Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
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As an addendum to the Andy Brown recommendation in the previous exhibit, we have evidence that in addition to his achievement as a soloist, Brown plays well with others. The setting is a bookstore recital in Chicago in 2010 and a performance of “Cry Me a River.†His duo partner is Anat Cohen.
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From the mid-1960s through the early years of this century, the Art Ensemble of Chicago crafted elements of free jazz into an ensemble personality that brought it extensive exposure. Often, as much attention went to the band’s costumes and makeup as to its wide range of influences from all eras of jazz and music of Africa, Asia, Latin America and other parts of the world. Apart from their primary instruments, the five musicians played an array of brass, reed, percussion and stringed instruments. The choreography of employing that arsenal could give an Art Ensemble concert a sort of neo-vaudeville atmosphere. Although they sometimes allowed the sideshow to obscure it, musicianship was at the heart of their best performances. A piece from the Berlin Jazz Festival in the fall of 1991 is an example.
The musicians are Lester Bowie, trumpet (1941-1999); Joseph Jarman, tenor saxophone; Roscoe Mitchell, alto saxophone; Malachi Favors Maghostut, bass (1927-2004); Famoudou Don Moye, drums. The piece is titled, “New York Is Full of Lonely People.†The video begins with a tune-up and a few second of silence.
Following Malachi Favors’ death in 2004, trumpeter Corey Wilkes and bassist Jaribu Shahid joined the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and the band recorded a new album.
Have a good weekend.
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Thanks to the readers—far too many to send individual thank-you’s—who responded to the weekend post about Paul Desmond. Your stories made great additions to the piece. The Rifftides staff is lucky to have you all along for the ride. To see the comments, which keep coming, go here and pan down.
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Several prominent trumpet players and other well-known jazz artists are expected to perform next Monday in New York City at a memorial service for the late trumpeter Lew Soloff. Here is the announcement from the Manhattan School of Music.
New York – A celebration of the life and music of Lew Soloff (Feb. 20, 1944-Mar 8, 2015) is scheduled for Monday, June 8, 2015 at the John C. Borden Auditorium, located at the Manhattan School of Music. This event is free to the public and begins at 7:00 p.m. Doors open at 6:15pm for early seating.
Lew Soloff, an essential player in the New York jazz scene since the early 1960s, created numerous musical associations during his career and many of those whose life he touched will come together to share their love and talent on this special evening. The musical program for this celebration is under the direction of Soloff’s close friends Paul Shaffer and Noah Evans, son of the late Gil Evans, Soloff’s “musical godfather.†Some of the artists taking part include; Wynton Marsalis, Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Owens, Cecil Bridgewater, Chris Potter, Ray Anderson, Gil Goldstein, Danny Gottlieb, Mark Egan, Sammy Figueroa, Manhattan Brass, Jeff Berlin, Fred Lipsius, Jeff “Tain†Watts, Pete Levin and Jesse Levy. More information on the final line-up will be announced shortly. Please visit lewsoloff.com for up-to-date details.
For the Rifftides post about Mr. Soloff’s passing, go here.
Carmell Jones Quartet (Fresh Sound)
Having proved himself in the jazz milieu of Kansas City, in 1960 the 24-year-old trumpeter Carmell Jones (1936-1996) quit his job as a railroad porter and moved to Los Angeles in search of full-time work in music. He was quick to impress bassist Red Mitchell, alto saxophonist Bud Shank and tenor saxophonist Harold Land. His recordings with them, with Gerald Wilson’s big band, and later with Art Blakey were to bring him attention and acclaim. Shortly after his arrival in L.A., Jones worked in a quartet with other emerging musicians—pianist Forrest Westbrook, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Bill Schwemmer. Westbrook’s apartment served as a studio where he recorded their rehearsals on a reel-to-reel stereo tape machine. For 55 years, those tapes were unheard by anyone but the musicians and Westbrook’s family and friends.
Following Westbrook’s death last year at 87, his daughter Leslie told Jordi Pujol of Fresh Sound Records about the tapes. The result is an album that finds Jones with the imagination and verve that led jazz expert John William Hardy, photographer William Claxton and critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt to issue enthusiastic reports about him after they heard him in Kansas City. Now, we hear Jones in his early west coast days, eleven months before The Remarkable Carmell Jones, his first released Pacific Jazz album as a leader.
