It is Superbowl Sunday in the United States. The Superbowl is an event in which the top two National Football League teams play one another for the league championship. Tickets to the game sell for as much as $5,000. The television audience numbers in the millions. Our photograph shows Al Hirt at the Superbowl in 1967. Jazz musicians are no longer invited to play there; rock and roll dominates the halftime show. Before today’s kickoff, Lady Gaga sang the national anthem.

On the off chance that there are Americans who won’t be watching the game and with the certainty that many Rifftides readers in other countries don’t follow US football, we offer an alternative. Here is a bebop superbowl from the 1950s. The participants are Sonny Stitt, alto saxophone; Howard McGhee, trumpet; J.J. Johnson, trombone; Walter Bishop, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; and Kenny Clarke, drums. Mr. Johnson introduces the tune.

Rifftides reader Mike Harris responded to last week’s post about the passing of pianist Frank Collett (pictured) and the outpouring of comments about him.

Testifying to what all those folks have been saying, (plus, it will really cheer you up), watch this video of Frank on piano with the Terry Gibbs Quartet as they play “I’m Gettin’ Sentimental Over You.” Collett’s solo is memorable! Andy Simpkins is on bass. The drummer is Jimmie Smith. This from a 1980 program on Los Angeles television station KCET.

In early December, Rifftides Moscow correspondent Svetlana Ilicheva reported with enthusiasm about an appearance by singer Victoria Tchekovaya (pictured) at a vocal festival of the Moscow Jazz Art Club. Ms. Tchekovaya’s concert was in observance of the 95th birthdays of Dave Brubeck and Carmen McRae. She included songs on which those two collaborated in the Brubeck musical The Real Ambassadors, plus vocal versions of other Brubeck instrumentals with lyrics by Iola Brubeck. Svetlana told us that “Blue Rondo a la Turk” was a highlight of the occasion. Video of that performance has materialized. Here is Ms. Tchekovaya with a quartet headed by the veteran pianist Victor Friedman. Pavel Kurtz is the alto saxophonist, with bassist Eugene Onischenko and drummer Valery Dedov.

Saxophonist Gary Foster sent a link to video from a Facebook post of a seldom seen or heard performance by Horace Silver (pictured). At the 1964 Antibes Jazz Festival in Juan les Pins, France, Silver played a new composition with the latest edition of his quintet. The band was Silver, piano; Carmell Jones, trumpet; Joe Henderson, tenor saxophone; Teddy Smith, bass; and Roger Humphries, drums. The piece was “Pretty Eyes.” This is a rare instance of Jones’s work with Silver.

The next year, Silver recorded “Pretty Eyes” in his Cape Verdean Blues album with Woody Shaw replacing Carmell Jones. It has since become one of the Silver compositions most frequently played by musicians around the world.

Producer Dick Bank reports that pianist Frank Collett died of liver failure yesterday in Pasadena, California. Collett was 74. He led his own trio and in the course of his career worked with Louis Armstrong, Zoot Sims, Shelly Manne, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Carter, Freddie Hubbard and a list of vocalists that included Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Ernestine Anderson, Helen Merrill, Jon Hendricks, Diane Reeves and Barbra Streisand.

Born in Brooklyn as Frank Taglieri, his talent as a prodigy won him a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music—at the age of six—and study with the prominent piano instructors Paul Gallico, David LeVita and Herbert Stessin. In the late 1950s he decided to become a jazz musician and changed his professional name to Collett. Following military service in the West Point Military Academy Band, he joined Sarah Vaughan and moved west. In Las Vegas and Los Angeles, his career took off. After the Vaughan period, Collett formed a trio with the other members of her trio, bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Donald Bailey. His Los Angeles recording and television work included recordings and appearances not only with mainstream jazz artists but also with pop performers, among them Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Keely Smith, Glenn Campbell and Bette Midler.

Hearing of Collett’s death, fellow pianist Jan Lundgren today referred to him as “a fantastic player.” Recalling Collett’s modesty, Dick Bank said, “Frank hid his light under a bushel.” Bank produced Collett’s last three albums. Here’s a track from one of them:

Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest broadcast this Sunday will feature four of Seattle’s most prominent jazz artists. Here is his announcement.

