JSngry

Ah, so that's what Lou meant by a sammich....

It probably was a Rhodes. Specifying "Rhodes" would be like crediting "Selmer" tenor saxophone or "Bach" trumpet. Wurlitzer, yeah, great sound. Used to great advantage by Joe Sample in the early 70s. Soulful like a Rhodes never thought about being. Kinda fragile though, at least for gigging. Light as a feather, relatively speaking. Them Rhodes (I still got one and just moved it around last week, so I know) were heavy.

Suzanne Pleshette, yeah, indeed! But I gotta be honest, over time, I found myself looking at Julia Duffy, beginning to have impure thoughts, and did not see anything in her appearance or demeanor to discourage them, probably not least of all that she sorta resembled the girlfriend of a college roommate of mine, a "high fashion" yet totally "Southern belle" type chick who, I found out many years later, was really, really into getting tied up and shit like that. So ok, that's not what you think about with Suzanne Pleshette. At least I don't. But with a seemingly tightass hoity-toity chick like Julia Duffy played? (Consensually, of course.) I'm just sayin', moving to Vermont need not necessarily have negative connotations...

James Burrows, of course went on to do Taxi & Cheers. Not bad.... And I had forgotten about Dick Martin.

Peter Bonerz (a Second City alum, iirc, the Chicago comedy troupe, not the TV show company) went on to do a lot of sitcom directing, including some of those first Newhart episodes (again, iirc). For me, direction is crucial, but writing is key. You got less than 30 minutes (what is it, 22?) to arc a story. In a good sitcom, every sentence goes somewhere towards advancing the arc, and the jokes are either pivots or setups for pivots. The bad, or even mediocre sitcoms don't really concern themselves with this, they just play for the laughs and the AWWWA, becasue people are into the characters more than the stories. Easy enough trap to fall into, you can sell it either way, but... Looking at both the Newhart & MTM shows, though, think about the pedigrees of those involved. Moore, of course had that legendary Van Dyke run (and so many of those shows were written by Carl Reiner & directed by Jerry Paris, and damned if you can beat that, eh?), Gavin MacLeod was on McHale's Navy (Sgt Bilko at sea, sort of, and if the scripts weren't always all that, the cast sure was...). Newhart, hey, a Chicago guy, right? Not Second City, but Bonerz was, and so, I think I've heard, was Marcia Wallace. Suzanne Pleshette, Bill Daily (remember him form I Dream Of Jeannie, all the patients, Howard Tiley, etc. pros all, experienced, if not necessarily "successful". Same with the MTM show, Asner, Knight, Leachman (Harper I'm not so sure about), they all knew how to work, to deliver to a job what the job needed to have delivered. And back to Newhart, hey - Betty freakin' White y'all, BETTY WHITE! My point being that, yeah, directing was key to getting those scripts to work like they needed to work. But if the scripts would not have been so tightly written, would any amount of good directing have gotten it to work without resorting to the character, not script-, driven approach? I don't think so. And both Newhart & Moore knew from good writing like not all sitcom "stars" do, albeit thorough diffent set of experiences. Of course, there's the whole physical comedy-driven sitcom, and no, scripts don't really matter that much there, nor necessarily does direction, not if the actor(s) himself are gifted physical buffoonerists. But for "smart" sitcoms like MTM & Newhart (and for that matter, maybe I'm in the minority, but my overall preference was for the 2nd Newhart series, the "Vermont" one), just as a good bassist can carry a bad drummer, but never the opposite, so does good writing drive the rest of the execution of this type sitcom. Get good, pro actors, give them smart, tight, funny things to say, and the director just has to make sure that they do it. give them something else to work with, and...what? Plus, let's not forget that both of these shows were taped live, not assembled. Sure, you can still stop when needed, but you still got that live vibe going, that rhythm, that energy to follow through like it's "real", because it is. That's not to say that "just making sure that they do it" is not an art unto itself, of course it is, but for me, in this type of comedy, it script uber alles.

