You needn’t be a demon sight reader to enjoy Rifftides reader Andy Wiliamson’s blog called Jazz Licks. Wililamson transcribes phrases from solos, mostly by saxophonists (he is one). He posts the transcriptions and provides audio clips so that you can read along with the licks as you listen to them. You can check out licks by Stan Getz, James Carter, Wardell Gray, Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson, Miles Davis and others by going here.
Even if your music reading development stopped after the first John Thompson piano book, you won’t have much trouble following the lines. Warning: this may prompt you to seek out the records. It could get expensive.

Sonny Rollins has returned home from Stockholm, where he was awarded the Polar Music Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy. Terri Hinte, publicist nonpareil, traveled with him and alerted us to the web site that carries photographs of Mr. Rollins and his co-winner Steve Reich receiving their prizes from the king of Sweden. The site also has a section of pictures of the beautiful people who attended, a history of the prize and its previous winners, and a forty-seven-minute video. I wish you better luck than I had downloading the video.
Each year, the winners are chosen from disparate fields of music. Pairing Rollins and Reich has a nice symmetry; two of the most daring musicians in their not-so-disparate bailiwicks. A collaboration between them could have more potential than if there had been one between the 1995 winners, Mstislav Rostropovitch and Elton John, or between the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and Led Zeppelin last year. The 1993 winners were Dizzy Gillespie and the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. What a joint project that could have been.

We’re heading into Memorial Day weekend, the thirtieth anniversary of Paul Desmond’s death.

Musically, what I remember about Paul is how hard he could swing in that really understated way. He had the most amazing time feel in his playing. People never really talked about that part of his playing. He could really swing. There’s a lot to Paul Desmond besides that beautiful sound and those beautiful melodies. He was a really strong cat.
–Don Thompson
I more or less said that found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’ve ever known in my life. I said that his leaving will make this planet a smaller and darker place for everyone.
–Jack Richardson recalling his speech at Desmond’s memorial service.

Both quoted in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
Last year around this time, I was also in the grips of nostalgia and sentimentality.

Posting will be scant and seldom this week. I am still cranking on a flurry of assignments that must be completed before I take off for the Swing ‘n Jazz fiesta in Rochester, New York.
One of the pieces is for the next George Mraz CD, which involves the remarkable Czech singer, violinist and actress Iva Bittova. This piece of video has her with the Stampa quartet in what appears to be the St. Nicholas Church in Prague, performing two Janacek songs. I have listened extensively to Bittova and watched several of her videos. She reminds me of no one as much as Elis Regina, the Brazilian marvel who died several years ago. The comparison is not of idiom but of musicianship and irrepressible spirit.

A message from Rubén González:

I´m reading regularly with pleasure Rifftides from Rosario, Argentina…

Sr. González includes a link to his web site and the story of his encounter with jazz in Dublin, Ireland. His account is in Spanish and English and includes video of three Irish musicians named Buckley playing, and playing well.

News releases from publicists come in waves by snail mail, e-mail and that ancient technology the fax machine. By rough estimate, at least half concern the latest CDs, concerts or club appearances of legends:

…the legendary _____________(fill in the blank)

…a legend of the (piano, drums, bass, trumpet, oboe ____________(fill in the blank).

Let’s consult a dictionary. The one in the answers.com dictionary will do; it essentially agrees with the definitions in the Random House and Webster’s dictionaries and adds an interesting usage note.

leg·end (lÄ•j’É™nd) n.
1.

a. An unverified story handed down from earlier times, especially one popularly believed to be historical.
b. A body or collection of such stories.
c. A romanticized or popularized myth of modern times.

2. One who inspires legends or achieves legendary fame.
[Middle English, from Old French legende, from Medieval Latin (lēctiō) legenda, (lesson) to be read, from Latin, feminine gerundive of legere, to read.]
USAGE NOTE Legend comes from the Latin adjective legenda, “for reading, to be read,” which referred only to written stories, not to traditional stories transmitted orally from generation to generation. This restriction also applied to the English word legend when it was first used in the late 14th century in reference to written accounts of saints’ lives, but ever since the 15th century legend has been used to refer to traditional stories as well. Today a legend can also be a person or achievement worthy of inspiring such a story–anyone or anything whose fame promises to be enduring, even if the renown is created more by the media than by oral tradition. Thus we speak of the legendary accomplishments of a major-league baseball star or the legendary voice of a famous opera singer. This usage is common journalistic hyperbole, and 55 percent of the Usage Panel accepts it.

I’ll try to keep the wisdom of the Usage Panel in mind the next time I read a news release or a liner note about some 23-year-old singer who is a legend. If she’s a female singer, she is, of course, a legendary diva.
There’s no perbole like hyperbole.

