The Phone Call to the Pharmacy
Angel City Jazz gives away the first hour of tonight's Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri show in Los Angeles, and what it gives away is Bela Bartok's own wax cylinders played out loud. Then Stan Getz at the Keystone Korner in 1976, four rooms from New Orleans to Minneapolis, and the morning in 1954 when Getz walked into a Seattle drugstore and called afterward to apologize.
LioraIn Los Angeles tonight, a free hour with Bela Bartok's wax cylinders, and then the concert. Today's record is two discs of Stan Getz at the Keystone Korner. Later, Seattle, 1954, and a phone call to a drugstore. It's Monday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Monday, October 12th. 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: Angel City Jazz gives away the first hour of tonight's Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri concert
LioraAngel City Jazz gives away the first hour of tonight's show, and what it gives away is a hundred year old field recording.
The festival's page bills Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri, "Transylvanian Dance," a multimedia performance, at 2220 Arts and Archives on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles. Twenty dollars, half past eight to eleven.
The page prints the night as two things. At half past seven, a free presentation: the Secret Codes Embedded in Bela Bartok Field Recordings. The festival says the two men will talk about the project and play audio from Bartok's original wax cylinder recordings from the early twentieth century, and that this portion of the program is free to attend.
LioraThe festival names no record, so here is the one behind it. ECM 2824, "Transylvanian Dance," out in August of 2024. Ban on piano, Maneri on viola, recorded October 2022 at CJT Hall in Timisoara. Eight tracks, every one of them credited Traditional.
So: Bartok took down the villages, the duo took down Bartok's collection in a hall in Timisoara, and tonight they play it again. An hour early, you can hear what Bartok actually carried home.
Two. Listen to This: Resonance Records has Stan Getz's May 1976 week at the Keystone Korner on two presale
LioraToday's record is the man tonight's story is about.
Resonance Records has "Stan Getz, The Sound in San Francisco: Live at Keystone Korner." Two discs, twenty five ninety nine, available for presale now, with no release date printed.
San Francisco, the Keystone Korner, May of 1976. Getz on tenor, Joanne Brackeen on piano, Clint Houston on bass, Billy Hart on drums. On disc one only, Joao Gilberto, guitar and vocals.
That parenthesis is the whole architecture. Disc one is the Gilberto night, thirteen tracks, opening with a minute and seven seconds of Getz talking. Disc two is the quartet, nobody singing, and it is the longer record. "Infant Eyes," seven fifty. "Morning Star," eight fifty eight. "Con Alma," twelve twenty two.
Here is the tip. Start on disc two.
LioraOne more. Blue Note Records China releases "Now's the Time: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Jazz," volume one, on October twenty third, produced by Don Was, Zhang Yadong and Ren Yuqing.
Now go back seventy two years. Tonight on The Bridge: Seattle, 1954. Stan Getz walks into a drugstore, says he has a gun, and leaves with nothing. Then he goes back to his hotel room and calls the store to apologize. Silas has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Seattle, 1954: Stan Getz walks into a drugstore, says he has a gun, leaves with nothing
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasSeattle. Friday morning, February 12th, 1954, about 7:40. A drugstore at 1125 Fourth Avenue, downtown, just remodeled, with a grand re-opening shortly before Christmas. A young man walks in, holding his right hand in his pocket. That detail comes from a 1954 drug trade journal; later tellings turn it into a finger. He waits until two customers have left. Then he faces the clerk, Mrs. Mary Brewster, 44 years old.
LioraWho is he?
SilasStan Getz, 27, the tenor saxophonist. A week earlier, at a concert in Los Angeles, Down Beat called him "the troubled tenor ace." Now he's on tour. One Seattle jazz history has him working up the coast with Zoot Sims and Wardell Gray. Getz wrote later, "Seattle was the eighth day of the tour and I could stand no more."
So he tells Mrs. Brewster, as the journal quotes him, "Look, lady, I want some drugs immediately. I've got a gun." Later books say he asked for morphine. The 1954 sources just say drugs, or in Getz's word, narcotics.
LioraDoes he have one?
SilasNo. His own letter says, "I said I had a gun," and then, in parentheses, "didn't."
What comes next depends on who you ask. The journal says Mrs. Brewster answered, "Let's see your gun," and Getz ran. Getz says she told another customer, who looked him over and laughed: "Lady, he's kidding you. He has no gun." Either way, he leaves with nothing. In his words, he had "flopped at my first 'caper.'"
LioraSo he's in the clear?
SilasNot quite. He goes back to his hotel. The journal names it the Olympic, and a biography of Norman Granz puts the drugstore across from the group's hotel. Then, in Getz's words, "When I was in my room I decided to call the store and apologize."
He phones the drugstore he just tried to rob. To say sorry.
LioraHe called to apologize?
SilasHe did. Getz wrote that the call was traced. The 1954 journal tells it plainer: a policeman at the pharmacy got his room number at the hotel, and Getz was arrested soon afterward.
Then it turns dark. Getz wrote that he swallowed 60 grains of a long-acting barbiturate on the way to jail. The next day, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer put him on the front page and called it heroin poisoning. Those two accounts don't agree. What Getz does tell us is that he woke "three days later, with a breathing tube inserted in my trachea." And: "God didn't want to kill me. This was his warning."
After that, it gets murky. He went back to Los Angeles. A Los Angeles Times report, which we know only through a Getz bibliography, says a judge there sentenced him to six months in jail as a heroin addict, then three years probation. Other accounts tie those six months to the holdup. How the Seattle charge ended, we couldn't find.
In March, from the Los Angeles County jail, he wrote it all out in pencil to Down Beat's editor, Jack Tracy. Two letters, six pages each. Down Beat printed them in April.
LioraNo gun, no drugs, and then a phone call to say sorry. The strangest part of that morning is the most human one. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: The Charmaine Neville Band plays two sets at Snug Harbor in New Orleans
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in New Orleans.
Snug Harbor has the Charmaine Neville Band, half past seven and half past nine, thirty five sixty five. Neville on lead vocals and percussion, Amasa Miller on piano and musical director, Detroit Brooks on guitar, Donald Ramsey on bass, Raymond Weber on drums.
Now the sweep.
In New York, Dizzy's Club has the Steven Feifke Big Band and an album release, seven and nine. Eighteen players, Martina DaSilva singing. Seven o'clock is sold out. Nine is a sixty dollar cover, plus a twenty five dollar food and drink minimum per person, per set.
In Chicago, the Jazz Showcase bills it "Carmen Sings Monk," eight to eleven, twenty five dollars, cash only, with Juli Wood on tenor and vocals.
LioraAnd in Minneapolis, the Dakota has Hiromi, The Trio Project, half past six and nine, with James Genus and Simon Phillips. From sixty three fifty eight early, from fifty two twenty five late.
Five. One More Note: On October 12, 1931, the Cab Calloway Orchestra cut four sides for ARC in one day
LioraOctober twelfth, 1931. One day's work at ARC.
The UC Santa Barbara archive has the date index. The Cab Calloway Orchestra cut four masters, 10865 through 10868. "Stardust." "You Can't Stop Me From Lovin' You." "You Dog." "Somebody Stole My Gal." The archive describes all four with the same phrase: jazz, dance band, with male vocal solo.
By the Library of Congress essay on "Minnie the Moocher," which Calloway recorded that same year, his orchestra had recently replaced Duke Ellington's at the Cotton Club.
Four sides, one afternoon.
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 Monday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.