Life in Eb The Phil Woods Autobiography

[Larry Kart]

1 hour ago, sgcim said:

Raney was Haig's little disciple when he first came to NYC, and he and Al would go on walks together. Whenever Haig would see someone he somehow knew to be Jewish, he'd drag Raney across the street to avoid them. On his own, Raney would not avoid Jews on the street.

Gotcha.

P.S. As for the studio, Raney probably wouldn't avoid, say, Bob Weinstock or Ira Gitler or Teddy Charles. Any idea about the nature and origin of Haig's anti-Semitism?

[sgcim]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

Gotcha.

P.S. As for the studio, Raney probably wouldn't avoid, say, Bob Weinstock or Ira Gitler or Teddy Charles or later on Don Schlitten. Any idea about the nature and origin of Haig's anti-Semitism?

From reading "Death of a Bebop Wife" it seemed to come from his family's attitudes.

[Larry Kart]

On the other hand, I can see where if the person approaching were Stan Getz, either man might have some reason to avoid him. 

[felser]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

On the other hand, I can see where if the person approaching were Stan Getz, either man might have some reason to avoid him. 

But Zoot Sims said that Getz was "a bunch of swell guys".😊

[sgcim]

4 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

On the other hand, I can see where if the person approaching were Stan Getz, either man might have some reason to avoid him. 

I don't know what he did to Haig, but Raney became an alcoholic after working with Getz for a number of years, and Billy Bean's last major gig was with Getz. He also became an alcoholic during his time with, and as a result of working with Getz, and never left Philly for the rest of his life, living with his mother till she passed.

Who knows what he did to Rene Thomas, but I recently learned that he died from an OD of heroin, not a heart attack, which I had read in Time Magazine.Maybe the heart attack was caused by the OD, but that wasn't mentioned in Time.

[Larry Kart]

12 hours ago, felser said:

But Zoot Sims said that Getz was "a bunch of swell guys".😊

To be precise, I believe he said "a nice bunch of guys." Also, when told that Stan had insisted that Astrud Gilberto get no royalties but only the standard session fee for her hit recording with him of "The Girl from Ipanema," Al Cohn commented, "It's good to see that Stan Getz hasn't changed."

[AllenLowe]

16 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Gotcha.

P.S. As for the studio, Raney probably wouldn't avoid, say, Bob Weinstock or Ira Gitler or Teddy Charles. Any idea about the nature and origin of Haig's anti-Semitism?

I just gotta add, re-Haig's supposed anti-semitism, that we were very close friends and that I am Jewish. I think we gotta understand that all this crazy stuff that Haig got in the middle of was due to his acute alcoholism. It's a vicious disease with a lot of Jekyl-and-Hyde characteristics. Bird's death messed up a lot of players who, in the words of Barry Harris, "didn't know what to do next." But Al was not a racist or an anti-semite that I saw in any way, shape, or form.

Edited March 10, 2021 by AllenLowe

[Larry Kart]

10 hours ago, sgcim said:

I don't know what he did to Haig, but Raney became an alcoholic after working with Getz for a number of years, and Billy Bean's last major gig was with Getz. He also became an alcoholic during his time with, and as a result of working with Getz, and never left Philly for the rest of his life, living with his mother till she passed.

Who knows what he did to Rene Thomas, but I recently learned that he died from an OD of heroin, not a heart attack, which I had read in Time Magazine.Maybe the heart attack was caused by the OD, but that wasn't mentioned in Time.

When trumpeter Dick Sherman, then a recovering addict, worked with Getz, Stan tried to pay him off in heroin.

[BillF]

I understand it was currency at one time in the Messengers, too.

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

When trumpeter Dick Sherman, then a recovering addict, worked with Getz, Stan tried to pay him off in heroin.

Interesting from an economic perspective. Was there an inefficiency between the value of cash and the cost of heroin, or did Stan just have too much of the latter and didn't want to bother with getting any of the former for a more traditional sideman payment?

1 hour ago, BillF said:

I understand it was currency at one time in the Messengers, too.

I don't know about currency but Eddie Higgins told me that he had an offer from Blakey to join the Messengers after his sideman appearance on the Morgan VeeJay LP but ultimately declined because he had a family to support and he heard that after paying the hotel and paying the connection, there might not be enough money left for salaries at the end of an engagement.

[sgcim]

5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

When trumpeter Dick Sherman, then a recovering addict, worked with Getz, Stan tried to pay him off in heroin.

Then there's the heartwarming story recounted by Mel Lewis in his autobiography about the time a musician was celebrating his one year anniversary of being off heroin. Stan's thoughtful present to the musician? A bag or two of heroin!

