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When trumpeter Bobby Shew left Los Angeles after years of work in big bands and the film and recording studios of L.A., he made a major commitment to education. From his home in New Mexico, he travels in the US, Asia and Europe for classes and workshops with college and high school music students. Among visits to schools in places as far-flung as Tokyo, Prague, Oulu in northern Finland and—recently—the US Pacific Northwest and southern British Columbia, he manages to also squeeze in concerts and club appearances. The concerts are sometimes with the youngsters he teaches.

That was the case when Shew appeared as guest soloist with the Two Rivers Youth Jazz Orchestra (TYRJO), a band of all-stars from a variety of high schools in the Yakima Valley of Washington state, and with Central Washington University’s Jazz Band One. The CWU band was fresh from winning first prize at the Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey, California and will play at the Monterey Jazz Festival itself next fall. Shew played with both bands at The Seasons, Yakima’s superb performance hall. He is pictured here with the CWU band directed by Chris Bruya. (Photos courtesy of Larry Chamberlain, Yamaha)

It turns out that there is video of some of the concert, including Shew soloing on flugelhorn with the TYRJO conducted by Josh Yohe. The piece is Randy Aldcroft’s “Breakfast Wine,” a favorite of Shew’s since he recorded it with his quartet in 1985.

It was a treat to hear that because the Shew album Breakfast Wine is long out of print. For details, see this Rifftides archive post.

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A recent discussion among jazz researchers centered on the evolution of instrumentation as big bands changed through the decades. The conversation developed into exchanges about not only the makeup of band sections—rhythm, brass and reeds—but also the matter of doubling, in which individual musicians played more than one instrument and sometimes several. In the 1920s and 1930s doubling was a requirement in many bands, among them Sam Gooding’s, Jean Goldkette’s, Jimmy Lunceford’s, Paul Whiteman’s, Glen Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra and, notably, Fletcher Henderson’s. Take a look at the arsenal of instruments laid out before Henderson’s reed section in this photograph from 1924. Henderson is at the piano. That’s Louis Armstrong in the middle of the top row. Coleman Hawkins is at the left end of the saxophones. The trumpet in front of alto saxophonist Don Redman suggests that he doubled in brass.

There’s not a lot of doubling apparent in Henderson’s 1924 “Sugarfoot Stomp,” but who cares?—the piece has a long Armstrong solo, one of his first on record.

Despite all of the opprobrium Paul Whiteman brought on himself with the title King Of Jazz and his declaration that he wanted to “’make an honest woman out of jazz,” his popular success and the rewards it brought made it possible to expand. He sometimes included French horns, tuba, strings and extra percussion, setting an example that inspired other big bands.

Here’s a Whiteman piece with the kind of arrangement and instrumentation that drove much of the criticism by purists. Wait for a solo by Armstrong’s Chicago jam session pal Bix Beiderbecke that makes the track indispensable. In the photograph that accompanies the recording, Bix is third from the left in the middle row.

Doubling continued though the twentieth century; think of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra and the Bob Florence Limited Edition. It is alive and well in the 2000s. For evidence, listen to (and watch) the Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band at the 2010 America’s Jazz Festival in Lacey, Washington, a suburb of the state capitol, Olympia. The piece they play goes back to nearly the beginning of jazz. This may be one of the few times you’ll see three bass saxophones trading phrases and engaging in simultaneous improvisation.

Bert Barr, leader, cornet; Rose Marie Barr, piano; John Goodrich, reeds; Paul Woltz, reeds; Pieter Meijers, reeds; Tom Jacobus, trombone; Al LaTourette, banjo; and Paul Hagglund, tuba. Thanks to Andrew Homzy for his lead to that video.

Apart from big bands, there was Roland Kirk, who doubled, tripled and sometimes quadrupled, simultaneously.

But that’s another story.

