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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

You are here: Home / 2010 / October / Archives for 4th

Archives for October 4, 2010

The Latest Recommendations

October 4, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

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CD: Miles Davis

October 4, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Miles Davis, Bitches Brew 40th Anniversary (Columbia). Here is everything you are likely to want to hear, know, ask or think about Davis' full-fledged leap into the rock ethic that informed his music in the 1970s. It is a lavish boxed package of two LPs, three CDs, a DVD, a book and a packet of posters, ticket replicas, photos, proof sheets and Columbia memos. For those willing to spend more than a hundred bucks, the memorabilia aspect is an attraction, but the music is the thing. Sidemen … [Read more...]

CD: Irene Kral

October 4, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Irene Kral, Second Chance (Jazzed Media). Kral's stock in trade was perfection—of intonation, time, feeling, diction and lyric interpretation. She sang with little movement, no show biz mannerisms, nothing resembling schtick. She was so good at 25 that in 1957 Maynard Ferguson hired her on the spot after hearing one song. Alan Broadbent became Kral's piano accompanist in 1974. Until her death four years later, they performed together on a plane of empathy rarely achieved in any genre of … [Read more...]

CD: Martin Wind

October 4, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Martin Wind, Get It? (Laika). The quartet's feeling of controlled abandon, symbolized in the cover shot, is notable in the title tune inspired by James Brown. There's a sense of slight danger even in the stately treatment of Billy Strayhorn's "Isfahan" and Wind's atmospheric, blues-inflected "Rainy River." The chance-taking is at a high point in Thad Jones' "Three and One," with a Scott Robinson tenor sax solo that slithers, growls and wails. Wind, Robinson, pianist Bill Cunliffe and drummer Tim … [Read more...]

DVD: Johnny Mercer

October 4, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Johnny Mercer, This Time The Dream's On Me (Warner Bros). Producer-director Bruce Ricker does a masterly job of integrating new and old material into a thorough biography of the great lyricist. The story of Mercer's life and artistry melds film clips and recordings of Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong and Mercer singing his songs. Colleagues including Johnny Mandel and Tony Bennett offer assessments of his gifts, and Mercer himself reflects on his … [Read more...]

Book: Nat Hentoff

October 4, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Nat Hentoff, At The Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years On The Jazz Scene (U of California Press). Hentoff is our leading avatar of the proposition that jazz is a living expression of the principles embedded in the US constitution, of which he is also a scholar. He does not deal in technical analysis of music. He gives strong, informed opinions and tells stories about those he knew or knows intimately, among them Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Clark Terry. But he also writes about … [Read more...]

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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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: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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Doug’s Picks

Monday Book Recommendation: Lilian Terry’s Jazz Friends

Lilian Terry, Dizzy Duke Brother Ray And Friends (Illinois) Lilian Terry’s book is full of anecdotes about her friendships with the musicians mentioned in the title—and dozens of others. Enjoying modest renown in Europe for her singing, Ms. Terry has also been involved in radio and television broadcasting and is a cofounder of the European […]

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Monday Recommendation: Oscar Peterson Plays 10 Composers

Oscar Peterson Plays (Verve) In this five-CD reissue, the formidable pianist plays pieces by ten composers who dominated American popular music for decades. Peterson had bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Barney Kessel, succeeded by Herb Ellis. It’s the trio that made Peterson famous with Jazz At The Philharmonic and–by way of the 10 albums reproduced […]

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Monday Recommendation: DIVA At 25

The DIVA Jazz Orchestra 25th Anniversary Project (ArtistShare) It has been a quarter of a century since Buddy Rich’s manager and relief drummer Stanley Kay found himself conducting a band whose drummer was young Sherrie Maricle. Intrigued by her playing, Kay set out to find whether there were other women jazz musicians of comparable talent. […]

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Monday Recommendation, Keith Jarrett Trio: After The Fall

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, After The Fall (ECM) In 1998 Keith Jarrett was emerging from a siege of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome that had sidelined him for two years. As he felt better, he was uncertain how completely his piano skill and endurance had returned. He decided to test himself. He gathered his longtime […]

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Monday Recommendation: Gerard Kubik, Jazz Transatlantic

Gerhard Kubik, Jazz Transatlantic, Vol. I and Vol. II (University Press of Mississippi) The first volume of Kubik’s work is subtitled, “The African Undercurrent in Twentieth–Century Jazz Culture;” the second, “Jazz Derivatives and Developments in Twentieth-Century Africa.” The descriptions indicate the depth and scope of the Austrian ethnomusicologist’s research, which has taken him to Africa […]

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Monday Recommendation: Magris In Miami

Roberto Magris Sextet Live in Miami @ the WDNA Jazz Gallery (J Mood) Widely experienced and recorded in Europe, pianist Magris demonstrates in this club date that he knows how to reach an American audience steeped in Latin and Caribbean music. The front line has trumpeter Brian Lynch at his fieriest, and the imaginative young […]

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More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

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