Edwin Newman’s death at age 91 is not the end of an era. The broadcast news era that produced Newman ended long ago, as you may have noticed in most of the news programs you watch on television and, particularly, on cable. Newman worked for NBC News. He was of a generation of broadcast news people the best of whom applied the values of the wire services and newspapers where they learned the craft of journalism. He was a splendid reporter who functioned as one of NBC’s most productive, versatile and wise correspondents. He anchored newscasts, delivered commentaries and wrote and hosted documentaries. In his radio and television broadcasts, Newman often devoted segments to defending the correct use of the language and to witty, if unyielding, criticism of its butchery by those who should know better. He was disturbed by what he saw as the deterioration of the average American’s ability to be articulate. He delighted in telling about the man he once interviewed whose answer to a question was, “Well, y’know, you never know, y’know?”
A few video clips exist of Ed Newman at work. YouTube has a series of pieces from the documentary he did about the 1964 World’s Fair in New York and a few audio segments of his interviews with Marshall McLuhan about language. I thought about showing you one of those lighter pieces, but decided to instead use the commentary Newman delivered on the day in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated. The elegance of his language and the clarity of his thought are as vivid and pertinent now as they were 47 years ago.

Edwin Newman, RIP

A dyslexia attack a week ago caused the Rifftides proprietor to alert readers to a radio broadcast last Sunday that, in fact, will take place this coming Sunday, September 19. The only way to make amends is to correct the mistake and post the item again. The entire Rifftides staff is on vacation this week, more or less, but this may give the impression that we’re on the job.
On his Jazz Northwest program this weekend, Jim Wilke will be playing the Ingrid Jensen-Benny Green concert that he recorded at the Port Townsend Festival in July. The trumpeter and the pianist appeared with drummer Jon Wikan, Dawn Clement on Fender Rhodes piano and bassist David Wong. According to Wilke’s alert to the broadcast, the band “brought the near capacity crowd to its feet at the end of the concert.”

I wasn’t at Port Townsend this year, but the audience reaction Jim describes is no surprise. Three years ago, at The Seasons in Yakima, Washington, I heard what I think was Jensen’s and Green’s first joint appearance. This is some of what I posted shortly after.

When I arrived home after a post-concert hang late Saturday night, I found this message from a musician friend:

Has there ever been a better concert at the Seasons than the Ingrid Jensen one this evening?

No. I have attended most of the jazz and classical events at The Seasons in its nearly two years of operation. I have heard wonderful performances in that former church, with its dramatic domed space and nearly perfect acoustics, but none better than when Jensen, the gifted Canadian trumpeter, and pianist Benny Green got together in a one-off collaboration. Creative sparks flew.

It is impossible to analyze with accuracy what is responsible for a performance that rises above even the usual excellence of artists of the quality of Jensen, Green, Jon Wikan and Russ Botten. I have a notion that what fired it up in this instance was the depth and unusual makeup of Green’s accompanying chords in the first piece, and the way he applied them rhythmically. The harmonic changes in his comping stimulated Jensen to daring ideas that she incorporated in long, flowing melodic lines through the entire concert. The range and virtuosity of her trumpet and flugelhorn playing are givens. What I am emphasizing is the lyric and melodic content of her improvisations.

To read all of the July, 2007, Rifftides review, go here.
I have no idea whether their 2010 encounter reached those heights, but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to find out. Jazz Northwest will air at 1 o’clock PDT Sunday afternoon, September 19, on KPLU-FM (88.5) in the Seattle Tacoma area. For internet listeners, it will stream live on the station’s website. Click on “Listen Now.”

First of all, I never strive for identity. That’s something that just has happened automatically as a result, I think, of just putting things together, tearing things apart and putting it together my own way, and somehow I guess the individual comes through eventually.

Especially, I want my work – and the trios if possible – to sing.

It bugs me when people try to analyze jazz as an intellectual theorem. It’s not. It’s feeling.