Welcome to Rifftides readers in:

Sydney, Melbourne and Berkeley Vale, Australia

Moscow, Russia

Stockholm and Vastra Gotaland, Sweden;

Baden-Wurttemberg and Niedernhausen, Hessen, Germany

Lisbon, Portugal

Vaud, Switzerland

Marbella, Spain

London, Birmingham and West Ham, Newham, UK

Toronto and York Mills, Ontario, Canada

an unspecified location in Nigeria

Places in the United States from Ephrata, Washington to Ephrata, Pennsylvania

In the Jack Sheldon piece (see the next exhibit), I forgot to mention his work on the most recent Tierney Sutton CD. To read about it, go here.
Sheldon brought interesting comments, including one from a man who went to school with him. Click on the “Comments” link at the end of the next piece.

Some time ago, Rifftides reader Steve Sherman wrote, more or less in haiku form:

Jack Sheldon, unpretentious,

one of the best living singers, trumpet players,

always swinging, often touching.
Maybe write something.

I agree with Mr. Sherman’s evaluation of Sheldon. I am happy to write something, but first here are passages from a message that came even longer ago from the trombonist, singer, bandleader and alcoholic beverage maven Eric Felten (he is the author of the the “How’s Your Drink?” column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal). Mr. Felten was responding to what I wrote about a solo that came fairly early in Sheldon’s career.

I am in total agreement with you that the Jack Sheldon solo on “Then I’ll Be Tired of You” is one of the great moments in jazz.

The solo was on the The Hi-Los and All That Jazz (dumb title), a 1958 album that has been in and out of print (mostly out) for decades. Sheldon plays the bridge of the song, eight bars of melody. By inflection and a few grace notes, he makes it an endearing personal statement. I wrote in that 2005 posting:

Inexcusably, Columbia has allowed The Hi-Los And All That Jazz to go out of print, but “Then I’ll Be Tired of You” is included in this compilation.

Here’s more of Eric Felten’s message:

I resisted the urge to mention my own recent disc during the Bill Perkins discussion (though my record is dedicated to Perk, who was supposed to be part of the session and died a month ahead of the recording date) because I enjoy being part of the Rifftides discussion and haven’t wanted to muck that up with self-promotion.

Oh, go ahead, promote away.

Let me mention my disc to you in the Jack Sheldon context. Jack is on the record and he plays brilliantly. He still has that big fat swaggering sound, and still alternates between broad melodic statements and tumbling bebop lines. And in the studio he keeps everyone in stitches with the bluest jokes imaginable (the sort of jokes that have gotten him barred from a number of L.A. jazz clubs). In other words he’s still Jack Sheldon.
Perhaps because he’s on the West Coast; perhaps because he was so involved in television; or perhaps because of the blue humor: whatever the reason, Sheldon has never received the credit he deserves as an essential jazz musician. But to me he achieves one of the most important things a jazz musician can do — he has an original and distinctive voice. This is a discrete thing, in my mind, from the question of being an “innovator.” As crucial as innovation is, I think that it is just as valid for a musician to find his own distinctive voice even if the idiom in which he is working is not at the cutting edge.

I won’t give you Sheldon’s history as a trumpeter, singer, comic, television star, motion picture actor and swimming instructor. The biography on his web site will supply all of that. I will tell you about a few recordings of the hundreds he has made.
This Amazon.com page has all four of the albums Sheldon made in the 1950s as a member of the Curtis Counce Quintet with bassist Counce, tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Carl Perkins and drummer Frank Butler. He was a brilliant soloist in a brilliant band.
Capable of drive, hard swing and humor in his playing, Sheldon has a quality of wistfulness that has made him attractive to film composers and producers. He is part of the music that made two abysmal movies worth attending. One was The Sandpiper, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and a bird. Sheldon plays “The Shadow of Your Smile.” His treatment of Johnny Mandel’s main title theme is as unforgettable as the song itself. Fortunately, you don’t have to see the movie to hear the sound track. If you’re lucky, you’ll find it here. The other film was The Subterraneans, a Jack Kerouac story about the Bohemian life in San Francisco. It translated badly to the screen, despite the presence of Leslie Caron. André Previn’s score was sublime. Sheldon’s playing in the orchestral portions of the soundtrack is memorable. The directing and acting are not. After I wrote recently about Previn’s music for the picture, he sent a message:

I always liked The Subterraneans score, although the film was dreadful. I am pleased and flattered that you remembered the music so kindly.

