After playing (or struggling with) the trumpet since I was 14, I finally decided to learn how to use a plumber’s friend for something other than its intended purpose. For five dollars, my neighborhood hardware store sold me what I needed. I unscrewed the wooden handle and, voila!—a plunger mute. The one you see here is fancy and probably came from a music store. Mine is red, the small kind used in sinks.

Take my word for it after two days of experimentation, plunger technique on a brass instrument is as demanding as it looks. My trumpet teacher left town, so I did the logical internet thing and found involuntary teachers on the web, beginning with two champions of the plunger style who learned from early masters like Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams and the great trombonist Tricky Sam Nanton. Here is Ryan Kisor, lead trumpet of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, summoning up Williams’ spirt in Duke Ellington’s “Concerto For Cootie.”

Snooky Young (1919-2011) perfected his plunger mute skill as a member of the Jimmy Lunceford band in the 1930s. He went on to play with nearly the full complement of important bands; Lionel Hampton, Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet, Thad Jones-Mel Lewis, Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland. He had several stays with Count Basie. Young became a national figure as a member of Doc Severinsen’s Tonight show band. In 1989, on his 70th birthday, Johnny Carson singled him out to perform one of the Lunceford band’s big hits.

After studying Kisor and Young and considering my early plunger attempts, there was only one thing I could say: Wa-wa.

Over the weekend, the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra played a concert devoted to music associated with Frank Sinatra. The SRJO is one of the world’s finest big bands dedicated to preserving the spirit and substance of the jazz tradition. Drummer Clarence Acox and saxophonist Michael Brockman co-lead the orchestra and have developed admirable projects devoted to works of Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Jimmy Heath, among other major figures.

The Sinatra program at The Seasons in Yakima, east of Seattle, might have been subtitled, “And his great arrangers.” The charts were by Nelson Riddle, of course, and by Benny Carter, Thad Jones, Quincy Jones, Neal Hefti, Billy May and the drastically underappreciated Billy Byers. The concert opened with baritone saxophonist Bill Ramsey (pictured anchoring the saxophone section), a veteran of the Ellington and Count Basie bands, soloing on Byers’ arrangement of “All of Me.” It progressed through nearly two hours of Sinatra’s best-known numbers, several of them featuring 22-year-old Danny Quintero, a singer with good time, intonation and phrasing who interprets, rather than imitates Sinatra. There were impressive solos by pianist Randy Halberstadt, trumpeters Mike Van Bebber and Syd Potter, trombonist Dan Marcus and tenor saxophonists Steve Tressler and Tobi Stone.

There is no video of the Saturday night concert. Regrettably, there is little but fragments of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra on the web, but the Rifftides staff found a complete performance from an earlier concert. The spoken introduction is by Clarence Acox, the trumpet solo by Jay Thomas.

For more about the SRJO, go here.

In response to the previous exhibit, Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilyicheva writes:

Spring is in full swing in the suburbs of Moscow too.

The calendar claims that we are two days into spring. There seems to be some mistake. This is what the dawn disclosed this morning. That gardening shed isn’t going to see much action today.

This Blossom Dearie album also has other songs about spring. They’ll help us through an unexpectedly wintry day.

This series of brief reviews calls your attention to recordings that captured the Rifftides staff’s interest and may capture yours.

Chris Brubeck’s Triple Play: Live At Arthur Zankel Music Center (Blue Forest)

As Triple Play, Chris Brubeck, harmonicist Peter Madcat Ruth and guitarist Joel Brown have had fun for more than 20 years. Brubeck plays piano, bass and trombone. They all sing. It’s a jazz band, or a blues band, or a folk group. It’s all of those. In this alternately raucous and tender July, 2011, concert, the repertoire includes pieces by Fats Waller, Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, Paul Desmond and Chris’s 90-year-old father Dave, who makes a surprise appearance in the middle of “Blue Rondo a la Turk” (the crowd goes wild). The elder Brubeck stays to play, among other things, a gorgeous unaccompanied “Dziekuje (Thank You),” back his son’s blowsy trombone on “Black and Blue” and get off some sparkling single-note lines on “St. Louis Blues.” Brown’s clarinetist father, a stripling of 85, sits in convincingly on several pieces. Ruth plays what is likely the first jaw harp solo ever on “Take Five,” and caps it with a wild harmonica coda. It’s all great fun, which is yet to be declared illegal in jazz.

Allen Lowe, Blues and the Empirical Truth (Music & Arts)

In a comprehensive sense, Lowe’s is a blues band. Three CDs with 52 tracks make the case for the tireless composer, saxophonist, guitarist and author’s Truth—that the blues in all its variety and malleability is the core of jazz. Lowe demonstrates using musicianship that employs intimacy, bombast, comedy, suggestiveness, wryness, profundity and a healthy dose of concepts that have developed in jazz since the advent of Ornette Coleman. Characters as diverse as Buddy Bolden, Pete Brown, Dave Brubeck, Davey Schildkraut, Lennie Tristano, Bud Powell, Elvis Presley and the Carter Family inspire some of the pieces. Lowe has the stimulating help of trombonist Roswell Rudd, guitarist Marc Ribot, pianists Matthew Shipp and Lewis Porter, and a few of Lowe’s fellow adventurers in the Portland, Maine, jazz community. This is a provocative and valuable collection.

Daryl Sherman, Mississippi Belle: Cole Porter in the Quarter (Audiophile)

The pianist and singer deepens her relationship with Cole Porter, forged in years of playing his piano at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York. Porter wrote the title tune for a movie in 1943, but it was rejected and has never before been recorded. The Quarter is the French Quarter in New Orleans, which is where Sherman recorded this collection of 13 Porter songs. Some are among his best known (“Get Out of Town,” “Let’s Do It”), some less often performed (“Ours,” “Tale of the Oyster”). Sherman gives all of them her beguiling phrasing, interpretation and vocal sunshine. When she accompanies herself or solos, she finds substantial harmonies. When her only accompaniment is Jesse Boyd’s bass, her intonation never falters. In this drummerless trio, Tom Fischer solos on tenor sax or clarinet.

Marianne Solivan, Prisoner Of Love (Hipnotic)

Solivan has attracted an impressive coterie of fans among New York’s musicians. They include Christian McBride, who plays bass on her first album and Jeremy Pelt, who produced the CD and has a trumpet solo on “Moon Ray.” In his liner notes, McBride emphasizes Solivan’s musicianship, which is apparent in this collection of standards. She applies it with reserve and taste, concentrating on melody and the meaning of lyrics. She refrains from scatting, the downfall of young vocalists who want to be hip. Her skill with “Prisoner of Love,””Day Dream” and “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry” establish her hipness credential. Betty Carter’s “I Can’t Help It,” and “Social Call,”—forever associated with Ernestine Anderson—endorse it. Pianists Xavier Davis and Michael Kanan appear with Solivan, as well as guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Ben Wolfe and drummer Jonathan Blake. It’s a fine debut.

Please return to Rifftides soon for more reviews as we attempt to catch up with the never-ending flow of jazz releases.

Mark Cantor (pictured, right), the preeminent jazz film archivist, has established a web channel of clips. If the first batch is an indication, the collection has the makings of a bonanza for viewers interested in the music and in the convoluted history of jazz in motion pictures and on television.

As an example of the choice moments Cantor has posted: just in case you didn’t see Sweetheart Of The Campus when it came out in 1941, you missed a rare movie appearance by Leo Watson and the Spirits of Rhythm. Watson (pictured, left) developed his infectious scat singing style before the term was in general use. He influenced later scat specialists including Ella Fitzgerald and Eddie Jefferson. He worked with Gene Krupa and made appearances on records with Artie Shaw, Slim Gaillard, Benny Goodman, Vic Dickenson and Billie Holiday. In his YouTube commentary on the clip, Cantor writes:

Teddy Bunn accompanies on guitar, and that is either Wilbur or Douglas Daniels on tipple to the left; they were both in the group, but I don’t know which of the two made the film gig. The string bass looks like Wilson Myers to me, but of this I am not certain.

As for the bandleader who introduces the Spirits of Rhythm, yes, he’s that Ozzie Nelson.

Cantor has also posted film or TV performances by—among others—Punch Miller, The Lighthouse All-Stars, Adrian Rollini and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. Surely, L-H-R knew about Leo Watson. To see Cantor’s collection so far, go here.

Nat Cole was born March 17, 1917. He did not appear to be Irish, but his birthday falls on St. Patrick’s Day. What better excuse to remember a great musician? Cole did not record many Irish songs, but there is one in his 1946 collaboration with Lester Young’s trio. We begin our Nat Cole birthday observance with Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Cole, piano; Buddy Rich, drums, and “Peg ‘O My Heart.” In an anomaly that only the person who posted this on YouTube could explain, the video continues for about 20 minutes after the four-minute piece ends, so unless you’re in love with the fuzzy representation of the album cover, you might want to bail out when the track is through and move to the next section.

