Archives for July 2006

It was over in three seconds. I had broken out my moderately refurbished road bike early in the morning and taken it for its first real ride in a couple of years, a break from my recent steady routine of mountain biking. Along the trail near where the Naches River flows into the Yakima, I came up behind a short, stocky, shirtless runner sticking to the right side of the path. To be safe, I drifted way to the left. Just as I was nearly even with him, he leaped–still running–directly in front of me.
“Whoa, whoa whoa,” I yelled, barely grazing him.
“Sorry, Dude,” he yelled. “Snake.”
I looked over my shoulder. A three-and-a-half-footer was making its way across the trail. I didn’t go back to see if it was a rattler.

Recordings are a commodity. Companies sell them to make money. When a CD stops selling briskly, only a label willing to make money slowly over a period of years, or one that feels a cultural obligation, keeps it in the catalog. For decades, the Fantasy complex of labels took the long view. Its Original Jazz Classics program maintained supplies of LPs, then CDs, that sold slowly but steadily. The collection preserved a wide slice of music essential to American culture. Companies that make decisions based on quarterly earnings reports tend not to live by the long sales haul. A few months ago, Concord Records, owned by a group of investors, bought Fantasy.
On July 10, writing of good old Miles Davis and Cal Tjader albums, I observed:

Concord deserves credit for keeping this and other valuable music available in the Fantasy Original Jazz Classics reissue program. But how long the OJC program will last is anybody’s guess. I recommend prompt action if you want to acquire these and other CDs in the OJC series.

Concord has just made plain how long that invaluable treasury of recordings of American music will last. It will last while supplies do. The warehouse is being cleared. Concord’s “Summer Blowout Sale” is not subtitled “last chance,” but the not-so-fine print on the company’s web page leaves no doubt. It bears the phrase, “discontinued titles.”

Special bundled pricing applies only to the discontinued titles included in the Summer Blowout Sale section of the online store. While supplies last. All sales are final.

Among the discontinued titles are the massive box sets of John Coltrane’s complete Prestige recordings, the complete Riverside recordings of Bill Evans, and more than three hundred CDs in jazz, gospel, blues, Latin and other genres. This is money-saving information for current buyers, but bad news for the next generation of listeners, who will have to look on E-Bay or at garage sales for some of the most important music of the last half of the twentieth century. It seems that dire predictions about the fate of the OJCs under Concord’s stewardship are coming true.
It is not difficult to understand why so many musicians of all generations are taking their recording, distribution and sales fate into their own hands. They want their music to survive the oversight of stockholders and accountants. Large-scale capitalism works but, except for the occasional spectacular sale of a Van Gogh or Hockney, it doesn’t work for the preservation of art. Small-scale entrepreneurial capitalism may be better for serious musicians unlikely to attract mass audiences.

In the final installment of Listeners’ Choices, Sam Stephenson mentioned Two Jims and Zoot and I mentioned indignation over that great 1964 album remaining out of print. It was guitarist Jimmy Raney’s date, with Jim Hall also on guitar; Zoot Sims, tenor saxophone; Steve Swallow, bass and Osie Johnson, drums. Devra Hall reports on two sources for the album.

This album included the first recording of dad’s tune “All Across the City”; he wrote it for that record date. It was on Mainstream Records and they released a CD as well as an LP. (I have the CD.) The LP was also reissued under the title Otra Vez. Then in October 1990 Mobile Fidelity reissued it on CD.
Outrageous! On ebay someone in Germany is selling the Mobile Fidelity CD for $91 (plus shipping, I imagine).
Or you can buy the LP (Otra Vez) for $4.95 plus 2.60 shipping.

Ms. Hall, aka Devra DoWrite, blogs here.

Welcome to the final installment of messages from Rifftides readers sharing with all of us what you have been listening to.

·I enjoy reading your blog. The following is what have been listening to recently.
Dave Holland Quintet, Prime Directive. I have been listening to this album for the last few weeks. It makes me smile.
Tom Jobim & Elis Regina, Elis and Tom. I got this after I saw your link to the YouTube video of them singing “Waters of March”. Thank you for introducing me to this music.
Vanitha Ragunathan
Melbourne, Australia

·Recent music (5-CD changer):
Carmell Jones, Mosaic Select #2
J R Monterose/Tommy Flanagan, A Little Pleasure
Blue Mitchell, Blue’s Moods
TD (prefer anonymity)
Hardenburgh, NY (rural Catskills), USA

