Rifftides was at ebb tide most of this week while I jumped in to help the Yakima Symphony Orchestra teach a couple of thousand children about music. The Chicago composer James Stephenson (pictured) was scheduled to be the narrator for his Compose Yourself, a 50-minute tour through instruments of the orchestra, long scheduled for the YSO’s annual children’s concert. An unforeseen development—the need for the orchestra’s musical director and conductor Lawrence Golan to be elsewhere—meant that Stephenson had to conduct. Since he couldn’t lead the band and narrate at the same time, I was called upon to be the speaker.

A year ago, I had the pleasure of narrating Mr. Stephenson’s moving Civil War tone poem Two Brothers, and I was delighted to be involved with another of his works. Rehearsals and the performance occupied a couple of days. The experience was worth every minute of it. There’s nothing like a theater full of enthusiastic fourth-graders to stimulate optimism about the future. They loved the trombone demonstration and the rather more serious bassoon demo, both shown here with other sections from an earlier performance of Compose Yourself with a different narrator. There are slight pauses between the sections. A trombone piece by Louis Seltzer and assorted other Stephenson clips are tacked by YouTube onto the end of the Compose Yourself excerpts as part of the package and can’t be detached, so enjoy as much of it as you have time for.

To hear the first half of a previous performance of Compose Yourself with a different narrator, go here. For more about Jim Stephenson, go here.

Today is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Duke Ellington, whose standing among the world’s great figures in music grows with each passing year. Miles Davis long ago summed up Ellington’s importance when he said, “At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.”

We see Ellington on the left at a 70th birthday gala in Paris in November of 1969. Seven months after the anniversary he was still being feted at celebrations around the world. The most notable of the parties was on April 29 at the White House. Leonard Garment and Charles McWhorter of the White House Staff and Willis Conover of the Voice of America persuaded President Richard Nixon to honor Ellington by throwing a party and awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The United States Information Agency, disbanded in the 1990s by the Clinton administration, made a short documentary about the affair. Evidently, only a snippet of the film is available. It is invaluable as a reminder of the occasion and of the bond between Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

Conover put together the band for the tribute concert. Below you see its members rehearsing in the East Room the afternoon of the party, April 29, 1969. From left to right: Hank Jones, Jim Hall, Milt Hinton, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Louie Bellson, Clark Terry, J.J. Johnson, Bill Berry, Urbie Green. Guest artists included Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor, Earl Hines and the singers Joe Williams and Mary Mayo.

Excerpts from my notes for the album of the evening’s music that finally came out in 2002:

Sitting behind Ellington, I heard him remark to Cab Calloway as Hinton appeared, ‘Look, there’s your bass player.’ Hinton hadn’t been in Calloway’s band for twenty years. When Desmond did a perfect Johnny Hodges impression during ‘Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,’ Ellington sat bolt upright and looked astonished, a reaction that pleased Desmond when I decribed it.

Urged onto the platform, Ellington improvised an instant composition inspired, he said, by ‘a name, something very gentle and graceful—something like ‘Pat.’ The piece was full of serenity and the wizardry of Ellington’s harmonies. Mrs. Nixon, who looked distracted through much of the evening, paid close attention. The host and his wife turned in, but he invited us to stay for dancing and a jam session…The party lasted until 2:45 a.m.

As he left, Ellington said, ‘It was lovely.’ At 8:00 a.m. he and his band were off to an engagement in Oklahoma City. For Duke, it was back to business as usual but, as Whitney Balliet wrote in The New Yorker, the maestro ‘was finally given his due by his country.’

Addendum: Ellington’s motion picture career started early. Here’s the band in the 1930 film Check and Double Check.

Duke Ellington & his Orch.: Arthur Whetsol, Freddie Jenkins, Cootie Williams (t) Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol (tb) Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney (reeds) Duke Ellington (p) Fred Guy (bj) Wellman Braud (b) Sonny Greer (d) & The Rhythm Boys—Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, Harry Barris.

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Bassist Chuck Deardorf called my attention to a video from the early 1960s, when jazz on the west coast of the US was attracting attention around the world. Many big band sidemen settled in southern California in the 1950s, joining the Los Angeles jazz community that had been vibrant for more than a decade. The former Woody Herman and Stan Kenton trumpeter Shorty Rogers was one of the spark plugs of what critics decided to label West Coast Jazz. By the time Oscar Brown, Jr. hosted Rogers’ quintet on his Jazz Scene USA television show, Rogers had had become influential as a composer, arranger and leader in L.A.’s recording, film and TV studios.

Jazz Scene USA production is a bit stiff. The show is made to appear as if it had a live audience, but the applause smacks of having been dubbed later. In their closeups when Brown introduces them, the guys in the band exhibit their police lineup faces. But the music, the video and the sound are excellent. In this 25-minute segment of the telecast, Rogers, saxophonist and flutist Gary LeFebvre, pianist Lou Levy, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Larry Bunker play “Greensleeves,” “Time Was,” the blues “Martians Go Home”—which for a time in the mid-fifties had been a modest hit for Rogers— and Lefebvre’s edgy “The Outsider.”

Peacock, the survivor of that group, has been a member of the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio since 1983.

