Archives for October 2006

From time to time, John Birchard of the Voice of America news staff shares with Rifftides his impressions of musical events in the District of Columbia and environs.

Can a ghost band make art? For example, does one consider a Glenn Miller Orchestra led by Sam Donahue capable of creating music that stands the test of time? How about the group led by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter that featured Wallace Roney in the role of Miles Davis? Is their collaboration to be considered on the same plane as the Miles Davis Quintet? If not, why not?
The crowd that gathered for the second set by Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band Featuring Jeremy Pelt (try fitting THAT on the marquee) at the KC Jazz Club at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (one long name deserves another) in Washington, DC last night didn’t seem to be mulling over such questions.
Whether they washed up on a wave of nostalgia–a number of gray heads in the audience could have been around back in the day for the Adderleys’ own group–or were there out of curiosity, they were treated to an hour and a half of tunes associated with Julian and Nat, served hot and tasty.
The set started with the Quincy Jones composition “Jessica’s Day”. The ensemble was tight and snappy, the solos bore promise of a good night. Though forty years have passed since Louis Hayes was a young up-and-comer, he still can drive a band, no matter the tempo. Next on the menu was “Lisa” by the late Victor Feldman. Hayes gives Pelt considerable solo space and the trumpeter uses it well. He reminds me of Freddie Hubbard in his attack and the confidence he exudes. Pelt was featured again, this time in a Harmon mute, on “Naturally” (spelling?). The rhythm section stayed with a feeling of 2/4 throughout, Hayes on brushes.
Julius Tolentino is a suitable stand-in for Cannonball. I had not heard the altoist before and on his feature “Bohemia After Dark”, he called up images of the Far East and snake charmers. Nicely done. Apparently, Tolentino is new to the band. When Hayes introduced him to the audience, he called him “Julian Tarantino”, which caused the rest of band to burst into laughter. Seems it’s happened before.
The set continued with Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere”, a showcase for bassist Gerald Cannon, whose funky walking solo brought yells from the audience, and for pianist Rick Germanson, whose offering was appropriately soulful. Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” closed the evening with Tolentino evoking Julian’s spirit And, again, Jeremy Pelt showed why he’s a star on the rise, with a swaggering, blues-inflected solo.
Does Louis Hayes front this band because he loves the music and wants to share it, or is it because he recognizes that he can earn a living from being the only surviving alumnus of a famous jazz group? Maybe it’s both. The fact is this is a very good band, playing strong material well. If last night’s audience is any indication, the public approves.
Having raised the question whether this is art or commerce, my vote is for commerce–but it surely is enjoyable commerce.
Your Washington correspondent,
John Birchard

For a Rifftides review of a CD by Hayes and the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band, click here.

Continuing the Adderley theme, a Rifftides reader who identifies himself as El Destiny, sent the following message, which includes a link.

This article includes a rare mp3 of Cannonball Adderley jamming with a novelty act of singing squirrels.
The article tells the story of jazzman Don Elliott and partner Sascha Burland recording the track in an attempt to compete with Alvin & the Chipmunks. (Who had their own troubles with record labels…!)

Within the article are several links, including one to an MP3 of Cannonball playing “Yardbird Suite” with Elliott’s and Burland’s Nutty Squirrels.

After reading the Rifftides item about Josef Skvorecky’s novel The Bass Saxophone, the British bassist, composer and leader Graham Collier wrote:

Some years ago I suggested to BBC radio that they adapt The Bass Saxophone, which they duly did with my music. Art Themen, best known as a tenor sax player, played the bass sax for the occasion. He owned a bass saxphone, which helped, but I asked him for this gig because–as I had seen in other collaborations with him–he had the rare ability to “act with his instrument.” This he did and the adaptation won a Sony Radio award.
The first time I heard Art play the instrument it shook the floor–and the people standing outside a nearby pub. I suggested that what I’d heard would do for the part where the boy in The Bass Saxophone was playing the instrument for the first time, but that for the final sequence–where he rides over the oom-pah band “like a dancing male gorilla”–he would need to practice. Which he did, and the end result was amazing. Art can be heard on bass saxophone in similar vein in my 1994 CD Charles River Fragments (Jazzprint).

