Thanks to Rifftides reader Hal Strack for the reminder that this is Gerry Mulligan’s birthday. Mulligan would be 85. Here is the baritone saxophonist, composer, arranger and pianist at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 with a great edition of his quartet: Art Farmer, trumpet; Bill Crow, bass; Dave Bailey drums. They played Mulligan’s “As Catch Can.” The video is a clip from Bert Stern’s film Jazz On A Summer’s Day.

The closing announcement was by the Voice Of America’s Willis Conover.

Gerry Mulligan died in January of 1996.

Gene Lees died two years ago this month, on April 22. That day I wrote, “We lost a writer unsurpassed at illuminating music and the world that musicians inhabit. I lost a cherished colleague whose work inspired me, a dear friend whose companionship brightened my existence.”

The Portland, Oregon, broadcaster, poet and visual essayist Lynn Darroch was another of Gene’s friends and admirers, although, he said in a message, “It wasn’t a smooth ride.” There were no smooth rides with Gene. There were lots of rewarding ones. With Lynn’s permission, here is the video remembrance he posted this week. Piano is by Tom Grant, audio mixing and mastering by Jonathan Swanson.

For more of Lynn Darroch’s work, visit this page. To read my musings on that sad day in 2010—and the outpouring of comments from Rifftides readers—go here.

Don’t be alarmed by the symbol. The Rifftides staff merely wants to call your attention to the new batch of suggested things to listen to, watch and read. You will find brief items about CDs by a trailblazing harmonicat, a piano/flute couple and a pianist who keeps you guessing—and entertained. We’re holding onto a Lee Konitz DVD a while longer, and telling you about a book by an expert who doesn’t buy the idea that mental instability must accompany genius. The recommendations are under Doug’s Picks in the right column and, for a time, directly below this alert.

Rifftides reader Jack Greenberg writes:

Although your site is not specifically a West Coast jazz site, I was surprised that none of the jazz blogs I regularly read mentioned the recent passing of top LA trumpet player Warren Luening. As a trumpet player myself, I greatly admired Warren’s playing, and his reputation within the LA jazz community was such that I thought his passing wouild generate more notice than it did.

Luening died of cancer on March 18. He was 70. The New Orleans native was a professional from his early teens, playing in Bourbon Street clubs with established musicians and other emerging Crescent City stars including drummer Johnny Vidacovich and trombonist Jack Delaney. Not long after he moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s, he became a member of Lawrence Welk’s orchestra, and in short order was one of the most versatile trumpeters in Hollywood’s film and television studios. Luening had a deep feeling for melody, was a valuable lead player and, when he had the opportunity, a fine improviser. There is little improvising in this feature with Welk, but his mature mastery of his instrument is apparent at a young age. Cracks about Welk’s businessman’s bounce rhythm aside, this 1959 performance is also a reminder of the level of musicianship in his band.

Fifty-one years later, Patrick Williams featured Luening in a big band concert of Williams arrangements. This video montage gathers several of his solos from the evening. Yes, that is trombonist Bill Watrous standing by but not heard in the video, and it looks like saxophonist Tom Scott next to Luening, and Luening’s close colleague Wayne Bergeron second from the left in the trumpet section.

Cat could play.

Warren Luening, RIP.

Following the recent post about plunger mutes, Rifftides reader Deborah Hendrick sent a reqest:

Would you give us a history lesson sometime, on the origin of mutes. “Jazz” seems to be played with muted brass more often than not. I’ve always wondered why, and how the practice began.

Aside from the plunger, mutes for brass instruments are not primarily specific to jazz, and they go back much further. I can give you no better history of mutes than this brief one on a website devoted to them.

As an appendix to that document, here is the brilliant cornetist Warren Vaché demonstrating a raft of mutes to his student Laura Telman.

For more of Vaché on the cornet and trumpet, go to his ArtistHouse page.

Sonny Igoe, who played drums with a succession of prominent leaders, died this week at the age of 88. In 1939 when Igoe was 16, he won the first Gene Krupa drum competition. After four years in the United States Marine Corps in World War Two, he worked briefly in a band of former Marines, then began a career that included work with Les Elgart, Ina Ray Hutton, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Chuck Wayne and Charlie Ventura. Herman’s featuring Igoe on “New Golden Wedding” in 1951 brought the drummer considerable attention. Two years earlier, his drive energized Benny Goodman’s big band and sextet. You can feel the swing intensify when Igoe switches from brushes to sticks on cymbals behind Wardell Gray’s tenor saxophone solo on “Blue Lou.” The other players are trumpeter Doug Mettome, pianist Buddy Greco, bassist Clyde Lombardi, rhythm guitarist Francis Beecher and Goodman on clarinet.

In recent years, Igoe co-led a big band with saxophonist Dick Meldonian, another musician respected among his peers but not widely known to the public. In this concert performance of “Just in Time,” Meldonian gives his partner the tempo assignment.

