Mark Stryker

Maybe, kinda? In concert, while the band was playing a lot of Nestico, the bread and butter were NT standards -- Shiny Stockings, Corner Pocket, April In Paris, In a Mellotone, etc. Besides, Nestico is sort of like Hefti Light anyway -- the charts are definitely less filling but, alas, not the same great taste. I've probably said this before, but the only post-1969 Basie big band LP that I need in my life is "I Told You So," arranged by Bill Holman (1976). That's a great album, and one to put with the earlier single-arranger dates from Foster, Carter, Q, etc.

RSV?

Interesting question. Just judging by the recordings, Jones was with the band as late as April 1972. Sonny Payne also recorded with the big band in April 1972 and he's subsequently on Basie recordings until October of 1973. This suggests Payne may have been back on the band full time for a year-and-a-half, but it could also mean that Basie was going through drummers and when the recordings came up, he just brought Payne back to pinch it. After October 1973, Basie stopped making big band records for a bit and from December 1973 to July 1975 (Montreux), Louis Bellson appears on a bunch of Basie small group recordings. Butch Miles' first recording with the big band are also in July 1975 at Montreux. So, if we assume that Payne really did rejoin the band after Jones, then the more narrow question is whether there was a regular drummer in the big band between roughly November 1973 to whenever Miles joined in 1975. I just found a newspaper review from Myrtle Beach, S.C., dated Feb. 5, 1975, that mentions that Butch Miles had joined the band only six days earlier. So that means Miles was on board by the end of January 1975. So now we know our date range: November 1973 through January 1975 -- about 15 months. But here are more pieces of the puzzle. An Akron Beacon Journal review from January 13, 1974 -- written by John Von Rhein who would soon become the longtime classical music critic at the Chicago Tribune -- names Payne as the drummer. And a March 20, 1974 review in a Minneapolis paper also names Payne So that's increasing evidence that Payne was in fact back on board as the regular drummer from April 1972 until at least March 1974. Who accounts for 10 months between March 1974 and January 1975? More fodder: A Leonard Feather review in the LA Times on December 3, 1974, says that Skeets Marsh was on drums -- that's the "egomaniac" (Elvin Jones' description) that was partially responsible for driving Elvin from the Ellington band back in 1966.) Feather is not complementary: "A drummer named Skeets Marsh, possibly aware that he is filling shoes once occupied by Gus Johnson and Sonny Payne, played as if the shoes were too tight. A Basie band with a less than perfect rhythm section just isn't the Basie band." Obviously, not clear how long Marsh was in the drum chair, but there are YouTube videos dated October and November where the drummer also appears to be Marsh, but the evidence now puts Marsh in the band for at least the months of October, November, and December 1974.

Wasn't aware of the existence of this music until this thread. A little research reveals there is actually film of the performance. Where is that? https://www.loc.gov/item/jots.200016608

Lord lists three Basie air shots of Good Bait, all from the Royal Roost between Sept. 11-18. As for "Stay On It," it certainly looks possible that it wasn't actually released until later but I don't have time to decode the discography at the moment. More on Harding: These Basie charts are also attributed to him, covering years from 1942-54: Rusty Dusty Blues Ain't it the Truth Green (Jumpin for Maria) Hob Nail Boogie Wild Bill's Boogie Nails Howzit Paradise Squat Rails

