Archives for May 2006

Later in the week, I’ll be posting from Rochester, New York, and the ninth annual Swing ‘n Jazz, an event supporting The Commission Project’s music education of young people. In this context, “Swing” refers to both music and golf. A tournament on Sunday raises money for the education. Workshops accomplish the learning during a three-day event, and throughout the year by way of commissioned works that provide educational opportunities for children of all ages. Trumpeter Marvin Stamm is the musical director of this year’s Swing ‘n Jazz. His faculty comes from the Eastman School, other educational institutions and the New York City jazz scene. Reversing the old axiom, this is a case in which those who can, do, and teach.
Last year’s faculty stayed over for two days and recorded a CD, The Swing ‘n Jazz All-Stars, under the direction of the trombonist Fred Wesley. It was just released. I can’t offer a full-fledged review, but I liked what I heard the first time through. Stamm is impressive throughout, and there’s a nifty bass duet by Jay Leonhart and Keter Betts. Sadly, Betts died not long after the session.

Following the posting about Paul Desmond playing “Take Five” in a youtube.com video, Rifftides reader Jon Naylor wrote from Seattle:

In regards to youtube.com, they have a great piece of history with Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie being presented a Down Beat music award by Leonard Feather and columnist Earl Wilson. Watch the look on Parker’s face when Earl Wilson refers to him and Dizzy as ‘you boys’ and the painful look on Feather’s face earlier when Earl tries to use some hipster lingo with the phrase, “Gimme some skin.” A classic.

Wilson’s clueless introduction preceded a performance of “Hot House,” with Parker and Gillespie accompanied by pianist Dick Hyman, drummer Charlie Smith and bassist Sandy Block. It is rare film of Diz and Bird together.
For those interested, see previous Rifftides postings on Parker (and others) on video here and here and here .

It is a truth so commonplace that it has become a cliché: You needn’t be American to be a first-rate jazz musician. The United States of America brought together and mixed the elements that made jazz. But it is not, after all, something in the water, the genes or the sociology of The United States that makes good jazz improvisers. Rather, it is talent, inspiration, hard work and experience–the combination that creates artists in any field. Some black musicians used to say of white ones, “They’re stealing our music.” Some American musicians used to say that of non-Americans. America gave jazz to the world. To borrow Dizzy Gillespie’s wonderful phrase, you can’t steal a gift.
Hardly a week goes by when the mail or the express truck does not bring at least one reminder that the gift is coming back, generously expanded, from all regions of the planet. I have yet to hear a jazz CD from Mongolia or Yemen, but when one shows up, I won’t be greatly surprised. Here is a list of a few recent arrivals that I have liked, with brief comments. Some of these albums will be hard to find. The links may help.
Roberto Magris Europlane, Check In (Soul Note). Forthright modern mainstream music from Magris, an Italian pianist. His quintet includes his countryman Gabriele Centis on drums, saxophonists Tony Lakatos (Hungary) and Michael Erian (Austria) and the impressive Czech bassist Robert Balzar.
Yaron Herman, Variations (Laborie). Herman is a young Israeli living in Paris. I might quibble with his harmonies on “Summertime,” but he takes stimulating solo piano flights on a couple of Fauré pieces, a rarity by Clare Fischer and several originals.
Flip Philipp-Ed Partyka, Something Wrong With You? (FF Records). The Austrian vibraharpist Philipp and American trombonist Partyka, superb players and writers, lead a ten-piece band populated mostly by Germans. Their music draws on the Birth of the Cool tradition, European avant-gardism and humor.
Hiromi, Spiral (Telarc). This tiny Japanese pianist (last name, Euhara) sometimes channels her formidable technique into new-age meandering. Her electronic keyboard manipulations can curl your teeth. But, as in the title track, she is capable of lyrical creativity.
Eldar, Live at the Blue Note (Sony Classical). The piano prodigy from Kyrgystan (last name, Djangirov), now nineteen, has chops to spare, but the surest sign here of his maturity is his restrained, beguiling Latin ballad playing on “Besame Mucho.”
Fay Claassen, Two Portraits of Chet Baker, (Jazz ‘N Pulz). Two CDs. In the first, the Dutch singer wordlessly replicates Baker’s trumpet in a recreation of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Baritone saxophonist Jan Menu plays Mulligan’s role, most impressively. In the second CD, Claassen sings, beautifully, songs that Baker sang. Jan Wessels handles the trumpet solos with a Baker orientation. Hein Van de Geyn is the noteworthy bassist.
Enrico Pieranunzi, Live in Paris (Challenge). Van deGeyn is also the bassist on this two-CD set, joining pianist Pieranunzi, the dean of modern Italian jazz pianists, and drummer Andre Ceccarelli. A stimulating couple of hours of trio music that owes much to Bill Evans.
The Dutch Jazz Orchestra, The Lady Who Swings the Band: Rediscovered Music of Mary Lou Williams (Challenge). “File Under Jazz/Historical,” it says on the back of the CD box. Don’t file at all, is my advice; play daily. Nine of these thirteen pieces by the brilliant composer-arranger have never before been recorded. If you’re not familiar with this sterling big band there is no finer introduction than this gem.
You will find further recommendations in the next exhibit.

