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Music Artists Take On the Business, Calling for Change – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/business/media/music-artists-take-on-the-business-calling-for-change.html?_r=0
** Music Artists Take On the Business, Calling for Change
————————————————————
By BEN SISARIO (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/ben_sisario/index.html) JULY 31, 2015
Melvin Gibbs is a jazz bassist and the president of the Content Creators Coalition. “None of these companies that are supposedly in the music business are actually in the music business,” Mr. Gibbs said. “They are in the data-aggregation business, they’re in the ad-selling business. The value of music means nothing to them.” Credit Gregg Delman for The New York Times
Musicians are known for speaking out on issues like human rights, politics and the environment. They are less known for speaking out about how the music business itself should operate.
That may be changing.
When Taylor Swift publicly rebuked Apple (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/business/media/as-quick-as-a-taylor-swift-tweet-apple-had-to-change-its-tune.html?_r=0) in June over royalty payments, the company reversed its position and Ms. Swift’s move was celebrated throughout the music world as a victory. But it was only the most prominent example of a growing trend of industry-focused activism undertaken by a range of artists, from big stars who take a principled stand to middle-class musicians who need to worry about paying the bills.
“We’re at a turning point,” said the singer David Byrne (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html) , formerly of Talking Heads, who has been vocal on the economics behind digital music. “Musicians, their managers and many others are frustrated. The black box of hidden transactions in the music business, while maybe not illegal, is a recipe for chicanery.”
The activism has taken different shapes. Jay Z, for example, paid $56 million for the subscription streaming service Tidal (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/business/media/jay-z-reveals-plans-for-tidal-a-streaming-music-service.html) , though his efforts to market it as an artist-friendly alternative have been criticized as clumsy (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/business/media/tidal-music-streaming-service-seeks-footing-after-a-stumble.html) . Prince (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/business/media/prince-removes-music-from-most-subscription-streaming-services.html) , Neil Young and Ms. Swift have withdrawn their music from some streaming outlets, and various musicians have called for greater transparency in how the music industry operates.
Photo
The singer and songwriter Blake Morgan started an online campaign, #IRespectMusic, to draw attention to low royalty payments for songs on streaming music services. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Over the last few weeks, dozens of acts, including R.E.M., Common and Chuck D of Public Enemy, took to social media to support a bill that would require radio stations to pay royalties to performers.
The debate has been enabled by social media and reflects changes in many artists’ attitudes toward the online economy over the last 15 years or so — a period that stretches from the rise of Napster and iTunes to online streaming outlets like YouTube, Pandora and Spotify, and has been accompanied by enormous changes in how money flows through the industry.
“The support that we’re seeing, in terms of the range and number of artists, whether it’s from somebody who’s a working-class musician to somebody who’s very successful, it’s unprecedented,” said Ted Kalo, the executive director of MusicFirst, a lobbying coalition that includes record labels and musicians’ groups and that helped organize the social media campaign.
The economics behind downloads is relatively simple: Typically about 70 percent of a song’s retail price goes to a record company, which then pays its musicians according to its contracts. But with streaming, the system is complex and often opaque, as became apparent in May, when an outdated licensing contract between Sony and Spotify was leaked online (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/business/media/sony-terms-with-spotify-uncovered-in-contract.html) , showing the elaborate formulas used in computing streaming rates.
Public relations missteps in the early 2000s kept many musicians from speaking out about economic issues, artists and executives said. Those include the music industry’s lawsuits against thousands of fans for online file-sharing, and the pillorying that the band Metallica received after it sued Napster for copyright infringement. But the shift toward streaming in recent years has prompted many musicians to investigate the changes in the business and comment online. Among them are independents like David Lowery (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/business/media/defining-and-demanding-a-musicians-fair-shake-in-the-internet-age.html) of the band Cracker; Zoë Keating, a cellist who has documented her online royalties (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/business/media/streaming-shakes-up-music-industrys-model-for-royalties.html) ; and Blake Morgan, a singer-songwriter who owns a small record company and started an online campaign, #IRespectMusic, to draw attention to the issue.
At the same time, musicians and songwriters of all stripes have begun to complain, often bitterly, of low royalty payments from streaming music. Last year, for example, Bette Midler (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/bette-midler-critiques-pandora-spotify-693961) spoke out against Pandora and Spotify, and Aloe Blacc said that he earned just $4,000 (http://www.wired.com/2014/11/aloe-blacc-pay-songwriters/) in songwriting royalties from 168 million streams on Pandora of Avicii’s hit “Wake Me Up,” which Mr. Blacc helped write.
Photo
Zoe Keating, a cellist, has made public how much Internet services pay to use her music. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times
In response, many streaming outlets point out that their actions are a legal and rapidly growing source of income for the industry as sales of CDs and downloads plunge. Pandora says it has paid nearly $1.5 billion in royalties since it started a decade ago, and Spotify, which went online in 2008, says it has paid $3 billion. Yet how much of that money makes its way into musicians’ pockets remains hotly debated.
Melvin Gibbs, a jazz bassist in New York who is the president of the Content Creators Coalition, said that declining royalties — he recalled once getting a check for 3 cents — were a factor that led him to study the business models of Internet companies that offer abundant music free or at low subscription prices.
“None of these companies that are supposedly in the music business are actually in the music business,” Mr. Gibbs said. “They are in the data-aggregation business. They’re in the ad-selling business. The value of music means nothing to them.”
Several years ago Ms. Keating, who controls her own recordings, began posting detailed royalty statements from Spotify, and she has also reported on private negotiations with YouTube in which that company appeared to pressure her (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/27/zoe-keating-youtube-google-music) into signing a contract for its new music-subscription service.
Despite growing complaints from middle-class musicians, it is still the stars who have the most impact. As Apple prepared last month to release its new streaming service, Apple Music, independent labels around the world said that the company’s refusal to pay royalties for trial streams was unfair. But Apple did not budge until Ms. Swift scolded the company in a blog post — whereupon Apple changed course in a matter of hours.
Lobbying has become another battleground. In April, the Fair Play Fair Pay Act was introduced to Congress, which would require AM and FM radio stations to pay royalties to performers, in addition to songwriters. The bill has been hailed by musicians and opposed by broadcasters, who have long argued that by playing a song on air they give it valuable promotion.
Photo
The guitarist David Lowery, who has played in the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, has been outspoken about artists’ rights. Credit Rebecca D’Angelo for The New York Times
But a side controversy has emerged over the MIC Coalition (http://mic-coalition.org/) , a Washington advocacy group that includes Pandora, the National Association of Broadcasters and others that have frequently opposed the music industry over royalty matters. In June, Amazon withdrew its membership, and a senior executive told Billboard magazine (http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6590024/amazon-pulls-out-of-mic-coalition-over-its-alleged-focus-on-music-pricing) that the company’s primary interest in transparency was “getting lost in the wilder noise surrounding rate-setting.”
Two weeks ago, National Public Radio also dropped out of the coalition after complaints from the Content Creators Coalition, which accused it of “working in Washington to deny fair pay to the very artists it purports to celebrate on their air.”
A spokeswoman for the MIC Coalition — whose name stands for Music, Innovation, Consumers — said that the group had not taken a position on the Fair Play act, though many of its members had as individuals. Michael Riksen, NPR’s vice president for policy and representation, declined to say why the organization had left the MIC Coalition. But he said that he “viewed the coalition as a way for the voice and values of public radio and NPR to be part of a broad-based conversation about copyright reform.”
“Had it taken a position” on the bill, Mr. Riksen added, “we wouldn’t have joined in the first place.”
The political chances are also unclear for the Fair Play bill, whose other provisions include paying royalties to artists for recordings made before 1972, which are not covered by federal copyright. Similar efforts have failed in the past, and the National Association of Broadcasters says that 203 members of the House and 19 senators have signed a nonbinding resolution opposing it.
Still, Mr. Byrne and other musicians pushing for the bill say they are undeterred.
“This one can be won, then we can move on to the harder ones,” Mr. Byrne said. “Why this time? Can’t point to anything specific. It feels right, and as musicians that’s what often drives us.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
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Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Music Artists Take On the Business, Calling for Change – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/business/media/music-artists-take-on-the-business-calling-for-change.html?_r=0
** Music Artists Take On the Business, Calling for Change
————————————————————
By BEN SISARIO (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/ben_sisario/index.html) JULY 31, 2015
Melvin Gibbs is a jazz bassist and the president of the Content Creators Coalition. “None of these companies that are supposedly in the music business are actually in the music business,” Mr. Gibbs said. “They are in the data-aggregation business, they’re in the ad-selling business. The value of music means nothing to them.” Credit Gregg Delman for The New York Times
Musicians are known for speaking out on issues like human rights, politics and the environment. They are less known for speaking out about how the music business itself should operate.
That may be changing.
When Taylor Swift publicly rebuked Apple (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/23/business/media/as-quick-as-a-taylor-swift-tweet-apple-had-to-change-its-tune.html?_r=0) in June over royalty payments, the company reversed its position and Ms. Swift’s move was celebrated throughout the music world as a victory. But it was only the most prominent example of a growing trend of industry-focused activism undertaken by a range of artists, from big stars who take a principled stand to middle-class musicians who need to worry about paying the bills.
“We’re at a turning point,” said the singer David Byrne (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html) , formerly of Talking Heads, who has been vocal on the economics behind digital music. “Musicians, their managers and many others are frustrated. The black box of hidden transactions in the music business, while maybe not illegal, is a recipe for chicanery.”
The activism has taken different shapes. Jay Z, for example, paid $56 million for the subscription streaming service Tidal (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/31/business/media/jay-z-reveals-plans-for-tidal-a-streaming-music-service.html) , though his efforts to market it as an artist-friendly alternative have been criticized as clumsy (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/02/business/media/tidal-music-streaming-service-seeks-footing-after-a-stumble.html) . Prince (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/business/media/prince-removes-music-from-most-subscription-streaming-services.html) , Neil Young and Ms. Swift have withdrawn their music from some streaming outlets, and various musicians have called for greater transparency in how the music industry operates.
Photo
The singer and songwriter Blake Morgan started an online campaign, #IRespectMusic, to draw attention to low royalty payments for songs on streaming music services. Credit Victor J. Blue for The New York Times
Over the last few weeks, dozens of acts, including R.E.M., Common and Chuck D of Public Enemy, took to social media to support a bill that would require radio stations to pay royalties to performers.
The debate has been enabled by social media and reflects changes in many artists’ attitudes toward the online economy over the last 15 years or so — a period that stretches from the rise of Napster and iTunes to online streaming outlets like YouTube, Pandora and Spotify, and has been accompanied by enormous changes in how money flows through the industry.
“The support that we’re seeing, in terms of the range and number of artists, whether it’s from somebody who’s a working-class musician to somebody who’s very successful, it’s unprecedented,” said Ted Kalo, the executive director of MusicFirst, a lobbying coalition that includes record labels and musicians’ groups and that helped organize the social media campaign.
The economics behind downloads is relatively simple: Typically about 70 percent of a song’s retail price goes to a record company, which then pays its musicians according to its contracts. But with streaming, the system is complex and often opaque, as became apparent in May, when an outdated licensing contract between Sony and Spotify was leaked online (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/25/business/media/sony-terms-with-spotify-uncovered-in-contract.html) , showing the elaborate formulas used in computing streaming rates.
Public relations missteps in the early 2000s kept many musicians from speaking out about economic issues, artists and executives said. Those include the music industry’s lawsuits against thousands of fans for online file-sharing, and the pillorying that the band Metallica received after it sued Napster for copyright infringement. But the shift toward streaming in recent years has prompted many musicians to investigate the changes in the business and comment online. Among them are independents like David Lowery (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/01/business/media/defining-and-demanding-a-musicians-fair-shake-in-the-internet-age.html) of the band Cracker; Zoë Keating, a cellist who has documented her online royalties (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/business/media/streaming-shakes-up-music-industrys-model-for-royalties.html) ; and Blake Morgan, a singer-songwriter who owns a small record company and started an online campaign, #IRespectMusic, to draw attention to the issue.
At the same time, musicians and songwriters of all stripes have begun to complain, often bitterly, of low royalty payments from streaming music. Last year, for example, Bette Midler (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/earshot/bette-midler-critiques-pandora-spotify-693961) spoke out against Pandora and Spotify, and Aloe Blacc said that he earned just $4,000 (http://www.wired.com/2014/11/aloe-blacc-pay-songwriters/) in songwriting royalties from 168 million streams on Pandora of Avicii’s hit “Wake Me Up,” which Mr. Blacc helped write.
Photo
Zoe Keating, a cellist, has made public how much Internet services pay to use her music. CreditJim Wilson/The New York Times
In response, many streaming outlets point out that their actions are a legal and rapidly growing source of income for the industry as sales of CDs and downloads plunge. Pandora says it has paid nearly $1.5 billion in royalties since it started a decade ago, and Spotify, which went online in 2008, says it has paid $3 billion. Yet how much of that money makes its way into musicians’ pockets remains hotly debated.
Melvin Gibbs, a jazz bassist in New York who is the president of the Content Creators Coalition, said that declining royalties — he recalled once getting a check for 3 cents — were a factor that led him to study the business models of Internet companies that offer abundant music free or at low subscription prices.
“None of these companies that are supposedly in the music business are actually in the music business,” Mr. Gibbs said. “They are in the data-aggregation business. They’re in the ad-selling business. The value of music means nothing to them.”
Several years ago Ms. Keating, who controls her own recordings, began posting detailed royalty statements from Spotify, and she has also reported on private negotiations with YouTube in which that company appeared to pressure her (http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/27/zoe-keating-youtube-google-music) into signing a contract for its new music-subscription service.
Despite growing complaints from middle-class musicians, it is still the stars who have the most impact. As Apple prepared last month to release its new streaming service, Apple Music, independent labels around the world said that the company’s refusal to pay royalties for trial streams was unfair. But Apple did not budge until Ms. Swift scolded the company in a blog post — whereupon Apple changed course in a matter of hours.
Lobbying has become another battleground. In April, the Fair Play Fair Pay Act was introduced to Congress, which would require AM and FM radio stations to pay royalties to performers, in addition to songwriters. The bill has been hailed by musicians and opposed by broadcasters, who have long argued that by playing a song on air they give it valuable promotion.
Photo
The guitarist David Lowery, who has played in the bands Cracker and Camper Van Beethoven, has been outspoken about artists’ rights. Credit Rebecca D’Angelo for The New York Times
But a side controversy has emerged over the MIC Coalition (http://mic-coalition.org/) , a Washington advocacy group that includes Pandora, the National Association of Broadcasters and others that have frequently opposed the music industry over royalty matters. In June, Amazon withdrew its membership, and a senior executive told Billboard magazine (http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6590024/amazon-pulls-out-of-mic-coalition-over-its-alleged-focus-on-music-pricing) that the company’s primary interest in transparency was “getting lost in the wilder noise surrounding rate-setting.”
Two weeks ago, National Public Radio also dropped out of the coalition after complaints from the Content Creators Coalition, which accused it of “working in Washington to deny fair pay to the very artists it purports to celebrate on their air.”
A spokeswoman for the MIC Coalition — whose name stands for Music, Innovation, Consumers — said that the group had not taken a position on the Fair Play act, though many of its members had as individuals. Michael Riksen, NPR’s vice president for policy and representation, declined to say why the organization had left the MIC Coalition. But he said that he “viewed the coalition as a way for the voice and values of public radio and NPR to be part of a broad-based conversation about copyright reform.”
“Had it taken a position” on the bill, Mr. Riksen added, “we wouldn’t have joined in the first place.”
The political chances are also unclear for the Fair Play bill, whose other provisions include paying royalties to artists for recordings made before 1972, which are not covered by federal copyright. Similar efforts have failed in the past, and the National Association of Broadcasters says that 203 members of the House and 19 senators have signed a nonbinding resolution opposing it.
Still, Mr. Byrne and other musicians pushing for the bill say they are undeterred.
“This one can be won, then we can move on to the harder ones,” Mr. Byrne said. “Why this time? Can’t point to anything specific. It feels right, and as musicians that’s what often drives us.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=7374eea7c4) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=7374eea7c4&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
10 Jazz Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-jazz-albums-rolling-stone-loved-in-the-1970s-youve-never-heard-20150731
** 10 Jazz Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard
————————————————————
By Gavin Edwards (safari-reader://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/gavin-edwards) July 31, 2015
Flora Purim and Gato Barbieri
(Tom Copi/Getty; David Warner Ellis/Getty)
Rolling Stone has never been a jazz-specialist publication, but in the Seventies, the magazine made sure readers stayed apprised of the jazz world as part of a well-rounded musical diet. In the thousands of record reviews Rolling Stone printed between 1970 and 1979, there were hundreds of jazz albums covered, by names both famous and obscure. Here’s ten of the LPs, from fusion to jazz-reggae, that we had in heavy rotation but are unknown today to all but the most hardcore jazz heads.
** Archie Shepp, ‘Attica Blues’
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Archie Shepp, ‘Attica Blues’
Shepp, a tenor saxophonist and sometimes a collaborator of John Coltrane, turned his talents to protesting the death of over 40 prisoners and guards during a 1971 uprising at Attica State Prison — the title track on this album was a collaboration between over 30 people, including a reading of the lyrics by lawyer William Kunstler, and was described as “a tribalistic frenzy of near hysteria that is one of the most amazing sounds ever achieved on record.” Shepp continued active careers as both a musician and a college professor.
What We Said Then: “Unless your reaction time is that of a hippo, they’ve got you like a strong current and there’s nothing to do but ride with them to the end. ‘Attica Blues’ is not just a masterpiece of protest: like the musics of Sun Ra, the Holiness Church, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and others, it is more a politico/religious experience, an appeal to higher human consciousness to, for God’s sake, help us out of this torment.” — Stephen Davis, RS 115 (August 17th, 1972)
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** Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, ‘Insights’
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Toshiko Akiyoshi,
Toshiko Akiyoshi, a Japanese-American pianist born in Manchuria, formed this West Coast big band with her husband Lew Tabackin (of the Tonight Show band with Doc Severinsen): she composed the music, while Tabackin was the featured soloist. What set this West Coast ensemble apart was Akyoshi’s compositions, which changed up the standard big-band sound with hypnotic flute grooves and Japanese percussion. She was 20 years into a career in which she would ultimately release over 50 albums.
What We Said Then: “With a name like the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, you’d better be good, and this group is right at the top of the heap of the remaining large jazz ensembles. Like all the survivors worth listening to, TA-LTBB reflects the musical thinking of one person — in this case, one of the most distinctive jazz sensibilities extant.” — Bob Blumenthal, RS 266 (June 1st, 1978)
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** Flora Purim, ‘Butterfly Dreams’
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Flora Purim, ‘Butterfly Dreams’
This Brazilian chanteuse with a six-octave range and a penchant for making unusual sound effects collaborated with Stan Getz and Chick Corea and attracted high-profile fans such as Stevie Wonder. Soon after this electrifying debut album was released, Purim served a 16-month prison sentence for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute — although while she was a prisoner, the Terminal Island warden did let her play one all-star concert at the correctional institution. After she served her time, she continued her career and went on to be known as the “Queen of Brazilian Jazz.”
What We Said Then: “Flora Purim is a Brazilian who looks like an incandescent cockatoo and doesn’t so much sing as instrumentalize vocally. She sounds like the next important female jazz singer. Her percussionist husband, Airto Moreira, leads the impossibly hot little band on this album — George Duke on piano, reedman Joe Henderson and Stanley Clarke on bass… Flora’s debut album stands out as one of the best from the jazz world so far this year.” — Stephen Davis, RS 166 (August 1st, 1974)
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** Huey Simmons, ‘Burning Spirits’
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Huey Simmons, ‘Burning Spirits’
Huey Simmons (a.k.a. Sonny Simmons) came up in San Francisco and Oakland with fellow saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Dewey Redman — but with this incandescent double album, he showed the breadth of his talent, from barnburners like “New Newk” to space odysseys like “Things and Beings.” Unfortunately, after this album, Simmons became homeless and spent many years busking before putting his life and career back together in the ’90s.
What We Said Then: “Simmons and friends have taken the developments of the past ten years, from Bop to Freedom, from Ornette to Trane, from Dolphy’s ‘Out There’ to Miles’ Bitches’ Brew, and compacted them into an ever-changing kaleidoscope of spaces and densities that make a lot of what’s au courantseem pale by comparison. If you buy only one LP of ‘jazz’ music this year, make it this one.” — Bob Palmer, RS 97 (December 9th, 1971)
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** Robin Kenyatta, ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’
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Robin Kenyatta, ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’
There was plenty of jazz-rock fusion in 1974, but the notion of jazz-reggae seemed revolutionary. (Reggae had not yet broken in a big way in the USA, although everyone was expecting it to happen.) Saxophonist Robin Kenyatta, however, fearlessly mashed up both worlds, covering songs as unlikely as the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica” for what we called “a varied and rewarding album, Kenyatta’s best by a long shot.” Kenyatta relocated to Europe and founded a jazz school in Lausanne, Switzerland — where he died in 2004.
What We Said Then: “The combination of tight, repetitive reggae and improvised solos doesn’t seem logical at first, but John Coltrane and his followers have demonstrated the ability to construct interesting lines over droning, trancelike rhythm-section playing, and reggae does offer much rhythmic interest. Kenyatta, a one-time refugee from the Sixties avant-garde, turns Allen Toussaint’s ‘River Boat’ into a stomping, soaring joy with the help of the Kingston rhythm section that backed Paul Simon and Jimmy Cliff.” — Bob Palmer, RS 175 (December 5th, 1974)
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-jazz-albums-rolling-stone-loved-in-the-1970s-youve-never-heard-20150731#ixzz3hZgoEESY
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Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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10 Jazz Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-jazz-albums-rolling-stone-loved-in-the-1970s-youve-never-heard-20150731
** 10 Jazz Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard
————————————————————
By Gavin Edwards (safari-reader://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/gavin-edwards) July 31, 2015
Flora Purim and Gato Barbieri
(Tom Copi/Getty; David Warner Ellis/Getty)
Rolling Stone has never been a jazz-specialist publication, but in the Seventies, the magazine made sure readers stayed apprised of the jazz world as part of a well-rounded musical diet. In the thousands of record reviews Rolling Stone printed between 1970 and 1979, there were hundreds of jazz albums covered, by names both famous and obscure. Here’s ten of the LPs, from fusion to jazz-reggae, that we had in heavy rotation but are unknown today to all but the most hardcore jazz heads.
** Archie Shepp, ‘Attica Blues’
————————————————————
Archie Shepp, ‘Attica Blues’
Shepp, a tenor saxophonist and sometimes a collaborator of John Coltrane, turned his talents to protesting the death of over 40 prisoners and guards during a 1971 uprising at Attica State Prison — the title track on this album was a collaboration between over 30 people, including a reading of the lyrics by lawyer William Kunstler, and was described as “a tribalistic frenzy of near hysteria that is one of the most amazing sounds ever achieved on record.” Shepp continued active careers as both a musician and a college professor.
What We Said Then: “Unless your reaction time is that of a hippo, they’ve got you like a strong current and there’s nothing to do but ride with them to the end. ‘Attica Blues’ is not just a masterpiece of protest: like the musics of Sun Ra, the Holiness Church, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and others, it is more a politico/religious experience, an appeal to higher human consciousness to, for God’s sake, help us out of this torment.” — Stephen Davis, RS 115 (August 17th, 1972)
*
*
*
*
*
** Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, ‘Insights’
————————————————————
Toshiko Akiyoshi,
Toshiko Akiyoshi, a Japanese-American pianist born in Manchuria, formed this West Coast big band with her husband Lew Tabackin (of the Tonight Show band with Doc Severinsen): she composed the music, while Tabackin was the featured soloist. What set this West Coast ensemble apart was Akyoshi’s compositions, which changed up the standard big-band sound with hypnotic flute grooves and Japanese percussion. She was 20 years into a career in which she would ultimately release over 50 albums.
What We Said Then: “With a name like the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, you’d better be good, and this group is right at the top of the heap of the remaining large jazz ensembles. Like all the survivors worth listening to, TA-LTBB reflects the musical thinking of one person — in this case, one of the most distinctive jazz sensibilities extant.” — Bob Blumenthal, RS 266 (June 1st, 1978)
*
*
*
*
*
** Flora Purim, ‘Butterfly Dreams’
————————————————————
Flora Purim, ‘Butterfly Dreams’
This Brazilian chanteuse with a six-octave range and a penchant for making unusual sound effects collaborated with Stan Getz and Chick Corea and attracted high-profile fans such as Stevie Wonder. Soon after this electrifying debut album was released, Purim served a 16-month prison sentence for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute — although while she was a prisoner, the Terminal Island warden did let her play one all-star concert at the correctional institution. After she served her time, she continued her career and went on to be known as the “Queen of Brazilian Jazz.”
What We Said Then: “Flora Purim is a Brazilian who looks like an incandescent cockatoo and doesn’t so much sing as instrumentalize vocally. She sounds like the next important female jazz singer. Her percussionist husband, Airto Moreira, leads the impossibly hot little band on this album — George Duke on piano, reedman Joe Henderson and Stanley Clarke on bass… Flora’s debut album stands out as one of the best from the jazz world so far this year.” — Stephen Davis, RS 166 (August 1st, 1974)
*
*
*
*
*
** Huey Simmons, ‘Burning Spirits’
————————————————————
Huey Simmons, ‘Burning Spirits’
Huey Simmons (a.k.a. Sonny Simmons) came up in San Francisco and Oakland with fellow saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Dewey Redman — but with this incandescent double album, he showed the breadth of his talent, from barnburners like “New Newk” to space odysseys like “Things and Beings.” Unfortunately, after this album, Simmons became homeless and spent many years busking before putting his life and career back together in the ’90s.
What We Said Then: “Simmons and friends have taken the developments of the past ten years, from Bop to Freedom, from Ornette to Trane, from Dolphy’s ‘Out There’ to Miles’ Bitches’ Brew, and compacted them into an ever-changing kaleidoscope of spaces and densities that make a lot of what’s au courantseem pale by comparison. If you buy only one LP of ‘jazz’ music this year, make it this one.” — Bob Palmer, RS 97 (December 9th, 1971)
*
*
*
*
*
** Robin Kenyatta, ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’
————————————————————
Robin Kenyatta, ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’
There was plenty of jazz-rock fusion in 1974, but the notion of jazz-reggae seemed revolutionary. (Reggae had not yet broken in a big way in the USA, although everyone was expecting it to happen.) Saxophonist Robin Kenyatta, however, fearlessly mashed up both worlds, covering songs as unlikely as the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica” for what we called “a varied and rewarding album, Kenyatta’s best by a long shot.” Kenyatta relocated to Europe and founded a jazz school in Lausanne, Switzerland — where he died in 2004.
What We Said Then: “The combination of tight, repetitive reggae and improvised solos doesn’t seem logical at first, but John Coltrane and his followers have demonstrated the ability to construct interesting lines over droning, trancelike rhythm-section playing, and reggae does offer much rhythmic interest. Kenyatta, a one-time refugee from the Sixties avant-garde, turns Allen Toussaint’s ‘River Boat’ into a stomping, soaring joy with the help of the Kingston rhythm section that backed Paul Simon and Jimmy Cliff.” — Bob Palmer, RS 175 (December 5th, 1974)
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-jazz-albums-rolling-stone-loved-in-the-1970s-youve-never-heard-20150731#ixzz3hZgoEESY
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=rollingstone) | RollingStone on Facebook (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=RollingStone)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=badfd4fd92) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=badfd4fd92&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
10 Jazz Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-jazz-albums-rolling-stone-loved-in-the-1970s-youve-never-heard-20150731
** 10 Jazz Albums Rolling Stone Loved in the 1970s You’ve Never Heard
————————————————————
By Gavin Edwards (safari-reader://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/gavin-edwards) July 31, 2015
Flora Purim and Gato Barbieri
(Tom Copi/Getty; David Warner Ellis/Getty)
Rolling Stone has never been a jazz-specialist publication, but in the Seventies, the magazine made sure readers stayed apprised of the jazz world as part of a well-rounded musical diet. In the thousands of record reviews Rolling Stone printed between 1970 and 1979, there were hundreds of jazz albums covered, by names both famous and obscure. Here’s ten of the LPs, from fusion to jazz-reggae, that we had in heavy rotation but are unknown today to all but the most hardcore jazz heads.
** Archie Shepp, ‘Attica Blues’
————————————————————
Archie Shepp, ‘Attica Blues’
Shepp, a tenor saxophonist and sometimes a collaborator of John Coltrane, turned his talents to protesting the death of over 40 prisoners and guards during a 1971 uprising at Attica State Prison — the title track on this album was a collaboration between over 30 people, including a reading of the lyrics by lawyer William Kunstler, and was described as “a tribalistic frenzy of near hysteria that is one of the most amazing sounds ever achieved on record.” Shepp continued active careers as both a musician and a college professor.
What We Said Then: “Unless your reaction time is that of a hippo, they’ve got you like a strong current and there’s nothing to do but ride with them to the end. ‘Attica Blues’ is not just a masterpiece of protest: like the musics of Sun Ra, the Holiness Church, the Mahavishnu Orchestra and others, it is more a politico/religious experience, an appeal to higher human consciousness to, for God’s sake, help us out of this torment.” — Stephen Davis, RS 115 (August 17th, 1972)
*
*
*
*
*
** Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, ‘Insights’
————————————————————
Toshiko Akiyoshi,
Toshiko Akiyoshi, a Japanese-American pianist born in Manchuria, formed this West Coast big band with her husband Lew Tabackin (of the Tonight Show band with Doc Severinsen): she composed the music, while Tabackin was the featured soloist. What set this West Coast ensemble apart was Akyoshi’s compositions, which changed up the standard big-band sound with hypnotic flute grooves and Japanese percussion. She was 20 years into a career in which she would ultimately release over 50 albums.
