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https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/buddy-greco-the-ultimate-lounge-singer-dies-at-90/2017/01/11/2427268a-d807-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?utm_term=.363c2bc57fc7
 
Buddy Greco, the ultimate lounge singer, dies at 90
By Matt Schudel

Buddy Greco in 2011. (Andre Csillag/Rex Features/AP)
January 11 at 7:09 PM
Buddy Greco, a jazz pianist and singer in Benny Goodman’s big band in the 1940s, who later hung around with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack and developed a well-polished Las Vegas stage show that made him perhaps the ultimate lounge act, died Jan. 10 in Las Vegas. He was 90.
 
His son Buddy Greco Jr. confirmed the death to the Desert Sun newspaper of Palm Springs, Calif. No cause was disclosed.
 
Mr. Greco mixed talent, tenacity and a hot temper in a career that lasted more than 80 years. He was an oft-married ladies’ man and almost but not quite a member of the Rat Pack, the high-living gang of entertainers surrounding Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin that embodied the extravagance of Las Vegas in its glory days.
 
Mr. Greco had a few minor hits, most notably with a 1960 version of “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and recorded more than 70 albums, but couldn’t quite scale the highest peaks of stardom.
 
He evolved from being a piano player who sometimes sang into a swinging, high-energy entertainer who jumped up from the keyboard to belt out swelling choruses of songs of occasionally dubious merit, all delivered with a finger-snapping hipster patter.
 

Buddy Greco with his then-wife Dani Crayne in 1962. (Bob Dear/AP)
 
“I’d always wanted to be a jazz pianist,” he told the New York Times in 1963. “But it’s easier to make a living as a singer. . . . I’d still be working in crummy rooms and playing to an audience of jazz buffs. By singing, I can appeal to the masses.”
 
Mr. Greco became a headliner in supper clubs and for years was featured at the Desert Inn’s Starlight Lounge in Las Vegas. He recorded with symphony orchestras and occasionally in straight-ahead jazz settings.
 
Throughout the 1960s, he was a familiar presence on television variety shows, where he was introduced as “Mr. Excitement of Song.” If he didn’t reach the showbiz heights of Martin, Sinatra or Tony Bennett, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
 
“No performer works harder at pleasing his crowds,” jazz critic Will Friedwald wrote in his book “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers.” “The most purist of jazz purists . . . could conceivably object to Greco’s highly animated offerings, but they’d be tapping their feet four beats to a bar while they did so.”
 
Mr. Greco never cracked the Top 40, but he kept chasing hits by changing his style from jazz to pop to country and back again, changing his wardrobe but never losing — at least in public — his 200-watt smile.
 
He suffered through withering reviews — “It is a strangely empty, unfocused act . . . that might suggest possibility for growth if Mr. Greco had not already been at it so long,” New York Times critic John S. Wilson wrote in 1977.
 
Ever the showman, Mr. Greco was known to sing a verse of “Satin Doll,” then sit down for some fancy flourishes at the piano, saying, “Talk to me, piano!”
 
The lounge-singer caricatures by Bill Murray on “Saturday Night Live” and Jerry Lewis, as “Buddy Love” in the 1963 film “The Nutty Professor,” cut a little close to the bone. A 1994 GQ magazine profile of Frank Sinatra Jr. had the insulting, if memorable headline “Frank Sinatra Jr. Is Worth Six Buddy Grecos.”
 
But there was more to Mr. Greco than a willingness to get on stage. There may have been lounge singers before him, but he was the perfection of the form.
He was “the epitome of a certain kind of saloon performer,” critic Larry Kart wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 1985. “Greco pretty much invented the style of performing he so totally typifies, to the point where one begins to feel that his moments of flashy excess can’t really be parodied — either because Greco is secretly sending up himself or because one feels a certain awe in the presence of this larger-than-life-size original.”
 
And through it all, through the lousy reviews and the endless interviews about Frank and Dean — and about that weekend in Lake Tahoe with Marilyn Monroe — Mr. Greco kept smiling. As late as age 87, he was on the road 30 weeks a year, with his tuxedo pressed, ready for the next spotlight, no matter how dim it might be.
 
Armando Joseph Greco was born Aug. 14, 1926, in Philadelphia. His music-loving father worked installing floors before opening a record store.
 
Young Buddy began singing on radio when he was 4 and taking piano lessons at 6. His family was too poor to buy a piano, he told the British newspaper the Independent in 1993, “so I would take my piano lessons from my teacher who lived close by, run home and practice on a cutout of a piano keyboard that my father found on the cover of a magazine. He pasted it on the table and I would play on this ‘keyboard’ and actually hear the notes in my head.”
He studied classical music but was soon drawn to the jazz of Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Nat “King” Cole and other pianists. He started performing in his teens and had a minor hit in 1947, “Ooh, Look-a There, Ain’t She Pretty.”
 
In late 1948, he joined clarinetist Goodman’s band for a year, then went on his own. He said he played every nightclub “at least twice” and became a second-tier star and first-rank hothead. He once pushed a piano off a stage toward a patron who wouldn’t put out his cigar.
 
While on tour, he was known to stop the car on the highway to fight with his brother, who played saxophone in his band. In Las Vegas, he reportedly traded punches in a nightclub with Bobby Darin, charging that the younger singer had stolen parts of his act.
 
Mr. Greco was also a notorious ladies’ man and, during those heady years in Vegas, a virtual member of the Rat Pack.
 
“Everyone drank,” he told the Independent, “everyone had a cigarette in their mouth and a lady on their arm, or maybe two.”
 
In 1962, Mr. Greco was in Lake Tahoe for a weekend with Sinatra, Monroe and a few others. It was days before the actress’s mysterious death, and some of the last photographs of the actress show her hugging Mr. Greco by a swimming pool. He never publicly revealed whether they shared more than an embrace.
 
Entertainment Alerts
Big stories in the entertainment world as they break.
Mr. Greco’s first four marriages, to Sally Baionno, Dani Crayne, Margret Kinley and Jackie Sabatino, ended in divorce.
Survivors include his fifth wife, singer Lezlie Anders of Palm Desert, Calif.; and seven children from his earlier marriages.
In the 1990s, Mr. Greco returned to jazz and went on tour with a legacy version of the Goodman orchestra. He continued to record albums as recently as 2013.
He and Anders ran a posh supper club near Palm Springs for several years, then created a tribute show to singer Peggy Lee, with which they toured the world. They lived in England for several years before returning to California.
“Greco has all the finger-popping shallowness we associate with lounge lizards,” jazz critic Friedwald wrote in 2010, “but at the same time there’s a sincerity and even a purity to his work that’s quite remarkable. There’s no one quite like him.”
Read more Washington Post obituaries
Buddy Bregman, gifted Hollywood musical arranger and conductor, dies at 86
Florence Henderson, who starred in TV’s ‘The Brady Bunch,’ dies at 82
Frank Sinatra Jr., who lived in the shadow of his famous father, dies at 72

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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https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/buddy-greco-the-ultimate-lounge-singer-dies-at-90/2017/01/11/2427268a-d807-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html?utm_term=.363c2bc57fc7
 
Buddy Greco, the ultimate lounge singer, dies at 90
By Matt Schudel

Buddy Greco in 2011. (Andre Csillag/Rex Features/AP)
January 11 at 7:09 PM
Buddy Greco, a jazz pianist and singer in Benny Goodman’s big band in the 1940s, who later hung around with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack and developed a well-polished Las Vegas stage show that made him perhaps the ultimate lounge act, died Jan. 10 in Las Vegas. He was 90.
 
His son Buddy Greco Jr. confirmed the death to the Desert Sun newspaper of Palm Springs, Calif. No cause was disclosed.
 
Mr. Greco mixed talent, tenacity and a hot temper in a career that lasted more than 80 years. He was an oft-married ladies’ man and almost but not quite a member of the Rat Pack, the high-living gang of entertainers surrounding Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin that embodied the extravagance of Las Vegas in its glory days.
 
Mr. Greco had a few minor hits, most notably with a 1960 version of “The Lady Is a Tramp,” and recorded more than 70 albums, but couldn’t quite scale the highest peaks of stardom.
 
He evolved from being a piano player who sometimes sang into a swinging, high-energy entertainer who jumped up from the keyboard to belt out swelling choruses of songs of occasionally dubious merit, all delivered with a finger-snapping hipster patter.
 

Buddy Greco with his then-wife Dani Crayne in 1962. (Bob Dear/AP)
 
“I’d always wanted to be a jazz pianist,” he told the New York Times in 1963. “But it’s easier to make a living as a singer. . . . I’d still be working in crummy rooms and playing to an audience of jazz buffs. By singing, I can appeal to the masses.”
 
Mr. Greco became a headliner in supper clubs and for years was featured at the Desert Inn’s Starlight Lounge in Las Vegas. He recorded with symphony orchestras and occasionally in straight-ahead jazz settings.
 
Throughout the 1960s, he was a familiar presence on television variety shows, where he was introduced as “Mr. Excitement of Song.” If he didn’t reach the showbiz heights of Martin, Sinatra or Tony Bennett, it wasn’t for lack of trying.
 
“No performer works harder at pleasing his crowds,” jazz critic Will Friedwald wrote in his book “A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers.” “The most purist of jazz purists . . . could conceivably object to Greco’s highly animated offerings, but they’d be tapping their feet four beats to a bar while they did so.”
 
Mr. Greco never cracked the Top 40, but he kept chasing hits by changing his style from jazz to pop to country and back again, changing his wardrobe but never losing — at least in public — his 200-watt smile.
 
He suffered through withering reviews — “It is a strangely empty, unfocused act . . . that might suggest possibility for growth if Mr. Greco had not already been at it so long,” New York Times critic John S. Wilson wrote in 1977.
 
Ever the showman, Mr. Greco was known to sing a verse of “Satin Doll,” then sit down for some fancy flourishes at the piano, saying, “Talk to me, piano!”
 
The lounge-singer caricatures by Bill Murray on “Saturday Night Live” and Jerry Lewis, as “Buddy Love” in the 1963 film “The Nutty Professor,” cut a little close to the bone. A 1994 GQ magazine profile of Frank Sinatra Jr. had the insulting, if memorable headline “Frank Sinatra Jr. Is Worth Six Buddy Grecos.”
 
But there was more to Mr. Greco than a willingness to get on stage. There may have been lounge singers before him, but he was the perfection of the form.
He was “the epitome of a certain kind of saloon performer,” critic Larry Kart wrote in the Chicago Tribune in 1985. “Greco pretty much invented the style of performing he so totally typifies, to the point where one begins to feel that his moments of flashy excess can’t really be parodied — either because Greco is secretly sending up himself or because one feels a certain awe in the presence of this larger-than-life-size original.”
 
And through it all, through the lousy reviews and the endless interviews about Frank and Dean — and about that weekend in Lake Tahoe with Marilyn Monroe — Mr. Greco kept smiling. As late as age 87, he was on the road 30 weeks a year, with his tuxedo pressed, ready for the next spotlight, no matter how dim it might be.
 
Armando Joseph Greco was born Aug. 14, 1926, in Philadelphia. His music-loving father worked installing floors before opening a record store.
 
Young Buddy began singing on radio when he was 4 and taking piano lessons at 6. His family was too poor to buy a piano, he told the British newspaper the Independent in 1993, “so I would take my piano lessons from my teacher who lived close by, run home and practice on a cutout of a piano keyboard that my father found on the cover of a magazine. He pasted it on the table and I would play on this ‘keyboard’ and actually hear the notes in my head.”
He studied classical music but was soon drawn to the jazz of Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Nat “King” Cole and other pianists. He started performing in his teens and had a minor hit in 1947, “Ooh, Look-a There, Ain’t She Pretty.”
 
In late 1948, he joined clarinetist Goodman’s band for a year, then went on his own. He said he played every nightclub “at least twice” and became a second-tier star and first-rank hothead. He once pushed a piano off a stage toward a patron who wouldn’t put out his cigar.
 
While on tour, he was known to stop the car on the highway to fight with his brother, who played saxophone in his band. In Las Vegas, he reportedly traded punches in a nightclub with Bobby Darin, charging that the younger singer had stolen parts of his act.
 
Mr. Greco was also a notorious ladies’ man and, during those heady years in Vegas, a virtual member of the Rat Pack.
 
“Everyone drank,” he told the Independent, “everyone had a cigarette in their mouth and a lady on their arm, or maybe two.”
 
In 1962, Mr. Greco was in Lake Tahoe for a weekend with Sinatra, Monroe and a few others. It was days before the actress’s mysterious death, and some of the last photographs of the actress show her hugging Mr. Greco by a swimming pool. He never publicly revealed whether they shared more than an embrace.
 
Entertainment Alerts
Big stories in the entertainment world as they break.
Mr. Greco’s first four marriages, to Sally Baionno, Dani Crayne, Margret Kinley and Jackie Sabatino, ended in divorce.
Survivors include his fifth wife, singer Lezlie Anders of Palm Desert, Calif.; and seven children from his earlier marriages.
In the 1990s, Mr. Greco returned to jazz and went on tour with a legacy version of the Goodman orchestra. He continued to record albums as recently as 2013.
He and Anders ran a posh supper club near Palm Springs for several years, then created a tribute show to singer Peggy Lee, with which they toured the world. They lived in England for several years before returning to California.
“Greco has all the finger-popping shallowness we associate with lounge lizards,” jazz critic Friedwald wrote in 2010, “but at the same time there’s a sincerity and even a purity to his work that’s quite remarkable. There’s no one quite like him.”
Read more Washington Post obituaries
Buddy Bregman, gifted Hollywood musical arranger and conductor, dies at 86
Florence Henderson, who starred in TV’s ‘The Brady Bunch,’ dies at 82
Frank Sinatra Jr., who lived in the shadow of his famous father, dies at 72

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

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/movies/vince-giordano-theres-a-future-in-the-past-review.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170112
 
Review: ‘Vince Giordano,’ a Nostalgist With Fresh Takes on Jazz
JAN. 12, 2017
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
 

Vince Giordano leads the Nighthawks band, and his music has been featured in Woody Allen’s movies and the series “Boardwalk Empire.” Charlie Gross/First Run Features
 
As you absorb the buoyant ’20s and ’30s jazz bubbling through the documentary “Vince Giordano: There’s a Future in the Past,” you may well wonder if this is the happiest American music ever created. It’s a peppy, carefree sound that conveys a frantic energy but is rendered with a light touch.
 
Born and based in Brooklyn, Mr. Giordano, 64, has been leading the Nighthawks, his 11-piece band specializing in the pre-swing era, for nearly four decades. He plays several instruments, including tuba, string bass and bass saxophone, and sings in a voice that evokes a less rambunctious Fats Waller. His popularity playing hotels has spawned a subculture of young fans who flock to his performances in period dress.
 
You probably know the music of this passionate preservationist, which has been featured in Woody Allen’s movies and the HBO series “Boardwalk Empire.” His devotion to stylistic authenticity infuses his band’s performances to the degree that, to quote a ’70s pop song title, “everything old is new again.” Played with such vigor and attention to detail, it sounds utterly fresh.
 
Much of the space in Mr. Giordano’s Brooklyn apartment is devoted to his ever-growing, meticulously annotated collection of 60,000 big-band arrangements. They are culled from his extensive search for original manuscripts and radio transcriptions of music that the film calls hot jazz. What the singer, pianist and cabaret performer Michael Feinstein is to vintage popular songs, Mr. Giordano is to hot jazz.
“There’s a Future in the Past” is a ground-level exploration of this historian at work, leading the Nighthawks or one of their satellite ensembles and traveling the country to examine and rescue old arrangements that have turned up in radio station archives and musicians’ basements. What others would dismiss as trash is the equivalent of discovering gold to Mr. Giordano.
 