Fascinating site indeed. Thans for posting.

Same fellow. Louis, his brother Dave and the great Freddy Below were the Aces. They were the backbone of a ton of Chicago blues sessions. Little Walter is the tip of the iceberg. In the late '60s Freddie was always after me to record his "jazz band", an organ trio. No money was the story then, regret now. Getting Louis on this date was interesting. Maybe someday when I have the time I'll tell it. From my point of view, he was a sweet guy. Who was the organist in that trio, Chuck? I was doing a road gig, hotel/lounge/showband/etc back in 1981-82, and we got booked into Greenville, Mississippi for a weekend. (there were two clubs in town, one white, one not. The white club had hotel showbands, the other didn't). Well, at first we thought that this was going to be a dreadful week, because we got there on a Tuesday & didn't work until Friday. Oh, that and that the first place we got rooms at, the Kazar Motel, on the outskirts of town, was one of the most roach-infested joints I've ever seen in my life, and that's saying a lot. The bandleader's wife (also the band's female vocalist, took him outside and gave him a loud earful about no way was she staying in this dump, so if he wanted to sleep alone all week that was going to be his prerogative, but don't he dare come to visit her at her room trying to get some, etc etc etc... Anyway... We got rooms in town, roach-free, and started hanging out around town. Pretty soon we noticed that there were always a lot of black people carrying instrument cases around, so of course we eventually struck up a conversation to see if there was some jamming or something going on during the week. come to find out, Greenville, Mississippi was about 50% black (back then anyway), and from all appearances, about 75% of the male African-American population was working blues musicians, either locally or with road bands, some name, some semi-name, and some...not (yeah, about 75%, by all appearances. I am not exaggerating, or if I am, not by much...). There was a little jamming going on, and we hit one or two sessions, but most everybody was too busy gigging. Heaven on earth! One older (or so it seemed when I was 26, he was probably just 52 or so...) guy we were conversing with told us about his nephew who had gone "up North to be a jazz trumpet player. He sends me all his records. I don't understand them, but I like 'em well enough". Ok, I was thinking Olu Dara maybe, but the guy said no, his name was Leo Smith, and you probably never heard of him. Yeah, I have heard of him, I told the guy, know his work pretty well actually, and he seemed genuinely pleased that a family member had "made a name" for themselves outside of the Greenville blues circuit. It was down-home like none other, it was. So Leo Smith & Louis Myers together, hey.....

Don't be embarrassed. There's a lot of music to hear, nobody hears it all... Notably, there's a Hancock/Corea piano duet version, and another duet version, this time by Burton/Corea. Woody Herman recorded a version, but that's big band, and truthfully, I don't recall if he used Rhodes on it or not.

This version, no. Not even. The song in general, sure.

To quote a TV show title starring that great bard and humanitarian Art Linkletter: "People are Funny". And "Kids Say The Darndest things"! Remember this guy? Didn't his own kid die in some bizarre tragedy? Art's yes. Not Muzzy's, at least not that I know of. Dianne Linkletter, fell to her death after stepping our a window while on an acid trip, believing that she could fly. Or so it was told. And on that note, let's get this thread back on track - Folks, if you're high on the LS&D, don't go stepping out of any windows, even ground level ones. You can't fly, not without some sort of mechanical assistance. On the other hand, Stan Getz could, and did, fly on a fine record of recorded jazz music called Captain Marvel. The record does have Chick Corea (who not coincidentally composed a tune called "Windows", but not, I repeat not, as a tribute (or a taunt) to Diane Linkletter) on electric piano, but if you think that might be annoying, consider the possibility of it being Muzzy Marcellino instead. Life is good and so is this record.

It's never too late. Literally!

To quote a TV show title starring that great bard and humanitarian Art Linkletter: "People are Funny". And "Kids Say The Darndest things"! Remember this guy?

Well, Lon you gotta realize that the comment currently under discussion was made in 2974. A lot of things have changed before then.

