Archives for March 2006

Larry Kart writes from Chicago about the David “Fathead” Newman review in the next exhibit:

A wise, lovely, loving piece of writing. A “customized time value” — yes. I had a similar thought the other day listening to Lou Donaldson on the reissue of his Blue Note album The Natural Soul. The way he holds a note as though he were holding/molding it with his hands.

One minute and twenty-six seconds into a blues called “Bu Bop Bass” on his new CD, Cityscape, the tenor saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman begins his solo with a phrase that consists of two quarter-note Fs, a quarter-note A and a half-note A—an interval of a major third in the key of F concert. How simple; except that it is not simple. It is complex, because Newman gives each note a customized time value that no annotator could capture on paper. They are Fathead Newman quarter notes and a half note. In addition, he gives the half note a slight downward turn, not so far that it becomes A-flat, just far enough that it’s a David Newman moan, a characteristic of his expression. Furthermore, he plays the phrase, as he does all of his music, with a tone that manages to be full and airy at the same time, not quite like anyone else’s tone. Newman has invested a one-bar phrase with his personality, so that anyone familiar with his work will know in that instant who is playing.
This sort of thing is what experienced musicians, fans and critics have in mind when they say that there was a time when they could recognize a soloist after a few notes. Except in the nostaligic minds of older listeners, that time is not gone, although it must be conceded that there are plenty of young soundalike players on every instrument. Is that a new phenomenon? Aside from specialists, could anyone really tell apart all of those disciples of Coleman Hawkins in the late 1930s and early forties, the herd of alto saxophonists in the 1950s who wanted to be Charlie Parker, the 1960s trumpeters who aspired to be clones of Freddie Hubbard? Imitators are eventually lost in the crowd. Individualists stand out.
On Cityscape, Newman places himself in the context of a seven-piece band similar to the six-piece Ray Charles outfit in which he became well known in the 1950s. He hasn’t recorded in that setting in a few years, and it’s good to hear again. The sound and feeling are reminiscent of the Charles days, but Newman and pianist-arranger David Leonhardt have collaborated to make the harmonic atmosphere fresh. Howard Johnson fills the crucial baritone saxophone chair. Benny Powell, often sidelined by illness the past few years, is on trombone. He and Johnson solo infrequently but well. With Winston Byrd on flugelhorn, they fill out the rich ensembles behind Newman’s tenor and alto saxophones. On alto in a piece called “Here Comes Sonny Man,” Newman recalls “Hard Times,” one of the records that made him famous with Charles.
This is basic music mining a rich tradition that grows out of jazz, rhythm and blues and the expansive territory band history of the American Southwest. No one alive does this sort of thing better than Fathead Newman.

Speak low, if you speak love —William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1599

Speak low, when you speak love—Ogden Nash, Kurt Weill, “Speak Low,” One Touch of Venus, 1943

A copy of every jazz album released does not show up at my house. It only seems that way when I look at, maneuver around or trip over stacks of CDs. The stream of review copies arriving by mail, UPS, FedEx and DHL makes it possible for a music writer to keep up with the work of established artists, learn what new ones are up to and hope for revelations, surprises, discoveries. That’s the theory.
The realilty is that listening to music is a linear pursuit. Until there’s a way to inhale or inject it (no jokes, please), the amount of music one human being can absorb is limited to the number of hours in the day minus time for distractions such as eating, sleeping, making a living, staying fit and maintaining agreeable relations with family and friends. There are people who expand their listening hours by employing iPods to pour music into their skulls every waking hour. I have no intention of being one of them. I have heard of a teenager who goes the next step. He retires with ear buds in place, his iPod supplying him through the night with music as he allegedly sleeps. We can only imagine the eventual effect of this practice on his development.
But, I digress. The point is that the accumulation of albums presents an opportunity and a burden. The opportunity is to evaluate a representative sample of what is happening in the music. The burden is one of guilt that stems from the inescapable fact that it is impossible to hear every CD that record companies and individual musicians send in the hope that it will be favorably assessed. The necessity to pick and choose is unavoidable.
Over the next several postings, I will offer observations on some of the recent CDs I have rescued from the stacks, dogged by the certainty that I will overlook something important.

