Archives for April 2007

Bobby Broom, Song And Dance (Origin). Accompanied by bass and drums, the Sonny Rollins and Dr. John guitarist plays a relaxed program of his compositions and others by Schwartz & Dietz, The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Webb. A highlight: Broom’s harmonic adventuring in an extended cadenza in “Good Old Days,” the Little Rascals theme.
Frank Foster Loud Minority Band, Well Water (Piadrum). There is more than curiosity value in this session that went three decades between recording and release. It may not quite qualify as recovered treasure, but the writing and ensemble playing are fine, and Elvin Jones’s drumming is superb. In his liner notes Foster puts himself down, amusingly, but he solos well on tenor and soprano saxophones, and we are treated to several solos by Charles Sullivan, a drastically overlooked trumpeter.
Billy Strayhorn, Lush Life (Blue Note). Blue Note’s all-star variety show CD of Strayhorn compositions was designed as a supplement to the PBS television special of the same name. Hank Jones, Bill Charlap, Joe Lovano, Diane Reeves and Elvis Costello head the bill, with important participation by George Mraz, Paul Motian, Russell Malone, Peter Martin, Gregory Hutchinson and Reuben Rogers. Charlap sets the bar high by opening with a tight, smart “Fantastic Rhythm,” and all hands maintain his standard. The collection is weighted toward Reeves, who sings with simplicity and little of the overdone melisma that sometimes mars her work. Lovano’s tenor sax is a hoot on “Johnny Come Lately.”
Jackie Cain & Roy Kral, Echoes (Jazzed Media). Five years after Kral’s death comes the discovery of a new Jackie & Roy album. Beautifully recorded in 1976 at Howard Rumsey’s Concerts By The Sea and digitally remastered, it contains a rich cross-section of the repertoire of the preeminent jazz vocal duo of their time. Of any time.
Frank Collett, Music From The Movies (Fresh Sound). Following up his CD of the film music of Bronislaw Kaper, the pianist surveys some of the best known movie songs. Among them: “Laura,” “I Remember You,” “Tangerine” and “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.” With bassist Tom Warrington and drummer Joe La Barbera, or in solo, Collett builds new stories around old themes.

Exception

Red Garland, Red’s Good Groove (Jazzland OJC). I ran across this on the shelves when I was looking for something to play along with and, boy, was I glad. There’s nothing recent–and nothing dated–about it. Recorded in 1962 and reissued on CD in 2001, the master pianist is nominally in charge of an organized jam session with four of his peers. And what peers: Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Pepper Adams, baritone saxophone; Sam Jones, bass; and Philly Joe Jones, drums. Six good tunes. Relaxed, unpretentious blowing. Sheer pleasure. It’s still in the OJC catalog. Get it while you can and remember five great players, all departed.

In an attempt to keep my head above the rising tide of incoming CDs, in the next few posts I will offer impressions of a few recent arrivals.
Not all recent arrivals are new. Graham Collier’s Deep Dark Blue Centre (disconforme) has been around for forty years, but it is as fresh as last week. A bassist, composer, arranger and leader, Collier made British jazz more interesting in the 1960s and has helped to keep it that way. The album title is part of what Hoagy Carmichael is said to have answered when he was asked about the future of jazz. Whatever happened, he replied, he hoped the music would always keep its deep dark blue centre. In 1967, Collier succeeded in his exploration of new possibilities by holding that vital center (centre if you spell in British).
His writing for a pianoless seven-piece ensemble had economy, daring and just enough whimsy to prevent the music from perishing of an overdose of self-regard, the fate of so much avant garde jazz of the sixties. Collier was aided by his choice of musicians. His sidemen included the young Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, the Rhodesian trombonist Mike Gibbs, and drummer John Marshall, all to become important figures in jazz. Reed and woodwind experts Dave Aaron and Karl Jenkins and guitarist Philip Lee are equally important as soloists and as contributors to the ensemble work in this still vital recording. Remastered in digital sound for the CD version, this is a perenially interesting introduction to Collier’s work.

The May issue of Jazz Times has a Before & After listening test to which the pianist Jessica Williams subjected herself at my request. She was forthright, smart and funny in her comments on ten recordings. This is some of what she said about Fats Waller’s “Smashing Thirds,” recorded in 1929.

It’s together; it swings. It reached a crescendo, a pinnacle. Then it switched gears unexpectedly and came home and resolved itself. It had humor, drama, amazing technique. It’s a great piece of art.

This is a little of her reaction to a track from a Myra Melford album.

Maybe 40 years ago, I might have tried that on one tune, to express a lot of pent-up rage. I’d never consider doing it again. You can hurt yourself doing that. You can leave blood on the keys.

The Before & After feature is on line at the Jazz Times web site. It is interactive, with samples of the tracks Williams heard.

