I had just sat down to write a tribute to Hank Jones on his 88th birthday when I was alerted to a column about Hank by Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press. I may flatter myself that I know and understand a great deal about the elegant Mr. Jones, but on my best day I could not improve on what Stryker wrote. I wish Hank a happy birthday and enthusiastically recommend that you read Stryker's article. Here's a sample: Jones' marriage of grace and guts created the template for a school of modern … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2006
CD
One For All, The Lineup (Sharp Nine). I have groused often enough, maybe too often, about soundalike improvisers in the younger generations of jazz players. One For All have their audible influences but for the most part they are happy exceptions to the carbon copy rule. In addition, tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander, trumpeter Jim Rotondi, trombonist Steve Davis, pianist David Hazeltine, bassist John Webber and drummer Joe Farnsworth are a band, not just a bunch of guys thrown together to … [Read more...]
CD
Neil Blumofe, Piety and Desire (Horeb). If you know New Orleans, you recognize Piety and Desire as the names of streets. If you know Jewish liturgy, piety and desire have additional meaning. If you think you know New Orleans music, you are likely to find surprises in this melding of Jewish and secular wedding themes, protestant hymns, blues, street parade rhythms, the sensibilities of traditional and modern New Orleans jazz and the spirit of a city determined to recover from disaster. Blumofe … [Read more...]
CD
Jan Lundgren in New York (Marshmallow). The great young Swedish pianist teams with two of the brightest rhythm players in New York, both named Washington; Peter on bass, Kenny on drums. Lundgren and the Washingtons give satisfaction in a program of classic standards plus originals by John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Benny Golson and the pianist himself. With the exception of a speedy "Cherokee," Lundgren holds the fiery side of his nature in abeyance, but compensates with his touch, harmonic … [Read more...]
DVD
This is not, precisely, a DVD. It is a portion of the only known video of a collaboration between Stan Getz and John Coltrane, tenor saxophonists of different styles who admired one another's work. (Coltrane once said of Getz, "We'd all sound like that if we could.") The occasion was a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1960. The rhythm section is Paul Chambers, bass; Jimmy Cobb, drums; and Oscar Peterson, who is seen at the beginning relieving Wynton Kelly at the piano. … [Read more...]
Book
Ashley Kahn, The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records, Norton. John Coltrane's dominance of the jazz of the 1960s intensified after he moved from Atlantic to Impulse!, a new label. His success made it possible for Impulse! (the exclamation point was part of its name) to record dozens of other important musicians as stylistically varied as Pee Wee Russell and Albert Ayler. Kahn's story-telling ability, reporter-like objectivity and thorough research make what might have been dull … [Read more...]
New Picks
The right hand column sports new CD recommendations under Doug's Picks. DVD and book picks will follow in a few days. … [Read more...]
Weekend Extra: Manah Manah
The Rifftides staff received the following e-mail message from Portugal: I'd visit your blog. I hope you visit my blog: http://www.jazzseen.blogspot.com./. If you don't understand Portuguese, don't worry, you can listen jazz. Luiz Portuguese and Spanish are similar enough that I was able to make out some of the Jazzseen text in the reviews to which Luiz's blog is primarily devoted. But they are not why I suggest you pay it a visit. At the top of the page is a video of the classic "Manah Manah" … [Read more...]
Sanctonfied
One of the new Tulane University students reading Tom Sancton's Song For My Fathers sent this comment about the book and the Rifftides report on it: As an entering freshman at Tulane, I can only give the highest praise for Sancton's book. My first visit to New Orleans, in March of 2004, is forever marked in my memory by the night I spent at Preservation Hall. I don't know if words can adequately desribe the kinship I feel with Sancton after learning that, nearly 40 years ago, he had the same … [Read more...]
Compatible Poems
Slow Drag Dead hallelulia four black Cadillac high black hearse and all the people come to hear the trom bone bawl look at Slow Drag picture on the Wall He call again Sweet Emma come Big Jim come when He call then honkie play and honkie plunk in Preservation Hall --Miller Williams, "Alcide Pavageau," from The Only World There Is That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes Like New Orleans reflected on the water, And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes, Building for some a legendary … [Read more...]
