TT 486: Matchbooks, CABARET on Broadway and on film, Philip Marlowe's taste in music, Curtis Fuller's attack, Strata-East Return, Monk Montgomery jumps into the Potomac, McCoy Tyner speaks

And I'll take a "Field Holler" from Charles Sullivan

Adam Nussbaum sent along this remarkable collection of matchbooks from jazz clubs of yore. (The upload of this image is dedicated to my friend Dean Estes, who also collects matchbooks.)

During the ‘90s I was in Sweet Basil, Angry Squire, Fat Tuesdays, Bradley’s, and Village Gate. They are gone now and I miss them all. (At Sweet Basil I saw: Cedar Walton/Ron Carter/Billy Higgins, John Scofield/Joe Lovano/Marc Johnson/Bill Stewart and others. Angry Squire: Kenny Werner/Ratzo Harris/Tom Rainey a.o. Fat Tuesdays: Joe Henderson several times with several great bands, also the Phil Woods quintet with Brian Lynch, Jim McNeely, Steve Gilmore, Bill Goodwin. Bradley’s: John Hicks/Kevin Eubanks/Walter Booker, Renee Rosnes/Larry Grenadier/Al Foster, a.o. Village Gate: Brad Mehldau/Ugonna Okegwo/Leon Parker, Josh Redman/Larry Grenadier/Leon Parker, a.o.)

Circa 1985 I would have liked to seen Steps Ahead at Seventh Avenue South and Philly Joe Jones’s Dameronia at Lush Life. (Both clubs were gone by the time I got to town at 1991.)

Eddie Condon’s didn’t have much modern music and Knickerbocker ain’t what it used to be. (I did see Roland Hanna at Knickerbocker but the audience was very noisy.)

Pit Inn was in Tokyo, and most of the others I don’t recognize.

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Sarah and I took in the current Broadway production of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club inside August Wilson Theatre on Friday; yesterday we watched the famous movie adaptation. We both thought the movie was better in every way; the themes, comedy, and drama are all served well by the major edit from the 1972 creative team of Bob Fosse, Jay Presson Allen, and Hugh Wheeler.

I like the score pretty well, but the tunes by John Kander are superior to the slightly static lyrics by Fred Ebb.

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Matthew Guerrieri knows how to please: What could be better than this gratifying look at art and music in the Raymond Chandler/Philip Marlowe canon? It’s a big swing, and Matthew delivers.

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Welcome trombonist Jacob Garchik to Substack! His opening salvo is just beautiful, a substantial mediation on brass vibrato, starting with Curtis Fuller and Fuller’s great solo on “Blue Train.”

(Congratulations also to Mr. Garchik for coming up with a good name for his publication, “Macrotones.”)

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The record label Strata-East made sensational product, but it hasn’t always been easy to find. Nate Chinen has the rundown on a rebirth Strata East: The Return. Tomorrow, Tuesday, February 11, at 6 PM EST, Nate will join Harmony Holiday, Marcus J. Moore and Syd Schwartz for a webinar on Strata-East and related matters: free on Zoom with registration.

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Trumpeter Charles Sullivan was somewhere in the conversation after Woody Shaw and Charles Tolliver. His 1974 debut LP Genesis is rarely seen in the wild, especially the original Strata-East pressing (my copy is from the Inner City reissue). The whole album is cool, Stanley Cowell shines in a few piano breaks, but I’m particularly struck by the driving “Field Holler” with Sharon Freeman (who I know better as an ensemble French horn player with Charlie Haden and Carla Bley, but she sounds great here accompanying on Rhodes), Anthony Jackson, and Alphonse Mouzon. Just a fabulous track.

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Billy Hart is drumming on the rest of Genesis. His memoir is done, I sent off a first final this morning; barring unforeseen events it will be available from Cymbal Press in July. Press inquiries welcome!

Scott Douglass has been a terrific help as a researcher for the Hart memoir; Douglass has also been active at his unique Substack Commonwealth of Jazz. One of Douglass’s topics is George “Poochie” Ross; the latest post is detailed and intriguing, especially if you are in the market for jazz duets for bassoon.

While working with Hart on his story, there were moments when I was a bit skeptical about certain events. For example, Billy toured with Monk Montgomery in the ‘60s as part of the Wes Montgomery band, and when Billy told me that Monk jumped in the water on orders from Lionel Hampton I didn’t know what to think. The conversation went something like this:

EI (astonished): “Monk jumped in the water?”

BH (laughing): “Yeah. Monk loved to talk about that. The audience loved it. Monk was a real comical and philosophical cat.”

EI (with no inflection): “Monk Montgomery jumped in the water on the gig, going for house.”

BH (sincere): “He did it more than once. Lionel Hampton paid him, too.”

Again, I was skeptical, but the legend is true, Milt Hinton tells the story in his memoir Bass Line: The Stories and Photographs of Milt Hinton, written with David Berger. At the time Hinton was on tour with Louis Armstrong. (I found the anecdote at Swing and Beyond.)

It was at an outdoor concert in Washington, D.C., near one of the big malls, right on the Potomac. The stage and dressing rooms were set up on a barge which was docked at the edge of the river, and the audience sat on a long, wide grass bank in front of it. In addition to us, Lionel Hampton’s and Illinois Jacquet’s bands were on the program. Jacquet was scheduled to play first, from six to seven. Hamp was to follow, from seven to eight. Then, after an intermission, Louis would come out and do the finale.

We had worked in New Jersey the night before and drove down from there in a private bus. We arrived at five-thirty, a half an hour before show time. There were about a thousand people in the audience, but no sign of Jacquet’s band. We unloaded our suitcases and instruments and moved everything over to the barge. By the time we’d changed into our tuxedos, it was six-thirty. Jacquet should have gone on at six, but he still hadn’t arrived. To make matters worse, there was also no sign of Hampton. Standing backstage, we could sense that the audience was getting restless. Every couple of minutes they’d start applauding and chanting, “Start the show. We want music.”

After about fifteen minutes, one of the producers went to Louis’s road manager and asked if Louis would go on first. Louis was the star of the show, but he didn’t care about billing or protocol. He was usually understanding and cooperative. So we went out and started playing. After waiting so long, the audience gave us an unbelievable reception. They applauded every solo and when we finished a tune they’d stand and cheer for a couple of minutes. We played about an hour and then took our bows, but the people wouldn’t let us off the stage. They screamed for encores and we kept doing them. Louis knew that there was no act to follow us, so he was content to stay out there and keep everyone happy until help arrived.

Finally, during out fifth or sixth encore, we saw a bus pull up and unload. As soon as Louis knew it was Jacquet’s bus, he told us, “This time when we end, walk off and stay off.” As soon as we finished, we headed for the dressing room and changed. Then we packed up our instruments and hung around backstage talking to some of the guys from Jacquet’s band.

Trying to follow a performer like Louis put Jacquet in a difficult position. To make matters worse, the audience knew that he’d been scheduled to play first and had kept them waiting. So when he came out onstage, he got a lukewarm reception. Jacquet had eight or nine good musicians with him. They started with a couple of standards but got no response. They even featured the drummer, but that didn’t rouse the audience. Then Jacquet must have figured that he had nothing to lose, so he called “Flying Home,” the tune he’d made famous with Hamp’s band. It took a couple of minutes before the audience recognized the tune and started to react. By then, Jacquet was soloing, and gave it everything he had, building, honking, screaming and dancing, all the moves, chorus after chorus. By the time he finished, he had the audience in the palm of his hand, just like Louis had them the hour before.

The audience screamed for an encore, so Jacquet did another couple of choruses of “Flying Home.” But right in the middle of this, Hamp’s bus pulled up. Hearing someone else play a tune he was known for and seeing the fantastic audience reaction must have made him furious. Everyone backstage saw what was going on and knew that somehow Hamp would want to outdo Jacquet. Louis was watching and he got interested too. I remember we were set to get on the bus, but Louis turned to us and said, “Wait, we have to see this.”

Jacquet finished, and after the stage got set up, Hamp came out. He began with “Midnight Sun,” one of his famous ballads. But after Louis’s performance and Jacquet’s finale, the audience was in no mood for it. Then he did “Hamp’s Boogie Woogie” and a couple of more numbers. He even played drums and sang, but still didn’t get much of an audience reaction. I was standing in the wings with Louis and a couple of other guys, and I could see how hard he was working. But time was running out. He looked frustrated and desperate. Finally, he called “Flying Home.”

The band started playing, but there wasn’t much response from the audience. But Hamp wouldn’t give up. He put everything he had into his solo, starting out soft, then building to a crescendo. When he finished his solo, sweat was dripping off every part of him, and a handful of people cheered. I guess that Hamp sensed that he was making some headway with the crowd. So when the band was playing, he went back to Monk Montgomery, who was playing Fender bass, and told him “Gates, you jump in the river on the next chorus and I’ll give you an extra ten.” Monk must have agreed because when the band got to the next crescendo and Hamp raised his mallets, Monk jumped over the railing. The audience went crazy. The band was still playing when Monk came back onstage, soaking wet. Hamp had the band play the same crescendo, and Monk went over the side again. By this time, the audience was in a frenzy and Hamp knew that he had accomplished what he’d set out to do.

Louis then turned to us and said, “Start the bus. We can go now.”

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Nelson George has a new post about Monk Montgomery, who deserves more credit than he usually gets for innovations with the electric bass.

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This AAJ McCoy Tyner interview is not new but it is new to me. There are a couple of joyous nuggets, like “I had a choir teacher who was Jimmy Smith's first wife.”

Tyner praises names expected and perhaps unexpected: the latter category includes Burt Bacharach, Artur Rubinstein, John Hicks, and Mulgrew Miller. There is also apparently a photo where Tyner and Red Garland are hugging each other.