Iinaliszletter 93024-O24-O
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P.O. Box 240 Ojai. Calif. iinaliszletter 93024-O24-O May 1991 VOI. IO NO. 5 a performer, however, he had some problems. The most Letters . serious was his time. He rushed. A lot. He was using a bass player named Vinnie Burke. Vinnie I’m sorry about the delay in renewing for 1991. I have just had a problem too. He had a hot temper and a short fuse. gone through the roughest two years I can remember, but He was famous for blowing his top, telling off the bandleader, finally closed one of my deals last week, so things will be all and getting fired as a result. I wanted to talk to Tal about it, right for a while. as he knew both of them and their quirks. I found Tal, jerked Please use the extra $50 to keep the Jazzletter going to one my thumb toward the bandstand, and said, "How long can this of the friends who is temporarily short. last?" -- Name Withheld "Not long," he said. I stopped in a few days later. Sure enough, Vinnie was The check was for $100. A number of readers have written gone. I spoke to Tal and asked what had happened. He told qimilar letters. The rate of renewal gives evidence of the me this story: ondition of the economy, and the letters indicate that these Vinnie lasted a day or two before his short supply of problems obtain not only in the United States but in Canada, patience ran out. Instead of losing his temper as he usually New Zealand, and other countries. Optimistic forecasts of did, he had come upon a novel solution. He decided to out- govemment do not convince me that it is going to change Mehegan Mehegan. When John would get too far ahead, radically for the better any time soon. The passion for short- Vinnie, instead of trying to hold him back -- a hard job term profits has finally brought its inevitable result. without drums -- simply moved ahead of him. John would When Frederick the Great came to power, one of his elders -- catch up, move ahead, and Vinnie would pass him again. It an uncle, I think - told him he would be surprised to discover didn’t take long before this little game of leap-frog had nearly with how little wisdom the world is governed. - doubled the tempo, so that even John was aware of it. He It hasn’t changed. looked at Vinnie and said, "You’re rushing, Vinnie.” Meanwhile, to Name Withheld, thanks. It all helps. And I Vinnie bent down and looked him in the eye and said, "I don ’t plan to drop anyone from the roster; paid or not. i know, how do you like it?" g Mehegan’s face turned red and he announced, "I’ll take you to the union!" The Composer Vinnie smiled and said, "What for? Rushing?" by Jimmy Raney I played at the club only one time, and this was with Bob Brookmeyer. As it was a piano room, Bob played mostly There was once in the West Fifties in New York City a jazz- piano instead of his usual valve trombone. I remember one piano room called the Composer. The owner was Sy Barron, incident in particular from our stay. who had owned and managed jazz clubs at other spots around Sy had a custom. Whenever there was a girl pianist, he .pwn. Sy liked jazz and jazz musicians, and treated his players placed a small vase containing two flowers on the piano. The with respect -- by no means the norm with club owners. intermission pianist at the time was a Japanese girl. Although he featured mostly piano, he sometimes used guitar On our opening night, Brookmeyer sat down and played a or vibraphone, and once in a while a horn, as long as the few notes to try out the piano. Suddenly he stopped, his eyes music didn’t get too loud. fixed on the flower vase. His face took on an expression of I f'n-st went there in the middle 1950s to hear guitarist Tal distaste. He picked up the vase, as if he were holding a dead Farlow. Sy managed to cajole him out of retirement once or rat by the tail, and set it on a nearby empty table, and we twice a year, and it was always a big event for us Tal Farlow started the first tune. addicts. The next night he did the same thing. On the third night, It was on one of these occasions that I first heard Bill Evans. just as we were about to mount the bandstand, the manager Bill was the intermission pianist, and relatively unknown. He said to Bob, "Mr. Barron has left strict orders that the flowers didn’t remain unknown for long. The club changed the main are not to be removed from the piano." attraction every week or two but sometimes kept the same Bob said nothing, and we played the first set, flowers and all. intermission pianist for longer periods. It wasn’t long before At the end of the set, Bobby altered his standard announce- the room was jammed with people who had come to hear Bill, ment. He said, "Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of Jimmy but would leave and go to a little bar around the corner while Raney on guitar, Teddy Kotick on bass, and yours truly Bob the main group was playing. Needless to say, this didn’t go Brookmeyer on the piano, we would like to thank you for your unnoticed by Sy Barron, who began to book Bill’s trio as the attention and applause -- piano by Steinway, flowers by Sy attraction. As the cliche goes, the rest is history. Barron." I went there another time to hear Tal. This time the He made the same announcement after every set that intermission pianist was John Mehegan. John was a Juilliard evening and the next. On the fifth night the flowers were graduate and a well-trained musician. A pedagogue, he had gone, never to reappear. R published a scholarly three-volume set for jazz instruction. As -- J Bird night I dropped in. He went there often to play or to watch by Bill Crow Jimmy’s little television set. Jimmy also had a tape machine on which he recorded the music that was played in the Charlie Parker’s death in 1955 stunned every musician I knew. sessions, later writing out Bird’s solos on score paper to use He was twenty-five when he first overwhelmed the jazz world for trombone practice material. with his brilliant playing, and only fourteen years later, that I was learning to play the bass by then, but I would never Niagara of music had ceased to flow. During my first months have dreamed of trying to play while Charlie Parker was in New York I spent every possible hour listening to him, but around. I don’t think Bird even knew what instrument I as I began to live my own musical life I went to hear him only played. I was just one of several guys who sat around and now and then when he played in New York. I felt no urgency. listened to what he had to say and play. Sometimes I went I thought he would always be there. back during the day to hear the tapes Jimmy made. I had only a few personal encounters with Charlie during the Buddy Jones had a lot of Bird tapes. He played one for me five years of his life that remained after I came to New York. of Parker playing at a session somewhere with five or six other I hung around him at Birdland when I first arrived, but I horn players and a rhythm section. During Bird’s solo, the didn’t really get to talk to him at length until he began visiting other horns began playing heavy sustained chords behind , Jimmy Knepper and Joe Maini’s basement on 136th Street. filling in all the space. Suddenly Charlie played a very strong Before Jimmy and Joe lived there, I was introduced to that melodic figure a beat earlier than one would have expected. basement apartment by Buddy Jones, a bass player from Hope, The other horn players, thinking they had dropped a beat, Arkansas, who knew Charlie Parker from Kansas City. I was stopped playing, leaving Bird in the clear for a few measures. standing in front of Birdland chatting with Frank Isola and a Every time the horns would fmd him and come in again, Bird couple of other musicians when Buddy came by and told us would play another figure that made them think they were in that he had found a great place to play. A sax player named the wrong place. He did this for the rest of his solo, always Gerson Yowell had rented a large basement room that coming back into consonance with the rhythm section before extended beneath the sidewalk and part of the street, where he lost them, too. you could make as much noise as you wanted day or night Bird would play musical tricks like that, but I never heard without bothering anyone. him put anybody down. He usually encouraged everyone to I hurried over to my room on Eighth Avenue to get my valve play. He wouldn’t insult or refuse to play with awkward trombone and Frank went to get his drums. Buddy waited for beginners. He’d been through those scenes himself when he us at the 50th Street IRT entrance with his bass and three or was just learning.