‘Blue’ drummer still keeping time

‘Plans to re-record Big Machine oldies’

By David Sharp

legend has it, Miles Davis assembled a super group of jazz musicians in a New York studio and recorded a bunch of songs without retakes. They left Columbia’s 30th Street Studio having no idea that their work would become one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time.

Drummer Jimmy Cobb mostly correct.

He recalls one song required a second try. And while they may not have known they were making history, they understood they’d created a hit with “Kind of Blue”.

“We knew it was pretty damned good,” Cobb joked.

Cobb, 90, of New York, is the last survivor of the musicians who assembled for “Kind of Blue” – saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane; pianists Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly; bassist Paul Chambers; and, of course, trumpeter Davis, and drummer Cobb.

The album, released 60 years ago, on Aug 17, 1959, captured a moment when jazz was transforming from bebop to something newer, cooler and less structured.

On the album, Davis experimented with “modal jazz” by using simpler “modes” instead of traditional chord progressions, giving his performers more freedom to improvise on the album. Sound engineers captured the sessions, held on two days, with a superb hi-fi recording.

Cobb grew up in Washington, D.C., listening to jazz albums and staying up late to hear disc jockey Symphony Sid playing jazz in New York City before launching his professional career. He said it was Adderley who recommended him to Davis, and he ended up playing on several Davis recordings. He’s still making music. On Aug 30, he’s releasing “Remem

said that’s

HBO series “Ballers”, and seven figures in royalties from his line of clothing, shoes and headphones with Under Armour.

Last year, Johnson was second behind bering U” with Japanese pianist Tadataka Unno and Italian bassist Paolo Benedettini, and guest appearances by saxophonist Javon Jackson and the late trumpeter Roy Hargrove.

As for “Kind of Blue”, Cobb said Davis assembled musicians who had chemistry and understood what he required for his minimalist approach in the studio. Davis craved authenticity and spontaneity, and his approach in the studio achieved it, Cobb said.

Davis had some notes jotted down but there weren’t pages of sheet music. It was up to the improvisers to fill the pages. “He’d say this is a ballad. I want it to sound like it’s floating. And I’d say, ‘OK’, and that’s what it was,” Cobb recalled.

Recorded

The full takes of the songs were recorded only once, with one exception, Cobb said. “Freddie Freeloader” needed to be played twice because Davis didn’t like a chord change on the first attempt, he said.

The album received plenty of acclaim at the time, yet the critics, the band and the studio couldn’t have known it would enjoy such longevity.

The total number of copies sold has surpassed 4 million.

“It was authentic. It was fresh,” said Ken Cervenka, a trumpeter who teaches “The Music of Miles Davis” and leads several Miles Davis ensembles at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Cervenka used to listen to the album over and over when he was kid. “Even today, you listen to it, and it sounds fresh,” Cervenka said. “I’ve never met anybody who’s heard that album who didn’t love it.”

These days, the 30th Street Studio is long gone. Many of the nation’s legendary jazz greats are gone, too. But the music endures.

And so does Cobb.

George Clooney, who reaped a windfall from the sale of his tequila company. (RTRS)

In this Oct 13, 2017 file photo, former president Barack Obama (right), and former first lady Michelle Obama arrive for the first session of the Obama Founda

tion Summit in Chicago. (AP)

Cobb still performs – with recent gigs at jazz festivals in Italy and in Maine – and over the years he played drums for Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Pearl Bailey, Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan, among others.

“Remembering U” shows he still has his chops.

It’s his 12th recording as band leader, and the first on his Jimmy Cobb World label. It features six originals, including a song that he wrote for his sister. There are ballads, swing and gospel – and a pair of Michael Jackson songs. It is being released digitally on his own label.

There isn’t much Cobb would change about his career. With the benefit of hindsight, however, he might’ve taken a cut in pay in favor of a cut of the proceeds from “Kind of Blue”. As it was, all of the musicians on the iconic album were paid union scale.

“The only thing that’s depressing about it is I’m not getting any money from it,” Cobb said, with a rueful laugh.

Also: LOS ANGELES:

When Taylor Swift let her feelings be known about her former label, Big Machine, ending up in the hands of Scooter Braun, speculation about what little recourse she had in the situation ran rampant: What if she simply re-recorded material from those first six studio albums?

Although that was considered a long shot for any number of reasons, Swift has now asserted in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning” that she plans to do just that, although the extent or timing of her plans to go back in the studio to revisit her oldies wasn’t addressed.

“Might you do that?” asked interviewer Tracy Smith, wondering whether Swift might make up for not getting rights to her old master recordings by going in to cut new ones. (Agencies)

LOS ANGELES:

Celso Pina, the cumbia music legend known as “the rebel of the accordion,” died of a heart attack on Wednesday in his hometown of Monterrey, Mexico. He was 66 years old.

“Today is a sad day for La Tuna Group, with deep pain we communicate the unexpected departure of a family member, our friend, and professor Celso Pina who died today in Monterrey at 12:38 pm due to a heart attack,” Pina’s music label, La Tuna Group said in an announcement via social media. “Our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and followers. We are left with an intense emptiness, but he leaves us his great legacy forever. We appreciate respecting the privacy of the family.”

Known for his fusion of cumbia with other genres like ska, hip-hop, reggae and R&B, Pina earned a Latin Grammy nomination for his album “Barrio Bravo”. (RTRS)

PARIS:

Frederic Riesterer, the producer and creator of electronic dance music who co-wrote the Grammy-nominated hit “I Gotta Feeling” with The Black Eyed Peas, has died. He was 58.

Riesterer, who used the stage name Fred Rister, also worked with David Guetta but, unlike the superstar French DJ, eschewed the limelight.

Last year he wrote; “I am the most famous of the unknowns. I work with pleasure for others without seeking their glory.” (AP)