Bing Crosby introduced “Love Thy Neighbor†in a scene with Ethel Merman and Leon Errol when Crosby co-starred with Carol Lombard (both pictured left) in the 1934 motion picture We’re Not Dressing. Crosby followed up with a hit record of the song for Brunswick. The record was on the charts for weeks and on the radio and jukeboxes for years. It seems unlikely that John Coltrane (born in 1926) would have missed hearing it in an era when radio was omnipresent in American lives. By the time his family moved from North Carolina to Philadelphia in 1944, Coltrane had been a saxophonist for about three years.
Here’s Crosby’s recording.
Coltrane’s 1950s discography is packed with standard songs, some—like “Love Thy
Neighborâ€â€”rarely used for jazz improvisation. In addition, as the scholar Carl Woideck has pointed out, Coltrane and pianist Red Garland recorded so often for Prestige that to assure variety, they maintained a constant lookout for unusual material. Coltrane’ solo on the song has plenty of variety, and a few hints at stylistic changes he was germinating that would flower a year or two later. It is one of his happiest solos of the 1950s. Coltrane with Garland, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and flugelhornist Wilbur Harden on July 11, 1958.
Less than a year later, Coltrane and Cobb joined Miles Davis, Bill Evans and Cannonball Adderley to record the first session for Davis’s Kind Of Blue, one of the most influential of all jazz albums. With his quartet, Coltrane had recorded “Giant Steps.†He had only a few years to live, but Coltrane’s innovations were already helping to set jazz on a new path.
demands close attention. At the piano, the clarity of Bley’s musical intelligence intertwines with Andy Sheppard’s saxophone mastery and Steve Swallow’s transformation of what he recently called “this rock and roll instrument‗his electric bass guitar—into a medium of unprecedented subtlety. 
with perhaps every technical expert, supervisor and engineer of a major printer manufacturer— several of them many times. What started as the simple warranty replacement of a defective printer morphed into full-scale frustration when the replacement model also failed. Frustration did not escalate to the degree illustrated at the left, except in my interior. Two days apart, I express-shipped back to the manufacturer the original printer and the replacement. Finally, after days, a second replacement arrived. It worked perfectly.
technical experts of a hardware manufacturer have consumed hours that would have been better spent listening, writing and posting. I hope to have good news from the techies tomorrow. In the meantime, the Rifftides staff is reaching into the backlog of recordings and videos that we keep on hand for times like this.
leader Bill Holman is working as much as he cares to, which seems to be a lot. In recent years, Holman has frequently led bands in the US and Europe in works of his that are universally considered classics. Last weekend, the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master (class of 2010) flew north from
Taken under Dizzy Gillespie’s wing when he was sixteen, Stan Levey (1926-2005) developed into a bebop drummer the equal of his early hero Max Roach. During the final five decades of his life, Levey left behind his rough east coast beginnings, his professional boxing sideline and a prison sentence. Before he moved to the west coast in the fifties, he kicked the habit, joined Stan Kenton’s band, stayed clean and healthy the rest of his life and became a mainstay of west coast jazz. The book’s insights into the bop dope culture are chilling. Author Hayde tells Levey’s story in a straightforward narrative that incorporates quotes from Levey, his family and many of the musicians he worked with, including Gillespie and Charlie Parker. In the seventies, facing deteriorating prospects in music, without regret Levey switched to professional photography, at which he excelled.
Live In Seattle was recorded in a former church on International Jazz Day almost exactly a year ago. Frequent collaborators, pianist Shipp and bassist Bisio give intriguing duo performances of five Shipp compositions and three standards. Shipp pays obeisance to the melody and chords of Rogers & Hart’s “My Funny Valentine†during its first chorus while Bisio, using his bow with speed and vigor, invents eerie countermelodies. As the storm subsides, there is a momentary pause before they launch into “New Fact,†a Shipp D-minor fantasy. The Roberta Flack hit “Where Is The Love?†gets Bisio’s wild bowing treatment while Shipp plays straight-time eighth notes, then the two become downright lyrical—briefly—and morph into “Psychic Counterpart,†with Bisio pizzicato in traditional time-keeping swing—for a while. “Green Dolphin Street“ appears in a game of melodic hide-and-seek, but Shipp’s chords leave little doubt about what they’re playing, and Bisio’s steady ostinato offsets Shipp’s peregrenations.
Guaraldi’s greatest recordings for the label. They are all there; the Charlie Brown Christmas pieces, so familiar to generations of TV kids; “Great Pumpkin Waltzâ€; “Cast Your Fate To The Winds,†“Samba de Orfeu†and the other definitive bossa nova pieces; Guaraldi’s beautiful religious composition “Hymn To Grace;†“Calling Dr. Funk,†the early triumph that circulated his nickname; and a couple of dozen others.
In January, Rifftides reader Donna Shore sent a remembrance of Bryce Rohde, the pianist and music director of the Australian Jazz Quartet. Outside of Australia the talented musician’s achievements received too little notice when he died in January. Updated slightly, here is Ms. Shore’s tribute, with video of Rohde’s trio performing the piece that she mentions. The video’s opening includes a biographical sketch. The low-level hum at the beginning quickly disappears.
Lederer conglomerates music by the free jazz avatar Albert Ayler with sea shanties that survive from the whaling ship era when Herman Melville had Ahab pursuing Moby Dick. Influenced by Ayler’s haunting, raucous saxophone style, Lederer enlists ten longtime collaborators in combining his hero’s headlong improvisational style with traditional sea songs. Ayler’s “Bells†opens the collection, followed by “Haul Away Joe,†a shanty that sounds as if it could have been written by Ayler. Fellow tenor saxophonist Petr Cancura is part of the proceeding, along with cornetist and slide trumpeter Kirk Knuffke and accordionist Art Bailey. Brian Dye plays blowsy trombone. Matt Wilson’s, Allison Miller’s and Stephen LaRosa’s percussion instruments include drums, ship’s bell, chum bucket and chain. Mary LaRose sings spiritedly on five tracks and ends the album reading a passage from Moby Dick. This unlikely project is a joy.
Bill Crow has played bass with several of of the world’s leading jazz artists, Stan Getz, Art Farmer, Marian McPartland and Gerry Mulligan among them. A terrific writer, he has developed a sidebar career as a story teller. His 
the musical chemistry between them produced some wonderful results. One night Dick Bock visited the Haig, the club where they were playing, and asked Gerry if he could sell him a record. Gerry told Bock that the group hadn’t recorded yet, and Bock said, “Well, how much does it cost to make a record?†When he found out that it could be done for just a few hundred dollars, he got the quartet into a recording studio, and the Pacific Jazz label was born. It went on to successfully record many West Coast jazz groups.
“I worked the Nut Club after Juilliard in the early 50’s, with Nick Stabulas (leader), George Syran (piano) and Jon Eardley (trumpet). We mostly played bebop, even for some of the strippers, but ‘Harlem Nocturne’ and ‘Night Train’ were frequent for the three shows a night. (I did not see a woman from the front for three years.)
I mention this phenomenon because Saturday April 16 is not only Eggs Benedict Day but also—perhaps of more importance to Rifftides readers— Record Store Day. Its website (no kidding, the day has a website) gives its history:
Early this year I had the privilege of writing notes for Forrest Westbrook’s only album as a leader. The CD was released five-and-a-half decades after it was recorded and two years after the pianist’s death at 86. The album is bringing overdue notice to Westbrook, a quiet, almost secretive figure in the southern California jazz movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Standard journalism practice is for a writer never to promote a project in which he has been involved. So, report me to the Journalism Police, but it’s important that serious listeners know about Westbrook’s work. Therefore, my clever surreptitious ploy is to let fellow blogger Marc Myers carry the ball. With his customary accuracy, Marc describes Westbrook as remarkable. To see his coverage of the pianist’s album, go to his 
The scores of photos, illustrations and reproductions of documents make this book a valuable supplement to the growing stack of Ellington biographies: Bennett’s watercolor painting of Ellington, the 10-piece 1920s band looking bemusedly at the camera, Ellington peering over the feathered headdresses of Cotton Club chorus girls, President Eisenhower’s note of appreciation, Duke playing a piano duet with actor Jimmy Stewart. Some material is seen for the first time. In the essays, Mercedes Ellington’s remembrance of her relationship with her grandfather illuminates the fragmented nature of his personal life. Co-author Brower contributes an invaluable 16-page timeline that traces the high points of Ellington’s life and career. Quincy Jones, Tony Bennett, Dan Morgenstern, Jon Batiste and Dave Brubeck discuss what Ellington means to them. Lack of IDs for many photos is a flaw that should be fixed before the next print run.
It’s April First. We have no Rifftides April Fool jokes, tricks, cartoons or gag shots. We have Billie Holiday. This is a 1937 recording with Buck Clayton, trumpet; Buster Bailey, clarinet; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Teddy Wilson, piano; Freddie Green, guitar; Walter Page, bass; and Jo Jones, drums. Ms. Holiday sings about the saddest kind of fooling.