The June 17 item about Bill Perkins elicited this response from Gordon Sapsed in the UK. Thank you - and to Steve Voce for the original interview. The piece today about Bill Perkins has got me starting my day revisiting Perk Plays Prez - and the CD will follow into the car with me when I go out later. I had forgotten that it is Jan Lundgren on piano - and that Jack Sheldon vocal! Rifftides is already influencing my life .... Tell your friends. We want all the visitors we can round up. The superb … [Read more...]

For the next few days, I'll continue playing catch-up with CDs that accumulated, and may have reproduced, while I was working on Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond (See Doug's Books on the right). John Bishop’s Origin and OA2 labels concentrate on jazz in the Pacific Northwest. That gives Origin a large pool of talented musicians from which to draw. The label issues so many CDs that it’s hard to keep up with them. The music ranges from mainstream to the near edge of the … [Read more...]

I think it's about time to put to rest the matter of New York Times critic Ben Ratliff's predicting the quality of a concert that hadn't happened (Rifftides, June 15.) But not quite. The Portland, Oregon, writer Jack Berry offered us this thought: The Ratliff flap is sad. But it's not so much the need to be "edgy," which some observers suggest is the Times' new obsession. Pop culture is all about the next thing. If it's been done, it's done. Jazz is classical music (for better and worse). … [Read more...]