Mark Stryker

Herbie did tell me once in an interview that he, Chris Anderson and (I think) Willie Pickens all used to practice together. They would trade-off playing ballads, each playing a chorus and reharmonizing like demons, learning from each other and exploring together.

Wow, this was completely new to me! Looks like you can get it as a download at 99 cents per track. Four bucks for the whole thing. I'm there. Thanks for posting. Coda: Hmm. Amazon has the four tracks for 99 cents each but the entire album for $5.99. What's that about?

Don't forget Clare Fischer. In the Los Angeles Times' obituary, Hancock is quoted: "Clare Fischer was a major influence on my harmonic concept," Herbie Hancock said in a statement on Fischer's website. Hancock credited Fischer's arrangements for the 1950s vocal group the Hi-Lo's with significantly influencing his 1968 recording "Speak Like a Child." Larry: Thanks for the source detail above.

Reluctant as I am to reopen this can of worms, I do want to point out this passage from a recent Tristano biography by Eunmi Shim in which Hancock directly address the issue of Tristano's influence. I'm sure Allen will say that Herbie doesn't go far enough and this is more evidence of his denial of his prime influence (smile). Having said that, however, one of the issues that came up here in prior dicussions about possible links between the two pianists was the contention that Hancock never talks about Tristano and this is actually further evidence that deep links do indeed exist, a misdirection ploy by Herbie to throw us off the scent. So in that context it's worth noting that he does speak about Tristano here (and admiringly). Of course, I'm sure interpretations of all this will vary. Coda: If somebody has the book, could you look up the footnotes to find the sources, because it would provide interesting context. When Herbie says "at that time" what is he refering to -- when the music was played or when he first heard it? And when did he make these comments? http://books.google.com/books?id=HQ9wL02AiNQC&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=herbie+hancock+and+lennie+tristano&source=bl&ots=vR9iGilT68&sig=KjwKwxCv6kDseDLUJbpftH7zzcE&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ge-FT66XLYaDgAe65MnIBw&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=herbie%20hancock%20and%20lennie%20tristano&f=false

http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/21932.html

That rhythm section certainly recorded frequently. LPs by Buck Hill, Nathan Page, Charles Sullivan, John McNeil/Tom Harrell, Nathan Page and Williams himself come immediately to mind. Gotta be others.

Long piece from New York Times. Don't know the writer. Assume he's from the city desk given the nature of the story http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/nyregion/giuseppi-logan-jazz-artist-tries-for-a-comeback.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=giuseppii%20&st=cse Oops. Just saw the ongoing Logan thread in "Artists."

Never cared for "Misty" either but on the other hand always liked "I Want to Talk About You" (basically same changes). Here's an interesting version:

Closing the circle: Far from comprehensive Amazon search yields two other contemporary covers of "The Outlaw," neither of which I've heard. Joe Chambers: http://www.amazon.com/Outlaw-Joe-Chambers/dp/B000E40Q6K/ref=sr_1_9?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1333543717&sr=1-9 Danny D'Imperio: http://www.amazon.com/The-Outlaw-Danny-Group-DImperio/dp/B00000JFRP/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1333544183&sr=1-1

