sgcim

The great guitar maker, Roger Borys, called me up today and said he had an extra ticket to a concert they had at The Cutting Room in NYC to celebrate Bucky's 88th birthday, so even though it was the coldest day in NY in many years, the words "free ticket" are music to my ears, and I somehow found my way there, and had a nice time. The band consisted of the NYC jazz guitar mafia- Bucky, Frank Vignola, Gene Bertoncini and Ed Laud(?)-and they played some of Bucky's favorite tunes. Bucky's still playing the shit out of that 7 string guitar, and each guitarist was featured playing their own solo guitar arrangements, which were all excellent. Then, Frank Vignola and the guitarist in his duo (Vinnie something)did a medley of songs in A minor, starting out with "Tico-Tico" and jetting through about five others, including Fred Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven", complete with worked out choreography. Bucky finished with an encore of Jenkins' "Goodbye" and the packed club gave him a standing ovation and sang Happy Birthday to Bucky, as he blew out the candles on his birthday cake.

I don't know what albums Mealing produced, but I looked at his credits on Discog, and he did arranging for numerous recording artists. On my IF 3 LP, JW is listed as Hodkinson. i was saddened to find that he passed away in July of 2013. I've got "Fallout" on the Sunbeam CD. There's a nice booklet that has Smith's recollections of the session. He said that Scott Walker decided to produce some jazz albums, and he chose TS as his first one. TS recalled he got to the studio in the morning, and was surprised to see the top players of the day waiting for him- Ray Warleigh, Gordon Beck, Kenny Wheeler and Harry South among others. I had the TS LP with Tony Lee on tape, but just tore apart half of my closet looking for it. I guess I'll start on the other half... It really deserves a CD release. Here's Pt. 1 of the Bull's Head gig with Smith and Lee:

They made him play pentatonic scales and use wah-wahs and distortion for the first IF LPs, but when I saw him at The Gaslight in NYC a year after I first saw them at the Fillmore, he was literally on fire the whole night. We sat at the table right in front of him, and I think I got the best guitar lesson I ever took that night. I think we've talked about IF here before, but it's worth repeating that most of their stuff with the original band gets into serious grooves, even though most of them use compound time signatures. Dennis Elliot sold out big time by joining Foreigner with his fellow sellout from KC, Ian MacDonald. Mealing became a big producer... J.W. passed this year, Morrissey a few years back.

I recently discovered this video on youtube, and did a search and found that TS had no thread here. Here he is with the Tony Lee Trio doing a Stevie Wonder tune: I've been a fan of TS since I went to see Black Sabbath at the Fillmore East, and opening for them was some British Jazz-Rock band named IF. I came away sick of BS, and in love with IF, and Smith's burning plectrum technique. I later discovered TS and Dick Morrissey had been Melody Maker pollwinners before they started IF, and TS had been musical director for Scott Walker, who produced TS' first LP back in 1968, "Fallout". He recorded with Jack McDuff on "In Search of a New Home" back then, and then played in a few bands, IF, Zzebra, before resuming his jazz career. I sent away to the UK to his record Co. directly, Actone Records, for his last CD, "Tenderly" a few years ago. He goes back to his Wes influence, abandoning his exciting plectrum technique for the use of his thumb. Someone taped the LP he made in 1977 with Tony Lee for me years ago, but I can't find it after a few moves. Was it ever released on CD? Has anyone heard the McDuff LP? There's also a recording someone made with their tape recorder at the Bull's Head of TS with the Tony Lee trio that was put up on youtube. Any Brits ever catch him there?

Very sad to hear. RIP, Al. The days of the great lead players like Al, Bernie Glow, etc... are all but over. Today, everyone is expected to be able to do everything, and it doesn't neccessarily mean that things are better that way...

I'm digging the KCR Memorial now. I have to admit to being more partial to his traditional stuff than the later stuff, but RIP to a great wind player. A trumpet player friend of mine was his mentor when Yuself was a student teacher at a public school in the Bronx. They used to put on jazz concerts every week in the school, and have public debates about jazz afterward, and the kids loved it. If someone tried to do that in the NYC public schools of today, you'd be out on the street in a minute. Bloomberg finally gave up his stranglehold on the schools today, but it will take decades to undo the harm he's done. My friend has some great framed pictures of himself and Yusef playing on the school auditorium stage.

