The American premier of Chris Brubeck’s new Prague Concerto for Bass Trombone and Orchestra will take place with the Yakima Symphony Orchestra on Saturday, January 21. The concerto reflects Brubeck’s rangy interests and skills in classical music, jazz and rock. That may indicate a bouillabaisse of a composition, but the piece has coherence, unity, and good-natured seriousness. The concerto comes in three movements titled “The Return of the Prince,” “Song of the Mountains” and “Dance of the Neocons.” I think that it is likely to further advance the reputation of Dave Brubeck’s number-three son as an American composer of standing and substance. The concerto is one of three of his compositions on this new compact disc. River of Song has ravishing singing by Frederica von Stade; Brubeck keeps good company. The other major work on the YSO program will be Leonard Bernstein’s Three Dance Episodes from On The Town.
In addition to the trombone concerto, the concert will present the quartet led by Chris, playing trombone and bass, and his brother Danny, a gifted drummer. Their colleagues are guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb. They will play three pieces by Dave Brubeck—“Cassandra,” “In Your Own Sweet Way,” and “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” in addition to Chris Brubeck’s “We’re Still in Love After All These Years.” If there is an encore, it’s likely to be—guess what? Right: “Take Five.”
I was asked to write the program notes for the symphony concert and to chat about the music with the YSO music director and conductor, Brooke Cresswell. You can hear our conversation in four short podcasts on the YSO website.
Earlier next week, on Wednesday, January 18, The Brubeck Brothers Quartet will play at The Seasons, that acoustically blessed former church, in another of what is becoming an impressive series of concerts. To many Rifftides readers, Yakima, Washington, may as well be on the far side of the moon, but the word is getting around in jazz and classical circles that a gig at The Seasons is something to be desired.

The following story from Agence France Presse has been popping up in newspapers, on television and radio, and everywhere on the internet. It seems to have (ahem) struck a responsive chord. In the unlikely event that you have missed it, Rifftides brings it to you as a public service.

World’s Longest Concert Sounds Second Chord

A new chord has sounded in the world’s slowest and longest concert, which will take 639 years to perform.

An abandoned church in eastern Germany is the venue for the 639-year-long performance of a piece of music by American experimental composer John Cage.

The performance of “organ2/ASLSP” (or “As SLow aS Possible”) began in the Buchardi church in Halberstadt on September 5, 2001, and is scheduled to last until 2639.

The first year-and-a-half of the performance was total silence, with the first chord, G-sharp, B and G-sharp, not sounding until February 2, 2003.

Two additional Es, an octave apart, were sounded in July 2004 and are scheduled to be released later this year on May 5.

Today, the first chord has progressed to a second, comprising A, C and F-sharp, and is to be held down over the next few years by weights on an organ being built especially for the project.

New pipes are being added to the organ in time for when new notes are scheduled to sound.

Cage originally conceived the piece in 1985 as a 20-minute work for piano, subsequently transcribing it for organ in 1987.

But organisers of the John Cage Organ Project decided to take the composer at his word and stretch out the performance for 639 years, using Cage’s transcription for organ.

The enormous running time was chosen to commemorate the creation of Halberstadt’s historic Blockwerk organ in 1361, 639 years before the current project started.

The organ, built by Nikolaus Faber for Halberstadt’s cathedral, was the first ever to be used for liturgical purposes, ringing in a new era in which the organ has played a central role in church music ever since.

Cage was a pupil of one of the 20th century’s most influential composers, Arnold Schoenberg.

Cage’s avant-garde oeuvre includes works such as the notorious “4’33”, a piece for orchestra comprising four minutes and 33 seconds of total silence, all meticulously notated.

Cage died in New York in 1992.

The organisers of the John Cage Organ Project say the record-breaking performance in Halberstadt also has a philosophical background, to “rediscover calm and slowness in today’s fast-changing world.” (AFP)

In recent years, Shirley Horn, RIP, was the leading exponent of that philosophy, although she never took quite that long between chords.

Rifftides reader Garth Jowett writes:

The Miguel Zenon is “different” from what I expected, but
wonderful in its own way. I would like to hear what he can do with
“bebop” standards, as he has such great control of the instrument, and a
wonderful sound. Thanks for the recommendation.

