ben. Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 I'll second the vote for Toshiko. I attended a master class of hers about 15 years ago (****, I'm getting old...), and her band could swing, and really played with dynamics. Her husband, Lew Tabackin (sp?) has a nice big tenor sound. Great arrangements as well. I think they both work on the arrangements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben. Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 Oh, Sinatra at the Sands is a fun record, too. Sonics are a bit suspect, Franks voice sounds like it was recorded at an Elks lodge. The band smokes, the arrangements (by Quincy Jones) kick, and Basie splanks along like he always did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WMcD Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 I bought In the Digital Mood by the Glen Miller Orchestra. It is a good recording but didn't seem to have much emotion to it. Too mechanical and measured. But then I don't know much about swing music. Now I did like Round Midnight by Linda Ronstat and Nelson Riddle. It is torch songs and not too much big band sound. Gil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boomac Posted June 15, 2004 Share Posted June 15, 2004 ---------------- On 6/15/2004 5:08:56 PM lovedrummin wrote: I used to play drums, so I've always been partial to Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. Also check out Ed Shaunnessy if you find him on anything. He was the drummer for the Tonight Show Band back when Johnny Carson was king of night-time TV. I was fortunate as a teenager that my grandfather and uncle (a couple of big band fans - may they r.i.p.)took me to The Steel Pier in Atlantic City a couple of times to see Krupa and Rich. Some of my fondest musical memories. ---------------- Lew, did you ever see the horse jump off Steel Pier? You may have missed it by a few years. You're a little younger than me. There was always some great entertainment over there. I say over there because we spent a fair amount of summertime in Ocean City. Allan, I was in the Third Herd! That would be the 3rd Armored Division! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 I have a fondness for big bands, and you really should make an effort to hear a well practiced one perform LIVE, there's little like it! My favorite is Ellington's. . . The verve of Duke's and Billy Strayhorn's writing puts them over the top for me, plus the excellent soloists that were catalysts for the writing and arrangements and who put their hearts into performances. Try "Indigos" on Columbia or "Soul Call" on Verve for good sounding great performances. I love the Basie band as well. . . Try the new one on Blue Note/Roulette "Chairman of the Board" for one of his great bands in killer sound. And I'll third Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band. Hard to find many of their recordings here in the state; I got all the Japanese imports I could. But their "Hiroshima Rising" came out stateside recently and is worth hearing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mandi Posted June 16, 2004 Author Share Posted June 16, 2004 Okay here is what I found used at our local Hastings. I love used stuff!! All were 3.99 each Duke Ellington - forever gold Count Basie - forever gold Time Life Swingin 60's there was another Best of Jazz (Big Bands)that was a 4 CD set that I made sure the girls knew would be a good thing for fathers day.......I noticed the youngest hid it where she could find it when mom took them back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 ---------------- On 6/15/2004 5:56:26 PM Allan Songer wrote: Bill Perkins (who replaced Stan Getz in Herman's band when he went out on his own) once told me that this was the loosest, swingingist bunch of cats he ever played with and that Herman was a great, laid back leader. He also told me that 80% of the band was addicted to heroin and that this was one of the main reasons Woody broke the band up. They reformed as "the Third Herd" a year or so later and that's when they cut those tracks with Charlie Parker. Killer big band. ---------------- How talented were these swinging cats if 80% of them were strung out on smack? It strikes me that they must have been playing some really simple parts. What's the big attraction to heroin with these musicians, Allan? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 16, 2004 Share Posted June 16, 2004 I won't speak to the attraction. . . . Life on the road and in clubs can lead to a lot of longing for "salves" of one type or another. . . alcoholism, sex addiction, narcotic addiction. So can just going to work and home day after day! I will say this: heroin has not seemed to DIMINISH the intellectual capacities, creativity, improvisational skill, etc. of these musicians. They risked their health and liberty and personal relationships, but their playing. . . wow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 Well I looked through quite a few jazz works I have and tried to find a real valid reason for the attraction. The closest I can come is to condense a few and say that the attraction for the musicians was pretty much similar to alcohol's attraction to musicians and anyone else (partly as a "stabilizer"---something constant in a shifting private and working environment as well as a stimulant for the sense and the social scene), only the heroin was "hipper," more a statement of being an cool outsider, among this community, and during that period of time availability was easier than at some points afterwards. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 Thanks, Lon. I just think that whatever these guys accomplished, they could have accomplished that and *much more* if they hadn't been strung out. Indulging in drugs is such a waste. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 I won't argue against that (that the use of drugs is a waste!) . . . but. . . I think somehow that the use of drugs HELPED them to enter into an underworld that allowed them to be more FREELY individualistic and creative; I am not convinced that they would have accomplished more without them in all cases. In some ways I think Charlie Parker's addictions helped him to become the master that he was, whose work has hardly been matched or superceded since; he accomplished an awful lot through his focusing of so much into two things: feeding his physical needs and flying in the face of the musical sun, too high in fact! He did so at personal peril. . . . But the risks also mirrored in many ways the gains. A safe player with a stable and healthy life and life style seems to be less ingenuous and influential. Just something I can't seem to discount. . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Parrot Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 Lon, I think everyone has enough personal problems without needing to actively seek out more (drugs) to add to them. Heroin can make them not feel their pain, but that's the wrong approach. They should be figuring out the roots of their pain, not masking them. And then deal with it. Maybe suffering is important in producing art. I'd submit that the effects of heroin are to ease suffering. But since we're dealing with individuals, we can never prove one way or another how their lives would have been different if they hadn't chosen the paths they did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 Well, I have seen a lot in just a few years of playing in bands, and I've seen a lot of alcoholic performers in the business and government world, and I really do think that drugs of this type (and alcohol is definitely of this type as well as heroin) can allow some individuals to work obsessively and achieve astonishing things because of the ability to screen a lot of other things out (such as the need for food and rest and sustaining relationships!) I'm not condoning it, but I think historically it is a big part of the fabric (both symbolic AND literally in terms of work as building blocks) of our human legacy and condition. I can only IMAGINE how awful and well as how wonderful it was to be a part of these bands in those years and be in one town after another in one club after another after one bus ride after another after one sad hotel room after another and how this consumption and focus on alcohol or narcotic could be a temptation and an anchor to allow one to carry on in the life and achieve. . . .But I do think that for some of these individuals there was a connecting line between the addictions and the achievement. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ben. Posted June 18, 2004 Share Posted June 18, 2004 How is this topic so antithetical to the 2-ch forum? Lots of surround sound mixes of Basie out there? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 20, 2004 Share Posted June 20, 2004 Yes, I thought for a spell it had been deleted! Some heavy moderation going on here! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lon Armstrong Posted June 24, 2004 Share Posted June 24, 2004 Well, with my new Decware Dec 685 Universal player I've been really enjoying the Duke Ellington "Blues in Orbit" SACD. Man, this session is a good one. . . swinging and with that sense of humor and warmth that yiu find in fifties Ellington (I mean what else would you expect to find in a tune called "Even Swingers Get the Blues!") Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boomac Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Since the last post I have picked up: Count Basie - "At Birdland" (Swings hard and it's a great sounding LP) Woody Herman - "Woody Live East & West" (Holy Shi_! this band swings) Toshiko Tabakin BB - Kogun (excellent) Jazman, Thad Jones does play a sweet horn! Thanks for the name. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allan Songer Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Scott, you should check out the Terry Gibbs Dream Band. Vinyl copies of the first three volumes are on ebay all the time for about five bucks. This was an INCREDIBLE band--Bob Brookmeyer once told me that he really thought that his Mulligan Concert Jazz Band was hot sh!t until he came to L.A. and heard these guys. Terry Gibbs kept these recordings to himself for abou 20-25 years and finally released them in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Do yourself a favor and track these LPs down! http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000X97.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ZAKO Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 I just read a histery on a town across the river from St Louis ....East St louis..And its connection with Glenn Miller. Aparently one of the members of the band had connections with the underworld gang mobs of that town. During the WW2 when the band was in Londen just before the fatel flight to Europe. That member left the band. Glenn Miller went to find him. Glen Miller was killed. The details in this tragity were suppresed. The army then put out the story that Glenn Miller was shot down over the channel. Christmas day. They did not want to reveal that one of the members of the band belonged to the mob & might be involved in Millers death. I,m trying to follow this story to get to the truth. But it seems sad to say the connection to the east side mob is true. I hope to find out more. I know who that mob leader was. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Adams Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 My word am I ever late to this thread. But I would have to say that as much as I've loved the music from many of those bands that have been mentioned, by far the best big band for me was Art Cissle and the Stardusters. There was Art as leader and trumpet player. Mary on vocals, Frank on sax, Bob Epperson on trombone, and who is that goofy looking kid with the big ears over there on trombone? Why...it looks like, yes - I believe it is.... It's Tom Adams playing 2nd or 3rd trombone!! Man...what memories this has brought back. Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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