Rifftides

In the beginning, Stash Records specialized in songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s that dealt with drugs and sex. The first Stash compilation of old recordings, in 1976, was called Reefer Songs. Another of the label's big sellers was Copulatin' Blues. Eventually, founder Bernie Brightman, began making original recordings by jazz artists, including singer Chris Connor and pianist Hilton Ruiz. To his eternal credit (he died in 2003), Brightman also recorded two albums by Anita Gravine, an artist whose talent justifies wide fame but who has remained an insiders' favorite. Here is my mini-review of one of her Stash LPs, from the July, 1986 issue of Texas Monthly.

Anita Gravine, I Always Knew (Stash ST 255). An experienced but little-known singer whose second album is even better than her first, Gravine handles both ballad and up-tempo songs with ease of voice production and rhythmic assurance. Mike Abene's arrangements are stimulatingly unclichéd. The album is further graced by the trumpet solos of Tom Harrell. All of the above outdo themselves on a wonderful fugitive from the forties, "The Coffee Song."

Before you listen to "The Coffee Song," you should know that the all-star rhythm section is Abene, piano; George Mraz, bass; and Billy Hart, drums. The strings are led by the amazing Harry Lookofsky. Harrell solos majestically over Abene's rich carpet of dissonance. The arrangement led composer and arranger Bill Kirchner to call this "Bartók Goes to Brazil." If you're trying to stay awake, this is better than caffeine.

My research indicates that Stash Records no longer exists. Neither of Gravine's Stash albums made it to CD, although two of her later albums have. Her Stash LPs are around but hard to find. If you're interested in I Always Knew, you might try this website or this one.

As the 30th anniversary of Bill Evans' death approaches, he is on many minds. I am preparing a piece that will run the week of the date he died, September 15. As I researched it, among the Evans posts I found buried in the Rifftides past is one from four years ago. In those primitive days, the staff had yet to learn how to embed video. All we could do was provide a link to a rare performance of Evans and Kenny Burrell in duo. Now, we bring it to you direct as part of this encore post.

Evans And Burrell (October 19, 2006)

As far as I knew until today, Bill Evans and guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded together only once, on Evans' 1978 Quintessence session, which also included tenor saxophonist Harold Land, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The resourceful Jan Stevens of The Bill Evans Web Pages has pointed the way to another collaboration between Evans and Burrell, at the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival. They played Thad Jones' "A Child is Born," one of the tunes from Quintessence. Evans was rarely caught smiling on camera, but he smiled radiantly—and for good reason—as he and Burrell finished a notably sensitive performance.

The Detroit Jazz Festival runs through the Labor Day weekend, with an impressive array of musicians including Roy Haynes, Maria Schneider, Terence Blanchard and Branford Marsalis. The festival's artist-in-residence, Mulgrew Miller, received advance attention from Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker.

...the brightest spotlight falls on the Mississippi-born Miller, who makes four major appearances. He leads his sextet called Wingspan, plays duets with fellow pianist Kenny Barron, joins bassist Robert Hurst's quartet and appears opening night with the neo-gospel vocal ensemble Take 6. He'll also make a couple of other cameo appearances.

Miller is a good match for Detroit. He's not so much a star as a blue-collar hero, known for his versatility, collegiality and consistency: an aesthetic kin to the many jazz musicians from Detroit who are better classified as profound stylists and craftsmen than innovators. Miller long ago forged his influences, especially McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Wynton Kelly, into an individual identity.

To read the whole thing, go here.

A few years ago (23), I wrote the liner notes for the Mulgrew Miller album Wingspan, which featured Kenny Garrett and Steve Nelson. Still fresh and undated, it is one of Miller's best. The LP and CD versions have become expensive collectors items, but it seems to be available as an MP3 download without necessitating a second mortgage. Shortly after he recorded Wingspan, Miller became a leader with a debut gig at the Village Vanguard. He has been one ever since, at the head of—what else?— Wingspan. It is good to see a prestigious festival like Detroit's recognizing so admirable a musician.

Bill Kirchner sent a link to a video. He accompanied it with a succinct message:

Play this when you're having a bad day.

I wasn't having a bad day, but the Thad-Jones Mel Lewis band made it better. This is from a European tour probably in the fall of 1969—not '68, as YouTube says.

The reed section: Joe Henderson, Jerry Dodgion, Jerome Richardson, Eddie Daniels, Pepper Adams.
Trumpets: Snooky Young, Danny Moore, Al Porcino, Richard Williams.
Trombones: Eddie Bert, Astley Fennell, Jimmy Knepper, Cliff Heather.
Rhythm: Mel Lewis, drums; Roland Hanna, piano; Richard Davis, bass.
Conductor: Thad Jones.

Be alert for the shot of Snooky at 2:35, enjoying Hanna's three-minute piano introduction. Who wouldn't?

While I'm wrestling the deadline monster (So far, I've got him two falls out of three), the least I can do is attempt to keep you entertained. If this doesn't do it, see your psychiatrist.

As far as I know, this is the first time I've been quoted in Magyar. It's a blurb on the back of the Hungarian edition of Jeroen de Valk's Chet Baker: His Life and Music. That invaluable book is also available in English.


Thanks to photographer Paolo Gant (behind the book) for sending the pictures. Gant captured stunning images of Baker not long before the trumpeter's death in 1988. You can see a few of them, prominently copyright-protected, at his gallery's website.

All of that is a perfectly good excuse to hear and see Baker in Stockholm on his 1983 tour with Stan Getz, Jim McNeely, George Mraz and Victor Lewis. Getz all but owned "Dear Old Stockholm;" he's the one who recorded the traditional Swedish song in 1951 and made it a jazz standard. This night, though, he presented the melody and gave Chet the solo. And what a solo.