Here are more recommended CDs by jazz artists not from the United States.
Gilad Atzmon, Musik: Rearranging the 20th Century (Enja). It is unlikely that Atzmon can separate himself from Israeli-Palestinian politics–or that he wishes to–but this CD is more about music and less about ideologies than, say, his Exile. The context of the album is, I suppose, world music, but it has plenty of Atzmon’s fearsome, lovely, sax and clarinet work. I have heard private recordings of his straight-ahead jazz tenor playing. Why isn’t that on CD?
Watch Out! Svensk Jazzhistoria,Vol. 10 (Caprice). The final box set in Caprice’s monumental survey of jazz in Sweden from its beginnings covers 1965-1969. It has Bengt Hallberg, Rolf Ericson, Monica Zetterlund, dozens of other Swedes, and distinguished visitors like Red Mitchell, George Russell and Don Cherry.
Ed Bickert, Out of the Past (Sackville). This comes from 1976, when guitarist Bickert, bassist Don Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke constituted the rhythm section of what Paul Desmond affectionately called his “Canadian Group.” Issued for the first time, this CD by the trio reaffirms the reasons for Desmond’s affection.
Moutin Reunion Quartet, Red Moon (Sunnyside). It opens with an exhilirating duet on “Le Mer” between French bassist Francois Moutin and his drummer brother Louis. When pianist Baptiste Trotignon and saxophonist Rick Margitza join for the title tune, the energy level–improbably–increases.
David Dorůžka, Hidden Paths (Cube Metier). A young Czech who studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston and is back in Prague, Dorůžka is an abstractionist who often fragments or floats his lines. He can also dig in, as he does on Monk’s “Evidence.” A guitarist to watch.
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, The Bass in the Background (Storyville). A compilation of the late bassist in support of and soloing with Bud Powell, Coleman Hawkins, Svend Asmussen, Ben Webster, Zoot Sims and others. And what support. NHOP was a marvel.
NHOP is the bassist on Thad Jones and the Danish Radio Big Band Live at the Montmartre (Storyville). Recorded during a residency in 1978, before Jones moved to Copenhagen, this CD is packed with his extraordinary arrangements. The ensemble playing is superior. There are solos to match it by saxophonist Jesper Thilo, pianist Ole Kock Hansen, trombonist Vincent Nilsson, and trumpeters Allan Borschinsky and Idrees Sulieman. Jones’s only cornet solo–on “Old Folks”–is memorable.
ICP Orchestra, Aan & Uit (ICIP). The bizarre and the beautiful. The irrepressible pianist Misha Mengelberg seems to be the guiding spirit in this project of ten musicians, most of them Dutch, who include the avant garde drummer Han Bennink. Just when you think the hi-jinks are getting out of hand, a gorgeous piece of arranging takes over. Their treatment of Hoagy Carmichael’s barely-known “Barbaric” is a highlight. Now zany, now touching, this is music for the open-minded listener with a sense of adventure and a sense of humor.

