It was not my intention to open a forum covering the range of abuse of the English language. At some point, we'll have to move on, but this is too much fun to cut off yet. If we had stopped, I wouldn't have been able to mention what happened at dinner tonight in Seattle. I thanked the waitress for her good service. She said, "Hey, no problem." When did we lose "You're welcome?" I like this one from Noel Silverman in New York. High on my list are "any and all," and "each and every," both … [Read more...]

It's Jazz And Other Matters, remember? We'll get back to jazz before long. Rifftides readers have my mind on words, and Seattle has my mind on the splendid weather they're having here and the hike I took around Green Lake. When the weather is good, as it is most Junes, there is no more breathtakingly beautiful city. Next time you're here, don't miss Ravenna Park, an urban treasure even many Seattleites have yet to discover. I pulled into one of the park's few parking spots, lunched on a Clif Bar … [Read more...]

A Rifftides reader named Deborah writes in response to the Clifford Brown item: Ah. The penny just dropped. I am a fairly new listener to jazz, and sometimes I feel like I'll never get up to speed. The first album I ever bought was John Lewis-The Wonderful World of Jazz and it remains an all-time favorite. One of the songs on the album is "I Remember Clifford" by Benny Golson. It is performed by Lewis on piano, Jim Hall on guitar, George Duvivier on bass, and Connie Kay on drums. It is a tender … [Read more...]

Reaction has begun coming in to the more or less lighthearted Rifftides posting about annoying, overused phrases. Here's a note from Bill Holman. Doug, Your response to "if you will' is the same as mine. Nancy is still taken aback when, while we're watching TV, I blurt "I won't!". How about "as we speak"? (seems to be fading) Here's one from Gene Lees. "If you will" is used by every reporter and anchor I can think of. And in the case of Wolf Blitzer's show, as much as five or six times in an … [Read more...]

Fifty years ago today at The Seattle Times, as I ripped copy from the wire machines my eye went to a story in the latest Associated Press national split. A young trumpeter named Clifford Brown had been killed early that morning in a car crash. My heart stopped for a beat or two. My stomach churned. I felt ill. I was attempting to master the trumpet and, like virtually all aspiring trumpet players, idolized Brown. The life of a majestically inventive musician had ended violently on a rainy … [Read more...]

In 1975, Mike Levy, the publisher of Texas Monthly, and Gregory Curtis, a staff writer, visited me in my office at KSAT-TV in San Antonio. They were on a tour to create good will for the fledgling magazine, which was even then attracting national notice for its quality. In the course of the conversation, Curtis asked me if I would write for Texas Monthly. I jumped at the chance, became a regular contributor, then for twenty-five years a contributing editor, sending in articles and reviews long … [Read more...]

"That said..." ."..the likes of..." (He has played with the likes of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and Andres Segovia.) "...looking to..." (The President is looking to cut taxes.) "...Indeed." Mindlessly intoned by anchors as a way of demonstrating sophisticated understanding. Or something. "At the end of the day..." "...if you will." (I won't.) … [Read more...]

Terri Hinte has been fired by Concord Records. Her name will not mean a thing to most of you, but her work has indirectly benefited serious jazz listeners for decades. The news of her dismissal is of intense interest to many writers because Ms. Hinte is the very model of what a record company publicist should be-- deeply knowledgeable about the music and its players, intelligent, responsive, resourceful, helpful in countless substantive ways. She went to work for Fantasy, Inc. in 1973 and was … [Read more...]

A Rifftides Reader who identifies himself only as David P. sent a link to his internet radio website, which is called Poolside Jazz: Cooler Than The Cool Side Of The Pillow. The music I heard there in a half-hour visit was cool only in the slang sense. In succession, David P. played Fletcher Henderson's "Queer Notions," Gil Evans' "The Time of the Barracudas," Sonny Rollins' "You Don't Know What Love Is," Dizzy Gillespie's "Woody 'n You," Jelly Roll Morton's "Sweetheart 'O Mine" and Bud Powell … [Read more...]

