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'we all play with stcks." That tickled my funny bone. Mine is not really a funny story, I guess. Styx played the senior prom of an old college buddy's high school, shortly after their first big hit dropped. The school held them to their contract as it was too late to find another band; I guess Styx was pretty surly throughout the gig.
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09-17-2016 09:58 PM
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Ever seen the Styx "Behind the Music"? Worth searching out. Apparently the rest of the guys cannot STAND Dennis DeYoung these days. They talk some major trash about him.
Originally Posted by Cunamara
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I'm amazed no one seems to have mentioned Joe Cohn in the Players section (unless I missed it). If he's not a genius he's the closest thing. More on his astonishing abilities another time, but here are 2 favorite stories:
1: The 1st time we played duo together was at his Washington Heights crib in '93. First thing we did was read some stuff. He was into reading with other guitarists (more than I), and I complied.
He then kicked my ass around the room, a musical spanking. Kept taking out easier and easier books, sighing things like 'Alright. here's some Mozart'. i was in a bloody heap after about an hour's worth.
Finally I cried uncle, saying 'c'mon, let's play a tune'. MF played and made me play so much that, in the words of he late Tommy Turrentine, 'I damn near had a rupture'.
The late Dennis Irwin was living in the building. Evidently he heard us through a wall or window and liked what he heard, so he knocked on Joe's door, bass in hand.
I was into Tom Harrell tunes then (still am), so I had brought some. I took out Open Air, and Joe suddenly announced that he was going to take a shower. So Dennis and I played the tune. His time and sound were amazing. When Joe got back he told us
'I took a shower because I didn't know the tune'.
Later he gave me a ride to the train or something. He had an appointment, and took in the car with him guitar, trumpet and electric bass.
2: the only time I ever double-booked myself in my, ahem, career was when I had a regular loft gig with Morris Edwards, Jimmy Wormworth and a 'tenor player' whose day job was sports announcer. I elected to take a gig with a 'singer' that night and sent Joe to the loft. The less said about my own gig that night the better, except that I decided to go to the loft after finishing and hear Joe and the guys.
When I got there he was sitting cross-legged playing so much guitar and music it scared me. Morris and The Worms' eyes were popping out. Joe asked me did I want to play?
'F&^k no!'.
He was with 2 Oriental ladies for some reason. He next asked me did I want to come over his place right then and play duets. I declined and drove home.
It was around 4 AM...Last edited by fasstrack; 09-19-2016 at 07:44 PM.
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great pairing...joe cohen and doug raney (rip)
cheers
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I'd be surly having to listen to that drivel, so turnabout's fair play, I guess. Originally Posted by Cunamara
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He's certainly a one-off. I met Joe Cohn at the now defunct Palio Bar a few years ago. He was playing with vibraphonist, Warren Chiasson and catching absolutely everything thrown at him. I was sitting with my recently departed buddy and great guitarist himself, Rick Stone and Teen Goh, a Thai luthier friend who'd accompanied me on the visit from Australia. Teen noticed a buzz in Joe's guitar and fixed it in the break. Joe and I chatted and he asked me over after the gig to read some Bach (I declined having just stepped off the plane from Sydney). Teen went over to Joe's place the next day to do a more permanent repair on the guitar. He arrived to find Joe frantically getting ready for another gig. Joe realised as they were both about to leave that he had no cash on him and pointing to large bag of CDs (his own recordings and those where he made a guest appearance) said to Teen, "Take as many as you want!" Originally Posted by fasstrack
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Sad about Rick. Though we were never close his passing shook me up a bit. I knew him since the Jazz Cultural Theater days of the early '80s. I last saw him this past winter and he was fit and chipper.
Sad...
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Yeah, Rick made a special visit that night from Brooklyn to catch up. He was one of the good guys: a lovely player with boundless positive energy. Originally Posted by fasstrack
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Well, this is not about a guitar player, but organist Jack McDuff. I may be the only guitarist in history never to have done that gig. Bet it would have been wild.
It's pretty short, and I'll try not too be too graphic.
His van was his home because he was a road rat. He actually made a hole in the bottom in the back so he could s&&t out of it.
The funny stuff is 2 things:
He took pills to wake up and sleep. Somebody in the band administered them. So he said to one guy one night
'Which pills did you give me, the red or brown?'
'Brown'.
'Shee-it! I told to give me the red, mothafucka. I wanted to wake up, not go to sleep, you dumbass mothafucka'.
He was really a blues player, and if you strayed too far from that he came down on your ass hard.
So he had this lady guitar player. She probably could play, but he hired people 'cause he thought it would be hip or 'show biz',
And he hated Berklee type or techno-harmonic players. When anyone took it out even a little his favorite line was
'Key of C!'
So this gal was taking it out, maybe playing patterns on her solo.
'What the f are you playing?'
'Shapes'.
'Well, play shapes in the key of C!...Last edited by fasstrack; 09-21-2016 at 03:33 AM.
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I had started a thread about honoring our teachers, but it seems to have disappeared. So, with moderators' permission, I'll park it here for now. Marshall was funny, anyway, a one-in-a-million character:
I studied with Marshall Brown, possibly known here for his Newport Youth Band (including an international version).
He had a workshop every Wednesday afternoon. Gene Allen and Hod O'Brien were there with us kids.
He recorded all the sessions, and afterwards would sit in his easy chair, pick his nose and critique guys' performance on the tape. That was a great idea, because recordings don't lie. He enumerated what he liked and didn't, and why.
An aggressive and brusque man, he would grab the guitar out my hand, saying 'here, gimme that, kid'. He didn't play well, except in his own mind, but he played enough to dramatize a point. Or he would show me off to Hod, telling me to play Lush Life on his D'angelico. Hod had no problem jumping in to correct my wrong changes.
He's the guy that started me playing 4/4 rhythm guitar, because when I got there my comping, he observed, 'has no rhythmic impulse. Sounds like a f%^&ing washing machine'. The rhythm guitar thing was some of the best advice for a young player. I don't believe you can swing in your solos if you don't know 'the circle'.
Humiliation and torture were part of his palette, too. He had a hapless piano student, Timothy. Once Timothy played an intro not to Marshall's liking, so he lit into him:
No, no, no Timothy! I don't want anything fancy. I don't want anything flowery. I don't want anything creative. (voicerising in a crescendo of wrathful, contemptuous hostility, with white spittle emerging from both sides of his mouth) I just want some fucking time, Timothy!!! Timothy would put his head---by now the color of a purple sofa---down. But he learned, as we all did.
Marshall's immense, thick-skinned ego sometimes interfered with good pedagogy, like when he would say 'as you know, Joel, no one plays more compositionally than me'. I'd be thinking 'right, no one but Pops, Bird, Pres...). He was not a great player, despite his brazen statements to that effect. What he was was a great thinker, and astute critic who could hear immediately hear what a student's weaknesses were and the proper remediation. He was a guy with a polar bear hide who brazened his way through life on brute force of his personality, but he taught us all well---and before us Ronnie Cuber, Eddie Gomez, Mike Abene and others as kids.
Marshall's intensity and antics, like his spittle shower on poor Timothy, would eventually lead to, or anyway contribute to a stroke. He recovered, taught and played again, but finally succumbed to a worse stroke. I thought he was a hell of a man and great teacher for me, personality flaws be damned. He gave me my first real ensemble experience (I had been playing guitar duos, mostly in guys' apartments) and evidently saw potential since he took me on as a 'scholarship student'. I never paid a dime for that Wednesday workshop...
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If I knew how to change the title I would, to Funny Jazz Musician Stories.
Scene: Summer-Fall 1987
Locations: Central Park, fountain east of the Plaza Hotel, City Hall Park----NYC
Players: Hasan Hakim, trombonist, bandleader, smooooth talker; Benta, a 25-year-old drummer from somewhere in Scandinavia; Steve S.: Phenomenal alto player who surely doesn't want his name used; Alex G., newly arrived bassist from a Western European nation, very high strung, a little crazy; Joel Fass: guitarist and swarthy Jew from Brooklyn; Clarence 'C.' Sharpe: great alto player and human being, deceased since 1990; Rob, a congero never heard from since
A street and park band performs in Central Park weekends, at the fountain just East of the Plaza Hotel and at City Hall Park
Band makes $110-$120 each (8 players) in 1987 money on weekends at the park. Sundays are especially good. Less $ earned at the other locations, but the leader wants to get out and play for people.
Scene 1: Central Park, a summer Sunday. C. Sharpe, in true bebopper fashion has arrived after 4 PM to play. The band started at 12.
Someone tells him
'You sound beautiful'.
'I know!'
After the job ends and the $ is laid out in rows---dollars, quarters. dimes, etc.---and counted, Hasan turns to the band and says
'Everybody give C. Sharpe $5'.
Turns to C., says
'You're lucky you're getting that!'
C. Sharpe, gaunt, sitting on his sax case
'I'm goin' to the union!'
Scene 2: Morning telephone call to Joel from Steve S.
Steve calls the band, properly named the Uncommon Jazz Ensemble 'The unconscionable..'. After viewing an army of rats run by our spot at the fountain he dubs one of our tunes 'Swinging Til the Rats Come Home'.
'I'm calling to gripe'.
'What about?'
The day before a guy had approached Joel, saying he was a guitarist, wanting to sit in. Said he was from Texas. Joel takes his # in case he needs a sub. The next day Joel indeed calls him to stand in, owing to a sick parent.
Back to the call: Steve had immediately dubbed the guitar player 'Tex'. Benta, a very sweet person, was not that far along in her playing yet. Steve's time is world-class.
'Tex and Benta. Tex and Benta. Tex and Benta....'
Like he was reporting on a non-anesthetized tooth extraction.
'Well, Tex ain't that bad'.
'No. Why should I care if he plays chord melody solos like Barney Kessel during my solo?'
More later. Stay tuned...Last edited by fasstrack; 09-23-2016 at 06:28 PM.
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Here's a story told to me by my teacher that demonstrates how difficult it is even for the truly great ones in this world.
Jimmy Bruno was out in Hollywood trying to find work in the studios and elsewhere and had to move back to Philadelphia. It wasn't the best of times for him so he got a job working at a neighborhood bar. As a bartender or something. Not playing music apparently. .
One night, he hears a knock on the back door, which was windowless. The person on the other side says "this is Joe Pass, I'm playing here tonight". Jimmy immediately shoots back, "bullshit! I know Joe Pass and he would never play a dump like this !"
He proceeded to open the door, and it was indeed Joe Pass and he was in fact playing a "dump like this"
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Again, file this one under jazz musician stories:
Sol Yaged, still alive at 94 but retired, was a clarinet player and well-known pain-in-the-ass and cheapskate in NY.
I was called to sub on his band by the late Rick Stone. The gig was at an Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side, NYC.
When I got there I was surprised to see Vince Giordano also there, with a tenor guitar. This was great, because it made my job much easier since I was freed from 4/4 rhythm and could play like a horn.
Sol was cohabiting with a woman musician I won't name because she is a great person and a good friend. She was on the gig, and he was bitching her out relentlessly all night. I could only wonder when it would be my turn.
I soon found out:
I made the mistake of looking at my watch, a habit picked up from my dad, in mid-set. Sol used this as a battering ram against me.
'Sparky, if you keep looking at your watch, it tells me you're not having a good time'.
A clarinettist mind-reader!
He would call a tune by saying
'Let's play a song called...'
About 3 hours into a grueling night (I think I played 3 or 4 nights over some weeks) in which endless good-tipping 'singers' who didn't know what time was paraded continually to the mic Sol announced
'Let's play a song called Bye Bye Blues'.
And so we did. For 20 minutes, during which I both had to play rhythm and trade 4s for at least 10 of the minutes with his talented but long-suffering paramour.
Then an Oriental couple sat down at a nearby table. Never one to miss an opportunity to make tips (for himself, as the cheap f$%k never split up tips like every other bandleader, but pocketed every one), Mr. Tact, Racial Sensitivity, and Appropriate Shame sashayed right up to that table and favored them with The Sukiyaki Song. Their stony-faced look gave new meaning to the old cliche about inscrutable Orientals.
When we sat down for our meal Sol would hand each player an envelope. Opening it one found a miniature candy cane. And. a. picture. of. Sol. Yaged.
I had played 4 nights and asked for my $ ($200 for 4 nights of this rich-making engagement). This was Thursday night and the c&&s^&er told me I had to come back the next night---a night I wasn't on the gig---to collect.
To show how beloved Sol Yaged was among musicians, he would spot someone he knew saying
'I'll be right with you'.
They took any escape route possible to avoid that fate.
Funny thing was, I really did like his playing: a beautiful sound, melodic, swinging and he really knew the tunes. And he worked and recorded with Swing Era greats.
Just not that night...Last edited by fasstrack; 09-23-2016 at 09:11 PM.
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