The dog trots freely thru the Rolling Jazz Canto Thread 2016

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.

So Junior Mance is retiring from public performance? Wish I had gone to Cafe Loup recently.

playlist is somewhat updated through March.

ILM's Rolling Jazz Thread 2016 Spotify Playlist

looking for an mp3 of Khan Jamal's "Thinking Of You" for a mix I'm making... does anybody have this song or album?

this song here: https://open.spotify.com/track/6d0peOC3sIcTA2rTKz6bCZ

The Rough Guide To South African Jazz starts out on the rougher or earthier side of smooth or reasonably regionally mainstream, at least compared to what I was hoping for, having read the press sheet first (try just to peek, but got pulled into the hype). Still, the music itself doesn't oversell its hospitality, and the whole thing def improved by the second listening, this time on headphones with volume up, catching more percussive subtleties and lots more bass.
Second half's surprises are more varied and gratifying, beginning with McCoy Mrubata & Wessel Van Rensburg's "Jikela Emawen," which I thought at first was Abdullah Ibrahim (later, the actual Ibrahim's "Soweto" starts to remind me of "Hang On Sloopy," although with a muted yet sassy trumpet solo). Zim Ngqawana's "Ebhofolo (This Madness)," billed as the "free" track, sounds more like a novelty to me, but a good'un (I'm inclined to think of Rashaan Roland Kirk the same way, so hey). Also, I finally get to hear a bit more of the African Echoes, and Brian Thusi's "Dembese" is a strong closer.
More info (amidst the hype) and audio samples of all tracks here (though the whole thing may be on spotify by now, come to think of it):
http://www.worldmusic.net/store/item/RGNET1341/

Listening to Ibrahim Maalouf's instrumental tribute to Umm Kulthum: pretty good so far, starting low key but quickly, steadily getting more intense: http://www.npr.org/series/347139849/jazz-night-in-america

Also meaning to hear this tomorrow night:

http://www.npr.org/event/music/467831394/the-2016-nea-jazz-masters-concert

Jazz Night In America
The 2016 NEA Jazz Masters Concert

February 25, 2016 • In a tribute concert at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the National Endowment for the Arts will recognize its 2016 class of NEA Jazz Masters — the highest honor the U.S. gives to a jazz musician or advocate. The performance will be webcast live on Monday, April 4 at 8 p.m. ET here and via arts.gov, Kennedy-Center.org, and broadcast on Sirius XM radio.

The NEA honors four individuals in 2016: vibraphonist, bandleader and educator Gary Burton; musicians' advocate Wendy Oxenhorn; saxophonist and composer Pharoah Sanders; and saxophonist, composer and educator Archie Shepp. Each Jazz Master receives a $25,000 grant.

The concert will be hosted by Jason Moran, pianist and Kennedy Center artistic director for Jazz, and include remarks by Jane Chu, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts; Deborah F. Rutter, president of the Kennedy Center; as well as the 2016 NEA Jazz Masters. The concert will feature performances by NEA Jazz Masters Chick Corea, Randy Weston, and Jimmy Heath, as well as Ambrose Akinmusire, Lakecia Benjamin, Billy Harper, Stefon Harris, Justin Kauflin, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Pedrito Martinez, Jason Moran, David Murray, Linda Oh, Karriem Riggins, Roswell Rudd, and Catherine Russell.

With this new class, the NEA has honored 140 great figures in jazz.

Pharoah Sanders is at Birdland this coming week. I saw him at Iridium in the early '90s, and I think it's time I went back for more.

Just came into a little bit of money so I ordered two more of those Cam Jazz boxes reissuing old Black Saint and Soul Note albums - one by George Adams (includes Don't Lose Control, Hand To Hand, Gentlemen's Agreement and Live At The Village Vanguard Vols. 1 & 2) and one by Julius Hemphill (includes Raw Materials & Residuals, Flat-Out Jump Suite, Fat Man And The Hard Blues, Five Chord Stud, and Chile New York) - for $52 including shipping.