Some swingin' playing by Harvey Phillips with Gil Evans

[UncleBeer]

I was surprised to hear how comfortable Harvey sounds on this.

[brianf]

I have heard this but the story is priceless . . .

In 1994 I made my first trip to the Tubaranch along with Arnold Jacobs. Harvey wanted me to stay an extra day to load Windows on his computer. He had an IBM and in those days they had a battle with Microsoft and did not load Windows! It was Harvey Phillips so I had to do the job. Here's the thing - I did not have the installation disks! I had to do a backup from my computer using floppy disks (remember them). I was getting bored to death doing the job then some visitors came to cheer me up - Harvey Phillips AND Arnold Jacobs! I was at Harvey's desk and he decided to play us some of his old recordings. Loading Windows took a lot of time so he played a lot of recordings. Both Arnold and myself were amazed! He got to this recoding and during it Both Arnold and myself looked at each other and our jaws simultaneously dropped! Then Harvey played more of his old recordings the rest of the night.

As a side note, when Harvey asked me to stay an extra day, I told him that I was driving Arnold's car so he had to talk Arnold into this. There was a Tubaranch picnic going on with a keg of beer. In front of Arnold, Harvey yelled "Frederiksen, you don't know how to drink - meet me at the keg." He poured for beers so in front of a lot of people (including Arnold) I chugged down two beers "Harvey style" with him from the top glass to the bottom glass! He quietly told me that he wanted me drunk enough so Arnold would not want me driving his car but sober enough so I wouldn't screw up his computer. We left the next day and Harvey had his computer loaded with Windows.

Since then I have made a lot of trips to the Tubaranch!

[MikeMason]

Tasty and hip playing! An artist that really sounds “one with the horn”. Thanks for sharing.

[UncleBeer]

I have heard this but the story is priceless . . .

Great story, Brian! Thanks.

[bloke]

simply put, Harvey could play.
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digging deeper, possibly Rich Matteson may have pushed Harvey even farther, but Harvey never dropped that ball, either.

[Three Valves]

Innovation without crossing over to the unlistenable.

[UncleBeer]

Innovation without crossing over to the unlistenable.

That's composer John Carisi. He was a fantastic post-bop composer & arranger, and a great trumpet player. I had the good fortune to play dixieland at the Yankee's games with him, '82-'89.

[Jim Williams]

NOTHING Harvey did ever surprised me. I still remember some of the stuff he did in my lessons--and those lessons were 35-40 years ago. I'd be playing some tune and Harvey would stop me, saying something like "now when he got to the bridge, Bob Brookmeyer (or Curtis Fuller, or Hal McKusick) did this..." and then he'd play Brookmeyer's (Fuller's, McKusick's) lick note-for-note in the proper register. Some stuff he used to "toss off" casually at the ranch has also stuck with me.
I'm going down to the ranch soon to deal with some Foundation business. A strange warmth and and unavoidable smile overtake me when I visit.