{"id":453,"date":"2006-05-05T01:05:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-05T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp\/?p=453"},"modified":"2006-05-05T01:05:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-05T08:05:00","slug":"a_tale_of_revision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2006\/05\/a_tale_of_revision\/","title":{"rendered":"A Tale Of Revision"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill Crow did not stop collecting jazz anecdotes when he published Jazz Anecdotes<\/em><\/a> and From Birdland to Broadway<\/em><\/a>. He has a column of anecdotes every month in Allegro<\/em>, the newspaper of New York\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. With Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s permission, here is one that deserves circulation beyond the 802 membership. The Rifftides<\/em> staff has added links to music by the principals.<\/p>\n

Bassist Don Payne<\/a>, who now lives in Florida, was three years out of the Army in 1958. He moved into a cottage in the Hollywood hills where he and a group of local musicians that called themselves \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Jazz Messiahs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d often rehearsed, trying to develop their own sound. Don Cherry<\/a>, the trumpet player with the group, introduced them to Ornette Coleman, who had written some interesting originals. One day they were working on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Blessing,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/a> one of Ornette\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tunes. Walter Norris <\/a>had worked out the harmonies, and they were playing it over and over to memorize it. Suddenly the door opened and Payne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s next door neighbor walked in. After nodding hello, he took a sheet of music paper and quickly wrote down the tune they had been playing, and added an improvement to the chords at the end of the bridge. He reached over Walter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s shoulder and put the music in front of him on the piano, bowed and smiled to the other musicians and went back out the door. Walter played what he had written and said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153This works!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d He turned around to say thank you, but the man was already gone. He asked, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Who was that?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Don said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my neighbor, Johnny Mandel<\/a>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Jazz is a small community, but I would never have imagined a connection between Ornette Coleman and Johnny Mandel.
\nI called Don Payne this afternoon to fill in a couple of blanks. He said that The Jazz Messiahs was Don Cherry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s group. Don Friedman<\/a> was the original pianist, replaced by Walter Norris when Friedman moved to New York. James Clay was the tenor saxophonist, Billy Higgins<\/a> the drummer. After Clay left to join Red Mitchell<\/a>, Ornette came in on alto saxophone. The quintet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s showcase performance at a Hollywood club led to Coleman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being offered a record deal. The band eventually went pianoless and became the Ornette Coleman Quartet. Payne left Los Angeles to join guitarist Mundell Lowe, then Ralph Sharon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s trio backing Tony Bennett.
\nPayne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s memories of the circumstances leading to the emergence of Ornette Coleman are at odds with conventional accounts, which he says perpetuate initial reporting errors that distort history. Eventually, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll have more of Payne’s recollections of that yeasty period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Crow did not stop collecting jazz anecdotes when he published Jazz Anecdotes and From Birdland to Broadway. He has a column of anecdotes every month in Allegro, the newspaper of New York\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. With Bill\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s permission, here is one that deserves circulation beyond the 802 membership. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}