Archives for 2017

Svend Asmussen, the Danish violinist who thrived in eight decades of stardom, died yesterday—three weeks short of his 101st birthday. He was one of the handful of violinists who in the 1930s proved the instrument capable of swing and emotional expression at the highest jazz level. He may well have been the only man still alive in the new century who had played with Fats Waller, Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington. Asmussen and his wife Ellen were surprise members of the audience at a concert in his honor at last summer’s Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden.

Our first clip of Asmussen in action is with Alice Babs and guitarist Ulrik Neumann, who were known as the Swe-danes. They thrived in the late 1950s. This piece was a record, radio and television hit in Scandinavia for years.

Miguel Zenon Quartet, Típico (Miel Music)

Since first hearing Miguel Zenon’s quartet well over a decade ago, I have been intrigued by the band’s deepening identity as a unit. Virtuosos all, alto saxophonist Zenon, pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Henry Cole have developed a collaborative personality. In his brief album note, Zenon refers to the importance of the rhythm section’s “individual sounds within OUR sound.” Masters of their instruments, not only do the quartet members listen intently to one another, but they are at a lofty level of mind meld. Such harmony of intent and spirit is a hallmark of a few seasoned classical chamber groups. In jazz it happened, for instance in the Count Basie band of the late thirties, the Miles Davis Kind Of Blue sextet and the Bill Evans Trio of the early sixties. The Zenon quartet achieves it throughout Típico.

A Rifftides reader has made us aware of a video featuring the remarkable Irish guitarist Louis Stewart. Stewart died at 72 in Dublin last August following a short battle with cancer. Video quality is fuzzy and the shot is static, but what matters most—the sound—is generally good. This performance of the Sonny Rollins composition “Oleo” was filmed during a tour of Wales in 1993. The second guitarist is Trefor Owen, with John McCormack playing bass and Steven Brown drums.

Two non-musicians prominent in the US jazz community have died in the past week. One was a
photographer whose images are among the most prominent in jazz history. Chuck Stewart’s intimate work appeared on dozens of album covers and in magazines. He was 89. Among his most familiar photographs were those of John Coltrane. Stewart (pictured right) took the one  below at a recording session for Coltrane’s album A Love Supreme.

In a New York Times interview, Fellow photographer Carol Friedman said of Stewart,

What is immediately apparent is that his subjects have let him into their inner sanctum. They like him and they trust him. Whether he’s documenting them at a recording session or capturing them in the privacy of his own studio, he knew how to defer to the moment in time that unfolded before him.

Asked in an interview about being labeled, Stewart referred to his variety of subjects, which included stars of popular and classical music, and Harlem street scenes:

I’m called a jazz photographer. What’s that got to do with anything? I’ve also photographed Bo Didley and Leopold Stokowski.

(Photo of Stewart by Chester Higgins, Jr.)

 

Ed Berger was an author, an accomplished photographer and associate director of Rutgers University’s Institute of Jazz Studies. Like Chuck Stewart, Berger died a little over a week ago. He was 67. He contributed to Jazz Times and was co-editor of the Journal of Jazz Studies. Known for his helpfulness to jazz scholars and musicians, Berger wrote books that brought him acclaim in jazz circles. They include biographies and oral histories. His Benny Carter: A Life In American Music is a definitive study of the life and work of the saxophonist, trumpeter, bandleader and composer. His most recent book is Softly, With Feeling: Joe Wilder and the Breaking of Barriers in American Music (2014), a biography of the trumpeter and an appreciation of Wilder’s approach to music, which was at once lyrical and powerful.

Dave Brubeck Quartet With Paul Desmond At The Sunset Center 1955 (Solar)

New music by the Dave Brubeck Quartet has surfaced on the European label Solar. Previously unissued, it finds the group brimming with the harmonic daring, contrapuntal interaction and humor that were beginning to make them famous. A 1954 TIME magazine cover story about the pianist, the success of the band’s Jazz Goes To College album and lots of radio airplay had them in the public eye and ear in an era when such prominence was possible for a jazz group. Eight of the tracks were taped at the Sunset Center in Carmel, California, in June of 1955 and one at New York’s Basin Street the following summer.