A preview of the film.
 
By FIRST RUN FEATURES on January 12, 2017. Image courtesy of Internet Video Archive. Watch in Times Video »
 
This movie, directed and produced by Dave Davidson and Amber Edwards, digs deeply enough into Mr. Giordano’s world to convey the drudgery and headaches of being a
bandleader: juggling personnel, scheduling, dealing with a musicians’ union and lugging around instruments. But for all the players’ expertise and devotion, their profession won’t make them rich and famous.
 
They do it for love. The most memorable performances are carried by a mysterious lilt that makes them the next best thing to dancing on air.
Vince Giordano: There’s a Future in the Past
 
NYT Critics’ Pick
 
                  Directors Dave Davidson, Amber Edwards
                  Writers Dave Davidson, Amber Edwards
                  Stars Sam Bardfeld, Dan Block, Colin Brigstocke, Adrian Cunningham, Andy Farber
                  Genres Documentary, Biography, History, Music
                  
Movie data powered by IMDb.com
                        Last updated: Jan 12, 2017
 

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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http://www.lohud.com/story/entertainment/2017/01/12/jazz-club-poised-open-tarrytown/96205578/
 
Jazz club poised to open in Tarrytown
 
Sol Hurwitz, For The Journal News Published 11:10 a.m. ET Jan. 12, 2017 | Updated 1 hour ago
Video: Jazz Forum in Tarrytown at One Dixon Lane
 
 
 

Mark Morganelli, the executive director of Jazz Forum Arts talks about his new jazz club, Jazz Forum at One Dixon Lane in Tarrytown. Mark Vergari/lohud

There’s welcome news for jazz lovers. Jazz Forum, Westchester’s newest jazz club, is slated to open in Tarrytown in March.
The brainchild of impresario Mark Morganelli, the club will present top names in jazz and Brazilian music, along with fine food and drinks, every weekend.
Morganelli recently toured Jazz Forum’s still unfinished space with a reporter, while an electrician was installing wiring, and wallboard was yet to be painted. In a corner stood a Steinway baby grand, a guitar, assorted percussion instruments, stacked chairs, and music stands.
Finished or not, Morganelli could imagine the look and feel of Jazz Forum when it opens for business.
“As you enter, you’ll come down this hallway, which opens to reveal a warm, inviting, and intimate jazz club,” he said.  “About 75 folks will be seated at tables and high-tops, plus a dozen at the bar seated on comfortable barstools opposite the bandstand.”
A room with a large antique pool table adjoins the entrance hallway.
“Folks can shoot pool, have drinks here, or just hang while waiting for the next set,” he said. The wall was festooned with framed recordings by some of the titans of jazz, among them Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, and Paul Winter. “They were all signed to me by artists I’ve presented over the years,” Morganelli recalled, “except Ella [Fitzgerald] and Miles [Davis].”
The club is housed in a building that dates from 1910, which was once a bakery. Morganelli and his wife, Ellen Prior, bought the property two years ago. “We were looking to down-size from our river view home in Dobbs Ferry, until we saw this space.  It spoke to us,” he said. They now live in a three-bedroom loft apartment above the club.

Buy Photo
The bar has beed delivered and work continues on Jazz Forum, at One Dixon Lane, a new jazz club in Tarrytown, Jan. 10, 2017, under the direction of Mark Morganelli, the Executive Director of Jazz Forum Arts. (Photo: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)
 
Jazz Forum is a project of Jazz Forum Arts, a nonprofit organization of which Morganelli is executive director. The group is devoted to the presentation, appreciation, and understanding of jazz as a distinctly American art form. Last summer Jazz Forum Arts presented 34 free jazz concerts in Westchester.
“Jazz Forum is a great extension of the work of Jazz Forum Arts by offering jazz as it was performed in its earliest days—in an informal setting, in clubs,” said board president John Gunther-Mohr, Sr. of Dobbs Ferry, a banker in New York City.
With the operation of the club, Morganelli expects Jazz Forum Arts’ annual budget to double. The organization gets its revenues from grants, sponsorships, individual contributions, and starting this year from the club’s cover charges and food and beverage sales. The cover will start at $20 per person per set, plus a $10 minimum in food and drink per person per set.
Special events will further increase its income. Last November, 121 friends and supporters paid $100 to attend an “Evening of Jazz” at Shadowbrook, the sprawling former estate of Stan Getz, the legendary saxophonist, in Irvington. In a rotunda encircled by Corinthian columns and Tiffany stained glass windows, listeners sipped wine and swigged beer while bopping and swaying to tunes performed by three giants of jazz: Kenny Barron, pianist; Ray Drummond, bassist; and Jimmy Cobb, drummer. “This is the brand of superior music and relaxed atmosphere that patrons can expect at Jazz Forum,” Morganelli boasted.
Morganelli foresees a market for Jazz Forum beyond Westchester. “We have many friends and colleagues from Rockland and Putnam counties who are enthusiastic about regularly attending performances.”
Nor does he rule out enticing an audience of jazz buffs from New York City. “The club is only a five-minute walk from Metro North’s Tarrytown Station,” he stated.
Morganelli was introduced to jazz at age 9, when he began playing the trumpet. “I was encouraged by my late father, Joe Morganelli, who drummed on the floor to the strains of big band 78s and LPs,” he recalled. In New York City the younger Morganelli had an active career as a trumpet player and producer of jazz programs.
“Ellen and I moved to Dobbs Ferry from the upper west side in December 1991 and six months later I began presenting ‘Jazz at the Music Hall’ in Tarrytown, which ran for 22 years,” he said. “We produced about 150 concerts in Westchester in the spring and fall, and several dozen free concerts each summer.”
Could Jazz Forum become Westchester’s answer to Birdland and Village Vanguard, New York City’s premiere jazz clubs?
Morganelli replied without missing a beat: “Yes!”
 

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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http://www.lohud.com/story/entertainment/2017/01/12/jazz-club-poised-open-tarrytown/96205578/
 
Jazz club poised to open in Tarrytown
 
Sol Hurwitz, For The Journal News Published 11:10 a.m. ET Jan. 12, 2017 | Updated 1 hour ago
Video: Jazz Forum in Tarrytown at One Dixon Lane
 
 
 

Mark Morganelli, the executive director of Jazz Forum Arts talks about his new jazz club, Jazz Forum at One Dixon Lane in Tarrytown. Mark Vergari/lohud

There’s welcome news for jazz lovers. Jazz Forum, Westchester’s newest jazz club, is slated to open in Tarrytown in March.
The brainchild of impresario Mark Morganelli, the club will present top names in jazz and Brazilian music, along with fine food and drinks, every weekend.
Morganelli recently toured Jazz Forum’s still unfinished space with a reporter, while an electrician was installing wiring, and wallboard was yet to be painted. In a corner stood a Steinway baby grand, a guitar, assorted percussion instruments, stacked chairs, and music stands.
Finished or not, Morganelli could imagine the look and feel of Jazz Forum when it opens for business.
“As you enter, you’ll come down this hallway, which opens to reveal a warm, inviting, and intimate jazz club,” he said.  “About 75 folks will be seated at tables and high-tops, plus a dozen at the bar seated on comfortable barstools opposite the bandstand.”
A room with a large antique pool table adjoins the entrance hallway.
“Folks can shoot pool, have drinks here, or just hang while waiting for the next set,” he said. The wall was festooned with framed recordings by some of the titans of jazz, among them Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Rollins, Pat Metheny, and Paul Winter. “They were all signed to me by artists I’ve presented over the years,” Morganelli recalled, “except Ella [Fitzgerald] and Miles [Davis].”
The club is housed in a building that dates from 1910, which was once a bakery. Morganelli and his wife, Ellen Prior, bought the property two years ago. “We were looking to down-size from our river view home in Dobbs Ferry, until we saw this space.  It spoke to us,” he said. They now live in a three-bedroom loft apartment above the club.

Buy Photo
The bar has beed delivered and work continues on Jazz Forum, at One Dixon Lane, a new jazz club in Tarrytown, Jan. 10, 2017, under the direction of Mark Morganelli, the Executive Director of Jazz Forum Arts. (Photo: Mark Vergari/The Journal News)
 
Jazz Forum is a project of Jazz Forum Arts, a nonprofit organization of which Morganelli is executive director. The group is devoted to the presentation, appreciation, and understanding of jazz as a distinctly American art form. Last summer Jazz Forum Arts presented 34 free jazz concerts in Westchester.
“Jazz Forum is a great extension of the work of Jazz Forum Arts by offering jazz as it was performed in its earliest days—in an informal setting, in clubs,” said board president John Gunther-Mohr, Sr. of Dobbs Ferry, a banker in New York City.
With the operation of the club, Morganelli expects Jazz Forum Arts’ annual budget to double. The organization gets its revenues from grants, sponsorships, individual contributions, and starting this year from the club’s cover charges and food and beverage sales. The cover will start at $20 per person per set, plus a $10 minimum in food and drink per person per set.
Special events will further increase its income. Last November, 121 friends and supporters paid $100 to attend an “Evening of Jazz” at Shadowbrook, the sprawling former estate of Stan Getz, the legendary saxophonist, in Irvington. In a rotunda encircled by Corinthian columns and Tiffany stained glass windows, listeners sipped wine and swigged beer while bopping and swaying to tunes performed by three giants of jazz: Kenny Barron, pianist; Ray Drummond, bassist; and Jimmy Cobb, drummer. “This is the brand of superior music and relaxed atmosphere that patrons can expect at Jazz Forum,” Morganelli boasted.
Morganelli foresees a market for Jazz Forum beyond Westchester. “We have many friends and colleagues from Rockland and Putnam counties who are enthusiastic about regularly attending performances.”
Nor does he rule out enticing an audience of jazz buffs from New York City. “The club is only a five-minute walk from Metro North’s Tarrytown Station,” he stated.
Morganelli was introduced to jazz at age 9, when he began playing the trumpet. “I was encouraged by my late father, Joe Morganelli, who drummed on the floor to the strains of big band 78s and LPs,” he recalled. In New York City the younger Morganelli had an active career as a trumpet player and producer of jazz programs.
“Ellen and I moved to Dobbs Ferry from the upper west side in December 1991 and six months later I began presenting ‘Jazz at the Music Hall’ in Tarrytown, which ran for 22 years,” he said. “We produced about 150 concerts in Westchester in the spring and fall, and several dozen free concerts each summer.”
Could Jazz Forum become Westchester’s answer to Birdland and Village Vanguard, New York City’s premiere jazz clubs?
Morganelli replied without missing a beat: “Yes!”
 

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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https://peterblowry.com/2017/01/11/oddenda-such-91/

ODDENDA & SUCH: # 91
Posted on January 11, 2017
 
Blasts from the past? … sort of!
 
My first holiday gift to/from myself this year was a new book – Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy, written by Richard Carlin*. It’s a biography of one of the more notorious guys in the business of yore based in NYC after WW II. Good books have already been written so far on other contemporaries such as the Chess brothers in Chicago; Ahmet Ertegun, or Joe Davis in NYC; a.o., (who are all in some ways appealing people) with tomes on The Bihari brothers in L.A. or Herman Lubinsky in Newark, NJ as yet unwritten.
 
Levy was a colorful (as they say), and an often unappealing and devious figure, one who had “naturally occurring” mob friends and connections due to his upbringing. This was in Depression-era Brooklyn, when so many on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder came to each other’s aid in one form or another as all attempted to survive by whatever means necessary. He was a child of his times and his neighborhood – the mob ruled!
 
The record business as it progressed after the war had something of the “wild west” about it, with many metaphorical gunslingers (and a few who really were that) and other biz rustlers trying to mine the new pop music mother-lodes to their benefit. One aspect that contributed to their rise was the major labels (Columbia, Victor, Decca) and their distributors having no idea how to serve vernacular audiences… blacks among them… or whether to even bother. The invention and proliferation of the tape recorder was one of the key technological events that led to this explosive growth after the war. One could essentially set up a simple recording “studio” almost anywhere, (garage, back room, basement, even a chicken coop!), and Bob’s your uncle – you’re in business! Many of the participants hadn’t a clue as to what they were doing (most of them, maybe?), others had some idea, and there were even a rare few who actually liked the music and the people who made it. (see O&S #87) It was vaguely reminiscent of the legendary monkeys and typewriters effect! And then there was the world of the new independent distributors, who took on the many new indie labels – there were often incestuous relations between the independent labels and distributors… kind of like Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s on First” sketch!!
 
Levy was not a music lover per se – he was only interested in the income that could be made from the records and the performers for his small initial investment. It was an industry to him like any other, with a product coming out one end for the public to purchase. He was a salesman. Unlike some in his situation, like the Chesses or Biharis, Morris Levy did not attempt to build anyone’s career over time but his own. He just recorded (or bought from others) material and that was generally as far as he went – early promotion and then nothing. That is why there are so many one-hit wonders on the aptly named Roulette Records!
 
To Morris Levy, music was simply a commodity to be mined and sold as it came to him (often unrefined), not something to be nourished: the word “art” never crossed his mind. On the positive side, he was not a racist, but an equal-opportunity exploiter of struggling musicians regardless of race, creed, or color! A man of his word (but not of his contracts), he managed to last a very long time in a cut-throat business! In reading the book, he comes across as volatile and occasionally fair according to his personal standards… those of the street. And I tend to believe after reading this book, that he was chased for decades by the Feds and they finally set him up and nailed before he died.
 
While I never had direct dealings with him, I was a fringe player in one of Levy’s law-suits against John Lennon – suits were his go-to response to any apparent slight! One day a phone call to my home in Ulster County came from Lennon’s lawyer asking for my assistance – I believe that they got my number from Atlantic Records, for whom I had recently done some work (O&S # 15). It seems that Chuck Berry (via his copyright holder Morris Levy) was suing Lennon for breach of copyright: I was told it was over four bars of music in common with “You Can’t Catch Me” (Berry) and “Come Together” (Lennon). They wanted to tap into my expertise in black music history for pre-Chuck precedents. I successfully found them in some Lomax field recordings from the mid-30s that had examples of the same musical phraseology. Four bars! (Nothing wholesale like George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”.)
 
I was then later told that the matter was to be settled out-of-court and I would not be needed to testify; yet another typically unpaid consultancy! The lawyer told me that Lennon had agreed to record three of Chuck’s songs on his planned album of oldies, and that Berry would get the copyrights to a couple of Yoko Ono songs in exchange. (I can’t make this stuff up, folks… not enough imagination!!!) Reading the book, I find that Morris Levy sued Lennon again later for not recording all his promised copyright tunes on that oldies album and won (sort of) – read pp. 171-178, Chapter 8; “Remainders: 1969 – 1974” for the whole strange story. Angels on the head of a pin stuff… it boggles one’s mind!
 
In another missed close encounter example, I never had direct contact with any of the Chess brothers, either, but I did meet Ralph Bass at their studios in Chicago one time while traveling with Mike Rowe. We had a great time listening to unissued Chess stuff and talking with Ralph about music of the past – he cared. A well-spent and educational afternoon! Another time, I was successful in “bribing” Ahmet Ertegun so I could produce six lovely sets of blues re-issue material from the Atlantic vaults. (see O&S #15) He was a music lover.
Finally, because I was based in northern NJ at my parents’ house at that time, it seemed logical to attempt to contact and interview Herman Lubinsky, owner and head of Newark’s Savoy Records – it was relatively close to Montclair, NJ. When I arrived and was admitted into his office, I found that he was a stone racist who hated ALL the black artists he recorded over the decades as well as their music – he made no attempt to hide his feelings from me.
 
