JazzWax

Mary Chapin, Daymond & Judy

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed singer-songwriter Mary Chapin Carpenter (go here) for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section. Mary Chapin talks about her recurring dream—that she's flying over her childhood house in Princeton, N.J., and the person she sees looking out her bedroom window. Mary Chapin's new album is Sometimes Just the Sky. [Photo above courtesy of Mary Chapin Carpenter]

Here's Mary Chapin Carpenter singing Down at the Twist and Shout...

And here's Sometimes Just the Sky from Mary Chapin's new album...

For my "Playlist" column in the Review section, I interviewed Daymond John of TV's Shark Tank (go here) about why Keni Burke's Risin' to the Top from 1982 means to much to him. Daymond grew up in the Hollis section of Queens, a rough area of New York then. The song was big at a time when he was busy learning to sew, which helped him start his company FUBU and avoid dealing and a host of other activities that could have landed him in jail or worse. [Photo above courtesy of Daymond John]

Here's an extended mix of Keni Burke's great dance hit...

Boston radio. If you spent any time at all attending college in the Boston area in the 1970s, you're probably more than familiar with WBCN-FM. The station's DJs introduced a long list of rock bands that were just starting out in a city with a static demographic (college freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors) and a relentless appetite for new music. When I was up there in the '70s, I listened to everything—punk, New Wave, disco, soul, garage and hard rock. Only later did these genres become nation-states with fans of one hating all the rest.

I just finished reading Radio Free Boston: The Rise and Fall of WBCN, a terrific history of the station by Carter Alan, who was a DJ at WBCN for 19 years. Now he's a DJ and music director at WZLX in Boston. In the book, he lays out how the FM station emerged and became a cultural force, breaking in local bands such as Aerosmith, Boston, The Cars and many more. Even if you've never been to Boston, the book is highly recommended reading if you loved FM radio at the dawn of its ascension as an in-depth long-form alternative to pop AM. In Radio Free Boston, you see how FM took hold and why early FM DJs in all cities are still so beloved. You'll find the book here.

The Celebrity Club in Providence, R.I., was a top integrated jazz and R&B night spot in New England in the 1950s. Back then, it was part of the club archipelago that ran from Baltimore to Boston that allowed musicians to earn a living. Chris Cowles sent along information on a documentary being made on the venue's history. Here's background. And here's a clip...

What the heck. Here's Judy Garland and Lena Horne singing Day In, Day Out on Garland's TV show in the early 1960s. Note the spectacularly imaginative set on this one and how Horne uses her mouth as she sings...

Oddball album cover of the week.

Believe it or not, this was a "special products" album created for Kentucky Fried Chicken to give away at their fast-food restaurants in the '60s. The songs were a round-up of licensed hits by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass. Only thing that's a mystery to me is how al fresco diners were supposed to play it. The cover might have been more compelling if the Colonel were covered in whipped cream. Another Mark56 production, by the way. Here's the full album...

Videos: René Thomas

René Thomas was a Belgian jazz guitarist who played and recorded often during his career with his fellow countryman Bobby Jaspar. Thomas moved to Canada in the 1950s and then back to Europe in 1962, where he played and recorded frequently with Jaspar, Kenny Clarke, Eddy Louiss and many others. Thomas had a tasty style that was something of a cross between Jimmy Raney and Grant Green. He has always been a favorite of mine and now will be a favorite of yours. If JazzWax had a theme, it could well be Thomas's Meeting, featured below in two clips.

Thomas died in 1975. Here are a bunch of videos of him in action plus three choice audio clips:

Here's René Thomas with saxophonist Bobby Jaspar...

Here's Thomas with organist Eddy Louiss and drummer Kenny Clarke...

Here's Thomas with Louiss and drummer Bernard Lubat...

Here's Thoms, Louiss and drummer Jean Louis Viale...

And here are three audio tracks:

Here's Thomas's Meeting...

Here's All Morning Long...

And here's No Smoking with Thomas, Luiss and Clarke...

