Archives for 2006

I’ve seen men lose 50 years in just a few hours. Baseball is better than sex. It is better than music, although I do believe jazz comes in a close second. It does fill you up.
–John Jordan “Buck” O’Neil, Jr. (1911-2006)

Mr. O’Neil died last Friday at 94. He was a star of the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues, the first black coach in the majors and a central figure in Ken Burns’ 1994 PBS film Baseball. Thanks to Russ Neff for calling the O’Neil quote to our attention.

Next weekend, Jim Wilke will broadcast the first half of the Bill Mays concert melding jazz and classical music. Jim recorded the concert at The Seasons for his Jazz Northwest. Part 1 will air exclusively on Tacoma/Seattle’s KPLU 88.5 on Sunday, October 15 at 1 pm Pacific Daylight Time. Cellist Kevin Krentz and violinist Kwan Bin Park of the Finisterra Trio joined Mays, Martin Wind and Matt Wilson for a stirring program that included Ravel, Debussy, Bach, Mendelssohn, Carl Sandburg and Charlie Parker, among others.
To hear the program on KPLU’s streaming audio, go to its web site on Sunday and click on “Listen Now” on the upper left of the home page. This is one I don’t think you want to miss. For the Rifftides review of the concert, click here. Wilke will schedule the second half of the concert for a date to be announced.

It is hardly a secret that some of the best large jazz aggregations in the world operate under the auspices of the United States military. One index to the excellence of the Air Force’s Airmen Of Note and the U.S. Army Blues Jazz Ensemble is the number of major civilian jazz soloists who have appeared with them and rave about their quality. I wrote in January about Buddy DeFranco’s encounter with the Army Blues. Our occasional correspondent John Birchard checks in with a report about another such high level collaboration.

Junior Mance will be 78 next week (Oct 10). Hard to believe it’s been over forty years since I last saw him in person.
Last night, Mance was the guest artist with the U-S Air Force jazz band, the Airmen of Note, as part of their Jazz Heritage Series at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium. The 17-piece Airmen kicked off the evening with a beautifully-written up-tempo original (most of the charts are by band members) featuring the trumpet of Master Sergeant Rich Sigler. The band vocalist, Tech Sergeant Paige Wroble, followed with a pair, “Let the Good Times Roll”, recalling the Ray Charles version, and “Corcovado”.
Junior joined the band and sounded somewhat tentative in the first piece, his own early composition “Jubilation”. But, as the concert progressed, so did his piano work. With “On Green Dolphin Street”, he began to sound like his old bluesy self. And by the time he called for Johnny Mandel’s “Emily”, which he described as his favorite tune these days, he showed why so many major artists have employed him over the years – Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Dizzy Gillespie, to name three. Accompanied only by the Airmen’s excellent bassist, Senior Master Sergeant Paul Henry, Junior’s “Emily” was by turns thoughtful and lovely.
Highlights of the evening for this listener followed: two charts by the late tenorman Eric Dixon, a slow blues and an up-tempo blues were separated by a stunning solo reading of Ellington’s “The Single Petal of a Rose”. When Junior finished “Rose”, there was silence followed by sustained applause.
The slow Dixon arrangement featured mostly Junior’s soulful piano, some nicely placed moans by a trio of trombones and a blistering guitar solo by Tech Sergeant Geoff Reecer, who – to that point in the evening – had played only a Freddie Greene rhythm role. When he turns up the amp, the mild-looking Reecer has a sound with a nice bite to it and he produced several choruses of heartfelt blues that had the audience yelling for more.
The evening ended with an up-tempo Dixon piece that brought to mind his longtime employer Count Basie, and Mance’s solo was a tribute to the Count’s style: spare, tasty and with a little bit of stride piano to finish the job. After long, warm applause for Junior and the band, Mance seemed almost overwhelmed by emotion. He told the audience, “This week has been one of the highlights of my career,” and went on to say, “These guys are not only great musicians, they’re great guys. I could use two or three more weeks like this.”
This year’s Jazz Heritage series ends November 3rd with the Airmen joined by guest artist Phil Woods – and these concerts are all free and open to the public. Not a bad way to start the holiday season.
Your Washington correspondent,
John Birchard

John is a veteran broadcast journalist employed by the Voice of America.

Last month’s Paul Gonsalves posting continues to stimulate recollections by Rifftides readers who admired the Duke Ellington tenor saxophonist. Here is another reminiscence, from a man who heard the band when neither Ellington nor Gonsalves had long to live.

I appreciate your piece on Paul Gonsalves. I recall seeing him a year and a half before he passed away at a miserably publicized and scantly attended concert at “Rhodes on the Pawtuxet” in Cranston, R.I. The Ellington band was deep into the post Hodges and Strayhorn era, but it was still great, and I recall being appalled, even embarrassed, at the size of the house. Still, some of Paul’s relatives had come across town from Pawtucket and several of the people among the two dozen or so in attendence claimed to have grown up or served in the army with him. They all talked of Paul with complete affection and were obviously proud of his accomplishments. I hope this was the reason Duke called for the “strolling saxophone” solo on “In a Sentimental Mood”, rather than for medicinal purposes you alluded to.
Gonsalves, at least while he was alive, never had the titanic reputation of his section mate Johnny Hodges or his predecessor in the tenor chair, Ben Webster– and they both, of course, were thrilling musicians. But, Gonsalves has always been my favorite of the Ellington sidemen because his ballad playing projected a special warmth and vulnerability, and his great solos –pieces like “Chelsea Bridge” and “Happy Reunion” — have a wonderful poignant edge. His playing also had a unique rhythm that was, perhaps, a product of his Cape Verdean ancestry.
The Cranston concert was only sixteen years after the great driving solo at Newport that made him famous, but his physical deterioration was evident at close range, and it was clear that he could no longer handle that sort of demand. But, “Happy Reunion” still worked, especially for those of his family and friends for whom I’m sure it was a happy reunion.
The concert was completed professionally. There was no encore and the band and customers repaired to the bar on the other side of the wall, where a friend of Paul’s had already made sure he would not have to buy drinks. Scott Hamilton, who at the time made his professional living in a rhythm and blues band which performed at various colleges in the area, took pains to secure the autograph of the entire reed section before they retreated from the bar into the November rain. Sixteen months later Paul and Duke were gone, with too many of those playing that night to follow soon after.
Arthur Luby

Gonsalves and Ellington both died in May, 1974. For other memories of Gonsalves, go here and here.

What is music to you? What would you be without music? Music is everything. Nature is music (cicadas in the tropical night). The sea is music, the wind is music. The rain drumming on the roof and the storm raging in the sky are music. Music is the oldest entity. The scope of music is immense and infinite. It is the ‘esperanto’ of the world.
–Duke Ellington

I try to listen attentively to musical sounds around me. You can think of the sounds of daily life as being musical. So I try to absorb the intricacies of the sounds as I would if I were listening to a piece of music. I try to see the beauty in everything.–Tom Harrell

The Fall Festival at The Seasons ended on Saturday night with a shout. In the second of two concerts by the Bill Mays Trio, the focus was primarily on themes from classical music. The string section of the Finisterra Trio integrated with the Mays group on several pieces. Following two days of rehearsals laced with hard work and laughter,
violinist Kwan Bin Park and cellist Kevin Krentz put aside the typical classical player’s apprehension about whether they could swing. They could. They did–mightily–with pianist Mays, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Matt Wilson.
The program included Rachmaninov, Debussy, Mendelssohn, Ravel, Borodin, Bach and Rodrigo, with additional compositions by Mays, Wind and Wilson. The pieces by the trio alone were at the Mays Trio’s customary high level of excellence. The performances with strings were extraordinary, particularly in the breathtaking closers of each half. Mays’ arrangement of the fourth movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s “Piano Trio in C Minor” opened up for the trio’s jazz improvisation and May’s skillfully written “blowing” lines for the strings. One section employed unalloyed E-flat blues changes, the other Mendelssohn’s own harmonies. Wilson’s solo on the blues was a living definition of melodic drumming, Wind’s on the more complex Mendelssohn changes a stunning demonstration of tonal depth and harmonic resourcefulness. In the movement’s famous hymn variations, the blend of cello, violin, piano and arco bass was almost unbearably moving. Mays’ variations on the variations summoned up still more hymns, including an allusion to “Bringing In The Sheaves.” If you think the famous “We Want Cantor” 1-6-2-5 harmonic sequence began with Eddie Cantor, listen to the conclusion of the Mendelssohn C Minor. And it was old when he used it. Properly played by a classical piano trio, that finale is a powerhouse. With the addition of Wind’s bass and Wilson’s drums, it is enough to lift an audience out of its seats. It did.
Mays’ “Peace Waltz” (aka “Kaleidoscope”) and Wilson’s setting of three poems by Carl Sandburg included narration, which I was flattered to be asked to provide. The poems from Sandburg’s The People, Yes, were “As Wave Follows Wave,” “To Know Silence Perfectly” and “Choose,” with beautifully written parts for the five instruments. Wilson’s instructions included improvisation by the classical players, which Krentz and Park performed as if they had been doing it all their lives. “Choose” has the passion of a 1930s labor protest song or something by Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra.

