Mr. JazzWax, aka Marc Myers, tracked down the venerable baritone saxophonist Danny Bank, one of the few Charlie Parker sidemen still with us, to talk about Bird. Among Bank's anecdotes: "One morning, sometime in 1951, I think, I took out one of the Sonatas for Woodwind by Hindemith and used it to practice. That night, after I played on two or three recording dates that day, I went to Birdland to hear Charlie play. "As soon as he saw me come into the club, he started to pay the Hindemith Sonata I … [Read more...]
Archives for August 2007
The Arrival Of Poodie James
For a long time, the Doug's Books section on the right side of your screen ended with: His next book is a novel that has nothing to do with music. The section now begins (bells, whistles, horns, raucous whoops and shouts, please): Doug's most recent book is Poodie James, a novel published in 2007. The official publication was a few days ago. The book is now available. Preview readers have been extraordinarily kind. You can see some of their comments if you go to this page at the publisher's web … [Read more...]
Correspondence: A Hal McKusick Tip
Rifftides reader Wade Nelson of River Forest, Illinois, writes: After reading a piece about George Russell, I hauled out a 1957 LP by Hal McKusick called Jazz Workshop that I hadn't listened to in many years. Arrangements by Russell, Giuffre, Evans, Mandel, Albam and Cohn. Very fine music. I couldn't agree more. McKusick was in an elite cadre of musicians during a golden age of jazz in New York in the late 1950s and early '60s. He had a distinctive tone on alto saxophone and a personalized … [Read more...]
…Doug’s books
Doug's most recent book is a novel,Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion to Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental. … [Read more...]
New Picks
The Rifftides staff directs your attention to the right-hand column and the exhibit entitled Doug's Picks. All the picks are new. We invite your comments, as always. … [Read more...]
CD:Maria Schneider
Maria Schneider, Sky Blue (artistShare). As I wrote in a Rifftides review of the album, this CD is the finest expression of the composer's restless and evolving talent. She writes with an ear for the capabilities and personalities of the musicians in her band. They respond with improvisations that suit the character of her music. It's a perfect marriage of a writer's intentions and her players' ability to carry them out. … [Read more...]
CD: Jay Thomas, John Stowell
Jay Thomas-John Stowell Quartet, Streams of Consciousness(Pony Boy). Delightful, often profound, intimacies. Thomas on fluegelhorn and Stowell on guitar sometimes blend in ways reminiscent of the Art Farmer Quartet with Jim Hall. When Thomas switches to tenor saxophone, the music moves into Wayne Shorter territory. Those comparisons are unfair to the originality of both of these veteran players, but it's unlikely to be a coincidence that three of the tunes are by Shorter. Bassist Chuck Kistler … [Read more...]
CD: Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong
Bing Crosby & Louis Armstrong, Havin' Fun (Storyville). A two-CD set containing several of Crosby's radio shows from the late 1940s and early '50s with Armstrong as the guest, but not the only one. Jack Teagarden, Joe Venuti, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Shore show up, too. The album title, as Louis might say, ain't no stage joke, neither. They really do have fun, occasionally sending up the stilted lines the writers hand them and improvising their own. Great live radio of a kind long … [Read more...]
DVD: Miroslav Vitous
Miroslav Vitous, Live In Vienna (MVD Visual). Another in the series of bassists playing at Porgy & Bess in Vienna. This time the star is Vitous, an erstwhile wunderkind of the double bass who arrived in New York from Czechoslovakia in the late sixties and quickly installed himself in the US jazz scene. After concentrating on his role as an educator, he is again in heavy performance mode. In this concert, Vitous applies his formidable gifts to a range of music including Beethoven, Dvorak, Jewish … [Read more...]
Book: Lee Konitz
Andy Hamilton, Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (Michigan). Unlike the overwhelming majority of books made up of verbatim interviews, this one works. Konitz's disarming candor about himself and others and Hamilton's organizational and writing skills transcend the form to create a balanced portrait of the alto saxophonist, one of the great individualists in jazz. Hamilton's transitions, insights, and interviews about Konitz with other musicians help make the book a success. … [Read more...]
Herbie Hancock: Set Free
Labor Day Weekend's Detroit International Jazz Festival is looming, and Mark Stryker of the Detroit Free Press is profiling some of its headliners. In today's column, pianist Herbie Hancock tells Stryker about his early experience with Miles Davis. "After a couple of months of trying to play what I thought would please Miles, I said to myself, 'I've got to let this out.' "So the next gig, which I think was in Chicago, I just played what I really wanted, and if it clashed with something Miles … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Mingus
The Rifftides piece about Charles Mingus brought a response from pianist and composer Jill McManus in New York. Jill McManus I knew Mingus! I was introduced to him one night when I took my mother, in from England, to the old Half Note in the '70s. I seem to remember it was pouring. We were waiting in line, chilled and dripping, chatting with Rev John Gensel when Mingus plunged in, and John introduced us. Mingus was charming, looked at them, one on either side of me, smiled and said, "Hmm, good … [Read more...]
Weekend Extra: Louis Armstrong And Johnny Cash
Here's a video clip of an unlikely collaboration, complete with a little refresher course in jazz history. … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Max Roach
The Chicago pianist and self-described bon vivant Jeremy Kahn writes: I was lucky enough to have crossed paths with Max Roach on a couple of different occasions: Once was for a workshop of an Amiri Baraka play about Bumpy Johnson, the black gangster in the twenties. It was performed by NYU students, one of whom was Muhal Richard Abrams's daughter Richarda. The first time, though, was for 3 plays by Sam Shepard at LaMama for which Max was supplying the music. Permit me a middle-aged memory: When … [Read more...]
Things Mingus
2007 is turning out to be a bonanza year for a Charles Mingus sextet that existed for a few months forty-three years ago. All of the band's members are dead. Its music is gloriously alive. The high point so far is a remarkable two-CD set capturing a performance that might have been forgotten except for a lucky discovery. On a neglected shelf, Sue Mingus, indefatigable preserver of her husband's legacy, found tapes of a concert the sextet played at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in March … [Read more...]
Mingusing
Coming soon: meditations on Charles Mingus, who is proliferating posthumously this year. I had hoped to finish the piece tonight, but it is demanding more than I had intended to give it and night is rapidly heading toward morning. To borrow Dave Frishberg's line, I gotta get me some Zzzzs. Stay tuned. … [Read more...]
Two Bebop Pianists
Al Haig and Gene DiNovi came out of their teens into the excitement of bebop as the music was discovering itself in the early 1940s. They played piano with some of the most important musicians of the era, had periods of relative obscurity, then re-emerged -- Haig briefly. DiNovi is still enjoying a long second run and showing no signs of slowing. Al Haig Haig's first recording session, when he was twenty-one, was with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Curly Russell and Sid Catlett on the Guild … [Read more...]
Correspondence: On Harry James
Record producer, writer and all-'round musician Bill Kirchner writes: In 1995, I programmed and did the liner notes for Harry James: Verve Jazz Masters 55, a CD compilation of James' MGM recordings from 1959 to '64. These recordings are among James' best from a jazz standpoint; the CD is still available. My thanks to trumpeter/bandleader/historian Dean Pratt--much more of a James authority than I am--who hipped me to these recordings in 1993 when I was working on the Smithsonian Big Band … [Read more...]
Harry James
In case you've forgotten or never knew, Harry James was a terrific leader who had some great bands. If that seems obvious to you, then you are a better listener than many of the critics who knocked James for what they decided was showy trumpet playing without much musical merit. There are many recorded examples disproving that misperception and, it turns out, several pieces of video that also demonstrate the quality of his band. The Rifftides staff is grateful to the big band authority Bill … [Read more...]