Brownian Motion

I was also thinking of Sonny White, Billy Kyle, Red Richards, and Ellis Larkins as folks who might have made interesting contributions to various mainstream dates. White in particular was a much-neglected musician for his entire career.

Pianist Claude Hopkins led some fine dates for Prestige Swingville. I'm especially partial to the one featuring Buddy Tate and Emmett Berry. In fact the whole Swingville catalogue is worth a listen to, though not everything in it is first rate. The problem with these Swingville sets, IMO, is that they often used a somewhat thin front-line, probably as an economy measure, and that they frequently used Tommy Flanagan (pretty much the Prestige "house pianist" during this period), who was not the most appropriate accompanist for the swing generation.

"European Windows" by John Lewis, recorded in '58, has some great solo work from various European jazz musicians. It is a scandal that it is not available on CD. The MJQ and the Beaux Arts String Quartet is also great music. And it's still available!

Here's another vote for Eddie Sauter-Stan Getz and "Focus". Decent string writing makes all the difference. I like Bird with strings, but that's only because I like Bird.

Marie Marcus, 89, Jazz Pianist and Fats Waller Protégée, Dies By DOUGLAS MARTIN Published: October 19, 2003 [M] arie Marcus, a jazz pianist who was a protégée of Fats Waller and appeared on Manhattan's 52nd Street, the prewar epicenter of jazz, before becoming a summer fixture in nightclubs on Cape Cod, died on Oct. 10 in Hyannis, Mass. She was 89. In a book about jazz personalities, "Barney, Bradley, and Max" (Oxford, 1989), the jazz critic Whitney Balliett suggested that Mrs. Marcus's talent and experience elevated her into a higher league than the normal run of resort acts. "At first, her style seems a simple mélange of chunky chords and brief connective runs, but on closer examination it is a repository of the jazz piano playing of the thirties and forties," he wrote. <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> Advertisement <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/ads/british/300x250_landing.gif> <http://graphics7.nytimes.com/images/misc/spacer.gif> Marie Eleanor Doherty, an only child, was born in Roxbury, Mass., on May 25, 1914. Her father, a plumber, and her mother were elegant ballroom dancers and had a player piano in the house with rolls by the likes of Waller. She started playing the piano at 4 and studied at the New England Conservatory of Music while attending Roxbury Memorial High. She started in children's radio shows and ended up in Manhattan playing the piano on a national radio show for NBC as well as in clubs, under the name Marie Doherty. When Waller persuaded her to play in an after-hours club in Harlem, he pointed to his heart and said, "For a white girl, you sure got it there." She asked him whether he knew a good piano teacher. He answered, "How about me?" and gave her lessons when he was in town. With the licks she absorbed from him, she made it to 52nd Street, the epicenter of jazz, where she played at the Swing Club. At the end of her New York years, she led a 12-piece band and, after several musicians were drafted, a six-piece one. Her agent sent her to the Coonamessett Club in Falmouth on Cape Cod, in part to help her relax from the exhausting work. The respite became a happy 40-year residency, and she became popular with both locals and tourists. President Kennedy came to hear her and Alma Gates White play as the "piano mamas" at the Panama Club in Hyannis. For many years, she also spent winters performing in Miami Beach. In the 1950's, she appeared on television shows like Steve Allen's "Tonight" show and the "Dave Garroway Show." In 1937, she married Jack Brown, a singer. They later separated, and he died. She later married Bill Marcus, a trumpet player and later a lawyer. He died in 1965. She is survived by her sons, Jack Brown, of Quincy, Mass., and William Marcus, of Fort Lauderdale; her daughters, Mary Liles and Barbara Marcus, both of St. Petersburg, Fla.; eight grandchildren; and eight great-grandchildren.

Anyone know anything about strider Charlie Lewis, who made solo sides in Paris in 1940, or '41? One of his tunes was "April in Paris"--I don't know of an earlier jazz recording of this chestnut.

In 1961 Kenny was a patient at the New York State Rehabilitation Hospital in West Haverstraw New York, since renamed the Helen Hays Hospital. I was there as well. Word got around among the patients that Kenny was quite a jazz pianist. I was 13, and was just developing an interest in jazz, but of course I had never heard of him. Kenny seemed to be a shy man who kept to himself, but after he was there for a month or so he was persuaded to perform for the patients. He was in a wheel chair by then but his upper extremities seemed fine. So one evening in the hospital auditorium he played for about an hour before a small but respectful crowd of other patients and a few ringers. I don't remember much about the concert, other than that he played a boogie woogie number that was most probably Boogie Woogie Cocktail, his old feature with Andy Kirk. I was pretty impressed.

