… [Read more...]

A recent discussion among jazz researchers disclosed what to many of us was news, that there exists video of Stan Getz and Eddie Sauter performing portions of Focus. There has never been anything else quite like the 1961 Verve album of Getz soloing over, around and inside Sauter’s dazzling score … [Read more...]

A Rifftides reader asked what happened with Bob Belden’s Miles Español video and audio project that I took a brief hiatus to contribute to this summer. It is out as a two-CD set. My essay on the African, Spanish, Caribbean and New Orleans influences that led to Miles Davis’s Sketches of Spain, … [Read more...]

Friend Dave Cohler sent me a few puns recently and reminded me of one I sent him long before it became a part of my Paul Desmond biography. Desmond and Jim Hall (pictured) concocted what I described in the book as the most elaborate pun I’ve ever encountered. He loved to recite it: A boy of … [Read more...]

Riding on the popularity of its late mentor, a new jazz group’s low profile may be about to get higher. A year or so before he died early this year, pianist George Shearing gave his blessing to vibraharpist Charlie Shoemake’s idea of forming a living tribute to Shearing’s quintet, for decades … [Read more...]

Shortly after Pete Rugolo died this week, Jeff Sultanof offered to contribute a piece putting Rugolo’s work in perspective. I was delighted to accept and flattered that he considered Rifftides the proper place for his essay. Jeff is a native of New York City, where he lives and works. He is a … [Read more...]

Marcus Strickland, Triumph of the Heavy (SMK). In the liner notes, saxophonist Strickland writes, “Playing for a live audience heightens the adrenaline; you don’t have the luxury of correcting mistakes. It puts you on a high wire.” The second of the album’s two CDs, a club recording, … [Read more...]

Pete Rugolo has died in Los Angeles at the age of 95. Rugolo’s composing and arranging, particularly for the Stan Kenton Orchestra, had much to do in the 1940s and ‘50s with the creation of what came to be called progressive jazz. As a discoverer of talent and as a producer, he was responsible … [Read more...]

A friend writes: Getting home, our plane had to stop in Sacramento to get gas. The jet stream was so strong last night, we flew north over parts of Canada to avoid it. Flying through the jet stream is NOT a good idea, so we did not. I put some cottage cheese in a plastic container and … [Read more...]

Cecilia Coleman Big Band, Oh Boy! (PandaKat). Before she moved to New York 13 years ago, Coleman established a solid reputation as a pianist and arranger in her native southern California. Studies with Charlie Shoemake and Tom Kubis provided a solid theoretical foundation for imaginative charts … [Read more...]

Tony Fruscella & Brew Moore, The 1954 Unissued Atlantic Session (Fresh Sound). Fruscella was an enigmatic trumpeter with a deeply personal style, Moore a tenor saxophonist who once said that anyone who didn’t play like Lester Young was wrong. At a time when Dizzy Gillespie’s fiery playing … [Read more...]

The irregular Rifftides series of posts inspired by moon sightings now continues. A half-hour ago, I glanced out the window at the harvest moon beginning its transit across the valley. It was framed by the branches of a huge fir tree, but clouds were beginning to move across its face. If I was going … [Read more...]

Mort Weiss identified himself in a comment here as “the world’s greatest out-of-work Jewish bebop clarinet player.” That may be, but he found work one night not long ago at Steamers jazz club in the Los Angeles area. Weiss led a band with Sam Most, tenor sax and flute; Ron Eschete, guitar; … [Read more...]

Here are a couple of anecdotes from Bill Crow’s “Band Room” column in the October Allegro, the New York Local 802 newspaper of the American Federation of Musicians. Ron Mills, while fronting a combo at a dance in Chicago, was approached by a couple of dancers. The husband asked, … [Read more...]

Rifftides does not make it a practice to observe birthdays of jazz artists. That could be a full-time job. Once in a while we make an exception. This is one. Larry Young was born on October 7, 1940. He took the organ beyond Jimmy Smith’s earthy approach and Don Patterson’s piano-style into the … [Read more...]

One index of the effectiveness of a jazz group in the yeasty activity of a festival is how much attention they get from other musicians. Backstage at Jazz at Newport, visiting players from New York and California raised eyebrows and leaned forward as they listened to Portland’s PDX Quintet. Led … [Read more...]

In 1963, Dick Gibson (1926-1998) threw a party in Denver, where he lived. An investment banker who expanded his fortune when he founded the Water Pik company, Gibson invited well-heeled friends to mingle with his favorite mainstream musicians and listen to them play. He ran his jazz parties for … [Read more...]