The Rifftides staff offers a belated welcome to Larry Blumenfeld, a new artsjournal.com blogger who recently launched Listen Good: Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and other sounds. Blumenfeld, a New Yorker, has established a three-months residency in New Orleans. He is covering efforts of the jazz community–and the city at large–to make a comeback in the face of daunting odds dealt more by man than by nature.

Anyone in New Orleans will offer stern correction should you refer to Katrina as a “natural disaster.”
And anyone involved in the city’s culture will point out the many unnatural barriers that have popped up in Katrina’s wake.
You’d think that New Orleans would welcome back the communities and establishments that anchor its culture.

Not so, Blumenfeld says. To read the whole thing, go here.
Cynthia Joyce has been blogging for artsjournal.com from New Orleans a little longer than Blumenfeld. Her Culture Gulf (an inspired title) can be read as a companion piece to Listen Good. As a former Orleanian whose heart still beats in the bend of the river, I frequently visit both, wishing that I were there.

It was not my intention today to serve as a referral service to other peoples’ work, but the two blogs mentioned in the above item deserved referral. The next recommendation demands it. Gene Weingarten wrote the story for last Sunday’s Washington Post. It is about the classical violinist Joshua Bell playing for tips in the Metro, Washington DC’s subway. It is about much more. It is about us, what is important to us and what we make time for in the United States in 2007. The story is long. It has a video component. To read, see and hear it, click here.
I thank Hotel Pianist for pointing us toward this remarkable piece of work.

Thanks to Rifftides reader Jon Foley for alerting us, in the wake of Tony Scott’s death, to what is evidently the colorful clarinetist’s final recording. Information about Scott’s CD/DVD is at this web site. Scroll down and if you wait for a video sample to load–slowly–you will be able to view a portion of the DVD.

Porno spammers continue to invade the Rifftides comments sector. You don’t don’t see what they send. Nor will you. The staff is redoubling efforts to combat the flood and taking additional steps to segregate the slime from your comments. There is evidence that some legitimate comments have been squeezed out, but we think we have corrected that problem.
If you have sent comments and had no response, please send them again. The Rifftides staff is interested in your information and opinions. A comment link follows each posted item.

I was curious about the tunes in guitarist John Stowell’s CD Swan Tones, Volume 1. so I asked him about those that he based on the harmonic structures of standard songs. Here is his reply:

“Wiil We Be One?” is based on “You and The Night and the Music” (second line of the lyric)
“Hot Flash” is an original
“A Tropical Breeze”is based on “St Thomas” (also a line from the lyric)
“Gabriel’s Fall” is based on “Falling Grace”: by Steve Swallow
“When Is He Coming?”i s based on “Someday My Prince Will Come”
“What Month Is This?” is based on “I’ll Remember April”
“We’re Going Now, Toto” is based on “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
“Silver Wish” is based on “Peace” by Horace Silver
“The River Is Near” is a free improvisation (luthier Jim Soloway’s house is on the Columbia, where the CD was recorded)
“Ginger’s Dance” is an original
“Jerome’s Things” is based on “All the Things You Are”
“Tom’s Road” is based on “Caminhos Cruzados (roads crossing) by Jobim. I’m sure you know that Jobim’s nickname was Tom
I found that knowing the original tunes made hearing my improvisations a bit more pleasant to listen to.

Rifftides reader Hans Christian Dörrscheidt writes from Germany:

Having listened to Barnet’s various bands from the 30s-60s a lot recently, I’d agree with Cannonball’s description. While Barnet probably won’t be counted among the great innovators of jazz saxophone playing, he certainly was a very individual player, always true to himself, be it on alto, tenor, or the soprano. And he always had good bands going, too!
Here’s an interesting Barnet clip, from late 1948/early ’49, C.B. and band playing “East Side, West Side”. That’s Doc Severinsen playing the trumpet solo. Danny Bank is on baritone sax, and Bunny Briggs is the singing telegram guy.
This clip is Charlie Barnet and his Orchestra playing “Skyliner”, from the November 1950 Snader Telescriptions session. The young Bill Holman can (more or less) be seen playing tenor in the section. The piano soloist is Arnold Ross.

Not to be contradictory, but the pianist appears to be Don Trenner. The alto saxophonist next to Holman is Dick Meldonian. I think I see Johnny Coppola in the trumpet section. Thanks to Mr. Doerrscheidt for the video alerts.

With the blazingly honest message heading, “Terrible Pun,” Rifftides reader Don Frese writes from the University of Maryland:

As part of my last duties as a librarian before retirement, I am wading
through Garrison & Morton’s Medical Bibliography to identify which historically important books we own so that they may be tagged for keeping as we prune our collection to make room for renovations to the building. Just now, I was in the psychoanalytic section, and seeing Carl Jung reminded me of my never-used idea for an album title.
I wanted someone to title one of Shelly Manne’s dates, Manne and His Cymbals, but alas, it never happened.

Alas.

Charlie Barnet was one of the first guys I thought was unique. I can tell you step-wise how the alto players got to me. The first one I knew played alto was Jimmy Dorsey. Then Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter and Willie Smith. Then when I first heard Charlie Paker I heard something different, really different. There were some guys who were trying to sound like Charlie Parker. Then I began to notice Charlie Barnet for the first time, even though he’d been on the scene. He was saying an awful lot of different things. He was peculiarly original from the outset. He played only like himself. And not just on alto. Here’s a guy whose tenor playing was far more influential than people realize. A great number of rock and roll players utilize Charlie Barnet devices. The so-called “chicken” tenor sax playing of King Curtis and Boots Randolph–direct quotations from Charlie Barnet thirty years ago.

On Jazz Review, WDSU, New Orleans, September 2, 1967, quoted in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.

Tony Scott’s death at eighty-five in Rome on March 28 set off a flurry of remembering by people who may not have thought about him for years. A clarinetist with a large sense of daring, a massive sound and nearly supernatural upper range, Scott was an important player in the New York bebop milieu of the late 1940s, an intimate of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He was an encourager of post-bop talent in the fifties. He exposed Bill Evans as the pianist’s career began to accelerate in the mid-1950s, hiring Evans regularly and featuring him on recordings.

Whether or not he initially intended to be, with a big-selling album, Music For Zen Meditation, in the sixties Scott was a pioneer of what came to be known as new age and world music. He was also a character known, even celebrated, for his conviction, flamboyance and occasional outrageousness. Jazz Times has a comprehensive, if rather dry, Scott obituary on its web site. The New York Times obit includes a splendid latterday photograph and the late critic John S. Wilson’s description of Scott “playing his clarinet in his own uncompromisingly distinctive manner, a manner which encompasses both a feathery, light-as-air impressionism and an intense, emotional ferocity that makes the old-time ‘hot’ men sound as though they were blowing icicles.”
Scott and I conducted a sporadic correspondence that began after I did a radio program about him in 1967. It fell off for a few years, then resumed in October of 1982 with a letter from Rome. I’m sharing the letter with you because it gives a sense of Scott’s personality and the passion with which he lived his life. I retain his punctuation, spelling and usage. My clarifications are in parentheses.

Hello Doug are you still there? I left NYC for Europe 1967. To Africa 1968/70. Live Italy 1970 till now. I am still alive and kicking. I have written a book. 700 pages of my life in jazz with Bird Lady Ben (Charlie Parker, Billie Holday, Ben Webster), 52nd St, Harlem, jazz in NYC 1939 till I left in 1959. My life in jazz with the giants, my travels, philosophy. About 100 photos I took of Lady Miles Ben Prez Mahalia (Holiday, Davis, Webster, Jackson).
My past has been 1967 to Europe with wife/child. 1968/70 to Africa playing a jazz show with locals I trained in luxury hotels. Then settled in Senegal 5 months study African music/rhythms.
1970 to Italy Roma to settle. Played mostly with Romano Mussolini on tour. Enjoyed life in Roma. 1975 divorced. Wife remarried. Two daughters Nina 10 Monica 5 live in Roma. I leave Italy for jobs in Europe for 2 years. Tired of travel. Stay in Roma 1977/78 see daughters – practice piano write music for big bands in Italy and Europe. Pays aboutr $3000 a show total for 3 day rehearsal & radio concert with public. 1979/80 travel around Europe always based in Roma.
1981 in and out of Italy. 1982 stay Holland 8 months with nice lady. Have $10,000 dental work. Lose feeling to play clarinet. Write book. Made a suite “African Bird” dedicated to Charlie Parker in 1981. Recorded in London. Glenn Ferris (USA) trombone, percussion, marimbas, flute, alto and vocal. Hope to sell in USA when I come in November for one month to sell book and “African Bird.”
See lots of old friends on tour Dizzy Buddy Blakey (Gillespie, De Franco, Art Blakey). Seems they are all here to work. I like Italy. My roots. I played with Kenny Clarke (drummer) in Sicily at festival. Good success. We played bebop. I want to do college tour with Kenny plus talk and photos & films of old days, Bird Monk Harlem. Kenny is 69 but OK and wants to make college tour with me. I need to play with my cats to get an urge to play clarinet.
My Music For Zen Meditation gives me money to live on. Sells 15,000 a year for 10 years now. 10,000 in Europe, 5,000 in USA. Japan put out my RCA Big Band with Clark Thad (Terry, Jones), Bill Evans. Made 1956. Have you got it?
In USA, thinking of teaming up with Buddy De Franco for a clarinet clan show. Regards to any fans or friends.
Tony

Scott’s autobiography has never found a publisher. I’m told that members of his family are still trying to place it. His web site, yet to be updated with his death, has historical sections and photos.

