Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
Across the country from warm and sunny Los Angeles tomorrow, New York’s Central Park will be full of leaves turning color and 30 bands serenading the season. It is the park’s annual Jazz And Colors celebration.
The photograph is from last year’s event. For information, including a list of the bands and a map, go here.
Watching and listening to Bill Holman put his big band through its paces was a rare treat. The 86-
year-old leader was preparing his troops for a rare public performance of his arrangements of the ten Thelonious Monk compositions in his celebrated Brilliant Corners album. Allowed to drop out of sight, never reissued, Holman’s Monk CD recorded in 1997 is one of the large-ensemble masterpieces of the second half of the twentieth century. Nor has there been anything that I know of to match it in the new millennium.
The concert tonight at Vitello’s in Los Angeles will be filmed for the documentary about Holman that I wrote about a couple of days ago. It has the makings of one of the city’s cultural events of the year, but it has received a puzzling lack of attention in the press and virtually no promotion by the club—barely a mention on their website. Holman’s band has some of L.A.’s youngest top-flight musicians, some of its oldest and some in between. As its 16 pros navigated the demands of his arrangements this afternoon, their enthusiasm, precision and joy were as if they were all about 25. If you are in L.A., or within striking distance, you might give attendance serious consideration. I rarely find myself in a promotional mood. For this, I make an exception.
Here is one of the pieces from that 1997 album, Monk’s “Friday The 13th.†The quirky soprano saxophone work is by the late Bill Perkins.
If I weren’t flying south today, I might very well be looking for a plane headed east. If you live in the 
northeastern US, you may want to know about these events:
Steve Kuhn has lined up a rarity in these days of one-shot engagements; four nights in the same club, Thursday through Sunday at the Jazz Standard in New York City. For decades a pianist of uncommon depth and inventiveness, Kuhn has in his trio Buster Williams on bass and Billy Drummond on drums. That’s all the information it would take to get me there. If you want more, go here, click on “Show Schedule” and scroll down.
Another event worth leaving home for is the 2013 manifestation of East Stroudsburg University’s Zoot Fest in the mountains of Pennsylvania’s Delaware Water Gap region. It’s a Sunday event named in memory of Zoot
Sims. Just one day, but what a day. The spirits of Zoot and Al Cohn will be there in spirit, summoned by an all-star cast that includes Phil Woods, Joe Lovano, Bucky Pizzarelli, Bill Crow, Bob Dorough, Lew Tabackin, Bill Goodwin, featured guest Joe Locke (pictured) and—if the pattern of previous years holds—a few surprises. It’s a fundraiser for the university’s Al Cohn Memorial CollectionTo learn more, go here.
Rifftides is going into partial suspension for a few days. I’m involved in a documentary about Bill Holman (pictured), the composer, bandleader and NEA Jazz Master universally regarded as one of the 
greatest of all jazz arrangers. I will be in Los Angeles for a few days to interview Mr. Holman. Kathryn King Media, a veteran producer of projects related to music, is making the film. Ms. King reports that the production will be supported in part by a fundraising campaign and that information about it will appear by the end of the week in the “Search Projects” section of the Kickstarter website under the title Charting Jazz: The Mastery of Bill Holman.
This video clip summarizes a few of King Media’s projects.
Here’s Holman in 2000 conducting Germany’s WDR Big Band. The piece is his arrangement of “Just Friends,†a breathtaking example of Holman’s celebrated linear writing style, with unison sections that he crafts as if they were improvised solos. Frank Chastener is the pianist, John Goldsby the bassist, Jeff Hamilton the drummer and James Moody the guest tenor saxophone soloist. About halfway through, you’ll see a list of all of the musicians in this remarkable band.
In due time, I’ll post more about the Holman project. As the week of production moves along, I’ll try to work in a Rifftides item or two. Stay tuned.
