Stan Levey

Hey everybody,

Here's some great footage of the highly underrated Bebop drummer, Stan Levey.

I find Mr. Levey especially helpful in terms of playing fast tempos because his comping always hits interesting parts of the bar yet isn't as "blatantly virtuosic" as say, Max Roach or Tony Williams. Some great recordings he's on are Victor Feldman's "The Arrival of Victor Feldman", Dizzy Gillespie's "For Musicians Only", and his own "This Time the Drum's on Me". (Although I just found it on iTunes and it was called "& Stan Levey" and was under Dexter Gordon's name.)

It's interesting, a lot of the musicians categorized as "West Coast" said that it was more of a marketing ploy than an actual style. Certainly if a kind of jazz could be labeled "cool" the music Lennie Tristano and his disciples ( all New Yorkers) were making is probably closer to that. Not that any of that matters. It's all great music.

Thanks,

T.