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Smalls Jazz Club is in the eighth year of its most recent incarnation as a bastion of uncompromising jazz in New York City. A couple of blocks down 7th Avenue from the Village Vanguard, a couple up from The Garage, it is in a part of Greenwich Village that may be as close as we’re going to see to a 21st century equivalent of the 52nd Street of the 1940s and ‘50s. In addition to presenting established musicians—Jimmy Cobb, Ethan Iverson, Jeremy Pelt and Peter Bernstein, among others—Smalls’ primary resuscitator, the pianist Spike Wilner, seeks out rising young players. Tonight, for instance, guitarist Avi Rothbard, tenor saxophonist Tivon Pennicott and bassist Spencer Murphy will lead successive groups, with Murphy playing after hours until the unspecified closing time.

Smalls produces CDs and live video performances streamed on the internet. Among the 40 CDs in its Live At Smalls catalog are three recent ones by Johnny O’Neal, David Berkman and Frank Lacy, all recorded at the club.

O’Neal is a Detroit pianist who made a splash in New York in the 1980s, then was largely unheard from for a couple of decades until his comeback in 2010. Self-taught, he is often mentioned as having technique that compares with Art Tatum’s, although there are no overt Tatum references in his CD. What grabs the listener as O’Neal’s Live At Smalls recording opens is his grainy singing of “The More I See You,” impeccable in swing and intonation. Elsewhere in the album, his vocal performances are less even. It’s O’Neal’s pianism that carries the day. The album includes a delicious exercise in dynamic variety and keyboard touch on “Blues For Sale,” an intriguing version of Walter Davis’s “Uranus,” a reflective unaccompanied “Goodbye,” and energetic compatibility with bassist Paul Sikivie and drummer Charles Goold in a medley of Roberta Flack’s “Where is the Love” and Stevie Wonder’s “Overjoyed.” O’Neal’s fierceness and execution are absolute in his solo on Billy Pierce’s “Sudan Blue.” Wilner acquits himself nicely as he sits in on piano to accompany O’Neal’s vocal and to solo on “Tea For Two.” O’Neal wraps up with “Let The Good Times Roll,” a title that sums up the collegial feeling of the album and his connection with the audience. O’Neal was featured in a recent New York Times profile.

Pianist David Berkman’s album for Smalls has the recognition advantage of featuring trumpeter Tom Harrell as a sideman, but it’s not Harrell’s star quality that accounts for the group’s success. It is Berkman’s musicianship and the interaction that he, Harrell bassist Ed Howard and drummer Jonathan Blake achieve. On the trio piece “For Kenny,” Berkman’s fluidity, energy and harmonic intensity make it clear that this relatively unknown Clevelander who teaches at Queens College in New York is in the top tier of contemporary pianists. His compositions “Ghost Wife” and “Small Wooden Housekeeper” are demanding vehicles that stimulate Harrell to intriguing, and frequently witty, harmonic solutions. Berkman and Harrell make their unaccompanied duet on “Body and Soul” an intimate conversation that Harrell seasons by working a quote from “The Gypsy,” of all things, into a place where it might not be reasonably expected to fit. It is refreshing to hear a contemporary group bring bebop verve to John Lewis’s “Milestones” and lace it with new harmonic daring.

Trombonist Lacy is one of the most flamboyant practicioners on an instrument that lends itself to blowsiness, but in his Smalls CD he is relatively restrained at the helm of a sextet of bright young New Yorkers. That is not to say that Lacy doesn’t burst forth with keenly placed blurts and blats, as in his harmonically rich “Spirit Monitor,” but at times he is downright lyrical. His colleagues in the front line are tenor saxophonist Stacy Dillard and trumpeter Josh Evans, both impressive for enthusiasm and command of their instruments. Dillard switches to soprano sax for an exotic, chancy solo on “Spirit Monitor.” Reaching high enough that he occasionally shows a bit of strain, Evans nonetheless manages logic and continuity in his flow of ideas on “Carolyn’s Dance,” which features Lacy’s granular voice in the passionate lyric to his love song. The rhythm section is Theo Hill, piano; Rashaan Carter, bass; and Kush Abadey, drums. According to the evidence here, Abadey is a listening drummer who designs accents and off-beats in reaction to the ideas of the soloists. In his solo on Joe Bonner’s “Sunbath,” Lacy manages to meld impressions of desperation and self-assuredness, after which Hill, unfazed by the contradiction, constructs a piano solo of quiet serenity. Without succumbing to crass imitation, Evans evokes Freddie Hubbard on Hubbard’s “The Intrepid Fox.”

