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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

DVD

August 24, 2006 by Doug Ramsey

Jazz Shots From The East Coast, Vols. 1-3, Jazz Shots from the West Coast, Vols. 1-3 (EforFilms). The music on these discs is almost uniformly good. The video ranges from TV quality to grainy film, and no wonder; some of these clips are ancient soundies. There are great rewards here, but be warned: the producers provide no information beyond the names of the leaders and the tunes, unless it was superimposed on the original clip. No dates. No sidemen identification. Who was that marvelous alto saxophonist soloing with Duke Ellington on “Sophisticated Lady?” It was Willie Smith, replacing Johnny Hodges for a time in the early 1950s, but if you don’t recognize him, you’re out of luck. Fortunately, pianist Ronnie Matthews’ name appears on the screen in a marvelous performance of “Monk’s Dream” by Johnny Griffin, but that is a rarity. Who was East Coast and who was West Coast may have been decided by a toss of the dice. In the course of the series, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, Bill Evans, Phil Woods, Jimmy Smith and Thelonious Monk show up in both categories. But pigeon holes don’t matter, music does, and for all of their informational faults, these DVDs deliver plenty of it by some of the best players of the twentieth century.

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Comments

  1. Ed says

    May 1, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    Jazz fans of the 50’s and of Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars may want to know that Howard Rumsey has been very ill this year and is in recovery at a skilled-nursing center. He spoke with me fondly of his days with all the greats that he played with at Hermosa Beach’s Lighthouse. Surely, your prayers and thoughts will be appreciated for his full recovery.

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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