Mr. JazzWax, aka Marc Myers, tracked down the venerable baritone saxophonist Danny Bank, one of the few Charlie Parker sidemen still with us, to talk about Bird. Among Bank's anecdotes: "One morning, sometime in 1951, I think, I took out one of the Sonatas for Woodwind by Hindemith and used it to … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2007
The Arrival Of Poodie James
For a long time, the Doug's Books section on the right side of your screen ended with: His next book is a novel that has nothing to do with music. The section now begins (bells, whistles, horns, raucous whoops and shouts, please): Doug's most recent book is Poodie James, a novel published in … [Read more...]
Correspondence: A Hal McKusick Tip
Rifftides reader Wade Nelson of River Forest, Illinois, writes: After reading a piece about George Russell, I hauled out a 1957 LP by Hal McKusick called Jazz Workshop that I hadn't listened to in many years. Arrangements by Russell, Giuffre, Evans, Mandel, Albam and Cohn. Very fine music. I … [Read more...]
…Doug’s books
Doug's most recent book is a novel,Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion to Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: … [Read more...]
New Picks
The Rifftides staff directs your attention to the right-hand column and the exhibit entitled Doug's Picks. All the picks are new. We invite your comments, as always. … [Read more...]
CD:Maria Schneider
Maria Schneider, Sky Blue (artistShare). As I wrote in a Rifftides review of the album, this CD is the finest expression of the composer's restless and evolving talent. She writes with an ear for the capabilities and personalities of the musicians in her band. They respond with improvisations that … [Read more...]
CD: Jay Thomas, John Stowell
Jay Thomas-John Stowell Quartet, Streams of Consciousness(Pony Boy). Delightful, often profound, intimacies. Thomas on fluegelhorn and Stowell on guitar sometimes blend in ways reminiscent of the Art Farmer Quartet with Jim Hall. When Thomas switches to tenor saxophone, the music moves into Wayne … [Read more...]
CD: Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong
Bing Crosby & Louis Armstrong, Havin' Fun (Storyville). A two-CD set containing several of Crosby's radio shows from the late 1940s and early '50s with Armstrong as the guest, but not the only one. Jack Teagarden, Joe Venuti, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Shore show up, too. The album title, … [Read more...]
DVD: Miroslav Vitous
Miroslav Vitous, Live In Vienna (MVD Visual). Another in the series of bassists playing at Porgy & Bess in Vienna. This time the star is Vitous, an erstwhile wunderkind of the double bass who arrived in New York from Czechoslovakia in the late sixties and quickly installed himself in the US jazz … [Read more...]
Book: Lee Konitz
Andy Hamilton, Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (Michigan). Unlike the overwhelming majority of books made up of verbatim interviews, this one works. Konitz's disarming candor about himself and others and Hamilton's organizational and writing skills transcend the form to create a … [Read more...]
Herbie Hancock: Set Free
Labor Day Weekend's Detroit International Jazz Festival is looming, and Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press is profiling some of its headliners. In today's column, pianist Herbie Hancock tells Stryker about his early experience with Miles Davis. "After a couple of months of trying to play what I … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Mingus
The Rifftides piece about Charles Mingus brought a response from pianist and composer Jill McManus in New York. Jill McManus I knew Mingus! I was introduced to him one night when I took my mother, in from England, to the old Half Note in the '70s. I seem to remember it was pouring. We were waiting … [Read more...]
Weekend Extra: Louis Armstrong And Johnny Cash
Here's a video clip of an unlikely collaboration, complete with a little refresher course in jazz history. … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Max Roach
The Chicago pianist and self-described bon vivant Jeremy Kahn writes: I was lucky enough to have crossed paths with Max Roach on a couple of different occasions: Once was for a workshop of an Amiri Baraka play about Bumpy Johnson, the black gangster in the twenties. It was performed by NYU … [Read more...]
Things Mingus
2007 is turning out to be a bonanza year for a Charles Mingus sextet that existed for a few months forty-three years ago. All of the band's members are dead. Its music is gloriously alive. The high point so far is a remarkable two-CD set capturing a performance that might have been forgotten except … [Read more...]
Mingusing
Coming soon: meditations on Charles Mingus, who is proliferating posthumously this year. I had hoped to finish the piece tonight, but it is demanding more than I had intended to give it and night is rapidly heading toward morning. To borrow Dave Frishberg's line, I gotta get me some Zzzzs. Stay … [Read more...]
Two Bebop Pianists
Al Haig and Gene DiNovi came out of their teens into the excitement of bebop as the music was discovering itself in the early 1940s. They played piano with some of the most important musicians of the era, had periods of relative obscurity, then re-emerged -- Haig briefly. DiNovi is still enjoying a … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Harry James
Record producer, writer and all-'round musician Bill Kirchner writes: In 1995, I programmed and did the liner notes for Harry James: Verve Jazz Masters 55, a CD compilation of James' MGM recordings from 1959 to '64. These recordings are among James' best from a jazz standpoint; the CD is still … [Read more...]
Harry James
In case you've forgotten or never knew, Harry James was a terrific leader who had some great bands. If that seems obvious to you, then you are a better listener than many of the critics who knocked James for what they decided was showy trumpet playing without much musical merit. There are many … [Read more...]