Archives for 2007

There is a joke from a category of jazz humor labeled the chick singer file. I hasten to add that there are plenty of non-chick singers to whom the sentiment of the story applies.
A woman asks to sit in with a band. The leader suggests “My Funny Valentine.” She agrees, but confesses that she’s a bit unsure of the bridge.
“That’s okay,” the leader tells her. “You’ll be next to the bass player. He knows it. If you get hung up, just turn to him.”
She approaches a part of the song where she needs help and looks at the bassist. He whispers, “D-minor, C-7, B-7, B-flat major 7.”
The story typifies musicians’ wry amusement and frequent frustration inspired by people without musical knowledge who try to be “jazz singers.” They are especially taken with those who decide they can improvise with their voices in the way that, say, Charlie Parker improvised with his alto saxophone. In her wonderful blog, Carol Sloane writes about the time she was asked to teach at the New England Conservatory and ended up with a brood of would-be scat singers. Here’s an excerpt:

You should not attempt Advanced Calculus (scat singing) until a firm grasp of basic math (chord structure) is achieved. My students much preferred the bungee-jump thrill of diving into wordless versions of “Joy Spring” or “Ornithology”. Yes, I certainly understand the desire to explore improvisational jazz since so many singers with impeccable credentials express themselves in this manner, thereby suggesting to the not-so talented that this activity is easy and without peril. My argument is that scat singing is an acquired attribute developed and nurtured over time. Listening to some blatantly confident but thoroughly unskilled scat singing can be harmful to your health, or (if you’re lucky) hysterically funny.

To read the whole thing go to SloaneView.

It’s amazing; YouTube can cosponsor presidential debates and still find time to put new music on the internet. In the past few days, up popped two clips of vibraharpist Charlie Shoemake playing and his wife Sandi singing with the Bill Holman Orchestra.

Charlie Shoemake Bill Holman Sandi Shoemake
YouTube provides no information beyond the superimposed titles, so the Rifftides staff swung (heh-heh) into research mode. The video was taken in Los Angeles during the making of Charlie Shoemake’s 1991 CD, Strollin’, a fine entry in the discographies of the Shoemakes and Holman. Stan Levey, the late drummer turned photographer, produced and directed a videotape at a rehearsal for the recording session. It is the source of the YouTube clips. To see and hear the clips, go here and here. The tenor saxophone soloist on “I’ll Never Stop Loving You” is Pete Christlieb.
Alerting me to the clips, Charlie Shoemake reminded me that I wrote the album notes for Strollin’. I looked them up and, as Paul Desmond used to say, didn’t have to cough too often during the playback. Here is a paragraph about Shoemake the teacher.

Shoemake goes a long way toward putting to rest the popular notion that jazz can be learned but not taught. When he came off the road in 1973 after six years with George Shearing, he settled down in Los Angeles to teach. For hundreds of musicians, he has solved the puzzles of improvisation. His system includes study of the solos of, among others, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro and Hank Mobley. These were musicians for whom chords comprised territory to be won through exploration. Studying their solos does not mean memorizing notes in the light of the harmonic possibilities that led to their choice. It means learning to apply that knowledge at the speed of thought so that the student can make choices of notes and execute them with coherence on his instrument in improvised performance, often at rapid tempos while observing a time feeling that grows out of a communal pulse.

What’s more, he wrote a book about it.
On the CD and in the YouTube clips, Charlie Shoemake demonstrates that, sometimes, those who teach, can. And, as it says in those Strollin’ liner notes, Sandi Shoemake displays “her control, her intonation and the meaning she imparts to lyrics.” Holman reminds us, if a reminder is needed, that he is the eminence grise of modern arrangers, with a magnificent band that keeps helping him prove it. In addition to Christlieb, the 1991 version of the Holman band was loaded with stars including Lanny Morgan, Jeff Hamilton, Andy Martin, Bob Enevoldsen, Bob Summers and Carl Saunders.

No, that is not the name of an obscure Mississippi Delta blues man. It’s the title of my forthcoming novel, which has nothing to do with the Delta or the blues, except, perhaps, the kind we all have. A few Rifftides readers have expressed interest. On its web site, the publisher provides an excerpt and a few outside opinions. Please have a look.

In the right-hand column under Doug’s Picks, you will find new recommendations for your aural, visual and mental pleasure. Please use them responsibly.

When I arrived home after a post-concert hang late Saturday night, I found this message from a musician friend:

Has there ever been a better concert at the Seasons than the Ingrid Jensen one this evening?

