It was a weekend of contrasts. I reread All Quiet on the Western Front, recovered from it on a long road bike trek that began with a one-mile climb up a steep grade (I refuse to submit to a testosterone exam), picked a few quarts of blackberries and played in a jam session in which, at one point, the rhythm section consisted of three guitars. That was a new and uplifting experience.
Now, it’s time to get serious. I’m on deadline for an essay to accompany a Thelonious Monk collection in the Riverside Profiles series. Blogging will be in the back of my mind, but that’s where it will have to stay for today and, possibly, tomorrow. Have a good Monday.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

– Igor Stravinsky

You might try taking the horn out of your mouth.

– Miles Davis, after John Coltrane said he found it difficult to play short solos

The new book and DVD recommendations are finally in place under Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column. I stretched the DVD category to make you aware of a discovery. I doubt that you’ll be sorry.

Readers have asked why Rifftides does not allow comments to be posted directly. I want the opportunity to review comments and, when it feels right, to respond to them in context and with editorial discretion. It has developed, as I thought it would, that Rifftides readers are not inclined to inititiate the kinds of shouting matches that infect too many web sites, so that has never been a worry. But there is another reason: spam. About half of the alleged comments that I receive are spam. If I allowed them to pop up unsupervised, you would be seeing random insults from web trawlers, pitches for ringtones and viagra and opportunities for a wide variety of personal services from members of all of the sexes. Not on this weblog, folks.
The Rifftides staff encourages you to send comments, whether or not they are about something you’ve seen here . They may end up in the comments section at the end of an item, as part of a posting in the main section or, rarely, on the cutting room floor. You may send a message to the e-mail address in the upper right-hand column or click on the “Comments” link at the end of an item. Please do.

Rifftides reader Marc Myers writes from New York City about the Louis Armstrong video mentioned yesterday:

Fabulous clip of Pops in the 1930s! Pure joy. Two observations: The band appears to be integrated, which is strange if this is indeed the early 1930s. In addition, none of the musicians is reading music. Was this for the sake of filming or simply for added novelty? Clearly, Louis must have rehearsed this group to death to execute
perfectly without charts.

The film was shot during a 1933-34 Armstrong European tour in which he augmented his band with local musicians. I’m fairly certain that “Dinah” and “I Cover the Waterfront” were filmed in Sweden. As for reading music, the arrangements, which were simple background riffs, hardly required it once the musicians had played them a couple of times. Here’s a second installment.
And, since the maestro is on our minds, we may as well take a look at a segment from the 1956 film Satchmo the Great. The narrator is Edward R. Murrow.

Louis Armstrong liked to tell people, and may have believed, that he was born on the Fourth of July, 1900. Given the circumstances of his family and of the rough part of New Orleans he came from, it is not unlikely that civic records were haphazard. Twelve years after Armstrong died in 1971, research turned up a baptismal certicate proving–or at least strongly indicating–that he was actually born on August 4, 1901, 106 years ago today. This film, made when he was riding high on success with his first big band, is a good way to celebrate and remember a great man.
Artsjournal.com colleague Terry Teachout is working on a biography of Armstrong. In an interview for one of the international programs websites of the US State Department, Terry does a fine job of summarizing Armstrong’s importance. You may read it here.

Speaking of colleagues, in case you haven’t heard the news about guitarist Jim Hall’s latest honor, there is no one better to tell you than his proud daughter Devra, aka the blogger DevraDowrite.
Congratulations to both.

August 3, 2006

Deborah Hendrick read the comment about Bix Beiderbecke having been a cornetist, not a trumpeter, and asks:

As part of my continuing education, why would a musician choose a trumpet over a cornet, or the other way around?

Experts on brass instruments have written volumes on that question. Following my non-voluminous answer, I’ll give you links to further information.

The trumpet’s tubing is elongated and relatively straight until it reaches the flare of the bell. That gives the instrument volume and brilliance. The cornet’s tubing is tightly wound compared to that of the trumpet, resulting in more air resistance when the player blows into the horn. Its tubing is conical, growing bigger around as it approaches the bell. Taken together, those two factors give the cornet a mellower, softer sound than the trumpet’s. Trumpets predominate these days in orchestras and bands, but through the last half of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, the cornet was king. It was developed by the Frenchman J.B. Arban, who literally wrote the book on how to play it. Arban’s Complete Conservatory Method is still the cornetist’s, and trumpeter’s, bible.