According to Herman, all “niggers” were nothing but drunken, drug addicted sex fiends and that included the black gospel acts he was living off of at the time. Tarheel Slim told me of a time when Herman pulled a gun (and firing into the ceilin), on Thermon Ruth, the leader of many a notable “quartet” or two (both secular and sacred) when Ruth brought up the subject of royalties. After my own unpleasant experience, I can believe that story is accurate. I found Lubinsky to be a horrid little man with no manners or couth, who waved his racism in my face. He made Morris Levy seem the pinnacle of subtlety and good taste!
 
I was attempting to meet with Lubinsky on behalf of BLUES UNLIMITED, then a mimeo’d journal from the (then) UK. Needless to say, there were no salaried positions with this labor of love! Herman demanded he be paid an undetermined sum before he’d talk with me – no amount of explanation of the reality of the situation on my part would sway his position. A wasted trip, but I hadn’t given up yet, masochist that I can be. The downside was that I went back to Savoy another time with Mike Rowe to find that he was not there even although we’d called ahead. The upside was that we instead met with Fred Mendelsohn (Regal Records, DeLuxe Records, Herald Records, a.o.), who was then Savoy’s main A&R man for black gospel material. Fred LOVED the black musics he worked with over time as well as the musicians – he was, unlike his boss, an all around lovely man**. We had a great time talking with Mendelsohn, who told us much about the record business in NJ and the NY area during the 40s. Then he pulled out a reel of Blind Willie McTell stuff from a session he’d recorded for Regal ca. ’49, and played it for us! WOW. Willie and Curley!! Heaven!!!
 
Later, most of Fred’s Regal blues material (a.o.) was sold to Arnie Caplin (Biograph Records), but that particular McTell reel came up missing in the initial hand-over! Apparently it was mis-filed or something, and that explains the odd initial mismatched McTell/Memphis Minnie LP of Regal material that first came out from Biograph at the time. The “lost” reel was eventually re-located after I hipped Arnie to the fact of its existence. Further down the line there was a second Biograph LP of Regal blues material including that “lost” McTell tape that was released later on. All the McTell/Weaver stuff is on CD these days, so no harm done in the long run… great stuff!
 
There you have it – my mild exposure to some of the early (notorious?) giants in the record business, the wheelers and dealers of their day***. I really was merely a shy, music-loving WASP guy from northern NJ! I was, nonetheless, able to meet some really nice people who liked the music and were wiling to speak with me. And then there were also a couple of real ass-holes of various type, depth, and intensity! Probably a representative sample of the biz of those days, though, and a great example of how not to be in many cases!
 
PETER B. LOWRY                                                                                                                                           
 Sydney, 2017
* University Press of Mississippi (2016) Jackson, MS.                                                                            
 (The author is the brother of Bob Carlin, claw-hammer banjo par excellence and author.)
 
** Among the releases he was responsible for recording (and selling) for Savoy were the wonderful albums of the very old-time, nay archaic, singing preacher, Rev. C.J. Johnson from Atlanta. They knocked Alan Lomax off his chair when I played some for him one time.
 
*** For more information, read Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers, written by John Broven. University of Illinois Press (2010) Urbana and Chicago.
 
 

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https://peterblowry.com/2017/01/11/oddenda-such-91/

ODDENDA & SUCH: # 91
Posted on January 11, 2017
 
Blasts from the past? … sort of!
 
My first holiday gift to/from myself this year was a new book – Godfather of the Music Business: Morris Levy, written by Richard Carlin*. It’s a biography of one of the more notorious guys in the business of yore based in NYC after WW II. Good books have already been written so far on other contemporaries such as the Chess brothers in Chicago; Ahmet Ertegun, or Joe Davis in NYC; a.o., (who are all in some ways appealing people) with tomes on The Bihari brothers in L.A. or Herman Lubinsky in Newark, NJ as yet unwritten.
 
Levy was a colorful (as they say), and an often unappealing and devious figure, one who had “naturally occurring” mob friends and connections due to his upbringing. This was in Depression-era Brooklyn, when so many on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder came to each other’s aid in one form or another as all attempted to survive by whatever means necessary. He was a child of his times and his neighborhood – the mob ruled!
 
The record business as it progressed after the war had something of the “wild west” about it, with many metaphorical gunslingers (and a few who really were that) and other biz rustlers trying to mine the new pop music mother-lodes to their benefit. One aspect that contributed to their rise was the major labels (Columbia, Victor, Decca) and their distributors having no idea how to serve vernacular audiences… blacks among them… or whether to even bother. The invention and proliferation of the tape recorder was one of the key technological events that led to this explosive growth after the war. One could essentially set up a simple recording “studio” almost anywhere, (garage, back room, basement, even a chicken coop!), and Bob’s your uncle – you’re in business! Many of the participants hadn’t a clue as to what they were doing (most of them, maybe?), others had some idea, and there were even a rare few who actually liked the music and the people who made it. (see O&S #87) It was vaguely reminiscent of the legendary monkeys and typewriters effect! And then there was the world of the new independent distributors, who took on the many new indie labels – there were often incestuous relations between the independent labels and distributors… kind of like Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s on First” sketch!!
 
Levy was not a music lover per se – he was only interested in the income that could be made from the records and the performers for his small initial investment. It was an industry to him like any other, with a product coming out one end for the public to purchase. He was a salesman. Unlike some in his situation, like the Chesses or Biharis, Morris Levy did not attempt to build anyone’s career over time but his own. He just recorded (or bought from others) material and that was generally as far as he went – early promotion and then nothing. That is why there are so many one-hit wonders on the aptly named Roulette Records!
 
To Morris Levy, music was simply a commodity to be mined and sold as it came to him (often unrefined), not something to be nourished: the word “art” never crossed his mind. On the positive side, he was not a racist, but an equal-opportunity exploiter of struggling musicians regardless of race, creed, or color! A man of his word (but not of his contracts), he managed to last a very long time in a cut-throat business! In reading the book, he comes across as volatile and occasionally fair according to his personal standards… those of the street. And I tend to believe after reading this book, that he was chased for decades by the Feds and they finally set him up and nailed before he died.
 
While I never had direct dealings with him, I was a fringe player in one of Levy’s law-suits against John Lennon – suits were his go-to response to any apparent slight! One day a phone call to my home in Ulster County came from Lennon’s lawyer asking for my assistance – I believe that they got my number from Atlantic Records, for whom I had recently done some work (O&S # 15). It seems that Chuck Berry (via his copyright holder Morris Levy) was suing Lennon for breach of copyright: I was told it was over four bars of music in common with “You Can’t Catch Me” (Berry) and “Come Together” (Lennon). They wanted to tap into my expertise in black music history for pre-Chuck precedents. I successfully found them in some Lomax field recordings from the mid-30s that had examples of the same musical phraseology. Four bars! (Nothing wholesale like George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”.)
 
I was then later told that the matter was to be settled out-of-court and I would not be needed to testify; yet another typically unpaid consultancy! The lawyer told me that Lennon had agreed to record three of Chuck’s songs on his planned album of oldies, and that Berry would get the copyrights to a couple of Yoko Ono songs in exchange. (I can’t make this stuff up, folks… not enough imagination!!!) Reading the book, I find that Morris Levy sued Lennon again later for not recording all his promised copyright tunes on that oldies album and won (sort of) – read pp. 171-178, Chapter 8; “Remainders: 1969 – 1974” for the whole strange story. Angels on the head of a pin stuff… it boggles one’s mind!
 
In another missed close encounter example, I never had direct contact with any of the Chess brothers, either, but I did meet Ralph Bass at their studios in Chicago one time while traveling with Mike Rowe. We had a great time listening to unissued Chess stuff and talking with Ralph about music of the past – he cared. A well-spent and educational afternoon! Another time, I was successful in “bribing” Ahmet Ertegun so I could produce six lovely sets of blues re-issue material from the Atlantic vaults. (see O&S #15) He was a music lover.
Finally, because I was based in northern NJ at my parents’ house at that time, it seemed logical to attempt to contact and interview Herman Lubinsky, owner and head of Newark’s Savoy Records – it was relatively close to Montclair, NJ. When I arrived and was admitted into his office, I found that he was a stone racist who hated ALL the black artists he recorded over the decades as well as their music – he made no attempt to hide his feelings from me.
 
According to Herman, all “niggers” were nothing but drunken, drug addicted sex fiends and that included the black gospel acts he was living off of at the time. Tarheel Slim told me of a time when Herman pulled a gun (and firing into the ceilin), on Thermon Ruth, the leader of many a notable “quartet” or two (both secular and sacred) when Ruth brought up the subject of royalties. After my own unpleasant experience, I can believe that story is accurate. I found Lubinsky to be a horrid little man with no manners or couth, who waved his racism in my face. He made Morris Levy seem the pinnacle of subtlety and good taste!
 
I was attempting to meet with Lubinsky on behalf of BLUES UNLIMITED, then a mimeo’d journal from the (then) UK. Needless to say, there were no salaried positions with this labor of love! Herman demanded he be paid an undetermined sum before he’d talk with me – no amount of explanation of the reality of the situation on my part would sway his position. A wasted trip, but I hadn’t given up yet, masochist that I can be. The downside was that I went back to Savoy another time with Mike Rowe to find that he was not there even although we’d called ahead. The upside was that we instead met with Fred Mendelsohn (Regal Records, DeLuxe Records, Herald Records, a.o.), who was then Savoy’s main A&R man for black gospel material. Fred LOVED the black musics he worked with over time as well as the musicians – he was, unlike his boss, an all around lovely man**. We had a great time talking with Mendelsohn, who told us much about the record business in NJ and the NY area during the 40s. Then he pulled out a reel of Blind Willie McTell stuff from a session he’d recorded for Regal ca. ’49, and played it for us! WOW. Willie and Curley!! Heaven!!!
 
Later, most of Fred’s Regal blues material (a.o.) was sold to Arnie Caplin (Biograph Records), but that particular McTell reel came up missing in the initial hand-over! Apparently it was mis-filed or something, and that explains the odd initial mismatched McTell/Memphis Minnie LP of Regal material that first came out from Biograph at the time. The “lost” reel was eventually re-located after I hipped Arnie to the fact of its existence. Further down the line there was a second Biograph LP of Regal blues material including that “lost” McTell tape that was released later on. All the McTell/Weaver stuff is on CD these days, so no harm done in the long run… great stuff!
 
There you have it – my mild exposure to some of the early (notorious?) giants in the record business, the wheelers and dealers of their day***. I really was merely a shy, music-loving WASP guy from northern NJ! I was, nonetheless, able to meet some really nice people who liked the music and were wiling to speak with me. And then there were also a couple of real ass-holes of various type, depth, and intensity! Probably a representative sample of the biz of those days, though, and a great example of how not to be in many cases!
 
PETER B. LOWRY                                                                                                                                           
 Sydney, 2017
* University Press of Mississippi (2016) Jackson, MS.                                                                            
 (The author is the brother of Bob Carlin, claw-hammer banjo par excellence and author.)
 
** Among the releases he was responsible for recording (and selling) for Savoy were the wonderful albums of the very old-time, nay archaic, singing preacher, Rev. C.J. Johnson from Atlanta. They knocked Alan Lomax off his chair when I played some for him one time.
 
*** For more information, read Record Makers and Breakers: Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers, written by John Broven. University of Illinois Press (2010) Urbana and Chicago.
 
 

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-key-an-accordion-player-fills-an-orchestral-gap-1484004379?mc_cid=4e07b68cb9
 
On Key: An Accordion Player Fills an Orchestral Gap
 
The New York Philharmonic looks for a temp and finds Bill Schimmel
 
By Charles Passy Jan. 9, 2017 6:26 p.m. ET

Accordion player William Schimmel warms up before a performance of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in New York on Friday. Photo: Elizabeth Shafiroff for The Wall Street Journal
 
Among its ranks, the New York Philharmonic counts 28 violinists, 11 cellists, four flutists, three trombonists and even one bass trombonist.
But when the call came for an accordionist this past week, the orchestra had to go outside its circle.
 
The ensemble turned to Bill Schimmel, a New York-based master of the instrument who has made something of a specialty performing with orchestras.
Never mind that the accordion is best known in a folk, pop or cabaret context. A handful of classically trained composers have incorporated it into their works, including Kurt Weill, whose “Little Threepenny Music” was part of the recent Philharmonic program. Mr. Schimmel, whose history with the Philharmonic goes back four decades, was more than up for the challenge.
 
The Philharmonic “has an energy that no other orchestra has,” said the 70-year-old Mr. Schimmel, who has also performed with symphonies from Chicago to Grand Rapids, Mich.
 
In its 175-year history, the New York Philharmonic has hired artists who specialize in a range of nontraditional instruments, from the harmonica to the hammered dulcimer. Even a virtuoso in the theremin, an electronic musical instrument with a distinctly eerie sound, has been tapped.
 
The works featuring such instruments often are of recent vintage, since contemporary composers are particularly known for pushing musical boundaries. The Hungarian composer Györgi Ligeti’s “Le grand macabre,” which was written in the 1970s and performed by the Philharmonic in 2010, is a prime example: The piece incorporates harmonicas, a steamship whistle and a kitchen pot, among other nontraditional instruments.
 
But there are a few older instances. Famed symphonist Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) incorporated a mandolin into a few of his large-scale works, for example.
No matter what instrument is involved, the Philharmonic typically begins the process by seeing if a musician from within its ranks can play it, orchestra officials say. That often means turning to the Philharmonic’s three-member percussion section, since percussionists are known for their ability to tackle a kitchen sink’s worth of instruments, including, yes, a kitchen pot.
 
But the Philharmonic has other musicians capable of “doubling” in all sorts of ways. Violinist Daniel Reed has played mandolin, for example.
 
Still, the orchestra often has to look outside for specialists—and in some cases, it has to cast a net beyond New York to fill a hole. Philharmonic librarian Lawrence Tarlow said one of the toughest challenges came when the orchestra needed a musician who played the gusli, a Russian instrument that is similar to an autoharp.
“We didn’t even know what a gusli was,” said Mr. Tarlow, adding that the orchestra was eventually able to find someone to play it.
 
Adding to the challenge: Not all specialists in nontraditional instruments are versed in playing with an orchestra, which requires understanding how to take cues from a conductor. Indeed, in some instances, such specialists may not even read sheet music, which is standard practice for orchestral players.
 
Ultimately, that is why Mr. Schimmel, a Juilliard-trained musician, thinks he is invited to perform so frequently as an accordionist with the Philharmonic and other orchestras. Too many of his fellow accordionists don’t understand the dynamics of working with a symphony, he said.
 
And even those who do might not warm to the fact that an orchestral gig isn’t typically a spotlight-grabbing role. At this past week’s Philharmonic performances, Mr. Schimmel was placed in the back of the ensemble.
 
“You’ve got to be willing to be a third banana,” he said.
 
Write to Charles Passy at cpassy@wsj.com
 

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/on-key-an-accordion-player-fills-an-orchestral-gap-1484004379?mc_cid=4e07b68cb9
 
On Key: An Accordion Player Fills an Orchestral Gap
 
The New York Philharmonic looks for a temp and finds Bill Schimmel
 
By Charles Passy Jan. 9, 2017 6:26 p.m. ET

Accordion player William Schimmel warms up before a performance of the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in New York on Friday. Photo: Elizabeth Shafiroff for The Wall Street Journal
 
Among its ranks, the New York Philharmonic counts 28 violinists, 11 cellists, four flutists, three trombonists and even one bass trombonist.
But when the call came for an accordionist this past week, the orchestra had to go outside its circle.
 
The ensemble turned to Bill Schimmel, a New York-based master of the instrument who has made something of a specialty performing with orchestras.
Never mind that the accordion is best known in a folk, pop or cabaret context. A handful of classically trained composers have incorporated it into their works, including Kurt Weill, whose “Little Threepenny Music” was part of the recent Philharmonic program. Mr. Schimmel, whose history with the Philharmonic goes back four decades, was more than up for the challenge.
 
The Philharmonic “has an energy that no other orchestra has,” said the 70-year-old Mr. Schimmel, who has also performed with symphonies from Chicago to Grand Rapids, Mich.
 
In its 175-year history, the New York Philharmonic has hired artists who specialize in a range of nontraditional instruments, from the harmonica to the hammered dulcimer. Even a virtuoso in the theremin, an electronic musical instrument with a distinctly eerie sound, has been tapped.
 
The works featuring such instruments often are of recent vintage, since contemporary composers are particularly known for pushing musical boundaries. The Hungarian composer Györgi Ligeti’s “Le grand macabre,” which was written in the 1970s and performed by the Philharmonic in 2010, is a prime example: The piece incorporates harmonicas, a steamship whistle and a kitchen pot, among other nontraditional instruments.
 
But there are a few older instances. Famed symphonist Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) incorporated a mandolin into a few of his large-scale works, for example.
No matter what instrument is involved, the Philharmonic typically begins the process by seeing if a musician from within its ranks can play it, orchestra officials say. That often means turning to the Philharmonic’s three-member percussion section, since percussionists are known for their ability to tackle a kitchen sink’s worth of instruments, including, yes, a kitchen pot.
 
But the Philharmonic has other musicians capable of “doubling” in all sorts of ways. Violinist Daniel Reed has played mandolin, for example.
 
Still, the orchestra often has to look outside for specialists—and in some cases, it has to cast a net beyond New York to fill a hole. Philharmonic librarian Lawrence Tarlow said one of the toughest challenges came when the orchestra needed a musician who played the gusli, a Russian instrument that is similar to an autoharp.
“We didn’t even know what a gusli was,” said Mr. Tarlow, adding that the orchestra was eventually able to find someone to play it.
 
Adding to the challenge: Not all specialists in nontraditional instruments are versed in playing with an orchestra, which requires understanding how to take cues from a conductor. Indeed, in some instances, such specialists may not even read sheet music, which is standard practice for orchestral players.
 
Ultimately, that is why Mr. Schimmel, a Juilliard-trained musician, thinks he is invited to perform so frequently as an accordionist with the Philharmonic and other orchestras. Too many of his fellow accordionists don’t understand the dynamics of working with a symphony, he said.
 
And even those who do might not warm to the fact that an orchestral gig isn’t typically a spotlight-grabbing role. At this past week’s Philharmonic performances, Mr. Schimmel was placed in the back of the ensemble.
 
“You’ve got to be willing to be a third banana,” he said.
 
Write to Charles Passy at cpassy@wsj.com
 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/arts/music/wbgo-radio-station-jazz-npr-partnership.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmusic
 
WBGO Is Giving Jazz a Higher Profile Online
By BEN SISARIOJAN. 10, 2017

 
Amy Niles, WBGO’s president and chief executive, in the radio station’s master control room in Newark. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
WBGO, the Newark public radio station, has long been one of the nation’s premier outlets for jazz on the air. Now it wants to be a destination for the music online as well.
Next week, the station will introduce a revamped website, featuring extensive commentary on jazz — its online presence to date has been minimal — and will also expand its partnership with NPR as that public radio network’s primary source of jazz content.
Along with these changes, the station has hired the jazz critic Nate Chinen as its director of editorial content. Mr. Chinen, who has been a regular contributor to The New York Times since 2005, will manage the editorial side of WBGO’s website; work on its signature program, “Jazz Night in America”; and join NPR’s stable of music commentators, online and on the air.

 
A revamped website and an expanded partnership with NPR is expected to transform WBGO’s online presence at a time when jazz is enjoying a creative renaissance. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
“This is a new age,” said Amy Niles, WBGO’s president and chief executive. “What we want to do is create a digital environment that is as potent and powerful as what people rely on us for on the radio.”
The changes at WBGO-FM (88.3) should have little influence on its on-air programming, which leans toward the giants of jazz history — think Miles, Coltrane, Billie — and is the second-highest-rated jazz station in the country, with a regular weekly reach of 375,000 people, according to Nielsen. (No. 1 is KKJZ in the Los Angeles area, with an audience of about 520,000.)

 
Rhonda Hamilton, a radio host at WBGO, in the master control room. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
The changes should transform WBGO’s presence online at a time when jazz is enjoying a creative renaissance. The NYC Winter Jazzfest over the last week was one example of this energy; another is the popularity of younger artists like Kamasi Washington and Robert Glasper, who have pushed the boundaries of the genre and collaborated with stars like Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar.
“Jazz is now in an intensively creative and vital phase,” Mr. Chinen said. “I’m excited to bring some expertise and editorial focus into the digital realm, where there’s a dire need for jazz content that upholds high journalistic standards.”

 
Jazz posters decorate the walls of the public radio station. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
WBGO, whose annual budget is about $5 million, already works with NPR and Jazz at Lincoln Center to produce “Jazz Night in America,” the expansive weekly show heard on nearly 200 radio stations around the country. WBGO will become NPR’s “voice of jazz,” Ms. Niles said. It will feed online content to the network, and Mr. Chinen will contribute to NPR on a national level.
Jazz has been a steady presence on NPR for decades, including shows like Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz.” But its presentation has changed recently, including the end of NPR’s weekly show “JazzSet” and of its jazz blog, A Blog Supreme. The planning began about three years ago, when NPR took stock of its jazz coverage and decided to take advantage of its various broadcast and online platforms, said Anya Grundmann, NPR’s vice president for programming and audience development.

 
WBGO in Newark is the second-highest-rated jazz station in the country, with a regular weekly reach of 375,000 people. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
“This is the result of a huge commitment by both organizations to continue the legacy of jazz presentation and storytelling that we both have,” Ms. Grundmann said.
Through its stations, websites and podcasts, NPR reaches 56.5 million people each month, she added.
Among the other changes at WBGO is the addition of two weeks’ worth of on-demand streams for its broadcast shows. This kind of feature, along with online commentary and reviews, is now common for most major radio stations. But Ms. Niles said that the station had not been slow in adapting to the digital age.
“I don’t think we’ve been slow; we’ve been strategic,” she said. “Doing it in the way that we’re doing it now is something that we really wanted to be able to do right.”
 

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/arts/music/wbgo-radio-station-jazz-npr-partnership.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmusic
 
WBGO Is Giving Jazz a Higher Profile Online
By BEN SISARIOJAN. 10, 2017

 
Amy Niles, WBGO’s president and chief executive, in the radio station’s master control room in Newark. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
WBGO, the Newark public radio station, has long been one of the nation’s premier outlets for jazz on the air. Now it wants to be a destination for the music online as well.
Next week, the station will introduce a revamped website, featuring extensive commentary on jazz — its online presence to date has been minimal — and will also expand its partnership with NPR as that public radio network’s primary source of jazz content.
Along with these changes, the station has hired the jazz critic Nate Chinen as its director of editorial content. Mr. Chinen, who has been a regular contributor to The New York Times since 2005, will manage the editorial side of WBGO’s website; work on its signature program, “Jazz Night in America”; and join NPR’s stable of music commentators, online and on the air.

 
A revamped website and an expanded partnership with NPR is expected to transform WBGO’s online presence at a time when jazz is enjoying a creative renaissance. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
“This is a new age,” said Amy Niles, WBGO’s president and chief executive. “What we want to do is create a digital environment that is as potent and powerful as what people rely on us for on the radio.”
The changes at WBGO-FM (88.3) should have little influence on its on-air programming, which leans toward the giants of jazz history — think Miles, Coltrane, Billie — and is the second-highest-rated jazz station in the country, with a regular weekly reach of 375,000 people, according to Nielsen. (No. 1 is KKJZ in the Los Angeles area, with an audience of about 520,000.)

 
Rhonda Hamilton, a radio host at WBGO, in the master control room. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
The changes should transform WBGO’s presence online at a time when jazz is enjoying a creative renaissance. The NYC Winter Jazzfest over the last week was one example of this energy; another is the popularity of younger artists like Kamasi Washington and Robert Glasper, who have pushed the boundaries of the genre and collaborated with stars like Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar.
“Jazz is now in an intensively creative and vital phase,” Mr. Chinen said. “I’m excited to bring some expertise and editorial focus into the digital realm, where there’s a dire need for jazz content that upholds high journalistic standards.”

 
Jazz posters decorate the walls of the public radio station. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
WBGO, whose annual budget is about $5 million, already works with NPR and Jazz at Lincoln Center to produce “Jazz Night in America,” the expansive weekly show heard on nearly 200 radio stations around the country. WBGO will become NPR’s “voice of jazz,” Ms. Niles said. It will feed online content to the network, and Mr. Chinen will contribute to NPR on a national level.
Jazz has been a steady presence on NPR for decades, including shows like Marian McPartland’s “Piano Jazz.” But its presentation has changed recently, including the end of NPR’s weekly show “JazzSet” and of its jazz blog, A Blog Supreme. The planning began about three years ago, when NPR took stock of its jazz coverage and decided to take advantage of its various broadcast and online platforms, said Anya Grundmann, NPR’s vice president for programming and audience development.

 
WBGO in Newark is the second-highest-rated jazz station in the country, with a regular weekly reach of 375,000 people. Stephen Speranza for The New York Times
“This is the result of a huge commitment by both organizations to continue the legacy of jazz presentation and storytelling that we both have,” Ms. Grundmann said.
Through its stations, websites and podcasts, NPR reaches 56.5 million people each month, she added.
Among the other changes at WBGO is the addition of two weeks’ worth of on-demand streams for its broadcast shows. This kind of feature, along with online commentary and reviews, is now common for most major radio stations. But Ms. Niles said that the station had not been slow in adapting to the digital age.
“I don’t think we’ve been slow; we’ve been strategic,” she said. “Doing it in the way that we’re doing it now is something that we really wanted to be able to do right.”
 

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https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/aloha/
 
“ALOHA.”
Posted on January 10, 2017
 
By Michael Steinman

RICH CONATY 1954-2016
 
 
William Parker visits WFUV-FM DJ Rich Conaty.
 
In the history of jazz, people who do not play instruments do as much, in different ways, to sustain the art without getting equal credit. Think of Milt Gabler, George Avakian, Henry Sklow, Norman Granz, George Wein, Whitney Balliett, Nat Hentoff, and other catalysts. Then there are broadcasters. “Broadcasting” meant something even before radio and television: spreading something widely, effectively: a newsboy shouting the headlines or a farmer distributing seed over a field. Jazz radio broadcasters — in previous decades Martin Block, Art Ford, Fred Robbins, Sid Torin; in our time Ed Beach, John S. Wilson, Phil Schaap, Dan Morgenstern, Alisa Clancy, Linda Yohn and many others – do more than play records. They become our friends, teachers, and benefactors. We look forward to their voices, personalities, and insights. Before there was streaming radio, we arranged our schedules around them; we tape-recorded their programs, which became sweet swinging libraries, introducing us to new artists or rare records.
 
Rich Conaty, who died of cancer on December 30, 2016, gave his energy and ultimately his life in the reverent and delighted service of the music he loved: the pop and jazz of the teens, Twenties, and Thirties, roughly 1911-1939. For forty-four years, he shared that music on a Sunday-night broadcast on Fordham University’s radio station, WFUV-FM (90.7). Rich’s THE BIG BROADCAST, named in homage to the 1932 film with Bing Crosby, Eddie Lang, the Boswell Sisters, Arthur Tracy, Cab Calloway, and others, was a consistent pleasure.
 
Rich was enchanted by this music when he was thirteen or fourteen, began broadcasting as a high school student on New York’s Hofstra College radio station. When he had to choose a college, he picked Fordham University because of its radio station, and beginning in January 1973, was on the air every Sunday night, live perhaps fifty weeks every year, taping shows in advance when he went away, perhaps to visit his mother in Florida.
 
Early on, Rich formed an alliance with Vince Giordano, leader of the Nighthawks, and these two did more to introduce this music to a wider, younger audience than perhaps anyone. Rich said that his program was “for the old and the old at heart,” for his humor was sharply wry (occasionally painfully self-deprecating) but he was most happy to learn that some seventeen-year old was now collecting Chick Bullock 78s or had fallen in love with Lee Wiley. He had other interests – vintage Nash automobiles, cats, and other kinds of vintage pop culture – but was devoted to the music and musicians above all.
 
Listening to Rich for decades, I was able to trace the subtle development of a scholarly intelligence.  Years ago, his library of recordings was small (as was mine) so he played the Mills Brothers’ TIGER RAG frequently.  As he became the person and the scholar he was meant to become, his awareness, knowledge, and collection deepened.
 
We’ve heard earnest but ignorant radio announcers – those who call the Ellington clarinetist “Barney Biggered,” or the King of Jazz “Paul White Man,” but Rich knew his music, his musicians, and his history. Every show, he created tributes to musicians, songwriters, and other figures whose birthday he would celebrate: not just Bix, Bing, Louis, Jolson, Annette; his enthusiasm for songwriters and figures, once renowned, now obscure, was astonishing. He had interviewed Bob Effros, Edward Eliscu, Ben Selvin, and Vet Boswell on the air; he was friends with Dolly Dawn, had gotten drunk with Cab Calloway. Connee Boswell sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY to him over the phone; Arthur Tracy performed at his wedding to Mary Hayes (“Manhattan Mary,” who also died too young of cancer).
 
Rich expanded our knowledge and our joy by playing an astonishing range of music from his own collection of vintage records. Every Sunday that I heard the program, I would say several times, “What is that? I never heard that record before!” and this was true in 2015 and 2016, where it seems as if everything is accessible on CD, download, or YouTube. He spent his life surrounded by 78s – those he had acquired at auction, those he was selling at record shows. Because the idea of THE BIG BROADCAST was not just famous, documented recordings, he would often play a record about which little was known. But he could offer an educated guess about the true band behind the Crown label pseudonym, whether the singer was Irving or Jack Kaufman, when the song had been premiered – much more than statistics gleaned from books. He took requests from his devoted audience, gave away tickets to jazz concerts, and with Bryan Wright, created a series of BIG BROADCAST CDs — I have more than a few — which are wonderful cross-sections of the period.
 
I should say that his taste was admirable.  He didn’t play every 78 he had found — no sermons, no organ recitals of light classics, no comedy records — but within the “pop and jazz” area I could trust him to play the good stuff, the music that would otherwise be forgotten.  He left IN THE MOOD to others, but he played Henry Burr, Bill Coleman, Jane Green, Johnny Marvin, Fred Rich, Ben Selvin, Annette Hanshaw, Lee Morse, Emmett Miller, Eddie Lang, Jack Purvis, Luis Russell, The Sunshine Boys, Kate Smith, Ted Weems, early Ellington, Jean Goldkette, and on and on.
 
