Last evening’s opening concert of the 2014 Portland Jazz Festival found the pianist and singer Eliane Elias in joyous spirits that led her to, but never quite over, the edge of giddiness. With bassist Marc Johnson, guitarist Graham Dechter and drummer Mauricio Zottarelli, Elias concentrated on music from her and Zottarelli’s native Brazil, with side trips into pieces from her Chet Baker and Bill Evans tribute albums. Throughout, pianism inspired by Bud Powell and Evans was characterized by rhythmic excitement and by harmonies that she seems to deepen year by year.

Elias opened with a Gilberto Gil song whose title my inadequate ear for Portuguese forced me to miss. Dechter helped set up the powerful swing in Jobim’s “Chega de Saudade,” which had the first of several Johnson bass solos. Over-amplification of the bass’s low frequencies took a bit of the edge off Johnson’s sound but could not mask the brilliance of his improvisation. Introducing “I Thought About You,” the first of three songs inspired by Baker, Elias explained the trumpeter’s influence in Brazil as bossa nova was developing in the 1950s. Her vocal phrasing, particularly in “Embraceable You,” reflected the way Baker’s singing and playing glided across bar lines. She and Dechter added a nicely worked-out alternate melody to “This Can’t Be Love,” in which the intensity of her piano solo had the audience leaning forward in their seats.

Elias recalled not merely listening to Bill Evans when she was a child but, in an early adventure in ear training, transcribing his solos. After she became bassist Johnson’s wife, she said, he played for her a cassette tape of unpublished, unreleased music that Evans gave him shortly before the pianist died in 1980. She expressed the emotion of that experience by playing a moving unaccompanied version of Cy Coleman’s “I Love My Wife,” which Evans recorded in his 1978 New Conversations album. Evans recorded the piece overdubbing two piano tracks. “I have only one piano tonight,” she said, then employed her technique to come close to making it sound like two. Elias’s solo introduction to “So Danco Samba” coursed through snatches of Bud Powell’s “Hallucinations,” blues riffs, “Liza,” and a series of exchanges with Dechter before Johnson and Zottarelli joined in behind her vocal and a powerful final chorus. Dechter, a member of the band for the past few months, adds harmonic depth and rhythmic thrust. His solo moments were effective and too few.

For Dorival Caymmi’s classic “Rosa Morena,” Elias picked up a wireless microphone, left the piano and made her way to the front of the stage to dance as she sang the song. It was the visual highlight of evening. The festival banned photographs last night. The one above is from an appearance at another festival. It captures the mood. Following “Desafinado,” with its long, riveting solo by Zottarelli, there was a standing ovation. The crowd demanded two encores; first came “The Girl from Ipanema,” then Caymmi’s “Chiclete Com Banana” (“Chewing Gum With Banana”), which had another outing by Zottarelli that swung so hard it inspired Johnson to depart from his customary stolid posture and perform a brief dance of his own. Following “Chiclete” came standing ovation number two.

Leonard Bernstein took a bit of a thrashing here recently in the Sid Caesar spoof and some of the comments that followed it. So, it is only fair to let Maestro Bernstein (1918-1990) redeem himself. The Rifftides recommendation of Rudy Royston’s new album mentions that he includes Mozart’s “Ave Verum Corpus.“ The opening seconds of the performance that you’re about to watch show the sort of Bernstein mannerism that was fodder for Caesar’s satire. Still, eight months before his death, Bernstein and the Bavarian Radio symphony orchestra and chorus gave a gorgeous performance of the piece that Mozart wrote in 1791. “Ave Verum Corpus” inspired Lizst, Tchaikovsky, no doubt countless other composers—and Rudy Royston. This was in the basilica of the parish church in Waldsassen, Bavaria.

The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, HE was a genius.

The remote control changed our lives, … The remote control took over the timing of the world. That’s why you have road rage. You have people who have no patience, because you got immediate gratification. You got click, click, click, click. If it doesn’t explode within three seconds, click click, click.

The trouble with telling a good story is that it invariably reminds the other fellow of a dull one.

The new Rifftides recommendation of Bob Dorough’s CD Eulalia mentions that his daughter Aralee, who appears on the recording with him, is a symphony musician. Ms. Dorough has been the principal flutist of the Houston Symphony since 1991. Aside from a few chamber music ensemble performances, little of her work is accessible on the internet. The exception is video of a 2011 recital of Béla Bartok’s Romanian Folks Dances. Bartok’s effect on jazz musicians is not only direct but also through the works of Eddie Sauter, Bill Holman and other composers and arrangers influenced by the great Hungarian composer. In these delightful little dances, we hear some of their source materal. Ms. Dorough plays the pieces with joy and skill that make the shaky amateur camera work bearable. The audio quality is good. Her introduction and tuneup are interesting, but take a while. You can bypass them by advancing to 2:20. The piano accompanist is Charles Blood.

For information about Aralee Dorough, see her website.

Here, she is featured with clarinetist Russell Procope in Ellington’s second sacred concert

Largely inactive in her later years, Ms. Babs had been under care for Alzheimer’s disease.

