Rifftides is on hold, as explained in the previous post. However, I’m taking a moment for a couple of timely alerts.

Chris Brubeck posted a memoir about life with his father, Dave. Chris’s article is packed with family anecdotes about the patriarch of American music who died on December 5 at age 91. Here’s a sample:

We were really poor in those early days. When we went on the road, we would stay in old hotels that had cavernous closets—most times the closets were the best thing going for them. My older brothers Darius and Mike traveled with sleeping bags for those closets, that was their part of the “suite.” My parents got the bed and when I was a baby apparently I fit nicely in the dresser drawer with some blankets piled underneath me. We thought it was fun—indoor camping! We saved money up as a family because dad had to start his own record company to get his music out there. Perhaps you have heard of it—Fantasy Records! His partners were sons of a man who owned a record pressing plant. Dave supplied the talent, and they manufactured the recordings. Critics noticed, and the vinyl started moving. Then his partners screwed him out of the company. He was thrown off his own label due to some legal shenanigans. But once he was forced out of Fantasy, Columbia Records signed him and with their mammoth distribution the rest is history.

To read all of the piece, go here.

Again this year, in addition to Christmas jazz around the clock Christmas Eve and Christmas day, the internet radio station known as The Jazz Knob will present several instances of the late radio host Chuck Niles’s reading of “‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.” Niles (pictured) was a Southern California jazz disc jockey from 1957 until his death in 2004. His presentation of the classic Christmas poem became a tradition in the Los Angeles area. For the schedule of readings and to listen to The Jazz Knob any time, go here.

My brother Dave is a tough guy. He is holding on.

The little valley where my brother and I grew up together is not green today. It is white and getting whiter, but when I think of it, this is how I remember it.

Rifftides will be largely inactive for a while. I don’t know how long. I will be spending time with Dave as he goes through a difficult period. I thank the readers who have expressed concern.

With the following preamble, Rifftides reader and retired Toronto jazz broadcaster Ted O’Reilly called our attention to an innovation in his former profession.

…Hawkins, Basie, Gillespie, Ornette — all those old guys — later. Here’s important JAZZ to learn about.

This news release from a Canadian jazz radio station is what caught Mr. O’Reilly’s attention:

DECONSTRUCTING SGT. PEPPER WITH SCOTT FREIMAN

JAZZ.FM91 announces a new pop culture initiative, the “JAZZ.FM91 Thinkers Series”, a series of lectures presented for the first time in Toronto. On Thursday, January 31st, the series opens with Scott Freiman and his highly acclaimed lecture “Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper” at TIFF Bell Lightbox at 7:00 p.m. Freiman a composer, engineer and Beatles expert explores and dissects the music of what Rolling Stone calls “the most important rock & roll album ever made.”

Scott Freiman taught a course at Yale about the Beatles. In Toronto, Freiman will tell the story of one of the most important albums of all time, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” using rare audio and video with anecdotes about the recording sessions. He’ll draw on numerous first-hand sources and use detailed analyses of the song writing and production techniques used by the band in recording the album. Rolling Stone covered Freiman in “10 Things You Didn’t Know About Beatles Music” and if you’re a music lover, Freiman’s focus is “strictly” on the music. 

“It has been a dream of mine to create a series that recognizes pivotal moments in pop culture. I’m thrilled that Scott Freiman will join us for our very first installment of the JAZZ.FM91 Thinkers Series. Scott brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and I know music lovers and aficionados will not want to miss this presentation,” said Ross Porter, President and CEO of JAZZ.FM91. 

For more information on Scott Freiman and “Deconstructing Sgt. Pepper” and purchasing tickets, please visit HERE.

Ted O’Reilly invents a postscript and offers a final thought:

(Next lecture: “Michael Jackson: Most Important Musician of the 20th Century!!!”)

And people wonder why I hang my head and whimper some days…

Following yesterday’s post, blogger Richard Kamins of Hartford, Connecticut, forwarded a Facebook message from one of his readers, whose name is Sarah Lee. The video that accompanies the message is of Ana Grace and her brother Isaiah. The 6-year-old daughter of saxophonist Jimmy Greene was one of 26 people shot and killed in Friday’s school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut.

♥RIP Ana Grace Márquez-Greene…Ana’s mom Nelba was part of my masters program. They just recently moved to the States. She has asked that this video be “Shared far and wide. Let the world know the victims – not the shooter.”♥

Note: The Facebook video has been removed, apparently by the FB user.
DR, 11/30/14

Among the 20 elementary school children killed in Friday’s mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, was Ana Greene, the 6-year-old daughter of saxophonist Jimmy Greene. She is on the right in the photograph with her father, her mother Nelba Marquez-Greene and her brother Isaiah, also a student at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Isaiah is reported unharmed. Six adults also died in the onslaught.

