John Coltrane, Reggie Workman and Me...

You see, there's something that comes through you when you have developed your being - that you charge your sound with a particular prana, a particular energy that is unique only to yourself. And nobody can sound like that but you, because that is your fiber and transmission. So I think the sound is one of the most important parts of being a musician. And working with young people, I find there are many young people in the school who have tremendous ability to play their instruments and learn all the theory, but they haven't made their own sound. And so I try to help them discover what that is - so they can feel that this is me, this is the sound I want, this is what I want to develop in my musical career. Somehow, they don't think about their personal input to what they're doing. They don't realize that they have their own sound, their own thing to give.

Reggie Workman

Four For Trane (1964) signed by Reggie, Archie Shepp

So you have all kinds of people that you come in contact with: Gigi Gryce, Jackie McLean... My philosophy became that you do the best in every occasion, and it's all about creating a musical dialogue. I want to have the best dialogue I can, just like in spoken conversation. You walk into a room, you don't know who you're going to encounter, it could be anybody. And you're not going to stop talking to someone because they're from a different place than you, you try to find a common thread... I want to be the best I can be at that moment, and maybe there's someone who just wants to play Broadway shows, and they work on just that area. and doing just that is still a helluva feat. But you notice that many of the musicians who came along with me had to do everything - played Broadway shows, played the clubs, played the lofts, and went on the road. They had to be ready. If Miles Davis called me to go on the road, I had to be ready.

Reggie Workman

Karma (1969) signed by Reggie, Billy Hart, Pharoah Sanders

Best known for a stint with his fellow Philadelphian John Coltrane, Reggie Workman is one of the premier jazz bassists of all time. Appearing on hundreds of sessions in his heralded sixty plus year career, Reggie has been the backbone for Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, Herbie Mann, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp, Wayne Shorter and so many other acclaimed artists. Appropriately lauded throughout, Reggie received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship in music composition in 2020, and he was also named an NEA Jazz Master in 2021, the highest honor that the United States confers upon jazz artists. Though most artists receive these accolades late in their careers as a capstone, Reggie is still a vibrant and creative life force, educating, performing and recording with a ferocity and tenacity that belie his age.

It all began in Philadelphia, as Reggie recalled, "I first started playing in community groups In Philadelphia. My parents recognized my aptitude for music and enrolled me in classes at Gimbels, a local department store in downtown Philly. I studied piano for several years..." A humble beginning and an unusual track, nevertheless Philadelphia was a thriving jazz scene in the 1940s and 1950s, "They called my area of Philly 'brickyard.' Music was everywhere and people came from all over to sit in on jam sessions and enjoy the music. On a given night, you might see Lee Morgan, the Wilson Brothers or Odean Pope. Since Philly was the last stop before New York, I met John Coltrane on several occasions at jams before joining his band. It was an exciting period."

Ugetsu (1963) signed by Reggie, Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton

Though he was only with Trane for one year in 1961, his masterful bass playing is evident on Africa/Brass, Live At The Village Vanguard and Ole Coltrane, three classics in the Coltrane canon. From there, Reggie joined one of the finest iterations of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Wayne Shorter on saxophone and Cedar Walton on piano. With Art at the helm, they were as prolific as they were talented, releasing six albums on Blue Note and Riverside Records within a two year period, creating an enduring legacy of classic hard bop records, including Caravan, Ugetsu and Kyoto.

As Reggie recorded hundreds of sessions with other leading jazz artists, he was steadfast in his commitment to give back to the community which had supported him. In 1970, he co-founded Collective Black Artists to assist musicians, as Reggie remembered, "We as black musicians were not getting work, calls for pit work, calls for orchestra spots, not getting record dates that we needed. We're not going to just lay down and say, 'Nobody will hire us.' We're going to hire ourselves and present our own concerts." It was a selfless act of service which is endemic and possibly unique to jazz artists: they willingly pass on their knowledge and traditions to subsequent generations.

Virgo Vibes (1967) signed by Reggie, Roy Ayers, Charles Tolliver, Buster Williams

Though Reggie was a first call session musician and a fluent hard bop practitioner, he was not content to rest on his laurels. He was equally sought after as a free jazz musician and avant garde composer. A restless sonic explorer with Marion Brown, Marilyn Crispell, Yusef Lateef, Roscoe Mitchell, and Sam Rivers, Reggie appeared on many of their seminal and challenging recordings. Probably his longest tenure, aside from his twenty-five plus years as an educator with The New School in New York City, was his participation with Trio 3, a thirty-five year partnership with the saxophonist/poet Oliver Lake, a founding member of the influential World Saxophone Quartet, and drummer extraordinaire Andrew Cyrille, a colleague for many years with the free jazz piano savant Cecil Taylor. Trio 3, a leaderless trio of extraordinary talent, released more than ten recordings in their storied career.

The Beat Goes On (1967) signed by Reggie

Erin and I were blessed to see Reggie and Trio 3 in one of their last public performances at Dizzy's Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City on February 6, 2022. The trio had announced their retirement from performances so the excitement was palpable to see these legends at one of their last concerts. Several weeks earlier, Erin and I had bought tickets and we were absolutely giddy as the show approached. The day before the show, Erin spoke with our niece and her husband, music lovers who had recently relocated to Brooklyn from New Orleans to see if they wanted to join us. Unfortunately, the show, touted in the New York Times as a must see, was now sold out. Fortunately, we had a hook in Reggie's niece who is a great friend of ours, so Erin called Gisele and we got the two extra tickets we needed. Thank you Gisele! Thank you Reggie!

Trio 3 with Vijay Iyer, Bruce Williams Dizzy’s Club NYC February 6, 2022

The show did not disappoint. The floor-to-ceiling windows of Dizzy's Club afforded a stunning visual backdrop of Columbus Circle and Central Park amid the swirling intensity of the city below. However, the real action and potency was on stage with the brilliant interplay between these virtuoso musicians. As an added bonus, Trio 3 was augmented by pianist Vijay Iyer and alto saxophonist Bruce Williams, two immensely talented and welcome additions. The show started with just the quartet (sans Oliver Lake), with Reggie anchoring the bottom with his deep and resonant bass. After several sprawling pieces, Oliver joined in the fun, trading solos, squawks, squeals and staccato bursts with fellow saxophonist Bruce Williams. Another highlight was "Refractions - Breaking Glass" featuring a spoken word performance by Oliver Lake that was equally poignant and moving. It was an incredible night, the music, at times, disjointed and dissonant, at others, melodic and soothing fueled by the deeply simpatico and telepathic grooves of Reggie and Andrew. As Reggie once wisely counseled, "The majority of people mistakenly feel like they don't need a live musical experience." Perhaps, there are such unfortunates, happily, Erin and I are not among them.

Reggie digging in with Oliver Lake

After the show, Erin and I visited with Reggie and he was very gracious as he signed some of his vinyl. I told him that I loved his playing on Pharoah Sanders's Karma, "This is a great album, it was a lot of fun to record," he affirmed. 'What was it like playing with (other bassists) Richard Davis and Ron Carter?' I inquired. "Oh, we didn't play together in the studio, that was all done later in mixing," he answered. When he saw the Fredddie Hubbard albums, he smiled, "Wow, I love Freddie, I really miss playing with him." We thanked Reggie for his music and especially his exceedingly cool niece Gisele, and we look forward to new music from this creative juggernaut.

Vijay Iyer, Reggie Workman, Oliver Lake

Reggie Workman, a fearless improviser and an uncompromising artist, endlessly and relentlessly creating, he’s come a long way from Gimbels Department Store. Perhaps his words describe it best, "Those were memorable times, but I don't want to live there. My thoughts are: Okay, that happened and it was good. But my mind is now, what happens tomorrow?" I'm guessing tomorrow there will be more life sustaining music and we can't wait.

Components (1968 recordings, 1980 release) signed by Reggie, Bobby Hutcherson

Choice Reggie Workman Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fz_ZgweERo&list=PLn6hhCaBfMnTZGHyiovYlDL4Jkb4D3vKf

“Song Of The Underground Railroad” Africa/Brass with John Coltrane 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWEvjzbTLR4

“Ole” Coltrane Ole 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjkVMnurFe8

“Ugetsu” with Art Blakey 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ6lB7FKxi8

“The Creator Has A Master Plan” Karma 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JRb0jYr7oc

“Naima” Four For Trane with Archie Shepp 1964

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-l8pkVPYykE

“JuJu” with Wayne Shorter 1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMvZ8mehVhM

Trio 3 live at Dizzy’s Club, NYC 2.06.22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oITDUn70uY

“That Old Feeling” live with Art Blakey, Paris 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQQZX910CrU

“The Beat Goes On” The Beat Goes On with Herbie Mann 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sjZsFZkHu4&list=RD-sjZsFZkHu4&start_radio=1

“Virgo Vibes” Virgo Vibes with Roy Ayers 1967

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EBPd7c5Zucg

Live with Mal Waldron, Ed Blackwell

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TRU1jTO6NyE

“Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” live in Munich with Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner 1961

New Horn In Town (1960) signed by Reggie

Heavy Spirits (1975) signed by Oliver

Jump Up (1982) signed by Oliver

World Saxophone Quartet Plays Duke Ellington (1986) signed by Oliver

Monty Alexander and Me…

My folks were lovers of music, and l just gravitated to music from I was very young. Four years old I started to pick out tunes on the piano and I heard local musicians playing, and I just got totally knocked out that anybody could make a sound from an instrument, whether it was a guitar or a banjo or a clarinet. It didn’t matter, so I grew up with music all the time.

Monty Alexander

Alexander The Great (1964) signed by Monty

I enjoy dealing with my identity issues, the identity issue of when you’re born in Jamaica you have such a powerful and thoroughly wonderful experience in that world. The thing about the lifestyle, as well as the music thing that happens, which is a strange concoction of things that came out of Jamaica and became popular. We like to say, the rhythm is the thing. You know that feeling in the music is so strong, so powerful, it affected the whole world. Call it reggae, or ska, the whole spirit of Jamaica. And that is in me just as deeply as when I hear jazz. So what I had to do, because I was born diverse—because I’m multi-cultural, multi-racial, all the things people talk about—I love serious forms of expression... and if I play a Jamaican oriented piece, that’s going to have life in it. If I play a bluesy thing which I also heard from the time I was a kid, it’s going to have life in it. If I play a ballad like a Nat Cole song, it’s going to have life in it. I love all these things. I finally came to terms. I’m not going to try and fit in to the status quo of being a jazz musician. I don’t know what that is. I just go play. And if I have an opportunity to play for those people who have never even heard of Louis Armstrong, I’m going to move them.

Monty Alexander

Spunky (1965) signed by Monty

It's me trying to instrumentally talk about a man who come from basic, simple, no trimmings, very underprivileged and creating such beautiful music for the whole world. And because of his spirituality when he gave out his messages, people were not just listening to songs and nice melodies, no, they were affected by it.

Monty Alexander, playing the music of Ras Bob Marley

This Is Monty Alexander (1969)

Us so-called jazz musicians what we might be accused of doing or celebrated for doing is that we take our own music but certainly we get any piece of music and we're not just gonna record it or perform it exactly like it is. We can't even do it if we tried because there's this little bug in us called ‘make it up.’ I call it ‘make it up,’ they say creativity.

Monty Alexander

Here Comes The Sun (1971) signed by Monty

I soaked up everything—the calypso band playing at the swimming pool in the country, local guys at jam sessions who wished they were Dizzy and Miles, a dance band playing Jamaican melodies, songs that Belafonte would have sung. I was fully aware of the rhythm-and-blues, my heroes on piano were Eddie Heywood and Erroll Garner, and, above all, Louis Armstrong was my king. I had one foot in the jazz camp and the other in the old-time folk music—no one more valuable than the other. 

               Monty Alexander

Just The Way It Should Be (1969 recordings, 1973 release) signed by Monty, Ray Brown, Teddy Edwards, Milt Jackson

Somebody I admire and respected a lot talked to me almost like I was an older brother, and it was none other than Ray Brown, who invited me to join him and Milt Jackson on a job in 1969 at Shelly's Manne-Hole. He saw that I was playing here and playing there. I'd already made about eight albums. "You know, you should try playing with some younger guys," he said to me. So I would play with these different guys, all the great bass players, 'cause I was already in that world and I knew what to do. I was leading the troops, if you know what I mean. I always had my own combo. I wasn't playing in somebody else's band or anything. I would get a gig and hire whoever it would be. In New York, I had engaged all these greatest bass players and drummers. So many of them—Ron Carter came to play with me, Roy Haynes came to play with me, Tony Williams. Just name it, a crew of different musicians. They were older than me, guys ten years older, and they didn't tell me what to do. They were following me.

So Ray said, "you should play with some younger guys," and I said "OK." That was when he introduced me to one of these up-and-coming younger bass players named John Clayton. John was just going to school and he told me about this friend from school, Jeff Hamilton. And they'd never played with people who hadn't gone to school. I came up with guys playing at functions with their friends, you know. We called it the university of the street corner. Most of our heroes of jazz were salt-of-the-earth guys who picked it up from one another. So, years went by and John stayed in touch with me. He came out of college, and he called at the exact time I was looking for a bassist. That all started with him and from that point on, I realized "hey, I'm playing with these whippersnappers." Since then, I like musicians who are younger.
Monty Alexander

Montreux’77 (1977) signed by Monty, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Clark Terry

Well, I have this whole philosophy. Whether you're playing for a small crowd or a large crowd, a small place or a large place, it's all the same thing. It comes from your innards, down in the gut, the spirit. Something comes out and people say, "how'd you play that?" I say "Man, I don't know." It's a magical thing. It's a mystery. That's one thing, one problem I have a lot with music teachers. A lot of them say, this is what it is, that's what it is. It's the same with preachers. I'm more drawn to the guy who says, I wonder what it is. What is it, question mark? How did this happen?

Monty Alexander

We’ve Only Just Begun (1971) signed by Monty

Born in Kingston, Jamaica, Monty Alexander studied classical piano as a six year old until he discovered jazz as a teenager. When he saw Louis Armstrong perform in 1957 at the Carib Theater, Monty was never the same. He started hanging around local musicians and sitting in on recording sessions. As he recalled, "The musicians in Kingston where I grew up were really so hospitable and friendly and warm and wonderful. I would go from place to place and hang around and pretty much terrorize every musician - 'Hey man, I love music. Can I play? Can I sit in?' And little by little I would be welcomed to join in with different groups playing. That's how I got involved with the recording studios because even at thirteen or fourteen years old, I used to sneak out of school. I would just say, 'I don't wanna be in school. I want to be where the musicians are.' And I'd go to the studio and that's how I started recording and I ended up making a lot of recordings back in the late 50s/early 60s for the producers at the time, people like Coxsone Dodd and Duke Reid..."

Duke Reid: Golden Hits (1969) signed by Monty

Although his performances were uncredited on those early Studio One sessions, Monty formed lasting friendships with the musicians, especially trombonist Don Drummond (a founding member of The Skatalites), saxophonist Roland Alphonso and guitarist extraordinaire Ernest Ranglin (they released nine albums together!). Ranglin remembered Monty's early days. "This guy, from the first time I hear this guy, we don't have to invite him up (on stage), we were dying to get him up." To which Monty responded, "I remember one thing. I came with plenty of enthusiasm. Rather than being light and right, I was wrong and strong!" This was a simpler time in Jamaica, the languid beats and shuffle sounds of "Ska" and "Rocksteady", well before Toots & The Maytals recorded "Do The Reggay" in 1968 which helped usher in the reggae explosion. While the Toots' song gave the music a name and genre, the "Reggay" dance craze did not endure. But the music of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer which followed certainly resonates. Everywhere.

Smackwater Jack (1971) signed by Monty, Bob James

Monty's family moved to Miami in 1961, and a year later he moved to New York City where he became the house pianist for Jilly's, a Frank Sinatra hangout in the 1960s run by Jilly Rizzo, a Sinatra crony. There, Monty often performed with Frank when he came to visit New York and received valuable exposure. In 1964, Monty recorded his first album and he has since recorded more than seventy albums as a leader and many more as a sideman with Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, and Dizzy Gillespie. And in the last decade, Monty has revisited and re-explored his Jamaican roots on additional recordings with Ernest Ranglin which showcase the compositions of the sine qua non Bob Marley, but also the talents of "Toots" Hibbert, Augustus Pablo, and Burning Spear (aka Winston Rodney). One memorable performance I saw in the early 2000s was Monty's solo rendition of "Redemption Song", an exquisite homage to Ras Bob, flawlessly and elegantly played.

With Love (1971) signed by Monty

I saw Monty perform again recently at the Blue Note in New York City. He was playing a week long gig that showcased his many talents and versatility. The first two nights Monty performed with a quintet as a tribute to his early recordings with Ray Brown, Milt Jackson and Teddy Edwards, the second two nights with his trio celebrating their 40th anniversary, and the last two nights with his Harlem-Kingston Express, a reggae inflected juggernaut investigating the sounds of Marley and other island rhythms. I opted for the trio format with John Clayton on bass, Jeff Hamilton on drums and Monty on piano, and I was not disappointed in their virtuosity.

Ivory & Steel (1980) signed by Monty

They opened the set with a bright and bluesy "Satin Doll" from the Duke Ellington songbook, a song which the trio first recorded in Montreux in 1976. They sounded great; Monty ripping off thunderous runs with either hand, John Clayton providing a sturdy bottom with his bass, and Jeff Hamilton dropping precise beats and accents with brushes and shimmering cymbals. Other song highlights were Cole Porter's "Love For Sale" which Monty wove into his composition "Think Twice", a delicious and delightful juxtaposition, and "Sweet Lady", a ruminative ballad which lived up to its name.

Love And Sunshine (1974) signed by Monty

The most interesting song transformation was "Ben", made famous by Michael Jackson in the 1972 eponymous movie. "Ben" was a Number 1 pop hit for Michael Jackson and it was nominated for an Academy Award (it lost to "The Morning After" from The Poseidon Adventure). Not surprisingly, the movie garnered far less acclaim. Following a luminous bowed bass introduction by John Clayton (evocative of the cello of Yo Yo Ma), Monty and his trio refashioned "Ben" as chamber jazz which then settled into a mid-tempo groover. It made me forget the abhorrent movie from whence it came: a sequel to the equally distasteful Willard. I guess killer rats were never my thing no matter how dressed up as a horror or morality tale! The trio's finale was the oft recorded "The Battle Hymn Of The Republic" which began as a soulful, mournful gospel and, by skilled turns, became a rollicking, swinging romp. It was a fabulous end to a fabulous night of music.

Triple Treat (1982) signed by Monty, Ray Brown

After the show, I visited with Monty, Jeff and John upstairs near their dressing rooms. As warm and genial as Monty is on stage, he is equally kind and generous off stage. There was quite a crowd of fans and well wishers surrounding him, and he was happy to sign my vinyl. I handed him Soul Fusion, a Milt Jackson album recorded in 1976. Monty saw Milt's signature, paused and said, "You know, I miss Milt more than ever. We made some great music together." I mentioned how much I liked his treatments of Bob Marley, especially "Redemption Song." "Bob is my man", he said quietly. I told Monty that I loved his version of "Ben" but that I hated the movie and the song. He laughed, "Yes, that's what we try to play, songs that most people hate!" Rather then try to explain my faux pas, I decided to cut my losses. It was time to move on.

Soul Fusion (1978) signed by Monty, Milt Jackson, Jeff Hamilton, John Clayton

His band mates, John Clayton and Jeff Hamilton were equally kind. John Clayton drew a little bass figure on the cover of Soul Fusion, and apologized when he got bumped by a passerby. I told him that many have his signature, but no one has that signature. The bump made it more valuable, it is sui generis! Jeff Hamilton was also very solicitous when I handed him Soul Fusion. He saw Milt Jackson's signature and said, "it is a great honor to sign anything that has Milt Jackson's name on it." I apologized, "I'm sorry there's not much room on the cymbal, the other fellas signed most of it." Jeff replied, "As a drummer, that is very appropriate. You know, that is a very important cymbal. It was given to me by John Van Ohlen when I was studying with him at Indiana University. John tried out for Benny Goodman but he didn't make the band. He gave me that cymbal to go and make it. And that recording with Milt is when I made it." I was happy that Jeff found room above Monty's signature to add his signature, and he also signed Facets, his wife's favorite album. "You know, this album is about the only recording of mine that makes her playlist and she is more than happy to tell me that," he confided with a smile.

Facets (1980) signed by Monty, Jeff Hamilton

Monty Alexander, a fabulous pianist whether performing solo, with his trio or a reggae band. He said recently about his reggae recordings, "I'd go to the studio with Sly (Dunbar) and Robbie (Shakespeare) who know me from way back. It's simple music, two chords - but life is in those two chords."

Thanks for all the chords, Monty. There's so much life and love in all your music.

Atlantic Jazz Piano back cover signed by Monty, Harold Mabern, Roger Kellaway, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Randy Weston

Choice Monty Alexander Cuts (per BK's request!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVB1NB8lvqM

"Redemption Song" Rocksteady 2004

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApmNziTwU6g
“No Woman No Cry" Harlem-Kingston Express Live! 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ycOeXVjWRM

"The Battle Hymn Of The Republic" Perception 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20rH1NroT00

"Ben" Perception 1974 Monty swings Michael!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z2xtUrS26y4

"What A Friend We Have In Jesus" Monty Takes Us To Church! Live 2011

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYMYFViAQJY

"Satin Doll" Live Montreux 1976

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_D4_apFuT8

"Sweet Lady" Triple Scoop 1987

Bonus cut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJwfh2TbmJg

"Do The Reggay" Toots and The Maytals 1968

Full Steam Ahead (1985) signed by Monty

Slide Hampton and Me…

It's very important for people to know what the real purpose of music is. They think that music often is just for their entertainment, and it's certainly entertaining but it's for a much more serious reason than that. Without music and without art, we'd really be in trouble on this planet. We're in enough trouble as it is, but it's nothing like it would be... Music is very, very therapeutic, very healthy for people.

Slide Hampton, interview 2000

The trombone is the kind of instrument that you can be a natural musician, but you still have to dedicate yourself to it in order to have any level of proficiency. Otherwise, the trombone will give you the impression that it's a very difficult instrument to play, but it's not really the trombone that's difficult. It's your understanding that counts, your willingness to dedicate yourself to developing a rapport with the instrument and understanding the nature of the instrument.

Slide Hampton

Slide Hampton and His Horn Of Plenty (1959) signed by Slide, George Coleman

See, I had a big house in Brooklyn. Eric Dolphy lived there for a long time. Freddie Hubbard lived there, and Wes Montgomery. Trane used to come here all the time, and Wayne Shorter used to live there. We had thirteen, fourteen rooms in the house, right in Fort Greene (Brooklyn), right around the corner from Spike Lee's father, (bassist) Bill Lee. A lot of musicians lived in the area, there were jam sessions and people practicing and rehearsing for years. 245 Carlton Avenue, Eric Dolphy recorded a song on one of his albums called "245."

Slide Hampton, jazz life in Brooklyn

Ego was never a thing for them, they always felt more humble. Dizzy (Gillespie) was a very humble guy and Trane, Trane was very humble, very beautiful and very humane and, "What can I do to help somebody?" This is the healthiest attitude that a person can have. Society has to grow on that kind of energy. Then we won't have all the stuff that's starting to become so common, with everybody being against everybody else. Now you have to be "inferior" if you're different. That's a fool's idea! You know, you can never tell what a person has to offer you unless you're able to be open to that person, and go to them and see what kind of communication you can have.

Slide Hampton interview 2000

Two Sides Of Slide (1962) signed by Slide, George Coleman

The great Slide Hampton passed away November 18, 2021. He was eighty-nine years old and I wish peace and blessings for his family. Slide leaves an impressive legacy of music as a skilled arranger, composer, educator, and virtuoso trombone soloist. He released more than thirty-five albums as a leader and he recorded extensively with jazz legends Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley, Charles Mingus. McCoy Tyner and many others in his lengthy discography. Though he was in declining health the past several years, his music will live an enduring life among jazz aficionados and music fans.

Born in Jeanette, Pennsylvania, raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Locksley Wellington "Slide" Hampton was surrounded by music. Both parents were musicians and his father had a family orchestra based in Indianapolis. One of twelve siblings who played musical instruments, Slide came by his choice of instrument at the direction of his family, “When I was young, there was already a band in existence in the family. There were no trombones and they wanted a trombone player in the family band, so they chose it for me.” A serendipitous choice and a remarkable career followed. Slide is lauded as one of the top trombone stylists in the annals of jazz history, quite an achievement for an unwieldy and somewhat clunky instrument.

Jazz With A Twist (1962) signed by Slide, George Coleman

The Hampton family band had local renown and eventually played Carnegie Hall, where Slide made his debut. It was very heady stuff, as Slide recalled, "First we came and played Carnegie Hall and then we went back to Indianapolis.Then we came back and played the Apollo Theater, the Savoy Ballroom, and after two weeks in the Savoy, we went back into the Apollo Theater by popular demand. I tried to convince my family, 'Let's stay in New York. This is the place we can really develop a career as musicians.' But they wanted to go back to Indianapolis." These initial experiences left an indelible impression, "I wanted to get back to New York as quick as I could 'cause I'd seen and heard Bud Powell and people like that. After that, all of my aspirations were keyed to New York. So as soon as I was old enough and I could go out on my own, I left the family band and I was on my way to New York. It took me a long time to get there."

Slide made it back to New York when he joined Buddy Johnson's rhythm and blues group in 1952. It was a circuitous route which started in Houston where Buddy was based. Buddy Johnson was best known for the jazz standard "Since I Fell For You" which Buddy's sister Ella sang and Arthur Prysock's "They All Say I'm The Biggest Fool." Slide developed his craft, honed his chops and soon joined Lionel Hampton, a brief and unsatisfying experience, "Lionel Hampton is also a great musician, but really not a caring person. He never really tried to give the musicians the kind of conditions that they could work in and would inspire them, and he never really inspired people to go to other heights. If you were with his band and he really liked you, he would almost threaten you if you wanted to leave and go with somebody else. And that was very unfortunate because he was a guy that had possibilities, especially for a lot of the Afro-American musicians, to open doors for them. But he was such an egomaniac, he couldn't consider what was happening for anyone else." An interesting insight which confirmed what I saw when Lionel performed decades later. When Lionel started a solo, even in his late eighties, it went on and on and on... twenty plus years later, I think Lionel is still somewhere banging that same solo!

A Message From Newport (1957) signed by Slide, Maynard Ferguson

Fortunately, Slide's next employer was less egocentric, as he joined the trumpet great Maynard Ferguson, "Maynard was a very nice guy, a very fine musician, and really gave all the musicians a chance to develop musical expertise there. He was the exact opposite from Hamp... He was really very considerate of the musicians and very respectful of us." Slide began to write charts and some of his compositions - "The Fugue," "Three Little Foxes," "Slide's Derangement" - became mainstays of the Maynard Ferguson canon.

After three years, Slide left Maynard to concentrate on his solo career and released several acclaimed records which featured a collection of top flight horn players George Coleman, Joe Farrell, Freddie Hubbard, and Booker Little among them. In the mid 1960s, Slide was enlisted by Motown Records and worked as a music director for Stevie Wonder and the Four Tops, and he helped write arrangements on some of their recordings.

Plays Jazz For Dancing (1959) signed by Slide, Maynard Ferguson

As the interest in jazz waned due to the commercial onslaught of The Beatles and other rock music, Slide toured Europe and stayed in Paris for the next six years, joining a fertile expat jazz community including Don Byas, Kenny Clarke, Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon, and Johnny Griffin. Slide was drawn in part by the extraordinary respect given to jazz artists at that time, "So I went to Europe and found out that there were a lot of opportunities for people that were into that concept of music. I went over with Woody Herman in '68 and we played two weeks in England. Then I went to France, and I lived in France for six years after that. I did television, recording, radio, which they don't have over here. You know, they have radio orchestras and radio programs that are subsidized by the government for a certain amount of jazz - concerts, cultural houses, everything you could think of. It had never been like that over here."

Returning to the United States in 1977, Slide began his impressive and influential career as an educator, first as an artist-in-residence at Harvard, and later serving professorial stints at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, DePaul University in Chicago, and Indiana University. He was a mentor to countless students, not only trombonists, but also arrangers who studied his charts and his deft interplay of the instruments while enhancing the melodies. He also won two Grammys late in his career, as the arranger for Dee Dee Bridgewater’s "Cotton Tail" in 1998 and for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album for The Way: Music of Slide Hampton in 2005.

Si! Si! M.F. (1962) signed by Slide, Maynard Ferguson

I was blessed to see Slide Hampton more than twenty years ago at the Blue Note in New York City. He was sitting in with his old friend Maynard Ferguson, and Maynard had reprised some of Slide’s classic arrangements. As an added bonus, Slide layed out on the trombone for a couple of tunes. In Slide’s virtuosic hands, the trombone glided and glistened, and the warm tones were only exceeded by the warmth and kindness he exuded offstage when I met him. After the show, there was a scene in the Blue Note dressing rooms as fellow trumpet greats Jimmy Owens and Jonah Jones came by to pay their respects to Maynard and Slide. I slipped in and Slide was gracious to sign his vinyl. He was of impossibly good cheer and I thanked him for his time and, especially, his music.

Slide Hampton, a virtuoso musician, as impressive on stage as off. His music is emphatically entertaining, healthy and therapeutic!

Swings Through College (1958) signed by Slide, Maynard Ferguson, Jonah Jones

Choice Slide Hampton cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g52wGTQ_s7M

“Night Never Comes” live in Italy 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN4P17pAdJ8

“The Fugue” A Message From Newport 1958

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzSuoyp1ljU

“Mack The Knife” Jazz With A Twist 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwoW_JQCZqU

“The Thrill Is Gone” Somethin’ Sanctified 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVXm16mAxz8&list=PLyHn3f7-9IULaKcL7ZLNOw_cH8PgPuQxd

“My Blues” A Day In Copenhagen with Dexter Gordon 1969

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jbbf2quuv6Y

“All In Love Is Fair” Slide plays Stevie Wonder!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvKF82hkReI

“Roots” with Clifford Jordan, Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins 1985

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bht4ySeQwjc

“All The Things You Are” live with Dizzy Gillespie, Johnny Griffin, Hank Jones 1987

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ7za4mOzSo

“Lament” Slide plays J.J. Johnson! 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FzQ1i--4QU

“Well You Needn’t” Slide plays Thelonious! 1962

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzWSNBxe588

“Sunny” Slide Hampton 1970

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEDwNok0nF0

“Solar” Slide Hampton plays Miles! 1985

Bonus picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AZnXclm0Bs

“I Was Made To Love Her” Stevie Wonder 1966

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ7iEZyrBcQ

“On The Street Where You Live” The Four Tops 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIm1MJqtH5o

“That’s Life” Kim Weston - Count Basie Orchestra arranged by Slide

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBHorI2_yOY&list=OLAK5uy_lknmi9DgyFAFkhhBjMO6bIKbhPIzVJajQ&index=12

“Nice ‘n’ Easy” The Four Tops 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_4NTGKVzLs

“The Beat Goes On” Kim Weston - Count Basie Orchestra arranged by Slide

Barry Harris and Me…

Most of us grew up playing in the church, where my mother started me. I studied classical with a preacher named Neptune Holloway, who quite a few of us took lessons from, and also Mrs. Lipscomb which was in a private home. Tommy Flanagan and I took lessons from Gladys Dillard; we were in a recital together one time. My mother was a very gentle and beautiful person, and one day she asked me whether I wanted to play church music or jazz. I said 'I'll play jazz,' and she was cool with that.

Barry Harris

Bull’s Eye (1968) signed by Barry, Charles McPherson

We played for our contemporaries. We played for shake dancers, we played shuffle rhythm, we played rhythm and blues. All of it was part of the deal. I would go to the dance, stand in back of the piano player and steal a couple of chords, then go home and learn how to play them. I remember Donald Byrd one day saying, 'I don't want to play in a bar, I don't want to play in a dance hall. I want to play on the concert stage.' Well, separating the music from dancing might have been the biggest drag that ever happened to us. We knew how to dance.

Barry Harris Downbeat interview 2000

Lee Morgan Memorial Album (1974) signed by Barry, Harold Mabern, Billy Harper

Barry always had a nice dynamic attack and approach to the piano. He was quick to get hip to Bud Powell, devoted more time to that style than anyone else on the scene then. He took it another step. He had a lot of confidence too. He was one of the few guys who would just wait for Charlie Parker to come to town and go up and sit in with him. That's more confidence than I had, I just didn't have the nerve.

pianist Tommy Flanagan

I Remember BeBop (1978) signed by Barry, Tommy Flanagan

I sat in with Bird at least three or four times. His band was late one time for a dance at the Graystone Ballroom, so we played just one song with him during the first set, a blues in C. He was beautiful to us. The best experience that I always tell people is a time he was playing a dance with strings at a roller rink called the Forest Club. We stood in front and the strings started, and when he started playing, chills started at your toes and went on through your body, orgasms, everything imaginable. It's really a spoiler. I don't like to go listen to people because I'm expecting somebody to make me feel like that. Bud Powell is important to me, I'm more of a Charlie Parker disciple, even more so now.

Barry Harris Downbeat interview 2000

Stay Right With It (1961/62 recordings, remastered/released 1978) signed by Barry, Charles McPherson

The great pianist Barry Harris passed away December 8, 2021. He was ninety-one years old and I wish peace and blessings to his family and friends. His performances, filled with elegance, lyricism and grace, were master classes by a master. This tribute was written five years ago after another riveting performance at the Village Vanguard…

Barry Harris is part of the great tradition of jazz artists from Detroit. Pianists Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, trumpeters Donald Byrd, Thad Jones, guitarist Kenny Burrell, drummers Elvin Jones, Louis Hayes and multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef are among Barry's Motown brethren who have had storied careers as musicians and composers. Initially, Barry honed his chops as the house pianist at the Blue Bird Inn (Thad Jones' composition "5021" refers to the actual address on Tireman) where he backed Sonny Stitt, Thad Jones and Miles Davis (for an extended three month stint in 1955 when Miles was trying to kick heroin), and at the Rouge Lounge where he accompanied Ben Webster, Lester Young and Lee Konitz. Eventually, Barry left Detroit to tour with Cannonball Adderley and he relocated to New York City in 1960 where he has remained ever since.

At The Jazz Workshop (1960) signed by Barry, Louis Hayes

Barry has released more than twenty-five albums as a leader, and he has appeared on hundreds as a sideman, including seminal and canonical recordings with Lee Morgan (The Sidewinder), Yusef Lateef (Eastern Sounds), Dexter Gordon (The Tower Of Power!) and Cannonball Adderley (Them Dirty Blues). Perhaps his greatest contribution has been his commitment to teaching. It started in Detroit and it has continued during his long stay in New York. A then fourteen year old Charles McPherson, a budding saxophonist, would practice at Barry's Detroit home and it blossomed into a sixty-five year personal and professional relationship.

Two Trumpets (1956) signed by Barry, Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, Jackie McLean

McPherson later explained, "He always leaned toward showing people things about harmony and theory, and his house was always a hub of activity. Musicians would come by and hang out with him. He had a reputation that extended not only to local musicians, but to musicians coming through town from New York. I saw everybody there, Sonny Rollins, Cannonball (Adderley). Trane came when I was there saying, 'OK Barry, what are you doing these days? What are you working on?' He's a master pianist, but it's more than knowledge that you can get from someone like Barry. You also get an element of musicality. You get the nuts and bolts, but you also get a sense of how to think about the aesthetics of music and art."

The Other Side Of Benny Golson (1958) signed by Barry, Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller

I saw Barry perform again recently at the Village Vanguard in New York City with bassist Ray Drummond and Leroy Williams, his drummer of choice for the past forty years. Opened in 1935 by proprietor Max Gordon as a folk, blues, and poetry space, the Village Vanguardhas become the most famous and revered jazz club in the world. It is a small space with seats for just 123 patrons in a basement off Seventh Avenue South. The acoustics are perfect and the venue has never been altered through the years. The blood red drapes hang heavy behind the small stage at the end of the room, enriched with the smoke and history of legendary performances past. Pictures of musicians line the walls, old lions like Thelonious Monk, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, and younger lions like Brad Mehldau and Wynton Marsalis, all artists who have recorded extensively here. In fact, there have been more than fifty live recordings issued and, as the late Bruce Lundvall, head of Blue Note Records observed, "The words 'Live At The Village Vanguard' do have a direct and positive influence on an album's sales." Indeed, it has an especially meaningful cachet among jazz aficionados.

Tower Of Power! (1969) signed by Barry, Buster Williams

The Friday night show at the Village Vanguard was sold out and the crowd was a bit raucous, fraught with the tension and anticipation of hearing a jazz lion in his lair. Barry did not disappoint. Although now eighty-six years old, you would never know it when Barry sat at the piano. His phrasing was challenging, lyrical, and swinging. Highlights were "Don't Blame Me", an alluring ballad off his 1960 vinyl At The Jazz Workshop, a bouncy "Isn't She Lovely?" from Stevie Wonder, an elegiac "Come Sunday" from the Duke Ellington songbook, a spritely "I Want To Be Happy", and a properly mournful "Lush Life" from the pen of Billy Strayhorn. It was an elegant performance of exquisite jazz piano.

Blues For Duke (1975) signed by Barry

Midway through the show, Barry announced, "Tonight, we're going to do something I'm sure you all expected to do at a jazz club. We're going to sing Karaoke! And we're going to write a song together." He continued amid the surprise and laughter, "I need some numbers. What are your favorite numbers 1 - 9?" Inwardly, I groaned, possibly my least favorite activity, an audience sing-a-along, and at the Village Vanguard?!. Numbers were quickly shouted by enthusiastic audience members and Barry said, "I heard 6, 7 and 3. I can make this work," and he began to play a greasy blues vamp and sang "6-7-3." Then he asked for participation and timidly, his Vanguard Choir barely mouthed "6-7-3" for three verses until he exhorted, "Come on now, you ain't ever getting into Heaven singing like that!" Suitably challenged, the audience responded with vigor and when we got to the bridge, Barry added "5-5-5-5." The song actually worked far better than I feared as I guess it helps to have a world class pianist and rhythm section! The closing song was Barry's theme, "Nascimento", a Latin rhythm written for an obscure percussionist whom Barry befriended during one of his trips to Brazil, not for noted Brazilian guitarist/songwriter Milton Nascimento as many assume.

Bottoms Up (1968) signed by Barry, Illinois Jacquet

After the show, I visited with Barry and he signed some albums. I greeted him with, "Stevie Wonder never sounded so swinging!" Barry said, "Oh thank you very much. I just had to do that song that way. That's a really fun song to play." It was certainly fun for the audience. When he saw the Sonny Stitt albums, Barry grew pensive. "You know, I sign these albums now, and I'm the only one who is still alive. It's just weird." Changing the topic, I offered, "You know, I love your version of "My Buddy", you do a really uptempo, swinging version. It's one of my favorite songs." "Thank you, that is a great song." He leaned over to his drummer, Leroy Williams who was seated next to him on the banquette, "Do you know that song?" Leroy nodded affirmatively. I couldn't resist, "You play it fast, but it's also beautiful as a ballad, 'Nights are long since you went away....' " Barry smiled at my attempt at the first stanza of the lyric, "Yes, I hope I don't go away any time soon!" Both Leroy and I assured him that was not going to happen, he had lots of new music to play. It was a lovely visit after a lovely night of music.

My Buddy (1976) signed by Barry, Leroy Williams

Pianist Duke Pearson wrote in the 1968 liner notes to Bull's Eye, "Going out to a club to hear Barry is just like a tonic. It restores your faith in beauty. Jazz should be beautiful and Barry's always is." Those words were true then and, almost fifty years later, those words seem truer now.

Barry Harris, a beautiful man with beautiful music.

Atlantic Jazz Piano (1986) signed by Barry, Dave Brubeck, Ray Bryant, Kenny Barron, Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, Sir Roland Hanna, Junior Mance, Brad Mehldau, Dwike Mitchell, Andre Previn, Horace Silver, Billy Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Chucho Valdes

Choice Barry Harris Cuts (per BK's request!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJi03NqXfk8

"The Sidewinder"  with Lee Morgan  1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elxQn503iTI

“Nascimento"   First Time Ever   1997

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YOPadEOCRg
“My Buddy"   Sonny Stitt with Barry    1976

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBpS9pyvUwo
"My Buddy"  A different take by Jerry Jeff Walker  1975

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFGuFfrpTVc
“Well You Needn't"  Barry and Tommy Flanagan Play Thelonious Monk  Live

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doJ8qS1XcaA

"Don't Blame Me"    At The Jazz Workshop   1960

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_sBbARz-M8

“Isn't She Lovely"   Live   2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZuCQFie-Ag
"A Time For Love"   Live   2014

Atlantic Jazz Piano back cover signed by Monty Alexander, Roger Kellaway, Harold Mabern, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Randy Weston

Houston Person and Me…

Well, it's uplifting and important, and a release and a relief. That's what it is...jazz. It's important that it's relaxing. Something that when the end of the day comes, after a hard and frustrating day out in the world, relieves you, relaxes you and makes you feel good. Solid melodies with some improvisation and plenty of blues feel. You always want that dance feeling there, that happy, happy feeling.

Houston Person

Goodness! (1969) signed by Houston

Silence is as much a part of the music as the notes are. After all, if you were to speak to someone and not pause here and there, everything would have equal importance. You use silence to underline something, whether you play it on an instrument or speak it in a conversation.

Houston Person

Person To Person! (1970) signed by Houston

There wasn't so much division as there is now, with everybody insisting on doing their own thing. Back in the day, there were common denominators for just about anybody who could play. It was danceable and had the blues in it. Even people now thought of as abstract, like (Thelonious) Monk or (Charles) Mingus.

Houston Person

Truth! (1970) signed by Houston

I spend my spare time researching stuff. There are good anthologies for all major composers like Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Duke Ellington. I know many of the neglected composers as well... I look at how each of these composers assemble the tune, then I re-study the lyrics to see what they mean as well. Investigating the verses of tunes is interesting. Sometimes, I really learn new things about songs we all think we already know. 

                Houston Person

Houston Express (1971) signed by Houston

I tell young people they should search for their own sound, and see what they hear. Everyone looks for different things.  Me, I just want beauty. I want a pretty sound. It should also fill the room. A big, pretty sound that fills the room, that's what I want to do.

               Houston Person 

I just play good music. I look for a great melody and great lyrics. A composer puts a lot of time into coming up with the perfect melody and I always try to let those melodies speak for themselves and be true to the composer’s intentions.

Houston Person

Good Vibrations (1980) signed by Houston

Few artists, if any, cover John Lennon, Randy Newman, Jerry Jeff Walker, and Thelonious Monk in the same career. Only tenor saxophonist extraordinaire Houston Person had the audacity (and chops) to cover each of these disparate artists in the same album, Broken Windows, Empty Hallways, a 1972 soul jazz classic. "Imagine", "I Think It's Going To Rain Today", "Mr. Bojangles" and "Let's Call This" comprise an unlikely and unique Great Jazz Songbook in Houston's skilled hands. 

Broken Windows, Empty Hallways (1972) signed by Houston

Born in Florence, South Carolina, Houston Person grew up with the earthy, gospel music of the church. Initially, Houston played piano and then switched to the tenor saxophone when he began his studies at South Carolina State College. Learning his craft, he gigged as a sideman at rhythm and blues concerts, following in the tradition of his hard blowing heroes, Gene Ammons and Illinois Jacquet. Of Jacquet, Houston confided, Illinois was "my main influence. He was a great musician, he was a great entertainer. He knew how to approach an audience. He had a wonderful sound and his music was always fun, very impressive."  

The Gospel Soul Of Houston Person (1978) signed by Houston

Houston also performed with a country and western band, an improbable alliance. As he said, "I played in a country and western band with two guitars. That was a challenge to cut through. When you are done with all of that experience, you have something to work with. When you hear my sound, you hear all of that other stuff. You get a little bit of it all." Houston's thick, warm sonorous sound, dripping like slow, honeyed molasses, was a fusion of the blues, country, gospel, and soul music which surrounded him.

The Big Horn (1976 recordings, 1979 release) signed by Houston

Houston's real jazz education began when he joined the U.S. Air Force after college. He was stationed at the Ramstein Air Force base in Heidelberg, West Germany from 1957-58 and jammed on weekends with Don Ellis, Eddie Harris and Cedar Walton, musicians and colleagues who left a lasting impression. Houston was self deprecating about the experience, "They were all really playing. The only person who wasn't playing was me! So they had me to kick around on weekends." When he returned to the United States, Houston took additional studies at the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut where, "They didn't have any jazz there, it was strictly classical music."

Heavy Juice (1982) signed by Houston

Houston's first recordings with Johnny "Hammond" Smith, the Hammond B3 maestro, had a big influence developing Houston's expressive and expansive sound, "Oh yeah, you've got to fight that Leslie (woofer and Hammond organ), got to learn how to cut through those sustained chords. But on the ballads, those sustained chords show you how to take your time. I learned a lot from the organ groups, they helped me get it together."

The Best Of Richard Groove Holmes (1969)

Indeed, Houston got it together and has had a prolific recording career with more than seventy-five albums as a leader, and hundreds more as a sideman. Houston is particularly well known for his exquisite blowing on ballads. This skill was enhanced by his time accompanying singers, especially the thirty years he performed with Etta Jones, a wonderful jazz artist. The lyrics and phrasing formed an integral part of Houston's musicianship, a lesson learned from one of his heroes, Ben Webster. Many years ago in a studio recording session, Ben Webster in a gorgeous tenor solo in full flight stopped abruptly. When the producer asked why? Ben chuckled, "Sorry, I forgot the words." The many times I have seen Houston through the years, he has never forgotten the words!

Black Talk! (1969) signed by Houston

I saw Houston Person recently at the Jazz Standard in New York City. He was celebrating his eighty-second birthday with his quartet, John DiMartino on piano, Matthew Parrish on bass, and former Tom Waits drummer, Chip White. They opened with "Why Not?" an upbeat groover that Houston wrote, then the gorgeous ballad, "All My Tomorrows" from the pen of Jimmy Van Heusen and the voice of Frank Sinatra, and a frenetic, hard blowing "Lester Leaps In", a romp written by Lester Young during his stint with Count Basie in the 1930s. Other highlights were a Latin inflected  "Bossa For Baby" by Hank Mobley, and a mid-tempo, strolling treatment of "Nice 'n' Easy", another beautiful song from the Frank Sinatra canon. The encore was "Since I Fell For You", a deep, mournful blues, wrung out and strung out, slowly and sensually rendered by a master balladeer. As always, Houston took his time.

Spicy! (1967) signed by Houston, Pat Martino

After the show, I visited with Houston in his dressing room. I wished him a Happy Birthday and told him I felt (almost!) guilty having him sign his vinyl after bestowing us with such a wonderful show, his music was a gift to all. He smiled, "That's alright. I'm glad you're here, and my daughter brought me a cake! Now, let's see what you got." I handed him Harmony, an album which depicts a comely swimsuit model strategically cradling his saxophone. "What's going on here?" I inquired. A long pause as he searched the cover and the image. "Nothing," came the emphatic and stern reply. Then a broad smile creased his lips, "That was a fun record." I handed him a couple of Richard "Groove" Holmes records, one he played on, one he didn't. He happily signed both, "I can see why you like this cover," he chuckled as he handed me back the aptly titled Spicy. He loved the album The Gospel Soul, a nod to his beginnings in the church. I told him that the album was unavailable digitally. "You should go to Japan. All my stuff is available there," he advised. I couldn't resist a Tom Waits reference, "So, you're big in Japan?" "Yes, they have everything. You need to go there," he replied. I thanked him again for sharing his birthday with us, and especially his gorgeous tenor sound.

Blues All Day Long (1988) signed by Houston

Houston Person, an underrated and relatively unknown tenor Saxophone Colossus. He is pure pleasure.

Pure Pleasure (1976) signed by Houston

Postscript: I saw Houston Person November 26, 2021 at the Jazz Forum in Tarrytown, New York, fronting a great quartet with Larry Fuller on piano, Matthew Parrish on bass and Vincent Ector on drums. The only concession to Houston’s recent eighty-seventh birthday was his approach to perform mostly sitting on a stool. The sound of his tenor saxophone remained resonant and luminous whether he played a lugubrious ballad “As Time Goes By,” a bluesy and brassy “Since I Fell For You,” an uptempo “Blue Moon,” or a bumping and brash “Sunny” to close the set.

Broadway (1980) signed by Houston

Before the show I visited with Houston and he signed some more vinyl. As I handed Underground Soul, he laughed, “This was my first album, that was a long, long time ago.” I mentioned that I loved all his work, but especially the Hammond B3 collaborations with masters Charles Earland, Richard Groove Holmes and Johnny Hammond Smith. “Thank you,” he replied, “You need to check out my latest with Ben Patterson. He’s really good, and they’re selling it at the coat check.” Sadly not on vinyl, only on CD, I bought it and Houston was right, it’s fabulous! I asked him what we was going to play, hoping for a preview. “Yeah, I don’t know, I never know. When I get out there, we just figure it out.” I guess with over eighty-five albums, countless sessions and songs, and seventy years of performing gives Houston that right, and he never disappoints!

Choice Houston Person Cuts (per BK's request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNmhKnHRbrE

"Since I Fell For You"  The Blues, Nothin' but the Blues!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PjYQndM-JM

“More Today Than Yesterday"  with Charles Earland on Hammond B3, Melvin Sparks on guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7AJj2AlvTc

“All My Tomorrows"  sumptuous balladry without Frank

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWfIhwTv9M8
“What's Goin' On?"  Houston swings Marvin Gaye!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-npjVDK2XU

“Let's Stay Together" Houston swings Al Green!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LB9fiA_HXmU
"Shaft" Houston and "Pretty" Purdie swing Isaac Hayes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gs_CL7fLkQ
“At Last" Houston swings Etta James!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFjZwmY8eWk
“Bewitched, Bothered, Bewildered" Houston swings Frank!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou871xaLpSM
"In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning"   Houston Swings more Frank!

Bonus Track:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWIR9mvf-IU 
"Big In Japan"   Tom Waits  Mule Variations   1998

Always On My Mind (1985) signed by Houston

Wild Flower (1978) signed by Houston

Suspicions (1980) signed by Houston

In The Pocket (1982) signed by Houston

Stolen Sweets (1977) signed by Houston

Very Personal (1981) signed by Houston

The Players: Pearls Of Love (1957) signed by Houston

Why Not! (1990) signed by Houston

Hank Crawford and Me…

I asked to be recorded with strings, and I was surprised when I got a yes on it from Neshui Ertegun at Atlantic Records. He agreed, to my surprise, and asked me who did I want to do the arrangements, and I said Marty Paich. I had heard Marty Paich’s small band arrangements when he was writing for Shorty Rogers and Stan Kenton, the West Coast scene, and I liked the way he voiced the strings. I found out the secret; he used french horns with strings to get that real melancholy sound. So Neshui agreed, and we went to California to record the record. I selected all the tunes except one, which really turned out to be sort of a signature tune for me, which was “Whispering Grass.”  Marty Paich suggested that.

Hank Crawford, recording Soul Of The Ballad

After Hours (1966) signed by Hank

And I like all music, man. I’m not trying to put down anybody. I have respect for anybody who gets involved in the business because it’s so competitive. But when I hear a guy that can cross all bridges, and comfortable playing in each setting, that’s what I admire — and don’t feel guilty playing it. I don’t feel guilty playing “Steel Guitar Rag” if I’m called to play it, you know what I mean? I heard that when I was coming up as a kid, man, at 6 o’clock in the morning. Down South, that’s the first thing you’d hear on your radio, is Country & Western and Gospel music...I spent many days listening to Eddy Arnold and Hank Snow and all of those people. And we all liked it! Even jazz musicians, they can’t say they didn’t grow up listening to these people. So I played it as a youngster, and I don’t feel offended by it. I just do my best in it. So it’s music to me. I don’t mind being square because I play this tune. In fact, it’s a blessing to be able to play in all the styles. That’s when your phone keeps ringing!

               Hank Crawford

Indigo Blue (1983) signed by Hank, David Fathead Newman, Dr. John, Howard Johnson, Bernard Pretty Purdie, Melvin Sparks

If musicians had to pay royalties for using someone else's sound the way they have to for recording someone else's songs, David (Newman) and Hank would be billionaires.

               producer Joel Dorn

More Soul (1960) signed by Hank

Listening to him, listening to the sound come out of his horn - that's like an education. That's a year of college right there, I'm telling you.

               saxophonist David Sanborn

Soul Survivors (1986) signed by Jimmy McGriff, Hank “Mr. Frim Fram”

I get asked lots of questions about my record collection, What's the most valuable? Nicest artist? Most disagreeable? No easy answers. The worst place I ever solicited a signature? That's easy, Hank Crawford in the men's room of a now defunct jazz club in lower Manhattan in 1986. Admittedly shameless pandering, here's how it happened...

I went to see Hank perform his alto saxophone wizardry with Hammond B3 maestro Jimmy McGriff, guitarist Wayne Boyd and drummer Don Williams. I was relatively new to stalking artists to sign vinyl and I was determined to get my quarry. Hank and Jimmy had just released Soul Survivors and they were playing their incendiary stew of soul-jazz-funk. After a long solo, Hank left the bandstand mid-song and went to the men's room. I followed. While Hank was finishing his business, I pretended to go as well. After Hank washed his hands, I whipped out The Soul Of The Ballad, a beautiful 1963 album featuring Hank's stirring alto with string arrangements by Marty Paich. "Hank, would you mind signing this? It's one of my favorite albums." He looked at me quizzically, "Alright, but we gotta do this quick, I need to get back on the bandstand." He signed the album and handed it back to me and left to rejoin Jimmy and the band in full flight. Clearly, not my most shining moment but effective nonetheless.

Soul Survivors (1986) signed by Hank, Jimmy McGriff, Bernard Pretty Purdie

To me (and probably only me!), it was reminiscent of the Keith Richards-Johnny Cash encounter at Johnny's Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame induction dinner in 1996. According to Keef's autobiography Life, Keith went to the bathroom and saw Johnny in the next stall. Keefer started singing "Loading Coal", a Johnny Cash obscurity. Keith said, "I'm pissing with Johnny Cash. We need a picture of this!" "No Keith, we do not need a picture of this," Johnny replied resolutely. Johnny Cash explained his perspective, "I was standing at the urinal in the rest room before the dinner and I heard this voice behind me singing 'Loading Coal,' which is probably one of the most obscure songs I ever recorded. I wondered who in the world could be singing that song and when I looked around I saw Keith and he had this big smile on his face. So I turned around and we sang the chorus together. That's when I guess I knew everything was going to be OK."

Now, I didn't sing any songs with Hank Crawford that night in the men's room, fortunately he plays instrumentals, but I did get one of my favorite albums signed by a favorite jazz saxophone star.

Midnight Ramble (1983) signed by Hank, David Fathead Newman, Dr. John, Howard Johnson, Bernard Pretty Purdie

Born in Memphis, Hank Crawford grew up surrounded by the sounds of the church, rhythm and blues, soul, and especially the blues. Hank was trained on piano and then switched to alto saxophone. When he attended Manassas High School in Memphis, some of his peers and classmates were future jazz legends George Coleman, Booker Little, Harold Mabern, Phineas Newborn, Jr. and his brother Calvin. As Hank later observed, "We had a pretty good education just by being around each other."

Mr. Blues (1967) signed by Hank

While still in high school, Hank sat in on some sessions in 1950 with B.B. King, a rising bluesman under the direction of master producer Sam Phillips, who later founded Sun Records and produced the early recordings of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Ike Turner, and Howlin' Wolf. Sam Phillips essentially invented rock and roll at his humble, renovated store front studio at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee. In fact, some musicologists cite pianist Ike Turner's 1951 hit "Rocket 88" with Jackie Brenston on vocals as the birth of rock and roll.

Dig These Blues (1965) signed by Hank

After playing locally, Hank joined the Ray Charles big band in 1958 and he became its music director in 1960, serving with distinction until he left for a successful solo career in 1963. As he said about his time with Ray, "He was strict about his music and how he wanted to run his organization, but if you adjusted to how he wanted things done, you could make it very easily. I watched how he liked his voicings, the horns and everything, so I made it like a classroom. Being around him augmented what I was thinking about...my direction."

Down On The Deuce (1984) signed by Hank, David Fathead Newman, Howard Johnson, Cedar Walton

Hank released more than forty albums in his career and he was featured on studio sessions with Etta James, Grant Green, Eric Clapton and many others. His warm, expressive alto was imbued with the sacred and profane which swirled around Memphis in the 1940s and 1950s, and Hank's influence extends far beyond soul jazz aficionados. Hip hop artists like Kanye West, Tupac, Drake and more than twenty other artists have sampled his righteous soul grease on their recent tracks. Hank was also a phenomenal arranger who wrote inspired charts for Ray Charles and he released five albums with Jimmy McGriff, the pre-eminent Hammond B3 soul-blues-jazz master. I was lucky to see Hank and Jimmy perform many times through the years and Jimmy McGriff ended up playing my wedding, but that's another story for another time!

Outside Looking In (1978) signed by Hank, Jimmy McGriff

Hank' s own words best encapsulate his music and approach:

"I found out as a young musician growing up in Memphis that if you weren't reaching people, and having them tap their foot, then there was nothing happening."

Mr. Chips (1986) signed by Hank

Thanks for all the grooves, Hank. There was always toes tappin' and something happenin', especially with Jimmy McGriff.

Steppin’ Up (1987) signed by Hank, Jimmy McGriff

Choice Hank Crawford Cuts (per BK's request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSHMRyY5Drk
"Whispering Grass" The Soul Of The Ballad 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJFMAZT4gcw
"Bill For Bennie" written by Hank, performed with Ray Charles on piano, David "Fathead" Newman on tenor, Hank on baritone, Swing Baby Swing!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC88dJ4KuFw
"Wildflower" 1973 sampled by Kanye's "Drive Slow", Tupac's "Shorty Wanna Be A Thug"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THK5FVuptp0
"Every Day I Have The Blues" Hank and Jimmy Live 1989

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nbouwehaMY
"You Send Me" Hank and Jimmy Live 1989

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0Cx8Tk4Miw
"The Peeper" Hank and David Sanborn Live 1990

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6jgvlbzy-I
"Frim Fram Sauce" Hank and Jimmy Soul Survivors 1986

Bonus tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__3wWqMKg4I
"Loading Coal" Johnny Cash without Keith!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gbfnh1oVTk0"Rocket 88" Ike Turner with Jackie Brenston 1951 - The birth of rock'n'roll

On The Blue Side (1990) signed by Hank, Jimmy McGriff

Still Hard Times (1982) signed by Hank, David Fathead Newman, Jimmy Cobb, Howard Johnson, Larry Willis

Fire! Live At The Village Vanguard (1989) signed by Hank, David Fathead Newman, Stanley Turrentine, David Williams

The Best Of Hank Crawford (1970) signed by Hank

Help Me Make It Through The Night (1972) signed by Hank

Brad Mehldau and Me…

Improvisation is one of the big things I use in my own definition of jazz. You have the ability to make a pretty intricate narrative, to play around with time itself, like a novel does, and your memory, and your expectation of what's taking place. Monk is doing that, Wayne Shorter, Coltrane. Most of my jazz heroes have that narrative aspect. Improvisation usually implies something very non-intellectual at its core, because when it's really working it has a real flow, it's in the moment. But if I listen to Coltrane, he's in the white heat of the moment, but there's also intricacy and complexity; you can enjoy it as a piece of art the same way you enjoy the compositional rigor of a Beethoven symphony or a Bach fugue. And then (you remember) it's being improvised. I think that's what appealed to me as a kid. Why you respond to something like a great Coltrane solo; to what extent you can map that is an interesting question. And particularly for jazz - it's a little less mapped, a little less written about than classical music, which has been a canon for such a long time. It's a little more open.

Brad Mehldau

Ballads And Blues (2014) signed by Brad

The challenge and the thrill are one and the same - there is no net; there is absolute freedom. When jazz musicians improvise in a group setting, they are often following some sort of schema - often it’s variations on the initial theme of whatever they are playing. When you are playing solo, you don’t have to correspond to what someone else is doing. So you might take that approach, but you might decide to chuck it out at a certain point and go off on a tangent that doesn’t formally adhere to what you’ve just been doing. That can be exciting and rewarding. The challenge there though is to make something with integrity - something that has a story to tell.

Brad Mehldau on the art of playing solo

The Art Of The Trio Volume Two (1997) signed by Brad

I was not really sure what I wanted to do because there is always so many different options for a recording. The way it went down was playing at The Vanguard once before with my own trio, I felt a special affinity for that place and a real inspiration that came from playing that room, because of the audiences that are there and the kind of intensity that they have when they’re listening. The room itself, for the kind of music we play, and most people feel that way, acoustically, it is so wonderful because you can hear everything perfectly. So there’s all sorts of subtleties that get lost a lot when you play in other venues, like a festival or whatever. Of course, playing live is a totally different thing than trying to create something in the studio. I asked Matt Pierson, the producer, if I could record the whole week and put it out and he said yes. Then, I just knew I wanted to do it, just because I had the opportunity to. Because, for me, if I had the option in a perfect world, I would make every album live and just put five or six songs on there. Those are my favorite albums, Miles Davis At The Plugged Nickel or Blackhawk or Coltrane At Birdland, where you hear them getting into that place they get when they’re allowed to stretch out and there’s no constraints. The music gets transcendental for me.

Brad Mehldau - recording at the Village Vanguard

The Art Of The Trio Volume Three (1998) signed by Brad

I have several ideas before I go out on the stage, and I usually stick to around half of them. Some things that I thought I would play I don’t when I get on stage because of what takes place when I get out there. For instance, if I play something that goes much longer than I originally intended, I will skip something else. I try for variety and often think of a multi-movement symphonic work or sonata as a model - you’ve usually got one movement that’s more intellectual, one that’s more simple direct, one that’s fast, one that’s slow, one that’s in 3/4 time maybe, etc. - in other words, a variety of mood and texture. In all that, as I’m going along, there is some sort of abstract narrative that presents itself in a concert - I don’t know how else to put it. Sometimes it will come in the form of themes that reappear in the different tunes I’m playing, or harmonic devices, or rhythmic motifs. That presents itself in the act of playing; it’s not something that is planned out.

Brad Mehldau

Suite: April 2020 (2020) signed by Brad

The piano itself is endlessly expressive as an instrument, but it's also rewarding to think more as an orchestrator---to think about ways of organizing sound. Many of the musicians or composers I am influenced by are great orchestrators as well, and I suppose their influence rubs off on me. Brahms seems to be one that I myself notice at least—I always see his music peeking out in what I write. It’s what one of his biographers described as “smiling through tears.” I like a bleeding heart that holds itself in check a bit—that kind of German Romanticism, not all in your face.

Brad Mehldau

Finding Gabriel (2018) signed by Brad

New York City is the greatest city in the world and it's not even close. Notwithstanding the politics, the peril, the naysayers, the nattering nabobs of negativity, no matter the turmoil and sturm und drang which the city endures, it always prevails. It simply does. Exhibit A in my ongoing love affair with all things New York was a recent visit to Mezzrow, a piano listening room on West 10th Street in Greenwich Village, just a couple of blocks from the hallowed and sacred Village Vanguard. On a summery, wind swept Monday night in August, the virtuoso jazz pianist Brad Mehldau performed a solo recital for fifty lucky souls. It was an extraordinary experience.

Seymour Reads The Constitution! (2018) signed by Brad

When I initially stumbled across the announcement for the concert online, I thought it was a mistake. Perhaps it was a streaming only concert, not an actual live performance. After all, Brad was more accustomed to playing concert halls, like the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Symphony Hall in Boston, or Carnegie Hall in New York City, not a creaky, dimly lit basement room in Greenwich Village. With skepticism, I bought a ticket and hoped that it wouldn't get canceled, checking almost daily to see if my hopes would be dashed. They weren't.

When I got to the club, a small line of patrons gathered outside the venue and soon I was ushered to my seat, maybe five feet from the grand piano which filled almost the entirety of the stage. A brick wall served as the backdrop and there didn't seem to be much amplification, nor was any needed. Mezzrow is the genius of pianist Spike Wilner, who founded the club in September 2014, a piano room offshoot of Smalls, a well known jazz club since its resurgence in 2004. The club was named after a very colorful character in jazz - Mezz Mezzrow.

Largo (2002) signed by Brad

Mezz Mezzrow, born in Chicago in 1899, was in and out of reform schools and prison while developing a passion for jazz and playing clarinet, especially influenced by the music of his hero Louis Armstrong who was based in Chicago at the time with his fabled Hot Five. In 1933, Mezz's orchestra recorded with jazz luminaries Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson and Willie "The Lion" Smith, the first of approximately one hundred-fifty sides which Mezz helmed with other jazz legends including Art Hodes and Sidney Bechet. While his clarinet skills were pedestrian and lackluster, Mezz was probably best known as a prolific marijuana dealer, with Louis Armstrong his best and most devoted customer. His business exploits were so ubiquitous that ‘Mezz' became slang for marijuana, an important and essential addition to the 1930s hipsters’ lexicon. Thus, the club Mezzrow is a fitting tribute to its namesake who devoted his life to jazz and pleasing others. Still, it was a remarkable and unlikely venue for a Brad Mehldau performance, certainly one of the preeminent and influential pianists extant.

Born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1970, Brad was ten when the Mehldaus moved to West Hartford, Connecticut. Brad’s father was an ophthalmologist, his mother a homemaker, and a piano was a constant presence in their home. He was soon smitten with Jazz, “I started out as a kid playing classical piano and listening to rock. When I first heard jazz when I was eleven or so, it seemed to have something from both of those types of music, but something even more - a deep feeling of dance rhythm and the blues, and also the kind of virtuoso display that I associated with classical piano players that I admired."

Round Again (2019) signed by Brad

The proximity to New York City. proved an inescapable and powerful lure, "I knew that I wanted to come here because it was everything that the suburbs wasn't. I was a white, upper-middle-class kid who lived in a pretty homogenized environment. Yet I was with a couple of other people, like Joel Frahm, the tenor saxophonist, who went to the same high school as me. A group of us were trying to expose ourselves to jazz. So New York for us was sort of the Other, yet it wasn't too far away, a two hour-and fifteen minute car or bus ride. What really cemented me wanting to go to New York was when I came here with my folks during my senior year of high school, and we went one night to Bradley's, and heard the Hank Jones-Red Mitchell duo. That blew me away, seeing someone play jazz like that, about six feet from you. The next night I heard Cedar Walton...with Bobby Hutcherson, Billy Higgins, Ron Carter and Harold Land, small ensemble jazz. The immediacy of hearing Billy Higgins' ride cymbal and seeing Cedar Walton comping, after hearing it for three years on all those great Blue Note records I had. That was it. I knew I had to come here, just from an actual visceral need to get more of THAT as a listener."

Alone Together (1996) signed by Brad

When he graduated from high school, Brad enrolled at The New School in New York City and he had the great fortune to study with some jazz piano masters. Brad remembered, "I had some very good lessons at The New School with Kenny Werner and Fred Hersch, and Junior Mance was my first teacher there. He was a little different than Fred and Kenny. Fred concentrated on getting a good sound out of the piano and playing solo piano a lot, which was great, because I hadn't got there yet. Perfect timing. Kenny showed me ways to construct lines and develop my solo vocabulary specific harmonic stuff. With Junior, it was more that thing I described of soaking it up by being around him. We would play on one piano, or if we had a room with two pianos, we'd play on two. I said, 'I want to learn how to comp better. I listened to you on these Dizzy Gillespie records and your comping is perfect. How do you do that?' He said, "Well, let's do it." So we sat down and he would comp for me, and then I would comp for him and try to mimic him. Yeah, soak up what he was doing. Junior is a beautiful person. A lot of those guys to me still are models as people, for their generosity as human beings, and Junior is certainly one in that sense." Brad was able to soak up those invaluable lessons and, after playing with fellow rising star saxophonist Joshua Redman for eighteen months, Brad formed a trio and was signed by Warner Brothers releasing Introducing Brad Mehldau in 1995. Since then, more than thirty albums have followed including collaborations with revered jazz artists Charlie Haden, Charles Lloyd, Lee Konitz and Wayne Shorter as well as sessions with Daniel Lanois, Willie Nelson, Chris Thile and Allen Toussaint.

Your Mother Should Know (2023) signed by Brad

As eclectic and diverse as that list may be, Brad's real genius is broadening the Great American Songbook to include not only Duke Ellington, Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Thelonious Monk and Richard Rodgers but also The Beatles, Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake, Bob Dylan and Radiohead. In Brad's deft hands, these melodies become virtuosic explorations and unparalleled sonic excursions. As Brad once said, "I don't make a distinction between genres, I just write and play what I'm feeling. Music in itself doesn't have genres. It's just twelve different tones and how you arrange them in a given point of time."

Long Gone (2022) signed by Brad

Erin and I have been blessed to see Brad many times over the years, as a solo artist, with his trio, and as a sideman supporting his great friend, guitarist Peter Bernstein. The shows were always inspiring, especially with his jaw dropping talent. The gig at Mezzrow was just as rewarding, probably more so given the intimacy of the venue. At the start of the show, Brad sat down at the piano and said, “it’s really great to be back in New York. I’m not going to say a lot about what’s happened, we’ve all experienced the loss. All I can say is, I’m really happy to be here playing for you.” He wasn’t the only one exultant!

Chris Thile & Brad Mehldau (2017) signed by Brad

Brad opened with a melodic “Here, There, Everywhere” from the Lennon/McCartney songbook which segued seamlessly into Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Next came “Go To Sleep” by Radiohead and a gorgeous and soulful “Golden Lady” from the pen of Stevie Wonder. Other highlights were an appropriately dissonant “Skippy” by Thelonious Monk, an extended and an appropriately overwrought “Come Rain Or Come Shine” and “Dis Here” by the great soul jazz pianist Bobby Timmons. He finished with more Radiohead, “Little By Little,” exquisitely rendered. Unlike some jazz artists, Brad announced the names of the songs near the end of his program which was appreciated given how much he deconstructs and reinvents the melodies. He also said, “You all are so close, it’s freaking me out.” I think he was kidding. Maybe.

Jacob’s Ladder (2022) signed by Brad

After the show, I met him near the club entrance. I told him what a thrill it was to see him in such an intimate venue having seen him at much larger spaces over the years. ‘This is extraordinary,’ I gushed. “Thank you. You know, Spike (Wilner) is an old friend and I’m really happy to be here.” I handed him some vinyl to sign and told him how excited I was to have some of his music finally on vinyl instead of CDs. “Yes, my label Nonesuch is big on vinyl,” he replied.‘Have you ever heard anything from Thom Yorke or Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead on your treatments of their songs? I mean, they’re very talented songwriters, no doubt, but you’re a virtuoso,’ I asked. “That’s very kind of you to say. Actually, I do know their producer Nigel Godrich and he’s told me they really like what I do with their songs.” I couldn’t resist a shameless Tom Waits plug, ‘You know, I heard you cover Tom Waits on a sketchy bootleg awhile back. I’d love to hear you reinvent some of his songs.’ Brad smiled, “Oh yeah, I did ‘Martha,’ that’s a nice little tune, a beautiful melody.” I saw an opening, ‘You know, you could do a lot with his songs, “Take It With Me,” “Picture In A Frame,” Invitation To The Blues,” those all have great melodies. You could do a lot with them,’ I persisted. “ You know,” Brad said, “his songs are so lyrically driven, they may overshadow the melodies, but they have that melancholy which is essential.” Yes, the Celtic melancholy which inhabits my soul, perhaps one day he will explore Waits! I thanked Brad for his time, talent, generosity and especially his transcendent music.

Brad Mehldau, a jazz master and a gifted songwriter with impeccable taste. Not many can master Bach, Brahms, The Beatles, Dylan, Nick Drake, Nirvana, Radiohead, Stevie Wonder and Thelonious Monk with equal aplomb and conviction. Just arranging twelve different tones and smiling through tears!

Atlantic Jazz (1982) signed by Brad, Dave Brubeck, Ray Bryant, Kenny Barron, Tommy Flanagan, Sir Roland Hanna, Barry Harris, Hank Jones, Dwike Mitchell, Junior Mance, Andre Previn, Horace Silver, Billy Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Chucho Valdes

Atlantic Jazz Piano back cover signed by Monty Alexander, Roger Kellaway, Harold Mabern, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Randy Weston

Choice Brad Mehldau Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_k9bzHNfRCk

“I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” Anything Goes 2004

I wake up every day to this beautiful song, you should too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zBQ52LxWWA

“River Man” Brad plays Nick Drake live in SF

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvMaC63vdao

“She’s Leaving Home” Day Is Done 2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_JqOlHHiWc

“Bittersweet Symphony > Smells Like Teen Spirit” Brad plays The Verve and Nirvana 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Fk5OMKy7w

“When It Rains” Brad plays Brad Largo 2002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc0UiB7FvqI

“Song Song” The Art Of The Trio Volume 3 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1F3J5BrPtqM

“Moon River” The Art Of The Trio Volume 2 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpF0qKQ4WeE

“And I Love Her” Brad plays The Beatles 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GNuMfQ1N0g

“Tear Drop” Brad plays Massive Attack! Live 2010

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GrQGKHZ5KmE

“Hey Joe” Brad channels Jimi Hendrix 2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-P679ZcwAg

“Little By Little” Brad plays Radiohead 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bCueJXqLYQ

“Dear Prudence” Largo 2002

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77gJ-s9hDp4

“Stranger In Paradise” live at Smoke, Brad, Peter Bernstein, Jimmy Cobb, John Webber

Bonus picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Ye4m3bPQ8
Brad Mehldau livestream, Mezzrow 9 August 2021 first set

Thanks, luv and much respect to Spike Wilner and the gang at Mezzrow for their tireless and amazing efforts!

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Sitting in with Brad, “Where Do You Start” written by Johnny Mandel, Smoke, NYC August 12, 2023 early show, with Larry Grenadier and Joe Farnsworth

Jose Feliciano, Weston, Erin and Me…

I’m not like other guitar players. In fact, I'm not even like most acoustic players because I use the nylon-string acoustic. I do play steel-string and the electric guitar, too, because I love rock 'n' roll and guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, but my bread and butter has always been the nylon-string. Very few guitarists play nylon-string. They don't know how to get the sound out of them. That's something I've spent a lot of time on…It still makes sounds and does things that surprise me. Any time I think I've learned all the tricks, I'll come up with something, or somebody else will, and a new door opens. It's beautiful.

Jose Feliciano

Everything I learned was from records and listening to other people. Segovia was my classical influence, and then I liked Charlie Byrd a lot, too. In the 1960s, when Charlie brought bossa nova to the United States along with Stan Getz, I started listening to acoustic guitar players like Luiz Bonfa, Alirio Diaz - they were fantastic. But in the popular bag, it was Charlie Byrd who taught me through his records to do certain things on the nylon-string guitar that you're not supposed to do, like bending the note and playing kind of bluesy. All of the guitar purists scoffed at me in my teenage years when I played in the Village. But see, I did those things on the acoustic because I loved rock 'n' roll. I couldn't afford an electric guitar, so I would kind of play my acoustic like an electric. I loved it.

                         Jose Feliciano 

Sombra…Una Voz, Una Guitarra (1965) signed by Jose

It was exciting, sure. I loved Segovia. With rock 'n' roll, like the other kids my age, I discovered it on the radio and from American Bandstand. I picked up on rock 'n' roll between 1955 and '56, and in '56 Elvis came along and made us all rock 'n' roll fans. I remember doing Elvis songs at the school assemblies. They'd tell me, 'We're letting you go on, but please, don't excite the kids. Don't play anything too exciting.' Did I listen? F#ck no! I played what I played, you know? The kids would scream - it was great. After my performance, I'd go back to the classroom, and everybody would stand up and clap, which was pretty cool. The teachers had to deal with that. So that was my first taste of success and being accepted by the kids at school as a performer. You never get tired of that, believe me.

                         Jose Feliciano on early idolatry 

I've always had blistering speed with my right hand. People call it 'flamenco,' but it's not. I've heard the phrase 'Jose Feliciano and his Flamenco Guitar' - that's not what it is. I'm not a flamenco guitarist. I happen to play a nylon-string guitar that flamenco guitarists also use, but I'm not a flamenco guitarist.

Jose Feliciano

I love creating new music for my fans. I love the challenge of continuing to create hits and I love working with my producer, my musicians and my fans. I’m breathing so I’m making music. It’s that simple.

Jose Feliciano

Canta Otra Vez (1971) signed by Jose

Weston, Connecticut is a cool town. Erin and I have lived here for twenty years and our children have thrived here. Located forty-five miles northeast of New York City, Weston retains a bucolic charm with two acre zoning, interesting architecture (mid-century masters Mies Van der Rohe and Richard Neutra both designed homes here!), great schools, a vibrant arts community and endless stone walls. It has a colorful history with actors: Marilyn Monroe lived here after finishing The Seven Year Itch as did other icons Rodney Dangerfield, Bette Davis, Christopher Plummer and Robert Redford.

Weston also has a longstanding relationship with musicians. Fritz Reiner, conductor of the New York Philharmonic, led summer programs with the entire orchestra at his home in the 1940s, choreographer and ballet master George Balanchine summered here, far from the sweltering asphalt of New York City, disco diva Donna Summer lived on Crystal Lake, and chanteuse Eartha Kitt spent the twilight of her life in this leafy, wooded community.

Perhaps the most famous musician, who has been a long time Weston resident despite his numerous other homes, is Rolling Stone Keith Richards and his supermodel wife Patti Hansen. Keith and Patti have lived here for nearly forty years and both of their daughters attended the local Weston public schools. I've been told by some residents who preceded us that it was not unusual for Keith and Patti to attend Back To School nights and the school plays, where Patti supplied her fearsome skills as a makeup artist. Turns out even the most venal and decadent Rolling Stone can be domesticated, although the sight of Keith prowling the halls of the Weston Middle School sans drinks, drugs and smokes is unusual and unsettling!

Despite all his fame and notoriety, Keith Richards is not the most talented guitarist in Weston. By his own admission, Keith is the second best guitarist in his hometown to Jose Feliciano, "We have never crossed paths even though Weston is a very small town. There's only one gas station and one market…That's right, he's a much better guitarist than me..and I haven't trained like him." A deferential show of respect and a proper nod from one guitar titan to a fellow guitarist of towering talent.

Guitarras (1977) signed by Jose

Born blind with congenital glaucoma in Puerto Rico, Jose Feliciano and his family moved to New York City when he was five years old. Jose was already showing an aptitude for music, banging on percussion at age three, and later playing the accordion. Soon, he was smitten with the guitar, as Jose remembered his early influences, "I listened to a lot of Spanish guitarists. There was Yomo Toro who was such a great player. He played the requinto. I started out on the instrument when I was about nine, but I don't think I was a guitarist till I was fourteen, I played the requinto like Yomo Toro. When I was fifteen, I became an avid fan of Andres Segovia. He brought so much respectability to the guitar. I remember when I tried to apply to the High School Of Music & Art in New York City, they wouldn't take me because I played the guitar. I had to play the piano - that's what they said. In my situation, because I was very poor and we lived in a small apartment, I couldn't have a piano, so Music & Art was out. Juilliard was out, too, because you needed money to go there."

Since the fancy music schools were not an option, Jose got his real education busking in the streets of New York City and playing coffee houses and clubs in the nascent though burgeoning folk scene in Greenwich Village, crossing paths with Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Dave Van Ronk. Through his coffee house earnings, Jose was able to contribute to the family coffers, and his family was grateful for the much needed financial remuneration.

Fantastic Feliciano (1966) signed by Jose

While performing in 1963 at Gerdes Folk City in Greenwich Village, Jose was “discovered” and signed by RCA Victor A&R executive Jack Somer. In 1965, Jose released his first album, The Voice And Guitar Of Jose Feliciano, and several others followed, but Jose hit his commercial stride when he hooked up with producer Rick Jarrad, a friendship and professional relationship which would endure for the next fifty years. Jarrad, at the time, was producing Harry Nilsson and the Jefferson Airplane.

Rick suggested songs which were different - “California Dreamin’ “ by the Mamas and the Papas and “Light My Fire” by The Doors - not the usual fare. Initially, Jose was skeptical since both songs had enjoyed tremendous chart success a year earlier, but Rick was insistent and encouraged Jose to put his spin on the tunes. Feliciano! released in 1968, became a monstrous worldwide hit, reaching Number Three on the Billboard charts. In fact, the first single was “California Dreamin’ “ and the b-side was “Light My Fire." When asked what The Doors thought of his recording, Jose recounted years later, "I did hear from (Doors guitarist) Robbie Krieger who said 'That was the way the song really should have been done.' I think Ray Manzarek, the keyboardist, liked what I did. I was a Doors fan, so that was just my way of showing The Doors that I liked their music. I never thought that my version would be a hit because the A side of the single was "California Dreamin'." Clearly, this single is a worthy candidate for the best ever 45 rpm!

Feliciano! (1968) signed by Jose

Riding high on the success of this record, Jose’s profile was raised ever higher, and he was asked to perform the National Anthem at Game Five (Detroit Tigers vs. St. Louis Cardinals) of the 1968 World Series by his friend, Tigers broadcaster Ernie Harwell, an eventual inductee into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jose sang the anthem his way, with soulful, yearning vocals accompanied by his fleet, finger picked acoustic guitar. A smattering of boos followed along with applause that the blasphemous performance was over. No one had ever sung the National Anthem like this. It was not sung in a stodgy, traditional way, rather it reflected the sensibilities and creativity of Jose. He recalled, "After I sang it, it was really strange to hear me being booed... and I didn't know what happened."

What followed was the worst that America has to offer. Angry calls to the Detroit Tigers front office precipitated a boycott of Jose's music on commercial broadcast radio and Jose was told that "Some veterans were taking off their shoes and throwing them at the television screens." There was a hue and cry to deport Jose from the miseducated and misinformed, sadly, a seemingly unending U.S. tradition. Indeed, it is not possible to deport a naturalized U.S. citizen, nevertheless, it affected and hurt Jose, "I was a little depressed to tell you the truth. And then they stopped playing me, like I had the plague or something." It is hard to believe that this performance almost derailed and scuttled his career.

Feliciano 10 To 23 (1969) signed by Jose

The unexpected and unintended consequence of his improvisation on the National Anthem, however quaint as it may seem today, are the many artistic interpretations that followed. It's not a straight line from Jose Feliciano's Latin folk to Jimi Hendrix's incendiary rock explosion at Woodstock in 1969 to Marvin Gaye's NBA All Star Game soul burner in 1983 to Whitney Houston's transcendence on an aircraft carrier in 1991, or maybe it is. As Jose admitted, "The only thing I can say about all these versions is that they wouldn't have done it if I hadn't done it - and I'm glad I did it.

Though the airplay dried up for a time, Jose continued to find college campus concerts more welcoming and he toiled away. Nothing overcomes a black list like releasing a Top 10 Holiday mainstay, even though "Feliz Navidad" was a bit of a fluke recording. Jose recalled that producer Rick Jarrad and he were working on a Christmas album in 1970, "Rick said to me, 'Jose, why don't you write a new Christmas song?' Well, at the time, the newest Christmas song was "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree" with Brenda Lee. And I thought to myself, 'Well Rick, you're asking for a tall order. How do I write something as good as Irving Berlin's "White Christmas"?" And I have to say, I put my mind to it. I thought about it and I came up with this very simple song using Puerto Rican instruments, like the cuatro, which my uncle taught me how to play when I was a little boy."

An anthem was born, a Christmas standard was introduced, and "Feliz Navidad" has been as ubiquitous as Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting)," and Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," and just as beloved. As the song recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, Jose remarked, "I feel it celebrates the continuing joy it's bringing to generations of families around the world. And it's about the true meaning of Christmas - being with family, sharing good meals and music. My proudest memory simply continues to be those many moments when I hear people all around the world singing my song. That blows my mind. I never would've imagined that could ever have been the case with one of my songs. I am so proud that it is the most popular global bilingual song, written by me in Spanish and English." A stunning achievement for any artist, Jose continues to bring joy and happiness to so many all over the world, and it is equally remarkable that he lives with his family just down a quiet Weston street.

Fireworks (1970) signed by Jose

Given our hometown connection, Erin and I have been blessed to see Jose several times over the years. He and his wife Susan, together fifty years, married almost forty (and introduced by Ernie Harwell - something great did come out of the Detroit debacle!), have been tireless supporters of the Weston community. Whether headlining with a full band at Westport's Levitt Pavilion for thousands, singing Midnight Mass at Assumption Church for congregants or performing an impromptu solo acoustic show for fifty at the Weston Senior Center, Jose's generous spirit is as infectious as his music is compelling.

So it was a fitting reintroduction to Jose and his music that he performed his first show in nearly eighteen months at the Weston Arts Fair on July 17, 2021. "Look, we haven't played in a long time and it was important for me and my family to play our first show here in my hometown, Weston. Please don't boo if we mess things up, It's been awhile," he quipped before the show started. His vocals sounded great and his guitar picking remained flawless. It's a good thing Keef didn't show up, he would have been shredded. Highlights included "California Dreamin'," "Light My Fire," and a stirring "Ain't No Sunshine," which Jose dedicated to his late great friend Bill Withers.

Alive Alive-O (1969) signed by Jose

Alive Alive-O (1969) back cover

After the show, Erin and I were led backstage through the internecine hallways by our friend Wendy and met with Jose and his beautiful and charming wife Susan in their dressing room. I told him that Keith Richards was using no false modesty when he said that he was the second best guitarist in Weston, "Oh you are very kind to say that. You know, I have never met Keith Richards but he was a big influence. The fuzz tone he used on 'Satisfaction' was a very important sound to me." Susan handed Jose the albums and told him what he was signing. Susan loved Alive Alive O!, an album he recorded at the London Palladium, "Oh, look at the back of this album, there’s Trudy (his beloved sight dog), and on the mic, a small picture of Jose. This is the only album (and he released more than sixty) which has two pictures of Jose on the (back) cover," she explained. As he signed Fantastic Feliciano, she told me that the original drawing hangs in their hallway. It is a beautiful rendering. Erin and I introduced our two friends who were visiting, one from Los Angeles via Iran, and the other from London via Iran. Jose brightened, "Oh, it is so nice to meet you. I would love to go to Iran some day. I really think I can help the people there. Music is a great healer and that's what they need, love and music." And that’s exactly what Jose provides. My friends, Erin and I thanked him for his kindness, generosity, and especially his music.

As talented as he is humble, Jose Feliciano is an amazing artist, a healer, a humanitarian, a great man and a great neighbor. He is definitely the best guitarist in Weston! We wish he and his family peace and blessings.

Vaya con dios!

Levitt Pavilion program, September 13, 2003 signed by Jose

Choice Jose Feliciano Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQkY2UFBUb4

“National Anthem” live at World Series 1968

Oh, the horror and blasphemy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YicQtP-xyg

“California Dreamin “ Feliciano! 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvwbBkGasQg

“Feliz Navidad” live with Daryl Hall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-lUBlbJkrQ

“Ain’t No Sunshine” Jose sings Bill Withers 1972

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrotN8mCV98

“Purple Haze” Jose shreds Jimi!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-qsN1Zc_Lk

“Billie Jean” Jose crushes Michael!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqlBJclyuMY

“Light My Fire” live with Daryl Hall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH4og7yap1o

“Sabor A Mi” live with Gloria Estefan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl4QBJeXqT4

“Rain” 10 To 23 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SxPhxvpNSY

“Fire and Rain” Jose sings James Taylor with Daryl Hall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMMfNiotGPo

“Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” Feliciano! 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uk3n-UQ9KSY

“Malagueña” Live

Bonus Picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3-b3ViNTMI

“National Anthem” Jimi Hendrix Woodstock 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8Z60CT6sLA

“National Anthem” Marvin Gaye NBA All Star Game 1983

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAMBM7YaEvQ

“National Anthem” Marvin Gaye, Game 4 1968 World Series, days before Jose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_lCmBvYMRs

“National Anthem” Whitney Houston 1991

Feliz Navidad

Feliz Navidad signed by Jose

Billie Holiday, Mal Waldron and Me…

52nd Street was an energizing experience. Minton's had a front bar and a back room where the rhythm section would be pumping away on one tune, and the horns would solo chorus after chorus, getting more furious. Then the pianist would get tired and another would take over. It kept going like that all night long. I heard (Thelonious) Monk there even before I heard his records. He was a big man, austere and imposing. He looked like he had his whole world around him, and you wouldn't penetrate that world. His sound wasn't immediately attractive to me. The way he hit the piano was so strange, but later it grew on me. It's an acquired taste.

Mal Waldron

That tune ("Soul Eyes") was written for John Coltrane. I knew he was on the date the next day. The way the set up was in those days, they'd tell me who was on the set and then they'd tell me to write six or seven compositions for the date. So I had to stay up all night long and write the changes, and the next morning I'd come in to Hackensack, New Jersey and make the records. Then I'd go home and write some more music for the next date.

