fasstrack

FWIW: I just endured 35 minutes of corn on a country awards show that was on after 60 Minutes. And I'm shutting it off.

You're welcome. The concert was at Carnegie Hall, 1980, so who knows? If not officially, I'm sure fans/players snuck in recorders on the sly. I remember another set that same concert was led by Dizzy, and had Stan, Dexter Gordon, Chuck Wayne, and I think Walter Davis, Jr. Jimmy told us Stan hated playing with Walter. 'Hard snd glassy'. But he started describing Walter Bishop, Jr. When this was pointed out he said 'same thing'. Jimmy cracked up at that. Thank you. Love the story about Stan's description of Walter Davis Jr. and Walter Bishop Jr.'s playing. Funny (-: I tried to find a review of that particular concert but to no avail. Only found a few reviews of Stan's quintet and Dexter at Carnegie Hall July 1980. I've been trying to read anything on a piano concert at Town Hall I went to as a teenager, in 1971. I saw a reference on the web to it on some sort of event listing but nothing about what happened or who played. It was hosted by Billy Taylor, who played with his trio, and had Bob Greene's world of Jelly Roll Morton, Bill Evans trio, and ended with Cecil Taylor. My buddies and I tripped on Cecil. We cracked up the whole train ride home b/c he put his shades down on top of the piano, played a bizzare little theme, took it out for about 1 hour, played the theme again then picked his shades up and abruptly left the stage. He never looked at the audience for a second. My friend Steve Goericke called his performance 'knipsified'. We thought he was too hip and weird. I wish I could remember what Bill played. He was into something and I was too young to know what. I remember how intent he looked playing, the lightness of his and the trio's sound, and how long his hair was when he came out to chat with Dr. Billy before anyone played.

Red Arrow, from the 50s. I think Ira was on that one too, with a great rhythm section. Philly Joe, I think. Also there was a really nice retrospective date from the early 90s---I can't remember the name, maybe Looking Back---where he plays the tunes he did with Bird. Chris Potter, very young, is on it and Bob Belden wrote it. I used to have some of those records with Ira from the 80s and heard them at the Vanguard. I can't remember anything about any of it, except I was excited to see Ira live. I think Rodney was maybe uncomfortable in that group (he said this in interviews) and wanted to play bebop while Sullivan wanted to play tunes he considered fresher. I've never heard Red Rodney play badly. You really can't go too wrong with anything he did.

Words are very over-rated---from one who talks too much. Music speaks louder to me. I wish I, and others, would play more and talk less. Written word is better to me for some reason. But one thing I'm sure of: it's a lot easier to talk shit about music or do post-mortems on it than play it well.

At age (almost) 38 I've come to the same conclusion. I've been working a lot with scales in all keys, and diatonic chords and arps moving through sequences (usually 4ths and 5ths, also 3rds), plus cycles of major, minor, and dominant 7th-type chords. My reading needs work, and so does my knowledge of standards. And bop heads. The Bach is never far away, though I haven't read anything new lately. Been working on some Mick Goodrick compositions out of his new book for (mostly) solo guitar. What did you think of the quartet I sent you, David? 38? You're a weeongeel! I'm the opposite of you, Joe. I know hundreds of tunes and don't really respect or want to play with people who don't (I'm smart enough to keep my mouth shut on a gig, though, and mostly lead when I do work---which I have mixed feelings about). I think our taste is probably somewhat different in guitar players also, you being from a younger generation. I don't really listen to that many, to tell the truth. I know who the good ones are, though. I've gone through periods where I actually get off my lazy ass for sustained periods and work on what I need to. Then I get lazy again and rely on my ear and melodic sense. I just like to play what sounds good to me. It's hard to grow that way, though. For some reason when I pick up the guitar in the morning I always play Corcovado and then whatever tunes I feel like. I'm kind of an accomplished jerkoff. It's only when I can't take my technique anymore that I practice what I should've all along. Let's not even talk about listening to recordings of myself...... If I ever could get really disciplined and find the time (it's been really hard on me b/c I never have enough money to live and have to do non-music work that eats up my time) I'd like to give myself a post-grad course: continue to work on long arpeggios (I do that every day, at least), do at least a little sight-reading (I always hated reading, but am actually not all that bad. My concentration drifts, though), force myself into new harmonic and stylistic terrain listening and playing along, and also continue serious study of composition---form, analysis, score study, etc. there are two jazzers I want to study also: Woody Shaw and Warne Marsh. I also have Chopin preludes I want to go through. I did put chord changes to and write a lead sheet on #4 at least. I want to go back to things I worked on with Barry Galbraith from his books and also some things a great teacher and good player named Joe Monk gave me to work on 14 years ago. Also I want to work on being more open. I look at what I write here and I'm pretty conservative, even perhaps intolerant---especially for a rebel in other areas. One reason I've always admired Tom Harrell so much, besides the beauty and accomplishment of his playing, is he really can play with anyone. He always seems to hear what's good and goes from there to make it better. That seems like something we all could work towards.

