In 1981, Art Pepper sat in with Jimmy Witherspoon at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California. Their acquaintance went back to the early 1950s when the Central Avenue jazz scene in Los Angeles was thriving.

Pepper died the following year at the age of 56, Witherspoon in 1997 at 77.

This nearly completes reviews of albums I voted for in the Rhapsody jazz critics poll as 2011’s best.

The Tierney Sutton Band, American Road (BFM)

Sutton and her band apply their musicianship, intensity and camaraderie to a dozen American songs. The pieces range across traditional music (“Oh Shenandoah/The Water is Wide,” “Wayfaring Stranger,” “Amazing Grace”); pop (“On Broadway,” “Tenderly”); songs from the theater (four by Bernstein, three by Gershwin, one by Arlen); and patriotism (“America the Beautiful”). In a duet with pianist Christian Jacob, Sutton applies delicacy to “Tenderly.” She finds just the right notes of dreamy hope in “Somewhere.” With the quartet in “My Man’s Gone Now,” following a Jacob solo that builds tension and drama, she chisels a chilling portrait of pain and despair.

A solo by Kevin Axt or Trey Henry sets up “Amazing Grace”— both bassists are on the album but not identified song by song. After one chorus from Sutton, drummer Ray Brinker’s emphatic strokes change the mood for Jacob’s solo. By the time Sutton reenters, there is an air of minor-key mystery that builds to uncertainty before she and the bass, in unison, resolve to an ending of ghostly peace. Those of us who believe that “America The Beautiful” should be the national anthem will find reinforcement in the purity of Sutton’s and Jacob’s closing duet. Sutton includes a bonus in “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” a quick biology lesson (whales aren’t fish, they’re mammals).

As I have noted more than once, these five people are not a singer and a rhythm section. They are a band. There is a lot happening in their latest collection. It has beauty, simplicity and complexity in equal measure. It deserves close listening—and rewards it.

Next time: A massive box of good old Duke Ellington, and we’ll move out of the poll business, maybe once and for all. But I’ve threatened that before.

I voted for these albums in the recent Rhapsody jazz critics poll and wrote a feature story about one of them, but have not previously reviewed them.

Jan Lundgren, Chuck Berghofer, Joe La Barbera: Together Again…At The Jazz Bakery (Fresh Sound)

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, I concentrated on the surprise discovery and audio rescue of the recording that resulted in this CD by pianist Lundgren, bassist Berghofer and drummer La Barbara. Toward the end of the piece, I wrote, “Mr. Lundgren’s clarity of execution matches the clarity of his ideas. He is at the top of his game in all of the elements of jazz pianism: touch, dynamics, harmonic imagination, swing, power and delicacy.”

Lundgren’s playing is glorious throughout, but what entices the listener—this one, at least—to play the album repeatedly is the power and subtlety of the interaction among the three. The CD’s title alludes to the trio’s 1996 encounter at the Los Angeles club. Together Again happened at a Jazz Bakery gig during a break from preparation of the trio’s 2008 album of film music of Ralph Rainger. Despite an interlude of 11 years, their empathy was in play from the start of the concert. Indeed, if anything, it ran deeper. The performance is characterized by the trio’s close listening to one another and their immediate responses to twists of harmony and rhythm, however spontaneous and understated. With his canny accents, quick rejoinders to Lundgren’s turns of phrase, faultless partnership-in-time with Berghofer and mastery of melodic drumming, La Barbera is remarkable. His exchanges with Lundgren in “Have You Met Miss Jones?” demonstrate those attributes and more, including faultless work with wire brushes.

For all of his success as a first-call studio musician, Berghofer remains at heart the stompin’ bassist who initially became well known with Shelly Manne in the 1960s. When he is simply (ha) walking time, the purity of his lines and note choices is one of the album’s great satisfactions. Significant Berghofer moments: the depth of his rubato bowing as he introduces “Yesterdays;” his joyful skipping behind Lundgren in the final chorus of “I’m Old Fashioned;” the thematic development in his solo on “Blues in the Closet;” the chromaticisms in his “Rhythm-a-ning” solo.

