Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet - Vas Simeon
It's a midnight memorial Jazz Mass up in here, as we celebrate one of the music's all-time stalwarts, who left us just days ago at the ripe old age of 95.
It's a pity too, because I was pulling for him to make 100 alongside Roy Haynes and Sonny Rollins (they're getting close) and Marshall Allen (he made it), so they could go on tour as The C-Notes.
Well, 95 is pretty longevitous (I made that word up roughly .23 seconds ago and I think I like it), 'specially for a musician and 'specially times fasho for a Jazzbo.
In his time here with us, he composed probably as many standards as anyone, outside of Great American Songbookworms like the Gershwins and people like that.
I Remember Clifford (his 1956 tribute to trumpet deity Clifford Brown, who had recently died in a car crash), how many times has that been recorded?
Along Came Betty, Killer Joe, Stablemates....he's got quite a portfolio.
He sure wins the award for Most Classic Tunes Authored That I Had No Clue He Wrote Until I Researched This Post, anyways.
He started out in the early 1950s, when wild Jazzers stalked an Earth covered with Panama Red plankton, in the orbit of piano lord Tadd Dameron.
Stints with Johnny Hodges, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers soon followed, until he co-founded, in 1959, the group with which he became most associated: his Jazztet combo with flugelhorn master Art Farmer.
He toured the world co-leading the Jazztet for a few years, before beginning a side career composing incidental music for TV shows such as Mannix, Ironside, M*A*S*H and The Partridge Family(!!).
In the mid 1970s he returned to Jazz full time and led his own bands, as well as playing with the Jazztet, until he left us last Saturday.
He was the last of two remaining musicians depicted in the famous NYC photo from 1958 called A Great Day In Harlem, too. Now only Sonny remains, so can somebody please bubblewrap him immediately?
Anyway, this set of tremendousness comes from a Jazztet gig at the 1987 Montreal Jazz Festival, to which I've affixed two stellar bonus cuts -- featuring the same frontline -- from Chicago the previous summer.
Be on the lookout for trombone visionary Curtis Fuller -- he will get his own day here someday, as will Art Farmer -- in these 2 hours and 10 minutes of hard bopping blissness as well.
Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet
Festival International de Jazz de Montreal QC
Théâtre St-Denis
Montreal, Canada
6.28.1987
01 introduction
02 Whisper Not
03 Are You Real?
04 Write Soon
05 Jam 'N' Boogie
06 I Remember Clifford
07 Vas Simeon
08 Along Came Betty
09 Without Delay/FM announcement
10 Back to the City/FM announcement
11 Stablemates
12 Flashback
Total time: 2:10:37
disc break goes after Track 06
comments between songs are by Benny Golson
all compositions are also by Benny Golson
except Tracks 04 & 12, which are by Art Farmer
Art Farmer - flugelhorn
Benny Golson - tenor saxophone
Curtis Fuller - trombone
Mickey Tucker - piano
Todd Coolman - bass (Tracks 01-10)
Juris Dudli - drums (Tracks 01-10)
Ray Drummond - bass (Tracks 11 & 12)
Marvin "Smitty" Smith - drums (Tracks 11 & 12)
Tracks 01-10 are sourced from a master off-air cassette of the original, live CBOF-FM "Jazz Sur le Vif" broadcast
Tracks 11 & 12 are bonus tracks from the Chicago Jazz Festival Petrillo Bandshell Grant Park, Chicago IL 8.30.1986
these are sourced from a 1st gen off-air cassette of the original WFMT-FM broadcast
all material slightly edited, repaired, denoised, retracked & somewhat remastered by EN, September 2024
926 MB FLAC/direct link
926 MB FLAC/direct link
I worked on this set and the bonus baseball all day, and decided there was no time like the present to pop it up and pay homage to as elegant and prolific a player and composer as will ever breathe life into music.
I'll be back on the weekend with one (perhaps two) more Septemberinos before we move on into the Fall here.
I wanted to memorialize Benny Golson right away, though, because when I heard the news I immediately put on this Montreal performance, and was so into it I just as immediately got it prepped to put on here. There'll never be another like him, and we're down to a precious few of these human treasures like Sonny and Roy before it's truly the end of a very irreplaceable era.--J.
1.25.1929 - 9.21.2024