Archives for April 2006

While I was away in the tulip fields, On An Overgrown Path posted a piece on the late Michel Petrucciani. It includes a link to a thirty-eight-minute video about the pianist. In it, Petrucciani talks about his aversion to applause, his fear of death, his love of the piano. It’s an important film. Visit On An Overgrown Path, then come back, please.

The most recent concert at The Seasons was by a Russian group I went to hear out of curiosity. I knew that the members of Trio Voronezh were classically trained at the conservatory in Voronezh, a city near the Don river 250 miles south of Moscow. I knew that they played instruments I had never heard; the domra, the bajan and the double-bass balalaika. But what drew me in was their repertoire, which included J.S. Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart, Astor Piazolla, Gershwin, Khachaturian, an assortment of other Russian composers, Leroy Anderson and Consuelo Velasquez (“Besame Mucho”).
The domra played by Vladimir Volochin is a sort of lute dating from the 1400s, a forerunner of the balalaika. Its heritage is Mongolian. Like the balalaika, it is a three-stringed instrument played with a pick, but it is round, not triangular. Sergei Telshev’s bajan is an accordian with chromatic buttons rather than a keyboard. In most parts of the world, it is considered, even disparaged as, a novelty or folk instrument. Russians take the bajan seriously and study it in institutes of higher music education. Valerie Petrukhin’s instrument is a large version of the traditional balalakia, tuned in E, A and D in the general tonal range of the double bass violin. It stands on a leg attached to the low corner of the triangle. Petrukhin plays it standing, slightly hunched. For the most part, he strums the strings to keep time and provide chords, but once in a while he uses pizzicato in the way a jazz musician plays the bass. You may see the instruments and hear samples of the trio’s work if you go to their website.
Trio Voronezh’s virtuosity was astonishing. They played everything from memory, including the complex “Burlesque” allegro con brio from the Shostakovich Violin Concerto No. 1 and a wild medley of Gershwin songs that incorporated devilish variations on “I Got Rhythm.” Their “Air On The G-String” from BWV 1068 was a passionate performance of that ravishing Bach melody. They captured the Argentine tango mystery of three of Astor Piazolla’s pieces, including his famous “Oblivion.” These are not improvising musicians, but they played with verve so infectious that they created an aura of sponaneity. They charmed the audience with their demeanor, Volochin with his mime’s expressions, all with their close attention to one another and their double bows following each piece. They played two encores and got three standing ovations, heartfelt ones, not the obligatory kind. I was standing and applauding with the rest of the audience.
Afterward, chatting with Volokhin, I jokingly asked why they included no Charlie Parker pieces in their concerts. At first he looked puzzled, then he played a few bars of air saxophone and grinned. “We don’t know any,” he said.
Later, I dubbed the master takes of “Yardbird Suite” and “Donna Lee,” packaged the CDR with lead sheets and sent them off to Trio Voronezh headquarters. Whether they will tackle Bird, I have no idea, but if they do, I want to be there for the premier performance. I’ll let you know if it happens. In the meantime, if they show up in your neighborhood, don’t miss them.

The new Doug’s Picks in the right column include CDs by Roland Kirk and Herb Geller. Kirk’s is a live recording made in Hamburg in 1972. Geller lived in Hamburg then, as he does now. In a coincidence that I don’t possess enough imagination to have made up, Geller attended Kirk’s concert. He read the Rifftides reviews and sent the following message. I have added links to explain some of his references.

Dear Doug,
I remember Roland Kirk´s concert at the NDR concert hall (the funkhaus). It was the only time I heard him live. It seemed to me at the time he did about 20 minutes of blowing in one breath! Then he started playing two and even three instruments at a time. He even played a few notes of flute and clarinet spontaneously and I almost fell out of my chair. This was of course like a circus act, but he pulled it off. The depth of his music for me was not that enthralling but the physical act itself was incredible.
I didn´t know the other musicians, but after they were announced, the drummer´s name rang a bell, especially since he was Richie Goldberg and black. After they finished, I went to him and told him my name. He jumped up and hugged me, saying he used to be married to Vi Redd, and Lorraine and I had visited them at their home in L.A. I went to Dorsey High School along with Vi and we were good friends there. He introduced me to Roland who told me he admired my playing especially on “Sleighride” and commented that the song had a difficult bridge, (which was why I enjoyed playing it).
Herbie G.

