The subject line of Scott Weiss’s e-mail was “trumpet stuff.” His message included a link to video Weiss took of Bobby Shew and Carl Saunders. For decades, the trumpeters played together in big bands including those of Buddy Rich, Bill Holman and Bob Florence. On his website, Weiss quotes Shew as saying that he and Saunders have been, “thick as thieves since around 1961.” In a rare combination of talents, each of them is a major improvising soloist also capable of the most demanding lead trumpet work.

Shew and Saunders have been stalwarts not only in jazz, but also in southern California film, television and recording studios. Since Shew moved from Los Angeles to his native New Mexico a few years ago, they cross paths less frequently, but when they do, to borrow Louis Armstrong’s phrase, “chops is flyin’ everywhere.” On this occasion, they took turns also playing drums. The 2003 gig was at a Camarillo, California, club called Michael D’s, now defunct. Bob Florence was the pianist, Dave Carpenter the bassist.

For more of Shew, Saunders and other trumpet players, see Scott Weiss’s YouTube page and his website.

The death a week ago of Annie Kuebler prompted a flood of tributes from writers, academics and researchers who benefited from her expertise, kindness, unfailing good humor and friendship. Ms. Kuebler was the archivist at the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. Her name is unfamiliar to most jazz listeners, but they are likely to have learned indirectly from her about the music by way of books, articles, blogs and liner notes written by people she helped. Annie died August 13 of a brain hemorrhage. She was 61. Matt Schudel’s obituary in The Washington Post summarizes her career and the tragedy she overcame to turn her life around to become, among other accomplishments, the leading scholar of the work of Mary Lou Williams.

From the earliest days of Rifftides, here is a small example of Annie’s contributions to the literature on jazz.

A Little “Rifftide” Geneology
July 19, 2005 By Doug Ramsey

Annie Kuebler, the Mary Lou Williams archivist at the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies, gives us further insights into “Rifftide.” That is the 1945 Coleman Hawkins recording that inspired the name of this blog. She does not say that Hawkins stole the tune from Williams, only that it is likely to have been lodged in his mind when he played on a little-known record date with Mary Lou a couple of months before his own session. In the mid-forties, Hawkins and Williams were major swing era musicians encouraging and aiding the younger players who were developing bebop. Hawkins gave Thelonious Monk one of his most important early jobs as a pianist. Wiliams had a profound influence on the new music’s pianists. She told Ira Gitler in an interview for his book Swing To Bop, “We were inseparable, Monk, Bud Powell and I. We were always together every day, for a long time.”

Here is the note Ms. Kuebler sent us about “Rifftide.”

On December 15, 1944, Moe Asch recorded six cuts titled Mary Lou Williams and Her Orchestra in New York City. Williams’s arrangement of “[Oh] Lady Be Good” is nearly identical to Hawkins’s “Rifftide”–and one doesn’t need a musicologist to explain it. It just takes a listen. The only real difference is the breaks to accommodate the various musicians.

Originally recorded on 78 rpm Asch 552-3 as a three record set, the recording is now available on CD on the Chronological Classics Series # 1021, Mary Lou Williams 1944 -1945. The personnel for four of the cuts is Hawkins – tenor sax; Joe Evans – alto; Claude Green – clarinet; Bill Coleman – trumpet; Eddie Robinson – bass; Denzil Best – drums; and, of course, Williams on piano.

Obviously, this recording precedes “Rifftide,” attributed to Hawkins, from Hollywood Stampede on February 23, 1945. I don’t believe enough time had passed that Hawkins forgot the source, but that’s an opinion. Since my music manuscript archivist career began with Duke Ellington’s Collection, I am not judgmental about these things — just like to lay the facts out. In such matters, I am always reminded of Juan Tizol’s reply when asked if Ellington stole songs, “Oh, he stole. He’d steal it from his own self.”

Hope this helps. Thank for naming your website after a great underrated artist’s arrangement.

Before she joined the Institute for Jazz Studies five years ago, Annie Kuebler spent twelve years at the Smithsonian Institution. There, among many other achievements, she accomplished the massive task of organizing the manuscripts in the Smithsonian’s Duke Ellington collection. Her contributions to preserving large segments of American art and culture are invaluable.

Thanks, Annie

In response to readers’ requests, Rifftides has added a way to subscribe by e-mail. Scroll down to the third item in the right column and follow the easy instruction.

