…it’s another; in this case that pesky gremlin. Rifftides finally banished him after two weeks of intermittent computer attacks, so he moved on to disrupt power to the western data center that provides the energy artsjournal.com blogs need to get on the internet. Rifftides was out of business for several hours today and inaccessible to thousands of readers. The hosts have it fixed. (Fingers crossed.)

Most of my thinking about gremlins lately has been confined to cursing them, but it occurred to me that there might be gremlin music. Sure enough, there is. It’s by the prolific film composer Jerry Goldsmith for a movie called—what else?—Gremlins. Here, a suite from the score is played by the Tenerife (Spain) Film Orchestra, conducted by Mark Snow.

It turns out that since 2007 Tenerife, in the Canary Islands, has hosted an important film festival.

Twitter and I are not strangers, but I recognize the addictive potential of tweeting and try not to get hooked. Still, occasional Rifftides announcements via Twitter turn up followers whom I, in turn, follow. A new one is Ken Pickering, the artistic director of the Vancouver, Canada, Jazz Festival. He liked an item he found in the archive and tweeted about it. It was from this blog’s Neolithic era, about the late composer, arranger and bandleader Rod Levitt.

Mr. Pickering’s tweet reminded me how much I miss Levitt and how jazz now could use his rare combination of solid musicianship, adventurousness and wit. Levitt’s recorded work is increasingly hard to find. Here is that piece, revised slightly and illustrated.
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From January 15, 2007

Rifftides reader Russell Chase writes:

Last night, my wife and I watched the 1933 movie 42nd Street on TV. I promised myself that I would listen to Rod Levitt’s LP with the same title today. I wound up playing all of the four Levitt LPs that I have. They have always rated very highly among my favorite things. Such consistently interesting writing and fine playing over a span of four LPs is hard to match.
When your name popped out of the notes of the Insight album, you were immediately nominated as the person with whom I would share my elation at having a non-CD day, and the reason why.

Well, Mr. Chase, now you have shared your elation with all of us, and that’s good; Levitt’s music deserves recognition. Rod Levitt played trombone in the Dizzy Gillespie big band that that toured Latin America and the Middle East in 1956, and in Gil Evans’ orchestra. For a time, he made a dependable living in the orchestra of the Radio City Music Hall. But he had a compulsion to write music, and in the early 1960s, he began turning out ingenious arrangements for an eight-piece rehearsal band. Levitt made use of audacious harmonies and spacious voicings, and many of his horn players doubled instruments, so that the octet often sounded twice its size. He adored Duke Ellington, and reflected Ellington’s influence. Yet, without embracing free jazz, he also managed to impart a rambunctious feeling of abandon, and Down Beat included him in a survey article about nonconformist composers. All of the other subjects of the piece were card-carrying members of the avant garde. I remember Levitt’s being amused, if surprised, by the company in which the magazine put him.

Over three or four years in the mid-sixties, he turned out the four albums Russ Chase mentions. They comprise a body of recordings that are fresh, evocative and enormously entertaining forty years later. The writing was daring, finely crafted and marinated in wit. Most of his players were top studio professionals who were superb improvisers. Among them were the trumpeters Rolf Ericson and Bill Berry, the pianist Sy Johnson and the saxophonists Buzz Renn and Gene Allen. Levitt’s gutsy, often raucous trombone was at the center of many arrangements, but he also fashioned delicate woodwind ensembles. None of Levitt’s three RCA Victor albums has been reissued on CD. Five tracks made it onto a 1988 RCA compilation CD with other works by Hal McKusick and John Carisi. The disc is difficult to track down. Amazon continues to list it, but as “currently unavailable.” Trolling the web may now and then turn up vinyl copies of Insight and Solid Ground, but 42nd Street seems to have evaporated.

For the most part, the demand by a modest-sized core of listeners for reissue of Levitt’s albums has fallen on deaf ears (also known as recording company accounting departments), but there is a happy exception. Before his company sold itself to Concord Records, Ralph Kaffel, the president of Fantasy, Inc., succumbed to years of entreaties from pesky critics and reissued Levitt’s first album on Riverside as a CD in the OJC series. That was 1963’s Dynamic Sound Patterns. In his 2003 National Public Radio review of the CD, Kevin Whitehead said, “He liked blaring harmonies and primary colors,” and that’s true, but Levitt also fashioned delicate woodwind ensembles. He knew how to use space. He was a master of balance among the sections and a creator of droll surprises. The enthusiastic cadre of admirers he accumulated with those LPs wasn’t big enough to earn him a renewal with RCA. Now that the Victor catalogue has been absorbed into the massive Sony empire, chances of the Levitts being reissued seem small. By the early seventies, possibly discouraged but a cheerful realist, Levitt began making a living writing music for advertising and turned out some of the hippest background music ever to grace TV commercials in New York. He kept the octet going as a rehearsal group, playing occasional concerts and, sometimes, simply hiring musicians to play his charts for fun. He also played for a time in the 1970s in Chuck Israels’ National Jazz Ensemble, a pioneer jazz repertory orchestra. For the NJE, he expanded the arrangement of “His Masters Voice,” Levitt’s evocative tribute to Duke Ellington. Happily, it is available in a splendid reissue CD on the Chiaroscuro label. For the past several years, Rod Levitt has been living in Vermont, largely inactive in music.