During the week when we lost Frank Wess, it has been impossible not to keep thinking about him—and listening to him. Today’s listening was to Uptown Records’ marvelous two-CD set of Wess in his partnership with trumpeter Johnny Coles (1926-1997). Their quintet was a 1980s band that reflected trends of the previous three decades. It was a platform not only for two nonpareil horn soloists but also for rhythm 
sections made up of some of the music’s brightest younger players. The first disc, recorded in 1983 in Rudy Van Gelder’s famous studio, has pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Reggie Johnson and drummer Kenny Washington. It is packed with pieces by the elite among modern jazz composers; Kenny Dorham, Tadd Dameron, Gigi Gryce, Bud Powell and Benny Golson among them. In some cases, two takes of a tune give additional insights into Wess’s warmth as an improviser on tenor and alto saxophones, and into his fluency of thought and execution, which seemed to come without effort. The same may be said of Coles, who plays flugelhorn throughout. He may well have been the most under-appreciated major brass soloist of the second half of the twentieth century. This collection is an opportunity to catch up with him.
The second disc finds Wess and Coles in 1988 at Yoshi’s in Oakland, California. Their rhythm section is the estimable trio of Bay Area pianist Smith Dobson, which included the rising bassist Larry Grenadier and the veteran drummer Donald Bailey. Here, Wess also plays flute, kicking off the set with energy and humor in the Sam Jones blues “One for Amos.†He and Coles end with Buddy Montgomery’s joyful up-tempo “Blues for David.†Wess’s tenor solo has a gruff buoyancy that may reflect the spirit of his Kansas City birthplace, even though his family left there when he was eight. Coles is as daring with harmonies and phrasing as he was in his years of adventuring in Charles Mingus’s band. Between the bookend blues performances, Wess, Coles and the Dobsons revisit Gryce’s “Minority†and Rodgers Grant’s “Morning Star†from the 1983 sessions. They also perform Wess’s ballad “If You Can’t Call, Don’t Come,†in which he plays tenor sax with aching beauty of expression that inspires Coles to take to the microphone to congratulate him. None of the Yoshi’s performances was issued until late last year. How music of this quality was allowed to remain on the shelf for nearly three decades is a mystery. Uptown’s Bob Sunenblick deserves congratulations for liberating it.
Favorite front porch exchange with one of tonight’s scores of trick-or-treaters.
Me: “Don’t eat too much of that candy.”
Eight-year-old Green Hornet: (with a sigh of exasperation through his mask) “I
know .”
As noted occasionally on Rifftides, the creative power of medium-sized jazz ensembles often exceeds their size. Go here to read several posts on that topic. The guitarist Anthony Wilson added to the mid-sized genre’s discography with his Power of Nine in 2006. Over the summer, he revived the group and peopled it with an impressive array of name musicians. Jim Wilke, winner of the Jazz Journalist Association’s broadcaster award, recorded the group and will put them on the air and stream them on the web this weekend. Here’s Mr. Wilke’s announcement with a photograph of the nonet by Jim Levitt.
Guitarist Anthony Wilson leads his nonet on Jazz Northwest, Sunday, November 3 at 2 PM (PDT) on 88.5 KPLU. The concert was recorded at Centrum’s Jazz Port Townsend last summer. Truly an all-star aggregation, the group includes Terell Stafford, trumpet, Jiggs Whigham, trombone, Jeff Clayton, alto sax & flute, Anat Cohen, tenor sax and clarinet, Gary Smulyan, baritone sax, Gerald Clayton, piano, Joe Sanders, bass and Matt Wilson, drums. All were on the faculty for the Jazz Port Townsend Jazz Workshop, which took place the week leading up to the festival.
Music on the program includes a couple of classics, and two contemporary pieces, one an original by Anthony Wilson who has recorded four CDs with this instrumentation as well as three more an organ trio. He has also toured and recorded as a member of the Diana Krall group.
Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for 88.5 KPLU. The program is also streamed live at kplu.org and is available as a podcast.
Here is a previous version of the Wilson Nonet with his composition “Hymn” at the Blue Whale in Los Angeles in 2012.