Cole became one of the most popular singers in the world—we’ll get to that toward the end—but he remained a pianist whose touch, harmonic depth, melodic creativity and swing set an example and standard for dozens of others, including Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Tommy Flanagan (not Irish) and a legion of their successors. Here is Cole in 1957 on his television show, with two versions of “Tea For Two.” Athough the difference could be in dubbing speed, the first one seems to be in A-flat, the second a half-step up in the more challenging key of A (I don’t have perfect pitch; I have a piano).

Now, Nat King Cole and his trio plus Jack Costanzo on conga drum, with the Bobby Troup song that kept Cole on hit parades, juke boxes and the radio for years and will no doubt be on the web and digital downloads for decades more.

Now and then, the Rifftides staff calls your attention to recordings selected from the stacks of more or less recent arrivals. Comments are brief, in an effort—no doubt doomed—to catch up with worthwhile releases.

Dutch Jazz Orchestra, Moon Dreams: Rediscovered Music of Gil Evans & Gerry Mulligan (Challenge)

Languishing in the stacks, this 2009 album called to me. I’m glad it did. It features arrangements that Gil Evans, in his mid-30s, and Gerry Mulligan, in his early 20s, wrote for the Claude Thornhill band in the late 1940s. Their work from that period anticipates what they, John Lewis and John Carisi created in 1949 and ‘50 for the nine-piece Miles Davis band later indelibly labeled Birth Of The Cool. Impeccably played by a fine Dutch repertory big band, the pieces include Evans’ chart on “Yardbird Suite” and his medley of “Easy Living,” a stunning “Moon Dreams” and “Everything Happens to Me.” There are buoyant Mulligan arrangements of “Rose of the Rio Grande,” “Joost at the Roost“and “Poor Little Rich Girl.” Sixty years later, all sound remarkably undated. In another 60, Evans’ treatment of “Lover Man” will still be fresh. If The Cool was born with the Davis band, it had a rich gestation period with Thornhill.

Wadada Leo Smith’s Mbira, Dark Lady Of The Sonnets (TUM)

Smith suggests imagery for each of the five pieces. If you are capable of envisioning 60,000 Zulus dancing on the surface of a lake in “Zulu Water Festival,” fine, but you need not hear this as program music. It may be best to let it wash over you and discover what your mind develops in response. Like all of Smith’s recent work, this transcends the category of free jazz with which the trumpeter and composer is usually identified. It is no surprise that the formidable percussionist Pheeroan akLaff, a longtime colleague, works hand-in-glove with Smith. Min Xiao-Fen, born in Nanjing, is a surprise. A collaborator with John Zorn, Jane Ira Bloom and Björk, she makes remarkable music with the pipa, an ancient Chinese stringed instrument, and with her voice. She and Smith occasionally play carefully crafted unison lines that have the precision of electricity. Her singing on the title track is haunting. The three players alternately blend with and highlight one another. Space is an essential element of their music. Smith calls the trio Mbira, the name of an African thumb piano, although there is no African thumb piano on the CD. Consider it part of the mystique of the music, which in his notes Smith says is in “a creative contextualization defined in the contemporary music language.” That language encompasses the blues. A pronounced blues sensibility washes through and beneath the surface of the playing, which manages to be at once contemplative and daring.

Phil Dwyer, Changing Seasons (Alma)

The composer and orchestrator Phil Dwyer allows Dwyer the tenor saxophone virtuoso a solo in the “Summer” section of this beautifully realized album. He gives fellow Canadian Ingrid Jensen a trumpet slot that is integral to the success of “Winter.” Most of the solos, however, are by Mark Fewer, a dazzling violinist who glides lyrically through Dwyer’s seasonal suite. The work may have been inspired at least in part, as any music with such a theme must be, by the example Vivaldi set 250 years ago. Clearly, though, Dwyer’s experience in modern jazz and classical music provides the basis for the pieces. He integrates a full string section and a big band in what amounts to a violin concerto blended into a concerto grosso. He and Fewer, who is not only the featured soloist but also conducts the strings, get what could have been an ungainly machine to swing mightily in the “Winter” section. In an unusual achievement for our length-obsessed CD era, the suite runs 35-and-a-half minutes, but it is so satisfying that it’s hard to imagine why it should be longer

Anthony Wilson, Seasons: Live At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art (Goat Hill DVD and CD)

