sgcim

Nat and Ron seemed to imply that it was that they felt Jazz came from an "unsavory" background. Nat brought up the fact that a poet, Sterling Brown, told him that in the 50 years he taught at Howard University, they never let him teach a course there that had anything to do with jazz, because of the unsavory background thing. Then he said that "Adam Clayton Powell had a paper in NY in competition with Amsterdam News. I knew the editor and had seen him at jazz clubs- but he never used jazz, and the implication was that it wasn't right for the image". Then he says to Ron Carter, "So what you said in that interview was that 'the black press,the black media, has a great deal of responsibility in the lack of, and the possibility of. increasing the visibility and viability of jazz.' "Is that still the case? Ron Carter says: "The only difference is that if I were writing it out verbally, I would underline all those words." Yeah, it sounds like that jerk that yelled that out wound up contributing to CT's act!

Yeah, Hentoff just produced records for Candid, which meant he wrote down the names and times of the tunes, and then said "Do whatever you want to do." Hentoff disclosed that he suffered from clinical depression that was cyclical, but he claimed that jazz brought him out of his most serious bout with it. Then he said that musicians used to put him down because he couldn't tell the difference between inside and outside ( which might explain his fervor over Ornette) or what chords they were playing. You've gotta give him credit for being honest about himself. Then he related a story about a Benefit concert at the Blue Note for Clark Terry. Clark struggled to get out of his wheelchair, and some guy from the audience yelled out, "So how are the golden years Clark?" Terry turned toward the voice and picked up his trumpet and said "They suck"!- and proceeded to play like he was 20 year-old!

Just finished "At the Jazz Band Ball" by Nat Hentoff. Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene" I read his YA novel "Jazz Country" as a kid from my school's library, and liked it so much, I never returned it. The book "ATJBB" is just a series of interviews and magazine pieces that he wrote from 2004-2009. There's a lot of repetition by NH regarding quotes he repeats in each interview from Ben Webster, Dizzy, Clark Terry, Phil Woods, Hank Jones,etc... that could have been edited out, and there's a jazz and politics section that I just skipped over, but other than those two things, it had some great stuff. Other than the free stuff, I liked his taste in music, and there was a chapter on Phil Woods which was great. I never knew NH was a Woods fanatic, and that he produced Woods' one release on Candid which Nat owned. Towards the end, it starts to get deadly serious with two great interviews he did with Jon Faddis and Ron Carter. Where else would you learn that the Black press in NYC plus Oprah both hated jazz, and did their best to kill it off? Jon Faddis is very candid about the realities of being a jazz musician in those years, and doesn't sugarcoat anything. Ron also tells it like it is, and it ain't very pretty.

RIP

Never heard "Utterly Simple" and "Hope I Never Find Me There". Are they worth listening to? Yeah, DM's songs were coming from a different place than SW's. Maybe that was what SW was mad about. Here's this guy who was playing gigs in his dad's jazz band at the age of twelve, then being compared to Ray Charles when was sixteen in the Spencer Davis Group. How are you going to put yourself above him? Weird about LSOHHB. What up wit dose Brits? I read DM's recent autobio "Only You Know and I Know", and I think that was the only gig he did with DATD. Lucky you!

That multi-colored dic looked so good, I wanted to take a bite out of it! I'm glad he managed to tell his side of things in his autobiography "Only You Know and I Know", which I read last year. It was no secret that he was very ill. He and Winwood couldn't see eye to eye on the creation of Traffic's songs.He would piss Winwood off to no end when he brought in his songs written alone without the input of Winwood, Capaldi or Wood. When "Hole In My Shoe" became a huge hit in the UK, that prompted DM's first firing from Traffic. It turned out to be the best thing that could happen to DM. He came to the US and finally got recognition for his fine singing, songwriting and guitar playing RIP

Just finished "The Jazz Barn : Music Inn The Berkshires, and the Place of Jazz in American Life" by John Gennari, Had to do with the Lennox School of Jazz, where Third Stream musicians like Gunther Schuller, Jimmy Giuffre, George Russell and John Lewis taught for the four years it was open. It goes for 80 pages before anything relating to jazz is mentioned, just woke history of the Berkshires. When he mentions the School of Jazz and the concerts they had there, it begins to get interesting, and there are a lot of pictures of some of the teachers and students there that have never been seen before. The author is an English Prof. in VT, who thinks that Dave Brubeck composed "Take Five". The type on the book is so small that I had trouble reading iit.

