Larry Kart

Here's an excerpt from a 1985 interview with Baker (mostly about his relationship with Lars Gullin) that touches upon Twardzik and Bob Zieff. "We made one album in Paris and we were supposed to do another album. This day we were all in the studio waiting and he didn't come, he didn't come, he didn't come. Peter [Littmann] went back to his hotel and they broke his door down and they found him in there. Nobody knows whether it was an accident or what, but Dick Twardzik was some kind of talent. You can tell from the record with all those Bob Zieff tunes. That album was way ahead of its time, it didn't go anywhere. He wrote one tune on that album, I think it was The Girl from Greenland; it's such a nice tune (hums). – I think that he and Lars influenced each other. They met briefly but they must have exchanged ideas and I think Lars learned from that. "He was unbelievable, I had never heard such things before", Lars said about him. They can have influenced each other; anybody with any musical sense at all would have been influenced by either one of them. Those Bob Zieff tunes were a real challenge to me, because they were so different from what I'd been doing up till that time. I was always sad because that album never received the recognition it should have. Bob Zieff was, is, because he's still alive and lives in Hollywood, a wonderful composer. All those tunes were completely different from one other. They had a different mood and a different feel to them, and so original. Sad Walk, Rondette, Mid-Forte, Piece Caprice – a really wonderful album and I enjoyed it so much." Zieff contributed several very knowledgable entries to "The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz," all about older players, most of them brassmen e.g. Mutt Carey, Charlie Green, Sandy Williams, Johnny Dunn, Tommy Ladnier. The contributors list locates him in Carlisle, Pa., not Hollywood, as of 1994. He used to contribute occasionally to another jazz-oriented list. I got the impression that jazz scholarship has been his chief interest for some time.

More on Herbert from Bill Kirchner: Please post that Gregory left Woody Herman in January 1975. Woody loved his playing, and Gregory regarded Woody almost as a second father. And whoever it was who "attacked a female colleague" at a Woody Herman March 1, 1976 concert, it certainly wasn't Joe Lovano, one the gentlest and nicest people I know.

I passed on the info in this thread to composer/saxophonist/bandleader writer Bill Kirchner, because I knew he knew and admired Herbert. He asked me to post this reply: As the author of the Ammons-Stitt liner notes (with a mention of Gregory Herbert) referred to in a previous posting, I feel qualified to comment on the postings re Gregory. I knew Gregory fairly well, and I wrote the only magazine feature on him that appeared during his lifetime (see DOWN BEAT, June 2, 1977). Though he fooled around with drugs, Gregory was not a junkie. If he had been, he probably would have been savvier about hard drugs and might still be alive today. As it was, some evil SOB in Amsterdam sold him a poisoned dose of heroin, and it killed him. In my experience, Gregory was anything but a "prick," as one of your postings described him. He was diffident until he got to know you, but once that hurdle was overcome, he was warm, humorous, and a lot of fun to hang out with. I know quite a few musicians who played with him with Woody Herman, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, the National Jazz Ensemble, and elsewhere. All remember him fondly, as do I. Gregory also was generous with some good advice at a time when I needed it. He's one of the reasons I'm a musician. Last, of all his recordings--all as a sideman--Gregory's favorite was the Chet Baker ONCE UPON A SUMMERTIME. Bill Kirchner

I agree with Chuck about Murray being a fake, and I'm sure his response has a wholly musical basis (as I think mine does). One particular encounter with his music, live, really convinced me. He came into Chicago in the early '80s with John Hicks, Ray Drummond (I think), and Ed Blackwell. This was in Murray's "return to the tradition" phase, and he was playing tunes with changes and trying to swing. First problem: once the tunes were stated their harmonic structures pretty much went out the window, and not in any "free," creative way; the blowing passages were essentially featureless huffing and puffing and didn't vary much from tune to tune, except in tempo. Second problem: Murray didn't seem to know where "one" was on any consistent basis, which left Blackwell in particular in a state of grave rhythmic distress. In fact, what Murray was failing to do amounted to an insult to that wonderful drummer. I recall writing about that aspect of Murray's performance that "he sounded like Charlie Ventura on roller skates," but that isn't really fair to Ventura. A couple of years later I heard Murray's octet in NY at, I think, Sweet Basil. Some good players in the band, but the writing and the ensemble work were crude at best (for one, everything was brutally, carelessly loud), and the whole thing radiated an air of "Who gives a f***" -- which I could understand sharing if I were on the stand and Murray was the leader. In fact, I talked after the set with one of the band's talented veterans (a saxophonist who must be nameless here), and he pretty much confirmed my feeling that working with Murray was a drag.

I have just about all, maybe all, of Florence's albums, and I'm of two minds about his work. On the one hand, I have a friend who's a very talented New York-based composer-arranger-bandleader-instrumentalist, and he dismisses Florence's work as much too white-bread and stage band-ish. I can hear what he means -- there's an arguably complacent acceptance of '40s and '50s shout-chorus big band conventions in Florence, and some of his focus on motivic detail can be a bit sewing-machine-like. On the other hand, that focus on motivic detail intrigues me -- if only because it speaks of real, almost obsessive, compositional thinking -- and I'm also attracted by the distinctiveness of his sax- and trumpet-section writing. In fact, it's more like he writes the same way for trumpets and reeds, which makes the trumpet writing doubly distinctive (and judging by the commitment with which it's executed, very interesting to play). Also, his lead trumpeter, George Graham, is terrific -- very powerful AND musical.

You're right, Chuck. BTW, who's that distinguished-looking fellow in the photo? Look like he's about to endorse a single malt whiskey.

Possibly interesting anecdote about "The All Seeing Eye." Soon after the record came out, I was in Chicago's Jazz Record Mart (the old W. Grand Ave. location) while the title track was being played in the store. Standing at the counter listening was Roscoe Mitchell, and during Freddie Hubbard's trumpet solo on (as I recall) the title track, Roscoe made one of those sub-verbal sounds that indicate intense approval. A bit surprised because I assumed he wasn't a big Hubbard fan, I said something along the lines of "You like Freddie Hubbard?" Roscoe replied, "No, man -- the drummer" (i.e. Joe Chambers).

A very strong second-stage (I guess) Jordan quartet album is "Bearcat" (Riverside, now OJC) with a terrific bass-drum team -- Teddy Smith and J.C. Moses. There are some Jordan solos here that have an unusual feel even for him, in that they sound (and certainly are) improvised and swing like mad but also have a kind of superior R&B blues-ballad melodic coherence, as though there were no break between the line and the blowing.

Jaspar and Blossom Dearie once were husband and wife.

Records be damned, too. In 1957-8, at a Joe Segal-run regular (for a while) Monday night session at the Gate of Horn in Chicago, I heard a band of Ira Sullivan, Griffin, Jodie Christian, Victor Sproles, and Wilbur Campbell play "Night in Tunisia," with Ira on trumpet. Then, after he, Griffin and Jodie played, Ira switched to tenor and he and Griffin went at it.

Ubu -- Not sure if by "what a title" you meant that "March of the Siamese Children" was an excellent track (it sure is) or an odd title for a piece, but at the risk of explaining something that you already know, if you meant that it was an odd title, "March of the Siamese Children" is from Rodgers & Hammerstein's musical "The King and I," where it accompanies the entry of the King of Siam's children, therefore it's not an odd title at all. Lawrence Kart