A couple of faithful Rifftides readers comment on the posting about the Bill Evans- Kenny Burrell video on YouTube. Ted O’Reilly counters my supposition that Evans and Burrell recorded together only one other time. He writes:

Bill and Kenny are both sidemen with Chet Baker on Chet — The Lyrical Trumpet of Chet Baker, Riverside OJC CD-087-2.

I had forgotten that. Thanks for the reminder.
Mel Narunsky writes:

Listening to Bill Evans and Kenny Burrell brings to mind a probably highly contentious question that I’ve seen posed on the web: Was Bill Evans a cocktail pianist?
Being a Bill Evans fan I was initially taken aback at such a question until I remembered a good example of such a possibility.
On his CD Alone (Again) (Fantasy) he plays, for 13 minutes and 41 seconds what became a much lauded performance of “People.”
I’ve never seen this performance criticized – on the contrary – but listen to it: for the whole 13 plus minutes he plays the melody only – not a bar of improvisation – and to my mind it becomes extremely boring.
So, despite being usually an inventive improviser – he could at times be something of a cocktail pianist as well.

Perhaps he could be, but “People” is not evidence of it.
Piano improvisation consists of more than variations on melody or the creation of new melody. I hear Evans’s “People” as a performance of orchestral proportions, with a rich palette of harmonic voicings, subtle and varied rhythmic patterns, exquisite use of timing, phrasing, dynamics and space. It has delicate balances between the intensities of the choruses and, within each chorus, among the internal sections of the song. In nine choruses of “People,” Evans alternates between two keys, creating sunny or reflective moods in B-flat, mysterious and occasionally stormy ones in the key of E, although he often departs from that pattern. He glorifies a less than glorious melody with his harmonic genius and his pianism. If that is cocktail piano, take me to the lounge where music like this is being played and I’ll buy you drinks all night.

As far as I knew until today, Bill Evans and guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded together only once, on Evans’ 1976 Quintessence session, which also included tenor saxophonist Harold Land, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The resourceful Jan Stevens of The Bill Evans Web Pages has pointed the way to another collaboration between Evans and Burrell, at the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival. They played Thad Jones’ “A Child is Born,” one of the tunes from Quintessence. Evans was rarely caught smiling on camera, but he smiled radiantly–and for good reason–as he and Burrell finished a notably sensitive performance. To see and hear them, click here.

The conventional web widsom is that the possibilities of the internet are infinite. Fellow blogger DevraDoWrite, aka Devra Hall, seems determined to prove the theory. She has launched a new multifaceted venture in addition to her blog. It’s called SnapSizzleBop! The exclamation point is part of the title, and no wonder. She says the site is destined for expansion, but the beta version is already a house of many mansions. You can check it out by going first to DevraDoWrite or see it directly by going here. The Rifftides staff wishes Devra well and expects to see an item explaining how she sustains all that creative energy.

ASCAP (American Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers) has formally announced the winners of its 39th annual Deems Taylor Awards. As promised earlier, when I learned that Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond is a winner, here is the alphabetical list of authors and publishers to be honored at the December 7 ceremony at Lincoln Center in New York City.

· Julia Blackburn for With Billie, published by Pantheon Books

· Anna Marie Busse Berger for Medieval Music and the Art of Memory, published by University of California Press

· Jeff Chang for Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hip Generation, published by St. Martin’s Press/Picador

· Boris Gasparov for Five Operas and a Symphony, published by Yale University Press

· Kenneth Morgan for Fritz Reiner: Maestro and Martinet, published by University of Illinois Press

· Tom Piazza for Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen, published by Random House

· Michael V. Pisani for Imagining Native America in Music, published by Yale University Press
· Doug Ramsey for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, published by Parkside Publications

· George Rochberg for The Aesthetics of Survival, A Composer’s View of Twentieth-Century Music, published by University of Michigan Press

