I’m curious about how you determined that Al Porcino was playing lead on the clips in question. He is sitting on the left side of the section (looking at the band) and thus not in the lead chair. I agree with you that Al is formidable — in fact I think he’s probably my all time favorite lead player from the ’50’s and ’60’s, but it appears to me that the guy next to Al is playing lead.
Jack Greenberg

For the answer, we went to a Jones-Lewis expert:

At the time, Al was the lead player. Lynn Nicholson (formerly with Maynard Ferguson) probably was playing second, Earl Gardner third, and Frank Gordon fourth (the jazz chair). All except Frank were capable of playing lead and probably did so at some point–those guys like to pass parts around the section in order to give the lead player some rest.
Al was also breaking in Earl as a lead player, and Earl went on to be the resident lead player (with T&M, and later both Mel and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra) for many years–until recently, in fact.
Bill Kirchner
God, what a pleasure to wake up this morning and click on Thad Jones and Mel Lewis in Germany! Has there ever been a better big band drummer than Lewis? Most of my favorite big band records of the 60’s have something in common – Mel in the drum chair: Terry Gibbs’ Hollywood Dream Band and Gerald Wilson are two examples.
And I first became aware of Thad’s solo work when he was part of the Thelonious Monk Town Hall ’59 band, always going unexpected places in his cornet solos.
When Thad-n-Mel’s first LP came out (on Solid State), I dropped the needle on “Once Around” and in moments the hair was rising on the back of my neck! Talk about head-long momentum from bar one… and then Mel’s brief-but-extraordinary solo and fills at the end…perfecto.
I had the pleasure of emceeing a big band night at the New Haven (CT) Coliseum back in the 70s. The program was Stan Kenton’s band and Thad-n-Mel. Kenton was fine, but when Jones-Lewis came on, they set fire to the place. In his first solo, Jon Faddis entered from the stratosphere and took it up from there. And Billy Harper scorched the earth. I was goggle-eyed with amazement and delight. The writing, the spirit of that band were something to behold – just a buncha guys hangin’ out at an old funky night club in the Village on Monday nights. Thanks for reviving a flagging spirit.
John Birchard

I wanted to add this to the last comment posted about Sue Raney:
Joe Morello told me Paul Desmond did not like chick singers. I wonder if Sue Raney could have been an exception. Joe does enjoy her singing.
If Sue happens to read this, I’ m very eager for another newly recorded CD. And, maybe even a visit to us here in NYC.
Jerry Bogner

Back in the antediluvian era of jazz blogging (early 2005), there weren’t many of us. Terry Teachout thinks that when Rifftides debuted, it was the first jazz blog. Maybe so. At any rate, now there are jazz blogs galore. Some are promotional vehicles for musicians, record companies, magazines, talent agencies–the gamut of music business interests. Others deal with substance. Some of the substantial ones are linked under Other Places in the Rifftides right-hand column.
A new blog that shows promise was launched a few days ago by a man named Bob Levin. It is called Jazz My Two Cents Worth. I am adding an Other Places link to it. Mr. Levin’s current topic is a decision by YouTube to remove Chet Baker videos put up by a contributor known as Itsartolie. The spat involves one Chet Baker foundation in Oklahoma and another in Canada, claims of copyright violation, and competing claims of copyright ownership. Mr. Levin, hoping for a cooperative solution, is offering to be a mediator.

If the Chet Baker Foundation in Oklahoma chooses to do nothing about this, then it’s a legitimate question to ask how much they actually care about their mission. If they contact the Canadian (foundation) side of the coin to find out who has the rights to this material, and a fight ensues, we know that jazz must continue to fight jazz in order for jazz to be preserved. It’s life through the looking glass. And if both Chets (foundations) get it worked out and YouTube is unresponsive, then I’ll be happy to write a post about YouTube trying to kill jazz while allowing its many virulently racist and anti-Semitic posts to remain.
We will also know the truth if someone from Chets (foundations) tries to contact Itsartolie. I’ll be happy to help with that.

YouTube has apparently removed all of its video clips of Chet Baker playing. At least one Baker fan is uninterested in the legal fine points. To read more about all of this, go to Jazz My Two Cents Worth.

Gone From YouTube, But Not Forgotten
If you have comments on this, please send an e-mail message. The Rifftides comments section is in the shop for repairs.

When the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra flourished, one of the complaints by the guys in the band was that Jones didn’t assign himself enough solos. They loved to hear him play. Who wouldn’t? A video has just surfaced in which at a 1970s concert in Germany the band plays “Cherry Juice” and Thad takes the first solo, on flügelhorn. No wonder they liked to hear him play. The other soloists are the little known tenor saxophonist Larry Schneider and the better known pianist Harold Danko. The lead trumpeter is the formidable Al Porcino. To see and hear “Cherry Juice,” click here.
On the same occasion, the Jones-Lewis band played “My Centennial,” featuring long, satisfying solos by Pepper Adams on baritone saxophone and Mel Lewis on drums. This time, Thad sets the pace with a cowbell. Bill Kirchner, reliable chronicler of the Thad and Mel band, informs us that although the YouTube headline says 1978, the performance was in 1976. For “My Centennial,” go here. Feel free to dance.

