If you are a fan (sic) of the kind of language misuse eloquently exposed by the poet Taylor Mali in this recent Rifftides piece, you may enjoy the following video, a commercial for accountants.

Thanks to Bill McBirnie for calling that to our attention.

I was unable to cover the Portland Jazz Festival this year, to my regret. For reasons of economy, the festival came in compact form; one week instead of two. Jack Berry of Oregon Music News tells me he thinks that smaller was better. Berry wrote about two of the festival artists. This is some of what he had to say in advance about Pharaoh Sanders, for forty years among the freest of the free.

So this is your cup of tea or it isn’t. Sanders was playing with John Coltrane on Live in Seattle and more than one acquaintance of mine considers that to be one the most astonishing experiences of their lives. Pharoah chatter on the Internet includes a rebuttal to Whitney Balliett’s putdown, that it’s noise, not music. Call it what you want, was the rejoinder, if it’s noise it’s noise of surpassing power and frequent beauty.

To read all of that piece and see video of Sanders playing in a tunnel, go here.
Berry’s Sanders concert review includes this observation:

No one, prior to the Golden Age and beyond, has teased so many strange sounds out of a tenor saxophone as the Pharoah. Echo effects, warbles, ululations and splintered multi-sonics abounded. Others have gotten percussive sounds from the instrument by just fingering the pads (not blowing) but his are really loud. I kept looking at the bass player to see how he was doing that but he wasn’t (at that moment) doing anything.

Here is the link to the full review.
As the Portland festival wrapped up last night, Berry heard trumpeter Dave Douglas and the band Douglas calls Brass Ecstasy, four horns and a drummer.

The association one has with brass bands is exuberance and there was that in spades. But “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” was so richly mournful that the emotional range of this instrumentation was astonishingly extended.

For all of Jack’s review of Douglas and company, click here.

As a young adult, Paul Breitenfeld adopted the last name Desmond. Over the years, to amuse himself and confound others, he concocted several reasons for the change. He sometimes said he did it because he thought that in the event that he ever made records, the shorter name would fit better on 78 rpm labels. In truth, the inspiration came when he and his friend and fellow saxophonist Hal Strack were at Sweets Ballroom in Oakland, California. Hal’s story is in Chapter 6 of a certain book.

“We were listening to Gene Krupa’s band, sometime in 1942,” Strack said. “Howard Dulany had just left as the singer. The guy who replaced him had some kind of a convoluted Italian name and they decided that just wasn’t going to work for a vocalist. I mean, it was more difficult than Sinatra. So, he changed his name to Johnny Desmond. We were standing there listening to the band and discussing the fact that this had happened, and Paul said, ‘Jeesh, you know that’s such a great name. It’s so smooth and yet it’s uncommon.’ He said, ‘If I decide I need another name, it’s going to be Desmond.'”
Over the years, when asked where he got the name, he gave a variety of answers, often delivered with his enigmatic grin: from the telephone book, from the unon directory, from a newspaper, from a girl friend. He delivered these harmless put-ons with charm, conviction and the ring of sincerity. The telephone-book answer took on a life of its own and is endlessly repeated in stories about Desmond.

Now, a little family history: Because of a condition that indisposed his mother, Paul did part of his growing up in New Rochelle, New York, in the home of his father’s brother Frederick Breitenfeld and his family. He became close to his cousins Rick and Ruth. Rick provided much of the research material that went into the Desmond biography. Ruth’s married name is Barton. Her son Fred has extensive Broadway, motion picture and cabaret credentials as composer, song writer, orchestrator, director and actor. See his web site for full information and MP3s of some of his work. He never met his famous second cousin, but had one memorable telephone conversation with him when Fred Barton was an 18-year-old majoring in music at Harvard. He writes:

I was visiting my Uncle Rick and Aunt Mary Ellen in December 1976 — and I had competed to write the music for Harvard’s Hasty Pudding show (my life’s dream, at the time — I wasn’t thinking big!) — anyhow, I was rejected and was beyond morose.
Rick and Mary Ellen sent a tape of the songs to Paul, and while I was visiting he called them to chat, and they suddenly put me on the phone with him. We were both a little tongue-tied, since we’d never spoken before, but we had a great chat. Paul told me that my retro-stride songs reminded me of his father…. and he assured me that I would win the competition the next year. Well, I DID win the competition the following year, and I (within the context of being typically Breitenfeldian-atheist) I had to think he was somehow winking at me “I told you so.”
If only I’d been born earlier, or he’d lived longer, we’d have gotten to know each other in New York. A friend of mine plays at Elaine’s Sunday nights — I’m going to make it a hang-out.

Here is an intriguing sample of Fred Barton’s writing. It’s called “Psychobirds.” Desmond might well have grinned at this.

I wrote “Psychobirds” at USC when I was getting my master’s in Film Scoring at USC (I’m happy to announce I won the annual Harry Warren scholarship; I was old-school and retro, of course, so Warren’s daughter Cookie Warren went for my stuff. She tragically died with her husband and two grandchildren in a plane crash within a month of the Award ceremony — I still have a book of her father’s songs she gave me, inscribed “YOU’D BETTER MAKE IT! — Best, Cookie Warren” — I’m trying, Cookie, I’m trying…..)
I was studying with David Raksin, and for one assignment, he put together a fake “main title” sequence for an imaginary movie called “Psychobirds,” based on the style of the Psycho/Vertigo films, with various geometric graphics doing various dramatic things, and part of the idea was to “hit” the main events and titles — so the piece was written to those hits. We would routinely record with a small ensemble drawn from the USC musicians du jour. Raksin was one of the funniest and smartest people I ever met, and since I’d actually heard of (and seen) “Laura,” etc. and knew all of his arcane references from the past, I was something of a teacher’s pet. He started out helping Charlie Chaplin in the earliest days — helping to turn the tune “Smile” into a film score….. (before it was a song.) One of his memorable quotes: “Madonna gives cheap vulgarity a bad name.”

After three years of keeping his alto saxophone in the closet, in 1974 Paul Desmond finally succumbed to the exhortations of the Canterino family and agreed for the first time in a quarter of a century to play a club date as leader. The Canterino’s club, the Half Note, had moved from lower Manhattan to Midtown. The new proximity was an important factor. “After all,” he told me, “It’s only a couple of blocks away. I can fall out of bed and onto the bandstand.” He hired Jim Hall on guitar, Ron Carter on bass and drummer Ben Riley. For two weeks, they played opposite the Bill Evans Trio.
Desmond enjoyed it so much that he wanted to do more quartet playing. He had been thinking about going to Canada. Hall told him about a Toronto guitarist named Ed Bickert and a club called Bourbon Street. Following negotiations, he went into the club with Bickert, bassist Don Thompson and drummer Terry Clarke, later replaced by Jerry Fuller. It was the group that became his beloved Canadian Quartet, and he played with them the rest of his life.
The young woman speaking with Desmond in the January, 1976, video below is the skilled interviewer Mary Lou Finlay, then the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Company’s Take 30. In the full program, the actor and jazz enthusiast Paul Soles fills Finlay in on Desmond’s career and on jazz, about which she confesses to know nothing. Then, in a pre-recorded studio video, the Canadian quartet plays “Wendy,” followed by Finlay chatting with Paul live. It is a pity that YouTube doesn’t offer the full segment, but at least we have a rare instance of Desmond speaking on television. The clip picks up after Finlay has asked him why the Dave Brubeck Quartet disbanded in 1967.

Desmond recorded this album with the Canadian Quartet at Bourbon Street. Chapters 32-34 of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond cover the Canadian period and the final 16 months of Desmond’s life. He died on Memorial Day,1977.

The Rifftides Department Of Language Reform (DOLR) has been neglecting its duties. Its members claim that their failure to stop the misuse of “absolutely” and “no problem” (see this archives post) discouraged them. At a staff meeting on the subject, the DOLRers moaned that they despair of succeeding where Fowler, Strunk, White, Bernstein, Ciardi and other titans of proper English usage have failed. They pointed out that people still say, “ya know” every few seconds; still say and write, “they” when they should use, “he” or “she;” millions still bloat their sentences with “on a daily basis” and “on a national basis,” wasting words when they could streamline with, “daily” and “nationally.”
“Never give up,” I told them. “It’s God’s — or Webster’s — work.”
“Maybe we’re being too fussy, too pedantic,” they said. “Maybe the language is just taking its evolutionary course, and what sounds wrong today will be right tomorrow.”
“Shut up and watch this,” I explained.

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

To learn more about the poet Taylor Mali, go here. Thanks to Bobby Shew for calling this delightful wig bubble to our attention.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words. — George Eliot

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. — George Orwell

What words say does not last. The words last. Because words are always the same, and what they say is never the same. — Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

I wonder what language truck drivers are using, now that everyone is using theirs? — Beryl Pfizer

In April of 2009, a Rifftides review of a Daryl Sherman CD failed to mention the album’s lead song, “S’Mardis Gras.” It also perpetuated the tray card’s mis-naming of the bass player. Correcting those shortcomings is a fine excuse to again call attention to a CD that deserves more of it.

