7/4

That's evil.

High end table

Exactly what I was thinking. Or maybe a fan of his?

Use the more options button.

I had some SQL errors.

Oh yes... I love Birds of Fire. This was the first Mahavishnu I heard, I used to listen to it in the school library over and over on head phones and read the Lord of Rings. I was a 13 year old Mahavishnu fanatic. Between Nothingness and Eternity is intense. I never thought too much about the compositions. Apocalypse I was excited about, for me it was the "NEW" MO album, so I dug it and still do. It was also first rock concert I went to. Visions of the Emerald Beyond suffers from funk. There must of been a virus going around at the time. I have to give it a fresh listen, it's been a while. Inner Worlds may suffer from some sappy songs, but there was some real far out Jams with JMcL road testing an early guitar synth. I have, but it's been so long since I've heard them, I can't really comment.

I'd agree with that statement.

There's a Exposure re-issue out. Here's Manny's scrambled story:

Allen Holdsworth maybe? I thought: wow! Then I realised that Holdsworth was in lifetime. He was also touring Europe this Spring with Alan Pasqua.

He works with Scientologists. How much credibility could he have?

Braxton, Anthony Birthdate 6/4/1945! Thanks for the great music Anthony!

The Man behind the beat Sunday, June 04, 2006 By BRADLEY BAMBARGER Star-Ledger Staff In the '60s, Bernard Purdie was the first-call rhythm "fixer" for New York recording sessions, laying down solid grooves for hit song after hit song. This drummer was "the man" -- and he knew it. Cutting a killer R&B rhythm track demands confidence, and Purdie liked to advertise that he had the right stuff. In the studio, he took to arranging signs on either side of his drum kit; one set read, "You done it ... You done hired the hit-maker -- Bernard 'Pretty' Purdie." It's hard to square such tales of youthful bravado with the mellow, avuncular presence across the table at Don's Sandwich Shop/Drummer's Corner in Boonton. Purdie, who turns 65 on June 11, recalls that he changed his tune at the tail end of the '60s, when a good friend dressed him down after the cocksure drummer dropped one too many names. "When she was done with me, I felt about an inch high -- and my behavior changed 180 degrees," says Purdie, a longtime resident of Springfield. "Having played on so many hit records -- my head had gotten big, real big. But I was just a country boy who came to the big city, really. I needed someone to set me straight." Just as Purdie finishes recollecting his epiphany of modesty, Aretha Franklin's "Think" rolls out of the radio, beat first. It's a reminder that a resume like Purdie's might make anyone a bit cocky. He drummed on most of Franklin's Atlantic-era classics; those are also his grooves on James Brown tracks sampled by myriad hip-hop producers. Steely Dan demanded the famous "Purdie Shuffle" for their "Aja" and "Royal Scam" albums. That's not to mention Purdie's drumming on countless '60s tunes, from Mickey & Sylvia's "Love Is Strange" and Tim Rose's "Morning Dew" to tracks by the Animals and the Monkees. In the '70s, Purdie was the beat behind B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone" and Percy Sledge's "When a Man Loves a Woman," as well as for LPs by Nina Simone, Roberta Flack, Hank Crawford, Freddie Hubbard and Quincy Jones. He not only fueled Isaac Hayes' "Shaft" but, in an era when dance music was still driven by carbon-based rhythm sections, Van McCoy's disco sensation "The Hustle." Next Saturday, the eve of Purdie's birthday, many of his longtime friends and colleagues will gather to celebrate the drummer's iconic legacy with a concert at Cedar Brook Park in Plainfield. The free, all-day affair will feature Purdie playing with three bands -- the Groove Masters (a soul-jazz trio with guitarist Grant Green Jr. and organist Reuben Wilson); the 14-piece New Pulse Band (led by composer Galt McDermott, a friend since Purdie played on his cast album to "Hair"); and a Stax-oriented R&B revue, featuring Booker T & the MGs guitarist Steve Cropper and the original "Blues Brothers" horn section. Isaac Hayes, who got his start in Memphis as a staff writer for Stax Records, will close the day with his own set. The all-star revue portion of the Purdie celebration will also include singers Eddie Floyd (of "Knock on Wood" fame) and Phoebe Snow, with backing by the Hudson River Rats and key members of the "Saturday Night Live" and "Late Night with David Letterman" bands. Stax hits, Steely Dan tunes and "Blues Brothers" favorites are on the set list. The show's prime mover has been singer/harmonica player Rob Paparozzi, leader of the Hudson River Rats and Purdie's touring partner since the early '90s. Paparozzi, a lifelong New Jerseyan, met Purdie in Greenwich Village in the late '80s, when the drummer was one of the R&B luminaries who cut loose in clubs with the Hudson River Rats. Since then, Purdie has been a fixture with Paparozzi's band, and Paparozzi has served as Purdie's music director on tours to Europe and Japan for performances and drum clinics. Purdie couldn't be more unassuming these days, Paparozzi insists: "Bernard just loves playing music for people; it doesn't matter what it is -- a giant concert, a serious recording session, a drum clinic or someone's wedding. He's played with some heavy cats, and he's got great stories to tell. But he's never intimidating; he's good at just being one of the guys." The drummer admits to allowing himself a little bit of intimidation, as when he peeks his head into classes at Drummer's Corner. (Purdie met Drummer's Corner owner Pat Clark when the latter brought his son to one of Purdie's clinics, homemade snare drum in hand. Purdie still uses that snare for private lessons at Clark's shop.) Purdie recalls that the music teacher in his hometown of Elkton, Md., "was an intimidator to say the least ... "Leonard Hayward never raised his voice, but you were always on the edge of your seat -- you knew you'd better get what he was saying," Purdie says. "But he meant everything to me -- he taught me discipline, how to shut up and absorb what was going on around you. He taught me how to read and write music. When I got to New York, I thought