Archives for July 26, 2005

Rifftides is not a way station for announcements, but if something comes up that I think you’d want to know about, well, of course. This is from trumpeter Marvin Stamm.

If you are of a mind – and awake – please tune tonight – July 26 – to JaiJai Jackson’s new jazz radio show at www.xradio.biz/lasvegas from 8-10pm West Coast Time…. just scroll down to “Woman of Jazz” and listen in!
JaiJai (Chubby Jackson’s daughter) will be interviewing me and playing tunes from The Stamm/Soph Project Live at Birdland and from By Ourselves, my duo CD with pianist Bill Mays.

The Stamm/Soph Project includes Mays, drummer Ed Soph and bassist Rufus Reid, with guitarist John Abercrombie on several tracks. Mays’ “In Her Arms” and Reid’s “When She Smiles Upon Your Face” are highlights. Consider both CDs recommended with enthusiasm.

In his newsletter, Blowing My Own Horn, the pianist Hal Galper (Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, his own trio) writes,”In truth, I’m a free player in bebopper’s clothing.”

You might find my history of free playing illuminating. In my early Boston days (the 1960’s) I had the good fortune to apprentice with Sam Rivers for 6 years. At the time with Phil Morrison on bass and Tony Williams on drums, followed by my old partner in crime Steve Ellington. We were playing free inside the tunes trying to make them accessible to our audiences by hiding how free we were playing by keeping a groove while still trying to be melodic. (It was many years later that Tony brought the concept, and Sam, into Miles’s band [Davis – ed.]). Eventually we recorded a quartet album for Blue Note, A New Conception.

To read the whole thing in printable PDF format, go here. The Rifftides staff also recommends Galper’s website for its news and his forthright views.

To your right, you will find a brand new batch of Doug’s Picks.

Regarding the Rifftides posting about the late Tom Talbert, and comments in later editions, Larry Kart writes from Chicago:

I bought Bix Duke Fats when it came out (in the days when you could listen in your local record shop to things by people you’d never heard of before) and since have acquired everything (I think) of Talbert’s that has been issued. He was special. Among other things, I love the way he could set up particular soloists in order to draw out their gifts—e.g. George Wallington and Aaron Sachs on Bix Duke Fats. Joe Wilder, too, of course, but there I think Talbert was working with what was evident to all, while with Wallington and Sachs, Talbert perhaps zeroed in on parts of their musical souls that lay a bit below the surface or had not been showcased as effectively before—e.g. what Talbert referred to, wonderfully, as Wallington’s “slow-smiling wit.”

While I never had the pleasure of meeting Talbert, his notes to Bix Duke Fats suggest that he must have been a very witty, sophisticated man. I remember in particular his remark about Bix being a “moderne” experimentalist as a composer, in contrast to a full-fledged modern artist like Picasso, who was not experimenting but realizing exactly what he was going for. That distinction made a big impression on my unformed adolescent mind. (BTW, I notice that the CD booklet for Bix Duke Fats removes both the reference to Bix being “moderne” and the contrast to Picasso.)

Larry Kart’s new book is Jazz In Search of Itself (Yale). I’ve mentioned it before. It deserves at least two plugs.

A reader sent a message taking me to task for shameless hucksterism.

Can a week go by without you plugging your book? I count 21 mentions since mid June.

So many? I’ll try to watch it. I won’t tell you the subject of my interview with Megan Marlena of KKJZ, Los Angeles. I guess you’ll just have to tune in or go to the station’s web audio stream and find out. It will run at 6:35 a.m. and 8:35 a.m. PDT (9:35 and 11:35 EDT) tomorrow, Wednesday.