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sgcim
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Posts posted by sgcim
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Whoops, that was Harold Arlen's jazz musical "Free And Easy"- Quincy Jones was only musical director.
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A good place to look for info on this band was Chan Parker's "My Life in Eb", as she was present for as long as Woods was in the band. They tried to perform Q's jazz musical "Free and Easy" for French audiences, but the language barrier, and other things made them give it up after a few days. Was "Free and Easy" ever produced? It seemed like members of the band appeared on stage.
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Wow, Jazztrain, that's enough info to send me out looking for that LP; thanks!
Ron used to be a very good trumpet player. He's featured on the LP "Compositions of Bobby Scott", and he sounds like a Fruscella/Joseph/Chet Baker-type player.
When I was doing gigs with him back in the 80s, he had switched to piano, and he had some great re-harmonizations of standards that have stayed with me to this day.
He was starting to gain some noteriety on trumpet (he placed in a DB Poll) when he had some type of injury that ruined his trumpet chops. If you know of anything else he arranged on, please let me know.
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Anyone have this Bethlehem LP, BCP 18?
It's a Sam Most LP with Oscar Pettiford on one side, and another group with Burger Jones(!) on bass.
I read online that Ronnie Woellmer, a trumpet player, arranged the four or five cuts with Pettiford.
Can anyone verify this?
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This was an attempt by leftist Barcelona composer Amargos to leave the conservatory and write music for the masses back in the 1970s:
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the book isn't bad (Life In Eb) but filled with too many sections of puffed-up and badly written prose, I think. The little section on Al Haig, however, is illuminating.
There are lots of arguments over who was the "real" wife; Don Schlitten told me he accepted Chan because she was the mother of bird's children.
Yes, she had a glib style that started to drive me crazy after a few chapters. I think this was written before "Death of a Bebop Wife", so her perception of Haig as the lunatic he seemed to be was pretty right on.
I think we've got a new genre here- "bebop wives tell all".
There's even a book about Bill Evans that was written by a woman who had a short relationship with him, towards the end.
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They don't do that anymore? That's all they do.
I didn't know you were the guy that Steve Post and Bob F. used to talk about on their shows.
Is it my imagination, or has NYC become a cultural cesspool since the glory days of BAI and channel 13 in the 60s?
![:shrug[1]:](https://www.organissimo.org/forum/uploads/emoticons/default_shrug%5B1%5D.gif)
I know this was after your time at BAI, but what ever became of John Fisk? He used to play some great Clifford Brown things.
That's probably why they fired him.
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I don't think there was a sincere fiber in Beverly Berg's body. She was an exploiter. Eastwood made a very bad mistake when he used her as a consultant for his Bird film.
Eastwood probably chose the love angle to make the film a commercial success. He called her, she didn't call him.
I couldn't stand the film, but I wasn't expecting much from a Hollywood actor.
I guess you could say she was trying to exploit her marriages with Bird and Woods with her two books, but I doubt she made any money with this one. Her endless descriptions of her depressions from the death of Bird and the end of her marriage with Woods made it a real downer. Still, if you're as fascinated with these two alto players as I am, her brain cells didn't seem to be as fried as some people have claimed they were, and you do get some insight into both of their careers that you might not find elsewhere.
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I knew she wrote a book with the title, "To Bird With Love", which I've never seen, but I think this is a different book. It's an autobiography; I don't know what "TBWL" is.
It covers four parts of her life- 1) Her pre-Bird life 2) Her life w/ Bird 3) Her life w/ Phil Woods 4) Her life after PW. PW has a DVD out called "A Life in Eb", which is interesting, considering her unflattering portrait of PW after their 17 year marriage broke up. Some things I found interesting were:
She said Bird was annoyed at people saying he was influenced by Lester Young. She said he didn't like playing behind the beat or rushing. He felt the placement of time right on. He claimed that Buster Smith was his main influence.
When Bird was in Bellvue, he was visited by Sherry Martinelli, who called herself "The Needle Lady".
She was the woman William Gaddis modeled the character Esme after, in "The Recognitions".
After Bird's death, they held a benefit concert for him at Carnegie Hall without her approval, that featured Sammy Davis Jr.
She thought that PW was a more likely successor to Bird than Jackie McLean or Cannonball.
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He also played on some of those LPs with Phil Woods as part of his European Rhythm Machine, when Gordon Beck wasn't doing it.
RIP GG
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I was at that concert in Central Park. I remember thinking, " that can't be the same Tal Farlow who played on all those Verve records I have..." Tal went through a lot of changes back when he was on top.
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Thanks for all the info on Sam Thomas. I saw his name on Klemmer's first LP, and tried to find out who he was, but to no avail.
Who or what is DG?
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This new book by Steven Roby is a compilation chronologically of JH's interviews.
