Ruth Underwood: Have Mallets Will Travel

[ibobunot]

...

[PennyCentury]

I loved Ruth Komanoff Underwood's style, and I wish she would return to recording and touring now that her family's grown.

[ibobunot]

I was able to attend three concerts with the "Over-Nite Sensation" line up. One
of the finest musical ensembles ever assembled....

[bluetele54]

Originally Posted by PennyCentury

I loved Ruth Komanoff Underwood's style, and I wish she would return to recording and touring now that her family's grown.

...on the "The Hamilton Face Band" album credits,they spell it Ruth Romonoff...on this link they spell it "Romanoff",
http://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Ruth_Underwood

...the singer in Hamilton Face,Lenny Laks,is an old friend and he told me the record company messed up a bunch of stuff on the record...looks like they misspelled her name as well...

[Eric Karonen]

Originally Posted by ibobunot

I was able to attend three concerts with the "Over-Nite Sensation" line up. One
of the finest musical ensembles ever assembled....

I didn't have the pleasure of seeing them live, but I loved the "commercial" era. Apostrophe and Over-Nite were killer albums. And I disintegrated an 8-track of Roxy and Elsewhere.

[trag-o-caster]

Originally Posted by PennyCentury

I loved Ruth Komanoff Underwood's style, and I wish she would return to recording and touring now that her family's grown.

Me too!

Thanks so much for posting those! I've been a big fan of her work for years.

[asatfan]

I'll never forget hearing her play at the Coleseum in Indianapolis back in.....72 or 73?? Just incredible.

[Bernie]

Ruthie ROCKS! Zappa said that she had a little atomic clock built inside of her, and that her time was always totally on. The Underwood years are my favorite of the Zappa era. The music and performances are jaw dropping.

[Jason S]

I see Chester Thompson on Drums. But, who is the other Drummer?

[Mark Davis]

Originally Posted by ibobunot

I was able to attend three concerts with the "Over-Nite Sensation" line up. One
of the finest musical ensembles ever assembled....

I saw Ruth 5 times with Zappa she played the most complicated stuff and never made a mistake.

Ruth George Duke Steve Vai Napoleon Murphy Brock Shiela E any many others.

Yep some great folks passed thru Zappas bands for sure some of the best.

[Casual_Reader]

Originally Posted by trag-o-caster

Me too!

Thanks so much for posting those!

+1

apparently, there's a dvd I need to track down.

[ibobunot]

[PennyCentury]

Ruth Komanoff's entry in the United Mutations list:

http://www.united-mutations.com/u/ruth_underwood.htm

[Robin Nahum]

On a TV series called "The Making of Great LPs" or similar, they did a program on Apostrophe and explained that the band was required to read the music as Frank had written it - no improvisation thank you - Frank was a composer. And then they showed the band recording, with apparent ease, one of the tracks with its harmonically innovative melody line, stops and starts and tempo changes and I was reminded of the amazing skills of truly pro musicians like Ruth.

[ibobunot]

Originally Posted by Casual_Reader

apparently, there's a dvd I need to track down.

Unreleased DVD
There was a 3 minute trailer released in the new millennium advertising a Roxy DVD which could potentially contain the footage from all three nights. The trailer was later included on the Baby Snakes DVD as a bonus feature.
Joe Travers has stated that "It's sitting in the vault. Waiting for a budget to do it properly. Basically the film footage, the negatives were transferred by Frank in the '80s using '80s technology. What we want to do is go back to the original negatives and do it in High Definition and then create a 5.1 mix from the original masters so that we have surround sound as well as Frank's 2 channel stereo mix. Once we get all that together, then we need to cut the program. Edit the program together, camera angles, what shows, what we are going to include from what shows or include all the shows. I have no idea what Dweezil and Gail want to do. It's great stuff, but the process of just getting to that point is going to cost a lot of money and take a lot of time."

...

[64Strat]

Originally Posted by asatfan

I'll never forget hearing her play at the Coleseum in Indianapolis back in.....72 or 73?? Just incredible.

I was at one of those shows, although, for some reason '74 sticks in my mind.

iirc, Jean-Luc Ponty was playing violin at the Indy Coleseum show I saw, along with Ruth of course.

[lupowitz]

Originally Posted by PennyCentury

I loved Ruth Komanoff Underwood's style, and I wish she would return to recording and touring now that her family's grown.

Very nicely put!!!!
Totally agreed!

[lupowitz]

Originally Posted by Jason S

I see Chester Thompson on Drums. But, who is the other Drummer?

Should be Ralph Humphrey.

[PapaBeef]

Brilliant

[Larry F]

Frank was an incredibly strong influence on me. I loved his music to death, evening having my guitar students playing the chords to Let's Make the Water Turn Black. I thought the idea of a rock-out guitarist writing for other instruments was unbelievably cool, which got me started on the path I'm on now.