The form is not going to revolutionize either jazz or poetry but it is going to stay with us, and both jazz and poetry are going to have one new way of expressing themselves, and so are going to be just a little richer.—Kenneth Rexroth

I never drowned out one word of whatever Jack was reading or making up on the spot … and he never drowned out or stepped on a word or interrupted a thought that I or anyone else had … in these late night-early morning get-togethers.—David Amram on collaborating with Jack Kerouac

Desmond has been in my thoughts today, back to the weeks before his death of lung cancer in 1977 at the age of 52. We talked frequently during that time. Here are two excerpts from Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, then a song that Paul cherished. He and Dave Brubeck played it together nearly from the beginning of their partnership.

A few days before Memorial Day, I got a call in San Antonio. “Hi, it’s me, Desmond,” he began, cheery as ever. After a few minutes we faded into an unusual conversational impasse, a series of commonplace exchanges that reflected what he knew and I suspected. He suggested that we both get mildly bombed on Friday evening and he would call me from Elaine’s.
Jenna had planned a trip to London for late May. Desmond encouraged her to take it. (Steve) Forster was looking after him, helping him get through the days. There was little that doctors could do.
“I was just falling to bits,” Jenna said. “I needed to go away. The day before I left, I went to say goodbye and, frail as he was, he insisted that Steve take him downstairs to the camera shop to buy me one of those Polaroid instant things that had just come out. I got to London and, of course, rang him immediately, and he sounded reasonably good. We had a nice chat. I said I would talk to him the next day. And he said, ‘No, no, don’t call tomorrow. Ring me Tuesday.’ I’ve got friends coming tomorrow, and I want you to relax and enjoy yourself.'”
“When I left on Friday,” Forster said, “I kind of knew that would be the last time I would see him. I felt it, but I wasn’t sure and, in a way, I didn’t want to admit it. But…he was tired. He knew.”
On May 30, Memorial Day, Desmond’s cleaning woman was unable to wake him.

Jack Richardson recalled that Marian McPartland said what many of Desmond’s friends were thinking, “It’s just like Paul to slip quietly away when everyone’s out of town, not to bother anybody.”

Occasionally, the Rifftides staff trolls the archives with an eye for older posts that hold up. Here is one from three years ago this Memorial Day weekend.

Time out of the writing crunch to hear successive Jessica Williams concerts was time well spent. Williams has taken a liking to The Seasons and returned there with her new trio for two evenings. On Saturday,Williams, bassist Doug Miller and drummer John Bishop played a Duke Ellington program. The repertoire, except for the infrequently heard calypso “Angelique,” was made up of sixteen of Ellington’s most familiar pieces. She opened with “C-Jam Blues,” closed with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and included “I Got it Bad,” “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me,” “Satin Doll” and…well, you get the idea. A routine Ellington lineup, perhaps, but Williams’ piano playing and her interaction with Miller and Bishop were far from routine.
Williams employed all of her virtuosity; the improbably long fingers executing piston keystrokes, the extended crossed hands passages, the stride left hand, the tremolos, the polytonality. Still, what captured the crowd was the swing, warmth and humanity of the music. Following a distracted start on “Prelude to a Kiss,” Williams called a halt and got sympathetic chuckles from the audience when she said, “If you can forgive others, you can forgive yourself.” She started the song again, soloed with passion and comped like a guiding angel behind a Miller bass solo that was a highlight of the concert. Williams’ concept for the evening was to program it as if the trio were playing for a dance. Indeed, she encouraged people to dance in the area between the front row of seats and the stage. Three couples did, rather tentatively, during “Mood Indigo,” but one of them told me later that the listening was so good, dancing was a distraction. That’s an interesting switch on the old complaint “Why don’t you play something we can dance to?”
Sunday, Memorial Day eve, Williams premiered a new composition, “Freedom Suite,” not related to the 1958 Sonny Rollins piece with the same name. She dedicated the six-movement work to veterans who died in all US wars from the American Revolution to Iraq and Afghanistan. Prefaced with a flag ceremony by women volunteers from a Veterans of Foreign Wars unit, the suite began with an other-worldly piano introduction to Miller’s bowing of “Taps,” its resonance supported by Williams’ impressionistic chords and the shimmering swell of Bishop’s cymbals. The movement called “Night Patrol” surged with modal intensity through piano and bass solos into a Bishop drum solo over an insistent pedal point.
Introducing the “Final Wish” section, Williams said, “I finished writing this one at 3:30 or 4:00 o’clock this morning. I wanted it to be perfect–and so far, it is.” She showed Bishop the bass part she had written for Miller, explaining the varied rhythms she wanted through a series of eight-bar sections. Bishop nodded and smiled, and with only that discussion for a rehearsal, the trio played the piece for the first time. It remained perfect.
Leaning into the piano, Williams stroked the strings like a harpist, setting up insistent three-four time that supported the dirge of the final movement, “Lament.” By way of her virtuosity through an unaccompanied solo that at times suggested an affinity for early McCoy Tyner, she managed to express optimism as well as sadness before Miller and Bishop rejoined her for a final statement of the theme.
This is an initial impression of a work I want to absorb further. We may all have that opportunity. The concert was recorded and could appear on a CD. If that happens, I’ll let you know.

So far, it hasn’t happened. Stay tuned.

Keith Jarrett/Charlie Haden, Jasmine (ECM). Keith Jarrett has had partnerships with powerful and distinctively different bassists; Gary Peacock since 1983 in the pianist’s Standards Trio; Palle Danielsson in the late 1970s in Jarrett’s European Quartet; Charlie Haden in his mid-70s quartet. For all of Peacock’s dazzling virtuosity and Danielsson’s rock-solid strength, Haden brought to Jarrett’s music something unique—deceptive simplicity rooted in his beginnings as a folk musician. Rather than the parsing of chords that dominates much of modern jazz bass playing, Haden’s lines relate directly to melodies. Often, his bass lines are less accompaniments or harmonic guides than melodies or melodic variations offered as commentaries. That might drive some pianists to distraction, but not Alan Broadbent of Haden’s Quartet West, and not Jarrett.
Thirty-three years after they last recorded together, the empathy between Jarrett and Haden retains its seductive strength in this collection of ballads. Haden’s deliberative playing underscores the beauty of “For All We Know,” “Goodbye,” “Where Would I Go Without You?” and other slow pieces. When the tempo increases slightly on “Body and Soul” and prominently on “No Moon At All,” he generates amiable forward motion, a runner on a relaxed jog finding the perfect slot . A pleasing aspect of Haden’s work has long been his ability to solo by creating melodies that approximate story-telling speech. There are instances of that on nearly every track here, notably in “Body and Soul.”
Jarrett’s lyricism seems stirred by Haden’s careful listening and note choices. He creates memorable solos throughout. There is fugue-like independence of left- and right-hand lines in his stimulating work in “No Moon At All.” He caresses the melody of Victor Young’s “Where Would I Go Without You,” then in his solo finds the blues implications in the tune’s harmonies. Following an unaccompanied introduction to “I’m Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life,” he manages to be languorous and urgent at the same time. In the bridge of the second chorus of his solo on “Body and Soul,” he achieves a floating state approaching weightlessness. Jasmine is a satisfying addition to Jarrett’s discography.
Coming soon on Rifftides, a review of ECM’s retrospective release of early recordings by Jarrett’s Standards Trio, Steve Kuhn, Gary Burton with Chick Corea, and Eberhard Weber.

On a collection of horns that amounts to an instrument museum, Scott Robinson plays every style of jazz from traditional to free. One night he might be with the cornetist Jon-Erik Kelso playing music inspired by Bix Beiderbecke, the next anchoring the floating impressionism of Maria Schneider’s orchestra. His arsenal, dozens of instruments, ranges from the slide soprano sax to the contrabass saxophone. It includes the theremin, the normaphone and the bass marimba. He plays all of those and more, and plays them well. In a video attached to the online version of Will Friedwald’s portrait of Robinson in the Wall Street Journal, he demonstrates a few of his prized possessions. To read the article and see the clip, go here.
In Friedwald’s piece, Robinson mentions his love of the tenor saxophone, which he considers his main horn. Here he is, playing tenor last year with the amazing 87-year-old Frank Wess on the Gene Ammons-Sonny Stitt specialty “Blues Up And Down.” The rhythm section is Ilya Lushtak, guitar; Tal Ronen, bass; and Quincy Davis, drums. Robinson is the one on the right, in the conservative jacket.