Impressive from his early days with Arne Domnérus and other Swedish jazzmen, Lundgren in his maturity is one of today’s most consistently rewarding pianists. In this recording, he emphasizes his Oscar Peterson influence in an unaccompanied performance of “Tenderly.” There are also bows toward Bud Powell, Ray Bryant and Bill Evans, among others, but Lundgren has become an original. The originality is underlined nowhere more dramatically than in the trio’s lightning “Rhythm-a-ning,” in which his Powellisms are not merely quotes but integral parts of the musical story. Lundgren has been recorded in a variety of situations lately, some less than suitable to his great talent. He does his best work with trios. This recording with La Barbera and Berghofer is a milestone in his career.

The 32-page CD booklet written by album producer Dick Bank is loaded with information about the music and the musicians, photographs, even the reproduction of a love letter to Lundgren from Steinway & Sons. Bank announced that this album was his last production before retiring. It’s a fine parting shot.

Sonny Rollins: Road Shows, Vol. 2 (Doxy)

This is mostly the 2010 Rollins 80th birthday concert at New York’s Beacon Theater, where Ornette Coleman was a guest soloist. The encounter was the first between Rollins, an audacious giant of mainstream tenor saxophone, and Coleman, the alto saxophonist who 50-odd years ago brought near-respectability to the idea of playing jazz outside the mainstream; ‘way outside. The meeting between the two youthful octogenarians is fascinating.

Rollins introduces Coleman not by name, but as someone backstage “who’s got a horn, and I wish he’d come out—NOW.” The predictably unpredictable surprise guest keeps his host waiting. Rollins has already played two solos on his famous blues “Sonnymoon For Two” by the time Coleman makes his fashionably late entrance to raucous applause and cheers. Coleman skates into his solo with a phrase that hints at the melody before he dekes the tune into a zone where no one but he can get at it. Bassist Christian McBride and drummer Roy Haynes keep the changes and time going while Coleman dangles, squeaking and honking, before he backhand-passes to Rollins. (All right, enough with the hockey metaphors.) The two then alternate solos, each complimenting the other by reshaping his partner’s closing phrases. There are moments when Coleman is his young self just out of Texas R&B, others when he seems to be approximating Rollins’s 1950s style, still others when he’s in low earth orbit, ever the iconoclast space cadet. Rollins matches him in the far-out department. When the rambunctious collaboration ends, he has equaled his most powerful and inventive work of the past two decades.

Another guest in the Beacon Theater concert was Jim Hall, the guitarist with whom Rollins made so much stimulating music in the 1960s. I don’t know what they did at the concert, but on the record Hall plays a lovely “In a Sentimental Mood” with Rollins’s rhythm section—bassist Bob Cranshaw, drummer Kobie Watkins and percussionist Sammy Figueroa—and nothing with Rollins. Not hearing these brilliant collaborators together is a disappointment. Trumpeter Roy Hargrove joins Rollins and the rhythm section for “I Can’t Get Started,” whose melody he gives a delicate reading. Hargrove’s ballad playing, always his strong point, is exquisite. They also play “Raincheck,” a highlight of Rollins’s great 1955 album Work Time. In their long exchange of four-bar phrases on the Billy Strayhorn tune, Hargrove is now brilliantly original, now searching for his inner Roy Eldridge. Rollins is relaxed, reflective and witty.

The CD opens with a 15-minute exploration of “They Say It’s Wonderful,” recorded at a concert in Japan a month before the Beacon birthday party. Rollins’s guest there was guitarist Russell Malone. Not to put too fine a point on it, Rollins plays the hell out of the Irving Berlin tune, injecting little obbligatos during the beginning of Malone’s solo, as if he can’t wait to dig in. When it’s his turn, Rollins plays a chorus, then, in a long exchange of fours with Watkins and another with Malone, grows increasingly more resourceful and whimsical. He quotes up a storm, everything from “Hey Bob-A-Rebop” to “Fools Rush In,” “It’s You or No One” (three times) and “There Will Never Be Another You.” The quotes are fun, but it’s his original stuff, as the old-timers called it, that inspires wonder at Rollins’s ceaseless gusher of inventiveness. The closer, a brief “St. Thomas,” gives him an opportunity to say goodbye in their language to his Japanese audience. He is enthusiastic with a wistful tinge, as if he didn’t want the evening to end. Neither did the audience. Neither did I, and I was only listening to a record.

Next time, the final two of my critics poll choices yet to be reviewed on Rifftides.

Visits to New York won’t be the same now that the Algonquin Hotel has closed the Oak Room. Since Ben Bodne sold the hotel in 1987, it has changed hands several times and is now operated by the Marriott chain as one of its high-end properties. With each change, another layer of the Algonquin’s mystique seems to evaporate. The Oak Room existed as an elegant dining and listening post for only 32 years of the hotel’s 110-year history, but from its opening night it was one of the most important New York showcases for singers. In announcing its demise last Thursday, general manager Gary Budge noted the room’s importance but said, ”…with declining guest counts, it seemed like the appropriate thing for us to do right now.” After a general renovation of the hotel, he said, the Oak Room would not reopen. For an appreciation of the room’s history and impact, see this Stephen Holden article in The New York Times.

The Oak Room never made a point of distinguishing between cabaret and jazz; in any case, that line is clear only when considering singers like Julie Wilson and Andrea Marcovicci, out-and-out cabaret stars. Among the performers featured there who could be described as jazz, cabaret or both were Sylvia Syms, Tierney Sutton, Wesla Whitfield, Barbara Carroll, Jack Jones, Sandy Stewart, Mary Cleere Haran, Diana Krall, Harry Connick Jr., Michael Feinstein and Daryl Sherman. Ms. Stewart sang at the Algonquin several times accompanied by her son Bill Charlap at the piano. Ms. Whitfield appeared with pianist Mike Greensill and bassist Michael Moore. Ms. Sherman became a latterday favorite in the Oak Room, sometimes working with trombonist Wycliffe Gordon. Here’s a part of their tribute to Johnny Mercer. The video is a bit fuzzy. The interpretation and verve are not.

I wonder if the Marriott folks might be persuaded to change their corporate mind about eliminating a cultural treasure. The improving economy could get those guest counts back up.

Toward the end of last summer, vibraphonist Ed Saindon sent a message alerting me to video of a duo concert he and fellow vibist Joe Locke had just played at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Saindon has been a professor at Berklee since 1975. I made a mental note to post one of their collaborations. As mental notes have a way of doing, it sank into the murky depths, where it lurked until it found its way to the surface this morning. So, belatedly, here are Saindon and Locke. They play “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams.” Harry Barris, one of Bing Crosby’s partners in The Rhythm Boys, wrote the song in 1931. Crosby’s record of it was a hit. Over the years, it has been a favorite of jazz musicians, with many recordings including splendid ones by Hampton Hawes with Harold Land and Bill Evans with Freddie Hubbard. As Locke and Saindon demonstrate, the bridge section has hidden little challenges that make the piece great fun to play. Locke is on the left.

To see and hear more from Saindon’s and Locke’s encounter, go here.

As for Harry Barris, he also wrote “I Surrender Dear” and “Mississippi Mud,” among a handful of other less well-known songs. When they were all still alive, I had a fantasy of making a record by Harry Barris, Barry Harris, Clark Terry, Terry Clarke, George Russell and Russell George.

There is good news today for a premier west coast jazz listening establishment. Architect Frank Gehry, creator of some of the most dramatic buildings in the world, is donating his services to the Jazz Bakery. The Los Angeles performance hall lost its lease in 2009 and has functioned in an assortment of rented or donated spaces while it looked for a new site. Now, it has found one on a sliver of land not far from its former Culver City home. Gehry designed the home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the massive Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown L.A., pictured here. Other famous Gehry buldings are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; the MIT Stata Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Experience Music Project in Seattle; the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis; and the Dancing Building in Prague. On its new seventh of an acre, the Bakery may not be quite as imposing as those. Here is the Dancing Building.

Gehry told The Los Angeles Times that he took on the pro bono design commitment at the urging of his wife, who is a jazz listener, and of his friend the late film director and actor Sidney Pollock. Ruth Price, the founder of the performance hall, said that Gehry’s offer came as a surprise. There are administrative and regulatory details to be worked out, but the deal for the new Jazz Bakery site seems set. For details, see this article in today’s L.A. Times.

