fasstrack

1974. Verve. If you don't own it, do. One of the all-time greats IMO. I never grow tired of it, Elis Regina, Tom Jobim, Cesar Mariano's timeless arrangements, the wonderful supporting cast of players. I have it as a goal to learn every note. I recommend especially making love or falling in love to it.

I have a funny feeling this is from a concert in April 2004 in Merkin Hall (I think) where Brook conducted Maria's band and played on his pieces and hers. I was there and I remember that jumpsuit thingie. Very nice concert.

I can relate. I worked some with a guy named Bobby Forrester before he died at 54 a few years back. No big name but enough among musicians and singers to always be working. His main gig for years was as Ruth Brown's MD (on piano and organ) Great musician and person. I know some guys that haven't gotten over it yet. I myself haven't found an organist that can fill his shoes. Organists of that school and caliber are pretty rare (as are people like Bobby). I miss him. Go out and dedicate a tune to your buddy. He'd appreciate it. Feel better.

Ha. Phil Woods told me "keep the music happening. Someone's always listening".....

Wow. I guess when you sound great from the jump and are this much in love this is what can happen....

Thanks. I just had recitals and my kids were awesome. A 7-year-old performed a song she wrote, a 10-year-old playing for 4 months played Cat's in the Cradle (not an easy tune), andf a 13-year old played Bach's Bouree in Em. I backed them all and it was a beautiful evening. I was proud of them and proud of me.

Truer words may have been spoken but I'm sure I don't know when. I'm a successful teacher of children, but it wasn't always so. Kids want to learn a song and more specifically they want to learn a song they know. I wasted a lot of years trying to be a pedagogue instead of tapping into the musical memory children already have. If they sing something it's because they like it. You can use the musical memory they have while slowly addressing the physical aspects of the instrument. Having said this I find 5 is not always a good age to start---depending on the child, of course. There are motor skill/attention issues and the smallness of hands to get around. That's when singing and hand clapping, etc. come in. You're keeping them with a song and you slowly show them how to do a simple one, praising their effort. They really need to like it so I smile a lot. It's not phony because I always smile around music----and it's contagious. But the physical/developmental realities are there and cannot be dismissed, and so I prefer 6 or especially 7 year olds as beginners. I teach guitar and beginning piano. Guitar is a hard instrument (as Benny Golson observed once to me at an IAJE clinic---not that I don't know that already playing the damn thing 40+ years ). So after knocking my brains out and getting nowhere trying to teach in 1st position where the frets are the biggest (due to indoctrination by all these damn beginner's books) the guy I work for gave me an alternative---and it works like a charm: Let them play a simple melody (Frere Jaques, etc.) along one string and have it written with tablature (a guitar system of reading fret numbers on each string) under the notes. Don't even mention the notes, only the tune and the #s. They get it and my whole practice turned around from this one adjustment. But singing, playing----everyone responds to melody and everyone has a musical memory to tap into.

They are friends and both of us admire the hell out of Herbert. He's a great man and a voice in the wilderness.

Nice ones. Random memories: Early 80s. He used to hang in Washington Square Park, read and drink beer. He minded his business and only talked to people he liked. Once a 'jackleg preacher' or whatever you call those guys invaded his space too closely and he told him to 'go preach the gospel somewhere else. That's as dark as I ever saw him get, and he forgot about it right after. Sometimes he sat in with the street bands that played there. He had mostly stopped playing by then and told me when he got the jones for music he would write a big band chart in his head. When I had my box with me we would sit and BS and pass the guitar around. He showed me the proper 2 line counterpoint to Con Alma. He was very respectful of my playing and encouraging. A mutual friend we had were the guitar player Eddie Diehl. I know Eddie dug him. Eddie, myself, and a bass player named Jared Bernstein (now a well-known economist in DC) had made a demo in 1981, and Les said he really dug it. I remember him also telling me he had hung with Tal Farlow when he (Spann) was in the army, and they got loaded one time and played their asses off. "He was a hell of a guy" I remember him saying. I definitely felt he was broken-hearted but he never went there and I certainly never took him there. That's all I can remember, and rest his soul.

