Archives for December 2013

The Rifftides staff wishes you a Merry Christmas, a splendid holiday season and happy listening.

The bonus winter scene is of the magnificent Mount Adams in southwestern Washington State, about 60 miles away and easily visible from Rifftides world headquarters.

The roll call of distinguished jazz artists leaving us seems to grow longer by the day. Now comes news of the passing of Yusef Lateef, who died today at his home in Massachusetts. He was 93. As a youngster in Detroit, Lateef mastered several reed instruments and early in his career became a respected performer, composer and educator. He was an inspiration and model for a generation of young Detroit musicians who in the 1950s moved to New York and themselves became influences in the burgeoning jazz scene of that decade. Lateef was an early innovator in what became known as world music, melding his deep understanding of and emotional connection to the blues with concepts derived from his study of Middle Eastern music

In addition to performing and recording prolifically with his own groups, Lateef had tenure with two enormously influential leaders—early in his career Dizzy Gillespie’s 1940s big band, in the 1960s the Cannonball Adderley Sextet. In this 1963 clip, we hear Lateef playing oboe with the Adderley group; Adderley, alto saxophone; Nat Adderley, cornet; Joe Zawinul, piano; Sam Jones, bass; Louis Hayes, drums. Cannonball named the piece for John Coltrane, his former colleague in the Miles Davis Sextet.

Mark Stryker, the music critic of The Detroit Free Press, has covered Lateef for years and written extensively about him. For Mr. Stryker’s summary of Lateef’s career, please go here. But before you do, don’t miss this astonishing 1972 performance by Lateef on tenor saxophone with Kenny Barron, piano; Bob Cunningham, bass; and Albert “Tootie” Heath, drums. Heath also plays wood flute. Following the performance is a brief disquisition in French.

To hear and see more from that Lateef quartet, go here and here.

Thanks to the YouTube uploader known as uvisninewnew for providing those Jazz Harmonie videos.

We have word from Herb Geller’s family that the venerable alto saxophonist died on Thursday in a Hamburg, Germany, hospital. He succumbed to pneumonia. Geller had been under treatment for the past twelve months for a form of lymphoma. He turned 85 in November. As noted in this Rifftides post last June, Geller remained not merely active but energetic until fairly recently, performing in clubs and at festivals throughout Europe. He had lived in Hamburg since 1965. Until his mandatory retirement at age 65 he was a key soloist with the NDR Big Band, then spent much of the next 20 years touring and recording in a solo career.

Geller’s long residence in Europe gave him steady and reliable employment with a superb government-sponsored orchestra but kept him less visible than contemporaries like Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Bud Shank and Paul Desmond who remained based in the US. Nonetheless, during his period of greatest US activity, when jazz burgeoned on the west coast, Geller was one of the busiest and most respected alto soloists of his generation. He was born in Los Angeles and began playing the saxophone when he was eight years old. Among his band mates at Dorsey High School in Southwest L.A. were fellow saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Vi Redd and the drummer Bobby White.

After he heard a performance by Benny Carter when Geller was 14, he decided to become a professional musician. Carter and Hodges were his early models, their influences soon leavened by the impact of Charlie Parker. Geller worked with a cross section of the major players in Los Angeles, recording copiously with, among others, Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers, Andre Previn, Quincy Jones and Chet Baker. He recorded three albums as a leader for Emarcy Records at a time when the label was riding high in the jazz world and was on hundreds of albums in the fifties. Among them, he recorded with Dinah Washington, Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Bill Holman, Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson and Kenny Drew. Geller said in a recent conversation that of the thirty or so albums he recorded under his own name his favorite was You’re Looking At Me. That 1997 Fresh Sound CD had a rhythm section of the young Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren and two Los Angeles stalwarts, the late bassist Dave Carpenter and drummer Joe LaBarbera. Lundgren became one of Geller’s favorite collaborators.

During the 1950s Geller’s first wife, Lorraine, was one of the premier jazz pianists in Los Angeles. The two frequently recorded together. She died in 1958 at the age of 30. Here are the Gellers in 1955 with a “Cherokee” variant called “Arapahoe.” Red Mitchell is the bassist, Mel Lewis the drummer.

