It was there his career exploded. For when Jazz Abstractions wrapped, December 21 dawned, and that meant LaFaroalong with Dolphywas boomeranging back to A&R Studios for the landmark waxing of the legendary, epoch-rattling Free Jazz, with a lineup of Dolphy on bass clarinet, Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Charlie Haden on bass, and Ed Blackwell on drums in the right channel, and Coleman on alto, Don Cherry on pocket trumpet, Billy Higgins on drums, and LaFaro in the left. Then wed go home and have dinner and ice cream. Right there on stage, Stan stopped playing and yelled, MF, Ive got the melody! Notwithstanding flair-ups of this kind, Kuhn says that Getz held LaFaro in the highest regard. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. ), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gzwXQGvXgc, LaFaro signed on with Stan Kenton for a tour in the spring of 1959. When Scotty was in sixth grade we took our first piano lessons. An investigation is underway after two people were killed in a crash involving a big rig along the . But he was best known for his collaborations and recordings with the Bill Evans Trio. Former Major League Baseball pitcher Scott Erickson has been charged in connection with a hit-and-run crash in Westlake Village that killed two . There was great rapport. One of the most substantial biographies I've read in recent years is the 2009 publication that Helene LaFaro-Fernandez devoted to her brother Scott. LaFaro took the opportunity, and he was the trios helmsman. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. In his liner notes, producer Orrin Keepnews focused on the phenomenon of Bill Evans thepianist, but the lone paragraph devoted to the other members of the trio noted that they werent limited toconventional rhythmic backing, and cited Autumn Leaves, as a harbinger of things to come. It wasnt until he left for Ithaca College, where music majors were required to play a stringed instrument, that he first played bass. Following the Vanguard engagement, LaFaro played with Getz, Steve Kuhn, and Roy Haynes at Newport on July 2. 4 or The Paradox of Continuity, The Montreal Tapes: with Geri Allen and Paul Motian, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Waltz_for_Debby_(1962_album)&oldid=1139601889, Short description is different from Wikidata, Album articles lacking alt text for covers, Articles with unsourced statements from January 2021, Articles with MusicBrainz release group identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Note on the alternate takes: "For this CD release, alternate versions of three of the six selections have been inserted just after the ones originally chosen for issuance.[] The 25-year old Scott LaFaros death in a car accident shortly after was a major shock to the jazz world. I remained close friends with Scotty in New York, and would go over there to see and admire them, and Scotty and Paul would come over to the Five Spot, too. He would practice for hours: he had all these Sonny Rollins solos he had written out in bass clef! On date night, people would end up at The Smith. The helmsman remains present to take us many places where we otherwise might not have gone, and no one has steered that ship better than Scott LaFaro. I suppose technically, yes, though its also far more, and thats a LaFaro thing. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has We calculated our top 40 new releases of 2022 We calculated our top 10 historical/reissue You never quite knew what Chicago bassist Kelly Sill was going to play (or what he was going to say). LaFaro began by practicing his fingers off. RE: Person I Knew is a tribute to bass legend Scott LaFaro, who died tragically in a car accident 50 years ago this year at the age of 25.Phil Palombi plays the EXACT bass that made Scotty a legend on the Bill Evans Trio, Live at the Village Vanguard Sessions!. He waited until we got interested, and then he was totally supportive. DSD 128 fs (2) DSD 64 fs (2) . [5] He left that organization to work in Los Angeles. The young bassist was friends to other artists and art during his all-too brief sojourn upon the mortal coil. Toggle filters. It is these performances, currently available as Sunday at The Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby that comprise the number one best jazz live recording in this present series. Evans stopped performing for several months. While his music education began in grade school with piano and then clarinet and tenor saxophone in junior high and high school, he didnt start playing bass until his senior year, and only because a string instrument was required for his enrollment at Ithaca College, where his intent was to major in clarinet and tenor saxophone. The title track, a musical portrait of Evans' niece, became a staple of his live repertoire in later years. Shortly after, their collaboration began. He had an incredible ear. 52.119.1.55 LaFaro-Fernandez: Dad (Joe LaFaro) never forced us to play music. Born in Newark, New Jersey, United States,[1] the son of a big band musician, LaFaro was five when his family moved to Geneva, New York. Mom needed the money. But LaFaro makes the music pulsehe provides its heartbeat and flow. Such is the legacy of bassist Scott LaFaro, though I would suggest that what was was more than we often think. Remembering Geneva's jazz legend Scott LaFaro: An interview with his sister Helene LaFaro-Fernandez - Smith Center for the Arts Smith Center for the Arts CONTACT US 82 Seneca Street Geneva, NY 14456 315-781-5483 BOX OFFICE Tuesday-Friday 10am-4pm ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES by appointment boxoffice@thesmith.org A record like this could easily have become just a mood disc: sound as fuzzy, woolly painting, in which the experiment becomes an end unto itself, the gesture, the gambit, being everything. Helene says that she and Scotty were taken to hear Tony Bennett, the Mills Brothers, Dizzy Gillespie and numerous others. [3] He took up double bass at 18 before entering college