Donors, Keep Your Eyes Peeled!

Yes, all the downloads are free, and I'm glad more and more people are listening to the music, and I do understand that many people can't (or don't want to) deal with paypal. But for those who've gone to the trouble of donating to Widow's Taste Records in response to the freebies, there will be a special gift for you at the very very end of this year to say thanks for your generosity. Meanwhile, greetings of the season and to all a good night!

FREE MUSIC: (Jazz) History is Made in NY

Art with Buffet alto sax, 1975

A couple of weeks before Art's famous 1977 Vanguard performance and recording session with George Cables, George Mraz, and Elvin Jones, Art played at the Vanguard in June with Onaje Allen Gumbs, Gene Perla, and Joe LaBarbara.  It was this event that inspired John Snyder (who sponsored this trip, Art's first East Coast Tour) to inspire Les Koenig of Contemporary Records to record the subsequent date set up by John and Les in July.

A fan sent me two discs of a live recording he made on the first night of the earlier date.  I have no idea who sent them.  If you are he/she and are following this blog, please get in touch so I can say thank you.  (and do you have any more?)

Meanwhile, even though Wayne Peet, who does my editing and mastering, is a miracle worker, there's no hope for fixing the sound on these tracks which are musically soooooo sweet.  Art was so happy and excited to be in New York at the Village Vanguard, and this, though an unfamiliar band, is such a swinging one.  So here's one track. They are ALL great, and I may post the rest of them singly or as a downloadable album.  Though I was tempted to post one of the sad-and-beautiful ballads they played, I figure, since it's the Christmas season, let's be merry-since the alternative is to be suicidal.

This is the first track played on the first night of the gig.
The audio quality gets better as the track continues.
It's yours to download and keep.  It's free.

Just enter zero in the payment box (though you can always donate)

Very Cool: The Art Pepper Legacy Quartet in Italy

George Cables, Bob Magnusson, Carl Burnett.  Gaspare Pasini on alto, playing Blues for Blanche, Ophelia, The Trip, Valse Triste, My Friend John, Patricia.  And a piece written especially for Art by Phil Woods, "Au Revoir M. Poivre" (last piece on this very very very long stream.)

Great hearing the charts again, especially by Art's band, and Pasini does well!

MUSIC FREE: My Excuse is...

...that this is one of my top ten favorites of Art's live performances (you can hear me shrieking at the end). The track has been released before, but I won't go into details for all kinds of reasons. It's free. I love you guys. Look for something brand new in December. Promise.

Just Enter zero in the price box.  Of course, you can always donate to the cause.



 Meanwhile...

(If you'll  look over to your right, you'll see a poll entitled: For 2013 release.  I had to close the poll after 14 votes since blogger doesn't seem to have a way for me to view results of ongoing voting!!!!)

    I'm installing another (3rd party) poll (below).  If you've voted before, no need to do it again. I've got your responses now.
    I'm thinking of releasing a DVD which will include some Art Pepper live performances.  The audio quality might not be as good as some of my better releases (Croydon, Stuttgart, Ronnie's) but I'll get Wayne Peet to do the best he can with it, and you'll get to see a great live performance of at least ten tunes.
     Also, it's going to be more expensive than the usual release.  I still haven't reckoned up the costs of manufacture and distribution.  So I don't know whether it'll be worth it to any of us to do it.  It's bound to cost AT LEAST half again what I've been charging.
     So What I'd like to know is how much do you want to SEE previously unreleased and mostly unseen Art Pepper LIVE.

Please vote while I do all my research.

L.

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

Free Music Download
Hit "download" and enter a zero in the payment box
(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....