Just Wow! French version of Art's Las Cuevas de Mario

MUSIC FREE: For Your Ears (and Eyes if you're a musician) Alternate take from Artists House Session: Pepper, Cables, Haden, Higgins

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(Of course you can always support ongoing releases by donating something)     First Draft of Art Pepper's "My Friend John"   

John Snyder, Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden, Art Pepper, George Cables

With Rocco's help, I've been scanning all Art's sheet music. I thought some musician fans might find this interesting. The Freebie today is an unreleased track from the Artists House date at Kendun Recorders in L.A. in '79 with Art, George Cables, Charlie Haden, Billy Higgins. It was recorded by John Snyder, for whom this song was written in 1977. John sponsored Art's first ever East Coast tour which wound up at the Village Vanguard, and Art wrote the tune for this date. I'm including 4 pages of music: The original ms, which Art scrawled during his cocaine nights sitting on bathroom floors of our hotel rooms in NY and Boston (read the book!). And the revised alto part. Art said that this chart and some others he wrote during that time were just too hard to play, so he rewrote them.

                           

MUSIC FREE: PREVIOUSLY RELEASED BUT UNAVAILABLE (it's' free)

It's unavailable unless you're prepared to pay for and download the entire Galaxy Box Set on iTunes (see below). I think it's a good deal for $59.00, but you may not have $59.

To download just this track for free, just click "download" and enter 0 in the price box. (You can always donate if you wanna.)

This is a track from the album entitled Art Lives. It was released by Fantasy after Art's death and was one of three albums culled from three nights of spectacular music performed during August, 1981 by the Art Pepper Quartet (George Cables, David Williams, Carl Burnett) at a club called The Maiden Voyage in L.A.

I've been discussing with the folks at Concord the possibility of me (Widow's Taste) licensing from them the Art Pepper tracks recorded by Galaxy but not available at all as cds or quality downloads.

Fantasy/Galaxy was a modest company with a giant jazz catalog. Concord, who purchased that label, is a big company with a newer and more popular catalog of newer artists and a much smaller jazz catalog.   It's not profitable for Concord to make a lot of jazz titles available in any format. So there are a lot of Art Pepper titles and (other jazz artists' titles) which, in Concord's view, simply won't sell enough to satisfy their stockholders.

   Visit Concord

At any rate, if you have $59 to buy that Galaxy Art Pepper Box (as download only) from iTunes, by all means DO IT! You will get a magnificent collection: The urgent, creative, brilliant music Art Pepper made during his last years--16 discs worth. (I'm also negotiating with Concord to scan and offer as a PDF the terrific booklet originally enclosed in the box: with liner notes by Gary Giddins; elaborate and complete details of the sessions by producer Ed Michel; and lovely photos by yours truly.)

While we're waiting, here's one of my favorites, so I think it's a crime it's not available: "Thank You Blues" from the Art Lives session in 1981. It's free.

-Laurie

MUSIC: FREEBIE FOR ART PEPPER'S BIRTHDAY

Freebie for Art Pepper's Birthday. Download in ANY format. Happy Day! This record company hasn't paid me any royalties since Joe Fields sold it. I'll be giving this BEAUTIFUL music away from time to time. But you can pay a few pennies if you wanna. L.

ANNOUNCEMENT: VOLUME VII UNRELEASED ART PEPPER!

Stop the Presses!
Something New!
Soon all titles will be available as HIGH QUALITY DOWNLOADS HERE:

