At 04:56 1/15/2006, you wrote: >pianotune05 wrote: > >>I hear a 68 year old piano on an old recording of a Chicago Blues jazz >>boogie woogie player, Albert Ammons. The piano sounded out of tune. >>I often comment to my wife how some pianos sound out of tune on >>recordings, even in some of the 50s and 60s oldies I 've noticed out of >>tuneness in their pianos as I listened. >>Marshall > > Many many records have out of tune pianos on them, especially in jazz > and blues recordings, and some country-western. I have recordings by the > greats in those fields and the pianos are out of tune, even for the likes > of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Horace Silver, Fats Waller, Otis Spann, et > al., ad nauseam. A lot of them are live recordings in clubs where the > club owner wouldn't spring for a piano tuner, especially for >"low-down" music like blues and jazz, and especially if the artist was >black. But some are in recording studios. If it wasn't "classical," a >lot of times they wouldn't bother to tune the piano. > Things became a little better, but only a little, as jazz began to get > some respect. And probably the artists started insisting on having an > in-tune piano, at least if they had the clout to do so. But even in the > late 70's, I saw Keith Jarrett at the renowned Village Vanguard in New > York and Keith had to come in early with his own tuning hammer to touch > up the tuning because the cheap-ass owner wouldn't pay to have it done. > It's not the recording -- the pianos sound out of tune because they > ARE out of tune. --David Nereson, RPT > Hence the expression, "close enough for jazz."... A different tack is taken here. The jazz orch director is the only director/artiste/faculty person who mentions the piano tuner in the program notes. anon
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