Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for 2006

Comment: Ferguson

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Nice piece Doug. I've linked it on The MF Trbute Page Forum, which is getting ten thousand times its usual traffic. I've been listening to MF since I was 15 (I'm only 47 now) and this is a big loss. What a complete musician, and what a gentleman. John Salmon … [Read more...]

Comment: Nonstop Rollins

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Rifftides reader Chris Harriott writes concerning the Sonny Rollins CD in the new set of Doug's Picks (right-hand column): Coincidentally, I've had Work Time in non stop rotation on my IPOD for the last 2 weeks or so. Can't get enough. … [Read more...]

Blog Watch

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A blog by the anonymous Dr. Jazz Ph.D. is worth perusing, if only for a couple of Michael Brecker video clips. One, from 1983, has the tenor saxophonist and a rhythm section that includes Niels Henning Orsted-Pedersen playing the fastest "Oleo" you're likely to hear this side of Johnny Griffin. The … [Read more...]

Maynard Ferguson

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CBS Radio News called this morning and asked me to talk about Maynard Ferguson. That's how I learned that Ferguson died last night in Ventura, California, just down the road from his home in Ojai. He was seventy-eight. He had an abdominal infection that shut down his liver and kidneys. The … [Read more...]

CD

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Sonny Rollins, Work Time (Prestige). This was recorded more than fifty years ago. It is forever new. At twenty-six, Rollins was full of energy and bursting with ideas. I have never listened to him soar through "There's No Business Like Show Business" and Billy Strayhorn's "Raincheck" without … [Read more...]

CD

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Brian Lynch, 24/7 (Nagel Heyer). I just caught up with this 2002 album. Lynch teams his trumpet with Miguel Zenon's alto saxophone. The two of them groove with a fine rhythm section of pianist Rick Germanson, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Neal Smith. Everyone plays well on the originals by … [Read more...]

CD

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András Schiff, Beethoven Piano Sonatas, Volume II, op. 10 and 13 (ECM). If you are a jazz listener who doesn't cotton to what is often categorized as "classical" music, you have my sympathy because you won't be hearing this brilliant pianist in the second CD of his projected series of the Beethoven … [Read more...]

DVD

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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: … [Read more...]

Book

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Vivian Perlis and Libby Van Cleve, Composers' Voices from Ives to Ellington (Yale). This is the book that took first place over Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond in the Independent Publishers awards competition. But, no hard feelings, only gratitude for a hefty volume that … [Read more...]

The New Picks Are Here

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Choosing a new group of Doug's Picks is always a challenge and a pleasant chore. You will find the latest recommendations in the right-hand column. As always, your comments are welcome and encouraged. The e-mail address is also to your right. … [Read more...]

Sudhalter’s Concert

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The program is mostly set for the concert Dan Levinson and Randy Sandke are organizing to benefit the author and cornetist Dick Sudhalter. For details about Dick's medical predicament, the effort by many of his friends to help him, how you can get tickets and how you can lighten his overwhelming … [Read more...]

Punishment His Way

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The other day, I sent DevraDoWrite a note about one of her postings. She used my message--that's how things work in the blogosphere--and wrote: In response to my mention of the Army's PsyOps division having used music as a weapon, Mr.Rifftides sent this message: I remember that a few years ago there … [Read more...]

…And Torture

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The preceding item about using good music as punishment has an unintended connection to a piece in one of Gene Lees' latest JazzLetters. With Gene's permission, here it is. TORTURE Kenny Drew's angst over the state of popular music put me in mind of a news story that came out about a year ago. The … [Read more...]

The Mulligan Strain

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To provide harmonic guidance, bands in early jazz, swing and bebop included banjos, guitars or pianos. There were exceptions, notably some of the New Orleans bands that rode in the beds of trucks or marched for funerals and parades, That practice continues with outfits as traditional as the Onward … [Read more...]

He Thinks, Therefore He Drums

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In the notes for Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions, I observed of certain Free Jazz or New Thing players, The movement did attract a fair number of poseurs enchanted by the idea of playing music without having to know anything about it. Today, most of them are otherwise employed. At least, they had … [Read more...]

Compatible Quotes

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When you begin to teach jazz, the most dangerous thing is that you tend to teach style...I had eleven piano students, and I would say eight of them didn't even want to know about chords or anything - they didn't even want to do anything that anybody had ever done, because they didn't want to be … [Read more...]

Comment: Bill Evans

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A nice appreciation of Evans. Is Monk really sui generis? I think there is a second piano tradition born of the Harlem pianists like James P. Johnson, and it runs to Duke and then to Monk, and appears in amalgamated form with the other tradition in folks like Elmo Hope and Barry Harris. And there … [Read more...]

Listen

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I rarely pass along promotional announcements, but this one is too intriguing not to deserve an exception. STANLEY CROUCH, GEORGE AVAKIAN AND MICHAEL JAMES WITH CHRISTOPHER LYDON TONIGHT AT 7 PM (EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME) TO DISCUSS DUKE ELLINGTON, NEWPORT JAZZ AND THE AMERICAN CENTURY On Open Source … [Read more...]

Bill Evans’s Birthday

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Bill Evans was born on this day in 1929. Gratitude for that gift to music is not merely in order, it is mandatory. Here is a little of what I wrote a decade ago in an essay for the CD box, Bill Evans: The Secret Sessions. The evolution of jazz music as a distinct form of creative expression is … [Read more...]