He has been gone for fifteen years, but interest in the American Indian tenor saxophonist Jim Pepper seems to be building. Pepper’s music, full of vigor and allusions to his cultural background, has received attention akin to cultism in parts of Europe and seems headed toward at least a modest revival in the US. (See this January Rifftides piece.) In Portland, Oregon, Pepper’s home town, the journalist and historian Jack Berry produced for Oregon Public Broadcasting a mini-documentary about Pepper and wrote an article for the Quarterly of the Oregon Historical Society. Here is a section of the article.

During the 1970s, at the height of the Black Power movement, a phenomenon called Crow Jim materialized. Some major black jazz musicians began insisting on an exclusive franchise; only African Americans could authentically perform the music. Pepper, who played with more white than black musicians, opposed Crow Jim, but he was also spared most of its consequences and was rarely spurned by black musicians. (Pepper’s mother Floy recalls saying at the moment of his birth: “How light is he? If he’s white, dip him in some chocolate. I want an Indian baby.”)
In the early 1980s, we worked for a time on a writing project. It was intended to show how the musical connection between, in his words, “the skins and the brothers” reflected a larger and neglected story, the way Africans and Native Americans collaborated to survive in racist America.
His singularity as a performer was the merging of two very different musical idioms, jazz and traditional Indian song. This made him difficult to categorize, one reason his recorded music is so difficult to find. It is probably more accurate to say that he played the two idioms side by side. The Indian songs are almost purely melodic, uncomplicated by the harmonic density of jazz. Most of the Indian songs come from tribes of the Southwest, where Pepper spent summers during his youth. He is better known by American Indians in that part of the country than he is to members of tribes in his native Northwest.

Apropriately for a historic journal, Berry’s article concentrates on Pepper’s ancestry and heritage, but it also has insights into his music. To read it, go here.
As for Berry’s film for Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Art Beat, it has shown up in two parts on YouTube. Its historical sequences include Pepper playing his most famous composition, “Witchi-Tai-To.” At the end of Part 2, host KC Cowan interviews Berry about Pepper and a proposed festival devoted to Pepper’s music. “The Pepper music just keeps rollin’ along,” he says. To see the film, go here…and here.

The artsjournal.com family of blogs becomes richer by one today. Howard Mandel (accent on the first syllable) debuts his Jazz Beyond Jazz with a manifesto that begins:

What if there’s more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz – and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz – could enrich your life?
What if jazz is the subtle, insightful, stylish, soulful, substantive guide to successful navigation of today’s big and little challenges?

He has other questions:

Like — if it’s so popular, why ain’t jazz rich? And how popular is it, anyway? What’s behind the imminent demise (or will it be another reorganization?) of the Jazz Alliance International, a basically bankrupt lobbying group established to function on the model of the far better positioned Country Music Foundation? Is it true Jazz at Lincoln Center loses money every time it has a show at 1000-seat Rose Hall, even if all tix sell out?

Howard has been around jazz a long time as a writer, producer, teacher and–for the past several years–as president of the Jazz Journalists Association. He is an insider. I look forward to his answers.
Welcome aboard, Howard. The more smart bloggers, the merrier–and the better informed we will all be.

John Coltrane
Not long after John Coltrane died forty years ago this week, Cannonball Adderley was the guest on Jazz Review, a radio program I did in New Orleans. He and Coltrane had forged a bond in the late 1950s as members of the Miles Davis Sextet. I wrote about their relationsip in a profile of Adderley in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers:

With Davis, Adderley began to alter his conception. Miles often leads in strange and reticent ways. But he was never reluctant to tell his sidemen when he didn’t like their playing. He told Cannonball he played too many notes, that when a note is played it should mean something. And Cannon, ever open, curious, receptive, listened more and more carefully to Davis’s playing and to his criticisms. Miles’s economy and his harmonic subtlety began to make themselves known in Adderley’s playing. After John Coltrane was added to the band, Cannon’s harmonic development accelerated through exposure to one of the most restlessly creative soloists in the history of jazz. The saxophonists rubbed together and threw off sparks. For a stunning instance of the way Coltrane infuenced Adderely, consult their solos on “Two Bass Hit” (Columbia) .
By the time of the epochal Kind of Blue session in 1959, the innocence in Julian’s solos had not been deflowered, but it had been tempered with deep insights into the possibilities of chords, with the wisdom that leads to a realization that one note can simultaneously serve more than one chord, with the knowledge that a pause may make a point more effectively than a trill. Cannonball became a more conservative player in the sense that he learned to hold something in reserve, but a more daring one in his harmonic aspects.
Cannonball told me on the air, “It’s still very hard for me to talk about him, except to say I learned more from him than from anybody.”

