Buddy Holly's "True Love Ways"

[Alexander]

I was just listening to some Buddy Holly this afternoon, and was really struck by the sax work by Sam "The Man" Taylor on that recording. His obbligatos behind Buddy's vocals are in a Lester Young/West Coast style and his solo is absolutely breathtaking! He almost sounds like Stan Getz! The orchestration is lush, but not overbearing the least. I think that this was one of Buddy's posthumous releases. If this is the direction he was taking before he died, all I can say is what a pity!

Edited July 13, 2006 by Alexander

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I was just listening to some Buddy Holly this afternoon, and was really struck by the sax work by Sam "The Man" Taylor on that recording. His obbligatos behind Buddy's vocals are in a Lester Young/West Coast style and his solo is absolutely breathtaking! He almost sounds like Stan Getz! The orchestration is lush, but not overbearing the least. I think that this was one of Buddy's posthumous releases. If this is the direction he was taking before he died, all I can say is what a pity!

I think it's Sam "The Man" Taylor.

MG

[Alexander]

I was just listening to some Buddy Holly this afternoon, and was really struck by the sax work by Sam "The Man" Taylor on that recording. His obbligatos behind Buddy's vocals are in a Lester Young/West Coast style and his solo is absolutely breathtaking! He almost sounds like Stan Getz! The orchestration is lush, but not overbearing the least. I think that this was one of Buddy's posthumous releases. If this is the direction he was taking before he died, all I can say is what a pity!

I think it's Sam "The Man" Taylor.

MG

It is. I said so in the original message. I wasn't asking who played it. Just remarking on how good it is.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Just did a Google search. I think I was right.

http://www.mmguide.musicmatch.com/album/al...?ALBUMID=500823

There's a thread in a sax forum where someone was speculating on whether it was Taylor or someone called "Boomie Richmond", but when I tried to get that up, the forum had moved and, doing a search brought up so many threads I couldn't be asked. Here's the search result, if anyone else wants to try.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22buddy+...r=&start=0&sa=N

It's the www.saxontheweb.net result.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I was just listening to some Buddy Holly this afternoon, and was really struck by the sax work by Sam "The Man" Taylor on that recording. His obbligatos behind Buddy's vocals are in a Lester Young/West Coast style and his solo is absolutely breathtaking! He almost sounds like Stan Getz! The orchestration is lush, but not overbearing the least. I think that this was one of Buddy's posthumous releases. If this is the direction he was taking before he died, all I can say is what a pity!

I think it's Sam "The Man" Taylor.

MG

It is. I said so in the original message. I wasn't asking who played it. Just remarking on how good it is.

OBO110X

I should learn to read.

MG

[Larry Kart]

I don't care what any written or on-line "source" says -- if you've heard Boomie Richmond (b. 1921, former Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman sideman, active in the studios from the '60s), and I have, that sounds exactly like Richmond -- a kind of pleasantly gargly offshoot of Bud Freeman and/or Eddie Miller, with an admixture of Pres. Also, it doesn't sound a bit like anything I've ever heard from Sam "The Man" Taylor, who was a big-toned R&b-ish player, sort of an older version of King Curtis. Taylor had several hit singles in the '50s and made commercialy succesful albums as well.

About Richmond (Given name Abraham Samuel Richmond), as fate would have it, I just picked up on Monday for 99 cents one of his rather few moments in the jazz solo sun -- a mid-1950s six-tune date for Jazztone under clarinetist Peanuts Hucko's leadership in which those two, plus trumpter Billy Butterfield, guitarist Mundell Lowe, pianist Hank Jones, bassist Jack Lesberg, and drummer Morey Feld attempt to recreate the sound of the Goodman Sextet with Cootie Williams, George Auld, and Charlie Christian. I don't usually care for re-creations, but there's some fine playing here. Othe side of the LP, title "Dedicated Jazz," is in the same spirit -- a Rex Stewart-led neo-Ellington small group date with Hilton Jefferson, Lawrence Brown, Danny Bank and rhythm. Also fine stuff, and it's one of the very few times on record when Bank takes a solo.

