Blue Wisp Memories

[Mark Stryker]

http://www.musicincincinnati.com/site/commentary/Remembering_the_Blue_Wisp.html

Here's a nice piece about the Blue Wisp club in Cincinnati. Coda: the writer was my editor for a few years in Detroit. Nice woman who really knows the music.

[John Tapscott]

Very interesting reading. I have 6 or 8 fine recordings by the Blue Wisp Big Band. It's a very good band, and I take it from the article that it's still playing regularly. Von Ohlen is a great drummer.

[Larry Kart]

Ah, yes -- "Rollin' with Van Ohlen." That was a fine band, or rather a real band. It also gave birth to at least one nice recorded small-group offshoot, band member Tim Hagans' first album -- "From the Neck Down" (1984) an LP on a local label MoPro. I reviewed it enthusiastically way back when. Nice also to hear a lot with the Blue Wisp of the band's other chief trumpet voice, George Russell alumnus Al Kiger.

[Mark Stryker]

Von Ohlin is a very musical drummer -- underrated. One of the best big band drummers who also sounds good in a small-group setting. If he had a different temperament, he'd be much better known -- living in LA or NY, recording, traveling with bigger name folks. But he's really a Midwesterner.

For a long time he co-led a once-a-week band in Indianapolis with pianist-composer-arranger Steve Allee that I think ran concurrently with the Blue Wisp band for a bit. A nice guy too -- I wrote a chart in high school once on "Billie's Bounce" and -- in a ballsy move I had no business making -- called him up and told him who I was and asked if his band would read it at one of their rehearsals. He agreed, and somewhere I have a tape of it I made on a crappy little machine. It was my first real big band arrangement and there was some funky stuff in it (as in "wrong"), but a lot of it worked and the guys were generous with praise. Kiger was there; so was the late tenor saxophonist Paul Plummer. Anyway, I was always grateful Von Ohlin took the time ...

Edited March 26, 2013 by Mark Stryker

[Larry Kart]

Paul Plummer was a terrific and quite individual player who grew a great deal from the already high level he had reached when he was young and with George Russell.. I have an album he did in the mid-1980s or earlier with an Indianapolis keyboardist Steve Corn that's a gem. And there were some fine CDs with Plummer later on, too. Latter-day Plummer was perhaps somewhat reminiscent in approach to JR Monterose in that however striking their work was harmonically, it seemed to be all melody and rhythm in inspiration.

Here's that album, co-led by Plummer and drummer Ron Enyard:

http://www.amazon.com/Detroit-Opium-Paul-Plummer-Enyard/dp/B007TNE980/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1364311852&sr=1-3&keywords=Paul+plummer

Also, there's this, which came up once before here a good while ago:

http://iufoundation.iu.edu/newsroom/archive/2012/plummer-jacobs-gift.html

[ghost of miles]

Mark, do you have this CD?

http://www.amazon.com/Downtown-Blues-John-Von-Ohlen/dp/B00000K1G0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1365122114&sr=1-1&keywords=von+ohlen+allee

[Mark Stryker]

Mark, do you have this CD?

http://www.amazon.com/Downtown-Blues-John-Von-Ohlen/dp/B00000K1G0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1365122114&sr=1-1&keywords=von+ohlen+allee

No, never seen/heard it. Is the big band or small group? When was it recorded. There was an ugly falling out between Von Ohlen and Allee, yes?