This afternoon during my Annapolis sojourn, I recorded an hour with John Tegler for his Capitol Conversations show. If you stay up late Friday night, you can hear it on Baltimore's WCBM, 680 AM. The air time is Saturday morning, August 13, at 12:05 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time...five minutes after … [Read more...]

This afternoon I will be signing copies of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond at Hard Bean Coffee and Book Sellers in Annapolis. The signing will follow the taping of a 2 PM interview with John Tegler for his Capitol Conversations radio program. Both things will happen at Hard … [Read more...]

Most people alive are too young to have heard Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker when they were establishing bebop. Most, indeed, were not born. Observers have attempted to describe the excitement of hearing Gillespie and Parker together for the first time, but words cannot convey the abstract … [Read more...]

As I write this, I'm having difficulty keeping my eyes off the scene out the window to the left of my friend's computer. I am spending a few days with a cherished colleague from my TV news days. He and his wife live on Weems Creek, a tributary of the Severn River in Annapolis, Maryland. Every house … [Read more...]

Our reuniting Marines spent yesterday cruising the Potomac, visiting the Korean War, Viet Nam, World War Two and Franklin Delano Roosevelt monuments, then the Washington Navy Yard for a long lunch. One of our 150 guys failed to make it back to the bus following the monuments tour, causing a good … [Read more...]

More than a hundred men who were commissioned Marine Corps second lieutenants together a long time ago are gathered at the Marine base in Quantico, Virginia. We visited the Officer Candidate School on the banks of the Potomac where we spent twelve weeks convincing the Corps that we were good enough … [Read more...]

When the Four Freshmen were winning 1950s Down Beat polls as the top vocal group and their recordings were ubiquitous on radios and juke boxes, I was more impressed by their contemporaries, the Hi-Los. The Hi-Los’ mix of voices was richer and more varied, their arrangements more harmonically … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Martin Fritter writes, I've just discovered Benny Carter's alto playing, which seems of absolutely the highest caliber. Could you recommend some basic discs? With pleasure. This is the best assignment I’ve had in weeks. I envy anyone’s hearing Carter for the first time. He’s … [Read more...]

Jim Brown writes about a couple of points with which he takes issue in a recent Rifftides piece, Harmony And History. First, I take great pleasure in sitting in a Starbucks or other small restaurant and hearing QUALITY music in the background (or even the foreground). It appears that Starbucks did a … [Read more...]

I am working tonight in an airport hotel. Tomorrow morning, I shall clamber aboard an airplane and head for Quantico, Virginia, and a reunion with a bunch of guys who took their commissions away from the Marine Corps a long time ago. Most of us haven’t seen each other since. Someone told me that … [Read more...]

I made a one-day trip to the Centrum Port Townsend (Washington) jazz festival over the weekend for a book signing and to hear as much music as I could take in. Copies of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond moved quite nicely, thank you. The music I heard was in the four-hour … [Read more...]

In Rifftides a month or so ago, you may have read, Jazz albums should have program notes. Listeners want and deserve information about the music. You can read the rest of that post by clicking here. I admit self-interest; I sometimes write album essays. Nonetheless, as a listener, I count on … [Read more...]

Fellow artsjournal.com blogger, indefatigable all-purpose arts critic and small-town New Yorker Terry Teachout is visiting home, down where Missouri meets Tennessee, Arkansas and Kentucky. He customarily refers to it as Small Town USA, but by giving us a link to the hometown paper, he's blown the … [Read more...]

It is unlikely that there will be a new posting today. The Rifftides staff is on deadline. But, you never know, we could finish early and file something. Watch this space. As always, we appreciate it when you tell people interested in jazz and other matters about our venture and direct them to … [Read more...]

I am adding the writer and musician John Robert Brown’s website to the Other Places list in the right-hand column, and not just because he wrote this: Occasionally a publication changes one’s thinking. Take Five is such a book. I am old enough to have attended several of Desmond’s concerts … [Read more...]

Rifftides is not a way station for announcements, but if something comes up that I think you'd want to know about, well, of course. This is from trumpeter Marvin Stamm. If you are of a mind - and awake - please tune tonight - July 26 - to JaiJai Jackson's new jazz radio show at … [Read more...]

Regarding the Rifftides posting about the late Tom Talbert, and comments in later editions, Larry Kart writes from Chicago: I bought Bix Duke Fats when it came out (in the days when you could listen in your local record shop to things by people you'd never heard of before) and since have acquired … [Read more...]

To your right, you will find a brand new batch of Doug's Picks. … [Read more...]

In his newsletter, Blowing My Own Horn, the pianist Hal Galper (Cannonball Adderley, Phil Woods, his own trio) writes,"In truth, I'm a free player in bebopper's clothing." You might find my history of free playing illuminating. In my early Boston days (the 1960's) I had the good fortune to … [Read more...]