Phil Woods
I met and hung out with Phil through my teacher Harry Leahey who worked in his famous quintet in the years of 1976 to 1978. Phil and the boys won a Grammy for Live
at the Showboat and did a European and Japan tour. Harry took me to a few band practices, and I was backstage at every show in the Tri-State area. He gained infamy
amongst the jazz crowd by blowing the sax solo on Billy Joels “Just The Way You Are” one of the corniest songs ever written. But he did introduce some of the best examples of BeBop licks in a sappy pop song that ever was pulled off. He got Harry studio gigs with Michael Legrand and Don Sebsky. Phil didn’t help his reputation as a “Bird clone”when he married Charlie Parker’s wife Chan Parker.
Phil was a famed raconteur and as always telling stories about the legends of jazz he hung out with coming up, particularly Al Cohn. He wrote a column in one of the jazz magazines that showed his brilliance as a writer of prose. The stories were incredible and mostly humorous.
Here Are Some Stories:
He invited Elvin Jones to a jazz summer camp he was putting on. During a break Elvin saw someone with a football and started organizing a football game. Everybody was
enthused until they discovered Elvin wanted to play “tackle.” While he was walking around the 52nd street area during Bird's final days. He walked by a club and there was Bird playing a Baritone sax! He had pawned his Alto. Phil immediately offered his and Bird finished the night then thanked Phil because Bird said: “That Baritone Motherf#%*er was killing me” imagine if someone had a tape recorder that night! Bird on Bari! He played with Duke during a European tour and one of Duke's go-to sayings was “Don’t bullshit me, I invented bullshit.” While on the State Department sponsored tour of Iran with Dizzy Gillespie. Phil and some other musicians copped some hash then went under the stage to smoke some. Dizzy appeared and Phil looked around and the other guys had vanished. This was his first one on one non music interaction with Dizzy. Diz looked at the pipe and went on a rant about how Phil was placing the whole tour in jeopardy, and didn’t think about the other musicians' livelihoods. He continued to say that “world peace might be hanging in the balance.” After the rant he said to Phil: “Is it good shit”, then had a couple hits. One time at a club some people were talking loudly for a long time so Phil finally yelled “Shut the f&*k up you assholes”. The band immediately stopped playing thinking he was yelling at them.
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