Bill Crow: Jazz Anecdotes

Bill Crow is one of jazz's finest living bassists. Bill began his recording career on a Claude Thornhill session in October 1952. A month later he was a member of the Stan Getz Quintet. The studio and live recordings of this group in '52 and '53 remain exquisite. Over the next two years, Bill recorded with Al Haig, Jimmy Raney, Marian McPartland (at New York's Hickory House), Jackie and Roy, and Victor Feldman. Then he joined the seminal Gerry Mulligan Sextet and Quartet in 1956. During the late '50s, Bill also played and recorded with Zoot Sims and Bob Brookmeyer, as well as Mose Allison, Bobby Scott, the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band, Benny Goodman and on and on. Bill spent much of his career on the East Coast and is best known for his work with Getz and Mulligan—two guys who liked to hear a bass talking to them loud and clear.

Bill recorded just two leadership albums, both late in his career: From Birdland to Broadway (1995) and Jazz Anecdotes (1996), which was named after his 1990 memoir. The latter is the focus of this post. Bill is first and foremost a storyteller bassist. This means that his bass lines and solos typically sound like a narrative—a tale being told on the instrument from point A to point Z, with the plot thickening in places.

That's why so many great artists loved him on their recording sessions and in their groups. When you're a leader responsible for playing most song's melodies and solos, the piano provides texture, drums keep you in tempo but the bass is the instrument that does the taking. Most listeners don't pick up on this, but leaders depend on the dialogue the bass lays down.

Bill's storytelling prowess isn't exclusive to his playing. If you follow him on Facebook, you know that he loves to tell engaging stories about jazz history from the perspective of an eyewitness. Bill has been there and done that, so those stories are invaluable. [Photo above of Bill Crow in 1958]

Jazz Anecdotes was recorded for Japan's Venus label and featured Bill (b), Carmen Leggio (ts), Joe Cohn (g) and David Jones (d). It's a real swinger, as is to be expected when Leggio, Cohn and Jones are in the mix. Leggio was perhaps best known for playing in Maynard Ferguson's powerhouse Roulette band in the late 1950s and Woody Herman's early '60s orchestra. Cohn recorded with Buddy DeFranco, Harry Allen, Grant Stewart and is an incredibly tasteful and engaging player. And Jones has been recording in groups since the 1980s.

The tracks are Jazz Anecdotes; Oscar Pettiford's Bohemia After Dark; Duke Ellington's In a Mellotone; the standard Street of Dreams; Bill's Tarrytown; the standards Lover Come Back to Me, On the Alamo, Mack the Knife and These Foolish Things; Thelonious Monk's 'Round Midnight; the standard Speak Low and Lester Young's Tickletoe. [Photo above of Joe Cohn]

What I love most about this album is Bill's playing and Leggio's assertive swinging. Bill's bass is so woody and conversational. What's more, instead of trying to hear him within the groups he recorded with over the years, you now can hear what makes him special, since he's fully exposed here. This setting lets you fully appreciate how terrific he is. Bill is such a warm, supersized player. Leggio (who died in 2009) was equally warm and an old-fashioned swinger. Cohn weaves his ringing guitar notes through the solo textures advanced by Bill and Leggio. And Jones keeps everyone on time with a delicate touch. [Photo above of Bill Crow and David Jones]

This is a perfect album and a must own.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find the Bill Crow Quartet's Jazz Anecdotes (Venus) here.

You'll also find Bill's memoir Jazz Anecdotes here and his Jazz Anecdotes: Second Time Around here.

JazzWax clips: Here's the Bill Crow Quartet playing the album's title track...

Jazz Anecdotes

A special thanks to David Langner.

Georgie Auld: To the Losers

The last time I posted about an exceptional tribute album to Frank Sinatra by a jazz artist was in January. The album was Oscar Peterson's A Jazz Portrait of Frank Sinatra, recorded in May 1959. Now I want to hip you to another gem. It's Here's to the Losers, a glorious little-known album by tenor saxophonist Georgie Auld that was produced by Jack Tracy for Philips Records in July 1963. While Sinatra isn't named on the cover or in the liner notes, the album features Auld playing saloon songs closely associated with the singer. 

