[Dixielandjazz] Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 119, Issue 27

Sat Nov 24 16:53:35 PST 2012

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On Nov 24, 2012, at 12:10 PM, dixielandjazz-request at ml.islandnet.com wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
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>   1. Stan Greig   RIP (ROBERT R. CALDER)
>   2. Louis Armstrong,    Bessie Smith reviewed - Buffalo News
>      (Robert Ringwald)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 16:03:15 +0000 (GMT)
> From: "ROBERT R. CALDER" <serapion at btinternet.com>
> To: Dixieland Jazz MailingList <Dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Stan Greig   RIP
> Message-ID:
>    <1353772995.53366.YahooMailNeo at web186004.mail.ir2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
> 
> Peter Vacher's Guardian obit is below
> ?
> It's a long time since I last saw Stan, one Monday night at King's Cross when he was playing the weekly gig as one of the forequarters of the Fawkes-Greig quartet, Wally in the interval singing his praises as a master of tempo, setting things up at an interesting pace regardless of whether it was a fast number or a slow or anything. 
> I remember him gigging at an Edinburgh jazz festival, with maybe Dave Green on bass doing one of the Ellington-Blanton duet numbers, and very interestingly not being a 'clean' player, the very opposite of what listmakes disapprove of in J.J. Johnson's trombonism. It was all go.? 
> I thought he was under-appreciated as a straight jazz pianist, a non-virtuoso doing things harder for some people than playing a lot of notes.? When he took over from the amazing Mick Pyne in Humph's band there was a change of character -- nothing collossal, but what happens when one individual replaces another individual. 
> The last I heard about him, from a regular southern visitor to Edinburgh, was of I think some sort of benefit for a colleague or colleague's family, where -- according to my ever-reliable friend -- Stan was hampered by the onset of what I now see was Parkinson's disease, and delivered blues on a model of Jimmy Yancey.? 
> ?
> I could amuse a few people with an example of the personable Stan being drily witty, but I'd have to cite a name, to protect the guilty.? The man had rhythm. 
> ?
> Robert R. Calder 
> ?
> Stan Greig obituary
> Brilliant blues pianist, drummer and founder of the London Jazz Big Band
> ????* Peter Vacher 
> ????* The Guardian, Friday 23 November 2012 18.43 GMT 
> 
> The jazz pianist ? and occasional drummer ? Stan Greig, who has died aged 82 after suffering from Parkinson's disease, performed with such leading lights of British traditional and mainstream jazz as Sandy Brown, Ken Colyer, Humphrey Lyttelton and George Melly. He was renowned for his conviviality, his brilliant blues and boogie piano playing, and his professional skills as a piano tuner.
> Greig was born in the Edinburgh suburb of Joppa, the son of a piano tuner and repairer. "I got into boogie-woogie first and didn't really move into jazz until I met the Sandy Brown crowd at school," he told me in a Melody Maker interview, before explaining that the pianos he encountered were so poor that he felt impelled to take up the drums. Greig was part of a circle at the city's Royal high school that eventually launched Greig, clarinettist Brown and their trumpeter friend Al Fairweather to enduring jazz fame.
> Listening to Louis Armstrong and King Oliver on record fired their enthusiasm, and this happy teenage collective ? sometimes with Alex Welsh in place of Fairweather ? began to play local jobs, with Brown ready to take on the world.
> When the trio gravitated to London, Fairweather joined Cy Laurie's band, Brown pursued his studies as an acoustic architect (he kept both careers going), and Greig, as a drummer, joined the Ken Colyer Jazzmen in 1954, just as the dedicated Colyer netted a four-month residency at the New Orleans Bier Bar in D?sseldorf.
> Back home and with a successful album, Back to the Delta, behind them, Colyer's band began to capitalise on their emerging reputation. Even so, keen to extend his range stylistically, Greig accepted an offer to join Lyttelton's band: his brushes are to be heard prominently on Lyttelton's hit recording of Bad Penny Blues, as engineered by Joe Meek.
> The single reached no 19 in the 1956 hit parade, the first out-and-out jazz record to enter the top 20, before, in Lyttelton's words, "falling back exhausted". In what was a successful period for the outfit, Greig recorded often until the Suez crisis led to him being called up as a reservist. According to Lyttelton, "He played a vital part in the campaign as an officers' mess pianist." Back with the band later in 1956, he shared drum duties with his eventual replacement, Eddie Taylor, who fitted the band's evolving style better. Greig left to go on tour with the US gospel singer Brother John Sellers.
> Having played off and on with Brown again, in 1960 Greig joined Acker Bilk's Paramount Jazz Band as its pianist, touring the world on the back of Bilk's international success with Stranger on the Shore and appearing in Dick Lester's film It's Trad, Dad! (1962). He stayed until 1968, eventually leaving to run a cafe in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, which "lasted a year".
> Always able to fall back on his tuning skills, Greig had regular clients including Mick Jagger. He picked up trio jobs, formed his swing band and remained active in the outer reaches of the London jazz world before joining John Chilton's Feetwarmers to accompany the mercurial vocalist George Melly for three years from 1977, playing at Ronnie Scott's club in London and appearing in New York.
