The Magnificent Terry Gibbs and Terry Pollard Show

Terry and Terry on the Steve Allen Tonight Show
In 2009, Terry Joan Pollard died right here in New York City to little or no fanfare. I wrote a whole piece about her on another blog and got nice comments from her brother and bassist Bill Crow. I don't know how many people even knew who she was, but to me she was one of the most talented jazz personalities I ever saw in person and later on the old Steve Allen Tonight Show. Not only was Terry Pollard a top-notch jazz pianist BUT she could also play the vibes. She not only played the vibes but she was as virtuosic a vibes player as any other vibes player I ever saw bar none, and that includes the greatest of the vibes players, Lionel Hampton. As a young man just entering college, I first heard Terry P. on a Terry Gibbs Emarcy LP called Seven Come Eleven. I had already been fascinated by Terry Gibbs's work on the Bethlehem label with the amazing Don Elliott one of the only mellophone players I've ever heard of in jazz then, since, or now. So I expected the liveliest best out of Terry Gibbs, but what a surprise I got when I first saw her photograph on the LP, she was one excitingly pretty and alluring woman, but then when I heard her piano playing, I mean I busted into a long WOW, groovy, and all that cat jazz jive in praise of her. I mean she had no trouble on that LP matching Gibbs's fiery playing, keeping perfect time with him, hitting the ones from the top down with him especially on his blazing version of the old Benny Goodman vehicle "Seven Come Eleven."

How surprised was I to only recently discover Terry Gibbs's Website. To find that T.G. up until January of this year was still performing. But then, how delightfully surprised was I to scroll down the Website and come across Terry's tribute to Terry Joan Pollard by showing a YouTube of Terry and Terry performing on an old 1956 Steve Allen Tonight Show. First they do "Gibberish," then Terry P. gets up off the piano bench and joins Terry G. at the vibes for a wild ride version of Bird's "Now's the Time." You just don't hear jazz played this way anymore. So dig this 5 minutes of jazz ecstasy with Terry G. and Terry P. They are backed by Jerry Segal on drums and Herman Wright on bass--and on "Now's the Time" Steve Allen's at the piano. [I had the privilege of knowing and working with Jerry Segal's son, Jerry, in the 1970s.]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8z6fwq4ZSE

An Old Jazz Cat
for The Daddy O'Daily