A sidebar to the story: When I was anchoring and reporting television news in Portland, Oregon, in the mid-sixties, I was addicted to Dynamic Sound Patterns. Levitt came to his hometown to visit his parents, I invited him to be a guest on a series I put together, a hybrid documentary and discussion program. It was called Insight. I told Levitt the broadcast needed theme music and asked, with trepidation, what it would cost to commission him to write it. He named what I thought was a reasonable figure. The program manager approved the deal. When Levitt got back to New York, he wrote the music, recorded it with his octet, notified me that it was ready and sent an invoice. The management reneged. They wouldn’t pay the bill. I was angry and embarrassed. When I told Levitt, he said not to worry, he would make use of the music. It became the title tune of his next album. In the liner notes, he mentioned me and the station, kindly. That’s class.

The piece stands alone, but it was also perfect for its intended use. In the unlikely event that I ever go back into television, I’ll do a documentary series, call it Insight, use that music and see that Rod gets paid for it.
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Rod Levitt died less than six months following this post, on May 8, 2007.

The new batch of suggested listening and viewing—a long time coming—will be posted in the main column for a day or so before the recommendations move down for new exhibits. They will be in the right column under Doug’s Picks until the staff can be persuaded to post new ones. This time around, we have two trumpeters named Miles; one guitarist twice; an enchanting CD by a young singer with an (ahem) experienced pianist; and a music book held over because rereading Dostoevsky’s The Possessed has kept me occupied quite enough lately, thank you.

Just because:

The drummer Artt Frank is observing his 80th birthday and the impending publication of his memoir about work and friendship with Chet Baker (they are pictured together). On Frank’s website, Baker is quoted as saying, “Artt Frank is my all-time favorite drummer. He always seems to know where I’m going.” This performance from one of their 1981 gigs features impressive latterday blues playing by the trumpeter and highlights Frank’s propulsive brush work behind Baker.

For an appreciation of Frank that spun off a post about the pioneering drummer Tiny Kahn, see this piece from the early days of Rifftides.

The attention-getting device above is one of the late Leo Meiersdorff’s album covers for the Thad Jones Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. If we have your attention, here’s an announcement from Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest about next Sunday’s broadcast:

SRJO PLAYS THAD JONES: FROM BASIE TO THE VILLAGE VANGUARD

Thad Jones played trumpet with the Basie Band and he brought the jazz orchestra into the modern age with his unique compositions and arrangements for the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra at The Village Vanguard. The current incarnation of that orchestra plays every Monday night at the hallowed New York club as The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, 47 years after it began. The music of Thad Jones still feels current and is played by jazz orchestras around the world, including The Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra which featured Thad Jones’ music in two sold out concerts last weekend.

Highlights from one of those concerts will air on Jazz Northwest Sunday, March 10 on 88.5, KPLU. Air time is 2pm PST. For web streaming, click on http://kplu.org, then on “Listen Live.” The concert was recorded at The Kirkland Performance Center. Included are several selections that have become jazz standards, “Three in One,” “A Child is Born,” “To You” and “Low Down.” Among the many soloists in this concert are two who performed with Thad Jones or the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Bill Ramsay and Mark Taylor.

In case you have forgotten how the Jones-Lewis band sounded and looked, click on the little arrow on the screen below. From the costumery, you might think that this was the 1970s.

Soprano saxophone solo: Jerry Dodgion. Baritone saxophone solo: Pepper Adams. Composer, conductor:Thad Jones.

All The Things You Are: The Life of Tony Bennett

by David Evanier

Reviewed by Paul Paolicelli

Tony Bennett is the longest-running act from the “greatest generation” of American popular singers. His career has spanned seven decades and his popularity is as strong today as it was when he was breaking into the public’s psyche with overly-emotive tunes like “Rags to Riches.” Not only a civil rights supporter, like Sinatra, but also an activist. A man who walked across the bridge in Selma and marched to Birmingham to demand social change. A true mensch in many ways, but also a complete enigma to many who could never really get very close to this man. A man who, like Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich, seemed to take great delight in eviscerating his musicians after concerts, but would turn around and publically praise or financially help the least among them. A man filled with either humility or an incredible lack of self-confidence. A man quite possibly haunted by ghosts.

