Gillian Hills

Top: Beat Girl, classic UK bad girl flick, Demons Of The Mind: her film swansong.

With Jane Birkin, In Blow-Up

Gillian Hills was born in Cairo, Egypt, in 1944 to English parents, she was raised in Paris where she was discovered by, but of course, Roger Vadim, who obviously spotted her resemblance to Brigitte Bardot, his first real meal ticket (he'd go on to discover Jane Fonda and Catherine Deneuve). After landing a small part in Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses (starring Jeanne Moreau) she began a second career, cutting records in what's now called the Ye-Ye Girl style and later recorded some U.K. style pop in the style of Marianne Faithful/Lulu/Cilla Black, etc. including this one which I like quite a bit-- Tomorrow Is Another Day which appeared on Barclay in '65. .
Her real career was as an actress where she made a huge impression with her second movie (and first English language flick) Beat Girl where she plays a spoiled, delinquent, brat with a pout that rivals Bardot. She later showed up in two classic and ground breaking three way sex scenes, the first in Antonioni's Blow Up (1966) where she appears with Jane Birkin, the other in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971), she's the girl with the Popsicle that droogie Alex picks up in the record store along with her pal. Most of her acting work was in France, or on U.K. television, although she put in a memorable appearence in the cheesy horror flick Demons Of The Mind (1972), one of her last roles.
She gave up acting in 1975, moved to New York City and started her third career, this time as a book illustrator. Still, Beat Girl, remains along with Val Guest's Expresso Bongo (1959) one of my favorite British rock'n'roll flicks, and I can't imagine anyone else in the title role, she was perfect. Whatever she's doing today, I hope Gillian Hills is having a great time.

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Tony Fruscella

Tony Fruscella, a name from the sharkskin underground of the 1950's. Born in 1927, he was raised in a nun's orphanage in New Jersey. Little Tony was given a trumpet at age fifteen and supposedly played at Carnegie Hall the same year as part of a concert for gifted classical students. He was drafted into the U.S. Army at age eighteen upon his discharge he headed for New York City, and a career in jazz. In the early fifties he worked with Lester Young, Stan Getz, and Gerry Mulligan (appearing with Mulligan at Newport in '54).
He led his own band at Open Door, a club on the south side of Washington Square Park, playing in a style that marked the middle point between be-bop and the coming sound of "cool" as embodied by Miles Davis around the same time. Is hard bop still a word? This is, well, not soft bop, but certainly soft focus bop. Jazz always had too many hyphens anyway. Fruscella's not always skillful playing is something of a precursor to Chet Baker and other west coast musicians who would rise to jazz stardom at the end of the fifties.
As a leader Fruscella recorded for tiny labels like Century (1948), Xanadu (1952) and cut his an LP for Atlantic in '55 (maybe the rarest LP on the label). Then there's this live set, from the aforementioned Open Door, recorded in '53, originally issued on the Spotlight label in the early 70's. The vibe of this late night recording is incredible. You can actually hear him nod off (and bang the bell of his horn into the microphone) at one point. The chatter from the stage leaves little to the imagination, there's some dope action going on, which provides the aural subtext for A Night At The Open Door which this LP is titled. This could be the soundtrack to Sweet Smell Of Success

if it starred Sonny Tufts and Vic Tayback instead of Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster.

Yet Fruscella was more than a white boy trying to be a hepster jazz man, his playing shows real sensitivity and depth. His take on the standard Lover Man is classic, and moving. One of the few versions to reference Charlie Parker's mid-nervous breakdown

recording of the same number. From the set starter Bernie's Tune (a Lieber-Stoller number), the Diz/Bird exotica classic A Night In Tunisia, Lester Young's Blue Lester, Monk's Hackensack and the standard Imagination are the highlights, there's also a nice reading of Jackie McClean's Donna and a very bluesy, extended stab at Sometimes I'm Happy. The other musicians are fairly obscure-- Brew Moore-- tenor sax (who I've never heard of but does a pretty good impression of later day Lester Young on Sometimes I'm Happy), Bill Triglia-- piano, Teddy Kotnick-- bass and Art Mardigan-- drums. They're competent enough, but Fruscella is certainly the star of the show. By the end of the fifties Fruscella's dope habit and alcoholism had ended his career in music, he would die in 1969 from a cardiac arrest and cirrhosis of the liver.
Fruscella was not a genius, he was not Bird or Miles, but for one hour, one night in '53, up there on the bandstand, somewhere between a nod and rush, he captured some magic, and this record remains, for me, more than just a curiosity of narcotica-ephemera, it's actually one of my favorite jazz albums of that era, and I probably listen to it more than really great jazz records (i.e. I can't remember the last time I played an Ornette Coleman record, and I've got at least a dozen of them), which may say more about me than Tony Fruscella. Bob Quine turned me onto this one very early on in our friendship, when I was still trying to develop an ear for jazz, he certainly understood my taste (or lack there of). While it may not be Kind Of Blue, Tony Fruscella- A Night At The Open Door has an allure all it's own that has little to do with musical innovation, it has a soul that is unique, and that makes it something special.