A number of those Harding charts for Basie identified at the LOC site are listed as "edited by" -- which suggests they were codified versions of original Basie head charts that Harding put on paper: Pound Cake, Lester Leaps In, Tickle-Toe, Dickie's Dream. Makes sense that as time went on, Basie needed actual written arrangements of those things to account for bandmembers coming and going and gigs slowing down, as opposed to earlier in the first flush of the Old Testament when the same cats were together for years. To stir the pot a bit, I played what I have always assumed were record transcriptions of Pound Cake and Dickie's Dream at the University of Illinois in the early '80s. I don't know the provenance and cannot say for certain at this late date if what we we played in fact coincides with the original Basie recordings. However, Dickie's Dream was revived for the famous Sound of Jazz television show in 1957 and discographies credit Nat Pierce for the arrangement, which is in an Old Testament style. The version I played very well could have been a transcription of this Pierce chart, and there appears to be no recorded evidence of the Harding version. A few years later, the band recorded Dickie's Dream again for the Best of Basie series on Roulette, except now Frank Foster is credited with the arrangement, which assimilates the song into the New Testament language. Pound Cake was only recorded by Basie in 1939, There's the studio version (Vocalion/Columbia) and a broadcast performance. In fact, the Tom Lord discography pegs both to the same day in Chicago -- May 19, 1939. So, again, it appears there isn't recorded evidence of the Harding version. On a personal note, the first time I played Pound Cake was first semester freshman year when I was called to sub a couple of nights in the top U of I band on an out of town gig in Peoria. That was a BIG deal for me at the time. I was 18, and in relative terms, I felt like I was being called up to the majors after just a couple months in Double A ball. I got the book a day in advance so was able to look at a few of the trickier things. The only second alto solo in the book was on Pound Cake, which we didn't play the first night, but we did do it the second night. Two chorus of the blues in G (concert) . Nice memory.

Harding wrote a handful of charts for Artie Shaw in this period. These five all seem confirmed as Harding's work. All were all recorded in 1945. Bedford Drive Little Jazz Natch The Glider The Hornet

Whoa. New to me. Burning.

So to be clear, Jimmy says that Joe's name given by Mtume was Keytu?

Hey gang -- here's something I've heard but never seen a reference to. Someone once told me that Joe had a Swahili name given to him by Mtume, like all the cats in Herbie's Mwandishi band. Anybody know if that's true about Joe and what the name was?

Gang -- the search is over. I'm cool now. Thanks.

Definitely go the Jazz Record Center. Not that far from the Village and Fred has very fair prices. Last time I was there I got the Louis Armstrong Decca 1934-45 set and some Ellington broadcasts that I didn't have. Plus, a great selection of books there.

Gang -- I'm trying to track down a story about Joe Williams in the the 12/17/64 issue of Downbeat. I don't have that particular issue on my shelf. Does anyone have it, and if so, would it be possible to scan the Joe Williams piece and send it to me. I can PM you my email address should you have it. Many thanks.

