Archives for 2013

Most of the obituaries of Leonard Garment mention his background as a jazz musician but not the key role he played in arranging White House honors for Duke Ellington. The former White House adviser died July 13 at the age of 89. Garment’s clarinet and tenor saxophone skills helped pay his way through college and law school. His gigs included a stint in Woody Herman’s saxophone section, but he opted for a career in law and public service. For a full review of Garment’s career, see his New York Times obituary.

Before Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he and Garment were partners in a Washington, DC, law firm. After Nixon’s election, Garment served in the White House as a special consultant on, among other matters, civil rights and the arts. His most visible role was defending Nixon in the Watergate scandal that erupted in 1972 and in the impeachment process that led to the president’s resignation. Noted for his integrity, Garment convinced Nixon not to destroy the oval office tapes that proved damning in the Senate Watergate hearings and investigation. Ultimately, he played a key role in persuading the president that he must resign.

Early in Nixon’s term, Willis Conover of the Voice of America suggested that the president throw Ellington a 70th birthday party at the White House. Garment and fellow Nixon adviser Charles McWhorter got the president’s approval. Conover assembled an all-star tribute band: Bill Berry and Clark Terry, trumpets; Urbie Green and J.J. Johnson, trombones; Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, saxophones; Hank Jones, piano; Jim Hall, guitar; Milt Hinton, bass; and Louie Bellson, drums; Joe Williams and Mary Mayo, vocals. Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, Willie the Lion Smith and Billy Taylor also played. Conover MCed the concert that followed Nixon’s presentation to Ellington of the National Medal of Freedom. The President then accompanied the birthday singalong. The US Information Agency, when there still was a USIA, filmed the event. This clip from an unnamed documentary is all that I have been able to turn up.

Following the concert, the East Room was cleared of chairs. Mr. and Mrs. Nixon retired but invited everyone to stay and enjoy themselves, which many did until 2:45 a.m. A jam session developed. Some of it is described in my notes for the CD of the music released 33 years later, including Garment’s part in it.

During the session, all of the pianists from the concert reappeared. Marian McPartland, Leonard Feather and George Wein also played the East Room Steinway. McPartland joined the Lion in a duet. Billy Eckstine, Joe Wiliams and Lou Rawls traded blues choruses. Leonard Garment, once a tenor saxophonist with Woody Herman, found himself jamming on clarinet with Mulligan, J.J. Johnson, Urbie Green and Dizzy Gillespie. In his book Crazy Rhythm, he wrote,

Years would pass before Benny Goodman would forgive me for not instructing him to bring his horn, but if he played, how could I?

Most of the all-stars sat in, and so did the Navy musicians. At one point, the rhythm section was made up of Marines, looking in their scarlet tunics like a contingent of Canadian Mounties.

There has been nothing like it at the White house—or anywhere else—since.

In his last two decades, Garment devoted much of his time and energy to establishment of the National Museum of Jazz in Harlem. He was its chairman until 2005.

Today is the 10th anniversary of Terry Teachout’s weblog About Last Night. For much longer than his digital decade, I have been amazed by the quantity, quality and insightfulness of Terry’s work on the web, in The Wall Street Journal, in Commentary and in his books (his biography of Duke Ellington is on the verge of publication). No one can be that prolific, that fast, that accurate, that concise, that good a writer. But he is. I would be offering him hearty congratulations even if he hadn’t been the one who encouraged and inspired me to start Rifftides eight (!) years ago. In his reflections on the first ten years, he writes,

I’ve posted something–if only an almanac entry–every weekday for a decade. Sometimes it’s a burden, but mostly it’s a pleasure.

It’s always a pleasure to read Terry, and to learn from him. I look forward to his next decade.

The light response stimulated by the news of Bengt Hallberg’s death was puzzling. Go here for the Rifftides post about the great Swedish pianist. In his later years, Hallberg used restraint and conservatism that sometimes disappointed listeners who became devoted to him for his refined bebop sensibility of the 1950s. Nonetheless, he never played with less than intriguing harmonic ingenuity and the rhythmic flow that distinguished his work from the beginning. Those unfamiliar with Hallberg’s work will find revelations in volume 7 of Svensk Jazzhistoria, Caprice Records’ massive survey of Swedish jazz from 1943 to 1969. In a 2001 Jazz Times review, I wrote about Hallberg’s work in the album.