Continuing Saga of the Wealthy White Alto Player I may be talking to myself here, but since it's off topic, you can skip it if you want to. ] Since the Wealthy White Alto Player (WWAP), thought the chart I wrote was Classical music, I wrote on the rhythm sections' charts "Strip Joint Music". On the trumpet player's charts I wrote "HARMON MUTE"above the staff so they wouldn't start a fight with me like the dick trumpet player in the other band almost succeeded in doing, and I brought the chart down to the rehearsal last night, expecting the worst. As soon as I walked into the room, the WWAP said to me, "I didn't bring my alto part." Luckily, I brought an extra part to conduct from, so I put it on his stand ( but I felt like shoving it you-know-where...) I gave the trumpet players their parts, and reminded them to use their mutes, which I should have done with the other band, I guess... Since the leader of the band, the WWAP, didn't even bother to send out reminders to the band about the rehearsal, we were missing two trombones, one tenor sax, one trumpet, and worst of all, a bass player.. Instead of conducting the band on my arrangement, I was forced to play the bass part on my guitar, so I just told the band, "Make believe you're in a strip joint and some blonde with big bosoms is doing her thing on the pole." Just to embarrass the WWAP, I added, "This is not classical music like our leader thinks it is." The guys in the band were making all types of lewd jokes which I can't repeat here, and I counted it off and we stumbled through it. The WWAP had obviously worked hard on it, just going off on some of the technical things, but since I was trying to play bass on it, I was too preoccupied to notice specifics. The WWAP just said, "Bring it down again when we have a bass player". To be continued...

I just got a call from a white alto player, who leads one of the big bands play in, and occasionally write and arrange for. We've got a gig coming up, and he asks me to write an alto feature for him. He doesn't mention money, so I gave him the alto part to an old Strozier chart I wrote, and told him to practice it, cause it's too hard to sight read, as he proved when he tried to play it, and gave up after a number of bars. He owns an entire block in NYC, so I know he needs time to work on it... Of course, he forgot that he tried to play it already. So he calls me and tells me that it sounds too classical to him (?) I said Classical? What the hell sounds classical about it? Now, I had given it to another band, and because Strozier sounds bluesy, I wrote the word bluesy at the beginning. The white alto player, who is a great Phil Woods-type player, took the word too literally, and started growling and moaning at the end, marring what WAS a perfect performance. Unfortunately, the trumpet section added to my misery by ignoring the word "MUTE" and played OPEN, drowning out the poor alto player's stellar performance. I even yelled at them to put on their effing mutes, but they ignored me. After it was over. I asked them why they didn't use mutes. They said I didn't write MUTE, so I point to the word "MUTE" on the most annoying guy's part. He said, " you wrote it in the wrong place." I said, "that's where they put it in MuseScore" The guy says, "that's not the way it's supposed to be". I gave up. I took the trumpet parts home and wrote MUTE on each one. Then I took the 1st alto part out and wrote the name "Phil Woods' on it, because I know this guy never heard of FS. So the leader said to me on the phone, that's why I said it was a classical piece, because Phil used to play the Ibert and Glazunov pieces, and it sounds like that. I said "But this is jazz; it's with a big band not an orchestra. So he said, "bring it down. We'll check it out.' I pretty much live to hear my shit played, so I said, okay. BTW, to name a white alto player, I was thinking of naming Sheila Cooper, who I mentioned in the "Artists" section, but then found out she had passed, so I did an RIP on her. ,

I just found out about the death of Sheila Cooper, a singer/alto sax player I used to play with in a band in Brooklyn, back in the mid 80s. I was shocked to hear of her passing, and I thought I'd look her up here to find out about it, but her name didn't come up in a search I did. She was born in Ottawa, Canada in 1960, and became part of the Toronto jazz scene before moving to NYC where I met her. She was a talented, intelligent, beautiful young woman, and used to have a lot of great stories about Ed Bickert. She married the great tenor sax player Andy Middleton, and I remember hearing somewhere that they moved to Berlin. She passed in 2021 in Vienna, Austria. Here's an example of her alto playing and singing with the great Polish pianist, Fritz Pauer:

Sorry to hear of his passing. "Bouncin' With Bartok" was a great book. R. I. P.

Very Cool.

I'm sitting here listening to Willie Colon on Felipe Luciano's great show, Latin Roots. He plays the music of all the great Latin music artists, and dedicated his show to Willie Colon today. RIP

Thanks Dan, for bringing this to our attention. Just seeing his name in your post reminds me of so many great albums I bought throughout my life. His pairing of Sonny Criss and Tal Farlow on Prestigr was truly inspired, and Xanadu helped resurrect the career of Jimmy Raney. I had no idea that he also did the photography for so many great records, also! RIP