Essays-Thoughts

Lionel Swinging!

Hi All,

I play regularly with a few drummers who can't read music, one most of the time and a couple of others on a fairly regular fill-in basis. I've been trying to get us to do some more formal arrangements of tunes -- nothing terribly complicated, just some accent points and rhythm breaks, added interludes and the like, although I'd like to get more complicated. I've been having trouble communicating these things to the drummers though.

in 1995 the college i briefly taught at brought in Clark Terry to play for a jazz festival. I was the guy picked to pick him up a the Airport in Chicago.. what an adventure. the college was a couple hours from chicago and i had never been to chicago never mind drove there..finally arrived a the airport.. got stuck in the one way lane so it took me atleast an hour to get to the parking for pick up .. whew .. i pulled and met John, cant think of his last name, but he was clarks personal manager.. he brought clark out in a wheel chair... and as soon as clark got in the car ..

I have had an ongoing discussion with the handful of students and friends who have come to me over the years about the nature of what we are doing as jazz musicians, how to study it and how it fits into the whole music in general. Recently, Tony and I were discussing some of this offline and he encouraged me to put this out here in this forum for discussion.

I love that idea.

Some time ago, Tony started a "gig story" series. This one here is by Paul Emil Breitenfeld, AKA Paul Desmond. It's to be found, among other things in relation to Desmond, on http://www.puredesmond.ca/. It's a most humorous gig story written by the guy who thought he sounded "like a dry Martini". We can all do with a bit of humor these days, can't we ?
I've attached it as a PDF file.

OK... when I first told Tony about this, I realized immediately that I have kept this hidden for years because, frankly, I am embarrassed at the way I wrote it. It was 30+ years ago and I had more than just a little youthful attitude. It sucks in that way. Here's the deal though... if anyone out here can benefit from what I started then I should put it out here and trust those of you who know me to understand that a kid younger than my own children are now wrote this.

Hey tony, I'm curious as to what type of music you compose and what it sounds like. Can you post some of it?!

I posted this over at www.larrysimprovpage.com and thought that maybe it would be of interest to some of you here, especially the pros.

Everybody is going for a bail out plan, well jazz musicians should also. After all, look at all the gigs we're losing because of those greedy f*(kin b**t(*(s who chiseled away everything they could until there was nothing left. They didn't care about anybody including our jazz gigs!

So I propose only 1 billion to be set aside to compensate us for the following (that's much less then anyone else is asking for):

ok, im thinking as i listen the digital jazz station that we get thru cable Tv. so many different recordings and omg the history .. so i got to thinkng.. I wonder what bobby hutcherson is listening to? what is tony listening too .. and on and on .. so here is the question..

What is everyone listening to right this moment in time that your reading this blog?

tal is amazing .. the red norvo quartets are my favorite..if i remember right mingus was on bass.

sorry had to comment on the tune... wow now a cut from a french saxphonist ..

If you haven't checked this out, do so. It's really cool what's happened here and what's been talk about.

I learned a lot from it!