And part of the pleasure of his expertise and of radio in general (at its best, when the programmer is subtle and wise) is not just the delighted shock of one record, but of the juxtapositions Rich created in three-sides-in-a-row.  THE BIG BROADCAST was rather like being invited to an evening at Jeff Healey’s house, where you knew the music would be embracing, uplifting, and educational in the best way.  (I should also say that Rich did talk — digressing into his own brand of stand-up comedy, with little bits of slightly off-key a cappella singing — but music made up the bulk of the program.  He wouldn’t tell you the personnel of the thirteen-piece big band, by choice, I am sure, because it would mean he could play fewer recordings.)
 
 
“Big Broadcast” #450
 
On a personal note: I, like many others, made cassettes of the program and played them in the car.  I fell asleep to the program on hundreds of Sunday nights.  When I was young and diligent, I graded student essays to it. Although Rich and I had much of the same focused obsession with the music, we met in person only a few times (I think always at Sofia’s when the Nighthawks were playing) and THE BIG BROADCAST was his world — and by extension the health and welfare of WFUV.  So our conversations were brief, before the band started or in between sets.  But my debt to him is immeasurable, and it would not have increased had our conversations been lengthy.
 

I do not know what will happen to Rich’s recorded legacy – more than eight thousand hours of radio. Some shows have been archived and can be heard through wfuv.org, but whether the station will share others as a tribute is not yet decided. More information can be found on the Facebook page devoted to Fans of the WFUV Big Broadcast.
 
I think of Wild Bill Davison’s puzzled question about Frank Teschemacher, dead in an auto accident in Bill’s car, “Where are we going to get another sax player like Tesch?” Paraphrase the question to apply to Rich Conaty, and the answer is, “We never will.” But his generosity will live on.
Aloha.  And Mahalo.
 
May your happiness increase!
 
Related
JAZZ WORTH READING: “NORMAN GRANZ: THE MAN WHO USED JAZZ FOR JUSTICE,” by TAD HERSHORNIn “”Thanks A Million””
“JAZZ LIVES” GOES SHOPPING at AMOEBA MUSICIn “”Thanks A Million””
STILL SPARKLING: JOE BUSHKIN AT 100
 

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https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2017/01/10/aloha/
 
“ALOHA.”
Posted on January 10, 2017
 
By Michael Steinman

RICH CONATY 1954-2016
 
 
William Parker visits WFUV-FM DJ Rich Conaty.
 
In the history of jazz, people who do not play instruments do as much, in different ways, to sustain the art without getting equal credit. Think of Milt Gabler, George Avakian, Henry Sklow, Norman Granz, George Wein, Whitney Balliett, Nat Hentoff, and other catalysts. Then there are broadcasters. “Broadcasting” meant something even before radio and television: spreading something widely, effectively: a newsboy shouting the headlines or a farmer distributing seed over a field. Jazz radio broadcasters — in previous decades Martin Block, Art Ford, Fred Robbins, Sid Torin; in our time Ed Beach, John S. Wilson, Phil Schaap, Dan Morgenstern, Alisa Clancy, Linda Yohn and many others – do more than play records. They become our friends, teachers, and benefactors. We look forward to their voices, personalities, and insights. Before there was streaming radio, we arranged our schedules around them; we tape-recorded their programs, which became sweet swinging libraries, introducing us to new artists or rare records.
 
Rich Conaty, who died of cancer on December 30, 2016, gave his energy and ultimately his life in the reverent and delighted service of the music he loved: the pop and jazz of the teens, Twenties, and Thirties, roughly 1911-1939. For forty-four years, he shared that music on a Sunday-night broadcast on Fordham University’s radio station, WFUV-FM (90.7). Rich’s THE BIG BROADCAST, named in homage to the 1932 film with Bing Crosby, Eddie Lang, the Boswell Sisters, Arthur Tracy, Cab Calloway, and others, was a consistent pleasure.
 
Rich was enchanted by this music when he was thirteen or fourteen, began broadcasting as a high school student on New York’s Hofstra College radio station. When he had to choose a college, he picked Fordham University because of its radio station, and beginning in January 1973, was on the air every Sunday night, live perhaps fifty weeks every year, taping shows in advance when he went away, perhaps to visit his mother in Florida.
 
Early on, Rich formed an alliance with Vince Giordano, leader of the Nighthawks, and these two did more to introduce this music to a wider, younger audience than perhaps anyone. Rich said that his program was “for the old and the old at heart,” for his humor was sharply wry (occasionally painfully self-deprecating) but he was most happy to learn that some seventeen-year old was now collecting Chick Bullock 78s or had fallen in love with Lee Wiley. He had other interests – vintage Nash automobiles, cats, and other kinds of vintage pop culture – but was devoted to the music and musicians above all.
 
Listening to Rich for decades, I was able to trace the subtle development of a scholarly intelligence.  Years ago, his library of recordings was small (as was mine) so he played the Mills Brothers’ TIGER RAG frequently.  As he became the person and the scholar he was meant to become, his awareness, knowledge, and collection deepened.
 
We’ve heard earnest but ignorant radio announcers – those who call the Ellington clarinetist “Barney Biggered,” or the King of Jazz “Paul White Man,” but Rich knew his music, his musicians, and his history. Every show, he created tributes to musicians, songwriters, and other figures whose birthday he would celebrate: not just Bix, Bing, Louis, Jolson, Annette; his enthusiasm for songwriters and figures, once renowned, now obscure, was astonishing. He had interviewed Bob Effros, Edward Eliscu, Ben Selvin, and Vet Boswell on the air; he was friends with Dolly Dawn, had gotten drunk with Cab Calloway. Connee Boswell sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY to him over the phone; Arthur Tracy performed at his wedding to Mary Hayes (“Manhattan Mary,” who also died too young of cancer).
 
Rich expanded our knowledge and our joy by playing an astonishing range of music from his own collection of vintage records. Every Sunday that I heard the program, I would say several times, “What is that? I never heard that record before!” and this was true in 2015 and 2016, where it seems as if everything is accessible on CD, download, or YouTube. He spent his life surrounded by 78s – those he had acquired at auction, those he was selling at record shows. Because the idea of THE BIG BROADCAST was not just famous, documented recordings, he would often play a record about which little was known. But he could offer an educated guess about the true band behind the Crown label pseudonym, whether the singer was Irving or Jack Kaufman, when the song had been premiered – much more than statistics gleaned from books. He took requests from his devoted audience, gave away tickets to jazz concerts, and with Bryan Wright, created a series of BIG BROADCAST CDs — I have more than a few — which are wonderful cross-sections of the period.
 
I should say that his taste was admirable.  He didn’t play every 78 he had found — no sermons, no organ recitals of light classics, no comedy records — but within the “pop and jazz” area I could trust him to play the good stuff, the music that would otherwise be forgotten.  He left IN THE MOOD to others, but he played Henry Burr, Bill Coleman, Jane Green, Johnny Marvin, Fred Rich, Ben Selvin, Annette Hanshaw, Lee Morse, Emmett Miller, Eddie Lang, Jack Purvis, Luis Russell, The Sunshine Boys, Kate Smith, Ted Weems, early Ellington, Jean Goldkette, and on and on.
 
And part of the pleasure of his expertise and of radio in general (at its best, when the programmer is subtle and wise) is not just the delighted shock of one record, but of the juxtapositions Rich created in three-sides-in-a-row.  THE BIG BROADCAST was rather like being invited to an evening at Jeff Healey’s house, where you knew the music would be embracing, uplifting, and educational in the best way.  (I should also say that Rich did talk — digressing into his own brand of stand-up comedy, with little bits of slightly off-key a cappella singing — but music made up the bulk of the program.  He wouldn’t tell you the personnel of the thirteen-piece big band, by choice, I am sure, because it would mean he could play fewer recordings.)
 
 
“Big Broadcast” #450
 
On a personal note: I, like many others, made cassettes of the program and played them in the car.  I fell asleep to the program on hundreds of Sunday nights.  When I was young and diligent, I graded student essays to it. Although Rich and I had much of the same focused obsession with the music, we met in person only a few times (I think always at Sofia’s when the Nighthawks were playing) and THE BIG BROADCAST was his world — and by extension the health and welfare of WFUV.  So our conversations were brief, before the band started or in between sets.  But my debt to him is immeasurable, and it would not have increased had our conversations been lengthy.
 

I do not know what will happen to Rich’s recorded legacy – more than eight thousand hours of radio. Some shows have been archived and can be heard through wfuv.org, but whether the station will share others as a tribute is not yet decided. More information can be found on the Facebook page devoted to Fans of the WFUV Big Broadcast.
 
I think of Wild Bill Davison’s puzzled question about Frank Teschemacher, dead in an auto accident in Bill’s car, “Where are we going to get another sax player like Tesch?” Paraphrase the question to apply to Rich Conaty, and the answer is, “We never will.” But his generosity will live on.
Aloha.  And Mahalo.
 
May your happiness increase!
 
Related
JAZZ WORTH READING: “NORMAN GRANZ: THE MAN WHO USED JAZZ FOR JUSTICE,” by TAD HERSHORNIn “”Thanks A Million””
“JAZZ LIVES” GOES SHOPPING at AMOEBA MUSICIn “”Thanks A Million””
STILL SPARKLING: JOE BUSHKIN AT 100
 

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http://deadline.com/2017/01/buddy-bregman-obituary-pajama-game-wild-party-1201882202/

January 9, 2017 7:42pm
 
Buddy Bregman Dies; Musical Director, ‘Pajama Game’ Orchestrator Was 86

by Greg Evans January 9, 2017 7:42pm
 
Buddy Bregman, an arranger and composer who scored and/or orchestrated such films as The Pajama Game, The Wild Party and Born Reckless, died Sunday evening in Los Angeles after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 86.
 
Bregman’s death was confirmed by his daughter, The Young and the Restless actress Tracey Bregman.
 
Before his film work, Bregman got his start, at age 25, as the head of A&R at Norman Granz’s Verve Records. While there, he worked as an arranger with such artists as Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. He arranged two of the now-classic albums in Ella Fitzgerald’s song book project as well as several of her early Verve Records singles. Bregman later became Ethel Merman’s personal arranger.
 
Following his tenure at Verve, Bregman became the musical director of NBC’s The Eddie Fisher Show, and was the first American director hired for the BBC. In 1966, he was appointed head of light entertainment for the weekday ITV company Redifussion London, and later worked as a television producer and director in the United States and Europe.
 
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by son Barry Bregman, former wife Suzanne Lloyd, four grandsons, a great grandson and a brother and sister-in-law.

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http://deadline.com/2017/01/buddy-bregman-obituary-pajama-game-wild-party-1201882202/

January 9, 2017 7:42pm
 
Buddy Bregman Dies; Musical Director, ‘Pajama Game’ Orchestrator Was 86

by Greg Evans January 9, 2017 7:42pm
 
Buddy Bregman, an arranger and composer who scored and/or orchestrated such films as The Pajama Game, The Wild Party and Born Reckless, died Sunday evening in Los Angeles after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. He was 86.
 
Bregman’s death was confirmed by his daughter, The Young and the Restless actress Tracey Bregman.
 
Before his film work, Bregman got his start, at age 25, as the head of A&R at Norman Granz’s Verve Records. While there, he worked as an arranger with such artists as Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. He arranged two of the now-classic albums in Ella Fitzgerald’s song book project as well as several of her early Verve Records singles. Bregman later became Ethel Merman’s personal arranger.
 
Following his tenure at Verve, Bregman became the musical director of NBC’s The Eddie Fisher Show, and was the first American director hired for the BBC. In 1966, he was appointed head of light entertainment for the weekday ITV company Redifussion London, and later worked as a television producer and director in the United States and Europe.
 
In addition to his daughter, he is survived by son Barry Bregman, former wife Suzanne Lloyd, four grandsons, a great grandson and a brother and sister-in-law.

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http://www.npr.org/2017/01/05/508382112/donny-mccaslin-tiny-desk-concert?utm_source=npr_newsletter

Hear McCaslin, the saxophonist and bandleader whose group backed David Bowie on Blackstar, near the anniversary of that album’s release. Selections include an instrumental take on Bowie’s “Lazarus.”

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http://www.npr.org/2017/01/05/508382112/donny-mccaslin-tiny-desk-concert?utm_source=npr_newsletter

Hear McCaslin, the saxophonist and bandleader whose group backed David Bowie on Blackstar, near the anniversary of that album’s release. Selections include an instrumental take on Bowie’s “Lazarus.”

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http://www.argosybooks.com/shop/argosy/272292.html?mv_pc=wants

Place Published: Newport, RI
Date Published: 1957
 
Description: Silver print, 10.75 x 13.75 inches, Styrofoam mounted, with Hoeffler’s full signature, title, and date, in ink, along with his copyright hand stamp on the back. 1957; printed late 1970s. This print is described in the “Rochester Jazz” Photographic Collection as an Exhibition Print of “John Hammond enthusiastically responding to the Count Basie Band at Newport, July 1957.” Sitting next to him is his wife Esme O’Brian Sarnoff, former spouse of Robert Sarnoff, Chairman of NBC and RCA Corp. Note: Hammond is considered one of the greatest discoverers of musical talent during the 20th century and is responsible for the careers of Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. Condition: This photograph was originally owned and displayed by Hoeffler as an Exhibition Print and, through handling, there are some minor imperfections, including some surface striations (almost invisible) and flatness and rounding at the corners. Very good(-) condition.
 
Comments: American photographer best remembered for his iconic images of the American Jazz scene of the 1950s and 60s, and whose work was prominently featured in the Ken Burns acclaimed documentary “Jazz.” He began this work while pursuing his BFA in Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where he studied with mentors Minor White and Charles Arnold and visiting photographers Ansel Adams, Ernst Hass, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstadt, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall.
 
 

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http://www.argosybooks.com/shop/argosy/272292.html?mv_pc=wants

Place Published: Newport, RI
Date Published: 1957
 
Description: Silver print, 10.75 x 13.75 inches, Styrofoam mounted, with Hoeffler’s full signature, title, and date, in ink, along with his copyright hand stamp on the back. 1957; printed late 1970s. This print is described in the “Rochester Jazz” Photographic Collection as an Exhibition Print of “John Hammond enthusiastically responding to the Count Basie Band at Newport, July 1957.” Sitting next to him is his wife Esme O’Brian Sarnoff, former spouse of Robert Sarnoff, Chairman of NBC and RCA Corp. Note: Hammond is considered one of the greatest discoverers of musical talent during the 20th century and is responsible for the careers of Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen. Condition: This photograph was originally owned and displayed by Hoeffler as an Exhibition Print and, through handling, there are some minor imperfections, including some surface striations (almost invisible) and flatness and rounding at the corners. Very good(-) condition.
 
Comments: American photographer best remembered for his iconic images of the American Jazz scene of the 1950s and 60s, and whose work was prominently featured in the Ken Burns acclaimed documentary “Jazz.” He began this work while pursuing his BFA in Photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) where he studied with mentors Minor White and Charles Arnold and visiting photographers Ansel Adams, Ernst Hass, Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstadt, Beaumont and Nancy Newhall.
 
 

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http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2017/01/passings-sylvester-potts-of-contours.html
 
Passings: Sylvester Potts of the Contours

Potts, front, with the most recent version of the Contours

by VVN Music
 
Sylvester Potts, a member of the Motown group the Contours from almost their beginning until today, has died.
 
