When Roger Kellaway isn’t performing in a club or concert, or practicing and composing at home, chances are he’s out collecting honors. Recently, he picked up two in the city where he grew up, Boston. For one event, he and his friend Quincy Jones dressed in black gowns and medieval hats to receive honorary doctorates from Kellaway’s alma mater, the New England Conservatory of Music. For another, he heard his music played by the Boston Pops. The news may have been in all of the Boston papers, but we heard it by way of the semi-weekly newspaper in Ojai, Kellaway’s longtime mountain valley home in Southern California. To read the story, go here.
For a Rifftides review of a recent Kellaway album, see this Doug’s Pick.
And from out of Kellaway’s past, here he is accompanying Zoot Sims and soloing at the belated Donte’s club in Los Angeles in 1970. Chuck Berghofer is the bassist, Larry Bunker the drummer. The tune is Ferde Grofe’s “On The Trail.”
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
What an excellent clip at Donte’s. Thanks for your including this and to your resource for publishing on You Tube! They all were cookin’ alright.
Love the video!
Zoot takes it out—–Do you think Larry wanted a piece of this? Duh!
Video is in F#—–we played it in F.
My 1st wife was a cousin of the Sims family, They [Sims] always thought of me as related ! What a joy.
Roger is probably right, but there wasn’t room for Larry on this one. All four of them are in top form, with Zoot rolling out chorus after chorus of power & beauty, carrying Roger and Chuck with him, particularly inspiring Roger into free-form swinging, with Larry doing all he could to undergird them all, which he did masterfully. Roger’s devilish smile, as Zoot finishes his sequence, is a delight…