sgcim

Cool picture. I never knew about the Avengers or 'Vance Arnold'. I've been reading a few books about the history of UK rock music of the 60s, and the strong tie-in with jazz. Many of them started off as jazzers (Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Graham Bond, etc...), and then switched to rock when they realized they had to pay bills. The others (Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page) hated jazz, and were more devoted to blues. Joe Cocker and Stevie Winwood were solidly in the 'Brother Ray' bag. RIP, Joe/Vance.

The only chart I remember by GM for for Mulligan's band was "Willie", written for that trombone player he used to play with. When I used to gig with Joe Cocuzzo, he said GM used to write each part especially for the player, and would even write the player's name on each part. On the LP GM did with Bill Evans, Evans was going through some dope issues, and didn't prepare at all for the album. He wound up sight reading, and sight improvising the entire session. I'm still waiting for word on the McFarland documentary...

Yes. Self disqualifying. That's funny. I was at the library when I stumbled on that article in a collection of what I could have sworn was a huge book of the collected writings of Balliet.

For further reading on this, read Whitney Balliet's essay, "On The Corner- Miles Davis Sells Out"- it's merciless!

I can definitely relate to some of the comments made about Trane's playing not fitting the group or the songs after a certain period. I heard one live date on KCR where I wanted to shut the radio off after hearing Trane mangle the changes and mood of the song, but then thank God, Cannonball brought things back to the real shit.

I posted a link to this on a jazz guitar forum, and got yelled at by some dude who thinks that it should be taken off of youtube, because Grant Green Jr. isn't getting any money from it. He said there's a video of it that's being sold somewhere. There has never been a lack of moral indignation on internet forums...

There are a lot of great guitarists that never used their pinky that much; Kenny Burrell, Wes, Jimmy raney, George Benson, Chris Flory and Peter Bernstein, who Peter Leitch thinks is so Grant Green influenced that he calls him Peter 'Green'stein.

Thanks for the opportunity to donate money to one of the most wonderful musicians and human beings that ever lived.

Wow, thanks!

I didn't like "California, Here I Come" either, and the Turn Out the Stars sessions were bootleg recordings that had inferior sound recording. Why anyone would bother to listen to or criticize them is beyond me. As I said before, to characterize BE's recorded output as erratic because of poorly recorded bootleg albums made when he was at death's door is not even worth commenting on... As I'm sure you know, the "Turn Out the Stars" set was lavished with praise when it came out. Also, it was not a bootleg I'm pretty sure ("original sessions produced by Helen Keane," it says in the booklet) and was professionally recorded by Malcolm Addey. You and I both think that BE often is in harried form there, but we're apparently in the minority. OTOH, much though TOTS makes my teeth grind, I find that BE is in quite good form for his latter days on much of "The Last Waltz" -- performances that were dubbed off the mixing board at the Keystone Korner by Todd Barkan and that took place much closer to the very end (8/31-9/8 '80) than what's on TOTS (6/4-6/8 '80). (BE died 9/15 '80). When I first heard TLW, I expected the worst; its virtues were a surprise. I call any recording of BE that he didn't approve, bootleg, and I've never listened to TOTS so I shouldn't have commented on the recording quality. Helen Keane was both a curse and a blessing for BE; while she made his music available to a wider audience and took care of ALL of the business aspects of his career, she wasn't a musician, and shouldn't have made every decision for him. i think he did veer off from his original direction on the "New Jazz Conceptions" due to her, but without her, he might have wound up as a violinist who worked with him back then found him: banging his head on the piano because he was so disgusted with the wedding gig he was playing! Helene Keane became BE's personal manager in 1962 -- by that time "New Jazz Conceptions" and the the style associated with it were distant specks in the rearview mirror. Heck, by that time, the music of the LaFaro-Motian Village Vanguard trio also was a thing of the past. Wow, I didn't think it was as late as 1962. That explains a lot. As much as I like Tony Bennett, pairing BE and TB was not my idea of a good fit. I'm glad he's hooked up with Lady Gaga now. I hope they'll be very happy together...

