Archives for September 2005

One of the things I like about Joe Locke’s new CD, Rev-elation, is that Bob Cranshaw plays acoustic bass on it. Sonny Rollins, for reasons unclear to me, prefers the electric instrument over what I irritate some of my bassist acquaintances by calling the real bass. Cranshaw uses the electric bass when he works with Rollins. He is one of the few players who comes close to persuading me that I’m hearing the real thing when he’s playing electric. Nonetheless, as well as he works that deception with Rollins, I get full satisfaction from his sound, attack and feeling when he’s on the good old standup, wooden, contrabass. It’s more profundo. Another thing: On Locke’s album, Mike LeDonne plays the Fender-Rhodes electric piano sparingly; a good idea. For the most part, however, he plays a Steinway grand. Well, I’m not positive that it’s a Steinway, but his playing is grand. (This is called backing into a review).
As far as I know, Mickey Roker has never used electric drums. Roker, LeDonne and Cranshaw were the rhythm section who supported the sublime vibraharpist Milt Jackson for much of the last part of his life. A tighter, more attuned rhythm section is hard to imagine. Locke has no choice but to play electric vibes. That’s the only kind the Ross, Deagan and Musser companies make. Otherwise, the instrument wouldn’t vibrate. It would be a marimba. Locke worships Jackson—something he has in common with all the vibraharpists who came after The Reverend, or Rev. Those were Jackson’s nicknames in addition to “Bags.”
In Rev-elation (get it?), the quartet treats an audience at Ronnie Scott’s club in London to the kind of set Jackson often played there. It is loaded with blues, a form at which Jackson excelled as Jack Nicklaus excelled at golf, although Jackson dominated his field much longer. Among other blues, Locke and his colleagues play an “Opus de Funk” that is among the most exciting versions of that imperishible Horace Silver tune. They also do Jackson’s “The Prophet Speaks” to a turn, and a sinuous new “I Got Rhythm” derivative of Locke’s called “Big Town.” In the ballad department, Locke approaches Jackson’s tenderness and depth on Johnny Mandel’s “Close Enough for Love.”
I have thought for some years that Locke was one of the most impressive post-Jackson vibes artist to emerge since Gary Burton. Unless you know the rules, it is impossible to successfully break them, as Locke comes close to doing with his Four Walls of Freedom band, pushing the modern mainstream bop tradition toward the experimental edges of jazz without losing its essence. In this album, he shows why he can do that. He knows the rules. He lives in the heart of the tradition.

Friday, I leave for Los Angeles to take part in one of Ken Poston’s Los Angeles Jazz Institute extravaganzas, which are packed with music, films about music, discussions of music and a good deal of laughter. This one is called Jazz West Coast 3: Legends of the West. It gets underway this morning and runs four days. Go here for a schedule and registration information.
The festival, party—or whatever it is—will bring together major figures of Southern California jazz, including Bud Shank, Herb Geller, Johnny Mandel, Chico Hamilton, Paul Horn, Chuck Flores, Buddy Collette, Dave Pell and Howard Rumsey. Among the highlights is an all-star tribute to Shank by bands containing some of the above and Bobby Shew, Mike Wofford and Holly Hoffman, to name a few. I am also looking forward to a rare instance of Johnny Mandel’s conducting a collection of his nonpareil compositions and arrangements for big band, among them pieces from the film I Want To Live.
Sunday morning I will preach about Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, and sign copies. Shank and Geller will join me to discuss their fellow alto saxophonist. Bud did an analysis of a Desmond solo for the book. Herb provided information about his and Paul’s early adventures with Jack Fina and later ones in Hamburg.
In addition to seventeen concerts, there will be panels on Charles Mingus, Shank, the fifties in Los Angeles jazz, Art Pepper, West Coast drummers and the history of Mode Records. Not only that, there will be screenings of five films, among them Ken Koenig’s new documentary, The Lighthouse, and glimpses of Laurie Pepper’s work-in-progress about Art Pepper. One of the things I like about Poston’s affairs is that events are sequential. Everyone can see and hear everything, not have to choose among several simultaneous concerts. That’s why these things run four days. What’s not on the program? Bill Holman’s band, but I guess you can’t have everything.
If I get a minute to sit down at the laptop, I’ll post an account or two.

