Archives for December 2005

Rifftides reader Peter Bergmann in Berlin responded to the posting about Ben Webster.

Great Webster.

Ben Webster is buried in Copenhagen, close to Kenny Drew with whom he frequently played at the Cafe Montmartre in the 6o’s and early 70’s.
His legacy is alive in Copenhagen – and the rest of Europe.

Jack Tracy’s story about Jake Hanna’s reflexive quip the night he learned of John Lennon’s murder inspired an assortment of responses from readers of the Jazz West Coast listserve. Here is one exchange, courtesy of the JWC list:
From: Jeff Jansen
Subject: John Lennon Anecdote

Is this what jazz people consider humor: celebrating the murder of one
musician and wishing for the murders of three more? Oh, yeah I forgot the
jazz credo: if it’s not jazz, it’s not music; and if you don’t play jazz
you’re not really a musician. I guess we can now add: if you’re any other
kind of musician, you deserve to die soon.

Jake Hanna is a bastard for making the joke, and Jack Tracy is a bastard for
loving Jake for saying it, but neither deserves to die before his time.

Jeff Jansen | Portland, Oregon | USA

From: joseph lang
Subject: RE: John Lennon Anecdote

Jeff,

I do not know your age, but I have seen several comments about the Jake
Hanna anecdote off-list that lead me to conclude that the reaction to Jake’s
comments might to be generational. I do not believe that Jake, or anyone,
welcomed Lennon’s death in any real sense. He was just smugly reacting to
the effect that the advent of the Beatles had on musical tastes, and the
concomitant effect that it had on the music business, especially for jazz
players. The Beatles, and rock music in general, certainly did not help
jazz musicians, except for those who benefitted from studio gigs on rock
recordings. I can understand how one could be offended by reading Jake’s
comment in the abstract, but, given the kind of humor that is often a part
of the jazz culture, Jake’s comment does not seem any more insensitive than
a lot of other comments by jazzmen that have been passed along through the
years. To those who put Lennon on a pedistal as some kind of super cultural
icon, a judgement that I do not share, I guess that they could never
understand the whimsy of Jake’s comment. I personally considered many of
Lennon’s positions, particularly his rather public acknowledgement of his
involvement in the drug culture, to be as offensive to me as Jake’s comment
is to you. I guess that it is all a matter of perspective.

Joe Lang

For information about subscribing to the Jazz West Coast list, click here.

Many Rifftides habitues also visit Terry Teachout’s About Last Night. Indeed, many of you first came here because Terry referred you. As you may know, TT has been in the hospital for several days. I just talked with everyone’s favorite arts polymath as he was packing his bag to return home. He will be writing about his ordeal and his prospects when he resumes blogging. Let us hope that will be soon. In the meantime, his About Last Night co-conspirator, Our Girl In Chicago, is holding the fort.

I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.—George Eliot

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness—Maya Angelou

Rifftides reader Bob Walsh writes:

Almost every review of GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK has applauded the rich tenor saxophone work of Matt Catingub on the soundtrack. But no one has mentioned that the work owes much to Ben Webster…and that Matt is the son of Mavis Rivers. (I saw them together at the Monterey Jazz Festival in the early 70s.)

Good points, especially the one about Ben Webster. I will dodge no opportunity to bring Webster to the attention of people who have not made his acquaintance. A good first step is to get his sound in your mind. Once you do, it is unlikely to leave. Follow this link for a short but complete sample of his tenor saxophone ballad artistry. Don’t bother clicking on the album cover you see there; it doesn’t take you to the album displayed, but the next Rifftides link does. The CD is Ben Webster at the Renaissance, in which he plays with Jimmy Rowles, Jim Hall, Red Mitchell and Frank Butler. Years later, when Ben was at a low point in his life and career, he said, “Why can’t I play with guys like that anymore?”
In Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers, I began a chapter called “Unabridged Webster” with this paragraph:

On the day my friend Swartz turned forty, he had a revelation. Entering my office at what for him was a gallop but for most of us would be a saunter, he announced that he had just heard on the radio a saxophonist named Ben Webster. He accurately described the fullness and the breadth of Webster’s tenor saxophone sound, his unmatchable phrasing, his gruff softness. Swartz added, with the sheepishness of one who realizes that he has just discovered something obviously long in the public domain, that there must be a lot of Ben Webster to catch up on.

It is nearly impossible to go wrong with a Webster CD. If you’d like to get started with him, here are three indispensable albums from among dozens available.
Duke Ellington:The Blanton-Webster Band
Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster
Ben Webster and Associates
Webster was born in 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri. He lived most of his final decade in Europe and died in Amsterdam in 1973.

The following message appeared today on the Jazz West Coast listserve.

