Archives for April 2007

Rifftides reader Bruce Tater came across a classic Warner Bros. cartoon from the Looney Tunes series. He called our attention to Three Little Bops, a perfectly preserved piece of 1950s hipness. Stan Freeburg is the narrator. Shorty Rogers did the music. Notice the stylized drawings of the nightclub audience. Don't miss Shorty's little sui generis muted solo near the end. Here's the link. … [Read more...]

Jessica Williams linked readers of her blog to the Before & After test she allowed me to give her for the current issue of Jazz Times. In the test, she reacted to recordings by ten pianists. To read some of the comments she received, go to Currents and scroll down. Oddly, Rifftides has received no reaction to the article despite Ms. Williams' unreserved assessments. … [Read more...]

National Public Radio's Weekend Edition Saturday included a report by Howard Mandel on Sonny Rollins, who recently founded his own record label, Doxy. In a sound bite, Rollins asked Mandel not to identify him as a corporate executive of a record company. "Don't do that to me man," he laughed as he pleaded with Mandel. "No, I don't want to screw anybody." Then he talked about the contradiction between corporate thinking and jazz thinking. The corporate culture is anathema to jazz. We don't like … [Read more...]

The past couple of days I have been listening to two CDs containing fresh old music and enjoying it as much as if hearing it for the first time. LaFaro Scott LaFaro had a rich musical life before he joined the Bill Evans Trio in 1959 and helped change the role of the bass in interactive improvisation. In 1957 when he was twenty-one, LaFaro was playing in Chicago with Pat Moran, a young pianist from Oklahoma who had studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory and been infuenced by Bud Powell and … [Read more...]

There will be a concert this weekend in Washington, DC, honoring Willis Conover, the Voice of America jazz broadcaster who was one of the most effective public diplomats in US history. The nation he served did little while he was alive to recognize his contributions and since he died in 1996 has done less. Efforts to persuade President Clinton, then President Bush, to award him a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom have gone nowhere. To read a Rifftides posting about Conover, go here. You … [Read more...]

During a 2005 trip to New York to promote Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, one of my rewarding encounters was with the longtime broadcast journalist Bill Vitka. After we talked about Desmond for CBS Radio News, Vitka mentioned that he had recently interviewed Kurt Vonnegut. He said Vonnegut told him that Desmond was his favorite musician. Back home, I arranged for Vonnegut to be sent a copy of the book. Vitka and I planned to get together with the great writer on a later … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Jon Foley recommends a YouTube clip of the Dave Brubeck Quartet with the comment, "They were in a good mood that night!" They sure were. I thought that we had linked to this performance before, but I can find no trace of it in the archive. The clip isn't dated, but it is amost certainly from the quartet's 25th anniversary reunion tour in 1976. The piece is "Three To Get Ready." I have no idea what set off the merriment, but the silliness was contagious and brought out Brubeck's … [Read more...]

If you are new to Blogville and wonder what those underlined words in blue are all about, you should know that they are links. When you click on a link, you are spirited away from Rifftides to another place on the internet that amplifies, explains or demonstrates the linked term. Happily for Rifftides, all you have to do is close out of the linked site to get back to home base. Perhaps you'd like to try it. Click on this link. You will be rewarded. (Pause) Welcome back. That was Louis Armstrong … [Read more...]

From time to time, Rifftides Washington, DC correspondent John Birchard reports on musical events in the US Capital City. NO STEREOTYPES, PLEASE The Smithsonian Jazz Café hosted a 70th birthday celebration for guitarist Gene Bertoncini on Friday, April 20th. What words come to mind when you think of Bertoncini? Taste, quiet beauty, delicacy? All true. But it was a different Gene Bertoncini on display Friday night. The Café was packed and LOUD. The place attracts a blend of true jazz fans, … [Read more...]

The British musician Graham Collier is an astute observer and a good writer. (Rifftides recently reviewed one of his early recordings.) In the current entry on his web site, Collier comments favorably on artsjournal.com blogger Terry Teachout's review in Commentary of Alyn Shipton's massive A New History of Jazz. Unfortunately Teachout's review is available on line only to Commentary subscribers. Part of it is quoted later in this posting. Collier questioned TT's observation that "it is by no … [Read more...]

Just in case you have lost track of the famous white plastic Grafton alto saxophone that Charlie Parker played for a time, here's a reminder. The horn, actually cream-colored and made of acrylic, was among items sold at Christie's in London when the Chan Parker Collection was auctioned in 1994. Chan, never legally Parker's wife, was the mother of two of his children and inherited most of his possessions when he died in March, 1955. As part of the pre-bidding activity, alto saxophonist Peter King … [Read more...]

It was the kind of success that resists analysis, but it undoubtedly involved the contrast presented by (Dave) Brubeck and (Paul) Desmond, the pianist openly touching on the pensive, the boisterous, and the bombastic, the saxophonist a self-effacing master of a coolly detached, liquid lyricism. --Stuart Broomer, pianist and critic, Amazon.com review The word bombastic keeps coming up, as if it were some trap I keep falling into. Damn it, when I'm bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be … [Read more...]

Regarding the poll described in this item, a singer who requests anonymity for reasons of "career protection and seemliness" writes: Your Jamie Cullum piece is spot-on, but it is worth noting that, unlike those many jazz singers who self-produce, Cullum is on a prominent European label (and a label with the savvy to rig polling). There are plenty of singers out there on labels who are just plain awful. I'm sure the need to attract the interest of label execs does help to filter out many of the … [Read more...]

