Rifftides readers have developed the recent Bing And Trane post into a colloquy on Red Garland (pictured). Garland was the pianist on “Love Thy Neighbor,†the Coltrane recording featured in the piece, and in the Miles Davis Quintet of the second half of the 1950s. His 1970s Texas comeback brings considerable attention in comments that follow the Crosby-Coltrane post.
Friday’s Stan Kenton correspondence attracted news that composer Terry Vosbein has prepared an archive of most of NBC Radio’s Stan Kenton Concert in Miniature broadcasts. The show ran every week for 18 months during 1952 ’53 and 1954 when Kenton’s was one of the most successful of the big bands that survived the swing 
era. Among the soloists with Kenton during that period were Conte Candoli, Bill Perkins, Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Frank Rosolino, Lennie Niehaus, Richie Kamuca, and Bill Holman. Stan Levey and Frank Capp were often the drummers, Don Bagley and Curtis Counce the bassists. The arrangers included Holman, Bill Russo, Pete Rugolo, Gerry Mulligan and Johnny Richards. It was an era when the Kenton band often managed to swing. Most of the concerts are live broadcasts that originated in clubs, concert halls and dance emporiums from Birdland and the Hollywood Palladium to the Steel Pier in Atlantic City and the Aviatrix Club in Amarillo, Texas. There are 150 of the programs, archived and playable on computers. Go here.
Jason Crane reports success in his appeal for support for his Jazz Session podcasts. The program will return to the web in a month. In the meantime, he is sending photos and comments from the Detroit Jazz Festival, which wraps up this evening. For news of the Jazz Session revival and for Jason’s photos from Detroit, go here.
George Colligan, is a fine pianist. He now and then surprises his audiences by picking up a pocket trumpet 
and playing it extremely well, as noted in this report from last winter’s Portland Jazz Festival. He is a composer; most accomplished young jazz musicians are these days. Colligan also writes prose with clarity and—in the case of this entry in his blog Jazztruth—moving simplicity and an effective touch of ambiguity.
There is a new addition to the Rifftides blogroll: Canadian pianist and composer Earl MacDonald’s Ever Up And Onward. He adopted the title from Billy Strayhorn’s motto.
Finally, neither an odd nor an end. Here’s Strayhorn playing his most famous composition with persuasion from and under the personal supervision of the leader of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.