In any case, I'll bet anything that the tenor soloist on "True Love Ways" is Richmond. He is/was a very distinctive player.

[Chuck Nessa]

Sounds like that to me too.

[Alexander]

Don't have enough experience with either player to be able to comment. It certainly could be Richmond instead of Taylor. Taylor is credited in the liner notes, but you could very well be right. It's certainly no "honk-and-wail" solo.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Don't have enough experience with either player to be able to comment. It certainly could be Richmond instead of Taylor. Taylor is credited in the liner notes, but you could very well be right. It's certainly no "honk-and-wail" solo.

Taylor, like most, if not all, of the honkers, was an excellent ballad player. Which is not to say that it's necessarily him on "True love ways"; it's merely to say that being a honker is no necessary disqualification.

That said, I must say it was with some surprise that I learned, many years ago, that he was credited with this solo. But Sam was a versatile musician, so I accepted it. Plenty of good people have done good solos on pop records; Curtis Amy's solo on Carole King's "It's too late" comes to mind immediately, as does his solo on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

MG

[Larry Kart]

Taylor, like most, if not all, of the honkers, was an excellent ballad player. Which is not to say that it's necessarily him on "True love ways"; it's merely to say that being a honker is no necessary disqualification.

MG

Yes, but Taylor's ballad mode was big-toned, out of Hawkins-Webster. This solo is, as Alexander said up top, rather Getz-like in its lightness of tone and somewhat wispy agility. And if you've heard Boomie Richmond, it sounds exactly like him. He was, again, a very distinctive player -- that neo-Bud Freeman/Eddie Miller "gargle" of his is the giveaway.

[Larry Kart]

A Richmond solo with Dorsey can be found here, on "Puddle Wump":

http://www.rhapsody.com/tommydorsey/thecom...dtranscriptions

[Larry Kart]

To complicate things further, Richmond also was known as Richman (his given name, I suspect).

[JSngry]

Curtis Amy's solo.....on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

???????????????

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Curtis Amy's solo.....on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

???????????????

????????????????

[Quincy]

Curtis Amy's solo.....on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

???????????????

????????????????

You're getting your classic rock sax appearances mixed up. Curtis Amy is on 2 Doors albums. Without looking them up I'm going to guess The Soft Parade and maybe L.A. Woman. Or would that be Morrison Hotel? I'm on a 15 year sabbatical from The Doors so it's hard to remember the horn songs.

Steve Gregory and Greg Beadle handle the sax on Honky Tonk Women.*

*page 338 of Bill Wyman's Rolling With The Stones

Edited July 14, 2006 by Quincy

[Dave James]

I have heard that Leroy Vinnegar also played on some of The Doors sessions. Speaking of The Doors, I just read the other day that they took their name from Aldous Huxley's "Doors of Perception". I did not know that.

Not to hi-jack "True Love Ways" saxophone discussion, but in terms of versions, I much prefer Rick Nelson's. His voice fits this very pretty tune like a glove.

Up over and out.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Curtis Amy's solo.....on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

???????????????

????????????????

You're getting your classic rock sax appearances mixed up. Curtis Amy is on 2 Doors albums. Without looking them up I'm going to guess The Soft Parade and maybe L.A. Woman. Or would that be Morrison Hotel? I'm on a 15 year sabbatical from The Doors so it's hard to remember the horn songs.

Steve Gregory and Greg Beadle handle the sax on Honky Tonk Women.*

*page 338 of Bill Wyman's Rolling With The Stones

Thanks - you're right. I haven't seen or heard any of those records since 1969. Memory going. "Soft parade" was the one that was out when I worked in a record shop.

MG

[Alexander]

Curtis Amy's solo.....on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

???????????????

????????????????

You're getting your classic rock sax appearances mixed up. Curtis Amy is on 2 Doors albums. Without looking them up I'm going to guess The Soft Parade and maybe L.A. Woman. Or would that be Morrison Hotel? I'm on a 15 year sabbatical from The Doors so it's hard to remember the horn songs.

