Rifftides reader Peter Luce has a question:

I’m wondering if someone in Rifftides’ knowledgeable readership can help clarify some conflicting information I’ve read about Ellington’s used of trumpet, trombone and clarinet in the original recording of “Mood Indigo.” John Edward Hasse, in The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, writes:
“Ellington turned on their heads the usual roles of trombone, trumpet and clarinet, assigning the trombone the high notes and the clarinet the low.”
Alyn Shipton in A New History of Jazz writes:
“Whereas in the traditional order of things, the clarinet would take the upper part, the trombone the lower, with the trumpet in the middle, [Ellington] assigned the highest notes to the muted trumpet, the central part to a muted high-register trombone, and the lowest notes to a clarinet in its deep chalumeau register.”
Both of these jazz historians agree that the clarinet was assigned the low parts, but clearly disagree on the trumpet and trombone. Can any of your readers shed any light?

We have in the audience arrangers, composers, musicologists and other listeners with big ears. Click the link above, listen, send your answers to Mr. Luce’s query and we will post them.

Graham Collier, Hoarded Dreams (Cuneiform). Here we have further, but not recent , adventures of the pioneering British composer, arranger and leader. Hoarded Dreams is a seven-part suite commissioned by the Bracknell Jazz Festival in 1983. Following its one performance by a band of European stars plus trumpeters Kenny Wheeler (Canadian) and Ted Curson (American), the music has languished in a tape archive for twenty-four years. Collier is in a league with George Russell and Charles Mingus in the demanding discipline of writing for large ensembles populated by musicians whose improvisation goes beyond the fringe of standard harmony.

Graham Collier
The looseness and cogency in Collier’s arrangements are in ideal balance to contain the wildness, daring and–it must be emphasized–good humor of the soloists. There is no trace of the anger and willfull distortion that marred so much avant garde playing in the final decades of the twentieth century. The quality of solos and interchanges by familiar players like Curson, Wheeler, trumpeter Tomasz Stanko and the baritone sax powerhouse John Surman is equaled by musicians who deserve to be better known outside the British Isles. Among them are guitarist Ed Speight, drummer Ashley Brown, tenor saxophonist Art Themen and trombonist Conny Bauer. Bauer manages to combine elements of Bill Harris and Roswell Rudd, to startling effect. There is so much happening in this music, I suggest that you give it two or three hearings to begin to absorb its dynamics, complexity and subtlety and to sort out which parts are written and which improvised. It’s worth your time. For thoughts on a previous release by Collier, go here.

(An annual Rifftides reminder)
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.–Benjamin Franklin
America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.–Abraham Lincoln

André Previn, Alone (Emarcy). When in the mid-1960s Previn committed himself to classical conducting, composing and performing, he did not leave jazz behind. Technique, taste and touch intact, he plays thirteen pieces using his range of dynamics, rhythmic subtlety, harmonic sensibility and capacity for surprise. He recalls a lick or two from his period of intense jazz involvement in the 1950s, but the greater interest here is Previn’s depth of exploration within the chord structures of familiar songs including “Angel Eyes,” “Skylark” and “It Might As Well Be Spring.”
In a lovely moment in “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” he sets up tension with riff-like repetition then provides release with a key change. His abstract treatment of “I Can’t Get Started” encompasses passages of the lightning finger work that reflects his classical background. The repertoire includes an original blues; “Darkest Before The Dawn,” a Previn collaboration with Johnny Mercer; and Previn’s 1966 hit song “You’re Gonna Hear From Me.” If the last title implies further solo adventures, they will be welcome. This is Previn’s best solo album since his 1960 Harold Arlen collection.

Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond in duo were one of the great treats of the seventies even as Desmond contended with the lung cancer that was soon to end his life. Someone caught one of their reunions on tape–a short blues performance culminating in the “Audrey” or “Balcony Rock” melody that they favored for more than a quarter of a century. This is another example of why Desmond said that Brubeck was his ideal accompanist.

If you are planning on attending the Newport Jazz Festival, keep in mind that it is no longer held over the Fourth of July weekend but in the second weekend in August. For a rundown on this year’s event, go here. For a three-CD compilation scanning the festival’s fifty-one-year history, try this boxed set. You’ll find a wide range of performances from Louis Armstrong’s “Tin Roof Blues” to John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.” Among the treasures are the famous Duke Ellington “Dimineundo in Blue” with Paul Gonsalves’ marathon tenor sax solo, Sarah Vaughan’s “Black Coffee,” the Dizzy Gillespie big band with “I Remember Clifford” and the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s piquant version of Ellington’s “Jump For Joy.”

