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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

You are here: Home / 2005 / Archives for August 2005

Archives for August 2005

Funky Blues: A Charlie Parker Story, Sort Of

August 31, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

I wrote this piece before Katrina sent New Orleans into agony. I almost held it back until the city revives. But that is likely to be years. Because I believe in the indomitable spirit of a place that is a part of my heartbeat and because WDSU's news department is doing the kind of great work it always did in times of crisis, I offer this little recollection of the Crescent City in better times. For a few years in the 1960s, when broadcasting companies still operated both radio and television … [Read more...]

The New Sonny Rollins CD

August 30, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

The new Sonny Rollins CD is out, the one I raved about after I heard the advance a couple of months ago. Rollins is amazing on the title track and "Where or When." Stephen Scott's piano solos, dazzling and capricious, run Sonny a close second. Trombonist Clifton Anderson has a good night, and Bob Cranshaw demonstrates that a great player can give electric bass lines the definition, clarity, and swing of the acoustic instrument. The album is Without A Song: The 9/11 Concert. Rollins plays with … [Read more...]

…With But A Single Thought

August 30, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

The man who created these all-too-human ballets led a life outwardly uneventful, at least by the standards of the best-seller list. He fled the Soviet Union in 1924, settling first in Europe and then in New York City, where he started a dance school and a series of ballet companies. For the rest of his days, he made and rehearsed dances. That was all there was to it, he claimed. Asked on one occasion by a journalist to sum up his life, he replied, "It's all in the programs." —All In The Dances: … [Read more...]

TT And The Blogosphere

August 30, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

As noted here earlier, to his credit Teachout temporarily refitted his Arts Journal About Last Night into a blog clearinghouse on Hurricane Katrina. In the process, he discovered something about this capacious and puzzling new medium. As Hurricane Katrina finally slowed down and Monday lurched to a close, I stopped updating “Live from Katrina” and started thinking about the implications of what I'd been doing for the past two days. On the one hand, nothing could have been less typical of “About … [Read more...]

Correspondence

August 30, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

From a Rifftides reader: Thanks for the postings and links on New Orleans. Teachout's site led me to great info. I'm from New Orleans and most of my family still lives there. Naturally I lost contact during the storm and the WDSU site had the early video and allowed me to see the area where they live. Fortunately most of my relatives evacuated. What a disaster! Thanks again for your concern. … [Read more...]

Morning After

August 29, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

The worst of Katrina has passed New Orleans. Now, flooding is the big concern. With dozens of news organizations and hundreds of bloggers covering the storm and the city's agony, there is little point in my attempting to add much from this distance. Monitoring tells me that my alma mater, WDSU-TV, is doing a good job of continuing updates, as is The Times-Picayune. Here's a recent entry from WDSU's web log: 11:52 a.m.: Evacuees Huddle In Hallways At Chalmette H.S. People who took shelter in … [Read more...]

New Orleans

August 29, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

With Katrina veering only slightly east, moving fast and staring New Orleans in the face, I'm worried about my friends there. We spent eight years in that amazing city and went through many hurricanes. We were there in 1969 for Camille, the one that's being compared with tonight's monster storm. I covered Camille. WDSU-TV was the only station in town with auxiliary power through most of it. I was on the air for something like thirty-six straight hours broadcasting to those who had electricity, … [Read more...]

The Audience and David Liebman

August 29, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

David Liebman, the perpetually searching saxophonist, has been playing festivals all over the world. He emphasizes that he is not complaining, but he is disturbed by the reaction of people attending those high-priced events. If anything concerning the question of communication is at all relevant, it is for me about the degree of successful interaction between band members. Doing this to the best of our abilities is the mechanism for demonstrating our respect for the audience. Miles used to say … [Read more...]

Barron At Bradley’s

August 29, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Nearly three years ago, I reviewed in Jazz Times a CD that pianist Kenny Barron recorded with bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Ben Riley at Bradley's, the lamented Greenwich Village club. Barron takes "Solar" at a fast clip that does nothing to suppress his development of original melodic ideas or inventiveness in voicings. There's not a cliche to be heard. Drummond aces another solo, Riley and Barron exchange eights and the three go into a long tag ending that culminates in a densely harmonic … [Read more...]