Anthony Wilson (guitar), Josh Nelson (piano), Hamilton Price (bass), Mark Ferber (drums), Alan Ferber (trombone), Gilbert Castellanos (trumpet), Matt Zebley (alto saxophone), Matt Otto (tenor saxophone), Adam Schroeder (baritone saxophone)
We have confirmation that Frank Wess died today. The flutist and saxophonist succumbed to kidney failure at 91. Wess played with undiminished spirit and creativity that kept him in the forefront of jazz soloists for decades after most of his contemporaries had retired or died. A professional from the age of 19, following service in World War Two Wess joined Billy Eckstine’s big band.
After earning a conservatory degree in flute, he became a member of Count Basie’s reed section in 1953 and stayed with Basie until 1964, occasionally playing alto sax in addition to tenor and flute. It was on tenor, however, that he developed a symbiotic relationship with Frank Foster (1928-2011). Their tenor sax partnership became so distinctive that the band was sometimes referred to as the Two Franks edition of the Basie organization.
One of Wess’s flute features with Basie was Neil Hefti’s “Cute.”
Here is Wess in 2009, when he was 87, with with fellow tenorist Scott Robinson in the Gene Ammons-Sonny Stitt specialty “Blues Up And Down.” The rhythm section is Ilya Lushtak, guitar; Tal Ronen, bass; and Quincy Davis, drums.
In 2007, Wess was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.
(Addendum, November 1, 2013)
As he was about to board a plane for Tokyo and a Japanese tour, Scott Roinson sent a message about his friend.
We have lost the great Frank Wess… a dear mentor, friend, and giant of music. Someone I have looked up to my entire musical life. A source of immeasurable inspiration and guidance, as well as friendship. An American treasure. I last saw him less than two weeks before I went on the road, and I knew it would not be long. But as my friend Maria Traversa said to me, “91 years of doing what you love is a pretty good life.” And, from fellow saxophonist Dan Block: “We’ll carry what he gave us throughout our lives.”
For me this is a very personal loss. I worked closely with Frank on many concerts, tours and recordings, and we even started a band together – at his urging – back in the early nineties. My wife and I hold annual cookouts at our home in NJ, and Frank and his beloved Sara were usually there. Here is a photo Maria took of Frank at one of these events, sitting under our giant oak tree with me and Dean Pratt, who is trying out my “echo cornet.”
I am incredibly grateful for the time I have known Frank Wess, and for all that he has given me. I will miss him more than I can say.
By special arrangement with the publisher, Rifftides readers may acquire autographed copies of Doug’s novel Poodie James at a reduced price. To see a description of the book, read an excerpt and learn how to order, click on Purchase Doug’s Books on the blue border above. The special price will be in effect until the limited supply runs out.
“Thank you,” I said to the clerk at the hardware store.
“Hey, no problem, ya know?” she replied.
It occurred to me that she had not jumped aboard the Rifftides Department Of Language Reform (DOLR) bandwagon. Despite our periodic efforts to encourage clarity of expression, Americans and other speakers of English continue in their wanton linguistic ways. I concluded that it’s time to rerun this item from more than three years ago.
The Rifftides Department Of Language Reform (DOLR) has been neglecting its duties. Its members claim that their failure to stop the misuse of “absolutely” and “no problem” (see this archives post) discouraged them. At a staff meeting on the subject, the DOLRers moaned that they despair of succeeding where Fowler, Strunk, White, Bernstein, Ciardi and other titans of proper English usage have failed. They pointed out that people still say, “ya know” every few seconds; still say and write, “they” when they should use, “he” or “she;” millions still bloat their sentences with “on a daily basis” and “on a national basis,” wasting words when they could streamline with, “daily” and “nationally.”
“Never give up,” I told them. “It’s God’s — or Webster’s — work.”
“Maybe we’re being too fussy, too pedantic,” they said. “Maybe the language is just taking its evolutionary course, and what sounds wrong today will be right tomorrow.”
“Shut up and watch this,” I explained.
The typography is by Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.
Thanks to Bobby Shew for calling this delightful wig bubble to our attention.
