Only read if you love jazz – but wikipedia must have cloth ears

What d’you mean, Bud Powell’s talent was in eclipse by the late ’50’s?  You’re pulling my plonker

Ever since I first bought the record  50 years or so ago I’ve played and replayed Jazz at Massey Hall with the Quintet of the Year.

It’s the sublime last great recording by Charlie Parker with Gillespie, Roach, Mingus and Bud Powell. With Parker and Gillespie so good, I didn’t really listen carefully enough to Bud Powell.

All I really knew about him was that thanks to the gentle attentions of sundry police forces and mental institutions he was not entirely with us a lot of the time. Also he liked a drink or three.

Today quite by chance I started listening to some recordings he made  in Europe between ’59 and ’62 when he was past his best according to Wikipedia. They are at http://www.jazzonthetube.com/videos/bud-powell/gigging-in-europe-1959-and-1962.html.

Just under 45 minutes of pure genius. As nimble as Peterson but more interesting; like a cross between Art Tatum and  Thelonius Monk.

If he was past his best I’m Louis Armstrong – whom I also saw when he was past his best, and pretty damn marvellous too.

This all reminded of one of my great regrets. I could have seen Billie Holiday, but didn’t go because the critics said she was past her best. Hooey.

Who said the relationship between the critic and the artist is like that between the dog and the lamp-post?

Yes, I know wikipedia is written by us, but  – just saying.

 

About the Author

In 2003, the Chartered Institute of Marketing named Drayton one of 50 living individuals who have shaped today’s marketing.

He has worked in 55 countries with many of the world’s greatest brands. These include American Express, Audi, Bentley, British Airways, Cisco, Columbia Business School, Deutsche Post, Ford, IBM, McKinsey, Mercedes, Microsoft, Nestle, Philips, Procter & Gamble, Toyota, Unilever, Visa and Volkswagen.

Drayton has helped sell everything from Airbus planes to Peppa Pig. His book, Commonsense Direct and Digital Marketing, out in 17 languages, has been the UK’s best seller on the subject every year since 1982. He has also run his own businesses in the U.K., Portugal and Malaysia.

He was a main board member of the Ogilvy Group, a founding member of the Superbrands Organisation, one of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing and one of the first three people named to the Hall of Fame of the Direct Marketing Association of India. He has also been given Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida.

1 Comments

  1. Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday are 2 of my all time favorite singers and never had a bad performance. Ask for Sashmo, even the better horn players fall short of him even when he was supposed to be passed his best

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