Musicians/jerks

[Cyril]

Keith Jarrett & Rita Reys.

[JSngry]

Tommy Jerques

And do tell me about Rita Reys, only know the name and a few of the records.

[Cyril]

Difficult to explain. Rita was thinking she was the greatest of all jazz singers. She was the big star...!!! Her disparagement for others, etc.

Edited May 2, 2016 by Cyril

[fasstrack]

On 30/04/2016 at 1:10 PM, duaneiac said:

Thanks for those anecdotes about Ruby Braff.  I have no doubt that he well deserved his reputation for being a jerk.  There are just too many stories about him to deny that conclusion.  Maybe my birthday greetings just caught him on a good day.  It was towards the end of his life when I wrote him, so perhaps he had mellowed a bit or perhaps he was a little more reflective given that he must have realized the end was nearing.  Didn't he battle emphysema the last few years of his life?  Anyway, I never expected a reply from any of the musicians I sent birthday greetings to (now sadly almost all gone, save for Sonny Rollins who sent me a thank you card!), least of all from the notorious Ruby Braff.  The fact that he would take even 10 minutes to write a thank you letter to some one he'd never met, and the contents of that letter as well, showed me there must have been a softer side to the man as well.

I never met him. Those are all second-hand stories, though amusing. Probably I should have kept them to myself...

I'm sure there was a softer side.

Edited May 3, 2016 by fasstrack

[JSngry]

Maybe wrongly, maybe notly, I've gotten the impression that Braff was more what they used to call "salty"  not so much an asshole, just frisky and brisk and not one to mince words or disguise feelings.

To me, a real jerk is somebody who fucks you over and then shrugs it off like oh, too bad, no real empathy about others. But that is not salty. 

[l p]

steve slagle refused to identify a couple of his old tunes for me. said that he doesn't want to listen to his music from 1985. then proceeded to give me a commercial about what he's recording now.

[clifford_thornton]

48 minutes ago, l p said:

steve slagle refused to identify a couple of his old tunes for me. said that he doesn't want to listen to his music from 1985. then proceeded to give me a commercial about what he's recording now.

I had this problem when interviewing Dave Holland. No Karyobin stories for me...

[7/4]

21 hours ago, l p said:

steve slagle refused to identify a couple of his old tunes for me. said that he doesn't want to listen to his music from 1985. then proceeded to give me a commercial about what he's recording now.

 

20 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

I had this problem when interviewing Dave Holland. No Karyobin stories for me...

Too bad. He's still great, but his music gets progressively less interesting despite the high level of musicianship.

On 5/3/2016 at 0:43 PM, JSngry said:

To me, a real jerk is somebody who fucks you over and then shrugs it off like oh, too bad, no real empathy about others. 

True.

[fasstrack]

On 23/04/2004 at 10:05 AM, Guest akanalog said:

one time ron carter played at my hometown's local community center-real small place of course. this is a little new jersey town and i have no idea why ron carter was even there...some jazz musicians live in the town including ts monk and i think john lee and monk puts on a "giants of jazz show" every year at the local middle school which usually gets some big names-i have seen jackie mclean and phil woods, for instance, on the same stage used for my 6th grade assemblies. anyway, carter played with tony reedus and james williams in this small little space for like 20 people maximum and afterwards my friend who is a drummer and was writing a research paper on jazz went up to carter and inquired if he could ask him a few questions about being a jazz musician and carter refused to speak to him at all. he said he didn't have time to speak to him and just blew him off-i think he might have actually said he did not want to be quoted. i could understand if this had been at some big club but it was a totally informal intimate show and no one was rushing off anywhere. the baird community center does not seem like the kind of place where one should act like a prima donna.

 

also a friend in rhode island went to the newport jazz festival with a friend who was a pianist and they saw les mccann sitting down at a table and the pianist went up to mccann to say how much he liked his music and that he too was a jazz musician and mccann said-"white boy playing jazz? i don't think so." i always thought that was a funny story and don't hold it against mccann. mccann might have been drunk and the pianist friend probably looked like a stoned out college hippie. this story was told to me also, so i cannot verify it personally.

Ron was nice and on my side as a student at CCNY, and has been loving to and concerned about a mutual friend. 

But I can't resist recounting two Joe Puma-Ron Carter stories that also show Puma's withering wit:

Puma was working a duo gig with Ron. Supposedly Ron had complained on break that he didn't want to play any more Gershwin because 'he ripped off my people'.

The comeback:

'Tell you what: Next set we won't play any tunes at all, and you can beat on a log'.

Ouch, and with more than a dollop of uncalled-for racism, but still a classic one-liner.

When I recounted this to (guitarist-luthier) Carl Thompson he told me 'You don't know the other story'.

'What story?'

'Joe couldn't find a bass player for a gig, and someone said 'why don't you call Ron? I think he's open'. Joe declined, and kept calling bass players and striking out. Again, someone said 'No, really. Call Ron'.

'Nah, I don't wanna work with a bass player who talks like David Niven'.
 

Edited September 13, 2016 by fasstrack

[robertoart]

6 hours ago, fasstrack said:

Ron was nice and on my side as a student at CCNY, and has been loving to and concerned about a mutual friend. 

