One Year Later

It's been a year since Sid passed away. It has been a wonderful opportunity for me to keep this blog up and running for him.

It's still hard to get songs up on the blog that featured him as a drummer. Here's a fun link to Allen Eager's "Perdido," except it's just a 30 second bit.

Found this interesting piece about Maynard Ferguson and Sid:

By way of background, with close friend tenor saxophonist Willie Maiden as his partner, Maynard used the steady studio gig at Paramount as a means of bankrolling a library of big band arrangements. Both were twenty-six years old in 1955 when they began building a library with arrangements that could be adapted to different set ups for the traditional big band. Funding some arrangements was one thing, but they lacked the necessary financing to put together a band to actually play them.

Until, that is, “Fate” in the form of Maynard’s friend, drummer Sid Bulkin, intervened. As Primack tells it in his Mosaic insert notes:

“… Sid Bulkin met with Birdland owner Morris Levy and Vik Records A&R man Jack Lewis. Levy and Lewis were looking for someone to briefly front a Birdland Dream Band, and Bulkin successfully served as Maynard’s intermediary.”

When Ferguson went to New York in 1956 to meet with Levy and Lewis, his big band book consisted of arrangements by Jazz’s best: Manny Albam, Jimmy Giuffre, Bill Holman, Willie Maiden, Johnny Mandel, Marty Paich and Ernie Wilkins. Once in New York, he would add charts by Al Cohn.

With a book like this, it’s no wonder that Levy and Lewis agreed to put up the money for a Birdland Dream Band that was to initially include:

Trumpets: Maynard [and valve trombone], Al DeRisi, Nick Travis and Joe FerranteTrombones: Jimmy Cleveland, Sonny Russo [or Eddie Bert]Alto Sax: Herb Geller Tenor Sax: Al Cohn and Budd JohnsonBaritone Sax: Ernie WilkinsPiano: Hank
Jones; Bass: Milt Hinton; Drums: Jimmy Campbell [or Don Lamond].

Pretty cool, my uncle Sid!