Daryl Sherman, New O’leans (Audiophile). Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the Crescent City inspired Sherman to record this collection of songs, but it goes beyond the post-disaster blues to touch on many of the aspects that endear New Orleans to the world. Harold Arlen’s “Ill Wind” was an obvious choice. Louis Armstrong’s “Red Cap,” Irving Berlin’s “Shaking the Blues Away,” Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” and Dave Frishberg’s “Eloise” may seem unexpected companions in a New Orleans tribute until you hear how Sherman and her colleagues use them to evoke the city. Rhodes Spedale’s “S’Mardi Gras” needs no enhancement in that regard; it is a tour of Fat Tuesday locations and emotions. Guitarist James Chirillo and trumpeter Connie Jones are Sherman’s best-known sidemen. Reed man Tom Fischer and bassist Al Bernard, misidentified as “Menard,” are in the same league. Sherman plays piano on this drummerless date. The infectious good cheer in her voice will make you grin, except when she makes your eyes moist with “Mr Bojangles” and “Wendell’s Cat.”

It seems there’s a new development every day in the saga of London’s Abbey Road Studios. Today, the building is off the block – if it was ever on – saved by designation as a part of history. The Los Angeles Times has the story with a splendid recent photograph of the building and the crosswalk the Beatles made famous.
Why does Rifftides care? Scroll down to “Studios And Sound,” February 21.

The Village Vanguard is observing its 75th anniversary this week. Joe Lovano and the band he calls Us Five are playing there through Sunday. I wish that I could attend. But I shouldn’t be greedy; in my New York years, I was fortunate to be in the club often. I heard music there that echoes in my mind to this day. Frequently on Monday nights, I wrapped up the newscast, jumped into a cab and headed for the Vanguard. That’s a night off for many musicians, and anyone might have shown up for the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band in its weekly gig. Gene Ammons sat in one Monday when I was there, Sonny Rollins another. I missed the night in 1981, after the band had become the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, when Miles Davis successively borrowed all the horns in the trumpet section and played on Jones’s “Second Race.” With or without a surprise guest, that band was a joy. Both of its its founders are gone and it is still a joy…every Monday night at the Vanguard.
It was a pleasure to hang out during the breaks with the musicians at the bar or in the kitchen and to chat with Max Gordon. Max started the club in 1935 because he wanted a place where poets could read their work. Jazz came to the club later. On National Public Radio, Lara Pellegrinelli told a brief history of the Vanguard, Max and Lorraine Gordon (pictured) and some of the musicians who made a cultural institution of a triangular room in a New York Seventh Avenue basement. To read and hear her report, including the story of the foodless kitchen, go here.
Happy birthday, Village Vanguard, and many more.

According to Norman Lebrecht, the proprietor of artsjournal.com’s
Slipped Disc, financial tap dancing led to reports that Abbey Road studios was–or
might be–for sale. That does not invalidate the sonic issues raised in this
February 21 Rifftides post. It may relieve the anxieties of audiophiles who
cherish the great old studios. To read Mr. Lebrecht’s followup, go here.

Unexpected and welcome news from a Danish web site:

Denmark’s once legendary jazz club Montmartre re-opens in May 2010 in its original premises in Copenhagen. During the 1960’s and 70’s the club served as a European home for American giants like Ben Webster, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Kenny Drew and many others.

Pianist Niels Lan Doky and a partner will operate the club as a nonprofit enterprise. For details, go here. For recent Rifftides posts involving the Montmartre, go here and here.

Jazz At Lincoln Center has just announced the artists posthumously inducted into its Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame for 2010. They are Bill Evans, Bud Powell, Billy Strayhorn and Sarah Vaughan. Those honored are chosen by vote of a panel of experts from 17 countries.
Jazz at Lincoln Center will present concerts dedicated to the inductees. Here is the schedule:
Intuition: The Music of Bill Evans (May 14-15, 2010)
The Music of Billy Strayhorn (November 5-6, 2010)
The Music of Sarah Vaughan (January 21-22, 2011)
The Music of Bud Powell & Earl Hines (April 29-30, 2011)
Hines was a previous winner, as were 34 others including Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Gil Evans, Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Mary Lou Williams and Jo Jones. To see the entire list and their photographs, visit the Ertegun Hall of Fame site. The hall is named for the distinguished producer of recordings by musicians from Kid Ory to Ornette Coleman. It was funded by his brother Ahmet, Nesuhi’s partner in Atlantic Records. Nesuhi Ertegun (pictured) died in 1989, Ahmet in 2006.

In the right hands, the accordion can be a wonderfully evocative instrument. To name a few jazz masters of the accordion: George Shearing, Joe Mooney, Eddie Monteiro, Pete Jolly, Ernie Felice, Angelo DiPippo, Tommy Gumina, and Sivuca, whose harmonic and rhythmic use of the accordion enhanced so much fine Brazilian music. Gus DeWert was a splendid accordionist from Kansas City. In his time, Art Van Damme may not have reached the general fame of Dick Contino (“Lady of Spain”), but he was immensely popular. Rifftides contributor Paul Conley of Capital Public Radio in Sacramento, California, prepared a report on Van Damme, who died last week on the threshold of his tenth decade. To listen to Paul’s piece, click here.
In the wrong hands, the accordion can be reduced to an object of ridicule and cruelty so universal that there is a web site solely devoted to accordion jokes.

