UPDATE: I have entered the correct date and added Lou Rawls’ name, thanks to Ehsan Khoshbakht and Ruth Gilson!
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It is usually said that Duke Ellington was a synaesthete – in his case a person being able to hear colors (and see music as colors).
Among Otto Flückiger’s old VHS cassettes I recently found a six minute clip of Duke and his orchestra performing in a surrounding that must hurt people of that ability. This comes from a Lou Rawls Show directed by Jörn Winther and produced in Canada in 1971 (Thanks, Ehsan!)
It seems like the only way for Duke to protect his inner ear from the screaming colors of the studio furniture and walls was to fight them by wearing a bright orange-red jacket with a lilac shirt!
Duke and the band (unfortunately one does not see much of the orchestra) play “Satin Doll”, afer that Duke is joined by singer Lou Rawls (thanks again, Ehsan!)– doing “Sophisticated Lady”.
Almost a year ago I discovered some nice footage of Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz in 1978 playing “I Can’t Get Started”. coming from the series “La Grande Parade du Jazz” concerts in Nice, filmed for french TV. I thought I could put up the rest of the footage as well. So here you have Dizzy Gillespie, trumpet; Barney Wilen, Stan Getz, tenor sax; Andy Laverne, piano; Rodney Jones, guitar; Mike Richmond, acoustic double bass; Mickey Roker, Billy Hart, drums, percussion at the Grand Parade du Jazz, Nice, July 14, 1978. playing “Night In Tunisia” – which is soon interrupted by heavy rain.
On the second segment (Improvisation/Ceciliana) Dizzy is accompanied by Hank Jones, Milt Hinton, J.C. Heard.
While digitizing the Donald Byrd footage from Montreux, I discovered a nice thirty minutes of video featuring blues piano legend Memphis Slim from the same festival. Since I synchronized the whole VHS cassette, I thought I might as well put it up on youtube as well. Memphis Slim is one of my favorite blues singers, and I hope you like this clip as much as I do.
Slim is accompanied by legendary session guitarist Mickey Baker, bassist Benny Turner and drummer Charles Meyers.
Note: I just got the message from youtube that this video might not be viewable in different countries. So I am sorry if this happens in your country.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: (February 27, 2013): Blue Note is now offering the audio of the whole concert (for free) here.
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Donald Byrd in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 5, 1973
Unfortunately it is true. Jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd passed on February 4, 2013. I would like to pay tribute to the man and his music, so I just uploaded nearly half an hour of video from the archives, showing the Donald Byrd/Nathan Davis group at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland, on July 5, 1973. I am not too well versed in Byrd’s repertoire of that time, so if anyone knows what is played here, it would be nice if you could tell me. According to Tom Lord’s Jazz Discography, the concert was recorded by Blue Note – but never issued. Lord gives the following titles: “Poco-mania”, “You’ve got it bad, girl”, “Untitled no. 3″, “Black Byrd” and “Flight time”. So maybe someone knows how this fits together. I chopped the video into three parts. The video was partly not in synch and this made it easier for me to bring it into synch again.
You will be hearing and seeing: Donald Byrd (tp,flhrn) Fonce Mizell (tp) Allan Barnes (fl,ts) Nathan Davis (sop,ts) Larry Mizell (synt) Kevin Toney (el-p) Barney Perry (el-g) Henry Franklin (el-b) Keith Killgo (d,vcl) Ray Armando (cga,perc)
In part 2 the band is playing “Black Byrd” (thanks to Ehsan Khoshbakt for identifying the title)
Oh, how I love to get some authentic live hard bop! Even better if this happens on a tuesday, the day of the week on which I spent almost twelve hours in the office usually coming home tired and beaten. But last tuesday was different, as Jazzclub Moods, which is just around the corner from my office, presented a concert with legendary trombonist Curtis Fuller (born 1934) and his sextet. Fuller is of course mostly known for his work on several sessions with John Coltrane (e.g. “Blue Train”) and for his work in the Curtis Fuller / Benny Golson Jazztet. I think that Fullers 1950s and early 1960 sessions for Blue Note and Savoy belong to the best hard bop sessions of their time.
