Richard M. Sudhalter gave elegance and exactness to speech, writing and music-making.

Dick’s perfection of expression came in natural flows, whether he was writing,
 playing the cornet or chatting over dinner. Gene Lees observed that Dick was the only person he knew who always spoke in perfect sentences and paragraphs. Sudhalter’s mastery of language is everywhere in his biographies of Bix Beiderbecke and Hoagy Carmichael and his monumental study Lost Chords. Currents of coherence, logic, passion and humor are equally evident in his playing.

A few years ago, a stroke robbed Dick of the ability to play and caused halting speech. Then a disease called multiple system atrophy (MSA) attacked him and, over a few years, shut down his body. He lost speech and the use of his limbs. The disease left his intellect intact but destroyed his ability to communicate, the thing he did extraordinarily well. Friends and admirers around the world donated to a fund for his medical expenses and there was a benefit concert, but MSA is progressive and incurable. Dick died in a New York hospital shortly after one o’clock this morning.

He sometimes used trumpet and he had a distinctive way with the flugelhorn, but he preferred cornet, the instrument his hero Beiderbecke stayed with despite the trumpet’s having come to dominance in jazz. Dick was a man out of his time in other ways, too. In an era of increasingly casual dress, he preferred the bespoke tailoring he learned to love during his London years as a UPI correspondent. He was open-minded about new developments in jazz,

but had a firm attachment to the emotional and intellectual straightforwardness of Bix and the Chicago School. You can hear it on all three of his instruments in this CD with friends including Dave Frishberg, Daryl Sherman, Dan Barrett and Bill Crow, among others. (In the picture, Dick, on the left, is with Crow.) Sudhalter is exclusively on cornet in The Classic Jazz Quartet with Dick Wellstood, Joe Muranyi and Marty Grosz — a gathering of four spirits aligned in their love for music, writing and clowning.

Because of its subtitle, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915-1945 was reflexively attacked by partisans who chose to see it as an effort to diminish the importance of black musicians. Had they bothered to read the book, they would have found that Sudhalter does quite the opposite while balancing the historical record of achievement in jazz and providing deep insights into the nature of the music. As a player, Bix was his hero and primary influence, but Dick also wrote beautifully about Louis Armstrong in, among other places, the notes for Heart Full of Rhythm, Vol.2, a CD with some of the music Armstrong recorded for Decca. Here’s a small sample of his ability to draw on the present in illuminating a performance from the past.

Pianist Bill Evans used to insist that excision of sentimentality yielded the purest form of romanticism. My bet is he’d have been delighted with what Louis does to “Once in a While.” Even on paper its lyric teeters precariously on the edge of bathos. Yet Louis manages (how? what’s the secret?) to strip away the self-pity and make it affecting, even poignant.

A few months after Dick’s stroke, I was in the lounge above the front lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York. His close friend Daryl Sherman was playing Cole Porter’s piano and singing. She told me that Dick was going to try to be there, but not to count on it; he was having some bad days. Soon, though, I saw him making his slow way across the room to where our friend Jill McManus and I were listening to Daryl. He was impeccably turned out in sport coat, slacks and tie, just the right late-afternoon outfit for the proper New York gentleman of the 1940s, a decade in which I think he would have preferred to be living. When Daryl took a break, the four of us sat chatting. Dick’s wit and incisiveness shined through the slow speech, but he tired quickly and returned to the apartment to rest.

After that encounter, we talked by telephone a few times. Then, he could correspond only by e-mail — then, only through relays from other people — then, not at all. One can only imagine how it was for this most articulate of men to be imprisoned within himself, unable to express ideas or emotions.

Dick wanted to go, I’m sure of that. His ordeal is at an end. Knowing that it was inevitable and coming soon did not prepare me for this depth of sadness. His music, his books, the good luck of his friendship, will enrich me for the rest of my life.

Our mutual close friend Terry Teachout was extremely helpful to Dick in his last year or two. For Terry’s tribute, go here.

(Photo of Dick Sudhalter courtesy of Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University) 

 

John McNeil and Bill McHenry have reemerged with their quartet, cleverly timing their next appearance and new affiliation with the fuss surrounding that other current phenomenon, a massive worldwide financial crisis. Here’s the announcement popping up in e-mail in-boxes from Truckee to Tokyo.

