Archives for July 2007

Frances Lynne, Remember (SSJ).
Often discussed but seldom heard, Ms. Lynne is a charming singer. She worked with Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond and Norman Bates in 1948. Recalling their time with her at the Geary Cellar and the Band Box, all of them told me that they were moved by her clarity, phrasing, feeling and interpretation of lyrics. She went on to sing, but not record, with the Charlie Barnet and Gene Krupa bands and kept on singing after she married trumpeter John Coppola, a veteran of the Barnet, Stan Kenton and Woody Herman bands. Finally, in 1991, she recorded for their private label, Lark, with Coppola’s medium-sized orchestra, which included strings and French horn. The album had virtually no distribution when it was released in 1999 and still has little, but it has been nicely repackaged by the Japanese label SSJ and is available from at least one web site (click on the link in the title above).
Ms. Lynne includes the seldom-heard verses of several songs. In his liner note message, Brubeck tells her that at the Band Box “there were many times you gave me goosebumps.” It may have been singing like her treatment of the verses of Irving Berlin’s “Remember” and the Oscar Hammerstein’s-Jerome Kern song “Can I Forget You?” that affected him. The CD is all the more precious for the presence of a pair of rarities, Kern’s “The Touch of Your Hand” and Harry Warren’s “Spring Isn’t Everything,” beautifully sung by Ms. Lynne. The superb arrangements of a dozen classic songs are by Mike Abene, who also conducts. The classy bass and drums are by Bill Douglass and Eddie Marshall. Soloists are Abene on piano, trumpeters Coppola and Johnny Coles, tenor saxophonist John Handy and–on alto sax and clarinet–Herbie Steward, one of the original Four Brothers of the Woody Herman Second Herd. Their vigor complements Ms. Lynne’s restraint and mature wistfulness. For most of us, Frances Lynne’s singing was mythical. This CD brings it happily to life.
For an account of the Geary Cellar-Band Box milieu long before there was a Dave Brubeck Quartet, see Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.

Rifftides reader Peter Luce has a question:

I’m wondering if someone in Rifftides’ knowledgeable readership can help clarify some conflicting information I’ve read about Ellington’s used of trumpet, trombone and clarinet in the original recording of “Mood Indigo.” John Edward Hasse, in The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, writes:
“Ellington turned on their heads the usual roles of trombone, trumpet and clarinet, assigning the trombone the high notes and the clarinet the low.”
Alyn Shipton in A New History of Jazz writes:
“Whereas in the traditional order of things, the clarinet would take the upper part, the trombone the lower, with the trumpet in the middle, [Ellington] assigned the highest notes to the muted trumpet, the central part to a muted high-register trombone, and the lowest notes to a clarinet in its deep chalumeau register.”
Both of these jazz historians agree that the clarinet was assigned the low parts, but clearly disagree on the trumpet and trombone. Can any of your readers shed any light?

We have in the audience arrangers, composers, musicologists and other listeners with big ears. Click the link above, listen, send your answers to Mr. Luce’s query and we will post them.

Graham Collier, Hoarded Dreams (Cuneiform). Here we have further, but not recent , adventures of the pioneering British composer, arranger and leader. Hoarded Dreams is a seven-part suite commissioned by the Bracknell Jazz Festival in 1983. Following its one performance by a band of European stars plus trumpeters Kenny Wheeler (Canadian) and Ted Curson (American), the music has languished in a tape archive for twenty-four years. Collier is in a league with George Russell and Charles Mingus in the demanding discipline of writing for large ensembles populated by musicians whose improvisation goes beyond the fringe of standard harmony.

Graham Collier
The looseness and cogency in Collier’s arrangements are in ideal balance to contain the wildness, daring and–it must be emphasized–good humor of the soloists. There is no trace of the anger and willfull distortion that marred so much avant garde playing in the final decades of the twentieth century. The quality of solos and interchanges by familiar players like Curson, Wheeler, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and the baritone sax powerhouse John Surman is equaled by musicians who deserve to be better known outside the British Isles. Among them are guitarist Ed Speight, drummer Ashley Brown, tenor saxophonist Art Themen and trombonist Conny Bauer. Bauer manages to combine elements of Bill Harris and Roswell Rudd, to startling effect. There is so much happening in this music, I suggest that you give it two or three hearings to begin to absorb its dynamics, complexity and subtlety and to sort out which parts are written and which improvised. It’s worth your time. For thoughts on a previous release by Collier, go here.

(An annual Rifftides reminder)
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

André Previn, Alone (Emarcy). When in the mid-1960s Previn committed himself to classical conducting, composing and performing, he did not leave jazz behind. Technique, taste and touch intact, he plays thirteen pieces using his range of dynamics, rhythmic subtlety, harmonic sensibility and capacity for surprise. He recalls a lick or two from his period of intense jazz involvement in the 1950s, but the greater interest here is Previn’s depth of exploration within the chord structures of familiar songs including “Angel Eyes,” “Skylark” and “It Might As Well Be Spring.”
In a lovely moment in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” he sets up tension with riff-like repetition then provides release with a key change. His abstract treatment of “I Can’t Get Started” encompasses passages of the lightning finger work that reflects his classical background. The repertoire includes an original blues; “Darkest Before The Dawn,” a Previn collaboration with Johnny Mercer; and Previn’s 1966 hit song “You’re Gonna Hear From Me.” If the last title implies further solo adventures, they will be welcome. This is Previn’s best solo album since his 1960 Harold Arlen collection.