DBMITW: Jazz at the Philharmonic

This is from a Jazz at the Philharmonic album from 1949 that I dug out of my father's record collection back in the early 80's, and I've been carrying it around ever since. It's got Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Roy Eldridge, Hank Jones, and Buddy Rich playing some pretty honking jam session style stuff. That trombone player is a guy named Tommy Turk.



That's what they used to call dropping bombs, what Buddy is doing there.

The record is labeled "New Volume 7 (formerly Vols. 12 and 13)"; you probably can't find the LP, but you can get it from Amazon. 

After the break is Lester Leaps In, from the same record, which I have to include because I love Lester Young's solo on it.

Papa Jo and Big Sid

Jammin' The Blues, a short film featuring Jo Jones and Sid Catlett. Watch for the trade off after 5:40:



"Big Sid was like my brother. I never go anyplace without a picture of Big Sid
Catlett. I've got a little picture of him that I carry with me. That's why I am never afraid. I know I've got Sid with me. See, I was very privileged to play with a Count Basie, to be around so many creative peoples. I remember one time Sidney sat in and he said, 'Man, I ought to knock you down— now I got to go back to the coal mines.'

Did you see Jamming The Blues? Remember when Sid threw that one stick at me? We used to do a thing every Thursday night at the Apollo when we closed. The theater's packed, but there are two seats set aside for Sid Catlett and his wife. I used to throw the stick to Sidney, and a man would put the light on him and BOOM—he'd catch it. Then, BOOM, he'd throw the stick back to me and we'd go into 'One O'Clock Jump.' Don't ask me. Ask the people that were there. They done saw it. They saw show business. Yeah, we did some strange things out there."

- Jo Jones, Modern Drummer, January 1984

Princess Wee-Wee

In his 2008 interview by Marc Myers at JazzWax, Roy Haynes talks about Lester Young and his reaction to Roy's first 20" bass drum:

Roy Haynes: [Lester] was a very humorous guy. He had his own way of talking. It was like a foreign language and unless you understood it, what he said would make little sense to you. You had to pick up on his special way of putting things to know what he meant. Sometimes you wouldn’t even know what the hell he was talking about. Thelonious Monk sort of reminded me of Lester. They both had their own way of talking. 

Back then, there were people playing jazz who were so original, even more so than everyone else who played it, you know. They developed different ways of communicating in the different parts of the ghettos we lived in and hung out in. There were a lot of exceptional people and musicians in the neighborhoods who never got credit. You've never heard of them and they're all but forgotten. Lester Young was one of those special people you did hear about. But you had to have a little imagination about a lot of things to get where he was coming from.