Kenny Dorham "private" dates

[clifford_thornton]

On 2/6/2025 at 9:46 PM, mhatta said:

 

That aside, it seems that the mystery of the mysterious drummer ‘Hersh’ Charles has been solved. It's true that Denis and Hersh look almost indistinguishable when you look at some messy handwriting...

Denis also had a percussionist brother named Huss Charles. I don’t think he played trap set, though, so I’d be surprised if he was on this Kenny Dorham recording.

[bertrand]

3 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

Denis also had a percussionist brother named Huss Charles. I don’t think he played trap set, though, so I’d be surprised if he was on this Kenny Dorham recording.

Interesting. Who knows how they decided it was Denis. I hope they did not get it wrong.

[clifford_thornton]

Yeah, I’m curious as well. The only recordings of Huss that I know of are on congas, and later than this Dorham.

[Peter Friedman]

Claude - R.I.P. 

[david weiss]

On 2/6/2025 at 11:15 AM, jcam_44 said:

Is this the new RSD from resonance?

The date with Sonny Red is what is being released on Resonance. I find it to be excellent Kenny Dorham and revelatory Sonny Red, I'm not involved in any way with this release so I don't know where the Denis Charles credit comes from. I do have the tape and the announcer says very clearly on the recording Huss Charles on Drums. 

[bertrand]

So the Denis Charles estate will be made instead of the Huss Charles estate.

Bertrand.

 

[bertrand]

I meant to say 'paid', not made.

[Niko]

Maybe Denis had lost his cabaret card and used his brother's name... I am sure the jazz detective has a good explanation and didn't just pick the name with the greatest sales potential among all borderline plausible ones...

[bertrand]

Interesting theory. The only person who would have known that is the guy who had the tape.

[Dan Gould]

9 hours ago, david weiss said:

The date with Sonny Red is what is being released on Resonance. I find it to be excellent Kenny Dorham and revelatory Sonny Red, I'm not involved in any way with this release so I don't know where the Denis Charles credit comes from. I do have the tape and the announcer says very clearly on the recording Huss Charles on Drums. 

So David does this "new" recording float around collector's circles and isn't really really new the way some of those Left Bank releases were?

[Niko]

Not David, but the answer is yes, for instance, the recording has been listed here for years with precise track times (April 1967)

https://jazzdiscography.com/Leaders/DorhamKenny-ldr.php

 

Edit: or just look at the first 2006 posts in this thread hetr ... However, there seems to be more music this time...

Edited Sunday at 12:38 PM by Niko

[bertrand]

I think I have the thing floating around and I think it does have fewer tracks.

It is possible that the liner notes will explain how Denis Charles was identified. The answer could simply be that there are photos from the date.

I am curious about the Fathead Newman date. It could have been a 2-CD set.

Edited Sunday at 04:02 PM by bertrand

[Dan Gould]

5 hours ago, Niko said:

Not David, but the answer is yes, for instance, the recording has been listed here for years with precise track times (April 1967)

https://jazzdiscography.com/Leaders/DorhamKenny-ldr.php

 

Edit: or just look at the first 2006 posts in this thread hetr ... However, there seems to be more music this time...

But Blue Bossa and Bags' Groove are the only tunes in common between the discography entry and the RSD description, and none of the Joe Lee Wilson tracks are mentioned at all for the new release.  I can almost kinda understand a concentration on the instrumentals but for me I am inclined to think this is another recording entirely, possibly from the same gig. To play Blue Bossa and Bags' Groove regularly is hardly surprising.

I guess we will know soon enough. 

[bertrand]

On 2/11/2025 at 10:55 AM, clifford_thornton said:

Yeah, I’m curious as well. The only recordings of Huss that I know of are on congas, and later than this Dorham.

Actually, he plays congas on the Ed Blackwell Strata-East record, January 1968. So he was on the scene around the Blue Morocco date.

[bertrand]

Huss is actually named Frank.

[clifford_thornton]

Credited as Frank with Archie Shepp, yeah. 

Very interesting theory about the cabaret card, and certainly possible given Denis’ proclivities.

[Niko]

I just reread the chapter about Denis Charles in Amiri Baraka's Black Music, a 1963 article published only later in that book. In there, Charles says that he didn't own a drum set until Buell Neidlinger bought him one in 1957 and that until then he'd been practicing on Frank's set... so Frank/Huss did own a trap set and was evidently talented enough a percussionist to record with Ed Blackwell, Sonny Rollins and Archie Shepp - even though always as his brother's sidekick/keeper/who knows and never on a drum set... still, in that combination, I'd say it's completely possible that he might have played a few local gigs with Kenny Dorham... Roger Blank, another percussionist from that circle remembers playing with Dorham on gigs like this in As Serious As Your Life... btw, regarding the claim about photos as proof of someone's presence, this is potentially tricky when it comes to brothers... 

for more on false names and cabaret cards, see e.g. the discussion of alto player Leon Rice here

[bertrand]

I found an album cover online for a Denis date that Huss is on. They are not pure lookalikes. I thought Huss was Larry Willis at first. Of course, this was way later than 1967.

[Niko]

36 minutes ago, bertrand said:

I found an album cover online for a Denis date that Huss is on. They are not pure lookalikes. I thought Huss was Larry Willis at first. Of course, this was way later than 1967.

Well, my brother and me wear fairly different beards and by now my hair is quite a bit whiter than his... But if you show someone a 20 year old black and white picture of him and ask whether this is Niko or Philly Joe Jones, most people will mistake him for me.... I am so curious what the liner notes will say...

Edited Monday at 09:36 PM by Niko

[clifford_thornton]

this is all getting more and more intriguing by the day. Haven’t picked up Black Music in quite some time but I do have a copy around somewhere.

agree, Huss/Frank & Denis don’t look that similar, at least from the cover photo on Triangle.