Let's hear it for..... David Schildkraut! Who??

[Rob MacKillop]

Listening to Miles again playing his first soulful take on Solaris, I was blown away by the alto sax solo, looked him up and found his name: David Schildkraut.

It's worth noting that Charlie Mingus mistook him for Charlie Parker, no less, in a blindfold test.

And how about these endorsements?


“As far as I’m concerned, the two most original saxophonists after Charlie Parker were Lee Konitz and Dave Schildkraut” – Bill Evans
“Dave Schildkraut was the only saxophonist to capture the rhythmic essence of Bird” – Dizzy Gillespie
“Dave Schildkraut was one of the greatest saxophonists I ever heard” – Stan Getz


Here's his wiki page: Dave Schildkraut - Wikipedia

Any Schildkraut fans here?

[A. Kingstone]

That's wild. Those kudos. Gillespie's especially. He must have been comfortable to semi-retire.

[sgcim]

He stopped playing when his daughter died in a car accident and became a mailman. He was playing at a wedding in Brooklyn at the same catering hall I was playing at, and on a break we all went down to see him.

We came in when his band was playing "Hello, Dolly" and DS was doing a Satchmo impersonation.
The pianist, who had played with Chet Baker for 8 months on the road, and knew DS when he was one of the top alto players in NY, said he felt sick to his stomach, and walked away.

One trumpet player was a close friend of his, and they used to study the Kabbala together.
IMHO, his best playing was on an album he did with the composer/arr. George Handy.

[grahambop]

I always liked that solo he did on Solar and wondered what happened to him. Anyway there’s some more info here:

JazzProfiles: DAVE SCHILDKRAUT by Gordon Jack [From the Archives]

[Rob MacKillop]

From what I’m reading, he seemed unsuited to the professional world of jazz, and didn’t really fit in, nevertheless he was certainly supremely talented. I love that solo or Solar. It’s like someone opened the curtains to let the sun in.

[PMB]

Yeah, great solo! He sounds like the missing link between Parker and Cannonball.

Schildkraut was working and recording with Chuck Wayne directly after this session (in Wayne's own band and as a sideman behind Tony Bennett). I imagine he copped an earful from Chuck who wrote Sunny, the tune that Miles 'reworked' as Solar.

[Cunamara]

Tonally he sounds like a predecessor of Paul Desmond- similar light, clean, dry tone.

[sgcim]

I always liked that solo he did on Solar and wondered what happened to him. Anyway there’s some more info here:

JazzProfiles: DAVE SCHILDKRAUT by Gordon Jack [From the Archives]

Gordon Jack doesn't want to go too deeply about his subjects, shown here with his statement that Don Joseph would rather teach HS than perform as a jazz musician.
A friend of mine was close friends with DJ and let's just say that his personal problems prevented him from continuing his jazz career, and he was never a public school music teacher like Jack says he was. He'd come in once in a while and work with a few kids on their trumpet chops, but that was it. Hardly a living.
I can't even tell some of the stories about DJ that my friend told me, but Bill Crow quotes him in one of his Jazz Anecdote books.
He wasn't let into a famous jazz bar, because he never paid his bar tab, and was always getting kicked out of bands for his bad habits.
One day the owner of the bar wouldn't let him in, and he replied
"Looks like I'm barred from the bands, and banned from the bars".LOL!;

[sgcim]

He stopped playing when his wife died in a car accident and became a mailman. He was playing at a wedding in Brooklyn at the same catering hall I was playing at, and on a break we all went down to see him.

We came in when his band was playing "Hello, Dolly" and DS was doing a Satchmo impersonation.
The pianist, who had played with Chet Baker for 8 months on the road, and knew DS when he was one of the top alto players in NY, said he felt sick to his stomach, and walked away.

One trumpet player was a close friend of his, and they used to study the Kabbala together.
IMHO, his best playing was on an album he did with the composer/arr. George Handy.

I asked a friend of his why he stopped playing jazz, and he said DS did want to be with his family more, but then his daughter got killed in a car accident. His wife never got over it, and she spent the next ten years bedridden, and died of cancer.
He never got over both deaths.