Interestingly, according to Jack's liner notes, the title song was appearing for the fist time on this album. While Jack was technically correct, since Sinatra's Softly As I Leave You album wasn't released until November 1964, Here's to the Losers was recorded by Sinatra in July '63—the exact same month as Auld's. Clearly, songwriters Robert Wells and Jack Segal or their song-plugger convinced both of them to record the song at around the same time.

Auld was a major player in the 1940s and '50s. Today, he's largely unsung. His recording career began in 1936 in Bunny Berigan's band. He joined Artie Shaw in 1938 and then Benny Goodman starting in 1940. Auld's leadership recording career began in 1944, and he made records with Coleman Hawkins, Sarah Vaughan and Dizzy Gillespie that same year. In the mid-1940s, Auld led a terrific band with Tadd Dameron and Budd Johnson as arrangers. And his late 1940s bebop recordings as a leader with Neal Hefti and Billy Byers remain landmark recordings.

In 1950, Auld was in Chubby Jackson's all-star band, and he led quintets that were impossibly excellent. Throughout the 1950s, Auld's energetic bop-influenced saxophone was in great demand, turning up on Maynard Ferguson's Octet and Around the Horn, both on EmArcy in 1955. His discography in the late 1950s is equally astonishing. The last time I posted about Auld was in 2015 here, with a focus on his late '40s bands. [Photo above of Georgie Auld fronting a band in August 1947 that included Tiny Kahn on drums, Red Rodney on trumpet and Serge Charloff on baritone saxophone, by William P. Gottlieb]

On Here's to the Losers, Auld was backed by a terrific, swinging West Coast ensemble: Larry Bunker (vib), Lou Levy (p), John Gray (g), Leroy Vinnegar (b) and Mel Lewis (d). The tracks are Here's to the Losers, In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning, That Old Feeling, Everything Happens to Me, Drinking Again, Blue and Sentimental, Learnin' the Blues, Auld and Vinnegar's For Losers and Boozers and One for My Baby (and One More for the Road).

Sinatra clearly had nothing to do with For Losers and Boozers and he never recorded Blue and Sentimental. But the rest of the songs were ballads the Chairman of the Board made famous. Leaving Sinatra's name off the album may have had something to do with Auld recording Here's to the Losers at the same time as Sinatra. As for Auld, he works his broad, flinty tenor saxophone through the Sinatra batch, giving them a hoarse, after-hours feel. Months earlier, Auld recorded Georgie Auld Plays the Winners for Philips backed by Frank Rosolino (tb) Lou Levy (p) Leroy Vinnegar (b) and Mel Lewis (d). A good album, but not nearly as blue as this one.

Georgie Auld died in 1990.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find all the tracks from Georgie Auld's Here's to the Losers and Plays the Winners here.

You'll also find the albums at Spotify.

JazzWax clips: Here's a tasty Here's to the Losers. Give it a second to start. This clip and the next are from the album, so there's needle pause...

Here's to the Losers

And here's In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning...

In The Wee Small Hours

Oscar Peterson: Hello Herbie

Pianist Oscar Peterson first heard guitarist Herb Ellis in the spring of 1953. Ellis was playing at a club in Buffalo, N.Y., with the Soft Winds, a trio featuring Johnny Frigo on bass and violin, and Lou Carter on piano. Peterson and Ellis met briefly between sets, and the pianist filed away Ellis's name. That summer, guitarist Barney Kessel, left the Oscar Peterson Trio. Tired of relentless touring, Kessel had decided to take on a growing list of recording commitments in Los Angeles. But before he left, Kessel recommended a guitarist to take his place: Herb Ellis. [Photo above of Oscar Peterson with MPS Records' Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer in Germany, courtesy of MPS]

Ellis joined Peterson and bassist Ray Brown in Boston in the late summer of '53. Over the next five years, the Oscar Peterson Trio became one of the most tireless and in-demand jazz groups in the country. The trio not only toured throughout the year but also recorded as the de-facto house band for Norman Granz's Verve label. [Photo above by Ray Avery, courtesy CTSImages.com]

Ellis had plenty of endurance and a technique to match Peterson's keyboard bombast, weaving lyrically in and around the pianist's purposeful, muscular attack and soloing with a gentle flash. By 1958, Ellis was a superstar sideman and left the group to accompany Ella Fitzgerald in the studio and on tour. Peterson replaced Ellis with drummer Ed Thigpen.

In the years that followed, Ellis recorded as a leader and as a sideman, mostly in Los Angeles. In 1965, he recorded with Peterson and Brown again on With Respect to Nat. Another four years would pass before Ellis and Peterson would be reunited in the studio. In November 1969, Ellis was in Europe and was convinced by MPS Records to team up with Peterson, bassist Sam Jones and drummer Bobby Durham in Villingen, Germany, at MPS's Black Forest recording studios.

The result was Hello Herbie. On the album, Peterson is strong, precise and absolutely flawless, while Ellis takes brash solos when he's not playing tasty rhythm guitar behind Peterson. The tracks are Naptown Blues, Exactly Like You, Day By Day, Hamp's Blues, Blues for H.G., A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening and Seven Comes Eleven. [Photo above, from left, Ray Brown, Oscar Peterson and Herb Ellis]

The high-points for me on the album are Wes Montgomery's Naptown Blues and the standard A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening. The former is a thrilling explosive swinger that features Ellis playfully doing a thumb-driven Montgomery impression before shifting into his own stylistic approach. Peterson's solo is pure Milt Buckner, unleashing cascades of block chords. The latter song is taken at a walking tempo, giving the listener a chance to hear the articulation of both musicians in comparative slow motion.

The next three MPS studio albums by Peterson were equally magnificent: Tristeza on Piano, recorded in January and February 1970 with Jones and Durham;  Walking the Line from November 1970, with George Mraz on bass and Ray Price on drums; and Tracks, a solo album, also recorded in November 1970.

Oscar Peterson died in 2007; Herb Ellis died in 2010.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Hello Herbie here, Tristeza for Piano here, Walking the Line (remastered) here and Tracks (remastered) here.

JazzWax tracks: Here's A Lovely Way to Spend an Evening from Hello Herbie...

Here's Triste from Tristeza on Piano...

Here's Once Upon a Summertime from Walking the Line...

And here's Oscar Peterson's solo on Give Me the Simple Life from the remastered Tracks...

Give Me the Simple Life

Mike Chéret: Take One

Over in France, Mike Chéret plays a beautiful tenor saxophone. When I last posted about Mike in 2016, I featured a series of videos of a band he led on alto in 2014 playing arrangements from the album Art Pepper + 11. Now Mike has released an album called Take One by his sterling hard-bop quintet, We Five. The band consists of Jim Rotondi (tp), Michael Cheret (ts), Olivier Truchot (p), Brice Berrerd (b) and Andréa Michelutti (d).

 
The album's songs are Milt Jackson's Compassion, Rotondi's and Eric Alexander's Mode for Mabes, Mike's Two Minutes of Rose, the standards I Concentrate on You and It’s Easy to Remember, Ray Charles's Mary Ann and the standard My Romance. What you notice immediately is how purposeful this group is. All of the musicians are driven and play tightly together, but they also give the music air, allowing what you're hearing to float around and sink in.

Born in 1974, Mike began playing the alto saxophone at 17 and entered the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris at 26. Now he plays mostly tenor and soprano saxophones. Over the years Mike has played in several different groups in France and has toured in the States.

Even the standards on Mike's new album are given a fresh spin. Mike and Rotondi make for a delicious pairing. Both have a different approach but they share a poetic sensibility. As they show on this album, it's not solely about notes, speed and heat but about beauty.