There's a very nice version of Silver's "The Outlaw" on the SF album. Did anyone else ever cover that excellent composition? Two nice covers of "The Outlaw" come to mind: Trumpeter Brian Lynch recorded it on "Peer Pressure" (Criss Cross) in the mid' 80s with Ralph Moore, Jim Snidero (out on this track) Kirk Lightsey, Jay Anderson and Victor Lewis. http://www.amazon.com/Peer-Pressure-Brian-Lynch/dp/B000A1QMSI/ref=sr_1_23?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1333476135&sr=1-23 It's on youtube here: Then there's the Blue Note 7, a band formed in conjunction with Blue Note's 70th anniversary in 2009 (Ravi Coltrane, Steve Wilson, Nicholas Payton, Peter Bernstein, Bill Charlap, Peter Washington, Lewis Nash.) I thought the studio record they made was dull, but "The Outlaw" was one of the stronger tracks. More interesting: I heard the group live after touring for a while with the material and by then it was animiated, loose and a lot of fun. Here's a taste of their "The Outlaw" from youtube. Don't care for either of those versions. Like Dameron's "Tadd's Delight," with its similarly shifting accents, it's a hard tune to get right rhythmically, and Horace and Louis Hayes do both times -- on the original recording with Art Farmer and Clifford Jordan and at Newport in 1958 with Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook. Indeed, by comparison with Hayes, the normally fine Victor Lewis sounds quite "off" and jumpy to me with Lynch's group -- perhaps through lack of enough rehearsal time. Also, particularly on the original recording the horns get a lovely "glide" feel going; the accents are hit but also are somehow sort of slid into/rounded off. I think that's what the piece calls for. Horace was something else. I hear you. Part of it might have been rehearsal issues but also the pick-up group vs. working band and recording today with head phones/isolation booths. More importantly probably, the whole hard bop rhythmic language and feel of the '50s/'60s is just very, very difficult to reproduce (though can be done) and a tune like "The Outlaw" that digs deep into the DNA of that feel is going to highlight any awkwardness. As great as Victor Lewis is -- and he's a hero of mine -- his fundamental conception of swing (and Latin) is really rooted in post-bop (60s -- TonyElvinJackBillyHart) rather than '50s hard bop, though he of course knows that language too, but it's certainly not his bread and butter. One correction: you have Blue Mitchell on the Newport '58 recording but it's actually Louis Smith.

There's a very nice version of Silver's "The Outlaw" on the SF album. Did anyone else ever cover that excellent composition? Two nice covers of "The Outlaw" come to mind: Trumpeter Brian Lynch recorded it on "Peer Pressure" (Criss Cross) in the mid' 80s with Ralph Moore, Jim Snidero (out on this track) Kirk Lightsey, Jay Anderson and Victor Lewis. http://www.amazon.com/Peer-Pressure-Brian-Lynch/dp/B000A1QMSI/ref=sr_1_23?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1333476135&sr=1-23 It's on youtube here: Then there's the Blue Note 7, a band formed in conjunction with Blue Note's 70th anniversary in 2009 (Ravi Coltrane, Steve Wilson, Nicholas Payton, Peter Bernstein, Bill Charlap, Peter Washington, Lewis Nash.) I thought the studio record they made was dull, but "The Outlaw" was one of the stronger tracks. More interesting: I heard the group live after touring for a while with the material and by then it was animiated, loose and a lot of fun. Here's a taste of their "The Outlaw" from youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKcdWYvZB-E I heard a version of that quartet (I think a different drummer) at The Brown Shoe in Chicago. After a would-be virtuosic (IMO just show-off, rubber-bandy) solo by Scotty Holt, Jackie said pretty much to himself (I was close to the bandstand) "ridiculous shit." From that moment to this, I'm not sure in what sense he meant that. FWIW, this quartet with Billy Higgins on drums can be heard on two SteepleChase records, "Dr. Jackle" and "Tune-Up," that both date to a one-nighter at the Left Bank Jazz Society in Baltimore on Dec. 18, 1966. The verite bootleg sound adds to what is already a more-raw-than-usual sounding Jackie -- great stuff but not for the faint of heart. Same quartet (w/Higgins) also recorded two standards in Feb. '67 for the Tribute to Charlie Parker Lp on RCA and then in March was the backbone for Jackie's "Old and New Gospel" with Ornette on Blue Note.

Jamie Moyer makes the Rockies' starting rotation at age 49. Should we be talking about him as the Gordie Howe of MLB? Actually, he's probably more like the George Blanda ... still, helluva thing ...

I'm sure this has been discussed before so forgive the interrruption, but have no bootlegs ever turned up of any gigs that Joe Henderson played with Miles' band?

