JSngry

I'd like to have seen the play when Cecil Taylor was in the cast and ad-libbing lines every night.

I've had this on VHS for years, and believe me when I tell you that if it weren't for J-Mac, this would be one of the most laughable pieces of pseudo-hip bullshit in the history of the world. Highly recommended to those who enjoy seeing clueless white (mostly) folks pretend to be super-cool junkies. Everybody else, get it for Jackie, and pray that the DVD is indexed accordingly.

Hi Ho, Bernstein!

Sonny & Trane are yin and yang, the complimentary opposites that make up the whole, although which is which I'll have to think about.

While reminiscing about Shreveport, Louisiana in the "show us your home town" thread, I tried to find a photo of Stan's Record Mart. No luck. But I did come across this niftly little bio of Stan Lewis. http://www.offbeat.com/obfebruary2003/tickets.html This kind of guy, warts and all, is a big part of how recorded American music got made and how records (ie - MUSIC) got heard and sold outside of somebody's neighborhood bar, church, whatever. Attention must be paid. LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: MUSIC BUSINESS STAN LEWIS Unbeknownst to many, for nearly three decades Shreveport was known as "The Record Center of the South." The man who was single-handedly responsible for Shreveport earning that designation was Stan Lewis, the 2003 recipient of OffBeat's Lifetime Achievement Award given to a member of Louisiana's music business community. Born in Shreveport, Stan Lewis was raised in a close-knit Italian family that ran a grocery store. A hustler as a youth, at the age of 19, immediately after World War II, he bought five 78 jukeboxes, all in black locations. Immediately, Lewis found out the biggest challenge for a jukebox operator servicing black locations was procuring new records for his machines. This sparked his interest in the retail and wholesale end of the record business. In 1948, Lewis decided to pursue this interest, so he and his wife, Pauline, pooled their assets ($2,500) and purchased the struggling J&M Record Shop at 728 Texas Street, smack in the center of Shreveport's black commercial district. After renaming the shop Stan's, Pauline worked behind the counter while he continued to work in the family grocery. However, after meeting Leonard Chess (owner of Aristocrat, Chess and Checker Records), who was in town from Chicago with a trunk full of 78s, Lewis decided to increase his involvement in rhythm and blues. In the 1940s, Texas Avenue was like Beale Street in Memphis or South Rampart Street in New Orleans, an avenue filled with clubs, tailor shops and businesses that catered to black clientele. Lewis began selling blues and spiritual records at a phenomenal rate, becoming one of the major retail outlets in the area, and one of the first to carry Specialty, RPM, Imperial, Trumpet, Miracle, Vee Jay, and of course the previously mentioned Chess imprints. Realizing the problems jukebox operators faced stocking the latest hits, he expanded and set up a one-stop and mail order operation. Lewis did exceptionally well, especially after buying airtime on the 50,000-watt giant KWKH (home of the Louisiana Hayride), Little Rock's KWAY, and XERF in Del Rio, Texas. Suddenly he was handling orders from no less than 35 states. By the early 1950s, he was also working as a Southern talent scout for several labels. Initially Lewis was interested in getting Taylor Town's Stick Horse Hammond-who'd earlier recorded a 78 for the J&M record shop-into the studio, but when he and Leonard Chess went looking for the one-legged blues guitarist, they were chased off by Hammond's shotgun-toting boss! Studio time at KWKH was cheap in the evenings and Lewis was determined to make use of the situation, concentrating on the Louisiana Hayride's roster and the black performers on Texas Avenue. He signed Sonny Boy Williamson (before he recorded for Trumpet), but the itinerant harp wizard left Shreveport before Lewis could get him in the studio. Eventually he placed Country Jim, Pine Bluff Pete and Jim Bledsoe on Specialty, steered Jimmy Newman to Dot, and recommended Imperial sign Slim Whitman. Lewis' by now best friend, Leonard Chess (Lewis named his son after Chess), benefited from most of Lewis' discoveries. Lewis produced sides by Oklahoma/Texas bluesman Lowell Fulson that appeared on Checker, and rockabilly artists Bobby Sisco, Wayne Walker and Jack Ford, that appeared on Chess. In 1955, Lewis submitted a song by Shreveport songwriter, Fats Washington, "I'll Be Home," which became a hit for the Flamingoes and later Pat Boone. The following year he sent Chess a dub of "Suzie Q" (named after Lewis' daughter) by Dale Hawkins which shot up the charts. He also discovered a local television repair man, Oscar Willis, who Lewis aptly dubbed TV Slim. Slim' "Flatfoot Sam" turned into a huge R&B hit on the Checker label. Chess reciprocated the efforts by giving Lewis more favorable terms on Chess and Checker products than other Southern distributors. By being able to sell Chess (then one of the strongest independent label in the county) at a cheaper price than other distributors, Lewis was able to expand his distribution business into New Orleans, Dallas and Houston. Lewis' next step was to form his own record label, and he did just that in 1963, launching Jewel and signing Abbeville's Bobby Charles. The first single was numbered 728, the same as the shop's address on Texas Avenue. Jewel was soon followed by Paula and Ronn (named after Lewis' younger brother). Lewis' labels thrived thanks to hits by Toussaint McCall, the Uniques, Nat Stuckey, Bobby Powell, the Carter Brothers and John Fred and the Playboy Band, the latter responsible for the Number One hit, "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses.)" Not one to forget his roots, by the early 1970s, Lewis' labels had taken over from where Chess, Excello, Imperial and Duke left off, becoming America's foremost producer in straight ahead blues and spiritual music. With masters pouring in from Chicago, Nashville, Muscle Shoals, Texas, New Orleans and of course his own studio, Lewis marketed new sounds by Lowell Fulson, Little Johnny Taylor, Rev. Willie Morganfield, Frank Frost, Little Eddie Lang, Wild Child Butler, Buster Benton, Bobby Rush, Ted Taylor and Jerry McCain among others. He also purchased important Chicago blues masters from Cobra, Chief, JOB, Profile, Artistic, USA and Age. The old shop had been replaced by an expensive new building and Lewis' mail order and distribution business thrived. Lewis hit a bump in the late 1970s when black America's tastes veered from authentic music to funk, disco and techno pop. Lewis tried to get his producers to adapt, but they were unable to come up with commercial combinations. Lewis had also expanded into video and opened several satellite stores around Shreveport, all which proved to be unprofitable. In the end he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Although the Texas Avenue store was leveled, by the late 1980s, Lewis was back on his feet, reactivating Ronn with reissues of previous glories, licensing masters to Europe, and releasing new recordings that appealed to Southern soul enthusiasts. Late in the millennium, Lewis sold all of his catalog to Emusic who subsequently dealt them to Universal. Today, Jewel, Paula, Ronn and the above mentioned Chicago masters are released on Fuel 2000 via an agreement with Universal. Retirement has never appealed to Lewis and he was quick to form a new label, Suzie Q, which he still operates with his son Lenny and his daughter (Suzie). Together they continue to record, and promote Southern soul and blues. -Jeff Hannusch

I was living in Shreveport, Louisiana for a couple of years (late 1962 thru mid 1965) when JFK got shot. They let school out early. One kid said, "I'm glad that ni**er President Kennedy got shot". I lived in a subdivision, Cherokee Park (418 Chickasaw Trail, if I remember correctly) on the other side of town from my school (Alexander Elementary), and we had to go through downtown Shreveport to get home (as well as crossing a bridge that had all sorts of L'il Abner-looking houses and people living on the banks of the river that it crossed). The place was nuts, and there were old-school newsboys running all over the place waving "EXTRA"s in the air. One older (as in 5th grader) kid stuck his head out the window and boutght one. Ordinarily, the bus driver (Mrs. Green) would have ahd his ass in a sling right then and there, but this time she let it pass. The weekend was nuts, of course, and nothing was on TV except assassination coverage. By Sunday, we all felt the need for some fresh air, so we went to a public pier at Caddo Lake to hang a pole or two off the dock. Nothing was biting, but it wasn't too long before a laughing fat guy in bermudas, a captain's hat, and a cigar stub showed up, walking the length of the pier, gleefully telling nobody in particular that "Lee Harvey Oswald is no longer of this world". Lots of other stuff happened when I lived in Shreveport, like The Beatles on the Sullivan Show, Beatlemania in general, my first bicycle, nearly getting suspended from school for kissing a really cute girl in my class (Cathy was her name) in first grade, the Charles Cole incident, my falling in love with baseball, and much more. A few years later, when I had moved back to Gladewater and discovered jazz, Shreveport proved to be an extremely fertile ground for finding promo copies of the latest jazz releases cheap (thank you, Stan & Ace Lewis), as well as a treasure trove of cutouts at the Shreve City Mall Woolco (found a really smoking Arabian wedding music LP - with liner notes entirely in Arabic - just before going to the theatre there to see Network), and old mom-and-pop stores with plenty of old jazz & R&B stuff at original prices (or less, sometimes). Shreveport was also as far as I could stand riding the bus back from NYC on my first visit there (1979). It was a "local" ticket. My folk's house in Gladewater was an hour and a quarter from Shreveport, and when they said that the bus would get there in "betweeen four and five hours", I dropped a dime and called the folks. Enough was enough. The last time I was in Shreveport was around 1989. Played a hotel gig with an oldies band for a week. They hadn't opened the "off shore" casinos yet, I don't think, and downtown was a mass of empty, boarded-up buildings, the streets populated by homeless folks and crack dealers. Stan's Record Mart, once a jumping bastion of everything you'd think of in a "big city record store", and Jewel-Paula Records (right next door) were shuttered up and beaten down. KEEL (730 AM), the place where Gene Kent had pumped The Beatle loud and proud for most of 1964, had turned into a 24-7 talk-radio station. KWKH (1130 AM), once an "good music" station during the week and home of the Louisiana Hayride on Saturdays, had gone totally C&W, taking a break only for Rush Limbaugh in the afternoons. The crime rate was high, and the mood was ugly everywhere you went. I went back home as soon as I could. Haven't been back since.