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Twenty-nine years ago this weekend, Paul Desmond bid his girlfriend goodbye as she set off for London, urging her to have a good holiday. That was on Friday. He would be fine, he told her; he had friends coming the next day. But his only companion was the lung cancer that had ravaged him during the past year. His housekeeper found him dead on Monday, Memorial Day. Marian McPartland said, “It’s just like Paul to slip quietly away when everyone’s out of town, not to bother anybody.” Details of his passing—and his life—are in this book.
In a coincidence for which I am grateful, this morning I received a message guiding me to a newly discovered video clip of Paul playing “Take Five.” It was made at Lincoln Center in 1972 in a concert reuniting him with Dave Brubeck. Alan Dawson is the drummer, Jack Six the bassist. Unlike most of the videos of Desmond that pop up here and there, this one is in color. It lingers after the piece ends while Paul bows and thanks the audience. I have watched it three times. I gave up hard liquor many years ago, but I am going watch the clip once more tonight, make a toast and have a sip of Dewars. If you would like to join me, go here.

Like, dig! I’m in step.
When it was hip to be hep, I was hep.
I don’t blow but I’m a fan.
Look at me swing. Ring a ding ding.
I even call my girlfriend “man,”
‘cuz I’m hip…

—Dave Frishberg, “I’m Hip,”1965

It has been well said that ‘the arch-flatterer with
whom all the petty flatterers have intelligence is a
man’s self.’
—Francis Bacon, “Of Love,” 1605

Terry Teachout’s ecstatic review of pianist Roger Kellaway’s new drummerless trio makes me want to hop a plane to New York. Kellaway has lived in California for years. He is back in The Apple for an engagement at the Jazz Standard.

The three men opened the set with a super-sly version of Benny Golson’s “Killer Joe,” and within four bars you knew they were going to swing really, really hard. So they did, with Kellaway pitching his patented curve balls all night long, including a bitonal arrangement of Bobby Darin’s “Splish Splash” and what surely must have been the first time that the Sons of the Pioneers’ “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” has ever been performed by a jazz group.

To read all of TT’s hymn of praise, go here.
There’s nothing new about Kellaway’s wizardry. It’s just that for a few years his playing took a back seat to his composing and arranging. He came back into the public ear as a pianist with a flourish that coincided with the 2004 film biography of Bobby Darin, for whom Kellaway was once musical director. His solo CD of songs associated with Darin was one of the piano album highlights of last year. If you’re not a Darin enthusiast, don’t worry; you needn’t be to appreciate what Kellaway does with the music. Here’s a bit of what I wrote in Jazz Times about I Was There.

The quality of playing here is so high that it’s difficult to designate one track as an apogee among the performances. I lean toward Berlin’s “All By Myself,” with its headlong swing, orchestral depth and a shout chorus worthy of the Count Basie brass section in the Harry Edison-Buck Clayton days. But, then, “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” has Kellaway’s flawless runs and arpeggios complementing and commenting on the melody, putting that timeless ballad in a new light.

To read the entire review, go here. Kellaway followed up the solo album with a trio CD of music Darin sang, employing the drastically underappreciated guitarist Bruce Foreman and bassist Dan Lutz. If you’ve been asleep on Roger Kellaway, now’s the time to wake up.

The Before & After test I did with Miguel Zenon at the Portland Jazz Festival appears in the June issue of Jazz Times, now on news stands. Here’s a sample of his acute hearing and assessments:

3. Gonzalo Rubalcaba
“Los Buyes” (from Paseo, Blue Note). Rubalcaba, piano; Luis Felipe Lamoglia, alto sax; Jose Armando Gola, electric bass; Ignacio Berroa, drums. Recorded in 2005.
BEFORE: This is Gonzalo Rubalcaba’s group, all Cuban. Luis Felipe Lamoglia is a tenor player, but he sounds great on alto on this tune. It sounds like this is an arrangement of a Cuban traditional song. Great performance. Incredible band.
AFTER: Gonzalo is one of the most original voices on piano over the past twenty years. For me, he’s probably the most impressive pianist I’ve ever seen, in terms of playing the instrument with flawless technique and great sound. He’s one of those guys who can do anything he wants, at any moment. He’ll give you all the technique, but he also has a great feel and sensibility for improvisation.

The complete Before & After will be on the Jazz Times website eventually, with audio samples of the records he heard, but for now you’ll have to be content with the print version.

The ambitious multiple blogger Jerry Bowles has put together blognoggle, a clearinghouse for several blogs. In a message to Rifftides, he writes:

I started blognoggle pages on new music, business and politics because I realized that only a small fraction of internet users now bother with RSS readers and those who do become quickly overwhelmed by too
much information. My hunch is that web readers (particularly music lovers as opposed to techies) would much rather go to a web page where the most important and freshest posts from the best sources have already been automatically selected for them to quickly review.

A good idea. I, for one, don’t know from RSS. The blognoggle page on new music is here. Among other valuable leads, it will take you to video of an Art Tatum performance of “Yesterdays.” Tatum stuck pretty much to his virtuoso routine on the piece, but he always incorporated a surprise or two. In this case, listen for his “Salt Peanuts” fillips.
The blognoggle music page has links to Bowles’s politics and business pages. I’m adding a link to it—and by proxy, them—in the Rifftides Other Places guide in the right-hand column. Mr. Bowles is also the proprietor of the excellent Sequenza21 blog on classical music. Bravo, sir. Sequenza21 gets an Other Places link, too.

The distinguished audio expert Jim Brown saw the Rifftides piece on the possible demise of the last jazz radio station in Los Angeles and sent this reminder that the music is threatened at stations across the nation.

Although I’ve just completed a move to Santa Cruz, I did learn during a recent visit to Chicago that WBEZ, the NPR station there, has announced discontinuance of all music programs in favor of the magazine format that has dominated an increasing portion of their airtime over the past ten years or so.
While that magazine format has been mostly done well, the jazz programming segment has both shrunk and suffered a serious decline in quality. I blame both the president and general manager (Torey Malatia) and Chris Heim, his appointed music director for those ten or so years. I got out to hear jazz at least once a week. I never saw Ms. Heim in a jazz venue, nor have I talked to anyone who has. Prior to her tenure, all the jazz jocks “lived it and loved it,” in the words of the legendary Chicago DJ Daddio Daylie, and it showed in their on-air work. Under Malatia/Heim, there were tight playlists (white bread), jocks are not allowed to say much of value, and good jocks were either fired or quit. In the same time frame, a low power suburban station, WDCB, has only musicians on the air as jocks and gives them plenty of running room. As a result, the real jazz fans deserted WBEZ in droves. This undoubtedly was reflected during pledge drives. Although I love NPR and their news programming, I withdrew my support years ago in protest of the mess they were making of jazz (and told them so), and supported WDCB generously. Now that we’re here, we’ll support KCSM.
Which brings up another threat to both jazz and NPR—we can’t hear KCSM on the air here, although they’re only 50 miles away, because there’s a 10 watt translator (for an Idaho religious broadcaster) on their frequency two miles away! If you travel across the country, you’ll find this is a common problem, as religious broacasters have gobbled up both high- and low-power licenses on the fringes of the major NPR stations. This mess, for example, caused WBEZ to need to add three translators to fill in the newly created “dead zones” that they previously covered quite well. In much of the United States, it is now far easier to get saved (and be fed the political agenda of the saviors) than it is to get the news.
WBEZ is run by a board composed of the same sort of large donors that fund PBS stalwart WTTW Channel 11 (whose upper crust-focused programming earned them the moniker “Wilmette Talks To Winnetka.” That, I suspect, has a lot to do with the Legends of Jazz debacle).
Jim Brown

A Rifftides reader writes

I just came across Rifftides, as I was searching for Coleman Hawkins’ Centennial CD/DVD package. I was at a loss in identifying some of the players on the DVD, and your post from 2005 helped a great deal. Especially in introducing me to Harry Sheppard and Dickie Thompson, neither of whom I’d known previously. I’m still wondering who the piano, bass and second tenor players are, however. Any help there? Anything would be appreciated.

The pianist is Willie “The Lion” Smith. The bassist is Vinnie Burke. The other tenor saxophonist on “Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid” is Lester Young.

