Rifftides readers who responded enthusiastically to the video we posted on February 22 in connection with a piece about the Modern Jazz Quartet may be absolutely delirious when they see—and hear—this one. Again, the music is John Lewis’s “The Golden Striker.” The video is from the same 1982 MJQ tour that produced the version recorded in Holland. This time, they were at the Alexandra Palace in London. Now, there is more than the mere suggestion of a smile from Milt Jackson. … [Read more...]

We have been notified that Rifftides is on the Accredited Online Colleges’ list of 30 best blogs for jazz students. This is the entry: Rifftides bursts at the seams with award-winning jazz critic and journalist Doug Ramsey’s observations on the scene past and present. He updates almost constantly with all the latest news and opinions from around the jazz world. We’re 30th on the list, but the staff felt better when we found a disclaimer in the preamble: This is by no … [Read more...]

Bill Dixon, Intents and Purposes (International Phonograph). Dixon, who died last year at 84, is typically described as a force in the free jazz that emerged in the1960s. He was that, but Intents and Purposes defied labeling when Dixon recorded it more than four decades ago. This long overdue reissue confirms that the album withstands categorization. Its daring and forthright iconoclasm has substance that outlives much music that was conceived in protest or defiance in the roiling atmosphere of … [Read more...]

Bill Mays writes from Japan, where—despite earthquake, tsunami and radiation—the Phil Woods Quintet is on tour: Mays, piano; Woods, alto saxophone; Brian Lynch, trumpet; Steve Gilmore, bass; Bill Goodwin, drums. Food and bottled water have not been a problem here in Tokyo. Transportation has posed no problem. Radiation levels are "safe." We are avoiding milk, tap water, other questionable items. I was a little paranoid the first two days here and ate nothing but bananas and … [Read more...]

As an addendum to his note from Tokyo in the preceding item, Bill Mays sent a link to a video and wrote: After Bird's version of this tune, this one's my second favorite. I can see why. The Rifftides staff rounded up both versions of “Just Friends.” Here they are, in Mays’ order of preference. … [Read more...]

Frank Foster wrote “Shiny Stockings” when he was in Count Basie’s “New Testament” band of the mid-1950s. He gained fame as half of Basie’s “Two Franks” tenor saxophone tandem with Frank Wess. The piece became a staple of not only the Basie band but of big jazz bands around the world. There is hardly a high school or college stage band that doesn’t have “Shiny Stockings” in its book. An experienced musician before he joined Basie, Foster went on to earn widespread admiration … [Read more...]

It is the first day of spring and, naturally, Igor Stravinsky is on everyone’s mind. Well, perhaps not everyone’s, but he is powerfully on the minds of The Bad Plus. That trio of restless and sometimes disturbing seekers are adapting Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, a piece that nearly a century ago sent even more shock waves through the music world than The Bad Plus sends today. National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday launched into spring with a feature on a marriage that seems … [Read more...]

Here are two great spring songs, performed at European festivals. First, Ellis Marsalis at Spain’s Jazz Vitoria Gasteiz in 1992 with Tommy Wolf’s and Fran Landesman’s “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most.>” Randy Brecker played at Plovdid Jazz Nights 2009 in Bulgaria’s second largest city. With him were Ventzislav Blagoev, flugelhorn; Shibil Benev; guitar; Plamen Karadonev, piano; Trifon Dimitrov, bass; and Dimitar Dimitrov, drums, playing Freddie Hubbard’s “Up … [Read more...]

Jeffrey Snedeker, Minor Returns (JS). Snedeker is a rarity, a first-chair symphony French horn artist who understands jazz time, phrasing and feeling. In settings from quartet through big band to 41-piece string orchestra, he pays homage to the horn’s role in jazz. Snedeker solos on pieces associated with the music’s handful of French horn heroes, including Julius Watkins, David Amram, Willie Ruff and John Graas. Among his colleagues is the perennial French horn poll winner Tom Varner, one … [Read more...]

It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line. The most important thing I look for in a musician is whether he knows how to listen. Fate is being kind to me. Fate doesn't want me to be too famous too young. (On the Pulitzer board denying him the prize the Pulitzer jury voted him in 1965.) … [Read more...]

Bruno Leicht writes from Germany: Here's one of my favorite tunes. It's a forgotten one. I know it since I was 17, and I still love it. What tricky writing for the clarinets, huh? Yes, and what singing by Herb Jeffries. The other soloist is Harry Carney, baritone saxophone. This was July 9, 1941. Duke Ellington And His Famous Orchestra at their peak. “Brown Skin Gal” is from this collection. Thanks for the reminder, Bruno. … [Read more...]

Because it has been too long since you’ve heard him, and because these two videos are—by all accounts—the only ones in existence that show him playing. His rhythm section at the Golden Circle in Stockholm in 1963 was Goran Lindberg, piano; Goran Peterson, bass; and Leif Wennerstron, drums. Please disregard the lead-in advertisement and the dreadful picture quality. Let us simply be grateful that these films exist. Dorham’s solo in this brief second clip is some of his most … [Read more...]

Joe Morello, the drummer best known for his long tenure with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, died this morning at his home in New Jersey. Morello joined Brubeck in 1956, remained with the group until it disbanded in 1967 and later played with it in reunions. He joined Brubeck after three years in Marian McPartland’s trio.  Earlier in the 1950s he worked with Gil Melle, Johnny Smith and, briefly, with Stan Kenton. His eyesight, always troublesome, began to fail in the later Brubeck years and by 1976 … [Read more...]

Ernie Krivda, Live At The Dirty Dog (CIMPoL).  Except for three years in New York in the 1970s and occasional tours out of town, Krivda has remained in Cleveland during his five decades as a hard-driving soloist, bandleader, composer, arranger and educator. If he had stayed in New York, he might be famous, or as famous as a journeyman jazz musician can become these days. He recorded this, his 36th album, at The Dirty Dog in Grosse Point, Michigan, with a Detroit Rhythm section headed by the … [Read more...]

In The Wall Street Journal, Nat Hentoff reminisces about his relationship with Duke Ellington. The occasion is the release of a massive Mosaic CD box set of early Ellington recordings remastered by Steven Lasker. The column is packed with anecdotes, including this one from the early 1940s, when Hentoff was a young broadcaster in Boston: Off the air, he once told me: "I don't want listeners to analyze my music. I want them open to it as a whole." And I was there when he played dances, just to … [Read more...]

Recorded music has never been as omnipresent as it is in 2011. If, heaven forbid, there should be a supermarket, gas station, dentist’s office or public street not blessed with speakers providing perpetual Muzak, that’s why Jobs made iPods. As technology moves from CDs to digital downloads to—perhaps—receptors implanted in the brain, it is instructive to look back to a time when finding music on record was less easy and much more dangerous. The time was the 1940s and ‘50s in the Soviet … [Read more...]

Don’t go away. You’ve come to the right place. This is Rifftides, but with a new design. The publishing platform called WordPress is a significant advance over the old Moveable Type platform. Artsjournal.com founder and editor Doug McLennan has been beta testing WordPress on his own blog. Now he’s helping us switch to the new system. It makes management of the blog easier for the Rifftides staff and—more important—makes the site more enjoyable and efficient for you to navigate. We’re … [Read more...]