Bill DeArango!!

[medjuck]

A long multi post discussion on the Duke Lym list serve led me to this website:

http://billdearango.com/site/index.htm

The only examples of DeArango's playing I owned were on a few of Dizzy's tracks for RCA. He was still recording in 1995 and there's one cd or download available from Amazon which has DeArango on guitar with Joe Levano on sax, two Schullers (sons of Gunther?) on bass and drums and is very modern. His life story as told on the website is really interesting as were some of the stories told by Duke Lym members. All of his music I've been able to hear is pretty great.

Am I the only one who didn't know about this guy?

[Big Beat Steve]

Don't know, really. Apart from some of his sideman dates such as those you mention I've had his EmArcy LP for a long time and like it a lot.

He is one of those characters from the history of jazz (particularly form the bebop era) who AUTOMATICALLy conjure up images of music from a VERY specific era to me because most of their commonly accessible recorded output is limited to a specific period, such as in the cases of musicians such as Dodo Marmarosa, Al Haig, George Wallington, Margie Hyams, Mary Osborne, etc. so I'd grab anything by them I'd come across (though I'd not been able to listen in beforehand) and I'd very, very seldom be disappointed.

[JSngry]

The Barry Altschul side listed in on his site is very fine.

If memory serves, he's had an excellent Cadence oral history done on him within the last 20 years. If not there, somewhere. I know I read an interview with him somewhere where he talked about how just playing changes wasn't enough for him and he needed to explore different concepts of harmony.

[Niko]

He is one of those characters from the history of jazz (particularly form the bebop era) who AUTOMATICALLy conjure up images of music from a VERY specific era to me

I know what you mean and agree... nevertheless, there's a nice contrast between the image of DeArango conveyed by your post and the 1973 trio live date which can be streamed on the page medjuck liked to...

here is another discography btw which looks better on first sight:

https://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g51092/DeArango.html

[Big Beat Steve]

He is one of those characters from the history of jazz (particularly form the bebop era) who AUTOMATICALLy conjure up images of music from a VERY specific era to me

I know what you mean and agree... nevertheless, there's a nice contrast between the image of DeArango conveyed by your post and the 1973 trio live date which can be streamed on the page medjuck liked to...

here is another discography btw which looks better on first sight:

https://www.staff.uni-giessen.de/~g51092/DeArango.html

I know what YOU mean too ... but look at De Arango's leader and sideman discography from before and up to his EmArcy date. There is a HUGE gap, so wherever you find his name in a pretty long period of jazz you automatically know where these recordings belong to, even if no rcording dates are given, and I must admit his later recordings have been totally off my radar.

In fact we probably are talking about two different "Bill de Arangos" altogether.