John Philip Sousa and Herbert L. Clarke, disciples of Arban, were virtuoso cornetists who led famous brass bands and further influenced the popularity of the instrument. When jazz came along, cornet was the default lead brass instrument in the early New Orleans bands, as it was in Chicago and New York in the 1920s and into the thirties. Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke were cornetists. My guess is that Armstrong switched to trumpet because when he organized his big band around 1930, he wanted to project more, but his great early recordings were on cornet. Beiderbecke, to my knowledge, played cornet exclusively. Many great jazz players thought of as trumpeters were, in fact, cornetists, among them Bobby Hackett, Rex Stewart, Ruby Braff, Jimmy McPartland, Wild Bill Davison, Nat Adderley and, often, Thad Jones. They preferred the cornet’s fluency and intimacy. Few modern trumpet players also play the cornet, but many double on flugelhorn, which can achieve similar, but not identical, mellowness. Committed cornetists are passionate in their love for the instrument, witness this quote from a player named Mike Trager.

I equate my cornet with a good-natured golden retriever and my trumpet with a vicious Doberman pinscher.

Left to right, you see flugelhorn, trumpet, cornet and piccolo trumpet and, in front, assorted mutes. The flugelhorn and the piccolo trumpet here are the four-valve variety. You know what I say about that? It’s hard enough to play three valves. I’ll leave well enough alone. But I wish I had my old cornet back. Maybe I’ll prowl the pawn shops.

If you want to go deeper into the arcania of brass instruments in the soprano range, see this essay, and this discussion with Michael Fitzgerald on the Organissimo website.

An alert reader of my Wall Street Journal piece about trumpeter Randy Sandke sent the following message:

I read your article mentioning the Beiderbecke Festival in The Wall Street Journal. I enjoyed the reading, but I felt compelled to clear up a point. Seems like you referred to “Davenport, Iowa, the classic trumpeter’s hometown.” I don’t believe that Bix Beiderbecke ever played a trumpet. He was a cornetist, not a trumpeter. Not a biggee, but what the heck. It’s interesting the impact the Midwest has had on music. Glenn Miller’s hometown was Clarinda, Iowa. And there have been others as well.
Craig Peterson
Santa Monica, CA
Born in McGregor, Iowa, and raised in Mason City, Iowa (AKA River City, Iowa)

Mr. Peterson is correct. I regret the error.

I had just sat down to write a tribute to Hank Jones on his 88th birthday when I was alerted to a column about Hank by Mark Stryker in the Detroit Free Press. I may flatter myself that I know and understand a great deal about the elegant Mr. Jones, but on my best day I could not improve on what Stryker wrote. I wish Hank a happy birthday and enthusiastically recommend that you read Stryker’s article. Here’s a sample:

Jones’ marriage of grace and guts created the template for a school of modern jazz pianists from Detroit — he was later followed by Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris and Roland Hanna — and his often overlooked influence has seeped into the bloodstream of jazz.
“His style is as profound and defined as any of the major masters,” says (Bill) Charlap. “It’s equal to Teddy Wilson, equal to Bill Evans, equal to Thelonious Monk, equal to Tommy Flanagan. It’s as much a unique musical utterance and just as balanced in terms of intellectualism and feeling.
“With Hank Jones you hear the past, present and the future of jazz piano.”

To read the whole thing, go here.
All I will add to Mark’s list of recommended Jones albums is a suggestion that you also listen to Second Nature if you can find it on, say, eBay. It is a double-LP Savoy package that contains the 1956 quintet session vibraharpist Milt Jackson made with Jones, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, bassist Wendell Marshall and drummer Kenny Clarke. Jackson and Jones created magic together, and this was a glorious example of it. Short of Second Nature, a fair sampling of the session’s tracks are on the Jackson CD called Jackson’s Ville.

The right hand column sports new CD recommendations under Doug’s Picks. DVD and book picks will follow in a few days.

The Rifftides staff received the following e-mail message from Portugal:

I’d visit your blog. I hope you visit my blog: http://www.jazzseen.blogspot.com./. If you don’t understand Portuguese, don’t worry, you can listen jazz.
Luiz

Portuguese and Spanish are similar enough that I was able to make out some of the Jazzseen text in the reviews to which Luiz’s blog is primarily devoted. But they are not why I suggest you pay it a visit. At the top of the page is a video of the classic “Manah Manah” routine from the Muppets Show. Click on the nose of the pink fuzzy bovine on the right to start it. Judging by the subtitles at the end, it was borrowed from German television. It’s good for a smile in any language.
Have a nice weekend.

