The dog trots freely thru the Rolling Jazz Canto Thread 2016

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cdl-aYnW8AAVvQ8.jpg

I interviewed Cecil Taylor for the new issue of The Wire. Digital edition will be out later today, physical version in a couple of weeks. He was...something.

great photo!

he's 87, huh. Richard Davis is 86. can you believe Roy Haynes is 91? is he the last drummer of his generation still around?

can you believe Roy Haynes is 91? is he the last drummer of his generation still around?

Tootie Heath is still playing.

Have you interviewed him, Phil?

Heath? No, but I did review his most recent album (with Ethan Iverson). It was okay.

Will have to read that Cecil interview! From Scott McDowell's weekly e-newsletter, here's Thurston Moore's Underground Jazz Top Ten, originally published in Grand Royal, reposted here in '08, maybe, and the downloads I tried didn't work, but certainly heartfelt descriptions and detailed notes: http://rootstrata.com/rootblog/?p=1801
The only one I hadn't heard of was Ric Colbert; McDowell adds:

It's full of impassioned playing, the band interconnected and very free, yet rooted in sturdy post-bop, punctuated by Colbeck's counterintuitive logic and note-hopping runs. Dyani's bass solo opening of the title track followed by the brassy fanfare of Ric's opening statement is chills-inducing, an intensely vulnerable passage of music, like there's something serious at stake. It's a beaut.

Ric Colbeck played on two Noah Howard records in the late '60s as well as Dave Burrell's La Vie de Boheme, all three beautiful gems in their own right. There's also an unreleased record under Ric Colbeck's own name that was scheduled for the Pixie label with the all-pro dream team of Sunny Murray, Sonny Sharrock, Byard Lancaster, Joel Freedman, Bennie Maupin and Sirone. It's criminal.

Rewind several years to 1963. after kicking around London playing traditional jazz, Ric sailed a small vessel with five friends from France to Miami. In a January 17th, 1970 interview with Melody Maker (posted on Richard Morton Jack's blog Galactic Ramble along with a bunch of other information on Colbeck), perhaps the only interview he ever gave, Ric tells the story:http://galacticramble.blogspot.com/2011/10/ric-colbeck-player-of-exceptional-power.html

"We landed there in September '63 on the day of the March on Washington. I went to Canada and hitch from Vancouver to Toronto, where I played with some local bands. There wasn't much happening, so I went to New York in 1964.

I had to have a job because of the work permit situation so I worked in a hip record store in the village and started to meet some interesting people.

Noah (Howard) and I started playing together, and I was living in Brooklyn with Rashied Ali on the next floor. It was all starting to happen, with a lot of people like Byard Lancaster, Dave Burrell, Sonny Sharrock and Norris Jones coming into town.

We played in a lot of lofts and at Slug's -- that was the main centre of activity. There was a lot of playing going on in cats' pads on the Lower East Side, with Trane and Pharaoh and Dewey Johnson [I imagine this is actually Dewey Redman -- .ed] all rehearsing there.

I think that the greatest single experience was to be able to hear Trane with three or four different bands at different stages of development. He was a very spiritual musician, who inspired a whole generation of players.

The experience of playing in New York is invaluable. Every musician should go there because that's where the music comes from, and there's something there that makes you play. You can't shuck--you must keep on going.

After one week in New York your playing changes. It's a very vibrant city when compared to London, where everything closes down early. If a musician is really serious he has to go and check out America. It's the genesis of what's happening.

It seems that you have to pay your dues in the States and then work in Europe. There's not much work in New York -- a lot of people won't come to hear the music because it reflects the state of the country and they don't want to be confronted by it. The music isn't deliberately programmatic--its' just the way we play, with that intensity."

Not much is known of Ric Colbeck's career after the early '70s, at least that I'm aware of. By all accounts he suffered from alcoholism, and that's what did him in finally, in 1981.

http://gallery.tinyletterapp.com/895a071ca3ab7365d5812792255f29a4cfaf5ed3/images/9029b574-bded-4b0e-8c28-b8e3d1de414c.jpg

can you believe Roy Haynes is 91? is he the last drummer of his generation still around?

Tootie Heath is still playing.

Jimmy Cobb too, 87 years old and still touring.

Is Haynes the last living person to have played with Charlie Parker?

No; Sonny Rollins played with Parker on Miles Davis's Collectors' Items album.

just a couple of months ago i could have said paul bley too. :(

slowly working my way through this long 1968 interview with Elvin Jones:
http://www.bangthedrumschool.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/ElvinJones.WalkToParl.1968.pdf

By all accounts he suffered from alcoholism, and that's what did him in finally, in 1981.

A contemporary of Colbeck's told me he had committed suicide. Very sad. I always loved his playing on those Noah Howard records. Never was able to find a copy of his record as a leader (and the lineup on that unreleased date looks unbelievable).

