Archives for June 2007

Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond in duo were one of the great treats of the seventies even as Desmond contended with the lung cancer that was soon to end his life. Someone caught one of their reunions on tape–a short blues performance culminating in the “Audrey” or “Balcony Rock” melody that they favored for more than a quarter of a century. This is another example of why Desmond said that Brubeck was his ideal accompanist.

If you are planning on attending the Newport Jazz Festival, keep in mind that it is no longer held over the Fourth of July weekend but in the second weekend in August. For a rundown on this year’s event, go here. For a three-CD compilation scanning the festival’s fifty-one-year history, try this boxed set. You’ll find a wide range of performances from Louis Armstrong’s “Tin Roof Blues” to John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” Among the treasures are the famous Duke Ellington “Dimineundo in Blue” with Paul Gonsalves’ marathon tenor sax solo, Sarah Vaughan’s “Black Coffee,” the Dizzy Gillespie big band with “I Remember Clifford” and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s piquant version of Ellington’s “Jump For Joy.”

Over the next few postings, the Rifftides staff will attempt the impossible–to catch up with recordings. The best I can do is single out a few and offer observations in hopes that they will provide Rifftiders guideposts as they decide which CDs in the endless stream are worth their time and money. The observations will be brief. This time, three saxophonists:
Michael Brecker, Pilgrimage (Heads Up). With his disease in what turned out to be temporary remission, six months before he died Brecker played like a man who had found new life. He put himself in the studio with five musicians he adored–Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau, Pat Metheny, John Patitucci and Jack DeJohnette–and delivered power, humor and unremitting creativity. The swaggering “Tumbleweed” is a hoot. But, then, so is the whole album. What a goodbye.
Zoot Sims Plays Tenor & 4 Altos (Fresh Sound). The release date is a few days away, but you may want to get in line now. Zoot Sims Plays 4 Altos all but evaporated as an LP a few years after its release in 1957. Devotees of Sims and George Handy have been clamoring for its reissue ever since. Mint copies of the LP have sold well into three figures. Based on Sims’ initial improvisation, Handy brilliantly scored arrangements for four alto saxophones. Sims then overdubbed the additional three parts. It was a thoroughly musical tour de force. The CD also includes the 1956 album Zoot!, with Sims on alto and his mainstay tenor, one horn at a time. Handy plays piano on both albums. Trumpeter Nick Travis, bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Osie Johnson are on Zoot! Knobby Totah and Nick Stabulas are the bassist and drummer on 4 Altos. This is a reissue event.
Clifford Jordan in the World (Strata-East). On CD at last, this 1969 recording follows up the late tenor saxophonist’s Glass Bead Games. It doesn’t have quite the cohesive sweep of that equally rare recording, but it has Jordan at a high level matched by sidemen Kenny Dorham, Don Cherry, Julian Priester, Wynton Kelly, Wilbur Ware, Richard Davis and Albert “Tootie” Heath–an eminent cast of adventurers finding the sweet spot between bebop and free jazz. It is further proof, if proof is needed, that Jordan was one of the great tenor men.
The next few days will include a business trip. I’ll try to work in a few more in this series of CD alerts

Generally, I’m against exclamation points. The one in the headline is a justified exception.
If you miss Art Farmer as much as I do, follow this link. The YouTube information line tells you that the rhythm section is Ray Brown, Jacky Terrason and Alvin Queen. It doesn’t tell you that the tune is Charlie Parker’s “Moose the Mooche,” that Art, late in his life, was playing with enormous beauty and power, or that Ray Brown was the boss of the bass. If the shape-shifting video bothers you, close your eyes. This is a gem.

Anat Cohen has not quite taken New York by storm. In this culture, only rock stars or politicians who campaign like rock stars do that. But Cohen has established herself in the jazz capital of the world as one of the bright new reed artists. The story of her becoming a jazz musician in Tel Aviv, her musical brothers, and substantial samples of her music occupied a sizeable chunk of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday. To hear Liane Hansen’s feature on Anat Cohen, go here.

I value the decades I spent in television news. Helping people to understand the events and issues of the day was important work that brought satisfaction and, at its best, promoted the democratic ideal of an informed citizenry. Now from the Society of Professional Journalists come two items about the state of broadcast journalism that are enough to embarrass me on behalf of the profession, or craft, and make my teeth hurt. I hope these travesties move news consumers in Tyler, Texas, and Portland, Maine, to demand corrective action, but my guess is that the line between news and entertainment has been so thoroughly plowed under that audiences don’t see anything amiss. Viewers have been conditioned by local and national television and cable news to accept a standard of professionalism dominated by the ethics of beauty contests and show business promoters.
Here is the first item, from SPJ’s electronic newsletter :

BOOB TUBE? A television station in Tyler, Texas, has a beauty pagaent queen with no journalism experience anchoring a news show. The woman’s experiences are being chronicled for a reality television program titled, “Anchorwoman.” Cary Darling of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported SPJ President Christine Tatum’s reaction to the station’s hiring decision.

Next: This item from Tatum’s own newsletter. Be sure to follow her link to the television news staff’s promotion of a movie. The first time I watched it, I thought it was a gag, a parody. The second time, I shouted bad words at the screen.

Then, there’s the news team at WGME in Portland, Maine, which appears in one of the biggest assaults on journalism integrity ever to hit the silver screen. But, hey, I give them credit for managing to promote a theater and their newscast while also directing moviegoers to turn off their cell phones and pick up their trash. That takes real talent!
Wake up, people. You’re harming journalism — and looking fabulous as you do so.

I don’t know who the news director is at WGME, but the Radio Television News Directors Association does. The RTNDA should reprimand him or her and the news director at KYTX in Tyler for their breaches of professional standards and for further disillusioning Americans about the reliability of broadcast news.

I used an hour and a half of the fifteen-and-a-half hours of daylight on this first day of summer for a morning ride on the Bianchi.The bike took me (with a little help) up a series of hills, past the golf courses and expensive housing developments that are pushing farms farther out from town and up the western slopes of the valley. Never fear, however; there are plenty of orchards left. If what I saw this morning is an indication, the world can expect an abundance of Washington applesnext fall, regardless of competition from China and New Zealand. By the time I got onto the roads out in orchard country, what passes for rush hour traffic around here was down to a car every four or five minutes. It was a peaceful place to start the day.

A recent reimmersion in things Tristano led to the mini-review of the Warne Marsh book in the latest batch of Doug’s Picks (right-hand column). It included several viewings of a video of Lennie Tristano’s quintet at the Half Note in 1964. The picture quality may have been fine originally, but it appears to have been through several generations of dubs. No matter; the sound is reasonably good. Through the murk you get a tour of the beloved Half Note in the days when folks dressed to go out in the evening. Those strips of cloth you will see on the mens’ shirtfronts were called neckties.
In this ten-minute clip, the bartender we glimpse now and then is Mike Canterino. He and his brother Sonny manned the bar. Their father may have had a formal name but his family and the customers called him Pop. He and Mamma took care of the kitchen. The word pasta never crossed Pop’s lips; it was spaghetti. The uncomplicated menu gave jazz club food a good name, a major accomplishment. Mike’s wife Judi and Sonny’s wife Tita helped out. Judi became a singer after James Moody recruited her one night to sing the Blossom Dearie bridge on “Moody’s Mood For Love.” Al the waiter completed the staff. In its original incarnation, the Half Note was among the warehouses and garages of lower Manhattan. In the seventies, the club moved uptown, lost its soul and died.
Tristano often played at the Half Note. To see and hear him, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Sonny Dallas and Nick Stabulas, click here. The piece they’re playing is “312 E. 32nd,” Tristano’s reimagination of “Out of Nowhere.”
For a lovely remembrance of the Half Note by Dave Frishberg, who often played there, go here. Dave paints splendid pictures of Al the waiter and of Mr. George, a dedicated customer for whom Al Cohn named a tune. For Mike Canterino’s story of the night Judy Garland came in, go here.