What We Said Then: “With a name like the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band, you’d better be good, and this group is right at the top of the heap of the remaining large jazz ensembles. Like all the survivors worth listening to, TA-LTBB reflects the musical thinking of one person — in this case, one of the most distinctive jazz sensibilities extant.” — Bob Blumenthal, RS 266 (June 1st, 1978)
*
*
*
*
*
** Flora Purim, ‘Butterfly Dreams’
————————————————————
Flora Purim, ‘Butterfly Dreams’
This Brazilian chanteuse with a six-octave range and a penchant for making unusual sound effects collaborated with Stan Getz and Chick Corea and attracted high-profile fans such as Stevie Wonder. Soon after this electrifying debut album was released, Purim served a 16-month prison sentence for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute — although while she was a prisoner, the Terminal Island warden did let her play one all-star concert at the correctional institution. After she served her time, she continued her career and went on to be known as the “Queen of Brazilian Jazz.”
What We Said Then: “Flora Purim is a Brazilian who looks like an incandescent cockatoo and doesn’t so much sing as instrumentalize vocally. She sounds like the next important female jazz singer. Her percussionist husband, Airto Moreira, leads the impossibly hot little band on this album — George Duke on piano, reedman Joe Henderson and Stanley Clarke on bass… Flora’s debut album stands out as one of the best from the jazz world so far this year.” — Stephen Davis, RS 166 (August 1st, 1974)
*
*
*
*
*
** Huey Simmons, ‘Burning Spirits’
————————————————————
Huey Simmons, ‘Burning Spirits’
Huey Simmons (a.k.a. Sonny Simmons) came up in San Francisco and Oakland with fellow saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Dewey Redman — but with this incandescent double album, he showed the breadth of his talent, from barnburners like “New Newk” to space odysseys like “Things and Beings.” Unfortunately, after this album, Simmons became homeless and spent many years busking before putting his life and career back together in the ’90s.
What We Said Then: “Simmons and friends have taken the developments of the past ten years, from Bop to Freedom, from Ornette to Trane, from Dolphy’s ‘Out There’ to Miles’ Bitches’ Brew, and compacted them into an ever-changing kaleidoscope of spaces and densities that make a lot of what’s au courantseem pale by comparison. If you buy only one LP of ‘jazz’ music this year, make it this one.” — Bob Palmer, RS 97 (December 9th, 1971)
*
*
*
*
*
** Robin Kenyatta, ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’
————————————————————
Robin Kenyatta, ‘Stompin’ at the Savoy’
There was plenty of jazz-rock fusion in 1974, but the notion of jazz-reggae seemed revolutionary. (Reggae had not yet broken in a big way in the USA, although everyone was expecting it to happen.) Saxophonist Robin Kenyatta, however, fearlessly mashed up both worlds, covering songs as unlikely as the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica” for what we called “a varied and rewarding album, Kenyatta’s best by a long shot.” Kenyatta relocated to Europe and founded a jazz school in Lausanne, Switzerland — where he died in 2004.
What We Said Then: “The combination of tight, repetitive reggae and improvised solos doesn’t seem logical at first, but John Coltrane and his followers have demonstrated the ability to construct interesting lines over droning, trancelike rhythm-section playing, and reggae does offer much rhythmic interest. Kenyatta, a one-time refugee from the Sixties avant-garde, turns Allen Toussaint’s ‘River Boat’ into a stomping, soaring joy with the help of the Kingston rhythm section that backed Paul Simon and Jimmy Cliff.” — Bob Palmer, RS 175 (December 5th, 1974)
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/10-jazz-albums-rolling-stone-loved-in-the-1970s-youve-never-heard-20150731#ixzz3hZgoEESY
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rw?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=rollingstone) | RollingStone on Facebook (http://ec.tynt.com/b/rf?id=bbJxak64Kr4kEzacwqm_6l&u=RollingStone)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=badfd4fd92) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=badfd4fd92&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
David Byrne Open the Music Industry’s Black Box – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html
** Open the Music Industry’s Black Box
————————————————————
By
David Byrne (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html)
Credit Post Typography
THIS should be the greatest time for music in history — more of it is being found, made, distributed and listened to than ever before. That people are willing to pay for digital streaming is good news. In Sweden, where it was founded, Spotify saved a record industry that piracy had gutted.
Everyone should be celebrating — but many of us who create, perform and record music are not. Tales of popular artists (as popular as Pharrell Williams) who received paltry royalty checks for songs that streamed thousands or even millions of times (like “Happy”) on Pandora or Spotify are common. Obviously, the situation for less-well-known artists is much more dire. For them, making a living in this new musical landscape seems impossible. I myself am doing O.K., but my concern is for the artists coming up: How will they make a life in music?
It’s easy to blame new technologies like streaming services for the drastic reduction in musicians’ income. But on closer inspection we see that it is a bit more complicated. Even as the musical audience has grown, ways have been found to siphon off a greater percentage than ever of the money that customers and music fans pay for recorded music. Many streaming services are at the mercy of the record labels (especially the big three: Sony, Universal and Warner), and nondisclosure agreements keep all parties from being more transparent.
Perhaps the biggest problem artists face today is that lack of transparency. I’ve asked basic questions of both the digital services and the music labels and been stonewalled. For example, I asked YouTube how ad revenue from videos that contain music is shared (which should be an incredibly basic question). They responded that they didn’t share exact numbers, but said that YouTube’s cut was “less than half.” An industry source (who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the information) told me that the breakdown is roughly 50 percent to YouTube, 35 percent to the owner of the master recording and 15 percent to the publisher.
Before musicians and their advocates can move to enact a fairer system of pay, we need to know exactly what’s going on. We need information from both labels and streaming services on how they share the wealth generated by music. Taylor Swift, when she forced Apple to back off a plan not to pay royalties during the three-month free trial period for its new streaming service, Apple Music, made some small progress on this count — but we still don’t know how much Apple agreed to pay, or how they will determine the rate.
Putting together a picture of where listeners’ money goes when we pay for a streaming service subscription is notoriously complicated. Here is some of what we do know: About 70 percent of the money (http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#how-we-pay-royalties-overview) a listener pays to Spotify (which, to its credit, has tried to illuminate the opaque payment system) goes to the rights holders, usually the labels, which play the largest role in determining how much artists are paid. (A recently leaked 2011 contract between Sony and Spotify (http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract) showed that the service had agreed to pay the label more than $40 million in advances over three years. But it doesn’t say what Sony was to do with the money.)
The labels then pay artists a percentage (often 15 percent or so) of their share. This might make sense if streaming music included manufacturing, breakage and other physical costs for the label to recoup, but it does not. When compared with vinyl and CD production, streaming gives the labels incredibly high margins, but the labels act as though nothing has changed.
Consider the unanswered questions in the Swift-Apple dispute. Why didn’t the major labels take issue with Apple’s trial period? Is it because they were offered a better deal than the smaller, independent labels? Is it because they own the rights to a vast music library with no production or distribution costs, without which no streaming service could operate?
The answer, it seems, is mainly the latter — the major labels have their hefty catalogs and they can ride out the three-month dry spell. (The major labels are focused on the long game: some 40 percent to 60 percent of “freemium” customers join the pay version after a trial period.)
I asked Apple Music to explain the calculation of royalties for the trial period. They said they disclosed that only to copyright owners (that is, the labels). I have my own label and own the copyright on some of my albums, but when I turned to my distributor, the response was, “You can’t see the deal, but you could have your lawyer call our lawyer and we might answer some questions.”
It gets worse. One industry source told me that the major labels assigned the income they got from streaming services on a seemingly arbitrary basis to the artists in their catalog. Here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say in January Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” accounted for 5 percent of the total revenue that Spotify paid to Universal Music for its catalog. Universal is not obligated to take the gross revenue it received and assign that same 5 percent to Sam Smith’s account. They might give him 3 percent — or 10 percent. What’s to stop them?
The labels also get money from three other sources, all of which are hidden from artists: They get advances from the streaming services, catalog service payments for old songs and equity in the streaming services themselves.
Musicians are entrepreneurs. We are essentially partners with the labels, and should be treated that way. Artists and labels have many common interests — both are appalled, for instance, by the oddly meager payments from YouTube (more people globally listen to music free on YouTube than anywhere else). With shared data on how, where, why and when our audience listens, we can all expand our reach. This would benefit YouTube, the labels and us as well. With cooperation and transparency the industry can grow to three times its current size, Willard Ahdritz, the head of Kobalt, an independent music and publishing collection service, told me.
There is cause for hope. I recently spent two days on Capitol Hill, with the help of Sound Exchange, a nonprofit digital royalty collection and distribution organization, to discuss fairer compensation for artists via the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, which would force AM and FM stations to pay musicians when their recordings are broadcast, as most of the world does.
Rethink Music (http://www.rethink-music.com/) , an initiative of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, released a report last month that recommends making music deals and transactions more transparent; simplifying the flow of money and improving the shared use of technology to connect with fans.
Some of these ideas regarding openness are radical — “disruptive” is the word Silicon Valley might use — but that’s what’s needed. It’s not just about the labels either. By opening the Black Box, the whole music industry, all of it, can flourish. There is a rising tide of dissatisfaction, but we can work together to make fundamental changes that will be good for all.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=081c52b294) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=081c52b294&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
David Byrne Open the Music Industry’s Black Box – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html
** Open the Music Industry’s Black Box
————————————————————
By
David Byrne (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html)
Credit Post Typography
THIS should be the greatest time for music in history — more of it is being found, made, distributed and listened to than ever before. That people are willing to pay for digital streaming is good news. In Sweden, where it was founded, Spotify saved a record industry that piracy had gutted.
Everyone should be celebrating — but many of us who create, perform and record music are not. Tales of popular artists (as popular as Pharrell Williams) who received paltry royalty checks for songs that streamed thousands or even millions of times (like “Happy”) on Pandora or Spotify are common. Obviously, the situation for less-well-known artists is much more dire. For them, making a living in this new musical landscape seems impossible. I myself am doing O.K., but my concern is for the artists coming up: How will they make a life in music?
It’s easy to blame new technologies like streaming services for the drastic reduction in musicians’ income. But on closer inspection we see that it is a bit more complicated. Even as the musical audience has grown, ways have been found to siphon off a greater percentage than ever of the money that customers and music fans pay for recorded music. Many streaming services are at the mercy of the record labels (especially the big three: Sony, Universal and Warner), and nondisclosure agreements keep all parties from being more transparent.
Perhaps the biggest problem artists face today is that lack of transparency. I’ve asked basic questions of both the digital services and the music labels and been stonewalled. For example, I asked YouTube how ad revenue from videos that contain music is shared (which should be an incredibly basic question). They responded that they didn’t share exact numbers, but said that YouTube’s cut was “less than half.” An industry source (who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the information) told me that the breakdown is roughly 50 percent to YouTube, 35 percent to the owner of the master recording and 15 percent to the publisher.
Before musicians and their advocates can move to enact a fairer system of pay, we need to know exactly what’s going on. We need information from both labels and streaming services on how they share the wealth generated by music. Taylor Swift, when she forced Apple to back off a plan not to pay royalties during the three-month free trial period for its new streaming service, Apple Music, made some small progress on this count — but we still don’t know how much Apple agreed to pay, or how they will determine the rate.
Putting together a picture of where listeners’ money goes when we pay for a streaming service subscription is notoriously complicated. Here is some of what we do know: About 70 percent of the money (http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#how-we-pay-royalties-overview) a listener pays to Spotify (which, to its credit, has tried to illuminate the opaque payment system) goes to the rights holders, usually the labels, which play the largest role in determining how much artists are paid. (A recently leaked 2011 contract between Sony and Spotify (http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract) showed that the service had agreed to pay the label more than $40 million in advances over three years. But it doesn’t say what Sony was to do with the money.)
The labels then pay artists a percentage (often 15 percent or so) of their share. This might make sense if streaming music included manufacturing, breakage and other physical costs for the label to recoup, but it does not. When compared with vinyl and CD production, streaming gives the labels incredibly high margins, but the labels act as though nothing has changed.
Consider the unanswered questions in the Swift-Apple dispute. Why didn’t the major labels take issue with Apple’s trial period? Is it because they were offered a better deal than the smaller, independent labels? Is it because they own the rights to a vast music library with no production or distribution costs, without which no streaming service could operate?
The answer, it seems, is mainly the latter — the major labels have their hefty catalogs and they can ride out the three-month dry spell. (The major labels are focused on the long game: some 40 percent to 60 percent of “freemium” customers join the pay version after a trial period.)
I asked Apple Music to explain the calculation of royalties for the trial period. They said they disclosed that only to copyright owners (that is, the labels). I have my own label and own the copyright on some of my albums, but when I turned to my distributor, the response was, “You can’t see the deal, but you could have your lawyer call our lawyer and we might answer some questions.”
It gets worse. One industry source told me that the major labels assigned the income they got from streaming services on a seemingly arbitrary basis to the artists in their catalog. Here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say in January Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” accounted for 5 percent of the total revenue that Spotify paid to Universal Music for its catalog. Universal is not obligated to take the gross revenue it received and assign that same 5 percent to Sam Smith’s account. They might give him 3 percent — or 10 percent. What’s to stop them?
The labels also get money from three other sources, all of which are hidden from artists: They get advances from the streaming services, catalog service payments for old songs and equity in the streaming services themselves.
Musicians are entrepreneurs. We are essentially partners with the labels, and should be treated that way. Artists and labels have many common interests — both are appalled, for instance, by the oddly meager payments from YouTube (more people globally listen to music free on YouTube than anywhere else). With shared data on how, where, why and when our audience listens, we can all expand our reach. This would benefit YouTube, the labels and us as well. With cooperation and transparency the industry can grow to three times its current size, Willard Ahdritz, the head of Kobalt, an independent music and publishing collection service, told me.
There is cause for hope. I recently spent two days on Capitol Hill, with the help of Sound Exchange, a nonprofit digital royalty collection and distribution organization, to discuss fairer compensation for artists via the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, which would force AM and FM stations to pay musicians when their recordings are broadcast, as most of the world does.
Rethink Music (http://www.rethink-music.com/) , an initiative of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, released a report last month that recommends making music deals and transactions more transparent; simplifying the flow of money and improving the shared use of technology to connect with fans.
Some of these ideas regarding openness are radical — “disruptive” is the word Silicon Valley might use — but that’s what’s needed. It’s not just about the labels either. By opening the Black Box, the whole music industry, all of it, can flourish. There is a rising tide of dissatisfaction, but we can work together to make fundamental changes that will be good for all.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=081c52b294) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=081c52b294&e=[UNIQID])
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Warwick, Ny 10990
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David Byrne Open the Music Industry’s Black Box – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html
** Open the Music Industry’s Black Box
————————————————————
By
David Byrne (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/open-the-music-industrys-black-box.html)
Credit Post Typography
THIS should be the greatest time for music in history — more of it is being found, made, distributed and listened to than ever before. That people are willing to pay for digital streaming is good news. In Sweden, where it was founded, Spotify saved a record industry that piracy had gutted.
Everyone should be celebrating — but many of us who create, perform and record music are not. Tales of popular artists (as popular as Pharrell Williams) who received paltry royalty checks for songs that streamed thousands or even millions of times (like “Happy”) on Pandora or Spotify are common. Obviously, the situation for less-well-known artists is much more dire. For them, making a living in this new musical landscape seems impossible. I myself am doing O.K., but my concern is for the artists coming up: How will they make a life in music?
It’s easy to blame new technologies like streaming services for the drastic reduction in musicians’ income. But on closer inspection we see that it is a bit more complicated. Even as the musical audience has grown, ways have been found to siphon off a greater percentage than ever of the money that customers and music fans pay for recorded music. Many streaming services are at the mercy of the record labels (especially the big three: Sony, Universal and Warner), and nondisclosure agreements keep all parties from being more transparent.
Perhaps the biggest problem artists face today is that lack of transparency. I’ve asked basic questions of both the digital services and the music labels and been stonewalled. For example, I asked YouTube how ad revenue from videos that contain music is shared (which should be an incredibly basic question). They responded that they didn’t share exact numbers, but said that YouTube’s cut was “less than half.” An industry source (who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the information) told me that the breakdown is roughly 50 percent to YouTube, 35 percent to the owner of the master recording and 15 percent to the publisher.
Before musicians and their advocates can move to enact a fairer system of pay, we need to know exactly what’s going on. We need information from both labels and streaming services on how they share the wealth generated by music. Taylor Swift, when she forced Apple to back off a plan not to pay royalties during the three-month free trial period for its new streaming service, Apple Music, made some small progress on this count — but we still don’t know how much Apple agreed to pay, or how they will determine the rate.
Putting together a picture of where listeners’ money goes when we pay for a streaming service subscription is notoriously complicated. Here is some of what we do know: About 70 percent of the money (http://www.spotifyartists.com/spotify-explained/#how-we-pay-royalties-overview) a listener pays to Spotify (which, to its credit, has tried to illuminate the opaque payment system) goes to the rights holders, usually the labels, which play the largest role in determining how much artists are paid. (A recently leaked 2011 contract between Sony and Spotify (http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/19/8621581/sony-music-spotify-contract) showed that the service had agreed to pay the label more than $40 million in advances over three years. But it doesn’t say what Sony was to do with the money.)
The labels then pay artists a percentage (often 15 percent or so) of their share. This might make sense if streaming music included manufacturing, breakage and other physical costs for the label to recoup, but it does not. When compared with vinyl and CD production, streaming gives the labels incredibly high margins, but the labels act as though nothing has changed.
Consider the unanswered questions in the Swift-Apple dispute. Why didn’t the major labels take issue with Apple’s trial period? Is it because they were offered a better deal than the smaller, independent labels? Is it because they own the rights to a vast music library with no production or distribution costs, without which no streaming service could operate?
The answer, it seems, is mainly the latter — the major labels have their hefty catalogs and they can ride out the three-month dry spell. (The major labels are focused on the long game: some 40 percent to 60 percent of “freemium” customers join the pay version after a trial period.)
I asked Apple Music to explain the calculation of royalties for the trial period. They said they disclosed that only to copyright owners (that is, the labels). I have my own label and own the copyright on some of my albums, but when I turned to my distributor, the response was, “You can’t see the deal, but you could have your lawyer call our lawyer and we might answer some questions.”
It gets worse. One industry source told me that the major labels assigned the income they got from streaming services on a seemingly arbitrary basis to the artists in their catalog. Here’s a hypothetical example: Let’s say in January Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me” accounted for 5 percent of the total revenue that Spotify paid to Universal Music for its catalog. Universal is not obligated to take the gross revenue it received and assign that same 5 percent to Sam Smith’s account. They might give him 3 percent — or 10 percent. What’s to stop them?
The labels also get money from three other sources, all of which are hidden from artists: They get advances from the streaming services, catalog service payments for old songs and equity in the streaming services themselves.
Musicians are entrepreneurs. We are essentially partners with the labels, and should be treated that way. Artists and labels have many common interests — both are appalled, for instance, by the oddly meager payments from YouTube (more people globally listen to music free on YouTube than anywhere else). With shared data on how, where, why and when our audience listens, we can all expand our reach. This would benefit YouTube, the labels and us as well. With cooperation and transparency the industry can grow to three times its current size, Willard Ahdritz, the head of Kobalt, an independent music and publishing collection service, told me.
There is cause for hope. I recently spent two days on Capitol Hill, with the help of Sound Exchange, a nonprofit digital royalty collection and distribution organization, to discuss fairer compensation for artists via the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, which would force AM and FM stations to pay musicians when their recordings are broadcast, as most of the world does.
Rethink Music (http://www.rethink-music.com/) , an initiative of the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship, released a report last month that recommends making music deals and transactions more transparent; simplifying the flow of money and improving the shared use of technology to connect with fans.
Some of these ideas regarding openness are radical — “disruptive” is the word Silicon Valley might use — but that’s what’s needed. It’s not just about the labels either. By opening the Black Box, the whole music industry, all of it, can flourish. There is a rising tide of dissatisfaction, but we can work together to make fundamental changes that will be good for all.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=081c52b294) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=081c52b294&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Latin Jazz’s Arturo O’Farrill Creates U.S.-Cuba ‘Conversations’ – NBC News
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arturo-ofarrill-creates-u-s-cuba-conversations-through-music-n400406
** Latin Jazz’s Arturo O’Farrill Creates U.S.-Cuba ‘Conversations’
————————————————————
by PATRICIA GUADALUPE
Latin jazz pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill (http://www.arturoofarrill.com/) calls it a happy coincidence that he happened to be in Havana recording some music last December when the announcement came down that the United States and Cuba would begin to normalize diplomatic relations after decades in a deep Cold War freeze.
“I am overjoyed that this is happening,” said two-time Grammy winner O’Farrill, speaking to NBC News from Vermont, where he is conducting summer jazz workshops. “Musicians have been on the frontlines of this (thawing between Cuba and the United States) for so long. We played a role in making that relationship mend.”
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146101/img_1009-edit_a6f954135fd96d89212bdfcfa3212da7.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Photo of Arturo O’Farrill. Laura Marie
The music O’Farrill was recording in Havana that fateful day is his newest work, ‘Cuba: The Conversation Continues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znsww02yN6o) ,’ a follow-up album to his Grammy-winner ‘The Offense of the Drum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwVpe3RoMKE) ,’ and in a sense, O’Farrill says, a follow-up to a 1940s collaboration between fabled trumpeter John “Dizzy” Gillespie and the seminal Afro-Cuban percussionist Luciano “Chano” Pozo. Pozo co-wrote some of Gillespie’s compositions, including ‘Manteca (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0H5RmpAezA) ‘ and ‘Tin Tin Deo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHQaUNeErVM) ,’ and was the first Latin percussionist in Gillespie’s transcendental band.
“Dizzy and Chano were on to something. Culture is a fluid, ongoing process. People tend to look at culture in a fixed time but it’s constantly moving and evolving, as is the conversation between Americans and Cubans,” said O’Farrill, who characterizes his new CD as continuing that collaboration and conversation started decades ago by two legendary musicians.
“O’Farrill grew up surrounded by reminders of what was and could have been; his father Chico O’Farrill died in 2001 without fulfilling his wish to return to the country he left in 1959.”
“The conversation never went away; it has always been there,” said O’Farrill. “It never went away when jazz and Cuban music were separated by the (Cuban) revolution. It just lay dormant.”
O’Farrill’s newest undertaking can be called a combination of music and current events, and it brings together musicians from the U.S. and Cuba to create an elegant array of music, from Cuban popular styles such as bolero, guaguancó, and guajira, to Trinidad and Tobago soca, Peruvian festejo, and Northern African Islamic melodies. O’Farrill calls the two-disc creation truly universal music. His two sons, drummer Zachary and trumpeter Adam, have their own musical group, the O’Farrill Brothers Band, and both are featured on the new album which will be released August 21st.
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146116/cuba_1500x1500_59e96ac1c4a411c7c1b0de57fc8e3e57.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Cuba: The Conversation Continues album cover.
O’Farrill welcomes the thawing of relations between the two countries because it also helps demystify both nations. “Cuban music is seen (in the United States) as exotic, like a curiosity. And Cuban musicians put jazz on a pedestal. That’s not healthy. I want to continue this conversation as equals. Chano and Dizzy were not exotic or venerated by each other. They were beginning to discover equality,” said the acclaimed pianist.
RELATED: Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco Launches U.S.-Cuba Writing Project (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/inaugural-poet-richard-blanco-launches-u-s-cuba-writing-project-n372161)
O’Farrill takes a personal interest in bringing Cuba and the United States together through music in part because he grew up surrounded by reminders of what was and could have been. O’Farrill is the son of the late and renowned Cuba-born band leader Chico O’Farrill, who died in 2001 without fulfilling his wish of returning to Cuba after leaving in 1959.
The younger O’Farrill was in Washington, D.C., the day earlier this month when the Cuban embassy officially reopened for the first time in 54 years. “It was an amazing moment, just breathtaking. It means so much because my father loved Cuba and he loved the United States. I was thinking about my father the whole time. He wanted to go back and never had the opportunity. That was such a sad thing to me. You don’t have to be a fan of Fidel (Castro) to be a fan of progress and change. The (raising of the) flag is progress and change. Why deny access to each other’s richness because we don’t agree with the policies?”
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146146/banner_1_f6b8eeb792918a37047612e9eab1d1d4.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.png
iTunes banner ad for Cuba: The Conversation Continues album.
O’Farrill says that he plans on being “very vocal” about removing another vestige of the decades-long bad blood between the two governments: the 55-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba.
“It serves no purpose except keep impoverished people poor. I can advocate to my elected leaders and family and friends. Do what democracy does best,” he said.
RELATED: Cuba Celebrates May Day, Officials Call For End to U.S. Embargo (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-celebrates-may-day-officials-call-end-u-s-embargo-n352126)
In addition to his collaborations and tours across the country and abroad to promote his music with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, O’Farrill is an Assistant Professor and Director of Jazz Ensembles and Jazz Studies at Brooklyn College in New York City.
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146136/150729-arturo-ofarrill-afro-latin-jazz-orchestra-01-1051a_cf4976bd6b071e6852544e5b64d98857.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill & Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra recording their upcoming new album, ‘Cuba: The Conversation Continues’ at the Abdala Studio in Havana, Cuba. David Garten / David Garten
“I teach them that jazz was not invented by one person, nothing was, and that we are all part of the journey. I really teach them to question the history books, to question me, and to not assume. I’m on the same journey of discovery that they are.” At the college, O’Farrill is developing a Master’s program focusing on Global and Modern Jazz Studies that is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2016.
Another one of O’Farrill’s projects in the works is an exchange program between musicians in the United States and Cuba through the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA, Universidad de las Artes), the University of Arts in Havana, the only one of its kind on the island.
“We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what can be done,” said O’Farrill. “People who don’t see the barriers get a lot more done than those who are fixated on a problem. Too many spend too much time trying to live in a fixed point, when our lives are an unfolding journey. Taking on new challenges is how we fix the world.”
O’Farrill is very optimistic going forward, particularly since politics is catching up to what he and many in the arts have wanted to change for a long time.
“This collaboration between the United States and Cuba has begun to take place and it’s so welcome. What we share is more common than what separates us. There is a lot of history we don’t know about. For us musicians, we’re in heaven.”
Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NBCLatino) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/NBCLatino) .
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=4f786190a9) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=4f786190a9&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Latin Jazz’s Arturo O’Farrill Creates U.S.-Cuba ‘Conversations’ – NBC News
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arturo-ofarrill-creates-u-s-cuba-conversations-through-music-n400406
** Latin Jazz’s Arturo O’Farrill Creates U.S.-Cuba ‘Conversations’
————————————————————
by PATRICIA GUADALUPE
Latin jazz pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill (http://www.arturoofarrill.com/) calls it a happy coincidence that he happened to be in Havana recording some music last December when the announcement came down that the United States and Cuba would begin to normalize diplomatic relations after decades in a deep Cold War freeze.
“I am overjoyed that this is happening,” said two-time Grammy winner O’Farrill, speaking to NBC News from Vermont, where he is conducting summer jazz workshops. “Musicians have been on the frontlines of this (thawing between Cuba and the United States) for so long. We played a role in making that relationship mend.”
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146101/img_1009-edit_a6f954135fd96d89212bdfcfa3212da7.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Photo of Arturo O’Farrill. Laura Marie
The music O’Farrill was recording in Havana that fateful day is his newest work, ‘Cuba: The Conversation Continues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znsww02yN6o) ,’ a follow-up album to his Grammy-winner ‘The Offense of the Drum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwVpe3RoMKE) ,’ and in a sense, O’Farrill says, a follow-up to a 1940s collaboration between fabled trumpeter John “Dizzy” Gillespie and the seminal Afro-Cuban percussionist Luciano “Chano” Pozo. Pozo co-wrote some of Gillespie’s compositions, including ‘Manteca (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0H5RmpAezA) ‘ and ‘Tin Tin Deo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHQaUNeErVM) ,’ and was the first Latin percussionist in Gillespie’s transcendental band.
“Dizzy and Chano were on to something. Culture is a fluid, ongoing process. People tend to look at culture in a fixed time but it’s constantly moving and evolving, as is the conversation between Americans and Cubans,” said O’Farrill, who characterizes his new CD as continuing that collaboration and conversation started decades ago by two legendary musicians.
“O’Farrill grew up surrounded by reminders of what was and could have been; his father Chico O’Farrill died in 2001 without fulfilling his wish to return to the country he left in 1959.”
“The conversation never went away; it has always been there,” said O’Farrill. “It never went away when jazz and Cuban music were separated by the (Cuban) revolution. It just lay dormant.”
O’Farrill’s newest undertaking can be called a combination of music and current events, and it brings together musicians from the U.S. and Cuba to create an elegant array of music, from Cuban popular styles such as bolero, guaguancó, and guajira, to Trinidad and Tobago soca, Peruvian festejo, and Northern African Islamic melodies. O’Farrill calls the two-disc creation truly universal music. His two sons, drummer Zachary and trumpeter Adam, have their own musical group, the O’Farrill Brothers Band, and both are featured on the new album which will be released August 21st.
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146116/cuba_1500x1500_59e96ac1c4a411c7c1b0de57fc8e3e57.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Cuba: The Conversation Continues album cover.
O’Farrill welcomes the thawing of relations between the two countries because it also helps demystify both nations. “Cuban music is seen (in the United States) as exotic, like a curiosity. And Cuban musicians put jazz on a pedestal. That’s not healthy. I want to continue this conversation as equals. Chano and Dizzy were not exotic or venerated by each other. They were beginning to discover equality,” said the acclaimed pianist.
RELATED: Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco Launches U.S.-Cuba Writing Project (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/inaugural-poet-richard-blanco-launches-u-s-cuba-writing-project-n372161)
O’Farrill takes a personal interest in bringing Cuba and the United States together through music in part because he grew up surrounded by reminders of what was and could have been. O’Farrill is the son of the late and renowned Cuba-born band leader Chico O’Farrill, who died in 2001 without fulfilling his wish of returning to Cuba after leaving in 1959.
The younger O’Farrill was in Washington, D.C., the day earlier this month when the Cuban embassy officially reopened for the first time in 54 years. “It was an amazing moment, just breathtaking. It means so much because my father loved Cuba and he loved the United States. I was thinking about my father the whole time. He wanted to go back and never had the opportunity. That was such a sad thing to me. You don’t have to be a fan of Fidel (Castro) to be a fan of progress and change. The (raising of the) flag is progress and change. Why deny access to each other’s richness because we don’t agree with the policies?”
