Volume 12 takes us back to the early days. Jeff Machota recently received several tapes from pianist Joan Hickey, including this gem of her playing with Ron Dewar in a quintet setting. We don’t know much about the lineage of the recording, but it sounds pretty good for being 35 
years old!
Thanks for the tapes, Joan!
Ron Dewar Quintet – August 27, 1980 (Nature’s Table Archive Vol 12)
Ron Dewar Quintet
Live at Nature’s Table
Urbana, Illinois
August 27, 1980
Source: Unknown cassette recorder/mics > unknown cassette generation >
Maxell UD-90 cassette > WAV > FLAC8
Mixing/EQ done on source tape: None
Recorded by Unknown
From the collection of Joan Hickey
Digital transfer by Jeff Machota
FLAC conversion, mixing/EQ and upload by Sean Kutzko
The Band:
Ron Dewar – Sax
Lin Halliday – Sax
Joan Hickey – Piano
Marlene Rosenberg – Bass
Mike Friedman – Drums
(Total Time = 94:02)
01: Woody N’ You (9:29)
02: Like Someone In Love (9:00)
03: Banter1 (0:19)
04: Summertime (7:01)
05: Trane’s Blues (15:07)
06: Pent-up House (11:50) [tape flip at 5:50]
07: Walkin’ (7:43)
08: Valse Hot (7:58)
09: How Deep Is The Ocean (14:44)
10: After You’ve Gone (10:27)
Haven’t had a chance to listen to this yet but looking at the tunes and personnel I think the tape has one of two possible origins. Terry and the gang were in the habit of taping things regularly that summer on cassette, setting up with mics and running it through a quality machine. The other possibility is this: Some reel-to-reel taping was done that summer too, though I don’t know exactly who was responsible. At one point around 1986 when I was working at Figaro’s, Morgan Usadel had in his possession a couple of reel-to-reel tapes but didn’t have the machinery at that point to listen or copy. We gave the tapes to a guy we knew who came into the store regularly — it was actually former history prof of mine named Robert McColley who was a big classical guy — and he took them home and transferred them to cassette for us. I have those tapes somewhere but am not sure without looking whether those are the same performances as these, though the personnel is definitely similar — Ron, Lin, Joan, etc.
Hi Mark-
Great info; thanks. Obviously we would be interested in those tapes if you can find them and you’d like to share them. Drop Jeff Machota or myself a note.
Sean