because learning a string instrument was required of music education majors. Also, Club 86 was bringing in major stars as well. These two albums, recorded less than two weeks prior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZ_rZZusz90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbTEgBEaEM4. In the latter case, Getz fired LaRoca and hired Roy Haynes, but Kenton wasn't about to be second-guessed. It was released in 1962. Little, another ill-fated star of the period who died at 23 in October 1961, described LaFaro in the liner notes as distant, but closea paradox that resolves only for those who were simpatico. He also recognized Scottys distinctiveness as an innovator who was much more of a conversationalist behind you than any other bassist I know[Hes] technicallyabout the greatest bassist we have. Remarking on the solo LaFaro plays on Bee Tees Minor Plea, the trumpeter said, The bass is a crude and rude instrument, but Scott makes it into something else. Helene says Scotty would have loved being described as something else, since I could remember how excited [he] was when he brought around to play for me the first record of Ornettes he owned,Something Else.. We think of LaFaro as a jazz bassist with leanings toward classical music; its the lan, I think. She writes, What he said not only had an impact on me, but seemed to sum up much of what I had been hearing as I talked to musicians. Bassist Marc Johnson, who was with Evans between 1978 and his death in 1980, wrote in the liner notes forPieces of Jadethat the Vanguard performance was the highest measure of Scotts musical vision. InJade Visions, he says, I must have listened to those recordingsthousands of timesTo this day, I still dont see how Scott articulated his ideas with such startling clarity and velocity., Johnson also speaks for the continuing hold that the recordings have on listeners touched by their emotional richness. Everyone would say Dont go to the creek! but we did anyway, and would come home with red shoes. He worked from sheet music for the clarinet, with its much higher pitch, to improve his command of the bass upper register. His sense of time was freer, less tied to the ground beat, than any jazz bassist had previously acheivedIt is not going too far to see this short-lived trio as redefining the nature of the jazz rhythm section. By. Scottys death was hard on my Mom. He used a Zen epigram in the closing of his letter to Gloria: Im trying to remember a bit of Zen I like so well: If you seek the fruits ofgood actionso shall they escape you. I try to smile everyday with that., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uugimR8honE, When I asked Kuhn if Scotty had similar anxieties about touring with Getz, he said no, but he recalled a bandstand incident between the bassist and the tenor player whom Kuhn called extraordinarily paranoid. One night at the Blackhawk in San Francisco, he said, they clashed. All that listening to the trio had another effect on me. Once he got the gig, his college days were over. Haynes shared with Scotty a fastidiousness about clothing, and hed just been named toEsquiresBest-Dressed list. Well, Michael Cera did play a bassist in Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. There is also a street off of Seneca Street, just across from the Smith Opera House, that has been renamed Scott LaFaro Way. So if you were all living in California, how was it that your brother was near Geneva when he died? Also, the exertion of a formidable musical will to take what was there, in an act of guidance. In a December 29, 1960 letter addressed to his lover Gloria Gabriel, the dancer to whom he dedicated Glorias Step, he wrote, One important thing is that I realize day by day the true artist and musician is becoming more and more meaningless in terms of public comprehension. This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 08:03. His records with Bill Evans are among the finest jazz trio discs ever made. In his playing you can hear how happy Evans is to have this helmsman at the back of the boatI think it helped him see better at the front. I was 19 and working. In addition to hosting Jazz la Mode since 1984, Tom writes the jazz blog and produces the Jazz Beat podcast at NEPM. Having followed him out to Los Angeles in the late 1950s along with the rest of the LaFaro family, LaFaro-Fernandez still lives in California and continues to answer daily inquiries about her brother, conduct interviews, and ensure his legacy will inform musicians and fans for generations to come. He waited until we got interested, and then he was totally supportive. This year The Smith is excited to have National Endowment of the Arts Jazz Masters, Kenny Barron (piano) and Dave Holland (bass), together on stage on Saturday, April 6. LaFaro died in an automobile accident on July 6, 1961 in Flint, New York on U.S. Route 20 between Geneva and Canandaigua, four days after accompanying Stan Getz at the Newport Jazz Festival. Ornettes group with Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell played the Village Gate for three weeks in August and September followed by engagements in Philadelphia and Detroit. April 3, 1936 in Newark, NJ. Bill had first heard Scotty with Chet Baker three years earlierNot long after we were back off the Goodman tour, there was a call waiting for Scottythat Bill wanted him to work with him., The first meeting of what became known as the trio took place at a Tony Scott recording date on October 28 and 29, 1959. LaFaro-Fernandez: After Scotty played at the Newport Jazz Festival with Stan Getz (July 1961), he went to Geneva to try to convince the people who had been renting our house to buy it. The loss of LaFaro hit Evans hard, and he went into a brief seclusion. His death came just ten days after recording two live albums with the Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz . Performers: Chet Baker, tp; Phil Urso, ts; Francy Boland, p; Larance Marable, d; Scott LaFaro, b. 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