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146146/banner_1_f6b8eeb792918a37047612e9eab1d1d4.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.png
iTunes banner ad for Cuba: The Conversation Continues album.
O’Farrill says that he plans on being “very vocal” about removing another vestige of the decades-long bad blood between the two governments: the 55-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba.
“It serves no purpose except keep impoverished people poor. I can advocate to my elected leaders and family and friends. Do what democracy does best,” he said.
RELATED: Cuba Celebrates May Day, Officials Call For End to U.S. Embargo (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-celebrates-may-day-officials-call-end-u-s-embargo-n352126)
In addition to his collaborations and tours across the country and abroad to promote his music with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, O’Farrill is an Assistant Professor and Director of Jazz Ensembles and Jazz Studies at Brooklyn College in New York City.
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146136/150729-arturo-ofarrill-afro-latin-jazz-orchestra-01-1051a_cf4976bd6b071e6852544e5b64d98857.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill & Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra recording their upcoming new album, ‘Cuba: The Conversation Continues’ at the Abdala Studio in Havana, Cuba. David Garten / David Garten
“I teach them that jazz was not invented by one person, nothing was, and that we are all part of the journey. I really teach them to question the history books, to question me, and to not assume. I’m on the same journey of discovery that they are.” At the college, O’Farrill is developing a Master’s program focusing on Global and Modern Jazz Studies that is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2016.
Another one of O’Farrill’s projects in the works is an exchange program between musicians in the United States and Cuba through the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA, Universidad de las Artes), the University of Arts in Havana, the only one of its kind on the island.
“We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what can be done,” said O’Farrill. “People who don’t see the barriers get a lot more done than those who are fixated on a problem. Too many spend too much time trying to live in a fixed point, when our lives are an unfolding journey. Taking on new challenges is how we fix the world.”
O’Farrill is very optimistic going forward, particularly since politics is catching up to what he and many in the arts have wanted to change for a long time.
“This collaboration between the United States and Cuba has begun to take place and it’s so welcome. What we share is more common than what separates us. There is a lot of history we don’t know about. For us musicians, we’re in heaven.”
Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NBCLatino) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/NBCLatino) .
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Latin Jazz’s Arturo O’Farrill Creates U.S.-Cuba ‘Conversations’ – NBC News
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/arturo-ofarrill-creates-u-s-cuba-conversations-through-music-n400406
** Latin Jazz’s Arturo O’Farrill Creates U.S.-Cuba ‘Conversations’
————————————————————
by PATRICIA GUADALUPE
Latin jazz pianist and composer Arturo O’Farrill (http://www.arturoofarrill.com/) calls it a happy coincidence that he happened to be in Havana recording some music last December when the announcement came down that the United States and Cuba would begin to normalize diplomatic relations after decades in a deep Cold War freeze.
“I am overjoyed that this is happening,” said two-time Grammy winner O’Farrill, speaking to NBC News from Vermont, where he is conducting summer jazz workshops. “Musicians have been on the frontlines of this (thawing between Cuba and the United States) for so long. We played a role in making that relationship mend.”
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146101/img_1009-edit_a6f954135fd96d89212bdfcfa3212da7.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Photo of Arturo O’Farrill. Laura Marie
The music O’Farrill was recording in Havana that fateful day is his newest work, ‘Cuba: The Conversation Continues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znsww02yN6o) ,’ a follow-up album to his Grammy-winner ‘The Offense of the Drum (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwVpe3RoMKE) ,’ and in a sense, O’Farrill says, a follow-up to a 1940s collaboration between fabled trumpeter John “Dizzy” Gillespie and the seminal Afro-Cuban percussionist Luciano “Chano” Pozo. Pozo co-wrote some of Gillespie’s compositions, including ‘Manteca (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0H5RmpAezA) ‘ and ‘Tin Tin Deo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHQaUNeErVM) ,’ and was the first Latin percussionist in Gillespie’s transcendental band.
“Dizzy and Chano were on to something. Culture is a fluid, ongoing process. People tend to look at culture in a fixed time but it’s constantly moving and evolving, as is the conversation between Americans and Cubans,” said O’Farrill, who characterizes his new CD as continuing that collaboration and conversation started decades ago by two legendary musicians.
“O’Farrill grew up surrounded by reminders of what was and could have been; his father Chico O’Farrill died in 2001 without fulfilling his wish to return to the country he left in 1959.”
“The conversation never went away; it has always been there,” said O’Farrill. “It never went away when jazz and Cuban music were separated by the (Cuban) revolution. It just lay dormant.”
O’Farrill’s newest undertaking can be called a combination of music and current events, and it brings together musicians from the U.S. and Cuba to create an elegant array of music, from Cuban popular styles such as bolero, guaguancó, and guajira, to Trinidad and Tobago soca, Peruvian festejo, and Northern African Islamic melodies. O’Farrill calls the two-disc creation truly universal music. His two sons, drummer Zachary and trumpeter Adam, have their own musical group, the O’Farrill Brothers Band, and both are featured on the new album which will be released August 21st.
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146116/cuba_1500x1500_59e96ac1c4a411c7c1b0de57fc8e3e57.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Cuba: The Conversation Continues album cover.
O’Farrill welcomes the thawing of relations between the two countries because it also helps demystify both nations. “Cuban music is seen (in the United States) as exotic, like a curiosity. And Cuban musicians put jazz on a pedestal. That’s not healthy. I want to continue this conversation as equals. Chano and Dizzy were not exotic or venerated by each other. They were beginning to discover equality,” said the acclaimed pianist.
RELATED: Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco Launches U.S.-Cuba Writing Project (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/inaugural-poet-richard-blanco-launches-u-s-cuba-writing-project-n372161)
O’Farrill takes a personal interest in bringing Cuba and the United States together through music in part because he grew up surrounded by reminders of what was and could have been. O’Farrill is the son of the late and renowned Cuba-born band leader Chico O’Farrill, who died in 2001 without fulfilling his wish of returning to Cuba after leaving in 1959.
The younger O’Farrill was in Washington, D.C., the day earlier this month when the Cuban embassy officially reopened for the first time in 54 years. “It was an amazing moment, just breathtaking. It means so much because my father loved Cuba and he loved the United States. I was thinking about my father the whole time. He wanted to go back and never had the opportunity. That was such a sad thing to me. You don’t have to be a fan of Fidel (Castro) to be a fan of progress and change. The (raising of the) flag is progress and change. Why deny access to each other’s richness because we don’t agree with the policies?”
http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146146/banner_1_f6b8eeb792918a37047612e9eab1d1d4.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.png
iTunes banner ad for Cuba: The Conversation Continues album.
O’Farrill says that he plans on being “very vocal” about removing another vestige of the decades-long bad blood between the two governments: the 55-year-old U.S. embargo on Cuba.
“It serves no purpose except keep impoverished people poor. I can advocate to my elected leaders and family and friends. Do what democracy does best,” he said.
RELATED: Cuba Celebrates May Day, Officials Call For End to U.S. Embargo (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cuba-celebrates-may-day-officials-call-end-u-s-embargo-n352126)
In addition to his collaborations and tours across the country and abroad to promote his music with the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, O’Farrill is an Assistant Professor and Director of Jazz Ensembles and Jazz Studies at Brooklyn College in New York City.
http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/newscms/2015_31/1146136/150729-arturo-ofarrill-afro-latin-jazz-orchestra-01-1051a_cf4976bd6b071e6852544e5b64d98857.nbcnews-ux-2880-1000.jpg
Jazz pianist Arturo O’Farrill & Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra recording their upcoming new album, ‘Cuba: The Conversation Continues’ at the Abdala Studio in Havana, Cuba. David Garten / David Garten
“I teach them that jazz was not invented by one person, nothing was, and that we are all part of the journey. I really teach them to question the history books, to question me, and to not assume. I’m on the same journey of discovery that they are.” At the college, O’Farrill is developing a Master’s program focusing on Global and Modern Jazz Studies that is scheduled to begin in the fall of 2016.
Another one of O’Farrill’s projects in the works is an exchange program between musicians in the United States and Cuba through the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA, Universidad de las Artes), the University of Arts in Havana, the only one of its kind on the island.
“We’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what can be done,” said O’Farrill. “People who don’t see the barriers get a lot more done than those who are fixated on a problem. Too many spend too much time trying to live in a fixed point, when our lives are an unfolding journey. Taking on new challenges is how we fix the world.”
O’Farrill is very optimistic going forward, particularly since politics is catching up to what he and many in the arts have wanted to change for a long time.
“This collaboration between the United States and Cuba has begun to take place and it’s so welcome. What we share is more common than what separates us. There is a lot of history we don’t know about. For us musicians, we’re in heaven.”
Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/NBCLatino) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/NBCLatino) .
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Enter Sound Man: An Insider’s Look at Baseball’s Walk-Up Music – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/sports/baseball/enter-sound-man-an-insiders-look-at-baseballs-walk-up-music.html?
** Enter Sound Man: An Insider’s Look at Baseball’s Walk-Up Music
————————————————————
By ROB HARMSJULY 31, 2015
At Citi Field, Mike Castellani — “I call myself an audio engineer,” he said — keeps an eye on which Met is headed to the plate and punches a player-specific code into a large pad. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times
Mike Castellani put aside his pregame dinner, leaned back and smiled. Dressed in a blue polo shirt and gray jeans and twirling a pair of eyeglasses in his hand, he was as ready as he would ever be for the music to begin.
Castellani has been the sound man for the Mets since 1994, through some good years and numerous bad ones. From a room overlooking Citi Field filled with 35 monitors and co-workers banging on keypads, he can turn on the music in one of the stadium’s ritzy lounges with the flick of a finger.
With another press, he can cue the walk-up music that plays over the public-address system when Mets batters stroll to the plate or when the team’s relief pitchers jog in from the bullpen.
“Everything you hear in the park,” said Tim Gunkel, an official in the Mets’ production and marketing department, “goes through him.”
Which means that Castellani, 57, is providing the soundtrack for what may be a season of resurgence for the Mets, who, at least for now, are competing for a division title after six straight years of losing records.
Photo
For his walk-up music this season, Curtis Granderson has regularly used “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg. Credit Mike Mcginnis/Getty Images; Jonathan Short/Invision, via Associated Press
Walk-up music is typically reserved for the home team in baseball and has loudly made its presence felt. The players pick the songs, and their choices often reflect pop culture. That means a lot of the lyrics are not necessarily suitable for ballpark audiences, although teams, by using only carefully chosen snippets of the songs, are generally able to sidestep that issue.
Castellani and others like him in ballparks around the major leagues make sure it all works — that the songs match the player, inning after inning, game after game, month after month. As the games become more important, the music takes on a little more meaning.
At Citi Field, Castellani — “I call myself an audio engineer,” he said — keeps an eye on which Met is headed to the plate, or to the mound, and punches a player-specific code into a large pad in front of him.
To avoid confusion, he sorts the songs to be used not by the name of the artist but by that of the player. To play the song for a Lucas Duda at-bat earlier this season, for example, he entered the code “LD1.” Soon, “All Along the Watchtower,” the Jimi Hendrix version, was thumping through the stadium’s speakers as Duda approached the batter’s box.
“We can be somewhere else not looking at the field, and we hear the song and we’re like, ‘Lucas Duda’s coming up,’ ” Gunkel said. “And I think the fans do that, too.”
But it is not just the fans who are listening. Some time ago, the Mets’ Curtis Granderson remembered, there was an umpire who really liked the song “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” a rap classic by Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg.
Granderson used to walk up to the plate to that song, and the umpire felt compelled to praise the choice.
“He said, ‘By far the best song in the big leagues,’ ” Granderson recalled.
Umpires, fans, users of social media — they all have told Granderson, who this season has regularly used “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg, what they think of his musical preferences.
And in one instance, several years ago, when Granderson was using “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” he ran into Busta Rhymes, the man who sings it, when they were both on a talk show. (No, they did not break out in song.)
Other times, the artist approaches the athlete. Earlier this season, the Christian musician Brandon Heath found out that Yankees catcher John Ryan Murphy walked to the plate to “Give Me Your Eyes,” one of Heath’s most popular songs. Heath, who said he had always wanted to be a part of a player’s walk-up music, wrote Murphy a Twitter message.
That eventually led to lunch at a pub in the East Village, where they discussed their families and how to navigate New York City. Murphy then treated Heath and his wife to a Yankees game, and they have plans to meet up again, a friendship borne of walk-up music.
But if religion informed Murphy’s choice of music, movies have inspired one of his counterparts, Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen that one U.F.C. movie with Kevin James in it,” d’Arnaud said, referring to the comedy “Here Comes the Boom,” about a teacher who trains to become a mixed martial arts fighter. “The teacher talks about how in war they used to play their battle songs to get you ready for the war. And for me, that moment, that’s my war with the pitcher, so I need something to get me hyped up and get me ready to go out there and see a baseball coming at me at 95 miles an hour.”
The song that meets d’Arnaud’s lofty standards this year is “0 to 100 / The Catch Up” by Drake. “Because when I walk up to the plate, it makes me feel” — d’Arnaud paused, searching for the right words — “really good.”
Players used to have little input about what song was played before their at-bats. In 1970, Nancy Faust, the popular organist for the Chicago White Sox who retired in 2010 and is believed to be the founder of walk-up music, started playing hitters’ state songs as they came to the plate. She then started experimenting with other songs for various players, and they became her signature.
“I had the ability to be able to just play spontaneous,” Faust said.
But in the mid-1980s, with better technology, walk-up music transformed into a player-driven phenomenon. Players chose their own songs, and walk-up music began its evolution to where it is today.
Photo
Earlier this season, the Christian musician Brandon Heath found out Yankees catcher John Ryan Murphy walked to the plate to “Give Me Your Eyes,” one of Heath’s most popular songs. CreditMark Humphrey/Associated Press; Hannah Foslien/Getty
For the Mets, that means having members of the audio staff ask players in spring training for three or four songs they want to use in the regular season and to begin compiling playlists.
Song choices range from merengue to Macklemore. Matt Harvey consulted with a music editor to create his own Frank Sinatra-infused clip; on the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez used “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” by Journey earlier this season. Some players change their song every two years; others change it every other homestand.
Mike Piazza was famous for choosing a whole bunch of songs when he played for the Mets. “He would call for something pregame, and we wanted to try to get it for him,” Gunkel said, “so we’d actually send an intern out to a record store.” Now, of course, when players request a new song, the Mets’ audio staff simply finds it digitally.
For players, the process for choosing a song can be more complicated than it appears. First, they have to find a 15-second clip that is clean, which is not always easy. The crowd, Granderson noted, contains thousands of people of all ages.
Faust said, “At first, when we were playing recorded music, we had to be very mindful — and we weren’t at the beginning — of lyrics.”
To manage, the audio staff members frequently use instrumentals, find clean versions of songs or work around the lyrics they do not want pulsing through the stadium.
Next, the song must be different from other players’ choices because, Granderson said, “you don’t want to double up.”
One of the more notorious cases of doubling up involved “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, which had become the soundtrack of Mariano Rivera’s walks from the bullpen to the mound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUTirIk75vg) . When Yankees fans discovered that the Mets’ Billy Wagner, newly arrived from the Philadelphia Phillies, also used that song (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/sports/baseball/05mets.html) when he came in to close games, they were, naturally, incensed — even though Wagner had been using it for years and even though Rivera said he was hardly in love with “Enter Sandman” in the first place. The uproar underlined the aura of walk-up music.
Songs and entrances for relief pitchers and closers, made popular by the 1989 movie “Major League,” can be more theatrical than those used for hitters — check out “Craig Kimbrel entrance” on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5e33L1L2M) — because of the game situations in which they arise: late innings, game on the line, fans tense.
Photo
Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud is using Drake’s “0 to 100 / The Catch Up” for his walk-up music this season. Credit Al Behrman/Associated Press; Kevin Winter/Getty Images, for Coachella
“That Broadway entrance,” the Mets’ Gunkel called it.
Gunkel noted that most stadiums now had “distributed sound” with speakers in every section, but he remembered a time when all of the stadium’s speakers were entrenched behind center field and “you’d listen for a couple seconds, and you’d try to figure out what song it is.”
Still, Granderson said, even current sound systems “might not do justice to the song you want,” so players have to keep their ears open.
A few lockers away, the Mets rookie outfielder Darrell Ceciliani explained that there were two types of walk-up songs: those that pump up and those that calm down.
Ceciliani, who was called up to the Mets from Class AAA Las Vegas in May and has since been sent back, said that in the minors this season, he was walking out to “All-American Middle Class White Boy” by Thomas Rhett because of its mellowing effect. With the Mets? “I actually don’t have one yet,” he said. “I’ve got to get ahold of somebody to do that.”
Well, maybe if he is called up again.
Some players, like d’Arnaud, care deeply, almost superstitiously, about their walk-up music; others seem more casual about it. When d’Arnaud was mired in a slump in the first month of last season, he cycled through four or five songs before returning to his original Busta Rhymes track. “And I started feeling good again,” he said.
But can walk-up music enhance performance? Jonathan F. Katz, a psychologist who has worked with several professional athletes and teams, including the N.H.L.’s Rangers, said music — which athletes have used to mentally prepare for competition long before walk-up music emerged — was one of several factors that could affect on-field production.
“Music is a factor in getting people in the right mind-set,” Katz said. “Now, the body and the mind work interactively, right? If you’re kind of anxious and nervous, the tension in your arm and how you hold the bat and your grip could be affected.”
He added, “The better the physical and mental state that a batter is when he gets in the batter’s box, the better position he is to hit.”
To cope with the musicless walks to the plate on the road, some players sing to themselves, said Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar, who uses “Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull and Ne-Yo and imagines it playing before his at-bats in other stadiums. (Pillar, incidentally, has a higher career batting average on the road than at home, as do Granderson and d’Arnaud.)
During a recent interview with Pillar, the song “Springsteen,” by the country singer Eric Church, was blaring through a speaker in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse at Citi Field. About 30 seconds in, it cut off, and Pillar got up from his chair to investigate. He glanced at his cellphone, which was attached to the speaker.
“Sorry, I’m a popular person,” he joked to his teammate Justin Smoak. Pillar then set the phone back down, and the music played on.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
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Enter Sound Man: An Insider’s Look at Baseball’s Walk-Up Music – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/sports/baseball/enter-sound-man-an-insiders-look-at-baseballs-walk-up-music.html?
** Enter Sound Man: An Insider’s Look at Baseball’s Walk-Up Music
————————————————————
By ROB HARMSJULY 31, 2015
At Citi Field, Mike Castellani — “I call myself an audio engineer,” he said — keeps an eye on which Met is headed to the plate and punches a player-specific code into a large pad. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times
Mike Castellani put aside his pregame dinner, leaned back and smiled. Dressed in a blue polo shirt and gray jeans and twirling a pair of eyeglasses in his hand, he was as ready as he would ever be for the music to begin.
Castellani has been the sound man for the Mets since 1994, through some good years and numerous bad ones. From a room overlooking Citi Field filled with 35 monitors and co-workers banging on keypads, he can turn on the music in one of the stadium’s ritzy lounges with the flick of a finger.
With another press, he can cue the walk-up music that plays over the public-address system when Mets batters stroll to the plate or when the team’s relief pitchers jog in from the bullpen.
“Everything you hear in the park,” said Tim Gunkel, an official in the Mets’ production and marketing department, “goes through him.”
Which means that Castellani, 57, is providing the soundtrack for what may be a season of resurgence for the Mets, who, at least for now, are competing for a division title after six straight years of losing records.
Photo
For his walk-up music this season, Curtis Granderson has regularly used “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg. Credit Mike Mcginnis/Getty Images; Jonathan Short/Invision, via Associated Press
Walk-up music is typically reserved for the home team in baseball and has loudly made its presence felt. The players pick the songs, and their choices often reflect pop culture. That means a lot of the lyrics are not necessarily suitable for ballpark audiences, although teams, by using only carefully chosen snippets of the songs, are generally able to sidestep that issue.
Castellani and others like him in ballparks around the major leagues make sure it all works — that the songs match the player, inning after inning, game after game, month after month. As the games become more important, the music takes on a little more meaning.
At Citi Field, Castellani — “I call myself an audio engineer,” he said — keeps an eye on which Met is headed to the plate, or to the mound, and punches a player-specific code into a large pad in front of him.
To avoid confusion, he sorts the songs to be used not by the name of the artist but by that of the player. To play the song for a Lucas Duda at-bat earlier this season, for example, he entered the code “LD1.” Soon, “All Along the Watchtower,” the Jimi Hendrix version, was thumping through the stadium’s speakers as Duda approached the batter’s box.
“We can be somewhere else not looking at the field, and we hear the song and we’re like, ‘Lucas Duda’s coming up,’ ” Gunkel said. “And I think the fans do that, too.”
But it is not just the fans who are listening. Some time ago, the Mets’ Curtis Granderson remembered, there was an umpire who really liked the song “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” a rap classic by Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg.
Granderson used to walk up to the plate to that song, and the umpire felt compelled to praise the choice.
“He said, ‘By far the best song in the big leagues,’ ” Granderson recalled.
Umpires, fans, users of social media — they all have told Granderson, who this season has regularly used “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg, what they think of his musical preferences.
And in one instance, several years ago, when Granderson was using “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” he ran into Busta Rhymes, the man who sings it, when they were both on a talk show. (No, they did not break out in song.)
Other times, the artist approaches the athlete. Earlier this season, the Christian musician Brandon Heath found out that Yankees catcher John Ryan Murphy walked to the plate to “Give Me Your Eyes,” one of Heath’s most popular songs. Heath, who said he had always wanted to be a part of a player’s walk-up music, wrote Murphy a Twitter message.
That eventually led to lunch at a pub in the East Village, where they discussed their families and how to navigate New York City. Murphy then treated Heath and his wife to a Yankees game, and they have plans to meet up again, a friendship borne of walk-up music.
But if religion informed Murphy’s choice of music, movies have inspired one of his counterparts, Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen that one U.F.C. movie with Kevin James in it,” d’Arnaud said, referring to the comedy “Here Comes the Boom,” about a teacher who trains to become a mixed martial arts fighter. “The teacher talks about how in war they used to play their battle songs to get you ready for the war. And for me, that moment, that’s my war with the pitcher, so I need something to get me hyped up and get me ready to go out there and see a baseball coming at me at 95 miles an hour.”
The song that meets d’Arnaud’s lofty standards this year is “0 to 100 / The Catch Up” by Drake. “Because when I walk up to the plate, it makes me feel” — d’Arnaud paused, searching for the right words — “really good.”
Players used to have little input about what song was played before their at-bats. In 1970, Nancy Faust, the popular organist for the Chicago White Sox who retired in 2010 and is believed to be the founder of walk-up music, started playing hitters’ state songs as they came to the plate. She then started experimenting with other songs for various players, and they became her signature.
“I had the ability to be able to just play spontaneous,” Faust said.
But in the mid-1980s, with better technology, walk-up music transformed into a player-driven phenomenon. Players chose their own songs, and walk-up music began its evolution to where it is today.
Photo
Earlier this season, the Christian musician Brandon Heath found out Yankees catcher John Ryan Murphy walked to the plate to “Give Me Your Eyes,” one of Heath’s most popular songs. CreditMark Humphrey/Associated Press; Hannah Foslien/Getty
For the Mets, that means having members of the audio staff ask players in spring training for three or four songs they want to use in the regular season and to begin compiling playlists.
Song choices range from merengue to Macklemore. Matt Harvey consulted with a music editor to create his own Frank Sinatra-infused clip; on the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez used “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” by Journey earlier this season. Some players change their song every two years; others change it every other homestand.
Mike Piazza was famous for choosing a whole bunch of songs when he played for the Mets. “He would call for something pregame, and we wanted to try to get it for him,” Gunkel said, “so we’d actually send an intern out to a record store.” Now, of course, when players request a new song, the Mets’ audio staff simply finds it digitally.
For players, the process for choosing a song can be more complicated than it appears. First, they have to find a 15-second clip that is clean, which is not always easy. The crowd, Granderson noted, contains thousands of people of all ages.
Faust said, “At first, when we were playing recorded music, we had to be very mindful — and we weren’t at the beginning — of lyrics.”
To manage, the audio staff members frequently use instrumentals, find clean versions of songs or work around the lyrics they do not want pulsing through the stadium.
Next, the song must be different from other players’ choices because, Granderson said, “you don’t want to double up.”
One of the more notorious cases of doubling up involved “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, which had become the soundtrack of Mariano Rivera’s walks from the bullpen to the mound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUTirIk75vg) . When Yankees fans discovered that the Mets’ Billy Wagner, newly arrived from the Philadelphia Phillies, also used that song (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/sports/baseball/05mets.html) when he came in to close games, they were, naturally, incensed — even though Wagner had been using it for years and even though Rivera said he was hardly in love with “Enter Sandman” in the first place. The uproar underlined the aura of walk-up music.
Songs and entrances for relief pitchers and closers, made popular by the 1989 movie “Major League,” can be more theatrical than those used for hitters — check out “Craig Kimbrel entrance” on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5e33L1L2M) — because of the game situations in which they arise: late innings, game on the line, fans tense.
Photo
Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud is using Drake’s “0 to 100 / The Catch Up” for his walk-up music this season. Credit Al Behrman/Associated Press; Kevin Winter/Getty Images, for Coachella
“That Broadway entrance,” the Mets’ Gunkel called it.
Gunkel noted that most stadiums now had “distributed sound” with speakers in every section, but he remembered a time when all of the stadium’s speakers were entrenched behind center field and “you’d listen for a couple seconds, and you’d try to figure out what song it is.”
Still, Granderson said, even current sound systems “might not do justice to the song you want,” so players have to keep their ears open.
A few lockers away, the Mets rookie outfielder Darrell Ceciliani explained that there were two types of walk-up songs: those that pump up and those that calm down.
Ceciliani, who was called up to the Mets from Class AAA Las Vegas in May and has since been sent back, said that in the minors this season, he was walking out to “All-American Middle Class White Boy” by Thomas Rhett because of its mellowing effect. With the Mets? “I actually don’t have one yet,” he said. “I’ve got to get ahold of somebody to do that.”
Well, maybe if he is called up again.
Some players, like d’Arnaud, care deeply, almost superstitiously, about their walk-up music; others seem more casual about it. When d’Arnaud was mired in a slump in the first month of last season, he cycled through four or five songs before returning to his original Busta Rhymes track. “And I started feeling good again,” he said.
But can walk-up music enhance performance? Jonathan F. Katz, a psychologist who has worked with several professional athletes and teams, including the N.H.L.’s Rangers, said music — which athletes have used to mentally prepare for competition long before walk-up music emerged — was one of several factors that could affect on-field production.
“Music is a factor in getting people in the right mind-set,” Katz said. “Now, the body and the mind work interactively, right? If you’re kind of anxious and nervous, the tension in your arm and how you hold the bat and your grip could be affected.”
He added, “The better the physical and mental state that a batter is when he gets in the batter’s box, the better position he is to hit.”
To cope with the musicless walks to the plate on the road, some players sing to themselves, said Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar, who uses “Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull and Ne-Yo and imagines it playing before his at-bats in other stadiums. (Pillar, incidentally, has a higher career batting average on the road than at home, as do Granderson and d’Arnaud.)
During a recent interview with Pillar, the song “Springsteen,” by the country singer Eric Church, was blaring through a speaker in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse at Citi Field. About 30 seconds in, it cut off, and Pillar got up from his chair to investigate. He glanced at his cellphone, which was attached to the speaker.
“Sorry, I’m a popular person,” he joked to his teammate Justin Smoak. Pillar then set the phone back down, and the music played on.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Enter Sound Man: An Insider’s Look at Baseball’s Walk-Up Music – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/sports/baseball/enter-sound-man-an-insiders-look-at-baseballs-walk-up-music.html?
** Enter Sound Man: An Insider’s Look at Baseball’s Walk-Up Music
————————————————————
By ROB HARMSJULY 31, 2015
At Citi Field, Mike Castellani — “I call myself an audio engineer,” he said — keeps an eye on which Met is headed to the plate and punches a player-specific code into a large pad. Credit Richard Perry/The New York Times
Mike Castellani put aside his pregame dinner, leaned back and smiled. Dressed in a blue polo shirt and gray jeans and twirling a pair of eyeglasses in his hand, he was as ready as he would ever be for the music to begin.
Castellani has been the sound man for the Mets since 1994, through some good years and numerous bad ones. From a room overlooking Citi Field filled with 35 monitors and co-workers banging on keypads, he can turn on the music in one of the stadium’s ritzy lounges with the flick of a finger.
With another press, he can cue the walk-up music that plays over the public-address system when Mets batters stroll to the plate or when the team’s relief pitchers jog in from the bullpen.
“Everything you hear in the park,” said Tim Gunkel, an official in the Mets’ production and marketing department, “goes through him.”
Which means that Castellani, 57, is providing the soundtrack for what may be a season of resurgence for the Mets, who, at least for now, are competing for a division title after six straight years of losing records.
Photo
For his walk-up music this season, Curtis Granderson has regularly used “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg. Credit Mike Mcginnis/Getty Images; Jonathan Short/Invision, via Associated Press
Walk-up music is typically reserved for the home team in baseball and has loudly made its presence felt. The players pick the songs, and their choices often reflect pop culture. That means a lot of the lyrics are not necessarily suitable for ballpark audiences, although teams, by using only carefully chosen snippets of the songs, are generally able to sidestep that issue.
Castellani and others like him in ballparks around the major leagues make sure it all works — that the songs match the player, inning after inning, game after game, month after month. As the games become more important, the music takes on a little more meaning.
At Citi Field, Castellani — “I call myself an audio engineer,” he said — keeps an eye on which Met is headed to the plate, or to the mound, and punches a player-specific code into a large pad in front of him.
To avoid confusion, he sorts the songs to be used not by the name of the artist but by that of the player. To play the song for a Lucas Duda at-bat earlier this season, for example, he entered the code “LD1.” Soon, “All Along the Watchtower,” the Jimi Hendrix version, was thumping through the stadium’s speakers as Duda approached the batter’s box.
