Archives for August 2007

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world — Albert Einstein
The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed — Albert Einstein

Curiosity overtook me today about Carl Payne, the San Francisco cable car bell-ringer who collaborated with the great drummer Max Roach. I found Payne by telephone and added the story of what he’s been up to since he sat in with Max in 1981. To read it at the end of the original posting, go here.

The passing of Herb Pomeroy on August 11 leaves jazz education in New England without one of its most skilled teachers and the music absent an improviser and bandleader of rare originality. Pomeroy was a trumpeter who grew into a major arranger, leader and inspiration to hundreds of students at the Berklee School of Music and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Vibraphonist Gary Burton, a former Berklee student of Pomeroy who later became dean of the school, told the Boston Globe:

He was one of the most skillful and clever of improvisers. A lot of improvisers, when they soloed, played familiar jazz licks, as we say. Herb was one of the players where you could really see his mind at work. When he played solos, you could see him telling stories, developing themes, creating serious content.

To read all of the Globe article, go here.

Herb Pomeroy
There is regrettably little of Pomeroy’s playing and little of his superb big band on CD. For his trumpet work of the early 1950s, I recommend Boston Days by saxophonist Charlie Mariano, one of Pomeroy’s closest Boston colleagues. Pomeroy’s splendid big band, with sidemen including pianist Jaki Byard, trumpeter Joe Gordon and alto saxophonist Boots Mussulli, is heard on the 1957 album Life is a Many Splendored Gig. A year later, Pomeroy backed Irene Kral in The Band and I, a collaboration of singer and big band that quickly became a classic and was recently reissued on CD.
Herb Pomeroy, dead at seventy-seven.

Max Roach died early this morning at the age of eighty-three. Phone calls and e-mail messages announcing his passing and commenting on his importance have been pouring in all day.

Max Roach
As a teenager, Roach began developing a way of drumming that grew out of the bop pioneer Kenny Clarke and was also profoundly affected by Sid Catlett. By the mid-1940s, Roach was the premier innovator among bebop drummers, with virtuosity, complexity and subtlety that made him perfect for the rhythm sections of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, his peers in bebop. Virtually all drummers in modern jazz patterned themselves to some degree on Roach. It is unlikely that drummers as disparate in style as Elvin Jones and Paul Motian, Ben Riley and James Black, Arthur Taylor and Mel Lewis would have developed as they did without Roach’s example.
For an outline of his career and appreciation of his artistry, see the obituary by Peter Keepnews in The New York Times and another by Ron Wynn in Nashville’s The City Paper.
YouTube has dozens of clips of Roach playing. This short video from fairly late in his career is a good one to start with. It captures Max looking handsome, healthy and happy — and playing a typically inventive solo.
WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University is devoting its schedule through next Wednesday to Roach’s music. In the New York area, tune in to 89.9 FM. Elsewhere, you’ll find WKCR’s streaming internet audio by clicking here.
I cherish remembrance of two occasions with Roach. The first was in New York in the early 1970s. I was at Lincoln Center covering a rehearsal for a concert that night at Avery Fisher Hall. By noon, my UPITN camera crew had enough material. I sent them back to the bureau to have the film processed and was heading off to find lunch when Dizzy Gillespie said, “You’re coming with us.” I ended up in a restaurant across the street with Dizzy, Percy Heath, Billy Eckstine, Max Roach and Roach’s young wife. As we were settling in, Fats Waller’s “Your Feet’s Too Big” materialized on the sound system. The table conversation continued, but Max announced, “Quiet. I haven’t heard this in years.” So, we all stayed mostly silent for three minutes, listened to Fats and watched Roach’s grin.
In 1981 when I was news director at KGO-TV in San Francisco, Roach was playing with his quintet at the Keystone Korner. That was the week of the annual contest to choose the best bell ringer among San Francisco’s cable car gripmen and conductors. I told Todd Barkan, who ran the club, that if he could arrange for Roach and the winner of the contest to get together, we’d send a crew. Barkan was leery; he wasn’t sure that the dignified Mr. Roach would go for what he might consider a gimmick.
Max liked the idea. The winner, Carl Payne, a gripman who over the years won the contest ten times, showed up one afternoon at Keystone Korner with a cable car bell something like this one.Roach was waiting at his drum set. Mr. Payne could meter on that brass bell. He invented patterns that stimulated Max and the two spent a half hour or so playing for, to and with one another. I have never heard anything quite like it — Max Roach trading fours with a cable car gripman. It made a good story on that evening’s six o’clock newscast, and a memory that has stayed with me for a quarter of a century.
Writing this, I began wondering what had become of Carl Payne and tracked him down. We had a fine conversation. He told me that he joined the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency in the early 1960s after he did his stint as a US Marine Corps military policeman in Viet Nam. He worked on the cable cars until 1990. Then he took a new job as an officer with the San Francisco Police Department, where he still works as a beat cop in China Town and on Union Square. Every year at the cable car bell ringing contest, he is an honored guest. He told me that at the demonstration ring-offs, he always wins.
Payne treasures his encounter with Roach. When I told him about Max’s death, he paused a moment, then said, “Oh, man, he was the nicest guy.”