One of Geller’s collaborators in his latterday playing expeditions around Europe was the pianist Roberto Magris. Following a lengthy introduction by the emcee and a bit of onstage preparation, we hear him play “If I Were a Bell” with Magris, bassist Nikola Matosic and drummer Enzo Carpentieri at the 2009 Novi Sad Jazz Festival in Serbia.

Herb Geller, RIP

(revised 12-23-13)

John Snyder, who produced some of Jim Hall’s best albums, sent a comment on Hall’s passing. It appears with the dozens of other observations sent by readers following the Rifftides remembrance posted on December 10, but the staff decided that the poetic eloquence of Mr. Snyder’s tribute stands on its own. We reproduce it here, followed by a performance from Jim Hall Live, the 1975 Hall trio album with bassist Don Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke recorded at Bourbon Street in Toronto and produced by John Snyder.

Jim left not only music behind when he finished the gig, he left an aesthetic, a “way”, a path. It was the way of the individual heart, of unencumbered truth, of listening and honesty and the responsibilities of self-expression. Even in his absence, his music breathes with life and selflessness, innocence and humor.

Jim had more than ten fingers; it’s just that he just didn’t use them all. He knew that guitar playing often obscured the heart of the player and I think that’s what he meant when he said to his student, “don’t just do something, sit there”. There are fantastic instrumentalists in this world and it has always been thus, but there are only a few whose music and expression transcend the instrument and it becomes transparent, rather like the architectural drawings of a Frank Gehry building. Necessary and important, they and the technique they manifest disappear into the awe we feel inside the aesthetic experience they create.

Jim was kind and funny and he loved irony. He fought with himself and won, he lived his life on his own terms and had no cynicism or bitterness about the music business that provided him with the occasional opportunity to share his music with us. He was always grateful for those opportunities and always made the most out of them. He loved the people he played music with (or had really good stories about them) and he loved the people he played for.

Jim added to this world and to the lives of those his music touched. How will we miss our friend, who will be remembered for as long as there is music? With joy, with thankfulness and smiles on our faces.

Steve Cerra, the proprietor of the endlessly interesting Jazz Profiles blog, has posted a new piece about Take Five: The Public And Private Lives Of Paul Desmond. In it, he says that the book would make a good Christmas present, a suggestion that I wouldn’t dream of challenging. Steve observes that any stocking the book might stuff would have to be huge. That was true in the days when Take Five existed only as a hard cover volume. Now, it is an eBook, meaning that the recipient’s stocking can be the size of a Kindle or a bunch of digital 0s and 1s.

To read Steve’s embarrassingly flattering assessment of the biography, with extensive excerpts, go here. To find out how to obtain the eBook version, go here. Many thanks to Mr. Cerra for his kindness.

Try as I might to ignore requests to vote in polls, I don’t seem to be able to say no to Francis Davis. This year, the eminent critic persuaded 136 people to take part in his annual critics poll, which he has moved to the website of National Public Radio. He asked writers, broadcasters, bloggers and others to name their choices for the best jazz recordings of the year. The results are in.

The overall winner, hands down, is Wayne Shorter, 80 years old and, evidently, indefatigable. In his introduction to the poll results, this is some of what Mr. Davis has to say about Shorter.

It says a lot about his enduring hold on jazz listeners that over a half century into his career, the descriptive phrases most commonly put in front of Wayne Shorter’s name — along with “the great saxophonist and composer” — remain “the elusive” and “the enigmatic.” The inside tray card to Shorter’s Without a Net, the runaway Best Album winner in this year’s NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll, pictures him from the back, in spotlighted silhouette. It’s reminiscent of the cover of 2002’s Footprints Live!, where only half of his face was visible in the mirror of a navigator’s compass. Both poses are evocative of his solos, his tunes and his persona, all of which routinely invite us to fill in the blanks.

For the August Rifftides review of the Shorter album, go here.

Here is the poll’s list of the top 10 finishers.