Among the many albums recorded at the old Jazz Bakery is one recently discussed in this Rifftides post.

A memorial service for broadcaster, editor and jazz historian Paul Blair will be held this evening, January 30 at St Peter’s Church in Manhattan. Thanks to Jim Eigo, here is full information:

Paul’s family and friends from elementary school, college, Peace Corps in Malawi, Voice of America, the New York Jazz community, are remembering Paul with words and songs.

Speakers:
Amandus J. Derr , Senior Pastor of St. Peter’s Church
Yessy Blair and Nick Blair
Ellen Miller from PS 16 and West High of Rochester, NY
Bob Abel / Charlie Meliska, Wooster College, OH
John Geraghty / Sandra Lauffer, PCV in Malawi
Barry Maughan, VoA (eulogy read by Nicholas Blair)
Howard Mandel of Jazz Journalists Association (JJA)

Musicians Set 1
Bob Dorough
Bill Mays
Pheeroan akLaff
Steve Berger
Pat O’Leary
Bob Mover
Scott Robinson

Music set 2:
Cecilia Coleman Big Band:
Peter Brainin, Bobby Porcelli, Stephan Kammerer, Geoff Vidal, Stan Killian, Frank Basile, Jeff Wilfore, Hardin Butcher, Kerry MacKillop, John Eckert, Don Sickler, Matt McDonald, Mike Fahn, Sam Burtis, Joe Randazzo, Tim Givens, Jeff Brillinger, David Coss, and Cecilia Coleman.

The family of Paul Blair thanks all friends who expressed their condolence and love.

Special thanks to Gwen Calvier and her staff at Hot House Jazz magazine
St. Peter’s Church, 619 Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, New York, NY 10022

For a summary of Paul’s life, career and contributions to jazz, see Howard Mandel’s remembrance on the Jazz Journalists Association website.

The Rifftides post about radio has taken on a life of its own with a chain of reader comments. To catch up with them, go here, and feel free to add yours.

One of those commenters, the veteran audio engineer (and discriminating listener) Jim Brown, has launched an internet page. He intially designed it as an aid for a jazz appreciation class he taught. Several sections serve as guides to listening, reading and viewing, complete with helpful internet links. You will find it here

After Gary Foster informed me of Clare Fischer’s death at 83 on Friday, I went to the LP shelves, got out Dizzy Gillespie’s 1960 recording A Portrait of Duke Ellington and listened to all of it. For perhaps the hundredth time, I was moved by the originality that Fischer brought to the daunting task of recasting pieces by the acknowledged master of jazz composition. In an irony of Fischer’s career, the understated brilliance of his arrangements for that remarkable collection went uncredited. The album notes did not mention him. They mentioned no one in the band but Gillespie. Over the years, despite Norman Granz’s Verve Records keeping it a secret, the identity of the arranger slowly made its way through the jazz underground. When finally it became general knowledge that the charts were Fischer’s, few in jazz were surprised.

By then, his writing and piano playing were greatly admired among musicians. Fischer’s vocal arranging for the Hi-Los in the late 1950s and early ‘60s had attracted attention that increased as he wrote for George Shearing, Cal Tjader, and Bud Shank, among others, and for his own instrumental and vocal groups. His playing was some of the most compelling of the many pianists who developed in the wake of Bill Evans. He himself became an influence on Herbie Hancock and other younger pianists. Don Heckman traces Fischer’s career in this Los Angeles Times obituary.

The Gillespie album, his work on several Hi-Los recordings, his albums as pianist and arranger with Tjader, his collaborations with saxophonist Foster and his own big band albums, are essential to serious collections. There is a selection of them here. Thesaurus has some of his finest writing for big band. The sublime Songs For Rainy Day Lovers, long out of print, still turns up on sites, including this one, that specialize in LPs.

In an episode from live Los Angeles television of the early 1960s, Fischer is the pianist in Bud Shank’s quartet and the composer of the piece they play. Larry Bunker is the drummer, Gary Peacock the bassist. Fischer also wrote “Carnival,” the tune that begins and ends the segment.