This Friday, Sept. 19th at Cornelia St. Café

The John McNeil/Bill McHenry Quartet Returns!

The boys took a brief hiatus to recover from the rigors of their recent New England tour. Dealing with surging, underwear-throwing crowds night after night takes a physical and psychological toll that is hard for normal Americans to imagine. After a few weeks away from the glare of publicity, however, the boys are refreshed and ready to participate in FONT (Fest. of New Trumpet Music) and to once more dispense their life-giving improvisations to the jazz public.

In more news, the band is now under the corporate sponsorship of Lehman Bros., a prestigious Wall Street firm, and this solid financial backing should help raise the public awareness of the McNeil/McHenry brand of spiritual and physical healing. Good times ahead!

John McNeil — Trumpet

Bill McHenry — Tenor

Joe Martin — Bass

Jochen Rueckert — Drums

One set, starting at 11:00 -ish $10.00 cover Cornelia Street Caf̩, Cornelia St. betw. Bleecker & 6th Ave, Manhattan (212) 989 Р9319 http://corneliastreetcafe.com/

If you live in Sweden, China, Brazil, New Zealand, Poughkeepsie or some other farflung locale where Rifftidesiacs dwell, and find it inconvenient to be in New York tomorrow night, here’s a consolation prize by the McNeil-McHenry Band. The tune is “Batter Up,” written by Russ Freeman and first recorded by him with Chet Baker’s quartet in 1953.

Scenes along the way on this morning’s road bike ride through Cottonwood Canyon and environs 

Rifftides Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard watched a DVD of the Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1994 35th Anniversary Tour and sent this review.

 

The 57 minutes were recorded at the Freiburg, Germany, music festival in 1987 and the evening shows the guys in average (that is to say brilliant) form.

 

The program opens with a vigorous “Rocking in Rhythm” from the Ellington songbook, featuring stop-time passages for each member. It seems that in their later years together, the four grew somehow both tighter and looser. The ensembles were ultra-crisp from so many performances, yet the feeling is one of relaxed, flowing conversation.

 

Milt Jackson handles the announcements and they are models of economy, no wasted words. The program resumes with “Echoes”, a lovely ballad that picks up momentum with the MJQ’s patented chugging two-feeling. Was there ever a better ballad player on vibes than Jackson? 

 

“Kansas City Breaks”, dedicated to Charlie Parker, follows, then a rather fussy version of “Django”. The quartet must have played “Django” ten thousand times or more over the years and John Lewis often re-arranged the piece to keep it fresh. This arrangement tinkers with the structure rather more than necessary.

 

Gershwin’s “Summertime” is next, then “Bags Groove”, another piece that the group surely performed in the thousands of times. But, at least for this listener, it has never grown stale. The medium blues showcases the strengths of the MJQ – John Lewis’ infectious, epigrammatic comping and his deceptively simple solos… Jackson’s never-ending supply of great blues choruses…Percy Heath’s ferocious, stomping four-to-the-bar time… and Connie Kay, head slightly bowed and turned to the left as he listened, laying down the foundation upon which the others built their soul-satisfying structures. 

 

The DVD ends with the group’s encore — “A Day in Dubrovnik”, one of Lewis’ compositions inspired by European cities. Lewis introduces it in his soft, almost apologetic way, saying it’s an extended piece that describes in music the flavor of the old Adriatic city  — the arrival of tourists in the afternoon, the night life and the quiet of the morning. Lewis wrote several attractive European-sounding themes for the piece, as he had done before in such compositions as “Spanish Steps” and “Vendome”. It is my own shortcoming that I cannot appreciate this part of John Lewis’ talent as much as I do his more straight-ahead jazz writing and playing. But I can tell you the Freiburg audience was vocal in its appreciation of “Dubrovnik” and the group, of course, played it well. Not my cup of tea, but the rest of the DVD is top-notch MJQ. 

 

The disc is a reminder of what we have lost with the passing of these gifted men. They each recorded with other artists, and often the recordings were very good to excellent. But together they created a unique body of work, a blend of delicate strength and refined funk that stands alone.