A relative said that the Greenes moved to Newtown last summer after Greene accepted a teaching position in the music program at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. A Connecticut native who grew up in Hartford, he had been teaching at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada. He is a veteran of the bands of Horace Silver, Tom Harrell, Freddie Hubbard and Kenny Barron, among others. Greene has also led his own groups and recorded extensively. Here is a piece from his 2009 album Mission Statement. It is named for his daughter, “Ana Grace.”

Today at the memorial service for the 26 victims of the murderous rampage, president Obama told their families and other members of the Newtown community,

No single law, no set of laws, can eliminate evil from the world or prevent every senseless act of violence in our society,” he said. “But that can’t be an excuse for inaction. Surely we can do better than this.

But there must be laws, including those to restore official responsibility for the mentally ill. Will Newtown be the incident that, at last, gives politicians the courage to say no to the National Rifle Association and the rest of the gun lobby and pass laws to establish meaningful regulation over availability of firearms? “No single law, no set of laws,” perhaps, but we must start somewhere. Under our form of democracy, state legislatures and the congress are the starting places. Tell your elected representatives. If they won’t do the job, replace them with people who will. It’s going to be a tough fight.

On January 14, the pioneering Latin jazz artist Eddie Palmieri will be among those honored by the National Endowment for the Arts as 2013 NEA Jazz Masters. The others are pianist, singer and songwriter Mose Allison; alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson; Owner Lorraine Gordon of New York’s Village Vanguard; and writer A. B. Spellman. Tonight and tomorrow night, Palmieri is being recognized by Jazz at Lincoln Center in concerts reprising the 76-year-old pianist’s career. From the JALC announcement:

On this evening, “El Rey de las Blancas y Las Negras” retrospects on his spectacular career with both The Eddie Palmieri Orchestra and his Afro-Caribbean Jazz Octet, coalescing his form-stretching salsa innovations with his sui generis brand of “jazz Latino.”

Larry Rohter’s New York Times piece has details about this weekend’s events at Lincoln Center and a survey of Palmieri’s work, which has won nine Grammy awards.

Among the most enduring and engaging of Palmieri’s albums is El Sonido Nuevo, a 1966 collaboration with another major figure in Latin music and jazz, Cal Tjader. Here is Tito Puente’s “Picadillo,” arranged by Palmieri and Claus Ogerman.

El Sonido Nuevo was the first half of a trade agreement between Tjader’s label, Verve, and Palmieri’s, Tico. In 1967, Tjader recorded with Palmieri’s band. The resulting album was Bamboleate. The title track features the leaders, the vocal ensemble and the formidable Latin trombone section of Barry Rogers and Mark Weinstein in the days before Weinstein switched to flute.

Bamboleate is out of print, outrageously priced as a CD or an LP, but reasonable as an MP3 download. The digital revolution has its good points.

On his New England Public Radio blog, Tom Reney’s new post on Charlie Parker includes Lee Konitz material for which he credits Rifftides. I thank Tom, but I thank him more for including a clip of Lee Konitz talking about what it was like to work and travel with Bird in their mutual Stan Kenton days of the 1950s. To hear Konitz on Parker, go here. The clip is at the end of the piece.

Journalist and occasional Rifftides commenter Ken Dryden (pictured) works nationally and lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Among other activities, he conducts a radio program. Mr. Dryden sent an alert to a special edition of his show remembering Dave Brubeck. If you are one of the unfortunate millions who do not live within broadcast earshot of Chattanooga, there’s good news; Ken’s show will be streamed tomorrow evening on the web. Here is his announcement.

Please join me for Dziekuje, Dave: A Remembrance of Dave Brubeck, on Wednesday, Dec. 12th on WUTC-FM. The two hour special will begin approximately at 8:18 to 8:20 pm Eastern Time, following the local news feature “Round & About.” Drawn from my music library and archives, it will include a number of Brubeck’s recordings, interview excerpts and even a few performances that you’ve never before heard. It will be webcast live at www.wutc.org, go to the website then click on “Listen Live” in the top left corner.

The WUTC site has posted an article previewing Dryden’s show.

With Dave Brubeck’s passing, interesting bits of arcana about his life and music are rising to the surface. BBC Radio 4 replayed a portion of an interview from 2000 on the network’s Front Row program with John Wilson. Brubeck tells Wilson about the role of vitamin B-6 in saving his hands and the unusual use of a bungee cord in his exercise routine. He illustrates polytonality by playing a bit of Duke Ellington’s “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be” in C and E-flat, simultaneously. To hear the six-minute conversation, go here and move the timer slide at the bottom of the screen to :24:05.

Then, see and hear an extended 1970 performance of “Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,” a blues staple in Brubeck’s repertoire, with Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Jack Six, bass; Alan Dawson, drums. It runs so long that YouTube had to present it in two installments.