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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Archives for May 2012

Book: Timme Rosenkrantz

Timme Rosenkrantz, Fradley Hamilton Garner, Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969

Timme Rosenkrantz (1911–1969) had royal Danish blood, but no royal pretensions, and when he came to the US in 1934, his garrulous charm made him fit right in. What attracted him here was jazz. He became a chronicler and friend of musicians from Louis Armstrong to Art Tatum to Lennie Tristano and dozens of others. He was a rounder and a storyteller, and he could write. His memoir, artfully edited by Fradley Garner, is a chronicle of three decades when New York was the center of the jazz universe and Rosenkrantz was swinging through it. Go here to see a video about Rosenkrantz and the book.

Compatible Quotes: Life

We in the Western world suffer from too many categories and classes; we’ve forgotten that we all still have diapers on. We’ve separated music from life.—Ornette Coleman

If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn.—Charlie Parker

What we play is life.—Louis Armstrong

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.—Emily Dickinson

Lagniappe*: Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk with Charlie Rouse, Butch Warren and Frankie Dunlop in Japan in 1963, playing “Epistrophy.”

*la·gniappe (lan-yap), noun
Chiefly Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas . 1.a small gift to a customer by way of compliment or for good measure; bonus. 2.a gratuity or tip. 3.an unexpected or indirect benefit.

Other Places: A Rifftides Dedication

Here’s a first: trumpeter, composer, teacher, blogger and frequent Rifftides correspondent Bruno Leicht (seen here) has dedicated a new composition—a suite, no less—to this weblog. Mr. Leicht, who is based in Cologne, explains on his own blog that he bases the composition on several important pieces of music sharing certain harmonic characteristics. The piece has yet to be premiered or recorded.

How did Rifftides get involved? Go here for Bruno’s explanation and a lead sheet. Then, come back and click here for added background in a post from the Rifftides archive. If you click on all of the links in Bruno’s post, it will be a while before you get back here. That’s okay. We’ll wait.

The Rifftides staff thanks Mr. Leicht for the honor. We look forward to someday hearing “A Bad Lady In Six Flats.”

International Jazz Day

The first annual International Jazz Day came and went on April 30 with no mention on Riffitdes, a lapse I regret. Fellow arts journal blogger Howard Mandel, president of the Jazz Journalists Association, has a fine report at his Jazz Beyond Jazz site. Howard includes a great quote from United Nations Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon (pictured) and a tribute to Herbie Hancock, who came up with the idea of such a day. A video posted on YouTube gives a scattershot idea of some of the events at the UN that inspired Howard’s enthusiastic account.

Miscellany From The West

It may have been news to many that there was a trace of jazz left anywhere on AM radio, but that doesn’t make a report from Los Angeles easier to take. Here’s the lead paragraph from Kirk Silsbee’s story in today’s L.A. Times.

A silence has descended on Los Angeles’ AM radio band. On April 2, KABC’s longtime morning man, Doug McIntyre (pictured), acquiesced to his management’s request that he no longer program jazz. Although he hosts a current events show 5 to 9 a.m. weekdays, McIntyre represented the last vestige of AM jazz, with his variety of big band bumper music, full songs and on-air interviews of jazz personalities.

The station apparently sees jazz as hindering its bid for a wider audience. In its place, rock music now serves as McIntyre’s bumper music.

To read the whole story of the corporate karate chop to jazz, go here.

Staying with Los Angeles, archivist Jim Harrod has a new blog devoted to the history of Pacific Jazz, the Southern California label that did much to make west coast jazz famous. The two installments so far profile Richard Bock, who founded the label. They cover Bock’s early involvement with Discovery Records, his work at the club called Haig and the advent of Pacific Jazz. There are photographs of Dizzy Gillespie, Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes and others, pages from PJ catalogs and lots of record labels, like the one on the right, that are likely to induce ripples of nostalgia. To see Harrod’s most recent post, click here. Scroll down to part one to get to the early history.

Before Bock moved to Los Angeles, before west coast jazz became a category, there was plenty of substantial jazz activity on the lower left coast. On the periphery of much of it, and sometimes at the center, was the pianist, guitarist, singer and protohipster Slim Gaillard (1916-1991). He had a duo, Slim and Slam, with bassist Slam Stewart. In 1938, the success of their “Flat Foot Floogie” made them famous on radio and jukeboxes. If you can’t bring Gaillard to mind, think “vout” and “oroony,” words that enriched the language. Gaillard moved to L.A. in the early 1940s, appeared in several movies and played in clubs including Billy Berg’s. His musicianship and verve attracted artists beyond the arena of novelty and comedy in which he primarily operated. They included Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, who appeared as guest soloists on a few of Gaillard’s recordings, including this one.

Here is Slim Gaillard as guest performer on a television program, presumably in L.A. If you have more information about it let us know by way of a comment.

Vout!

Finally in this west coast wig bubble, here’s a link to a piece from Oregon Music News, written by old pal Jack Berry, who was desperate for a column idea.

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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, … [MORE]

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