Which jazz book are you reading right now?

[GA Russell]

On 5/24/2025 at 6:59 AM, mikeweil said:

Re-reading Duncan's book while preparing an evening with Tjader's music at a friend's listening saloon with a very expensive hi-fi. Vibes sound so great on his gear.

Mike, is the Second Edition any different from the First?

[mikeweil]

41 minutes ago, GA Russell said:

Mike, is the Second Edition any different from the First?

It's a bit more detailed, as Duncan intensified his research in Californian newspapers. About 40 pages more text.

[GA Russell]

8 minutes ago, mikeweil said:

It's a bit more detailed, as Duncan intensified his research in Californian newspapers. About 40 pages more text.

👍

[Ken Dryden]

Duncan also removed some text, mostly brief references to people that he decided weren’t all that important. I know this since I created the index for the second edition.

[Big Beat Steve]

10 hours ago, sgcim said:

I found some of Talbert's stuff from the 50s

 

Never got around yet to finding a decently priced copy of the "Bix Duke Fats" vinyl, but FWIW the below one (from his "key progressive" period) is very recommended listening too:

https://www.discogs.com/de/release/6325343-Tom-Talbert-Jazz-Orchestra-1946-1949

 

[sgcim]

13 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Never got around yet to finding a decently priced copy of the "Bix Duke Fats" vinyl, but FWIW the below one (from his "key progressive" period) is very recommended listening too:

https://www.discogs.com/de/release/6325343-Tom-Talbert-Jazz-Orchestra-1946-1949

 

Thanks for the link! One of the central theses of the book is that Talbert was the founder of what became known as West Coast Jazz. I wonder if he's mentioned in that regard in any of the books about West Coast Jazz (Ted Gioia, etc..)?

The book was supposed to have a CD in it that included Talbert recordings from 1949-1999, limited to his own compositions due to copyright laws. Two cuts from the album you posted a link to are on the CD, that feature the musicians in California that were most devoted to him; Jack Montrose and Johnny Barbera on tenor sax, Harry Betts, trombone, and John McComb on trumpet, a musician that Talbert said was "way ahead of Chet Baker. Chet copied him (McComb) and never had the lyricism of John at his best". 

Talbert also said that "Howard McGhee never got the credit for being the innovator he was- he was Twenty times the player that Miles Davis was." Other musicians that were in Talbert's band on the West Coast were Jimmy Pratt and Art Pepper. I played at a jazz festival where Pratt played in the festival band, and he was the best drummer I ever saw live. I don't know what became of him. Warne Marsh also played in Talbert's band, along with Milt Bernhardt on trombone, so one could see that along with Talbert's contrapuntal writing, his band might have started the style of music we now call "West Coast Jazz". Talbert ran out of work in LA, and in 1950 took off for NY. Kenton took things over in LA.

Here's an example small group writing that Talbert did in NY:

 

[Big Beat Steve]

8 hours ago, sgcim said:

Thanks for the link! One of the central theses of the book is that Talbert was the founder of what became known as West Coast Jazz. I wonder if he's mentioned in that regard in any of the books about West Coast Jazz (Ted Gioia, etc..)?

 

I could have sworn it was a mention in Ted Gioia's book that made me aware of the Tom Talbert orchestra of the late 40s, but he does not figure in the index. Neither is he in the WCJ books by Robert Gordon and by Alain Tercinet.
I had to think hard what made me search for the CD I linked, and I guess it must have been his entry in the "Bebop - The Essential Listening Companion"guide by Scott Yanow (et al.). At the time I became aware of him (a good 20 years ago) I also must have read about him onlline, and this made me spring for this CD with his early recordings on his Sea Breeze label. 

Re- drummer Jimmy Pratt, his name rang a bell. To the best of my recollections (confirmed by some indications on the www), he worked in Europe (including Germany) for several years in the late 50s and the 60s. So to some extent he is a "name" over here. 

 

[sgcim]

On 6/1/2025 at 3:58 AM, Big Beat Steve said:

I could have sworn it was a mention in Ted Gioia's book that made me aware of the Tom Talbert orchestra of the late 40s, but he does not figure in the index. Neither is he in the WCJ books by Robert Gordon and by Alain Tercinet.
I had to think hard what made me search for the CD I linked, and I guess it must have been his entry in the "Bebop - The Essential Listening Companion"guide by Scott Yanow (et al.). At the time I became aware of him (a good 20 years ago) I also must have read about him onlline, and this made me spring for this CD with his early recordings on his Sea Breeze label. 

Re- drummer Jimmy Pratt, his name rang a bell. To the best of my recollections (confirmed by some indications on the www), he worked in Europe (including Germany) for several years in the late 50s and the 60s. So to some extent he is a "name" over here. 

