Now that the White House has announced President Obama’s Medal of Freedom winners for 2013, the sniping begins over his choices. Here is my snipe. Whatever Arturo’s Sandoval’s merits as a musician, they are put in perspective by his biography in the White House announcement, which notes that the trumpeter and pianist was a protégé of Dizzy Gillespie. (They are pictured together). That shines a bright light on the fact that while he was alive and in the 20 years since his death, Gillespie has been ignored in the Medal of Freedom selections. The medals can be awarded posthumously, and three of this year’s will be.

Sandoval is an accomplished musician, but I suspect that the dramatic story of his escape to the United States from Castro’s Cuba carried more weight in his selection than his standing as an artist. Gillespie was among the most important figures of the twentieth century as a trumpeter, the leading theoretical teacher in the bebop movement, a pioneering international cultural ambassador for the US and a dynamic and inspirational presence in American life. Let us hope that in the 2014 round of medal deliberations, President Obama will give serious consideration to Gillespie and, while he’s at it, to alto saxophonist Charlie Parker (1920-1955), the genius who called Gillespie, “the other half of my heartbeat.”

Here, alphabetically, is the complete list of 2013 Medal of Freedom Winners:

Ernie Banks, the Chicago Cubs home run star and hall of famer.
Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of The Washington Post.
Former President Bill Clinton.
Senator Daniel Inouye, (posthumous), first Japanese-American elected to Congress, WWII Medal of Honor winner.
Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist.
Richard Lugar, former US Senator, bipartisan leader in the movement to reduce threat of nuclear weapons.
Loretta Lynn, country music vocalist.
Mario Molina, chemist and environmental scientist.
Sally Ride (posthumous), first US female astronaut in space.
Bayard Rustin, (posthumous), pioneer of nonviolent resistance in the civil rights movement, organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.
Arturo Sandoval, trumpeter, pianist, composer.
Dean Smith, University of North Carolina basketball coach from 1961 to 1997, with two national championships and a record-setting number of wins.
Gloria Steinmen, writer and women’s equality activist.
C.T. Vivian, minister, author, organizer, civil rights leader.
Patricia Wald, retired chief judge of US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
Oprah Winfrey, broadcast journalist, talk show host, philanthropist.

And here, for those who need a reminder, is nearly an hour of Dizzy Gillespie with the group of his peers known as the Giants of Jazz, in Copenhagen in 1971: Kai Winding, trombone; Sonny Stitt, saxophone; Thelonious Monk, piano; Al McKibbon, bass; Art Blakey, drums. We rarely post videos of this length on Rifftides, but in most of the northern hemisphere it’s too hot to be outside and in much of the southern, too cold. This will help you stay cool, or warm, or just right.

Accolades to Sergio Balint for placing that video on YouTube

Denny Zeitlin, Both/And (Sunnyside)

One-man bands have come a long way since 1941, when Sidney Bechet recorded “The Sheik of Araby.” Playing clarinet, soprano and tenor saxophones, piano, bass and drums, Bechet and the RCA engineers laboriously added an instrument in each of a succession of takes until the band was all present and accounted for on one master 78 rpm disc. Today’s digital electronics simplify the process and expand the possibilities, but one thing has not changed since Bechet’s painstaking feat—the need for virtuosity by the performer and the recording engineer. For the first six tracks in Both/And, Zeitlin fills both roles. He records on acoustic and electric pianos and creates synthesizer sounds that are uncannily like those of brass, reed, string and rhythm instruments and a choir. In the five sections of the kaleidoscopic “Monk-y Business Revisited,” he shares producing and recording credit with electronic music pioneer Patrick Gleeson.

Zeitlin, a psychiatrist, made his first major impact when he was a medical student. As the pianist on Jeremy Steig’s Flute Fever, his playing, in particular his solo on “Oleo,” came in for enthusiastic critical notice. Flute Fever has never been reissued on CD. He followed with four trio albums for Columbia that established him as one of the leading young pianists in jazz.
In the late 1960s and through much of the seventies, Zeitlin changed direction. On his website, he describes the shift:

I withdrew from public performance to research possibilities in electronic music, hire engineers to build sound-altering equipment, modify existing keyboards and synthesizers, build systems and racks, and find kindred musical spirits. What emerged was an evolving set-up that looked like a 747 cockpit of 7+ keyboards and synths, myriad processors and pedals, (and) what seemed like miles of connectors…

Some of Zeitlin’s music from his first electronic period is on Expansion, an album that he recorded and released on his own after record companies turned it down, even as his trio records continued to sell. There is more of his electronic work in the soundtrack he composed for the 1978 remake of the science fiction movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. His work in the film brought praise from critics including Paulene Kael of The New Yorker, who wrote, “…dazzling score…the music is a large contributor to the jokes and terrors.” Zeitlin’s demanding involvement with the movie drained him of desire to do further motion picture writing and performing. Through the ‘80s, ‘90s and into the new century he has concentrated largely on acoustic piano while maintaining his day gigs; psychiatric practice and university teaching. He has chronicled his work on the Steinway in several recent releases on Sunnyside Records.

