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The great Kenny Dorham


Claude Schlouch

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I forgot about KD's stay with Blakey (I don't have the Mosaic yet, but I have that "Max" album which came out in the Chessmate series some years ago. A nice one).

You wanted to say "Roach", didn't you? I read after my last post that he disbanded his own Jazz Prophets band with J.R. Monterose (which he led AFTER the Jazz Messengers) to join Max after Clifford Brown's death - that also may be a reason why the 2nd ABC LP remained unissued. That was the period when that Argo LP was recorded, a Rollins date for Prestige and then the first EmArcy sessions in the Mosaic, most of them with a Dorham/Rollins frontline that is also on a Dorham Riverside session.

After leaving Max he had a band with Charles Davis that recorded two fine LPs for Time Records. "Whistle Stop", the unreleased Blue Note session with Charles Davis and Grant Green and the band with Jackie McLean that recorded for United Artists and Pacific Jazz also fall into this period before the quintet with Joe Henderson.

He always had something going, that Kenny Dorham, if you count all his record dates, that's quite a number coming together ... with a great list of equally important players. Art Blakey appropriately called him "The King" on the Café Bohemia sessions!

Claude's 1999 Kenny Dorham disco should clear some aspects of his career; I will get that next years if it's still available.

Edited by mikeweil
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KD also travelled to France in 1959 to record the music for the film 'Un Temoin Dans La Ville' with Barney Wilen and Duke Jordan. The three also appeared in scenes from the Roger Vadim film 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses'. Dorham also played for several weeks at the Club Saint-Germain with Wilen and Jordan. Much material was added to the original 'Barney' RCA album they recorded at the Club for the two CDs that came out several years ago. Beautiful sessions with one of the earliest appearance of Daniel Humair on drums.

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KD also travelled to France in 1959 to record the music for the film 'Un Temoin Dans La Ville' with Barney Wilen and Duke Jordan. The three also appeared in scenes from the Roger Vadim film 'Les Liaisons Dangereuses'. Dorham also played for several weeks at the Club Saint-Germain with Wilen and Jordan. Much material was added to the original 'Barney' RCA album they recorded at the Club for the two CDs that came out several years ago. Beautiful sessions with one of the earliest appearance of Daniel Humair on drums.

I have recently been listening to the Temoin Dans La Ville soundtrack again (available on Jazz in Paris: Jazz et Cinéma Vol. 1) and found a copy of the double disk set of the Saint Germain material you refer to last week. Many thumbs up. :tup

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I forgot the Riverside date Dorham did with Ernie Henry. I suspect that the idea to have a band without a piano was discussed between Dorham and Roach, as they both practiced that at the same time! The Roach Dorham band recorded without piano for the "Max Roach plays Charlie Parker" LP (part of the Mosaic, but only partially released at the time), all dating from November/December 1957, with Mobley on tenor - the album was completed in April, 1958 with Dorham and George Coleman, who stayed with Max after Kenny left.

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Dorham died in 1972 at age 48, of kidney failure - it seems his illnes took its toll several years earlier, after the band with Henderson.

I suspect that he and Alfred Lion didn't get along very well, despite the half-dozen albums as a leader for Blue Note - there is the possible disagreement (imagine the royalties Dorham would have got from "Blue Bossa" alone!) about song publishing, the one unreleased 1961 session ...

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Much material was added to the original 'Barney' RCA album they recorded at the Club for the two CDs that came out several years ago. Beautiful sessions with one of the earliest appearance of Daniel Humair on drums.

Brownie or couw, is that double CD still available? Could you post an issue number? I only have the soundtrack and like it very much!

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Brownie or couw, is that double CD still available? Could you post an issue number? I only have the soundtrack and like it very much!

Mike, this was not a double CD. It was a single CD issued as 'More from Barney at the Club Saint-Germain des Pres' (BMG 74321544222).

Recorded April 24/25, 1959.

Tracks list:

- The Best Things In Life Are Free

- All The Things You Are

- Reets And I

- Round Midnight

- With a Song In My Heart

- Time on My Hands

- There Will Never Be Another You

- As Time Goes By

This had the same shot of Barney Wilen on the cover as the original LP issue and CD.

I was at the Club Saint-Germain a couple of times when KD/Wilen/Jordan played there but that's not me you hear in the audience clapping hands. Missed the nights they recorded for RCA.

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I've got the two CDs in a cheap cardboard box, subtitled "the complete RCA Victor recording". It has both "Barney" (with additional material), and the "More From Barney..." CDs. Both clock in at more than 70 minutes, and it's a fantastic set!

