Responding to the Rifftides review of the Cannonball Adderley CD in the current batch of Doug’s Picks, its producer writes:

A somewhat important point needs to be made about the current ownership of a significant, if relatively small, segment of the records produced by Orrin Keepnews. I’m in a pretty good position to know about his work, since that’s who I am. From 1953 to until the end of ’63, Bill Grauer and I were Riverside Records. I produced records; Grauer handled business matters. Then he died, following a heart attack. After having helped in the rise of such artists as Monk, Adderley, Montgomery, Bill Evans, Milt Jackson, Johnny Griffin, Jimmy Heath, Wynton Kelly and a few dozen others, Riverside (and assorted subsidiaries, mostly Jazzland) disappeared beneath the waves of a substantial bankruptcy.
A few years later, I started again, as Milestone Records, developed with considerable assistance from pianist-and-sometime-producer Dick Katz. From 1972 until 1980, Milestone and Riverside and I were all part of Fantasy, where I worked with such remarkable artists as Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, Joe Henderson, Bobby Timmons, et al. Having departed from Fantasy in 1980, Ieaving past labels behind, I eventually could point with pride to Landmark Records, which included Bobby Hutcherson, Mulgrew Miller, the Kronos Quartet, Wesla Whitfield. Somewhat confusingly, Landmark was only distributed, not owned, by Fantasy; therefore, it passed through other hands and — unlike just about everything else that once was mine, did not eventually end up owned by the Concord Group.
Currently, much of my energy is being devoted to a project under the auspices of Concord. Known as the “Keepnews Collection,” it involves remastering, additional performances, and thoroughly expanded annotation of some of the original productions described above. Of course you understand all this, but I much appreciate your lending me some space in which to attempt to explain these creative but confusing matters to your jazz-loving audience.
Best regards,
Orrin

Rifftides reader Eric R. Quick writes from Gaithersburg, Maryland about one of the CDs reviewed in this recent posting and about the valuable collection of which it is a part:

With regard to Red’s Good Groove – you say get it while you can (I already have the CD)
Will the OJC catalog (or much of it) be deleted by its current owners? What is the word?
Should I be purchasing all those discs I have never gotten around to buying?

I passed along Mr. Quick’s question to Nick Phillips of Concord Records, since Concord’s purchase of Fantasy Inc. the owner of the OJC (Original Jazz Classics) archive. I asked him about the closing of the company’s Berkeley, California, warehouse where much of the OJC stock was stored. Here is his reply:

While it is true that the Berkley warehouse is closed, that doesn’t mean we’re embarking on any kind of wholesale deletion campaign. That warehouse facility is closed because we’ve consolidated our warehousing operations to one facility, in Cleveland (where our Telarc operations are based).
We are not planning to “delete the OJC catalog.”
That said, as the consumer trends in acquiring music continues to shift toward downloads (much in the same way that there was a shift from LP to CD) there may be, however, instances of titles that simply are not selling any more on CD that we will not reprint in that format; but they will continue to be available via digital download (via i-tunes, emusic.com, etc.).
Finally, there are also many examples of titles where we’ve taken the OJC CD version of a classic album off of the market, when we reissue a new version of the same title (such as our RVG Remasters series, and our new Keepnews Collection series).

After reading the Rifftides remembrance of Tony Scott, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells sent a message from Stockholm. Mr. Wells discusses a facet of Scott’s musical life about which few people may have known.