Eleven of the album’s 65 tracks feature Hallberg as leader, arranger or sideman and together constitute perhaps the most complete disclosure under one cover of the extent of his talent. A pianist admired in Europe and the US for his fluency, touch and harmonic acuity, he wrote music with the same sense of discovery that he brought to his solos. His 1953 concert recording of “All the Things You Are” shows how completely Hallberg understood and absorbed postwar jazz developments and blended them into the cool classicism of his piano style. His 1954 “Blue Grapes,” for an octet, is a meld of blues sonorities, folk harmonies and a stately, almost baroque, sense of calm.

Further surprises and satisfactions concerning Hallberg meet our eyes and ears in video of a 1967 rehearsal for an NDR (North German Broadcasting) Jazzworkshop concert. The band is the cream of the Swedish jazz community of the day: Bosse Broberg, trumpet; Palle Mikkelborg (Danish), trumpet & fluegelhorn; Ake Persson, trombone; Lennart Aberg, tenor sax; Arne Domnérus, alto sax; Erik Nilsson, baritone sax; Rune Gustafson, guitar; Bengt Hallberg, piano; Georg Riedel, bass; Egil Johannsen, drums.

The pieces they play are, in this order, “Gubben und Källinge” (Riedel); ‘Vals” (Hallberg); “Ad Libitum” (Riedel); “Refrain” (Hallberg); “Hanid,” which is the 1925 hit “Dinah” (Axt, Lewis, Young) spelled backward; and “Django” (John Lewis). In the last two pieces, Hallberg gives full rein to his arranging craftsmanship and imagination. At the keyboard, he frees his inner Cecil Taylor. It is not our custom to embed long videos, but this was irresistible. If you understand Swedish, that’s all to the good, but you won’t need it to get the drift of the music and musicianship of Bengt Hallberg and his friends.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (it was called New Orleans) I took a break from two television and several radio newscasts a day and also broadcast a weekly program called Jazz Review. It did what the name suggests. Once in a while I deep-sixed the review format and put together a special called “It’s All Music.” The show might consist of recordings by artists as diverse as Charlie Parker, Waylon Jennings, Spike Jones, Percy Sledge, Artur Rubenstein, Jo Stafford, the Juilliard String Quartet and Frank Sinatra. Once I played the entire second movement of Mahler’s 6th Symphony. I did the first “It’s All Music” with trepidation. It turned out that the listeners—and the sponsor— liked it and asked for more. There’s no percentage in assuming that people are not open-minded.

All of that came to mind today when I got a notice that my newest follower on Twitter is the composer Daron Hagen (pictured). Anyone familiar with Hagen’s music is aware that he is open-minded. The eclecticism of his work, from chamber music to grand opera, makes that clear. You can find out about him on his website. But this isn’t about Daron, who—full disclosure—is a friend. It’s about a singing group and a piece of their music I found on YouTube when I followed a link in one of Hagen’s tweets. The group is New York Polyphony. The music is a liturgical work by the 16th century English composer William Byrd. Maybe it struck me because I recently finished reading Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall about the exploits of Henry The Eighth and Ann Boleyn during Byrd’s time. Or maybe it’s because the singing in this short piece is so good and the harmonies are so rich. I thought that you’d enjoy it, too.

It’s all music.

In the right column and for a while directly below, you will find the latest batch of Doug’s Picks: two new CDs, a classic album on CD at last, a DVD documentary about a giant of the piano who should not be forgotten, and a book that examines non-musical factors in the evolution of jazz. As always, reader comments are welcome by way of the “Speak Your Mind” box at the end of each post or the “Contact” button on the blue stripe.

YouTube says that 42,793 people have seen a clip of Clare Fischer (1928-2012) conducting what seems to be a master class. I came across it this evening while looking for something else. I abandoned the something else; Fischer was more interesting. At the piano, he plays Duke Elliington’s “I Didn’t Know About You” to set up an observation about the quality of Johnny Hodges’s alto saxophone playing. Without mentioning it he also demonstrates the quality of his own harmonic conception. In the second video, we hear Hodges confirm Fischer’s point. The person who contributed the video was obviously at least as concerned with the audiophile setup as with the music.

