JSngry

Yeah, I had a chance to chat briefly with Claire Fischer at a clinic he did at NTSU back in the 70s (longer than briefly, actually, Fischer LOVES to talk, or at least did that day), and he got going on critics and how they don't know how adversely they can affect some players. He used Perkins as an example - the DB review of THESAURUS was not kind to Perkin's bari playing on his feature number, and Fischer said that Bill was just DEVASTATED about that for months on end. I remember reading that review (yeah, I was a library geek too), and I don't remember the comments being THAT bad, certainly not cutting or anything like that. Truth be told, I didn't dig it that much either. Mr Kart, did YOU write the review that bummed out Bill Perkins?

I don't think of it as a continuation/extension/whatever of the Miles/Gil thing as much as I do a revival of the Miles/MUSIC FOR BRASS thing - Miles as featured soloist in somebody else's context, and a challenging context at that. As such, I think it's an excellent piece of music. Not "Miles Music", but rather a chance to hear him as (almost) a sideman in a "serious" compositional context not of his own making. It's easy to forget that Miles was not just one of the most important player-bandleaders of all time, but that he was also a PLAYER, pure and simple. It's a subtle but real distinction, I think. AURA for me is an opportunity to hear the player removed from the leader, and I enjoy it very much as such.

From ejazznews.com Due for release tomorrow (8/12) is a unique gem from the Riverside catalog: the comedy classic "The Grand Prix of Gibraltar!" as enacted by PETER USTINOV. "There must have been some very perverse people around at the time, buying [these car] records," Ustinov told CD annotator Nigel Roebuck, "but there it was! The Riverside people had the idea of my trying something, a sort of satirical record about motor racing. . . . They had no idea what I was going to do--and I, frankly, had no idea, either." http://www.fantasyjazz.com/catalog/ustinov_p_cat.html "Gibraltar" was reissued last year by Fantasy's U.K. licensee Ace Records and proved a surprise seller. Roebuck, a writer for Motor Sport magazine, revealed in his August 2002 column about the CD that his father had given him a copy of "The Grand Prix of Gibraltar" in the late '50s when he was just 12, "and I've been entranced by it ever since. Listening to it again, after an interval, is like re-reading Wodehouse, as fresh now as the day it was conceived." Gentlemen, start your engines!

I've begun a cost/benefit analysis to see if it's worth 9 bucks to REALLY enjoy wiping my ass.

Huge fan here. Not too many cats can excel as a lead player AND a soloist. Benny Bailey is definitely one of them.

Blue Cheer on Bandstand? The mind boggles! Oh, it was a trip. I don't know why they played live, but they did. Of course, the volume all but destroyed the studio's sound equipment. All you heard was 3-4 minutes of this grinding noise. As well, their guitars kept giving off these HUGE, blinding reflections. Dick Clark acted like there was nothing wrong when he conducted the post-performancce interview, but he didn't fool anybody. Bandstand had just been reamed. Not quite The Who on the Smothers Brothers show, but pretty darn close, all things considered.

Ditto! For my money, the most successful of the BN "w/voices" albums. Simply gorgeous playing by Conrad Lester. and my favorite Roach liner notes, bar none. Very "read between the lines"-ish Black Pride. Blues For 007, baby!

Freddie Roach wrote some of the best liner notes I've ever read. On an instrument that lends itself to "obviousness", Roach was the kind of player who played stealthily - the closer you listen, the more you hear. Definitely more there than meets the ear first (or even second) time around. Yeah, Freddie Roach!

Sound as in Puget Sound. Is Puget Pungent?

I STILL remember seeing him on Bandstand doing that song. He sang the whole thing entirely in profile, showing only the left side of his face. ONLY the left side of his face. For the entire freakin' song. I always thought that he probably had a shiner or something. That and Blue Cheer playing "Summertime Blues" LIVE ( ) are the most memorable Bandstand moments that I ever saw. And yeah, "T.B. Sheets"... Whoa...

