sgcim

I wouldn't be surprised if DR was mistaken on that. He tended to be a bit of a hothead about certain things, and get in trouble for being kind of blunt. There's a lot more of that type of stuff in the unabridged version than in the abridged version. His involvement in the McCarthy Hearings may have affected his career, and why he isn't more widely known. He tried to have it both ways, which didn't make him popular with those on the extreme right and extreme left.

Did you ever read Raksin's response to why "Laura" became a standard? He said, "It has a lot of shoulder chords." The interviewer asked him what he meant by "shoulder chords." Raksin replied - and I am paraphrasing - the kind of impressive chords that cocktail pianists like to identify by raising their shoulders right before they play them! Have I ever posted here the story of how Elmer Bernstein notated "swing" in his charts for "The Man with the Golden Arm?" Pretty funny stuff. Great Raksin story TTK. His autobiography is packed with anecdotes like that, involving everyone in the music world DR encountered, from Ben Webster to Aaron Copland, etc... He scored over 100 films, and I've transcribed about twelve tunes of his that have never been played (outside of the films), and plan to record them someday. The saddest story was the one that involved Oliver Nelson's death. The film people were working ON to death, and he collapsed under the strain at the film's recording session. He went home, and passed away that same day. DR was president of the Composer and Lyricist's Guild, and made a speech to the CLG about the inhuman working conditions that did his friend, the great ON, in, and one of the members said, "It was his own fault". DR nailed that guy's ass to the wall. He then got a law passed that improved working conditions for film composers.

Actually, Boulez was quoted as saying that he wished classical sax players could get that cold, unemotional sound that Lee Konitz got back in the 50s, rather than that overdone vibrato Mule started. So even Boulez was influenced by jazz, although not OP. Raksin straddled both worlds (classical and jazz), and studied with Schoenberg, so there are plenty of recollections of hanging out with Arnold, plus Huxley and Mann. He worked with Stravinsky on "Circus Polka", Chaplin on "Modern Times", and was close friends with Berio, Babbitt, and a host of other figures from the classical and jazz worlds. I spent sixteen hours glued to the monitor, reading both the abridged and unabridged versions. Fascinating guy.

I just finished David Raksin's autobiography (only available on Kindle), and was surprised to hear of DR's involvement as a jazz musician, before his film music career (he played first tenor with Benny Goodman's new big band back in the 30s!). In 1951, his two friends, Stravinsky and Boulez, happened to be in Hollywood, and Igor said he wanted to hear some jazz. DR took them to a club where the Oscar Peterson Trio (Ray Brown and Herb Ellis) were playing, and Igor was fascinated by OP and especially Ray Brown, who used four fingers on his right hand to play the bass, unlike the classical method. Pierre Boulez ignored the entire thing, which didn't surprise DR at all. When Stravinsky asked him why he wasn't surprised, DR said it was a typical reaction of French intellectuals to jazz. He then went on to tell the story about Hughes Panassie (actually a Belgian jazz writer) grabbing the mic at an Eddie Condon group performance in NY, and giving a detailed analysis of what each musician was doing (to the audience), as the musicians were playing. Condon, annoyed at what was going on, lambasted Panassie after the song was over: "Why do 'dese Frogs have to tell us how to play jazz? We don't teach them how to jump on grapes!"

Tuned in on the middle of an interview done last year with Joe on WBAI last night. It was sad, because he kept saying that he was playing better than he'd ever played before, and wanted to get out and play. He mentioned that he already had two heart attacks, and his BP was through the roof, so he knew he didn't have too much longer... He said that the reason why they went from The Jazz Crusaders to the Crusaders was because he wanted to tour Japan, and Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers were fucking up too much because they were a bunch of junkies. He figured if they dropped the "Jazz" from their name, they wouldn't be associated with the Jazz Messengers, and they could tour Japan! He put down the free jazz movement in NYC in 1968, because it was too much of a break from the black music that he loved, and also put down all the guys adopting African names and wearing dashikis back then. He said the one thing he refused to do was to play things the same way on sessions and gigs, and put down some of the people who made him play that way (including Donald Fagen).

Just finished the book. Hopefully they're not going to make too big a deal out of JA's issues... Maybe it will create two or three more jazz fans...

Amazing range of styles KW played. RIP.

Obscure singer/songwriter from early 70s, who was the first artist David Geffen signed for Asylum Records. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04g8hrd

I don't know if he grew up in Brooklyn, but he played there back in the 70s with some musicians I used to know. They talked about how he'd do some wedding gigs with rhythm sections that didn't know tunes like "ATTYA", and he'd be able to blow on it using only one hand, and with the other hand he'd signal the chord changes (one finger= F, two fingers= Bb, etc...)! One of the first LPs he played on was a Trane type quartet led by a pianist from Philly named Kenny Gill. I think the LP was called "What Was, What Is, What Will Be". Gill OD'd in his 30s. I saw BB at the Jazz Forum in the quintet that he co-led with Tom Harrell back in the 80s. They were playing some great high-energy stuff with the great pianist Armen Donelian. The only thing I didn't like about BB was his tendency IMHO to overplay on ballads, but his you couldn't touch him on fast, high-energy things.

