Rifftides: January 2009 Archives

Once alight with bulbs that spelled out "Armstrong," the large steel archway above North Rampart Street, across from the venerable Donna's Bar & Grill, was dark much of the past decade, largely rusted. Beneath it, the main gate to a park named for trumpeter Louis Armstrong had been padlocked for more than three years, save for the occasional special event. Just inside, Congo Square -- where two centuries ago enslaved Africans and free people of color spent Sundays dancing and drumming to the bamboula rhythm, seeding the pulse of New Orleans jazz -- had been effectively off limits. The adjacent Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts, home to opera and ballet performances for more than 30 years, sat empty and in need of repair after taking on 14 feet of water in 2005. 

It would be hard to find a more potent symbol of the tenuous state of musical life and cultural history in a city largely defined by both. But earlier this month, shortly after dusk, Mayor C. Ray Nagin flipped a switch -- just a prop, it turned out, for dramatic effect -- and on went the lights of the arch and the park's streetlamps. As the Original Pin Stripe Band played "Bourbon Street Parade," a small mock second-line parade wound its way around a bronze statue of Armstrong and over to a sparkling Mahalia Jackson Theater for a free concert, the first in a series of events spanning 10 days and a broad range of performing arts. 

  

Terry's ties to the city have been more spiritual than personal, but his admiration for a New Orleans hero led almost a decade ago to one of the most important gestures of his life. A few blocks from the Super Dome a monument to Louis Armstrong is nearing completion. It might very well not have been built without Terry's inspiration. 

New Orleans's Armstrong Park has been a project of the administration of former mayor Moon Landrieu, who deserves full credit for paying tangible tribute to the city's greatest artist. But impetus for the idea came in 1969 on a bus ride during the second New Orleans Jazzfest. As a musicians' tour was passing Jane Alley, Armstrong's birthplace, Terry deplored that fact that while New Olreans seemed to have statues of half the Latin American presidents in history, there were none of the city's most famous son. Then and there, he started a fund to commission a statue. His first dollar was symbolic. His organizing ability and leadership were much more. Nine years later, that statue is on the verge of becoming the centerpiece of an entire park dedicated to Armstrong's memory. The park's completion slowed in the six-month transition period between Landrieu's administration and that of Mayor Ernest Morial. But assuming that Morial, the city's first black mayor, gets behind the project, Armstrong Park should be the New Orleans equivalent of Copenhagen's celebrated Tivoli Gardens and open by 1980.

Landrieu (then U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), Morial and Armstrong's wife Lucille dedicated Armstrong Park on April 15, 1980, nine years after Armstrong's death. It has a long way to go to become the Tivoli Gardens of America, but the developments Blumenfeld describes give hope that it will blossom despite the city's setbacks.

...a dimly lit room in the Scottish Rite Center provided a fitting atmosphere for "Vitriol & Violets," which tracks the careers and friendships of the 1920s Algonquin Round Table. The story presents a lot of characters to follow, but the witticisms flow freely, the songs by Dave Frishberg are alternately hilarious and deeply poignant, and a cast featuring Adair Chappell (charmingly acerbic as Dorothy Parker), Joe Theissen, Isaac Lamb and others pulls it off with appropriate panache.

The show is running smoothly, and the audience seems to love it. It's a small space, 99 seats, no proscenium, so it's like 3/4 in-the-round. Actors play practically in the laps of the audience. There are six musical events in the show, and all are warmly received. The cast is wonderful; the best singers are Dorothy Parker and Heywood Broun. Just piano accompaniment (not by me). Four performances left, including two matinees. The play seems a natural for off Broadway in New York. I hope it happens. It's been a challenging and rewarding project, and I'm glad it's over.

