sgcim

It was depressing hearing him sing on his last album. The once great singer of "Tales of Brave Ulysses" and many other great Cream tunes, now sounded like an old, sick man. I kept wondering, why did they release this? Now we know... I wonder how his 'best fiend' Ginger Baker is taking this? JB's music career began when he sat in with a jazz group GB was playing with at a club. GB called something absurdly fast, so they could get rid of this little Scottish punk he had never met before. When Jack smoked the tempo, Ginger realized this kid was something special. That didn't stop Ginger from pulling a knife on Jack, when he came in on one of Ginger's solos in the Graham Bond Organization, and then getting Jack fired from the band because of the incident!

Back when we were all playing in garage bands playing Cream covers, I had no idea Bruce and Baker had such strong jazz backgrounds. Rick Laird was another one who made the same transition Baker and Bruce made. RIP, JB

We just watched four hours straight of Tubbs on youtube. The guy was superhuman! Never knew he played vibes so well.

A rare treat today till 6:00pm, some six hours of Frank Strozier on KCR. Last I heard from the guy that got Frank his science teaching gig, Frank has completely dropped out of the scum-sucking music game, and left NY for RI. Good for him!

Kenny Burrell (as mentioned before) did a lot of R&B session work. I played a recording session with a jazz pianist who did a lot of Motown session work named Al Jabaz Williams. Rudy Williams (Mingus' cousin) was on Tenor sax.

I dunno, but Michael Howell's name pops into my mind....

Donald Fagen wrote a chapter on them in his recent book "Eminent Hipsters".

I just read an amusing story in David Raksin's autobiography about Wozzeck. Raksin was hired to write the music for Abe Polansky's film "Force of Evil", and Polansky told him he wanted something more modern from him, like Berg's Wozzeck. Later, at a party at Raksin's house, Polansky remarked to Raksin about the music that was playing on the phonograph, "Dave, do you think you could turn off that disgusting crap you're playing on the phonograph?" Raksin replied, "Abe, that is Berg's Wozzeck..." Hollywood...

My sis used to work at the Fillmore East, so I got to see a lot of free shows, and the East Village was a very exciting place back then. She said that she saw Miles Davis snorting cocaine in the bathroom at the FE. A friend of mine who lived in the EV said some Ukrainian guy got mad at some guy in a store, so he went to his apt. and got an axe and chopped the guy's hand off! The Hell's Angel's were always hanging out there, but I never saw them bother anyone. BTW, here's my favorite jazz trivia quetion: Which great jazz guitarist was a member of the Hell's Angels, and even had a contract placed on his life by them, because he testified against them in a murder trial?

Just recently, I remembered that PR &TR were the first rock concert I ever attended. It was at some hall on LI, and all I remember was that it didn't sound at all like the record... I remember a priest played "Kicks" for us at Sunday School, and followed it with a lecture on the evils of drugs. .

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