Great Live Jazz on 18th St (NO COVER!)- The Butch Warren Experience

Hey friends,

Executive Summary: Butch Warren, legendary 1960s bassist, appearing with great jazz band at Columbia Station on 18th St. in Adams Morgan in Washington DC on Wed nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights, Sunday nights. No cover! Sparse crowd last night. Need to get the word out on this before its gone.


Lets get the word out on this! Even if you're not into live jazz yourself you might be surprised at who is!

I thought I'd help spread the word on this because if we in Washington DC don't support live jazz we are not going to have any live jazz.. And in Duke Ellington's hometown that would be an embarassment and a crime....( FOR MEAT AND POTATOES SCROLL TO BOTTOM)

It was pretty incredible musically and accesible (not crazy weird jazz, not modern fusion jazz but just great straight
ahead old school jazz) but there weren't too many people there so they need your support and that of your friends. Its rare to find this kind of level of jazz at a nice place with no cover (there is a $10 minimum expected expenditure and they band does play for tips).

Butch Warren is a DC jazzman. Plays the upright bass. Did so in the 1960s with many of the greatest of the greats... We're talking Thelonious Monk, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock, Hank Mobley - THOSE KIND OF NAMES- and if you listen to many of the great Blue Note records of the 1960s (He's the bassist on one of the great sessions of all time- Dexter Gordon's "GO" along with Sonny Clark on piano)... anyways you may unknowingly have heard his work ... then again sometimes one takes the bass for granted but when its gone whooooooooooaaaaaaaaa nelly i'm bungee jumpin' and I ain't got no shorts on!

Anyways, Butch Warren went through some hard times(see link to Washington Post piece that delves more into that..) and who hasn't but he's back trying to make it in the real world and leading a jazz band called the Butch Warren Experience and I checked them out last night and was impressed. Butch Warren played on about half the songs and even sang a few tracks. He shares the bass duties with a stand in- Bill "Magic" Lavender. The saxophonist Knud Jensen was very impressive as was the pianist who acts as band leader, Peter Edelman. They played some standards (ie., Stella by Starlight) , some Charlie Parker (ie., Donna Lee) and some Butch Warren original compositions. The bandmembers are very congenial and you can interact with them in between sets. Its not every day you get to talk to a guy that played with these legendary cats but I didn't talk to Butch last night but will do so soon...

So please spread the word to your friends and check these guys out...

They're playing at


The Butch Warren Experience
appearing at COLUMBIA STATION
2325 18th St NW
Adams Morgan

Butch Warren/bass
Bill "Magic" Lavender/bass
Peter Edelman/piano
Eric Allen/ drums
Knud Jensen/tenor saxophone
Olivier Brown/trumpet

Wednesday 8:30 pm - 12:30 am
Friday 9:30 pm- 1:30 am
Saturday 9:30 pm - 1:30 am
Sunday 8:30 pm- 12:30 am

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/rawfisher/2007/07/


thank you

On a Blue Note kick yet again- Grant Green

So finally after a few years of wanting to get my hand on the Blue Note Grant Green "1961-1966 Retrospective" box set I finally found it for a reasonable price. Curiously enough my set was made in Europe and shipped from Germany. Not sure why this is the case. Anyways, I feel like a kid in a candy store again. I mean this set has is jam packed with great jazz and incredible musicians over 38 tracks on 4 cds. I love vinyl but it has just become imposible to get all these records without having to fork over a few kidneys. Of course I have heard a ton of these tracks but not all.. not all.. I would calculate I may not have heard 14 of the 38 tracks compiled although I probably have a bunch of them on mp3 format somewhere..The pictures in the booklet, inserts etc (some should be in the picture immediately above this blurb) are the typical wonderful Francis Wolff photography. Its always interesting to me that these jazz cats always look so sharp in all the pictures. I mean they are perfectly groomed, manicured, dressed, styling gentlemen. All of them. For all the stuff you hear about who was doing what drug or having what problem when you look at the pictures Francis Wolff took they are all dressed to the nine's and styling.

Of course after taking a probably forced leave of absence from the label Green was back at Blue Note in 1969 and cut some incredible yet more on the funky/popular spectrum of things. Bob Blumenthal, like most critics, sort of dismisses the later Green and I feel thats very misguided but having said that the music on this box cannot be argued with or dismissed. Its great jazz. I am not a fan of compilations but for $20 this is a very worthwhile look at my favorite guitarist. Right now I'm listening to Jimmy Smith jamming with Green on their only collaboration now one of my favorite tracks I can tell its Lou Donaldson from the Natural One- Funky Mama- just came on.. This stuff is very hot....Of course Grant Green begins the song... One thing I found interesting is how young Green looks in the pictures be they from his arrival to New York City in 1961 or from later sessions in 1965.. and to add something to the discourse Gran Green apparently smoked Kool cigarretes by the way...

Whatever happened to Hank Mobley? (via Dizzy Reece)

I'd always wanted this one but have found it impossible to find. There seem to have been very few copies printed of the original LP and I never see it on later pressings (i.e., liberty, new york, united artists, etc.). I do think it might be available on a scorpio pressing for 9.99.. not sure about that... but I found a Classic Records pressing and thought it would be cool to have one having heard all the hype.. Well I am impressed with the quality... The platter is heavy and really looks and feels like the original but of course no RVG or ear in the wax..sigh.... The LP cover is not as hard or thick as the original and is shinier ...on the back there is a telling "Courtesy of Blue Note Records.." I am not an audiophile but this one sounds great to me.. Now why was I interested in this one? Well , Hank Mobley firstly.... HE is the tenor man here playing with Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers and Art Taylor... .... but the main reason I was interested in this one is because the recording date on November 19, 1959 predates the one and only great Soul Station session by but a few weeks (February 7, 1960). Save for a live session with Blakey for Blue Note 4015 Meet you at the Jazz Corner in APril 1959 this was the first Blue Note Mobley date since Peckin' Time a session co-led with Lee Morgan dating back to February 1958 and also featuring Chambers and Kelly. And that was his first session since June 1957 on the classic Mobley Blue Note 1568. Its telling that he would go on to record his greatest LPs with both Chambers and Kelly. Leonard Feather who tragically called Mobley the "..middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone" (I believe in the liner notes to soul station) here also contributes the notes with the following reference to Hank; "Mobley's sound, on this track and throughout the album, has more assurance and warmth than ever"(referring to "The Rake") and later on referring to him with "Hank's time is conspicuously cool.." (re: I wishes on the moon). I have to agree with Feather that Mobley does sound different on this LP than he did in his mid 50s to 57 sides. Basically since mid 57 until Soul Station he only co-led Peckin time and played on the live Blakey date (in so far as Blue Note goes...). Ergo, Mobley's recording session work had decreased markedly. 1958 was a very fallow year taking into account that between 1956-1957 he'd been in on something like 38 sessions. He would never recover. He simply would not be recorded as often again. I suppose the reasons must either be that he fell into heavy drug use or that since he was not selling records there was not much desire to record him. The truth probably lies somewhere in between with these two factors reinforcing each other. Its truly a pity because I find his playing on the 1959-1961 period to be more enjoyable than his golden years recordingwise which must be considered 1956-1957. In fact we see that between Peckin Time in February 58 he did participate in the live at birdland twin dates for Roulette (which are not on the level of anything else he was doing) and a private basement jam session (Joe Brazil's) until in March 59 he participated on a rejected Blue Note session and played tenor on a few other rejected sessions -including one led by Sonny Clark- before Blakey took him to Birdland and the Meet you at the Jazz Corner..then it would take until the Dizzy Reece date to get him going again. So what we have is that basically Mobley between the last quarter of 1957 and the end of 1959 had barely been recorded at all! This is an amazing gap. Between Soul Station and Going Up with Hubbard (November 1960) there would be another 9 month gap. SO: 1958, 1959 and 1960 Mobley was recording infrequently. He would join Miles Davis in 1961 (perhaps March) stick around til May (includign the live at the blackhawk stuff) and be out of the Miles circle by May. At this point he would have a failed session in December for Blue Note , Another Workout (great stuff!), which would not be released and there is no record of him having played any music the entire year of 1962! What am I saying? I guess that Mobley really did fall on some hard times.. It remains for biographers to try to piece this all together... What is clear is that after failing to cut it in Miles' eyes Mobley pretty much did not play for 18 months!!!!!! Sad for someone that had cut Soul Station only the year before... mind boggling actually...