Deems Taylor (1885-1966) was a composer and music critic. He wrote suites, notably Through The Looking Glass and The Chambered Nautilus, and a number of other orchestral works. Two of his operas, The King’s Henchman and Peter Ibbetson, were commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera Company. An influential figure in American culture for more than three decades, he was ASCAP’s president for six years. Taylor was an intimate of the group of writers, actors and critics known as the Algonquin Round Table. The Algonquin group of literary tastemakers of the 1920s included Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Alexander Wolcott and Dorothy Parker.
For a complete list of the 2006 Deems Taylor Award winners in all fields, click here to go to the ASCAP announcement.

Johnnie Taylor, the blues singer, called me up one day and said I ought to play some rock and roll. No. No way. The blues, yes, that’s my heart. And let me play some Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, good standards, improvise on those. But play rock and roll? No, sir, that just isn’t music to me. I’d wash dishes first.

–Red Garland, pianist, quoted in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.

It was not for nothing that Dinah Washington was called, or called herself, The Queen of The Blues. Whatever she sang was infected with the blues. While YouTube still exists, or before it is transformed by new ownership or copyright suits, do not miss the opportunity to see and hear a pertinent example of her alchemy, at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. Among the accompanists are Terry Gibbs, who shares his vibes solo with Dinah; trombonist Urbie Green; and drummer Max Roach. The audience shots are priceless, the cameraman is fascinated with Ms. Washington’s strategically placed large pink bow, and the whole venture captures the old days of the Newport festival at its feel-good best. Click here.

I actually tried to get a sound as big as Adrian Rollini, who was playing bass sax at that time . . . so I suppose whatever sound I get goes back to that.
–Harry Carney
No baritone player should be afraid of the noise it makes. Harry Carney isn’t.
–Pepper Adams

Dan Nimmer’s tale of talent and a lucky break resembles the story line of a feel-good movie. An accomplished twenty-one-year-old pianist, he moved from his native Milwaukee to New York City in early 2004. Wynton Marsalis heard him and was so impressed that when the piano chair in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra became vacant, Marsalis put Nimmer in it. The pianist also tours as a member of Marsalis’s quartet, catapulted virtually overnight into the upper echelons of the world’s jazz capital. Marsalis may have been influenced in his hiring decision by the fact that Nimmer can play uncannily like Wynton Kelly. Marsalis was named for Kelly, one of his pianist father Ellis’s musical heroes and role models, and his admiration for Kelly is well known.
In any case, Nimmer’s talents are on impressive display in a new CD called Kelly Blue (Venus) after the title tune composed by Wynton Kelly. In addition to the aural evidence, drummer Jimmy Cobb’s presence on the album bespeaks endorsement of Nimmer’s authenticity in the Kelly style. Cobb was Kelly’s rhythm section mate in the Miles Davis quintet and sextet of the late 1950s and early sixties and is the drummer on Kelly’s own 1959 album called–guess what–Kelly Blue. Kelly was noted for a combination of driving swing, delicacy of touch and harmonic depth. Nimmer achieves all of that–relaxation on top of the beat, filagreed runs, blues inflections, left-hand punctuations on the off-beats, lightning parallel octives, deep swing. John Webber is the bassist, performing his Paul Chambers role so convincingly that someone hearing the CD in a blindfold test might confidently guess that it was a previously unreleased album by Kelly’s trio. Kelly died in 1971 at the age of thirty-nine.
Where Nimmer goes from here, whether he has aspirations and inclinations outside of his Kelly bag, remains to be disclosed. For now, it’s great fun to hear him emulating one of the most affecting of all jazz pianists. For background on Nimmer, plus photographs and an interview, go here.
Venus, imported from Japan, specializes, although not exclusively, in piano trios. Among the pianists recorded by Tetsuo Hara, the label’s impresario, are Eddie Higgins, Bill Charlap, Kenny Barron, Denny Zeitlin, Steve Kuhn, Barry Harris, Harold Mabern and Jacky Terrasson. On Hara’s trips to New York to capture leading jazz artists, he has also recorded guitarist Russell Malone, saxophonists Archie Shepp, Bob Kindred and Eric Alexander, and the One For All group with Alexander, Jim Rotondi, Steve Davis, David Hazeltine, David Williams and Joe Farnsworth. Venus CDs are beautifully recorded and packaged, often with cover photographs of beautiful women, some less than fully clothed. The albums harken back to the 1950s and sixties when American labels like Riverside, Blue Note, Prestige, Fantasy and Contemporary filled the mainstream niche that Venus, Criss Cross, Marshmallow and other overseas companies now aim to occupy.
I asked Charlap and Higgins how it is to work with Hara.
Charlap:

He makes some suggestion of tunes. Mostly, he just allows the dates to happen, lets the guys play. It’s almost like the old companies used to be. Nobody was worried about being on magazine covers. They just played. He has created a market in Japan.

Higgins:

His taste in jazz runs pretty much along the lines of the Great American Song Book. When he gets ready to do a CD, he sends Todd Barkan, his U.S. producer, a list of tunes for me to choose from. Todd reads me the list over the phone and we decide on 14 or so that I like. Then we pick sidemen, set a date and a studio, and I fly to NYC and record it–two or sometimes three CDs in a two-to-four day period. Venus is geared to the Japanese market, where it flourishes. Rarely a month goes by without a Venus CD in the #1 spot on the Swing Journal jazz charts. As far as the U.S. market is concerned, I don’t think that Venus has a distribution setup, although Amazon lists some at high prices.

When Venus CDs show up in US stores and on web sites, they go for import prices as high as thirty-five dollars. eJazzLines‘ $23.73 price for Nimmer’s Kelly Blue indicates that if you shop around, you may find them for less than $30.00 US. If you read Japanese, you may want to explore Venus’s web site.

News has arrived of the death of Claude Luter, the French trumpeter turned clarinetist who formed a close friendship with Louis Armstrong. Luter died last Friday at eighty-three. Already a success at the age of twenty-five when he met Armstrong at the Nice Jazz Festival in 1948, his popularity expanded during the late 1940s and remained high for the rest of the century. His band was in demand among the intelligentsia and glitterati who helped make jazz a French passion during the postwar years. Luter patterned his soprano saxophone playing after that of Sidney Bechet, Armstrong’s counterpart as a genius of New Orleans music. He became Bechet’s friend and disciple.
Agence France-Presse quotes French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres describing Luter as “a very great name in French jazz”:

For me as for so many, the name of Claude Luter will be forever associated with Saint Germain des Pres in the post-war years, with its innumerable jazz clubs where one ran across Camus, Sartre, Giacometti, Boris Vian, Raymond Queneau and so many others. Now and for ever he will be remembered as one of the remarkable men who symbolised this highly talented epoch.

This clip from a 1958 Edward R. Murrow documentary on CBS-TV, Satchmo The Great, shows Armstrong sitting in with Luter’s band in a Parisian club. The event may have been staged for the filming, but the affection between Armstrong and Luter was not.

The Rifftides staff loves to get your comments. We do not love to get messages in the comments file that are solicitations for Viagra, deviant sex, investment opportunities and cheap electronic equipment. Bogus comments come in by the dozens, doing the sender no good; they are dispatched to never-never land. Today, as I was executing several of these unwelcome intruders, I inadvertenty checked a legitimate comment about the Buck O’Neil quote two items down the page. All I saw of it before I answered yes to the “Do You Want To Delete These Comments” query was the name Ted Williams, and–poof–it was gone.
If the sender will launch it again, I will control my itchy trigger finger and share the comment with all of you.
(LATER) The sender, John Salmon, did. The comment is now posted with the Buck O’Neil item.
Reader comments are always welcome. Let ’em fly.