It may seem that jazz gets less coverage in the general press than it deserves, but don’t blame the Associated Press or the San Francisco Chronicle. The Chronicle frequently runs substantial AP stories and pieces by its own staffers about major musicians and important developments in jazz.
Bassist Ron Carter was the subject of a recent Chronicle article by AP writer Charles J. Gans. Carter told Gans he rejects the notion that his old boss Miles Davis had disdain for the audience. He explains the circumstances that may have led to that impression. To read Carter’s observations about Davis, the changing role of the bass, and his career, go here.
Reporter Sharon Cohen visited the musicians’ village that Branford Marsalis and Harry Connick, Jr. helped to build in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina.
The Chronicle‘s David Rubien had lunch with Lee Konitz. He found the alto saxophonist forthright, and amusing in spite of his irascibility as he approaches his eightieth birthday.
Thanks to Wolfram Knauer of Germany’s Jazz Institut Darmstadt for alerting us to these stories. The institute is a fascinating place. I recommend a visit next time you are in the Frankfurt area. If you can’t go, check out the institute’s web site.

The Rifftides Lead Of The Week Award goes to Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe for this entry:

NEWPORT, R.I. — News bulletin: Major theft this weekend at Fort Adams State Park during the JVC Jazz Festival. Description of subject: Elderly gentleman, white hair, thick glasses, walks and speaks slowly, but plays piano like a madman. Date of birth: 12-6-20. Item stolen: the show.

Greenlee was describing Dave Brubeck. To read all of his review of Sunday at the Newport Festival, go here.
In the interest of survival, jazz festivals everywhere have loosened the admittance requirements for musicians and modified the already indistinct definition of jazz. There are no rules determining who qualifies as a jazz artist, so the Newport management might defend on business grounds its inclusion of B.B. King. Let’s call it a borderline compromise. But I must share Greenlee’s surprise at the presence on the Newport stage of the blues-rock-folk, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink performer Bruce Hornsby.
Next year at Newport: Ricky Skaggs, The Grateful Dead?

In response to last week’s Rifftides posting on free press issues, DevraDowrite brings up the Bush administration’s relationship to press freedom and journalistic responsibility, particularly in regard to the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame episode. As I would have if I’d had the presence of mind to think about it, Devra links to the conversation on a recent PBS program among Bill Moyers and two constitutional scholars . To read her comments and get a link to the transcript of the Moyers program, go here. And think about Devra’s concluding paragraph:

Having watched the program, I realized how little I know about the Constitution, the intentions of those who wrote it, and the predictions they made. I was fascinated by the discussion, and heartened that it took the subject of impeachment out of the realm of Bush bashing, or even partisan politics, and placed it in a solidly historical, impersonal perspective.

I wonder how many of us know as much about the Constitution as we think we do. I keep a copy on my desk and one in my laptop case, but I don’t look at them nearly often enough. I’m making a resolution to brush up. We all should. With civil liberties under attack (as they always are) and a crucal election on the horizon, we need the understanding. For the price of shipping and handling, you can get a free copy here.

Speaking–er, writing–of Benny Carter, as we did in this Rifftides posting and others that followed, there’s a lot of Carter in the air this year of his centennial. The polymath saxophonist, arranger composer, bandleader, author and broacaster (whew) Bill Kirchner joins the celebration. Here’s his announcement:

Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From the Archives” series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).
Benny Carter (1907-2003) would have turned 100 this August 8. So the entire month of August on “Jazz From the Archives” is devoted to the music of this giant. My own contribution is an hour of recordings by notable artists performing Carter’s compositions.
The musicians will be a diverse lot, to say the least. They’ll include Miles Davis, violinist Joe Kennedy Jr., Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, Art Pepper, and the Loren Schoenberg and U.S. Army Jazz Ambassadors big bands. Also featured will be a newly-released CD, The Benny Carter Centennial Project, with a distinguished cast of players.
The show will air this Sunday, August 19, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time.
NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.

A year and a half ago, Rifftides reported to you about an extraordinary concert the Maria Schneider Orchestra played at Jazz Alley in Seattle. Schneider was two days away from her Los Angeles premier of a new work commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, so in Seattle she kept “Aires de Lando” under wraps. In Schneider’s CD Sky Blue, those who were not in Disney Concert Hall that night can hear the piece.

Maria Schneider
An adventure in unusual time signatures, Peruvian rhythms and percussion, “Aires de Lando” emerges as a highlight of Schneider’s remarkable new CD. Her orchestration supports, enfolds and at times all but engulfs a compelling extended clarinet solo etched by Scott Robinson on layers of Schneider’s harmonic richness. The piece is reminiscent of Bartók, not in style but in its melding of complex rhythms and textures with folk simplicity of melody. That is true of much of this album, among her six CDs the finest expression of the composer’s restless and evolving talent.
The Jazz Alley concert included two pieces that are in Sky Blue, the title work and “The Pretty Road.” Here’s what I wrote about them in February, 2006

It is a writer’s band, and the writer populates it with musicians who play her demanding compositions with virtuoso skill and provide ensemble cohesiveness that can come only from long, close association. Most of the band’s members have been with Schneider as long as Robinson has. They are from the cream of New York players and include some of the music’s most individual improvisers in a period of jazz not overflowing with individuality.. Among the memorable soloists at Jazz Alley was Steve Wilson on “Sky Blue,” a new composition. Schneider told the audience that she wrote it after a friend died. It is a hymn, not a dirge. Wilson’s soprano saxophone tone has breadth and depth rather than the pinched snake-charmer sound favored by many who play the horn. His solo was a marvel of structural unity and passionate delivery. “He took my breath away,” said the woman on the next bar stool, “he’s beautiful.”
A new Schneider piece,”The ‘Pretty’ Road,” is yet to be recorded, something to anticipate. It has to do with her memories of growing up in Windom, Minnesota, “the environment of my past,” she said. She has layered into it little references to things she recalls–church music, childhood songs, a meadowlark, the sight of the town from a hilltop at night. It is program music of a high order. She featured on flugelhorn and trumpet Ingrid Jensen, who soloed with the self-editing of increased maturity that leavens her spirited virtuosity. The dynamics of Schneider’s ensembles in the piece were meticulously shaped–almost micro-managed–by her graceful but definite conducting.

Wilson in “Sky Blue” and Jensen in “The ‘Pretty’ Road” solo again on the CD with, if anything, even greater cogency and passion. Schneider extends the practice of her mentor Gil Evans and his inspiration Duke Ellington of writing with specific musicians in mind. In “Rich’s Piece,” the only soloist is tenor saxophonist Rich Perry, a charter member of Schneider’s band and a veteran of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.

Rich Perry
In her album notes, Schneider writes that the music, “asked to be nothing other than a meditation–the chance to ponder the beauty of sound, in particular, Rich’s sound, and the orchestra would just cloak him in a sonic robe.” Operating in the sparest of harmonic environments but cloaked in that luxurious robe, Perry reaches into his imagination and applies his mastery of the instrument to sustain beauty, and the listener’s interest, in a performance of nearly ten minutes.
Inspired by the depth and direction of Schneider’s writing, tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin, accordianist Gary Versace and alto saxophonist Charles Pillow are impressive as the soloists in the twenty-two minutes of “Cerulean Blue.” Reflecting her attachment to birds and bird song, Schneider begins the piece with bird calls as if in a forest and develops it as an expression of her wonder at the miracle of birds and bird migration. She accomplishes that flight of imagination so evocatively that the listener is likely to absorb the idea without recourse to her program notes.
With her previous CD, Concert in the Garden, Schneider took her recording affairs into her own hands. She releases only through ArtistShare, a service designed to help musicians circumvent the traditional recording industry and receive more of the money they earn. A key part of the system is that listeners provide contributions to ArtistShare artists. A major contributor to Schneider’s Sky Blue project was rewarded with the title of executive producer and pictured in the forty-page extra booklet that comes with the deluxe edition of the CD. Gold, silver and bronze contriubutors got prominent mentions. I don’t know how extensive the market is for this kind of independent financing of musicians, but for Schneider, it’s working. Concert in the Garden won a Grammy. It will be a surprise if Sky Blue is not nominated for one.
How do other musicians feel about Schneider’s music and about her success? To my knowledge, there has been no survey on that question, but my sense is that Schneider’s contemporaries, many older musicians and–almost universally–those in the generation behind hers, admire her work and are pleased that so talented and uncompromising a composer and leader receives recognition. Darcy James Argue, a young composer and operator of his own big band, may have spoken for them in this item in his web log.

No, this isn’t about Lester Young. It’s about journalism and, ultimately, your right to know.
In her blog, Christine Tatum, president of the Society of Professional Journalists, kindly links to Rifftides. The Rifftides staff is happy to reciprocate. Tatum tackles free press issues. Her present tirade is against the outlandish requirement of the National Football League that photojournalists covering its games on the sidelines wear official red vests bearing the logos of NFL sponsors Reebok, the shoe manufacturer, and Canon, the camera maker. She calls it a “rule so offensive to journalists and ethical journalism that I urge all SPJ members to complain about it.” And they do. You can read her critique and their comments at Tatum’s blog, Freedom of the Prez.
Uniforms for journalists? What’s next, licensing? Tatum discusses that, too.
If you think an unimpeded flow of information is vital to the survival of democracy, rummaging around in the Freedom of the Prez archives will be enlightening–and sometimes infuriating. She can be as tough on the news business and wayward journalists as she is on their enemies and detractors. If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, I’m glad that Chris Tatum is on the ramparts.

One of my happiest assignments in recent months was writing the liner essay for a new CD by the New York composer, arranger and pianist Joan Stiles. She rounded up an all-star group of sidemen–Steve Wilson, Joel Frahm, Peter Washington, Jeremy Pelt and Lewis Nash–for Hurly-Burly. Her writing and the playing by all hands sparkle in pieces by Thelonious Monk, Mary Lou Williams, Fats Waller, Jimmy Rowles, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington and Stiles herself. Consider this not a review, but a hot tip.
This is short notice, but Joan is going to be on the radio soon to talk about the CD with Vince Outlaw of KSDS radio in San Diego. That’s at 10:15 pm EDT, 7:15 PDT this evening. You can hear it by clicking here to get to the KSDS website and clicking on “Listen Now” on the right of your screen.