Comedian Mort Sahl’s introduction of the band is an audio blur, hard to understand. That’s too bad because whatever he said brought clearly audible chuckles from the quartet. Otherwise, sound quality of the location recording is adequate, perhaps adequate+. The instruments are distinct and in reasonable balance, although there are places where pitch correction in the remastering would have helped. The playlist is made up of familiar items in the quartet’s mid-fifties repertoire. Brubeck and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond take approaches that make the content fresh and often surprising. They begin with “Gone With the Wind.” Nearly fifteen minutes long, it incorporates trademark aspects of the principal soloists; Desmond’s lyricism and Brubeck’s power, although there are tradeoffs in both areas. Desmond flows through “I’ll Never Smile Again,” fully engaging his ability to fit quotes into unlikely harmonic nooks and crannies. In his solo, Brubeck scatters quirky chord bouquets.

In the arrangement that Brubeck Octet trumpeter Dick Collins fashioned in pre-quartet days, “Jeepers Creepers” follows the routine familiar to listeners who know the Columbia Brubeck Time album. Soloing, Desmond applies an astringent tone and note substitutions that on manuscript paper would look “wrong.” When he plays them, they are right—and occasionally hilarious. “Yeah, Paul,” Brubeck says more than once. As usual when they played the piece, it gets a spoofy Dixieland tag ending. With some heat, Collins once told me that he didn’t understand why they “tacked that on,” but it became a permanent addition.

The minor harmonies of “Brother, Can You Spare A Dime” inspire Brubeck to meld a circle of fourths into his solo for a deeper statement than on the Brubeck Time version. Desmond’s wistfulness in “Little Girl Blue” takes a funky turn with a ferocious blues lick of his invention and a visit to “St. James Infirmary” before he soars into the horn’s altissimo register. Regrettably, he did less of that stratospheric soaring as the years went by. He also goes altissimo in “Take the ‘A’ Train,” but it is his minor-key Orientalism that grabs attention there before Brubeck launches his own series of quotes. Both soloists are full of vigor on the album’s final track, “Two-Part Contention,” recorded at Basin Street for an NBC Monitor radio broadcast that has a nostalgia-inducing signoff by announcer Bob Collins.

A final note: so much attention went to bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello in the Brubeck Quartet’s final decade that the memory of Norman Bates’ and Joe Dodge’s consistency and strength as a rhythm team may tend to fade. Among its other virtues, this album is a reminder of the sympathetic support and responsiveness that Bates and Dodge brought to the quartet during their tenure.

Saxophonist Charles Lloyd has made a cover version of Bob Dylan’s protest song “Masters Of War.” Lloyd and Blue Note Records timed the release of the single—a track from the album I Long To See You—to coincide with today’s inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president of The United States. The world’s troubles in 2017 echo the uneasy Cold War standoff of 1962 and 1963 when Dylan wrote the song. Dylan said then,

I’ve never written anything like that before. I don’t sing songs which hope people will die, but I couldn’t help it with this one. The song is a sort of striking out… a feeling of what can you do?

In a news release accompanying the release, Lloyd is quoted,

Nations have been throwing rocks at each other for 1000s of years. We go through spells of light and darkness. In my lifetime I have witnessed periods of peace, protest, and uprising, only to be repeated by peace, protest and more uprising. The fact that Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” was written in the early 1960s and not during the last decade, makes it timeless and timely. It breaks my heart to think that there are current generations of young people all over the world who are growing up without knowing of Peace in their lives. The words Dylan wrote are a laser beam on humanity.

The recording is by Lloyd’s band, Charles Lloyd & The Marvels: Lloyd, tenor saxophone; Bill Frisell, guitar; Greg Leisz, pedal steel guitar; Reuben Rogers, bass; and Eric Harland, drums. The powerful vocal is by the folk, blues, rock and country singer Lucinda Williams.

