Larry Kart

Dishwater!

I faintly recall Chuck leaping in like Superman to alter an error in Leon Kellert's recording setup.

Wonder if that was the only time Milt and Philly Joe got together on record. BTW, when I was just getting into jazz back in 1953-4, I bought those Tony Scott 10-inchers for some damn reason. Enjoyed the heck out of Milt and Philly Joe, couldn't stand Scott.

"Lockjaw-ish"? In my experience, there are no rails that Scott won't go off of in the next moment or so -- time-wise, tone-wise, changes-wise, you name it He reminds of the scene in "Citizen Kane" where Dorothy Cummigore tries to sing that coloratura soprano aria. OTOH, in the movie, she knew she sucked.

No --not too loud; Philly Joe is just fine here. But Scott is close to incoherent. All that upper-register twiddling makes my teeth hurt. I'll take Buddy DeFranco with Blakey. (see below)

I know that.

My bad. Perkins was on that date. Vic played vibes on it.

You may be right in your speculation/suspicion above, Jim, but IIRC Feldman had an immediate impact on the West Coast scene as a whole. And he certainly fit in musically. You or I might have preferred Carl Perkins, but he might have been on the nod.

For sure, Leroy had a say. Nice album too.

I think, like Criss a bit earlier on, he was playing at LA-area staged jam sessions, where he made an impression.

That's the incident I witnessed. And Frank was wholly in the wrong in his nastiness there. As Willie Pickens said, when Frank was a kid, whatever happened, it was never his fault. And in this case there was no reason to blame anyone for anything. The band played a set of standard bop lines, blues, etc, in perfectly acceptable fashion. Frank berated Wilbur Campbell, of all people -- and Wilbur was really bothered by this -- for not following certain routines that Frank claimed to have had in mind, but as usual at the Showcase there had been no time for any rehearsal. Were Wilbur and Willie and the bassist supposed to read Frank's mind? But again, nothing that they all played was other than what one would have expected to hear on that material in terms of routines.

According to Jimmy Heath's autobiography, the Philadelphia police narcotics squad was hell on wheels. As for Frank Morgan, aside from the obvious, his problem was that he was a dyed in the wool con artist .Indeed IIRC that How Frank got busted in addition to drugs, for cheating elderly women out of their savings.I witnessed some behavior from him of that general sort at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago after Frank made his comeback. Willie Picken, who was a member of the rhythm section for that gig and who grew up in Milwaukee with Frank said to me as we shook our heads over what Famk had just tried to pull, "Frank was always that way."

I agree.

I thought your point was, or almost was, that the likes of Bock probably wouldn't have had had much to do with with two such black-audience-oriented fads, if fads they were, or even would have noticed them in the first place because they weren't in the Pacific Jazz label's stylistic wheelhouse. What was the difference in these cases? (P.S. -- I wouldn't call the Crusaders a fad. They had genuine musical value, plus a fair amount of longevity. McCann I never paid much attention to beyond that one groovy BN album he made with S. Turrentine.) My guess is that, as quirky as Bock probably was, there was more nuance at work here than we might think. In particular, I'll bet that someone Bock knew and trusted pulled his coat to McCann and the Crusaders, and/or they were tearing it up at a venue (the Lighthouse?) where Bock hung out. BTW, it was the quirky Bock who at about this time brought out all those Ravi Shankar albums that would adorn so many college dorm rooms. That would be your "next fad" perhaps? But then I wouldn't be surprised if Bock genuinely loved Shankar's music and placed a bet on it with little or no calculation that it would pay off as it did. But then there was the fad that Bock bet big on and lost -- "Sophie Tucker Sings Yiddish Folk Songs."

No. not my favorite Lighthouse All Stars record. About Ammons needing to be marketed, I think you misunderstand the social/commercial context to some degree. By the time Ammons albums came to be made, he had essentially and already been marketing himself with and to his audience for some time -- as a vaunted big band soloist with Hines snd Woody Herman, in best-selling recorded tenor battles with Stitt et al., as the maker of numerous juke box 78s, etc. -- I have a multiple CD set full of those. By the time Gene Ammons albums came to be made, he was, so to speak, pre-marketed and pre-sold to his audience. Another factor with the standard West Coast Jazz labels and Ammons-like players. The product those labels were putting out appealed to audiences of a different socio-economic demographic than Ammons-like records would have. Salesmen would sell Pacific Jazz and Contemporary type records to one kind of store and Ammons-type records to another kind of store that might well have been located in a rather different neighborhood. Are the same salesmen going to service both sorts of stores? Perhaps or even probably not. The label owners, I woiuld guess, were aware of this and proceeded accordingly in their a&r choices. But didn't Bock make Les McCann into Les McCann and the Jazz Crusaders likewise?

For Plas to be marketed as an LA-based Gene Ammons he would have to have been willing to take the time and trouble to be so marketed. Given the texture of the rest of his life, economically and professionally, I would be surprised if he would have been. I belIeve that most of not all of of Plas' estimable jazz albums were post-"Pink Panther" affairs.

