I don't know either of course, but I would not be surprised at all if he did play it. Many professional musicians, known essentially for one instrument, often play multiple instruments though they may never do that professionally. I somehow doubt Duke was mimicking only for a camera. He seems to have been too proud a man to do something like that if he had no ability at all. I wouldn't be surprised if he played with certain chords on the guitar. I decided to call my friend, a serious Duke collector who had once been Jerry Valburn's associate (the world's #1 Duke collector), and asked him. He wasn't aware of whether Duke played guitar.
Well, as an amateur guitarist myself I have never seen a photo of Duke with a guitar where it actually looked as if Duke was playing a real note or really knew what he was doing, but just posing. Duke was a ham. He was photographed with instruments draped all over him, and many other publicity photos that were . . . well . . . . I love the man's music and his sort of subversive sense of humor. I wish we could see more of his paintings. Still I don't get the sense he could play the guitar. Doesn't diminish him in any way in my estimation!
Blue Mitchell - Down With It! I have long considered Blue Mitchell's The Thing to Do to be one of the all time great trumpet albums. I also very much enjoy any of the 8 Blue Mitchell albums that appear on my bargain basement set of all eight Blue Mitchell albums from 1958 to 1963, Blue Soul also being one of the all time greats and most of the rest being at least excellent. So I figure it was time to move forward and see where Mr. Mitchell went after is seminal album. Next up in the chronological queue was this, Down With It!. To be fair, probably nothing could have followed The Thing to Do! without being a bit of a letdown. Down With It! is a bit more letdown than I hoped. It's a fine album as a representative of good quality hard bop/soul jazz of the time, and well worth a listen, but hardly a barn burner. A young Chick Corea plays well enough but doesn't come across as particularly inspired. Sax man Junior Cook occasionally cooks, as does Mitchell, and there are enough memorable moments to make this album worth the time. I found the album's high point to be the lively, soulful, and impressively delivered "March on Selma," which would have been a standout track on any Blue Mitchell album. Unbeatable, that one; it'll be taking a prominent place in my best jazz playlist.
I bought that when it came out. I used to meet Harry Lim, the original producer of the Keynote jazz sessions, when he worked at Sam Goody's Records in NYC (the biggest in the world at that time). I was disappointed that there was not an appropriate companion set that included Keynote's other great musical contribution, the 1940's issues of folk & blues by artists that were later blacklisted, like Paul Robeson. Most of the Keynote sessions by these artists have remained rare. I just came across my pile of Keynote 78 RPMs. They are very special. But Keynote made a bad business decision in its heyday. It used the lowest grade materials for its records, making the surfaces much noisier than those in high grade material records, such as those used by RCA Victor. Many companies thought of music as very ephemeral, like newspapers, so they did not care. During the war, good materials were in high demand, or restricted, and probably only the biggest companies could get good materials. But the low quality persisted later too. They broke more easily too. I really wish Fresh Sounds had done a proper reissue of the entire box. They probably thought they would sell more with a slimmer version. But it might have been the opposite. A CD edition of the full box may have been a must buy for many people. I skipped it myself as it wasn't complete
Very true. But it got me to thinking about how Duke managed while on the long tours of one night stands. These stories of him composing all of the time, late at night, make me wonder whether he had some piano at hand. But how? I recall stories of the tours that were not by railroad, but on the highways, where most of the band was on the bus, while Duke and Harry Carney drove Duke's car (Harry behind the wheel, I believe). Where could any piano go? It seems too hard to move about for one night into a hotel room at the hotels that would even allow Duke as a guest.
I had no idea that Duke chatted up women to get them to move his traveling piano. But if these guys could manage, I suppose the society ladies could definitely move his key board.
When I was 22, I found a damaged piano and mounted the piano harp on my living room wall (with help from friends). I had some mallets and hoped guests would enjoy making some music. Perhaps I thought it would attract ladies the way Duke did, but it seemed to have the opposite effect. Fortunately the next tenant thought it was cool. The landlord lived in Greece, so had no idea. Not this one:
Around 20 years ago I bought a dozen or so V Discs at Village Music in Mill Valley, CA, by artists such as Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Les Paul, and many others. I spent a few hours today transferring them to digital. V Discs were US government-sponsored 12" 78s recorded during 1942-1949, and distributed exclusively to military bases. These special recordings were produced during the infamous musician's union strike that put the brakes on commercial recording for two years, and so these are among the only authorized recordings of pop and jazz during that period. Per the agreement with the union, at the end of the war the masters were destroyed and the issued discs were supposed to have been collected and destroyed as well... so V Discs are fairly rare today. The recordings vary in quality, as they were not typically done during formal recording sessions. Some were cut on film studio soundstages or at radio station facilities. The informal nature of the records led to some fairly unusual performances by well-known artists. For example, check out Jo Stafford singing a blues filled with racy double-entendres!
