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Originally Posted by sgcim
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06-18-2020 09:43 PM
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A recording I didn't know about until yesterday. Johnny Smith performing "The Annotations of the Muses" composed by Johnny Richards. This was recorded in 1955, according to Lin Flanagan's biography:
And as a bonus the famous Schoenberg concerto conducted by Dmitri Mitropolous, when Smith deputized for a classical guitarist who couldn't read the part:
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Originally Posted by Cunamara
cheersLast edited by neatomic; 07-06-2020 at 08:46 PM. Reason: clarity-
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Did the thief get JS's gun, too? (Johnny "Nails" Smith used to carry a revolver in the neck pocket of his guitar case. Semper vigiles.)
[No judgment implied, here, by the way. I have long been a Smith devotee.]
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johnny was not sugar coated...he was a WW II vet... played trumpet in the army...
when he was approached last minute to do the schoenberg session ^, after a long day in the nbc pit...he took the score and stuck it under his bed and went out on the town..a real bender...(johnny liked his drinkin...)
still intoxicated, he got a call to come for his audition right away...johnny showed up and said though he could hardly hold the guitar, he still did enough to secure the session
when the session occurred a few days later, he nailed it in one take!
cheers
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I work with lots of musicians. Everyone reads music. Very few are brilliant sight readers. I've played in orchestras and I would say that most classical musicians are adept at sight reading, but nowhere near brilliant (me included). I have run into some true machines, however. You put anything in front of them and BAM!
Smith, Tommy Tedesco, etc., were really gifted when it cam to this sort of thing.
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totally agree gt..but schoenberg might be a bit tougher to sight read!
i left out that johnny holed up with one of the great nbc pianists, irwin kostel, and woodshedded for a few days before the recording!!
still nailed a complicated score tho....and went over so well..it was a live recording..they encored it for the audience!!
cheersLast edited by neatomic; 07-06-2020 at 11:16 PM.
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Originally Posted by neatomic
Geez, after one beer my fingers barely work. I always had to hold off on having a drink at gigs until after all the music was over.
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Originally Posted by jameslovestal
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Originally Posted by ronjazz
AGAIN: all I said what that it was folly for anyone TODAY to imply what some one DEAD would have to say about current players.
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This is on the NAMM website; I had never seen this. The full interview is 41 minutes long.
Johnny Smith | Oral Histories | NAMM.org
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Originally Posted by Cunamara
JD
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After listening to the entire interview I didn’t learn anything new. But it reaffirmed what I knew already and that was Johnny was a truly warm and wonderful human being. And listening to “muses”, also proved what I’ve known all along. Johnny was the greatest guitar player i will ever hear in my lifetime.
That’s my hero right there. And I am very to say that.
Joe D
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There have been a few mentions about mistakes. When you play live, they are always just around the corner. And, they happen because people are not machines . . . they are people. For musicians who play live, you know you bring a bag of mistakes with you every time you play. They can come from losing focus, not feeling well, inebriation, a bad day, or just simply mechanical errors. Your audience rarely notices them. Perhaps, a few musicians will hear them. However, they are more profound when playing Classical Music since you are playing from a score that requires exactitude, precision, and certitude. Not so much in Jazz since ,if you're fast on your feet, you can turn it into something else and recover. If I am going to judge a musician, I want to hear him/her live before an audience where sound and mistakes cannot be manipulated by a recording engineer. It's a good night, indeed, when the gremlins don't visit. Play live! . . . Marinero
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Those old jazz recordings were "live in the studio," union-required to complete a minimum recording of three songs in four hours for which they received union scale pay. Jazz musicians in the so-called golden age rarely if ever saw royalty payments, as the recording contract assigned those rights to the studio as a matter of course. Record companies have stolen from artists since the beginning. Johnny Smith himself did not receive any royalties from his famed Roost records until after the death of Reddy Reig, the label owner, who left a partial payment of back royalties in his will. Johnny didn't get royalties from his last three recordings (on Verve?) until an interview in Guitar Player magazine brought that forth and the interviewer contacted the label about it. This was why Johnny stopped recording, which he didn't much like very much anyway. FWIW John Coltrane got union scale for Giant Steps and that, reportedly, was it- like $500.
There were rarely overdubs or punch-ins, due to there being no budget for that and no isolation for the various instruments anyway, and little if any rehearsal unless it was a group that had been playing live. Things are very different nowadays, with Pat Metheny famously stitching together different takes and the like, just as one example. But Kind of Blue, Giant Steps, etc., were all live performances in the studio and often the first take. No different than a club gig, just a much smaller and very quiet audience.
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"and little if any rehearsal unless it was a group that had been playing live"
This is generally true but Blue Note frequently had paid rehearsals and Alfred Lion would often put out food and soft drinks.
These gestures relaxed the musicians and many feel is a big reason the label's recordings are so consistently excellent.
Starting a phrase late
Yesterday, 11:19 PM in Improvisation