The only jazz content is JH talking about how much he dug Roland Kirk, and the fact that he jammed with Kirk at Ronnie Scott's (March 8, 1969- Vernon Martin-Bass, Jimmy Hopps-Drums, Ron Burton- Pno.) Jimi on the jam:
"Oh yeah. I had a jam with him (Kirk) at Ronnie Scott's in London, and I really got off. It was great. It was really great. I was so scared! It's really funny. I mean ROLAND (laughs). That cat gets all those sounds. I might just hit one note, and it might be interfering, but like we got along great I thought.
He told me I should have turned it up or something."
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Thanks!
My fave vinyl with RT was the live session with Bobby Jaspar on Mole in 1962 in Paris.
One obscure record he did that I haven't seen mentioned was "A Milanese Story" by John Lewis on Atlantic from 1961.
It was an Italian movie soundtrack that had Bobby Jaspar also on flute and tenor and Buster Smith on drums, plus a string quartet.
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I avoid those concerts like the plague, unless it's something that can't miss.
My only positive experience was seeing Phil Woods and the Manhattan School of Music Jazz Ensemble recreate Gil Evans' "New Bottles,Old Wine" (Phil played the Cannonball parts- you can't go wrong w/ PW).
On the rock and/or roll side of things, I saw "Forever Changes" by Love recreated by Arthur Lee and Baby Lemonade, but maybe that doesn't count, because Arthur Lee was the original vocalist with Love.
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Buddy DeFranco played with Bird on the Metronome All Star recordings. From the Montreal 1953 album on Uptown, we have Hal Gaylor. I'm not sure about his whereabouts, but Dick Garcia is also on that recording.
Dick Garcia was a friend of my mom's family. I believe he passed long ago.
As far as I know Dick Garcia (born in 1931) is still alive.
Yes, Dick Garcia is still around, and living in his parents' house in Astoria, NY., according to a relative I contacted on the net.
He practices zen buddhism, and is living in seclusion. His phone # is in the White Pages.
One guy that played and recorded with Bird and Diz, who I've done many gigs with is Aaron Sachs. He's still playing very well, and lives in the Bronx. He's in his late 80s now.
He told me a story once about how he was walking down Broadway back in the 40s or 50s, and he ran into Bird.
Bird said something to him like, " Don't go thinking that you're the top cat around" OSLT.
Aaron was interviewed by Phil Schaap a number of years ago about his involvement with Tiny Kahn's version of a head based on "Indiana" that was very similar to "Donna Lee". He used to jam with Tiny and Terry Gibbs in the Bronx in the 40s, and they recorded it on a Terry Gibbs Quintet LP. I transcribed it, and while it was not the same melody as Donna Lee, you can see that DL probably evolved from Tiny's tune. They elaborated on lines at sessions back then, and came up with variations that got picked up by various players.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/aaron-sachs-mn0000586928/credits
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CT lived on the road from the time he got kicked out of high school and his house for getting a girl pregnant, till 1960, when he became the first black dude to work for the NBC Studio Orchestra.
He was the guy who broke up the fight between Mingus and Tizol when he was with Duke. Mingus had a fire axe(!) and Tizol had a huge switchblade, and CT held them apart from each other, till they got the stage call. Oscar Pettiford replaced Mingus the next night, laughing his head off about Mingus(whom he had previously clocked at a club), and CT said no one noticed any difference from the bass chair.
The band was so tough, the first thing CT would do each night was take out his switchblade, and throw it into his music stand, to let everyone know not to mess with him!
When Mingus later called him for a rehearsal for the LP "PreBird", the manuscript was so bad, CT told him he couldn't read it and he was walking out. Mingus stood in front of him, and tried to intimidate him physically, but CT put his trumpet case down and gave Mingus such a threatening look, Mingus let him leave.
I played at the Jimmy Nottingham Memorial concert with CT at the Storytown club in NY, and he was the sweetest cat in the world, giving me vocal praise on the stand, whenever he heard anything he liked.
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I just finished CT's autobiography, and thought I'd post something on it, because I haven't seen much written on it.
Three co-authors passed away before it was done, so it was written with CT's wife, Gwen, and it largely comes across as CT's speaking voice. It starts out with his life in St. Louis (where he meets a young fellow trpt. player named "Dewey") and then goes into his stints with Barnet, Basie and Duke, with many great stories about life on the road. It skips around chronologically when he wants to make a point.
He then goes into his twelve years with NBC, and his teaching and freelance career after that.
A few stories I found interesting were:
1) He goes into the drug scene in the 50s, where at the Apollo, several musicians tried to hold him down and inject him with drugs, but he fought them off with his training as a boxer. He never used narcotics.
