• Overkill word of the day, perhaps the decade: Absolutely.
This week on The News Hour on PBS television, nearly every person interviewed began answers to a total of approximately 150 questions with, “Absolutely. ” That frequency, from educated people discussing policy issues, is typical at all levels of public and private life.
Perhaps we can bring back “yes.”
• Inapt phrase of the day, perhaps the century: No Problem.
Ask for more water in a restaurant and the waiter says, “No problem.” Tell the supermarket cashier “Thank you,” and she says, “No problem.” Extreme example: the other day I wished a passerby a good morning. He replied, “Hey, no problem.”
This is getting out of hand.

Larry Bunker’s versatile drumming, vibes playing and skill as an all-’round percussionist put him in demand by jazz players, symphony conductors, film and television studios, and singers. He worked with an array of artists that included Gerry Mulligan, Pierre Boulez, Peggy Lee, Judy Garland, Dizzy Gillespie, Gary Burton and Michael Tilson Thomas. In the mid-sixties, Bunker (1928-2005) took time to fill an ambition. For years, he had dreamed of playing with Bill Evans, and for a year or so left his lucrative first-call Los Angeles life to go on the road and record with Evans’ trio.
In this performance with Evans and bassist Chuck Israels, we hear–and see–why Bunker was so highly regarded for his playing with brushes. Following a rapid version of “Israel” and BBC-TV host Humphrey Lyttleton’s farewell, Evans ends with his “I Got Rhythm” variant called “Five,” toward the end working in a few bars each of “The Theme” and “Taps Miller.” Throughout, he and Israels have spirited exchanges with Bunker.

Today is Billy Taylor’s 88th brthday. It has not gone unnoticed by his publicists that, coincidentally, the piano has 88 keys. Appropriately, they have posted on his web site 88 videos of Taylor playing in a variety of contexts; speaking informatively on CBS Sunday Morning, where for years he did commentary; and being interviewed by Charles Kuralt, Charlie Rose, Charles Osgood and William F. Buckley, Jr., among others.
It is worth noting that Taylor and Dave Brubeck have long maintained a mutual admiration society. Brubeck is also 88, and one of those web site videos brings us the two of them playing 176 keys. Michael Moore is the bassist, Randy Jones the drummer.

“Take The ‘A’ Train,” which you just heard, was Duke Ellington’s theme song. Taylor and Brubeck were guest pianists at the 70th birthday party President Richard Nixon threw for Ellington at the White House in 1969. I happened to be standing nearby at the afternoon rehearsal in the East Room when a photographer asked the two of them to pose together. Taylor said, “Sure, something might rub off,” eliciting a wide grin from Brubeck.
Happy Birthday, Billy.

To those who who knew Russ Freeman or his work it was a source of frustration that he elected during his final years not to play the piano. Freeman died in 2002 at the age of 76. He was part of the west coast jazz scene before it was called that. He worked in Los Angeles in the late forties and early fifties with Howard McGhee, Charlie Parker, Dexter Gordon and other bop musicians. Then he got famous as the pianist in Chet Baker’s first quartet and attracted a following for his inventive work with Baker as accompanist, soloist and composer. Freeman wrote one of the classic jazz ballads, “The Wind,” in addition to “Maid in Mexico,” “Happy Little Sunbeam” “Fan Tan,” “Band Aid” and pieces titled for his love of baseball, among them “Batter Up,” “Safe at Home” and “Fungo.”. Freeman recorded one trio album of his own and made a stunning two-piano album with André Previn. He collaborated closely with drummer Shelly Manne in Manne’s quintet and two remarkable sets of piano-drum duets, one in 1954, another in 1982.
A concert that Freeman played in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1959 has emerged on a new CD. The ten tracks remind us of his stimulating blend of lyricism and percussiveness. The repertoire includes includes standards, with an intriguing “Lush Life,” a stirring “With a Song in My Heart” and a live version of “Fan Tan.” The bassist and drummer are not identiied. This is a substantial addition to the sparse discography of Freeman as leader and a reminder of the muscle and drive in his solo work.
Thanks to Wolfram Knauer of Jazzinstitut Darmstadt in Germany for calling my attention to an article in the Las Vegas Sun about Carolyn Freeman. Russ Freeman’s widow is at the center of a movement to create a jazz performance center in that Nevada city. In the course of the piece, she is quoted about her husband’s reluctance to perform.

Though he was a great musician, her husband never listened to music at home, she says.
“He focused so hard when he listened it wasn’t relaxing,” Freeman says. “He couldn’t tune it out. He’d hear the scores in movies. At a particularly dramatic moment he’d say, ‘Carolyn, listen to that string line,’ and it blows the whole movie.”
The Northridge earthquake in 1994, which killed 72 and injured thousands, drove the Freemans out of Los Angeles, and they ended up in Las Vegas. Both were retired by then.
“He didn’t play music anymore,” she says. “I asked him, ‘Why don’t you play? It’s your gift?’ And he said, ‘It’s very painful.’ Russ was a perfectionist. He said, ‘When the music is wonderful, it’s unbelievable, but most of the time it’s not.’ ”

To read all of the piece about Carolyn Freeman, go here.

