Following the recent Rifftides review of Gretta Matassa’s new album, I came across a video that she made when she was in Los Angeles for an engagement. Her longtime bassist, the Seattle veteran Clipper Anderson, was on board. Her other sidemen for the occasion were pianist Mike Garson and drummer Bob Leatherbarrow, stalwarts of the Southern California jazz community. The Riffides staff thought that you would enjoy Ms. Matassa and friends in their medley of songs written by George and Ira Gershwin.

Greta Matassa, Portrait (Origin)

Greta Matassa has never stopped performing extensively or touring with her widely admired quintet, but it has been years since she has made a new recording. The singer’s first album since 2011 is a reminder of the rare depth of her musicianship and her ability to fnd the essence of a song. The longtime colleagues with her on Portrait are veterans of the vital Pacific Northwest jazz community. Matassa selects thirteen songs that are among the finest of the past century, going back as far as1939 and “Just For A Thrill.” Matassa plumbs the soulful depths of that Lil Armstrong-Don Raye classic at a tempo that is slower than slow, sustaining long tones and at the end interacting with Alexey Nikolaev’s tenor saxophone in one of several appearances by that Russian-born musician. Nikolaev has become a mainstay of jazz in Seattle. “Gone With The Wind” opens with Matassa and the powerful bassist Clipper Anderson as partners in rhythm for a chorus before drummer Mark Ivester and pianist Darin Clendenin join them. Ivester’s subtle way with wire brushes is key to his effectiveness, but he exhibits full-range drumming on the up-tempo “If You Never Fall In Love With Me,” which began life in 1960 when bassist Sam Jones wrote it as an instrumental called “Del Sasser.” The piece became a staple in the repertory of Cannonball Adderley’s quintet. Donald Wolf added the lyric, which Matassa sings with zest reminiscent of Adderley’s on alto saxophone.

Among the album’s ballads, Matassa invests Johnny Mandel’s and Peggy Lee’s “The Shining Sea” with sweetness matched by Nikolaev’s tenor when he winds around and under her voice as the track dissolves in a subtle key change. The two are entwined even more tightly in Bob Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love,” written by Dylan without the word “To” in the title and first recorded by Billy Joel in 1997 before Dylan’s own version appeared. Other highlights in Matassa’s unusual and welcome album: Ennio Morricone’s “That Day” from the film Cinema Paradiso, with a lyric by Stan Dunn; The Lalo Schifrin-Gale Garnett ballad “Down Here On The Ground; a spirited non-showbizzy “Baubles, Bangles And Beads with pianist Clendenin inspired and Matassa scatting with a musicianly understanding of what the tune is made of.

Finally, I must mention Matassa and company’s visits to the Ellington-Strayhorn song book, first in her reflective treatment of Duke Ellington’s “Prelude To A Kiss.” Ivester’s brush work and Clendenin’s piano solo are essential elements in her interpretation of that classic. The album closes with Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.” All members of the quintet support Matassa and one another in what could become known as a definitive vocal version of that masterpiece. The album’s cover painting of Greta’s mother is a work by her late father, James Goehle, whom she credits with inspiring her career.

Have a good weekend

The young Scandinavians of the Eka Trio combine the relaxed sensuosity of trends in Nordic music with their underlying commitment to the adventurousness that goes to the heart of jazz. In the album that they call “O,” the trio and two guest artists craft a collection of fourteen pieces that thrive on certain major-minor key relationships often found in music of Sweden, Norway and Finland, as well as on interaction among guitarist Tomas Hornberg, bassist Anne Marte Eggen and drummer Pontus Haggblom. In addition, saxophonist Karolina Almgren and trombonist Goran Abelli provide lyrical moments and, in Abelli’s case, grit that intensifies the musical pallete. It is a delightful…and frequently surprising…album.

Thomas Cunniffe’s excellent weblog Jazz History Online has managed to find the performance by Paul Desmond and his Canadian quartet originally broadcast in 1975 by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. That is good news for listeners who continue to follow the alto saxophonist’s career after the dissolution of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, in which he starred with Brubeck for seventeen years. Cunniffe also presents the complete interview of Desmond by the CBC’s Mary Lou Finlay, with enthusiastic, nearly rhapsodic, commentary by her co-host Paul Soles. Previously, the interview has aired in the United States mostly in bits and pieces. To see all of the interview, the segment by Desmond’s Toronto-based quartet, and Tom Cunniffe’s extensive backgrounder, click here.

Thanks to Thomas Cunniffe, Mary Lou Finlay and the CBC for sharing an important moment in jazz history.

Have a good weekend.

…just because it’s Saturday night. You want to feel good as you fall asleep and even better when you wake up on Sunday morning. Fats will help. He always does

A jazz version of “June Is Busting Out All Over”? you might ask. Who would think of such a thing? Finding the right tempo might be possible, but how about those Richard Rodgers harmonies?  Well, Bill Holman-or maybe it was Stan Kenton-thought it would work. From the period, presumably in the mid-1950s, when Holman was doing a good deal of arranging for Kenton’s band, let’s listen to his arrangement of the tune that has been welcoming  this month since the song debuted in the Broadway musical Carousel in 1945. Youtube provides no information about when it was recorded or who plays the solos. Sam Noto may be the trumpeter. The alto saxophonist? Possiby Charlie Mariano. Despite the claim of the unoriginal album cover, we do not hear a solo from Bob Cooper or Frank Rosolino. We do hear some nice writing by Holman.  As the song’s lyric famously declares, it’s June, June, June.

