Mark Stryker

Good news. Welcome home.

Thanks for this perspective.

EI: Ernie Henry. MS: Out of Bird but with a hard-edged, wailing sound, rhythmic punch and a pungency to his lines that mark an emerging individuality. But he died so young that we never got to hear where he might have gone. I’m fond of both Riverside records, Presenting Ernie Henry and Seven Standards and a Blues. Also, he held his own standing next to Sonny Rollins on Monk’s Brilliant Corners. Not a lot of guys could do that in 1956.

Gang -- I'm helping a friend value and prepare for sale an extraordinary collection. Her late husband was in the record business for 40 years dating to 1967, he had rarified taste owned all the right records in the pressings you would want, and all in IMACULATE condition (vinyl and jacket)/ Jazz, blues, rock, classical. We'll be splitting them up by genre, using different strategies for different stock. But here's a basic question: If she uses a broker/dealer to sell stuff via eBay auction, discogs or consignment, what is a reasonable fee to pay for that service and how is it figured -- 30 percent? 40 percent? 25? Does the percentage change depending on value of the item being sold? How are packaging and shipping costs figured in? Thanks for your insights.

The 1970s were, um, a decade ...

Time capsule.

Worth mentioning that Shipp lays out some fairly concrete criteria for entrance into the club of Black Mystery School Pianists. It's not just a catchall for anyone who falls outside the mainstream or has a quirky/weird/unusual streak. Leaving aside the requirement of being black, which Shipp clarifies in his opening, he centers on these conditions: 1) an aspect of a secret code that places their language outside the mainstream 2) alternative touch to the Tatum-Peterson-Evans-Hancock ideals (I added the names Evans and Hancock for context) 3) resists academic codification 4) iconoclastic --carves out a singular universe and and lives there a stubborn fuck-the-world attitude. 5) tend to focus on their own compositions and/or body of work rather than deal with a common language or repertory Of course, a lot of these are judgement calls and in many cases, he's identifying members by a preponderance of the evidence combined plus his own intuition. It's almost like being a Black Mystery School Pianist is a syndrome more than an absolutely strict adherence to every symptom/condition.

Early Geri Allen.. Jason Moran. Possibly Craig Taborn.

Sigh. R.I.P. to another link in the chain of great bassists across genres from Detroit -- Al McKibbon, Major Holley, Ernie Farrow, Will Austin, Ray McKinney, Paul Chambers, Doug Watkins, James Jamerson, Ron Carter, Cecil McBee, Cameron Brown, Bootsy Collins (a transplant), Ralphe Armstrong, Jaribu Shahid, Marion Hayden, Robert Hurst, Rodney Whitaker, Tassili Bond ...

Amusing anecdote: “I looked around at the other musicians; they were staring at me,” Hancock recalled. “‘Did Rudy say I could actually plug it in?’ ‘Yeah, we heard that, too.’ So I did. I was like, ‘Wow, I finally rose to the top!’” https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/19/arts/music/rudy-van-gelder-studio.html

Man, great clip of Getz et. al. Thanks for posting.

FWIW, I posted this Top 20 Freddie Hubbard solos on Twitter for birthday in April. Half are from his own records or concerts as a leader. Coda: This is Freddie's best working band based on all the stuff I've been able to hear. 1973 -- Junior Cook, George Cables, Kent Brinkley, Michael Carvin.

Twenty years ago, James Carter bought a tenor saxophone from — wait for it — the late Larry Storch. The horn had once belonged to — wait for it — Chu Berry. https://www.facebook.com/852624088/posts/pfbid0gp1YjpTBsBn1rw7sZMmswwxF3GDga8suvKmqPECeRvvCvyDEjBJwrpyqh7FoFRDKl/?d=n&mibextid=25F3IK

Man, the complete show is something else with an extended performance of One Note Samba by Jobim and Mulligan joining in. Related: Anybody know who the trumpet player is in the California club scene?

Ugh. Amazing how far I've gotten in life considering my IQ is around 70. Link added above.

A quite remarkable 1962 news report on the "the music and the cult called bossa nova." A full 7-1/2 minutes long. Amazing footage and an amusing journalist's frame to the story.

Proud my city -- three of the four inductees are from Detroit -- and happy to make an appearance in this report. https://www.npr.org/2022/07/14/1111505514/regina-carter-kenny-garrett-and-louis-hayes-named-2023-nea-jazz-masters?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR2T6WXNixGpjiXtWvU3dmcyRrIjFzIAKkTVLMK1CdptVrhYpcjusIwaN54

That "Lazy Bird" arrangement is good one -- Stapleton -- if I recall. A lot happens in just over three minutes and the chorus based on Trane's solo works well, scored creatively and integrated into the whole better than that kind of thing typically is. I always liked Tony Klatka's "Blues for Poland." I didn't realize until I got older that it was not just layered riffs ala Basie but very much a take on Thad Jones. The 4th chorus -- the full ensemble chorus that leads to the baritone sax solo -- has melodies cut from Thad-like intervals and contours and the dissonant brass voicings often sound lifted from any by any number of Thad's charts. That's cool. It's all syncopated and swinging.

I had "Thundering Herd" and "Giant Steps" as a kid, and the last time I listened to those records a few years ago, I thought the best of the charts and the playing held up surprisingly well, though it can be hit and miss track to track. But the Alan Broadbent arrangements in particular have legs. Try his original "Bebop and Roses" and his chart on Zappa's "America Drinks and Goes Home." When I started writing big band arrangements in high school, I used "Bebop and Roses" as a model. Funny story: When I was 13 in 1976, my middle school jazz band played at a jazz festival in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Woody's band was the guest attraction. There were clinics in the afternoon and Woody's longtime lead tenor man Frank Tiberi ran the one for saxophone players. He was also a fine bassoon player, and I remember that he told us how beneficial it would be for us saxophone players to take up a double reed instrument like oboe or bassoon because the double lip embouchure would force you to really support the air column from the diaphragm -- that's the only way to maintain your pitch -- and this would help prevent you from biting down too hard on your saxophone mouthpiece with your top teeth or exerting too much pressure from the bottom lip. And this would thus improve your airflow and sound. He's right about this, but I recall thinking at age 13 that this was really odd advice to give to a group of young musicians who could barely play the saxophone, and yet he wanted us to start learning the oboe. Back to Broadbent, I will say this rococo arrangement of "Blues in the Night" from a little earlier in 1970 is completely nuts, and not always in a good way. The curve ball at the 6:40 mark is not the choice I would have made. I won't spoil it for those who don't know what's coming. But the whole thing was a showstopper. I think Woody wanted something akin to Buddy Rich's "West Side Story" -- a big production number.

Yep -- that was it was all about. Thanks for the kind words.

Not CD, but that's Getz's fashion show quartet.

Favorite: No. 5.

A giant has passed. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/arts/music/richard-taruskin-dead.html

Geri Allen’s “Open on all Sides” and “Twylight,” and pretty much any MBase/Steve Coleman-related recordings on JMT, etc.