sgcim

It would have been difficult to get anything out of Max towards the end. A friend of mine played a gig with Earl May at the senior home where Max was living, and sadly he said Max was all but gone from some severe brain disease.

Get Roku and screw them all.

KCR played a tribute to him, and I was bowled over by the sound of his voice. He sounded like Sam Cooke singing b3rds and b7ths. They played his early stuff where he sang the shit out of some standards ("Fever" among others).

I've noticed that Phil Schaap and WKCR haven't played any JS. Could the reasons for this be: 1) He wasn't black? 2) He didn't play free jazz? 3) He didn't have any self-destructive "habits" which endeared him to a hipster audience? 4) He wasn't black?

I think you are thinking of Dr. Terror's House of Horrors. Amusingly for British viewers the trumpeter was played by Roy Castle, a light entertainer (and trumpeter) who presented a long-running children's series called Record Breakers. Tubby Hayes also makes an appearance. That's the one. RC was a pisser! I saw another 60s British horror flick the other day called "Corruption", with Peter Cushing wildly overacting the old 'mad surgeon trying to restore his wife's beautiful face by using the skin of other beautiful women' role (in other words, a rip-off of "Eyes Without a Face"). There's some wonderfully demented 'Twilight Zone Jazz' in the scene when Cushing and his wife are chasing the beatnik chick across the beach for what seems like an hour.

I think I've already related the story of seeing Phil Woods play there, and having the honor of him hurling a can of beer at me after we tried to visit him backstage. My HS friend introduced me to PW as "the world's greatest jazz guitarist" (we were still in high school!)and Phil bellowed, "Get the fuck outta here!!", and let the can of Bud fly. The guy who ran it sometimes sells records in various places in NYC, and I bought some great LPs "Eddie Costa Trio Live at Newport,1957", "The New York Jazz Quartet", and "The Sal Salvador Sextet"- all without their covers. He told me that he was making a film on jazz artists like Costa, Clifford Brown, etc... who died young.

While we're talking about composers' kinks and prejudices, I'm reading "Self Portrait of Percy Grainger", a compilation of all his private writings, and this man had enough to fill four books- let alone one. Although he wasn't gay, his appetite for flagellation seemed to be inexhaustible. In the Grainger Museum in Melbourne, there are photos on display of him with hundreds of whip scars on his body, along with his actual collection of whips. He also has a 25 item list of suggestions of things that should be done to make the world safe for Nordics near and far.

This is a long list, but here's only a few: Don Joseph jamming with Bill Evans Jimmy Raney playing with Bill Evans at a jazz clinic Pepper Adams playing Miles Davis' solos down an octave at the same time Miles was supposedly improvising Bob Bruno playing bass with Teddy Wilson while tripping on acid Bob Bruno playing piano duets with Don Preston at the Musicians' Union in Cal. Bob Bruno jamming with Jimi Hendrix and Larry Young in NYC Bob Harris playing piano with Gabor Szabo in 1970 Judee Sill playing upright jazz bass and singing in a duo with Bob Harris Phil Woods playing at Carnegie Hall with the opera singer mentioned in Martin Williams' rundown of the Thirdstream concert featuring Eric Dolphy Steve Kuhn playing with the John Coltrane Quartet All of these things happened, but weren't recorded, AFAIK...

You're lucky, Jeff. Bloomberg has fucked the shit out of the NYC Public School music programs.

That's sad about J&R, but we know what NYC is all about... I scored many great CDs and LPs there. I still remember when one of their employees defiantly put Steely Dan in the Jazz section, with something like, "Yes, they deserve to be here!!!". Another time, I heard them talking about a chick they knew who was a Frank Strozier groupie. I used to go into Manhattan every week, and spend twelve hours just looking at records at Tower, J&R, Rockit Scientist, etc...Now they're all gone. I haven't gone into Manhattan in years- it's just a big tourist attraction- Bloomberg's destroyed it...