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All day, we had fierce winds, grey skies threatening rain—and then at sunset:

An evening like ours might have made Jimmy Rushing feel a little better about things than when he recorded this with Count Basie in 1936:

Basie, piano; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Jo Jones, drums; Walter Page, bass; Freddie Green, guitar. You’ll find it in this comprehensive package of early Basie.

Rifftides was at ebb tide most of this week while I jumped in to help the Yakima Symphony Orchestra teach a couple of thousand children about music. The Chicago composer James Stephenson (pictured) was scheduled to be the narrator for his Compose Yourself, a 50-minute tour through instruments of the orchestra, long scheduled for the YSO’s annual children’s concert. An unforeseen development—the need for the orchestra’s musical director and conductor Lawrence Golan to be elsewhere—meant that Stephenson had to conduct. Since he couldn’t lead the band and narrate at the same time, I was called upon to be the speaker.

A year ago, I had the pleasure of narrating Mr. Stephenson’s moving Civil War tone poem Two Brothers, and I was delighted to be involved with another of his works. Rehearsals and the performance occupied a couple of days. The experience was worth every minute of it. There’s nothing like a theater full of enthusiastic fourth-graders to stimulate optimism about the future. They loved the trombone demonstration and the rather more serious bassoon demo, both shown here with other sections from an earlier performance of Compose Yourself with a different narrator. There are slight pauses between the sections. A trombone piece by Louis Seltzer and assorted other Stephenson clips are tacked by YouTube onto the end of the Compose Yourself excerpts as part of the package and can’t be detached, so enjoy as much of it as you have time for.

To hear the first half of a previous performance of Compose Yourself with a different narrator, go here. For more about Jim Stephenson, go here.

Today is the 115th anniversary of the birth of Duke Ellington, whose standing among the world’s great figures in music grows with each passing year. Miles Davis long ago summed up Ellington’s importance when he said, “At least one day out of the year all musicians should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.”

We see Ellington on the left at a 70th birthday gala in Paris in November of 1969. Seven months after the anniversary he was still being feted at celebrations around the world. The most notable of the parties was on April 29 at the White House. Leonard Garment and Charles McWhorter of the White House Staff and Willis Conover of the Voice of America persuaded President Richard Nixon to honor Ellington by throwing a party and awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The United States Information Agency, disbanded in the 1990s by the Clinton administration, made a short documentary about the affair. Evidently, only a snippet of the film is available. It is invaluable as a reminder of the occasion and of the bond between Ellington and Billy Strayhorn.

Conover put together the band for the tribute concert. Below you see its members rehearsing in the East Room the afternoon of the party, April 29, 1969. From left to right: Hank Jones, Jim Hall, Milt Hinton, Gerry Mulligan, Paul Desmond, Louie Bellson, Clark Terry, J.J. Johnson, Bill Berry, Urbie Green. Guest artists included Dave Brubeck, Billy Taylor, Earl Hines and the singers Joe Williams and Mary Mayo.

Excerpts from my notes for the album of the evening’s music that finally came out in 2002:

Sitting behind Ellington, I heard him remark to Cab Calloway as Hinton appeared, ‘Look, there’s your bass player.’ Hinton hadn’t been in Calloway’s band for twenty years. When Desmond did a perfect Johnny Hodges impression during ‘Things Ain’t What They Used To Be,’ Ellington sat bolt upright and looked astonished, a reaction that pleased Desmond when I decribed it.

