A friend just pointed out that this is the birthday of Joe Henderson (1937-2001). The Rifftides time clock says that I’m punched out for the holiday, but to post a remembrance of Joe I’m sneaking past the security guards and putting up this remarkable performance of a piece associated nearly as closely with Henderson as with the man who wrote it, Kenny Dorham. The initial recording of “Blue Bossa” was in 1963 with Dorham on Page One, Henderson’s debut as a leader. It was one of a remarkable series of Blue Note albums they made together. Perhaps it is not out of the question to imagine that during this 1994 performance in Munich, Henderson was thinking of his old pal. He is the only soloist, soaring on the support he gets from bassist George Mraz, drummer Al Foster and pianist Bheki Mseluku and ending with a quixotic coda—two of them, in fact.

Here’s a cheery version of Irving Berlin’s classic holiday song. It’s by Jimmie Lunceford’s band, recorded in 1939. The vocal and exuberant trombone solo are by Trummy Young. Have patience, please. It takes the Garrard disc jockey a while to get it cued up, giving you nearly 15 seconds to read the record label.

Happy Easter.

For reasons involving the configuration of the new publishing platform, Rifftides had to put off posting a new batch of Doug’s Picks. The crack artsjournal.com technical team has eliminated the barrier and in the right-hand column you will find the staff’s recommendations of new CDs by a pianist leading a big band, a pianist leading a trio and the welcome reissue of classic Stan Getz quintet recordings. We are also alerting you to a delightful Erroll Garner DVD and a book that takes a seriously lighthearted approach to use of the language.

Speaking of roses…

Oh, we weren’t? Well, we are now. The resident rose expert around here informed me the other day that two famous roses are named in honor of Louis Armstrong. The same breeder developed both of them. His name is Sam McGredy (pictured), an Irishman who moved to New Zealand more than 40 years ago. Among rose aficionados around the world he became famous for his hybrids. McGredy’s “Satchmo” rose came first, in 1970. According to Stirling Macoboy’s The Ultimate Rose Book, experts admire it “for its bright scarlet color, its shapely clusters of double flowers and its freedom of bloom.”

McGredy is reported to believe that “Satchmo’s” 1977 hybrid offspring, “Trumpeter,” also named in tribute to Armstrong, supersedes its parent. Again quoting Macoboy, the flowers “are only slightly scented, but they are borne in great abundance and hold their jazzy color until they drop, without fading, burning or turning purple.” You may read into those qualities whatever metaphorical significance pleases you.

Now, to the main event. You knew this was coming, right? It’s Louis and the
All-Stars on tour in Europe. Oddly, this seems to be the only video of Armstrong performing one of his biggest hits. For reasons not explained, less than two minutes in still photos take over and the performance ends abruptly at 3:18. But it’s what we have, and it’s a treasure.

On his Armstrong web site Ricky Riccardi has a comprehensive history of Pops’ affair with “La Vie en Rose,” including seven MP3 versions by Louis and a clip from the motion picture Wall-E.

If Sam McGredy or rose breeding interest you, this link will take you to an on-camera interview with McGredy about his long career and some of the roses he’s named after friends and acquaintances, including the one known as “Sexy Rexy.”

In a section of a Hank Jones master class DVD that was a 2008 Doug’s Pick, Jones critiqued budding jazz pianists. One of them was a 21-year-old Julliard graduate named Aaron Diehl. For Jones, Diehl played “I Cover The Waterfront” and Art Tatum’s arrangement of Massenet’s “Elegy.” Apart from a slight reservation about Diehl’s use of dynamics in the first piece, Jones had nothing but praise, especially for the way the young man scaled the heights of “Elegy.” “If you should decide to stay in the music profession,” he told the young man, “I see nothing for you but a bright future.”

Diehl decided to stay. Good idea. Last Saturday, the American Pianists Association announced that he had won the 2011 Cole Porter Fellowship in Jazz competition. The fellowship carries a $50,000 cash prize. In addition, according to the association’s announcement, over the course of two years Diehl will receive in-kind career development with the value of an additional $50,000. The jury members included pianists Geri Allen, John Taylor and Danilo Pérez, New York Times music critic Nate Chinen and Al Pryor, an executive of Mack Avenue Records. For details about the competition, see Becca Pulliam’s account on the NPR website.

