Mark Stryker

Here's an interesting near miss: Marcus Belgrave tells me he was offered the job with Horace in 58 -- the gig would go to Blue Mitchell -- but he turned it down because he had just gotten off the road with Ray Charles and was settling into NY and didn't want to return to the grind so soon after unpacking his suitcase. At the same time, Marcus also turned down Ellington, who knew about him because Clark Terry and Ray Nance had played alongside Marcus on "The Genius of Ray Charles" sessions.

Slide's charts on "Sophisticated Giant" are seriously great -- beautifully detailed, fully realized and like all of Slide's writing, revealing a stylistic breadth that takes in huge chunks of modern jazz in an organic fashion. The chart on "Red Top" is a good example with a "Maiden Voyage"-like intro with the vamp and suspended 4th chords and then the way he dresses up the blues in modern harmonies without obscuring an essential earthiness. There's a nice moment in the interludes introducing Dexter's solo where the harmony is contemporary but the syncopated rhythms are pure Dizzy Gillespie big band of the '40s. Later around or during the vibes solo there are backgrounds that directly quote Thad Jones' "Quietude." I love Slide.

At 29, Max Scherzer is the reigning Cy Young Award winner and has made 179 professional starts. Last night he threw his FIRST complete game. In 1971 alone Mickey Lolich pitched 29 (!) complete games and he ended his 16 year career with 195. Another way to think about that: If Scherzer had thrown all 9 innings in every game he has started since his 2008 debut, he would need another 16 complete games to reach Lolich. To be clear: I'm not criticizing Scherzer -- this is the way the game is played today and the way he and his peers were trained. We have effectively bread the 6-inning starting pitcher. But it is striking how much pitching has changed in the last 35 years since the concept of the closer solidified. My memory is that Bruce Sutter was perhaps the Louis Armstrong of the breed starting in the late '70s, though Goose Gossage and Rollie Fingers were key transitional figures. But I think it was LaRussa managing the A's who really codified the whole set-up guys in the 7th and 8th then using Eckersley exclusively in the 9th.

Really enjoyed my first pass at Azar Lawrence's "The Seeker" on Sunnyside, recorded live at the Jazz Standard in Dec. 2011 with Nicholas Payton, Benito Gonzalez, Essiet Essiet and Jeff Watts. The modal universe! Vamps, etc. The spirit of Trane and '70s McCoy but it doesn't sound like a museum. Cats sound fiery, inspired, in the moment. Also amused by the 70s throwback tune titles: "Lost Tribes of Lemuria," "Venus Rising," "Rain Ballad," "Spirit Night." I feel my consciousness rising.

http://nypost.com/2014/05/29/roy-hargrove-admits-to-cocaine-possession/ Sounds like a got a break but with a prior he'll be in deep shit if he screws up again.

Thanks, Don. I'll take a look at "Hear Me Talkin' to Ya." Not everything in that book is reliable, however. Re: "Papa" -- in Feather's first edition of the Encyclopedia of Jazz published in 1960, "Papa" is not listed as a nickname for Jones and it would have been if it was in common use at the time.

Thanks for the responses. Still would like to know where the line originated. Will look for the Modern Drummer piece and need to track down autobio too. All of this came up in context of a piece I'm revising about Louis Hayes for my book. Papa Joe took Louis under his week when he arrived in NY as a kid -- and they'd make the scene. Louis would put on a coat and tie -- at Joe's insistence -- and they'd hit the clubs, Joe telling stories about the old days and schooling Louis about jazz history and culture.

Anybody know who first coined the phrase "the man who played like the wind" as a description for Jo Jones? I can't recall seeing it ever attributed and can't put my finger on a source.