In his highly researched book, David Evanier tackles the Bennett complexities. It is no easy job. With Bennett, Evanier has to do double-duty since his early experiences were both intense and wide-ranging and, as he matured, he became more and more drawn into himself.

Perhaps the most formative event in Bennett’s life was World War Two. Unlike several other musicians of his generation, he didn’t serve as a performer; he was a dogface on the front lines. He served with the U.S. Seventh Army in southern Germany, mopping up pockets of German resistance in closing days of the war. This action through Bavaria meant the liberation of concentration camps. Tony Bennett, Italian kid from Astoria Heights, saw firsthand at Dachau the ultimate degradation of human beings. Saw firsthand indescribable suffering, the images of which would stay with him for the rest of his life. And like most of his generation, he didn’t talk about it much when he came home.

Bennett tells several interviewers over the years that he started his musical career as a singing waiter and he would have been happy spending his entire life doing just that. Can the man really be that simple? The question infuses Evanier’s work. While there are times when he appears to have none of the ego associated with even lesser talents, one wonders if the humble approach isn’t the equivalent of Dean Martin’s drunk act. But time and again Evanier finds those fellow musicians and professional associates who talk about Bennett’s love of the music and joy of singing. Still, the reader is left wondering…

While not an Italian American, Evanier, a native New Yorker, has a clear and touching appreciation and understanding of the Italian American experience. He goes to great lengths to describe Bennett’s youth and the role of his family in his formation as a man and musician.

Tony Bennett was not exactly an overnight success, but this book makes it clear that his talent was evident early on and that, after a modicum of schooling (he dropped out of technical school to help support the family) and his war experiences, it didn’t take him very long to get down to the business of singing. From that point on he seems to have a miraculous way of bumping into the right people who take to him immediately and help him along. And, as Evanier makes quite clear, Bennett had and maintains an unerring sense of the types of songs he could and should sing. Perhaps alone among the popular singers of his day, Bennett had an innate sense of quality and taste and, while the listener might dispute the interpretation of the song (especially in some of the early dramatic renditions), there’s no “Come On-a My House” tragedy in the entire discography. He remained true throughout his career to his musical and artistic compass. A man who insisted on returning to Jazz after each popular success. A man who has spent his life praising his own personal heroes—Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald—and who speaks eloquently and often of their artistry and legacy. It’s clearly the music that drives him.

That is perhaps, Evanier’s greatest accomplishment with this book; he never leaves the music far behind. He describes in great detail the selections at the various times and over the course of countless recording sessions, the personnel (both musical and managerial), the highlights of the recordings and performances. He talks with hundreds of people who performed with Bennett, recorded with him, traveled with him, managed him; even with former lovers. It’s a valuable body of interviews and sourcing material.

Yet, despite all of that testimony, Tony Bennett remains a little unclear. Like his art, Bennet is colorful, dramatic, dissonant, bright, but there’s no photograph here; it’s strictly representational. This is not a deficiency of the biographer, but rather the completely illusive and evasive character that Evanier is dealing with. Evanier amasses an impressive array of first-person testimony that is often contradictory. Even the people who worked the closest with Bennett often say they don’t really know the man.

“All the Things You Are” is the perfect title for this book. Because, in the final analysis, Bennett is an awful lot of things. While no clear photograph emerges of this man and his art, a clear appreciation is the net result. Throughout, Evanier never loses his clearly articulated sense of wonder and love for Tony Bennett’s work.

Paul Paolicelli is the author of two acclaimed books about the Italian American experience: Dances With Luigi—a Barnes&Noble “Discover Great New Writers” selection and Los Angeles Times best seller—and Under the Southern Sun, a Sons of Italy recommended reading selection. Paolicelli is a veteran broadcast journalist who has managed television news departments and the Washington, D.C., bureau of the NBC television stations. The Rifftides staff is pleased to have him as a contributor.

Speaking of John Coltrane (see the post two items down), if you’re looking for a starter saxophone for your child, here’s a great opportunity.

Yes, that says $115,000. But, hey, shipping is free.

Before he became famous for his tenor and soprano saxophone playing, Coltrane was an alto saxophonist in the Navy and in the early part of his professional career with King Kolax, Dizzy Gillespie and Earl Bostic, among others. Of the few recorded instances of his alto work, this may be the most famous. It’s from a 1958 Gene Ammons all-star session. Ammons hosted Coltrane, fellow tenor saxophonist Paul Quinichette, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, flutist Jerome Richardson, pianist Mal Waldron, bassist George Joyner and drummer Arthur Taylor. If you’re in a hurry, you can move the slider to Coltrane’s solo at 6:40. My advice is, don’t be in a hurry. Everyone sounds good.

