Jim Reider?

[connosax]

Just listening to my old Mulligan big band LP's--what the hell
happened to Jim
Reider, tenor player with the band? Never heard anything about him
since. What a great sounding player...

[TEP251Sax]

Jim is from my home town, Reading .Pa.
In the 50's..Reading produced a bunch
of great jazz saxophonists.Jim Reider was one of them.
Jim studied with,as most including Gerry Mulligan....Mr Sam Correnti.Who was
an old vaudville/big band sax-cla-flute man.
The others included Gary Klein..who was
with Woody, and Dick Hafer who held the
chair on the Merv Griffin show,as well as bands like Woody,Barnet, Nat Pierce
and the historic Mingus dates like "Black Saint and the Sinner Lady".
Years later the same city procuced the innonvative and very original young man
named...PETER PONZOL.
Jim Reider had a certain harder side of Prez thing IMHO, very on the beat
swing,
and a real blower.He played hard.
The records he did w/Mulligan were
classics...sadly Jim was found dead from an overdose in the 60's.He had a
brother that played trumpet that was good to named Skip. Skip ran the family
construction biz and played gigs on and off.
AS a kid, I played with Skip a lot and
thru Mr Correnti learned about these guys.
Mr Correnti hipped me to Frank Teschmaker,Prez, Benny, Getz, Mulligan
etc..after that I was so inspired I bought records every week.lol-
I heard Jim Reider as a kid, at a session at "The Eks Club".Most of those
guys..were either using White Brillharts
or Tonalin Brills. LaVoz was the tenor reed of choice then, as I spoke to Jim
and he told me in no uncertain terms, "switch to a LaVoz kid"....they're
better.
Jim had something special...if you listen to those records...this guy was very
internalized...lika pre-Rich Perry or that kinda concept. The stuff was from
another sound side of tenor, but the time was HOT.
( I only used Rich cuz hes a easy example..NOT...that theres ANY
similarish...just a ref point ...I could say like a hard Warne Marsh sound
to...I guess..)
Those guys all worshiped- ZOOT.
ZOOT....was a god around here.I remember as a kid, buying Zoot Sims sides
without any problem. They were in dept stores and in the places my mom took me
to in Philly to record shop.
I wish Jim recorded with Hafer in a studio,
cuz it coulda been hip. Hafer is an unabashed kicker and blower...great english
horn player to :)
So..there's a lil' bit about an unsung guy who SHOULD be dug by ppl.....
As I say before...ALL THE ANSWERS ARE ON RECORDS.
Hope this helps- Jim was a big inspiration to me a a high school kid.....down
to the white brill and ray bans-hahahahaha-
Jim also hipped me to Billy Root but thaz another story, Tim Price