Please visit Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column for recommendations of two CDs, two DVDs and a book. Thanks for your patience; these have been a long time coming.

Alerting the Rifftides staff to this combination, Bill Kirchner wrote, “Yes, you read that right.” There may have been less likely tenor saxophone encounters, but I doubt if they were captured on camera. The third tenor player–the one we see but don’t hear–is Lew Tabackin.
The house of the good old blues in F has many mansions. Here’s proof. YouTube doesn’t disclose the year, but from the youthful appearance of the principals, I’d guess this was a good two decades ago.

Most customers, by the time the musicians reach the second set, are to some extent inebriated. They don’t care what you play anyway.–Charles Mingus
The boppers flat their fifths. We consume ours.–Eddie Condon
I’m all in favor of getting grants for musicians. Or any other good brand of Scotch.–Pepper Adams

As you may have surmised from the paucity of substantial postings the past few days, I am still working my way through an accumulation of professional obligations, some connected with music, some not. Nonetheless, I try to give you items that I hope will keep you coming back to Rifftides.
So, here is a link to a rarity–video of the sublime singer Carol Sloane. It was made in New Orleans in 1979. Sloane was in town with her friend Jimmy Rowles, who was the pianist in Ella Fitzgerald’s trio. Keter Betts was the bassist, Bobby Durham the drummer. Ella had the night off from her engagement at the Blue Room of the Fairmont Hotel, so Sloane borrowed her rhythm section and accepted the invitation of the talented director John Beyer to tape a show at WYES-TV, the public station. I’m hoping to track down the entire program. For now, all that is to be found is a clip on YouTube. Ignore the faulty credit blurb; the year was 1979, not 1984. It is probably unlikely that Ella knew Carol was using her musical support staff. All of the above information is courtesy of the gracious Ms. Sloane, who says, “Knowing Ella, I doubt she’d have been upset in the least.” Especially if she could have heard the result.
To see and hear a memorable Carol Sloane ballad performance, click here. I suggest listening to it at least twice, once concentrating on the riches of Rowles’ accompaniment to “My Ship.”
Don’t forget to visit Sloane’s blog. It’s terrific. It is linked in the Other Places section of the right column, but this direct link will take you there. No extra charge.

On his blog Pop Musicology, Michael J. West discloses that he has joined the ranks of reviewers for Jazz Times. He was recommended by Nat Hentoff, a fine way to be launched. In the Other Places department, I am adding a link to Pop Musicology.
The subtitle of Mr. West’s blog is:

Popular music treated seriously. Damnedest thing, ain’t it?

It is.

I asked bassist Bill Crow what he remembered about the Gerry Mulligan Sextet concert that is the subject of the next exhibit, posted yesterday. Here is his response:

I was delighted to see and hear the sextet again. That was such a good band. I had forgotten about the large orchestra behind us. I think it was a concert, but it could also have been a TV show. We went over on the Andrea Doria (the year before it sank) to Naples, then played Rome, Milan, Bologna, and Genoa, and then a small Mercedes-Benz bus took us to Paris, where we were one of the acts on the bill at the Olympia Theatre for three weeks. On our off nights they ran us out to Lyons, Rouen and Roubaix for concerts in movie theaters. We returned home on one of the Queens, and the sextet finished the album we had begun before we left, played a couple of more nightclubs on the circuit, and then Gerry and I had a disagreement in Providence and I left the band.
He called me again later when he formed the quartet with Art Farmer, and I left that group when they went to California. I rejoined when the Concert Jazz Band came back from Europe and Conte (Candoli) and Buddy Clark left to go home to California. Stayed with the quartet with Brookmeyer until I left after another disagreement with Gerry in Chicago, and that was the end of my time with Mulligan groups. It was a great experience, and I was glad to go on and do some other things.

You will find a link to Mr. Crow’s web site in the Other Places section of the right-hand column. It is always worth a visit.