About that Coltrane alto on ebay: if you’re interested in bidding, follow this link.

Blogging will be suspended while we try to subdue an invading tech gremlin. Damage so far is slight, the only casualty a printer. The Rifftides staff is doing everything possible to make sure that the incursion is terminated—with prejudice—and we send the troublemaker back to infinity, or wherever he came from.

In the meantime (sneaky transition), enjoy the classic Shorty Rogers recording of “Infinity Promenade.” Shelly Manne is the magician with cymbals. Soloists: Art Pepper, alto saxophone; Rogers, trumpet; Marty Paich, piano. What makes this recording, however, is not the soloists and not that repeated riff. It’s the mind-blowing double trumpet lead near the end by Conrad Gozzo and Maynard Ferguson, still a sort of gold standard for lead trumpeters.

Lester Perkins of Jazz On The Tube pointed out that today is Jimmy Garrison’s birthday. Garrison, who died in 1976, would have been 79. Perkins alerted his subscribers to a 1968 video from Danish television of the bassist featured with Elvin Jones’s trio on Garrison’s composition “Sweet Little Maia.” Joe Farrell was the soprano saxophonist. Jones and Garrison had been members of John Coltrane’s quartet. When this was televised, Coltrane had been dead less than a year. Farrell was attracting increasing attention as one of his most accomplished successors.

Garrison’s 42-year-old son Matthew is also a respected bassist. He was a member of Jack DeJohnette’s band at the recent Portland Jazz Festival. For the Rifftides review of the concert, click here.

To learn about Jazz On The Tube, go here.

At last year’s Healdsburg Jazz Festival in California, pianist Michele Rosewoman’s trio welcomed trombonist Julian Priester as their guest. They played Priester’s “End Dance” from his album In Deep End Dance (say it aloud, fast). Andy McKee is the bassist, Billy Hart the drummer. The sound quality of this video is acceptable. That—and closing your eyes while you listen—helps compensate for the fuzzy picture.

Ms. Rosewoman’s three-decade career in music that combines jazz and Afro-Cuban elements includes her leadership of the New Yor-Uba ensemble, which this spring celebrates its 30th anniversary. Over the years, Priester, Hart, Howard Johnson, Oliver Lake, Orlando “Puntilla” Rios, Pedro Martinez, Adam Cruz and an assortment of other leading American, Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians have played in New Yor-Uba. For more About Michele Rosewoman, see her website.

There’s a lot happening at night in the City Of Roses during the Portland Jazz Festival, but overlapping scheduling makes it impossible to hear many of the excellent Pacific Northwest musicians featured in clubs and hotels. During my five days in town, concerts at the big theaters precluded catching Gretta Matassa, Kerry Polizer, Mel Brown, Randy Porter, David Friesen, Rob Davis and at least a dozen other accomplished regional artists. From Montreal to New Orleans to Montreux and Tokyo, that is the 21st century style of big jazz festivals, and it is unlikely to change.

Steve Kuhn’s Portland festival edition of his trio teamed the pianist with his longtime collaborator Joey Baron on drums and Buster Williams playing bass. The flow of Kuhn’s melodic lines, the density of his harmonies and his assured swing established him long since as one of the major trio pianists in modern jazz. The humor in his playing is not always immediately obvious, but it was evident in his first chorus of improvisation on “There is No Greater Love” that he enjoyed quoting “Santa Claus is Coming to Town.” That may have been a whim of the moment or a way to draw in the audience. In any case, the set was off to a comfortable start. Baron used a butterfly touch with brushes on cymbals to create delicate patterns behind a powerful Williams solo. The bassist showed no sign of weariness despite having played the demanding previous concert by the Blakey Jazz Message group. After creative repetition in a tag ending, Kuhn closed the piece with hand vibrato on the keyboard. Sensed and seen more than heard, the vibrato had the effect of keeping the audience’s attention—and silence—until the final chord had faded.

In a Portland festival conversation at the Art Bar, interviewer Tim DuRoche questioned pianist Steve Kuhn (pictured ca 1960) about first hearing Bill Evans. “Did it rattle you a little bit?” DuRoche asked.

Friday night, members of several graduating classes of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers celebrated their boss. Tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson assembled the intergenerational all-star band only for their concert at the Portland Jazz Festival.

Conversations with musicians are valuable sidebars to performances at the Portland Jazz Festival. They allow audiences to hear artists talk about what they do. At the Art Bar, drummer and radio host Carlton Jackson rounded up four prominent drummers and asked them: