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Poster:
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veblen |
Date:
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August 16, 2008 12:21:32am |
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GratefulDead
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Re: Dexter Gordon... |
Had to think about it, but maybe because he was a musician's musician. Musician's loved and respected him but it never got translated to the public. He was a major influence on the musicians that he played with, along with a long, long list of tenor players (coltrane and rollins being two biggies). Most importantly he did more to translate bop to tenor than anyone.
When you are playing with Bird, Miles and Bud you are playing in some fine company. I would love to find a couple of tracks of that bop. Bird playing with a tenor.
Plus, the drugs, prison, drugs cycle certainly didn't help his art.
Maybe his Europe days add to it in someway as well.
Listening to him playing with Freddie Hubbard; and sadly, one of only a few things I have by him. Now I have some music to buy.
So a tenor I have really come to love within the past couple of years is Hank Mobley. He is known as the Middleweight Champion of Tenors but No Room for Squares is really exceptional with Lee Morgan on trumpet. Lee Morgan was a damn fine trumpet player (maybe that is why coltrane had him on bluetrain). Andrew Hill, Johnny Ore and Philly Joe Jones round out the band. It has come to be one of my fav jazz albums. (The tune Old World is the flintstones theme.) Soul station ain't too shabby either...
Thanks, I shall show dexter more love!
Nothing like listening to jazz and watching urban crackheads deal with drunks from the burbs...
This post was modified by veblen on 2008-08-16 07:21:32
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Poster:
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bluedevil |
Date:
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August 16, 2008 12:27:42am |
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GratefulDead
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Re: Dexter Gordon... |
thanks for the thoughtful response and for pointing me in new directions.
...if you ever get down to the monterey jazz fest, you have a place to crash a stones throw away...
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Poster:
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veblen |
Date:
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August 16, 2008 12:29:31am |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: Dexter Gordon... |
thanks bluedevil!
I can easily see that in my future, since I have been putting it off for too long.
So how did you come across your love of jazz?
I was very fortunate to be taken under the wing of an ederly pittsburgh jazz dee-jay who loved the thought of sending a young white kid into the jazz clubs of the hill district with knowledge. I heard Bird and Miles playing Chasin' the Bird on his show one afternoon and began making requests, which lead to him devoting entire programs to teaching me about an artist or group.
"I told ya, I'm not takin' requests today cuz I am teaching this white boy some jazz."
"this is one college kid that knows monk not punk..."
simply put, an education that I cherish everyday.
oh. I forgot to mention that the no room for squares also has two tracks with charlie byrd on trumpet and hancock on keys...two great line-ups on one great album...
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Poster:
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bluedevil |
Date:
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August 16, 2008 09:50:32am |
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Forum:
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GratefulDead
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Subject:
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Re: Dexter Gordon... |
I had a great uncle in D.C. who had been a big band drummer (Glenn Miller style) and worked for the Library of Congress that was really the dad to my dad since my dad's dad died when he was a teenager. My dad played jazz trumpet in the 50s, also a big band type guy, and we'd go up to D.C. (living in Richmond, Va at time) and my Great Uncle had a basement with a drum kit and the walls lined with 78s. When jazz players came thru the area in the 50s and 60s many would end up in that basement since they couldn't go to many of the clubs to hang out in that they actually earned money for by performing (segregation/Jim Crow ain't that far in the past) and would have "jam" sessions and listen to my great uncle's 78s. Too bad those didn't come to me, since they went to a cousin that actually worked for Strom Thurmond for awhile. Irony is a cruel bitch. Anyway, when I went to college my first day I went over to the college radio station and for the rest of time I was there I had a weekly jazz show and usually also a friday afternoon "alternative" show, as did my close friend I met the first day of college, who went on to become Primus' manager (I helped roll the vinyl copies of suck on this down delmar and over to ashbury and down to the haight post office to mail to college radio stations; this was after jay lane left and herb was the drummer - of course both chimenti and jay play with bob in ratdog and then with les, off and on, in the flying frog brigade). In college, we both had a class with Paul Jeffrey, who had played with Lionel Hampton for years and is a saxophonist and arranger. You would show up in class and a legend would be there - like Sonny Rollins one morning. To tie it all back to the Dead, it was the boys (Jer credits Coltrane with being the biggest influence on his phrasing in the Playbill for the Lunt-Fontane shows) that taught my "ear" to really appreciate jazz. Once I started to catch many great jazz shows, I was hooked. Only two times I've ever "seen" musical notes and had a live "epiphany", w/o any substances, were both piano trios - Ahmad Jamal and McCoy Tyner. I now live in Monterey (Pacific Grove) and we have a fair little fest here, so if you ever make it down this way....
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