1. Wayne Shorter, Without A Net (Blue Note)
2. Craig Taborn Trio, Chants (ECM)
3. Charles Lloyd & Jason Moran, Hagar’s Song (ECM)
4. Cécile McLorin Salvant, Woman Child (Mack Avenue)
5. Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Functional Arhythmia (Pi)
6. Tim Bern’s Snakeoil, Shadow Man (ECM)
7. Dave Douglas Quintet, Time Travel (Greenleaf)
8. Terence Blanchard, Magnetic (Blue Note)
9. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, Brooklyn Babylon (New Amsterdam)
10. Mary Halvorson Septet, Illusionary Sea (Firehouse 12)

The other categories are Reissues, Vocal, Debut and Latin. To see those results and a list of the top 50 choices, go to the NPR Music site. For what it’s worth, this is how I voted.

Best New Releases

1. Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, Somewhere (ECM)
2. Wayne Shorter, Without A Net (Blue Note)
3. Eddie Daniels & Roger Kellaway, Live in Santa Fe: Duke at the Roadhouse (IPO)
4. Dave Holland, Prism (Dare2)
5. Bill Frisell, Big Sur (Okeh)
6. JD Allen, Grace (Savant)
7. Dave Douglas, DD/50 Special Edition 50th Birthday Recordings (Greenleaf Music)
8. Ivo Perelman, Matthew Shipp, Whit Dickey, Gerald Cleaver, Enigma (Leo Records)
9. Steve Turre, The Bones of Art (High Note)
10. Rudresh Mahanthappa, Gamak (ACT)

Reissues

Jeremy Steig, Flute Fever (International Phonograph)
Lester Young, Boston 1950 (Uptown)
Woody Shaw, The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic)

Best Vocal Album

Cécile McLorin Salvant, Woman Child (Mack Avenue)

Best Debut Album

Chad Lefkowitz-Brown, Imagery Manifesto (Lefkowitz-Brown)

Best Latin Jazz Album

Mark Weinstein, Todo Corazon (Jazzheads)

This is the 77th birthday of Eddie Palmieri. The pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader moved with his family to New York from Puerto when he and his older brother Charlie were children. By the time Eddie was eight, he and Charlie were performing in talent contests. Both became major figures in the Latin jazz movement. As a teenager, Eddie Palmieri worked with experienced Latin bands, including that of Tito Rodriguez. At fourteen, he had his own band. In the early 1960s, his Conjunto La Perfecta became one of Latin music’s most influential ensembles. Palmieri’s La Perfecta II continues as a primal force in the music that is sometimes called Nuyorican.

Palmieri recorded two classic collaborations with his equally influential Latin jazz peer Cal Tjader. Here, thanks to a YouTube contributor named Ted Nelson, is “Pecadillo” from Tjader’s and Palmieri’s 1966 album El Sonido Nuevo. Palmieri, piano; Tjader, vibes; Barry Rogers, trombone solo.

The other joint effort by Palmieri and Tjader, Bamboleate—equally rewarding—seems to have gone out of print as a CD or LP, but is available as a digital download.

Feliz cumpleaños, Sr. Palmieri

Grover Washington, Jr., was born on this day in 1943 and died on December 17, 1999. He was a tenor, alto and soprano saxophonist who had huge success as a popular artist, in great part because his 1974 album Mister Magic was high on the pop, soul and R&B charts for weeks. He followed with additional best-selling albums and singles. Predictably, his ability as a hit-maker had critics reaching for their sharp knives, but far from being a sellout, Washington was a superbly inventive jazz soloist whose rhythm and blues roots strengthened his improvisations. His posthumously released Aria, with its variations on opera music and superb arrangements by Bob Freedman, was one of the best albums of 2000.

Here are Washington and his band before a Philadelphia audience in 1981, playing “Mister Magic.” In addition to his own work, this is notable for a gritty guitar solo by Washington’s omnipresent sidekick Eric Gale and the collaboration between drummer Steve Gadd and percussionist Ralph Mcdonald. Richard Tee is on piano, Paul Griffin on synthesizer

An excerpt from the liner notes for the Mister Magic album:

During an engagement with his quartet at the Half Note, New York’s venerable jazz club, Grover was pulling in the expected audience of hip young black people familiar with his recorded versions of pop hits. One evening a certain crusty jazz veteran noted for his musicianship and his acid critiques wandered in and sat scowling at the bar. When the set ended the scowl remained, but there was an announcement to no one and everyone in the gruffest of stage whispers.

