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Joni The Group: Eddie Lang Day in Philadelphia 2016
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Plans are now under way for Eddie Lang Day in Philadelphia 2016 and it will be HUGE !….literally
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Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Joni The Group: Eddie Lang Day in Philadelphia 2016
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
Plans are now under way for Eddie Lang Day in Philadelphia 2016 and it will be HUGE !….literally
Join The Group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/275965225845953/
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=c46020ad72) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=c46020ad72&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz concert rings in Merton’s 101st birthday
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2016/01/31/jazz-concert-rings-thomas-mertons-101st-birthday/79611002/
** Jazz concert rings in Merton’s 101st birthday
————————————————————
Jenna Esarey, Special to the Courier-Journal
A crowd came out to celebrate what would have been Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday with a jazz concert dedicated to the Trappist monk and author.
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto, a friend of Merton’s, presented “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend.” The performance included music he composed for the documentary “Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton.”
Sisto was joined for the 90-minute concert by jazz guitarist Father John Moulder of St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Chicago. He has performed nationally and internationally at festivals, clubs, and concert halls.
“I’m certainly a lover of his (Merton’s) works,” he said. “On my next album, ‘Earthborn Tales of Soul and Spirit,’ there’s a suite devoted to him called ‘Journey to the East.'”
Merton, a monk of Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, wrote poetry, personal journals and social critiques. His writings on peace, justice and ecumenism are still widely read.
Born in France in 1915, he died suddenly at a monastic conference in Thailand in late 1968.
“I became friends with him and we’d meet at Gethsemani,” Sisto said. “He really influenced me spiritually. We’d also have parties on the lake with friends. I was beer runner.”
Bill Strauss, left, and pastor Rick Kautz arrange CDs Buy Photo
Bill Strauss, left, and pastor Rick Kautz arrange CDs at the back of the sanctuary before “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to the CJ)
Sisto is an internationally known musician who, as the host of two long-running public radio shows for the Louisville ‘s NPR affiliate WFPL, has interviewed and performed with more than a few jazz greats.
“Not everyone knows, but Merton was a big jazz fan. He liked jazz before his awakening. He was a bad boy,” Sisto said. “In the 60s I would play at a club, 118 Washington, and he would come in.”
Sisto and Moulder teamed up in Chicago for a Merton concert shortly before Kautz contacted Sisto about performing at St. Paul’s. “That’s the way Merton works,” Sisto joked. “He’s gotten me so many gigs.”
Moulder also serves as Chaplain to the Arts for the Archdiocese in Indianapolis. “We’re trying to reclaim the role of the church which ahs traditionally been a patron of the arts,” he said.
He met with St. Paul’s pastor Rick Kautz and members of the church’s Arts Council, which staged the event, earlier in the day. “We talked about how we can deepen the connection between the arts and spirituality in southern Indiana,” Kautz said.
St. Paul’s Art Council has worked to forge those connections within the community for three years. They also host an Art in the Parlor series of exhibits and a Parlor Stories literary and performing arts series.
“This is really our first music performance,” said council member Bill Strauss. “We’ll be doing a Valentine’s Cabaret on February 13 with eight singers.”
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder Buy Photo
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder present “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to The CJ)
Other art show proceeds, including those from the church’s wildly popular Art on Parish Green juried art show every June, benefit either the weekly soup kitchen or the new pet pantry program.
But the Merton event funds are earmarked for restoration of the church’s pipe organ. “Our organ has not been touched since the 1960’s,” Kautz said. “We have $16,000 in the organ fund, but it will take $32,000.”
For more information on the church or upcoming Arts Council events visit stpaulna.org (http://stpaulna.org/) or find them on Facebook as St. Paul’s Arts Council (https://www.facebook.com/St-Pauls-Arts-Council-376926445751822/?fref=ts) .
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder Buy Photo
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder present “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to The CJ)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=5854fae47d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=5854fae47d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz concert rings in Merton’s 101st birthday
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2016/01/31/jazz-concert-rings-thomas-mertons-101st-birthday/79611002/
** Jazz concert rings in Merton’s 101st birthday
————————————————————
Jenna Esarey, Special to the Courier-Journal
A crowd came out to celebrate what would have been Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday with a jazz concert dedicated to the Trappist monk and author.
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto, a friend of Merton’s, presented “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend.” The performance included music he composed for the documentary “Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton.”
Sisto was joined for the 90-minute concert by jazz guitarist Father John Moulder of St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Chicago. He has performed nationally and internationally at festivals, clubs, and concert halls.
“I’m certainly a lover of his (Merton’s) works,” he said. “On my next album, ‘Earthborn Tales of Soul and Spirit,’ there’s a suite devoted to him called ‘Journey to the East.'”
Merton, a monk of Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, wrote poetry, personal journals and social critiques. His writings on peace, justice and ecumenism are still widely read.
Born in France in 1915, he died suddenly at a monastic conference in Thailand in late 1968.
“I became friends with him and we’d meet at Gethsemani,” Sisto said. “He really influenced me spiritually. We’d also have parties on the lake with friends. I was beer runner.”
Bill Strauss, left, and pastor Rick Kautz arrange CDs Buy Photo
Bill Strauss, left, and pastor Rick Kautz arrange CDs at the back of the sanctuary before “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to the CJ)
Sisto is an internationally known musician who, as the host of two long-running public radio shows for the Louisville ‘s NPR affiliate WFPL, has interviewed and performed with more than a few jazz greats.
“Not everyone knows, but Merton was a big jazz fan. He liked jazz before his awakening. He was a bad boy,” Sisto said. “In the 60s I would play at a club, 118 Washington, and he would come in.”
Sisto and Moulder teamed up in Chicago for a Merton concert shortly before Kautz contacted Sisto about performing at St. Paul’s. “That’s the way Merton works,” Sisto joked. “He’s gotten me so many gigs.”
Moulder also serves as Chaplain to the Arts for the Archdiocese in Indianapolis. “We’re trying to reclaim the role of the church which ahs traditionally been a patron of the arts,” he said.
He met with St. Paul’s pastor Rick Kautz and members of the church’s Arts Council, which staged the event, earlier in the day. “We talked about how we can deepen the connection between the arts and spirituality in southern Indiana,” Kautz said.
St. Paul’s Art Council has worked to forge those connections within the community for three years. They also host an Art in the Parlor series of exhibits and a Parlor Stories literary and performing arts series.
“This is really our first music performance,” said council member Bill Strauss. “We’ll be doing a Valentine’s Cabaret on February 13 with eight singers.”
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder Buy Photo
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder present “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to The CJ)
Other art show proceeds, including those from the church’s wildly popular Art on Parish Green juried art show every June, benefit either the weekly soup kitchen or the new pet pantry program.
But the Merton event funds are earmarked for restoration of the church’s pipe organ. “Our organ has not been touched since the 1960’s,” Kautz said. “We have $16,000 in the organ fund, but it will take $32,000.”
For more information on the church or upcoming Arts Council events visit stpaulna.org (http://stpaulna.org/) or find them on Facebook as St. Paul’s Arts Council (https://www.facebook.com/St-Pauls-Arts-Council-376926445751822/?fref=ts) .
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder Buy Photo
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder present “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to The CJ)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=5854fae47d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=5854fae47d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz concert rings in Merton’s 101st birthday
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/local/indiana/2016/01/31/jazz-concert-rings-thomas-mertons-101st-birthday/79611002/
** Jazz concert rings in Merton’s 101st birthday
————————————————————
Jenna Esarey, Special to the Courier-Journal
A crowd came out to celebrate what would have been Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday with a jazz concert dedicated to the Trappist monk and author.
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto, a friend of Merton’s, presented “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend.” The performance included music he composed for the documentary “Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton.”
Sisto was joined for the 90-minute concert by jazz guitarist Father John Moulder of St. Gregory’s Catholic Church in Chicago. He has performed nationally and internationally at festivals, clubs, and concert halls.
“I’m certainly a lover of his (Merton’s) works,” he said. “On my next album, ‘Earthborn Tales of Soul and Spirit,’ there’s a suite devoted to him called ‘Journey to the East.'”
Merton, a monk of Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky, wrote poetry, personal journals and social critiques. His writings on peace, justice and ecumenism are still widely read.
Born in France in 1915, he died suddenly at a monastic conference in Thailand in late 1968.
“I became friends with him and we’d meet at Gethsemani,” Sisto said. “He really influenced me spiritually. We’d also have parties on the lake with friends. I was beer runner.”
Bill Strauss, left, and pastor Rick Kautz arrange CDs Buy Photo
Bill Strauss, left, and pastor Rick Kautz arrange CDs at the back of the sanctuary before “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to the CJ)
Sisto is an internationally known musician who, as the host of two long-running public radio shows for the Louisville ‘s NPR affiliate WFPL, has interviewed and performed with more than a few jazz greats.
“Not everyone knows, but Merton was a big jazz fan. He liked jazz before his awakening. He was a bad boy,” Sisto said. “In the 60s I would play at a club, 118 Washington, and he would come in.”
Sisto and Moulder teamed up in Chicago for a Merton concert shortly before Kautz contacted Sisto about performing at St. Paul’s. “That’s the way Merton works,” Sisto joked. “He’s gotten me so many gigs.”
Moulder also serves as Chaplain to the Arts for the Archdiocese in Indianapolis. “We’re trying to reclaim the role of the church which ahs traditionally been a patron of the arts,” he said.
He met with St. Paul’s pastor Rick Kautz and members of the church’s Arts Council, which staged the event, earlier in the day. “We talked about how we can deepen the connection between the arts and spirituality in southern Indiana,” Kautz said.
St. Paul’s Art Council has worked to forge those connections within the community for three years. They also host an Art in the Parlor series of exhibits and a Parlor Stories literary and performing arts series.
“This is really our first music performance,” said council member Bill Strauss. “We’ll be doing a Valentine’s Cabaret on February 13 with eight singers.”
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder Buy Photo
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder present “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to The CJ)
Other art show proceeds, including those from the church’s wildly popular Art on Parish Green juried art show every June, benefit either the weekly soup kitchen or the new pet pantry program.
But the Merton event funds are earmarked for restoration of the church’s pipe organ. “Our organ has not been touched since the 1960’s,” Kautz said. “We have $16,000 in the organ fund, but it will take $32,000.”
For more information on the church or upcoming Arts Council events visit stpaulna.org (http://stpaulna.org/) or find them on Facebook as St. Paul’s Arts Council (https://www.facebook.com/St-Pauls-Arts-Council-376926445751822/?fref=ts) .
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder Buy Photo
Vibraphonist Dick Sisto and guitarist John Moulder present “A Merton Birthday Celebration: Memories and Music for a Spiritual Friend” in honor of Thomas Merton’s 101st birthday at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in New Albany on Sunday. January 31, 2016 (Photo: Jenna Esarey, Special to The CJ)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=5854fae47d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=5854fae47d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
The Biggest Session Drummer Of All Time Is Ready For The Spotlight
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan/you-have-heard-bernard-purdie-play-drums#.icLDzD1Lld
SHARE
**
————————————————————
You may not know his name, but you’ve heard Bernard “Pretty” Purdie play drums. Over five decades, the prolific session musician has backed some of the 20th century’s biggest hits. Now, at 74, he’s ready to take center stage.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan?language=en
John Lingan (http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan?language=en)
BuzzFeed Contributor
posted on Jan. 28, 2016, at 11:05 p.m.
Buddha-calm and Buddha-bellied, Bernard Purdie sat alone at a huge conference table in the green room of the Clef Club in downtown Philadelphia. At 74, even with sharp white sideburns, Purdie looks youthful: His impish smile is all broad cheeks and squinting eyes, like a little boy turning on the charm when Mom walks in angry. The showmanship extends to his fashion choices, which that day included cowboy boots, a gold watch, a grape-sized pinkie ring, and a silver chain that peeked out from the collar of a jaggedly striped multicolored sweater.
But look past the gleam and he has the presence of a mountain. Nothing rushes him. He unwrapped a massive sausage and green pepper hoagie with the same unhurried precision that defined his work as the most prolific drummer of the 20th century.
“I’m on over 4,000 albums,” he said, a claim he’s made often in interviews. It would be nearly impossible to fact-check, though no one has ever disputed it. “I never looked at any one of them as, ‘Oh that’s a great opportunity.’ It’s a freaking job. I got paid to do my job.”
You have heard Bernard Purdie play drums. He has made you dance. This isn’t about musical taste — it’s just math. “What a Wonderful World.” “Rock Steady.” “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” And those are just a few of his better-known, uncontested credits. In his heyday, the early ’60s through the ’70s, he was punctual, nailed songs on the first take, worked for hours on end, and played with inspiring energy and perfect, metronomic time. Producers loved him. They called him “Pretty.” Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. You have heard him play drums.
** “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown
————————————————————
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images; Music: King
But once the pop industry began to move away from the session-musician business model in the ’80s, Purdie diversified. He teaches private lessons, holds clinics at recording industry events, and regularly travels overseas where he’s heralded as royalty by funk and hip-hop heads. His summer schedule included a Steely Dan tribute in a New Orleans club, a Russian breakdancing competition where he’d serve as a judge and accompanist, and the upstairs bar of a tiny Italian restaurant near Asbury Park, with plenty of others in between. His Philly audience, typical these days, would consist largely of fellow musicians, drummers especially. Many of them would buy Pretty Purdie T-shirts and the autobiography Let the Drums Speak!, which he published in 2014. A crowdsourced documentary about his life (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-purdie-good-life-the-documentary–2#/) , made with his excited participation, is in production as well. The gig coincided with his most recent
appearance on the cover of Modern Drummer, the biggest percussionists’ magazine in the world, where a worshipful profile found him dispensing wisdom about finding the groove and smiling while you play.
These are just the latest achievements in a 50-year career of expert self-promotion, another area where Purdie broke ground as a session man. Back when he recorded his first tracks, studio musicians weren’t appreciated or even known by name outside the record industry. But Purdie was one of the foremost sidemen to advocate for his own visibility, and few others had his charisma or cockiness. Everywhere he goes, Purdie is called upon to play his defining creation, the Purdie Shuffle, a notoriously complex four-limb beat that he invented (and quickly named after himself) in his salad days.
** The Purdie Shuffle
————————————————————
Photo: YouTube; Music: Drummerworld
It has since become a rite of passage for every aspiring drummer, pilfered even by John Bonham for Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain.” Well before individuals, let alone backup musicians, practiced “branding,” Purdie had mastered it. In the time of 20 Feet From Stardom, Searching for Sugar Man, and Muscle Shoals, he’s well-positioned to be the latest hero of our culture’s habit for belatedly celebrating its unsung musical legends.
For now, he’s ably cultivating a legend even though his Top 40 days are long past. In Philadelphia, decades after he kept the busiest schedule of any drummer in Manhattan, that night’s ticket bore his name: Bernard Purdie and Friends, one of a few small combos he regularly performs with now.
“It’s taken a lot of years,” he said, “but people are finally starting to come see me for my own thing.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
Downstairs, in the steeply angled 200-seat theater, the Friends were setting up onstage. Miho Nobuzane, a waifish young Japanese woman, ran scales and checked her charts as a sound man clipped a microphone to the inside of her grand piano. Right next to its open lid, on a stool by his amp, her compatriot Tetsuya Sato tuned his electric bass. Frankie Cicala, a short, middle-aged guy who looks like an extra from The Sopranos, strapped a hollow-body guitar to his upper chest and bent a few strings. Purdie came up the stairs on far stage left and unzipped the drum cases that were waiting for him.
The Clef Club is a jazz school for Philadelphian kids as well as a venue, and one of its teenage students was helping set up the stage audio. He walked over to Purdie’s kit with a cord loosely wound around his palm.
“Do you need a drum mic?” he asked.
Barely looking at him, hands in his pockets, Purdie shook him off. “Don’t need it.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
He was once that young man himself, at the feet of mentors in a downbeat hometown. Purdie was born and raised in Elkton, Maryland, a county seat wedged between the Mason-Dixon Line and the Delaware border. In the ’40s and ’50s, Elkton was full of old plantation money, and the racial climate was unsurprisingly grim. Black Marylanders were raised to expect a lifetime of labor with no chance of building wealth or improving their lives. His father and grandfather both laid steel for the railway lines, and Purdie joined them from age 6. He held the spikes as his elders hammered. From there, he never stopped working.
“Racially, we were owned,” Purdie says now. “It was slave ownership only worse, because you never knew where you stood.”
But as a child, he seemed to have never thought about race or oppression one way or the other. He moved from track work to newspaper delivery to shoe-shining downtown, which put him in touch with local elites, including the white mayor, John Stanley, who took to Bugsy, as he was then known, like he was his own son.
“Working for the mayor, I could go home with $75 to $100 a week,” he says. “I did anything I wanted, because I was friends with the mayor. I went in any door, ate at any counter. I was 10 years old!”
Purdie evolved into a bona fide local character — the beloved black kid who worked hard, never had a bad word for anyone, and accepted the social way of things. A crowd-pleaser, in other words, and a well-paid one.
Armed with letters of recommendation from his teachers at the black-only George Washington Carver High School, Purdie applied to enter the town’s white school in his senior year.
Purdie in high school. Cecil County Public Schools
Word spread that the school was about to integrate, and Purdie’s white friends asked him “who the nigger was” that would be enrolling. When he drove onto campus and walked up to sign in, he heard one of them shout, “This is no nigger, this is Bugsy!”
“I was the first black to integrate in the state of Maryland, which I didn’t know,” he says. “I just wanted to go to school with the kids I delivered papers to.”
By that point, Purdie had already discovered the drums. Elkton was a known stop on the so-called chitlin circuit for Southern black musicians, and a robust local gig scene had sprung up alongside.
Inspired by all the nearby talent, young Bugsy became a student of local drummer Leonard Hayward, helping the old man set up his kit and and occasionally stepping in for him on stage when he drank too much. By high school Purdie had a band of his own, a trio called Jackie Lee and the Angels.
This was the late ’50s, and the Angels were an interracial group: white guitar player, Hawaiian bassist, and Purdie on drums. Purdie loved jazz and R&B, but he also loved rock ‘n’ roll, and especially country, and he wanted to play all of it. After graduation, he moved to Baltimore, where North Avenue, the borderline between the city’s north and south sides, held a thriving ecosystem of clubs, bars, and burlesque venues.
“You made money if you wanted to in Baltimore,” he remembers today. “Music happened every night, seven nights a week, starting at 5 or 6 in the evening and going ’til 5 or 6 in the morning. Your credibility was being on time, and being able to hold down the chair.” The former 6-year-old rail worker fit in fine.
But Purdie already knew what it was like to be a small-town success. Playing drums was his job, and though Baltimore was comfortable, there was only one place that mattered in the industry.
“New York was the ultimate place to go,” he says. “I needed to go and see the ultimate.” He left in 1961, at age 19.
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After setup and soundcheck in Philadelphia, a few more teenagers brought out a long card table and placed it onstage. A woman about his age and half his size helped Purdie unpack boxes of autobiographies, stacking them carefully on the table next to the T-shirts as the club’s main doors were opened. It was 5:30. A few acolytes came in, approaching the stage in hushed awe.
“You’re a master,” said a black man in a soft leather jacket. A middle-aged white man had brought a drumhead for Purdie to sign. For these and others, including a few who brought their plainly uninterested young sons, Purdie had a few minutes of the vague, koan-like shoptalk that musicians live for: “Being able to read music is what puts you above everybody else.” “I don’t care who you are, you gotta land on the one.”
When the autograph session ended, he turned to the woman who’d accompanied him and handed over a bulging, broken leather wallet held together by a rubber band. “We’re going upstairs to eat,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” This was Celia Thompson, who says with pride, “I’m his better half.”
Thompson’s from North Plainfield, New Jersey, a second-generation Italian-American with an accent that would sound at home in the old Yankee Stadium bleachers. Few people look so satisfied while lugging someone else’s boxes on and off a small stage.
“I’ve been a nurse for 40 years, but this” — being “Pretty” Purdie’s muse and cheerleader — “is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she says.
Four years ago, Thompson’s daughter took her to dinner at a jazz club in Madison, New Jersey, and Purdie happened to be playing in the band. They started talking in the break between sets, though she had no idea who he was. Later, he described his early career, listing some of the songs he played on. Amazed, she told him, “I’ve known you my whole life.”
Since then, she’s traveled with him whenever possible, taking pride in every request for the Purdie Shuffle and every book sold. “I just love watching him soar,” she says. “It’s my joy in life.” Their song is one of his earliest hits, Doris Troy’s “Just One Look.”
“That’s me,” Thompson smiles.
“Just One Look” was recorded in 1963, two years after Purdie landed in Manhattan looking for work. He found it miraculously quickly, in only his first week. He met Mickey and Sylvia, whose biggest song, “Love Is Strange,” from 1956, was about to be re-recorded. Purdie leaped at the job.
Purdie performing with his band at New York’s Lone Star Cafe in 1985. Ebet Roberts / Redferns
“I had no studio experience in Baltimore, but I wasn’t gonna tell people I didn’t have it,” he says. “All I know is, when I got to that studio, in four hours I made $80. I’d never made that much money. I was rich. No one could tell me otherwise. I bought all the drinks for everyone that night.”
From that point, Purdie’s life switched from Baltimore strip clubs to Manhattan recording studios. As a member of the Brill Building–era hit factory, he would show up to a studio and the producer would supply him with either a new chart or a prerecorded track that he would play over, a process known as “sweetening.” Sometimes the tracks were by established acts; other times they were merely songwriting demos for labels to shop around.
“Just One Look” was intended as a demo, but Atlantic Records released it as a single and it ended up hitting the top 10. It’s not a big drum feature — few recordings of the AM radio period were — but even within the confines of a mid-tempo, three-minute pop song, all of Purdie’s signature elements are in place.
** “Just One Look” by Doris Troy
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Photo: Gilles Petard / Redferns / Getty Images; Music: Atlantic Records
There’s a surprising depth in the bass drum, an uncommon heaviness for the time. On top of it, Purdie layers a simple but insistent snare drum pattern that really swings — he puts just enough space between the notes to make the tune rock back and forth. Compared to, say, Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” or the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man,” “Just One Look” sounds like a funk song.
The New York studio scene allowed Purdie to bring all of his lifelong talents together — the nonstop schedule ensured that the insatiable workaholic always had the next job lined up, the variety of music allowed him to play multiple genres a day, and his eagerness to please made him a welcome member of the relatively tight-knit community of musicians.
“When I was in the studio, headphones on, I was totally into the band,” Purdie says. “I heard everything. I would start with the volume really low, then slowly bring it up, paying attention to all the nuances.”
Galt MacDermot, the pianist and composer who later wrote the music for Hair, met Purdie in the mid-’60s, after spending a half decade in South Africa. “I’d heard most of the drummers in town by then,” he says today, “and he was by far the best. He translated that African sound that I’d heard into North America.”
To non-musicians, it might seem that the drummer’s main role in a band is to keep the tempo, but that’s only a small part of the job. Drummers give a song its personality: They make it loud or quiet, they dictate where the beat is, and they define the entire character of a band by their relative power or absence. And this, more than anything else, is what Purdie brought to the instrument. He increased the energy and clarity wherever he played. He expanded the dynamic range of pop drumming in every direction — deeper bass, tighter snare, increased volume but also increased subtlety.
Every song has a hundred components — the lyrics, the arrangement, the melody, the production, the vocals, and on and on.
“My job,” Purdie says, “is to make it work.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
At 7 p.m., Purdie emerged onstage in a short-collared red silk shirt and black jacket. The club, about half full, whooped and hollered.
“It’s your night as well,” he announced as his international group plugged in behind him. “We’re gonna have a lot of fun, we’re gonna enjoy ourselves. And we’re gonna make sure you enjoy yourselves too.”
Then he sat down, hit his sticks together four times, and the group began a slow, bubbling instrumental version of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” Purdie’s shoulders jumped, his wrists snapped, his knees hopped, his feet danced. Throughout, he looked around to each band member and made eye contact, flashing that huge-cheeked smile. Whenever he hit his snare, it was like a rifle shot through the air.
They moved on to a gentle waltz version of “Blue Moon,” then a slow jazz song for which Purdie switched to brushes, then a bossa nova tune with Miko on vocals in Portuguese. A massive guitar feature followed, for which Frankie stepped to the front of the stage and shredded like he was trying to break a land-speed record while standing still.
Over the course of the ’60s, he moved from the record industry’s best-kept secret to a full-on celebrity among musicians without ever seeming to break a sweat, yet he wasn’t known for flashy solos. But his flair shone through in other ways, like the homemade sandwich-board signs he brought to sessions. In bold red and blue, they screamed:
YOU’VE DID IT AGAIN PRETTY HIT MAKER PURDIE
IF YOU NEED ME CALL ME THE HIT MAKER PRETTY PURDIE
The New Yorker mentioned the signs when they featured Purdie in a November 1967 Talk of the Town story (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/11/18/pretty-purdie) , which caught him leading a Shirelles session amid a 12-hour workday behind the kit that also included James Brown and commercial jingles. “I’ve had seven days off in the last four years,” he told the magazine, before listing a few recent clients, including the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and “all the acts from Motown.”
Getty Images
By design, Purdie wasn’t ever listed as the drummer on those recordings, and in some cases, his credits have even been disputed or ignored. The Beatles claims have drawn particular ire. In his book, which is written in the third person, he says, “Purdie kept his mouth shut for fifteen years, until, while teaching a music course at The New School, some of his students began holding up Ringo Starr as one of the greatest drummers of his era” and “he couldn’t let such a statement go unchallenged.” Over the years he has claimed to have played on 21 unspecified tracks, while elsewhere stating that Ringo didn’t play anything on the Beatles’ first two albums. He also says in the book that this breach of the sweetener’s code has resulted in death threats and hate mail. For what it’s worth, he isn’t mentioned in any of the dozens of books on the Beatles — or Motown, for that matter.
Since it wasn’t standard practice to credit — or even acknowledge — session musicians at the time, it’s impossible to know with certainty which songs of the era Purdie actually played on. But no one has ever disputed that he played constantly in the record industry’s innermost sanctum.
The same year that The New Yorker caught up with him, Purdie recorded Soul Drums, which featured heavy funk breaks but also skipped through Latin styles and the Duke Ellington staple “Caravan.” It was unusual for a drummer-for-hire to put out a solo album, and the record made his reputation as a groove craftsman, not just a tasteful studio hand.
The timing was perfect: 1967 was also the year that Atlantic released its first record from Aretha Franklin.
** “Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin
————————————————————
Photo: Leni Sinclair / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images; Music: Atlantic
Purdie was close with bandleader and saxophonist King Curtis, and when Curtis was asked to back Aretha in 1971, Purdie went along with him. Franklin and Curtis both released records called Live at Fillmore West from the shows the band played in San Francisco in March, and Purdie stayed with Aretha for her next two albums, Young, Gifted and Blackand Amazing Grace, which marked her commercial peak: platinum sales, Grammy wins, top 10 singles. Those records turned Purdie into a superstar, at least among musicians.
B.B. King and Purdie on stage in New York in 2012. Dino Perrucci
Now the studio work came faster than ever, and Purdie’s name was almost always on the sleeve. Hall and Oates, Todd Rundgren, Miles Davis, Gato Barbieri, Roberta Flack, and hundreds of other funk and soul recordings that have disappeared for all but the most discerning crate diggers. This was a golden age for session drummers: Purdie’s colleagues included legends like Steve Gadd, Rick Marotta, Jim Gordon, and Jim Keltner, brilliant hired guns who made bundles of money and commanded the kind of respect for their talent that had once been reserved for jazzmen. Collectively, those four and Purdie must have held the beat for half of pop radio during the ’70s. But none of the others recorded solo albums in their prime. And none of them created a beat as indelible or well-known as the Purdie Shuffle.
All four, however, played with Steely Dan, who by 1975 had transitioned into a country club for the greatest session musicians alive. Purdie played on the entirety of their 1976 record The Royal Scam, and they asked him back the following year for two tracks on Aja. That album — which sounds so beautiful that studio engineers still (http://www.soundandvision.com/content/test-tracks-your-most-important-audio-tool#FVrbXIOhReMppKbW.97) use (http://ajournalofmusicalthings.com/what-are-the-top-10-digital-tracks-for-testing-speakers/) it to test speakers — includes “Home at Last,” featuring what might be the all-time greatest Purdie Shuffle alongside “Babylon Sisters,” from the band’s follow-up, Gaucho. On Aja, the infamously fastidious Steely Dan production style brings out every skittering ghost note on the snare, every gasp-short open-and-close on the hi-hats. It also reveals how he subtly complicates the beat in the chorus, simplifying it in the verses. Purdie never solos,
but he animates and steers the entire six-minute track.
** “Home At Last” by Steely Dan
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Photo: Chris Walter / WireImage; Music: ABC
Bernard Purdie and Friends played “Home at Last” at the Clef Club, which sent all the middle-aged drum geeks into paroxysms. He took a few more quick funk-groove solos, one of which he punctuated by standing up and dancing by himself in the middle of the stage.
“I’d like to go home with every last one of you!” he shouted as his band clapped along with everyone else. In the front row stood Celia Thompson, clapping louder than anyone else.
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In retrospect, Steely Dan’s disappearance after Gaucho marked the end of the studio-talent era that Purdie had come to dominate. Dance music was increasingly made by DJs, and producers became more important than individual players in the creation of a hit. By the mid-’80s, Purdie had left the city altogether and moved to Jersey.
“When you cross that bridge, all the stress and hassle all goes down,” he says.
He kept playing sessions, doing more quiet jazz and songwriter music than his big-beat reputation might have allowed before, though his legend grew thanks to the preponderance of Purdie samples in hip-hop and electronic music. By the mid-’90s he was back on the radio, in Beck’s “Devils Haircut” and the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats,” and his drums could be heard on tracks from Madlib and DJ Shadow.
** Purdie’s “Soul Drums” sampled on Beck’s “Devils Haircut”
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Photo: Martyn Goodacre / Getty Images; Music: DGC, Bong Load Custom
Gabriel Roth, producer behind the Dap-Kings and Daptone Records, who specialize in the kind of horn-heavy soul from Purdie’s glory days, worked with him when the label was still in its infancy.
“We were in awe,” Roth says of the 2000 session, which happened on a fluke when he and his bandmates dared to call and ask the legend to sit in — Purdie obliged without hesitation. “I’ve been lucky enough to work with guys like Booker T. and Al Green, where there wasn’t any mystery, ‘How’d this guy make so many good records?’ Like Bernard, they had a sense of humility. They had incredible restraint and discipline. Purdie plays exactly that one thing that needs to be played.”
Purdie created an inexhaustible number of heavy funk and soul-jazz recordings. Still, the breadth and empathy of his playing remain underappreciated. His accompaniment on the platinum 1972 record Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway is spare and bright, just as his work on Alan Jackson’s 2006 record Like Red on a Rose supplies a solid foundation for songs that rarely rise above a whisper.
At this point, he preaches mostly to the converted, people who know him and know how to appreciate this kind of thing. As the band took a bow at the edge of the Clef Club stage, a woman sitting to my right looked at her beaming middle-aged husband and laughed, “You look like a kid.”
“I am,” he told her.
More than the Purdie Shuffle, more than the record-setting CV and the superlatives he’s so fond of, Purdie’s legacy rests on bringing pop drummers into fans’ lives in this way. If the gigs are a little more niche these days, he looms larger on the stage. He’s booked as “Pretty” Purdie more often than as somebody’s sideman. The audiences show up to witness those wrists and that beaming smile. They come to see the man who demanded, for the first time, that pop drummers get their due as artists and creators in their own right.
“My basic goal in life is to not lose what I’ve been given out,” he says. “I’m trying to make sure my teaching keeps moving forward, that I’m helping young drummers take the next step. They’ve taken a part of me and moved on to another plateau. I want it to continue.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
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You may not know his name, but you’ve heard Bernard “Pretty” Purdie play drums. Over five decades, the prolific session musician has backed some of the 20th century’s biggest hits. Now, at 74, he’s ready to take center stage.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan?language=en
John Lingan (http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan?language=en)
BuzzFeed Contributor
posted on Jan. 28, 2016, at 11:05 p.m.
Buddha-calm and Buddha-bellied, Bernard Purdie sat alone at a huge conference table in the green room of the Clef Club in downtown Philadelphia. At 74, even with sharp white sideburns, Purdie looks youthful: His impish smile is all broad cheeks and squinting eyes, like a little boy turning on the charm when Mom walks in angry. The showmanship extends to his fashion choices, which that day included cowboy boots, a gold watch, a grape-sized pinkie ring, and a silver chain that peeked out from the collar of a jaggedly striped multicolored sweater.
But look past the gleam and he has the presence of a mountain. Nothing rushes him. He unwrapped a massive sausage and green pepper hoagie with the same unhurried precision that defined his work as the most prolific drummer of the 20th century.
“I’m on over 4,000 albums,” he said, a claim he’s made often in interviews. It would be nearly impossible to fact-check, though no one has ever disputed it. “I never looked at any one of them as, ‘Oh that’s a great opportunity.’ It’s a freaking job. I got paid to do my job.”
You have heard Bernard Purdie play drums. He has made you dance. This isn’t about musical taste — it’s just math. “What a Wonderful World.” “Rock Steady.” “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” And those are just a few of his better-known, uncontested credits. In his heyday, the early ’60s through the ’70s, he was punctual, nailed songs on the first take, worked for hours on end, and played with inspiring energy and perfect, metronomic time. Producers loved him. They called him “Pretty.” Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. You have heard him play drums.
** “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown
————————————————————
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images; Music: King
But once the pop industry began to move away from the session-musician business model in the ’80s, Purdie diversified. He teaches private lessons, holds clinics at recording industry events, and regularly travels overseas where he’s heralded as royalty by funk and hip-hop heads. His summer schedule included a Steely Dan tribute in a New Orleans club, a Russian breakdancing competition where he’d serve as a judge and accompanist, and the upstairs bar of a tiny Italian restaurant near Asbury Park, with plenty of others in between. His Philly audience, typical these days, would consist largely of fellow musicians, drummers especially. Many of them would buy Pretty Purdie T-shirts and the autobiography Let the Drums Speak!, which he published in 2014. A crowdsourced documentary about his life (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-purdie-good-life-the-documentary–2#/) , made with his excited participation, is in production as well. The gig coincided with his most recent
appearance on the cover of Modern Drummer, the biggest percussionists’ magazine in the world, where a worshipful profile found him dispensing wisdom about finding the groove and smiling while you play.
These are just the latest achievements in a 50-year career of expert self-promotion, another area where Purdie broke ground as a session man. Back when he recorded his first tracks, studio musicians weren’t appreciated or even known by name outside the record industry. But Purdie was one of the foremost sidemen to advocate for his own visibility, and few others had his charisma or cockiness. Everywhere he goes, Purdie is called upon to play his defining creation, the Purdie Shuffle, a notoriously complex four-limb beat that he invented (and quickly named after himself) in his salad days.
** The Purdie Shuffle
————————————————————
Photo: YouTube; Music: Drummerworld
It has since become a rite of passage for every aspiring drummer, pilfered even by John Bonham for Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain.” Well before individuals, let alone backup musicians, practiced “branding,” Purdie had mastered it. In the time of 20 Feet From Stardom, Searching for Sugar Man, and Muscle Shoals, he’s well-positioned to be the latest hero of our culture’s habit for belatedly celebrating its unsung musical legends.
For now, he’s ably cultivating a legend even though his Top 40 days are long past. In Philadelphia, decades after he kept the busiest schedule of any drummer in Manhattan, that night’s ticket bore his name: Bernard Purdie and Friends, one of a few small combos he regularly performs with now.
“It’s taken a lot of years,” he said, “but people are finally starting to come see me for my own thing.”
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Downstairs, in the steeply angled 200-seat theater, the Friends were setting up onstage. Miho Nobuzane, a waifish young Japanese woman, ran scales and checked her charts as a sound man clipped a microphone to the inside of her grand piano. Right next to its open lid, on a stool by his amp, her compatriot Tetsuya Sato tuned his electric bass. Frankie Cicala, a short, middle-aged guy who looks like an extra from The Sopranos, strapped a hollow-body guitar to his upper chest and bent a few strings. Purdie came up the stairs on far stage left and unzipped the drum cases that were waiting for him.
The Clef Club is a jazz school for Philadelphian kids as well as a venue, and one of its teenage students was helping set up the stage audio. He walked over to Purdie’s kit with a cord loosely wound around his palm.
“Do you need a drum mic?” he asked.
Barely looking at him, hands in his pockets, Purdie shook him off. “Don’t need it.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
He was once that young man himself, at the feet of mentors in a downbeat hometown. Purdie was born and raised in Elkton, Maryland, a county seat wedged between the Mason-Dixon Line and the Delaware border. In the ’40s and ’50s, Elkton was full of old plantation money, and the racial climate was unsurprisingly grim. Black Marylanders were raised to expect a lifetime of labor with no chance of building wealth or improving their lives. His father and grandfather both laid steel for the railway lines, and Purdie joined them from age 6. He held the spikes as his elders hammered. From there, he never stopped working.
“Racially, we were owned,” Purdie says now. “It was slave ownership only worse, because you never knew where you stood.”
But as a child, he seemed to have never thought about race or oppression one way or the other. He moved from track work to newspaper delivery to shoe-shining downtown, which put him in touch with local elites, including the white mayor, John Stanley, who took to Bugsy, as he was then known, like he was his own son.
“Working for the mayor, I could go home with $75 to $100 a week,” he says. “I did anything I wanted, because I was friends with the mayor. I went in any door, ate at any counter. I was 10 years old!”
Purdie evolved into a bona fide local character — the beloved black kid who worked hard, never had a bad word for anyone, and accepted the social way of things. A crowd-pleaser, in other words, and a well-paid one.
Armed with letters of recommendation from his teachers at the black-only George Washington Carver High School, Purdie applied to enter the town’s white school in his senior year.
Purdie in high school. Cecil County Public Schools
Word spread that the school was about to integrate, and Purdie’s white friends asked him “who the nigger was” that would be enrolling. When he drove onto campus and walked up to sign in, he heard one of them shout, “This is no nigger, this is Bugsy!”
“I was the first black to integrate in the state of Maryland, which I didn’t know,” he says. “I just wanted to go to school with the kids I delivered papers to.”
By that point, Purdie had already discovered the drums. Elkton was a known stop on the so-called chitlin circuit for Southern black musicians, and a robust local gig scene had sprung up alongside.
Inspired by all the nearby talent, young Bugsy became a student of local drummer Leonard Hayward, helping the old man set up his kit and and occasionally stepping in for him on stage when he drank too much. By high school Purdie had a band of his own, a trio called Jackie Lee and the Angels.
This was the late ’50s, and the Angels were an interracial group: white guitar player, Hawaiian bassist, and Purdie on drums. Purdie loved jazz and R&B, but he also loved rock ‘n’ roll, and especially country, and he wanted to play all of it. After graduation, he moved to Baltimore, where North Avenue, the borderline between the city’s north and south sides, held a thriving ecosystem of clubs, bars, and burlesque venues.
“You made money if you wanted to in Baltimore,” he remembers today. “Music happened every night, seven nights a week, starting at 5 or 6 in the evening and going ’til 5 or 6 in the morning. Your credibility was being on time, and being able to hold down the chair.” The former 6-year-old rail worker fit in fine.
But Purdie already knew what it was like to be a small-town success. Playing drums was his job, and though Baltimore was comfortable, there was only one place that mattered in the industry.
“New York was the ultimate place to go,” he says. “I needed to go and see the ultimate.” He left in 1961, at age 19.
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
After setup and soundcheck in Philadelphia, a few more teenagers brought out a long card table and placed it onstage. A woman about his age and half his size helped Purdie unpack boxes of autobiographies, stacking them carefully on the table next to the T-shirts as the club’s main doors were opened. It was 5:30. A few acolytes came in, approaching the stage in hushed awe.
“You’re a master,” said a black man in a soft leather jacket. A middle-aged white man had brought a drumhead for Purdie to sign. For these and others, including a few who brought their plainly uninterested young sons, Purdie had a few minutes of the vague, koan-like shoptalk that musicians live for: “Being able to read music is what puts you above everybody else.” “I don’t care who you are, you gotta land on the one.”
When the autograph session ended, he turned to the woman who’d accompanied him and handed over a bulging, broken leather wallet held together by a rubber band. “We’re going upstairs to eat,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” This was Celia Thompson, who says with pride, “I’m his better half.”
Thompson’s from North Plainfield, New Jersey, a second-generation Italian-American with an accent that would sound at home in the old Yankee Stadium bleachers. Few people look so satisfied while lugging someone else’s boxes on and off a small stage.
“I’ve been a nurse for 40 years, but this” — being “Pretty” Purdie’s muse and cheerleader — “is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she says.
Four years ago, Thompson’s daughter took her to dinner at a jazz club in Madison, New Jersey, and Purdie happened to be playing in the band. They started talking in the break between sets, though she had no idea who he was. Later, he described his early career, listing some of the songs he played on. Amazed, she told him, “I’ve known you my whole life.”
Since then, she’s traveled with him whenever possible, taking pride in every request for the Purdie Shuffle and every book sold. “I just love watching him soar,” she says. “It’s my joy in life.” Their song is one of his earliest hits, Doris Troy’s “Just One Look.”
“That’s me,” Thompson smiles.
“Just One Look” was recorded in 1963, two years after Purdie landed in Manhattan looking for work. He found it miraculously quickly, in only his first week. He met Mickey and Sylvia, whose biggest song, “Love Is Strange,” from 1956, was about to be re-recorded. Purdie leaped at the job.
Purdie performing with his band at New York’s Lone Star Cafe in 1985. Ebet Roberts / Redferns
“I had no studio experience in Baltimore, but I wasn’t gonna tell people I didn’t have it,” he says. “All I know is, when I got to that studio, in four hours I made $80. I’d never made that much money. I was rich. No one could tell me otherwise. I bought all the drinks for everyone that night.”
From that point, Purdie’s life switched from Baltimore strip clubs to Manhattan recording studios. As a member of the Brill Building–era hit factory, he would show up to a studio and the producer would supply him with either a new chart or a prerecorded track that he would play over, a process known as “sweetening.” Sometimes the tracks were by established acts; other times they were merely songwriting demos for labels to shop around.
“Just One Look” was intended as a demo, but Atlantic Records released it as a single and it ended up hitting the top 10. It’s not a big drum feature — few recordings of the AM radio period were — but even within the confines of a mid-tempo, three-minute pop song, all of Purdie’s signature elements are in place.
** “Just One Look” by Doris Troy
————————————————————
Photo: Gilles Petard / Redferns / Getty Images; Music: Atlantic Records
There’s a surprising depth in the bass drum, an uncommon heaviness for the time. On top of it, Purdie layers a simple but insistent snare drum pattern that really swings — he puts just enough space between the notes to make the tune rock back and forth. Compared to, say, Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” or the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man,” “Just One Look” sounds like a funk song.
The New York studio scene allowed Purdie to bring all of his lifelong talents together — the nonstop schedule ensured that the insatiable workaholic always had the next job lined up, the variety of music allowed him to play multiple genres a day, and his eagerness to please made him a welcome member of the relatively tight-knit community of musicians.
“When I was in the studio, headphones on, I was totally into the band,” Purdie says. “I heard everything. I would start with the volume really low, then slowly bring it up, paying attention to all the nuances.”
Galt MacDermot, the pianist and composer who later wrote the music for Hair, met Purdie in the mid-’60s, after spending a half decade in South Africa. “I’d heard most of the drummers in town by then,” he says today, “and he was by far the best. He translated that African sound that I’d heard into North America.”
To non-musicians, it might seem that the drummer’s main role in a band is to keep the tempo, but that’s only a small part of the job. Drummers give a song its personality: They make it loud or quiet, they dictate where the beat is, and they define the entire character of a band by their relative power or absence. And this, more than anything else, is what Purdie brought to the instrument. He increased the energy and clarity wherever he played. He expanded the dynamic range of pop drumming in every direction — deeper bass, tighter snare, increased volume but also increased subtlety.
Every song has a hundred components — the lyrics, the arrangement, the melody, the production, the vocals, and on and on.
“My job,” Purdie says, “is to make it work.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
At 7 p.m., Purdie emerged onstage in a short-collared red silk shirt and black jacket. The club, about half full, whooped and hollered.
“It’s your night as well,” he announced as his international group plugged in behind him. “We’re gonna have a lot of fun, we’re gonna enjoy ourselves. And we’re gonna make sure you enjoy yourselves too.”
Then he sat down, hit his sticks together four times, and the group began a slow, bubbling instrumental version of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” Purdie’s shoulders jumped, his wrists snapped, his knees hopped, his feet danced. Throughout, he looked around to each band member and made eye contact, flashing that huge-cheeked smile. Whenever he hit his snare, it was like a rifle shot through the air.
They moved on to a gentle waltz version of “Blue Moon,” then a slow jazz song for which Purdie switched to brushes, then a bossa nova tune with Miko on vocals in Portuguese. A massive guitar feature followed, for which Frankie stepped to the front of the stage and shredded like he was trying to break a land-speed record while standing still.
Over the course of the ’60s, he moved from the record industry’s best-kept secret to a full-on celebrity among musicians without ever seeming to break a sweat, yet he wasn’t known for flashy solos. But his flair shone through in other ways, like the homemade sandwich-board signs he brought to sessions. In bold red and blue, they screamed:
YOU’VE DID IT AGAIN PRETTY HIT MAKER PURDIE
IF YOU NEED ME CALL ME THE HIT MAKER PRETTY PURDIE
The New Yorker mentioned the signs when they featured Purdie in a November 1967 Talk of the Town story (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/11/18/pretty-purdie) , which caught him leading a Shirelles session amid a 12-hour workday behind the kit that also included James Brown and commercial jingles. “I’ve had seven days off in the last four years,” he told the magazine, before listing a few recent clients, including the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and “all the acts from Motown.”
Getty Images
By design, Purdie wasn’t ever listed as the drummer on those recordings, and in some cases, his credits have even been disputed or ignored. The Beatles claims have drawn particular ire. In his book, which is written in the third person, he says, “Purdie kept his mouth shut for fifteen years, until, while teaching a music course at The New School, some of his students began holding up Ringo Starr as one of the greatest drummers of his era” and “he couldn’t let such a statement go unchallenged.” Over the years he has claimed to have played on 21 unspecified tracks, while elsewhere stating that Ringo didn’t play anything on the Beatles’ first two albums. He also says in the book that this breach of the sweetener’s code has resulted in death threats and hate mail. For what it’s worth, he isn’t mentioned in any of the dozens of books on the Beatles — or Motown, for that matter.
Since it wasn’t standard practice to credit — or even acknowledge — session musicians at the time, it’s impossible to know with certainty which songs of the era Purdie actually played on. But no one has ever disputed that he played constantly in the record industry’s innermost sanctum.
The same year that The New Yorker caught up with him, Purdie recorded Soul Drums, which featured heavy funk breaks but also skipped through Latin styles and the Duke Ellington staple “Caravan.” It was unusual for a drummer-for-hire to put out a solo album, and the record made his reputation as a groove craftsman, not just a tasteful studio hand.
The timing was perfect: 1967 was also the year that Atlantic released its first record from Aretha Franklin.
** “Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin
————————————————————
Photo: Leni Sinclair / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images; Music: Atlantic
Purdie was close with bandleader and saxophonist King Curtis, and when Curtis was asked to back Aretha in 1971, Purdie went along with him. Franklin and Curtis both released records called Live at Fillmore West from the shows the band played in San Francisco in March, and Purdie stayed with Aretha for her next two albums, Young, Gifted and Blackand Amazing Grace, which marked her commercial peak: platinum sales, Grammy wins, top 10 singles. Those records turned Purdie into a superstar, at least among musicians.
B.B. King and Purdie on stage in New York in 2012. Dino Perrucci
Now the studio work came faster than ever, and Purdie’s name was almost always on the sleeve. Hall and Oates, Todd Rundgren, Miles Davis, Gato Barbieri, Roberta Flack, and hundreds of other funk and soul recordings that have disappeared for all but the most discerning crate diggers. This was a golden age for session drummers: Purdie’s colleagues included legends like Steve Gadd, Rick Marotta, Jim Gordon, and Jim Keltner, brilliant hired guns who made bundles of money and commanded the kind of respect for their talent that had once been reserved for jazzmen. Collectively, those four and Purdie must have held the beat for half of pop radio during the ’70s. But none of the others recorded solo albums in their prime. And none of them created a beat as indelible or well-known as the Purdie Shuffle.
All four, however, played with Steely Dan, who by 1975 had transitioned into a country club for the greatest session musicians alive. Purdie played on the entirety of their 1976 record The Royal Scam, and they asked him back the following year for two tracks on Aja. That album — which sounds so beautiful that studio engineers still (http://www.soundandvision.com/content/test-tracks-your-most-important-audio-tool#FVrbXIOhReMppKbW.97) use (http://ajournalofmusicalthings.com/what-are-the-top-10-digital-tracks-for-testing-speakers/) it to test speakers — includes “Home at Last,” featuring what might be the all-time greatest Purdie Shuffle alongside “Babylon Sisters,” from the band’s follow-up, Gaucho. On Aja, the infamously fastidious Steely Dan production style brings out every skittering ghost note on the snare, every gasp-short open-and-close on the hi-hats. It also reveals how he subtly complicates the beat in the chorus, simplifying it in the verses. Purdie never solos,
but he animates and steers the entire six-minute track.
** “Home At Last” by Steely Dan
————————————————————
Photo: Chris Walter / WireImage; Music: ABC
Bernard Purdie and Friends played “Home at Last” at the Clef Club, which sent all the middle-aged drum geeks into paroxysms. He took a few more quick funk-groove solos, one of which he punctuated by standing up and dancing by himself in the middle of the stage.
“I’d like to go home with every last one of you!” he shouted as his band clapped along with everyone else. In the front row stood Celia Thompson, clapping louder than anyone else.
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
In retrospect, Steely Dan’s disappearance after Gaucho marked the end of the studio-talent era that Purdie had come to dominate. Dance music was increasingly made by DJs, and producers became more important than individual players in the creation of a hit. By the mid-’80s, Purdie had left the city altogether and moved to Jersey.
“When you cross that bridge, all the stress and hassle all goes down,” he says.
He kept playing sessions, doing more quiet jazz and songwriter music than his big-beat reputation might have allowed before, though his legend grew thanks to the preponderance of Purdie samples in hip-hop and electronic music. By the mid-’90s he was back on the radio, in Beck’s “Devils Haircut” and the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats,” and his drums could be heard on tracks from Madlib and DJ Shadow.
** Purdie’s “Soul Drums” sampled on Beck’s “Devils Haircut”
————————————————————
Photo: Martyn Goodacre / Getty Images; Music: DGC, Bong Load Custom
Gabriel Roth, producer behind the Dap-Kings and Daptone Records, who specialize in the kind of horn-heavy soul from Purdie’s glory days, worked with him when the label was still in its infancy.
“We were in awe,” Roth says of the 2000 session, which happened on a fluke when he and his bandmates dared to call and ask the legend to sit in — Purdie obliged without hesitation. “I’ve been lucky enough to work with guys like Booker T. and Al Green, where there wasn’t any mystery, ‘How’d this guy make so many good records?’ Like Bernard, they had a sense of humility. They had incredible restraint and discipline. Purdie plays exactly that one thing that needs to be played.”
Purdie created an inexhaustible number of heavy funk and soul-jazz recordings. Still, the breadth and empathy of his playing remain underappreciated. His accompaniment on the platinum 1972 record Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway is spare and bright, just as his work on Alan Jackson’s 2006 record Like Red on a Rose supplies a solid foundation for songs that rarely rise above a whisper.
At this point, he preaches mostly to the converted, people who know him and know how to appreciate this kind of thing. As the band took a bow at the edge of the Clef Club stage, a woman sitting to my right looked at her beaming middle-aged husband and laughed, “You look like a kid.”
“I am,” he told her.
