RIP 2 Friends - Art Hoyle and Pete Crawford

[Chuck Nessa]

Messages last night stunned me.

Pete Crawford, friend since the mid '70s, staff at Flying Fish, replaced me at the US office of SteepleChase and replaced me at Tant Enterprises in Michigan. He was a partner in Red Beans records and Blues Etc. (bar and venue in Chicago). Later he moved to a farm near Petoskey, MI.

Art Hoyle - master trumpet player was a gentle giant, great friend/advisor and much more. He is on the early Sun Ra records and became the first call lead for tons of Chicago gigs (especially Chicago's jingle biz). He was a board member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago and helped guide the group and Chicago Jazz in general.

You can get a glimpse here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Pg-Z-OJ3c&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3m-KP9f8PS1460ag311dmuwfm4VkPfZ2AiVaG7cT8HmkWUUzOwFhRL8hM

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

RIP

 

 

[Larry Kart]

12 hours ago, Chuck Nessa said:

Messages last night stunned me.

Pete Crawford, friend since the mid '70s, staff at Flying Fish, replaced me at the US office of SteepleChase and replaced me at Tant Enterprises in Michigan. He was a partner in Red Beans records and Blues Etc. (bar and venue in Chicago). Later he moved to a farm near Petoskey, MI.

Art Hoyle - master trumpet player was a gentle giant, great friend/advisor and much more. He is on the early Sun Ra records and became the first call lead for tons of Chicago gigs (especially Chicago's jingle biz). He was a board member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago and helped guide the group and Chicago Jazz in general.

You can get a glimpse here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Pg-Z-OJ3c&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR3m-KP9f8PS1460ag311dmuwfm4VkPfZ2AiVaG7cT8HmkWUUzOwFhRL8hM

No, not Art. When I traveled to Belgium and Germany accompanying Mike Reed's band with Art, Julian Priester, Ari Brown, Greg Ward, Jason Roebke, and Frank Rosaly, Art's friendship (he knew my wife had died a few years earlier) meant a great deal to me.  A gentle giant indeed.

[JSngry]

 

I try to imagine guys walking in to read these charts and kinda looking at each other and going "mmmm, ok..." But listen to Art Hoyle there, playing it and giving it that good trumpet flavor.

I know, not what "we" want to remember Art Hoyle by/for, but just still, studio musicians play lots of things and the good ones make it work every time. And that takes a certain innate musicality that is not all that common.

RIP.

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

 

I try to imagine guys walking in to read these charts and kinda looking at each other and going "mmmm, ok..." But listen to Art Hoyle there, playing it and giving it that good trumpet flavor.

I know, not what "we" want to remember Art Hoyle by/for, but just still, studio musicians play lots of things and the good ones make it work every time. And that takes a certain innate musicality that is not all that common.

RIP.

!!!

[clifford_thornton]

Sorry to hear this; Hoyle I only really know from the Ra recordings, so it looks like I need to educate myself on more of his work. 

[JSngry]

21 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

!!!

Oh, that Dells album is amazing. highly recommended (and has apparently gotten kinda pricey). I love The Dells anyway, I love Bacharach anyway, and I for damn sure love Charles Stepney anyway.

and look at these credits:

Credits

 

• Baritone Vocals – Johnny Carter
• Bass Vocals – Chuck Barksdale
• Bongos – Derf Reklaw Raheem*, Ealee Satterfield*, Oye Bisi Nalls
• Cello – Karl Fruh, Leonard Chausow
• Congas – Charles Stepney, Derf Reklaw Raheem*, Ealee Satterfield*, Oye Bisi Nalls
• Double Bass – John Frigo, Joseph Gudstafeste*
• Drums – Donny Simmons*, Morris Jennings
• Guitar – Cash McCall (tracks: A5), Phil Upchurch, Roland Faulkner
• Harp – Edward Druzinsky
• Horns – Ethel Merker, Paul Ondracek
• Percussion – Bobby Christian, Charles Stepney
• Producer, Arranged By, Piano, Harpsichord – Charles Stepney
• Tenor Vocals – Michael McGill*, Verne Allison
• Trumpet – Arthur Hoyle, Bob Lewis*
• Viola – Arthur W. Ahlman, Bruce Hayden, Harold D. Klatz, Harold Kupper
• Violin – Elliott Golub, Everett Zlatoff-Mirsky, Irving Kaplan, Jerry Babransky*, Roger Moulton, Ruth Goodman, Samuel Magad, Sol Bobrov

Yeah, Art Hoyle was definitely a top-shelf jazz player, and really, that's enough. But to take a full measure of a person's life, the ability to....circulate is something that not just everybody has!

[Larry Kart]

That date includes a lot of Chicago Symphony string players, including the orchestra's co-concertmaster Samuel Magad,  its harpist  Edward Druzinsky, cellist Leonard Chausow,  and its vaunted principal bassist his (name is mis-spelled in the credits) Joseph Gustafeste (he was the teacher of the brilliant AACM bassist Charles Clark, who died at a sadly early age of a brain hemorrage). Also on bass, Johnny Frigo. The Chicago freelance music scene was quite yeasty.

BTW, I would love to read a history of Chicago's very vigorous jingles scene, which Chuck mentioned. I think it was Art who told me that the reason so many jazz musicians were prominent there was that could they were inherently flexible and imaginative and could think on their feet in a business where getting things right and on time was essential. In particular, the guy in charge, the client's representative, often was a guy from an ad agency who might have little musical knowledge. One of the scene's many talented composer-arrangers, say Dick Marx (longtime pianist at the London House), might have written the jingle, but if it was a jingle for, say, a breakfast cereal or a shampoo, the ad agency rep might complain, "No good -- it's not crunchy (or foamy) enough. Make it crunchier or more foamy -- you've got five minutes." And guys like Art or bass trumpeter Cy Touff (another jingles mainstay) would put their heads together and come up with more crunch or foam just like that. 

Some of you may know the Bonnie Herman story. THE female singer on that scene, and also the angelic female voice of the Singers Unlimited, Bonnie was the voice on the famous State Fram commercial "Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There," which earned her a great deal in royalties over all the years it ran. The story is that State Farm's CEO was looking over the balance sheet at the end of one year saw that Bonnie had earned almost as much that year in royalties as he had in salary. From that point on, State Farm had a new jingle and new person to sing it, with a very different contract.
 

[JSngry]

No Art Hoyle here, but this shit swings a lot harder than it either needed to or should have: