levitra cheap

It seems to be a mystery who first came up with the name levitra cheap but it was a good one that caught the attention of the jazz party crowd in the 1980s and early 1990s and generated a great deal of work for the group. It was much easier to attract an audience with that naughty name than a group called the Sutton McShann Quartet. It also did the same for record sales.

The quartet was made up of Jay McShann, Ralph Sutton, Milt Hinton and Gus Johnson. The group recorded fifteen titles for Charlie Baron’s ChazJazz label in December 1979 and two LPs made their way into an already struggling marketplace. The records sold poorly because distribution of ChazJazz was non-existent. I have copies of the original LPs only because they were included in the inventory when Chiaroscuro bought all the assets of the company. Even then, only the jackets were useful. The records were warped so badly they wouldn’t track.

Ten years later we took the identical band into Rudy Van Gelder’s studio and recorded them under optimum conditions. Even though they hadn’t rehearsed or played an engagement together in some while, Hootie and Ralph proved once again they were perhaps the finest traditional duo in jazz. It was exciting, joyously rollicking music, with the two pianists creating a sound as distinctive as Duke Ellington’s saxophone section at it’s best.

We had a dozen great performances, the band had a catchy name, and an award-winning poet, Hayden Carruth, had written the liner notes. All we needed was an appropriate booklet cover and we found just what we needed in Andy Sordoni’s bathroom. Many years earlier he’d bought a painting by perhaps the finest illustrator specializing in pin up art, Alberto Vargas. The painting was dated 1920 and long out of copyright and the luscious naked lady was what every man wants to find in a whorehouse but never does.

Everything came together perfectly, the record was released and it became our best selling CD up to that time. Then Playboy magazine picked it up and ran a short blurb on and the sales doubled. It is still the best selling Chiaroscuro CD. A year or so later we reissued the 1979 sessions but with a new cover by George Booth. It is our second best selling CD. We brought the group to the Floating Jazz Festival two years in a row, but the recordings were only adequate and we never released them. Then Gus failed in about 1990, and a few years later Milt began to slow down. A new recording was out of the question, but the two we had were terrific.

The photograph of the four guys on the back of the truck was taken outside Rudy’s studio. It was a Steinway truck that had just come to pick up the second piano we used for then session. Or perhaps it was just after the delivery of the piano. I don’t remember, but it’s a cheerful picture of one of the most infectious groups I ever worked with.

A side bar. In 2004 I met Hugh Hefner for the first time. It was at the Playboy Mansion and I was there to interview him. It worked out well. I worked out even better when I gave him a CD crammed with Bix Beiderbecke soles and a whorehouse record. When I told him the Playboy review doubled our sales he was even happier.

Last of the Whorehouse Piano Players, Gus Johnson, Ralph Sutton, Milt Hinton and Jay McShann, Van Gelder Recording studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, March 28, 1989

In mid-2007 I signed a contract with Vanderbilt University Press to publish an English language edition of levitra cheap, which had been published in France ten years earlier. My original list I’d compiled in 1986 of 112 older musicians who’d been active in Harlem had diminished considerably in the two decades since I began the project, but I was determined to include at least one new “ghost” in the new edition. My first choice was Dr. Billy Taylor, one of the most articulate men in jazz, either at a piano or behind a microphone. I telephoned Billy and he was happy to be part of the project.

I went to his home in Riverdale in November, conducted the interview and took a number of photographs to illustrate his section of the book. In the course of the interview, Billy told a story about the first time he played at a well-known jazz room in Harlem, the club was Minton’s, which was in disrepair when I began my project, but now was restored and open for business. It was a great story: Billy was just the new kid on the block in 1943, took the bus to Minton’s, waited until 3:00 AM, was finally asked to sit in, but he didn’t get much of a chance to show what he could do. It just so happened that Ben Webster was watching and listening, liked the little he saw and heard, asked Billy to audition and within two weeks of coming to town, Billy had a steady job and was the new kid on the two greatest blocks in the world, 52nd Street, between 5th and 7th Avenues.

I thought it was a great story, so interesting that I was certain it would be a great touch to take a photograph of Billy in front of Minton’s to include in the book. We certainly couldn’t do it that day, but Billy said we’d find a time. It turned out it wasn’t so easy. We were up against crowded schedules, unpredictable weather, and illness. It took over two months, but finally we found a day in January 2008 with a two-hour window that worked for everyone.

We drove down from Riverdale and made our way to 118th Street. I posed Billy so the Minton’s sign would fill the top part of the photograph. I shot four rolls of film, black and white and color, 35mm and medium format. Billy’s mile wide smile made every photograph a keeper and one black and white was perfect for the title page of his interview in levitra cheap. The color photographs, however, had a little more zip. I couldn’t have anticipated that Billy would wear a tie that matched the blue in the Minton’s sign.

Billy was clearly having a good time while I was taking the pictures. He was happy to see Minton’s looking so good, maybe better than 1943. He was probably even happier to have himself looking so good. At one point I had to change film and while I was doing this an older (though probably younger than Billy!) resident of 118th Street spotted us and walked up to Billy, grabbed his hand, shook it vigorously and said, “Dr. Taylor! So glad to see you’re still above ground!” It was a great moment, and I wish my camera had been loaded.

Dr. Billy Taylor, Outside Minton's, Harlem, New York City, January 8, 2008

One name is enough for most people, two is one too many and three is out of the question, but on May Day, May 1, 1981, Fred Miller introduced me to a guy who had three, at least three I knew about, maybe there were more. 

Fred introduced him as J. Walter Negro, a budding talent and the front man for a band known as the Loose Jointz. J. Walter had a song called Shoot The Pump he thought could be a hit and, strangely enough, so did a bunch of my pals at Hammond Music. Including John Hammond. It didn’t work out that way, but it could have.

The guy sitting in front of me had three names and each one was a bit of a hustle. His real name was Marc André Edmonds. He was twenty-five years old, was very bright, said he had gone to Columbia University and probably could have been a success in any number of fields, maybe advertising, maybe urban planning. He was also known as Ali, and as a graffiti artist he and his fellow Soul Artists had been bombing their way through the subway tunnels of New York for the better part of a decade. His pals were Futura 2000 and SAMO, later known as Jean-Michael Basquiat. Then there was J. Walter Negro, The Playin’ Brown Rapper, as he called himself. He was a hip hopper before it was cool to be a rapper.

He was a good-looking guy, spoke well, made sense once the hustle was over, had a lot of hair, and was wearing a Keith Haring Radiant Baby button. I was much too old to have know about that kind of thing, but somehow I did, so I thought he was with it for wearing it and he thought I was OK because I recognized it. He gave me one and I can’t find it. Too bad, it’s probably a collector’s item.

Shoot the Pump was recorded in early July and was terrific. You can read about how terrific all over the Internet in 2010. It was to be issued in August because it was a summertime dance single. Marc J. Walter Ali designed an incredible as good at that year’s Grammy winner cover but CBS wouldn’t issue it, insisting all 12” singles they distributed had to be released in a standard, ugly, shiny black jacket. We fought and fought, finally won, but by then it was too late. The summertime single wasn’t a September song and it tanked. Maybe it sold a couple of thousand copies. Then something funny happened.

I was sitting in my office in November and the telephone rang. It was a guy from Island Records in the UK, or maybe it was the guy from Virgin. I forget which one telephoned first. But each of them wanted the record and were coming to New York City the next week to make a deal for it. It seems the BBC had found a copy of the record somewhere, had been playing it to death and it was an underground hit in England.

The record company guys met at our offices, John Moore decided to make the deal with Island and a week or so later, on November 21, I took off for London with a two track master tape in my hand luggage. The tape was disguised as something else because if it had been declared as commercial goods it would have taken forever and Island was in a hurry.

