The Rifftides staff is springing—well, easing—(all right, slouching) back into action after near-total immersion in the Miles Español project described three items down. Here is a pleasant way to do it.

Word from Sweden is that the Ystad Jazz Festival organized and supervised by pianist Jan Lundgren in his hometown was a sold-out success. The four-day festival concluded last Sunday. I had hoped to cover it for you, but was unable to make arrangements. Maybe next year.

Fortunately for all of us, the Norwegian bassist Arild Andersen arranged with Swedish Radio P2 to play on his website a recording of Lundgren’s mellow concert on Saturday with Andersen, trumpeter Peter Asplund and the remarkable Korean singer Youn Sun Nah. Brush up your Swedish for the opening announcement, after which Lundgren introduces the tunes and musicians in English. To hear the entire hour-and-a-half, click here, then on the SverigeSRadio box. Afterward come back, please, for a Rifftides archive special.

The news from Ystad arrived in a conversation with Dick Bank that also included discussion of a recording that is a high point in Lundgren’s career as a pianist and in Mr. Bank’s as a record producer. It is Lundgren’s album with bassist Chuck Berghofer and drummer Joe La Barbera of songs by Ralph Rainger. When the CD was released two-and-a-half years ago, it received enthusiastic reviews, but in narrow precincts of the press and the web. It deserved more attention and still does. Therefore, below is that Rifftides rarity, a rerun.

This post is from December, 2008.

The release of a new CD, The Film Music Of Ralph Rainger, is the occasion for my piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Coupled with an article about the contemporary motion picture composer A.B. Rahman, it is headlined, Another Who Has Been Unjustly Forgotten and begins: 

For years, Jack Benny opened his CBS radio and television broadcasts with “Love in Bloom.” The comedian’s violin butchery of his theme song became a running coast-to-coast Sunday night gag. As a result, the piece became even more famous than Bing Crosby had made it with his hit record in 1934. Generations of listeners and viewers heard Bob Hope close his NBC shows with “Thanks for the Memory,” which he introduced in a movie, “The Big Broadcast of 1938.” The song was inseparable from Hope’s career. 

Ralph Rainger, the man who wrote those songs, was a pianist and recovering lawyer from Newark, N.J., who also composed such standards as “Easy Living,” “If I Should Lose You,” “Here Lies Love,” “Moanin’ Low,” “June in January,” “Please” and “Blue Hawaii,” most often with lyricist Leo Robin. Rainger and Robin turned out dozens of songs for Hollywood movies. They were frequently on the hit parade with Rodgers and Hart, Cole Porter and the Gershwins. George Gershwin died at age 38, Rainger at 41. But while Gershwin’s fame increased after his death, Rainger’s name faded. With their beguiling melodies and challenging chord progressions, Rainger’s works are frequent vehicles for improvisation. Yet, in my experience, most musicians who play those songs respond with puzzled looks when asked who wrote them. That might have been the case with bassist Chuck Berghofer, pianist Jan Lundgren, drummer Joe La Barbera and the incomparable vocalist Sue Raney until producer Dick Bank recruited them to record the CD “The Film Music of Ralph Rainger” (Fresh Sound). 

…it is the first all-Rainger album since pianist Jack Fina managed to reduce Rainger’s tunes to dreary cocktail music in a 1950s LP. Mr. Lundgren, a brilliant Swedish pianist, plumbs the songs’ harmonic souls. He illuminates even the prosaic “Blue Hawaii,” which — to Rainger’s horror — became a huge hit in 1937. “It will disgrace us,” he told Robin. “It’s a cheap melody . . . a piece of c-.” 

Bill Crow sent this followup to the August 4 Rifftides item:

I talked to Clark yesterday on the phone (my call interrupted his practicing the trumpet). He’s been home from the hospital for a couple of days and says he is concentrating on healing up. Sounded wonderful.He laughed a long time when I told him a joke. He’s an expert at hanging in there, and I hope that he hangs in for a long time.

Blogging here has slowed in the past few days and may not pick up markedly for a few more. The Rifftides staff is on deadline for an historical essay to accompany Bob Belden’s Miles Español film project. The research has had to be deeper, wider and more intense than I imagined when I said yes to the assignment. No regrets, though. A few years ago, William Zinsser wrote an inspirational book called Writing to Learn. I thought I knew a thing or two about the subject at hand, but as I write this, boy, am I learning—about the roots of African, Spanish and Caribbean music, how they intertwined and nourished early jazz, about how those traditions informed what we heard from Miles Davis and Gil Evans and led to much of what we hear today. A bonus: I’ve come to know Jelly Roll Morton even better.