Carol Sloane has joined the ranks of bloggers, telling stories accumulated during her career as one of the best singers on earth. Her first entry has an introduction and a gripping story about the time she went to prison. I look forward to regularly reading SloaneView.I have added it to the links in Other Places in the right-hand column. … [Read more...]

A new jazz radio station in England, theJazz, recently conducted a poll of its listeners to determine--as they put it--the "best ever jazz record." This was the result, as reported on the BBC web site. TOP TEN 1. Miles Davis - So What 2. Dave Brubeck - Take Five 3. Louis Armstrong - West End Blues 4. John Coltrane - A Love Supreme 5. Miles Davis - All Blues 6. John Coltrane - My Favourite Things 7. Weather Report - Birdland 8. Jamie Cullum - Twentysomething 9. Duke Ellington - Take The 'A' … [Read more...]

The traditional record industry is imploding. It is impossible to say what will emerge from the turbulence. Some analysts of the music business are predicting that the compact disc will quickly go the way of the LP, the cassette, the eight-track tape, the 45, the 78 and the cylinder. They say it's going to be an iPod world, an MP3 world. How long will technology allow those new means of music delivery to survive? Are you ready for a digital implant in your brain? In the meantime, CDs … [Read more...]

Responding to the Rifftides review of the Cannonball Adderley CD in the current batch of Doug's Picks, its producer writes: A somewhat important point needs to be made about the current ownership of a significant, if relatively small, segment of the records produced by Orrin Keepnews. I'm in a pretty good position to know about his work, since that's who I am. From 1953 to until the end of '63, Bill Grauer and I were Riverside Records. I produced records; Grauer handled business matters. Then … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Eric R. Quick writes from Gaithersburg, Maryland about one of the CDs reviewed in this recent posting and about the valuable collection of which it is a part: With regard to Red's Good Groove - you say get it while you can (I already have the CD) Will the OJC catalog (or much of it) be deleted by its current owners? What is the word? Should I be purchasing all those discs I have never gotten around to buying? I passed along Mr. Quick's question to Nick Phillips of Concord … [Read more...]

After reading the Rifftides remembrance of Tony Scott, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells sent a message from Stockholm. Mr. Wells discusses a facet of Scott's musical life about which few people may have known. I'm a bass player. I played with Tony in Germany in the mid-seventies and then in the US in the early 80s. There are two reasons i feel compelled to leave a comment here. The first is, Tony's graduation didn't cause me to remember him again. I never forgot him. During the last couple of years, i … [Read more...]

Bobby Broom, Song And Dance (Origin). Accompanied by bass and drums, the Sonny Rollins and Dr. John guitarist plays a relaxed program of his compositions and others by Schwartz & Dietz, The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Webb. A highlight: Broom's harmonic adventuring in an extended cadenza in "Good Old Days," the Little Rascals theme. Frank Foster Loud Minority Band, Well Water (Piadrum). There is more than curiosity value in this session that went three decades between recording and … [Read more...]

In an attempt to keep my head above the rising tide of incoming CDs, in the next few posts I will offer impressions of a few recent arrivals. Not all recent arrivals are new. Graham Collier's Deep Dark Blue Centre (disconforme) has been around for forty years, but it is as fresh as last week. A bassist, composer, arranger and leader, Collier made British jazz more interesting in the 1960s and has helped to keep it that way. The album title is part of what Hoagy Carmichael is said to have … [Read more...]

The May issue of Jazz Times has a Before & After listening test to which the pianist Jessica Williams subjected herself at my request. She was forthright, smart and funny in her comments on ten recordings. This is some of what she said about Fats Waller's "Smashing Thirds," recorded in 1929. It's together; it swings. It reached a crescendo, a pinnacle. Then it switched gears unexpectedly and came home and resolved itself. It had humor, drama, amazing technique. It's a great piece of art. This is … [Read more...]

The Rifftides staff offers a belated welcome to Larry Blumenfeld, a new artsjournal.com blogger who recently launched Listen Good: Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and other sounds. Blumenfeld, a New Yorker, has established a three-months residency in New Orleans. He is covering efforts of the jazz community--and the city at large--to make a comeback in the face of daunting odds dealt more by man than by nature. Anyone in New Orleans will offer stern correction should you refer to Katrina as a … [Read more...]

It was not my intention today to serve as a referral service to other peoples' work, but the two blogs mentioned in the above item deserved referral. The next recommendation demands it. Gene Weingarten wrote the story for last Sunday's Washington Post. It is about the classical violinist Joshua Bell playing for tips in the Metro, Washington DC's subway. It is about much more. It is about us, what is important to us and what we make time for in the United States in 2007. The story is long. It … [Read more...]

Thanks to Rifftides reader Jon Foley for alerting us, in the wake of Tony Scott's death, to what is evidently the colorful clarinetist's final recording. Information about Scott's CD/DVD is at this web site. Scroll down and if you wait for a video sample to load--slowly--you will be able to view a portion of the DVD. … [Read more...]

Porno spammers continue to invade the Rifftides comments sector. You don't don't see what they send. Nor will you. The staff is redoubling efforts to combat the flood and taking additional steps to segregate the slime from your comments. There is evidence that some legitimate comments have been squeezed out, but we think we have corrected that problem. If you have sent comments and had no response, please send them again. The Rifftides staff is interested in your information and opinions. A … [Read more...]