Lena Horne died a little more than a year ago. Yesterday, she would have been 94. Ms. Horne’s varied gifts launched her into a career as a massively successful general entertainer. But her jazz roots went deep, and she never forgot where she came from, as she demonstrated in this performance of her most famous song. The YouTube statistics say that a quarter of a million people have watched this. That’s not enough.

The Rifftides staff has done exhaustive auditioning, winnowing and selecting from among hundreds of CDs, DVDs and books hoping to be chosen. The result: a new batch of recommendations. They are compact discs by a pianist and a trumpeter who love Mingus, musical portraits of the seven deadly sins, a Nat King Cole concert that surfaced after 61 years in hiding, a DVD of two elderly avant-garde saxophonists with the energy of teenagers, and a book dedicated to the proposition that Louis Armstrong’s late period was glorious. Please see the listings in the right column under Doug’s Picks.

Clifford Brown died on this date in 1956. If he had lived, he would be 80. We will never know what glories he would have added to those he had achieved at the age of 26. Here is what I wrote on the 50th anniversary of his death.

Fifty years ago today at The Seattle Times, as I ripped copy from the wire machines my eye went to a story in the latest Associated Press national split. A young trumpeter named Clifford Brown had been killed early that morning in a car crash. My heart stopped for a beat or two. My stomach churned. I felt ill. I was attempting to master the trumpet and, like virtually all aspiring trumpet players, idolized Brown. The life of a majestically inventive musician had ended violently on a rainy highway in Pennsylvania. He was four months short of his twenty-sixth birthday. When I think about his loss, I still feel ill.

There has never been a jazz musician who worked harder, lived cleaner, and accomplished or promised more in so short a lifetime. His practice routine encompassed taping himself as he worked out on trumpet and piano. I have listened to some of those tapes. It is moving to hear Brown pursue–and achieve–perfection as he brings complex ideas to fruition through the persistent application of his technical mastery, to hear him sing a phrase and then play it repeatedly until he has polished it nearly to his satisfaction. Like most first-rank artists, he was never truly satisfied with his performance. To listeners, however, Brown’s solos are among the glories of twentieth century music. To trumpet players, his work remains an inspiration. His passion, power, lyricism and flaweless execution constitute a model whose pursuit is bound to bring improvement.

In Today’s Washington Post, Matt Schudel summarizes Brown’s life and contributions. For a fuller account, read Nick Catalano’s biography of Brown. Fortunately, Brown recorded copiously during his few years of playing. Most of his work remains in print. This album captures him at his peak with the group he and drummer Max Roach co-led. This box set covers highlights from his recordings for several labels. If you don’t know Clifford Brown’s work, I suggest that you move immediately toward the nearest CD shop or website.

For rare video of Brown playing, see this Rifftides archive post.

Bill Perkins (1924-2003) was the archetype of the creative musician incapable of letting his style freeze in place. To borrow the phrase coined by his initial inspiration Lester Young, Perkins refused to be a “repeater pencil.” He was with Stan Getz, Gene Ammons, Zoot Sims, Richie Kamuca, Al Cohn, Don Lanphere and many others in a generation of young tenor saxophonists who developed with Young as their model. His playing under Young’s influence graced the bands of Jerry Wald, Woody Herman and Stan Kenton and dozens of recordings from the 1950s on. It was epitomized in his solos on Grand Encounter, the leaderless 1956 album he shared with John Lewis, Percy Heath, Jim Hall and Chico Hamilton.

When he left the 1950s, Perkins’ restless curiosity and musicianship kept him searching, studying and changing. I know from many conversations with him that he appreciated the enthusiasm of listeners who loved his early work, but he would not deny the compulsion to progress. His solos on Bill Holman’s 1997 big band album of Thelonious Monk tunes are latterday evidence of that. There is more in this video clip of Perkins from a 1993 appearance with Shorty Rogers. (Rogers doesn’t play on “You’ve Changed.”) The rhythm section is Chuck Marohnic, piano; 
Joel DiBartolo, bass; and Dom Moio, drums. For reasons known only to whoever posted this on YouTube, the clip fades to black just as Perk is starting the final 16 bars of his last chorus. In addition, the video is fuzzy and applause wipes out the beginning of Marohnic’s solo. But for Perkins’ reading of the melody and his solo chorus that follows, this glimpse of his playing in his final decade is worth seeing and hearing.

For more video clips from the session, go here.

The National Endowment for the Arts today named the 2012 NEA Jazz Masters. As announced in the NEA’s news release, the winners are:

Jack DeJohnette, Drummer, Keyboardist, Composer
(born in Chicago, IL; lives in Willow, NY)

Von Freeman, Saxophonist
(born in Chicago, IL; lives in Chicago, IL)

Charlie Haden, Bassist, Composer, Educator
(born in Shenandoah, IA; lives in Agoura Hills, CA)

Sheila Jordan, Vocalist, Educator
(born in Detroit, MI; lives in Middleburgh, NY and New York, NY)

*Jimmy Owens, Educator, Trumpeter, Flugelhorn Player, Composer, Arranger
(born in Bronx, NY; lives in New York, NY)

*Jimmy Owens is the recipient of the 2012 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy.

Each recipient will receive a one-time award of $25,000 and be publicly honored next January at the annual awards ceremony and concert, produced by Jazz at Lincoln Center at its home, Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City. This class of NEA Jazz Masters brings to 124 the number of musicians who have received the honor.

Full profiles and photographs of the 2012 NEA Jazz Masters are on the NEA’s website.

Congratulations to all.

More than one Rifftides reader has taken me to task for posting nothing about the death of Bob Flanigan, the original lead singer of the vocal-instrumental group The Four Freshmen. Flanigan died on May 15 at his home in Las Vegas. He was 84.

As if to validate the group, many of his obituaries dwelled on Flanigan’s and the Freshmens’ influence on the Beach Boys and other pop performers of the ‘60s and ‘70s. The Freshmen validated themselves through excellence as singers and instrumentalists. In this video from a 1964 Japan tour, Flanigan has the trombone solo on one of the Freshmen’s biggest hits.

Flanigan was the last original member of the Four Freshmen to retire, in 1992. But his association with it did not stop. He owned the rights to the Four Freshmen name and managed the group when it continued with new members, as it does today.

Speaking of quasi-forgotten trumpeters of the 1930s and ‘40s (see the Benny Carter item in the previous exhibit), in his current post, blogger and frequent Rifftides correspndent Bruno Leicht highlights Hot Lips Page. Here’s some of what he writes about that musician of astonishing gifts:

‘Hot Lips’ was a joyful trumpeter with a big tone, directly influenced by Louis Armstrong. Most commercial studio dates don’t reflect his daring trumpet excursions; they rarely let you hear adequately how he really sounded. — He sometimes went to the extreme, as the following great interpretation of “I Got Rhythm” from 1940 shows.

To hear Lips in that remarkable recording, another in which he plays and sings in collaboration with Artie Shaw, a third one with his own band, and to read about Page, go here.

With ironic intent, I have occasionally used the term “your corner record store” when suggesting that you seek out certain recordings. Well, there are a few actual record stores left, as opposed to the virtual ones on the internet. In The Chicago Tribune last week, Howard Reich wrote a profile of one of the biggest, oldest and—believe it or not— most profitable. It is Chicago’s venerable Jazz Record Mart. To read Howard’s piece, go here.

Coming soon: new Doug’s Picks and a few recommendations from the never-ending stream of new releases.

Benny Carter (1907-2003) is indelibly identified as a master of the alto saxophone, to the point where many listeners new to his work don’t know that he was also one of the great trumpet soloists of the 1930s. He gave up the horn for several years, concentrating on alto sax, composing and arranging. When he picked up the trumpet again and spent six weeks reconditioning his chops, he regained his distinctive tone and expansive way of improvising. He was always in search of perfection.