One of the new Tulane University students reading Tom Sancton’s Song For My Fathers sent this comment about the book and the Rifftides report on it:

As an entering freshman at Tulane, I can only give the highest praise for Sancton’s book. My first visit to New Orleans, in March of 2004, is forever marked in my memory by the night I spent at Preservation Hall. I don’t know if words can adequately desribe the kinship I feel with Sancton after learning that, nearly 40 years ago, he had the same experience, and had the fortune to learn from the musical masters of the Hall. thank you for highlighting this book.
Hannah Trostle

Slow Drag Dead
hallelulia
four black Cadillac
high black hearse
and all
the people come
to hear the trom
bone bawl
look at Slow
Drag picture on
the Wall
He call again
Sweet Emma come
Big Jim come when He call
then honkie play
and honkie plunk
in Preservation
Hall
–Miller Williams, “Alcide Pavageau,” from The Only World There Is

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,
Building for some a legendary Quarter
Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,
Everyone making love and going shares–
Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles
Others may license, grouping around their chairs
Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced
Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,
While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed
Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.
On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood,
And greeted as the natural noise of good,
Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.
–Philip Larkin, “For Sidney Bechet,” from The Whitsun Weddings

The Bix Beiderbecke Festival opens today in Beiderbecke’s home town, Davenport, Iowa. It features Randy Sandke and, in a nice stroke of timing, so does The Wall Street Journal. My piece called “The Best Trumpeter You Never Heard Of” is in the Journal’s Leisure and Arts section. Here are samples:

The trumpeter and sometime guitarist Randy Sandke receives neither the critical nor the popular attention that goes to fellow trumpeters Wynton Marsalis and Dave Douglas — to pick a couple of names out of the air — but everything about his music says that he should. He is a technical and creative virtuoso. Regardless of the styles and eras of music he chooses for his projects, he seems unrestricted in interpretive power. He arranges and composes for large and small groups with a canny understanding of dynamics, instrumental textures, relative harmonic densities and the importance of space.
In seven fairly recent albums by Mr. Sandke, there is scarcely a routine moment. The settings range from a trumpet-piano duo to a 16-piece band. “Subway Ballet” finds Mr. Sandke at a peak of complexity in concept, instrumentation and daring. The CD’s accessibility is partly because it portrays an aspect of something familiar, New York, the nation’s second hometown even to those who have never been there. Not yet choreographed, the ballet music is so graphic that anyone capable of connecting sounds with images (all of us) can listen with eyes closed and supply the action.

To read the whole thing, go here, but hurry; the article is free to non-subscribers to the Journal Online for only seven days.

It turns out that many listeners are concerned with the issues covered in our Means of Delivery discussion. Here are comments from three Rifftides readers.

Like you, I’m pondering today’s post re: means of delivery. We really must adjust to new realities, but I’m having a hard time believing that I will LIKE them. Downloading is fine — IF I get uncompressed WAV files of the music. But NOT if what I get is compressed MP3 that sounds OK with rock music, or for listening in
a noisy car, but not at home.
Jim Brown

Mr. Brown is an audio imaging expert with long recording experience.

To me the whole downloading thing seems like just a tease – except for iPod users, who are happily blasting these sounds into their earbuds. It’s such a different experience of music, & each to his own, but what about printed matter, documentation, & all that? What about high-quality equipment, high-quality nondeafening sound, filling a room with music? The iPod/download audio experience is like AM radio at the beach – it has its place, & its merits, but it’s a far cry from hearing live music or reclining on one’s couch awash in beautiful sounds emitting from those speakers you paid a lot of money for.
Terri Hinte

Ms. Hinte is a free lance publicist and jazz archivist.

I understand that people still want to have a disc to hold and cover art to fondle. I do too. But, if the choice was between no physical disc, and no music, which would you take? It costs practically zero to keep lots of catalogue in digital print, and there are real costs to keeping things in physical print. If a company is making back catalogue available in any format, I count that as a plus.
I sell my music at my own download store. All of the offerings have pdf liner notes that can be downloaded, and the last two additions have pdfs of the full album art, so the listener could print the book and traycard if she so desired. The liner notes are free downloads separate from the purchased music, so one could even read the liners before deciding to buy, like the good old days of vinyl in the store.
Jeff Albert

I took a look and was impressed. Mr. Albert’s graphic downloads are a right step in the direction of information about the music, but Jim Brown’s caution about sound quality is a crucial point. Will listeners accustomed to CD clarity will settle for less?

Yesterday’s post on the unavailabity of certain music in CD form brought the following thoughtful and informative response from a veteran of the jazz record business.

I am encouraged by Mr. Mitchell’s optimism that useable packaging and notes will become available in digital downloads. Why not now? The technology exists.
The standard price I had in mind for the nonexistent Verve Chubby Jackson CD was $15.00 or $16.00, not the $30.49, plus shipping, that Amazon is asking for the Japanese import edition.

Mention of Chubby Jackson’s album Chubby’s Back as a digital download brought this account of the session that produced it.

Doug:
I was at the session in 1957 when this album was recorded. I was editor of Down Beat at the time, and a close friend of Chubby’s, and I had been asked to write the liner notes.
Bill Harris and Don Lamond, ex-Hermanites along with Jackson, had been flown in from Florida to do the date–the rest of the musicians were Chicagoans, all of whom were determined to prove that New York and Los Angeles were not the sole sources of top players.
The band, except for Harris and Lamond, had rehearsed the charts and were raring to go–Chubby had them ready.
The entire album was cut one night (a Sunday if I recall) in just two three-hour sessions that ended at about 1 a.m. The engineer was the legendary Bill Putnam, a true innovator of modern recording techniques.
Enthusiasm in the studio was contagious, with trumpeter Don Jacoby and Chubby being the most vociferous. Bill Harris, quiet and professorial as always, played beautifully. Lamond was inspirational, and the band responded blazingly to his drive. A couple of the studio playbacks that were unmistakably master takes brought cheers from the band as they ended.
I have attended a great many recording sessions in subsequent years, both as observer and as a producer, but I can’t recall another that had this sort of atmosphere. When it finished, nobody wanted to go home.
I’d love to hear it on CD, carefully mastered and transferred to digital. I think it would be great listening.
Jack Tracy

You will find a biography of Jackson here.

Rifftides Reader Marc Myers writes from New York City:

Some jazz tidbits…
1. Desmond’s Bridge Over Troubled Water is an iTunes download for $9.90. This is an absolute gem (thanks so much for turning me onto it). Wow.
2. The rare and expensive import, Chubby’s Back (Chubby Jackson, about whom not enough has been written or re-released) is a $6.90 iTunes download. Chubby’s Back is a fun album–but I did have to do a Google search for the personnel, which turned up at a Tiny Kahn site.*

DR: It is absurd that Verve won’t reissue Bridge Over Troubled Water on CD. As for Chubby’s Back, originally on the Argo label, Verve owns the master to that, too, and they could easily put it on CD for domestic consumption at standard prices. People still want to own albums with packaging and liner notes. I don’t consider myself a technological troglodyte, but I do not welcome a future in which I have to buy an iPod or a computer with a CD burner in order to hear music that becomes available only through digital downloads. I’ve written about this recently in connection with the disappearance of other important CDs. It brought a fair amount of comment.

MM: I know. My absolute joy after a hard week of reporting and writing is spending two hours in Tower in NYC (Lincoln Center). The place is slowly and steadily becoming a dump. The racks aren’t managed, new stuff isn’t in stock, headphones are busted. Hence, the iPod add-on, since “shopping” around the iTunes site allows you to listen to clips and find stuff that isn’t available on CD. Part of the problem is that CDs are terribly overpriced, and many people are running out of room in their homes. I’m at the point where I’ll buy CDs only if it’s a wonderfully produced classic. Otherwise, I’ll download it. I had a choice–spend $70 on Desmond and Jackson CDs from Japan or spend $18 for both via iTunes download. The download won–and the sound is great.

MM: 3. I watched an odd, colorful 1966 film the other night, Made in Paris, with Ann-Margaret and Louis Jourdan. The big surprise was that Count Basie and Mongo Santamaria are in it (swinging nightclub cameos). We should start a list of films in which jazz artists appear (i.e. Young Man with a Horn, etc.). Best part of Made In Paris was seeing Lockjaw Davis take a solo, though way too brief. Wish they’d release the entire footage v. chopped song for flick. Be fun to see entire filmed appearance. Lockjaw–talk about Mr. Cool!

DR: Made in Paris sounds intriguing. I looked for it on Netflix and Amazon and did a general web search. It seems not to be available on either DVD or VHS.

MM: I caught it on Turner Classic Movies

DR: Young Man With a Horn is a cliched but powerful film with Kirk Douglas as Rick Martin, who is, more or less, Bix Beiderbecke. The only real musicians who appear in it are Hoagy Carmichael in a character role and Louis Armstrong, uncredited, as himself.
*Date: March 31, 1957
Location: Chicago
Chubby Jackson (ldr), Don Geraci, John Howell, Don Jacoby, Joe Silva (t), Cy Touff (btp), Bill Harris, Tom Shepard (tb), Howard Davis (as), Sandy Mosse, Vito Price (ts), Bill Calkins (bar), Remo Biondi, Jimmy Gourley (g), Marty Rubenstein (p), Chubby Jackson (b), Don Lamond (d), Tiny Kahn (a)