OlyJazz

This is our 3rd OlyJazz release, the second that is being released to the public for the first time ever! Debuted! This album was recorded by then teenaged and current True Olympian drummer, Jeff Parkhurst (who is currently working on his debut GMR release) when he was a teenager. Jeff couldn’t get in the bar and got a friend’s mom to take his mono Sony cassette deck and mic into the club and set it up by the sound board. Thirty-seven years later, we have the result.  Jeff assures me that none of these great musicians survive and they have no known heirs, so we are releasing this with no permissions whatsoever, as a public service. Any dough that we take in for this will be donated to Oly Jazz Central. Any heirs coming forward and making a claim will be honored appropriately – anywhere from giving them any proceeds to simply taking it down. Our intent was to have this unique histporical artifact unearthed. It is so cool.

Au Privave No. 1 (Charlie Parker)
Our Delight (Tadd Dameron)
Just in Time (Jule Styne, Lyrics – Betty Comden and Adolph Green)
I’ve Got A Crush On You (George Gershwin, Lyrics – Ira Gershwin)
Don’t Get Around Much Anymore (Duke Ellington)
Tenderly (Walter Gross, Lyrics – Jack Lawrence )
Satin Doll (Duke Ellington / Billy Strayhorn, Lyrics – Johnny Mercer)
Prelude To A Kiss (Duke Ellington, Lyrics – Irving Gordon and Irving Mills)
The Preacher (Horace Silver)

1. Au Privave (No.1)
2. Our Delight
3. Just In Time
4. I’ve Got A Crush On You
5. Don’t Get Around Much Any More
6. Tenderly (Summer Me, Winter Me)
7. Satan Doll
8. Prelude to A Kiss (excerpt)
9. The Preacher

Red Kelly – Bass;
Jack Perciful – Piano;
Don Ober – Guitar;
Don Manning – Drums;
Jan Stentz – Vocals;
Chuck Stentz – Tenor Sax and Flute;
Bill Ramsay – Tenor Sax;
Don Smith – Trumpet and Flugelhorn;
Dave McCrary – Trumpet and Flugelhorn;
Davey Tuttle – Trombone

Recorded Live at Red Kelly’s Conservatory of Music Restaurant Club 8/29/1976
Produced by: Jeff Parkhurst, Recorded by: Barb Olendorf on Sony TC-110A Cassette-Corder tape deck with Memorex 90 MRX2 Oxide cassette tape @ 1 7/8 i.p.s.
Mastered by Tom Dyer May 2023

Oly Jazz #7 – Constant Conversation
The second solo album by Olympia jazz master bassist and founding member of 30-year-plus Oly Latin/Jazz band Obrador. Eight originals written between 1980 and 2003, recorded and originally released in 2004. Featuring instrumental quintets, sextets and septets featuring piano, drums, saxophones, trumpet and Steve on string bass. Adventurous writing and arranging, with strong solo work from all members of the band. The music presented in this album is dedicated to all music teachers, especially Anthony “Gump” Marinelli, Jack Perciful, Bert Wilson and Joe Baque.

1. Drop Me A Line
2. Waltz Ellen
3. Bassalope Lope
4. The Two Of Us
5. Nate & Brandi
6. Menagerie
7. Lark Song
8. Relaxed Wanderer

Oly Jazz #5! Get Up and beat the Blues The first solo album by Olympia jazz master bassist and founding member of 30-year-plus Oly Latin/Jazz band Obrador. Seven originals written between 1985 and 2001, recorded and originally released in 2001. With instrumental quintets and sextets featuring piano, drums, saxophones, trumpet and Steve on string bass. The album had been described as a journey from blue to renew.

1. Get Up Blues (a command)
2. Patience
3. The Grin
4. Reticent Love Song
5. Sensei
6. M3
7. Lookout
8. Get Up Blues (a suggestion)

