sgcim

I met Toots when he was playing guitar and harmonica in an All-Star big band at a jazz festival they used to have on Lon Guyland in the 70s. I was playing in a kid band before them, and he and Ron Carter didn't have amplifiers for the rehearsal, so they both used my friend's Kustom 100, that I was borrowing. They didn't even ask me, they just told me they were using it. Toots saw that I was totally in awe of him and Ron, so he ordered me to move the amp where he wanted it. He said to me:'"Slave, you will move the amp over here!" I, of course, complied. A student arranger from Eastman wrote a chart for them, and Ron Carter made him rewrite the bass part right before the concert, because he said it was too sloppy. The poor guy was completely freaking out while Ron sat back and relaxed. Toots got standing ovations from the audience on his harmonica features. We used to have thousands in attendance at these summer jazz festivals, because it was free, and it was held at the huge Eisenhower Park, which goes on for miles. People loved it, but when the head of the Office of Arts and Cultural Development(who loved jazz) was politically ousted, they never held another jazz festival.

Are there enough good Eddie Costa piano solos on that to make it worth getting?

I always get confused about that. We used to see Mike playing way back in the 1980s at a place called 55 Grand Street, and the people I was with said that he lived above it, and owned the place. Apparently 55 Bar is not the same as 55 Grand St., right?

Anyone hear anything about this? https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203077512836820&set=a.1384481210160.2055314.1175899651&type=1&theater

I was just talking about him with a trumpet player friend of mine who went to high school with VR, and he said that VR was the most swinging drummer he ever played with. He was playing pro level when he was in high school. Unfortunately, VR adopted some bad 'habits', and that's what might have ultimately did him in. My friend, who played with Lionel Hampton, wasn't even aware that VG recorded, although he knew about the Mangione connection. He still has never used a fuckin' computer, so I'll have to tell him about the recordings mentioned.

Another Kerouac 'naming' from The Subterraneans was the character Harold Sands, who represented the novelist William Gaddis, who hung in The Village with Kerouac in the 50s, and who had just had the manuscript of "The Recognitions" accepted by a publisher. You can still hear the influence of Kerouac's take on jazz in the lyrics of Donald Fagen, a big Beat fanatic.

This thread is not going as I wanted it to go. I wanted secret cabals of LSD using jazzers to be exposed; maybe even Ornette's secret acid dealer to come forward and make startling revelations . I guess it's back to the free jazz movement of the 60s being spearheaded by aliens theory...

Before the Internest, I usually kept my little crackpot theories to myself, and the world was probably a better place for it.. . But now we are all subject to whatever stupid thoughts run through everyone else's mind, and that can't be a good thing... Anyway, I was talking to a sax player I know a while ago, and I told him I didn't like Trane's "OM' LP. He said they all took acid before they recorded it, and when Trane listened to it, he didn't like it, and didn't want them to release it, but they released it anyway. Then I heard Larry Young's jam with Jimi Hendrix, and I thought,"Hmm...that's definitely not typical LY,.." So I did a little research (IOW, I did a google search), and I found out that LY was trippin' himself around then... Then I was listening to a Roland Kirk CD, and noticed he started doing some odd music in the mid to late 60s, like "Jammin' With Wolves", and other things like that, and then I read his bio, and sure enow, Rahsaan be trippin' his brain out , too. i don't think I need to point out the pattern that seemed to be emerging, so what say you? Can the term 'acid jazz' be used another way?

I just picked up KB's "Blues: The Common Ground" on Verve, and was blown away by his sound and playing on it. It was recorded in 1968, and there's a picture of KB playing his blonde D'Angelico New Yorker on the cover. My favorite KB record is "Night Song" again with a picture of the same guitar on the back cover. I did a search, and KB played that guitar again on the "A Generation Today" LP he made with Phil Woods, yet another of my fave KB LPs. I think we're beginning to see a pattern here... I compared this sound with the stuff he did in the 50s and early 60s on Blue Note and Prestige and found that that stuff doesn't speak to me in the same way that the Verve stuff using that guitar did. He then stopped playing it and switched to a Gibson Super 400 at some point, and again, his sound didn't speak to me in the same way etc.... Can anyone name any other LPs KB made using the D'Angelico? BTW, that very same guitar was sold by KB, and a NY music store was selling it for 75K...

Does this set have a lot of Galbraith solos on it, or is it another session where Galbraith takes a few and mainly plays rhythm for Jones?

You da man, Scooby! Now how about some PW transcriptions...

Zappa, really? I thought he did an audio-only project (a commission, iirc), that was deemed 'pornographic' by the local authorities -- or something like that. I'm not as deeply steeped in Zappa lore as I once was 10-15 years ago, so my claim is certainly not authoritative. The only movie that Zappa did that I'm aware of was a crazy flick in the 60s called "The World's Greatest Sinner"(1962). It was made by the crazy character actor Timothy Carey, and I've got it on tape. To quote the Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film: "Frank Zappa did the music for this oddity about an insurance salesman who decides he's God, and becomes a rock 'n' roll evangelist to spread the word." It's not a porno film- just very weird. I've pretty much spent my life looking for weird flicks like this... I don't know about porn, but those composers like BN, PU and EM wrote some great music for the Italian "Giallo" films of the 60s and 70s.