Urged onto the platform, Ellington improvised an instant composition inspired, he said, by ‘a name, something very gentle and graceful—something like ‘Pat.’ The piece was full of serenity and the wizardry of Ellington’s harmonies. Mrs. Nixon, who looked distracted through much of the evening, paid close attention. The host and his wife turned in, but he invited us to stay for dancing and a jam session…The party lasted until 2:45 a.m.

As he left, Ellington said, ‘It was lovely.’ At 8:00 a.m. he and his band were off to an engagement in Oklahoma City. For Duke, it was back to business as usual but, as Whitney Balliet wrote in The New Yorker, the maestro ‘was finally given his due by his country.’

Addendum: Ellington’s motion picture career started early. Here’s the band in the 1930 film Check and Double Check.

Duke Ellington & his Orch.: Arthur Whetsol, Freddie Jenkins, Cootie Williams (t) Joe Nanton, Juan Tizol (tb) Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney (reeds) Duke Ellington (p) Fred Guy (bj) Wellman Braud (b) Sonny Greer (d) & The Rhythm Boys—Bing Crosby, Al Rinker, Harry Barris.

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Bassist Chuck Deardorf called my attention to a video from the early 1960s, when jazz on the west coast of the US was attracting attention around the world. Many big band sidemen settled in southern California in the 1950s, joining the Los Angeles jazz community that had been vibrant for more than a decade. The former Woody Herman and Stan Kenton trumpeter Shorty Rogers was one of the spark plugs of what critics decided to label West Coast Jazz. By the time Oscar Brown, Jr. hosted Rogers’ quintet on his Jazz Scene USA television show, Rogers had had become influential as a composer, arranger and leader in L.A.’s recording, film and TV studios.

Jazz Scene USA production is a bit stiff. The show is made to appear as if it had a live audience, but the applause smacks of having been dubbed later. In their closeups when Brown introduces them, the guys in the band exhibit their police lineup faces. But the music, the video and the sound are excellent. In this 25-minute segment of the telecast, Rogers, saxophonist and flutist Gary LeFebvre, pianist Lou Levy, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Larry Bunker play “Greensleeves,” “Time Was,” the blues “Martians Go Home”—which for a time in the mid-fifties had been a modest hit for Rogers— and Lefebvre’s edgy “The Outsider.”

Peacock, the survivor of that group, has been a member of the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio since 1983.

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It has been a long time since we shared a video creation by the poet and broadcaster Lynn Darroch. One of his latest stories recalls Duke Ellington’s relationship with Oregon, beginning in a time when innovation, courage and acceptance made it possible to tour with an all-black band despite restraints in a segregated land.

Clay Giberson was the pianist, John Nastos the alto saxophonist. Lynn Darroch is a teacher, journalist and writer. He broadcasts on KMHD-FM in Portland, Oregon.

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Herb Wong, an academic scientist who became prominent as a jazz critic, record company executive and festival producer, died this week. A PhD in Zoology, he was a native of northern California’s Bay Area. Wong continued to follow his boyhood enthusiasm for jazz as he developed an academic career, teaching at the University of California at Berkelely and Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. A gentle man with infectious enthusiasm for all of his interests, Wong taught science, administered university departments and developed jazz studies courses.

In addition, he produced the Palo Alto Jazz Festival, designed a jazz oral history exhibit for the Smithsonian Institution and in the course of his career headed two jazz record companies, Blackhawk and Palo Alto. He was also a disc jockey with the Bay Area radio station KJAZ-FM. In addition, he wrote scores of liner essays for albums. Internment will be at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland, California. Services are yet to be announced. Herb Wong was 88.

Herb was notably proud of a 1984 Phil Woods Quintet album that he produced for his Blackhawk label. It was called Heaven after the Duke Ellington title tune and featured Woods, alto saxophone; Tom Harrell, trumpet; Hal Galper, piano; Steve Gilmore, bass; and Bill Goodwin, drums.

Herb Wong, RIP

It was a full day, and the holiday greeting is late, but heartfelt. Happy Easter, everyone. Here’s one of the great sequences from the Fred Astaire-Judy Garland-Irving Berlin film Easter Parade. I hope that it makes you happy.