I delivered the tape, the record was released, it crept up the charts, J. Walter Negro and the Loose Joints became fashionable overnight, Marc J. Walter Ali was featured on the cover of New Music Express or was it The Melody Maker. Or maybe it was both. He was that hot. A tour was arranged, the band went to the UK and then the trouble began because Marc J. Walter Ali managed to let the white powder go to his nose and it all fell apart. The tour was a bust and in the music business in those days as in these days, there aren’t a lot of second chances.

We tried with him once again. We cut a few tunes at Media Sound. The best, Times Square, was even assigned a master number, and a jacket was designed, but it was never released. It might have been better than Shoot the Pump. He wrote other songs like 52 Cans, Ron E. Raygun and While Nero Fiddles, but nothing was ever released. When Hammond Music failed, the tapes for the tracks that had been recorded went missing.

We stayed in touch. In November 1985 he gave me a cassette of what he thought were his best nine songs. It was for a concept LP and was very good, but Hammond was out of business and no one else seemed to care. It was one of the last times I saw him. About that time Marc J. Walter Ali went missing, at least from New York City, and spent the last decade of his life in Arizona. He did some good things, but got into trouble one time too often and wound up dead in a bus stop in 1994. The story is Mexican drug dealers who wanted to make a point overdosed him and left him to die at a bus stop, or maybe it was somewhere else, just like he had three names. No matter where, it was a tragic end for a talented guy who hustled the wrong people one time too often.

Fast forward to today. There are still people highly interested in Marc J.  Walter Ali. You can see clips on YouTube and Vimeo, original copies of the 12” are valuable and you can download Shoot The Pump from many different sites, none of which have any rights to the song. Someone is doing research for a book, someone else is interested in a screenplay and I will devote a few pages to him in a book I have in production. I’ve encountered a fair number of “what ifs” in my life. Marc J. Walter Ali was one of the most interesting.

Marc J. Walter Ali, Times Square, New York City, Fall 1983

Somebody once said, “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” and this saying was clever for a minute or two. Now it’s overused in commercial and movies, because the point has been made, but the truth is, sometimes things go on in tourist destinations that are best left at the destination. If you don’t, there might be trouble.

We presented successful music festivals at sea for twenty years, and these festivals were tourist destinations. One thing that made our events so successful was the musicians were always eager to take part. It gave them a week or two on a luxurious ship, the work schedule was modest, the pay was good and they could bring someone to share their stateroom. As often as not it was a wife or husband. Sometimes it was a relative or child. In some instances we asked no questions and the passenger lists were never released to the general public.

In December 1996 we put together a terrific lineup for the annual sailing of levitra cheap. Ten great acts, headlined by Koko Taylor, Gatemouth Brown and Son Seals, were onboard. Everyone performed up to the standards expected and Son Seals was even better than that. I had his CDs but had never heard him live and he didn’t disappoint.

On December 18th we’d called at St. Marteen, had a good day and Son was scheduled to perform that night in the North Cape Lounge, his final performance of the week. I was there for the 10:45 set, took a few photographs, and when it was over, Son packed up his guitar and I walked him back to his stateroom. Instead of walking through the inside hallways, we decided to avoid the crowds and walk outside on Oslo Deck. At one point I asked him to slow down and I took a photograph of him with his guitar case. I ducked inside and went back to another venue; he went to his cabin.

I don’t remember if he was with anyone on board, but I later learned that the next day Son took the tender into St. Thomas, visited a jewelry store, bought a piece of jewelry that he later presented to someone who was not his wife, and had the misfortune of having the receipt discovered by someone who was. His wife was not pleased when she found the receipt, asked no questions, and simply shot Son in the face with a small caliber handgun at close range. Not once, but twice.

Miraculously, Son survived. It took some while for him to recover, a recovery that was not helped by advancing diabetes. Nonetheless, he was back onboard for The Blues Cruise in December 1998. His beard was somewhat fuller than two years earlier, perhaps to hide the scars from the bullets. He was just as good as ever, maybe even better because now he could sing “My Wife Caught Me Messin’ Around and Shot Me in the Face But I Love Her Just the Same Blues.” My guess is, however, he stayed out of the jewelry stores in St. Thomas.