everyone knew how to read, but that wasn't true; it gave me a leg up." Purdie was born into a family of 15, losing his mother at age 11 and father at 13; he was raised by his grandparents and "people all over town." He was a gigging musician as a pre-teen, playing in a bar-band, Jackie Lee & the Angels. His heroes were big-band jazz drummers -- Sid Catlett, Louie Bellson, Gene Krupa, Cozy Cole, Papa Joe Jones, Christopher Columbus; their swinging hi-hat technique became a key element of Purdie's sound. "Those swing drummers were timekeepers, and keeping time was what I was taught as my job," Purdie says. "To this day, that's what it's all about for me -- keeping that beat happening and everybody's feet moving." Purdie moved to New York at the start of the '60s. One of his first sessions was for "Love Is Strange." He was paid $80 for four hours on a Sunday. The song "ended up making millions," he says, "but I felt rich with that 80 bucks, even though it was all gone by Tuesday, what with me buying drinks for everybody." At his peak in the '60s, Purdie was working four sessions a day, six days a week, at triple union-scale pay -- "an instant groove-maker," as he likes to say. Purdie's black box of rhythm made him in demand to the point of being, it is often asserted, the world's most recorded drummer. His impeccable time was invaluable in the days before digital editing; when a rock band's drummer couldn't lay it down smoothly enough for a producer's liking, the producer would call on "Pretty" Purdie to get the job done. Infamously, Purdie claimed -- and still claims -- that he was drafted to "fix" 20 or so early Beatles tracks. The drummer says he was moved to divulge this out of irritation over his students idolizing Ringo Starr; his brazenness in interviews earned him death threats from Beatlemaniacs. Purdie insists that the legend will be laid to rest in an autobiography, written with Ed Dennis, that he hopes will be published late this year or early next. Jim Keltner -- another candidate for the world's most recorded drummer -- doesn't buy Purdie's Beatles story for a second. Still, he has been a Purdie fan ever since he heard "With This Ring" by the Platters on his Corvette's radio (and then did the research to find out who the drummer was). "To this day, I melt whenever I hear 'With This Ring'," Keltner says. "I had to hear everything Bernard played after that. I got to meet him backstage at the Atlanta Pop Festival in '69, when he was playing with Al Kooper and I was with Delaney & Bonnie. Bernard was 'the man,' definitely, and let's just say that he was not bashful in those days. But he was great, let me bug him with a million questions. "Later, Jeff Porcaro was like my kid brother, always hanging around, and I told him to seek out Bernard -- and he became a Purdie disciple," Keltner adds, referring to the late Toto drummer and session star. "Jeff's groove on Toto's 'Roseanne' that everybody loved? That was Purdie to the bone, practically an homage." The "Purdie Shuffle" -- his funky signature technique -- is marked not only by its laid-back, half-time groove but by its "ghost notes," the little accents made by the drummer's hands on the rebound that help the locomotion rise to a polyrhythmic slow boil. In the "Classic Albums" documentary devoted to Steely Dan's "Aja," an entire segment is devoted to Purdie demonstrating that beat, ideal for the bluesy, laconic "Home at Last." These days, Purdie is full of generosity about his peers (he's a big fan of Steve Gadd, who also played on "Aja" and plays with Eric Clapton now) and a younger generation of drummers (a photo of him with Steve Ferrone, now in Tom Petty's Heartbreakers, is among those adorning the walls of Don's Sandwich Shop). He's especially warm about such past colleagues as Franklin, whom he gives credit for the grooves on her records, saying "we got the beat straight from her piano-playing." Purdie says Dennis plans for the last chapter of their book to revolve around Saturday's birthday concert. But despite his arthritis, the drummer isn't ready to lay his sticks down just yet. He just returned from Nashville, where he played on an album by country singer Alan Jackson, produced by bluegrass star Alison Krauss. (And, yes, the funky drummer likes country music, having played on Johnny Cash sessions.) Coming from a large family, Purdie sired a big one himself, with two marriages producing seven children (three with his current wife, Barbara), 12 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. He also has his drumming children -- and they can keep a teacher busy with more than just weak paradiddles. Purdie says that one of his '70s students, Max Weinberg, kept him as busy with "a young man's needs for personal counseling" as he did with trying to develop a groove to go along with his technique. Purdie continues to stress the hard-to-come-by qualities of "feel" and "style" in young drummers, which he insists are gained only through trial-and-error in front of audiences that move (or not). "I would work 24/7 if I could, and I love having something to offer the young people," Purdie says. "I don't care what the question is, I got the answer -- 'cause I lived it. Now, that's not being cocky, that's the truth." Bernard Purdie and friends with Isaac Hayes When: 3 p.m. June 10 Where: Cedar Brook Park, Plainfield How much: Free

Been a while sice I heard that one!

USENET disscussion sad story.

The article is from last year, I wonder if he's published his initial findings yet.

Very cool interview! Thanks Guy.

I love this album. Too bad the solo cuts are so short. Even worse it's out of print, I wonder what's up with that....

I was, but now I think this whole thread is in bad taste. You started it, you delete it.

Where's the horns?

The next level after Stanley Jordan.

I've never seen him cow tippin', but I have seen him around town quite a bit.

He should be, he lives in the East Village.

Wow! I never knew...

Might be your best shot at playing with Braxton. Seriously, though, with 100 tubas there, I'm not sure if actually knowing how to play one would be necessary... Heck, I saw 100 guitarists at Disney Hall in March. Braxton is late to the game; Branca beat him to it. I don't think Branca got the 100 he was looking for.