Folks, I have seen my share of musical prodigies over the years, but I have never seen a kid like this. Good God. 9-year-old drummer Kojo Roney (son of saxophonist Antoine Roney), channeling Tony Williams, while sitting in w/organist Joey DeFrancesco in New York a couple weeks ago and playing "Seven Steps to Heaven." The video comes from drummer George Fludas' phone (and posted here with permission). George was on the gig, though I think the kid is getting ready to steal it. Like Joey D says at the end, "No matter how old he is, he's bad!" https://www.dropbox.com/s/julyo6rrchhrwrf/VID_20140513_230913_574.mp4

What Jim said and then what David said (and nobody is being too rough). I appreciate the interviews on jazzwax -- a lot of good stuff there, but the criticism is usually flawed and the history distorted. FWIW, re: Sonny. I've always heard "Worktime" as a definite leap up in conception and command in terms of the recordings, and as a coming out party after the Chicago sabbatical it makes sense to mark it as the start of Rollins' maturity. But he was progressing swiftly. He was also recording A LOT. As Jim suggests, the history of jazz is not the same as the history of jazz on record, But it's interesting that in 1956 alone Sonny was in the studio about 15 times either as a leader or sideman, and if you throw in bootlegs you can more or less get a monthly snapshot of how he was playing, That pace continues in '57, before slowing up in '58. I agree with David that the true peak is 57-59 but that it's a culmination. Looking for THE turning point is folly. I will say that "A Night at the Village Vanguard" represents the pinnacle. Don't get no better than that. Ever. As I've said before, I'm a HUGE '60s Rollins fan, and that if I could play like anyone, it would be Sonny on a good night in 65. But in a way I think of the Vanguard record as the first of the '60s trios.

I can't provide a discography but I can add a coda to the recording of Elliott Carter's First Quartet. The violist in the Walden Quartet, which was in residence at the University of Illinois, was John Garvey, an influential figure, unique personality and force of nature, who dropped out of school to go on the road with the Jan Savitt Orchestra in the '40s, and would eventually found the U of I jazz band in the late '50s and lead it to glory, particularly in the late '60s and '70s. He also conducted (and recorded) music by Harry Partch in the '60s and later he would buy a complete orchestra of balalaikas on his world travels so he could start a Russian Folk Orchestra. I played second alto in John's jazz band in 1983-85 and learned to play (barely) enough alto balalaika (a boom-chick rhythm instrument) to do a stint in the Russian Orchestra. John used to say that Carter's First Quartet was the first piece of music you couldn't sight read and tell if it was any good or not; you actually had to learn it in order to decide if it was good. In 1998 I spent half a day with Carter for a story and he had very fond memories of the Walden Quartet. Carter sent the piece unsolicited to a bunch of quartets. The Walden was the only one who wrote back to say they'd play it.

Over the weekend I happened to find an original LP copy of "Top Brass," a Savoy date featuring 5(!) trumpeters -- Wilder, Ernie Royal, Donald Byrd, Ray Copeland and Idrees Sulieman. The rhythm section is the Savoy house trio of Hank Jones, Wendell Marshall and Kenny Clarke. Ernie Wilkins wrote the charts. November 1955. A fascinating date, and even though the solo space is shared, Wilder sounds great, especially on a ballad medley. Also fascinating to compare all of those guys at that particular point in their careers and that particular point in jazz history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/world/asia/china-says-goodbye-in-the-key-of-g-kenny-g.html?_r=0

What a beautiful musician, both highly intuitive and highly schooled (he studied with the midcentury trumpet gurus Joseph Alessi and William Vacchiano). He had one of the most purely gorgeous trumpet sounds of them all – honeyed, round, mellifluous – along with the versatility to play lead trumpet in a big band, solo creatively with a small group, play principal trumpet in an orchestra or handle any Broadway pit assignment. He was a pioneer too, one of the very first black horn players to crack the studios and Broadway. And he was an elegant, lovely man, dignified, modest to a fault and never seen in public without a coat and tie. Joe represents the kind of gifted foot soldiers in jazz that almost never get the attention they deserve. When he received the NEA Jazz Master Award in 2008 I thought it was among the program's finest moments. His life was a monument to the idea that to be a musician was a noble calling. Nothing was more sacred to him than his professionalism. I spoke with him briefly on a couple of occasions but can’t say I knew him. But about a decade ago I witnessed a scene I have never forgotten. Joe was playing in suburban Detroit on a small jazz society series backed by a local trio and a singer from mid-Michigan who had known Joe and arranged to bring him out to the area for a couple gigs. Joe played wonderfully with his exquisite sound, elegant melodic sense and still-remarkably supple technique. But there was one moment that stood out. He was playing a samba that he had written and there was this tricky little curlicue figure coming out of the bridge during the melody. Joe flubbed it during the first chorus and you could see immediately in his body language how much it bothered him to have made a mistake. After the solos, when it came time for the out-chorus, as soon as he started playing the melody again, you could clearly sense him aiming all of his attention toward that spot in the tune that he had previously missed. Sure enough, when he got there he nailed it. That sense of pride and craftsmanship has really stayed with me -- the fact that here he was at 81, when no one would begrudge him a tiny technical slip (and the passage was tricky enough to trip up a much younger player), and he was playing for maybe 100 mostly older folks in a place that to him must have seemed like 1,000 miles from nowhere. But, by God, he was not going to miss that passage two times in a row. It was just so inspiring to see that level of commitment. A model for anyone doing anything at any age.