Belden’s Miles Español will result in a compact disc, but it is primarily a video venture. Many of the musicians worked with Miles. A few of the players are Chick Corea, Jack DeJohnette, Chano Domínguez, John Scofield, Alex Acuña, Ron Carter and Jerry Gonzalez. All 36 are named in the credits of this 10-minute preview.

Hasta la mañana (mas o menos)

This item from trumpeter Mike Vax has popped up in various places on the web in the past couple of days. It is dated August 3.

I just talked with Gwen Terry. Clark Terry had surgery on his right leg to remove some blockage and the operation went very well. I will be talking with Clark tomorrow and will give him all the good wishes that I know will come from many of you. Please keep him in your thoughts and think good things for him. After all – any surgery at age 90 is a major thing.

Gwen says that Clark sends his best to all his friends and fans around the world!

That is good to hear. So is this.

That was at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland on July 14, 1977. The other musicians were Ronnie Scott, tenor saxophone; Milt Jackson, vibes, Oscar Peterson, piano; Joe Pass, guitar; Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, bass; Bobby Durham, drums. CT is the sole survivor of that group.

I wonder how many of his fans know about Terry’s crucial role in prodding New Orleans to pay proper homage to its most celebrated cultural figure. Here’s the story from the Terry chapter in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. I wrote the piece in 1978.

Terry’s ties to the city have been more spiritual than personal, but his admiration for a New Orleans hero led to one of the most important gestures of his life. A few blocks from the Super Dome a monument to Louis Armstrong is nearing completion. It might very well not have been built without Terry’s inspiration.

New Orleans’s Armstrong Park has been a project of the administration of former mayor Moon Landrieu, who deserves full credit for paying tangible tribute to the city’s greatest artist. But impetus for the idea came in 1969 on a bus ride during the second New Orleans JazzFest. As a musicians’ tour was passing Jane Alley, Armstrong’s birthplace, Terry deplored the fact that while New Orleans seemed to have statues of half the Latin American presidents in history, there was none of the city’s most famous son. Then and there, he started a fund to commission a statue. His first dollar was symbolic. His organizing ability and leadership were much more. Nine years later, that statue is on the verge of becoming the centerpiece of an entire park dedicated to Armstrong’s memory. The park’s completion slowed in the six-month transition between Landrieu’s administration and that of Mayor Ernest Morial. But assuming Morial, the city’s first black mayor, gets behind the project, Armstrong Park should be the New Orleans equivalent of Copenhagen’s celebrated Tivoli Gardens and open by 1980.

Well, it may still be a while before the park is the US Tivoli Gardens, but it was formally dedicated on April 15, 1980 by Landrieu (then US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), Morial and Armstrong’s widow Lucille. The statue of Armstrong is the centerpiece.

For more on Clark, including the story of how he became Buddy Bolden, see this Rifftides archive piece.

The subtitle above may seem like a redundancy, and for too many musicians, it is. Fellow artsjournal blogger Howard Mandel’s newest post offers a question—

“Are hard times good for jazz?”

—and answers it at some length, complete with a classic 1930s film clip. The reader comments are also interesting. To see the piece, click here.

Nice work, Howard. I wish I’d thought of that.

This morning I took a side trip through a subdivision that not long ago was an orchard. The non-architecture is typical of the builder-designed antisepsis or Stepford school—big double and triple garages with houses attached.

But wait, there’s a bright spot. This is the name of the main drag.

In vain, I rode around looking for Brass Boulevard, Strings Street, Percussion Place, Chorus Court, but all of the other streets in this collection of extruded houses have numbers rather than names. The developer missed a thematic opportunity.

As Paul Motian’s latest engagement began at a venerable New York club that holds precious memories for him, Larry Blumenfeld profiled the 80-year-old drummer in The Wall Street Journal. Here’s a quote:

What turns me on isn’t technique,” he said. “It’s the sound of the drums, the way they’re tuned. I can play one beat on a tom-tom, and that might set me off. One sound leads to another. It just grows.”

The article includes Motian’s thoughts about the Bill Evans Trio, in which he became well known (“It taught me what it means to play ideas”), and reflects on his work with Paul Bley, Keith Jarrett, and Bill Frisell. Blumenfeld quotes colleagues less than half Motian’s age who are profoundly affected by his music and his example. To read the piece, go here.

Here is Motian the master of brushes, cymbals, subtley and timing, with pianist Anat Fort and bassist Gary Wang last fall at the Rubin Museum in New York City.

Frank Foster died today following a long period of ill health. He was 82. Foster was important to the Count Basie band as a tenor saxophonist, composer and arranger for more than a decade beginning in 1953. In the reed section, he and Frank Wess teamed up as one of the best-known tenor sax tandems in jazz. Foster later also distinguished himself as a bandleader in his own right and as an educator. He moved beyond his hard bop essence as a soloist into free territory opened for exploration by John Coltrane, but never abandoned his bebop beginnings or the blues heart of his style. His Loud Minority and Living Color big bands served as training and proving grounds for dozens of young musicians and outlets for established players who cherished the band environment. After Thad Jones’ death, Foster led the Basie band for nearly ten years in the 1980s and ‘90s. For a thorough obituary of Foster, see Nate Chinen’s piece in today’s New York Times.