So-so so far. Chambers' main flaws are that sometimes he doesn't know when he doesn't know something (e.g. a reference to a piece's "harmonics" when he means its harmonies) and that he likes to make sweeping assertions (seemingly for their own sake) that are wrong and odd (e.g. Pacific Jazz's failure for 40 years to release the adventurous 1957 chamber music date that Bob Zieff scored for Chet Baker "effectively kept Baker on a musical diet of ballads for the rest of his days"). If you're writing a book about Twardzik, you should know your Chet Baker, and no one who does could say such a thing -- at least not if he were paying attention to what he was saying instead of unnecessarily pumping up the volume. Similarly, perhaps, Chambers asserts on p.6 that when Twardzik recorded "Bess You Is My Woman Now" in 1954 "it was completely unknown as a jazz vehicle." How well known "Bess" was as a jazz vehicle when Twardzik recorded it in Oct. 1954 is something I'll try to check, but, jeebus, on p. 128 Chambers refers to Charlie Mariano's 1953 recording of "Bess," and on p. 132 adds that "Twardzik [who plays on the Mariano recording] would later record this ballad with his trio, as we have already noted...." OK. I wouldn't be so picky myself. I've heard some great players use 'harmonics' that way and knew what they meant. It's more expressive, actually, IMO, and fairly common among players, right or wrong. Perhaps tyhat's where he picked it up. But in a book I guess you have to be careful, as people reading may not know the difference.

Sol Yaged is still alive and playing great at 85. He's also active in other ways as his picture is in the OED at the entry for 'pain in the ass'....

Agreed . I remember hearing the record and thinking the organist had to be one of the veteran grease merchants . Quite a shock to find out it was Pullen - he had the style down cold ! He sure did. Especially on organ.

Any of my LPs or cassettes. I moved recently and still have no turntable, receiver, or speakers. (I sold everything on moving to Holland 2 years ago and lived in a room with my stuff in storage until 2 months ago. No music at home except for the radio or playing myself.) At least I can play CDs and listen through this s$$t speaker in the laptop. It's a start. I want to get Benny Golson's new thing and James Moody/Hank Jones, though.

Just picked up a copy of Sounds of Synanon and am really enjoying it. I agree that Pass sounds just great on this album, as does Arnold Ross. Some of the other guys sound talented, but kind of unfinished. I would have liked to hear what else trumpeter Dave Allan was capable of, but he doesn't seem to have recorded again. In any case, thanks for this thread - Sounds of Synanon would not even have been on my radar otherwise. I know what you mean about 'unfinished'. In fact at first I thought it was kind of a mediocre junkie band playing mediocre junkie bebop except for Pass, but it grew on me. It has soul. I dig the whole thing. My friend, a very swinging guitarist himself, came over one day and we listened together, and he said that good jazz was 'sexy'. I know what he meant.

You're welcome. The concert was at Carnegie Hall, 1980, so who knows? If not officially, I'm sure fans/players snuck in recorders on the sly. I remember another set that same concert was led by Dizzy, and had Stan, Dexter Gordon, Chuck Wayne, and I think Walter Davis, Jr. Jimmy told us Stan hated playing with Walter. 'Hard snd glassy'. But he started describing Walter Bishop, Jr. When this was pointed out he said 'same thing'. Jimmy cracked up at that.