Potts joined the group in 1961, shortly after they had been signed to Motown and after the release of their first single. replacing Benny Reeves, brother of Martha Reeves, who had only been with the group a few months before being drafted.
 
The Contours released a second single that failed to chart before Motown founder Berry Gordy gave them a song he had written, Do You Love Me. After some initial problems with the song, the group finally found the formula of vocalist Billy Gordon practically shouting the lyrics. The song went to number 3 on the Hot 100 and 1 on the R&B Singles, earning The Contours a gold record.
 
A series of followup singles charted but were far less successful including Shake Sherry (1963 / #43 Pop / #21 R&B), Can You Do It (1964 / #41 Pop / #16 R&B) and Can You Jerk Like That (1964 / #47 Pop / #15 R&B) but disagreements with the label soon saw four of the five members leave Motown, leaving only vocalist Billy Gordon.
 
Berry Gordy hired a new version of the Contours but, a year later, Potts returned to the group. Unfortunately, they never found much chart success and, in 1967, their contract with Motown expired and the band split up.
 
A resurrected version of the group toured throughout the 70’s and, in 1984, Potts returned to the Contours and was able to ride a new wave of popularity starting in 1987 when Do You Love Me became a hit again through the movie Dirty Dancing.
 
Potts stayed with the group until 2004 when he broke off and joined another local Detroit group, Upscale, changing their name to the Contours and setting off a round of lawsuits with another former member, Joseph Billingslea. The eventual settlement let Potts move forward under the name “The Contours Featuring Sylvester Potts”.
 
 
Shop Related Products

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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http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2017/01/passings-sylvester-potts-of-contours.html
 
Passings: Sylvester Potts of the Contours

Potts, front, with the most recent version of the Contours

by VVN Music
 
Sylvester Potts, a member of the Motown group the Contours from almost their beginning until today, has died.
 
Potts joined the group in 1961, shortly after they had been signed to Motown and after the release of their first single. replacing Benny Reeves, brother of Martha Reeves, who had only been with the group a few months before being drafted.
 
The Contours released a second single that failed to chart before Motown founder Berry Gordy gave them a song he had written, Do You Love Me. After some initial problems with the song, the group finally found the formula of vocalist Billy Gordon practically shouting the lyrics. The song went to number 3 on the Hot 100 and 1 on the R&B Singles, earning The Contours a gold record.
 
A series of followup singles charted but were far less successful including Shake Sherry (1963 / #43 Pop / #21 R&B), Can You Do It (1964 / #41 Pop / #16 R&B) and Can You Jerk Like That (1964 / #47 Pop / #15 R&B) but disagreements with the label soon saw four of the five members leave Motown, leaving only vocalist Billy Gordon.
 
Berry Gordy hired a new version of the Contours but, a year later, Potts returned to the group. Unfortunately, they never found much chart success and, in 1967, their contract with Motown expired and the band split up.
 
A resurrected version of the group toured throughout the 70’s and, in 1984, Potts returned to the Contours and was able to ride a new wave of popularity starting in 1987 when Do You Love Me became a hit again through the movie Dirty Dancing.
 
Potts stayed with the group until 2004 when he broke off and joined another local Detroit group, Upscale, changing their name to the Contours and setting off a round of lawsuits with another former member, Joseph Billingslea. The eventual settlement let Potts move forward under the name “The Contours Featuring Sylvester Potts”.
 
 
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In RECOLLECT, Blue Engine Records takes some of the world’s greatest jazz musicians on record shopping sprees, digging up forgotten favorites and certified classics in the process. Go behind the recording process with the artists who know it best and learn the stories behind your favorite albums from the musicians who heard them firsthand. 
 
In this episode, jazz scholar PHIL SCHAAP discusses loaning records to Max Roach , how Jo Jones came to take him under his wing, and the importance of NYC’s Jazz Record Center to the music.
 
 
 

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In RECOLLECT, Blue Engine Records takes some of the world’s greatest jazz musicians on record shopping sprees, digging up forgotten favorites and certified classics in the process. Go behind the recording process with the artists who know it best and learn the stories behind your favorite albums from the musicians who heard them firsthand. 
 
In this episode, jazz scholar PHIL SCHAAP discusses loaning records to Max Roach , how Jo Jones came to take him under his wing, and the importance of NYC’s Jazz Record Center to the music.
 
 
 

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Nat Hentoff, 1925-2017
 

 
The nation lost a unique voice, and the Fillius Jazz Archive lost a supporter with the passing of Nat Hentoff on January 7. Mr. Hentoff died at the age of 91 at his home in Manhattan. In a career that spanned seven decades, he excelled as a jazz critic and as an astute observer of our nation and its politics. The Associated Press opined, “Nat Hentoff enjoyed a diverse and iconoclastic career, basking in the freedom to be infuriating on a myriad of subjects.”
Nat was interviewed for the Fillius Jazz Archive in New York City on January 12, 2007, almost ten years ago to the day of this blog.
As a child Nat loved jazz and had aspirations to pursue a career as a musician.
NH:  I was taking clarinet lessons from an alumnus of the Boston Symphony and I was about 13, 14 years old. And I could read anything. And I was playing scales one day near an open window, it was a summer day. And all of a sudden I hear a shout from downstairs. “Hey kid, you want to go to a session?” I look down, there’s this short kid and I figured well I can read anything, so I went. And when we got there this kid took out his horn and began to play and I knew then that I’d have to find a day job that wasn’t in jazz. It was [jazz cornetist] Ruby Braff. He was about my age. He was already playing extraordinarily beautiful stuff.
Due to his passion for the music, Nat still found himself in the middle of the jazz scene. As a co-producer for the 1957 “Sounds of Jazz” Live TV special, he witnessed a poignant moment between Lester Young and Billie Holiday. Here is a link to that moment, seen in this clip at 1:25.
NH:  The background of that was Lester was not feeling well. He was supposed to be in one of the big band sections with the all-time sax section: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, I forget who else we had there. I said look, you don’t have to do that, and when you do the small combo thing with Billie, you can just sit down. And then she came on in a circle with Roy Eldridge and Lester etcetera. He got up and in the control room, people, as this was unfolding, had tears in their eyes. It was such a moment. Because they were looking at each other, as Lester played. And they had been very close and then not so close, and it was so personal and so intimate, and I was so glad we got that for the ages.
Like the musicians he so admired, Nat was required to wear multiple career hats which seemed to suit him well. I asked him about making a living as a writer/critic.
MR:  Was it tough raising a family of four kids as a freelance journalist?
NH:  It was tough for a while because I got fired. My one gig was at Down Beat when the first child was coming along and I committed a wrongdoing. We were writing essentially about black music. We had no black employees, no black writers in either New York, Chicago where the headquarters were, or in Los Angeles. The boss wasn’t interested in the music at all; he ran a printing shop but he owned the paper. He did not like Jews, he did not like blacks. And one day a woman came in. I thought she was black and we needed a sort of a receptionist so I figured okay we can start with that. I didn’t check with him. He found out about it and I was fired. Years later when I wrote about it she wrote me a note and she said well you know I’m not black, I’m Egyptian. Well some of the theorists today would say yes you are. But anyway that left me in a hole, and Norman Granz was very helpful. He gave me a whole bunch of liner notes for a hundred bucks apiece, and that paid the rent for a while. But I had to freelance. And the Village Voice was very important. They didn’t pay us at the time. But I went there on one condition, that I didn’t have to write about jazz. Because in terms of the newspaper and magazine editors, I was stereotyped, talk about categorizing. So I could write about anything I wanted to: education, the laws, civil liberties. And that got me started as a freelance writer.
Nat was highly attuned to the sharing of accurate information. Even though our interview took place ten years ago, the proliferation of instant Internet access was a concern to him.
NH:   This is an extraordinary paradox. There’s never been a time in human history when there’s been so much instant access to information — or what appears to be information. The 24 hour news cycle is such that the idea of reporting in teams or a reporter getting months to do a story, that’s very rare now. So what you get are, if not sound bites, quick stories. And once something else happens — when I was growing up in Boston the reporters had a phrase, follow-up. You all had to follow-up on the story. But there’s not much of that either. And this cacophony of information, it’s increasingly on the Internet. Most of the newspapers, to stay alive, are going increasingly on the Internet, and they’re being contested by bloggers and they’re multiplying. But there’s no filter as to what you’re hearing from the bloggers. Is it information or just unvarnished biased opinion? So in a time when we have access to all this information I think there’s more confusion than ever before.
Nat Hentoff wrote supportively of the oral history project that is the Fillius Jazz Archive, and his opinions about our effort appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and Jazz Times. We shared a love for the music and personality of singer Joe Williams, and Nat wrote glowingly about our 2005 release of the CD “Havin’ a Good Time” culled from reel to reel tapes from Joe Williams’ estate. At the end of our interview, Nat evoked Joe’s name:
MR:  I’m very appreciative of you giving me your time today.
NH:  Oh look, as you can tell I enjoy talking. But one of your friends, I was once in Joe Williams’ dressing room and we were talking about players who are no longer here, some because of their own damn fault. And Joe looked at me and said, “You and I are survivors.” And I felt like I’d been knighted, that Joe would put me in his company.
You can view my complete interview with Nat Hentoff here.

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Nat Hentoff, 1925-2017
 

 
The nation lost a unique voice, and the Fillius Jazz Archive lost a supporter with the passing of Nat Hentoff on January 7. Mr. Hentoff died at the age of 91 at his home in Manhattan. In a career that spanned seven decades, he excelled as a jazz critic and as an astute observer of our nation and its politics. The Associated Press opined, “Nat Hentoff enjoyed a diverse and iconoclastic career, basking in the freedom to be infuriating on a myriad of subjects.”
Nat was interviewed for the Fillius Jazz Archive in New York City on January 12, 2007, almost ten years ago to the day of this blog.
As a child Nat loved jazz and had aspirations to pursue a career as a musician.
NH:  I was taking clarinet lessons from an alumnus of the Boston Symphony and I was about 13, 14 years old. And I could read anything. And I was playing scales one day near an open window, it was a summer day. And all of a sudden I hear a shout from downstairs. “Hey kid, you want to go to a session?” I look down, there’s this short kid and I figured well I can read anything, so I went. And when we got there this kid took out his horn and began to play and I knew then that I’d have to find a day job that wasn’t in jazz. It was [jazz cornetist] Ruby Braff. He was about my age. He was already playing extraordinarily beautiful stuff.
Due to his passion for the music, Nat still found himself in the middle of the jazz scene. As a co-producer for the 1957 “Sounds of Jazz” Live TV special, he witnessed a poignant moment between Lester Young and Billie Holiday. Here is a link to that moment, seen in this clip at 1:25.
NH:  The background of that was Lester was not feeling well. He was supposed to be in one of the big band sections with the all-time sax section: Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, I forget who else we had there. I said look, you don’t have to do that, and when you do the small combo thing with Billie, you can just sit down. And then she came on in a circle with Roy Eldridge and Lester etcetera. He got up and in the control room, people, as this was unfolding, had tears in their eyes. It was such a moment. Because they were looking at each other, as Lester played. And they had been very close and then not so close, and it was so personal and so intimate, and I was so glad we got that for the ages.
Like the musicians he so admired, Nat was required to wear multiple career hats which seemed to suit him well. I asked him about making a living as a writer/critic.
MR:  Was it tough raising a family of four kids as a freelance journalist?
NH:  It was tough for a while because I got fired. My one gig was at Down Beat when the first child was coming along and I committed a wrongdoing. We were writing essentially about black music. We had no black employees, no black writers in either New York, Chicago where the headquarters were, or in Los Angeles. The boss wasn’t interested in the music at all; he ran a printing shop but he owned the paper. He did not like Jews, he did not like blacks. And one day a woman came in. I thought she was black and we needed a sort of a receptionist so I figured okay we can start with that. I didn’t check with him. He found out about it and I was fired. Years later when I wrote about it she wrote me a note and she said well you know I’m not black, I’m Egyptian. Well some of the theorists today would say yes you are. But anyway that left me in a hole, and Norman Granz was very helpful. He gave me a whole bunch of liner notes for a hundred bucks apiece, and that paid the rent for a while. But I had to freelance. And the Village Voice was very important. They didn’t pay us at the time. But I went there on one condition, that I didn’t have to write about jazz. Because in terms of the newspaper and magazine editors, I was stereotyped, talk about categorizing. So I could write about anything I wanted to: education, the laws, civil liberties. And that got me started as a freelance writer.
Nat was highly attuned to the sharing of accurate information. Even though our interview took place ten years ago, the proliferation of instant Internet access was a concern to him.
NH:   This is an extraordinary paradox. There’s never been a time in human history when there’s been so much instant access to information — or what appears to be information. The 24 hour news cycle is such that the idea of reporting in teams or a reporter getting months to do a story, that’s very rare now. So what you get are, if not sound bites, quick stories. And once something else happens — when I was growing up in Boston the reporters had a phrase, follow-up. You all had to follow-up on the story. But there’s not much of that either. And this cacophony of information, it’s increasingly on the Internet. Most of the newspapers, to stay alive, are going increasingly on the Internet, and they’re being contested by bloggers and they’re multiplying. But there’s no filter as to what you’re hearing from the bloggers. Is it information or just unvarnished biased opinion? So in a time when we have access to all this information I think there’s more confusion than ever before.
Nat Hentoff wrote supportively of the oral history project that is the Fillius Jazz Archive, and his opinions about our effort appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and Jazz Times. We shared a love for the music and personality of singer Joe Williams, and Nat wrote glowingly about our 2005 release of the CD “Havin’ a Good Time” culled from reel to reel tapes from Joe Williams’ estate. At the end of our interview, Nat evoked Joe’s name:
MR:  I’m very appreciative of you giving me your time today.
NH:  Oh look, as you can tell I enjoy talking. But one of your friends, I was once in Joe Williams’ dressing room and we were talking about players who are no longer here, some because of their own damn fault. And Joe looked at me and said, “You and I are survivors.” And I felt like I’d been knighted, that Joe would put me in his company.
You can view my complete interview with Nat Hentoff here.

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/names/2017/01/06/legendary-jazz-impresario-fred-taylor-fired-booker-scullers-jazz-club/wAfhng9pjMP6vxIleWD2zM/story.html

MICHELE MCDONALD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/FILE
Fred Taylor at Scullers in 2014.
 
 
Legendary jazz impresario Fred Taylor fired as booker at Scullers Jazz Club
 
By Mark Shanahan Globe Staff  January 06, 2017
 
Fred Taylor, a legendary figure on the Boston jazz scene since the 1950s, has been abruptly fired as entertainment director at Scullers Jazz Club, angering local jazz fans and signaling a changing of the guard at the well-known music venue.
 
Taylor, whose acts at the club included Lou Rawls, Wynton Marsalis, and Norah Jones, had presided at Scullers since shortly after it opened 27 years ago at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel. He e-mailed friends this week to say he’d been let go by the hotel’s management.
 
Taylor said DoubleTree general manager Jayne Barrett told him last week that he would be finished at the end of February. He said Annmarie Blythe, the general manager of Scullers, also was fired.
 
“I said, ‘What is your motivation for making a change?’ And [Barrett] said, ‘You’ve been doing the same thing for a long time and we need a change,’ ” Taylor said. “That’s what I got for an answer.”
 
The Globe’s top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond.
 