Mal Waldron, pianist and composer for Prestige Records

Impressions (1959) signed by Mal

All the thousands of people he’s played with love Mal because he makes them sound good, and he sounds good himself. He gets a wonderful sound out of the piano, and he’s got his own style, his own angle, a vast knowledge of structure, of harmony, of rhythm, time and space. He’s an ideal partner.

Steve Lacy

Well, music is a language, and as long as you have a large enough vocabulary, you can communicate with anybody else. And if the vocabulary is the same, then you can communicate even better. Steve and I had pretty much the same vocabulary.

Mal Waldron on his frequent duo collaborator, Steve Lacy

The Quest (1962) signed by Mal

A wonderful accompanist, arranger, composer and pianist, Mal Waldron flies well below the radar. Many are not aware of his accomplishments and enduring influence compared to his more celebrated contemporaries. Part of his obscurity stems from his decision to decamp to Europe in the 1960s where he settled until his passing in 2002, joining a long and esteemed list of jazz brethren expatriates, Kenny Clarke, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Bud Powell and Ben Webster among them. As Mal trenchantly observed, "When I got to Europe, it was like the other side of the coin. In America, if you were black and a musician at that time, it was two strikes against you. And in Europe, if you were black and a musician, it was two strikes for you, so I decided to go for that." It was a smart trade.

Born in Harlem in New York City, Mal and his family moved to Jamaica, Queens when he was only four. The family was quite musical, although Mal's father was a bit of a martinet, "I was forced to take piano lessons, really forced. I didn’t like playing classics, because I had to do it the same way every time, otherwise I got my knuckles rapped. But if I didn’t do it, my father would pound me in the face or something like that. Fear is a great motivator.” Notwithstanding his father's brutish and churlish oversight, Mal's piano skills developed initially with the study of classical music. His love of jazz blossomed when he heard the indelible tenor saxophone of Coleman Hawkins and his signature song "Body and Soul." Mal remembered, "My first jazz experiences were on the saxophone. I bought an alto, since I couldn't afford a tenor. I got a big, hard reed and an open lay on the mouthpiece so it would sound like a tenor, and I got the music for "Body and Soul" from DownBeat, and for five minutes, I was Coleman Hawkins."

The relationship and infatuation with the alto saxophone didn't last, "I was trying to emulate Charlie Parker, but I couldn't arrive, so I hocked my horn and went back to the piano. I found my basis was strong enough at least to enable me to play the changes right." Drafted into the US Army in 1943, Mal was stationed at West Point and he would take the train in on weekends to see his jazz heroes, Art Tatum, Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk. When he was discharged, Mal attended Queens College on the G.I. Bill where he studied Music Composition and Theory with Professor Karol Radhaus, and played sessions around New York City honing his skills.

4, 5, and 6 (1956) signed by Mal, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean

His talents were noticeable and Mal was recruited by the redoubtable Charles Mingus, a towering figure, to join his band in 1954. Mal recalled, "Mingus was like my older brother. He gave me a lot of advice and helped me develop into a mature musician. I was into imitating Bud Powell from things like "Bud's Bubbles," making Bud's runs and so on. Mingus said, 'Don't copy anyone. That's not the way. An ordinary musician can play everybody, but a jazz musician can only play himself.' That stuck, and I started working on my own style which entailed not thinking of changes as changes, but as sounds. So that a cluster would do for a change, just a group of notes could be an impetus for soloing. I learned that the piano was a percussive instrument, you beat on it. We realized that jazz is the music for the people who were not satisfied with the status quo. You'd punch the piano as though you were striking somebody in your way."

Pugilistic pianism aside, Mal became the house pianist for Prestige Records, a celebrated record label known for important and seminal recordings by John Coltrane, Tadd Dameron, Miles Davis, Jackie McLean, Sonny Rollins and so many others. Mal described his responsibilities thusly, "Composing went along with improvising, which is instant composition. I'd make my changes first, nice blowable changes that you could solo on beautifully, and then write a tune over them. My life consisted of thinking about melodies in the daytime, writing them at night, and recording them the next day." Such diligence, hard work and preternatural talent led to more than four-hundred compositions, including the jazz standards “Soul Eyes," "The Git-Go," "Fire Waltz," and "Left Alone," an aching ballad with lyrics written by Billie Holiday.

Jackie McLean & Co. (1957) signed by Mal, Jackie McLean

Near the end of her tragic life, Billie recruited Mal to accompany her in 1957, "It was really an accident, because her pianist just conked out, he couldn't function any more... so it was an accident, but it was a beautiful accident for me." Mal recorded and performed with Billie until her untimely demise in 1959, and they co-wrote “Left Alone,” a beautiful blues ballad. Mal later recalled the circumstances, "She wrote the words and I wrote the melody. We were on a plane going from New York to San Francisco. It took more time than it does now because they were propeller planes. She just wanted to write a tune about her life. so she wrote those lyrics, and I wrote the melody. By the time we got off the plane, it was finished." Thanks and praises for propeller planes!

Though Billie's lyrics are bereft, forlorn and forsaken, Mal's melody brims with beauty and hope:

Where's the love that's made to fill my heart?

Where's the one from whom I'll never part?

First they hurt me. then desert me

I'm left alone, all alone

There's no house that I can call my home

There's no place from which I'll never roam

Town or city, it's a pity

I'm left alone, all alone

Seek and find they always say

But up to now, it's not that way

Maybe fate has let him pass me by

Or perhaps we'll meet before I die

Hearts will open, but until then

I'm left alone, all alone

Lady In Satin (1958) Billie sings, Mal plays!

Although Billie died before she was able to record "Left Alone," Mal released several instrumental versions and also accompanied the great Abbey Lincoln in 1961 as she delivered a stirring vocal. Mal's technique for accompanying singers was simple and direct, as he described, "Well, it's really support. I just lay down a blanket for them to walk on, the blanket is me, and they walk on me... It really helps me to improvise, because the words give it a completely different atmosphere to improvise on. You can improvise on the words alone, instead of just improvising on the changes and the harmony and the melody." He makes it sound so easy, but how tricky and devilish it is to execute, except in the skilled hands of a master.

Mal's career almost unraveled as quickly as it began. While on the road in Chicago with Max Roach in 1963, Mal overdosed on heroin, an unfortunate drug of choice, "I couldn't remember where I was. I couldn't remember anything about the piano or anything else. I lost my coordination, and my hands were shaking all the time. I spent six-seven months in East Elmhurst Hospital, where they gave me shock treatments and spinal taps and all kinds of things to relieve the pressure on my mind." It was an arduous recovery for the next two years as Mal had to relearn the piano and his extensive song catalog. Finally in 1965, his skills sufficiently restored, the film director Marcel Carne asked Mal to write the film score for Three Bedrooms In Manhattan. Mal accepted his gracious offer and he flew to Paris. In Europe, Mal thrived and, over the years, he lived in Paris, Rome and Munich, where he remained until his death in 2002. Mal found the reception gratifying, "The main thing that affected me in Europe is their respect for the music. They came out and made an effort to understand your music if they didn't understand it. When they were done, they showed respect and appreciation that you were an artist, which was not true in America." Equally remarkable, Mal stayed clean and free from all drugs, "I found in Europe, there was so much respect and love for me that I didn't need any drugs. I didn't need any drugs at all."

Sempre Amore (1987) signed by Mal, Steve Lacy

Erin and I were lucky to see Mal perform at the Village Vanguard in New York City in 1996. It was a rare stateside appearance by Mal at the venerable and intimate club, and he was joined by his longtime friend Steve Lacy on soprano saxophone. It was a Tuesday night late show and the environment was loose and low key, as the show wasn’t sold out and there wasn’t a lot of fussing, just two master musicians collaborating and creating. The program was Monk, Mingus and some knotty originals, featuring a perfect display of their wonderful interplay and longstanding chemistry. Mal could do it all, he could swing, play bebop and even mix in some dissonance. It was a remarkable and engaging performance. After the show, I chatted briefly with Mal and he was gracious as he signed his albums. As he signed Impressions, Mal confided, "You know, this is one of my favorite albums." I thanked him for his time and, especially his music.

Mal Waldron, a wonderful composer and pianist, and so terribly underrated. Whether he accompanies John Coltrane, Billie Holiday or Charles Mingus, Mal only plays himself!

Reflections (1959) signed by Steve, piano by Mal

Soprano Sax (1959) signed by Steve

Choice Mal Waldron Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_z4pYO4Y_g

“Soul Eyes” with John Coltrane 1962

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s5iD-q9FUU

“Left Alone” live with Jackie McLean 1986

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyvyiqlQPws

“Warm Canto” The Quest 1962

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z9WBPw6dIo

“Blue Calypso” with John Coltrane, Jackie McLean, Art Taylor 1957

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppguMAJiqK8

“Three Gymnopedies, No. 1” Mal Waldron Plays Eric Satie (1983)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0oeMhHXfhc&list=RDe0oeMhHXfhc&start_radio=1

“The Git-Go” with Joe Henderson, Reggie Workman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjdT0b5_DSg

“Fire Waltz” The Quest (1962)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JvgjdmTWf8

“Champs Elysee” Impressions (1959)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7wFgx0BLGk

“You And The Night And The Music” with Reggie Workman, Ed Blackwell 1983

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LP3l_qht-co

“Left Alone” duo with Archie Shepp 2002

Bonus picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6_JhsFpvU8

“Foolin’ Myself > Easy To Remember > What A Little Moonlight Can Do” live with Billie Holiday 1958

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7w8Wb5_aZA

“Left Alone” Mal with Abbey Lincoln, 1961

George Cables, Art Pepper and Me…

I don’t feel that one should be stuck in the mud playing the same old stuff all the time, trying to prove that this music is valid. We don’t need to prove anything, but I think you really have to be responsive to your heritage and then go on and find your own voice.

George Cables

Goin’ Home (1982) signed by George Cables

I never really listened to pianists when I was coming up. I would probably say I’ve been more influenced by Miles or Trane and their whole bands rather than by any single pianist. The concept of the music is more important than listening to somebody’s chops, somebody’s technique, The way Miles’ band held together, it was just like magic. You were transported to another world.

George Cables

Circle (1979) signed by George, Rufus Reid

The Jazz Samaritans was led by Artie Simmons…and his cousin was Roy Haynes who would come by and check us out, especially if Billy was playing, he wanted to check out Billy Cobham. He would also sit in, play the drums. I mean, I wasn’t really playing anything, I was just starting, didn’t really know anything, but he would come and thrill us. I remember Roy Haynes did a roll on the bass drum, and everybody just fell out! He took a solo on the bass drum, we couldn’t believe it, we didn't know anyone’s foot was that fast! I thought it was just great, and later I got to play with him, which was even better! Once I was playing with him, and I was enamored at that time with the rhythm section Miles had with Herbie, Ron, and Tony, you know, they used to catch each other and play across the bar, play these accents. So I thought, you know, since Roy, when he would accent, it wasn’t like he would always come down on “one,” or the “four.” But I would try to catch him, but it was trying to chase him around the block, you never could pin him down! So he said “George…” He gave me a very nice lesson, and told me in a very nice way, he didn’t say, “Hey man, stop doing that, don’t do that,” he said, “Do you know who I listen to?” I said, ‘No.’ He said, “I listen to the piano player.” So he’s telling me, ‘Look, you could just do your thing and I can follow you, or I can be free to do my thing too, and that’s how it will come together.’

     George Cables on his first band and early lessons from Jazz master Roy Haynes

Phantom Of The City (1985) signed by George

Yeah, that was the last session. Tete-a-Tete and Goin’ Home were the same session. We didn’t know it at the time when we were doing it that it would be Art’s last. I chose that song “Goin‘ Home,” I was going to dedicate it to my mother-in-law who passed, but then Art passed away, so it became the idea of Art “Goin’ Home,” and that became the title of the record. And then the other one, “Tete-a-Tete” was a kind of calypso I wrote. I remember one thing, on the first session Art was nervous about doing it duo, and (producer) Ed Michel kept going and coming back in, so we locked the door. Course, Ed just found the key and came back! But Art just didn’t wait, he said, “Come on man, I just want to do this.” But Ed was being a producer, you know, gotta do this, gotta do that. Duo was a new thing for both of us, we wanted to get it right.

                         George Cables on his last recordings with Art Pepper

Tete A Tete (1982) signed by George

I saw Trane at age 20 at Birdland, with Elvin and McCoy Tyner and Jimmy Garrison, what a band. But I was really still too young to really get the most out of that music, I was too young musically, not musically initiated enough to really get it. I heard some things where I was really moved, but I didn’t really know and understand in my heart and in my soul exactly. I didn’t understand in a deep way what was going on. I got some of the things, as much as I could at the time. I got to Trane a little later on. That was when I was listening to some music in the basement and I was on the phone. I had A Love Supreme on—it was like something that was pounding on the door, you know, pounding on my brain’s door, “Let me in!” I got so distracted, I couldn’t talk on the phone, I had to hang up. All of a sudden, it was this epiphany, this realization, boom: “Oh, I get it.” You hear the stuff before, and you kind of like it, but everything else is kind of on the surface for me.

                          George Cables on the transcendence of John Coltrane 

Cables’ Vision (1979) signed by George

That was right in your face with McCoy, because of the kind of music he was playing. McCoy was playing with Elvin for chrissakes, so he’s playing the piano more like a drum, and the left hand was very strong. His right hand was very strong, and McCoy is very soulful too, but you felt as if he was playing percussively, not that he was banging, but his was a percussive approach that the piano was a percussion instrument like the vibes, or an African xylophone. Herbie, I thought, was a little more lyrical, and would use colors. Someone asked Freddie (Hubbard), “Who do you like better, Herbie or McCoy?” And Freddie, I don’t know if I’m quoting him right, but he said, “Well, McCoy’s my man, but Herbie can do anything!”

I mean Herbie’s voicings, I don’t know! Sometimes I asked Herbie, “What are you playing?” He said, “I don’t know.” Just put the piano in front of you, and where your hands fall, your hands fall. What he played was, I think, harmonically complicated. McCoy, you know, you got the sense that McCoy could kind of manhandle this thing. The feeling from McCoy… I remember one night at Keystone Korner in particular, I would have sworn that that piano was being levitated, he played with so much energy, it would just pick you up.

                         George Cables on Herbie Hancock vs. McCoy Tyner - Who ya got?!

Landscape (1979) signed by George

I try to tell students that the piano is a percussive instrument, and it can sing if you make it sing, and the whole orchestra’s in there, but you strike it, and that’s a quality, when you comp, I think you need to take advantage of. Some guys, you just hear the chords, a chord here, a chord there, but you need to invest in the rhythm, whether you’re delicate, it doesn’t mean you need to pound everything. You can try to drive and be an engine for a band, that’s part of what you do. The pianist, you know, we’re glue. We’re the glue of the rhythm section in a way, and maybe sometimes the glue in the band.

                            George Cables

High Energy (1974) signed by George, Freddie Hubbard

A sideman's sideman, George Cables has forged an exemplary career as an arranger, composer, and pianist. A leader or co-leader on more than forty albums, George has also appeared on hundreds of sessions with jazz luminaries Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, Max Roach and Sonny Rollins. His deft lyricism and acute sense of swing always bolsters and enhances these artists' recordings. George may be best known for his collaborations with Art Pepper at the end of Art's troubled life, and he appeared on more than twenty Art Pepper recordings, most released posthumously. Art's wife, Laurie confided that George was Art's favorite pianist, and as evidence, Art nicknamed George “Mr. Beautiful." He wasn’t lying, Art knowed!

Born in New York City in 1944, George was classically trained and attended the prestigious High School of Music & Art in Hamilton Heights in Harlem. Some very notable alumni are actor/singer/ Diahann Carroll, designer Milton Glaser, singer/songwriter Laura Nyro, KISS frontman Paul Stanley and actor Billy Dee Williams, quite an eclectic collection of artists. It also includes drummer extraordinaire Billy Cobham.

Crankin’ (1971) signed by George, Curtis Fuller, Lenny White, Stanley Clarke

A relatively late bloomer in jazz, George recalled in a wonderful recent interview with pianist Ethan Iverson, "I started playing piano when I was about six or so. Before then, actually, I used to watch my mother play in the house, and I used to try to reach up to the piano to play. The music that I'm involved with now, Jazz, was not in my vocabulary, It wasn't in the house. I remember people I played with saying, 'Yeah, man when I was a kid, I used to listen to my grandma, my father's records. I was listening to Bird when I was eight or thirteen, or something.' But all this stuff was new to me when I was fifteen or seventeen years old, so I was playing catch-up a lot of the time."

When he graduated from high school, George attended The Mannes School Of Music as a piano major and he joined his first band, The Jazz Samaritans, led by drummer and trombonist Artie Simmons. Other members were saxophonist Steve Grossman, bassist Clint Houston, Billy Cobham and Lenny White, all eventual jazz band leaders and stalwart musicians. George's real education was just beginning, and it started at the Five Spot, a venerable and storied New York City club, where he saw Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Coleman Hawkins' big band and others perform their illustrious magic. Soon, George was invited to play sessions with Art Blakey (he was a Jazz Messenger for a short stint in 1969), Frank Foster, Woody Shaw and Max Roach.

Double Image (1986) signed by George, Frank Morgan “Duet To It!”

George remembered his time with Max fondly, "We played different places with Max, because he was very business-like, he paid well. He had another air about him, and one night, Thelonious Monk came out to hang out at Club Baron, I couldn't believe it! We got off the stand and he kept looking at me. You know, I'm not one to go up to Thelonious and go, 'Hello Mister Monk!" All I know is that he's a different kind of guy. He's Thelonious Monk, he's someone apart from everybody. I might say something to Max (Roach), but who knows what to say to Thelonious Monk? And that night we had a party at Max's house, and Monk was there, and the night after, Max said, 'You know, that's the most I've heard Monk say in years.' And I hadn't heard him say anything that night! And Max said, 'You know, he likes you,' and man, I haven't come down from that yet."

Artworks (1979) signed by George

His chops sufficiently strengthened, George embarked on a tour with Sonny Rollins in 1969 which landed him in California. Smitten with the lifestyle and the West Coast music, George settled there for decades, initially in Los Angeles, then in San Francisco, finding session work with Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, Art Pepper and other California compatriots. He also began recording at Contemporary Records, an influential Los Angeles based record label founded by Les Koenig in 1951.

Koenig was a Hollywood screenwriter and producer who was swept up in the furor fomented by the ugliest American Joseph McCarthy in his dogged pursuit of communists (real and mostly imagined) in the 1940s-50s. Though Koenig was not a communist, he was asked to testify and name "names." Rather than do that, as some disgracefully did, he accepted his blacklist as a punishment and started a record company. Motion pictures‘ loss was clearly music’s gain. Initially, Koenig wanted to record his friends - composers from the film community - but he broadened the label to indulge his passion for jazz.

Dynamics (1985) signed by George

While not as revered or acclaimed as the Blue Note label in New York City, Contemporary Records in Los Angeles was responsible for some epochal recordings: Sonny Rollins' Way Out West, Cecil Taylor's Looking Ahead!, Art Pepper Meets The Rhythm Section and Andre Previn's Double Play! Probably the most controversial and important recordings were Ornette Coleman's Something Else!!! and Tomorrow Is The Question! although the engineer, Roy DuNann, begged to differ. Upon hearing Ornette’s challenging rhythms and dissonance, Roy quipped, “I would have sent them home.” Although Ornette Coleman is considered a visionary now, his music mostly eluded Roy, “Yeah, I got so I could listen to a lot of the jazz stuff and know where one chorus was going to end and the next one begin. It was important for knowing where to make a splice. But with Ornette, you couldn’t tell where you were. It just started out and it ended. It wasn’t music at all for me.”

Art Lives (1983) signed by George, David Williams

Though Roy was less well known than Blue Note engineer supreme Rudy Van Gelder, he was vastly talented and a secret weapon at Contemporary Records. Roy was recruited to join Contemporary from Capitol Records, having worked on Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, and hundreds of other sessions. With his keen ear and extensive experience, Roy helped design the recording studio, “Lester decided he wanted to try recording jazz groups in the shipping room. There were records stacked all over the place on record shelves. We needed a little control room so we could listen on loudspeakers without feedback into the studio, so we set it up in the office across from the publicist’s. Lester had a German friend who had worked at Telefunken with an engineer named Neumann. This friend had brought a Telefunken condenser microphone with him from Germany.” The magic would continue until Les Koenig's unfortunate and untimely death in 1977, and Roy’s departure from the recording studio.

That Old Feeling (1986) signed by George

Erin and I have been very blessed to see George Cables perform dozens of times over the years and it is always a joyous occasion. Full of impossibly good cheer, George's spirit radiates in his wonderful playing. There have been so many memorable shows over the years, at Blues Alley in Washington, DC, the Blue Note in New York City, and Bradley's, a now shuttered and sorely missed jazz club in the West Village. Erin and I have also seen George numerous times at the Jazz Forum in Tarrytown, New York, a wonderful jazz club run by trumpeter Mark Morganelli and his lovely wife Ellen.

Keep Your Soul Together (1973) signed by George, Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter

After a recent Jazz Forum show, where George was supporting a record release by guitarist Roni Ben-Hur, George was warm and welcoming, and he was happy to sign some vinyl. I asked George how he ended up paired with Art Pepper on so many great recordings? "Thank you," he replied, "I was doing some sessions with Woody Shaw at Contemporary (Records) and Les (Koenig) really liked my sound and he thought Art and I would sound great together." And Les, with his impeccable taste was right! George was particularly struck when I handed him Freddie Hubbard's Keep Your Soul Together. He opened the gatefold carefully and pointed at a photo of saxophonist Junior Cook, "You know, Junior was my roommate, we lived together for awhile. What a great man and musician, I miss him." Erin and I thanked George for his time and, especially his music.

George Cables, a remarkable and remarkably unsung musician, the glue in every band and "Mr. Beautiful" in all ways possible. Long may he play!

California Concert (1985) signed by George

Choice George Cables Cuts (per BK's request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rafXSARZtSw

“Over The Rainbow” duo with Art Pepper 1982

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ8m-fYpfMA

“Over The Rainbow” live with Art Pepper 1981

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cyyKadNqV0

“Arthur’s Blues” live with Art Pepper 1981

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBdpHfZmlMc

“In A Sentimental Mood” George plays Duke Ellington! 1995

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgaFAmToHRE

“It Don’t Mean A Thing” more Duke Ellington, live at Keystone Korner 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTCVkNawNa0

“Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Crying” with Art Pepper 1982

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKm__ke__BY

“Keep Your Soul Together” with Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter, Junior Cook 1973

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4GVyzHdjgI

“For All We Know” Too Close For Comfort 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59ntu1ZlzQc

“Lullaby” My Muse 2019

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHBA6Ee5htc

“Isn’t She Lovely?” Goin’ Home Art and George slay Stevie! 1982

Michelle (1966) signed by George

Thank You Thank You (1977) signed by George, Roy Haynes

Some Of My Favorite Things (1980) signed by George

Harold Land and Me…

Jazz has a lot to do with the vibrations of the moment. Perhaps with the communication between the group that’s participating, which would be aside from the amount of creative ability within each individual on the stand at that moment. It’s just, if things start working—or if they don’t. Which can happen at any given time, no matter what music is being played. A lot of times I think musicians can feel on the stand that it’s really happening, but the audience might not be aware of what they’re feeling. Then it can often be reversed; the audience can be completely bowled over, yet the musicians won’t feel that way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I guess—or rather, the ear of the listener.

                         Harold Land 

Jazz is not going to change, no matter how much anybody attempts to blacken it. Jazz has been here for quite some time, and it doesn’t seem to be rubbed out, despite the obstacles it has to get over. It still thrives; there’s still millions of youngsters in the new generation coming up who want to play jazz. Even though they know they can go out and get a guitar, learn three changes and make thousands of dollars, their ambition is still to be jazz players. Why? That shows what a strong quality jazz has as an art. It’s no mirage—it’s for real.

Harold Land 1969 interview

Harold In The Land Of Jazz (1958) signed by Harold

We were driving around - can’t even recall where - but I asked him who his favorite trumpeter was and you know who he said? Not Dizzy, not Miles. Fats Navarro. And I told him Fats is my favorite, too. As a matter of fact, there’s a solo that Fats takes on “Out of Nowhere” - it’s a Tadd Dameron arrangement - that whenever I listen to it, it brings tears to my eyes. There was a certain quality to his playing that always moved me.

Harold Land on Clifford Brown

I know I would have had much wider acceptance if I had been based in New York.

Harold Land

Eastward Ho! Harold Land In New York (1960) signed by Harold

Harold Land is one of the great hard bop Jazz tenor saxophonists. Just ask Sonny Rollins who said in a recent interview: “Harold Land was one of the premier saxophonists of the time. He was one of the best… a great player, one of my favorites.” Terribly underrated, Harold’s prominence and renown was possibly dimmed by his allegiance and fealty to his West Coast roots, although his talents shone brilliantly on numerous recordings with Clifford Brown and Max Roach, Curtis Counce, Bobby Hutcherson and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. Harold also furnished his fulsome skills on sessions with Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd, Bill Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Hampton Hawes, Thelonious Monk and countless other jazz icons in his storied career.

You Get More Bounce With Curtis Counce! (1957)

Born in Houston, Texas, raised in San Diego, Harold Land was a late bloomer, initially playing piano and not picking up the saxophone in earnest until he was sixteen and heard the captivating tones of the inimitable Coleman Hawkins blowing “Body And Soul,” Hawk’s tour de force, and a source of inspiration for all saxophonists. After graduating from high school, Harold honed his skills, knocking around San Diego playing clubs and touring briefly with rhythm and blues band leaders Jimmy and Joe Liggins. In 1954, Harold moved to Los Angeles where he serendipitously met trumpet extraordinaire Clifford Brown. Harold was jamming at the home of his friend Eric Dolphy when Clifford heard him play. Clifford soon hired Harold to replace Teddy Edwards as tenor saxophonist in his important and heralded band, which Clifford had co-founded with Max Roach a year earlier.

Jam Session (1954) signed by Harold, Max Roach, Maynard Ferguson, Junior Mance, Clark Terry

Harold left his wife and young son in Los Angeles and went east, joining the Brown-Roach juggernaut which toured and recorded incessantly, and created some of the most passionate hard bop jazz records including Jam Session (1954), Brown and Roach Incorporated (1954), and Study In Brown (1955). Though the music was exhilarating, being on the road and away from his family while living in Philadelphia was wearying and difficult. Then, his grandmother fell ill and Harold disclosed, "After being away from Lydia and my son for two and a half years, I figured the best thing for me was to go back home and stay." Despite Clifford's protestations to remain, Harold was resolute and left to rejoin his family. Meanwhile, Brown and Roach recruited saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins as Harold's replacement, certainly a noteworthy addition and an invaluable consolation prize.

Study In Brown (1954) signed by Harold, Max Roach “Thanks Brownie”

Harold's decision to depart had a larger significance, as it probably saved his life. As his wife Lydia recalled, "If Harold had not come back when he did, he probably would have been in that car with Brownie. He and Brownie always drove together." Indeed, it was a tragedy when Clifford Brown and pianist Richie Powell (Bud's equally talented brother!) crashed on the wet slick anaconda that was the Pennsylvania Turnpike and perished on June 26, 1956 leaving the jazz world stunned. Brownie was just twenty-five years old while Powell was twenty-four, and their talents were as respected as their losses were devastating.

Harold remembered Brownie fondly, “Clifford Brown was a very beautiful person. He had a very warm personality and usually seemed so relaxed it made me relaxed to be around him. In my opinion, Brownie had a very even temperament, if that’s the best way to describe it, and a kind of wisdom or knowledge of himself and those around him, and of life in general, that one associates with someone quite a bit older than he was at the time. And to me these same qualities were evident when he expressed himself through his instrument. I have had more than one talented musician say to me, referring to Brownie, that he played his instrument like a young old man! And in each instance I’m sure they meant this statement to be an extremely beautiful compliment, that a man so young in years could acquire such command, depth, and broad musical scope in such a relatively short span of time. Playing with the fire and creativeness of a young man, and with the depth, tenderness, and insight into past, present, and future of an older man.”

Memphis Jackson (1970) signed by Harold, Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Teddy Edwards, Harry Sweets Edison, Ernie Watts

Despite the loss, Harold soldiered on and released several influential albums as a leader, Harold In The Land Of Jazz, The Fox, and Eastward Ho! Harold Land In New York. Harold then joined the Gerald Wilson Orchestra, a highly acclaimed group of West Coast players under the helm and steely guidance of noted arranger and composer Gerald Wilson. Harold participated on thirteen Gerald Wilson albums in the ensuing decades along with other esteemed jazz colleagues, saxophonist Teddy Edwards, organist Richard "Groove" Holmes, trumpeter Carmell Jones, guitarist Joe Pass, pianist Jack Wilson and vibraphonist Roy Ayers, a supremely gifted ensemble. Another key collaboration was Harold's relationship with vibraphone master Bobby Hutcherson on eight distinguished Blue Note albums. Although Harold did not share the notoriety of some of his New York City peers, he was, nonetheless, prolific and influential as evidenced by his impressive discography.

Gerald Wilson Orchestra: Live and Swinging (1967) signed by Gerald, Charles Tolliver

In 1996, Harold joined the faculty at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a lecturer at the behest of guitarist Kenny Burrell, the Director of Jazz Studies who had helped create the program in the 1970s. Remembering Harold on his passing in 2001, Kenny said, "Harold Land was one of the major contributors in the history of the jazz saxophone. He was a vital and well-loved member of the jazz faculty here at UCLA."

I only saw Harold Land once in the late 1990s at the Jazz Standard in New York City. Harold rarely ventured east so it was a rare and exciting opportunity to see him perform. He had great musicians with him, drummer Billy Higgins, pianist Mulgrew Miller and bassist Ray Drummond. The performance featured songs off Harold’s 1995 release A Lazy Afternoon, mostly a compelling set of standards, "In A Sentimental Mood," "But Beautiful, "What's New," and a Thelonious Monk seldom heard nugget "Ugly Beauty." It was a sterling night of music propelled by these transcendent musicians.

