What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Serial_Apologist]

The Ezra Collective. Www-ell, you gotta start somewhere, innit?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGkZM6wjIwk

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Talking of jazz guitar, THIS has just been put up on YouTube...
Jazz in Britain. 1974. The Ray Russell Quintet with Gary Windo on tenor, Harry Beckett on trumpet. I think Gary W is "vocalising" thro his tenor, an unusual sound. Indeed.

http://youtu.be/-JElUqMZt3I

[Serial_Apologist]

Talking of jazz guitar, THIS has just been put up on YouTube...
Jazz in Britain. 1974. The Ray Russell Quintet with Gary Windo on tenor, Harry Beckett on trumpet. I think Gary W is "vocalising" thro his tenor, an unusual sound. Indeed.

http://youtu.be/-JElUqMZt3I

Wow! This looks different from the BBC tracks included on a Ray Russell compilation double CD I obtained about 18 years ago. Thanks Bluesie - will check out tomorrow.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Wow! This looks different from the BBC tracks included on a Ray Russell compilation double CD I obtained about 18 years ago. Thanks Bluesie - will check out tomorrow.

I didn't know very much about Gary Windo, but he certainly led an "interesting" life. From heroin drug busts and serving time in the States (Rikers Island), deportation, the Brotherhood of Breath, Robert Wyatt et al, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, the Psychedelic Furs etc, and "running the horns for Gary Glitter". He got around.

BN.

[Jazzrook]

A British jazz classic from 1983 in urgent need of reissue:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=MXf6OFN-W0E

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

A British jazz classic from 1984 in urgent need of reissue:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=MXf6OFN-W0E

JR

For me the version of "Body & Soul" on that is the greatest of all time - a good "final track" to play to guests about to leave.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Agree. Wonderful. Up there with Dexter's Danish version with Kenny Drew.

[Serial_Apologist]

I didn't know very much about Gary Windo, but he certainly led an "interesting" life. From heroin drug busts and serving time in the States (Rikers Island), deportation, the Brotherhood of Breath, Robert Wyatt et al, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, the Psychedelic Furs etc, and "running the horns for Gary Glitter". He got around.

BN.

Pamela Windo, Gary's wife, is still going - 27 years on from Gary's death in 1992, at age 51 - and living in Santa Fe. Pam wrote most of the liner notes to the memorial 2003 compilation album to Gary, "Anglo American" (Cuneiform Rune). Contrary to an assumption I had made about him being American, Gary was brought up in Brighton, as was Pam - they even attended the same primary school. Then they went their separate ways - Gary to the States to study with Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh, and, I believe, join the Paul Butterfield Blues band for a while, before returning to the UK in 1969. Here is her commentary to one of the tracks:

"The Brotherhood of Breath were another group of musicians who were like an extended family: bound by the same struggles to survive financially while creating music. They filled our apartment with music and dance, with wild antics and generosity. Chris and Maxine [McGregor] were so creative, original and courageous. I remember one evening at Peanuts when Marc Charig was blowing a solo, he leaned too close to a candle that caught the hair at the back of his head on fire. He was so caught up in his solo, he didn't notice, so I ran up and smothered his hair in my hands. At that point, Marc stopped playing and looked at me as if I was a mad woman! ...

"In 1979 we emigrated to the U.S.A. - staying first with a new friend Nancy in Chappaqua, and then with John Clark (trumpet player with Carla Bley) until we found our way up to a log cabin in Willow, NY. Gary loved Carla's band, a perfect vehicle for his brilliant zaniness. It was a family affair, living in the woods near Carla's studio, with the boys, Simon and Jamie getting up on stage at the Public Theater introducing the orchestra, and in the south of France, playing percussion. She would always cook meals for her musicians, saying that cooking and composing were closely tied! I was the one who booked her into Dingwall's in London, a show that surprisingly packed the club out. I remember her letter arriving in Lonson, asking Gary to tour in the U.S. I had never wanted to visit, let alone live in America, but knowing how much he wanted to go, I went ahead of him to New York, to figure out how to get him back there. By pure luck, when I telephoned the Musician's Union, one of the top guys answered, and told me to go over and he'd help me fill out the visa application. That's how we came to live in America".

Probably not how Gove managed to circumvent US visiting rules barring drug offenders when he and Theresa went over to meet Trump!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

That's good stuff. She has written a book about their lives together. She also had a punk band "Pam Windo and the Specs" in which she sang and played piano. Apparently Sonny Stitt was very impressed with Gary and suggested working together but that kind of straight ahead jazz was not his scene. He died relatively young from asthma, an acute attack, he'd been a long time sufferer.

[Joseph K]

For me the version of "Body & Soul" on that is the greatest of all time - a good "final track" to play to guests about to leave.

It's very nice. However, this for me is the greatest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z-dDWrIKDQ

[Serial_Apologist]

That's good stuff. She has written a book about their lives together. She also had a punk band "Pam Windo and the Specs" in which she sang and played piano. Apparently Sonny Stitt was very impressed with Gary and suggested working together but that kind of straight ahead jazz was not his scene. He died relatively young from asthma, an acute attack, he'd been a long time sufferer.

