JSngry

Yes! Thank you, sir.

There was a Bulgarian clarinet player who had a brief turn in the spotlight here in the US a few years ago, forget his name, but it was something like "MR X' s Bulgarian Wedding Band". Great stuff - intoxicating as hell, and more than a little crazyinagoodway to these American ears. They had at least one CD out, and I wish I had picked it up. Incredible stuff!

As they say, seek and ye shall find! http://www.mighty-quinn.net/Home.html http://www.mighty-quinn.net/Current.html http://www.mighty-quinn.net/Future.html

Yes to both. I've only heard (and seen) Essence once, and have been thirsting for it ever since. News of an impending reissue (at last!) is news I can use!

John L. Lewis John Lewis Jean-Louis Trintignant

Dr. Kervorkian Dr. George Butler Wynton Marsailis

Too bad that Dock Ellis & Bill Lee were never on the same staff together.

What Mike said, exactly.

I would like to add that "Fat Butt" is an original composition/arrangement of mine, and that "Deputy of Jah" is a melody (and arrangement) that I created over a bass line provided by Dennis. This information has, to my knowledge, only been given on the label of the original LP release, and in the case of "Deputy of Jah", only given as a co-composer credit on said label. A little more discographic info - The two tunes mentioned above were recorded at the KERA (the local PBS/NPR outlet) studios in Dallas, and "'Clajoma" (actually a performance of "Oklahoma" w/the heads edited out for copyright reasons) was recorded at Tango on 12/11/83 as per the original liner insert. Tango was a club that was also the original home of the giant frogs now residing at the Carl's Corner truck stop in Carl's Corner, Tx). I'm pretty sure that the KERA dates were done at roughly the same time, because I was living in Albuquerque, NM at the time, and Dennis had me come to town for the concert/recording session, a very generous gesture on his part. Not sure about any of the other cuts on that album, as I was not involved in them, but I do know that Dennis had hooked up with Purcell earlier, and some recording had transpired, either live or in Dennis's living room (aka Medio Dia Studios). If you want more information than you really need, I wrote "Fat Butt" while having dinner w/Dennis & his family at Ninfa's Restaurant, and "Deputy Of Jah" in Dennis' living room. Dates are at this point lost in the fog of memory, but both were composed specifically for the recording session. I think we might have done "Deputy" at the concert, prior to the studio session, but I'm pretty sure that "Fat Butt" got it's first reading in the studio, because Alex & Gerard both were thrown for a loop by my request for a "Chicago shuffle, like on a Little Walter record". The results came out a lot more rock-ish than I wanted, but time was tight, and I was just glad to have the thing recorded so I could hear (and learn from) my attempts at a Ray Charles-esque four-piece horn arrangement. The soloing, though, was fine. Dennis used to have (and probably still does) a rather large cache of unissued concert and Medio Dia recordings from the daagnim era, some involving me, some not. A particularly interesting one involves Kelvyn Bell playing with a local crew. I wasn't in town for that one, but I heard the tapes, and they are quite good. Dennis planned on releasing it at one point, but one of the participants (not Bell) objected for "political/career" reasons, and the project was shelved (this whole thing being a "labor of love" at the time, nobody except the "stars" got paid for recordings, concerts, etc., so Dennis, much to his credit, respected everybody's wishes in such matters). More than that I won't say, except that it's a shame. Bell was playing REALLY well on that tape.

Details, please!

This is but one reason why you are a friend of mine!

I saw this the title of this thread and was afraid it was going to be a demand that I repent of my recorded musical sins. Trust me, I have, and I still am...

Gerard Bendiks would be the correct name. Drummer, percussionist, conmposer/conceptualist, all-around freakinagoodway. The kind of cat who would (and did) bring in an incredibly difficult tune called "Nigeria" which tuned out to be "nothing more" than "Airegin" played backwards. Also a guy who has one of the most jaw-drobbing commands of odd-meter superimpositions I've ever come across. You want to hear one hand play a septuplet, the other play a nontuplet, one foot play 15, the other 13, all over a 3/4 beat? Gerard's you man. He's spent a lifetime figuring out and perfecting stuff like this, and transferring it to his compositions, which of course freaks everybody (myself included) out when trying to make sense of it. Gerard was also one of the first in our area to not just recognize, but actually actively and avidly pursue the post-Ayler innovations of the AACM & the European free improv movements. He studied w/Alan Silva for a while in Paris, and also brought a unique-for-the-area "global" perspective, much of it due to having a French (iirc) mother and a father who had a job working for a major oil company, a job which sent him and his family to different countries for extended periods. Gerard is also one of the few local drummers who know how to tune his kit. The guy's drums sound incredible, speaking with a distinction and fullness of tone that many confuse with "volume". This attention to duning no doubt somes from his deep devotion to studying the playing Sonny Greer & Max Roach. Needless to say, a person with an outlook such as Gerard's stuck out like a sore thumb in the "jazz community" at NTSU in the mid-1970s, where the 60s Blue Note sound was considered the "ultimate" in modern music. But you'd go to Gerard's crib, & he'd lay some Art Ensemble, Lacy, Braxton, Frank Wright, etc. on you, as well as tons of Max, Ellington, Mingus, etc. A guy after my own heart! Gerard's still active, still playing, still doing what he does in the face of what can best be described as a befuddled marketplace (as well as a too-large group of befuddled musicians). I'll shoot his a link to this thread and see if he wants to contribute some of his unique verbal gymnastics, which are every bit the equal of his musical ones. As for Bob Ackerman, yes, he and his wife (singer Pam Puvis) both lived and gigged (and in Bob's case, plyed his trade as mouthpiece technician/deal-broker) in these parts from the late 70s through the early 1980s, before moving back home to Jersey. Bob was one of those cats who tryed to have a foot in both (many, actually) musical "camps", which in the deeply factionalized DFW jazz scene of those (and, to a great extent, these) days, made him a "man without a country", so to speak. But he put forth a valliant effort while he was here!

Call me a sentimental sap, but this is a very moving image to me.

Have You Heard? You haven't?

My sentiments as well.

My sentiments as well.

Pops Poopadeaux, unquestionably.

Hmm ... I suspect it has something to do with one Patti Allen? ← Not as much as it does with "Bulgarian Bulge"!

Back to Les Brown, I'm sure that the name is familiar to many the world over for his long association w/Bob Hope. But I'm not aware of Hope ever giving the band any space on his numerous TV shows/specials. Maybe when they appeared live he used them as a warm-up. But Brown had a history (and a band) long before the Hope affiliation.

I had the same specific reaction. Not that that necessarily proves anything, but...

Milan, the odds are that the Lestorian tenor player you have on your Brown disc is either Pell (who later on formed the Prez Conference group, remember) or Ted Nash. Probably Pell.

Fred Wesley Maceo Parker Richard 'Kush" Griffith

Yep - wackinagoodway stuff galore.