Diehl lives in New York, where he is music director of St. Joseph of the Holy Family Church in Harlem. For further biographical details, visit his website. His duties at St. Joseph’s leave him time for performances, some of which have made their way to the internet. Here are two, a solo interpretation of Fats Waller’s “Viper’s Drag” that opens and closes in a mood of rumination appropriate to the church setting—I wish Fats could have heard it—and a quartet presentation at Dizzy’s club in New York of John Lewis’s “Django.” At the end of “Django,” Dizzy’s impresario Tadd Barkan introduces the sidemen.

Diehl wrote a fascinating account for Ethan Iverson’s Do The Math blog of how Mirjana Lewis, John’s widow, educated him about Lewis’s music and the Modern Jazz Quartet. To read it, go here.

“I see nothing for you but a bright future.”—Hank Jones, 2004

It seems unlikely that anyone who follows jazz closely has not encountered Mr. P.C., counselor to musicians who wish to do the right thing but are confused about what that is. However, it’s tough to keep up with much of even the most valuable information in the bounty—not to say glut— of digital outpourings. If you have missed Mr. P.C., Rifftides is happy to call him to your attention. The credo prefacing his column on the All About Jazz website begins:

Inspired by the cutting edge advice of Abigail Van Buren, the storied bass playing of Paul Chambers, and the need for a Politically Correct doctrine for navigating the minefields of jazz etiquette, I humbly offer my services.

Here is a sample of his services—the Q and some of the A in an exchange from his most recent column:

Dear Mr. P.C.:
A friend of mine books a successful outdoor music series featuring crowd-pleasing groups like rock cover bands. He called me up and told me that there was a problem: crowds had grown too large, forcing the city to hire extra police and trash collectors. Because of the city’s budget crisis, he was under pressure to book bands that would draw smaller crowds. Then he offered my jazz trio a date in the series.
How should we dress for the gig?
— Kirk, New York




Dear Kirk: I totally understand your dilemma. Since the crowd is used to rock bands, they probably expect your trio to wear spandex body suits with plunging chest lines and cucumber-stuffed crotches. But that would objectify you as mere sex objects—albeit middle-aged, saggy ones—and detract from the profundity of your art.

On the other hand, if you were to dress in the more high-toned attire of intimate jazz clubs and cocktail lounges, all the nuances—matching patterned bowtie and cummerbund, polished cufflinks, ruffled shirts—would be lost in the physical distance between you and the audience.

But these may be moot points. Given all the challenges they’re having with their budget and trash collection, don’t you think they’ll expect you to help clean up the garbage after your performance? Well, there’s your answer!…

Well, there’s part of the answer. To see all of it and some of his other advice, go here.

Those who note a resemblance between the portrait of Mr. P.C. on the upper left and the Seattle pianist Bill Anschell may be onto something.

Think about it. Have you ever seen them together?

One Monday night in the ‘70s, I found myself seated at a table in the Village Vanguard with Manny Albam, listening to the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. During a break, I said to him, “I wonder why you haven’t written something for this band.”

“So do I,” he said.

To my knowledge, Albam never did write for the Jones-Lewis band. I wish that he had. He created wonderful music for lots of other people, though. It has always puzzled me that he wasn’t better known outside of the tight jazz circles of New York and Los Angeles. Nine years following his death, he remains one of the most respected composer-arranger craftsmen of the last half of the 20th century. If you’re not familiar with Albam, his classic The Blues is Everybody’s Business (1957) is a fine place to start.

On tonight’s installment of Jazz From the Archives on Newark, New Jersey’s WBGO-FM, Bill Kirchner will play some of the great variety of music Albam made in his last decade. The program will be streamed live on the web. Here’s Bill’s preview:

Manny Albam (1922-2001) was one of NYC’s busiest recording composer-arrangers in the 1950s and ’60s. After focusing on education for two decades, he experienced something of a career renaissance in the ’90s.

We’ll hear Albam’s 1990s writing in a variety of settings: with pianist Hank Jones and the Meridian String Quartet; the SDR Big Band in Stuttgart, Germany; saxophonist Joe Lovano’s “Celebrating Sinatra” with chamber orchestra; singer Nancy Marano and the Netherlands Metropole Orchestra; and a special tribute to his close friend and fellow composer-arranger Bob Brookmeyer.

