Mark Stryker

I wonder if anyone can shed some light on some lingering questions about this well-known material that I'm referencing here under the title of the Columbia 2-LP set that came out in 1977. First, the bassist and drummer. These tracks (well, all but a few) are always credited to Curly Russell and Art Blakey, However, the usually reliable Bird scholar Carl Woideck has written that his ears tell him it's Roy Haynes drums (and perhaps Tommy Potter on bass),It's the drum issue in which I'm most interested. I confess that I have sometimes questioned whether that was really Blakey on at least some tracks, because the drummer has more technique than I associate with Art. On the other hand, some tracks do sound like Blakey. (The performances of Embraceable You and a Cool Blues coupled to 52nd St. Theme are in fact usually credited to Walter Bishop Jr., Potter and Haynes, though the vocalist is sometimes cited as Chubby Newsome and sometimes Jimmy Scott.) Second, the date for this recording is usually given as May or June 1950, but as others, including Ira Gitler, frequently noted, it's almost impossible to believe that Fats Navarro was playing so great so shortly before his death on Feb. 7. An earlier date in 1950 or l949 date would seem more probable. One explanation for discrepancies would be that the performances don't come from just one night at Birdland but from multiple nights and maybe not necessarily all from Birdland, which opened on Dec. 15, 1949. One interesting bit of speculation backing this theory is that Boris Rose was the known source of these tapes, but Rose typically recorded off the radio and none of the programs he relied upon ever broadcast this much material in a single night. So, can anyone ads some facts, enlightened speculation or fresh scholarship to help untangle all of this?

That's incorrect. The Jazz Communicators was a cooperative co-led by -- Freddie, Joe, and Louis. The group played a handful of gigs from late 1967 through 1968 and they almost got some traction. In addition to the 10-day stand at Crawford's in November in 1967 referenced above, the the same line-up played a week at Marty's in Los Angeles in late January 1968 (Leonard Feather reviewed the gig favorably in the LA Times) and what I think was a week at the Both/And Club in San Francisco in early February 1968 (another favorable review in the Oakland Tribune by Russ Wilson). Ralph J. Gleason also mentioned the group as having just formed in a short item in his nationally syndicated column at the start of 1968. The cats were back at Crawford's in July 1968 and in August returned for two weeks to the Both/And in San Francisco. There was also a night at the Washington-Baltimore Jazz Festival in Laurel, MD., where the group subbed for Horace Silver, who according to reports was suffering from arthritis in his fingers. There was also a one-nighter on July 22, 1968 at the Hartford Jazz Festival. The billing reported in the press was Freddie Hubbard and his Jazz Communicators. James Spalding was on that gig rather than Henderson, and the bassist was Juni Booth. All this suggests that on occasion they might have played under the nominal leadership of one guy or another, but the basic band was a co-op. I assume Kenny Barron did all the gigs on piano, but it's possible someone else stepped in at times. The bassist chair was filled at times by Herbie Lewis and at times by Juni Booth. My understanding is the group also played some neighborhood joints around New York, and it may well have played more out of town gigs that I haven't yet tracked down. I remember reading a reference somewhere that they were playing gigs as early as the summer of 1967 but I can't recall exactly where I saw that. Alas, no tapes of any of the band's gigs have shown up. Curiously, there are no commercial recordings that bring together Freddie, Joe, and Louis. They all recorded as twosomes -- Freddie/Joe, Freddie/Louis Joe/Louis -- but never as a threesome. I wonder if they had been able to record under the Jazz Communicators name in 1967-68 whether that would have allowed them to sustain the group.

Thanks much.

Hey, thanks for the heads up. That's one I don't know.

For those who are interested, I wrote up some thoughts about Grossman's complex legacy for Iverson's Do The Math. https://ethaniverson.com/one-that-got-away-steve-grossman-1951-2020-by-mark-stryker/?fbclid=IwAR0OABLoRyM08rjldPu_MmYD0hstSyQlOZwcJuvmiDW6uSCMY4yfHSZPZyg

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/arts/music/black-fire-records.html

Thanks

It is amazing (or maybe not) how after a lifetime of study -- I turned 57 yesterday and have been at this music thing since I was 10 -- that there is still so much to discover.

Gobsmacked to discover Yusef Lateef in a place I never would have expected and which never turned up during my book research. Maybe some of you already knew about Lateef's appearance with Dakota Staton on "Dakota at Storyville," but it was news to me. Let me start at the beginning: About a decade ago, an exceptional local record store in metro Detroit closed. During the closeout sale, I bought some 150 LPs at rock-bottom prices -- in some cases less than $1 a side. A lot of them were by vocalists -- Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Dakota Staton, Bobby Short, Peggy Lee, Gloria Lynne, Lurlean Hunter, Sammy Davis Jr., Eydie Gorme, Tony Bennett, Della Reese, Joe Williams, and others. A friend suggested I open a supper club when he heard about my haul. I've tried to listen to all of them by now, but occasionally I discover that one has slipped by me. I realized last night that I never checked out "Dakota at Storyville" (Capitol), recorded live at the Boston club on April 29, 1961. The cover identifies her accompaniment only as the Norman Simmons Quartet with no further details. Most of you know that Simmons was a pianist who worked with a lot of singers over the years. I started listening to the opening track, "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby," and the tenor sax obbligatos behind the vocal caught my ear immediately. Even before a rollicking saxophone solo erased any doubt, it was already pretty clear that it was Lateef -- there's no mistaking that sound! He also plays flute on some tracks and even pulls out the oboe on "Music, Maestro, Please." I did a little Internet searching and while there are sources here and there that do identify Lateef, the bassist and drummer remain a mystery. Discographies shed no light either. I would love to know who the other cats are and especially how Yusef ended up on the record. I did notice, however, when looking closely at the back of the LP, that the hazy black-and-white drawing of Staton at work includes a saxophonist, and it's crystal clear that it's Lateef's profile --which suggests the drawing was done on site at the club. I can't find an artist credit, but it might be buried in the drawing somewhere. Here's a taste of the music.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/world/canada/oscar-peterson-montreal-little-burgundy.html

