Off jazz: 12 by Ordinarius

Ordinarius—a word-play after their musical director and arranger, Augusto Ordine—is the name of a vocal sextet faring from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Left to right: Maíra Martins, Augusto Ordine, Matias Corrêa, Fabiano Salek,
Beatriz Coimbra, Mateus Xavier, Rebeca Vieira.

Bird quotes Satchmo

When Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie burst into the jazz scene in the mid-1940s, much was made of the presumed animosity between the new and the older generations of musicians. Although there were some noises in that direction, let's just say that jazz journalism paid a lot off attention to celebrity status, fans and gossip.

Back in 1928, Louis Armstrong recorded this classic cadenza as the opening for his "West End Blues":

Charlie Parker must have paid attention, since he used it twenty years after Armstrong, at least twice on record, both times while playing the blues, one at Carnegie Hall on Christmas day, 1949:

the other at St. Nicholas Arena in New York (St. Nick's), a couple of months later:

PS 2022-03-25: And a third one, on May 30, 1953, at Birdland with Bud Powell on piano and Charles Mingus on bass.

Zoot greets Getz

Zoot Sims, Tião Neto, Stan Getz at A&R Studios, NYC. March 18/19, 1963
(Photo by Jim Marshall. Source: JazzTimes.)

Zoot Sims (left) and Stan Getz (right) had a common history beginning in the summer of 1947 in a rehearsal band for which Gene Roland wrote the arrangements. This eight-piece group led by trumpet player Tommy DeCarlo and also comprising Herbie Steward and Jimmy Giuffre was spotted by Ralph Burns and eventually led to Woody Herman's signing the saxes minus Giuffre—Herman had already signed Serge Chaloff for the bari chair.

Gil Evans recycles

Before the career-changing album that was Miles Ahead for both Miles Davis and Gil Evans, the latter was making a living out of odd jobs and small assignments. Like this arrangement of "Miss Brown to You" for Kent Harian, for instance (the only one by Evans in the album Echoes of Joy):

When Harian recorded his album, in December 1956, Evans was already hard at work writing for Miles Ahead, which would be released in October 1957. Only weeks before that release, he was in the studio, courtesy of Prestige—Miles's previous label—, to do Gil Evans & Ten, his first album as a leader, at age 45. One of its better known tracks is his reading of the bloody ballad "Ella Speed", with a classic solo by Steve Lacy, and this passage for the ensemble:

Image and sound: Webster Hall, 1956

One satisfaction of researching jazz photography—for it is a lot of fun—is the rare occasion when the images can be married to sounds. The book The Sound I Saw (Phaidon Press, 2011) by Roy DeCarava (1919-2009) includes a beautiful collection of black and white images, many of jazz musicians, with no credit whatsoever. Checking faces, names and discographies like this one, there are two photographs which can be pinned down, taken at the magnificent Webster Hall, RCA's regular studio in NYC at the time. These:

Tony Scott and orchestra, Webster Hall, NYC,
Friday, December 14, 1956

Left to right: Frank Foster, Danny Bank (with back to the camera), Frank Wess, Sahib Shihab,
Gigi Gryce, Tony Scott; same date and location.

Musiciansʼ quotes: Carla Bley on (im)perfection

Photo by Lauren Lancaster / NYT/Redux

“Well, youʼre not going to get very far in the musical world without some kind of a defect.”

Carla Bley's reply to the late Lew Soloffʼs assertion that he could (indeed) play “everything and anything”, quoted in this profile by Ethan Iverson.