Gary Burton's autobiography contains a multitude of 'touching' stories about his tenure with Getz, closing with the straw that broke the vibist's back: Stan had been using him as his road manager, taking care of a bunch of time consuming tasks. One day, Burton came across an actual statement of how much the group was being paid for their gigs. Burton realized that he was being paid something like 1/4 of what he should have been paid, and that wasn't even taking into account that he had been acting as Getz' road manager!

Burton gave Getz his notice the next day...

[Larry Kart]

19 minutes ago, sgcim said:

Then there's the heartwarming story recounted by Mel Lewis in his autobiography about the time a musician was celebrating his one year anniversary of being off heroin. Stan's thoughtful present to the musician? A bag or two of heroin!

Gary Burton's autobiography contains a multitude of 'touching' stories about his tenure with Getz, closing with the straw that broke the vibist's back: Stan had been using him as his road manager, taking care of a bunch of time consuming tasks. One day, Burton came across an actual statement of how much the group was being paid for their gigs. Burton realized that he was being paid something like 1/4 of what he should have been paid, and that wasn't even taking into account that he had been acting as Getz' road manager!

Burton gave Getz his notice the next day...

The musician in that Mel Lewis story might have been Dick Sherman. To answer Dan Gould's question above, it might have been because Stan had more heroin around than money at the time or, and I might vote for this, he just wanted out of sheer perversity to mess Sherman up.

[JSngry]

People will try to pay you in drugs because it's cheaper for them than cash + they figure that if you're gonna go for the okey-doke, hey, why not. They save money, you get high, everybody's happy.

Besides, if you're an addict and not just a Get High Boy, hey, there you go, they can get you to play the next gig for that, and the next, and the next...all the gigs, until you fuck up once too often or once too badly. And then they can just find another chump.

This shit ain't pretty, this getting paid business. Just play the records.

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

People will try to pay you in drugs because it's cheaper for them than cash + they figure that if you're gonna go for the okey-doke, hey, why not. They save money, you get high, everybody's happy.

 

Yeah but if you're an addict too, you need to replace that dope you're using as cash. And I don't think they'll give you more if you play a pretty ballad for them, you gotta, you know, hand over the cash.  And if the dope is perfectly calibrated to the cash owed, the only thing saved is the time/expense of getting the money to pay in the normal way.

I like Larry's theory of Getz doing it just to fuck with people.

[JSngry]

Just now, Dan Gould said:

Yeah but if you're an addict too, you need to replace that dope you're using as cash. And I don't think they'll give you more if you play a pretty ballad for them, you gotta, you know, hand over the cash.  And if the dope is perfectly calibrated to the cash owed, the only thing saved is the time/expense of getting the money to pay in the normal way.

I like Larry's theory of Getz doing it just to fuck with people.

See, that's WAY to logical. It don't work that way. People not be looking past the next high, by any means necessary, ASAP.

And cash? You can get cash, somehow, almost always. And if you can't, hey, excuses are the only thing easier to get than dope.

I mean, a professional junkie will plan it out and handle their business, but still...THE PANIC IS ON.

Who was that SF guy who was notorious for getting people strung out and paying them in dope? Virgil Gonzalves? Every town's got one. At least one. Slavers, all of them.

As far as Getz...I would not rule out that he was any worse than anybody else, just better at it than most.

[sgcim]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

See, that's WAY to logical. It don't work that way. People not be looking past the next high, by any means necessary, ASAP.

And cash? You can get cash, somehow, almost always. And if you can't, hey, excuses are the only thing easier to get than dope.

I mean, a professional junkie will plan it out and handle their business, but still...THE PANIC IS ON.

Who was that SF guy who was notorious for getting people strung out and paying them in dope? Virgil Gonzalves? Every town's got one. At least one. Slavers, all of them.

As far as Getz...I would not rule out that he was any worse than anybody else, just better at it than most.

Yeah, but with the Sherman thing (I think it was Sherman, but I loaned the Lewis book to a friend and I can't check it now), this was at a one year anniversary party for the poor guy being off heroin, and what does Getz give him? A tie? a new mouthpiece, a book? No, Stanley gave him an envelope that contained a bag or two of heroin.

I read somewhere that Prestige used to pay their musicians with dope.

[JSngry]

9 hours ago, sgcim said:

Yeah, but with the Sherman thing (I think it was Sherman, but I loaned the Lewis book to a friend and I can't check it now), this was at a one year anniversary party for the poor guy being off heroin, and what does Getz give him? A tie? a new mouthpiece, a book? No, Stanley gave him an envelope that contained a bag or two of heroin.

 

There are vultures everywhere who try to get somebody back using once they've gone clean. Dealers, fellow users, sick people everywhere who cannot live without capturing them a slave.

I do not think that Prestige literally paid people in dope.