Several versions of a joke usually beginning something like, “A note walks into a bar….” are floating around the internet. Buddy DeFranco forwarded the most elaborate I’ve seen. The Rifftides management makes no claims about the reliability of the musicology in this tale:

A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says: “Sorry, but we don’t serve minors.” So, the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between them. After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished: the G is out flat. An F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.
A D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying, “Excuse me. I’ll just be a second.”
An A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that this relative of C is not a minor.
Then the bartender notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar and exclaims: “Get out now! You’re the seventh minor I’ve found in this bar tonight.”
The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night in a 3-piece suit with nicely shined shoes. The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company downsized) says: “You’re looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could be a major development.” This proves to be the case, as the E-flat takes off the suit, and everything else, and stands there au naturel.
Eventually, the C sobers up, and realizes in horror that he’s under a rest. The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 years of DS without Coda at an upscale correctional facility. On appeal, however, the C is found innocent of any wrongdoing, even accidental, and that all accusations to the contrary are bassless.
The bartender decides, however, that since he’s only had tenor so patrons, the soprano out in the bathroom, and everything has become alto much treble, he needs a rest – and closes the bar.

Reaction to the Bush administration’s cockeyed attempt to emasculate the Voice of America through budget cuts is getting shocked attention not only among policy analysts at home but also from members of the VOA’s audience abroad. Here is part of a letter from a New Delhi man named Vijay Kranti to The Washington Times, a heavily conservative newspaper. Earlier, the Times‘s editorial page urged the White House to abandon its plan to cut English language news broadcasts by slashing VOA’s funding.

I wonder if the U.S. policy-makers ever knew that the total population of shortwave radio listeners in India alone is more than total number of U.S. voters on any given day. Unlike me, most of these listeners live in areas where they have just “zero” or not enough access to TV, FM or Internet. Shortwave radio has, for decades, been their main source of information. And it is going to stay with them till the day technology offers them a low-cost battery-operated direct to home TV.
It may be news to U.S. policy-makers that thanks to radio networks like VOA, millions of these listeners world over are better informed about America and the world situation as compared to an above-average American citizen.

To read the whole thing, go here and scroll down to the second letter. If you are concerned about the administration’s attempt to stifle a government agency that sends objective and balanced news and information to a world in which the United States needs understanding, tell your senators and representatives. Congress can stop this repressive campaign against open expresion.

John Stowell’s solo on “Blues on the Corner” should be transcribed by every serious guitar player on the planet.
On second thought, make that every serious player.
Bill Kirchner

Jeff Albert’s story the other day about his daughter’s innocently perceptive question brought this followup.

Doug,
My favorite father/daughter story comes from my friend, the great drummer Allen Schwartzberg from New York. Quite a few years ago he took his eight-year-old daughter to hear an evening outdoor concert of Rostropovich and the National Symphony. Sitting together under the stars, before the concert was about to begin, Allen pointed to the television cameras and explained to her that the concert was going to be broadcast live all over America. To which she replied, “You mean we’re gonna miss it?”
Alan Broadbent

Not that you would, but don’t miss Terry Teachout’s essay about going home again. This will give you a hint of what it’s about, although it’s about much more.

“Thanks, Carol, I’d love to, but…” But the truth is that I don’t play anymore, Carol, I haven’t touched a bass in years, it wouldn’t be fun for either one of us, maybe some other time. Long pause. Deep breath. “But promise me one thing—don’t make me take any solos.”

He also writes this:

The trouble with good advice is that nobody ever takes it. Kind friends warned me that a book tour is the only thing more humiliating than falling in love with someone who likes you back, but that didn’t stop me from hitting the road and watching every single word they said come true. The TV people hadn’t read my book; the newspaper reporters had, and hated it. As for the in-store appearances, the worst one was in a small town where I did an early-morning guest shot on the local radio station, then went to the mall and sat for five straight hours without signing a single copy.

OH, yes.
To read it all, go here. Then, come back.

You may be interested in where some of your fellow readers are following Rifftides. A recent check of the site meter finds them all over the world, in places including:
â–ªMickleover, Derby, United Kingdom
â–ªMere, Warrington, United Kingdom
â–ªBrussels, Belgium
â–ªBarcelona, Spain
â–ªArche, Limousin, Spain
â–ªCceres, Extremadura, Spain
â–ªMijas, Andalucia, Spain
â–ªMontreal, Quebec, Canada
â–ªHamilton, Bermuda
â–ªTokyo, Japan
â–ªKuguta, Chiba, Japan
â–ªParis, France
â–ªNantes, Pays de la Loire, France
â–ªZurich, Switzerland
â–ªPenrose, New Zealand
▪The United States, from Wenatchee, Washington to Fenton, Missouri, to West Henrietta, New York, and hundreds of spots in between—large and small. Welcome to you all.
Wenatchee, my home town (funny I should mention that), is The Apple Capital of the World and the Buckle of the Power Belt of the Northwest. The masthead of The Wenatchee World has made that clear since long before I began my career in journalism launching copies of the newspaper onto subscribers’ porches. I will be visiting Wenatchee tomorrow. The occasion is the annual Wenatchee Jazz Workshop, an annual event that brings student players together with a faculty of world-class musicians. I have been asked to speak preceding a concert featuring the Jeff Hamilton Trio with Tamir Hendelman and Cristof Luty, trombonist Bruce Paulsen, tenor saxophonist Tom Peterson, trumpeter Gilbert Castellanos, and the Wenatchee Big Band. The kids are in good hands. I’m looking forward to hearing them and their visiting teachers.

