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Today is Paul Desmond’s 90th birthday. Years after Paul’s death, his guitar companion and good friend Jim Hall (1930-2013) said, “He would have been a great old man.” The last birthday Desmond celebrated, his fifty-second, fell on Thanksgiving, 1976. He spent it with Jim and his wife Jane at their daughter’s tiny apartment in New York City. He had taken a hiatus from his lung cancer therapy to play the Monterey Jazz Festival and an engagement at Barnaby Conrad’s El Matador in San Francisco. From Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, this is an account of that Thanksgiving day. The photographs are courtesy of his hostess, Devra Hall, who had known Paul since she was a little girl.

Back in New York, Desmond resumed his chemotherapy treatments and spent time with friends. Jim and Jane Hall’s daughter, Devra, had been graduated from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusets and was living on 89th Street between West End and Riverside Drive. Her mother announced to her that now that she had her own place, Devra would be hosting Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving and Desmond’s 52nd birthday came on the same day, November 25, 1976.

“I told her, ‘Okay, but you have to bring Paul,'” Devra said. “I knew what Mom would do, so I went to the market on Broadway and got this turkey and, mind you, my kitchen was the size of a small bathroom. To open the oven, you had to stand outside the kitchen door. This is New York, my first apartment and my first turkey, I’m growing up and very pleased with myself. I followed all the instructions, turned on the oven and put it in. We all knew Paul was sick. I think he had just finished a chemo treatment, but he said he felt up to it, and he and my folks came to this tiny one-room apartment. There was no bed, just a pullout couch; it was all folded up. Paul was sitting in the little brown canvas sling chair. There was an upright piano that my dad had bought me for my birthday, a chest of drawers and a drop leaf table at which we had dinner. That was it for furniture. Well, they’re sitting there. My mother says, ‘So, how’s the bird? I say, ‘Well, go check it out.’ She opens the oven–I couldn’t go in there with her; there was no room–and she closes the door and she’s laughing. You know, I’m mortified. I can’t imagine what’s wrong.

“Paul’s saying, ‘What’s wrong, didn’t she turn on the oven?’ Jim can’t decide whether I’m going to cry or what. It turns out that I had put the turkey in the oven upside down. Don’t the legs go on the bottom? I mean, isn’t that how the bird stands? We later determined that I was ahead of my time. Today, that’s the chef’s secret to keeping the meat moist. It turned out fine. It was a very quiet dinner. Paul was not feeling well, but he was clearly happy not to be home alone. He didn’t have to say a word around my folks. They talked a blue streak, usually, but he was just very comfortable. My fondest recollection is that I made him dinner on his last birthday.”

The senior Halls and Desmond went back to Jim and Jane’s apartment when they left Devra’s, and on the way stopped at the Village Vanguard. Thelonious Monk was performing there. Between sets, they all gathered in the Vanguard’s kitchen, the closest thing the club has to a Green Room.

“It was the most coherent conversation I ever had with Thelonious,” Hall said, “in the kitchen with Paul and me and Thelonious. I had a sort of nodding acquaintance with Monk, but he and Paul really connected. I’m not even sure what they talked about, just standing around in that kitchen, going through old memories and things. It was nice.”

During the life of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Desmond rarely recorded apart from Brubeck. Albums under his leadership on Fantasy, Warner Bros and RCA were exceptions. After Brubeck disbanded, Desmond recorded occasionally with other pianists. One of the most memorable such encounters accomplished something he had talked about, even joked about, for years; a recording with the Modern Jazz Quartet in concert.

Anticipating this 90th Desmond birthday, Rifftides reader Frank Roellinger sent a communiqué suggesting that in Paul’s solo on “You Go to My Head” with the MJQ he may have inserted a tribute to his friend and Town Hall band mate John Lewis, the quartet’s pianist.

From about 03:58 to the end of his solo, it sounds as though Paul is paying homage to Lewis by playing in a style very similar to John’s— especially near the end at 04:36 where he plays that minor second interval in a rhythm exactly the way John would have done it. That’s what first tipped me off. It might be interesting so see whether any of your readers agree with this.

The track is from Paul Desmond & The Modern Jazz Quartet, recorded at Town Hall in New York City on Christmas night, 1971.

As for what it was like to know Desmond, I cannot improve on what the playwright Jack Richardson said at Paul’s memorial service on June 20, 1977:

I found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’d ever known in my life. His leaving will make this planet a smaller and darker place for everyone.

For The Sound Of A Dry Martini, Paul Conley’s classic National Public Radio profile of Desmond, go here and click on “Hear the Documentary.”

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Near the windup of our visit to southern California, we took a walk along the beach in Santa Barbara. Not far from our host’s house, we stood for a long time admiring the ocean and the sky’s patches of blue expanding and contracting as the weather tried to make up its mind. In the third year of a drought, people were hoping for rain. They got sprinkles. Those dots on the far horizon near the middle of the photograph are oil rigs.

Santa Barbara is a magnet for tourists and travelers. The streets and parks attract homeless people. Some of them extend their temporary residencies to weeks or months. The city seems hospitable to them or tolerant of them, at least. This man was lying on his side reading a book when we first saw him. Walking back, I saw that he had gone to sleep and waited a while in hopes that he was only snoozing. I’d like to have learned where he’d been on that loaded bicycle, pulling that loaded trailer, and where he was going. He slept on. We had a dinner appointment to keep. I’ve been thinking about him and imagining what his life must be like.

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The Rifftides staff’s vacation visit to California coincided with an appearance by Kristin Korb on her US tour. The bassist and singer appeared at a Santa Barbara Jazz Society concert at the downtown restaurant called Soho. Korb, pianist Magnus Hjorth and drummer Snorre Kirk were winding up a string of concerts that began in the state of Washington and took them south through Oregon and California. The tour ended tonight in San Diego. The Santa Barbara concert followed the outlines of Korb’s appearance at the Ystad Sweden Jazz Festival covered here last summer. The trio was, if anything, more tightly unified than in its impressive work at Ystad. The swing and solidity of Korb’s bass playing in the Ray Brown tradition continues to deepen. She incorporated pieces from the trio’s newest album and added a few from earlier CDs, including her vocalese treatment of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz’s solo on his 1955 recording of “East of the Sun.”

Soon, the sidemen will be flying home to Copenhagen. Korb will be off to Canada to teach at workshops and seminars in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, before she, too, returns home to Denmark.

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This news is five days old, but perhaps I’m not the only one who has been on the road and out of touch. The young Chicago trumpeter Marquis Hill won the Thelonious Monk Institute’s big award. Charles Gans of the Associated Press included that fact as the final paragraph in his story about a retired tenor saxophonist and government official, seen above with pianist Herbie Hancock at the ceremony. For the full AP story, go here.

For a sample of Hill’s work with his Blacktet, see the video below. Hill, trumpet; Dustin Laurenzi, tenor saxophone; Justin Thomas, vibraphone; Joshua Ramos, bass; Makaya Mccraven-drums.

Nate Chinen’s New York Times report has more about Hill and the Monk Institute award ceremony in Los Angeles.

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I was saddened to learn on the road that Buddy Catlett died yesterday. I remember him looking as he does in this photograph made around the time we were both involved in Seattle’s vibrant jazz community in the early-to-mid 1950s. He left town to work with a variety of large and small bands. By the end of the decade Buddy had joined the big band his childhood friend Quincy Jones took to Europe that also included Seattleites Floyd Standifer and Patti Bown. For an obituary, read the Seattle Times article by Paul de Barros, the leading chronicler of Seattle’s rich jazz history.

Buddy solos on Thelonious Monk’s “Straight No Chaser” with a combo from the Jones band in 1959. His companions are Phil Woods, alto saxophone; Clark Terry, trumpet; Patti Bown, piano; Quentin Jackson, trombone; Sahib Shihab, flute; and Joe Harris, drums.