In the quarter of a century during which Marian McPartland has presented Piano Jazz on National Public Radio, her guests have included most of the idiom’s important pianists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ranging in style from Jay McShann to Chick Corea. One of the most rewarding of her programs was in 1984 with the late Shirley Horn. Usually shy and reluctant to verbalize about her music, Horn came out of her shell for McPartland. The two pianists got along beautifully and delivered a supremely relaxed hour of conversation and music. They played with and for one another, and Horn sang—perfectly—three songs. At times, the patter edged into the giddiness of a couple of friends indulging in girl talk. Charming stuff.
When they tackled Don Redman’s 1928 pop song “Cherry” and collided harmonically on its bridge, McPartland and Horn worked their way out of the confusion and laughed about it afterward. Collaborating on a spontaneous blues, each played at the top her game, stimulated and encouraged by the other. There may have been more profound and instructive installments of Piano Jazz—the one with Bill Evans, as an example—but none more enjoyable.
Jazz Alliance, a subsidiary of Concord Records, has issued a new batch of Piano Jazz shows on CD. They include guests Dave Brubeck, Teddy Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton and—from the sort-of-, would-be- or near-jazz category—Steely Dan, Elvis Costello and Bruce Hornsby. To check out several of the most recent and older Jazz Alliance releases in the series, go here.

If conventional wisdom and the Nielsen SoundScan survey are right, jazz titles constitute three-to-four percent of CDs. That means that jazz CDs account for about two-million-480-thousand of the 619-million total CD sales Nielsen reports for 2005. Putting aside such value-laden considerations as what constitutes a jazz record or, for that matter, what jazz is, nearly two-and-a-half million CDs sold indicate a substantial audience. Of course, the jazz album market is not large in comparison with the audience for, say, recordings by Arctic Monkeys or Black Eyed Peas (I am not making up those names).
Except for Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte in the eighteenth century, certain songs of Stephen Foster in the nineteenth, and a few hits during the unreproducable years of the swing era, art music has always been less commercially viable than pop. It probably always will be, whether it is by a jazz piano trio or the Budapest String Quartet. Charlie Parker sold many fewer records than Patti Page. At the height of his jazz-rock success, Miles Davis sold millions fewer than Jimi Hendrix or Sly And The Family Stone. Diana Krall, one current jazz musician who has edged into the pop market, is leagues behind Jennifer Lopez—in terms of sales, that is.
It is not that jazz (and classical) musicians are opposed to popular success, or even that they are unwilling to compromise. The guitarist Jim Hall once said, more or less seriously, “Where do I go to sell out?” But a musician of Hall’s commitment, integrity and talent is unlikely to be able to sell out even if he makes the effort, simply because of his inability to tune into frequencies lower than those of his artistry. Witness trumpeter Freddie Hubbard’s Coumbia albums of the 1980s, ineffective as either jazz or pop.
So, what to make of Rewind That by the gifted twenty-two-year-old trumpeter Christian Scott. There is no apparent reason not to take him seriously when he is quoted in a Concord Records news release, “I set out to find my own style to convey how I feel in my heart…” and, “Everyone wanted me to do a straight-ahead album, but that’s like meeting a woman and trying to be like her last boyfriend. You’ve got to be special.”
If individuality is the key to being special in jazz—I am persuaded that it is—good for Scott for wanting to develop his individuality. If, on the other hand, he is devoted to being different for the sake of being different in order to achieve commercial success, he is likely to end up being like the last boyfriend.
From Tod A. Smith’s liner notes for Rewind That:

His music is the language of this era – forged by the sounds of a new generation and developed by the shared experiences of that new generation. And while others may be content with reading the primer for this new language, Christian Scott is writing the definitive style guide.

And

Scott appeared destined to record this music, at this very moment in time. Incorporating the influences of jazz, hip hop, R&B and rock in a Harrison-developed concept called Nouveau Swing.

Harrison is Scott’s uncle, Donald Harrison, the brilliant New Orleans alto saxophonist who made his first splash in jazz in the eighties. I first heard Scott with Harrison’s band at the Estoril, Portugal, jazz festival in 2000, when Scott was seventeen, already an impressive trumpeter. I made a note then to keep an ear out for him. Harrison called not only his concept, but his band, Nouveau Swing. It had the rap and rock underpinnings that Scott was to adopt, but it also embodied swing, the kind of 4/4 groove that grew out of Kansas City in the 1930s and has delineated the rhythmic component of jazz for decades. Rewind That does not have that kind of swing. Rather, it seems to contrive to bend over backward not to swing in the conventional sense (“You’ve got to be special”). As a result, despite Scott’s gorgeous tone, and his range and fluency on the trumpet, the music of his sextet has an oddly static feel throughout much of the album.
The drumming of Thomas Pridgen occasionally hints at New Orlean parade beats but most often concentrates on hip-hop rhythmic sensibilities, as do Linques Curtis’s fragmented, non-linear bass patterns. Straight time is not an element of this collection. That, clearly, is how Scott wants it. Most of the music stutters along to a degree where, ultimately, I found myself excoriating the speakers, “Swing, damn it,” even as I was enchanted by Scott’s soft tone and crisp articulation in the lower register of his horn. As Scott meanders over the rhythmic hesitancies of “Caught Up” and “Paradise Found,” the most unified and satisfying track of the album, an experienced listener taking a blindfold test might conclude that he was hearing Chet Baker.
Walter Smith III’s tenor saxophone solos in the post-Coltrane mold flow nicely, as do the solos of guitarist Matt Stevens. Zaccai Curtis’s Fender-Rhodes piano is employed mostly to provide chords and atmosphere. Donald Harrison, a guest on four tracks, is the most adventurous of the soloists, taking interval leaps that bring life to the piece called “Suicide.”
If Christian Scott is “writing the definitive style guide” for his generation of jazz musicians and his style continues to develop around hip-hop rhythmic values, I am disturbed about where jazz may be headed. In the final analysis, swinging is what differentiates jazz from other music. It will be a challenge to keep paying attention if swinging is phased out. So far, jazz has absorbed and integrated its influences. The optimist in me assumes that it will not be dominated by rap and hip-hop. There is much to like in Mr. Scott’s playing. I shall continue to have an ear out for him and hope that he listens more to Count Basie and Zoot Sims and less to Black Eyed Peas.

Bill Crow, bassist, author and occasional Rifftides correspondent, has taken to the air or the ether, or whatever you call the medium that contains the internet. His new website is a work in progress, as all good websites should be. He writes,

I keep polishing it as I learn the software. Some of the pictures are a little fuzzy, but I think I know how to fix that, as soon as I get time to rescan them.

Well and good, but the photos are fascinating as is. Bill uses many of them to illustrate his biography, from his birth in 1927 to the present. They include shots, from early in his career, of two musicians who would have been among the best known and most admired in jazz if—to grab the nearest handy cliché—their lifestyle choices had been a tad more moderate and they had lived. They were the drummer Buzzy Bridgeford and the tenor saxophonist Freddy Greenwell. Among his slightly better known colleagues are Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Marian McPartland, Kai Winding and J.J. Johnson, Claude Thornhill, Tommy Flanagan and Bob Brookmeyer, to name a few among dozens. Crow’s discography starts with Mary Lou Williams in 1950. Its most recent entry is a CD with tenor saxophonist Tony Lavorgna, recorded last month.
I am adding billcrowbass.com to the links in the right-hand column, where it shall remain.

The Charlie Parker posting has elicited a number of interesting responses, including this one from Rifftides reader Dave Lull.

The late Esther Bubley took photographs of Charlie Parker and others at a jam session. There are a few of them posted at a web site devoted to Ms Bubley, and more posted here.
From the Esther Bubley Gallery forward:
“Esther Bubley was the photographer at the Norman Granz Jam Session recording in 1952. What is really remarkable about this series of photographs is that they show Charlie in a variety of moods: attentive, jovial, exhausted, nervous, and most of all, respectful towards Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter, both of whom were Charlie’s idols. Barney Kessel said, “The odd thing, I felt more warmth and receptivity from Charlie Parker towards the others than they did to him. […] He was younger and he learned from them. They didn’t learn from him, they’d already left him a legacy; they were already established people before he’d even picked up a horn. He openly admired them”. Esther Bubley’s document of this session is genuinely unique for the photographs not only capture Charlie in the creative process, but are linked to one moment in time.”
These photographs are available in her book Charlie Parker, published in France by Editions Fillipacci, 1995.
Cordially,
Dave Lull

During my New Orleans years, Charlie Parker’s two-chorus solo on “Funky Blues” from the Jam Session album was the theme song of a radio program, Jazz Review, that I did on WDSU. When Cannonball Adderley was a guest one night, the theme came up and he vocalised it in perfect unison with Bird. If only I had cued the engineer to open Cannon’s microphone, we’d have had a classic duet recording.

Good news for radio listeners in Cincinnati, Ohio, or anywhere on the internet: The veteran broadcaster Oscar Treadwell (legendary would not be a hyperbolic term in this case) is back on the air. In his early career, Treadwell was so highly regarded by musicians that Wardell Gray named one of his compositions “Treadin’ With Treadwell,” Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded “An Oscar for Treadwell” and Thelonious Monk wrote “Oska T.”
Treadwell retired in 2001, but a survey of listeners disclosed that they wanted him back and WXVU-FM (91.7) gave him a two-hour slot at 9 pm Eastern Time on Sundays. The station streams its programming live and has an archive of Treadwell’s programs. I have sampled several of them and find him as hip as ever, expert in all eras of jazz; tasteful, to the point and knowledgeable in his comments.
The Rifftides staff thanks reader Dave Barber for calling this to our attention.

Several interesting comments came in regarding the Charlie Parker posting. Many of them included information about the DVD that was the source of the footage on the Dailymotion web site. Here are some of the reader responses.

The Parker/Hawkins footage is on “The Greatest Jazz Films Ever,” available from various outlets. That 2-DVD set also includes the complete Sound Of Jazz, Jammin’ The Blues with alternate takes, The Robert Herridge Theater Miles Davis/Gil Evans program, the “Hot House” Bird/Dizzy TV appearance and Jazz From Studio 61, featuring the Ahmad Jamal Trio and a Ben Webster all-star group. An absolutely essential DVD set. By the way, you should know that on the Parker/Hawkins Jazz At The Philharmonic segment, the musicians are playing to a pre-recorded track – watch the hands of Ray Brown and Buddy Rich. Notice that the sound is excellent studio sound, but there are no microphones visible. And if you watch really closely, you’ll see a number of places where it doesn’t match up (if you watch that closely, though, it takes away from the enjoyment of the film, I have to admit). Check out Buddy Rich’s tiny drum set. He must have laughed when he came into the studio and saw that. It was directed by Gjon Mili, just like “Jammin’ The Blues.”
Jon Foley

Hi Doug,
The 2 DVD set that Jon Foley references is a Spanish production that most likely has ignored the fact that this footage was edited and produced by Norman Granz, Frank Tenot, and Jacques Muyal and is ® 1996. I am certain that if Norman were still alive he would descend upon the Spanish producers and sue them for every penny in their possession. Of course they would point to the fact that it was filmed in 1950 and therefore exempt from copyright protection. But the truth is that the footage had been in storage until the nineties when Granz was urged to release it, and had never been released or viewed prior until 1997 when it came out in Japan. Upon closer examination of the credits on the box I see that it was also released as a Laser Disc, TOLW-3258. I recall that Swing Journal devoted numerous pages to this monumental release when it came out.
One of the delights of the original production is the on camera presence of Norman Granz who opens the film and sets the stage for what he was trying to achieve, an examination of the art of improvisation which is at the heart of jazz. Norman also narrates introductions to the film clips that follow the opening Mili sequence. The BLUES FOR JOAN MIRO clip with Duke Ellington was filmed at the Foundation Maeght in St. Paul on the Riviera, and includes Miro and Duke strolling the grounds before Duke sits down to improvise his piece dedicated to Miro.
Jim Harrod

Hi, Doug,
You did fine in thinking the tune Hawk is featured on is “I Got It Bad,,,,” only it is called “Ballade” on the the records and videos that have it. The second tune by Bird and the rhythm section is called “Celebrity.” These were recorded in a studio in NYC in the Fall of 1950. The filming was done later in Gjon Mili’s studio with the players doing their best to sync it.
Russell Chase

Ah. Good. The ears may still have a few miles to go.