"I don't even know what the hell west coast jazz is," he said, with

exasperation and no wry laugh. "It was something different from what they were doing in New York, so the critics called it west coast jazz. That Miles Davis BIRTH OF THE COOL album, out of New York, probably started west coast jazz. It was also very organized, predetermined, written. It was a little bit more intellectual, shall I say, than had happened before. Jimmy Giuffre, Buddy Childers, Shorty, Shelly Manne, Marty Paich, Bob 

Cooper, almost everybody involved; we all came from somewhere else, New York, Texas, Chicago, Ohio. The fact that we were in L.A. around the orange trees had nothing to do with it. I really think that everybody played the way they would have played no matter where they were. New York writers, they're the ones who invented west coast jazz."

"Those bastards," I said.

"Those bastards," he said, laughing uproariously.

"It was my hero," Golson says. "Art Blakey was on the phone. One of his guys was having trouble getting a cabaret card from the police and he asked me to come In and sub for a night. 'Oh, my God,' I said to myself, 'Art Blakey.' He didn't know it, but I would have played for free. And I went down and played, and I noticed that although the band had been together for a while, not much was happening; just tunes. But, on a personal level, he just laid me out. I'd never played with a drummer like that before." 

Blakey asked him back a second night and then for the weekend. By now, Golson though to inquire about money, and when he found out how little the band was making,

he took his leader aside for a little chat. "I said, 'Art, you're a great man. This pay is nothing for you. It makes me sad.' And he looked at me with his sad, beautiful cow eyes and said 'Can you help me?' And I can't believe what came out of my mouth, this young upstart who hadn't been in New York too long. "I said, 'Yes, if you'll do exactly what I tell you.' 

"How dared I?" Golson asks, laughing. "But he went for it. He said, 'What should I do?' And I said, 'Get a new band.'" 

He agreed, gave the men notice and on Golson's recommendation hired a new set of Jazz Messengers, all from Benny's home town. On trumpet was Lee Morgan, barely 20 years old, a fellow alumnus of the Gillespie big band. Morgan had sat in with the drummer in Philadelphia as a prodigy of 15, and the previous year had recorded two pieces with an expanded version of the Messengers. The pianist was 26-year-old Bobby Timmons, and on bass was Jymie Merritt, at 31 three years older than Golson and like him a veteran of the Bull Moose Jackson rhythm and bues band of the early 1950s. 

"What's all this Philadelphia stuff?' Blakey said. I told him 'Trust me.'" 

Rebecca sings the songs to perfection. No fuss, no unnecessary embellishment, dead-on pitch. Hers is a cheery sounding voice and her diction is impeccable. My kind of singer. Dave's jaunty piano style is the perfect compliment for her, and they include a great many verses sinfully ignored by many.

I was in band class and I had this music on my music stand but it was upside down ... He [Mr. Miller] knew I could barely read the music right side up. He thumped me on the head and called me 'Fathead.' My classmates laughed. After that, it became my trademark. I don't consider it derogatory and it doesn't offend me. If someone asked me what I prefer to be called, it would be David. But Fathead doesn't bother me at all.

As he approaches his mid seventies, David Newman's pace is not slower; he is merely moving toward different audiences. Like many jazz musicians, he tries to stay away from clubs, with their late hours and the smoke his doctor says he must avoid. The success of his CDs and of a film about Ray Charles put him in greater demand than ever. He is accepting concert offers, playing festivals and doing clinics. 

At one of his concerts recently, his encore was a B-flat blues with a searing flute solo. He and the sixteen-piece band from Central Washington University rocked the hall and got a standing ovation. Newman smiled when I remarked on it later, then delivered what for him was an effusion of self-satisfaction. "Yes, I was very pleased with that," he said

CARMEN MCRAE: AN APPRECIATION

By John Birchard

According to Netflix, the DVD Carmen McRae: Live is valued at three stars. Don't believe it. I watched it last night and was transported by the woman's artistry. The Tokyo concert was recorded in 1986 and released by Image Entertainment. 

Accompanied by a superb rhythm section 

(Pat Coil, piano; Bob Bowman, bass; Frank Felice, drums), Carmen cruises through some of the best of The Great American Songbook, opening with "That Old Black Magic" and "I Get 
Along Without You Very Well." By the time she gets to "I Concentrate on You", her pipes are thoroughly warmed and she's taking chances with the melody, going down the scale when you expect her to go up, growling, sliding into a note the choice of which leaves one laughing with delight. 