Who wouldn’t remember it kindly?
Now available only as a fairly pricey import CD, drummer Shelly Manne’s interpretation of My Fair Lady features Sheldon singing as Henry Higgins, with Irene Kral as Eliza Doolittle. It’s a classic.
Here are a few CDs I recommend from the many Sheldon has made as a leader:
Jack Sheldon All-Stars. Mid-fifties big band with Chet Baker, Herb Geller and Conte Candoli, among others. Sheldon plays ravishing melody on “I Had The Craziest Dream.”
Class Act. Sheldon in duets with the late Ross Tompkins, his piano sidekick of decades. You will have to imagine Tompkins’ deadpan reactions to Sheldon’s beyond-the-edge humor. You’ll have to imagine the humor, too. But the playing is gorgeous.
Hollywood Heroes. Sheldon singing and playing in 1988 in superb form, with a quartet that includes the stompin’ pianist Ray Sherman, a secret too well kept.
JSO Live! Recent Sheldon with his big band. Exhilirating.
California Cool. Even more recent, with his quartet featuring pianist Milcho Leviev, bassist Bruce Lett and drummer Nick Martinis.
Jack Sheldon in New Orleans. This is a DVD made at a club on Bourbon Street with Dave Frishberg on piano, bassist Dave Stone and guitarist John Pisano. There’s nothing quite like Sheldon live, and this catches him at his playing and singing best.

Deadlines galore: Lead review for Jazz Times (Ron Carter’s next CD). Notes for two CDs, George Mraz’s Moravian Gems, and Mad Duran’s Simply Mad. I’m reading and evaluating the manuscript of a new book by a major jazz biographer. Nonetheless, I have something in mind to post tomorrow or the next day.

If you never had the good luck to see Ray Nance,
Now, thanks to YouTube, you have the chance.

The item in the next exhibit was, I thought, the last Rifftides posting about Rod Levitt. Then Erik Lawrence sent the following message and his obituary of Rod, which is too thorough, touching and well written not to pass along to you. Erik refers to his late father, the multifaceted saxophonist, leader and educator Arnie Lawrence.

(Your piece was) So well put. I knew Rod when I was a child, as my father played alto in the last incarnation of the Rod Levitt Orchestra. Years later my family and I moved to Vermont and heard he lived nearby. We met and despite the beginning of his declining health he became very excited about a recreation of his music. I put together a group and we performed it twice in honor of his 75th birthday. I even convinced him to join the local ragtag big band, which he really enjoyed.
Jean called me as well and asked that I write an obituary based on an article I’d written about Rod in January 2006. I’ve copied it below.
I was blessed to know Rod and Jean. Bringing him and his music back to the stage stands as one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.
In Peace,
Erik
——————
Rod Levitt, In Memoriam
By Erik Lawrence
Rod Levitt, jazz trombonist, composer and arranger, 77, died quietly in his sleep late Tuesday night, May 8th, 2007 at his home in Wardsboro, Vermont after a courageous battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Born in September 16th, 1929 and raised in Portland, Oregon, Rod took his love for jazz and his trombone to the University of Washington. It was there he studied music theory, harmony and arranging. Many top bands come through the city of Seattle. It was there that he met a talented a young trumpeter, still in high school, named Quincy Jones. This association put Rod to work in young Quincy’s band, which featured another young jazz artist, singer Ernestine Anderson.
Four years in the Air Force allowed Rod to hone his arranging skills. He played piano and trombone and arranged for the 722nd Regiment Air Force band. They would play dances 5 or 6 nights a week.
Upon finishing his military career Rod made his way to NY, found an apartment and started picking up work as a versatile trombonist, continuing his graduate education at Mannes School of Music. The musician’s union building, local 802, was the place to meet other musicians and bandleaders and find out about work. On his way there one day he bumped into his old friend Quincy again. Quincy quickly offered Rod a gig on the road with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. And Rod was on his way.
He spent a year touring with Dizzy Gillespie, the “clown prince of bebop”. This included several recordings. Dizzy In South America offers a recorded interview with Rod and saxophonist Benny Golson. When asked recently whether Dizzy’s joking and showmanship caused his music to suffer Rod quickly said no. “You can’t hear that on records!”
Rod’s association with Gillespie carried on throughout much of his own career. But upon returning from this first tour he began to find work in town and his reputation brought him into the elite rank as a strong player with many tools, reading, improvising and arranging. Evidence of his work is clear on recordings from that time with Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine, Benny Golson, Gil Evans and many others. A television show is now available showing Rod playing in an ensemble “in the round” under the direction of Gil Evans, featuring the groundbreaking quintet of Miles Davis with John Coltrane.
In 1958 Rod took a job playing in the symphony orchestra at New York’s famed Radio City Music Hall, which he maintained for thirteen years. In 1959 he caught the eye of the newest member of the legendary Rockettes. “Who is that man with the Trombone?” she asked on her very first day of work, “Rod Levitt!!! I have all of his records!” Rod and Jean Levitt were married in 1962. They never stopped giggling like school kids about meeting and finding one another.
With a good job and a strong work ethic Rod found opportunities for writing more and more for various musical settings. The recording industry was based primarily in New York and was still in infant stages of technology. Talented craftsmen were responsible for using skills creatively to make recordings that would stand the test of time.
The field of television was blossoming and work was available for musicians who could play and write for commercials (called “jingles”), theme music and soundtracks. Rod found he liked the challenge and diversity of writing music for commercials and moved in that direction. In this setting he had the opportunity to write for an orchestra or flute choir, a playful ditty, or a steamy jazz piece. He would make use of the best musicians and singers available. In a very challenging and competitive field, he was in demand as a top writer, creating the music for thousands of commercials for every product imaginable. The ad men who hired him would not always understand what was and wasn’t possible with music. Quoting Rod, “Sometimes they told you what they wanted, now that was dangerous!”
Despite the years and advancing Alzheimer’s, he could always sing the music he wrote and tell you exactly when he did what and with whom. Much of this is quite interesting. Once he flew to Chicago to record Mahalia Jackson in her living room. Another time he used the brilliant blind reedman Rahsaan Roland Kirk for a spot for Chemical Bank. During this time he also scored music for the film score Bush Doctor, featuring Hugh O’Brian.
This dedication to excellence and strong work ethic also produced the Rod Levitt Orchestra in the 1960’s, perhaps his crowning achievement. This eight piece ensemble earned its title of orchestra with the brilliant arrangements and the virtuosity it demanded of his players as strong readers, the ability to play several instruments, thus expanding his palette of musical ‘colors’ and top level improvising.
From 1962 through 65 Rod wrote prolifically for this group and recorded four celebrated albums. His Dynamic Sound Patterns is currently available on CD. These recordings put him in the pantheon of jazz arrangers. Jazz is a collective art form and only a very few receive the popularity and success they deserve. Critically a hit, he never was able to get enough attention with this ensemble. Though they never released a recording after 1966, the dedicated members played his music and he continued to write for the Orchestra for at least a decade more.
Soft spoken and very wise, Rod had done the nearly impossible in music many times over. He made a fine living, he stayed on a clean path of health, raised a family and he even retired! He lived out his last few years in rural Vermont with his bride Jean. When asked what retirement is like for a musician, he responded; “I practice every day. I pull out my arrangements and check them over (author’s note: these arrangments were perfect forty years ago). In fact I wrote a method book for the trombone. I call it Sure Way to Chops in 20 Minutes a Day. That’s the hawker in me coming out!” he said in an interview in January, 2006, harkening back to the jingle days.
Mr. Levitt is survived by his wife Jean, of Wardsboro, Vermont and son Barry, of Miami, Florida.

