Three Wishes

Pannonica asked trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie if he had three wishes what would they be and his reply was…

  1. “Not to play for money.
  2. “Permanent peace in the world.”
  3. “A world where you don’t need a passport.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats – Complied and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

THE WATCHFUL EYE

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Anita O’Day Swings Cole Porter with Billy May is a is a 1959 studio album recorded on Verve Records label. All of the songs were written by Cole Porter and arranged and conducted by Billy May.

The session saw O’Day recording 18 songs: Just One of Those Things, Love for Sale, You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To, Easy to Love, I Get a Kick Out of You, All of You, Get Out of Town, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, Night and Day, It’s De-Lovely, I Love You, What Is This Thing Called Love?, You’re the Top, My Heart Belongs to Daddy, Why Shouldn’t I?, From This Moment On, Love for Sale and Just One of Those Thing.

The cover photo was taken by Bill Rotsler, designed by Sheldon Marks and the album was produced by Norman Granz.

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The Jazz Voyager

The Jazz Voyager is in Salvador do Bahia, Brazil for the largest annual street festival and celebration of Carnival that begins this year on Friday afternoon of the 9th, 51 days before Easter and the 14th, Ash Wednesday at noon, which marks the beginning of Lent, the forty-day period before Easter. The term carnival originated from the word carnelevare, which means to remove meat, as on certain days of Lent, Roman Catholics and some other Christians would traditionally abstain from the consumption of meat and poultry. Not a problem for this voyager as meat has been off my menu for more than thirty years.

The black population commemorated the days of Carnival highly marked by Yoruba characteristics, dancing in the streets and playing instruments. Thought primitive by the upper-class white elite, they banned the groups from participating in the official Bahia Carnival, but the groups defied the ban and continued to do their dances. This voyager will be among the millions to be enticed to dance to samba, samba-reggae and axé presented by the groups Afoxês, Trios Elétricos, Amerindian, and Blocos Afros. For those in the know, samba is the basis for the adaptive bossa nova that came to the jazz world via a host of jazz musicians such as Charlie Byrd, Stan Getz and Cannonball Adderley. #wannabewhereyouare

GRIOTS GALLERY

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Three Wishes

When the Baroness Pannonica asked drummer Philly Joe Jones what his three wishes were he responded…

    1. “Money”
    2. “Money”
    3. “Money”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats – Complied and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

THE WATCHFUL EYE

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The Blues And The Abstract Blues is an album by jazz composer/arranger and saxophonist Oliver Nelson recorded in 1961 for the Impulse label. Rudy Van Gelder was the recording engineering, Chuck Stewart took the photograph and Pete Turner designed the cover.

The albums length is a mere 36 minute and 33 seconds long but remains Nelson’s most acclaimed album. It is an exploration of the mood and structure of the blues, though only some of the tracks are structured in the conventional 12-bar blues form.

All the songs are composed by Nelson Stolen Moments, Hoe-Down, Cascades, Yearnin’, Butch and Butch and Teenie’s Blues. The musicians on the session were Oliver Nelson on alto and tenor saxophone, Eric Dolphy on flute and alto saxophone, George Barrow on baritone saxophone, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, pianist Bill Evans, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Roy Haynes.

The most famous composition from the album, Stolen Moments, is also his most recorded and performed, both instrumental and vocal, by numerous artists such as Phil Woods, J.J. Johnson, Carmen McRae, Betty Carter, Frank Zappa, Mark Murphy, Ahmad Jamal, Booker Ervin, New York Voices, the United Future Organization and the Turtle Island Quartet, to name just a few.

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