I was at that same shop in 1989 and bought a small pile of V Discs. I am not sure whether you got my leftovers or I got your leftovers. But I left many there. At that time, I was only trying to collect V Discs that were in very good shape. As they were played very frequently and handled roughly, most surviving copies tend to be pretty worn. But after that, I picked them up in lesser condition, unless they were totally wiped. My best day getting V Discs was at a local garage sale many years ago. I spotted a few and was so pleased that I asked the old man about them. He told me that he had been a chaplain in WWII. Aside from their spiritual duties, chaplains were also in charge of recreation (makes sense?) and thus had the prime responsibility for V Discs. After the war and the orders came to destroy them, as a music lover, he just could not do that, so he saved them and shipped them home. He had boxes of them, many still in the original WWII V-Disc shipping boxes. He was so pleased with my interest that he gave them all to me for free. He said there were many like him, who did not destroy them. He said he thought only briefly about ethics. Then he thought about the music. Last year, I found a shop that was selling them for $1 each. I bought about 50! The shop owner said they were not in good condition. I thought he was nuts, and he thought I was nuts. I suspect that many V-Discs remained in the areas of military occupation, especially in Europe and Japan. Collectors in those countries probably have far more than exist in the USA. I also suspect that the main audience for V Discs was in those areas (they continued to be made after the war), because military bases in the USA could easily tune in American AM radio. Perhaps you are not aware, but only a minority of the V-discs were unique recordings made exclusively for the V-Discs. Many were either air-checks (recordings of songs taken off popular AM radio programs) or V Disc pressings of commercially issued records (probably donated without license fees by the major record labels). This was the idea back then. Too bad the idea was lost in our government. They came in all musical varieties: jazz, swing, pop, classical, folk, etc.
Cannonball Adderley/ Cannonball's Sharpshooters (1959) Cannonball, alto sax Nat Adderley, trumpet Junior Mance, piano Sam Jones, bass Jimmy Cobb, drums Swing easy, Jimmy. "Jubilation" Natalie Weiner's obituary for Jimmy has a lovely final line. Jimmy Cobb, The Pulse Of 'Kind Of Blue,' Dies At 91
I like this one rather more than you do, and all of Mitchell's Blue Notes til we get to Collision in Black and Bantu Village which are really Monk Higgins records to me. I think Hi-Heel Sneakers grooves insanely.
I'm not very keen about some types of jazz, and the one that falls into the Latin-American category is one of them. Nevertheless, I like to challenge myself from time to time. So, I ordered this box set of Stan Getz, which I saw posted on this thread some time ago by @Mirror Image. I'll go in a chronological order and start with Jazz Samba
Riverside RLP - 12-242 [Japan 1977] - Thelonious Monk Septet " Monk's Music" - rec. 1957 - Engineer: Jack Higgins
And now the last two from the box set. Getz/Gilberto and Stan Getz With Guest Artist Laurindo Almeida
Another hot day on tap. Like farmers, we were up early yesterday and planted everything that we had by 10 AM. There are a few empty spots in the rows that might get a coule more peppers or tomatoes. Rest of the day was easy, spent cleaning the pool, watering the garden, taking a waste high dip in the pool (water is about 70 so pretty cold), watering the garden (it WAS 88 yesterday) and a lot of music all day long. Currently, I'm still on the ECM train before heading out to some playtime with the dogs. Ill see how feisty they are on this already warm morning. Stay cool and stay safe More Images Thomas Strønen / Iain Ballamy : Food – Quiet Inlet Label: ECM Records – ECM 2163, ECM Records – 273 4919 Format: CD, Album Country: Germany Released: 16 Apr 2010 Genre: Jazz Style: Contemporary Jazz, Free Improvisation Tracklist 1 Tobiko 7:08 2 Chimaera 5:00 3 Mictyris 5:41 4 Becalmed 7:51 5 Cirrina 6:16 6 Dweller 6:20 7 Fathom 8:39 Companies, etc. Phonographic Copyright (p) – ECM Records GmbH Copyright (c) – ECM Records GmbH Made By – EDC, Germany – 52512434 Recorded At – Blå, Oslo Recorded At – Molde International Jazz Festival Mixed At – Rainbow Studio Credits Design – Sascha Kleis Drums, Electronics [Live-Electronics] – Thomas Strønen Guitar, Electronics – Christian Fennesz* (tracks: 1, 3, 7) Mixed By – Food, Jan Erik Kongshaug, Manfred Eicher Music By – Food Photography By [Cover Photo] – Eberhard Ross Photography By [Liner Photo (Booklet P. 10)] – Knut Bry Photography By [Liner Photos (Booklet Pp. 2, 6)] – CF Wesenberg* Photography By [Liner Photos] – Kjetil Vaseng Producer [Produced By] – Food, Manfred Eicher Recorded By – Simen Scharning (tracks: 2, 4 to 6), Thomas Hukkelberg (tracks: 1, 3, 7) Tenor Saxophone, Soprano Saxophone – Iain Ballamy Trumpet, Electronics – Nils Petter Molvær (tracks: 2, 4 to 6) Notes Live recordings, performances captured at Oslo’s Blå club and the Molde Festival, in 2007 and 2008 An ECM Production Supported by Fund For Performing Arts, Norway
Not just Collette play perfect here, but Gianni Basso plays beautful sax solos, in Pres-Getz vein.. Buddy Collette- in Italy, BR 60s