 

                                                                — John Birchard

 

 

The scourge of heroin addiction among jazz musicians of the 1940s and 1950s is central to dozens of stories, novels, poems, plays and movies, most of them dreadful, overwrought clichés. Bad art aside, the monkey on the backs of musicians was real. It rode many of them to their graves. Unhorseing the habit required triumphing over more than the punishing chemical consequences of withdrawal. It meant also withstanding social pressure to conform in tight little communities of addicts whose lives were governed as much by the drug as by music.

It is impossible to exaggerate the courage of musicians who purged themselves of heroin addiction. Miles Davis, Gerry Mulligan, Don Lanphere and others managed to survive a legion of colleagues who committed the slow suicide of slavery to heroin. However much the long-term effects of drug damage may have ultimately shortened their life spans, when they got clean they added productive decades.

Sonny Rollins is also a victor over drug addiction. There is power in the story of his struggle. As the recent Chicago Jazz Festival got underway with the 78-year-old Rollins as a headliner, Neil Tesser told Rollins’s story in an article in the Chicago Reader. The piece is called “How
Sonny Defeated the Dragon.” Rollins told Tesser about temptation in Chicago when he went there in 1955 after being released from the narcotics hospital at the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky. One night when he thought he had accumulated enough fortitude, he went to a prominent jazz club known as a gathering place of addicts.

“When I got there, I saw a lot of old friends, a lot of the guys: ‘Hey Sonny, let’s go get high,'” Rollins says. “I had to be strong enough to withstand that. And that’s where I faced my Goliath. It was hard, man, because some of these guys knew I was not that far from using drugs. It was one of these biblical-like temptations. I resisted–my palms got sweaty and everything, but I resisted. I went back to my custodial job, but I thought, ‘I gotta get back into music.’ It was very difficult, because to tell the truth, I just escaped that first time; I just was able to resist all my friends offering these free drugs. But I thought, ‘I’m a musician and I have to be strong enough to be around drugs,’ because that was the scene.”

To read all of the story, go here. The online piece incorporates two audio clips of Rollins playing with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet. One of them is a twenty-two-minute “Get Happy” with Rollins full of confidence and wit, and astonishing work by Brown. Thanks to Harris Meyer for tipping me to the Chicago Reader story.

In 1963, eight years after he rescued himself, Rollins appeared, hale and hearty, with his quartet on Italian television. Jazz had changed, in part because of the freedom introduced by Ornette Coleman.  With Rollins were Coleman’s trumpet pal Don Cherry; bassist Henry Grimes and drummer Billy Higgins. The tune is Thelonious Monk’s “52nd Street Theme,” in an eccentric sculpted arrangement by Rollins. As you will see, they didn’t call Higgins Smiling Billy for nothing. At the end, the lights go up, Sonny almost smiles, a big band plays them off and we get a quick shot of a woman who may have been the hostess of a variety show.

I think as long as people can hear a record and hear people like Lester Young on a recording, there will always be a great inspiration for somebody to try to create jazz. – Sonny Rollins

No one is original. Everyone is derivative. — Sonny Rollins

There was a period which I refer to as the ‘Golden Age of Jazz,’ which sort of encompasses the middle thirties through the sixties, we had a lot of great innovators, all creating things which will last the world for a long, long time. — Sonny Rollins

I guess I’m fortunate that I’m still around and I emphasize “I guess” because you never can tell what musicians would be playing had they been around as long as I have. – Sonny Rollins

Today would have been Cannonball Adderley’s eightieth birthday, reason enough to bring you this video of his sextet. The band is Cannonball, his brother Nat, cornet; Yusef Lateef, tenor sax; Joe Zawinul, piano; Sam Jones, bass; and Louis Hayes, drums. The tune is “Jessica’s Birthday” by Quincy Jones. The year was 1963.

Adderley died on August 8, 1975.

Following a brief Rifftides review of the CD reissue of two of Bob Brookmeyer’s 1954 quartet recordings, Bill Kirchner wrote to recommend Back Again. It is a Brookmeyer quintet album that I didn’t know existed. I acquired it quickly and have been listening to it with interest and pleasure over the past two or three weeks.

