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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

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

Archives for September 2005

Jackson Locked In

September 30, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

One of the things I like about Joe Locke’s new CD, Rev-elation, is that Bob Cranshaw plays acoustic bass on it. Sonny Rollins, for reasons unclear to me, prefers the electric instrument over what I irritate some of my bassist acquaintances by calling the real bass. Cranshaw uses the electric bass when he works with Rollins. He is one of the few players who comes close to persuading me that I’m hearing the real thing when he’s playing electric. Nonetheless, as well as he works that deception … [Read more...]

Heading South

September 29, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Friday, I leave for Los Angeles to take part in one of Ken Poston’s Los Angeles Jazz Institute extravaganzas, which are packed with music, films about music, discussions of music and a good deal of laughter. This one is called Jazz West Coast 3: Legends of the West. It gets underway this morning and runs four days. Go here for a schedule and registration information. The festival, party—or whatever it is—will bring together major figures of Southern California jazz, including Bud Shank, Herb … [Read more...]

Broadcast Gypsies

September 28, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Ted O’Reilly, the Toronto broadcaster, answered my flippant question in yesterday’s posting: “Why won’t these broadcast people stay put?” Station owners—all have risen from the sales department, or got their money the old-fashioned way, inheritance—won't let them. An ever-deepening lowest common denominator, combined with a desire for an ever-raising bottom line drives owners to “greater efficiency”, meaning “put in computers serviced by pre-digested content providers”. Greater Efficiency has … [Read more...]

Fred’s Still Ahead, Part One

September 27, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Responding to the Rifftides posting about the humor of the late bassist Freddie Schreiber, Alan Broadbent relayed a few names that Schreiber invented. Alan was a collaborator with and friend of the wonderful singer Irene Kraal. She is also, regrettably, among the departed. When she was working with Shelly Manne’s band at the Manne Hole in Los Angeles, Freddie would drop in during breaks and run his latest masterpieces past the band. Somewhere, there is a long list of them. Here are a few that … [Read more...]

Fred’s Still Ahead, Part Two

September 27, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Cal Tjader, Schreiber's boss, was a major fan of his bass playing and of his word play. The drummer and radio host Dick McGarvin sent this recollection. One of the people fond of quoting Freddie Schreiber's classic lines was Cal himself. And it was from him that I first heard them. I met Cal in 1965 when I was working at KVI in Seattle and he would appear at The Penthouse. He'd come off the stand, sit down at my table and say, "So, what did you think of my angular probing lines? How about … [Read more...]

At Last, New Picks

September 26, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

In the right-hand column, under Doug's Picks, you will find our latest recommendations for your listening, viewing and reading pleasure. Enjoy. Your eating pleasure is another matter. We're a little behind in that area, but thinking; always thinking, searching and testing. … [Read more...]

The Catcher In The Vanguard

September 23, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

A number of musicians I have known felt a connection with J.D. Salinger's character Holden Caulfield. This is from my … [Read more...]

Towering Achievement

September 22, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Just back from Monterey by way of Seattle, I am ready to crash for—oh, I don’t know, two or three days—but first, I must second what DevraDoWrite posted about the Tower Records staff who made our book signings an agreeable experience at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Here's a little of what Devra wrote about the treatment she and her husband John Levy received for their signing of Men, Women and Girl Singers. We didn’t know these great folks before a week or two ago, and we never asked for any … [Read more...]

Way Stop: Seattle

September 21, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Making my way home from Monterey, I’m in Seattle for meetings. The city is at its best in the late September sun. People downtown walk around with smiles on their faces, not thinking about the rainy season to come. Many of the hundreds of coffee places have tables on the sidewalk, and the tables are full of sippers watching street life. North of downtown, runners and walkers are six deep on the path around Green Lake. They form one of the world’s great urban parades in a setting like a … [Read more...]

Comment: Desmond and Bird

September 20, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

In Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, I included a long letter from 1949 in which Paul told his father, in precise language, why he did not want to be another Charlie Parker imitator. Two excerpts: The question of to bop or not to bop has been a gnawing one ever since I began working at the Band Box on Monday nites with Howard Keith. Ever since then, I‘ve been in, out, above, beneath, and on the fringes of bop as it is played in San Francisco. And although my playing has … [Read more...]

