About...

...Rifftides 
This blog 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 it reaches past... more

...Doug Ramsey 
Doug 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. more

...Doug's Books 

Doug's most recent book is 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? His next book is a novel that has almost nothing to do with music.

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Doug's Picks

CD 

John Gross, Dave Frishberg, Charlie Doggett, Strange Feeling (Diatic Records). Gross, the outside tenor saxophonist; Frishberg, the inside pianist; and Doggett, the adaptable young drummer, meet on the common ground of a brilliantly assembled repertoire. The pieces are by Ellington, Strayhorn, Monk, Cohn, Davis, Brookmeyer and McFarland. Gross is calm in his delivery of solos that burn with convincing ideas. Frishberg is a foil for Gross's daring excursions and a soloist of forthrightness, whimsy and a powerful left hand. This one is a sleeper.

CD 

Fats Waller, If you Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It (Bluebird/Legacy). This is not a comprehensive Waller set, but a well chosen three-disc survey of the stride pianist whose song writing, singing and irrepressible personality made him an American favorite son in the 1930s and early '40s. Even listeners who have the seventeen CDs Bluebird released toward the end of the last century will want this box because of the 98-page booklet. The photographs, the introduction by producer Orrin Keepnews and the masterly notes by Dan Morgenstern make it one of the best studies of Waller. The music, from 1926 ("St. Louis Blues") to 1942 ("Jitterbug Waltz") is sublime.

CD 

Paul Carlon Octet, Other Tongues (Deep Tone). From Red Norvo to James Moody, Ray Charles, Rod Levitt, Gil Evans, Lee Konitz and Bill Kirchner, I'm a sucker for medium-sized ensembles supported by resourceful writing. To the list add this octet of New Yorkers led by saxophonist and flutist Carlon. The orientation is Latin, the arranging at once economical and adventurous. Billy Strayhorn's "Smada" becomes a danzón, Emily Dickinson's poem "A Certain Slant of Light" inspires a pointillist reverie, "Boogie Down Broder" a rambunctious trombone fiesta. And there's this encouraging disclaimer: "NO jazz musicians were harmed in the manufacture of this recording."

DVD 

Amalia Rodrigues: The Spirit of Fado (MVD World Music Talents). Rodrigues was the leading interpreter of fado, the moody music that expresses Portugal's national preoccupation with fate. In fado at its best there is a commonality with jazz in the give-and-take among the perfomer and the guitar accompanists. Rodrigues could be as moving as Billie Holiday or Edith Piaf. In the form of a documentary, the film traces her career to her death in 1999 at age 79. The logy script does not diminish the glories of Rodrigues' singing. The menu gives the viewer the option of isolating her performances from the pompous narration.

Book 

Louis Armstrong, Satchmo: My Life In New Orleans (Da Capo). A friend asked me recently, "What's the best book about Louis Armstrong?" It may turn out to be the one Terry Teachout is writing, I said. I told him about Armstrong biographies by Gary Giddins, Laurence Bergreen, James Lincoln Collier, Max Jones-John Chilton and others, all with their strengths. But I suggested that if he had not read Armstrong's own account of his youth, that would be the place to start. This modest little autobiography is honest, conversational and true to the man's style as one of the positive, uplifting figures of our time.

Other Places

Other Places

Terry Teachout
JerryJazzMusician
JazzCorner
ArtistShare
Nick Catalano
DevraDoWrite
First Draft
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Jim Wilke's Jazz After Hours
PressThink (Jay Rosen)
On An Overgrown Path
Jessica Williams:The Zone
WGBH Jazz Blog
Jazz Scene
Bill Crow
The People vs. Dr. Chilledair
blognoggle
Sequenza 21
Gregory Curtis
Bill Evans Web Pages
Jazz Spotlight on Sinatra
Jazz Boston
Remembrance of Swings Past
Jazzitude
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus

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