As I was writing liner notes for the next album by Cyrus Chestnut (pictured), the research led me to a remarkable performance of its title song. Published in 1989, “Sweet, Sweet Spirit” by gospel composer Doris Akers became a favorite of Elvis Presley, who sometimes sang it with The Stamps Quartet but did not record it with them. Gospel devotees consider The Stamps to be one of the genre’s quintessential groups. This may help to explain why.
In the recording, Chestnut plays “There’s A Sweet, Sweet Spirit†unaccompanied, slowly and with deep feeling. HighNote tells me they expect to release the album in July.
with pounding us into the shapes of Marines, that Corky Ram would have no problem. He was a standout in the grueling weeks of officer candidate competition and then in the months of physical and mental rigor designed to make us worthy of those little gold bars on the collars of our fatigues. After high school in Jersey City, New Jersey, he had served a hitch as a Navy enlisted man, and then got a college degree before he chose the Corps. He was two or three years older than most of us, and a natural leader. He could tell when the pressure was about to cave a green lieutenant exhausted from a 20-mile forced march with full field pack or demoralized after a classroom test he was sure he had flunked. Corky knew how to use encouragement or cajolery to restore flagging determination. He helped a lot of us make it through. The picture above is how I remember him from that period.
devoted himself to helping young musicians develop their skills. After he and his vocalist wife Sandi moved from Los Angeles to the Central California coast in 1990, his playing and teaching and playing activities continued, with young musicians making the 440-mile round trip to Cambria to absorb Shoemake’s lessons in improvisation, composition and harmonic development. Among them were musicians now well known, including trombonist Andy Martin, saxophonist Ted Nash, pianist Cecilia Coleman and trumpeter Kye Palmer.
students. He includes three of them, and Sandi, in his new album named for their home territory. Here is video featuring a piece from the CD, with a theme that will be familiar to many Rifftides readers. If you don’t recognize it, never fear; the band “announces†the title more than once. The players in his new quartet are are Shoemake, vibes; Josh Collins, guitar; Keegan Harshman, bass; and Darrell Voss, drums.
As pointed out in a Rifftides review earlier this year, drummer John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet…
Saxophonist and bandleader Dave Pell, a prominent figure in the west coast jazz of the 1950s and ’60s, died on May 8. He was 92. Pell recorded extensively with his octet and the tribute group Prez Conference. Over the years the collective members of those bands included Art Pepper, Red Mitchell, Harry Edison, Mel Lewis, Benny Carter, John Williams and other leading musicians of the day. Pell’s devotion to his hero Lester Young extended to the rescue of Young’s instrument. Here’s that story from the Rifftides archive. 
Responses to the 2017 survey of what our readers around the world are listening to are piling into Rifftides world headquarters at a breathtaking rate. The staff complain that trying to put internet links to all the submissions, is all but taking their breath. The mangement says, “Tough, think of all the overtime hours.†They say, “Overtime pay would be better.†Well, the original idea was to provide the readers with links to all of the recordings mentioned. We may have to lighten up on that plan in order to fend off a rebellion of the sleepless peons. “Links?†they say in their terrible attempt at an Alfonso Bedoya accent, “We don’t need no stinking links.†Management is taking their complaints under advisement. In the meantime, with links galore, here are four more reports from Rifftides readers who do a lot of listening.
Responses to our 2017 “Catching Up With You†reader survey are rolling in. This is what we asked of you four days ago:
From time to time, Rifftides asks readers to send information about the music they turn on, and vice versa. It has been more than five years since we canvassed you about what you’re hearing. It’s time. Here is a variation on the introduction to the original 2006 survey:
Once in a while, all of my New Orleans years come rushing back and fill me with music I haven’t thought about in ages. Tonight, it was the muscular alto saxophone of Captain John Handy. The son of a bandleader, he was born in Mississippi in 1900. Handy taught himself clarinet and in his middle teens was in New Orleans playing with trumpeter Punch Miller. After he switched to alto sax in the late 1920s, he developed a big sound with enough vibrato to be interesting but not annoying. Through the 1930s he worked with his bassist brother Sylvester in the Louisiana Shakers and before his death in 1971 had played with Kid Howard, Jim Robinson, Lee Collins, the Young Tuxedo Brass Band, the Preservation Hall Band, Kid Clayton, Kid Sheik Colar and dozens of other New Orleans stalwarts. In their book New Orleans Jazz: A Family Album, Doc Souchon and Al Rose described Handy as, “A rock and roll-type musician limited to the blues,†a mystifyingly wrong-headed evaluation. Here’s Handy with the New Orleans classic “While We Danced At The Mardi Gras,†with nary a hint of rock and roll.
captured a splendid image of drummer Billy Hart in action. There was no opportunity to use the picture in our Rifftides coverage of the PDX Festival, but Mr. Sheldon has granted us the right to show it to you now.
Not really. It could, but the title refers to the fact that it was the first song I wrote for my wife, Ruth. That was first recorded on [Quartet West’s] 
Martin Speake are equally responsible for keeping the listener’s attention. Burgoyne and Luft were Speake’s students at London’s Royal Academy of Music. Now the professor is a sideman in his former student’s little band, which is increasingly prominent in British music. Moderate sonic manipulation occasionally enhances the music, as in “Midnight Train to Malmö.†If you are not aware of the digital molding, it seems natural—and isn’t that the idea? Luft and Speake achieve keening intensity on “Purple Z.†Burgoyne fashions a cymbal-fest before the piece slowly subsides into a thoughtful echo. The first third of “Green T†is an exercise in reflection for Luft’s guitar and Burgoyne’s cymbals before Speake soars, then darts, in a solo whose passion takes his alto well into the altissimo range. The eight pieces in the album, all composed by Burgoyne, include two short tracks titled “Quiet Unquiet I†and Quiet Unquiet II†that demonstrate the melodic quality of his solo technique. The musicality and appeal of this little band seem likely to keep bringing them attention. 
Seattle long ago. She was sitting in a kind of alcove, knitting. As we began chatting, Buddy Rich materialized and began teasing her, moving toward her, then back, gliding in and out with fluid drummer dance moves. “Ella,†he kept saying, “Ella…Ella…Ella…â€, changing inflections, grinning.
Trumpeter Vu and three fellow Seattle adventurers explore pieces by Michael Gibbs. It was guitarist Bill Frisell’s idea to bring the British composer to the University of Washington last year for concerts of his orchestral music as well as sets by Vu’s quartet with Frisell, bassist Luke Bergman and drummer Ted Poor. In a news release, Vu is quoted as saying that their aim was, “…our individual aesthetics coming together and trying to find a common goal/language.†The language is post-bebop bordering on free jazz. Recorded at the concerts, the 4TET—with exhilaration and a sense of risk—apply their unique idiom to five Gibbs compositions. “Ballet†begins as a series of collective abstractions and soon assumes a waltz feeling. Vu’s dazzling state-of-the-trumpet-art solo leads to him and Frisell ending with Gibbs’s eccentric melody appearing in the piece for the first time.
“Four†is one of the best-known jazz tunes attributed to Miles Davis. He may
actually have written it, although a substantial number of musicians maintain that the composer was the alto saxophonist and blues singer Eddie “Cleanhead†Vinson. It is all but certain that Vinson also wrote “Tune Up,†another modern jazz standard for which Davis took credit. Regardless of authorship, “Four†quickly became a jazz standard following its first recording by Davis on his 1954 Prestige album Blue Haze. It has been performed countless times since.