In a voicemail Friday night, Barrett didn’t address Taylor’s status, but said there are “exciting things happening” at the club. Scullers recently moved from the second floor of the hotel to the first and expanded from 170 seats to 205.
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A fixture on the Boston jazz scene for several decades, Taylor, now in his 80s, is perhaps best known as the former owner of the storied jazz clubs Paul’s Mall and the Jazz Workshop on Boylston Street, where he booked such luminaries as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, and George Benson. (At one time, Berklee student Keith Jarrett was the house pianist at Paul’s Mall.)
 
For now, Taylor is still listed on the Scullers website.
working ad adLayerPath: /Boston/Production/BostonGlobe.com/WebPages/Homepage/homepage.ad-layer.story-asset.dwp
 
“Fred is an ageless, irrepressible font of creativity, enthusiasm, and humor — besides being the father of Boston’s modern jazz scene,” said Pauline Bilsky, cofounder of the JazzBoston nonprofit, which supports jazz musicians. “Nobody doesn’t love Fred. Nobody. People are very sad and others are outraged.”
 
Emmett Price, CEO of Jazz Boston and a former music professor at Northeastern University, thinks the DoubleTree made a “big error” by sacking someone as beloved by jazz fans as Taylor.
 
“Scullers is a landmark that’s internationally known. When you go to Boston, you go to Scullers,” Price said. “That’s entirely the result of Fred Taylor’s work. He put that place on the map.”
 
Dayla Arabella Santurri, who was GM at Scullers for over a decade, agreed.
 
She said that she meets people around the world who talk to her about a memorable show booked by Taylor at Scullers.
 
“It’s an institution and his fingerprints are all over it,” Santurri said.
 
Saxophonist Walter Beasley has known Taylor for over 30 years and was among the first acts to perform at Scullers.
 
“I played there for very little money, but the way Fred presented it to me, I felt he was a genuine cat who really cared about the music and wanted to do something special,” Beasley said. “Fred’s an icon for what he’s contributed to the music scene. It’s a shame it happened this way.”
 
Beasley said Taylor’s departure is certain to further diminish Boston’s jazz scene, which has lost much of its trill over the past several years. Clubs have closed or book fewer jazz artists, and jazz programming on the radio, notably Eric Jackson’s “Eric in the Evening” on WGBH, has been severely curtailed.
 
“When I came to Boston to go to Berklee [College of Music] in 1979, man, you’re talking about a vibrant community,” Beasley said. “The place has changed dramatically since then.”
 
Speaking on a cellphone on his way to the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in New York, Taylor sounded downcast Friday.
 
He said Jan Mullen, who runs The SideDoor, a jazz club at the Old Lyme Inn in Connecticut, has been hired to book and manage Scullers.
 
Taylor said he’s met with Mullen, whom he described as “a lovely person and capable at what she’s doing.” But, he said, The SideDoor will never be confused with Scullers.
 
“Unfortunately, [Mullen] has been thrown into a whole new territory,” he said.
 
 

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MICHELE MCDONALD FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE/FILE
Fred Taylor at Scullers in 2014.
 
 
Legendary jazz impresario Fred Taylor fired as booker at Scullers Jazz Club
 
By Mark Shanahan Globe Staff  January 06, 2017
 
Fred Taylor, a legendary figure on the Boston jazz scene since the 1950s, has been abruptly fired as entertainment director at Scullers Jazz Club, angering local jazz fans and signaling a changing of the guard at the well-known music venue.
 
Taylor, whose acts at the club included Lou Rawls, Wynton Marsalis, and Norah Jones, had presided at Scullers since shortly after it opened 27 years ago at the DoubleTree Guest Suites Hotel. He e-mailed friends this week to say he’d been let go by the hotel’s management.
 
Taylor said DoubleTree general manager Jayne Barrett told him last week that he would be finished at the end of February. He said Annmarie Blythe, the general manager of Scullers, also was fired.
 
“I said, ‘What is your motivation for making a change?’ And [Barrett] said, ‘You’ve been doing the same thing for a long time and we need a change,’ ” Taylor said. “That’s what I got for an answer.”
 
The Globe’s top picks for what to see and do each weekend, in Boston and beyond.
 
In a voicemail Friday night, Barrett didn’t address Taylor’s status, but said there are “exciting things happening” at the club. Scullers recently moved from the second floor of the hotel to the first and expanded from 170 seats to 205.
total:0
A fixture on the Boston jazz scene for several decades, Taylor, now in his 80s, is perhaps best known as the former owner of the storied jazz clubs Paul’s Mall and the Jazz Workshop on Boylston Street, where he booked such luminaries as Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, and George Benson. (At one time, Berklee student Keith Jarrett was the house pianist at Paul’s Mall.)
 
For now, Taylor is still listed on the Scullers website.
working ad adLayerPath: /Boston/Production/BostonGlobe.com/WebPages/Homepage/homepage.ad-layer.story-asset.dwp
 
“Fred is an ageless, irrepressible font of creativity, enthusiasm, and humor — besides being the father of Boston’s modern jazz scene,” said Pauline Bilsky, cofounder of the JazzBoston nonprofit, which supports jazz musicians. “Nobody doesn’t love Fred. Nobody. People are very sad and others are outraged.”
 
Emmett Price, CEO of Jazz Boston and a former music professor at Northeastern University, thinks the DoubleTree made a “big error” by sacking someone as beloved by jazz fans as Taylor.
 
“Scullers is a landmark that’s internationally known. When you go to Boston, you go to Scullers,” Price said. “That’s entirely the result of Fred Taylor’s work. He put that place on the map.”
 
Dayla Arabella Santurri, who was GM at Scullers for over a decade, agreed.
 
She said that she meets people around the world who talk to her about a memorable show booked by Taylor at Scullers.
 
“It’s an institution and his fingerprints are all over it,” Santurri said.
 
Saxophonist Walter Beasley has known Taylor for over 30 years and was among the first acts to perform at Scullers.
 
“I played there for very little money, but the way Fred presented it to me, I felt he was a genuine cat who really cared about the music and wanted to do something special,” Beasley said. “Fred’s an icon for what he’s contributed to the music scene. It’s a shame it happened this way.”
 
Beasley said Taylor’s departure is certain to further diminish Boston’s jazz scene, which has lost much of its trill over the past several years. Clubs have closed or book fewer jazz artists, and jazz programming on the radio, notably Eric Jackson’s “Eric in the Evening” on WGBH, has been severely curtailed.
 
“When I came to Boston to go to Berklee [College of Music] in 1979, man, you’re talking about a vibrant community,” Beasley said. “The place has changed dramatically since then.”
 
Speaking on a cellphone on his way to the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Conference in New York, Taylor sounded downcast Friday.
 
He said Jan Mullen, who runs The SideDoor, a jazz club at the Old Lyme Inn in Connecticut, has been hired to book and manage Scullers.
 
Taylor said he’s met with Mullen, whom he described as “a lovely person and capable at what she’s doing.” But, he said, The SideDoor will never be confused with Scullers.
 
“Unfortunately, [Mullen] has been thrown into a whole new territory,” he said.
 
 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/nyregion/nat-hentoff-dead.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170107
 
Nat Hentoff, Journalist and Social Commentator, Dies at 91
By ROBERT D. McFADDENJAN. 7, 2017
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Nat Hentoff in 2009. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Nat Hentoff, the author, journalist, jazz critic and civil libertarian who called himself a troublemaker and proved it with a shelf of books and a mountain of essays on free speech, wayward politics, elegant riffs and the sweet harmonies of the Constitution, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.
His son, Nicholas, said he died of natural causes, surrounded by family listening to Billie Holiday.
Mr. Hentoff wrote for The Village Voice for 50 years, and also contributed to The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Down Beat magazine and dozens of other publications. He wrote more than 35 books — novels, volumes for young adults and nonfiction works on civil liberties, education and other subjects.
The Hentoff bibliotheca reads almost like an anthology: works by a jazz aficionado, a mystery writer, an eyewitness to history, an educational reformer, a political agitator, a foe of censors, a social critic. He was, indeed — like the jazz he loved — given to improvisations and permutations, a composer-performer who lived comfortably with his contradictions, though adversaries called him shallow and unscrupulous, and even his admirers sometimes found him infuriating, unrealistic and stubborn.
In the 1950s, Mr. Hentoff was a jazz critic in Manhattan, frequenting crowded, smoky nightclubs where musicians played for low pay and audiences ran hot and cold and dreamy. “I knew their flaws as well as their strengths,” he recalled, referring to the jazz artists whose music he loved, many of whom he befriended, “but I continued to admire the honesty and courage of their art.”
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In the 1960s and ’70s, he wrote books for young adults, nonfiction on education, magazine profiles on political and religious leaders and essays on racial conflicts and the Vietnam War. He became an activist, too, befriending Malcolm X and joining peace protests and marches for racial equality.
In the 1980s and ’90s, he produced commentaries and books on censorship and other constitutional issues; murder mysteries; portraits of educators and judges; and an avalanche of articles on abortion, civil liberties and other issues. He also wrote a volume of memoirs, “Speaking Freely” (1997).
His writing was often passionate, even inspirational. Much of it was based on personal observations, but some critics said it was not deeply researched or analytic. His nonfiction took in the sweep of an era of war and social upheaval, while many of his novels caught the turbulence, if not the character, of politically astute young adults.
While his sympathies were usually libertarian, he often infuriated leftist friends with his opposition to abortion, his attacks on political correctness and his criticisms of gay groups, feminists, blacks and others he accused of trying to censor opponents. He relished the role of provocateur, defending the right of people to say and write whatever they wanted, even if it involved racial slurs, apartheid and pornography.
He had a firebrand’s face: wreathed in a gray beard and a shock of unruly hair, with dark, uncompromising eyes. Once a student asked what made him tick. “Rage,” he replied. But he said it softly, and friends recalled that his invective, in print or in person, usually came wrapped in gentle good humor and respectful tones.

 
Hentoff and the clarinetist Edmond Hall at the Savoy club in Boston in 1948. via Bob Parent/First Run Features
Nathan Irving Hentoff was born in Boston on June 10, 1925, the son of Simon and Lena Katzenberg Hentoff. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and he grew up in the tough Roxbury section in a vortex of political debate among socialists, anarchists, Communists, Trotskyites and other revolutionaries. He learned early how to rebel.
On Yom Kippur in 1937, the Day of Atonement and fasting, the 12-year-old Nat sat on his porch on a street leading to a synagogue and slowly ate a salami sandwich. It made him sick, and the action outraged his father. He had not done it to scandalize passing Jews who glared at him, he said in a memoir, “Boston Boy” (1986). “I wanted to know how it felt to be an outcast,” he wrote. “Except for my father’s reaction and for getting sick, it turned out to be quite enjoyable.”
He attended Boston Latin, the oldest public school in America, and read voraciously. He discovered Artie Shaw and fell passionately for Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and other jazz legends. As more modern styles of jazz emerged, Mr. Hentoff also embraced musicians like Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and, later, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor.
At Northeastern University, he became editor of a student newspaper and turned it into a muckraker. When it dug up a story about trustees backing anti-Semitic publications, the university shut it down. Mr. Hentoff and members of his staff resigned, but he graduated in 1946 with high honors and a lasting devotion to the First Amendment.
After several years with a Boston radio station, he moved to New York in 1953 and covered the jazz scene for Down Beat until 1957.
He was one of the most prolific jazz writers of the 1950s and ’60s, providing liner notes for countless albums as well as writing or editing several books on jazz, including “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It” (1955), which he edited with Nat Shapiro. It was a seminal work of oral history.
In 1958 he was a founding editor of the influential The Jazz Review, which lasted until 1961. In 1960, he began a notable if brief career as a record producer, supervising sessions by Mingus, Max Roach and others for the Candid label.
Around the same time, he began a freelance career that took him into the pages of Esquire, Harper’s, Commonweal, The Reporter, Playboy and The New York Herald Tribune.
In 1958, he began writing for The Village Voice, the counterculture weekly. It became a 50-year gig, despite changes of ownership and editorial direction. Veering from jazz, he wrote weekly columns on civil liberties, politics, education, capital punishment and other topics, all widely syndicated to newspapers.
In January 2009, he was laid off by The Voice, but said he would continue to bang away on the electric typewriter in his cluttered Greenwich Village flat, producing articles for United Features and Jewish World Review and reflections on jazz and other music for The Wall Street Journal.

 
Mr. Hentoff in his office in Greenwich Village in 2010, as seen in “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step,” a 2013 documentary about him directed by David L. Lewis. David L. Lewis/First Run Features
Citing the journalists George Seldes and I. F. Stone as his muses, he promised in a farewell Voice column to continue “putting on my skunk suit at other garden parties.”
He wrote for The New Yorker from 1960 to 1986, and for The Washington Post from 1984 to 2000. He also wrote for The Washington Times and other publications. For years he lectured at schools and colleges and was on the faculties of New York University and the New School.
Mr. Hentoff’s first book, “The Jazz Life” (1961), examined social and psychological aspects of jazz. Later came “Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste” (1963), a biography of the pacifist, and “The New Equality” (1964), on the role of white guilt in racial reforms.
“Jazz Country” (1965) was the first of a series of novels for young adults. It explored the struggles of a young white musician breaking into the black jazz scene. Others included “This School Is Driving Me Crazy” (1976), “Does This School Have Capital Punishment?” (1981) and “The Day They Came to Arrest the Book” (1982). They addressed subjects like the military draft, censorship and the generation gap, but some critics called them polemics in the mouths of characters.
Many of Mr. Hentoff’s later books dealt with the Constitution and those who interpreted and acted on it. In “Living the Bill of Rights” (1998), he profiled the Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the educator Kenneth Clark and others as he explored capital punishment, prayer in schools, funding for education, race relations and other issues.
In “Free Speech for Me — But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other” (1992), he attacked not only school boards that banned books but also feminists who tried to silence abortion foes or close pornographic bookstores; gay rights groups that boycotted Florida orange juice because its spokeswoman, Anita Bryant, crusaded against gay people; and New York officials who tried to bar South Africa’s rugby team because it represented the land of apartheid.
In 1995, Mr. Hentoff received the National Press Foundation’s award for lifetime achievement in contributions to journalism, and in 2004 he was named one of six Jazz Masters by the National Endowment for the Arts, the first nonmusician to win the honor.
Mr. Hentoff was the subject of an award-winning 2013 biographical film, “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step,” produced and directed by the journalist David L. Lewis, which played in theaters across the country.
Mr. Hentoff’s first two marriages, to Miriam Sargent in 1950 and to Trudi Bernstein in 1954, ended in divorce. His third wife, the former Margot Goodman, whom he married in 1959, is a columnist and author of essays, reviews and short stories.
Besides his wife and son Nicholas, he is survived by two daughters, Jessica and Miranda, a son, Thomas; a stepdaughter, Mara Wolynski Nierman; a sister, Janet Krauss, and 10 grandchildren.
 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/07/nyregion/nat-hentoff-dead.html?emc=edit_tnt_20170107
 
Nat Hentoff, Journalist and Social Commentator, Dies at 91
By ROBERT D. McFADDENJAN. 7, 2017
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Nat Hentoff in 2009. Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times
Nat Hentoff, the author, journalist, jazz critic and civil libertarian who called himself a troublemaker and proved it with a shelf of books and a mountain of essays on free speech, wayward politics, elegant riffs and the sweet harmonies of the Constitution, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.
His son, Nicholas, said he died of natural causes, surrounded by family listening to Billie Holiday.
Mr. Hentoff wrote for The Village Voice for 50 years, and also contributed to The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Down Beat magazine and dozens of other publications. He wrote more than 35 books — novels, volumes for young adults and nonfiction works on civil liberties, education and other subjects.
The Hentoff bibliotheca reads almost like an anthology: works by a jazz aficionado, a mystery writer, an eyewitness to history, an educational reformer, a political agitator, a foe of censors, a social critic. He was, indeed — like the jazz he loved — given to improvisations and permutations, a composer-performer who lived comfortably with his contradictions, though adversaries called him shallow and unscrupulous, and even his admirers sometimes found him infuriating, unrealistic and stubborn.
In the 1950s, Mr. Hentoff was a jazz critic in Manhattan, frequenting crowded, smoky nightclubs where musicians played for low pay and audiences ran hot and cold and dreamy. “I knew their flaws as well as their strengths,” he recalled, referring to the jazz artists whose music he loved, many of whom he befriended, “but I continued to admire the honesty and courage of their art.”
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In the 1960s and ’70s, he wrote books for young adults, nonfiction on education, magazine profiles on political and religious leaders and essays on racial conflicts and the Vietnam War. He became an activist, too, befriending Malcolm X and joining peace protests and marches for racial equality.
In the 1980s and ’90s, he produced commentaries and books on censorship and other constitutional issues; murder mysteries; portraits of educators and judges; and an avalanche of articles on abortion, civil liberties and other issues. He also wrote a volume of memoirs, “Speaking Freely” (1997).
His writing was often passionate, even inspirational. Much of it was based on personal observations, but some critics said it was not deeply researched or analytic. His nonfiction took in the sweep of an era of war and social upheaval, while many of his novels caught the turbulence, if not the character, of politically astute young adults.
While his sympathies were usually libertarian, he often infuriated leftist friends with his opposition to abortion, his attacks on political correctness and his criticisms of gay groups, feminists, blacks and others he accused of trying to censor opponents. He relished the role of provocateur, defending the right of people to say and write whatever they wanted, even if it involved racial slurs, apartheid and pornography.
He had a firebrand’s face: wreathed in a gray beard and a shock of unruly hair, with dark, uncompromising eyes. Once a student asked what made him tick. “Rage,” he replied. But he said it softly, and friends recalled that his invective, in print or in person, usually came wrapped in gentle good humor and respectful tones.

