'Live At The Winery, September 6, 1976' is made up of six songs inner-dispersed with Pepper's grateful and sincere stage banter. The disc opens with possibly Art's most passionate reading of the Juan Tizol classic "Caravan". Written for the Duke Ellington orchestra, "Caravan" was composed with a Middle Eastern flavor in mind, but in the hands of Art and local pianist Smith Dobson, it is a samba bullet shot from a Latin jazz gun. Art gives a long introduction before steering into the familiar theme, fighting a guerrilla war for the next ten minutes of exhilarating performance.
Art follows with an angular original composition, "Ophelia" from his 'Living Legend' album, that would show up many more times in his live
performances. Art, always the master of ballads, presents "Here's That Rainy Day"
also from 'Living Legend' and earlier, displaying the complete command of
the form that would reach its pinnacle on the 'Winter Moon' album from 1980.
The band follows with "What Laurie Likes," a blues-funk piece suggesting
Pepper's future masterpiece "Red Car" from his next studio recording. Art closes with his be bop-infused "Straight Life" and "Saratoga Blues" demonstrating that he is a master of that idiom also.
Art Pepper on alto saxophone
Smith Dobson on piano
Jim Nichols on bass
Brad Bilhorn on drums
Smith Dobson on piano
Jim Nichols on bass
Brad Bilhorn on drums
- Caravan
- Talk: Band Intros
- Ophelia
- Here's That Rainy Day
- Talk: About Smith Dobson; Intro to What Laurie Likes
- What Laurie Likes
- Straight Life
- Saratoga Blues
For the freeload, what was the hottest (spicy) thing you have ever eaten?
Chicken Curry with a green chili sauce at a local Thai restaurant. When the waiter asked how hot I asked for eight on a scale of ten. I thought I could handle it because normally I brush my teeth with Sriracha and rinse with Frank's Red Hot. It was probably the last time I threw up.
ReplyDeleteSri Lanka/South Indian style curry.. I'm used to eating spicy food as I live in Thailand, but those curries.., like eating lava, totally destroyed all taste buds, no fun at all. Even my Thai wife couldn't handle that!
ReplyDeleteA old work colleague of mine spent some of his working life out in Asia and tyhe Far East and one of his party tricks was consuming curries as if they were going out of fashion and the hotter the better and he didn't think twice about ordering a Phaal. We were in Solihull in the West Midlands where such dishes originated in a curry house and he offered me the chance to try one and fool me I did. One mouthful.
ReplyDelete5 minutes later I stopped coughing and spluttering, 10 minutes and my eyes stopped streaming and after 15-20 minutes and at least 2 pints of lager later, I began to consume my own milder Malayan Curry not that I tasted it as my teeth felt numb and my taste buds had long since passed out and probably did not revive until the morning. I'm sure the waiters had wry smiles on their faces when they walked past me, well that was until they saw my colleague demolish the dish in no short order without a blink of the eye They seemed very impressed with that and shook his hand when we left.
No idea which chillis were used or where they ranked on the Scoville scale but never, never ever again.
Nothing as good as the above stories. I grew some Taiwan chilis that could make you go blind. But my story is that I decided to make a pan of enchiladas. I was following a recipe. I had all the ingredients except when I got to the part of adding Chili powder I couldn't find any so I substituted ground Cayenne pepper at the same measurement. I served my family and shared with the neighbors. Everyone was crying and grinning. It was hot but it was great and it's still talked about to this day.
ReplyDeleteHad a friend in high school who was trying to raise money for lunch. Southern California. They used to give away free chili peppers. Probably still do. My friend bet a dollar that he could eat 10 chili peppers. He ate 10 and got his dollar. But instead of buying himself lunch he bought a giant soda to try to quench the heat.
ReplyDeleteI lived around the corner from a Thai restaurant for awhile, where you could select the heat level of the food you ordered - 1 through 5 scale, with descriptions as to each level. For years, I ordered food there at the 1 level, and was generally satisfied. One adventurous night, I decided to up my heat level game, and skipped to 3. The woman who co-owned the place tried to talk me out of it, but I insisted and persisited. Bottom line - I couldn't eat it, and the little bit I did ingest felt like I had swallowed molten iron. My stomach was F'ed supremely for over a week. Next time I ventured in the place, I reverted to my 1 level, and the co-owner looked at me, and started laughing.
ReplyDeleteBeva Cafe in Santa Fe, no longer there unfortunately. It was across the street from the bus station. Bean burrito with green chile, (she had a huge vat on the stove), home fries & a little rice, homemade tortillas. We went most days for this meal. We couldn't stay away. Green chile was so hot that we would finish eating, mouths on fire, walk a block up the street, go to Swenson's Ice cream for a cup of ice cream, walk another block to sit on the Plaza eating the ice cream and when finished, our mouths were still en fuego!
ReplyDeleteConsistently the hottest chile in Santa Fe during the mid to late 70's. A tiny, great hole in the wall cafe run by Beva the abuela and her granddaughters were the waitresses.
(Side note I should probably not mention, but, oh well. The next morning in the outhouse with door flung wide to observe the sun rising over the Sangres with a cool breeze on your bottom reminded you of just how hot the chile was.) Thanks Babs
One other tale, but no one could eat it so it may not qualify. When I was in law school, I started to learn how to cook. Got a bunch of red fish filets (this was before Paul Prudhomme started blackening them, so they were dirt cheap) and decided to try my hand at red fish courtbullion. Recipe looked easy enough and I felt confident in my fledgling abilities to handle it. Should have thought harder because I obviously didn't understand the subtle nuance between sprinkling cayene pepper over the top of the filets (which the recipe called for) as oposed to dredging the filets through cayene (which is what I did). When the dish was complete, I decided to sample a bit straight from the pot in which it was cooked. Got the spoon up to my lips, when they pursed and refused to open, while my nostril and moustache hairs simultaneously curled away. Tried all sorts of tricks to try to tame the heat, including adding raw potatoes, diluting the stock with water, and praying to the gods of cooking schools. Nothing worked and I had to toss it before anyone actually ate any of it.
ReplyDeleteA few years back my brother grew a ghost pepper plant that blew my socks off—and I fancied myself a capsicum hardass.
ReplyDeleteI understand there are now hybrids bred from that variety that are more than twice as hot, an unimaginable searing of one's mucous membranes and a place to which I'll not be venturing.
Speaking of heat, thanks for the Pepper, it's wonderful that so-much of his later-career work, especially in live settings, has come out. He is so unfailingly inventive that when he revisits a ballad he might have cut in the 50s, it's a whole new song. Thanks for your generosity and curation, Babs. My iTunes library is much richer due to your efforts.
I make a spicy non-traditional Ratatouille. For heat, I use a few Scotch Bonnets, that I make small slits in, and cook them whole. When the Ratatouille is done, I fish out the Scotch Bonnets, and discard them. One day I forgot to remove them, and while I was eating, I saw a Scotch Bonnet in my bowl, and thought to myself, “How hot could they be at this point?”. Turns out they are still really, really hot! Painfully so…
ReplyDeleteLink
ReplyDeletehttps://we.tl/t-PM9l86AHVS
A spicy delicacy from Soi Sii.
ReplyDeleteGood Spicy: Chicken Vindaloo in London
ReplyDeleteBad Spicy: Too much "After Death" sauce on chicken tacos