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Bud Powell's birthday today


ghost of miles

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Man, I hope Peter Pullman's bio of Bud comes out some day. He supposedly wrote quite a bit about Monk's bust in '51 (when he evidently took the fall for Bud), after the two of them were stopped with drugs in their car; as a result, Monk lost his cabaret card and was unable to play legally in NYC for six years. Has anybody talked to Peter recently?

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Guest youmustbe

Everyone knows, I'm sure, the story about Bud...when he was in an institution, he drew a keyboard on the wall and would 'play on it and ask people if they liked what he was 'playing'

Similarly, Beethoven, when he was totally deaf, would play his pianoforte, and ask people if they liked his new piece. The strings were all broken inside, and there was no sound. Like Bud, it was in his head.

A story one of the Kenton guys told me: In the early fifties, Birdland would serve dinner for the help at 5 in the afternoon. If you were playing that night, you could join in for 50 cents, all you can eat. Bud, who was a ward of Birdland, would be brought in to eat at that time. But, he would fidget, talk to himself and annoy everybody, so one day, Oscar Goodstein, the manager, told Bud to get up on stage and play and leave everyone alone.

So, as the Kenton guy said, here he was, in NY, in Birdland, all you can eat for 50 cents and getting a private solo concert by the top pianist in Jazz, Bud Powell!

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A "belated" happy birthday to one of the most important pianists in the history of improvised music. Such a master he was. I like the quote of Bud in the vol. 1 (BN) liner notes saying how pianists would be playing like he did on those sessions ten years in the future. He was wrong, but only in his severe under-estimation. What a genius.

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