Dick Berk, a drummer admired as a developer of young talent and as a colleague of dozens of major jazz artists, died last Saturday at the age of 74. Berk had been undergoing dialysis treatment for some time in Portland, Oregon, his home in recent years. In his late teens he was Billie Holiday’s drummer, recording with her at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival. In 1960 he went from the Berklee School of Music to New York City, where he played with Charles Mingus, Freddie Hubbard, Monty Alexander and the Ted Curson-Bill Barron group, among others. His Los Angeles years in the late 1960s and early ‘70s saw him working and recording with a range of musicians including Cal Tjader, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, Blue Mitchell, Georgie Auld, Nat Adderley and Phineas Newborn, Jr.

Berk’s own band, the Jazz Adoption Agency, nurtured such young talents as baritone saxophonist Nick Brignola, tenor saxophonist Jay Collins and trombonists Andy Martin and Mike Fahn. During his two long residencies in Portland, he gigged and recorded with pianist Jessica Williams and bassist Leroy Vinnegar and continued to encourage developing young players. As a sideline, he had acting roles in films, including Idiot’s Delight with Jack Lemon, and in the television shows Hogan’s Heroes, It Takes a Thief and Emergency.

From Berk’s L.A. period, let’s listen to him with Nick Brignola’s quintet: Brignola, baritone; Bill Watrous, trombone; Dwight Dickerson, piano; John Heard, bass. The piece is Horace Silver’s “Quicksilver.” Berk’s time throughout, the vigor of his solo and the strategic placement of his cymbal splashes give us an idea why so many superior players loved having him on the bandstand.

Dick Berk, RIP

Before we leave our Slim Gaillard phase (at least for now), it seems appropriate to recall that he is a transcendental presence in Jack Kerouac’s definitive Beat Generation novel On The Road, published in 1957. One hallucinatory scene involves Sal Paradise, Kerouac’s roman à clef narrator, his traveling companion Dean Moriarty and Gaillard—or his apparition.

Nobody knows where Slim Gaillard is. Dean once had a dream that he was having a baby and his belly was all bloated up blue as he lay on the grass of a California hospital. Under a tree, with a group of colored men, sat Slim Gaillard. Dean turned despairing eyes of a mother to him. Slim said “There you go-orooni.” Now Dean approached him, he approached his God; he thought Slim was God; he shuffled and bowed in front of him and asked him to join us ; “Right-orooni,” says Slim; he’ll join anybody but he won’t guarantee to be there with you in spirit. Dean got a table, bought drinks, and sat stiffly in front of Slim. Slim dreamed over his head. Every time Slim said “Orooni,” Dean said, “Yes!” I sat there with these two madmen. Nothing happened. To Slim Gaillard the whole world was just one big orooni.

The website Schmoop, a word Slim might have invented had he thought of it, offers literary analysis of that On The Road passage.

Slim, in his simplicity of language, seems to provide something for Dean that few other characters can. Just as Dean speaks of “IT” to Sal without telling him what “it” really is, so Slim speaks in cryptic language (“orooni”) without any explanation. It may be that Slim fulfills the hero role for Dean that Dean does for Sal.

And it may be that this offers more enlightenment.

Gaillard with Bam Brown on bass and Scatman Crothers on drums.

Vout.

In a gathering of people even younger than I, when I mentioned Slim Gaillard three of them said in unison, “Who?”

“Flat Foot Floogie,” I explained, “Cement Mixer, Putti Putti,” “Matzoh ball Oroony,” and—just to make sure they understood—”Poppity Poppity Poppity Pop Go De Motorcycle.”

Their blank stares made me realize that there must be other folks in the 21st century in need of remedial cultural education. We’ll begin with an audiovisual aid.

That was Slim Gaillard on The Tonight Show. The music as he walked off was the theme during Steve Allen’s tenure as host of the program, so it was probably the mid-1950s. By then, Gaillard had behind him a couple of decades of success that began in the late ’30s with Slim and Slam, a duo of Gaillard and bassist Slam Stewart. Their big hits were “Flat Foot Floogie” and “Cement Mixer,” novelties executed with superb musicianship. Columbia’s The Groove Juice Special CD has 20 of their recordings. Later, Gaillard teamed with another bassist, Bam Brown. Their Laughing In Rhythm: The Best of the Verve Years has several tracks that include the great bop pianist Dodo Marmarosa and such other guests as Ben Webster, Dick Hyman, Ray Brown and Milt Jackson. Slim Gaillard at Birdland 1951 is a collection of performances when he was a regular at the New York club, with Art Blakey, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Terry Gibbs, Brew Moore and others sitting in.

Well aware of Gaillard’s musicianship, the fathers of bebop, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, were happy to be guests on his recording session in Los Angeles on December 29, 1945. Gaillard is the pianist and raconteur, Jack McVea the tenor saxophonist, with Bam Brown on bass with Zutty Singleton playing drums in this blues titled “Slim’s Jam.”

Accurate information about Gaillard’s earliest years is hard to come by. This Wikipedia article seems to have what is available. If you would like to sample Gaillard’s extensive output of recordings, YouTube has dozens of them. Go here. In his later years, Gaillard sometimes worked as an actor in television shows including Marcus Welby M.D., Charlie’s Angels and Mission Impossible. He continued to appear in clubs in the US and Great Britain. He died in London in 1991 at age 75.