[I imagine this is actually Dewey Redman -- .ed]

I don't understand the presumption here -- is there documentation that Redman was actually there, or is the editor not familiar with Dewey Johnson? Johnson's another criminally underrated trumpeter. Amazingly enough, there's some footage of him on a Jimmy Lyons date:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpPraEdnKjY

Colbeck's playing on those two Noah Howard albums - Noah Howard Quartet and At Judson Hall, both on ESP-Disk - is great. He should have been better known, for sure.

i spent two days reading interviews on here. they are old but you get to hear from people you never see interviewed.

http://www.nationaljazzarchive.co.uk/stories?p=23

great time waster. my apologies to the tons of olde tyme british people interviewed who i skipped.

also this one with buddy rich and louie bellson together is a HOOT!

http://www.nationaljazzarchive.co.uk/stories?id=106

Thanks for those! Definitely gonna waste some time there today.

In scrolling through the list of interviews I saw Lou Donaldson. Looked it up and yet, he's still around! 89 years old! He never recorded with Charlie Parker, but I'd be surprised if he didn't play with him informally at some point.

Yeah, he played the Jazz Standard not too long ago. I thought about going.

nice John Bonham diss in that Buddy Rich interview. :)

B.R.: Listen, I had a surprise one time. Kathy, my daughter got me out to see Led Zeppelin, when they played Madison Square Garden. I wasn't too anxious to go, but I went, to please Kathy. We sat fairly much in the front; and for what seemed to be the first year that they were on there, I endured it—not a change of tune; not a change of a melodic line, but the heavy organ, the heavy guitar and the drum. The finale was a drum solo—and he had maybe two million dollars' worth of drums up there; I think Carl Palmer's the only other guy I've ever seen with so many drums. He started playing, and during the course of his solo a cat came out in a loincloth, with a torch; he started dancing, and the drummer was playing the tom–toms, or whatever he was doing. Obviously he had asbestos in position, because this cat set fire around the set of drums. Now, I don't know what that does for a drum solo, but it scared the hell out. of me—I thought the joint was on fire! I'd no idea what was going on. But when you have to sort to that, you're saying in essence to the audience: "I don't really play that well, but look how brave I am."

Could you perhaps call it hot music?

B.R.: Not to me. It was a flaming bore!

Did Zeppelin play live shows with organ?

Oh, looks like they did

it would make the story even better if it was actually Deep Purple or something.

When Buddy Rich opened for the Who, after hearing Moon, Buddy came up to him and said, "People pay you to play like that?!"

Cecil Taylor has some pretty contemptuous things to say about rock drummers in my Wire story.

Ha! Seriously can't wait to read that. Will there be audio on the site (like with the Bill Dixon interview)?

Okay, now I am intrigued.

Lol at Buddy Rich's sideswipe at Carl Palmer too.

Will there be audio on the site (like with the Bill Dixon interview)?

No, because I recorded four hours of interviews for the piece and a lot of it is him telling rambling stories about other musicians, and about his family, and a lot of the latter was way too personal to include in the piece, so I definitely wouldn't want to just toss it out there without any kind of context. Also, he was drinking during our meetings, and got tired as things went on, which meant he repeated the same stories a few times, etc., etc., just like if you were talking to your old Uncle Cecil after Thanksgiving dinner.

As fun and interesting as that would be to hear, yeah, I can see why it probably wouldn't be a good idea to post.

Thanks for those! Definitely gonna waste some time there today.

In scrolling through the list of interviews I saw Lou Donaldson. Looked it up and yet, he's still around! 89 years old! He never recorded with Charlie Parker, but I'd be surprised if he didn't play with him informally at some point.

http://www.jazzwax.com/2012/01/interview-sheila-jordan-part-1.html

https://tedpanken.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/its-barry-harris-84th-birthday-a-link-to-a-2011-post-of-a-downbeat-article-and-several-verbatim-interviews-conducted-for-the-piece/

https://www.arts.gov/audio/lou-donaldson-playing-charlie-parker

Ha, that's great.

I suspect it's difficult tracking down "the last living person to play with Parker," since so many musicians sat in with him without having been a member of his group or recording with him.

must be some big band people left who played with him.

I have been digging some Scandinavian jazz tonight. The Anna Högberg Attack one and the new Fire! one, on which I think they sound better without the orchestra.

I haven't heard much of Ginger Baker since Cream, but did love No Material, with Sharrock, Skopelitis, Brotzmann, and uh the bass player from Das Pferd---Laswell didn't show, which is another reason for the title. It's a one-off live in Munich, and my notebook scribble was something like "ergot-encrusted Easter Island heads, hoppin' down the bunny trail"-sorry, it was the 80s. But that's still what it sounds like to me. Also, on headphones, I always get into how Sharrock relates to Skopelitis, then Brotzman, back and forth (Brotz always rips Skop to shreds, but they grow back together). Baker sounds great here, but I'm not sorry he didn't replace Ronald Shannon Jackson when Last Exit re-converged. How are Horse and Trees, Ginger Baker's Air Force, others?
Also, always wondered about that big band album Charlie Watts made with some Evan Parker etc.