The show will air this Sunday, April 17, 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.

In the meantime, or any time, this video will show you Manny Albam conducting a piece he arranged for pianist Billy Taylor, who talks about their collaboration.

Outrage continues to grow in the Latin jazz community over the decision of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) to drop the Best Latin Jazz category from the annual Grammy awards. The NARAS Board of Governors this week decided to eliminate nearly a third of the award categories, but the loudest protest has come from Latin jazz artists, their fans and record labels that specialize in Latin music. NARAS president Neil Portnow defended cutting the number of categories from 109 to 78 as “restructuring.” He countered charges that big record companies can influence the Grammy voting and, as Larry Rohter reported in The New York Times, “seemed to be arguing that the committee that cut 31 Grammy categories was acting to preserve the integrity of the awards.”

As Eddie Palmieri, Bobby Sanabria and other Latin jazz musicians continue to protest, people in many areas of music are calling into question the overall thrust and and purpose of the Grammys. Among them is the saxophonist, composer, arranger, producer and Grammy-award-winning bandleader Bob Belden. Belden has committed his thoughts on the matter to paper in the spirit of Jonathan Swift, Woody Allen and Stan Freberg. He has allowed Rifftides to share them with you.

NARAS TO BAN MINOR CHORDS
By Bob Belden

Adding further fuel to the fire, NARAS announced late last night that the
use of “Minor Chords or any chord that would constitute a breach of the peace is prohibited in songs or arrangements submitted for Grammy Consideration”.

In another ruling, the board, at the urging of Cee-Lo and the panel of
America’s Got Talent and American Idol, have created a “Best Profane Song Of The Year” category. When asked by reporters about this about-face in lieu of dropping categories, a spokesperson for NARAS said “F___ you”. They are also considering for the “Best New Artist” category the use of a text message voting system to appeal to audience participation and ensure that the least talented “artist” will always win based on popularity and media exposure, the true philosophy of NARAS.

In another move to boost revenue, each major category will have a
corporate sponsor. “Song of the Year” will now be “Comcast Song of the Year.” “Best New Artist” will be “Exxon Best New Artist.” Hilton Hotels will sponsor “Best Lounge Act.” Sony will sponsor “Best New Sony Artist.” The Emir of Dubai, Warren Buffet and Osama Bin Laden have donated money to the NARAS Executive Travel Fund to get “branding rights.” Rumors are that The Trump Organization wants branding rights to all of the R&B and Hip Hop awards as a reflection of Donald Trump’s closeness with “the blacks.” Newt Gingrich is reported to want branding rights to an R&B category out of “historic traditions.” The State of Arizona wants rights to all Hispanic categories in order to deport all of the artists who enter. We know of deals in the works for “Phil Spector Best Female Artist,” the “Suge Knight Humanitarian Award” and “Goldman Sachs Best Country and Western,” but details are not forthcoming; all is hush-hush at NARAS headquarters in the Blackwater/Halliburton building.

Henceforth, the Grammy statues will contain advertising. When artists accept the awards, they will be instructed to hold the objects in a way that will allow one or two corporate logos to flash in front of the millions of viewers. This money will be donated to the NARAS Executive Compensation Fund. CBS will also charge a ‘”flash view” fee for any artist who wants to have a one-second “cut to” shot in the televised show. If an artist or manager wants more “flash time,” the fee is increased.

Dropped before their first year of awards were “Best Overdubbed Solo”,
“Best Latin Jazz Vocals Sung in Actual Latin,” “Best New Payola Artist,” “Best New Monopoly Label” and “Best Baritone Saxophone Solo.” The live band will be eliminated, on grounds that most of the nominated artists will not know the difference.

I had the middle part kind of vaguely in mind. I thought, “We could do this, but then we’d have to modulate again and we’re already playing in 5/4 and six flats, and that’s enough for one day’s work.” Fortunately, we tried it, and that’s where you get the main part of the song.—Paul Desmond

At the time, I thought it was kind of a throwaway. I was ready to trade in the entire rights of “Take Five” for a used Ronson electric razor.—Paul Desmond

Desmond changed his mind about swapping the “Take Five” royalties for a shaver. Following his death in 1977, his will directed gifts of personal items and bequests of cash to a number of relatives and friends. The royalties went elsewhere. As recounted in the Coda chapter of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond:

The balance of Desmond’s residuary estate, after payment of debts and taxes, went to The American Red Cross. “Residuary” is the fateful word in that provision of Desmond’s will. Every year since his death, through his royalties from “Take Five,” his other compositions, his recordings and his share of the Brubeck Quartet recordings, Desmond has kept on earning. Noel Silverman (the executor of his estate) sends the Red Cross the money in increments of $25,000 as it accumulates in the estate’s account. In 1991 the total reached more than a million dollars.

For years, the Red Cross accepted the money but recognized the flow of payments only in form letters. In 2002, Silverman had had enough of the relief agency’s bureaucratic insensitivity. He wrote a letter that included this paragraph:

It is easy to accuse the Red Cross of ingratitude. I suspect that that may be less than accurate. It may simply be that the organization is poorly run, badly mannered, or understandably not concerned with gifts which are not dependent on whether or not they are acknowledged. Come to think of it, organizational ungraciousness may not be such a bad description after all.

That resulted in a high-ranking Red Cross official going from Washington, DC, to New York to meet with Silverman. She pronounced herself “horrified.” The Desmond estate began to receive closer attention. From the book:

Finally, the Red Cross informed Silverman that at the annual dinner dance of the organization in New York, Desmond would be honored with a posthumous tribute. On April 8, 2003, Silverman accepted the honor in Paul’s memory. He announced at the banquet that Desmond’s total contribution to the Red Cross had reached four million dollars and was growing.

“He has left us a double legacy—not only the art itself but the ongoing proceeds of that creativity as well,” Silverman told the Red Cross executives, donors and staff members. “It is easy to forget, however, that the Paul Desmonds of our world need and deserve our support just as we need theirs. Not because they may end up as contributors to the Red Cross, but because they constitute the soul of our society. Our failure to support them—the authors, the artists, the musicians, the dramatists, even the ones that defy easy description—leaves us poorer. We are who we are because of them. Our government’s increasing insistence that the arts are irrelevant or, worse yet, subversive, is of course sometimes correct and sometimes incorrect, as it needs to be in a vibrant, pluralistic society. We cannot easily do without organizations like the Red Cross, and we fail to support them at our peril, but the same is equally if not more true of our artistic community. Honoring the Paul Desmonds of the world is not a luxury. It is a necessity, and the fact that the Red Cross is the financial beneficiary of his munificence is simply icing on the cake.”

I spoke with Noel Silverman this morning. He told me that Desmond’s contributions to the Red Cross, largely by way of “Take Five’s” royalties, are now “well north of six million dollars.”

When Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond took time out for tips from Indian musicians during their 1958 State Department tour, the exchange worked both ways. The Brubeck Quartet’s tour was an important component of the cultural diplomacy the United States practiced during the Cold War. Among other inspirations Brubeck picked up on the international road more than half a century ago was the 9/8 Turkish rhythm that became the basis for his “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” Desmond had long been working into his improvisations the minor feeling of near- and middle-eastern music, as—most famously— in “Le Souk” on the Jazz Goes To College album. Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo” and Desmond’s “Take Five” had yet to be written when the picture on the left was taken, but the Brubeck group left impressions in India and Pakistan that helped insinuate modern jazz into the cultures of those countries. Able to not only absorb from other musics but also contribute to them, jazz has become more and more natural to musicians there, as have Indo-Paki scales, ragas and quarter tones to western musicians.

With improvisation common to the music of both cultures, it may have been inevitable that something like the Sachal Studios Orchestra would develop. Founded by a businessman and philanthropist named Izzat Majeed, Sachal Studos in Lahore provides some of Pakistan’s most talented musicians a place to pursue their craft. Its current project is an album called Sachal Jazz: Interpretations of Jazz Standards & Bossa Nova, due out in May. According to an advance track list, it opens with “Take Five.” Here is the promotional video. The soloists are Balu Khan, tabla; Nafees Khan, sitar; and Tanveer Hussain, guitar. The conductor is Riaz Hussain. The string arrangement may not be long on innovation, but it follows the dictum drummer Joe Morello gave Brubeck before they made the original recording, “Keep that vamp going.”

Jazz historian, composer, arranger, bandleader, educator and short sleeper Bill Kirchner writes:

You’ve probably seen—or will see—the new “Jazz” U.S. postage stamp just issued. A year ago, I was a paid consultant on the design of it. The graphic artist’s original design included a trumpeter, saxophonist, pianist, and bassist—no women, no singer. I successfully lobbied for a female singer–my foremost contribution to American culture (smile).

This was the stamp being introduced in New Orleans on the day it was issued, March 25. The man in the light suit is Paul Rogers, who designed it.

On his website, Rogers wrote about the project.

Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, and about a dozen others have been honored with stamps in the past, and in 2008 Michael Bartalos designed a wonderful Latin Jazz stamp, but there has never been a single stamp to pay tribute to America’s original art form, jazz. It’s always an honor to design a postage stamp, and because I love jazz and have great respect for the history of the music, this one was very special to me.

To read about and see the stages of Rogers’ creation of the design, including detail about how the singer became part of the scheme, go here.

The Treme Brass Band was part of the stamp’s unveiling ceremony, so why not let them end our story?

Now, I’m homesick. And I miss Ed Bradley.

The violinist Billy Bang, who created himself as a jazz musician out of the trauma of the Vietnam war, died yesterday at 63. Inhabited by his combat experiences, his emotions wounded, Bang found relief and rehabilitation by returning to the violin he had studied as a child. He pursued an intensity of expression that helped him evade his demons. He became one of the most centered players in the free movement, inspired by John Coltrane and by the violin playing of Ornette Coleman and Leroy Jenkins. The great swing violinist Stuff Smith also influenced him. For complete obituaries of Bang, go here and here. Below is an encore of the Rifftides review of Bang’s last album.

Billy Bang, Prayer For Peace (TUM). In an album mostly of his own compositions, the violinist opens with Stuff Smith’s “Only Time Will Tell.” Bang and trumpeter James Zollar might be summoning the spirits of the seminal jazz violinist Smith (1909-1967) and his Onyx Club sidekick of the 1930s, Jonah Jones. The rest of the CD is redolent of the music Bang has made with Sun Ra, Don Cherry, the bassist Sirone and others in the avant garde, and of his love for John Coltrane. That is not to say that it is experimental or inaccessible. Even at its most daring, Bang’s music has always had an engaging old-timey quality that he transmits to those who play with him, including Zollar, bassist Todd Nicholson, pianist Andrew Bemkey and drummer Newman Taylor-Baker, the band of young musicians he has employed for some years. The title tune, just short of 20 minutes, runs in a tranquil modal course that reflects the quest for peace that Bang has promoted with music since his experience in the Viet Nam war. Bang’s danceable version of “Chan Chan,” the Afro-Cuban anthem made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club, is among the pleasures here. The Finnish record company TUM lavished commendable care on the sonic production and packaging of this CD.

Also see artsjournal.com colleague Howard Mandel’s remembrance of Bang.

The first section following the introduction of my 1989 book Jazz Matters is titled “A Common Language.” It ends with this:

Like every art form, jazz has a fund of devices unique to it and universally employed by those who practice it. Among the resources of the jazz tradition available to the player creating an improvised performance are rhythmic patterns, harmonic structures, material quoted from a variety of sources and “head arrangements” evolved over time without being written. Mutual access to this community body of knowledge makes possible successful and enjoyable collaboration among jazzmen of different generations and stylistic persuasions who have never before played together. It is not unusual at jazz festivals and jam sessions for musicians in their sixties and seventies to be teamed with others in their teens or twenties. In the best of such circumstances, the age barrier immediately falls.

If I were to write that today, I’d change “sixties and seventies” to “eighties and nineties.” The aging population contains a number of active jazz octogenarians and nonagenarians. Jimmy Heath at 85, Joe Wilder at 89 and Dave Brubeck at 90 are three cases in point. Toots Thielemans, 89, is another. Thielemans recently played a duo gig at Sculler’s in Boston with Kenny Werner, who is 59. One evening, they asked Grace Kelly to sit in. She is 18. This is what happened.

