In the 1950s, the New Orleans saxophonist Al Belletto had a surge of international success with his sextet. A contemporary of Al Hirt and Pete Fountain, Belletto grew up steeped in traditional jazz as a clarinetist. But like Ellis Marsalis, Alvin Batiste, Ed Blackwell and other young New Orleans musicians, he was entranced by the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell. He became an alto saxophonist and formed a small band whose members sang every bit as well as they played. For … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2006
Quote
Excuse interruption of music festival, please, but would mind repeating excrutiating sound made with assistance of cat intestine? --Charlie Chan to son Tommy, who has been playing "jazz" violin. From the motion picture Docks of New Orleans, 1948 … [Read more...]
Correspondence: Remembering Anita O’Day
Saxophonist, arranger and leader Bill Kirchner writes: Anita O'Day's passing reminded me of a week I spent working with her in the summer of 1982 at the Blue Note in NYC. I was part of her backup quartet: Mike Abene, piano; Rick Laird, bass; her longtime partner John Poole, drums; and myself on saxes and flute. As one might expect of someone with Anita's frequently harsh life experiences, she was pretty brittle, though I got along with her well enough. She didn't sing very many ballads, … [Read more...]
Quotes
Anita O'Day was my hero because she used four-letter words. That was really neat. I didn't myself say them for a long time, but I loved hearing her say them.--Carla Bley All I know is that there are four beats to a bar and there are a million ways to phrase a tune.--Anita O'Day ( Down Beat, circa 1938-39) … [Read more...]
Anita O’Day And Walter Booker
Over the long weekend, we lost Anita O'Day, who died in Los Angeles on Thanksgiving day. She was eighty-seven. The stalwart bassist Walter Booker is also gone, dead in New York on Friday at the age of seventy-three. O'Day was the last of the great female jazz vocalists who emerged in the swing era. She survived Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae. She had perfect time and pitch, a voice without vibrato and the ability to swing as hard as the top horn players of her era. … [Read more...]
Desmond, “Emily”
November 25 would have been Paul Desmond's 81st birthday. Less than two years before he died, he made a featured appearance at the 1975 Monterey Jazz Festival. He played Johnny Mandel's "Emily" with an all-star rhythm section that included pianist John Lewis, bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Mundell Lowe. Exquisitely lyrical, even for Desmond, the performance might have justified his celebrated claim that he had won several awards for playing slowly. To see and hear it, click here. … [Read more...]
Followup: Bennett’s Arrangements & Voice
In our review of the Tony Bennett TV special, a question arose about the absence of arranger credits. The New York Sun's Will Friedwald, reviewing Bennett's Duets CD, provides a substantial clue that the charts were a team effort: Mr. Bennett's musical director and pianist Lee Musiker, string orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli, and horn arranger Torrie Zito (who has worked with Mr. Bennett for 40 years) have collaborated to rewrite or amend classic Bennett charts by Ralph Sharon, Johnny Mandel, and … [Read more...]
Thanksgiving 2006
This is an important American national holiday. To those of the U.S. persuasion, the Rifftides staff sends wishes for a happy Thanksgiving. To readers around the world: we are thankful for your interest, attendance and comments. … [Read more...]
Tony Bennett
Our occasional Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard sent a message that included the following observations about Tony Bennett, An American Classic, the special that ran on NBC Television last night. I thought The Old Man outclassed all the other performers. Bennett is in astonishingly good shape, vocally. The last few years, he seems to take more liberties with the melodies, adding nice little alternatives that freshen the songs he's sung so many times. (example: "I Left My Heart in San … [Read more...]
Jazz Foundation Of America
Nat Hentoff is a champion of the Jazz Foundation of America in its efforts to help aging musicians who lack the resources to provide for themselves. In his latest column in the Village Voice, Hentoff makes it clear that jazzmen and women who find themselves in want are not always those who failed to make it to the top of their profession. Jazz musicians do not have pensions, and very few have medical plans or other resources. Pianist Wynton Kelly, for example--a vital sideman for Miles Davis … [Read more...]
CD
One More: The Summary, Music of Thad Jones, Vol. 2 (IPO). To name the players is to indicate the quality of this project: Eddie Daniels, Richard Davis, Benny Golson, Hank Jones, James Moody, John Mosca, Jimmy Owens, Kenny Washington and Frank Wess. Assembling all-stars is no guarantee of success, but most of these men worked with Jones in the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, love his music and deeply understand it. They give "Little Pixie," "Three and One," six other Jones compositions and … [Read more...]
A Tsunami Of Muck
Like many blogs, Rifftides is under seige by lurkers filling the Comments bin with messages having nothing to do with Rifftides. Some days there are hundreds. The strictest filters do little to stem the tide of these unsolicited links to hard porn sites. In an attempt to delete en masse a batch of this filth, we may have inadvertently deep-sixed a few legitimate comments. We want to hear from you. The Rifftides staff will don gas masks, hip boots and rubber gloves to wade through the sludge and … [Read more...]