Choose (Sandburg)
The single clenched fist lifted and ready.
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.

I was recruited to play melody on flugelhorn in “Choose” and to commit free improvisation along with the quintet. It ended up sounding like Don Cherry sitting in with your neighborhood Salvation Army band.
The final piece began with Mays playing J.S. Bach’s “Two-Part Invention No. 8 in F Major,” BWV 779,segueing into Charlie Parker’s “Scrapple From The Apple,” the cello and violin playing Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha” in counterpoint. Mays, Wind and Wilson each soloed at length, Mays quoting “Nola” and “Jitterbug Waltz,” among other several other unlikely things. But he wasn’t through quoting when his solo ended. The penultimate chorus that Mays wrote for the ensemble contained snatches of “Tenor Madness,” “Buzzy” and “Honeysuckle Rose.” The final shout chorus of counterpoint on the Parker themes concluded with the celebrated coda of Parker’s 1947 Dial recording of “Scrapple From The Apple,” the strings wrapping it up on a tremendous tremolo. The encore was a repeat of the shout chorus.
We have frequently discussed in Rifftides the undeservedness of ninety percent of standing ovations these days. This standing O at The Seasons was in the other ten percent.
Jim Wilke recorded the concert for his Jazz Northwest radio program. There is talk that it may also be released on compact disc. Stay tuned.

Many Rifftides readers check in regularly with Terry Teachout’s indispensable artsjournal.com blog About Last Night. You may also read him in The Wall Street Journal, where Terry’s Sightings column over the weekend concerned the economic, ethical, commercial and cultural facets of a phenomenon often discussed and linked here. It is YouTube, the web site devoted to video clips. A large percentage of what appears on YouTube and similar sites is ego-driven ephemera, but much of it is cultural treasure. To read Teachout’s thoughts on the long-term value of YouTube, go here. The Journal has granted a free link to the piece.
When you come back, click this link for a YouTube clip of the great saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins at a latterday Jazz At The Philharmonic concert. The introducer is JATP’s impresario, Norman Granz. The intergenerational rhythm section is pianist Teddy Wilson, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Louie Bellson. The tune is “Blue Lou,” not, as YouTube bills it, “Blue Lue.” Spelling is not often the strong suit of the people who mount these videos.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers called this morning with the news that Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond is the winner of a 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, my second. I am unable to tell you the names of the winners in other categories. ASCAP is waiting to make an announcement until all of them have been notified. I’ll give you a report when that happens.
What a lovely day. ASCAP called, and we finished painting the shed.

The first Deems Taylor, in 1997, was for the essay accompanying the Bill Evans boxed CD set The Secret Sessions. I’m having a good weekend. I hope that you are, too.

A Rifftides reader wrote to say that he did not understand drummer Nick Martinis’s quote in Charlie Shoemake’s anecdote about swinging or not swinging. Martinis said to his bandmates…..”Well cats, do we swing tonight or do we hide ‘one’?” Perhaps there are other readers who don’t get it. Here’s an oversimplified explanation.
“One” is the first beat of the measure. A leader is likely to begin counting off in half time–“One, two,” then double the time to the tempo he wants–“One, two, three, four…”
If “one'” is not expressed–if it is hidden–the band, and quite likely the audience, will be in a rhythmic no-man’s land. Some musicians who adventure on the edges of jazz, beyond the traditional concept of swing, want to be free of what they consider the tyranny of steady time. Others feel that the rhythmic quality we have come to call swing is at the heart of jazz, that “one” is essential.
Among those who believed strongly in the importance of “one” was Gerry Mulligan. Trumpeter John McNeil’s new CD East Coast Cool is influenced by Mulligan, yet McNeil takes liberties with time. He also swings, demonstrating that both things are possible and underlining the warning that my explanation of “one” is oversimplified. After my Rifftides review of the album, McNeil sent a message that included a quote indicating that Mulligan thought jazz that abandons the imperative to swing is an indulgence of interest mainly to the insiders who play it.

I hope Mulligan is smiling somewhere, but he’s probably saying “That cross-the bar hide-the-one shit is just for other cats–nobody else digs it.” (an actual quote) He’d like the sonorities and the counter lines, though.

Apropos of little but proof that McNeil’s turn of mind is as wry as his turns of time are tricky, here’s his latest e-mail gig alert:

Sunday, October 1st

Night and Day Restaurant and Jazz Room
presents the

John McNeil/Bill McHenry Quartet

Applying a cool, damp washcloth of jazz to the fevered brow of Brooklyn’s cultural elite since 2006.

Featuring the music of Russ Freeman, Denzil Best,
Wilbur Harden and a host of other neglected composers.

John McNeil — trumpet

Bill McHenry — tenor

Chris Lightcap — bass

Jochen Rueckert — drums

This week’s intermission pianist — Dred Scott
“I’d really love to go hunting with these guys…” — Dick Cheney

8:30 — 11:00

230 Fifth Avenue (at President) Park Slope, Brooklyn

(718) 399 – 2161 www.nightanddayrestaurant.com/

If I lived in Brooklyn or nearby and didn’t have all this painting to do, I’d be there.

Posting will be light, if at all, for the next few days. For one thing, the Rifftides staff will be employed in prepping and painting the larger of the two sheds at Rifftides world headquarters. For another, The Seasons Fall Festival is underway, there’s a lot of jazz and classical music to be heard, and I’ve been pressed into service to read a few short Carl Sandburg poems when The Bill Mays Trio and the Finesterra Trio collaborate. Among other joint efforts, they will combine Charlie Parker and J.S. Bach and play a movement of the Mendelssohn D-Minor Trio.
The big question: Will the jazz and classical cats agree on where “one” is?

Charlie Shoemake, the vibraharpist, leader and teacher, checks in with a story pertinent to the Rifftides discussion about swing and jazz values.

Thought you would get a laugh out of a true anecdote that concerns the current topic in your column. 40 years (or so) ago I was playing a night at Dontes in North Hollywood with the guitarist Ron Anthony. (George Shearing, Frank Sinatra). In the group that night was a drummer named Nick Martinis (member of Pete Jollys’ trio for many years among other west coast names) who was (and is) well known for his off-center personality and remarks.
Before the group hit the stand for the first set Nick said to all of us standing at the bar…..”Well cats, do we swing tonight or DO WE HIDE ‘ONE’?” That concept has been around for close to half a century now and yet many of today’s younger players still think of it as “the new thing.” Whenever I hear a group playing like that now I always think of Nick and laugh. It’s certainly a valid concept but I’ll always feel (probably because of my generation) that acheiving what Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke (or Paul Chambers and Philly Joe) did with the time is much more difficult. Old fashioned or not.
Charlie Shoemake

In the right-hand column under Doug’s Picks, we have three CDS, a DVD and a book. One of the CDs is old and up to date. The book is old with a message that’s never out of date.

