RIP, Steve Grossman.

[Hardbopjazz]

Today’s turning out to be a bad day.  
RIP, Steve. Thanks for the music.  

[JSngry]

Congrats for making it this long. RIP!

[HutchFan]

Sad news.

R.I.P.

 

[mikeweil]

R.I.P.

I saw him live with Stone Alliance in 1974 - I like the way he played back then and on his own albums until 1980 much better than his later, Rollins-influenced style. He was only 69 ... 3 years older than I am ..... 

Edited August 17, 2020 by mikeweil

[danasgoodstuff]

 

[Late]

The Day Elvin Jones Fired Up Milwaukee's Lakefront Festival of Art in 1972

I love this quartet. Wouldn't be the same without Grossman.

 

[soulpope]

R.I.P ....

[sidewinder]

Sad news - way too young. RIP.

Another fan here of his work with Elvin and Miles.

[Peter Friedman]

Sorry to hear this bad news. I very much liked his playing in th eRollins style. His recording with Barry Harris a particular favorite.

[felser]

7 hours ago, Late said:

The Day Elvin Jones Fired Up Milwaukee's Lakefront Festival of Art in 1972

I love this quartet. Wouldn't be the same without Grossman.

 

I loved it also.  "Live at the Lighthouse" was one of my very early jazz purchases.   Seeing a picture of the group is jarring to me, actually, never thought about appearances, Elvin playing with what looked like a bunch of hippies.  Gene Perla really sounded great with that group.  And the Liebman/Grossman front line just worked so well.  

[clifford_thornton]

Cool piece on the Elvin group. Also read an interesting interview with Liebman on Grossman and that scene -- 

http://davidliebman.com/home/interviews/on-saxophonist-steve-grossman-with-jonathan-beckett-2012/

really don't know much of Grossman's music apart from Elvin, Miles, Terumasa Hino, and Sunrise Studios, but I do like his playing in those contexts. RIP.

[sidewinder]

Remember buying those two ‘Lighthouse’ CDs as longboxes back in 1989. Among the first CDs I ever bought - from ‘Sam the Record Man’ in Toronto if I remember rightly. Some fine hours playing those two on repeat play.

[sgcim]

That's very sad to hear. He was a real fixture here in NY back in the day. He taught a lot of tenor players I've played with, and some even played in that big band with him on Lawnguyland when they were still in high school. One guy I knew even lived with him for a few years. He was a musical genius; you could play him some Sonny Rollins record, and he could write out the tenor solo, without a horn, after just listening to it ONCE!!!! According to all the tenor players that knew him, he wasn't really into that stuff he played with Miles and Elvin; his heart was into the real stuff- BOP.

There are some monster tenor players former students of his out there, who are going to be really broken up about this, but some of them picked up some bad 'habits' from him, so maybe that would temper their feelings a bit... One funny story I heard from one tenor player who caught him live somewhere was that SG saw the guy digging his playing, so SG asked him if he was a tenor player, and wanted to take lessons with him. The guy said, "Yeah!" So Steve said to him, "Okay give me $60 right now, and we'll have the lesson sometime soon".

RIP, to a true musical genius.

Edited August 17, 2020 by sgcim

[CJ Shearn]

RIP. Love the Elvin work especially

[Stereojack]

R.I.P.

Saw him with Miles summer 1970. Played mostly soprano sax.

[Mark Stryker]

For those who are interested, I wrote up some thoughts about Grossman's complex legacy for Iverson's Do The Math. 

 

https://ethaniverson.com/one-that-got-away-steve-grossman-1951-2020-by-mark-stryker/?fbclid=IwAR0OABLoRyM08rjldPu_MmYD0hstSyQlOZwcJuvmiDW6uSCMY4yfHSZPZyg

 

 

[Larry Kart]

Grosman is heard to quite good latter-day effect on this 1978 Rene Urtreger album (see below). Grossman is on six of the album's eleven tracks and iiRC is in very inventive relaxed form. Perhaps the fact that Urteger was older (b.1934), is a brilliant pianist, was the leader, and supplied a variety of heady frameworks (three of the tracks with Grossman include a small jazz-savvy string ensemble)  served to take some pressure off Grossman.