Besides Fuller the band consisted of young(er) men. The other horns were german tenor saxophonist Ralph Reichert and trumpeter Joshua Bruneau from Vermont. Read more »
Yesterday the jazz world heard of the passing of trumpet legend Donald Byrd. But until now the only source for this sad news is Byrd’s nephew, confirmation from other relatives is still missing.
If it’s true that Donald Byrd passed, he would have reached the age of 80. Not widely known – although mentioned in standard discographies – is the fact that Byrd started his career at a very early age. Byrd can first be heard on two 78rpm records by the tenor saxophonist Robert Barnes for Fortune Records, a company based in Detroit. Although some discographies note 1947 for these recordings (Byrd would have been 15 then), it was probably recorded in 1949. judging from the date on which one of the resulting records was mentioned in Billboard.
Of the four sides with “Sahib Byrd” apparently released I can offer you two here. Unfortunately the record this was dubbed from broke some dozen years ago and was glued. When played now it skips and jumps at several points, although I really tried my very best to fix the problem (if someone has a better sound file, please let me know)
Although “Bobbin’ At Barbee’s” is designated as the b-side of Fortune 113, it’s the side with a solo by Byrd, so I put it in first place. Billboard (June 18, 1949) did not like it very much: “Just noise – hardly any music”, is all they had to say.
At least Billboard had more words for the a-side, “Black Eyed Peas”,which features Barnes exclusively: “Good opening riff dissipates into another loud honking tenor sax solo of little quality or distinction.”
During all of the 1980s, one of my favorite musicians was guitarist James Blood Ulmer. At that time he was playing with his band Phalanx (with tenor saxophonist George Adams) as well as with his “Odyssey” Band, featuring violinist Charles Burnham and drummer Warren Benbow. I managed to see Phalanx live several times then, but I never got to see the Odyssey band.
I lost my interest in Ulmer a little after his 1990 release “Blues All Night” which in my ears was totally overproduced and sounded much too clean. Although I bought the Music Revelation Ensemble’s 1994 CD “In The Name Of” when it appeared (a great album by the way), I never came to see Ulmer live again since 1989 or so. So it really was a nice surprise when I opened up the morning paper last wednesday and noticed that James Blood Ulmer’s “Black Rock Experience” was to play at the Moods Jazz Club in my town that night. The band as announced was to be Ulmer with bassist Mark Peterson and drummer Grant Calvin Weston and singer Queen Esther. I somehow had the feeling that the music might be in the vein of the “Blues All Night”, which I relistened just before going to the gig only to find out that I still do not like it too much.
Much too my surprise the personnel for this evening turned out to be Ulmer with the old Odyssey band: Charles Burnham and Warren Benbow. And featuring Queen Esther. And it turned out to be a great evening of deep Blues from earthy to abstract, splashed with dots of free funk, and salted with harmolodic spices.
I made some nice photos during the concert, which was started off by Ulmer doing a slow and melancholy – nearly painful – solo rendition of the U.S. National Anthem.
I would have loved to hear more of Queen Esther who really has a great voice. One of the evening’s highlights was her acapella rendition of “We’ll be Together Again”.
While drummer Warren Benbow had an indifferent look on his face during the whole evening and never even had a faint smile on his face (absolutely no indifference in his playing though), violinist Charles Burnham got really involved:
Although I originally did not plan to – else i would have taken a small tripod – I filmed parts of the concert. I had a very unconvenient standing position so you might get seasick when watching the three tracks I have edited down from the footage. I would say that the nauseating shakiness takes any commercial potential out of this clip, but if someone with the right to object objects against this video being on youtube, I’ll be taking it down in a hurry.
I managed to come a little closer and take some nice shots of Ulmer after the concert when he was selling and signing CDs from the stage.