2) He finds a "bulk lying in the gutter on Broadway". He kicks it over, and finds it was Miles Davis. He takes him back to his hotel room, leaves MD in bed, and comes back to find MD walked off with his trumpet, clothes and radio. A few days later he saw Philly Joe Jones walking down Broadway with CT's brand new maroon Phil Kronfeld shirt! He gets his wife to call MD's father to tell him that Doc Davis "thinks he's going to Julliard, but he's going to Yardbird". Doc Davis refused to believe Miles was on narcotics, and said that if musicians like CT would leave him alone, "he wouldn't be into that kind of traffic."
3) Norman Granz didn't like the subtle sound of the flugelhorn ( or much other subtlety), so he got a guy to try and steal CT's flugelhorn while he was on tour with NG, but CT found out about it, and prevented it.
4) Patti Ausin was seven years old when she was singing with "Free
and Easy" Q's musical in France.
5) He was passed over for Doc Severinsen's job on the Tonight Show because CT would ruin the ratings in the Southern market.
Then they told him to find another black trpt. player for the band, but he had to be married (when most of the other players in the Tonight Show Band weren't married). Then Aaron Levine told CT, "we're going to have to let your boy go", because Snookie wasn't getting along well with Skitch Henderson. CT said, "He's not my boy, Aaron. He's my FRIEND", and if you want to fire him, you'll have to fire me, too. They wound up keeping both of them.
6) Monk came into a club CT was playing at in 56 and told him to come over the Baronness' house to work on some songs for his new LP. They spend three hours watching Monk throw some stuff into the fire in the fireplace, and Monk doesn't say a word.
Then they do the session the next day without a rehearsal...
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But then you must be aware there's much more to Brookmeyer than his stint with Jones/Lewis, right?
Just some high points in his career include:
- his early albums as a leader, crowned by "Traditionalism Revisited"
- his sideman work with the Jimmy Giuffre 3
- his sideman work with Gerry Mulligan's quartet and sextet
- his part in the success (musically speaking) of Mulligan's great Concert Jazz Band
And of course he was with Thad/Mel long before Thad left and was - in my opinion - a fine contributor at that stage, already!
And what about the Clark Terry/Bob Brookmeyer Quintet? One of the last bands Eddie Costa played with, they released four great LPs featuring magic improvised counterpoint betwixt the Flugelhorn and Valve trombone:
"Quintet"
"Tonight"
"The Power of Positive Swinging"
"Gingerbread Men"
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I'm glad I bought any of the JPJ Quartet LPs when I spotted one of them - a very underrated band, playing excellently and not simply a retro swing group, much more than that. These guys were playing!
Same for any Hines Quartet recordings with Johnson.
The complete(?) JPJ Quartet recordings (studio and live) have been (re)issued on Storyville.
I used to catch the JPJ Quartet live a lot in NY back in the 70s. I have fond memories of Budd's ecstatic version of "If I Had You".
I've never heard a tenor sound like that, before or since.
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I used to drink Michelob all the time back in the day. The last time I was in a store looking for a non-microbrewed beer for a party, I looked around for it but only found some weird low carb version. Michelob Ultra maybe? No way I was buying that.
Michelob Ultra= 2.6g carbs
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The Honegger was always my fave.
Strongly recommend Honegger's 'Une Cantate de Noel' to Xmas music lovers who don't know it. A 25 minute piece in two parts, the first extremely dark and brooding with absolutely no tinsel. The way the light comes in in the second part, built round a childrens choir singing the carol 'Il est né le divin enfant,' weaving in and out of other themes ('er ist ein ros entsprungen') is pure Christmas.
There's another recent version on this disc that I've not heard; but the couplings are better known Honegger - more spring like!
I've always wondered why he wasn't played that much, then I read an article on his activities in WWII, I guess that explained it.
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I know the OP was asking for his work as leader but I'll reccommend Oliver Nelson's "Straight Ahead" with Dolphy. Love his bass clarinet solo on the first track, Images. I'd also say check out Chico Hamilton's "The Original Ellington Suite". While not as "outside" It's still a pretty interesting take on some Ellington tunes.
AFAIK, the Chico Hamilton record is the only really "inside" playing Dolphy did on an entire LP.
He plays an "inside" clarinet solo on the Waldron "Quest" LP, but the rest is typical Eric
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Well said, Magnificent One- "be careful what you wish for..."
I have fond memories of watching Rhassan destroy a chair(!) on the WNET program "Soul" somewhere around 1970(?).
I always wondered, 'what up wit dat?'
Greatest LPs to never make it to CD
in The Vinyl Frontier
Posted
One great LP that may never make it to CD is Jimmy Raney's "Strings and Swings".
His son said that there were legal problems regarding the extended piece of music that Raney composed, "Suite For Guitar and String Quintet" that may never be settled.
It's a shame, because it's a historically significant piece of music that combines Bartok and jazz, and has some great Raney solos on it. The other side is a regular jazz quintet recording featuring Raney leading a group with Bobby Jones and Dave Lahm, live in Louisville KY. It's also excellent.
If you have that LP, consider yourself lucky.