I heard the longtime Chicago trio led by pianist John Campbell with bassist Kelly Sill and drummer Joel Spencer countless times both on their own and backing up so many visiting stars (Woody Shaw, Red Rodney, Dave Liebman, Eddie Harris and on) and it still drives me nuts that they never got recorded as a threesome, especially in the 1980s. That was a remarkably telepathic, exciting and versatile trio -- far superior than so many "national" bands in mainstream idioms -- with a very personal take on the bebop\post-bop language and an interesting repertoire that swept through a lot of piano players' best writing, from Bud Powell to Bill Evans, Chick Corea and Cedar Walton and more. I also heard them many times as a quartet with former Chicago saxophonist Ed Peterson playing Ed's music and with yet another Chicagoan, tenor saxophonist Ron Dewar, a personal hero, who on his inspired nights in those days played with a truly astounding level of iauthority coming out of '60s Sonny Rollins but WAY past imitation. I cherish the cassette tapes I have all of this that prove the point but wish there were commercial recordings. They would have turned a lot of heads.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKcdWYvZB-E

Thanks for this. Was not aware this was released as part of an Icons box. Wish it were available individually.

"Intrepid Fox" -- Good Lord, the band is on fire. Not just Freddie but Junior Cook (in his Joe Henderson bag) and Michael Carvin. Actually entire rhythm section is very tight. Would love to hear more of this concert. The Cook-Henderson connection is interesting. While Joe's super loose rhythm and phrasing developed out of Sonny Rollins, I think he took a little something from Junior early on, especially sound wise (both were hard rubber mouthpiece guys and got that centered dark and reedy tone, though Joe much moreso). Later, as you can hear here, when Junior moved from hard bop territory into post-bop, he definitely picked up some of Joe's loose, slipperiness and fluttery rhythmic figures.

More video: "Ugetsu"

Hmm. Never seen that side before. Interesting set list -- populist stuff (Taste of Honey/What Kind of Fool/Sermonette, etc.) but also some very hip standards (In Love in Vain, Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out).

I thought this was pretty good list. Compiler was coming from a particular place (explaned herein) but it's a good post-war survey. http://www.sequenza21.com/carey/2012/03/sixty-postwar-pieces-to-study/

The chili house quote has always really bugged me, because it's so illustrative of the kind of shoddy history -- mythology, really -- that has been readily accepted in jazz but would never pass muster in the study of classical music. (This is something that we used to talk about a lot in Larry Gushee's class at the University of Illinois, including the chili house quote.) It's a function of the early jazz historians and critics being mostly enthusiastic fans with no real training in music or history and the tacit acceptance of the wider musical world that didn't think jazz was serious enough to demand true scholarship. The quote is meaningless in many ways on its face and what little fact there is doesn't, as Larry and Jeff note, get at Bird's innovations at all. But it sounds all music theoryish (musical truthiness, as Colbert might say) so we'll just accept it as gospel and keep repeating it through the decades... In Thomas Owens' "Bebop" there's a discussion of this on pages 38-39. Here's a link to the Google Books. Scroll to page 38: http://books.google.com/books?id=RYBZPO3oe9UC&pg=PA38&lpg=PA38&dq=thomas+owens+and+bebop+and+biddy+fleet&source=bl&ots=2qiFivFpNP&sig=10m3YHEOKhBqYu_E5mTorC5fw8U&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ifVnT4amAcq30AGErtWCCQ&sqi=2&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false I'll let Owens do the heavy lifting but will note that the original source was actually a paraphrase by John S. Wilson and Michael Levin in a story about Bird in Down Beat in 1949, From there it got rewritten by others, who invented the "quote" as if it came from Bird's mouth directly. That's how it appears in "Hear Me Talkin' To Ya" but it's not clear from Owens if this was the first instance of the quote being rewritten or if someone else did it first. Who knows what Bird actually said -- the original paraphrase is kooky enough to suggest that the authors got whatever Bird said pretty turned around ...

Part 2 now posted: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=333428993376474

both the pianist and alto sound good (slick Cannonball bluesy trills and a reference to One Mint Julip in the first "4" with James). Anybody know who it is?

Happy 87th birthday to the true 8th wonder of the world. May he didit 'n didit 'n didit 'n didit forever.