As voluble and expressive as Harold was with his horn on stage, he was equally quiet and taciturn off stage. He was pleased to sign his vinyl but he didn’t exude much excitement nor proffer any insights. I thanked him for his time and his extraordinary oeuvre of music. Sadly, a couple of years after this concert, Harold passed away on July 27, 2001 after suffering a stroke at the age of seventy-two. It was a terrible loss as Harold was beginning to record and tour more. Fortunately, Harold's enduring music is timeless and sustains.

Jazz Impressions Of Folk Music (1963)

Choice Harold Land Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M283JFxesic

“Cherokee” Study In Brown 1955

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-q3i39qzHo

“West Coast Blues” West Coast Blues 1960

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHCfcDQUYPI

“I’m Gonna Go Fishin’ “ with Carmell Jones 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKGNIrBmgrs

“Tom Dooley” Jazz Impressions of Folk Music 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FE1t6lUVB_k

“Joy Spring” Clifford Brown & Max Roach 1954

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4YC-Yz53Bw

“The Peace Maker” The Peacemaker 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPTFg667yyg

“What Is This Thing Called Love” Jam Session 1954

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwdYNNVv6Zs

“So In Love” Eastward Ho! with Kenny Dorham 1960

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JmPZgil_pQ

“Esatchmo” live in Cologne, 1986

Bonus picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRitvl7o1lw

“Out Of Nowhere” Fats Navarro with Charlie Parker

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKq9Hn7Fo-k

“San Diego Bounce” Early Harold, 1948

9/11, David Rice, Sandler O’Neill, Sting and Me…

For the past five years on the anniversary of 9/11, I have written about some of the extraordinary men and women with whom I worked at Sandler O'Neill on the 104th floor of Two World Trade Center in New York City. The following is an excerpt from a letter which I wrote eighteen years ago to the mother of my deceased and great friend David Rice.

David Rice - three weeks before he was murdered on 9/11

"I met David at Sandler O'Neill in September of 1998. I had recently joined the firm some two or three weeks earlier and David was visiting from Chicago. We were introduced and chatted briefly, each one of us eyeing the other, wary and suspecting, like two fighters ready to spar. He was all Brooks Brothers head to toe: gray flannel suit, white button down shirt, red rep tie and conservative wing tips. I was all flash: Italian suit and loafers, custom shirt, cuff links, and a loud Hermes tie.

In an instant, I hated him. He was young, smart, gregarious, and unflappable Mid-West cool. At the end of the day (it was a Friday), he was flying to Chicago and I was headed to Washington, DC. David suggested we share a cab to the airport. I nodded begrudgingly, and we walked to the elevator bank. By no small coincidence, David mentioned that he didn't drink. Leery that I was now in the company of some high minded Okie Southern Baptist, I stammered, 'Do you go to meetings?' "Yes," he said excitedly and loudly, "Do you?" ‘Yes,’ I told him, ‘ever since December 13, 1992.’ David smiled broadly, and all the fears and tensions melted away as we shared the elevator ride down and subsequent cab ride together like two little school kids caught up in our own secret world.

During the cab ride, David told me that he had been sober since March 13, 1993, and he shared with me his remarkable story of how he came, came to, and came to believe. From then on, I teased him unmercifully that he would never have as much sobriety as I, and, as competitive as he was, this drove him nuts. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful drive, and over the next three years, we shared an incredible, intimate relationship, talking on the phone (almost) daily, and needling and teasing each other incessantly. David's zest for living and unbridled enthusiasm was infectious.

When David came to visit New York, I took him to meetings, in particular a Monday Men's Group that he enjoyed, and he introduced me to Richard V.F. and the very small meeting that Richard hosted in his apartment. I will never forget that gathering, six or seven dysfunctional personalities functioning beautifully, discussing their hopes, fears, dreams, and, as David always insisted, the twelve steps. At the conclusion of the meeting, it was off to dinner in the East Village.

This ragtag, motley crew enjoyed a convivial dinner and then, the check came. In a flash, David seized it. "What do you think about bank stocks?" he asked. Blank looks and vacant stares abounded. Our guests - a disheveled, unpublished playwright, a fine watch salesman peddling wares of questionable provenance, and other assorted hustlers and malcontents - went quiet. David continued, "Do you think they're cheap in here? The bank stocks?" "Yes" came a timid, unsure reply from nowhere. "All right then, that'll satisfy the IRS. Dinner's on me!" David proclaimed, proffering his corporate American Express (thanks Jimmy D!).

Then it was out into the streets and bright lights of the big city. A couple of blocks later, David started shouting, "Amy Rice! Amy Rice! Amy Rice!" at the top of his lungs. Thinking he had Tourette's Syndrome of a particularly weird and virulent strain, I didn't know what to do. Then, some three or four flights up in a window, a furtive image darted out from behind a curtain. "David, is that you?" It was his sister. Thank God he didn't have Tourette's, although others on the New York City sidewalks seemed not so sure and they gave him a wide berth as he strove with ardent resolve to her building. "I'll call you tomorrow!" he shouted, "We just had dinner. It was great."

In March of 2000, my career was at a crossroads, and I began to have discussions with another Wall Street firm. David was my biggest cheerleader. "Yes, you have to explore this opportunity for the sake of your family," he told me. I was a little hesitant and nervous, but he reminded me that God was always taking care of me and that God wasn't going to stop now. I made the move to UBS Warburg in May of 2000, relocated to Connecticut with my family, and David and I continued our friendship and constant dialogue.

David, in turn, began to think about his career. His marriage was falling apart - we shared many a late night call - and he felt professionally that he should move from Chicago to New York and switch to bond sales from equities. I became his biggest cheerleader. Yes, you should move, the partners at Sandler O'Neill love you, you are young, smart and all the action is in New York, I counseled. It is the only advice which I have come to regret.

On Monday, September 10, 2001, I spoke with David and, as usual, he had a crazy story. On the previous Saturday night, he went to the Michael Jackson birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden in the Sandler O'Neill box. 'How did you possibly get tickets?' I asked, incredulous that he saw the show, the hottest ticket of the year. "You'll love this Wheely," David started. By then he had given me many nicknames, "Neilio the Dealio" begat "Dealio" begat "Wheely Dealy" begat "Wheely" or just plain "Wheels."

Then David's story.... Sandler had four tickets for David and his customers. So, of course, he invited a date. He needed five tickets. Desperately. He called all the ticket brokers to no avail, there were no tickets. Did David back down? Hell no. He said he went to the security desk, and with all the earnestness he could command, he looked the guard straight up and said. "Sir, my name is David Rice and I do not have a ticket, my name is not on your list. But I have four clients in the Sandler O'Neill box who are expecting me and you HAVE to let me in." His sense of urgency and passion did not go unnoticed. Probably, it would have been easier to breach White House security than get into Madison Square Garden that night, but the guard relented and David quickly joined his guests in the Sandler suite.

How was the show? I asked. "It sucked. Michael Jackson's a freak and Marlon Brando's insane," he replied. How was your date? "Well..." then he paused, a long pause. "Let's just say I don't think we'll be going out again, but the clients loved it and we all had a great time." Classic David Rice. Always a story, always an adventure, and always an unstoppable force of life and energy.

The next day, September 11, was the worst day in my life. I was at work in Stamford, Connecticut on my firm's trading desk when the first tower was hit. Unsure of which tower had been struck, I immediately called the Sandler equity trading desk and asked for Frank Salvaterra or Bruce Simmons. Allison Jones answered, and she told me that Frankie and Bruce were off the desk in a meeting. She said it was chaotic but they were fine. 'Tell Frankie and Bruce I love them and I'm thinking of them,' and then I hung up.

Then I typed David an electronic message via my Bloomberg terminal, 'Just another day in paradise...' In an instant, David's response flashed: "Bad situation. We're OK" His words gave me comfort. Of course, David was all right and he would tell me fabulous stories later. Minutes later on live television, I saw a fireball erupt. The second tower had been hit, and in that one horrifying instant, so many lives, hopes and dreams were shattered and forever altered. I called Sandler again. The phone rang three times. I hung up. I felt guilty, as I didn't want to slow down anyone's escape. Or so I thought....and then I felt a terrible emptiness and sadness for what had befallen my friends and colleagues at Sandler O'Neill. It continues to this day.

When David's tower collapsed, I left work immediately, went home, hugged and kissed my wife and children, and tried to make sense out of what had happened. That night I went to a meeting - David was always on me to go to more meetings - and I prayed and prayed and prayed. Well, I'm still praying, I'm still trudging and I'm still waiting. I want answers and there are none. I can't make any sense, nor most days do I even try. All I know is I miss my friend David. Terribly.

For my birthday in December 2001, my wife, Erin, gave me a frame with David's picture which she downloaded from his memorial website. I burst into tears, a mixture of mostly sorrow and some joy. David's picture now occupies a prominent place among our other family photos. And when my children get older (they are five, three and one) and they ask me who is that smiling, handsome, slightly mischievous man whom they have never met, I will tell them simply: David Rice was one of the finest men I have ever known. He was a great and true friend and I loved him..."

Well, eighteen years have passed since I wrote those words to David's mother, and my kids are much older now, and they know exactly who David Rice is and what he means to me. I was very blessed to have him in my life, however fleeting the time, and I cherish his friendship and the many laughs that we shared.

This will be my last Sandler O'Neill 9/11 post. It's been an honor and privilege to share with you some small measure of their humanity. They are remarkable men and women and I miss them dearly and wish peace and blessings for their families. Shakespeare wrote that "Parting is such sweet sorrow..." Sometimes, for me, it's just sorrow.

God bless.
Neil

Happy, Joyous and Free! I love you David

Please feel free to disseminate and read the entire collection!

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-j-kirk/frank-salvaterra-sting-he_b_8122112.html
Frank Salvaterra

Stacey McGowan and Kristy Irvine

https://www.vinyl-magic.com/blog/911-stacey-mcgowan-kristy-irvine-ryan-sting-and-me

Bruce Simmons

https://www.vinyl-magic.com/911-bruce-simmons-herman-sandler-sting-and-me

Here’s David’s obit from his family:

David Rice was the student with the grade point average of less than 2, who was voted most likely to succeed in high school. He was constantly in trouble. He would do things like rent a warehouse in Oklahoma City, hire a rock band, charge $10 a head and make thousand of dollars before the police broke up the party.

Still, as a teenager in Oklahoma City, he read biographies of Donald Trump and told his family that that was the kind of entrepreneur he would be. At age 31, David was an investor in bonds at Sandler O'Neill & Partners, in the south tower. "He drove his clients crazy but they loved him to death," says his younger brother, Andrew. "He was a pistol."

His life was marked by huge turnarounds. He had hit bottom in his early 20's from alcoholism and drug use. He dropped out of college. Then he began his recovery. He became a Fulbright scholar in Zimbabwe and South Africa. He earned a master's degree from the London School of Economics. Last February he transferred to New York from Chicago, where he had lived for 10 years.

"He was very real," his brother says. "He wasn't perfect but he was so wise for his age."

Here's the original Herman Sandler post.... 

Herman Sandler was a founder of Sandler O'Neill, a financial services investment bank. Along with his partners, he ran a very successful and lucrative practice. Herman was also a benefactor, who gave generously to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and The Rainforest Foundation. He looked like Daddy Warbucks: shaved head, glasses perched on the top of his forehead, fit and disciplined like the US Army Captain who had served his country in Vietnam. He was tough and he did not suffer fools, and I was lucky to work for him and his talented team of bankers, salesmen, and traders on the 104th floor of 2 World Trade Center until I left in May 2000.

In November 1999, Sting was playing four shows at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. One of my clients was a big Sting fan and asked if I could get tickets. Tickets were at a hefty premium since the venue was so small - only 3,000 seats vs. Sting's normal Madison Square Garden gig with 20,000+. I bought tickets through a ticket broker and asked Herman for backstage passes, since Herman was friends with Sting and his wife, Trudie Styler, and served with them on the board of The Rainforest Foundation. Herman said, "No problem." Everything was no problem with Herman, even his boat was named "No Problem." Herman secured the backstage passes the next day and handed them to me. No problem.

Sting backstage pass - Beacon Theater, New York City

The night of the show, I met the client and her trading assistant for a quick dinner at the Ocean Grill on the upper West Side. They were very excited to see Sting. We finished our meal and headed over to the Beacon. The backstage entrance is near the loading dock, so we flashed our passes and we were escorted in. A roadie told us that there was no real backstage area, so we could stand along the wall or go to our seats. I looked at the wall. That didn't look very promising and it was too early to go to our seats. 'Lets try this again,' I told the clients, 'Follow me.' We went back to where we came from and an elevator door opened. Another roadie got off. We got on. Taped to the elevator wall was handwriting: Sting 6, Costumes 5, Band 4, Catering 3. This was helpful. I pressed 6 and up we went.

Outlandos d’Amour (1978) signed by Sting, Andy Summers

The elevator opened on the 6th floor into an anteroom where Sting had his back to us. He was being interviewed, speaking into a mic attached to a large tape machine. I walked by Sting, nodded, and my clients followed me and stood in the corner. Actually, they cowered in the corner, they were so star struck. The interview concluded and I greeted Sting. I told him that I worked for Herman Sandler. "Herman is a great friend and a good man. We're doing some great work together on the Rainforest Foundation," Sting said as he signed a couple of his albums. I asked him if he would take a picture with my two guests. He agreed. I coaxed them out of the corner and they flanked Sting as I took a picture. No iPhone in those days, I relied on a throw away camera just purchased at Duane Reade. I took the picture, no flash. I stalled, 'Hey Sting, we got everything working now,' I promised as I took another picture. No flash again. Sting laughed, "You got everything working except the camera!" Then he shook everyone's hands and left. We headed back to our fourth row seats and watched Sting put on a great show. My clients were very grateful that they got to meet Sting, less so when my pictures got developed and came back blank.

Regatta de Blanc (1979) signed by Sting, Andy Summers

Tragically, Herman Sandler died on September 11, 2001, along with sixty-six of his Sandler O'Neill colleagues and some of my best friends. Sting later performed his song "Fragile" at one of the World Trade Center benefits and dedicated it to Herman's memory. I miss Herman Sandler, David Rice, Frank Salvaterra, Bruce Simmons, Howard Gelling, Tom Clark, Tom Collins, Doug Irgang, Stacey McGowan, Kristy Irvine Ryan, Mike Edwards and all the other Sandler O'Neill colleagues who senselessly died that horrible day. Although the years pass, their loss is a wound that never fully heals.

Synchronicity (1983) signed by Sting, Andy Summers

Bonus content:

Armed with a Master's Degree from Harvard Divinity School, Andrew Rice is an accomplished author and poet - a veritable renaissance man. Recently, Andrew started a podcast - storiesfromnowherepodcast.com - with an eclectic and fascinating mix of guests, including the founders of Die Jim Crow Records (DJCR), a label which helps artists incarcerated behind bars, Great Britain based clinical psychologist Sandra Barefoot, Programme Development Lead for The Forgiveness Project, and Church Goin' Mule, a Cleveland, Mississippi based artist influenced by the outsider art of Howard Finster and Bill Traylor. and the delta blues of Robert Johnson, Howlin Wolf and Blind Willie McTell.

Several months ago, Andrew called me and asked if I would contribute to his podcast and speak about his brother. I was deeply touched and gladly accepted. Andrew said, "We'll just have a conversation and see where it goes."  There were no notes, no preparation and no guardrails. It was just two brothers united in their recovery and grief trying to make sense of the senseless. There were tears and laughter as we talked, remembering the indomitable spirit and force of energy that was our brother David Rice, his by blood, mine by choice. For me, It was a glorious afternoon, recalling the profound and profane, in short, the human condition which infuses and informs all of our lives.

As stated on its website, the purpose of Stories from Nowhere "documents unconventional conversations, details human connections, presents the questions and mysteries we all face, from anywhere, out in nowhere, and everywhere…" I am so humbled and honored to be included. Thank you Andrew for the opportunity. While I mostly bend and stumble toward the light, in words and deeds, you live an exemplary life of love and service. David would be so proud.

Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Mangum and Me…

It was this really sweet thing in the early days, when Will (Cullen Hart) and Jeff (Mangum) and Robert (Schneider) would give each other tapes of these songs, and some of these songs are just god awful, terrible. They were just thirteen year old boys yelling. "F*ck your mama," and bashing on the drums as hard as they can. It was just kids having fun, and they would fill up a whole cassette tape with this two-track recording of just dog sh*t, and they put this Elephant 6 logo on it, and would be like, "Hey man, I made you an album!" They're hysterical.

Laura Carter, Elf Power band member and Orange Twin Records founder

The songs sort of come out spontaneously and it’ll take me awhile to figure out what exactly is happening lyrically, what kind of story I’m telling. Then I start building little bridges—word bridges—to make everything go from one point to the next point to the next point until it reaches the end. A continuous stream of words keeps coming out like little blobs, usually in some sort of order. They come at me at random and I have to piece them together. I’ll hear lots of parts, but the songs are like little blurs in my brain. They’re whole entities, but it’s weird—I write them and I sing them and I envision them for what they are, and the recordings never go very far from that, but at the same time when they do become recordings they become like a whole other thing. It takes a little while to get used to the music coming from these speakers instead of inside my head. It’s very exciting to hear that, like when we play live, but it’s very strange.
Jeff Mangum, Pitchfork interview, 1997

I’m very influenced by the circus. A lot of the dreams that I have, I’m in the circus. I have this song called “Ferris Wheel on Fire,” and in the dreams a lot of times I’ll be walking around and there is this Ferris wheel in flames, and I’m on the ground walking through the crowd—a lot of the songs are influenced by my dreams. And where my dreams come from, I have no idea. When I was a kid, the bed used to feel like concrete, and I always had this dream where this bomb was rolling towards me, and everything was moving really incredibly fast, but it would never reach me. And I’d wake up, and my hands would feel totally enormous, and the bed would feel like concrete.
Jeff Mangum, Pitchfork interview, 1997

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998) signed by Jeff Mangum, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, Scott Spillane

When I started writing “Ghost,” it's like the 10th track, the song that goes “Ghost, ghost I know you live within me,” because we thought we had a ghost living in the house, living in the bathroom. So I locked the door and started trying to sing to the ghost in the bathroom. But then that was sort of like singing about the ghost that we thought was constantly whistling in the other room that kept waking me up, and then a ghost that may or may not live within myself. And it also ended up being more of a reference to Anne Frank. And a lot of the songs on this record are about Anne Frank.

Right before recording On Avery Island I was walking around in Ruston waiting to go to Denver to record. I don’t consider myself to be a very educated person, ’cause I’ve spent a lot of my life in dreams... And I was walking around wondering, “If I knew the history of the world, would everything make more sense to me or would I just lose my mind?” And I came to the conclusion that I’d probably just lose my mind. The next day I went into a bookstore and walked to the wall in the back, and there was The Diary of Anne Frank. I’d never given it any thought in my entire life. I spent two days reading it and then completely flipped out... I spent about three days crying, and just was completely flipped-out. While I was reading the book, she was alive to me. I pretty much knew what was going to happen.

But that’s the thing: You love people because you know their story. You have sympathy for people even when they do stupid things because you know where they’re coming from, you understand where they’re at in their head. And so here I am as deep as you can go in someone’s head, in some ways deeper than you can go with even someone you know in the flesh. And then at the end, she gets disposed of like a piece of trash. And that was something that completely blew my mind. The references to her on the record—like “Ghost” refers to her being born. And I would go to bed every night and have dreams about having a time machine and somehow I’d have the ability to move through time and space freely, and save Anne Frank.

                         Jeff Mangum writing In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 

I’ve cried while listening to the album. I still hear things in it that I missed from previous listens. The thing with this record is that it can’t be heard casually, it has to be an event! You first of all have to listen to the entire thing. The track sequencing alone demands it, if the tide and momentum don’t pull you along. These songs should not be broadcast as singles on a radio show. They are all linked to this prescribed chain and it all flows together. You can put it on in a room full of friends and conversations will just drop. People regularly hold their water to finish listening to this record. People sit in cars in driveways all over the world waiting to cut the engine and go inside until that chair squeaks and Jeff ‘gets up to leave’. This album commands attention but never demands it, you know?

                         Jamey Huggins, Of Montreal and Great Lakes musician on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

The Golden Tickets!!!

It seems only a dream. Nearly seven years ago, my eldest daughter Kendall and I saw the elusive and enigmatic Jeff Mangum perform with his celebrated band Neutral Milk Hotel at the Klein Auditorium in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In keeping with Jeff’s reputation as the J.D. Salinger of Rock, the concert was barely advertised, there was no signage and we were lucky to score two great seats in the historic, restored Klein. Jeff had recently emerged from a self imposed fifteen year exile, regrouped his band, embarked on a worldwide tour, and had a headlining gig at Coachella, a festival of 90,000 besotted fans in the desert hills of Indio, California. It was quite a distance from Jeff’s initial beginnings in Ruston, Louisiana, a sleepy town of twenty-thousand, home to Louisiana Tech University, alma mater to Terry Bradshaw, an NFL wordsmith of lesser talents and, unfortunately, more renown.

Like most communities in the South, football is revered as the dominant male sport and a magnet for participation. Jeff didn't share this reverence. While trying out in junior high, his efforts were as uninspired as the lackluster attempts by his eventual music cohort Will Cullen Hart, "Neither one of us found it very interesting. We were the ones lagging behind," Will remembered. They did share a love of music, so they quit and jammed together. Initially, Will played guitar while Jeff played drums, a portent of his later extremely percussive approach on guitar. Soon, they were joined by Robert Schneider (who formed Apples In Stereo and created Pet Sounds Studios in Denver) and Bill Doss (who co-founded the Olivia Tremor Control with Will Hart). Certainly, there was an abundance of talent in Ruston, or as Will put it, "There was a group of us that gelled together because we didn't want to be in Whitesnake." Amen, one Whitesnake is definitely more than enough!

While still in high school, Jeff and his friends would haunt the college radio station at Louisiana Tech. Will Hart explained, "We were like, 'Look, we don't have that many friends. Can we maybe come up here and do a show?' " Once there, the embarrassment of riches which indie college radio afforded transfixed them. "We'd spend hours and hours just going through the records and pulling things out and going, 'God, this looks great! I want to hear this," Bill Doss recalled. They also began to share homemade tapes of original music amongst themselves, absorbing the influences of the Beach Boys, the Zombies, Syd Barrett and other psychedelic pop, a far cry from grunge which was the prevalent music genre at the time. On the tapes, they wrote "Elephant 6," which Will explained: "To me, it was a spirit thing especially, listen to the music inside yourself and don't give up. It's real. A lot of people saw it as a logo or a catchphrase, and it was that, maybe, but it's more than that..." And Jeff Mangum certainly agreed, "When we started the Elephant 6 thing, we had a very utopian vision that we could overcome anything through music. The music wasn't just there for entertainment. We were trying to create some sort of change. We had a desire to transform our lives and the listeners' lives." Thus was the Elephant 6 Recording Company, a collective of like minded sonic explorers, friends helping friends on their projects, with no President or Board of Directors.

Dropping out of Louisiana Tech after one year, Jeff moved in the early 1990s to Athens, Georgia, a rich music environment and a thriving scene led by the B-52s and R.E.M., one of the biggest rock bands at the time. Like his friends, Jeff was restless and eager to escape the confines of his hometown, and he continued to nurture his relationships with Will Hart, Bill Doss and Robert Schneider. As Jeff explained in 1997, “We sort of record for each other and write songs for each other. And like anytime that I’m in here recording, I’ll be going places that I don’t understand, and I’ll know that my friend Will’s gonna listen to it. I’ll give him a tape and he’ll really dig it. So that gives me a certain kind of gratification, to put something on a tape and walk down the street and hand it to him... There’s about twenty-five people that all came here from Ruston that live here now. It’s really funny; we all gravitated towards each other. We’ve just always played together our whole lives, but we’re not this closed club or something. There are people showing up all the time and they go, ‘Well I sort of bow this thing and it makes a squeaky sound!’ And then we go ‘Waaaa! Cool, man! Come squeak on this thing over here!’ If anyone wants to play, they just have to show up and want to play."

On Avery Island (1996) signed by Jeff Mangum, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, Scott Spillane

In 1994, Jeff moved to Denver to record On Avery Island, his first album under the moniker Neutral Milk Hotel, at Pet Sounds Studio, produced by Robert Schneider, his childhood friend. Schneider and Mangum played virtually all the instruments, a cacophonous mix of guitars, air organs, xylophones, fuzz bass, tapes, trombone, and sundry Indonesian instruments thrown in for good measure. When released, the album elicited some good reviews and Jeff returned to Athens to create a band so they could play the songs properly and tour. He enlisted Jeremy Barnes on drums, multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster on banjo, guitars, Lowrey Wandering Genie organ, and singing saw, and Scott Spillane on trombone and trumpet. According to Laura Carter, Mangum's girlfriend at the time and later a founder of Orange Twin Records and a member of Elf Power, “None of us were professional musicians on any level, except Jeremy. Scotty learned to play the trumpet so fast and beautifully with no teacher, no experience, no nothing, just because he understood the goal and everybody believed in it.”

The recruitment of Scott Spillane was unusual. Though they were old Ruston friends and had played together in Clay Bears, a previous band, Jeff crossed paths with Spillaine in 1996 in Austin, Texas at Gumby's Pizza where Scotty was slinging dough during the night shift. Spillane recounted, "At two o'clock in the morning, all the drunks order pizza, and I was the only one in the store, so I was like, 'Come back here and help me throw this dough.' I just taught him how to put the sauce on the pizza. After about forty-five minutes of that, it calmed down, and we went outside to smoke a cigarette and he said, 'Man, this job sucks. You should come with me to New York.' " Gumby’s culinary loss was music’s gain as Spillane quit, took a bus to New York and squatted at Julian Koster's apartment in the city, "There were five of us, a dog, a cat living there in one room, about the size of a van." During the week, their squalor abated when they practiced at Koster's grandmother's home on Long Island. Their chops sufficiently strengthened, they toured, opening for acts as celebrated as Superchunk and as wondrously obscure as Supreme Dicks, still incredulous that their 1994 release Working Man's Dick didn't bring more acclaim.

In 1997, Spillane got a call to rejoin Magnum and his Elephant 6 cohorts in Denver to record Neutral Milk Hotel's masterwork, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, "He said he'd feed me and buy me cigarettes for however long it took. So we ate rice and tofu with barbeque sauce on it every day for a month. We didn't do anything else then, except play a video game or two." While the band members shared their many musical talents, Jeff wrote nearly all the songs, which were an homage to the tragic life of Anne Frank. But it wasn't that simple or direct. The imagery of the lyrics was so graphic, varied and wild that they seemed the rantings of a stark, raving madman. Or a genius. Or both.

"In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"

And one day we will die

And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea

But for now we are young

Let us lay in the sun

And count every beautiful thing we can see

Love to be

In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me

"Ghost"

Ghost, ghost, I know you were within me, feel you as you fly

In thunder clouds above the city, into one that I loved

With all that was left within me till we tore in two

Now wings and rings and there's so many waiting here for you

And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929

With wings that ringed around a socket right between her spine

All drenched in milk in holy water pouring from the sky

I know that she will live forever, she won't ever die

"The King Of Carrot Flowers Part 3"

Up and over we go through the wave and undertow

I will float until I learn to swim

Inside my mother in a garbage bin

Until I find myself again, again

Up and over we go with mouths open wide and spitting still

I will spit until I learn to speak

Up through the doorway as the sideboards creek

With them ever proclaiming me, me

"Two Headed Boy Part 2"

And when we break, we'll wait for our miracle

God is a place where where some holy spectacle lies

When we break, we'll wait for our miracle

God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life

Two-headed boy, she is all you could need

She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires

And return to sheets safe and clean

But don't hate her when she gets up to leave

The instrumentation and melodies were as challenging as the lyrics. Producer Robert Schneider disclosed, "He has a strong sense of what's cool, and for him, cool is very weird, like out of left field, like something you've never heard before on a record... I would generate a lot of ideas and record a lot of stuff, and most of the time, Jeff would veto it. He would always have feelings. Like one night, he dreamed about Tibetan monks chanting. The next day, he said, 'I want to have something that sounds like the way that felt.' " Jeff's bandmates were more than equal to the task: Julian Koster contributed a singing saw, basically an industrial saw that bends and, when manipulated with a bow, creates an eerie and ethereal sound, as hauntingly beautiful and ghostly as a Theremin, Laura Carter played a zanzithophone, a digital horn made by Casio in the mid 1980s which evoked bagpipes and other synthesized sounds, and Robert Schneider worked with Sott Spillane and Rick Benjamin on the horn sections. Julian Koster noted, "The tension of Scott being heartfelt, explosive, and Robert trying to superimpose arrangement and control, made for something nice." And driving the band with his nasal whine was Jeff Mangum, braying his surreal, dadaist lyrics with a force and potency that was otherworldly.

Everything Is (1995 EP, 2011 reissue) cover artwork by Will Cullen Hart

For their initial production run, Merge Records ordered 5,500 CDs and 1,600 vinyi, a prudent order given the limited success of On Avery Island. However, demand far outstripped supply and the record has sold more than 500,000 copies in the ensuing decades and continues to sell upwards of 25,000 copies each year. It has become one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved records in indie rock and many bands - Beirut, Bright Eyes and The Decemberists among others - have cited Neutral MilkHotel as a seminal influence for their uncommon instrument choices and elliptical songwriting. In fact, Grammy winner and arena rockers Arcade Fire acknowledged that they signed with Merge Records because it was Neutral Milk Hotel’s label.