Hopefully we'll hear more of Mike, whose tenor saxophone has a big yearning feel. For more about the album, go here and click on the English translation.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Mike Chéret's Take One only at his French site here (click on English).

If you click on the long yellow-ish button, you'll be directed to a purchase page that is billable to your PayPal account.

JazzWax clips: Here's Compassion...

And here's the group playing I Concentrate on You from the album...

R.O., Rosanne and Cass

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed illustrator R.O. Blechman (go here), whose work has appeared on 15 covers of The New Yorker magazine and in hundreds of books, newspapers and other magazines. Bob is most famous for his "shaky line," which makes his work fun and accessible. Bob's passion for art began as a teen living on Central Park West. His neighbor was a bohemian French female artist. He admired her, and she helped him with his portfolio when applying to the prestigious High School of Music & Art. Fortunately for us she encouraged him. Bob was accepted, and the rest is history. [Photo of R.O. Blechman above courtesy of R.O. Blechman]

Here's Bob's revolutionary Alka-Seltzer ad in 1967 that introduced a new kind of animation to TV commercials...

For my WSJ "Playlist" column this week, I interviewed singer Rosanne Cash on Joni Mitchell's River (go here). After her parents' divorced, Rosanne went to live with her mother in a small Southern California town where she was misunderstood and miserable. In 1971, when Joni's Blue came out, Rosanne closely identified with the cover and the music inside. Joni's song River—her wish for a frozen river that she could use to skate out of town—became Rosanne's lifesaver. [Photo above of Rosanne Cash courtesy of Rosanne Cash]

Here's Rosanne singing on a promo video for her most recent album, The River & the Thread (2014)...

SiriusXM. For those of you who don't have a subscription to SiriusXM satellite radio or missed me last week talking about my "Anatomy of a Song" column on the Pet Shop Boys' Being Boring (1990), you can hear the entire Feedback show hosted by Nik Carter and Lori Majewski here. Thanks to Nik, Lori, Matt and Alex for treating me so well. [Photo of Nik and Lori above]

Off the wall. Last week, my undergrad alma mater, Northeastern University, turned the tables on me when Molly Chase phoned to interview me about my childhood and career. So that's what it feels like to be "House Call-ed." To read all about it, go here. [Photo of me in Los Angeles on assignment two weeks ago]

Anatomy of a Song in London. My book of 45 WSJ columns plus outtakes and additional reported material was spotted in the gift shop last week at London's Albert Hall by Jason Elzy. Wow, appearing at Albert Hall, where so many amazing artists have performed. So cool. To order the paperback edition of my book in the U.S. and Canada, go here. In the U.K., go here.

Marian McPartland hosted Steely Dan in 2005 on her Piano Jazz show on national public radio. The interaction between Walter Becker, Donald Fagen and Marian is fascinating. Donald and Walter clearly were a little intimidated at first, and so was Marian, as the gracious host tried to find a place where their personalities could meet. Halfway though, when Walter and Donald ask her to play Star Eyes, the chemistry gelled as Marian's British sense of humor came alive, making the boys from Steely Dan feel right at home. Go here.

Cityscape. I took the above photo of an old New York emergency kiosk on Park Avenue last Thursday night after dinner with director Raymond De Felitta.

What the heck. Here's the Mamas & the Papas' Cass Elliot and Andy Williams on TV singing a duet, combining Words of Love (Elliot) and Words (Williams) on the Andy Williams Show in 1968. So easy to forget how comfortable Elliot was on stage and how powerful and beautiful her voice was. You had to be an extraordinary artist with a large personality to upstage Williams, and that's exactly what Cass did without ever offending him...

Oddball album cover of the week.

Doctors needed music for dancing while seeing patients? Looks like a dose of malpractice and a touch of #MeToo on that cover. Plus the fiddling patient appears to be smoking. Apparently, Jimmie Janes was an M.D., according to the liner notes.

Funny thing is the band and arrangements by Jack Stern are superb. Mark56 Records was an Anaheim, Calif., label, which tells me the band was loaded with top-flight West Coast studio musicians making a few extra bucks. Sounds very Les Brown-y and feels like it's from the very early 1960s. Here's the entire album...