For another great Astaire dance and drum sequence from the Rifftides archive, click here.

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The Rifftides staff is up to his clavicle in non-Rifftides deadlines but wanted the readership to know that you are on his mind. He thought you would want to know that in the south forty, the lilacs and tulips are out.

Junior Mance, piano; Ray Brown, bass; and Lex Humphries, drums, supply the music by which to gaze at the lilacs, which are doing fine without rain, thanks.

That’s from Junior Mance and his Swinging Piano, a 1959 album that I thought was long unavailable. Turns out that it is not. Hooray.

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The Jazz Journalists Association has named 24 Jazz Heroes, recognizing them as “activists, advocates, altruists, aiders and abettors of jazz.” Among them is Jim Wilke (pictured on James Moody’s left), whose Sunday Jazz Northwest program we at Rifftides sometimes tell you about. It airs today at 2:00 pm PDT on KPLU-FM, 88.5 in Seattle and streams here on the internet. Jim features artists who will be playing at this week’s Ballard Jazz Festival, among them Sonny Fortune, Mimi Fox and Jay Thomas. For details about the festival, go here.

Below is the complete list of the JJA’s Jazz Heroes. Maybe you’ll find someone from your neighborhood.

Harold Battiste, New Orleans-based saxophonist, composer-arranger and producer 

John Bilotti, co-producer of the Wall Street Jazz Festival, Kingston NY 

Cephas Bowles, president and CEO of WBGO, Newark NJ 

Raymond Brown, trumpeter and head of jazz studies at Cabrillo College near Santa Cruz, CA
Faye Carol, vocalist and educator in the SF Bay Area
Bill Foster, founder of Detroit’s Jazz Network Foundation 

Bobby Hill, writer and broadcaster at WPFW, Washington DC

Joseph Jennings, saxophonist and retired educator in Atlanta
Jennifer Johnson Washington, director of programming for Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events

Dr. John Lamkin II, cross-genres trumpeter and educator in Maryland 

Emilio Lyons, the Sax Doctor of Boston 

Thara Memory, composer, trumpeter and educator in Portland OR 

Vita West Muir, founder and producer of the Litchfield Jazz Festival and Jazz Camp 

Thomas Pierce, activist for the Schenectady-based Swingtime Jazz Society and A Place for Jazz 

Jon Poses, founder and executive director of the “We Always Swing”® Jazz Series in Columbia MO 

Geraldine “Gerry” Seay, owner/operator of B Sharps Jazz Café, Tallahassee 

Meghan Stabile, founder of Revive Music Group 

Peggy Stern, pianist and co-founder/producer of the Wall Street Jazz Festival, Kingston NY 

Janis Stockhouse, trumpeter and director of bands at Bloomington High School North, Bloomington IN

Bill Strickland, founder of Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild 

Patrick Taylor, founder and producer of the Toronto Jazz Festival 

Larry Reni Thomas, journalist and radio broadcaster working with Art of the Cool, Durham NC 

Wayne Thompson, writer and Portland Jazz Festival board member, Portland OR
Jim Wilke, Jazz After Hours radio show producer, Seattle

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A film about Ukraine’s position visa vis Russia showed up on YouTube earlier this week. In three days it has attracted more than 115,000 viewers. The film was created and posted by a video artist whose accompanying explanation said that she or he preferred to remain anonymous in order not to distract from the message of the piece. Nor is the little girl singing or lip-synching the song identified. Without taking an overt political stand, this well-made video’s simplicity and power help put the Ukranian peoples’ dilemma in perspective.

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This is an item from Bill Crow’s The Band Room column in the April issue of Allegro, the newspaper of New York Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. We use it with Mr. Crow’s permission.

In the little town in Washington State where I grew up, our local school system had a full arts program. It was the 1930s, as this country struggled with the joblessness and poverty of the Great Depression. From grade school to high school, we had art and music classes in the regular curriculum. We had band, orchestra, and chorus. We sang in the classrooms. Parents provided the smaller instruments for band and orchestra, and the school provided the larger ones. The marching band had uniforms. There were tympani and basses for the orchestra and sousaphones for the band. I played a school-owned baritone horn until I reached high school, when an after-school job made it possible for me to buy one of my own. The school provided a drum set and arrangements for the swing band.