Clarence Acox & the Legacy Quartet Seattle Art Museum concert airs on Jazz Northwest on January 24

Drummer Clarence Acox is a widely heralded teacher who leads the award winning Garfield Jazz Ensemble and is co-director of The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. He was the drummer for the long run of Floyd Standifer’s quartet at The New Orleans Creole Restaurant. A legendary trumpeter, Standifer led the group until he died in 2007. Clarence renamed it The Legacy Quartet in honor of Floyd, with various horn players rotating in Standifer’s place. Acox continued the tradition until the restaurant closed in 2013.

This Art of Jazz concert presented by Earshot Jazz, reassembled the quartet at the Seattle Art Museum, not far from the Pioneer Square restaurant where it played Wednesday nights for 27 years. The quartet includes saxophonist Tony Rondolone, Bill Anschell, piano, Phil Sparks, bass and Clarence Acox on drums. They play standards and range from swing to bop to movie themes. Many in the large, appreciative, audience at the concert first heard the group at the New Orleans Creole Restaurant.

Jazz Northwest airs Sundays at 2 PM Pacific time on 88.5 KPLU and streams at kplu.org.

When the music labeled West Coast Jazz was still in its heyday, before rock achieved more or less total dominance in popular music, Shorty Rogers maintained his popularity. One of his most successful pieces was the blues he called “Martians Go Home.” He played it on the television program Jazz Scene USA in 1962. This version of his Giants had Lou Levy, piano; Gary Peacock, bass; Larry Bunker, drums; Gary Lefebvre flute; and Rogers, flugelhorn.

Pianist Denny Zeitlin will play a solo concert, “Exploring Thelonious Monk,” this Thursday, January 21, at 9 PM PST. It will be streamed live on Jim Bennett’s “In the Moment” show at kcsm.org (that’s a link).

As on previous observances of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Rifftides remembers him with one of the most eloquent pieces of music to arise out of the civil rights struggle in the United States in the 1960s. The John Coltrane Quartet played it on Ralph Gleason’s Jazz Casual telecast in 1963.

John Coltrane, tenor saxophone, composer; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums.

Eleven days into his 74th year, Barry Altschul is not resting on his laurels—or anything else. The drummer made his first big impression with Paul Bley’s trio in 1964 and went on to work with a cross-section of the most adventurous musicians in jazz. In the early ‘70s he, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Anthony Braxton comprised the group called Circle. Sidemen in his own bands have included Anthony Davis, Ray Anderson and Mark Helias. Altschul has played with mainstream artists—Hampton Hawes, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Owens and Paul Winter among them—but he is best known for his intuition, reflexive responses and adventuring on the forward edge of the music. Here he is in 2013 with bassist Helias in tenor saxophonist Jon Irabagon’s trio at the Kaleidophon in Ulrichsberg, Austria.

One of the great pleasures of my years in New Orleans was a friendship with Danny Barker (1909-1994). After he moved back to his hometown from New York, Danny became a guiding light to young musicians, curator of the New Orleans Jazz Museum and a living link to the city’s musical past. The countless youngsters who learned from him came to know his history as a member of the influential Swing Era bands of Lucky Millinder and Cab Calloway, one of the music’s great rhythm guitarists and a writer of songs that last. I’m a day late in remembering what would have been his 107th birthday and happy to recognize it with this recording of Danny performing his most celebrated composition. At 01:46, watch for a photo of Danny with his wife, the fine blues singer Blue Lu Barker. Following that, you’ll see him with his Cab Calloway colleague bassist Milt Hinton.

To follow up on the post in the previous exhibit about the Bill Evans documentary, let’s revisit the 1962 Evans trio with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Paul Motian. This clip seems to be from Italian television. Evans’s harmonic chance-taking, rhythmic force and quick reactions to Motian’s accents suggest that—at least for this performance—the pianist had recovered from the shock of losing bassist Scott LaFaro in a car wreck the previous year, and that Israels was fully on board as LaFaro’s successor. The piece is Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way.”

