Archives for 2008

Three CDs, a DVD and a book: your new Doug’s Picks are in the center column. To see previous recommendations, click “more picks” at the bottom of that section.

Looking for the earliest Slim Gaillard clip I could find, I came across a sequence from Olsen and Johnson’s manic 1941 hit movie Hellzapoppin’. Gaillard plays piano and guitar, with his constant companion of the period, the great Slam Stewart, on bass. Among the several dozen uncredited musicians and dancers is the Duke Ellington cornetist Rex Stewart, done up in a cook’s outfit. If anyone can identify the clarinetist, trombonist and drummer, please send a comment. You’ll see some of the most aggressive jitterbugging ever filmed, but keep your ears open to the jam session that inspires the dancers. The funny little man in the opening scene is Hugh Herbert.

They don’t make them like this anymore. How could they?

Summertime, and the living is easy.

            –Ira Gershwin, “Summertime”

 

I hear laughter by the swimming hole.

Kids out fishing, with the willow pole.

Boats come drifting ’round the bend.

Why must summer ever end?

            –Iola Brubeck, “Summer Song”

(With apologies to Rifftides readers in the Southern Hemisphere)

It has been some time since we ran a check on the whereabouts of Rifftides readers. Here is a partial location list of recent visitors, starting at the point farthest from home base.

Wellington, New Zealand

Wollongong, Australia

Sydney, Australia

Tokyo, Japan

Beijing, China

Tarnow, Poland

Kronobergs Lan, Sweden

Dalmine, Lombardia, Italy

Heidelberg, Germany

Terneuzen, Zeeland, Netherlands

Kettering, Nottinghamshire, England

Glasgow, Scotland

Casablanca, Morocco

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Santo Domingo, Domican Republic

Mangua, Nicaragua

Apodaca, Nuevo Leon, Mexico

Mexico, Distrito Federal, Mexico

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

In the United States, you are in too many places to count, from Aliso Viejo, California (the home of Ketel One Vodka, Fluor Corporation and the Marie Callender’s restaurant chain) to Evans City, Pennsylvania. Any state that names a town after Bill Evans can’t be all bad.

Welcome, one and all. Please visit often, and let us hear from you. Use the Contact me button in the center column or the comments link at the end of any item.

The Rifftides staff is going to take a couple of days off and trek across the mountains to watch the Mariners play the Tigers. The links are for the benefit of those in, say, Casablanca or Tarnow who may not be familiar with the quaint US sporting culture.

In the meantime, enjoy this video of Miguel Zenon and two of his homeboys at work in their native San Juan, Puerto Rico, last December. The bassist is Ricky Rodriguez, the drummer Henry Cole.

More on Zenon soon. Have a pleasant weekend 

A few years ago, research disclosed that Louis Armstrong was not born on the Fourth of July,
1900, but a little more than a year later. No matter; Armstrong believed that Independence Day was his birthday and identified himself with the United States of America. As his career and popularity developed and the magnitude of his genius became apparent, the country he loved–and much of the rest of the world–adopted him as a symbol of the spirit of America.

Much of Armstrong’s reputation stemmed from the audacity, the inventiveness, the sheer visceral and intellectual excitement of his work in the late 1920s with his Hot Five and Hot Seven. And yet, barely more than a decade after they were made, the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings had all but disappeared. That situation disturbed a fan who found a way to do
something about it and went on to become one of the greatest jazz record producers. The young man was George Avakian (pictured here), now in his ninetieth year. New York Sun columnist Andrew Wolf chose the eve of the Fourth of July to retell the story of Avakian’s determination to see that Armstrong’s revolutionary music became available to new generations of listeners.

There is a key figure in Armstrong’s career who still is alive and has a great story to tell of Satchmo, and his own story of American ingenuity and his contribution to the music industry.

George Avakian, a spry and energetic 89-year-old, is my neighbor here in Riverdale. As a student at the Bronx’s Horace Mann School in the late 1930s, he came up with what was then a revolutionary idea — the reissue of collections of music of the past.

To read all of Wolf’s column, and see a terrific photograph of Armstrong, go here.

Thanks to Avakian’s early labors, Armstrong reissues moved through 78 rpm albums, LPs, cassette tapes and CDs into the era of digital downloading. This box set has all of the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens.

Here is the Armstrong Hot Seven in 1927 playing “Potato Head Blues.” Armstrong’s final chorus is one of the wonders not just of jazz improvisation, but of all twentieth century music.

Happy Independence Day.

(An annual Rifftides reminder)

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.–Benjamin Franklin

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.–Abraham Lincoln

It appears that Ernestine Anderson is going to be able to stay in her house–at least for now.
News of the seventy-nine-year-old singer’s impending eviction traveled quickly around the world last week, and people responded. Help came from fans, old friends–including Quincy Jones–and just plain folks who sympathized. Here are the most recent essential facts from The Seattle Post Intelligencer.

Folks over the weekend held benefits. And dozens upon dozens in the city, across the state and nationwide deposited help at Bank of America to help meet Anderson’s $45,000 payment deadline by Monday.

See Robert L. Jamieson, Jr.’s Post Intelligencer column for the whole rescue story and how officials are looking into whether Anderson’s dilemma ties into the predatory lending scandal mitigating the housing crisis. Her mortgage payments on a modest house are $4,422 a month. That special Bank of America account for Anderson will continue to accept funds

Among those who jumped in, Pat Strosahl, the major domo of The Seasons performance hall, offered Anderson a booking with a guaranteed fee and a promise to donate proceeds of the gate to help with her financial problem. Anderson is now scheduled for an October 15 appearance as part of The Seasons Fall Festival in Yakima, Washington, across the Cascade mountains from Seattle.

It was in the back of my mind that I would post something about this morning’s bicycle ride. I took the mountain bike along the canal trails. It was a perfectly good ride, but it turned up nothing to report beyond the fact that by the time I finished, around 11 a.m., the temperature was approaching one hundred degrees.

So, I decided to dig into the archives and bring back by popular request (one), a piece that generated considerable response when it ran nearly two years ago. Hey, if Dave Barry can rerun columns and Charles Schultz can (posthumously) rerun comic strips, why can’t a blogger reblogitate? 

Other Matters: October

 

Any day now could be the last good one of the year for cycling, so I said goodbye to work and took advantage of a late October afternoon so perfect that to have left it out there by itself would have been a shame. Deciding not to pit the road bike against heavy, skitterish Friday traffic, I left it in the shed and headed the mountain bike toward the system of canals that criss-crosses this agricultural valley. I dropped onto the path along a canal a block from my house and entered instant peace and quiet, except for the dogs that charge with intent to kill the moment they sense a cyclist.

 

Is there an animal psychologist out there who can tell us what it is about bicycles that drives dogs temporarily insane? Fortunately, there’s a leash law that keeps dogs mostly behind fences in town. In the country, you can usually get up a head of steam and outrun a farm dog, but a couple of weeks ago, a big black brute roared out of a yard and was gaining on me. When he came alongside and started nipping, I yelled as loud as I could (that’s loud), “Go home.” To my relief–and from the expression on his face, to his astonishment–he went home.

 

Nothing like that happened today. The only annoyances were piles of mud dredged out of the canals by ditch riders cleaning up after a summer of irrigation, and the extra shirt I threw on under my jersey. The air seemed cool when I started, but the temperature quickly rose on the steep hills. Russet and red leaves along parts of the path crackled under my tires. A crow circled along in the clear sky above me for a few hundred yards, reprimanding me for some offense. Two horses looked up as I passed their pasture. Apple harvest was over in most of the orchards. One pear farmer apparently decided that his crop wouldn’t bring him enough to make picking worthwhile. The pears lay beneath his trees where he let them fall, in the first stages of returning into the earth.

 

On a stretch up near the valley rim, a squirrel darted across the path fifty feet ahead. To my right, I saw a bigger creature move along the edge of an expansive lawn. The man paused to pump his air gun, then stalked the squirrel. He stopped, took aim, got off a shot, shook his head, and resumed gliding slowly along the edge of his property. Not wanting to distract him, I stopped and watched for ten minutes as he pursued his quarry with no less concentration than a sahib on safari. He took two more shots, but it was clear that the varmint had escaped. As he turned around, I said, “Hold your fire.”

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t see you.”

 

“I know. I didn’t want to startle you and be your next victim.”

 

He felt like talking. He said he couldn’t keep flowers and couldn’t grow vegetables. The squirrels dig them up and eat them. They undermined a stone walkway he built. It was sinking, he said. He pointed to two pieces of equipment, a loader and a hay rake. One of his sons was storing them there, but he told him he’d have to move them, so the son found a buyer who gave him fifty dollars for the loader and a hundred for the rake, but the buyer hasn’t come for them.

 

“You see that shed,” he said. “I put that there years ago to store my tools while I built the house. I intended to tear it down when the house was done, but now it’s full of my grandson’s stuff. I told him he’d have to get it out of there next year. I want this area clear so I can plant it in lawn. That camper my son put there has got to go.” His gaze swept over his property. “I’ve got a lot of lawn, two acres of it. That area there, I cleared,” he said, pointing to a space ten by twenty feet bordered with creosoted timbers. “My other son had this old Mustang. It sat there for a long time, then some fella from Australia came along and paid him ten thousand dollars for it. Shipped it back to Australia with three or four other Mustangs. I guess they like old Mustangs down there.

 

“I’ve had this place since 1941. Retired from the mill fifteen years ago. Raised three kids here. After we had the first one, a daughter, the doctor told my wife she couldn’t have any more children. Seven years later, we had a son. He was fine. She was fine. Shows you what doctors know. Fourteen years after that, we had another son. What happiness. She was fifteen when we met, I was seventeen. Got married when she was twenty and I was twenty-two. I love it out here. It’s quiet. Away from the road. I’ve got a long driveway. Got that ditch running by. Nearest neighbor is clear over there, but his property runs right up against mine. We get along.”

 

He gestured at the orchard across the canal. “The old man who owned that had property ran clear into town, down by the freeway where the mall is. He used to stop by here when he was in his eighties, and I’d say, ‘I’m going in and get you a coke,’ and we’d just sit here by the canal and talk, for hours sometimes. He’s gone now.”

 

I extended my hand. We exchanged names. “I ride by here now and then,” I said. “We’ll talk again.”

 

“We sure will,” he said. “You take care.”

 

I rode home feeling good. The dogs seemed friendlier.

 

First published October 28, 2006 1:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man’s convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man’s brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle. ~Elizabeth West, Hovel in the Hills

When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. ~H.G. Wells

Last week, jazz lost two journeyman artists valued for their dependability, versatility and
swing. On the west coast, bassist Dave Carpenter died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-eight. Most recently, Carpenter had been in drummer Peter Erskine’s trio, which also included pianist Alan Pasqua. A veteran of the Buddy Rich, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson and Bill Holman big bands, he also worked with Bill Perkins, Jack Nimitz, Al Jarreau, Herb Geller, Bill Cunliffe, Jan Lundgren, Terry Gibbs, Buddy DeFranco and Richard Stoltzman, to name a few. In as great demand in Los Angeles studios as he was in clubs, Carpenter has a list of recording credits as long as both of your arms. To see the list and hear brief samples, go here.

On Saturday, pianist Ronnie Mathews died in New York of pancreatic cancer. He was seventy-two. Mathews toured and recorded extensively with Max Roach, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Haynes, Dexter Gordon, Louis Hayes, and Woody Shaw. He had long associations with tenor saxophonist Johnny Griffin, drummer T. S. Monk, and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. See and hear him in this video clip of Griffin’s quartet. Ignore the superfluous list of personnel from YouTube; the rhythm section is Mathews, drummer Kenny Washington and bassist Ray Drummond. The locale is the Village Vanguard in New York, not somewhere in Europe. Otherwise, YouTube got it right. Due to the site’s ten-minute limit, the performance fades away before it ends, but it provides a generous idea of Mathews’ skill as an accompanist and a soloist.

It sometimes takes Rifftides posts a while to catch up with their subjects. On August 22, 2006, I reported the results of research into the matter of a high school teacher who received a lot of attention in 1993 for using Frank Sinatra to punish miscreant students. Sinatra did not come to class to administer the discipline. Bruce Janu, the teacher, made the wayward kids listen to Sinatra recordings. Over the weekend, Mr. Janu, who teaches at John Hershey High School northwest of Chicago, e-mailed a message to bring us up to date.

