Nice piece Doug. I’ve linked it on The MF Trbute Page Forum, which is getting ten thousand times its usual traffic.
I’ve been listening to MF since I was 15 (I’m only 47 now) and this is a big loss. What a complete musician, and what a gentleman.
John Salmon
Archives for 2006
Comment: Nonstop Rollins
Rifftides reader Chris Harriott writes concerning the Sonny Rollins CD in the new set of Doug’s Picks (right-hand column):
Coincidentally, I’ve had Work Time in non stop rotation on my IPOD for the last 2 weeks or so. Can’t get enough.
Blog Watch
A blog by the anonymous Dr. Jazz Ph.D. is worth perusing, if only for a couple of Michael Brecker video clips. One, from 1983, has the tenor saxophonist and a rhythm section that includes Niels Henning Orsted-Pedersen playing the fastest “Oleo” you’re likely to hear this side of Johnny Griffin. The other was made at an outdoor festival in Switzerland in 1998 with his Brecker’s own quartet, Joey Calderazzo on piano, James Genus on bass, and drummer Ralph Peterson. In it, Brecker manages to incorporate tricks that would have put a 1920s saxophone vaudevillian to shame while also negotiating a complex harmonic scheme and, ultimately, going into straight time and swinging the house down. Well, he would have swung it down if he hadn’t been on an outdoor stage.
The young blog is The Jazz Clinic. I have cruised through its archives and found it valuable for the fresh perspective of a young enthusiast with big ears. To visit it, and to see those Brecker clips, go here.
Maynard Ferguson
CBS Radio News called this morning and asked me to talk about Maynard Ferguson. That’s how I learned that Ferguson died last night in Ventura, California, just down the road from his home in Ojai. He was seventy-eight. He had an abdominal infection that shut down his liver and kidneys. The phenomonal trumpeter had been performing on tour with his band, Big Bop Nouveau, when he became ill and went to the hospital. Before him lay a full schedule of performances–an indicator of the almost superhuman energy and enthusiasm that drove Ferguson from the beginning of his career at the age of fifteen, to the end. In his early twenties, he left his native Canada and played with Charlie Barnet, then became a spotlighted soloist with Stan Kenton.
Answering a series of questions from CBS’s Scott Saloways, I said that Ferguson made his biggest general impact with his 1977 hit record of “Gonna Fly Now,” the theme from the motion picture Rocky, and that he will probably be primarily remembered by the public as a man who could generate excitement by playing double high Cs in the super-stratsophere of the trumpet. Saloways asked if that was his greatest contribution.
No. He was a fine improviser who could build lovely long-lined solos in the middle register when he had a mind to and the circumstances were right. The circumstances were perfect in the sextet that he operated for a time in the late 1960s when the economics of low demand forced him to abandon the big band format he loved as a showcase for his trumpet acrobatics. It was one of his most musical periods. This album is evidence of that, and there is more in this 1954 Dinah Washington jam session, in which Ferguson goes head to head with fellow trumpeters Clifford Brown and Clark Terry. But musicians and serious listeners are most likely to venerate Ferguson for the big band he led in the late 1950s and early 60s. He brought together some of the brightest young players and arrangers in jazz and gave them their heads while providing leadership and just enough discipline to make the band coalesce. It had all of the power and none of the schmaltz that characterized his 1970s hits on “McArthur Park” and the “Rocky” theme. In this review for Jazz Times in 1995, I attempted to describe why the band was important.
MAYNARD FERGUSON
The Complete Roulette Recordings of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra
Mosaic MD 10-156 (53:39) (46:18) (43:43) (49:28) (53:30) (54:58) (55:09) (64:39) (60:46) (69:49)
After immersing myself in nine hours of the Ferguson orchestra of the late 1950s and early sixties, I’m certain of two things:
* Double high Cs will be ringing in my brain for months.
* Ferguson gave the orchestra a signature sound and much of its drive, but this was an arrangers’ band.