No. I have attended most of the jazz and classical events at The Seasons in its nearly two years of operation. I have heard wonderful performances in that former church, with its dramatic domed space and nearly perfect acoustics, but none better than when Jensen, the gifted Canadian trumpeter, and pianist Benny Green got together in a one-off collaboration. Creative sparks flew.

Ingrid Jensen
Jensen’s quartet included drummer Jon Wikan, bassist Russ Botten of Vancouver British Columbia, and Green. They were headed to western Washington state to teach at the Centrum Port Townsend Jazz Workshop this week and perform at the festival there next weekend. A convenient gig on the way to Port Townsend, the stop at The Seasons in Yakima grew into a memorable evening. Before they were married a couple of years ago, Jensen and Wikan developed musical empathy. In their own groups, with the Maria Schneider Orchestra and with other bands, they have become one of New York’s most remarkable musical couples.

Saturday was one of those occasions when the combination of musicians, location, audience and circumstances elevated the proceedings. Jensen and Wikan had just come off vacation. They were relaxed and ready to play. Green is always ready to play. He was accomplished so young that he seems to have been around longer than his age makes possible, a phenomenon enhanced by his looking at least ten years younger than forty-four. The Seasons audience is chronically attentive and knowledgeable. How they got so hip in a small city in the middle of an agricultural area with no jazz history to speak of, I cannot tell you. They know what they’re hearing and react in the right places.

Saturday night, a bond quickly developed on stage and between the musicians and the listeners. In what was essentially an ad hoc group, harmonic and rhythmic extrasensory perception emerged with the first piece, a fast “If I Were a Bell.” Jensen’s abstraction of an arrangement encouraged chance-taking in a round of solos by all hands, ending in a spontaneous tag inspired by the fifty-year-old Red Garland ding-dong piano introduction to the Miles Davis recording of the song. When it ended, smiles decorated the bandstand. Then, through Freddie Hubbard’s “Up Jumped Spring” to the wildness of an impressionistic “Summer Night,” there was so much variety, so much inventiveness, that time flew. When it was over, I was surprised to discover that the concert had run a good half hour beyond its scheduled end.

Benny Green
It is impossible to analyze with accuracy what is responsible for a performance that rises above even the usual excellence of artists of the quality of Jensen, Green, Wikan and Botten. I have a notion that what fired it up in this instance was the depth and unusual makeup of Green’s accompanying chords in the first piece, and the way he applied them rhythmically. The harmonic changes in his comping stimulated Jensen to daring ideas that she incorporated in long, flowing melodic lines through the entire concert. The range and virtuosity of her trumpet and fluegelhorn playing are givens. What I am emphasizing is the lyric and melodic content of her improvisations. For a decade or more, I have listened to her develop as a soloist. This was, simply, the best I have ever heard her play. Green, at a nine-foot Steinway, matched Jensen’s brilliance. So did Wikan, in his ensemble work and in solo. This was my first opportunity to hear Botten at length. He does not engage in the fingerboard acrobatics that put many modern bassists into competition with guitarists. He plays good time and good notes, listens carefully to what his colleagues are doing, responds with appropriate support and improvises well when he is called upon to solo.

I steeled myself when Jensen bent down to set up an electronic loop device, but was relieved that she used it to enhance, not dominate, the music. She combined the looping echo and repetition overlays with a Harmon mute producing judicious wa-wa effects in “It Never Entered My Mind.” Her performance took on an endearingly–well, loopy–aspect, complete with an extended quote from “Petrouchka” as she wrapped up her stunning solo on “Summer Night.” I don’t know whether in a recording studio this group could capture the camaraderie, looseness and stimulation they found on Saturday night. I hope that they will give it a try.

In the meantime, Jensen and Wikan team with Ingrid’s saxophonist-composer sister Christine, the Swedish pianist and composer Maggi Olin and bassist Mattias Welin in the new CD Flurry. The group is called Nordic Connect. The CD is full of what Ingrid Jensen in the liner notes calls “happy-sad” music. Christine Jensen’s piece “Garden Hour” is a highlight in an album that is at once stimulating and peaceful.

Benny Green’s album Bluebird places him in a duo setting with a frequent partner, the guitarist Russell Malone. They support and energize one another in a fiesta of harmonic and rhythmic ingenuity. The fun is infectious.

For two years, the Doug’s Books section of the right-hand column has ended with this forecast:

His next book is a novel that has almost nothing to do with music.

That is about to change. The target date for publication is next month. Am I relieved, breathing easier? Yes. Am I excited? You bet. Please stay tuned.