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

Words are the children of reason and, therefore, can’t explain it. They really can’t translate feeling because they’re not part of it. That’s why it bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

Jazz is not a what, it’s a how. If it were a what, it would be static, never growing. The how is that music comes from the moment, it is spontaneous, it exists at the time it is created. And anyone who makes music according to this method conveys to me an element that makes his music jazz.

Before the 83rd anniversary of Bill Evans’ birth fades away, at least in this time zone, let’s listen together to “Gloria’s Step,” a masterpiece from his 1961 Sunday At The Village Vanguard album. The trio, of course, was Evans, bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian.

Evans died on September 15, 1980.

Rifftides reader Red Sullivan (pictured), who is Irish, plays the flute and lives in Rio de Janeiro, wrote a comment and question about the Swedish folk song cum jazz standard mentioned in the review of the recent Quincy Jones celebration at the Ystad festival. Others may be interested in the music that prompted his curiosity. The comment and reply are posted with the Jones item four exhibits down. For those who might otherwise miss them, here they are:

And Miles very wonderfully and prominently took up “Ack Värmeland du sköna,” too, for his perfect, important, Columbia Records album ‘Round About Midnight – overlooked album sometimes, but as great a statement as that classic quintet ever made. EVER! So, is the “Ack Värmeland” there inspired by Getz directly, do you happen to know? i.e. Chicken or Egg…? (Nor should it be any surprise to anyone that Miles may well have taken his cue from Getz. He really adored Getz…. After all, he had good taste in music!).

So: What was Miles connection to the Swedish theme: Getz, or personal?

The Getz recording with pianist Bengt Hallberg, bassist Gunnar Johnson and drummer Jack Noren was on the Swedish Metronome label. Shortly after they made it in 1951, the Prestige label released it in the US under the title, “Dear Old Stockholm.” It quickly became familiar to American musicians, including, no doubt, Davis, who recorded it in 1956. The Getz recording observes the song’s original folk-like AABA structure, with its unusual four-bar B section. Davis altered the song by adding interludes that may have been suggested by Gil Evans. The booklet for the Columbia Legacy reissue of Davis’s ‘Round About Midnight album identifies the piece as “traditional, arranged by Stan Getz,” but the Getz recording does not have the interludes. Purists prefer the unadulterated original, but the altered Davis version is pervasive. It is the one that musicians’ fake books have adopted.

For the record (heh-heh), here is the 1951 Getz version. For anyone unfamiliar with Hallberg, this is a perfect way to hear why his keyboard touch and harmonic concept captivated so many listeners.

Von Freeman had everything it took to be a world-famous tenor saxophonist. He chose, instead, to remain in his native Chicago for his entire career. Appearances at a few jazz festivals in the US and abroad were the main exceptions. Freeman’s death on August 11 was announced today. He would have been 89 on October 3.

Freeman shared many of the influences that affected such contemporary Chicago tenor artists as Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, Eddie Harris and Fred Anderson. Like theirs, his playing had grit and toughness, particularly in the lower register. It also had wily humor, bent notes and idiosyncratic turns that made his work unlike that of any other saxophonist.

“They said I played out of tune, played a lot of wrong notes, a lot of weird ideas,” Freeman told The Chicago Tribune in 1992. “But it didn’t matter, because I didn’t have to worry about the money—I wasn’t making (hardly) any. I didn’t have to worry about fame— I didn’t have any. I was free.”

Freeman may have been unknown to the general public, but musicians and dedicated listeners admired him extravagantly. His reputation among the cognoscenti resulted in his being named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master this year. Though he could work subtle and sophisticated magic on standard songs, the blues tinged nearly everything Freeman played. Here he is with his young Chicago rhythm section at the 2002 Berlin Jazz Festival in an E-flat blues that goes deeper than tinges.

Freeman’s colleagues in the New Apartment Lounge Quintet were guitarist Mike Allemana (who uploaded that video to YouTube);
 Jack Zarra, bass; and Michael Raynor, drums. “Blues for Sunnyland Slim” was included in the album Vonski Speaks, recorded at the Berlin concert.

For a comprehensive Freeman obituary, see Howard Reich in The Chicago Tribune.

Von Freeman, RIP.