Charles McPherson On Charles McPherson And Others

August 28, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Mark Stryker's column in today's Detroit Free Press is about the alto saxophonist Charles McPherson. Here's some of what McPherson told Stryker about his school days, when he studied with the pianist Barry Harris, another Detroiter: One day I came home from school and I had my report card, and he asked to see it. I was a C student; I didn't try for anything more than that. He saw the C's and he said, 'You're quite average, aren't you?' I said, 'Well, I'm passing.' He said, 'You can't be average … [Read more...]

Weekend Extra: NPR’s Basic Library

August 27, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Here is the critic A.B. Spellman on Ornette Coleman's groundbreaking Change Of The Century album. A large part of the credit I believe must be given to the rhythm section. Because in Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins you have two Hall of Fame musicians. And this rhythm section again was working with a different kind of sense of accents. You had a strong melodic lead in the bass of Charlie Haden, because without a piano, the bass then has more responsibility for sort of leading the group. The … [Read more...]

Quote

August 27, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Alec Wilder on Irving Berlin's "Puttin' On The Ritz." Berlin keeps you totally off-balance until the fifth bar, where he sensibly lands on a whole note tied to a half note and then whips you with the title phrase in eighth notes. The release, again sensibly, he leaves for the most part unrhythmic. The structure is straight A-A-B-A. It's a marvelous song. Wilder: American Popular Song (Oxford) … [Read more...]

Peevish

August 27, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

DevraDoWrite is peeved about website inadequacies and excesses and doesn't mind saying so. As an example: Ineffective site search tool – If you do any kind of research, search tools are invaluable. I believe that sites with a lot of content, be they static or ever changing and growing blogs, should provide a search tool specific to that site. On this blog, for example, you can search for Luther Henderson and see a listing of only those posts in which his name appears. Amen to that and all of … [Read more...]

Brubeck at 84

August 26, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Dave Brubeck, touring at eight-four as if he were twenty-four, is in California—momentarily. Saturday night at eight, he will play in Sacramento at the Radisson Hotel Grove Amphitheater with his quartet (Bobby Militello, alto saxophone; Michael Moore, bass; Randy Jones, drums). A few weeks ago at Carnegie Hall, during the JVC Jazz Festival Newport, Brubeck began noodling one of his introductions designed to mystify his sidemen. It is one thing for a pianist to play an obscure introduction to a … [Read more...]

As for Joe Gilman…

August 26, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

...he has an undergraduate degree in piano and jazz studies from Indiana University, a masters from the Eastman school and a doctorate in education from Sarasota University. There is more on his background here. Gilman, with six CDs under his belt, is a teacher who can do. His albums date back to 1987. One from 1992 has drummer Bob Hurst and Jeff "Tain" Watts as sidemen and the brilliant tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson as guest soloist. In the course of his teaching, Gilman has become an expert … [Read more...]

Contact

August 26, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

The Rifftides staff is always glad to hear from you. We direct your attention to the e-mail address in the right-hand column. And we promise that there will soon appear new items in Doug's Picks. … [Read more...]

Beat

August 25, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Today I made a round-trip drive of six hours for an hour-and-a-half meeting that could have been completed in thirty minutes or a twenty-minute conference call. While motoring, I auditioned several CDs that I promised to listen to, only one of which was rewarding. As a result, my blogspiration index is lower than my blood sugar and the level of fuel in my gas tank. That’s low. A good night’s sleep and relief of the temporary hypoglycemia should send me back into action. In other words, there … [Read more...]

Plumming with Schubert

August 24, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

A couple of weeks ago, the Italian plum tree in our little orchard broke off at the base of its trunk and fell over, loaded with hundreds of perfect purple plums. Before the hired man chopped it up and hauled it away to a useful end in someone's fireplace, I harvested the tree's final crop and stashed it in bushel baskets. This evening, I pulled a chair up to the dissecting table in the garden shed, switched on the radio and set to work cutting the plums, removing the pits and putting the halves … [Read more...]

Quote

August 24, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

One of my favorite quotations about writing could apply just as well to jazz soloing. No writer ever truly succeeds. The disparity between the work conceived and the work completed is always too great and the writer merely achieves an acceptable level of failure. --Phillip Caputo … [Read more...]

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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

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

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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