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It has been a long time since we shared a video creation by the poet and broadcaster Lynn Darroch. One of his latest stories recalls Duke Ellington’s relationship with Oregon, beginning in a time when innovation, courage and acceptance made it possible to tour with an all-black band despite restraints in a segregated land.

Clay Giberson was the pianist, John Nastos the alto saxophonist. Lynn Darroch is a teacher, journalist and writer. He broadcasts on KMHD-FM in Portland, Oregon.

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Herb Wong, an academic scientist who became prominent as a jazz critic, record company executive and festival producer, died this week. A PhD in Zoology, he was a native of northern California’s Bay Area. Wong continued to follow his boyhood enthusiasm for jazz as he developed an academic career, teaching at the University of California at Berkelely and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. A gentle man with infectious enthusiasm for all of his interests, Wong taught science, administered university departments and developed jazz studies courses.

In addition, he produced the Palo Alto Jazz Festival, designed a jazz oral history exhibit for the Smithsonian Institution and in the course of his career headed two jazz record companies, Blackhawk and Palo Alto. He was also a disc jockey with the Bay Area radio station KJAZ-FM. In addition, he wrote scores of liner essays for albums. Internment will be at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. Services are yet to be announced. Herb Wong was 88.

Herb was notably proud of a 1984 Phil Woods Quintet album that he produced for his Blackhawk label. It was called Heaven after the Duke Ellington title tune and featured Woods, alto saxophone; Tom Harrell, trumpet; Hal Galper, piano; Steve Gilmore, bass; and Bill Goodwin, drums.

Herb Wong, RIP

It was a full day, and the holiday greeting is late, but heartfelt. Happy Easter, everyone. Here’s one of the great sequences from the Fred Astaire-Judy Garland-Irving Berlin film Easter Parade. I hope that it makes you happy.

For another great Astaire dance and drum sequence from the Rifftides archive, click here.

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The Rifftides staff is up to his clavicle in non-Rifftides deadlines but wanted the readership to know that you are on his mind. He thought you would want to know that in the south forty, the lilacs and tulips are out.

Junior Mance, piano; Ray Brown, bass; and Lex Humphries, drums, supply the music by which to gaze at the lilacs, which are doing fine without rain, thanks.

That’s from Junior Mance and his Swinging Piano, a 1959 album that I thought was long unavailable. Turns out that it is not. Hooray.

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The Jazz Journalists Association has named 24 Jazz Heroes, recognizing them as “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.” Among them is Jim Wilke (pictured on James Moody’s left), whose Sunday Jazz Northwest program we at Rifftides sometimes tell you about. It airs today at 2:00 pm PDT on KPLU-FM, 88.5 in Seattle and streams here on the internet. Jim features artists who will be playing at this week’s Ballard Jazz Festival, among them Sonny Fortune, Mimi Fox and Jay Thomas. For details about the festival, go here.

Below is the complete list of the JJA’s Jazz Heroes. Maybe you’ll find someone from your neighborhood.

Harold Battiste, New Orleans-based saxophonist, composer-arranger and producer 

John Bilotti, co-producer of the Wall Street Jazz Festival, Kingston NY 

Cephas Bowles, president and CEO of WBGO, Newark NJ 

Raymond Brown, trumpeter and head of jazz studies at Cabrillo College near Santa Cruz, CA
Faye Carol, vocalist and educator in the SF Bay Area
Bill Foster, founder of Detroit’s Jazz Network Foundation 

Bobby Hill, writer and broadcaster at WPFW, Washington DC

Joseph Jennings, saxophonist and retired educator in Atlanta
Jennifer Johnson Washington, director of programming for Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events

Dr. John Lamkin II, cross-genres trumpeter and educator in Maryland 

Emilio Lyons, the Sax Doctor of Boston 

Thara Memory, composer, trumpeter and educator in Portland OR 

Vita West Muir, founder and producer of the Litchfield Jazz Festival and Jazz Camp 

Thomas Pierce, activist for the Schenectady-based Swingtime Jazz Society and A Place for Jazz 

Jon Poses, founder and executive director of the “We Always Swing”® Jazz Series in Columbia MO 

Geraldine “Gerry” Seay, owner/operator of B Sharps Jazz Café, Tallahassee 

Meghan Stabile, founder of Revive Music Group 

Peggy Stern, pianist and co-founder/producer of the Wall Street Jazz Festival, Kingston NY 

Janis Stockhouse, trumpeter and director of bands at Bloomington High School North, Bloomington IN

Bill Strickland, founder of Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild 

Patrick Taylor, founder and producer of the Toronto Jazz Festival 

Larry Reni Thomas, journalist and radio broadcaster working with Art of the Cool, Durham NC 

Wayne Thompson, writer and Portland Jazz Festival board member, Portland OR
Jim Wilke, Jazz After Hours radio show producer, Seattle

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A film about Ukraine’s position visa vis Russia showed up on YouTube earlier this week. In three days it has attracted more than 115,000 viewers. The film was created and posted by a video artist whose accompanying explanation said that she or he preferred to remain anonymous in order not to distract from the message of the piece. Nor is the little girl singing or lip-synching the song identified. Without taking an overt political stand, this well-made video’s simplicity and power help put the Ukranian peoples’ dilemma in perspective.