I remember waiting that night in 1967 for Adderley to say more about Coltrane, but he swallowed hard and waved me off. I introduced a piece of music. While it played, he told me that when it was over, he’d rather talk about something else, it was too soon to talk about John.
Unlike Cannonball and Coltrane, Sonny Rollins and Coltrane were not student and teacher, but equals. They shared Miles Davis in their backgrounds, but their approaches to improvisation were independent of one another, distinctive saxophone offshoots of a common source, Charlie Parker. In Like Sonny, a short film he put up on the Rollins web site yesterday, journalist Bret Primack explores the relationship between the two men. Rollins appraises Coltrane’s importance, and there are insights from saxophonists Jimmy Heath and Paul Jeffrey. The mini-documentary includes footage of Coltrane and Rollins playing–not together–and audio of Coltrane talking about Rollins. To view it, go here and marvel that four decades following his death, Coltrane’s presence in music is as powerful as that of his old friend who plays on.

From San Francisco comes word that Earl Watkins died early this month at the age of eighty-seven. Elegant, softspoken and full of knowledge, Watkins was a key figure in Bay Area jazz as a drummer and a historian of the music. He played with bands as varied as Bob Scobey’s traditional revival outfit at the Tin Angel and Earl “Fathah” Hines’ at the Hangover Club. He was the first drummer hired at Jimbo’s Bop City when that celebrated after hours club opened in 1950. He worked steadily until bad health sidelined him last fall, and he was a mentor to generations of young musicians.
Watkins spent most of his life in the Bay Area, but in the mid-forties played for a time in the Los Angeles big band of pianist Wilbert Baranco, a friend from his days as a World War Two US Navy musician. Another member of the rhythm section was bassist Charles Mingus. The band included Snooky Young, Melba Liston, Lucky Thompson and Britt Woodman. Watkins is with the Baranco band on four tracks of the CD Groovin’ High in L.A. 1946. He recorded at the Hangover Club in 1957 and ’58 with the Hines band, which had Muggsy Spanier, Darnell Howard, Jimmy Archey and Pops Foster. Some issues of the Hines-Spanier recording are subtitled, “The Chicago Dates,” but as Jepsen’s discography delicately puts it, “the above details are believed to be more correct.”
Mr. Watkins enriched my research when I was working on Paul Desmond’s biography. His generosity with his expertise about the San Francisco jazz scene of the forties and early fifties was invaluable. Earl was good company. I shall miss him.

If you are holding on to your turntable and LPs, you may be encouraged by what Katie Allen reports in The Guardian, especially if you are in the United Kingdom.

The format was supposed to have been badly wounded by the introduction of CDs and killed off completely by the ipod-generation that bought music online.
But in a rare case of cheerful news for the record labels, the latest phenomenon in a notoriously fickle industry is one nobody dared predict: a vinyl revival. Latest figures show a big jump in vinyl sales in the first half of this year, confirming the anecdotal evidence from specialist shops throughout the UK.

To read the whole thing, go here. Then follow up with Mr.On An Overgrown Path.
National Public Radio says it’s happening in the US, too–with a kind of reverse spin.

Sue Raney, Heart’s Desire: A Tribute To Doris Day (Fresh Sound).
Sue Raney is hardly without a following, but it is a puzzle why a singer of her gifts never achieved widespread fame. For far too long, general audiences have been unaware of Raney’s sublime work. Happily, EMI recently reissued All By Myself, one of her early Capitol albums. She seldom makes new recordings, and most of her reissued albums are on CDs that are hard to find except as imports. Since the death of Albert Marx and the end of his Discovery label, American companies have missed the boat on this exemplary artist. Raney’s new Doris Day tribute is one of the best albums of her career. The Spanish label Fresh Sound recorded it last fall in Los Angeles with a full orchestra arranged and conducted by Alan Broadbent.
Day was in the last wave of quality popular singers blessed with good material, and Raney makes the most of “Secret Love,” “Love Me Or Leave Me” and twelve other songs. A singer who has achieved technical perfection that encompasses tonal accuracy and range into the stratosphere, she provides a moment of thrilling vocalese when she parallels the lead trumpet in an interlude on “Sentimental Journey.” For the most part, however, she just sings the songs, and sings them superlatively. Her treatment of “Shanghai” (“I’m just around the corner in a phone booth….”) is a joy. But then, so is the entire CD. Broadbent’s arrangements perfectly complement Raney. There are succinct solos by Broadbent at the piano, Carmen Fanzone (Raney’s husband) on fluegelhorn and saxophonists Bob Sheppard and Gary Foster. Doris Day did not record Broadbent’s and Dave Frishberg’s “Heart’s Desire,” a modern ballad that equals the best of the great American song book, but Raney’s version dedicated to Ms. Day is likely to steal your heart.
To hear and see Raney as guest vocalist with a latterday Stan Kenton band, go here for “Let There Be Love” and “I Got It Bad And That Ain’t Good.” There is nothing wrong with your computer; the clip is black and white.