Sonny Igoe, RIP

Rifftides reader Larry Peterson suggested that while two days of March remain, it would be a good idea to revisit an Antonio Carlos Jobim classic. It is, of course, “Águas de Marco.” March is the rainiest time of year in Rio de Janeiro. Jobim fashioned the progress of the music and the Portuguese lyric to suggest the storm waters’ relentless flow toward the sea. The words, in Portuguese and in his English version, constitute a paen to “the promise of life.” A 2001 poll of Brazilian musicians and journalists concluded that it was the best of all Brazilian songs.

Jobim performed “The Waters of March” often with his friend the nonpareil singer Elis Regina. This 1974 version from a television show has attracted 2,155,406 YouTube viewers. No wonder.

To see Jobim’s lyrics in Portuguese and English—side by side&#151click here.

We still get questions about whether there will be a service in memory of Bob Brookmeyer, who died in December. The answer is yes. This is the updated information from Bob’s friend and colleague Bill Kirchner:

Here’s a reminder about the memorial for valve trombonist/composer/arranger Bob Brookmeyer (December 19,1929-December 15, 2011).

It will be held at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church (E. 54th St. between 3rd and Lexington Avenues) in New York City on Wednesday, April 11, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. A reception will follow immediately afterward at the church.

That evening, Bob’s music will be played by the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (for which he wrote for over forty years) and two specially-assembled smaller groups. There will also be a number of distinguished speakers: (in alphabetical order) Darcy James Argue, Greg Bahora, Dave Bailey, Bill Crow, Ed Dix, Jim Hall, Bill Kirchner, Jim McNeely, Dick Oatts, Jimmy Owens, John Snyder, Michael Stephans, and Terry Teachout. In addition, there will be an audio tribute by Clark Terry, and a video presentation by Maria Schneider, Ryan Truesdell, and Marie Le Claire.

I’m the coordinator of this event, so any inquiries can be directed to me: kirch@mindspring.com

After playing (or struggling with) the trumpet since I was 14, I finally decided to learn how to use a plumber’s friend for something other than its intended purpose. For five dollars, my neighborhood hardware store sold me what I needed. I unscrewed the wooden handle and, voila!—a plunger mute. The one you see here is fancy and probably came from a music store. Mine is red, the small kind used in sinks.

Take my word for it after two days of experimentation, plunger technique on a brass instrument is as demanding as it looks. My trumpet teacher left town, so I did the logical internet thing and found involuntary teachers on the web, beginning with two champions of the plunger style who learned from early masters like Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams and the great trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton. Here is Ryan Kisor, lead trumpet of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, summoning up Williams’ spirt in Duke Ellington’s “Concerto For Cootie.”

Snooky Young (1919-2011) perfected his plunger mute skill as a member of the Jimmy Lunceford band in the 1930s. He went on to play with nearly the full complement of important bands; Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland. He had several stays with Count Basie. Young became a national figure as a member of Doc Severinsen’s Tonight show band. In 1989, on his 70th birthday, Johnny Carson singled him out to perform one of the Lunceford band’s big hits.

After studying Kisor and Young and considering my early plunger attempts, there was only one thing I could say: Wa-wa.

Over the weekend, the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra played a concert devoted to music associated with Frank Sinatra. The SRJO is one of the world’s finest big bands dedicated to preserving the spirit and substance of the jazz tradition. Drummer Clarence Acox and saxophonist Michael Brockman co-lead the orchestra and have developed admirable projects devoted to works of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Jimmy Heath, among other major figures.

The Sinatra program at The Seasons in Yakima, east of Seattle, might have been subtitled, “And his great arrangers.” The charts were by Nelson Riddle, of course, and by Benny Carter, Thad Jones, Quincy Jones, Neal Hefti, Billy May and the drastically underappreciated Billy Byers. The concert opened with baritone saxophonist Bill Ramsey (pictured anchoring the saxophone section), a veteran of the Ellington and Count Basie bands, soloing on Byers’ arrangement of “All of Me.” It progressed through nearly two hours of Sinatra’s best-known numbers, several of them featuring 22-year-old Danny Quintero, a singer with good time, intonation and phrasing who interprets, rather than imitates Sinatra. There were impressive solos by pianist Randy Halberstadt, trumpeters Mike Van Bebber and Syd Potter, trombonist Dan Marcus and tenor saxophonists Steve Tressler and Tobi Stone.

There is no video of the Saturday night concert. Regrettably, there is little but fragments of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra on the web, but the Rifftides staff found a complete performance from an earlier concert. The spoken introduction is by Clarence Acox, the trumpet solo by Jay Thomas.

For more about the SRJO, go here.

In response to the previous exhibit, Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilyicheva writes:

Spring is in full swing in the suburbs of Moscow too.

The calendar claims that we are two days into spring. There seems to be some mistake. This is what the dawn disclosed this morning. That gardening shed isn’t going to see much action today.

This Blossom Dearie album also has other songs about spring. They’ll help us through an unexpectedly wintry day.

This series of brief reviews calls your attention to recordings that captured the Rifftides staff’s interest and may capture yours.