Lorraine was Geller’s first wife, a brilliant pianist who is with him on “Sleighride” on the Herb Geller Plays album. She died in 1958, an event that sent him into depression and on an extended trip to escape it. He ended up in Europe, where he has lived, for the most part, ever since.
Amazon offers Herb Geller Plays at an inflated import CD price. The album has not been reissued on CD in the United States, but Verve, which controls the EmArcy catalogue, offers it here as an iTunes download. Those who comprehend that technology may want to investigate.

No blogging for a couple of days. I’m off the see the tulips.
You are invited to browse the Rifftides archive. You’ll find the archive gateway in the right-hand column. Just click and you can travel back in time…but only as far as June 15, 2005, our launch date.

Observe, please, that in the right column we have brand new Doug’s Picks. They are three CDs by saxophonists who could hardly be less alike, a DVD to replicate a great night out, and a book that may make you wish you could drop back into a special time in San Francisco. Of course, it could be argued that in San Francisco, every time is special, but this one, worse luck, is gone forever.

The brilliant pianist Kenny Drew, Jr., has reached the boiling point over the condition of black popular music in the United States. Here are two excerpts from his current essay on the All About Jazz website:

…when I first started studying music I was told that music had to consist of three elements: melody, harmony and rhythm. Rap music (an oxymoron similar to “military intelligence “or “jumbo shrimp”) has basically discarded the first two elements and is left with nothing but rhythm. Since only one element of music is present in most of this crap it doesn’t even justify being called music. Our culture has been dumbed down to the point where your average dumb-ass American can’t tell the difference between a truly great musician and somebody who’s been studying their instrument for a week.
I recently discovered that there is now a form of rap called “coke rap”, in which the lyrics deal mainly with the sale, distribution and use of cocaine and crack. I find it offensive that any record company would try to make a profit from glorifying something that has decimated the black community the way that crack has. I hope that one day while 50Cent is lounging by the pool in his humongous mansion surrounded by beautiful groupies, he might consider how many lives were ruined by the poison he used to sell, and how many more lives will be potentially damaged by the musical poison he’s selling now.

Drew gets more colorful and specific about what rap and hip-hop are doing to the fabric of American society with their messages about drugs, the subjugation of women and glorification of criminal violence. He’s far from the first to notice; Gene Lees long ago addressed all of it in his JazzLetter. But Drew is a young black man. Maybe his rant will get a modicum of attention in the black community. To read the whole thing, go here.

The great football player, singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson was born on this day in 1898. Like legions of other Americans, he made the mistake in the 1930s of thinking that Communism had the solution to problems of inequality in the United States. He went to the Soviet Union to investigate the system and for the rest of his life paid for the trip by being made the target of relentless surveillance by the government. Dr. Chilledair (Bill Reed) posts a recollection of Robeson’s ingenious, courageous and humorous 1949 end-run around McCarthyite witch-hunters. Go here to read the piece and follow Reed’s link to a sound bite of saxophonist Buddy Collette’s eyewitness account of the event.

In my report on the Johnny Mandel concert at the Jazz West Coast 3 festival last fall, I remarked on the exquisite performance by Pinky Winters of one of Mandel’s songs.

Ms. Winters sang Dave Frishberg’s lyrics to Mandel’s “You Are There,” accompanied by only the composer at the piano. Together, without embellishment, they created magic, something at which this masterly singer has excelled for many years to recognition that comes nowhere near her level of artistry.

At JWC3, I learned from Ms. Winters and her producer, Bill Reed, that she had recorded an entire album of Mandel songs with the great pianist Lou Levy, her companion in music and life who died in 2001. In 1983, they performed in the Great American Songwriters series at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, DC. Until this spring, the recording of their Mandel concert was squirreled away on a reel of tape. The good news for those who relish singing that serves the song is that the recital has emerged on an imported compact disc. Slightly less good is the news that The Shadow of Your Smile: Pinky Winters Sings Johnny Mandel…with Lou Levy, produced by the Sinatra Society of Japan, sells for nearly forty dollars. If I had not received a review copy, I would have paid the forty bucks. Singing of this quality is worth it.

