Looking west down Lomas Blvd, Albuquerque — September 16, 2o17 — photo by Mark Weber

The Thursday Jazz Radio Show

October 5, 2o17 Jazz @ Noon every Thursday (starts at 12:07 after the satellite news) Host MARK WEBER KUNM Albuquerque, USA 89.9 FM (Mountain Standard Time) also streaming on the web KUNM.org Current time zone offset: UTC*/GMT -6 hours (*Coordinated Universal Time)/Greenwich Mean Time)

. . . in this music one hears vestiges

                        of the blues, like a palimpsest

faintly seen through the veil

floating

the notes of a minor scale vaporize

over a major chord progression

there is a light wind in the trees

the rustling of leaves

as if the spirits of a doomed army

were passing by

there’s a guy wearing a bandana across

      his brow sanding the fender

of a 1952 Dodge with whitewalls

and curbfeelers

floating iridescence

the notes are like powder, you

can hear them if you cup your ears

Kenny Burrell — May 9, 1981 Los Angeles —- photo by Mark Weber

I could be wrong but I think Jameel Moondoc assembled this band, it wasn’t clear — November 13, 2016 for Connie Crothers Memorial at Roulette —- It struck me as the perfect foil for his work: Ras Moshe (tenor), Felice Rosser (electric bass), Reggie Sylvester (alto), On Ka’a David (guitar), and Jameel on alto — photo by Mark Weber

I was sitting in the front row with Andy Fite when I snapped this one, that’s why it came out so interesting: Nick Lyons (alto), Ken Filiano (bass), Lorenzo Sanguedolce (tenor) at the Memorial for Connie Crothers — November 13, 2o16 at Roulette, 509 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn NYC — photo by Mark Weber

Buddy Rich arrives at Playboy Jazz Festival, Hollywood Bowl — June 21, 1980 — photo by Mark Weber —- One of my favorite Buddy Rich stories comes from David Parlato, who, along around 1968 he got the call to sub one weekend with Buddy’s band at the Carousel in Covina, California (remember that place you Angelenos?) (it was right off the San Bernardino Freeway) Anyway, David’s all set up with his bass next to the drumkit and they’re about ready to hit and Buddy comes out, and sits down at the drums and says to David, “Don’t keep it a secret, kid.”

Another great album cover by Burt Goldblatt (1924-2006) —– He was in the first generation to design covers for LPs — the first wave of long players were 10″ like this one, in 1953 & 1954 (if you visit Institute of Jazz Studies, Newark, you’ll see a wall of nothing but 10″ albums from those years) —- For the record, my favorite jazz singer is Jack Teagarden, he’s my main man in that department . . . . .

Gretchen Parlato with her dad’s band in Albuquerque: Bob Fox (piano), John Trentacosta (drums), David Parlato (bass), Michael Anthony (guitar) — April 6, 1998 — photo by Mark Weber

Every time I catch this trio (two times) I’m knocked out, they go straight into that good old-fashioned groove jazz, maybe something like Bobby Timmons or Horace Silver —- I wish I had a recording of them to play for you —- Red Hot & Red they call themselves: Steve Figueroa (piano — his mother Mary is a big jazz nut and is from Laguna Pueblo), Louis Speaking Eagle (Zacatec Indian from El Paso on drums), Milo Jaramillo (Isleta Pueblo on bass) — June 29, 2o17 at Outpost Performance Space, Albuquerque — photo by Mark Weber

What We Live + Leo Smith —- March 22, 1998 at Outpost Performance Space — There’s a CD released from this performance on Black Saint —- Larry Ochs, Donald Robinson, Wadada Leo Smith, Lisle Ellis — photo by Mark Weber

Jack Casady — July 10, 2o16 playing with Electric Hot Tuna in Madrid, New Mexico — photo by Mark Weber —- One of my early heroes of the electric contrapuntal bass, I learned a lot listening to him —- I wonder what occasion’d Jack’s decision to take up residence on the Island of Jersey off the coast of Normandy? (There’s important paleolithic sites of Neanderthals 250,000BP on Jersey)

One of the great guitarists this side of the Mississippi River: Lewis Winn motivatin’ — September 16, 2o17 Albuquerque —— We’re in negotiations for Lewis to bring his rig down to KUNM some Thursday in October to play for us live over the New Mexico airwaves —- photo by Mark Weber —- In our negotiations I had got off on a tangent and was explaining my current love of standards and how that came about, and Lewis suggested that I run it up the flagpole. Here are excerpts from our communiques :

Mark,
Now see, if most of THAT rich but surprisingly concise historical run-down was on your KUNM bio… Nothin’ wrong with what’s already there mind ya, multicolored map that it is, and I spect that was your work too. But this one? Well heck slim, even tho I already knew many of your sordid details this oeuvre-view not only added visceral vitae and raison d’extras to my who and why of you but also too more than a few plain old sheets of facts. And the fulsome fleet of fascinating tales continues ad nominum…. [email from Lewis Winn > MW 9/26/2o17]

[Two notes: 1) Lewis is a master of the malapropism and pulls me into that vortex on occasion 2) Right About Now is a trio he works with that is open-ended and free]

Lewt,
Why’nt you do duets with Bobby Shew?
I bet we could talk him into that.
We’d have to pick a Thursday that he was in town.

Barring that, I’d go with duets with Michael Olivola (sp? now you got me all messed up) —– I’m still in my period of romance with Standards/Song Book. It’s where I live.

I love the Right About Now thing, it’s pure jazz. But I have to admit, I came into jazz backwards. I started out with free jazz and the avant garde ——– In high school when I ran out of rock&roll (it were only ten years old back then, if you remember, and there wasn’t that much of it) and I drifted into classical music for a minute but gawd damn I was 19 & 20 at that time I wanted something a little more in your face — classical was too polite and placid. And so here I am a white boy from the suburbs of L.A. dragged screaming into jazz. With rock I was a guitar solo freak. Jerry Garcia 1967-1969 the best, Duane, Zappa, Jeff Beck’s first album, Harvey Mandel’s first album, etc, and so the next thing was saxophone solos in jazz. And of course, always the blues. And Watts was just half hour away and that’s where I lived the years I might shoulda been in collitch —- I were in the blues bars swilling beer and catching Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulson, Eddie Cleanhead Vinson, Big Joe Turner, Charles Brown, Joe Liggins & the Honeydrippers, Shakey Jake, Roy Brown (“Tin Pan Alley”!), Johnny Otis, Mississippi Smokey Wilson, etc etc etcetera ————-Man, you shoulda heard Pee Wee’s second guitarist Evans Walker, that was a BAAD dude (I’ve put photos of him on my webpage) but, he was a down & dirty boozehound (weren’t we all?) and would have been a bad prospect to take into a studio, I’m sure he didn’t live into 1980 he was going down . . . . .

Then I took my studies deeper and started visiting the black churches, and got my hair curled witnessing all that — people speaking in tongues, fainting, screaming, hollaring, walls shaking, drums pounding, testifying, hand to God ———————- I should write about all that someday . . . .

ANYHOO, I’ve always been a graphics artist (I keep it under wraps in Albuquerque) beginning even before kindergarten I (first day of kindergarten I took a Band-Aids tin full of string I had colored and felt important that I show everyone, haha), all through grade school and high school I had my own easels in art class and so forth, won awards (Bronx cheer) (hated that brouhaha), so that by about 9th grade I was totally down with the Dadaists, Surrealists, and Cezanne forwards, and painted abstract expressionist action paintings for several years, and listened vehemently to Stravinsky and Capt Beefheart. SO THAT by the time I switched to jazz I was ready for Ornette, late-stage Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, etc, I was a mondernist totally ——————-

But, in L.A. I had enough sense to go check out other doings like the cool 50s jazz cats that were still in action then out in the Valley (where Shew lived), (I grew up in the Okie lands to the east), and the vibrant Dixieland scene, and etc. (I had read Martin Williams and even tho he was big on Cecil Taylor, who I met when I was 21, he always stressed that we listen to everything else, great scholar that he was, and I still send youngsters to his books.) My photos attest to all this.

Long story short. (Yoga class is looming, I got to run.) I gradually worked my way along until I realized I like song forms and the abstractions / improvisations derived thereof . . . . . SO. I have had a snootful of free jazz to last a lifetime. That was my main thing for years. It was good training, sort of. Opened my ears, that’s for sure. And my late friend Connie Crothers who I worked with for 15 or so years (NYC mostly) was total free, if she had her druthers. She was way off into playing free . . . . . .

BUT & SO, that would be my choice, the standards would be wonderful. Got to run, more later,
MW————–[email > Lewis Winn 9/26/2017]

 

Mark————-
Thank you for the op to storm your air. Methinks later in the mumph would be more bester for moi. Praps that last one, 10/26? Not sure what I’d do but I’ll think o sumpm. I might tap those Right About Now lads to join me tho, would that be acceptable? If not I could see if Michael Oldvioila will be in town. Ain’t made noises with him for a while so that’d be nice. Whatever works. In fact if you have some sort of thematic plan in mind for your show I might be able to serve that some good. Maybe not too but hey, if ya got thots…
Until senility steals our lunch monkey, ————-Lewt the Coot [Lewis Winn email 9/25/2o17 > MW]

Saxophonist Jon Gordon and composer-arranger Maria Schneider at the old Outpost — March 30, 1998 — photo by Mark Weber

Filmmaker Eric Brietbart, who I met at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology when we were both part of the book repair crew on Saturday mornings back in the 90s — He lived out here for about ten years then moved back to NYC — We became good friends and still keep in touch —- In this frame he’s filming Judson Crews (at a gathering at Wendell Anderson’s place) November 26, 1993 Albuquerque —- He and Mary Lance are New Deal Films production company and you’ve seen several of their documentaries on PBS, like the Diego Rivera, and the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair, among others — photo by Mark Weber

Don Weber — photo by his son Mark — November 1982 Upland California —- I was lucky, I had good parents, decent people —- My Dad worked for the post office 28 years and boy, when he retired he had no problem settling into retirement, none of that disorientation and uselessness and depression that I hear assails certain retirees, not my Dad, he was in the easy chair by the next day and never looked back

Fresh off the easel —- Daryl Rogers has been on a Mingus kick lately and calls this “Mingus” says “I still like to do an occasional abstract while listening to jazz”