Wishing you a perfect June.

If only they were still with us, two major artists would be celebrating their birthdays this weekend. They were Peggy Lee (1920-­­2002) and Miles Davis (1926-1991). She was of major significance in popular music and he in jazz, but their wide appeal to audiences of many kinds makes it difficult to assign either to a strict category. Staff research has turned up no recording, radio broadcast or television program in which they performed together. In fact, as far as we can discover, there were few songs that each recorded. In tribute, however, we can offer their versions of the same piece. It is “Bye Bye Blackbird,” a song written in 1926 by Mort Dickson and Ray Henderson. It became famous by way of Gene Austin’s recording soon after it was published. It was one of the songs that Peggy Lee sang on the sound track of the 1955 motion picture Pete Kelly’s Blues, starring Jack Webb.

Denny Zeitlin Solo Piano: Remembering Miles

For the most recent of his annual solo concerts at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California, pianist Denny Zeitlin’s subject was Miles Davis. The recital before the Piedmont’s customary audience of close listeners covered several eras of the trumpeter’s career. Davis composed few major jazz standards, and he had collaborators for some of those. In the recording, Zeitlin’s repertoire begins with one of the most famous pieces attributed to Davis. “Solar” was in fact written in 1947 by guitarist Chuck Wayne as “Sonny” and named for trumpeter Sonny Berman. It is one of Davis’s most famous appropriations. Zeitlin eases into it, but soon employs his formidable left hand to fill out the sound and roll into minor-key explorations, to  the advantage of its harp-like qualities, then modulates into a series of commentaries that come in fragments of left-hand flourishes and, ultimately, in final thoughts that incorporate a stunning decrescendo.

It is all but certain that Bill Evans was a major contributor to the composition of “Flamenco Sketches,” a modal masterpiece that was a highlight among highlights in Davis’s amazingly successful Kind Of Blue, which remains one of the best-selling jazz albums ever. Zeitlin is relaxed and harmonically subtle throughout this piece, which is welcome as one of the album’s longer tracks.”Tomaas,” a Davis collaboration with bassist Marcus Miller, finds Zeitlin at first reaching inside the piano to take advantage of its harp-like qualities, then modulating into series of commentaries that come in fragments of left-hand comments and, ultimately, in final thoughts that incorporate a stunning decrescendo.

Finally, I must mention that Zeitlin concludes with a pair of performances based in the heart and lifeblood of jazz: first, the energy  that he applies to the “I Got Rhythm” changes of Davis’s “The Theme;” second, the drive, pzazz and humor with which he invests the good old b-flat blues, in this case a piece that Davis recorded in 1954 and titled “Weirdo.” Zeitlin wraps it up in keeping with the title. The ending is ever so slightly weird.

Permit me to tell you how my yesterday went. It went badly. Here’s why. I prepared a Rifftides post that included a video. After the preliminary work and I was ready to post, I got a “video unavailable” notification. I settled on another post, put it together and got a second “video unavailable” message.

So, I decided to bring you a couple of videos that I was reasonably certain would be available. They were. They contain recordings that are part of the basic repertoire, pieces with solos that all good Rifftides readers should be able to sing along with. Please do, and we’ll both feel better about the whole day. First: Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” (1928). Second: Charlie Parker’s and Lester Young’s “Lady Be Good” (1946).       

                                 

Now,  don’t you feel better?

The exact date is uncertain, but we know who was with Hubbard in this L.A. all-star band:

Freddie Hubbard, featured trumpet soloist. Saxes & Flutes: Bud Shank (alto), Bill Perkins (tenor), Bob Tricarico (baritone sax). Trumpets: Chuck Findley and Gary Grant. Trombone: Bill Watrous. Horn: Vince DeRosa, Tuba: Tommy Johnson. Rhythm: Dan Ferguson (guitar), Bill Mays (piano), Abe Laboriel (bass), Bill Maxwell (drums) and Joe Porcaro (percussion). They play “Ride With The Wind.”

Have a good Thursday.

Midweek extra: Freddie Hubbard with  Allyn Ferguson Band in the 70s

The exact date is uncertain, but we know who was in this all-star L.A. band:

Freddie Hubbard, featured trumpet soloist. Saxes & Flutes: Bud Shank (alto), Bill Perkins (tenor), Bob Tricarico (baritone sax). Trumpets: Chuck Findley and Gary Grant. Trombone, Bill Watrous. Horn: Vince DeRosa. Tuba, Tommy Johnson. Rhythm: Dan Ferguson (guitar), Bill Mays (piano), Abe Laboriel (bass), Bill Maxwell (drums) and Joe Porcaro (percussion). They play (Ferguson’s?) “Ride With The Wind.”

Have a good Thursday.