As New Orleans makes its slow way back from the devastation of hurricane Katrina and the fumbling federal and state crisis response, there are rays of hope on the cultural front. The jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld, who has become a semi-permanent New Orleans resident, writes about it in The Wall Street Journal. 

Once alight with bulbs that spelled out “Armstrong,” the large steel archway above North Rampart Street, across from the venerable Donna’s Bar & Grill, was dark much of the past decade, largely rusted. Beneath it, the main gate to a park named for trumpeter Louis Armstrong had been padlocked for more than three years, save for the occasional special event. Just inside, Congo Square — where two centuries ago enslaved Africans and free people of color spent Sundays dancing and drumming to the bamboula rhythm, seeding the pulse of New Orleans jazz — had been effectively off limits. The adjacent Mahalia Jackson Theater of the Performing Arts, home to opera and ballet performances for more than 30 years, sat empty and in need of repair after taking on 14 feet of water in 2005. 

It would be hard to find a more potent symbol of the tenuous state of musical life and cultural history in a city largely defined by both. But earlier this month, shortly after dusk, Mayor C. Ray Nagin flipped a switch — just a prop, it turned out, for dramatic effect — and on went the lights of the arch and the park’s streetlamps. As the Original Pin Stripe Band played “Bourbon Street Parade,” a small mock second-line parade wound its way around a bronze statue of Armstrong and over to a sparkling Mahalia Jackson Theater for a free concert, the first in a series of events spanning 10 days and a broad range of performing arts. 

  

Terry’s ties to the city have been more spiritual than personal, but his admiration for a New Orleans hero led almost a decade ago to one of the most important gestures of his life. A few blocks from the Super Dome a monument to Louis Armstrong is nearing completion. It might very well not have been built without Terry’s inspiration. 

New Orleans’s Armstrong Park has been a project of the administration of former mayor Moon Landrieu, who deserves full credit for paying tangible tribute to the city’s greatest artist. But impetus for the idea came in 1969 on a bus ride during the second New Orleans Jazzfest. As a musicians’ tour was passing Jane Alley, Armstrong’s birthplace, Terry deplored that fact that while New Olreans seemed to have statues of half the Latin American presidents in history, there were none of the city’s most famous son. Then and there, he started a fund to commission a statue. His first dollar was symbolic. His organizing ability and leadership were much more. Nine years later, that statue is on the verge of becoming the centerpiece of an entire park dedicated to Armstrong’s memory. The park’s completion slowed in the six-month transition period between Landrieu’s administration and that of Mayor Ernest Morial. But assuming that Morial, the city’s first black mayor, gets behind the project, Armstrong Park should be the New Orleans equivalent of Copenhagen’s celebrated Tivoli Gardens and open by 1980.

Landrieu (then U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development), Morial and Armstrong’s wife Lucille dedicated Armstrong Park on April 15, 1980, nine years after Armstrong’s death. It has a long way to go to become the Tivoli Gardens of America, but the developments Blumenfeld describes give hope that it will blossom despite the city’s setbacks.

Dave Frishberg lives very much in the present but makes no bones about his fascination with the past. After all, his last CD was titled Retromania. So it’s no wonder that the producers of a new piece of musical theater sought out Frishberg to write the words and music. Anyone familiar with “I’m Hip,” “My Attorney Bernie,” “Peel Me a Grape,” “Listen Here” or his dozens of other songs knows that he’s prepared to capture irony, whimsy and tenderness. 

…a dimly lit room in the Scottish Rite Center provided a fitting atmosphere for “Vitriol & Violets,” which tracks the careers and friendships of the 1920s Algonquin Round Table. The story presents a lot of characters to follow, but the witticisms flow freely, the songs by Dave Frishberg are alternately hilarious and deeply poignant, and a cast featuring Adair Chappell (charmingly acerbic as Dorothy Parker), Joe Theissen, Isaac Lamb and others pulls it off with appropriate panache.

Not long after I posted the item above, Mr. Frishberg sent this: 

The show is running smoothly, and the audience seems to love it. It’s a small space, 99 seats, no proscenium, so it’s like 3/4 in-the-round. Actors play practically in the laps of the audience. There are six musical events in the show, and all are warmly received. The cast is wonderful; the best singers are Dorothy Parker and Heywood Broun. Just piano accompaniment (not by me). Four performances left, including two matinees. The play seems a natural for off Broadway in New York. I hope it happens. It’s been a challenging and rewarding project, and I’m glad it’s over.