·Three most recent iPod additions:
Mahavishnu Orchestra, Inner Mounting Flame
Jose Gonzalez, Veneer
Los Lonely Boys, Diamonds EP
Jason Crane
Rochester, New York, USA

·Paul Desmond: Bridge Over Troubled Water. (A&M, now a
Japanese import). With Herbie Hancock playing dreamy
Rhodes piano, Ron Carter, Airto on drums (!) with Don
Sebesky arrangements, “Scarborough Fair” in 5/4!, all
tunes by Paul Simon. In my car: Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer (on two
pianos!) The Ivory Hunters, with Percy Heath and
Connie Kay.
Jan Stevens
Passaic County, New Jersey, USA

·Being old-fashioned and fond of fine rhythm sections, I have been
enjoying The Swing Kings, led by pianist Ray Kennedy, with Bucky
Pizzarelli on guitar and Ken Peplowski on clarinet. For a more mellow clarinet, I’ve enjoyed Easy to Remember, by Ken Peplowski, which has some soothing ballads, a vocal by Bobby Short and a nice version of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” a tune I’ve always liked.
Tracy Warner
Wenatchee, Washington, USA

·”Rising Sun” from the Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz Impressions of Japan.
Owen Cordle
Cary, North Carolina, USA

·I am currently listening to the Ray Charles and Betty Carter duet album and also to Ralph Sharon Plays the Harry Warren Songbook. Enjoy the blog very much.
Alonso Jasso
San Antonio, Texas, USA

·Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet
Ted Allen
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

·The Bill Holman Band Live What an arranger. What a band.
Dave Ramsey
Wenatchee, Washington, USA

Spent the weekend listening to Bird. Every time I return to the Master, I’m amazed at his music. The Royal Roost broadcasts kept taking my breath away all weekend.
Bird Lives , indeed!
– Jeff Rzepiela

·Here’s what I’m wearing out this summer.
Branford Marsalis, A Love Supreme Live
Branford Marsalis, Eternal
John Coltrane,Transition
Buddy DeFranco, Quartets w/Sonny Clark (Mosaic) [Out of print – DR]
Larance Marable,Tenorman
Brad Mehldau, Day is Done
Pee Wee Russell, Swingin’ with Pee Wee
Messiaen, Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (both the Serkin and Aimard recordings)
Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time (Tashi)
Over the Rhine, Ohio
Over the Rhine, Drunkards Prayer
Meshell Ndgeocello, Comfort Woman
Zoot Sims At E.J.’s
Zoot Sims, Two Jims and a Zoot [Out of print. I demand an investigation – DR]
It’s been a helluva summer so far. I can’t get enough of this stuff.
I’ve been on the road a lot and I’ve absolutely worn this stuff out on my
iPod. I resisted the iPod for a long time but it is a beautiful
convenience for travel.
Sam Stephenson
Pittsboro, North Carolina, USA

That flurry ends our survey. You brought to my attention music I didn’t know existed; Over The Rhine and the Brad Mehldau-Renee Fleming collaboration, for instance, not to mention Skerk’s Syncopated Taint Sextet. I hope that you made discoveries, too. Maybe we’ll do this again sometime, but not until the Rifftides staff’s fingers, eyes and patience have recovered from entering the code for all of those links.
Thanks to everyone who responded. Good listening to you all.

Ah, well, over the weekend so many more of you responded to the request for your current listening choices that we can’t wrap it up today after all. If you wish to understand the genesis of these listings, go here. But–I am sorry–it’s too late to contribute. At some point, we have to get back to business as usual, whatever that is, so the arbitrary cutoff is hereby imposed. The final batch will appear in tomorrow’s Rifftides edition, or whatever you call a blog installment.

·The most recent things on my listening agenda:

Kronos Quartet: Plays Music of Bill Evans and Monk Suite.

Jack Sheldon: California Cool
Jack Brownlow
Seattle, Washington, USA

·Bob Brookmeyer’s most recent New Art Orchestra collection, Spirit Music, which has, no surprise, great brass arrangements and performances, and demonstrates that Europeans can swing.
A couple of recently remastered good ole’ good ones: The Complete Studio Recordings of the Gerry Mulligan Sextet, featuring, among others, Messrs Brookmeyer and Art Farmer; and the Mosaic box of the Phillips/Verve Dizzy Gillespie small group recordings, which is the best Father’s Day present I’ve ever received.
I’ve also been playing Magnus Lindberg’s Clarinet Concerto, simply one of the most engaging pieces of new “legit” music I’ve heard in a long time. Finally, for the obvious reasons, I’ve been listening to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson’s recording of the Bach cantatas BVW 82 and 199. Those who have never heard Ms. Lierberson’s angelic voice do not know what they are missing. RIP.
Steven Marks
Potomac, Maryland, USA