I didn't like "California, Here I Come" either, and the Turn Out the Stars sessions were bootleg recordings that had inferior sound recording. Why anyone would bother to listen to or criticize them is beyond me. As I said before, to characterize BE's recorded output as erratic because of poorly recorded bootleg albums made when he was at death's door is not even worth commenting on... As I'm sure you know, the "Turn Out the Stars" set was lavished with praise when it came out. Also, it was not a bootleg I'm pretty sure ("original sessions produced by Helen Keane," it says in the booklet) and was professionally recorded by Malcolm Addey. You and I both think that BE often is in harried form there, but we're apparently in the minority. OTOH, much though TOTS makes my teeth grind, I find that BE is in quite good form for his latter days on much of "The Last Waltz" -- performances that were dubbed off the mixing board at the Keystone Korner by Todd Barkan and that took place much closer to the very end (8/31-9/8 '80) than what's on TOTS (6/4-6/8 '80). (BE died 9/15 '80). When I first heard TLW, I expected the worst; its virtues were a surprise. I call any recording of BE that he didn't approve, bootleg, and I've never listened to TOTS so I shouldn't have commented on the recording quality. Helen Keane was both a curse and a blessing for BE; while she made his music available to a wider audience and took care of ALL of the business aspects of his career, she wasn't a musician, and shouldn't have made every decision for him. i think he did veer off from his original direction on the "New Jazz Conceptions" due to her, but without her, he might have wound up as a violinist who worked with him back then found him: banging his head on the piano because he was so disgusted with the wedding gig he was playing!

Good, maybe you can help me defend Phil Woods from the barbaric assaults that go on against him here!

I didn't like "California, Here I Come" either, and the Turn Out the Stars sessions were bootleg recordings that had inferior sound recording. Why anyone would bother to listen to or criticize them is beyond me. As I said before, to characterize BE's recorded output as erratic because of poorly recorded bootleg albums made when he was at death's door is not even worth commenting on...

I once did a gig with an elderly Jewish trumpet player, who was a close friend of Davey Schildkraut, and he said DS was heavy into Jewish mysticism, the Kabala Bill Evans' recorded output was controlled by Helen Keane; he didn't choose the people he recorded with, Helen did. I'm sure if it was BE's choice, he would've recorded with musicians like Schildkraut, Don Joseph (whom he had a private session with) Jimmy Raney and others.

Just got back from a great gig with a great big band I never played with before, and they played a few Willie Maiden charts that smoked. They were all minor blues. One was a fast waltz that had a few bars of 5/4 in it. Hip genius indeed!

After reading about his lifestyle in the Harry Nilsson biography, I'm amazed he made it to 70. Harry barely made to 53. RIP, you party animals...

Do you want us to beg?

Yes, that's the CD I was talking about. It was recorded terribly by Mike Harris, who secretly recorded a lot of BE's gigs, and the sound on this CD is especially bad. Like the review said, it sounded like one long Philly Joe Jones drum solo because of the mic placement. It never should have been released. I don't think that you can compare this recording to "California Here I Come", because: 1) BE didn't know it was being recorded, and never would have approved its release in a million years. 2) The sound is horrendous on it. 3) "California Here I Come" had no examples of Evans as out of control as he obviously was on the "Gettin' Sentimental Over You " CD. 4) BE was aware that he was being recorded on "CHIC" and wasn't mainlining coke. The "GSOY" CD should be played as part of a drug abuse education course for young jazz pianists in college. Just from listening to the way he rushed through "In Your Own Sweet Way" would be enough to 'scare the kids straight'. Using one secretly taped,incompetently taped, drug impaired performance to assess a musician's playing in general, is not a good idea. I've heard so many poor live performances by musicians generally accepted as great, that using them as examples of their playing in general would be ridiculous.

The only time I thought that BE rushing unmusically was on one of the bootleg CDs they made towards the end of his life, when some people might have been aware that he was in bad shape, so they decided to tape every gig he played. I'm sure he wouldn't have let them release the live CD I'm talking about if he knew it existed, but he was obviously wired up on that one gig. BE was such a perfectionist that he didn't even want the first Verve LP he made with Getz released, but he had switched record companies after that, so he had no say in the matter. I saw the BE trio the last time they played at the VV, and as people here have attested to, his rhythmic/harmonic displacement approach was so advanced that even Marian McPartland had a hard time playing standards with him on her show. MM: "Oh, I feel like I'm swimming against the tide!"

He attributed it to drug issues.

I've always used The Vanilla Book. http://www.ralphpatt.com/Song.html

If you can put up with the obsessive, suicide-inducing verbosity of Phil Schaap every Monday at 12 noon on WKCR, he's still doing a two hour feature on BE's music leading up to the LaFaro- Motian BE Trio. Today he offered some crackpot theory on BE's tempo variation issues and told us about the significance of getting LaFaro's autograph on a napkin at the VV in 1961 with SLF penning the name SCOTTY instead of SCOTT!

Great find. Too bad he didn't sing "Make Me Rainbows" again.

She was interviewed on her 86th birthday on the Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC: http://www.wnyc.org/story/vocalist-sheila-jordans-70-years-jazz/

Yeah, I don't see the chicks going wild for the dude above when they could have Chettie to fantasize about. There was a French film about Bill Evans. Maybe they got Jerry Lewis to play Bill.