“Cat can play.”

It was a benediction equivalent to a bushel of five-star reviews.

For reasons I have forgotten, I didn’t include the name of that musician in the notes. I see no reason why it shouldn’t appear now. It was Charles Mingus.

The two volumes of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz at the College of the Pacific on the Fantasy label have never received quite the degree of acclaim that met Jazz at Oberlin, recorded earlier in 1953. That’s a puzzle; The C.O.P. albums often equal the brilliance of Oberlin and of the phenomenally successful Jazz Goes to College, the quartet’s first LP for Columbia.

Having blazed the trail that opened college campuses to performances by major jazz groups, Brubeck’s C.O.P. concert was a triumphal return to his alma mater and a highlight of his band’s dozens of campus appearances in the early 1950s. In the week of the concert’s 50th anniversary and a year after Brubeck’s death at 91, we welcome Professor Keith Hatschek of what is now the University of the Pacific. Professor Hatschek writes for Rifftides about the event and the recording.

Jazz at the College of the Pacific—Celebrating a Landmark Recording

By Keith Hatschek

On December 14,1953, the Dave Brubeck Quartet played a concert at the College of the Pacific that was immortalized on the iconic album Jazz at the College of the Pacific (Fantasy OJCCD-047-2). The esteemed jazz critic Nat Hentoff gave the recording five stars at the time of its release and wrote that it, “. . . ranks with the Oberlin and Storyville sets as the best of Brubeck on record.”

Time has done little to diminish the impact of this classic live recording. The set showcases the Quartet’s ability to weave melodic, rhythmic and dynamic elements into a cohesive sound that is at once both easily accessible to the casual listener while offering a depth of contrapuntal and thematic invention that merits repeated listening by the jazz aficionado.

Since his 1942 graduation from College of Pacific, aka C.O.P., pianist Dave Brubeck had grown significantly as a musician and bandleader. Wartime service, leading the first integrated U.S. Army band, finding his own compositional voice while studying on the G.I. Bill with the storied French composer Darius Milhaud, marrying Iola Whitlock, eventually starting a family, leading his ground-breaking Jazz Workshop Octet, suffering a severe neck injury body surfing in Hawaii, founding the Dave Brubeck Trio and, eventually, the Dave Brubeck Quartet— life was never dull in the Brubeck family household!

The 1953 version of the Quartet was anchored by the smooth and swinging grooves established by drummer Joe Dodge and bassist Ron Crotty. Over their rhythmic bed, the free-ranging flights of alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and Brubeck’s own imaginative and singular improvisations would soar in the C.O.P. Music Conservatory’s packed concert hall. The original release featured only about half of the performance, six songs (due to the time limitations of 33 1/3 LPs). While none of them was a Brubeck original, the enthusiastic response of the audience shows just how much the Quartet’s interpretations connected with the student audience.

That night was the third time since his return from military service that Dave had performed in concert at his alma mater. All three of these early concerts were the result of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, the men’s music fraternity, raising the money to hire Dave’s various groups and bring them back to campus. In 1948, his experimental Jazz Workshop Octet, formed in 1946, performed on campus, presenting their new and imaginative take on jazz standards, as well as original pieces. Looking back on the Octet’s music today, it is clear that they helped to establish a totally new direction in West Coast jazz, one that would be developed along similar lines by Miles Davis soon after with his own New York-based Nonet in 1949-50. Some of the Octet’s earliest pieces can be heard on Dave Brubeck Octet, also available on Fantasy.

