Don Ellis Newsletter

Issue number two

July 25, 2001 (Happy birthday, Don)

Scott Harris, editor

In This Issue:

What's The Deal?
Big News: Three Major CD Releases (so far!)
Don Ellis Library moves to its new home
Sheet music for Strawberry Soup finally available
French Connection due on DVD
Nick Di Scala checks in
Hello from Glenn Stuart
Hello from Milcho Leviev
Ellis Album Checklist
Ellis Movie Checklist
Don Ellis Sheet Music
Other Don Ellis Projects
Don Ellis around the Internet

I would like to thank the Ellis family, Nick Di Scala, Glenn Stuart, Milcho Leviev, Lukas Kendall and Film Score Monthly magazine, Ben Brooks, Gord McGonigal, and Louise Spear.

Gord McGonigal has asked me to remind everybody that his Don Ellis Info Sheet has a new Internet address http://www.handofgord.com/donellis/

These newsletters are now on my web site. The HTML versions are much easier to read and navigate then the email version. (and some actual pictures, too!). Look for it here: http://www.scottharris.com/donellis/

Feel free to email me if you have any comments/corrections or if you would like to sign up on the email distribution list for the newsletters:scott@scottharris.com We currently have over 350 Don Ellis fans on the mailing list and it is growing all the time.

Scott Harris

Available for the first time on CD, this live recording of two of the Don Ellis Orchestra performances (The Pacific Jazz Festival in 1966 and Shelly's Manne-Hole in 1967) includes some bonus tracks that weren't on the original album. This was the second of two Ellis Orchestra albums released on the Pacific Jazz label. The first, LIVE AT MONTEREY, was reissued on CD in 1998.

*somebody needs to create a special Don Ellis font so that the song titles can be correctly printed.

In May of this year, Don's 1968 album SHOCK TREATMENT was finally reissued on CD. It was released on the Koch Jazz Label. They have done a wonderful job putting the CD together. The album was originally released in 3 different versions with some differences in the song lists and edits. With Nick Di Scala's help, the folks at KOCH sorted it all out, and were able to include the songs from all the different versions and also some bonus tracks. Koch is interested in reissuing other Ellis albums so we should be sure to support them and let them know that their effort is appreciated.

The soundtracks for the French Connection (1971) and French Connection II (1975) films were never released in album form. Now Film Score Monthly magazine has released a CD containing Don Ellis' film scores for both films. Much of the music was not used in the movies and is now being heard for the first time ever. The CD contains 75 minutes of music, all composed and conducted by Ellis and performed by his band supplemented by members of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. The music was never intended to "stand on its own" but it is very interesting to listen to as an insight into Ellis' development as a film composer. Many of the tracks are 10 or 20 second cues and sound effects to create "atmosphere." This CD is a must for the serious Don Ellis collector. The CD ($20 US plus shipping) is only available for order on-line at Film Score Monthly's web site. It is a limited pressing of 3000 copies. They have said that if sales are sufficient, they would be interested in issuing CDs of other Ellis film scores as well.

The good news is that the music and materials are now being stored under the proper conditions to last many many years and being cared for by experts in the field. The down side is that the materials are stored off-site and so you go there and select the items you wish to look at and then it takes a couple of days to deliver them to the library. You can purchase photocopies of sheet music from them but it is rather more expensive that it had been at Eastfield College.

The Ethnomusicology Archive has set up a special web page listing all the items in the Ellis collection

They also have a very nice article about Ellis in their Ethnomusicology Archive Report (The EAR) which emphasizes Ellis' long connection to UCLA.

The contact person for the Don Ellis Collection is:
Louise S. Spear
UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive
1630 Schoenberg Hall
Box 951657
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1657
telephone 310-825-1695
fax 310-206-4738
email LSpear@arts.ucla.edu

For the first time ever, Strawberry Soup (possibly Ellis' greatest composition) is available as sheet music (both score and parts). Thanks to the untiring efforts of Nick Di Scala and Russell Scarbrough. This is the first product of their Don Ellis Critical Editions project. It is available from the University of Northern Colorado Jazz Press as are all of the other Don Ellis published arrangements. (more on that below)

The French Connection and French Connection II are finally coming to DVD! Scheduled for release on September 25, 2001. It will be released in three different packages. One two-disk set with the French Connection film on one disk and an additional disk of "extras." The French Connection II will be available seprately. There will also be a three disk set including both films and the disk of extras. Read the press release from 20th Century Fox Home Video.