Obrador’s 30+ year highlights include playing several Washington prisons. We played the Walla Walla pen 2 times, McNeil Island, Monroe and the Purdy women’s facility. Those long volunteer travels were full of stories of being inside a very closed environment. Kim McCartney, a student at the The Evergreen State College was doing prison advocacy studies and arranged all of Obrador’s prison visits. Each visit provided stories for all of us. At our McNeil Island federal pen visit, we hauled gear all day. On trucks, on the road, on dock, on ferry, on truck, off truck, upstairs to on stage. We were the first group to play there due to a 2-year lockdown, so they were ready for
an afternoon of Jazz, Funk, Latin and original music. When the curtain came down the prisoners came in and the lights on the crowd turned off. The curtain opened and we couldn’t see a soul in the 800+ crowd, but could hear a very satisfied roar after each tune. You’ll find every kind of guy in prison. I saw a guy that looked like a nerd I knew in high school standing next to a guy that scared you by barely looking in his direction. At Monroe, we saw guys in the 4th row smoking reefer, At Purdy, we hurried to our next tune as fast as we could, due to the heckling cat calls from the crowd. Being in a prison and not being a prisoner was like being in the middle of a National Geographic article.

Paul Hjelm and Michael Olson

January 2026.

1. Kim McCartney Introduction
2. Dedication
3. Cantaloupe Island
4. Um Ah La
5. Black Box
6. Mas Que Nada
7. Foot Prints
8. Passion Dance
9. Win Vidor’s comments on KAOS FM
10. Festival
11. Equinox
12. Impressions
13. Mambo Atrasado
14. Little Sunflower
15. Lady In The Black Hat
16. Blink Samba
17. Festival 2
18. Tough Talk

Obrador:

Tom Russell- Flute and Baritone Sax
Vince Soluna- Tenor Sax
Paul Hjelm- Guitar
Michael Olson- Conga, Percussion
Michael Moore- Piano
Jim Doney- Drums
Doc Doolittle- Bass

Recorded 6/18/1977

Aaron Sonego- Sound and Recording
Produced by Obrador

Mastered by Tom Dyer 2026

Cover shot – Obrador at McNeil Island – you can see the bars on the door!

Oly Jazz #4! We are taking you in the wayback machine to 1981 for Obrador’s debut album, More Odd Jobs. In short – this album is refreshingly excellent – a bunch of young guys deep in their chops who probably don’t yet even know how good they are – the opening volley in a thirty year run for this band. They even feature the immortal saxophonist Bert Wilson on Michael Moore’s “Tierra De Ensueno”. This was pressed up on black vinyl back when and I asked the Obradorians to dig thru their basements – they have come up with 10 sealed copies for you to buy. $15 bucks for your piece of joyful Olympia sonic history and truth. Don’t hesitate.

1. Willow
2. Tierra De Ensueno
3. Sidestream
4. Zaire Freedom Suite
5. Downtown Lacey
6. More Odd Jobs
7. Free Three Mile Island
8. Snakes Bewildered

Previously unreleased! “It’s been nearly 40 years since Obrador pointed a big yellow step van loaded with gear & seven musicians south on Interstate 5. Destination San Francisco, where the group was scheduled for a 30-hour session at Russian Hill Studio. Against all odds, we made it there and back to Olympia without being arrested. On arrival we were welcomed to a well-equipped professional studio and an engineering staff that was probably more fascinated by the Obrador “scene” than particularly enamored of the music. As the first session began, we were confronted with a problem. The engineers had no idea what to do with a String Bass. They had never worked with a Bass Violin and more than a few hours were eaten up trying to get an acceptable sound. Kudos to the Russian Hill staff and bassist Steve Luceno for their diligence. What resulted from 4 or 5 different sessions was 8 original compositions recorded live in the studio. I don’t recall that we did very much overdubbing and several of the pieces were accomplished in one take. Steve Luceno’s beautiful ballad, “Return” was one take at 11:00am after a night of substantial partying over in Berkeley. The music on this recording has been gathering dust in the band archive for decades and only a few of the selections were ever publicly performed. So, this is a rare glimpse into the instrumental repertoire of a band that played together for 30+ years; a band with no commercial potential that endured solely from the love between members and a passion to create a unique sound.” Thanks for listening, Michael Moore.

1. Blink Samba
2. Lady In The Black Hat
3. Nasty Figures
4. Return
5. Suit’s Time
6. Three In One
7. Two Of Us
8. Water Memories

Recorded at Russian Hill Studios San Francisco July 1983
Mixed at ?? Studios Fall 1983
Transferred to digital 2003
Steve Bentley ~ Drums
Paul Hjelm ~ Guitar
Steve Luceno ~ Bass
Michael Moore ~ Piano
Michael Olson ~ Conga/Percussion
Vincent Soluna ~ Sax
Tom Russell ~ Sax, Flute

Engineers ~ Aaron Sonego, Tomas Jones
Producer ~ Carl Cook

OlyJazz #8 – This month we bring you Bert Wilson and Rebirth – “Further Adventures in Jazz” from 1992. This album is basically an augmented five piece groovin’ hard with chops galore. Much more in a mainstream mode than some of Bert’s avant outings with Jeffrey Morgan like Magnetic Fields, it is still a chops-laden tour de force and worthy of your attention. I have been listening as I write this and I say thumbs up!
Ps. Do not fail to note the band in the control room of the alto sax space ship on the cover!