 
Hentoff and the clarinetist Edmond Hall at the Savoy club in Boston in 1948. via Bob Parent/First Run Features
Nathan Irving Hentoff was born in Boston on June 10, 1925, the son of Simon and Lena Katzenberg Hentoff. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and he grew up in the tough Roxbury section in a vortex of political debate among socialists, anarchists, Communists, Trotskyites and other revolutionaries. He learned early how to rebel.
On Yom Kippur in 1937, the Day of Atonement and fasting, the 12-year-old Nat sat on his porch on a street leading to a synagogue and slowly ate a salami sandwich. It made him sick, and the action outraged his father. He had not done it to scandalize passing Jews who glared at him, he said in a memoir, “Boston Boy” (1986). “I wanted to know how it felt to be an outcast,” he wrote. “Except for my father’s reaction and for getting sick, it turned out to be quite enjoyable.”
He attended Boston Latin, the oldest public school in America, and read voraciously. He discovered Artie Shaw and fell passionately for Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and other jazz legends. As more modern styles of jazz emerged, Mr. Hentoff also embraced musicians like Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and, later, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor.
At Northeastern University, he became editor of a student newspaper and turned it into a muckraker. When it dug up a story about trustees backing anti-Semitic publications, the university shut it down. Mr. Hentoff and members of his staff resigned, but he graduated in 1946 with high honors and a lasting devotion to the First Amendment.
After several years with a Boston radio station, he moved to New York in 1953 and covered the jazz scene for Down Beat until 1957.
He was one of the most prolific jazz writers of the 1950s and ’60s, providing liner notes for countless albums as well as writing or editing several books on jazz, including “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It” (1955), which he edited with Nat Shapiro. It was a seminal work of oral history.
In 1958 he was a founding editor of the influential The Jazz Review, which lasted until 1961. In 1960, he began a notable if brief career as a record producer, supervising sessions by Mingus, Max Roach and others for the Candid label.
Around the same time, he began a freelance career that took him into the pages of Esquire, Harper’s, Commonweal, The Reporter, Playboy and The New York Herald Tribune.
In 1958, he began writing for The Village Voice, the counterculture weekly. It became a 50-year gig, despite changes of ownership and editorial direction. Veering from jazz, he wrote weekly columns on civil liberties, politics, education, capital punishment and other topics, all widely syndicated to newspapers.
In January 2009, he was laid off by The Voice, but said he would continue to bang away on the electric typewriter in his cluttered Greenwich Village flat, producing articles for United Features and Jewish World Review and reflections on jazz and other music for The Wall Street Journal.

 
Mr. Hentoff in his office in Greenwich Village in 2010, as seen in “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step,” a 2013 documentary about him directed by David L. Lewis. David L. Lewis/First Run Features
Citing the journalists George Seldes and I. F. Stone as his muses, he promised in a farewell Voice column to continue “putting on my skunk suit at other garden parties.”
He wrote for The New Yorker from 1960 to 1986, and for The Washington Post from 1984 to 2000. He also wrote for The Washington Times and other publications. For years he lectured at schools and colleges and was on the faculties of New York University and the New School.
Mr. Hentoff’s first book, “The Jazz Life” (1961), examined social and psychological aspects of jazz. Later came “Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste” (1963), a biography of the pacifist, and “The New Equality” (1964), on the role of white guilt in racial reforms.
“Jazz Country” (1965) was the first of a series of novels for young adults. It explored the struggles of a young white musician breaking into the black jazz scene. Others included “This School Is Driving Me Crazy” (1976), “Does This School Have Capital Punishment?” (1981) and “The Day They Came to Arrest the Book” (1982). They addressed subjects like the military draft, censorship and the generation gap, but some critics called them polemics in the mouths of characters.
Many of Mr. Hentoff’s later books dealt with the Constitution and those who interpreted and acted on it. In “Living the Bill of Rights” (1998), he profiled the Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, the educator Kenneth Clark and others as he explored capital punishment, prayer in schools, funding for education, race relations and other issues.
In “Free Speech for Me — But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other” (1992), he attacked not only school boards that banned books but also feminists who tried to silence abortion foes or close pornographic bookstores; gay rights groups that boycotted Florida orange juice because its spokeswoman, Anita Bryant, crusaded against gay people; and New York officials who tried to bar South Africa’s rugby team because it represented the land of apartheid.
In 1995, Mr. Hentoff received the National Press Foundation’s award for lifetime achievement in contributions to journalism, and in 2004 he was named one of six Jazz Masters by the National Endowment for the Arts, the first nonmusician to win the honor.
Mr. Hentoff was the subject of an award-winning 2013 biographical film, “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step,” produced and directed by the journalist David L. Lewis, which played in theaters across the country.
Mr. Hentoff’s first two marriages, to Miriam Sargent in 1950 and to Trudi Bernstein in 1954, ended in divorce. His third wife, the former Margot Goodman, whom he married in 1959, is a columnist and author of essays, reviews and short stories.
Besides his wife and son Nicholas, he is survived by two daughters, Jessica and Miranda, a son, Thomas; a stepdaughter, Mara Wolynski Nierman; a sister, Janet Krauss, and 10 grandchildren.
 

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Scroll down for article by Gene Krupa, “School for Skins,”
 
http://darwinscans.blogspot.com/2012/06/duke-v01n01-june-1957-black-playboy.html

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Scroll down for article by Gene Krupa, “School for Skins,”
 
http://darwinscans.blogspot.com/2012/06/duke-v01n01-june-1957-black-playboy.html

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http://triblive.com/aande/music/11697930-74/humphries-campbell-drummer

Musicians coming together to celebrate Humphries work
Bob Karlovits

Kahmeela Adams
Roger Humphries
Saxophonist Tony Campbell is right on the money when he says there are many reasons to celebrate the work of drummer Roger Humphries.
 
“He’s a mentor, a colleague and a friend,” Campbell says.
 
He could even be understating it a bit. Humphries is not only an excellent drummer, but he works hard at keeping jazz alive in many ways.
 
His work has led Campbell to put together a concert that will not only feature Humphries, but also pay tribute to him. It will be Jan. 20 at the ballroom of the James Street Gastropub & Speakeasy on the North Side and feature a large group of musicians who have played with him over the years.
 
Included will be saxophonists Campbell, Lou Stellute and Don Aliquo Jr.; trumpeters James Moore, Delano “Volcano” Choy and Ron Horton; keyboardists Max Leake and Howie Alexander; bassist Dwayne Dolphin; and even another drummer, Thomas Wendt.
 
For decades, Humphries, 72, has been an important part of jazz here. He is a steady performer with his group, RH Factor. He frequently sits in with national performers at concerts at places such as the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty or the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild on the North Side.
 
And he has been a leader of jam sessions all over the city. A dedicated professional, he always manages to keep them from turning into amateur hours.
 
“It’s not a Gong Show” is one his famous expressions at what he wants jam session participants to produce. It is easy to see growing frustration on his face when a jammer is taking matters too far or stumbling over the chord changes.
 
Humphries, a North Side native, could easily have taken his talents elsewhere. In the ’60s he was performing and touring with Ray Charles and Horace Silver, but he decided he would rather be here.
 
He is one of that curious bit of Pittsburgh genetics that produces great drummers — from Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey to Humphries and Jeff “Tain” Watts.
By the way, Humphries will take part in a tribute to Clarke and Blakey at a concert with drummer Lewis Nash Feb. 25 at the Craftsmen’s Guild.
 
Humphries still tours some, but he has rooted his career here — which has really helped jazz in this town.
 
The Horace Silver connection actually is what led to this concert. Campbell, who has been putting together shows at the James Street focusing on bands or performers, decided to do one on Silver.
 
“And then I thought about Roger’s connection with Horace and I thought I could sort of kill two birds with one stone,” he says.
 
Even though he was thinking of it as a tribute to Horace Silver, featuring Roger Humphries, the club’s general manager, Kevin Saftner, looks at it more as Roger Humphries Day.
 
The drummer is happy regardless of the direction.
 
“I’m really looking forward to it,” he says. “It’s nice to play the music of Horace, and it’s good to have the musicians around here and a place like James Street to do it.”
Music begins at 8 p.m. Jan. 20. Admission is $30, $25 in advance. Details: 412-904-3335 or jamesstreetgastropub.com
DeFade takes center stage
Eric DeFade sometimes fades too far into the background.
 
The saxophonist performs in the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra and with bands such as Salsamba and Firm Roots. He also teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and Seton Hill University.
 
But that range of activity usually has him as part of something rather than as the star.
So pay him a bit of attention on his own Jan. 10 at the JazzLive Happy Hour at the Backstage Bar in Theater Square, Downtown.
Music begins at 5 p.m. and is free. Details: 412-456-6666 or trustarts.org
Bob Karlovits is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.
 

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http://triblive.com/aande/music/11697930-74/humphries-campbell-drummer

Musicians coming together to celebrate Humphries work
Bob Karlovits

Kahmeela Adams
Roger Humphries
Saxophonist Tony Campbell is right on the money when he says there are many reasons to celebrate the work of drummer Roger Humphries.
 
“He’s a mentor, a colleague and a friend,” Campbell says.
 
He could even be understating it a bit. Humphries is not only an excellent drummer, but he works hard at keeping jazz alive in many ways.
 
His work has led Campbell to put together a concert that will not only feature Humphries, but also pay tribute to him. It will be Jan. 20 at the ballroom of the James Street Gastropub & Speakeasy on the North Side and feature a large group of musicians who have played with him over the years.
 
Included will be saxophonists Campbell, Lou Stellute and Don Aliquo Jr.; trumpeters James Moore, Delano “Volcano” Choy and Ron Horton; keyboardists Max Leake and Howie Alexander; bassist Dwayne Dolphin; and even another drummer, Thomas Wendt.
 
For decades, Humphries, 72, has been an important part of jazz here. He is a steady performer with his group, RH Factor. He frequently sits in with national performers at concerts at places such as the Kelly Strayhorn Theater in East Liberty or the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild on the North Side.
 
And he has been a leader of jam sessions all over the city. A dedicated professional, he always manages to keep them from turning into amateur hours.
 
“It’s not a Gong Show” is one his famous expressions at what he wants jam session participants to produce. It is easy to see growing frustration on his face when a jammer is taking matters too far or stumbling over the chord changes.
 
Humphries, a North Side native, could easily have taken his talents elsewhere. In the ’60s he was performing and touring with Ray Charles and Horace Silver, but he decided he would rather be here.
 
He is one of that curious bit of Pittsburgh genetics that produces great drummers — from Kenny Clarke and Art Blakey to Humphries and Jeff “Tain” Watts.
By the way, Humphries will take part in a tribute to Clarke and Blakey at a concert with drummer Lewis Nash Feb. 25 at the Craftsmen’s Guild.
 
Humphries still tours some, but he has rooted his career here — which has really helped jazz in this town.
 
The Horace Silver connection actually is what led to this concert. Campbell, who has been putting together shows at the James Street focusing on bands or performers, decided to do one on Silver.
 
“And then I thought about Roger’s connection with Horace and I thought I could sort of kill two birds with one stone,” he says.
 
Even though he was thinking of it as a tribute to Horace Silver, featuring Roger Humphries, the club’s general manager, Kevin Saftner, looks at it more as Roger Humphries Day.
 
The drummer is happy regardless of the direction.
 
“I’m really looking forward to it,” he says. “It’s nice to play the music of Horace, and it’s good to have the musicians around here and a place like James Street to do it.”
Music begins at 8 p.m. Jan. 20. Admission is $30, $25 in advance. Details: 412-904-3335 or jamesstreetgastropub.com
DeFade takes center stage
Eric DeFade sometimes fades too far into the background.
 
The saxophonist performs in the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra and with bands such as Salsamba and Firm Roots. He also teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and Seton Hill University.
 
But that range of activity usually has him as part of something rather than as the star.
So pay him a bit of attention on his own Jan. 10 at the JazzLive Happy Hour at the Backstage Bar in Theater Square, Downtown.
Music begins at 5 p.m. and is free. Details: 412-456-6666 or trustarts.org
Bob Karlovits is a Tribune-Review contributing writer.
 

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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211487503088431

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https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211487503088431

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http://www.musicismysanctuary.com/crate-digging-dont-do-it
 
Artist Stefan Glerum has created a brilliant look into the extreme sport of digging for wax. 13 reasons why you shouldn’t spend your sunny afternoons in a basement; “You will end up all alone”, “It will mess up your back”, “Theres always someone digging in a better crate”… Check it out for real!

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http://www.musicismysanctuary.com/crate-digging-dont-do-it
 
Artist Stefan Glerum has created a brilliant look into the extreme sport of digging for wax. 13 reasons why you shouldn’t spend your sunny afternoons in a basement; “You will end up all alone”, “It will mess up your back”, “Theres always someone digging in a better crate”… Check it out for real!

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFHBuwDQ0gA

Here’s my pics from Jazz Connect that took place this past week at Saint Peter’s Church.
 
This is only a small representation of folks who attended.
 
I wish I could have connected with you all.
 
There’s always next year.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFHBuwDQ0gA

Here’s my pics from Jazz Connect that took place this past week at Saint Peter’s Church.
 
This is only a small representation of folks who attended.
 
I wish I could have connected with you all.
 
There’s always next year.

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