I s I see a fair number of Plas Johnson CDs on Amazon and have several myself. Wasn't Plas Johnson something of a special case? Unless I'm mistaken he was making money hand over fist in the studios for a good many years doing that special Plas thing, and aside from making some good records now and then under his own name for reasons of self-expression and perhaps to some degree ego, he may have had little or no interest into making a career for himself a jazz "soloist." Sonny Criss, for example, would seem to have had no other alternative.

Now that would be a prize.

Also a Contemporary label offshoot, with Vernon Duke playing an advisory role: The Society for Forgotten Music: 1000 mono /2000 stereo 12 inch series: SFM 1001mono, 7006 stereo – Mendelssohn: Quartet In E flat and Glinka:Quartet in F - Westwood Quartet [5/58] Released in stereo on Stereo Records 7006. SFM 1002 mono – Jan Ladislaw Dussek: Piano Music – Hermanns & Stoneridge [6/58] No stereo release. SFM 1003 mono, 7014 stereo - Works of Chausson: Quartet in A Op. 30 (piano) - Andre Previn and the Roth Quartet [1958] Released in stereo on Stereo Records 7014. SFM 1004 mono, 7023 stereo - Works of Guillaume Lekeu: Trio in C – Ryshna, Baker And Kaparoff [1958] Release in stereo on Stereo Records 7023. SFM 1005 mono, 2005 stereo – Michael Haydn Quintets in C & G for Strings – Roth Quartet, Halleux [1959] SFM 1006 mono, 2006 stereo – Viotti: Quartets in B flat and G for Strings – Baker Quartet [1959] SFM 1007 mono, 2007 stereo – Mily Balakirev Sonata: Berceuse Nocturne; Valse – Ryshna SFM 1008 mono, 2008 stereo – Lekeu Piano Quartet; Cello Sonata, Trois Poemes Van den Burg, Duke, McCraken– Ryshna, Baker Quartet SFM 1009 mono, 2009 stereo – Wilhelm Friedemann Bach Polonaises (12) Sonatas;Suite; Fugue; March – Hermanns (Piano) SFM 1010 mono, 2010 stereo – Mozart: Andantino in B flat for Cello and Piano Sonata in E for Cello and Piano, Bonifazio Sonata in C for Cello and Piano – Kaufman, Neikrup I have the Viotti; it's a gem; excellent performances by an Israel Baker-led quartet. Wish I had more SFM albums. I believe that the Chausson and Lekeu works have latter-day recordings. There's a fair amount of Dussek on CD now as well.

That was the Cecil record that really got me big time.

Another step, a sad one. The eminently talented Don Christlieb was IIRC in the forefront of those Hollywod film studio musicians who named names and pretty much ended the careers of a good many of his colleagues. Probably because many of them were European Jewish emigres and had direct experience of Nazism, the older generation of film studio musicians was a fairly Left-Wing group.

There is a singularly unappetizing passage in Victor Navasky's account of the Blackilist, "Naming Names." where he corners Raksin, by all accounts a very gentle man, and browbeats him over his HUAC testimony until Raksin breaks down into tears, at which point Navasky is satisfied. The parallels between the tactics of HUAC's interrogators and those of Navasky seem obvious to me -- they both demanded that their subjects pay for their "crimes" with an acceptably emotional show of contrition.

Strange -- I was just listening to a Fresh Sound CD, "Buddy Collette and his West Coast Friends" that combines two tasty 1956 Collette related albums -- his "Tanganyika" (Dig) and drummer Max Albright's "Mood for Max" (Motif). Both were produced by DJ Sleepy Stein (white), the former for a label owned by Johnny Otis (whte, with extensive r&B associations). Personnel, in addition to Collette (black ) is for "Tanganyika" trumpeter John Anderson (black), reedman Bill Green (black), pianist Gerald Wiggins (black), bassist Curtis Counce (black), drummer Chico Hamilton (black), and guitarist Jim Hall (white). On "Mood for Max" Albright is white, as are bsss trumpeter/trombonist Dave Wells, reedmen Chuck Gentry and Gene Cipriano; rest of the group is Wiggins, Green, and either Counce or Joe Comfort on bass. Racially mixed music-making par excellence, though the warm laidback style of both dates is clearly shaped by Collette and Anderson, no "West Coast" frou frou here. BTW, Anderson is quite a player -- sort of a cross between Joe Wilder and Harry Edison with a hint of Benny Carter's trumpet work. Collette is a favorite of mine on all his horns.

The kid in the concept car on the cover is John Koenig, Lester's son. The Tatro album has never ceased to fascinate me. Yanow needs ear Braille. I talked to Tatro on the phone once some 30 years ago. Nice man, pleased to hear that his work was still remembered fondly. He was going to send me a tape of the 12-tone guitar concerto he wrote for Howard Roberts, but something got screwed up and the tape he sent only included the intro to the radio broadcast of the concert, no music. There was nothing decorative or chi-chi about Tatro's music. BTW, on Art Pepper's album "Smack Up" he plays (quite beautifully) Tatro's "Maybe Next Year" from "Jazz For Moderns."