Seriously, though, here is Carter at the 1977 Montreux Jazz Festival, playing trumpet and alto saxophone. The rhythm section is Ray Bryant, piano; Niels-Henning Ørsted Pederson, bass; and Jimmie Smith, drums. The video has a case of the tremors, but the sound quality is fine.

The entire Carter quartet session at Montreux is on this CD. If you would like to hear him on clarinet, an instrument he mastered in the 1920s and, unfortunately, abandoned in the forties, listen to the title track of this album.

Don Emanuel, David Evans and other Rifftides readers have encouraged me to continue posting photographs made during bicycle expeditions. Okay. Maybe they are a welcome diversion.

I tore myself away for a 15-miler this afternoon and paused at the top of a long, steep hill because my legs told me to. This may be nothing more than your standard b-flat calendar shot, but taking it was an excuse to rest. I like the clouds and that house high up on the left.

When I got back, as I opened the gate these characters were scurrying along the grass. By the time I got the camera out of the bike bag, they had squeezed through the fence into the neighbor’s yard. I was barely able to catch them as they made for the safety of bushes. Mr. and Mrs. Quail took up residence with us a couple of years ago. We assume that they have a covey of chicks about ready to join in the foraging expeditions.

What you can’t see in these pictures is the wind, which has been powerful and relentless for weeks. Maybe pedaling uphill into 25-mile-an-hour breezes builds character. I would rather that my character remain unimproved.

Here are the headline, subhead and lead paragraph of a news release from the Montreal Jazz Festival.

I wonder if he jumped in at the last moment to sub for another jazz star who withdrew, Lady Gaga, perhaps.

Reaction to the death of Ray Bryant keeps coming in. Dubliner Colm (Red) O’Sullivan writes from Rio de Janeiro, where he is immersing himself in Brazilian music. He alerts us to video of a fellow Irishman, guitarist Louis Stewart, playing a Bryant composition. Stewart has been an important player in the UK for decades. He has occasionally appeared in the US. In The New York Times in 1981, John S. Wilson wrote, after hearing Stewart, “he spins out single-note lines that flow with an unhurried grace, colored by sudden bright, lively chorded phrases.” That has not changed.

Here are Stewart and his frequent partner, pianist Jim Doherty, playing Ray Bryant’s “The Bebop Irishman.” Following the tune, a BBCish announcer gives a bit of Stewart’s bio.

Sorry for the early out. That’s all there was.

The staff is back at Rifftides world headquarters after joining other Jazz Journalists Association members for the JJA’s 2011 award event. We assembled on Saturday at Egan’s Ballard Jam House in Seattle to watch the ceremony by satellite feed from New York. It was one of several satellite parties around the country. John Gilbreath of Earshot Jazz was among us and received one of the nine Jazz Hero awards, a new category this year. Applause, shouts and whistles for John were as deafening as our mighty handful could make them.

These are the winners of a few of the top awards:

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN JAZZ: Jimmy Heath

MUSICIAN OF THE YEAR: Sonny Rollins

COMPOSER OF THE YEAR: Jason Moran

ARRANGER Of The Year: Bill Holman

UP AND COMING ARTIST OF THE YEAR: Ambrose Akinmusire

RECORDING OF THE YEAR: Bird Songs /Joe Lovano Us Five
(Blue Note)

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN JAZZ JOURNALISM: Bill Milkowski

BLOG OF THE YEAR: Patrick Jarenwattanon.

The Rifftides staff sends hearty congratulations to Patrick for his excellent A Blog Supreme.

For the complete list of winners, go here.

Woke up this morning (no, that is not going to be the beginning of a blues lyric)…

…and made this the background music to preparations for the day.

I chose it because I wanted something that had solos I could sing, hum and whistle along with as I fixed breakfast. Every note of Horace Silver’s second Blue Note album, the first by the Jazz Messengers, has been embedded in my brain since shortly after it was released in 1955. My record collection then consisted of 10 or 12 LPs. This was one of them. I played it so often that Silver’s, Kenny Dorham’s and Hank Mobley’s solos and Art Blakey’s drum choruses became part of my mind’s musical furniture. Silver, Blakey and bassist Doug Watkins comprised a rhythm section that was the standard for what came to be called, for better or for worse, hard bop. Dorham and Mobley, with their deep knowledge of chord-based improvisation, constructed some of their most memorable solos. Silver’s compositions—and one by Mobley—are classics.