CD
Ruth Naomi Floyd, Root to the Fruit (Contour). Ms. Floyd is a Philadelphia church singer whose jazz connections and finely tuned musicianship are as organic to her art as are her Christian convictions. In her fifth album, she leads ten musicians including saxophonist Gary Thomas, drummer Ralph Peterson, bassist Tyrone Brown and the incredible flutist James Newton. Songs like "Mere Breath" and "The Bottle of Tears" disclose her as a solid composer and lyricist whose work holds up well in the … [Read more...]
CD
BED, Bedlam (Blue Swing). BED is the acronym for vocalist Becky Kilgore, guitarist Eddie Erickson and trombonist Dan Barrett. The group also includes bassist Joel Forbes, but the name BEDJ wouldn't make much sense. What does make sense is Ms. Kilgore's sunny, flawlessly in-tune singing and the way she interacts with the easy-going playing and occasional singing of her three co-conspirators in the art of delivering fine songs. BED's repertoire includes great standards and some unusual entries: a … [Read more...]
DVD
The Heath Brothers, Brotherly Jazz (DanSun). Part documentary, part concert, this engrossing film about the celebrated Philadelphia brothers was shot a year before elder brother Percy Heath died in 2005. Their life stories are varied--Percy the fighter pilot who became a major bassist--Jimmy, the saxophonist who transformed himself from an addict into one of the great arrangers--Tootie, the drummer who says his older brothers saved him from a possible future as a doctor or lawyer. They play for … [Read more...]
Book
Debra DeSalvo, The Language of the Blues (Billboard Books). From "Alcorub" to "Zuzu," Ms. DeSalvo combines solid research with humor, insight and straightforward description to explain the often arcane terms that populate blues songs. You may have an idea about the various meanings of "easy rider," but how about "faro," "biscuit," "cooling board?" "Mojo" gets two full pages. The book is more than a dictionary; it's a lesson in the Southern black culture that took root in rural blues and spread … [Read more...]
Quote
I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all other dead things that were once considered artistic. Miles Davis … [Read more...]
Miles Davis: The Movie?
For years, there have been reports that there would be a feature film about Miles Davis. No film has appeared. Pat Broeske writes in Sunday's New York Times that two such motion pictures may actually be on the drawing board. One would have a screenplay by Quincy Troupe, who co-authored Davis's autobiography and later wrote a memoir about his friendship with the trumpeter. Another, according to Broeske, would be a picture "authorized" (the quotation marks are Broeske's) by the Davis estate. That … [Read more...]
Jazzitude
The Rifftides staff has added Marshall Bowden's Jazzitude web site to Other Places in the right-hand column. Befitting its Louisiana origin, Jazzitude is a gumbo of a site. On the menu: news, reviews, features and history sections. If the free enterprise road to the internet future is advertising, Bowden is paving it with a profusion of links to books, DVDs, CDs, posters, instruments, equipment and sheet music. His menu doesn't trap you in the ads, though. It allows navigation to what … [Read more...]
Old Brubeck Blues
Good old video keeps surfacing. The new Jazz Icons series of DVDs (about which, more later) is a prime example. Short clips show up on YouTube, Google, Yahoo and whatever new video sites have materialized in the past half hour. A recent addition to the YouTube gallery is a 1961 performance in Holland by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. They play "St. Louis Blues," for years Brubeck's concert opener. All hands solo at length following Brubeck's introduction, beginnning with Paul Desmond's five choruses … [Read more...]
Bob Brookmeyer: Spirit Music
Like Brahms and Bartók late in their careers, Bob Brookmeyer has achieved increased profundity by clarifying his musical palette. The tensions and conflicts that continued to roil his compositions as he emerged from a period of electronics and experimentation in the first half of the 1990s may not be gone, but if they linger they do not dominate. Spirit Music, Brookmeyer's new recording with his New Art Orchestra, includes moments that recall his advanced mainstream writing in the 1960s for … [Read more...]
Other Matters
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE The pig pen smelled like pigs. --William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury … [Read more...]
Compatible Quotes
Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.--Maurice Ravel I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.--Igor Stravinsky It's the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you're going to get it. And whatever you get, that's you, so that's your story.--Count Basie … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Emphysema
Phil Woods responds to John Birchard's review of his recent Washington, DC, concert: Hey Doug, Upon reflection, I think the reviewer missed the point of emphysema - it is Nature's way of saying - "Stop playing all those 16ths and find a whole note that means something." Phil … [Read more...]
Radio: Brookmeyer and Kirchner
It's not too late to put a reminder on your listening calendar. Bob Brookmeyer is the subject on Bill Kirchner's Jazz From The Archives tonight at 11:00 p.m. EST on WBGO radio, which you will find at 88.3 on your FM dial if you're in the Newark-New York area and at … [Read more...]
Phil Woods In Concert
Rifftides reader John Birchard, a Voice of America newscaster, has been attending the Jazz Heritage series of concerts in Washington, DC, and sharing his impressions with us. Here is his latest report. The Rifftides staff has added links to Woods' recorded performances of some of the pieces John mentions. Once upon a time, Phil Woods was the hottest alto player on the planet. Bird was dead. Benny Carter had disappeared into the Hollywood studios. Cannonball Adderley was biding his time with … [Read more...]