Post #525689 by Dr. Zarkov on Fri, Apr 23, 2010 6:13 AM

On 2010-04-22 17:07, lucas vigor wrote:
I love it, Zarkov! Lots of great jazz in this one, including Gil Evan's version of "Joy Spring" (which is one of the best versions ever). I dig the unison, monophonic playing of the melody.

A lot of Gil Evan's later stuff really straddled the border between jazz and Lounge/exotica...very moody, understated, heavy use of Bongos...I always say that if you like Les Baxter, you will probably like Gil Evans...and he is not really discussed around here much, so props to you for including him in your show!

http://www.myspace.com/lucasvigor

I've been a big fan of his since I was a high school radio DJ in northern New Jersey in 1968-69 (broadcasting directly into New York City from our transmitter atop one of the Ramapo Mountains!) I was turned on to his music by Max, the salesman at Sam Goody's in Paramus Mall, a short Jewish guy who always wore a suit and smoked cigars (in the store!) and who took me under his wing and provided me with my first real jazz education by recommending first-rate records from the store's cut-out bin, which made them affordable for a teenager, at a time when I thought the height of jazz profundity was Herb Alpert. I later mentioned this to some jazz musicians and invariably their faces would light up because they all knew Max.

The Individualism of Gil Evans was one of these LPs Max pulled out of the bin and declared, "You really should buy this." A few years later I had the opportunity to see Gil Evans live during one of his weekly open rehearsals at Westbeth in NYC, where he lived. I remember the tuba player Howard Johnson was one of the musicians, and in the middle of the band playing, Airto and Flora Purim wandered in, unpacked his percussion instruments and started playing along with the rest of the band like they had been there all along.

I started chatting with the woman sitting next to me, who was one of Evans' neighbors in Westbeth, the poet Ree Dragonette who I later got to know and helped out sometimes with the poetry reading series she held in her loft. You may know her from the liner notes to Eric Dolphy's Berlin Concerts recording. At one point she and Dolphy held joint concerts where she read her poetry aloud while he accompanied her. Although those performances were recorded, the recordings were never found after he died. Now that she's gone, too, I can say that I have suspected it may have been because they were having an affair (around the time she was working with Dolphy she wrote a famous poem dedicated to a Black lover), and Dolphy's wife destroyed the tapes. But that's just sheer speculation on my part.

[ Edited by: Dr. Zarkov 2010-04-23 06:44 ]