First, I would like to announce the publication of the first Don Ellis Critical Edition. "Strawberry Soup" is now available through UNC Jazz Press web site. There is also an information web site for the Critical Editions themselves. The person who set this site up is Russell Scarbrough. He has a long relationship working and playing with Hank Levy and does professional publication. Russell also helps me with the input for the upcoming editions. Two other people, Jeff Turner and Pat Castor, have also volunteered their time and labor to help me get these editions out in a more timely fashion. Jeff has done quite a bit of professional music preparation for the Chicago Symphony, Diana Ross and others. These three people all contacted me through the Internet. I would like to publicly thank them for their contributions, past and future. I know how much effort it takes to donate one's time and services for philanthropic endeavors and they all deserve the appreciation of everyone who reads this.

As soon as my schedule dies down a bit, "Open Wide", "Whiplash", "K.C. Blues", and "Niner Two" are on the short list for upcoming publication. If you buy a copy of any Critical Edition, please feel free to contact me with your comments.

As many of you are probably aware, we finally have some CD reissues of Don's big band albums. "Electric Bath", "Live at Monterey" were released as of the last newsletter's publishing. Now, "Live in 3 2/3 / 4 Time" and "Shock Treatment" are also available. I strongly urge each and every one of you to buy them if you haven't already done so. The likelihood of future reissues is solely dependent on sales and how much noise you make to the A&R people.

Blue Note has issued both albums that Don made under the Pacific Jazz label. They don't own the rights to any other albums. I spoke with a gentleman at Universal's European division, which owns the MPS recordings ("Soaring" and "Haiku"). He is a fan of Don's music and told me that, somewhere down the line, there is the possibility of "Soaring" being reissued. However, the future for "Haiku" doesn't look so good. Since it wasn't a typical Ellis album and would be a tough marketing sell to anyone other than the most dyed-in-the-wool fan, it will very likely not be reissued. If you want this recording (and it has its pleasures, especially if you like Don's late ballad writing) you should check the used record bins and e-bay.

As far as the Atlantic albums are concerned, Koch Jazz will be releasing the Montreux recording, hopefully with extra material. The Montreux set had much more to it, including longer versions of material that did make it onto the final album. (I always suspected that "Niner Two" was edited down and I was right.) It currently is scheduled for sometime in the Fall. The future of the Star Wars album is in limbo. Various numbers from the Montreux concert are live (of course) versions of tunes on the album. I'm trying to convince Koch to release the album with the live versions as bonuses.

As for Sony, which has all the Columbia albums, they keep getting sidetracked with other projects. Koch Jazz has also expressed an interest in the live albums and Sony basically is agreeable. When this will happen is too far down the road at the moment to give any more information.

Let's continue with talk of recordings.

Recently, I spoke with Milcho Leviev about whether he would be interested in doing an album of pieces Don wrote for piano alone. This covers a wide time period from college composition finals to the last piece he wrote. There's a chunk of material to go through to ascertain what would be the most viable for a recording. Some of the pieces are actually lead sheets or the basis for a big band arrangement. We need to decide whether these constitute "solo piano" pieces or not. No label has been secured at present. It very likely would end up on a small independent one. Milcho has worked with several small labels and we both feel fairly confident that something can be found. Also, at Milcho's suggestion, it's likely that another, more classically oriented, pianist would perform some of the more "legit" compositions.

One of Don's last major pieces, "Make a Joyful Noise", was written for symphony orchestra. The only recording, in Don's personal tape library, is from the world premiere performance. The execution is often tentative and dicey. Any future performances of this piece are unlikely due to its obscurity. Even if people knew of it and wanted to hear the recording before making their programming decision, the performance does not make a convincing argument for the piece. Therefore, I am considering making a MIDI performance of the piece and making that available. Since there is no improvisation written into the piece, the resultant writing seems to lend itself toward a halfway respectable synthesizer version. Even though I am not a big fan of synthesizer orchestrations, I have access to quite a range of top notch equipment and think I might be able to put together something that could be used as a decent reference and/or marketing tool.

I mentioned in the prior newsletter that one of my goals is to record some of Don's work that never made it onto albums for various reasons. There's a lot of worthwhile material that should be heard and, I'll admit it, some which probably wouldn't enhance his legacy if they were heard. In addition to knocking on doors every now and then (and getting, at best, nothing but encouragement) I have tried to generate income and interest through the other projects that I have described. It is a very slow, uphill battle. If anyone out there knows of an organization or individuals interested in funding this recording project, please provide me the contact information. If luck is on our side, perhaps we'll all get to benefit from someone's philanthropy.

Wrapping things up, the Don Ellis Memorial Library moved from Eastfield College to UCLA this past Spring. While Eastfield did its best to manage things, their resources were always limited. UCLA has a staff hired exclusively to handle archival music libraries. You may already know that this is where Schoenberg's library is kept. The main contact for the Ellis library is Louise Spear.

As organized as some of the material currently is, there remains much more to be done before all the materials in the library can be useful. The biggest chunk is Don's large collection of tapes. Much of what is there has little more than a performance date/location on the label. Even the tapes with more information on them are often incomplete or outright wrong. I have talked to Louise a little about the possibility of me assisting in the organization and identifying of the materials. She agrees that they could use the help and mentioned the possibility of getting some grant money to underwrite the expenses.

Well, that's about it for now. (That's more than enough, isn't it?) As usual, I'm always interested in hearing from people and talking about our mutual interest. Here is my contact information again:

Nick Di Scala
1309 26th Ave., #1
San Francisco, CA 94122
(415) 566-0480
email: ndiscala@cwnet.com

Or visit his web page.

I finally got to meet Milcho a few months ago when his new Trio LESENTU played at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society in Half Moon Bay, California. It was a great concert and afterwards I asked him to write a few words about his association with Don:

I am proud I was part of his musical enterprise, and key member of the orchestra. After Don passed away in 1978, I was asked to write something like eulogy. I am enclosing it:

Back in the early sixties a friend of mine in Bulgaria played for me a George Russell's LP - "Ezzthetics". There was a cut entitled "Honesty" which had a trumpet solo that grabbed my attention from its very opening - avangard, yet traditional at the same time, hilarious, and incredibly rhythmical - yet played in a rubato manner! I couldn't wait for the end of the solo, and eagerly asked my friend: "Who's this, Who's this?!!". He looked at the album credits and read: DON ELLIS.

That was my first encounter with the music of one of the most creative men in jazz history. At that time my jazz education consisted of regular listening to Willis Conover's radio jazz programs - usually at 2:00 a.m. Bulgarian time. One night Conover broadcasted Don's band live from Monterey. I was lying in my bed, but after the first couple of bars I was on my feet, and couldn't go back to sleep out of excitement! Few years earlier as the leader of the Bulgarian Radio & TV Big Band I started experimenting with odd time signatures (which are not "odd" at all in Bulgaria) but I did not receive much encouragement from my colleagues ("Jazz can swing only in 4/4 time" - even in Bulgaria the jazz musicians believed that).

Well, here was that man Ellis, 10,000 miles away from the odd time source, swinging the hell out of 5, 7, 9, 11/4 et. I thought - God, I would be the happiest man if I could be near this band and hear them live!

Few years later I became one of the key men in the DON ELLIS ORCHESTRA (strings, fr.horn, tuba... 22 pieces!) and I was the happiest man! But you have to pay serious toll encountering a genius. Don's high demands for professionalism towards everyone - and first towards himself - were at times inhuman. One night we were playing a quartet gig at "Donte's". Don called a standard I didn't know. I told him that, but he started counting the tempo of the tune, and said: "That's your problem" !! Some times in the middle of a concert, he would put the entire orchestra on an incredible test, asking us to improvise aleatorically, together, with no structure at all, just following his manual cues, and employing all our imagination and creativity. And, not always, but at times the results were amazing.