Westbury, NY.

http://www.northcoastbrewing.com/beer-brotherThelonious.htm

Very sad to hear. I loved his work on Michael Franks' "The Art of Tea" RIP, Mr. Sample.

I used to play with a pianist/arranger, Mike Alterman, who was DW's manager and accompanist just before she hit it big. She left him for Burt and Hal, and the rest is history. Mike was the pianist with Woody Herman on the "East Meets West" LP, and spent eight traumatizing months on the road with Chet Baker back in the 60s.

Yet I've tried other Brazilian vocalists looking for the same fix I get from AG, but it's not there. Almost all of the time, she chooses nice tunes, even the non-Brazilian ones, that work perfect for her voice. She sang the shit out of an obscure Harry Nilsson tune that no one else has ever recorded. There have been many other female vocalists who have tried to sing in her bag, but none have come close, even Sade, IMHO. It's like Sinatra...

I don't know why they have to build the whole thing around his relationship with da little white boy; he's not even a trumpet player. Seems like they're trying to make a tear jerker out of it. CT's life (if they based it on his autobiography) should be more than enough. BTW, Clark's buddy, Phil Woods, has an unpublished autobiography that I'd do anything to read. Here's a pretty long excerpt: http://jazzprofiles.blogspot.com/2014/08/a-chapter-from-phil-woods-my-life-in-e.html?m=1

#2 just sounds like PM trying to blow on ATTYA or maybe some other standard.

Schoenberg never wrote a Hollywood film score, although they begged him and Stravinsky to write one.I forget the story of why AS didn't do it, but as I recall it was pretty funny. Herrmann never studied with Schoenberg! I don't know where that article got that from... Raksin definitely did study with him, and used a twelve tone sequence for the confrontation with Donald Pleasance scene in "Will Penny"(probably the best place for serial music IMHO ). I'm doing an all-Raksin gig sometime in Sept. Once I hit the lotto I'll make my all-Raksin CD.

Yeah, that's the bio I mentioned in my post. It offered a good understanding of what Buckley was all about from someone who worked with him for many years. The thing I remembered most about it was the time that he and TB were playing a concert that featured Jimi Hendrix as the opening act. As most jazz guitarists did back then (me included), he wrote him off as just another loud, out of tune, pentatonic wanker. Later on, he said that he realized Jimi's true genius.

Yeah, I heard her music before I heard her story, and I knew there was something there. She was the first artist David Geffen signed for his record label, Asylum Records, and things looked good for her, but she didn't like the way Geffen was sending her out as a solo,opening act for some of the big rock groups back then, and they had a big blow out over it. She outed him at a concert interview (she called him a fat, little fag), and this was the early 70s- way before he was ready to come out of the closet. He pulled all publicity from her second LP, and it sunk like a rock. It's rumored Geffen got her blackballed from any of the big record companies after he dropped her from Asylum, and that was it for her career.

Yeah, tht's him. He was in the country/rock band Joyous Noise (two LPs), as well as Spanky & Our Gang, and played on Ron Elliot's (Beau Brummels) "Candlestickmaker" album. He recorded a solo album, "Songs For Old Ladies and Babies" for Capitol in 1972. His sister, Vicky McClure (now Vicky Doney) recently recorded an album with Phil Woods. All those people were involved with Judee Sill, one of my faves.

I think I should've titled this 'popular' thread, "Rochberg's Critique of the Strict Twelve-Tone Method of Composition", rather than a critique of Schoenberg, whose music and genius Rochberg greatly admired....

At a time when I was interested in the folk/jazz connection in the 1960s, I read the bio on TB, which I enjoyed a lot. TB was fiercely anti-commercial, and used jazz-oriented guitarists, Underwood and Art Johnson, rather than the hokey players the other folkies used. I exchanged emails with Art Johnson about his involvement with Buckley, and Judee Sill, and discovered a jazz underground in LA that consisted of players like Tommy Peltier, Lynn Blessing, Marc McClure, Denis Del Guidice and Bill Plummer, who fused folk/rock and jazz in a subtler way than the more well-known examples of that fusion. While I appreciated the fact that he incorporated improvisation into his later music (and later, funk!), I still prefer the Happy/Sad, Hello/Goodbye tunes

No Arnold, you shan't have the last word. You were truly a master, but you sought to reduce music to an aurally meaningless mathematical formula consisting of twelve-tone rows, in which no note could be repeated until the row had been stated. Though you composed master works outside of the twelve-tone system, you and no one else composed a master work using the STRICT, serial system. Praise free atonality, but the twelve-tone enslavement is over! Adrian Leverkuhn

I recently read "Straight Life", and found it to be one of the most honest jazz autobios ever written. Art and Laurie, maybe due to their Synanon training, didn't whitewash anything. I just finished "Raise Up Off Me", which was also great, but maybe HH needed someone like Laurie rather than Don Asher to get more in depth. Happy B'day!

Yes, the way Sal integrated his solos so well in each arrangement is amazing; no matter what the tempo was. Jake Hanna and the bass player propel the band effortlessly, and every member of the band swung like nobody's business.