When I was among the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award winners in 1997, there was a handful of us, barely more than a half-dozen. There has been an expansion of categories. They include not only writers and publishers of books, articles and liner notes, but also–observing new media reality–hosts and producers of radio and television programs and proprietors of blogs. The total of winners for 2006 is thirty-seven. It’s the No Writer Left Behind Program, and I am delighted not to have been left behind. For a complete list, go here.
The ASCAP ceremony Thursday night was held before the backdrop of Columbus Circle, Central Park and a large section of Manhattan glittering outside a three-story glass wall. The setting was the Frederick P. Rose Room on the 6th floor of the home of Jazz at Lincoln Center. Staff members warned people in the audience not to photograph the scene; JALC has copyrighted the view through its windows. The dramatic vista from the Rose room perspective has become an east coast equivalent of the famous registered logo of Pebble Beach Resorts, a lone pine on a rocky promintory in Monterey, California, verboten to tourist cameras.

The awards production was beautifully organized by the ASCAP staff and ran like clockwork, with multi-media presentations about the winning entries. Each of us was allowed thirty seconds for an acceptance speech. No one, as far as I could tell, ran longer. In the photograph, authorized as an artifact of the ceremony, I am the small figure in the lower right corner, about a third of the way through my half-minute of fame. The lights of New York’s West Side are behind me.
In a few cases, there was live music appropriate to the subject of the award.
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond was acknowledged by the young alto saxophonist Jaleel Shaw playing Leonard Bernstein’s “Somewhere.” Shaw, accompanied by bassist Joe Martin and drummer Kendrick Scott, did Desmond the honor of observing the spirit but not the letter of his playing. Paul, the great individualist, would have applauded Shaw’s being himself.
The ceremony, the reception afterward, the milling around and chatting with other Deems Taylor recipients; it was a great evening with ASCAP.

The next time you are looking for surprises on YouTube, do not bypass Tommy Flanagan playing Billy Strayhorn’s “Rain Check.” The 1991 performance at a club in Germany was with his trio; George Mraz on bass, Bobby Durham on drums. The video and audio quality are unusually high for a YouTube clip, with matching direction and camera work. Flanagan’s Ellington quotes in his solo might be expected, but…”Star and Stripes Forever?”

Rifftides reader Don Emanuel has managed to excerpt from a Polish television program a rare performance of “‘Round Midnight” by Thelonious Monk. It was taped during the Monk quartet’s 1966 European tour, with Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Larry Gales, bass; and Ben Riley, drums. Watching Monk is half the fun. Mr. Emanuel posted the clip on YouTube. You may see it by going here.
YouTube also has a clip showing rehearsal and performance of “Evidence” by a medium-sized Monk band that includes Rouse, Riley, Gales, Phil Woods, Johnny Griffin, Ray Copeland and a trombonist who may be Benny Powell. We briefly see Monk in conference with Hall Overton, who did orchestrations for at least three concerts by similar Monk groups. YouTube gives no information about date or place. This is a fascinating look at Monk preparing a performance and an opportunity to see him solo at his best.

Our latest check on Rifftides readers’ whereabouts shows that some of you are in:
Armadale North, Australia
Azur, France
Batnfjordsra, Norway
Belleville, Canada
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Fulmer, UK
Harlesdon, UK,
Kihei, Hawaii
Monterrey, Mexico
Niederndorf, Germany
Reykjavk, Iceland
Schnborn, Germany
Settimo Torinese, Italy
Stoke, UK
Sydney, Australia
Tokyo, Japan
Toronto, Canada
Torremolinos, Spain
Tubize, Belgium
Viskafors, Sweden
Warsaw, Poland
Zurich, Switzeland
And the continental United States from Paradise, California, to its east coast counterpart, Brooklyn, New York. It’s good to have you aboard.

The Rifftides staff is headed to New York to receive the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond (still available, suitable for fancy wrapping and holiday giving).
Posting from the road will take place as possible.

