Deep Talk – Der Bass im Jazz

Tommy Bryant, ja! Habe ich grad ergänzt. Die Golson-Scheibe kenne ich, zudem diverse Aufnahmen mit Ray, neulich auch „The Nifty Cat“ mit Roy Eldridge gekauft (eine Master Jazz Scheibe mit Budd Johnson, Benny Morton, Nat Pierce, Bryant und Oliver Jackson), zudem war Bryant 1957 auch in der kurzlebigen Big Band von Dizzy Gillespie, die Quincy Jones für ihn organisiert hatte (er ist auf den Bootlegs aus Chester, Pennsylvania zu hören – diese Live-Aufnahmen sind wohl fast toller als die drei Verve-Alben, die auf dem schönen 2CD-Set „Birks Works“ mit diversen Outtakes gesammelt wurden, und auch fast besser als das Newport-Konzer – am Bass war zuerst Nelson Boyd, dann Paul West, und dann eben Bryant). Mit Dizzy war Bryant auch auf der tollen „Sonny Side Up“ und der unterschätzen „Duets“ (auch Verve 1957). 1958 war er dabei bei der „Monday Night at Birdland“ und dem Follow-Up „Another Monday Night“, als Hank Mobley mit Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Billy Root, Ray und Tommy Bryant sowie Specs Wright zwei Roulette Live-Alben aufnahm, 1959 begleitete er Mahalia Jackson und Barney Wilen in Newport… da ist eine ganze Menge gute Musik!

r.i.p. Nabil „Knobby“ Totah (1930-2012)

Hier der Soundtrack zur folgenden Lektüre:
Subaru Mama (von: Nabil Totah: „Double Bass“, Consolidated Artists 103, Mike Longo-p, Totah-b, Ray Mosca-d

NABIL TOTAH, JAZZ BASSIST, 82

Jazz bassist Nabil (“Knobby”) Totah passed away on Thursday June 7 in York, PA, after a long illness. He was 82. An elegantly swinging player with a gliding, rich sound, Nabi had an illustrious career in jazz, working and recording with many of the top jazz musicians of his day.

He was born in Ramallah, Palestine, on April 5, 1930, the son of Khalil A. Totah, the headmaster of a Quaker school in Ramallah, and Eva Marshall Totah, an American teacher who met his father while working at the school. She started Nabi on piano studies and then violin, where he showed unusual talent. Nabi’s father was a leading educator who urged Arab-Jewish reconciliation, and was active on behalf of justice for Palestinians, both at home and in America. The family emigrated in November, 1944, when Nabi was fourteen years old. Nabi and his father sailed from Egypt to New York in the hold of a Liberty ship in a wartime convoy, and his mother and sisters Sibyl and Joy were on another ship in the convoy. Nabi attended Moses Brown, a Quaker boarding school in Providence, Rhode Island, and after a year at Penn College in Oskaloosa, Iowa, transferred to Haverford College in Haverford, PA. There he
studied political science and was on a diplomatic career path when he discovered and took up the bass, and his world changed. While serving in the Army in Japan (1953-54), he played with the 289th Division Army Band, and at a coffee house in Yokohama, near Tokyo, with pianists Hampton Hawes and the young Toshiko Akiyoshi.

Three days after Totah returned to New York, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker heard him at a jam session and hired him. The famous bassist Oscar Pettiford became a mentor (and later so did Charles Mingus, who called him to play bass when he wanted to play piano). About 1954, Totah met drummer Ray Mosca at a session in Florida. They meshed right away. After Totah got Mosca to join him in composer and pianist Cy Coleman’s band, the two soon became a “first call” rhythm section.

From 1955 to 1958, Totah and Mosca played for weekly Monday sessions at Birdland with different headliners, and worked the rest of the week with top pianists such as George Wallington, Hampton Hawes and Sonny Clark. When tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims formed his first quartet, he hired them along with master stride pianist Dave McKenna to go on the road.

In 1957, when tenor player Al Cohn joined the group, the band became known as “Zoot and Al” and became very popular. Besides working steadily, Totah was “house bassist” for countless jam sessions in Sims’s apartment, in the building on 37th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues where both were living at the time. Others Totah worked with were drummer Gene Krupa, guitarist Johnny Smith, tenor saxophonists Harry Edison and Stan Getz, pianist Bobby Scott, the Les Elgart Orchestra, as Eddie Costa and Herbie Mann. In the 60s, he worked with Bobby Hackett, Teddy Wilson, Sol Yaged and Slide Hampton’s Octet; in the 70s he played with Benny Goodman, Max Kaminsky, Hazel Scott and tenor saxophonist Lee Konitz. He also led small groups that included Pepper Adams, Attila Zoller, Horace Parlan and Mike Longo.

At the same time, he kept up his classical studies of the bass, with the world-renowned bassist Fred Zimmerman, composer/soloist Alvin Brehm, and Orin O’Brien of the New York Philharmonic. He won several scholarship awards while a member of the National Orchestra Association. He was also a member of and active in Local 802 0f the American Federation of Musicians.
Totah made more than twenty recordings, including with Zoot Sims and Al Cohn, Herbie Mann, Bobby Hackett, Gene Krupa, Johnny Smith, Bobby Scott, Hazel Scott, Tal Farlow and Lee Konitz. His last was Nabil Totah – More Double Bass, which he produced for the Consolidated Artists label in 1997. It contained material from a 1987 trio album with pianist Mike Longo and drummer Ray Mosca, plus four new tracks including one with guest guitarist Joe Carter, and won high praise.