In today’s Wall Street Journal I have an article in observance of the 30th anniversary of Bill Evans’ death. Here are a few of the 900-plus words:

Among pianists, Evans, who died 30 years ago Wednesday at age 51, is as immediately identifiable as Tatum, Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell. In artistry and influence, he is their inheritor and successor. With the exception of those who specialize in stride or boogie woogie, virtually all jazz pianists who developed from the early 1960s on learned from Evans and, if they could, adapted aspects of his playing.

To read the entire piece, open your WSJ to the Personal Journal section, or go here.
As a bonus for Rifftides readers, here’s an account from Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond of the night Evans asked Desmond to sit in.

(Desmond) and I went one evening to a club called Reno Sweeney to hear Bill Evans, who, it could be argued, was the most influential and respected jazz pianist since Bud Powell. Evans was appearing with his trio opposite Blossom Dearie. During a break, he joined us at our table to chat and said he would love it if Paul sat in. Desmond declined. Bill tried to persuade him. I offered to take a cab uptown and bring back his horn. “No, not tonight, thanks,” Paul said. “Gee,” Bill said, almost pleadingly, “Lee sat in last night.” The news about Lee Konitz, whom Paul admired, did not change his mind.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined the music those two would have made together.

Dominick Farinacci, Sounds In My Life (Keystone). When I first heard Farinacci five or six years ago, he was one of two trumpet students featured on a Warren Vaché instructional DVD. In his solo on a blues, I was intrigued that he seemed to be reflecting in a personal way a school of trumpet playing notable for the subtlety of its beauty. Some of the trumpeters in the 1950s whose characteristics of tone, fluidity of ideas and lyricism bound them together in a general style were Don Joseph, Tony Fruscella, Chet Baker and Miles Davis. As on-the-sleeve virtuosity has burgeoned, it is an approach to the trumpet that has become increasingly rare. When Farinacci’s Sounds In My Life showed up in the mail, I put in on the CD player anticipating that kind of playing. I cannot report that I am disappointed that he was playing differently; his work is gorgeous.
Farinacci’s generous tone is open throughout the horn’s register, with no sign of strain to reach top notes. At his most original, his ideas are intriguing. By 2007, when this was recorded, however, he had moved on from the Fruscella-Joseph-Baker-Davis approach to harder facets more akin to Blue Mitchell, Freddie Hubbard and the Miles Davis of the sixties. His work on two Jimmy Heath pieces is notably reflective of Mitchell, and no Mitchell admirer can complain about Farinacci’s solo on “Mona’s Mood.” I am slightly troubled that a soloist of Farinacci’s evident abilities chooses to perform virtual approximations of muted Davis in “Flamenco Sketches” and “My Funny Valentine.” Davis did it brilliantly, so brilliantly that his muted work has been imitated for decades and has become a cliché. On open horn, Farinacci summons mid-sixties Davis in the opening out-of-tempo section of “What is This Thing Called Love,” but in the main body of his solo works his way into what the old-timers used to call original stuff. His exposition of the melody of “I Can’t Get Started” has intimations of Clifford Brown’s control and Brown’s use of grace notes, with improvisation in the solo that has a fine combination of elegance and passion.
Farinacci is still in his twenties and has recorded several other albums. I will seek out the others and follow his development with interest in the assumption that he is going through a period of assimilation and will come out of it with stronger indications of the individuality I heard in those few blues choruses on that Vaché DVD.
The US distributor of Sounds In My Life reports that the CD is out of stock, but this web site lists it at a bargain price.
Hey, I’m supposed to be on vacation this week. Look for further posts as they happen—and they may.

Tenor saxophonist Hadley Caliman died Wednesday in Seattle. He was 78 and had liver cancer. Until a few weeks before his death, Caliman thrived in the Pacific Northwest, starring in the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra and leading his own group. Here, we see him soloing with the SRJO.