The great fusion drummer Ricky Lawson passed at the age of 59.

Now I've heard everything... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX-aPJ6AB4w

Yesterday, I saw this 1953 Noir-ish drama about a refugee looking for a clarinetist in Times Square to prevent him from being deported, and all of a sudden there's Jimmy Giuffre sitting there playing tenor sax in one club scene. I checked Meeker, and sure enough, it was Jack Teagarden featured with Shorty Rogers' band (Giuffre, Bob Gordon Jack Montrose, Shelly Manne, Howard Rumsey and Frank Patchen), with Bob Keene ghosting the clarinet solos throughout the movie. I don't know why they had to have a West Coast band featured in a movie that was shot in NYC, but they played some wild swing arrangements with some good trombone, clarinet and trumpet blowing.

Spent countless hours listening to Gato wailing away on "Falsa Baihana" on that one. Immediately caught him live in 73 at the Newport in NY Festival with a teenager named Stanley Clarke on bass. We had a post-Christmas Pop vinyl fest last night: McKendree Spring-1st LP- drummer-less quartet with elec. violin. Free Design- "You Could Be Born Again" - Chris Dedrick was a genius IF- 1st LP- great UK jazz-rock feat. Dick Morrissey and Terry Smith

Speaking of KC drummers, I finally received the DVD of the 21st Century Schizoid Band Concert in Japan from Netflix, and was overjoyed to hear the great work of Michael Giles for a full concert. As KC fanatics know, this concert re-united the original band with the exception of Fripp and Lake. IMHO, the highlight of the set was a Giles original from his 1978 LP entitled "Progress", which featured Giles playing a complicated. polyrhythmic accompaniment to a deceptively slow tempo that I had to listen to twice to fully comprehend. Though the concert was recorded back in the early 2000s, "Progress" can stand up to anything current in jazz, fusion or prog., and should be a standard in any of those genres. Mel Collins proves that he came a long, long way in his sax and flute playing since the early days of KC, and really shines on this and "Formentura Lady". McDonald proves that he was the compositional genius behind "ITCOTCK" and does his usual impeccable job on flute and keyboards. A great touch was featuring McDonald and Collins on baritone and tenor saxes rather than taking the easy way out with synths handling everything, an approach that has IMHO fucked music beyond redemption. Unfortunately, the disc had some type of electronic blocking format in it that prevented me from duping it on to videotape on my DVD/VCR Recorder, but would it be possible to dupe such a disc onto another disc in my computer?

I really enjoyed this BBC ND tribute concert " A Way To Blue", as many talented Brits got together to celebrate their country's neglect of one of their most talented singer/songwriers, ultimately pushing the already fragile ND over the edge... But seriously, this is a very nice concert with nary a synthesizer nor a Sting in sight. The orchestra performs the original arrangements wonderfully, and Danny Thompson performs on the ACOUSTIC BASS marvelously. The acoustic guitarist does a wonderful job, also. The only performance I didn't like was Robyn Hitchcock's. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X2JDv39tG0

Just finished this. I had never read his column for Premeire, so I was never exposed to his writing before, and I found it uniformly excellent. In the first section he talks about going to jazz clubs in the 60s and 70s, and comments that when he'd see Bill evans towards the end (the late 70s) at the VV, and he was surpried by the "odd, loping shuffle in his right hand lines, as if he was regressing to an antiquated rhythmic style." He also mentions seeing Mingus at the VV, and talked about CM seeing Coleman Hawkins at the bar and calling the Hawk an Uncle Tom. Hawk just smiled politely at him and kept drinking... He also saw Jaki Byard there and Jaki spent an entire break at his table when he asked JB some questions about the music. When talking about jazz radio, he fondly remembers Mort Fega's show, and recalled an incident where Fega played an Albert Ayler cut, and after a minute, scraped the needle on the record and took it off... In the second section he describes his gradual psychic degeneration from what he calls "Acute Tour Disorder", and ends the book with a clinical description of its symptoms as if it was actually listed in the DSMIV-R (or whatever it's called). A great read from one of our greatest living singer/songwriters.

Thanks so much Uli! Jazz piccolo and I guess that was either alto or bass flute. I enjoyed that more than the LPs with Herbie Mann and Jeremy Steig. I knew Herb played the flute, but I didn't know he was that good. Was that ever released as an LP?

I just got back from the most intense jam session I ever had in my life, and the pianist said he had a video from Italy with Herb playing a concert with Bill Evans(!). BE's little seen GF, Elaine was in it. it can only be played on an all region VCR, which I don't have, so I guess i'll have to wait for next time. My pianist friend freaked when he heard Herb had passed...

Like Judee Sill, Drake paid the price for overestimating the sophistication of the music audience of his time...

Very sad to hear. One of the alto greats of all-time. RIP, Mr. Geller.

Charlie Shoemake "Plays The Music of David Raksin" on Discovery Records Never knew this existed, which is kind of strange considering I thought I was going to be doing the first jazz album of DR's music. Found it on Discog for $4.99. Good playing by CS, Peter Sprague, Mike Wofford and Ted Nash.

Phil Schaap is celebrating CT's 93rd on "Traditions in Swing" right now on WKCR. I was ready to hang it up many years ago and get a 'real job' when I got a gig with CT, and decided if he dug my playing, maybe I should stick wid it. He dug me, and I wound up getting a real job later anyway, but nothing can match being recognized by a real giant on the stand. Happy Birthday, CT, and many more!

They're too busy kissing Bloomberg's ass to bother with facts anymore... Nate Chinen was the same genius who wrote that article that said Trane was one of the founders of bebop

One of my favorites, too. Hall and Raney were an intense pairing, especially on "Move It" (think that's the title and think it's a Hall piece). The young Steve Swallow adds a lot to this date, as he does to the Art Farmer Quartet with Hall, and Walter Perkins or Pete LaRoca. The other date he did with Zoot, featuring Ron Carter and some pianist named billevans, was also pretty special...

Yeah, I have to admit I wasn't thrilled to hear him use a chorus device on some of his later stuff. I also wasn't too thrilled about some of the company he was keeping...

Very sad to hear. He was looking very frail, so it's not totally unexpected, but it's still hard to believe. I caught him live so many times in the 70s, I can't remember them all. He's on so many great recordings it would be impossible to list them all. The last time I saw him, he played "Skylark" at Jimmy Raney's Memorial service at St. Peter's, but who's going to play it for him? I'm sitting here listening and taping WKCR's 24 hour tribute to him. Absolute genius. RIP, Mr. Hall...

Wow, that was nice, Ted. Thanks for posting. Jerry was such a lovely player. Puts me in a Paul Desmond frame of mind. Couple of questions - did you take those pics? I'm sure you were at the session. Anyway, it's a wonderful collage and great to see all the guys from some 30 years ago. Also I know Jerry was sadly afflicted with Alzheimer's and went to live in a nursing home. Has he passed away? And speaking of alto players, Boss Brass and Woods (made shortly after this recording) is one of the best big band albums ever recorded. Ever. Period. (IMHO, of course). . But seriously. Sad to say, Jerry Toth passed away in March 1999. There's a Wikipedia page about him... I think I took some of the pictures there, of the producer Fernando Gelbard at 0:37, and 0:54. That's me at 1:13, in my smoking days (and Tennessee Tuxedo). And speaking of alto players, the guy who sat beside Jerry Toth was a pretty good bop alto, Moe Koffman. This live performance also has some hot Sam Noto trumpet, too. Gee, You Tube has my old theme song, also. Rob wrote T.O. for me, and later, T.O.2 as a closing theme... Speaking of Koffman, I recently learned his son made a movie about him entitled "Jazzman". Anyone from the Great White North ever see it?

Unfortunately, Ed Bickert has never done a solo LP. The guy I was trying to remember before was Jonathan Kreisberg. His recent solo CD is unbelievable. Not possible to surpass that shit...