Floyd Standifer was an essential member of the Seattle jazz scene in the 1950s when the city had dozens of superior players who banded together in a close-knit community. I hadn’t seen him more than two or three times since those Northwest Jazz Workshop days, but recently I was pleased to encounter him twice. In late November, Standifer joined drummer Don Kinney’s trio for a concert at The Seasons. A fine trumpeter from time he was a teenager, Floyd later took up the tenor saxophone and became an impressive singer. He has been a revered performer and teacher in the Pacific Northwest ever since he returned from Europe and New York in the early 1960s. He filled all three of his roles splendidly in the Kinney concert, captivating his audience, as he does on this CD.
A week or so earlier, I saw and heard Standifer as a member of the 1960 Quincy Jones band. The Jones outfit was so good, Floyd told me the other night, that after Quincy opened for Count Basie’s band at the Olympia Theater in Paris, Basie said to him, “You’re not planning to take this band back to the States, are you?”
On the Quincy Jones DVD in the new Jazz Icons series, Standifer solos in the trumpet section with Clark Terry, Benny Bailey and Lennie Johnson. When Jones formed the band, he hired Floyd along with two more of Quincy’s Seattle pals, bassist Buddy Catlett and pianist Patti Bown.
Trombonist Melba Liston was the other woman in this ground-breaking band, which also boasted saxophonists Phil Woods, Porter Kilbert, Sahib Shihab, Budd Johnson and Jerome Richardson; trombonists Quentin Jackson, Ake Persson and Jimmy Cleveland; drummer Joe Harris; Les Spann on flute and guitar; and the incredible French horn player Julius Watkins. The DVD catches the band in a television concert in Belgium and another a couple of months later in Switzerland with Roger Guerin replacing Terry. Hearing the Jones band on records has been impressive enough over the years. Witnessing the visual dimension of the precision, musicality and camaraderie of this legendary group is a revelation.
Jones did take the band back to the States, but the European sojourn was a fiscal disaster for him and any threat to Basie was short-lived. By the mid-sixties Jones was recovering by broadening his efforts into the more lucrative areas of show business in which he has thrived. During the short life of his big band, he wrote an important paragraph in the history of jazz. If the economics of his situation had worked out differently, the paragraph might have grown into a chapter.
Because it is so revealing and powerful, the Jones DVD is first on my list of the nine Jazz Icons DVDs in the series’ initial release by Reelin’ In The Years Productions, but they are all impressive and valuable. Made from films and videotapes produced by noncommercial state television stations in Europe, even those from the late 1950s are of exceptional quality. We see Lee Morgan blaze into his famous trumpet solo on “Moanin'” with the classic 1958 edition of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers–Chet Baker in 1964 and again fifteen years later, playing beautifully on both occasions–Dizzy Gillespie in 1958 burning through the blues, with Sonny Stitt on tenor saxophone giving no quarter.
Buddy Rich’s drum solo on “Channel One Suite” in Holland in 1978 is a prodigy of musicality and control, evidence for liner note writer Dean Pratt’s argument that Rich was a genius. Ella Fitzgerald has an electrifying moment in a 1957 concert in Belgium when for one number Oscar Peterson sits in on piano and Roy Eldridge on trumpet. With guitarist Herb Ellis, bassist Ray Brown and drummer Jo Jones, it’s Peterson’s powerhouse trio augmented. Fitzgerald is inspired to a level of rhythmic intensity unusual even for her on “It Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing”.
What else? Count Basie in 1962 with his New Testament band that included Thad Jones and the two Franks, Foster and Wess; Thelonious Monk in 1966, fascinating in his concentration and eccentricity, with his quartet featuring Charlie Rouse; and Louis Armstrong with his 1959 All-Stars in a typical performance…that is, exhilirating. If you want proof that in his late fifties Armstrong could make other trumpeters shake their heads in disbelief, you’ll find it here.
This project demonstrates the quality that DVD reissues can achieve when they are produced with dedication, skill and the understanding that jazz listeners want not just music, but also information. Far too many DVDs provide auxiliary material only as extras on the disc. Each Jazz Icons box contains an illustrated booklet with carefully researched notes by experts of the caliber of Ira Gitler, Don Sickler, Chris Sheridan, Will Friedwald and Michael Cuscuna.
David Peck and Phillip Galloway, the Jazz Icons producers at Reelin’ in The Years, plan further releases if there is demand. Possibilities include performances new to DVD by John Coltrane, Roland Kirk, Charles Mingus with Eric Dolphy and Duke Elllington with Ella Fitzgerald. I wonder what other treasures are resting in the vaults of those European TV stations.

Thanks to Bill Kirchner, who calls me to account for an error in the previous item, Boxes, about Cannonball Adderley’s tenure with Miles Davis.