Why? Maybe the key lies in that phrase from the October Rifftides review: “without embellishment.” Pinky Winters does not scat, swoop, or indulge in any form of “jazz singer” posturing. I have no doubt, given her innate musicianship, that she could embellish up a storm, but—like the man who knows how to play the accordion in Mark Twain’s definition of a gentleman—she chooses not to. She merely sings the song, with impeccable diction, interpretation, time and phrasing, and with intonation that is centered in the heart of each note. Strike “merely;” there’s nothing mere about her kind of artistry. The great bassist Red Mitchell once wrote a song called “Simple Isn’t Easy.” He might have had Pinky Winters in mind.

In her two minutes with Mandel’s “You Are There” (lyric by Dave Frishberg), she presents the song as a chapter in a life story. Through her subtle phrasing, “it’s morning,” makes us feel the freshness of morning. She sings “pretend the dream is true” with the softest diminuendo on the word “dream,” and we’re dreaming. At a dynamic level of double piano, she makes the piece a soliloquy. She works the same magic with Peggy Lee’s lyrics to Mandel’s “The Shining Sea,” with “Cinnamon and Clove,” with “Emily,” indeed, with all ten of the songs she caresses here. It’s no wonder that in his back-cover endorsement Mandel says, “I’m proud to say that many fine singers have recorded my songs, but none of them made me as happy as what you’re about to hear on this record.”

Levy’s accompaniment is half the story of the album’s success. One of the finest of the generation of bebop pianists who followed Bud Powell, he was a member of Woody Herman’s Second Herd and of Chubby Jackson’s big band. He went on to solo with power and imagination through a career that brought him together with a high percentage of the top jazz artists of the second half of the twentieth century. He worked often with Stan Getz, his pal from the Herman days. Levy’s sixth sense about what singers need made him a favorite accompanist of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson and, of course, Pinky Winters—the royalty of vocalists in the second half of the twentieth century. Levy once said, “I’ve played for every singer except Pavarotti.” That’s a tough break for Pavarotti.

In addition to the pieces with Winters, Levy plays “Theme from M*A*S*H,” “El Cajon” and “A Time For Love” as piano features, aided by the late bassist Bill Takas, who also assists on the vocal tracks. The intimate quality of the recording captures all of Levy’s full-bodied harmonies. The album ends with a 1991 recording of Ms. Winters singing “Take Me Home,” Mandel accompanying her in what is described as a demo track. Some demo. Some album.

Paul Conley of KXJZ in Sacramento, California, writes:

Hi Doug,
If you’re looking for some audio to add to your reflections on Jackie Mac, you might consider this short piece I did for the station. It draws from an interview originally recorded in 2001 and a feature produced in 2002. To hear it, click here.
There is one faux pas, I’m afraid. At the end I say Jackie died at the age of 75… meant to say 73.

Mr. Conley has produced several programs in National Public Radio’s Jazz Profiles series.

You never know where, or in what language, Paul Desmond will turn up next. Here is a sample from a collection of Desmond’s most quoted bon mots, now translated into Spanish.

Probé a practica unas pocas semanas y acabé tocando demasiado rápido.
(I tried practicing for a couple of weeks and ended up playing too fast.)

The translator, Fernando Ortiz de Urbina, writes from London:

Apart from my research on Eddie Costa, I am working on a series of short translations for a Spanish website. Latest in the series is the Desmondisms and Paul Desmond’s interview with Charlie Parker, which I’ve done with the help of Paul Caulfield.
I have also mentioned your book on Desmond, which left me completely speechless when I opened the box it came in (luckily postage was charged by item, not by the kilo.) I have been only browsing, but it is amazing.
Anyway, if you want to have a look all this, it is here:
Fernando
London

Muchas gracias al Sr. Ortiz. Se agradecerán los comentarios de los lectores hispanohablantes.
( Many thanks to Senor Ortiz. Comments from Spanish speakers are most welcome.)

Among the many news columns about Jackie McLean the past few days, Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press hit a number of right notes in his appreciation.

There was nothing in jazz like the sugar-free sound of alto saxophonist Jackie McLean, who died last week at his home in Hartford, Conn., at age 74.
McLean produced a searing, anguished wail that rode the sharp side of the pitch like a cowboy trying to tame a wild steer. Even those of us who worship McLean recognize that his acidic tone and slippery tuning are not to everyone’s taste. But for true believers, McLean’s bittersweet sound remains one of the most soulful cries in American music, and the hot-blooded intensity of his style manifests the same urgent quest for self-expression that made us fall in love with jazz in the first place.

To read all of Stryker’s column, go here.

There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices.—Thelonious Monk
I played the wrong, wrong notes.—Thelonious Monk

Doug,
Jackie was raw but, man, he adored melody. He was lyrical yet never sold out (imagine a Jackie McLean and Strings LP!). How could he with that frantic, sharp, pants-on-fire sound? But he was no pocket Sonny Rollins.
For my money, the best example of Jackie’s work and energy level is Music From The Connection, with Freddie Redd, Mike Mattos and Larry Ritchie. The sad yet hopeful quality of Jackie’s lines on that date are staggering. Each song is hummable and loaded with soaring runs, not only by Mack but also Freddie Redd. Makes you wonder why the pair didn’t record again and again.
Interestingly, this was the East Coast version of The Connection. The West Coast version featured songs written and played by Dexter Gordon, some of which pop up on Dexter Calling on Blue Note. I think it’s fair to say Mack topped Dex hands down—and that’s saying something. Much more soul and passion—and a burning desire for wider recognition.
The Connection is the perfect soundtrack for any Jackie eulogy.
Marc Myers

Doug,
I was really saddened to hear about his passing. Huge inspiration to me as a young player. I’d toss the following into your list (see below). I’ve always had a preference for the records that were a little more angular and less Blue Note-boogalocentric.
Bluesnik
(includes great playing by Pete LaRoca)
4 5 6
(excellent earlier McLean, with great versions of “Why Was I Born” and “Sentimental Journey”–showing a knack for Sonny Rollins-like sense of phrasing. Album has solid contributions for Mal Wadron and Mobley too! Listen closely, Art Taylor’s hi-hat pedal needs to be oiled)
Right Now!
(Especially notable for Clifford Jarvis’ s hard-swinging drumming and McLean’s tune “Eco”, burning!)
I’d also throw in the curveball of the 1967 session Demon’s Dance
(which features Woody Shaw, Jack DeJohnette and two great tunes: Shaw’s “Sweet Love of Mine” and the gorgeous ballad “Toyland”).
Tim DuRoche

Jackie McLean
Jackie McLean died in Hartford, Connecticut on the last day of March. He was 74. When he was a teenager, McLean’s goal in life was to sound just like Charlie Parker on the alto saxophone. Despite his determination to be a Bird clone, he became one of the most recognizable of the post-Parker alto saxophonists. There was a distinguishing cry in his playing, achieved in part by tuning his horn a tad sharp and in part by building on his deep love of the blues. His first recording was with Miles Davis on the Dig date in 1951. McLean worked with Davis through the early 1950s, was on a memorable album as part of George Wallington’s quintet in 1955, recorded on his own for Jubilee and Prestige and in 1959 made the first of his thirty-one albums for Blue Note.
If you have yet to discover Jackie McLean, the few albums listed here will constitute an introduction to his adventurous and exhuberant music.
Lights Out
Jackie’s Bag
A Fickle Sonance
Destination Out!
Let Freedom Ring
Oscar Treadwell
On March 10, we reported that the exceptional jazz broadcaster Oscar Treadwell had returned to the air in Cincinnati and on the internet. The news staff of WXVU, his station, sent this report, dated April 2.

Long time Cincinnati jazz host Oscar Treadwell has died. He began his career in 1947 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His longtime love of jazz led to friendships with many musicians including Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Thelonious Monk wrote a song for him called “Oska T.” Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie wrote “An Oscar for Treadwell” in honor of their friend. OT began broadcasting in Cincinnati in 1962 on WZIP. He also broadcast on WNOP and WGUC. His Sunday night program on WVXU has been on the air since last August. He often weaved poetry and vintage interviews into his program. Tonight at nine you can hear an interview Lee Hay did with OT when he was returning to the airwaves. His regular Sunday night program will follow that interview tonight. Treadwell was 79.

To hear the interview and then Jazz With OT, go here at 9:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time tonight. The station also has an archive of Treadwell’s broadcasts.
For more about OT, go to the Oscar Treadwell website.