Now, about scatting: I'm not a big fan of the technique, but Carmen McRae reminded me that certain people can handle it. First, she didn't overdo it, running out of ideas before exhausting her enthusiasm. Her scatting was musicianly, sometime funny and always inventive. Aspiring jazz singers would benefit from watching this disc. 

Her technique with the hand microphone was a lesson in the art of dynamics. Depending on the effect she was going for, the mic would be close to her lips at one moment, then pulled away to accomplish a fade effect. That's what experience does for an artist. 

Carmen's concert was an exercise in what Whitney Balliett had in mind when he called jazz, "the sound of surprise." On a turbocharged "Thou Swell", when one would expect a racehorse gallop into scat-land and a long, noisy drum solo, the whole thing was over in not much more than a minute - fast, tightly arranged, no scat, no drum solo. Just a breath-taking display of musicianship. 

During this one-hour-21-minute concert, she reminded me how few singers really pay attention to lyrics. Carmen told stories, emphasized words in a way that, no matter how familiar the song, brought fresh attention to the story it told. With her, words meant something. By altering her volume from a belt to a whisper and tinkering with the melody, a song she might have sung a thousand times became new again. Besides the familiar standards, she salted the program with lesser-known tunes such as "Getting Some Fun Out of Life", "Love Came On Stealthy Fingers" and "As Long As I Live", the latter featuring her own accompaniment on acoustic piano. She took it at a walking tempo and the way she used the left hand in her solo reminded me of Jimmy Rowles.

There is so much to like on this DVD, from her sly use of musical humor to a hardly noticeable tapping of her finger on the edge of the piano to signal Pat Coil the tempo she wanted to slip into after beginning the Brazilian song "Dindi" a cappella. The word diva is tossed around with reckless abandon these days, applied to practically any teen-age phenom who has two hits in a row. Carmen McRae was a diva - not that easy to work for, demanding high standards from her musicians and herself. When she took the stage, SHE TOOK THE STAGE. There was no question this lady was in charge and she delivered with professionalism and artistry. 

Carmen McRae's death left a huge hole that remains to be filled. If Netflix believes this DVD is worth only three stars, I would like to experience a singer whose work is rated at five.

I'll cut to the chase: Poodie James is a very good book. Not only is it handsomely and lyrically written, but Ramsey's snapshots of small-town life circa 1948 are altogether convincing, and he has even brought off the immensely difficult trick of worming his way into the consciousness of a deaf person without betraying the slightest sense of strain... Ramsey is no less adept at sketching the constant tension between tolerance and suspicion that is part and parcel of the communal life of every small town. 

                                 -- Terry Teachout, commentarymagazine.com

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the

bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. - Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. - Barak Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009

1959: The Year Jazz Was Reborn 

By Gary L. Alexander

Early in the morning of February 3, 1959, the chartered Beechcraft Bonanza carrying Buddy Holly, Richie Valens and J.R. "Big Bopper" Richardson crashed just after take-off near Clear Lake, Iowa. It was shocking news, similar to what jazz fans felt when Charlie Parker died ("Bird Lives") four years before, in March 1955. Later singers like Don McLean called this crash "the day the music died." 

I beg to differ. Later that same day, the Miles Davis sextet (absent Miles) recorded

The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in Chicago, the first of three phenomenal new albums - all included John Coltrane - in the first half of 1959 alone. As the 50th anniversary of the Buddy Holly crash arrives this year, rock musicians and cultural pundits will mourn the death of these three vital voices at their peak of popularity in their golden age of rock'n'roll, but jazz musicians can celebrate the rebirth of their own music. 

