The energetic, and possibly sleepless, Washington, DC trombonist, singer and bandleader Eric Felten writes:

I read the Fud Livingston post with interest, because in my endless searches for vintage big band music I have acquired a number of Fud Livingston charts. But I can’t remember ever actually trying any of them out. In part, that’s because they are “stocks” (which I’m happy to collect, but wouldn’t go out of my way to perform). And as much as I hate to admit it, I think I have reflexively dismissed the charts because of the man’s rather goofy name. Shallow of me, but human. And not without some grounding in reason — one learns not to expect hot music from the Ish Kabibbles of the world. But now I’ll go check my library to see if there is something from Fud worth putting in front of the band.

I also enjoyed the trolley item, in no small part because I live one house away from what used to be the trolley car tracks in my Washington neighborhood. It was the line that ran up along the Potomac, ending in Glen Echo Maryland, where there is an historic amusement park built long ago by the trolley company. The business model worked like this: Build an amusement park at the end of the trolley line, and you could take the trolley system’s largely unused weekend electricity and use it to power the rides. Getting to the park also gave people a reason to ride the trolley on the weekends. Sadly, the trolley was killed off about 1980. But the amusement park is going strong. The only ride left is a gorgeous 1920s Denzel carousel to which my kids (and I ) are devoted. The bumper car pavillion has been turned into an open-air dance space. Other buildings have been turned into art studios, a puppet theater and a children’s theater.

But the most extraordinary thing at the park is the Spanish Ballroom. Built in the 1930s it has been beautifully restored and it continues to host a remarkably vibrant dance scene. Saturday nights are for the swing dance crowd, but other nights of the week host tango, contra, waltz etc. I was there with my big band in August, and we played for about 600 very sweaty dancers. (For authenticity’s sake, air-conditioning was never installed in the ballroom.) It’s great fun playing for dancers — the rhythm takes on a whole new meaning. And when we play for dances, part of the fun is the feeling that we’re keeping a neglected part of the jazz tradition alive.

It is good to know that this splendid remnant of the American past exists. Most such dance pavilions faded away with the passing of two other great American institutions, the swing era and urban rail transporation.

Old friend Bob Godfrey, retired drummer and retail record entrepeneur, was prompted by Freddie Schreiber’s silly names to observe:

You may have opened up a can of worms.

Then, he proves it.

Todd L. Entown

Wynn Abaygo

Rick O’Shay

Dick Tatorial

Unretired vibraharpist and concert entrepeneur Charlie Shoemake offers:

Otto Nowhere

Hey, I don’t write these things; I just pass ’em along.
QUOTE

Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek—Milton

One of the things I like about Joe Locke’s new CD, Rev-elation, is that Bob Cranshaw plays acoustic bass on it. Sonny Rollins, for reasons unclear to me, prefers the electric instrument over what I irritate some of my bassist acquaintances by calling the real bass. Cranshaw uses the electric bass when he works with Rollins. He is one of the few players who comes close to persuading me that I’m hearing the real thing when he’s playing electric. Nonetheless, as well as he works that deception with Rollins, I get full satisfaction from his sound, attack and feeling when he’s on the good old standup, wooden, contrabass. It’s more profundo. Another thing: On Locke’s album, Mike LeDonne plays the Fender-Rhodes electric piano sparingly; a good idea. For the most part, however, he plays a Steinway grand. Well, I’m not positive that it’s a Steinway, but his playing is grand. (This is called backing into a review).
As far as I know, Mickey Roker has never used electric drums. Roker, LeDonne and Cranshaw were the rhythm section who supported the sublime vibraharpist Milt Jackson for much of the last part of his life. A tighter, more attuned rhythm section is hard to imagine. Locke has no choice but to play electric vibes. That’s the only kind the Ross, Deagan and Musser companies make. Otherwise, the instrument wouldn’t vibrate. It would be a marimba. Locke worships Jackson—something he has in common with all the vibraharpists who came after The Reverend, or Rev. Those were Jackson’s nicknames in addition to “Bags.”
In Rev-elation (get it?), the quartet treats an audience at Ronnie Scott’s club in London to the kind of set Jackson often played there. It is loaded with blues, a form at which Jackson excelled as Jack Nicklaus excelled at golf, although Jackson dominated his field much longer. Among other blues, Locke and his colleagues play an “Opus de Funk” that is among the most exciting versions of that imperishible Horace Silver tune. They also do Jackson’s “The Prophet Speaks” to a turn, and a sinuous new “I Got Rhythm” derivative of Locke’s called “Big Town.” In the ballad department, Locke approaches Jackson’s tenderness and depth on Johnny Mandel’s “Close Enough for Love.”
I have thought for some years that Locke was one of the most impressive post-Jackson vibes artist to emerge since Gary Burton. Unless you know the rules, it is impossible to successfully break them, as Locke comes close to doing with his Four Walls of Freedom band, pushing the modern mainstream bop tradition toward the experimental edges of jazz without losing its essence. In this album, he shows why he can do that. He knows the rules. He lives in the heart of the tradition.

Friday, I leave for Los Angeles to take part in one of Ken Poston’s Los Angeles Jazz Institute extravaganzas, which are packed with music, films about music, discussions of music and a good deal of laughter. This one is called Jazz West Coast 3: Legends of the West. It gets underway this morning and runs four days. Go here for a schedule and registration information.
The festival, party—or whatever it is—will bring together major figures of Southern California jazz, including Bud Shank, Herb Geller, Johnny Mandel, Chico Hamilton, Paul Horn, Chuck Flores, Buddy Collette, Dave Pell and Howard Rumsey. Among the highlights is an all-star tribute to Shank by bands containing some of the above and Bobby Shew, Mike Wofford and Holly Hoffman, to name a few. I am also looking forward to a rare instance of Johnny Mandel’s conducting a collection of his nonpareil compositions and arrangements for big band, among them pieces from the film I Want To Live.
Sunday morning I will preach about Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, and sign copies. Shank and Geller will join me to discuss their fellow alto saxophonist. Bud did an analysis of a Desmond solo for the book. Herb provided information about his and Paul’s early adventures with Jack Fina and later ones in Hamburg.
In addition to seventeen concerts, there will be panels on Charles Mingus, Shank, the fifties in Los Angeles jazz, Art Pepper, West Coast drummers and the history of Mode Records. Not only that, there will be screenings of five films, among them Ken Koenig’s new documentary, The Lighthouse, and glimpses of Laurie Pepper’s work-in-progress about Art Pepper. One of the things I like about Poston’s affairs is that events are sequential. Everyone can see and hear everything, not have to choose among several simultaneous concerts. That’s why these things run four days. What’s not on the program? Bill Holman’s band, but I guess you can’t have everything.
If I get a minute to sit down at the laptop, I’ll post an account or two.

Ted O’Reilly, the Toronto broadcaster, answered my flippant question in yesterday’s posting: “Why won’t these broadcast people stay put?”

Station owners—all have risen from the sales department, or got their money the old-fashioned way, inheritance—won’t let them. An ever-deepening lowest common denominator, combined with a desire for an ever-raising bottom line drives owners to “greater efficiency”, meaning “put in computers serviced by pre-digested content providers”.

Greater Efficiency has never benefited consumers (and certainly not employees), only shareholders.
Individual voices are driven out of the market, more and more to fringes. That may mean a larger city, and certainly a marginal-niche station.

I was attempting to be sardonic. I know the life. In twenty-four years in radio and television news, I changed cities eight times, jobs nine times. Luckily, each move save one was to a greener pasture. Ultimately, that one turned out well, too. But that was before the corporate MBA mentality governed by quarterly earnings reports to shareholders gripped the broadcasting business in a stranglehold that has resulted in increasingly deeper cuts, greater homogenization, devaluation of experience, lower quality, and confusion about the difference between news and entertainment. Otherwise, everything is perfect.
Do I miss it? Oddly, yes, sometimes. When we have major events like Katrina and Rita or a significant betrayal of the public trust by the highly placed, the fire-horse reflexes kick in. Generally, I come back to my senses after a day or two.

