JazzWax

Kim, Jimmy and Arthur

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed actress Kim Cattrall for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Kim is best known for playing Samantha Jones on TV's Sex and the City series. but she has had a long acting professional career that began in 1975. She was born in Liverpool, moved with her family to Vancouver (British Columbia), studied in Liverpool at age 12, and moved to New York at 16 to study acting. Her first movie was Rosebud (1975), directed by Otto Preminger. Former New York City mayor John Lindsay appeared in the film, too. He helped Kim get her green card. Currently, she stars in TV's Filthy Rich (Fox). [Photo above of Kim Cattrall from YouTube]  

Here's Kim on Who Do You Think You Are?...

SiriusXM. On Tuesday, I'll join co-hosts Nik Carter and Lori Majewski on Feedback to talk about my recent "Anatomy of a Song" column on Dexys Midnight Runners' Come On Eileen. Tune in at noon (EDT), on channel 106.

Tony Fruscella. Back in 2018, I posted about trumpeter Tony Fruscella and bassist Red Mitchell, and their rendition of I'll Be Seeing You. Photographer Gilles D'Elia sent along the following (be sure to click on the link and view his work, it's extraordinary):

Hi Marc. Thanks to your website, that I read very often, I've discovered the Red Mitchell version of Tony Fruscella's solo on "I'll Be Seeing You." I can't help it: I had to write and record an adaptation in French, my native language. Even if I'm not a musician nor a singer, I've done it just for pleasure, and I hope maybe you will like to listen to it. Here it is. Please be indulgent...

David Thompson. This weekend, Dave plays Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen's Polka Dots and Moonbeams, Frank Sinatra's first hit with Tommy Dorsey in 1940...

Art Pepper practicing the tenor saxophone in the basement of Synanon in Santa Monica, Calif., in 1969, courtesy of Laurie Pepper's Facebook page.

Dave Brubeck. Got a few million bucks? You may want to consider the former home of Dave and Iola Brubeck, which just came on the market in Wilton, Ct., for $2.75 million. I spent an afternoon there for the WSJ with Dave and his wife, Iola, in 2010 (go here) and have written about the house and architect Bev Thorne at JazzWax (go here, here and here). Thanks to Carl Woideck for bringing the listing to my attention.

Jimmy Sweeney was Elvis Presley's first vocal influence when Presley began recording at Memphis's Sun label in 1955. Listen to Sweeney's voice...

For Record Store Day on Saturday (September 26), Org Music is making available a vinyl album entitled Jimmy Sweeney: Without You, featuring 17 sides by the Black singer. To order from your nearest participating store, go here.

Here's Arthur Prysock in 1964 on Dick Clark's American Bandstand singing Close Your Eyes (sorry, the end is cut off)...

And here's Prysock in 1976 singing his disco hit, When Love Is New...

Autumn and Miles Ahead + 19

A month after I moved into my dorm along the Fenway in Boston in September 1974, I took the "T" to Harvard Square in Cambridge. The weather had already begun to turn blustery, as was the case in Boston back then. Fall slid toward winter's doorstep rather quickly. I'm not sure if that still happens now due to global warming. I remember, because I had my pea coat on with the collar up.

Emerging at Harvard Square, I headed over to the "Coop," a co-operative book store affiliated with Harvard and MIT that in the early '70s featured a record department with one of the best jazz sections in town. The Coop is housed in a brick Federalist building that dates back to 1882.

Down in the record department, I discovered Miles Davis and Gil Evans's Miles Davis: Miles Ahead +19. It happened to be playing on the speaker system and Davis's romantic horn backed by Evans's breathless arrangements captured my imagination instantly. I grabbed the album along with four others and headed back to Boston. [Photo above of Gil Evans and Miles Davis]

Ever since, Miles Ahead + 19 has been my autumn album. We all have one—music purchased in the fall that you always associate with the colorful, chilly season. For me, this one is it and always will be.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Miles Ahead + 19 (Columbia) here.

JazzWax clips: Here's the first song on the album; then all the other tracks follow. You just have to click on the embed at the end for the next track. Or click the link I provided and go to YouTube...

For longtime fans of the album, here's an "alternate" album that someone built out of alternate takes. To me, these sound like the rundown, when musicians, soloist and conductor simply feel their way along for the first time without concern for precision or perfection...

Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto

There are no bad recordings of pianist Thelonious Monk together with tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse. Well, maybe two—when they were in a top-notch group assembled in the late 1940s to back a so-so vocalist named Frankie Passions, who recorded two lackluster pop songs. But starting in the fall of 1958, at New York's Five Spot, Monk and Rouse began a working and recording relationship that lasted until 1969. Fortunately for us, most of their sessions were live.

Recently, a new entry was released in the Monk-Rouse gig canon called Palo Alto. The CD and vinyl came out in June on Impulse while the download was released last week by Legacy. The previously unissued concert was captured at a performance Monk gave the afternoon of  October 27, 1968 at Palo Alto High School in California. A wise janitor asked if he could record the gig if he tuned the piano. Danny Scher, a senior at the school who produced concerts there, wisely let him. Danny, of course, would go on to work with concert impresario Bill Graham as his right-hand man for 24 years. [Photo above of Thelonious Monk by Lee Tanner, courtesy of Legacy Records]

But there were complications. Unsure if Monk would appear, Danny called him up before the scheduled performance. Here's the story from Danny's liner notes...

People were skeptical that Monk would ever show up, so two days before the concert I called him at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop where he was performing and I wasn't old enough to enter. I had never received a fully executed contract. [Photo above of Danny Scher from YouTube]

Monk said he knew nothing about the concert and wondered how he would even get to Palo Alto and back for his evening Jazz Workshop performance. I said that my brother, Les, was old enough to drive to San Francisco and could pick up him and his band and return them in time for that evening’s performance.

Monk agreed to have Les picking them up and drive them back. What you hear on the new album is what took place after they got out of the car. The tracks are Ruby, My Dear, Well, You Needn’t (with a terrific arco solo by bassist Larry Gales and a crisp drum solo by Ben Riley), Don’t Blame Me, Blue Monk, Epistrophy and I Love You Sweetheart of All My Dreams, which the quartet had recorded in 1964 for Columbia's Monk album. [Photo above of Charlie Rouse and Thelonious Monk from IMDB]

The sound of this new release is excellent, and the quartet's playing is assertive, outgoing and generous. Monk's piano, in particular, was jumping, with notes going off like packs of firecrackers. Rouse, Gales and Riley also played with extra edge. One wonders if the group's shoulders leaning into the music had something to do with Danny and his family.

Few tickets had been sold by the time Danny's brother, Les, returned from San Francisco with the quartet, the bass sticking out the window. The people who weren't convinced Monk would show lingered in the parking lot until they saw the band roll up. Then they reached into their pockets. "People went to the box office and bought tickets," Danny writes. "The show sold out, but Monk was hungry. My parents went across the street and brought back food for him and the band." [Photo above of Palo Alto High School]

Danny and his family were those kind of people. As a result, we now know where the Thelonious Monk Quartet was on an afternoon in October of 1968 and how great the band sounded. I'll have to ask Danny what they had for lunch. 

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Thelonious Monk: Palo Alto on vinyl and CD (Impulse) here. The digital download (Legacy) is here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Well You Needn't...

Here's a mini-doc about the album...