Time Remembered, a film about pianist Bill Evans (1929-1980), is being screened in selected showings around the United States. It is set for tomorrow, Tuesday, evening in San Diego, California. The film by CBS News producer Bruce Spiegel, was eight years in the making. It has screened in New Orleans, in Hammond, Louisiana, where Evans went to college at Southeastern University, and at the Atlanta Film Festival, where it won a Golden Spotlight Award.

In the 90-minute documentary, musicians, family members and friends remember Evans’s precocious musical development, his emergence as a major jazz figure and the tragedy of the addictions that shortened his life. Sequences of Evans playing connect the interview segments and provide continuity. Among those who tell parts of his story are drummers Paul Motian, Jack DeJohnette and Joe LaBarbera; guitarist Jim Hall; bassist Marc Johnson, trombonist Bob Brookmeyer; singer Tony Bennett and pianists Warren Bernhardt and Billy Taylor. Bill’s niece Debby, the inspiration for “Waltz For Debby,” provides insights into the profound influence of her father, Harry, on his younger brother. LaBarbera and Laurie Verchomin, who was Evans’s companion in his final year, give an account of the wild ride to a hospital in an attempt to save his life. Here is a trailer for the film.

Your Rifftides host tries to keep up with the relentless inflow of albums. The effort is doomed, of course, but it’s great fun to keep at it. Here are thoughts about two more or less recent arrivals.

Houston Person, Something Personal (High Note)

The clever album title stands as a fair description of the tenor saxophonist’s approach. Person is a melodist who finds the heart and essence of a tune and, within a few notes, puts his trademark on it. His choice of songs here is as satisfying as his choice of colleagues. As annotator Willard Jenkins suggests, Person internalizes what he plays—from the harmonic content to the flow of melody and the importance of the words. In common with his predecessors Ben Webster, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, the listener senses Person thinking a song’s lyric. It’s true in “Crazy He Calls Me,” the Ruth Brown classic “Teardrops From My Eyes,” Irving Berlin’s “Change Partners,” Jimmy McHugh’s and Dorothy Field’s “On The Sunny Side of the Street.” It is true of all 10 songs here, including Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford,” the longest and most heartfelt performance on the album.

Bassist Ron Carter, a frequent collaborator with Person, told me when we were discussing a previous project, “Houston knows all the verses to all the songs. He knows the complete melodies. He plays with a great sense of feeling, and he’s open to any kind of harmonic suggestion.” Then there’s Person’s irresistible swing, buoyant at any tempo. In that aspect, he is in admirable company here with vibraphonist Steve Nelson, pianist John DiMartino, bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Lewis Nash. Guitarist James Chirillo is an additional asset on four tracks.

Bren Plummer, Nocturnal (Bren Plummer Music)

A veteran jazz and classical bassist, Bren Plummer heads a trio with fellow Seattleites John Hansen, piano, and Reade Whitwell, drums. He applies his incisive bowing technique in Duke Ellington’s and Billy Strayhorn’s “The Star-Crossed Lovers” and—in one chorus of pure melody supported by a filagree of Whitwell’s cymbal strokes—in the impressionistic title tune composed by drummer Joe Chambers for a 1968 Bobby Hutcherson recording. The trio is full of vigor on Lee Morgan’s “Boy, What a Night,” energizes the 1942 Tommy Dorsey-Frank Sinatra hit “In the Blue of Evening” and plays Miles Davis’s “Take Off” in the neo-bop spirit of the original Blue Note recording.

Plummer and company bring dynamism even to ballads customarily played slow, including Matt Dennis’s “The Night We Called it a Day,” Mitchell Parish’s “Stars Fell on Alabama” and Bill Evans’s “Turn Out the Stars.” Arco or pizzicato, Plummer solos impressively throughout. Hansen invests everything he plays with a light touch and harmonic depth. The track titles suggest a preoccupation with night, but there is little danger that a listener will fall asleep while Nocturnal is playing.