·I find as I get older that I’m listening more and more to the music that first turned me on to jazz and not so much to what’s currently being released. So today it was Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra on Decca (1936 to 1938) featuring a couple of my favorite tunes that nobody does, “Ev’ntide” and “Lyin’ To Myself”. Also Carmen McCrae Live at Donte’s, with Jimmy Rowles giving a master class in the art of the accompanist.
Mike Greensill
St. Helena, California, USA

Mr. Greensill has himself given a few master classes as the accompanist to, among others, Wesla Whitfield.

·I discovered your site just by coincidence while I googled George Mraz’s Morava. Currently I listen to Abbey Lincoln’s The World Is Falling Down (thanks a lot, Gary Giddins!), with stellar playing from Clark Terry and the late Jackie McLean. Also on the desk is the wonderful Mary Stallings with her Live at the Village Vanguard , including great playing and arrangements from Eric Reed . When will be there a follow-up from this great but neglected singer? Yes, and last but not at least there is Paul Reddick, a great Canadian singer, songwriter-poet and harmonica player. I saw him recently in a small club in Leverkusen (thats close to Cologne, Germany) playing and singing his heart out for 6 (!) listeners. His albums Rattlebag and Villanelle are marvelous stuff and offer great production and guitar playing from Colin Linden. Oh yeah, did I mention Otis Rush with his intense 1976 live recording just recently reissued by Delmark?.It’s a gas and an all-time-classic!
Clemens Zahn
Cologne, Germany

·Two weeks ago, I finally obtained a copy of Woody Herman’s Verve LP Woody Herman ’58 that has some Bill Harris solos, among others, with most of the writing by Gene Roland, but there is also a Bill Holman original and one by Al Cohn called “Try To Forget.”
I have also been listening to a couple of CDs that I recently acquired. One is the latest by Henry Francis’ small swing group The Swing Legacy. Superb in all respects, as was the first disc by this swinging jump band issued around 1999. Sound samples and ordering info at www.swinglegacy.com.
The other CD is called “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans” and features music from the University of New Hampshire’s Traditional Jazz Series. Proceeds from sales go to Music Cares, Hurricane Relief 2005, and American Library Association, Katrina Relief Fund. Learn more at http://www.izaak.unh.edu/nhltj/. It is $20 well spent.
Russ Chase
Kendall Park, New Jersey, USA

·Da Vida Bella – a two-CD set of wonderful solo piano performances by 30 great players from Gerald Wiggins to Gerald Clayton. The album includes a lovely “If You Could See Me Now” by Alan Broadbent, a take-no-prisoners version of “A Night In Tunisia” by Patrice Rushen and tracks from, among others, Kenny Barron, Dick Hyman, Dave Grusin, Cedar Walton, Bill Mays, Roger Kellaway, Bob Florence, Clare Fischer and Mike Melvoin, who also produced this marvelous collection. This album was recorded as a tribute to dedicated fan and patron David Abell, and released in conjunction with a concert in his honor June 2005 at UCLA. It now serves as a touching and fitting memorial, since David died in March. As far as I know, Da Vida Bella has not been released commercially and is available only from Friends of Jazz UCLA with proceeds going to the David Abell Scholarship Fund for the Jazz Studies Program. For info: e-mail Susan Townsley or call (310) 206-3269.

Also on my turntable or in the CD player this past week:

Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band – Now Hear Our Meanin’

Bruce Brown (pianist/singer/songwriter and one of the world’s great undiscovered talents) – Love Finds You

Pat LaBarbera Quintet featuring Randy Brecker – Crossing The Line (Jazz Compass)

Sandi Shoemake – Sophisticated Lady

Mulgrew Miller – With Our Own Eyes

Charles Lloyd Quartet (with Gabor Szabo, Ron Carter and Tony Williams) – Of Course, Of Course. This 1965 Columbia album was out of print for years and was never reissued on CD…until recently. Mosaic has just released it as part of their new ‘Singles’ series.
Dick McGarvin
Van Nuys, California, USA

·I’ve been totally immersed in the 4-CD set, The Dutch Jazz Orchestra Plays the Music of Billy Strayhorn in preparation for a course I gave this past week at the Chautauqua Institution. This is the music that the musicologist Walter van de Leur uncovered in the 1990s. Most of the music is original compositions for jazz orchestra, but there is
one full CD of gorgeous Strayhorn arrangements of standards. If you like Billy Strayhorn’s music with Ellington, you will be richly rewarded by these works which, for the most part, were never recorded or performed during Strayhorn’s lifetime.
Peter Luce
Rochester, New York, USA

·Gerry Mulligan meets Johnny Hodges, with Claude Williamson, piano, Buddy Clark, bass, Mel Lewis, drums, July 1960. A profoundly beautiful recording–“Shady Side” as the supreme gem among gems. This won’t be dated until music itself is.
Peter Bergmann
Berlin, Germany

Finally in this penultimate group of listeners’ choices, we have an essay from Larry Kart, one of our most esteemed and penetrating critics. It’s a pleasure to have him aboard.

·I’m working my way through a biggish batch of Hep label reissues of 1939-53 big band material — Teddy Wilson from ’39, Charlie Barnet’s 1947 Town Hall Concert, three by Sam Donohue, ’49’-53 Claude Thornhill, Jimmy Dorsey from ’46, et al. So far I’m struck by how unique, fine, and still fresh the latish Thornhill material is (does anyone know who among Lee Katzman, Tom Patton, and Chuck Speights takes that lovely-eerie trumpet solo on “Oh You Beautiful Doll”? — it’s worthy of Bobby Hackett or Tony Fruscella); by the sheer fieryness of that ’47 Barnet band (with Clark Terry and the stratospheric yet sweet-toned Jimmy Nottingham in the trumpet section, and swinging drummer Dick Shanahan); the distinctive, throaty-reedy timbre of the Donohue band, and the classiness of featured trumpeter John Best in the band’s U.S. Navy version (his sectionmates were Conrad Gozzo, Frank Beach, and Don Jacoby); the humane warmth of the Dorsey band (I like Jimmy on alto especially) and the fact that on a track from July 1944, “All the Things You Ain’t,” trombonist Sonny Lee’s solo makes use of the “Salt Peanuts”
figure — this from a date that included a chart, “Grand Central Getaway,” that Dizzy Gillespie wrote for the band). And there’s lots more.
Thinking these thoughts, I also began to think about the life-stories behind this music — the various interactions between these leaders, their audiences, and the larger worlds (the music business, and the external social-historical world as a whole) in which these music makers made their way. About Barnet, who sank his heart and much of his ample inheritance into his bands and also into his taste for high living (no regrets for him, it seems); about Wilson (whose marvelous 1939 band failed to make its way commercially); about Donohue (whose service band was felt by many to be was superior to Artie Shaw’s [which Donohue had taken over and remade] and Glenn Miller’s but who belatedly entered a post-war market without his core musicians because of the Navy’s point system of discharges); about the equivocal, vulnerable temperaments of Dorsey and Thornhill and the relatively early deaths of those two and Donohue; about the two AFM recording bans, the wartime entertainment tax that lingered on afterwards and did much damage to live music, etc. What if we had the power to preserve and protect in all this what was worth preserving and protecting, while shunting aside or even destroying all that threatened what was lovely and living here? Perhaps to even ask the question — given the weight and the sometimes ghastly connectedness of all that we know was at stake here, not to mention all that was at stake or connected to what was at stake here that we aren’t or can’t be aware of — is a form of absurdity.
Larry Kart
Highland Park, Illinois, USA

Here is the third report on the survey of what Rifftides readers are listening to these days.

·Today I have two CDs in my car player: A lovely duo recording by Randy Sandke and Dick Hyman, and a CD reissue of one of my favorite LPs, Boss of the Blues, with Joe Turner and a dynamite studio band arranged by Ernie Wilkins.
Bill Crow
New City, New York, USA

·I’m currently knocked out by a net recording from website Dimeadozen from Vienna’s Opera House in June 2006 of Sergio Mendes current band. How he has manged to update his sound after 40 years amazes me. The Austrian audience is grooving, just shows how Brazilian music can get to the most staid (assumed) audience.

I’ve also just discovered Duke’s Cosmic Scene, great stuff, Gonzalves and Terry are sublime.