In common with a legion of other young trumpeters in the 1950s and 1960s, Jones’s full sound and dazzling technique owed much to Clifford Brown. If he was inclined to an excess of finger-flicking grace notes, he balanced that manifestation of self-consciousness or nervousness with symmetry of phrasing that could be stunning on ballads. The prime example of his lyricism here is on the alternate take of “Willow Weep for Me, in which he uses a cup mute and overflows the Ann Ronell song with blues feeling. With the horn open, the warmth of his tone is remarkable on the first take of “Willow,†“Baubles, Bangles and Beads†and two takes each of “If I Love Again;†“Ruby,†Heinz Roemheld’s 1953 hit from the film Ruby Gentry; and Harold Arlen’s “For Every Man There’s a Woman.â€
Peacock, at 25 a veteran of work with Shank, Don Ellis, Shorty Rogers, Barney Kessel and Paul Horn, was deep into the characteristics of technique, timekeeping and harmonic mastery that were to take him to the top levels of jazz, including his three decades in the Keith Jarrett Trio. “His development,†Shank told me in 1998, “was phenomenal. He turned into one of the most creative bass players that ever happened.†Drummer Schwemmer, a friend of Peackock, has a lower profile. His time concept melds nicely with Peacock’s here, his cymbal work is noteworthy, and he has effective exchanges of four-bar phrases on several tracks. He evidently left active playing after the 1960s.
Westbrook’s solos and accompaniments shine throughout the album. In that relaxed second take of “Willow Weep for Me,†he negotiates piquant intervals in the solo melody he creates. He simulates bent notes in a manner reminiscent of Jimmy Rowles, a contemporary whose work Westbrook no doubt knew. The rhythm section plays “Airegin†without Jones. Westbrook is astonishing on the Sonny Rollins tune. He brings together bent notes, unconventional intervals and keyboard touch in a range from delicate to dynamic. His headlong solo has stylistic allusions to Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano. Most of all, it communicates the sense of joy and discovery that illuminates a performance when a player is so inspired that it seems the music is showing the way, taking him along for the ride.
There are other tapes in the Westbrook cache of jam session and rehearsal recordings. This CD is a valuable glimpse into Carmell Jones’s early musicial life. For many it will be a surpising introduction to Westbrook. It is encouraging to think that more music of this quality may remain to be discovered.
Since Rifftides began, every year on May 30 I have posted something about Paul Desmond. He died thirty-eight years ago today. For reasons that I cannot clearly identify, this year I struggled with the idea. Until the last moment I put off the remembrance and finally concluded that the best option was to have Paul speak for himself with his playing.
At the 1954 recording session for the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s album Brubeck Time, LIFE magazine photographer Gjon Mili shot the film you will see. Mili had egged Brubeck into an pugnacious frame of mind by saying that he did not consider that what the quartet played was jazz. That got the result he was hoping for, a surge through the harmonies of “Oh, Lady Be Good†that ended up titled “Stompin’ For Mili.†It’s the piece you hear and see last in the film clip. Brubeck later recalled that producer George Avakian then asked for a quiet minor blues. The preamble here is from my 2005 book The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.
“I would like,†said Gjon, closing his eyes and raising his hand expressively, “I would like to see Audrey Hepburn come walking through the woods—“
Gee,†said Paul wistfully, “So would I.â€
“One,†I said, noticing the glazed expression about Paul’s eyes, “two, three, four. And we played it.â€Mili may not have known of Desmond’s infatuation with Audrey Hepburn, but he could have said nothing more likely to inspire the playing that followed. Paul never met Audrey Hepburn, though he came close many times that summer of 1954. In the Jean Giraudeaux play Ondine, she was an underwater nymph who fell in love with a knight. She won a Tony award for her work in the title role. Ondine played at the 46th Street Theatre, not far from Basin Street.
“Paul would look at his watch the whole time we were playing at Basin Street,†Brubeck told me. “He knew when she would walk out the stage door and get in her limousine, and he wanted to be standing there. So, when I’d see him watching the time, I knew I’d better take a quick intermission or I was going to have problems with Paul. He’d put his horn down, and out the door he’d go, and he’d run down just to stand and watch her leave.â€
“Paul told me that,†I said to Brubeck, “and I asked him, ‘What did you say to her?’ And he looked surprised and said, ‘Nothing. Are you kidding?’
Here is “Audrey,” note for note as it appeared on the album
This addendum to the “Audrey†story is also from the Desmond biography.
Brubeck Time became a big seller and “Audrey†one of Desmond’s most beloved works. The recording associated his name with
Hepburn’s, but he died twenty-three years later never having imagined that she knew who he was or that she had heard the piece. After Hepburn died in 1993, the United Nations honored her for her international work with children. Her husband, Andrea Dotti, asked Brubeck and his Quartet to play “Audrey†at the memorial service at UN headquarters in New York.
