Jack Pine

Piano/Vocal. Pardon the MIDI piano sound/timing:

Patrick Bartley on alto has pretty personal thing. I once commented that his tone reminded me of the SID(synthesizer on a chip) from the old Commodore64 computer. I then worried I might have offended him, but he replied quite positively as if that was precisely the sound he was going for.

I don't know how much this speaks for his popularity, but I sell a few arrangements through Hal Leo's self publishing outfit: 'I Want To Talk About You' is by far my biggest seller. I'm getting close to 10 sold in the past month, which is big numbers for me! I agree though, he does seem in a way 'erased'.

One of my favorite artists generally and rated #1 baritone in my book. A few of my favorites: 'Billy's Eckstine's Imagination' 1958 (Pete Rugolo) 'No Cover, No Minimum' and 'Once More With Feeling' 1960 (Both with Billy May) 'Basie/Eckstine Inc.' 1959 I'd be interested to know more about how he was supposedly 'black balled' from the industry. This seems to be an oft told legend: photographed hugging a white fan- career put on the skids. I think this was in Miles' autobio and Frank Wess also talked about it in an interview.

I got a new car recently that had Sirius installed. The jazz offerings were quite adequate for my tastes; between Real Jazz, Seriously Sinatra, and 40s Junction. I maybe had it for two months before it expired and I have not renewed it. As much as I enjoyed it the playlists were starting to get a little stale, and it's easy enough to just play music off your phone from Youtube or wherever. I doubt I ever will renew it, maybe if they added some more jazz channels.. I think Public Radio deserves a great deal of credit for keeping jazz in people's ears, especially in areas where it isn't especially popular. I'm forever in debt to CMU and Interlochen public radio for all the hours of great jazz and classical they've offered me and the rest of the jack pine savages of the great north woods.

Oh man, that is a sad scene with Mingus. I've never been a big metronome user myself, but what work I have done with them seems to be helpful. I think that there probably is a danger of becoming too dependent on one, or of developing a rigid, mechanical time feel. Just using a metronome to keep time, 1*2*3*4*: I agree this will not offer much rhythmic inspiration. The helpful stuff I have found is setting the tempo at half speed and hearing the clicks as 2* 4*: you can swing in this manner. I'm imagining Bill's system involves more unorthodox use of the clicks. Though I won't have to imagine much longer, thanks to the board I got his contact info, so should be seeing for myself soon.

I ran across an old thread here, long non-active user 'Upright Bill' mentions some metronome exercises that will "set your internal clock to atomic accuracy or kill you in the process." Anyone hip to Bill's method or interested in offering other tips on tightening up the time?

How about "When a rhythm is very fast, we hear it as pitch." https://dantepfer.com/blog/?p=277

One of my favorite young reed players, Giacomo Smith, had been hosting a really high quality live stream. It seems like it's been given up now, but there is an archive on the youtube channel. One of my favorites: Giacamo also did a few shows featuring some young artists on the London scene. A couple of seriously swingin' sticks here, if you are into that kind of thing: Don't sleep on 'Taking A Chance On Love', round about 32:22!

Sure, my cleverness is finite and perhaps waning, so I'll have to refocus it now on my calypso arrangement of 'A Walk In The Black Forest', speaking of relevant. My brain is kind of hurting now from hours of trying to cram two these songs together with increasing fervency, to prove... something. Time well enough spent though, the closer I look at Solar the hipper it becomes.

Well, I can't deny I have a 'rich inner life' and certainly could have fabricated the overt connection in my mind. I also used to have a habit of falling asleep to Phil Schaap, so until I can prove that I did not get this idea from him, that's what I'm going with.

I concede the 'identical' point, it was only so in my head. 'Transition' maybe didn't make a strong enough case, how about 'with a minimum of finesse, the melody of HHTM can be played over the changes to Solar, or vice versa.' I still tend toward Solar/Sonny being 'inspired by/based on' HHTM. The odd thing is, like Rooster Ties, I've somehow come to believe this is the case, hearing it and/or reading about it, trying to put it into practice. Doesn't it just make some sense too that both songs refer to one of the two most intimate celestial bodies, wasn't that sort of a convention for songs that were based on earlier changes? Confirmation-Denial. You are not wrong regarding the key signatures, yet this is the hill I have staked on.

