Rifftides

William Claxton's cover shots appeared on ten CDs produced in Los Angeles by Dick Bank. The photographer's last project for Bank was the cover photograph for the 2006 Andy Martin-Jan Lundgren album How About You?

Bank sent this note following Claxton's death last weekend.

I had the idea for the cover to be a trombone (for Andy Martin) resting on top of the piano (for Jan Lundgren). It necessitated Clax getting up on a tall ladder to shoot it. I asked if it wouldn't be safer if it was shot with him standing on a box. He said, no, it had to be shot elevated to do it right. I was concerned about him climbing up on that ladder--something he had done hundreds of times--in his present state of health. He didn't hesitate. I held onto the ladder and was ready just in case. He could have done it with his eyes closed. The result was exactly what I envisioned--no, better!--and lighted as only Bill Claxton could do it.

I had called him on his birthday last year as I always do, and told him we would be doing an album of Ralph Rainger music right after New Year's, with Jan Lundgren, Chuck Berghofer and Joe La Barbera. Before I could say, "I hope you'll be able to join us," he said he would love to be there and would it be all right to drop by. Can you imagine: Bill Claxton asking me if it would be OK to be there? I called a few weeks before to remind him and he said yes, he was looking forward to it.

The weather was terrible on January 6. It had been raining heavily all day. I did not expect him to drive over to Entourage Studios in North Hollywood from his Beverly Hills home on such a dreadful day. We were underway and I happened to look over my right shoulder and there he was sitting behind me! He was unobtrusive, as he always was when he had a camera in his hands. He loved what he heard and was very complimentary of Jan Lundgren, as always, and said he was looking forward to hearing the album. It will be out in a few weeks. He would have loved it.

He gave me a gift which was wrapped. I could tell it was a book. I was really touched and told him I wanted to open it at home when I was alone. It was The House That George Built by Wilfrid Sheed, a history of the golden age of American popular music. That he came out on that day, which I know was a personal favor to me, moved me deeply. The gift and the card that was with it is something that I will treasure for the rest of my life. He signed the card, "You're the best...your friend and fan, Clax."

William James Claxton is my hero!

For more thirty years, John Fordham has been favoring the British public with his finely-honed critiques and observations about jazz. Most of his work has appeared in the newspaper The Guardian, but he is also the author of an entertaining and informative history of jazz. Fordham is a full-range listener with good ears and a writer with an open mind, as interesting on The Bad Plus as he is on Humphrey Lyttleton. 

In a flow of 881 words, Fordham's most recent column manages to encapsulate the development of jazz piano. It begins...

The iconography of jazz usually features smoky images of coolly wasted-looking individuals in natty hats blowing saxophones. But if saxes and trumpets have seemed like the quintessential jazz instruments, it's the piano that has been absolutely central to the development of the music.

...and includes this paragraph on two seminal pianists:

The tormented, fitfully visionary pianist Bud Powell participated in the inception of bebop as a teenager, and his approach refined the Earl Hines "trumpet" style to a dazzling melodic display similar to bop hero Charlie Parker's sax lines. A very different founding-figure of bebop, the former gospel-pianist Thelonious Monk, came from a more eccentric angle. Monk liked erratic silences as much as sounds, struck frequently dissonant chords with a drumlike whack, and composed some of the most enduringly personal themes in the jazz repertoire.

To read the whole thing, go here. If Fordham is a bit lenient in his assessments of some UK musicians, that tolerance is more than offset by his overall perspective on the music. For a selection of his Guardian blog entries, click here.

Word has just come in that William Claxton died on Saturday in Los Angeles of congestive heart failure. He was one day short of his eighty-first birthday. With his pictures of Chet Baker in the early 1950s, Claxton established himself as a brilliant photographer of jazz musicians and went on to a career as one of the most admired camera artists in the world. He did incomparable work not only in jazz, but also with a varied array of personalities including Frank Sinatra, Marlene Dietrich, Igor Stravinsky, Fred Astaire, Joan Baez, Steve McQueen, Chris Rock and Benicio Del Toro.

Clax was a friend, a colleague, good company and -- in a category that seems sparsely populated in our hard, fast world -- a gentleman, meaning that he was kind, polite, honorable and unfailingly considerate.

To see some of Bill Claxton's work go here. This obituary from The Los Angeles Times includes a striking candid portrait of Clax by the Times's Gary Friedman and one of Clax's shots of McQueen. It does not include one of the Chet Baker photographs that helped make Chet and Claxton famous. The one to your left is from a session for Baker's 1954 album Chet Baker And Strings. 

McCoy Tyner, Guitars (Half-Note). This is one of the most engaging Tyner collaboration projects since he teamed with the late tenor saxophonist Michael Brecker to record Infinity in 1995 and with Wayne Shorter the following year in the session that produced Extensions. For this release, the pianist set up in a studio with stalwart rhythm companions, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Jack DeJohnette. He brought in four guitarists -- John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Derek Trucks, Mark Ribot -- and Bela Fleck, a banjoist with the fluency of a guitarist. Each of the string artists played two or three pieces with Tyner, Carter and DeJohnette. The CD is accompanied by a DVD that provides fascinating views of this music being prepared and recorded.

Although the pairing of chording instruments presents plenty of opportunities for clashes, there are no fatal collisions here. Some of these meetings are more rewarding than others, but each is interesting, at the very least. An air of inquisitive camaraderie hangs over all of the sessions. Scofield, who has a mainstream history aligned with Tyner's, seems most at home. Perhaps he was least intimated by the heavyweight rhythm section. His headlong linear improvisations and hurdy-gurdy sound work beautifully in Tyner's "Blues on the Corner" and in "Mr. P.C.," a staple of John Coltrane's book when Tyner was Coltrane's pianist. In addition to Tyner's customary large helpings of bounding chords, his own work throughout has passages of the kind of single-note lines that were important to the success of his great Impulse! and Blue Note albums of the 1960s. In his solo on "Mr. P.C.," Carter reminds us that in the post-Scott LaFaro era when bassists aspire to the facility of guitarists, a good old-fashioned walking bass solo executed by a master is among the deepest satisfactions in jazz.

The most daring pieces on the album are two free improvisations in duo by Tyner and the adventurous session guitarist Marc Ribot. Ribot is heavily electronic on both, irritatingly so on "Improvisation 2" but achieving on "Improvisation 1," among other effects, the soothing sound and feeling of a cello. He is a powerhouse on "Passion Dance," allowing little contrast with Tyner's equally dense and commanding piano. Ribot employs restrained Wes Montgomery octave chords on "500 Miles" and generally lays back in his solo following a reflective one by Tyner, but can't resist including a few self-conscious wa-wa licks.

Fleck sounds at home with Tyner, and Tyner with him on the banjoist's "Trade Winds" and "Amberjack" and, notably, on "My Favorite Things." On the latter, Fleck solos with so much dexterity, imagination and hip manipulation of interior time that it almost makes me want to swear off ever telling another banjo joke. With the swing of his jaunty three-four patterns, DeJohnette is superb on this track. The slide guitarist Derek Trucks evokes country music and urban blues in Tyner's "Slapback Blues" and in Henry VIII's "Greensleeves," which adheres to Coltrane's general approach and in which Tyner finds freshness despite having played it for four decades.

Bill Frisell's relatively delicate approach brings the intensity down a notch, but his guitar is in sonic, psychic and musical balance with the rhythm section. His piece "Boubacar" melds into a mesmerizing treatment of "Baba Drame" by the Mali singer, composer and guitarist Boubacar Traoré so that the two pieces comprise an entrancing tribute to Traoré. On Tyner's "Contemplation," the third waltz of the album, Frisell commands attention with his quiet assurance and the logic of his lines. Carter has a particularly thoughtful and easy-going solo on this piece. The DVD -- all three hours of it -- gives viewers a choice of four angles from which to watch the music being made. That is an innovation of John Snyder, who produced the sessions and wrote liner notes of rare honesty and frankness. A sample:

When Marc suggested that he would overdub a solo, Ron put down his instrument, walked over to him, towering, and asked somewhat humorlessly, "What school did YOU go to man? This is CREATIVE music. We don't do that.

The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.--Andres Segovia

There is only one thing more beautiful than one guitar; two guitars--Frederic Chopin

They said, ''You have a blue guitar, you do not play things as they are. The man replied, ''Things as they are changed upon a blue guitar.''--Wallace Stevens, The Man With The Blue Guitar

Julius LaRosa sent a reminiscence.

This quote from Wikipedia: "Garner was self-taught and remained an 'ear player' all his life - he never learned to read music."

A hundred years ago we shared a bill in Pittsburgh...or was it Boston...or was it Chicago...and by coincidence went there on the same flight. Anyway, during the usual small talk I asked, re: "MISTY", how he came up with that gorgeous melody.

He replied, I daresay innocently, "I was sittin' in a plane, just like this...imaginatin'."

That's all?!

A fool who never sang it,
Julie

All video clips of Garner playing "Misty" seem to have been removed from the internet because of copyright conflicts. So, let's settle for this one of him playing "All The Things You Are."

As for LaRosa, here he is with Nat Cole and Peggy Lee on Cole's 1957 TV show.

The British composer, arranger and leader Graham Collier has a new web site that should win awards for design, thoroughness and easy navigation. The home page contains a link to a thirteen-minute montage of music from nine of Collier's eighteen albums over forty years. The montage is designed to be played while the visitor roams the site. It is a clever teaser, making the roamer want to hear more of Collier's daring writing played by superb musicians, among them trumpeters Kenny Wheeler, Ted Curson, Tomasz Stanko and Harry Beckett; pianist John Taylor; saxophonist John Surman; drummer John Marshall; and Collier himself on bass. I have made no secret of my admiration for Collier's work. From a review last year of his 1967 album Dark Blue Centre:

His writing for a pianoless seven-piece ensemble had economy, daring and just enough whimsy to prevent the music from perishing of an overdose of self-regard, the fate of so much avant garde jazz of the sixties.