More than the Purdie Shuffle, more than the record-setting CV and the superlatives he’s so fond of, Purdie’s legacy rests on bringing pop drummers into fans’ lives in this way. If the gigs are a little more niche these days, he looms larger on the stage. He’s booked as “Pretty” Purdie more often than as somebody’s sideman. The audiences show up to witness those wrists and that beaming smile. They come to see the man who demanded, for the first time, that pop drummers get their due as artists and creators in their own right.
“My basic goal in life is to not lose what I’ve been given out,” he says. “I’m trying to make sure my teaching keeps moving forward, that I’m helping young drummers take the next step. They’ve taken a part of me and moved on to another plateau. I want it to continue.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
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You may not know his name, but you’ve heard Bernard “Pretty” Purdie play drums. Over five decades, the prolific session musician has backed some of the 20th century’s biggest hits. Now, at 74, he’s ready to take center stage.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan?language=en
John Lingan (http://www.buzzfeed.com/johnlingan?language=en)
BuzzFeed Contributor
posted on Jan. 28, 2016, at 11:05 p.m.
Buddha-calm and Buddha-bellied, Bernard Purdie sat alone at a huge conference table in the green room of the Clef Club in downtown Philadelphia. At 74, even with sharp white sideburns, Purdie looks youthful: His impish smile is all broad cheeks and squinting eyes, like a little boy turning on the charm when Mom walks in angry. The showmanship extends to his fashion choices, which that day included cowboy boots, a gold watch, a grape-sized pinkie ring, and a silver chain that peeked out from the collar of a jaggedly striped multicolored sweater.
But look past the gleam and he has the presence of a mountain. Nothing rushes him. He unwrapped a massive sausage and green pepper hoagie with the same unhurried precision that defined his work as the most prolific drummer of the 20th century.
“I’m on over 4,000 albums,” he said, a claim he’s made often in interviews. It would be nearly impossible to fact-check, though no one has ever disputed it. “I never looked at any one of them as, ‘Oh that’s a great opportunity.’ It’s a freaking job. I got paid to do my job.”
You have heard Bernard Purdie play drums. He has made you dance. This isn’t about musical taste — it’s just math. “What a Wonderful World.” “Rock Steady.” “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher.” And those are just a few of his better-known, uncontested credits. In his heyday, the early ’60s through the ’70s, he was punctual, nailed songs on the first take, worked for hours on end, and played with inspiring energy and perfect, metronomic time. Producers loved him. They called him “Pretty.” Bernard “Pretty” Purdie. You have heard him play drums.
** “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World” by James Brown
————————————————————
Photo: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images; Music: King
But once the pop industry began to move away from the session-musician business model in the ’80s, Purdie diversified. He teaches private lessons, holds clinics at recording industry events, and regularly travels overseas where he’s heralded as royalty by funk and hip-hop heads. His summer schedule included a Steely Dan tribute in a New Orleans club, a Russian breakdancing competition where he’d serve as a judge and accompanist, and the upstairs bar of a tiny Italian restaurant near Asbury Park, with plenty of others in between. His Philly audience, typical these days, would consist largely of fellow musicians, drummers especially. Many of them would buy Pretty Purdie T-shirts and the autobiography Let the Drums Speak!, which he published in 2014. A crowdsourced documentary about his life (https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/a-purdie-good-life-the-documentary–2#/) , made with his excited participation, is in production as well. The gig coincided with his most recent
appearance on the cover of Modern Drummer, the biggest percussionists’ magazine in the world, where a worshipful profile found him dispensing wisdom about finding the groove and smiling while you play.
These are just the latest achievements in a 50-year career of expert self-promotion, another area where Purdie broke ground as a session man. Back when he recorded his first tracks, studio musicians weren’t appreciated or even known by name outside the record industry. But Purdie was one of the foremost sidemen to advocate for his own visibility, and few others had his charisma or cockiness. Everywhere he goes, Purdie is called upon to play his defining creation, the Purdie Shuffle, a notoriously complex four-limb beat that he invented (and quickly named after himself) in his salad days.
** The Purdie Shuffle
————————————————————
Photo: YouTube; Music: Drummerworld
It has since become a rite of passage for every aspiring drummer, pilfered even by John Bonham for Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain.” Well before individuals, let alone backup musicians, practiced “branding,” Purdie had mastered it. In the time of 20 Feet From Stardom, Searching for Sugar Man, and Muscle Shoals, he’s well-positioned to be the latest hero of our culture’s habit for belatedly celebrating its unsung musical legends.
For now, he’s ably cultivating a legend even though his Top 40 days are long past. In Philadelphia, decades after he kept the busiest schedule of any drummer in Manhattan, that night’s ticket bore his name: Bernard Purdie and Friends, one of a few small combos he regularly performs with now.
“It’s taken a lot of years,” he said, “but people are finally starting to come see me for my own thing.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
Downstairs, in the steeply angled 200-seat theater, the Friends were setting up onstage. Miho Nobuzane, a waifish young Japanese woman, ran scales and checked her charts as a sound man clipped a microphone to the inside of her grand piano. Right next to its open lid, on a stool by his amp, her compatriot Tetsuya Sato tuned his electric bass. Frankie Cicala, a short, middle-aged guy who looks like an extra from The Sopranos, strapped a hollow-body guitar to his upper chest and bent a few strings. Purdie came up the stairs on far stage left and unzipped the drum cases that were waiting for him.
The Clef Club is a jazz school for Philadelphian kids as well as a venue, and one of its teenage students was helping set up the stage audio. He walked over to Purdie’s kit with a cord loosely wound around his palm.
“Do you need a drum mic?” he asked.
Barely looking at him, hands in his pockets, Purdie shook him off. “Don’t need it.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
He was once that young man himself, at the feet of mentors in a downbeat hometown. Purdie was born and raised in Elkton, Maryland, a county seat wedged between the Mason-Dixon Line and the Delaware border. In the ’40s and ’50s, Elkton was full of old plantation money, and the racial climate was unsurprisingly grim. Black Marylanders were raised to expect a lifetime of labor with no chance of building wealth or improving their lives. His father and grandfather both laid steel for the railway lines, and Purdie joined them from age 6. He held the spikes as his elders hammered. From there, he never stopped working.
“Racially, we were owned,” Purdie says now. “It was slave ownership only worse, because you never knew where you stood.”
But as a child, he seemed to have never thought about race or oppression one way or the other. He moved from track work to newspaper delivery to shoe-shining downtown, which put him in touch with local elites, including the white mayor, John Stanley, who took to Bugsy, as he was then known, like he was his own son.
“Working for the mayor, I could go home with $75 to $100 a week,” he says. “I did anything I wanted, because I was friends with the mayor. I went in any door, ate at any counter. I was 10 years old!”
Purdie evolved into a bona fide local character — the beloved black kid who worked hard, never had a bad word for anyone, and accepted the social way of things. A crowd-pleaser, in other words, and a well-paid one.
Armed with letters of recommendation from his teachers at the black-only George Washington Carver High School, Purdie applied to enter the town’s white school in his senior year.
Purdie in high school. Cecil County Public Schools
Word spread that the school was about to integrate, and Purdie’s white friends asked him “who the nigger was” that would be enrolling. When he drove onto campus and walked up to sign in, he heard one of them shout, “This is no nigger, this is Bugsy!”
“I was the first black to integrate in the state of Maryland, which I didn’t know,” he says. “I just wanted to go to school with the kids I delivered papers to.”
By that point, Purdie had already discovered the drums. Elkton was a known stop on the so-called chitlin circuit for Southern black musicians, and a robust local gig scene had sprung up alongside.
Inspired by all the nearby talent, young Bugsy became a student of local drummer Leonard Hayward, helping the old man set up his kit and and occasionally stepping in for him on stage when he drank too much. By high school Purdie had a band of his own, a trio called Jackie Lee and the Angels.
This was the late ’50s, and the Angels were an interracial group: white guitar player, Hawaiian bassist, and Purdie on drums. Purdie loved jazz and R&B, but he also loved rock ‘n’ roll, and especially country, and he wanted to play all of it. After graduation, he moved to Baltimore, where North Avenue, the borderline between the city’s north and south sides, held a thriving ecosystem of clubs, bars, and burlesque venues.
“You made money if you wanted to in Baltimore,” he remembers today. “Music happened every night, seven nights a week, starting at 5 or 6 in the evening and going ’til 5 or 6 in the morning. Your credibility was being on time, and being able to hold down the chair.” The former 6-year-old rail worker fit in fine.
But Purdie already knew what it was like to be a small-town success. Playing drums was his job, and though Baltimore was comfortable, there was only one place that mattered in the industry.
“New York was the ultimate place to go,” he says. “I needed to go and see the ultimate.” He left in 1961, at age 19.
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
After setup and soundcheck in Philadelphia, a few more teenagers brought out a long card table and placed it onstage. A woman about his age and half his size helped Purdie unpack boxes of autobiographies, stacking them carefully on the table next to the T-shirts as the club’s main doors were opened. It was 5:30. A few acolytes came in, approaching the stage in hushed awe.
“You’re a master,” said a black man in a soft leather jacket. A middle-aged white man had brought a drumhead for Purdie to sign. For these and others, including a few who brought their plainly uninterested young sons, Purdie had a few minutes of the vague, koan-like shoptalk that musicians live for: “Being able to read music is what puts you above everybody else.” “I don’t care who you are, you gotta land on the one.”
When the autograph session ended, he turned to the woman who’d accompanied him and handed over a bulging, broken leather wallet held together by a rubber band. “We’re going upstairs to eat,” he said.
“Yes, sir.” This was Celia Thompson, who says with pride, “I’m his better half.”
Thompson’s from North Plainfield, New Jersey, a second-generation Italian-American with an accent that would sound at home in the old Yankee Stadium bleachers. Few people look so satisfied while lugging someone else’s boxes on and off a small stage.
“I’ve been a nurse for 40 years, but this” — being “Pretty” Purdie’s muse and cheerleader — “is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she says.
Four years ago, Thompson’s daughter took her to dinner at a jazz club in Madison, New Jersey, and Purdie happened to be playing in the band. They started talking in the break between sets, though she had no idea who he was. Later, he described his early career, listing some of the songs he played on. Amazed, she told him, “I’ve known you my whole life.”
Since then, she’s traveled with him whenever possible, taking pride in every request for the Purdie Shuffle and every book sold. “I just love watching him soar,” she says. “It’s my joy in life.” Their song is one of his earliest hits, Doris Troy’s “Just One Look.”
“That’s me,” Thompson smiles.
“Just One Look” was recorded in 1963, two years after Purdie landed in Manhattan looking for work. He found it miraculously quickly, in only his first week. He met Mickey and Sylvia, whose biggest song, “Love Is Strange,” from 1956, was about to be re-recorded. Purdie leaped at the job.
Purdie performing with his band at New York’s Lone Star Cafe in 1985. Ebet Roberts / Redferns
“I had no studio experience in Baltimore, but I wasn’t gonna tell people I didn’t have it,” he says. “All I know is, when I got to that studio, in four hours I made $80. I’d never made that much money. I was rich. No one could tell me otherwise. I bought all the drinks for everyone that night.”
From that point, Purdie’s life switched from Baltimore strip clubs to Manhattan recording studios. As a member of the Brill Building–era hit factory, he would show up to a studio and the producer would supply him with either a new chart or a prerecorded track that he would play over, a process known as “sweetening.” Sometimes the tracks were by established acts; other times they were merely songwriting demos for labels to shop around.
“Just One Look” was intended as a demo, but Atlantic Records released it as a single and it ended up hitting the top 10. It’s not a big drum feature — few recordings of the AM radio period were — but even within the confines of a mid-tempo, three-minute pop song, all of Purdie’s signature elements are in place.
** “Just One Look” by Doris Troy
————————————————————
Photo: Gilles Petard / Redferns / Getty Images; Music: Atlantic Records
There’s a surprising depth in the bass drum, an uncommon heaviness for the time. On top of it, Purdie layers a simple but insistent snare drum pattern that really swings — he puts just enough space between the notes to make the tune rock back and forth. Compared to, say, Lesley Gore’s “It’s My Party” or the Four Seasons’ “Walk Like a Man,” “Just One Look” sounds like a funk song.
The New York studio scene allowed Purdie to bring all of his lifelong talents together — the nonstop schedule ensured that the insatiable workaholic always had the next job lined up, the variety of music allowed him to play multiple genres a day, and his eagerness to please made him a welcome member of the relatively tight-knit community of musicians.
“When I was in the studio, headphones on, I was totally into the band,” Purdie says. “I heard everything. I would start with the volume really low, then slowly bring it up, paying attention to all the nuances.”
Galt MacDermot, the pianist and composer who later wrote the music for Hair, met Purdie in the mid-’60s, after spending a half decade in South Africa. “I’d heard most of the drummers in town by then,” he says today, “and he was by far the best. He translated that African sound that I’d heard into North America.”
To non-musicians, it might seem that the drummer’s main role in a band is to keep the tempo, but that’s only a small part of the job. Drummers give a song its personality: They make it loud or quiet, they dictate where the beat is, and they define the entire character of a band by their relative power or absence. And this, more than anything else, is what Purdie brought to the instrument. He increased the energy and clarity wherever he played. He expanded the dynamic range of pop drumming in every direction — deeper bass, tighter snare, increased volume but also increased subtlety.
Every song has a hundred components — the lyrics, the arrangement, the melody, the production, the vocals, and on and on.
“My job,” Purdie says, “is to make it work.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
At 7 p.m., Purdie emerged onstage in a short-collared red silk shirt and black jacket. The club, about half full, whooped and hollered.
“It’s your night as well,” he announced as his international group plugged in behind him. “We’re gonna have a lot of fun, we’re gonna enjoy ourselves. And we’re gonna make sure you enjoy yourselves too.”
Then he sat down, hit his sticks together four times, and the group began a slow, bubbling instrumental version of Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” Purdie’s shoulders jumped, his wrists snapped, his knees hopped, his feet danced. Throughout, he looked around to each band member and made eye contact, flashing that huge-cheeked smile. Whenever he hit his snare, it was like a rifle shot through the air.
They moved on to a gentle waltz version of “Blue Moon,” then a slow jazz song for which Purdie switched to brushes, then a bossa nova tune with Miko on vocals in Portuguese. A massive guitar feature followed, for which Frankie stepped to the front of the stage and shredded like he was trying to break a land-speed record while standing still.
Over the course of the ’60s, he moved from the record industry’s best-kept secret to a full-on celebrity among musicians without ever seeming to break a sweat, yet he wasn’t known for flashy solos. But his flair shone through in other ways, like the homemade sandwich-board signs he brought to sessions. In bold red and blue, they screamed:
YOU’VE DID IT AGAIN PRETTY HIT MAKER PURDIE
IF YOU NEED ME CALL ME THE HIT MAKER PRETTY PURDIE
The New Yorker mentioned the signs when they featured Purdie in a November 1967 Talk of the Town story (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1967/11/18/pretty-purdie) , which caught him leading a Shirelles session amid a 12-hour workday behind the kit that also included James Brown and commercial jingles. “I’ve had seven days off in the last four years,” he told the magazine, before listing a few recent clients, including the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkel, and “all the acts from Motown.”
Getty Images
By design, Purdie wasn’t ever listed as the drummer on those recordings, and in some cases, his credits have even been disputed or ignored. The Beatles claims have drawn particular ire. In his book, which is written in the third person, he says, “Purdie kept his mouth shut for fifteen years, until, while teaching a music course at The New School, some of his students began holding up Ringo Starr as one of the greatest drummers of his era” and “he couldn’t let such a statement go unchallenged.” Over the years he has claimed to have played on 21 unspecified tracks, while elsewhere stating that Ringo didn’t play anything on the Beatles’ first two albums. He also says in the book that this breach of the sweetener’s code has resulted in death threats and hate mail. For what it’s worth, he isn’t mentioned in any of the dozens of books on the Beatles — or Motown, for that matter.
Since it wasn’t standard practice to credit — or even acknowledge — session musicians at the time, it’s impossible to know with certainty which songs of the era Purdie actually played on. But no one has ever disputed that he played constantly in the record industry’s innermost sanctum.
The same year that The New Yorker caught up with him, Purdie recorded Soul Drums, which featured heavy funk breaks but also skipped through Latin styles and the Duke Ellington staple “Caravan.” It was unusual for a drummer-for-hire to put out a solo album, and the record made his reputation as a groove craftsman, not just a tasteful studio hand.
The timing was perfect: 1967 was also the year that Atlantic released its first record from Aretha Franklin.
** “Rock Steady” by Aretha Franklin
————————————————————
Photo: Leni Sinclair / Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images; Music: Atlantic
Purdie was close with bandleader and saxophonist King Curtis, and when Curtis was asked to back Aretha in 1971, Purdie went along with him. Franklin and Curtis both released records called Live at Fillmore West from the shows the band played in San Francisco in March, and Purdie stayed with Aretha for her next two albums, Young, Gifted and Blackand Amazing Grace, which marked her commercial peak: platinum sales, Grammy wins, top 10 singles. Those records turned Purdie into a superstar, at least among musicians.
B.B. King and Purdie on stage in New York in 2012. Dino Perrucci
Now the studio work came faster than ever, and Purdie’s name was almost always on the sleeve. Hall and Oates, Todd Rundgren, Miles Davis, Gato Barbieri, Roberta Flack, and hundreds of other funk and soul recordings that have disappeared for all but the most discerning crate diggers. This was a golden age for session drummers: Purdie’s colleagues included legends like Steve Gadd, Rick Marotta, Jim Gordon, and Jim Keltner, brilliant hired guns who made bundles of money and commanded the kind of respect for their talent that had once been reserved for jazzmen. Collectively, those four and Purdie must have held the beat for half of pop radio during the ’70s. But none of the others recorded solo albums in their prime. And none of them created a beat as indelible or well-known as the Purdie Shuffle.
All four, however, played with Steely Dan, who by 1975 had transitioned into a country club for the greatest session musicians alive. Purdie played on the entirety of their 1976 record The Royal Scam, and they asked him back the following year for two tracks on Aja. That album — which sounds so beautiful that studio engineers still (http://www.soundandvision.com/content/test-tracks-your-most-important-audio-tool#FVrbXIOhReMppKbW.97) use (http://ajournalofmusicalthings.com/what-are-the-top-10-digital-tracks-for-testing-speakers/) it to test speakers — includes “Home at Last,” featuring what might be the all-time greatest Purdie Shuffle alongside “Babylon Sisters,” from the band’s follow-up, Gaucho. On Aja, the infamously fastidious Steely Dan production style brings out every skittering ghost note on the snare, every gasp-short open-and-close on the hi-hats. It also reveals how he subtly complicates the beat in the chorus, simplifying it in the verses. Purdie never solos,
but he animates and steers the entire six-minute track.
** “Home At Last” by Steely Dan
————————————————————
Photo: Chris Walter / WireImage; Music: ABC
Bernard Purdie and Friends played “Home at Last” at the Clef Club, which sent all the middle-aged drum geeks into paroxysms. He took a few more quick funk-groove solos, one of which he punctuated by standing up and dancing by himself in the middle of the stage.
“I’d like to go home with every last one of you!” he shouted as his band clapped along with everyone else. In the front row stood Celia Thompson, clapping louder than anyone else.
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
In retrospect, Steely Dan’s disappearance after Gaucho marked the end of the studio-talent era that Purdie had come to dominate. Dance music was increasingly made by DJs, and producers became more important than individual players in the creation of a hit. By the mid-’80s, Purdie had left the city altogether and moved to Jersey.
“When you cross that bridge, all the stress and hassle all goes down,” he says.
He kept playing sessions, doing more quiet jazz and songwriter music than his big-beat reputation might have allowed before, though his legend grew thanks to the preponderance of Purdie samples in hip-hop and electronic music. By the mid-’90s he was back on the radio, in Beck’s “Devils Haircut” and the Chemical Brothers’ “Block Rockin’ Beats,” and his drums could be heard on tracks from Madlib and DJ Shadow.
** Purdie’s “Soul Drums” sampled on Beck’s “Devils Haircut”
————————————————————
Photo: Martyn Goodacre / Getty Images; Music: DGC, Bong Load Custom
Gabriel Roth, producer behind the Dap-Kings and Daptone Records, who specialize in the kind of horn-heavy soul from Purdie’s glory days, worked with him when the label was still in its infancy.
“We were in awe,” Roth says of the 2000 session, which happened on a fluke when he and his bandmates dared to call and ask the legend to sit in — Purdie obliged without hesitation. “I’ve been lucky enough to work with guys like Booker T. and Al Green, where there wasn’t any mystery, ‘How’d this guy make so many good records?’ Like Bernard, they had a sense of humility. They had incredible restraint and discipline. Purdie plays exactly that one thing that needs to be played.”
Purdie created an inexhaustible number of heavy funk and soul-jazz recordings. Still, the breadth and empathy of his playing remain underappreciated. His accompaniment on the platinum 1972 record Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway is spare and bright, just as his work on Alan Jackson’s 2006 record Like Red on a Rose supplies a solid foundation for songs that rarely rise above a whisper.
At this point, he preaches mostly to the converted, people who know him and know how to appreciate this kind of thing. As the band took a bow at the edge of the Clef Club stage, a woman sitting to my right looked at her beaming middle-aged husband and laughed, “You look like a kid.”
“I am,” he told her.
More than the Purdie Shuffle, more than the record-setting CV and the superlatives he’s so fond of, Purdie’s legacy rests on bringing pop drummers into fans’ lives in this way. If the gigs are a little more niche these days, he looms larger on the stage. He’s booked as “Pretty” Purdie more often than as somebody’s sideman. The audiences show up to witness those wrists and that beaming smile. They come to see the man who demanded, for the first time, that pop drummers get their due as artists and creators in their own right.
“My basic goal in life is to not lose what I’ve been given out,” he says. “I’m trying to make sure my teaching keeps moving forward, that I’m helping young drummers take the next step. They’ve taken a part of me and moved on to another plateau. I want it to continue.”
Elias Williams for BuzzFeed News
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/arts/music/for-the-vanguard-jazz-orchestrajust-this-once-every-night-is-monday-night.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160131
** For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair
————————————————————
By NATE CHINEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_chinen/index.html) JAN. 31, 2016
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra will celebrate its 50th anniversary of residency at the Village Vanguard with a weeklong engagement. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra opened its first set at the Village Vanguard on a recent Monday night with a familiar blend of purring saxophones and punchy brass, carving up “Big Dipper” (https://youtu.be/mwwu0WPpPw0) just as it had in its first performance in the same room almost exactly 50 years ago.
That debut, on Feb. 7, 1966, initiated a residency with no close equivalent in jazz, and few parallels in any creative field. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra has been a Monday-night fixture in the club ever since, carrying on the legacy of its founder, the trumpeter and composer Thad Jones, and his co-leader, the drummer Mel Lewis. Hearing the band in its natural habitat, on any given Monday, has long been an essential New York experience.
“I used to go down and hear that band, oh my gosh, almost every Monday night,” said the composer Maria Schneider, referring to her early days in New York, in the mid-’80s, before she formed her own orchestra. “Just to take in the exuberant sound of that music in that room.”
This week the Vanguard band celebrates its 50th anniversary with an extended engagement, Monday through Feb. 8. And the historical echoes in the club should ring even more clearly than usual, owing to the forthcoming release of “All My Yesterdays: The Debut 1966 Recordings at the Village Vanguard,” a revelatory two-disc set documenting the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, as it was known for its first dozen years, at a moment of explosive arrival.
The album, out on Feb. 19, will be the first sanctioned release of this material, featuring revered figures like Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone and Hank Jones, Thad’s older brother, on piano. An extensive booklet has interviews with all seven surviving musicians from the sessions, including the alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, the trumpeter Jimmy Owens and the bassist Richard Davis. The music sounds marvelous, supercharged with jocular flair and soulful fire.
It was recorded in the club to two-track tape by George Klabin, at the time a sophomore at Columbia University and head of the jazz department at WKCR-FM, the university station (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/arts/music/columbias-wkcr-goes-silent-online.html?_r=0) . Among the two evenings of material, one is from that opening night, Feb. 7. “I had listened to a lot of jazz,” said Mr. Klabin, who is releasing the album on his label, Resonance (http://resonancerecords.org/) , “and I had never heard anything like this.”
Mr. Jones was far from a novice when he started the orchestra, initially as a rehearsal band of his peers, jazz musicians who were also first-call session players in New York. They convened after hours, to accommodate their schedule of Broadway, television and commercial work, playing charts that Mr. Jones had written for the Count Basie Orchestra. (Those charts, including “Big Dipper,” had been rejected by Basie as a poor fit for his more traditional band.)
“The grounding, of course, is in the Basie style,” said Darcy James Argue, whose contemporary big band, Secret Society, is recording its third album this week. “There’s a real swing feeling to that, but the harmonic vocabulary is completely modern. The level of sophistication and ingenuity of the reharmonization that he used is still a constant source of inspiration.”
The band also relied on the subtle, sensitive power of Mr. Lewis’s drumming. “The whole tradition, honestly, was built around how Mel played drums,” Ms. Schneider said. “He was so relaxed, and everything seemed so effortless. I remember thinking, ‘He looks like my dad in the fishing boat.’ It wasn’t that he played a lot of flash and fills; he was laying everything just in the right spot.”
Max Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard, hired the band for a few Mondays, a night when the club was usually dark. From the first night, which was enthusiastically reviewed (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980CE2DB153BE333A25751C1A9649C946791D6CF) in The New York Times, the band’s potential was blazingly clear. Soon the Monday big-band residency had become its own custom: Gil Evans held one for a while, as did Ms. Schneider. (The Mingus Big Band now appears on Mondays at the Jazz Standard.) Over the years, there have been stretches when Monday is the Vanguard’s most reliable night in terms of attendance.
Any institution learns to adapt, and the Vanguard band has survived not only an evolving roster — the saxophonist Joe Lovano is among its distinguished alumni — but also several changes in leadership. Mr. Jones decamped in the late ’70s, moving to Copenhagen to lead the Danish Radio Big Band. For roughly the next decade, it was the Mel Lewis Orchestra.
When Mr. Lewis died in 1990, it became the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, playing its trusted repertory as well as ambitious new works by Mr. Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely and others. In 2011, the death of Mr. Brookmeyer (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/arts/music/bob-brookmeyer-jazz-musician-and-educator-dies-at-81.html) had another profound effect on the band, which released its most recent album, “Overtime: Music of Bob Brookmeyer” (Planet Arts), to worthy acclaim in 2014.
