Jacky Terrasson

[jazzbo]

He doesn't seem like much of a comper, which is annoying to me and would make him an incomplete musician in my ears. But, to be fair, most of the younger piano players didn't have the experience to play with good singers, especially the old-school types who would read their asses out if they didn't know the tunes in their keys, didn't listen, couldn't play an intro, were too leading, etc. Or for sure most didn't have an inside track on the song form like Bill Charlap, who had as parents a band singer and show music composer, and both excellent ones to boot. But it's a different scene today and a lot of the core values seem to be dying and replaced by----what? Not anything better, to me. OK, I'm starting to editorialize and-----

I'm out.

Have you heard his work with Jimmy Scott (especially) and Cassandra Wilson? He comps adequately to my ears, and in the case of the Scott he really arranged a great album with some originality in the accompaniment and the texture.

Edited March 26, 2006 by jazzbo

[AllenLowe]

Fasstrack - intersting about the nephew - I spent a lot of time with Schildkraut in the late 1970s, got to know him and his wife Gloria pretty well - was the nephew's dad named Alan? That was the only son I met -

[fasstrack]

Fasstrack - intersting about the nephew - I spent a lot of time with Schildkraut in the late 1970s, got to know him and his wife Gloria pretty well - was the nephew's dad named Alan? That was the only son I met -

I don't know the brother's name but my friend, the nephew, that I grew up in Canarsie with was Alan Schildkraut. He goes by Alan Childs.

And I may as well give the Dave Schildkraut story, since I teased y'all:

I was sitting in a library on Cortelyou Road in Flatbush, Brooklyn in winter 1989. It was at one of those long, roundish tables they have. I noticed this white-headed and long-white-bearded sylph of a guy sitting. He looked to me like he was at the head of a round dais with me near the other end and a circle of black kids doing schoolwork on either side of him. He was talking to them---while they were doing their best to ignore him and some were laughing at him. Understandable, because this guy just started talking to them unasked. He was giving advice and just riffing, and he looked like a skinny incarnation of the R. Crumb character Mr. Natural. Or a street person, kind of funkily dressed and, well, 'aromatic'. He did have a shopping bag, actually.

Finally the guy spotted me reading a bio on Lester Young I dug up from the young adult section---and he started in on me. After he started talking about the big bands he played with, including I think Woody's, my curiosity finally became piqued.

"What's your name?"

"Dave Schildkraut".

"You're Davey Schildkraut? I grew up with your nephew. I've known about you since I was a teenager."

Naturally the conversation got warmer and more familial from there. I remember he had a funny, ironic way of self-expression, like when well after he saw the Pres book and after I told a little about myself he said "so, in other words, uh, you like the jazz?"

We went on to speak about the music business. When I asked him about musicians that were on the scene then, like Tom Harrell, he said "I read about him. In the Downbeat". A question about what he thought of Wynton's work as compared to the great trumpet players around in his day brought something like "it's really not the same thing".

He generally seemed a little nutty, but in a totally friendly way and not at all hard to follow; a little sad, too, but also very much at peace. No anger or self-pity. I had heard before this that his adult daughter fell down a flight of stairs and died. Supposedly he quit the music business soon thereafter and got a civil service job. I guess he was retired by the time I met him that day.

When it was time to go I offered him a ride, dropped him off in Coney Island, told him it was great to meet him, and said goodbye.

That was the first and last time I met Davey Schildkraut.

Edited March 27, 2006 by fasstrack

[Daniel A]

Thanks for the touching story.

[AllenLowe]

actually, the daughter was killed in a car accident; she had a very crazy boyfriend, and Davey was always warning her about his driving- one day he lost control of the guitar and wrapped it around a tree, and she was killed. Davey's wife Gloria, a lovely woman, took to her bed after this, and never got out, finally dying of cancer. Davey had moved to that Coney Island apartment from a place they had near the Belt parkway where I had visited him and Gloria a lot in the late 1970s; we lost touch as Davey became more and more paranoid. Last I talked to him, in the middle 1990s, I think, he accused me of stealing money fom him and exploiting him, and told me that people where coming up to his door and than running away. That was the last I spoke to him; he died, I think, in 1998.

[fasstrack]

Wow.

[AllenLowe]

Davey was something - he turned down three recording dates with Dizzy, and he turned down Norman Granz who wanted to take him on the road - and he was admired by everyone - Stan Getz, Jackie McClean and Bill Evans all told me they thought Davey was one of the greatest saxophonists they ever heard - Evans's quote, exactly was: "As far as I'm concerned there were only two saxophonists who came out of the bebop era who didn't just copy Bird - Lee Konitz and Dave Schildkraut." I cornered Dizzy at a gig and asked him about Dave - he said: "Dave Schildkraut was the ONLY saxophonist I ever heard who captured the rhythmic essence of Bird."

Edited March 26, 2006 by AllenLowe