Ornette Coleman

I thought I’d go with the great Ornette Coleman for my next entry. The autographs shown above are on Ornette’s Crisis! album. The album is a fairly rare Impulse! recording from 1969. The cover seems appropriate for today's times.

Old and New Dreams was an Ornette Coleman alumni band consisting of Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. They played UCLA and I got their autographs. I found out that Crisis! was so rare that Don Cherry remarked that even he didn’t have a copy of it! (A few months after this encounter, I went to see him at a gig at McCabe’s and gave him a cassette of it. He greatly appreciated it.) My copy is signed by all six of the participants, plus Ed Blackwell.

(Ornette Coleman and his son Denardo signed at a later gig.)

My Jazzy Christmas Presents

Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings
An 8 CD collection of Jelly Roll! The sound is kind of rough, but if you’re into the roots music, it’s a must have. (It’s only the second jazz item in my collection with an explicit lyrics warning label!)






Louis Armstrong: The Offstage Story of Satchmo
I saw this book several years ago at the Grove in LA and had never seen it anywhere else since then. A really good book!

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

For my last post of 2005, I have another entry dedicated to the sadly underrated and neglected (you didn’t see him on Ken Burns’ Jazz, did you?) Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1935-1977). As I mentioned in one of my early blog entries, I saw him 6 months before he passed away on December 5, 1977. It’s hard to believe it’s been 28 years! So in honor of Rahsaan, I thought I’d post another page from the prospective book of Kirk transcriptions. This one is from the "Introducing Roland Kirk" album and this excerpt is his unaccompanied manzello/tenor sax duet near the beginning of the blues entitled "The Call."



!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

Miles Davis

Back in the mid-80s, they used to hold various incarnations of the Kool Jazz Festival.

For the San Diego version, my friend Ellen got me a job driving the artists from their dressing areas (behind the dugout) to the stage in center field in a electric cart.

Most were nice (especially Patti LaBelle), but there was one jerk (his name rhymes with Joe Sample).

I approached Miles Davis before I gave him a ride to the stage. He signed it, but said nothing the whole time. Honestly, I would have been surprised if he had spoken!

I always feel like somebody’s watching me…..

Under the Freedom of Information Act, you can obtain information on:

• an organization, business, investigation, historical event, or incident.
• a third party.
• a deceased person.
• yourself.
  

At the FBI website (www.fbi.gov), they have published some of the most popular FOIA requests. From a jazz standpoint, these include Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway and Charles Mingus amongst others. An interesting peek into an interesting period of time…..

Benny Carter

Benny Carter's autograph

I’m back, after a too long absence. I hope I didn’t lose too many of my dozen readers! My time has been spent on getting my genealogy website online. It’s at www.jamesbowiefmc.com, dedicated to my great-great-great-great grandfather, James Bowie, free man of color and his descendants. The web site is still in the formative stages, but I’ll be trying to get back to weekly entries here at Blog-O-Jazz.

Back to the music….

One of the cool things about Los Angeles is that you can run into celebrities without really trying. For me, those of movie and TV fame don’t impress me that much and I would never care enough to ask one of them for their autograph. But as you know, a jazz musician is a totally different matter.

Back in 1979, at an Ellington tribute concert, I happened to turn around to find the great Benny Carter [1907-2003] seated directly behind me. Benny Carter was a great arranger and composer and pretty much played every instrument. His specialties were alto sax and trumpet. He was an amazing musician with an amazingly long career, with recordings from the 1920s to the 1990s!

Diz, Bird, Monk & Trane

Diz, Bird, Monk & Trane

There are two newly discovered, previously unknown, never before issued live concerts that you MUST own. Get them today!!!

The first is by Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker, recorded in June of 1945. The ‘be-bop’ movement was in its infancy. The songs they played were new, each one destined to become a standard. The group even has trouble recalling the title of ‘that Tadd Dameron tune’ (Hot House).

The sound is great for a 1945 live session. Most importantly, the group really gets to stretch out – the average song is 7 minutes, twice that available on the 78 rpm records of the time. Bird does things here that you don’t hear on the studio recordings. He even makes several excursions into the altissimo register. The rhythm section is Al Haig, Curly Russell and Max Roach. Tenor saxophonist Don Byas and drummer Big Sid Catlett guest on a song each.
The second captures the Thelonious Monk quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall in 1957. This group burns! This concert is extra significant because of the limited amount of material documenting the Monk/Coltrane collaboration. Supporting cast: Ahmed Adbul-Malik on bass and Shadow Wilson on drums.

On Tuesday, 11 October, our local jazz radio station KKJZ (88.1 FM) will present a one hour program on the Monk/Coltrane connection at 7:00 PM (Pacific Standard Time). For those of you outside the area, go to http://www.kkjz.org for their stream broadcast.

A New Orleans Memory

Autographs of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, 1983

For obvious reasons, here’s another entry about New Orleans:

My first trip to New Orleans occurred in August, 1983. Being a southern California native, my attention was immediately seized by the overwhelming humidity. I was glad my grandparents had left the South before I was born!

As a jazz fanatic, I needed to make the pilgrimage to Preservation Hall, home of traditional (don’t call it Dixieland) music. It’s small un-air-conditioned room, and on that hot humid night was completely filled with tourists like me. The band consisted of Raymond Burke (1904-1986) on clarinet, Emanuel Paul (1904-1988) on tenor sax, Emanuel Sayles (1907-1986) on banjo. Leading the band was trumpeter ‘Kid’ Thomas Valentine (1896-1987). Kid Thomas was OLD – I’m not sure that he wasn’t a conductor on the Underground Railroad! ;>)

It seemed Kid Thomas had a range of about an octave and a half. But he was still able to provide a punchy and quirky lead for the band. It was interesting to hear a trumpeter whose style owed more to King Oliver than Louis Armstrong.

A friend of ours was recently lamenting the many artists she had missed seeing (Tito Puente amongst them) and the city of New Orleans due to procrastination. If someone is playing nearby, go see them! As you can see by the dates of death for the Preservation Hall band members, I barely made it in time to see these gentlemen. But New Orleans will be back!

Jam Session!

Jam Sessions at the Vintage Cafe!



Well, last night, I performed in public for the first time in two years and only the second time in about 12 years!

The occasion was the weekly Tuesday night jam session at the Vintage Café in Pasadena. The hardest part was making myself get out of the car. There was no ego tripping or endless solos; and everyone was cool. The host of the jam, drummer Tony DiGiovanni, went out of his way to make everyone feel welcome. House bassist Al Gruskoff was also a big help in easing my nerves.

All told, at varying times, there were two alto saxophonists, two flutists, two vocalists and one each on harmonica, trumpet, trombone, clarinet and tenor sax.

There was a variety of abilities amongst the horns – I wasn’t the best (that honor would have to have to go to a clarinetist(!) named John), but I wasn’t the worst either. There were things I wish I would/could have done better, but I did manage to surprise myself on how well I did when they called a funk blues in E (C# on the alto)! Considering the long hiatus, I can hold my head up.

New Orleans Suite

New Orleans Suite

One of my favorite Duke Ellington albums is 1970’s "New Orleans Suite." It features the last recordings of Johnny Hodges. The first track, the appropriately titled "Blues for New Orleans" features him for the last time with the band.

New Orleans is (present tense) one of the great cities of the world. They’ll eventually come back with your help. If you can spare anything, think about www.redcross.org.

The title of the fourth track says it all - "Thanks For The Beautiful Land On The Delta."