sgcim

He was on so many records, it would be impossible to not listen to him. He was even on a Steely Dan LP! RIP

GM always did interesting things in the many idioms he wrote and played in- jazz quintet, tasteful pop, big band arr., movie scores, experimental pieces for strings, woodwind quintet and piano (Steve Kuhn, Bill Evans) and even folk-rock. I can't wait for the doc, but word is, it's not as probing as it could have been.

Well, I was happy because I had heard the trio sides before at my bi-polar ex-chick's house, where her bi-polar dad had scratched the shit out of the 78 (along with Bird stuff on Dial), and there was some great Howard Roberts on it, with much improved sound. Speaking of Buddy Collette, I also picked up "Man of Many Parts" on Contemporary, which featured some great playing by this very under-rated sax/flute/clarinet player. His quartet with Gerry Wiggins was a gas, and the quintet with Barney Kessell was also wonderful. The octet with Gerald Wilson on trumpet (now I know why he became an arr./bandleader) was pretty disappointing. All were recorded in 1956. I saw Buddy on the 30 minute TV show from CA, "Club Date", and he was just perfection on all three instruments.

Gene Puerling, the greatest harmonic genius that ever lived- live! Thanks!

I found this weird re-issue at a library I frequent, and I don't know why they bothered to mention Horn's name on it-he doesn't do any blowing on it! He is featured on clarinet (if that is him) on a neo-Baroque piece by Fred Katz, but there's no improvisation in it. There are eight cuts on the CD, and he only plays the heads and ensembles on #5-8! This is supposedly from the sleazy Crown Records label, but most of it must have come from World Pacific, as a thread here stated. I picked it up, because I distinctly remember seeing the first three cuts on a Chico Hamilton Trio 78 that an ex-girlfriend's father had in his collection. I tried to tape it back then, but it was in such lousy shape that it really wasn't worth it. The sound on this re-issue is clear, but the arco cello is way too loud, and I found myself laughing my head off at how loud Chico's tom-toms were on one tune. It sounded like CH was in my living room, and the other guys were in another room. The liner notes in the CD booklet do not give the personnel for any of the tunes, and for the trio tunes they say that it is "most likely Geo. Duvivier on bass and either Howard Roberts or Jim Hall on guitar(!). It's nice that they bothered to fully research their 're-issue'. For the quintet tunes, they don't bother to mention who plays bass and guitar on them...

I just finished this book, and PL is "not going to go quietly". He is one of the few world class jazz musicians to lay down the truth, as he sees it. The book doesn't get really interesting until PL comes over to the US; then PL unloads some of the more controversial shit. He talks about the race issue in jazz in NYC, and said that when he first came to NYC, most of the white jazz cats would "look right through him", because he didn't have the "music school, old boy network behind him." When he worked, toured and recorded with the great black quartet he had of John Hicks, Ray Drummond and Marvin "Smitty" Smith, white musicians said to him, "Why are you working with those black guys? They're not gonna hire you." PL answered them, "Well, you're not hiring me! Goddamn!" He then laced into the clueless jazz critics and journalists with a suggestion that musicians should have polls on them, the way they have polls on us. The categories he makes up are so hilarious, it's worth buying the book just for that. I won't spoil it. He talks about being named the music director of the "Guitars Play Mingus Group" by Mingus' widow, and then finding out that the one guitarist who wasn't a good fit for the group, Larry Coryell (who couldn't read the parts, and was playing way too loud), was being paid more than everyone else. PL complained to Sue Mingus, and she replied, "Well, he made a record with Charles." PL replied, "Yeah, and it was the worst record Charles ever made!" She thought for a minute, and replied, "That's what Charles said." He then took on the whole the early 90s, Wynton Marsalis "Young,Gifted and Black syndrome", talking about how the corporate record label support went to black musicians under the age of 25, who "were still in the early or transitional stages of their development, and were about as ready to make a major label record as (he) was ready to fly to Mars. Maybe not as ready!" He later talked about being hired in 2005 by Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at JALC, and said the gig paid so little that he couldn't hire a respectable trio, and played the gig with just a bass player for a week. He later mentioned how he doesn't use electronic effects, because of their tendency to take away one's individual voice and personality. He said listening to Pat Metheny and Mike Stern, he thought, "If you're going to use that much digital reverb or delay, you might just as well have a lobotomy! The digital effects, especially the delay, seemed to obscure the attack of the note, which somehow impeded the forward motion of the music." He did say that he had no problem with it on non-jazz music. Finally, he talks about how he teaches students the things that jazz academia doesn't teach- jazz esthetics (sic?). There's obviously a lot more covered in the book, but I'd thought I'd just cover some of the more controversial aspects.