The high-note trumpeter had charts from established writers like Marty Paich, Bill Holman, Ernie Wilkins and Benny Golson. He also encouraged arrangements from band members, and launched the arranging careers of Slide Hampton, Don Menza, Mike Abene and Don Sebesky. Willie Maiden had been a journeyman arranger for Ferguson since 1952. The uniqueness and command of the idiom in Jaki Byard’s few arrangements for the band emphasize the mystery of why his writing skills didn’t put him in wide demand. It was a remarkable stable of arrangers, many of them writing for a group of musicians with whom they played every night.
The resourcefulness of the arrangers made Ferguson’s ensemble sound bigger than its 13 pieces. Some of the charts experimented with keys and voicings in ways quite daring for the period, or any other. The 141 tracks of this 10-CD set include many standards in addition to the original compositions generated by the arrangers. For the most part, the arrangers fashioned standards for the dance jobs Ferguson frequently played, but they produced some of the most interesting writing in the album, much of it by Hampton, Sebesky and Maiden. Hampton’s version of “Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child” and Sebesky’s “I’m Beginning To See The Light” are two examples of innovation applied to familiar material.
As for the straight-ahead jazz charts, the “Fox” series, “Three Little Foxes,” “Three More Foxes” and “Fox Hunt” contains exciting workouts for the trumpets. “Oleo” and “The Mark Of Jazz” have some of Hampton’s best early writing. The ingenuity of Byard’s section-against-section scoring and stretched blues harmonies in “X Stream” (aka “Ode To Bird’s Mother”) underscores lost opportunities when Ferguson failed to make greater use of the pianist’s talent for orchestration.
To emphasize the importance of the arranging staff is not to downplay the importance of the band’s soloists. Maiden’s tenor saxophone was central to the excitement, as were Menza’s and Joe Farrell’s during their time with Ferguson. Also important were the young Slide Hampton’s trombone work, the alto solos of Jimmy Ford, Lanny Morgan and Carmen Leggio, the idiosyncratic range of Byard’s piano and the drive of Joe Zawinul’s. Drummers Frankie Dunlop, Rufus Jones and Jake Hanna swung the band while meeting the book’s complex challenges.
The enthusiasm Ferguson transmitted to his young musicians made it one of the most exhilarating bands of the period. The force and range of his horn dominated the trumpet section, especially when he doubled the lead an octave or two higher. Still, these recordings have important ensemble and occasional solo contributions by Bill Chase, Clyde Reasinger, Chet Ferretti, Don Ellis and Jerry Tyree.
The freshness and joy of playing that marked the Ferguson band come across with impact in this collection. As usual in Mosaic sets, the accompanying documentation is part of the pleasure. The helpful essay and play-by-play description by Bret Primack includes the reconstruction of a night at Birdland that will stimulate amusement and recognition in anyone who ever endured Pee Wee Marquette and sat in an audience walloped by the power of the Maynard Ferguson Orchestra.
Now the bad news. The box, like all Mosaic sets a limited edition because of a licensing agreement, sold out long ago. As of this writing, Amazon has one for sale at the going collector’s price, $750.00. Hurry. Worse, none of the Roulette recordings seems to be available in CD form. Here is a website that claims to have some of the original Roulette LPs at reasonable prices. Good luck.
Finally, this message from the pianist Christian Jacob, one of the many fine musicians of several generations whom Ferguson discovered and encouraged. Jacob became a member of the Ferguson family.
I have the deep regret of letting all of you know that last night at 8PM, one of the greatest jazz legends passed away from liver and kidney failure. This legend happened to be my beloved father in law: Maynard Ferguson.
He passed very quickly and with minimum pain. He will be sorely missed, by his 4 daughters his 2 son in laws, his 2 grandchildren, and of course all the friends and fans who have loved him throughout the years.
CD
Sonny Rollins, Work Time (Prestige). This was recorded more than fifty years ago. It is forever new. At twenty-six, Rollins was full of energy and bursting with ideas. I have never listened to him soar through “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and Billy Strayhorn’s “Raincheck” without grinning. Max Roach, high on his partnership with Clifford Brown, was at his apogee of drumming. Ray Bryant’s gorgeous piano solo on “There Are Such Things” is his best ballad playing on record. The bassist, George Morrow, had been working with Rollins and Roach in the Roach-Brown group and locked powerfully into Rollins’ momentum. This is a basic repertoire item.
