Archives for August 2005

This afternoon during my Annapolis sojourn, I recorded an hour with John Tegler for his Capitol Conversations show. If you stay up late Friday night, you can hear it on Baltimore's WCBM, 680 AM. The air time is Saturday morning, August 13, at 12:05 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time...five minutes after … [Read more...]

This afternoon I will be signing copies of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond at Hard Bean Coffee and Book Sellers in Annapolis. The signing will follow the taping of a 2 PM interview with John Tegler for his Capitol Conversations radio program. Both things will happen at Hard … [Read more...]

Most people alive are too young to have heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker when they were establishing bebop. Most, indeed, were not born. Observers have attempted to describe the excitement of hearing Gillespie and Parker together for the first time, but words cannot convey the abstract … [Read more...]

As I write this, I'm having difficulty keeping my eyes off the scene out the window to the left of my friend's computer. I am spending a few days with a cherished colleague from my TV news days. He and his wife live on Weems Creek, a tributary of the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland. Every house … [Read more...]

Our reuniting Marines spent yesterday cruising the Potomac, visiting the Korean War, Viet Nam, World War Two and Franklin Delano Roosevelt monuments, then the Washington Navy Yard for a long lunch. One of our 150 guys failed to make it back to the bus following the monuments tour, causing a good … [Read more...]

More than a hundred men who were commissioned Marine Corps second lieutenants together a long time ago are gathered at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. We visited the Officer Candidate School on the banks of the Potomac where we spent twelve weeks convincing the Corps that we were good enough … [Read more...]

When the Four Freshmen were winning 1950s Down Beat polls as the top vocal group and their recordings were ubiquitous on radios and juke boxes, I was more impressed by their contemporaries, the Hi-Los. The Hi-Los’ mix of voices was richer and more varied, their arrangements more harmonically … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Martin Fritter writes, I've just discovered Benny Carter's alto playing, which seems of absolutely the highest caliber. Could you recommend some basic discs? With pleasure. This is the best assignment I’ve had in weeks. I envy anyone’s hearing Carter for the first time. He’s … [Read more...]

Jim Brown writes about a couple of points with which he takes issue in a recent Rifftides piece, Harmony And History. First, I take great pleasure in sitting in a Starbucks or other small restaurant and hearing QUALITY music in the background (or even the foreground). It appears that Starbucks did a … [Read more...]

I am working tonight in an airport hotel. Tomorrow morning, I shall clamber aboard an airplane and head for Quantico, Virginia, and a reunion with a bunch of guys who took their commissions away from the Marine Corps a long time ago. Most of us haven’t seen each other since. Someone told me that … [Read more...]

I made a one-day trip to the Centrum Port Townsend (Washington) jazz festival over the weekend for a book signing and to hear as much music as I could take in. Copies of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond moved quite nicely, thank you. The music I heard was in the four-hour … [Read more...]