This week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed Lady Gaga for the daily arts section (go here). I'll have more on my interview with Lady on Monday and more about her new duet album, Love for Sale, with Tony Bennett.
Also in the WSJ this week, I interviewed Jennifer Beals for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Jennifer talked about her strange audition for Flashdance and her current role reprising her Bette Porter character in Showtime's The L Word: Generation Q.
Jimmy Gourley. After my post on guitarist Jimmy Gourley. I received the following from Roger Cotterrell in London...
Hello Marc, thanks for another very welcome post on Jimmy Gourley. It brought back many memories for me. He came over from Paris to play briefly in a London club in the early 1980s. I met him then and loved his playing, which previously I’d only heard on record. I was also intrigued by the fact that unlike many other guitarists, he always stood up to play. He also had a disconcerting habit of throwing back his long wavy hair and gazing upwards in mid-solo, as if to the star,s when he hit emphatic notes.
At the time, I told him I'd be visiting Paris a few weeks later and asked could I bring my cassette recorder and have a conversation with him. He was fine with that. In Paris, I went to his little apartment on Rue Ponthieu, near the Champs Elysees, where the windows looked out on an old courtyard at the back and there was a lot of noise from the renovations being done below. He didn’t have a lot of work but he said was full of plans and possibilities.
After I left, Jimmy sent me a postcard from Paris to tell me he liked the article I wrote for "Jazz Forum" (issue 82 in August 83). He thanked me and said I'd made him sound a bit too "profound – ugh!" A few years later he was in London again, at the same venue, but unfortunately he didn’t have a name in the UK and the audience was embarrassingly small.
He was, as you say, a fine guitarist who was underestimated by the public but appreciated by fellow musicians. He also was a pleasant, friendly, warm man and perhaps too modest. He was thoroughly acclimated to life in France, spoke the language, and traveled around the country to play. Thanks, as always, for brightening my jazz week with your posts.
And this from legendary pianist and arranger John Cameron...
Hey Marc, an interesting week in JazzWaxLand, especially for my memory banks. Leon Russell played piano the way I liked to when I wasn’t playing like Thelonius Monk. And more importantly for me, Jimmy Gourley was one of the first three American jazz musicians I ever saw live. The other two were Kenny Clarke and Lou Bennett. I saw Jimmy in March 1962 on a mad dash with bass player Jimmy and drummer Les from a U.S. base in Verdun where we were playing to Paris on our night off. It was a two-hour drive.
We descended on the Blue Note to see Messrs Gourley, Bennett and Clarke, in person. In the U.K., the musicians' union only started to allow American musicians to work in Nov ’61. Zoot Sims was the first at Ronnie Scott's. To a star-starved young jazzer like me to see three live at once was absolute magic.
Having filled our boots and ears with great music, we all piled into Les’s minivan as the sun came up and dashed back to Verdun to catch a few hours before the evening’s gig. I went back to Paris on my own a couple of times over the years at a more leisurely pace, but that first dash was something else. Crazy.
Louis Stewart. Last week I received the following from Andrew Carroll in Ireland...
Hi Marc, greetings from a piano player in Ireland. It was Ollie Dowling (ex-Jazz FM and Dublin and manager of the late Louis Stewart) who introduced me to your fine blog some time ago. I'm sure you get told this all the time, but it really is so good to have something like JazzWax to look forward to every day.
After you highlighted one of the quintessential Bond chords (E-minor 9th with major 7th) in JazzWax Feb 18 of 2020, it has been one of the things I show people when they ask me to teach them something on the piano, in particular the intrigue and suspense created by the little delicate roll of the fingers in a rising sequence. I was at the cinema last night and if you haven't seen "No Time To Die," I thought you might be interested to hear that they use it as a stand-alone chord as an isolated sting on at least one occasion. When they did, I whispered to my wife, "Hey, that's the Marc Myers chord!"—for that is what it has come to be known.
Note: Here's the JazzWax passage Andrew is referring to:
Billie Eilish co-composed and sang the new James Bond film, No Time to Die. I can't quite make out the lyrics, which is part of its charm. But the song itself is fabulous. And love that last chord! After sharing it with arranger Roy Phillippe, Roy hipped me to the last chord's construction: "It's an E-minor 9th with the major 7th—the last chord of the James Bond Theme going all the way back to Dr. No."
Cedar Walton. After I recently let readers know about Sid Gribetz's five-hour Jazz Profiles on pianist Cedar Walton (above) on WKCR-FM, I received the following from Kim Paris of the FM Radio Archive...
Marc, thanks for letting us know about the Cedar Walton special on "Jazz Profiles" in New York. JazzWax readers may be interested in hearing some of the eight Cedar Walton live recordings on the FM Radio Archive. The first, from 1980, is Cedar with Dexter Gordon's band. The last, from 2009, is the Cedar Walton All Stars set you've mentioned before on JazzWax. The six others include three with the Timeless All Stars in the 1980s and three with Cedar as leader. Go here.
New York gigs. Are you in the New York area next week? A couple of JazzWax pals are performing:
Judy Wexler will be singing at Pangea (178 Second Ave. at 12th St.) on October 6 and at The Side Door in Old Lyme, Ct., on October 9. On the Pangea gig, she will be joined by Jim Ridl on piano, Essiet Essiet on bass and Tim Horner on drums. In Connecticut, she'll be working with Ridl on piano, Bill Moring on bass and Horner on drums. For my interview with Judy, go here.
For reservations and more information about the Pangea gig, go here. For The Side Door, go here.
The Michael Weiss Trio with be at Mezzrow on Friday, October 8, with Michael on piano, Paul Gill on bass and Pete Van Nostrand on drums. Mezzrow is at 163 West 10th Street, and sets are at 7:30 and 9 p.m. For information, go here.
For those unable to attend in person, the engagement will be live-streamed here and the archived stream will be available to view a few days later. They will be performing selections from an upcoming CD. For my last post on Michael, go here.
Elmo Hope radio. WKCR-FM's Sid Gribetz will host a five-hour radio broadcast celebrating the career of Elmo Hope on Sunday (October 3), from 2 to 7 p.m. (ET) on Jazz Profiles. Listen from anywhere in the world by going here.
Jazz art. Artist Allen Mezquida sent along a link to jazz portraits he created during last year's lockdown. To view, go here. Here's a video about his site and work...
And finally, here's Archie Bell and the Drells performing Soul City Walk in 1976 in London...