In the center exhibit under the legend Doug’s Picks you will find new recommendations assembled by the Rifftides staff. They include CDs, a DVD and a book. They are by:
•A great pianist in the creative burst of his last days
•A bassist eschewing hybridized jazz for the straight but not narrow
•Another bassist, who sings as well as she plays
•A trumpeter at the beginning of what may turn out to be a significant career
•A composer with a keen ear, assessing his fellow composers

The following exchange showed up on the Jazz West Coast listserve today. It was attributed to Bill Crow’s book Jazz Anecdotes, although I couldn’t find it there. Wherever it’s from, it deserves wide exposure.

“How late does the band play?”
“About half a beat behind the drummer.”

The newest addition to jazz.com’s “The Dozens” series is Bill Kirchner’s recommendation of twelve tracks by pianist Denny Zeitlin. Five of the pieces appear in the new Mosaic compendium of Zeitlin’s 1960s trio recordings for Columbia. The others are from single albums, some available, others rare. Typical of Kirchner’s keen musician’s guidance through the tracks is this evaluation of Zeitlin’s “Stonehenge:”

This modal burner deserves to be more widely performed. One reason it isn’t probably has to do with a complex polyrhythmic interlude that requires an authoritative lead sheet to be executed properly. Since Denny Zeitlin’s own lead sheet isn’t commercially available (I have a copy, and trust me, it’s not music you’d want to transcribe), that leaves the piece in limbo.
From a listener’s standpoint, though, this is a compelling performance, and one of Zeitlin’s earliest indications of his gifts as a composer. It has McCoy Tyner-esque sturm und drang, but Zeitlin’s vocabulary is quite different and gives his improvisation a character of its own. The climax is (drummer) Freddie Waits’ solo over a roaring vamp by Zeitlin and (bassist) Cecil McBee.

From this listener’s standpoint, that sort of guidance is helpful. Perhaps it will be to you, too. To read the whole thing, go here. You may find that Kirchner’s article works hand-in-hand with a piece I wrote about Zeitlin in The Wall Street Journal last March.

Bobby Shew’s Breakfast Wine is so rare that it does not appear in the Shew discography on the trumpeter’s own web site. Nonetheless, the PAUSA long-playing vinyl album released in 1985 is a highlight not only of Shew’s recording career but also of all jazz releases in the last two decades of the twentieth century. I lost my copy of Breakfast Wine in a move, so when I was rummaging through the used LP bin in a Seattle store the other day and came across a pristine copy, I gave a whoop. That prompted another customer to amble over and see what the fuss was about. I showed him the cover. He stared at it blankly and went back to the rock section. Good. I didn’t want to have to fight him for the LP.

Shew’s rhythm section on the record included the stalwart drummer Sherman Ferguson, pianist Makoto Ozone and bassist John Patitucci. Ozone and Patitucci were in their early twenties, at the launch points of their substantial careers. They shared with Shew the enthusiasm he had rekindled after deciding to walk away from his career of lead trumpet work with Woody Herman, Buddy Rich and other big bands, and from the Hollywood studios in which he had spent hundreds of lucrative hours.

“After all the Woodys and Mork and Mindys,” he told the liner note writer (full disclosure: I was the liner note writer), “I realized I wasn’t doing what makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. So I threw it all over, and now I’m playing jazz in clubs and doing clinics for student musicians about 200 days a year. I don’t make the kind of money I used to as a studio musician. But I love everything I do. It’s a self-inflicted eccentricity. And I’ve discovered it works not only in an artistic sense, but in a business sense too. I’m doing what I love and life is good.”

And that, essentially, is what Shew has been doing for a quarter of a century. He has recorded more than two dozen albums as a leader since, but Breakfast Wine has a special place in his output because of the sense of discovery in his playing, the freshness of the emerging Ozone and Patitucci and, not least, because of the title tune. Randy Aldcroft’s intriguing “Breakfast Wine” has made its way into the repertoires of many musicians and into fake books. The recording that introduced it should make its way back into general circulation as a CD reissue.
In the meantime, if you get lucky, as I did, you may find the LP. This web site lists several copies ranging in price from expensive to ridiculous. They include an offer from an outfit in France that will sell you the LP and a CD-R transfer for a mere $78.84 US.

On his web site, Old And New Swingin’ Dreams, Bruno Leicht gathers together four versions of “Chinatown, My Chinatown” and its latterday nom de déguisement “Sax No End.” The clips run from Fletcher Henderson in 1930 to the Clarke-Boland band in 1967, the Oscar Peterson Trio a year later and, finally, an undated video performance by Clarke-Boland. Along the way, we hear solos by, among others, Rex Stewart, Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Johnny Griffin, Sahib Shihab, Ronnie Scott and the shamefully ignored alto saxophonist Derek Humble. The assemblage of these audio and video clips is a good idea well executed. I wish I’d thought of it. The public service aspect of Leicht’s idea is the reminder to jazz players of all generations that this is a great set of changes to blow on — if that’s not too old fashioned a concept.
Go here to take the ride.
Nor should we overlook Louis Armstrong’s big band version from 1931, notable for his spoken nonsense, the glory of his long-lined trumpet solo when he finally gets around to it, the way he swings the band, and his splendid high D-flat at the end. To hear it, click here.