While the Octet provided inspiration to many, finding work that paid adequately for an eight-piece ensemble proved impossible, so Dave formed a trio and in 1950, they were invited back to perform at C.O.P., for another sold-out show. In 1951, as Dave was recovering from his Hawaiian misadventure (he had been there performing with his trio with drummer Cal Tjader and Jack Weeks subbing for Ron Crotty, who had been drafted), Brubeck wrote to Paul Desmond, a former member of the Octet, seeking to start a Quartet with Paul and a rhythm section. Tjader and Weeks had been asked by Fantasy to start a new group that would go on to success as the Cal Tjader Trio. With the prolonged convalescence that Dave’s neck injury required, he invited Desmond to share the solo spotlight and make his own return to performing less strenuous.

Thus, the earliest incarnation of one of the most celebrated jazz groups in history was formed out of necessity in the wake of Dave’s injury. With a few changes in the rhythm section, by 1953 they had hit their stride as can be heard on the seminal recording from March 1953, Jazz at Oberlin, and their various recordings spanning 1952-54 packaged as Jazz at Storyville.

Nick Phillips, Vice President of A&R and Jazz Catalog for Concord Music Group, which acquired Fantasy Records in the early 2000’s adds his own perspective:

Brubeck’s Jazz at the College of Pacific recording is both one of the most exciting and popular of his Fantasy Records-era albums — exciting for both the performances and the unbridled audience reaction to them. Along with Jazz at Oberlin, it was also pioneering: Presenting and recording jazz concerts at colleges simply wasn’t done before Brubeck did it. And it inspired a generation of college students to get into jazz.

Hearing the album today, the scintillating Brubeck-Desmond interplay at the end of “All the Things You Are” and the lyrical beauty suffused in the moving rendition of “Laura” demonstrate how these masters of invention could take any musical idea and make it uniquely original and captivating. There really was musical magic being made that night in the C.O.P. concert hall. Echoing the hearty applause heard on the LP, the then-student president of Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia, Wayne Morrill, contributed the erudite liner notes for the album, offering his appreciation from a musician’s perspective, of the group’s artistry. In closing, he wrote,

So ended another memorable concert by the Brubeck group at C.O.P. We of Phi Mu Alpha and the College of Pacific are proud to have Dave as an alumnus, and to know Dave as an old friend. Dave can be sure that he and his groups have a faithful and eager audience at Pacific.

The remaining eight songs captured during that night of the concert recording languished in the vault until 2002, when Fantasy Records released them as Jazz at C.O.P. Volume 2. They may have been held back because they include a few of the arrangements featured on the earlier Oberlin LP. Writing about the additional Volume 2 set, critic Dave Rickert of All About Jazz, noted,

 

Desmond gets plenty of solo time, really digging into the changes while showing a sense of humor by injecting quotes from “Santa Claus is Coming To Town” into “Love Walked In.” At this point in time Brubeck was playing as rhythmically and forcefully as he ever would, and his Tatum-meets-Rachmaninoff style shows the origins of the exploratory work he would pursue later on.

Jazz Times concurred, with David Franklin noting that on the second volume the Quartet was “in top form . . .Desmond’ s ideas seem inexhaustible . . . [and] Brubeck’s solos overflow with invention . . . this one’s a real find.” Concord Music Group’s Phillips offers one more reason for serious Brubeck fans to add Volume 2 to their collections.

The CD release of Volume 2 is also illuminating in that it features a significant bonus track, a rare recorded performance by Brubeck while he was a C.O.P. student. Recorded in 1942, Brubeck’s jazz solo piano rendition of “I Found a New Baby” is an incredible display of musicality and jaw-dropping virtuosity.

So to experience the whole night’s performance, albeit out of order from the actual fourteen-song set list that night, you’ll need to buy both albums, which are readily available. The bonus performance from 1942 is the cherry on top.

Meanwhile, Dave’s legacy is in good hands today. In 1999, Dave and his wife Iola, also a graduate of Pacific, selected what became University of the Pacific to be the home for the Brubeck Institute. The institute continues to support the Brubecks’ mission to foster jazz education and scholarship, a commitment to bettering the world around us and a celebration of mankind’s own interconnectedness, often using jazz and music as the point of connection and conversations.

It may have been a half century ago that this notable piece of jazz history was recorded here in Stockton, California, but the Quartet’s playing sounds as fresh and vibrant today as it did then. Here’s to celebrating a singular night of jazz well worth remembering fifty years on.

