Don Grolnick, Michael Brecker, Bill Frisell, Jeff Watts, Marc Johnson - 7th Ave South, NYC 12/20/85

This is the kind of show you could expect to see at Seventh Avenue South in Greenwich Village in the first half of the 1980s: local jazz giants teaming up in an ad hoc configuration for a couple of shows. Not a touring or recording band, just friends getting together and having fun. Every week I would scan the ads in the Village Voice to see who was playing (the ad for this gig is in the graphic above - misspelling Jeff Watts’ last name). After 7th Ave. So. closed down in 1986, Fat Tuesday’s became the next best thing for current jazz/jazz-rock shows. Don Grolnick is one of those under-the-radar musicians everyone has probably heard (he played on many albums by, among others, Steely Dan, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Carly Simon, as well as with many jazz artists), but is largely unknown outside of the jazz world. He unfortunately passed away at a relatively young age in 1996. To me this was a dream band, as I was heavily into Frisell and Jeff Watts, and Brecker of course was legendary. This was the