Just one more reason why it’s good to be in Portland: Mount Hood from my hotel window at noon today. This is not typical winter weather here, but to the residents of this frequently damp city it certainly is welcome.
PDX Jazz: Eigsti With Stevens & Harrison’s Free Country
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As usual at the Portland Jazz Festival, no one can take in more than a slice of the music filling this city of 610,000. A friend and I paused at a crosswalk to hear a musician, tip basket at his feet, serenading passersby with his bass clarinet. He was no Eric Dolphy and he wasn’t officially a part of the festival, but he was providing some of the music heard everywhere in Portland, from street corners to bars, clubs, restaurants, hotel lobbies and theaters.
Trying to hear as much music as possible in my four days here, I began with pianist Taylor Eigsti and singer-guitarist Becca Stevens sharing an evening with Joel Harrison and his Free Country Ensemble. Pictured below, left to right: Eigsti, David Binney, Ted Poor, Harrison
They played in the venerable First Congregational Church in the heart of downtown. Stevens is a pop and folk singer who performs frequently with jazz artists, among them pianists Brad Mehldau and, notably, Eigsti. Their rhythm section included drummer Kendrick Scott and the young bassist Zach Ostroff. Eigsti introduced the trio’s opening piece with a vigorous attack that culminated in a run of fists up the keyboard before he settled into the rich chording and cleanly articulated single-note lines that make him one of the most impressive pianists to have emerged in the new century. Throughout the set, Scott’s propulsiveness and crisp placement of accents made his drumming a compelling center of attention. Ostroff’s bass work was largely lost to the booming acoustics of the high-ceilinged sanctuary.
Ms. Stevens’s first song was the Burke and Van Heusen standard “But Beautiful.†She did one chorus with an
extension that featured her improvised vocalese, an aspect of her work that the audience made clear it adored. The remainder of the set was songs written by Stevens or Eigsti, some as collaborations. It was difficult to determine whether her variable intonation was a flaw or an intentional feature of her style, which tends toward the folk tradition. Her vocal lines in unison with her guitar were cleanly in tune. Eigsti’s “Play With Me†has demanding intervals, which Ms. Stevens nailed. The audience included knots of 20- and 30-somethings who were loud and vocal in their appreciation; there was a lot of woo-hooing and whistling. They were all, apparently, Stevens fans and left en masse when the Taylor-Eigsti set ended.
Joel Harrison’s Free Country Ensemble concentrates on songs by Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Merle Haggard and other specialists in Americana. Harrison plays country-rock-pop guitar with jazz tinges. Ted Poor is a straight-ahead jazz drummer able to flex among several idioms. Michael Bates was the bassist. Alto saxophonist David Binney goes a long way toward justifying the “Free†in the name of the band. Binney’s solo on the spiritual “I’ll Fly Away†was beyond outside, but when he came back to earth, his blend with Harrison’s guitar was exquisite. Eigsti’s piano made the group a quintet. His full-bodied accompaniments and improvisations enriched the proceedings. “Wayfaring Stranger†was replete with guitar atmospherics, drones and loop effects supported by unfettered exchanges between Bates’s bass and the slash and chatter of Poor’s drums. As I was leaving to head across town to another concert, Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman†was getting a Harrison makeover.
More coming from Portland
Portland 2015
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The Rifftides staff is off to Portland, Oregon for the first four days of the ten-day PDX Jazz Festival. I have been recruited to moderate a Saturday panel discussion about Frank Sinatra’s influence on jazz musicians. In my primary role as observer, I’m looking forward to hearing a diverse cast that includes newcomers like the French singer Cyrille Aimée and the young saxophonist Hailey Niswanger, as well as oldcomers like alto sax giants Lou Donaldson, 88, and Lee Konitz, 87.
In between: Hal Galper, Nicholas Payton, Marc Cary, Ron Carter, Taylor Eigsti, Vijay Iyer, Sheila
Jordan, Benny Green, Bill Charlap, Stanley Jordan, Jackie Ryan, Julian Lage, Tain Watts and Freda Payne, to single out a few. Whew. For complete details, see the festival website. Blogging from Portland will be as often as time and endurance allow. Stay tuned. A visit to Portlandia is never less than interesting because the community spirit is——well, see the picture on your right.