“We can be somewhere else not looking at the field, and we hear the song and we’re like, ‘Lucas Duda’s coming up,’ ” Gunkel said. “And I think the fans do that, too.”
But it is not just the fans who are listening. Some time ago, the Mets’ Curtis Granderson remembered, there was an umpire who really liked the song “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang,” a rap classic by Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg.
Granderson used to walk up to the plate to that song, and the umpire felt compelled to praise the choice.
“He said, ‘By far the best song in the big leagues,’ ” Granderson recalled.
Umpires, fans, users of social media — they all have told Granderson, who this season has regularly used “Drop It Like It’s Hot” by Snoop Dogg, what they think of his musical preferences.
And in one instance, several years ago, when Granderson was using “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See,” he ran into Busta Rhymes, the man who sings it, when they were both on a talk show. (No, they did not break out in song.)
Other times, the artist approaches the athlete. Earlier this season, the Christian musician Brandon Heath found out that Yankees catcher John Ryan Murphy walked to the plate to “Give Me Your Eyes,” one of Heath’s most popular songs. Heath, who said he had always wanted to be a part of a player’s walk-up music, wrote Murphy a Twitter message.
That eventually led to lunch at a pub in the East Village, where they discussed their families and how to navigate New York City. Murphy then treated Heath and his wife to a Yankees game, and they have plans to meet up again, a friendship borne of walk-up music.
But if religion informed Murphy’s choice of music, movies have inspired one of his counterparts, Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen that one U.F.C. movie with Kevin James in it,” d’Arnaud said, referring to the comedy “Here Comes the Boom,” about a teacher who trains to become a mixed martial arts fighter. “The teacher talks about how in war they used to play their battle songs to get you ready for the war. And for me, that moment, that’s my war with the pitcher, so I need something to get me hyped up and get me ready to go out there and see a baseball coming at me at 95 miles an hour.”
The song that meets d’Arnaud’s lofty standards this year is “0 to 100 / The Catch Up” by Drake. “Because when I walk up to the plate, it makes me feel” — d’Arnaud paused, searching for the right words — “really good.”
Players used to have little input about what song was played before their at-bats. In 1970, Nancy Faust, the popular organist for the Chicago White Sox who retired in 2010 and is believed to be the founder of walk-up music, started playing hitters’ state songs as they came to the plate. She then started experimenting with other songs for various players, and they became her signature.
“I had the ability to be able to just play spontaneous,” Faust said.
But in the mid-1980s, with better technology, walk-up music transformed into a player-driven phenomenon. Players chose their own songs, and walk-up music began its evolution to where it is today.
Photo
Earlier this season, the Christian musician Brandon Heath found out Yankees catcher John Ryan Murphy walked to the plate to “Give Me Your Eyes,” one of Heath’s most popular songs. CreditMark Humphrey/Associated Press; Hannah Foslien/Getty
For the Mets, that means having members of the audio staff ask players in spring training for three or four songs they want to use in the regular season and to begin compiling playlists.
Song choices range from merengue to Macklemore. Matt Harvey consulted with a music editor to create his own Frank Sinatra-infused clip; on the Yankees, Alex Rodriguez used “Don’t Stop Believin’ ” by Journey earlier this season. Some players change their song every two years; others change it every other homestand.
Mike Piazza was famous for choosing a whole bunch of songs when he played for the Mets. “He would call for something pregame, and we wanted to try to get it for him,” Gunkel said, “so we’d actually send an intern out to a record store.” Now, of course, when players request a new song, the Mets’ audio staff simply finds it digitally.
For players, the process for choosing a song can be more complicated than it appears. First, they have to find a 15-second clip that is clean, which is not always easy. The crowd, Granderson noted, contains thousands of people of all ages.
Faust said, “At first, when we were playing recorded music, we had to be very mindful — and we weren’t at the beginning — of lyrics.”
To manage, the audio staff members frequently use instrumentals, find clean versions of songs or work around the lyrics they do not want pulsing through the stadium.
Next, the song must be different from other players’ choices because, Granderson said, “you don’t want to double up.”
One of the more notorious cases of doubling up involved “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, which had become the soundtrack of Mariano Rivera’s walks from the bullpen to the mound (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUTirIk75vg) . When Yankees fans discovered that the Mets’ Billy Wagner, newly arrived from the Philadelphia Phillies, also used that song (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/sports/baseball/05mets.html) when he came in to close games, they were, naturally, incensed — even though Wagner had been using it for years and even though Rivera said he was hardly in love with “Enter Sandman” in the first place. The uproar underlined the aura of walk-up music.
Songs and entrances for relief pitchers and closers, made popular by the 1989 movie “Major League,” can be more theatrical than those used for hitters — check out “Craig Kimbrel entrance” on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p5e33L1L2M) — because of the game situations in which they arise: late innings, game on the line, fans tense.
Photo
Mets catcher Travis d’Arnaud is using Drake’s “0 to 100 / The Catch Up” for his walk-up music this season. Credit Al Behrman/Associated Press; Kevin Winter/Getty Images, for Coachella
“That Broadway entrance,” the Mets’ Gunkel called it.
Gunkel noted that most stadiums now had “distributed sound” with speakers in every section, but he remembered a time when all of the stadium’s speakers were entrenched behind center field and “you’d listen for a couple seconds, and you’d try to figure out what song it is.”
Still, Granderson said, even current sound systems “might not do justice to the song you want,” so players have to keep their ears open.
A few lockers away, the Mets rookie outfielder Darrell Ceciliani explained that there were two types of walk-up songs: those that pump up and those that calm down.
Ceciliani, who was called up to the Mets from Class AAA Las Vegas in May and has since been sent back, said that in the minors this season, he was walking out to “All-American Middle Class White Boy” by Thomas Rhett because of its mellowing effect. With the Mets? “I actually don’t have one yet,” he said. “I’ve got to get ahold of somebody to do that.”
Well, maybe if he is called up again.
Some players, like d’Arnaud, care deeply, almost superstitiously, about their walk-up music; others seem more casual about it. When d’Arnaud was mired in a slump in the first month of last season, he cycled through four or five songs before returning to his original Busta Rhymes track. “And I started feeling good again,” he said.
But can walk-up music enhance performance? Jonathan F. Katz, a psychologist who has worked with several professional athletes and teams, including the N.H.L.’s Rangers, said music — which athletes have used to mentally prepare for competition long before walk-up music emerged — was one of several factors that could affect on-field production.
“Music is a factor in getting people in the right mind-set,” Katz said. “Now, the body and the mind work interactively, right? If you’re kind of anxious and nervous, the tension in your arm and how you hold the bat and your grip could be affected.”
He added, “The better the physical and mental state that a batter is when he gets in the batter’s box, the better position he is to hit.”
To cope with the musicless walks to the plate on the road, some players sing to themselves, said Blue Jays outfielder Kevin Pillar, who uses “Time of Our Lives” by Pitbull and Ne-Yo and imagines it playing before his at-bats in other stadiums. (Pillar, incidentally, has a higher career batting average on the road than at home, as do Granderson and d’Arnaud.)
During a recent interview with Pillar, the song “Springsteen,” by the country singer Eric Church, was blaring through a speaker in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse at Citi Field. About 30 seconds in, it cut off, and Pillar got up from his chair to investigate. He glanced at his cellphone, which was attached to the speaker.
“Sorry, I’m a popular person,” he joked to his teammate Justin Smoak. Pillar then set the phone back down, and the music played on.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
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Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Has a New Director – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/nyregion/institute-of-jazz-studies-at-rutgers-has-a-new-director.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150731
** Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Has a New Director
————————————————————
By TAMMY LA GORCEJULY 31, 2015
Wayne Winborne, the new executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
Wayne Winborne has a knack for reeling off liner-note trivia from classic ’70s jazz albums, and in his 20s he gave serious thought to becoming a professional saxophone player. But he has never sat behind a circulation desk or charged anybody a fine for returning a past-due book.
So when friends started telling him last spring that he should apply to be the executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Newark (http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/index1.html) , home to the country’s most extensive jazz archive and library, he demurred.
“I heard the words ‘library’ and ‘archive’ and I thought, ‘I’m not that guy,’ ” he said recently from a conference room at the institute that doubles as a gallery for showing off treasures like Curly Russell’s bass (http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/curlyRussell/) .
For the last five years, Mr. Winborne, 55, of Brooklyn, had run the Winborne Group (http://www.thewinbornegroup.com/) , a consulting company with offices in New York City and Los Angeles. Eight years before that, he was vice president for business diversity outreach at Prudential Financial in Newark.
“Then I found out about the vision behind this job, and I thought, ‘That’s me,’ ” he said. Mr. Winborne accepted the newly created position in June. He started on July 15.
“Wayne is positioned to be the catalyst for exponentially growing interest in jazz and audiences for jazz,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (http://www.njpac.org/) and co-chairman of the search committee that selected Mr. Winborne after a nationwide screening process that lasted months.
The institute, which houses more than 150,000 recordings and 6,000 books, was founded in 1952. Before Ken Burns (http://kenburns.com/) made his 10-part, Emmy (http://www.emmys.com/) -nominated mini-series “Jazz” in 2000, he spent a year exploring the institute’s trove of recordings. And the actor Forest Whitaker (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001845/) visited the archives in 2011 for research on a film about Louis Armstrong, said Adriana P. Cuervo (http://adrianacuervo.com/wp/) , associate director of the institute.
In 2013, it was designated a literary landmark by the New Jersey Center for the Book (http://www.njcenterforthebook.org/) , an affiliate of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/) . Students and faculty members in the Rutgers Master of Arts in Jazz History and Research program rely heavily on its collections, Ms. Cuervo said.
The program is the only one of its kind in the United States, said Peter T. Englot, senior vice chancellor for public affairs and chief of staff at Rutgers.
But Mr. Schreiber knows that it will take more than celebrity sightings at the institute — even if it is an authoritative site for jazz academics — to drum up mainstream interest in jazz.
Photo
Mr. Winborne in the institute’s extensive archives. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
“What’s the cliché about the theater?” Mr. Schreiber said. “They call it ‘the great invalid.’ Jazz has been the great invalid for 100 years. It’s always being referred to as a dying art form.”
Brimming with books, vinyl records, tapes, CDs, DVDs and dozens of instruments played by jazz greats, including a Lester Young (http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_young_lester.htm) saxophone and one of Miles Davis’s (http://www.milesdavis.com/) trumpets, the institute seems better suited to memorialize jazz than to resuscitate it. Yet jazz seems to be gaining new life, Mr. Schreiber said.
“There is actually more jazz training in universities than in history right now, and there are more young players out there working than ever before,” he said.
Mr. Winborne is convinced that the institute can help to promote jazz and revive its swing.
“We’re going to leverage what we have here to become a pipeline to the wider community,” he said. Public programs are still in the planning stages, but Mr. Winborne intends to work with local jazz personalities, as well as institutions such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and WBGO-FM (https://www.wbgo.org/) , to create events like a jazz film festival and what he called “a series of conversations.”
Photo
Adriana P. Cuervo, associate director, with Miles Davis’s trumpet. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
“I hate to call it a lecture series because that sounds like academia, and that’s the kiss of death,” he said.
Maybe so, but Mr. Winborne is no stranger to academia. Before attending graduate school at New York University (http://www.nyu.edu/) in 1982, he taught jazz history and appreciation as a student at Stanford University (https://www.stanford.edu/) and spent a summer studying at the Berklee College of Music (https://www.berklee.edu/) in Boston.
“I used to go sit in at Wally’s, (http://www.wallyscafe.com/) which was this jazz place in Boston that was known for its jam sessions,” said Mr. Winborne. Those sessions convinced him not to pursue a career as a musician, he said.
“I’d go play with cats like Jean Toussaint (http://jeantoussaint.com/bio/) , who played with Art Blakey (http://artblakey.com/) and those guys, and I would get absolutely sliced up,” he said. “But I was fearless and I loved the music and the camaraderie.”
Mr. Winborne said he plans to apply that same fearlessness at the institute. He hopes the result will be a camaraderie around Newark to rival some of the tightest-knit jazz communities ever documented in its archives.
“The buzz we all felt when we were in our 20s about this music? That’s coming back,” he said. “We’re going to grow that here.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Has a New Director – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/nyregion/institute-of-jazz-studies-at-rutgers-has-a-new-director.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150731
** Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Has a New Director
————————————————————
By TAMMY LA GORCEJULY 31, 2015
Wayne Winborne, the new executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
Wayne Winborne has a knack for reeling off liner-note trivia from classic ’70s jazz albums, and in his 20s he gave serious thought to becoming a professional saxophone player. But he has never sat behind a circulation desk or charged anybody a fine for returning a past-due book.
So when friends started telling him last spring that he should apply to be the executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Newark (http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/index1.html) , home to the country’s most extensive jazz archive and library, he demurred.
“I heard the words ‘library’ and ‘archive’ and I thought, ‘I’m not that guy,’ ” he said recently from a conference room at the institute that doubles as a gallery for showing off treasures like Curly Russell’s bass (http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/curlyRussell/) .
For the last five years, Mr. Winborne, 55, of Brooklyn, had run the Winborne Group (http://www.thewinbornegroup.com/) , a consulting company with offices in New York City and Los Angeles. Eight years before that, he was vice president for business diversity outreach at Prudential Financial in Newark.
“Then I found out about the vision behind this job, and I thought, ‘That’s me,’ ” he said. Mr. Winborne accepted the newly created position in June. He started on July 15.
“Wayne is positioned to be the catalyst for exponentially growing interest in jazz and audiences for jazz,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (http://www.njpac.org/) and co-chairman of the search committee that selected Mr. Winborne after a nationwide screening process that lasted months.
The institute, which houses more than 150,000 recordings and 6,000 books, was founded in 1952. Before Ken Burns (http://kenburns.com/) made his 10-part, Emmy (http://www.emmys.com/) -nominated mini-series “Jazz” in 2000, he spent a year exploring the institute’s trove of recordings. And the actor Forest Whitaker (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001845/) visited the archives in 2011 for research on a film about Louis Armstrong, said Adriana P. Cuervo (http://adrianacuervo.com/wp/) , associate director of the institute.
In 2013, it was designated a literary landmark by the New Jersey Center for the Book (http://www.njcenterforthebook.org/) , an affiliate of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/) . Students and faculty members in the Rutgers Master of Arts in Jazz History and Research program rely heavily on its collections, Ms. Cuervo said.
The program is the only one of its kind in the United States, said Peter T. Englot, senior vice chancellor for public affairs and chief of staff at Rutgers.
But Mr. Schreiber knows that it will take more than celebrity sightings at the institute — even if it is an authoritative site for jazz academics — to drum up mainstream interest in jazz.
Photo
Mr. Winborne in the institute’s extensive archives. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
“What’s the cliché about the theater?” Mr. Schreiber said. “They call it ‘the great invalid.’ Jazz has been the great invalid for 100 years. It’s always being referred to as a dying art form.”
Brimming with books, vinyl records, tapes, CDs, DVDs and dozens of instruments played by jazz greats, including a Lester Young (http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_young_lester.htm) saxophone and one of Miles Davis’s (http://www.milesdavis.com/) trumpets, the institute seems better suited to memorialize jazz than to resuscitate it. Yet jazz seems to be gaining new life, Mr. Schreiber said.
“There is actually more jazz training in universities than in history right now, and there are more young players out there working than ever before,” he said.
Mr. Winborne is convinced that the institute can help to promote jazz and revive its swing.
“We’re going to leverage what we have here to become a pipeline to the wider community,” he said. Public programs are still in the planning stages, but Mr. Winborne intends to work with local jazz personalities, as well as institutions such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and WBGO-FM (https://www.wbgo.org/) , to create events like a jazz film festival and what he called “a series of conversations.”
Photo
Adriana P. Cuervo, associate director, with Miles Davis’s trumpet. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
“I hate to call it a lecture series because that sounds like academia, and that’s the kiss of death,” he said.
Maybe so, but Mr. Winborne is no stranger to academia. Before attending graduate school at New York University (http://www.nyu.edu/) in 1982, he taught jazz history and appreciation as a student at Stanford University (https://www.stanford.edu/) and spent a summer studying at the Berklee College of Music (https://www.berklee.edu/) in Boston.
“I used to go sit in at Wally’s, (http://www.wallyscafe.com/) which was this jazz place in Boston that was known for its jam sessions,” said Mr. Winborne. Those sessions convinced him not to pursue a career as a musician, he said.
“I’d go play with cats like Jean Toussaint (http://jeantoussaint.com/bio/) , who played with Art Blakey (http://artblakey.com/) and those guys, and I would get absolutely sliced up,” he said. “But I was fearless and I loved the music and the camaraderie.”
Mr. Winborne said he plans to apply that same fearlessness at the institute. He hopes the result will be a camaraderie around Newark to rival some of the tightest-knit jazz communities ever documented in its archives.
“The buzz we all felt when we were in our 20s about this music? That’s coming back,” he said. “We’re going to grow that here.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Has a New Director – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/nyregion/institute-of-jazz-studies-at-rutgers-has-a-new-director.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150731
** Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers Has a New Director
————————————————————
By TAMMY LA GORCEJULY 31, 2015
Wayne Winborne, the new executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
Wayne Winborne has a knack for reeling off liner-note trivia from classic ’70s jazz albums, and in his 20s he gave serious thought to becoming a professional saxophone player. But he has never sat behind a circulation desk or charged anybody a fine for returning a past-due book.
So when friends started telling him last spring that he should apply to be the executive director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, Newark (http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/index1.html) , home to the country’s most extensive jazz archive and library, he demurred.
“I heard the words ‘library’ and ‘archive’ and I thought, ‘I’m not that guy,’ ” he said recently from a conference room at the institute that doubles as a gallery for showing off treasures like Curly Russell’s bass (http://newarkwww.rutgers.edu/IJS/curlyRussell/) .
For the last five years, Mr. Winborne, 55, of Brooklyn, had run the Winborne Group (http://www.thewinbornegroup.com/) , a consulting company with offices in New York City and Los Angeles. Eight years before that, he was vice president for business diversity outreach at Prudential Financial in Newark.
“Then I found out about the vision behind this job, and I thought, ‘That’s me,’ ” he said. Mr. Winborne accepted the newly created position in June. He started on July 15.
“Wayne is positioned to be the catalyst for exponentially growing interest in jazz and audiences for jazz,” said John Schreiber, president and chief executive of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (http://www.njpac.org/) and co-chairman of the search committee that selected Mr. Winborne after a nationwide screening process that lasted months.
The institute, which houses more than 150,000 recordings and 6,000 books, was founded in 1952. Before Ken Burns (http://kenburns.com/) made his 10-part, Emmy (http://www.emmys.com/) -nominated mini-series “Jazz” in 2000, he spent a year exploring the institute’s trove of recordings. And the actor Forest Whitaker (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001845/) visited the archives in 2011 for research on a film about Louis Armstrong, said Adriana P. Cuervo (http://adrianacuervo.com/wp/) , associate director of the institute.
In 2013, it was designated a literary landmark by the New Jersey Center for the Book (http://www.njcenterforthebook.org/) , an affiliate of the Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/) . Students and faculty members in the Rutgers Master of Arts in Jazz History and Research program rely heavily on its collections, Ms. Cuervo said.
The program is the only one of its kind in the United States, said Peter T. Englot, senior vice chancellor for public affairs and chief of staff at Rutgers.
But Mr. Schreiber knows that it will take more than celebrity sightings at the institute — even if it is an authoritative site for jazz academics — to drum up mainstream interest in jazz.
Photo
Mr. Winborne in the institute’s extensive archives. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
“What’s the cliché about the theater?” Mr. Schreiber said. “They call it ‘the great invalid.’ Jazz has been the great invalid for 100 years. It’s always being referred to as a dying art form.”
Brimming with books, vinyl records, tapes, CDs, DVDs and dozens of instruments played by jazz greats, including a Lester Young (http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_young_lester.htm) saxophone and one of Miles Davis’s (http://www.milesdavis.com/) trumpets, the institute seems better suited to memorialize jazz than to resuscitate it. Yet jazz seems to be gaining new life, Mr. Schreiber said.
“There is actually more jazz training in universities than in history right now, and there are more young players out there working than ever before,” he said.
Mr. Winborne is convinced that the institute can help to promote jazz and revive its swing.
“We’re going to leverage what we have here to become a pipeline to the wider community,” he said. Public programs are still in the planning stages, but Mr. Winborne intends to work with local jazz personalities, as well as institutions such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center and WBGO-FM (https://www.wbgo.org/) , to create events like a jazz film festival and what he called “a series of conversations.”
Photo
Adriana P. Cuervo, associate director, with Miles Davis’s trumpet. Credit Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times
“I hate to call it a lecture series because that sounds like academia, and that’s the kiss of death,” he said.
Maybe so, but Mr. Winborne is no stranger to academia. Before attending graduate school at New York University (http://www.nyu.edu/) in 1982, he taught jazz history and appreciation as a student at Stanford University (https://www.stanford.edu/) and spent a summer studying at the Berklee College of Music (https://www.berklee.edu/) in Boston.
“I used to go sit in at Wally’s, (http://www.wallyscafe.com/) which was this jazz place in Boston that was known for its jam sessions,” said Mr. Winborne. Those sessions convinced him not to pursue a career as a musician, he said.
“I’d go play with cats like Jean Toussaint (http://jeantoussaint.com/bio/) , who played with Art Blakey (http://artblakey.com/) and those guys, and I would get absolutely sliced up,” he said. “But I was fearless and I loved the music and the camaraderie.”
Mr. Winborne said he plans to apply that same fearlessness at the institute. He hopes the result will be a camaraderie around Newark to rival some of the tightest-knit jazz communities ever documented in its archives.
“The buzz we all felt when we were in our 20s about this music? That’s coming back,” he said. “We’re going to grow that here.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=c0998bc965) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=c0998bc965&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Hudson Reporter – Note Worthy Resident oversees world-renowned institute dedicated to jazz
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://hudsonreporter.com/bookmark/26778041-Note-Worthy-br-font-size-2-i-Resident-oversees-world-renowned-institute-dedicated-to-jazz-big-big-br-____________-br-center-b
**
————————————————————
Note Worthy
Resident oversees world-renowned institute dedicated to jazz
by Joseph Passantino
Reporter staff writer
Jul 29, 2015
http://matchbin-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/public/sites/383/assets/2Q6U_07bayjazz22_1_mh.jpg
VINCENT PELOTE (picture: Ed Berger)
If you’re a jazz aficionado with degrees in music education and library science, what could be better than managing the world’s foremost collection of items related to your favorite genre? Nothing, according to Bayonne resident Vincent Pelote, director of operations for the Institute of Jazz Studies, housed at Rutgers University in Newark.
For Pelote, 61, his recent ascension to what he considers his own pinnacle of jazz is nothing short of a dream come true. He has worked at the institute in various posts since the 1970s.
Pelote is a Jersey City native and former Union City resident.
“It’s not just a job, it’s a great place to be,” he said. “This is like a second home.”
Think of what the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is to baseball, and you will understand what the institute is to jazz, and to Pelote.
Starting small, the institute was founded by Hunter College English professor Marshall Stearns as a library in a Greenwich Village apartment in 1952. But since being relocated to Rutgers in 1966, it has grown to epic proportions, now housing more than 100,000 recordings, 30,000 photos, and 5,000 volumes dating from the early 1900s.
The institute includes a large and comprehensive collection of jazz journals from all over the world, including Denmark, England, France, Germany, and South America.
“Jazz is worldwide, even though it’s an American creation,” Pelote said. “It’s the United States’s contribution to world culture.”
The institute also includes many instruments from jazz musicians, as well as newspaper and magazine archives with clippings of just about every noteworthy article about jazz.
“Our research collection is world renowned,” Pelote said.
The information housed there is so well regarded that when documentarian Ken Burns’s crew researched for his series on jazz they spent close to a year at the institute.
And that’s where Pelote comes in. He oversees day-to-day operations of the institute. That includes archival collections, reference materials and the staff that deals with them, and all books, CDs, LPs, and DVDs.
“Just about anything we need to keep this place viable,” he said.
Pelote is also involved in the planning of the facility’s concert series, roundtables, and guest lectures.
Rutgers’s arts, culture, and media department students use the institute extensively, as do many others.
“We’re here for everybody,” Pelote said. “We serve anybody and everybody.”
Pelote’s interest in jazz was awakened by his father, who liked jazz, and his uncle Lester Pelote, a jazz guitarist.
“He played a mean guitar,” Pelote said. “He was fantastic.”
Uncle Lester gave Pelote lessons and continually encouraged his interest in jazz. Pelote earned an undergraduate degree in music education and a master’s in library science, two degrees that serve him well in his new post.
Bayonne background
Pelote’s new job in Newark is only a few miles away from Bayonne, his adopted hometown.
But Pelote’s city roots run deep, as a child playing in what is now Stephen R. Gregg Park, shopping on Broadway as a teenager, and then student teaching at Bayonne High School.
“I used to say I may one day wind up living here,” Pelote recalls. “It’s a beautiful town. I always liked Bayonne.”
_____________
“As I told my wife, if I can’t be a player, this is what I want to do.” – Vincent Pelote
____________
One day in 1994 he and his wife looked at a Roosevelt Terrace house, and that was it. They’ve been here ever since.
Future institute plans
While Pelote never taught music after college, nor had an extensive music performing career, he has no regrets, because he now has the job that fits him best.
“As I told my wife, if I can’t be a player, this is what I want to do,” he said. “This is wonderful.”
His goals include collaborative projects with other institutions in Newark, such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Newark Museum, and WBGO, the city’s jazz station.
“We want to do more programming, more concerts, and panel discussions,” he said. “Stuff like that. And raise the profile of the institute to reach a broader population. We’re known to the jazz heads, but we want to get known by more.”
Joseph Passantino may be reached at JoePass@hudsonreporter.com. (mailto:JoePass@hudsonreporter.com) To comment on this story online visit www.hudsonreporter.com.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=3469dbbb3f) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=3469dbbb3f&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Hudson Reporter – Note Worthy Resident oversees world-renowned institute dedicated to jazz
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://hudsonreporter.com/bookmark/26778041-Note-Worthy-br-font-size-2-i-Resident-oversees-world-renowned-institute-dedicated-to-jazz-big-big-br-____________-br-center-b
**
————————————————————
Note Worthy
Resident oversees world-renowned institute dedicated to jazz
by Joseph Passantino
Reporter staff writer
Jul 29, 2015
http://matchbin-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/public/sites/383/assets/2Q6U_07bayjazz22_1_mh.jpg
VINCENT PELOTE (picture: Ed Berger)
If you’re a jazz aficionado with degrees in music education and library science, what could be better than managing the world’s foremost collection of items related to your favorite genre? Nothing, according to Bayonne resident Vincent Pelote, director of operations for the Institute of Jazz Studies, housed at Rutgers University in Newark.
For Pelote, 61, his recent ascension to what he considers his own pinnacle of jazz is nothing short of a dream come true. He has worked at the institute in various posts since the 1970s.
Pelote is a Jersey City native and former Union City resident.
“It’s not just a job, it’s a great place to be,” he said. “This is like a second home.”
Think of what the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is to baseball, and you will understand what the institute is to jazz, and to Pelote.
Starting small, the institute was founded by Hunter College English professor Marshall Stearns as a library in a Greenwich Village apartment in 1952. But since being relocated to Rutgers in 1966, it has grown to epic proportions, now housing more than 100,000 recordings, 30,000 photos, and 5,000 volumes dating from the early 1900s.
The institute includes a large and comprehensive collection of jazz journals from all over the world, including Denmark, England, France, Germany, and South America.
“Jazz is worldwide, even though it’s an American creation,” Pelote said. “It’s the United States’s contribution to world culture.”
The institute also includes many instruments from jazz musicians, as well as newspaper and magazine archives with clippings of just about every noteworthy article about jazz.
“Our research collection is world renowned,” Pelote said.
The information housed there is so well regarded that when documentarian Ken Burns’s crew researched for his series on jazz they spent close to a year at the institute.
And that’s where Pelote comes in. He oversees day-to-day operations of the institute. That includes archival collections, reference materials and the staff that deals with them, and all books, CDs, LPs, and DVDs.
“Just about anything we need to keep this place viable,” he said.
Pelote is also involved in the planning of the facility’s concert series, roundtables, and guest lectures.
Rutgers’s arts, culture, and media department students use the institute extensively, as do many others.
“We’re here for everybody,” Pelote said. “We serve anybody and everybody.”
Pelote’s interest in jazz was awakened by his father, who liked jazz, and his uncle Lester Pelote, a jazz guitarist.
“He played a mean guitar,” Pelote said. “He was fantastic.”
Uncle Lester gave Pelote lessons and continually encouraged his interest in jazz. Pelote earned an undergraduate degree in music education and a master’s in library science, two degrees that serve him well in his new post.
Bayonne background
Pelote’s new job in Newark is only a few miles away from Bayonne, his adopted hometown.
But Pelote’s city roots run deep, as a child playing in what is now Stephen R. Gregg Park, shopping on Broadway as a teenager, and then student teaching at Bayonne High School.
“I used to say I may one day wind up living here,” Pelote recalls. “It’s a beautiful town. I always liked Bayonne.”
_____________
“As I told my wife, if I can’t be a player, this is what I want to do.” – Vincent Pelote
____________
One day in 1994 he and his wife looked at a Roosevelt Terrace house, and that was it. They’ve been here ever since.
Future institute plans
While Pelote never taught music after college, nor had an extensive music performing career, he has no regrets, because he now has the job that fits him best.
“As I told my wife, if I can’t be a player, this is what I want to do,” he said. “This is wonderful.”
His goals include collaborative projects with other institutions in Newark, such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Newark Museum, and WBGO, the city’s jazz station.
“We want to do more programming, more concerts, and panel discussions,” he said. “Stuff like that. And raise the profile of the institute to reach a broader population. We’re known to the jazz heads, but we want to get known by more.”
