fasstrack

www.joeraposo.org I'm a big fan, and have written children's songs myself. His music had such heart and musicality. His songs have been embraced by many--- public and performer----with good reason. They view kids as people (and probably people as kids). They just have the basics. This site has a really nice slideshow summarizing Raposo's career up to his untimely 1989 death at only 52.

A Jimmy Raney date that was reissued as Early Getz is outstanding (the other side on the vinyl edition had a small group out of Woody's band). Raney wrote some excellent originals like Motion, Signal, and Lee, and there's a memorable Round Midnight. Hall Overton, Red Mitchell, and Frank Isola (I think) are the rhythm section. Getz-Raney got a great blend. The live stuff is better known, though. Give this one a listen. From later periods I like Pure Getz. The series from the Montmarte with Kenny Barron et. al. (Serenity, Anniversary) are perfection. People Time is great, as is The Master, with Albert Dailey. And let's not omit The Peacocks (actually Jimmy Rowles' date).

Ahhhrgh. It's like trying to stop a public fight between a guy and his wife. You may mean well but both will give you the evil eye and tell you to fuck off. Hope y'all solve that problem of life being unfair and the powerful clinging to power with this back-and-forth. Of course the subject's never been debated before . I'm out.

The content of this thread has taken a nose-dive. Repetitiveness, sadly,has set in like gangrene. Anyone with a different take care to jump in?

:g

If you read him this and asked for comments you guys would be crying for a week.

There's names listed on the record? :o Geez, I hope nobody was able to use that for their career gain... I WANNA BE ON A QUINCY JONES DATE. HEAR ME, OH LORD----YOU GOOD WOMAN. I'LL WASH PEGGY LIPTONS'S FEET IF INSTRUCTED AND I CAN PAD THE RESUME LATER, JUST AS THE L WOMAN PADS....WELL, LET'S ,UM, NOT GO THERE........... Guys, seriously: if every musician playing uncredited on record dates between 1950 and now (well there IS no recording industry now) complained about not having their props tickets punched there'd be................................................................................................................................................................... a shitload of complaints. Then a shitload of firings and replacings with ass-lickers. So let's get real. Getting paid well and keeping one's mouth shut are wonderful ways to keep something green that pays for things like food and cars and kids education coming in. Are we clear on this? Or should I take a Berlitz course in Lithuanian conjunction and try afresh?

http://www.allmusic.com/album/meditation-r136801 As you can see, the proper spelling is Montoliu (and our own EKE BBB is the expert in all things Tete!) Thanks. My shrinking (unincredible) brain also thanks you.

Maybe we oughtta check with Eve.....

And they became well-rewarded employees, not full-bore owners. Nothing wrong with that at all, hell, it's more than I aspire to, I'd love to reach that level, that's for sure. I'm just saying, there are many "opportunities" in this business, and like any other business, when you decide to cross the line into full-time management, if you want to "reach the top" and become "ownership", then...that's a whole 'nother game with a whole 'nother set of rules. You know why there's so few people at the top in any business? Because most folks don't want to do what it takes to get there. Thank god. I wrote a song with a very talented guy named Jimmy Norman. He was in the R&B end of it and a hell of a songwriter. The first time I went over his place he played me a ballad of his that was so good I said I thought it was as good as anything Curtis Mayfield ever wrote. He said 'that's a hell of a compliment'. It was a hell of a song. Jimmy wrote lyrics with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley and the well-known lyric to Time is On My Side. But few people know his name (he died in November) and---more to the point---his heirs will see little royalty money. He didn't watch his back. Curtis Mayfield's heirs, OTOH, will do just fine. Curtis owned all his songs---no ifs, ands, or buts. So two artistic equals IMO, but only one watched the store. In this business you want to be like Curtis, not Jimmy. Especially now, since thieves are even more fearless and are aided by the Web.

