Five years ago, I wrote about Tom Sancton’s book Song For My Fathers being assigned reading for Tulane University’s incoming students. That venerable school chose it to give the freshmen a shared intellectual experience that would stimulate discussion. Not incidentally, it would also acquaint … [Read more...]

This is the latest of our periodic efforts to keep up with recorded music. Some of these CDs are recent. Some have been languishing in the holding pen for months. Some are timeless standard repertoire items that the Rifftides staff believes everyone should know about. The album titles in blue … [Read more...]

Several days ago in the course of conducting a web search, Vicki Overfelt came across a 2008 Rifftides mini-review of a Rosa Passos album, Romance. She used the comment function to ask if anyone could help her find the object of her search. She wanted the words to “Desilusión,” a song Passos … [Read more...]

The animated digital robot spoofs springing up on the internet include several aimed at the jazz-insider culture, in particular at the hipper-than-thou talk exchanged among students of the art who may be ever so slightly over-educated and just too cool—but not too cool for words. There are … [Read more...]

Trummy Young and Johnny Mercer wrote “Travelin’ Light.” Billie Holiday owned it. This version with an unidentified pianist was made in Paris in 1959, the year she died. It is one of her most affecting treatments of a song that became one of her signature pieces. For more about Billie and … [Read more...]

The logical followup to the piece below about Chris Byars' hero Lucky Thompson is a piece by Thompson. Here's a film from Paris in 1959 at the Blue Note. The rhythm section is Bud Powell, piano; Pierre Michelot, bass; Jimmy Gourley, guitar; Kenny Clarke, drums. The compostion is Dizzy Gillespie's … [Read more...]

Chris Byars, Lucky Strikes Again (Steeplechase). This album by a gifted saxophonist, composer and arranger has several things to recommend it. ï‚—It presents 10 pieces written and arranged by Lucky Thompson (1924-2005), a saxophonist whose brilliance and originality as a player and writer … [Read more...]

Tony Emmerson's blog Prague Jazz has come out of hibernation after several months of dormancy. It was, and presumably again will be, a prime source of information about music in one of eastern Europe's great centers of culture. The main re-entry item is an interview with saxophonist Julian Nicholas, … [Read more...]

A friend just pointed out that this is the birthday of Joe Henderson (1937-2001). The Rifftides time clock says that I’m punched out for the holiday, but to post a remembrance of Joe I’m sneaking past the security guards and putting up this remarkable performance of a piece associated nearly as … [Read more...]

For reasons involving the configuration of the new publishing platform, Rifftides had to put off posting a new batch of Doug’s Picks. The crack artsjournal.com technical team has eliminated the barrier and in the right-hand column you will find the staff’s recommendations of new CDs by a pianist … [Read more...]