He told me once (answering my complaint about "putting us on the spot" in such cases) "Listen, I don't want to play it safe. I don't believe in playing it safe. I believe that an artist could do his/her best under pressure". He certainly put himself under the heaviest pressure. This, combined with the fact that our society seldom rewards an artist for digging deep, and being truly creative, led to Don's premature death. This was, and still us a huge loss, especially for an environment like Los Angeles, where commercializing of the arts has become increasingly triumphant.

Milcho

Columbia Legacy Recordings has a web page where you can make requests for album reissues. Give it a try!

(From the Internet Movie Database)

• Natural Enemies (1979)
• Ransom (1977)
  ... aka Assault on Paradise (1977)
  ... aka Maniac (1977)
  ... aka Town That Cried Terror, The (1977)
• Ruby (1977)
  ... aka Blood Ruby (1977)
• Deadly Tower, The (1975) (TV)
  ... aka Sniper (1975) (TV)
• "Doctors' Hospital" (1975) TV Series
• French Connection II (1975)
• In Tandem (1974) (TV)
  ... aka Movin' On (1974) (TV) (USA: alternative title)
• Seven-Ups, The (1973)
• Kansas City Bomber (1972)
• French Connection, The (1971)
• Moon Zero Two (1969)

All of published charts from the Don Ellis Orchestra are available for sale from the UNC Jazz Press at the University of Northern Colorado: Go here.

• Anti-ergophobia
• The Blues
• Bulgarian Bulge
• Concerto For Trumpet
• The Final Analysis
• Go Back Home
• Good Feelin'
• The Great Divide
• House In The Country
• Indian Lady
• The Magic Bus Ate My Doughnut
• Pussywiggle Stomp
• Rock Odyssey
• Thetis
• Turkish Bath
• Strawberry Soup New!!!

UNC Jazz Press also sells charts by Milcho Leviev and Sam Falzone,

John Vizzusi continues in the fund raising phase for his documentary film "Electric Heart: The Don Ellis Story"

In it he examines the pieces measure by measure to look for rhythmical patterns and relationships. He has some very interesting insights into Ellis' compositional processes.

Until very recently, those interested in experimenting with the ring modulator would have to build their own unit. Craig Anderton's book "Electronic Projects for Musicians" is a good guide. Kits and instructions are available from PAIA Electronics.

Now, a few ring modulators are available for sale. Robert Moog (Inventor of the Moog Synthesizer) has a very nice unit for sale from his new company, Big Briar Inc. It is called the Moogerfooger-102 and the list price is $299 US. I own one of these and it is a blast to mess around with. Don Ellis Lives!

I recently read a review for another ring modulator called the DACS Freque II which has a list price of $1,400. Just a bit out of my price range.

Yet another model called the Blue Ringer V2 Ring Modulator is available from a company called Frostwave

Just thought you might enjoy this personal vignette.
Don was a close friend and much loved. His friendship and love for my daughter (who first met and 'fell in love' with him when she was 6 years old) has always been one of the treasures of our lives. In reading the notes, I was reminded of some comments that made to my daughter the last time we saw him (about 2 days before his death) ... my daughter's favorite albums were 'Haiku' and 'Montreaux' and she queried him about what he had enjoyed the most. Believe it or not, "Haiku" was his favorite album ... and "Children" his favorite cut. He jokingly said that he thought that it had only sold 2 copies and one of them was his personal copy!!!

There is a sometimes rather lively discussion at the Don Ellis Message Board at iMusic

A number of Don Ellis related web sites have appeared recently. Here are the ones I know about:

Todd Fronauer has a very nice Ellis tribute page.

Another page that has some audio and video clips.

John Killoch's Ellis page

Another Ellis page.

A Don Ellis Tribute Page

A Ralph Humphrey Fan Page

John Klemmer's web site

Another John Klemmer biography

Above The Clouds is a band featuring saxophonist Vince Denham

A Milcho Liviev tribute page.

Information about Milcho's new Trio LESENTU.

Montreux Jazz Festival Database: Don Ellis (1977)

A web site on singer Patti Allen who was featured on Ellis' Underground album.

That's all for this time around. Don would have been 67 years old today. Happy birthday, Don.

Email me at donellisnews@scottharris.com

Return to the Don Ellis Newsletter home page.