<br /><br />Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...<br /><br /><br />I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.<br /><br />The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be <b>hugely </b>successful. They see what it takes and say, &quot;uhhhhh....no thanks&quot;, and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it &quot;really big&quot;, and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.<br /><br />And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.<br /><br />Otherwise, you either have an &quot;industry&quot; and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.<br /><br /><br /><br /> I don't necessarily take this as BS. I don't know that much about the music world, but take all of the music references out of this thought and you have pretty well explained every other work situation I have ever been in. Bravo. You said a mouthful, brother. Musicians are no different---we just think we are. Word. The whole Nicholas Payton #BAM thing is dead in the water because he's only looking at who's gonna "own" the music, not who's gonna own the business. Yeah, MF, own your music all you want to, own your masters, and all this and all that, call it whatever you want to. At some point, if you want to be more than a cottage industry (of whatever size), you gonna have to do business with somebody who is not you, not like you, and not really all that concerned about you. Shake hands and come out swinging! To expect a musician to get into the business, I mean all the way in, I mean to get into it to win, and not expect them to screw other musicians along the way, hell, that's crazy talk! Who else is there to screw, at least if you want to live? Milton Hinton never screwed anyone. Barry Galbraith, Clark Terry. The list goes on. The business changed, and America is mostly a fickle, shallow place culturally. Those guys probably couldn't get arrested now. Personally I really don't give a shit about Nicholas Payton's opinions. (I mean on 'jazz is dead' and such) More palaver, and there's plenty already. I like to hear the music. He's got a really nice sound. Isn't that enough? Why make yourself an oracle? Like, get over yourself, dude. Aaahh, why bother..........

<br /><br />Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ...<br /><br /><br />I'm a big believer in credit where credit is due myself, but that is not what the Corporate Music Industry is built on. It's the same as any other corporate industry - the many do the work, the few organize the work, and the fewer still get the glory and the big bucks. Same as it ever was.<br /><br />The Dirty Little Secret in jazz is that most people don't really want to be <b>hugely </b>successful. They see what it takes and say, &quot;uhhhhh....no thanks&quot;, and then set about to get as far along as they can be doing what they feel is right (enough). Which is all good (best, actually, imo), but...don't bitch about not ever making it &quot;really big&quot;, and don't be shocked and surprised when the people who do want to be really big go ahead and do the things that lead to just that.<br /><br />And this - if you see somebody who really is a Nice Guy who has also made it really big, you can almost bet your life that somewhere, at some point, they had somebody acting on their behalf to do what it took.<br /><br />Otherwise, you either have an &quot;industry&quot; and all that comes with it or you don't. C'est la vie.<br /><br /><br /><br /> I don't necessarily take this as BS. I don't know that much about the music world, but take all of the music references out of this thought and you have pretty well explained every other work situation I have ever been in. Bravo. You said a mouthful, brother. Musicians are no different---we just think we are.