Having heard “Room 608,” “The Preacher,” “Doodlin’” and the other tunes on this indispensable album this morning, I’ll feel good all day. Listen, and you will, too.

New video has surfaced from an engagement that trumpeter Marcus Printup played with the Emil Viklický Trio during Printup’s visit to the Czech Republic in 2007. YouTube identifies the first piece as “In Holomoc Town,” but that is likely a misspelling or alternate spelling of “Olomouc,” the name of Viklický’s Moravian hometown. And where is Olomouc, you might ask. It is southeast of Prague (Praha) and northeast of Brno (thanks for the map, Google).

Viklický is the pianist, Petr Dvorsky the bassist, Laco Tropp the drummer. The gig was at a jazz club with the unlikely name Tibet, in Olomouc.

Steel yourself for an untimely end to ”A Night in Tunisia” just when Laco Tropp is on a roll——among other drum strokes. But the shock is softened by what has gone before.

Word is that on his current visit to the US, Viklický recorded a duo album with his sometime collaborator Scott Robinson, the Jim Thorpe of jazz multi-instrumentalists.

Periodically, we post brief alerts to recordings the Rifftides staff finds worthwhile. The mini- or micro-reviews are not intended as deep analysis, but as guideposts. Some of these albums are recent arrivals. We select others, not quite at random, from accumulations in the music room and office, stacks like those on the left. Beneath the piles of CDs is my desktop. I remember it fondly.

Bill Cunliffe, How My Heart Sings (Torri).

The album has pianist Cunliffe’s ingenious sextet arrangements of 10 songs by Earl Zindars, a friend and favorite composer of Bill Evans. Zindars’ work is notable for lyricism, charming melodies cloaked in harmonic sophistication and, often, metric daring. Some of the pieces here, including the title tune and “Elsa,” gained recognition through Evans’ recordings. Others, like “City Tune” and the complex “Heads or Tails,” are barely known. Cunliffe’s sextet includes Bob Sheppard on saxophones, flutes and clarinet; Bobby Shew on trumpet and flugelhorn; Bruce Paulson, trombone; Joe LaBarbera, drums; and Jeff D’Angelo, bass. Flugelhornist Justin Ray augments the band on two tracks. Solos by Cunliffe, Sheppard, Shew and the underrated Paulson are superb. Shew must be singled out for his flugelhorn work on “Elsa.” This collection was a sleeper when it came out in 2003. For Zindars’ compositions and the high quality of these performances, it deserves an audience.

Luciano Troja, At Home With Zindars (Troja).

Troja, an Italian pianist, recorded 14 of Earl Zindars’ songs and one of his own. Playing unaccompanied, he clearly has Evans in mind but does not imitate him. Among the pieces are the familiar—”Mother of Earl,” “How My Heart Sings,” “Silverado Trail”—and new ones like “Joy,” “Nice Place” and “Roses for Annig” that Troja discovered when he had access to the composer’s manuscripts during stays with Zindars’ family in California following Zindars’ death in 2005. Troja gives a splendid two-part treatment of one of Zindars’ best-known tunes, “Sareen Jurer” (“The Mountain’s Water”). His tribute piece “Earl and Bill” parallels the reflective character of Zindars’ own writing. The pianist’s touch, both firm and delicate, is an essential element of his success in negotiating the dimensions of dynamics in Zindars’ works.

Wadada Leo Smith’s Organic, Heart’s Reflections (Cuneiform).