Yes, I've just discovered that book from Pam's facebook, reading which takes me back to another era!

http://www.pamelawindo.com/gary-windo-2/

[Ian Thumwood]

The classic version of "Body & Soul" is always the Coleman Hawkins but it is interesting to discover that this tune had already been recorded 9 years earlier by Louis Armstrong with Les Hite's orchestra which was one of the premier West Coast big bands back then. Hite's band is little known now although T-bone Walker started his career with this band.

What is interesting about Hawkins' version was that it terminated a pretty stressful recording session by his big band where there was a staggering number of takes required to capture two arrangements. Ultimately Hawkins recorded his famous version with the rhythm section and the orchestra limited to providing chords towards the end of the solo. Coleman Hawkins' big band did not last too long and I think he grew frustrated with the musicians not being of the same calibre. Certainly he was dismissive of the state of jazz in the US when he returned from Europe and was surprised that there were so few threats to his dominance. I have always wondered why he was so economical with the truth having previously famously been routed by Lester Young in Kansas city. I find Coleman Hawkins a somewhat amazing figure in jazz because he was so significant in Fletcher Henderson's band in the 20's and 30's yet I feel his playing still resonates today. If he was playing in 2019, he would still be relevant and , maybe, getting away from Coltrane's reliance on modes and intervallic improvisation, probably more interesting as an improvisor being as he was more aligned with broadening jazz harmony as opposed to narrowing it down to scales / one tonal centre. As much as I love Coltrane, I still feel there is a lot to be learnt from Hawkins' playing.

Oddly enough, Hawkins returned to this number in 1944 where he performed similar feats albeit the tune was retitled "Rainbow Mist." I am not sure what else the band recorded on this session but the line up also included Dizzy, Max Roach, Don Byas, Budd Johnson, Clyde Hart and Oscar Pettiford.

I agree with Joseph that the Coltrane arrangement is somewhat iconic but there are more recent versions such as the one Joe Lovano recorded with Hank Jones which is pretty good too. I have also been listening to Horace Tapscott play "Body & soul" with Sonny Simmons in my car this week!

[Joseph K]

The 5 original albums of Scofield and Shorter arrived today; currently listening to Scofield's 'Time on my Hands'.

[Ian Thumwood]

Picking up on the Gary Windo topic, I think it is almost quaint that Windo was operating in a field where jazz over-lapped with rock n' roll. Some of the projects he was involved with seem so redolent of the era even though I had got in to jazz around the same time in the early 80's and totally missed what he was doing because I was not ready to listen to that approach towards jazz at that time. It is quite peculiar to look back at those times and see just how much levity there was in jazz at that time and there seemed to be almost an irreverence in the performances of bandleaders such as Carla Bley which you don't find in jazz now. I think you can find the same spirit in bands like Willem Breuker's Kollecktief who trod a similar path. Gary Windo has always been a mythical name to me yet someone I have never heard to any great extent. Some of the stuff from the early 80's is curious in that it predates the seriousness of the New Neos and a number of musicians were happy to mix with the more creative members of the pop fraternity such as Robert Wyatt, Marianne Faithfull, etc. If anything, the lack of separation between categories is even more pronounced in the work of someone like Michael Mantler which covers so many bases that it is beyond classification.

The weirdest thing regarding the Gary Windo topic was the bill board on the wall in the link to the Ray Russell clip on YouTube where the more adventurous musicians of the day seem to have been booked at the same venue as pretty full-on Trad Bands. (Bob Kerr's Whoopee Band, Avon City etc) I was fascinated to see this odd mixture and wondered how people would have commented at the time. For one, the radio commentary sounds like the gig was recorded for Open University! Quite intriguing to consider if the same debates were raging back then and to think that Russell's band sounds pretty mainstream now. I managed to find the recent edition of Jazz Journal on line and found the letters page quite interesting. Not withstanding the usual sensible comments from our friend Jazzrook, it was curious to see some letters lamenting the lack of coverage of mainstream jazz" and comments about "bands not swinging" which appear to pick up from the late 1980's when I stopped buying the magazine! I loved the letter pages in that magazine and I did use to envisage Trevor Cooper, late of this board, spilling his vitriol to the editors lamenting the demise of jazz since about 1967! Still, it was immensely satisfying to see one reviewer award a new album on the ACT label by Emil Parisien at 1/2 a star out of a possible 5! That made me smile as I feel the same about this label too.

[Ian Thumwood]

The 5 original albums of Scofield and Shorter arrived today; currently listening to Scofield's 'Time on my Hands'.

The Scofield Blues Notes are terrific. The first two are amazing but I have always loved the clash with Bill Frisell which is a humdinger. The arrangements were by Mike Gibbs.

The late Denis Irwin is on bass on a number of these discs and he is easily the nicest jazz musician I ever met. A real gent and someone interested to hear your views on jazz. He also played some pretty good clarinet too.