Have a good weekend

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Following yesterday’s Rifftides commentary about the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, I heard from fellow jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld (pictured). Larry is a New Yorker who in recent years has spent much of his time in New Orleans. He writes from there for The Wall Street Journal and other outlets about the city’s recovery following Hurricane Katrina, about its legacy of music and, frequently, about its mores and politics. In a report from this year’s festival, he observed,

Beyond the Fair Grounds, in the real life of a city that a decade removed from utter disaster seems now rushing headlong toward a gentrified “new” New Orleans, such matters — especially whether the sound of music spilling out is heard as glorious or not — weigh heavy for those whose lives revolve around jazz and heritage long after the festival’s two weekends are done.

Larry reported extensively on big 2015 festival doings at the Fair Grounds and on smaller, often more interesting, ones throughout New Orleans. To read both parts, go here, then here.

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The 2015 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival wrapped up last Friday. Mark Hertsgaard’s Daily Beast review of the festival includes this lament.

Yet for all of Jazz Fest’s celebration of the music, food and culture of New Orleans, some locals complain that a central element is missing: the people. The daily ticket price of $70 is just too high in a city where many folks struggle to get by. In recent years, Jazz Fest’s crowds have become increasingly affluent, old, and white as the festival’s promoters, the AEG corporation, book acts such as The Eagles and this year The Who and Chicago that have precious little to do with the music of New Orleans.

That point activates an irritation that flares up every year around this time. New Orleans is by no means the only major festival that includes jazz in its name as a marketing ploy, not as a description of the music. That raises a question: if these festivals headline performers from rock and roll, folk, funk, blue grass and other non-jazz genres, why do their proprietors think that the word “jazz” will attract, say, rock and roll aficionados?

In a Facebook discussion of the Daily Beast piece, Fellow critic Ken Dryden wrote:

Another slight problem with this article: Willis Conover (pictured left) produced and booked the music for the first New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1969, when it was the real deal. Doug Ramsey knows: ‘The house band for the week was Zoot Sims, Clark Terry, Jaki Byard, Milt Hinton and Alan Dawson, and some of the hundred or so musicians who performed were Sarah Vaughan, the Count Basie band, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Albert Mangelsdorff, Roland Kirk, Jimmy Giuffre, the Onward Brass Band, Rita Reyes, Al Belletto, Eddie Miller, Graham Collier, Earle Warren, Buddy Tate, Dickie Wells, Pete Fountain, Freddie Hubbard and Dizzy Gillespie.’ It overshadows any New Orleans Jazz Fest which followed it.




Ken’s information is accurate, except that the 1969 Jazzfest was not the first. It was the second. To know what Jazzfest was in the beginning, it helps to know who was there. The festival in 1968 included Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Gary Burton, Woody Herman, Dick Hyman, Ramsey Lewis, Pee Wee Russell, Art Hodes, Ray Bryant, Teddi King, Max Kaminsky, Carmen McRae, Cannonball Adderley and Dave Brubeck with Gerry Mulligan. In addition there were dozens of New Orleans musicians covering the wide spectrum of jazz in the city, among them Danny Barker, Pete Fountain, Willie Tee And The Souls, Al Hirt, Al Belletto, the Olympia Brass Band, Sharkey Bonano, The Dukes of Dixieland, Thomas Jefferson, Roy Liberto, Ronnie Kole and the Crawford-Ferguson Night Owls. The ’68 Jazzfest was put together by a board of directors comprised of New Orleans musicians and people from the business and professional community. Willis Conover was the MC. Following the festival’s success, the committee hired Conover to be music and program director for the ’69 festival that Ken Dryden describes above.

In 1970, the board voted to turn the festival over to George Wein’s Festival Productions. Now it is run by the sports and entertainment giant AEG (Anschutz Entertainment Group). New Orleans is a party town. Good times will always roll. If the board’s intention was to have a second Mardi Gras, they succeeded. But the 1968 and 1969 New Orleans Jazzfests were jazz festivals.

Here’s one reminder of what the word jazz implies, and of its heritage.

Louis Armstrong, trumpet; Edmond Hall, clarinet; Trummy Young, trombone; Danny Barcelona, drums; probably Squire Gersh, bass, Marty Napolean, piano. Timex TV special, 1958.

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Like any good independent self-promoting professional, Mike Greensill sends occasional email messages about what he and his wife, Wesla Whitfield, are up to. He’s a pianist. She’s a singer. They live in California’s Napa Valley, near San Francisco. Now and then they fly to New York City to work at Joe’s Pub and Carnegie Hall, among other places. Mr. Greensill’s most recent communiqué contained a link to a song of the kind in which they specialize——established, familiar, classic——songs that if you’re writing about them and don’t include the phrase “Great American Songbook,” you get a call from ASCAP.

When they’re at home in Napa, the Greensills often appear at a club called Silo’s, conveniently placed just down the road from their house. That’s where she sang the Gerswins’ “Our Love Is Here To Stay,” complete with verse and one of the world’s longest sustained, in-tune, closing notes.

You may have noticed that Ms. Whitfield sings seated in a wheelchair, and wondered why. She tells the story in this segment from a 1994 broadcast of CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood.

More about Wesla Whitfield and Mike Greenstill at her website and his.

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Dan Brubeck, Live From The Cellar: Celebrating The Music And Lyrics Of Dave & Iola Brubeck (Blue Forest Records)

On the eve of his 60th birthday, Dave and Iola Brubeck’s drummer son releases his first album as a leader. A tribute to his parents, it is also a revelation of the quality of musicians in his adopted hometown, Vancouver, British Columbia.

With his work in his father’s quartet, Two Generations of Brubecks, the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, Larry Coryell and the Dolphins, Dan Brubeck established decades ago that he was an extraordinary drummer. Barely into his twenties, he substituted for Joe Morello when Morello’s worsening eyesight forced him to leave the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 25th anniversary reunion tour. Young Brubeck’s firm time and light touch made him a favorite of DBQ saxophonist Paul Desmond, who was exacting in the qualities he expected in drummers.

In Vancouver, Brubeck recorded with his quartet at The Cellar four months before the club closed in late 2013. All of the 14 pieces they performed were by Dave Brubeck, many of the songs with words by Iola. Dan Brubeck writes in his liner notes that bassist Adam Thomas sings, “…completely in tune, phrasing beautifully, with a soulful sweetness, all while swinging his ass off on bass.” That’s an accurate evaluation of Thomas’s bass work. In an instance or two, demanding melodic intervals put a bit of strain on his voice, but he sings “Summer Song” “Ode to a Cowboy,” “Strange Meadowlark,” even the metric challenges in “It’s A Raggy Waltz,” with élan and a subtle jazz-wise edge. He conveys the implications of tragedy and hope in the lyric Dave wrote to “Weep No More” following his World War Two Army service in Europe.

To one not familiar with the current Vancouver jazz scene, Thomas comes as a surprise, as do saxophonist Steve Kaldestad and pianist Tony Foster, who avoid attempts to emulate Desmond and Dave Brubeck. A hint of John Coltrane surfaces in Kaldestad’s tenor playing but does not dominate it. His low register on the horn has remarkable resonance. On alto, his individuality is tempered with evidence that he may be familiar with Sonny Stitt. Foster’s piano touch is light and he has impressive speed. He permeates with blues feeling his solo on “Lord, Lord” from Dave Brubeck’s cantata The Gates of Justice.

At a Brubeck Brothers concert a few seasons ago, Chris Brubeck introduced his little brother with affection as “an animal on the drums.” It is true that Dan has strength, intensity and power in his playing, and he displays all of it on this album, notably in his solo on “Take Five,” the longest track in the two-CD set. He balances his aggressive side with the sensitive support of his brushes on the exquisite “Autumn In Our Town” and the album’s other ballads.

The booklet accompanying the CD set includes lyrics to nine of the songs that Thomas sings. In addition to Dan Brubeck’s essay, it has track-by-track commentary on the tunes; Iola wrote it shortly before her death in the spring of 2014. The booklet also has a selection of Brubeck family photographs.

A video made at The Cellar during the recording sessions that produced the album shows the quartet at work. It’s a montage of pieces on the CD, with the exception of the opening drum solo and part of a Kaldestad tenor solo on Dave Brubeck’s “Jazzanians.”

The pieces in the Montage were “Jazzanians,” “Ode to a Cowboy,” “Autumn in Our Town,” “Blue Rondo ala Turk,” Strange Meadowlark” and “Take Five.” The album was released on April 28th. Amazon has it as an MP3 album. CD Baby offers it as both MP3 and CD.

(Oops. A typographical error in the initial posting misidentified the release date. April 28th is correct.)

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Thanks to Rifftides reader Marla Kleman for sending an alert to the posting of a film about one of the late pianist Frank Strazzeri’s loveliest albums. Strazzeri died last year at about this time. He was 84. The album was his Woodwinds West with saxophonists Bill Perkins, Bob Cooper and Jack Nimitz, bassist Dave Stone and drummer Paul Kreibich. In the 1993 film Frank talks about his approach to writing for a woodwind chamber ensemble, what it means to play “outside,” and the inspiration of working with a reed section made up of men who have intimate knowledge of one another’s minds and moods. The video has generous portions of music. Being a small part of the documentary project and knowing the musicians was a pleasure of my years in Los Angeles. Here’s the complete half-hour film produced by Merle and Paul Kreibich.

A 2014 Rifftides obtituary and remembrance of Strazzeri, includes video of him playing when he was in the eighties, audio of his “Strazzatonic” and his story of working with Elvis Presley. To see it, go here.

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A trove of jazz recorded in the 1950s became available again when Naxos of America acquired the Bethlehem Records catalogue a couple of years ago and began an extensive reissue program. Gus Wildi, who was born and grew up in Switzerland, founded the label in New York in 1953. Through the 1950s he recorded Dexter Gordon, Booker Ervin, Zoot Sims, Mel Tormé, Oscar Pettiford, Nina Simone, Chris Connor and a couple of dozen other major artists on both coasts. He provided outlets for substantial but little-known singers like Peggy Connelly, Betty Blake and Pat Moran. Bethlehem remained important to jazz through the 1950s and into the 1960s, when it came under new ownership and began edging into Rhythm & Blues and gospel. Some Bethlehem jazz recordings have shown up in recent years on labels that may or may not have had legal reissue permission. Others all but disappeared.

Frank Rosolino, I Play Trombone (Bethlehem)

Among those revived by Naxos is a 1956 session that brought together Rosolino, pianist Sonny Clark, bassist Wilfred Middlebrooks and drummer Stan Levey,—all musicians who earned greater recognition than they receive these days. During his years as a mainstay of the Stan Kenton band, then as a freelance jazz and studio artist, Rosolino (1926-1978) became a trombone soloist admired on a level with J.J. Johnson, Jack Teagarden, Kai Winding and Bill Harris. His facility, harmonic imagination, daring and humor have inspired legions of younger trombonists, among them the contemporary players Andy Martin, Scott Whitfield, Wycliffe Gordon and Bill Watrous.

I Play Trombone includes one of the earliest covers of Sonny Rollins’s “Doxy,” introduced less than two years earlier on a Miles Davis recording. Levey recalled, “Frank loved to play that tune.” Alternating intricate fast passages with langorous extended notes, Rosolino discloses bebop inventiveness as well as the blues and soul feeling he absorbed in his youth in Detroit. The lightness, speed and mastery of harmony in Clark’s soloing on “Doxy” are typical of the work he was doing during the mid-fifties with Rosolino, the Buddy DeFranco quartet and the Lighthouse All-Stars. Rosolino blazes through a fast blues called “My Delux.” Muted, he relaxes with “The Things We Did Last Summer.” For Rosolino, however, relaxation was incomplete without digressing into a rapid-fire arpeggio or two. This session is a gem of his discography.

The Jazz Experiments of Charles Mingus (Bethlehem)

All of his career, Mingus sought combinations of instruments, forms and musical textures that would satisfy the demands of his protean nature. As he grew older, his eclecticism kept pace with the development of his skill as a bassist, composer and leader, producing such milestone recordings as Mingus Ah-Um and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. In this 1954 sextet session, we hear him on the way to those heights. It stands as one of the most engaging of his relatively early achievements.

Except for the inclusion of Jackson Wiley’s cello on some pieces, the instrumentation is standard for bebop and post-bop small bands—a rhythm section and three horns. Not just any three horns, however; this was the recording debut of trumpeter Thad Jones, and the band included saxophonists John LaPorta and Teo Macero. Macero, also a composer, went on to a primary career as a producer. From the 1960s, that kept his highly individual tenor sax mostly under wraps. LaPorta’s clarinet and saxophone playing got considerable exposure during his Woody Herman days. In this album, his alto sax is a primary factor in solos and in the ensembles. LaPorta’s arrangement of “Stormy Weather” gives Jones a showcase for his technique and the expressiveness of his ballad playing. Dizzy Gillespie’s example is plain in Jones’s work on Mingus’s arrangement of “What Is This Thing Called Love,” but throughout the album it is clear that an important new trumpet soloist has emerged.

As bassist, pianist, composer and arranger, Mingus coalesces the human and musical elements into six tracks that are extensions of his personality. That is true throughout, but particularly on his “Minor Intrusion,” in which the written and improvised sections blend in and out of one another and the soloists are in conversation or, as Mingus suggests in his liner notes, occasional arguments.

Oddly, the Bethlehem reissue of this album, originally on the Period label, eliminates the Macero composition “Abstractions.” The piece is included in this earlier reissue on Original Jazz Classics.

For a complete Bethlehem discography, go here.

Rifftides reader David Perrine writes:

In the spirit of your occasional feature, I offer the following quotes. (As you know, a notated F# on alto sax would normally be a concert A— except in the quantum physics-like world of harmolodics.)

‘Poise’ has an F# for its tonic on the Eb alto and a D concert for the transposed key.—Ornette Coleman

[Ornette] took his saxophone out, and I notated what he played. I asked him what chord he was using, and he blew the arpeggio of a G chord thinking it was a B minor.—Herb Geller

No one has to learn to spell to talk.—Ornette Coleman

Coleman, alto saxophone; Don Cherry, trumpet; Charlie Haden, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums. August 2, 1960.

“Poise” is included in Coleman’s Complete Atlantic Recordings.

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From today’s cycling expedition through the hills of apple country, there is evidence that prospects seem good for a bountiful crop next fall. If a late snowstorm in the Cascade Mountains melts enough water into the high reservoirs that provide irrigation for the orchards in the valleys below, growers—and those of us who love Honey Crisps, Fujis, McIntoshes, Pink Ladies and Winesaps (to name a handful of hundreds of varieties)— should be happy come September.

If you prefer undelayed gratification, listen to Ruby Braff, cornet, with Dick Hyman at the mighty Wurlitzer, from their modern classic, America The Beautiful.

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Following the April 8 Rifftides post about Carol Sloane and Carmen McRae, Bill Kirchner sent us a link to a German television program featuring McRae in 1968 with the formidable Clarke-Boland Big Band. Co-led by drummer Kenny Clarke and pianist-arranger-composer Francy Boland, the band was a collection of prominent European and American musicians. It thrived for more than a decade in the 1960s and 1970s. It was notable for, among other things, having two drummers.

The members: Benny Bailey, Manfred Schoof, Idrees Sulieman, Jimmy Deuchar, trumpets; Ã…ke Persson, Nat Peck, Eric Van Lier, trombone; Derek Humble, Tony Coe, Johnny Griffin, Ronnie Scott, Sahib Shihab saxophones; Jimmy Woode, bass; Francy Boland piano; Kenny Clare and Kenny Clarke, drums. Carmen is the guest artist, singing three numbers. She is introduced 15 minutes into the program by critic Joachim Berendt. Here is the entire 40-minute show.