There oughtta be a Joe Puma.....

[fasstrack]

......thread, so here's one. Very underrated player and unnessecarily forgotten not a decade after his death. He knew every tune, played with wit, melodicism, and swing---and was a dark, hilarious character to boot.

A few stories:

I ran into Puma last time in 1997 when I went to hear him at a joint called the Red Eye Grill on 56th Street. It's still there. He knows me a little and asked how I was doing. Trying to be clever, or something, I answered that I was trying to play a little and stay 'a step ahead of the sheriff. He turned, looked at me hard, said:

'You better watch out. The sheriff might play better than you'.

A little later they were playing a CD on break. It sounded good. I think it was Vic Juris. Puma turned and asked if that was me.

'I think it's the sheriff' I said*

When I was 21 (it was a very good year, and...) I used to hang around Chuck Wayne a lot. This was when Puma and Chuck used to have a guitar duo. I heard it ended after a few years of arguing when they finally were driving to Florida for a gig and had a fight over whether a diminished scale is a 7 or 8 note scale. It reportedly ended with 'f*&k yous' and silence through several states. I remember when they first started they sat together, with amps on the far side. By the end the arrangement was in reverse.

So Chuck couldn't make a gig at Stryker's, ca. 1975. Joe got a great tenor player, maybe Carmen Leggio, I can't remember, but a MF player. Like the little idiot I was I expressed my disappointment in Chuck not being there by directly walking up to Joe and asking where Chuck was tonight. He fixed a hard gaze and replied

'as you get older you'll like my playing better'.

Stinging and deserved, yet prescient. I'm older and I do like his playing better than Chuck's. Chuck is one of the greatest guitarists ever, who invented his own systems on guitar, and a stylist, but Joe swung more IMO and just appeals more to me musically.

The funniest line I walked into and invited (I should've been his straight man or a softball practice pitcher) was when I, at around the same age, repeated some bitter babble Chuck ran down to me about this and that guy being an 'opportunist'.

Joe just smoked from his ears after about ten minutes of this malarkey and finally looked at his watch.

'I'd like to take this opportunity to go back on the stand and play. But first I think I'll call a couple guys and ask if it's alright'.

A link to some recordings:

http://www.answers.com/topic/joe-puma

* No, I didn't, either, but have been conning people into thinking I did ever since. But if anyone uses the sheriff retort again damned if I ain't ready.......

Edited April 11, 2009 by fasstrack

[7/4]

I heard him at a workshop at Sam Ash, Edison, NJ sometime in 93-94. I've never heard any recordings.

Also I heard Chuck Wayne at some bar in Sommerset country, NJ around the same time.

db

[AndrewHill]

I started one here when I was looking for recs on Wild Kitten:

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php...303&hl=puma

Great album btw. Enjoy!

HG

[marcello]

I heard Wayne and Puma for almost every night during a three week stand in 1975. I got to know Chuck some since he was in strange territory ( Rochester), so we had some meals together and I took him to a radio interview and a driving range ( golf was a passion for him). One day I asked him if Joe would like to come along and he said "'He just sits in his room and practices while watching TV". I gathered that they didn't get along off the bandstand too well.

Their music was very intricate but very free and flowing at the same time. Master musicians. I didn't talk to Puma much, but I used to visit Chuck whenever I was in NYC and he was playing, usually at Gregory's. He was always very nice and a highly intelligent and well rounded person.

Here's a photo that I took from that time:

Edited April 11, 2009 by marcello

[AllenLowe]

somewhere I have a picture of Puma playing at Bill Evans' funeral; most beautiful guitar piece I've ever heard -

[ghost of miles]

I'm going to go get his "bird" album (and I don't mean Parker) if it's still available at Ye Local Record Shoppe tomorrow.

[Larry Kart]

I heard Wayne and Puma for almost every night during a three week stand in 1975. I got to know Chuck some since he was in strange territory ( Rochester), so we had some meals together and I took him to a radio interview and a driving range ( golf was a passion for him). One day I asked him if Joe would like to come along and he said "'He just sits in his room and practices while watching TV". I gathered that they didn't get along off the bandstand too well.

Their music was very intricate but very free and flowing at the same time. Master musicians. I didn't talk to Puma much, but I used to visit Chuck whenever I was in NYC and he was playing, usually at Gregory's. He was always very nice and a highly intelligent and well rounded person.

Here's a photo that I took from that time:

That's the Puma-Wayne story I remembered.

[fasstrack]

I heard Wayne and Puma for almost every night during a three week stand in 1975. I got to know Chuck some since he was in strange territory ( Rochester), so we had some meals together and I took him to a radio interview and a driving range ( golf was a passion for him). One day I asked him if Joe would like to come along and he said "'He just sits in his room and practices while watching TV". I gathered that they didn't get along off the bandstand too well.

Their music was very intricate but very free and flowing at the same time. Master musicians. I didn't talk to Puma much, but I used to visit Chuck whenever I was in NYC and he was playing, usually at Gregory's. He was always very nice and a highly intelligent and well rounded person.

Here's a photo that I took from that time:

That's the Puma-Wayne story I remembered.

Chuck was the greatest to me. Treated me like a son. He used to drive me home to Brooklyn from Gregory's---going out of his way on the way home to Staten Island. I was proud enough to burst when I finally got good enough to sit in there and he let me. He had become somewhat bitter about his relative obsurity in the biz, compared to other names, after all he did for his instrument (we are talking about perhaps an all-time great player of the instrument, aside from his place in jazz guitar history) but toward the end of his life he and his wife became born again. It worked for him and I'm happy it did. I called him when he had gotten sick, after no contact for quite a few years. His voice was frail and his breathing shallow, but I also heard peace.

It's a shame those two couldn't get along. They really played different enough (though with similar roots and taste) to make it work, and that duo was well-received. When they improvised two guitar counterpoint, I thought that was their highlight.

Edited April 12, 2009 by fasstrack

[marcello]

They play "Baubles, Bangles and Beads on "Interactions", that says it all.

[fasstrack]

I can't tell you how gratifying it is to have a place to talk about folks like Joe, Chuck, Jimmy Raney, and others not exactly in the mainstream of Amrican popular culture and people not only know who they are, they add stuff like that great picture of Chuck. Man, that brings back so many memories....

[AllenLowe]

truth is Chuck was not playing very well by the middle 1970s - he and Haig worked together for a long time at Gregory's until they had an argument over chord changes one night; than Al Gaffa came in -