While I’m grumping about lousy usage, I’ll grump at The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. They are among the newspapers and broadcast news outfits that seem to have succumbed to budget pressures by firing their copy editors. Folks, the past tense of sink is “sank,” not “sunk.” The past tense of swim is “swam,” not “swum.” Thank you.
Lester Perkins, the proprietor of Jazz On The Tube, sent an alert to a rare opportunity to watch and listen to Duke Ellington rehearsing a new piece. This was on the French Cote d’Azur in 1966. We see glimpses of Paul Gonsalves, Russell Procope, Cat Anderson, Buster Cooper, Jimmy Hamilton and the other members of the ’66 band, even one of Tom Whaley, Ellington’s indispensable arranger and copyist (at :37). The video clip melds smoothly from rehearsal into performance and features chorus after chorus of Johnny Hodges deep into the “The Old Circus Turn-around Blues.â€
That track ended up as part of the eight-CD album Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington Cote d’Azur Concerts. The box is still around, expensive as a new CD set, but possible to find used at a reasonable price, or as an MP3 download. It’s worth the search, full of top-notch performances by one of the best of Ellington’s latter-day bands and by Fitzgerald at her peak.
I must confess that among the dozens (and dozens) of unsolicited email messages that pour into the Rifftides computer each day, I have paid little attention to those from the Litchfield Jazz Camp. That changed when one arrived with news that next year the camp moves from Kent to another Connecticut town. From the news release:
The camp will now be held at Canterbury School in New Milford, CT. The new campus allows the camp to offer a wide array of health and fitness options along with its time-honored, top quality music instruction.
Photographer Mark Vanasse’s picture of the new site is what caught my eye:
It reminded me a bit of the idyllic campus in the old Patrick McGoohan TV series The Prisoner, minus the presence of that threatening giant balloon.
The Litchfield camp’s music director is Don Braden, a saxophonist with a long discography and a track record in bands led by Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard, Betty Carter and Wynton Marsalis. The extensive faculty includes such veterans as Claudio Roditi, Matt Wilson, Wayne Escoffery, Helen Sung and Orrin Evans as well as established newer artists like pianist Carmen Staaf and bassist Luques Curtis. The Litchfield camp is administered by Litchfield Performing Arts, a charitable organization that describes its mission as “changing lives through the arts.â€
“Charitable†doesn’t mean free, of course, but considering the high costs of summer camps these days, Litchfield’s charges seem reasonable, and a quarter of the camp’s students attend on needs-based scholarships totaling a value of about $100,000 each year. The camp’s website includes a video with information, and explanations from Braden, Jimmy Heath and others.
YouTube has a collection of videos from previous camps. Here’s a 2012 student group getting familiar with the blues via Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,†including two choruses of collective improvisation.
Happy campers.
The Rifftides blogroll near the end of the right-hand column now includes a link to pianist-arranger-composer Mike Longo’s new website. Longo’s site is replete with practical tips to musicians about developing and refining their craft. By way of example, it also presents videos of his trio and his New York State Of The Art big band. Here, the band plays “No More Blues,†aka “Chega de Saudade.â€
Longo’s site contains archive clips of him playing with his mentor and former employer Dizzy Gillespie and Gillespie’s longtime partner James Moody.
As interesting to musicians as the clips—perhaps even more interesting—Longo offers suggestions for improved practice and performance techniques. Some of them are specific, as in his adamant warning not to practice using a metronome. He begins the section by cautioning that the clicking of a metronome is not a pulse.
What is a pulse anyway? The sound of your heart beating. It produces a throbbing, pumping kind of feeling as opposed to the monotonous, soulless clicking of a metronome.
Elsewhere, Longo tackles mistaken guidance about the nature of harmonic content in jazz.
One of the problems musicians have when trying to learn how to solo over changes lies in the misconception regarding chords. Chords and harmony are two separate issues. Harmony can best be described as Motion. The motion of the tones of one voicing moving into the tones of another in a melodic fashion. Chords may best be described as arrested motion.