“I told him,†Brubeck said, “that I had no idea he’d be aware of ‘Audrey.’ He said, ‘My wife listened to it every night before she went to bed, and if she was walking through the garden, she’d listen to it on earphones.’â€
“Paul never knew,†Iola Brubeck said. “And he was so in love with Audrey.â€
A year or so earlier, Hepburn herself acknowledged what “Audrey” meant to her. The publicist and author Peter Levinson sent the actress a copy of Brubeck Time when the album was first reissued as a compact disc. She responded with a hand-written note.
19 March ’92
Dear Peter,
Thank you for such a lovely gift—I am thrilled to have the Brubeck C.D. with ‘My Song,’ the ultimate compliment. You letter is so lovely, and I am most grateful for all your kindness.Warmest Wishes,
Audrey HepburnAt the United Nations ceremony, Brubeck’s new alto saxophonist, Bobby Militello, played Desmond’s solo note for note, inflection for inflection. He had memorized it when he was a boy.
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The modern jazz sub-genre called jazz fusion emerged in the 1960s, attracted a wide audience and received extensive radio air play through the second half of the twentieth century. The music combined elements of rhythm and blues, jazz, rock, funk and, often, time signatures that were challenging for both musicians and listeners. Fusion came in for criticism for traditionalists and purists. “Con-fusion, I call it,†the great bassist Gene Ramey once told me. Nonetheless, the category—like jazz itself—was flexible enough to accept everything from the soporific oatmeal music that for a time seemed to dominate top-forty radio to inventive groups like the Joe Zawinul-Wayne Shorter Weather Report and John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Among other forward-looking musicians who succeeded in melding disparate or compatible forms into substantial music were Larry Coryell, Miles Davis, Jean-Luc Ponty, Santana, Chick Corea’s Return To Forever and, at his most coherent, Frank Zappa. In the 1980s the band that vibraharpist Mike Mainieri at first called Steps became Steps Ahead. At its peak, Steps Ahead consisted of Mainieri, saxophonist Michael Brecker (1949-2007), pianist Eliane Elias, bassist Eddie Gómez and drummer Peter Erskine. Here is their concert filmed in 1983 at Copenhagen’s Carlsberg Glyptotek. Members of the band and their friend Don Grolnick wrote the pieces. Each gets screen credit as his composition plays. This is a fine way to spend an hour of your weekend.
Thanks to the YouTube contributor Herkenes for putting the concert on the web.
Have a good weekend.
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…in 90-degree weather was illuminated by sun reflecting on clouds a few hours away from becoming thunderheads…
(I managed to stay under 35 MPH).
There were plenty of roadside attractions, including wildflowers blooming by a stream…
…a monumental pump…
…and a calf having lunch.
It was a good ride.
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In an op-ed column in the weekend Wall Street Journal, Jerry Cianciolo urges readers to visit their local World War II memorials—nearly every town has one—look at the names, touch them and think about the sacrifices they symbolize. Hundreds of communities have monuments to American warriors who died in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cianciolo writes,
Many young combatants who, as the English poet Laurence Binyon wrote, “fell with their faces to the foe†never set foot on campus. They never straightened a tie and headed to a first real job. They never slipped a ring on a sweetheart’s finger. They never swelled with hope turning the key to a starter home. They never nestled an infant against a bare chest. They never roughhoused in the living room with an exasperated wife looking on. They never tiptoed to lay out Santa’s toys.
Where I live, there is a memorial to men and women who died in Viet Nam. I’ll go there today and remember a friend, as I did in this piece from the Rifftides archive.
There is someone I think of every Memorial Day, and many other days. Cornelius Ram and I were among a collection of young men who accepted the United States Marine Corps’ bet that we weren’t tough or smart enough to wrestle commissions from it. It quickly became apparent to everyone, including the drill instructors charged with pounding us into the shape 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 on the right is how I remember him from that period.
Unlike most of us who served our few years and got out, Corky made the Marine Corps his career. He served two tours in Viet Nam. Here is the official 5th Marines’ Command Chronology of what happened to him and another officer on his second tour in January of 1971, as the war was slogging to its demoralizing conclusion:
“On 10 January Major Ram (2/5 XO) and Captain Ford (E Co., CO), while attempting to aid two wounded Marines, were killed by a 60mm surprise firing device.”
There’s a bit more to the story. Major Ram, Executive Officer of 2/5 Marines, and Captain Ford (of Glen Rock, NJ), Commanding Officer of Echo Company, were overhead in a command helicopter when they spotted the wounded Marines in the open and in the path of oncoming enemy troops. The helicopter pilot, convinced that the open area was mined, refused to land in the vicinity of the wounded Marines and instead put down at a distance. Major Ram and Captain Ford exited the helicopter and began to cross the open area toward the wounded men. The pilot was right – the area was mined, and both Major Ram and Captain Ford died as a result. At least one of the two wounded Marines survived; he visited the Ram family several years later and described the circumstances.