[Mark Stryker]

7 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Grosman is heard to quite good latter-day effect on this 1978 Rene Urtreger album (see below). Grossman is on six of the album's eleven tracks and iiRC is in very inventive relaxed form. Perhaps the fact that Urteger was older (b.1934), is a brilliant pianist, was the leader, and supplied a variety of heady frameworks (three of the tracks with Grossman include a small jazz-savvy string ensemble)  served to take some pressure off Grossman.

Hey, thanks for the heads up. That's one I don't know.

[HutchFan]

35 minutes ago, Mark Stryker said:

For those who are interested, I wrote up some thoughts about Grossman's complex legacy for Iverson's Do The Math. 

 

https://ethaniverson.com/one-that-got-away-steve-grossman-1951-2020-by-mark-stryker/?fbclid=IwAR0OABLoRyM08rjldPu_MmYD0hstSyQlOZwcJuvmiDW6uSCMY4yfHSZPZyg

 

 

That's an insightful and fascinating career overview, Mark.  Thank you for sharing it!

 

Edited August 18, 2020 by HutchFan

[mjzee]

Dave Liebman posted this on Facebook:

 

PASSINGS: STEVE GROSSMAN 

Someone jokingly commented that Liebman-Grossman sounded like a law firm!! For sure we were tight in the early 70s, even trading the saxophone chairs with the Elvin Jones' and Miles Davis’ Groups. We WERE the happening sax players in the early ‘70s rooted in first generation post-Coltrane. Steve was the most talented of the “Jewish mafia” (Mike Brecker, Bob Berg, Grossman and myself). Legend has it that Steve’s older trumpet-playing brother got him into practicing and transcribing at first Bird, followed by Trane. By the time Steve was 15 years old, he sounded more like the originals than they did. Plus he played more than acceptable drums, bass and piano. With Miles, Steve was replacing Wayne Shorter, a pretty heavy load for an 18 year old guy. Musically, he and I were trying to deal with pentatonics and chromaticism, pushing the tenor into other sonic areas. We played quite a bit of free jazz in my midtown loft during those years. For a time we even roomed together. The next decades found Steve doing one-nighters and the like in Europe, kind of slipping through the New York jazz cracks. He got into Newk, while staying the course of upholding the bebop tradition. We had a lot of fun together, especially in Elvin’s group with the addition of bassist Gene Perla. The ”Live At The Lighthouse” recording remains as a testament to Steve and myself reaching forth. Talking raw talent, that was Steve Grossman to the tee!!

[Mark Stryker]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

That's an insightful and fascinating career overview, Mark.  Thank you for sharing it!

 

Thanks much.

[mikeweil]

3 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

For those who are interested, I wrote up some thoughts about Grossman's complex legacy for Iverson's Do The Math. 

 

https://ethaniverson.com/one-that-got-away-steve-grossman-1951-2020-by-mark-stryker/?fbclid=IwAR0OABLoRyM08rjldPu_MmYD0hstSyQlOZwcJuvmiDW6uSCMY4yfHSZPZyg

 

 

Great article! Terra Firma really rocks, and Con Amigos has my favourite Grossman solo. 

[JSngry]

for people who do "that sort of thing", perhaps the most influential of all Grossman recordings are the Live @ Brown's stuff. I've run into more than enough people to say this with confidence.

[felser]

11 hours ago, JSngry said:

for people who do "that sort of thing", perhaps the most influential of all Grossman recordings are the Live @ Brown's stuff. I've run into more than enough people to say this with confidence.

Can you give more detail on those?  Google search came up empty.

[JSngry]

just some homemade tapes of a club date, i don't remember who all was on it, quartet. But Grossman was playing long LONG solos and feeling no pain.

Ask the next "that kind" of tenor player you see, they will probably be able to tell you. Or maybe not, maybe they're still kept secret, the way that Trane's Paris date with Miles was before that got leaked out little by little.