Clare Fischer, RIP

Jerry Gonzalez Y El Comando de la Clave (Sunnyside)

Since Jerry Gonzalez changed his base of operations from New York to Madrid a decade ago, the trumpeter and congero has worked with many musicians while seeking a satisfactory combination of players for his own band. In Los Comandos de la Clave, he seems to have found it. This is his most stimulating album since the Fort Apache Band’s Rumba Para Monk in 1989.

In company with Cuban and Spanish players who feel rhythm as he does, Gonzalez unleashes his gusto, propensity for chancy high-wire walking and mastery of melodic improvisation. However important melody and harmony are to his conception, rhythm is at its heart. That is particularly evident on “Obsesión,” “Avisale a mi Contrario” and a stunning “Love For Sale,” but it extends to a treatment of “Tenderly” that honors the implication of the tune’s name while imparting a soft urgency. The fullness of Gonzalez’s flugelhorn sound is vital to “Tenderly’s” success, as it is to “In A Sentimental Mood,” done primarily with percussion accompaniment and vocalese by bassist Alaín Perez. As Gonzalez plays obbligato, the Ellington tune’s final choruses flow through a hypnotic group vocal on the repeated word “sentimiento.” Perez now becomes one of the few electric bassists capable of making me reconsider my reservations about the instrument. The impressive Cuban pianist Javier Masso, known as “Caramelo,” and drummer Kiki Ferrer round out the basic quartet. On selected tracks, vocalist Diego el Cigala, cajonista Israel Suarez (“Piraña”), and Alberto “Chele” Cobo playing clave join the band. Piquant nicknames abound in this group. When he lays down his trumpet or flugelhorn, Gonzalez’s congas are prominent in the percussion section.

For its intensity, power and variety, I would single out as the highlight Gonzalez’s and the Comandos’ thematic and metrical development of John Coltrane’s “Resolution”, but the entire album is a highlight. That’s why I voted for it as 2011’s best Latin album in the recently released Rhapsody critics poll. In the video of an extended performance of “Resolution” that just popped up on the web, the quartet come close to topping themselves.

In the days ahead, I’ll be writing about some of the other CDs that I voted for in the critics poll but have not reviewed.

Radio has no interest in music. It is in the advertising business. The record industry has no interest in music. It is in the business of selling pieces of plastic. It is a gigantic machine, almost entirely owned now by international conglomerates, whose only purpose is to accrue profits. It is indifferent to what is on its plastic discs, except insofar as it induces the undiscriminating to buy them. It virtually ignores the discriminating audience because the undiscriminating are so much more numerous.—Gene Lees, The Modern Rhyming Dictionary.

Radio was the tiny stream it all began with. Then came other technical means for reproducing, proliferating, amplifying sound, and the stream became an enormous river. If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, “regardless whether we want to hear it,” it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaurants, in elevators, in the streets, in waiting rooms, in gyms, in the earpieces of Walkmans, music rewritten, reorchestrated, abridged, and stretched out, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, a flood of everything jumbled together so that we don’t know who composed it (music become noise is anonymous), so that we can’t tell beginning from end (music become noise has no form): sewage-water music in which music is dying.”—Milan Kundera, Ignorance

Creativity shouldn’t be following radio; it should be the other way around.—Herbie Hancock

There have been several inquiries about whether we are affected by the winter storms in this part of the world. Yes. My shoveling muscles are affected. Driving can be interesting. But when you wake up to sights like these, who cares if there’s a foot of snow.

Way off in the distance in the upper right is Mount Adams.

Such scenery inevitably leads to thoughts of this:

Woody Herman’s First Herd, recorded in December, 1945. The trumpet solo was by Sonny Berman, the trombone by Bill Harris. Neal Hefti’s arrangement was advanced for the time—his final chords still sound advanced—but there is no doubt that Woody’s vocal was what made the record a hit. If you’d like to hear the recording in better than 78-rpm quality, Mosaic did a splendid job of remastering it for this box set.

The careers of Johnny Otis and Etta James emphasize Duke Ellington’s often-quoted truth: There are two kinds of music—good music and the other kind. In only slightly different language, Igor Stravinsky offered the same wisdom. Otis died early this week at the age of 90, James today at 73. For decades, they made good music. Ms. James invested everything she sang with the power and sensibility of the blues. Her huge hit, Mack Gordon’s and Harry Warren’s “At Last,” was a standard ballad made popular by Glenn Miller in 1942. With the passion of her 1961 version Ms. James made it her own. In The New York Times, Peter Keepnews traces her life and music.