Monday Recommendation: Pullman On Powell
Peter Pullman, Wail: The Life of Bud Powell (Pullman)
Pullman’s research, detail and zeal override flaws of style in this indispensible study of the architect and spirit of modern jazz piano. The author is illuminating in his treatment of Powell’s early years as a child prodigy. He is chilling in his documentation of the mature pianist’s tribulations in the hands of police, mental institutions, lawyers, the courts, and some of his women companions. He paints a bleaker picture than the conventional wisdom that Powell’s European exile was a happy period. Concocted racial euphemisms like “afram†and “euram†are distractions, as is banishment of “the†in the names of things. Descriptions of Powell’s music making are likely to send the reader to the CD shelves or YouTube to hear the brilliance of the pianist’s inventions. Pullman delivers invaluable information about a great artist. Flaws, eccentricities and all, this is an essential book.
Other Matters: Snowless Winter (Sorry, Boston)
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Boston, it would be kinder not to let you see this, but February out here is treating us rather differently from what you are enduring. Most years at this time eastern Washington State is likely to be covered in white.
Today, it was winter on the calendar but spring in the valley. The high temperature was in the sixties. I took the bicycle along a road halfway up Ahtanum Ridge, looked west and saw snow only on the summit of Mount Rainier, 14,400 feet high and 60 miles away (in the middle of the photograph). That’s good news for stir-crazy cyclists but bad news for skiers and for orchardists and other growers. Without a substantial snow pack in the mountains, this big old agricultural region faces the possibility of a severe water shortage this summer. That could mean we’ll all have fewer and more expensive apples, peaches, pears, cherries, asparagus and—god forbid—hops for beer making.
Boston: too much snow? Send it west.
Happy CT Valentine’s Day
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The obvious choice for music in a Valentine’s Day post may seem a cliché. Of course, Rifftides wouldn’t be caught dead clichéing. Still, given yesterday’s news about Clark Terry (see the next item in the queue), it seemed appropriate to discover whether “My Funny Valentine†shows up in his discography. It does in a 1963 Gary Burton album by the 20-year-old vibraharpist and guest artists. Terry plays flugelhorn on the Rodgers and Hart song which, under his stewardship, is too lovely to be a cliché. Burton makes a brief atmospheric appearance toward the end of the piece. Tommy Flanagan is the pianist, John Neves the bassist, Chris Swanson the drummer.
The long-playing vinyl album Who Is Gary Burton? all but disappeared for years, occasionally surfacing in used record stores and flea markets. German BMG reissued it as a CD in 1996. It is also available as an LP. In addition to Terry, Bob Brookmeyer and Phil Woods are guests, and Joe Morello plays drums on some tracks.
Happy Valentine’s Day.
Clark Terry Goes To Hospice
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Clark Terry has gone into hospice care after years of illness in which he was able to stay at home. The great trumpeter is 94 and suffers from extreme complications of diabetes. A fund raising campaign 
in and beyond the jazz community made his home care possible. This afternoon, Billboard posted the hospice news with a message from CT’s wife Gwen, a brief summary of his career and video of a memorable appearance as his alter ego, the blues singer celebrated as “Mumbles.†To read the Billboard piece, go here.
When I learn of further developments in Clark’s situation, I will keep you informed. In the meantime, this Rifftides piece posted on his 90th birthday contains two performance videos and observations about the importance of one of the most gifted and beloved of all jazz artists.
CLARK TERRY IS 90
Posted on December 14, 2010Today is Clark Terry’s 90th birthday. Admired for his trumpet, flugelhorn, singing and blues mumbling, Terry has been an idol of trumpet players since the teenaged Miles Davis took him for a role model in St. Louis in the 1940s. From his days with Charlie
Barnet, Count Basie and Duke Ellington through his national prominence in the Tonight Show band and his long career as a leader and soloist, CT has been an inspiration to generations of musicians. It is a rare set in which Terry doesn’t include something by Ellington, whom he invariably calls Maestro. Here’s CT with his quartet at the Club Montmartre in Copenhagen in 1985. Duke Jordan is the pianist, Jimmy Woode the bassist, Svend E. Noregaard the drummer.
From Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of Its Makers, here is a passage from the chapter on Terry:
With Ellington, Terry blossomed. Duke’s genius for recognizing and capitalizing on the characteristics of his sidemen has rarely had more startling results than in the case of Clark Terry.