But I can't resist recounting two Joe Puma-Ron Carter stories that also show Puma's withering wit:

Puma was working a duo gig with Ron. Supposedly Ron had complained on break that he didn't want to play any more Gershwin because 'he ripped off my people'.

The comeback:

'Tell you what: Next set we won't play any tunes at all, and you can beat on a log'.

Ouch, and with more than a dollop of uncalled-for racism, but still a classic one-liner.

When I recounted this to (guitarist-luthier) Carl Thompson he told me 'You don't know the other story'.

'What story?'

'Joe couldn't find a bass player for a gig, and someone said 'why don't you call Ron? I think he's open'. Joe declined, and kept calling bass players and striking out. Again, someone said 'No, really. Call Ron'.

'Nah, I don't wanna work with a bass player who talks like David Niven'.
 

It doesn't get any funnier.

[fasstrack]

4 hours ago, robertoart said:

It doesn't get any funnier.

Thank Joe, not me. Granted, that might be hard to do in his current state...

[Pim]

On 2-5-2016 at 9:33 PM, JSngry said:

Tommy Jerques

And do tell me about Rita Reys, only know the name and a few of the records.

Quite a long time ago you asked this Jim, but I happen to hit this topic just now. I have got a few quotes for you:

She sounds like a drunk guy (on Nina Simone)

Off key and a horrible timing (on Anita O’Day)

She really doesn’t do a thing to me (on Billie Holiday)

Overrated and she can’t sing (on Sarah Vaughan)

The worst jazz singer: she can’t hold one note (on Astrid Gilberto)

The only one she could give a break was Ella.

Rita Reys was a horrible, overly arrogant women. And she wasn’t all that great herself too. Small minded, the type of person that does not fit into free art forms like jazz. 

[erwbol]

6 hours ago, Pim said:

Quite a long time ago you asked this Jim, but I happen to hit this topic just now. I have got a few quotes for you:

She sounds like a drunk guy (on Nina Simone)

Off key and a horrible timing (on Anita O’Day)

She really doesn’t do a thing to me (on Billie Holiday)

Overrated and she can’t sing (on Sarah Vaughan)

The worst jazz singer: she can’t hold one note (on Astrid Gilberto)

The only one she could give a break was Ella.

Rita Reys was a horrible, overly arrogant women. And she wasn’t all that great herself too. Small minded, the type of person that does not fit into free art forms like jazz. 

Somehow I'm not surprised to read this.

[Teasing the Korean]

7 hours ago, Pim said:

Rita Reys was a horrible, overly arrogant women. And she wasn’t all that great herself too. Small minded, the type of person that does not fit into free art forms like jazz. 

I had an album of hers with arrangements by the great Tom Dissevelt of electronic music fame.  I sold it for a lot of money.  Not sure if the bidding war was because of Rita Reys or Tom Dissevelt.

[Pim]

11 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I had an album of hers with arrangements by the great Tom Dissevelt of electronic music fame.  I sold it for a lot of money.  Not sure if the bidding war was because of Rita Reys or Tom Dissevelt.

Than you should be twice as glad with that sell now you know this

[Teasing the Korean]

57 minutes ago, Pim said:

Than you should be twice as glad with that sell now you know this

I try not to let entertainers' opinions cloud my views on their work.  I simply didn't think Rita Reys was a very good singer, and I was disappointed that there were no electronics on the album.

Note that I say "try."  When I listen to Stan Getz, I think I am hearing aspects of his personality that I don't like in his playing, and I consequently have a hard time enjoying his music.   

Edited June 30, 2019 by Teasing the Korean

[Gheorghe]

I didn´t know the expression "jerk" in this context (being a hobby fisherman I know a "Jerk Bait" is some big bait for some big pike and so on), but I deduced from the track that it´s about rude behaviour torwards the audience or fellow musicians.

In this context I remember the trumpet player Joe Newman. During the late 70´s early 80´s he came quite often to "Jazzland" in Vienna as a solo artist, working with very very fine local musicians but the way how he "lectured" them on stage was just sad shit. You don´t have to "lecture" good musicians only because they are "locals" how to play "Bye Bye Blackbird". They did a good job, but with that shitty behaviour after some time nobody in my town wanted to play anymore with him.

Maybe he was not aware of it. Joe Newman is a very fine mainstream trumpet player but maybe he is not the greatest of them all. We had artists with bigger names like let´s say Woody Shaw and I didn´t hear no complaints about the locals who played with him.

Another guy I would like to mention was Sonny Stitt. Once he came in town to play with some of the best European musicians around, on piano we had the great Fritz Pauer and on bass was Alarad Pege, the great hungarian bass solist and bass professor. And Sonny Stitt just did really bullshit on stage, "lecturing" them how to play and this was stupid, because with all my deepest respect for Sonny Stitt and I never will say else than that he was one of the great virtuosos on alto and tenor, but if someone can play and Fritz Pauer and Alardar Pege and the drummer who was very fine really play, it´s easy to play a set with Sonny Stitt, his music is not so "far out" that you might have to figure out strange things........

Things got even worse after the concert. It was announced that Sonny might visit the club "Jazz Freddy" and would jam with tenorists Harry Sokal and Roman Schwaller and the same rhythm section, but Mr. Stitt started to show the piano player on stage "how to play piano" and so this was a really embarrasing experience in Spring 1980.