I feel like I'll probably have to prove this in some way or look like a shmuck, but I can pretty seamlessly transition between the two tunes and incidentally yes also Ornithology, on piano. I don't think I came to the idea independently, I must have read about it somewhere and started messing around with it, but it has been my custom to quote from Solar in HHTM and vice versa for some time now. They fit together nicely in many different arrangements. I do respect your opinion though JSngry and admit I overstated my case at first.

In my eagerness to get into a fight over chord changes I neglected to refer to the actual sheets, which seem to show two songs not even in the same key and not actually sharing as many chords they were in my head.🤡 I'm still going to say the functional harmony is basically the same between the two songs, though Solar does make some hip additions, substitutions. Both have a series of 2-5-1's leading through 3 key centers(I guess technically 4 in Solar). I also must have read elsewhere that this is the case... Iverson blog maybe?

Indeed I phrased that carelessly. Functionally identical is a hill I would stand on.

They are not only similar but identical, save for the first chord. Solar has a very different vibe though, with the minor(major7) sound adding that mysteriousness.

Hilariously it is notated incorrectly on the tombstone! They copied it from the Real Book 😂 Stolen from Chuck Wayne it may be, I still think it's a great tune and I play it out often. Didn't Chuck Wayne borrow the changes from How High The Moon anyway?

I arrange for sheet music direct! That's like being a self published poet. Muscore is the one I would recommend, with some reservations. They have a huge active community and a ton of good quality user created scores, everything from lead sheets to ensemble and big band charts. The price is reasonable, and they often run special discounts on the subscription, but be aware that you are only able to freely download the user generated scores, the 'Official Scores' of which there are many, still cost a few bucks each. For me the great advantage of Muscore is all the scores are downloadable into the muscore app, which is the best non-professional notation software out there for my money(it's free), where you can transcribe, edit, etc all very easily. My tip: don't sign up right away if you are going to. Go to the site several times over the course of a week and you will notice the price they are offering for the subscription goes down. You should be able to get it for just $50 or 60 for the year if you are patient.

I appreciate your concern but no, this was not any kind of illegal site. You would not for instance find scans of official Hal Leonard sheets or the like, I know there are a few sites like that. It was all user shared 'homemade' transcriptions, and there was some pretty obscure stuff on there: Shorter, Mobley, Duke Jordan, John Hicks... so many transcriptions. People could make requests too. All non-commercial and in the spirit of education, no one was making any kind of money, they didn't even run ads. I kind of assume the reason it shut down is it was a labor of love for whoever was paying for it, maintaining it, and it just got too laborious.

I'm wondering if anyone here knows what became of freejazzinstitute.com/.org? It was an amazing resource, seemingly with a fairly active community and a huge archive of user added transcriptions. Then it just up and disappeared. It seems I can still get any of the old transcriptions using the 'wayback machine', but I'm wondering if the people involved with it have moved on somewhere else?

It is a similar situation with my own wife. She passively listens to me practicing standards on piano, often for hours every day, and has become quite familiar with the melodies. She isn't so familiar with the names of the songs, but if something comes on XM radio that's in my repertoire she is very quick to pick it out. I think it is much more the melody that sticks in her head though, not really the changes. She is fairly musically inclined though, played french horn and percussion in high school.

Handsome couple. That would seem to be the single picture of the two of them floating around out there. Thanks for sharing.

Indeed all three were exceptional. I should get Frishberg's book, even if it doesn't have much on Blossom I'm sure it's worth reading. There are so many little interesting snippets here and there about people she worked with: arrangements with Gil Evans, random festival pickup band with Mingus, being present at the Birth Of The Cool sessions... I'm 99% sure this is not her, but some in some of the youngest pictures of her she does have a bit of a different look. Do you think blondie here could be Miss Dearie?

I'm wondering if anyone can help me with some research on Blossom Dearie. I'm particularly interested in her early career with Woody Herman, The French Blue Stars, and her marriage to Bobby Jasper. I found a mention in the 1/25/56 issue of Down Beat of Blossom and Jasper touring Europe and Japan with Chet Baker, was she playing piano for Chet at that time?

Yes no one sings a good baritone these days, not like B or Johnny Hartman. I don't know that you missed much by sleeping through The Squirrel Nut Zippers or The Cherry Poppin' Daddies in the 90s, not to disrespect those bands, but they do kind of pale in comparison to stuff they imitate. I enjoyed the above version as well. Not being that familiar with Braxton I thought now I can 'unbuckle' and enjoy the rest of this swingin' album after that great opening track... I guess the formula song titles do serve as a sort of 'warning label' for people like me 🙂