All this success and notoriety didn’t help Jeff though. The worldwide tour was wearying and Jeff became more disconsolate and withdrawn. After their last gig at the Underworld in Camden, England on October 12, 1998, Jeff decided to retreat and stop performing. He even declined hometown heroes R.E.M's request to open for them on their upcoming world tour in 1999, which would have widened the Neutral Milk Hotelaudience considerably.The weight and burden of being a savior and a savant was too much. As Bill Doss told The Guardian in 2011, "Jeff's a very private person and kids were freaking out over him, following him around, these little packs of kids staring at him. It weirded him out in a way, and he just sort of backed off."

Poster signed by Jeff, Mangum, Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, Scott Spillane

Laura Carter agreed, "When Neutral Milk Hotel started to get so popular, Jeff started to back away from the whole thing. A lot of people that were approaching us at shows started to have a cultish behavior, and for me that was scary, because we're just people. We were excited to have this really develop into something wonderful, So at first, there was just total excitement, then as it kept snowballing, there was a little bit of fear... In some ways, I think that Jeff is a genius who knew the mystery of dropping out. Like Soft Machine's Robert Wyatt who waited another ten years to make an album. That is cooler than seeing a band grind into the ground playing the same songs and traveling around the country. Part of me thinks that the attitude of the fans was overwhelming. People were like, 'I was going to kill myself and you saved my life.' That's a hard act to live up to, and if your next album sucks, what are they going to do? Go kill themselves?"

The fans weren’t the only ones who were merciless in their pursuit. Journalists also wanted to dredge up information, including details about his parents’ messy divorce. This was not what Jeff intended as he responded to one particularly persistent writer, “I’m not an idea. I am a person who obviously wants to be left alone. If my music has meant anything to you, then you’ll respect that. Since it’s my life and my story, I think I should have a little say as to when it’s told. I haven’t been given that right.”

As Jeff also elaborated in 2002, "I guess I had this idea that if we all created our dream we could live happily ever after. So when so many of our dreams had come true and yet I still saw so many of my friends in pain, I saw their pain from a different perspective and realized that I just couldn't sing my way out of all this suffering. I realized that I wanted to take a deeper life in order to become kind of a truly healing force in people's everyday lives." And then he disappeared...

Ferris Wheel On Fire (2011 reissue)

So it was with complete shock that Neutral Milk Hotel regrouped and played a gig in our backyard on September 7, 2014 at the Klein Auditorium in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Erin was busy with our two younger kids, so I brought my oldest daughter Kendall, who was not quite seventeen at the time. She was very excited to see Neutral Milk Hotel, having grown up with their enthralling music. I wanted to make sure that I got a couple of records signed before the show as I was nervous that Jeff might disappear after the show. He had that ability. I happened to know the head of security (thanks Bernie!) so Kendall and I hung out near the backstage entrance to the Klein. One by one, the band members stopped to chat with Kendall and I, and signed the vinyl. Julian Koster and Scott Spillane couldn't have been any nicer, Julian even added a stick man self portrait. Jeremy Barnes was with his wife, the talented violinist Heather Trost, who was sitting in with the band. I told Jeremy that I was a big fan of A Hawk and A Hacksaw, his current band, and that I was sorry I didn't have any vinyl, just a couple of CDs. He was very gracious as was Heather.

Jeff Mangum came last. He looked like a Duck Dynasty cast off, long hair, even longer beard, funky, colorful sweater probably picked from a Salvation Army dumpster dive, and what looked like a Cuban military hat screwed on tight. He signed the records which Kendall gave him. I was respectful and said quietly, ‘We are so thrilled to see you tonight. Thank you so much for your music.’ “Thank you,” he replied and left, averting any eye contact. Kendall and I were thrilled with our brief encounter and went inside to watch the show.

The show did not disappoint. Though Jeff had been in seclusion, his vocals were strong and intact after a nearly fifteen year stage absence. He opened with a solo acoustic version of "I Will Bury You In Time," and then, the rest of the band joined and lit into a driving “Holland, 1945,” a stunning performance. Jeff sang and played guitar with such passion, fury and abandon, it felt like he was singing for his life, which he probably was. The crowd knew all the words and mouthed along, no small feat, especially given the lyrical excesses of Jeff’s nine minute opus “Oh Comely.” The encore was "Two Headed Boy, Part 2," the last song on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, a fitting end to a remarkable show. To be sure, Jeff and his friends in all their ragged gloriousness were “truly a healing force in people's everyday lives, singing away so much suffering.”

I feel blessed to have shared this amazing concert experience with my daughter. Occasionally, even now, these many years later, I'll pinch myself and ask her, 'Did we really see Neutral Milk Hotel at the Klein?' Kendall assures me that we did. I still think it was only a dream.

Ferris Wheel On Fire back cover artwork by Jeff Mangum

Choice Neutral Milk Hotel cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJTl4EyY_Hk

“The King Of Carrot Flowers, Part 1-3” In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXSY0aspgKo

“Oh Comely” In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gkl8WiWFw0M

“Ghost” In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX9iW7n9qWQ

“Two Headed Boy” In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq5l0MT_Ivg

“Two Headed Boy Part 2” In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLaFLztnL84

“Holland 1945” In The Aeroplane Over The Sea 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQd24x9aGQo

“Two Headed Boy Part 2, Holland 1945” live San Francisco 4.12.98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVez90kx8ao

Live at the Knitting Factory, NYC 3.07.98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMw54NK_524

Live in Athens, Georgia 10.31.97

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmjY1oihqq8

“Holland 1945” live France 5.30.14

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WeO5Fl8G8s

“Oh Sister” Ferris Wheel On Fire (2011 reissue, 1992-1994 recordings)

George Coleman and Me…

So 1963 was when Miles (Davis) called me in person. He said, "I'd like for you to come to Japan and do you have any other people you might want to recommend because I'm getting a new band." I recommended Harold Mabern, my partner from Memphis, for the piano...he wanted another horn besides myself, so I recommend Frank Strozier, who played alto. So when we first started out, it was a sextet, alto, tenor, and him on trumpet...Harold Mabern on piano, Jimmy Cobb on drums, and Ron Carter on bass...That lasted for a few months and we toured the West Coast. And then, after we finished the West Coast, he condensed the band, he broke it down and said that he just wanted a quintet. Jimmy Cobb left and...me, along with Ron Carter, we were the only two left in that band. That is when he added Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock and then the rest is history, the famous Miles Davis Quintet that made all those records that people still talk about today, My Funny Valentine, Four & More, Miles Davis in Europe, and Seven Steps to Heaven. It was those four albums that I did with him during that period, in just a year.

               George Coleman on joining Miles Davis

Quiet Nights (1963) signed by George

The major reason was, during that time, Miles was not in good health. I would wind up being out front, standing out front and in a quartet situation, because a lot of times he wouldn't show and then people would think I was Miles Davis. You can believe that. That is an absolute fact. They would come to me after the set was over and say, "Oh, Mr. Davis, the music was so tremendous." They had never seen Miles. They didn't know what he played, but he was so charismatic that even if he wasn't there, people thought he was. They didn't know whether he played tenor or trumpet or what. So there was too much pressure on me.

               George Coleman on leaving Miles Davis after one year

Max Roach +4 (1956) signed by George, Max Roach, Bob Cranshaw

George Coleman is playing with reckless abandon, not concerned with perfection or even precision. He is clearly feeding off the energy of the crowd and riding high above the beautiful accompaniment from the top-flight rhythm section. He is going for it. The no-holds-barred approach that is his signature is on full display throughout this whole date, and it’s absolutely delightful.

record label owner/saxophonist Cory Weeds on Live In Baltimore

Live In Baltimore (1971 recordings, 2020 release) signed by George

Oh yeah, the Famous Ballroom was great. We used to get up there quite a bit, with Wynton Kelly, Ron McClure and Jimmy Cobb. Those were some of the good moments. I really enjoyed playing there. The people were nice, too. A lot of black folks used to go there, too. It was integrated—I mean, black, white, whatever. They were there to listen to the music. It was a really great era.

George Coleman

Deeds Not Words (1958) signed by George, Max Roach

New York was incredible then. You had everybody from Coleman Hawkins - the father of the tenor saxophone in jazz - to Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. It was a constant inspiration to work at your craft. There was so much truly good playing, you couldn't help but be inspired. There was no room for jive.

               George Coleman on New York City in the late 1950s

Max Roach 4 Plays Charlie Parker (1959) signed by George, Max Roach

George Coleman grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, in a swirl of blues, jazz, and soul. Some of his classmates at Manassas High School were future jazz legends Booker Little, Charles Lloyd, Hank Crawford, Harold Mabern, Frank Strozier, and Phineas and Calvin Newborn. As Hank Crawford later observed, "We had a pretty good education just by being around each other." George picked up the alto saxophone at first, an homage to his hero Charlie Parker, "Charlie Parker was the real deal. He was the man I was really inspired by. His great technique, sound and all of those great qualities is what interested me to play the music." George switched to tenor saxophone when he joined B.B. King, "I made that switch when I joined B.B. in 1955. When I arrived on the scene, he went to the music store and bought me a tenor and that's when I began playing tenor because he had an alto player in the band."

Three Or Four Shades Of Blues (1977) signed by George

How the jazz gods smiled when B.B. King had no need for another alto saxophonist and bought George a tenor saxophone! From this humble beginning, George Coleman has played on some of the most important Jazz recordings like Herbie Hancock's "Maiden Voyage", Miles Davis' "My Funny Valentine", Max Roach's "Deeds Not Words" (written by bassist Bill Lee, film auteur Spike Lee's dad), and Lee Morgan's "City Lights."  George has released nineteen albums as a leader, and he has appeared on hundreds more as a sideman with Charles Earland, Charles Mingus, Jimmy Smith and Chet Baker. George spoke warmly of his recordings with Chet Baker, "That was a wonderful date. We did five of those LPs (including Smokin’, Groovin’, Comin’ On, Cool Burnin’). Chet’s chops were not the greatest and, of course, he was dealing with his affliction. We would record for maybe an hour or two, and then Chet would have to cut out, get his stuff taken care of. It was quite a revelation for me, because I had never played with him and I didn’t know he could play that great. When he put that trumpet to his mouth, man, some stuff came out of there—some real, real bebop. And he was sick..."

Manhattan Panorama (1985) signed by George, Harold Mabern

George's longest collaboration has been with his high school friend and pianist extraordinaire, Harold Mabern. They have been friends and colleagues for nearly seventy years. George appeared on Harold's first two releases in 1968 as a leader, including Rakin' And Scrapin'. Harold described the origin of the title, "I remember one day when I was ten or eleven years of age, I asked my father for some money for something I wanted to buy and I remember him saying, "Junior, I don't have the money now but I'll try to rake and scrape the money up for you." Steeped in the blues, Harold is a virtuoso pianist. His role model growing up was his fellow Memphian, Phineas Newborn, Jr., "When Phineas played, everything was at his command. He could put his right hand in one pocket and play complete compositions with his left. I knew the first time I saw him I wanted to play like that. I also knew I had my work cut out for me." As a leader, Harold has released more than twenty albums and hundreds more as a sideman in his celebrated discography, and his work continues.

Workin’ & Wailin’ (1969) signed by George, Harold Mabern, Buster Williams

Harold and George are both robust and physical performers. George has a brawny, muscular tone on the tenor saxophone which befits his background as a star high school football linebacker. A commanding stage presence, he was not nicknamed "Big George" for nothing. As he once mused about his athletic exploits, "I was sidetracked by the music. Any glimmer of hope for that was negated by the music that I was hearing from Charlie Parker and some of the other great players. So I knew right then that I wanted to be a musician pretty quick and not an athlete."

Live At Yoshi’s (1989) signed by George, Harold Mabern

Erin and I saw George and Harold again recently at The Jazz Standard in New York City, a small venue with one hundred-twenty five seats. With a halting gait, George made his way to the band stand. There, he remained seated on a stool as Harold thoughtfully handed him his horn. George said to the audience, "Thank you for coming. We'd like to dedicate this set and program to the one and only Miles Davis." The quartet - George on tenor, Harold on piano, John Webber on bass, and Joe Farnsworth on drums - opened with "Solar", a 1954 Miles Davis classic blues (the first two bars are etched on Miles' tombstone in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx!). George may be a lion in winter, but he can still roar. Even seated, his sound was warm and full, and there were plenty of solos by his talented accompanists as each song stretched beyond twelve minutes. The Richard Rodgers/Lorenz Hart standard "My Funny Valentine" followed which showcased Harold's lyrical touch. Harold deftly wove the Michel Legrand chanson "The Windmills Of Your Mind" into the middle of his extended piano solo before returning to the main theme. Next came the gorgeous ballad  "Someday My Prince Will Come" from the Disney songbook, Snow White never sounded so mournful yet beautiful. The quartet finished with "Oleo", a Sonny Rollins romp, as a blazing, up-tempo closer. It was a crisp celebration of Miles Davis, a glorious night of music, and an exquisite program executed by skilled practitioners.

Amsterdam After Dark (1985) signed by George

After the show, I visited with George in his dressing room. He was generous and expansive as he signed the vinyl. As he signed Amsterdam After Dark, he pointed to his horn laying flat on his dressing room banquette, "You know, that's the same horn on that cover, I've had it for more than forty years. It's not my main horn though, that one's in the shop."  ‘How long have you had the other horn?’ I asked. "More than fifty years," he chuckled. I mentioned that Jimmy McGriff played my wedding. "Yes, I know Jimmy very well. He used to play with one of my main men, Hank Crawford. Hank and I grew up together back in Memphis," George said. ‘That was some group of talent in Memphis back then,’ I mentioned. "Yes, it was," George agreed, "Yes, it was." And George Coleman and Harold Mabern are right at the top of that list of impressive talent, in Memphis or anywhere.

Mr. Wonderful (1964) signed by Harold, Sammy Davis Jr.

A Change Is Gonna Come (1966) signed by George, Jack McDuff, Pat Martino, Bernard Pretty Purdie

After my visit with George, I found Harold relaxing at the bar, having a drink with his dinner. I brought along some Sammy Davis Jr. vinyl because I loved Harold's Sammy tribute, Mr. Lucky, which he released in 2012. Harold smiled and said, "Sammy was a great artist and very underrated. I had a lot of fun recording his songs." I nudged him, "What about Greasy Kid Stuff ? That needs to be re-released on vinyl. Your version of Michael Jackson's "I Want You Back" smokes." Harold laughed, "Thank you, but I don't have anything to do with that." I expressed my condolences on the recent passing of Rudy Van Gelder, the ninety-one year old master engineer who ran a studio out of his home in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey and was responsible for nearly all of the Blue Note sessions from 1953 to 1967, including the works of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. "It's a terrible loss, that studio should become a museum," I offered. Harold agreed, "Yes it is a terrible loss. No one really knows what will happen. I don't know if there's a will, no one really knows. I was at a recording session less than a year ago and Rudy was there. He had moved a bed into the studio so he could continue to work." Erin and I left the show astonished with the vitality of these two jazz men in their eighties. Their music must be their secret elixir, I know it's mine.

Rakin’ And Scrapin’ (1968) signed by George, Harold Mabern

George Coleman and Harold Mabern, friends since high school and purveyors of the finest jazz. Long may they play.

Choice George Coleman and Harold Mabern cuts (per BK's request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amLdS7KFEFo

"Woke Up This Morning" George sax solo, B.B. King on guitar/vocals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc3CXMjeV-8
"My Funny Valentine" Miles, George, Herbie, Ron, Tony Live At Philharmonic NYC 1963

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HncvF1rTEMg
"Maiden Voyage" George with Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard 1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5X-JHEFj18&list=PLB6A8217C2D99FF1A
"Lean On Me" Shirley Scott on organ, George wails Bill Withers! 1972

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QUYO69aclU 

"On A Misty Night"  Boppin' With The Chet Baker Quintet  1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbdoRmh8XYE 
"I Want You Back"   Harold swings Michael Jackson!  Greasy Kid Stuff  1970

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_FEIlEY7es
"Blues for B.B."   A Master Speaks   George Coleman   2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CkPB5GcvGw
"Rakin' And Scrapin' "  Harold Mabern   live   Smalls, NYC   2013

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsiI37-b2uI
"Hey There"  Mr. Lucky: Tribute To Sammy Davis Jr.  Harold Mabern  2012

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6pHGxs6hPE
"Fools Rush In"  with Norah Jones   Afro Blue  Harold Mabern  2015

Love Bug (1969) signed by George, Reuben Wilson

Lean On Me (1972) signed by George

Smokin’ (1977) signed by George

Two Sides Of Slide (1961) signed by George, Slide Hampton

Slide Hampton And His Horn Of Plenty (1959) signed by George, Slide Hampton

Jazz With A Twist (1962) signed by George, Slide Hampton

Time Capsule (1977) signed by George, Elvin Jones, Kenny Barron, Frank Foster, Frank Wess

Blue Breakbeats (1998 compilation) signed by George, Reuben Wilson

Larry Harlow and Me…

I came from a family of all musical people: mom, dad, uncles, brother, aunts, grandfather, great grandfather, so it was so easy to slip into music. Music and Art High School in New York City in the Barrio opened my mind to Música Latina. Going to pre-Castro Cuba to study and listen was my schooling… I fell in love with the 'cha cha cha.'

               Larry Harlow

Larry is a gringo with clave, who understands and respects our music, but also knows how to be innovative. Most of the people at Fania, no matter what their age, could be very conservative. But Larry came in with an open mind and renovated the format, adding new ingredients, new chords, new instruments, and that created enthusiasm and led to tremendous success for a lot of people, including me.

singer Ruben Blades

Heavy Smokin’ (1965) signed by Larry

I miss those days, I do. I miss the recording days; I was very, very good at doing it. I studied a lot, every time a new machine came out, I was right on it. We took everything from Mono, we started with Mono to the 4 Tracks, 8 Tracks, 12 Tracks, 24 to 32 then Digital. From writing operas, to writing symphonies, music scores for movies. We were always expanding the music to other concepts, taking salsa music to other worlds. I do miss those recording days, but I have a lot of business to take care of these days also.

Larry Harlow

When we got there, there was a big reception with all the natives in native garb, dancing and bands playing, Mobutu's staff and Don King waiting at the bottom of the steps. When we came off the plane, there was also a little band and it was playing (Fania founder Johnny) Pacheco's music, playing and singing phonetically in Spanish. Of course they didn't understand the Spanish but it sounded just like Pacheco's band. The kids would run up to me in the street and say 'You're Larry Harlow, you're Larry Harlow' and I thought 'how do these kids know who I am?' I was totally surprised, especially in a French speaking country. They would sing my songs and then do scat solos, playing bottles or pails, stuff in the street. The (concert) music was spectacular, almost everyone performed very well. James Brown - here's a guy who works every single day of the year -  was still rehearsing his band twice a day in Africa. He was putting them though it - dancing, singing, everything.

               Larry Harlow's Zaire '74 concert experience, prior to the Ali-Foreman Rumble In The Jungle

El Exigente (1967) signed by Larry

It is a label that right now only sell T-shirts, compilations and stuff like that, they don’t bring out new material whatsoever. It is great they keep the music alive as a testimony of a wonderful era. They put salsa on the map; brought it to a worldwide audience. A lot of kudos for Jerry Masucci in the old days, he put his money into creating this new musical genre. I was one of the lucky ones, was one of the first artists signed to the label. He used me, I used him. We had a love-hate relationship… it was very healthy and very good for all of us. It took us to places we would have never gone otherwise. Basically, Jerry made a career for me and I give him a lot of credit. There are issues with non-payment of royalties, not giving musicians credits when credits were due…

               Larry Harlow on his relationship with Fania Records co-founder Jerry Masucci

Con Mi Viego Amigo (1976) signed by Larry

Born Lawrence Ira Kahn in Brooklyn, Larry Harlow became an unlikely champion of Musica Latina and one of its foremost artists, celebrated as a performer, pianist, songwriter, arranger and producer. Surrounded by music at an early age, Larry's mother, Rose Sherman, was an opera singer, and his father performed as Buddy Harlowe, a bandleader at the Latin Quarter, a famous New York City nightclub run by Lou Walters, father of television icon, Barbara Walters. Larry remembered, “I was brought up backstage there. When I was a kid, ten or eleven years old, Barbara and I used to sit in the booth next to the spotlight, and we saw every show that came in there, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Joe E. Brown, Sophie Tucker...”

Larry's exposure to Latin music was piqued further as he walked to the High School of Music and Art on West 135th Street in Hamilton Heights. Larry heard "this strange music coming out of the bodegas and the mom and pop record stores and the bars." He was smitten and because he was an accomplished pianist, he soon joined Latin dance bands and played throughout New York City and at gigs in the Catskills during the summer. The Mambo dance craze was in full flight and Larry and his band mates made sure people got their Latin dance groove on. Rather than attend Brooklyn College in the late 1950s, Larry decamped for Cuba to study Latin music at its fountainhead. While the class work in Cuba was challenging, Larry's real education happened at clubs and concerts, As he recalled, “I became 'salsified', totally absorbed into the Latin culture. The music wasn’t called 'salsa' yet, but I became an Afro-Cuban nut, just studying the history and the old photographs and going to see Beny Moré, Orquesta Riverside and all those people in person.” 

La Raza Latina (1977) signed by Larry

As the Cuban Revolution took hold, Larry returned to the United States and resumed playing in clubs as a sideman and leading his own orchestra. Johnny Pacheco saw Orchestra Harlow  and immediately signed them to Fania Records, a fledgling record label in 1964 which Pacheco had co-founded with Jerry Masucci. Fania Records would eventually become as important to Latin music as Motown Records was to Soul music. Pacheco remembered seeing Larry and Orchestra Harlow, "The first thing I noticed was that he really knew how to play Latin music. He had the band set up, and they were pretty tight, but when he took a solo, that’s when he really got me. He used to take incredible solos. You could tell he had really listened to Peruchín and all those guys in Cuba. The scales he used to play, I was flabbergasted. He really was 'El Judío Maravilloso.' ” The Marvelous Jew -  "El Judio Maravilloso" became Larry's well earned sobriquet, and the title of a memorable Harlow record release in 1975.

And what a marvelous career Larry Harlow has had, releasing over forty albums on Fania Records as a leader, and producing more than two-hundred records for Fania with seminal Latin artists like Ruben Blades, Hector Lavoe, Ismael Miranda, Johnny Colon, and The Fania All-Stars who performed a sold out concert at Yankee Stadium in 1972. Larry coaxed a then retired Celia Cruz (living in obscurity in Mexico in 1973) to perform on Hommy, A Latin Opera, which was performed at Carnegie Hall. The story was a thinly veiled appropriation of The Who's successful rock opera Tommy, substituting "Tommy", the deaf, blind pinball player with "Hommy", a deaf, blind conga player with prodigious percussion skills. The record spawned worldwide hits - "Gracia Divina", "Soy Sensacional" and "Quirinbomboro" - and rejuvenated Celia Cruz as the "Queen of Salsa" as she embarked on a second recording career, probably the most productive and satisfying of her impressive artistic journey.

Senor Salsa (1976) signed by Larry

Led by his band's infectious, pulsating rhythms and his unbridled enthusiasm, Larry Harlow always puts on a bumpin' show. Most recently, I saw him perform at the Blue Note in New York City along with his expert ten-piece band, including noted drummer Bobby Sanabria, Nelson Gonzalez on tres (Latin guitar), Joe Fielder on trombone, and (per Larry's introduction) "my fellow landsman and colleague for almost fifty years" Lewis Kahn on trombone and violin. It is a joyful and propulsive noise indeed, as the two trumpet and two trombone gloriously drone on, while the piano, bass, drums and two conga supply a sturdy bottom.

Before the show, I visited with Larry in his upstairs dressing room. He was quite expansive as he signed the vinyl. I casually mentioned that I had not seen him perform in this club. "Yes, eighteen straight years playing at the Blue Note in Japan, and this is the first time ever in the Blue Note in New York? And I live on West 86th?! C'mon, there's something wrong with that!" How about Cuba, have you ever gone back? "No, I haven't played there since 1978. I have no interest in going back, they don't want to pay anything. Their musicians come here and get paid well and they take our jobs, but they don't want to pay us anything. No thanks." I heard you were writing a book? "Yes, the book is written but it's stuck in editing. You know Judith Regan? Well, she signed me, paid me $50,000, said she would personally edit my book, did nothing and disappeared. She's busy now with (disgraced NYC police commissioner) Bernie Kerik's book. I did like the fifty grand though," Larry said with a knowing smile.

Senor 007 (1965) signed by Ray Barretto, unsigned by Larry

I gave him a couple of albums to sign. He asked, "How many do you have? You know I made fifty-six." I said, I wish I had all of them plus the two-hundred-fifty you produced, as I handed him a Ray Barretto album. "Nah, I'm not signing that. You know, I miss Ray. A great friend, he played with me in the Fania-All Stars in the 1970s and he was in my first Latin Legends band in 1995. Ray had some problems though, he didn't pay his taxes for twenty-five years and it caught up with him. So, when we played, all he wanted was cash and that made it hard for the rest of the band. I didn't produce any of his albums, he was a real musician not just a drummer. He could write, arrange, produce, he was the real deal. He didn't need me as a producer." Like Tito Puente who studied at Juilliard? "Yes, exactly like Tito!"

How about the Rumble In The Jungle in Zaire in 1974? "Crazy. We were there twelve days, there was no money, but we had a blast. The (Muhammad Ali-George Foreman) fight was delayed because Foreman broke his wrist in training, but the concerts were booked so we went anyway. We had too much equipment on the (charter) plane going over there, so we had to shift it to the back of the plane. It's a miracle we got there." I mentioned that my friend, Gary Stromberg, was on the plane, and he told me that there were a lot of extracurricular activities. Larry had a big smile. "Yes, well, James Brown brought his own 'doctor' with his own bag. You can guess what was in it! Yes, there was a lot of stuff going on." How were the concerts? "The shows were great. I later produced all the music, but the scene was wild. They were hanging young kids underneath the stands for petty theft and stuff like that, while we were playing. We didn't know it at the time, but that was incredible. The (Mobutu) martial law was brutal. And all these young African bands showed up to play and we had no idea who they were. We'd say to them, 'Ok, the band in the blue suits, you're next, let's go', and they would play and they would be great. One of the bands was led by Fela Kuti, I knew who he was and he was impressive."

Nice ‘n’ Naasty (1976) signed by Larry

I asked him about his reception in other countries, playing in stadiums versus small clubs. "You know, I'm big in Colombia. Fans are so passionate, they're asking me to play songs from my first album. It's been so long, I have no idea how to play the songs. They know all the words, they ask questions like who is the bass player on the second side, track 3? How am I supposed to know?! They are fanatics. They get very deep. They also find out where you're staying and they will show up at your hotel and swarm, like two-hundred-fifty people following us around. We're like rock stars. My wife, well, my new wife is certainly not used to that." Again, Larry flashed a very knowing smile.

I mentioned that I was seeing Eddie Palmieri in a couple of weeks. "Oh, he's great, we're great friends. We go back a long time." What was his brother Charlie like? "Great musician, you know, a much better talent than Eddie, but he drank too much. That's what took him out. I'll tell you who was a great pianist that no one has ever heard - Bundini Brown (Muhammad Ali's corner man, sometime poet and author of "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, Your hands can't hit, what your eyes can't see"). He was a helluva stride player, he could really play. I'm not kidding." I thanked Larry for all his courtesy and kindness, and as I left, he said, "Hey Neil, really nice chatting with you. When I see you downstairs, I expect you to clap. Loud!"

No problem, Larry. No problem. Now if only his book could get published!

Synergy (1992) signed by Larry

Choice Larry Harlow Cuts (per BKs request)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W777MIR8-ko
"Guantanamera"  Celia Cruz with Fania All-Stars  Zaire, Africa 1974

Larry Harlow on piano, Johnny Pacheco conducting, Ray Barretto on conga

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXN-_asIaYs
"Quimbara"  Celia Cruz with Fania All-Stars  Zaire, Africa 1974

Larry Harlow on piano, Johnny Pacheco conducting, Ray Barretto on conga

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed7aKWIq28w
"La Cartera"  Orchestra Harlow  live - dig Larry's corn rows!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ed7aKWIq28w
"Descarga"  Buda All-Stars live with Larry and Charlie Palmieri on piano, Mongo Santamaria on conga

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MX__RFXq4s
"Gracia Divina"  Celia Cruz  Hommy, A Latin Opera  1972

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hChH_YyWAo4
"Soy Sensacional"  Orchestra Harlow  Hommy, A Latin Opera  1972

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xEbVo1fy8I
"Descarga Fania"  Larry Harlow's Latin Legends, Blue Note Tokyo  2015

Ron Carter, Brendan and Me…

I like to think that anything I play on will be commercially viable and I’m not afraid to say that. When musicians get together, whatever their level, something special can come out. I think if you’re looking for it, you’re not going to find it. As it turns out, those records you mentioned (Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, Freddie Hubbard’s Red Clay, Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil or Jobim’s Wave) happen to be important ones, whether it pertains to the advancement of sound or concept. We weren’t looking to make a famous record, only to have a great time playing and making as good a recording as possible.

               Ron Carter   Interview 2014

Pick ‘Em (1975) signed by Ron, Kenny Barron, Ben Riley, Buster Williams

You ever see an anchor? It’s down at the bottom, rusty. No one knows it’s there; no one gives a shit that it’s there, holding the boat back. Anchor of the band? That means the band’s not going anywhere. That’s not what I do, man. My job is to knock your socks off. An anchor is dead weight; it’s corroded. If you want to think of me as an item, think of me as a nice guy who wears great ties and plays bass, I can live with that.

               Ron Carter on Miles Davis calling him the "anchor" of his second quintet (1963-1968)

Spanish Blue (1974) signed by Ron, Billy Cobham, Sir Roland Hanna, Hubert Laws

For me, it's a highlight anytime someone calls me to make a recording with them, when any artist not only in New York but in the world, calls me to make a recording. To bring the music to the highest level, that's always my greatest moment. Any really good record date gives me another chance to make the music work. That's what I do.