Ellington sensed in Terry something of the New Orleans tradition. When he was preparing A Drum Is A Woman, his suite in which New Orleans plays a large part, he chose Terry to portray Buddy Bolden. Bolden’s style is entirely legendary; no recordings of him are
known to exist. Terry recalls protesting the assignment.
“I told him, ‘Maestro, I don’t know anything about Buddy Bolden. I wouldn’t know where to start.’ Duke said, ‘Oh, sure, you’re Buddy Bolden. He was just like you. He was suave. He had a good tone, he bent notes, he was big with diminishes, he loved the ladies, and when he blew a note in New Orleans, he’d break glass across the river in Algiers. Come on, you can do it.’ I told him I’d try, and I blew some phrases, and he said, ‘That’s it, that’s Buddy Bolden, that’s it, Sweetie.’ That’s how Maestro was. He could get out of you anything he wanted. And he made you believe you could do it. I suppose that’s why they used to say the band was his instrument. The Buddy Bolden thing is on the record, and Duke was satisfied. So as far as I’m concerned, it was Buddy Bolden.”
On this auspicious day in Clark Terry’s long life, let us indulge ourselves in one of his great summit meetings. At the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1977, he, Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Lockjaw Davis and the Oscar Peterson Trio joined forces for the incomparable “Ali and Frazier,” introduced on this video by the impresario Norman Granz.
“Ali & Frazier” is also on this CD.
Happy birthday, CT.
My Kind Of Friday The 13th
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It is possible to have good luck on Friday the 13th. We have proof in the form of a recording from a Town Hall concert played by Thelonious Monk in New York City on February 28, 1959. “The Thelonious Monk Orchestra†is the grand term that the promoters and the record company applied to the 10-piece band assembled for the
occasion, one of the most memorable of Monk’s career. Fortunately for posterity, the concert was recorded. Hall Overton wrote an arrangement that observed the eighth-note rhythm pattern of Monk’s piano in his 1953 quintet recording of his composition “Friday The 13th.†Solos are by Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Monk, piano; Phil Woods, alto saxophone; and Donald Byrd, trumpet.
After Rifftides posted that video a few years ago, some zealous patroller of the internet took it down, without explanation. If that happens again, try this direct link to the YouTube video.
Speaking of luck, when the Monk Town Hall recording was reissued, it turned out to include four tracks that were not on the original album.
A New Old Bill Evans Interview
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Since Rifftides has been pretty much about Bill Evans since last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal article, let’s continue with a discovery brought to light through fellow blogger Marc Myers on his JazzWax. It’s a 1976 interview with Evans by a pair of young jazz broadcasters on a Madison, Wisconsin radio station. Marc recruited Bret Primack, The Jazz Video Guy, to add pictures to the sound track of James Farber’s and Larry Goldberg’s interview. Thirty-nine years later, it’s fascinating to hear Evans jovial and relaxed in a 43-minute discussion about many things, including his time with Miles Davis (pictured above with Evans), the various editions of his trio and vagaries of his relationships with record companies.
For details about how the Evans interview became public via Marc Myers, please see his JazzWax post.
Monday Recommendation: Vijay Iyer Trio
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Vijay Iyer, Break Stuff (ECM)
It would be safe to say that the pianist Vijay Iyer is the only jazz musician who constructs his music on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers introduced by the Medieval Italian mathematician. Safe that is, if Iyer didn’t credit saxophonist Steve Coleman with giving him the idea years ago. Maybe Coleman got it from Bartók (e.g., “Music For Strings, Percussion and Celestaâ€). Whether Iyer’s ascendency in jazz can be credited to his mathematical expertise and intellectual romance with numbers is beside the point. What
counts is the effectiveness of the music. On some of the pieces here, Iyer, bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilmore avoid the boredom of repetition by overlaying sheer lyricism. In Thelonious Monk’s “Work,†Coltrane’s “Countdown,†Iyer’s own “Wrens†and “Break Stuff,†and his langorous unaccompanied solo on Billy Strayhorn’s “Blood Count,†boredom is unlikely.
Correspondence: Broadbent On The Swinging 8th Note
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Mike Harris, Rifftides reader, surreptitious recordist (Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions) and avocational pianist, sent this query:
I wonder if Alan Broadbent could expand a bit on the thought he expresses, in your Wall Street Journal article about Bill Evans, that his “aim was to have a swinging eighth-note?†I have long speculated as to just what it is that makes the quality of his gentle swing so appealingly distinctive, and perhaps it is this concept of a “swinging eighth-note†that is the key to his secret sauce?