In the early to mid 1960s, before hardcore or softcore porn existed, most of the movies they'd play at the 'Grindhouse' theaters would feature some type of jazz soundtrack. There would be no music credits listed, so there's no way of knowing who's playing, or which composer wrote the music. A good, Catholic boy such as myself, would have no knowledge of movies such as that, but a friend of mine told me he saw one from about '64 that had a jazz quartet with what sounded like Herbie Hancock and Freddie Hubbard going completely maniacal for about a half hour straight on some very modern (for the time) sounding modal thing. Unfortunately, the Meeker book wouldn't have any info on something like that.

http://observer.com/2014/02/what-is-the-future-of-jazz-in-new-york/#axzz2t9AYqtEj

I just heard some great musical silence by the master Bill Evans himself, on the 1974 Live in Holland album his trio did with Stan Getz. They had a three hour rehearsal the day before the concert, and agreed on what tunes they were going to play. Then, the day of the concert, Getz acts like a total dick, and plays one of his own tunes (Stan's Blues) that they hadn't rehearsed. You can hear BE comp changes for the head, then he just refuses to play after that. While Getz plays his solo, BE starts shaking his head at Eddie Gomez, telling him not to take a solo, even though Getz wanted him to play a bass solo. When Getz finishes his solo, he expects EG to play a bass solo, but the entire trio stops playing, and Getz is forced to play a stop chorus by himself. Getz manages to pull it off, and then they take the tune out, but BE never played another note after the first chorus. Don't mess with BE!!

Very sad to hear. PSH was a great stage actor as well as movie actor. RIP, Mr. Hoffman

I remember there was some controversy about who really wrote the Shaft theme arrangement when it first came out. I still read 'Downbeast' at that time, and some guy had written a letter saying that he had actually done that genius (IHMO) arrangement, and Isaac Hayes took all the credit for it. Was that Johnny Allen, or someone else?

You're no doubt correct, but I could never get past the corny-creepiness. I never heard any music compelling enough to care. The whole "it takes a worried man to sing a worried song" thing...eh, yeah, right, I sing a worried song, therefore I am a worried man, well, ok, furrow your brow then, worried man, furrow your brow and let's get busy killing fascists with banjos and guitars and songs. BOOM!!! BANG!!! STRUM!!!!! Here's how you kill a Fascist: Everything else just throws them off balance for a little while. Get to the bank while you can! That was Woody Guthrie that wrote "this machine kills fascists" on his guitar- not Pete Seeger.

RIP, Mr. Seeger- The man was a saint, as well as a virtuoso banjo player.

Another cat who's in his 90s that's still playing is Billy Taylor's drummer, Percy Bryce. I was just talking with a trumpet player friend of mine who was doing gigs with Percy and Earl May up until Earl's death a few years ago, and he just spoke to Percy, and he said Percy is still doing jazz gigs today.

I've got to admit I've never seen the there there with BF, but he further intensifies it with a CD he made with his former guitar teacher, where he demonstrates he can't even play straight-ahead as well as his aging teacher. Oh well, if DOWNBEAST says he's a genius, I guess he must be...

I was still a kid and had just discovered Sid on WEVD, but he was playing all latin music instead of the jazz that I expected. I'm pretty sure that I phoned in when he was taking requests on that last broadcast, and asked him to play Tal Farlow. He said, "Larry Harlow? You got it." He then proceeded to play some Larry Harlow cut that I couldn't give a shit about.

Frank Strozier has a nice song that he plays on flute from the LP "Remember Me" called Neicy that begins on an ascending b5 interval. The song "Isn't It Romantic" has a tricky descending major 7th interval in the last bar of the first ending that goes from the sixth in the key to the b7 "When I Fall in Love" has an ascending maj7th interval going from the first bar of the 2nd ending to the second bar. "There'll Never be Another You" has another ascending maj7th on the words 'how can they come true" at the end. "The Song Is You" has an ascending maj7 in the fifth bar of the bridge. "Misty" has an ascending maj7 on the first two notes of the second bar. "Invitation" has an ascending maj7th followed by a descending 4th on the second third and fourth notes, a pattern repeated throughout the song up a minor 3rd. "I'll Never Smile Again" has a descending minor seventh on the words 'smile again' repeatedly throughout the song

RIP, Phil. They played a live concert on the radio in tribute, and I was surprised to hear what great musicians they used and featured at their concerts. This one had the great Buddy Emmons(!) and Albert Collins.

We used to have almost 100 copies of "Blues People" at the HS where I used to teach. If a black kid was failing my music class, I gave them a copy and had them write a book report on it for extra credit. None of them ever returned it. Maybe I created an entire generation of jazz critics. RIP AB/LJ