Yeah, there's a scene in the last 20 minutes of Once a Thief that has a great piece that could've been written today. It also had a wild opening scene of a jazz drummer playing a drum solo in a jazz club, that went on for more than five minutes.

You're a manly man, Jeff. Band Camp has driven many a music teacher into retirement. They stranded a friend of mine on an island with the little monsters for a week every summer, and that eventually drove him to call it quits.

Wow is right! Thanks for that.

Yeah, Bennie da man!

There was a great 1960s British horror film anthology that featured a short horror story about a jazz trumpet player who transcribed some sacred African melodies, and performed them in a club.The resultant piece is a bongo-filled, dissonant, wild cacophony that builds up to the leader of the tribe laying the hapless trumpet player to waste. I forget the name of the movie- maybe something like "Tales of Terror"(?). Kenton might have done some stuff like that. Lalo Schifrin's first Hollywood score (some 1966 crime movie with Ann- Margaret), ends with a wild piece like this. David Raksin wrote some dissonant stuff for "Force of Evil" that might qualify. i think there was some of this type of stuff in "Crime and Punishment, USA" (1962).

On the record PW made with RC, "Side By Side", they play Donna Lee at 352BPM. Like Roland Kirk did with George Adams, and Sonny Stitt did with RRK, PW mops up the floor with RC. Sorry all you jazz pacificts out there- this is a noble jazz tradition.

This is considered the standard text for jazz musicians in films. I just used it to discover that Bud Shank was the flautist in the jazz club scene in "Night Tide", a lesser known Raksin film score. http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/html/jots/jazzscreen-home.html

That would be pretty strange if it were true. A British guitarist is writing a bio of Smith that should be coming out pretty soon; maybe he'll go into it...

Good post. Years ago, I was playing with a very talented jazz musician, who was too broke to afford a car, so i had to pick him up at train stations, and we'd drive to our gigs together. I also played on a jazz LP with him. Somehow, he got hooked up with a journalist, who became his agent, and the next thing you know, he was releasing albums on a big label, appearing at all the big festivals around the world, and winning jazz polls on his instrument.

There are many interesting facts about JS that I've unearthed over the years, but they would mainly interest only guitarists. However, he received the greatest endorsement of all when he played at Birdland in the 50s, and Bird himself would perch himself in the front to listen to him play. Which is not to say that JS played in Bird's style- just that Bird recognized the beauty of Smith's genius on the guitar.

At 8:06 am. First Johnny Smith and now Sam Most. RIP Mr. Most...

We've just lost the greatest master of the plectrum guitar that ever lived. Even today, nobody has even come close to the artistry JS displayed with a pick on those records he made on Roost in the 50s. I bought every one of them, and still bought the Mosaic set. You could play better jazz than him, you could swing more than him, but you CANNOT play the guitar with a pick better than him. Rest In Peace, Johnny...

I remember hearing that Toots Thielmans used to like to practice harmonica in his bathroom because he liked the sound.

Thanks, Jeff. I read that book many years ago, and forgot about that part. There's a very embarassing part for Jim Hall on the George Russell piece where he can't cut it. He pretty much gives up, and says, "Can't you get Barry?", referring to the great Barry Galbraith, who was such a great reader that Russell used to use him on every recording he made in the 50s.

I haven't replied to this yet because I'm away from my home and books, but yes, that's more or less the case, if I remember correctly. Schuller presented several "third stream" pieces, some featuring Dolphy, then the three Dolphy quartet tunes and the jam session. Someone (Martin Williams?) wrote an article about the final rehearsal for the concert. The classical musicians were apprently amazed at how casually the jam session was organized. Was this the same concert that they recorded 'Variations on a Theme By John Lewis (Django)? That was a mind-blowing performance featuring Eric Dolphy on flute, Eddie Costa on Vibes, and Jim Hall with a string quartet. I have that on cassette tape, so I don't have any specifics. I think that was from a great LP called "Jazz Abstractions", but I don't know if it had anything to do with the Donna Lee session...I'm so confused!