Archives for 2005

Dick McGarvin writes from Los Angeles: Your blog about watching the silent television images of the New Orleans disaster while listening to Miles' recording of "Basin Street Blues" was quite moving. And, having played that recording many times, I could hear it without even taking the album off the … [Read more...]

Richard Tabnik writes: heard the 'new' bird and diz? amazing...if that had come out 60 years ago, the entire concept of saxophone would be different whew! From the August 8 Rifftides posting: Throughout, Gillespie’s control, range, harmonic ingenuity, melodic inventiveness and time—above all, … [Read more...]

For a while last night, I watched the latest images of New Orleans with the television babble turned off. From the CD player came the 1963 Miles Davis recording of “Basin Street Blues,” its muted trumpet solo a long, slow memory of loss, Victor Feldman’s piano choruses laced with hope. The … [Read more...]

Several days ago, DevraDoWrite posted a piece about the all-but-forgotten guitarist Brick Fleagle. I then sent her a message that mentioned another important, now obscure, musician with an unusual name. She researched Fud Livingston and came up with a fascinating report. Here is a little of what … [Read more...]

A Rifftides reader writes: While you admit that the problems New Orleans faced and knowledge of what was necessary go back to Camille and beyond, indeed had to have been known 300 years ago when the city was built, the only person who comes in for blame is, guess who?, George W. Bush. This is … [Read more...]

Following up on yesterday's posting about the lack of preparedness for Katrina, Rifftides reader Garret Gannuch points us toward an October 2001 Scientific American article. The piece by Mark Fischetti provides additional detail about what it will take to help nature rebuild parts of the Mississippi … [Read more...]

Demonstrating the principle enunciated in the first item in the right-hand column, we have a tip from the same helpful Rifftides reader who raised the question about President Bush. He alerts us to a reliable source in the U.S. for the Buddy De Franco CD discussed in Doug's Picks (also on your … [Read more...]

During my coverage of the aftermath of hurricane Camille in 1969, I talked with experts who predicted that some day New Orleans would not be so "lucky." Eventually, they said, unless massive preventive steps were taken, there would be a storm so big that the levees would not hold, the pumps would … [Read more...]

For anyone partial to Roy Hargrove, this would be a fine week to be in New York. He is appearing Wednesday through Sunday at The Jazz Gallery with his quartet (pianist Danny Grisett, bassist Reuben Rogers and drummer Greg Hutchison). Each night, Hargrove will perform with a different fellow … [Read more...]

The Chicago Jazz Archive is maintaining a list of New Orleans musicians found safe. The list is short but growing. Deborah Gillaspie, the archive curator, asks that anyone with verified reports of survivors e-mail her. She emphasizes that the CJA is not searching for missing people, only reporting … [Read more...]

Seattle’s Earshot Jazz magazine has a nice article by Philip Coady on Lucky Thompson. It includes stories about Clark Terry’s visits to his old friend before Thompson died. Coady also describes Ellis and Branford Marsalis going to Thompson’s hospital room and drawing out a man who had been … [Read more...]

“Don’t buy gas if you don’t need it.” —George W. Bush … [Read more...]

Among the many New Orleanians I have been worrying about is Al Belletto, the leader of the Al Belletto Sextet and, in recent years, also of a booting big band. Calls to him and his companion Linda Rhodes in the city and to their vacation retreat in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, went nowhere; the 504 … [Read more...]

Rummaging through biographical facts, I was reminded that the great pianist Jimmy Rowles and Minnie Pearl, the comic doyenne of country music both died in early 1996. That recalled a story Rowles told over lunch one day a few weeks before his death. When he was Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist, he … [Read more...]

In the right-hand column under Doug's Picks, you will find all new selections except for Food. We shall stay with crab cakes for now. I would appreciate suggestions from you folks about new culinary entries. The e-mail address is also on the right. … [Read more...]

From the web site of San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club of California comes a transcript containing what may be the most unexpected question ever asked the head of a country in a public forum. The club’s speaker last November was Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic. At the end of … [Read more...]

Francis Davis, the jazz critic of The Village Voice, likes the new Sonny Rollins album, about which I have enthused a couple of times. On the other hand: The problem is the string-of-solos format: When Rollins goes first, everything else is anticlimactic, and when he goes last, as is more often the … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]