Indeed. When the WB box set of the Dial sides was released, it was in preparation for a "forthcoming" biopic starring Richard Pryor. This was in the mid/late 1970s. Several years, lifetimes, and brain cells ago (1973) I was a mail boy-messenger at MCA Universal. A project was broached to make Ross Russell's then-current book a movie. Lou Donaldson's name came up as a possible choice to play Bird because of not only the sonic but physical similarities. Anyway, we see where that idea went.....

well, you "outed" PeeWee Marquette as being female and no one else seemed to know. We have some funny MFs here. I once threatened Donald Duck with blackmail and presented pictures of him in compromising positions with Huey. Lived high on the hog for a minute at that. Oh, wait, scratch that---I think that was another Huey and Donald the FBI agent...... Damn. Another middle-aged moment

Thanks for being a gentleman, good sir.

It's not the point, Chris. It's not your call IMO to 'out' anyone, especially someone not around any more. People's sexuality is their own affair and none of my business unless they make it so. And c'mon, your negative comments re Chan had nothing to do with her sex life. No, I didn't read your bio on Bessie, but remember your liner notes and a '70s show on BAI here in the Big Mango. I have no issue with you as a writer, jazz or record industry persona. On the contrary. You are quite an accomplished and insightful man and friend of music. I don't know you, nor you me. It does seem from your posts that you are a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy sometimes. I can relate, since there are a lot of things to be drug about. But since I'm a musician I find I may not be able to do much about the things that displease me but I can do more good lifting someone's spirits or making them think in an hour playing---that's if and when I'm in focus---than tilting at all the windmills (or windbags) in the world. I have no illusions, but it just might help someone think better thoughts. Life is short and music beautiful. That's not nihilism to me, but using one's talents as John Stuart Mill might have suggested. But do your thing, Chris. I made my point, you made yours, and we're both big boys. I won't press this any further.

Don't know about the foot end, but people waking up on the wrong side usually miss the floor with their feet. Instead they wind up in their mouths.....

I feel wonderful, Chris. Thanks for asking. Look, I'm not trolling you. I know and respect your accomplishments, but making yourself hanging judge and jury, especially of those no longer around to defend themselves is downright tasteless IMO, and certainly unnecessary. That's all I meant despite my strong language, and it stands. As far as the movie Bird itself, when it came out there was a telling roundtable discussion of it with musicians like Diz, Roy Haynes, and others I can't remember now on (the great) Gil Noble's Like it Is. They corrected some of the more romantic flights of fancy like the one where Bird importunes Gillespie to 'write this (music) down for me'. Someone, perhaps Jackie McClean, was saying how at a record date Bird asked each guy if they wanted food and starting writing something that appeared to be food orders but in fact was parts he was copying super fast. Then there was Red Rodney, who many times has stated he never felt Parker had the great knowledge attributed to him---not that it mattered. "It doesn't matter how you got it, it's what you got" I believe were his exact words. As for my own opinion, I found the movie marred by Eastwood's heavy-handed anti-drug preachments and, as observed by others here, his one-dimensional characterization of Bird as someone pitiful and sort of doomed to act out a tragedy. People that knew him would say BS. Also, as has been noted here too, Dizzy's minimal role and the abscence of Max, Miles, KD are pretty egregious sins. It's obvious though that Eastwood loved Bird and loves jazz and its musicians generally, but I think he sort off booted this one. I still enjoy it as drama and art. I liked the actor that played Rodney and was less impressed by Whittaker (though I am a fan generally) and Venora's work. I think they sort of were done in by the soapsuds in the script. It's weird, but Eastwood in this case reminds me of how I feel about Spike Lee: best at capturing/romanticizing the atmospheric sights and sounds of an era. The 52nd Street themes were stunning to look at.

Jesus, calm down, will you? You are so dark and seem to be bent on exposing or 'outing' jazz people. WTF is up with that? Like your charming little vignette about Dizzy's supposed bisexuality. True or not, who the fuck are you to be talking about that on the Internet? Takes a lot of balls, BTW, after the man is in his grave.... Chan Richardson was married to the man. She had to know something, for chrissakes, even if there is a grain of truth to your bitter little analysis. I truly hope for your sake you are not this sour all the time.