Oh God, SS is turning over in his grave!

I was just listening to the 1962 "Sahib Shihab and the DRJG" album I recently acquired, and was surprised by the quality of his orignal tunes and arrangements, not to mention his playing. I did a search here, and found he had no page. Surely, this must be an oversight...

I used the terms 'placid' and 'raw' in the sense of Hall adding pedals (electronic f/x) to his sound, like Frisell and Metheny in his later playing. I happen to prefer his work with Giuffre, Rollins, and Evans more than his later stuff. YMMV.

I'm not the OP, so your recommendations are perfect for the thread. I was just taking it in a different direction. On the Giuffre and Adderly LPs, there is plenty of inspired improvisation; by Cannonball, Giuffre, Hall and Pena/Atlas. The fact that they managed to integrate it with wonderful counterpoint, ensemble passages and use of dynamics not usually encountered in jazz, made records like these rather special,IMHO. Jim Hall seemed to be interested in exploring these types of unusual jazz textures; in the 50s he wrote a wonderful piece for electric guitar and string quartet that also featured some great improvisatory work by Mr. Hall himself, and no drummer. It's available on the LP "Jazz Abstractions", which was I think, under Gunther Schuller's name. It's a shame he ended up aligning himself with musicians like Frisell and Metheny, because they seemed to exert a more placid influence on his music, when you compare it to the raw jazz feeling exhibited in his work in the 50s, IMHO.

I appreciate your willingness to assume the terrible burden of guilt for those two, but no man should be asked to take on such a heavy weight...

I'm sure all these drummerless groups albums are fine, but for the most part, they're pretty much the same type of thing the leaders would put out, except they wouldn't have a drummer. The only exceptions I'm aware of that cross over into what could be called "chamber-jazz" are the Giuffre group the OP mentioned and the john Benson Brooks/Cannonball Adderly, "Alabama Concerto" LP. I can understand why there are very few LPs like the ones I mentioned above; they require: 1) A composer/arr. on the exalted level of a Giuffre or Brooks- they don't exactly grow on trees... 2) Muicians who can read very demanding music, and on top of that, improvise on a very deep level, like Giuffre, Adderly, Hall, Hinton and Pena could. These also don't grow on trees... There were groups that tried to do this on a more superficial level; the Ahmad Jamal Trio, the Red Norvo Trio, but they lacked the type of writing that Giuffre and Brooks were capable of. Can anyonethink of any LPs similar to the Giuffre or Brooks LP (I'm not interested in any free jazz or atonal examples)? Giuffre made another LP that did away with the pulse completely; "Tangents In Jazz", but i forget if he used a drummer on it anyway. Anyone know if there was a drummer on that?

And the Cannonball Adderly record "Alabama Concerto with Milt Hinton and Barry galbraith- wait- this feels like deja vu, all over again...

It was interesting to find out that Giuffre's inspiration for those wonderful trio LPs with Clarinet (and a little tenor sax), guitar and bass, came from the Impressionists work for flute, harp and viola, mainly the piece by Debussy that used that instrumentation. Nothing could match the magical blend of the chalimeau register of JG's clarinet with Hall's mellow guitar and Pena's bass. A shame he had to switch the instrumentation to that noisy, banging instrument, the piano. Joe Puma seemed to prefer drummerless groups on a few of his recordings. On "Joe Puma Jazz" on Jubilee, he has a full side of the trio with Eddie Costa on vibes, himself on guitar and Oscar Pettiford on bass.back in the late 50s. Then he recorded another album on Resevoir, with his working group at Gregory's in 1984, featuring Hod Obrien on piano, and Red Mitchell on Bass. Chet Baker dispensed with drummers on the European trio records with Doug Raney and a bass player.