There are undoubtedly pairs of CDs farther apart in spirit than these; say, New Orleans Rhythm Kings 1922-1925 and The Art of Mabel Mercer. Well, I like both of those together under my roof. Weber and Salim are welcome to join them.
Eberhard Weber, Stages Of A Long Journey (ECM). In 2005 Weber’s home town, Stuttgart, Germany, threw him a 65th birthday celebration. Weber has staked out territory that borders the jazz avant garde, modern classical minimalism and Bill Evans romanticism, with a hint of Charles Mingus rambunctiousness. The concert in the acoustically blessed Theaterhaus included several of the composer and virtuoso bassist’s most popular pieces. The SWR Southwest Radio Orchestra Stuttgart provided support in passionate performances of Weber orchestrations, with their contrasting textures and arresting silences. Longtime Weber colleagues vibraharpist Gary Burton, saxophonist Jan Gabarek and pianist Wolfgang Dauner joined in the festivities, which ECM recorded with its customary clarity and fullness. Burton is as lyrical as ever. Gabarek plays with force that may surprise devotees of his work on ECM albums that verge on easy listening. The title composition features all hands, to dramatic effect.
Weber plays his electric upright bass, save on one piece, but it is the exception that steals the album. In a duo performance of Jerome Kern’s “Yesterdays” with his old friend Dauner, the natural tone, sensitivity and concentrated power of Weber’s work on double bass made me wish that he had reversed the CD’s eleven-to-one track ratio of electric to acoustic.
A.K. Salim, Pretty For The People (Savoy). Salim, whose surname was originally Atkinson, was a Chicago contemporary of trombonist Bennie Green and tenor saxophonist Gene Ammons. A composer and arranger who wrote for Lionel Hampton and Count Basie, among others, he left music for a time, then reappeared in the late 1950s to write for Tito Puente and lead a few record dates for Savoy. Salim’s writing reflects a bit of his admiration for Tadd Dameron, but has harmonic undercurrents and a sauciness all his own. What makes Pretty For The People so satisfying is the platform it provides for eight musicians who in a large sense epitomize the state of jazz in 1957, when it was recorded. They were:

Kenny Dorham, trumpet

Johnny Griffin, tenor saxophone

Buster Cooper, trombone

Pepper Adams, baritone saxophone

Wynton Kelly, piano

Paul Chamber, bass

Max Roach, drums

Chino Pozo, congas
Any reasonably hip jazz listener will see that list, consider the year and conjure up an approximation of the style. It was bebop, of course, going through a change wrought in part by the so-called hard bop movement that included groups led by Roach, Horace Silver, Art Blakey and–of increasing importance–Miles Davis. The most important thing about this recording, however, is not its watershed nature, but the music.
When the drummer Kenny Washington was in town with Bill Charlap’s trio a few weeks ago, he mentioned the album and, when I drew a blank, strongly recommended it. It took a week or so to acquire it. I have listened to it most days since, and–in the immortal words of James Brown–I feel good. The playing is unselfconscious and swinging. As extensively as I have heard them, Dorham, Adams and Griffin have never given me more enjoyment. Buster Cooper is a revelation. Even the era’s mandatory conga drums can’t derail the perfect rhythm section.
As a bonus, you get period liner notes of the exclamation point school, with passages like this:

Kenny Dorham floored me! Without the hustle-bustle of the whirring, buzzing, frantic backgrounds and tempi fans are coming to associate with him of late, he emerges sensitively and surely in the most perfect sequence of solo and ensemble statements heard from his corner in quite a spell!

An ex-Kentonite who has returned to the fold (Pepper Adams’s) statements are direct and skillful on the unwieldy instrument, yet not without bite!

!
Apparently, the album has never been out of print since its LP days. I’m not sure how it managed to escape me all these years, but I’m glad that I have it now. Thank you, Kenny Washington. I owe you one.

In response to the John Frigo item in the next exhibit, Rifftides reader Jim Brown writes:

In later years, I heard Johnny say of “Detour” that “it was all mine, words and music.” He explained that The Soft Winds was a co-op group, and they had an agreement that all of their names would go on anything they wrote while they were together. On his self-produced CD Rennnaissance Man (recorded 1985, released 1999), “Detour Ahead” is credited as “words and music by Johnny Frigo, with thanks to Lou Carter and Herb Ellis.”
Johnny was also a superb country and western fiddle player, and held a long time gig (decades) on the WLS Barn Dance. On one track of Rennaissance Man (Back Home Again in Indiana), the band breaks into a kicking C&W bag for a half chorus. The band is Larry Novak (p), Larry Gray (bs), Kenny Soderblom (ts), Pat Ferreri (g), Howard Levy (harm), and Rick Frigo (d).
Johnny continued to write music throughout his life, from jingles to jazz tunes. Rennaissance Man includes two of his later compositions, “Apogee” and “Bow Jest.” “Hey, Hey, Holy Mackerel” (the Cubs are on their way) (1969) was played on WGN, Chicago, for several decades as the opening theme for Cubs broadcasts. The title was an amalgam of lines used by Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse. Chicagoan Scott Simon chose it to close his remembrance on NPR’s Weekend Edition.
Thanks for the YouTube links. They are typical of Johnny’s writing and style. He would read several things like this during an evening in a club.

Mr. Brown, long a Chicagoan, now lives in northern California.

If John Frigo’s only contribution to good music had been his co-authorship of “Detour Ahead” and “I Told You I Loved You, Now Get Out,” he would have deserved admiration and gratitude. He wrote those songs in the late 1940s with Herb Ellis and Lou Carter, his partners in the elegant Soft Winds trio. Frigo played bass in the trio. The other members were guitarst Herb Ellis and pianist Lou Carter, buddies from his stint in the Jimmy Dorsey band. However, when he died last week in Chicago at the age of ninety, Frigo left a larger legacy than his compositions and the moderate success of The Soft Winds. In his last three decades, he established himself as a virtuoso jazz violinist.

Violin was Frigo’s first instrument when he was a child in Chicago. He turned to bass because it brought him more work. Late in his career he began concentrating again on violin, with harmonic resourcefulness, passion, swing and warmth of tone to rival Stuff Smith and Joe Venuti. Don Heckman of The Los Angeles Times reflected the opinion of other serious critics and listeners when he wrote that Frigo “made a convincing case for himself as the premier violinist in contemporary jazz.” A couple of Frigo’s latterday recordings support that case. Released on Hank O’Neal’s Chiaroscuro label, they have him in old and new settings.
In The Soft Winds Then and Now, one CD is devoted to reissues of the trio’s original recordings from 1947 and ’48, with Frigo playing bass. A second disc reunites Frigo, Carter and Ellis, with Frigo on violin and a guest, Keter Betts, on bass. The happiness of the occasion is reflected in the performances and in a long bonus track of Frigo, Carter and Ellis reminiscing. If anything, The Johnny Frigo Quartet Live at the 1997 Floating Jazz Festival represents with even greater clarity Frigo’s ability to generate excitement without sacrificing tone and lyricism. He demonstrates his power in a series of standards, ending in an incandescent “Lester Leaps In.”
Frigo was a poet and raconteur as well as a musician. There is little of his playing on internet videos, but several YouTube clips of decidedly unprofessional picture and sound quality capture something of his personality. They were made on the occasion of his 88th birthday celebration at the equally venerable Green Mill club in Chicago.

Vladimir Godar, Mater (ECM).
In the course of writing the notes for George Mraz’s forthcoming CD Moravian Gems, I made the aural acquaintance of the Czech singer, violinist and actress Iva Bittová and was enchanted by her. Mraz informed me that the composer Vladimír Godár, inspired by Bittová’s talent, wrote a mass for her. I acquired the CD of the work and have been listening to it over several weeks.

Bittová’s singing and Godár’s writing not only held up through all of those playings, but with repeated hearings the music took on greater depth and profundity. Bittová, the small string ensemble and DuÅ¡an Bill’s Bratislava Conservatory Choir under conductor Marek Å tryncl are moving in the pieces that precede the “Stabat Mater,” their serenity interrupted only by expressionist instrumental stabs in the “Magnificat.” Godár’s “Ecce Puer,” based on the James Joyce poem (Of the dark past/A child was born;/With joy and grief/My heart is torn), has Bittová floating ethereally between string passages.

In an ECM news release, Godár says, “Only when I got to know Iva, her musical intuition, energy and discipline, did I feel able to write a Stabat Mater for her. Her singing is pure and full of emotion and her articulation is just perfect.” A prominent figure in Czech culture, Bittová is best known as a singer of Moravian folk music, Janáček, and popular songs. Once you have heard her, you will not confuse her with what pop singing has come to mean in the United States. Her voice is deceptively light and the articulation that Godár admires is virtually free of vibrato, but when Bittová does apply it in the “Stabat Mater,” her notes bloom with color an operatic soprano would be pleased to achieve. The joy of her expression in the “Regina Coeli,” with its rhythmic displacement of “alleluia,” is priceless. She is exquisite in passages teaming her with solo violinist MiloÅ¡ Valent.

To people primarily interested in jazz, all of this may seem far afield. I can only refer you to the standard observed by Duke Ellington, who said, “There are two kinds of music, good music and the other kind.” Mater is good, and Bittová is addictive.
For video of Bittová performing two Janáček songs with the Stampa Quartet, go here.