The First Amendment is often inconvenient. But that is beside the point. Inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.– Anthony Kennedy, US Supreme Court justice
The dominant purpose of the First Amendment was to prohibit the widespread practice of government suppression of embarrassing information.– William O. Douglas, US Supreme Court justice

For further appreciation of Benny Carter (see the next exhibit), here are links to three video performances of the alto saxophonist among his peers. The first two are from a Copenhagen night club in 1985 with Carter’s contemporary Red Norvo on vibraharp, pianist Horace Parlan, bassist Jesper Lundgaard, and drummer Ed Thigpen. You’ll hear and see them in “Sunny Side of the Street” and then, without Norvo, in Carter’s classic “When Lights Are Low.”
Next, so long that You Tube had to run it in two parts, is “Autumn Leaves” from a Jazz At The Philharmonic concert at the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival. The players are Carter, Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge, Zoot Sims, Joe Pass, Tommy Flanagan, Keter Betts and Bobby Durham. For both halves of this stirring jam session, go here and then here. Listening to their inspired playing, seeing the interaction, mutual appreciation and love among these guys–all of them but Terry and Durham gone–made me a little moist around the eyes.
Benny Carter, Part Three
Thanks to Terri Hinte for calling my attention to a conversation between Carter and Mel Martin, videotaped during the 1993 San Francisco Jazz Festival. Martin had more success getting Benny to talk about himself than I ever had when writing about him (“I’m not much interested in nostalgia”). He quickly converted Martin’s answers to questions about him into observations about others, and did it with his elegant sense of humor. To see what amounts to a semi-mini-documentary put together by Bret Primack, click here.

Benny Carter was born in New York City on August 8, 1907. He died in 2003 less than a month before his 96th birthday. Observances of Carter’s centennial include a Hollywood Bowl concert on his birthday and the release of two new CDs. Welcome and deserved as they may be, those events are slight recognition of an artist whose broad gifts and creative consistency graced and influenced music for seven decades.

Benny Carter
Here’s a little of what I wrote about Carter in the notes for Three Great Swing Saxophonists, a 1989 CD that included some of his best work from 1929 to 1941.

At the height of his career, he played alto, tenor, clarinet and trumpet, composed, arranged, and sometimes played piano and sang. He is–along with Johnny Hodges and Charlie Parker–one of the three great original alto sylists in jazz. He wrote arrangements in the mid-’30s that sound fresh today. He was a natural born leader and teacher and one of the most important catalysts in jazz history. At the age of 81, as this is written, Carter plays elegant alto, and trumpet when he feels like it. He was deeply involved in a 1988 concert of his music by the American Jazz Orchestra, which he rehearsed to within an inch of its life. He travels the world as a performer and writes music with today and tomorrow in mind. He refuses to discuss his past triumphs, explaining simply but firmly, “I’m not much interested in nostalgia.”