What Q did was somewhat or notably different in kind than what Irving Mills, Goodman, Kenton, you name it, did. Their motives were largely a matter of money -- if their names were on the songs, they got royalties, often a whole lot of money if the song was a hit. Also, for someone like Kenton, who assiduously shaped the style of his bands, a chart in the Kenton style that was not actually his or all his but was credited to him was in effect a Kenton chart. See Ellington in this respect, of course, not in terms of arranging per se but in assembling compositions from strains and licks that came from band members. Now, Q, as I mentioned above, had a quite distinctive arranging style, yet after a certain point (and I'm confining myself only to the period when he was writing for big bands, not his later "pop" period) very few if any charts that were said to be Q's were written by him or even SOUNDED one bit like they were written by him. This, I submit, is a different sort of thing than the ones mentioned above and implies that his motive was not primarily (or even at all) money per se (because no, or no significant, royalty income probably would be involved) but was instead some manifestation of Q's ego. That is, it was important to him that he continue to be KNOWN for doing something that he no longer was willing or chose to do, and that his way of accomplishing that goal was take away the "ego income" of his colleagues in the business. Was this merely a matter of convenience on Q's part or something a fair bit stranger, even pathological? I don't know. But I do know that his peers regarded his behavior as strange and (depending on their own temperaments and degree of involvement) more than a fair bit ugly. Also, again, they found it different than the old Mills, Goodman, etc., type of thing, where the bandleader or manager put his name on a tune to garner a share of the royalties. P.S. FWIW, when Q was doing things like M. Jackson's "Thriller," it probably was the case the was the "author" of those albums as much as Jackson was. Wow. Ego goes with talent, also the desire for power. I met a few egotists in the music biz---to the point of being truly obnoxious. They usually fell more in line with the talented child trip than those wanting power. But I've never known any one of those capaciously egotistical guys to resort to stealing. They didn't have to, they had the goods already. What I do see is a couple of jazz players, ay least in NY trying to control scenes and get their boys in their clique in places with the winking understanding that their own backs will be scratched. This can be obnoxious, but it still comes under the survival rubric and humans are mostly herd animals anyway. Issues of plagiarism and credit-swiping are serious, though. I've had it happen to me and I know. More complicated is the issue of farming out work. Arrangers are afraid if they say no the contractor won't call again---and ghostwriters have to eat, too. I don't find that practice particularly egregious. Again, survival in one of the world's tougher rackets.

Beautiful sound. I sure hope he doesn't lose that. It's one of the best. I also like his harmonic ideas. I don't always go for tenor players running chords and I think George does more than that. He's a thinker. Sometimes working things out somewhat is a viable approach. With that approach when one is inspired there are options. He was pretty inspired IMO on his solo on Dolphin Dance. Very well worth studying. You also can tell a guy's good when he's exposed, and on the duet record he made with---I think---Tete Montelu (sp?) he's right out there and it holds up beautifully. I remember a wise statement by Eddie Harris in a radio interview. He said something like 'you wanna hear where a tenor player's really at? Pan down the rhythm section and see if you still can pat your foot to him.' The duet record, called "Convergence" (from 1990) is with the wonderful Richie Beirach. I never heard of that one before, and would like to hear it. But my addled brain does seem to recall a recording with Montelu.

Beautiful sound. I sure hope he doesn't lose that. It's one of the best. I also like his harmonic ideas. I don't always go for tenor players running chords and I think George does more than that. He's a thinker. Sometimes working things out somewhat is a viable approach. With that approach when one is inspired there are options. He was pretty inspired IMO on his solo on Dolphin Dance. Very well worth studying. You also can tell a guy's good when he's exposed, and on the duet record he made with---I think---Tete Montelu (sp?) he's right out there and it holds up beautifully. I remember a wise statement by Eddie Harris in a radio interview. He said something like 'you wanna hear where a tenor player's really at? Pan down the rhythm section and see if you still can pat your foot to him.'

Maybe what some seem to have reservations about here is why grabbing a survival opportunity so often has to go at the price of shortchanging your fellow MUSICIANS. Credit to whom credit is due seems to be a line of thinking here and I cannot say I do NOT find that understandable ... I never defended his actions. I repeat: I'm neither God nor Freud. Have enough tsuris figuring out my own f-ing life. Just trying to look at the big picture. It's so rare that anyone makes it in music w/o singing or being a complete jerk---artistically, I mean here---(or pretending to be one for lucre.) Speaking as a musician that actually would like to be successful, I have to, one, acknowledge said success and, two, figure out what that guy/gal might be doing right that I'm not. I think that might be a better expenditure of energy than taking easy 'emperor has no clothes' shots. It might help a lot of talented musicians get rewarded for their work. Or not. But where there's life there's hope. There are some NY area musicians who have given very useful talks on navigating the (ugh) jazz business. Two are Hal Galper and Jimmy Owens. Both took the bull by the horns and did OK---and as far as I know did it on the square. Why not have more threads on guys/gals like that instead of always pulling covers off the well-heeled looking for dirt (if you'll forgive an extremely messed-up mixed metaphor ).