JazzTimes magazine announced today that it will come back to life with an August issue. A post on the magazine’s web site says that a Boston company, Madavor Media, has acquired JazzTimes. It describes Madavor as “a market-leading enthusiast publishing and trade-show group.”
Jazz Times announced in early June that it was temporarily suspending publication. A New York Times report today says that Madavor bought the JazzTimes brand and assets from publisher Glenn Sabin. Sabin’s father, Ira, founded the publication in 1970 as Radio Free Jazz, a newsletter that he transformed into a tabloid-sized paper and, 19 years ago, a slick magazine that reached a circulation of more than 100,000. JazzTimes won this year’s Jazz Journalists Association award as best jazz magazine, an honor it received for several years.
The New York Times story quotes JazzTimes editor-in-chief Lee Mergner as saying that contributors will get fees the magazine owes them. Mergner told the Times that he and managing editor Evan Haga will remain aboard and use the same staff of free-lance contributors.
More than a month ago, we wrote:

With the suspension last year of the Canadian magazine Coda, the absorption of Britain’s Jazz Review by Jazz Journal and the conversion of JazzIz to a quarterly, jazz listeners’ choices of major print information about the music are disappearing fast. The question, unanswerable at this point, is whether web sites and blogs can provide the same depth and width of coverage generations have received from jazz magazines. This is a small manifestation of the larger challenge facing free societies as newspapers shrink or disappear. A democracy can only suffer from diminution and fragmentation of the flow of information upon which we base our judgments.
Let us hope that JazzTimes survives its reorganization. More important, let us hope that we do not lose news organizations serving mass audiences. They help bind us together.

Congratulations to JazzTimes.

Martial Solal Live at the Village Vanguard (CamJazz). The CD’s subtitle is I Can’t Give You Anything but Love. In this recital, the French pianist gives his listeners more than love. We get architectural thinking, drollery, daring, virtuosity that includes astonishing mastery of meter, and chord voicings that illuminate like fireworks. Solal was 80 when this was recorded in 2007. His command of the instrument and his intellectual resources were in full operation. He interprets seven standards with insights into the natures of the songs, deep harmonic substance and inflections of his endearing wit. Among other delights, following his deep ruminations during “‘Round Midnight” he makes pointed allusions to other Thelonious Monk compositions; integrates crippled cadences into “On Green Dolphin Street;” plays abstractions of the melody, astringent parallel harmonies and stride flurries in “Corcovado.” Solal has always managed to integrate profundity and entertainment without sacrificing anything of either. Two of his own compositions, “Ramage” (French for “flower patterns”) and “Centre de Gravite,” have characteristics suggested by their titles and give the impression of pure improvisation, whether or not they are.
Because of his command of the piano, Solal is often compared with Art Tatum. Fair enough; what jazz pianist of his generation with the technical ability to emulate Tatum was not under the influence of that master? Bud Powell is less often mentioned as a component of Solal’s musical makeup, but on this night at the Vanguard, Powell was a beatific presence peering out of Solal’s solos. A listener might also hear traces of other pianists of several eras and styles; Bill Evans, Teddy Wilson, Al Haig or Solal’s young countryman Michel Petrucciani. Still, when this CD ends, Solal has confirmed yet again that he is unclassifiable, a thorough original.

Here’s a look at Martial Solal in performance with a trio in a video pastiche. YouTube does not identify the sidemen, but they appear to be the Moutin brothers, Francois on bass and Louis on drums.

It was 97 degrees today and time to get the apricots off the tree. In 2008, the tree produced two apricots. This year, it compensated, loading its branches with huge fruits. Eat your hearts out. Or, better, visit Rifftides World Headquarters and eat an apricot. The two bushels are perhaps a fifth of the tree’s output.

What does this have to do with jazz? It’s summertime. Here’s Sidney Bechet.

In Barcelona, there is a baritone saxophonist named Joan Chamorro. As might be expected of a young player of his instrument, he is under the spell of Harry Carney, Gerry Mulligan and Pepper Adams. I can find no recordings under his own name, although here and here, Chamorro is listed as a sideman. Jordi Pujol sent the Rifftides staff a message in which he mentioned that this year his Fresh Sound label will release a CD with Chamorro as leader. Based on what I have heard of his playing, that seems something to anticipate.
On YouTube and Google there several videos of Chamorro at work with his quartet. In the lengthy clip below, he pays tribute to Mulligan with a medley of quartet pieces. The first number, incomplete, is Ben Webster’s blues “Go Home,” followed by “Bernie’s Tune,” “Makin’ Whoopee” and “Love Me or Leave Me.” The other musicians are Toni Belenguer, trombone; David Mengual, bass; and David Xirgu, drums. Despite their adherence to the form of the Mulligan pieces, the individuality of Chamorro and the others leaps off the screen and out of the speakers, particularly in the final choruses of “Love Me or Leave Me.” Unfortunately, the performance is summarily executed before it finishes. The sloppy production is typical of web videos, but we get spirited playing that indicates more good work to come from Spain.