Concerning the "Driving Be Bop" item below, Ted O'Reilly writes from Toronto:  Here's a picture I took in St. Maarten in the Caribbean, in Oct. 2006. It's the nameplate of a car -- can't remember which Asian vehicle it was, but one less-familiar to us in N. America -- perhaps a Daihatsu? Anyway, must be a tenor fan who came up with it... … [Read more...]

Over the years, Honda has called several vehicles, including a motorcycle, Jazz. Now Renault, the French auto maker, has unveiled a new model in its Kangoo line and named it the Be Bop. Could Renault's move kick-start a trend? How about: Mercedes Swing Hyundai Stride BMW Boogie-Woogie Chrysler Blues Mini Cooper Trad Chevrolet Cool GM Groove Porsche Scat Volvo Vouty For Shorty Rogers fans, the Infiniti Promenade The Renault web site indicates that the Be Bop is available in much of the world, … [Read more...]

In the past few days, three videos have materialized of a 1956 television performance by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. They show the group after Brubeck was elevated to general fame by way of a TIME magazine cover story but before Joe Morello and Eugene Wright replaced Joe Dodge and Norman Bates on drums and bass. As I wrote in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, It may be difficult for anyone who grew up after the pervasive hype of television and the omnipresence of the … [Read more...]

Tonight and tomorrow night, Town Hall in New York City is observing the fiftieth anniversary of Thelonious Monk's celebrated performance there with a ten-piece band. This evening's concert will present trumpeter Charles Tolliver's big band playing Monk's music. WNYC will broadcast it live at eight o'clock EST. To hear it in the New York area, tune in to 93.9 FM. To hear it on the internet, go here. Tomorrow night, pianist Jason Moran will lead an eight-piece ensemble in what is being described … [Read more...]

What you've all been waiting for -- -- new Doug's Picks. Please see the center column. … [Read more...]

Howard Mandel suffered a transportation glitch, but gamely picked up the reporting on the Portland Jazz Festival that I left dangling. The proprietor of Jazz Beyond Jazz, Howard does a fine job of pulling together the loose Portland ends. He manages to incorporate three video clips, including one of Laurel and Hardy that I could watch all night. To see his omnibus piece, click here. … [Read more...]

Every few years, there is a Freddie Webster revival, of sorts. In recent weeks, through internet contact jazz musicians, researchers and writers have again been discussing Webster, the trumpeter generally thought to have been an influence on Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. Webster died in 1947 at the age of 30. If you have been told or read about Webster but never heard him, David Brent Johnson offers the opportunity to listen to just about everything the trumpeter recorded. In 2005, Johnson … [Read more...]

Viewing Tip The current offering on Bret Primack's web site is a video in which the Blue Note 7 all-stars play a complete performance of Thelonious Monk's "Criss Cross." It is worth your time. To see it, click here. For the Rifftides review of a Blue Note 7 concert as they got underway with their national tour, go here. … [Read more...]

When I was looking for something on You Tube the other night, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the Kessler Sisters. I hadn't seen them in forty years, and they still looked terrific. Paul Desmond introduced me to them in 1965 at the Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon. Desmond had just played a concert with the Dave Brubeck Quartet at Willamette University down the road in Salem. I couldn't go because I was working. When I got off the air, I met him for a drink. Here's the story from … [Read more...]

In today's Los Angeles Times, David Ritz writes from a personal standpoint about the nearly simultaneous loss of three important musicians. Ritz is the author or co-author of several books about blues and soul artists including Ray Charles. The headline on his op-ed piece is "Ray Charles' Heavenly Trio." Here's the first paragraph: In summer 1957, I was a teenager who had just moved to Texas from the East Coast. One Sunday afternoon, I happened to walk into a large social hall in South Dallas … [Read more...]

Earlier this week, Dick Hyman played a noontime recital at a church in Manhattan. Fellow artsjournal blogger Jan Herman was there with his camera and posted videos of Hyman playing Fats Waller's "My Fate Is In Your Hands" and "Bach Up To Me." To see Jan's piece and hear Hyman, go here. When you come back, if you want more Waller -- and, of course, you will -- click on these links to hear Fats play: "My Fate Is In Your Hands, " Valentine Stomp" (take one) and "Valentine Stomp" (take two), all … [Read more...]

Final report on the opening days of the Portland Jazz Festival: In elegant Schnitzer Hall, clarinetist and tenor saxophonist Don Byron had Edward Simon on piano and Eric Harland on drums in his Ivey-Divey Trio. It was the same instrumentation as the Gross-Frishberg-Doggett trio that played the night before in quite different circumstances (see Part 2). In makeup, feeling and interaction, both groups reflect the Lester Young-Nat Cole-Buddy Rich trio of the mid-1940s. Their lead voices, … [Read more...]

Further reflections on highlights of the festival's first weekend: Gonzalo Rubalcaba opened the first major concert of the festival with a band of young sidemen who are in the thick of the latterday New York Latin jazz explosion that is producing some of the most important music of the new century. The virtuoso pianist's quintet is twice or three times removed from the Charlie Parker-Dizzy Gillespie generation but it has a distinct bebop lineage, particularly in the ensembles. The rhythms are … [Read more...]

What to add to the hundreds of tributes to Louie Bellson in the wake of his death last weekend? The outpouring of accolades emphasizes what anyone who ever encountered him knows: he was full of warmth, generosity and the largest available portion of human spirit. Dozens of obituaries are quoting Duke Ellington's assessment of Bellson as not only the world's greatest drummer but the world's greatest musician. There are excellent obits by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune, Nate Chinen in The New … [Read more...]

The sagging economy has led the Portland Jazz Festival to cancel one of the major concerts of its final weekend. Artistic director Bill Royston announced that for the first time in his 32-year-career as a jazz impresario he was pulling the plug on a primary event. Advance sales to a Friday night concert by singer Cassandra Wilson and pianist Jason Moran amounted to about 400 seats in a 3000-seat hall in downtown Portland. Royston called the cancellation "an arduous decision." Despite difficult … [Read more...]