Chris Brubeck’s Triple Play: Live At Arthur Zankel Music Center (Blue Forest)

As Triple Play, Chris Brubeck, harmonicist Peter Madcat Ruth and guitarist Joel Brown have had fun for more than 20 years. Brubeck plays piano, bass and trombone. They all sing. It’s a jazz band, or a blues band, or a folk group. It’s all of those. In this alternately raucous and tender July, 2011, concert, the repertoire includes pieces by Fats Waller, Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, Paul Desmond and Chris’s 90-year-old father Dave, who makes a surprise appearance in the middle of “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (the crowd goes wild). The elder Brubeck stays to play, among other things, a gorgeous unaccompanied “Dziekuje (Thank You),” back his son’s blowsy trombone on “Black and Blue” and get off some sparkling single-note lines on “St. Louis Blues.” Brown’s clarinetist father, a stripling of 85, sits in convincingly on several pieces. Ruth plays what is likely the first jaw harp solo ever on “Take Five,” and caps it with a wild harmonica coda. It’s all great fun, which is yet to be declared illegal in jazz.

Allen Lowe, Blues and the Empirical Truth (Music & Arts)

In a comprehensive sense, Lowe’s is a blues band. Three CDs with 52 tracks make the case for the tireless composer, saxophonist, guitarist and author’s Truth—that the blues in all its variety and malleability is the core of jazz. Lowe demonstrates using musicianship that employs intimacy, bombast, comedy, suggestiveness, wryness, profundity and a healthy dose of concepts that have developed in jazz since the advent of Ornette Coleman. Characters as diverse as Buddy Bolden, Pete Brown, Dave Brubeck, Davey Schildkraut, Lennie Tristano, Bud Powell, Elvis Presley and the Carter Family inspire some of the pieces. Lowe has the stimulating help of trombonist Roswell Rudd, guitarist Marc Ribot, pianists Matthew Shipp and Lewis Porter, and a few of Lowe’s fellow adventurers in the Portland, Maine, jazz community. This is a provocative and valuable collection.

Daryl Sherman, Mississippi Belle: Cole Porter in the Quarter (Audiophile)

The pianist and singer deepens her relationship with Cole Porter, forged in years of playing his piano at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Porter wrote the title tune for a movie in 1943, but it was rejected and has never before been recorded. The Quarter is the French Quarter in New Orleans, which is where Sherman recorded this collection of 13 Porter songs. Some are among his best known (“Get Out of Town,” “Let’s Do It”), some less often performed (“Ours,” “Tale of the Oyster”). Sherman gives all of them her beguiling phrasing, interpretation and vocal sunshine. When she accompanies herself or solos, she finds substantial harmonies. When her only accompaniment is Jesse Boyd’s bass, her intonation never falters. In this drummerless trio, Tom Fischer solos on tenor sax or clarinet.

Marianne Solivan, Prisoner Of Love (Hipnotic)

Solivan has attracted an impressive coterie of fans among New York’s musicians. They include Christian McBride, who plays bass on her first album and Jeremy Pelt, who produced the CD and has a trumpet solo on “Moon Ray.” In his liner notes, McBride emphasizes Solivan’s musicianship, which is apparent in this collection of standards. She applies it with reserve and taste, concentrating on melody and the meaning of lyrics. She refrains from scatting, the downfall of young vocalists who want to be hip. Her skill with “Prisoner of Love,””Day Dream” and “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” establish her hipness credential. Betty Carter’s “I Can’t Help It,” and “Social Call,”—forever associated with Ernestine Anderson—endorse it. Pianists Xavier Davis and Michael Kanan appear with Solivan, as well as guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Jonathan Blake. It’s a fine debut.

Please return to Rifftides soon for more reviews as we attempt to catch up with the never-ending flow of jazz releases.

Mark Cantor (pictured, right), the preeminent jazz film archivist, has established a web channel of clips. If the first batch is an indication, the collection has the makings of a bonanza for viewers interested in the music and in the convoluted history of jazz in motion pictures and on television.

As an example of the choice moments Cantor has posted: just in case you didn’t see Sweetheart Of The Campus when it came out in 1941, you missed a rare movie appearance by Leo Watson and the Spirits of Rhythm. Watson (pictured, left) developed his infectious scat singing style before the term was in general use. He influenced later scat specialists including Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson. He worked with Gene Krupa and made appearances on records with Artie Shaw, Slim Gaillard, Benny Goodman, Vic Dickenson and Billie Holiday. In his YouTube commentary on the clip, Cantor writes:

Teddy Bunn accompanies on guitar, and that is either Wilbur or Douglas Daniels on tipple to the left; they were both in the group, but I don’t know which of the two made the film gig. The string bass looks like Wilson Myers to me, but of this I am not certain.

As for the bandleader who introduces the Spirits of Rhythm, yes, he’s that Ozzie Nelson.

Cantor has also posted film or TV performances by—among others—Punch Miller, The Lighthouse All-Stars, Adrian Rollini and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. Surely, L-H-R knew about Leo Watson. To see Cantor’s collection so far, go here.