A reader sent a link to a photograph published by Joe Gromelski in the current issue of Stars and Stripes, the US military newspaper.

Frankfurt, West Germany, March, 1956: The stars of the “Jazz at the Philharmonic” tour pose for a photo backstage at the Frankfurt Zoo Theater. In front are Herb Ellis and Ella Fitzgerald; in back, from left to right, are Oscar Peterson, Roy Eldridge, Ray Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquette, Gene Krupa and Flip Phillips.

There does not seem to be video of precisely this JATP combination of musicians, but from the same year, here is impresario Norman Granz introducing some of them, plus Jo Jones. Jones demonstrates that among drummers there is still a reason that he is  known as Papa.

There may be no happier place to celebrate New Year’s than New Orleans’ French Quarter. For those not in the Crescent City or unable able to get there on short notice, the Rifftides staff offers consolation, the classic late 1980s version of “Auld Lang Syne” by Harold Dejan (1909-2002) and his Olympia Brass Band.

Again this year, I swore off voting in what has become an epidemic of jazz popularity contests, also known as critics polls, with one exception. I don’t seem to be able to say no to the persuasive Francis Davis, who conducts the National Public Radio Jazz Critics Poll. How I voted on the day I succumbed doesn’t necessarily reflect how I might have voted a day—or a week—sooner or later. Here’s my ballot:

NEW RELEASES

• Tom Harrell, First Impressions (HighNote)
• Charles Lloyd, Wild Man Dance (Blue Note)
• Maria Schneider, The Thompson Fields (ArtistShare)
• Jack DeJohnette, Made in Chicago (ECM)
• Gary McFarland Legacy Ensemble, Circulation: The Music of Gary McFarland (Planet Arts)
• Antonio Sanchez, Three Times Three (CAM Jazz)
• Carla Bley-Steve Swallow-Andy Sheppard, Trios (ECM)
• Katie Theroux, Introducing Katie Thiroux (BassKat)
• Bill Kirchner, An Evening of Indigos (Jazzheads)
• Matthew Shipp, To Duke (RogueArt)

 REISSUES

• John Coltrane, A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters (Impulse!)
• Erroll Garner, The Complete Concert by the Sea (Columbia/Legacy)
• Lars Gullin, Portrait of the Legendary Baritone Saxophonist (Fresh Sound)

 VOCAL

• Ernestine Anderson, Swings the Penthouse (HighNote)

 DEBUT

• Katie Theroux, Introducing Katie Thiroux (BassKat)
• Logan Strosahl, Up Go We (Sunnyside)

 LATIN

• Paquito D’Rivera & Quinteto Cimarron, Aires Tropicales (Sunnyside)

To see complete results of the NPR poll, go here.

It is not a Rifftides custom to accompany reviews with record companies’ electronic press kits, but in the case of the Monday Recommendation in the previous exhibit, it may be helpful. Few people are familiar with Mette Henriette, a situation that seems likely to change. Here’s the video.

Bill Crow now and then allows me to borrow an anecdote from his Band Room column in Allegro, the monthly publication of New York Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. Here’s an item from his December column.

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.”

Here’s evidence to support Mulligan’s answer about Chet’s harmonic knowledge.

John Coltrane, A Love Supreme: The Complete Masters (Impulse!)

John Coltrane (1926-1967), was already a musician of major standing and influence when he recorded A Love Supreme on December 9, 1964. In the less than three years of life remaining to him, the album became a watershed in the development of jazz. It made Coltrane a secular saint not only of the music but also of a troubled generation wandering in the spiritual wasteland of the Viet Nam and civil rights era. As a living Coltrane legacy, A Love Supreme’s effect on succeeding jazz by instrumentalists and vocalists has continued to grow. The titles of the piece’s sections are indications of the depth of the saxophonist’s metaphysical transformation in 1957 from post-bebop striver with drug and alcohol problems into a seeker of peace and enlightenment through creative expression, religion and mysticism. The titles are “Acknowledgement,” “Resolution,” “Pursuance” and “Psalm.”