Today In The Journal
The Bix Beiderbecke Festival opens today in Beiderbecke's home town, Davenport, Iowa. It features Randy Sandke and, in a nice stroke of timing, so does The Wall Street Journal. My piece called "The Best Trumpeter You Never Heard Of" is in the Journal's Leisure and Arts section. Here are samples: The trumpeter and sometime guitarist Randy Sandke receives neither the critical nor the popular attention that goes to fellow trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Dave Douglas -- to pick a couple of names out … [Read more...]
Followup: Means Of Delivery
It turns out that many listeners are concerned with the issues covered in our Means of Delivery discussion. Here are comments from three Rifftides readers. Like you, I'm pondering today's post re: means of delivery. We really must adjust to new realities, but I'm having a hard time believing that I will LIKE them. Downloading is fine -- IF I get uncompressed WAV files of the music. But NOT if what I get is compressed MP3 that sounds OK with rock music, or for listening in a noisy car, but not … [Read more...]
Comment: Means Of Delivery
Yesterday's post … [Read more...]
Eyewitness
Mention of Chubby Jackson's album Chubby's Back as a digital download brought this account of the session that produced it. Doug: I was at the session in 1957 when this album was recorded. I was editor of Down Beat at the time, and a close friend of Chubby's, and I had been asked to write the liner notes. Bill Harris and Don Lamond, ex-Hermanites along with Jackson, had been flown in from Florida to do the date--the rest of the musicians were Chicagoans, all of whom were determined to prove that … [Read more...]
Colloquy: Means Of Delivery
Rifftides Reader Marc Myers writes from New York City: Some jazz tidbits... 1. Desmond's Bridge Over Troubled Water is an iTunes download for $9.90. This is an absolute gem (thanks so much for turning me onto it). Wow. 2. The rare and expensive import, Chubby's Back (Chubby Jackson, about whom not enough has been written or re-released) is a $6.90 iTunes download. Chubby's Back is a fun album--but I did have to do a Google search for the personnel, which turned up at a Tiny Kahn site.* DR: It is … [Read more...]
Sancton’s Song For Students
Each summer, Tulane University in New Orleans sends the coming autumn's entering students a book to read. Tulane's goal in its reading project is "to provide new students with a shared intellectual experience through the reading and discussion of a common book and a campus-wide intellectual dialogue that begins during orientation and continues throughout the fall semester." This year, Tulane's book is Song For My Fathers, Tom Sancton's moving account of growing up white and middle class in New … [Read more...]
Weekend Listening
Il Bello Del Jazz The Italian pianist Roberto Magris, who operates a band called Europlane, is out with a new CD featuring a distinguished guest. In his mid-forties, Magris is one of those European artists so steeped in jazz that in a blindfold test a listener--no matter how perceptive--would be unlikely to conclude that he was hearing somone not from the United States. In Il Bello Del Jazz, Magris adds to his quartet Herb Geller, the American alto saxophonist who for decades has made Hamburg, … [Read more...]
Malachi Thompson, Dead at 56
Malachi Thompson, the sparkling, exploratory, Chicago jazz trumpeter who died of cancer on Tuesday at the age of fifty-six, recorded a flurry of CDs in his last decade. Many of Thompson's albums for his hometown label Delmark pulled off the demanding trick of looking simultaneously forward and back. Following an initial seige of cancer, his renaissance began in 1992 with Lift Every Voice and included Buddy Bolden's Rag, 47th Street and one of the last and most effective with his Africa Brass … [Read more...]
Comments: Vanishing OJCs
Thank you so much for the great service you did for all serious jazz lovers regarding Concord's discontinuing so many important titles. This is infuriating and exasperating news. Key titles by Miles, Trane, and so many others will soon be axed. It's disgusting. I was already p____d off when they canned Terre Hinte. This is too much. Jan Stevens Jan Stevens is the proprietor of the The Bill Evans Web Pages. Thanks for the heads-up on Concord Records' Summer Blowout--and subsequent unavailability … [Read more...]