Alan Broadbent graciously sent his reply:
Trying to describe, in lay terms, the art of rhythm (jazz) is a bit like how Gustav Mahler described the act of composing: “It’s like making a trumpet. First you take some air, then you wrap metal around it.â€
The pushing and pulling of a musical phrase over a steady beat by a soloist, the tension and release of a phrase, is what creates a profound feeling of swing. This is not what singers call “back phrasingâ€, which is a forced and conscious affect to try and produce the same thing. This is actually an engagement between the soloist’s inner feeling for the time and the time itself. Unlike classical, fusion and pop music which is just the beat, the jazz musician/soloist is creating a magnetic force between his “pole” and the beat’s “pole.†Lennie Tristano believed this to be a “life force†inherent in human existence. His axiom was, “Jazz is not a style, it is a feeling.â€
Imagine a small sailboat in a lake, its mast a metaphor for the steady beat (the drummer). To get the thing moving I don’t sit with my fellow sailors in the middle of the boat. I lean a bit to the side to let the sail engage the wind (the tempo), then a bit to the other side, then sometimes in the middle, all the while getting the feel of the other sailors counterbalancing my moves. Too much to the left or right and everybody tips over, too much in the middle and we become dead weight. Within a single eighth-note phrase there are many ways of leaning each note to the right, left and middle, depending on the stress of the moment and which side of the boat needs adjustment. All of this the sailors or musicians do intuitively according to the weight needed to propel everyone on board forward.
This swing is not to be confused with swing dance music or “the blues†which are triplet feels (think “In The Mood†and B.B. King). It is closer to the atom, so to speak, and therefore closer to the truth of artistic human experience. This is not just my opinion but is borne out in the history of the music. Louis Armstrong invented it (see his “Dinah†in Paris 1933).
Interestingly, you can see videos of the Masai tribe singing a cappella where a soloist comes forward and does the same thing, creating tension against the chorus, but without the art of Louis’s notes, of course), Lester Young polished it and Charlie Parker took it to its limits. Billie Holiday
and Bud Powell are extraordinary examples of the art. Upon this feeling they then made beautiful music. And within this milieu there are, indeed, many different “styles”. Horace Silver, Tommy Flanagan, Wynton Kelly (who was the key to my unlocking the mystery) and Hank Jones are a few contemporaries who come to mind.
This is going to cause some flack, but it is undeniable: A good example of the difference between a “dance swing†feeling and a “profound swing†feeling would be to compare the respective eighth-note feeling of George Shearing, whom I love (triplets), and Bud Powell (profound eighth note), who speaks to me of deeper things. The same with Coleman Hawkins (triplets) and Lester Young (profound eighth note); Rosemary Clooney/Lena Horne (triplets) and Billie Holiday/Carmen McRae (profound eighth)
and—dare I say—Oscar Peterson (triplets) and Bud Powell (most profound of all eighth notes). It’s the rhythm that produces the notes and not the other way around.
It would be easier to demonstrate on the piano this eighth-note propulsion, and it is something that a young musician has to find with other players in order to learn how to do it. But a listener may also
feel this mysterious tension in an unaccompanied solo by, say, Sonny Rollins, or by Tristano, as in The New Tristano. Once the feeling is mastered, then it is up to the musicality of the young musician to create his own path without limit. Recently, during a radio interview where some of my music was played, I witnessed the interviewer’s disinterested young tech guy playing the CDs of my orchestral arrangements. A medium tempo trio tune of mine was playing and in the corner of my eye I could see this young person involuntarily moving his body to the time. I stood up and exclaimed “You see? That’s exactly what I mean!”
And what is it, this jazz time that speaks to me? It is the link between intelligence (musical construction) and universal human experience (feelings, emotions) expressed in the moment of artistic creation, a portal to unconditional love, beauty and ecstasy, the quality that gives our existence meaning, a sailboat in the lake of life.
Many thanks to Mr. Broadbent for his fascinating essay.
Weekend Extra: Evans Reflects On Ellington
In the aftermath of my Bill Evans piece in The Wall Street Journal this week and the
many generous comments about it here and in the online edition of the paper, I thought you might enjoy a rare Evans performance. It is the exquisite concert version of a piece that he recorded for this album in 1978 and played again in his memorable appearance on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz program. This was at Carnegie Hall on June 28, 1978. Bill makes the introduction.
