In sum, LaFaro visited Geneva, his home town, spent some time with some local friends, drove one of them to visit a mutual friend, left to return to Geneva, fell asleep at the wheel, hit a tree near Flint, NY, seven miles east of Geneva, and burned to death. Everyone heard him. "Route 66" songwriter Bobby Troup was the show's host. He was visiting some friends west of Geneva and was driving home late when he crashed. 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. [citation needed], By late 1960, LaFaro was in demand as a bassist. Dad (Joe LaFaro) never forced us to play music. That show typically includes stories about LaFaro, who forever changed the jazz worlds concept of what bass playing could accomplish with his counter-melodic style. Taking a tip from Red Mitchell, he trained himself to pluck the strings of his bass with his index and middle finger independently. He's seen here playing "Cherry" and "Chart of My Heart" with saxophonist Richie Kamuca's Quintet on a Stars of Jazz television broadcast on April 7, 1958. LaFaro was honored in 2012 in Geneva, where a street was renamed Scott LaFaro Drive and an annual Scott LaFaroDay was inaugurated. Pictures of people only please! My dad took Scotty to see anyone who came there, or to Syracuse or Rochester. He played in a trio or quartet at Belhurst from the time he got back until he died. At that years Monterey Jazz Festival, LaFaro performed with both the Coleman Quartet and Gunther Schuller. He began working in jazz radio in 1977 at WCUW, a community-licensed radio station in Worcester, Massachusetts. He quoted Evans, who said, Im hoping the trio will grow in the direction of simultaneous improvisationIf the bass player, for example, hears an idea that he wants to answer, why should he just keep playing a background?, Scotty, of course, heard and answered plenty of ideas. Tom holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he majored in English and African American Studies. 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.[] Evans, according to Motian, would play "I Loves You Porgy," a song with which he and LaFaro became synonymous, almost obsessively, but always as a solo piece. ", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-Z8KuwI7Gc, Jade Visionscredits the demo session that LaFaro made with Steve Kuhn and Pete LaRoca nearly a year later as one where this conversational approach to group dynamics was evident. Scott Yanow, All-Music Guide Scott LaFaro's life and career were cut short in July of 1961. Scott died instantly and the world lost a talented andinnovative musical voice. According to Paul Motian, the death of LaFaro left Bill Evans "numb with grief", "in a state of shock", and "like a ghost". Three of the tunes from their setBaubles, Bangles and Beads; Where Do You Go; and Airegin were released on CD in 1994. In spring 1960, he featured on a half-dozen tracks that trumpeter Booker Little cut for his second session as leader. LaFaro died in an automobile accident on July 6, 1961, in Seneca, New York,[5] on U.S. Route 20 between Geneva and Canandaigua,[9] four days after accompanying Stan Getz at the Newport Jazz Festival. I would love to see it. The 25-year old Scott LaFaros death in a car accident shortly after was a major shock to the jazz world. I was also told by classical bass players that this also changed things for them because as was with all music pretty much up until then, the bass was considered more of a rhythm instrument only. A master of the upright bass, he recorded with Bill Evans and Ornette Coleman before he died in a car crash at age 25. For much of 1958, LaFaro was with pianist/vibraphonist Victor Feldman's band. He played a lot of top, cymbals, and Scotty wanted more drums, says Kuhn. Geller said Goodman was unhappy with his current bassist, and offered to recommend Scotty but cautioned, Bennys very conservative, dont do any of those fast things you can do. Once he got the gig, his college days were over. In Meet Me at Jim & Andy's: Jazz Musicians and Their World, Gene Lees wrote, "The shock of LaFaro's death stayed with Bill for years, and he felt vaguely guilty about itHe felt that because of his heroin habit he had made insufficient use of [their] time togetherAfter LaFaro's death, Bill was like a mane with a lost love, always looking to find its replacement. In high school Scotty played clarinet and tenor saxophone, in spite of not being happy about a lip injury he got playing basketball at the Y. LaFaro-Fernandez: My father passed away (from a heart attack) in 1957. [14] On April 4, 2014 a ceremony to rename a downtown street Scott LaFaro Drive took place. The last day was recorded for two albums, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby.[8]. For many, that Evans association, with drummer Paul Motian, is the LaFaro legacy. In the latter case, Getz fired LaRoca and hired Roy Haynes, but Kenton wasn't about to be second-guessed. Q: What were Scotts childhood and teen years like here in Geneva? 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. One may even ask the question whether it is possible to love jazz and not love Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, and I dont think youre being a curmudgeon if you stamp a foot and issue an emphatic No, by Jove!. Dave Green joins Alyn Shipton to pick the essential recordings of fellow bassist Scott LaFaro's brief but brilliant career, including work with Bill Evans. [5] He left that organization to work in Los Angeles. Put one way: Scott LaFaro was up for it. At the time it was such a revolutionary idea, and it ushered in a sea change for jazz. This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 08:03. Chops: What Bassists Listen for in Drummers, The 10 Best Jazz Albums of the 1950s: Critics Picks, Year in Review: The Top 40 Jazz Albums of 2022, Year in Review: The Top 10 Historical Albums of 2022, Chops: What Bassists Listen for in Drummers. 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. Its no knock on Charlie Hadena formidable pioneer himselfto say that if hes a bass player, LaFaro is something else, to use the Coleman argot. By. There is a creek that ran through the park, it would go up past Shuron Optical where they used this rouge chemical to make glass lenses, so the creek was always red. 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). 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. The three not duplicated here were played only once that day. The rest is told in his gripping visuals, The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist. And there truly couldn't be a better way to . According to Paul Motian, the death of LaFaro left Bill Evans "numb with grief", "in a state of shock", and "like a ghost". jazz bass Another link(Born: April 3, 1936 in Newark, NJ, Died: July 6, 1961 in Geneva, NY)During his tragically short life, Scott LaFaro quickly developed into one of the most advanced bassists around, competing with Charlie Haden and Charles Mingus. Does anyone have pictures of this bass, or have you seen it in person? My dad loved the director, so we had to go and have that experience as well. Composer: LaFaro LaFaro is one of those players who register to the ears like more than one man, generating a huge amount of sound with ostensibly little effort, and that sound resonating as direct, controlled, economical; this is part of the reason why. The loss of LaFaro hit Evans hard, and he went into a brief seclusion. Many believe that Evans never fully recovered from the loss, as well as that it contributed to his pattern of heroin usage, an addiction that would later kill him. Pianist Walter Norris described him as a "wild fire," and said "he never used any stimulants to enhance life, but his every moment was seriously lived to the fullest." She recalls that Zoot Sims so impressed her brother that he was impatient for the intermission to end, and that bassist Leroy Vinnegar hummed all the while he was playing, a habit Scotty later developed as well. Helene says he talked about seeing Duke Ellington for weeks, shaking his head in disbelief of howthey could fool with the melody and make it so much more. As for religion, she says that whenever shes asked, I always answer, We went wherever the music was best. That was Dads criterion, be it a mass at a Roman Catholic church or Friday evening Shabbat dinner at the cantors home., Scottys first instruments were piano, clarinet, and tenor saxophone. Scotty and I rented a house for Mom and the girls, I got married a few months later and (soon) we all moved into a new house in a new development in West Hills. Performers: Bill Evans, p; Scott LaFaro, b; Paul Motian, d. 28 Dec 1958. "[3], It was voted number 465 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000).[10]. 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. He was his own thing. We never got to enjoy it as a concert venue in our day, unfortunately. Our Dad was from here. The Scott La Faro book was wonderful. We are in a fix! April 3, 1936 in Newark, NJ. Fraternal guidance, in that this endeavor allowed fellow band members to do what they best did. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. . This Third Stream affair has jazz as a major tributary vein, and it has LaFaro to thank for it. Styles. That is what so many families Sunday ritual were like. Later in high school, kids would go to the movies with their friends, or boyfriends, or girlfriends. After that touch of piano, he really started to enjoy music and develop a keen awareness of what it was all about. Become a member and get exclusive access to articles, live sessions and more! It is still so wild to me that he was so influential. 2023 Madavor Media, LLC. We would explore all around our neighborhood on West Street our house was where the elementary school is. Bud Powell. Christian said, Scottys playing was the bible for bass playersJimmy Blanton the old testament, Scotty the new., LaFaro spent the evening of July 5 with old friends in Geneva then drove 80 miles west with Frank Ottley to visit another friend in Warsaw who was house-sitting at a place with a good stereo. The bass was badly damaged in the automobile accident that killed him, but was eventually restored and is sporadically used in performance to honor LaFaro. [10] Obsessively he played "I Loves You Porgy", a song that had become synonymous with him and LaFaro. It was an idyllic childhood. Bill Evans Trio. Little was as star-crossed as LaFaro, and hes usually talked about in conjunction with altoist Eric Dolphy as often as LaFaro is with Evans. He told Helene that Scott lived for the bassHe was looking all the time to play. Mr. Berg, whose career encompassed free jazz, soul jazz, jazz rock, and straight-ahead playing, was driving east on Route 27 with his wife when Waltz for Debby is a live album by jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans and his trio consisting of Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro, and drummer Paul Motian. LaFaro is heard soloing while George Duvivierplays the bass riff that Percy Heath had introduced on the first recordings of "Django" by the Modern Jazz Quartet. Q: What happened to your brother after Ithaca College? Evans was an articulate interweaver of a pianist, a melodic speaker, a filigree lord rather than a rhythm king. AMAGANSETT, N.Y. - Acclaimed tenor saxophonist Robert Berg was killed Thursday when a cement truck skidded across a snow-slicked road and rammed into his sport utility vehicle, East Hampton police said. LaFaro-Fernandez: Dad (Joe LaFaro) never forced us to play music. Later in high school, kids would go to the movies with their friends, or boyfriends, or girlfriends. Often controversial, always entertaining, JazzTimes is a favorite of musicians and fans alike. In Jade Visionshe says, Scott wasnt what one would consider a big band bass player. It wasnt until he left for Ithaca College, where music majors were required to play a stringed instrument, that he first played bass. What kind of influence did your father have on your brothers music? Toggle filters. The Getz Quartet, with either Henry Grimes or Jimmy Garrison spelling LaFaro (Kuhn cant recall for certain), was playing that week at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. Kuhn is uncertain about exactly where he met LaFaro, but says it was most likely when he heard the Evans trio at the Five Spot late in 1959. They spent so much time discussing music, listening to records, at the piano, they were inseparable. So if you were all living in California, how was it that your brother was near Geneva when he died? 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. LaFaro is a potent cup of teaa brilliant future is in store for this youthful bassist from Geneva, N.Y., (Film footage ofLaFarois extremely rare. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. LaFaro was killed in a car accident ten days after the recording. LaFaro went on to perform with Victor Feldman, Chet Baker, Benny Goodman, Stan Kenton, Stan Getz and Ornette Coleman. The trio attracted attention for its style. Its the top of the sheet, instead of the coarseness of the winter blanket. He heard what I was doing at the piano, and I heard what he was doing. I still have people from all over the world knocking at my doorstep, wanting to see where Scotty played. HOMETOWN Newark, NJ, United States of America BORN April 3, 1936 Similar Artists Paul Motian. Hes just so damn elegant. DSD 128 fs (2) DSD 64 fs (2) . LaFaro joined the Bill Evans Trio in 1959 and, although he would record with Ornette Coleman (including Free Jazz) and gig with Stan Getz, the bassist is best remembered for his association with Evans, particularly their Village Vanguard recordings of 1961. Composer: Porter: I quit very fast, but he was a natural. 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