Especially when he and Getz were the same age - both born in 1927! Nevertheless, I thoroughly applaud your appreciation of Raney - a giant whose work is far less well known that it should be. He was a true original. Trust me, it's extremely hard to pull off what he did on a guitar---especially his early smoothness and ease at fast tempos. The vocabulary was created by horn players and is punishingly difficult---especially the control---to transfer to guitar, a lowly rhythm instrument that wasn't even audible before the time of Durham/Christian. But the better players have taste, at least, and know the guitar vocab is not enough to reach for. At least that's the way I see it.

Thank Jimmy. Anything I play that sounds decent comes from guys like him, besides whatever talent I work to bring out. I'm so lucky to have been exposed personally to guys like him, Eddie, Chuck Wayne. Joe Puma was another, I didn't hang with him too tough. Hilarious, too. That era is over and there's no one around like them now, to me anyway. I guess guys like me and my generation of players have to carry the torch/bring our own experiences, feelings and ideas. That way they sort of live on.....

I have always felt the same way about Elvis. I've heard the vast majority of his work, and I have rarely been moved or impressed. Agreed. A collection of continually recycled mannerisms. But he did have a nice body of work, due mostly to good songwriters. The best thing about him to me was the raw animal magnetism. I guess that's sort of as gift, but I'm neither a woman nor gay, so who cares? Musically he's underwhelming. Not in Sinatra's neighborhood as singer and certainly not as actor, and his arrival and prominence was sort of the beginning of the end of the real quality period in American pop music. If Tony Bennett were to tell his real feelings, I bet he'd be less than pleased about what went on, the lowering of musical standards. When subtlely went out the window it lowered the bar. Also, a bit off-topic but related, that's when my instrument started going downhill in perception by the public. They saw it as something to strap onto a handsome buck, or something easy to learn a few chords on and become a 'star'---and all the work put in by some real players---giants---became a poor relation. We haven't recovered yet and good guitar players still catch hell. But I liked I'll be home for Christmas and Heartbreak Hotel a lot. Finally, since this started out about Johnny Cash, to me he had a cry in his voice and a pain that was much more real to me than Elvis ever did. Elvis seemed too dumb to have much of an emotional range. Maybe I haven't heard the right records.

That was it! The Swell Season. It's the further adventures of Benny and his friends (it was Benny, wasn't it?). Very lyrical writing about youth. Thanks also for the update. I'll look in my copy for the dedication.

I came across this just last week and sent it to my students. Good stuff. Good. He lived it, too. The most no-BS, straight ahead artist I ever knew. I hope his following grows. I'm sure it will. One of the great things about having a jazz radio program is that it provides you with an opportunity to advance your own jazz agenda. During the time I was on the air I played a lot of my own Raney collection -- both because I felt he was under-rated and because the station library was thin in the Jimmy dept. Nice to see him getting big kudos here on the O. I always thought he was a great improvisor. He started out as one of Charlie Christian's gifted acolytes, hung with Bird, found his own style. It's pretty impressive when a 23-year-old kid can hang on the stand with Stan Getz and actually give him a run for his money---on guitar, no less. Finally, he absorbed a lot of classical music, especially was into Bartok. His compositions were very well crafted, melodically beautiful, and witty. And they showed great knowledge of form, as his solos did. His touch and time were first rate. I had the opportunity to hang and also study with him in 1979. We got together at Attila Zoller's place, where he was staying. His perception was such that he saw right into the heart of what I needed as a developing player. Instantly. When we played tunes I could hear him breathe (I mean actually breathe, not metaphorically) between phrases. He was a man who lived his music and lived for it. He also was very dryly funny. There are a lot of funny stories I remember but the episode that most shows his quiet wit involved some guys from back home who shared an apartment on Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn, near the waterfront. He came up to play the 1980 Newport Festival (or whatever it was called then), reuniting with Stan, Al Haig, and Roy Haynes. He called the place the 'Louisville Ghetto'. I remember him sitting quietly for a while, then saying to one of the guys, Tim Whalen: 'You know, Tim, I've seen furniture on the street, but it always looked better than this...' He had a middle ear infection by then, and went to take a nap. He told the guys: 'I'm sleeping on my good ear. Let me know if someone calls.' We wanted to have a session while he was there, so Tim walked to my place blocks away and helped me carry it over without wheels. I thought I was gonna play, but he was bringing it for Jimmy. On the way the amp broke somehow---I think we hit something. I told Jimmy I was drug b/c I had planned to sell it. (I was practicing for lifelong poverty and already very accomplished...). I was sweating like an ox, a sedentary youth carrying this heavy Fender tube amp, which was the size of a small Buick, up a steep flight of stairs. For him. He turned and without missing a beat drawled 'you won't get much for it now'. He instead played through the stereo, sitting on the floor in green gym shorts with spindly legs sticking out---like the proverbial kid that 'turned sideways and the teacher marked him absent'. He really looked undernourished. But he played choruses worth their weight in gold. I remember he played 'This is New', and wrote out a tune he recorded with his on Doug soon after: 'English Brick and Chewish Chives'---a dedication to himself and his girlfriend, Cyra Green. He was the English Brick.... Other examples of his wit can be found in an article he wrote for a Louisville paper not long before he died (his father was a well-known journalist in town). It was about thinking as a young jazz-struck kid that he was going to live in NY in a penthouse like all the famous jazz musicians did, only to find that he was to record on 'way-out labels', live in cribs with more roaches than people, and broker than a 'po' boy that couldn't afford the rest of the word 'poor'. He concluded that 'it's probably good I never got to live in a penthouse. I probably would've got drunk and fallen off the balcony'.

What's it worth to you, MF? Good on you guys. Jazz lives in Detroit.....

It was an early cancer treatment. Other than that.......? Charlie Christian's sound lives! In my ears since age 17, and also in the guitars I've owned and played. Mostly in our ears, though, and memory can mean a lot if used right. And sound gets passed on. I believe that. As long as we listen.....

Nice. They held the tempo pretty well until the end. It picked up a hair, I thought. The guitar set it slower than the drummer picked up, I thought. I can relate anyway. I always seem to rush a little on bossas when I play by myself. Those tempos are hard somehow. You have to focus. I WANT THAT GIG. I'M COMIN' AFTER YOU, WILSON, YOU HEAR ME! GRRRRRR Seriously, was that Anthony Wilson? Nice job.

I hope it was Anthony. He's a hell of a musician (why wouldn't he be?) and did a great job on a duet w/the late Nancy LaMott on P.S. I love you. 'Sings the Lyrics of Johnny Mercer' I think it's called. I'm a big fan of Nancy especially when she sings standards.

So a P90 has a bit more grit, a bit more edge? I've thought about a P90 for my Epi Joe Pass. I had 2 Guilds with that pickup. One I'm hoping to get back. I love that sound and it's unmatched for me. Thanks for putting this up. Rene Thomas was fine too BTW, and thanks for remembering him too. A combo of Jimmy, Django, and his own Belgian soul to my ears. I like Stan Getz: Dynasty, w/Thomas, Eddie Louiss, and I forget the drummer's name. He wasn't even supposed to be a jazz drummer, but they swing their asses off. Stan plays like an animal on that one. Around '70, I think.

I dig. Nice work if you can get it.... Thanks.

It wasn't me. I swear. (I wish it was, though)...... Actually, a guy with a record store saved it for me some years ago but, jerkoff that I am, I never went to pick it up. I just practiced 'So in Love' along with them, but the tempo kicked my ass so I put the metronome on instead and played it for about 45 minutes. It still kicked my ass but at least I have crutches on every 4 beats now. Nothing like the masters to humble you and make you work towards something........

It gets better and better. This is from a record long out of print, and very expensive: Jimmy Raney in 3 Attitudes. There are 3 tracks up, at least. I promise to buy this, not merely steal it from Youtube. I always wanted this anyway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLdrnP1vrts...feature=related

I sort of agree, but there sure was a lot of talent involved. I remember the first or second album with Don Un Romo and liking it. Electric something? I think maybe they were 'done in' by the egos involved, but maybe I'm wrong---and I don't want to start trouble. Anyway I appreciate the great talent involved and enjoyed all their separate doings very much. I guess I'll leave it there b/c I don't know that much more.