Play Blue for Paul Bley

There’s a photo of Paul playing with Lester Young, and then of course the sessions with Bird in Montreal 1953, released on the Uptown label. The trio record with Mingus and Blakey.

And then:

The Hillcrest Club. “Fire Dave Pike!”
Sonny Rollins. That solo.
Footloose. Ramblin’.
Turning Point, with John Gilmore.
The Guiffre trio.
“The October Revolution”, Jazz Composers Guild.
ESP records: Barrage, Closer.
Carla Bley.
Annette Peacock.
Among the first Jazz musicians to start their own label.
The first ECM records, Ballads and With Gary Peacock.
Japan Suite.
Virtuosi.
Open, To Love.
The invention of the synthesizer.
The never-ending tour: show up, play, record, get paid, split, for decades and decades. Like Chuck Berry in an alternate universe.
The many, many, many fine records on Steeplechase, CrissCross, Owl, Hat Art, Soul Note, etc. (Including Diane with Chet Baker, Plays Carla Bley, Annette with Peacock and Franz Kogelman, Notes on Ornette, Bebop, Memoirs with Haden and Motian, Tango Palace, and that’s just off the top of my head. I probably own 25 Paul Bley records.)
The later ECM records.
“Stopping Time”: a surprising, compulsively readable late-in-life memoir.
The New England Conservatory sage, the macrobiotic advocate, and the endlessly quotable, cranky contrarian, mind-games loving, mad genius.
Musicians covet and trade stories about Paul Bley the way that squirrels hoard nuts.

What a resume!
What a life. What a singular voice.

This entry was posted in Music Thoughts and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.