Thanks, as well, for your excellent blog; I’m now a reader. I especially liked your pieces on New York in spring and on the Garage (a nice place to play) and Virginia Mayhew. I know her, and agree with your comment on the
jump in her playing.
E. J. Decker
New York, NY

Oh, no, thank YOU. Just for fun, here’s a reprise of that July 7, 2005, Doug’s Pick:

Coleman Hawkins:The Centennial Collection.This two-disc CD/DVD package was part of Bluebird’s observance of RCA Victor’s 100th anniversary. The CD has twenty of the tenor saxophone patriarch’s recordings made over several decades. All of them have been reissued repeatedly. The news here is the DVD showing Hawkins in 1950s television programs with peers like Charlie Shavers, Pee Wee Russell and J.C. Higginbotham, and younger musicians, too; bassist Vinnie Burke and a very good unidentified vibraharpist among them. In fact, none of the musicians is identified, a drastic production failure. Still, the music is terrific. The piece de resistance is a jam session performance in which Hawkins and Lester Young–the most revered tenor men of their era–trade four-bar phrases on “Jumpin’ With Symphony Sid.” Seeing and hearing them together is a joy.

As he moves toward the middle of his eighty-sixth year, Dave Brubeck is not slowing down. He’s picking up speed—and honors—and preparing a major work. Today he is at his alma mater, University of the Pacific, to collect another medal. For a story about Brubeck’s whirlwind week and his new project, go here.

A story in today’s Los Angeles Times has this headline:
Straight-ahead jazz may lose its KKJZ-FM gig
And this quote:

“KKJZ is a very famous jazz station and there aren’t many more around like them,” said Frank Sinatra Jr., son of the singing legend, and a professional musician who lives in West Los Angeles. “[Straight-ahead] jazz is the biggest music in the world, except in the country (where) it was created. It would be such a big loss if they stopped playing jazz. That station is the last lighthouse in the fog.”

The story is about what may be the next major step in the decimation of jazz on radio in the United States. Stations across the country are cutting back or abandoning jazz programming. They include independent broadcasters and many National Public Radio affiliates that have dropped NPR’s Jazz Profiles, Jazz Set, and Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz. KKJZ’s owner, the Long Beach branch of California State University, is soliciting proposals designed to put the station under management that will make it what the chairman of Pacific Public Radio calls “a cash cow ” for the university. Pacific Public Radio is the current operator of KKJZ and one of five radio companies asked to submit proposals.
To read the Times story, go here.
To listen to KKJZ on your radio in the Los Angeles area, tune to 88.1 FM. To hear it on your computer, go here.
The provost and senior vice president of Cal State Long Beach, the station’s license holder, is Dr. Dorothy Abrahamse, e-mail dabraham@csulb.edu

What can be hoped of an art which must necessarily depend on the favor of the public—of such a public, at least, as ours? Good work may, does sometimes, succeed. But never with the degree of success that befalls twaddle and vulgarity. Twaddle and vulgarity will always have the upper hand.
—Max Beerbohm, Saturday Review, September, 1908
We know that the tail must wag the dog, for the horse is drawn by the cart;
But, the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: It’s
clever, but is it Art?
—Rudyard Kipling, The Conundrum of the Workshops

John Birchard writes from Washington, DC.

Reading TT’s disgusted remarks about the American Masters Nat King Cole show brought to mind the only time I saw Cole in person.
It was 1956. I was in Uncle Sam’s Air Force, stationed at Craig AFB outside Selma, Alabama. A jazz fan friend of mine and I learned that Cole would be coming to Birmingham as headliner of a tour that included June Christy, the Four Freshmen, Ted Heath’s British band and comedian Gary Morton, who later would become more widely known as Lucille Ball’s husband. We got tickets and drove to Birmingham, eagerly anticipating a show that turned out to be both more and less than we bargained for.
Alabama in ’56 was still very much a Jim Crow state. The audience for the Cole concert was divided by race—whites for the early show, blacks to attend the late one. The evening started enjoyably enough. The artists went through their tunes and jokes until it was time for Cole to appear. The curtain went up on the Trio, with Nat seated at the piano, turned half-way toward the audience, floor mic between his knees. The audience greeted him warmly and he began to sing. Suddenly, there was noise from the rear of the hall, quickly followed by four men, two in each aisle of the Auditorium, racing toward the stage. They leaped onto the stage, one of them tackling Cole, knocking him off the piano bench onto the floor.
There was instant chaos. the audience on its feet, screaming. Before you could blink, there were what seemed like a hundred cops onstage, grappling with the four white men, dragging them away. Now, the audience was shouting, cursing. My friend and I were, of course, stunned at what had happened and now, a couple of Yankees in a strange land, we were scared that the all-white audience might be calling for Cole’s blood. But no, they were angry at what had just taken place, calling for the scalps of the rednecks who had attacked Cole and ruined the evening.
In the midst of the confusion, the curtain had come down, Nat and his guys had disappeared and the crowd was milling about when the curtain rose again, this time on a scene of musicians from the Ted Heath band scrambling into their chairs. Amidst the chaos, someone had ordered Heath to play the national anthem and, to add to the bizarre quality of the night, the Brits launched into “God Save the Queen”.
That was the end of the show. Cole was slightly injured in the fracas and considerably shaken up by this ugly homecoming to his native state. There was a second show for the black audience, but Cole did not sing. He appeared on stage to apologize for not performing, but of course his fans understood. Later, we learned from newspaper accounts that the four racists who launched the attack were local Klan members who cooked up this plan. They did some jail time for assault abd battery or some such minor charge. The Birmingham police apparently had been tipped off that there might be trouble at the concert and were stationed backstage. Cole’s biography includes more details for anyone interested.
I have long regretted that it was my only chance to enjoy Nat Cole live, but on the other hand it was a bit of history.

Mr. Birchard is a news broadcaster for the Voice of America.

artsjounal.com neighbor Terry Teachout suggests that I pass along an item from his About Last Night. As a followup to recent Rifftides discussions about the quality of television music programming, here it is—a public service:

If you missed last night’s PBS American Masters documentary on Nat King Cole, don’t even think about catching a replay. Not only was the script a dumbed-down, once-over-lightly account of one of the most significant careers in the history of American popular music, but the show contained next to no uninterrupted footage of Cole in performance. In between the snippets was a numbing succession of talking-head interviews with such irrelevant celebrity interlopers as Whoopi Goldberg and Carlos Santana. Rarely have I endured so witless a piece of junk. Avoid it at all costs.

He didn’t llike it.

Very interesting (fascinating actually) subject, I think. Doug, I am thrilled that you are exploring the origins of the Jazz Messiahs and the emergence of Ornette Coleman. Pianist Don Friedman mentioned to me that this band played several gigs in the Pacific Northwest and Vancouver during this period, late 1957 (just prior to his joining a newly formed Buddy DeFranco group for an east coast tour). I have been searching many years for a possible recording made of the Jazz Messiahs from a CFUN Canadian Radio broadcast in late 1957. The group for this broadcast supposedly consisted of Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, Don Friedman, Ben Tucker(filling in for Don Payne), and Billy Higgins. Another interesting tidbit as told to me by Don Payne….he recalls Scott LaFaro filling in for him on bass with this group on at least one occasion. I look very much forward to more of your writing on this topic.
Mark Ferrante, New York

If new information surfaces, we’ll report it. For Don Payne’s followup to the original posting, go here.

Matthew Lurie writes from Chicago:

I just thought I’d drop a line and link to an article I wrote about Legends of Jazz for Time Out Chicago. Because Ramsey Lewis is from here (as are the rhythm section of Larry Gray, Willie Pickens, and Leon Joyce) and the show was shot here, we viewed it as our special Chi-town duty to try and address some of the problems of the show.

Did he ever. Two samples:

The younger musicians who do make it in the show (Chris Potter, Roy Hargrove and Kurt Elling) perform beneath themselves despite herculean efforts to the contrary—they can’t escape the stylistic straitjacket the producers have imposed.

The problem with Legends is that jazz, the most quintessentially spontaneous music, is treated like a still photograph of someone who’s already dead and gone.

To read all of Lurie’s review of the series, go here.