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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Just Because

Count
Basie, Oscar Peterson, Niels-Henning Ørsted-Pedersen, Martin Drew

Troubling Coverups

In the act of playing music, it is impossible to separate the process from the product. Or, it was. In an important piece of journalism, Eric Felten turns a floodlight on the technological airbrushing of live performances in an effort to insure perfection. Felten’s Wall Street Journal essay emphasizes that two recent massive public events in the United States masked actual performance. One was the Super Bowl, with Jennifer Hudson singing “The Star Spangled Banner.” The other was President Obama’s inauguration, where Yo-Yo-Ma, Itzhak Perlman and associates played “Simple Gifts.” In both cases, the performers mimed over pre-recorded sound tracks. Here are two paragraphs from Felten’s article, which is headlined, “That Synching Feeling.” 

My, what a standard of perfection is now demanded. No longer is a good or even a great performance good enough. Now we must have performances free from the “slightest glitch.” And since no one — not even a singer of Ms. Hudson’s manifest talent nor a violinist of Mr. Perlman’s virtuosity — can guarantee that a live performance will be 100% glitch-free, the solution has been to eliminate the live part. Once, synching to a recorded track was the refuge of the mediocre and inept; now it’s a practice taken up by even the best artists.

Whatever the motivation, the fear of risking mistakes has led musicians to deny who they are as performers. The most disheartening thing about the Inauguration Day quartet’s nonperformance was the lengths to which they went to make sure that nothing they did on the platform could be heard. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma put soap on the hair of his bow so that it would slip across the strings without creating even a wisp of sound. The inner workings of the piano were disassembled. There is something pitiful and pitiable about musicians hobbling their own voices.

In the course of his piece, Felten invokes the British critic John Ruskin’s famous essay on the importance of human imperfection in art. To eliminate it, Ruskin said, is “to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality.” 
In the photoshop age, digital manipulation is possible in every mass medium. That coincides with plummeting standards of objectivity and fairness in too many news organizations. Felten’s piece is not only a warning to all who watch live performance: authenticity of what you see and hear is not guaranteed. By implication, it should also make us worry about manipulation of the visual and spoken information on which a free society bases its decisions. There is no area of public life in which we should be more vigilant. 
To read the article, go here.

Hard Bop, Continued

Response to the Rifftides post on hard bop has created a lively discussion. You can read the comments here. In addition to the Savoy CD called Hard Bop that was, more or less, the focus of the piece, the commenters mention or allude to other albums. If you’re thinking of expanding the hard bop (if there is such a thing) section of your library, or starting one, here are a few worthy candidates. Other nominations will be accepted in the “Comments” section. The links will take you to Amazon.com pages that in most cases provide audio samples. 

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Art Blakey, A Night At Birdland, Vols. 1 & 2 (Blue Note), 1954 






Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note), 1954-5

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Max Roach & Clifford Brown, Study In Brown (EmArcy), 
1955
The Adderley Brothers, The Summer of ’55 (Savoy)

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Sonny Rollins Plus Four (Prestige), 1956 
Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin’ (Blue Note), 1957

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Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Paris Olympia – 1958 (Mercury) 





Horace Silver Trio and Quintet (Blue Note), 1959

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Hank Mobley, Roll Call (Blue Note), 1960

Here’s Fats Waller Now That We Need Him

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War worries have you gloomy?  Depressed over the recession? Investments tanking? Coming down with something and can’t pay your health insurance premium? 
Take this advice (click here) from a great philosopher.

Compatible Quotes: Fats Waller

You get that right-tickin’ rhythm, man, and it’s ON!

So easy, when you know how.

One never knows, do one?

Correspondence: Hard Bop

Rifftides reader and occasional correspondent Red Colm O’Sullivan writes from Ireland (where else, with a name like that?): 

And here’s another frequently used term that has no meaning whatsoever: “Hard Bop”. I have NO IDEA what that MEANS (as opposed to supposed to mean).

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That brought to mind something I wrote for a 2000 compilation CD on the Savoy label. The two-disc album was called The Birth of Hard Bop. It was made up of music recorded in 1956 by groups under the leadership of Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley. Among the players are Horace Silver, Kenny Clarke, Arthur Taylor, Barry Harris, Doug Watkins and three people who could by no stretch be considered hard boppers — Hank Jones, Ronnie Ball and John LaPorta. The essay begins:

The urge to put ideas in boxes will not be denied. Accordingly, one day in the early 1950s someone, presumably a critic, dreamed up a box called “hard bop.” The inventor no doubt intended the term to be a synonym for “soul” and “funk.” He or she may also have meant it to distinguish jazz played primarily by black people on the East Coast from jazz played primarily by white people on the West Coast. It seemed important to critics in those days to make that distinction. To some, it still seems important. At any rate, “hard bop” came to signify jazz that had rhythmic drive, leaned on blues harmonies, drew inspiration from church gospel music and was hot, not cool. 

Unfortunately for box theory, try as you will to contain music, it flows around, into and out of boxes. Strict hard bop constructionists cannot force this album’s lyrical “I Married An Angel” into the category with any greater justification than they can jawbone Clifford Brown’s “Daahoud” (the Pacific Jazz version) into the shape of West Coast Jazz. Nearly half a century later, the music in this collection swings on in the category that matters most: the one labeled “Good.”

The notes then discuss the musicians and the 21 tracks on the CDs. 

At the end, the reissue’s producer, Orrin Keepnews, jumps in with a postscript that reads, in part:
  

…So it is quite possible that there never really was a musical style that could properly be described a “hard bop.” However as Doug’s not quite tongue-in-cheek essay reminds us, there was a powerful music developing in the mid-fifties. I lived and worked in the New York area during that time span, so I was thoroughly immersed in it throughout its early development. I know that I continue to think of this music as “hard bop” whenever I think back on it (which is often), and when I heard it still being played by many of today’s best young jazz people, which is also quite frequently. 

…I join Doug Ramsey in not giving a damn about the legitimacy of the terminology, because what really matters is that the music itself was among the most legitimate and exciting jazz ever created. – O.K.

As always, your thoughts on this or any other topic are welcome. Use the “Comments” link below or the “Contact Me” link in the center column.
By the way, since Keepnews is involved in this post, if you think that jazz critics and writers are a dour, humorless bunch, here is irrefutable evidence otherwise.

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                          Ramsey                   Keepnews           Dan Morgenstern

This was several years ago, but we’re still laughing. 
 

Recent Listening: Hendelman, Shaw, Dial-Roche

In a posting a few months ago, I outlined the problem that all who write about music must face: keeping up. Nothing has changed, except that more CDs than ever are stacked throughout the office and music room. A colleague says he told a caller demanding to know when his album would be reviewed that his desktop looked like the Manhattan skyline, “and your CD is on the 44th floor.” Following are recommendations for three CDs retrieved from the jewel box skyscrapers. 


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Tamir Hendelman, Playground (SwingBros). Hendelman has been the pianist in the Jeff Hamilton Trio and the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra since the turn of the century, to general acclaim. A native Israeli in the US since 1984, he has lightness, firmness and wit. Currents of blues wisdom and a related Middle Eastern feeling for the uses of minor chords move through whatever he plays. He is likely to tackle standard tunes in non-standard keys, and his harmonic chops are fully developed. His originals are truly original. This is Hendelman’s first album as leader. His bosses, drummer Jeff Hamilton and bassist John Clayton, are his sidemen. It is an impressive debut CD on all counts – content, balance and performance. 