Crunk

September 19, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

I've been away. It's been days since I checked into what my ArtsJournal.com colleagues are writing about. Martha Bayles is the movie person, but she's also perceptive on my former calling. I'm probably the one who ought to be writing about the performance of television (and cable) news in the Katrina disaster aftermath. I don't think I could have assessed one embarassing aspect of it more effectively than Martha did in this recent piece. … [Read more...]

Monterey

September 19, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

It was good weather for jazz in Monterey over the weekend, and the Monterey Jazz Festival was a good place for an author. Leroid David and Pete Leon, honchos at the Tower Records booth on the old fairgrounds, said that the signing session for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, was the most successful book signing in all the years that Tower has hosted events at Monterey. A record number of folks lined up to buy the book and have me inscribe it. Many thanks to all of the old … [Read more...]

Monterey, Brubeck, Desmond, Stravinsky

September 16, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

I am off to California and a book signing at the Monterey Jazz Festival Saturday afternoon from 3 to 6 pm at the Tower Records booth. See you there, I hope. What book? Glad you asked. It's Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, still available after all these months. Desmond and Dave Brubeck were frequent performers with Brubeck's quartet at Monterey. Dave is not there this year, but I'm looking forward to hearing Sonny Rollins and John Handy, among others. if there is a spare … [Read more...]

Correction

September 16, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

A knowlegeable reader has caught me in an error in yesterday's Bill Evans posting. It was John O'Hara, not Robert Benchley, who said of George Gershwin's death, "I don't have to believe it if I don't want to." I have heard the quotation attributed to Benchley so often that I didn't doublecheck it. Let that be a lesson to me. One of the good things about blogging, as opposed to print publishing, is that after the horse has escaped you can get him back into the barn. With a few keystrokes, I am … [Read more...]

Bill Evans: Always On Sunday

September 15, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Bill Evans died twenty five years ago today. To borrow what John O'Hara said when he heard of George Gershwin’s death, I don’t have to believe if I don’t want to. His music is here through dozens of recordings, but his presence goes beyond aural artifacts. Evans is part of jazz today because he is woven into the concept of nearly every pianist who followed him, and of many who were established when he became an important player in the second half of the 1950s. Indeed, his influence extends … [Read more...]

Justice Douglas And The Trolleys

September 14, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

The town in which I spend most of my time—Yakima, Washington—has several physical attributes that help make it a good place. It has air that cannot be seen, sunshine nearly every day, seasons, mountain views and hundreds of vineyards that produce world-class wines. It has apples, cherries, pears, peaches, plums and apricots in such profusion that the city used to bear the municipal nickname, Fruit Bowl Of The Nation. Several years ago, before we moved here, the slogan was dropped, for reasons … [Read more...]

Two Religions

September 14, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Tom Stites, a former editor at The Chicago Tribune and The Kansas City Star, also edited the fine magazine Jazz, which published from 1976 to 1981. Jazz featured some of the best writers on the subject, including Dan Morgenstern, Ira Gitler, Tom Piazza, Bob Blumenthal, Leonard Feather, Sy Johnson, Peter Keepnews and Stites himself. The magazine’s approach was serious but not pompous. It avoided the fanzine excesses and shallowness of too much jazz journalism, and it got beneath the surface of … [Read more...]

Freddie Schreiber

September 13, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Freddie Schreiber was making a mark in Cal Tjader’s quintet when he died, far too young, in the 1960s. I remember him in Seattle in the mid-1950s as an aspiring bassist and an extremely witty man. He struggled to master the instrument, not with notable success. Later, within a period of two or three months, his hard work kicked in and he became a superb player. Tjader told me that he was thrilled to have Freddie on the band. Schreiber's best recording with Tjader was Saturday Night/Sunday Night … [Read more...]

Quoteworthy

September 13, 2005 by Doug Ramsey

Rifftides reader Eric Bruskin reacts to yesterday’s quote from Bertrand Russell: Was this before or after Yeats put it much more memorably: The best lack all conviction while the worst Are full of passionate intensity ... That is not the only memorable line in William Butler Yeats’s The Second Coming (1921). I wonder whether any poem has had greater effect on observers of the chaos of the Twentieth Century and the early years of this one. It inspired, among other writings, the title of Joan … [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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