BN-LA-258-G

Dom Minasi - When Joanna Loved Me

Released - 1974

Recording and Session Information

A&R Studios, NYC, March 19, 20 & 21, 1974
Peter Dimitriades, Paul Winter, violin; Seymour Berman, Harry Zaratzian, viola; Seymour Barab, Kermit Moore, cello; Eugene Bianco, harp; Don Minasi, guitar, arranger; Garry Newman, bass; Bud Nealy, drums, percussion; Joseph Daddiego, congas, percussion; Wade Marcus, string arranger, conductor.

14033 Spinning Wheel
14034 When Joanna Loved Me
14035 On Green Dolphin Street
14036 With A Little Help From My Friends
14037 What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life
14038 I'll Only Miss Her

Track Listing

Side One
Title	Author	Recording Date
Spinning Wheel	D.C. Thomas	March 19,20,21 1974
When Joanna Loved Me	J. Segal-R.Wells	March 19,20,21 1974
On Green Dolphin Street	B. Kaper-N. Washington	March 19,20,21 1974
Side Two
With A Little Help From My Friends	J. Lennon/P. McCartney	March 19,20,21 1974
What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life	A. Bergman/M. Bergman/M. Legrand	March 19,20,21 1974
I'll Only Miss Her (When I Think Of Her)	J. Van Heusen/S. Cahn	March 19,20,21 1974

Liner Notes

Part of a writer's stock in trade - and part of his vanity - is in being very hip. We like to be uniquely ahead of what's happening, even to fancy ourselves as privy to secrets at the source and able to predict the course of legend. Then, just to keep us all humble, the illusion of omniscience is shattered by the kind of surprise which I found and which awaits you in the astonishing grooves of this, Dom Minasi's first Blue Note album.

Hence it is far from easy to present an adequate perspective on this extraordinary stranger who arrives herewith, or on the quality of the music he plays. What Dom Minasi does is catch you unaware, with distinctive subtlety and an irreproachable authority. He reminds you that there hasn't been anyone playing quite so much unadorned honest sax since that sad day in 1968 when Wes Montgomery left. And he will remind you of Wes; indeed, it is not an overstatement to place Dom Minasi in the rarest lineage of the guitar, the line extending from Django Reinhardt through Charlie Christian to Wes — and now, Dom.

I say that this can surprise you, as it surprised me. We have become accustomed to the electronic guitar — as opposed to the electric guitar — fuzzed and wah-wah'd into a reiterative expression of an exotic technology. We just don't expect the straight tone and technique of the purist, although no one reveals more of himself musically. Dom Minasi is that candid, that straight, that assured, and he has the gifts to make it work.

But perhaps these virtues will also explain why I think that When Joanna Loved Me is likely to be the big jazz sleeper of the year. And why Dom Minasi has had to struggle to make it. He is thirty and you know very well he didn't acquire his chops yesterday.

He was four years old when he wheedled his first guitar from a willing parent, and what all of this means is that he has been headed directly toward your ear for the better part of twenty-six tough years. Dom is from Brooklyn, where, according to his landsman Lewis McMillan, he worked days in a pants factory, going home to "soak his swollen hands just so he would be able to play somewhere that night."

He had some band gigs, notably with Buddy Rich and Les Elgart, and the common hassles with club managers who expected him to give the customers "the usual commercial garbage." So his is the classic, even harrowing, example of dedication to an inner determined ideal, and by no means an unusual back story of an important, emerging artist. Such careers are often subject to obstacles in time and circumstance, in what seems almost a metaphysical compression of character and artistry. Arrival comes with a whoosh—as abundantly illustrated by the resources and definition of Dom's debut LP.

It is my feeling that When Joanna Loved Me is the start of a very big and singular jazz reputation — the polls and the charts and critical discovery. At that point, dues-paying ceases to have meaning, having been the penalty rather than the price. It is his virtuosity and his musicianship which place Dom Minasi at once in the first rank of jazz guitarists.

With him on his album, Dom has fine sidepeople and sensitive production. The structuring of "On Green Dolphin Street," with strings arranged and conducted by Wade Marcus, must reinforce an inevitable comparison to the Wes Montgomery-Oliver Nelson creative collaborations. I would also single out bassist Garry Newman, who is given room to stretch his own considerable talents.

Finally, to those who are of a mind to hurry forth to spraypaint "Wes Lives" on neighborhood walls, that isn't the message at all. What this album proves, rather, is that genius lives; and the message should read: Dig Dom! Wes wouldn't mind at all.

Leonard Brown