The trombonist John Mosca, who just celebrated his 40th anniversary with the band, is now its director. And the bass trombonist Douglas Purviance, whose tenure stretches back almost as long, is its manager. During a conversation between sets in the Vanguard office, they characterized their stewardship of the orchestra as a matter of respect for its founding fathers.
“I just remember the spirit of Thad,” Mr. Purviance said, “and you can hear it on the new record. I think we play the music very, very, very well. But the only thing that I really miss is that spirit that Thad Jones had in front of the band.”
“Those guys are irreplaceable,” Mr. Mosca said. “It took me years to learn not to look for Mel and to see how the music could progress with the new guys. And when Thad left, it was like ‘Oh my God, it’s the end of the world.’ But it wasn’t. That’s the great thing about this music. It doesn’t end.”
Mr. Purviance nodded. “Maybe you heard it here 10 years ago,” he said. “Maybe you heard it two years ago. It’s still worth coming down to hear how this music has survived — and has grown.”
Correction: January 31, 2016
An earlier version of the headline with this article misstated the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s history of weeklong engagements at the club. It has in fact had them before; this week’s will not be the first.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/arts/music/for-the-vanguard-jazz-orchestrajust-this-once-every-night-is-monday-night.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160131
** For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair
————————————————————
By NATE CHINEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_chinen/index.html) JAN. 31, 2016
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra will celebrate its 50th anniversary of residency at the Village Vanguard with a weeklong engagement. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra opened its first set at the Village Vanguard on a recent Monday night with a familiar blend of purring saxophones and punchy brass, carving up “Big Dipper” (https://youtu.be/mwwu0WPpPw0) just as it had in its first performance in the same room almost exactly 50 years ago.
That debut, on Feb. 7, 1966, initiated a residency with no close equivalent in jazz, and few parallels in any creative field. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra has been a Monday-night fixture in the club ever since, carrying on the legacy of its founder, the trumpeter and composer Thad Jones, and his co-leader, the drummer Mel Lewis. Hearing the band in its natural habitat, on any given Monday, has long been an essential New York experience.
“I used to go down and hear that band, oh my gosh, almost every Monday night,” said the composer Maria Schneider, referring to her early days in New York, in the mid-’80s, before she formed her own orchestra. “Just to take in the exuberant sound of that music in that room.”
This week the Vanguard band celebrates its 50th anniversary with an extended engagement, Monday through Feb. 8. And the historical echoes in the club should ring even more clearly than usual, owing to the forthcoming release of “All My Yesterdays: The Debut 1966 Recordings at the Village Vanguard,” a revelatory two-disc set documenting the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, as it was known for its first dozen years, at a moment of explosive arrival.
The album, out on Feb. 19, will be the first sanctioned release of this material, featuring revered figures like Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone and Hank Jones, Thad’s older brother, on piano. An extensive booklet has interviews with all seven surviving musicians from the sessions, including the alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, the trumpeter Jimmy Owens and the bassist Richard Davis. The music sounds marvelous, supercharged with jocular flair and soulful fire.
It was recorded in the club to two-track tape by George Klabin, at the time a sophomore at Columbia University and head of the jazz department at WKCR-FM, the university station (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/arts/music/columbias-wkcr-goes-silent-online.html?_r=0) . Among the two evenings of material, one is from that opening night, Feb. 7. “I had listened to a lot of jazz,” said Mr. Klabin, who is releasing the album on his label, Resonance (http://resonancerecords.org/) , “and I had never heard anything like this.”
Mr. Jones was far from a novice when he started the orchestra, initially as a rehearsal band of his peers, jazz musicians who were also first-call session players in New York. They convened after hours, to accommodate their schedule of Broadway, television and commercial work, playing charts that Mr. Jones had written for the Count Basie Orchestra. (Those charts, including “Big Dipper,” had been rejected by Basie as a poor fit for his more traditional band.)
“The grounding, of course, is in the Basie style,” said Darcy James Argue, whose contemporary big band, Secret Society, is recording its third album this week. “There’s a real swing feeling to that, but the harmonic vocabulary is completely modern. The level of sophistication and ingenuity of the reharmonization that he used is still a constant source of inspiration.”
The band also relied on the subtle, sensitive power of Mr. Lewis’s drumming. “The whole tradition, honestly, was built around how Mel played drums,” Ms. Schneider said. “He was so relaxed, and everything seemed so effortless. I remember thinking, ‘He looks like my dad in the fishing boat.’ It wasn’t that he played a lot of flash and fills; he was laying everything just in the right spot.”
Max Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard, hired the band for a few Mondays, a night when the club was usually dark. From the first night, which was enthusiastically reviewed (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980CE2DB153BE333A25751C1A9649C946791D6CF) in The New York Times, the band’s potential was blazingly clear. Soon the Monday big-band residency had become its own custom: Gil Evans held one for a while, as did Ms. Schneider. (The Mingus Big Band now appears on Mondays at the Jazz Standard.) Over the years, there have been stretches when Monday is the Vanguard’s most reliable night in terms of attendance.
Any institution learns to adapt, and the Vanguard band has survived not only an evolving roster — the saxophonist Joe Lovano is among its distinguished alumni — but also several changes in leadership. Mr. Jones decamped in the late ’70s, moving to Copenhagen to lead the Danish Radio Big Band. For roughly the next decade, it was the Mel Lewis Orchestra.
When Mr. Lewis died in 1990, it became the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, playing its trusted repertory as well as ambitious new works by Mr. Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely and others. In 2011, the death of Mr. Brookmeyer (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/arts/music/bob-brookmeyer-jazz-musician-and-educator-dies-at-81.html) had another profound effect on the band, which released its most recent album, “Overtime: Music of Bob Brookmeyer” (Planet Arts), to worthy acclaim in 2014.
The trombonist John Mosca, who just celebrated his 40th anniversary with the band, is now its director. And the bass trombonist Douglas Purviance, whose tenure stretches back almost as long, is its manager. During a conversation between sets in the Vanguard office, they characterized their stewardship of the orchestra as a matter of respect for its founding fathers.
“I just remember the spirit of Thad,” Mr. Purviance said, “and you can hear it on the new record. I think we play the music very, very, very well. But the only thing that I really miss is that spirit that Thad Jones had in front of the band.”
“Those guys are irreplaceable,” Mr. Mosca said. “It took me years to learn not to look for Mel and to see how the music could progress with the new guys. And when Thad left, it was like ‘Oh my God, it’s the end of the world.’ But it wasn’t. That’s the great thing about this music. It doesn’t end.”
Mr. Purviance nodded. “Maybe you heard it here 10 years ago,” he said. “Maybe you heard it two years ago. It’s still worth coming down to hear how this music has survived — and has grown.”
Correction: January 31, 2016
An earlier version of the headline with this article misstated the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s history of weeklong engagements at the club. It has in fact had them before; this week’s will not be the first.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=8096c05d5b) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=8096c05d5b&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/arts/music/for-the-vanguard-jazz-orchestrajust-this-once-every-night-is-monday-night.html?emc=edit_tnt_20160131
** For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair
————————————————————
By NATE CHINEN (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/nate_chinen/index.html) JAN. 31, 2016
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra will celebrate its 50th anniversary of residency at the Village Vanguard with a weeklong engagement. Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times
The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra opened its first set at the Village Vanguard on a recent Monday night with a familiar blend of purring saxophones and punchy brass, carving up “Big Dipper” (https://youtu.be/mwwu0WPpPw0) just as it had in its first performance in the same room almost exactly 50 years ago.
That debut, on Feb. 7, 1966, initiated a residency with no close equivalent in jazz, and few parallels in any creative field. The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra has been a Monday-night fixture in the club ever since, carrying on the legacy of its founder, the trumpeter and composer Thad Jones, and his co-leader, the drummer Mel Lewis. Hearing the band in its natural habitat, on any given Monday, has long been an essential New York experience.
“I used to go down and hear that band, oh my gosh, almost every Monday night,” said the composer Maria Schneider, referring to her early days in New York, in the mid-’80s, before she formed her own orchestra. “Just to take in the exuberant sound of that music in that room.”
This week the Vanguard band celebrates its 50th anniversary with an extended engagement, Monday through Feb. 8. And the historical echoes in the club should ring even more clearly than usual, owing to the forthcoming release of “All My Yesterdays: The Debut 1966 Recordings at the Village Vanguard,” a revelatory two-disc set documenting the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, as it was known for its first dozen years, at a moment of explosive arrival.
The album, out on Feb. 19, will be the first sanctioned release of this material, featuring revered figures like Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone and Hank Jones, Thad’s older brother, on piano. An extensive booklet has interviews with all seven surviving musicians from the sessions, including the alto saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, the trumpeter Jimmy Owens and the bassist Richard Davis. The music sounds marvelous, supercharged with jocular flair and soulful fire.
It was recorded in the club to two-track tape by George Klabin, at the time a sophomore at Columbia University and head of the jazz department at WKCR-FM, the university station (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/arts/music/columbias-wkcr-goes-silent-online.html?_r=0) . Among the two evenings of material, one is from that opening night, Feb. 7. “I had listened to a lot of jazz,” said Mr. Klabin, who is releasing the album on his label, Resonance (http://resonancerecords.org/) , “and I had never heard anything like this.”
Mr. Jones was far from a novice when he started the orchestra, initially as a rehearsal band of his peers, jazz musicians who were also first-call session players in New York. They convened after hours, to accommodate their schedule of Broadway, television and commercial work, playing charts that Mr. Jones had written for the Count Basie Orchestra. (Those charts, including “Big Dipper,” had been rejected by Basie as a poor fit for his more traditional band.)
“The grounding, of course, is in the Basie style,” said Darcy James Argue, whose contemporary big band, Secret Society, is recording its third album this week. “There’s a real swing feeling to that, but the harmonic vocabulary is completely modern. The level of sophistication and ingenuity of the reharmonization that he used is still a constant source of inspiration.”
The band also relied on the subtle, sensitive power of Mr. Lewis’s drumming. “The whole tradition, honestly, was built around how Mel played drums,” Ms. Schneider said. “He was so relaxed, and everything seemed so effortless. I remember thinking, ‘He looks like my dad in the fishing boat.’ It wasn’t that he played a lot of flash and fills; he was laying everything just in the right spot.”
Max Gordon, the owner of the Village Vanguard, hired the band for a few Mondays, a night when the club was usually dark. From the first night, which was enthusiastically reviewed (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=980CE2DB153BE333A25751C1A9649C946791D6CF) in The New York Times, the band’s potential was blazingly clear. Soon the Monday big-band residency had become its own custom: Gil Evans held one for a while, as did Ms. Schneider. (The Mingus Big Band now appears on Mondays at the Jazz Standard.) Over the years, there have been stretches when Monday is the Vanguard’s most reliable night in terms of attendance.
Any institution learns to adapt, and the Vanguard band has survived not only an evolving roster — the saxophonist Joe Lovano is among its distinguished alumni — but also several changes in leadership. Mr. Jones decamped in the late ’70s, moving to Copenhagen to lead the Danish Radio Big Band. For roughly the next decade, it was the Mel Lewis Orchestra.
When Mr. Lewis died in 1990, it became the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, playing its trusted repertory as well as ambitious new works by Mr. Brookmeyer, Jim McNeely and others. In 2011, the death of Mr. Brookmeyer (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/19/arts/music/bob-brookmeyer-jazz-musician-and-educator-dies-at-81.html) had another profound effect on the band, which released its most recent album, “Overtime: Music of Bob Brookmeyer” (Planet Arts), to worthy acclaim in 2014.
The trombonist John Mosca, who just celebrated his 40th anniversary with the band, is now its director. And the bass trombonist Douglas Purviance, whose tenure stretches back almost as long, is its manager. During a conversation between sets in the Vanguard office, they characterized their stewardship of the orchestra as a matter of respect for its founding fathers.
“I just remember the spirit of Thad,” Mr. Purviance said, “and you can hear it on the new record. I think we play the music very, very, very well. But the only thing that I really miss is that spirit that Thad Jones had in front of the band.”
“Those guys are irreplaceable,” Mr. Mosca said. “It took me years to learn not to look for Mel and to see how the music could progress with the new guys. And when Thad left, it was like ‘Oh my God, it’s the end of the world.’ But it wasn’t. That’s the great thing about this music. It doesn’t end.”
Mr. Purviance nodded. “Maybe you heard it here 10 years ago,” he said. “Maybe you heard it two years ago. It’s still worth coming down to hear how this music has survived — and has grown.”
Correction: January 31, 2016
An earlier version of the headline with this article misstated the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra’s history of weeklong engagements at the club. It has in fact had them before; this week’s will not be the first.
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** JOE HARRIS makes his transition on January 28, 2016 at the age of 89. (http://jazzburgher.ning.com/group/obituaries/forum/topics/joe-harris-makes-his-transition-on-january-28-2016-at-the-age-of-)
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** JOE HARRIS makes his transition on January 28, 2016 at the age of 89. (http://jazzburgher.ning.com/group/obituaries/forum/topics/joe-harris-makes-his-transition-on-january-28-2016-at-the-age-of-)
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** JOE HARRIS makes his transition on January 28, 2016 at the age of 89. (http://jazzburgher.ning.com/group/obituaries/forum/topics/joe-harris-makes-his-transition-on-january-28-2016-at-the-age-of-)
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Jun 20, 2009 – Joe Harris is a great jazz drummer who was well known back during the 1940s and 50s during the Bebop era. He played with the seminal …
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AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’? – The New York Times
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/arts/television/remember-wenn.html?_r=0
** AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’?
————————————————————
By RACHEL SYMEJAN. 29, 2016
The cast of “Remember WENN,” which made its debut on AMC in 1996. AMC
A decade before AMC began to make its name as a home to highly rated and critically acclaimed TV shows, a tiny series set in a World War II-era radio station ran on the network from 1996 to 1998 before vanishing into the ether.
“Remember WENN,” a half-hour comedy-drama that aired on Saturday nights, made its debut 20 years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/31/arts/tv-weekend-modest-series-on-modest-radio-show.html) on what was then known as American Movie Classics. It is now nearly impossible to find the show. “WENN” is not available to stream or on DVD. The only traces of it are bootleg YouTube clips. AMC’s first show remains one of its lost shows.
AMC is well known today for buzzy hourlong dramas like “Mad Men,” Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead.” But in 1996, its viewership was mostly made up of older viewers and cinephiles. “You have to understand, we were doing so many things that were never done before,” said Rupert Holmes, the show’s writer and primary creator, sitting in his agent’s Chrysler Building office on a recent afternoon.
He continued: “AMC was primarily a subscription channel for classic movies. And when Ted Turner decided he should make his own network, TCM, to compete, AMC realized that it needed a property that it owned. So they branched out into making one original show. We became AMC’s first experiment.”
Rupert Holmes wrote “Remember WENN,” which was AMC’s first original, scripted show. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
It was also Mr. Holmes’s first foray into television. The writer and singer of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazHNpt6OTo) ” (1979), he had spent years writing plays and novels and musicals — including his Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (http://www.nytimes.com/theater/venues/broadway.html?inline=nyt-classifier) adaptation of Dickens’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1985) — before he was approached by Howard Meltzer, a television producer who had directed the music video for “Escape,” to work on “WENN.”
Mr. Meltzer said AMC had the idea to do a half-hour comedy about an old-time radio station, believing that it would fit right in with the channel’s classic film selections, and went to Mr. Holmes because, as he said: “Howard knew I had an obsession with vintage radio. I’d spend hours listening to programming from the Golden Age.”
The resulting show was a warm, wholesome portrait of American radio, complete with Art Deco microphones, authentic period costumes (down to the lingerie) and a sound effects wizard named Mr. Foley, who never spoke one word of dialogue.
Mr. Holmes had never tried writing a teleplay before. “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he said, “so I treated it like theater. In the end, I was writing the world’s longest play.” His description is accurate; “WENN” feels like a screwball theatrical farce. Every scene was set inside the Pittsburgh radio station, leading to a lot of swinging doors, back-room scheming and snappy dialogue being hurled back and forth.
Because “WENN” shot in New York, it used a stable of largely unknown Broadway actors to fill out the ensemble cast. (Betty Buckley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7DMFdVgCk) and Patti LuPone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rie6uX2yUUQ) were among several of the show’s better-known guest stars.)
“We called ourselves Off Broadway TV,” said Kevin O’Rourke, who played the debonair con man Scott Sherwood. “We were used to working long hours for no money; we were used to working as a company. I actually used to joke that the writing was on the wall for the show when they started to pay more than my Broadway quote. During the fourth season, they raised our salaries from $1,000 per episode to $2,500. That’s when I knew it was over.”
Mr. Holmes said the show’s skimpy budget was a blessing in disguise, letting him write without much network intervention. “I got to develop story arcs without telling anyone,” he said. “And by the time they gave me notes on a script, I would call them and say, ‘These are wonderful notes, but we shot this yesterday.’”
He continued: “There were episodes that I wrote in 72 hours before sleeping. One of them is called ‘If I Die Before I Sleep’; I knew I would have to write it over two nights, so I made the episode about the cast trying to beat the Guinness record for performing radio without sleeping.”
Broadcast on a network that had never aired a scripted weekly series before, “WENN” wasn’t the easiest show to track down. “The fans we did have just adored it,” Mr. Holmes said. “Because the tone was so gentle, and sweet, and unlike anything else on television. We were unabashedly sentimental, and never vulgar.”
“I used to call it the best-kept secret in cable,” Mr. Meltzer said. “The first season when we were nominated for a SAG award for best comedy ensemble and we hit the red carpet, no one knew who we were.”
After four seasons and more than 50 episodes, the show was canceled in 1998. Mr. Meltzer says the news was devastating. “A new person came to take over AMC, and he only spent about 40 minutes on our set,” Mr. Meltzer said. “He canceled us on the beginning of a three-day weekend, and we only found out from a fan site.”
That person was Marc Juris, who now heads WE tv, a sister channel of AMC, which he left in 2002. He says that while “WENN” was “an experiment that in the long run paid off,” he felt that he needed to make room for a different show that more closely reflected the network’s classic-movie culture. “The Lot,” a drama about a Golden Age film back lot, made its debut in 1999 and lasted two seasons.
All that Mr. Holmes and Mr. Meltzer want today is the ability to give fans old and new a chance to somehow experience “WENN.” They have not had any luck. “I went back to AMC a few years ago, couldn’t even get a box set put out,” Mr. Meltzer said. “No one even knew where the contracts were.”
In 2007, nine years after “WENN” went off the air, AMC rebooted itself as a prestige player by offering the debut of “Mad Men,” a show that many new viewers perceived as the network’s first original series. Mr. Holmes says he cannot bring himself to watch “Mad Men.” It hits a bit too close to home for him.
“It is a period piece that they marketed as their first-ever original series,” he said. “But it wasn’t their first. We were their first. And I know that acknowledging us hurts the narrative, but Disney made cartoons before Mickey Mouse. Ultimately, I don’t blame them, but I still want to strangle them.”
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AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’? – The New York Times
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/arts/television/remember-wenn.html?_r=0
** AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’?
————————————————————
By RACHEL SYMEJAN. 29, 2016
The cast of “Remember WENN,” which made its debut on AMC in 1996. AMC
A decade before AMC began to make its name as a home to highly rated and critically acclaimed TV shows, a tiny series set in a World War II-era radio station ran on the network from 1996 to 1998 before vanishing into the ether.
“Remember WENN,” a half-hour comedy-drama that aired on Saturday nights, made its debut 20 years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/31/arts/tv-weekend-modest-series-on-modest-radio-show.html) on what was then known as American Movie Classics. It is now nearly impossible to find the show. “WENN” is not available to stream or on DVD. The only traces of it are bootleg YouTube clips. AMC’s first show remains one of its lost shows.
AMC is well known today for buzzy hourlong dramas like “Mad Men,” Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead.” But in 1996, its viewership was mostly made up of older viewers and cinephiles. “You have to understand, we were doing so many things that were never done before,” said Rupert Holmes, the show’s writer and primary creator, sitting in his agent’s Chrysler Building office on a recent afternoon.
He continued: “AMC was primarily a subscription channel for classic movies. And when Ted Turner decided he should make his own network, TCM, to compete, AMC realized that it needed a property that it owned. So they branched out into making one original show. We became AMC’s first experiment.”
Rupert Holmes wrote “Remember WENN,” which was AMC’s first original, scripted show. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
It was also Mr. Holmes’s first foray into television. The writer and singer of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazHNpt6OTo) ” (1979), he had spent years writing plays and novels and musicals — including his Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (http://www.nytimes.com/theater/venues/broadway.html?inline=nyt-classifier) adaptation of Dickens’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1985) — before he was approached by Howard Meltzer, a television producer who had directed the music video for “Escape,” to work on “WENN.”
Mr. Meltzer said AMC had the idea to do a half-hour comedy about an old-time radio station, believing that it would fit right in with the channel’s classic film selections, and went to Mr. Holmes because, as he said: “Howard knew I had an obsession with vintage radio. I’d spend hours listening to programming from the Golden Age.”
The resulting show was a warm, wholesome portrait of American radio, complete with Art Deco microphones, authentic period costumes (down to the lingerie) and a sound effects wizard named Mr. Foley, who never spoke one word of dialogue.
Mr. Holmes had never tried writing a teleplay before. “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he said, “so I treated it like theater. In the end, I was writing the world’s longest play.” His description is accurate; “WENN” feels like a screwball theatrical farce. Every scene was set inside the Pittsburgh radio station, leading to a lot of swinging doors, back-room scheming and snappy dialogue being hurled back and forth.
Because “WENN” shot in New York, it used a stable of largely unknown Broadway actors to fill out the ensemble cast. (Betty Buckley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7DMFdVgCk) and Patti LuPone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rie6uX2yUUQ) were among several of the show’s better-known guest stars.)
“We called ourselves Off Broadway TV,” said Kevin O’Rourke, who played the debonair con man Scott Sherwood. “We were used to working long hours for no money; we were used to working as a company. I actually used to joke that the writing was on the wall for the show when they started to pay more than my Broadway quote. During the fourth season, they raised our salaries from $1,000 per episode to $2,500. That’s when I knew it was over.”
Mr. Holmes said the show’s skimpy budget was a blessing in disguise, letting him write without much network intervention. “I got to develop story arcs without telling anyone,” he said. “And by the time they gave me notes on a script, I would call them and say, ‘These are wonderful notes, but we shot this yesterday.’”
He continued: “There were episodes that I wrote in 72 hours before sleeping. One of them is called ‘If I Die Before I Sleep’; I knew I would have to write it over two nights, so I made the episode about the cast trying to beat the Guinness record for performing radio without sleeping.”
Broadcast on a network that had never aired a scripted weekly series before, “WENN” wasn’t the easiest show to track down. “The fans we did have just adored it,” Mr. Holmes said. “Because the tone was so gentle, and sweet, and unlike anything else on television. We were unabashedly sentimental, and never vulgar.”
“I used to call it the best-kept secret in cable,” Mr. Meltzer said. “The first season when we were nominated for a SAG award for best comedy ensemble and we hit the red carpet, no one knew who we were.”
After four seasons and more than 50 episodes, the show was canceled in 1998. Mr. Meltzer says the news was devastating. “A new person came to take over AMC, and he only spent about 40 minutes on our set,” Mr. Meltzer said. “He canceled us on the beginning of a three-day weekend, and we only found out from a fan site.”
That person was Marc Juris, who now heads WE tv, a sister channel of AMC, which he left in 2002. He says that while “WENN” was “an experiment that in the long run paid off,” he felt that he needed to make room for a different show that more closely reflected the network’s classic-movie culture. “The Lot,” a drama about a Golden Age film back lot, made its debut in 1999 and lasted two seasons.
All that Mr. Holmes and Mr. Meltzer want today is the ability to give fans old and new a chance to somehow experience “WENN.” They have not had any luck. “I went back to AMC a few years ago, couldn’t even get a box set put out,” Mr. Meltzer said. “No one even knew where the contracts were.”
In 2007, nine years after “WENN” went off the air, AMC rebooted itself as a prestige player by offering the debut of “Mad Men,” a show that many new viewers perceived as the network’s first original series. Mr. Holmes says he cannot bring himself to watch “Mad Men.” It hits a bit too close to home for him.
“It is a period piece that they marketed as their first-ever original series,” he said. “But it wasn’t their first. We were their first. And I know that acknowledging us hurts the narrative, but Disney made cartoons before Mickey Mouse. Ultimately, I don’t blame them, but I still want to strangle them.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=6958805328) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=6958805328&e=[UNIQID])
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USA
AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’? – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/arts/television/remember-wenn.html?_r=0
** AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’?
————————————————————
By RACHEL SYMEJAN. 29, 2016
The cast of “Remember WENN,” which made its debut on AMC in 1996. AMC
A decade before AMC began to make its name as a home to highly rated and critically acclaimed TV shows, a tiny series set in a World War II-era radio station ran on the network from 1996 to 1998 before vanishing into the ether.
“Remember WENN,” a half-hour comedy-drama that aired on Saturday nights, made its debut 20 years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/31/arts/tv-weekend-modest-series-on-modest-radio-show.html) on what was then known as American Movie Classics. It is now nearly impossible to find the show. “WENN” is not available to stream or on DVD. The only traces of it are bootleg YouTube clips. AMC’s first show remains one of its lost shows.
AMC is well known today for buzzy hourlong dramas like “Mad Men,” Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead.” But in 1996, its viewership was mostly made up of older viewers and cinephiles. “You have to understand, we were doing so many things that were never done before,” said Rupert Holmes, the show’s writer and primary creator, sitting in his agent’s Chrysler Building office on a recent afternoon.
He continued: “AMC was primarily a subscription channel for classic movies. And when Ted Turner decided he should make his own network, TCM, to compete, AMC realized that it needed a property that it owned. So they branched out into making one original show. We became AMC’s first experiment.”
Rupert Holmes wrote “Remember WENN,” which was AMC’s first original, scripted show. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
It was also Mr. Holmes’s first foray into television. The writer and singer of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazHNpt6OTo) ” (1979), he had spent years writing plays and novels and musicals — including his Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (http://www.nytimes.com/theater/venues/broadway.html?inline=nyt-classifier) adaptation of Dickens’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1985) — before he was approached by Howard Meltzer, a television producer who had directed the music video for “Escape,” to work on “WENN.”
Mr. Meltzer said AMC had the idea to do a half-hour comedy about an old-time radio station, believing that it would fit right in with the channel’s classic film selections, and went to Mr. Holmes because, as he said: “Howard knew I had an obsession with vintage radio. I’d spend hours listening to programming from the Golden Age.”
The resulting show was a warm, wholesome portrait of American radio, complete with Art Deco microphones, authentic period costumes (down to the lingerie) and a sound effects wizard named Mr. Foley, who never spoke one word of dialogue.
Mr. Holmes had never tried writing a teleplay before. “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he said, “so I treated it like theater. In the end, I was writing the world’s longest play.” His description is accurate; “WENN” feels like a screwball theatrical farce. Every scene was set inside the Pittsburgh radio station, leading to a lot of swinging doors, back-room scheming and snappy dialogue being hurled back and forth.
Because “WENN” shot in New York, it used a stable of largely unknown Broadway actors to fill out the ensemble cast. (Betty Buckley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7DMFdVgCk) and Patti LuPone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rie6uX2yUUQ) were among several of the show’s better-known guest stars.)
“We called ourselves Off Broadway TV,” said Kevin O’Rourke, who played the debonair con man Scott Sherwood. “We were used to working long hours for no money; we were used to working as a company. I actually used to joke that the writing was on the wall for the show when they started to pay more than my Broadway quote. During the fourth season, they raised our salaries from $1,000 per episode to $2,500. That’s when I knew it was over.”
Mr. Holmes said the show’s skimpy budget was a blessing in disguise, letting him write without much network intervention. “I got to develop story arcs without telling anyone,” he said. “And by the time they gave me notes on a script, I would call them and say, ‘These are wonderful notes, but we shot this yesterday.’”
He continued: “There were episodes that I wrote in 72 hours before sleeping. One of them is called ‘If I Die Before I Sleep’; I knew I would have to write it over two nights, so I made the episode about the cast trying to beat the Guinness record for performing radio without sleeping.”
Broadcast on a network that had never aired a scripted weekly series before, “WENN” wasn’t the easiest show to track down. “The fans we did have just adored it,” Mr. Holmes said. “Because the tone was so gentle, and sweet, and unlike anything else on television. We were unabashedly sentimental, and never vulgar.”
“I used to call it the best-kept secret in cable,” Mr. Meltzer said. “The first season when we were nominated for a SAG award for best comedy ensemble and we hit the red carpet, no one knew who we were.”
After four seasons and more than 50 episodes, the show was canceled in 1998. Mr. Meltzer says the news was devastating. “A new person came to take over AMC, and he only spent about 40 minutes on our set,” Mr. Meltzer said. “He canceled us on the beginning of a three-day weekend, and we only found out from a fan site.”
That person was Marc Juris, who now heads WE tv, a sister channel of AMC, which he left in 2002. He says that while “WENN” was “an experiment that in the long run paid off,” he felt that he needed to make room for a different show that more closely reflected the network’s classic-movie culture. “The Lot,” a drama about a Golden Age film back lot, made its debut in 1999 and lasted two seasons.
All that Mr. Holmes and Mr. Meltzer want today is the ability to give fans old and new a chance to somehow experience “WENN.” They have not had any luck. “I went back to AMC a few years ago, couldn’t even get a box set put out,” Mr. Meltzer said. “No one even knew where the contracts were.”
In 2007, nine years after “WENN” went off the air, AMC rebooted itself as a prestige player by offering the debut of “Mad Men,” a show that many new viewers perceived as the network’s first original series. Mr. Holmes says he cannot bring himself to watch “Mad Men.” It hits a bit too close to home for him.
“It is a period piece that they marketed as their first-ever original series,” he said. “But it wasn’t their first. We were their first. And I know that acknowledging us hurts the narrative, but Disney made cartoons before Mickey Mouse. Ultimately, I don’t blame them, but I still want to strangle them.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=6958805328) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=6958805328&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’? – The New York Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/arts/television/remember-wenn.html?_r=0
** AMC Classics: ‘Mad Men,’ ‘Breaking Bad’ … ‘Remember WENN’?
————————————————————
By RACHEL SYMEJAN. 29, 2016
The cast of “Remember WENN,” which made its debut on AMC in 1996. AMC
A decade before AMC began to make its name as a home to highly rated and critically acclaimed TV shows, a tiny series set in a World War II-era radio station ran on the network from 1996 to 1998 before vanishing into the ether.
“Remember WENN,” a half-hour comedy-drama that aired on Saturday nights, made its debut 20 years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/31/arts/tv-weekend-modest-series-on-modest-radio-show.html) on what was then known as American Movie Classics. It is now nearly impossible to find the show. “WENN” is not available to stream or on DVD. The only traces of it are bootleg YouTube clips. AMC’s first show remains one of its lost shows.
AMC is well known today for buzzy hourlong dramas like “Mad Men,” Breaking Bad” and “The Walking Dead.” But in 1996, its viewership was mostly made up of older viewers and cinephiles. “You have to understand, we were doing so many things that were never done before,” said Rupert Holmes, the show’s writer and primary creator, sitting in his agent’s Chrysler Building office on a recent afternoon.
He continued: “AMC was primarily a subscription channel for classic movies. And when Ted Turner decided he should make his own network, TCM, to compete, AMC realized that it needed a property that it owned. So they branched out into making one original show. We became AMC’s first experiment.”
Rupert Holmes wrote “Remember WENN,” which was AMC’s first original, scripted show. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
It was also Mr. Holmes’s first foray into television. The writer and singer of “Escape (The Piña Colada Song) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazHNpt6OTo) ” (1979), he had spent years writing plays and novels and musicals — including his Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (http://www.nytimes.com/theater/venues/broadway.html?inline=nyt-classifier) adaptation of Dickens’s “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” (1985) — before he was approached by Howard Meltzer, a television producer who had directed the music video for “Escape,” to work on “WENN.”
Mr. Meltzer said AMC had the idea to do a half-hour comedy about an old-time radio station, believing that it would fit right in with the channel’s classic film selections, and went to Mr. Holmes because, as he said: “Howard knew I had an obsession with vintage radio. I’d spend hours listening to programming from the Golden Age.”
The resulting show was a warm, wholesome portrait of American radio, complete with Art Deco microphones, authentic period costumes (down to the lingerie) and a sound effects wizard named Mr. Foley, who never spoke one word of dialogue.
Mr. Holmes had never tried writing a teleplay before. “I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he said, “so I treated it like theater. In the end, I was writing the world’s longest play.” His description is accurate; “WENN” feels like a screwball theatrical farce. Every scene was set inside the Pittsburgh radio station, leading to a lot of swinging doors, back-room scheming and snappy dialogue being hurled back and forth.
Because “WENN” shot in New York, it used a stable of largely unknown Broadway actors to fill out the ensemble cast. (Betty Buckley (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF7DMFdVgCk) and Patti LuPone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rie6uX2yUUQ) were among several of the show’s better-known guest stars.)
“We called ourselves Off Broadway TV,” said Kevin O’Rourke, who played the debonair con man Scott Sherwood. “We were used to working long hours for no money; we were used to working as a company. I actually used to joke that the writing was on the wall for the show when they started to pay more than my Broadway quote. During the fourth season, they raised our salaries from $1,000 per episode to $2,500. That’s when I knew it was over.”
Mr. Holmes said the show’s skimpy budget was a blessing in disguise, letting him write without much network intervention. “I got to develop story arcs without telling anyone,” he said. “And by the time they gave me notes on a script, I would call them and say, ‘These are wonderful notes, but we shot this yesterday.’”
He continued: “There were episodes that I wrote in 72 hours before sleeping. One of them is called ‘If I Die Before I Sleep’; I knew I would have to write it over two nights, so I made the episode about the cast trying to beat the Guinness record for performing radio without sleeping.”
Broadcast on a network that had never aired a scripted weekly series before, “WENN” wasn’t the easiest show to track down. “The fans we did have just adored it,” Mr. Holmes said. “Because the tone was so gentle, and sweet, and unlike anything else on television. We were unabashedly sentimental, and never vulgar.”
“I used to call it the best-kept secret in cable,” Mr. Meltzer said. “The first season when we were nominated for a SAG award for best comedy ensemble and we hit the red carpet, no one knew who we were.”
After four seasons and more than 50 episodes, the show was canceled in 1998. Mr. Meltzer says the news was devastating. “A new person came to take over AMC, and he only spent about 40 minutes on our set,” Mr. Meltzer said. “He canceled us on the beginning of a three-day weekend, and we only found out from a fan site.”
That person was Marc Juris, who now heads WE tv, a sister channel of AMC, which he left in 2002. He says that while “WENN” was “an experiment that in the long run paid off,” he felt that he needed to make room for a different show that more closely reflected the network’s classic-movie culture. “The Lot,” a drama about a Golden Age film back lot, made its debut in 1999 and lasted two seasons.
All that Mr. Holmes and Mr. Meltzer want today is the ability to give fans old and new a chance to somehow experience “WENN.” They have not had any luck. “I went back to AMC a few years ago, couldn’t even get a box set put out,” Mr. Meltzer said. “No one even knew where the contracts were.”
In 2007, nine years after “WENN” went off the air, AMC rebooted itself as a prestige player by offering the debut of “Mad Men,” a show that many new viewers perceived as the network’s first original series. Mr. Holmes says he cannot bring himself to watch “Mad Men.” It hits a bit too close to home for him.
“It is a period piece that they marketed as their first-ever original series,” he said. “But it wasn’t their first. We were their first. And I know that acknowledging us hurts the narrative, but Disney made cartoons before Mickey Mouse. Ultimately, I don’t blame them, but I still want to strangle them.”
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=6958805328) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=6958805328&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz Record Mart for sale – Chicago Tribune
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-jazz-record-mart-for-sale-20160129-column.html
** Jazz Record Mart for sale
————————————————————
Bob Koester
Bob Koester, owner of the Jazz Record Mart, in 2011.
(Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)
Howard Reich Howard Reich (http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/reich/chinews-howard-reich-20130507-staff.html#nt=byline) Contact Reporter (mailto:hreich@chicagotribune.com?subject=Regarding:%20%22Jazz%20Record%20Mart%20for%20sale%22)
The Jazz Record Mart, long billed as “The World’s Largest Jazz and Blues Record Store,” is up for sale while its founder searches for a possible new location.
“The rent is killing us,” said Bob Koester, 83, owner of the famous shop at 27 E. Illinois St.
“I want to die with the store. But it’s either phase it out or sell it. Phasing it out is not easy. Know anyone who wants to buy a record store?”
Koester, who began selling records in Chicago in the late 1950s and officially established the Jazz Record Mart name in 1962, said the store holds approximately “$400,000 worth of inventory.” Through the decades, the Jazz Record Mart has operated at a variety of locations.
Business-wise, “We’re doing OK,” said Koester, but a recent spike in rent has forced his hand.
Koester also owns the Chicago-based Delmark Records label, which has been documenting jazz and blues since 1953, starting in St. Louis.
“Delmark’s doing well,” said Koester, who expects his son to carry on that business in future years.
Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz Record Mart for sale – Chicago Tribune
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-jazz-record-mart-for-sale-20160129-column.html
** Jazz Record Mart for sale
————————————————————
Bob Koester
Bob Koester, owner of the Jazz Record Mart, in 2011.
(Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)
Howard Reich Howard Reich (http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/reich/chinews-howard-reich-20130507-staff.html#nt=byline) Contact Reporter (mailto:hreich@chicagotribune.com?subject=Regarding:%20%22Jazz%20Record%20Mart%20for%20sale%22)
The Jazz Record Mart, long billed as “The World’s Largest Jazz and Blues Record Store,” is up for sale while its founder searches for a possible new location.
“The rent is killing us,” said Bob Koester, 83, owner of the famous shop at 27 E. Illinois St.
“I want to die with the store. But it’s either phase it out or sell it. Phasing it out is not easy. Know anyone who wants to buy a record store?”
Koester, who began selling records in Chicago in the late 1950s and officially established the Jazz Record Mart name in 1962, said the store holds approximately “$400,000 worth of inventory.” Through the decades, the Jazz Record Mart has operated at a variety of locations.
Business-wise, “We’re doing OK,” said Koester, but a recent spike in rent has forced his hand.
Koester also owns the Chicago-based Delmark Records label, which has been documenting jazz and blues since 1953, starting in St. Louis.
“Delmark’s doing well,” said Koester, who expects his son to carry on that business in future years.
Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=31f60fdecd) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=31f60fdecd&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz Record Mart for sale – Chicago Tribune
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-jazz-record-mart-for-sale-20160129-column.html
** Jazz Record Mart for sale
————————————————————
Bob Koester
Bob Koester, owner of the Jazz Record Mart, in 2011.
(Abel Uribe / Chicago Tribune)
Howard Reich Howard Reich (http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/reich/chinews-howard-reich-20130507-staff.html#nt=byline) Contact Reporter (mailto:hreich@chicagotribune.com?subject=Regarding:%20%22Jazz%20Record%20Mart%20for%20sale%22)
The Jazz Record Mart, long billed as “The World’s Largest Jazz and Blues Record Store,” is up for sale while its founder searches for a possible new location.
“The rent is killing us,” said Bob Koester, 83, owner of the famous shop at 27 E. Illinois St.
“I want to die with the store. But it’s either phase it out or sell it. Phasing it out is not easy. Know anyone who wants to buy a record store?”
Koester, who began selling records in Chicago in the late 1950s and officially established the Jazz Record Mart name in 1962, said the store holds approximately “$400,000 worth of inventory.” Through the decades, the Jazz Record Mart has operated at a variety of locations.
Business-wise, “We’re doing OK,” said Koester, but a recent spike in rent has forced his hand.
Koester also owns the Chicago-based Delmark Records label, which has been documenting jazz and blues since 1953, starting in St. Louis.
“Delmark’s doing well,” said Koester, who expects his son to carry on that business in future years.
Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune (http://www.chicagotribune.com/)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Yusef Lateef obituary: Multi-instrumentalist, Grammy winner Yusef Lateef dies at 93 – LA Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-yusef-lateef-20131225-story.html
** Yusef Lateef dies at 93; Grammy winner blended jazz, world music
————————————————————
By Don Heckman, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Yusef Lateef
Yusef Lateef, a Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator who brought the sounds of world music to jazz and became one of the first jazz musicians to convert to the teachings of Islam, has died. He was 93.
Lateef died Monday at his home in Shutesbury, Mass., his family announced (http://www.yuseflateef.com/) .
Lateef initially was best known as a dynamic tenor saxophonist with a big tone and a strong sense of swing. But his persistent creative and intellectual curiosity led him to the discovery of an array of other instruments as well as a fascination with various international forms of music.
He was an early advocate for the flute as a credible jazz voice. And his performances on the oboe as early as the ’50s and ’60s were definitive – and rarely matched – displays of the instrument’s jazz capabilities. He searched the globe for more exotic instruments, while mastering, among others, the bamboo flute, the Indian shenai, the Arabic arghul, the Hebrew shofar and the West African Fulani flute.
Tall and shaven-headed, his powerful presence offset by a calm demeanor and the quiet, articulate speaking style of a scholar, Lateef combined thoughtfulness and a probing intellectual curiosity with impressive musical skills. Early in his career, he established his role as a pathfinder in blending elements from a multiplicity of different sources.
His first recordings under his own leadership, released on the Savoy label in the mid-’50s, already revealed a fascination with unusual instruments: In addition to tenor saxophone and the flute, he also plays the arghul. Several of Lateef’s original compositions on those early albums also integrated rhythms and melodic styles from numerous global musical forms.
“In any given composition,” wrote Leonard Feather in The Times in 1975, “there may be long passages that involve classical influences, impressionism, a Middle Eastern flavor, or rhythmic references to Latin America.”
Like a number of musicians – from Duke Ellington to his contemporaries, Max Roach and Sonny Rollins – Lateef objected to the use of the word “jazz” to describe his work. He preferred, instead, the phrase, “autophysiopsychic music,” which he defined as “music which comes from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.”
He also acknowledged the importance of the blues, in his music and elsewhere.
“The blues,” he said in an NPR (safari-reader://www.latimes.com/topic/business/media-industry/radio-industry/npr-ORNPR0000040-topic.html) interview in 2003, “is a very elegant musical form which has given birth to wonderful compositions. I recognize the blues. In fact, if the African had not been brought to America as a slave, the blues would never have been born.”
Lateef’s desire to pursue his own musical path — as a performer, a composer and an educator — led, in 1981, to his refusal to perform in nightclubs. For the next four years, he lived in Nigeria as a senior research fellow at Ahmadu Bello University. Returning to the U.S., he taught at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College.
In the succeeding decades, Lateef performed in concert halls, colleges and music festivals in Japan, Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. He often led seminars and master classes outlining his belief in the presence of autophysiopsychic music principals in cultures around the world.
“To me,” he told the Times in 1989,” it feels as though there’s a kind of aesthetic thread running through the improvisational musics of the world. If you’re alive and your heart is beating, you’ll find it, and that’s what makes the relationship between you and the world.”
Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on April 9, 1920, in Chattanooga, Tenn. When he was 3, he moved to Lorraine, Ohio, with his parents. In 1925 they relocated to Detroit. Music was a constant presence in his early family life.
“My parents were innately musical,” he recalled in the liner notes to his album “Yusef Lateef Anthology.” “Both of them sang, and my mother also played piano. I can recall my mother and her siblings getting together every week to sing spirituals while my grandmother played one of those organs you pump with your feet.”
Growing up in the flourishing Detroit music scene of the ’30s, Lateef’s youthful acquaintances and friends included such nascent jazz artists as Milt Jackson, Lucky Thompson, Hank Jones (safari-reader://www.latimes.com/topic/entertainment/music/hank-jones-PECLB002638-topic.html) , Thad Jones and others. By 18, he was working as a professional musician. During the ’40s, occasionally using the name Bill Evans, he played saxophone with big bands led by, among others, Roy Eldridge, Herbie Fields and Lucky Millinder, eventually joining Dizzy Gillespie’s big bebop band in 1949.
In 1950, he studied flute and composition at Wayne State University in Detroit. Converting to Islam in the Ahmadiyya movement, he took the name Yusef Lateef, which translates roughly into “Gentle Joseph.” Over the next two decades, he alternated between leading his own jazz groups, working with such artists as percussionist Babatunde Olatunji, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist/composer Charles Mingus, pianist Kenny Barron, alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and guitarist Grant Green, while continuing his education.
The first of Lateef’s more than 100 recordings under his own name – “The Sounds of Yusef” — was released in 1956. In 1969 he received a bachelor’s degree in music, and in 1970 a master’s degree in music education, both from the Manhattan School of Music. In 1975 he was awarded a doctorate in education by the University of Massachusetts, where he also taught as an emeritus Five Colleges professor.
His “African American Epic Suite,” commissioned by the WDR Orchestra in 1993, a four-movement work for quintet and orchestra, has been performed by the Atlanta Symphony and the Detroit Symphony.
In addition to his compositions, which ranged from chamber music to such full-scale works as his “Symphonic Blues Suite,” he has published two collections of short stories, “Spheres” and “Rain Shapes”; a pair of novellas, “A Night in the Garden of Love” and “Another Avenue”; as well as his autobiography, “The Gentle Giant” (written with Herb Boyd). He has also released, through his own company, Fana Music, improvisational method books for flute and other instruments. His paintings have been exhibited at various galleries.
In 2010, Lateef was named an American Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1987 he was awarded a Best New Age Grammy Award for Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony, a recording in which he performed all the instrumental parts.
Lateef is survived by his wife, Ayesha Lateef; his son, Yusef Lateef; a granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Yusef Lateef obituary: Multi-instrumentalist, Grammy winner Yusef Lateef dies at 93 – LA Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-yusef-lateef-20131225-story.html
** Yusef Lateef dies at 93; Grammy winner blended jazz, world music
————————————————————
By Don Heckman, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Yusef Lateef
Yusef Lateef, a Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator who brought the sounds of world music to jazz and became one of the first jazz musicians to convert to the teachings of Islam, has died. He was 93.
Lateef died Monday at his home in Shutesbury, Mass., his family announced (http://www.yuseflateef.com/) .
Lateef initially was best known as a dynamic tenor saxophonist with a big tone and a strong sense of swing. But his persistent creative and intellectual curiosity led him to the discovery of an array of other instruments as well as a fascination with various international forms of music.
He was an early advocate for the flute as a credible jazz voice. And his performances on the oboe as early as the ’50s and ’60s were definitive – and rarely matched – displays of the instrument’s jazz capabilities. He searched the globe for more exotic instruments, while mastering, among others, the bamboo flute, the Indian shenai, the Arabic arghul, the Hebrew shofar and the West African Fulani flute.
Tall and shaven-headed, his powerful presence offset by a calm demeanor and the quiet, articulate speaking style of a scholar, Lateef combined thoughtfulness and a probing intellectual curiosity with impressive musical skills. Early in his career, he established his role as a pathfinder in blending elements from a multiplicity of different sources.
His first recordings under his own leadership, released on the Savoy label in the mid-’50s, already revealed a fascination with unusual instruments: In addition to tenor saxophone and the flute, he also plays the arghul. Several of Lateef’s original compositions on those early albums also integrated rhythms and melodic styles from numerous global musical forms.
“In any given composition,” wrote Leonard Feather in The Times in 1975, “there may be long passages that involve classical influences, impressionism, a Middle Eastern flavor, or rhythmic references to Latin America.”
Like a number of musicians – from Duke Ellington to his contemporaries, Max Roach and Sonny Rollins – Lateef objected to the use of the word “jazz” to describe his work. He preferred, instead, the phrase, “autophysiopsychic music,” which he defined as “music which comes from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.”
He also acknowledged the importance of the blues, in his music and elsewhere.
“The blues,” he said in an NPR (safari-reader://www.latimes.com/topic/business/media-industry/radio-industry/npr-ORNPR0000040-topic.html) interview in 2003, “is a very elegant musical form which has given birth to wonderful compositions. I recognize the blues. In fact, if the African had not been brought to America as a slave, the blues would never have been born.”
Lateef’s desire to pursue his own musical path — as a performer, a composer and an educator — led, in 1981, to his refusal to perform in nightclubs. For the next four years, he lived in Nigeria as a senior research fellow at Ahmadu Bello University. Returning to the U.S., he taught at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College.
In the succeeding decades, Lateef performed in concert halls, colleges and music festivals in Japan, Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. He often led seminars and master classes outlining his belief in the presence of autophysiopsychic music principals in cultures around the world.
“To me,” he told the Times in 1989,” it feels as though there’s a kind of aesthetic thread running through the improvisational musics of the world. If you’re alive and your heart is beating, you’ll find it, and that’s what makes the relationship between you and the world.”
Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on April 9, 1920, in Chattanooga, Tenn. When he was 3, he moved to Lorraine, Ohio, with his parents. In 1925 they relocated to Detroit. Music was a constant presence in his early family life.
“My parents were innately musical,” he recalled in the liner notes to his album “Yusef Lateef Anthology.” “Both of them sang, and my mother also played piano. I can recall my mother and her siblings getting together every week to sing spirituals while my grandmother played one of those organs you pump with your feet.”
Growing up in the flourishing Detroit music scene of the ’30s, Lateef’s youthful acquaintances and friends included such nascent jazz artists as Milt Jackson, Lucky Thompson, Hank Jones (safari-reader://www.latimes.com/topic/entertainment/music/hank-jones-PECLB002638-topic.html) , Thad Jones and others. By 18, he was working as a professional musician. During the ’40s, occasionally using the name Bill Evans, he played saxophone with big bands led by, among others, Roy Eldridge, Herbie Fields and Lucky Millinder, eventually joining Dizzy Gillespie’s big bebop band in 1949.
In 1950, he studied flute and composition at Wayne State University in Detroit. Converting to Islam in the Ahmadiyya movement, he took the name Yusef Lateef, which translates roughly into “Gentle Joseph.” Over the next two decades, he alternated between leading his own jazz groups, working with such artists as percussionist Babatunde Olatunji, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist/composer Charles Mingus, pianist Kenny Barron, alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and guitarist Grant Green, while continuing his education.
The first of Lateef’s more than 100 recordings under his own name – “The Sounds of Yusef” — was released in 1956. In 1969 he received a bachelor’s degree in music, and in 1970 a master’s degree in music education, both from the Manhattan School of Music. In 1975 he was awarded a doctorate in education by the University of Massachusetts, where he also taught as an emeritus Five Colleges professor.
His “African American Epic Suite,” commissioned by the WDR Orchestra in 1993, a four-movement work for quintet and orchestra, has been performed by the Atlanta Symphony and the Detroit Symphony.
In addition to his compositions, which ranged from chamber music to such full-scale works as his “Symphonic Blues Suite,” he has published two collections of short stories, “Spheres” and “Rain Shapes”; a pair of novellas, “A Night in the Garden of Love” and “Another Avenue”; as well as his autobiography, “The Gentle Giant” (written with Herb Boyd). He has also released, through his own company, Fana Music, improvisational method books for flute and other instruments. His paintings have been exhibited at various galleries.
In 2010, Lateef was named an American Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1987 he was awarded a Best New Age Grammy Award for Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony, a recording in which he performed all the instrumental parts.
Lateef is survived by his wife, Ayesha Lateef; his son, Yusef Lateef; a granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Yusef Lateef obituary: Multi-instrumentalist, Grammy winner Yusef Lateef dies at 93 – LA Times
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-yusef-lateef-20131225-story.html
** Yusef Lateef dies at 93; Grammy winner blended jazz, world music
————————————————————
By Don Heckman, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Yusef Lateef
Yusef Lateef, a Grammy Award-winning multi-instrumentalist, composer and educator who brought the sounds of world music to jazz and became one of the first jazz musicians to convert to the teachings of Islam, has died. He was 93.
Lateef died Monday at his home in Shutesbury, Mass., his family announced (http://www.yuseflateef.com/) .
