Frank Wess RIP

[sgcim]

To quote Milt Jackson concerning Frank Wess:

"Ain't but a few of us left."

RIP, Mr. Wess

[Daniel A]

I'm very sorry to hear this. Wess was on the first real jazz album I heard and then listened to over and over; "Flutes and Reeds" with Jerome Richardson.

[king ubu]

RIP. I think his self-titled The Frank Wess Quartet was one of the last OJCs issued.

http://www2.concordmusicgroup.com/albums/The-Frank-Wess-Quartet/

And that's a very good one!

Also his Savoy recordings from the fifties. Got to dig them up again ...

[Claude Schlouch]

RIP

[Cyril]

Rest in peace, Frank Wess.

[Stereojack]

A marvelous musician - sometimes taken for granted because he was so busy and so very dependable. I got to see him with Basie and later with the New York Jazz Quartet. RIP, Frank.

[mjzee]

I'll be spinning this later today...

[mikeweil]

What can you say ... a real great musician, dependable, and able to deliver a real hot solo when desired. I cherish that VeeJay Lp where he plays alongside Frank Foster and Gene Ammons and always wins the prize.

R.I.P.

[John L]

RIP

[king ubu]

What can you say ... a real great musician, dependable, and able to deliver a real hot solo when desired. I cherish that VeeJay Lp where he plays alongside Frank Foster and Gene Ammons and always wins the prize.

R.I.P.

Don't know that one ... but wins all prices with Coltrane and Lady Q, too! And that Concord album with Frank Foster pictured above is wonderful, get hold of it if you can!

[Mike Schwartz]

Frank Wess Memorial Radio Broadcast WKCR

6PM 10/31/13 - 9PM 11/1/13

www.wkcr.org

[Blue Train]

Be well....


http://youtu.be/17ktLA7pSgA

http://youtu.be/9e0yzoSSfkI

[sidewinder]

Will be spinning this one later tonight..

[Clunky]

Sad loss indeed. RIP

[mikeweil]

What can you say ... a real great musician, dependable, and able to deliver a real hot solo when desired. I cherish that VeeJay Lp where he plays alongside Frank Foster and Gene Ammons and always wins the prize.

R.I.P.

Don't know that one ... but wins all prices with Coltrane and Lady Q, too! And that Concord album with Frank Foster pictured above is wonderful, get hold of it if you can!

That one was issued under Bennie Green's name, "The Swingin'est" - but it may be reissued under somebody else's name, too. There was one under Gene Ammons's name, "Juggin' Around", but that subsituted a track. The complete session was six tracks, I have a twofer Blue Moon edition with all of them.

Edited October 31, 2013 by mikeweil

[king ubu]

Thanks, that looks interesting! I remember hearing about that Green album - got to look for this twofer then!

[Tom 1960]

I imagine I've told this story before but I saw Frank perform a few years back as part of a celebration marking the 75'th birthday of David Fathead Newman. Sadly David was too sick to perform and was unable to attend. In the band along with Frank was Cedar Walton. All 3 have now left us. R.I.P. Frank.

[Justin V]

His album with Hank Jones, Hank and Frank, is desert-island material. I don't have nearly enough of his music. RIP, Mr. Wess, and thank you for the music.

[alocispepraluger102]

http://www.studentaf...ovember-1st-9pm

"Join us as we commemorate the life and music of jazz saxophonist and flutist Frank Wess, who passed away on Wednesday, 30th of October at the age of 91. We will preempt all regular programming from 6:00pm on Thursday, 31st of October to 9:00pm on Friday, 1st of November. "

[Shawn]

Damn. R.I.P.

I had the pleasure of seeing Wess back in the 90s, he made a surprise appearance at a Hank Crawford & Jimmy McGriff performance at Jazz Alley in Seattle. Great player.

[Larry Kart]

Excellent arranger, too. I recall hearing Toshiko's band play several of his pieces at a Chicago club in the 1980s. They were gorgeously and subtly laid out for the ensemble -- quite a contrast in that respect, or so I felt, with the leader's writing.

[Mark Stryker]

Larry -- small world story. When Toshiko's band was playing at Rick's in 1985 I came up from Champaign to interview Brian Lynch who was going to be playing down in Urbana shortly thereafter. I was with Brian when somebody called Brian's room to literally read him your Tribune review over the phone, which said nice things about him. (FWIW, I was trying to freelance a piece for the paper in Champaign, having just graduated from U of I, but I don't think it ever ran.)

Edited November 1, 2013 by Mark Stryker

[Larry Kart]

Mark -- I re-read that review last night after I sent the post and discovered that it said the band played only one Wess piece and that that piece was arranged by Toshiko, not Wess. Whatever, my memory was that Wess's piece sounded very different from her own compositions (his a somewhat Strayhorn-esque and/or Dameron-like carpet of shifting colors rather than, as with Toshiko, something that sounded like it had been conceived for a two-horn frontline and then expanded). Later on I mentioned how I felt about Toshiko's writing by and large to a friend who is a talented veteran composer-arranger-bandleader-instrumentalist, and he agreed with me in detail (IIRC he said, citing examples, that her sense of how things "sound" vertically is often close to mechanical-random and that her sidemen often found the results frustrating). Finally, a day or two after that review ran I got a post-card from Bill Russo (hadn't met him at the time and somehow never would) saying "right on" or words to that effect.

In any case, arguably self-serving stuff aside, all this came to mind because that was my first encounter with Wess' post-Basie writing, and it was a revelation.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Always good stuff.

I didn't know my edition of the Bennie Green was missing a track. I'll have to look out the Blue Moon version. Or will I? My copy, issued by Charly on the Atlantis label, has 6 tracks...

I like this one a lot, as Frank didn't often record with an organ band

MG

[paul secor]

Thank you, Mr. Wess.