sgcim

Sometimes, on a little-known film like this, you get some interesting behind-the-scenes stories from people who were involved with the film, posted on the IMDB: "My father, who passed away in 2002, was a well-known jazz trumpeter who played with the Maynard Ferguson, Duke Ellington and Woody Herman bands among many others. He was the Technical Adviser on "Uncle Joe Shannon," meaning he taught Burt Young to appear as though he could play the instrument. He thoroughly enjoyed this gig because Burt is a genuinely nice individual. I remember spending time in Burt's trailer a number of times and appearing as an extra in the orphanage dormitory scene. The producers offered dad the opportunity to perform the trumpet solos on the soundtrack but my father felt that Maynard's style (the legendary high notes and amazing technical prowess,) would be more appropriate and dramatic for the film and the character of Joe Shannon. My dad's trumpet playing style was more subtle, muted, and lyrical. Additionally, Maynard had a hit with the "Rocky" theme at the time. Chartoff-Winkler produced both the "Rocky" films and "U.J.S." Maynard said his work on this film was the best-paying job he'd ever had, (considering the short amount time he spent in the recording studio.) "Uncle Joe Shannon" is obviously no "Citizen Kane," but the acting is good, a lot of the first-time crew members got their union cards, and ultimately I doubt the producers lost any significant money. I have fond memories of this period, and of this film".

I stumbled on to this 1978 flick that starred and was written by Burt Young: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.jots.200020248/default.html It starts off with BY doing a recording session for a film, screeching like Maynard, for no discernable reason. He hangs with his beautiful wife and son, and then hurries off to a concert with a symphony orchestra (whose members are all dressed in white robes) where he's the soloist in some kind of Baroque/Jazz Concerto for Trumpet that features him screeching again like Maynard, for no discernable reason. When he comes home after the concert, his wife and kid have been turned into unrecognizable toast by a fire in their house. Next thing you know, he's a homeless, alcoholic bum, carrying around his trumpet without a case throughout the entire movie. I thought that maybe the avocados I've been having with my salad caused some type of cinematic hallucination, but I checked the IMDB, and sure enough, this movie was released, and then went to the Meeker cited above, and found out whowas associated with it. No musicians on the gig tonight ever heard of this flick. Please tell me that someone has seen this weirdness...

I showed it to Johnny Amoroso, and he smiled and said it was Carl Gianelli, but Stan Auld (Georgie Auld's nephew) disagreed. Johnny Amoroso was the star vocalist and trumpet player with Tommy Dorsey for many years, and told a story about how Neal Hefti burst into his hotel room at 3:00 in the morning, completely blitzed out of his mind, and told him Tommy wanted him to write an arrangement on "Angel Eyes" for JA by the next day. JA said the arrangement was so incoherent that he couldn't even find the key when they tried it out. Like most horn players, they couldn't give a shit about who the guitarist was... Dick Johnson seems like a good guess- it sounded more like him than anyone else.

I'm gonna bring the LP cover to the gig tonight. Between Jimmy Miller and Johnny Amoroso, one of them has to know. This mystery shall be solved!!!!

Definitely not Phil or Quill. Probably some studio guy who could read flyshit. After listening to "Soul Guru", I doubt Wally Richardson had the technical and reading chops to handle Hefti's quite demanding charts, but Soul Guru was another genre, so maybe in this swing setting he could cut it. WR sounded pretty weak on the Joe Wilder LP with the Pete Brown group, so I don't know if he had the chops for this. I don't know if this was East or West Coast, but I know Hefti used Bud Shank for his score to "Barefoot in the Park".

My father bought this LP back in 1960, when it first came out. He was a guitarist up till the time he got married, so most LPs he bought had something to do with the guitar. On the back cover, there's a picture of NH in the studio with a white alto player, and a black guitarist (playing through a Fender Tweed amp,Tremolux?), which probably was the reason he bought the LP. The first side features the trpt, alto, guitar bass and drums. Side two replaces the guitar with piano. I've been wondering, lo these many years, who is this guitarist, because the musicians are not listed on the LP. Your mission, should you decide to accept it; identify the musicians on this LP. This post will self-destruct if personnel not ID'd.

Aaron wrote one Latin big band thing that Louie Bellson used as one of his theme songs, and he didn't get credit for it, so called up LB, and eventually received credit. I forget the tune. Something like "Prime Time"? The guys in the Terry Gibbs group, AS, TG and Tiny Kahn, used to get together when they were kids in the Bronx, and Tiny came up with a line on "Indiana" that they recorded with the Terry Gibbs Quintet years before "Donna Lee" was written. I transcribed it, and it's obviously the source of Donna Lee, although there were some differences. Aaron was a guest on Phil Schaap's show on WKCR discussing the evolution of Donna Lee. He said Phil grilled him for two hours about it. It is fascinating how jazz used to be more of an oral tradition back then, and lines would get passed back and forth at jam sessions, and eventually evolve into a recorded tune. A lot of bop and swing heads were "communally" composed.

I did a search on the guitarist in the United States of Mind, RR, and it seems he passed last year in Fla., after being thrown from his wife's car. For some reason, he was on the back of the car while it was moving(?). They said it was under investigation...

I remember seeing Horace Silver and the United States of Mind on WNET when I was a kid. He had the guitarist Richie Resnikoff with him back then. I only knew RR from Buddy Rich's Big Band records. I've done a few gigs with John McNeil, I didn't know he worked with HS. Did they record together?

OMG, what personnel! Featuring John Lewis, piano ; the composer, arranger, conductor. #1, 4, 6: John Lewis, piano ; Nick Travis, Louis Mucci and Freddie Hubbard, trumpets ; Mike Zwerin, trombone ; Bob Swisshelm and Bob Northern, French horns ; Don Butterfield, tuba ; Billy Bean, guitar ; Richard Davis, bass ; Connie Kay, drums. #2, 5: John Lewis, piano ; Harold Jones, flute ; Eric Dolphy, alto flute ; Phil Woods, clarinet ; William Arrowsmith, oboe ; Loren Glickman, bassoon ; Don Stewart, bassett horn ; Gene Allen, baritone sax ; Jim Hall, guitar ; Richard Davis, bass ; Connie Kay, drums. #3: John Lewis, piano ; Eric Dolphy, alto sax ; Benny Golson, tenor sax ; Jimmy Giuffre, baritone sax ; Herb Pomeroy, trumpet ; Gunther Schuller, French horn ; Jim Hall, guitar ; George Duvivier, bass ; Connie Kay, drums.

I turned on WKCR, and they were playing great jazz that swung, had great soloists that could swing, and make musical sense, and played great tunes that also swung and made musical sense. I figured something cataclysmic had happened and it was the end of the world. RIP, Horace.

Cool, thanks for the report! No keyboard or guitar? Do you remember any of his comments?

Thanks, mucho. Great stuff!

That reminds me that when one of the musicians tried to compare Charlie Watts' jazz playing with Ginger Baker's, Giampaolo gave a GTFOH reaction to the comparison. Not in the same league...

I'm up to p.426 of "Straight Life", and am completely blown away by the book. I had no idea that Pepper led the life he did in betwixt recording sessions/gigs, and like Chet Baker, I'm amazed that he managed to accomplish what he did, in spite of the huge obstacles he faced. BTW, I heard a Pepper Live LP from the 50s, where AP showed he could play as fluently as Bird or Stitt on double-time and up tempo things. Does anyone know what LP this was?

The first question I ask drummers I work with nowadays, since seeing "Beware of Mr. Baker", is what they think of GB as a jazz drummer. A big band, Buddy Rich-type drummer said words to the effect of, "Get the fuck outta here." A bebop drummer, who's more open-minded, considered it for a few minutes, but wound up saying GTFOH, also. However, I did a gig with the great Italian drummer, Giampaolo Biagi, who was in Europe when Baker was playing jazz, and he defended Baker's rep as a jazz drummer against the condemnation of some older musicians. He said Ginger stood up very well in his drum battles with Max Roach, Elvin Jones and Art Blakey.