Lateef initially was best known as a dynamic tenor saxophonist with a big tone and a strong sense of swing. But his persistent creative and intellectual curiosity led him to the discovery of an array of other instruments as well as a fascination with various international forms of music.
He was an early advocate for the flute as a credible jazz voice. And his performances on the oboe as early as the ’50s and ’60s were definitive – and rarely matched – displays of the instrument’s jazz capabilities. He searched the globe for more exotic instruments, while mastering, among others, the bamboo flute, the Indian shenai, the Arabic arghul, the Hebrew shofar and the West African Fulani flute.
Tall and shaven-headed, his powerful presence offset by a calm demeanor and the quiet, articulate speaking style of a scholar, Lateef combined thoughtfulness and a probing intellectual curiosity with impressive musical skills. Early in his career, he established his role as a pathfinder in blending elements from a multiplicity of different sources.
His first recordings under his own leadership, released on the Savoy label in the mid-’50s, already revealed a fascination with unusual instruments: In addition to tenor saxophone and the flute, he also plays the arghul. Several of Lateef’s original compositions on those early albums also integrated rhythms and melodic styles from numerous global musical forms.
“In any given composition,” wrote Leonard Feather in The Times in 1975, “there may be long passages that involve classical influences, impressionism, a Middle Eastern flavor, or rhythmic references to Latin America.”
Like a number of musicians – from Duke Ellington to his contemporaries, Max Roach and Sonny Rollins – Lateef objected to the use of the word “jazz” to describe his work. He preferred, instead, the phrase, “autophysiopsychic music,” which he defined as “music which comes from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self.”
He also acknowledged the importance of the blues, in his music and elsewhere.
“The blues,” he said in an NPR (safari-reader://www.latimes.com/topic/business/media-industry/radio-industry/npr-ORNPR0000040-topic.html) interview in 2003, “is a very elegant musical form which has given birth to wonderful compositions. I recognize the blues. In fact, if the African had not been brought to America as a slave, the blues would never have been born.”
Lateef’s desire to pursue his own musical path — as a performer, a composer and an educator — led, in 1981, to his refusal to perform in nightclubs. For the next four years, he lived in Nigeria as a senior research fellow at Ahmadu Bello University. Returning to the U.S., he taught at the University of Massachusetts and Amherst College.
In the succeeding decades, Lateef performed in concert halls, colleges and music festivals in Japan, Russia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the U.S. He often led seminars and master classes outlining his belief in the presence of autophysiopsychic music principals in cultures around the world.
“To me,” he told the Times in 1989,” it feels as though there’s a kind of aesthetic thread running through the improvisational musics of the world. If you’re alive and your heart is beating, you’ll find it, and that’s what makes the relationship between you and the world.”
Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on April 9, 1920, in Chattanooga, Tenn. When he was 3, he moved to Lorraine, Ohio, with his parents. In 1925 they relocated to Detroit. Music was a constant presence in his early family life.
“My parents were innately musical,” he recalled in the liner notes to his album “Yusef Lateef Anthology.” “Both of them sang, and my mother also played piano. I can recall my mother and her siblings getting together every week to sing spirituals while my grandmother played one of those organs you pump with your feet.”
Growing up in the flourishing Detroit music scene of the ’30s, Lateef’s youthful acquaintances and friends included such nascent jazz artists as Milt Jackson, Lucky Thompson, Hank Jones (safari-reader://www.latimes.com/topic/entertainment/music/hank-jones-PECLB002638-topic.html) , Thad Jones and others. By 18, he was working as a professional musician. During the ’40s, occasionally using the name Bill Evans, he played saxophone with big bands led by, among others, Roy Eldridge, Herbie Fields and Lucky Millinder, eventually joining Dizzy Gillespie’s big bebop band in 1949.
In 1950, he studied flute and composition at Wayne State University in Detroit. Converting to Islam in the Ahmadiyya movement, he took the name Yusef Lateef, which translates roughly into “Gentle Joseph.” Over the next two decades, he alternated between leading his own jazz groups, working with such artists as percussionist Babatunde Olatunji, guitarist Kenny Burrell, bassist/composer Charles Mingus, pianist Kenny Barron, alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley and guitarist Grant Green, while continuing his education.
The first of Lateef’s more than 100 recordings under his own name – “The Sounds of Yusef” — was released in 1956. In 1969 he received a bachelor’s degree in music, and in 1970 a master’s degree in music education, both from the Manhattan School of Music. In 1975 he was awarded a doctorate in education by the University of Massachusetts, where he also taught as an emeritus Five Colleges professor.
His “African American Epic Suite,” commissioned by the WDR Orchestra in 1993, a four-movement work for quintet and orchestra, has been performed by the Atlanta Symphony and the Detroit Symphony.
In addition to his compositions, which ranged from chamber music to such full-scale works as his “Symphonic Blues Suite,” he has published two collections of short stories, “Spheres” and “Rain Shapes”; a pair of novellas, “A Night in the Garden of Love” and “Another Avenue”; as well as his autobiography, “The Gentle Giant” (written with Herb Boyd). He has also released, through his own company, Fana Music, improvisational method books for flute and other instruments. His paintings have been exhibited at various galleries.
In 2010, Lateef was named an American Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1987 he was awarded a Best New Age Grammy Award for Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony, a recording in which he performed all the instrumental parts.
Lateef is survived by his wife, Ayesha Lateef; his son, Yusef Lateef; a granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ composer Bob Dorough, 92, brings his hipster bebop to South
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
Thanks to Steve Ramm for the link.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20160128__Schoolhouse_Rock___composer_Bob_Dorough__92__brings_his_hipster_bebop_to_South.html
** ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ composer Bob Dorough, 92, brings his hipster bebop to South
————————————————————
Bob Dorough, 92, best-known for his songs for “Schoolhouse Rock!” in the 1970s, brings his bebop chops to South on Wednesday.
Shaun Brady, For The Inquirer
Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2016, 3:01 AM
http://www.philly.com/inquirer
Ask any children of the 1970s or ’80s how they were first exposed to jazz, and chances are that memory will have a cartoon attached.
At Christmastime, it was Vince Guaraldi’s drifting-snow swing behind the Peanutsgang’s bittersweet holiday celebrations in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
For the rest of the year, though, it was the sneakily educational, improbably hip songs of Schoolhouse Rock! The short films aired on Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1985 (returning briefly in the ’90s), teaching sugar-addled kids about math, grammar, and history through indelibly catchy songs and charming animation.
What those kids didn’t realize was most of the series’ best-loved songs – among them “Conjunction Junction,” “Three Is a Magic Number,” and “Electricity, Electricity” – were written and often performed by Bob Dorough, a hipster bebop vocalist who counted Miles Davis and Blossom Dearie among his collaborators. Dorough brought the same wit and playfulness that he employed in his music for adults to his educational tunes.
“I guess you’d say I’m an entertainer in the jazz mode, and even when I sing a love song, I still try to put some kind of joy, emotion, and playfulness into it,” Dorough said last week from his home in the Delaware Water Gap region. “Schoolhouse Rock!wasn’t that different; I was just thinking that my audience was going to be young people instead of adults.”
Those young children having long since grown into adults, but Dorough still slips a Schoolhouse Rock! number or two into his set lists. At 92, he remains the epitome of hip, as he’ll showcase with his regular trio at the South Jazz Parlor on Wednesday as part of Orrin Evans’ “What’s Happening Wednesdays?” series.
Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, Dorough grew up listening to the swing bands of Harry James, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw on the radio.
From the Plainview Texas High School Band, he served a three-year stint in a Special Services Army Band unit and went on to the University of North Texas, where he first heard the revolutionary sounds of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.
He followed those sounds north in 1949. “As soon as I got my degree, I jumped on the Greyhound bus and went to New York City,” Dorough recalled. “It was quite an adventure, believe you me. The town was full of young people from all over the country coming there to learn about the new jazz we called bebop.”
While hanging at bop haunts such as Birdland and playing at underground jazz clubs by night, Dorough made a living playing piano for a tap-dance studio. Retired boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson came in to learn a few steps before heading out on a song-and-dance tour and ended up hiring Dorough as his accompanist.
“Sugar Ray had retired from the ring and was going to be in show business,” Dorough said with a chuckle. “He had a little act – he did this dance routine that the teacher taught him and told a few jokes and sang a couple of songs. I worked for him for two years and finally he took me to Paris.”
When Robinson returned to the States, Dorough stayed behind, taking up a six-month residency at the Mars Club, a cabaret on the Right Bank.
It was there that he met fellow expat Dearie, the winsome singer who went on to be a duet partner and fellow Schoolhouse Rock! vocalist with Dorough in the decades that followed.
Shortly after returning to the U.S. in 1955, Dorough released Devil May Care, his debut album, highlighted by his vocal version of Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” The album cover, a portrait of the singer in the bull’s-eye of a ring of concentric circles, caught Miles Davis’ attention one day in a friend’s apartment.
“I always dug Miles and would go to see him in New York City,” Dorough said, “but he was a very unapproachable cat. You’d say, ‘Hey Miles, I really dug that set!’ and he wouldn’t stop. He might glance at you, but he didn’t say a word. Years later, I was in L.A., and one of my friends related to me that he actually heard my LP when he was in town doing a three-week engagement, so I took her to the club and met him there, and we became kind of pals for a minute.”
That led to Dorough’s penning the anti-commercialization Christmas song “Blue Xmas” for Davis, which the two performed for a compilation called Jingle Bell Jazzin 1962. Davis also recorded Dorough’s song “Nothing Like You” with the singer, along with an instrumental version of the title track from Devil May Care.
In the early 1970s, Dorough was approached by an advertising executive frustrated by his children’s inability to memorize multiplication tables – despite knowing every word to songs by Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. Dorough composed an album’s worth of educational tunes called Multiplication Rock, which became the foundation for Schoolhouse Rock!
“I just stumbled into that gig. We had a captive audience – every Saturday, kids were eating cereal and watching cartoons, and some of them found Schoolhouse Rock!and got stuck on it. If it were up to me, it would last forever, because there’s always kids.”
Bob Dorough
8 and 9:45 p.m. Wednesday at South Jazz Parlor, 600 N. Broad St.
Tickets: $10.
Information: 215-600-0220 or southrestaurant.net (http://www.southrestaurant.net/)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=6bb9828d8c) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=6bb9828d8c&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ composer Bob Dorough, 92, brings his hipster bebop to South
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
Thanks to Steve Ramm for the link.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20160128__Schoolhouse_Rock___composer_Bob_Dorough__92__brings_his_hipster_bebop_to_South.html
** ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ composer Bob Dorough, 92, brings his hipster bebop to South
————————————————————
Bob Dorough, 92, best-known for his songs for “Schoolhouse Rock!” in the 1970s, brings his bebop chops to South on Wednesday.
Shaun Brady, For The Inquirer
Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2016, 3:01 AM
http://www.philly.com/inquirer
Ask any children of the 1970s or ’80s how they were first exposed to jazz, and chances are that memory will have a cartoon attached.
At Christmastime, it was Vince Guaraldi’s drifting-snow swing behind the Peanutsgang’s bittersweet holiday celebrations in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
For the rest of the year, though, it was the sneakily educational, improbably hip songs of Schoolhouse Rock! The short films aired on Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1985 (returning briefly in the ’90s), teaching sugar-addled kids about math, grammar, and history through indelibly catchy songs and charming animation.
What those kids didn’t realize was most of the series’ best-loved songs – among them “Conjunction Junction,” “Three Is a Magic Number,” and “Electricity, Electricity” – were written and often performed by Bob Dorough, a hipster bebop vocalist who counted Miles Davis and Blossom Dearie among his collaborators. Dorough brought the same wit and playfulness that he employed in his music for adults to his educational tunes.
“I guess you’d say I’m an entertainer in the jazz mode, and even when I sing a love song, I still try to put some kind of joy, emotion, and playfulness into it,” Dorough said last week from his home in the Delaware Water Gap region. “Schoolhouse Rock!wasn’t that different; I was just thinking that my audience was going to be young people instead of adults.”
Those young children having long since grown into adults, but Dorough still slips a Schoolhouse Rock! number or two into his set lists. At 92, he remains the epitome of hip, as he’ll showcase with his regular trio at the South Jazz Parlor on Wednesday as part of Orrin Evans’ “What’s Happening Wednesdays?” series.
Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, Dorough grew up listening to the swing bands of Harry James, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw on the radio.
From the Plainview Texas High School Band, he served a three-year stint in a Special Services Army Band unit and went on to the University of North Texas, where he first heard the revolutionary sounds of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.
He followed those sounds north in 1949. “As soon as I got my degree, I jumped on the Greyhound bus and went to New York City,” Dorough recalled. “It was quite an adventure, believe you me. The town was full of young people from all over the country coming there to learn about the new jazz we called bebop.”
While hanging at bop haunts such as Birdland and playing at underground jazz clubs by night, Dorough made a living playing piano for a tap-dance studio. Retired boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson came in to learn a few steps before heading out on a song-and-dance tour and ended up hiring Dorough as his accompanist.
“Sugar Ray had retired from the ring and was going to be in show business,” Dorough said with a chuckle. “He had a little act – he did this dance routine that the teacher taught him and told a few jokes and sang a couple of songs. I worked for him for two years and finally he took me to Paris.”
When Robinson returned to the States, Dorough stayed behind, taking up a six-month residency at the Mars Club, a cabaret on the Right Bank.
It was there that he met fellow expat Dearie, the winsome singer who went on to be a duet partner and fellow Schoolhouse Rock! vocalist with Dorough in the decades that followed.
Shortly after returning to the U.S. in 1955, Dorough released Devil May Care, his debut album, highlighted by his vocal version of Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” The album cover, a portrait of the singer in the bull’s-eye of a ring of concentric circles, caught Miles Davis’ attention one day in a friend’s apartment.
“I always dug Miles and would go to see him in New York City,” Dorough said, “but he was a very unapproachable cat. You’d say, ‘Hey Miles, I really dug that set!’ and he wouldn’t stop. He might glance at you, but he didn’t say a word. Years later, I was in L.A., and one of my friends related to me that he actually heard my LP when he was in town doing a three-week engagement, so I took her to the club and met him there, and we became kind of pals for a minute.”
That led to Dorough’s penning the anti-commercialization Christmas song “Blue Xmas” for Davis, which the two performed for a compilation called Jingle Bell Jazzin 1962. Davis also recorded Dorough’s song “Nothing Like You” with the singer, along with an instrumental version of the title track from Devil May Care.
In the early 1970s, Dorough was approached by an advertising executive frustrated by his children’s inability to memorize multiplication tables – despite knowing every word to songs by Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. Dorough composed an album’s worth of educational tunes called Multiplication Rock, which became the foundation for Schoolhouse Rock!
“I just stumbled into that gig. We had a captive audience – every Saturday, kids were eating cereal and watching cartoons, and some of them found Schoolhouse Rock!and got stuck on it. If it were up to me, it would last forever, because there’s always kids.”
Bob Dorough
8 and 9:45 p.m. Wednesday at South Jazz Parlor, 600 N. Broad St.
Tickets: $10.
Information: 215-600-0220 or southrestaurant.net (http://www.southrestaurant.net/)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=6bb9828d8c) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=6bb9828d8c&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ composer Bob Dorough, 92, brings his hipster bebop to South
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
Thanks to Steve Ramm for the link.
http://www.philly.com/philly/entertainment/20160128__Schoolhouse_Rock___composer_Bob_Dorough__92__brings_his_hipster_bebop_to_South.html
** ‘Schoolhouse Rock!’ composer Bob Dorough, 92, brings his hipster bebop to South
————————————————————
Bob Dorough, 92, best-known for his songs for “Schoolhouse Rock!” in the 1970s, brings his bebop chops to South on Wednesday.
Shaun Brady, For The Inquirer
Posted: Thursday, January 28, 2016, 3:01 AM
http://www.philly.com/inquirer
Ask any children of the 1970s or ’80s how they were first exposed to jazz, and chances are that memory will have a cartoon attached.
At Christmastime, it was Vince Guaraldi’s drifting-snow swing behind the Peanutsgang’s bittersweet holiday celebrations in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
For the rest of the year, though, it was the sneakily educational, improbably hip songs of Schoolhouse Rock! The short films aired on Saturday mornings from 1973 to 1985 (returning briefly in the ’90s), teaching sugar-addled kids about math, grammar, and history through indelibly catchy songs and charming animation.
What those kids didn’t realize was most of the series’ best-loved songs – among them “Conjunction Junction,” “Three Is a Magic Number,” and “Electricity, Electricity” – were written and often performed by Bob Dorough, a hipster bebop vocalist who counted Miles Davis and Blossom Dearie among his collaborators. Dorough brought the same wit and playfulness that he employed in his music for adults to his educational tunes.
“I guess you’d say I’m an entertainer in the jazz mode, and even when I sing a love song, I still try to put some kind of joy, emotion, and playfulness into it,” Dorough said last week from his home in the Delaware Water Gap region. “Schoolhouse Rock!wasn’t that different; I was just thinking that my audience was going to be young people instead of adults.”
Those young children having long since grown into adults, but Dorough still slips a Schoolhouse Rock! number or two into his set lists. At 92, he remains the epitome of hip, as he’ll showcase with his regular trio at the South Jazz Parlor on Wednesday as part of Orrin Evans’ “What’s Happening Wednesdays?” series.
Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, Dorough grew up listening to the swing bands of Harry James, Benny Goodman, and Artie Shaw on the radio.
From the Plainview Texas High School Band, he served a three-year stint in a Special Services Army Band unit and went on to the University of North Texas, where he first heard the revolutionary sounds of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis.
He followed those sounds north in 1949. “As soon as I got my degree, I jumped on the Greyhound bus and went to New York City,” Dorough recalled. “It was quite an adventure, believe you me. The town was full of young people from all over the country coming there to learn about the new jazz we called bebop.”
While hanging at bop haunts such as Birdland and playing at underground jazz clubs by night, Dorough made a living playing piano for a tap-dance studio. Retired boxing champion Sugar Ray Robinson came in to learn a few steps before heading out on a song-and-dance tour and ended up hiring Dorough as his accompanist.
“Sugar Ray had retired from the ring and was going to be in show business,” Dorough said with a chuckle. “He had a little act – he did this dance routine that the teacher taught him and told a few jokes and sang a couple of songs. I worked for him for two years and finally he took me to Paris.”
When Robinson returned to the States, Dorough stayed behind, taking up a six-month residency at the Mars Club, a cabaret on the Right Bank.
It was there that he met fellow expat Dearie, the winsome singer who went on to be a duet partner and fellow Schoolhouse Rock! vocalist with Dorough in the decades that followed.
Shortly after returning to the U.S. in 1955, Dorough released Devil May Care, his debut album, highlighted by his vocal version of Charlie Parker’s “Yardbird Suite.” The album cover, a portrait of the singer in the bull’s-eye of a ring of concentric circles, caught Miles Davis’ attention one day in a friend’s apartment.
“I always dug Miles and would go to see him in New York City,” Dorough said, “but he was a very unapproachable cat. You’d say, ‘Hey Miles, I really dug that set!’ and he wouldn’t stop. He might glance at you, but he didn’t say a word. Years later, I was in L.A., and one of my friends related to me that he actually heard my LP when he was in town doing a three-week engagement, so I took her to the club and met him there, and we became kind of pals for a minute.”
That led to Dorough’s penning the anti-commercialization Christmas song “Blue Xmas” for Davis, which the two performed for a compilation called Jingle Bell Jazzin 1962. Davis also recorded Dorough’s song “Nothing Like You” with the singer, along with an instrumental version of the title track from Devil May Care.
In the early 1970s, Dorough was approached by an advertising executive frustrated by his children’s inability to memorize multiplication tables – despite knowing every word to songs by Jimi Hendrix and the Rolling Stones. Dorough composed an album’s worth of educational tunes called Multiplication Rock, which became the foundation for Schoolhouse Rock!
“I just stumbled into that gig. We had a captive audience – every Saturday, kids were eating cereal and watching cartoons, and some of them found Schoolhouse Rock!and got stuck on it. If it were up to me, it would last forever, because there’s always kids.”
Bob Dorough
8 and 9:45 p.m. Wednesday at South Jazz Parlor, 600 N. Broad St.
Tickets: $10.
Information: 215-600-0220 or southrestaurant.net (http://www.southrestaurant.net/)
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=6bb9828d8c) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=6bb9828d8c&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Passings: T.J. Tindall, Guitarist For MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra ~ VVN Music
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2016/01/passings-tj-tindall-guitarist-for-mfsb.html?utm_source=VVN+Music+E-Mail+Subscribers
** Passings: T.J. Tindall, Guitarist For MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2016/01/passings-tj-tindall-guitarist-for-mfsb.html)
————————————————————
9:39 AM MFSB (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/MFSB) , Passings (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Passings) , Salsoul Orchestra (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Salsoul%20Orchestra) , Soul (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Soul) No comments (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=26817478&postID=3295749507345647610)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Y3uophDFhA/VqjWcgMELsI/AAAAAAABDS8/UTfRkAJ8KeY/s1600/Tindall.jpgPhiladelphia and the soul music world have lost one of the great guitarists of the 70’s, T.J. Tindall.
Tindall, who was born and raised in Trenton, NJ, took up music early, starting with drums at the age of 4 and later moving to guitar. At the age of 20, he began regular pilgrimages to the offices and studio of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff in Philadelphia where he finally got his break sitting in with the Edison Electric Band.
T.J. eventually became the guitarist for the Philadelphia International house band MFSB, first heard on the O’Jay’s massive hit Love Train. They went on to back some of the label’s biggest stars and, in 1974, broke out on their own with the number 1 singles TSOP which went on to become the theme from the show Soul Train.
MFSB continued to have occassional hits throughout the disco era including Love is the Message (1974 / #42 R&B / #85 Pop), Sexy (1975 / #2 R&B / #42 Pop / #1 Disco), Summertime and I’m Feelin’ Mellow (1976 / #65 R&B / #1 Disco) and Picnic in the Park (1976 / #1 Disco).
A number of members of MFSB, including Tindall, had a disagreement with Gamble and Huff over money and moved to Salsoul Records where they became the Salsoul Orchestra. Another of the great disco instrumental groups, their popularity peaked with the single Tangerine (1976 / #18 Pop).
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3gkI7YyRurk/VqjWcunrGiI/AAAAAAABDTA/ZPNUhf85xm8/s1600/Tindall%2B2.jpgIn the early 80’s, Tindall became disillusioned by the changes in the sound of music and left the business to take over the family’s lighting business. It wasn’t until 2011 that he returned, forming T.J. Tindall’s East Coast who have played regularly around the New Jersey and Pennsylvania area.
Other credits for Tindall include work with Bonnie Raitt, Joe Simon, Bobby Whitlock, Don Covay, the Whispers, the Tramps, Robert Palmer, Loleatta Holloway and others.
Our thanks to Soul Tracks (http://www.soultracks.com/story-tj-tindall-dies) for first reporting on Tindall’s passing.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=fb96e113ed) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=fb96e113ed&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Passings: T.J. Tindall, Guitarist For MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra ~ VVN Music
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2016/01/passings-tj-tindall-guitarist-for-mfsb.html?utm_source=VVN+Music+E-Mail+Subscribers
** Passings: T.J. Tindall, Guitarist For MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2016/01/passings-tj-tindall-guitarist-for-mfsb.html)
————————————————————
9:39 AM MFSB (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/MFSB) , Passings (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Passings) , Salsoul Orchestra (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Salsoul%20Orchestra) , Soul (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Soul) No comments (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=26817478&postID=3295749507345647610)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Y3uophDFhA/VqjWcgMELsI/AAAAAAABDS8/UTfRkAJ8KeY/s1600/Tindall.jpgPhiladelphia and the soul music world have lost one of the great guitarists of the 70’s, T.J. Tindall.
Tindall, who was born and raised in Trenton, NJ, took up music early, starting with drums at the age of 4 and later moving to guitar. At the age of 20, he began regular pilgrimages to the offices and studio of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff in Philadelphia where he finally got his break sitting in with the Edison Electric Band.
T.J. eventually became the guitarist for the Philadelphia International house band MFSB, first heard on the O’Jay’s massive hit Love Train. They went on to back some of the label’s biggest stars and, in 1974, broke out on their own with the number 1 singles TSOP which went on to become the theme from the show Soul Train.
MFSB continued to have occassional hits throughout the disco era including Love is the Message (1974 / #42 R&B / #85 Pop), Sexy (1975 / #2 R&B / #42 Pop / #1 Disco), Summertime and I’m Feelin’ Mellow (1976 / #65 R&B / #1 Disco) and Picnic in the Park (1976 / #1 Disco).
A number of members of MFSB, including Tindall, had a disagreement with Gamble and Huff over money and moved to Salsoul Records where they became the Salsoul Orchestra. Another of the great disco instrumental groups, their popularity peaked with the single Tangerine (1976 / #18 Pop).
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3gkI7YyRurk/VqjWcunrGiI/AAAAAAABDTA/ZPNUhf85xm8/s1600/Tindall%2B2.jpgIn the early 80’s, Tindall became disillusioned by the changes in the sound of music and left the business to take over the family’s lighting business. It wasn’t until 2011 that he returned, forming T.J. Tindall’s East Coast who have played regularly around the New Jersey and Pennsylvania area.
Other credits for Tindall include work with Bonnie Raitt, Joe Simon, Bobby Whitlock, Don Covay, the Whispers, the Tramps, Robert Palmer, Loleatta Holloway and others.
Our thanks to Soul Tracks (http://www.soultracks.com/story-tj-tindall-dies) for first reporting on Tindall’s passing.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
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Passings: T.J. Tindall, Guitarist For MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra ~ VVN Music
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2016/01/passings-tj-tindall-guitarist-for-mfsb.html?utm_source=VVN+Music+E-Mail+Subscribers
** Passings: T.J. Tindall, Guitarist For MFSB, Salsoul Orchestra (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/2016/01/passings-tj-tindall-guitarist-for-mfsb.html)
————————————————————
9:39 AM MFSB (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/MFSB) , Passings (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Passings) , Salsoul Orchestra (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Salsoul%20Orchestra) , Soul (http://www.vintagevinylnews.com/search/label/Soul) No comments (https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=26817478&postID=3295749507345647610)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_Y3uophDFhA/VqjWcgMELsI/AAAAAAABDS8/UTfRkAJ8KeY/s1600/Tindall.jpgPhiladelphia and the soul music world have lost one of the great guitarists of the 70’s, T.J. Tindall.
Tindall, who was born and raised in Trenton, NJ, took up music early, starting with drums at the age of 4 and later moving to guitar. At the age of 20, he began regular pilgrimages to the offices and studio of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff in Philadelphia where he finally got his break sitting in with the Edison Electric Band.
T.J. eventually became the guitarist for the Philadelphia International house band MFSB, first heard on the O’Jay’s massive hit Love Train. They went on to back some of the label’s biggest stars and, in 1974, broke out on their own with the number 1 singles TSOP which went on to become the theme from the show Soul Train.
MFSB continued to have occassional hits throughout the disco era including Love is the Message (1974 / #42 R&B / #85 Pop), Sexy (1975 / #2 R&B / #42 Pop / #1 Disco), Summertime and I’m Feelin’ Mellow (1976 / #65 R&B / #1 Disco) and Picnic in the Park (1976 / #1 Disco).
A number of members of MFSB, including Tindall, had a disagreement with Gamble and Huff over money and moved to Salsoul Records where they became the Salsoul Orchestra. Another of the great disco instrumental groups, their popularity peaked with the single Tangerine (1976 / #18 Pop).
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3gkI7YyRurk/VqjWcunrGiI/AAAAAAABDTA/ZPNUhf85xm8/s1600/Tindall%2B2.jpgIn the early 80’s, Tindall became disillusioned by the changes in the sound of music and left the business to take over the family’s lighting business. It wasn’t until 2011 that he returned, forming T.J. Tindall’s East Coast who have played regularly around the New Jersey and Pennsylvania area.
Other credits for Tindall include work with Bonnie Raitt, Joe Simon, Bobby Whitlock, Don Covay, the Whispers, the Tramps, Robert Palmer, Loleatta Holloway and others.
Our thanks to Soul Tracks (http://www.soultracks.com/story-tj-tindall-dies) for first reporting on Tindall’s passing.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
From Alfalfa to Rosie the Riveter: A New Way to Watch B Movies Online For Free | Leonard Maltin
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/from-alfalfa-to-rosie-the-riveter-a-new-way-to-watch-b-moviesfor-free-20160126?utm_medium=sailthru_newsletter
** From Alfalfa to Rosie the Riveter: A New Way to Watch B Movies—For Free
————————————————————
Leonard Maltin By Leonard Maltin | Leonard Maltin January 26, 2016 at 10:00PM
Tahiti Honey-1-680
Simone Simon and Michael Whalen in ‘Tahiti Honey’
Last week, during a phone conversation with an old friend who is an eminent film scholar and professor I asked, “Have you heard that Tahiti Honey is streaming for free online?” and he said “What? How can I see it?” Such is the excitement among connoisseurs of the arcane and obscure upon learning that the Paramount Vault YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzMVH2jEyEwXPBvyht8xQNw) channel is offering a random selection of titles from its vast Republic Pictures library. These are pristine, uncut versions of B-movie titles from the 1940s and ‘50s. Are they any good? That’s all in the eye of the beholder (read: no, not really) but they are rare.
Tahiti Honey-News Ad-2-150
Never mind that Paramount is also offering Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 and John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, as well as highlight clips from scores of films like Airplane!, Forrest Gump, and Footloose. Most of those titles have always been accessible. Not so for the Republic archive.
I wish there were some rhyme or reason for the selection but it appears to be random, based on titles that have been restored. Among the offerings: the aforementioned Tahiti Honey (1943), a threadbare musical starring Dennis O’Keefe and the winsome Simone Simon (whose French accent magically disappears whenever she sings—thanks to an unnamed dubber), Rosie the Riveter (1944) with Jane Frazee, Frank Albertson, Vera Vague (Barbara Jo Allen), and Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, and Remember Pearl Harbor (1942) with Don “Red” Barry. Barry also appears in one of the handful of Westerns on the channel (The Man from the Rio Grande, 1943), with fellow contractee Allan Lane headlining Trail of Kit Carson (1945).
One of Republic’s specialties was servicing small-town theaters in America’s heartland by featuring what used to be called hillbilly performers like Roy Acuff in O, My Darling, Clementine (1943). Mary Lee headlines Barnyard Follies (1943), which features Rufe Davis, Alfalfa Switzer, Dorothy Harrison, Queen of Dairyland and “Radio’s Popular Entertainers ‘Pappy’ Cheshire, The Cackle Sisters, Jim Jeffries, The Kidoodlers, Ralph Bowman, Isabel Randolph as ‘Mrs. Uppington.’ ”
One of the oddities of the Republic catalog is that it includes a number of British productions that studio chief Herbert J. Yates acquired for U.S. distribution, like Laugh it Off (1940) with popular English comedy star Tommy Trinder and others that he co-financed like Track the Man Down (1955) with Kent Taylor and Petula Clark.
Rosie the Riveter-4680
Perky Jane Frazee (a favorite of Ed Norton, if you remember ‘The Honeymooners’) plays Rosie, The Riveter
And there are condensations of some latter-day Republic serials like Cyclotrode X, a feature-length version of The Crimson Ghost (1946) and Satan’s Satellites,derived from Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952).
Last but not least, you’ll see unexpected titles that found their way into the collection, like Norman Krasna’s The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) with Jean Arthur and Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
If I had my druthers, I’d love to see Paramount release some vintage Republic serials in their entirety. (Olive Films, which has dug deep into this archive, has only released some later, lesser examples like The Invisible Monster and Flying Disc Man from Mars on DVD and Blu-ray.)
Republic also owns the old NTA short subject library, which is chockfull of fascinating material, and a nifty behind-the-scenes series called Meet the Stars, which features rare footage of Orson Welles, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, among others. There’s also one feature I’ve always been curious about: Sons of Adventure(1948), “the story of movie stunt men,” which was directed by the great Yakima Canutt.
Don Miller-B Movies
Here’s hoping that the folks at Paramount continue digging, and invite their audience to suggest titles they’d like to see. I’ve done my part.
Incidentally, this is as good a place as any to remind you that Don Miller’s unique and exhaustive book “B” Movies (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015EYQYHE?keywords=b%20movies%20don%20miller&qid=1453838820&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) is back in print, thanks to Amazon Kindle. If you purchase it as an e-book you can word-search any of the hundreds of titles he describes; if you buy the print-on-demand softcover there is no index, sorry to say, but it still makes great reading and is an indispensable guide to the world of Bs.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=525e02526d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=525e02526d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
From Alfalfa to Rosie the Riveter: A New Way to Watch B Movies Online For Free | Leonard Maltin
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/from-alfalfa-to-rosie-the-riveter-a-new-way-to-watch-b-moviesfor-free-20160126?utm_medium=sailthru_newsletter
** From Alfalfa to Rosie the Riveter: A New Way to Watch B Movies—For Free
————————————————————
Leonard Maltin By Leonard Maltin | Leonard Maltin January 26, 2016 at 10:00PM
Tahiti Honey-1-680
Simone Simon and Michael Whalen in ‘Tahiti Honey’
Last week, during a phone conversation with an old friend who is an eminent film scholar and professor I asked, “Have you heard that Tahiti Honey is streaming for free online?” and he said “What? How can I see it?” Such is the excitement among connoisseurs of the arcane and obscure upon learning that the Paramount Vault YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzMVH2jEyEwXPBvyht8xQNw) channel is offering a random selection of titles from its vast Republic Pictures library. These are pristine, uncut versions of B-movie titles from the 1940s and ‘50s. Are they any good? That’s all in the eye of the beholder (read: no, not really) but they are rare.
Tahiti Honey-News Ad-2-150
Never mind that Paramount is also offering Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 and John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, as well as highlight clips from scores of films like Airplane!, Forrest Gump, and Footloose. Most of those titles have always been accessible. Not so for the Republic archive.
I wish there were some rhyme or reason for the selection but it appears to be random, based on titles that have been restored. Among the offerings: the aforementioned Tahiti Honey (1943), a threadbare musical starring Dennis O’Keefe and the winsome Simone Simon (whose French accent magically disappears whenever she sings—thanks to an unnamed dubber), Rosie the Riveter (1944) with Jane Frazee, Frank Albertson, Vera Vague (Barbara Jo Allen), and Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, and Remember Pearl Harbor (1942) with Don “Red” Barry. Barry also appears in one of the handful of Westerns on the channel (The Man from the Rio Grande, 1943), with fellow contractee Allan Lane headlining Trail of Kit Carson (1945).
One of Republic’s specialties was servicing small-town theaters in America’s heartland by featuring what used to be called hillbilly performers like Roy Acuff in O, My Darling, Clementine (1943). Mary Lee headlines Barnyard Follies (1943), which features Rufe Davis, Alfalfa Switzer, Dorothy Harrison, Queen of Dairyland and “Radio’s Popular Entertainers ‘Pappy’ Cheshire, The Cackle Sisters, Jim Jeffries, The Kidoodlers, Ralph Bowman, Isabel Randolph as ‘Mrs. Uppington.’ ”
One of the oddities of the Republic catalog is that it includes a number of British productions that studio chief Herbert J. Yates acquired for U.S. distribution, like Laugh it Off (1940) with popular English comedy star Tommy Trinder and others that he co-financed like Track the Man Down (1955) with Kent Taylor and Petula Clark.
Rosie the Riveter-4680
Perky Jane Frazee (a favorite of Ed Norton, if you remember ‘The Honeymooners’) plays Rosie, The Riveter
And there are condensations of some latter-day Republic serials like Cyclotrode X, a feature-length version of The Crimson Ghost (1946) and Satan’s Satellites,derived from Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952).
Last but not least, you’ll see unexpected titles that found their way into the collection, like Norman Krasna’s The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) with Jean Arthur and Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
If I had my druthers, I’d love to see Paramount release some vintage Republic serials in their entirety. (Olive Films, which has dug deep into this archive, has only released some later, lesser examples like The Invisible Monster and Flying Disc Man from Mars on DVD and Blu-ray.)
Republic also owns the old NTA short subject library, which is chockfull of fascinating material, and a nifty behind-the-scenes series called Meet the Stars, which features rare footage of Orson Welles, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, among others. There’s also one feature I’ve always been curious about: Sons of Adventure(1948), “the story of movie stunt men,” which was directed by the great Yakima Canutt.
Don Miller-B Movies
Here’s hoping that the folks at Paramount continue digging, and invite their audience to suggest titles they’d like to see. I’ve done my part.
Incidentally, this is as good a place as any to remind you that Don Miller’s unique and exhaustive book “B” Movies (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015EYQYHE?keywords=b%20movies%20don%20miller&qid=1453838820&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) is back in print, thanks to Amazon Kindle. If you purchase it as an e-book you can word-search any of the hundreds of titles he describes; if you buy the print-on-demand softcover there is no index, sorry to say, but it still makes great reading and is an indispensable guide to the world of Bs.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=525e02526d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=525e02526d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
From Alfalfa to Rosie the Riveter: A New Way to Watch B Movies Online For Free | Leonard Maltin
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/from-alfalfa-to-rosie-the-riveter-a-new-way-to-watch-b-moviesfor-free-20160126?utm_medium=sailthru_newsletter
** From Alfalfa to Rosie the Riveter: A New Way to Watch B Movies—For Free
————————————————————
Leonard Maltin By Leonard Maltin | Leonard Maltin January 26, 2016 at 10:00PM
Tahiti Honey-1-680
Simone Simon and Michael Whalen in ‘Tahiti Honey’
Last week, during a phone conversation with an old friend who is an eminent film scholar and professor I asked, “Have you heard that Tahiti Honey is streaming for free online?” and he said “What? How can I see it?” Such is the excitement among connoisseurs of the arcane and obscure upon learning that the Paramount Vault YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzMVH2jEyEwXPBvyht8xQNw) channel is offering a random selection of titles from its vast Republic Pictures library. These are pristine, uncut versions of B-movie titles from the 1940s and ‘50s. Are they any good? That’s all in the eye of the beholder (read: no, not really) but they are rare.
Tahiti Honey-News Ad-2-150
Never mind that Paramount is also offering Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1900 and John Cassavetes’ Love Streams, as well as highlight clips from scores of films like Airplane!, Forrest Gump, and Footloose. Most of those titles have always been accessible. Not so for the Republic archive.
I wish there were some rhyme or reason for the selection but it appears to be random, based on titles that have been restored. Among the offerings: the aforementioned Tahiti Honey (1943), a threadbare musical starring Dennis O’Keefe and the winsome Simone Simon (whose French accent magically disappears whenever she sings—thanks to an unnamed dubber), Rosie the Riveter (1944) with Jane Frazee, Frank Albertson, Vera Vague (Barbara Jo Allen), and Carl “Alfalfa” Switzer, and Remember Pearl Harbor (1942) with Don “Red” Barry. Barry also appears in one of the handful of Westerns on the channel (The Man from the Rio Grande, 1943), with fellow contractee Allan Lane headlining Trail of Kit Carson (1945).
One of Republic’s specialties was servicing small-town theaters in America’s heartland by featuring what used to be called hillbilly performers like Roy Acuff in O, My Darling, Clementine (1943). Mary Lee headlines Barnyard Follies (1943), which features Rufe Davis, Alfalfa Switzer, Dorothy Harrison, Queen of Dairyland and “Radio’s Popular Entertainers ‘Pappy’ Cheshire, The Cackle Sisters, Jim Jeffries, The Kidoodlers, Ralph Bowman, Isabel Randolph as ‘Mrs. Uppington.’ ”
One of the oddities of the Republic catalog is that it includes a number of British productions that studio chief Herbert J. Yates acquired for U.S. distribution, like Laugh it Off (1940) with popular English comedy star Tommy Trinder and others that he co-financed like Track the Man Down (1955) with Kent Taylor and Petula Clark.
Rosie the Riveter-4680
Perky Jane Frazee (a favorite of Ed Norton, if you remember ‘The Honeymooners’) plays Rosie, The Riveter
And there are condensations of some latter-day Republic serials like Cyclotrode X, a feature-length version of The Crimson Ghost (1946) and Satan’s Satellites,derived from Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952).
Last but not least, you’ll see unexpected titles that found their way into the collection, like Norman Krasna’s The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) with Jean Arthur and Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).
If I had my druthers, I’d love to see Paramount release some vintage Republic serials in their entirety. (Olive Films, which has dug deep into this archive, has only released some later, lesser examples like The Invisible Monster and Flying Disc Man from Mars on DVD and Blu-ray.)
Republic also owns the old NTA short subject library, which is chockfull of fascinating material, and a nifty behind-the-scenes series called Meet the Stars, which features rare footage of Orson Welles, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers, among others. There’s also one feature I’ve always been curious about: Sons of Adventure(1948), “the story of movie stunt men,” which was directed by the great Yakima Canutt.
Don Miller-B Movies
Here’s hoping that the folks at Paramount continue digging, and invite their audience to suggest titles they’d like to see. I’ve done my part.
Incidentally, this is as good a place as any to remind you that Don Miller’s unique and exhaustive book “B” Movies (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015EYQYHE?keywords=b%20movies%20don%20miller&qid=1453838820&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) is back in print, thanks to Amazon Kindle. If you purchase it as an e-book you can word-search any of the hundreds of titles he describes; if you buy the print-on-demand softcover there is no index, sorry to say, but it still makes great reading and is an indispensable guide to the world of Bs.
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=525e02526d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=525e02526d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
A Little Jazz History From Robert Northern aka Brother Ah
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
On 1/27/16, 9:51 AM, “vincent” wrote:
As Robert Northern, he played French Horn with Miles, Trane, Eric Dolphy, Oliver Nelson and others. Now known as Brother Ah, he has taught at Brown University and now lives in D.C., while doing some music shows for WPFW.
This is a photo of him, Julius Watkins and Miles from 1959.
v
________________________________________
From: Robert Northern
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 5:47 PM
To: vincent thomas
Subject: Miles Davis
Hi Vincent…this photo of Miles was taken at a recording session in 1959…that’s me sitting next to Miles holding my horn. The horn player on my right is the great Julius Watkins…Peace …Brother Ah
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=484716077f) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=484716077f&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
A Little Jazz History From Robert Northern aka Brother Ah
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
On 1/27/16, 9:51 AM, “vincent” wrote:
As Robert Northern, he played French Horn with Miles, Trane, Eric Dolphy, Oliver Nelson and others. Now known as Brother Ah, he has taught at Brown University and now lives in D.C., while doing some music shows for WPFW.
This is a photo of him, Julius Watkins and Miles from 1959.
v
________________________________________
From: Robert Northern
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 5:47 PM
To: vincent thomas
Subject: Miles Davis
Hi Vincent…this photo of Miles was taken at a recording session in 1959…that’s me sitting next to Miles holding my horn. The horn player on my right is the great Julius Watkins…Peace …Brother Ah
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
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A Little Jazz History From Robert Northern aka Brother Ah
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
On 1/27/16, 9:51 AM, “vincent” wrote:
As Robert Northern, he played French Horn with Miles, Trane, Eric Dolphy, Oliver Nelson and others. Now known as Brother Ah, he has taught at Brown University and now lives in D.C., while doing some music shows for WPFW.
This is a photo of him, Julius Watkins and Miles from 1959.
v
________________________________________
From: Robert Northern
Sent: Tuesday, January 26, 2016 5:47 PM
To: vincent thomas
Subject: Miles Davis
Hi Vincent…this photo of Miles was taken at a recording session in 1959…that’s me sitting next to Miles holding my horn. The horn player on my right is the great Julius Watkins…Peace …Brother Ah
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=484716077f) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=484716077f&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
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That Old Black Magic The moony lyricism of Johnny Mercer: From: The Oxford American
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/752-that-old-black-magic
ISSUE 91, WINTER 2015 (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/173-issue-91-georgia-music-issue)
** THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC
————————————————————
By John Lingan (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/user/1031-johnlingan) | January 21, 2016
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/media/k2/items/cache/a7c7e20ef55b9c6f68541bcec8a4cfb6_XL.jpg“Castaway/Harvest” (2013), by Jeffrey Whittle
Supposedly, in a moment of frustration in the early 1950s, Sam Phillips told his business partner, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Only a few years later, Phillips would record Elvis Presley and more or less prove the point. But for all the savvy of his label boss, the King wasn’t the first white boy to bring a firsthand love of black culture to the American musical mainstream. A generation earlier, another Southerner—this one entirely un-Presley-like in his sound and upbringing—drew from the same tradition and made, if not quite a billion dollars, certainly an inexhaustible fortune, and left behind a half-dozen of America’s most indelible melodies besides.
Johnny Mercer arrived in New York in 1928, at the height of Tin Pan Alley. George Gershwin had premiered “Rhapsody in Blue” four years prior, and Cole Porter was at work on what would become his first hit musical, Paris. The Roaring Twenties were American music’s debutante ball, the historical moment when urbane sophisticates wed jazz idioms and orchestral ambition. Before, the young nation boasted only regional music: minstrelsy, Dixieland, cowboy tunes, shape note. Now it had the Great American Songbook.
Mercer was eighteen at the time and had listened to songs by Gershwin, Porter, Irving Berlin, and their New York colleagues for years during his rollicking yet privileged adolescence in Savannah. But coming from a moneyed Georgia family, with ancestors who fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, his musical background included more than just their pop hits. In an unpublished memoir—written in 1973, three years before his death—Mercer begins his life story with a description of the commute to his family’s summer home in the country: “The roads were still unpaved, made of crushed oyster shell, and as they wound their way under the trees covered with Spanish moss, it was a sweet, indolent background for a boy to grow up in.” Even more than the rural Georgia scenery, he recalls “the help,” who lived in nearby houses on the property and came over regularly to do their own domestic upkeep—laundry, cooking, bathing—in addition to serving the Mercers:
Having all those colored people around meant having a lot of music also, and not only did we get the traditional lullabies and work songs, but we’d get to hear their church services upon an occasional Sunday. As a matter of fact, I can hardly ever remember there not being music, in town or out. My Aunt Hattie swears I hummed back at her at the tender age of 6 months, and she always used to take me to see the minstrel shows which were so popular then in the South as well as the big Northern cities.
At the country property, on the banks of the Vernon River—a landscape that inspired “Moon River,” for which Mercer would later win the third of his four “best original song” Oscars, in 1961—he heard these same black families speak Geechee, the Carolina dialect that Gershwin appropriated for Porgy and Bess. But Mercer’s cross-cultural education was fostered in the city as well. His father, a banker who lost his fortune right as Johnny set out for Manhattan, sang along to his sizable collection of race records at home. As soon as Johnny was old enough, he did his own record shopping, showing a particular appetite for Louis Armstrong. With his parents and brother, he was a regular attendee of the famed Savannah Easter parade, a vibrant showcase of black dance, music, and fashion. His black nurse sang him spirituals in between lullabies. (Decades later, Mercer would pay to repair the roof of her church.) As a boy, he took regular walks through town, peeking in the city’s black
churches, grabbing a seat if a pew was open. His regular stops included the United House of Prayer for All People, where he heard the controversial Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace preach during the faith healer’s regular trips to town.
“George Gershwin could go up to Harlem to hear jazz and blues,” wrote biographer Philip Furia, but “Johnny Mercer, alone among the great songwriters of his generation, was, from the day he was born, influenced by the music of blacks.”
Relative to Elvis, Mercer’s most famous songs bore little of that influence on the surface. He wrote the lyrics for an unbelievable run of hits in the late 1930s and ’40s, often recording his own popular versions as a vocalist: “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “I’m Old Fashioned,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” “Laura,” “Fools Rush In.” But his very first commercial success, a lesser-known 1933 Hoagy Carmichael collaboration called “Lazybones,” which was a hit for Mildred Bailey (and later Louis Armstrong himself), was a direct homage to the voices he’d heard as a boy:
Long as there is chicken gravy on your rice,
Everything is nice.
Long as there’s a watermelon on your vine,
Everything is fine . . .
Lazybones, sleepin’ in the shade,
How you ‘spec’ to get your cornmeal made?
Never get your cornmeal made,
Sleepin’ in the evenin’ shade.
“Lazybones,” recorded the same year that Gershwin’s Geechee opera premiered, depicts “taters” in the ground, the hot noon sun, and a fishing line hanging in the water—a Southern pastoral so Edenic that it’s nearly pastiche. It’s also, despite black artists’ embrace of the song, a borderline-racist depiction of Southern blackness, a cousin of Disney’s Song of the South,from the next decade. But “Lazybones” is of a piece with Mercer’s better-known, more universal compositions, which, while always clever, were never more complicated than they needed to be. His melodies don’t leap and dash—they glide along conversationally, as if he made them up on the spot. Lyrically, he never used two syllables when one would do, and he returned to Southern nature scenes over and over again, letting his images quietly speak for themselves. In “Skylark,” one of his most-recorded songs, he asks the title bird,
Have you seen a valley green with spring,
Where my heart can go a-journeying?
Over the shadows and the rain,
To a blossom-covered lane.
And in my favorite of his songs, the 1939 Jimmy Van Heusen tune “I Thought About You,” he finds uncommon emotional complexity in an uneventful nighttime ride:
I took a trip on a train
And I thought about you.
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about you.
Two or three cars parked under the stars,
Winding stream.
Moon shining down on some little town,
And with each beam, the same old dream.
Is the singer sad or happy, regretful or horny? He claims to feel blue, but that’s as much as we’re told about his internal state. Instead, we’re presented with one fleeting, unpeopled scene after another, all described with an absolute minimum of words and only the slightest up-and-down incremental melody. When Yip Harburg, the celebrated lyricist and Mercer mentor, described his protege as “one of our great folk poets,” this was the kind of song he surely had in mind.
Beyond his lyrics’ rural and black affectations—the dropped g’s, the cornpone scenery—Mercer brought a distinctly Southern stillness to American pop. Economical yet vivid in his natural descriptions, he kept his songs’ emotions at a cool simmer and rarely told stories, instead opting for calm, wistful dioramas like the one he arranges in “Early Autumn”:
When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze
And touches with her hand the summer trees,
Perhaps you’ll understand what memories I own.
There’s a dance pavilion in the rain all shuttered down,
A winding country lane all russet brown,
A frosty windowpane shows me a town grown lonely.
Mercer wrote nearly 1,500 songs, so maybe it’s unfair to point out that three of the four I’ve quoted so far include mention of a “lane,” an easy (and easily rhymeable) symbol for escapist romance. But I wouldn’t be the first to acknowledge his complacent streak; prolific as he was, Mercer garnered a reputation as a bit of a lazybones himself.
He preferred to write lyrics while supine, eyes closed, “as if he could dream songs into existence,” according to the critic Wilfrid Sheed. His entire public persona was built around this same aloofness; onstage (a rare occurrence, though he became better known for live performances in the 1970s), his mind seemed to be elsewhere, and even his Tinseltown reminiscences seem muted, obligatory. While Mercer worked consistently for decades, for every great pop composer of the era, he was strongest on the scale of individual songs. No major Broadway success, no film soundtrack, no grand artistic statement ever sprung from those naps with the muse. His tower of song was built verse by casual verse.
His singing voice, too—like that of another Southern-bred, Hollywood-friendly master of concision, Randy Newman, who resembles Mercer more than any songwriter since at least the Brill Building era—could blur the line between “relaxed” and “soporific.” He made his friend and early creative partner Bing Crosby sound over-caffeinated.
But he roiled inside. When he drank, which he did often, he got blackout hammered and became infamously abusive. He spewed insults at good friends, dumped cocktails on his wife’s head, urinated in a hostess’s shoes, and once tried to force himself on his own niece. In the mornings he was always contrite, sending remorseful notes of apology, and most recollections of Mercer are besotted, not angry. In Savannah now, he is remembered as a classic Southern gentleman, an inspiration for museums, historical walks, and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. You’d think he owned the place. But in fact, he tended to keep the town at arm’s length, as he did most things.
Asked by the state legislature to compose a new official Georgia song, he came up with a rare seven-verse epic that slathers on the good-ole-summertime hokum and never reveals anything meaningful about his attachment to the place:
Georgia, Georgia, where do I start?
Words can sing but not like the heart;
There’s no land in all this earth,
Like the land of my birth.