I love Wilen, and Dorham and Duke Jordan turn in some good solos, too. Daniel Humair was (and still is!) one of Europe's foremost drummers. (He is swiss, ain't he? Or am I mixing something up?)

(Mike, as we've got an open exchange, tell me if you'd like to get a copy. Has anything arrived yet, by the way?)

ubu

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Great that you have been there! Would you mind sharing some reminisces about KD with us?

Ooh la la, this was a long, long time ago.

I had free entrance privileges at the time (1959) at the Club Saint-Germain (don't ask me why) (complicated!) but I was finishing highschool then and did not have as many opportunities as I would have wanted to go there. The club was a 15-minute walk from where home.

The Club Saint-Germain had extraordinary guests in the late '50s: Miles Davis, Bud Powell, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, JJ Johnson, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Kenny Dorham were appearing there in succession.

Thinking back about it, all those people were on hand and I took going to and listen to them a bit too much for granted. This was really the case of 'Hey, Art Blakey is playing down at the club, let's go down there!'. And those were the Messengers with Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merrit! What I wouln't give to get back to that place to hear those people!

I have not as many reminiscences of Kenny Dorham as I have from some other evenings at the Club. but I do know that I found his trumpet sound absolutely beautiful! I preferred his sound to Lee Morgan and Blue Mitchell, two other favorites who played the Club. Still do. There is an uniqueness in Dorham's sound that still leaves me awed.

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  • 4 weeks later...

What I dig about KD is not only his unique, bittersweet sound but the fact that IMO, he was the greatest trumpeter-composer of them all. I just finished making for my own enjoyment, out of my own collection, a compilation CD-R of Dorham compositions on which he is featured either as a leader or a sidemen on 12 different sessions between 1955 and 1964. The compositions:

Tahitian Suite, La Villa, Sao Paulo, Lotus Blossom, Sunrise in Mexico, El Matador, Escapade, Speculate, The Prophet, Short Story, Minor's Holiday and Horn Salute. All great pieces and there were many more to choose from.

MartyJazz

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I'm probably in the minority here, but I prefer SHOWBOAT to JAZZ CONTEMPORARY. Both are fine, but the former really sparkles as a group effort. In particular, Jimmy Heath turns in one of his best recorded performances, feeling the influence of his homeboy John Coltrane and dealing with it in a no-nonsense manner.

I usually don't care for those "jazz versions of a Broadway show" type albums, but the Kern material in this one is strong both melodiacally and harmonically, and KD carpe diems like a mofo, givining each tune a reading that is both deeply personal and germane to the material itself, something that doesn't always happen in these type affairs.

Over the years, the preference I've encountered in others is JAZZ CONTEMPORARY, but for me, I'll take SHOWBOAT by a length and a half.

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"Round About Midnight at the Cafe Bohemia" is one of my favorite live sets. I know some people who don't think so highly of it, but I love it. Love him with the Messengers at the Bohemia too. Clifford Brown is a hard act to follow, but Kenny did it with style.

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:tup

I love the Bohemia sets - the Prophets and the Blakeys!

No need to compare the Bohemias with the Brownie ones - we can have and enjoy both of them!

And they're quite different in style anyway! I think Watkins and Mobley make a huge difference - the whole feel of the band has evolved pretty much between these two dates - and Brownie's marvellous playing (though his relative youth shows sometimes, in my opinion) notwithstanding, I personally may even prefer the Bohemias of Blakey. (Sacrilege, but who cares...)

ubu

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...and Brownie's marvellous playing (though his relative youth shows sometimes, in my opinion) notwithstanding, I personally may even prefer the Bohemias of Blakey. (Sacrilege, but who cares...)

Infidel! I declare a Clifford Brown fatwa! Death to the Unbeliever! :g

I don't think you can compare Kenny and Brownie. I was just saying that many players would find it daunting to follow someone like Clifford. Not only did Kenny do it well, he did it brilliantly.

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...and Brownie's marvellous playing (though his relative youth shows sometimes, in my opinion) notwithstanding, I personally may even prefer the Bohemias of Blakey. (Sacrilege, but who cares...)

Infidel! I declare a Clifford Brown fatwa! Death to the Unbeliever! :g

I don't think you can compare Kenny and Brownie. I was just saying that many players would find it daunting to follow someone like Clifford. Not only did Kenny do it well, he did it brilliantly.

:tup

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