Totah married Norma Lewis in 1961 in New York, and they had two daughters, Lisa and Samira. To support his family, he went to work for society bandleader Lester Lanin, and was constantly on the road for many years. Highlights were playing for Queen Elizabeth in England, and for the inauguration of several Presidents including Bill Clinton. Totah moved to Bridgeport CT, where he lived until 2011. When he became ill, he moved to York, PA. He died in a hospital after breaking a hip, with complications
such as difficulty breathing, pneumonia and other ailments.

He is survived by his daughters Lisa Edmonds of York, PA, and Samira Totah of Santa Cruz, CA, his sister Joy Totah Hilden, an artist and teacher, of Berkeley, CA., and three granddaughters, Whitney and Myra Edmonds, and Samira’s daughter Carmea. His sister Sibyl Belmont, a classical concert pianist and teacher, died in 1991.

A memorial service will take place on August 20, 2012 at Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church, 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street in New York, from 7 to 9 p.m.

by Jill McManus

Quelle: http://www.saintpeters.org/events/detail/564/text/

Charlie Haden leidet seit einiger Zeit unter Spätfolgen seiner Polio-Erkrankung als Kind:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-ent-0130-jazz-charlie-haden-20130130,0,2439631.column

2007 spielte er mit dem Quartet West in Zürich – und ich hab’s mal wieder verpasst (high brow Event mit Eintrittspreisen, die Abzockern angemessen waren).

Butch Warren leidet an unheilbarem Lungenkrebs – verdammt.

Photos von seinem letzten Auftritt:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/jazz-bassist-butch-warrens-last-jam/2013/09/13/1bf25daa-1c84-11e3-a628-7e6dde8f889d_gallery.html#photo=1

“I’m still hitting the notes on the head,” Warren says. “I can hear the songs in my head. But I got to play every day. I miss two days, and I lose my chops.”

Das Quartett von Thelonious Monk (mit Charlie Rouse, ts; Butch Warren, b; Frankie Dunlop, d) in Japan 1963 (beide Videos)

Mr. Warren, who reappeared in Washington clubs in recent years, was best known for the recordings he made from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. He was discovered by trumpeter Kenny Dorham on a trip through the District and, within a matter of years, the 19-year-old Warren was working at the center of New York’s elite orbit of hard-bop jazz musicians.

As the house bass player for the Blue Note record label in New York, he helped set the pace and tone on first-rate albums by saxophonist Dexter Gordon, trumpeter Donald Byrd and pianists Herbie Hancock and Sonny Clark. He also toured the world with Thelonious Monk in 1963 and 1964 and was considered a promising disciple of the wildly innovative pianist and composer.

“Warren’s rich, loping bass is well suited to Monk’s rhythms if not his harmonic ideals,” Time magazine noted in a 1964 story about the band. “He is like a pony in pasture who traces his mother’s footsteps without stealing her grace.”

He left his mark on albums such as Hancock’s “Takin’ Off” (1962), Gordon’s “Go!” (1962), Jackie McLean’s “Vertigo” (1963), Dorham’s “Una Mas” (1963) and “Miles & Monk at Newport” (1964) with Miles Davis and Monk. Mr. Warren also wrote pieces included on several of the Blue Note albums, including “Eric Walks,” a tribute to his son, then a toddler taking his first steps.

Lean and lanky with an impassive face and an enduring attachment to the narrow lapels and thin ties popular among bop artists of the mid-century, Mr. Warren was for decades a mysterious, silent presence along the fringes of the Washington jazz scene.

After his return from New York in the mid-’60s, he was for a few years a regular in the house band on Channel 4’s morning talk show, “Today With Inga.” Then he largely disappeared, popping up from time to time at a club gig or at the Friday night jazz shows at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Southwest Washington.

The Washington Post found Mr. Warren in 2006 in the locked-down psychiatric ward at Springfield Hospital Center , an institution 50 miles north of the District in Sykesville, Md. He had lost most of his teeth, and he seemed dazed and distracted. He had lost his apartment in a seniors’ facility in Silver Spring, lost his balance, lost his bass. “This is about the best place I’ve ever lived,” he told The Post.

The staff at the mental hospital knew him only as “Ed” until a worker on the ward got curious, Googled him, and discovered that the patient who kept asking for permission to play the piano in the recreation room was one of the lost bassists of the venerated Blue Note era.

Aus dem Nachruf der Washington Post

gypsy tail windHa ha! Nein, vermutlich gab’s da nie eine Korrektur, da mir der Fehler nicht auffiel … die Handy-Sachen kenne ich nur teils, habe das Mosaic Select noch immer nicht angeschafft … aber in Sachen Don Thompson fällt mir gerade das hier ein, neulich gerade gelesen:
http://stomp-off.blogspot.ch/2010/07/i-dont:-know-how-many-of-you-remember.html
:lol:

Es ging mir da natürlich um Albertsons Satz: „Surely, not remembering Don Thompson from the John Handy Monterey album is grounds for suicide … – aber die Lektüre des ganzen Briefwechsels lohnt – Kofsky ist gewiss eine der seltsameren Fussnoten der Jazzgeschichte.

It is with deep sorrow that we announce that Charlie Haden, born August 6, 1937 in Shenandoah, Iowa, passed away today at 10:11 Pacific time in Los Angeles after a prolonged illness. Ruth Cameron, his wife of 30 years, and his children Josh Haden, Tanya Haden, Rachel Haden and Petra Haden were all by his side.

http://ottawacitizen.com/entertainment/music/jazzblog/rip-charlie-haden