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"Drugs and Loneliness -- Some Jazz"

Joseph Albany

 

Last night, the Beast had dinner with some friends who related to us that filming of a new L.A.-based jazz biopic is now actually in production as we speak (filming is currently underway at The Dresden Room). From the outset, Low Down might seem like a strange project. It's based on the dark memoir of Amy Albany about her life with her father, the troubled bop pianist Joe Albany.

 

Albany is not very well-known outside of jazz freaks and even there he's sort of a murky figure due to his persistent jail and drug problems during the 1960s and 1970s. But he was at the apex of bebop in the 1940s, when he backed Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Benny Carter, Dexter Gordon, Roy Haynes, Howard McGhee, Lester Young and Charles Mingus. He was part of the enviable, rotating house band at Little Tokyo's Club Finale that included Hampton Hawes, Russ Freeman, Addison Farmer, Red Callender and Roy Porter. Because of his demons, Albany released only one album between 1957 and 1971, The Right Combination, but it is a corker of a record with equally troubled saxophonist Warne Marsh (about whom we also heard a documentary is in the works) and bassist Bob Whitlock.

 

Actor Mark Ruffalo was originally reported to be playing Albany, but turns out he's producing the film; no matter, the Oscar-nominated actor John Hawkes is playing Albany, so we can all sleep well at night that the role is in god hands. (Also on hand are some interesting casting choices, including Peter Dinklage, Flea and the luminous Elle Fanning as Amy Albany.) Besides, this frees up Ruffalo to appear later at the lead in some future biopic of Art Pepper. Don't laugh, he could pull it off.

 

We hope the new film will be an honest assessment but won't necessarily be, as one reviewer described Albany's memoir, "drugs and loneliness" wit "some jazz." In the meantime, there's a one-hour documentary Joe Albany: A Jazz Life that's available on YouTube to tide us over:

 

Bloggie Nights

Hi, we're back from vay-cay to Italy (which we will be posting about soon) and looks like we missed quite a lot of good stuff. Here's a smattering:

The Art of Writing About Listening

(New York Times)

Why I Tried To Be A Punk

(Salon)

WATCH: Drummer Matt Wilson's Amazing Speech
at the Jazz Education Network Conference
(YouTube)

Sound Check: Thundercat
(Soul Train)

LISTEN: Remembering Ray Manzarek
(NPR)
 

The 50 Albums Everyone Needs To Own, 1963-2013

(Flavorwire)

True To The Avant-Garde: Wadada Leo Smith

(Huffington Post)

WATCH: Full Set from Savages Live on KEXP
(Dangerous Minds)
 

20 Essential Music Documentaries

(Pitchfork Media)

On Being And Unbeing A Singer
(The Rumpus)

LISTEN: State of the L.A. Jazz Scene, Pt. 1
(Break the Mold)

The Day Punk Died Again
(The New Yorker)

The Source Family: Transform Our Culture Now!
(L.A. Record)

"I'm A Walking Bordello!": Q&A with Charlemagne Palestine
(The Quietus)
 

GALLERY: The Bizarre Studios of Experimental Musicians

(The Wire)

James Jamerson: A Hidden Masterpiece

(The Blue Moment)

 

REVIEW: Reissue of Rare, Historical, Murky Recording of Sun Ra

(Chicago Reader)

 

Sax, Health and Rock & Roll: The Many Sound Battles of Colin Stetson

(Free Jazz)

 

Same Old Song: The Secret Re-recordings of Classic Hits

(Slate)

When Did Cover Songs Become Annoying Marketing Ploys?
(Salon)
 

Greg Errico: The Backbone to Sly & the Family Stone

(The Revivalist)

WATCH: Brian Eno's Full Lecture @ Red Bull Music Academy

(Pitchfork Media)

The Julliard Effect: 10 Years Later

(New York Times)

WATCH: Paul Williams Talks About His New Daft Punk Collaboration

(Rolling Stone)

 

(Another) Angry Interview with Tricky

(ExBerliner)

The Best (and Worst) of Sebadoh

(Stereogum)

"Call It Art": A Vindication of the New York Art Quartet
(Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches)
 

WATCH: Wilco Drummer Glenn Kotche's Awesome Delta Faucet Commercial

(YouTube)

Unearthing the Avant-Metal Scene

(Metal Underground)

Five Historic L.A. Jazz Spots

(L.A. Weekly)

LIVE REVIEW: Matthew Shipp in Nashville

(NuVoid)

The History of Stealing Music

(Salon)

Watch Giorgio Moroder Perform His First DJ Set

(Brooklyn Vegan)

They Fathom Distinctive Languages: Pat Metheny & John Zorn

(New York Times)

Charles Ives: Caught Between Two Caricatures
(PostClassic)

Dare To Dream: Jimi Hendrix/McCartney/Miles Davis Supergroup

(Rolling Stone)

Delmark Records Turns 60
(Jazz Beyond Jazz)

Ojai Music Fest Launches Online University
(Sequenza21/)

What Classical Music Can Learn from Cats
(On An Overgrown Path)

You Name This Post

• KCET has a good piece by our blog bud Nikki Darling on the Locals Only theme of the upcoming 2013 EMP Pop Conference in L.A. this weekend. Our friend Los Angeles magazine senior editor Elina Shatkin will be reading her treatise on Garth Brooks' bizarre Chris Gaines period at 3:15pm Friday at USC's Campus Tutor Center.

• If you're still downtown a sort of "pop-up jazz club" called the House of Spades is happening Friday night and features vocalist Dee Dee McNeil with Jacques Lesure's group, who has been burning the house down every month at jam sessions in Leimert Park's Barbara Morrison Performing Arts Center. (Wynton Marsalis recently sat in with them.)

• Could eBooks be the answer for jazz biographies? There's two of note as of late: Peter Pullman's Wail: The Life of Bud Powell and Peter Erskine's No Beethoven: Autobiography & Chronicle of Weather Report. Hmmm, this is giving us ideas...

Jazzstarters

The Beast just found this Kickstarter page for Lady Be Good: Instrumental Women in Jazz, a new documentary by Seattle filmmaker K.D. Ray that's narrated by local L.A. pianist Patrice Rushen. Obviously, funds are needed by April 19 (this week, y'all) so we'd thought we'd throw this up for anyone whose interested.

 

For our part, we've been fascinated with how indie jazz documentarians are using KS to fund their labors of love. There's been fund drives for films about Charles Mingus, Thomas Chapin, Jason Moran, Buddy Rich, Henry Grimes and The Peace Old Jazz Band (a.k.a., "The World's Oldest Jazz Band"). Now, all we need to do is come up with a KS campaign for "The First Annual Kickstarter Jazz Documentary Film Festival" because a lot of these have been successfully seeded and soon even PBS won't even be able to keep up with them.

Horace at Harvard / Carter at Angel City?

 

As the Beast previously reported, Michael Heller, musical director of Harvard University's Dudley Hall Jazz Bands, put on a remarkably comprehensive tribute program to local L.A. jazz composer Horace Tapscott and his Pan Afrikan People's Arkestra back in 2011. What's more remarkable is that they tackled some of the Ark's most challenging tunes from Tapscott as well as other Ark affilitates like Jesse Sharps, Adnan Zunic and Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq. Here's the set list:

Dudley House Combo Band

1. To The Great House

2. Sonny's Dream

3. How to Choose Avocados

4. Sandy Niles

5. Ballad of Deadwood Dick

6. Warriors All

 

Dudley House Big Band

1. Lino's Pad

2. Daughter of Cochise

3. The Black Apostles

4. The Goat and Ram Jam

5. Mike's Tune

6. The Golden Pearl

7. Ballad for Samuel

8. Eternal Egypt Suite

What's more, the entire concert, which was broadcast live on Boston public radio, is now available on YouTube. Here's a smattering:

 

IN OTHER UNDERAPPRECIATED L.A. JAZZ ARTIST NEWS: This is nothing but scuttlebutt, but The Beast recently heard that the Board of Directors of the upcoming 2013 Angel City Jazz Festival are bandying about a pretty awesome idea: An entire recreation of Roots & Folklore, the epic five-album suite composed by late free jazz clarinetist John Carter (known mostly for his collaborations with cornetist Bobby Bradford) back in the 1980s. The proposal seems to be a multi-night event -- quite possibly staged at REDCAT downtown -- culminating in Carter's old pal Bobby Bradford playing his own tribute to Carter, the Death of A Sideman suite he recorded back in 1992 with David Murray. Will this even happen? Methinks Kickstarter would be a good place to, uh, start.