The Bud Powell thread

..where I don't really have anything interesting to say other than I love him, but here it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbSsFV2Z8Pg

Classic. Been meaning to read his biography, Wail, for months.

It sounds like a harrowing read, which is sad considering how nice he seemed.

My understanding is that in addition to be being a bio of Bud it has lots of great info about the birth of bebop.

Just read some reviews on the Pullman book and the Amazon blurb and decent price sold the digital edition to me.

*Wail* is the exhaustive exploration of the life and times of an extraordinary musician. Pianist-composer Powell's classical training and upbringing in Harlem in the midst of its great renaissance prepared him well to emulate the solo virtuosity of Art Tatum and to become Thelonious Monk's most loyal disciple.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/out-walked-monk/

"At the station, Monk denied that the heroin was his and said he didn’t know who it belonged to. During his interrogation he repeatedly refused to implicate Powell, who had been strapped into a straightjacket and sent to the psych ward at Bellevue. Monk would never snitch out Powell. Seven years older than Powell, Monk had been his mentor, his friend, his nurse. He knew Powell was too frail to handle prison and later said he wasn’t about to “drag him down.”

This is an account of just how loyal a friend Monk was to Powell, he ended up losing his card (which meant he was effectively banned from performing in all NYC music venues) to prevent him getting a custodial sentence.

can we get jeffrey st. clair to write about jazz and only jazz from now on?

I never realised before that his older brother Richie played on Sonny Rollins +4 and lots of Clifford brown/Max Roach recordings of that era and was actually making more money as a gigging musician than Bud ever could - before he died in a car crash. It seems Bud could be very haughty and indifferent, or just plain uncommunicative with musicians he felt weren't worthy to play with him. Which obv isn't the best manner for getting regular work and especially when you are already vulnerable to downtime due to racist police problems, or drugs or recovering from the savage ECT treatment he regularly received in psych wards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWKye6-X8-g
i love this so much