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Great to see Jim Mullen live and on top form today (he is 75) at a pub gig, in the sunshine (at last!). Unusually for him, he was playing a Gibson Super 400. I asked him about it, he said he inherited it from a friend who died. He said he found it hard to play, but he was determined to ‘tame’ it, seeing as it is such a great guitar!
Jim Mullen - guitar; Roger Beaujolais - vibes; Simon Thorpe - bass; Winston Clifford - drums.
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06-01-2021 12:13 PM
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Jim Mullen.
One of the few guitarists who plays great with his thumb.
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Originally Posted by kris
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Originally Posted by grahambop
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Jim's great. My friend Tom Remon, a great young guitarist, just released his debut album. It's a series of duets with Jim.
Link: Duality | Tom Remon & Jim Mullen | Tom Remon
Last edited by David B; 06-01-2021 at 06:30 PM.
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Did he lay a lot of his famous quotes on you?
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His sound is one that for some reason I instantly recognize when a track of his comes on. A definite voice.
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No discussion of Jim Mullen is complete without my posting one of my all-time favourite guitar solos: Jim live with Gene Harris on 'Meditation'.
(Jim's solo starts at 3:17)
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Love Jim's playing. That audience definitely needs to be treated to a flat-out 30 min Manic Depression jam.
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A couple of years ago Jim Mullen played in Barcelona (Spain) with my D'Angelico Vestax NYL-2
Excellent guitarist and a better person.
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One of the greats, and so humble with it.
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Been listening to Jim since the seventies.Got to have a pint with him in London in the eighties. Glad to see hes doing so well!!!
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Originally Posted by carlescountry
sounding really good on your DA too
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A few comments:
1. Mullen also played guitar with the "Average White Band, Mose Allison, Jimmy Smith, Jimmy Witherspoon
2. The future of Jazz? White heads playing for White heads under a backyard gazebo? Where are all the young lions?
Oh, yea . . . Youtube.
We are witnessing the death of an era in Jazz. Jim is one of many talented artists who walked the road of live performance as a proving ground for their music and development and is in his "Golden Hour." What's next?
Play live . . . Marinero
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Please don't let it be Snarky Puppy.
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Can we please keep this thread on the topic of our appreciation of Jim Mullen and his music?
We can discuss the demographics of jazz audiences and the future of the music elsewhere.
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Originally Posted by David B
When you post something in the future, please provide for our readers what comments you deem acceptable and which are not acceptable ,in advance, so we may adhere to your strict editorial policies and not offend your principles of propriety and decorum. My comments ARE related to JM since he is in his last years of life and the pix of him provided by the OP were very interesting from both a historic and generational perspective in regards to Jazz music and musicians. Who else am I talking about? . . . Snarky Puppy????? God . . .I hate the thought police.
Play live . . . Marinero
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Originally Posted by Marinero
The gig was at a country pub on a Tuesday lunchtime, miles away from any large towns, you are obviously going to get mainly older people attending at that time.
There were in fact some young people in the audience, mainly teenage girls as it happens, however I was not going to go and point my camera at them!
The guy who promotes this regular series of concerts actually puts on a lot of jazz gigs in the area (in Kent), he has been doing it successfully for years, so they must be well-attended.
There is a pretty active jazz scene in London now, with a lot of up-and-coming younger players, they seem to be attracting a younger audience as well.
I understand your point that there seems to be a culture of players who appear to exist on youtube only, but I don’t think live jazz is dead yet, certainly not where I live. And there are young new players coming through here in the UK.
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"I understand your point that there seems to be a culture of players who appear to exist on youtube only, but I don’t think live jazz is dead yet, certainly not where I live. And there are young new players coming through here in the UK." grahambop
Hi, G,
Thank you for the information and your civil response. Jazz music is a unique art form of the highest level. No one wants to see its disappearance but there is little we can do about its popularity. Performance opportunities for serious musicians are scarce--both in Jazz and Classical. Recording contracts are even rarer since they focus on potential sales. Jim Mullen is one of the last of a breed of musicians who made a career from music performance in Jazz. I'm happy there are still some young Jazzers worldwide who want to carry the torch of the Art form. But, unless exceptionally lucky, they must have another form of employment.
My sister-in-law flew to Chicago last week to visit her dad and went to Joe Seagal's(RIP) Jazz Showcase to hear trumpeter Marcus Carroll and his quintet. Her response was that the music was great but the crowd was small and mostly "seniors" with a few young people who were undoubtedly musicians. Her father, a staunch Jazz fan, is 95. So, for some of us who actually played live for years, the message is clear. And, its not only that Jim represents an era but also a form of Jazz that is being replaced with a steady diet of pseudo-Jazzers like the aforementioned Snarky Puppy who I find unlistenable(is that a word?). Jim is a rare talent of certified Jazzers and we all hope his voice will live beyond his years.
Play live . . . Marinero
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A nice interview with Jim, with playing as well as talking:
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I think my introduction to Jim years ago was this clip from a 2006 gig at the 606 Club. A burning rhythm changes solo.
A few quotes in there identified in the YouTube comments:
0:00: Mona Lisa
00:20 Yes, Sir That's My baby
00:40 Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered
00:47 Mama loves shortnin' bread (tenuous?)
1:27 Sweet Georgia Brown
1:40 If I were a rich man
1:53 Flintstones (bridge) ???
2:00 Let's fall in love
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If memory serves, I think the first time I saw Jim was with Morrissey-Mullen, I think it was at a jazz festival in the early 1980s. A few years later I saw him again at The Gun pub in Croydon. Before the gig, he came and put a little recording gadget (a Sony mini-disc recorder?) on my table and said ‘Could you keep an eye on that for me?’ I felt honoured to have been chosen for the task!
Since then I have seen him many times, at all sorts of venues. He has a neat way of playing tunes to appeal to a wider audience, for example when Pavarotti was all the rage, I saw him play a bossa version of ‘Nessun Dorma’! It was partly a joke, but he actually made it work as a jazz vehicle, and of course the audience loved it. At the same gig he played a great jazz version of Steely Dan’s tune ‘Aja’. He also played ‘Stairway to the Stars’ and joked that these days, he had to call it ‘Stairlift to the Stars’.
I saw him at the Brecon jazz festival once, and after playing a straight-ahead jazz set, later the same day he appeared with a blues band and played down-home blues equally well.
He truly deserves his success.
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"Technique must be the servant . . . not the master." J. Mullen
Only a creator knows this important point instinctively.
Play live . . . Marinero
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I think Flintstones is a contrafact for Rhythm changes. Yabba Dabba Do !!!
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The first I heard of Jim was with UK RnB group Kokomo as a student in Boston. A Scottish friend gave me the album and I really loved it. A think Jim started out in Scotland and also lived in NYC for a year as an adult. There was an audition for the drummer position in the band held in NYC. A friend of mine auditioned but he didnt get the gig. Part of the reason he didnt get it was because he was a lot more of a jazz drummer than a good RnB drummer,but I guess he got to play with Jim at the audition. I mentioned my Scottish friend Jesse Ray and Jim remembered him.I used to loan Jesse my first cassette deck so he could work on his demos. One good thing leads to another sometimes! Kokomo had a really burnin version of the Bobby Womack song I Can Understand It with a Great Jim Mullens solo in it!!! Great Player Great Guy !!! Jesse Ray was an excellent musician in the AWB type style which I quite like sometimes.
RIP Nick Gravenites
Today, 05:48 PM in The Players