Old Motifator threads are available in the Archive.
TheDukester
Total Posts: 3345
Joined 01-18-2003 status: Guru |
Got the news that Louis Bellson and Joe Cuba have died.
Louis Bellson? Well he should have been part of the conversation we had a few weeks back on “Drummers/Percussionists”.
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DavePolich
Total Posts: 6820
Joined 07-27-2002 status: Guru |
Wow, I didn’t know Bellson passed away. He was one of my top three
Amazingly, he had a new CD out last year. He just didn’t want to
A true giant of percussion - he’ll be missed. |
slargthorb
Total Posts: 123
Joined 07-28-2002 status: Pro |
Not at all to be funny, but I was surprised that he was still alive! Of course I share my respect for his musical contributions and I wanted to share a memory with you all.
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scotch
Total Posts: 2027
Joined 08-14-2005 status: Guru |
Except that that discussion as I remember it was supposed to be about big bands.
I’m guessing in respect to Billy Cobham at least that this has something to do with the double bass drums. We’re about twenty-two years late to commemorate Teddy Wilson in the way we commemorate musicians here. I saw Teddy twice, once in great form in the spring of 1981 and once just after he’d suffered a stroke (and shortly before he died) in the fall of 1985. The evidence in 1981 suggested he’d been getting better and better without ever venturing outside the boundaries of stride and pre-bop swing. Bellson and Brown are from another era, and yet I can think of few musicians of that other era likely to bend so well sympathetically toward Teddy. I imagine this a concert well worth attending, and I’m jealous. |
MoGut
Total Posts: 1535
Joined 05-08-2004 status: Guru |
I just watched some youtube video of him, great stuff. Early double bass drum user for sure, I wonder if there many others doing the same at that time. I could watch drum solos all day long, unfortunately its something todays culture quickly gets bored with. Thanks for the thread, I didnt know of him until now. |
slargthorb
Total Posts: 123
Joined 07-28-2002 status: Pro |
Yeah Scotch, it was indeed a great show; and ridiculously cheap with a student I.D. card as I recall. We saw many shows that way: Spyro Gyra, Chuck Mangione, Renaissance (remember them?), and on and on.......... |
scotch
Total Posts: 2027
Joined 08-14-2005 status: Guru |
Not really. The name is registering faintly in a remote part of my brain, such as it remains, but that’s all. (Can’t pretend to think highly of Spyra Gyra, but I was pleasantly surprised with Chuck Mangione when I very belatedly saw him.) |
TonyPhillips
Total Posts: 844
Joined 09-16-2005 status: Guru |
Spyro Gyra was one of my favorite “Smooth Jazz” groups. I first got to see them live when I was a summer intern at IBM in Raleigh, NC about 20 years ago. Heck, they’ve been going strong for 30 years now. Can’t think of many bands that have as long a discography as they… We have a Chuck Mangione tune in our Big Band reportoire. I only wish I could play soprano even remotely as good as the guy on his recording that was playing in the Altissimo for a good chunk of it… |
scotch
Total Posts: 2027
Joined 08-14-2005 status: Guru |
The watering-down of fusion started very soon after Miles Davis’s forays into the genre and the formation of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra (whom I saw in the summer of 1973) and the original Weather Report (I saw a later version of Weather Report with Jaco Pastorius). Spyra Gyra was one of the worst offenders of their precise debut time, but not one of the earliest offenders over all. There’s no question that Jean-Luc Ponty was pandering when I saw him a few months before the (free) Teddy Wilson concert I mention above, and in that connection it’s not even worth mentioning Jeff Lorber (whom I saw maybe several months afterward). One (subjective) difference is that I’ve actually avoided a Spyra Gyra performance when I happened to be right there on the scene and attending wouldn’t have cost me a cent. (Of course it’s possible that I might have ended up with a higher opinion of the group if I hadn’t avoided their concert.) Chuck Mangione cracked on “Feel So Good” when I saw him, and I wondered why he didn’t just take the thing down a step or so. My brother contends the audience would have noticed and subliminally objected. (I didn’t mind the cracking, by the way--makes it real.) |