Ted O’Reilly, the Toronto broadcaster, answered my flippant question in yesterday’s posting: “Why won’t these broadcast people stay put?”

Station owners—all have risen from the sales department, or got their money the old-fashioned way, inheritance—won’t let them. An ever-deepening lowest common denominator, combined with a desire for an ever-raising bottom line drives owners to “greater efficiency”, meaning “put in computers serviced by pre-digested content providers”.

Greater Efficiency has never benefited consumers (and certainly not employees), only shareholders.
Individual voices are driven out of the market, more and more to fringes. That may mean a larger city, and certainly a marginal-niche station.

I was attempting to be sardonic. I know the life. In twenty-four years in radio and television news, I changed cities eight times, jobs nine times. Luckily, each move save one was to a greener pasture. Ultimately, that one turned out well, too. But that was before the corporate MBA mentality governed by quarterly earnings reports to shareholders gripped the broadcasting business in a stranglehold that has resulted in increasingly deeper cuts, greater homogenization, devaluation of experience, lower quality, and confusion about the difference between news and entertainment. Otherwise, everything is perfect.
Do I miss it? Oddly, yes, sometimes. When we have major events like Katrina and Rita or a significant betrayal of the public trust by the highly placed, the fire-horse reflexes kick in. Generally, I come back to my senses after a day or two.

Responding to the Rifftides posting about the humor of the late bassist Freddie Schreiber, Alan Broadbent relayed a few names that Schreiber invented. Alan was a collaborator with and friend of the wonderful singer Irene Kraal. She is also, regrettably, among the departed. When she was working with Shelly Manne’s band at the Manne Hole in Los Angeles, Freddie would drop in during breaks and run his latest masterpieces past the band. Somewhere, there is a long list of them. Here are a few that Irene passed on to Alan. If some are familiar to you, remember that Freddie was rampant in the 1960s and a lot of his wig bubbles have become lingua franca.
Oliver Teethout
Arturo Versees
Delores M’Shephard
Oswald MacGum
Rachel Prejudice
Warren Peace
Russell Upsumgrub
Tyrone Shoelaces
Noah Fence
The brothers Felix and Isaac Cited
This sort of thing is the lowest form of humor. I love it.
Freddie was ahead of the computer revolution or he undoubtedly would have thought of Dot Matrix. If anyone out there in webland has the complete Schreiber list, please pass it along.

Cal Tjader, Schreiber’s boss, was a major fan of his bass playing and of his word play. The drummer and radio host Dick McGarvin sent this recollection.

One of the people fond of quoting Freddie Schreiber’s classic lines was Cal himself. And it was from him that I first heard them. I met Cal in 1965 when I was working at KVI in Seattle and he would appear at The Penthouse. He’d come off the stand, sit down at my table and say, “So, what did you think of my angular probing lines? How about my relentless, throbbing beat?” Cal had a great sense of humor and thought the lines were hilarious. He continued the practice after I’d moved to San Francisco and would see him at El Matador.

McGarvin is now in Los Angeles. Why won’t these broadcast people stay put?

In the right-hand column, under Doug’s Picks, you will find our latest recommendations for your listening, viewing and reading pleasure. Enjoy. Your eating pleasure is another matter. We’re a little behind in that area, but thinking; always thinking, searching and testing.

A number of musicians I have known felt a connection with J.D. Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield. This is from my biography of Paul Desmond:

Paul thanked his father for recommending The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger’s novel published a year or so earlier. “It’s not only practically perfect,” he wrote Emil, “but it’s the closest thing I’ve yet seen to the way you’d write, if you wrote, which you should, and I’m rapidly going broke buying copies of it for miscellaneous friends here and there.” Salinger’s half-comedy, half-tragedy about a young man’s self-destruction resonated with Desmond’s view of the human condition, particularly his own. He gave me a copy of it shortly after we met. I was happy, years later, to respond with Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, that beautiful novel about loneliness and grace, in which Paul found a reflection of himself.