My brother-in-law went to HS with him when they grew up on LI. We were just talking about it over the holiday weekend. Duke, Satchmo, and all the other biggies used to come out to Long Beach for dinner, and Billy knew them all.

My dentist is always catching live jazz in NYC, and telling me about it, as he drills what's left of my teeth into oblivion. Today, as he was prepping me for my latest root canal, he told me he saw Lenny White in a club in a basement on 14th St. (the VV?)a few months ago, and he said his guitarist, a black guy with long hair and shades, played the entire night with his back to the audience, staring at the wall. When LW told him on the mic to face the audience, he refused to turn around, and just waved at the audience with his back still facing them. My dentist is Russian, so he might have confused the guitar with the bass guitar, but does anyone have any idea who this might be? Every time he talks about jazz, my dentist asks me who this guy "Mr. G" is, who he hears people talking about. I tell him the same thing each time; it's Kenny G. and he don't play jazz!

WKCR noticed; they played 24 hours straight of Mingus' music. They played a JJ Johnson LP I was never aware of that featured some nice playing by Billy Bauer and Kai Winding. The re-issue is "Mad Bebop", recorded in 1954.

The apologist couldn't make our weekly rehearsal/session, so we spent a few minutes renaming the infidel 'Stanley Crotch', and then went back to channeling our deity BE, musically. We then took a break, and started recounting several stories that presented Miles Davis in the worst possible light.

Though I could see I wasn't going to change his mind, he knows Sandke, and agreed to read his book. On the free jazz question, he cited a Cecil Taylor concert at JALC. On using whitey, he mentioned his friend, and a few other white musicians, and said the JALC orchestra is an integrated.one. I think things have gotten better in that regard, but the repertoire is still nothing I'd ever want to check out, including the Brubeck program that's coming up.

I just did a google search on it, and found reams of articles mentioning that SC was the co-founder and artistic consultant of JALC. Not that that will mean anything to person i was arguing with...

We were having a nice Sunday afternoon session, when we started talking about JALC. The drummer has a friend who has done some work with Wynton and JALC, so he was very defensive when I started bringing up some aspects of the scene at JALC, and denied any notion of WM being anti-free jazz, anti-white jazz musicians, anti-semitic, etc... I could see it was pointless to pursue it any further, but he seemed especially irate when I said that WM was influenced by Stanley Crouch in some aspects of JALC. He asked for some proof, and all I could think of was a vague memory of it being mentioned in Randy Sandke's book. Can anyone cite any mentions of Crouch's involement in JALC? TIA

We Have a Winner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nobody knows which movie I was talking about? Hint: I was being extremely sarcastic when I called it a horror movie; it was actually a well-known Hollywood movie

I saw the scariest movie I've ever seen the other day, and it had one scene that literally had me jump out of my seat! It was a movie from 1938, and the basic plot was that a young classical violinist defied the wishes of his mentor, Professor Heinrich, and started a band of his own playing non-classical music. He met a blonde female vocalist of questionable moral background, and they reluctantly were forced to work together in this hideous band in San Francisco. As is quite typical of this genre, even though they were repulsed by each other at first, the violinist and the blonde eventually fell in love, but she was lured away to NYC by a big-time theatrical producer. He somehow followed her to NY, but his band now needed a vocalist, and this brought about what was most surely the most frightening moment (IMHO) in movie history: The new young woman vocalist they found, barged into the hapless violinist's hotel room emitting one piercing, frightening, pitch from her vocal cords that can only be compared to the shrieking violin of the shower scene in "Psycho"! Can anyone identify both the movie, and that terrifying vocalist?

Yeah, but he could sure beat those skins! Although he should've used some more name players as sidemen...