http://www.txstate.edu/trumpet/Winking-Publication-Wilder.pdf A very good interview.

Here's what I really care about: Art at his best, from the sessions that comprised my favorite Art Pepper LP (from any era): "Today," 12/78 w/Stanley Cowell, Cecil McBee, Roy Haynes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkU0y20Rywg

"Ornery" was the word the headline writer probably was going for.

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/171347/allen-lowe-profile

There are youtube links for some but not all of the unissued Village Gate material. Not sure where those fall within the board rules, so I'll refrain from linking but one performance that should have been on the original album was "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

To be clear, I agree with Jim on everything here -- my use of the word conventional should have come with quotes -- "conventional" -- because what we're talking about is surface conventionality compared to the surface "free" of the Cherry band. But this is Sonny (jazz) at his/its best. Words like "convention," "free", "avant-garde" and the like are irrelevant. What's relevant is Sonny Rollins with a good trio. Don't get no better than that. Ever.

There are three tunes from Graz with Rollins, Merritt, Roach -- "Lover," "Poinciana" and "Love Walked In." The issue is pitch -- some versions I've heard run so fast that Sonny sounds like he's playing alto. It's laughable. These issues show up on the Graz material issued on the Copenhagen CDs I reference above, though I've actually heard worse. And, as I said, the Copenhagen material runs slow. I disagree with Leeway above to the extent that "not comfortable in the idiom" is projecting onto the music a conception of Ornette-like free playing that Sonny wasn't necessarily interested in pursuing. He was looking for a more open way of approaching harmony and form in this repertoire and using melodic (thematic) variation (what I think Leeway dismisses as 'ornamentation') as a way of organizing his improvisations in this environment. I'm certainly not saying the music is not without tension over the means and ends or that it's always successful -- though it frequently is extraordinary. But the discomfort Sonny sometimes suggests to me is more a reflection of an inability to reconcile all of the ideas he was juggling than simply a failure at playing free. Having said that I do agree that his experience with this quartet laid the groundwork for the more conventional settings and sidemen that he would pursue in the mid and late '60s. Still, the absolute authority of that later work it must be said has never been equaled, whether you're talking about the title track from "Alfie," where you can still hear the echoes of some of the ideas Sonny was dealing with in the Cherry quartet, to the various live versions of "Four," "Three Little Words," "To a Wild Rose," "Sonnymoon for Two," etc. that make a lot of other very find jazz musicians sound like children. Coda: what do folks think of the material with Paul Bley?

Folks -- what is the best, pitch-corrected source for the Copenhagen material from Jan. 1963? The two-CD set I picked up recently, "The Complete 1963 Copenhagen Concert," sounds slow (flat). (I'd take LP recommendations as well as CD.)

I don't think it's that odd. Miles was the leader and his harmon-muted ballads were probably the thing he was most known for in those days among a large swath of his audience. It's logical that Miles would keep those slow tunes for himself. Moreover, in those days the performances were still relatively short -- it certainly wasn't de rigueur for bands to play 10-minute ballads with round-robin solos.

Oliver reports that he still has that red mouthpiece. However, he hasn't yet given any more info about the circumstances surrounding the performance/broadcast. Will stay on it ...

I'm sorry to start another in memoriam thread, but the great and underrated Los Angeles drummer Ralph Penland appears to have died at 61. I have not seen an official obituary -- hence I didn't add RIP to the thread title -- but a number of friends and colleagues have been posting the news on Twitter, among them Christian McBride.