Tony and San Francisco

Hugs for Tony Bennett. Earlier this week on March 21, the U.S. Library of Congress announced that his 1962 recording of I Left My Heart in San Francisco would be added to the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically or artistically significant."

Written in 1953 by lyricist Douglass Cross and composer George Cory, I Left My Heart in San Francisco was given to Ralph Sharon, Tony's pianist, several years later. Sharon stuck it in a dresser drawer along with other new songs he received but became too busy to bother giving it a careful look. Sharon pulled it out in 1961 just before he and Tony went off on a cross-country tour that would end at the Venetian Room in San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. Sharon figured it might come in handy when they reached the city by the bay. When Tony sang the song at the hotel in December 1961, the crowd went wild.

So Tony pushed to record it at his next Columbia recording session in January 1962. The label put the unknown song on the B side of Once Upon a Time. But DJs didn't dig the A side and flipped it over and began playing I Left My Heart in San Francisco instead. Tony's single climbed to #19 on Billboard's pop chart and #7 on its Easy Listening chart. San Francisco's popularity quickly became Tony's theme and one of the city's anthems. I had my own encounter with the song at the Venetian Room (go here).

Today, in tribute to Tony and the song, I found the entire Singer Presents Tony Bennett broadcast of 1966, which included Tony singing I Left My Heart in San Francisco. Amazing that the Singer Company, the maker of sewing machines, was big enough then to sponsor Tony Bennett's first TV special on ABC on October 26, 1966.

Here's an hour of Tony in his prime with the Ralph Burns Orchestra, Bobby Hackett, Paul Horn, Buddy Rich, Candido, Milt Jackson, Gene Bertoncini and other jazz greats making guest appearances. Sony Legacy really should consider re-issuing this...

By George! Handy, of Course

Posting about Hal McKusick yesterday and re-reading my interviews with him, I was reminded of arranger George Handy. They were good friends and wound up in Los Angeles together in the mid-1940s following an impulsive decision. The story involves Al Cohn and a u-turn. Hal turned me on to Handy during one of our 2007 conversations, and Handy remains one of the great, forgotten arrangers of the 1950s. [Photo of George Handy by William P. Gottlieb]

With the rise of the 12-inch LP in the mid-1950s, the demand for arrangers grew as labels needed orchestrators to write precise, inventive scores for mid-size bands. Surprisingly, Handy recorded only two albums as a leader—Handyland, USA in August 1954 and By George! Handy, of Course in April 1955. Both were for RCA's X label.

The former album featured fairly straight-up jazz. The latter was awash in modern classical influences, which makes sense, since Handy studied with Aaron Copland and at New York's Juilliard School of Music. Handy cut his teeth in Boyd Raeburn's experimental big band from 1944 to 1946. After he and Hal wound up in L.A., Handy began to record and write for a range of bands. [Photo above from left, Dave Lambert, John Simmons, Chubby Jackson, George Handy and Dizzy Gillespie in 1947, by William P. Gottlieb]

Handy is playing piano on Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's Dial recording in L.A. of Diggin' Diz in February 1946. Then he was back with Raeburn and playing and arranging in Buddy Rich's 1947 band. He arranged for Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra in 1949. I suspect he was ghostwriting from 1949 to 1954, the year in which he recorded the 12-inch LP Handyland, USA, which let him stretch out.