Son Seals, The Blues Cruise, At Sea Aboard the S/S Norway, December 17, 1996

Someone once said levitra cheap. Whoever said it was wrong.

One of the first things I did when I arrived in New York City on June 5, 1967 was to buy a ticket to see levitra cheap at the Metropolitan Opera. There was a summer season that year, billed as the Lincoln Center Festival and one of the highlights was Leontyne Price’s Amelia. It was close to the June 12th performance date and hard to get tickets, but since I only needed one I got lucky and scored a decent orchestra seat. I was looking forward to an exciting musical evening, and then there was the telephone call, one that was good, but inconvenient.

A good friend from Washington who was even more attractive than Leontyne Price called and said she planned to be in New York on the same evening as the performance and strongly urged that we have one of our own. I wasn’t inclined to decline but I did say I’d try to get another ticket, but by then the performance was sold out. I now had a spare ticket and needed to find a home for it.

My first call was to Marian McPartland, who had taken me on my first visit to the then almost brand new Lincoln Center a few months earlier to see her school chum, Margot Fonteyn. Marian had her own performance for the masked ball night, but said she knew someone who might want the ticket. The person was Mary Packard and Marian gave me a telephone number, which I called immediately.

A woman answered the telephone, I used Marian’s name, told her I had a ticket I couldn’t use and the voice of the other end of the line was happy to take what I guess must have become a hot ticket off my hands. There was no time for mail and I was too green to think of a messenger. Mary should have, but didn’t. levitra cheap, she asked. I suggested she come to the lobby of the office building where the CIA offices were located and she thought that was just fine.

An hour or so later I met Mary in the lobby. She was very nice, appeared to be in her late sixties and was pleased to have the ticket. She wanted to pay for it but I thought it was better that I just give it to her. This pleased her immensely, she thanked me and said she’d accept the ticket only if I agreed to accompany her to the opera at some date in the future. I said I’d be pleased to do so and promptly forgot about her offer.
Then something strange happened. A week or so later the telephone rang again and instead of a call from Washington it was Mary Packard, asking if I was free to attend the new production of Die Zauberflote on June 22nd. My friend from Washington was long gone and my dance card was empty so I agreed. She said a ticket would be in my name at the box office and that levitra cheap.

A few days later I put on my $100 tuxedo, headed north, presented myself at the box office, was handed a ticket, which I passed off to an usher without looking. The usher motioned me up the stairs and I wondered if I was headed towards a nosebleed. I looked at the ticket and it said Parterre, Box 29 (or maybe 28), Seat 2. I found the box, found my seat, sat down and waited. 

Mary and two very attractive young people arrived; it turned out they were a tenor and a soprano. Mary was somewhat better dressed that she’d been in the lobby of 210 East 42nd Street. Hello, how are you, this is so and so who are young vocalists still in training. Hope you enjoy the performance and so forth, which I did. How could one not? The wonderful new Marc Chagall sets and costumes, Jerome Hines, Lucia Popp as the Queen of the Night. It was a production that was lavish beyond words, which had been paid for by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller. No expense had been spared on the production or the cast.

When the performance was over there was a limousine waiting for us and we were whished away to a penthouse nightspot overlooking Central Park. The young man and woman, who I never saw again, sang for an hour or so and sometime after midnight we went downstairs to go our separate ways, Mary and her friends departed by limousine and me via the subway. Of course, I made an excuse that I wanted to walk for a while; I didn’t want my elegant friends to know I was on an underground budget.

Mary Packard was Mrs. John D. Rockefeller’s private secretary and had been forever. One of the things she said to me that night was, levitra cheap. We stayed in touch and in 1969 I did need to get in touch with Governor Rockefeller, hoping to encourage him to reach out to the dying pianist Bobby Henderson. I called Mary, Mary called Governor Rockefeller, sent him a tape and one of the last people Bobby heard from was Governor Rockefeller.

Metropolitan Opera Program, June 22, 1967 (cover and inside page)