Saxophonist, composer, bandleader and educator Bill Kirchner writes from New Jersey:

I’ve read all the comments with interest–fortunately, they all come from thoughtful persons. Otherwise, discussions like this can be insufferable.
My favorite rejoinder in such discussions comes, I believe, from drummer Paul Wertico: “It don’t mean a thing if all it does is swing.” I can think of some truly stupid music I’ve heard that swings quite well. The moral is that jazz–and all good music–needs to do something *besides* swinging.
In recent decades, there have been jazz artists who have used the term “swing” almost as a weapon, with a kind of phallic posturing. As critic Larry Kart perceptively wrote: “Warmth, soul, and swing are among the hallmarks of a Ben Webster or a Dexter Gordon, but for them these things seem not be sought after in themselves. Instead
they are an inevitable byproduct of the act of playing jazz, virtues that arise as a matter of course when one makes musical and emotional contact with the material at hand.”
The Dizzy Gillespies and Miles Davises of the world never indulged in phallic posturing about swinging. They simply played great music, and it worked on all levels, including swinging. And there are many different ways to swing–not just boom-chicka-boom. Miles’ 1970 LIVE-EVIL, for example, swings mightily to my ears (considerable
thanks to Jack DeJohnette, among others), even though it comes from a period of Miles’ career that some doctrinaire folks refuse to regard as jazz. We’re still discovering new ways of swinging, thank God–at
least, many of us are.

If you are new to this discussion of swing and what constitutes jazz, you can go here to catch up and follow the links back through the previous postings.

We have posted several new comments about Mel Narunsky’s communique concerning what is and is not jazz, including a new one from Mr. Narunsky himself. You will find them here, appended to the original message. We also received a mini-essay from the bandleader, arranger, composer, trombonist, vocalist and libationologist Eric Felten, who has given the matter considerable thought. Here is Mr. Felten’s meditation on the groove:

The question of swinging, and whether it can coexist with a post-modern jazz sensibility brings to mind a phenomenon that I have witnessed repeatedly — a modern unwillingness to let swing time settle into a groove.
Here’s what I mean: When jazz musicians take on funk or hip-hop or Latin idioms, they seem to recognize that the repetitive quality of the rhythm is an essential part of the music. In other words, the music has a “groove” (indeed, when some prominent jazz musicians put together hip-hop-influenced ensembles, they call them their “groove bands.” For there to be an effective and affecting groove, the rhythm has to lock into some degree of consistency and repetition, whether in funk, hip-hop or Latin styles.
And I would argue that the same is true for the swing idiom. And yet, it is as though a couple of generations of jazz musicians have been brought up to think that there is something lame or uninventive about a consistent, repeated swing groove. It is rare that I hear a modern rhythm section go for more than four bars (well, really, even just two) without in some way “breaking up the time.” Subverting the swing groove is now as reflexive a gesture as “playing outside.” So much so that I think many players feel uncomfortable in a steady swing groove just as “outside” harmonies have become so ingrained in our ears that they are the new diatonic, if you will.
Let me be clear, by the way, that I am not saying there should be no more breaking up of straight-ahead time. Sadly, so much discussion of jazz falls into false dichotomies and accusations of apostasy. I once wrote an article arguing that melody has been neglected in modern jazz and I was denounced for 1) declaring that jazz was dead (which I never said in the slightest) and 2) declaring that no one should ever do anything other than play the melody (again, which I never even suggested), and 3) saying that there is no one on earth left who knows how to play a melodic solo (again, not what I said).
So, in this case let me emphasize that what I am saying is that there is power in “groove” including the groove known as swing. Groove-Power is easily recognized when jazz players are crossing over into other idioms, but all too often forgotten when they are working in a straight jazz context. I long to get lost in a swing groove as hypnotic as any hip-hop or trance loop. This is not a retro manifesto: I would suggest that there is untapped potential to reassert the power of the jazz groove in a modern context. And I would further suggest that “breaking up the time” would be far more musically interesting if it were used more sparingly — that is, if some real time were established before the breaking of it begins.
And lastly, I would suggest that jazz musicians wouldn’t have to go so far afield in search of the satisfactions of grooving if they were more willing to develop the grooves in their own backyard.
cheers,
Eric

Mr. Felten’s right to use “cheers” for his closing is hard-won. His How’s Your Drink column appears most Saturdays in The Wall Street Journal. Just think of all that testing and tasting.