Jaleel Shaw, Optimism (Changu). After I heard this young alto saxophonist in New York a couple of years ago, I wrote about my admiration for his originality in a situation that might tempt a player into imitation. This CD increased the admiration level. Intimations of other musicians and other eras sound as suggestive echoes in Shaw’s work, but the dominant

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voice is his own. In his improvisations there is a confident glide through the notes, whether in a waltz like “In 3” or the urgencies and time changes of “The Struggle;” no forced tempos or frantic grabs for handsful of notes, although Shaw is capable of blazing speed and as many notes as he can conceive. Among his own compositions he nestles two standards, “Love For Sale” and “If I’m Lucky,” the latter done reflectively with only Lage Lund’s guitar and Joe Martin’s bass for accompaniment. Other companions on the CD, all of his generation, are trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, pianist Robert Glasper and drummer Johnathan Blake. Shaw will be 31 on February 11.

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Garry Dial & Terry Roche, US An’ Them (Dialroche). Dial, the jazz pianist, and Roche, the folk singer, collaborate on imaginative treatments of sixteen national anthems. With them are other musicians including Romero Lubambo, Anne Drummond, Dick Oatts, Joey Baron and Jay Anderson among the jazz players, and an array of instrumentalists and singers from around the world. In the accompanying DVD about the making of the CD, Dial makes the point that people everywhere know the US Anthem, but it is unlikely that the man on the street in Milwaukee knows the Tibetan anthem. He and Roche wanted to do something about that. They give each song a treatment that is unique to its sentiment and its origin. 
Eleven of the arrangements are by Dial, a masterly writer and pianist. The settings run from a voice-piano duo to a string orchestra. Jamaica’s anthem becomes a calypso with gospel touches, Czechoslovakia’s (apparently from before the Czeck-Slovak separation) a call for national awakening, Israel’s a yearning for fulfillment of real freedom. Samir Chatterjee’s arrangement of India’s anthem is an Eastern ode to joy. The CD booklet has English translations of the songs sung in other languages. You may have known that there is an Esperanto anthem. I did not. By the time the collection ends with Roche’s simple voice and guitar delivery of “The Star Spangled Banner,” listeners, wherever they may be, are likely to feel a bit closer to the world at large. 
Next posting: A few more CDs from the stacks.

Recent Listening: Aaron Irwin

Aaron Irwin Group, Blood and Thunder (Fresh Sound New Talent). In a tray card photograph, we see the 30-year-old alto saxophonist drinking a glass of milk and lookingAaron Irwin.jpg about eighteen. Irwin’s compositions and arrangements have a concomitant freshness about them, and resourcefulness. His writing tends to make his quintet sound bigger. There is no piano; Ben Monder’s guitar has the chording assignment. Chris Cheek’s tenor sax adds a third melody voice. Both solo with economy and plenty of unexpected turns, as does Irwin. Matt Clohesy is the bassist, Ferenc Nemeth the drummer. 

These musicians are in the thick of New York’s young experimental-cum-mainstream jazz population. Irwin, a product of the impressive DePaul University (Chicago) jazz program run by Bob Lark, has adapted to the yeasty Manhattan/Brooklyn scene. His title tune has an appropriately ominous caste amplified by the harmonies expressed and implied in the interaction of the saxophones and the guitar. The melody line and harmonies of the country-sounding “Back to You” might have been written by Hank Williams. Irwin doesn’t unveil the melody of “From This Moment On” until the final chorus. The collective and individual improvisations in the first five minutes take full advantage of the basic, good-natured harmonies that helped make the song one of Cole Porter’s biggest latterday successes. 
The saxophones and the guitar intertwine on “Little Hurts,” reacting to one another’s ideas in a sort of musical basket weaving until Monder takes over for a solo that manages to incorporate force, restraint and premonitions of uncertainty that are not entirely resolved before the track ends. “Sprung” is a pointillist melodic exercise on the harmonic pattern of “It Might As Well Be Spring.” Its good humor spills over into the solos. The Bill Evans waltz “Very Early” glides along in character with its composer’s intentions and features a chorus of improvisation by Clohesy that helps bring home why he’s being much discussed among his contemporaries. Irwin adds Eliza Cho’s violin for the last track, “Until We Say Our Last Goodbye,” a composition so like a classic standard song that it all but demands a lyric. 
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The bloom of originality in Irwin’s approach is fertilized by his reach into the traditions of several branches of American music. If that becomes a trend among a young jazz generation that sometimes defeats itself by defying tradition, it can only benefit them and the music.

Hank Crawford

Hank Crawford, another of the cadre of Ray Charles saxophonists who went on to their own fame, died on January 29. David “Fathead” Newman and Leroy “Hog” Cooper, Crawford’s colleagues in the Charles band, died earlier last month. Crawford’s alto, Newman’s tenor and Cooper’s baritone saxophones were integral to Charles’s big band in the 1950s and early ’60s. 

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Crawford’s recording and touring bands were among the finest medium-sized groups of the era. Some of his earliest and best work is contained in this two-CD set. A gifted soloist, composer and arranger, Crawford continued to make superb ensemble recordings throughout his active career. This 1984 album is representative of his ability to merge sophistication in his writing with the deep blues feeling that almost always resulted in the word “soul” being applied in discussions of his music. When he came of age, Memphis, Tennessee, was producing a storied group of jazz musicians that also included Charles Lloyd, Harold Mabern, George Coleman, Booker Little and Phineas Newborn, Jr. 
Crawford was 74.

Recent Listening: Tom Harrell

CD: Tom Harrell, Prana Dance (High Note) 

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The economy, lyricism and ingenuity in Tom Harrell’s writing and his trumpet and flugelhorn playing make him one of the most admired musicians in jazz. Not only his contemporaries, but also musicians of younger and older generations are in awe of Harrell’s musicianship. When he was a member of Phil Woods’ quintet In the 1980s, Woods made the frequently-quoted statement that he had never played with a better musician. With two decades of leadership and growth since then, Harrell has gone on to occupy a position of esteem comparable to that of Woods himself and of Wayne Shorter, two of the few living jazz artists with similar all-’round capability and depth of creativity. 
Harrell writes and he plays. As you know if you’ve seen him at work, there is no show business component to his performance except in the irony that his catatonic state onstage when he’s not playing constitutes a kind of riveting non-showmanship. In a marvel of courage, dedication and modern medicine, a man who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia overcomes his condition to create music at the level of genius. 
Harrell’s Prana Dance, recorded last May, is with the same quartet that made Light On two years earlier. Again, the compositions are all Harrell’s. This is one instance in which you won’t find me complaining that there are no standard songs. Like Shorter, Herbie Hancock and Horace Silver, Harrell delivers an album full of original works that have substance and will endure. To single out three, “Prana,” “Maharaja” and “Ride” have the structural simplicity and harmonic magnetism to stay in the mind after only a hearing or two. Those are characteristics of many of Harrell’s compositions. 
What he and the increasingly impressive tenor saxophonist Wayne Escoffery do with these attractive and deceptively simple songs is crucially important to the success of the album. As Neil Tesser points out in his evocative liner notes, you can hear, or feel, Harrell and Escoffery thinking their way through solos. And yet, spontaneity and a sense of discovery dominate the improvisation. The young rhythm section of pianist Danny Grissett, bassist Ugonna Okegwo and drummer Johnathan Blake is splendid. Often when a pianist switches from the Steinway to play electric piano, I clench my teeth. Although I’d rather hear him play the acoustic instrument, Grissett adapts the Fender Rhodes to some of these tunes in a way that makes it the right choice for the material. 
Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Clifford Brown, Blue Mitchell and Chet Baker figured in Harrell’s education as he developed his conception. If out of fond tribute he occasionally alludes to them in his solos, it is with subtlety, originality and – often – humor. Harrell has long since evolved into an original. In tone, style, choice of notes and the ability to reach his listeners’ emotions, he is a worthy successor to his heroes. Prana Dance is an immensely satisfying album. 
The video below is of Harrell’s quintet at a club in Paris with Xavier Davis on piano and Jimmy Greene on tenor saxophone. Okegwo is the bassist. The drummer is unidentified.
 
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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, … [MORE]

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