Bill Crow has played bass with several of of the world’s leading jazz artists, Stan Getz, Art Farmer, Marian McPartland and Gerry Mulligan among them. A terrific writer, he has developed a sidebar career as a story teller. His books of anecdotes, great fun to read, are standard reference works, but Bill doesn’t rest on his laurels. His flow of anecdotes continues in The Band Room, his column in Allegro, the monthly publication of New York local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. With Bill’s and Allegro’s permission, Rifftides now and then hijacks stories from The Band Room and brings them to you. Here are two from last year. The Rifftides staff has incorporated musical supplements.
December 2015
When Gerry Mulligan formed a quartet in Los Angeles and hired Chet Baker on trumpet,
the musical chemistry between them produced some wonderful results. One night Dick Bock visited the Haig, the club where they were playing, and asked Gerry if he could sell him a record. Gerry told Bock that the group hadn’t recorded yet, and Bock said, “Well, how much does it cost to make a record?†When he found out that it could be done for just a few hundred dollars, he got the quartet into a recording studio, and the Pacific Jazz label was born. It went on to successfully record many West Coast jazz groups.
The Mulligan Quartet records were an immediate hit. Everyone was amazed at the interplay between the two horns, and the inventiveness of their soloing. Someone remarked to Gerry, “I understand that Chet doesn’t know anything about harmony.†Gerry replied, “He knows everything about harmony! He just doesn’t know the names of the chords.â€
September 2015
After reading my note about the Nut Club in a recent Band Room column, Phil Woods sent me this note:
“I worked the Nut Club after Juilliard in the early 50’s, with Nick Stabulas (leader), George Syran (piano) and Jon Eardley (trumpet). We mostly played bebop, even for some of the strippers, but ‘Harlem Nocturne’ and ‘Night Train’ were frequent for the three shows a night. (I did not see a woman from the front for three years.)
“One night someone told me Bird was across the street jamming in Arthur’s Tavern (which is still there!). Bird was playing Larry Rivers’s baritone and was scuffling with the beat-up horn. I was on a break and asked the maestro if he would like to use my horn. At the time I thought the horn was not happening. Didn’t like the horn, the mouthpiece or even the strap. The piano was only about three octaves and the cat playing it had to be 95 – and his father was on drums that consisted of pie plates and a skinless tom-tom! “Bird played ‘Long Ago and Far Away,’ and my horn sounded just fine. Even the strap sounded great. Then Mr. Parker handed me my horn and said, ‘Now, you play.’ I knew the tune. I knew all the tunes. I was a living Real Book. “Bird leaned over and whispered in my ear: ‘Sounds real good, son!’ Be still my heart! I levitated back to work and played the bejesus out of ‘Night Train,’ stopped complaining about the horn and started practicing 26 hours a day. Best lesson I ever had!â€
After dealing with emphysema for years and never allowing it to stop him from playing and leading his quintet, Phil ordered his doctors to stop treatment for the disease. He died on September 29 last year. He was 83.
To see Bill’s anecdotes in the current edition of The Band Room, go here.
Have a good weekend.
I mention this phenomenon because Saturday April 16 is not only Eggs Benedict Day but also—perhaps of more importance to Rifftides readers— Record Store Day. Its website (no kidding, the day has a website) gives its history:
Early this year I had the privilege of writing notes for Forrest Westbrook’s only album as a leader. The CD was released five-and-a-half decades after it was recorded and two years after the pianist’s death at 86. The album is bringing overdue notice to Westbrook, a quiet, almost secretive figure in the southern California jazz movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Standard journalism practice is for a writer never to promote a project in which he has been involved. So, report me to the Journalism Police, but it’s important that serious listeners know about Westbrook’s work. Therefore, my clever surreptitious ploy is to let fellow blogger Marc Myers carry the ball. With his customary accuracy, Marc describes Westbrook as remarkable. To see his coverage of the pianist’s album, go to his 
It’s April First. We have no Rifftides April Fool jokes, tricks, cartoons or gag shots. We have Billie Holiday. This is a 1937 recording with Buck Clayton, trumpet; Buster Bailey, clarinet; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Teddy Wilson, piano; Freddie Green, guitar; Walter Page, bass; and Jo Jones, drums. Ms. Holiday sings about the saddest kind of fooling.
