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Jazz Artists in unexpected settings


randyhersom

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I was browsing the web and found an enthusiastic review of Johnny Guitar Watson by a jazz lover. I definitely considered his music ultracommercial when it was first released and did not check it out. But after the review a band was listed with Paul Dunmall on sax. This is precisely the situation that the acronym WTF was coined for. Sometime or other I'll have to give that a listen.

It did bring to mind George Adams stay in the Fatback Band and Arthur Rhames in Slave. My mind flashes to Sonny Rollins with the Stones and I realize we''ve done this thread before. But still, Paul Dunmall was a pretty unexpected name to find there.

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well, I once played for a show of Female Impersonators, in Bridgeport, Connecticut -

and Dave Schildkraut played for strip shows near 52nd street in the middle 1950s -

and Bill Triglia was playing an Orthodox Jewish wedding with Wilbur Ware when Charlie Parker showed up and sat in -

and when I was 16 I played with a little jazz group at the graduation ceremony for a Home for Unwed Mothers.

And Jelly Roll Morton played in whorehouses.

Larry Gushee told me how he and his band once got booked for what they were told was Polish wedding, and when they got there it turned out to be a Puerto Rican wedding, and they knew no appropriate tunes.

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Johnny Guitar Watson was a baaaaad man, going back to the 1950s and all the way up to the end. Ignore him (but not necessarily all of his records) at your peril!

Now speaking of George Adams, him & Byard Lancaster were both on a Johnny Copeland album about 25 or so years ago...Copeland Special I think it was...and they both sound just fine, which really should not be a surprise or in iny other way unexpected.

My favorite response to these type threads will always be Whitney Houston & Archie Shepp together on a cut from one of the old Material albums. Freakin' surreal...

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Also, all of the Blue Notes have popped up in some crazy places. My favorite is probably Dudu Pukwana's guest stint on A Tent's prescient electronic album Six Empty Places. The most famous instance is Chris McGregor's appearance on Nick Drake's Bryter Layter, which inexplicably gets McGregor into as many history books as his unbelievable run in jazz/improv.

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Ronnie Ross turns in a fine baritone solo on Lou Reed's "Transformer"!

Scott Walker is very much worth checking out! I'd go for "Drift" - not sure what to call that, but it's clearly some kind of avantgarde! I think "Climate of Hunter" is the one with Evan Parker?

French "Jazz Magazine" have a little story (an excerpt of an upcoming book) about Robert Wyatt and his jazz connections.

Not a person, but Gil Evans' wonderful "Las Vegas Tango" turns up opening and closing Wyatt's album "The End of An Ear". Sidemen there include Marc Charig and Elton Dean.

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