Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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, … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
The right hand column sports new CD recommendations under Doug's Picks. DVD and book picks will follow in a few days. … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
Yesterday's post … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
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 … [Read more...]
by Doug Ramsey
It was over in three seconds. I had broken out my moderately refurbished road bike early in the morning and taken it for its first real ride in a couple of years, a break from my recent steady routine of mountain biking. Along the trail near where the Naches River flows into the Yakima, I came up … [Read more...]