For fifty years, the master of cordeen humor has been Pete Barbutti, a triple-threat musician and a comic capable of reducing audiences to helplessness with his accordion routines. Here is his most famous one, from a Tonight Show broadcast during the program’s Johnny Carson zenith.

For more on the sound quality issues raised in the following exhibit (February 21), see the comments that piece has stimulated (click on the Comments button at the end of the item). Also, go here for a golden oldie updating news about Roy DuNann, a late-20th-century hero of recorded sound. That post, in turn, will link you back to the original DuNann installment from March, 2007. Welcome to the Rifftides time machine.
The staff looks forward to your comments on current and past entries.

In their list of priorities, most serious listeners put music’s content before the quality of its sound. In one of our listening sessions at my house, I apologized to Paul Desmond for the scratchy surface of the old vinyl LP I was playing for him. “I don’t care if it’s recorded on cellophane strips,” he said, “as long as I can hear what everybody’s doing.” Nonetheless, Desmond’s own playback equipment was state of the art. He preferred first-class audio.
The Desmond episode came to mind as I read Eric Felten’s Wall Street Journal “De Gustibus” column about the importance of studios to the enjoyment of recorded music. Felten used as his point of departure the report that EMI may sell its Abbey Road Studios. Musicians venerate Abbey Road for the sound quality of recordings made there not only by the Beatles, Radio Head, Duran Duran and dozens of other pop performers but also by classical artists. Sir John Barbirolli conducted the premiere performance of Vaughan Williams’ Symphony No. 5 at Abbey Road. French Horn virtuoso Dennis Brain recorded the Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds there.
Now, any 18-year-old tenor saxophonist with a computer and a bedroom can be a record company. Felten argues that the loss of the great studios to digital wizardry has resulted in homogenization and a leveling of individuality in recorded sound.

The digital-recording revolution has allowed producers armed with laptops and a few padded rooms in a basement to forgo the expensive environs of the traditional recording hall. Yet this comes at a cost.

Felten singles out the lamented Columbia 30th Street Studio as an example of what we have lost.

The airiness of classic ’50s jazz owed much to the acoustic properties of an old Armenian church in Manhattan converted by Columbia Records into its 30th Street Studio.
Miles Davis’s masterpiece, Kind of Blue, was recorded at 30th Street, and so too, just a couple of months later, was Dave Brubeck’s album Time Out. David Simons, in his book Studio Stories, suggests that the success of those two records owed something to how they sounded, something that wasn’t just a function of the quality of the recording equipment. There was the sympathetic resonance of the studio’s unvarnished wood floor and the distant reverberations reflected by its towering ecclesiastic architecture: “To hear 30th Street is to hear drummer Joe Morello’s snare and kick-drum shots echoing off the 100-foot ceiling during the percussion break in Dave Brubeck’s great ‘Take Five.'”

Much of the intimacy and warmth of Charles Mingus’s Mingus Ah-Um (another masterpiece from 1959) and many of Thelonious Monk’s Columbia records also came from the unique properties of the 30th Street Studio. The same can be said of how RCA’s Studios A and B benefited recordings like Mingus’s Tijuana Moods, Desmond’s quartet albums with Jim Hall and the Juilliard String Quartet’s recordings of Debussy, Ravel and Webern. You don’t get that kind of sound with a laptop in your bass player’s rec room.
To read all of Felten’s thought-provoking column, including his reflections on the dread Auto-Tune, go here.

Rifftides reader Lauren Kesner O’Brien writes from New Orleans:

I’m the founder of a new video magazine, www.telegraph21.com, and am contacting you because all week we are featuring great videos about jazz and New Orleans. In particular I thought today and tomorrow’s video feature, The Sound After the Storm, featuring well known musicians Lillian Boutté and Dr. Michael White would be of particular interest to your blog readers:    

http://www.telegraph21.com/video/the-sound-after-the-storm

If it has been a while since you’ve heard these exemplars of modern New Orleans music, now in their 32nd year, here’s your chance. It’s Astral Project on the road last fall at the Artists Quarter in St. Paul, Minnesota. The band is Tony Dagradi, tenor (and at the end soprano) saxophone; Steve Masakowski, guitar; James Singleton, bass; Johnny Vidacovich, drums. The name of the post-Katrina piece is “Dike Finger.” Think about it.