1. Bent
2. Rocky’s Waltz
3. Ionic Implant
4. Lasting Impressions
5. Love Blues
6. A Real Gypsy Word
7. Nancy’s Back
8. Karmic Reflections
9. Happy Pretty
10. Truth

Volume 2 of OlyJazz – Bert Wilson & Art Tantrum’s Magnetic Fields album from 2002. Art Is better known as Jeffrey Morgan, currently residing in Germany – Bert left the planet in 2013. Bert’s catalog is immense, I have only heard a sampling of it, but it is excellent. I particularly like the albums I’ve heard that he did with Jeffrey and I believe this one is a great addition to the OlyJazz Series. In my research for my “Jazz In Olympia” song on the “Olympia: A True Story” album, I came to consider Bert, along with Red Kelly and Obrador, as the linchpin of the Olympia jazz scene. td

Jeffrey: I first met Bert Wilson back in 1976, when I was living in upstate New York. At that time I was attending the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, and his name was unknown to me, but an apparent mutual friend of ours, Michael Moore (of Obrador), mentioned that I should look him up while I was out on the East coast. I started playing Free Music a couple of years earlier, first on the piano, and then the saxophone and trumpet followed soon after, due to my enthusiasm towards the music.

When I decided to give Bert a call, I had asked to take a lesson, and we set an appointment. Upon arriving at his house he started the lesson by interogating me, to see wehat I know about Jazz; to say the least, I failed the quiz miserably. Here was a man, sitting in a wheelchair, coming across with some kind of beatnik air, and played some records he was on from the previous decade: (1966) Sonny Simmons, “Music of the Spheres”; and the (1967 ESP) James Zitro, “Listen.” I sat there a little dumbfounded, thinking to myself, “Who are these guys?”
This first meeting with Berthad an effect on me that I can’t really pinpoint. I never really thought I would cross paths with him again, but it turned out to be one of those Karmic conicidences, that one day in 1978, a cassette of music from Olympia landed in Bert’s mailbox while he was still in upstate New York. One of the selections was a piece entitled “Killer Bees”, one of the rare occasions I sat in with Obrador (Moore, being a member of the band, had sent the tape to Bert). Bert heard there was some good energy coming out of our little corner of Planet Earth (just head up north and take a left…) and decided to move back to the West coast, establishing his new residence in Olympia.
Bert Wilson, to me, is truely a phenomenon. He was born in 1939, but contracted polio at the age of 4, and the doctors never believed he would live to be 20.
However, Bert was atraccted to the Music after seeing Louis Armstrong and Barney Bigard when he was 10, then he discovered Charlie Parker! He took up the clarinet at 13, and the saxophones followed a few years later. Today, he feels his practice on reed instruments saved his life, which is probably true to an extent, and his will to live and play music has kept him healthy and in good spiritis. Over the last 40 years he has developed extended techniques that would normally take lifetimes to crystallize.
The recordings documented here are from my summer 2000 visit to Olympia, where I spent a few days hanging out with Bert at his house playing music. The four pieces represented here I have selected because they show Bert’s mastery on the clarinet, bass clarinet, alto and tenor saxophones respectively.
Who’s Art Tantrum? Well, some people identified him as the village idiot-Savant. He was unable to conform to the system, could not keep a regualr job, much less being able to take care of himself, However, other people in the community looked after him, especially if he lost too much weight.As Art developed his unconvential piano style from early on, many people thought he had studied Ravel, Debussy, Scriabin, and Satie, but he would proclain he was only a product of his time. Jeffrey Morgan – September 2000 – Cologne, Germany.

1. Licorice Launch
2. Propulsion
3. Stalking Into The Stygian Sky
4. Velocity

Bert Wilson – Clarinet, bass clarinet, Alto & Tenor sax, Art Tantrum – Upright piano. Final Mix by Joker Nies.