Corky Ram was one of 13,085 Marines who died in hostile action in Viet Nam. I knew others, but he was the one I knew best. More than once, I have stood gazing at his name on the wall at the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, DC. When Memorial Day comes around, he symbolizes for me the American service men and women who have died in the nation’s wars. What we and all of the free world owe them is beyond calculation.
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Following yesterday’s post about recently deceased musicians, a Rifftides reader who identifies himself only as Derrick sent a message:
I just heard that Ron Crotty, the original bassist of The Dave Brubeck Quartet, died just a few days ago, too, but I have not seen anything written about it. Which leads me to ask, has Ron passed? Or is it another case of the internet burying someone who is still with us?
The sad report that Derrick heard was accurate. Evidently, nothing has been written in the jazz press or in general news outlets about Crotty’s death. Guitarist Tony Corman, his frequent playing companion in recent years, confirmed it for us by email.
Ron was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on his 87th birthday,
Apr 2, and passed three weeks later. He’d been treated for cancer two years ago and came through a rather grueling treatment pretty well, and we resumed playing our steady Sunday gig at the Oakland Museum. He was gardening again and had a new love relationship, really was doing fine, and then started feeling lousy, went to the doc, and, well, there you are. We’re looking to do a remembrance at the Oakland Museum on June 28, 3 – 5 PM. I couldn’t find an obit either, nor were we told of a funeral. Ron has one daughter, who lives I think in D.C. She was (and may still be) out to see him at the end and, I presume, take care of his affairs.
Six years before his death—nearly to the day—Rifftides posted a piece about Crotty. It contained video of Crotty, guitarist Corman and bass trombonist Frank Phipps playing at the Oakland Museum. With the elimination of a bit of introductory rambling, here it is.
Ron Crotty was the bassist in the Dave Brubeck Trio of the late 1940s and early ’50s and the quartet that Brubeck and Paul Desmond formed in 195l. On the cover of Brubeck’s celebrated Jazz at Oberlin from 1953, he is lounging in the lower
right of the photograph. Crotty’s influences were Jimmy Blanton and Ray Brown. At the age of 80, that’s how he plays today, with solid time, a big tone, the best notes in any given chord, no acrobatics high on the finger board, no triple stops and no blinding double-time passages. With Crotty on the new CD are men he plays with in his gigs in the café of the Oakland Museum, the clubs called Anna’s and Sadie’s and other spots around the Bay Area. They are bass trumpeter Frank Phipps and guitarist Tony Corman. How many important bass trumpeters can you name? I can think of two in addition to Dizzy Gillespie, who dallied briefly with the instrument. They are Cy Touff and Johnny Mandel. Mandel played bass trumpet briefly with Count Basie, then went on to other work. Add Phipps to the list. Cat can play. So can Corman. Phipps has a lovely way of alluding to extracurricular tunes without quoting them outright. Why is he shown on the cover playing a trombone? I don’t know.
The CD, cleverly titled Crotty Corman And Phipps, is on the Auraline label, as new to me as are Phipps and
Corman. All of the tunes are standards, except Corman’s samba “Rosa Rugosa” and Phipps’s “Ron’s Muse.” I was absorbed by Crotty’s straightforward bass line on “I Got Rhythm” changes in “Ron’s Muse.” “Rhythm” changes can be abused and they can be boring, but in the right hands they are never outdated. Other highlights: the languor of Corman’s out-of-tempo introduction to “Rosa Rugosa;” Phipps’s muted sound of a friendly walrus on “How Deep is the Ocean;” the way the three use the changes to create a new melody from the beginning of “Ghost of a Chance,” never disclosing the tune until the bridge of the final chorus; the unperturbed spunk of “My Little Suede Shoes;” the rolling swing of “Tangerine.”
In this clip from YouTube, they play “Witchcraft.” The sound is on the verge of distortion, but the video gives you a look at the group. Corman goes beyond allusion in his quote from John Lewis’s “The Golden Striker,” but he makes it fit so nicely that he can be forgiven.
Ron Crotty, RIP.
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Rifftides was never meant to be an obituary service, but who might have expected that so many people of high accomplishment and value would die in a so short a period. Ignoring their departures would be impossible. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Death comes to all, but great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold.†That consoling thought applies to four men whom we have lost in the past several days.
Bob Belden died yesterday of a massive heart attack at his home in New York City. He was 58. Belden was a saxophonist, composer, arranger, bandleader, producer, historian and writer. As a player, he worked with 
Woody Herman, Mel Lewis, Donald Byrd, Chick Corea, McCoy Tyner and others in the top levels of jazz. He brought his understanding of music and the inner workings of the jazz business to major ventures. Massive projects reissuing recordings by Miles Davis and Gil Evans won him Grammy awards for producing and for liner notes. His original works Black Dahlia, Turandot, Miles From India and Miles Español and others brought him further widespread recognition. When I wrote notes for the Miles Español set I became aware first-hand of his discipline, humor and openness to ideas. This paragraph from his own notes for the album gives an idea of how he approached his work.