In the six months of 1959 - particularly the four months between the famous crash on February 3 and the end of May - jazz was almost literally reborn, with ground-breaking albums like Miles Davis and his all-star sextet in the celebrated perennial best-seller, Kind Of Blue which was mostly recorded on March 2 of 1959. That album, a best-seller 

each year since, introduced modal music to many listeners, while albums recorded in the same season contained the most forward-looking avant-garde music. Giant Steps, John Coltrane's post-"sheets of sound" excursion, was mostly recorded on May 5, the same day that Ella Fitzgerald captured many of the first Grammy awards in ceremonies dominated by jazz and swing-related music. 

Ella was busy recording her largest "Songbook" offering, the 53-song George And Ira Gershwin Songbook recorded from January to July of 1959. In the

 same period, Thelonious Monk recorded his famous Town Hall Concert (on February 28) and Charles Mingus perhaps his best album, Mingus Ah-Um (in May). Looking forward, Ornette Coleman offered us The Shape of Jazz to Come. At mid-year, Dave Brubeck recorded odd-time compositions in Time Out on June 25 and July 1. 

The rest of America was fairly hip in those months. The #1 jazz hit in 1959 was the "Theme from Peter Gunn," written by Henry Mancini and played by Ray Anthony's big band. It was in the Billboard Top 40 from January 19 to April 13, 1959, peaking at #8. The #1 hit for 1959 was a song written by Kurt Weill for a German opera in the 1920s, "Mack the Knife" (recorded in late 1958 and reaching #1 for 9 of 10 weeks in late 1959, a huge hit for Bobby Darin). As you can see, the #1 hits for the first half of 1959 were better-than-average pop songs.
   

#1 Billboard Hits its in Early 1959 

"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," by the Platters (#1 for 3 weeks, January 19 to February 8) "Stagger Lee," by Lloyd Price (4 weeks): February 9 to March 8 
"Venus," by Frankie Avalon (5 weeks): March 9 to April 12 
"Come Softly to Me," by the Fleetwoods (4 weeks): April 13 to May 10 
"Kansas City," by Wilbert Harrison (3 weeks): May 11 to May 31 
"The Battle of New Orleans," by Johnny Horton (6 weeks): June 1 to July 12 

Jazz singers fared reasonably well on the Hit Parade, too. "Broken-Hearted Melody," by Sarah Vaughn, charted for 11 weeks (August 17 to October 16), peaking at #7, while "What a Difference a Day Makes," by Dinah Washington, reached #8. When the first Grammy Awards were announced in May 1959, jazz was a big winner, especially in the "Pop" category - although later on the Grammy judges mostly ignored jazz. 

For records released in 1959, the 1960 Grammy awards were also jazz-centered: 

Speaking of movie soundtracks, 1959 was the year that jazz scores expanded from jazz-influenced composers like Alex North, Elmer Bernstein and Henry Mancini to pure jazz artists like Duke Ellington, Gerry Mulligan and John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet. 

In late 1958Johnny Mandel scored and a band led by Mulligan played in I Want to Live, followed by Duke Ellington's award-winning Anatomy of a Murder score in the Otto Preminger classic, released July 1, 1959. In the fall of 1959, three more movies featuring jazz artists were released: Les Liaisons Dangereuses, featuring Art  Blakey; Odds Against Tomorrow, with a score by John Lewis, and Shadows, featuring the music of Charles Mingus. 

The public was mostly buying good music, too. The best-selling album of 1959 was the soundtrack from Peter Gunn, which featured top Los Angeles-based jazz musicians. For the eight years surrounding 1959, the best-selling albums in America were all Broadway soundtrack albums: My Fair Lady (#1 in 1957-58), The Sound of Music (1960), Camelot (1961), West Side Story (1962-63), Hello Dolly (1964) and Mary Poppins (1965). The record-buying public was pouring more cash into music by Lerner & Loewe, Rodgers & Hammerstein, Leonard Bernstein & Steve Sondheim, Jerry Herman and other great composers than into any single item by any rock artist - and that trend continued for nearly a decade, until 1966. 

Turning back to pure jazz, here are just a few of the albums recorded in those four magic months.

