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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Places: A Rifftides Dedication

May 5, 2012 by Doug Ramsey

Here’s a first: trumpeter, composer, teacher, blogger and frequent Rifftides correspondent Bruno Leicht (seen here) has dedicated a new composition—a suite, no less—to this weblog. Mr. Leicht, who is based in Cologne, explains on his own blog that he bases the composition on several important pieces of music sharing certain harmonic characteristics. The piece has yet to be premiered or recorded.

How did Rifftides get involved? Go here for Bruno’s explanation and a lead sheet. Then, come back and click here for added background in a post from the Rifftides archive. If you click on all of the links in Bruno’s post, it will be a while before you get back here. That’s okay. We’ll wait.

The Rifftides staff thanks Mr. Leicht for the honor. We look forward to someday hearing “A Bad Lady In Six Flats.”

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Comments

  1. SeptemberintheRain says

    May 5, 2012 at 7:04 am

    A musician with knowledge, wit, chutzpah, humour, and the title “A Bad Lady in Six Flats” is surely a cool one. Bruno Leicht’s blog (as well as yours, Mr. Ramsey!) is an inspiration for every jazz fan and can’t be recommended highly enough. Great mixture of historical panorama, expertise, far-out finds, and above all, an always palpable love for jazz. Big cheers!

  2. David says

    May 5, 2012 at 2:36 pm

    As explained in the links above, Monk’s “Hackensack” was a slightly altered version of Hawkins’ “Rifftide” which was actually a Mary Lou Williams tune on the changes of Gershwin’s “Lady Be Good.” It’s not the only tune that Monk got from Mary Lou. “Rhythm-a-ning” is based on a section of her “Walkin’ and Swingin’.” Williams discovered Monk in the ’30s when he came through Kansas City playing with a medicine show and may have introduced him to Hawkins. Williams and Hawkins helped Monk get established in the New York jazz scene. Mary Lou was also responsible for insisting that Benny Goodman listen to an unknown young guitarist named Charlie Christian. Her “Zodiac Suite” may finally get the performance that she envisioned at the L.A. Bebop fest.

  3. Steve Provizer says

    May 5, 2012 at 3:46 pm

    Thanks, Bruno, for taking us through this Rifftides excursion and for Doug’s blog’s role in inspiring it. Looking forward to Bruno’s students getting it together. I love comparing Bill Coleman and Howard McGhee’s solos.

  4. Brew says

    May 8, 2012 at 3:21 am

    Yeah, Steve! Bill Coleman & Howard McGhee: Two unsung stylists; and I guess, both are almost forgotten in the US. Bill resumed his career in Europe; he died in France (1981) where he received the Ordre National du Mérite in 1974.

    His Bill Coleman Blues, an intimate duet with Django Reinhardt from 1937, should get posthumously awarded too. Isn’t there a Hall of Fame for Legendary Jazz Performances?

    No medal for Maggie though, the composer of “Cheers”, “Carvin the Bird” and “Stupendous”, and the inspiration for so many others. I strongly recommend his Maggie’s Back In Town.

    And since we’re in May, why not remembering April with Maggie?

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

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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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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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