Joseph Passantino may be reached at JoePass@hudsonreporter.com. (mailto:JoePass@hudsonreporter.com) To comment on this story online visit www.hudsonreporter.com.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=3469dbbb3f) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=3469dbbb3f&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Hudson Reporter – Note Worthy Resident oversees world-renowned institute dedicated to jazz
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://hudsonreporter.com/bookmark/26778041-Note-Worthy-br-font-size-2-i-Resident-oversees-world-renowned-institute-dedicated-to-jazz-big-big-br-____________-br-center-b
**
————————————————————
Note Worthy
Resident oversees world-renowned institute dedicated to jazz
by Joseph Passantino
Reporter staff writer
Jul 29, 2015
http://matchbin-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/public/sites/383/assets/2Q6U_07bayjazz22_1_mh.jpg
VINCENT PELOTE (picture: Ed Berger)
If you’re a jazz aficionado with degrees in music education and library science, what could be better than managing the world’s foremost collection of items related to your favorite genre? Nothing, according to Bayonne resident Vincent Pelote, director of operations for the Institute of Jazz Studies, housed at Rutgers University in Newark.
For Pelote, 61, his recent ascension to what he considers his own pinnacle of jazz is nothing short of a dream come true. He has worked at the institute in various posts since the 1970s.
Pelote is a Jersey City native and former Union City resident.
“It’s not just a job, it’s a great place to be,” he said. “This is like a second home.”
Think of what the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., is to baseball, and you will understand what the institute is to jazz, and to Pelote.
Starting small, the institute was founded by Hunter College English professor Marshall Stearns as a library in a Greenwich Village apartment in 1952. But since being relocated to Rutgers in 1966, it has grown to epic proportions, now housing more than 100,000 recordings, 30,000 photos, and 5,000 volumes dating from the early 1900s.
The institute includes a large and comprehensive collection of jazz journals from all over the world, including Denmark, England, France, Germany, and South America.
“Jazz is worldwide, even though it’s an American creation,” Pelote said. “It’s the United States’s contribution to world culture.”
The institute also includes many instruments from jazz musicians, as well as newspaper and magazine archives with clippings of just about every noteworthy article about jazz.
“Our research collection is world renowned,” Pelote said.
The information housed there is so well regarded that when documentarian Ken Burns’s crew researched for his series on jazz they spent close to a year at the institute.
And that’s where Pelote comes in. He oversees day-to-day operations of the institute. That includes archival collections, reference materials and the staff that deals with them, and all books, CDs, LPs, and DVDs.
“Just about anything we need to keep this place viable,” he said.
Pelote is also involved in the planning of the facility’s concert series, roundtables, and guest lectures.
Rutgers’s arts, culture, and media department students use the institute extensively, as do many others.
“We’re here for everybody,” Pelote said. “We serve anybody and everybody.”
Pelote’s interest in jazz was awakened by his father, who liked jazz, and his uncle Lester Pelote, a jazz guitarist.
“He played a mean guitar,” Pelote said. “He was fantastic.”
Uncle Lester gave Pelote lessons and continually encouraged his interest in jazz. Pelote earned an undergraduate degree in music education and a master’s in library science, two degrees that serve him well in his new post.
Bayonne background
Pelote’s new job in Newark is only a few miles away from Bayonne, his adopted hometown.
But Pelote’s city roots run deep, as a child playing in what is now Stephen R. Gregg Park, shopping on Broadway as a teenager, and then student teaching at Bayonne High School.
“I used to say I may one day wind up living here,” Pelote recalls. “It’s a beautiful town. I always liked Bayonne.”
_____________
“As I told my wife, if I can’t be a player, this is what I want to do.” – Vincent Pelote
____________
One day in 1994 he and his wife looked at a Roosevelt Terrace house, and that was it. They’ve been here ever since.
Future institute plans
While Pelote never taught music after college, nor had an extensive music performing career, he has no regrets, because he now has the job that fits him best.
“As I told my wife, if I can’t be a player, this is what I want to do,” he said. “This is wonderful.”
His goals include collaborative projects with other institutions in Newark, such as the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Newark Museum, and WBGO, the city’s jazz station.
“We want to do more programming, more concerts, and panel discussions,” he said. “Stuff like that. And raise the profile of the institute to reach a broader population. We’re known to the jazz heads, but we want to get known by more.”
Joseph Passantino may be reached at JoePass@hudsonreporter.com. (mailto:JoePass@hudsonreporter.com) To comment on this story online visit www.hudsonreporter.com.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Review: ‘Pompie’s Place,’ a Blues Club in a Time Warp – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/arts/music/review-pompies-place-a-blues-club-in-a-time-warp.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150731
** Review: ‘Pompie’s Place,’ a Blues Club in a Time Warp
————————————————————
By STEPHEN HOLDEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/stephen_holden/index.html) JULY 31, 2015
Some of New York City’s finer jazz and blues musicians performed Wednesday evening at “Pompie’s Place (http://www.pompiesplace.com/index.html) ,” an imaginary club within a club at Don’t Tell Mama (http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/home) . Pompie is the theatrical sobriquet of the show’s impresario, Arthur Pomposello, the former host of the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel. Addressing the audience as though it were filled with children about to embark on a scary Halloween (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/halloween/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) thrill ride, he pretended the club was “a den of vice.”
The assembled talent was no joke, though, and the tiresome comic shtick was an unnecessary distraction. Under the musical direction of Ehud Asherie, who was also on piano, an ensemble of top-flight musicians, including the brilliant reed player Ken Peplowski, ran through a familiar jazz and blues repertory that began with “St. Louis Blues” and ended with “Blues in the Night.” Each number was vigorously performed by the musicians, who were joined by the singers Lezlie Harrison and Hilary Gardner (http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=425728231&m=425870351) .
Ms. Harrison’s imperious, sultry alter ego and Ms. Gardner’s personification of a down-and-out girl next door made for a nifty juxtaposition of 1930s and ’40s blues archetypes around whom you could imagine all kinds of trouble swirling. In her performance of “Fine and Mellow,” especially, Ms. Harrison embodied one of Duke Ellington’s “sophisticated ladies.” Ms. Gardner evoked an uninhibited answer to the young Doris Day in her rendition of “Ten Cents a Dance.” She was the epitome of what used to be called a tarnished angel.
The two joined forces for several songs, of which the most striking was a closely harmonized duet on “Mood Indigo.” Lending the music extra weight were the drummer Jackie Williams and the bassist David Wong, who rounded out the ensemble.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Review: ‘Pompie’s Place,’ a Blues Club in a Time Warp – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/arts/music/review-pompies-place-a-blues-club-in-a-time-warp.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150731
** Review: ‘Pompie’s Place,’ a Blues Club in a Time Warp
————————————————————
By STEPHEN HOLDEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/stephen_holden/index.html) JULY 31, 2015
Some of New York City’s finer jazz and blues musicians performed Wednesday evening at “Pompie’s Place (http://www.pompiesplace.com/index.html) ,” an imaginary club within a club at Don’t Tell Mama (http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/home) . Pompie is the theatrical sobriquet of the show’s impresario, Arthur Pomposello, the former host of the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel. Addressing the audience as though it were filled with children about to embark on a scary Halloween (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/halloween/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) thrill ride, he pretended the club was “a den of vice.”
The assembled talent was no joke, though, and the tiresome comic shtick was an unnecessary distraction. Under the musical direction of Ehud Asherie, who was also on piano, an ensemble of top-flight musicians, including the brilliant reed player Ken Peplowski, ran through a familiar jazz and blues repertory that began with “St. Louis Blues” and ended with “Blues in the Night.” Each number was vigorously performed by the musicians, who were joined by the singers Lezlie Harrison and Hilary Gardner (http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=425728231&m=425870351) .
Ms. Harrison’s imperious, sultry alter ego and Ms. Gardner’s personification of a down-and-out girl next door made for a nifty juxtaposition of 1930s and ’40s blues archetypes around whom you could imagine all kinds of trouble swirling. In her performance of “Fine and Mellow,” especially, Ms. Harrison embodied one of Duke Ellington’s “sophisticated ladies.” Ms. Gardner evoked an uninhibited answer to the young Doris Day in her rendition of “Ten Cents a Dance.” She was the epitome of what used to be called a tarnished angel.
The two joined forces for several songs, of which the most striking was a closely harmonized duet on “Mood Indigo.” Lending the music extra weight were the drummer Jackie Williams and the bassist David Wong, who rounded out the ensemble.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Review: ‘Pompie’s Place,’ a Blues Club in a Time Warp – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/01/arts/music/review-pompies-place-a-blues-club-in-a-time-warp.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150731
** Review: ‘Pompie’s Place,’ a Blues Club in a Time Warp
————————————————————
By STEPHEN HOLDEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/stephen_holden/index.html) JULY 31, 2015
Some of New York City’s finer jazz and blues musicians performed Wednesday evening at “Pompie’s Place (http://www.pompiesplace.com/index.html) ,” an imaginary club within a club at Don’t Tell Mama (http://www.donttellmamanyc.com/home) . Pompie is the theatrical sobriquet of the show’s impresario, Arthur Pomposello, the former host of the Oak Room at the Algonquin Hotel. Addressing the audience as though it were filled with children about to embark on a scary Halloween (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/h/halloween/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) thrill ride, he pretended the club was “a den of vice.”
The assembled talent was no joke, though, and the tiresome comic shtick was an unnecessary distraction. Under the musical direction of Ehud Asherie, who was also on piano, an ensemble of top-flight musicians, including the brilliant reed player Ken Peplowski, ran through a familiar jazz and blues repertory that began with “St. Louis Blues” and ended with “Blues in the Night.” Each number was vigorously performed by the musicians, who were joined by the singers Lezlie Harrison and Hilary Gardner (http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=425728231&m=425870351) .
Ms. Harrison’s imperious, sultry alter ego and Ms. Gardner’s personification of a down-and-out girl next door made for a nifty juxtaposition of 1930s and ’40s blues archetypes around whom you could imagine all kinds of trouble swirling. In her performance of “Fine and Mellow,” especially, Ms. Harrison embodied one of Duke Ellington’s “sophisticated ladies.” Ms. Gardner evoked an uninhibited answer to the young Doris Day in her rendition of “Ten Cents a Dance.” She was the epitome of what used to be called a tarnished angel.
The two joined forces for several songs, of which the most striking was a closely harmonized duet on “Mood Indigo.” Lending the music extra weight were the drummer Jackie Williams and the bassist David Wong, who rounded out the ensemble.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Van Alexander, Composer of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket,’ Dies at 100 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/arts/music/van-alexander-composer-of-a-tisket-a-tasket-dies-at-100.html?_r=0
Van Alexander, Composer of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket,’ Dies at 100
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIKJULY 29, 2015
The composer Van Alexander worked with musicians including Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday.Credit Mitch Tobias
Van Alexander, a composer and arranger who adapted a nursery rhyme into “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjiNWZrQGZI) which became Ella Fitzgerald’s breakout hit in 1938, died on July 19 at a hospital near his home in Los Angeles. He was 100.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Joyce Harris.
Mr. Alexander began his career arranging for big bands in the 1930s and later composed for film and television. He worked with Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday, among other musicians, and scored films, like “Babyface Nelson” (1957), which starred Mickey Rooney, and “Strait-Jacket” (1964), with Joan Crawford. His television credits included “Bewitched,” “Dennis the Menace” and “The Dean Martin Show.” He led his own band from 1939 to 1944.
His most memorable collaboration came early in his career, after he had landed a job arranging for the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb when he was just 19. Fitzgerald, who was singing with Webb’s band, approached him with the idea of adapting an old nursery rhyme into a swinging jazz number.
“I put the children’s tune into a 32-bar song,” Mr. Alexander told Marc Myers in an interview (http://www.jazzwax.com/2012/05/interview-van-alexander-part-1.html) on his blog JazzWax in 2012. “I also wrote novelty lyrics, including the exchanges between Ella and the band.”
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket” became a jazz standard and a crossover success for Webb and Fitzgerald, who is also credited as a writer on the song. Mr. Alexander, who went by Al Feldman at the time, embraced childhood themes for another song, “Gotta Pebble in My Shoe,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_0sZlUb2A) which Fitzgerald also recorded.
Alexander Van Vliet Feldman was born in Harlem on May 2, 1915. His father was a pharmacist, and his mother was a classical pianist who began teaching him to play when he was 6.
He played the drums and cymbals in the marching band at the former George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan and began writing arrangements for six- and seven-piece ensembles. As a teenager, he also studied music at Columbia University and orchestration and theory with the composer Otto Cesana and frequented nightclubs like the Savoy Ballroom, where he met Webb.
In 1938, he married Beth Baremore. She died in 2011.
He became a bandleader after Webb’s death in 1939 and began calling himself Van Alexander professionally after Eli Oberstein, the head of RCA Victor Records, suggested that he adopt a more marketable name.
In 1945, as the big band era declined, he moved to California. He received a lifetime achievement award (http://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/awards/filmtv/2002/van_alexander.aspx) from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 2002.
In addition to Ms. Harris, he is survived by another daughter, Lynn Tobias; four grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Alexander also wrote popular books about making music and taught his craft to composers, including Johnny Mandel.
“If it wasn’t for Van, I don’t know what I’d be doing,” Mr. Mandel said at a 100th birthday celebration for Mr. Alexander in May.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
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Van Alexander, Composer of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket,’ Dies at 100 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/arts/music/van-alexander-composer-of-a-tisket-a-tasket-dies-at-100.html?_r=0
Van Alexander, Composer of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket,’ Dies at 100
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIKJULY 29, 2015
The composer Van Alexander worked with musicians including Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday.Credit Mitch Tobias
Van Alexander, a composer and arranger who adapted a nursery rhyme into “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjiNWZrQGZI) which became Ella Fitzgerald’s breakout hit in 1938, died on July 19 at a hospital near his home in Los Angeles. He was 100.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Joyce Harris.
Mr. Alexander began his career arranging for big bands in the 1930s and later composed for film and television. He worked with Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday, among other musicians, and scored films, like “Babyface Nelson” (1957), which starred Mickey Rooney, and “Strait-Jacket” (1964), with Joan Crawford. His television credits included “Bewitched,” “Dennis the Menace” and “The Dean Martin Show.” He led his own band from 1939 to 1944.
His most memorable collaboration came early in his career, after he had landed a job arranging for the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb when he was just 19. Fitzgerald, who was singing with Webb’s band, approached him with the idea of adapting an old nursery rhyme into a swinging jazz number.
“I put the children’s tune into a 32-bar song,” Mr. Alexander told Marc Myers in an interview (http://www.jazzwax.com/2012/05/interview-van-alexander-part-1.html) on his blog JazzWax in 2012. “I also wrote novelty lyrics, including the exchanges between Ella and the band.”
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket” became a jazz standard and a crossover success for Webb and Fitzgerald, who is also credited as a writer on the song. Mr. Alexander, who went by Al Feldman at the time, embraced childhood themes for another song, “Gotta Pebble in My Shoe,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_0sZlUb2A) which Fitzgerald also recorded.
Alexander Van Vliet Feldman was born in Harlem on May 2, 1915. His father was a pharmacist, and his mother was a classical pianist who began teaching him to play when he was 6.
He played the drums and cymbals in the marching band at the former George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan and began writing arrangements for six- and seven-piece ensembles. As a teenager, he also studied music at Columbia University and orchestration and theory with the composer Otto Cesana and frequented nightclubs like the Savoy Ballroom, where he met Webb.
In 1938, he married Beth Baremore. She died in 2011.
He became a bandleader after Webb’s death in 1939 and began calling himself Van Alexander professionally after Eli Oberstein, the head of RCA Victor Records, suggested that he adopt a more marketable name.
In 1945, as the big band era declined, he moved to California. He received a lifetime achievement award (http://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/awards/filmtv/2002/van_alexander.aspx) from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 2002.
In addition to Ms. Harris, he is survived by another daughter, Lynn Tobias; four grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Alexander also wrote popular books about making music and taught his craft to composers, including Johnny Mandel.
“If it wasn’t for Van, I don’t know what I’d be doing,” Mr. Mandel said at a 100th birthday celebration for Mr. Alexander in May.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=aab474486c) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=aab474486c&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Van Alexander, Composer of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket,’ Dies at 100 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/arts/music/van-alexander-composer-of-a-tisket-a-tasket-dies-at-100.html?_r=0
Van Alexander, Composer of ‘A-Tisket, A-Tasket,’ Dies at 100
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIKJULY 29, 2015
The composer Van Alexander worked with musicians including Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday.Credit Mitch Tobias
Van Alexander, a composer and arranger who adapted a nursery rhyme into “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjiNWZrQGZI) which became Ella Fitzgerald’s breakout hit in 1938, died on July 19 at a hospital near his home in Los Angeles. He was 100.
His death was confirmed by his daughter Joyce Harris.
Mr. Alexander began his career arranging for big bands in the 1930s and later composed for film and television. He worked with Benny Goodman and Billie Holiday, among other musicians, and scored films, like “Babyface Nelson” (1957), which starred Mickey Rooney, and “Strait-Jacket” (1964), with Joan Crawford. His television credits included “Bewitched,” “Dennis the Menace” and “The Dean Martin Show.” He led his own band from 1939 to 1944.
His most memorable collaboration came early in his career, after he had landed a job arranging for the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb when he was just 19. Fitzgerald, who was singing with Webb’s band, approached him with the idea of adapting an old nursery rhyme into a swinging jazz number.
“I put the children’s tune into a 32-bar song,” Mr. Alexander told Marc Myers in an interview (http://www.jazzwax.com/2012/05/interview-van-alexander-part-1.html) on his blog JazzWax in 2012. “I also wrote novelty lyrics, including the exchanges between Ella and the band.”
“A-Tisket, A-Tasket” became a jazz standard and a crossover success for Webb and Fitzgerald, who is also credited as a writer on the song. Mr. Alexander, who went by Al Feldman at the time, embraced childhood themes for another song, “Gotta Pebble in My Shoe,” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9_0sZlUb2A) which Fitzgerald also recorded.
Alexander Van Vliet Feldman was born in Harlem on May 2, 1915. His father was a pharmacist, and his mother was a classical pianist who began teaching him to play when he was 6.
He played the drums and cymbals in the marching band at the former George Washington High School in Upper Manhattan and began writing arrangements for six- and seven-piece ensembles. As a teenager, he also studied music at Columbia University and orchestration and theory with the composer Otto Cesana and frequented nightclubs like the Savoy Ballroom, where he met Webb.
In 1938, he married Beth Baremore. She died in 2011.
He became a bandleader after Webb’s death in 1939 and began calling himself Van Alexander professionally after Eli Oberstein, the head of RCA Victor Records, suggested that he adopt a more marketable name.
In 1945, as the big band era declined, he moved to California. He received a lifetime achievement award (http://www.ascap.com/eventsawards/awards/filmtv/2002/van_alexander.aspx) from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers in 2002.
In addition to Ms. Harris, he is survived by another daughter, Lynn Tobias; four grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Alexander also wrote popular books about making music and taught his craft to composers, including Johnny Mandel.
“If it wasn’t for Van, I don’t know what I’d be doing,” Mr. Mandel said at a 100th birthday celebration for Mr. Alexander in May.
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Sundays at Slugs’ by Charles Simic | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
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http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jul/29/sundays-at-slugs-ornette-coleman/
** Sundays at Slugs’
————————————————————
By Charles Simic
http://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/slugs.jpg
Donald Ayler, Albert Ayler, Lewis Worrell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Michel Sampson outside Slugs’, 1966
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last month, was one of the great innovators of the free jazz movement that began in the late 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Following Coleman’s death, Charles Simic spoke to his brother Milan Simich, who has produced concerts and recordings for more than twenty-five years, about the avant-garde jazz scene in New York’s East Village that gave rise to that music. Simich’s book A Night At Birdland And Other Places: The Golden Age Of Modern Jazz In New York 1949-1959 will be available from The Jazz Record Center soon.
—The Editors
————————————————————
Charles Simic: There’s been a lot of talk lately in connection with the death of Ornette Coleman about a number of New York jazz clubs in the early 1960s. I was just out of the army in those days, trying to restart my life, working during the day, attending classes at NYU at night, getting married, and only now and then catching a late set at the Five Spot, Village Vanguard, or some other club in the Village. I had no idea you were hanging out with Ornette.
Milan Simich: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there. I think the building is still there. It was a double bill: Archie Shepp’s band and Pharaoh Sanders’s band. I think it was a buck and everybody sat on the floor. I had bought Ornette’s albums even before coming to New York, while still in high school. I remember buying his first album, Something Else!!!!, at Jack Howard’s Record Store on State Street in Chicago in 1960, I think it was. At the same time I picked up a record by Chu Berry, who was a great swing tenor player and the polar opposite of Ornette. The saleswoman, a black lady with short, red-tinted hair, said “You have very good taste, young man.” I was fifteen years old, had been into jazz for a year.
So here I am at this loft four years later and who’s sitting opposite me but Ornette Coleman with a good-looking lady. Between Archie and Pharaoh’s sets somebody put on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet At the Five Spot record. There’s a Booker tune aptly titled “Aggression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsWUkz2Gmc) where twice he does this smeared notes thing and at that moment our eyes met across the room and we both broke out laughing. Me and Ornette. Two guys diggin’ jazz on the Bowery in 1964! After the gig he gave me his address and invited me to visit. About a week later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to the West Village. I forget the street, he had a basement apartment. I hesitated, couldn’t ring the bell, and walked away. Thing is, I was nineteen, what was I going to talk to him about? Next year I finally heard him live at Village Vanguard. I lived near the club at the time so I went a lot during what I think was like a three or four-week gig. I would sit by
the drums and when Ornette would come out of the dressing room and come to the stage, we would say hello. Ornette had this thing, this lick. He repeated this phrase over and over, quicker and quicker on up-tempo tunes, and stop. It was like being hurtled toward a precipice and stopping on the edge. Loved that.
Charles: Tell me about Slug’s, that much-loved and famously dangerous place on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. Though I went to clubs in the Village, I ventured there only once to hear Sun Ra and remember being scared walking from Astor Place and being petrified walking back after midnight. You told me you went a lot, so I wondered what it was like.
Milan: Slugs’, not the singular possessive Slug’s, which is always mistaken. Originally it was Slugs’ Saloon, but the Liquor Authority didn’t allow the name “saloon” to be used. So it became, on those famed posters, Slugs’ In the Far East because of the address, 242 East 3rd Street. The name derives from the spiritualist George Gurdjieff’s term for human beings and how they go through life in a state of waking sleep… slugs. The two original owners, Jerry Schultz and Bob Schoenholt, were in the same Gurdjieff group as our father. Story goes that Jerry just wanted to open a bar for the artists that lived in the hood, but Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, lived in the building and persuaded Jerry to put in music. You’d walk into this long, narrow, storefront-size room with the bar to your left. At the end of the bar, against the wall, was a small stage with an upright piano that could fit drums, bass, and one soloist. Opposite the stage were a few tables, with the rest of the
tables in the back. There was also a jukebox against the wall opposite the bar before you came to the tables. When it became popular, they built another stage in the back and got a baby grand and you could fit either a quintet or Larry Young’s B-3 electric organ.
Charles: What made the gigs at Slugs’ stand out in those years? What was so different from other jazz clubs?
http://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Lee_Morgan.jpg
Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley at Slugs’, circa 1965
Milan: Slugs’ was “different” because it was on the Lower East Side and was the latest embodiment of the avant-garde culture that that area was producing. By the mid-1960s, the Beat vibe had gone out of the Village. Bleecker Street, the coffee houses were just tourist destinations. The East Village as it became known was where the arts were happening; all the painters, writers, poets, musicians, Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, The Living Theater. The Saxophonist Jackie McLean was in Jack Gelber’s Living Theater production of The Connection as an actor and also playing on stage. Actually, if you see Shirley Clarke’s filmed version of the play with Jackie, you can see the scene back then. The cold, dirty lofts, roaches, general bleakness. But you could live cheaply. I paid my rent, food, working as an office boy and had money left over to go to clubs or the opera. Just Google St. Mark’s Place and see who lived there through the years. Leon Trotsky lived at 80 St. Marks Place, where
the Jazz Gallery was and where Sonny Rollins made his comeback, John Coltrane started his own group, and Ornette played with Dizzy. Years later, when Slugs’ had become a bodega, I went in and was stunned how small the place was and just how much great and important music went down there. Slugs’ kept acoustic jazz going in those dark days of Beatles, The Twist, and Fillmore.
Charles: That’s the reason I went that one time. I wanted to take father along because of Gurdjieff, but figured that Sun Ra’s “The Solar Myth Arkestra” or the “Blue Universe Arkestra,” as his groups were called, might be too much for him. I had heard there was a waitress who wore a live boa constrictor over her shoulders as she went around serving her customers and that there were frequent fistfights at the bar or outside in the street, but I saw nothing like it that night. When did you go there first?
Milan: I had read—I guess in Down Beat—about this club. I went on a Sunday afternoon. It was the free jazz pianist Paul Bley with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. It was an upright piano. I only stayed a few minutes. It was 1964 and I didn’t like the area cause it was an immigrant neighborhood and myself being one, didn’t feel I needed to be around that. Slugs’ was a dangerous place—lots of muggings and fights. It closed in the early 1970s, not long after the great trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed there by his common-law wife. But, it was Jackie McLean who made me a somewhat regular at Slugs.’
Charles: What about Jackie McLean?
Milan: What I liked about McLean’s music that it was all in your face. He was off the scene cause he didn’t have a cabaret card, drugs or something. He could work concerts or Sunday afternoon sessions when a cabaret license wasn’t required. It was the One Step Beyond record band with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan, and Clifford Jarvis. Shortly after, he did a series of Sunday afternoons at a restaurant on Waverly Place in one of the NYU buildings, Harout’s. Hutch was on vibes again and it was the first time I heard Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette.
But later that year Jackie finally got the cabaret card and was booked into…Slugs’. When Jackie started playing there he and his wife Dolly also opened this soda fountain/candy store a couple of storefronts up. The whole family worked there. Jackie was brusque. He had, like many others who were street wise, a wariness toward people. He was opinionated, but not like Mingus, who believed in every conspiracy theory that had been handed down through the ages. And he was not hesitant to tell you the latest one in the middle of a set at the Five Spot.
I got to know Jackie well years later. He told me about his first time playing at Birdland. It was 1952 or something, with Miles Davis. The very first solo he took that night, he was so nervous he stopped, turned around and went back through the curtain at the back of the stage and into the dressing room behind it and threw up. Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland manager, ran in and yelled at him, “Get back on stage!” Jackie goes back out, finishes his solo and gets a big round of applause from the audience. Miles turns to him and says, “Man, I’ve never seen that one before!”
Charles: Now and then sitting in a packed club and hearing someone like Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins, I recall thinking, this is heaven. I had in mind both the music and the spectacle—like that time Sonny started playing in the bathroom at Five Spot while his bass player, drummer, and pianist were waiting for him on the stand. But the lofts were more your thing. I went to poetry readings in lofts and a couple of happenings, but don’t believe I heard any music or the jazz musicians you admired.
Milan: I don’t want to mythologize the loft scene. It was just another scene like all before and since where people congregated around a common interest. This was one about music, brand new music, improvised, instrumental music that had no connection to the melodic, rhythmic structures of what was then—the mid-1960s—commonly accepted as jazz. Without guideposts, you had to be open to the overall sound, shape, contours of the music being played. You either liked it or not. I dug it. In lofts you could stand or sit next to the band, there were no microphones, everything truly acoustic, and no drinks bullshit. Everybody was there for the music.
There was The Cellar or something off Broadway in the nineties that had a run of Sundays. I heard Sun Ra with the wonderful John Gilmore on tenor there. And that gig with Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams, an all-nighter in a loft on 4th Avenue and 10th Street, that also included Ra, Archie’s group, and Paul Bley’s Barrage band, which I also heard at The Cellar. I dug that band cause of the bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with the pianist Bill Evans for many years. My sole claim to fame in my extremely brief and sad attempt to play bass was being asked to replace Eddie in the band one night.
Charles: By the way, what ever happened to that bass?
Milan: The first one which I bought in a pawn shop in Chinatown was my “attempt.” When I went home after having dinner with you and Helen on 13th Street during the blackout in 1965, I got on top of the bed and played it for hours, since there were no lights, except the moon and complete silence everywhere. I don’t remember what I did with it, sold it or left it out in the street. As you know, I had other things to think about. In December of 1965 I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.
July 29, 2015, 3:13 p.m.
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safari-reader://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/slugs.jpgDonald Ayler, Albert Ayler, Lewis Worrell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Michel Sampson outside Slugs’, 1966
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last month, was one of the great innovators of the free jazz movement that began in the late 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Following Coleman’s death, Charles Simic spoke to his brother Milan Simich, who has produced concerts and recordings for more than twenty-five years, about the avant-garde jazz scene in New York’s East Village that gave rise to that music. Simich’s book A Night At Birdland And Other Places: The Golden Age Of Modern Jazz In New York 1949-1959 will be available from The Jazz Record Center soon.
—The Editors
————————————————————
Charles Simic: There’s been a lot of talk lately in connection with the death of Ornette Coleman about a number of New York jazz clubs in the early 1960s. I was just out of the army in those days, trying to restart my life, working during the day, attending classes at NYU at night, getting married, and only now and then catching a late set at the Five Spot, Village Vanguard, or some other club in the Village. I had no idea you were hanging out with Ornette.
Milan Simich: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there. I think the building is still there. It was a double bill: Archie Shepp’s band and Pharaoh Sanders’s band. I think it was a buck and everybody sat on the floor. I had bought Ornette’s albums even before coming to New York, while still in high school. I remember buying his first album, Something Else!!!!, at Jack Howard’s Record Store on State Street in Chicago in 1960, I think it was. At the same time I picked up a record by Chu Berry, who was a great swing tenor player and the polar opposite of Ornette. The saleswoman, a black lady with short, red-tinted hair, said “You have very good taste, young man.” I was fifteen years old, had been into jazz for a year.
