Gene Quill

[AllenLowe]

that's the one.

[Larry Kart]

Yes, Allen -- many thanks. I've been enjoying it. Got it at about the same time as a recent 2-CD Sonny Red compilation of Jazzland, etc. material. Interesting to compare:

http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/quartet,_quintet_&_sextet_4_lps_on_2_cds-cd-5679.html

Both Quill and Red somewhat acrid in tone but attractively so to me, Quill more mobile but Sonny Red no slouch, Red at times edging into modality but this development in the music occurred after the Quill recordings were made.

BTW, one of the Sonny Red albums on that compilation has what strikes me as the best Barry Harris I've ever heard. Also interesting are the variations among the rhythm sections Sonny Red plays with. One took in such differences at the time, I suppose, but with the passage of 50 or so years (!), how the musical personalities involved interact and the various overall flavors that result seem more striking.

[AllenLowe]

Barry rarely, to me, sounds as good in recordings as he has in person. He's also a difficult pianist to record - has a light touch and plays in the middle of the keyboard - as opposed to, say, a Hank Jones, who soloed higher up more often. But there were some nights, at Bradleys, also the old Jimmy's, and the Angry Squire, where he just was amazing, the most melodic player. On records, however....there is Preminado, on an out-of-tune piano, and the Riverside at the Jazz Workshop. Also, some of his best playing is on a late Sonny Criss Xanadu,

glad everybody liked the Quill. I've been obsessing lately over mouthpieces and reeds and trying to get more of that kind of sound (Quill did use tenor reeds on some of this records, but they're very hard to control on alto).

Gotta check out the Sonny Red.

Edited June 4, 2012 by AllenLowe

[flat5]

So Larry you got me listening to "The Mode".

Barry's comping is not very varied (always closed voicing for instance)

and he goes to the bridge early at about 4:27 :-)

Just saying (not sure why). I mean I don't think it's his best recording date.

[Larry Kart]

So Larry you got me listening to "The Mode".

Barry's comping is not very varied (always closed voicing for instance)

and he goes to the bridge early at about 4:27 :-)

Just saying (not sure why). I mean I don't think it's his best recording date.

I believe it was the "Breezin'" album in that compilation that seemed to me to have topnotch Harris.

[AllenLowe]

that is the way Barry comps, very surprised he would go to the bridge early, probably reading the tune - Lee Konitz actually said once that, in the 50s (I think it was) Barry was the guy that all the visiting musicians wanted to hire.

I also heard Barry say, just before Sonny Red died, that Red had won some kind grant (maybe an NEA thing, I don't remember) and how sad it was that he was terminal.

[flat5]

I'll look for Breezin'.

The Mode is harmonically the same as "So What", Allen.

Not much to read but easy to jump to the bridge early (once in your carrier):-)

Perhaps he was wondering when they were going to break for lunch.

[mrjazzman]

Wow, lots of Phil Woods haters on this forum. I'm not a huge fan so I'm not here to defend, but I do enjoy Sugan and Musique Du Bois. Whoops, I own 7 more of his titles..........

[golfcrazy1984]

Wow, lots of Phil Woods haters on this forum. I'm not a huge fan so I'm not here to defend, but I do enjoy Sugan and Musique Du Bois. Whoops, I own 7 more of his titles..........

Yes, lot's of Phil Woods haters here. I'm not one. Everyone's allowed an opinion.

All I know, is that Benny Carter thought that Phil was one of the best----that comment coming from one of the best. I think he said something like, "when Adolphe Sax invented the sax, he must have had Phil Woods in mind"...or maybe, could never have thought that someone like Phil would come along.

I think, he has, for the last 20 years---or as some have said the last 50 years, kinda done the same thing. But, hey, he got to that LEVEL. He certainly crafted his voice on the alto.

Anyways, Gene Quill, IMHO, was a great altoist---who had his own sound. Great player. I was just listening to a Jimmy Rushing Roulette recording with a great NY big band (1963?) and Gene and Phil are playing altos. They both have solos, in fact I think Gene may be playing lead on this recording.

Added an "e" to Adolph(e) Sax.

Edited June 12, 2012 by Jazz Nut

[flat5]

Doing the same thing...playing brilliantly on every recording...gee, that's terrible.

[AllenLowe]

well, that's not really why we don't like him - he's just gotten, for my tastes, too machine-like. Larry and I went back and forth on this at one point, as we both prefer the earlier Phil (though I am personally convinced that his playing deteriorated once he started wearing that silly hat).

[golfcrazy1984]

well, that's not really why we don't like him - he's just gotten, for my tastes, too machine-like. Larry and I went back and forth on this at one point, as we both prefer the earlier Phil (though I am personally convinced that his playing deteriorated once he started wearing that silly hat).

I agree that his playing was more inspired and less derivitave in the 50s and 60s. He branched out from his be-bop roots, with the European Rhythm Machine though.

I wonder when he started wearing the hat, and why?

[AllenLowe]

I think it starts appearing in the '60s.

[Larry Kart]

IMO, with few exceptions, after "Sugan" there isn't much Woods that's in the same class with his earlier work, which I generally like a lot. Using a shorthand phrase that I've used before, he was a jazz musician who seemed almost overnight to become a jazzy musician, full of, by his own earlier standards, rather arbitrarily placed gestures of hotness, while at the same time his formerly quite shapely lines -- in particular, his Benny Carter/Don Stovall-like taste for placing/bouncing phrases in one register off of phrases another -- seemed to become much more generically boppish. A story I've told before: At some point in the mid-1980s, Woods brought his group to Rick's Cafe Americain in Chicago. Expecting the usual bells and whistles, I was delighted to encounter some of the most relaxed and lucid playing I'd heard from Woods in years. After the last tune, Woods apologized for the tepid nature of the first set, explaining that because of transportation problems they'd gotten almost no sleep the night before, and he urged everyone to stick around for the next set, where he promised they'd really get things together. I stuck around, and the second set was akin to/worthy of Richie Cole. Obviously just my opinion, but I do wonder how someone can listen to the Woods of, for example, Jon Eardley"s "Pot Pie" or Quincy Jones "This Is How I Feel Ablut Jazz" and not at least hear how different it is from most later Woods. If you prefer later Woods, fine; but the differences, again, are pretty fundamental.

[JSngry]

That European Rhythm Machine stuff is definitely worthy.

And let me say it one more time, becuase it's rapidly becoming a lost art in what for all intents and purposes is a lost idiom - one of the greatest post-Bird lead alto players ever.

Not really a fan of anything past the early return from Europe stuff, though (and the L.A. group he had with Pete Robinson) shows me that he tried to keep going "forward" but just hit a dead end inside himself and decided to stand pat and get fat, and that's his earned prerogative).

But the hat, is not good. The hat is silly. And lots of alto players favor them, hats of one form or fashion (thread suggestion - Album Covers With Alto Players Wearing Hats/Caps). And there are lots of silly alto players. It's an instrument that lends itself to being silly, juat as the tenor lends itself to being long-winded.

Put a silly alto player on bari - if they're really not silly, that'll prove it.

[Ted O'Reilly]

Just to add another flavour here, I love Woods' clarinet work. His playing on that old Colpix Al-Cohn-led "Goodman guys back from Russia" album is GRRRREAT!

[John Tapscott]

Maybe we need a Phil Woods "corner," (then again, maybe not!)

[BillF]

Maybe we need a Phil Woods "corner," (then again, maybe not!)

Why not!

[EKE BBB]

Maybe we need a Phil Woods "corner," (then again, maybe not!)

Why not!

Done!

[fasstrack]

Quill is, to my ears, the best altoist of the '50s after Schildkraut and McClean.

Not sure if I ever told my Davey Schilkraut story here.

I grew up--coincidentally--with his nephew Alan, who was always talking about his uncle Davey, the jazz musician. Jazz was something very exotic to us Gen-Woodstockers. We feared and hated it (talking ca. 1970). Alan became a successful road-rat rock/pop drummer as Alan Childs, and has played with practically every major pop act (as has another boyhood friend, Mark Rivera).

One day in 1990 or so I found myself in the Cortelyou branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. There was a round table toward the front. Seated were a group of black schoolkids, maybe 10 or so years old---undoubtedly doing a homework assignment and bothereing no one. When I sat down I noticed a white-haired guy with a short beard. He smelled like a street person and had a paper bag with him. He was trying to strike up a conversation with these kids who alternately ignoring or making fun of him. I had found a biography from the YA section on Lester Young, and the guy turned his attention to me. We spoke and I discovered who he was. He was way past being Alan's uncle by then, I had heard the record with Miles and probably others. At least one trustworthy musician had called him 'the best musician to ever come out of (NY's) Local 802.