When I first heard Foster with Basie around 1955, he looked pretty much as he does in this photograph. Following a concert in downtown Seattle one night, he, Wess, bassist Eddie Jones and other members of the band showed up at the old Birdland on East Madison Street (pictured). Aside from Foster’s powerful playing in a jam session that occupied several early morning hours, I remember that during breaks he charmed the best looking woman in the club and ultimately went out the door with her on his arm. That was years before he met Cecilia, the woman who became his wife.

Foster’s composition “Shiny Stockings,” recorded in Basie’s 1955 April in Paris album, became an instant staple in the Basie book, where it remains in today’s edition of the band. That hugely popular piece will be coming in for lots of attention in the aftermath of Frank’s death. Video of the Basie band playing it has been removed from the web by a record company copyright intervention, but we have the audio of “Shiny Stockings,” accompanied by a photo of Basie.

Here is Foster leading his beloved Loud Minority in his composition “4, 5, 6.” The video is a bit shaky, possibly because of the disco lights on the dance floor. He is in a wheel chair and doesn’t play, but you can feel his energy swinging the band. The trombone soloist is the veteran Benny Powell.

Frank Foster, RIP.

“Evenin’,” Jimmy Rushing sang with Basie and Prez in 1936, “every night you come and you find me….”

I could hear Rushing in my mind’s ear as we looked out across the deck, the garden shed roof and the neighborhood trees to Ahtanum Ridge reflecting the sun still blazing at 7:30.

What could follow that? Thelonious Monk could, with the other great evening song in jazz. Here’s Monk alone playing “Crepuscule With Nellie” in Berlin in 1969.

I hope that you had a nice evening, too.

Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray. ——Lord Byron

Each morning sees some task begun, each evening sees it close; Something attempted, something done, has earned a night’s repose. ——Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table. ——T.S. Eliot

What a nice night for an evening. ——Stephen Wright

Matthew Shipp, The Art of the Improviser (Thirsty Ear).

This album will not show up on the soft jazz and easy listening charts. Shipp is strong medicine. The first disc of the two-CD set has the audacious avant garde pianist with his trio, the second playing alone. They capture concert performances in 2010. In each, Shipp blends separate pieces of music in an uninterrupted flow so that the audience doesn’t realize for a moment or two that he has melded the end of his “Circular Temple” with the trio into the beginning of Duke Ellington’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” or, in the solo CD, his reflective “4D” into “Fly Me to the Moon.” With bassist Michael Bisio and his longtime drummer Whit Dickey, Shipp throttles back a bit on his power—if not on his intensity—to accommodate trio interaction and sideman features like Bisio’s virtuoso bowing on “Virgin Complex.”

“Fly Me to the Moon” and “’A Train” are the only standards in the release. Beneath Shipp’s hands they serve, like his own compositions, as touchstones for an imagination and a keyboard technique that produce what I described a few years ago as “wild bursts, salvos of repetition, explosions in the lower regions of the piano and plenty of dissonance.” He is also capable of joyous headlong energy and bebop articulation that call to mind his hero Bud Powell, as well as impressionist gracefulness like that of “Patmos,” the lacy solo piece that ends this stimulating collection. Shipp seems to be attracting a widening base of listeners who might have avoided him ten years ago. He is no less intrepid than he was then. Maybe the new century is catching up with him.

Bill Crow, Embraceable You
Bill Crow Sings with Armand Hirsch

Crow has been a stalwart among mainstream bassists from nearly the moment he moved from Seattle to New York in 1950. He has worked with Stan Getz, Claude Thornhill, Terry Gibbs, Marian McPartland, Gerry Mulligan’s quartet and Concert Jazz Band, Benny Goodman, the Al Cohn-Zoot Sims quintet, Quincy Jones, Lee Konitz and the Bob Brookmeyer-Clark Terry quintet. That list covers just a few of his associations. His books, From Birdland to Broadway and Second Time Around are permanent items on the shelves of serious readers about jazz. At 83, Crow is still playing bass, and sometimes tuba, in regular gigs. Many of them are with the trio heard in the first of these CDs on his own unnamed label. He, pianist Hiroshi Yamazaki and drummer John Cutrone were the rhythm section for Carmen Leggio, a splendid tenor saxophonist who died in 2009.