The super deluxe edition of the latest reissue of A Love Supreme puts in clear perspective Coltrane’s and his quartet’s achievement. Its three compact discs include the original release plus revisions that amount to Coltrane’s afterthoughts about the music— afterthoughts that he abandoned in favor of the purity and passion of the original recording. Coltrane, pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones had a burst of inspired music making in the December 9 session. The next day, Coltrane brought in tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp and bassist Art Davis to join the quartet in new runs at some of the music. The four alternate takes, a false start and a breakdown take of “Acknowledgement” have moments of interest, some produced by Shepp’s raw energy and his interaction with Coltrane. However, hearing the collective approach using two saxophones and two basses leaves no doubt about the wisdom of Coltrane, producer Bob Thiele and engineer Rudy Van Gelder staying with the original quartet plan for the issued album. The new album also includes monaural reference tapes of “Pursuance” and “Psalm” that add nothing to understanding of the primary material. In another take, Coltrane’s inclusion of his alto saxophone for a second horn part in “Psalm” proves pointless, although the take catches Elvin Jones unleashing a magnificent peal of thunder on what sounds like kettle drums.

By the time of the Antibes Jazz Festival in mid-1965, A Love Supreme was years from general recognition as a masteripiece. A French musician and record company executive, Jeff Gilson, had heard an advance copy and asked Coltrane to play the piece. Radio France broadcast the concert and recorded it. The third disc of this set is that performance of all four parts believed to be the only time the quartet played it for a live audience. It turns out that France’s national television system aired the concert as well, and recorded at least a part of it. The video is not a part of the Impulse! set, but a segment of it has shown up on YouTube, thanks to an uploader calling himself, or themselves, ajack2boys. It includes only 12 minutes of the performance, but it’s an intriguing glimpse of Coltrane’s quartet playing part of it eight months after they recorded the album.

Trumpet virtuoso Bobby Shew sent a history of his instrument.

The trumpet started as a weapon of war. It later became a signal/alert tool. This led it to become utilized for fanfare announcements. It then moved into the world of chamber music and then to orchestral music. Next came its’ dominance in military music. After migrating to the western world, it became involved in the early development of jazz and especially in the big band era. This led the trumpet into blues and rock and roll bands, which brought it back full-circle to use as a weapon!

On the other hand, Mr. Shew and two of his colleagues demonstrated a couple of years ago in Prague that the trumpet still has peaceful uses. Shew, Randy Brecker and Jan Hasenöhrl made that clear in the Czech National Symphony Orchestra’s Trumpet Summit program with the St. Blaise’s Big Band. Shew and Brecker are American. Hasenöhrl, a Czech, is chief trumpeter of the CNSO. They play Thad Jones’s “Three in One.” In addition to standard trumpet Hasenöhrl plays two brief high-register interludes on a Bach trumpet. Vince Mendoza is the conductor.

So, we have evidence that the trumpet survived rock and roll.

Guitarist Jim Hall (December 4, 1930 – December 10, 2013) would have been 85 years old today. Building on what he absorbed from Charlie Christian, Hall came to prominence in Chico Hamilton’s and Jimmy Giuffre’s groups in the mid-1950s. He went on to collaborate with Ben Webster, Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer, Lee Konitz and Bob Brookmeyer, among others. His versatility and his openness to a wide range of music allowed him to be as effective in third stream music as in the mainstream.

Of his own albums as a leader, Concierto has become a classic since it was issued in 1975. The title piece was drawn from Joaquin Rodriogo’s Concierto de Aranjuez already something of a jazz standard because of Gil Evans’ arrangement for Miles Davis in their Sketches of Spain album. For Hall’s CTI version, arranger Don Sebesky sketched out parts for Hall, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, trumpeter Chet Baker, pianist Roland Hanna, bassist Ron Carter and drummer Steve Gadd.

Of Hall’s avoidance of clutter in his playing, John Wilson wrote in a New York Times review in 1991, that he “carefully [chose] a few notes instead, one after another, and placed them with the care of someone setting an elegant table.”

Hall’s dedication to the creative use of silence in music led him to tell an overactive student who was showing off his technique during a guitar lesson,

Don’t just do something. Sit there.

The Rifftides staff does not plan to observe the season by loading the blog with jazz versions of Christmas songs. There may be exceptions.

The first exception is a video brought to our attention in a message from the irrepressible German alto and soprano saxophonist Nicole Johänntgen. In the clip, Ms. Johänntgen is disguised as someone you may recognize.

Here she is, undisguised, at a 2015 festival in Italy, with the William Lenihan Quartet—Lenihan, guitar; Francesco Puglisi, bass; Lucrezio de Seta, drums

For a review of Ms. Johänntgen and her band called Sofia (Support of Female Improvising Artists) at last summer’s Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, go here.