Archives for 2006

Conventional wisdom, which--granted--isn't always dependable or even wise, holds that current sales of jazz recordings account for about three per-cent of the recorded music market and classical recordings another three per-cent. Fellow artsjournal.com blogger Greg Sandow has thoughts about that, … [Read more...]

Francis Davis, who monitors developments on the outer edge, writes in this week's Village Voice about the avant garde tenor saxophonist David S. Ware's new CD of standard ballads. Davis suggests that Ware may be playing to an audience for whom classics by Kern, Gershwin, Porter and other popular … [Read more...]

When Pandora Internet Radio first popped up on the web a year ago, I visited it often but in the press of business and activities gradually forgot about it. Today, I remembered. I'm glad I did. Over the course of an hour or so, out of Pandora's box came, in succession, Cannonball Adderley, Von … [Read more...]

In the Rifftides report on the ASCAP Deems Taylor Awards ceremony the other day, I mentioned that audience members were told not to take photographs through the windows of Jazz At Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Room. If that restriction --based on a claim of copyright-- sounded strange to you, … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff is back at home base following a transcontinental flight and a drive through the snowy Cascade mountains. Posting from New York a few nights ago about the ASCAP Deems Taylor bash, in my bleary-headed condition at 2:30 a.m. I forgot to mention this: My thirty-second oration wound … [Read more...]

Rifftides offers a short list of recommended holiday music -- one old CD, two new ones. OLD: The umpteenth reissue of Vince Guaraldi's imperishable sound track to Charles Schulz's television classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas. Maybe I love it because the music is so good, so fresh, that listening to … [Read more...]

When I was among the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award winners in 1997, there was a handful of us, barely more than a half-dozen. There has been an expansion of categories. They include not only writers and publishers of books, articles and liner notes, but also--observing new media reality--hosts and … [Read more...]

The next time you are looking for surprises on YouTube, do not bypass Tommy Flanagan playing Billy Strayhorn's "Rain Check." The 1991 performance at a club in Germany was with his trio; George Mraz on bass, Bobby Durham on drums. The video and audio quality are unusually high for a YouTube clip, … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Don Emanuel has managed to excerpt from a Polish television program a rare performance of "'Round Midnight" by Thelonious Monk. It was taped during the Monk quartet's 1966 European tour, with Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; and Ben Riley, drums. Watching Monk is … [Read more...]

Our latest check on Rifftides readers' whereabouts shows that some of you are in: Armadale North, Australia Azur, France Batnfjordsra, Norway Belleville, Canada Buenos Aires, Argentina Fulmer, UK Harlesdon, UK, Kihei, Hawaii Monterrey, Mexico Niederndorf, Germany Reykjavk, Iceland Schnborn, … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff is headed to New York to receive the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond (still available, suitable for fancy wrapping and holiday giving). Posting from the road will take place as possible. … [Read more...]

Floyd Standifer was an essential member of the Seattle jazz scene in the 1950s when the city had dozens of superior players who banded together in a close-knit community. I hadn't seen him more than two or three times since those Northwest Jazz Workshop days, but recently I was pleased to encounter … [Read more...]

Thanks to Bill Kirchner, who calls me to account for an error in the previous item, Boxes, about Cannonball Adderley's tenure with Miles Davis. Cannonball was a member of the Miles Davis sextet from the gitgo--December 1957. Cannonball had been working for Miles since the fall of 1957, and Miles … [Read more...]

Publishers allow complete sets of Shakespeare and Faulkner to go out of print. Record companies are under no greater obligation when it comes to classics in music. In the free market, a label is at liberty to do whatever it pleases with its stock. Concord, the company that bought the Fantasy complex … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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...]

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 … [Read more...]

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 … [Read more...]

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. … [Read more...]