Art Pepper:  Unreleased Art Volume VII The latest in the series of Unreleased Art (If you want to skip the commercial and go straight to CD Baby & buy this TWO-DISC set, my feelings will not be hurt.  You can read it later.) GO to CD Baby   August 28, 2012  No music this time, but hit the link to CD Baby and listen to samples of the tracks. Here are snippets from pre-release reviews of Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. VII and below are some of the photos from the 32 page booklet. We have yet another scrumptious edition to the Widow's Taste series. Whatever his personal problems or character flaws they didn't negate the fact that the man was one helluva musician. In the jargon of the streets, Art Pepper was bad... After a contrapuntal beginning [on Cherokee] between Art and Cables over an upright ostinato and Afro-Cuban flavored traps the alto and piano take burning rides before sharing fours and the head. As much as I loved to hear Pepper pour on the pots, he had a way with a ballad that was uniquely his own and could turn one's spine to jelly. There was a yearning in his playing that was only equaled by Miles Davis in his Harmon muted musings at slower tempos. [Over the Rainbow] is the tour-de-force on platter one and his long solo sax introduction is worth the price of the package alone. As with previous volumes, this is a top-shelf presentation with attractive graphics and a thick booklet with chatty (and informative) annotation from the female “road daddy” herself. Judging from some of his occasional altissimo forays Art Pepper had a good reed that night and we're all the better for it. Lucky seven indeed. -- Cadence: Larry Hollis Considering that the record was culled from a cassette recording from an unknown audience member, the sound quality is quite good. Everyone in the band is heard, although at times I would have liked to have heard Cables a little better. The polite crowd didn’t create any noise that interfered with the performance, and Pepper’s saxophone is clearly heard projecting into the audience. Under the circumstances and benefiting from Wayne Peet’s mastering job, this is not bad at all.   "Cherokee" is slower than its normal torrid pace, but it’s just slow enough to allow Pepper to add accents to his notes, making his solo perhaps more impressive than a straight blizzard of notes. Dumas has a great handle on this song, nimbly piloting his serpentine walking lines. Later on, Pepper is trading fours at first with Cables before bringing the song to a rousing conclusion. His original “Straight Life,” incidentally, is played more like other bands perform “Cherokee,” galloping like a horse at the Preakness, and Pepper has shown no let up in his ability to burn through impossible lines.  Pepper led the band through the title song of the as-yet unreleased Winter Moon album he had recorded just a couple of months earlier. His articulations on the Hoagy Carmichael song aren’t the concise, note-perfect performance he gave in the studio, but it carries more passion. Pepper wasn’t going to end the set on a ballad, and he saved a blazing run through “Donna Lee” for last, highlighted by Burnett’s lively drums. Laurie Pepper included a meaty booklet into the jewel case of this double disc set, full of candid snapshots she took of that tour and her equally candid personal thoughts and recollections from that time, a time she described as a happy one for her husband. But you probably don’t need to see the dozens of pictures of him grinning to know he was happy; the music performed the night of November 18, 1980 in Osaka, Japan affirm his contented state of mind.  -- Something Else Reviews:  S. Victor Aaron Copyright © 2012 Arthur Pepper Music Corporation/ Widow's Taste Records, All rights reserved.

Journal: BIG FUN at CAPITOL RECORDS

What a spectacular day! Went with Cheryl Pawelski and her dear dear Audrey (Bilger) to meet with legendary Ron McMaster at Capitol Records to watch Ron make the final master for Omnivore's Art Pepper set of 3 LPs, NEON ART -- which will be released on the same day as Unreleased Art Pepper Volume VII from Widow's Taste.  You can hear a little bit of it below.

Ron told me that he had created the Art Pepper Blue Note LP masters a long long time ago.

 I SAW this building going up when I was in my teens back in the early fifties, and I've been inside on business but never really inside like today. Maybe the record business isn't dead after all? It's just been waiting for vinyl to come back? No, no, don't worry fans, I'll keep on making CDs. But wow, what a day!

Me, Ron, Cheryl in the studio

My original tapes were first remastered by Wayne Peet, and then mastered for vinyl by Ron. They sound AMAZING.

And HERE'S the lacquer being cut (and a little taste of the music)...


and finally, Ron inscribed the master (and this will be right there on every copy of Volume Three).  I told Ron to carve out the phrase Art liked to write when he was asked to signed our book, Straight Life.  He wrote, "Keep Swingin'"

Audrey, me, and Ron inscribing....

Journal: Mercury's Retrograde and So Am I

Everything that can go wrong has been going wrong with the publication and pressing of the latest album.  

I'm a week behind schedule but I gave myself a LOT of wiggle room this time, so little holdups aren't devastating, just really really annoying.