Someone recently sent me your blog post about the teacher who used Frank Sinatra as punishment. Well, I am that teacher. I still teach and I still use Sinatra in the classroom. Not so much for punishment anymore…more for enlightenment. I put extra-credit Frank
Sinatra questions on every test and often play Sinatra. In my Contemporary American Text class, I teach the history of jazz and, of course, include some Sinatra there as well. During the whole hoopla surrounding the “detention club,” (it was a slow news day) some reporters attempted to get Sinatra’s comment. Through his press person, it was relayed to the media that Sinatra had “no comment” other than to say that there are plenty of young people who like his music. I hope that in the years that I have been doing this, some kids have grown to appreciate a great singer.

In his teaching of sociology, Mr. Janu incorporates film study. He has developed a parallel career as a documentarian. His first full-scale film, about the genocide in Sudan, last year won awards for best documentary at two film festivals. Facing Sudan has screened at a dozen other festivals across the United States, from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Port Townsend, Washington. For more about Bruce Janu and Facing Sudan, go here.

The Rifftides post three weeks ago with the video of Peggy Lee’s and Frank Sinatra’s “Nice Work if You Can Get It” brought so much comment that another Lee installment seems justified. Here she is with her husband Dave Barbour on guitar. The song is Lee’s composition “Maňana,” a huge hit in 1947. In the current DVD pick (center column), I mention Lee’s devotion to Barbour. In this clip, there is more evidence of it, and of the kind of playing that made him one of the great jazz guitarists of his era. This performance has an air of carefree fun, but the musicianship–by husband and wife–is serious.

This CD has a few of Lee’s recordings from the 1940s, with Barbour leading the bands and playing guitar. This boxed set from Mosaic has even more of their collaborations, plus Barbour also playing for June Christy on some tracks. It includes transitory pop recordings, but there is a high ratio of quality to ho-hum.

Friends and admirers of Bob Florence, including his Limited Edition band, gathered at the Catalina Bar and Grill in Hollywood on June 15 to pay tribute to the arranger, composer, leader and pianist.. Florence died exactly a month earlier at the age of seventy-five. In Florence’s honor, the piano remained silent. A jazz fan and videographer, Mike Kaiser, captured the Limited Edition playing Billy Strayhorn’s “Chelsea Bridge in Florence’s arrangement and posted it on the Daily Motion web site. The band is made up of Los Angeles luminaries. Trombonists Charlie Loper and Bob McChesney are featured soloists in the Strayhorn. Guitarist Larry Koonse also solos. The drumming, done with his patented combination of energy, precision and looseness, is by Peter Erskine.

Around 1955 (I must have been in kindergarten), I went to a concert at the 5th Avenue Theater in Seattle and for the first time heard Ernestine Anderson. She sang with a big band. I was impressed with the quality of her voice, her phrasing, her time, the lack of gimmickry in her delivery and how she looked in her red gown. A year or so later, when she was in Sweden she recorded with Harry Arnold’s band. The long-playing record that resulted, Hot Cargo, was one of the best vocal albums of the decade and remains an example of Anderson at the peak of her talent.

Over the years, Anderson’s career and the quality of her singing have had their ups and downs. Now, she faces a discouraging down. At the age of seventy-nine, she is in financial trouble and about to be evicted from her house in Seattle. Friends and admirers are trying to raise money to stop or delay the eviction. They have set up a rescue account for her at the Bank of America. Time is short. She is scheduled to be kicked out at the end of June. Details are in this column by Robert L. Jamieson, Jr. of the  Seattle Post Intelligencer

If you need to be inspired to help, watch this performance by Anderson with pianist Monty Alexander, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Kenny Clare in Berlin in 1978. Those are the musicians. Ignore the You Tube identifications, except for Brown; they got him right.  

For more on Anderson’s dilemma and information about her life and career, visit her web site.

Exactly how Anderson keeps her contralto so plush and supple ranks among the sweet imponderables of the art of jazz singing…. she remains an eloquent song interpreter with a broad array of expressive devices at her command. — Howard Reich, Chicago Tribune, September, 2004

Anderson remains a wonderfully expressive vocalist, able to pierce the emotional core of a lyric with seemingly little effort. — Mike Joyce, The Washington Post, May, 1999