Dave Liebman played sax on Miles Davis’s “On the Corner”, “Big Fun”, “Dark Magus”, and “Get Up With It”, my favorite Miles stuff. The guy is amazing. He’s been here twice at the Jazz Fest. We saw both shows at Montage last year and we bought his DVD. Last night he played at the Bop Shop in what was billed as a “classic organ trio setting”. Paul Smoker, Bill Dobbins and all the local jazz celebrities were out.
Phil Haynes, who we have heard a few times with Paul Smoker, played drums and Steve Adams played a Hammond B3. They played all standards and opened with “The Night Has A Thousand Eyes”. Dave was playing a wooden flute, The organ player held on extremely long fuzzy note and the drums sounded beautiful. Phil Haynes plays with his bare hands, he scratches the top surface of his cymbals with the butt end of his sticks and looks like he is conducting the music with his facial expressions and whole body. He plays “Ayotte” drums with wooden rims and they are the best sounding drums I have ever heard. They sounded especially nice in this bass player less setting.
Dave played one song that Doris Day had popularized and when someone snickered as he introduced it Dave said, “Don’t undercut Doris. She was right there with Sly back in the day.” we weren’t sure if we heard him right so after the show Peggi and I asked him after the show if said’ “Sly”. He said, Oh yeah. She was right there, hanging with Sly, doing LSD, the whole trip.
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