So here I am at this loft four years later and who’s sitting opposite me but Ornette Coleman with a good-looking lady. Between Archie and Pharaoh’s sets somebody put on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet At the Five Spot record. There’s a Booker tune aptly titled “Aggression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsWUkz2Gmc) where twice he does this smeared notes thing and at that moment our eyes met across the room and we both broke out laughing. Me and Ornette. Two guys diggin’ jazz on the Bowery in 1964! After the gig he gave me his address and invited me to visit. About a week later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to the West Village. I forget the street, he had a basement apartment. I hesitated, couldn’t ring the bell, and walked away. Thing is, I was nineteen, what was I going to talk to him about? Next year I finally heard him live at Village Vanguard. I lived near the club at the time so I went a lot during what I think was like a three or four-week gig. I would sit by
the drums and when Ornette would come out of the dressing room and come to the stage, we would say hello. Ornette had this thing, this lick. He repeated this phrase over and over, quicker and quicker on up-tempo tunes, and stop. It was like being hurtled toward a precipice and stopping on the edge. Loved that.
Charles: Tell me about Slug’s, that much-loved and famously dangerous place on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. Though I went to clubs in the Village, I ventured there only once to hear Sun Ra and remember being scared walking from Astor Place and being petrified walking back after midnight. You told me you went a lot, so I wondered what it was like.
Milan: Slugs’, not the singular possessive Slug’s, which is always mistaken. Originally it was Slugs’ Saloon, but the Liquor Authority didn’t allow the name “saloon” to be used. So it became, on those famed posters, Slugs’ In the Far East because of the address, 242 East 3rd Street. The name derives from the spiritualist George Gurdjieff’s term for human beings and how they go through life in a state of waking sleep… slugs. The two original owners, Jerry Schultz and Bob Schoenholt, were in the same Gurdjieff group as our father. Story goes that Jerry just wanted to open a bar for the artists that lived in the hood, but Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, lived in the building and persuaded Jerry to put in music. You’d walk into this long, narrow, storefront-size room with the bar to your left. At the end of the bar, against the wall, was a small stage with an upright piano that could fit drums, bass, and one soloist. Opposite the stage were a few tables, with the rest of the
tables in the back. There was also a jukebox against the wall opposite the bar before you came to the tables. When it became popular, they built another stage in the back and got a baby grand and you could fit either a quintet or Larry Young’s B-3 electric organ.
Charles: What made the gigs at Slugs’ stand out in those years? What was so different from other jazz clubs?
safari-reader://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Lee_Morgan.jpgLee Morgan and Hank Mobley at Slugs’, circa 1965
Milan: Slugs’ was “different” because it was on the Lower East Side and was the latest embodiment of the avant-garde culture that that area was producing. By the mid-1960s, the Beat vibe had gone out of the Village. Bleecker Street, the coffee houses were just tourist destinations. The East Village as it became known was where the arts were happening; all the painters, writers, poets, musicians, Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, The Living Theater. The Saxophonist Jackie McLean was in Jack Gelber’s Living Theater production of The Connection as an actor and also playing on stage. Actually, if you see Shirley Clarke’s filmed version of the play with Jackie, you can see the scene back then. The cold, dirty lofts, roaches, general bleakness. But you could live cheaply. I paid my rent, food, working as an office boy and had money left over to go to clubs or the opera. Just Google St. Mark’s Place and see who lived there through the years. Leon Trotsky lived at 80 St. Marks Place, where
the Jazz Gallery was and where Sonny Rollins made his comeback, John Coltrane started his own group, and Ornette played with Dizzy. Years later, when Slugs’ had become a bodega, I went in and was stunned how small the place was and just how much great and important music went down there. Slugs’ kept acoustic jazz going in those dark days of Beatles, The Twist, and Fillmore.
Charles: That’s the reason I went that one time. I wanted to take father along because of Gurdjieff, but figured that Sun Ra’s “The Solar Myth Arkestra” or the “Blue Universe Arkestra,” as his groups were called, might be too much for him. I had heard there was a waitress who wore a live boa constrictor over her shoulders as she went around serving her customers and that there were frequent fistfights at the bar or outside in the street, but I saw nothing like it that night. When did you go there first?
Milan: I had read—I guess in Down Beat—about this club. I went on a Sunday afternoon. It was the free jazz pianist Paul Bley with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. It was an upright piano. I only stayed a few minutes. It was 1964 and I didn’t like the area cause it was an immigrant neighborhood and myself being one, didn’t feel I needed to be around that. Slugs’ was a dangerous place—lots of muggings and fights. It closed in the early 1970s, not long after the great trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed there by his common-law wife. But, it was Jackie McLean who made me a somewhat regular at Slugs.’
Charles: What about Jackie McLean?
Milan: What I liked about McLean’s music that it was all in your face. He was off the scene cause he didn’t have a cabaret card, drugs or something. He could work concerts or Sunday afternoon sessions when a cabaret license wasn’t required. It was the One Step Beyond record band with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan, and Clifford Jarvis. Shortly after, he did a series of Sunday afternoons at a restaurant on Waverly Place in one of the NYU buildings, Harout’s. Hutch was on vibes again and it was the first time I heard Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette.
But later that year Jackie finally got the cabaret card and was booked into…Slugs’. When Jackie started playing there he and his wife Dolly also opened this soda fountain/candy store a couple of storefronts up. The whole family worked there. Jackie was brusque. He had, like many others who were street wise, a wariness toward people. He was opinionated, but not like Mingus, who believed in every conspiracy theory that had been handed down through the ages. And he was not hesitant to tell you the latest one in the middle of a set at the Five Spot.
I got to know Jackie well years later. He told me about his first time playing at Birdland. It was 1952 or something, with Miles Davis. The very first solo he took that night, he was so nervous he stopped, turned around and went back through the curtain at the back of the stage and into the dressing room behind it and threw up. Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland manager, ran in and yelled at him, “Get back on stage!” Jackie goes back out, finishes his solo and gets a big round of applause from the audience. Miles turns to him and says, “Man, I’ve never seen that one before!”
Charles: Now and then sitting in a packed club and hearing someone like Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins, I recall thinking, this is heaven. I had in mind both the music and the spectacle—like that time Sonny started playing in the bathroom at Five Spot while his bass player, drummer, and pianist were waiting for him on the stand. But the lofts were more your thing. I went to poetry readings in lofts and a couple of happenings, but don’t believe I heard any music or the jazz musicians you admired.
Milan: I don’t want to mythologize the loft scene. It was just another scene like all before and since where people congregated around a common interest. This was one about music, brand new music, improvised, instrumental music that had no connection to the melodic, rhythmic structures of what was then—the mid-1960s—commonly accepted as jazz. Without guideposts, you had to be open to the overall sound, shape, contours of the music being played. You either liked it or not. I dug it. In lofts you could stand or sit next to the band, there were no microphones, everything truly acoustic, and no drinks bullshit. Everybody was there for the music.
There was The Cellar or something off Broadway in the nineties that had a run of Sundays. I heard Sun Ra with the wonderful John Gilmore on tenor there. And that gig with Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams, an all-nighter in a loft on 4th Avenue and 10th Street, that also included Ra, Archie’s group, and Paul Bley’s Barrage band, which I also heard at The Cellar. I dug that band cause of the bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with the pianist Bill Evans for many years. My sole claim to fame in my extremely brief and sad attempt to play bass was being asked to replace Eddie in the band one night.
Charles: By the way, what ever happened to that bass?
Milan: The first one which I bought in a pawn shop in Chinatown was my “attempt.” When I went home after having dinner with you and Helen on 13th Street during the blackout in 1965, I got on top of the bed and played it for hours, since there were no lights, except the moon and complete silence everywhere. I don’t remember what I did with it, sold it or left it out in the street. As you know, I had other things to think about. In December of 1965 I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.
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Sundays at Slugs’ by Charles Simic | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
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http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jul/29/sundays-at-slugs-ornette-coleman/
** Sundays at Slugs’
————————————————————
By Charles Simic
http://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/slugs.jpg
Donald Ayler, Albert Ayler, Lewis Worrell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Michel Sampson outside Slugs’, 1966
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last month, was one of the great innovators of the free jazz movement that began in the late 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Following Coleman’s death, Charles Simic spoke to his brother Milan Simich, who has produced concerts and recordings for more than twenty-five years, about the avant-garde jazz scene in New York’s East Village that gave rise to that music. Simich’s book A Night At Birdland And Other Places: The Golden Age Of Modern Jazz In New York 1949-1959 will be available from The Jazz Record Center soon.
—The Editors
————————————————————
Charles Simic: There’s been a lot of talk lately in connection with the death of Ornette Coleman about a number of New York jazz clubs in the early 1960s. I was just out of the army in those days, trying to restart my life, working during the day, attending classes at NYU at night, getting married, and only now and then catching a late set at the Five Spot, Village Vanguard, or some other club in the Village. I had no idea you were hanging out with Ornette.
Milan Simich: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there. I think the building is still there. It was a double bill: Archie Shepp’s band and Pharaoh Sanders’s band. I think it was a buck and everybody sat on the floor. I had bought Ornette’s albums even before coming to New York, while still in high school. I remember buying his first album, Something Else!!!!, at Jack Howard’s Record Store on State Street in Chicago in 1960, I think it was. At the same time I picked up a record by Chu Berry, who was a great swing tenor player and the polar opposite of Ornette. The saleswoman, a black lady with short, red-tinted hair, said “You have very good taste, young man.” I was fifteen years old, had been into jazz for a year.
So here I am at this loft four years later and who’s sitting opposite me but Ornette Coleman with a good-looking lady. Between Archie and Pharaoh’s sets somebody put on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet At the Five Spot record. There’s a Booker tune aptly titled “Aggression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsWUkz2Gmc) where twice he does this smeared notes thing and at that moment our eyes met across the room and we both broke out laughing. Me and Ornette. Two guys diggin’ jazz on the Bowery in 1964! After the gig he gave me his address and invited me to visit. About a week later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to the West Village. I forget the street, he had a basement apartment. I hesitated, couldn’t ring the bell, and walked away. Thing is, I was nineteen, what was I going to talk to him about? Next year I finally heard him live at Village Vanguard. I lived near the club at the time so I went a lot during what I think was like a three or four-week gig. I would sit by
the drums and when Ornette would come out of the dressing room and come to the stage, we would say hello. Ornette had this thing, this lick. He repeated this phrase over and over, quicker and quicker on up-tempo tunes, and stop. It was like being hurtled toward a precipice and stopping on the edge. Loved that.
Charles: Tell me about Slug’s, that much-loved and famously dangerous place on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. Though I went to clubs in the Village, I ventured there only once to hear Sun Ra and remember being scared walking from Astor Place and being petrified walking back after midnight. You told me you went a lot, so I wondered what it was like.
Milan: Slugs’, not the singular possessive Slug’s, which is always mistaken. Originally it was Slugs’ Saloon, but the Liquor Authority didn’t allow the name “saloon” to be used. So it became, on those famed posters, Slugs’ In the Far East because of the address, 242 East 3rd Street. The name derives from the spiritualist George Gurdjieff’s term for human beings and how they go through life in a state of waking sleep… slugs. The two original owners, Jerry Schultz and Bob Schoenholt, were in the same Gurdjieff group as our father. Story goes that Jerry just wanted to open a bar for the artists that lived in the hood, but Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, lived in the building and persuaded Jerry to put in music. You’d walk into this long, narrow, storefront-size room with the bar to your left. At the end of the bar, against the wall, was a small stage with an upright piano that could fit drums, bass, and one soloist. Opposite the stage were a few tables, with the rest of the
tables in the back. There was also a jukebox against the wall opposite the bar before you came to the tables. When it became popular, they built another stage in the back and got a baby grand and you could fit either a quintet or Larry Young’s B-3 electric organ.
Charles: What made the gigs at Slugs’ stand out in those years? What was so different from other jazz clubs?
http://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Lee_Morgan.jpg
Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley at Slugs’, circa 1965
Milan: Slugs’ was “different” because it was on the Lower East Side and was the latest embodiment of the avant-garde culture that that area was producing. By the mid-1960s, the Beat vibe had gone out of the Village. Bleecker Street, the coffee houses were just tourist destinations. The East Village as it became known was where the arts were happening; all the painters, writers, poets, musicians, Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, The Living Theater. The Saxophonist Jackie McLean was in Jack Gelber’s Living Theater production of The Connection as an actor and also playing on stage. Actually, if you see Shirley Clarke’s filmed version of the play with Jackie, you can see the scene back then. The cold, dirty lofts, roaches, general bleakness. But you could live cheaply. I paid my rent, food, working as an office boy and had money left over to go to clubs or the opera. Just Google St. Mark’s Place and see who lived there through the years. Leon Trotsky lived at 80 St. Marks Place, where
the Jazz Gallery was and where Sonny Rollins made his comeback, John Coltrane started his own group, and Ornette played with Dizzy. Years later, when Slugs’ had become a bodega, I went in and was stunned how small the place was and just how much great and important music went down there. Slugs’ kept acoustic jazz going in those dark days of Beatles, The Twist, and Fillmore.
Charles: That’s the reason I went that one time. I wanted to take father along because of Gurdjieff, but figured that Sun Ra’s “The Solar Myth Arkestra” or the “Blue Universe Arkestra,” as his groups were called, might be too much for him. I had heard there was a waitress who wore a live boa constrictor over her shoulders as she went around serving her customers and that there were frequent fistfights at the bar or outside in the street, but I saw nothing like it that night. When did you go there first?
Milan: I had read—I guess in Down Beat—about this club. I went on a Sunday afternoon. It was the free jazz pianist Paul Bley with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. It was an upright piano. I only stayed a few minutes. It was 1964 and I didn’t like the area cause it was an immigrant neighborhood and myself being one, didn’t feel I needed to be around that. Slugs’ was a dangerous place—lots of muggings and fights. It closed in the early 1970s, not long after the great trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed there by his common-law wife. But, it was Jackie McLean who made me a somewhat regular at Slugs.’
Charles: What about Jackie McLean?
Milan: What I liked about McLean’s music that it was all in your face. He was off the scene cause he didn’t have a cabaret card, drugs or something. He could work concerts or Sunday afternoon sessions when a cabaret license wasn’t required. It was the One Step Beyond record band with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan, and Clifford Jarvis. Shortly after, he did a series of Sunday afternoons at a restaurant on Waverly Place in one of the NYU buildings, Harout’s. Hutch was on vibes again and it was the first time I heard Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette.
But later that year Jackie finally got the cabaret card and was booked into…Slugs’. When Jackie started playing there he and his wife Dolly also opened this soda fountain/candy store a couple of storefronts up. The whole family worked there. Jackie was brusque. He had, like many others who were street wise, a wariness toward people. He was opinionated, but not like Mingus, who believed in every conspiracy theory that had been handed down through the ages. And he was not hesitant to tell you the latest one in the middle of a set at the Five Spot.
I got to know Jackie well years later. He told me about his first time playing at Birdland. It was 1952 or something, with Miles Davis. The very first solo he took that night, he was so nervous he stopped, turned around and went back through the curtain at the back of the stage and into the dressing room behind it and threw up. Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland manager, ran in and yelled at him, “Get back on stage!” Jackie goes back out, finishes his solo and gets a big round of applause from the audience. Miles turns to him and says, “Man, I’ve never seen that one before!”
Charles: Now and then sitting in a packed club and hearing someone like Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins, I recall thinking, this is heaven. I had in mind both the music and the spectacle—like that time Sonny started playing in the bathroom at Five Spot while his bass player, drummer, and pianist were waiting for him on the stand. But the lofts were more your thing. I went to poetry readings in lofts and a couple of happenings, but don’t believe I heard any music or the jazz musicians you admired.
Milan: I don’t want to mythologize the loft scene. It was just another scene like all before and since where people congregated around a common interest. This was one about music, brand new music, improvised, instrumental music that had no connection to the melodic, rhythmic structures of what was then—the mid-1960s—commonly accepted as jazz. Without guideposts, you had to be open to the overall sound, shape, contours of the music being played. You either liked it or not. I dug it. In lofts you could stand or sit next to the band, there were no microphones, everything truly acoustic, and no drinks bullshit. Everybody was there for the music.
There was The Cellar or something off Broadway in the nineties that had a run of Sundays. I heard Sun Ra with the wonderful John Gilmore on tenor there. And that gig with Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams, an all-nighter in a loft on 4th Avenue and 10th Street, that also included Ra, Archie’s group, and Paul Bley’s Barrage band, which I also heard at The Cellar. I dug that band cause of the bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with the pianist Bill Evans for many years. My sole claim to fame in my extremely brief and sad attempt to play bass was being asked to replace Eddie in the band one night.
Charles: By the way, what ever happened to that bass?
Milan: The first one which I bought in a pawn shop in Chinatown was my “attempt.” When I went home after having dinner with you and Helen on 13th Street during the blackout in 1965, I got on top of the bed and played it for hours, since there were no lights, except the moon and complete silence everywhere. I don’t remember what I did with it, sold it or left it out in the street. As you know, I had other things to think about. In December of 1965 I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.
July 29, 2015, 3:13 p.m.
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safari-reader://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/slugs.jpgDonald Ayler, Albert Ayler, Lewis Worrell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Michel Sampson outside Slugs’, 1966
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last month, was one of the great innovators of the free jazz movement that began in the late 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Following Coleman’s death, Charles Simic spoke to his brother Milan Simich, who has produced concerts and recordings for more than twenty-five years, about the avant-garde jazz scene in New York’s East Village that gave rise to that music. Simich’s book A Night At Birdland And Other Places: The Golden Age Of Modern Jazz In New York 1949-1959 will be available from The Jazz Record Center soon.
—The Editors
————————————————————
Charles Simic: There’s been a lot of talk lately in connection with the death of Ornette Coleman about a number of New York jazz clubs in the early 1960s. I was just out of the army in those days, trying to restart my life, working during the day, attending classes at NYU at night, getting married, and only now and then catching a late set at the Five Spot, Village Vanguard, or some other club in the Village. I had no idea you were hanging out with Ornette.
Milan Simich: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there. I think the building is still there. It was a double bill: Archie Shepp’s band and Pharaoh Sanders’s band. I think it was a buck and everybody sat on the floor. I had bought Ornette’s albums even before coming to New York, while still in high school. I remember buying his first album, Something Else!!!!, at Jack Howard’s Record Store on State Street in Chicago in 1960, I think it was. At the same time I picked up a record by Chu Berry, who was a great swing tenor player and the polar opposite of Ornette. The saleswoman, a black lady with short, red-tinted hair, said “You have very good taste, young man.” I was fifteen years old, had been into jazz for a year.
So here I am at this loft four years later and who’s sitting opposite me but Ornette Coleman with a good-looking lady. Between Archie and Pharaoh’s sets somebody put on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet At the Five Spot record. There’s a Booker tune aptly titled “Aggression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsWUkz2Gmc) where twice he does this smeared notes thing and at that moment our eyes met across the room and we both broke out laughing. Me and Ornette. Two guys diggin’ jazz on the Bowery in 1964! After the gig he gave me his address and invited me to visit. About a week later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to the West Village. I forget the street, he had a basement apartment. I hesitated, couldn’t ring the bell, and walked away. Thing is, I was nineteen, what was I going to talk to him about? Next year I finally heard him live at Village Vanguard. I lived near the club at the time so I went a lot during what I think was like a three or four-week gig. I would sit by
the drums and when Ornette would come out of the dressing room and come to the stage, we would say hello. Ornette had this thing, this lick. He repeated this phrase over and over, quicker and quicker on up-tempo tunes, and stop. It was like being hurtled toward a precipice and stopping on the edge. Loved that.
Charles: Tell me about Slug’s, that much-loved and famously dangerous place on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. Though I went to clubs in the Village, I ventured there only once to hear Sun Ra and remember being scared walking from Astor Place and being petrified walking back after midnight. You told me you went a lot, so I wondered what it was like.
Milan: Slugs’, not the singular possessive Slug’s, which is always mistaken. Originally it was Slugs’ Saloon, but the Liquor Authority didn’t allow the name “saloon” to be used. So it became, on those famed posters, Slugs’ In the Far East because of the address, 242 East 3rd Street. The name derives from the spiritualist George Gurdjieff’s term for human beings and how they go through life in a state of waking sleep… slugs. The two original owners, Jerry Schultz and Bob Schoenholt, were in the same Gurdjieff group as our father. Story goes that Jerry just wanted to open a bar for the artists that lived in the hood, but Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, lived in the building and persuaded Jerry to put in music. You’d walk into this long, narrow, storefront-size room with the bar to your left. At the end of the bar, against the wall, was a small stage with an upright piano that could fit drums, bass, and one soloist. Opposite the stage were a few tables, with the rest of the
tables in the back. There was also a jukebox against the wall opposite the bar before you came to the tables. When it became popular, they built another stage in the back and got a baby grand and you could fit either a quintet or Larry Young’s B-3 electric organ.
Charles: What made the gigs at Slugs’ stand out in those years? What was so different from other jazz clubs?
safari-reader://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Lee_Morgan.jpgLee Morgan and Hank Mobley at Slugs’, circa 1965
Milan: Slugs’ was “different” because it was on the Lower East Side and was the latest embodiment of the avant-garde culture that that area was producing. By the mid-1960s, the Beat vibe had gone out of the Village. Bleecker Street, the coffee houses were just tourist destinations. The East Village as it became known was where the arts were happening; all the painters, writers, poets, musicians, Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, The Living Theater. The Saxophonist Jackie McLean was in Jack Gelber’s Living Theater production of The Connection as an actor and also playing on stage. Actually, if you see Shirley Clarke’s filmed version of the play with Jackie, you can see the scene back then. The cold, dirty lofts, roaches, general bleakness. But you could live cheaply. I paid my rent, food, working as an office boy and had money left over to go to clubs or the opera. Just Google St. Mark’s Place and see who lived there through the years. Leon Trotsky lived at 80 St. Marks Place, where
the Jazz Gallery was and where Sonny Rollins made his comeback, John Coltrane started his own group, and Ornette played with Dizzy. Years later, when Slugs’ had become a bodega, I went in and was stunned how small the place was and just how much great and important music went down there. Slugs’ kept acoustic jazz going in those dark days of Beatles, The Twist, and Fillmore.
Charles: That’s the reason I went that one time. I wanted to take father along because of Gurdjieff, but figured that Sun Ra’s “The Solar Myth Arkestra” or the “Blue Universe Arkestra,” as his groups were called, might be too much for him. I had heard there was a waitress who wore a live boa constrictor over her shoulders as she went around serving her customers and that there were frequent fistfights at the bar or outside in the street, but I saw nothing like it that night. When did you go there first?
Milan: I had read—I guess in Down Beat—about this club. I went on a Sunday afternoon. It was the free jazz pianist Paul Bley with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. It was an upright piano. I only stayed a few minutes. It was 1964 and I didn’t like the area cause it was an immigrant neighborhood and myself being one, didn’t feel I needed to be around that. Slugs’ was a dangerous place—lots of muggings and fights. It closed in the early 1970s, not long after the great trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed there by his common-law wife. But, it was Jackie McLean who made me a somewhat regular at Slugs.’
Charles: What about Jackie McLean?
Milan: What I liked about McLean’s music that it was all in your face. He was off the scene cause he didn’t have a cabaret card, drugs or something. He could work concerts or Sunday afternoon sessions when a cabaret license wasn’t required. It was the One Step Beyond record band with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan, and Clifford Jarvis. Shortly after, he did a series of Sunday afternoons at a restaurant on Waverly Place in one of the NYU buildings, Harout’s. Hutch was on vibes again and it was the first time I heard Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette.
But later that year Jackie finally got the cabaret card and was booked into…Slugs’. When Jackie started playing there he and his wife Dolly also opened this soda fountain/candy store a couple of storefronts up. The whole family worked there. Jackie was brusque. He had, like many others who were street wise, a wariness toward people. He was opinionated, but not like Mingus, who believed in every conspiracy theory that had been handed down through the ages. And he was not hesitant to tell you the latest one in the middle of a set at the Five Spot.
I got to know Jackie well years later. He told me about his first time playing at Birdland. It was 1952 or something, with Miles Davis. The very first solo he took that night, he was so nervous he stopped, turned around and went back through the curtain at the back of the stage and into the dressing room behind it and threw up. Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland manager, ran in and yelled at him, “Get back on stage!” Jackie goes back out, finishes his solo and gets a big round of applause from the audience. Miles turns to him and says, “Man, I’ve never seen that one before!”
Charles: Now and then sitting in a packed club and hearing someone like Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins, I recall thinking, this is heaven. I had in mind both the music and the spectacle—like that time Sonny started playing in the bathroom at Five Spot while his bass player, drummer, and pianist were waiting for him on the stand. But the lofts were more your thing. I went to poetry readings in lofts and a couple of happenings, but don’t believe I heard any music or the jazz musicians you admired.
Milan: I don’t want to mythologize the loft scene. It was just another scene like all before and since where people congregated around a common interest. This was one about music, brand new music, improvised, instrumental music that had no connection to the melodic, rhythmic structures of what was then—the mid-1960s—commonly accepted as jazz. Without guideposts, you had to be open to the overall sound, shape, contours of the music being played. You either liked it or not. I dug it. In lofts you could stand or sit next to the band, there were no microphones, everything truly acoustic, and no drinks bullshit. Everybody was there for the music.
There was The Cellar or something off Broadway in the nineties that had a run of Sundays. I heard Sun Ra with the wonderful John Gilmore on tenor there. And that gig with Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams, an all-nighter in a loft on 4th Avenue and 10th Street, that also included Ra, Archie’s group, and Paul Bley’s Barrage band, which I also heard at The Cellar. I dug that band cause of the bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with the pianist Bill Evans for many years. My sole claim to fame in my extremely brief and sad attempt to play bass was being asked to replace Eddie in the band one night.
Charles: By the way, what ever happened to that bass?
Milan: The first one which I bought in a pawn shop in Chinatown was my “attempt.” When I went home after having dinner with you and Helen on 13th Street during the blackout in 1965, I got on top of the bed and played it for hours, since there were no lights, except the moon and complete silence everywhere. I don’t remember what I did with it, sold it or left it out in the street. As you know, I had other things to think about. In December of 1965 I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.
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Sundays at Slugs’ by Charles Simic | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books
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http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jul/29/sundays-at-slugs-ornette-coleman/
** Sundays at Slugs’
————————————————————
By Charles Simic
http://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/slugs.jpg
Donald Ayler, Albert Ayler, Lewis Worrell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Michel Sampson outside Slugs’, 1966
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last month, was one of the great innovators of the free jazz movement that began in the late 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Following Coleman’s death, Charles Simic spoke to his brother Milan Simich, who has produced concerts and recordings for more than twenty-five years, about the avant-garde jazz scene in New York’s East Village that gave rise to that music. Simich’s book A Night At Birdland And Other Places: The Golden Age Of Modern Jazz In New York 1949-1959 will be available from The Jazz Record Center soon.
—The Editors
————————————————————
Charles Simic: There’s been a lot of talk lately in connection with the death of Ornette Coleman about a number of New York jazz clubs in the early 1960s. I was just out of the army in those days, trying to restart my life, working during the day, attending classes at NYU at night, getting married, and only now and then catching a late set at the Five Spot, Village Vanguard, or some other club in the Village. I had no idea you were hanging out with Ornette.
Milan Simich: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there. I think the building is still there. It was a double bill: Archie Shepp’s band and Pharaoh Sanders’s band. I think it was a buck and everybody sat on the floor. I had bought Ornette’s albums even before coming to New York, while still in high school. I remember buying his first album, Something Else!!!!, at Jack Howard’s Record Store on State Street in Chicago in 1960, I think it was. At the same time I picked up a record by Chu Berry, who was a great swing tenor player and the polar opposite of Ornette. The saleswoman, a black lady with short, red-tinted hair, said “You have very good taste, young man.” I was fifteen years old, had been into jazz for a year.
So here I am at this loft four years later and who’s sitting opposite me but Ornette Coleman with a good-looking lady. Between Archie and Pharaoh’s sets somebody put on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet At the Five Spot record. There’s a Booker tune aptly titled “Aggression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsWUkz2Gmc) where twice he does this smeared notes thing and at that moment our eyes met across the room and we both broke out laughing. Me and Ornette. Two guys diggin’ jazz on the Bowery in 1964! After the gig he gave me his address and invited me to visit. About a week later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to the West Village. I forget the street, he had a basement apartment. I hesitated, couldn’t ring the bell, and walked away. Thing is, I was nineteen, what was I going to talk to him about? Next year I finally heard him live at Village Vanguard. I lived near the club at the time so I went a lot during what I think was like a three or four-week gig. I would sit by
the drums and when Ornette would come out of the dressing room and come to the stage, we would say hello. Ornette had this thing, this lick. He repeated this phrase over and over, quicker and quicker on up-tempo tunes, and stop. It was like being hurtled toward a precipice and stopping on the edge. Loved that.
Charles: Tell me about Slug’s, that much-loved and famously dangerous place on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. Though I went to clubs in the Village, I ventured there only once to hear Sun Ra and remember being scared walking from Astor Place and being petrified walking back after midnight. You told me you went a lot, so I wondered what it was like.
Milan: Slugs’, not the singular possessive Slug’s, which is always mistaken. Originally it was Slugs’ Saloon, but the Liquor Authority didn’t allow the name “saloon” to be used. So it became, on those famed posters, Slugs’ In the Far East because of the address, 242 East 3rd Street. The name derives from the spiritualist George Gurdjieff’s term for human beings and how they go through life in a state of waking sleep… slugs. The two original owners, Jerry Schultz and Bob Schoenholt, were in the same Gurdjieff group as our father. Story goes that Jerry just wanted to open a bar for the artists that lived in the hood, but Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, lived in the building and persuaded Jerry to put in music. You’d walk into this long, narrow, storefront-size room with the bar to your left. At the end of the bar, against the wall, was a small stage with an upright piano that could fit drums, bass, and one soloist. Opposite the stage were a few tables, with the rest of the
tables in the back. There was also a jukebox against the wall opposite the bar before you came to the tables. When it became popular, they built another stage in the back and got a baby grand and you could fit either a quintet or Larry Young’s B-3 electric organ.