With all the ink flowing about this being 25 years since John Lennon
bought the farm, I must tell you how I heard about it.

I was at Dante’s jazz club in the San Fernando Valley and the TV set
above the bar was on and showing the Monday night football game. The
band was on a break. Howard Cosell made his now-notable announcement
that Lennon had been shot and killed. It was silent. Then Jake Hanna
looked up at the screen from his bar seat and proclaimed firmly in his
best W.C. Fields voice, “One down, three to go.”

I love Jake.

Jack Tracy

Jack Tracy is a former editor of Down Beat.
Jake Hanna is a great drummer.

John Schaefer, Drew McManus and I had a good time addressing the proposition: to applaud or not to applaud. It was on WNYC Radio’s Soundcheck program. The discussion included calls from listeners with intelligent observations. If you missed it, you can listen to it by going to the Soundcheck page on WNYC’s website. You’ll be able to hear the whole hour or choose individual segments.
Following our get-together, John brought on Judy Kaye and Donald Corren, stars of the Broadway play Souvenir, which tells the story of the classical diva (ahem) Florence Foster Jenkins, likely the worst singer ever to maintain a career. We hear clips of Jenkins’ caterwauling and a live performance of Judy Kaye approximating it. There is a priceless sketch from the play in which Corren, as accompanist Cosme McMoon, attempts to teach Madame Jenkins to syncopate “Crazy Rhythm.” Florence Foster Jenkins was awful to the point of unintentional comedy, but she loved to sing and her sincerity was touching. All of that is probably why her recordings, including this one, still sell like hotcakes.

In a recent Rifftides posting, I wrote:

It must be tempting, if you own a newspaper, to break down the traditional separation between the news side of the paper and the advertising department. There are plenty of advertisers eager for credibility they think will come from a more direct connection with news content, and there are plenty of good reasons why a breakdown of separation is a bad idea for a news organization.

DevraDowrite is also distrubed by the apparent trend toward a melding of news and advertising and alerts us to another step down what she correctly calls a slippery slope. To read her post and follow her link to further information, go here.

The other day, we declared the following item from The Los Angeles Times the winner of the Rifftides everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-in-the-lead newswriting competition.

Ed Masry, the flamboyant, crusading environmental lawyer portrayed by actor Albert Finney in the movie “Erin Brockovich,” which was based on Masry’s landmark $333 million settlement against Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for ground water contamination in California’s high desert, has died.

Reader Dick McGarvin of Los Angeles had this response:

Word has it that, at the beginning of this item, Ed was still alive.

The Rifftides applause discussion of the past several days attracted attention off the web as well as on. Drew McManus of Adaptistration and I will join John Schaefer of WNYC radio in New York to talk about applause for jazz and classical music.
The broadcast will be tomorrow, Friday, December 9, at 2 pm Eastern time, 1 pm Central, 11 am Pacific, 9 am Honolulu, 8 pm Paris. You can hear it on WNYC’s live audio stream. Please do.

One of the great albums of the early 1960s has never been reissued on CD, a circumstance that calls for a listener uprising and perhaps a congressional investigation. It was Flute Fever by the Jeremy Steig Quartet (Columbia CS 8936 stereo, CL 2136 monaural). Copies of the LP in good condition, when they can be found, sell for upwards of $200. Great music should not be available only to rich collectors.

Steig, son of the brilliant cartoonist William Steig, was, and is, a flutist of audacity, force and humor. Flute Fever was his debut recording, as it was for his pianist, a young medical student named Denny Zeitlin. On the Sonny Rollins compostion “Oleo,” each of them solos with ferocious thrust, chutzpah, swing and—one of the most challenging accomplishments in jazz—a feeling of delirious freedom within the discipline of a harmonic structure. The structure happens to be the most lenient in jazz apart from the blues, the chord pattern of “I Got Rhythm.” Nonetheless, Steig and Zeitlin used it for two of the most exhilirating rides anyone since Charlie Parker had taken on “Rhythm” changes. Great as they both were, if I were forced to referee, I’d have to give the round to Zeitlin. His choruses constitute one of the most memorable stretches of improvisation by an unknown player ever captured on record.

Zeitlin’s anonymity ended with that solo, which triggered enthusiastic reviews. He went on to make a series of five LPs for Columbia. Only two of them are available on CD, not including the brilliant Live At The Trident. He was graduated from medical school and became a prominent practicing and teaching psychiatrist, never abandoning the piano. In the notes for Flute Fever, Willis Conover quoted the prospective MD: “I love medicine as much as music…I can play more of what I feel is in myself instead of playing what I have to for hamburgers.” While in full-time medical practice, he has managed to turn out seventeen albums and make regular appearances in clubs and concerts. He had an electronic period, with interesting, if mixed, results. He has done a fair amount of solo playing, but it seems to me that Zeitlin had made his most effective music with trios, none of which has been more stunning than his current one with bassist Buster Williams and drummer Matt Wilson.