The current offering on Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles web log is part one of an extensive examination of the career and music of alto saxophonist Bud Shank. It incorporates most of the contents of the booklet I wrote for the Mosaic Records boxed set The Pacific Jazz Bud Shank Studio Sessions (1956-1961), long out of print. As he always does, Steve includes personal recollections and lots of photographs. Here is a short excerpt from the Mosaic notes, Shank talking about west coast jazz.

“I don’t even know what the hell west coast jazz is,” he said, with

exasperation and no wry laugh. “It was something different from what they were doing in New York, so the critics called it west coast jazz. That Miles Davis BIRTH OF THE COOL album, out of New York, probably started west coast jazz. It was also very organized, predetermined, written. It was a little bit more intellectual, shall I say, than had happened before. Jimmy Giuffre, Buddy Childers, Shorty, Shelly Manne, Marty Paich, Bob 

Cooper, almost everybody involved; we all came from somewhere else, New York, Texas, Chicago, Ohio. The fact that we were in L.A. around the orange trees had nothing to do with it. I really think that everybody played the way they would have played no matter where they were. New York writers, they’re the ones who invented west coast jazz.”

“Those bastards,” I said.

“Those bastards,” he said, laughing uproariously.

Benny Golson celebrates his 80th birthday today. At the same time, he releases a new CD with a band in the mold of the Jazztet that he and Art Farmer led beginning in 1960. The Jazztet’s success put Golson’s composing and arranging abilities into the consciousness of listeners who may have been unaware of his history. He played a key role in the revitalization of Art Blakey’s career. At 28, when he was seasoned but mainly known only in the jazz inner circle, Golson took over as music director of the drummer’s Jazz Messengers in 1958. The band had been generating excitement, but Golson persuaded Blakey that its lacked substance. Golson told me the story when I was writing notes for Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers, Paris1958. Their relationship began with a telephone call. 

“It was my hero,” Golson says. “Art Blakey was on the phone. One of his guys was having trouble getting a cabaret card from the police and he asked me to come In and sub for a night. ‘Oh, my God,’ I said to myself, ‘Art Blakey.’ He didn’t know it, but I would have played for free. And I went down and played, and I noticed that although the band had been together for a while, not much was happening; just tunes. But, on a personal level, he just laid me out. I’d never played with a drummer like that before.” 

Blakey asked him back a second night and then for the weekend. By now, Golson though to inquire about money, and when he found out how little the band was making,

he took his leader aside for a little chat.
“I said, ‘Art, you’re a great man. This pay is nothing for you. It makes me sad.’ And he looked at me with his sad, beautiful cow eyes and said ‘Can you help me?’ And I can’t believe what came out of my mouth, this young upstart who hadn’t been in New York too long.
“I said, ‘Yes, if you’ll do exactly what I tell you.’ 

“How dared I?” Golson asks, laughing. “But he went for it. He said, ‘What should I do?’ And I said, ‘Get a new band.'” 

He agreed, gave the men notice and on Golson’s recommendation hired a new set of Jazz Messengers, all from Benny’s home town. On trumpet was Lee Morgan, barely 20 years old, a fellow alumnus of the Gillespie big band. Morgan had sat in with the drummer in Philadelphia as a prodigy of 15, and the previous year had recorded two pieces with an expanded version of the Messengers. The pianist was 26-year-old Bobby Timmons, and on bass was Jymie Merritt, at 31 three years older than Golson and like him a veteran of the Bull Moose Jackson rhythm and bues band of the early 1950s. 

“What’s all this Philadelphia stuff?’ Blakey said. I told him ‘Trust me.'” 

By tradition and general agreement in the reviewing trade, it is considered unprofessional and tacky to write about a recording to which one has contributed liner notes. Therefore, I have not written about Rebecca Kilgore’s and Dave Frishberg’s Why Fight The Feeling?, a collection of songs by Frank Loesser. However, I have no qualms about alerting you to the welcome fact that Carol Sloane has switched on her blog after a month of reticence. She posts a number of items, in one of which she writes: 

Rebecca sings the songs to perfection. No fuss, no unnecessary embellishment, dead-on pitch. Hers is a cheery sounding voice and her diction is impeccable. My kind of singer. Dave’s jaunty piano style is the perfect compliment for her, and they include a great many verses sinfully ignored by many.

Gentle, soulful David Newman is gone. He died on Monday. 

I was in band class and I had this music on my music stand but it was
upside down … He [Mr. Miller] knew I could barely read the music right side
up. He thumped me on the head and called me ‘Fathead.’ My classmates laughed.
After that, it became my trademark. I don’t consider it derogatory and it
doesn’t offend me. If someone asked me what I prefer to be called, it would be
David. But Fathead doesn’t bother me at all.

As he approaches his mid seventies, David Newman’s pace is not slower; he is merely moving toward different audiences. Like many jazz musicians, he tries to stay away from clubs, with their late hours and the smoke his doctor says he must avoid. The success of his CDs and of a film about Ray Charles put him in greater demand than ever. He is accepting concert offers, playing festivals and doing clinics. 

At one of his concerts recently, his encore was a B-flat blues with a searing flute solo. He and the sixteen-piece band from Central Washington University rocked the hall and got a standing ovation. Newman smiled when I remarked on it later, then delivered what for him was an effusion of self-satisfaction. “Yes, I was very pleased with that,” he said

CARMEN MCRAE: AN APPRECIATION

By John Birchard

According to Netflix, the DVD Carmen McRae: Live is valued at three stars. Don’t believe it. I watched it last night and was transported by the woman’s artistry. The Tokyo concert was recorded in 1986 and released by Image Entertainment. 

Accompanied by a superb rhythm section 

(Pat Coil, piano; Bob Bowman, bass; Frank Felice, drums), Carmen cruises through some of the best of The Great American Songbook, opening with “That Old Black Magic” and “I Get 
Along Without You Very Well.” By the time she gets to “I Concentrate on You”, her pipes are thoroughly warmed and she’s taking chances with the melody, going down the scale when you expect her to go up, growling, sliding into a note the choice of which leaves one laughing with delight. 

Now, about scatting: I’m not a big fan of the technique, but Carmen McRae reminded me that certain people can handle it. First, she didn’t overdo it, running out of ideas before exhausting her enthusiasm. Her scatting was musicianly, sometime funny and always inventive. Aspiring jazz singers would benefit from watching this disc. 

Her technique with the hand microphone was a lesson in the art of dynamics. Depending on the effect she was going for, the mic would be close to her lips at one moment, then pulled away to accomplish a fade effect. That’s what experience does for an artist. 

Carmen’s concert was an exercise in what Whitney Balliett had in mind when he called jazz, “the sound of surprise.” On a turbocharged “Thou Swell”, when one would expect a racehorse gallop into scat-land and a long, noisy drum solo, the whole thing was over in not much more than a minute – fast, tightly arranged, no scat, no drum solo. Just a breath-taking display of musicianship. 

During this one-hour-21-minute concert, she reminded me how few singers really pay attention to lyrics. Carmen told stories, emphasized words in a way that, no matter how familiar the song, brought fresh attention to the story it told. With her, words meant something. By altering her volume from a belt to a whisper and tinkering with the melody, a song she might have sung a thousand times became new again.
Besides the familiar standards, she salted the program with lesser-known tunes such as “Getting Some Fun Out of Life”, “Love Came On Stealthy Fingers” and “As Long As I Live”, the latter featuring her own accompaniment on acoustic piano. She took it at a walking tempo and the way she used the left hand in her solo reminded me of Jimmy Rowles.

There is so much to like on this DVD, from her sly use of musical humor to a hardly noticeable tapping of her finger on the edge of the piano to signal Pat Coil the tempo she wanted to slip into after beginning the Brazilian song “Dindi” a cappella.
The word diva is tossed around with reckless abandon these days, applied to practically any teen-age phenom who has two hits in a row. Carmen McRae was a diva – not that easy to work for, demanding high standards from her musicians and herself. When she took the stage, SHE TOOK THE STAGE. There was no question this lady was in charge and she delivered with professionalism and artistry. 

Carmen McRae’s death left a huge hole that remains to be filled.
If Netflix believes this DVD is worth only three stars, I would like to experience a singer whose work is rated at five.

The publisher of Poodie James has good news for you, if not for my royalty statements. He has reduced the price. If you have yet to pick up a copy, be advised that the book is available here and here. From a review: 

I’ll cut to the chase: Poodie James is a very good book. Not only is it handsomely and lyrically written, but Ramsey’s snapshots of small-town life circa 1948 are altogether convincing, and he has even brought off the immensely difficult trick of worming his way into the consciousness of a deaf person without betraying the slightest sense of strain… Ramsey is no less adept at sketching the constant tension between tolerance and suspicion that is part and parcel of the communal life of every small town. 

                             

                                 — Terry Teachout, commentarymagazine.com

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the

bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. – Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865 

We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you. – Barak Obama, Inaugural Address, January 20, 2009