The trumpeter’s playing, writing and ability to field-marshal combinations of acoustic and electric instruments come together in another epic two-CD set. In a large sense, it is a continuation of Smith’s electronic approach in 2009’s Spiritual Dimensions. His music owes something to Miles Davis’s electric period, but the power of his personality and vision guarantees the kind of distinctively individual music we get here. Employment of multiple amplified guitars would seem to threaten electronic goulash, but even when four of them improvise freely at the same time, they blend rather than clash. Piano, violin, drums, two alto saxophones and—I swear— two laptops enrich Smith’s palette. From it, he applies tonal colors, sometimes in flecks, more often in swaths saturated with blues. In addition to Smith’s virtuoso playing, full of risk-taking and humor, I must mention the supercharged drumming of Pheeroan akLaff and lovely piano lines by Angelica Sanchez.

Ruby Braff, For The Last Time (Arbors).

Another two-CD set, another trumpeter (well, cornetist). Another world, one might think. And yet, Leo Smith and Ruby Braff are connected in the jazz tradition and the joy of spontaneous creation. I can imagine Smith getting a kick out of listening to Braff here. In this concert at the 2002 Nairn Festival in Scotland, Braff was playing with his customary verve and inventiveness and announcing tunes with his usual wit— often acerbic—as he kidded with the musicians and the audience. The repertoire is ten standards, fully explored; the longest track is nearly 16 minutes, the shortest about five. Braff’s frequent companions tenor saxophonist Scott Hamilton, pianist John Bunch and guitarist Jon Wheatley are aboard. With Bunch and Wheatley in the rhythm section are bassist Dave Green and drummer Steve Brown, UK sidemen often sought out by visiting leaders. The proceedings are relaxed and happy, the level of inspiration high. Braff’s choruses on “Rockin’ Chair” and “I Want a Little Girl” are saturated with feeling. There is nothing in his playing to disclose that he was ailing, but he opened up the tunes to more frequent solos by his colleagues than he might have in healthier days. Braff died six months later; thus, the title of an album that is a good way to remember him.

Fay Claasen, Sing! (Challenge).

The Dutch singer with uncanny control, intonation, swing, and English with no trace of an accent sings 12 songs associated with singers from Bessie Smith to Björk. She is as convincing in “Is You Is Or Is You Ain’t My Baby” (Dinah Washington”) and “A Felicidade” (Elis Regina) as in Joni Mitchell’s “Be Cool” and Abbey Lincoln’s “Throw it Away.” Her overdubbing of three ad-libbed improvisations on Miriam Makeba’s “Unhome” is astonishing, as are her flawless unison passages with the ensemble on “Tea for Two” (Anita O’Day). Michael Abene conducts. Claasen soars on Abene’s beautifully crafted arrangements and on support by the WDR Big Band. Bonuses abound in excellent solos by trumpeter John Marshall, alto saxophonists Johan Hörlen and Karolina Strassmeyer, pianist Frank Chastenier and other WDR members. The exclamation point in the title is warranted.

Ray Bryant died on Thursday in a New York hospital following a long illness. He was 79. A pillar of modern mainstream piano, Bryant was often categorized as a blues pianist. He was certainly that, a great one, but his stylistic breadth, powerful swing and harmonic flexibility put him in demand not only by blues singers and players but also by the most sophisticated modern jazz artists from the 1950s on. A list of a few of his colleagues and employers gives an idea of Bryant’s range: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Jack Teagarden, Carmen McRae, Zoot Sims, Betty Carter, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie and Jimmy Rushing. Bryant was from a Philadelphia family that included his bassist brother Tommy, who died in 1982, and three nephews prominent in jazz—Robin, Kevin and Duane Eubanks.

Among his compositions adapted by others, “Cubano Chant” and “Blues Changes” were influential. He had hit records in “Little Susie,” “Madison Time” and “Slow Freight.” Bryant’s first solo album, Alone With the Blues (1958) is a basic repertoire item, essential to any reasonably comprehensive jazz collection. The CD and vinyl versions are, inexplicably, out of print and going at auction for as much as $185. The album can be had for significantly less as an MP3 download. It includes his memorable treatment of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Rockin’ Chair.”

 Apologies, (2018). Evidently someone, probably the music’s copyright holder, has denied further access to that video. To see and hear the performance, click here and be taken to YouTube.)

For more about Ray Bryant, see Nat Chinen’s obituary in The New York Times.