The YouTube uploader offers no details about the Hodges recording; who’s playing with him, for instance. My wild guess is that it is from the 1958 Not So Dukish session on Verve, with Billy Strayhorn, piano; Jimmy Woode, bass; and Sam Woodyard, drums—stalwarts from the Ellington organization. Out of print for years, Not So Dukish has been reissued on CD.

Oh, yes, this is the uploader’s description of the audio system. I presume that his or her fellow audiophiles will understand it.

THORENS TD 124 + WE MC STEPUP(PHILIPS RESISTOR) + BLACK CUBE SE + WE 80A +10 SE + LOWTHER PM6

People aware of my life as a news gypsy sometimes ask, “Don’t you miss New York—New Orleans—San Antonio—San Francisco—Portland—Washington, DC—Los Angeles—Cleveland—?” (Pick one). There are things I miss about each of them. But on a day like today, cycling mile after mile through the back country—the recent 106 degree heat a mere memory—I didn’t miss them at all.

Still, this evening in my chair with a book, a glass of something and the right piece of music, I may make an exception.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. —Benjamin Franklin

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. —Abraham Lincoln

Bengt Hallberg, honored as one of the finest pianists in modern jazz, died today in Uppsala, Sweden, of congestive heart failure. He was 80 years old. Hallberg’s keyboard touch and harmonic inventiveness came to the attention of musicians and listeners outside his native Sweden on Stan Getz’s 1951 recording of the traditional song “Ack Värmeland du sköna,” released in the US as “Dear Old Stockholm.” He made a further impression internationally with his playing on Quincy Jones arrangements for Clifford Brown, Art Farmer and a group of Swedish all-stars in a 1953 recording. Hearing a tune from that album in a 1955 Leonard Feather Blindfold Test when Hallberg was still little known, Miles Davis said:

The piano player gasses me – I don’t know his name. I’ve been trying to find out his name. He’s from Sweden. . . . I think he made those records with Stan, like “Dear Old Stockholm.” I never heard anybody play in a high register like that. So clean, and he swings and plays his own things…”

Jan Lundgren, inspired by Hallberg and considered by many his successor as Sweden’s leading jazz artist, said today:

“Hearing his Hallberg’s Surprise record when I was a young teenager made such a deep impression on me. He is one of the reasons I play jazz. His playing, at his best, was in a class matched by few others. Bengt Hallberg was the most humble man you’re likely to ever meet with a talent unsurpassed. Teddy Wilson is said to have stated that there were two musicians in Europe on a level with the very best Americans—Django Reinhardt and Bengt Hallberg.”

Hallberg and Lundgren appeared together in a two-piano concert at last year’s Ystad Jazz Festival in southern Sweden. For a Rifftides review of that concert, go here.

Through the 1950s and ‘60s, Hallberg was closely associated with Arne Domnérus, Lars Gullin and other leading Swedish musicians. Formed in the 1980s, Trio Con Tromba‘s recordings with Hallberg, trumpeter Jan Allan and bassist Georg Riedel remain popular. Hallberg composed extensively, writing for jazz groups as well as string quartets and ballet companies. He remained active in music until shortly before his death. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Here is Hallberg with Stan Getz in the recording that established the pianist as a major soloist when he was 19 years old.

Another pianist, primarily noted for his impeccable accompaniment of singers but who was also a soloist of wide ranging abilities, died today. Paul Smith was 91. He was probably best known for his work with Ella Fitzgerald. He also played for Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan and Doris Day, among others. Early in his career, he worked with Ozzie Nelson, Les Paul and Tommy Dorsey. For a quarter of a century, he was the music director for Steve Allen’s television program. With his 1954 album Liquid Sounds, Smith crossed markets, achieving success with both jazz and easy-listening audiences. As a leader, he recorded dozens of albums.

Singer Lyn Stanley, a friend who studied with Smith and whom he accompanied, told Don Heckman of The Los Angeles Times, “Paul was a perfectionist and worked every day to improve his art. When you worked with him, he expected the same of you.” To read Heckman’s obituary of Smith, go here.

