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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

You are here: Home / 2010 / Archives for January 2010

Archives for January 2010

Joyce Collins, 1930-2010

January 29, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

The pianist and singer Joyce Collins died recently in Los Angeles following a long illness. She was 79. Highly respected in jazz circles, Collins played with a sensitive touch and subtle use of chords. Her singing was an outgrowth of those values, with attention to interpretation of the meaning of songs and, as Marian McPartland put it, "...deep feeling, a way of lingering over certain phrases, telling her story in a very poignant way." Collins's recorded debut as a leader had Ray Brown on bass … [Read more...]

The Montmarte Masks

January 28, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

If you have seen videos filmed at the Montmartre club in Copenhagen in the 1950s and '60s, you may have wondered about the stylized wall masks that often show up in the opening moments. Rifftides reader Dave Bernard has wondered about them, too. Mr. Bernard researched the masks and reports the results in the comments section of a recent post about Bud Powell. To see the masks and what he has learned, go here. While we're at it, we may as well enjoy more of Powell at the Montmartre with bassist … [Read more...]

The Blues Are Brewin’

January 27, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

1947 was a good year for movies. It saw the release of Miracle on 34th Street, Gentleman's Agreement, Life with Father, Lady from Shangai and Out of the Past, among other excellent films. New Orleans also hit the screen that year. It began life as an Orson Welles project, but Welles dropped it and went on to other things. If he had developed it, the movie might not have been in a league with Citizen Kane, but it would likely have had more to recommend it than the music. Unlike the other films … [Read more...]

The Long Wait Is Over: New Picks

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Maybe it was the holidays. Maybe I've been busy writing for a living. Maybe I'm lazy. Well, no matter. You finally have a new edition of Doug's Picks. Consult the center column for the latest recommendations. … [Read more...]

Weekend Extra: Oscar Peterson and NHØP

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Here is a lovely opportunity to hear and see two masters toward the ends of their lives. Oscar Peterson played at the Montreal Jazz Festival in July of 2004 with bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, guitarist Ulf Wakenius and drummer Alvin Queen. The piece is "Cakewalk." NHØP died the following April, Peterson in December of 2007. To see other videos from their Montreal concert, go here. … [Read more...]

CD:SFJazz Collective

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

SFJAZZ Collective, Live 2009 (SFJazz). Last year's tour by the all-star septet was built around their arrangements of music by pianist McCoy Tyner. It also included new compositions by its members, Joe Lovano, Miguel Zenón, Dave Douglas, Robin Eubanks, Renee Rosnes, Matt Pennman and Eric Harland. This two-CD set, recorded in halls across the US, is a tribute to Tyner, offering invigorating playing and writing by members of a younger generation he influences. Among the new pieces, Zenón's "No … [Read more...]

CD:Eddie Thompson And Brad Terry

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Eddie Thompson and Brad Terry, Eddie and Me (Living Room). Thompson, a blind British pianist, spent ten years in the US before he returned home in 1972. He performed often around New York with Terry, a peripatetic clarinetist whose brilliant work would be better known if he had pursued a conventional career. This album, finally reissued on CD, captures their empathy, harmonic audacity and wit. It is available as a download here and as a CD by e-mailing here. Full disclosure: I wrote a pro bono … [Read more...]

CD: Henry Threadgill

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Henry Threadgill Zooid, This Brings Us To, Volume 1 (PI Recordings). Threadgill names his band Zooid after a cell "that is able to move independently of the larger organism to which it belongs." Accordingly, five musicians simultaneously and freely invent within, around and through structures devised by saxophonist and flutist Threadgill, one of the leading lights of the avant AACM movement. The music has moments of amusing bluster, others of reflective calm. Its intricacy demands patient … [Read more...]

DVD: The Story Of Jazz

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Masters of American Music: The Story Of Jazz (Medici Arts). An opening montage cleverly synchronized to Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing" introduces the first in a series whose other initial subjects are Billie Holiday, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk. The programs ran on public television in the last century. It is good to have them revived on DVD with crisp picture and sound. The Story Of Jazz features superb performance clips, interesting interviews and a … [Read more...]

Book: Teachout On Armstrong

January 24, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Terry Teachout, Pops: A Life Of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin). Teachout is a consummate biographer. His books about H.L. Mencken and George Balanchine proved that. With Armstrong, he exceeds himself. Teachout combines the advantage of unique access to Armstrong's archives with deep musical understanding and the gift of writing clearly about complex matters. He makes the reader understand that when the history is told and the analysis finished, there is just one real explanation of how a … [Read more...]

Weekend Listening: Hadley Caliman

January 23, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

A few days into his 79th year, tenor saxophonist Hadley Caliman is thriving in the Pacific Northwest, starring in the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and leading his own group. As a high school youngster, Haliman was a part of the yeasty Los Angeles jazz community of the late 1940s and early '50s. After college, he went on to record extensively and work with musicians as varied as Gerald Wilson, Don Ellis, Freddie Hubbard, Santana and The Grateful Dead. Jim Wilke recorded Caliman in a recent … [Read more...]

Pianists: Matthew Shipp And Greg Reitan

January 21, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Why consider in the same piece albums by pianists as unalike as Matthew Shipp and Greg Reitan? Because in different ways the ghost of Bud Powell informs their music; because pairing them may lead partisans of one to listen to the other and find unexpected rewards; because the profound dissimilarity between the iconoclast Shipp and the modern traditionalist Reitan typifies the wide variety of satisfactions to be found in jazz; and because they are more or less simultaneously releasing new … [Read more...]