CD
Brian Lynch, 24/7 (Nagel Heyer). I just caught up with this 2002 album. Lynch teams his trumpet with Miguel Zenon’s alto saxophone. The two of them groove with a fine rhythm section of pianist Rick Germanson, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Neal Smith. Everyone plays well on the originals by band members, but the prize tracks are Jerome Kern’s “Nobody Else but Me” Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” and Ellington’s barely-known ballad “Azalea.” In the Kern, Lynch, using a tight mute, is quick and lyrical (yes, those qualities can go together). In “West End Blues,” he nails Armstrong’s cadenza opening and observes the original arrangement, then he, Zenon and Germanson (keep an eye on him) play stunning extended solos before wrapping it up with the celebrated 1928 Armstrong tag.
CD
András Schiff, Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume II, op. 10 and 13 (ECM). If you are a jazz listener who doesn’t cotton to what is often categorized as “classical” music, you have my sympathy because you won’t be hearing this brilliant pianist in the second CD of his projected series of the Beethoven sonatas. Consider relenting. Even you can probably relate to the c-minor, the famous “Pathetique,” but Schiff’s magic with the slow movement of the D-major could just convert you entirely. Lucky you. Schiff is one of the supreme pianists of his generation. His first two volumes of the sonatas suggest that his complete set will rank with Richard Goode’s among his contemporaries and Arthur Schnabel’s among his predecessors. Aside: I can’t help wondering if the classically-canny Bill Evans had the first movement of the D-major in mind when he wrote “Waltz for Debby.”
DVD
Jazz Shots From The East Coast, Vols. 1-3, Jazz Shots from the West Coast, Vols. 1-3 (EforFilms). The music on these discs is almost uniformly good. The video ranges from TV quality to grainy film, and no wonder; some of these clips are ancient soundies. There are great rewards here, but be warned: the producers provide no information beyond the names of the leaders and the tunes, unless it was superimposed on the original clip. No dates. No sidemen identification. Who was that marvelous alto saxophonist soloing with Duke Ellington on “Sophisticated Lady?” It was Willie Smith, replacing Johnny Hodges for a time in the early 1950s, but if you don’t recognize him, you’re out of luck. Fortunately, pianist Ronnie Matthews’ name appears on the screen in a marvelous performance of “Monk’s Dream” by Johnny Griffin, but that is a rarity. Who was East Coast and who was West Coast may have been decided by a toss of the dice. In the course of the series, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, Phil Woods, Jimmy Smith and Thelonious Monk show up in both categories. But pigeon holes don’t matter, music does, and for all of their informational faults, these DVDs deliver plenty of it by some of the best players of the twentieth century.
Book
Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve, Composers’ Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale). This is the book that took first place over Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond in the Independent Publishers awards competition. But, no hard feelings, only gratitude for a hefty volume that presents oral history in a readable–and listenable–form. The book includes two CDs with, in many cases, the voices of the composers. Aaron Copland: “Music needn’t be so high-falutin’ that it becomes abstract and just pure notes, you know.” Duke Ellington: “Everything is so highly personalized that you just can’t find a category big enough. And ‘jazz’ certainly isn’t big enough.” If you wish to know more about Eubie Blake, Mel Powell, Nadia Boulanger, Edgard Varèse or Nicolas Slonimsky, among many others, this is a book for you.
The New Picks Are Here
Choosing a new group of Doug’s Picks is always a challenge and a pleasant chore. You will find the latest recommendations in the right-hand column. As always, your comments are welcome and encouraged. The e-mail address is also to your right.
Sudhalter’s Concert
The program is mostly set for the concert Dan Levinson and Randy Sandke are organizing to benefit the author and cornetist Dick Sudhalter. For details about Dick’s medical predicament, the effort by many of his friends to help him, how you can get tickets and how you can lighten his overwhelming burden of medical costs, go here.
The quality and range of musicians who have volunteered their services constitute a testimonial to the respect and affection Richard M. Sudhalter has earned in the jazz community.
RICHARD SUDHALTER BENEFIT CONCERT
St. Peter’s Lutheran Church
Lexington Avenue & 54th Street
New York, New York
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Schedule
7:00-7:10 OPENING REMARKS BY DAN MORGENSTERN
7:10-7:20 ED POLCER’S GANG FROM 54th STREET
Ed Polcer -cornet
Tom Artin -trombone
Joe Muranyi -clarinet
Harry Allen -tenor sax
Dave Frishberg -piano
Bucky Pizzarelli -guitar
Frank Tate -bass
Jackie Williams -drums
7:20-7:30 DAVE FRISHBERG (piano solo: “Dear Bix”)
7:30-7:40 DAN LEVINSON’S LOST CHORD SEEKERS
Jon-Erik Kelso -trumpet
Orange Kellin -clarinet
Dan Levinson -C-melody sax
Brad Kay -piano
Jeff Healy -guitar/vocal
Brian Nalepka -bass
Kevin Dorn -drums
Molly Ryan -vocal
7:40-7:50 DARYL SHERMAN (piano solo/vocal)
7:50-8:00 CAROL SUDHALTER BAND
Carol Sudhalter -sax
Dick Katz or Chuck Folds -piano
Jim Ferguson -bass
Jackie Williams -drums
Keisha St. Joan – vocal
8:00-8:10 STEVE KUHN (piano solo or with rhythm section)
8:10-8:20 DAVID OSTWALD’S GULLY LOW JAZZ BAND
Jon-Erik Kellso -trumpet
Wycliffe Gordon -trombone
Joe Muranyi -clarinet
James Chirillo -banjo
David Ostwald -tuba
Kevin Dorn -drums
8:20-8:30 JACKIE CAIN (vocal with piano)
?Steve Kuhn -piano
8:30-8:40 HEALY’S HAPPY HARMONISTS
Brad Kay -cornet/piano
Dan Levinson -clarinet
Andy Stein -violin
Jeff Healy -guitar/trumpet/vocal
Scott Robinson -bass sax
Kevin Dorn -drums
8:40-8:50 MARIAN McPARTLAND (piano solo or with rhythm section)
?Frank Tate -bass
8:50-9:00 THE BIAGI BAND
Carol Sudhalter -sax
Sam Parkins -clarinet
Andy Stein -violin
Chuck Folds -piano
Bill Crow -bass
Giampaolo Biagi -drums
Francesca Biagi -vocal
9:00-9:10 SY JOHNSON (piano solo or with rhythm)
9:10-9:20 BILL KIRCHNER TRIO
Bill Kirchner -soprano sax
Armen Donelian -piano
Jim Ferguson -bass
9:20-9:30 RANDY SANDKE’S BIXOPHILES
Randy Sandke -trumpet
Dan Barrett -trombone
?Dan Levinson -clarinet/C-melody sax
Scott Robinson -C-melody sax/clarinet/whatever
Mark Shane -piano
Marty Grosz -guitar
Nicki Parrott -bass
Rob Garcia -drums
9:30-9:40 BED
Becky Kilgore -vocals/guitar
Eddie Erickson -guitar
Dan Barrett -trombone
Joel Forbes -bass
9:40-10:00 LOREN SCHOENBERG BIG BAND
If you are in or near New York, please plan on attending. If you are not and wish to help assure the best possible medical treatment for Dick, here again is the link for information.
Thank you.
Punishment His Way
The other day, I sent DevraDoWrite a note about one of her postings. She used my message–that’s how things work in the blogosphere–and wrote:
In response to my mention of the Army’s PsyOps division having used music as a weapon, Mr.Rifftides sent this message:
I remember that a few years ago there was quite a ruckus about the high school principal who punished his misbehaving inner-city students by making them listen to Frank Sinatra recordings. It may have been Chicago. If I turn up details, I’ll let you know.
I hope he does turn up the details; thats a story I’d like to hear.
I tracked down the story, surprised at how long ago it was. Here’s a hint at the end of an item by Arthur Higbee in the International Herald Tribune of February 20, 1993.
With corporal punishment now illegal in about half the 50 states, schoolteachers are keeping pupils in line in more imaginative ways, The Washington Post reports. Mark Twain’s Aunt Sally had it right, teachers agreed at a recent conference in Washington on “creative detention.” Just as she sent a misbehaving Tom Sawyer to whitewash the fence, so teachers are using troublemakers to scrub or scrape or sod. When Joyce Perkins of Sour Lake, Texas, hears her 12-year-olds use bad language, she marches them to the telephone and makes them call their mothers and repeat the words syllable by syllable. Bruce Janu of Chicago says that when his high schoolers get out of line, he makes them listen to old Frank Sinatra records.
That was hard enough to find. After another hour of trolling, I came up with all of the story. This is from the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch by way of the 1993 edition of the World Almanac and Book of Facts.
Bruce Janu has a different kind of detention. The social science teacher punishes troublemaking students by making them stay after school and listen to Frank Sinatra for a half-hour. Janu created the Frank Sinatra Detention Club last year at Riverside-Brookfield High School in Riverside, Illinois. “You’ve got a Frank,” he tells unruly students. The 24-year-old teacher said he loves Sinatra’s music but realizes that teen-agers these days would rather listen to rap or Madonna. “The kids hate it,” he said. “This is the worst thing that has ever happened to them.” Senior Mike Niesluchowski received two Franks in one day, meaning he had to listen to Ol’ Blue Eyes for an hour. “It just got to where he couldn’t stand it,” he said.
My god, Madonna has been around that long?
I tried to learn whether Sinatra knew about the detention and had anything to say about it, but there is no evidence that he did. It might not have been printable in a family blog, anyway. Or would he have laughed?
…And Torture
The preceding item about using good music as punishment has an unintended connection to a piece in one of Gene Lees’ latest JazzLetters. With Gene’s permission, here it is.
TORTURE
Kenny Drew’s angst over the state of popular music put me in mind of a news story that came out about a year ago.
The Associated Press carried a report on a U.S. military prison near Kabul in Afghanistan that specialized in torturing prisoners. The Human Rights Watch group, based in New York City, after interviews with so-called “detainees” (if you don’t call them “prisoners” you can do anything you want to them), describes how prisoners were chained to walls or hung upside down or kept in total darkness for days and subjected interminably to loud music. And what kind of music was it? “Loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time.”
A prisoner born in Ethiopia and raised in England said that he was exposed to Eminem and Dr. Dre for seeming endless hours
What? No Mozart? No Bach? No Debussy or Duke Ellington or Charlie Parker or Bill Evans or Miles Davis or Frank Sinatra?
The prisoner said he could her people knocking their heads on the walls and screaming.
No kidding.
You won’t find Gene Lees Ad Libitum & JazzLetter on the internet. It is published the old fashioned way, with ink and paper. The legend at the end of the September, 2005 issue reads:
The JazzLetter is published 12 times a year at PO Box 240, Ojai, California 93024-1240. $70 per year U.S. and Canada, $80 for other countries. Subscribers may buy introductory gift subscriptions for friends for $35.
Oh, about the September 2005 issue coming out in August, 2006. The JazzLetter shows up in batches, sometimes four or five issues at once. Whatever the dates on the issues you receive, what is in them will be timely and timeless. It is an unusual publishing practice, but the JazzLetter is an unusual publication, forthright, beautifully written and ranging through subjects of interest to intelligent, aware readers, whether or not the topics relate directly to jazz. I have every copy since it started, March 15, 1982. If seventy dollars a year sounds high, I maintain that the Scott LaFaro and Herb Geller issues Lees just sent out are worth that much and more.
The Mulligan Strain
To provide harmonic guidance, bands in early jazz, swing and bebop included banjos, guitars or pianos. There were exceptions, notably some of the New Orleans bands that rode in the beds of trucks or marched for funerals and parades, That practice continues with outfits as traditional as the Onward and Olympia brass bands and as up to date as the Dirty Dozen. In general, though, after 1930, as jazz became more and more a soloist’s art, players depended on pianists or guitarists to supply the chordal basis for improvisation.
The harmonic aspect of bop was often complex, even unto altered changes for the most basic material–the blues and pieces based on simple standard songs like “I Got Rhythm” and “Oh, Lady Be Good.” When the baritone saxophonist and arranger Gerry Mulligan unveiled a band without a chording instrument, it seemed to some listeners incomplete. Others thought it brought openness and freshness to a music that had grown increasingly involved and demanding. Mulligan’s quartet with trumpeter Chet Baker, bassist Carson Smith and drummer Chico Hamilton was a popular success in the pre-rock-and-roll early 1950s, and came to have a lasting influence in the music. Before the decade was out, Ornette Coleman was further reducing dependence on chording instruments, in fact on chords themselves, with instrumentation identical to Mulligan’s save that Coleman played alto rather than baritone sax. Groups patterning themselves on Mulligan’s emerged through the years. Paul Desmond’s quartet with guitarist Jim Hall and later with Ed Bickert may have been the most successful.
Fascination with the Mulligan quartet and its achievements continues in the new century. Three fairly recent CDs make the point. Trumpeter John McNeil’s East Coast Cool (Omnitone) is the newest and most experimental, taking Mulligan’s concept beyond conventional song-form harmony into freedom that often verges on Coleman territory. He includes only one piece, “Bernie’s Tune,” from Mulligan’s repertoire. In it, he expands the famous introductory triplet phrase by half, then doubles it, takes the bridge into waltz time and elasticizes the meter in the improvised choruses. The metric foolery in this and other selections is possible not only by way of McNeil’s celebrated instrumental and cerebral virtuosity, but also that of baritone saxophonist Alan Chase, bassist John Hebert and the magical drummer Matt Wilson.
The rest of the twelve pieces, except for Kenny Berger’s Mulligan-like “GAB,” are by McNeil. Some have what sound (deceptively) like conventional chord changes. Some seem to have none, but depend on rhythmic regularity. Throughout, there is a large dollop of McNeil’s wryness and wit, but they never overwhelm his musicality. “A Time To Go,” which apparently means to poke fun at the conventions of accessible melodicism in the West Coast Jazz of the 1950s, is nonetheless melodic and accessible. “Delusions” alternates between sections of uplift and menace and features amazing extended press-roll dynamics by Wilson.
Two duets by McNeil and Chase sound totally improvised, but with McNeil you can’t always be certain what is worked out and what is off the cuff. In “Duet #2,” the trumpet discreetly uses what I presume to be tape-loop echo while Chase, closely miked, manipulates the saxophone’s keys without blowing into the instrument, producing a hollow effect something like that of the drums called boo-bams. The track is intriguing and judiciously short; too much of this would have been precious. Other highlights: a piece called “Schoenberg’s Piano Concerto,” built of twelve-tone rows, also brief and effective; a truly beautiful semi-free ballad called “Wanwood;” and “Waltz Helios,” which is wistful and touching. McNeil extends Mulligan’s concept into regions of free and modal jazz without going so far out as to lose the cogency or the sense of fun that helped make Mulligan’s quartet a model upon which to buld.
News From Blueport by the Andy Panayi Quartet (Woodville Records) closely observes the Mulligan ethos and repertoire. With trombonist Mark Nightingale, bassist Simon Woolf and drummer Steve Brown, baritone saxophonist Panayi approximates the edition of the Mulligan quartet that had Bob Brookmeyer on trombone. Veterans of British studios and jazz clubs, they achieve the Mulligan-Brookmeyer blend. Except in short stretches of Bill Crow’s title tune, the band does not deviate from straight time or leave conventional harmonic arenas. Yet, it is not a mere replication of the Mulligan group. However skillfully Panayi has adapted certain of Mulligan’s mannerisms, he occasionally departs into growls, honks and slurs that announce his individuality.
Nightingale plays the slide trombone, not the valve version of which Brookmeyer is the undefeated champion. A precisionist of the J.J. Johnson school, he nonetheless glories in his instrument’s ability to whoop and holler. The tune list is predominantly from the Mulligan book–“Blueport,” “Line for Lyons,” “Sun on the Stairs,” “Festive Minor” and others–but it also has nice changes of pace in Jimmy Rowles’ “The Peacocks,” Pepper Adams’ “Reflectory” and “Em ‘N En,” a Nightingale line based on “There Will Never Be Another You.” Woolf and Brown are new to me. Their work in support is admirable, and Woolf demonstrates both ardor and technique, including plenty of double stops, in his bass solos. This is a Mulligan tribute album that will introduce many non-Britains to four impressive musicians. This CD seems to be hard to find in the U.S. The link above is to a British seller.
The Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava’s Full Of Life (CamJazz) also embraces Mulligan, but with more subtlety than the Payani group and less overt adventuresomeness than McNeil’s. Rava is one of many European trumpeters influenced by Chet Baker and Miles Davis. He also has some of the free radical genes of players like Kenny Wheeler and Don Cherry. Javier Girotto is the baritone saxophonist. Although his soloing is more elliptical than Mulligan’s, and he works within a narrower dynamic range, when he and Rava heat up their counterpoint on “Surrey With the Fringe on Top,” they achieve a symbiosis remarkably like that of Mulligan and Baker.
The CD contains no Mulligan compositions, but Rava pays tribute with “Moonlight in Vermont,” using the essential outline of Mulligan’s famous version with Baker. It is a langourous, reflective, enchanting performance, but “Nature Boy” outdoes it for sheer passion that reaches the simmering intensity of slow flamenco in Rava’s solo and in Girotto’s on soprano saxophone. As for the rest of the tunes, Rava’s and Girotto’s originals are as intriguing as some of their titles; “Boston April 15th,” as an example, “Happiness is to Win a Big Prize in Cash” as another. Those pieces, “Miss MG,” “Full of Life,” “Visions” and “Mystere” have harmonic structures that inspire lovely solos from both horns and, often, daring ones from Rava. Like Kenny Wheeler, he is prone to making surprising interval leaps into the stratosphere without sacrificing his lyricism.
Bassist Ares Ravolazzi and drummer Fabrizio Sferra present further evidence that superb rhythm section players are everywhere in Europe these days. Full of Life is an apt title for this consistently satisfying album.
He Thinks, Therefore He Drums
In the notes for Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions, I observed of certain Free Jazz or New Thing players,
The movement did attract a fair number of poseurs enchanted by the idea of playing music without having to know anything about it. Today, most of them are otherwise employed.
At least, they had instruments.
The blogger known as Shrinkucci, who is a drummer and a psychologist, posts an interesting story about a young man who, because he wants to be, believes himself to be a great drummer. To read it, go here.
Compatible Quotes
When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style…I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn’t even want to know about chords or anything – they didn’t even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn’t want to be imitators. Well, of course, this is pretty naive…but nevertheless it does bring to light the fact that if you’re going to try to teach jazz…you must abstract the principles of music which have nothing to do with style, and this is exceedingly difficult. So there, the teaching of jazz is a very touchy point. It ends up where the jazz player, ultimately, if he’s going to be a serious jazz player, teaches himself.
—Bill Evans
Jazz is like writing. It can be learned, but it can’t be taught.
—Paul Desmond
Comment: Bill Evans
A nice appreciation of Evans.
Is Monk really sui generis? I think there is a second piano tradition born of the Harlem pianists like James P. Johnson, and it runs to Duke and then to Monk, and appears in amalgamated form with the other tradition in folks like Elmo Hope and Barry Harris.
And there may be one exception to your observation about styles not set before 1960 developing in the shadow of Kind of Blue. I think Jackie McLean had a distinct style before and after Kind of Blue. Frankly, I can’t stand his early work, which always sounded strained, frantic and involved the worst sort of change-running — a sweaty steeplechase from chord to chord. I don’t think there was a musician who greater benefited from Kind of Blue’s influence. McLean responded to the greater demand that modal jazz placed on the soloist to create a body of work on Blue Note from 1960-1966 that is extraordinary. I have them all in my collection, and dutifully pulled them all out when he died, and they are as fresh and as exciting as they were 40-45 years ago. A Fickle Sonance still blows me right across the room, the same way it did when I first heard it on Symphony Sid‘s show in 1963.
Don Frese
Listen
I rarely pass along promotional announcements, but this one is too intriguing not to deserve an exception.
STANLEY CROUCH, GEORGE AVAKIAN AND MICHAEL JAMES WITH CHRISTOPHER LYDON TONIGHT AT 7 PM (EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME) TO DISCUSS DUKE ELLINGTON, NEWPORT JAZZ AND THE AMERICAN CENTURY
On Open Source On WGBH 89.7
Open Source airs Monday through Thursday from 7pm-8 pm on WGBH 89.7 and streams at wgbh.org/listen
On July 7, 1956, Duke Ellington played the Newport Jazz Festival. Paul Gonsalves soloed for six minutes on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” the crowd exploded, an album was cut and our century – the American century, the Jazz century – found its high point. Christopher Lydon says, “Fifty summers after the Newport Suite and Paul Gonzalves’ 27 choruses of blues, we’re going savor a golden moment in American life with (music critic and author) Stanley Crouch; the Columbia record producer George Avakian; the Newport impresario then and now, George Wein; and with Duke Ellington’s ever-eloquent and all-witnessing nephew Michael James.”
Crouch, Avakian and James are articulate men of, shall we say, firm opinions. Lydon is a skilled interviewer. It would be surprising if they were boring on the subject of Ellington.
Bill Evans’s Birthday
Bill Evans was born on this day in 1929. Gratitude for that gift to music is not merely in order, it is mandatory. Here is a little of what I wrote a decade ago in an essay for the CD box, Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions.
The evolution of jazz music as a distinct form of creative expression is contained in only eight decades of the 20th century. The maturing of the art of jazz piano improvisation is an index to the astonishing speed of that development. It took less than 40 years, and its main current ran from James P. Johnson through Fats Waller, Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Nat Cole, Bud Powell and Bill Evans, with Art Tatum standing apart as an unclassifiable phenomenon.
Today, I might add Jelly Roll Morton at the beginning of the list and Thelonious Monk as the other great unclassifiable.
Acting on insights gained from the music of Debussy and other impressionist composers, he enriched his chords beyond those of any other jazz pianist. Comparisons that come to mind are with harmonies that Gil Evans and Robert Farnon wrote for large orchestras and with some of the mysterious voicings of Duke Ellington. Even in his earliest trio work he stretched and displaced rhythm and melody and hinted at modes and scales as the basis for improvisation.
With the 1958 Miles Davis sextet that included saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley, bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Philly Joe Jones (replaced before very long by Jimmy Cobb), Evans had enormous influence in determining the course that mainstream jazz follows to this day. Although in his own groups he was to remain within the song form all his life, at this time Evans clearly accelerated Davis’s change from a repertoire of popular songs and jazz standards to pieces with fewer chord changes and greater demands on the taste, judgment and imagination of the soloist.
Davis saw ways of using the pianist’s approach to open up and simplify harmonies. By applying modal changes, the two men even transformed a twelve-bar blues, already the simplest traditional jazz form. By 1959, their work together helped lead to the landmark Davis sextet recording, Kind Of Blue. (It is fair to say that of important players and writers whose styles were not set before 1960, most developed in the shadow of that album.) Their modal and scalar approach to improvisation profoundly influenced John Coltrane’s turn toward fewer harmonic guideposts. Independently, at about the same time, alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman was solong on melodic lines, which he wrote without key centers, modes or scales. Taken together, the two methods led to Free Jazz or The New Thing, the avant garde jazz of the 1960s.
On his website The Bill Evans Web Pages, Jan Stevens writes:
Needless to say, he changed the way we all hear jazz –whether this is realized or not — and of course, he changed the very foundations of chord- voicing and improvisation forever. A very private and reserved soul who nevertheless reached out through his own naked self-expression, Bill was able to somehow create a fresh and vibrant soundscape that remains illuminating, if not downright spiritual to all who can really get inside of it and hear it at the highest levels.
And:
Make no mistake: Bill Evans was, of course, firmly within the jazz tradition and its ongoing aethetic, and was proud of it. Besides his legendary ballad playing, he could swing like crazy with his own trios, and it’s impossible to imagine certain albums by Miles or Mingus or Chet Baker or Cannonball Adderley or Kai and J.J. and many others without him. Yet, aspects of some of his best work transcend jazz as we know it –sometimes even confounding and delighting those who are not amenable to jazz to begin with. (Try out an early “My Foolish Heart” or almost anything from the “You Must Believe in Spring” album on your uninitiated, musically-intelligent friends and see what happens.)
To read all of Jan’s tribute, go here and find disclosures of what Evans might have done had he lived.
Bill Evans died on September 15, 1980. He was fifty-one years old. In a habit of anticipation developed during the course of his career, I still go to the mailbox in hopes that a new Bill Evans album will appear.