Gerry Mulligan became famous well beyond jazz circles for his 1950s quartet that included Chet Baker on trumpet, succeeded by Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone. Mulligan achieved universal admiration among musicians and a large following of listeners with his Concert Jazz Band, which flourished in the early 1960s. He frequently said, though, that his greatest musical satisfaction came from the sextet he headed from 1955 through 1958.
The sextet made a brief preview appearance in December of 1954 when Mulligan played a concert at a high school in San Diego, California. On that occasion, Red Mitchell was on bass and Larry Bunker on drums. Then, the quartet with Brookmeyer was still Mulligan’s working band, but nine months later he constituted the sextet as a permanent entity. The front line had Mulligan’s baritone saxophone, Brookmeyer’s trombone, Zoot Sims’ tenor saxophone and Jon Eardley’s trumpet. The bassist was Peck Morrison, the drummer Dave Bailey. Eardley was replaced for a short time near the end of the band’s life by Don Ferrara, Morrison by Bill Crow. The sextet recorded three twelve-inch LPs on the Emarcy label, none of which the company ever reissued on CD. Verve, which bought the Emarcy masters, now offers one of the albums as a web site digital download.
All of the Mulligan Sextet recordings, including the San Diego concert first issued by Pacific Jazz, are in a new three-CD box on Spain’s Fresh Sound Label. To find it, go here. The set is also available here. It is called The Fabulous Gerry Mulligan Sextet. The hyperbole of the title is justified. Mulligan’s leadership molded the six men into a unit capable of bringing to life the ambitious vision he laid out in his compositions and arranging. They combined the spontaneity of a freewheeling jam session with the disciplined performance of a chamber group. Because of Mulligan’s voicings, the horn lines that he layered and intertwined, and the intensely close relationships among the players, the group often sounds twice its size. The critic Ralph J. Gleason once characterized the effect of the sextet’s horns at their most rambunctious as “a boiling and bubbling stew which can raise me right off the floor.”
The pieces include Mulligan’s “Apple Core,” “Nights at the Turntable” and “Elevation,” Jerry Lloyd’s “Mud Bug,” Eardley’s “Demanton” (read it backward), and Mulligan’s ingenious treatments of standards. Two Duke Ellington medleys, the impressionistic “La plus que lente” and a glorious “Sweet and Lovely” are highlights of an album of highlights. There is not a dull moment in thirty-seven tracks. Among other attributes, these sextet recordings have some of the most inspired and ebullient Zoot Sims on record, compelling statements by Brookmeyer in the gruff-old-man style of his youth, and Mulligan’s baritone in full, majestic bloom. Eardley, with his fleet lines and slightly acerbic tone, fit perfectly with his more famous colleagues.
Later, Mulligan formed other sextets of various instrumentations. The enchanting Night Lights has the one with Brookmeyer, trumpeter Art Farmer and guitaritst Jim Hall. But there was never another Mulligan sextet that had quite the vivacity and sense of discovery of the band with Sims, Brookmeyer and Eardley. The digital remastering and reissue production by Dick Bank give the recordings greater depth and brilliance than they had in their original format. This welcome CD reissue of an important chapter in modern American music has been needed for a long time.
Coming soon: a few thoughts about Brookmeyer’s latest, Spirit Music.

Referring to the WKCR Lennie Tristano Festival and, on the other hand, the general white bread-with-mayonnaise quality of most radio today, particularly in regard to jazz, DevraDoWrite, observes:

I know a lot of dee-jays who are nearly in tears because their bosses, not wanting them to break the musical spell with any talk, won’t even allow them to tell us listeners who’s playing on a particular track let alone mention that the artist might be appearing in town.

Amen. Maybe it’s time to again lower on the pabulum purveyors and their consultants who run most radio operations, public and private. Not that it ever does much good. Apparently, listeners are getting what they want, or they would rise up against mediocrity. To read all of Devra’s posting, go here.

As I write this, I’m hearing Lennie Tristano talk about his admiration for Charlie Parker. The archived 1973 interview with Tristano, who died in 1978, is a part of a four-day celebration of his music by WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University. WKCR is billing it as a Tristano festival. It will run through noon EST on Saturday, November 11.
Tristano just said:

I had the best possible opportunity of anybody in the forties and fifties, because I was the only one who wasn’t doing what Bird was doing.

Tristano admirers undoubtedly know about the marathon broadcast and are listening. Those unfamiliar with his importance will be enlightened. In the New York area, tune your radio to 89.9 FM. In the rest of the world, the streaming audio is available on the web. Go here and click on “Live Broadcast” at the bottom of the page.
The following paragraphs are from the station’s news release.

A pivotal and often overlooked figure in jazz, Lennie Tristano was a virtuosic pianist whose singular achievements in performance, composition and teaching continue to resonate in today’s world. Born in 1919 in Chicago, he immersed himself in the New York scene at a time when Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were in the midst of their revolutionary collaborations. Tristano quickly integrated into the bebop community and went on to build a musical world based on a distinct concept of improvisation.
Our festival seeks to present the many sides of Tristano’s genius. In addition to an airing of his entire recorded output, there will be in depth features on his compositional techniques and teaching methodology, as well as interviews with the former colleagues and students of Tristano who represent his living legacy.
The festival will include a chronological presentation of Tristano’s complete discography, presented uninterrupted throughout the day of Friday, November 10th.

The Rifftides staff encourages comments about the broadcast and about Tristano. Please use the comment link at the bottom of this posting or send an e-mail message to the address in the right column.

A recurring theme of this blog is the universality and remarkably consistent quality of jazz in nearly every precinct of the globe. Jay Thomas has done his part to not only stimulate the growth of that quality abroad, but also to see that those of us in the music’s homeland get to hear the new generation of players from abroad. The trumpeter-saxophonist-flutist-leader and international sojourner spends a good deal of time in Japan and frequently imports his Japanese colleagues to work with him in the US.
A few days ago, Thomas’s East/West Jazz Alliance kicked off Seattle’s Earshot Jazz Festival with a concert at City Hall. In addition to Thomas, the band has pianist John Hansen, bassist Phil Sparks, alto saxophonist Atsushi Ikeda, tenor saxophonist Yasahiro Kohama and drummer Daisuke Kurata. Seattle’s remarkably hip municipal website has streaming video of the concert–nearly an hour long. To see it, go here. The Thomas concert is the first item.
Scrolling down the page, you will find video performances by The Tiptons, the energetic all-female saxophone quartet and drummer; and a stimulating set by the veteran trombonist Julian Priester’s quartet, which includes the rising young pianist Dawn Clement. Immediately below the Thomas video is the link to a November 12 recital by pianist Byron Schenkman with Mozart’s delicate Sonata in D-minor K31, and a set of Schubert’s compelling late piano pieces performed with notable vigor.
Seattlites can conduct their municipal business at city hall, then stop by the atrium for live music. There are compensations for living with all that rain.
Jay Thomas will be taking an edition of the East/West Jazz Alliance into The Seasons Saturday, November 11. I will have the pleasure of introducing the band. If you find yourself in Yakima, Washington, that night and attend the concert, please make yourself known.

Thanks to Bob Young of Jazz Boston for adding Rifftides to the links from the site, which chronicles jazz people and events in the Boston area and includes Carol Sloane, Joe Lovano, Danilo Perez, Terri Lynn Carrington and Charlie Kohlhase on its board of artistic advisers. They must be giving good advice; it is a web site with good design, sensible organization, extensive information and hip background music .
Thanks to Mr. Young, also, for including among Jazz Boston’s links one to a collection of pieces Tony Gieske has written and illustrated with his photographs over the years. Gieske, once with The Washington Post, now writes for the Hollywood Reporter. His site is called Remembrance of Swings Past. It has columns, essays, and anecdotes about Woody Herman, Miles Davis, Tiny Grimes, Jimmy Rowles, Ravi Coltrane, Bob Brookmeyer, Sam Rivers, Peggy Lee, Charles Lloyd Conte Candoli, Chet Baker, the young trumpeter Maurice Brown and a couple of dozen others. Gieske is good at description:

Brookmeyer poked the mike deep into the bell of his instrument and began producing that drawly, equable sound of his, buzzy and furry and intimate. The brilliant guitarist Larry Koonse, immaculate and cool, gave the sound a silvery core as the two exposed the text of whatever familiar theme they had chosen.

Gieske has an ear for quotes, like this one from a profile of Annie Ross, the heroine of Lambert, Hendricks and Ross:

The other day I was walking along Madison Avenue and I passed a police station and a black policeman came out off duty and he’s walking up the street singing ‘Moody’s Mood for Love.’ He did the female chorus, the whole thing, walking along Madison Avenue. Out of sight! I was thrilled.

And this one from Tiny Grimes recalling New York in 1944:

I had a little job with my quartet down on 52nd Street, and Charlie Parker used to come in, and I used to let him play, you know? He couldn’t get a job nowhere because nobody at that time understood the music. But I could dig it. I just couldn’t play it that well.
But Bird was there every night. He was there so often, they thought he was workin’ there. And then when I got this record date for my group, the producer at Savoy over in New Jersey – he really didn’t want him. I talked him into it. It was Parker’s first real record date, where somebody let him play.

I am adding Jazz Boston and Remembrance of Swings Past to the links in the right-hand column. Pay them a visit. Don’t forget to come back.

In the recent Rifftides piece about Freedom and Josef Skvorecky, I named several jazz musicians from former Communist countries who have risen to the top of their profession. One of them was the Czech pianist Emil Viklický.
The world is small and tightly interconnected. A day or two after the piece appeared, I got a message from Viklický informing me that he knows Skvorecky “quite well” and that he contributed an important element to a masterly–and very funny–Skvorecky novel. Emil wrote:

There is my long letter to him, written in 1974 to Canada, published as a
resolution of novel The Engineer of Human Souls.

The Engineer of Human Souls rambles through life under the Nazis, the Communists, academia and the human condition. In this brilliant roman á clef, the narrator, a Czech professor of literature teaching in Toronto, is Skvorecky once removed. One of the characters from his Czech past is his friend Benno Manes, described by Viklický in his message as “dirty speaking fabulous trumpetist.” Viklický discloses that Manes’ had a counterpart in real life.

Skvorecky of course changed all real names to fictive names. It was necessary back in 1974. The letter describes the death of Pavel Bayerle, bandleader, trumpeter, a close friend of Skvorecky. I was in army big band in October 1971 when Bayerle died of heart attack on the stage while conducting the band in Russian-occupied army barracks in Olomouc. Bayerle was 47 then. My letter to Josef remained in the novel practically intact. Skvorecky received my letter just when he was finishing Engineer.
Skvorecky changed Olomouc army barracks to Bratislava Russian barracks. In Russian barracks, we often played longer improvisations mostly ending in aggresive free music. It was our kind of protest. We knew that Russian listeners didn’t like it that way.

As it appears in the book, the letter mentions a singer, Miluska Paterjzlova; a guitarist named Karel Kozel, “a big handsome fellow with a green Gibson;” the MC, Private Hemele; and a trumpeter called Pavel Zemecnik who helps the letter writer, “Desmosthenes,” pull the stage curtain closed when Benno Manes dies as he is conducting. They were fictional names of Viklicky’s real bandmates.

Real singer name was Helena Foltynova, lately married as Helena Viktorinova, still singing some backgrounds for pop stars now. She was Marilin Monroe type of beauty, at the time simply stunning. Guitarist real name was Zdenek Fanta, his Gibson was dark red colour. Private Hemele is well-known actor Jan Kanyza; Trumpeter, who closed yellow curtain from the other side, was Petr Fink. Bayerle died in the 5th bar of letter D of his own song.

From the letter about Benno Manes’ death in Skvorecky’s novel:

The last thing I remember, and I’ll never forget it, was how he was lying there in that empty hall on an empty stage, with his huge belly completely purple, and dark grey trousers, and you couldn’t see his head for the stomach, and all around there was yellow bunting, that awful yellow bunting. Yellow and purple, maybe the bust of some statesman behind it but all I could see when I looked into the hall for the last time was that ghastly purple stomach and the yellow bunting. Then we left for Prague.
I thought you might be interested in how your friend died.

They went on to become friends, the novelist emerging as a major literary figure; the pianist about to leave the army, devote himself to jazz and become one of Europe’s most famous jazz musicians. Viklicky adds:

When my quartet played in Chicago in 1991, Skvorecky came down from Toronto and stayed with the band for a few days. I think he was fascinated by musicians’ talk, because he stayed through rehearsals as well. Backstage slang in ’91 was probably different than back in the ’40s when Skvorecky was young. But he seemed to love to listen to it. And maybe put it into his next novel.

Yes, the world is small and tightly interconnected.

When they played The Seasons the other night, it had been nine months since I heard alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón’s quartet. I was impressed with the band at the Portland Jazz Festival and with Zenón’s Jíbaro CD. In Feburary, the leader’s fellow Puerto Rican Henry Cole had recently replaced the formidable Antonio Sánchez on drums and was working into the group. Cole’s working-in is long past. The band has the cohesion, mutuality of direction and sense of purpose that come when performance together night after night settles individual players into a unit.
Zenón, Cole, bassist Hans Glawischnig and pianist Luis Perdomo are without question a unit. Playing to a hinterlands audience unsure of what to expect from a band most of them had neither heard nor heard of, Zenón took the bold step of performing the tunes in each of two sets without interruption. Before intermission, all of the pieces but two new compositions, “Camarón” and “Penta” were from the Jíbaro album. In the second set, the music consisted only of fresh music by Zenón, unified in the form of a suite.
I could sense surprise and mild discomfort in the hall when the playing in the first set had continued without a break for fifteen or twenty minutes. Gradually, the content of Zenón’s music, the band’s intensity and the passion of the soloing created the awareness that this was chamber music of a high order; captivating chamber music flowing with Latin pulses, lyricism and yearning, fed by jazz sensibility and swing. Zenón’s playing is unlike that of any other young alto saxophonist of whom I am aware. He has the potential to become one of those soloists–not uncommon a couple of generations ago–whom the average listener can recognize after a few notes. Cole is an equally distinctive player. The four members of the band interact with almost eery interconnectedness inside complex music made to sound natural and easy.
I have frequently commented here on the regrettable trend of knee-jerk standing ovations. If everything deserves a standing ovation, nothing deserves one. When the concert ended, there was a long standing ovation full of shouts and whistles. The Zenóns deserved it.
The new pieces that made up that entrancing second half were “Ulysses in Slow Motion,” “Santo,” “Lamamilla” and “3rd Dimension.” None has been recorded. Zenón told me that he hopes to take the band into the studio early next year and incorporate the new music into a CD. Good.

From time to time, John Birchard of the Voice of America news staff shares with Rifftides his impressions of musical events in the District of Columbia and environs.

Can a ghost band make art? For example, does one consider a Glenn Miller Orchestra led by Sam Donahue capable of creating music that stands the test of time? How about the group led by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter that featured Wallace Roney in the role of Miles Davis? Is their collaboration to be considered on the same plane as the Miles Davis Quintet? If not, why not?
The crowd that gathered for the second set by Louis Hayes and the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band Featuring Jeremy Pelt (try fitting THAT on the marquee) at the KC Jazz Club at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (one long name deserves another) in Washington, DC last night didn’t seem to be mulling over such questions.
Whether they washed up on a wave of nostalgia–a number of gray heads in the audience could have been around back in the day for the Adderleys’ own group–or were there out of curiosity, they were treated to an hour and a half of tunes associated with Julian and Nat, served hot and tasty.
The set started with the Quincy Jones composition “Jessica’s Day”. The ensemble was tight and snappy, the solos bore promise of a good night. Though forty years have passed since Louis Hayes was a young up-and-comer, he still can drive a band, no matter the tempo. Next on the menu was “Lisa” by the late Victor Feldman. Hayes gives Pelt considerable solo space and the trumpeter uses it well. He reminds me of Freddie Hubbard in his attack and the confidence he exudes. Pelt was featured again, this time in a Harmon mute, on “Naturally” (spelling?). The rhythm section stayed with a feeling of 2/4 throughout, Hayes on brushes.
Julius Tolentino is a suitable stand-in for Cannonball. I had not heard the altoist before and on his feature “Bohemia After Dark”, he called up images of the Far East and snake charmers. Nicely done. Apparently, Tolentino is new to the band. When Hayes introduced him to the audience, he called him “Julian Tarantino”, which caused the rest of band to burst into laughter. Seems it’s happened before.
The set continued with Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere”, a showcase for bassist Gerald Cannon, whose funky walking solo brought yells from the audience, and for pianist Rick Germanson, whose offering was appropriately soulful. Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” closed the evening with Tolentino evoking Julian’s spirit And, again, Jeremy Pelt showed why he’s a star on the rise, with a swaggering, blues-inflected solo.
Does Louis Hayes front this band because he loves the music and wants to share it, or is it because he recognizes that he can earn a living from being the only surviving alumnus of a famous jazz group? Maybe it’s both. The fact is this is a very good band, playing strong material well. If last night’s audience is any indication, the public approves.
Having raised the question whether this is art or commerce, my vote is for commerce–but it surely is enjoyable commerce.
Your Washington correspondent,
John Birchard

For a Rifftides review of a CD by Hayes and the Cannonball Adderley Legacy Band, click here.

Continuing the Adderley theme, a Rifftides reader who identifies himself as El Destiny, sent the following message, which includes a link.

This article includes a rare mp3 of Cannonball Adderley jamming with a novelty act of singing squirrels.
The article tells the story of jazzman Don Elliott and partner Sascha Burland recording the track in an attempt to compete with Alvin & the Chipmunks. (Who had their own troubles with record labels…!)

Within the article are several links, including one to an MP3 of Cannonball playing “Yardbird Suite” with Elliott’s and Burland’s Nutty Squirrels.

After reading the Rifftides item about Josef Skvorecky’s novel The Bass Saxophone, the British bassist, composer and leader Graham Collier wrote:

Some years ago I suggested to BBC radio that they adapt The Bass Saxophone, which they duly did with my music. Art Themen, best known as a tenor sax player, played the bass sax for the occasion. He owned a bass saxphone, which helped, but I asked him for this gig because–as I had seen in other collaborations with him–he had the rare ability to “act with his instrument.” This he did and the adaptation won a Sony Radio award.
The first time I heard Art play the instrument it shook the floor–and the people standing outside a nearby pub. I suggested that what I’d heard would do for the part where the boy in The Bass Saxophone was playing the instrument for the first time, but that for the final sequence–where he rides over the oom-pah band “like a dancing male gorilla”–he would need to practice. Which he did, and the end result was amazing. Art can be heard on bass saxophone in similar vein in my 1994 CD Charles River Fragments (Jazzprint).

Charles River Fragments is also available as a digital download.