When I hear of all the cuts made in the arts in urban school systems nowadays, I wonder how our small town was able to carry such a full program during the Depression. Did we value the creative arts then more than we do now? Shouldn’t every child have a chance to learn to make his own music?

If you know who makes school budget decisions where you live, see that they read Bill’s plea. If you don’t know, give serious consideration to finding out. They, and we—all of us—should be ashamed.

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Geneva, a town of 13,000 in New York State’s Finger Lakes district, is the home town of Scott LaFaro. The brilliant bassist of the Bill Evans Trio influenced the development of jazz bass playing, and the town is keeping his memory alive. He died near Geneva in an auto accident in 1961. Thanks to Rifftides readers Frank Roellinger and Svetlana Ilyicheva for alerting us that last Thursday, Geneva honored LaFaro on his 78th birthday by proclaiming April 3rd its first annual Scott LaFaro Day. On Friday, the town’s monthly Geneva Night Out celebration included a concert by a quartet performing LaFaro compositions, and the bassist’s recordings playing at a book store called Stomping Grounds. Jim Meaney, the coordinator of Geneva Night Out, said,

LaFaro was a revolutionary and singular musician, but his contributions to the music world aren’t widely known to many Geneva residents. This effort aims to give recognition to LaFaro’s short but stellar career, while creating a platform for future jazz tribute concerts, festivals, and events in Geneva that will honor LaFaro’s legacy.

In addition, the town renamed a street Scott LaFaro Drive.

Here is one reason Geneva finds LaFaro worth honoring—the bassist with Bill Evans and Paul Motian playing his most famous composition, “Jade Visions” from Sunday at the Village Vanguard.

For details about Geneva’s LaFaro day, go here. For an extensive Rifftides appreciation of LaFaro, analysis of his importance and rare videos, go here.

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Best Press release of the week. Of course, it’s only Sunday.

Billy Mintz Quartet tours in New York May 2014

No more sneaking oversize instruments past the airlines! No more cramped economy seats! No more European trains where you jump up in a panic every time the conductor makes an announcement in a language you don’t understand! No more gas guzzling tour buses that smell like a bathroom! The Mintz Quartet announces a glorious five-day tour where the band can literally walk from one gig to the next (or at least to the nearest subway stop)!

Drummer/composer and band leader Billy Mintz commented thoughtfully, “Traveling is such a drag…you know? So, man, I just thought, “Hey, why not book a tour where we don’t have to actually, like, tour?” 
The tour features the original quartet from Billy’s 2013 leader debut, Mintz Quartet: John Gross: tenor saxophone; Roberta Piket, piano, organ; Putter Smith, bass; Billy Mintz, drums, percussion, compositions.

 Below is a list of all the performances.

05/24/2014 7:30 pm Smalls Jazz Club 183 W. 10th St., New York
05/23/2014 8:00 pm Ibeam 168 7th Street, Brooklyn
05/21/2014 8:00 pm Barbes 376 9th St., Brooklyn
05/19/2014 8:30 pm Greenwich House 46 Barrow St., New York
05/18/2014 9:30 pm Firehouse Space 246 Frost St., Brooklyn

For a Rifftides review of Mintz’s most recent album, go here.

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On his Jazz Northwest broadcast this afternoon, April 6, Jim Wilke is airing an appearance by vibraharpist Susan Pascal. Recorded by Wilke recently at Tula’s in Seattle, Pascal will lead her quintet in the music of Cal Tjader. The band (seen above) includes some ofthe Pacific Northwest’s leading lights—pianist Fred Hoadley, bassist Chuck Deardorf, drummer Mark Ivester and Latin percussionist Tom Bergerson. The program airs at 2pm PDT on KPLU-FM, 88.5 and will stream live on the internet at kplu.org. It’s available as a podcast following the broadcast.