Well, there you have it!

Yeah, ignorance. There's a lot of that going around. Since time-fricking-eternal. Does that surprise you or something? No, what surprised me is that when they said that the McGriddle had the syrup baked in, they really meant syrup, and they really meant baked in. I did so not see that one coming... I mean, they call that shit "cheese", you'd think that everything would be off the table as far as reality goes. But apparently not. Helluva country, eh?

Dude - you're the New Yorker and I'm the Texan. Let's get our stereotypes straight, please!

More like ignorance, but that's a line that you can draw wherever it works for you.

James is one of my best friends and he is a hell of a musician. That doesn't sound like anything he would say, though. 2974 was a long time ago, anyway. Well hell, it was 965 years in the future. Maybe he was senile by then. Seriously, the point he was trying to make was simply that there's a lot of chest-thumping about "purity" by people who don't have even half a clue as to what that really means. Good point then, good point now.

For that matter, the notion that a tube amp (which is what the conversation/comparison/whatever was going on about) is even capable of producing a true, 100% "pure" sound is one that is questionable at best. Some would even call it laughable, but hey, you know how geeky geeks can get... Ok, I'm done now.

And oh, btw - the "misinformed" person who said that was a guitar player, and a damn good one at that, even then - James Chirillo, spring of 1974, I believe it was. Somewhere back in there.

The point about Kessell was that "jazz people" like(d) to bitch about how rock guitarist's use of electronics distorted" the "pure" tone of a guitar when in fact most of them wouldn't know a "pure" tone if it bit them in the ass. I think that's a valid point even today. It's like people who want to nag about pop music's use of post-production while overlooking, hell, probably not even noticing, the splices on so many "classic" sides of the 50s & 60s. Or even worse, praise the same shit in the creation of motion pictures. Making an informed argument on the matter of degree is something I can respect. Making an uninformed one on a "principle" that is at the very least partially imaginary isn't.

No, actually, I am wrong. Chick says in the liners they he had formed the original RTF about a year before hooking up w/Getz, but that work was not constant. So when he heard that Getz had a tour coming up and was looking for a backup band, he carpe diemed & pitched him, Stanley & Airto from RTF + Tony as the band, and the RTF repertoire as the book. Stan went for the idea and the rest, as they say, is history.

Not sure, but I think this band actually preceded the original RTF. Chick contributes an essay to the reissue that delineates all this. I guess I should give a reread...

FWIW, Belden removed all the post-production reverb & reissued the album totally dry. Freaked me out at first (really freaked me out, actually, to the point of almost pissing me off), but it does let everything get heard cleared and better, which is a good thing, because them boys was playin'! And FWIW, and as sstricly a matter of personal taste, I can't say that I've ever heard a Rhodes sound "clean" and "good" at the same time. The "distortion" is part of the characteristic tone that those of us who like Rhodes like about the sound of the Rhodes. Lest anybody scoff at that, I had a guitar geek buddy back in college who would go off on jazz guitarist's bitching about rock player's "distorted" tone. "Listen to Barney Kessell," he'd scream, "that motherfucker's playing through a tube amp with so much distortion built into it that everybody just assumed it was a pure sound. BULLSHIT. You've got to use electronics to get the distortion OUT of an electric guitar sound!" So yeah, Rhodes was not really an "electric piano". It was a Rhodes, an electric "piano". Differnt species altogether, great for some music (like the eternal WHOOOOOSH of Captain Marvel), not so great for others, and downright inappropriate/unacceptable for others, unless the intent was to make it something else. But to put Tommy Flanagan on a Rhodes to play Bebop at face value....why? For such a music of such a supposedly "abstract" nature, a lot of jazz people, players and fans alike, sure do tend to be aggressively literal-minded....

Well, ok, but that means that Euro-audiences are just as stuck as American ones, only instead of being stuck in the 50s & 60s, they're stuck in the 70s & 80s.