Here is Smith playing for his family on his 90th birthday, April 17, 2012.

The National Endowment for the Arts today announced the class of 2014 NEA Jazz Masters to be inducted early next year. Here are the Endowment’s profiles.

JAMEY AEBERSOLD*
Educator, Saxophonist, Pianist, Bassist, Banjo player
Born in and currently resides in New Albany, Indiana

* Jamey Aebersold is the recipient of the 2014 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy, which is bestowed upon an individual who has contributed significantly to the appreciation, knowledge, and advancement of the art form of jazz.

“Jamey Aebersold has made enormous contributions to the jazz world through his tireless efforts as a performer, educator, and publisher,” said 2000 NEA Jazz Master David Baker (pictured to Aebersold’s right) who is also on the faculty of the Summer Jazz Workshops, directed by Aebersold. “As the creator of the innovative and groundbreaking Jamey Aebersold Jazz Play-A-Long recordings series, as the longtime director of the Jamey Aebersold Summer Jazz Workshops, as an exceptional clinician and performer, and as the publisher of an extensive catalogue of jazz materials, Jamey has revolutionized the way people practice, teach, create, and perform their music. Jamey has carried his message that ‘anyone can improvise’ and that ‘creativity is part of the nature of every person’ throughout the world to great success, impacting generations of both aspiring and established jazz performers and teachers.”

ANTHONY BRAXTON
Composer, Saxophonist, Clarinetist, Flutist, Pianist, Educator
Born in Chicago, Illinois. Currently resides in Middletown, Connecticut

Anthony Braxton’s compositions almost defy categorization through his use of the improvised and rhythmic nature of jazz but moving it in a more avant-garde direction, such as in his Ghost Trance Music compositions.
Jason Moran, jazz pianist, composer, and artistic advisor for jazz at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, noted, “Anthony Braxton’s expansive catalog has always been an inspiration. [He is] a beautiful artist in every sense of the word: performer, composer, educator, co-conspirator. Braxton is a supreme improviser and composer who searches with sounds.”

RICHARD DAVIS
Bassist, Educator
Born in Chicago, Illinois. Currently resides in Madison, Wisconsin

One of the premier jazz bassists in history, Richard Davis is widely recorded, not only in jazz settings but also in the pop, rock, and classical genres. Bassist and composer Linda Oh commented, “Richard Davis, with his wide palette of skill sets, has been an inspiration for me and many bassists. To me, he shows strength and versatility within his musicianship—a versatility that seems to not compromise integrity and individuality, something many bassists can only dream to achieve.” In addition to his prowess on bass, Davis is a noted educator, having been a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1977.

KEITH JARRETT
Pianist, Composer
Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Currently resides in Oxford, New Jersey

Keith Jarrett’s talent for playing both abstractly and lyrically, sometimes during the same musical work, continues to astound and delight audiences around the world. His ability to work in both the jazz and classical fields as performer and composer demonstrate the breadth of his creativity. 2012 NEA Jazz Master Charlie Haden, who has performed and recorded alongside Jarrett, commented, “Along with Bill Evans, Keith Jarrett is perhaps the most influential pianist in the history of improvised music because of his mastery of the instrument, his creativity and deep harmonic knowledge. His playing transcends category.”

The NEA will again partner with Jazz at Lincoln Center to produce an awards ceremony and concert in honor of the 2014 NEA Jazz Masters, that will be webcast live on Monday, Monday, January 13, 2014 on arts.gov and jalc.org/live. A limited number of free tickets will be available for the public. More information about the awards ceremony and concert and how to obtain tickets will be released this fall.

The latest edition of Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles features an extensive illustrated history of Supersax. The group of saxophone virtuosos dedicated themselves to performing transcriptions of intricate Charlie Parker solos. In addition, band members played top-grade improvisations of their own. Steve’s post has an interview of Supersax founder Med Flory by Marc Myers of Jazz Wax. A live concert video of “A Night in Tunisia” includes not only brilliant reed section work but also let-out solos by baritone saxophonist Jack Nimitz and trumpeter Conte Candoli. To go to Jazz Profiles, click here.