Thanks to Terri Hinte of Fantasy Inc., for a link to the writer James Isaacs’ autobiographical reflections on Salinger and Bill Evans. Isaacs’ radio musings were inspired by the new CD box of Evans’ 1961 Village Vanguard recordings. Holden Caulfield knew plenty of loneliness, and so did Issacs when he was a teenager. In his audio essay for WBUR in Boston, Isaacs talks about the day he wandered into the Village Vanguard and found solace coming from Bill Evans’ piano.

Just back from Monterey by way of Seattle, I am ready to crash for—oh, I don’t know, two or three days—but first, I must second what DevraDoWrite posted about the Tower Records staff who made our book signings an agreeable experience at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Here’s a little of what Devra wrote about the treatment she and her husband John Levy received for their signing of Men, Women and Girl Singers.

We didn’t know these great folks before a week or two ago, and we never asked for any special treatment while exchanging a few emails and quick calls. I was also surprised to learn that this team that worked together like a well-oiled machine is actually a bunch of colleagues from several different stores. I kept asking who was in charge, so I could give thanks and heap praise on all. Seems they were all in charge, so let me publicly thank the ones I know by name, and encourage you to shop at Tower…

Go here to learn those names and to see a photograph of Leroid and Mike with the amazing nonagenarian Mr. Levy.
I gotta get me some Zs.

Making my way home from Monterey, I’m in Seattle for meetings. The city is at its best in the late September sun. People downtown walk around with smiles on their faces, not thinking about the rainy season to come. Many of the hundreds of coffee places have tables on the sidewalk, and the tables are full of sippers watching street life. North of downtown, runners and walkers are six deep on the path around Green Lake. They form one of the world’s great urban parades in a setting like a painting.
I had dinner last night with three friends; Malcolm Harris, the publisher of my biography of Paul Desmond; Ted Van Dyk, retired as one of Washington DC’s canniest political consultants, now a columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer; and Jack Brownlow, the dean of Pacific Northwest jazz pianists. The conversation ranged across music, sports, books and politics. Much of it concerned leadership—national and local, with the aftermath of Katrina the focus. As he made clear in a recent column, Ted sees parallels between weaknesses at the top in New Orleans and Seattle.

Seattle does not suffer from New Orleans’ pervasive cash-in-envelope corruption. But it does suffer from policy corruption facilitated by complacency and incompetence just as serious as the Big Easy’s.

You can read all of Ted’s column here. Keep an eye out for a memoir of his life in politics. The University of Washington Press will publish it next year. Van Dyk is one of our most trenchant and forthright analysts of public policy issues. As Hubert Humphrey’s right-hand man before and after Humphrey became Lyndon Johnson’s vice president, Van was an insider during the civil rights struggles of the sixties, Johnson’s Viet Nam agony and political developments through the end of the twentieth century.
Jack Brownlow, at 81, has doggedly refused to let a round of health problems put him out of commission. He is gigging less, but a stream of colleagues comes to his house to play music with him and learn from him. He is an inspiration to them, as he has been to me since I was sixteen.
I’m not the only one in town fresh from Monterey. Carla Bley and her Lost Chords quartet are at Jazz Alley through tonight, Wednesday, following Bley’s double triumph at the Monterey festival.

In Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, I included a long letter from 1949 in which Paul told his father, in precise language, why he did not want to be another Charlie Parker imitator. Two excerpts:

The question of to bop or not to bop has been a gnawing one ever since I began working at the Band Box on Monday nites with Howard Keith. Ever since then, I‘ve been in, out, above, beneath, and on the fringes of bop as it is played in San Francisco. And although my playing has fluctuated back and forth quite a bit, I still stick to my original reaction. I like to listen to bop, I admire its originators, but I can’t see the point in throwing away one’s individuality and working like mad to become a carbon copy of Charlie Parker. Even if what you play isn’t as good, as long as it’s your own it should be valid. The only other alternative is to play bop and still remain individual, which I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to do.

I couldn’t see it. The qualities in music which I considered most important—and still do—were beauty, simplicity, originality, discrimination, and sincerity. There is no originality in the act of copying, and no discrimination in the all-inclusive way in which it was done.

Another young saxophonist who thought a good deal about Parker was a student at the Eastman School in the early 1950s. He is Ned Corman, who went on to be president of the The Commission Project, which makes possible the composing and performance of new works in American music. His experience with Parker was more typical than Desmond’s of the gravitational pull that Bird exerted on young musicians.

Your various comments about PD holding to his voice in the frequently overwhelming forces from the East Coast school touched me deeply. Those forces, for better or worse, slid me away from my high school heroes, PD, Konitz, Pepper. Within a year or so after matriculating at Eastman School of Music in 1955, I lost focus on simplicity and beauty, falling under Bird’s spell and peer influence. Technique remains a priority for almost all players.

I can honestly say there is nothing in my life – except for being a more thoughtful and considerate person – that, if I had the chance to redo, I would. Your wonderful book, in various places, made me say to Linda, my wife; you know, I wonder what my music would have become had I been less impressionable in ’55.

To learn about Ned Corman and The Commission project, go here.

I’ve been away. It’s been days since I checked into what my ArtsJournal.com colleagues are writing about. Martha Bayles is the movie person, but she’s also perceptive on my former calling. I’m probably the one who ought to be writing about the performance of television (and cable) news in the Katrina disaster aftermath. I don’t think I could have assessed one embarassing aspect of it more effectively than Martha did in this recent piece.

It was good weather for jazz in Monterey over the weekend, and the Monterey Jazz Festival was a good place for an author. Leroid David and Pete Leon, honchos at the Tower Records booth on the old fairgrounds, said that the signing session for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, was the most successful book signing in all the years that Tower has hosted events at Monterey. A record number of folks lined up to buy the book and have me inscribe it. Many thanks to all of the old and new friends who came by, including DevraDoWrite.
Guitarist John Scofield was greeting fans and signing CDs at an adjoining table. During lulls, we had a rare opportunity to catch up with one another’s doings. Later, I caught just enough of fellow guitarist Larry Carlton’s set with his Sapphire Blues Band to hear Scofield sit in and tear off a blazing blues solo.
A few impressions of other music that I selected from the rich Monterey smorgasbord :
In keeping with the pattern of concurrent attractions at modern megafestivals, it is impossible to hear one band without giving up the chance to hear others. On a limited time budget, this listener had to duck in and out of performances. I arrived at a set by pianist Benny Green and guitarist Russell Malone to hear only two and a half tunes. The half was the last part of a fast “The Way You Look Tonight,” Green’s piston fingers blazing. Each man played an unaccompanied piece, then on “Sunny” demonstrated the empathy they have developed over years of duo collaboration; two of the most satisfying contemporary players.
After dining too quickly on a reasonable facsimile of New Orleans jambalya from one of dozens of fast food stalls, I hurried to the Bill Berry Theater to catch the last number by another duo who think and breathe as one, Sheila Jordan and Steve Kuhn. The piece was a blues in which Jordan sang about her life from age fourteen, when she first heard Charlie Parker. It was a brilliantly balanced blend of musicianship and theatrical story-telling—carefully made, natural and moving. Kuhn’s piano accompaniment and the depth of his soloing made him in every sense a full partner. Jordan, a great original, ended with a tribute, eight bars of vocalese that was pure Billie Holiday.
Alto saxophonist John Handy reprised the concert that electrified the Monterey festival 40 years ago. Violinist Carlos Reyes and guitarist Steve Erquiega subbed for Michael White and Jerry Hahn, but the stalwart bassist and drummer of Handy’s original quintet, Don Thompson and Terry Clarke, were gloriously present. It would have been unthinkable for Handy not to give the audience “Spanish Lady,” the piece that brought him a standing ovation in 1965. He delivered a passionate rendition that climaxed in Reyes’ surging violin choruses and climaxed again in a Handy solo that went into the super-stratosphere of the alto. History repeated. He got a standing ovation.
It took Sonny Rollins most of his set to hit his stride, and he strode to a faretheewell on the last piece, the calypso “Don’t Stop The Carnival,” achieving rhythmic intensity and thematic development close to his best work of the 1950s and early sixties. Rollins was also splendid on “I Want To Talk About You,” but when is Rollins not a moving ballad player? Listeners who expected Steven Scott, the pianist on Rollins’s latest album, seemed not to be disappointed that guitarist Bobby Broom was the other primary solo voice. Nor should they have been; Broom was a worthy foil and partner.
I was able to hear Carla Bley with The Lost Chords, the quartet that incudes her partner Steve Swallow on bass, tenor saxophonist Andy Sheppard and drummer Billy Drummond. After intensive touring, the quartet is tight, full-bodied and possessed of even more engaging wackiness than in its recent CD. Later, recapturing a formative experience of her youth, Bley premiered “Appearing Nightly at the Black Orchid.” The four-part composition for big band was inspired by her first and only job as a solo pianist, when she was seventeen, at a Monterey club called The Black Orchid. She introduced it with a piano pastiche that hinted at several songs without stating them. I wish it had gone on much longer. Her writing for the band was loaded with Bleyian harmonic mystery and deep textures supporting soloists who sounded inspired. It seems to me among Bley’s best work, and I am eager to hear it again.
Tony Bennett sang brilliantly, enjoying himself enormously and extending his set to nearly an hour and a half. He interacted intimately with his quartet and with the audience. Perhaps in honor of the jazz festival setting, he gave pianist Lee Musiker, guitarist Gray Sargent, bassist Paul Langosch and drummer Harold Jones plenty of solo space. I watched his set on a big screen in the festival’s Turf Club with a roomful of musicians who cheered Bennett with appreciation for his timing, dynamics, phrasing and swing. “So,” one prominent jazz figure asked another as they applauded, “is he a jazz singer?” His friend replied, “Does it matter what you call him?”
The two nights I was at the festival, there were jam sessions after midnight in the capacious lobby bar of the Hyatt Regency. As usual in such situations, the quality of playing and players varied, but it was enlightening and encouraging to hear two Australians—the seasoned alto player Andrew Speight, now based in San Francisco, and Simon Chadwick a seventeen-year-old tenor saxophonist imported for the festival as part of the Australian Youth All-Star Big Band. Speight is a polished Charlie Parker expert with penetrating tone and ferocious delivery. Chadwick is a tall blonde youngster with a choir-boy face and huge tone. When he keeps the number of notes under control, his sense of melodic construction makes him someone to listen for as he develops. The Saturday session also provided an opportunity to hear the Bay Area tenor saxophonist Anton Schwartz, whose work that night exceeded what I’ve heard of him on records.
Some of the best music of the festival was on screen in the documentary film Brotherly Jazz, the story of Percy, Jimmy and Tootie Heath. This was the first public showing of the film produced by Danny Scher and directed by Jesse Block. Made not long before Percy died, it melds the brothers’ life stories with performances including terrific versions of “Autumn Leaves” and Jimmy’s “Gingerbread Boy.” The sound track needs equalization, but the film effectively interweaves perfomances by the group not long before Percy died in April, archival photos and video and the brothers’ on-camera reminiscences. It has sparkling versions of “Autumn Leaves,” Yardbird Suite” and Jimmy’s classic “Gingerbread Boy. It presents tributes from a dozen or so admirers, including Herbie Hancock, George Wein, Marian McPartland, Chico Hamilton, Peter Jennings and the brothers Jeff and John Clayton. Brotherly Jazz captures the Heaths’ determination, artistic integrity and humor. Of growing up as the youngest in a musical family, Tootie says, “If it hadn’t been for the example set by my brothers, I might have gone astray and become a doctor or a lawyer.”