Jim Wilke of Jazz After Hours fame will make his Jazz Northwest broadcast on Sunday a tribute to Buddy. Here is Jim’s announcement.

Jazz Northwest will remember him with several unpublished recordings of the Local 493 Reunion Band on Sunday, November 16 at 2 PM Pacific on 88.5 KPLU and kplu.org. The group included veterans of the Black musicians union Local 493 in the years before it merged with the white musicians union Local 76.

The recordings of the Local 493 Reunion Band date from the 90s and include Buddy Catlett, Floyd Standifer, Jabbo Ward, Billy Wallace, and guests, Ed Lee, Freddie Greenwell, Brian Nova, Jack Perciful and others. Some have been broadcast once before, but none has been issued on commercial recordings.

Quincy Jones wrote: ‘RIP to my brother and bandmate Buddy Catlett, one of the greatest bass players to ever take the stage. From Charlie Taylor’s and Bumps Blackwell’s bands when we were starting out in Seattle to my Free and Easy tour of Europe, we traveled the world playing the music we love. A lot of notes, a lot of laughs, a lot of great memories. We will all miss you Buddy, but you will live on in our hearts.’

Jazz Northwest is recorded and produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for 88.5 KPLU and kplu.org. The program is also available as a podcast at kplu.org following the broadcast.

Buddy Catlett, RIP.

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On the way south, we spent a couple of nights in Fort Bragg on the northern California coast. In addition to admiring the bird pictured in the post below, we took time to visit with Mark Ruedrich and Doug Moody. They are the president and senior vice president of the North Coast Brewery, the biggest—and by far the hippest—employer in that Mendocino County town, population 7,200. Among his other achievements, Brewmaster Ruedrich developed a Belgian ale inspired by a pianist (pictured) known to Rifftides readers.

Ruedrich and Moody installed in the brewery’s restaurant and taproom a jazz club that presents performances by California musicians, many of them national figures. They also founded a record label whose income, in addition to some of the brewery’s, taproom’s and company store’s profits, are earmarked for support of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Many of label’s artists, including trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire, singer Gretchen Parlato and saxophonist Wayne Escoffery are alumni of the Monk Institute. Considering the brewery’s other philanthropic contributions in Mendocino, we got the impression of a vital force in the craft brewing field and in a small town that Doug Moody claims with a degree of seriousness hard to gauge, is “in the middle of nowhere.”

This page of the North Coast Brewery website contains a half-hour film that traces the history of Monk’s namesake ale. The mini-documentary, prominently featuring Thelonious’s son T.J. Monk, also outlines the history and processes of craft beer making in the United States. I always wondered what happens to those spent hops.

Cheers.

You never know who you’ll run into when you’re on vacation. This morning, this guy was on the balcony railing outside our room in Fort Bragg on Northern California’s Mendocino coast. He’s a Pacific Gull, I believe. He was good at looking hungry. We had nothing to contribute to his breakfast.

Sorry about the headline. While I waited in line at the supermarket, I was infected by tabloid newspapers.

Jenner didn’t play trumpet or sing. Baker is not known for decathlon victories. What he is famous for is captured in a video made in Laren, The Netherlands, in 1975, 13 years before his death. He was captured in concert with alto saxophonist Bob Mover, pianist Harold Danko, bassist Dave Shapiro and drummer Beaver Harris. The guest artist is soprano saxophonist and flutist Jacques Pelzer, with whom Baker had a close connection during his later years in Europe. Baker had recovered from the loss of several teeth after he was beaten in San Francisco in 1968, most likely over a drug deal. Plagued by his addiction, he could still produce moments of the lyricism that made him one of the best known musicians of his time. His playing on “I Waited For You” here is an example of his ability to caress and embellish a melody.

You may want to set aside time for this. The segment runs 40 minutes.

Chet Baker, 1929-1988.