Barbara Nessim, the artist known for her Rolling Stone, TIME and New York Times Magazine covers, among other works, has a fascinating website tracking her output from the beginning of her career in the 1960s to the present. It includes a piece of video showing Nessim's hands as she invents place cards for one of her dinner parties. I haven't seen a more effective on-screen demonstration of improvisatory graphic art since the 1955 Henri-Georges Clouzot film, The Mystery of Picasso. A tour of … [Read more...]

The Jazz Journalists Association announced its annual awards last night in New York. Roy Haynes was honored for lifetime achievement in jazz. Sonny Rollins was named musician of the year, Dafnis Prieto up and coming musician of the year, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall, album of the year. And there was this: Best Book About Jazz Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond (Parkside), by Doug Ramsey Many thanks to JJA's members. Recognition by one's … [Read more...]

After Fathers Day activity (a present, a card, a few phone calls) subsided, I listened to two CDs, one because the publicist for the band keeps calling and asking if I've heard it, the other because I try never to go longer than a month without a Harry Allen fix. Harry Allen Allen is a thirty-nine-year-old tenor saxophonist from Rhode Island who managed to grow up in the post-Coltrane era without absorbing a detectable trace of John Coltrane's influence. His Encyclopedia of Jazz entry says that … [Read more...]

Alec Wilder (1907-1980) wrote sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, film scores, ballets, art songs, woodwind quintets, brass quintets and music for French horn. In his composing, he was as prolific as he was ingenious and eclectic, but his work was politically incorrect in the sense that it did not fit the preconceptions of the classical establishment of his time. The individuality, substance and pronounced American character of Wilder's concert music cannot be denied, but little of it gained … [Read more...]

When I set out on a short bicycle ride yesterday, I had every intention of being at the computer by noon and writing the rest of the day. I ended up cruising along the Yakima River, and it captured me. The stream was swollen with snow melt from the Cascade mountains. This photograph shows the river at normal height. I've never seen the Yakima so full short of a major flood. It was roaring along, bound for the mighty Columbia ninety miles downstream, and I rode along with it miles farther than … [Read more...]

Jim Wilke, who produces and hosts the splendid Jazz After Hours program carried by radio stations across the land, is also an accomplished performance and recording engineer. He frequently combines his specialties in Jazz Northwest, a broadcast he does once a week on KPLU-FM, the Seattle-Tacoma jazz station. Sunday, June 18, Wilke will air a concert by the Jeff Johnson Trio, recorded at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Also in the trio are Mark Taylor, alto & soprano saxes, and Byron Vannoy, drums … [Read more...]

Following yesterday's posting about Jeremy Steig's Flute Fever (see the item below this one), Bill McBirnie was moved to expand on his enthusiastic evaluation. To wit: Even though I am a self-declared disciple of Hubert Laws, Flute Fever is, without qualification, my favourite jazz flute recording. This album is in my view THE classic jazz flute record for all time. Jeremy was utterly on fire on this session...and he was teamed up for a "blowing session" with what proved to be an outstanding … [Read more...]

The fine Canadian flutist Bill McBirnie writes: I am so glad to hear someone acknowledge what is truly a masterpiece...Flute Fever...with Jeremy Steig (flute) and Denny Zeitlin (piano). When will this album ever be re-issued on CD?! That question has been asked frequently over the years (by me, among others). Eventually the A& R people at Sony/Columbia will get the message. But will the the guys who really matter, the Sony/Columbia accountants, get it? When I tell you that McBirnie is a fine … [Read more...]

Tag in a Jazz At Lincoln Center news release: Brooks Brothers is the official clothier of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis … [Read more...]

Richard M. Sudhalter, the gifted cornetist, biographer of Bix Beiderbecke and invaluable jazz historian, needs help. Following a massive stroke nearly three years ago and a recent diagnosis that he has MSA (multiple system atrophy), Dick's medical bills have mounted to proportions that he cannot begin to manage. Sudhalter wrote Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz 1915-1945. Following racist attacks by ignoramuses when it was published in 1999, it is now beginning to get … [Read more...]

Observe, please, that in the right-hand column is a new set of Doug's Picks: two CDs, a DVD and an enchanting novel. … [Read more...]