I am off to California and a book signing at the Monterey Jazz Festival Saturday afternoon from 3 to 6 pm at the Tower Records booth. See you there, I hope. What book? Glad you asked. It’s Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, still available after all these months. Desmond and Dave Brubeck were frequent performers with Brubeck’s quartet at Monterey. Dave is not there this year, but I’m looking forward to hearing Sonny Rollins and John Handy, among others. if there is a spare moment now and then, I’ll be posting brief reports.
In Take Five, I go on a bit about Paul’s love affair with the works of Igor Stravinsky. He was particularly smitten with Petrouchka and The Rite of Spring and often quoted them in ingenious ways. I am grateful to Rifftides reader Garret Gannuch for pointing me toward a web site called Casa Jonsson and a page that discusses the Brubeck-Desmond-Stravinsky axis. It provides audio samples of Stravinsky’s works and of the ways Desmond and Brubeck used them in their improvisations in Jazz At Oberlin. It’s educational; good, clean fun for the whole family.
If you would like to be in touch, you’ll find an e-mail address in the right-hand column. See you next week, if not sooner.

A knowlegeable reader has caught me in an error in yesterday’s Bill Evans posting. It was John O’Hara, not Robert Benchley, who said of George Gershwin’s death, “I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.” I have heard the quotation attributed to Benchley so often that I didn’t doublecheck it. Let that be a lesson to me. One of the good things about blogging, as opposed to print publishing, is that after the horse has escaped you can get him back into the barn. With a few keystrokes, I am correcting the mistake.
The knowledgeable reader is Terry Teachout. Thanks, pal, that’s (another) one I owe you.

Bill Evans died twenty five years ago today. To borrow what John O’Hara said when he heard of George Gershwin’s death, I don’t have to believe if I don’t want to. His music is here through dozens of recordings, but his presence goes beyond aural artifacts. Evans is part of jazz today because he is woven into the concept of nearly every pianist who followed him, and of many who were established when he became an important player in the second half of the 1950s. Indeed, his influence extends beyond pianists to players of virtually every melody instrument; listen, as an example, to the trumpeter Tom Harrell.
Hearing the new Riverside box set of the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Vanguard in 1961, it is easy to imagine that he is still with us. So he is, in a demonstrable way, because he, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian changed the concept of the piano trio from that of a soloist accompanied by bass and drums to that of three musicians who breathe, think and function as one. Among important jazz trios in the twenty first century, adaptations of the Evans approach to performance are the rule, not the exception.
In addition, LaFaro had the greatest impact of anyone since Jimmy Blanton in Duke Ellington’s band of the early 1940s, on the way bass players use their instrument. He was not only a phenomenal master of the technical aspects of playing the double bass, he was also gifted—quite likely a genius, as was Evans—in matters of harmonic choices, melodic construction and rhythmic placement. It is an unintended consequence of LaFaro’s pervasive influence that regiments of young bassists imitate his ability to play high and fast, but most do not or cannot begin to approximate his lyricism, beauty and timing ,or the depth of his tone, which Evans likened to the sound of an organ. New bassists—not all, but many—emulate the technique they hear from LaFaro on the Evans recordings without understanding how it fits into the complex relationship among Evans, LaFaro and Motian and, particularly, how his note choices relate to the impressionistic chord voicings that give Evans’s playing so much of its character. Worse, they overlook at least half of what made him a great bassist, the power of his straight-ahead swing.
For all of Evans’s legend as an introspective, withdrawn musician, his playing had muscle and grit, and there is plenty of swing in the Vanguard recordings. Originally issued on a forty-one-minute LP, they helped to expand the reputation he made as a New York session musician, occasional leader and Miles Davis sideman. For the next nineteen years, he built his career in great part on the foundation of the trio with LaFaro and Motian and on the Vanguard sessions. In the years since Evans died in 1980, Fantasy, Inc. has reissued that album many times in several formats. The initially released tracks, and almost everything else recorded at the Vanguard on June 25, 1961 are in the huge Bill Evans: Complete Riverside Recordings box.
The new three-CD box has only one “new” track, a previously unissued take of LaFaro’s composition “Gloria’s step,” slightly marred by a brief dropout resulting from a power failure. The set is the most complete possible account of an amazing afternoon’s and night’s work by the Evans trio, two-and-a-half hours of music. Quantity is not, however, what renders the set compelling. Nor is it the fact that the performances are in their proper sequence; that is true in the big Riverside Evans box. In that collection, however, they begin and end, unavoidably but annoyingly, in the middle of CDs. Here, they begin at the beginning of the first CD and conclude at the end of the third. No, it is the intensity and joy of the music itself, and the sense of occasion, that have kept people going back to these performances for four decades. The recordings are remastered so that listening to them, preferably with closed eyes and a glass of something good at hand, we are as near as possible to being with Evans, LaFaro and Motian in that little wedge of a club beneath Seventh Avenue South in New York. Through expanded intervals between numbers, chatter of the audience is now a greater part of the ambience. We hear snippets of discussion among the musicians about repertoire choices, and we hear their occasional reactions to one another’s playing.
Orrin Keepnews, who produced the original sessions, was not involved in preparing the new reissue, but wrote liner notes for the package. In the essay, he admits to initial skepticism about the idea of yet another release, but says that his doubts were erased when he heard the results. When I knew the box was on the way, I had about decided that it would be redundant. It is not. I have had it playing for days. I am making room for it on my Bill Evans shelf.
Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker wrote of Evans’s playing in these recordings, “They are as close to pure emotion, produced without impediments – not at all the same thing as an entire self poured out without inhibitions, the bebop dream – as exists in music.” This is a good day to read “That Sunday,” Gopnik’s 2001 account of the Evans Vanguard sessions on the occasion of their fortieth anniversary. It is a good day to remember one of our greatest musicians.