Doug,
Wow, killer site with the jazz clips. Those Bird vids where he confidently cuts (Hawk) and Hawk looks sorry he ever showed up…and Bird digging Buddy for his sheer energy level are something–as is everything else at the site, in fact. Mick Jagger singing “Like a Rolling Stone” ain’t chopped liver, either.
Hats off to you! Fab find.
Marc Myers

Mick Jagger?

You probably don’t want people commenting on other comments, but Marc Myers seems to be projecting too much of his own point of view onto the reactions of Bird and Hawk. I don’t see any expression of remorse or discomfort by Hawkins – just mutual digging and appreciation by both of them. Hawkins’ solo is beautiful, and Bird appreciates it, just as Hawkins appears to groove to Bird. And one can just as easily read Bird’s response to Buddy Rich as mocking disbelief at the bombastic drummer’s unhip antics, but that would be my opinion.
Larry Beckhardt

Not apropos of Charlie Parker, but if you live in or around New York City and your interests include chamber music, do yourself a favor and visit Mr. Beckhardt’s website, Hellgate Harmonie. It will tell you about performances in the kinds of places Mozart frequented in Vienna in the late 1780s. You might hear fine music for the price of a beer or a cup of coffee. Intriguing.

Doug,
The story behind that Billie Holiday/Prez segment on The Sound Of Jazz was told me by Gerry Mulligan, who was also there. Prez was not in good shape at the rehearsal, and the Basie alumni group he was supposed to play with complained about having him with them. Billie said, “Let him play with me,” and during the rehearsal, Prez played weakly, trying to put some ideas together for his solo. On the take, he really pulled himself together and, though not physically strong, played a lovely chorus. It was his triumph over his condition that evoked the expression on Billie’s face that was caught by the camera.
Bill Crow

Mr. Crow, as nearly everyone knows, was the bassist with Mulligan’s quartet and, later, his Concert Jazz Band. He is the author of Jazz Anecdotes and From Birdland to Broadway, essential inclusions in every two-foot shelf of books about jazz.

One of the pleasures of living in the Washington, D.C. area (there ARE some), is that the three main military jazz bands make their homes here.
One of the better concerts I attended this past year was at George Washington University, where the Airmen of Note, the U-S Air Force’s jazz group, played host to the great guitarist Pat Martino. The band was inspired by Martino’s presence and the guitarist clearly dug being surrounded by such a talented big band, an experience I expect he doesn’t get to enjoy every day. And, of course, the icing on these GI jazz “cakes”: not a penny is charged for admission.
The Army Blues, the Navy’s Commodores and the Airmen all present periodic concerts in the DC area at attractive sites like the U-S Capitol steps, the Navy Memorial and various local parks, in addition to their tours around the country.
Hard to say which of the three bands is “best”. Each of them is worth hearing any time you get the opportunity.
John Birchard

Devra Hall, aka DevraDoWrite, sent this about military bands:

Joe Williams is one of the many jazz artists who loved to work with the
The Airmen of Note, the premiere Air Force band that was for many years
under the baton of Col. Gabriel. For about a year (2003-2004) I wrote a
monthly column for MilitaryMusic.com. Here are links to a couple of
those pieces still archived online:
Military History 101: Warrant Officers —
Song Notes: From WAAC to WAC to WAF —
And here’s a link to Patriotic Jazzmen, my blog post from last July4th. —
Devra

Good reports. Carry on. I’ll be in the area all day.

Rifftides is extending its reach in southern regions. Welcome to new Rifftides readers in Mexico, Peru and Djibouti.

For years, I have thought that the only film showing Charlie Parker at work was a well-known 1952 clip of Parker with Dizzy Gillespie when they appeared on a television program to receive a magazine award and played “Hot House.” It turns out, happily, that I was wrong. A website called Dailymotion has filmclips and videotape sequences of a number of musicians, jazz and otherwise, including two with Bird.
In Dailymotion’s Parker video, we see him at first listening with great appreciation to Coleman Hawkins play what seems to be “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good,” then sharing the performance with the great tenor saxophonist. An up-tempo blues follows—Parker with pianist Hank Jones, Bassist Ray Brown and drummer Buddy Rich. It’s nearly as much fun watching Bird dig Buddy’s solo as to see and hear his own playing. Another piece has the rhythm section with Lester Young, Bill Harris, Harry Edison, Flip Phillips and Ella Fitzgerald. The video quality is crisp, the sound clear. To see the clip, go here. If you do not have a high-speed internet connection, it may download slowly.
The knowledgeable Jim Harrod of the Jazz West Coast listserve says that the clip is “from NORMAN GRANZ PRESENTS IMPROVISATION released in Japan on 9/26/1997 by Toshiba EMI, release number TOVW-3258, VHS. I believe it has also been released on DVD. The entire film runs 64 minutes and includes footage from 1966, 1977 and 1979.”
The footage of Parker and the other stars of Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic troupe is, of course, from the early 1950s. Parker died fifty-one years ago next Sunday, on March 12, 1955. My internet search turned up references to the DVD on web sites, apparently Russian, whose links did not work. Maybe you’ll have better luck. If you know where the DVD can be obtained, let us know, please.
To see part of the Parker-Gillespie “Hot House” clip, go here.
As long as I’m directing you to the Dailymotion stash of videos, I should mention Billie Holiday’s “Fine and Mellow” from the 1957 CBS program The Sound of Jazz. If you have never seen the look on Holiday’s face as her friend Lester Young plays his perfect blues chorus, go here.

With all the back-and-forth about Maynard Ferguson’s band and outreach, music ed and so on, I wonder why the military bands are never mentioned? These ensembles are comprised of some of the best players and composers/arrangers on the planet and probably do more to keep students interested in jazz than most others. Granted, their concerts are free (a competive advantage), but it’s nice to see some of our tax dollars going into worthy endeavors.
Dennis E. Kahle

The armed forces jazz bands are not mentioned often enough. That’s true. But, “never?” Here’s part of a recent Rifftides posting.

Buddy DeFranco, approaching his eighty-fourth birthday, played in concert with the U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble. Made up of sergeants of various stripes and led by Chief Warrant Officer Charles Vollherbst, the Blues (named for their dress uniforms) is one of the best big jazz bands at work, military or civilian. It has a stompin’ rhythm section, impressive brass and wind sections, fine soloists, and arrangers with skill and imagination. Staff Sergeant Liesl Whitaker’s lead trumpet work places her among the best in that demanding, punishing craft.

To read the whole thing, go here.

From Ciardi’s A Browser’s Dictionary (1980):

Hip Mod. Slang (and prob. becoming passé). Aware, knowing, up on, in the know. [Earlier hep with the same senses, perhaps modified from the military usage for counting cadence, itself a modification of “left” as in hep-ri’-hep (because “hep” is easier to say with great expulsive force. MMM* attests hep in this military usage by 1862; with the sense “aware, knowing,” as of 1903; the sense shift being from military alertness to alertness in any sense.

Ciardi being Ciardi, that wasn’t enough information about the word. He added,

J.L. Dillard, Where Our words Come From,asserts a straight-line connection between West African hipi and mod. slang hippie; but this assertion addresses only the present form hip without considering earlier hep, it suggests no conceivable line of transmission, and must be dismissed as a fetch based on surface resemblance only by a Negro scholar who is a bit overzealous in his otherwise admirable desire to show how much Africa culture has contributed to American life—as it has done richly, though that contribution is not assisted by willful etymology.]

*(Mitford M. Matthews, A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles)

“Good Morning,” he said, “this is John Ciardi prowling around your breakfast table and peering into your cereal bowl to find a whole cluster of words there.” It was his introduction to one of the pieces he did on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition in the 1980s. To hear the whole thing, go here and click on “Listen. ”
If you like that one, go here for five NPR podcasts of Ciardi sending “good words to you.” (This page is a slowwwwww loader. Be patient)

He published 38 books, 12 of them for children, one a translation of Dante. He was a fine poet.

Measurements
I’ve zeroed an altimeter on the floor
then raised it to a table and read three feet.
Nothing but music knows what air is
more precisely than this. I read on its face
Sensitive Altimeter and believe it.
Once on a clear day over Arkansas
I watched the ridges on the radar screen,
then looked down from the blister and hung like prayer:
the instrument was perfect: ridge by ridge
the electric land was true as the land it took from.
These, I am persuaded, are instances
round as the eye to see with,
perfections of one place in the visited world
and omens to the godly
teaching an increase of possibility.
I imagine that when a civilization
equal to its instruments is born
we may prepare to build such cities as music
arrives to on the air, lands where we are
the instruments of April in the seed.

From John Ciardi: Selected Poems ©1984
Ciardi died in 1986 at the age of seventy. Damnit.

Art Kane’s 1958 photograph of fifty-eight musicians in front of and on the steps of a Harlem brownstone ran in Esquire magazine, which called it A Great Day In Harlem. It became one of the best known snapshots in the world, already famous for decades when Jean Bach made a film about it in 1994. Now, in her late eighties, she has expanded the film and brought the picture and its subjects even more renown. Ms. Bach, the brilliant film editor Susan Peehl and director Matthew Seig added nearly four hours of new material to the production. Like the picture that inspired it, the film is not a polished product. It is a rough and ready masterpiece that makes the most of the materials at hand, rather like a jam session solo.

At the IAJE meeting in January, Ms. Bach gave me a copy of the updated two-DVD release of A Great Day In Harlem. Over this past weekend, I finished watching it. One of its most appealing qualities is that, after the viewer has seen the main body of the production, he can dip into the nearly four hours of new features when its convenient, without fear of losing continuity. Navigation is easy by means of menu features that give the option of using alphabetical listings or—for computer users—browsing through the Kane photo with arrow keys and highlighting individual musicians to bring up their stories.

Some of the new segments are interviews with the musicians from the photo who were still alive when the film was being made, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer, Bud Freeman, Horace Silver and Max Kaminsky. Most of the others in the picture were gone by then, including Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Red Allen, Pee Wee Russell, Rex Stewart, Thelonious Monk, Roy Eldridge, Count Basie and Sonny Greer. Their surviving colleagues—and sometimes the vital and knowledgeable Jean Bach herself—tell their stories, all fifty-eight of them. In their recollections, Chubby Jackson is effusive, Sonny Rollins thoughtful and writer Nat Hentoff savvy and often amused.

The cumulative effect, whether or not the viewer is a hard-core jazz fan, is a sense of the yeastiness of what may have been the last golden era of jazz. Pioneers of the form were still at work, sometimes on the bandstand with musicians a generation or two, or three, younger. A natural companion to A Great Day In Harlem, the 1957 CBS television program The Sound Of Jazz, illustrates the generational compatibility, respect and understanding that marked the New York jazz scene through the fifties and into the early sixties. Ms. Bach’s film draws from the kinescope of that landmark show for scenes, for instance, of Count Basie listening raptly to Thelonious Monk, of Gerry Mulligan playing with Ben Webster and Rex Stewart.

Bill Charlap and Kenny Washington, who didn’t exist when Kane took the picture, reflect on the legacy of their predecessors in an interview highlighted by Washington’s uncanny impression of the character and mannerisms of Jo Jones, an idol of Washington and virtually all other drummers. The new DVD set also includes a mini-documentary about the making of the film, with hilarious sidebars about the travails of fund-raising, locating musicians and trying to coax accurate information from failing memories. Ms. Bach gracefully and affectionately corrects Art Blakey’s confident representations of facts that are clearly wrong, including his claim to have owned the brownstone that was the setting for the photograph. There is a brief feature about Kane, who committed suicide in the 1990s, apparently because of health worries. In addition, Jean Bach guides the viewer through an exhibit of the many “Great Day” photo imitations; A Great Day In Philadelphia—San Diego—New Jersey—Haarlem (Netherlands), et al—even A Great Day In Hip-Hop.

The film is informative, entertaining and uplifting. Whatever misgivings you may have about where jazz is headed, A Great Day In Harlem is almost sure to make you happy about where it has been.

“Jazz is where you find it.” That is the opening sentence in the first paragraph of an essay in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. Here is the rest of the paragraph.

The Polish novelist and essayist Leopold Tyrmand, who spent much of World War Two as a forced laborer in Germany, tells of hearing the music of Benny Goodman from a hand-cranked phonograph in a rowboat in the middle of a river. The phonograph was operated by a Nazi soldier afraid of being thought an American spy or sympathizer if he listened openly. With difficulty, Tyrmand talked his way into the soldier’s confidence, and a strangely matched pair of fans spent a Sunday afternoon spelling one another at the oars and digging Benny.

Owen Cordle, a correspondent for that excellent newspaper the Raleigh, North Carolina, News and Observer, may not feel as isolated and certainly not as endangered as Tyrmand and Hitler’s soldier did. Cordle lives in a small suburb of Raleigh where high-quality jazz does not run rampant. He reports, however, that great music materialized there the other night. Owen sent the message below to share the experience with Rifftiders. It confirms my frequent observation that it is possible to be surprised by fine music almost anywhere in the United States. I have supplied a few informational links.

Doug,
Lou Marini showed up last Saturday night at the Lotus Leaf, a small Vietnamese restaurant in Cary, NC, as part of a dinner party booked by Frank Corbi, his former saxophone teacher. There was no publicity other than an e-mail message from the owner to the musicians who regularly perform there that Lou and Frank were coming and that they might bring their horns. Guitarist Richard Fitzgerald, who was performing there with singer Deb Trauley, had done a little preemptive homework — just in case.
Dinner orders placed, Lou and Frank headed for the corner where Richard and Deb were set up. Richard launched “T-Bone Shuffle” and the horns tore into it, Lou on alto, Frank on tenor. Knowing Lou’s history as a member of Blood, Sweat & Tears, the original Saturday Night Live band and the Blues Brothers band (he was in both Blues Brothers movies), I was primed for a heavy R & B scene. But Lou proved a fierce bebopper. With Frank in his lively, oblique Lester Young bag, this was as close to Bird and Pres as I’ve ever come. I was knocked out.
This may sound odd, but part of the joy came from watching Lou grab bits and pieces of the heads and sometimes feel his way through the first improvised chorus or part thereof and then nail the chord changes solidly the next time around. He was fallible and human but a quick study. And that was the beauty of it — recovery, ingenuity, memory and the musical ear in action on the wing. He played lots of blistering runs and varied the entrances and exits of his phrases. You could catch Bird’s vibrato once in a while. He showed intense drive. In the words of the “Cannonball” Adderley title, this was “spontaneous combustion.”
Frank’s tenor — full of quotes and circling runs and behind-the-beat phrases — took the harmony to places it had rarely been before. He can make the oddest note fit. It was lovely and floating. He was the Four Brothers to Lou’s Bebop Brother.
Richard called the tunes, started an intro and let the horns find the melody and weave counterlines: “I Remember You,” “Have You Met Miss Jones,” “Blue Monk,” “Autumn Leaves,” “Tenor Madness,” “There Will Never Be Another You” …
Sometimes the spirit of a thing can give you hope and heal you even when the source isn’t perfect. Such was the case here. I wouldn’t have changed a note.
(For the record: Frank lives in Cary. Lou’s dad., who was also present, now lives in Raleigh. Frank and the Marinis lived in Ohio during Frank’s teaching days.)
(I sent you this because jams of this caliber and spontaneity don’t happen too much anymore, especially where I live.)
Owen

In addition to his work for the News and Observer, Owen Cordle reviews music for JazzTimes magazine.