The coolest guys ever.
I didn’t find this clip, The Poor Man did. There are so many outstanding single shots in it — I can’t decide between Miles in the foreground w/ Trane in the background awaiting his solo and the trombone player taking a drag on his cigarette — that you’ll just want to watch it over and over. I didn’t buy this record until I was 35, a mere 33 years after its recording. Proof that every day in every life, something amazing can still drop into it.
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Danny said on May 26th, 2006 at 10:56 am
Amazing clip. Funny how some of the guys were on break on stage or only slightly off-stage, having a smoke during each other’s solos. Reminds me of an interview where Rick Wakeman was explaining how he would have a spot of tea during Chris Squire’s bass solos. He remarked that it was a wonderful way to spend a bass solo.
Jim from Fla said on May 26th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Amazing video, amazing music. Thanks for sharing the clip. What a great way to start the weekend!
ashley said on May 27th, 2006 at 1:53 am
In New Orleans, a trumpet is still a way out of poverty.
Nance said on May 27th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Ash, one of my favorite memories of NO was when we wandered past Preservation Hall as the music was starting. This would normally be a place I’d avoid like herpes; I had visions of a bunch of horrible tourists watching a group of criminally bored musicians playing “Saints” for the 12 billionth time. I was right about the tourists, but to my utter surprise, the band was smokin’. They played “I Wish That I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” with real energy and joy. I treasure that moment as much as the night we saw Ellis Marsalis play at some bar with a few of his students, kids no older than teens, all dressed in coats and ties, serious as hell and really good.
basset said on May 27th, 2006 at 10:20 pm
“a spot of tea” sounds appropriate but kinda out of character for Wakeman… even thirty-plus years later, I still remember standing at the foot of the stage in Louisville during the “Topographic Oceans” tour and watching him pound what looked like a whole case of warm Stroh’s during the show without missing a note, then come back for more in the encore.
Danny said on May 28th, 2006 at 4:05 pm
Yeah, I know what you mean. The interview was on one of their recent dvd releases (Yesspeak). He also made the comment that they are just the same today as they were back then except now they each weigh individually what they then weighed collectively. Pretty funny stuff. Of course, he is wrong about Steve. Steve is gaunt and I think rather unhealthy looking for being a longtime committed vegan.
basset said on May 28th, 2006 at 8:34 pm
yeah, as I remember he made some remark about Steve looking like “a stick insect”… when I saw Steve perform in Nashville a few weeks ago he just looked old. Rick looks like he might be twice as big as he was in the old days, but what the hell, I do too… and both of ‘em can still play…
rootlesscosmo said on June 4th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I bought “Kind of Blue” shortly after it was released in 1959, and I am here to tell you it was astonishing. Bebop – “classic” bebop of the 40’s, the era of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell – was already diverging down new paths; just “sounding like Bird” was turning stale. The Jazz Messengers (Horace Silver, Art Blakey et al.) were taking a direction toward a “churchier,” funkier style, good listening but sort of a creative retreat (or so it seemed to us young beboppers); “Kind of Blue,” the writing, Bill Evans’s playing, and above all Coltrane – listen to his solo on “Blue in Green,” my candidate for the most beautiful 16 bars in jazz – were really moving ahead, which for bebop, a “make it new” modernism if ever there was one, was the highest, bravest achievement.