Cannonball was a member of the Miles Davis sextet from the gitgo–December 1957. Cannonball had been working for Miles since the fall of 1957, and Miles then rehired Philly Joe Jones, Coltrane, and Red Garland. As you know, Bill Evans replaced Garland in the spring of 1958, followed shortly thereafter by Jimmy Cobb replacing Jones.
It may be that on the Café Bohemia pieces you mentioned, Cannonball was unavailable that
evening. On the TV show that Miles did for Robert Herridge in 1959, Cannonball was not
present because of migraines that he suffered periodically. (You’ll note that he nonetheless
is listed in the show’s credits.)

To see and hear Davis, John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb give a first-rate performance of “So What” from the Herridge broadcast, go here. The entire half-hour program, or all of it that survives, is available on DVD.
Adderley and Evans continued the mutual admiration society they formed on Davis’s Kind of Blue sextet. In 1961, after they had moved on to be leaders of their own groups, they recorded Know What I Mean? with bassist Percy Heath and drummer Connie Kay of the Modern Jazz Quartet. A highlight in the discographies of both men, the CD has one of the most charming versions of Evans’s “Waltz for Debby” and additional takes of the title tune and Gershwin’s “Who Cares?” Unlike many alternate takes, these bonus tracks are as good as the originally released cuts.

Publishers allow complete sets of Shakespeare and Faulkner to go out of print. Record companies are under no greater obligation when it comes to classics in music. In the free market, a label is at liberty to do whatever it pleases with its stock. Concord, the company that bought the Fantasy complex of labels, has not disclosed its intentions for other important complete collections, but it has dropped from its catalogue the monumental 18-CD Complete Bill Evans on Riverside. Amazon.com is down to five copies of the Evans box. Two of the five are used. One of the sets described as new and unopened is offered at the astonishing price of $399.94. That’s $200 above list. A few other sets are scattered among assorted web sites. Evans completists who have been waiting might do well to move quickly, as might those who have been putting off buying Thelonious Monk: Complete Riverside Recordings. That 15-CD box is also gone from the Concord catalogue, along with Wes Montgomery: The Complete Riverside Recordings (12 CDs).
So far, Concord’s John Coltrane: The Prestige Recordings (16 CDs) and Miles Davis Chronicle: The Complete Prestige Recordings (12 CDs) are still in the catalogue and available at or near list prices. It would be nice to think that Concord not only considers commercial potential but also places cultural existence value on treasures like the Coltrane and Davis boxes, but the fate of the Evans, Monk and Montgomery sets is not encouraging.
To Concord’s credit, it has recently reissued smaller, but still substantial, Coltrane and Davis boxes and one with some of saxophonist Sonny Stitt’s best early work. John Coltrane: Fearless Leader has six CDs covering the 1957 and ’58 Prestige dates under the tenor saxophonist’s own name. That means his collaborations with Sonny Rollins, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Hank Mobley, Paul Quinichette, Tadd Dameron, Gene Ammons and several cooperative sessions are not included. Still, the collection presents Coltrane during a period of stunning development when he cleaned up his life after being fired by Miles Davis for unreliability. Under Thelonious Monk’s leadership, he expanded his craftsmanship and creativity at a pace all but unprecedented by an established jazz musician. He was on his way back and soon would rejoin Miles Davis in the mind-blowing sextet with Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers and Philly Joe Jones.
The Miles Davis Quintet: The Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions is the 1955-’56 band with Coltrane, Chambers, Jones and pianist Red Garland. This was Davis on his own comeback trail, establishing himself as one of the most influential and popular musicians of his generation and his quintet as one of the best small bands in jazz history. The music in this set was released as LPs called Miles, Workin’, Relaxin’, Steamin’ and Cookin’. The four CD set contains previously unreleased performances made as air checks from Steve Allen’s Tonight Show and two taped at the Blue Note in Philadelphia. It also includes four pieces recorded at the Café Bohemia in New York after Bill Evans replaced Garland in 1958 but before Adderley made the band a sextet. Thus, the new disc would be important as a document of transition even if the music wasn’t first rate, which for the most part it is.
Sonny Stitt once told me with a straight face and aggressive finality that he arrived at his way of playing independent of Charlie Parker’s influence. It is a matter of continuing speculation among students of jazz geneology whether it is conceivable that Stitt, four years younger, could have sounded so much like Parker without having heard bebop’s incandescent solo genius. Given Stitt’s cocky bravado, it is difficult not to be skeptical, but in the long run the music is what matters to all but scholars and specialists. The best of Stitt’s music, which includes nearly everything in this collection, is in the top tier of jazz improvisation. Aside from the question of stylistic originality, he was one of the most gifted saxophonists of the bop era, as technically formidable, creative and hard-driving on tenor as on alto. Stitt’s Bits, Sonny Stitt: The Bebop Recordings, 1949-1952 is a 3-CD box that starts with Stitt in J.J. Johnson’s quintet and ends with him at the head of an octet. It concentrates on Stitt’s tenor saxophone, the instrument on which he was warmest, even at the rapid tempos he loved.
It presents all ten tracks from his Prestige quartet sessions with Bud Powell, the progenitor of modern jazz pianists. Stitt and Powell achieved an intensity that makes the perfectly respectable quartet tracks that follow, with pianist Kenny Drew, seem polite. The collection covers the early years of the celebrated two-tenors collaboration between Stitt and Gene Ammons, starting with the 1950 session that produced their famous “Blues Up and Down” and including the great chase sequence on “Stringin’ the Jug.” On alto, with a dream rhythm section of Junior Mance, Gene Wright and Art Blakey, Stitt soars through “Cherokee” at a blazing tempo, leaving no doubt that regardless of whether he modeled himself on Parker, he equaled the master in facility. Like the Coltrane and Davis sets, the Stitt box has beautifully remastered sound and attractive, informative packaging.
I have been critical enough of Concord Records that it is fair to give the company credit when they earn it. With these sets, they earn it. The tilt of Concord’s new recording efforts is drastically away from the invaluable mainstream music that still populates the labels they bought from Fantasy, Inc. Big headline in the “News” section of the Concord web site:

TV ALERT- MICHAEL BOLTON TO APPEAR ON DR. PHIL AIRING DECEMBER 12!

Let’s hope that the Fantasies, Riversides, Prestiges, Contemporaries and Debuts in the Concord catalogue survive the Bolton era.

In the 1950s, the New Orleans saxophonist Al Belletto had a surge of international success with his sextet. A contemporary of Al Hirt and Pete Fountain, Belletto grew up steeped in traditional jazz as a clarinetist. But like Ellis Marsalis, Alvin Batiste, Ed Blackwell and other young New Orleans musicians, he was entranced by the music of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell. He became an alto saxophonist and formed a small band whose members sang every bit as well as they played. For a time, they were a part of Woody Herman’s touring big band. They recorded for Capitol, Bethlehem and King and performed throughout North and South America. But Belletto couldn’t get New Orleans out of his system. The town effects people that way. In the 1960s, he left the road and returned home.
Belletto swam against New Orleans’ conservative musical preferences and turned the tide. Playing modern jazz, he developed an audience and established himself as a local favorite. He became a guru to generations of young musicians. They learned as they passed through his bands, and they invariably address him as “Coach.” Now and then he made CDs, including this splendid big band album. He was content to spend the rest of his life in the city whose call he couldn’t resist. The Louisiana Jazz Federation named Belletto its artist of the year.
Then Katrina devastated New Orleans. Belletto retreated to his weekend place in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, but it took a heavy hit and could not be a refuge for long. His house in New Orleans was filled with eight-and-a-half feet of water and mud. Everything in it was ruined. After being submerged for weeks, two of his alto saxes have been repaired, but he says they’ll never be the same. Recordings, sheet music, memorabilia of his long career–all are gone. Belletto and his longtime companion Linda moved in with his son and his family in Dallas. After several months came a painful decision; they would not move back to New Orleans. They were unable to handle what it would take physically and emotionally to get started again amid the wreckage. Now, they have their own house in Dallas. Settling in, adjusting to the idea of being exiles, they are filled with longing for their city, its history, its incomparable culture and atmosphere, longing for what New Orleans was before the storm.
I thought of Al Belletto and Linda as I read Howard Reich’s Chicago Tribune report about Katrina obliterating substantial portions of the documentation of New Orleans music. To read Reich’s piece, go here. Be sure to visit the photo gallery and interactive features of the article. As clarinetist Michael White takes Reich on a video tour through the debris-filled hulk of his house, you’ll get an impression of what White, Belletto and thousands of other New Orleanians went through after Katrina came to call.
As we reported soon after Katrina, in the wake of the hurricane con artists circled like a school of sharks, claiming that they would help musicians recover and re-establish. Most of the scammers have moved on to prey on victims of other disasters, but be cautious. Check out relief organizations before you give. Be sure that your money goes where you want it to go. Musicians displaced, disrupted or impoverished by the storm still need help, and will for a long time. The New Orleans Musicians Hurricane Relief Fund is an authenticated 501(c)(3) organization that directs to musicians all of the funds it receives. Click on the link above to go to the NOMHRF web site and make a donation. Belletto is getting by in Dallas. White is living in a FEMA trailer. Others aren’t as fortunate.

Excuse interruption of music festival, please, but would mind repeating excrutiating sound made with assistance of cat intestine?
–Charlie Chan to son Tommy, who has been playing “jazz” violin. From the motion picture Docks of New Orleans, 1948

Saxophonist, arranger and leader Bill Kirchner writes:

Anita O’Day’s passing reminded me of a week I spent working with her
in the summer of 1982 at the Blue Note in NYC. I was part of her backup quartet: Mike Abene, piano; Rick Laird, bass; her longtime partner John Poole, drums; and myself on saxes and flute.
As one might expect of someone with Anita’s frequently harsh life experiences, she was pretty brittle, though I got along with her well enough. She didn’t sing very many ballads, for whatever reason. On medium-to-up tempos, Poole would play nice brushes and Anita would float over them with one of the hippest, most laidback time feels I’ve ever experienced from anyone, singer or instrumentalist. Alas, when it was time for me to solo, Poole would exchange brushes for sticks, to less-than-exquisite effect. It was tough.
One night, though, Anita called “My Funny Valentine” at a slow tempo. She sang the melody and then, as we had predetermined, I soloed for a half-chorus and then paused for her to come back in. Apparently I was doing something right, because she motioned for me to finish the chorus. At that moment, I happened to look into her eyes; to my surprise, her protective shell seemed to disintegrate, revealing one very vulnerable soul.
Anita never said a word about this, but it was one of the most unforgettable moments I’ve had in music, and one of the greatest compliments I’ve ever received.

In her autobiography, High Times, Hard Times, Ms. O’Day explored those “harsh life experiences,” sparing no one, least of all herself. Her caption on a mug shot police took following a drug bust:

Arrested for the fourth time in Kansas City, I was as angry as I look. On a previous occasion I was framed and served time. This time I was guilty and managed to get off without a trial.

If you’d prefer to remember her in more innocent days, try this clip from the early 1940s, when she became famous as Gene Krupa’s vocalist.

Anita O’Day was my hero because she used four-letter words. That was really neat. I didn’t myself say them for a long time, but I loved hearing her say them.–Carla Bley
All I know is that there are four beats to a bar and there are a million ways to phrase a tune.–Anita O’Day ( Down Beat, circa 1938-39)

Over the long weekend, we lost Anita O’Day, who died in Los Angeles on Thanksgiving day. She was eighty-seven. The stalwart bassist Walter Booker is also gone, dead in New York on Friday at the age of seventy-three.
O’Day was the last of the great female jazz vocalists who emerged in the swing era. She survived Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae. She had perfect time and pitch, a voice without vibrato and the ability to swing as hard as the top horn players of her era. Her feistiness matched her musicianship and she had the respect of her instrumental colleagues, an honor not always accorded singers. One of the O’Day anecdotes being circulated concerns the time she was overheard correcting her drummer. He told her not to tell him how to play. “I’m not telling you how to play,” she said, “I’m telling you when to play.”
O’Day might have been ill advised to continue singing into her eighties, when after a monumentally rough life about all that remained of her talent was her spirit, but she soldiered on. It is unlikely that anyone could have persuaded her to retire.
For as long as she is remembered, her most indelible image is of the glamorous woman in the black dress with white flounce and spectacular hat singing at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. To see and hear her at Newport, click here for “Sweet Georgia Brown” and here for “Tea for Two.” But do not miss a sample clip from her less publicized 1963 Tokyo television special, a superb recital by one of the most important singers of her time.
Walter Booker played with scores of top jazz artists, but he will be best remembered as Cannonball Adderley’s bass player in the late 1960s and early ’70s when Adderley’s quintet was one of the most popular bands in the world. Never a virtuosic acrobat of his instrument, Booker’s specialties were good notes and dependable time, qualities that served Adderley well on more than a dozen Capitol and Fantasy albums including Pyramid. For a reprise of Booker’s life as a musician and as the operator of an important recording studio, go here.

November 25 would have been Paul Desmond’s 81st birthday. Less than two years before he died, he made a featured appearance at the 1975 Monterey Jazz Festival. He played Johnny Mandel’s “Emily” with an all-star rhythm section that included pianist John Lewis, bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Mundell Lowe. Exquisitely lyrical, even for Desmond, the performance might have justified his celebrated claim that he had won several awards for playing slowly. To see and hear it, click here.

In our review of the Tony Bennett TV special, a question arose about the absence of arranger credits. The New York Sun‘s Will Friedwald, reviewing Bennett’s Duets CD, provides a substantial clue that the charts were a team effort:

Mr. Bennett’s musical director and pianist Lee Musiker, string orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli, and horn arranger Torrie Zito (who has worked with Mr. Bennett for 40 years) have collaborated to rewrite or amend classic Bennett charts by Ralph Sharon, Johnny Mandel, and others in a way that preserves the best of the past.

Rifftides reader Mark Stryker, the music writer for The Detroit Free Press, sent the following message with information about Calandrelli and about the eighty-year-old Bennett’s vocal regimen.

I happened to meet Calandrelli in August at the Vibrato Grill, the swanky restaurant-jazz club in Bel Air owned by Herb Albert. I was in Los Angeles working on a couple of stories and went to the place to hear a friend of mine, pianist John Campbell; Calandrelli was there to eat and check out the music after some function at the Mancini Institute, and we were introduced. He seemed to be a very, very nice man. What was weird was that two days earlier I had spoken to Bennett for 20 minutes for a quick-hit story for the Free Press. I mentioned this to Calandrelli, who told me about the CD, though I cannot recall if he said anything about the film.
In my short interview with Bennett, which we ran as a Q-and-A, I asked him specifically about craft and how he’s kept his voice in such good shape. I’ve copied the exchange below. It relates nicely to your observations and those of your D.C. correspondent.
Question: At 80, your voice is still in remarkably supple shape. You’ve taken good care of your instrument, haven’t you?
Bennett: Yes. I had good training and very good teachers. After the Second World War, when I came home, I studied at the American Theatre Wing under the GI Bill and they taught me how to keep my voice in good shape.
Q: What did they teach?
A: Stay very musical and the system of and doing that warm-up, which is very easy, unlike what everybody thinks. I’m not trying to sing like Pavarotti. Just the vowel sounds of A, E, Ah, Oh, OO, and warm up that way because each day it’s a little different. It keeps you in shape, so you don’t have to push.
Q: Do you have a vocal routine?
A: It takes about 15 minutes. Sometimes it’s very intimate and no one can even hear you do it. It’s a matter of breathing properly and when you feel the center — it’s almost like tai chi — you get relaxed and you can see where you are that day.
I do it in bits and pieces. Like in the morning, if I’m shaving, I’ll very quietly hum a kind of flat sound without any vibrato, and then about 2 o’clock in the afternoon I go to it for about 15 minutes. Once I feel that center, I’m ready to perform.
Q: I spoke recently with the great jazz pianist Hank Jones, who just turned 88 and still practices two hours a day. As his fellow pianist Cedar Walton told me, “Preparation is his secret weapon.”
A: Boy, that’s good advice. You know, the late Joe Williams saw me on a airplane once, and we had a chat. He sang with the Basie band in the ’50s. He said, “You know what it is about you? It’s not that you want to sing. It’s that you have to sing.” I said, “You just saved me a lot of money from going to a psychiatrist.”
Q: You’re not a jazz musician, but jazz has clearly had a huge impact on your phrasing, your sense of time, the way you interact with a band.
A: I know how to improvise, and for me jazz is the greatest contribution culturally that the United States has given to the world.
Q: You’re always concerned with getting the message of the song across, but there’s a looseness to the phrasing that makes it come alive in the moment.
A: That’s the whole thing. It’s the interpretation of going behind the beat or in front of the beat, and it changes every night. You might be singing the same song but there’s a vitalness that the musicians feed me and I feed them. I’ll make a turn of phrase and all of sudden they’ll change the chords, embellish it and make it better.
Q: There’s such optimism in your singing and the way you interpret a lyric. Are you you really that happy?
A: No, it’s a gift. My life is absolutely gorgeous. Imagine the things that are happening to me. I’m 80 years old and it’s really the greatest year that I’ve ever had — becoming an NEA Jazz Master and the Smithsonian Institute has accepted one of my paintings and it’s in there permanently, along with John Singer Sargent and Hopper and Winslow Homer. I’ll never get over that.
–Mark Stryker

This is an important American national holiday. To those of the U.S. persuasion, the Rifftides staff sends wishes for a happy Thanksgiving. To readers around the world: we are thankful for your interest, attendance and comments.