Plus a lovely record by Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi Fellini Jazz with Chris Potter, Kenny Wheeler, Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Lovely stuff from all concerned with some exquisite themes.
Don Emanuel
Kent, England

·I have been utilizing my aging El Camino recently. Its tape deck won’t play bebop. That said, I’ve been listening to a home-made compilation of Benny Goodman material from the 1940’s Columbia era, with the likes of Mel Powell, Sid Catlett, Vido Musso, Cootie Williams, Billy Butterfield, Dave Tough, Peggy Lee, Lou McGarrity and those fine Eddie Sauter arrangements such as “Benny Rides Again,” “Perfidia,” “Scatterbrain,” “The Man I Love,” if you will. Indeed, at the end of the day I’m ready for some Artie Shaw.
R.H. Godfrey
Wenatchee, Washington, USA

A virtuoso double trifecta of words and phrases. Bravo, Mr Godfrey.

·Listening to Erik Truffaz’s Face a Face
Kevin Wehner
Kansas City, Missouri, USA

·Lee Morgan, Tom Cat (car)
John Coltrane, Live Trane: The European Tours (iPod)
Patrick J. Whittle
Washington, DC, USA

·The car CD changer currently has on:
Trio de Paz, Somewhere
Very recently:
Louis Armstrong, In Scandinavia Vol 1
Bryn Terfel, An Die Musik: Schubert favorites
Charlie Parker Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 discs C & D
Oscar Peterson Trio At the Stratford Shakespearean Festival
Fredrik Ullen, Ligeti Complete piano music
Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus
Karrin Allyson, Ballads: Remembering John Coltrane
Garret Gannuch
Denver, Colorado, USA

·Pianist Frank Kimbrough’s new CD Play, and: Various Artists: From Ragtime to Rock: A History of American Music This rare LP (supposed only 100 were pressed) features live performances from the January 13, 1970 Today Show, including Lionel Hampton, Bud Freeman, Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and more. Issued by Mrs. Paul’s Kitchens!
Ken Dryden
Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA

·Right now, I’m listening to and enjoying Change Of Heart by Martin Speake Quartet on ECM, and the Dutch Jazz Orchestra’s 1996 collection of Billy Strayhorn compositions, Portrait Of A Silk Thread. Also, Brad Mehldau’s and Renee Fleming’s Love Sublime on Nonesuch, but I don’t know how I feel about that one yet. I enjoy Rifftides. Thanks for keeping it going.
Chuck Mitchell
Kinnelon, New Jersey, USA

·Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band at the Olympia, Paris, Nov.
19, 1960, a 2-CD set.
Jon Foley
Providence, Rhode Island, USA

·Reuben Rogers, The Things I Am

Tim Garland, If The Sea Replied

Frank Kimbrough, Play

Ray Brown, Something For Lester

Fay Claassen is a wonderful and extremely inventive singer. Her recording titled RHyTHMS & RHyMeS ( yes, that’s the correct typeset ) is very fine indeed with a wonderful arrangement of “Seven Steps to Heaven,” but the whole recording is at a very high standard. Toots Thielemans; Joe Locke; Steve Davis; Kenny Werner assist.
Tom Marcello
Webster, New York USA

Tomorrow, the Rifftides staff has a day of rest. The final batch of listeners’ choices will appear on Monday, so if you have been holding back, now’s the time to send yours.

Entries are still arriving in the worldwide Rifftides listeners’ sweepstakes (no losers, no prizes). It is not too late to join. All civil responses will be published. Simply send an e-mail message telling us your current listening choice. Please include your name and where you live. Here is the second installment.

·Jimmy Witherspoon featuring Ben Webster. And for the past week, it was Charlie Byrd/Herb Ellis. Must have played that record twenty times.
Sean Cannon
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania, USA

·Stan Kenton: West Side Story
Oscar Peterson: West Side Story
Andre Previn & His Pals: West Side Story
Carl Abernathy
West Lafayette, Indiana, USA
http://cahlsjukejoint.blogspot.com/

·The Rempis Percussion Quartet (482 Music)
Jeff Albert
Mandeville, Louisiana, USA
www.scratchmybrain.com

·Pat Metheny, Secret Story
… because I woke up in a sentimental mood this morning
Deborah Hendrick
San Leon, Texas, USA

·Over the last few days I’ve been giving very careful attention to Bob
Brookmeyer with the Ed Partyka Jazz Orchestra: Madly Loving You(Challenge Records, recorded in September 1999 and mixed in May of 2000). Not only is this CD revelatory with respect to BB and his playing but the composers of the 8 tunes are quite a mix: Bill Holman, Marka Lackner, Maria Schneider, Manny Albam, Jim McNeely, Frank
Peinshagen, Ed Partyka and John Hollenbeck. The concept, the compositions and the playing are all extraordinary.
And from the sublime to something a little less sublime, The Ed Palermo Big Band: Take Your Clothes Off When you Dance (Cuneiform Records, 2006). This is the second Palermo collection of Frank Zappa compositions and, like the first CD, this one continues to enthrall. It’s fun and serious at the same time. Arrangements are superb and the band seems to get tighter as the CD deveops (8 tracks).
And then I’m listening to Lorraine Hunt-Leiberson, Sibelius and Louise Talma.
Peter Kountz, Ph.D
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