That 2 DEGREES... album was one of the first jazz records I ever owned. I bought it because of Chico Hamilton, whose work I had been digging, both with Mulligan and his first Quintet LP. This would have been early 1971. There had been a gigantic purge of the Liberty labels in '69 or '70, and stuff was all in the cutout bins for dirt cheap, so I was just buying everything. This album hit me like the proverbial velvet fist, especially Perk's solo on "Almost Like Being In Love". That solo, and the fours he trades with Chico just floored me - I hadn't heard Prez yet, but I knew ABOUT him, and the whole lineage thing, and I couldn't believe that Prez could be any better than THIS. Oh lord, I learned that solo, I played that solo, I sang that solo, I wrote down that solo, I slept with that solo, I did everything but become that solo. A lot of the things that floored me when I was first discovering jazz have lost their allure to one degree or another. Some even are repugnant to me now. But not that solo. If anything, I marvel at it even more today than I did then, because I now KNOW just how heavy it was. Perkins was always a fine player, but for a little bit there in the mid-50s, he was in a ZONE. Some of the solos he played on Woody's Capitol sides have that same heavy floating quality to them too, like Prez at his most etherial taken one step beyond. Supposedly there's an airshot of an "Early Autumn" that was on an early 70s Columbia big band compilation (one I've never heard) where he plays a solo that supposedly eclipses the famous Getz original (Getz was quoted around the time as saying, "Right now, Perk's playing more than all of us", and Getz was not a man given to superficial praise). This would not surprise me. Perkins was definitely in that zone when he made 2 DEGREES..., and he was in the zoniest of zones for "Almost Like..." A guy touches you like that in a formative stage of your life and it stays with you. When the thing that touched you continues to grow in magnitude with the passing of time, that REALLY stays with you. I'll not pretend that I'm a Bill Perkins completist, or that everything he's done has knocked me out like that one solo did. I'm not, and it hasn't. But the guy has a place in my heart that is very, VERY special, and he always will. He gave me a gift, a lasting, meaningul, profound gift, and I can never forget that. I WILL never forget that. Thank you, Bill Perkins, and rest in peace.

Juat what IS the sound for water sports, anyway? SPLASH?

Ok. That removes much of the "interesting career" angle then. Thanks. So what remains is this question - did Spence (the arranger) have a jazz past, like Johnny Dankworth? Or did he just learn those fat chords and other "jazzy" touches by copping straight from Riddle sides?

Seems to happen EVERY Sunday.

Yeah, I read that, and I'm not convinced that it's the same Johnny Spence. But maybe it is!?!?!?!?!

Ok, I just got this Annie Ross thing, A HANDFUL OF SONGS, and the arrangements are by Johnny Spence, a name I recognize from his work with Matt Monro as a Nelson Riddle clone of the highest order (and I mean that as a compliment, "clone" notwithstanding). This is a perfectly wonderful pop album, with a version of "Love For Sale" that gets more intense every time I listen to it, and not in a "comfortable" way. Ms. Ross seems to understand the darker side of the lyrics QUITE well. Then I jog my memory a bit more and realize that Johnny Spence was Tom Jones' arranger for years. O...K... So I'm doing some Websearch last night and find hime mentione in connection with a seminal(?) British rock band called The Pirates. Now I'm REALLY asking myself - who the hell was this Johnny Spence cat? Seems like he came up on the cusp between jazz(y) pop and rock, had the tools to fully work in both worlds, and did so. Seems like an interesting career, to say the least. Anybody got stories? Info? Opinions? Recs? Outright venom? Gimme something here, I'm clueless!

As the old folks know, the soundtrack for A HARD DAYS NIGHT was released in the US on UA Records. The songs from the movie were mixed in with incidental instrumental versions of some of the same songs. Pretty cheesy stuff overall, but the album finishes w/a jazz waltz version of the title tune that has a boppish alto solo. Nothing particularly gripping, but nice, competent work. I've long wondered who it was. Anybody know? Also, who was the arranger for these instrumental cuts? George Martin, or somebody else? And finally, what has become of this instrumental music now that the album has been restored to its original (i.e. - British) form of an all-Beatle album? Does it survive on CD anywhere or has it been relegated to the scrap heap of history? Not that theat would be too big a loss, but still... I suppose I should ask the same about the HELP! soundtrack as well. But who's that alto player?

Sometimes I feel like this is the really cool UHF station that only comes in on certain days, and when the antenna is angled just so. (Guess the analogy dates me...) But hell, when it's on, it's great!

Got 2 e-mails that I assume were from the real you. Sorry to hear about the major hassles you've been through, and hope that resolution is soon at hand. Welcome to the land of .org!

Yeah, it was 1980. My bad. Guess I suffered brain damage from the combination of a house with no AC and my antidote, which was filling up the car, getting a 6 pack of Mickey's Big Mouths, and cruising around with the windows rolled up and the car AC totally cranked until the sun went down and things cooled off some. Did that pretty much every day. Kids, don't try this at home....

So this Hamilton Price cat is going from playing with Sam River to playing with Jim Cullum? Well, like I say, at some primal level, it's all the same thing when you get right down to it!

Remember a movie called The Adding Machine from late nite TV. Pretty cool, actually, especially the closing scene. Not from my "youth", but I saw a flick called "The Day The Fish Came Out" one afternoon when I was married but childless (and that SEEMS like my youth...) that was just freaky.

If you see it, jump on it.

DAMN it.

OOPS!