Clark Terry's 92nd birthday today.

[sgcim]

WKCR is playing a day of CT. Just heard the 1977 MPS LP, "Clark After Dark", great Tony Coe arrangements, and wonderful CT. Happy Birthday CT!

Edited December 15, 2012 by sgcim

[Hardbopjazz]

Happy Birthday Clark. Hope you're feeling better.

[imeanyou]

I hope Clark is in good health, all things being equal. I know he's been through some difficult times in the last couple of years with his amputations but he's still with us. Happy birthday Mr Terry.

[flat5]

Happy Birthday Mr. Terry!

[sidewinder]

Happy Birthday Mr Terry ! I was watching a DVD of the Big Bad Band from the 1970s the other day (European Tour broadcasts) and was reminded of just how good that undersung band was. And what a great lineup !

[CJ Shearn]

Happy birthday!!

[Cyril]

Happy Birthday, Mr Terry !!!

[gmonahan]

Happy birthday to one of the great ones!

[JSngry]

Indomitable!

[sgcim]

I just finished CT's autobiography, and thought I'd post something on it, because I haven't seen much written on it.

Three co-authors passed away before it was done, so it was written with CT's wife, Gwen, and it largely comes across as CT's speaking voice. It starts out with his life in St. Louis (where he meets a young fellow trpt. player named "Dewey") and then goes into his stints with Barnet, Basie and Duke, with many great stories about life on the road. It skips around chronologically when he wants to make a point.

He then goes into his twelve years with NBC, and his teaching and freelance career after that.

A few stories I found interesting were:

1) He goes into the drug scene in the 50s, where at the Apollo, several musicians tried to hold him down and inject him with drugs, but he fought them off with his training as a boxer. He never used narcotics.

2) He finds a "bulk lying in the gutter on Broadway". He kicks it over, and finds it was Miles Davis. He takes him back to his hotel room, leaves MD in bed, and comes back to find MD walked off with his trumpet, clothes and radio. A few days later he saw Philly Joe Jones walking down Broadway with CT's brand new maroon Phil Kronfeld shirt! He gets his wife to call MD's father to tell him that Doc Davis "thinks he's going to Julliard, but he's going to Yardbird". Doc Davis refused to believe Miles was on narcotics, and said that if musicians like CT would leave him alone, "he wouldn't be into that kind of traffic."

3) Norman Granz didn't like the subtle sound of the flugelhorn ( or much other subtlety), so he got a guy to try and steal CT's flugelhorn while he was on tour with NG, but CT found out about it, and prevented it.

4) Patti Ausin was seven years old when she was singing with "Free

and Easy" Q's musical in France.

5) He was passed over for Doc Severinsen's job on the Tonight Show because CT would ruin the ratings in the Southern market.

Then they told him to find another black trpt. player for the band, but he had to be married (when most of the other players in the Tonight Show Band weren't married). Then Aaron Levine told CT, "we're going to have to let your boy go", because Snookie wasn't getting along well with Skitch Henderson. CT said, "He's not my boy, Aaron. He's my FRIEND", and if you want to fire him, you'll have to fire me, too. They wound up keeping both of them.

6) Monk came into a club CT was playing at in 56 and told him to come over the Baronness' house to work on some songs for his new LP. They spend three hours watching Monk throw some stuff into the fire in the fireplace, and Monk doesn't say a word.

Then they do the session the next day without a rehearsal...

[brownie]

sgcim, thanks for bringing our attention to the CT bio! I was not planning to get it but if the rest of the book is as interesting I will certainly change my mind!

Love the last item with Monk. Great album it turned out!

[king ubu]

Yes indeed!

[Caravan]

Here's the Monk story in Clark Terry's own words:

As it was situated in 1956 in the book, this presumably relates to the second (additional) session for Brilliant Corners, where Terry played on Bemsha Swing and not to the Terry-Monk Quartet date, which was done in 1958.

[JSngry]

Worth remembering, perhaps, that the Terry/Monk album was actually recorded under Terry's leadership, with Monk as sideman.

[marcello]

A wonderful artist and man.

Once, a long time ago, I gave him a photo that I took of him. He took me backstage and we have a lovely conversation that night and several nights during the week that he was playing at the club. He could play some stuff, especially when he had a mute in his trumpet, that reminded me of Miles with more chops. You could really hear the influence he had on Miles.

That first night, I gave him the photo nicely mounted and matted, and he when saw that I didn't sign it, he demanded that I put a signature to it, so that when people saw it they new who the photographer was. He could exude a unique mixture of sweetness, joy and more than a little toughness/badness from the stage and in person.

[sgcim]

CT lived on the road from the time he got kicked out of high school and his house for getting a girl pregnant, till 1960, when he became the first black dude to work for the NBC Studio Orchestra.

He was the guy who broke up the fight between Mingus and Tizol when he was with Duke. Mingus had a fire axe(!) and Tizol had a huge switchblade, and CT held them apart from each other, till they got the stage call. Oscar Pettiford replaced Mingus the next night, laughing his head off about Mingus(whom he had previously clocked at a club), and CT said no one noticed any difference from the bass chair.

The band was so tough, the first thing CT would do each night was take out his switchblade, and throw it into his music stand, to let everyone know not to mess with him!

When Mingus later called him for a rehearsal for the LP "PreBird", the manuscript was so bad, CT told him he couldn't read it and he was walking out. Mingus stood in front of him, and tried to intimidate him physically, but CT put his trumpet case down and gave Mingus such a threatening look, Mingus let him leave.

I played at the Jimmy Nottingham Memorial concert with CT at the Storytown club in NY, and he was the sweetest cat in the world, giving me vocal praise on the stand, whenever he heard anything he liked.

Edited December 30, 2012 by sgcim