Responding to the Rifftides posting about the humor of the late bassist Freddie Schreiber, Alan Broadbent relayed a few names that Schreiber invented. Alan was a collaborator with and friend of the wonderful singer Irene Kraal. She is also, regrettably, among the departed. When she was working with Shelly Manne’s band at the Manne Hole in Los Angeles, Freddie would drop in during breaks and run his latest masterpieces past the band. Somewhere, there is a long list of them. Here are a few that Irene passed on to Alan. If some are familiar to you, remember that Freddie was rampant in the 1960s and a lot of his wig bubbles have become lingua franca.
Oliver Teethout
Arturo Versees
Delores M’Shephard
Oswald MacGum
Rachel Prejudice
Warren Peace
Russell Upsumgrub
Tyrone Shoelaces
Noah Fence
The brothers Felix and Isaac Cited
This sort of thing is the lowest form of humor. I love it.
Freddie was ahead of the computer revolution or he undoubtedly would have thought of Dot Matrix. If anyone out there in webland has the complete Schreiber list, please pass it along.

Cal Tjader, Schreiber’s boss, was a major fan of his bass playing and of his word play. The drummer and radio host Dick McGarvin sent this recollection.

One of the people fond of quoting Freddie Schreiber’s classic lines was Cal himself. And it was from him that I first heard them. I met Cal in 1965 when I was working at KVI in Seattle and he would appear at The Penthouse. He’d come off the stand, sit down at my table and say, “So, what did you think of my angular probing lines? How about my relentless, throbbing beat?” Cal had a great sense of humor and thought the lines were hilarious. He continued the practice after I’d moved to San Francisco and would see him at El Matador.

McGarvin is now in Los Angeles. Why won’t these broadcast people stay put?

In the right-hand column, under Doug’s Picks, you will find our latest recommendations for your listening, viewing and reading pleasure. Enjoy. Your eating pleasure is another matter. We’re a little behind in that area, but thinking; always thinking, searching and testing.

A number of musicians I have known felt a connection with J.D. Salinger’s character Holden Caulfield. This is from my biography of Paul Desmond:

Paul thanked his father for recommending The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger’s novel published a year or so earlier. “It’s not only practically perfect,” he wrote Emil, “but it’s the closest thing I’ve yet seen to the way you’d write, if you wrote, which you should, and I’m rapidly going broke buying copies of it for miscellaneous friends here and there.” Salinger’s half-comedy, half-tragedy about a young man’s self-destruction resonated with Desmond’s view of the human condition, particularly his own. He gave me a copy of it shortly after we met. I was happy, years later, to respond with Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, that beautiful novel about loneliness and grace, in which Paul found a reflection of himself.

Thanks to Terri Hinte of Fantasy Inc., for a link to the writer James Isaacs’ autobiographical reflections on Salinger and Bill Evans. Isaacs’ radio musings were inspired by the new CD box of Evans’ 1961 Village Vanguard recordings. Holden Caulfield knew plenty of loneliness, and so did Issacs when he was a teenager. In his audio essay for WBUR in Boston, Isaacs talks about the day he wandered into the Village Vanguard and found solace coming from Bill Evans’ piano.

Just back from Monterey by way of Seattle, I am ready to crash for—oh, I don’t know, two or three days—but first, I must second what DevraDoWrite posted about the Tower Records staff who made our book signings an agreeable experience at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Here’s a little of what Devra wrote about the treatment she and her husband John Levy received for their signing of Men, Women and Girl Singers.

We didn’t know these great folks before a week or two ago, and we never asked for any special treatment while exchanging a few emails and quick calls. I was also surprised to learn that this team that worked together like a well-oiled machine is actually a bunch of colleagues from several different stores. I kept asking who was in charge, so I could give thanks and heap praise on all. Seems they were all in charge, so let me publicly thank the ones I know by name, and encourage you to shop at Tower…

Go here to learn those names and to see a photograph of Leroid and Mike with the amazing nonagenarian Mr. Levy.
I gotta get me some Zs.