Jazz WorkShop 1966

This was my first album. It came about as a result of playing at The Jazz Workshop, the then famous jazz club in San Francisco. It went on to become a strip joint. (Well they always said that jazz was brothel music)

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I was playing on a Monday Night (the off night for Les McCann who had played all the week before). Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer, the owner of SABA Records, Baldhard G. Falk and another person came to see Les, and decided to stay and see me upon learning that Monday was Les's night off. I didn't know who they were, so I was kinda loose and having a lot of fun. Besides, the house was light.

The year was 1966. At that time I was studying at The San Francisco Conservatory Of Music. They approached me at the break and asked me if I'd like to record an album. Needless to say, I was in a state of shock. Baldhard asked me to give him a call at his office. As fate would have it, I made an appointment, went to see him, and signed an agreement to record one LP for SABA records.

Without a doubt this is the worst record I've ever made. I was quite nervous and had been studying John Coltrane. For some reason I thought all I had to do was play the head of a tune real nice and then proceed to rattle off myriads of notes at high velocity. This did not make for a pleasing result, but it was all I knew. Actually I have tapes that predate this LP that are far superior, because I was relaxed and not in a studio environment.

The record took six hours to record. We did three tunes a day in three hours. On the record was a young bass player named John Heard (I grabbed him after he left John Hendricks) whom I worked with for many years.