Charles: What made the gigs at Slugs’ stand out in those years? What was so different from other jazz clubs?
http://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Lee_Morgan.jpg
Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley at Slugs’, circa 1965
Milan: Slugs’ was “different” because it was on the Lower East Side and was the latest embodiment of the avant-garde culture that that area was producing. By the mid-1960s, the Beat vibe had gone out of the Village. Bleecker Street, the coffee houses were just tourist destinations. The East Village as it became known was where the arts were happening; all the painters, writers, poets, musicians, Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, The Living Theater. The Saxophonist Jackie McLean was in Jack Gelber’s Living Theater production of The Connection as an actor and also playing on stage. Actually, if you see Shirley Clarke’s filmed version of the play with Jackie, you can see the scene back then. The cold, dirty lofts, roaches, general bleakness. But you could live cheaply. I paid my rent, food, working as an office boy and had money left over to go to clubs or the opera. Just Google St. Mark’s Place and see who lived there through the years. Leon Trotsky lived at 80 St. Marks Place, where
the Jazz Gallery was and where Sonny Rollins made his comeback, John Coltrane started his own group, and Ornette played with Dizzy. Years later, when Slugs’ had become a bodega, I went in and was stunned how small the place was and just how much great and important music went down there. Slugs’ kept acoustic jazz going in those dark days of Beatles, The Twist, and Fillmore.
Charles: That’s the reason I went that one time. I wanted to take father along because of Gurdjieff, but figured that Sun Ra’s “The Solar Myth Arkestra” or the “Blue Universe Arkestra,” as his groups were called, might be too much for him. I had heard there was a waitress who wore a live boa constrictor over her shoulders as she went around serving her customers and that there were frequent fistfights at the bar or outside in the street, but I saw nothing like it that night. When did you go there first?
Milan: I had read—I guess in Down Beat—about this club. I went on a Sunday afternoon. It was the free jazz pianist Paul Bley with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. It was an upright piano. I only stayed a few minutes. It was 1964 and I didn’t like the area cause it was an immigrant neighborhood and myself being one, didn’t feel I needed to be around that. Slugs’ was a dangerous place—lots of muggings and fights. It closed in the early 1970s, not long after the great trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed there by his common-law wife. But, it was Jackie McLean who made me a somewhat regular at Slugs.’
Charles: What about Jackie McLean?
Milan: What I liked about McLean’s music that it was all in your face. He was off the scene cause he didn’t have a cabaret card, drugs or something. He could work concerts or Sunday afternoon sessions when a cabaret license wasn’t required. It was the One Step Beyond record band with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan, and Clifford Jarvis. Shortly after, he did a series of Sunday afternoons at a restaurant on Waverly Place in one of the NYU buildings, Harout’s. Hutch was on vibes again and it was the first time I heard Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette.
But later that year Jackie finally got the cabaret card and was booked into…Slugs’. When Jackie started playing there he and his wife Dolly also opened this soda fountain/candy store a couple of storefronts up. The whole family worked there. Jackie was brusque. He had, like many others who were street wise, a wariness toward people. He was opinionated, but not like Mingus, who believed in every conspiracy theory that had been handed down through the ages. And he was not hesitant to tell you the latest one in the middle of a set at the Five Spot.
I got to know Jackie well years later. He told me about his first time playing at Birdland. It was 1952 or something, with Miles Davis. The very first solo he took that night, he was so nervous he stopped, turned around and went back through the curtain at the back of the stage and into the dressing room behind it and threw up. Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland manager, ran in and yelled at him, “Get back on stage!” Jackie goes back out, finishes his solo and gets a big round of applause from the audience. Miles turns to him and says, “Man, I’ve never seen that one before!”
Charles: Now and then sitting in a packed club and hearing someone like Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins, I recall thinking, this is heaven. I had in mind both the music and the spectacle—like that time Sonny started playing in the bathroom at Five Spot while his bass player, drummer, and pianist were waiting for him on the stand. But the lofts were more your thing. I went to poetry readings in lofts and a couple of happenings, but don’t believe I heard any music or the jazz musicians you admired.
Milan: I don’t want to mythologize the loft scene. It was just another scene like all before and since where people congregated around a common interest. This was one about music, brand new music, improvised, instrumental music that had no connection to the melodic, rhythmic structures of what was then—the mid-1960s—commonly accepted as jazz. Without guideposts, you had to be open to the overall sound, shape, contours of the music being played. You either liked it or not. I dug it. In lofts you could stand or sit next to the band, there were no microphones, everything truly acoustic, and no drinks bullshit. Everybody was there for the music.
There was The Cellar or something off Broadway in the nineties that had a run of Sundays. I heard Sun Ra with the wonderful John Gilmore on tenor there. And that gig with Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams, an all-nighter in a loft on 4th Avenue and 10th Street, that also included Ra, Archie’s group, and Paul Bley’s Barrage band, which I also heard at The Cellar. I dug that band cause of the bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with the pianist Bill Evans for many years. My sole claim to fame in my extremely brief and sad attempt to play bass was being asked to replace Eddie in the band one night.
Charles: By the way, what ever happened to that bass?
Milan: The first one which I bought in a pawn shop in Chinatown was my “attempt.” When I went home after having dinner with you and Helen on 13th Street during the blackout in 1965, I got on top of the bed and played it for hours, since there were no lights, except the moon and complete silence everywhere. I don’t remember what I did with it, sold it or left it out in the street. As you know, I had other things to think about. In December of 1965 I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.
July 29, 2015, 3:13 p.m.
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safari-reader://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/slugs.jpgDonald Ayler, Albert Ayler, Lewis Worrell, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Michel Sampson outside Slugs’, 1966
The saxophonist Ornette Coleman, who died last month, was one of the great innovators of the free jazz movement that began in the late 1950s and flowered in the 1960s. Following Coleman’s death, Charles Simic spoke to his brother Milan Simich, who has produced concerts and recordings for more than twenty-five years, about the avant-garde jazz scene in New York’s East Village that gave rise to that music. Simich’s book A Night At Birdland And Other Places: The Golden Age Of Modern Jazz In New York 1949-1959 will be available from The Jazz Record Center soon.
—The Editors
————————————————————
Charles Simic: There’s been a lot of talk lately in connection with the death of Ornette Coleman about a number of New York jazz clubs in the early 1960s. I was just out of the army in those days, trying to restart my life, working during the day, attending classes at NYU at night, getting married, and only now and then catching a late set at the Five Spot, Village Vanguard, or some other club in the Village. I had no idea you were hanging out with Ornette.
Milan Simich: I met Ornette Coleman in a loft on Cooper Square in 1964. That’s where LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) and others lived. There used to be jam sessions there. I think the building is still there. It was a double bill: Archie Shepp’s band and Pharaoh Sanders’s band. I think it was a buck and everybody sat on the floor. I had bought Ornette’s albums even before coming to New York, while still in high school. I remember buying his first album, Something Else!!!!, at Jack Howard’s Record Store on State Street in Chicago in 1960, I think it was. At the same time I picked up a record by Chu Berry, who was a great swing tenor player and the polar opposite of Ornette. The saleswoman, a black lady with short, red-tinted hair, said “You have very good taste, young man.” I was fifteen years old, had been into jazz for a year.
So here I am at this loft four years later and who’s sitting opposite me but Ornette Coleman with a good-looking lady. Between Archie and Pharaoh’s sets somebody put on the Eric Dolphy-Booker Little Quintet At the Five Spot record. There’s a Booker tune aptly titled “Aggression” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgsWUkz2Gmc) where twice he does this smeared notes thing and at that moment our eyes met across the room and we both broke out laughing. Me and Ornette. Two guys diggin’ jazz on the Bowery in 1964! After the gig he gave me his address and invited me to visit. About a week later on a Sunday afternoon, I went to the West Village. I forget the street, he had a basement apartment. I hesitated, couldn’t ring the bell, and walked away. Thing is, I was nineteen, what was I going to talk to him about? Next year I finally heard him live at Village Vanguard. I lived near the club at the time so I went a lot during what I think was like a three or four-week gig. I would sit by
the drums and when Ornette would come out of the dressing room and come to the stage, we would say hello. Ornette had this thing, this lick. He repeated this phrase over and over, quicker and quicker on up-tempo tunes, and stop. It was like being hurtled toward a precipice and stopping on the edge. Loved that.
Charles: Tell me about Slug’s, that much-loved and famously dangerous place on East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C. Though I went to clubs in the Village, I ventured there only once to hear Sun Ra and remember being scared walking from Astor Place and being petrified walking back after midnight. You told me you went a lot, so I wondered what it was like.
Milan: Slugs’, not the singular possessive Slug’s, which is always mistaken. Originally it was Slugs’ Saloon, but the Liquor Authority didn’t allow the name “saloon” to be used. So it became, on those famed posters, Slugs’ In the Far East because of the address, 242 East 3rd Street. The name derives from the spiritualist George Gurdjieff’s term for human beings and how they go through life in a state of waking sleep… slugs. The two original owners, Jerry Schultz and Bob Schoenholt, were in the same Gurdjieff group as our father. Story goes that Jerry just wanted to open a bar for the artists that lived in the hood, but Hank Mobley, the tenor saxophonist, lived in the building and persuaded Jerry to put in music. You’d walk into this long, narrow, storefront-size room with the bar to your left. At the end of the bar, against the wall, was a small stage with an upright piano that could fit drums, bass, and one soloist. Opposite the stage were a few tables, with the rest of the
tables in the back. There was also a jukebox against the wall opposite the bar before you came to the tables. When it became popular, they built another stage in the back and got a baby grand and you could fit either a quintet or Larry Young’s B-3 electric organ.
Charles: What made the gigs at Slugs’ stand out in those years? What was so different from other jazz clubs?
safari-reader://www.nybooks.com/media/img/blogimages/Lee_Morgan.jpgLee Morgan and Hank Mobley at Slugs’, circa 1965
Milan: Slugs’ was “different” because it was on the Lower East Side and was the latest embodiment of the avant-garde culture that that area was producing. By the mid-1960s, the Beat vibe had gone out of the Village. Bleecker Street, the coffee houses were just tourist destinations. The East Village as it became known was where the arts were happening; all the painters, writers, poets, musicians, Ellen Stewart’s La Mama, The Living Theater. The Saxophonist Jackie McLean was in Jack Gelber’s Living Theater production of The Connection as an actor and also playing on stage. Actually, if you see Shirley Clarke’s filmed version of the play with Jackie, you can see the scene back then. The cold, dirty lofts, roaches, general bleakness. But you could live cheaply. I paid my rent, food, working as an office boy and had money left over to go to clubs or the opera. Just Google St. Mark’s Place and see who lived there through the years. Leon Trotsky lived at 80 St. Marks Place, where
the Jazz Gallery was and where Sonny Rollins made his comeback, John Coltrane started his own group, and Ornette played with Dizzy. Years later, when Slugs’ had become a bodega, I went in and was stunned how small the place was and just how much great and important music went down there. Slugs’ kept acoustic jazz going in those dark days of Beatles, The Twist, and Fillmore.
Charles: That’s the reason I went that one time. I wanted to take father along because of Gurdjieff, but figured that Sun Ra’s “The Solar Myth Arkestra” or the “Blue Universe Arkestra,” as his groups were called, might be too much for him. I had heard there was a waitress who wore a live boa constrictor over her shoulders as she went around serving her customers and that there were frequent fistfights at the bar or outside in the street, but I saw nothing like it that night. When did you go there first?
Milan: I had read—I guess in Down Beat—about this club. I went on a Sunday afternoon. It was the free jazz pianist Paul Bley with David Izenzon on bass and Charles Moffett on drums. It was an upright piano. I only stayed a few minutes. It was 1964 and I didn’t like the area cause it was an immigrant neighborhood and myself being one, didn’t feel I needed to be around that. Slugs’ was a dangerous place—lots of muggings and fights. It closed in the early 1970s, not long after the great trumpeter Lee Morgan was shot and killed there by his common-law wife. But, it was Jackie McLean who made me a somewhat regular at Slugs.’
Charles: What about Jackie McLean?
Milan: What I liked about McLean’s music that it was all in your face. He was off the scene cause he didn’t have a cabaret card, drugs or something. He could work concerts or Sunday afternoon sessions when a cabaret license wasn’t required. It was the One Step Beyond record band with Grachan Moncur, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Khan, and Clifford Jarvis. Shortly after, he did a series of Sunday afternoons at a restaurant on Waverly Place in one of the NYU buildings, Harout’s. Hutch was on vibes again and it was the first time I heard Charles Tolliver, Cecil McBee, and Jack DeJohnette.
But later that year Jackie finally got the cabaret card and was booked into…Slugs’. When Jackie started playing there he and his wife Dolly also opened this soda fountain/candy store a couple of storefronts up. The whole family worked there. Jackie was brusque. He had, like many others who were street wise, a wariness toward people. He was opinionated, but not like Mingus, who believed in every conspiracy theory that had been handed down through the ages. And he was not hesitant to tell you the latest one in the middle of a set at the Five Spot.
I got to know Jackie well years later. He told me about his first time playing at Birdland. It was 1952 or something, with Miles Davis. The very first solo he took that night, he was so nervous he stopped, turned around and went back through the curtain at the back of the stage and into the dressing room behind it and threw up. Oscar Goodstein, the Birdland manager, ran in and yelled at him, “Get back on stage!” Jackie goes back out, finishes his solo and gets a big round of applause from the audience. Miles turns to him and says, “Man, I’ve never seen that one before!”
Charles: Now and then sitting in a packed club and hearing someone like Thelonious Monk or Sonny Rollins, I recall thinking, this is heaven. I had in mind both the music and the spectacle—like that time Sonny started playing in the bathroom at Five Spot while his bass player, drummer, and pianist were waiting for him on the stand. But the lofts were more your thing. I went to poetry readings in lofts and a couple of happenings, but don’t believe I heard any music or the jazz musicians you admired.
Milan: I don’t want to mythologize the loft scene. It was just another scene like all before and since where people congregated around a common interest. This was one about music, brand new music, improvised, instrumental music that had no connection to the melodic, rhythmic structures of what was then—the mid-1960s—commonly accepted as jazz. Without guideposts, you had to be open to the overall sound, shape, contours of the music being played. You either liked it or not. I dug it. In lofts you could stand or sit next to the band, there were no microphones, everything truly acoustic, and no drinks bullshit. Everybody was there for the music.
There was The Cellar or something off Broadway in the nineties that had a run of Sundays. I heard Sun Ra with the wonderful John Gilmore on tenor there. And that gig with Cecil Taylor and Tony Williams, an all-nighter in a loft on 4th Avenue and 10th Street, that also included Ra, Archie’s group, and Paul Bley’s Barrage band, which I also heard at The Cellar. I dug that band cause of the bassist Eddie Gomez, who played with the pianist Bill Evans for many years. My sole claim to fame in my extremely brief and sad attempt to play bass was being asked to replace Eddie in the band one night.
Charles: By the way, what ever happened to that bass?
Milan: The first one which I bought in a pawn shop in Chinatown was my “attempt.” When I went home after having dinner with you and Helen on 13th Street during the blackout in 1965, I got on top of the bed and played it for hours, since there were no lights, except the moon and complete silence everywhere. I don’t remember what I did with it, sold it or left it out in the street. As you know, I had other things to think about. In December of 1965 I was drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Vic Firth, Who Gave Drummers Their Sticks, Dies at 85 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/arts/music/vic-firth-who-gave-drummers-their-sticks-dies-at-85.html?ref=obituaries
** Vic Firth, Who Gave Drummers Their Sticks, Dies at 85
————————————————————
By MARGALIT FOX (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/index.html) JULY 28, 2015
The drumstick maker Vic Firth in 1999 in Newport, Me., where a company bearing his name, founded in 1963, produces 12 million sticks and mallets annually.Credit Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press
If you build a better drumstick, the world will beat a path to your door.
That, more than 50 years ago, is precisely what Vic Firth did, in the process becoming, almost inadvertently, the world’s most prolific drumstick manufacturer.
Mr. Firth, who died on Sunday at 85, spent more than 40 years as the principal tympanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, playing under a roster of distinguished conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Erich Leinsdorf and Seiji Ozawa.
During his tenure as the orchestra’s music director, Mr. Ozawa called Mr. Firth “the single greatest percussionist anywhere in the world.”
Mr. Firth, whom The Boston Globe, in a 2002 profile, called “debonair, affable, intelligent and sometimes cheerfully profane,” never planned to become a Stradivari of sticks. But by the early 1960s, after having played with the orchestra for a dozen years, he had grown frustrated with the drumsticks on the market, which, he realized, could not meet the demands of the full symphonic repertoire.
Seeking sticks that were fleet, strong, perfectly straight, of even weight in the hands and able to produce the vast range and color of sounds he desired — from the patter of raindrops to the rattle of bones to the thunder of cannons — he was forced to jury-rig a pair.
Working in his garage, he whittled a prototype that had the lightness, versatility and equilibrium he desired, and engaged a wood turner to fabricate the sticks. Mr. Firth intended them solely for his own use, but his students clamored for them. Soon other drummers did too, and in 1963 Vic Firth Inc., as the company was originally known, was born.
Today the company, which has headquarters in Boston and a factory in Newport, Me., turns out some 12 million drumsticks and mallets annually. Its wares have been used by renowned classical, jazz and rock drummers, among them Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones and Anton Fig of David Letterman’s house band.
“We are selling the drummers’ bread and butter,” Mr. Firth told The Bangor Daily News in 2008. “They may think twice before buying a new set of drums, but they always need sticks.”
Made chiefly of hickory, maple or birch, Mr. Firth’s sticks, which range in price from about $7 to $50, are designed for durability. But though a drumstick may hold up well under Handel and Haydn, he said in the same interview, “a man in green pants and purple hair breaks it in one rimshot.”
Everett Joseph Firth, known as Vic, was born on June 2, 1930, in Winchester, Mass., and reared in Sanford, Me. His father, Everett, was a trumpeter and cornet player, and Vic began cornet lessons at 4.
After trying his hand at a spate of instruments, he settled on percussion, and by the age of 16 had his own ensemble, the Vic Firth Big Band, which played throughout New England.
In 1952, at 21, Mr. Firth was invited to audition for the Boston Symphony. Practicing for 14 hours before his audition, he bested nine other candidates, becoming the orchestra’s youngest player by a wide margin. While in the job, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.
In 1956 he was named the orchestra’s principal tympanist, a post he held until his retirement in 2002. Mr. Firth was also a longtime faculty member of the New England Conservatory, serving as the head of its percussion department for more than 40 years.
Vic Firth Inc. was acquired by the Avedis Zildjian Company (http://zildjian.com/) , a well-known maker of cymbals, in 2010 and has been known since then as the Vic Firth Company. For some years, Mr. Firth’s company also made highly regarded wooden kitchen implements including saltshakers, pepper mills and rolling pins; that division was sold to Maine Wood Concepts (http://www.mainewoodconcepts.com/) in 2012.
A member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame (http://www.pas.org/About/the-society/halloffame.aspx) , Mr. Firth lived in Boston. His death, from cancer, at his home there, was confirmed by Rob Grad, a Vic Firth Company spokesman.
Mr. Firth’s survivors include his wife, the former Olga Kwasniak; two daughters, Tracy Firth and Kelly DeChristopher; and a sister, Sherrill Auld.
If Mr. Firth’s tenure with the Boston Symphony made him a star in classical music circles, his stick-making life gave him cachet with the purple-haired set. As a result, he was sometimes asked to sit in with some of the world’s foremost rock bands.
In the 2002 article in The Globe, Mr. Firth recalled a cameo appearance with the Grateful Dead in Providence, R.I.
“I was sitting on the stage, and they asked me to lead off the big drum solo,” he said. “I was wearing a coat and tie and I told them I’d look like a stuffed shirt. But they persuaded me to take them off, and I did start off the solo.”
Through an audience member, word of Mr. Firth’s escapade reached a member of the Boston Symphony’s august board of directors. Before long there were, for the percussionist, repercussions.
Mr. Firth’s manager called him into his office.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he said, “that you played with the Grateful Dead.”
“So I told him it wasn’t true,” Mr. Firth told The Globe. “As I headed for the door, he said, ‘Did you really do it?’ and I said, ‘Of course I did.’
“ ‘Just don’t do it again,’ he said, and I didn’t.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Vic Firth, Who Gave Drummers Their Sticks, Dies at 85 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/arts/music/vic-firth-who-gave-drummers-their-sticks-dies-at-85.html?ref=obituaries
** Vic Firth, Who Gave Drummers Their Sticks, Dies at 85
————————————————————
By MARGALIT FOX (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/index.html) JULY 28, 2015
The drumstick maker Vic Firth in 1999 in Newport, Me., where a company bearing his name, founded in 1963, produces 12 million sticks and mallets annually.Credit Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press
If you build a better drumstick, the world will beat a path to your door.
That, more than 50 years ago, is precisely what Vic Firth did, in the process becoming, almost inadvertently, the world’s most prolific drumstick manufacturer.
Mr. Firth, who died on Sunday at 85, spent more than 40 years as the principal tympanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, playing under a roster of distinguished conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Erich Leinsdorf and Seiji Ozawa.
During his tenure as the orchestra’s music director, Mr. Ozawa called Mr. Firth “the single greatest percussionist anywhere in the world.”
Mr. Firth, whom The Boston Globe, in a 2002 profile, called “debonair, affable, intelligent and sometimes cheerfully profane,” never planned to become a Stradivari of sticks. But by the early 1960s, after having played with the orchestra for a dozen years, he had grown frustrated with the drumsticks on the market, which, he realized, could not meet the demands of the full symphonic repertoire.
Seeking sticks that were fleet, strong, perfectly straight, of even weight in the hands and able to produce the vast range and color of sounds he desired — from the patter of raindrops to the rattle of bones to the thunder of cannons — he was forced to jury-rig a pair.
Working in his garage, he whittled a prototype that had the lightness, versatility and equilibrium he desired, and engaged a wood turner to fabricate the sticks. Mr. Firth intended them solely for his own use, but his students clamored for them. Soon other drummers did too, and in 1963 Vic Firth Inc., as the company was originally known, was born.
Today the company, which has headquarters in Boston and a factory in Newport, Me., turns out some 12 million drumsticks and mallets annually. Its wares have been used by renowned classical, jazz and rock drummers, among them Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones and Anton Fig of David Letterman’s house band.
“We are selling the drummers’ bread and butter,” Mr. Firth told The Bangor Daily News in 2008. “They may think twice before buying a new set of drums, but they always need sticks.”
Made chiefly of hickory, maple or birch, Mr. Firth’s sticks, which range in price from about $7 to $50, are designed for durability. But though a drumstick may hold up well under Handel and Haydn, he said in the same interview, “a man in green pants and purple hair breaks it in one rimshot.”
Everett Joseph Firth, known as Vic, was born on June 2, 1930, in Winchester, Mass., and reared in Sanford, Me. His father, Everett, was a trumpeter and cornet player, and Vic began cornet lessons at 4.
After trying his hand at a spate of instruments, he settled on percussion, and by the age of 16 had his own ensemble, the Vic Firth Big Band, which played throughout New England.
In 1952, at 21, Mr. Firth was invited to audition for the Boston Symphony. Practicing for 14 hours before his audition, he bested nine other candidates, becoming the orchestra’s youngest player by a wide margin. While in the job, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.
In 1956 he was named the orchestra’s principal tympanist, a post he held until his retirement in 2002. Mr. Firth was also a longtime faculty member of the New England Conservatory, serving as the head of its percussion department for more than 40 years.
Vic Firth Inc. was acquired by the Avedis Zildjian Company (http://zildjian.com/) , a well-known maker of cymbals, in 2010 and has been known since then as the Vic Firth Company. For some years, Mr. Firth’s company also made highly regarded wooden kitchen implements including saltshakers, pepper mills and rolling pins; that division was sold to Maine Wood Concepts (http://www.mainewoodconcepts.com/) in 2012.
A member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame (http://www.pas.org/About/the-society/halloffame.aspx) , Mr. Firth lived in Boston. His death, from cancer, at his home there, was confirmed by Rob Grad, a Vic Firth Company spokesman.
Mr. Firth’s survivors include his wife, the former Olga Kwasniak; two daughters, Tracy Firth and Kelly DeChristopher; and a sister, Sherrill Auld.
If Mr. Firth’s tenure with the Boston Symphony made him a star in classical music circles, his stick-making life gave him cachet with the purple-haired set. As a result, he was sometimes asked to sit in with some of the world’s foremost rock bands.
In the 2002 article in The Globe, Mr. Firth recalled a cameo appearance with the Grateful Dead in Providence, R.I.
“I was sitting on the stage, and they asked me to lead off the big drum solo,” he said. “I was wearing a coat and tie and I told them I’d look like a stuffed shirt. But they persuaded me to take them off, and I did start off the solo.”
Through an audience member, word of Mr. Firth’s escapade reached a member of the Boston Symphony’s august board of directors. Before long there were, for the percussionist, repercussions.
Mr. Firth’s manager called him into his office.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he said, “that you played with the Grateful Dead.”
“So I told him it wasn’t true,” Mr. Firth told The Globe. “As I headed for the door, he said, ‘Did you really do it?’ and I said, ‘Of course I did.’
“ ‘Just don’t do it again,’ he said, and I didn’t.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=bc6a97be82) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=bc6a97be82&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Vic Firth, Who Gave Drummers Their Sticks, Dies at 85 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/arts/music/vic-firth-who-gave-drummers-their-sticks-dies-at-85.html?ref=obituaries
** Vic Firth, Who Gave Drummers Their Sticks, Dies at 85
————————————————————
By MARGALIT FOX (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/margalit_fox/index.html) JULY 28, 2015
The drumstick maker Vic Firth in 1999 in Newport, Me., where a company bearing his name, founded in 1963, produces 12 million sticks and mallets annually.Credit Robert F. Bukaty/Associated Press
If you build a better drumstick, the world will beat a path to your door.
That, more than 50 years ago, is precisely what Vic Firth did, in the process becoming, almost inadvertently, the world’s most prolific drumstick manufacturer.
Mr. Firth, who died on Sunday at 85, spent more than 40 years as the principal tympanist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, playing under a roster of distinguished conductors including Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Erich Leinsdorf and Seiji Ozawa.
During his tenure as the orchestra’s music director, Mr. Ozawa called Mr. Firth “the single greatest percussionist anywhere in the world.”
Mr. Firth, whom The Boston Globe, in a 2002 profile, called “debonair, affable, intelligent and sometimes cheerfully profane,” never planned to become a Stradivari of sticks. But by the early 1960s, after having played with the orchestra for a dozen years, he had grown frustrated with the drumsticks on the market, which, he realized, could not meet the demands of the full symphonic repertoire.
Seeking sticks that were fleet, strong, perfectly straight, of even weight in the hands and able to produce the vast range and color of sounds he desired — from the patter of raindrops to the rattle of bones to the thunder of cannons — he was forced to jury-rig a pair.
Working in his garage, he whittled a prototype that had the lightness, versatility and equilibrium he desired, and engaged a wood turner to fabricate the sticks. Mr. Firth intended them solely for his own use, but his students clamored for them. Soon other drummers did too, and in 1963 Vic Firth Inc., as the company was originally known, was born.
Today the company, which has headquarters in Boston and a factory in Newport, Me., turns out some 12 million drumsticks and mallets annually. Its wares have been used by renowned classical, jazz and rock drummers, among them Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones and Anton Fig of David Letterman’s house band.
“We are selling the drummers’ bread and butter,” Mr. Firth told The Bangor Daily News in 2008. “They may think twice before buying a new set of drums, but they always need sticks.”
Made chiefly of hickory, maple or birch, Mr. Firth’s sticks, which range in price from about $7 to $50, are designed for durability. But though a drumstick may hold up well under Handel and Haydn, he said in the same interview, “a man in green pants and purple hair breaks it in one rimshot.”
Everett Joseph Firth, known as Vic, was born on June 2, 1930, in Winchester, Mass., and reared in Sanford, Me. His father, Everett, was a trumpeter and cornet player, and Vic began cornet lessons at 4.
After trying his hand at a spate of instruments, he settled on percussion, and by the age of 16 had his own ensemble, the Vic Firth Big Band, which played throughout New England.
In 1952, at 21, Mr. Firth was invited to audition for the Boston Symphony. Practicing for 14 hours before his audition, he bested nine other candidates, becoming the orchestra’s youngest player by a wide margin. While in the job, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.
In 1956 he was named the orchestra’s principal tympanist, a post he held until his retirement in 2002. Mr. Firth was also a longtime faculty member of the New England Conservatory, serving as the head of its percussion department for more than 40 years.
Vic Firth Inc. was acquired by the Avedis Zildjian Company (http://zildjian.com/) , a well-known maker of cymbals, in 2010 and has been known since then as the Vic Firth Company. For some years, Mr. Firth’s company also made highly regarded wooden kitchen implements including saltshakers, pepper mills and rolling pins; that division was sold to Maine Wood Concepts (http://www.mainewoodconcepts.com/) in 2012.
A member of the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame (http://www.pas.org/About/the-society/halloffame.aspx) , Mr. Firth lived in Boston. His death, from cancer, at his home there, was confirmed by Rob Grad, a Vic Firth Company spokesman.
Mr. Firth’s survivors include his wife, the former Olga Kwasniak; two daughters, Tracy Firth and Kelly DeChristopher; and a sister, Sherrill Auld.
If Mr. Firth’s tenure with the Boston Symphony made him a star in classical music circles, his stick-making life gave him cachet with the purple-haired set. As a result, he was sometimes asked to sit in with some of the world’s foremost rock bands.
In the 2002 article in The Globe, Mr. Firth recalled a cameo appearance with the Grateful Dead in Providence, R.I.
“I was sitting on the stage, and they asked me to lead off the big drum solo,” he said. “I was wearing a coat and tie and I told them I’d look like a stuffed shirt. But they persuaded me to take them off, and I did start off the solo.”
Through an audience member, word of Mr. Firth’s escapade reached a member of the Boston Symphony’s august board of directors. Before long there were, for the percussionist, repercussions.
Mr. Firth’s manager called him into his office.
“Tell me it isn’t true,” he said, “that you played with the Grateful Dead.”
“So I told him it wasn’t true,” Mr. Firth told The Globe. “As I headed for the door, he said, ‘Did you really do it?’ and I said, ‘Of course I did.’
