Word: saxman
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Playwright Garson (Born Yesterday) Kanin (rhymes with rain in), a jazz saxophonist during his knockabout days, has managed this much. His novel is cast in the form of a onetime saxman's fond, moody reminiscence of the hard-blowing early '303. Jogged by a telephone call from one of his old partners, the narrator recalls the rise and fall of the combo they formed. The group begins as a trio, built around an astonishingly good young trumpeter. Then the saxman finds a pianist at a Harlem rent party, and the trio sounds even better as a quartet. Bookings...
...Friends (Ben Webster, tenor sax; Jimmy Rowles, piano; Red Mitchell, bass; Stan Levey, drums; Fantasy). Trombonist Harris, who sometimes sounds as if he were blowing through several folds of velvet, is the weakest operative on an album chiefly distinguished by the pensive unfolding of some fine solos by Saxman Webster. In Where Are You?, I Surrender, Dear and In a Mello-tone, Webster articulates his longings with spacious ease and a tone as husky with melancholy as a distant-sounding foghorn...
Death of a Poet. Author Holmes, a leading member of San Francisco's Beat Generation, makes the usual novelist's disclaimer: his characters are not real people. Still, reading his book, any sensitive cat might think of someone like Tenor Saxman Lester Young or Charley ("Yard-bird") Parker (who died in 1955 at the age of 35 because he behaved too much like Edgar Pool). The prototype for Geordie. The Horn's No. 1 chick, might be someone like Jazz Singer Billie Holiday. Actually, the resemblances are not important. This is a standard jazz story and, beyond...
Ellington at Newport (Columbia). An audible report on the highly charged performance of Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue, which set Newport bloods to stomping up the aisles last summer. Most notable: the supple solo by Tenor Saxman Paul Gonsalves, who lovingly rocks through no fewer than 27 choruses...
...memorize and play a piece we don't like the way a legit musician can," Dave said when he first heard Howard's plans. But he changed his mind when he heard Howard's fast-breaking, dissonant orchestral score. "It's O.K.," said Alto Saxman Paul Desmond. "Everything's out of tune...