Michael Bourne, 1946-2022 I am heartbroken to learn of the passing of broadcaster and journalist Michael Bourne, who died Sunday at age 75. Michael is best known for his decades as a signature voice of WBGO-FM in Newark, the jazz station for metro New York, where he was on the air from 1984 until just recently. But for a dozen years before that he was a fixture on WFIU-FM in Bloomington, Indiana, where I grew up. He was one of the most important figures in my early jazz education. Every afternoon his daily program, "There," opened new horizons for me. He introduced me to more music, from staples of the jazz canon to au courant releases, than I could ever recount. He had impeccable taste and a distinctive vocal cadence. When I did volunteer jazz radio programming on WEFT in Champaign in 1985-87, I imitated his pacing and copied some of his favorite phrasing -- "And upfront, on the tenor saxophone, Dexter Gordon." I still have the tapes -- they're amusing. More importantly, Michael was my first true mentor as a writer. I was in an accelerated English class as a sophomore in high school. For our big project in the spring, our teacher paired us up with experts or professionals in the community. I was already interested in writing about jazz, so I got matched with Michael. I would go over to his tiny one-room apartment and he'd talk to me about criticism, writing profiles, his radio work, his work for Downbeat, the importance of reading widely. I can't tell you how significant all of this was to me. There are still ways that I think about criticism that come directly from Michael and that I pass along to students today with my own little spin. Borrowing from Aristotle, Michael said a critic should always ask three questions: What is an artist trying to do? How well is he or she doing it? And was it worth doing in the first place? Michael edited things I wrote; so much red ink and all of it necessary! Just by observing his life up close, I was able to envision what a life for myself might look like in the arts, even if I didn't end up pursuing a career as a performing musician. I remember so much of those visits to his pad. To prepare for his radio show, he would time everything out with a stopwatch and write out his scripts longhand. But he wouldn't read them verbatim on the air. He'd use them as guides, speaking off the cuff to maintain an air of spontaneity. His written notes ensured that he didn't forget major points or historical details. He told me great stories about his encounters with folks like Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hutcherson, and others. The one that sticks out most is Dizzy in his boxers in a Chicago hotel room, sitting on the bed, smoking a joint, watching some soap opera he was addicted to, and yelling at the TV about how "that woman is a bitch!" Michael was definitely an eccentric -- a Falstaffian presence who knew his Shakespeare literally -- he had studied acting in college and earned a Ph.D in theater at Indiana University. He grew up loving opera, especially Wagner, but he also collected comic books as a kid. In fact, he had torn all of the covers off his childhood comics and plastered them over every square inch of the ceiling of his apartment. Quite the interior design choice. I remember thinking, "Wow, you mean you're allowed to do that as an adult?" A great lesson to learn at age 15. I asked him once why he liked jazz. Besides telling me the music that got him interested in the idiom in the first place -- Dave Brubeck's "Strange Meadowlark" and Art Blakey's "Bu's Delight" -- he had an interesting perspective and way of expressing it. He said he liked jazz best because about 70 or 80 out of every 100 jazz records released were worth hearing, while only 40 or 50 of every 100 classical records released were worth hearing, and 15 or 20 pop records out of every 100 were worth hearing. Whether you agree or not with the sentiment, what a clever and creative way to make the point! Through the years, whenever I met someone from WBGO, I would always ask them to give Michael my regards. I only spoke with him once since I was a kid. This was in fall 2019, when I was at WBGO doing an interview with Nate Chinen about my book, "Jazz from Detroit." A station official called him and handed me the phone, and I was able to express my appreciation. What a gift to be able to tell him what he had done for me. I was also able to inscribe a copy of my book for Michael and place it in hands that made sure he got it. The bumper music on his afternoon program in Bloomington, bridging his show and the start of "All Things Considered" was Joe Farrell's 1970 recording of "Follow Your Heart" -- a great song written by John McLaughlin. Follow your heart: That's certainly what Michael did with his life. R.I.P.

Just as an aside, since I'm writing about Sam Woodyard at the moment -- Woodyard's tenure with Ellington almost exactly parallels Payne's years with Basie Completely different style in that Woodyard, who like Sonny Greer, was fantastic colorist, expressly did NOT set up the band figures and make every hit like Payne did. Each cat was perfect for the band in which they played. And speaking of Payne, dig the windmills he starts throwing at his cymbal on 2 and 4 at the 2:22 mark with Sinatra.

"And if we could get a full accounting of the Columbia and RCA OT bands, we'd likely here that the change was both inevitable and necessary." Inevitable and necessary -- and likely more gradual than people generally think. Not that is was a straight line the Old Testament and the New Testament. I mean, hey ... JImmy Mundy, I think ...

Having always been aware of generally of a Sonny Payne backlash but having never looked closely at the roots of it, I always assumed that the folks who didn't like Payne were reacting to how much he differed from Papa Jo, not from Gus Johnson. And that this was actually part of the broader dialogue around the New Testament Basie Band, which some critics and others thought was an unfortunate turn away from the aesthetics of the Old Testament band. Am I wrong about this?