Odds And Ends: Sloane On Balliett, Reilly On Haden
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On her SloaneView blogspot, Carol Sloane posts recollections of her long-running affection for The New Yorker. Describing the time Whitney Balliett interviewed her for a profile in the magazine, she discloses how the great writer prepared his tea. Haven’t you always wondered? And she tells what it was like to be on the confirmation end of The New Yorker’s exhaustive fact-checking process. To read Ms. Sloane’s blog, go here.
Also in the recollection department, the veteran pianist Jack Reilly sent a story about a little-known early appearance in New York of the late bassist Charlie Haden. It is posted as a comment at the end of a recent Riffitdes piece about Haden, but you may have missed it.
Charlie Haden came to NYC in 1959 and played with me at the old Five Spot on East 8th street just off 3rd Avenue. I needed a bass player for the week. I was accompanying Sheila Jordan and had Ronnie Bedford on drums. The black clientele were very upset having a white band playing there and said as much to the owner. He didn’t do anything like firing us but felt pressured, I’m sure. We played three sets a night, one hour each with a 30-minute recess. Quite a long job since I had to get up at 6 AM to travel from Staten Island, where I was living at the time, to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, to teach from 9 AM to 3 PM. I traveled by car from my home and crossed the river on the 69th Street Ferry, a short boat ride, just under 20 minutes. This was long before the Verrazano Bridge was finished in 1965.
The owners of the Five Spot club were brothers, Joe and Iggy Termini. At this period in my life I was teaching choral music and music appreciation at a Bensonhurst Junior High school 5 days a week and Iggy’s son was in one of my classes. He knew I was an aspiring jazz pianist so he came up to me after class one day and told me about his father and suggested I contact his Dad for a gig. I did, and booked a week’s work for the trio plus Sheila Jordan on vocals. However, I needed a bass player and Sheila had heard Charlie Haden was coming to the “Apple.†(She knows where every bass player is around the globe!!). He was delighted to play the week, his first week in Manhattan. Needless to say, we had a “cookin’†time. Charlie read all of Sheila’s charts perfectly and soloed magnificently during several trio features. A memorable evening for all.
Later in 1959, Haden appeared again at the Five Spot with the Ornette Coleman Quartet in an engagement that shook up the jazz establishment and made “free jazz†a tributary that would affect the mainstream of the music.
“Ramblin'”: Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Billy Higgins, drums.
56 years later, it doesn’t sound so radical does it? You could make a case that it never was.
The Bill Evans Legacy
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My piece in today’s Wall Street Journal is about Bill Evans, his continuing influence on pianists and on the general course of jazz, 35 years after his death. You may be able to see the column here (that’s a link). Otherwise, I hope that your town has a newsstand or a full-service supermarket that sells the Journal.
Monday Recommendation: Lisa Parrott
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Lisa Parrott, Round Tripper (Serious Niceness Records)
There is muscle and grit in the sound of Ms. Parrott’s baritone saxophone on Ornette Coleman’s “Round Trip.†Playing alto, she comes closer to essence of Coleman in “Rosa Takes a Stand†and “D. Day.†Her work on both horns is inflected with a kind of Coleman chanciness, but it would be a mistake to categorize this Australian who moved to New York in the 1990s. In a song written with her bassist sister Nikki, “Do You Think That I Do Not Know,†and a moody adaptation of “Waltzing Matilda,†her lyricism can be reminiscent of mainstream saxophonists like Harry Carney and Willie Smith. She turns Brazilian in Pixinguinha’s classic “Um a Zero.†Ms. Parrott has exquisite dialogues with fellow Australians Nadje Noordhuis, trumpet, and Carl Dewhurst, guitar. Drummer Matt Wilson and bassist Chris Lightcap complete a flawless rhythm section
Super Bowl Jazz
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As everyone in the United States cannot help knowing, and as many people around the world cannot help puzzling over, today is an unofficial US national holiday known as Super Bowl Sunday. In Phoenix, Arizona, The Seattle Seahawks play football of a kind that is not soccer, against the New England Patriots for the championship of the National Football League. Multiple millions of dollars are spent on the game——and that’s just for commercials aired in the television broadcast.