Music and psychiatry are not enough to absorb Dr. Zeitlin’s curiosity and energy. He is also devoted to mountain biking, fishing, gastronomy and wine. Nor does he dabble in those interests. He Pursues them. I should mention his newest passion, his web site. With the aid of internet maven Bret Primack, Zeitlin recently set up shop on the web. I recommend a visit, but go when you have time to explore, among other areas of his life, the Zeitlin wine cellar. He gives you a video tour that, if you love wine, will activate your olfactory and saliva glands—and whatever gland stimulates envy. When you get there, click on “Denny’s Wine Cellar.”

Zeitlin’s old partner in excitement, Jeremy Steig, is still in business, as you may hear on a recent CD. He has a website, too. His primary interests are music and art. His site gives us glimpses of a few of Steig’s paintings, which he creates with the same imagination and whimsy that he brings to his music.

Now, the question naturally arises: when will these two magicians make music together again?

As you may have noticed, I maintain an interest in what is happening in journalism. Quality of writing is a particular fascination. I’ve begun keeping a sort of journal of examples of writing and of broadcast speech. I may occasionally share an entry with you.
The year is nearly over, so I think it is safe to declare a winner in the 2005 Rifftides everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-in-the-lead-sentence competition. No one’s going to top this:

Los Angeles Times
December 6, 2005

Ed Masry, the flamboyant, crusading
environmental lawyer portrayed by
actor Albert Finney in the
movie “Erin Brockovich,” which
was based on Masry’s landmark
$333 million settlement against
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for
ground water contamination in
California’s high desert, has died.

Rifftides reader Steven Marks responded to a recent more or less lighthearted posting with this::

As a former writer for Down Beat and other arts periodicals, this post made me laugh. I know what you mean about the writer’s minimum wage, esp when it comes to arts journalism — I’d say it’s about 2 bits. Which is why I became a medical science writer – don’t ask. It isn’t nearly as much fun, but it does pay the rent. How you guys are able to survive on the pittance the editors are willing (or able) to pay continues to amaze me.

(Reminds me of something funny that Calvin Trillin once said. When asked about The Nation’s Victor Navasky and his closed-wallet policies, Trillin demurred, noting that Navasky always paid him “in the high 2 figures.”) While there certainly is more to life than money, financial recognition for the wisdom, experience, and grace required to move words around a blank page in a compelling manner is no small potatoes either. You gotta love it, I guess. And one can always hope the reader is enlightened, amused, infuriated, or otherwise moved. That too is something. Count me among the entertained and informed.

Minimum Wage duty calls. Today, I must write like crazy to finish what one might amusingly describe as a paying job. I also have to figure out what I’m going to say tonight when I introduce a performance of the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn “Nutcracker Suite” at The Seasons. It will be played by a band from the Central Washington University music department, a good one. The likelihood of further posting in the next thirty-six hours is small, but not nonexistent. You might visit the archives (right column) and my talented artsjournal.com neighbors (farther down the right column).

A month ago, in the discussion of Good Night, And Good Luck, I included this item about Diane Reeves’ important contribution to the film’s success. Thanks to Rifftides reader Paul Conley of KXJZ in Sacramento for calling my attention to his interview with Ms. Reeves about her role in the movie.
Conley being Conley—a craftsman whose reports are those of a documentarian with a fine production touch—it is more than an interview. He knows how to let music help tell the story, as he has proved in a number of full-length programs, including this one, for NPR’s Jazz Profiles series. The Reeves piece is a representative sample of his work. To hear it, click here, then click on “Listen.”

We are about to wrap up the discussion about whether to applaud, and when. First, if you’d like to see the comments of classical fans who responded on Drew McManus’s Adaptistration , go here, then come right back.
Unless something extraordinary pops up, we conclude with a comment from Bill Kirchner, who more or less initiated the conversation.

Fascinating views from the classical part of the spectrum. Maybe the overall lesson is that regimented, obligatory, unspontaneous responses from an audience are a drag for all concerned. Let people
respond as and when they wish, but *because* they wish to, not because they believe it’s their duty.

A composer friend of ours tells of going to hear a performance of a work by a famous contemporary composer. After twenty minutes, our friend was so overwhelmed in a negative sense that he started booing and was escorted out of the hall. “But you know,” our friend remarked, “I give ________ credit; he got an honest and deep reaction out of me.”

As a rule, I don’t advocate booing, but perhaps both jazz and classical audiences need to be encouraged to trust their guts more and be less encumbered by tired conventions of conduct.

I would like to tell you the names of both composers, but a promise is a promise.