I came to the sessions Tabula Rasa and my mind is still in that place. I knew that these musicians could create an undiscovered world of sound and textures, of light and motion. I just didn’t know exactly what. That is the purpose of jazz. Mystery. Surprise. Adventure. Human Nature. A producer can be an artist only if he/she lets go of the possessive nature of ego. To impose my will on people I respect for their individuality and creativity would be rather imperious. To counter the forces of ‘creative control’, I composed a framework based on pure empirical history and from that template emerged a modus operandi for harnessing the creative energy of the musicians. In some ways, the overall framework for the project is similar to that of filmmaking, where the producer is responsible for the story but not the dialog.
Bob Belden, a musician and impresario of sensitivity and scope. For an obituary, go here.
A day earlier in Inglewood, New Jersey, Bruce Lundvall died at 79 of complications from Parkinson’s disease. As the president of Blue Note Records beginning in 1984, Lundvall brought the label back to the importance it had for decades before its founder, Alfred Lion, sold it in
1971. He attracted to the label Joe Lovano, Kurt Elling, Dianne Reeves and other leading jazz artists including Jason Moran, Pat Martino, Robert Glasper and Cassandra Wilson. On Lundvall’s watch at Blue Note, the singer-pianist Norah Jones became a million-selling folk-pop-jazz performer whose success helped support his dedication to mainstream jazz.
Earlier, after more than two decades at Columbia Records Lundvall became that label’s president and ultimately headed its parent company, CBS Records. His stable of artists at Columbia included Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Herbie Hancock and country star Willie Nelson. Between his Columbia and Blue Note periods, Lundvall in 1982 started Elektra Musician, where he launched singers Bobby McFerrin and Rubén Blades, signed trumpeter Woody Shaw and the group Steps Ahead and released albums by Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Charles Lloyd and Grover Washington, Jr., among others. Lundvall’s professionalism linked to a low-key demeanor helped lead to his election as chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America and governor of the influential New York Chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. To read a full obituary of Lundvall, go here.
William Zinsser was a hero of writers and of people who cherish the proper 
and economical use of the English language. His 18 books, including On Writing Well and Writing To Learn, are standard guides for writers and just plain good reading for anyone. He once wrote, “My purpose is not to teach good nonfiction, or good journalism, but to teach good English that can be put to those uses. Don’t assume that bad English can still be good journalism; it can’t.†James J. Kilpatrick, himself a writer of great clarity, once said that On Writing Well is the one essential book on the subject and, “Zinsser’s sound theory is that ‘writing improves in direct ratio to the number of things we can keep out of it.’”
Zinsser died on May 12. He was 92. A mutual friend tells me that as recently as a month ago, he was playing the piano in her apartment and seemed well. His books are within reach of my desk. They are worn.
B.B. King’s death on May 15 at the age of 89 received so much attention in print, on the air and in hundreds of digital outlets that reprising his career seems unnecessary. It may be enough to observe that he was one of
the best-known performers of his generation, regardless of musical style, and that the way he played blues on the electric guitar has echoes in the work of hundreds of guitarists. Eric Clapton, one of his greatest admirers claimed a few years ago that King was “the most important artist the blues has ever produced.†That could be argued, but it is unquestionable that without King’s example, Clapton and dozens of other guitarists in blues and rock would not play as they do. King suffered from diabetes and had been hospitalized for treatment of dehydration.
Nearly 19-million viewers have seen this YouTube video of King’s greatest hit, performed at Montreux in 1993.
Rolling Stone has a thorough and admiring obituary of King. To read it, go here.
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Luis Perdomo, Twenty-Two (Hot Tone Music)
The title observes the number of years since the pianist moved from his native Venezuela to New York City. In that time Perdomo has established a musical personality apart from the influential leaders for whom he has worked—Ray Barretto, Ravi Coltrane, Miguel Zenon, Brian Lynch among them. His early studies in New York with pianists Roland Hanna and Harold Danko, powerful teachers and examples, emphasized the importance of developing an individual voice. As he demonstrated in his 2010 album with bassist Drew Gress and drummer Jack DeJohnette, Perdomo has a gift for harnessing a trio to single-mindedness in pursuit of his vision. In this case, his colleagues are bassist Mimi Jones and drummer Rudy Royston.
Royston does not merely accompany but listens, reacts, and integrates his ideas into the communal effort. Nonetheless, he doesn’t flinch from an opportunity to solo with power and at length on “The Old City†and more briefly but with no less energy on “Brand New Grays.†Jones brings incisiveness of tone and powerful swing that complement Perdomo’s own time feel combining relaxation and power. The pianist’s Chopinesque unaccompanied opening moments of “Love Tone Poem†typify his keyboard approach. His integration of Jones and Royston into the piece demonstrate his concept of the trio’s music as the product of minds intermingling. Employing electric piano on five of the tracks, Perdomo creates an almost horn-like flow of melodic line, particularly on the stirring “Cota Mil.†Still, the clarity of his playing on the acoustic piano, with every note distinct, is welcome after a couple of tracks of the Fender-Rhodes. Perdomo composed all of the album’s 12 pieces, except “How Deep is Your Love†by the Bee Gees. Despite the lightweight source material, he lifts that performance to the level of the rest of this intriguing album.
We Float, Silence (Havtorn)
As noted in the Rifftides wrapup report on last summer’s Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival, the quartet called We Float wafts between jazz and pop. The harmonic partnership of leader Anne Marte Eggen’s electric bass and Fanny Gunnarsson’s piano, buoyed by Flip Bensefelt’s crisp drumming, puts the band in the jazz column often enough to keep the music from slipping into mere ambience. The band’s substance is notable in Ms. Eggen’s “Echolation,†which employs repetition to build tension before its fade ending. With clarity and trueness of pitch, Linda Bergström’s voice is effective as the lead instrument, notably so on “Echolation†and “Silence.†The album’s sound quality is excellent.
More Recent Listening coming soon, maybe even tomorrow.
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Following yesterday’s Rifftides post announcing the Jazz Journalists Association poll winners, vibraharpist Charlie Shoemake commented:
Randy Weston has had a long and distinguished career as have many of the other deserving award winners. Just curious, though, if any jazz artists from the west coast have ever been or ever will be recognized. It always seems in these things as though we’re an invisible group. One recent positive note, though. Four of my young students here on the California Central Coast have just been awarded the best community jazz combo in America by Downbeat magazine. We do exist. All is not lost.
A few musicians from west of the Mississippi have come in for major recognition in the polls, although not many since the heyday of so-called west coast jazz in the 1950s and early ’60s. Honors have come from elsewhere. For example, arranger, composer and bandleader Bill Holman and vibraharpist Bobby Hutcherson were named National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Jazz Masters in 2010. Others: Charlie Haden in 2012, Quincy Jones in 2008, Dave Brubeck in 1999, Billy Higgins in 1997, Gerald Wilson in 1990, Ornette Coleman in 1984.
Geography plays a part in how JJA members vote. A majority of them live in or near the northeastern United States. They hear live performances in the clubs and concert halls of Boston, New York and Philadelphia, cities with large numbers of the best-known jazz musicians. However much one might hope that jazz journalists would take pains to be familiar with the spectrum of artists from all parts of the world, provincialism is and always has been a factor in how they vote in polls operated by the JJA, Jazz Times, Downbeat, Playboy, Esquire and others too numerous to list.
We could discuss what qualifies a person to be a jazz journalist, but that leads to the larger question of what qualifies a person to be a journalist of any description. That, in turn, leads to considerations of licensing and government control of the flow of information. Let’s not fool with that. And let’s not place undue importance on the results of polls that have many of the aspects of popularity contests. What counts is the quality of the music.
That looks like a cue. Here are Charlie and Sandi Shoemake in 1991 with the Bill Holman Orchestra. Solos by trombonist Andy Martin and the Shoemakes.
Trumpets: Bob Summers, Carl Saunders, Frank Szabo, Tony Lujan.
Trombones: Bob Enevoldsen, Rick Culver, Andy Martin, Pete Beltran.
Saxophones: Lanny Morgan, Bob Militello, Pete Christlieb, Ray Hermann, Bob Efford.
Piano: Rich Eames.
Bass: Bruce Lett.
Drums: Jeff Hamilton.
Filmed at the recording session for Shoemake’s album Strollin’.
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The Jazz Journalists Association has named 89-year-old pianist, composer 
and bandleader Randy Weston winner of the JJA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for 2015. Weston’s 66-year career began in his native New York. In his early years it included work with Art Blakey, Bull Moose Jackson, Eddie Vinson, Kenny Dorham and his childhood friends Cecil Payne and Ray Copeland. He was a key figure at Music Inn in Lenox, Massachusetts, during the institution’s influential years in jazz education. Also in the 1950s, he initiated the jazz policy at New York’s Half Note Café.