Maintaining a jazz core, Owens and his band freshened rhythm and blues and led the way to rock and roll. Even his slimmest works were underpinned with solid musicianship. He was an accomplished pianist, vibraphonist, drummer and singer. Most of the rockers inspired by Otis had neither his level of artistry nor the desire to achieve it. His obituary in The Los Angeles Times quoted him addressing that point:

“Today’s musicians are better technically,” Otis said in 1979, “but that’s not a virtue in itself. What’s important is the emotional impact…. Most rock or disco today doesn’t stir up anything in my heart — not the way a Picasso does, not the way the blues or gospel does.”

To read the entire article, go here.

Here’s Otis on his television program in 1959 with his biggest hit and, at the end, banter with a guest.

To see the entire half-hour program, including Otis with his band, his vocalists, a duet with Lionel Hampton, and live commercials, go here. The video struggles to get started, but it settles down after a minute or so. It’s worth the wait.

For a review of Otis’s career that puts him in just the right perspective, see the JazzWax piece that Marc Myers posted this morning.

In his debut commentary today on CBS This Morning, Wynton Marsalis recalled that he was in the second grade in 1968 when Martin Luther King was assassinated. He talked about being immersed in the black culture and life of New Orleans in the late 1960s, about having a poster of Malcolm X over his bed, about being angry well into his teens, about thinking that King was an Uncle Tom.

My job in New Orleans when Marsalis was a little boy involved reporting on the events and movements of those days when the Civil Rights Law had been on the books for nearly four years, black people were struggling for what the Congress had given them on paper, and much of the southern power structure was fighting—often violently—to see that they didn’t get it. By way of my reporting and my connection with the jazz community, I knew Wynton’s father Ellis, many other black musicians and hundreds of ordinary and extraordinary black citizens in the South. I understood something of their rage and frustration. I also knew of the tolerance, hope and humor that helped see them through that dark time.

Wynton’s CBS essay, a beautifully produced piece of television, recounts the incident that began to turn around his attitude toward MLK. It goes on to draw a bigger conclusion about this life that we’re all in together and what we owe one another. It is worth watching. To see it, go here.

Using as his point of departure a review of Ricky Riccardi’s recent book about Louis Armstrong’s final decades, Steve Provizer concentrates on Armstrong’s debt to grand opera. In his Brilliant Corners blog, Provizer writes about the great man’s trumpet tone as perhaps his defining characteristic.

Hundreds of gifted and proficient trumpet players have come and gone through jazz history, but no one has ever had that tone. Not even close. Yes, others have had an identifiable sound, but their tone basically falls within the parameters of a given historical era. Give me the name of an early jazz player, a swing era player, a bop player, a free player, a neo-mainstream player and I can name you other trumpeters from that era who had a sound that was very similar.

Even though he always talked about his debt to his mentor Joe Oliver, Armstrong seems not to have been subject to that need for identification. His tone rides over jazz history as freely as his solos rode over orchestras and rhythm sections. I believe that Armstrong’s singular tone sent a unique message to the listener: “I am making myself completely vulnerable to you. While part of me is acting (and Armstrong’s acting talent was unassailable, if underutilized), part of me will die if you don’t love what I am giving to you.”

Armstrong’s genius also included melodic invention and revolutionary uses of rhythm that made jazz a soloist’s art and changed the music forever. Given those facts, one could argue that singling out tone as his central quality is out of balance in evaluating his overall contribution. Nonetheless, Provizer’s argument is persuasive enough that it deserves serious consideration. To read his essay, including the case that Armstrong’s latterday performances were “operatic in intention,” go here.

If you need to be reminded of that glorious tone—or of the origin of jazz singing—listen to this 1959 performance in Stuttgart, Germany.

The All-Stars with Pops were Trummy Young,trombone;
 Peanuts Hucko, clarinet;
 Billy Kyle, piano; Mort Herbert, bass; and Danny Barcelona, drums.