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Not terribly sorry, actually. The Rifftides staff needs a vacation, so we’re taking one. There may be occasional blogging through the magic of digital delays, so please check in once in a while. There’s a Chet Baker piece coming up In a day or two, for instance. If anything of interest takes place or comes to mind along the way, we may overcome the objections of family members who point at the laptop and say, “You’re not taking that thing with you, are you?” We will occasionally examine email messages. We have not determined a return date.

In other words, I’m going to try to make “off” mean “OFF.” In the meantime, please browse the archives by way of the “Search The Site” box (top right) or “Archives” (right column). I will be thinking of all of you whenever I get a chance. See you soon…more or less.

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The weather around here has been what meteorologists call, for lack of a more scientific term, variable. That means warm, cold, cloudy, sunny, rainy and—while all that is going on—fierce wind gusts blowing the beautiful fall leaves off the trees. Last evening, the cloudy and sunny elements combined to paint a sunset that lasted barely long for me to dash inside from the deck, grab a camera and get back in time to catch the final seconds of the show.

It was too windy for any mockingbird to be out. Besides, they’ve all headed south. But we’re in luck. We can hear Duke Ellington’s “Sunset And The Mockingbird.” Here are two versions, Ellington’s from The Queen’s Suite, and Tommy Flanagan’s from his album that took its title from the name of the piece.

Improvisations in 1959 were by Ellington on piano and Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet. Pianist Flanagan’s 1998 trio included bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash.

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On Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles blog, today’s subject is Paul Desmond’s Complete RCA Victor Recordings featuring Jim Hall, a fine companion to your morning coffee. Steve put together one of his celebrated videos incorporating photographs and music, in this case Desmond’s recording of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” with strings, and pictures by Chuck Stewart, Ray Avery, William Claxton and Ted Williams. The written matter consists of essays by Paul and me. To visit Jazz Profiles click here.

Enjoy Steve’s work, then come back to Rifftides and browse the archive’s nine years of posts. You can do that by entering a term in the “Search The Site” box at the upper right or by picking a month and year under “Archives” in the right column.

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From 1960 to 1972 in Hollywood, drummer Shelly Manne operated Shelly’s Manne Hole, one of the great jazz clubs in the world. It was headquarters for his quintet known as Shelly Manne And His Men, which over the years included many of the era’s premier players, among them Charlie Mariano, Bill Holman, Richie Kamuca, Conte Candoli, Joe Gordon, Stu Williamson, Leroy Vinnegar, Russ Freeman, Victor Feldman and Monty Budwig.

Now and then, though, Manne brought in a few friends for short-term appearances at the club. One night in 1970, his all-star quartet du jour consisted of Manne, tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper, pianist Hampton Hawes and bassist Ray Brown. They played a blues in what seems to be A-flat (although I’m not sure I trust the pitch of the film sound track), and followed with “Stella By Starlight.” Then came ”Milestones,” which Manne kicked off at a tempo about as fast as it’s possible for musicians to play coherently. Brown gives Manne a grin that seems to say, “You devil,” but the four manage without difficulty.

Shelly was forced to close the Manne Hole because the music was causing problems for Wally Heider’s recording studio next door. He reopened for a time in L.A.’s Wilshire section, but the club lasted less than a year at the new location. Manne thrived until shortly before his death in 1984, always in demand, one of the most admired drummers and bandleaders in the history of the music.

Have a good weekend.

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This piece ran on Rifftides eight years ago. In those early days of the blog, I hadn’t learned how to add pictures and relied on words to create images.

Any day now could be the last good one of the year for cycling, so I said goodbye to work and took advantage of a late October afternoon so perfect that to have left it out there by itself would have been a shame. Deciding not to pit the road bike against heavy, skitterish Friday traffic, I left it in the shed and headed the mountain bike toward the system of canals that criss-crosses this agricultural valley. I dropped onto the path along a canal a block from my house and entered instant peace and quiet, except for the dogs that charge with intent to kill the moment they sense a cyclist.