I wrote in Jazz Matters about Caliman in a 1979 performance with Freddie Hubbard’s band:

As the evening progressed, Caliman’s playing took on much of the intensity and coloration of John Coltrane’s work, but he is a more directly rhythmic player than Coltrane was toward the end of his life and from that standpoint is reminiscent of his mentor Dexter Gordon. He made his first records in Los Angeles in 1949 when he was 17 and a student of Gordon. Whatever his influences, Caliman is an inventive and cheerful soloist.

After college, he went on to record extensively and work with musicians as varied as Gerald Wilson, Don Ellis, Hubbard, Santana and The Grateful Dead. Caliman retired in the mid-2000s as a music educator at Seattle’s Cornish College of the Arts but not as a tenor saxophonist. In his final years he still sounded cheerful and at least as inventive as during his heyday (he made his first records in Los Angeles in 1949 when he was seventeen and a student of Gordon).
For an obituary of Caliman in a newspaper near the small town where he lived for several years, go here.
This video, unfortunately truncated, captures Caliman last July at Jazz Alley in Seattle with Thomas Marriott, trumpet; Bill Anschell, piano; Phil Sparks, bass; Matt Jorgensen, drums; and vocalist Gail Pettis. Jim Wilke does the introduction. The evening was a celebration of Caliman’s 65th year as a professional musician.

The siege of deadlines has lifted. The assignments were good for the sagging exchequer but put the blogging account in arrears. In the days remaining before the staff goes on vacation, we’ll pay attention to a few recent CDs.
Denny Zeitlin, Precipice (Sunnyside). Following Mosaic’s release last year of a box of his Columbia recordings of the 1960s and a new trio album with Buster Williams and Matt Wilson, the protean pianist goes solo. He played this concert in a Santa Barbara hall with a fine Steinway and acoustics worthy of the instrument. I can’t recall hearing Zeitlin’s nuances with greater clarity. For that matter, I can’t recall more of them. The title tune lives up to its name as it switches time signatures—or sets them aside for a while—and progresses through rhythms that stomp, dance and float. It’s Zeitlin at his most orchestral.
He comes closest to the edge of the precipice in the relatively uncomplicated “Oleo.” Many listeners first became aware of Zeitlin through his solo on that “I Got Rhythm” contrafact in a 1963 album with flutist Jeremy Steig. Down the years he has continued to play it. Familiarity with tunes doesn’t breed contempt in jazz musicians, it breeds speed. Tunes have been known to reach velocities so high that their players fly out of control. Despite the tempo (eight choruses in two minutes and 47 seconds), not only is Zeitlin not thrown off, but he remains fully in charge for the whole ride. At a metronome setting of 310, you don’t get profundity. You get exhilaration. In this case, the bozos in the audience who whooped and hollered after every tune were justified.
Zeitlin also revisits another of his favorites, “What is This Thing Called Love,” at a relaxed tempo with altered harmonies that never occurred to Cole Porter and arpeggios that amount to Coltrane-like scales. Appropriately, he melds into Coltrane’s “What is This…” variant “Fifth House,” which has its own transformation of Porter’s famous chord sequence. With the free improvisation that precedes it, the blended piece runs more than 12 minutes and feels half that long. Other highlights: Zeitlin’s muscularity, technical control and dynamic range in Wayne Shorter’s “Deluge” and his own “On the March;” his 5/4 flirtation with Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s waltz “Out of My Dreams;” the tenderness of “The We of Us” and “Love Theme From Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” Zeitlin wrote the score for that 1978 film. I haven’t seen the movie. On the basis of its enchanting theme, it is on my list.
Zeitlin has divided his recorded work in the modern era more or less evenly between trio and solo albums. Those who have granted his trio albums the upper hand might do well to pay close attention to this one. It is in a league with his celebrated 1993 Maybeck performance, whose “What is This Thing Called Love/Fifth House” makes for interesting comparison with this new one.
More catching-up coming soon.

In the beginning, Stash Records specialized in songs from the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s that dealt with drugs and sex. The first Stash compilation of old recordings, in 1976, was called Reefer Songs. Another of the label’s big sellers was Copulatin’ Blues. Eventually, founder Bernie Brightman, began making original recordings by jazz artists, including singer Chris Connor and pianist Hilton Ruiz. To his eternal credit (he died in 2003), Brightman also recorded two albums by Anita Gravine, an artist whose talent justifies wide fame but who has remained an insiders’ favorite. Here is my mini-review of one of her Stash LPs, from the July, 1986 issue of Texas Monthly.

Anita Gravine, I Always Knew (Stash ST 255). An experienced but little-known singer whose second album is even better than her first, Gravine handles both ballad and up-tempo songs with ease of voice production and rhythmic assurance. Mike Abene‘s arrangements are stimulatingly unclichéd. The album is further graced by the trumpet solos of Tom Harrell. All of the above outdo themselves on a wonderful fugitive from the forties, “The Coffee Song.”

Before you listen to “The Coffee Song,” you should know that the all-star rhythm section is Abene, piano; George Mraz, bass; and Billy Hart, drums. The strings are led by the amazing Harry Lookofsky. Harrell solos majestically over Abene’s rich carpet of dissonance. The arrangement led composer and arranger Bill Kirchner to call this “Bartók Goes to Brazil.” If you’re trying to stay awake, this is better than caffeine.

My research indicates that Stash Records no longer exists. Neither of Gravine’s Stash albums made it to CD, although two of her later albums have. Her Stash LPs are around but hard to find. If you’re interested in I Always Knew, you might try this website or this one.

As the 30th anniversary of Bill Evans’ death approaches, he is on many minds. I am preparing a piece that will run the week of the date he died, September 15. As I researched it, among the Evans posts I found buried in the Rifftides past is one from four years ago. In those primitive days, the staff had yet to learn how to embed video. All we could do was provide a link to a rare performance of Evans and Kenny Burrell in duo. Now, we bring it to you direct as part of this encore post.

Evans And Burrell
(October 19, 2006)
As far as I knew until today, Bill Evans and guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded together only once, on Evans’ 1978 Quintessence session, which also included tenor saxophonist Harold Land, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The resourceful Jan Stevens of The Bill Evans Web Pages has pointed the way to another collaboration between Evans and Burrell, at the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival. They played Thad Jones’ “A Child is Born,” one of the tunes from Quintessence. Evans was rarely caught smiling on camera, but he smiled radiantly—and for good reason—as he and Burrell finished a notably sensitive performance.

The Detroit Jazz Festival runs through the Labor Day weekend, with an impressive array of musicians including Roy Haynes, Maria Schneider, Terence Blanchard and Branford Marsalis. The festival’s artist-in-residence, Mulgrew Miller, received advance attention from Detroit Free Press music critic Mark Stryker.

…the brightest spotlight falls on the Mississippi-born Miller, who makes four major appearances. He leads his sextet called Wingspan, plays duets with fellow pianist Kenny Barron, joins bassist Robert Hurst’s quartet and appears opening night with the neo-gospel vocal ensemble Take 6. He’ll also make a couple of other cameo appearances.
Miller is a good match for Detroit. He’s not so much a star as a blue-collar hero, known for his versatility, collegiality and consistency: an aesthetic kin to the many jazz musicians from Detroit who are better classified as profound stylists and craftsmen than innovators. Miller long ago forged his influences, especially McCoy Tyner, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea and Wynton Kelly, into an individual identity.

To read the whole thing, go here.
A few years ago (23), I wrote the liner notes for the Mulgrew Miller album Wingspan, which featured Kenny Garrett and Steve Nelson. Still fresh and undated, it is one of Miller’s best. The LP and CD versions have become expensive collectors items, but it seems to be available as an MP3 download without necessitating a second mortgage. Shortly after he recorded Wingspan, Miller became a leader with a debut gig at the Village Vanguard. He has been one ever since, at the head of—what else?— Wingspan. It is good to see a prestigious festival like Detroit’s recognizing so admirable a musician.

Bill Kirchner sent a link to a video. He accompanied it with a succinct message:

Play this when you’re having a bad day.

I wasn’t having a bad day, but the Thad-Jones Mel Lewis band made it better. This is from a European tour probably in the fall of 1969—not ’68, as YouTube says.
The reed section: Joe Henderson, Jerry Dodgion, Jerome Richardson, Eddie Daniels, Pepper Adams.
Trumpets: Snooky Young, Danny Moore, Al Porcino, Richard Williams.
Trombones: Eddie Bert, Astley Fennell, Jimmy Knepper, Cliff Heather.
Rhythm: Mel Lewis, drums; Roland Hanna, piano; Richard Davis, bass.
Conductor: Thad Jones.
Be alert for the shot of Snooky at 2:35, enjoying Hanna’s three-minute piano introduction. Who wouldn’t?
While I’m wrestling the deadline monster (So far, I’ve got him two falls out of three), the least I can do is attempt to keep you entertained. If this doesn’t do it, see your psychiatrist.

As far as I know, this is the first time I’ve been quoted in Magyar. It’s a blurb on the back of the Hungarian edition of Jeroen de Valk’s Chet Baker: His Life and Music. That invaluable book is also available in English.

Thanks to photographer Paolo Gant (behind the book) for sending the pictures. Gant captured stunning images of Baker not long before the trumpeter’s death in 1988. You can see a few of them, prominently copyright-protected, at his gallery’s website.
All of that is a perfectly good excuse to hear and see Baker in Stockholm on his 1983 tour with Stan Getz, Jim McNeely, George Mraz and Victor Lewis. Getz all but owned “Dear Old Stockholm;” he’s the one who recorded the traditional Swedish song in 1951 and made it a jazz standard. This night, though, he presented the melody and gave Chet the solo. And what a solo.

This is Charlie Parker’s 90th birthday. In observance, the German trumpeter, teacher and indefatigable blogger Bruno Leicht posted an entry tracing the evolution of Parker’s “Ko-Ko” from its roots in Ray Noble’s “Cherokee.” In his introduction, Bruno writes:

…Ray Noble had no idea, but this piece seemed to be extra-created for an ingenious improvisor like Bird. And it really became his leitmotiv through the years, from 1939 on. He owned it so to speak, and he took it to his grave. No one, not even the unique trumpet virtuoso Clifford Brown, could play on those changes as convincingly as the one and only Bird.

Leicht follows with a series of 20 MP3 recordings of “Cherokee” and “Cherokee” variants, from Noble’s 1939 recording through many by Parker with his own groups, Parker with Nat Cole, Parker with Stan Kenton, one by Don Byas, one by Benny Goodman and two by Clifford Brown and Max Roach. The MP3-fest ends in 1958 with Roach’s quintet featuring Kenny Dorham. After listening to all of it, I am left invigorated, in awe of Bird all over again and with “Cherokee” changes embedded in my brain. Leicht also links to Marc Myers’ five-part JazzWax interview with Parker enthusiast Phil Schaap (scroll down to find it).
It’s a lot of “Cherokee,” a lot of Bird, a lot of work by Bruno, and a fascinating reading and listening experience. To take the ride, go here.

For reasons that cannot be fully explained or quantified, some of the most personal soloists in jazz remain out of the spotlight despite their accomplishments. There is no better example in modern jazz than the trumpeter Johnny Coles (1926-1997), an insiders’ favorite barely known to the general public.
A native of Philadelphia, a contemporary of Jimmy Heath, Clifford Brown, John Coltrane and Benny Golson, Coles never became a leader except on odd jobs and record dates, but he worked for some of the most famous leaders of his time. During his career he played with, among others, Tadd Dameron, James Moody, Herbie Hancock, Ray Charles, Duke Ellington and Gil Evans. Evans framed Coles’ solos in shimmering orchestrations on several albums.
In a labor of love years in the making, Donald Frese—a frequent and knowledgeable Rifftides commenter—gives Coles his due in a new web discography that documents his major recordings beginning with Bull Moose Jackson in 1951 and ending with Geri Allen in 1996. From Frese’s introduction:

Coles often said that Miles Davis was the trumpet player he most admired. Steve Voce, in Coles’ obituary, wrote: “Johnny Coles would perhaps have been regarded as one of the jazz greats had he not been so close to Miles Davis in sound and style. Both Coles and Davis had the ability to express themselves powerfully using a minimal number of notes. The similarities clouded the fact that Coles’ inventions were completely original and that he barely borrowed.” And they both had their own distinctive cries and a certain dryness of sound. Gil Evans was probably Coles’ greatest champion and the first to fully utilize his talent.
One does not think of Evans, like Duke Ellington, writing and arranging with the sounds of the men in his orchestra in mind, with the exception of his notable collaborations with Davis and the pieces that featured Coles. It is hard to imagine the compositions “Sunken Treasure” or “Zee Zee”, or the arrangements of “Django” and “Davenport Blues” without Coles. Gil wrote the following about Coles in the liner notes to the Artists House LP, Where Flamingos Fly: “Johnny Coles is right in the be-bop era, part of the be-bop happenings and all that, but at the same time he had a great lyric sense and the main reason he could indulge in it is because he’s got a great tone. He can hold a tone. When you can hold a tone, then you can take advantage of it. There’s hardly anyone else who can do what he can do.”

To visit the Johnny Coles discography, go here.
There is precious little video of Coles performing, evidently none with Evans. He is featured with the Mingus sextet in Norway and Sweden in the excellent Jazz Icons DVD Charles Mingus Live In ’64. Here he is (the good guy in the white hat) on flugelhorn with the Count Basie band under the direction of Thad Jones. This was made in Japan, probably in 1985. Unfortunately, whoever supplied this clip to YouTube allowed the picture and sound to be out of synchronization. If it bothers you, you can always close your eyes and just listen.

Here, synchronization is no problem. Coles is at the helm of his own ship in the title track of his 1963 Blue Note album Little Johnny C. He solos between alto saxophonist Leo Wright and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson. The rhythm section is Duke Pearson, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; and Walter Perkins, drums.

Johnny Coles, admired and loved by his colleagues for the warmth of his playing, now getting posthumous attention in Don Frese’s discography.

Further evidence has come in verifying the value of that cache of previously unheard recordings in the Savory Collection at the National Jazz Museum in Harlem. Proof is posted on Newsweek‘s web edition—tantalizing solos from the late 1930s and early ’40s by Mildred Bailey and Jack Teagarden; Lester Young with Count Basie; Roy Eldridge; Herschel Evans; Benny Goodman; Bobby Hackett; Lionel Hampton; and the John Kirby Sextet. To read the Newsweek story and hear the audio clips, go here.
Just for fun, here’s a later edition of the Kirby sextet with (left to right on your screen) Charlie Shavers, Sid Catlett, Charlie Holmes, John Kirby, Buster Bailey and Billy Kyle. This is from a 1947 move, Sepia Cinderella.

For previous Rifftides items about the Savory collection at the National Jazz Museum, see the August 19 and August 22 posts,

Deadlines are stacking up around here like cordwood or like the piles of CDs I haven’t heard. I have mixed feelings about deadlines. On the one hand, I’d like to avoid them. On the other, they help make it possible to meet certain commitments; feeding the family, for example. For the next few days while I chop away, posting will be intermittent and may lack the customary Rifftides profundity.

A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it’s better than no inspiration at all.—Rita Mae Brown

Call me a braggart, call me arrogant. People at ABC (and elsewhere) have called me worse. But when you need the job done on deadline, you’ll call me.—Sam Donaldson

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.—Douglas Adams

The natural urge when running a distance is to push harder and finish sooner—to race against time. Every second behind a deadline is a little defeat.—Joe Henderson (the runner, not the tenor player)

In the meantime, here is interesting modish playing by Jeremy Pelt, flugelhorn and trumpet; J.D Allen, tenor saxophone; Dwayne Burno, bass; and Gerald Cleaver, drums. The video was made, evidently recently, at the Paris restaurant Duc des Lombards. YouTube did not supply the name of the tune. You may give it a title of your choice.