In Both/And, Zeitlin returns to the electronic arena with a collection so finely crafted that his means of producing it are considerations secondary to the success of the music as music. A piece called “Meteorology” is a meditation on Weather Report, the group in which Joe Zawinul pioneered the synthesizer in jazz. It opens with Zeitlin’s convincing approximation of Jaco Pastorius’s electric bass. The bass provides the backbone and continuity of the piece. Once the atmosphere is established, the listener’s attention goes to the quality and content of the solos and ensembles. What Zeitlin achieves in integrating the elements could have come only through meticulous labor in the studio, but in “Meteorology” and throughout the CD the music imparts the impression of spontaneity. That is as true of the mysterious “Dawn,” with its intimations of Alan Hovahness or Kryzsztof Penderecki abstraction, as of the “trombone” like a rampaging bull elephant in the jungle of “Tiger, Tiger.”

Zeitlin’s Steinway is prominent in a ballad, “Kathryn’s Song,” interacting with a string orchestra in “Dystopian Uprising” and in “Monk-y Business Revisited.” If only real string sections could achieve the phrasing and swing feeling that Zeitlin gives the “strings” in the “Into The Funk” section of “Monk-y Business.” It’s an orchestra of Harry Lookofskys. As for percussion, if I didn’t know that this project is essentially a one-man operation, I would suspect Zeitlin and Gleeson of editing a live drummer and a trap set into the final mix.

This is a substantial album, fascinating for its musicianship, variety, good humor and the multifaceted talents of Denny Zeitlin

For an idea of what the RCA post-production crew went through half a dozen times to make the two-and-a-half-minute Sidney Bechet record mentioned in the Zeitlin review in the post above, watch these films about the complexities of the record-making process 72 years ago. The narrator is Milton Cross, for 43 years the host of the Metropolitan Opera’s weekly live radio performances.

Louis Armstrong was born on this day in 1901. When he was 26, he recorded King Oliver’s “West End Blues” with an opening cadenza that put the world on notice that this new music was an art form to be taken seriously. How big was Armstrong’s impact on the development of jazz in the late 1920s? No one has described it more succinctly than one of his greatest admirers, the cornetist Ruby Braff. Braff said that Armstrong “changed everything.”

Louis Armstrong and his Savoy Ballroom Five: Earl Hines piano; Jimmy Strong clarinet; Fred Robinson, trombone; Mancy Carr, banjo; Zutty Singleton, drums; Armstrong trumpet and vocal. June 28, 1928.

In one of my Rifftides posts on last October’s Oregon Coast Jazz Party, I told you a little about the remarkable program in which Bill Mays traced the development of modern jazz piano. Here’s that section from October 12, 2012

Bill Mays’ History of Jazz Piano concert for a morning audience covered pianists from James P. Johnson to Herbie Hancock. Teddy Wilson, Bill Evans and Bud Powell were among the 13 whose styles Mays summoned without surrendering his individuality. Tommy Flanagan and Sonny Clark had to be set aside when time ran short. I had the privilege of providing narration leading into each of Bill’s segments. That put me in the second best seat in the house in the curve of the nine-foot Steinway as Mays poured himself into interpreting some of the pianists who influenced his development. It was a great experience, with a responsive audience, and so much fun that we’re thinking of doing it again sometime, somewhere.

When the program ended, Bill and I were satisfied enough with it that we sought out the house audio crew to see if they had recorded it. They hadn’t. Well, that was the end of that, we said, although as noted at the conclusion of the report, we hoped that we could do it again. We still do. It turns out that the concert hadn’t quite disappeared. Yesterday we discovered that the festival management had a snippet of it videotaped.

But wait, there’s more. The following morning, Bill played a trio set with Portland bassist Tom Wakeling and Washington, DC, drummer Chuck Redd. Here’s some of what I wrote about it:

The Sunday morning wrap session began with Mays updating and expanding the repertoire of his CD Mays at the Movies. He, Wakeling and Redd concentrated on music from films he admires, has written for, or on whose soundtracks he played. The admiration category included the classics “Laura,” “The Very Thought of You” and “Smile.” His own “Cool Pool” was a Miles Davis “All Blues” clone that he wrote for a producer who didn’t want to pay a heavy licensing fee to use the Davis original.

