As Easy as Recognizing His Voice

Posted on May 23, 2019 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Digitizing audio cassettes today. I came across this quote that echoes my lifelong belief that music is a language, and the best musicians communicate through music as well as our best orators communicate through the spoken word.

“All people hear music, some people listen to it. There is a difference. I prefer to listen. In the old days there were no discographies, in fact there were no jazz magazines. We had to listen to the old records and try to figure out the personnel and the soloists. Jazz men were recording with pop bands and we had to identify the players. After a while, it became easy, for the performer’s sound and style was as easy to recognize as his speaking voice.”

Source: Milt Gabler, Founder of Commodore Records, Town Hall Concert 1945 liner notes.

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Ray Appleton: A Marvelous Blues Shuffle

Posted on May 19, 2019 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Listening today to Willie Nelson’s version of the song Outskirts of Town, had me thinking of that song on one of favorite albums ever. Jimmy Witherspoon’s Blues is Now remains among my top blues albums — with superb musicians and superb singing from Jimmy Witherspoon.

The drummer on Blues Is Now is Ray Appleton. Here’s a first-class blues shuffle version of the classic Good Rockin’ Tonight. Appleton and the entire band nail this one.

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Elvin with John Coltrane – Belgium 1965 (Full Performance)

Posted on May 12, 2019 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Thank you, Eric Ross, for posting this whole set chance to see and hear Elvin Jones with the classic John Coltrane Quartet.

It’s curious that for set’s last song, My Favorite Things, Elvin switches to a larger floor tom.

Enjoy!

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My Heart Attack

Posted on May 11, 2019 by Scott K Fish

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My heart attack
Scott K. Fish, Special to the Piscataquis Observer • May 10, 2019

To park on the street I turned my car steering wheel right and felt a new chest pain. “Heart,” was my first instinct. But, since I have never had heart problems, I considered other possibilities like indigestion.

By nightfall my chest pain subsided or stopped. I slept until 4:01 AM when my chest hurt again. I went downstairs, showered, dried myself and sat on our couch.

The chest pain remained.

I awakened Eileen who was an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). Eileen suspected I was having a heart attack. She checked my vitals and called the volunteer Turner Maine Fire Department Rescue.

I washed down two chewed aspirin with water. Then a pair of Turner Rescue Paramedics were escorting me from living room to ambulance. I laid back on a gurney/stretcher. They wired me to an EKG machine, inserting an IV in my right arm. One Paramedic radioed Central Maine Medical Center’s Emergency Room with information needed for my arrival.

Then we hit the road, Eileen following in her Honda.

Full story

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The Day Krupa Fired Gerry Mulligan

Posted on May 3, 2019 by Scott K Fish

SKF NOTE: Gerry Mulligan wrote some great arrangements for Gene Krupa’s big band. Lemon Drop and Leave Us Leap come first to mind. I never met Mr. Mulligan, but from many accounts I’ve read, in addition to his talent as a baritone saxophonist and arranger, he could be a hot head.

This story from Nat Hentoff’s book,Jazz Is (Discus Printing, 1978), supports Mulligan’s “hot head” reputation. It also shows his seriousness as a musician, and how not to criticize a bandleader or your fellow band members.

Kudos to Krupa for rising to Mulligan’s musical challenge. I’m guessing it hurt Krupa, at least musically, to fire Mulligan.

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[W]hile Mulligan was with Gene Krupa…the band had been working and traveling frenetically, and its playing in Mulligan’s opinion had become shoddy.

One night, at the end of a set, Mulligan rose and, in plain hearing of the audience, upbraided the band in general and then Krupa in particular for his inability or unwillingness to set higher standards.

“I told them all to go to hell,” Mulligan recalls.

At the meeting of the band next day, Krupa lit into the band first, and then into Mulligan for inexcusable behavior in public. Krupa proceeded to fire Mulligan, but he did not hold a grudge against his former employee.

“I had to admire that guy,” Krupa said a few years later. “You get too much obsequiousness in this business. There was no obsequiousness in [Mulligan], which I dug.”

Source: Nat Hentoff, Jazz Is, (Discus Printing 1978)

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