He had a funny way of expressing himself. Like we were talking for a while, and by then he knew I played, but he kept looking at the Pres book and finally he said

'So in other words you like the jazz?'

I asked him what he thought of the musicians of today compared to his day (I don't think he really listened much anymore). Naturally Wynton's name came up, he was relatively new on the scene. He did say 'there's no comparison', and not much else. I asked him if he knew about Tom Harrell, whose work I was studying closely because i felt he was playing and writing on a high level then. He said he'd heard about him.

'Where?'

'In the Downbeat'.

I found him to be a very direct, sweet, unpretentious guy with absolutely not a hint of ego about his playing accomplishments. I had heard he's been out of music for years and had worked for those years for HRA or some other agency. Before that he had played club dates and I guess a little jazz when there was an opportunity. I also heard he had a daughter that fell down a flight of stairs and died. He did look a bit world-weary, and did have the appearance I mentioned. But at least from where I sat I detected no bitterness.

I drove him back near his Coney Island home.

He died not long after.

[AllenLowe]

though I am being repetitious, I will note that both Dizzy Gillespie and Bill Evans, in separate conversations I had with them, called Davy their favorite alto player after Bird. Similar things were said to me by Jackie McLean, Stan Getz, and Mel Lewis.

He was a genius.

Edited June 14, 2012 by AllenLowe

[fasstrack]

Doing the same thing...playing brilliantly on every recording...gee, that's terrible.

(;

well, that's not really why we don't like him - he's just gotten, for my tastes, too machine-like. Larry and I went back and forth on this at one point, as we both prefer the earlier Phil (though I am personally convinced that his playing deteriorated once he started wearing that silly hat).

Have a little compassion, man! How would you sound with a rat on YOUR head?!

Damn. I misspelled Shildkraut. And I wasn't aware it was Davy, not Davey...

[fasstrack]

I always had mixed feelings about Jackie MacLean: loved his ideas, feeling, and drive-could never love that sound. But then I never liked Wayne Shorter's; Sidney Bechet's wide vibrato; especially Lee Konitz's, which to me got uglier by the minute. These are great players I enjoy in other ways, but to quote an alto player with a sound I always dug, Art Pepper, 'sound is personal'. He was talking about not digging Bird's sound, so there you go. The first thing you get is sound-and you either love it, recoil in horror, or-worst of all-have no reaction at all. The player is dead in the water then. Getting back to Jackie Mac, the other thing I had a little trouble with was a constant bluesiness that I'm sure was deeply felt-but to me didn't always fit, for example on a ballad. A great player, creative force, and doer of great things in this world for sure though...

[robertoart]

I always had mixed feelings about Jackie MacLean: loved his ideas, feeling, and drive-could never love that sound. But then I never liked Wayne Shorter's; Sidney Bechet's wide vibrato; especially Lee Konitz's, which to me got uglier by the minute. These are great players I enjoy in other ways, but to quote an alto player with a sound I always dug, Art Pepper, 'sound is personal'. He was talking about not digging Bird's sound, so there you go. The first thing you get is sound-and you either love it, recoil in horror, or-worst of all-have no reaction at all. The player is dead in the water then. Getting back to Jackie Mac, the other thing I had a little trouble with was a constant bluesiness that I'm sure was deeply felt-but to me didn't always fit, for example on a ballad. A great player, creative force, and doer of great things in this world for sure though...

One can never have enough 'constant bluesiness'. Especially in the hands of harmonically aware players.

Just listening recently to Houston Person and Ike Quebec play some ballads.

Or am I missing your point.

[fasstrack]

You're not missing my point. Just the way I hear those guys, and with all due respect to them-they are all way better than me, so that should put it it in perspective. And BTW the music that moved me (after hearing show tunes on the hi-fi as a child) was blues-in its purest form. We HSers in Canarsie, East NY, and Brownsville were blues freaks, and I immersed myself in it as a kid guitar player. And I still feel that way. When jazz wears me down I regenerate with blues, and it's a big part of my own playing. It's just that there's a time and place for everything, and also some guys are geniuses, some less so. Bird wasn't afraid of putting some blues on almost anything (don't forget he was from K.C., and cut his teeth with McShann and Hootie Blues. But to my ears he always made it fit. His blues and Pres's weqe a little more evolved, prettier, more urbane than what preceded IMO-while still being earthy. It's what I call progress, and always based in thd past. But if you notice Bird with Strings the bluesiness