The qualities that attracted so many top-level leaders to Crow—time, tone and firm swing— form the foundation of the group’s treatments of standards, originals based on standards and pieces by Crow and Yamazaki. The tracks include Crow’s “News from Blueport,” a staple of Mulligan’s big band and quartet, with a melodic solo by the composer that incorporates phrases going back to King Oliver’s “Chimes Blues.” Cutrone’s brush work is impressive in his solo on that piece. Yamazaki complements his light touch with lyrical ideas, imaginative phrasing and on faster pieces, earthiness that recalls Wynton Kelly. The extended take on “Embraceable You” is relaxed and irresistibly rhythmic, a combination that characterizes the entire album.

I’ve always been a sucker for jazz musicians who sing on the side. Their vocal chops may not be Sinatra quality, their intonation may slip a bit, but feeling, phrasing and lyric interpretation that arise out of experience can compensate. I don’t have in mind doubly- gifted musicians like Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, present-day phenomena like Diana Krall and John Pizzarelli or singer-songwriters like Johnny Mercer, Dave Frishberg and Jay Leonhart. I’m thinking of instrumentalists who now and then sing because they enjoy it. Benny Goodman and Dizzy Gillespie could sing and didn’t do it often enough. My favorite recording of “Laura” is still Woody Herman’s. Bunny Berrigan may not have been a singer, but his vocal on “I Can’t Get Started” had a lot to do with its becoming a hit. Tex Beneke stepped out of Glenn Miller’s reed section to do “Chatanooga Choo Choo” and found himself more famous as a singer than as a tenor saxophonist. Zoots Sims recorded a touching “September Song.”

Bill Crow has been a vocalist all his life. He was good enough to be a member of the Dave Lambert Singers in his early New York days but gave up singing to concentrate on his bass playing. Now, on his gigs he’s singing again. He sought out the fine young guitarist Armand Hirsch to go into the studio and accompany him on 14 songs. That line above about feeling, phrasing and understanding of lyrics applies to Crow’s singing. His deep baritone, with its slightly ragged edge, is perfect for classic blues associated with Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Turner and Leroy Carr. I cannot imagine a more ironic delivery than that he gives Saunders King’s great line, “… I went downtown and bought you some hair, when the good Lord never gave you none.” On standard songs including “That Old Feeling,” “You Came a Long Way From St. Louis,” “Skylark,” “Detour Ahead” and “I Didn’t Know About You,” notes that wander a bit off center do not detract from Crow’s story-telling through lyrics. Hearing him negotiate Frishberg’s tricky “Zoot Walks In” is a treat. I’ll take worldly wisdom and musical understanding over bland perfection every time.

Joan Chamorro, Baritone Rhapsody (Fresh Sound New Talent).

Almost exactly two years ago, I posted a video of the rising young Spanish baritone saxophonist Joan Chamorro, with the notation that Fresh Sound Records planned to release a Chamorro CD. That CD is out. As the title hints, it is an accolade to his predecessors on the instrument, but it is a good deal more. The jazz scene that thrives in Spain, particularly in Barcelona, is far from secret, but the depth of talent disclosed in this disc may come as a revelation to listeners who haven’t paid attention to new European jazz. In that 2006 video, the individuality of Chamorro, trombonist Toni Belenguer, bassist David Mengual and drummer David Xirgu was striking, as it is on the CD. So, too, is that of tenor saxophonists Enrique Oliver, Víctor de Diego and Jon Robles; trumpeter Julian Sánchez; trombonist Sergi Verges; and pianist Joan Monné. I mention all of those young Spaniards because their names are worth noting. It seems inevitable that you will be hearing them in years to come. Visiting American Scott Robinson adds his prodigious talent on six quintet pieces, playing tenor, bass and baritone saxophones and trumpet. Since he discovered the extent of their talent, Robinson has become a fan and advocate of his new Spanish friends.

The pianoless quintet tracks pay tribute to Mulligan and Pepper Adams, primary among Chamorro’s inspirations. It is easy to detect their influences in his improvisations, but they flow beneath the surface of his highly personal solos, which include unexpected interval leaps and tonal quirks. He is adventurous in Adams’s “Bossa Nouveau” and two Mulligan pieces deftly arranged for nonet by Verges, who orchestrates for four saxophones Zoot Sims’ famous solo from Mulligan’s big band recording of “Motel.” On his various instruments, Robinson is the foil for Chamorro in six pieces, among them compositions by Adams and a quick bow to Serge Chaloff, the bebop baritone sax giant. Chamorro’s lyrical solo on Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” reflects his admiration for Harry Carney, whom Ellington featured for decades in the piece. Chamorro’s and Robinson’s baritones intertwine in mutual improvisation for a stimulating conclusion to the title tune, based on “I Hear a Rhapsody.” Now that Chamorro has paid obeisance to his baritone heroes, we may look forward to his developing the distinctive voice we get satisfying glimpses of in this album.