Georgia, Georgia, careless yield
Watermelons ripe in the field;
Pine trees full of red-bird song,
River rollin’ along.
Georgia nights when twilight is done,
Smell of peaches long in the sun,
Breeze comes blowin’ through the shade
Like a cool lemonade.
The song, according to his memoir, was ultimately rejected for being “too Savannah” to reflect the whole state, but that might grant it too much credit. Rare for Mercer, he lifted a few lines from another source, in this case Stephen Vincent Benét’s “John Brown’s Body,” though he borrowed none of Benét’s galloping intensity. Instead, this ode to Georgia is positively generic, proof that Mercer’s genius was for sly gesture and restrained emotion, not heart-swelling pride and love, and certainly not for unabashed sentimentalism.
Perhaps this is Johnny Mercer’s true legacy—he not only smuggled a genuine Southern musical sensibility into the Great American Songbook, he brought along the whole breadth of regional contradictions that have historically fed so much of the South’s art and angst. He was both a manor-born gentleman and a venomous alcoholic; a prolific natural talent and, according to many who knew him, a bafflingly unambitious artist; he had black music and speech in his marrow, yet never had a close black friend. He may have been the first writer to bring Southern identity to American pop, yet one of his most famous songs claimed, “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home.”
Like any pioneer, Mercer bridged worlds as a matter of course. He made the exotic seem natural and welcome, and never more so than in “That Old Black Magic,” written in 1941 and inspired by Cole Porter’s line, “Do do that voodoo that you do so well,” from “You Do Something to Me.” Mercer transformed the idea from mere wordplay to a whole motif, envisioning black magic as a welcome sensual trance:
That old black magic has me in its spell,
That old black magic that you weave so well.
Icy fingers up and down my spine,
The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
The same old tingle that I feel insideD
When that elevator starts its ride.
Down and down I go, ‘round and ‘round I go,
Like a leaf that’s caught in the tide.
Mercer’s words conjured new voices, new vistas, but they always seem to beckon: don’t fear. No big words here, no artsy posturing. Even witchcraft is as natural as the water and the leaves. I may drink too much, but I’ll always apologize. Come on in.
————————————————————
** An exclusive 1961 demo recording of “Moon River”—performed by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini—appears on our Georgia Music Issue (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/173-issue-91-georgia-music-issue) CD.
————————————————————
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=06f72d534d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=06f72d534d&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
That Old Black Magic The moony lyricism of Johnny Mercer: From: The Oxford American
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/752-that-old-black-magic
ISSUE 91, WINTER 2015 (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/173-issue-91-georgia-music-issue)
** THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC
————————————————————
By John Lingan (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/user/1031-johnlingan) | January 21, 2016
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/media/k2/items/cache/a7c7e20ef55b9c6f68541bcec8a4cfb6_XL.jpg“Castaway/Harvest” (2013), by Jeffrey Whittle
Supposedly, in a moment of frustration in the early 1950s, Sam Phillips told his business partner, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Only a few years later, Phillips would record Elvis Presley and more or less prove the point. But for all the savvy of his label boss, the King wasn’t the first white boy to bring a firsthand love of black culture to the American musical mainstream. A generation earlier, another Southerner—this one entirely un-Presley-like in his sound and upbringing—drew from the same tradition and made, if not quite a billion dollars, certainly an inexhaustible fortune, and left behind a half-dozen of America’s most indelible melodies besides.
Johnny Mercer arrived in New York in 1928, at the height of Tin Pan Alley. George Gershwin had premiered “Rhapsody in Blue” four years prior, and Cole Porter was at work on what would become his first hit musical, Paris. The Roaring Twenties were American music’s debutante ball, the historical moment when urbane sophisticates wed jazz idioms and orchestral ambition. Before, the young nation boasted only regional music: minstrelsy, Dixieland, cowboy tunes, shape note. Now it had the Great American Songbook.
Mercer was eighteen at the time and had listened to songs by Gershwin, Porter, Irving Berlin, and their New York colleagues for years during his rollicking yet privileged adolescence in Savannah. But coming from a moneyed Georgia family, with ancestors who fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, his musical background included more than just their pop hits. In an unpublished memoir—written in 1973, three years before his death—Mercer begins his life story with a description of the commute to his family’s summer home in the country: “The roads were still unpaved, made of crushed oyster shell, and as they wound their way under the trees covered with Spanish moss, it was a sweet, indolent background for a boy to grow up in.” Even more than the rural Georgia scenery, he recalls “the help,” who lived in nearby houses on the property and came over regularly to do their own domestic upkeep—laundry, cooking, bathing—in addition to serving the Mercers:
Having all those colored people around meant having a lot of music also, and not only did we get the traditional lullabies and work songs, but we’d get to hear their church services upon an occasional Sunday. As a matter of fact, I can hardly ever remember there not being music, in town or out. My Aunt Hattie swears I hummed back at her at the tender age of 6 months, and she always used to take me to see the minstrel shows which were so popular then in the South as well as the big Northern cities.
At the country property, on the banks of the Vernon River—a landscape that inspired “Moon River,” for which Mercer would later win the third of his four “best original song” Oscars, in 1961—he heard these same black families speak Geechee, the Carolina dialect that Gershwin appropriated for Porgy and Bess. But Mercer’s cross-cultural education was fostered in the city as well. His father, a banker who lost his fortune right as Johnny set out for Manhattan, sang along to his sizable collection of race records at home. As soon as Johnny was old enough, he did his own record shopping, showing a particular appetite for Louis Armstrong. With his parents and brother, he was a regular attendee of the famed Savannah Easter parade, a vibrant showcase of black dance, music, and fashion. His black nurse sang him spirituals in between lullabies. (Decades later, Mercer would pay to repair the roof of her church.) As a boy, he took regular walks through town, peeking in the city’s black
churches, grabbing a seat if a pew was open. His regular stops included the United House of Prayer for All People, where he heard the controversial Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace preach during the faith healer’s regular trips to town.
“George Gershwin could go up to Harlem to hear jazz and blues,” wrote biographer Philip Furia, but “Johnny Mercer, alone among the great songwriters of his generation, was, from the day he was born, influenced by the music of blacks.”
Relative to Elvis, Mercer’s most famous songs bore little of that influence on the surface. He wrote the lyrics for an unbelievable run of hits in the late 1930s and ’40s, often recording his own popular versions as a vocalist: “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “I’m Old Fashioned,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” “Laura,” “Fools Rush In.” But his very first commercial success, a lesser-known 1933 Hoagy Carmichael collaboration called “Lazybones,” which was a hit for Mildred Bailey (and later Louis Armstrong himself), was a direct homage to the voices he’d heard as a boy:
Long as there is chicken gravy on your rice,
Everything is nice.
Long as there’s a watermelon on your vine,
Everything is fine . . .
Lazybones, sleepin’ in the shade,
How you ‘spec’ to get your cornmeal made?
Never get your cornmeal made,
Sleepin’ in the evenin’ shade.
“Lazybones,” recorded the same year that Gershwin’s Geechee opera premiered, depicts “taters” in the ground, the hot noon sun, and a fishing line hanging in the water—a Southern pastoral so Edenic that it’s nearly pastiche. It’s also, despite black artists’ embrace of the song, a borderline-racist depiction of Southern blackness, a cousin of Disney’s Song of the South,from the next decade. But “Lazybones” is of a piece with Mercer’s better-known, more universal compositions, which, while always clever, were never more complicated than they needed to be. His melodies don’t leap and dash—they glide along conversationally, as if he made them up on the spot. Lyrically, he never used two syllables when one would do, and he returned to Southern nature scenes over and over again, letting his images quietly speak for themselves. In “Skylark,” one of his most-recorded songs, he asks the title bird,
Have you seen a valley green with spring,
Where my heart can go a-journeying?
Over the shadows and the rain,
To a blossom-covered lane.
And in my favorite of his songs, the 1939 Jimmy Van Heusen tune “I Thought About You,” he finds uncommon emotional complexity in an uneventful nighttime ride:
I took a trip on a train
And I thought about you.
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about you.
Two or three cars parked under the stars,
Winding stream.
Moon shining down on some little town,
And with each beam, the same old dream.
Is the singer sad or happy, regretful or horny? He claims to feel blue, but that’s as much as we’re told about his internal state. Instead, we’re presented with one fleeting, unpeopled scene after another, all described with an absolute minimum of words and only the slightest up-and-down incremental melody. When Yip Harburg, the celebrated lyricist and Mercer mentor, described his protege as “one of our great folk poets,” this was the kind of song he surely had in mind.
Beyond his lyrics’ rural and black affectations—the dropped g’s, the cornpone scenery—Mercer brought a distinctly Southern stillness to American pop. Economical yet vivid in his natural descriptions, he kept his songs’ emotions at a cool simmer and rarely told stories, instead opting for calm, wistful dioramas like the one he arranges in “Early Autumn”:
When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze
And touches with her hand the summer trees,
Perhaps you’ll understand what memories I own.
There’s a dance pavilion in the rain all shuttered down,
A winding country lane all russet brown,
A frosty windowpane shows me a town grown lonely.
Mercer wrote nearly 1,500 songs, so maybe it’s unfair to point out that three of the four I’ve quoted so far include mention of a “lane,” an easy (and easily rhymeable) symbol for escapist romance. But I wouldn’t be the first to acknowledge his complacent streak; prolific as he was, Mercer garnered a reputation as a bit of a lazybones himself.
He preferred to write lyrics while supine, eyes closed, “as if he could dream songs into existence,” according to the critic Wilfrid Sheed. His entire public persona was built around this same aloofness; onstage (a rare occurrence, though he became better known for live performances in the 1970s), his mind seemed to be elsewhere, and even his Tinseltown reminiscences seem muted, obligatory. While Mercer worked consistently for decades, for every great pop composer of the era, he was strongest on the scale of individual songs. No major Broadway success, no film soundtrack, no grand artistic statement ever sprung from those naps with the muse. His tower of song was built verse by casual verse.
His singing voice, too—like that of another Southern-bred, Hollywood-friendly master of concision, Randy Newman, who resembles Mercer more than any songwriter since at least the Brill Building era—could blur the line between “relaxed” and “soporific.” He made his friend and early creative partner Bing Crosby sound over-caffeinated.
But he roiled inside. When he drank, which he did often, he got blackout hammered and became infamously abusive. He spewed insults at good friends, dumped cocktails on his wife’s head, urinated in a hostess’s shoes, and once tried to force himself on his own niece. In the mornings he was always contrite, sending remorseful notes of apology, and most recollections of Mercer are besotted, not angry. In Savannah now, he is remembered as a classic Southern gentleman, an inspiration for museums, historical walks, and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. You’d think he owned the place. But in fact, he tended to keep the town at arm’s length, as he did most things.
Asked by the state legislature to compose a new official Georgia song, he came up with a rare seven-verse epic that slathers on the good-ole-summertime hokum and never reveals anything meaningful about his attachment to the place:
Georgia, Georgia, where do I start?
Words can sing but not like the heart;
There’s no land in all this earth,
Like the land of my birth.
Georgia, Georgia, careless yield
Watermelons ripe in the field;
Pine trees full of red-bird song,
River rollin’ along.
Georgia nights when twilight is done,
Smell of peaches long in the sun,
Breeze comes blowin’ through the shade
Like a cool lemonade.
The song, according to his memoir, was ultimately rejected for being “too Savannah” to reflect the whole state, but that might grant it too much credit. Rare for Mercer, he lifted a few lines from another source, in this case Stephen Vincent Benét’s “John Brown’s Body,” though he borrowed none of Benét’s galloping intensity. Instead, this ode to Georgia is positively generic, proof that Mercer’s genius was for sly gesture and restrained emotion, not heart-swelling pride and love, and certainly not for unabashed sentimentalism.
Perhaps this is Johnny Mercer’s true legacy—he not only smuggled a genuine Southern musical sensibility into the Great American Songbook, he brought along the whole breadth of regional contradictions that have historically fed so much of the South’s art and angst. He was both a manor-born gentleman and a venomous alcoholic; a prolific natural talent and, according to many who knew him, a bafflingly unambitious artist; he had black music and speech in his marrow, yet never had a close black friend. He may have been the first writer to bring Southern identity to American pop, yet one of his most famous songs claimed, “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home.”
Like any pioneer, Mercer bridged worlds as a matter of course. He made the exotic seem natural and welcome, and never more so than in “That Old Black Magic,” written in 1941 and inspired by Cole Porter’s line, “Do do that voodoo that you do so well,” from “You Do Something to Me.” Mercer transformed the idea from mere wordplay to a whole motif, envisioning black magic as a welcome sensual trance:
That old black magic has me in its spell,
That old black magic that you weave so well.
Icy fingers up and down my spine,
The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
The same old tingle that I feel insideD
When that elevator starts its ride.
Down and down I go, ‘round and ‘round I go,
Like a leaf that’s caught in the tide.
Mercer’s words conjured new voices, new vistas, but they always seem to beckon: don’t fear. No big words here, no artsy posturing. Even witchcraft is as natural as the water and the leaves. I may drink too much, but I’ll always apologize. Come on in.
————————————————————
** An exclusive 1961 demo recording of “Moon River”—performed by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini—appears on our Georgia Music Issue (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/173-issue-91-georgia-music-issue) CD.
————————————————————
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
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That Old Black Magic The moony lyricism of Johnny Mercer: From: The Oxford American
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/752-that-old-black-magic
ISSUE 91, WINTER 2015 (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/173-issue-91-georgia-music-issue)
** THAT OLD BLACK MAGIC
————————————————————
By John Lingan (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/user/1031-johnlingan) | January 21, 2016
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/media/k2/items/cache/a7c7e20ef55b9c6f68541bcec8a4cfb6_XL.jpg“Castaway/Harvest” (2013), by Jeffrey Whittle
Supposedly, in a moment of frustration in the early 1950s, Sam Phillips told his business partner, “If I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and the Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars.” Only a few years later, Phillips would record Elvis Presley and more or less prove the point. But for all the savvy of his label boss, the King wasn’t the first white boy to bring a firsthand love of black culture to the American musical mainstream. A generation earlier, another Southerner—this one entirely un-Presley-like in his sound and upbringing—drew from the same tradition and made, if not quite a billion dollars, certainly an inexhaustible fortune, and left behind a half-dozen of America’s most indelible melodies besides.
Johnny Mercer arrived in New York in 1928, at the height of Tin Pan Alley. George Gershwin had premiered “Rhapsody in Blue” four years prior, and Cole Porter was at work on what would become his first hit musical, Paris. The Roaring Twenties were American music’s debutante ball, the historical moment when urbane sophisticates wed jazz idioms and orchestral ambition. Before, the young nation boasted only regional music: minstrelsy, Dixieland, cowboy tunes, shape note. Now it had the Great American Songbook.
Mercer was eighteen at the time and had listened to songs by Gershwin, Porter, Irving Berlin, and their New York colleagues for years during his rollicking yet privileged adolescence in Savannah. But coming from a moneyed Georgia family, with ancestors who fought in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, his musical background included more than just their pop hits. In an unpublished memoir—written in 1973, three years before his death—Mercer begins his life story with a description of the commute to his family’s summer home in the country: “The roads were still unpaved, made of crushed oyster shell, and as they wound their way under the trees covered with Spanish moss, it was a sweet, indolent background for a boy to grow up in.” Even more than the rural Georgia scenery, he recalls “the help,” who lived in nearby houses on the property and came over regularly to do their own domestic upkeep—laundry, cooking, bathing—in addition to serving the Mercers:
Having all those colored people around meant having a lot of music also, and not only did we get the traditional lullabies and work songs, but we’d get to hear their church services upon an occasional Sunday. As a matter of fact, I can hardly ever remember there not being music, in town or out. My Aunt Hattie swears I hummed back at her at the tender age of 6 months, and she always used to take me to see the minstrel shows which were so popular then in the South as well as the big Northern cities.
At the country property, on the banks of the Vernon River—a landscape that inspired “Moon River,” for which Mercer would later win the third of his four “best original song” Oscars, in 1961—he heard these same black families speak Geechee, the Carolina dialect that Gershwin appropriated for Porgy and Bess. But Mercer’s cross-cultural education was fostered in the city as well. His father, a banker who lost his fortune right as Johnny set out for Manhattan, sang along to his sizable collection of race records at home. As soon as Johnny was old enough, he did his own record shopping, showing a particular appetite for Louis Armstrong. With his parents and brother, he was a regular attendee of the famed Savannah Easter parade, a vibrant showcase of black dance, music, and fashion. His black nurse sang him spirituals in between lullabies. (Decades later, Mercer would pay to repair the roof of her church.) As a boy, he took regular walks through town, peeking in the city’s black
churches, grabbing a seat if a pew was open. His regular stops included the United House of Prayer for All People, where he heard the controversial Charles Manuel “Sweet Daddy” Grace preach during the faith healer’s regular trips to town.
“George Gershwin could go up to Harlem to hear jazz and blues,” wrote biographer Philip Furia, but “Johnny Mercer, alone among the great songwriters of his generation, was, from the day he was born, influenced by the music of blacks.”
Relative to Elvis, Mercer’s most famous songs bore little of that influence on the surface. He wrote the lyrics for an unbelievable run of hits in the late 1930s and ’40s, often recording his own popular versions as a vocalist: “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” “I’m Old Fashioned,” “Too Marvelous for Words,” “One for My Baby (And One More for the Road),” “Laura,” “Fools Rush In.” But his very first commercial success, a lesser-known 1933 Hoagy Carmichael collaboration called “Lazybones,” which was a hit for Mildred Bailey (and later Louis Armstrong himself), was a direct homage to the voices he’d heard as a boy:
Long as there is chicken gravy on your rice,
Everything is nice.
Long as there’s a watermelon on your vine,
Everything is fine . . .
Lazybones, sleepin’ in the shade,
How you ‘spec’ to get your cornmeal made?
Never get your cornmeal made,
Sleepin’ in the evenin’ shade.
“Lazybones,” recorded the same year that Gershwin’s Geechee opera premiered, depicts “taters” in the ground, the hot noon sun, and a fishing line hanging in the water—a Southern pastoral so Edenic that it’s nearly pastiche. It’s also, despite black artists’ embrace of the song, a borderline-racist depiction of Southern blackness, a cousin of Disney’s Song of the South,from the next decade. But “Lazybones” is of a piece with Mercer’s better-known, more universal compositions, which, while always clever, were never more complicated than they needed to be. His melodies don’t leap and dash—they glide along conversationally, as if he made them up on the spot. Lyrically, he never used two syllables when one would do, and he returned to Southern nature scenes over and over again, letting his images quietly speak for themselves. In “Skylark,” one of his most-recorded songs, he asks the title bird,
Have you seen a valley green with spring,
Where my heart can go a-journeying?
Over the shadows and the rain,
To a blossom-covered lane.
And in my favorite of his songs, the 1939 Jimmy Van Heusen tune “I Thought About You,” he finds uncommon emotional complexity in an uneventful nighttime ride:
I took a trip on a train
And I thought about you.
I passed a shadowy lane
And I thought about you.
Two or three cars parked under the stars,
Winding stream.
Moon shining down on some little town,
And with each beam, the same old dream.
Is the singer sad or happy, regretful or horny? He claims to feel blue, but that’s as much as we’re told about his internal state. Instead, we’re presented with one fleeting, unpeopled scene after another, all described with an absolute minimum of words and only the slightest up-and-down incremental melody. When Yip Harburg, the celebrated lyricist and Mercer mentor, described his protege as “one of our great folk poets,” this was the kind of song he surely had in mind.
Beyond his lyrics’ rural and black affectations—the dropped g’s, the cornpone scenery—Mercer brought a distinctly Southern stillness to American pop. Economical yet vivid in his natural descriptions, he kept his songs’ emotions at a cool simmer and rarely told stories, instead opting for calm, wistful dioramas like the one he arranges in “Early Autumn”:
When an early autumn walks the land and chills the breeze
And touches with her hand the summer trees,
Perhaps you’ll understand what memories I own.
There’s a dance pavilion in the rain all shuttered down,
A winding country lane all russet brown,
A frosty windowpane shows me a town grown lonely.
Mercer wrote nearly 1,500 songs, so maybe it’s unfair to point out that three of the four I’ve quoted so far include mention of a “lane,” an easy (and easily rhymeable) symbol for escapist romance. But I wouldn’t be the first to acknowledge his complacent streak; prolific as he was, Mercer garnered a reputation as a bit of a lazybones himself.
He preferred to write lyrics while supine, eyes closed, “as if he could dream songs into existence,” according to the critic Wilfrid Sheed. His entire public persona was built around this same aloofness; onstage (a rare occurrence, though he became better known for live performances in the 1970s), his mind seemed to be elsewhere, and even his Tinseltown reminiscences seem muted, obligatory. While Mercer worked consistently for decades, for every great pop composer of the era, he was strongest on the scale of individual songs. No major Broadway success, no film soundtrack, no grand artistic statement ever sprung from those naps with the muse. His tower of song was built verse by casual verse.
His singing voice, too—like that of another Southern-bred, Hollywood-friendly master of concision, Randy Newman, who resembles Mercer more than any songwriter since at least the Brill Building era—could blur the line between “relaxed” and “soporific.” He made his friend and early creative partner Bing Crosby sound over-caffeinated.
But he roiled inside. When he drank, which he did often, he got blackout hammered and became infamously abusive. He spewed insults at good friends, dumped cocktails on his wife’s head, urinated in a hostess’s shoes, and once tried to force himself on his own niece. In the mornings he was always contrite, sending remorseful notes of apology, and most recollections of Mercer are besotted, not angry. In Savannah now, he is remembered as a classic Southern gentleman, an inspiration for museums, historical walks, and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. You’d think he owned the place. But in fact, he tended to keep the town at arm’s length, as he did most things.
Asked by the state legislature to compose a new official Georgia song, he came up with a rare seven-verse epic that slathers on the good-ole-summertime hokum and never reveals anything meaningful about his attachment to the place:
Georgia, Georgia, where do I start?
Words can sing but not like the heart;
There’s no land in all this earth,
Like the land of my birth.
Georgia, Georgia, careless yield
Watermelons ripe in the field;
Pine trees full of red-bird song,
River rollin’ along.
Georgia nights when twilight is done,
Smell of peaches long in the sun,
Breeze comes blowin’ through the shade
Like a cool lemonade.
The song, according to his memoir, was ultimately rejected for being “too Savannah” to reflect the whole state, but that might grant it too much credit. Rare for Mercer, he lifted a few lines from another source, in this case Stephen Vincent Benét’s “John Brown’s Body,” though he borrowed none of Benét’s galloping intensity. Instead, this ode to Georgia is positively generic, proof that Mercer’s genius was for sly gesture and restrained emotion, not heart-swelling pride and love, and certainly not for unabashed sentimentalism.
Perhaps this is Johnny Mercer’s true legacy—he not only smuggled a genuine Southern musical sensibility into the Great American Songbook, he brought along the whole breadth of regional contradictions that have historically fed so much of the South’s art and angst. He was both a manor-born gentleman and a venomous alcoholic; a prolific natural talent and, according to many who knew him, a bafflingly unambitious artist; he had black music and speech in his marrow, yet never had a close black friend. He may have been the first writer to bring Southern identity to American pop, yet one of his most famous songs claimed, “Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home.”
Like any pioneer, Mercer bridged worlds as a matter of course. He made the exotic seem natural and welcome, and never more so than in “That Old Black Magic,” written in 1941 and inspired by Cole Porter’s line, “Do do that voodoo that you do so well,” from “You Do Something to Me.” Mercer transformed the idea from mere wordplay to a whole motif, envisioning black magic as a welcome sensual trance:
That old black magic has me in its spell,
That old black magic that you weave so well.
Icy fingers up and down my spine,
The same old witchcraft when your eyes meet mine.
The same old tingle that I feel insideD
When that elevator starts its ride.
Down and down I go, ‘round and ‘round I go,
Like a leaf that’s caught in the tide.
Mercer’s words conjured new voices, new vistas, but they always seem to beckon: don’t fear. No big words here, no artsy posturing. Even witchcraft is as natural as the water and the leaves. I may drink too much, but I’ll always apologize. Come on in.
————————————————————
** An exclusive 1961 demo recording of “Moon River”—performed by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini—appears on our Georgia Music Issue (http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/itemlist/category/173-issue-91-georgia-music-issue) CD.
————————————————————
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=06f72d534d) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=06f72d534d&e=[UNIQID])
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Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Eddie Lang Mural proposal
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
Guitarist and bandleader Richard Barnes is proposing a mural honoring South Philadelphia’s legendary musician, Eddie Lang. (Salvatore Massaro).
Richard will discuss this at the next community meeting Wednesday evening at the Palumbo Recreation Center, 10th and Fitzwater.
“This mural will depict Eddie Lang as the center piece, honoring him as a musician, local resident ( St Albans St) , Italian American.
I plan to incorporate elements of his life including a smaller photo of Venuti, Bing Crosby, Bessie Smith and the James Campbell School, as well as utilizing vintage photos I’ve found of the intersection from the 19teens/20s.”
I am attaching a rough first draft showing my ideas.
Richard Barnes
Richard Barnes Photography
RBarnesPhotography.com
PO Box 402 , Media Pa
c – 484.478.1638
e – RBarnesPhotography@comcast.net (mailto:RBarnesPhotography@comcast.net)
** Wednesday, January 27, 2016, 7 pm
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** Palumbo Recreation Center @ 10th & Fitzwater
————————————————————
Come to learn more about your neighborhood and interesting things going on nearby too.
We are pleased to host the following guests who will speak about the latest:
* Richard Barnes: Mural proposal for 7th & Fitzwater.
Anthony DiFlorio
RLI – Dist 7
Rizzo Rink
1001 S Front St
Phila., PA 19147
215-685-1593
tony@rizzorink.com (mailto:tony@rizzorink.com)
267-240-5459
Jim Eigo Jazz Promo Services T: 845-986-1677 E-Mail: j (mailto:jazzpromo@earthlink.net) im@jazzpromoservices.com (mailto:jim@jazzpromoservices.com)
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com (http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/)
HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.
CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDvUe6fkNLU)
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=8dd00bbbbc) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=8dd00bbbbc&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2016 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA