Archives for 2010

A couple of days ago, I called a company for technical support. A well-spoken young woman answered. She did not put me on hold, dump me into voice-mail hell, pass me along to a robot or connect me with someone in Bangladesh. In about three minutes, she analyzed the problem and provided a solution. At the end, she did not try to sign me up for an extended warranty, sell me more stuff or ask me to complete a survey. I know—you’ve called tech support. You find this hard to believe. It’s true.
To protect the company’s switchboard from being clogged with calls from troubled consumers hungry for the sound of a human voice, I will not identify it. If I blew the whistle on their enlightened customer relations practices, the Association Of Businesses Promoting Telephonic Delay, Obfuscation and Frustration might take them to court in an unfair competition case.
All right, it wasn’t a billion-dollar international company manufacturing complex digital equipment. It was a small outfit that makes relatively simple devices. When its customers have problems, it gives them human beings who take an interest, find solutions quickly and don’t send callers through procedural hoops or voice-mail loops. The billion-dollar guys could learn something from these folks.

I should have long since added Chris Albertson’s Stomp Off blog to the Personal Jazz Sites roll under Other Places at the of the middle column. It is hereby added. For your first Albertson fix, I recommend that you take in his latest entry. It has to do with a jam session he recorded in Copenhagen in 1953 that included Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Jimmy Cleveland and others who were touring with Lionel Hampton’s band, as well as several Danish musicians.
Albertson (pictured) incorporates two fairly lengthy audio samples of the jam festivities, which coincided with a populous party. Perhaps you will be able to identify the soloists. I can only guess. Chris’s accompanying essay explains the circumstances, among them a celebration of the Hamptons’ wedding anniversary and his friendship with the storied jazz patron Baron Timme Rosenkranz. To reach Stomp Off, go here.

Bob McChesney writes:

I put up a little video of me demonstrating the first trombone part to “I Love You” live.

To hear, and read along with, McChesney playing that line and three harmony parts, go to this Rifftides archive post.

Jazz as an academic discipline has made huge strides in colleges and universities, even in high schools and middle schools. Students can major in jazz studies in music departments where 40 years ago they would have been suspended for jamming in practice rooms. The University of North Texas, Indiana University, the University of Illinois, Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory are among dozens of institutions of higher education turning out hundreds of graduates educated in jazz. In a feedback system not lacking in irony, jazz degrees do not pave the way to making a living in clubs, concerts, festivals and recording studios. Rather, in today’s market, many jazz graduates end up teaching in programs that turn out still more musicians unable to sustain themselves performing the music they love.
Problems of economics and our jazz-deaf culture aside, how effective is formal jazz education in transmitting the kind of knowledge and experience—call it wisdom—that musicians in earlier eras accumulated on the road with big bands, playing extended engagements in clubs, sitting in after-hours jam sessions? Do they get the kind of seasoning young Paul Desmond (pictured below) described in a letter to his wife in 1950? He was on the road in New York with Jack Fina’s band. Pianist Sanford Gold invited Desmond to a Sunday night session at Eddie Condon’s club.

I got out to Condon’s after the job, about 10 minutes before they finished. As I came in the club and unpacked the horn, they played, in rapid succession, my three favorite tunes, things I hadn’t even thought of for a year. The rhythm section was swinging, Sanford was playing impeccably, and the horns were miscellaneous and unimpressive, instead of the trumpet-trombone-clarinet thing that I was a bit worried might be there. I had stayed up the night before, was feeling more like playing than I had for years, and the situation seemed expressly designed to restore some of my shattered confidence. One chorus of a ballad, I thought happily as I climbed up on the stand, and at least somebody around here will be interested. If I can just get something across to one person, all is not yet lost. Seething pleasantly with lyrical ideas, I sat down just as they started the last tune of the night. “Cherokee,” at a circus tempo. I played miserably. After that, they went home, and Sanford Gold went to the hospital for three weeks for an operation.
Before he left, Peanuts Hucko said “Sounds nice, man.” He smiled at me the way I used to smile at Herbie Caro*…
*A San Francisco tenor saxophonist not highly regarded by Desmond, who died in the 1940s.

A widespread criticism of modern jazz education is that it concentrates too little on the formative risks of jumping in and possibly failing, as Desmond claimed he did at Condon’s, and too much on putting fashionably hip post-Coltrane chords with the appropriate scales, too much on reading arrangements. Delfeayo Marsalis is a part-time educator who has another method. He is in northern California this week using a special kind of ear training to inculcate in high school musicians a feeling for jazz that cannot flow from manuscript paper. Paul Conley of Sacramento’s Capitol Public Radio visited one of Marsalis’s classes. To hear his story, go here and click on “Listen Now”.

Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.—Oscar Wilde

Jazz is like writing. It can be learned but not taught.—Paul Desmond

Jenney is famous for eight-bars of trombone improvisation on Artie Shaw’s 1940 recording of “Stardust.” Several months earlier with his own band, he played a full-length solo on this little-known version of Hoagy Carmichael’s classic song.

Recommendations in the center column, under Doug’s Picks:
CDs by a trumpeter, a bassist and an arranger
A DVD documenting the birth of a piano
A book of stories about a brass phenomenon

Pianist Jack Reilly will be at the Johns Hopkins Medicine Center in Baltimore today to pay musical tribute to the memory of the doctor who saved his life.
For details, go here.

Rifftides reader Don Frese recommended this item from Bill Crow’s “The Band Room” column in Allegro, the newspaper of New York Local 802 of the American Federation of musicians.

The late British tenor man and club owner Ronnie Scott once told me that he was standing one day on the platform of a tube station in London, and he suddenly realized that the man standing next to him was Charles Laughton. Ronnie said excitedly to the great actor, “Excuse me, sir, but I just have to say what a great fan of yours I am. I have seen everything you’ve ever done, and admire your work tremendously.” Laughton thanked him, and asked, “Are you an actor?” Scott replied, “No, I’m a jazz musician.” Laughton considered this for a moment, and then inquired, “Do you have any pot?”

To read Bill’s entire November column, go here.

The November 4 post below and coverage elsewhere about James Moody’s illness generated so much concern that it has created a problem in the Moody household. Here is part of a message from Moody’s wife Linda.

Would you mind posting that people should leave Moody messages on Facebook? Our computers and two e-mail addresses are about to crash. I have had my computer guy here a couple of times in the last 3 days to keep them from crashing. Moody has had an outpouring of love from every corner of this earth.

This is a link to Moody’s Facebook page. Please use it to wish him well rather than clogging and possibly crashing his computers with e-mail. I’m sure that the Moodys will appreciate it.

The news about James Moody is not good. He has been aware of it for some time, but kept it private until this week. No one who knows him will be surprised that he is at peace with the decision he has made. Here is the first paragraph of George Varga’s story in The San Diego Union Tribune.

Jazz saxophone legend James Moody, a San Diego resident for the past 21 years, has disclosed that he has had pancreatic cancer since at least February — and that he had decided not to receive any chemo therapy or radiation treatment.

To read all of the article, go here.
The last time we were together, in 2007—too long ago—I interviewed Moody on stage at a festival. He reminded me that we had known each other for 50 years and had the kindness to inflate my ego by telling the audience, “And we’ve been buddies, too.” Then he went on to play an astonishing set with the Bill Mays Trio. Go here for a Rifftides account of his concert on that occasion.
On Moody’s 83rd birthday, WBGO-FM, the jazz station in Newark, New Jersey, put together this profile using his own words. It summarizes his attitude toward music, people and life.

Now, the musical part of that philosophy in action: Moody has the first solo in this 1985 performance of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Ow,” with Gillespie, Ray Brown, Gene Harris and Grady Tate.

Please take a moment to give a thought to James Moody.

As noted in a Rifftides review last week, record companies from abroad often come to the United States to make CDs of American musicians. Conversely, it is not unusual for Americans to record when they are touring overseas. Either way, some of the best work of US artists is done for labels that Stateside record stores —the few remaining—are unlikely to stock. The Internet then becomes the source of last resort for CDs or downloads. Two further instances of hard-to-find discs that are worth the trouble:
Hank Jones, Jazz At Prague Castle 2009 (Multisonic). Recorded less than a year before the pianist died in May, this trio recording shows that his swing, invention of melodic lines, harmonic imagination and celebrated touch were flourishing at the end of his 90th year. The occasion was the 31st concert of Jazz na HradÄ› in the Prague castle, the Czech counterpart of the White House. The series was initiated by the Czech Republic’s ranking jazz fan, its president, Vaclav Klaus. The first track of the CD is Klaus’s brief welcome and introduction, in Czech. Jones takes over in the universal language of music, accompanied by the eminent Czech émigré bassist George Mraz and the young drummer Willie Jones III (no relation).
The trio establish their compatibility from the first notes. Through 13 pieces, it never wavers. The program typifies Jones’ sense of contrast, balance and discovery. It begins with his brother Thad’s “Lady Luck,” written for third brother Elvin’s 1962 album Elvin!. Willie Jones’ brush wizardry and Mraz’s restrained power blend under the elder Jones’ buoyant, full-bodied improvisation. Behind Mraz’s solo, Hank Jones gives a lesson, the first of many in the album, in the art of accompanying through reactive listening. Willie J. switches to sticks for a beautifully realized treatment of Joe Henderson’s modern classic “Recorda Me.”
The medium- and up-tempo tunes are a delight, but the ballads come close to stealing the CD. J.J. Johnson’s “Lament” and Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” demonstrate the three musicians’ dedication to the principle of togetherness rather than emphasis on the individual. Which is not to suggest that Mraz and Willie Jones are less than splendid in solo. Willie is particularly effective in Hank’s “Interface.” The audience lets him know it. They show great warmth to hometown favorite Mraz, their most famous jazz export, particularly following his virtuoso solo on Wes Montgomery’s “Twisted Blues.” Commitment to the trio concept aside, Hank Jones firmly establishes his individualism in two-and-a-half unaccompanied minutes of “Lonely Woman,” capturing the wistfulness of the piece. It is neither the Benny Carter nor the Ornette Coleman “Lonely Woman” but the relatively obscure song by William Stegmeyer and Richard Carney.
“Comin’ Home, Baby,” “Stella by Starlight” and “Speak Low” swing hard. Jones reaches deep into the harmonies of “Speak Low” and gives Mraz more of his attentive support as the bassist executes yet another of his perfect solos. Jones concludes with two by his contemporary, Monk. “Rhythm-A-Ning” and “Blue Monk” effectively cover two of the staples of modern jazz, “I Got Rhythm” changes and the blues. It’s a terrific concert by one of the music’s treasures and a fine way to remember Hank Jones.
Jakob Bro, Balladeering (Loveland). Bro is a young Danish guitarist with his own label and a sense of quiet daring in his music. He has the respect of musicians years older. That is what enabled him to enlist drummer Paul Motian, guitarist Bill Frisell, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and bassist Ben Street as sideman for Balladeering. They recorded the CD with him in New York. Now in his early thirties, Bro attracted notice in Motian’s Electic Bebop band, and further prominence with Polish trumpeter Tomas Stanko’s group.
The title of the first tune in the CD, “Weightless,” might stand as a description of Bro’s music, except that while the music floats and seems to make few demands on the listener, beneath its placid surface flow currents that compel thought and stimulate emotions in ways that, among the arts, only music can. Bro’s and Frisell’s guitars dart around and through one another, meld, shift, disperse and recombine. Konitz’s tone takes on expansiveness in this setting. The lines he creates are mystic stories spun out by a wise elder. Street’s deliberate bass patterns are more commentaries than guidelines. Motian’s participation is the essence of what has made him unique for more than five decades. He splashes, shimmers, punctuates and urges, rarely stating the beat but always giving the music its pulse. The two versions of “Starting Point”—one acoustic, the other electric—constitute a stunning contrast in the difference the medium can make in the message of a piece of music.
Bro’s album runs under 45 minutes. He did not fill it to CD capacity, as far too many musicians do. I presume that is because he accomplished what he set out to achieve and was satisfied. Bravo.

Mark Stryker, music critic of the Detroit Free Press, sent this note:

Thought you might be interested in this— a couple months ago I recall a comment on your Mitch Miller/Bird post including a reference to the Australian Jazz Quartet/Quintet. The vibraphonist from the group, Jack Brokensha, a longtime Detroiter, died this week at 84. This is a link to the Free Press obituary.
Couldn’t find any YouTube clips with Jack, save a few Motown hits where he’s playing various percussion instruments and/or vibes. There must be film of the band somewhere; I can’t imagine they weren’t on television at some point, particularly when they went back to Australia to play. Interestingly, Jack once showed me a fascinating reel of home movies that he had taken back in the middle ’50s when the AJQ was traveling widely as part of package tours with Miles Davis’s band, Brubeck, Carmen McRae and others. The films were super 8 and they were silent. What stays with me 14 years later is that you saw all the cats relaxed on tour, waiting for the bus, hanging on the street, smiling for the camera (Miles too), plus film of the marquees and clubs in various cities. My memory is hazy but I think he also had film of the various groups performing though the reason this doesn’t stick out is that, as I said, it was all silent footage.
Brokensha was a sweet guy with a firecracker personality. He was a real fixture here.