He follows with annotated examples of how great jazz improvisers use chords to develop flowing lines of melody. Such particulars may be of interest not only to professional and developing musicians, but also to laymen interested in deepening their knowledge of how jazz is made.
It was a fine day for the ritual of draining, coiling, labeling and storing the hoses. The canal has been
dry and the irrigation water off 
since Tuesday. That news is of no importance whatever and has nothing to do with the usual topics of this blog. Hoping to find a connection (hah), I searched for music inspired by hoses and found nothing but a semi-bawdy saloon song that ended up being about a garden hose only after implying that it was about something else. Therefore, we offer a song the
first syllable of whose title is the word in question. The song, from Harry Belafonte’s best selling 1956 Calypso album, expresses the elation we felt around here after all those hoses had been stored for the winter.
Stumbling across that track from the Belafonte album was a reminder of what a refreshing presence he was in popular music after he decided to pursue folk music rather than jazz; in an appearance in the late forties he was once backed by the Charlie Parker quintet. The album and its big hit, “The Banana Boat Song” (“Day-oh”) launched Belafonte into a major career that included film acting as well as singing.
First, from an upstairs window looking across the valley. This is a fine time of year to live in the high desert at the foot of the Cascades.
Next, in the exquisite 1948 original adapted by Ralph Burns from a movement of his Summer Sequence suite for the Woody Herman Ochestra. This is the recording that sent young Stan Getz on his way to tenor saxophone fame. A YouTube contributor identified as ZOrkaz added the autumnal photographs.
If Johnny Mercer had written nothing but, “There’s a dance pavilion in the rain, all shuttered down, a winding country lane all russet brown,” he would be in the lyricist hall of fame for evocative imagery. Jo Stafford sang Mercer’s lyric with the perfection of simplicity. Her husband, Paul Weston, wrote the arrangement.
Stafford’s “Early Autumn” is in her collection The Big Band Sound, released on the Westons’ Corinthian label in 1993 and, happily, still available.
There is no evidence that Miley Cyrus was influenced by Jo Stafford.
Rifftides reader Ted Hodgetts writes from Ontario, Canada, with a reminder that Clark Terry’s 
prolonged, expensive, illness continues. CT’s medical bills are accumulating at an accelerating rate. The Jazz Foundation of America set up a special fund to help with, among other things, the substantial cost of aides who give care. The health workers make it possible for him to remain at home, where he continues to support and advise developing young musicians. For details about his situation and how to help, see CT’s website. Don’t miss his illustrated blog entries about visits from prominent colleagues and aspiring jazz artists. As you browse, you’ll be treated to an audio montage of Clark Terry solos.
If you need a reminder of the joy and power he pours into his music, here he is in 2000 with his quintet at the Jazzwoche Burghausen in Germany. You may never hear a hipper arrangement of “Over The Rainbow.”
Clark Terry, flugelhorn; Dave Glasser, alto saxophone; Don Friedman, piano; Marcus McLaurine, bass; Sylvia Cuenca, drums
It’s a bit late to recognize Christopher Columbus on his holiday but at this writing it’s still Columbus Day in the Pacific time zone. The banks and the post office were closed for the day in the land that Columbus discovered. Substantial parts of the federal government have been shut down for two weeks and our elected leaders in Washington are in political confusion. According to the latest news, there may be hope that the 
nation won’t go into default this week.
But, in the unforgettable words of Thomas Waller, “Son, don’t let it bother you.” Let’s try to put all that nonsense aside for the moment and remember Ammiráglio Colombo with a history lesson from Mr. Waller And His Rhythm.
Fats Waller, piano; Gene Sedric, tenor sax; Herman Autrey, trumpet; Al Casey, guitar; Charles Turner, bass; Yank Porter, drums. April 8, 1936.
Happy Columbus Day.
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond is moving along briskly in its new digital life as an ebook. The hardcover edition has sold out. Used copies are going for as much as $335 on book and auction sites, but new clothbound copies are history. The electronic transformation is good news on several counts:
The book will continue to be available. For now, it is on Kindle. Publisher Malcolm Harris of Parkside Publications tells me that he expects to have it up on Apple and Barnes & Noble soon.
The ebook edition has all of the features of the hardbound, including the nearly 200 photographs, the chapter notes, the solo transcriptions, the discography, the extensive index and Dave and Iola Brubeck’s foreword.
The ebook edition is easily portable. The most frequent complaint about the five-pound, 10-and-a-half-by-11-inch original was, “How am I supposed to read this thing on an airplane?†Now you can, after the pilot says it’s okay to fire up your Kindle, iPad, Nook or Sony Reader.
 The ebook sells for less than a third of the list price of the original hardcover edition.
Among other honors, Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and the Jazz Journalists Association Book of the Year Award. Here are a few of its plaudits:
Scrupulously researched and written with an attractive combination of affection and candor, it casts a bright light on Desmond’s troubled psyche without devaluing his considerable achievements as an artist. “Any of the great composers of melodies—Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin—would have been gratified to have written what Desmond created spontaneously,†Mr. Ramsey says. Strong words, but Take Five makes them stick. —Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal
The telling is lyrical, funny, nostalgic, provocative, and allusive — just like a Paul Desmond solo.â€â€¨ —Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of its Second Century
Doug Ramsey, the saxophonist’s friend for 20 years before Desmond’s death in 1977, constructs the full person as well as digging out much more of his writing than was known. A major piece of jazz scholarship, the book cuts no corners. —Ben Ratliff, The New York Times
Desmond was fascinated by electronic technology. We can only imagine his delight if he knew that his life story had been digitized.
To order the Kindle edition, please go here. To listen to Paul sounding the way he looks above, play this video.
Summertime, CTI, 1968. Paul Desmond, alto saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Airto Moreira, drums; Joe Beck, guitar; Wayne Andre, Paul Faulise, Bill Watrous, Kai Winding, trombone; John Eckert, Joe Shepley, Marvin Stamm, trumpet; Ray Alonge, Tony Miranda, French horn; Don Sebesky, arranger.
Jim Wilke will devote his Jazz Northwest broadcast on Sunday to a musician who has been the bartitone saxophone anchor in a significant number of great bands and, on baritone and alto, a mainstay of jazz in the Pacific Northwest. Here’s the announcement:
Saxophonist Bill Ramsay is a Northwest treasure who’s been both leader and sideman in dozens of bands, not only in this region but also internationally. He recently played concerts in Brazil with former Count Basie Band members. He’s played with many of the best known bands ever – Basie, Ellington, Goodman, Les Brown, Quincy Jones, Grover Mitchell, Maynard Ferguson and others. He was a regular at Red Kelly’s in both Tumwater and Tacoma, is co-leader of the Ramsay-Kleeb Band, a founding member of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra, and in the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame.
Bill Ramsay shouts encouragement to the front line of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra: Travis Raney, Jay Thomas and Dan Marcus, at Tula’s (photo by Daniel Sheehan)
Now in his 80s, he’s as vital as ever, teaching summer jazz workshops at Jazz Port Townsend, on call as a quick sub with numerous major names, and playing pops concerts with the Seattle Symphony. In this tribute concert two sides of this versatile musician are showcased, his powerful baritone sax soloing and his arrangements for this specially assembled septet. In addition to “Rams” fronting the group, you’ll hear Travis Raney on alto and tenor sax, Jay Thomas, trumpet; Dan Marcus, trombone; John Hansen, piano; Chuck Deardorf, bass; and Greg Williamson, drums. The concert was presented by Earshot Jazz as part of the current Earshot Jazz Festival, which continues through mid-November.
Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for 88.5 KPLU. The program airs Sundays at 2 PM Pacific time, and a podcast of the program is available at kplu.org following the broadcast.
Despite his refusal to correct the spelling of his last name, Mr. Ramsay and I manage to maintain cordial relations when we meet.
