Talk:Tommy Turk

Untitled
I found only a little on him and that wasn't easy. I feel like I should have another source to confirm his being killed, but I found no obituary of him online.--T. Anthony (talk) 00:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Okay another source corroborates the shooting, but they differ on whether it was a bar or a drugstore. Still it sounds like his being shot to death is true even if it's a little fuzzy on detail.--T. Anthony (talk) 00:38, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Tommy Turk is a somewhat mysterious figure, even though he enjoyed a lot of public exposure for a brief period, probably owing to his association with Jazz at the Philharmonic. Good work finding those sources. Even there, there are problems. One of your references says he was murdered in the late Seventies! Can't say I can offer any help resolving that conflict with the death year of 1981. I did expand and clarify a little. His "Tommy Turk and His Orchestra" was clearly assembled briefly only for recording purposes. Not mentioning that might have misled some people to think it was a regularly performing band. If it had been, Turk would be a lot less obscure now. --Alan W (talk) 04:28, 27 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I see. I thought I'd heard a fair amount about him once, but I might be thinking of the actor Tommy Kirk. I found what I could, but I thank you for improving it more.--T. Anthony (talk) 06:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Death
I've added the grim details of his death, from newspaper sources. EddieHugh (talk) 23:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Unreleased recordings
The story on Turk's unreleased 1949 recordings (I see the reference was deleted, which I can accept, given the futility of WP edit wars) is that bootleg tapes have circulated for decades among jazz trombonists. I got them about 35 years ago from my trombone teacher, a jazz educator and founder of the International Trombone Association. When I later mentioned them to a well-known Boston-based jazz trombonist, he told me that at one time, he possessed the original session tapes. However, he lent them to a jazz DJ at WBUR-FM, who never returned them. I can cite other jazz trombone historians who are aware of these recordings, but I doubt there's a foolproof way of tracing their provenance. If you listen to the tracks, they're clearly Tommy Turk -- compare with his published work such as The Truth, and the identity is fairly cut-and-dried. But I'd be hard-pressed to come up with proof that meets a strict interpretation of the WP reliability guidelines. If the link has to go, so be it, but I thought it worth discussing where the recordings came from and why I felt they were reliable and notable enough to be referenced in this article... Actually, I went back to an obituary in the November, 1981 issue of JazzTimes by Gerry Sloan, which mentions "Tommy Turk - Untitled (four one-of-a-kind discs, three 12" and one 10", made from Tommy's private tapes - in the collection of John E. McDade," whose address is given. It seems likely that these are the recordings in question. That's probably the best I can do, for provenance. If you want to discuss offline, feel free to drop me an email. --info@kafalas.com (talk) 16:30, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
 * I don't doubt the above; however, we still need reliable sources, as described at WP:RS. And is there any value in saying 'some private/bootleg recordings exist; they haven't been released'? It's not really telling the reader much, and is a common assertion for a jazz musician. EddieHugh (talk) 16:48, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Understood. I can state with a high degree of confidence that these recordings are legit -- in the world of modern jazz trombone (not a huge group of people!), the recordings are somewhat well known. But I don't think there's a way to meet the WP:RS rules. So your deletion will have to stand. It's a shame -- Tommy Turk is little-remembered, and when he is, it's usually for those awful JATP cuts, because they're the only recordings most people have heard.  Even knowledgeable jazz writers, such as Brian Priestly, in his liner notes to the CD reissue of the Clef Records/Norman Granz sides with Kenny Dorham, opines that Turk "might be charitably described as one of Granz's few artistic failures." We can safely assume that Priestly had not heard the 1949 cuts -- modern trombonists I've talked to universally find them amazing, considering what the standards were at the time, both musical and technical. What other players were capable of that kind of pyrotechnics and phrasing back then? J.J. Johnson was close, but he was still finding his way until well into the '50s. Trummy Young, maybe, but he was a much more traditional player stylistically.  So Tommy Turk fades into obscurity, and when he is mentioned, it's usually in denigrating terms... and that's on top of having had the misfortune to be shot to death at 53!  In any case, thanks for at least motivating me to dig out that old JazzTimes and add a bit of information to my blog post with the MP3 files. Info@kafalas.com (talk) 20:41, 30 September 2022 (UTC)