Lover Man
Gordon Davis, the lawyer and parks commissioner who was the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center, has died at eighty five. Today's record is the Branford Marsalis Quartet and Dianne Reeves on "Dedicated To You," and The Bridge goes to Los Angeles in 1946.
LioraGordon Davis, the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center, has died at eighty five. Today's record is a Coltrane tribute. Later, Los Angeles, 1946, and four tracks Charlie Parker can barely play. It's Wednesday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Wednesday, October 7th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: Gordon Davis, the lawyer and parks commissioner who was the founding chairman of Jazz at
LioraGordon Davis has died. He was eighty five, the founding chairman of Jazz at Lincoln Center.
WBGO posted the news at twenty six minutes past one this morning. Davis died of complications of emphysema. No notice we could read gives a day, so we will not.
He was a lawyer, and before that New York City's parks commissioner in the late seventies and early eighties, the city's first Black parks commissioner. WBGO's list: he created the park's conservancy, he restored the Sheep Meadow, and he made Elton John's 1980 concert possible, and Simon and Garfunkel's in 1981.
His firm, Venable, put up one sentence. "It is with a heavy heart that we inform you of the passing of our partner and friend, Gordon Davis."
LioraThe firm's own biography of him is a list of buildings. In private practice he did the real estate and the financing for Bryant Park, Penn Station, and Jazz at Lincoln Center.
In January, when Wynton Marsalis said he would step down after nearly forty years, Davis told the New York Times this, and his firm reprints it. "Jazz was dead in this country. Wynton raised it up to make it what it should be: a true art of American culture."
Two. Listen to This: Blue Note's "Dedicated To You" puts the Branford Marsalis Quartet and Dianne Reeves on
LioraToday's record is three weeks old, and it is a Coltrane centennial album.
"Dedicated To You," the Branford Marsalis Quartet and Dianne Reeves, out on Blue Note on September eighteenth.
Blue Note says it takes six standards from the 1963 Impulse album "John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman," then adds instrumental pieces from Coltrane's canon.
Count the room. Marsalis on saxophone, Reeves singing, Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, Justin Faulkner on drums.
Marsalis on how they made it: "This was more of an integrated band thing, where the arrangements happened in the studio." So listen for the arranging.
One more. Blue Note's Tone Poet series put out three all analog reissues on October second, Freddie Hubbard's "Hub Cap," Booker Ervin's "Structurally Sound" and Stanley Turrentine's "Z.T.'s Blues."
LioraNow go back eighty years. Today on The Bridge: Los Angeles, 1946. Charlie Parker records four tracks he can barely play, and the label puts one of them out anyway. Silas has the story. Welcome, Silas.
Three. The Bridge: Los Angeles, 1946. Charlie Parker records four tracks he can barely play
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasLos Angeles. Summer, 1946. Charlie Parker came west the previous December, eight weeks at Billy Berg's in Hollywood with Dizzy Gillespie, bringing bebop to the West Coast. In February the run ends. Dizzy goes back to New York. Bird stays.
SilasHe signs with a new label called Dial, run by a man named Ross Russell, who kept a record shop on Hollywood Boulevard and started the label to record Parker. First session, March 28th, 1946.
SilasThen Los Angeles takes him apart. Los Angeles magazine, working the local record, describes him dope sick from a heroin habit, smoking a street residue called mud when there was nothing better, drinking when there was no heroin at all.
LioraAnd he's still recording.
SilasIn July, yes. One more Dial date. He is in withdrawal. He can barely play. He records four unfocused tracks, and he leaves the studio.
One of those four is "Lover Man." The writer of that Los Angeles piece, Matthew Duersten, put it this way. Parker "sounds like he's breathing his last and the horn just happens to catch the wind he expels."
You may have heard that Russell held him upright at the microphone to get the take. That detail is often repeated. We could not verify it, so we are not telling it to you.
LioraWhat happens after he leaves the studio?
SilasThat same night, a fire starts in his hotel room, and Parker is arrested. One account, the Los Angeles magazine piece, names the place: the Civic Hotel, downtown. No other source we read names it.
A single account, and a thinner one, says a cigarette caught the bedding, that he went into the hallway with no clothes on, and that he served ten days on a charge of arson and indecent exposure. One source. Take it as one source. None of the sources we read says he meant to start it.
Then he goes to Camarillo State Hospital, a state institution in Ventura County. Treated for addiction and general physical breakdown. He is there about six months.
LioraSix months. And Dial?
SilasDial released "Lover Man."
Parker never forgave Ross Russell for it. That much is on the record.
Whether Russell was an exploiter is not settled, and I am not going to settle it for you. The one Los Angeles account we read says Russell had a dubious reputation with musicians, and in the same breath credits him as a model for the independent jazz labels that came after. Both, side by side.
And Parker is not only the injured party here. Stan Levey, Dizzy's drummer on that Billy Berg's run, called him a sociopath. His words: "I want, I take."
LioraSo how does it end?
SilasHe comes out in January 1947. Word runs down Central Avenue that Bird is out, and Bird is sitting in at Jack's Basket Room. Buddy Collette is in the room. He wrote later that Parker "had been quite ill, having problems with drugs and going through other things."
Collette's line about what happened when Parker finally played: "Nobody played a note after that."
The next month, February 1947, he is back in a studio for Dial, recording his own composition. He calls it "Relaxin' at Camarillo."
LioraHe came out of that place and named a tune after it. Nothing hidden, nothing prettied up. Put it right on the label. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Tonight's ticket is Marcus Gilmore's New Orchestra at the Village Vanguard
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in New York.
The Village Vanguard has Marcus Gilmore's New Orchestra, in a run the club dates through the eleventh. Seven players, among them Joel Ross on vibraphone, David Virelles on piano and Ekep Nkwelle on voice. The house sets are eight and ten. The club prints no price, only a one drink minimum.
Now the sweep.
In Nashville, Rudy's Jazz Room has two bills. The Matt Twaddle Trio with Ric Fierabracci and Zach Dubay at six, then Regi Wooten and Friends at nine. Fifteen dollars either way.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has the Preservation All-Stars four times over, at five, quarter past six, half past seven and quarter to nine. No leader named tonight, and no price printed.
LioraIn Seattle, Jazz Alley closes a two night stand with the Yellowjackets at half past seven, doors at six. Forty one dollars, which the club says includes a twelve fifty handling fee.
And in Oakland, Yoshi's has Will Downing, doors at seven, show at half past seven, seventy nine to a hundred twenty nine dollars.
Five. One More Note: On October 7, 1940, Artie Shaw's orchestra cut five sides for Victor in Hollywood
LioraOctober seventh, 1940, in Hollywood.
Artie Shaw's orchestra cut five sides for Victor in one session. "Love of my life." "A handful of stars." "Star dust." "Marinela." "Danza lucumi."
The archive's card for "Star dust" gives Hoagy Carmichael as the composer. Take one is the master. Take one A says "Not processed."
Then an oddity. The same song came out on both sides of Victor 44-0003, which the archive calls a dubbed juke box pressing.
The ledger's one note about the room: "H. Meyerson, present."
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Wednesday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.