JATP Video

After a long absense....
Hey! A friend told me about a Jazz at the Philharmonic video that's available for viewing. It features Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Lester Young and many others.
Check it out at http://www.dailymotion.com/alternativa/video/53031

Jackie McLean [1932-2006]

Alto sax great Jackie McLean passed away last week at the age of 73. Unfortunately, I only had one opportunity to see him play in person. It was in the mid-80s at the famous San Francisco club called the Keystone Corner. The pictures are on the dark side because, like most clubs, they didn't allow flash photography. (One of my favorite albums of all time, Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s Bright Moments was recorded live at the Keystone.)

On this particular occasion, McLean co-led a quintet with vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson. This quintet alternated with another quintet led by tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, featuring trumpeter Woody Shaw. What a double bill!

Johnny Griffin

After a two month absence, another entry!!!

I saw Johnny Griffin at a now defunct Marina del Rey jazz club called Hop Singh’s in the mid- 80’s. Nice place, and it didn’t last very long, but it did manage to have groups like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra.
Griffin was featured last week in the Los Angeles Times on expatriate musicians. Griffin didn’t play in the US very often and his visit to the West Coast was a very rare event. [The autograph reads ‘John Griffin III.’]

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.