Kenny also turns up on the Buck Clayton Mosaic set, and a live date with Buck from the early 50s that was issued on Storyville (not very good sound quality, unfortunately). Kenny's also on the Jack Teagarden album reissued on Fresh Sounds with Lucky Thompson and Ruby Braff. And Kenny shows up on a Sol Yaged date from 1956 and easily steals the show from Yaged's vapid Benny-derived noodlings. Not long after, Kenny stopped playing because of a degenerative disease--I'm not certain which.

Harry was a good blues player; he made some nice records in that vein with Albert Ammons, Teddy Wilson, and the Metronome All-Stars. But I believe that by the time he left Goodman to strike out on his own as a bandleader his career as a jazzman was over. Although professionally active until his death, Harry never again recorded in a straight jazz context with peer musicians, not even as a lark. And that was clearly his choice.

Tell me more about these canary vocals!

One more thing. The present incarnation of the Vanguard Company has not done too well with their precious jazz catalogue. I don't know whether alternate takes of these sessions exist anymore (if they do they're worth issuing), but with Vanguard it's common for some tracks to show up under more than one name and on more than one CD (witness the Vic Dickenson situation) while other tracks (Buck Clayton's "I Must Have That Man" for instance) have not yet appeared on CD.

It's true. This is a great album. Besides the prime Ruby, Shad Collins, one of producer John Hammond's favorites, gets an all-too-infrequent chance to stretch out a little. And then of course there is Sir Charles Thompson, who was a perfect accompanist for these musicians. IMO a lot of 50s and 60s mainstream sessions were dragged down by unsympathetic pianists, but that's never the case when Sir Charles is on the job. Edmond Hall maintains his usual high standard throughout. I was just listening last week to an album of alternate takes by Ed, and his command and inventiveness from track to track just blew me away. Vic himself is of course a wonderful witty soloist. Although he had been part of the NY jazz scene for awhile by the time these sessions were recorded, I believe these were Vic's first recording's as a leader. In general these Hammond-produced Vanguard sessions and the Buck Clayton Jam sessions at over Columbia marked the re-emergence of a style of playing jazz that had gone out of fashion since the triumph of bop in the late 1940s. Players like Clayton, Ed Hall, Vic, Red Allen, Dickie Wells, Benny Morton, and others of their generation were not very convincing as dixieland players, so it's nice to hear some of these same musicians once again in a comfortable setting.

Jazztone lps were the only long-playing records I've run across that had milled edges. If you accidentally dropped the stylus onto that edge it made a bloody racket and filled you with dread that your stylus would not survive the abuse. Although the later Jazztones were high quality vinyl--even with their serrated edges--the early ones were made of some kind of cheap, lightweight plastic and wore out quickly no matter how tenderly you treated them.

I'll second Sammy Price, and add Albert Ammons, Jelly Roll Morton, Pete Johnson.

Freddie did a date with Sammy Price--I think it was '44. It's on Classics. And if memory serves Freddie played with Jimmie Lunceford in 1942, and cut a solo or 2 with the band, but I don't have the specifics.

Fourty years ago, when I began listening to jazz, the music was embroiled in controversy. Such figures as Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and John Coltrane were accused by establishment critics of being at best misguided and at worst charlatans and hustlers. Now some of the hostility toward these musicians was simply racism. That's undeniable. But some of it wasn't. Accessability was and is a problem with many or all of the aforementioned. Yet today each one of these musicians is firmly ensconced in the pantheon of jazz greats, with a very vocal cadre of champions eager to convert others to their cause and fill holes in their collection of the Great Man's Works So what gives? Does every jazz musician eventually find an audience, even if it's as "the most under-rated jazz musician of all time"? Or are there extremist musicians whose vision was so personal and so peculiar that they never developed a critical mass of adherents? If so, who are they? And have there been fakers in jazz so transparent in their knavery that they were left by the roadside as jazz history rolled on?

I'm a night person all the way, although a dreary dark day will work almost as well. Sunshine and jazz don't mix.

Lucky recorded as a sideman on the early "third stream" effort by John Lewis and Gunther Schuller titled "The Modern Jazz Ensemble Presents a Program of Contemporary Music", which was reissued by Verve. Lucky plays magnificently on the cuts on which he appears, as do the other musicians involved: Stan Getz, Aaron Sachs, J. J. Johnson, Tony Scott. This session is OOP; grab it if you see it.

"Tricotism" is one of his best efforts. It's OOP now, but copies surface often. Anything he did in Paris in the 1950s, including the aforementioned date with the blues pianist Sammy Price. He also did a great date for Urania called "Accent on Tenor Sax" which was reissued on a Fresh Sounds CD, but it's OOP and HTF.

What tenor saxophonist appeared in the 1950s on record dates with Monk, Teagarden, Milt Jackson , and Sammy Price? Lucky. He's a great one.