This is Charlie Parker's 90th birthday. In observance, the German trumpeter, teacher and indefatigable blogger Bruno Leicht posted an entry tracing the evolution of Parker's "Ko-Ko" from its roots in Ray Noble's "Cherokee." In his introduction, Bruno writes:

...Ray Noble had no idea, but this piece seemed to be extra-created for an ingenious improvisor like Bird. And it really became his leitmotiv through the years, from 1939 on. He owned it so to speak, and he took it to his grave. No one, not even the unique trumpet virtuoso Clifford Brown, could play on those changes as convincingly as the one and only Bird.

Leicht follows with a series of 20 MP3 recordings of "Cherokee" and "Cherokee" variants, from Noble's 1939 recording through many by Parker with his own groups, Parker with Nat Cole, Parker with Stan Kenton, one by Don Byas, one by Benny Goodman and two by Clifford Brown and Max Roach. The MP3-fest ends in 1958 with Roach's quintet featuring Kenny Dorham. After listening to all of it, I am left invigorated, in awe of Bird all over again and with "Cherokee" changes embedded in my brain. Leicht also links to Marc Myers' five-part JazzWax interview with Parker enthusiast Phil Schaap (scroll down to find it).

It's a lot of "Cherokee," a lot of Bird, a lot of work by Bruno, and a fascinating reading and listening experience. To take the ride, go here.

For reasons that cannot be fully explained or quantified, some of the most personal soloists in jazz remain out of the spotlight despite their accomplishments. There is no better example in modern jazz than the trumpeter Johnny Coles (1926-1997), an insiders' favorite barely known to the general public.

A native of Philadelphia, a contemporary of Jimmy Heath, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane and Benny Golson, Coles never became a leader except on odd jobs and record dates, but he worked for some of the most famous leaders of his time. During his career he played with, among others, Tadd Dameron, James Moody, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington and Gil Evans. Evans framed Coles' solos in shimmering orchestrations on several albums.

In a labor of love years in the making, Donald Frese—a frequent and knowledgeable Rifftides commenter—gives Coles his due in a new web discography that documents his major recordings beginning with Bull Moose Jackson in 1951 and ending with Geri Allen in 1996. From Frese's introduction:

Coles often said that Miles Davis was the trumpet player he most admired. Steve Voce, in Coles' obituary, wrote: "Johnny Coles would perhaps have been regarded as one of the jazz greats had he not been so close to Miles Davis in sound and style. Both Coles and Davis had the ability to express themselves powerfully using a minimal number of notes. The similarities clouded the fact that Coles' inventions were completely original and that he barely borrowed." And they both had their own distinctive cries and a certain dryness of sound. Gil Evans was probably Coles' greatest champion and the first to fully utilize his talent.

One does not think of Evans, like Duke Ellington, writing and arranging with the sounds of the men in his orchestra in mind, with the exception of his notable collaborations with Davis and the pieces that featured Coles. It is hard to imagine the compositions "Sunken Treasure" or "Zee Zee", or the arrangements of "Django" and "Davenport Blues" without Coles. Gil wrote the following about Coles in the liner notes to the Artists House LP, Where Flamingos Fly: "Johnny Coles is right in the be-bop era, part of the be-bop happenings and all that, but at the same time he had a great lyric sense and the main reason he could indulge in it is because he's got a great tone. He can hold a tone. When you can hold a tone, then you can take advantage of it. There's hardly anyone else who can do what he can do."

To visit the Johnny Coles discography, go here.

There is precious little video of Coles performing, evidently none with Evans. He is featured with the Mingus sextet in Norway and Sweden in the excellent Jazz Icons DVD Charles Mingus Live In '64. Here he is (the good guy in the white hat) on flugelhorn with the Count Basie band under the direction of Thad Jones. This was made in Japan, probably in 1985. Unfortunately, whoever supplied this clip to YouTube allowed the picture and sound to be out of synchronization. If it bothers you, you can always close your eyes and just listen.

Here, synchronization is no problem. Coles is at the helm of his own ship in the title track of his 1963 Blue Note album Little Johnny C. He solos between alto saxophonist Leo Wright and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. The rhythm section is Duke Pearson, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; and Walter Perkins, drums.

Johnny Coles, admired and loved by his colleagues for the warmth of his playing, now getting posthumous attention in Don Frese's discography.

Further evidence has come in verifying the value of that cache of previously unheard recordings in the Savory Collection at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Proof is posted on Newsweek's web edition—tantalizing solos from the late 1930s and early '40s by Mildred Bailey and Jack Teagarden; Lester Young with Count Basie; Roy Eldridge; Herschel Evans; Benny Goodman; Bobby Hackett; Lionel Hampton; and the John Kirby Sextet. To read the Newsweek story and hear the audio clips, go here.

Just for fun, here's a later edition of the Kirby sextet with (left to right on your screen) Charlie Shavers, Sid Catlett, Charlie Holmes, John Kirby, Buster Bailey and Billy Kyle. This is from a 1947 move, Sepia Cinderella.

For previous Rifftides items about the Savory collection at the National Jazz Museum, see the August 19 and August 22 posts,

Deadlines are stacking up around here like cordwood or like the piles of CDs I haven't heard. I have mixed feelings about deadlines. On the one hand, I'd like to avoid them. On the other, they help make it possible to meet certain commitments; feeding the family, for example. For the next few days while I chop away, posting will be intermittent and may lack the customary Rifftides profundity.

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all.—Rita Mae Brown

Call me a braggart, call me arrogant. People at ABC (and elsewhere) have called me worse. But when you need the job done on deadline, you'll call me.—Sam Donaldson

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.—Douglas Adams

The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner—to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.—Joe Henderson (the runner, not the tenor player)