Compatible Quotes: On Bud Powell

January 21, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

No one could play like Bud; too difficult, too quick, incredible!--Thelonious Monk Bud is a genius.--Charlie Parker Bud is a genuine genius.--Duke Ellington He laid down the basis of modern jazz piano.--Dizzy Gillespie Bud was the most brilliant that a spirit might be, a unique genius in our culture.--Max Roach … [Read more...]

Stories: Sinatra, Herman and Manne

January 18, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Once again, Bill Crow's The Band Room column in the New York musicians union Local 802 newspaper, Allegro, is packed with anecdotes. Here are two. Outgoing (Local 802) President Mary Landolfi told me this one: Her husband Pat and another tuba player, Lew Waldeck, had arranged to meet at the Carnegie Tavern after a benefit at Carnegie Hall. The major attraction at the benefit was Frank Sinatra, and when Lew came into the Tavern afterward, he was all agog. "Pat," he said excitedly, "I just met … [Read more...]

Other Places: It’s Moody In Detroit

January 15, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

James Moody is in Detroit this week. Mark Stryker, the music critic of The Detroit Free Press, heralded the event with a column that begins: James Moody is my hero, and he should be yours. At 84, the irrepressible saxophonist and flutist remains a ferociously creative musician, playing with passion, energy and a sense of wonder at the endless possibilities of music. Stryker provides a sketch of Moody's career, then a section that includes this exchange: Q: Do you practice every day? A: I try to. … [Read more...]

Jazz Masters Honored

January 14, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Wednesday night, the 2010 NEA Jazz Master awards went to pianists Kenny Barron, Cedar Walton and Muhal Richard Abrams; arranger, composer and band leader Bill Holman; saxophonist and flutist Yusef Lateef; vibrahaphonist Bobby Hutcherson; singer Annie Ross (pictured at the ceremony); and record producer George Avakian. They received their medals and checks in a National Endowment For The Arts ceremony at Lincoln Center. To read accounts of the event by Nate Chinen of The New York Times and my … [Read more...]

Ed Thigpen, RIP

January 14, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

An American jazz master who relocated to Europe nearly four decades ago died yesterday in Denmark hours after eight of his peers were honored in New York. Drummer Ed Thigpen succumbed to heart and lung problems in a hospital in Copenhagen, his home since 1972. He was 79. Thigpen was universally admired for his technique, which he applied with taste and musicianship that made him one of the best known drummers in the world during his long run as a member of the Oscar Peterson Trio. Here, he is … [Read more...]

Compatible Quotes: The Tenor Saxophone

January 13, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

I made the tenor sax - there's nobody plays like me and I don't play like anybody else. - Coleman Hawkins If you like an instrument that sings, play the saxophone. At its best it's like the human voice. - Stan Getz The tenor's got that thing, that honk, that you can get to people with. - Ornette Coleman … [Read more...]

Brecker and Blake

January 13, 2010 by Doug Ramsey

Speaking of Seamus Blake (see the item below), I looked for a video clip with him in action and came across one of the 28-year-old Blake in heavy company. He follows the late Michael Brecker in solo on Charles Mingus's "Goodbye Porkpie Hat." All of the other information I can give you is that this was in Japan in 1999 and that the pianist is David Kikoski. The camera work suggests that this was filmed during an earthquake of at least 6.5 on the Richter scale. You may want to take a seasickness … [Read more...]

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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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.

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Doug’s Picks

We’re Back: Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s New Trio Album for Sunnyside

As Rifftides readers have undoubtedly noticed, it has been a long time since we posted. We are creating a new post in hopes  that it will open the way to resumption of frequent reports as part of the artsjournal.com mission to keep you up to date on jazz and other matters. Pianist Denny Zeitlin’s stunning new trio album […]

Recent Listening: The New David Friesen Trio CD

David Friesen Circle 3 Trio: Interaction (Origin) Among the dozens of recent releases that deserve serious attention, a few will get it. Among those those receiving it here is bassist David Friesen’s new album.  From the Portland, Oregon, sinecure in which he thrives when he’s not touring the world, bassist Friesen has been performing at […]

Monday Recommendation: Dominic Miller

Dominic Miller Absinthe (ECM) Guitarist and composer Miller delivers power and subtlety in equal measure. Abetted by producer Manfred Eicher’s canny guidance and ECM’s flawless sound and studio presence, Miller draws on inspiration from painters of France’s impressionist period. His liner essay emphasizes the importance to his musical conception of works by Cezanne, Renoir, Lautrec, […]

Recent Listening: Dave Young And Friends

Dave Young, Lotus Blossom (Modica Music) Young, the bassist praised by Oscar Peterson for his “harmonic simpatico and unerring sense of time” when he was a member of Peterson’s trio, leads seven gifted fellow Canadians. His beautifully recorded bass is the underpinning of a relaxed session in which his swing is a force even during […]

Recent Listening: Jazz Is Of The World

Paolo Fresu, Richard Galliano, Jan Lundgren, Mare Nostrum III (ACT) This third outing by Mare Nostrum continues the international trio’s close collaboration in a series of albums that has enjoyed considerable success. With three exceptions, the compositions in this installment are by the members of Mare Nostrum. It opens with one the French accordionist Galliano […]

Monday Recommendation: Thelonious Monk’s Works In Full

Kimbrough, Robinson, Reid, Drummond: Monk’s Dreams(Sunnyside) The subtitle of this invaluable 6-CD set is The Complete Compositions Of Thelonious Sphere Monk. By complete, Sunnyside means that the box contains six CDs with 70 tunes that Monk wrote beginning in the early years when his music was generally assumed to be an eccentric offshoot of bebop, […]

More Doug's Picks

Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

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