Singular They
By way of suggesting that I was misguided when I railed against the use of “they” with singular antecedents, Rifftides reader David Seidman directed me to a web log called Language Log. Language Log summons up the Bible and Shakespeare to make the case that “everyone” and “themselves” are good partners, and concludes, alliteratively:

This use of “they” isn’t ungrammatical, it isn’t a mistake, it’s a feature of ordinary English syntax that for some reason attracts the ire of particularly puristic pusillanimous pontificators, and we don’t buy what they’re selling.

If this argument interests you, here is Mr. Seidman’s communique, complete with links to Language Log entries on the matter and, for dessert, to an essay on Ray Charles and a language choice he made in a performance of one of his most famous specialties.

A covey of professors of linguistics operates a blog called Language Log. One of the professors wrote, some time ago, “Singular they, as we’ve repeated at tiresome length, has been sanctioned for centuries by the usage of esteemed writers, though it’s deprecated by some.” These blog posts cover singular they in the Bible and in Shakespeare, as well as some other things:
Some of the same material is covered in the Wikipedia article Singular They — Wikipedia notes the content is disputed (and the full notes on the disputes seem to be available).
While at Language Log (which I read regularly, perhaps less because I am interested in language than because the writers write well, interestingly, and often very amusingly), you might want to take a look at this entry, which has nothing to do with the singular they. It is an appreciation of Ray Charles’s magnificence, combined with an analysis of a linguistic error in his recording of “America the Beautiful” — the analysis includes a highly plausible discussion of the likely reasons why Charles made the error.
David Seidman

As for the Rifftides staff, it invites, or they invite, further discussion. Just click on the “Comments” link at the bottom of this item.
Have a linguistically satisfying weekend.

Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. –Kurt Vonnegut Jr
One should not be too severe on English novels; they are the only relaxation of the intellectually unemployed. –Oscar Wilde

Rifftides reader Marc Myers writes:

Among the most underrated and barely celebrated pianists from the 1950s has to be Lorraine Geller, the late wife of alto saxophonist Herb Geller, who today lives in Germany. Stylistically, Lorraine was a funky bop cross between Bud Powell and Horace Silver. She can be heard playing with Herb on a number of solid Emarcy LPs from the mid-50s, including Herb Geller Plays and the stunning The Gellers. Just listen to “Araphoe” from The Gellers, which is set to Cherokee changes–or the loping “Two of a Kind.”

No mouse, Lorraine was always in full command. She also can be heard on
Miles Davis and The Lighthouse All-Stars and was a sidewoman on many notable West Coast 1950s dates. Some of her solo efforts are captured on the import, Lorraine Geller at the Piano. But my favorites feature Lorraine playing in Maynard Ferguson’s Dimensions and Around the Horn big bands of 1955-56. Perhaps her high point was her vamping front and center on Bill Holman’s “Dancing Nitely,” which builds steadily and showcases Lorraine’s signature touch throughout. And dig her on Holman’s “Wildman.” The Ferguson sessions can be found on Jazz Masters 52. Lorraine died of a heart ailment shortly after her 30th birthday in October 1958. Sadly, she’s all but forgotten today. Here’s to Lorraine Geller!

Thanks to Mr. Myers for those leads to the work of a pianist who deserves the attention–and more. She came in for mention in this Rifftides item from April, 2006. While we’re visiting the past, we may as well replay the Doug’s Picks that occasioned that piece.
Herb Geller Plays the Arthur Schwartz Songbook (Hep). The enduring, and enduringly inventive, alto and soprano saxophonist visits seventeen songs by the unclassifiable composer of whom Alec Wilder said, “quality was his style.” Melody was his style, too. Schwartz wrote songs that brighten the atmosphere of American life; “Dancing in the Dark,” “You and the Night and the Music,” “Gal in Calico,” “A Shine on My Shoes,” “Alone Together” and the others addressed by Geller and an excellent rhythm section of Britons barely known outside the UK. As tough-minded and disciplined as musicians come, Geller reaches deeply into these songs to extract beauty and joy. The Schwartz pieces bring out the romantic aspect of his nature and–I rather imagine–of the listeners’. In Geller’s hands, “That’s Entertainment,” the album closer, is a smile-inducing bebop romp.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Brotherman in the Fatherland (Hyena). Kirk died in 1977, but Hyena’s Joel Dorn keeps finding music by the astonishing multi-instrumentalist that is worth issuing. In this case, it comes from a 1972 date at the Funkhaus in Hamburg, Germany. The album finds Kirk fully armed with tenor saxophone, flute, nose flute, manzello, stritch, clarinet and siren. Now and then, he plays three of the horns at once. Early in his career, he was accused of using that capability as a gimmick. But Kirk’s real gimmicks, if you care to think of them that way, were his deep musicianship and his massive, unending, energy. He unleashes both in a breathtaking seventeen-and-a-half-minute examination of the blues on John Coltrane’s “Blue Trane.” I would call it the highlight of the CD, except for Kirk’s live cross-fade from a gloriously unadorned “Lush Life” on tenor sax to manzello and the Latin urgencies of “Afro Blue.” This is exciting stuff.

In the steady dumbing-down of the English language, there is little dumber than the convoluting fandango that began about twenty years ago to achieve political correctness by avoiding gender. Today’s Wall Street Journal story about efforts to protect the pre-publication sanctity of the new Harry Potter book quotes Potter’s inventor, J.K. Rowling:

I’d like to ask everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan to help preserve the secrecy of the plot for all those who are looking forward to reading the book at the same time on publication day.

“…everyone who calls themselves a Potter fan…”
It shouldn’t be too difficult for a professional writer to figure out ways of avoiding singular-plural disagreement. How about, “…people who call themselves Potter fans…” or “…those who call themselves Potter fans…” Ms. Rowling could work around the generic “himself” by using “herself.” That’s not an ideal solution, but it doesn’t make my teeth hurt. Perhaps it is inevitable that “they” will replace “him” and “her” in the English language, but I’m not going to let it happen without a fight.
What kind of sentence is this?

President Bush saying we’ll have to wait for General Petraeus’s report.

It is not a sentence. Nor is:

Officials telling Fox News the fire is eighty-seven percent contained.

Fox News and, I regret to report, established news organizations that don’t use the slogan “fair and balanced” have adopted this imbecilic way of writing and talking, evidently in the interest of imparting a sense of urgency and immediacy to the news. If you haven’t noticed, the news these days is urgent and immediate all by itself. It doesn’t need hypeing at the expense of further deterioration of English usage.
Children may be listening. We wouldn’t want them to think that’s how to speak. People who know good English may be listening. We wouldn’t want them to suffer apoplexy.

He has been gone for fifteen years, but interest in the American Indian tenor saxophonist Jim Pepper seems to be building. Pepper’s music, full of vigor and allusions to his cultural background, has received attention akin to cultism in parts of Europe and seems headed toward at least a modest revival in the US. (See this January Rifftides piece.) In Portland, Oregon, Pepper’s home town, the journalist and historian Jack Berry produced for Oregon Public Broadcasting a mini-documentary about Pepper and wrote an article for the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society. Here is a section of the article.

During the 1970s, at the height of the Black Power movement, a phenomenon called Crow Jim materialized. Some major black jazz musicians began insisting on an exclusive franchise; only African Americans could authentically perform the music. Pepper, who played with more white than black musicians, opposed Crow Jim, but he was also spared most of its consequences and was rarely spurned by black musicians. (Pepper’s mother Floy recalls saying at the moment of his birth: “How light is he? If he’s white, dip him in some chocolate. I want an Indian baby.”)
In the early 1980s, we worked for a time on a writing project. It was intended to show how the musical connection between, in his words, “the skins and the brothers” reflected a larger and neglected story, the way Africans and Native Americans collaborated to survive in racist America.
His singularity as a performer was the merging of two very different musical idioms, jazz and traditional Indian song. This made him difficult to categorize, one reason his recorded music is so difficult to find. It is probably more accurate to say that he played the two idioms side by side. The Indian songs are almost purely melodic, uncomplicated by the harmonic density of jazz. Most of the Indian songs come from tribes of the Southwest, where Pepper spent summers during his youth. He is better known by American Indians in that part of the country than he is to members of tribes in his native Northwest.

Apropriately for a historic journal, Berry’s article concentrates on Pepper’s ancestry and heritage, but it also has insights into his music. To read it, go here.
As for Berry’s film for Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Art Beat, it has shown up in two parts on YouTube. Its historical sequences include Pepper playing his most famous composition, “Witchi-Tai-To.” At the end of Part 2, host KC Cowan interviews Berry about Pepper and a proposed festival devoted to Pepper’s music. “The Pepper music just keeps rollin’ along,” he says. To see the film, go here…and here.

The artsjournal.com family of blogs becomes richer by one today. Howard Mandel (accent on the first syllable) debuts his Jazz Beyond Jazz with a manifesto that begins:

What if there’s more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz – and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz – could enrich your life?
What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, soulful, substantive guide to successful navigation of today’s big and little challenges?

He has other questions:

Like — if it’s so popular, why ain’t jazz rich? And how popular is it, anyway? What’s behind the imminent demise (or will it be another reorganization?) of the Jazz Alliance International, a basically bankrupt lobbying group established to function on the model of the far better positioned Country Music Foundation? Is it true Jazz at Lincoln Center loses money every time it has a show at 1000-seat Rose Hall, even if all tix sell out?

Howard has been around jazz a long time as a writer, producer, teacher and–for the past several years–as president of the Jazz Journalists Association. He is an insider. I look forward to his answers.
Welcome aboard, Howard. The more smart bloggers, the merrier–and the better informed we will all be.

John Coltrane
Not long after John Coltrane died forty years ago this week, Cannonball Adderley was the guest on Jazz Review, a radio program I did in New Orleans. He and Coltrane had forged a bond in the late 1950s as members of the Miles Davis Sextet. I wrote about their relationsip in a profile of Adderley in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers:

With Davis, Adderley began to alter his conception. Miles often leads in strange and reticent ways. But he was never reluctant to tell his sidemen when he didn’t like their playing. He told Cannonball he played too many notes, that when a note is played it should mean something. And Cannon, ever open, curious, receptive, listened more and more carefully to Davis’s playing and to his criticisms. Miles’s economy and his harmonic subtlety began to make themselves known in Adderley’s playing. After John Coltrane was added to the band, Cannon’s harmonic development accelerated through exposure to one of the most restlessly creative soloists in the history of jazz. The saxophonists rubbed together and threw off sparks. For a stunning instance of the way Coltrane infuenced Adderely, consult their solos on “Two Bass Hit” (Columbia) .
By the time of the epochal Kind of Blue session in 1959, the innocence in Julian’s solos had not been deflowered, but it had been tempered with deep insights into the possibilities of chords, with the wisdom that leads to a realization that one note can simultaneously serve more than one chord, with the knowledge that a pause may make a point more effectively than a trill. Cannonball became a more conservative player in the sense that he learned to hold something in reserve, but a more daring one in his harmonic aspects.
Cannonball told me on the air, “It’s still very hard for me to talk about him, except to say I learned more from him than from anybody.”

I remember waiting that night in 1967 for Adderley to say more about Coltrane, but he swallowed hard and waved me off. I introduced a piece of music. While it played, he told me that when it was over, he’d rather talk about something else, it was too soon to talk about John.
Unlike Cannonball and Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Coltrane were not student and teacher, but equals. They shared Miles Davis in their backgrounds, but their approaches to improvisation were independent of one another, distinctive saxophone offshoots of a common source, Charlie Parker. In Like Sonny, a short film he put up on the Rollins web site yesterday, journalist Bret Primack explores the relationship between the two men. Rollins appraises Coltrane’s importance, and there are insights from saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Paul Jeffrey. The mini-documentary includes footage of Coltrane and Rollins playing–not together–and audio of Coltrane talking about Rollins. To view it, go here and marvel that four decades following his death, Coltrane’s presence in music is as powerful as that of his old friend who plays on.

From San Francisco comes word that Earl Watkins died early this month at the age of eighty-seven. Elegant, softspoken and full of knowledge, Watkins was a key figure in Bay Area jazz as a drummer and a historian of the music. He played with bands as varied as Bob Scobey’s traditional revival outfit at the Tin Angel and Earl “Fathah” Hines’ at the Hangover Club. He was the first drummer hired at Jimbo’s Bop City when that celebrated after hours club opened in 1950. He worked steadily until bad health sidelined him last fall, and he was a mentor to generations of young musicians.
Watkins spent most of his life in the Bay Area, but in the mid-forties played for a time in the Los Angeles big band of pianist Wilbert Baranco, a friend from his days as a World War Two US Navy musician. Another member of the rhythm section was bassist Charles Mingus. The band included Snooky Young, Melba Liston, Lucky Thompson and Britt Woodman. Watkins is with the Baranco band on four tracks of the CD Groovin’ High in L.A. 1946. He recorded at the Hangover Club in 1957 and ’58 with the Hines band, which had Muggsy Spanier, Darnell Howard, Jimmy Archey and Pops Foster. Some issues of the Hines-Spanier recording are subtitled, “The Chicago Dates,” but as Jepsen’s discography delicately puts it, “the above details are believed to be more correct.”
Mr. Watkins enriched my research when I was working on Paul Desmond’s biography. His generosity with his expertise about the San Francisco jazz scene of the forties and early fifties was invaluable. Earl was good company. I shall miss him.