Attention aficionados of the baritone saxophone and of women who play the instrument: Rifftides reader Tony Burrell sent an illustrated comment following up two recent posts. He went to the trouble of rounding up performances by seven female players of the imposing instrument and included them in his comment. Few of them are well known. All can play. For the evidence, go here and scroll down.

Following the release of the John Coltrane Quartet’s album Live At Birdland, the band appeared on Ralph J. Gleason’s Jazz Casual program on public television. Here, Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones revisit “Alabama,” the high point of the Birdland album and a major musical statement about the brutality of racists who bombed a black church in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1953 and killed four little girls. As the piece begins, we have a brief glimpse of Ralph Gleason.

Last night we lost Nat Hentoff, a defender of civil liberties and—notably, for this readership—a lifelong champion of jazz. He was 91. His son Nick reported that members of the family were nearby and a Billie Holiday record was playing when Hentoff died in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York. Influential as a jazz critic for DownBeat, the Village Voice and other publications, he was even better known for his books and columns explaining and defending First Amendment freedoms.

He once said that his unyielding protection of civil liberties and the First Amendment was, “Of all my obsessions, the strongest.” He often expressed his conviction that the United States’ destiny was inseparably bound to the responsibility of the electorate to be informed. In an interview eight years ago, he told The New York Times, “I think we’re in a perilous state, in that, to paraphrase [President] Madison, the way to keep this republic is to have an informed electorate.” Instead, he said, we have “constitutional illiteracy, which is rampant.”

He expanded on that and on his involvement with jazz in a 2014 interview with the website Fire.org., which is what Hentoff is referring to in his frequent mention of the word “Fire.”

If you can’t get enough of the baritone saxophone, Ralph A. Miriello has gone to lengths to see that your obsession is addressed if not satisfied. On his Notes On Jazz blog, Mr. Miriello (pictured) has assembled videos and audio recordings by twenty-five players of the baritone. He starts with Harry Carney, whom he quite rightly describes as “the master” of the instrument, and includes Serge Chaloff, Gerry Mulligan, Cecil Payne, Lars Gullin, Nick Brignola, Sahib Shihab, Ronnie Cuber, Gary Smulyan and—among the relative newcomers—Mats Gustaffson, Jason Marshall and Brian Landrus. It is quite a parade. To watch and hear it, carve out at least an hour and go here.

And don’t forget to come back to Rifftides.

Jim Wilke reports that on his Jazz Northwest this Sunday, January 8, he will feature the distinguished vocalist Nancy King in a private concert with pianist Steve Christofferson. That will be at 2 p.m. PST on the radio in the Seattle-Tacoma area at KNKX 88.5 FM and on the internet at http://knkx.org. From Jim’s announcement:

Nancy King was named to the Jazz Society of Oregon’s Hall of Fame in 2001, the City of Portland named Feb.22 2008 as Nancy King Day, and she was recognized as the third Portland Jazz Master in 2013. In this intimate Seattle concert she’s joined by pianist and composer Steve Christofferson with whom she’s often worked for over 35 years. They’ve toured internationally and recorded two CDs together, one with The Metropole Orchestra of the Netherlands. Nancy has also recorded with Glenn Moore, Ray Brown, and others. Her latest is a live album with Fred Hersch at The Village Vanguard in New York.

Dedicated King followers need no introduction. Other Rifftides listeners may. Here she is with Christofferson in a 2009 performance of “Zanzibar,” words and music by Dave Frishberg.

As the Rifftides staff continues recovering from the holidays and auditions a few dozen incoming albums, let’s follow a lead sent by frequent commenter Terence Smith. Mr. Smith writes from his sanctuary in Washington State’s San Juan Islands:

Somebody posted a video of the classic Brubeck Quartet having lots of fun with ‘Three to Get Ready’ live in ‘65 (also ‘Swanee River’)—Desmond giving the rest of the band little shock treatments of surprise at the Newport Jazz Festival on tour in Paris.