Richard Twardzik

Today is the birthday of the phenominal jazz pianist, Richard Twardzik. Born 1931 and died in 1955, "If he [Twardzik] had lived, he would probably have changed the whole course of jazz piano," pianist and composer Marc Puricelli, who came of age in the seventies, told Chet Baker biographer James Gavin. Continues Gavin in his bio of the trumpeter: "Twardzik was a forerunner of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, both of whom brought a rich knowledge of classical harmony and an orchestral fullness to the keyboard."

But if Twardzik is remembered at all today, it is as a musician who died of a drug overdose in proximity to a legendary jazz icon, Chet Baker, before he had even turned twenty-five. By the time Twardzik was twenty-one, he had not only recorded and/or played extensively with the likes of Charlie Parker, but had already developed the sizeable heroin addiction that would fell him only a few years later.

Twardzik died while touring with Chet Baker in Paris; he was discovered "blue" and unresponsive in his hotel room in the city's Arab quarter. The full details surrounding his death will probably never be known, but various rumors have resounded down through the years ever since. What was vouchsafed was that someone was with Twardzik at the time, also shooting up, but had fled when it became obvious that the pianist was overdosing. Common wisdom has it that the party was Baker, who was to die an equally mysterious drug-related European death in 1988.

It is fitting that a biography of the pianist, Bouncin' with Bartok: The Incomplete Works of Richard Twardzik , by Jack Chambers, has been published just in time to celebrate what would have been Twardzik's 74th birthday.

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Monsieur Kuro

No one can possibly imagine (um, well, maybe Doris Day could) how much this cat is beloved in our household. He RULES...as well he should. Sooooo beautiful. . .like a living Monet, Manet, Tippi Tippi Dayday. Perhaps his specialness arises out of his feral roots, i.e. he has a vestigial pack mentality and more or less relates to David, myself and Jay as members of his pussycat posse. The way he behaves toward each of us is very different from the other. He is essentially very straightforward, no nonsense with David; rough and tumble with me (he thinks I'm a cat); and, with Jay, very loving and sensuous. Film director Alain Renais is perhaps correct in his belief that the world and the universe are essentially a construct around which the wellbeing and protection of cats revolve.

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Fun-filled fact 'o the Day

DID YOU KNOW that the difference between the amount of oil needed to supply a theoretical U.S. of mostly sensibly-sized vehicles AND an actual one overrun with bloated outsized SUVs is almost exactly equal to the differential between domestic oil supplies and the additional amount of same that is being plundered by the U.S. in Iraq at the present time? Think about it.

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Nancy Drew Lives!

Bill Black

Those who've read my web site page about singer Bill Black might be interested in knowing that this recording will be released in Japan in September. A surprise to me because I didn't really fight very hard for it. Ya never know...

What I DID fight for, however, was to try and understand how a singer---Bill Black---touted by big band poobah George T. Simon as being the next Sinatra could more or less disappear from sight after 1950, essentially never to professionally resurface again.

Nothing that I could come up with was sufficient to explain it: alcoholism, tax and/or draft evasion, sex, drugs. . .? It just didn't add up. At a certain point, I even thought that it might have something to do with a (literal) black "passing" for white. But Bill was so smart he could most likely have navigated those shoals.

After two years of searching, yesterday morning, almost on the point of giving up, I was finally able to make contact with and interview a close friend of Bill's (aka Clay). Soon, I should be able to solve the mystery of the recording. Who plays on it, etc.

The most illuminating (AND SHOCKING) thing he told me explains beyond question why Bill disappears from the "scene" after 1950. In retrospect, I should have guessed. If it had been a snake it would bit me. What Bill's friend said even explains why he "washed up" on the shores of Manhattan a decade later with a new name, Clay Mundey.

"He was attacked by the Mob," Bill's friend said. "He was left on a Los Angeles freeway. And some doctor out in Palm Springs had him stay in his house for about a year. He recuperated. That knocked the stuffing out of him and he changed his name to Clay Mundey at that time because he wanted to get out from under the radar of the Mob. It happened right at the wrong time. Right when the music was changing where it took an extra push for anybody that wanted to make it in the business. You had to have the desire, to have it in your belly, and Clay lost it. He was an exciting guy, one-of-a-kind.

"Did he tell you about his Hollywood days?: Natalie Wood, James Dean and Rock Hudson. He was real good friends with Rock Hudson. They always used to hang out in Palm Springs. Dennis Hopper. He lived in this building and Clay [Bill] was coming down the stairs once and Dennis was coming up the steps, and there was this “Bill Black! Bill Black!” They obviously knew each other. My mouth dropped open. He [Clay] knew Elizabeth Taylor, too."

What befell Bill was very common in the U.S. music industry at one time; especially, immediately after the big bands were breaking up. It happened to nearly every pop singer cut loose from the "protection" the bands afforded. Most chose to cooperate with the Mob, but if you didn't the results could be very very bad...as in Bill's case. The artist would be coerced into signing with an agent who was "in bed with" the mob. The agent would then take a VERY LARGE part of the artist's earnings and pass it on to Vinnie and da boys. It was standard. Few complained.

This aspect of the music business formed a significant part of singer Alan Dale's book, The Spider and the Marionettes. Very much the same thing that happened to Bill also befell at least one other singer, a now very well known vocalist from the same era who was also beat up by the mob for not cooperating. Still known today, apparently, unlike stubborn-by-nature Bill Black, the singer finally accepted the offer he couldn't refuse.