If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.—Eubie Blake (1887-1983) on his 96th birthday.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.—Groucho Marx

To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.—Bernard Baruch

Researching key signatures in performances of “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” I made a discovery. Everyone else out there may have known about Olaf Polziehn, but he was new to me. After I heard him play the piece (in E-flat), further research turned up these facts: Polziehn is 40 years old. He was born in Ludwigsburg, Germany. He is professor of jazz piano at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz, Austria. That is where the expatriate American composer, arranger and trombonist Ed Partyka is chairman of the jazz department, Dena DeRose is a professor of voice and Ed Neumeister a professor of composition, arranging and trombone. Clearly, things are happening in Graz.

Polziehn has played with, among others, Bob Mintzer, John Riley, Harry Allen, Scott Hamilton, Patti Austin and Warren Vaché. In the video of his unaccompanied version of “Wrap Your Troubles…,” we see the only a three-quarters view of the back of his head. So here, on the right, is what he looks like. Now, press play and you’ll hear what he sounded like at the Stride + Swing Piano Summit in Switzerland in 2008.

If you’re curious, the original key of Billy Moll’s, Harry Barris’ and Ted Koehler’s “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” (1931) was C. If you’d like to hear a splendid version in B-Flat, click here for Hampton Hawes with Harold Land, Scott LaFaro and Frank Butler from Hawes’ album For Real.

Here is Thelonious Monk in Japan with Charlie Rouse, Butch Warren and Frankie Dunlop. Monk is in a dancing mood. That’s the bonus in this splendid performance of “Evidence.” The staff recommends full-screen viewing.

Now, how can you not have a good weekend?

Miscellany accumulates, each unrelated matter of some importance but too small for an item of its own. The solution—hardly an innovation—is to put them all in the same container, call it Odds And Ends and get the jumble out of my mind and into yours.

Following last Monday’s fundraiser at the New York’s Village Vanguard for northern Japan’s earthquake and Tsunami victims and today’s at Vitello’s in Los Angeles, Seattle’s Jazz Alley announces a similar humanitarian event. For singer Gail Pettis’s engagement April 19 and 20, the club will donate cover charges to the Japanese Red Cross. Her band will be stars of the Pacific Northwest jazz community: pianist Darin Clendenin and bassist Clipper Anderson Tuesday night; pianist Randy Halbertstadt and bassist Jeff Johnson Wednesday night; drummer Mark Ivester both nights. For details, see this article. For a Rifftides revew of Pettis’s latest CD, go here. For a clip of her singing with Halberstadt, go to this archive post.

Speaking of pianists from the Northwest (barrrrruuuumpah), Jim Wilke will feature Carmen Staaf on his Jazz Northwest broadcast this Sunday in a concert recorded during last fall’s Earshot Jazz Festival. Here are details from Jim’s announcement.

The pianist’s early training and experience was at the Washington Middle School and Garfield High School jazz programs. Since leaving Seattle, Carmen Staaf has completed a double degree program at Tufts University (anthropology) and New England Conservatory (music), taught piano for four years at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, won the 2009 Mary Lou Williams Women In Jazz Pianist Competition in Washington DC, and is now active member of the New York City jazz scene, performing and touring with her trio as well as with other groups. Her trio is also featured this week on NPR’s JazzSet.

In this Earshot Festival performance, she is joined by her New York trio mates, Kendall Eddy on bass and Austin McMahon on drums. Selections from the concert will also be issued as a new Carmen Staaf Trio CD on April 15, so this broadcast also serves as a preview of the new CD.

Jazz Northwest broadcasts Sunday, April 10 at 1 PM (PDT) on 88.5, KPLU and at the same time streams live on the web at kplu.org. Staaf’s trio is the rhythm section on Jeff Chang’s excellent debut CD, reviewed in October in this Rifftides roundup.

I haven’t done a tabulation, but my estimate is that 63.5% of all news releases and PR blurbs accompanying review copies of albums contain the phrase, “the likes of.”

His career includes performances with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and John Coltrane.