Ok, that's one tune. What others were done like that?

Yeah, that booty is working on MY mind!

Staying alive and sane is not necessarily the best of career moves these days....

My sentiments exactly.

Oh yeah, one BIG revelation from this book was the fact(?) that a percussionist named Barbara Burton, along with Don Alias, actually provided the bulk of the percussion work on the first Weather Report album, and that Airto's involvement, by his own admission, was limited to a few overdubs and posing for photos. The Barbara Burton tale is pretty interesting!

Finished skimming this and am now beginning to actually read it. First impression is that, despite occasional obvious errors (e.g. - Willie Maiden is referred to as "Willie Nathan") and a possible dependence on cumulatively-credited-at-the-end-of-the-book but not individually cited research (e.g. - Alex Acuna's claim that "Elegant People" was written for him is printed verbatim from its website telling, which might ceome from someplace else, even, I don't know), this book is a good compendium of the facts of Zawinul's life and career. The author has had a fair amount of ono-on-one interviews w/Zawinul, and, perhaps, those who have worked/been around him over the years (without specific citations and/or an encylopedic knowledge of what's already been published, it's hard to say what's "found" and what's original, and yes, that bugs me). The book is written fromt he perspective of a fan, but the musical critiques show a fair amount of objectivity, if an equally fair amount of a lack of real musical analytical skills. The writing style is concise w/o being bland. I'll leave it to others to determine if this is a "real" book or a "cut and paste" job (although, Glasser seems to hedge his bets a little in the introduction by going to some length to differentiate between a "biography" - which he claims that this is NOT, and a "portrait" - which is what he calls this book). Bottom line, though -there's nothing else out there this comprehensive about Zawinul, a figure whose personal importance is huge to some and minimal to others, but about whom it would be hard to argue that the word "influential" did not apply in some form or fashion. I'm a big fan (but not an "absolute" one), and I'm enjoying this book, flaws (real and possible) and all. It'll have to do until the real thing comes along, if it ever does... Somewhat enthusiastically recommended on those terms to fans of this unique artist. You'll not fail to get a better picture of the Zawinul personality, personal and artistic, and that might well have been the author's only true intent. If so, he's succeeded marvellously, if frustratingly.

Maybe some/lots of the artists expressed their wishes not to be recorded, at least without some form of compensation? Speaking of which, thee Harkit discs all go to great pains to mention that the tapes have been fully authorized (or some such) and leased by the original owner, but they don't say a word about whether or not the artists themselves have granted permission, much less if are being compensated. If Sonny Rollins has actually authorized his release, that would mean that he's finally mellowing about old stuff of his coming out. If that's the case, and I seriously doubt that it is, somebody needs to get into the RCA vaults ASAP and get all that Village Gate stuff a-goin'!

Don't remember the specifics, but a posthumous appreciation of Mobley in MUSICIAN magazine mentioned that Hank had been tentively scheduled to play at the BN concert, but he showed up in a bright orange(?) leisure suit and was in "no condition to play" (or words to that effect). Sad, but that's the way it went....

That's how I felt about Richie Cole! Seriously, I had a C.I. Joe, the first one, that was a "regular sized" doll, not a scaled down figurine. It was cool compared to all the "500 for a Dollar" little green toy soldiers available at the time - this cat could EXECUTE! But the coolest thing about it was when I had a babysitter use Joe & my sister's Barbie to act out a stag flick....

A small (literally) portion of Lake Gladewater. My grandfather served as Lake Superentindent for a year or two after he retired from being a pumper for Texaco. He enjoyed the super job immensely, but he had two heart atacks in a little over a year and the second one killed him.

I'll take Imminent Backlashes for $1000, Alex.

Is the statue plastic too?

Right. The one time I lost, truly lost, an instrument is still the darkest time of my life. Other things have upset me more, but none deeper.

Paradoxical as it might seem, the better you play, the worse axe you can handle.

Pretty vapid as I recall it.

Coming to all this stuff after the fact, and out of sequence at that, I can't say that I hear WORKTIME as the "breakthrough" that those who heard it contemporaneously seem to have heard it as (Steve Lacy in particular has noted what an immediate impact it had on him). I DO hear it as a full coalescence of a lot of things that had been bubbling around for a few years, most notably in the sessions with Monk. No matter, it's definitely Sonny's first great album, from start to finish, and the programming, whoever's decision that was, flows as well as SAXOPHONE COLLOSUS, which is no small feat.

Looks very much like an old Selmer to me.

Maybe it WAS 1954 and the strain from travelling the time warp is what caused Coles to collapse!