One minute and twenty-six seconds into a blues called “Bu Bop Bass” on his new CD, Cityscape, the tenor saxophonist David “Fathead” Newman begins his solo with a phrase that consists of two quarter-note Fs, a quarter-note A and a half-note A—an interval of a major third in the key of F concert. How simple; except that it is not simple. It is complex, because Newman gives each note a customized time value that no annotator could capture on paper. They are Fathead Newman quarter notes … [Read more...]

Speak low, if you speak love —William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, 1599 Speak low, when you speak love—Ogden Nash, Kurt Weill, “Speak Low,” One Touch of Venus, 1943 … [Read more...]

A copy of every jazz album released does not show up at my house. It only seems that way when I look at, maneuver around or trip over stacks of CDs. The stream of review copies arriving by mail, UPS, FedEx and DHL makes it possible for a music writer to keep up with the work of established artists, learn what new ones are up to and hope for revelations, surprises, discoveries. That’s the theory. The realilty is that listening to music is a linear pursuit. Until there’s a way to inhale or … [Read more...]

In the quarter of a century during which Marian McPartland has presented Piano Jazz on National Public Radio, her guests have included most of the idiom’s important pianists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, ranging in style from Jay McShann to Chick Corea. One of the most rewarding of her programs was in 1984 with the late Shirley Horn. Usually shy and reluctant to verbalize about her music, Horn came out of her shell for McPartland. The two pianists got along … [Read more...]

If conventional wisdom and the Nielsen SoundScan survey are right, jazz titles constitute three-to-four percent of CDs. That means that jazz CDs account for about two-million-480-thousand of the 619-million total CD sales Nielsen reports for 2005. Putting aside such value-laden considerations as what constitutes a jazz record or, for that matter, what jazz is, nearly two-and-a-half million CDs sold indicate a substantial audience. Of course, the jazz album market is not large in comparison with … [Read more...]

Bill Crow, bassist, author and occasional Rifftides correspondent, has taken to the air or the ether, or whatever you call the medium that contains the internet. His new website is a work in progress, as all good websites should be. He writes, I keep polishing it as I learn the software. Some of the pictures are a little fuzzy, but I think I know how to fix that, as soon as I get time to rescan them. Well and good, but the photos are fascinating as is. Bill uses many of them to illustrate his … [Read more...]

The Charlie Parker posting has elicited a number of interesting responses, including this one from Rifftides reader Dave Lull. The late Esther Bubley took photographs of Charlie Parker and others at a jam session. There are a few of them posted at a web site devoted to Ms Bubley, and more posted here. From the Esther Bubley Gallery forward: "Esther Bubley was the photographer at the Norman Granz Jam Session recording in 1952. What is really remarkable about this series of photographs is that … [Read more...]

Good news for radio listeners in Cincinnati, Ohio, or anywhere on the internet: The veteran broadcaster Oscar Treadwell (legendary would not be a hyperbolic term in this case) is back on the air. In his early career, Treadwell was so highly regarded by musicians that Wardell Gray named one of his compositions "Treadin' With Treadwell," Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie recorded "An Oscar for Treadwell" and Thelonious Monk wrote "Oska T." Treadwell retired in 2001, but a survey of listeners … [Read more...]

Several interesting comments came in regarding the Charlie Parker posting. Many of them included information about the DVD that was the source of the footage on the Dailymotion web site. Here are some of the reader responses. The Parker/Hawkins footage is on "The Greatest Jazz Films Ever,” available from various outlets. That 2-DVD set also includes the complete Sound Of Jazz, Jammin' The Blues with alternate takes, The Robert Herridge Theater Miles Davis/Gil Evans program, the "Hot House" … [Read more...]

One of the pleasures of living in the Washington, D.C. area (there ARE some), is that the three main military jazz bands make their homes here. One of the better concerts I attended this past year was at George Washington University, where the Airmen of Note, the U-S Air Force's jazz group, played host to the great guitarist Pat Martino. The band was inspired by Martino's presence and the guitarist clearly dug being surrounded by such a talented big band, an experience I expect he doesn't get to … [Read more...]

Rifftides is extending its reach in southern regions. Welcome to new Rifftides readers in Mexico, Peru and Djibouti. … [Read more...]

For years, I have thought that the only film showing Charlie Parker at work was a well-known 1952 clip of Parker with Dizzy Gillespie when they appeared on a television program to receive a magazine award and played “Hot House.” It turns out, happily, that I was wrong. A website called Dailymotion has filmclips and videotape sequences of a number of musicians, jazz and otherwise, including two with Bird. In Dailymotion’s Parker video, we see him at first listening with great appreciation … [Read more...]

With all the back-and-forth about Maynard Ferguson's band and outreach, music ed and so on, I wonder why the military bands are never mentioned? These ensembles are comprised of some of the best players and composers/arrangers on the planet and probably do more to keep students interested in jazz than most others. Granted, their concerts are free (a competive advantage), but it's nice to see some of our tax dollars going into worthy endeavors. Dennis E. Kahle The armed forces jazz bands are … [Read more...]

From Ciardi’s A Browser’s Dictionary (1980): Hip Mod. Slang (and prob. becoming passé). Aware, knowing, up on, in the know. [Earlier hep with the same senses, perhaps modified from the military usage for counting cadence, itself a modification of “left” as in hep-ri'-hep (because “hep” is easier to say with great expulsive force. MMM* attests hep in this military usage by 1862; with the sense “aware, knowing,” as of 1903; the sense shift being from military alertness to … [Read more...]

"Good Morning," he said, "this is John Ciardi prowling around your breakfast table and peering into your cereal bowl to find a whole cluster of words there." It was his introduction to one of the pieces he did on National Public Radio's Morning Edition in the 1980s. To hear the whole thing, go here and click on "Listen. " If you like that one, go here for five NPR podcasts of Ciardi sending "good words to you." (This page is a slowwwwww loader. Be patient) … [Read more...]

He published 38 books, 12 of them for children, one a translation of Dante. He was a fine poet. Measurements I've zeroed an altimeter on the floor then raised it to a table and read three feet. Nothing but music knows what air is more precisely than this. I read on its face Sensitive Altimeter and believe it. Once on a clear day over Arkansas I watched the ridges on the radar screen, then looked down from the blister and hung like prayer: the instrument was perfect: ridge by ridge the electric … [Read more...]

Art Kane’s 1958 photograph of fifty-eight musicians in front of and on the steps of a Harlem brownstone ran in Esquire magazine, which called it A Great Day In Harlem. It became one of the best known snapshots in the world, already famous for decades when Jean Bach made a film about it in 1994. Now, in her late eighties, she has expanded the film and brought the picture and its subjects even more renown. Ms. Bach, the brilliant film editor Susan Peehl and director Matthew Seig added nearly … [Read more...]

“Jazz is where you find it.” That is the opening sentence in the first paragraph of an essay in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. Here is the rest of the paragraph. The Polish novelist and essayist Leopold Tyrmand, who spent much of World War Two as a forced laborer in Germany, tells of hearing the music of Benny Goodman from a hand-cranked phonograph in a rowboat in the middle of a river. The phonograph was operated by a Nazi soldier afraid of being thought an … [Read more...]

Several versions of a joke usually beginning something like, "A note walks into a bar...." are floating around the internet. Buddy DeFranco forwarded the most elaborate I've seen. The Rifftides management makes no claims about the reliability of the musicology in this tale: A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says: "Sorry, but we don't serve minors." So, the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished: the G is … [Read more...]

Reaction to the Bush administration's cockeyed attempt to emasculate the Voice of America through budget cuts is getting shocked attention not only among policy analysts at home but also from members of the VOA's audience abroad. Here is part of a letter from a New Delhi man named Vijay Kranti to The Washington Times, a heavily conservative newspaper. Earlier, the Times's editorial page urged the White House to abandon its plan to cut English language news broadcasts by slashing VOA's … [Read more...]