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The Last Balladeer, The Johnny Hartman Story


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Have just stuck my nose in this. Didn't know Clint Eastwood slowed down Hartman's Beehive record when using it in the soundtrack to "Bridges of Madison County." Didn't know Eastwood as a teenager snuck into a club to hear the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band with Hartman in it. Didn't know Hartman's last studio recording session was for the adult entertainment "The Devil in Miss Jones, II."

There's way more than that stuff here, just saying that with a skim through the discography, some of the end notes, and the first few chapters, this is an informative read.

http://johnnyhartmanbook.com/

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Didn't know Clint Eastwood slowed down Hartman's Beehive record when using it in the soundtrack to "Bridges of Madison County."

This brings back a memory of analyzing and comparing the tracks from the Beehive LP and the BoMC CD's, and gradually coming to that conclusion.

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Dan, the new Vince Guaraldi book is going for $45.00. No wonder so many people are switching to eBooks!

Its $30+ for a Nook copy ... still too much. The only way I'll get this is if I get a $50 B&N gift card and I'm willing to blow 60% of it on one book.

Will look for this book when the paperback edition comes out!

Yeah, when the price will drop to $24.95. Or more likely you'll never see a paperback edition because the hard copy sales won't be sufficient to make it worthwhile.

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I'm waiting for the Granz bio to become affordable too. I did read the free sample chapters on my Kindle.

The Beehive is maybe my favorite Hartman album:

hartma_john_onceineve_101b.jpg

ONCE IN EVERY LIFE

New York, August 11, 1980

Johnny Hartman (vocal); Frank Wess (tenor sax, flute); Joe Wilder (trumpet, flugelhorn); Al Gafa (guitar); Billy Taylor (piano); Victor Gaskin (bass); Keith Copeland (drum).

EASY LIVING

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

WAVE

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

BY MYSELF

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

FOR ALL WE KNOW

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

WILL YOU STILL BE MINE?

45: Bee Hive unnumbered promo

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

I COULD WRITE A BOOK

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

I SEE YOUR FACE BEFORE ME

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT

LP: Bee Hive BH 01

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

Hartman (vocal) accompanied by Gafa (guitar) only.

IT WAS ALMOST LIKE A SONG

45: Bee Hive unnumbered promo

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

NOBODY HOME

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

45: "Bee Hive unnumbered promo" was distributed to radio stations only.

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012 entitled ONCE IN EVERY LIFE

LP: Bee Hive BH 01 entitled THE Bee Hive SESSIONS - UNISSUED TUNES, VOL. 1

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259 entitled REMEMBERING MADISON COUNTY. It consists of seven tunes by Hartman (including six tunes from the LP and one previously unissued) as above, and three piano instrumentals by Ahmad Jamal.

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/fitzgera/hartman.htm

This inspired me to listen to some of his early stuff on Spotify. I must say, in the '40s he was almost as unbearable as Kenny "Pancho" Hagood. I'm glad he got better.

Edited by Pete C
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I'm waiting for the Granz bio to become affordable too. I did read the free sample chapters on my Kindle.

The Beehive is maybe my favorite Hartman album:

hartma_john_onceineve_101b.jpg

ONCE IN EVERY LIFE

New York, August 11, 1980

Johnny Hartman (vocal); Frank Wess (tenor sax, flute); Joe Wilder (trumpet, flugelhorn); Al Gafa (guitar); Billy Taylor (piano); Victor Gaskin (bass); Keith Copeland (drum).

EASY LIVING

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

WAVE

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

BY MYSELF

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

FOR ALL WE KNOW

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

WILL YOU STILL BE MINE?

45: Bee Hive unnumbered promo

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

I COULD WRITE A BOOK

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

I SEE YOUR FACE BEFORE ME

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

MOONLIGHT IN VERMONT

LP: Bee Hive BH 01

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

Hartman (vocal) accompanied by Gafa (guitar) only.

IT WAS ALMOST LIKE A SONG

45: Bee Hive unnumbered promo

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

NOBODY HOME

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259

45: "Bee Hive unnumbered promo" was distributed to radio stations only.

LP: Bee Hive BH-7012 entitled ONCE IN EVERY LIFE

LP: Bee Hive BH 01 entitled THE Bee Hive SESSIONS - UNISSUED TUNES, VOL. 1

CD: Malpaso / Warner Bros. 46259 entitled REMEMBERING MADISON COUNTY. It consists of seven tunes by Hartman (including six tunes from the LP and one previously unissued) as above, and three piano instrumentals by Ahmad Jamal.

http://www.jazzdiscography.com/fitzgera/hartman.htm

This data is incomplete. There was another Malpaso/Warner Bros CD which included the rest of the Beehive tracks. I sent the correct info to Mr. Friedwald many years ago, but he apparently disregarded it. I also alerted Mike Fitzgerald to the existence of the other CD (in 2004), here in a thread about the Beehive discography.

In addition to the above listed "Remembering Madison County" CD, there was also a CD titled "The Bridges Of Madison County" (Malpaso / Warner Bros. 45949), which included the remaining Beehive tracks: "Easy Living", "I See Your Face Before Me" (same version as on 46259, but mastered at a different speed), "It Was Almost Like A Song", and "For All We Know", in addition to tracks by Dinah Washington, Barbara Lewis, and Irene Kral.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think he was perhaps an unhappy man-in the sense of all artists having to live in the real world. I base this on the scant evidence of two early '80s incidents: a radio interview that wasn't bitter exactly but disappointed w/the world and its ways. And he stumbled into a long-defunct NY piano bar, the West Boondock, so drunk he could barely walk. I think Duke Jordan was playing. Hartman did not sing. However things worked out for him in his view he had plenty to be proud of: the stuff w'Trane is the best-known, but I prefer the Voice That Is and Just Dropped by to Say Hello, but especially All of Me-where he swings with a big band, throwing off the chains of the balladeer stereotype. I'm glad for those ballads, though. He owned them.

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Joel, I remember West Boondock. Another Joel used to have a regular gig there before I got to know him.

The sample chapters didn't make me think this is a must read. Not every musician should get a bio. Yet I'd love to see a Joe Lee Wilson book because I loved his singing and liked him so much. Ditto Leon Thomas. Andy Bey would make a good subject for a bio on so many levels.

Edited by Pete C
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Forrester? Good, quirky composer. Good stuff. I think bios of musicians ARE important, if only so people would know what we go through-and then possibly understand, if not appreciate. Also for the humor and life. It's not the many stories, it's the telling, by mediocre writers or poor researchers. Or they insinuate themselves in the story unbidden-sorry to say like the late Gene Lees, who I found superior, pretetentious, and annoying-not to mention w/several bugs up his ass (mostly a silly obsession w/white players getting no credit or something). Anyway, some time ago a writer was going to write a collective bio of sidemen in jazz. What, he wondered aloud, became of that?

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I remember when I met Dave one of his regular gigs was with blues singer Bobby Radcliff. So I just did a search and found this album from '85, with some "downtown jazz" all-stars of the day:

EARLY IN THE MORNING

(1985) A-Okay LP-1000

Bobby Radcliff: guitar & vocals

Dave Hofstra, Brian Miller & Oren Bloedow: basses

Bobby Previte: drums

Wayne Horvitz: piano

Philip Johnston: tenor saxophone

Dave Sewelson: baritone saxophone

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I did hear of him-just don't know his music, or any of theirs, really, except Joel's tunes-which I like. I never heard the Microscopic, even though I knew Dave earlier. It would've been impossible to live in NY in the '80s and NOT have heard of a lot of those guys. They were press darlings-you couldn't open the Village Voice and not read about the 'downtown scene'. I just never checked it out. Maybe the hype made me suspicious, dunno. Anyway, I just went a different way, that's all.

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Was Oren Bloedow a jazz bassist at some point?

He attended New England Conservatory in 1987-88, and on returning, started gigging frequently at the Knitting Factory on Houston St. Previte, Horvitz and Johnston were all playing there, and so were many musicians Oren came to play with, like Samm Bennett, The Jazz Passengers, Marc Ribot, Bosho, Gary Lucas and innumerable others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oren_Bloedow

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