Our occasional Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard sent a message that included the following observations about Tony Bennett, An American Classic, the special that ran on NBC Television last night.

I thought The Old Man outclassed all the other performers. Bennett is in astonishingly good shape, vocally. The last few years, he seems to take more liberties with the melodies, adding nice little alternatives that freshen the songs he’s sung so many times. (example: “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which also featured lovely accompaniment from Bill Charlap)
My major complaint about the show is that it seemed like the camera never stopped moving. I suppose the director and/or producer deem that necessary for today’s media-saturated generation, but I find it tiresome. Also, it seemed like the camera seldom settled on Bennett in close-up… there were mostly medium- and long-range shots, or hazy, atmospheric closer pictures of him. Are they afraid we’ll see how old he is?
But, all in all, it was good to see and hear an hour with Bennett. The word “icon” is
used altogether too often on so many of today’s suddenly-arrived stars, but it seems
appropriate for somebody who’s stood for so long as a model of taste and integrity
in the notoriously changeable pop music world.
Hope you had a chance to catch the show. –JB

Yes, I watched it, amazed that a network would do something like that these days. The Las Vegas segment was godawful, but we speculated that, as a spoof, Rob Marshall, the director, made it as faitfhul as possible to one of those dreadful Vegas hotel productions. I had never before heard Elton John sing an actual song. He was in tune, and his phrasing wasn’t bad. K.D. Lang sang well.
Bennett looked and sounded fine, with only a couple of intonation slips. His phrasing and interpretation of lyrics have improved over the years, and they were good to start with, even on that terrible song that made him famous, “Rags to Riches.”
The rapport I’ve seen in the past between Diana Krall and Tony didn’t quite materialize. Stevie Wonder’s harmonica solo was the instrumental highlight of the hour. His singing drove me nuts. It always has, but he’s written two or three good songs. Christina Aguilar? That was a joke, right? Bublé? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Charlap got a solo chorus on “San Francisco,” but they covered him with meaningless b-roll shots, about twenty of them in half a minute. Television, like the movies, is infected with the quick-cut disease. God forbid that a director should let the audience get used to a shot for longer than three seconds.
Let’s see, who else was there? Oh, Streisand, at the beginning. She sang beautifully. I wish that the show had maintained the taste and simplicity of that opening song, but any network getting away with presenting palatable music in 2006 must satisfy the MTV generation and those with MTV tastes. When Bennett is gone, what popular singer of classic songs who has taste, ability and a repertoire of standards will have the clout to get a network television program like this?

Do you know who wrote the arrangements? I tried to catch that info during the
closing credits, but missed it – if it was there. — JB

I went here to get arranger credits. The arranger(s) got no credit. Hooray for Hollywood.
For a review that ran in advance of the broacast, go here.

Nat Hentoff is a champion of the Jazz Foundation of America in its efforts to help aging musicians who lack the resources to provide for themselves. In his latest column in the Village Voice, Hentoff makes it clear that jazzmen and women who find themselves in want are not always those who failed to make it to the top of their profession.

Jazz musicians do not have pensions, and very few have medical plans or other resources. Pianist Wynton Kelly, for example–a vital sideman for Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie–died penniless. I was at the first recording session of pianist Phineas Newborn, whose mastery of the instrument was astonishing. As jazz musicians say, he told a story. His ended in a pauper’s grave in Memphis.
At last, 17 years ago, in New York, a group of musicians and jazz enthusiasts for whom the music had become essential to their lives formed the Jazz Foundation of America. Its mission is to regenerate the lives of abandoned players–paying the rents before they’re evicted, taking care of their medical needs, and providing emergency living expenses.

To read all of Nat’s column, learn of Dizzy Gillespie’s crucial role in the foundation and find out how to help, click here.