Weston’s lifelong interest in Africa intensified when he played in Nigeria in 1961. Since then he has performed frequently in several African countries and for a time lived in Morroco. Many of his more than fifty albums have African themes or exhibit African influences. It is likely, however, that Weston’s best known composition remains “Hi Fly,†recorded at the Five Spot Café in 1959 with an all-star cast of Weston, Coleman Hawkins, tenor sax; Kenny Dorham, trumpet; Wilbur Little, bass; Roy Haynes, drums; and an arrangement by Melba Liston.
Weston tops a list of 31 winners of the 2015 JJA awards, among them Jason Moran, musician of the year; Cecile McLorin Savant, up and coming artist of the year; Wadada Leo Smith, composer of the year; Maria Schneider, arranger of the year; Kenny Barron and Dave Holland, record of the year, for their The Art of Conversation.
To see the entire list and photographs of the winners, go here. Hearty congratulations to all.
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When trumpeter Bobby Shew left Los Angeles after years of work in big bands and the film and recording studios of L.A., he made a major commitment to education. From his home in New Mexico, he travels in the US, Asia and Europe for classes and workshops with college and high school music students. Among visits to schools in places as far-flung as Tokyo, Prague, Oulu in northern Finland and—recently—the US Pacific Northwest and southern British Columbia, he manages to also squeeze in concerts and club appearances. The concerts are sometimes with the youngsters he teaches.
That was the case when Shew appeared as guest soloist with the Two Rivers Youth Jazz Orchestra (TYRJO), a band of all-stars from a variety of high 
schools in the Yakima Valley of Washington state, and with Central Washington University’s Jazz Band One. The CWU band was fresh from winning first prize at the Next Generation Jazz Festival in Monterey, California and will play at the Monterey Jazz Festival itself next fall. Shew played with both bands at The Seasons, Yakima’s superb performance hall. He is pictured here with the CWU band directed by Chris Bruya. (Photos courtesy of Larry Chamberlain, Yamaha)
It turns out that there is video of some of the concert, including Shew soloing on flugelhorn with the TYRJO conducted by Josh Yohe. The piece is Randy Aldcroft’s “Breakfast Wine,†a favorite of Shew’s since he recorded it with his quartet in 1985.
It was a treat to hear that because the Shew album Breakfast Wine is long out of print. For details, see this Rifftides archive post.
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An international campaign is underway to win national recognition for Willis Conover, the Voice Of America broadcaster who sent American jazz to millions of listeners around the world. A petition drive is aimed at persuading the United States Postal Service to issue a stamp honoring Conover (1920-1996). Efforts to win him a posthumous Presidential Medal Of Freedom have yet to yield results. Admirers established a Conover Facebook page in 2010, but recognition by the US government has been limited to tokens: his name twice being read into the Congressional Record.
Through most of the cold war, Conover was the host of Music USA on the Voice of America. He was never a government employee, always working under a free lance contract to maintain his independence. While our leaders and those of the Soviet bloc stared one another down across the nuclear abyss, in his stately bass-baritone voice Willis introduced listeners around the world to jazz and American popular music. With knowledge, taste, dignity and no trace of politics, he played for nations of captive peoples the music of freedom. He interviewed virtually every prominent jazz figure of the second half of the twentieth century. Countless Eastern European musicians give him credit for bringing them into jazz. Because the Voice is not allowed to broadcast to the United States, Conover was unknown to the citizens of his own country. For millions behind the iron curtain he was an emblem of America, democracy and liberty. The late Gene Lees made the case for recognition, to which I subscribe wholeheartedly.
…Willis Conover did more to crumble the Berlin wall and bring about the collapse of the Soviet Empire than all the Cold War presidents put together.
Will this postal stamp petition lead to Conover’s getting a long overdue posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom? Perhaps it will if infuential senators and congressmen get behind the idea and persuade the White House. At the very least, the Postal Service honor could be an effective first step. The organizers’ goal is a thousand names. Let’s deluge them with signatures in multiples of a thousand. To learn more and to sign the petition, go here.
One of the great contributions of Conover’s career was the part he played 
in organizing the White House tribute to Duke Ellington on Ellington’s 70th birthday in 1969. Willis put together the ten-piece band that serenaded Ellington with his own music, plus guest musicians Earl Hines, Dizzy Gillespie, Willie The Lion Smith, Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor, Joe Williams and Mary Mayo. Drummer Louis Bellson arranged his former boss’s music for the occasion. The piece is “In A Mellotone.†The soloists, in order, are Paul Desmond, Bill Berry, Urbie Green, Jim Hall, Gerry Mulligan, Clark Terry and Hank Jones.
After years of negotiations, Blue Note Records finally released a CD of the Ellington White House tribute concert in 2002.
For a Dave Frishberg sidebar on Conover’s cold shoulder from the VOA itself, see this 2006 Rifftides post.