Wilson’s album appeared at about the same time as Dwyer’s. Aside from subject matter and titles, they could hardly be more different. John Monteleone, an American guitar maker respected by his fellow craftsmen and revered by guitarists, created four magnificent archtop instruments named for the seasons, then commissioned Wilson to write a suite for them. Wilson engaged fellow guitarists Steve Cardenas, Chico Pinheiro and Julian Lage to perform the work with him in concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Fittingly, the Monteleone guitars—subtly tinted and illustrated by the luthier—will be on display at the museum through July 4th as works of art. Each of the guitarists is featured in a movement of the seasonal cycle, with the other three playing Wilson’s often-intricate ensemble accompaniments. Cardenas begins with the moody “Winter;” the young Brazilian Pinheiro dances through the samba “Spring;” Wilson celebrates “Summer” with an Ozarks twang; Lage has the central part in “Autumn’s” harmonic complexities, wrapping up the 32-minute suite. The DVD has the suite, masterfully photographed and directed at the concert, a documentary about Monteleone making the guitars and Wilson writing the music, and an extensive slide show. The CD has the suite, each of the guitarists in a solo feature, then all of them together in a ‘round robin on Joni Mitchell’s ”The Circle Game.” This is a remarkable guitar chamber music experience.

More reviews coming soon, listening and contemplation time permitting.

In a new venture, Washington, DC, Rifftides correspondent John Birchard (so that’s what he looks like) is combining his broadcast experience, devotion to jazz and fascination with the internet. The former Voice Of America newscaster has posted his first installment of a webcast he calls Cyber Jazz Today. It is an hour program in which he plays music, speaks briefly but cogently about it and, in a valuable wrinkle, provides glimpses of the future. John writes:

I have come up with a weekly feature for the show, “Jazz Goes to College” (remember the Brubeck Columbia album by the same name?), in which I single out a college-level music school for recognition. It runs a couple of minutes, includes comments on programs, faculty and a name or address where interested parties can contact the school . I also am encouraging the schools to provide me with CDs of the students performing. So far, having started with Berklee, I’ve gotten enthusiastic responses from Manhattan School of Music and the U of North Texas. The first show, with the Berklee feature, incorporates two cuts from Berklee students from their latest student-produced CD “Octave”. I will have two from the Manhattan School next week and two from North Texas’ big bad One O’Clock Lab Band the following week.

To hear John’s maiden voyage, go here and click on “Enjoy The Show.” While you’re at the site, investigate the FAQ section. A sample:

Q: Did John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet invent the fugue?
A: No, but he did invent the tuxedo.

Despite that, Rifftides is adding a Cyber Jazz Today link in the right-hand column under Personal Jazz Sites. Bon voyage, John.

John Gilmore (1931-1995) was a tenor saxophonist highly regarded by leaders in a wide stylistic range. He worked with Earl Hines, Buster Smith, King Kolax, Miles Davis, B.B. King, and Charles Mingus, among many others. Gilmore was equally comfortable playing mainstream tenor with fellow Chicagoan Red Saunders and exploring the planets with Sun Ra. During his time with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the first half of the 1960s, Gilmore’s front-line partner was trumpeter Lee Morgan. Blakey, bassist Victor Sproles and pianist John Hicks were the rhythm section. Here, Gilmore is featured on a ballad introduced by host Humphrey Lyttleton in a 1964 BBC 4 broadcast.

For the last 30 years of his life, Gilmore was on the leading edge of the avant garde as a pillar of the Sun Ra Arkestra. He attracted a following for solos that incorporated long stretches of upper register playing in the extreme falsetto range of the horn that led one internet commenter to observe, “I think the tea is ready.” Still, his core of musicality had the power to lead John Coltrane to name Gilmore as a major influence. Here, Gilmore talks about why he devoted himself to Sun Ra’s music. Then, we see and hear him solo with Ra’s band on “’Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk, whom Gilmore had just claimed was superseded by Ra.

Following Sun Ra’s death in 1993, Gilmore became one of the band’s leaders. If you are interested in hearing and seeing one of his altissimo episodes with Ra, click here. To hear Gilmore in a splendid series of choruses on “But Not For Me” in 1960, go here.

For all of his activity and regard by his colleagues, I have been able to find no evidence that Gilmore recorded as a leader, except for co-leader credit with Clifford Jordan for the classic 1957 Blue Note two-tenor album Blowing in From Chicago.
(John Gilmore photo at top by Michael Wilderman, jazzvisionphotos.com)