Archives for March 2013

The drummer Artt Frank is observing his 80th birthday and the impending publication of his memoir about work and friendship with Chet Baker (they are pictured together). On Frank’s website, Baker is quoted as saying, “Artt Frank is my all-time favorite drummer. He always seems to know where I’m going.” This performance from one of their 1981 gigs features impressive latterday blues playing by the trumpeter and highlights Frank’s propulsive brush work behind Baker.

For an appreciation of Frank that spun off a post about the pioneering drummer Tiny Kahn, see this piece from the early days of Rifftides.

The attention-getting device above is one of the late Leo Meiersdorff’s album covers for the Thad Jones Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. If we have your attention, here’s an announcement from Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest about next Sunday’s broadcast:

SRJO PLAYS THAD JONES: FROM BASIE TO THE VILLAGE VANGUARD

Thad Jones played trumpet with the Basie Band and he brought the jazz orchestra into the modern age with his unique compositions and arrangements for the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra at The Village Vanguard. The current incarnation of that orchestra plays every Monday night at the hallowed New York club as The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, 47 years after it began. The music of Thad Jones still feels current and is played by jazz orchestras around the world, including The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra which featured Thad Jones’ music in two sold out concerts last weekend.

Highlights from one of those concerts will air on Jazz Northwest Sunday, March 10 on 88.5, KPLU. Air time is 2pm PST. For web streaming, click on http://kplu.org, then on “Listen Live.” The concert was recorded at The Kirkland Performance Center. Included are several selections that have become jazz standards, “Three in One,” “A Child is Born,” “To You” and “Low Down.” Among the many soloists in this concert are two who performed with Thad Jones or the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Bill Ramsay and Mark Taylor.

In case you have forgotten how the Jones-Lewis band sounded and looked, click on the little arrow on the screen below. From the costumery, you might think that this was the 1970s.

Soprano saxophone solo: Jerry Dodgion. Baritone saxophone solo: Pepper Adams. Composer, conductor:Thad Jones.

All The Things You Are: The Life of Tony Bennett

by David Evanier

Reviewed by Paul Paolicelli

Tony Bennett is the longest-running act from the “greatest generation” of American popular singers. His career has spanned seven decades and his popularity is as strong today as it was when he was breaking into the public’s psyche with overly-emotive tunes like “Rags to Riches.” Not only a civil rights supporter, like Sinatra, but also an activist. A man who walked across the bridge in Selma and marched to Birmingham to demand social change. A true mensch in many ways, but also a complete enigma to many who could never really get very close to this man. A man who, like Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich, seemed to take great delight in eviscerating his musicians after concerts, but would turn around and publically praise or financially help the least among them. A man filled with either humility or an incredible lack of self-confidence. A man quite possibly haunted by ghosts.

In his highly researched book, David Evanier tackles the Bennett complexities. It is no easy job. With Bennett, Evanier has to do double-duty since his early experiences were both intense and wide-ranging and, as he matured, he became more and more drawn into himself.

Perhaps the most formative event in Bennett’s life was World War Two. Unlike several other musicians of his generation, he didn’t serve as a performer; he was a dogface on the front lines. He served with the U.S. Seventh Army in southern Germany, mopping up pockets of German resistance in closing days of the war. This action through Bavaria meant the liberation of concentration camps. Tony Bennett, Italian kid from Astoria Heights, saw firsthand at Dachau the ultimate degradation of human beings. Saw firsthand indescribable suffering, the images of which would stay with him for the rest of his life. And like most of his generation, he didn’t talk about it much when he came home.

Bennett tells several interviewers over the years that he started his musical career as a singing waiter and he would have been happy spending his entire life doing just that. Can the man really be that simple? The question infuses Evanier’s work. While there are times when he appears to have none of the ego associated with even lesser talents, one wonders if the humble approach isn’t the equivalent of Dean Martin’s drunk act. But time and again Evanier finds those fellow musicians and professional associates who talk about Bennett’s love of the music and joy of singing. Still, the reader is left wondering…

While not an Italian American, Evanier, a native New Yorker, has a clear and touching appreciation and understanding of the Italian American experience. He goes to great lengths to describe Bennett’s youth and the role of his family in his formation as a man and musician.

Tony Bennett was not exactly an overnight success, but this book makes it clear that his talent was evident early on and that, after a modicum of schooling (he dropped out of technical school to help support the family) and his war experiences, it didn’t take him very long to get down to the business of singing. From that point on he seems to have a miraculous way of bumping into the right people who take to him immediately and help him along. And, as Evanier makes quite clear, Bennett had and maintains an unerring sense of the types of songs he could and should sing. Perhaps alone among the popular singers of his day, Bennett had an innate sense of quality and taste and, while the listener might dispute the interpretation of the song (especially in some of the early dramatic renditions), there’s no “Come On-a My House” tragedy in the entire discography. He remained true throughout his career to his musical and artistic compass. A man who insisted on returning to Jazz after each popular success. A man who has spent his life praising his own personal heroes—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald—and who speaks eloquently and often of their artistry and legacy. It’s clearly the music that drives him.