Holly Hofmann, the gifted flutist who serves as the Oregon Coast Jazz Party’s music director, explains that she has only short portions of the festival concerts videotaped for use in promotion and marketing. Gratitude for small favors is in order, but it’s too bad that there aren’t full-length videos for the archives.

Go here for information about the 2013 festival October 4-6.

As reported in this Rifftides coverage last fall, a concert by the Clayton Brothers is likely to become a party. John and Jeff Clayton and their band partied again at the recent Jazz Port Townsend festival on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. Jim Wilke, a fine recording engineer as well as an award-winning broadcaster, captured the Claytons and will feature their performance on his Jazz Northwest program this Sunday. Here is Jim Levitt’s photograph of the band and a guest at the concert.

And here is Mr. Wilke’s announcement:

A concert by the Clayton Brothers quintet and special guest Stefon Harris is the first of a seven concert series from Centrum’s Jazz Port Townsend which will air on Jazz Northwest, Sunday August 4 at 2 PM PDT on 88.5 KPLU.

Co-led by brothers John Clayton (bass) and Jeff Clayton (alto sax and flute), the group also includes John’s son Gerald on piano, Terell Stafford on trumpet, and Obed Calvaire, drums.  John Clayton is also Artistic Director of Jazz Port Townsend and the Jazz Camp which leads up to the weekend festival, now in its 40th year.  Special guest on this concert is the vibraphonist Stefon Harris, who is one of the brightest stars on the insrument.  He has seven CDs as a leader and has been a popular sideman in many situations including the Clayton Brothers.

Concerts from Jazz Port Townsend will air on alternate weeks during coming months, with the Anat Cohen Quartet next on August 18.  Also in the series are concerts by Bria Skonberg, René Marie and Sachal Vasandani, the Centrum All-Star Band directed by Clarence Acox in a Salute to Quincy Jones, Cyrille Aimée and Diego Figueredo, and The Anthony Wilson Nonet.

Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for 88.5 KPLU.  The program airs Sundays at 2 PM Pacific, and is available as a podcast at kplu.org after the broadcast.  Special thanks to Rick Chinn and Neville Pearsall for assistance with recording at Jazz Port Townsend.

Oh, what the heck, let’s add the Clayton Brothers quintet at work. The video is from The Pittsburgh Jazzlive festival in June, 2012. It provides a sample of this intergenerational band’s togetherness and—at the end&#151of young Obed Calvaire’s drumming energy.

Woody Shaw: The Complete Muse Sessions (Mosaic)

In a couple of record dates when Woody Shaw was 21 and in a dozen years through the 1970s and ‘80s, Muse Records captured some of the trumpeter’s most innovative and inspired work. When Shaw emerged, it was clear that Freddie Hubbard had influenced the younger man but, as he was to demonstrate, the model Shaw reflected most profoundly was not a trumpeter but a saxophonist, John Coltrane. The characterization of Shaw as a Hubbard clone persists in some quarters to this day, but at his most brilliant he was one of the great individualists of his generation of jazz artists. His intelligence, creative drive and technical mastery are plain to hear in his solos on the five quintet pieces he recorded with tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson in late 1965. “Cassandranite” and “Three Muses” from those sessions are early indicators of his gift for composition as well as playing.

By 1974, Shaw had processed Coltrane’s innovations so that when he recorded “The Moontrane,” a piece he wrote in his teens, he was indicating the way out of what many young musicians saw as a creative dead zone in which jazz was languishing in the early ’70s. Shaw helped demonstrate that it was possible to admire Coltrane, even adore him as a guru, without apeing his every mannerism. In pieces such as “The Moontrane” “Zoltan” and “Katrina Ballerina,” Joe Bonner’s “Love Dance” and Larry Young’s “Obsequious,” Shaw reached a level of expressiveness, headlong linear development and freedom from post-bop conventions that was not only ahead of his time; this music from three and four decades ago is ahead of much of the rote, formulaic jazz of our time. The Mosaic box set makes it clear to what an extent Shaw was at once a liberator of the music and a preserver of tradition.