DevraDoWrite is trying to answer a question from one of her blogees. This is it:

In 1966, the Hampton Hawes trio (with Red Mitchell & Donald Bailey) recorded ‘live’ for Contemporary Records at Mitchell’s Studio Club in Los Angeles (the ‘Mitchell’ in question was no relation to Red, the bassist). Two LP albums were subsequently issued: The Séance and I’m All Smiles. My question is: Do you – or does anyone among your many readers happen to recall the address of this particular club?

Phil Woods and Ray Bryant also recorded at Mitchell’s. I have no further clues.

If you direct your attention to the right-hand column and scroll down, you will come upon the new batch of Doug’s Picks. At the top of that column in “About,” the Rifftides staff makes the assumption that people who follow jazz are also interested in other matters. The book pick this time around may be, at least in literature, the ultimate Other Matter.

Nice piece of writing by Ben Ratliff in today’s New York Times. He covered the concert in which 87-year-old Gerald Wilson took over the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. Ratfliff reports that Wilson “hijacked the evening.”

Mr. Wilson made the show an exclamation point. He stalked the front of the stage, his white mane turned to the audience and his piercing eyes trained on the band. His body was tuned to the music — dislodging rich, overstuffed harmonies of brass and reeds and quelling them, socking his right fist into his left hand to drive the rhythm section harder, ending songs crisply.

To read the whole thing, go here.

The Portland Jazz Festival ends on Sunday, but the main events took place last weekend. Here are samples of my impressions, from a long review for Jazz Times.

McCoy Tyner’s trio with bassist Charnett Moffett and drummer Eric Gravatt played the opening concert. Before a capacity audience in the gargantuan grand ballroom of the Portland Hilton, Tyner pulled out the stops, meaning that on a dynamic scale of 10, he kept the music between 8.5 and 10. A monster sound system, suited to a rock concert in a stadium, grossly over amplified Moffett’s bass so that Gravatt had no choice but to compensate with full drum power. What could Tyner do but lean into the piano with all of his considerable strength, exaggerating his natural tendencies.

On Dee Dee Bridgewater:

The one American song was Neal Hefti’s “Girl Talk.” Bridgewater announced it as strictly for the women in the audience. She sang it in French, then English. As it progressed, she morphed from sophisticated Parisienne into a Della Reese/Pearl Bailey persona and converted the song into a sketch about picking up a man in a bar, taking him home to bed, then dismissing him without their ever learning one another’s names. If that sounds earthy and outrageous, it was, explicitly so, with illustrative body language. It was ”just between us girls” and it was very funny.

On Bill Frisell:

Scherr and Roberts, the cellist, began a series of unison chromatic lines leading into another segue transition. Suddenly Frisell’s guitar was in solo on a peaceful melody as the strings made a transition from free playing to a folk melody. Behind them, Scherr raised the intensity with an arco solo, then the activity decreased back toward peacefulness, but it was a more troubling peace, a dissonant, polytonal, Schoenbergian peace that didn’t end but melded into Frisell playing heavy guitar over a slow, insistent waltz beat.

To read the whole thing, go to the JazzTimes website.
Have a good weekend.

Doug:
Fine commentary on Earl Hines’ rightful place in jazz legend. You might also have mentioned how indebted Nat Cole was to the Fatha and how Nat is also often unrecognized today for the giant he was–most people seem to remember him as just a singer.
He exhibited the same joy and exuberance in his playing that Hines did and need not have ever sung a note in order to be always remembered.
Jack Tracy

I couldn’t agree more with the former editor of Down Beat about Nat Cole’s greatness as a pianist. In addition to the qualities Mr. Tracy mentions, Cole’s keyboard touch and advanced harmonic concept influenced almost all modern jazz pianists who came after him, including Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans. Considering the impact those three alone had on the course of jazz piano, it is clear that the multiplier effect of Cole’s example pervades the music. He had other influences—Teddy Wilson, Billy Kyle—but Hines was his primary inspiration, and Cole often acknowledged him. Hines’ effect on Cole is directly apparent on the earliest King Cole Trio recordings on Decca. There are even more refined examples of it in his “Body and Soul” solo from the first Jazz At The Philharmonic concert in 1944, in “Lester Leaps In,” and most dramatically in “Tea for Two.” You can also plainly hear Hines in the way Cole comps at JATJP behind Shorty Sherock, Jack McVea, Les Paul, and Illinois Jacquet on “Rosetta.” On the same album, his exchange of two-bar phrases with Les Paul in a chase sequence on the blues demonstrates the exuberance Jack mentions, as well as Cole’s lightning musical reflexes and his love of risk-taking. Nat Cole’s spectacular, and deserved, popular success as a singer eclipsed his role as a pianist, but his enduring musical importance came at the keyboard.
I’m glad that Jack raised this point about Cole. It sent me to the shelves to dig out the JATP album. I hadn’t heard it in years. I haven’t had more listening fun in weeks, even unto the tenor sax honks and squeals of McVea and Jacquet. Sixty years later, they seem not gratuitously outrageous, but amusing. I suspect that is how they were intended. Not the least of the CD’s pleasures is hearing the young trombonist J.J. Johnson making the transition from swing to bop.

Doug,
In a confluence of recent Rifftides topics…
I took my 11-year-old step son and 4-year-old daughter to a Maynard Ferguson Big Bop Nouveau concert at a local high school last night. The high school’s big band opened for them.
During the first tune, after a couple of solos and the traditional after-solo applause, my daughter leaned over to me and asked, “are they going to play straight through, or stop between songs?” I said, “no, they will stop between songs,” to which she replied, “then why are we clapping while the music is still playing?”
Jeff Albert

My kind of 11-year-old.