Great Encounters Archives - Jerry Jazz Musician

Great Encounters #53: Backstage with Bud Powell and Charles Mingus

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. In this edition, the writer Francis Paudras — a young patron of jazz music in Paris during the 1960’s, and whose devotion, friendship and compassion toward the pianist Bud Powell helped Powell late in his life — tells a short story about a backstage encounter between Powell and Charles Mingus following a 1964 performance at Salle Wagram in Paris.

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August 7th, 2018

Great Encounters #52: Monk, Hawk, and Coltrane in the studio, 1957

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. In this edition, Art Blakey tells a story of Thelonious Monk, Coleman Hawkins and John Coltrane that took place during the 1957 recording session of Monk’s Music.

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April 19th, 2018

Great Encounters #51: The night Louis Armstrong taught Buck Clayton how to “do the gliss”

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition tells the story of the evening in c. 1930 that Louis Armstrong taught Buck Clayton how to perform a trumpet technique known as the “gliss”

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November 17th, 2017

Great Encounters #50 — The Night Bill Evans met Woody Herman

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition tells the story of the evening of the 1963 Grammy Awards, when Woody Herman met Bill Evans.

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October 14th, 2017

Great Encounters #49 — A night at the Turf and Grid with Woody Herman and Serge Chaloff

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition tells the story of an evening in Washington D.C., starring Woody Herman and Serge Chaloff

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May 2nd, 2017

Great Encounters #48: When Lester Young turned Jack Kerouac on to marijuana

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition tells the story of Lester Young getting high with Jack Kerouac, and his overall influence on his generation

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March 4th, 2017

Great Encounters #47: When Ella Fitzgerald chose not to meet Pablo Picasso

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition describes the time Ella Fitzgerald chose to pass on an opportunity to meet Pablo Picasso.

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December 15th, 2016

Great Encounters #46: The early friendship of Miles Davis and Gil Evans

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition describes the early friendship and collaboration of Miles Davis and composer/arranger Gil Evans, who Miles once described as “the greatest musician in the world.”

Excerpted from Castles Made of Sound: The Story of Gil Evans,

by Larry Hicock

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“I first met Gil when I was with Bird,” Miles told Marc Crawford in a 1961 interview for Down Beat.

He was asking for a release on my tune, “Donna Lee.”…I told him he could have it and asked him to teach me some chords and let me study some of the scores he was doing for Claude Thornhill.

He really flipped o me on the arrangement of “Robbin’s Nest” he did for Claude. See, Gil had this cluster of chords and superimposed another cluster over

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September 12th, 2016

Great Encounters #22…Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, and Sam Cooke — the Clay/Sonny Liston fight, Miami, 1964

In honor of the passing of Muhammad Ali, I am re-posting “Great Encounters #22, Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, and Sam Cooke — the Clay/Sonny Liston fight, Miami, 1964,” in which Peter Guralnick, author of Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke, tells the story of Ali’s (then Cassius Clay) relationship with Cooke and the circumstances of Clay taking his new name.

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June 6th, 2016

Great Encounters #45: Miles and Monk at Newport, 1955

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition offers two accounts of the events surrounding Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk’s performance at the 1955 Newport Jazz Festival — a story that is, according to Thelonious Monk biographer Robin D.G. Kelley, “shrouded in myth.”

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May 27th, 2016

Great Encounters #44 — Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean and their “nearly murderous confrontation”

“Great Encounters” are book excerpts that chronicle famous encounters among twentieth-century cultural icons. This edition tells the story of the violent, physical confrontation that took place between Charles Mingus and Jackie McLean while touring in Cleveland, 1956

Excerpted from Better Git it in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus, by Krin Gabbard

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Any mature jazz artist with the ability and the desire to succeed will have shared the stage with a long list of musicians. But Charles Mingus seems to have played with everyone from Kid Ory to George Adams and at every stop along the paths of jazz history. Once he became a leader, he hired and fired a long list of sidepeople. Some stayed longer than others. Many were quickly discarded because

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March 29th, 2016

Great Encounters #43: When Billy Taylor saw Jelly Roll Morton play

Back in 1937, Jelly Roll Morton was part owner of a sleazy night club upstairs from a U Street hamburger stand in Washington, D.C. At the time, I was finishing high school and playing gigs around the city as often as they came my way. I was a good, proud, seventeen years old then, and quite naturally very little remained which I did not know about life and music. I used to hang around with

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August 29th, 2015