FWIW, in Basie's autobiography "Good Morning Blues" (as told to Albert Murray), he confirms Johnson's story and doesn't mention any bad blood in the band -- doesn't mean there wasn't any of course, but it's not brought up. Basie says: "... the guy we brought in to pinch-hit for Gus was Sonny Payne, and he came in and hit a home run with the bases loaded. That was not any reflection on Gus at all. Absolutely not, because Gus, even up to this very minute, is still one of the great drummers. He's got a great sense of timing, and he can hold things together. Everybody speaks of him as being a great man for backing a band. He can set things behind a big band or any kind of band or any kind of group. It doesn't make any difference. He's a great drummer even if he's just playing by himself. He can do it from on and two on up. He's just an all-around great guy to have in your organization. "But fate is funny thing. Sonny Payne came in there, and right away he touched off a new spark in that band, and we had to keep him as much as we loved Gus. Naturally, people noticed that Sonny was more of a showman than Gus was, but I wouldn't say that showmanship was what made the difference. It was not that easy. You can't see any stick twirling and trickerlating on those next records, but you can her and feel a difference in the band." "

Incidentally, Dance reports an October 1951 gig at the Savoy, opposite Jimmy Rushing's group, as the official start of the reorganized big band. Dance writes that "most of the arrangements were by Neal Hefti, Nat Pierce, and Buster Harding." Re: the Pierce arrangements, in his interview in the book, Pierce says, "Basie told me he was going to start another big band in a little while, and he said he wanted me to write some arrangements. Charlie Mariano, Sonny Truitt, and I wrote some and gave them to him and never thought anything more about 'em. Soon after that, I went with Woody Herman's orchestra and towards the end of 1951, we heard that Basie had gotten his band together one more time ... When I went to hear them, they were playing my arrangements and I said, 'Oh, wow, that sounds great!'" What is unclear to me from that statement is whether Mariano and Truitt contributed to Pierce's charts or whether they all wrote their own individual charts, but if it's the latter, did Basie ever play those by Mariano or Truitt?

In Stanley Dance's "The World of Count Basie," there i is a long interview with Gus Johnson. There doesn't seem to be any real drama or conflict. Johnson says he was with the band until December 22, 1954, but that the next day he was in the hospital with appendicitis. "I was there for 10 days or so when Basie wrote me to say that he had got Sonny Payne and that he was doing a good job. Basie like a lot of flash, and some of the fellows in the band thought sonny was better than me because he was more of a showman. Charlie Fowlkes told me later on that he (Charlie) fell and broke his kneecap, and Basie didn't hire him back either. The same thing to Marshall Royal when head to go into the hospital. Moral: Don't get sick!" (Obviously, Fowlkes and Royal were eventually rehired.) Johnson doesn't seem to have any hard feelings. He reports joining Lena Horne and making good money right after Basie, and then moving on to Ella.

The Lee Morgan idea is a good one.

Re: Big Band choices -- Thad Jones/Mel Lewis, "Consummation" (1970) is essential. There was a 2-LP compilation issued in the mid '70 called Thad Jones/Mel Lewis with the multi-colored cover that was great -- it grabbed tracks from all the early LPs on Solid State which by then was part of the same family as Blue Note. I don't know if technically those records came out on Blue Note on CD or if there were still on Solid State or if it was both. Except for the record with Joe Williams -- I think the CD of that is in fact on Blue Note. It's probably cheating, but there's some Basie Roulette material that appeared on CD under the Blue Note umbrella. The two Duke Pearson Big Band Records, Introducing and How Hear This, would definitely count, though I always felt like the whole was less than the sum of the parts, especially the first one. Haven't revisited them in a long time, though.

There are a zillion combinations of five Blue Note recordings I might recommend to newcomers. Off the top, these five would work. These records are not about introducing people to the Blue Note label per se but to jazz in a broader sense. I've recommended them all to various folks through the years, depending on the background, prior listening, and personality of the person I'm talking to -- though this is the first time I've ever grouped these particular five together. I tend to think about sound, vibe, and compositions when making suggestions to listeners new to the idiom. A list of my own favorites on Blue Note would of course be different, though I would note that Roll Call is my favorite Mobley record and Horace-Scope and Cape Verdean Blues are my favorite Silver recordings. Anyway, in chronological order: Sidney Bechet, The Best of Sidney Bechet Horace Silver, Horace-Scope Hank Mobley, Roll Call Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage John Scofield, Meant to Be

Never knew they were brothers either. Interesting!

Interesting. Would those same union rules likely been in place a generation earlier in the 50s and early 60s?