That is perhaps, Evanier’s greatest accomplishment with this book; he never leaves the music far behind. He describes in great detail the selections at the various times and over the course of countless recording sessions, the personnel (both musical and managerial), the highlights of the recordings and performances. He talks with hundreds of people who performed with Bennett, recorded with him, traveled with him, managed him; even with former lovers. It’s a valuable body of interviews and sourcing material.

Yet, despite all of that testimony, Tony Bennett remains a little unclear. Like his art, Bennet is colorful, dramatic, dissonant, bright, but there’s no photograph here; it’s strictly representational. This is not a deficiency of the biographer, but rather the completely illusive and evasive character that Evanier is dealing with. Evanier amasses an impressive array of first-person testimony that is often contradictory. Even the people who worked the closest with Bennett often say they don’t really know the man.

“All the Things You Are” is the perfect title for this book. Because, in the final analysis, Bennett is an awful lot of things. While no clear photograph emerges of this man and his art, a clear appreciation is the net result. Throughout, Evanier never loses his clearly articulated sense of wonder and love for Tony Bennett’s work.

Paul Paolicelli is the author of two acclaimed books about the Italian American experience: Dances With Luigi—a Barnes&Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and Los Angeles Times best seller—and Under the Southern Sun, a Sons of Italy recommended reading selection. Paolicelli is a veteran broadcast journalist who has managed television news departments and the Washington, D.C., bureau of the NBC television stations. The Rifftides staff is pleased to have him as a contributor.

Speaking of John Coltrane (see the post two items down), if you’re looking for a starter saxophone for your child, here’s a great opportunity.

Yes, that says $115,000. But, hey, shipping is free.

Before he became famous for his tenor and soprano saxophone playing, Coltrane was an alto saxophonist in the Navy and in the early part of his professional career with King Kolax, Dizzy Gillespie and Earl Bostic, among others. Of the few recorded instances of his alto work, this may be the most famous. It’s from a 1958 Gene Ammons all-star session. Ammons hosted Coltrane, fellow tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, flutist Jerome Richardson, pianist Mal Waldron, bassist George Joyner and drummer Arthur Taylor. If you’re in a hurry, you can move the slider to Coltrane’s solo at 6:40. My advice is, don’t be in a hurry. Everyone sounds good.

About that Coltrane alto on ebay: if you’re interested in bidding, follow this link.

Blogging will be suspended while we try to subdue an invading tech gremlin. Damage so far is slight, the only casualty a printer. The Rifftides staff is doing everything possible to make sure that the incursion is terminated—with prejudice—and we send the troublemaker back to infinity, or wherever he came from.

In the meantime (sneaky transition), enjoy the classic Shorty Rogers recording of “Infinity Promenade.” Shelly Manne is the magician with cymbals. Soloists: Art Pepper, alto saxophone; Rogers, trumpet; Marty Paich, piano. What makes this recording, however, is not the soloists and not that repeated riff. It’s the mind-blowing double trumpet lead near the end by Conrad Gozzo and Maynard Ferguson, still a sort of gold standard for lead trumpeters.

Lester Perkins of Jazz On The Tube pointed out that today is Jimmy Garrison’s birthday. Garrison, who died in 1976, would have been 79. Perkins alerted his subscribers to a 1968 video from Danish television of the bassist featured with Elvin Jones’s trio on Garrison’s composition “Sweet Little Maia.” Joe Farrell was the soprano saxophonist. Jones and Garrison had been members of John Coltrane’s quartet. When this was televised, Coltrane had been dead less than a year. Farrell was attracting increasing attention as one of his most accomplished successors.

Garrison’s 42-year-old son Matthew is also a respected bassist. He was a member of Jack DeJohnette’s band at the recent Portland Jazz Festival. For the Rifftides review of the concert, click here.

To learn about Jazz On The Tube, go here.

At last year’s Healdsburg Jazz Festival in California, pianist Michele Rosewoman’s trio welcomed trombonist Julian Priester as their guest. They played Priester’s “End Dance” from his album In Deep End Dance (say it aloud, fast). Andy McKee is the bassist, Billy Hart the drummer. The sound quality of this video is acceptable. That—and closing your eyes while you listen—helps compensate for the fuzzy picture.

Ms. Rosewoman’s three-decade career in music that combines jazz and Afro-Cuban elements includes her leadership of the New Yor-Uba ensemble, which this spring celebrates its 30th anniversary. Over the years, Priester, Hart, Howard Johnson, Oliver Lake, Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, Pedro Martinez, Adam Cruz and an assortment of other leading American, Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians have played in New Yor-Uba. For more About Michele Rosewoman, see her website.