To read the whole thing, go here. Later, there was another Rifftides piece about a Collier reissue:

The looseness and cogency in Collier's arrangements are in ideal balance to contain the wildness, daring and--it must be emphasized--good humor of the soloists. There is no trace of the anger and willfull distortion that marred so much avant garde playing in the final decades of the twentieth century.

The Bill Charlap Trio with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Kenny Washington played Wednesday night in a live broadcast on National Public Radio and Newark, New Jersey's, WBGO-FM. The program of well more than an hour consisted of one of the trio's sets at New York's Village Vanguard. Coincidentally, Charlap opened with Gigi Gryce's "Satellite" (See the next item). If you missed the broadcast, you may be glad to know that NPR archived it. You can listen to it by going here and clicking on "Listen Now." I did that. It is playing as I write, and tonight -- to quote Duke Ellington -- I shall sleep with a smile on my face.

 (Pictured, L to R, Charlap, K. Washington, P. Washington)

Art Farmer-Gigi Gryce Quintet: Complete 1954-1955 Prestige Recordings (Fresh Sound). In 1953, Farmer arrived in New York from California with Lionel Hampton's band, Gryce from his Fulbright studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and Arthur Honneger. The next year they began a two-year collaboration in a quintet that amalgamated their instrumental skills with approaches to form and harmony that eased away from the rigidities of bebop.

Farmer, with his lyricism and relatively soft tone, already stood apart from the pack of bop trumpeters. Gryce was a Charlie Parker alto saxophonist who had a nice way with a melody and colored his improvisations with the deep knowledge of harmony that characterized his innovative compositional technique. Some of the fourteen Gryce compositions in this compilation became minor classics, among them "Social Call," "Satellite" and "Capri." "Nica's Tempo" is a jazz standard. "The Infant's Song" should be.

As fine as Gryce's soloing is here, it is Farmer's work that lingers in the mind, and not only for his celebrated melodic qualities. His command of the instrument and fiery blowing at fast tempos remind us what a complete trumpeter he was early in his career. His work on the quicksilver "I Got Rhythm" variant called "Deltitnu" is a prime example. Horace Silver does a fair amount of scene stealing with the forthright swing and humor of his piano solos. Freddie Redd and Duke Jordan are the other pianists; Percy Heath and Addison Farmer the bassists; Kenny Clarke, Art Taylor and Philly Joe Jones the bassists. In addition to their other attractions, six of the tracks benefit from the effortless keyboard touch and inventiveness that made Jordan the envy of other pianists.

This single disc combines three sessions that originally appeared on the Prestige albums When Farmer Met Gryce and Art Farmer Quintet. Both of those are still available individually.

It's a pleasure to run into old friends in places where you don't expect them. Yesterday, I encountered Zoot Sims in a dog food commercial. He was in good company; a cute pooch and a beautiful woman.

The music was "Blinuet," one of several pieces George Handy wrote for the 1956 ABC Parmount album Zoot Sims Plays Alto, Tenor and Baritone. If you would like to hear all of "Blinuet" and the rest of that sterling collection, you'll find it on a CD reissue called That Old Feeling. The disc also includes the Argo quartet session called Zoot. They were recorded a month apart with the same rhythm section; pianist John Williams, bassist Knobby Totah and drummer Gus Johnson. Here is some of what I wrote in the notes for that 1995 reissue:

One of the great writing talents of the 1940s, Handy did sensational work for the Boyd Raeburn band. His arrangements of pieces like "Dalvatore Sally," Tonsillectomy" and "There's No You" were some of the most important writing of the bebop era. But from the mid-forties to the mid-fifties little was heard from or known about Handy except for the extended work called "The Bloos," recorded in 1946 but not released until 1949 as part of Norman Granz's ambitious album, The Jazz Scene. There was a renewed flurry of interest in Handy after he made two albums under his own name for Label "X" in 1955 and teamed up with Sims for the alto-tenor-baritone session in November, 1956, and another ABC Paramount date, Zoot Sims Plays Four Altos, in January, 1957. Since then, Handy has been inactive in jazz. His work with Zoot is particularly valuable as one of the few bodies of evidence of his great talent.

2008 update: Handy re-emerged in the mid-1960s to compose for the New York Saxophone Quartet. He wrote a few record reviews for Down Beat in the late sixties. He died in 1997 at the age of seventy-seven. Handy's biography at the Institute for Studies in American Music web site describes him as an "enigmatic iconoclast." The label is justified.

I hope that Handy's and Zoot's estates are collecting royalties from the dog food people.