The town in which I spend most of my time—Yakima, Washington—has several physical attributes that help make it a good place. It has air that cannot be seen, sunshine nearly every day, seasons, mountain views and hundreds of vineyards that produce world-class wines. It has apples, cherries, pears, peaches, plums and apricots in such profusion that the city used to bear the municipal nickname, Fruit Bowl Of The Nation. Several years ago, before we moved here, the slogan was dropped, for reasons that I can only imagine had something to do with embarassment over a new meaning increasingly attached to the word “fruit.” This is a conservative community, not likely to cotton to snickers about its name. The big illuminated sign that proclaimed Fruit Bowl Of The Nation is no longer on display downtown, but in the museum.
Now, as you approach the downtown exit from the west on Interstate 82 , you encounter a sign erected on private property by a businessman in the recreational vehicle field. It reads, “Welcome to Yakima, the Palm Springs of Washington.” That encourages lots of snickers and a certain amount of outrage, but at least it isn’t—well, you know—suggestive. I have encouraged friends down south to erect a sign that says, “Welcome to Palm Springs, The Yakima of California.”
Yakima has two other institutions that, unlike mountains, air, fruit and wine, are unique to the town. Not far from the Fruit Bowl sign in the museum is a replica of the US Supreme Court office of Justice William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal judges ever to sit on the high court. Yakima is Douglas’s home town, and despite its conservative nature, the city is, for the most part, proud of that fact. He grew up here, practiced law downtown and for nearly all of his life made Yakima a point of departure for hikes and hunting and fishing expeditions. At the high school from which he was graduated in 1916 is a fine statue of Douglas. Last week, a 75-mile trail from Yakima to Mount Rainier was dedicated to him and given his name. The event was suported by the other unique attraction, the trolley line.
The Yakima Valley Trolley line’s web site explains, “The YVT is listed on the National Register of Historic Places because it is the last authentic, all-original turn-of-the-century interurban railroad in the United States.” The line runs from more or less the center of Yakima to the little town of Selah, five miles away, and has since 1907. For decades, it provided essential public transit. These days, it is used primarily for sightseeing and nostalgia. Following the trail dedication ceremony, a few dozen Douglas fans and outdoor enthusiasts, some wearing back packs and hiking boots, walked to the north side of town.
It was a coincidence that I chose that storybook autumn morning to take a long mountain bike ride. I was tooling along near the conjunction of the Naches River and the Yakima as the hikers arrived at the the base of one of the hills that form the Selah Gap. Both ancient trolleys were waiting there. The casual strollers piled aboard the red trolley and went back to town. The serious hikers boarded the yellow trolley, rode a symbolic few hundred yards, got out, began a steep climb and headed west toward Mount Rainier. I pulled over and watched the line of fifteen men and women and one dog as they trudged beneath a cloudless sky up the steep trail through the sagebrush and disappeared beyond the brow of the hill. They planned on taking four days to reach the mountain. I imagined Bill Douglas with them, setting the pace.

