In 1990 I interviewed drummer Rashied Ali for The World According to John Coltrane, a documentary produced and directed by Toby Byron. It was the first but not the last time I spoke to Ali, a sorely underrated musician and jazz presence who died yesterday (August 12, 2009) following a heart attack at age 74. Here’s a transcript of our talk, slightly edited and annotated, mostly about Coltrane, with whom Ali became famous.Â
Archives for 2009
Rashied Ali (1935 – 2009), multi-directional drummer, speaks
A 1990 interview with drummer Rashied Ali, about his relationship with John Coltrane.
U.S. institutions promoting jazz?
Of the 32 formal concerts in the Library of Congress 2009-2010 season only two or three are jazz-related. Does this say something about the nation’s commitment to jazz, our “rare and valuable national American treasure”?
Year of the Blues Images calendar, 2010
“This Old World’s In A Hell Of A Fix,” a 1931 sermon by Rev. Dr. J. Gordon McPherson, called “The Black Billy Sunday,” gives title and theme to the 7th annual Blues Images wall calendar, complete with artwork from the collectible Paramount and Brunswick “race records” of the late ’20s and early ’30s. The package includes a cd of 18 deep blues from back in the day, including two unreleased sides featuring guitarist Blind Blake and rarities by Papa Charlie Jackson and Henry Townsend, among others.Â
  
Mr. Teachout gets the word: Jazz’s Swing Era popularity past
Biographer of H L. Mencken and (coming soon) Louis Armstrong, ArtsJournal blogger and scribe for the Wall Street Journal Terry Teachout has raised a fuss by pointing to the National Endowment for the Arts‘ study citing declines in jazz audiences from 2002 to 2008 (and indeed from 1982 to 2008). That this data was released in June and been reported on earlier, elsewhere, (like at Jazz.com by editor Ted Gioia) without getting much attention suggests either the broad reach and high profile of Murdock-owned media or it’s August and a writer getting outraged about ho-hum “news” can stir otherwise becalmed straits.Â
But seriously: Mr. Teachout has stumbled into a very old trap, forecasting the death of jazz.
Paeans to Hank Jones
My profile of pianist Hank Jones, who turned 91 on July 31, is in the August issue of Down Beat and excerpted here. Space limitations disallowed any of the resounding shout-outs I asked for from a bevy of musicians to make the print edition: No such problem on the web! So read what several pianists with styles of their own, and one of Hank’s most admiring collaborators, Â have to say about an eminently modest but extraordinarily accomplished gentleman.Â
Meet the Composer grants — not for improvisers
Pursuant to online debates about whether grants and fellowships are good for jazz — here’s a report on the non-profit Meet the Composer‘s choice of 31 recipients for $300,000 towards realization of commissions. Only one jazz-related project among them: composer-guitarist Joel Harrison, commissioned by the Brooklyn-based organization Connection Works, to write for a large ensemble. However, three principals of the new music collect Bang on a Can, as well as celebrated veteran composers Meredith Monk and Steve Reich, and the music theater artist Stew (“Passing Strange,” Spike Lee’s movie of which is scheduled for mid-August release) are grants winners.
best review ever of Miles Ornette Cecil — Jazz Beyond Jazz
I’m humbled by writer-poet-performance artist Kirpal Gordon‘s appreciation of and insight into my book on the avant garde through the models of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, in the just-posted NOLA issue of Big Bridge magazine. He’s captured my intent and says I accomplished what I meant to. See if you agree.Â
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Summertime, and the listening should be easy
My latest column in City Arts-New York is now online, with pick hits for free August concerts in NYC. I don’t suggest the season’s not right for serious,
substantial music, just that we would appreciate the surrounding
circumstances being comfortable and hassle-free. Here’s the opening graph, meant to set the tone and keep you reading — and notes about the Caramoor jazz fest in suburban Westchester.
Backlash against grants for jazz?
Nate Chinen, estimable New York Times music journalist, questions the effect of grants like the $253,000 announced by Chamber Music America for jazz composers: Are applicants pressed to create overly grand and pc projects? Ottawa Citizen blogger Peter Hum asks why Canada’s government supports jazz at all.
But Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra leader Arturo O’Farrill has been commissioned to write a Latin jazz orchestra piece in honor of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Are grants and government support bad for jazz?
Earma Thompson, unheralded piano jazz star, dies at 86
A Chicago mainstay, whose efforts supported local and touring musicians starting in the early ’40s but who didn’t record under her own name until 2004, Earma Thompson deserves to be celebrated as an outstanding example of how women have participated in jazz often more than is acknowledged, from behind the scenes. As the Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich wrote in his July 16 obituary of this significant pianist and salon — not saloon — keeper, “Earma Thompson never really had a chance to become famous.”
www,JazzChicago.net/jazzfest.html
Mandela Day African music fest, Brooklyn
Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Cyndi Lauper with Li’l Kim, Dave Stewart and French first-lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy celebrated Nobel laureate Nelson Mandela‘s 91st birthday July 18 at a heavily reported Radio City Music Hall concert, but in Prospect Park Nigeria’s King Sunny Adé headlined a free five-act, seven-hour pan-African Celebrate Brooklyn! show drawing some 20,000 people. No reviews have been forthcoming, but hey, it was pretty nice, so you should know.
Fast impressions, new jazz ‘n’ out cds
I’m determined to try to survey unusual and promising new jazz-and-beyond cds with regularity — here are responses (not in-depth reviews) to only half-a-dozen grabbed off my teetering in-pile almost at random, plus related diversions. The scale: 5 stars “You gotta hear this”; 4 – “very interesting, if interested in this sort of thing”; 3 — “middling, ok fun, consistent”; 2 – “flawed, somehow worthy”; 1 “never mind, really.”