sgcim

We just played it last week. It's a great chart. I'm trying to condense it for just guitar and bass, but the leader doesn't let us take home charts, because he's got too many books and doesn't want it to get lost. A funny story about Mantooth; this trumpet player in the band told me a few months ago that when he was a Jazz ensemble director he had Mantooth as a clinician with his HS band. He said Mantooth constantly bellttled and put down the kids and treated them like dirt. I was surprised, because I've only heard good things about the late Mantooth. Then, last week we played a chart by John Fedchock, and he told me the same story, but this time it was about Fedchock. I told him he said the same thing about Mantooth, and he denied ever even meeting Mantooth! I kept insisting that he told me the exact same story about Mantooth, and he kept denying he ever met him. Finally I looked at him and I asked him how old he was. Sheepishly, he said 75 with a smile on his face. I said, "well that explains that".

Although there's a lot of other content on this wild polymath, Szwed brings out a lot of Smith's love for and incorporation of bop into his work. He's generally known for his anthology of folk music, but not much is known of his attempts to 'transcribe' bop tunes into his paintings, and later on into his films. He would take a piece by Diz, "Manteca", and paint to it for sometimes a year or two, translating every sound on the record into a form e.g. dots, lines, circles, etc... until the entire painting became a literally painted version of Manteca. This wasn't a painted impression of Manteca; it was Manteca itself! He had a great 'illumination' when he was high on pot, and went to see Dizzy play. He literally saw colored flashes, and at that point realized music could be put to his films. Before that, he had always shown his films silently. The rhythmic complexity of Dizzy's recordings put Harry's asynchronous matching of images to sound to the test. When he lived in that all Black section of the Fillmore District in SF, Harry went to Bop City every night, taking notes, making sketches of the music. In 1950and 1951 he painted a series of large murals on the club's wall during the day, listening to jazz records while he worked, painting what he heard fueled by pot and Banzedrine. Dexter Gordon sometimes sat listening with Harry while he was painting. He escaped the frame and canvas, the film, the projector, and the screen, filling the the room where jazz was performed with his visual perceptions of the music. large discs hang like planets with smaller discs within, giving off solar flares or starbursts. Running beneath the mural is what looks like a hand-scratched film soundtrack. Percy Heath first met Harry at Jimbo's in 1950. He said, "all the musicians knew him as a bebop fan who was what he called a non-objective painter. He was a mystical person, and had a demeanor about him so that no one would approach except with awe and fascination. I used to ask him about so-and-so, and he'd say, 'You don't need to know about that, you've been through that in other lives. This is all an illusion except in your mind.'" Smith began showing his films with a live jazz group providing the soundtrack to a film that will serve as the sixth instrument in a bebop jam session to consist of an expert group in person, on the piano, cornet, valve trombone, bass and drums. Silent movies had used live music to cue people to the mood of a scene, but Harry's films had no subject or narrative for the music to match, and the musicians collectively improvised on compositions they thought were suitable. At the SF Museum of Art, he did a concert like that with the Atlee Chapman band in 1950, playing tunes like Boplicity , Move etc... to Harry's film. Later on, he moved to NYC and hung out every night at the Five Spot, hanging out with Monk whom he would have long conversations with. One of his reasons for moving to NYC was to paint a portrait of Monk, but he said Monk's rhythms were too complex to translate to one of his 'Transcriptions', and would have to make a film of him instead.

RIP. George. I remember back in the 70s when he did the same theater gig I was doing back then. I forget what act he was playing.

What a dramatic finish. Gators came back in the last few minutes after being behind 12 points at one point. Great game.

Gil Evans did the arrangements on his first album! He also used to bring the guitarist Buddy Fite on the road with him, until Buddy got too scared of flying. Arthur Lee said he modeled his singing after Johnny's.

You mean "Get Together"; "Come Together is a song by The Beatles. Jesse told the story about hearing Buzzy playing it at a concert somewhere, and he asked Buzzy for the music to Get Together, so he didn't 'lift it' like Marc Myers said. He said hearing Buzzy sing it was a 'mystical experience' that changed his life, and the Youngbloods went into the studio and recorded it right away. I don't know if they paid Buzzy anything, because arrangements are not copyrighted. I wonder if Buzzy ever recorded it, also. He's another folk-rock-jazz crossover guy like Jesse, and those guys never made it big, because they didn't want to sellout to THE MAN. Thanks for mentioning the Myers' book, I'll look for it. Thanks!

I only had to listen to a few seconds of the intro to "Get Together" to appreciate the musical superiority of Banana, Joe Bauer and Jesse compared to the Airplane, David Crosby and The Kingston Trio's versions of Get Together. The Youngbloods were calling in cats like Victor Feldman years before Steely Dan even entered a recording studio. When Jesse went on his own, his singing chops and ability to improvise vocally were equal to anyone of that period and since. When he got a band together, he got the hippest players around him. He sings this song in the original key, and then modulates twice, and he and the sax player are both burning in each new key:

Been playing with a bass player who was the second husband of the late Japanese free jazz vocalist, Nozomi Oye. She sang with people like Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor (who called her the greatest singer in the world), Matthew Shipp, John Cage, and Knitting Factory people like John Zorn, and other members of the Lower East Side Avant Garde jazz scene, and also the Punk band Pigkill. They moved to LA in '92 where she got a day gig, and sang straight jazz in Beverly Hills supper clubs. Does this ring any bells with anyone?

JCY used to live across the street from the VV, and spent many nights digging the jazz

RIP. I did a gig with his keyboard player, Mark Adams. He was so good, I made one of my students take private lessons with him.

Liked her duets with Donny Hathaway the best. RIP

I remember when I first heard about Tardo Hammer, I was hoping he'd sound like eddie costa. He didn't. No one sounds like eddie Costa.

BH didn't like things that didn't fit within the strict bebop style.

With all the hundreds of clinics Barry Harris did all over the world, there must be thousands of pianists playing in his style. At one of his clinics, a friend of mine said BH yelled at a kid for sounding like Bill Evans. "No Bill Evans here!" BH declared.

Just finished, John Pizzarelli: "World On A String: A Musical Memoir" 2013 . Although I like both Bucky and John Pizzarelli's guitar playing, this book mainly deals with the show biz aspects of the neo-swing scene, and john says, "Too often, jazz is held up as an intellectual exercise that can be only understood by the chosen few who can whip out their Village Vanguard matchbooks from the night in 1962 when Eric Dolphy cut loose while playing alongside John Coltrane". Then he talks about how George Benson and his handlers omitted the word jazz, when publicizing his biggest hit "Breezin'" as if it was a dirty word. Other than Zoot Sims, and Benny Goodman, and Bucky, no chapters are devoted to jazz musicians, other than JP's small groups and the musicians they played with. It's mostly about the tough business of being a singer-jazz guitarist, and having to travel 200 days a year trying to make a living. He also has a chapter on his time with Rosemary Clooney, one on touring as the opening act for Frank Sinatra's tour in his later years, his career as a rock musician, his stint as a radio DJ, his role in a musical on Broadway, his recording sessions with James Taylor and Paul McCartney, The great American Songbook, Jonathan Schwartz, NY radio stations, and a lot of funny stories. Stephen Holden of the NY Times writes a blurb on the back of the book, endorsing it. If that's your cup of tea, go for it.

Like a Scientologist keyboard player I worked with said to me on the first gig I worked with him, the week that L.Ron Hubbard died: "He didn't die; he's just away on research". How do we know Chick won't want his records back when he comes back from "research"?☠️

RIP, Claude.

There were a lot more Jazz guys from LA that lost their houses, according to a friend of mine who used to live there. What a nightmare.

that very sangry dog.

Tonight we played my chart on TMTGA, Frank's masterpiece, and it was a big disappointment. First, the trumpets didn't put on their mutes, and then argued with me that I didn't specify which mute to use. Duh, you've got to be told to use a Harmon mute in modern jazz? Then, the alto player played my transcription 'accurately' as far as my transcription of Frank's brilliant solo and playing of the melody went, but he chose to give it this cornball 'white' interpretation of it that made we want to puke. At least he got through it, the alto player in the other band had a decent interpretation of it, but didn't even make it halfway through it. It all just goes to show what a genius Frank is, and that he can't be replaced. When he's gone, he's gone...

Never can get enough of that one!

Yeah, that's how we read it.

I think he was saying that only jazz musicians appreciate his music.

When we went to see him at a club in Rye, NY. , we went up to tell him how great he sounded, and how much we loved Long Night. He just looked at us and said, "You two guys are musicians, right?" That woke me up to reality. He wound up getting a job as a Science teacher from a District Supervisor that he played club dates with. FS really played the schist out of Hava Nagila according to the Supervisor/pianist!

It's kind of ironic that he does his most incredible playing on other people's tunes, and not as incredible playing on his own tunes. That's why I wasn't that excited by "The Music of FS" album; they're not that great tunes, and the playing isn't as inspired as FS' playing on his own albums. I've written tunes and BB charts based on HLWK and TMTGA from Long Night, and even TMOTSC from that album.