© Keith Hatschek, All rights reserved

Keith Hatschek directs the Music Management program at University of the Pacific and is an active Brubeck scholar. His article “The Impact of American Jazz Diplomacy in Poland During the Cold War Era” was published in Jazz Perspectives, Vol. 4., No. 3 in 2010. He is currently at work on a book about Dave and Iola Brubeck’s jazz musical, The Real Ambassadors. He has written two books on the music industry and is a contributing writer for the music blog, Echoes—Insights for Independent Artists.

Devra Hall Levy informed friends this morning that her father died last night in his sleep at home in New York, six days following his 83rd birthday. In her message, Ms. Levy wrote from Los Angeles, “He was not feeling well, but had not to my knowledge been diagnosed with any particular illness.”

Jim Hall was born in Buffalo, New York, raised in Cleveland and received his formal musical education at the Cleveland Institute of Music. The guitarist performed steadily into his eighties, including a concert at the 2013 Newport Jazz Festival. Hall’s first major professional notice was in 1955 as a member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet. Later, he had successes with Jimmy Giuffre, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer and Bob Brookmeyer, collaborated with Paul Desmond, Ron Carter, Bill Evans and George Shearing, and led his own trio.

Hall’s influence extended beyond jazz to virtually all genres of music. His appearance at a guitar shop in Los Angeles in the 1980s drew many of the jazz guitarists in town but also rockers, country pickers and classical acoustic players. In a style that grew out of Charlie Christian’s, he developed daring uses of chords that reflected his knowledge of and love for modern classical composers. Hall once said that Béla Bartok was his hero. A master of the effective use of space in his solos, he was also noted for the intensity of his swing and the lyricism of his melodic lines.

In the notes for the 1975 album Jim Hall Live! I wrote:

He is a wizard, truly the only contemporary guitarist to be mentioned with Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. Over the years, I’ve heard him in playing situations ranging from the Sonny Rollins Quartet in the gloom of McKie’s bar on the Southside of Chicago to the East Room of the White House at Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday party. He has never been less than superb.

Discussing his approach to improvisation, Hall told Juan Rodriguez of The Montreal Gazette in a 2002 interview, “I want a picture in my mind of the way a solo looks as I’m playing it. That way I can keep it from becoming boring— to me or the listeners— and avoid clichés. Here he is not being boring in the mid-1960s playing “Sometime Ago,” with Farmer on flugelhorn, bassist Steve Swallow and drummer Walter Perkins.

At the Marciac festival in France in 2009, Hall played “My Funny Valentine,” a piece he transformed countless times in his career, with Kenny Barron, piano; Scott Colley, bass; and Lewis Nash, drums.

In part because his recordings with Desmond inspired legions of young guitarists, many of them sought him out as a teacher. Interviewing him as I was writing a Desmond biography, I asked Jim if his playing changed as a result of working with Paul.

“Certainly,” he said. “I had more respect for melody. It worked out perfectly for me because I don’t have the amazing chops that a lot guys have, anyway. I realized that playing nice melodies was okay, so that made it a lot easier for me.”

“Could you pass that along to some of the younger players?” I said.

“I do, actually, whenever I’m teaching. I have these students with incredible chops. I try things to get them to slow down. Occasionally, I’ll have them just play on one string like a trombone, or play a mode with three or four notes and develop that through a whole solo, make them more aware of what Paul was aware of, how it becomes an art form and gets away from all that macho b.s.”

After a student improvised a passage overflowing with meaningless technique, Hall told him, “Don’t just do something. Sit there.” The bon mot circulated quickly and became celebrated in the jazz community.

Jim’s wife and collaborator, Jane, wrote “Where Would I Be?” “The Answer is Yes” and other pieces that were in his repertoire for decades. His family life revolved around Jane, their daughter Devra and his dog Django. A familiar sight in their lower Manhattan neighborhood was Django walking Jim. Here is a favorite family portrait.

Thanks to National Public Radio, you can go here to listen to Hall’s complete concert at last summer’s Newport festival with Scott Colley, Lewis Nash and fellow guitarist Julian Lage.