for jazz. Your best bet is to get to Guitars 'N Jazz in NJ. They have all those guitars, and you can play them before you buy. Here's the link: http://guitarsnjazz.com/ I don't know if they have lefties, but give them a call. What amp are you playing through?

from a coke-induced heart attack. His autopsy revealed that his arteries were completely clean.

I became very suspicious about this so-called CharlieBirdParker father-son team when I found this alto/tenor duo had posted these videos eight years ago. With a little research, I found that they had indeed pioneered the Jazz Karaoke Movement in Japan, after leaving everything behind in Alabama after the economic crisis left the father's genetic engineering firm (of which the son was an early experimental subject) bankrupt. This could account for the son's 'Children of the Damned' emotionless look and style of playing, as he was a result of a cross-cloning experiment using the DNA of Sonny Rollins and Stan Getz. They hustled the Karaoke Jazz circuit in Japan for years, posing as US tourists searching for what they described as "the perfect sashimi". In reality, they confided to their arresting officers that they were actually searching for the perfect Japanese tail. The father and son team continued their typical Karaoke Jazz routine of playing tunes from the Real Book without realizing that they had to transpose the music for their respective horns, resulting in that distinctive sound of parallel fourths that has been known to stimulate Japanese women. Their hedonistic orgies with multiple partners became so notorious, that the great Japanese exploitation film director, Takashi Miike, made a bio-pic about them entitled "The Great American Karaoke Jazz Hustlers". As a result of the film's popularity, the Yakuza became aware of all the tail their Karaoke Jazz employees were losing, and the duo had their fingers broken in the back room of the well-known Karaoke Jazz Club, Sashimi Palace in Tokyo. Without the financial support of their many Karaoke jazz conquests, the father and son team turned to crime, and were soon arrested for running a prostitution ring in Osaka. They were eventually deported back to the US to serve the remainder of their sentences. Here's a performance of the notorious Father/Son Duo "CharlieBirdParker" performing their infamous version of Donna Lee. Notice that they save their female sex organ stimulating parallel fourths sequence for the out chorus, to induce a buildup to the eventual Japanese female orgasm it so reliably produces:

Sad to hear. A drummer friend of mine used to work with him in Brooklyn. RIP Mr. Jeffrey

OOhh! That very good! You play entire Sonny Stitt solo instead of coming up with your own lines! We try to discourage creativity at Jazz Karaoke. Ladies, sex this boy up!!

I'm sorry, you play wrong note on bar 23- no sex for you! Next!

Yeah, but it's got to start in Japan. Americans are only capable of copying things that originate in Japan anymore; films, tech, Karaoke, etc... Some US club owner goes on vacation to Japan and sees the Eric Dolphy Karaoke, sees all the sex it generates, and then incorporates it into his club in the US. That's how it's gotta start.

In the first part of my post, I'm not talking about training; I'm talking about exposure to jazz or any other types of music other than hip-hop. They're not getting exposed to jazz on "Hot 97", they're not getting exposed to it as Mike said on the streets, the schools etc... My guess is that you were at least exposed to it somewhere earlier, but today it has become as Ralph Ellison would say, the 'invisible man'. And don't tell me the internet has made things better, because they just follow what ever becomes 'viral' on you tube.

As a music teacher at an inner-city HS for over 15 years, i conducted various forms of research into how non- musician kids perceived music before taking my class. Some findings were: 1) About 98% of the kids that didn't play an instrument or sing could not tell if a pitch was higher or lower than another pitch. 2) The only jazz/swing music they responded to was "Sing, Sing, Sing" , probably because it was in that Jim Carey movie, The Mask. 3) Most of them could not identify the sound of most instruments. Almost nobody could tell that Tal Farlow was playing a guitar, on tests(!) 4) They all hated Esther Phillips. 5) When given the opportunity to pass the class by doing an extra credit assignment that consisted of simply listening to any jazz recordings, and explaining why they did or did not like the music, about 50% chose to fail the class. The other 50% would say they liked the recordings because they found the music relaxing. Since the kids that played instruments and sang were the polar opposite, the solution might be to have as many students as possible learn instruments and sing in chorus, gospel choir, etc... However, since Bloomberg assumed mayoral control of the schools, music programs hit rock bottom, with no instrumental programs in ANY elementary schools, barely any (maybe 5%) music programs in Middle School, and approximately 25% of high schools having a basic music program (not just a Chorus). This 25% was further reduced to almost nothing as a result of Bloomberg forcing music out of the curriculum by requiring students to have double math and English periods, and then closing down almost every High School large enough to have a music program, and dividing each school into three independent charter schools which would make it impossible to have a school band, orchestra, etc...within that school(s). The fact that most jazz musicians, Charlie Parker, Eric Dolphy, etc...learned how to play their instruments in school is almost beside the point. The point is how can you expect to have an informed listening audience for jazz with the multiple assaults of hip-hop, non-existent school music programs and technology's destruction of the music business. I find it amazing that there is any listening audience at all, at this point.

According to a trumpet player friend of mine, Clark Terry couldn't even play the trumpet for the last 20 years. He saw people like Clark at Town Hall in Queens about 20 years ago, and he had difficulty even getting notes out. The same thing happened with his idol, Freddie Hubbard- he could barely play towards the end. IMHO, Lee Konitz is a shadow of what he used to be... Jazz musicians are like athletes in that sense.

John, I just finished "There's A Mingus Among Us", another great interview. Here's my favorite quote when you asked Mingus about the influence that Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman had on the jazz of that period: "How can you talk about Eric Dolphy and Ornette Coleman? Eric Dolphy was a master musician. Ornette Coleman can only play in the key of C. Ornette Coleman doesn't have any color in his music. Jazz is supposed to have a tradition. I don't hear any tradition in Ornette Coleman. I don't hear any Charlie Parker in his playing. Now I like the songs he writes- they're good songs. But he could never be the the player Eric Dolphy was." Downbeat Feb. 27, 1975.

Órale!! The music is by Terry Smith. I wonder if he's related? Muddy Waters is also played when the young women do their act;.

I knew someone would cheat and use the IMDB. The movie was "Street Girls" (1975), (the other IMDB listings are TV shows where he probably played the organ). This movie was so obscure, that it wasn't listed in either of the two volumes of the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film I own. Jimmy plays a hip, jive talkin' strip club bartender named Jimmy. He's usually dressed in a thick leather jacket with a big cowboy hat when he's on the street, but he wears typical bartender garb in the club. The plot is similar to the George C. Scott movie, "Hardcore", where a daddy is looking for his wayward little girl. Although he has a tough exterior, 'Jimmy' is a strip club bartender with a 'heart of gold', as he rescues the father getting the shit beat out of him by a pimp. There's a great scene of 'Jimmy' playing pool with some of the 'brothers'. He's constantly smoking a cigarette, blowing the smoke out of his nose. 'Jimmy' is pretty much the only sympathetic character in the flick, as all the white characters are shown as a bunch of stoners, junkies, pimps, rednecks and stripper/'hoes'. Jimmy is constantly shown shaking his head smiling, as whitey keeps making fools out of themselves. As whitey continues to ruin the lives of everyone they come in contact with, Jimmy gets the last line of the movie, shaking his head, and muttering, "Crackers..." The movie was co-written by Barry Levinson, a fact that he probably doesn't include in his filmography.

I couldn't believe my fucking eyes tonight when I was watching a movie that had Jimmy Smith in a dramatic role. There wasn't an organ in sight, and he even had the last line in the movie.