Steve Gregory and Greg Beadle handle the sax on Honky Tonk Women.*

*page 338 of Bill Wyman's Rolling With The Stones

Thanks - you're right. I haven't seen or heard any of those records since 1969. Memory going. "Soft parade" was the one that was out when I worked in a record shop.

MG

There are some great horn charts on the "Soft Parade" album. Can't remember which track now (possibly "Touch Me"), there's this one song that has an insane little avant-garde freak-out right in the middle of the track. God only knows what fifteen-year-old me must have thought of that when I first heard it!

[Alexander]

Curtis Amy's solo.....on the Stones' "Honky tonk women".

???????????????

????????????????

You're getting your classic rock sax appearances mixed up. Curtis Amy is on 2 Doors albums. Without looking them up I'm going to guess The Soft Parade and maybe L.A. Woman. Or would that be Morrison Hotel? I'm on a 15 year sabbatical from The Doors so it's hard to remember the horn songs.

Steve Gregory and Greg Beadle handle the sax on Honky Tonk Women.*

*page 338 of Bill Wyman's Rolling With The Stones

Thanks - you're right. I haven't seen or heard any of those records since 1969. Memory going. "Soft parade" was the one that was out when I worked in a record shop.

MG

There are some great horn charts on the "Soft Parade" album. Can't remember which track now (possibly "Touch Me"), there's this one song that has an insane little avant-garde freak-out right in the middle of the track. God only knows what fifteen-year-old me must have thought of that when I first heard it!

[BruceH]

Taylor, like most, if not all, of the honkers, was an excellent ballad player. Which is not to say that it's necessarily him on "True love ways"; it's merely to say that being a honker is no necessary disqualification.

MG

Yes, but Taylor's ballad mode was big-toned, out of Hawkins-Webster. This solo is, as Alexander said up top, rather Getz-like in its lightness of tone and somewhat wispy agility. And if you've heard Boomie Richmond, it sounds exactly like him. He was, again, a very distinctive player -- that neo-Bud Freeman/Eddie Miller "gargle" of his is the giveaway.

Well alright.

[paul secor]

I don't care what any written or on-line "source" says -- if you've heard Boomie Richmond (b. 1921, former Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman sideman, active in the studios from the '60s), and I have, that sounds exactly like Richmond -- a kind of pleasantly gargly offshoot of Bud Freeman and/or Eddie Miller, with an admixture of Pres. Also, it doesn't sound a bit like anything I've ever heard from Sam "The Man" Taylor, who was a big-toned R&b-ish player, sort of an older version of King Curtis. Taylor had several hit singles in the '50s and made commercialy succesful albums as well.

About Richmond (Given name Abraham Samuel Richmond), as fate would have it, I just picked up on Monday for 99 cents one of his rather few moments in the jazz solo sun -- a mid-1950s six-tune date for Jazztone under clarinetist Peanuts Hucko's leadership in which those two, plus trumpter Billy Butterfield, guitarist Mundell Lowe, pianist Hank Jones, bassist Jack Lesberg, and drummer Morey Feld attempt to recreate the sound of the Goodman Sextet with Cootie Williams, George Auld, and Charlie Christian. I don't usually care for re-creations, but there's some fine playing here. Othe side of the LP, title "Dedicated Jazz," is in the same spirit -- a Rex Stewart-led neo-Ellington small group date with Hilton Jefferson, Lawrence Brown, Danny Bank and rhythm. Also fine stuff, and it's one of the very few times on record when Bank takes a solo.

In any case, I'll bet anything that the tenor soloist on "True Love Ways" is Richmond. He is/was a very distinctive player.

The session listing in John Goldrosen and John Beecher's Remembering Buddy - The Definitive Biography of Buddy Holly agrees with what Larry said. This discography gives a complete listing of the musicians on the "True Love Ways" date, and Abraham "Boomie" Richman is listed as the tenor saxophonist. You can't believe everything you read, but putting Larry's ears together with the session listing, I'd bet that Boomie Richman/Richmond played that solo.

Part of the confusion with Boomie Richman and Sam "The Man" Taylor may have come from the fact that Taylor played on the Holly session in June, 1958 that produced "Early in the Morning".