Video has shown up on YouTube of the last two minutes of the Quincy Jones tribute at the Ystad Jazz Festival in Sweden. (See the item below for details). The celebration ended with the audience joining the musicians and vocalists on stage in singing “We are the World” and Jones thanking everyone, in English and idiomatic Swedish.

More from the Ystad, Sweden, Jazz Festival, as the week wound down.

BENNY GREEN

Benny Green’s Ystad Theater concert previewed music the pianist is preparing for his next record. His trio played some of Green’s new pieces for the first time, giving the set an air of discovery and, occasionally, of a rehearsal. A few seconds into a fast tune titled “Flying Saucer,” Green declared a false start, called a halt, counted off a new tempo and started over. Following the opening melody chorus he got fully into the performance, legs angling away from the piano to the right, upper body leaning to his left, cranking up the swing, grinning at bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Rodney Green. Among Green’s new compositions, the lively “Cactus Flower” and “Priestess,” a ballad, have the potential to become standards.

A contingent of young listeners toward the front of the theater seemed transfixed by Green, who is 49 but, even with the beard he has sported lately, looks at least 15 years younger. The pianist’s technique is formidable. He could probably execute Hiromi-style pyrotechnics, but in the tradition of his bebop forbears his focus at any speed is on the development of narrative lines. One of his heroes was Sonny Clark, whose name Green made the title of a new tune. Taking the piece at a fast clip, he captured Clark’s essence in the melody and in his improvisation. Rodney Green soloed using wire brushes at blazing speed.

Coming out of Wolfe’s solo on “The Asphalt Shuffle”, all of the players laughed, evidently at something he played. It was not the only time during the concert that the three reacted to inside information. It happened during “Golden Flamingo” with its powerful Ben Wolfe solo. The trio’s camaraderie seemed to draw the audience in.

CHINA MOSES AND IKIZ

The singer China Moses appeared with Ikiz, a Swedish quintet led by Robert Ikiz, a drummer born in Turkey whose music education was at the Swedish Royal Academy. Moses, the daughter of Dee Dee Bridgewater, sings with enthusiasm reminiscent of her mother, blues phrasing and audacity inspired by Dinah Washington and an easy relationship with the band and her audience. At the Ystad Saltsjöbad concert, Moses shared billing and attention with the Ikiz group, which included impressive soloists in trumpeter Carl Olandersson and tenor saxophonist Karl-Martin Almqvist.

DEE DEE BRIDGEWATER

Almqvist is also a featured soloist with the powerful Norrbotten Big Band from the north of Sweden, which backed Bridgewater in her Billie Holiday tribute at the Ystad Theater. For background on Bridgewater’s “To Billie With Love” project, see this Rifftides review of her appearance at this year’s Portland Jazz Festival. In Portland, working with her quartet, she achieved intimacy and spontaneity. In Ystad, riding on the power of the big band, she reflected more of the Holiday who sang with the Count Basie and Artie Shaw bands than the subtle singer who bonded with Lester Young in the famous Okeh combo recordings. In any case, Bridgewater’s aim is not to imitate her idol but to honor her in a program of pieces associated with Holiday. And so she did, from the opening “Lady Sings the Blues” through a dozen of Holiday’s signature songs.

With arrangements by her former husband Cecil Bridgewater and Norrbotten leader Hâkan Broström, she was particularly effective when she related directly to the band’s soloists. With the rest of the band sitting out, Bridgewater and bassist Martin Sjöstedt collaborated on Holiday’s first hit, “My Mother’s Son-in-law,” interacting and trading phrases to the amusement of one another and the audience. In “A Foggy Day,” it was a tossup as to which solo was more musical, Bridgewater’s scatting or Dan Johansson’s on flugelhorn. “You’ve Changed,” taken at just the right languid tempo, had a splendid Almqvist tenor solo and a Bridgewater ending that was much more Sarah Vaughan than Holiday. Other notable solos came from Broström on alto saxophone and trombonist Peter Dahlgren. “Fine and Mellow” picked up steam as it progressed and ended with a Bridgewater vocalese lick in unison with the band, a thrilling moment. After “Them There Eyes,” and roses presented to all hands, the capacity crowd called for an encore and got “All of Me,” the Norrbottens genuinely digging Dee Dee’s scat solo.

(All photos by Lars Grönwall)