His respect for the mainstream is manifest in the set’s final two CDs containing 14 standards, among them “The Touch Of Your Lips,” “There Is No Greater Love,” “It Might As Well Be Spring” and “All The Way,” which concludes with a riveting Shaw cadenza on flugelhorn. He also plays, faster than fast, on trumpet “The Woody Woodpecker Song,” often quoted in solos but rarely, if ever before, given recognition as a full-fledged vehicle for improvisation. Shaw’s and pianist Kenny Barron’s solos elevate the song’s stature so that the 1948 novelty almost seems to belong with “Imagination,” “If I Were A Bell,” “Dat Dere” and “Stormy Weather.” In several of the sessions, markedly in the standards albums, Shaw’s and trombonist Steve Turre’s compatibility is essential to the music’s feeling of cohesiveness—and its humor.

The five pieces Shaw recorded with his seven-piece band at the 1976 Berlin Jazz Festival—notably the epic “Hello to the Wind”—are enduring examples of the possibilities for harmonic texture in medium-sized jazz groups. In terms of sheer improvisational exuberance, the exchanges on the Berlin version of “Obsequious” between Shaw and trombonist Slide Hampton and those between saxophonists Rene McLean and Frank Foster rank with the most exhilarating chases ever captured on record.

His contemporaries and a number of perceptive older musicians understood Shaw’s importance and welcomed the opportunity to work with him. His teaming with Dexter Gordon, commemorated on Gordon’s Columbia albums, enhanced the saxophonist’s triumphant return to the United States after decades in Europe. The list of Shaw’s collaborators in this seven-CD set is a cross-section of leading players that includes, as mentioned, Henderson, Foster, McLean, Hampton, Turre, Barron and Young. Others are Herbie Hancock, Frank Strozier, Ron Carter, Buster Williams, Ray Drummond, Victor Lewis, Peter Leitch, Kenny Garrett, Neil Swainson, Cedar Walton, Louis Hayes, Steve Turre and the avant gardists Anthony Braxton and Muhal Richard Abrams. As usual with Mosaic sets, production is first rate, with thorough discographical information, plenty of photographs of Shaw and several of his sidemen and interesting session-by-session notes by his son, Woody Shaw III. Audio remastering by Malcolm Addey is excellent.

Shortly before his death, deteriorating vision, addiction, his uneven lifestyle and a subway accident in which he lost an arm brought an end to Shaw’s career. Throughout the Mosaic set, his intellectual and physical energy, harmonic innovation and mastery of melody are reminders of what we lost when he died at the age of 44 in 1989, two years after the last of these Muse sessions.

The Rifftides webmaster received a communiqué from the distinguished songwriter Mickey Leonard (pictured) about the Fred Astaire-Rita Hayworth videos in the next exhibit.

This is the absolute best thing I’ve ever seen/heard with “Stayin’
Alive” & those two spectacular dancers. Bravo for such a wonderful thing to do. Without question, fantastic!!! Thank you from a most appreciative composer who generally doesn’t like anything. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

Mr. Leonard—described by critic Will Friedwald as “a beloved staple of the jazz and cabaret scenes”—is the composer of “I’m All Smiles,” “Why Did I Choose You” and “Not Exactly Paris,” among other standard songs. His arrangement of Luiz Eca’s “The Dolphin” is the highlight of the 1969 album From Left to Right, in which he collaborated with pianist Bill Evans. Here is what I wrote about that Evans track in a Down Beat magazine review.

Evans’ solo on “The Dolphin” is one of his finest, on a par with his best work in the Portraits and Explorations albums with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. Leonard’s orchestration in the “After” version complements perfectly what Evans and the rhythm section had improvised in the “Before.” The lily is enhanced by the gilding as Leonard harmonizes Evans’ solo for flutes and piccolo, with the improvised piano line in the lead. It is a moment of absolute beauty.

For further appreciation of Mickey Leonard, see this 2011 Will Friedwald article in the online Wall Street Journal.

Article 235, section 17-a of the Web Logger Handbook:

When other duties preclude blogging, inspiration flags or the dog days of summer make you listless and you haven’t posted lately, just tap dance or play a drum solo.

How about both. And how about if I get someone else to do them.

Fred Astaire from A Damsel in Distress, 1937.

On July 17 Lionel Ferbos broke his own record as the world’s oldest working jazz musician. The New Orleans trumpeter is now 102. Ferbos celebrated by playing a gig at the Palm Court, where he has performed for a substantial number of his ten decades. This shot of Ferbos recently won Skip Bolen the Jazz Journalists Association’s photo of the year award.

Associated Press writer Stacy Plaisance’s birthday article about Ferbos (pronounced Fair-boh) quotes him on his longevity.

“Isn’t that something?” he said. “But you know I never dreamed of that. I figured if I could go to about 50 I’d be doing good.”

To read all of Plaisance’s story, go here. For a Rifftides post about Ferbos when he was a mere 99, with a video that ends with his good advice, go here.