But Handy's masterpiece is By George! a year later. The results exceed Gil Evans during this period. Handy even beat Evans to the punch as an LP leader. Evans wouldn't lead with sophistication on a 12-inch album until Helen Merrill's Dream of You in 1956 and his masterpiece in 1957, Miles Davis's Miles Ahead +19. Evans's first leadership album, Gil Evans and Ten, would follow later that year. This takes nothing away from Evans, only to point out how remarkable Handy was. [Pictured from bottom, above: arrangers Ralph Burns, Neal Hefti, Johnny Richards, George Handy, Ed Finckel and Eddie Sauter at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1947 by William P. Gottlieb]

Handy's album By George! is sophisticated and daring for 1955. He brashly combines Copland-esque passages with a natural cinematic jazz touch. It's easily one of the finest classical-influenced jazz albums of the decade and one of my favorites of any decade. You can listen to it from start to finish without interruption and it never grows dull. Most fascinating, there isn't a dud among the 12 tracks. [Photo above by William P. Gottlieb]

The band includes Dick Sherman (tp); Gene Orloff (tp,violin); Frank Rehak (tb); Ray Beckenstein and Dave Schildkraut (as); Tom Mace (ts); Danny Bank (bar); Tony Aless (p); Buddy Jones (b); Osie Johnson (d) and George Handy (arr,cond). As you'll hear, Danny Bank's baritone saxophone stands out. [Photo above by William P. Gottlieb]

After the mid-1950s, Handy moved to the Catskill Mountains north of New York City and played piano at the summer resorts. It's a shame he wasn't given a grant in the 1950s to simply arrange for decades to come. At least we have these two albums as examples of what Handy could do and what might have been if there was greater demand for his approach. In some ways, Gil Evans picked up where Handy left off, relaxing Handy's busy approach to allow for soloists and singers.

George Handy died in 1997.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find George Handy's Handyland, USA here and By George! Handy, of Course here. 

JazzWax notes: To read my interview with Hal McKusick on George Handy, go here.

For more on George Handy's life, a thorough biography can be found here. (A special thanks to Jeff Helgesen.) Even more on Handy here (scroll down), from the great Ben Bierman, author of Listening to Jazz).

Also, see essays on Handy by Jeffrey Sultanof and Bill Kirchner in Gene Lees's May 1997 Jazzletter here. (A special thanks to Bill Kirchner.)

JazzWax clips: Here's The Sleepwalker...

The Sleepwalker

Here's Knobby Knees...

Knobby Knees

And here's Pensive...

Pensive

Six Videos of Hal McKusick

Before he died in April 2012 at 87, saxophonist Hal McKusick was one of JazzWax's biggest fans and a dear friend. We spoke almost weekly about jazz events Hal had witnessed and his many recording sessions, including one with Charlie Parker (here). Many of our conversations were captured in my JazzWax posts. Hal was an educator and always available, and he was loaded with stories and insights. Naturally, his passing was heartbreaking. His early encouragement was essential and fantastic, and his cool, relaxed way of talking was entertaining in and of itself.

Hal was one of my earliest JazzWax interviews. As I recall, baritone saxophonist Danny Bank was my first. I had much more free time between 2007 and 2010, so I simply decided to track down jazz musicians I admired on my records and interview them about growing up and their recording careers for JazzWax. I figured interviewing was what I did for a living, why not pay the music back by capturing the lives and stories for my blog. Today, all of those interviews are free and in the right-hand column.

Recently, I was thinking of Hal. Here are a handful of videos of him in action so you can get to know him, too. If you want to read my multipart 2007 interview first, go here. Links to additional parts are above the red date at the top of the post.

Here's Hal McKusick playing John Coltrane's The Wise One...

Here's a video tribute to Hal after his passing by the Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., where Hal taught music and led the school's orchestras and ensembles for many years...

Here's a video that Ross School student Alexandra Fairweather made of Hal in 2009...

Here's Home Town Blues in 2007 in Sag Harbor, N.Y.with Hal McKusick (as), Don Friedman (p), Jay Anderson (b) and Dennis Mackrel (d)...

Here's Hal on alto sax in 1956 on his album Jazz at the Academy playing Irresistible You with Barry Galbraith (g), Milt Hinton (b) and Osie Johnson (d)...

And here's Hal on alto and bass clarinet at his peak in 1958 on his album Cross Section-Saxes playing George Handy's arrangement of La Rue with Dick Hafer and Frank Socolow (ts), Jay Cameron (bs), Bill Evans (p), Paul Chambers (b) and Connie Kay (d)...