Sadly, one of the guys said that Aaron passed away last week, and they had the funeral two days ago on Sunday. He said Aaron was 91 when he passed. Everyone was shocked to hear about it. He passed away after a fall caused a hip fracture, and he died as a result of an infection from the fracture. One of the guys was talking about how Aaron was child prodigy on the clarinet, and was expected to be the next Artie Shaw. He claimed that Aaron had gotten involved with drugs when he married Helen Merrill, and that had derailed his career, but the guy who said that was just speaking from rumors that were circulating back then. Aaron himself had told me that he was supposed to be the 'great white hope' in response to Bird, but it didn't work out for some reason. He once told me about walking down Broadway at that time and running into Bird, who said to him, "I know who you are, but don't go thinking you're something special"! Another time he told me that John Lewis heard him practicing Bach on the flute before a concert he did with him and was surprised that he was playing classical music, because all the other guys were too busy getting high. Aaron studied arranging with Hall Overton, and we played his arrangements in the two bands we both played in. He wrote a great chart featuring himself on Tenor on "Who Can I Turn To", and it was a profound experience to hear him improvise on tenor. I could best describe his tenor sound as a cross between Getz and Paul Desmond, and his improvisations were melodically very deep, definitely on the level of the melodic giants, such as Giuffre, Getz, Young, and Desmond. I've got a disc and a tape he gave me of live concerts he did on clarinet with a quartet featuring Janice Friedman, and a trio featuring Joe Puma. On clarinet, he sounded more mainstream and technical than his Tenor playing. Although he was a first call studio player, and could sight read anything, improvisation was where he was truly at. He turned to me on a gig we were playing with charts, and dramatically said, "You see all those notes on the page- they mean absolutely nothing. Nothing!" I'm really going to miss him. The younger guys and guys around my age, don't have that special melodic thing that Aaron and the few deep jazz players left had. Not many left. Thank God I still play with a few. RIP, Aaron.

The guys in the band that I'm playing with tonight should know about Aaron. All the best, older players from the Bronx used to play in it, but they're gradually passing. We already lost Eddie Bert, and Aaron's been in bad shape recently. I was playing regularly with Aaron for the last 20 years, but he retired a year or two ago. I've written a lot here about his significance in jazz history, Although he was about 90, he still had the attitude of a young guy. On the last gig we did together, he said to me, "It looks like they don't care about our music anymore." Based on what's going on in jazz today, I'd have a hard time disagreeing with him...

Thanks for the link. Has anyone heard any of the Connor, Sloane or other LPs he played on? Was there a Bill Evans thing in his playing?

Guitar

Reading the Dennard thread got me thinking about other obscure pianists. Last night, I did a gig in NYC with a pianist I never heard of before named Johnny Morris. It turned out he played on some small group Buddy Rich sessions back in the 60s, "Playtime" and "Blues Caravan", and went on a State Dept. tour with BR. i found this on youtube: He still plays classic swing piano, and I found myself thinking of Teddy Wilson during his solos. Another guy that I used to work with a lot who's still around is Mike Alterman, a fine musician. He played on the Woody Herman LP "East Meets West", and has a great solo on an up tempo blues. He went on the road with Chet Baker for eight months, and it was so traumatic, he refused to talk about it. I played with the great bass player, Frank Tate, also last night, and he mentioned a guy named Bill Rubenstein (Rubinstein?), whom he described as playing like Bill Evans, before BE started playing like BE. I did a search on him, and the only recordings he played on were a few Chris Connor LPs, and a Carol Sloane LP, "Live on 30th St." Anyone familiar with him?

We didn't get into his attitude toward women when I interviewed him for Down Beat back in 1968 or '69. But he was on a personal level as mean as a snake, even rather cruel (though I admit that in my still callow relative youthfulness and anxiety to please I left him an opening or two that I shouldn't have). The interview took place by a motel swimming pool with most of the Mothers within earshot, and they (Don Shelton, especially) were more or less appalled at the way Zappa had behaved and gathered around after he'd left to say a good many insightful things about the band that helped to make the experience a success after all, at least journalistically. I used to work with a drummer who went on tour with Zappa as a percussionist, and he said that FZ treated the musicians like dogs. And then there's his two famous quotes about jazz: "Jazz, the music of unemployment". "Jazz isn't dead, it just smells funny..."

Great show! They played "Step Lightly" by Blue Mitchell, which Leonard Lopate uses as the theme for his daily radio show on WNYC. I've been wondering what tune that was for a long time. I was in a used record store recently, and they played a Herbie Nichols tune that LL also uses as break music on the show. I didn't know that one, and had to ask the record store guy who it was.

I just read the Oscar Peterson article, and you obviously understand OP's playing, so I take back what I said concerning your stance on OP. I recently read "Miles on Miles", and if one were to confront him on everything he said in his interviews, it would take years. Miles liked to put people on. When my personal deity, Bill Evans, was asked to join the MD group, Miles told him he would have to give a blow job to everyone in the band, if he wanted the gig. Bill thought for a minute, and said, "I'm sorry Miles, I don't think I can do that." Miles broke out laughing, and told BE he was just kidding.