I’m a bass player. I played with Tony in Germany in the mid-seventies and then in the US in the early 80s. There are two reasons i feel compelled to leave a comment here. The first is, Tony’s graduation didn’t cause me to remember him again. I never forgot him. During the last couple of years, i was trying to get together with him to do some new music. After tracing him through the Internet i set about nagging him to do a project with me. The other reason for my taking up bandwidth here is to mention something i never see in any of the biographical info on Tony. Tony played clarinet in a New Jersey based “Avant-Rock” band that i was in called “DP and the Grays”. We toured in the north-eastern US with this band during the early 1980s.
Tony was something of a mentor to the band’s leader and guitarist, Dani Petroni. The story was they met when Dani was playing in the streets in Rome. When Dani got back to the states and got his band together and a record deal, he called Tony and asked him to be in the band. Imagine what a surprise it was to me when i showed up to a gig and he was there. The band only released one LP which was recorded before Tony entered the band (Frank Lowe is on reeds on the album). We played all of the significant regional clubs of the time, CBGBs, The Stone Pony, Maxwell’s, etc. Tony Scott was an electrifying musician who elevated any and every musical situation he found himself in. It’s a shame that his playing with DP and the Grays wasn’t properly documented. I’m sure that somewhere out there are concert bootlegs of Tony Scott ripping it up. He is still the only musician i have ever heard who made a clarinet sound more ferocious than an over-driven guitar. It was a dimension of the multi-faceted Tony Scott that i feel privileged to have experienced first-hand.
Jair-Rohm Parker Wells

Bobby Broom, Song And Dance (Origin). Accompanied by bass and drums, the Sonny Rollins and Dr. John guitarist plays a relaxed program of his compositions and others by Schwartz & Dietz, The Beatles, Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Webb. A highlight: Broom’s harmonic adventuring in an extended cadenza in “Good Old Days,” the Little Rascals theme.
Frank Foster Loud Minority Band, Well Water (Piadrum). There is more than curiosity value in this session that went three decades between recording and release. It may not quite qualify as recovered treasure, but the writing and ensemble playing are fine, and Elvin Jones’s drumming is superb. In his liner notes Foster puts himself down, amusingly, but he solos well on tenor and soprano saxophones, and we are treated to several solos by Charles Sullivan, a drastically overlooked trumpeter.
Billy Strayhorn, Lush Life (Blue Note). Blue Note’s all-star variety show CD of Strayhorn compositions was designed as a supplement to the PBS television special of the same name. Hank Jones, Bill Charlap, Joe Lovano, Diane Reeves and Elvis Costello head the bill, with important participation by George Mraz, Paul Motian, Russell Malone, Peter Martin, Gregory Hutchinson and Reuben Rogers. Charlap sets the bar high by opening with a tight, smart “Fantastic Rhythm,” and all hands maintain his standard. The collection is weighted toward Reeves, who sings with simplicity and little of the overdone melisma that sometimes mars her work. Lovano’s tenor sax is a hoot on “Johnny Come Lately.”
Jackie Cain & Roy Kral, Echoes (Jazzed Media). Five years after Kral’s death comes the discovery of a new Jackie & Roy album. Beautifully recorded in 1976 at Howard Rumsey’s Concerts By The Sea and digitally remastered, it contains a rich cross-section of the repertoire of the preeminent jazz vocal duo of their time. Of any time.
Frank Collett, Music From The Movies (Fresh Sound). Following up his CD of the film music of Bronislaw Kaper, the pianist surveys some of the best known movie songs. Among them: “Laura,” “I Remember You,” “Tangerine” and “Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead.” With bassist Tom Warrington and drummer Joe La Barbera, or in solo, Collett builds new stories around old themes.

Exception

Red Garland, Red’s Good Groove (Jazzland OJC). I ran across this on the shelves when I was looking for something to play along with and, boy, was I glad. There’s nothing recent–and nothing dated–about it. Recorded in 1962 and reissued on CD in 2001, the master pianist is nominally in charge of an organized jam session with four of his peers. And what peers: Blue Mitchell, trumpet; Pepper Adams, baritone saxophone; Sam Jones, bass; and Philly Joe Jones, drums. Six good tunes. Relaxed, unpretentious blowing. Sheer pleasure. It’s still in the OJC catalog. Get it while you can and remember five great players, all departed.

