Archives for May 2014

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="m9vwjWMjWpTdvRbpZd0JJhkb1ZeolXbB"] Paul Desmond died 37 years ago today. Every year, as the anniversary approaches, my cerebellum senses it and the brain starts dialing up episodes. Playwright Jack Richardson (1934-2012) got it right when he spoke at the memorial service about what it was like to be Paul’s friend: I found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="B1QBPBZ8YjVUMLjdV7AbzEFCJCaScgkh"] After Herb Jeffries died on Sunday in Los Angeles, headlines around the world remembered him for his career as a singing cowboy in a succession of low budget 1930s Hollywood movies. Herb Jeffries dies at 100; Hollywood's first black singing cowboy—The Los Angeles Times Herb Jeffries, ‘Bronze Buckaroo’ of Song and Screen, Dies at 100 (or So)—The New York Times Appreciative listeners are more likely to … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ABchPwLgH2K5awTM86q69y3iVphBSdIE"] With hardly a week going by in which we don’t lose a venerable musician, it may be natural to wonder whether the art form will wither. That is unlikely. New players emerge and enrich the music. It is rare, however, that they emerge quite as young as Kojo Roney of the Philadelphia Roneys. He is the son of tenor saxophonist Antoine and a nephew of trumpeter Wallace. He plays drums. He is nine years old. He recently sat in for Al … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="w78PgBDnDJyWYKXzRQiO0OA1jK4RzSGd"] Reports that the veteran pianist Frank Strazzeri had died began circulating a couple of weeks ago. They were impossible to confirm until now. Strazzeri died at 84 on May 9 in his hometown, Rochester, New York, but he spent most of his career in Los Angeles. He moved back to Rochester in late April following a final engagement at the Glendale club Jax, where he often played in his final years. After attending the Eastman School … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="lyZMy06LLnBWMNnPKUOLJ9IufBnDOSPn"] Gregory Herbert, one of the most talented saxophonists of his generation, was born in Philadelphia 67 years ago this month. After a brief engagement with Duke Ellington when he was 17, Herbert spent four years as a music major at Temple University in his hometown, concentrating on alto saxophone, clarinet and flute. In 1971 he joined Woody Herman’s Herd, that perpetual incubator of young talent, and began to specialize as a tenor … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="UQo5fh0SCcdHRNHA8P9jqU46Us4dj7Pb"] This is Bill Holman’s birthday. At 87, the great arranger shows no inclination to sit around basking in the glow of his achievements. He and his band are gearing up for a concert tomorrow night at the Los Angeles Jazz Institute’s Adventures In Big Band Jazz, a four-day celebration featuring music associated with 13 big bands. In the course of his career, Holman has written for at least half of them, including those of Woody Herman, … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="GG4cSaJMjbqOMHFSUMzsXv7wGebsuhvE"] Rifftides reader Ted Arenson writes in response to yesterday’s posting about bees and a piece of bee-oriented music: How about Hamp and the Ellingtonians great recording of "Buzzin 'Round with the Bee?" That’s a fine reminder of the many all-star sessions that Lionel Hampton recorded for RCA Victor in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Victor usually listed the records as by “Lionel Hampton and His Orchestra,” … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="TT4YMOkk9IbX4RX0PUQWYAhaS34jn2Pb"] This morning a man came to the door, introduced himself as Francisco and said he was cutting the neighbors' lawn. The neighbors were away. “Do you know about bees?” Francisco said. “Let me show you.” We walked over to a tree and there were two huge clumps of bees hanging from a branch. Francisco said, “When I was a kid, one time I was out playing and disturbed a nest of bees and they started to come after me. We lived near a … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="dDyhSTr79gYGAKCxIhomZBkpUZsmrBzD"] Joe Wilder, admired for his trumpet tone, range, stylistic flexibility and for his elegance as a musician and person, is gone. Wilder died at the age of 92 last Friday in New York. Despite his modesty and disinclination to assert himself, his skill put him in demand by big band leaders including Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman, as well as a wide range of Broadway and television producers. Among the dozens of … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="eU8YgjHD3gXMIUOnpcZjatK14I2JyIm1"] The winter of 2013-2014 was relatively mild in the Pacific Northwest. Still, there was plenty of snow in the Cascades. It is melting and filling the rivers, not to overflowing, but with water high and fast enough to pull trees out of the banks. Here, you see the Yakima River at noon today carrying one of those trees southeast toward the Columbia. The National Weather Service reports that the Yakima is near flood stage in … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="l9zHFPSrBgX9qziE9L514OculJzaOSJV"] Jerome Kern (pictured) wrote his last song nearly 70 years ago, but the freshness of its melody, hipness of its harmonies, surprise of its extended form and charm of Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyric make it seem perpetually new. Jan Clayton sang the new song, “Nobody Else But Me,” for Kern’s and Hammerstein’s 1946 Broadway revival of their 1927 masterpiece Show Boat. Lou Dinning had the vocal in Paul Weston’s popular early recording. … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="ZRikcL5pfPd5cAbbJIjdTbagy2S7nVBw"] It has been slightly more than two years since the Rifftides staff has alerted you the invaluable work of Mr. P.C. He is a counselor to musicians who takes to the web to address problems that are often so sensitive that his clients find it necessary to use clever pseudonyms (“Ted,” for instance) to protect their livelihoods and reputations. “Mr. P.C.,” of course, is not a pseudonym. It is the given name of the Seattle pianist … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="qng7CdV8vke0quBV3QWspbWu8dRiDvzC"] Gwen Terry told me today that at 93 her husband continues “as a tribune of survival.” The trumpeter, singer and NEA Jazz Master continues to confront his mobility and vision problems at home under ‘round-the-clock care paid for in great part by fans and admirers. For details about how to help, go here. To the left, we see Mrs. Terry congratulating her husband last fall on his induction into Lincoln Center’s Neshui Ertegun Jazz … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="Em0JeDIncJodW1DxUiGHLBlMATyV6vpN"] Smalls Jazz Club is in the eighth year of its most recent incarnation as a bastion of uncompromising jazz in New York City. A couple of blocks down 7th Avenue from the Village Vanguard, a couple up from The Garage, it is in a part of Greenwich Village that may be as close as we’re going to see to a 21st century equivalent of the 52nd Street of the 1940s and ‘50s. In addition to presenting established musicians—Jimmy Cobb, … [Read more...]

[contextly_auto_sidebar id="NzFBw7aNlwmITnaAaFgyeyrK9awIWBpU"] All day, we had fierce winds, grey skies threatening rain—and then at sunset: An evening like ours might have made Jimmy Rushing feel a little better about things than when he recorded this with Count Basie in 1936: Basie, piano; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Jo Jones, drums; Walter Page, bass; Freddie Green, guitar. You'll find it in this comprehensive package of early Basie. … [Read more...]

Rifftides was at ebb tide most of this week while I jumped in to help the Yakima Symphony Orchestra teach a couple of thousand children about music. The Chicago composer James Stephenson (pictured) was scheduled to be the narrator for his Compose Yourself, a 50-minute tour through instruments of the orchestra, long scheduled for the YSO’s annual children’s concert. An unforeseen development—the need for the orchestra’s musical director and conductor Lawrence Golan to be elsewhere—meant … [Read more...]