This is awful stuff. I missed the Wall Street Journal stories from 2014 in which Rusch was first accused of sexually abusing middle school students when he taught at a private school in Brooklyn in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Rusch confessed to some of the charges in one of the stories. He’s now being sued. If I understand correctly, the suit is only now possible because of a new law in New York that allows for a “look-back” in child sex abuse cases that does away with previous statute-of-limitations restrictions. (Coda: I reviewed records for Cadence early in my career in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s.) https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/07/30/three-women-accuse-ex-private-school-teacher-of-sexual-abuse-suit/amp/

Andrew Gilbert is reporting on Twitter: “Universal Music announced last night that ‘Palo Alto,’ the album documenting the 1968 Paly High performance by Thelonious Monk's quartet, has been postponed, with no new release date...I'll post more when I get details.” Confirms what others have noted in real time on this thread, though this suggests some sort of official announcement was made — tho I could be reading that incorrectly and the “announcement” was simply what folks noticed on Amazon.

Thanks. That’s what I thought. FWIW, I think they used the best all-around takes for the masters, but most of the solos on the alternates — especially my Joe —are inspired. There’s a take of “If” — can’t recall which one — where I think I actually prefer Joe’s solo to the master take. Those motherfuckers were insanely consistent.

I don’t have that one, just the others. They were sent to me a while ago — I think before the legit Japanese CD came out — but I don’t recall exactly. Just trying to get a handle on when and how many times they have been released legitimately.

Gang --- The four alternate takes from Larry Young's "Unity" -- two of "If" and one each of "Moontrane" and "Beyond All Limits" --seem to have only come out legitimately as part of a Japanese CD issue of the record. Is that true? Asking for a friend. Thanks

Exactly. This is the only jazz version I know that gets at the real grit of prostitution. The verse helps set it up, but that's not all. Her swinging phrasing, the sensual way she straddles the tempo, and the way she italicizes certain words with a sly smirk or snarl, gets under the skin of the song. Yet also note the brassy, exuberant shakes she adds to the words "old" and "new" in the second bridge -- like maybe there's a part of walking the streets she kinda digs. Or maybe she's just pretending to enjoy it. After all, that's the gig.

Yes --tho not the most swinging band,but it hardly matters.

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/music/story/2020-07-14/and-all-that-jazz-bram-dijkstras-invaluable-record-collection-to-be-donated-to-sdsu

Whoa! The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis has launched a remarkable archive of creative black music dating back some 40 years, including audio (and in some cases video) of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Henry Threadgill, Anthony Braxton, Julius Eastman, Betty Carter, Wadada Leo Smith, and Amiri Baraka. https://walkerart.org/collections/publications/jazz/creative-black-music-at-the-walker-selections-from-the-archives

When Chick Corea's Five Peace Band including John McLaughlin played in Ann Arbor in 2009, Chick mentioned from the stage of Hill Auditorium that he and McLaughlin had been reminiscing about playing on that same stage with Miles in 1970. A nice moment.

Well, there is this film of Wes playing the tune overseas with four saxophones.Maybe this is what you were hearing?

It's a snippet of Wes Montgomery's "West Coast Blues"

"It’s not about your music—it’s about what makes your music your music. You’ve got to have a feeling like that. You have to have a reason for your music. Have something besides the technical. Make it for something. Make it for kindness, make it for peace, whatever it is. You know what I mean?" https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/sonny-rollins-on-the-pandemic-protests-and-music

Listened to this last night. Al Harewood plays a rimshot on beat 4 in every bar of this performance with just three exception — all in the same spot in the tune: the bar going into the bridge on the opening melody chorus and then in that same bar during both trumpet choruses. Otherwise, he ticks off 4 in every bar for nine minutes and 19 seconds. It’s almost a piece of performance art. And, man, does it swing.

Rara Avis A 50-minute snapshot of casual straight ahead-jazz in New York in 1976 at Boomer's (340 Bleeker in the Village). Kenny Barron, Bob Berg, Al Foster and a bass player I don't immediately recognize. Anyone know who it is? And does anyone have any ideas who filmed this and why? As always, Barron is unruffled and consistent, and Foster in particular is playing his ass off. My best guesses for the bass player are Bob Cunningham or a young Charles Fambrough, but as I said, I don't recognize him.