 

I found a book about Joe Wilder that mentioned Talbert, but that was on the East Coast. On the West Coast, he had a lot of competition from Giuffre, Mulligan and everyone that wrote for Kenton. He tried to get some charts to Kenton, but Kenton didn't play them. Then he finally played one of them, and everyone liked it so much, Kenton used it as his closing tune for gigs.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir, 1934-1969.  I've been eyeing this for a long time but the price has always been prohibitive.  Today I noticed that the price for the kindle edition dropped from about $97 to about $41.  I had some credits which brought it below the psychologically significant barrier of forty bux and went for it.  Interesting book!  

Edited June 11 by Stompin at the Savoy

[Big Beat Steve]

17 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir, 1934-1969.  I've been eyeing this for a long time but the price has always been prohibitive.  Today I noticed that the price for the kindle edition dropped from about $97 to about $41.  I had some credits which brought it below the psychologically significant barrier of forty bux and went for it.  Interesting book!  

Well worth reading any time. I am in the middle of it right now (taking it in in small instalments over time ...). 

I must admit that, given the prohibitive price for the printed version everywhere, I at long last went a different route. In January I took out a copy from my regional State library (through interlibrary loan), took it home, ran it through my photocopier (which yields very decent photo reproductions too) and made my personal paperback out of it ("for permanent reference"). 

Edited June 12 by Big Beat Steve

[BeBop]

Randy Weston's assisted autobiography "African Rhythms".  I have been living overseas where American/English books aren't available for 20 years,  so I wasn't aware of this.  Interesting-enough with some amusing stories.  Would have benefited from tighter editing, but definitely a worthwhile read.

[mikeweil]

On 6/11/2025 at 7:45 PM, Stompin at the Savoy said:

Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir, 1934-1969.  I've been eyeing this for a long time but the price has always been prohibitive.  Today I noticed that the price for the kindle edition dropped from about $97 to about $41.  I had some credits which brought it below the psychologically significant barrier of forty bux and went for it.  Interesting book!  

In Germany the Kindle edition goes for € 26,40.

[HutchFan]

Just arrived in the mail:

[sgcim]

Just finished "Softly, With Feeling", a bio of Joe Wilder. He was really a great person, forced to feel the brunt of racism, like Clark Terry, without letting it get to him. No matter where he went, the Marines, the classical music world, Broadway, on the road in the South with big bands, he was treated like crap, but was able to transcend it, by virtue of his superiority as a person.

It's not surprising he wound up with other great black musicians, like George Duvivier, Milt Hinton and Hank Jones. His hard work during his early classical training enabled him to sight read anything, and he was able to get lead trumpet work in both commercial work and jazz work, and eventually learned enough about improvisation on his own, to excel in that realm, also.

Rather than relying on high note chops, he was noted for the beautiful sound he got out of the horn in the middle and lower ranges, and his creativity as a soloist. It's no wonder that he wound up playing for Tom Talbert, who able to discern other great players who played the same way, like Aaron Sachs. 

A great deal was made how unknown he was, which surprised me, because my father had bought albums like The Pretty Sound of Joe Wilder, and the Bix, Duke and Fats album of Talbert that he was featured on, so they were always lying around the house when I was a kid. I didn't realize that he never led his own small group in a club until he was in his 60s, even working with younger players who realized how great he was like Michael Weiss, besides his old buddies Hank Jones and Milt Hinton.

He was even featured on a Steely Dan cut, so he was obviously big in the studios, so outside of his small group jazz playing, he was quite prominent in the studio orchestras, like Johnny Smith, another musician that he worked with on "Annotation of the Muses" by Johnny Richards, during his 'Third Stream" phase. 

The author Edward Berger, seemed to be unaware of the tremendous difficulty of making a living in the jazz field, and that musicians had to play other types of music (Wilder even wound up playing 'club dates' for a while) to get by. 

The worst culprit in Wilder's case seemed to be the classical field, which refused to allow any Black musicians to play in their orchestras, until quotas had to be imposed. If you were someone like Joe Wilder you didn't stand a chance of getting an orchestral job. Much of the book deals with legislation that enabled Black musicians to find work in Broadway orchestras and Symphony orchestras,

Finally Ben Steinberg started The New World Symphony Orchestra, which allowed minorities to play in it, and Wilder was a charter member. However,Wilder left after he was disgusted at the political in-fighting that forced Steinberg out of his position as conductor.

He eventually found work in the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. He also went into teaching at Julliard and Hamilton College in his 80s. He was still alive and active after surviving cancer when the book was written, in 2014, the year of his death at 92.

[EKE BBB]