> Arguably Greig's finest achievement was the formation, with Fairweather, of the London Jazz Big Band in 1975. On its debut at the 100 Club in central London, this splendid all-star ensemble had just six tunes in the book, each played with solo spots for all 16 band members, and then repeated the same six pieces with even longer solos. Gradually more repertoire was added by Fairweather and others, and their 100 Club sessions remain firmly in the memory as hugely enjoyable events.
> Later, Greig was to return to the Lyttelton band, by now more of a mainstream unit, to play the piano, and stayed for 10 years until 1995, his albums on Lyttelton's Calligraph label including a solo recording and a band collaboration with the singer Helen Shapiro. The onset of Parkinson's hampered Greig's ability to play, and Jools Holland was on hand to support him at his benefit concert at the 100 Club in 2002.
> Visiting US instrumentalists always valued Greig for his solid swing playing ? he toured Europe in 1985 with a group of Harlem veterans ? and his many recordings attest to his status as one of the finest blues and jazz pianists.
> Twice divorced, he is survived by his first wife, Jean, their daughters, Alison and Lindsey, and son, Duncan.
> ? Stanley Mackay Greig, jazz pianist and bandleader, born 12 August 1930; died 18 November 2012
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 10:25:04 -0800
> From: "Robert Ringwald" <rsr at ringwald.com>
> To: "DJML" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Cc: Dixieland Jazz Mailing List <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
> Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Louis Armstrong,    Bessie Smith reviewed -
>    Buffalo News
> Message-ID: <CEE6293A44CD4911AF279270EAE1D083 at BobPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="utf-8"
> 
> Louis Armstrong: The Okeh, Columbia and RCA Victor Recordings: 1925-1933 (Sony Legacy)
> Bessie Smith: The Complete Columbia Recordings (Sony Legacy)
> by Jeff Simon
> Buffalo News, November 23, 2012
> These are cornerstones of American music. Period.
> So exalted and fundamental is what's on these two majestic 10-disc box sets for the
> gift season that they are perfect for ears hungry for the music that was essential,
> in a way, to everything that followed and for gift givers with a passion to fill
> those ears as a mark of love and respect.
> If, for instance, you'd caught a sober, reflective Jimi Hendrix on his way out the
> door for a suitably Hendrixian night, he'd have gladly admitted that if Louis Armstrong
> hadn't been among the precious few who virtually invented the improviser's solo role
> in American music, there would have been no Jimi Hendrix. Nor would there have been
> a Hendrix -- or a Mick Jagger or Kanye West for that matter -- if Bessie Smith hadn't
> been a blues singer not only larger than life but larger than most people's idea
> of life. (Smith's was a musical stardom that created all of its own rules. Other
> people either got it. Or they didn't.)
> Listeners in the 21st century might have to teach themselves the creative astonishments
> of the music underneath the primitive recording technology and the pervasive historical
> influence. So, too, may they have to deal with the ineluctable monotony of Smith
> in vast quantity and the large variety of commercial inanity that was as essential
> to Armstrong's public career as the lightning bolt masterworks.
> The trick, of course, with both is to never listen to more than two discs in one
> sitting. (And in addition with Armstrong, to make sure that every sitting involves
> either disc three with "Potato Head Blues" or "Struttin' with Some Barbecue" or "Hotter
> Than That" and disc four with Earl Hines and Armstrong on "Weather Bird," "St. James
> Infirmary" and "Tight Like This.")
> In the racial world of the 21st century with President Obama in the White House,
> the duet of Armstrong and Hoagy Carmichael on the original "Rockin' Chair" -- with
> Armstrong, always, being the "son" ordered to fetch the gin by a white "father" --
> requires an indulgent understanding of exactly how much sophisticated racial irony
> was involved (not as much as the riotously subversive Fats Waller but a lot). But
> to listen to the primal recording years of Armstrong is to hear the roar of communal
> genius, if neither the notes or remasterings are ideal.
> To listen to Smith's voice is to encounter a wonder of nature so large that it mooted
> almost entirely the technology that housed it (in his notes, Ken Romanowski comically
> refers to her voice as "contralto"). There are some very stark blues here -- "Backwater
> Blues," "Send Me to the Lectric Chair" -- that offset the string of 1928 double entendres
> on "Empty Bed Blues," "Put It Right Here or Keep It Out There," "I'm Wild About That
> Thing" and "You've Got to Give Me Some."
> The final disc of the Smith box is Chris Albertson's interview with her ribald, joyously
> indiscreet niece by marriage Ruby Smith. You'll have to decide for yourself how much
> is truth and how much is the raucous legend-making essential to the ongoing life
> of the blues. My guess? About 60 percent.
> 
> 
> -Bob Ringwald
> www.ringwald.com
> Amateur (ham) Radio Operator K6YBV
> 916/ 806-9551
> 
> Friendship is like peeing your pants. Everyone can see it, 
> but only you can feel its warmth. ? Jack Handey
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
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> End of Dixielandjazz Digest, Vol 119, Issue 27
> **********************************************