Day by Day, Classic Jazz Albums Recorded from February 2 to May 31, 1959

You can make a case that all forms of jazz existed side by side, in relative peace, in that one year - everything from Dixieland to avant-garde was on the record shelves under one category, Jazz.  The miracle year 1959 was not only the year the music was reborn, but the year that jazz creativity reached its zenith.

                                                                                  ©Gary Alexander, 2009.

In his touring all-star tournament, Jazz at the Philharmonic, Norman Granz by the 1950s was conducting a war against segregated seating. Capitalizing on the large audiences JATP attracted, Granz insisted on a guarantee from promoters that there would be no "Colored" signs in the auditoriums. "The whole reason for Jazz at the Philharmonic," he said, "was to take it to places where I could break down segregation." 

Here's an example of Granz in action: After renting an auditorium in Houston in the 1950s, he hired the ticket seller and laid down the terms. Then Granz personally,

before the concert, removed the signs that said WHITE TOILETS and NEGRO TOILETS. When the musicians -- Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Rich, Lester Young -- arrived, Granz watched as some white Texans objected to sitting alongside black Texans. Said the impresario: "You sit where I sit you. You don't want to sit next to a black, here's your money back."

In your liner notes from the great Christmas present CD I received, The Art and Soul of Houston Person, you mentioned a gifted 19-year-old jazz musician who plays few standards. I wondered if you were talking about Eldar. I was looking forward to seeing him at the Clearwater, FL Jazz Holiday back in October. I came away disappointed for the same reason. He played mostly his own compositions. Brilliant though he may be, his choice of music almost boredered on semi classical. I think he played one number, "Straight, No Chaser," that was recognizable, and that you could tap your foot to. I wanted to approach him at the CD sales and signing booth and tell him, in a constructive, senior citizen way, but I did not.

No, it wasn't Eldar. it was Sam Reider, an impressively talented and tasteful young man. You can find out something about him on his MySpace page and hear him in full performances, including one standard, with the Uptown Trio. You might also take a look at a Rifftides piece posted a day or two after I listened to him and his confreres in a concert. This is the paragraph from the Person notes: 

A gifted nineteen-year-old jazz musician recently told me why he and his band play few standards. With touching earnestness, he explained that people under sixty don't relate to standards and that his generation has no connection to the classic songs of the last century. He had just played a concert of compositions mostly written by him or his band members. It evidently escaped him that the audience, with a sizeable component of young people, gave its most enthusiastic response of the evening to an adventurous performance of Matt Dennis's "Everything Happens to Me." As his career progresses, it may dawn on our emerging young artist that when he provides his listeners a melody they can hold onto, they open up to him and accept considerable leeway when he goes beyond the familiar. That has been a fact of life in music at least as far back as Mozart.

As for Eldar Djangirov, the first time I heard him, in a Brubeck Institute workshop run by Roy Hargrove, I was mightily impressed. I think he was sixteen. When his records started coming

out, I heard what you're apparently alluding to, overplaying and a tendency toward pretentiousness, also reflected in his or his handlers' deciding that he should use only one name, a la Beyoncé or Liberace. That's show biz. I haven't heard Djangirov in live performance in several years and don't wish to issue a blanket criticism of a young man who has formidable technical gifts and enormous musical potential. I hope that, ultimately, he will prove to also have taste, judgment and the ability to edit himself at the keyboard. As Miles Davis and John Lewis, among many others, have pointed out, it is important to know what not to play. 

Ramsay celebrates his 80^th birthday this month. Jim Wilke will observe the occasion on his Jazz Northwest radio program on Sunday, January 4 at 1:00 p.m. Pacific time, 4:00 p.m. Eastern.  Wilke will include previously unissued music by Ramsay's big band, recorded in 1961. To hear the program in the Seattle-Tacoma area, tune in KPLU at 88.5 FM. To hear it on the internet, go here.  

Ramsay and I are not related -- except by mutual interests. Whenever I encounter him, he tells me to correct the spelling of my last name and I tell him to correct the spelling of his.