Is there an animal psychologist out there who can tell us what it is about bicycles that drives dogs temporarily insane? Fortunately, there’s a leash law that keeps dogs mostly behind fences in town. In the country, you can usually get up a head of steam and outrun a farm dog, but a couple of weeks ago, a big black brute roared out of a yard and was gaining on me. When he came alongside and started nipping, I yelled as loud as I could (that’s loud), “Go home.” To my relief–and from the expression on his face, to his astonishment–he went home.

Nothing like that happened today. The only annoyances were piles of mud dredged out of the canals by ditch riders cleaning up after a summer of irrigation, and the extra shirt I threw on under my jersey. The air seemed cool when I started, but the temperature quickly rose on the steep hills. Russet and red leaves along parts of the path crackled under my tires. A crow circled along in the clear sky above me for a few hundred yards, reprimanding me for some offense. Two horses looked up as I passed their pasture. Apple harvest was over in most of the orchards. One pear farmer apparently decided that his crop wouldn’t bring him enough to make picking worthwhile. The pears lay beneath his trees where he let them fall, in the first stages of returning into the earth.

On a stretch up near the valley rim, a squirrel darted across the path fifty feet ahead. To my right, I saw a bigger creature move along the edge of an expansive lawn. The man paused to pump his air gun, then stalked the squirrel. He stopped, took aim, got off a shot, shook his head, and resumed gliding slowly along the edge of his property. Not wanting to distract him, I stopped and watched for ten minutes as he pursued his quarry with no less concentration than a sahib on safari. He took two more shots, but it was clear that the varmint had escaped. As he turned around, I said, “Hold your fire.”

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t see you.”

“I know. I didn’t want to startle you and be your next victim.”

He felt like talking. He said he couldn’t keep flowers and couldn’t grow vegetables. The squirrels dig them up and eat them. They undermined a stone walkway he built. It was sinking, he said. He pointed to two pieces of equipment, a loader and a hay rake. One of his sons was storing them there, but he told him he’d have to move them, so the son found a buyer who gave him fifty dollars for the loader and a hundred for the rake, but the buyer hasn’t come for them.

“You see that shed,” he said. “I put that there years ago to store my tools while I built the house. I intended to tear it down when the house was done, but now it’s full of my grandson’s stuff. I told him he’d have to get it out of there next year. I want this area clear so I can plant it in lawn. That camper my son put there has got to go.” His gaze swept over his property. “I’ve got a lot of lawn, two acres of it. That area there, I cleared,” he said, pointing to a space ten by twenty feet bordered with creosoted timbers. “My other son had this old Mustang. It sat there for a long time, then some fella from Australia came along and paid him ten thousand dollars for it. Shipped it back to Australia with three or four other Mustangs. I guess they like old Mustangs down there.

“I’ve had this place since 1941. Retired from the mill fifteen years ago. Raised three kids here. After we had the first one, a daughter, the doctor told my wife she couldn’t have any more children. Seven years later, we had a son. He was fine. She was fine. Shows you what doctors know. Fourteen years after that, we had another son. What happiness. She was fifteen when we met, I was seventeen. Got married when she was twenty and I was twenty-two. I love it out here. It’s quiet. Away from the road. I’ve got a long driveway. Got that ditch running by. Nearest neighbor is clear over there, but his property runs right up against mine. We get along.”

He gestured at the orchard across the canal. “The old man who owned that had property ran clear into town, down by the freeway where the mall is. He used to stop by here when he was in his eighties, and I’d say, ‘I’m going in and get you a coke,’ and we’d just sit here by the canal and talk, for hours sometimes. He’s gone now.”

I extended my hand. We exchanged names. “I ride by here now and then,” I said. “We’ll talk again.”

“We sure will,” he said. “You take care.”

I rode home feeling good. The dogs seemed friendlier.

Immediately outside the west wall of Rifftides world headquarters is a magnificent Sunset Maple. Each fall, the tree puts on a show. The show is in its final act. With luck, we have a week before the curtain of leaves falls. In the meantime, this is what we wake up to.

