• Home
  • About
    • Doug Ramsey
    • Rifftides
    • Contact
  • Purchase Doug’s Books
    • Poodie James
    • Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
    • Jazz Matters
    • Other Works
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal
  • rss

Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for May 19, 2011

Woody Shaw: Ginseng People

Woody Shaw died 22 years ago this month. A trumpeter of power, taste, a subtle harmonic sense and admirable originality, Shaw was long burdened with critiques that described him as a disciple, if not a copy, of Freddie Hubbard, who was six years his senior. This recording they made together—out of print, expensive and worth finding—says otherwise. Before becoming a leader in the late 1970s, Shaw worked with Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Joe Henderson, Max Roach, Dexter Gordon and Gil Evans, among others.

 

Here he is with his quartet at a concert at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1985, when he was 40. His rhythm section was Stanley Cowell, piano; David Williams, bass; and the 19-year-old Terri Lynn Carrington, drums. This is Shaw’s “Ginseng People.”

 

The Shaw video came from Steve Provizer, the Boston trumpeter, writer, broadcaster and proprietor of the interesting weblog Brilliant Corners, which has long had a link in the Rifftides blogroll. In his current posting, Provizer ponders what he sees as a general decline in the number of comments by readers of jazz blogs.

JJA Awards: It’s Already Been A Year?

The members have voted and the Jazz Journalists Association awards ceremony will be held on June 11 in New York City. Winners will be announced in 39 categories of musicians, writers, bloggers, videographers and photographers. Nominees for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz are Jimmy Heath, Muhal Richard Abrams, Paul Motian, Phil Woods and Wayne Shorter; for Musician of the Year, Esperanza Spalding, Jason Moran, Joe Lovano, Sonny Rollins and Vijay Iyer.

 

Rifftides is pleased to again be nominated for Blog of the Year, an award it won in 2010. The competition is stiff: Patrick Jarenwattanon’s A Blog Supreme, Ethan Iverson’s Do The Math, Howard Mandel’s JazzBeyondJazz and Marc Myers’s JazzWax. Good luck to all.

 

For details and a list of nominees in all categories see the JJA website.

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, … [MORE]

Subscribe to RiffTides by Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Rob D on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • W. Royal Stokes on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Larry on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Lucille Dolab on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside
  • Donna Birchard on We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside