Archives for September 2008

Following a brief Rifftides review of the CD reissue of two of Bob Brookmeyer’s 1954 quartet recordings, Bill Kirchner wrote to recommend Back Again. It is a Brookmeyer quintet album that I didn’t know existed. I acquired it quickly and have been listening to it with interest and pleasure over the past two or three weeks.

Back Again has the valve trombonist in 1978 with cornetist Thad Jones, pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassist George Mraz and drummer Mel Lewis. Jones and Lewis, of course, were co-leaders of the magnificent orchestra that bore their names. Brookmeyer had been a major
soloist in that band and wrote some of its most memorable arrangements. Mraz was the Jones-Lewis bassist from 1972 to 1976 and was now working around New York with Rowles. One of the most unclichéd pianists in jazz, Rowles’ history with Brookmeyer went back to the trombonist’s first L.A. tour of duty, when they and bassist Buddy Clark recorded two classic albums in 1953 and 1960. Now, in ’78, Brookmeyer had returned to New York from a second west coast stay that he found uninspiring. He was happy (see the cover shot) to be back and in a studio with this congenial group, recording for the Swedish label Sonet.

With their mutual depth of harmonic understanding and willingness to let whimsy lead them where it might, Brookmeyer and Jones made a two-horn front line loaded for beauty and surprise. Playing off one another in “Sweet and Lovely,” they give us both. Brookmeyer the melody maker opens the improvisation with a delicious phrase any composer would be proud to have written. The lunging West Indian feeling of “Carib” sets up two choruses of counterpoint between the horns that approaches downright abandon. There is a lot to like here, not least Brookmeyer’s through-improvised solo — if that’s the term — on “Willow Weep for Me,” on which he wrote a deathless orchestration in 1966 for the Jones-Lewis orchestra. Here, he invents one slow chorus of pure, original, melody that is itself worthy of orchestration.

“In a Rotten Mood” belies its title with chorus after chorus of assertive, good-natured vigor in a fast B-flat blues with altered changes. It has a slot for unaccompanied Rowles holding no finger in reserve, splendid soloing by Mraz, and more of that free-spirited counterpoint. The other tunes are “Caravan,” “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” (more mutual commentary by Brookmeyer and Jones) and two takes of “I Love You;” standard material, extraordinary results. Throughout, Lewis sustains his reputation for perfect time and perfect adaptation to every subtle change in flow of ensemble and soloist. Rowles is, simply, Rowles; unimitative and inimitable, one of the great originals.

During this period, Brookmeyer had not yet moved past his penchant for half-valve phrases, growls, slurs and exclamatory, explosive, glissandos in both directions. His playing in those days often achieved the approximation or intimation of human speech that a few master horn players — also including Pee Wee Russell, Eric Dolphy, Lawrence Brown, Clark Terry and Bill Harris — made such endearing parts of their styles. I love the way Brookmeyer plays today, but that was a special time in his development.

I bought the Back Again CD from an online company in Canada that now says it is sold out will not have more copies. But don’t give up. This outfit announces that it will have Back Again back again on September 23 at a sale price. Who knows for how long?

The publisher of Poodie James has reduced the price of my novel. My slight loss in royalties is your gain. Ordering direct from the publisher benefits everyone on the writing and production end.

From a review:

I’ll cut to the chase: Poodie James is a very good book. Not only is it handsomely and lyrically written, but Ramsey’s snapshots of small-town life circa 1948 are altogether convincing, and he has even brought off the immensely difficult trick of worming his way into the consciousness of a deaf person without betraying the slightest sense of strain… Ramsey is no less adept at sketching the constant tension between tolerance and suspicion that is part and parcel of the communal life of every small town. — Terry Teachout, Commentary

With esteem for the United States at a low ebb around the world, the government continues to dismantle the Voice Of America, for more than half a century one of the nation’s most effective creators of good will abroad. The Washington Post reports on the latest VOA service to be stilled by the Bush administration:

NEW DELHI — At the height of the Cold War, as India leaned resolutely toward the Soviet Union, one direct line of communication remained open from Washington to India’s teeming millions: Voice of America, the U.S. government’s radio network. Rangisah Prasad, 70, recalls the days when there was just one radio set in his village, and Voice of America’s Hindi-language broadcasts provided an escape from the dull drone of India’s state-controlled radio news.

The Cold War is over, but Prasad’s devotion to VOA lives on. “I have been hearing this station for 40 years now. Their tone was always friendly and informal. People gathered around the radio in the village square and listened to Voice of America,” Prasad said in a telephone interview from Dumarsan village in the Indian state of Bihar. “We understood the world through their programs.”

But in a move that reflects shifts in U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors has decided that VOA’s seven-hour Hindi-language radio service will end this month, after 53 years. VOA will also eliminate radio broadcasts in three Eastern European languages. Radio broadcasts in Russian went off the air in July.

To read all of the Post story, go here. The administration’s relentless disassembling of one of the most effective and cost-efficient US tools of cultural diplomacy seems to have gone unnoticed by either presidential campaign. The candidates should be asked what they would do to revive the VOA. The Rifftides staff’s concern with this matter goes back a long way. The lack of public concern disturbs me.It should disturb all Americans, and those in other countries who wish us well.

On Jazz Wax, Marc Myers’s marathon interview with tenor saxophonist, arranger and composer Benny Golson (pictured) started running on September 8 and winds up today. If you are put off by transcribed verbatim interviews, never fear. Myers edits with care, provides appropriate web links and illustrates his pieces lavishly, sometimes to a fault (Golson says — tongue in cheek, I hope– “As the future crouches beneath my window waiting unashamedly to reveal itself…” and Myers shows you a dreamscape of a sky — tongue in cheek, I hope).

Golson on how Art Blakey let him know he wasn’t playing forcefully enough:

One night, instead of playing a press roll for two bars before we came into the new chorus, he started that press roll eight bars early. He was so loud I thought he had lost his senses. When he came down for the new chorus, every two or three beats he’d hit a loud crash. I said to myself, “What is wrong with this guy?” I still didn’t get it. Finally, he hollered over at me, “Get up out of that hole!” I said to myself, “Man, I guess I am in a hole. Nobody can hear me.” So I started playing harder and with more bite.

To read the five-part interview, go here, then scroll down to part 1 and work your way back up.

But first, you may wish to refamiliarize yourself with Golson’s work. Here, he leads a band with Curtis Fuller, trombone; Teramasu Hino, trumpet; Mulgrew Miller, piano; Ron Carter, bass; and Billy Higgins, drums. The piece is one of Golson’s most famous, “Blues After Dark.”

The September Jazz Times has my rather long review of Mosaic’s box of Lionel Hampton’s small-band recordings from the late 1930s and early forties. The five CDs contain a sizeable percentage of the best combo music of the period. From the review:

RCA Victor’s formula was simple: put the exciting young vibraphonist, drummer and two-finger piano player Lionel Hampton in a studio with various combinations of his peers and see what happens. With a few exceptions, these were lightly organized jam sessions. Accordingly, the music varies in quality, but many of the 107 tracks represent the swing era at its artistic zenith. Hampton’s collaborators came from the bands of Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Luis Russell, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller and Earl Hines, giving him the cream of the period’s soloists and rhythm players.

And…

Often on autopilot and in full bombast, Hampton was always propulsive. When he was in the mood and in the right company, he could also be lyrical and sensitive with dynamics and harmonies. He was in the right company late in 1939 in a session with Carter on trumpet, Coleman Hawkins on tenor, clarinetist Edmond Hall and a stimulating rhythm section of pianist Joe Sullivan, guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Artie Bernstein and drummer Zutty Singleton. Hampton is particularly effective in “Dinah,” but Hawkins steals the date with the magnificence of his playing on that tune, “My Buddy” and “Singin’ the Blues.”

To read the whole thing, go here.  

Hampton wanted to put Quincy Jones in his trumpet section after he heard him in Seattle when Jones was fifteen. Mrs. Hampton overruled her husband and insisted that the boy finish
high school. Jones did, and was studying at the Schillinger School of music in Boston when Hampton renewed the offer. That was the end of school and the beginning of Jones’s career as trumpeter, arranger, composer, leader, producer and the winner of more Grammy awards (27) than anyone but Sir George Solti (31). Paul deBarros recently published a profile of Jones in The Seattle Times. It covers Jones’s life from before his formative days at Seattle’s Garfield High School to the present.

When the new freshman class enters a new Garfield in a few days, it’s likely many will not know the school was named for an American president. But most will have heard of Quincy Jones. That’s because, again and again, he has adapted to current musical trends. Starting out with Hampton’s jazz, he moved easily through the jazz/rock fusion of “Walking in Space,” the ’70s funk of the Brothers Johnson, the crossover rock of Jackson’s “Thriller” (which merged black and white traditions in an unprecedented way), then went on to hip-hop with “Back on the Block.”

Some jazz musicians view Jones as an opportunist who deserted the art of jazz for the commerce of pop. But as many others have noted, Jones’ creative vision makes moot most arguments about jumping musical fences. In 1973, when funk was king, he coproduced the TV show “Duke Ellington, We Love You Madly.” Quincy says Ellington himself told him after the show, “Q, you may be the one to decategorize American music.”

To read all of deBarros’s article, go here.

Here is a sample of the magnificent 1960 Quincy Jones big band playing “Rack ’em Up,” with tenor saxophonists Jerome Richardson and Budd Johnson out front.

Those unfamiliar with The Wall Street Journal, might be surprised to learn of its cultural component. The newspaper’s Personal Journal section has frequent profiles, reviews and backgrounders involving painting, sculpture, architecture, literature, dance–the whole range of
cultural interests. The most recent piece of particular interest to jazz listeners is Tom Nolan’s update on Orrin Keepnews, the 85-year-old co-founder of Riverside Records and indefatigable producer of reissues of a wide range of recordings, including many of his own productions. From the article, here is some of what Keepnews has to say about the economics of independent jazz recording in the 1950s, with Riverside as the case in point.

 

Much of the label’s development reflected the improvisatory nature of the music it documented, Mr. Keepnews says, at a time when audio tape and the long-playing record were changing producing in radical ways. “Nobody was an expert at what it was we were fumbling around trying to do,” Mr. Keepnews says, “because the whole basic technique was brand-new.”

One of the key elements in the development of Riverside and other independent labels, Mr. Keepnews says, was the “postwar deflationary period”: “At that point, union-scale pay for a sideman for a three-hour session was $41.25; double that for the leader. Among other things, you could do a trio album for a total musician cost of, in round numbers, $250. That is probably the most important factor in the growth of independent jazz labels — and why, as it turned out, the “50s was such a golden age for recorded jazz, I think.”

The on line version of the story has links to clips from important recordings. To read the whole thing, which includes some of Keepnews’s thoughts about Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley, go here.

As I set out for a bicycle ride, this is what I saw across a corner of the garden. It was a good way to start the day.

The Portland PDX Jazz Festival is thriving. The main message of the 2008 post below is drastically out of date. The Portland community came to the festival’s rescue in 2009 and it has been doing fine ever since. For the 2017 schedule, go here.  I kind of like the Bill Frisell review in this old post, but please ignore the lead paragraph and those following it.

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The Portland Jazz Festival is no more. Word went out that next year’s edition has been scrubbed and the festival will not be revived. Here is part of the official announcement.

Operations and planning for the 2009 February event could not continue because of a decline in funding and sponsorship support. Shortfalls accumulated to a total need of over $100,000 that could not be met by ticket sale projections and other forms of earned revenue. Recent attempts to develop support throughout the community were not successful. The 09 festival was to have been dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Blue Note Records.

For details, go to the festival’s web site.

Critics of the Portland festival complained that it focused on hiring major performers from out of town and luring tourists from outside of Portland and Oregon. They claim that the national emphasis cut local and regional artists out of the action and discouraged support by Portland listeners, businesses and institutions. I have seen no analysis of the extent to which the recession–if it is a recession–is responsible for the lack of funding, but how could our massive economic downturn not have an effect?

I covered two of the Portland events for Jazz Times. There were flaws, often having to do with mismanaged sound systems in cavernous hotel ballrooms. There were also memorable performances. Here is what I wrote about one of them at the 2006 festival:

The last of the festival events I attended was a concert at the Portland Marriott by Bill Frisell’s Unspeakable Orchestra, one of four bands the eclectic guitarist heads these days. The string section was violinist Jenny Scheinman, violist Eyvind Kang and cellist Hank Roberts. Tony Scherr was the bassist, Kenny Wollesen the drummer. Frisell announced no numbers, in fact said little beyond telling one of his snail jokes and saying to the audience, “This is great. You guys are cool.”

The strings began playing parts over active bass and drums ornamentation, Frisell comping lightly. Allusions began to creep in, to “The Tennessee Waltz,” Monk’s “Misterioso,” “You Are My Sunshine.” They were all too short to be considered quotes; feelings, perhaps. The harmonic basis was vaguely country, vaguely blues. The time was 3/4. Roberts soloed, Scheinman soloed. Kang soloed. Then Frisell developed a gorgeous dissonance over the sweetness of the strings and there was the first of several segues, this one into Kang’s viola lead that was more or less Far Eastern. Intensity built through written parts for the strings, the violin carrying the lead.

The next segue led to more written parts, although it was becoming difficult to determine what was written and what was free improvisation. As the piece bloomed, the strings went into a tremolo mode while Scherr and Frisell–smiling at one another–invented unison fragments. Then Scherr and Roberts, the cellist, began a series of unison chromatic lines leading into another segue transition. Suddenly Frisell’s guitar was in solo on a peaceful melody as the strings made a transition from free playing to a folk melody. Behind them, Scherr raised the intensity with an arco solo, then the activity decreased back toward peacefulness, but it was a more troubling peace, a dissonant, polytonal, Schoenbergian peace that didn’t end but melded into Frisell playing heavy guitar over a slow, insistent waltz beat.

The strings slid under him in ensemble, and suddenly the guitar was emitting wah-wah and chicken sounds, intimating country music and rural blues, everyone in unison, with guitar interjections. Then, the band was fully into country–real yee-hah stuff–a hoe-down, a barn dance, Frisell conducting his orchestra from the guitar with smiles and directional nods of his head.

When that ended, Frisell made his “You guys are cool” remark, and kicked off a Monkish melody over Scherr’s walking bass, the only conventional 4/4 playing he had done so far.
The melody was a wild, through-composed line that went on for a couple of choruses before it began to dawn on me that it was built on the changes of “What Is This Thing Called Love.” Scheinman played a gorgeous solo, followed by Frisell in a solo that was as close to pure bebop as we’re likely to hear from him. The audience gave a standing ovation. The encore was Burt Bachrach’s “What The World Needs Now,” which may or may not have been done tongue-in-cheek. With Frisell, you’re never quite sure.

To read the complete review of that festival, go here.

And to read Joe Woodard’s review of this year’s PDX Festival –the last one– go here.

Impresario Bill Royston poured his vitality, organizational ability and knowledge of music and musicians into the Portland Festival. Whether he has the energy or desire to marshal the forces required to mount another such event remains to be seen. He deserves credit for having put together what in five years became a major happening in jazz and keeping the overall quality amazingly high. In these times of dwindling interest in the music, that is no small accomplishment.

Rifftides postings have been seldom lately because I’m working on a magazine piece about the resuscitation of Lester Young’s tenor saxophone and the consequent revival of a band devoted to his music. More about that later. In the meantime, here’s a set of thoughts from and about Prez.

Well, the way I play, I try not to be a ‘repeater pencil’, ya dig? Originality’s the thing.   You can have tone and technique and a lot of other things but without originality you ain’t really nowhere. Gotta be original.–Lester Young

The trouble with most musicians today is that they are copycats. Of course you have to start out playing like someone else. You have a model, or a teacher, and you learn all that he can show you. But then you start playing for yourself. Show them that you’re an individual. And I can count those who are doing that today on the fingers of one hand.–Lester Young

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.–Billie Holiday

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal.–Lee Konitz

Anyone who doesn’t play like Lester Young is wrong.–Brew Moore

And, in case you haven’t seen it in a while, here are Prez and a few of his friends in Gjon Mili’s classic 1944 short film Jammin’ The Blues. The cast credits run at the top. Do yourself a favor and watch it full screen.

The list of veterans of the glory days of modern jazz in Sweden grew significantly shorter on Tuesday with the death of Arne Domnérus at the age of eighty-three. The alto saxophonist and clarinetist came to popular attention in the late 1940s and early 1950s as one of the most adroit disciples of Charlie Parker and Lee Konitz. Within a few years, his own personality emerged and he distinguished himself as a soloist immediately recognizable for the individuality and warmth of his playing. Those aspects of Domnérus’s work were emphasized today in his obituary in the British newspaper the Telegraph.

His playing mellowed with age until, by the 1980s, it had attained a state of great expressive simplicity. While it was still possible to trace early influences in his style on both saxophone and clarinet, he could no longer be fitted into any conventional jazz category.

With pianist Bengt Hallberg, baritone saxophonist Lars Gullin, clarinetist Stan Hasselgard, trumpeter Rolf Ericson and a few other pioneers of modern jazz in Sweden, Domnérus became recognized as a peer of the best young American jazz musicians. His approach was cooler than that of the fieriest Parker acolytes, but he worked on an equally high level of creativity. When American musicians visited Sweden, they often recorded with Domnérus. He was prominent as a soloist when Clifford Brown and Art Farmer collaborated in 1953 with the Swedish All-Stars in four tracks included in this CD set.

Jan Lundgren today occupies a place in Swedish jazz comparable to that of Bengt Hallberg in the 1950s. He played frequently with Domnérus. Their work together on the Domnérus quartet CD Dompan! Is among the highlights of both mens’ discographies. From his home in Malmö, Lundgren sent this message to Rifftides:

Having worked with some great musicians through the years, there is still nobody who had such an enormous emotional effect on me as Arne. The secret was in his sound and in his way of nuancing each tone. He was a jazz musician who reached a whole nation, including people who wouldn´t normally listen to jazz. He was loved by the audiences.

Anyone with an interest in jazz should take a listen to “The Midnight Sun Never Sets,” recorded in the 50s with Quincy Jones leading the Swedish Radio Big Band — a classic. Arne was one of the world´s finest interpreters of the Great American Song Book, but not only that, he was also one of the pioneers in playing music of Swedish origin, popular songs and folk music, in a jazz context. Arne Domnérus was one of the great ones and will be missed by thousands of fans.

“The Midnight Sun Never Sets” is available here as an MP3 download. That piece and many others with Domnérus are included in volume 8 of Svensk Jazzhistoria: Swedish Jazz 1956-1959.

In 1950 in a concert in Malmö, Domnérus shared a rhythm section and trumpeter Rolf Ericson with Charlie Parker–although the two saxophonists performed in separate sets. The concert was recorded and recently released in this CD.

Despite his ability early in his career to approximate Charlie Parker, throughout Arne Domnérus’s life, Benny Carter remained a primary inspiration. In this 2000 performance in Paris with pianist Claes Crona, Domnérus thoroughly explores Carter’s “When Lights Are Low.”

The Bix Beiderbecke discussion that began here last week has spread to other precincts of the internet, most recently in an entry on Marc Myers’s JazzWax. Marc builds on what he points out is an absurd trumped-up competition, Beiderbecke vs. Louis Armstrong; as if music was boxing, a track event or a beauty contest. To read it, and hear the recording of Bix’s “Sorry,” go here.

And don’t miss this phrase in Myers’s text…

…the rubbery bark of Adrian Rollini’s bass sax.

That’s a nice piece of writing.