Very nice. But, being a big fan and follower of Tom's career IMO his recordings on other people's records in the 70s-80s and a lot of his leader dates on smaller labels were generally better than the BMG stuff. I liked Labyrinth. He really stretched out on that writing-wise and played a stunner of a solo on his chart called Hot Licks on the Sidewalk. This is not to say this is not a lovely album. I revisit it from time to time and enjoy it. The orchestrations are nice and well-thought out. The use of all the voices in the mix, his own included, is like a good director. Tom does that very well, establishes the sound as a writer, then lets the players speak. I guess my overall gripe is that the tunes were not his best, because he has some gems in his years, and not just a few. But where he might have been coming from was to explore rhythmic structures, grooves, and vamps. He definitely succeeded at that. Sometimes it's hard to tell with the larger labels why a recording gets made. I think part of the reason for this on was that either the label wanted to try something different, or Harrell did---or both. And they have the budget for larger projects, so why not? I still like recordings like Form, Passages, Stories, Sail Away, etc. better, and let's not even talk about his trumpet playing with Horace, Bill Evans, Harold Danko, Ronnie Cuber, etc. etc.---going all the way back to my old friend Bob Mover who I just saw and heard tonight, and who first told me "I have this amazing trumpet player in my band" 30 years ago. I went to Sweet Basil, fell in love, and never looked back.....

Excellent musician. Everything I ever heard by him swung and was musical. I was friendly with a guitarist named Les Spann and he had a record called Gemini where he played guitar and flute and Julius got some nice space on that. I believe he's on Phil Woods' the Rites of Swing too. Not sure of that, though.

About last week's concert or the one in '98? He's also on my suspect list for writing wrong info about the Jazz Cultural Theater on the notes to David X. Young's Jazz Loft and never even bothering to do the simplest research after the fact to correct it. My solution would be to put Ben, Howard, and the Great Genius Stanley Crouch together in an isolation chamber. They'd have no choice then but to bore each other to death and leave the rest of us alone.

Ha. 'Deed it does. I miss Johnny terribly. Late night TV is interchangeable and forgettable host and guest-wise these days. RIP, Ross. So many great players in that band over the years. CT, Snooky Young, Pete Christlieb,etc. Good charts, too. And Doc had style and panache and was crazy like a fox to allow himself and his wardrobe to become grist for the Carson zinger mill. An era I can only remember fondly now.

You go, Dave! I love reading stuff like this. Music keeps us young.

Ha. It really does speak for itself. Don't fall over yourselves all apologizing at once, guys (I love this). Wilson's racism, condescendingness, his fascination with what he took to be his own intellect, and other appealing qualities were self-evident on the tape. And, as I said, Bird nailed it and Wilson's sorry ass in one sentence, and with one look. What cracks me up is the video is some 3 years after the none-too-funny doggerel of his article. But did the Broadway Sage catch up one iota to what every musician knew was important and great? Like I said, he was a low-rent Winchell wannabe, a Broadway hustler that landed in a newspaper. What a self-important windbag.

I'm quite surprised no one mentioned the Art Farmer-Jim Hall collaboration (unless I missed it). The best known one is Interactions, and deservedly so. I Love Sweden is also good. Chet Baker, the Tokyo concerts (1987) is very nice. Also, These Rooms (Jim Hall/Tom Harrell). I'm sure I'll think of some others. Bedtime for Bonzo just now.

Bless you for mentioning both Ruby and Warren. Both are gems and I'm a major fan.

BTW, don't believe a word of that charlatan Ben Ratliff about Herbie's working group. He says the same thing about any group with electric instruments, especially bass (God forbid it should soil a jazz group). He ran almost that review verbatim at a magical Wayne Shorter concert in '98. I was there and it was a phenomenal evening but the all-knowing one ripped it to shreds in his 'review'. Ben, stop annoying people. I tell you, all the wrong people get paid in this world....