In recent years, bowing to popular taste, the NFL has hired pop performers, mostly from rock and roll, to supply the Super Bowl’s halftime entertainment. The Nielsen ratings from last year’s Super Bowl XLVIII (or for those who prefer Arabic numerals, 48) show that the singer Bruno Mars set a record for halftime watching by attracting 115.3 million viewers. It has been decades since jazz artists have been invited to perform at the Super Bowl. Ella Fitgerald sang In 1972. Woody Herman sat in with the University of Michigan Marching Band in 1973. The 1975 halftime show was a tribute to Duke Ellington, who had died the year before. The late Al Hirt played several times over the years, as has his good friend Pete Fountain. Here is Fountain in the halftime extravaganza in 1990 at Super Bowl XXIV. Be patient; he shows up at 2:20.
The final score was San Francisco 55, Denver 10. No one is expecting that kind of blowout in today’s Seahawks-Patriots game. At this writing, kickoff in Phoenix is two-and-a-half hours away.
Later: Final score, New England 28, Seattle 24. Dejection overrules analysis. Suffice it to say that Seattle threw the game away—literally—in the final moments.
Dick Vartanian’s Little Book
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Dick Vartanian, a trumpet player, was one of many San Francisco jazzmen who served in World War Two and returned home to see if they could make a living playing music. He and a clarinetist, 
Paul Breitenfeld, had become good friends at Polytechnic High School. The war behind them, the young Army veterans attended San Francisco State College, worked gigs in and around the city and played together for a time at the Feather River Inn, a resort in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. We see them pictured above at a 1949 jam session at San Francisco State. Breitenfeld changed his main instrument to alto saxophone, changed his last name to Desmond and hooked up with a pianist named Brubeck. Full disclosure: Mr. Vartanian was an invaluable source when I was writing Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.
Vartanian switched to piano and worked for decades with his trio and as a soloist in a variety of Bay Area clubs and restaurants. Approaching his 90th birthday, he has published an account of
his life. It is in a little book called Ivories and Brass. It tells of his early days jamming with Desmond and Jerome Richardson; travails and pleasures of life as an Army musician; encounters with Harry James, Jonathan Winters, Victor Borge, Vernon Alley and Frank Sinatra (among many others); the Chinatown club owner who insisted that he wear a turban; a wild horseback ride with the 11-year-old Natalie Wood; and songs that he wrote for a revue starring Johnny Mathis before Mathis became a pop star. The book is rough-hewn, readable and replete with wry reflections. It is short and priced accordingly.
To hear one of the Mathis songs from 1955 and see a picture of Vartanian and Mathis together, go here.
Just Because: Lester Young
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Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Teddy Wilson, piano; Roy Eldridge, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Gene Ramey, bass; Freddie Green, guitar; Jo Jones, drums. This Year’s Kisses. Prez, Teddy, Roy, Vic, Gene, Freddy, Jo. “This Year’s Kisses†from Jazz Giants ‘56.
Nick Travis
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Nick Travis (1925-1964) played trumpet in a variety of big bands including those of Woody Herman, Ray McKinley, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Ina Ray Hutton and Jerry Wald; all of those in the 1940s. The list got longer in the ‘50s, when he worked with Herman again, and with Jerry Gray, Bob Chester, Elliott Lawrence, Jimmy Dorsey, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and Maynard Ferguson’s Birdland Dream Band. Travis was active in New York studios in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s and was a prominent member of Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band. In demand as a lead player, he was also a more than capable soloist in small groups led by Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and others. He had his own quintet album on RCA.
A recent discussion among jazz researchers turned up a rare kinescope recording of Travis performing with former Duke Ellington cornetist Rex Stewart in 1958 on one of the Art Ford’s Jazz Party broadcasts. Their version of “There Will Never Be Another You†may well have been arranged on the spot.
The bassist was Vinnie Burke, frequently featured on the Ford program. YouTube identifies the drummer as Barry Miles and the pianist as Ray Bryant. The pianist, however, is someone else. Bryant is seen wandering toward the piano in the closing seconds of the film. If you know who the pianist is, please send a comment.
(Footnote 1/28/15. Jan Lundgren suggests in his comment below that the pianist may be Eddie Costa [1930-1962]. Costa fits the time frame and general appearance, but since there is no piano solo, it’s difficult to base a conclusion on playing style.)
Pianist on the video                               Eddie Costa