You probably suspect that I’m going to use the foliage as an excuse to play a piece of music, and you’re right. It’s from a television special, Those Ragtime Years, narrated by Hoagy Carmichael. It aired on November 22, 1960, on NBC’s Project 20. This was the finale, Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” played by four pianists—from left to right in the video, Ralph Sutton, Dick Wellstood, Eubie Blake and Carmichael. The Sidney DeParis band joins them for the final chorus.

Canada might give serious thought to making that piece its national athem.

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The governing principle of the Dayna Stephens album recommended in the post below brought to mind the philosophy of Red Mitchell (1927-1992). “Simple isn’t easy,” the great bassist often said. He wrote a song and made an album using that title. The album is a quirky jewel of his discography, as endearing as when it first appeared 30 years ago. It’s Mitchell all the way; just Red, his bass, his piano, his singing and his compositions. In addition to the title tune, the songs include “I’m a Homeboy,” “Let’s Emulate the Japanese” and “Where’s Don Ellis Now?”

Where’s Red Mitchell now?—now that we need his wit, his incomparable bass playing and his songs promoting love and understanding?

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Billie Holiday’s recording of “Strange Fruit,” shocked listeners in 1939. Seventy-five years later, the song’s portrayal of racist lynching retains its disturbing power as commentary on a shameful part of the American past. Trumpeter, bandleader, blogger and broadcaster Steve Provizer’s radio drama about the singer and the history of the record is debuting this fall. It will air on stations across the country. The story involves not only Holiday, but also the song’s composer, and the club and record label owners who had the courage to act on their belief in “Strange Fruit.”

Mr. Provizer (pictured right) says, “I would like to emphasize that I hope the program can be used in educational and non-profit settings to stimulate conversations on racism and culture.” He has granted Rifftides permission to give readers a link to a page at PRX (Public Radio Exchange) where you can listen to the quarter-hour drama. Click here.

Steve Provizer will discuss the background of the program and play excerpts on the Morgan White, Jr. show on WBZ, the CBS station in Boston. The show is scheduled for Saturday, November 8 at 11 p.m. EDT. It will be streamed live on the internet at this site.

Queries still arrive about where to buy Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. As hardened Rifftides readers know, but newcomers may not, new clothbound copies are history, unless you are lucky enough to spot one on the shelf of your corner bookstore. And if your town still has a corner bookstore, congratulations. Desmond—pictured left with Dave Brubeck and Gene Wright—loved technological advances; he would no doubt be at least this happy if he knew that his biography has gone digital. Please see this announcement from a year ago for details.

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‘Tis now the very witching time of night, When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out Contagion to this world. — William Shakespeare

 

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.   — Emily Dickinson

 

There are three things I have learned never to discuss with people: religion, politics and the Great Pumpkin. — Linus Van Pelt

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-legged beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us! – Scottish saying

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Conventional wisdom in jazz is that the harmonies in the bridge section of Rogers and Hart’s “Have You Met Miss Jones?” inspired John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps.” Recently Mark Gilbert, the editor of the British magazine Jazz Journal suggested that a more likely source was composer Harry Warren’s “Chica Chica Boom Chic,” from the 1941 film That Night In Rio. Pianist Jan Lundgren followed up with a letter to the magazine calling Gilbert’s proposition a “sensational discovery.” Lundgren said his analysis showed that the way Warren (pictured right) used moving key centers in major thirds in the final strain of the novelty movie song is “more or less exactly the way Coltrane used the sequence in the first important three bars of “Giant Steps.”

Let’s listen to and watch Carmen Miranda and Don Ameche perform the song. The section in question comes near the end of the movie clip, at 2:37. You needn’t bother digging into your record collection for the comparison. Coltrane’s 1959 recording of “Giant Steps” follows.

It is unlikely that we will ever know whether Coltrane was familiar with “Chica Chica Boom Chic,” but Gilbert’s and Lundgren’s speculation is intriguing.