Back Again has the valve trombonist in 1978 with cornetist Thad Jones, pianist Jimmy Rowles, bassist George Mraz and drummer Mel Lewis. Jones and Lewis, of course, were co-leaders of the magnificent orchestra that bore their names. Brookmeyer had been a major
soloist in that band and wrote some of its most memorable arrangements. Mraz was the Jones-Lewis bassist from 1972 to 1976 and was now working around New York with Rowles. One of the most unclichéd pianists in jazz, Rowles’ history with Brookmeyer went back to the trombonist’s first L.A. tour of duty, when they and bassist Buddy Clark recorded two classic albums in 1953 and 1960. Now, in ’78, Brookmeyer had returned to New York from a second west coast stay that he found uninspiring. He was happy (see the cover shot) to be back and in a studio with this congenial group, recording for the Swedish label Sonet.

With their mutual depth of harmonic understanding and willingness to let whimsy lead them where it might, Brookmeyer and Jones made a two-horn front line loaded for beauty and surprise. Playing off one another in “Sweet and Lovely,” they give us both. Brookmeyer the melody maker opens the improvisation with a delicious phrase any composer would be proud to have written. The lunging West Indian feeling of “Carib” sets up two choruses of counterpoint between the horns that approaches downright abandon. There is a lot to like here, not least Brookmeyer’s through-improvised solo — if that’s the term — on “Willow Weep for Me,” on which he wrote a deathless orchestration in 1966 for the Jones-Lewis orchestra. Here, he invents one slow chorus of pure, original, melody that is itself worthy of orchestration.

“In a Rotten Mood” belies its title with chorus after chorus of assertive, good-natured vigor in a fast B-flat blues with altered changes. It has a slot for unaccompanied Rowles holding no finger in reserve, splendid soloing by Mraz, and more of that free-spirited counterpoint. The other tunes are “Caravan,” “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To” (more mutual commentary by Brookmeyer and Jones) and two takes of “I Love You;” standard material, extraordinary results. Throughout, Lewis sustains his reputation for perfect time and perfect adaptation to every subtle change in flow of ensemble and soloist. Rowles is, simply, Rowles; unimitative and inimitable, one of the great originals.

During this period, Brookmeyer had not yet moved past his penchant for half-valve phrases, growls, slurs and exclamatory, explosive, glissandos in both directions. His playing in those days often achieved the approximation or intimation of human speech that a few master horn players — also including Pee Wee Russell, Eric Dolphy, Lawrence Brown, Clark Terry and Bill Harris — made such endearing parts of their styles. I love the way Brookmeyer plays today, but that was a special time in his development.

I bought the Back Again CD from an online company in Canada that now says it is sold out will not have more copies. But don’t give up. This outfit announces that it will have Back Again back again on September 23 at a sale price. Who knows for how long?

The publisher of Poodie James has reduced the price of my novel. My slight loss in royalties is your gain. Ordering direct from the publisher benefits everyone on the writing and production end.

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, Commentary

With esteem for the United States at a low ebb around the world, the government continues to dismantle the Voice Of America, for more than half a century one of the nation’s most effective creators of good will abroad. The Washington Post reports on the latest VOA service to be stilled by the Bush administration:

NEW DELHI — At the height of the Cold War, as India leaned resolutely toward the Soviet Union, one direct line of communication remained open from Washington to India’s teeming millions: Voice of America, the U.S. government’s radio network. Rangisah Prasad, 70, recalls the days when there was just one radio set in his village, and Voice of America’s Hindi-language broadcasts provided an escape from the dull drone of India’s state-controlled radio news.

The Cold War is over, but Prasad’s devotion to VOA lives on. “I have been hearing this station for 40 years now. Their tone was always friendly and informal. People gathered around the radio in the village square and listened to Voice of America,” Prasad said in a telephone interview from Dumarsan village in the Indian state of Bihar. “We understood the world through their programs.”

But in a move that reflects shifts in U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors has decided that VOA’s seven-hour Hindi-language radio service will end this month, after 53 years. VOA will also eliminate radio broadcasts in three Eastern European languages. Radio broadcasts in Russian went off the air in July.

To read all of the Post story, go here. The administration’s relentless disassembling of one of the most effective and cost-efficient US tools of cultural diplomacy seems to have gone unnoticed by either presidential campaign. The candidates should be asked what they would do to revive the VOA. The Rifftides staff’s concern with this matter goes back a long way. The lack of public concern disturbs me.It should disturb all Americans, and those in other countries who wish us well.