Rifftides

Jerry Gonzalez Y El Comando de la Clave (Sunnyside) Since Jerry Gonzalez changed his base of operations from New York to Madrid a decade ago, the trumpeter and congero has worked with many musicians while seeking a satisfactory combination of players for his own band. In Los Comandos de la Clave, he seems to have found it. This is his most stimulating album since the Fort Apache Band’s Rumba Para Monk in 1989. In company with Cuban and Spanish players who feel rhythm as he does, … [Read more...]

Radio has no interest in music. It is in the advertising business. The record industry has no interest in music. It is in the business of selling pieces of plastic. It is a gigantic machine, almost entirely owned now by international conglomerates, whose only purpose is to accrue profits. It is indifferent to what is on its plastic discs, except insofar as it induces the undiscriminating to buy them. It virtually ignores the discriminating audience because the undiscriminating are so much more … [Read more...]

There have been several inquiries about whether we are affected by the winter storms in this part of the world. Yes. My shoveling muscles are affected. Driving can be interesting. But when you wake up to sights like these, who cares if there's a foot of snow. Way off in the distance in the upper right is Mount Adams. Such scenery inevitably leads to thoughts of this: Woody Herman’s First Herd, recorded in December, 1945. The trumpet solo was by Sonny Berman, the trombone … [Read more...]

Word came this morning from Devra Hall Levy that her husband John, a major advocate for and representative of jazz musicians, is gone. Levy died in his sleep on Friday at home in Altadena, California. He was 99. Ahmad Jamal recently described Levy as “one of the foremost supportive bassists” of the postwar period. In that role, beginning as a teenager, Levy worked with Ray Nance, Earl Hines, Stuff Smith, Ben Webster and Lennie Tristano, among dozens of other prominent jazz figures. On … [Read more...]

The careers of Johnny Otis and Etta James emphasize Duke Ellington’s often-quoted truth: There are two kinds of music—good music and the other kind. In only slightly different language, Igor Stravinsky offered the same wisdom. Otis died early this week at the age of 90, James today at 73. For decades, they made good music. Ms. James invested everything she sang with the power and sensibility of the blues. Her huge hit, Mack Gordon’s and Harry Warren’s “At Last,” was a standard ballad … [Read more...]

In today’s Wall Street Journal, I write about the surprise circumstance that led to the finest trio album of Jan Lundgren’s career. All but unknown—and unreviewed—in the United States, Together Again…At The Jazz Bakery features the Swedish pianist with bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer Joe LaBarbera in a recording they didn’t know was being made. The CD was voted Record Of The Year in the British magazine Jazz Journal’s critics poll. I gave it first place in the new … [Read more...]

In his debut commentary today on CBS This Morning, Wynton Marsalis recalled that he was in the second grade in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. He talked about being immersed in the black culture and life of New Orleans in the late 1960s, about having a poster of Malcolm X over his bed, about being angry well into his teens, about thinking that King was an Uncle Tom. My job in New Orleans when Marsalis was a little boy involved reporting on the events and movements of those … [Read more...]

Using as his point of departure a review of Ricky Riccardi’s recent book about Louis Armstrong’s final decades, Steve Provizer concentrates on Armstrong’s debt to grand opera. In his Brilliant Corners blog, Provizer writes about the great man’s trumpet tone as perhaps his defining characteristic. Hundreds of gifted and proficient trumpet players have come and gone through jazz history, but no one has ever had that tone. Not even close. Yes, others have had an identifiable sound, … [Read more...]

As I wrote the day Paul Motian died, Rifftides was not conceived as an obituary blog, but when an important musician leaves, I feel an obligation to observe the passing. I failed to do that when Gordon Beck died at 75, also in November. To many, Beck was best known as a pianist who frequently collaborated with singer Helen Merrill, and as a member of Phil Woods’ European Rhythm Machine in the 1970s, but his contributions to jazz were much more extensive. The Irish flutist Colm “Red” … [Read more...]

Ken Dryden, estimable liner note author and Allmusic.com reviewer, writes in response to yesterday’s post about the Rhapsody critics poll. Doug, please share your method of winnowing the huge list of new releases and reissues down to a manageable list from which to make your final picks, I think everyone would be interested. I know it is easier for me if I highlight possible picks monthly for possible inclusion on my new arrival log. One thing I always have to note is that not all … [Read more...]

I keep swearing to swear off critics polls. I fail when Francis Davis persuades me to take part in his. For years, Francis ran the Village Voice jazz critics poll. This year he moved the operation to the Rhapsody website and recruited more than 120 jazz critics, writers and broadcasters. Who knew there were so many jazz critics? Well, the definition is stretched, but the results are interesting. The Winner Here is some of what Davis wrote in his essay about the Beacon Theater (New York) … [Read more...]

The wedding yesterday of our son and new daughter-in-law, under blue Florida skies, was beautiful and moving (see the January 3 post below). The bride and groom are up and away, and we are all happy beyond measure. By necessity, blogging has been in suspension the past few days, but I have been saving a video to show you during a slow period such as this. From a 1965 CBS-TV documentary, the clip demonstrates the artistry that put so many who worked with Frank Sinatra in awe of his … [Read more...]

The influential Czech novelist Josef Skvorecky, an admirer and champion of jazz musicians and the freedom they represent, has died in Toronto. He was 87. Skvorecky and his wife moved to Canada after the reforms of the Prague Spring were trampled by the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. His novels portrayed the perverse absurdity of totalitarian regimes, the Nazis in The Bass Saxophone, Stalinist Soviets in The Engineer of Human Souls. In Toronto, Skvorecky established a firm that … [Read more...]

For the next several days, blogging will be a sometime thing, if it happens at all. Mrs. R. and I are plunging into activities surrounding and including our son’s wedding in Miami. The ceremony will be by the pool of a lovely old art deco hotel on South Beach. It is wrenching to forsake the January pleasures of the interior Pacific Northwest, but for those we love no inconvenience is too great, even sand in our shoes, stone crabs and mojitos in our diets—and that moon. We'll be … [Read more...]

Steve Cerra, pictured on the left, is the proprietor of the endlessly informative and entertaining Jazz Profiles blog. His latest profile is of Paul Desmond, concentrating on Desmond’s RCA Victor recordings with Jim Hall. Desperate for material, Steve fills out the feature with liner notes I have written over the years to accompany Desmond albums. At the end is a montage of portraits of the artist with a soundtrack from the Desmond Blue album. Cerra excels at those video constructions. To see … [Read more...]

As 2011 wound down, American music lost two octogenarians who were dramatically different except for what they had in common, insistence on getting to the heart of the matter without compromise. Sam Rivers died in Orlando, Florida on December 26 at the age of 88, Barbara Lea the same day in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 82. Rivers was a formidable saxophonist, flutist and composer. He had a university education in harmony, theory and composition, played blues with T-Bone Walker, worked with … [Read more...]

Happy New Year to all Rifftides readers around the world. For your listening, viewing and reading pleasure, the Rifftides staff offers recommendations of three CDs that differ dramatically from one another, an intimate Chet Baker DVD, and the autobiography of an irrepressible jazz institution. Please see the right column under Doug's Picks. … [Read more...]