Michael Weiss

Check your local PBS schedule

Friday night

Anyone here attending? Schedule Line Up

A few minutes of talk, okay, but I didn't ask for no history lesson, least of all from some punk.

Interminable yakking between tunes. I've been waiting here at least 15 minutes to hear a song. And it's not Phil Shaap!

Second Laurie Johnson's Avengers theme, (goes well with Diana Rigg in her leather jumpsuit) Mission Impossible (Isn't that Hubert Laws?) The Saint

Now four: Cedar Walton Mulgrew Miller George Duke Marian McPartland

RIP I was introduced to EL with Freaky Deaky last year and got hooked. I like Killshot and Swag.

Definitely heard "Swee Pea" in Universe.

I don't think so.

Bradley's, sometime around 1989-1992: I've finished a set with my trio, during which I had played "I'll Remember April" as a slow ballad. Dorothy calls me over to her table. After I sat down next to her, she puts her hand on my thigh and compliments me on the performance, all the time slowly moving her hand further up my thigh and squeezing. She says "I love the way you played I'll Remember April. You were strokin' it!"

The notes that bend your ear, odd half-steps or chromaticism, I could hear. It's the simple chords with eight horns that's sometimes difficult to assign who's playing what.

Would very much like to know what the "answer" to those puzzles were, if you can remember them. Otherwise, all I really know is the Russell stuff. But guys who are ready for anything, people with a broad skill set, those guys are getting to be fewer and farther between, it seems. Anytime any one of them passes, it's a change in the fabric of the overall music world. Won't say "loss" necessarily, but definitely a change, as "what is" slowly becomes "what was". RIP. Can't really give you more specifics than what I stated. I had trouble hearing the exact orchestration in spots and Al filled in the missing parts. In fact I just looked at the score now and it's clear which notes are in Al's hand and which notes are in mine. He even filled in specific notes for bass instead of just chord changes - like a pro. Agree with you wholeheartedly about this class of musicians and the void they leave when they leave.

June 19, 1932 - July 20, 2013 I owe much to Al during my formative years in Indiana. One of the first of many gracious mentor figures I've encountered who freely gave encouragement and taught purely by example. Mercer Ellington gave me the job of transcribing "Stompy Jones" when the band came through Bloomington in 1980. When I got in a jam trying to hear inner voices in a few passages, Al bailed me out without a second thought and finished the chart like a real pro. Around 1979-1981 I had the opportunity to hire Al, Pookie Johnson and Benny Barth on a number of gigs in and around Bloomington. I had no business being a bandleader in such company. But these guys played with the same professionalism they would accord a peer. We got back in touch four years ago. He moved to Austin to be with his daughter last year.

Great composition. As with most of Wayne's music post Messengers, the harmony is too specific to be pidgeon-holed with "changes." That's why Wayne didn't write chord symbols on the music.

Just curious... Any info?

Slide's a lefty.

Barry Harris just played me this record today. I am astonished at how good it is. His playing and arrangements are something else. It's hard to imagine how playing of this caliber and originality has remained so obscure.

I arranged the second piece, Vergangenes for my quartet. The opening nine bars is soulful like a MF.

Kenny Kirkland, Gene Perla, Don Alias, Bob Mintzer

This is a great interview.

Except for the Left Bank gig with Wynton Kelly in 1967, this is the only live recording I know of Hank Mobley fronting a group in a club. To hear Hank stretch out - for a very long time - on his own tunes - (despite the obvious inebriation) is priceless. I hear Trane's influence more pronounced in Hank's later years as this tape clearly demonstrates, especially on Third Time Around. This is also some of the best Tootie Heath on tape foreshadowing his playing on The Prisoner. I played this for George Coleman a few weeks ago and he was particularly enamored with Tootie's playing on here. The sound might not be ideal but really, who gives a fuck? Maybe my dub is a little better than yours Kevin, but I hear Hank clearly throughout the tape.

Bullshit

It was the night of the Holmes/Cooney fight. The hotel offered a closed circuit TV package.

Murray Wall was on bass. We played in the bar of the Albuquerque Sheraton. One night a fight broke out in the bar during our set. Jon got all offended and stormed off the bandstand leaving the rhythm section to duck the onslaught of flying beer bottles. There was no chicken wire! We played Santa Fe for two nights a couple of weeks later at a place called Club West.