Eric Jackson, Stephen J. Charbonneau and Steve Schwartz of Boston’s venerable jazz station WGBH have launched a new weblog. It concentrates on music and musicians in the Boston area. Many of the best jazz players show up there, several live in the city or nearby and the WGBH blog has news about them. Schwartz recently went to the Regattabar in Cambridge to hear Kenny Barron’s trio. He found Barron and Ray Drummond, but drummer Ben Riley was missing, replaced by young Francisco Mela. That worried Schwartz.

My apprehension was short lived. Mela, from Cuba and a former Bostonian (he came here to go to school, graduated and moved to New York but continues to teach at Berklee College of Music) was totally up for the task. This gig was the first time he had played with Kenny and Ray. It was as if he was born to be there.

He told me afterwards that Kenny heard him at a jazz festival in France, came up to him after and began talking to him. Kenny said he would call Francisco about gigs. Francisco told Kenny, “Maestro, please don’t tell me you are going to call me if you are not going to call me!”

Kenny took him by the shoulder and said, “Francisco, I’m going to call you!” Two days later the phone rang and this gig was a result of that conversation.

To read the whole thing, go here. I’m adding the GBH blog to the Other Places list in the right column. Please go there now and then, but don’t forget to return to Rifftides. Bring a friend. There’s lots of room.

Please notice that we’re beginning another week of Rifftides with a fresh batch of Doug’s Picks. As always, we would appreciate knowing how you like hearing, watching and reading them. You’ll find them in the right column.

Rifftides reader Janet Shapiro, a veteran of the classical recording industry who produces television broadcasts of classcial music, saw our most recent installment of the applause debate. It concerned Bill Kirchner’s hold-your-applause experiment the other night. She wrote:

Classical music is struggling to move in the opposite direction – the aficionados still shush the newbies at concerts when they make the “mistake” of applauding between movements, making the same argument that Bill Kirchner did. This has become a hot topic in classical music circles, but I must admit, as a knee-jerk applauder of jazz solos myself, I never thought of it as an issue in the jazz world.

Janet suggested that it would be a good idea to draw my artsjournal.com colleagues Drew McManus and Greg Sandow into this diablog.
In an e-mail message, Greg, the proprietor of Sandow, responded with these comments:

First, different strokes. It’s good for everyone to try something different, and shake the dust off. Jazz maybe benefits from stopping the ritual applause; classical music could gain by canning the ritual silence.

Second, a little more dubiously, this sounds like a step in the classicization of jazz, which isn’t always a good thing.

Third, if the audience applauds, jazz musicians have a resource classical musicians don’t. They can vamp till the applause dies down, or at least play music that’s not going to lose anything if it’s partly covered by applause. Last night, prowling around Amazon’s new free downloads, I came across an Italian opera performance in which the audience started cheering in the middle of an aria. But they picked the right place to do it. The music they covered didn’t lose a thing. (This was Carlo Bergonzi, singing “Di quella pira” from Trovatore sometime in the ’60s. The audience cheered and clapped at the end of the aria proper, as the coda was beginning. The music worked fine with that, just a lot of noisy riffs from the orchestra.)

Finally, is there a danger in getting what you wish for? Or file this under the department of unforseen consequences. I know classical musciians, including many of my Juilliard students, who’d love some reaction from the audience. “Are they out there? Do they care? What are they thinking?” Of course, it’s different in a club, when you can see the whites of your audience’s eyes. A concert hall is more anonymous. So, as a counterpart to what you’re saying, Doug, I had a student a few years ago who passed out a flyer at her graduate recital. “Please make noise. Interrupt the music any time you want. Cheer, shout, boo, yell, laugh, anything!” Or words to that effect. Comes back to different strokes…..

Drew McManus is a specialist in orchestra management. His thoughts came in a posting on his blog, Adaptistration.

It’s all quite fascinating when you compare it to orchestra concerts; consequently, the topic would have made good fodder for an episode of “The Twilight Zone”…

Nevertheless, some of the discussion will ultimately come down to how artists relate with their audience. It’s akin to having a new dance partner but not being able to figure out who gets to lead. Should the audience behave how they wish or should the artists create an environment, complete with rules and regulations, which instructs patrons on how to experience the event?

For orchestra managers, the latter is a web which becomes tangled all too often, with results leading to an antiseptic, artificial concert environment. Just visit the website for your local orchestra and see if they have a first-timers guide, “how to prepare” or a FAQ section which “suggests” how you should experience the concert.

There’s much more on this from Drew. His conclusion is hilarious. To read the whole thing, click here.
Now, how about a big hand for Bill, Janet, Greg and Drew.
Er……
And you? If you’re not too busy applauding, let us know your position on this matter, which is not crucial, merely fascinating.