[Dixielandjazz] Lee Konitz

[TBW504 at aol.com]

Not just Louis. The foremost exponent of the cool approach to jazz and  
associated with Miles Davis in the late 40s, and the last person one would  expect 
to have any connection with traditional jazz. However, Konitz lived at  the 
same house as David Bell in 1946. Mama Yancey used to help with the chores.  
Marty Marsala and Don Ewell hung out there, too, and David and his wife Marilyn  
met Bunk Johnson at that time, and later made the famous film of Bunk. Later  
still the Bells got to know Harold Drob, and were friends also of Emily Mae  
Evans, Bunk's stepdaughter. In 1947 Konitz was studying with Lennie Tristano in 
 New York and heard Bunk Johnson play at the Stuyvesant. Jerry Blumberg 
quoted  Konitz as saying, "You ought to hear Bunk play 'Honeysuckle Rose'. He's 
playing  like Tristano!"  
If you open your ears it's all music.
Brian Wood