·Frank Sinatra Jr.’s new album, That Face. Great charts and to my ears damned good singing from this fine musician.
Pat Goodhope
Middletown, Delaware, USA

·Frank Kimbrough: Play
Matthew Shipp/William Parker/Guillermo Brown: Trio Plays Ware
Chris Harriott
Hoboken, New Jersey, USA

·I’m now listening to WWOZ, 90.7-FM, online from New Orleans. In my CD changer I have a Buddy Guy acoustic, Gatemouth Brown, the most recent Monk/Trane, Bill Frisell’s Nashville, and No Room for Squares, Hank Mobley. (I’ve been a fan of your writing since I first began listening to great American Music when I was at Whitman College. I’m a frequent attendee at The Seasons, where your introductions are greatly appreciated. I’ve also enjoyed your descriptions of cycling in the Yakima Valley. I’m an avid cyclist myself and just wanted you to know you are not alone.)
Barry K. Schmidt
Yakima, Washington, USA

I was wondering about that. See you on a hill somewhere.
More choices next time. What an interesting group you are.

We suggested that Rifftides readers around the world disclose their current listening. The replies are rolling in, so many that we will have to post them in installments. Here is the first batch. Wherever possible, the Rifftides staff has provided links for those who are interested in pursuing their fellow Rifftiders’ choices.
What We’re Listening To

·A recently arrived shipment of Mosaic Select sets. I’m currently
enjoying the wonderful Bob Brookmeyer “revisited” sessions that I first
fell in love with 40 years ago. Just before that, it was Annie Ross
on the Mulligan set, and before that, the Desmond/Hall Mosaics that
I’ve owned for many years.
Jim Brown
Santa Cruz, California, USA

·I listened last days at :
Warne Marsh – Berlin 1980
Don Fagerquist – Portrait Of a Great Jazz Artist
The Trumpet Artistry of Stu Williams
Leith Stevens scores for The Wild One & Private Hell 36
John Coltrane – Live at the Showboat
axel van looy
antwerp, belgium

·Presently, in the CD player in my car I have a private recording of Warne Marsh with Hank Jones at the Village Vanguard. On my turntable I have a Japanese reissue of Dick Wetmore’s 10″ LP on Bethlehem. In my CD player at home I have the second disc of the recent Gerry Mulligan Mosaic Select
Pete Bainbridge
Lititz, Pennsylvania, USA

·Bob Magnusson Quintet – Liquid Lines
Roger Kellaway Trio – Remembering Bobby Darin
Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival
John Birchard
Washington, DC, USA

·Right now I’m listening to a Han Bennink CD: Nerve Beats (1973), purchased recently on the internet. It is a live recording from Radio Bremen with cover artwork by Han Bennink himself. Listening to rare recordings and discovering something new and exciting is certainly one of the best sides of my job of the last 15 years as a jazz program producer for the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (public radio). Thank you for an entertaining website,
Lana Kolbrun Eddudottir
Rykajavik, Iceland

·My latest “find” is Fay Claassen. About the time you mentioned the Two Portraits of Chet Baker album, I was busy looking for a place to buy it. Your recommendation increased my efforts. The two-disk project is beautiful. The band is very impressive, providing the Mulligan-Baker feel perfectly for underpinning the vocals. The singer, whom I had never heard before, does an amazing job of matching Baker’s phrasing and timing. Best of all, the music comes first and she is an interpreter with taste and respect. I would put this tribute album alongside Italian trumpeter Felice Reggio’s I Remember Chet CD on Philology. They both understand what Chet’s music was about.
Jim Wardrop
Whitehall, Pennsylvania, USA

·Phil Woods Unheard Herd. Mind-blowing stuff from senior citizens who should be taking life easy. Thank god they are not.
Doug Stewart
UK

Many more to come in the next posting, possibly tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who responded.

Homeward bound on a two-hour ride, I saw this sign on the front of a ramshackle house:

HIPPIES
USE SIDE DOOR

If you have forgotten about hippies or are too young to remember them, or if you’re an aging hippie and want to read about yourself, here are the first few lines of the Wikipedia definition

Hippie, often spelled hippy, is a term originally used to describe some of the rebellious youth of the 1960s, although the dawn of the 21st century has brought with it a neo-hippie movement, holding similar beliefs and values as the hippies of the 1960s. The word hippie was popularized by the late San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.

For the rest the article, go here, but be aware that the Wikipedia entry brushes by the beatniks of the 1950s, the immediate forebears of the hippies. For John Ciardi’s exploration of the word’s root, go here.
Dave Frishberg’s song “I’m Hip” captured the essence of hippiedom with lines like these:

When it was hip to be hep, I was hep.

I’m so hip, I call my girlfriend “man.”

The site meter shows that new Rifftides readers have checked in this week from

Algiers, Algeria

Tokyo, Japan

Bejing, China

Reykjavk, Iceland

Ajidjan, Cote D’Ivoire

Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

North Ockendon, Thurrock, in the United Kingdom

And from these places, among others, in the United States

Coraopolis, Pennsylvania

Blue Earth, Minnesota

Kihei, Hawaii

Cave Creek, Arizona

The Rifftides staff is interested in what all of those readers, and all of you, are listening to. Please take a moment to send a message with your name (if you care to disclose it), your location and the most recent music on your iPod, CD player, tape deck, wire recorder, turntable or cylinder machine. We will keep track and compile a report when we have a sizeable list. I’ll get the ball rolling:
Doug Ramsey. Yakima, Washington, USA. Alec Wilder’s score for the 1961 film The Sand Castle Out of print and difficult, but not impossible, to find).

Devra DoWrite, of eagle eye and encylopedic knowledge, adds information to the Rifftides item in the following exhibit about a good old Cal Tjader album wth Eugene Wright, Gerald Wiggins and Bill Douglass.

What was not mentioned was a small fact that gives “but of course” understanding to why “everything clicked” — Bill Douglass was Wig’s drummer and they’d been working together alot in the few years leading up to the Tjader recording.

To read all of Devra’s addendum and mild rebuke, go here. Hey, to paraphrase the deathless words of Steven Wright, you can’t know everything; where would you put it? I appreciate the clarification.

At a concert, Louis Armstrong almost invariably said, “And now, we’re going to lay one of those good old good ones on you.” He used variations of that introductory line during his entire career. Here’s an example, on video, from 1933. I’m borrowing Pops’s line and applying it to two albums from the mid-1950s. This fits in with Deborah Hendrick’s (she has a last name, after all) request to suggest CDs she can recommend to friends who are neophyte jazz listeners.
Concord, through its Fantasy, Inc. subsidiary, has just released another batch of RVG Remasters, named for Rudy Van Gelder, the gifted engineer who recorded them and has digitally updated his original work. It includes Walkin’: The Miles Davis All-Stars, two sessions from April, 1954 with brilliant playing by Davis, trombonist J.J. Johnson, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, alto saxophonist Dave Schildkraut, pianist Horace Silver, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Kenny Clarke. Most jazz musicians and many listeners who came up in the fifties and sixties know the album’s solos by heart, particularly those on “Walkin'” and “Blue and Boogie.” The title tune has become a part of the basic repertoire. Davis had yet to make what repeater-pencil jazz writers persist in describing as his “comeback” at the Newport Jazz Festival the following year. He had never been away. He was yet to record the series of Columbia albums that brought him widespread fame, but he was a major figure in jazz. He, Johnson, Thompson and Silver were inspired in their improvisations on the sextet date. Their solos so quickly became ingrained in the minds of jazz musicians everywhere that within weeks of the album’s release, you could hear paraphrases of them in jam sessions and, before long, in other recordings. More than half a century later, they are a part of the lingua franca of jazz.
In the quintet session, the other horn was Schildkraut, whose alto playing so closely resembled Charlie Parker’s that no less a Parker intimate than Charles Mingus thought that he was hearing Parker when Leonard Feather played Schildkraut’s “Solar” solo for him in a blindfold test. Throughout both sessions, the rhythm section demonstrates that perfect accompaniment can be as satisfying as the improvisation it supports. Focusing on Heath’s bass lines alone can bring great rewards. This is a record to go back to time and again for deeper discoveries.
In 1956, Cal Tjader recorded Cal Tjader Quartet, an album that received little critical notice and sold modestly but over the decades has proved one of the most enduring of the vibraharpist’s dozens of recordings. By 1956, Tjader was becoming better known for his role in the development of Afro-Cuban jazz than as the straight-ahead musician who debuted with the Dave Brubeck Octet and later was the drummer and occasional vibist in Brubeck’s trio. In a pickup date while he and his bassist Eugene Wright were in Hollywood, Tjader brought in pianist Gerald Wiggins and drummer Bill Douglass. Everything clicked. They produced a collection notable for its consistent sensitivity and good feeling. Their “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is one of the finest jazz versions of that piece. The album has an engaging balance of swinging peformances with three slower ones that demonstrate Tjader’s seldom-recognized status as one his generation’s most effective players of ballads. His “For All We Know” solo alone proves that, and his playing on Wright’s “Miss Wiggins,” incorporating the “new blues” harmonic changes introduced by Charlie Parker, gives insights into his understanding of the blues.
Wiggins’ comping complements Tjader in quite a different manner than that of the funkier Vince Guaraldi, who was Tjader’s regular pianist at the time. Wiggins’ solos are a delight. He manages to combine harmonic and melodic delicacy with muscular swing. The sturdy, dependable Wright melds with Douglass, one of the great brush artists among drummers, into a mutual surge that floats the entire enterprise. The instrumentation inevitably brings to mind the Modern Jazz Quartet, which was riding high in 1956, but too much has been made of the comparison. This is music with its own flair and personality.
Concord deserves credit for keeping this and other valuable music available in the Fantasy Original Jazz Classics reissue program. But how long the OJC program will last is anybody’s guess. I recommend prompt action if you want to acquire these and other CDs in the OJC series.

Terry Teachout has come up with a terrific idea for his About Last Night blog. I only wish that I had thought of it first.

In recent months I’ve been posting links to interesting videos that I found on other blogs, but until a few days ago it never occurred to me to experiment with turning this blog into a one-stop portal to the wonders of YouTube. Now I’ve done just that. Take a look at the “Sites to See” module of the right-hand column and you’ll see that it ends with a brand-new roll of selected culture-oriented video links, most of them to YouTube. So far as I know, this is the first such list to appear anywhere on the Web.

Watching Hank Williams, followed by Maria Callas followed by Spike Jones, then Thelonious Monk, is a trip. Please make it a round trip; we want you back. To read Terry’s entire entry and visit his list of YouTube links, go here.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Red Smith

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

Writing does for me what milking does for a cow. ~H.L. Mencken

From Washington, DC:

The other morning I was pawing through my CD collection, looking for something to accompany my pre-work meal when I came upon The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival.

I put it on and, in seconds, was reminded why that recording has stayed near the top of my all-time best list for nearly 50 years. For sheer head-long momentum, nothing I have ever heard can match it. Peterson has headed some notable trios, but the Herbie Ellis-Ray Brown edition beats ’em all.

The chemistry among those three guys bordered on the miraculous. And I defy anyone to show me how any other three people ever achieved grooves of that incredible depth.

I bought the LP in the winter of ’57-’58 while stationed with the Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska. My roommate for part of that year was the drummer Roy McCurdy. As wonderful a drummer as he is – and as partial to his instrument as he is – he had to admit that he couldn’t imagine how the group could swing any harder with the addition of a drummer.

As I listened to the trio this week, to tunes like “Gypsy in My Soul”, “Love You Madly” and “Noreen’s Nocturne”, they produced the same reactions in me they did nearly a half-century ago–laugh-out-loud amazement and delight. That, it seems to me, is one definition of great art.

John Birchard

The DVD choice is now among the new batch of Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column. It took a while to get it there because isolating nearly two hours of viewing time during the holiday weekend turned out to be impossible. When I finally got to it, I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would that I watched it twice.

Hey, do you want to read some nifty short stories? Go here. You may get hooked. Don’t forget to come back, please.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.–Benjamin Franklin

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.–Abraham Lincoln

Jason Crane writes concerning the Doug’s Picks item about John La Barbera (right-hand column):

If I’m not mistaken, Joe is a co-owner of Jazz Compass with Clay Jenkins, Tom Warrington and Larry Koonse. The label has put out a crop of high-quality releases. It’s refreshing to see the players taking control of their musical destiny.

Mr. Crane is not mistaken. Jazz Compass is an intelligently run independent company, five years old, with a catalogue of fourteen CDs by its owners, as well as John La Barbera and drummer Steve Houghton. With major labels abandoning, downgrading or diluting jazz, companies owned and operated by musicians are helping to keep the music available. They have the laudable effect of also allowing musicians to keep more of the money they earn. Distribution is a problem, but it is one that Jazz Compass, Artist Share and other independent CD organizations are solving by way of the internet.