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Orson Welles- It's All True

If you've never seen the footage from Orson Welles' lost South American movie,

It's All True this footage is a must see. RKO pulled the plug when they found out that Welles was shooting mostly native fishermen and black samba clubs in the favela, a part of Brazil neither RKO nor the Brazilian government much wanted publicized. I bring up the subject only because I finally finished reading Orson Welles:Hello Americans (Simon Callow, Viking, 1997), the second volume of what will eventually be a three part biography of the Welles, and as good a book on the subject as we're likely to ever see. This volume begins with the filming of the Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and ends after his 1948 screen version of Macbeth. Despite taking in only six years of his career, it's quite a read. It's been sitting in the pile of unread books for almost a decade, now that I've finally gotten around to reading it I had to go back and look at this footage again, discovered in the early 90's and lovingly re-assembled by Bill Krohn and Myron Meisel, I remember TCM running it in 1993, it might have even played the at the Film Forum here in NYC if I remember correctly. Another example of what could have been. Also worth keeping an eye out for is F Is For Fake, Welles' 1974 documentary about art forger Elmyr and scam artist Clifford Irving (who faked Howard Hughes' autobiography), it's in regular rotation on the Ovation channel, your best bet is to tape it so you can fast forward through the longest and worst commercials in TV history.

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Gillian's Found Photo #20

Even I'm at a loss for comment about the Fang's contribution this week. A masked debutante Satanist ball? The hand signals alone seem to point in that direction. Who are these women and what are they doing? Who dressed them like that and why? And what is that gesture they're making with their right paws? Year and place unknown, but I can't help but notice that my birthday, May 23rd is on the board in the back for a scheduled assembly. Perhaps they were gathered together to herald my coming to earth? Rather unlikely. Then again May 24 is also on the schedule, birthday of both Bob Dylan and Sun Ra, maybe it's a birthday party for the both of them....

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Coleman Hawkins and Thelonious Monk: Oct. 1944

Coleman Hawkins, whose 1939 version of Body and Soul would forever define the sound of the tenor saxophone, not only in jazz but in all music, is one of the most profoundly important musicians of the 20th century. And one of the most rightly heralded, he even got his own stamp.
But in the conventional wisdom that is often the lie that becomes truth, most especially in telling the story of American music, he is often remembered as a traditionalist. As the star of the Fletcher Henderson band, we hear the sad tale of his replacement-- Lester Young. Henderson's wife would constantly play Hawkins records whenever Prez was around, in hopes that Prez would start to play more like Hawkins (aka Bean). Hawkins played with a fat tone, plenty of vibrato, and a gutsy sound. Lester Young of course founded his own school of playing, with a light, vibrato-less tone, in the airy upper register he often sounded like he was playing an alto sax, and soon Henderson shipped his ass back to Kansas City where he could play the way he liked as the star of the up and coming Count Basie band. This has little to do with Hawkins himself, who was always a forward looking (and playing) musician, and if he never bothered attempting to use Lester Young's harmonic innovations in his own playing, he certainly appreciated them. He once burned out the motor of a brand new car to make a jam session with Young that was hundreds of miles away. Hawkins did use the innovations of musicians who would come in Young (and Art Tatum's) wake to create what would be called be-bop. In fact, the very first session that employed these young "bop" musicians would be recorded under Hawkins guise. On Feb. 16, 1944 Hawkins cut a session for the Apollo label using Dizzie Gillespie, Leo Parker and Max Roach, it would be the first waxing of the new music that would cause such a rift in the jazz world. Eight months later (Oct. 11, 1944), Bean who was then working on 52nd St. brought his small band in the studio for the Joe Davis label to cut four tunes. It would be the first session for the already legendary pianist and composer Thelonious Monk who played piano on these sides along with Edward Robinson on bass and Denzil Best on drums. These four tunes, sometimes used to fill out various Prestige compilation CD's, are in my mind one of the greatest jazz sessions of the era, a pivotal moment where through the music the listener can look (or hear) the future of jazz, or just kick back and say-- "How come music doesn't sound this good anymore"?
Monk was already well known amongst fellow musicians, holding down the piano chair at the jam sessions at Mintons (see the Charlie Christian posting), and his songs were beginning to make the rounds, but he was considered too weird, too eccentric for listeners to get, and work was hard to come by for the young Monk. Coleman Hawkins recognized his talents and hired him for his first downtown gig on 52nd Street. And brought him into the studio for the session that is our subject for today.
The most striking thing about these recordings are how much Monk sounds, well, just like Monk. His style is fully developed, listen to the intro on Drifting On A Reed, it could have been recorded at virtually any time in Monk's career, he emerged with his style fully formed (there are many musicians, to this day, who think Monk was a crappy pianist, including my pal Mathew Shipp, one of the finest players in the world today, who once told me he couldn't stand to hear Monk play piano). On the same tune we hear Hawkins incorporate the new ideas into his sound with an ease that is hard to describe. He never changed his style either, but he never stopped growing, he had huge ears, he could take inspiration for anywhere, and he had huge ideas, and the talent to turn them into jazz. Flying Hawk, the only uptempo number recorded, gives Monk plenty of space. On The Bean catches Hawkins in a swinging mood, he gives Monk a short solo in the middle eight, and responds to Monk's quirkish chording with authority and ease. Recollections, a ballad, captures everything Hawkins did best, his lyricism, his soulfulness, and his technique (the double stop triplets on the first solo) all come together for a two and half minute piece of mood sculpture, I can just imagine coming in out of the rain and fog to a half empty club on 52nd St. to be met with that sound wafting through the doorway, as if to say-- you're in the right place. 52nd St isn't there anymore. Well, there's a 52nd St, but every building that housed a jazz joint has been bulldozed and replaced by ugly, modern high rise office buildings and hotels.
Coleman Hawkins and Thelonious Monk are long gone, no one could ever replace them.
And jazz, like R&B and rock'n'roll is something that used to be great, it exists, but modern audiences are too dumb to understand it, too lazy to develop on ear for it. It's safe to say the best of it it is long gone, and we'll never see anything like what happened in American music in the 2oth Century again....

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