I wonder who those “likes” were. This fuzzy usage isn’t confined to flackery. You may see it in nearly any context. I once read in a history book that Abigail Adams, the wife of the second US president, maintained her interest in politics after John Adams’s term and was supportive of “the likes of Thomas Jefferson.” Ah, yes, there were so many like Jefferson, it’s hard to keep them straight.

When the world was young, before the digital revolution, a few major record companies and a few independent labels recorded jazz. Each of the majors and some of the independents released a handful of long playing vinyl albums a month. It was possible for a reasonably conscientious critic to keep up with what was happening in jazz, at least with what was making it to records. Even after compact discs became common in the mid-1980s, the number of releases did not drastically change. As the technology became more accessible and cheaper, however, and the traditional systems of marketing, sales and distribution broke down, musicians began taking their careers—including making and selling records—into their own hands.

That was in many ways a significant step forward in the movement toward freedom of the artist from the strictures of contracts and royalty arrangements of the companies. Some major labels and independents disappeared. Some morphed together into enormous multi-label complexes. A few independents became processors packaging and distributing CDs made by musicians who otherwise have no connection to the labels. By the new century, it was relatively inexpensive and not too demanding technically for a musician to become his own record operation and to use CDs as announcements or business cards.

Now, an established reviewer is likely to receive, unsolicited, dozens of CDs a week. My personal record (hah) is 15 in one day. Sometimes the albums come directly from musicians, sometimes from publicists who constitute a cottage industry accommodating the desire and legitimate need of artists to call attention to their work. The frustrating fact of life that results for the reviewer, is that there are not enough waking hours to sample—let alone give a full hearing to— the embarrassment of what may be riches flowing into his mailbox. Of course, I will listen to the latest CD by Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano or Dave Holland, the newest Mosaic box, the previously unissued Kenny Dorham. It is much less a sure thing that I will pull from the stacks of beckoning review copies a collection of originals by one of this spring’s new Berklee, NEC or Monk Institute graduates. All of this is just to tell you that if you are a musician who has sent a CD, I cannot promise you that I will review it. I can’t even promise you that I will hear it. Like so much in life, that isn’t fair.

I wish that there were a way to absorb music. Alas, listening is still a linear activity.

Although there is a link to his website in our blogroll (at the extreme south end of the right column), it has been too long since we’ve caught up with Darcy James Argue and his Secret Society. That big band of brash young New Yorkers is less of a secret these days than when we first encountered it a couple of years ago. Now, they win polls and sell records. They also occasionally travel out of town.

If you’re interested in knowing something of the thinking of one element of the young artists who are helping to shape the future of music, this video from January at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, makes a few disclosures. The band’s roster follows the clip. The piece is Argue’s “Phobos.” He is the conductor. Jon Wikan gets things underway and ends them with his cajon, the box-like Peruvian percussion instrument of which he has become a master.

Winds:
David DeJesus,
Rob Wilkerson,
Sam Sadigursky,
Mark Small,
Josh Sinton.


Trumpets:
Seneca Black,
Tom Goehring,
Matt Holman,
Nadje Noordhuis,
David Smith.


Trombones:
Noah Bless,
Tim Sessions,
Kevin Moehringer,
Jennifer Wharton.


Guitar:
Sebastian Noelle.


Piano & Keyboards:
Red Wierenga.


Bass:
Matt Clohesy.


Drums & Percussion:
Jon Wikan.

Since the previous exhibit doesn’t give you a clear look at Jon Wikan’s cajon, here’s a picture of one.

And here is a link to a Wikipedia article about the instrument’s nature and history.

Today is the 84th anniversary of Gerry Mulligan’s birth. He died in 1996 at the age of 68. There are many contexts in which to remember Mulligan—as a precocious teenaged arranger for Tommy Tucker, Elliott Lawrence and Gene Krupa; one of the key figures in the Birth of the Cool recordings; the leader of groups from quartets to big bands; a writer who made the Stan Kenton band swing; and, of course, a splendid baritone saxophonist. Here he is in Rome in 1956 with his sextet: Bob Brookmeyer, Zoot Sims, Jon Eardley, Bill Crow and Dave Bailey, playing to a backdrop of appreciative orchestra members.

If that merely whetted your appetite for Mulligan’s music, Lester Perkins of Jazz On The Tube has assembled 13 Mulligan videos. You may view them here.