My internet service provider, Charter Communications (remember that name) is providing internet service hit or miss today. Mostly miss. When it gets on an even keel, Rifftides will resume posting. Mostly hit. Thank you for your patience.

The Spoleto Festival USA chamber group is on tour in the Pacific Northwest under the direction of the festival’s founding director, the venerable and irrepressible Charles Wadsworth. Friday night in the Spoletinians’ (new word) concert at The Seasons, Cellist Andres Diaz and violinist Chee-Yun played the Pascaglia for Violin and Cello, a ravishing set of variations by Johan Halvorsen on themes by Handel. At one Steinway, Wadsworth and Stephen Prutsman roared through three Hungarian Dances by Brahms, reinforcing my conviction that Brahms is the true father of stride piano. Chee-Yun, Diaz and Prutsman did a splendid Haydn Trio for Violin, Cello & Piano.
After intermission came the familiar Sonata for Clarinet & Piano by Francis Poulenc with Wadsworth and the young virtuoso Todd Palmer, a clarinetist with amazing facility, feeling, and consistency of tone in every register of the horn. Smetana’s big, powerful, seldom-heard Piano Trio in G-Minor was the official closer, but introducing it Wadsworth told the audience that the group had prepared an encore and were going to play it even if the Smetana was a dud and got no reaction. The Smetana was not a dud.
There being no such animal as a classical piece for two pianists, cello, clarinet and violin, Prutsman had written the encore. It was a riotous set of variations on Gershwin’s “I Got Rhythm” that started with crippled cadences and ending up swinging hard. Palmer was operating in Benny Goodman territory, even higher; Artie Shaw territory. He managed one of those classic 1930s poses with his clarinet pointed practically straight up. At dinner after the gig, I asked Palmer and Wadsworth how much of the “Rhythm” extravaganza had been improvised. “Much more than you might think,” Palmer said. Wadsworth merely laughed.
Wadsworth had the hippest spoken line of the night. Introducing the Poulenc and discussing the chords of that impressionistic French classic, he told the audience, “Poulenc used these harmonies even before Bill Evans used them.”

There seems to be concern among its competitors in internet technology that YouTube will rule the world. I suppose that no one is in favor of universal domination–except, possibly, YouTube–but when they come up with clips like this one from the 1983 Aurex Jazz Festival in Japan, they deserve thanks.

Sept.2,1983
SHORTY ROGERS(Flugelhorn)
BUD SHANK(AltoSax)
JIMMY GIUFFRE(TenorSax)
BOB COOPER(TenorSax)
BILL PERKINS(BaritoneSax)
PETE JOLLY(Piano)
MONTY BUDWIG(Bass)
SHELLY MANNE(Drums)

All but Shank and Giuffre are gone, worse luck. This was around the time that Shank swore off the flute to concentrate on being a full-time bebop alto saxophonist. It’s hard not to miss his incomparable flute, but with alto playing like this, who can complain? My only argument with this performance is that Perkins’s baritone solo is at least one chorus too short.
For dessert, try “Infinity Promenade.” It’s not quite the same without the scorching double trumpet lead of Maynard Ferguson and Conrad Gozzo on the original recording, but we get a nice round of sixteen-bar solos.
PS: The original posting of this item included the wrong assumption that Jimmy Guiffre was dead. He is not. The Rifftides Staff regrets the error and apologizes.

allaboutjazz.com is out with its annual April 1st collection of reviews covering previously undiscovered jazz albums. It contains several surprising disclosures, including this one from Ken Dryden’s review of Paul Desmond’s Autumn Leaves: The Lost Vocal Session.

It was recorded during the making of the album 1975: The Duets with Dave Brubeck. Desmond, who at the time was seeing a young lady in her early twenties, wanted to make a special recording just for her. So the alto saxophonist sang for the first and only time on any record, something that he intended for her ears only, with Brubeck as his sole accompanist.

Dryden also unearthed Tonight At Noon, a buried CD of Jane Monheit singing works of Charles Mingus.

With a strong supporting cast of European musicians, Monheit tackles the difficult works of Charles Mingus on stage at Ronnie Scott’s in London. She nails “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” the moving tribute Mingus wrote in memory of Lester Young, offering a powerful interpretation that will silence earlier critics. She shows off her playful side with her adept scatting through the brisk arrangement of “Boogie Stop Shuffle,” trading licks with trumpeter Harley Herald.

And who would have guessed that Jerry Lee Lewis recorded an album in tribute to one of the great boogie-woogie pianists, The Killer Plays Boogie Woogie Classics by Meade Lux Lewis.
To find all of the AAJ April Fool’s reviews by Dryden, Jack Bowers, Jim Santella and others, click here.