Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for January 2012

Sam Rivers And Barbara Lea, RIP

As 2011 wound down, American music lost two octogenarians who were dramatically different except for what they had in common, insistence on getting to the heart of the matter without compromise. Sam Rivers died in Orlando, Florida on December 26 at the age of 88, Barbara Lea the same day in Raleigh, North Carolina, at 82.

Rivers was a formidable saxophonist, flutist and composer. He had a university education in harmony, theory and composition, played blues with T-Bone Walker, worked with Miles Davis for a time, and became a leading figure in the avant garde. Rivers’ 1964 Fuchsia Swing Song, now a collectors item, melded experimentation with established values. His composition “Beatrice” from the album quickly joined the standard jazz repertoire. According to Rivers’ daughter Monique, he remained active as a performer and teacher until virtually the eve of his death and recorded material for dozens of albums yet to be released. Rivers was a lifelong prober beneath the surface, unsatisfied with routine, using his intellect and daring in equal measure to discover mysteries.

Here are Rivers and his quartet at the 1989 Leverkusener Jazztage in Germany, playing “Beatrice.” Rael Wesley Grant is on bass, Darryl Thompson on guitar and Steve Mcraven on drums.

Like Sam Rivers, Barbara Lea knew music inside out; she had a degree from Wellesley in music theory. Rivers was devoted to chance taking. Ms. Lea’s integrity was based in fealty to the song. She fervently believed, and said in interviews, that a singer’s business was to sing the song, not to use the song to sell herself. If it seemed to some listeners that she was too low key to be entertaining, her masterly phrasing, intonation, sense of time and understanding of the songwriter’s intentions persuaded others that her interpretations were definitive. She was sometimes described as a cabaret singer, but like Lee Wiley, whom she admired, Ms. Lea was a favorite of jazz musicians. Dick Sudhalter, Johnny Windhurst and the members of The Lawson-Haggart Jazz Band (on this album) were among her devoted fans and colleagues. There is regrettably little of Barbara Lea on video, but here’s a fine performance of “Sweet and Slow” with the trumpet obbligato and solo by Doc Cheatham. It’s from the 1984 Manassas, Virginia, jazz festival.

For The New York Times obituary of Sam Rivers, go here. For the Barbara Lea obituary, go here.

New Recommendations for 2012

Happy New Year to all Rifftides readers around the world.

For your listening, viewing and reading pleasure, the Rifftides staff offers recommendations of three CDs that differ dramatically from one another, an intimate Chet Baker DVD, and the autobiography of an irrepressible jazz institution. Please see the right column under Doug’s Picks.

CD: Corea, Gomez, Motian

Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez, Paul Motian, Further Explorations (Concord)

The two-CD album is described in the notes as a “template,” a “tabula rasa,” rather than a tribute to Bill Evans. Nonetheless, Corea’s encounter with two great Evans sidemen underlines Evans’s profound influence on the development of the jazz piano trio and on Corea’s own playing. Released less than a month following Motian’s death at 80, the live recording from New York’s Blue Note beautifully captures the drummer’s freedom, swing and interaction. In pieces from Evans’s repertoire and others by members of the trio, there is a spirit of adventure and, in Evans’s newly found “Song No. 1,” the challenge of discovery.

CD: Pinky Winters

Pinky Winters, Winters In Summer (SSJ)

To borrow from Paul Williams’s words to Ivan Lins’ “Love Dance,” Winters knows how to turn up the quiet. Using subtleties in phrasing, pitch, intensity and tone shading, she takes ownership of a song without violating its writer’s intentions. Here, her bossa nova repertoire includes Jobim, Lees and Moraes, plus Brazilianized songs by Cole Porter, Dave Frishberg, Bob Florence and Jack Jones. A highlight: her caressing of Jobim’s and Lees’ “Dreamer,” which also has one of several simpático tenor saxophone solos by Pete Christlieb. Years pass between Pinky Winters albums. When one appears, it is an event.

CD: Ronnie Cuber

Ronnie Cuber, Ronnie (Steeplechase)

Cuber has been playing uncompromising jazz on the baritone saxophone for more than half a century. With pianist Helen Sung, bassist Boris Kozlov and drummer Jonathan Blake, he is in top form in this 2009 album that escaped my attention until recently. Following his hard-bop gruffness in Freddie Hubbard’s “Thermo,” Cuber floats with tenderness through Scott LaFaro’s “Gloria’s Step” and Michel LeGrand’s “Love Theme From Summer of ’42.” At the speed of thought, he burns through ”Ah Leu-Cha” and “All the Things You Are”, giving young Blake a run for his money in their exchanges.

DVD: Chet Baker

Chet Baker, Candy (MVD)

In a private library in Sweden in 1985, Baker plays and sings with his working trio of the period, pianist Michael Graillier and bassist Jean Louis Rassinfosse. Red Mitchell is a guest, not on bass but at the piano showing Baker his preferred changes to “My Romance,” which the two perform together. Baker is relaxed and impressively fleet in the 1944 title tune and in “Tempus Fugue-it,” “Nardis,” “Sad Walk,” Mitchell’s “Red’s Blues” and “Love for Sale.” His “Bye Bye Blackbird” is tinged with blues. In brief interludes, Baker chats with Mitchell about his career. It’s good to have this on DVD at last.