Jan Kazda is the bass player (unflappable)

made with *Evan Parker*, not some Evan Parker!

Do you mean Live at Fulham Town Hall? I haven't listened to it in years, but it's fine. Not particularly interesting, but not a completely negative experience. I read an interview with Parker who said that Watts kept trying to get him to play more "out," but Parker declined, largely because it wouldn't have worked in that context.

Parker's presence on it, however, is supposedly what led to his falling out with Derek Bailey. Bailey thought Parker taking on a gig with Watts was tantamount to selling out, and never spoke to him again.

There's a second recorded gig by that No Material band - you can get both on this 2CD version from 2013.

Baker's recent album Why? is pretty good, too.

I'm not too keen on Buddy Rich's sour grapes, being all "it's about the music maaaan" when your primary draw is being a chops wonder is bullshit. There are different kind of drumming and different kinds of entertainment in the world.

xpost Thanks for the Ginger tips! Tarfumes' mention of Bailey got me to check Improvised Music 1981, which also incl. Sharrock, Laswell, Frith, Zorn and Noyes. On first listening, I most like the 5th, 6th and 7th improvs, the way the spaces between simultaneous and rapid-response sounds are pulled into the staggered momentum---also (along with impressions of pigeons fluttering around the inside of the skylight, ganglia stretched this way and that, staccato car and house keys, blurts/comments of radio and/or tapes, or maybe just those tiny 1981 samples, tiny reeds, Zorn's squelched duck calls, also basic textures, room effects), we also get sounds that stand on their own, with no particular source suggested, no mental clutter of picturing a guy with an instrument/object. Still, I do like that 7 starts with an actual drum kit, for instance.

Listening to Ellington's Masterpieces By Ellington for the first time tonight. A 1951 recording on Columbia - four long (8-15 minutes) tracks and three short ones (2-3 minutes). Pretty great, and excellent writing music.

In searching for more info on Ric Colbeck, I found the following comment posted by Bill Dixon on the Destination Out blog:
http://destination-out.com/?p=63

March 25, 2007
at 3:37 pm

When I was in NY in the sixties I knew Ric Colbeck quite well; he took a few studies with me on the instrument. I originally met him when he was working at the Record Center, owned by Bob Staub on 8th street in the Village. At one point such people as Bob Levin; Cecil Taylor; Ira Gittler, all worked at the Record Center. It was sort of a center of musical activity; musicians could come in, take a few recordings, and play them. This, of course, is before recordings began to be ‘bound up’. But that’s another story. Colbec, as a trumpet player, did a lot of very interesting work with Noah Howard. He also did a considerable amount of work with me in my larger groups. There is one very good piece called Motorcycle, [the title was dancer-choreographer Judith Dunn's], a collaboration that was performed at Judson Church. The instrumentation for that performance included Colbec; Marc Levin;[on trumpets (Colbec played a Conn Constellation cornet, that looked like a trumpet and spoke with the brilliance of a trumpet); Mark Weinstein, trombone and one or two additional trumpet players], all situated on the upper balcony of the church. I played trumpet [and flugelhorn, an english Besson, that was later stolen and never recovered] and the cellist Joel Freedman, then more known for his work with Albert Ayler, who subsequently left music to do films, performed in duet form, while Judith Dunn danced. At a point in the performance the brass instruments proceed to play a row of seventeen notes, with each of them entering in a staggered fashion and echoing ethereally throughout the beautiful contours of the church wall. It was a stunning performance, aurally and visually and Earle Brown the composer, himself a trumpet player, in attendance at the performance, had many nice things to say about the work and how it was performed. Colbec was a very unique player, and a person gifted with a warm personality, a trait that he sought, successfully, in my opinion, to transfer to his work on the instrument. If one really wants to know more about his work, then Noah Howard should be consulted. He might even have tapes of their work together. Motorcycle, the piece that I’ve described above, was recorded and I have it on vinyl. I expect one day, along with some other works out of that period, to transfer it to cd.

BILL DIXON

as well of this photo of Dixon with (l-r) Jacques Coursil (I believe), Judith Dunn, Joel Freedman, and Colbeck.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R0cPWh_NTLs/UZ7krEM2zUI/AAAAAAAAAI0/gq9jgXIgO2k/s1600/photo+by+V+Sladon+1969.jpg

Wow, that photo is fantastic.

Yeah, there's a bunch more Dunn/Dixon photos here:
http://judithdunndancearchive.blogspot.com/

I just caught up the s/t Bathysphere album from last year which I think is quite ace. I don't know anything about them other than pianist Pandelis Karayorgis and reedman Jorrit Dijkstra are label-mates and they mix old + new influences quite nicely.