“ ‘Just don’t do it again,’ he said, and I didn’t.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=bc6a97be82) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=bc6a97be82&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home – WSJ
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-radio-broadcaster-who-fought-the-cold-war-abroad-but-remained-unheard-at-home-1437512977
** The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home
————————————————————
By
Doug Ramsey
July 21, 2015 5:09 p.m. ET
During the Cold War, listeners in captive nations behind the Iron Curtain huddled around radios in basements and attics listening to the imposing bass-baritone voice of the man who sent them American music. His greeting—“Good evening, Willis Conover in Washington, D.C., with Music U.S.A.”—was familiar to millions around the world. At home, relatively few people knew him or his work. A proposal for a postage stamp honoring Conover may give hope to those who want the late Voice of America broadcaster to be awarded a larger mark of distinction.
Willis Conover during a radio show in 1967. ENLARGE
Willis Conover during a radio show in 1967.Photo: Associated Press/Bob Daugherty
For 40 years, until shortly before his death in 1996, Conover’s shortwave broadcasts on the Voice of America constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy. Never a government employee, to maintain his independence he worked as a freelance contractor. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no tinge of politics, he introduced his listeners to jazz and American popular music. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the 20th century. His use of the VOA’s “special English”—simple vocabulary and structures spoken at a slow tempo—made him, in effect, a teacher of the language to his listeners.
Countless musicians from former Iron Curtain countries have credited Conover with attracting them to jazz, among them the Czech bassists George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous, the Cuban saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. On the Conover Facebook page established in 2010, Ponomarev wrote that Conover had done as much for jazz “as Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.” Conover’s New York Times obituary said, “In the long struggle between the forces of Communism and democracy, Mr. Conover, who went on the air in 1955 . . . proved more effective than a fleet of B-29’s.” In his publication Gene Lees Jazzletter, the influential critic wrote, “Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin Wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.”
In its Dec. 9, 1966, issue, Time magazine quoted Conover on the importance of the music he championed. “Jazz tells more about America than any American can realize. It bespeaks vitality, strength, social mobility; it’s a free music with its own discipline, but not an imposed, inhibiting discipline.”
When Conover visited Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R.—Poland for the first time in 1959, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in 1965—huge crowds gathered to greet him as a hero. But thanks to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which forbids the VOA from broadcasting within the U.S., only Americans who snagged VOA shortwave signals directed overseas knew Conover’s programs. Attempts to persuade Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama to posthumously award Conover a Presidential Medal of Freedom have yielded no result.
There have been official recognitions, however slight. News articles about Conover were read into the Congressional Record in 1985 and 1993. In 2009, on a resolution introduced by Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, Congress declared a Willis Conover Day, and he was mentioned during celebrations on the National Mall. But the greatest appreciation has come from members of the public who set up the Conover Facebook page, just as a new campaign to have Conover recognized by way of a postage stamp grew out of a citizen petition. The petitioners’ goal was to collect a thousand signatures. As of July 18, the total was 7,757.
The Voice of America broadcast most of the early Newport Jazz Festivals, with Conover as master of ceremonies for many of the concerts. That increased his fame abroad and also made him known to festival audiences who, because of the Smith-Mundt Act, couldn’t listen to his broadcasts. He produced concerts at other festivals, notably the 1969 New Orleans Jazz Festival, remembered as one of the greatest of all such events. Its Stars included Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Eubie Blake and a host of Crescent City luminaries headed by Pete Fountain.
Conover’s VOA theme music was Duke Ellington’s “Take The ‘A’ Train.” Early in the first term of President Richard Nixon, he suggested that the president give Ellington a 70th birthday party at the White House. Nixon advisers Leonard Garment and Charles McWhorter got the president’s approval. In April 1969, Conover assembled an all-star band that included Clark Terry, Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, with guest pianists Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, Billy Taylor and Willie “The Lion” Smith. The all-stars serenaded Ellington with new arrangements of his music. Guests included an array of Washington dignitaries, and celebrities as various as film director Otto Preminger, composers Harold Arlen and Richard Rodgers, pianist Marian McPartland, and Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson. Mr. Nixon played the piano and led the guests in singing “Happy Birthday.” Then he awarded Ellington the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the New Yorker, Whitney Balliett wrote that Ellington “was
finally given his due by his country.”
That is an honor that eluded Conover while he was alive. If the 13 members of the Postal Services Stamp Advisory Committee approve a Conover stamp, perhaps the posthumous medal won’t be far behind.
Mr. Ramsey writes about jazz for the Journal. He blogs about jazz and other matters at Rifftides, www.dougramsey.com.
Correction: The image caption in an earlier version listed the wrong date of the photo.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Warwick, Ny 10990
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The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home – WSJ
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-radio-broadcaster-who-fought-the-cold-war-abroad-but-remained-unheard-at-home-1437512977
** The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home
————————————————————
By
Doug Ramsey
July 21, 2015 5:09 p.m. ET
During the Cold War, listeners in captive nations behind the Iron Curtain huddled around radios in basements and attics listening to the imposing bass-baritone voice of the man who sent them American music. His greeting—“Good evening, Willis Conover in Washington, D.C., with Music U.S.A.”—was familiar to millions around the world. At home, relatively few people knew him or his work. A proposal for a postage stamp honoring Conover may give hope to those who want the late Voice of America broadcaster to be awarded a larger mark of distinction.
Willis Conover during a radio show in 1967. ENLARGE
Willis Conover during a radio show in 1967.Photo: Associated Press/Bob Daugherty
For 40 years, until shortly before his death in 1996, Conover’s shortwave broadcasts on the Voice of America constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy. Never a government employee, to maintain his independence he worked as a freelance contractor. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no tinge of politics, he introduced his listeners to jazz and American popular music. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the 20th century. His use of the VOA’s “special English”—simple vocabulary and structures spoken at a slow tempo—made him, in effect, a teacher of the language to his listeners.
Countless musicians from former Iron Curtain countries have credited Conover with attracting them to jazz, among them the Czech bassists George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous, the Cuban saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. On the Conover Facebook page established in 2010, Ponomarev wrote that Conover had done as much for jazz “as Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.” Conover’s New York Times obituary said, “In the long struggle between the forces of Communism and democracy, Mr. Conover, who went on the air in 1955 . . . proved more effective than a fleet of B-29’s.” In his publication Gene Lees Jazzletter, the influential critic wrote, “Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin Wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.”
In its Dec. 9, 1966, issue, Time magazine quoted Conover on the importance of the music he championed. “Jazz tells more about America than any American can realize. It bespeaks vitality, strength, social mobility; it’s a free music with its own discipline, but not an imposed, inhibiting discipline.”
When Conover visited Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R.—Poland for the first time in 1959, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in 1965—huge crowds gathered to greet him as a hero. But thanks to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which forbids the VOA from broadcasting within the U.S., only Americans who snagged VOA shortwave signals directed overseas knew Conover’s programs. Attempts to persuade Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama to posthumously award Conover a Presidential Medal of Freedom have yielded no result.
There have been official recognitions, however slight. News articles about Conover were read into the Congressional Record in 1985 and 1993. In 2009, on a resolution introduced by Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, Congress declared a Willis Conover Day, and he was mentioned during celebrations on the National Mall. But the greatest appreciation has come from members of the public who set up the Conover Facebook page, just as a new campaign to have Conover recognized by way of a postage stamp grew out of a citizen petition. The petitioners’ goal was to collect a thousand signatures. As of July 18, the total was 7,757.
The Voice of America broadcast most of the early Newport Jazz Festivals, with Conover as master of ceremonies for many of the concerts. That increased his fame abroad and also made him known to festival audiences who, because of the Smith-Mundt Act, couldn’t listen to his broadcasts. He produced concerts at other festivals, notably the 1969 New Orleans Jazz Festival, remembered as one of the greatest of all such events. Its Stars included Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Eubie Blake and a host of Crescent City luminaries headed by Pete Fountain.
Conover’s VOA theme music was Duke Ellington’s “Take The ‘A’ Train.” Early in the first term of President Richard Nixon, he suggested that the president give Ellington a 70th birthday party at the White House. Nixon advisers Leonard Garment and Charles McWhorter got the president’s approval. In April 1969, Conover assembled an all-star band that included Clark Terry, Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, with guest pianists Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, Billy Taylor and Willie “The Lion” Smith. The all-stars serenaded Ellington with new arrangements of his music. Guests included an array of Washington dignitaries, and celebrities as various as film director Otto Preminger, composers Harold Arlen and Richard Rodgers, pianist Marian McPartland, and Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson. Mr. Nixon played the piano and led the guests in singing “Happy Birthday.” Then he awarded Ellington the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the New Yorker, Whitney Balliett wrote that Ellington “was
finally given his due by his country.”
That is an honor that eluded Conover while he was alive. If the 13 members of the Postal Services Stamp Advisory Committee approve a Conover stamp, perhaps the posthumous medal won’t be far behind.
Mr. Ramsey writes about jazz for the Journal. He blogs about jazz and other matters at Rifftides, www.dougramsey.com.
Correction: The image caption in an earlier version listed the wrong date of the photo.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home – WSJ
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-radio-broadcaster-who-fought-the-cold-war-abroad-but-remained-unheard-at-home-1437512977
** The Radio Broadcaster Who Fought the Cold War Abroad but Remained Unheard at Home
————————————————————
By
Doug Ramsey
July 21, 2015 5:09 p.m. ET
During the Cold War, listeners in captive nations behind the Iron Curtain huddled around radios in basements and attics listening to the imposing bass-baritone voice of the man who sent them American music. His greeting—“Good evening, Willis Conover in Washington, D.C., with Music U.S.A.”—was familiar to millions around the world. At home, relatively few people knew him or his work. A proposal for a postage stamp honoring Conover may give hope to those who want the late Voice of America broadcaster to be awarded a larger mark of distinction.
Willis Conover during a radio show in 1967. ENLARGE
Willis Conover during a radio show in 1967.Photo: Associated Press/Bob Daugherty
For 40 years, until shortly before his death in 1996, Conover’s shortwave broadcasts on the Voice of America constituted one of his country’s most effective instruments of cultural diplomacy. Never a government employee, to maintain his independence he worked as a freelance contractor. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no tinge of politics, he introduced his listeners to jazz and American popular music. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the 20th century. His use of the VOA’s “special English”—simple vocabulary and structures spoken at a slow tempo—made him, in effect, a teacher of the language to his listeners.
Countless musicians from former Iron Curtain countries have credited Conover with attracting them to jazz, among them the Czech bassists George Mraz and Miroslav Vitous, the Cuban saxophonist and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera and the Russian trumpeter Valery Ponomarev. On the Conover Facebook page established in 2010, Ponomarev wrote that Conover had done as much for jazz “as Art Blakey, Duke Ellington, Horace Silver, Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.” Conover’s New York Times obituary said, “In the long struggle between the forces of Communism and democracy, Mr. Conover, who went on the air in 1955 . . . proved more effective than a fleet of B-29’s.” In his publication Gene Lees Jazzletter, the influential critic wrote, “Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin Wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.”
In its Dec. 9, 1966, issue, Time magazine quoted Conover on the importance of the music he championed. “Jazz tells more about America than any American can realize. It bespeaks vitality, strength, social mobility; it’s a free music with its own discipline, but not an imposed, inhibiting discipline.”
When Conover visited Eastern Europe and the U.S.S.R.—Poland for the first time in 1959, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia in 1965—huge crowds gathered to greet him as a hero. But thanks to the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which forbids the VOA from broadcasting within the U.S., only Americans who snagged VOA shortwave signals directed overseas knew Conover’s programs. Attempts to persuade Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama to posthumously award Conover a Presidential Medal of Freedom have yielded no result.
There have been official recognitions, however slight. News articles about Conover were read into the Congressional Record in 1985 and 1993. In 2009, on a resolution introduced by Rep. John Larson of Connecticut, Congress declared a Willis Conover Day, and he was mentioned during celebrations on the National Mall. But the greatest appreciation has come from members of the public who set up the Conover Facebook page, just as a new campaign to have Conover recognized by way of a postage stamp grew out of a citizen petition. The petitioners’ goal was to collect a thousand signatures. As of July 18, the total was 7,757.
The Voice of America broadcast most of the early Newport Jazz Festivals, with Conover as master of ceremonies for many of the concerts. That increased his fame abroad and also made him known to festival audiences who, because of the Smith-Mundt Act, couldn’t listen to his broadcasts. He produced concerts at other festivals, notably the 1969 New Orleans Jazz Festival, remembered as one of the greatest of all such events. Its Stars included Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Eubie Blake and a host of Crescent City luminaries headed by Pete Fountain.
Conover’s VOA theme music was Duke Ellington’s “Take The ‘A’ Train.” Early in the first term of President Richard Nixon, he suggested that the president give Ellington a 70th birthday party at the White House. Nixon advisers Leonard Garment and Charles McWhorter got the president’s approval. In April 1969, Conover assembled an all-star band that included Clark Terry, Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, with guest pianists Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, Billy Taylor and Willie “The Lion” Smith. The all-stars serenaded Ellington with new arrangements of his music. Guests included an array of Washington dignitaries, and celebrities as various as film director Otto Preminger, composers Harold Arlen and Richard Rodgers, pianist Marian McPartland, and Oklahoma football coach Bud Wilkinson. Mr. Nixon played the piano and led the guests in singing “Happy Birthday.” Then he awarded Ellington the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In the New Yorker, Whitney Balliett wrote that Ellington “was
finally given his due by his country.”
That is an honor that eluded Conover while he was alive. If the 13 members of the Postal Services Stamp Advisory Committee approve a Conover stamp, perhaps the posthumous medal won’t be far behind.
Mr. Ramsey writes about jazz for the Journal. He blogs about jazz and other matters at Rifftides, www.dougramsey.com.
Correction: The image caption in an earlier version listed the wrong date of the photo.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=ae5e36c9dc) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=ae5e36c9dc&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Howard Rumsey, Musician Who Invigorated West Coast Jazz Scene, Dies at 97 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/arts/music/howard-rumsey-musician-who-invigorated-west-coast-jazz-scene-dies-at-97.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150726
** Howard Rumsey, Musician Who Invigorated West Coast Jazz Scene, Dies at 97
————————————————————
By BEN RATLIFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ben_ratliff/index.html) JULY 26, 2015
Howard Rumsey, right, with members of the Lighthouse All-Stars in 1954. Credit Howard Rumsey Collection, Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archive
Howard Rumsey, the jazz bassist and entrepreneur who as leader of the Lighthouse All-Stars helped popularize the notion of a progressive West Coast jazz scene in the 1950s, died on July 15 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 97.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Nancy Simonian, a longtime friend.
In the late 1940s, the Lighthouse Cafe (http://www.thelighthousecafe.net/history.html) was a struggling Polynesian-themed nightclub a block from the sand in Hermosa Beach, Calif., with a clientele of longshoremen and aircraft-factory workers. Mr. Rumsey, not one of jazz’s greatest bassists but surely one of its champion promoters, transformed it into a locus of postwar, California jazz. Using the club’s name to build a brand, he formed a top-level house ensemble, the Lighthouse All-Stars; booked college-circuit tours; and started his own record company, Lighthouse Records. But in 1952 the Contemporary label began releasing a series of Lighthouse All-Stars records — some recorded live in the club — with evocative beach-scene photographs, including “Music for Lighthousekeeping (http://www.amazon.com/Music-Lighthousekeeping-Howard-Lighthouse-All-Stars/dp/B000000YU5/ref=pd_bxgy_15_img_y) ” and “Lighthouse at Laguna
(http://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-At-Laguna-All-Stars/dp/B000000YMK) .”
Howard Rumsey was born on Nov. 7, 1917, in Brawley, Calif. He had worked in Stan Kenton’s first big band, and later with Charlie Barnet’s. In 1948 he relocated to Hermosa Beach, and soon proposed the idea of Sunday afternoon jam sessions to the Lighthouse’s owner, John Levine. Starting in 1949, he ran the club’s music bookings, turning the Sunday sessions into 12-hour marathons and having the band play evenings during the week as well.
An early version of the All-Stars was made up of musicians from Los Angeles’s Central Avenue jazz scene, including the tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/arts/teddy-edwards-78-deft-star-of-los-angeles-jazz-scene.html) and the pianist Hampton Hawes. Later, members of Kenton’s and Woody Herman’s bands began to drift into the group.
Among the band’s core were the trumpeters Shorty Rogers and Conte Candoli; the saxophonists Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre and Bud Shank; the trombonist Frank Rosolino; and the drummers Stan Levey and Shelly Manne (http://www.npr.org/2010/06/07/127478987/shelly-manne-the-well-toned-drummer) . (Max Roach played drums with the band for a time in 1953.)
Some of the music was the airy, low-pulse-rate jazz that the West Coast became famous for; more was loose, straight-ahead post-bop, modeled after the New York style.
The group disbanded in the early 1960s, but Mr. Rumsey continued to book the Lighthouse through the decade, increasingly with major out-of-town acts. By the mid-50s he had also started the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival to help develop talent in Southern California.
From 1971 to his retirement in 1985, he managed and booked the music at Concerts by the Sea, a jazz club in Redondo Beach, Calif.
He had no immediate survivors.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=7cf25310fb) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=7cf25310fb&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Howard Rumsey, Musician Who Invigorated West Coast Jazz Scene, Dies at 97 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/arts/music/howard-rumsey-musician-who-invigorated-west-coast-jazz-scene-dies-at-97.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150726
** Howard Rumsey, Musician Who Invigorated West Coast Jazz Scene, Dies at 97
————————————————————
By BEN RATLIFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ben_ratliff/index.html) JULY 26, 2015
Howard Rumsey, right, with members of the Lighthouse All-Stars in 1954. Credit Howard Rumsey Collection, Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archive
Howard Rumsey, the jazz bassist and entrepreneur who as leader of the Lighthouse All-Stars helped popularize the notion of a progressive West Coast jazz scene in the 1950s, died on July 15 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 97.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Nancy Simonian, a longtime friend.
In the late 1940s, the Lighthouse Cafe (http://www.thelighthousecafe.net/history.html) was a struggling Polynesian-themed nightclub a block from the sand in Hermosa Beach, Calif., with a clientele of longshoremen and aircraft-factory workers. Mr. Rumsey, not one of jazz’s greatest bassists but surely one of its champion promoters, transformed it into a locus of postwar, California jazz. Using the club’s name to build a brand, he formed a top-level house ensemble, the Lighthouse All-Stars; booked college-circuit tours; and started his own record company, Lighthouse Records. But in 1952 the Contemporary label began releasing a series of Lighthouse All-Stars records — some recorded live in the club — with evocative beach-scene photographs, including “Music for Lighthousekeeping (http://www.amazon.com/Music-Lighthousekeeping-Howard-Lighthouse-All-Stars/dp/B000000YU5/ref=pd_bxgy_15_img_y) ” and “Lighthouse at Laguna
(http://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-At-Laguna-All-Stars/dp/B000000YMK) .”
Howard Rumsey was born on Nov. 7, 1917, in Brawley, Calif. He had worked in Stan Kenton’s first big band, and later with Charlie Barnet’s. In 1948 he relocated to Hermosa Beach, and soon proposed the idea of Sunday afternoon jam sessions to the Lighthouse’s owner, John Levine. Starting in 1949, he ran the club’s music bookings, turning the Sunday sessions into 12-hour marathons and having the band play evenings during the week as well.
An early version of the All-Stars was made up of musicians from Los Angeles’s Central Avenue jazz scene, including the tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/arts/teddy-edwards-78-deft-star-of-los-angeles-jazz-scene.html) and the pianist Hampton Hawes. Later, members of Kenton’s and Woody Herman’s bands began to drift into the group.
Among the band’s core were the trumpeters Shorty Rogers and Conte Candoli; the saxophonists Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre and Bud Shank; the trombonist Frank Rosolino; and the drummers Stan Levey and Shelly Manne (http://www.npr.org/2010/06/07/127478987/shelly-manne-the-well-toned-drummer) . (Max Roach played drums with the band for a time in 1953.)
Some of the music was the airy, low-pulse-rate jazz that the West Coast became famous for; more was loose, straight-ahead post-bop, modeled after the New York style.
The group disbanded in the early 1960s, but Mr. Rumsey continued to book the Lighthouse through the decade, increasingly with major out-of-town acts. By the mid-50s he had also started the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival to help develop talent in Southern California.
From 1971 to his retirement in 1985, he managed and booked the music at Concerts by the Sea, a jazz club in Redondo Beach, Calif.
He had no immediate survivors.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Howard Rumsey, Musician Who Invigorated West Coast Jazz Scene, Dies at 97 – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/27/arts/music/howard-rumsey-musician-who-invigorated-west-coast-jazz-scene-dies-at-97.html?emc=edit_tnt_20150726
** Howard Rumsey, Musician Who Invigorated West Coast Jazz Scene, Dies at 97
————————————————————
By BEN RATLIFF (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ben_ratliff/index.html) JULY 26, 2015
Howard Rumsey, right, with members of the Lighthouse All-Stars in 1954. Credit Howard Rumsey Collection, Los Angeles Jazz Institute Archive
Howard Rumsey, the jazz bassist and entrepreneur who as leader of the Lighthouse All-Stars helped popularize the notion of a progressive West Coast jazz scene in the 1950s, died on July 15 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 97.
The cause was complications of pneumonia, said Nancy Simonian, a longtime friend.
In the late 1940s, the Lighthouse Cafe (http://www.thelighthousecafe.net/history.html) was a struggling Polynesian-themed nightclub a block from the sand in Hermosa Beach, Calif., with a clientele of longshoremen and aircraft-factory workers. Mr. Rumsey, not one of jazz’s greatest bassists but surely one of its champion promoters, transformed it into a locus of postwar, California jazz. Using the club’s name to build a brand, he formed a top-level house ensemble, the Lighthouse All-Stars; booked college-circuit tours; and started his own record company, Lighthouse Records. But in 1952 the Contemporary label began releasing a series of Lighthouse All-Stars records — some recorded live in the club — with evocative beach-scene photographs, including “Music for Lighthousekeeping (http://www.amazon.com/Music-Lighthousekeeping-Howard-Lighthouse-All-Stars/dp/B000000YU5/ref=pd_bxgy_15_img_y) ” and “Lighthouse at Laguna
(http://www.amazon.com/Lighthouse-At-Laguna-All-Stars/dp/B000000YMK) .”
Howard Rumsey was born on Nov. 7, 1917, in Brawley, Calif. He had worked in Stan Kenton’s first big band, and later with Charlie Barnet’s. In 1948 he relocated to Hermosa Beach, and soon proposed the idea of Sunday afternoon jam sessions to the Lighthouse’s owner, John Levine. Starting in 1949, he ran the club’s music bookings, turning the Sunday sessions into 12-hour marathons and having the band play evenings during the week as well.
An early version of the All-Stars was made up of musicians from Los Angeles’s Central Avenue jazz scene, including the tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/23/arts/teddy-edwards-78-deft-star-of-los-angeles-jazz-scene.html) and the pianist Hampton Hawes. Later, members of Kenton’s and Woody Herman’s bands began to drift into the group.
Among the band’s core were the trumpeters Shorty Rogers and Conte Candoli; the saxophonists Bob Cooper, Jimmy Giuffre and Bud Shank; the trombonist Frank Rosolino; and the drummers Stan Levey and Shelly Manne (http://www.npr.org/2010/06/07/127478987/shelly-manne-the-well-toned-drummer) . (Max Roach played drums with the band for a time in 1953.)
Some of the music was the airy, low-pulse-rate jazz that the West Coast became famous for; more was loose, straight-ahead post-bop, modeled after the New York style.
The group disbanded in the early 1960s, but Mr. Rumsey continued to book the Lighthouse through the decade, increasingly with major out-of-town acts. By the mid-50s he had also started the Intercollegiate Jazz Festival to help develop talent in Southern California.
From 1971 to his retirement in 1985, he managed and booked the music at Concerts by the Sea, a jazz club in Redondo Beach, Calif.
He had no immediate survivors.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Robert Martin pleads guilty in death of Savannah jazz legend, Be – WTOC-TV: Savannah, Beaufort, SC, News, Weather
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.wtoc.com/story/29624602/robert-martin-pleads-guilty-in-death-of-savannah-jazz-legend-ben-tucker
Posted: Jul 24, 2015 9:51 AM EDTUpdated: Jul 24, 2015 6:55 PM EDT
By Elizabeth Rawlins
** Robert Martin pleads guilty in death of Savannah jazz legend, Ben Tucker
————————————————————
SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) –
The man charged with the death of local jazz legend, Ben Tucker, has been sentenced to five years’ probation.
Robert Martin pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in court on Friday. He was charged with vehicular homicide in the first degree for the June 2013 crash that killed Tucker. Prosecutors say Martin was speeding along Grand Prize of America Avenue on Hutchinson Island when he collided with Tucker’s golf cart.
Martin, a Texas native, was in Savannah for a conference at the time of the incident. He has no prior criminal record and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash. Investigators say Martin was testing out the track on Hutchinson Island when the crash happened. Data from his car showed he was traveling at 97 miles-per-hour two seconds prior to hitting Tucker.
Even though Martin takes the responsibility of the crash, the defense says it is not entirely his fault because the road should have been blocked off
At one time, there were big plans for the area, including for the road to be a racetrack, but it was a flop. The area was supposed to be secured to prevent situations like the one in question, but it wasn’t.
“This could happen to anyone, judge, and it’s happened to Mr. Martin,” the defense said.
Little did Martin know, he was about be on a ride that would change his family’s and the Tucker family’s lives.
Investigators say he takes full responsibility for his decision. But, the defense argues that the track should have been blocked off, because it had already been deemed unsafe for several reasons.
Defense: “Is there a speed limit sign posted anywhere on grand prize avenue?”
“No sir, there’s not,” replied Terry Shook, Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Department.
D: “Is there any marking on the track indicating that there’s a crossing for golf carts, to warn a driver to watch out?”
TS, SCMPD: “No sir.
In fact, the defense showed the judge that there is a designated cart path for all golf carts to use that runs underneath the track, because according to the law, golf carts should not be on the road — a combination of what the defense says was unfortunate circumstances that lead to this tragedy.
Tucker’s wife took the stand, describing the love of her life, who was taken from her so suddenly, two years ago.
“His death left a huge whole in my life,” said Gloria Tucker. “He’ll never walk through the door again. He’ll never kiss me hello. I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.”
Robert Martin got very emotional when he took the stand himself.
I relive it everyday…it’s not easy to talk about,” he said.
Martin is a father of four, and until Friday, was unsure if he would be around to help finish raising his children. But regardless, he knew he would live with this the rest of his life, while others live without Ben Tucker.
“I’d like to apologize to Savannah and the icon that was lost here. I didn’t know Mr. Tucker prior to coming here,” Martin said.
A civil lawsuit has been filed regarding who is responsible for keeping the area safe and blocked off.
Martin could have faced anywhere from three to 15 years.
Copyright 2015 WTOC (http://www.wtoc.com/) . All rights reserved.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Robert Martin pleads guilty in death of Savannah jazz legend, Be – WTOC-TV: Savannah, Beaufort, SC, News, Weather
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.wtoc.com/story/29624602/robert-martin-pleads-guilty-in-death-of-savannah-jazz-legend-ben-tucker
Posted: Jul 24, 2015 9:51 AM EDTUpdated: Jul 24, 2015 6:55 PM EDT
By Elizabeth Rawlins
** Robert Martin pleads guilty in death of Savannah jazz legend, Ben Tucker
————————————————————
SAVANNAH, GA (WTOC) –
The man charged with the death of local jazz legend, Ben Tucker, has been sentenced to five years’ probation.
Robert Martin pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide in court on Friday. He was charged with vehicular homicide in the first degree for the June 2013 crash that killed Tucker. Prosecutors say Martin was speeding along Grand Prize of America Avenue on Hutchinson Island when he collided with Tucker’s golf cart.
Martin, a Texas native, was in Savannah for a conference at the time of the incident. He has no prior criminal record and was not under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the crash. Investigators say Martin was testing out the track on Hutchinson Island when the crash happened. Data from his car showed he was traveling at 97 miles-per-hour two seconds prior to hitting Tucker.
Even though Martin takes the responsibility of the crash, the defense says it is not entirely his fault because the road should have been blocked off
At one time, there were big plans for the area, including for the road to be a racetrack, but it was a flop. The area was supposed to be secured to prevent situations like the one in question, but it wasn’t.
“This could happen to anyone, judge, and it’s happened to Mr. Martin,” the defense said.
Little did Martin know, he was about be on a ride that would change his family’s and the Tucker family’s lives.
Investigators say he takes full responsibility for his decision. But, the defense argues that the track should have been blocked off, because it had already been deemed unsafe for several reasons.
Defense: “Is there a speed limit sign posted anywhere on grand prize avenue?”
“No sir, there’s not,” replied Terry Shook, Savannah-Chatham Metro Police Department.
D: “Is there any marking on the track indicating that there’s a crossing for golf carts, to warn a driver to watch out?”
TS, SCMPD: “No sir.
In fact, the defense showed the judge that there is a designated cart path for all golf carts to use that runs underneath the track, because according to the law, golf carts should not be on the road — a combination of what the defense says was unfortunate circumstances that lead to this tragedy.
Tucker’s wife took the stand, describing the love of her life, who was taken from her so suddenly, two years ago.
“His death left a huge whole in my life,” said Gloria Tucker. “He’ll never walk through the door again. He’ll never kiss me hello. I didn’t have the chance to say goodbye.”
Robert Martin got very emotional when he took the stand himself.
I relive it everyday…it’s not easy to talk about,” he said.
Martin is a father of four, and until Friday, was unsure if he would be around to help finish raising his children. But regardless, he knew he would live with this the rest of his life, while others live without Ben Tucker.
“I’d like to apologize to Savannah and the icon that was lost here. I didn’t know Mr. Tucker prior to coming here,” Martin said.
A civil lawsuit has been filed regarding who is responsible for keeping the area safe and blocked off.
Martin could have faced anywhere from three to 15 years.
Copyright 2015 WTOC (http://www.wtoc.com/) . All rights reserved.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=efc959989f) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=efc959989f&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2015 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA