🎷 AotW: CTI Dave Frishberg: Oklahoma Toad (CTI Records CTI 1004)

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1673319086453.pngDave Frishberg: Oklahoma Toad

CTI Records CTI 1004
Released 1970
  • A1 - One Horse Town 3:25
  • A2 - Van Lingle Mungo 2:45
  • A3 - The Secret Of Success 2:30
  • A4 - Oklahoma Toad 3:30
  • A5 - The Prophet Of Doom 3:40
  • B1 - Rocky Mountain Water 2:55
  • B2 - You Can't Go 2:25
  • B3 - Wallflower Lonely, Cornflower Blue 2:23
  • B4 - Nasty Nasty Habit 2:25
  • B5 - I Don't Believe You 4:43
Baritone Saxophone – Sol Schlinger
Bass – Russell George
Design [Album] – Tony Lane (2)
Drums – Herb Lovelle*
Engineer – Larry Schnapf, Warren Schatz
Guitar – Stuart Scharf
Photography By [Courtesy Of] – The Museum Of Natural History
Producer – David Rosner, Margo Guryan
Recorded By [Re-recorded], Mastered By – Rudy Van Gelder
Tenor Saxophone – Al Cohn
Trombone – Garnett Brown
Trumpet, Flugelhorn – Bill Berry
Vocals, Piano, Organ, Electric Piano, Clavinet – Dave Frishberg
Written and Arranged By – Dave Frishberg


Amazon product ASIN B008UHFPAA




 
This album is an oddball--it was not produced by Creed Taylor, not recorded at Van Gelder's, and has no CTI personnel in the credits. Not quite sure why CTI would release this one--it would be interesting to hear the back story behind it. As it is, the 1000-series was short lived and had some unusual musical choices.
 
I remember an Obama White House event where "My Attorney Bernie" was performed, but I don't recall who the singer that night was (it may have been Dave)..
 
This album is an oddball--it was not produced by Creed Taylor, not recorded at Van Gelder's, and has no CTI personnel in the credits. Not quite sure why CTI would release this one--it would be interesting to hear the back story behind it. As it is, the 1000-series was short lived and had some unusual musical choices.
Yeah. Just not my musical cup of tea -- and that it's a CTI makes it even more disappointing.
 
Yeah. Just not my musical cup of tea -- and that it's a CTI makes it even more disappointing.
It seems as though this album was more like a favor to Frishberg, and/or intended as a one-off, as there's nothing this record has in common with the others beyond the logo. There are other, later CTI records which Taylor didn't produce, yet they still sound like CTI/Kudu productions.

Thankfully there is only one more in the 1000 series before we get to the meat of CTI's catalog with the 6000 series. (And we can skip the first release of the 6000 series as it was a reissue of Crying Song, only a year after its 1000 series release.)
 
It seems as though this album was more like a favor to Frishberg, and/or intended as a one-off, as there's nothing this record has in common with the others beyond the logo.
Agreed and not unlike the Butler LP, which I also thought was a favour / payback / debt collection / you name it endeavour.
 
Agreed and not unlike the Butler LP, which I also thought was a favour / payback / debt collection / you name it endeavour.
And like the Butler record, I'm surprised A&M didn't release this record instead--Frishberg would work with the new T.J.B. only a few years later.
 
This album is an oddball--it was not produced by Creed Taylor, not recorded at Van Gelder's, and has no CTI personnel in the credits. Not quite sure why CTI would release this one--it would be interesting to hear the back story behind it. As it is, the 1000-series was short lived and had some unusual musical choices.
There is whole story behind this, and it's a cracker. Margo Guryan had been Creed's assistant a decade or so earlier, she'd attend two of the three Lenox School of Jazz and had hung out with a young Freddie Hubbard and J. J. Johnson. She wrote tracks for the schools performances etc . and went to work for MJQ John Lewis and from there to Creed.It's alleged she help design the Impulse! logo, thats false.

Much later she met David Rosner who was then Elton Johns manager in the USA... together they had Dave, a good friend who'd been friends with Margo's first husband Bob Brookmeyer ... long story short, when Creed was setting up CTI after leaving A&M he needed titles, no one else would put out the Frishberg album, Creed agreed. There are two different mixes of this album the original, and the CTI one. The CTI vinyl version has, you guessed it, strings where the original does not. The CTI released version was re-engineered and overdubbed by Rudy Van Gelder at his studios in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

If you listen to the Frishberg album on streaming, it's probably the original Daramus/Rosner/Guryan mix.

Rosner went on to become quite a powerhouse in music publishing; Elton John... enough said; Margo mostly disappeared until she was "Discovered" in the 90's. Margo passed away in November 2021 which was when I wrote this and put together a mix of Margo's work.

 
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