Meanwhile been working with the ingenious Terri Hinte on the press release to (which she'll publish and I'll publish here) announcing the release on August 28th of Vol VII of Unreleased Art (see previous) and of the first of 3 Art Pepper vinyl singles from Omnivore (entitled Neon Art) with nothing but totally mad, swinging, weeping, dancing tracks, to which I'm listening right now, and my mood is escalating even as I write this.  You're gonna want these tracks!  They work better than anti-depressants or anything else, really.  Here's the cover of disc One from Omnivore plus a pretty picture of me taken by my sweetie, Hugh.

MUSIC: Mambo Koyama

Scroll down past the chatter to play (and download) the music

Some of you have asked for more glimpses of my memoir-in-progress. So I've added another bit about the buildup to the Village Vanguard date.  Look at the top of the sidebar for the Memoir.

   The latest release from Widow's Taste is due soon!  August 28th, to be exact.  It's a two disc set.  More details about it soon.  Here are pictures of the cover, front and back:

I've been digging through my old tracks more energetically than usual recently to find tracks for Omnivore who'll be releasing THREE Art Pepper vinyl singles in the next few months under the heading "Neon Art." (I'll keep you informed of all releases).

  

While I searched through a wonderful series of live recordings from our last tour of Japan in November, 1981, I found quite a few frustratingly incomplete and thus unusable tracks: The tape ran out or started too late or got eaten in the middle.

This is a track that made me tear my hair, because it is so great but started too late to use.  It's missing the melody statement and the piano solo (and it's George Cables in top form, and I'm really sorry!).

The music begins right before the Art Pepper solo.  There's a terrific bass solo by David Williams.  The drummer is Art's beloved stalwart Carl Burnett.   Named after Kiyoshi Koyama, once the editor of the once wonderful Swing Journal, MAMBO KOYAMA was recorded in Okayama, Japan on November 14, 1981 (George Cables's birthday).

Here, in all its incomplete gorgeousness is:

 
To Download and keep it forever, Right-Click Right Here!


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Music: Body and Soul: Just Because It's June, June, June!

Here's the latest taste from the widow's kitchen And with it a new policy, so you can download ALL the tracks I post from now on.

A bunch of tracks recorded at the soundboards of various venues in Japan in November of 1981 have been digitized by the indefatigable Rocco. Now that I can listen to them, I discover that they are seriously spectacular as is this track recorded at a town in Japan called Tottori. The band is Art, George Cables, David Williams, Carl Burnett.

I've put the track up here because it's incomplete (so I probably won't be releasing it; I know you guys and your tricks. Many of you know how to download it and keep it.) So now I'm making it easier for everyone to download. You can play it, just as is. And/Or you can click the link below the player (where it says "Right-Click Right Here")and download the track as an mp3 and put it in your iTunes or whatever. And it is free. And, you know, you could donate, too (below). Any amount.

Body and Soul, missing the intro and the first four bars.


To Download and keep it forever, Right-Click Right Here!
To DONATE: Click Here:

MUSIC: Y.I. BLUES

Time for another listen.  BELOW find an exceptionally relaxed and swinging version of Art's Y.I. Blues (also sometimes called Untitled #34).  It will be on my next release, "Unreleased Art Pepper Vol. VII, Osaka 1980."  Featuring George Cables, Tony Dumas, Carl Burnett. (pictured: George & Art in Japan).

I promise I will upload a free download soon, next month, in fact.

Meanwhile some &^%$#@ has released a bootleg version of my planned next release:  The Aforementioned Osaka '80 concert
PLEASE WAIT FOR MINE!
My double cd will be cheaper, my liner notes more extensive and revealing, and there will be at least a dozen great photos, maybe more.  And of course the audio quality will be incomparably superior, thanks to the incomparable Wayne Peet.

My Widow's Taste release will be in August.  I don't want to rush it because I want it to be as perfect as I can make it.  So listen to this lovely (not-yet-remastered) track and please please wait for the rest.  P.S.  This set will include a gorgeous solo by George Cables and the only recorded live performance of Art playing "Winter Moon."