Over the next few postings, the Rifftides staff will attempt the impossible–to catch up with recordings. The best I can do is single out a few and offer observations in hopes that they will provide Rifftiders guideposts as they decide which CDs in the endless stream are worth their time and money. The observations will be brief. This time, three saxophonists:
Michael Brecker, Pilgrimage (Heads Up). With his disease in what turned out to be temporary remission, six months before he died Brecker played like a man who had found new life. He put himself in the studio with five musicians he adored–Herbie Hancock, Brad Mehldau, Pat Metheny, John Patitucci and Jack DeJohnette–and delivered power, humor and unremitting creativity. The swaggering “Tumbleweed” is a hoot. But, then, so is the whole album. What a goodbye.
Zoot Sims Plays Tenor & 4 Altos (Fresh Sound). The release date is a few days away, but you may want to get in line now. Zoot Sims Plays 4 Altos all but evaporated as an LP a few years after its release in 1957. Devotees of Sims and George Handy have been clamoring for its reissue ever since. Mint copies of the LP have sold well into three figures. Based on Sims’ initial improvisation, Handy brilliantly scored arrangements for four alto saxophones. Sims then overdubbed the additional three parts. It was a thoroughly musical tour de force. The CD also includes the 1956 album Zoot!, with Sims on alto and his mainstay tenor, one horn at a time. Handy plays piano on both albums. Trumpeter Nick Travis, bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Osie Johnson are on Zoot! Knobby Totah and Nick Stabulas are the bassist and drummer on 4 Altos. This is a reissue event.
Clifford Jordan in the World (Strata-East). On CD at last, this 1969 recording follows up the late tenor saxophonist’s Glass Bead Games. It doesn’t have quite the cohesive sweep of that equally rare recording, but it has Jordan at a high level matched by sidemen Kenny Dorham, Don Cherry, Julian Priester, Wynton Kelly, Wilbur Ware, Richard Davis and Albert “Tootie” Heath–an eminent cast of adventurers finding the sweet spot between bebop and free jazz. It is further proof, if proof is needed, that Jordan was one of the great tenor men.
The next few days will include a business trip. I’ll try to work in a few more in this series of CD alerts

Generally, I’m against exclamation points. The one in the headline is a justified exception.
If you miss Art Farmer as much as I do, follow this link. The YouTube information line tells you that the rhythm section is Ray Brown, Jacky Terrason and Alvin Queen. It doesn’t tell you that the tune is Charlie Parker’s “Moose the Mooche,” that Art, late in his life, was playing with enormous beauty and power, or that Ray Brown was the boss of the bass. If the shape-shifting video bothers you, close your eyes. This is a gem.

Anat Cohen has not quite taken New York by storm. In this culture, only rock stars or politicians who campaign like rock stars do that. But Cohen has established herself in the jazz capital of the world as one of the bright new reed artists. The story of her becoming a jazz musician in Tel Aviv, her musical brothers, and substantial samples of her music occupied a sizeable chunk of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday. To hear Liane Hansen’s feature on Anat Cohen, go here.

I value the decades I spent in television news. Helping people to understand the events and issues of the day was important work that brought satisfaction and, at its best, promoted the democratic ideal of an informed citizenry. Now from the Society of Professional Journalists come two items about the state of broadcast journalism that are enough to embarrass me on behalf of the profession, or craft, and make my teeth hurt. I hope these travesties move news consumers in Tyler, Texas, and Portland, Maine, to demand corrective action, but my guess is that the line between news and entertainment has been so thoroughly plowed under that audiences don’t see anything amiss. Viewers have been conditioned by local and national television and cable news to accept a standard of professionalism dominated by the ethics of beauty contests and show business promoters.
Here is the first item, from SPJ’s electronic newsletter :

BOOB TUBE? A television station in Tyler, Texas, has a beauty pagaent queen with no journalism experience anchoring a news show. The woman’s experiences are being chronicled for a reality television program titled, “Anchorwoman.” Cary Darling of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported SPJ President Christine Tatum’s reaction to the station’s hiring decision.

Next: This item from Tatum’s own newsletter. Be sure to follow her link to the television news staff’s promotion of a movie. The first time I watched it, I thought it was a gag, a parody. The second time, I shouted bad words at the screen.

Then, there’s the news team at WGME in Portland, Maine, which appears in one of the biggest assaults on journalism integrity ever to hit the silver screen. But, hey, I give them credit for managing to promote a theater and their newscast while also directing moviegoers to turn off their cell phones and pick up their trash. That takes real talent!
Wake up, people. You’re harming journalism — and looking fabulous as you do so.

I don’t know who the news director is at WGME, but the Radio Television News Directors Association does. The RTNDA should reprimand him or her and the news director at KYTX in Tyler for their breaches of professional standards and for further disillusioning Americans about the reliability of broadcast news.