No vacation can deflect the march of time. I am sad to learn of the death yesterday at 84 of the trombonist, cellist, composer and music educator David Baker. He is pictured here, on the right, with Dizzy Gillespie. Baker founded Indiana University’s Jazz Studies program and taught at IU for decades. Dozens of his students went on to distinguished jazz careers. He was a trombonist with the Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson and Quincy Jones bands and then with George Russell’s quintet. Baker had to give up the instrument after his jaw was injured in a car crash. Eventually, he switched to cello but achieved his greatest renown and acclaim as a teacher and theorist. His instruction books include the influential 
I’m still on vacation, but I took time to check out Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles blog. Today, Steve republishes Gene Lees’ 2005 JazzLetter piece on the late alto saxophonist Herb Geller. It includes Geller’s reminiscences about the young Stan Getz, one of his early mentors, and about his lifelong admiration for Benny Carter. To read it, 
You may recall that a couple of weeks ago the Rifftides Monday Recommendation was an album of recently discovered recordings by the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. This evening, the PBS News Hour closed with correspondent Jeffrey Brown’s report on the continuing story of the band and the venerable New York City club where it was born. Anchor Judy Woodruff introduces the story following a message from a News Hour funder that supports independent non-commercial television news—an effort the Rifftides staff wholeheartedly endorses.
Continuing this week’s string of birthday observances that began with Quincy Jones and Charles Lloyd, we turn to Bill Frisell. The guitarist was born on this date in 1951. Frisell’s stylistic versatility allows him to operate with ease and authenticity in genres from folk to free jazz. One might not expect Frisell and the pianist Chick Corea to be natural collaborators, and in the first moments of their duet on “It Could Happen To You,†they themselves may not be convinced. But two superb improvisers work it out nicely.
Whether or not the river runs green where you live, this is the special day when the whole world is Irish. We bring you two versions of what may well be the most loved of all Irish songs. The first is a concert performance by Renee Flemming, the second a piano solo by Bill Evans from his 
Happy St. Patrick’s Day.
    
coincidentally with his recent Portland Jazz Festival appearance, Lloyd released a new album, 
Quincy Jones turns 83 today. His story has had many chapters since his early days in Seattle and his apprenticeship in Lionel Hampton’s trumpet section. Jones went on to lead an important big band, score motion pictures, become one of the most successful producers in pop music and be named an NEA Jazz Master. As I wrote a few years ago in reviewing a box set of 
Ernestine Anderson died on Thursday at the age of 87 at a retirement home in Seattle. The singer’s career of more than six decades began in that city when she was a teenager. She went on to be featured with the big bands of Johnny Otis and Lionel Hampton, record the classic album Hot Cargo and receive Grammy nominations and rave reviews for recordings she made after a comeback in the 1970s. For an extensive account of Ms. Anderson’s life, see Paul deBarros’s article in 
For your weekend listening pleasure, let’s follow up on the previous post’s review of organist Larry Young’s album of recently discovered Paris recordings. Here is “Paris Eyes†(a coincidental title) from Young’s Blue Note album 
guitar; Bill Leslie, tenor saxophone; and Jimmie Smith, drums. Young shows what he could do with—or for—a Great American Songbook classic. This was also recorded by Van Gelder (pictured).
Larry Young took the organ even further than Patterson beyond the conventions that Smith established for the instrument. Attentive to changes in music inspired by John Coltrane, Young absorbed harmonic practices of Coltrane’s pianist McCoy Tyner and applied them to the organ, using intervals of fourths and other Tyner chordal devices. Those dovetailed with what he learned in Newark as a piano student of Olga Von Till, who had studied in Budapest with Béla Bartók and Ernő Dohnányi, giants of twentieth century classical music. Young combined harmonic sophistication, highly developed keyboard technique and smoothness of touch with the joy of headlong swing.
together with trumpeter Woody Shaw and drummer Billy Brooks, all Newarkians in their early twenties reunited in Paris. Other tracks in the two-CD set combine the quintet with French musicians organized by pianist Jack DevÃal. Those octet performances include two long blues tracks, “La valse grise†and “Discothèque†that disclose how accomplished Young, Shaw and Davis were at this early stage of their careers. They also find the French tenor saxophonist Jean-Claude Fohrenbach in impressive form.