Tom Stites, a former editor at The Chicago Tribune and The Kansas City Star, also edited the fine magazine Jazz, which published from 1976 to 1981. Jazz featured some of the best writers on the subject, including Dan Morgenstern, Ira Gitler, Tom Piazza, Bob Blumenthal, Leonard Feather, Sy Johnson, Peter Keepnews and Stites himself. The magazine’s approach was serious but not pompous. It avoided the fanzine excesses and shallowness of too much jazz journalism, and it got beneath the surface of the music into its essence. Based on quality, it deserved to succeed, but after an impressive run, it died. Stites went back to newspapers for a while and then took a job as editor of the magazine of the Unitarian Universalist religious denomination. A friend of his says that Stites is probably the only person alive who has edited the magazines of both his religions.
I winced a bit when I saw the title of an article Stites wrote for UUWorld—“Improvisational Faith:Jazz and Unitarian Universalist Thelology”—but a few paragraphs in, skepticism faded that this would be another exercise in the church-goes-pop movement that has produced weak theology and weak music. It was thoughtful, provocative and, somehow, reassuring. Regardless of your religious orientation or non-orientation, you may find it interesting. Here’s an excerpt:

…both jazz and Unitarian Universalism are inclusive rather than exclusive. Everybody is welcome, and everybody is welcome to improvise. In jazz, improvisation means spontaneous composition of music in the moment it is played. In Unitarian Universalism, it means that each of us must search for our own truth and meaning—and, like jazz players, we draw from many sources of inspiration. And neither jazz nor Unitarian Universalist improvisation is for the faint-hearted. It requires real courage to take responsibility for our own religious lives, both as individuals and as congregations.

To read all of Tom Stites’s piece, go here. It’s good to know that he’s writing, and where to find him.

Freddie Schreiber was making a mark in Cal Tjader’s quintet when he died, far too young, in the 1960s. I remember him in Seattle in the mid-1950s as an aspiring bassist and an extremely witty man. He struggled to master the instrument, not with notable success. Later, within a period of two or three months, his hard work kicked in and he became a superb player. Tjader told me that he was thrilled to have Freddie on the band. Schreiber’s best recording with Tjader was Saturday Night/Sunday Night At the Blackhawk, San Francisco (Verve 8459). It has never been reissued on CD, which is a shame, but it can be found on web sites, including this one, that specialize in rare LPs. I have always liked the album. It includes, among other things, a marvelous version of Gary McFarland’s “Weep,” but in the July 5, 1962, Down Beat, reviewer John S. Wilson gave Saturday Night/Sunday Night a lukewarm once-over that ended with this:

Schreiber comes in for an occasional solo, but this scarcely relieves the generally monotonous sound of the group. The performances are loose and airy, but none of the soloists is sufficiently distinctive to raise the set out of an anonymous although generally pleasant rut.

A few issues later, Down Beat published a response from Schreiber that has been quoted by musicians for years.

I am the bass player with Cal Tjader’s group, and I have just finished reading John Wilson’s review of our latest record on Verve recorded at the Blackhawk (DB, Jul 5) I think Mr Wilson was very fair in putting down Cal and the other guys in the group, but I really think he should have listened to me more carefully. Evidently he did not listen closely to my angular, probing lines, and I am sure that not once did he take note of my relentless throbbing beat. I just hope that when our next album is released, which is entitled It Ain’t Necessarily Soul, that Mr Wilson pays more attention to my great playing–because, man–I’m too much!

And that’s one reason I miss Freddie Schreiber.

Rifftides reader Eric Bruskin reacts to yesterday’s quote from Bertrand Russell:

Was this before or after Yeats put it much more memorably:

The best lack all conviction while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity …

That is not the only memorable line in William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming (1921). I wonder whether any poem has had greater effect on observers of the chaos of the Twentieth Century and the early years of this one. It inspired, among other writings, the title of Joan Didion’s brilliant book of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born
—W.B. Yeats
On the off chance that you need help with Yeats’s mysticism and symbols (I’m raising my hand), here’s a start.