               Ron Carter 

Uptown Conversation (1969) signed by Ron

I got the bass I have now in 1959 and borrowed money to pay for it since I didn’t have enough when I moved to NY. I’ve been playing this bass for all these years. Bass players I think look for a second fiddle and...secondary instruments and I have three or four that didn’t quite pan out. But I have a second one I’ve made some adjustments to and it’s coming together. What’s happening now is that airlines won’t let you take your instrument on board – and it’s forced us to play whatever instrument is at the gig. We call that a “bass du jour."

               Ron Carter  Interview 2014

Alone Together (1972) signed by Ron, Jim Hall

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Ron Carter is the most prolific and recorded jazz bassist in history, appearing on over twenty-two hundred recordings. An enormous body of work, this reflects Ron's participation on albums with Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Freddie Hubbard, Hank Jones, Lee Morgan, Horace Silver, and McCoy Tyner, among many others. Surprisingly, I do not have all of Ron's recordings (yet!), but I do have a bunch.

Maiden Voyage (1965) signed by Ron, Herbie Hancock, George Coleman

Empyrean Isles (1964) signed by Ron, Herbie Hancock

Born in Ferndale Michigan, Ron moved to Detroit when he was ten and pursued the study of classical music, the cello and double bass. Though he was aware of the vibrant jazz scene in Detroit in high school, his interests were Bach, Bartok and Handel. As he noted, "I started playing (cello) at ten years old and switched to bass at seventeen...this was around January 1955. My parents scraped by and got me a cello and encouraged me. Then I traded in my cello and got a bass from the local music store downtown and had a paper route to pay it off." That paper route yielded a bountiful return!

Peg Leg (1978) signed by Ron, Kenny Barron, Ben Riley, Buster Williams

Upon graduation, Ron attended The Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York where he continued his classical studies as a bassist with dreams of joining a symphony. Though he had considerable talent, he had no opportunities as symphony orchestras in the 1950s generally did not hire African-Americans. As the (not so) great conductor Leopold Stokowski told Ron, that while he loved his talent, the board of directors of The Houston Symphony Orchestra "was not ready for a colored man to be in their orchestra." Classical music's stupidity, arrogance and intransigence was jazz music's gain and good fortune.

Out There (1960) signed by Ron

After college, Ron started gigging around New York City and got jobs with pianist Jaki Byard and drummer Chico Hamilton. Ron's first recording was playing bass and cello on Eric Dolphy's Out There in 1960. Largely improvised in the studio, Out There is an aptly titled, avant-garde jazz excursion which features the compositions of Charles Mingus and Dolphy, a colleague in the Chico Hamilton band. Ron's big break was joining the Miles Davis Quintet in 1963 with Miles, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Tony Williams. This groundbreaking quintet released fourteen albums,including  E.S.P (1965) which featured three Ron Carter compositions. After leaving Miles in 1968, Ron continued his studio work, appearing on thousands of sessions and releasing forty-eight albums as a leader in his remarkable and indefatigable career.

Blues Farm (1973) signed by Ron, Bob James

His recording philosophy was simple: "Whenever I play, I think about what note will make the other musicians' notes sound the best. I'm always listening, and at each moment I want to pick a note that will make the other musicians think. I want to push the music to a higher level." As Ron brought his brilliance to each session, not only jazz musicians benefited, he also recorded with Roberta Flack, Lena Horne, Billy Joel, Gil Scott-Heron, Paul Simon, and hip-hop avatar A Tribe Called Quest.

Keep Your Soul Together (1974) signed by Ron, Freddie Hubbard, George Cables

I have seen Ron Carter many times through the years in New York City jazz clubs and they were memorable shows. From small groups - a fabulous trio in 2008 with French composer/pianist Michel LeGrand and drummer Lewis Nash at Birdland - to larger bands - the Ron Carter Nonet at the Blue Note which featured a string quartet with piano, bass, drums and Ron playing a Piccolo bass (an upright bass usually tuned an octave higher to allow for soloing in a higher register). Each time I met with him, Ron was kind and affable while he signed his vinyl.

The Kicker (1967) signed by Ron, Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, Louis Hayes

Piccolo (1978) signed by Ron, Kenny Barron, Buster Williams

For me, the most memorable Ron Carter performance was at the Iridium in New York City in April, 2010. A basement club on Broadway, just up from Times Square, the Iridium is intimate with seats for maybe one hundred-twenty five. Ron was reunited with an old Rochester, New York friend, tenor saxophonist and composer Pee Wee Ellis, best known for his stint with James Brown in the mid-1960s and co-writer of the JB hits, "Cold Sweat" and "Say It Loud - I'm Black And I'm Proud." Joining Pee Wee and Ron were pianist Mulgrew Miller and drummer Jimmy Cobb. Yes, the Jimmy Cobb, the last living link to Miles Davis' transcendent Kind Of Blue, probably the best known jazz album and certainly, its best selling. Erin and I decided to bring the whole family to the show, so Kendall (age 12), Brendan (age 10) and Camryn (age 8) joined in the revelry. Fortunately, the smoky, basement jazz clubs of yore no longer exist, they are a faded (and absurd) memory like smoking sections on airplanes.

Blue Moses (1973) signed by Ron, Randy Weston

We were seated at a table and settled in for the show about ten feet from the small stage. The band came out and played mostly jazz standards in a straight ahead groove - "There Is No Greater Love", "Airegin" from the Sonny Rollins' songbook, and Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait." This marked the first time that Ron and Pee Wee had played together in more than fifty years and it was great to hear such good friends and master musicians perform so seamlessly. Sadly, there was no funk from the James Brown canon, just a mid tempo groover, "Blue Bell Pepper", a new track off Different Rooms, Pee Wee's recent CD. 

Monk Suite (1984) signed by Ron, David Harrington, Hank Dutt, Joan Jeanrenaud, John Sherba

After the show, Erin and I took the kids back stage to meet the band and they were extremely nice, as I'm sure they were not used to meeting such young and enthusiastic fans in a nightclub. I told Ron that my son Brendan was playing electric bass in a band and that they had recently brought down the house at an intermediate school recital. I neglected to mention that they played a cover of "Stacy's Mom", a wholly inappropriate song for Grades 3-5, that escaped the (less than) rigorous censorship of the school administration. Ron looked down at my young son, "That's wonderful news. You know what you must do?" Brendan looked up quizzically. Ron, tall and lean with long slender fingers, 6'3" and growing taller, intoned sternly, "You must practice, practice, practice. Everyday you must practice! That's what I do. That's what you must do." Brendan nodded quietly, he didn't seem rattled or intimidated, but I sure as hell was! We thanked Ron for the advice and the great performance, and left.

Big Bags (1962) signed by Ron, Milt Jackson, Hank Jones, James Moody, Willie Ruff, Jerome Richardson, Jimmy Heath, Clark Terry, Doc Severinsen

Ron Carter, as virtuosic as he is prolific, always evolving and exploring. And recording! As he once said, "I've been playing this instrument for over fifty years. Every day, I'm finding new combinations of notes to play, and wondering and wondering why I didn't think of that before.”

In Concert (1973) signed by Ron, Freddie Hubbard, Stanley Turrentine

Addendum: 6 August 2021

6 August 2021 - The Maestro!!!

I was blessed to see Ron Carter, the redoubtable bassist, perform with his exquisite quartet at the Blue Note in New York City. It was a wonderful night of live music and his other members - Renee Rosnes on piano, Jimmy Greene on tenor sax, Payton Crossley on drums - performed brilliantly. They opened with “All Blues,” segued into “Corcovado “ then a beautiful ballad and an unaccompanied “You Are My Sunshine” which the maestro picked, plucked and thwacked to the delight of everyone. Before launching into a sumptuous version, Ron disclosed that “My Funny Valentine” was his favorite song and finished the evening with a rollicking “ You And The Night And The Music,” a fitting coda to a sprawling suite of mesmerizing musicianship, or just another Ron Carter performance!

Before the set, I had a chance to visit with Ron in his dressing room and he was gracious to sign some more vinyl. He greeted me warmly, “It’s great to see you.” I almost looked behind me to see if someone else had come in. I mentioned that this was my first live show in New York City and Ron smiled, “Yes, I know. I need this and I’m glad you’re here.” I handed him his book which I had just purchased, ‘Hey, I got your book.’ “That’s not important,” he said with a long pause, at least 4 beats, “You need to read the book.” After he signed it, he handed it back to me and pointed at the inscription, “You know what those are? They’re repeating clefs, so Thank You, Thank You, Thank You…” I thanked Ron for his time and offered a fist bump as I was about to leave. He ignored the fist bump and clasped my forearm and drew me near, “Thank you for coming, I really need this.” Yes, Maestro, we all do, it was beautiful moment with an equally beautiful man.

Repeating Clefs - Thank You…

The Real McCoy (1967) signed by Ron, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones

Off The Top (1982) signed by Ron, Jimmy Smith, Grady Tate, Stanley Turrentine

Choice Ron Carter Cuts (per BK's request)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_oSAPsP6-w

"Stacy's Mom"  Brendan and Friends   Rockin' in Weston CT   6.11.09

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRHK9psKK7I

" 'Round Midnight"  Live with Miles, Herbie, Wayne, Tony and Ron

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asJRAGUlZ1c

"Walkin' "  Live 1983 with Herbie Hancock, Billy Cobham

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VN8zH366M8

"Cantaloupe Island"  Live with Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Tony Williams

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfUqggDylJU

"Autumn Leaves"  Live with Jacky Terrasson on piano, Russell Malone on guitar

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfUqggDylJU

"Joshua"  Live 1964  with Miles, Herbie, Wayne, Tony

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Mc2GPTZaxk

"Concierto de Aranjuez"  Chet Baker, Paul Desmond, Jim Hall, Ron Carter, Sir Roland Hanna, Steve Gadd

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZ4WNpAYo6I

"Toys"  Live with Herbie Hancock, piano  Billy Cobham, drums

Yardbird Suite (1988) signed by Ron, Frank Morgan, Mulgrew Miller

Sessions (1964 recordings, 1975 release) signed by Ron, Chick Corea, Richard Davis

Concierto ((1975) signed by Ron, Jim Hall, Steve Gadd, Sir Roland Hanna

Empire Jazz (1978) signed by Ron, Jon Faddis, Billy Cobham, Frank Wess

Plas Johnson, The Pink Panther and Me…

My dad got me started, but I'm mostly self taught. I was playing mostly by ear. You have to have your idols, your heroes. You listen to what they play, pick up the licks you like. Adapting, I guess copying is a better word, the great solos and using what you can. It's the way you put it together that becomes your style. Your notes are your words. It's very boring if you use the same adjectives over and over again. So you have to listen to more than one source. The toughest part of playing jazz is sound and articulation - breaking down your sentences into melody and harmony.

Plas Johnson

Grease: that essence which each jazz musician applies to the music, allowing it to slide around and between the notes and rhythms, imparting elements of spontaneity, emotion and personality which defy written notation.

Plas Johnson, L.A. '55 liner notes

This Must Be The Plas! (1959) signed by Plas

Through the years, Erin and I have been to thousands of shows seeing music encompassing all genres in every conceivable venue: Jerry Jeff Walker in a dance hall in Luckenbach, Texas, Ray Charles and his big band (including The Raelettes!) rocking a Neiman Marcus store in a shopping mall in Washington, DC, Jimmy McGriff playing jazz at our wedding in our backyard, Willie Nelson performing a full set at a Tower Records store in New York City, Eric Clapton at Carnegie Hall, Beirut at the Guggenheim Museum (designed by architect eminence grise Frank Lloyd Wright) and James Brown performing in a tent at a store opening in Westport, Connecticut. Equally fabulous and uncommon was a free Plas Johnson gig in the lobby of the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel. LAX never sounded so groovy and greasy.

Best known for his studio work, Plas Johnson and his tenor saxophone have graced the recordings of The Beach Boys, Bobby Darin, Marvin Gaye, B.B. King, Liza Minnelli, Linda Ronstadt, Boz Scaggs, Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart, and Tom Waits, a cast as wide as it is talented. Plas was also a member of the famed Wrecking Crew, a stable of extraordinarily talented Los Angeles based musicians who were featured on thousands of recordings. Bassist Carol Kaye, drummer Hal Blaine and guitarist Glen Campbell were just a few of Plas’ celebrated studio compadres.

The Pink Panther (1963)

Plas was also the tenor saxophonist on Henry Mancini’s ubiquitous hit “The Pink Panther Theme.” Plas remembered, "We only did two takes, I think. When we finished, everyone applauded, even the string players. And that's saying something, they never applaud for anything." The string players weren't the only one's applauding, "The Pink Panther Theme" captured the hearts and ears of millions of fans and became a beloved song which resonated throughout the nine subsequent Pink Panther movies (and cartoons!) in this enduring franchise. A tremendous commercial success, the soundtrack won three Grammys in 1963 and was nominated for an Academy Award, but lost to Mary Poppins, a worthy competitor. The composer Henry Mancini recalled, "I had a specific saxophone player in mind - Plas Johnson. I nearly always precast my players and write for them and around them. Plas had the sound and the style I wanted." To be sure, the mellifluous sound of Plas Johnson was a fitting muse.

It all started in Donaldson, Louisiana, sixty miles north of New Orleans, where Plas grew up in a very musical family. Plas was named after his dad, an abbreviation of plaisant, French for pleasant and delightful, an appropriate and apt sobriquet. His father and mother were musicians and included their children in their family enterprise, “My mother, Grace, played piano and sang. My dad, Plas Sr., played alto sax. They hustled work everywhere we lived. We would travel up and down the bayou on weekends. They would play wherever they could, in bars and restaurants, dances. We all were singers.” That changed when his father brought home a soprano saxophone, “It was a straight soprano. My dad paid $16 for it, he got it from a pawnshop. It doesn't sound like much, but $16 was a whole lot of money back then." For the princely sum of $16, a career was launched which still resonates throughout the film, jazz and television worlds today!

Mood For The Blues (1960)

Plas and his brother Ray, a pianist, recorded in the late 1940s as the Johnson Brothers Combo for Regal, a small label in New Orleans. Plas then joined the great blues and jazz singer Charles Brown in 1951 and toured with Charles until he was conscripted into the US Army. Upon his release in 1954, Plas decamped to Los Angeles where he studied at the Westlake School of Music, one of the first academic institutions to offer a college diploma for a Jazz curriculum. Though Westlake was only viable from 1945 through 1961 before closing, it did help other notable Jazz artists, including Bob Cooper, Charlie Haden, and Gary Peacock.

The versatility of Plas was invaluable as he became an in-demand session player in the fertile Los Angeles music and studio scene. Fluent on alto, baritone and soprano saxophone, as well as clarinet and flute, Plas considered his tenor saxophone the most important, "I started playing tenor when I was about fifteen. I call it my money horn. No matter how great you play alto, there's always more calls for tenor." And Plas got lots of calls, especially after the resounding success of “The Pink Panther Theme.”

L.A. ‘55 (1983) signed by Plas, Art Hillery

Dave Cavanaugh, a legendary Capitol Records A&R executive, signed Plas to a contract immediately after hearing Plas perform on some early Johnny Otis sessions. This led to some obscure recordings - a series of Arthur Murray dance records (credited to "Big Dave Cavanaugh") and jams with lounge exotica master Les Baxter on African Jazz and Tamboo! Plas also added his deft and smooth sax fills for singers Nat King Cole, Peggy Lee and Frank Sinatra. Plas remembered the exacting perfectionist that was Sinatra, "I sat in the hall for two hours and then Dave Cavanaugh brought me in to sit with the band. I played something like an eight-bar solo and that was it." All this acclaimed session work led to other opportunities in television, including a twelve-year stint on the Merv Griffin Show with Merv’s orchestra. Even the great Neal Hefti, a jazz composer of renown for his work with Count Basie, enlisted Plas and the redoubtable trumpet of Harry "Sweets" Edison to perform the theme for the hit television show The Odd Couple. Who knew that Felix and Oscar were hipsters and had such great taste?!

So it was a complete surprise when I was in Los Angeles on a business trip in March 2006 and scoured the LA Times entertainment section and saw that Plas Johnson was playing a gig at the Westin Los Angeles Airport Hotel for free. No cover, no minimum. Billed as "Jazz in the Lobby," it was a series of concerts in an unlikely venue. The hustle and bustle of a transient airport hotel lobby was surprisingly an hospitable host for an incomparable jazz master, no matter the cavernous lobby, challenging acoustics and sterile industrial furnishings. And Plas had some help, the great pianist Art Hillery was sitting in.

There was no stage, just a piano, drum kit, acoustic bass, saxophone and ferns. Lots and lots of ferns. I sat down at an empty table far from the madding shrubbery and an elderly woman asked if she could join me. 'Of course,' I said to the woman who was dressed in her elegant Sunday finery, as she sat down with her doting husband and friend. A few minutes later, the show started. Plas opened with a languid and dripping with molasses "Please Send Me Someone To Love." As Plas began his smoldering and sensuous groove, the woman shouted out, "Mmm, mmm, mmm, take your time!" It was a plea, a petition, and a prayer which Plas willingly answered as he played a wonderfully slow take on the Percy Mayfield classic. Other highlights were "Georgia On My Mind," from the pen of Hoagy Carmichael, a Ray Brown original "Parking Lot Blues" and, of course, "The Pink Panther Theme," a crowd pleasing finale. Despite the roomy and reverberant lobby, Plas imbued so much warmth and sound with his horn, it felt as if we were in an intimate, hazy nightclub. It was an amazing night of music.

The Blues (1975) signed by Plas

After the show, I visited with Plas and exhorted him to come back east to perform in New York. "Oh, I don't travel much these days," he said with a shrug and a smile. He was happy to sign his records, and I thanked him for his music and his time. As he once said about his extensive recording studio work, "My solos always seemed to bring up the record another notch. I could do that in eight bars, I could do that in twelve bars, and I was used to maybe do fills behind the vocalist after that." Yes, Plas Johnson always brought the songs up a notch, just listen to his contributions on Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On or Boz Scaggs' Silk Degrees or Sam Cooke's Twistin' The Night Away or Joni Mitchell's Travelogue or The Platters' The Great Pretender or Tom Waits' Heart Attack & Vine or...

With Plas, the possibilities are as endless as they are rewarding!

After You’ve Gone…(1975) signed by Plas, Ray Brown, Harry Sweets Edison

Choice Plas Johnson Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBupII3LH_Q

“The Pink Panther Theme” live with Henry Mancini on piano

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=plas+johnson+please+send+me+someone+to+love

“Please Send Me Someone To Love” The Blues 1975

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCwF9XfHDX0

“Flintstones” After You’ve Gone 1975

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3byGuyvLG2Y

“The Blues” live with Jay McShann on piano, Milt Hinton on bass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nU5gedgIUfs

“Time After Time” The Blues 1975

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6qPwCg2f1Y

“Parking Lot Blues” Introduction To Soul Jazz 2000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfMdhAzJZDE

“The Shake” Plas solos with Van Johnson 1959

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDrfHj3j398

“The Odd Couple Theme” with Harry Sweets Edison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dechpnavTyA

“Peter Gunn Theme” live with Henry Mancini on Steve Allen show

Bonus Picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBk1ajp8sIE

“Let’s Get It On” with Marvin Gaye 1973

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzCD84MNjBI

“Distant Lover” with Marvin Gaye 1973

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUg315xTNtk&list=PLjb5kMzP2zonY8b-FLOPt1bt2l11mWB4l

“What Can I Say” with Boz Scaggs 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvpsquT3eOQ&list=PLjb5kMzP2zonY8b-FLOPt1bt2l11mWB4l&index=2

“Georgia” with Boz Scaggs 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0qypyPl7oQ&list=PL6AINSH9vTTICTDY17uHuCZAmm5ycNOsD

“Squeeze Me” with Maria Muldaur 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IkNDzvCswU

“It Ain’t The Meat, It’s The Motion” with Maria Muldaur 1974

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzEBerpg9gk

“What’d I Say” wiith Bobby Darin 1962

Arthur Prysock and Me…

In the category of true and lasting greats - is Arthur Prysock. Here is a performer with the look and sound of a man who has lived and loved. His voice, a thoroughly matured instrument, has a warmth and power that is totally believable. The assurance with which he approaches a song, and the confidence with which his interpretation makes it so unmistakably his own - are qualities that emerge only when a rich natural talent is tempered by a good measure of experience. Prysock is clearly no adolescent, but it is at least equally clear that he is, and probably always will be, full of youthful vigor and fire.

producer Orrin Keepnews, Mister Prysock liner notes 1964

A Portrait Of Arthur Prysock (1963) signed by Arthur

Only in church. I didn't have any idea that I could sing, really. The people I got a room with, their son played piano. I sang in the bathroom, you know what they say, a singer in the bathroom sounds good. He was listening to me, and after a month or two, he asked me to come into his part of the house where he had a piano. He asked if I could sing in tune, and I said, 'I guess so. He hit a note, and I hit the note. He asked what songs I knew. One I knew was Nat King Cole's "That Ain't Right." It's a blues thing. He played it and I sang it. He said he'd teach me a lot of songs. He took me to the club and introduced me to his little brother and had me come up and sing a song. I almost fainted... I sang one song and the girls screamed. The man who owned the place came out and asked where I'd come from. He hired me for three dollars a night, which was a lot of money. I was working at Pratt and Whitney Aircraft, until they found out I was sixteen, and they fired me. So I stayed around there for about a year and became the biggest singer there.

Arthur Prysock and his early start in 1943 in Hartford, Connecticut

I Worry About You (1961)

We got back after three months - all the way to California - and opened at the Apollo Theater. That was the biggest thing in my life. The fellows kidded me, "If they don't like you in the Apollo Theater, they'll throw tomatoes at you, and they're still in the can." I was scared to death. When I walked out on stage, the girls screamed. I went backstage for about five minutes, they couldn't get me out there. I was scared to death. Buddy (Johnson) was a quiet man, he said, "Come on Arthur, they love you." They brought me back on stage. I started singing and they started screaming again. Buddy said, "They love you." He was right. I became the number one singer with Buddy. My first record was a million seller - "They All Say I'm The Biggest Fool." I stayed with the band for about eight years as a singer, and when I left, I went out as a single. Of course, it wasn't too good for me. Then rock and roll came in, and it almost killed me, almost knocked me out of the business. But I stuck to it, and I'm very happy I did."

Arthur Prysock and his first tour with Buddy Johnson

Art & Soul (1966)

"Here's to good friends, tonight is kinda special, the beer will flow...so tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau." So intoned the dulcet baritone of Arthur Prysock as he implored the virtues of Lowenbrau, a Munich beer whose origins traced from the 14th century which was being mass produced by the Miller Brewing Company in the 1970s. Lowenbrau, a mainstay at Munich’s Oktoberfest since 1810, never caught on with North American, no account boozers like me. The recipe was different and Miller did not adhere to the strict German ingredient guidelines which proved prohibitively expensive to mass produce. As forgettable and horrid as the beer was, the jingle was inescapable and catchy. In those halcyon beer war days, Lowenbrau’s jingle was a valiant attempt to compete with Budweiser's spokesman, the incomparable Mr. Lou Rawls and, later, Colt 45's charismatic Billy Dee Wiilliams. Of the three, Arthur Prysock was, perhaps, less well known, but certainly no less talented.

Mister Prysock (1967)

Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Arthur grew up singing in the church. Like many in the 1940s, job opportunities were limited in the South to working in fields or picking cotton, so Arthur left to pursue a job in manufacturing in the North. He ended up working at a Pratt and Whitney Aircraft facility in Hartford, Connecticut. He worked there for a year until they found out he was only sixteen and he was unceremoniously fired. Fortunately, he was already singing at local clubs and he was hired by Buddy Johnson in 1944 to join his orchestra when the singer, Joe Medlin, fell ill. Aerospace’s loss was music’s gain!

This Is My Beloved (1968)

Arthur remembered, “Buddy Johnson came through and I asked if I could sing a song. His singer was sick. He said, "Well, if you know any of my songs, yes." I said, 'I know them all. I do them nightly.' I sang three or four songs, and when it was over, he asked if I'd like to sing with his band. I said, 'I'd love it.' He said, "You'll hear from me in a couple of weeks." We got together in Hartford. Then I wrote a letter home telling everybody that I was singing with Buddy Johnson's band. The girl I was going with down there before I left said I was the biggest liar and that I should not write to her anymore. When we got down there, we played Greensboro, Spartanburg, Darlington, the cornbread circuit. Everyone knew then that I was singing with Buddy Johnson.“ Notwithstanding his (soon to be ex) girlfriend’s misconceptions, Prysock became Lou Gehrig to Medlin’s Wally Pipp as Arthur stayed with Buddy for the next eight years and recorded many celebrated and million selling records, including “They All Say I’m The Biggest Fool” and "I Wonder Where Our Love Has Gone."

The Best Of Arthur Prysock (1967) signed by Arthur

Though he was only sixteen when he joined and too young to go into clubs, the experience was invaluable performing with these older musicians. Arthur remembered his time with Buddy fondly, "Yes, I wouldn't give it up for anything because Buddy Johnson was like a teacher. He would write the songs, and he would teach them to you the way they should be sung. Today, when I sing one of Buddy's songs, I always think about how he brought me up, teaching me how to present myself to the audience, lyric-wise. He couldn't sing too good, but he was a heck of a teacher." No, not many singers were blessed with the mellifluous and buttery tone of Arthur’s bass-baritone, a style that Arthur admittedly copied from Billy Eckstine: "Billy Eckstine was my idol. I loved his singing. We had similar voices... I still like him and we're good friends. Whenever we're around, we see each other. We almost spend the night together, just talking."

I Must Be Doing Something Right (1968)

After eight years with Buddy, Arthur decided it was time to move on, as he wasn't making enough money to support his growing family. Arthur credited his wife with her enduring support in those early, trying years, "It was tough. My wife also worked to help the family and to help me. She said, 'As long as you want to try it...' After about a year, she said, 'Are you sure you don't want to get a job?' "No," I said, "I gotta stick it out." It's good when you got a good woman, because you can have a bad one and that's the end of it. They don't care whether you make it or not. The first thing they want is the lawyer."

Fly My Love (1970)

Arthur stuck with it and enjoyed an acclaimed forty-two year career as a singer, mixing Jazz, Rhythm and Blues, and Soul in an intoxicating stew. He released more than thirty records and was nominated for two Grammys late in his career. He also recorded with jazz legends, including Count Basie who wanted Athur to join his band to replace the departing Jimmy Rushing. He spurned Basie's offer, as well as an opportunity from Duke Ellington, preferring to remain independent.

Here’s To Good Friends (1978) Tonight is kinda special!

The Lowenbrau fame came later in Arthur's career when he had been reduced to performing in cabaret style supper clubs. Arthur recounted, "I was in the studio at the time making Miller commercials. When I finished, the producer asked, 'Arthur, would you like to try out for a new beer, Lowenbrau?' I said that I had never heard of it, but I'd be glad to do it. He said, "Next week, maybe." I said OK. He called and asked if I had a key on the Lowenbrau commercial. I said, "Sure." He said, 'That's mighty low.' I said, "Don't worry about it." So I went into the studio and did it, and he said, 'Damn, I didn't think you were going to make it. I almost put it a half tone higher.' They loved the commercial because of the depth of it. I was contracted to them for eight years." And the royalties, as Arthur confirmed, were "lovely."

Funny Thing (1970)

Erin and I were lucky to see Arthur at a now forgotten club in Washington DC in the early 1990s. A friend of mine, William Claire, a rare book purveyor by vocation and a jazz lover by avocation, was an investor in a short lived cabaret style club a block off Wisconsin Avenue NW on Van Ness. The name of the club escapes, lost to the mists of time. I had used William’s considerable skills to sleuth copies of Fatso, a memoir by Arthur Donovan, the great Hall of Fame Baltimore Colt whose son was a college friend of mine, and I was blessed to spend many afternoons with them at the Valley Country Club. After securing several Fatso books, William said with a little exasperation, "You know, Neil, I do sell other books than Fatso. I'd be happy to find other names for you." I thanked William for his efforts but my bibliophile interests were decidedly low brow. However, when William told me that he was opening a jazz club, Erin and I leapt at the opportunity to see Arthur Prysock and his band.

The Country Side Of Arthur Prysock (1969)

The show was phenomenal. Arthur was in great form and his band was led by his older brother Red, a hard driving, honking saxophonist who was more comfortable in a R&B milieu than in a bebop environ. Red had performed (uncredited) on many of Arthur's hits on Old Town Records in the 1950s and 1960s, and they had been touring together for the past decade. Highlights at the show were "I Didn't Sleep A Wink Last Night," "The Very Thought Of You," "Good Rockin' Tonight," and a sumptuous cover of the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody."

The Big Sound Of Red Prysock (1964)

After the show, I approached Red as he walked off the bandstand, "Hey Red, that was a great show, would you mind signing this?" and I handed him The Big Sound Of Red Prysock. "No," he said as he hurriedly brushed by me. I was a bit disappointed, so I warily approached Arthur who greeted me warmly, "Yes, I'd be happy to sign some records." When I mentioned that Red had just blown me off, Arthur said, "Oh, please don't take any offense. Red suffered a partial stroke awhile back and he's embarrassed by his signature." 'Wow, I didn't see that, I thought his playing was really good,' I said. "Yes, he hides it quite well," Arthur replied. I thanked him again for his time and especially his music.

Today’s Love Songs, Tomorrow’s Blues (1988)

The end came too soon for Red Prysock in 1993 and for Arthur in 1997. Red died of a heart attack and Arthur died of an aneurysm in Hamilton. Bermuda where he had retired years earlier. In September 1996, I spoke with Don Williams, a gifted drummer who was playing our wedding with the great Jimmy McGriff. Don noticed the framed, signed Arthur Prysock record on our wall and said dolefully, "You know, Arthur bought me my first real drum set, he was such a beautiful man. I played with him for a long time.” 'What's he up to now? I haven't seen him touring lately," I asked cheerfully. "Oh, it's such a shame. He's down in Bermuda, talking to the coconuts in the trees. He's in bad shape," Don sadly related. Unfortunately, Alzheimers was taking its ravaging toll and we heard the sad news that Arthur had passed nine months after our joyous wedding. But Arthur’s music plays on and on...

A gifted singer, the night wasn’t “kinda special”when Arthur Prysock sang, it was glorious.

Don Williams, Jimmy McGriff and Me… September 21, 1996

To Love Or Not To Love (1968)

Choice Arthur Prysock Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j7QLblDFns

“They All Say I’m The Biggest Fool” Arthur sings with Buddy Johnson 1946

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6xFIFd95l8

“At Last” Arthur sings with Buddy Johnson Orchestra  1952

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Zucc8IgD4o

“Unchained Melody”  Arthur Prysock Sings Only For You  1966

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pm7k9PLTs4

“Close Your Eyes”  live on American Bandstand - 12 December 1964

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFKmVng6rrY

“When Love Is New”  Arthur sings Gamble and Huff! 1977 Disco Fever!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EueQdYyZpUs

“Here’s To Good Friends”  Lowenbrau Beer Commercial  1970s-80s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoe-0L5Ru5I

“Here’s To Good Friends”  Here’s To Good Friends  1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDXraPHkGjE

“My Buddy”   I Must Be Doing Something Right  1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPRIazUs9o4

“You Gave Me A Mountain”   The Country Side Of Arthur Prysock  1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrHcICZRqSs

“Everything Must Change”   This Guy’s In Love With You  1987

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zy7eXg825Y

“I Worry ‘Bout You”  with Count Basie  1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBp-aG98OPE

“I Didn’t Sleep A Wink Last Night”   1952

Bonus picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0DngXqWCkg

“When You Say Budweiser” Mr. Lou Rawls 1978

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pK5HmuCMBM

“The Power of Colt 45” Billy Dee Williams

The Blasters, Dave Alvin and Me…

But the thing about The Blasters was that we were just playing our version of old Rhythm & Blues, all hopped up and fast, but that’s all there was. It struck a chord that night, and several other nights in several other cities we were banned from. It wasn’t like we were calling for people to burn down the city, you know, we were just playing our songs. Our attitude was always that when these things happened we didn’t stop playing, because we weren’t going to let that stop us from playing. Our job as musicians is to play. And your job as a promoter, this that and the other, is to make sure these things don’t happen. Whether that’s the right attitude or not, that was our attitude.
Dave Alvin

I had a '61 Fender Mustang, still have it ... and a lot of the people in the audience liked The Blasters... but then there's an element of the audience that hated The Blasters. We were almost like their older brothers who liked rhythm and blues. And they were going to show their displeasure. One kid threw this beer bottle really well and he threw it right at my head, and I raised — in maybe the greatest moment of my life physically — I raised the guitar up to cover my face at exactly the time that it got to my face, but the guitar got in the way and, yeah, there's about a six-inch-long, quarter-inch-deep gash in the Mustang to this day from that beer bottle. That kind of stuff happened. I remember it was in the mid 90s when I started relaxing before I went onstage, because I could go, 'Oh, wow, nobody's gonna throw anything. I think those days are in the past for me.'
Dave Alvin

King Of California (1995) signed by Dave

I don't know if "Fourth Of July" is my most Chandleresque song, but it was definitely trying to say a lot with a little. Sometimes I try to say a lot with a lot. But that song was trying to say a lot with a little. When I was writing it, I had a third verse, which I threw away, because the weight of the song with the third verse felt too heavy. On the other hand, with just the two verses and the little part that goes 'whatever happened/I apologize,' it felt like, 'Is that enough? Is that possibly enough? I get it. But will anyone else?' Here's what I've learned over time, and my only advice to a young traditional roots rock songwriter is that a song you think is entirely personal and no one else will get it is sometimes the most universal. I don't know too many songwriters who were trained or schooled as songwriters. So it's a feel thing. When X wanted to record the song and we recorded a couple of demos for Elektra, one of the producers, who is a notable musician who shall remain nameless, said, "I'm not getting enough. It needs more." So I thought, well, maybe I should pull that third verse back into it? But then I thought, no, it's getting the point across. They're either breaking up or they're staying together.

               Dave Alvin

Hard Line (1985) signed by Dave

There are many musical traditions in our household. Birthdays are celebrated with a raucous and rousing "Birthday" by the Beatles and the soulful ebullience of "Happy Birthday" by Stevie Wonder. Christmas treats run the gamut, Chet Baker to John Fahey to Frank Sinatra, and even, Jacob Miller's "Natty Christmas" makes a festive and green Yuletide appearance. Saint Patrick's Day is celebrated year round (as it should be!) and the more maudlin and morose the melodies the better. The talents of Paul Brady, Van Morrison, Sinead O'Connor, and, especially Shane MacGowan and The Pogues on "Carrickfergus", "Raglan Road", "Ye Auld Triangle", "The Homes Of Donegal", "Peggy Gordon", "Streams Of Whiskey" and "Wild Mountain Thyme" stoke and soothe my Celtic melancholy. "Grand weepers and grim reapers", as Tom Waits once described his music, "...beautiful melodies telling me terrible things." Amen brother Tom, amen.

The Blasters (1981) signed by Dave

Another great tradition occurs on our Nation's birthday, and surely we are not alone when we play "Fourth Of July" by the Los Angeles punk band X turned up way past eleven. It just sounds better that way. "Fourth of July" was written by the incomparable American roots music avatar, Dave Alvin, who formed The Blasters in 1979 with his older brother Phil. The Blasters released four critically acclaimed albums from 1980 to 1986 until Dave departed. Thereafter, the brothers remained estranged for decades, following in a great rock and roll bickering siblings tradition, advanced by the peevish Forgertys of Creedence Clearwater Revival, the petulant Davies of The Kinks, and the fractious Gallaghers of Oasis. Fortunately, Dave and Phil have enjoyed a recent rapprochement, and they have released two albums in tribute to their early rock and roll influences: Big Joe Turner and Big Bill Broonzy. As Dave acknowledged, "We argue sometimes, but we never argue about Big Bill Broonzy", the subject of their 2014 album, Common Ground: Dave & Phil Alvin Sing and Play The Songs Of Big Bill Broonzy, "Big Bill, he was the entrance drug into prewar blues. That's the record Phil came home with that was all late '30s recordings, and that was an eye-opening thing." Of his relationship with his brother, Dave recently confided, "Well, we’re getting along great. We actually haven’t been this close in decades. Over the past year, he’s had two life-threatening health issues, and that’s brought us even closer. For years there was a lot of… anger’s not the word, but misunderstandings. And there still are. But brothers are brothers. Brothers are gonna fight, brothers are gonna quibble, and brothers are gonna love each other. That’s just the way it is." Yes, it was not always lilacs and lilies for the brothers Alvin.

Teenage Cruisers (1980) signed by Dave

The Blasters never really fit into the Los Angeles hard core punk scene of the 1980s. The nihilistic speed metal and the discordant thrash of Black Flag, The Minutemen and the Circle Jerks was alien to Dave and Phil. At their core, they were blues and R&B aficionados. Dave described his early influences, "I wanted to be cool, that's about it. I wanted to play music from an early age which is one of the reasons why, when I was a certain age, I started sneaking into clubs. I had three older cousins, they were like ten, twelve years older than me, we’re talking about when I was like five and six. My cousin Donna was a wild girl, with a beehive hairdo and a jacked up ’49 Ford and she was an R&B chick. She liked Ray Charles and Big Joe Turner and doo-wop and rockabilly and things like that. My cousin Mike played acoustic guitar and banjo and he liked Ramblin’ Jack Elliot and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee and folk blues kinds of things. And then my cousin JJ grew up on a ranch and he liked Buck Owens. My view of the musical universe was really based on my older cousins’ tastes and by the time I was eleven or twelve, I was collecting old records and by the time I was thirteen or fourteen, my brother and I were sneaking into bars. It was like, 'We like this music, where can we go hear it?' At the same time, my mom would drive me to see Jimi Hendrix and a year later we were copping rides from guys to get to a club like the Ash Grove or to neighborhood bars. In those days, where we lived, you could find blues and honky tonk music and all that stuff in neighborhood bars and that was my education to a great extent."

For a kid straight outta Downey, CA, this was splendid training and breeding. Dave became the principal songwriter and lyricist for The Blasters, and he found the perfect voice for his music, "Now, I was never a singer. When I was a little kid, I got kicked out of choir. My older brother Phil was one of the star choir singers of the Catholic Church and I was asked not to be part of it. So when I wrote songs for the Blasters, I'd go to rehearsal and sing them for like an hour and my brother would sit and listen and say, 'Sing it again, sing it again.' Then, when he would step up to the microphone, he'd say, 'Okay, I got it' and I'd never sing the song again. I mean, I had this brother with this big, loud, magnificent blues voice." Unfortunately, the Alvin talents did not translate into fame or commercial success. Director Walter Hill solicited The Blasters for the music for 48 Hours, a hit film and a breakthrough for Eddie Murphy. Alas, Dave didn't like the script and refused to participate. As he said later with apparent equanimity, "We never sold out, which was both a good thing and a bad thing."

X; See How We Are (1987) signed by Dave, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Tony Gilkyson, D.J. Bonebrake

After leaving The Blasters in 1985, Dave joined X briefly and played guitar on See How We Are,a record featuring "Fourth Of July" which has been a staple in our house ever since. He also joined The Knitters, an acoustic side project led by X vocalists and former husband and wife, Exene Cervenka and John Doe. Featuring an engaging mix of mostly covers of country (Albert Brumley's "Rank Stranger", Merle Haggard's "Silver Wings"), folk ("Walkin' Cane" from the 1880 quill of James Bland), blues (Lead Belly's "Rock Island Line") and rock (Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild"), The Knitters have released two albums in their modest discography:Poor Little Critter On the Road (1985) andThe Modern Sounds Of The Knitters (2005).

The Knitters: Poor Little Critter On The Road (1985) signed by Dave, John Doe, Exene Cervenka, D.J. Bonebrake

Back Cover signed by Billy Zoom

As a solo artist, Dave has released twelve albums and his range is extraordinary. From burning down the house rockers "Wanda and Duane" and "Haley's Comet" to country weepers "Bus Station" and an exquisitely re-imagined "Border Radio" to the folk bluster of "King Of California" and the Civil War horror of "Andersonville", there is little that Dave cannot write, sing and master. He is a consummate storyteller and a ferocious guitar slinger. I have seen him many times over the years, whether bashing on guitar with The Knitters at Irving Plaza in New York City and at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in San Francisco, or fronting Dave Alvin & The Guilty Women at the Santa Monica Pier, or performing at smaller clubs like the Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia, Dave always delivers the goods. Each time, I met Dave after a show, I found him to be generous, his wit and humor as dry and laconic as "Dry River", a song he wrote about his childhood. "I was born by a river, but it was paved with cement..." Asked in an interview whether it bothered him at his shows that 'there's some clown yelling all night for "Marie, Marie" or "Fourth Of July"? Dave's response is telling, "And oftentimes, I'm that clown. I may be the rare artist who doesn't get tired of playing songs that he wrote. Part of it is that I'm always startled that I wrote them in the first place."

Lost Time (2015) signed by Dave

Lost Time (2015) signed by Dave and Phil Alvin

In April 2005, I saw a very memorable show at Cafe Nine, a small venue in New Haven, Connecticut. Touted as 'The Musician's Living Room' (accurate if your favorite musician's living room resembled a dive bar!), Cafe Nine is housed in a decaying brick building. Dave was playing an acoustic show with Chris Miller, his sole accompanist on guitar. I entered and walked into the bar. The stage to the right of the door entrance barely held room for one, let alone two guitarists. When the show started, Dave and Chris squeezed in, and the front door was sealed shut, in probable defiance of the (absent) fire marshal.  All tardy patrons were thus denied admittance, and more than a few banged on the door, their clamor and pleas to no avail.

Ashgrove (2004) signed by Dave

The crowd was what you might expect. Aging rock fans clinging to their fading hopes, swilling Heinekens, spilling Budweisers, and blotting out the last vestiges of a Sunday night in a sweat box. Dave and Chris were in fine spirits and played stripped down songs off Dave's recently released Ashgrove, titled after the legendary Los Angeles music club on Melrose Avenue, the site of many concerts where Dave and Phil saw their heroes - Big Joe Turner, Lightnin' Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee - in their well spent youth. Dave and Chris played a mix of newer songs - "Rio Grande", "Ashgrove", "Everett Reuss" and "Nine Volt Heart" and worked in some Blasters' favorites - "Marie Marie" and "So Long Baby, Goodbye." to placate the boisterous fans who were pleading for more Blasters. Near the end of the show, during a guitar tuning break, Dave asked for requests for the encore. A fusillade of shouts erupted. One particularly persistent fan insisted on "From A Kitchen Table", a wistful ballad of unrequited love, regret, and love letters never read.

I hope this letter finds you
Wherever you may be
'Cause I mailed some awhile back
And they were all returned to me
Ain't nothin' I can tell you 'bout the hometown
Everything changes, but nothing's new
Just Sunday night at the kitchen table
Finishin' a beer and thinkin' of you.

And I still work the same job
Just live with my mom for free
'Cause ever since the old man passed on
It just got harder to leave.

Well I heard a rumor that you got married
Though you swore that you never would
I guess you finally got your own kids now
You ever tell 'em 'bout the old neighborhood?
Like the time we stole your dad's car
Drove all night down Imperial Highway
You kept sayin' "Maybe we should turn around, "
And I said "It don't take much to get away."

But I still work the same job
Just live with my mom for free
'Cause ever since the old man passed on
It just got harder to leave.

Guess that's all that I've got to tell you
I guess things turned out how they're meant to be
I just hope that this letter finds you
But until then I'll just keep it with me.

Eleven Eleven (2011) signed by Dave

A beautiful and mournful song, it even includes a haunting clarinet solo on the record, hardly fodder for a rockin' Sunday night encore. Dave laughed, "You know, that's a really tough song to play in a bar." Then he added over the din, "But it is Sunday night, so what the hell, let's give it a go." The crowd grew more reverent as Dave spun his tale about the broken dreams and unfulfilled promises which led to the quiet desperation and desolation of a Sunday night missive written from a kitchen table (or a barroom!).  Despite the ongoing revelry and bacchanalia in Cafe Nine, the irony was not lost on me. Once again, Dave Alvin was reading our mail!

Romeo’s Escape (1987) signed by Dave

After the show, I chatted with Dave briefly as he signed a couple of vinyl. I thanked him for his music. What was it like hanging with Big Joe Turner? I'm also a really big fan, I said. He paused. A long pause. He was deliberate and careful in his words, "It was like....hanging....with Joe Turner," he said with a thin smile. He drew a cigarette on the cover of Romeo's Escape, an homage to an ever present menthol, always dangling from his lips. I declined to ask him about his brother, I thought he was probably inundated with requests. In fact, he later wrote, "What's Up With Your Brother", a duet with Phil, to address all fan's concerns. Mostly, I just thanked him for his songs and music. I said, 'It was ballsy to play "From A Kitchen Table" in a bar, especially, this bar.' Ever modest, Dave replied, "Thanks, I wasn't sure that was going to work, but it turned out fine." Yes, it did.

Tulare Dust: A Songwriter’s Tribute To Merle Haggard (1994) signed by Dave

As he once said about his heroes, "Big Joe and T-Bone and Lightnin’ and whoever, who didn’t quit. It wasn’t even a lifestyle, it was just life. You just played music."

Dave Alvin, a well lived life playing and writing music, American music. Like he says, "Everything changes, but nothing's new."

Over There: Live At The Venue, London (1982) signed by Dave

When I look back on my time in this racket, the one thing I know is that you never know what people are going to like. I didn't think anyone would like "Fourth of July" when I was writing it. All I knew is that I liked it. But as a songwriter, you have to persevere through that board of critics that's in your head going, 'You might as well just throw this away. Nobody's going to like this one.' You just have to get to a place of acceptance.  

               Dave Alvin

Blue Blvd (1991) signed by Dave

Dave Alvin and The Guilty Women (2009) signed by Dave

Choice Dave Alvin Cuts (per BKs request) 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhu807VUY24
"Fourth Of July"  X: See How We Are  1987

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJf4r5E4qHI
"Fourth Of July"  King Of California  1994

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXd1bG3ArNQ
"From A Kitchen Table"  Blackjack David  1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG1hoB0nOeg
“Everett Reuss" Live 2010 Genius storyteller!
“No, because disappearing is poetry, finding him is journalism.."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6W25W6c4pY
"Everett Reuss"  Ashgrove   2004

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im-407BAbnA
“King Of California"  Live from Austin, TX  1999

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcvabni9GF4
"Andersonville"  Live at Bottom Line, NYC with Richard Thompson on guitar

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEdMgz2fmo0
“Border Radio"  Live From Austin, TX  1999

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxM7lNF9M3A
"Ashgrove"  Live with David Hidalgo and Pete Sears  2017  Listen and learn!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1iPfrJ8D8E
“Kern River"  Tulare Dust  Dave sings Merle!  1994

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AZyAoIL8GE
“Dry River"  Live From Austin, TX  1999

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o239IMppW5w
“Key To The Highway"  Common Ground  Dave & Phil Sing Big Bill Broonzy  2014

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFtDvDGUFZU
“What's Up With Your Brother"  Dave & Phil Live in Auburn, CA  2.11.16

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRCfky62TvU
"Wanda And Duane"   Blue Blvd  1991

Dead Rock West (2017) signed by Dave and Phil Alvin

Bonus tracks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmaXdkC0zE4
"Border Radio"  The Blasters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPuQPJLxW8o
"Burnin' House Of Love"  The Knitters on Letterman  2005

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N5HAOsw57I
"Goodbye Again"  Rosie Flores and Dave Alvin  1990 

Roadhouse Revival: Tour Of The USA flyer (1996)

Non Fiction (1983) signed by Dave

Eddie Harris and Me…

I like to hear anybody that is individualistic, especially if they are individualistically minded. You can hear it come out in their playing... Monk, Miles, Duke, Sun Ra, Kool and the Gang, Sly (Stone), Bartok, Schoenberg...anything that people do that is unique and different.

Eddie Harris

I practice eight hours a day. How do you think I can play all the things I play? I play at fast speeds for all the things I do on the saxophone, you've got to put time in. I make no bones about it. You talk with (guitarist) John Scofield and all these cats, they'll say, "Hey man, if we're in a hotel with Harris, put him in 101 and us in 1120. We'll never get any rest."

Eddie Harris and his multi-instrumentalist discipline

Swiss Movement (1969) signed by Eddie, Les McCann

Billie Holiday was very instrumental in trying to get me to understand that I could not only swing, that I played melodically. I was playing at the Pershing Lounge opposite Ahmad Jamal, and played off nights. She had a club underneath, which at first she called Birdland, then the people in New York wouldn't allow her to call it Birdland, so she changed it to Budland. She came down one time, when we were rehearsing during the afternoon... She came down to these rehearsals, any time she could, and she directed the rehearsals, "Hey, don't do that!" ...and she said, "You can really phrase, your timing..." and she used a lot of four-letter words...

Eddie Harris on his piano skills and his sharpest critic

It’s strange. People like my piano playing. I wish they would like my saxophone playing like that. I don’t know what it is. The piano playing, maybe it’s because I can groove, I get across to the average John and Jane Doe. The saxophone, I don’t know what it is, I’ve never had that happen.

Eddie Harris

I've been open minded. I listen to people, like what I like, dislike what I dislike, just the same as everyone else. I believe if you're playing a salsa tune, you try to improvise on the way the melody was constructed. If you're playing a tune where you want to take extreme liberties, in what you call avant garde jazz, you try to solo accordingly. That's all I've tried to do all my life in playing music. Therefore, people haven't always known how to program me. They'll say, "Oh, he's the cool cat because he did "Exodus." Then, "Hey man, what's this "Freedom Jazz Dance?" What is that?" Then, "What's he doing, man, playing with his echo on his horn or playing a tenor with a trombone mouthpiece? He shouldn't do that."

                       Eddie Harris

The Soul Of Eddie Harris (1961 recordings, 1968 release) unsigned

Arranger, author, composer, inventor, patent holder, pianist, saxophonist and singer, Eddie Harris was as broad in his interests as he was talented. Equally adept at piano, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, vibraphone, oboe, and bassoon, Eddie enjoyed early commercial success with his jazz version of “Exodus” from the hit film of the same name (the first jazz million seller in 1961) while charting his own peripatetic path. Eddie also wrote the jazz standards "Listen Here" and "Freedom Jazz Dance," the latter popularized by Miles Davis, though Eddie seemed unfazed by his renown, as he related, "It just happened that Ron Carter took the tune over to Miles Davis and he recorded it, and then it became hip,” as did the multitude of others who performed it...

Playin’ With Myself (1979) signed by Eddie

Born in Chicago, Eddie studied music at Dusable High School under the imposing Walter Dyett who ran a fabled music program: Nat King Cole, Bo Diddley, John Gilmore, Johnny Griffin, Clifford Jordan, and Julian Priester are among its distinguished alumni. Walter Dyett was a bit of a martinet and he was unrelenting in his discipline and direction to his students, as Eddie recalled, “(Walter) Dyett was an instructor...he had been a Captain in the service, and he had to be rough, because the guys who came to that school were extremely rough. In other words, say you hit that part wrong. Some guys would just tell you, "So what? Go on and play the music," and he didn't tolerate that. He would either go upside your head, or have you bring your parents up to the school. I remember one time, I fell asleep. He kicked the chair out from under me, and I got up off the floor with my clarinet sprawled everywhere! It was really strange."

Although draconian and extreme, Dyett's techniques did have their rewards, "We could just read tremendously, because Dyett taught us like that...Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton - I got a chance to hear all these guys. They'd come by because they just couldn't believe the Booster Band was that hip. That was the jazz band, and when you miss a note, you're out of the band. He'd pop his fingers, 'You're out of the band, bring your mother up to school.' And a guy in the back would take out his instrument, he'd come and sit down, and he was just as good, if not better. I mean, it was that kind of competition you came up under, which really helped you."

Plug Me In (1968) unsigned

The school became a hotbed of talent for band leaders like Sun Ra (née Herman Blount) who relocated to Chicago from Birmingham, Alabama. Sun Ra was able to poach many students for his band who went on to storied jazz careers, John Gilmore and Eddie Harris among them. Sun Ra’s music was necessarily dense and different which flummoxed critics and listeners alike. Eddie remembered, “I didn’t have any adverse reaction to it, due to the fact that I played in the orchestras. I played classical music. The big thing was looking at the way he wrote them. It was like orchestra music. You had scales, arpeggios, flamadas and like that. He would write a note and make a zig-zag line to another note, and within that time frame, you played what you wanted to play. Which is modern writing today, but I wasn’t too hip to that, you know. I would have liked to stay along with him and played a lot longer, but I couldn't go along with his teachings that he had after rehearsals and after playing, when he said, 'I've been here before,' because he was talking about 'Space is the place' and going on with that. I liked his music, I liked to experiment, but I couldn't go along with his teaching. So not being with him, that's when I more or less started playing with another group of guys..where we did our thing." Eddie was far too earthy and grounded for Sun Ra’s extraterrestrial musings, and though his tenure with Sun Ra was brief, it was influential, notwithstanding their distinct philosophical differences, as Eddie would use the relentless innovation and restless experimentation in his future endeavors.

The Real Electrifying Eddie Harris (1982) signed by Eddie

After a stint in the US Army, Eddie moved to New York City and was in demand because of his versatility, playing in orchestra pit bands on Broadway, a grueling nine show a week schedule, and with trumpeter Kenny Dorham. Eventually, Eddie was frustrated with his lack of financial recompense, so he decided to move back to Chicago, "I just went back to Chicago...I was scheduled to go back to Europe and play because Quincy Jones was going to hire me to take a guy’s place named Oliver Nelson... He said, ‘Man, I’m happy to run into you. You can go back to Europe with me.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ I stopped by to see my mother, and she asked me what I was doing, and I said, ‘I’m going back over to Europe with a guy named Quincy Jones.’ She started crying. She just made a big issue out of this. I said, ‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong?’ She said, “I understood you was going to make a record.” I said, ‘Oh yeah, I can do that when I come back.’ She said, “It’s a shame. I’m ashamed to tell people that you play music because everybody’s made a record but you.” I said, ‘I don’t care nothin’ about that. I’m working. I’m playing.’ She said, “Well, you ought to make this one record, because VeeJay asked you to make a record.” But they’d asked me to record on piano, because they wanted me to sound like the guy down the street at Cadet Records who I used to show chords to... Ramsey Lewis...this guy had the Gentlemen of Jazz, and that was selling. So they wanted me to do that down the street at Vee-Jay. And I wasn’t particular about that, so I didn’t care nothing about making a record. But my mother said, “Oh, please make this one record, then you can go to Europe, Asia, anywhere.” I said, ‘But won’t nobody want me then if I stay here and make the record?’ So I went down to Chess, and I talked with them, and they said, “Well, we don’t want you to play the saxophone; you’re too weird,” and I told him where to go. Well, there was a guy named Sid McCoy, and a guy named Abner, who ran the company . . . It was actually Vivian and Jimmy’s company, V-J, and Abner was the president, and Sid McCoy was the A&R, artists and repertoire guy. Abner, who had gone to college with me, said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll let you play several numbers on saxophone.” I said, ‘Okay, that’s fair enough.’ I told Quincy that. He said, “One record?! Oh, man.” And to this day, when he thinks about it, he says, “One record” — because that one record turned out to be “Exodus.” Isn’t that amazing? A million-seller.” Originally released as a 45 rpm single, “Exodus” went on to sell more than two million copies, and helped catapult Eddie's career which led to more than seventy albums as a leader and millions of records sold. And it wouldn't have happened without Eddie's mother's persistent and prescient admonition!

Trip! (1961 recordings, 1969 release) unsigned

All of Eddie's success came with a price, however, as critical acclaim never matched his commercial viability, "I figure that I'm put down because I sell a lot of records." That wasn't entirely true, as Eddie was unyieldingly creative and some of his albums were all over the map musically, mixing genres like funk and fusion, featuring his gruff vocals, and instruments that he helped create like a saxophone outfitted with a trombone mouthpiece that Eddie dubbed the "Saxobone." He also experimented with an electric saxophone, the "Varitone" which further confounded and alienated jazz critics and purists alike. He even released a comedy album - The Reason Why I’m Talking Sh*t - which was probably the final straw. As he admitted, "I'm experimenting. I'll try this, try that. A lot of people would say, 'No one knows where to put you.' I'd say, 'Why don't they just put me in a category called "Don't know where to put you?" You can do anything you want to do, if you want to do it." And he did.

Second Movement (1971) signed by Eddie, Les McCann

Erin and I saw Eddie only once in 1988 at Blues Alley in Washington DC. He and Les McCann were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of their album Swiss Movement, which was recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival. An impromptu jam session, the album was mostly improvised and a last minute addition to the third annual Montreux Jazz Festival. Though Les and Eddie knew each other, they were an odd and unlikely couple. Eddie was meticulous and planned everything, Les not so much. He was as freewheeling and open to possibilities as Eddie was disciplined and structured. Their commonality derived mostly from being on the same record label - Atlantic Records - who suggested they perform together.

Even more remarkable, Eddie, Les and the band had only rehearsed for ten minutes before they "let it happen." The celebratory throng in Montreux was only the beginning as Swiss Movement went on to sell more than a million copies and became one of the finest examples of Soul Jazz when it was released in 1969. It also helped cement the reputation of Montreux Jazz which was then an unproven and fledgling festival, not the international showcase it has become more than fifty years later.

Second Movement (1971) back cover signed by Les McCann

The show at Blues Alley was a lot of fun. The rollicking piano of Les was driven by the searing tenor of Eddie. They played their biggest hit, "Compared To What" and "Cold Duck Time," a song which Eddie wrote, a paean really, about the virtues of an adult beverage of dubious quality and intent. After the show, Eddie was gracious as he signed his vinyl but seemingly withdrawn in contrast to his partner, the voluble and expressive Les McCann. We thanked Eddie for his time and especially his music.

Sadly, we never had the chance to see Eddie again as he passed away in 1996, but what a legacy of music and songs he left us. An author of seven music books, a patent holder for mouthpieces which he designed for trumpet, trombone and saxophone, and a seller of millions of records, Eddie has also been sampled by hip hop artists, Heavy D, The Notorious B.I.G., Digable Planets, Gang Starr and hundreds of others. Although the critical acclaim may have been elusive to Eddie during his lifetime, his influence and relevance extends among fans and musicians to this day. Maybe, just not for his comedic efforts, that record is rare to find and deservedly so.

The In Sound (1965) unsigned

Choice Eddie Harris Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HJjnHiMVhw

“Exodus” Exodus To Jazz 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsHtO_i4qzM

“Listen Here” The Electrifying Eddie Harris 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDrH5urtCbQ

“Freedom Jazz Dance” The In Sound 1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7F7sg5IeZY

“My Buddy” Mighty Like A Rose 1961

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDMQqDUtv4

“Compared To What” live at Montreux 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8YOLY4Tats

“Cold Duck Time” live at Montreux 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRIRtrw-rsE

“The Shadow Of Your Smile” The In Sound 1965

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az34xP65Fn4

“Set Us Free” Second Movement with Les McCann 1971

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cXT23pOH7g

“I Don’t Want No One But You” The Electrifying Eddie Harris 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgqdT9iYHxM

“Playin’ With Myself” Eddie plays piano and sax 1979

Bonus picks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ11cArknek

Miles Davis: “Freedom Jazz Dance” Miles Smiles 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzelqRLyIlg

Dr. Lonnie Smith: “Freedom Jazz Dance” live 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R2qZFC4Qb0

“What I’m Thinking Before I Start Playing” The Reason I’m Talking Sh*t 1975