It is a pleasure to find Poodie James mentioned with fellow artsjournal.com blogger Alex Ross’s landmark book The Rest Is Noise. Richard Kamins of the Hartford Courant managed to put my little novel and Alex’s study of twentieth century music under the same roof in his column “See! Hear!”

In a moment of enthusiasm or weakness, I agreed to give a speech. The deadline is looming, and if I don’t set aside other things and prepare, a large roomful of listeners will be hearing me read my driver’s license. Blogging will have to slow for a while. As it turns out, this isn’t a bad time for reduced activity because the artsjournal.com publishing platform is on the verge of undergoing updating that will require pauses and delays. I’ll post when possible. Please stay tuned. If the speech turns out all right, I’ll share some of it with you. If it doesn’t, you’ll never hear about it again.

Marc Myers writes.

Wonderful post on George Russell. Hal McKusick told me a great story re: where he found Russell in the mid-1950s and how he brought him back onto the scene.
“Not long afterward I walked into a drugstore in Greenwich Village. There, behind the counter working was George Russell. I asked him what he was doing there. George had written ‘Cubano Be Cubano Bop’ for Dizzy [Gillespie], which was one of the first combinations of Afro-Cuban rhythms and jazz in 1947. He also had written ‘Ezz-Thetic’ in 1951 for Lee [Konitz]. Both arrangements were huge.
“George told me he had a wife to support and that nothing was happening for him in the music business. Then he said he had hit upon something called the Lydian Theory. He asked if I wanted to hear it. I agreed, so I met him at his apartment nearby the next day.”
To read the rest of the story, go to Jazz Wax.

In 1966 on Jazz Review on WDSU-FM in New Orleans, I devoted five programs to a survey of George Russell’s music. It opened with these words:

Over the next few weeks we’re going to consider the recorded work of George Russell, not only because Russell’s music is interesting, absorbing listening, but because of his influence on the development of jazz in the sixties–an influence, I believe, more profound and widespread than is generally recognized, even by many musicians.
Russell believes jazz must develop on its own terms, from within. He believes that to borrow the concepts of classical music and force jazz into the mold of the classical tradition results in something perhaps interesting, perhaps Third Stream music, but not jazz. Faced with this conviction that jazz musicians must look to jazz for their means of growth, Russell set about creating a framework within which to work.

Then followed a discussion of Russell’s Lydian Concept of Tonal Organization, which allows the writer and the improviser to retain the scale-based nature of the folk music in which jazz has its roots, yet have the freedom of being in a number of tonalities at once. For more on that, go to Russell’s web site.
Listening to the recordings of George Russell’s small bands of the 1950s and ’60s is as stimulating now as when I first heard them. They have some of the finest early work of Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Hal McKusick and others. What a welcome surprise it is, all these years later, to see performances of some of the music Russell wrote for the group he called his Smalltet. A kinescope of the final program of The Subject Is Jazz, a series that ran on WNBC-TV in New York in 1958, has popped up on YouTube. It includes the Smalltet doing “Concerto For Billy The Kid,” the piece that first brought Bill Evans to the attention of many musicians and listeners. Russell also appears, chatting with host Gilbert Seldes about his approach to music. The musicians include Evans, Farmer, Doc Severinsen, Gene Quill, Tony Scott, Barry Galbraith and Jimmy Cleveland. To see the entire program, go here. “Concerto For Billy The Kid” comes up about six minutes into the show.
The RCA album The George Russell Smalltet Jazz Workshop was reissued on CD in the late 1980s. It has gone out of print, but a few copies are still available for a small fortune. Now in his mid-eighties, Russell retired from teaching at the New England Conservatory four years ago. He continues to compose. This article by Ed Hazell brings us nearly up to date.

Next door — that is, in the right-hand column — you will find recommended new listening, viewing and reading under the heading Doug’s Picks. Your comments are always welcome. For now, please use the e-mail address, also in the right-hand column, under Contact.

From time to time I’ll be posting parts of letters I wrote to Jack Brownlow over a period of twenty-five years or so. To my surprise, after his death a collection of them showed up among his effects. I had forgotten much of what I wrote him in our correspondence. This excerpt from New Orleans was on a WDSU-TV memo form :

August 13, 1980
To: Bruno
From: DR
I was walking through Jackson Square at the noon hour today and heard someone playing vibes. I wandered over in front of St. Louis Cathedral to see what was happening. There on a platform were (so help me) Milt Jackson, Monte Alexander, Lou Donaldson, Bob Cranshaw and Grady Tate. I had thought it was Milt when I heard the music from afar but figured that some French Quarter jugglers were playing a record to perform by. You could have knocked me over.
It turns out that Michelob is sponsoring a ten-city tour of free Jazzmobile concerts. Tomorrow night they play in Armstrong Park. Monte Alexander was playing his buns off.* I thought Lou Donaldson was dead. He sounded great. So it was old home week. I knew all of these guys except Donaldson in New York, and they were as surprised as I was. Sad thing; it got no advance publicity, so there were just a few tourists standing around in the hot sun trying to figure out what was going on.

The Jazzmobile organization is still going strong. So are Alexander, Donaldson, Cranshaw and Tate. Milt Jackson died in 1999.
* A critical term I have since abandoned.