That's it. He (and Gene Allen) used to play Marshall Brown's Wed. session with us students. Hod, like Rod.

I'll let Mr. Sangrey be the Last Angry Man here and be glad not to take the heat, but I do agree with much of what he says. For another example: I remember Cecil Taylor slamming Donald Byrd in DB for being 'full of shit' and maybe saying 'But Donald has his (read 'material') things. So what? Did Taylor know what Byrd might have gone through before starting the bitchfest? I remember Pepper Adams talking also in an interview about the hell he and Byrd caught trying to keep a jazz band together. He, at least, was more of a gentleman while still candid: 'Maybe that explains Donald's later aberrations'. Jazz is an impossible business. Period. People have died trying. So anyone lecturing about what bad guys they think certain people are---when those people have had enough of the shit and abuse and heartbreak and grabbed a survival opportunity (or---heaven forbid---grown musically)..... Well, you get it.....

Do you mean STORING or DATING posts? Now I'm worried that a blog I started (and appears right before yours) will disappear in the cyber-ether. I'm temped to defend Mr. Jones here, if only b/c I have an unfortunate habit of rushing to defend those attacked. But he's rich and doesn't need my help. I really liked his big band (the one stranded in Europe---which circumstances might have been the reason for his later MO.) What do I know? I'm neither Freud nor God, and anyway don't care that much. But that band and tunes like Jessica's Day are what I prefer to focus on. He CAN write when he wants to, and sure could then. We've been through this before and I'm not going there, but I do sometimes find the motives for attacking the successful (often under the self-righteous aegis of 'afflicting the comfortable') suspect. Life---and the people populating it---is not 'black' or 'white'----but complex and different things at different times. Human behavior may by turns repulse or delight me----but hardly anything anyone does surprises me anymore. Maybe Mr. Q is a bad guy in some ways---never met the man. But I'd wager that many in the music biz---myself perhaps foremost---would not at all mind having their names associated with his. I don't accuse anyone here of jealousy, but generally I'm a bit sick of that sort of thing. I'd prefer to do my work myself and let the universe, whoever or WHEREver she is, sort the other crap out.

To tie in to your thread on Bill Finegan, Finegan---never one to bite his tongue about what he DIDN'T like---was so impressed with one of Clare Fischer's vocal arrangements for Chanticleer he got his number and cslled him to let him know. There was also a recording of a great ballad by my late friend Chuck Clark (Full Moon) supposedly arranged by Fischer and recorded by a vocal group. I never heard it, but sent Chuck's lead sheet to Phil Woods. I got an email back: 'This tune is a MF'. When Phil heard Chuck died he spent an afternoon transcribing the tune to Sibelius notation---and wrote 'In Memorium to Chuck Clark'. It came in my email. And he never even met Chuck. Don't let anyone tell you musicians aren't good people. If anyone's heard Fischer's vocal chart please let me know. All I have is Chuck's lead sheet---sans lyric---and PW's generous effort. I wish I knew Fischer's music better now.

I wanted to write more, but was in the library on their PC and the hourglass ran out. But it wasn't for nothing that Shakespeare wrote that brevity is the soul of wit. Or maybe I read it on a can of roach spray (OK, I stole that from the once-popular comic London Lee) may we, then, call you 'quicky'? You may call me any name the bank deems valid to cash a check with, sir. Whence the check?......

He would've dug that. But then he was vain...

You are truly demented! Thanks. I used to have that. Funnnyyyy shizzle!

That cover's almost as funny as the one for Jackie Vernon's The Day my Rocking Horse Died. Dig that one up, Jim.....

I wanted to write more, but was in the library on their PC and the hourglass ran out. But it wasn't for nothing that Shakespeare wrote that brevity is the soul of wit. Or maybe I read it on a can of roach spray (OK, I stole that from the once-popular comic London Lee)