Parker, Hodges, Carter
One of the new albums is among the last Carter made as a saxophonist, the other a tribute to Carter by more than a dozen of his colleagues and admirers. The San Francisco tenor saxophonist Mel Martin struck up a friendship with Carter in the late 1980s and became a sort of musical Boswell to Carter’s Johnson, featuring and promoting Carter compositions in his own performances. He went Boswell one better and collaborated in a full partnership with the great man he so admired. That resulted in a 1994 engagement at the Oakland music emporium Yoshi’s and the Martin-Carter quintet CD Just Friends. The rhythm section–pianist Roger Kellaway, bassist Jeff Chambers and drummer Harold Jones–is superb. Carter and Martin play to and for one another with relaxation and an infectious sense of fun. Some of the pieces, “Perdido,” “Secret Love,” “Just Friends,” have the air of a jam session about them, but any jam session involving Benny Carter had underlying order. The CD includes two gorgeous, little-heard Carter pieces, “People Time” and “Elegy in Blue.”
The Benny Carter Centennial Project presents, in various combinations, musicians including Phil Woods, Randy Sandke, Warren Vaché, Bill Kirchner, Joe Wilder, John Coates, Loren Schoenberg, James Chirillo, Russell Malone and Carter’s last rhythm section–Chris Neville, piano; Steve LaSpina, bass; and Steve Johns, drums. All of the compositions are Carter’s, and he makes a rare appearance without a saxophone.
In ubiquity, urbanity and skill, if not in style, Woods is a younger counterpart of Carter. He and Carter were fast friends and recorded together memorably on several occasions. In the Centennial Project, he contributes achingly beautiful duets with pianist Coates on the ballads “Johnny” and “Other Times.” On soprano saxophone, Bill Kirchner combines delicacy and deep understanding of Carter’s melodic essence in his reading of the master’s longtime theme song, “Melancholy Lullaby.” A five-man sax section headed by Schoenberg rolls out perfectly interpreted performances of two of Carter’s greatest arrangements, “I’m Coming Virginia” and “All of Me.”
Trumpeters Vaché and Sandke nail the spirit of “I’m in the Mood for Swing,” best known for the ingenuity and propulsion of Carter’s sax section writing in a 1938 Lionel Hampton all-star recording with Harry James shining in solo. Sandke in “Again and Again” and Vaché in “Key Largo” team with the rhythm section for solo spots. In “Far Away,” “Echo of My Dream” and “South Side Samba,” Neville, LaSpina and Johns display the lightness and firmness that Carter appreciated in them as accompanists. Neville rolls out his modern stride in “Fable of a Fool.” The final track is “All About You,” a ballad Carter wrote toward the end of his life and presented to guitarist Malone. Malone plays it alone, followed by Carter’s version on piano in 2001. It was his last recording, and he plays the piece with a tenderness that makes me wonder if he was more interested in nostalgia than he let on.
Here is a list of a few Carter CDs that I recommend.
All Of Me: Essential Carter from the 1930s and ’40s, with a smattering of his M Squad TV music of the 1950s.
Django Reinhardt All Star Sessions: Carter in Europe in the 1930s with the great guitarist and tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. This includes celebrated versions of “Crazy Rhythm” and “Honeysuckle Rose.”
They All Had Rhythm – ’45 and ’46 and Groovin’ High in L.A. 1946: Compilations including Carter’s big band, plus Jimmy Mundy’s, Gerald Wilson’s and Wilbert Baranco’s. Great arranging and playing by Carter, and fiery young soloists including, on Groovin’ High in L.A., Miles Davis.
Jazz Giant: Brilliant in every respect. With Ben Webster, Jimmy Rowles, André Previn, Frank Rosolino, Barney Kessel, Leroy Vinegar and Shelly Manne.
Further Definitions: Carter’s masterpiece of the early 1960s, with Coleman Hawkins, Phil Woods, Charlie Rouse and a powerhouse rhythm section. If you were limited to a collection of ten CDs, this would have to be one of them.
There are dozens of other Carter recordings. It would difficult to go wrong with any of them. You may want to go here and browse.

Jazz blogs are proliferating. Two recent entries worth investigating are Marc Myers’s JazzWax, whose current posting is an evaluation of Benny Carter, and Chicago bassist Bill Harrison’s Jazz Underneath.

Carol Sloane’s blog piece about her short career in music academia recently inspired a Rifftides item about singers who misfire. Sloane’s followup story recounts the time early in her career when she shared a bill with Oscar Peterson and impressed him, in a way.

I was singing at THE Village Vanguard; I was opening for one of the world’s greatest JAZZ pianists. Was I not therefore A JAZZ SINGER??? And what do jazz singers do? They improvise! To hell with a boring, simple melody. It needed some embellishment, some “jazzing up”. And so I commenced to work around, above and below the line every time I sang it. After one or two of these seriously flawed attempts to improve on Mr. Weill’s melody, Oscar took notice.
He’d say: “Carol. Sing “My Ship”, and of course I was flattered that my rendition so impressed the Great Man. He’d sit in the shadows on the banquette just to my left. Each night I sang with my usual abandon, and each night I’d eagerly look toward him, expecting acknowledgement for my inventiveness. Instead, his was a dead-pan expression, PopEye-like biceps firmly fixed across his expansive upper torso. Buddha displeased.

To get the whole story, go here.