"Chicago Calling: Unsung Heroes Of The City’s Hardbop Scene”

[ghost of miles]

This past week's show up for online listening--music from Ira Sullivan, Wilbur Ware, John Jenkins and more:

Chicago Calling: Unsung Heroes of the City's Hardbop Scene



...already at work on a sequel.

Edited February 24, 2020 by ghost of miles

[BillF]

Some great music there, David! I was particularly interested to hear the track by Gene Shaw. When you mentioned that he'd played with Mingus, I immediately wondered if this could be Clarence Shaw, who played so beautifully on East Coasting and Tijuana Moods and who I and other listeners half a century ago regarded as thereafter lost to jazz. His first notes on your disc revealed that this was indeed the same guy and I find that his full name was Clarence Eugene Shaw. Interesting! Almost like a lost soul rediscovered!

Edited February 2, 2010 by BillF

[Larry Kart]

Don't miss Johnny Griffin's solo on "Body and Soul" from the Ware album. Those deadpan quotes are outrageous even by Griffin's standards -- Frank Signorelli's "A Blues Serenade" (nice tune) seguing into "The Donkey Serenade." This street-corner surrealist side of Griffin perhaps fed into the Art Ensemble, and/or all parties were drawing from some sense of leering matter-of-fact juxtaposition that was built into Chicago reality.

[ghost of miles]

Some great music there, David! I was particularly interested to hear the track by Gene Shaw. When you mentioned that he'd played with Mingus, I immediately wondered if this could be Clarence Shaw, who played so beautifully on East Coasting and Tijuana Moods and who I and other listeners half a century ago regarded as thereafter lost to jazz. His first notes on your disc revealed that this was indeed the same guy and I find that his full name was Clarence Eugene Shaw. Interesting! Almost like a lost soul rediscovered!

Bill, thanks--I wish I'd had more time to spend talking a bit about Shaw. Very interesting guy--I Xeroxed some old Downbeat articles about him while I was researching the show. He quit Mingus' group after a blowup during one of the Bethlehem dates (Shaw called in sick, Mingus never got the message, Mingus threatened him in Mingus-like fashion, Shaw said "see ya"). I think that Dusty Groove reissue of BREAKTHROUGH is still in print.

[Chuck Nessa]

Saw him a few times in Chicago with an organ group. I'm sure Larry did too.

[Larry Kart]

Saw him a few times in Chicago with an organ group. I'm sure Larry did too.

Yes -- at a bar on Wells St. I'd probably recognize the name of the place if I heard it. John Litweiler wrote an appreciative review of that group for Down Beat.

[Larry Kart]

The Wells St. bar where Gene Shaw played (with organist Bobby Pierce and drummer Fred Stoll) was The Hungry Eye. John Litweiler's review of the group appeared in the Oct. 17, 1968 issue of Down Beat (on p. 32), which happened to be the second issue of DB I worked on as assistant editor.

It's a pretty long review; here are some excerpts:

"Shaw, it seems clear by now, is one of the outstanding trumpeters of his generation, in fact, one of only one or two or three to survive the hard bop era as genuinely successful artists.

"There are not many to compare to him, because too many of his contemporaries these days have chosen fashionable modal jazz or soul music; and others, like Ray Copeland, linger in an unfair obscurity. Uniquely, Shaw has stayed with chords and the standard mid-'50s bop repertoire, and few of the others can approach the incisive power and daring of his art.

"His style is almost a final refinement of the hard-bop idiom. Certainly the most personal quality of his solos is their comprehensive structure, achieved by almost every means possible -- contrasting dynamics, rhythms, note values, lines and spaces, use of juxtapositions for resolutions, balancing sequences against each other. His method is not so different from that of, say, Roy Eldridge, or some of the craftier swing-oriented players -- except that Shaw's harmonic-rhythmic basis is more sophisticated, he is subtler, and his good taste is more consistent.

"He is not a straight-ahead soloist, for Shaw's imagination instinctively turns toward illuminating attractive byways and dark, strange shapes. Yet he avoids any kind of thematic improvisational approach, and his solos are almost never ordered around a central climactic idea. The perfectly formed ideas evolve naturally, one on another, resulting in relaxed, lyrical, satisfying statements...."

[ghost of miles]

That's one of the articles I Xeroxed over at the IU School of Music Library, and one of the best things I came across about Shaw. Don DeMichael also wrote what's probably the most extensive biographical piece about Shaw for the Jan. 30, 1964 issue of Downbeat (pg. 16-18), and Harvey Pekar did a profile as well for the July/August 1972 issue of Coda (pg. 12-14).

[sheldonm]

This past week's show up for online listening--music from Ira Sullivan, Wilbur Ware, John Jenkins and more:

Chicago Calling: Unsung Heroes of the City's Hardbop Scene

...already at work on a sequel.

...listened to it this afternoon...very nice stuff.

m~

[sheldonm]

The Wells St. bar where Gene Shaw played (with organist Bobby Pierce and drummer Fred Stoll) was The Hungry Eye. John Litweiler's review of the group appeared in the Oct. 17, 1968 issue of Down Beat (on p. 32), which happened to be the second issue of DB I worked on as assistant editor.

It's a pretty long review; here are some excerpts:

"Shaw, it seems clear by now, is one of the outstanding trumpeters of his generation, in fact, one of only one or two or three to survive the hard bop era as genuinely successful artists.

"There are not many to compare to him, because too many of his contemporaries these days have chosen fashionable modal jazz or soul music; and others, like Ray Copeland, linger in an unfair obscurity. Uniquely, Shaw has stayed with chords and the standard mid-'50s bop repertoire, and few of the others can approach the incisive power and daring of his art.

"His style is almost a final refinement of the hard-bop idiom. Certainly the most personal quality of his solos is their comprehensive structure, achieved by almost every means possible -- contrasting dynamics, rhythms, note values, lines and spaces, use of juxtapositions for resolutions, balancing sequences against each other. His method is not so different from that of, say, Roy Eldridge, or some of the craftier swing-oriented players -- except that Shaw's harmonic-rhythmic basis is more sophisticated, he is subtler, and his good taste is more consistent.

"He is not a straight-ahead soloist, for Shaw's imagination instinctively turns toward illuminating attractive byways and dark, strange shapes. Yet he avoids any kind of thematic improvisational approach, and his solos are almost never ordered around a central climactic idea. The perfectly formed ideas evolve naturally, one on another, resulting in relaxed, lyrical, satisfying statements...."

Gene Shaw also worked a while for Jim Neumann (Beehive Records) in a non-music related field.

m~

[ghost of miles]

We re-aired Chicago Calling: Unsung Heroes of the City's Hardbop Scene last week, and it remains archived for online listening.