Charles River Fragments is also available as a digital download.

Any day now could be the last good one of the year for cycling, so I said goodbye to work and took advantage of a late October afternoon so perfect that to have left it out there by itself would have been a shame. Deciding not to pit the road bike against heavy, skitterish Friday traffic, I left it in the shed and headed the mountain bike toward the system of canals that criss-crosses this agricultural valley. I dropped onto the path along a canal a block from my house and entered instant peace and quiet, except for the dogs that charge with intent to kill the moment they sense a cyclist.

Is there an animal psychologist out there who can tell us what it is about bicycles that drives dogs temporarily insane? Fortunately, there’s a leash law that keeps dogs mostly behind fences in town. In the country, you can usually get up a head of steam and outrun a farm dog, but a couple of weeks ago, a big black brute roared out of a yard and was gaining on me. When he came alongside and started nipping, I yelled as loud as I could (that’s loud), “Go home.” To my relief–and from the expression on his face, to his astonishment–he went home.

Nothing like that happened today. The only annoyances were piles of mud dredged out of the canals by ditch riders cleaning up after a summer of irrigation, and the extra shirt I threw on under my jersey. The air seemed cool when I started, but the temperature quickly rose on the steep hills. Russet and red leaves along parts of the path crackled under my tires. A crow circled along in the clear sky above me for a few hundred yards, reprimanding me for some offense. Two horses looked up as I passed their pasture. Apple harvest was over in most of the orchards. One pear farmer apparently decided that his crop wouldn’t bring him enough to make picking worthwhile. The pears lay beneath his trees where he let them fall, in the first stages of returning into the earth.

On a stretch up near the valley rim, a squirrel darted across the path fifty feet ahead. To my right, I saw a bigger creature move along the edge of an expansive lawn. The man paused to pump his air gun, then stalked the squirrel. He stopped, took aim, got off a shot, shook his head, and resumed gliding slowly along the edge of his property. Not wanting to distract him, I stopped and watched for ten minutes as he pursued his quarry with no less concentration than a sahib on safari. He took two more shots, but it was clear that the varmint had escaped. As he turned around, I said, “Hold your fire.”

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t see you.”

“I know. I didn’t want to startle you and be your next victim.”

He felt like talking. He said he couldn’t keep flowers and couldn’t grow vegetables. The squirrels dig them up and eat them. They undermined a stone walkway he built. It was sinking, he said. He pointed to two pieces of equipment, a loader and a hay rake. One of his sons was storing them there, but he told him he’d have to move them, so the son found a buyer who gave him fifty dollars for the loader and a hundred for the rake, but the buyer hasn’t come for them.

“You see that shed,” he said. “I put that there years ago to store my tools while I built the house. I intended to tear it down when the house was done, but now it’s full of my grandson’s stuff. I told him he’d have to get it out of there next year. I want this area clear so I can plant it in lawn. That camper my son put there has got to go.” His gaze swept over his property. “I’ve got a lot of lawn, two acres of it. That area there, I cleared,” he said, pointing to a space ten by twenty feet bordered with creosoted timbers. “My other son had this old Mustang. It sat there for a long time, then some fella from Australia came along and paid him ten thousand dollars for it. Shipped it back to Australia with three or four other Mustangs. I guess they like old Mustangs down there.

“I’ve had this place since 1941. Retired from the mill fifteen years ago. Raised three kids here. After we had the first one, a daughter, the doctor told my wife she couldn’t have any more children. Seven years later, we had a son. He was fine. She was fine. Shows you what doctors know. Fourteen years after that, we had another son. What happiness. She was fifteen when we met, I was seventeen. Got married when she was twenty and I was twenty-two. I love it out here. It’s quiet. Away from the road. I’ve got a long driveway. Got that ditch running by. Nearest neighbor is clear over there, but his property runs right up against mine. We get along.”

He gestured at the orchard across the canal. “The old man who owned that had property ran clear into town, down by the freeway where the mall is. He used to stop by here when he was in his eighties, and I’d say, ‘I’m going in and get you a coke,’ and we’d just sit here by the canal and talk, for hours sometimes. He’s gone now.”

I extended my hand. We exchanged names. “I ride by here now and then,” I said. “We’ll talk again.”

“We sure will,” he said. “You take care.”

I rode home feeling good. The dogs seemed friendlier.

Jazz expresses a yearning for freedom that survives the worst oppression. In his essay “Red Music,” the Czech novelist Josef Skvorecky wrote about an urge that even the most brutal tyranny cannot fully extinguish. Skvorecky grew up under Nazi occupation in World War Two. He was a budding tenor saxophonist in a dance band with other youngsters. They were infected by the “forceful vitality,” the “explosive creative energy” of jazz. He and his young friends did not regard themselves as protesters,

…but of course, when the lives of individuals and communities are controlled by powers that themselves remain uncontrolled–slavers, czars, fuhrers, first secretaries, marshals, generals and generalissimons, ideologists of dictatorships at either end of the spectrum–then creative energy becomes a protest.
Jazz was a sharp thorn in the sides of the power-hungry men, from Hitler to Brezhnev, who successively ruled in my native land.

“Red Music” prefaces a volume with two short Skvorecky novels, Emoke and The Bass Saxophone. The latter is the story of a boy whose life is ruled equally by the Nazis and his fascination with jazz. He dreams of the music and of figures who to him and his friends are demigods, among them Louis Armstrong and the bass saxophonist Adrian Rollini. He discovers a bass saxophone, plays it, then hears it played in a solo so powerful that he arrives at an epiphany. It is a simple story told with complexity and beauty. The Bass Saxophone is about what Skvorecky calls “the desperate scream of youth” that, as I wrote years ago in a review of the book, “is always inside us when we have been touched with the indelible truth of art.” You will find an excerpt from The Bass Saxophone on Skvorecky’s web site, but I urge you to read the entire novel. My review of it is included in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.
Also in Jazz Matters is a story told by the Polish writer Leopold Tyrmand, who, like Skvorecky, was a captive of both Naziism and Communism. A forced laborer in Germany, Tyrmand chanced upon a Nazi soldier who was also a jazz fan. At the risk of dire consequences to both of them if they were caught, they rowed a boat to the middle of a river and spent an afternoon taking turns at the oars, listening to forbidden Benny Goodman records on a windup phonograph.
I thought of the Skvorecky and Tyrmand stories when I read Nate Chinen’s New York Times article about Tomasz Stanko, the Polish trumpeter who was captured–and freed–by jazz when he first heard it half a century ago.

“The message was freedom,” he said one afternoon last week in a Midtown Manhattan hotel room. “For me, as a Polish who was living in Communist country,” he continued in his slightly broken English, “jazz was synonym of Western culture, of freedom, of this different style of life.”

To read the entire interview, go here. Stanko’s new recording is Lontano (ECM). He is one of dozens of Eastern European musicians who, since the collapse of Communism, have joined the top ranks of jazz musicians in the world. He, George Mraz, Emil Viklický, Robert Balzar, FrantiÅ¡ek Uhlíř, Adam Makowicz, the late Aladar Pege, Laco Tropp and many others kept the music alive underground during years of subjugation and proved that in art, talent and the human spirit trump race and nationality.

The latest DVD recommendation has joined the other new Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column.

. . .this is my dilemma. I’m a guy who makes things up as I go along so nothing is ever finished–there are so many layers. So when you solo, yeah, you might get into one thing, but then, hey, everything has implications! You can hear the next level. And that’s how I feel about improvising–there’s always another level. –Sonny Rollins

In the right column under Doug’s Picks, you will find three recommended new CDs and a book of photographs to keep you company. Soon to come: a new DVD pick.

We get a lot of notices about concerts and club appearances. We don’t publish them (“post them,” in blogese). Rifftides is not, and will not be, a publicity clearinghouse. However, the Rifftides staff is making a one-time exception, partly because Margaret Davis, Henry Grimes’ manager and ranking fan, was too clever and resourceful to resist. She even used the old “speaking of” trick. She went all the way back to Dave Frishberg’s January 23 guest item about Cecil Taylor and used it as a hook for her promo disguised as a comment. Here is Ms. Davis’s message in its entirety.

Speaking of the great Cecil Taylor, the Cecil Taylor Trio featuring Henry Grimes, back with the master after 4O (!) years (Into the Hot, Unit Structures, Conquistador) and drummer Pheeroan akLaff will play tonight, Saturday, Oct. 21st, ‘O6 at 8 p.m. at Jackie and Dollie McLean’s place the Artists’ Collective,
12OO Albany Ave., Hartford, Connecticut, 86O-527-32O5, http://artistscollective.org/events.htm;
and
Thursday & Friday, Oct. 26th & 27th at the Iridium Jazz Club, 165O Broadway at 51st St., New York City, 8:3O & 1O:3O + 3rd set at midnight Friday night, 212-582-2121,
www.iridiumjazzclub.com/schedule.shtml;
and
Cecil Taylor is also playing solo on Saturday, November 4th at International House, 3701 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, 8 p.m., 215-895-6546, 215-387-5125, x 2219, http://www.arsnovaworkshop.com/.

Mostly, however, we succumbed because it’s a pleasure to know that Henry Grimes is on the scene and thriving. It also offers an excuse to refer you to this Gerry Mulligan CD in which Grimes is the stompin’ bass player, working hand in glove with guitarist Freddie Green to underpin the swing throughout one of Mulligan’s least known and happiest albums.

I have long been convinced that one of the predominant reasons listeners took the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet to their hearts was visual. In the late fifties through the sixties, it was hip for jazz musicians to turn their backs–literally or figuratively–on the audience and each other. In contrast, it was obvious that the quartet enjoyed one another’s company and music and didn’t feel that it was uncool to show it. Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright and Joe Morello paid close attention as the music unfolded, and reacted to it. As a result, audiences were drawn in, not shut out.
A fetching example of that camaraderie has surfaced in a piece of video, probably from 1976, when the quartet reunited for its 25th anniversary tour. The piece is “Three to Get Ready,” often the basis for fun and games among the four. You may notice that Brubeck and Morello are casually dressed and wearing fashionably long hair, and that Desmond and Wright are as Brooks Brothersish as ever. To see and hear the clip, click here.
A longer “Three to Get Ready” from the same tour and with the same degree of mirth is included on the DBQ’s 25th anniversary reunion album.

Eric Felten writes:

On the “Kelly Blue” post: There’s another reason to cherish Wynton Kelly’s Kelly Blue. The title cut has what I consider to be Benny Golson’s finest solo on record, and one of the great tenor solos of all time. It starts out bluesy and easy-going and builds relentlessly (and logically) into a torrent of out-and-in-and-back-out-again playing. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
The lengthy “Kelly Blue” track, by the way, was clearly cobbled together from at least a couple of takes. Take a listen and try to spot the most egregious edit — the guy splicing tape accidently created a 5/4 bar at the end of one of the solos.

a href=”http://www.arsc-audio.org/”target=”_blank”>The Association for Recorded Sound Collections is pleased to announce the winners of the 2006 ARSC Awards for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research.

BEST RESEARCH in RECORDED JAZZ MUSIC
Best History:
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, by Doug Ramsey, with discography by Paul Caulfield. (Parkside Publications).
Best Discography:
Stan Getz: An Annotated Bibliography and Filmography, with Song and Session Information for Albums, by Nicholas Churchill. (McFarland).
Certificates of Merit:
Pioneers of Jazz: The Story of the Creole Band by Lawrence Gushee. (Oxford University Press).
Bix: The Definitive Biography of a Jazz Legend: Leon ‘Bix’ Beiderbecke (1903-1931), by Jean Pierre Lion. (Continuum).
The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz, by Jeffrey Magee. (Oxford University Press).

The awards will be presented at the ARSC’s annual meeting next May in Milwaukee.

Once in a while it is necessary to take a day off and listen for the pleasure of the music, ignoring assignments and deadlines, including those that are self-imposed. Randomness is the key, letting one piece of music lead to the next. Sometimes the results are a surprise. I took a day off. Here’s what I heard, in more or less this order. Only the Bill Evans was in the line of duty. (See the next item.)
Branford Marsalis, “Hope” (from Braggtown) (Marsalis Music)
Jack Teagarden, “Think Well of Me” (from Think Well of Me) (Verve)
Irene Kral & Terry Gibbs, “Moonlight in Vermont” (from Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Vol. 6) (Contemporary)
Edgard Varése, “Déserts,” Chicago Symphony Orchestra (from Boulez Conducts Varése)
Johnny Cash, “The Man Comes Around” (from The Man Comes Around) (American)
Enrico Pieranunzi, “La Dolce Vita” (from Fellini Jazz) (CAMJazz)
Frank Sinatra, “There Are Such Things,” (five takes from an unissued rehearsal tape)
Sonny Rollins, “There Are Such Things” (from Work Time) (Prestige)
Max Bruch, “Scottish Fantasy,” Yehudi Menuhin, New Symphony Orchestra of London, Malcolm Sargent (Deutsche Gramophone)
Joe Temperley, “This Time the Dream’s on Me” (From a forthcoming Hep CD for which I just finished writing notes)
Myra Melford, “Fear Slips Behind” (from The Image of Your Body) (Cryptogramophone)
Beethoven, Sonata No. 9 in E major op. 14/1, Andras Schiff, piano (from Ludwig van Beethoven: The Piano Sonatas, Volume III) (ECM)
Bill Evans, “People” [from Alone (Again)] (Fantasy)
Rosa Passos and Ron Carter, “Caminhos Cruzados” (from Entre Amigos) (Chesky)
Duke Ellington, “Three Cent Stomp” (from Duke Ellington at the Hollywood Empire) (Storyville)
Mingus Big Band, “Wham Bam” (from Live in Tokyo at the Blue Note) (Sunnyside)
Christian McBride, “Clerow’s Flipped” and “Sonic Tonic” (from Live at Tonic) (Ropeadope)

A couple of faithful Rifftides readers comment on the posting about the Bill Evans- Kenny Burrell video on YouTube. Ted O’Reilly counters my supposition that Evans and Burrell recorded together only one other time. He writes:

Bill and Kenny are both sidemen with Chet Baker on Chet — The Lyrical Trumpet of Chet Baker, Riverside OJC CD-087-2.

I had forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder.
Mel Narunsky writes:

Listening to Bill Evans and Kenny Burrell brings to mind a probably highly contentious question that I’ve seen posed on the web: Was Bill Evans a cocktail pianist?
Being a Bill Evans fan I was initially taken aback at such a question until I remembered a good example of such a possibility.
On his CD Alone (Again) (Fantasy) he plays, for 13 minutes and 41 seconds what became a much lauded performance of “People.”
I’ve never seen this performance criticized – on the contrary – but listen to it: for the whole 13 plus minutes he plays the melody only – not a bar of improvisation – and to my mind it becomes extremely boring.
So, despite being usually an inventive improviser – he could at times be something of a cocktail pianist as well.

Perhaps he could be, but “People” is not evidence of it.
Piano improvisation consists of more than variations on melody or the creation of new melody. I hear Evans’s “People” as a performance of orchestral proportions, with a rich palette of harmonic voicings, subtle and varied rhythmic patterns, exquisite use of timing, phrasing, dynamics and space. It has delicate balances between the intensities of the choruses and, within each chorus, among the internal sections of the song. In nine choruses of “People,” Evans alternates between two keys, creating sunny or reflective moods in B-flat, mysterious and occasionally stormy ones in the key of E, although he often departs from that pattern. He glorifies a less than glorious melody with his harmonic genius and his pianism. If that is cocktail piano, take me to the lounge where music like this is being played and I’ll buy you drinks all night.