To learn more about Erik Lawrence and hear the cavernous sound of his baritone saxophone, go here.

It was a phone call I wished never to receive and knew was inevitable. Rod Levitt’s wife Jean called to report that he died peacefully in his sleep the night of May 8. A composer and arranger of inventiveness, warmth and resourcefulness, a trombonist whose kindness and humor radiated in his playing, Rod had Alzheimer’s. He was not warehoused in an institution, as so many Alzheimer’s patients must be. Jean kept him with her at home in Vermont. She said that although much of his past had slipped away, he kept his horn near and played it this week even as he was declining.
“You know, his trombone, his music, were his life,” Jean said. She left out the most important element in his life, Jean.
Mrs. Levitt said that they kept printouts of the Rifftides pieces about him in a neat stack on his desk and that he often asked her to read them to him. She said he was moved by the comments from Rifftides readers. For background on Rod and links to his music, see this item from January, and this followup from Steve Schwartz about Rod in his final years. Here is a little of what I wrote about the importance of his albums:

They comprise a body of recordings that are fresh, evocative and enormously entertaining forty years later. The writing was daring, finely crafted and marinated in wit.

The bassist Bill Crow knew Rod more than a decade longer than I did. He sent this recollection.

When I got out of the Army in 1949 and returned to my studies at the University of Washington, I soon discovered the afternoon jam sessions that went on in the U.’s music annex. I was a bebop valve trombonist and sometime drummer in those days. I met Rod Levitt at one of those jams, and we hung out a little together on the Seattle music scene until the winter of 1950, when Buzzy Bridgeford, a drummer from Olympia, invited me to go with him when he went back to New York. I kept hearing about Rod, but when he came to New York, he didn’t hang with the same people I was interested in at that time. Whenever our paths crossed, we had a nice reunion, and he called me to play on a couple of his projects, which I enjoyed very much. I liked his playing and his writing, and always appreciated his sunny disposition.

Rod Levitt would have been seventy-eight in September.

As if our friend and fellow artsjournal.com blogger Terry Teachout weren’t polymath enough, he’s extending his cultural breadth. On his blog, About Last Night, he announces:

I’m writing an opera.

What?

I’M WRITING AN OPERA.

That’s what I thought he said. To get the details, go here.

The Rifftides staff is pleased to announced that (finally) we have posted a new group of Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column. A reminder: We now archive the Picks. To see past entries, click on “More Picks” at the end of the current crop.