In case you need reminding of the Tjader group that helped to inspire Pascal, here’s his “Lucero” with Tjader, vibes; Vince Guaraldi, piano; Mongo Santamaria, congas; Willie Bobo, timbales; and Al McKibbon, bass, live at the Blackhawk in San Francisco in 1958. Sorry about the lousy graphics. They are part of the YouTube package.

For the past couple of days, Rifftides and all of the arts journal.com blogs have been hors de combat. Unlike last week’s outage, this was not caused by hacker bots, but by good intentions gone awry. The webhost organization was moving databases to give them greater security and somehow misconfigured rather than reconfigured them. Don’t ask me to explain that. I’m just relieved that we’re back and no longer feeling like the guy on the left. Thanks for coming back.

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The family of Mrs. Dave Brubeck has announced that there will be a small memorial observance in Wilton, Connecticut on April 21. Iola Brubeck died on March 12 at the age of 90, 14 months following the death of her husband. In a letter, their oldest son Darius pointed out that next week’s Brubeck Festival at New York’s Lincoln Center will be a tribute to both of his parents.

There is a wonderful exhibition already in place, including almost-life-size photos of Iola and Dave working on projects together. We especially look forward to Jazz At Lincoln Center’s staging of The Real Ambassadors, which features some of Dave’s greatest songs with Iola’s lyrics and script and we are really pleased that her creative contribution to Dave’s career is shown as integral to his achievements.

Here is a link to Jazz at Lincoln Center: And this is a link to a short video about the festival.

The Lincoln Center schedule calls for the Brubeck Brothers Quartet—trombonist and bassist Chris, drummer Danny, pianist Chuck Lamb and guitarist Mike DeMicco—to play at Dizzy’s Club Monday and Tuesday evenings. Darius on piano, Chris, Dan and the British saxophonist Dave O’Higgins will play on April 9 and April 13 as part of the festival.

As for The Real Ambassadors, here are three pieces from the 1961 recording with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae singing Iola’s lyrics.

And here is the Brubeck Quartet with the main theme:

Have a good weekend.

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New York City’s Library for the Performing Arts announces that it has received the archives of George Avakian, who supervised some of the most influential jazz recordings of the past 70 years. At first as a student working part time for Columbia Records and then as an executive at Columbia and, later, RCA, Avakian was responsible for recordings by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck, among dozens of other artists. The library will catalog his personal papers as well as unissued recordings. It will also have the archives of Mrs. Avakian, the prominent classical violinist Anahid Ajemian. Avakian celebrated his 95th birthday on March 15. For details, see this story in The New York Times.

In another important bequest, saxophonist Ravi Coltrane has presented his father’s tenor saxophone to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American National History. It is the instrument that the senior Coltrane most likely used when his quartet recorded A Love Supreme in 1965. The album not only became one of Coltrane’s biggest sellers but also one of the most potent musical statements of the post bebop era, influencing countless musicians to take new directions. In another gift to the museum, photographer Chuck Stewart donated more than two dozen images he made of Coltrane, some at the A Love Supreme session, others never published. You will find a story about Coltrane’s saxophone here, and one about the Stewart pictures here, both on the Smithsonian website. Here are the “Acknowledgement” section of A Love Supreme and Stewart’s cover photograph for the album.

The poignant muted trumpet on “Flamingo” in Charles Mingus’s 1957 album Tijuana Moods was by Clarence Shaw, a Detroiter whose career derailed for a time, in part because of Mingus. More about Shaw in a moment, but first let’s listen to his most famous solo.

By the time RCA finally released that music in 1962, Shaw had rebuilt his career, altered his first name, moved to Chicago and began recording again. There remains a good deal of mystery surrounding his story, which is nicely told by Thomas Cuniffe on his Jazz History Online website. To read it, go here.

The survivors across the mountains from us in the little community of Oso are hurting, in every conceivable way. The physical and emotional devastation caused by that gigantic mudslide last week has them reeling. They are in need of just about everything. Washington state’s governor, Jay Inslee, is making a plea for help. He says that the best way to provide it is through the American Red Cross. Go here to see the governor’s message—and how you can pitch in. Thank you.