In an attempt to keep my head above the rising tide of incoming CDs, in the next few posts I will offer impressions of a few recent arrivals.
Not all recent arrivals are new. Graham Collier’s Deep Dark Blue Centre (disconforme) has been around for forty years, but it is as fresh as last week. A bassist, composer, arranger and leader, Collier made British jazz more interesting in the 1960s and has helped to keep it that way. The album title is part of what Hoagy Carmichael is said to have answered when he was asked about the future of jazz. Whatever happened, he replied, he hoped the music would always keep its deep dark blue centre. In 1967, Collier succeeded in his exploration of new possibilities by holding that vital center (centre if you spell in British).
His writing for a pianoless seven-piece ensemble had economy, daring and just enough whimsy to prevent the music from perishing of an overdose of self-regard, the fate of so much avant garde jazz of the sixties. Collier was aided by his choice of musicians. His sidemen included the young Canadian trumpeter Kenny Wheeler, the Rhodesian trombonist Mike Gibbs, and drummer John Marshall, all to become important figures in jazz. Reed and woodwind experts Dave Aaron and Karl Jenkins and guitarist Philip Lee are equally important as soloists and as contributors to the ensemble work in this still vital recording. Remastered in digital sound for the CD version, this is a perenially interesting introduction to Collier’s work.

The May issue of Jazz Times has a Before & After listening test to which the pianist Jessica Williams subjected herself at my request. She was forthright, smart and funny in her comments on ten recordings. This is some of what she said about Fats Waller’s “Smashing Thirds,” recorded in 1929.

It’s together; it swings. It reached a crescendo, a pinnacle. Then it switched gears unexpectedly and came home and resolved itself. It had humor, drama, amazing technique. It’s a great piece of art.

This is a little of her reaction to a track from a Myra Melford album.

Maybe 40 years ago, I might have tried that on one tune, to express a lot of pent-up rage. I’d never consider doing it again. You can hurt yourself doing that. You can leave blood on the keys.

The Before & After feature is on line at the Jazz Times web site. It is interactive, with samples of the tracks Williams heard.

The Rifftides staff offers a belated welcome to Larry Blumenfeld, a new artsjournal.com blogger who recently launched Listen Good: Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and other sounds. Blumenfeld, a New Yorker, has established a three-months residency in New Orleans. He is covering efforts of the jazz community–and the city at large–to make a comeback in the face of daunting odds dealt more by man than by nature.

Anyone in New Orleans will offer stern correction should you refer to Katrina as a “natural disaster.”
And anyone involved in the city’s culture will point out the many unnatural barriers that have popped up in Katrina’s wake.
You’d think that New Orleans would welcome back the communities and establishments that anchor its culture.

Not so, Blumenfeld says. To read the whole thing, go here.
Cynthia Joyce has been blogging for artsjournal.com from New Orleans a little longer than Blumenfeld. Her Culture Gulf (an inspired title) can be read as a companion piece to Listen Good. As a former Orleanian whose heart still beats in the bend of the river, I frequently visit both, wishing that I were there.

It was not my intention today to serve as a referral service to other peoples’ work, but the two blogs mentioned in the above item deserved referral. The next recommendation demands it. Gene Weingarten wrote the story for last Sunday’s Washington Post. It is about the classical violinist Joshua Bell playing for tips in the Metro, Washington DC’s subway. It is about much more. It is about us, what is important to us and what we make time for in the United States in 2007. The story is long. It has a video component. To read, see and hear it, click here.
I thank Hotel Pianist for pointing us toward this remarkable piece of work.

Thanks to Rifftides reader Jon Foley for alerting us, in the wake of Tony Scott’s death, to what is evidently the colorful clarinetist’s final recording. Information about Scott’s CD/DVD is at this web site. Scroll down and if you wait for a video sample to load–slowly–you will be able to view a portion of the DVD.

Porno spammers continue to invade the Rifftides comments sector. You don’t don’t see what they send. Nor will you. The staff is redoubling efforts to combat the flood and taking additional steps to segregate the slime from your comments. There is evidence that some legitimate comments have been squeezed out, but we think we have corrected that problem.
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