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A recent discussion among jazz researchers centered on the evolution of instrumentation as big bands changed through the decades. The conversation 
developed into exchanges about not only the makeup of band sections—rhythm, brass and reeds—but also the matter of doubling, in which individual musicians played more than one instrument and sometimes several. In the 1920s and 1930s doubling was a requirement in many bands, among them Sam Gooding’s, Jean Goldkette’s, Jimmy Lunceford’s, Paul Whiteman’s, Glen Gray’s Casa Loma Orchestra and, notably, Fletcher Henderson’s. Take a look at the arsenal of instruments laid out before Henderson’s reed section in this photograph from 1924. Henderson is at the piano. That’s Louis Armstrong in the middle of the top row. Coleman Hawkins is at the left end of the saxophones. The trumpet in front of alto saxophonist Don Redman suggests that he doubled in brass.
There’s not a lot of doubling apparent in Henderson’s 1924 “Sugarfoot Stomp,†but who cares?—the piece has a long Armstrong solo, one of his first on record.
Despite all of the opprobrium Paul Whiteman brought on himself with the title King Of Jazz and his declaration that he wanted to “’make an honest woman out of jazz,†his popular success and the rewards it brought made it possible to expand. He sometimes included French horns, tuba, strings and extra percussion, setting an example that inspired other big bands.
Here’s a Whiteman piece with the kind of arrangement and instrumentation that drove much of the criticism by purists. Wait for a solo by Armstrong’s Chicago jam session pal Bix Beiderbecke that makes the track indispensable. In the photograph that accompanies the recording, Bix is third from the left in the middle row.
Doubling continued though the twentieth century; think of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra and the Bob Florence Limited Edition. It is alive and well in the 2000s. For evidence, listen to (and watch) the Uptown Lowdown Jazz Band at the 2010 America’s Jazz Festival in Lacey, Washington, a suburb of the state capitol, Olympia. The piece they play goes back to nearly the beginning of jazz. This may be one of the few times you’ll see three bass saxophones trading phrases and engaging in simultaneous improvisation.
Bert Barr, leader, cornet; Rose Marie Barr, piano; John Goodrich, reeds; Paul Woltz, reeds; Pieter Meijers, reeds; Tom Jacobus, trombone; Al LaTourette, banjo; and Paul Hagglund, tuba. Thanks to Andrew Homzy for his lead to that video.
Apart from big bands, there was Roland Kirk, who doubled, tripled and sometimes quadrupled, simultaneously.
But that’s another story.
Have a good weekend
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest promises a potpourri of music so interesting that wherever you’re planning to spend the weekend, you might want to have along a radio, cell phone, iPad or other listening device. Mr. Wilke’s announcement serves as a reminder that Seattle has a busy jazz scene.
The broadcast will include organist Barney McClure with the Central Washington University Big Band, a prize winning composition by David Friesen, an original song by Ana Velinova who will be at the Seattle Art Museum next Thursday, and a new CD by Choroloco, a Brazilian band from
Seattle. Jazz Northwest airs at 2 p.m. PDT on KPLU-FM, 88.5, and streams on the web at kplu.org.
After this weekend’s many flavors of jazz at the Ballard Jazz Festival, next week promises even more, including the Juno Award winning group Maqueque, led by the Canadian soprano saxophonist and flutist Jane Bunnett fronting a sextet with five young Cuban women. (Maqueque means “spirit of a young girl”) They’re on a West Coast tour next week, including Jazz Alley in Seattle on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Here are Bunnett and Maqueque last summer at the Toronto Botanical Garden.
Jane Bunnett, soprano saxophone; Yissy Garcia, drums; Daymé Arocena, voice; Magdelys Savigne, percussion; Danaé Olano, piano; Yusa, bass; and Celia Jiménez, bass. They also play “Tormenta” on their 2014 self-titled album.
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Following yesterday’s Rifftides commentary about the New Orleans Jazz and
Heritage Festival, I heard from fellow jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld (pictured). Larry is a New Yorker who in recent years has spent much of his time in New Orleans. He writes from there for The Wall Street Journal and other outlets about the city’s recovery following Hurricane Katrina, about its legacy of music and, frequently, about its mores and politics. In a report from this year’s festival, he observed,
Beyond the Fair Grounds, in the real life of a city that a decade removed from utter disaster seems now rushing headlong toward a gentrified “new†New Orleans, such matters — especially whether the sound of music spilling out is heard as glorious or not — weigh heavy for those whose lives revolve around jazz and heritage long after the festival’s two weekends are done.
Larry reported extensively on big 2015 festival doings at the Fair Grounds and on smaller, often more interesting, ones throughout New Orleans. To read both parts, go here, then here.