It’s not quite a bop standard, but Zenon solos on “MDM” with the Mingus Big Band on I Am Three and has interesting solos in Not In Our Name by Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. With Haden, he is at his most boppish in “America The Beautiful,” but he is unabashedly a post-bop player.

I’m off this morning to the IAJE bash. Travel will consume the better part of today and tomorrow. Blogging for the next few days will be catch as catch can, but I’ll keep my eyes and ears open among the throngs and the wall-to-wall music and keep you posted, even if sporadically.

Jessica Williams played a magnificent solo concert Saturday night at The Seasons. A tall, luminous presence in dark tones and silver, she began with her new-agey composition called “Love and Hate” and followed it with an explanation that it was “the sort of thing you’d hear on top-forty radio.” Well, not quite, but it prompted concern in the hall that we might be headed for an evening in George Winston territory. That worry began dissipating when she was eight bars into Billy Eckstine’s “I Want To Talk About You.” It was gone forever by the time she played “Monks’ Mood,” which opened an extended Thelonious Monk medley that ended up swinging so hard and so deeply that the audience of 300 was a mass of smiling faces on bobbing heads. The nine-foot Steinway was stunning in its unamplified glory in the hall’s perfect acoustics. Her command of it was breathtaking.
Williams prefaced a Duke Ellington segment with the observation that she can’t play his music without feeling his warmth. The warmth filled the room as she explored “Mood Indigo,” “In My Solitude” and “Take The ‘A’ Train” in an Ellington segment laced with allusions to several of his other tunes. Engaging if charmingly distracted in her conversation between pieces, she told of opening for Bill Evans at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in the 1980s. After her first set, she recalled, she passed Evans on the stairs and he said, “Where the _____ did you come from?” a compliment she still relishes. (The chaste “_____” is hers, not mine). Then, she captured several aspects of Evans in her composition “Bill’s Beauty.”
“You’re such a great audience,” she said, “that I’m going to take requests.” Before she finished talking, someone jumped the gun. A loud male voice asked for John Coltrane’s “Wise One.” She grinned. “Just for that,” she said, “I won’t play it.” The next request was for “Giant Steps. No, she said; if Tommy Flanagan wouldn’t play it, neither would she. It was a good-natured, but odd, refusal. Not only was Flanagan the pianist on Coltrane’s celebrated 1959 recording of the piece, but he also recorded it in 1981 with his quartet, and made trio versions in 1982 with George Mraz and Al Foster and 1983 with Ron Carter and Tony Williams. No matter; Williams was happy to comply with the next request, for “’Round Midnight.” Again, Monk stimulated her most profound playing. The last piece, another request, Gershwin’s “My Man’s Gone Now,” had echoes of Evans that gave way to pure Williams, the kind of inspired creativity that jazz players in the thirties called “original stuff.”
She thanked the audience, bowed and left the stage to a standing ovation, not of the knee-jerk variety that has been sweeping the land, but one motivated by artistry. Called back, Williams spoke about Erroll Garner, identified him as one of her heroes and cautioned her listeners never to take him for granted as a mere entertainer but to realize that he was “a great pianist and a great musician.” Then she went back to the Steinway and played a two-and-a-half-minute encore, “Body and Soul” (“Not in D-flat, but E-flat,” she said). Except for the key change, it was Garner circa 1951, to the life.

New Rifftides reader John B. an estimable blogger, comments on the apparently endless fascination of Rifftiders with the phenomenon of applause.

I know this is an old post of yours, but I excuse this by saying that I’ve just learned of your blog and so “it’s new to me.” Apologies in advance for prattling.

This topic reminds me of something that happened at a concert by a Slovak orchestra that I attended some years ago in Mobile, Alabama. I can’t remember the piece now, but at the end of the first movement many in the audience began applauding. The conductor, somewhat bemused, half-turned and acknowledged it with a slight bow of the head. But now a precedent had been established: at the end of the second movement, the audience again applauded. This time, though, the conductor’s expression as he turned was a considerably less patient one–the smile tighter, the nod of the head slower. For me, at least, that moment created a tension that lasted the rest of the concert; the focus wasn’t on the music but on that whole constellation of behaviors involved in concertgoing that were transgressed in part that night. The night became a question of what, in the end, do we attend concerts for: to hear music or to observe the obsequies attendant upon hearing music?

I suppose an appropriate analogy would be a deviation from the norm of a high-church’s liturgy: Being a high-churcher myself, I am drawn to liturgy–it connects me to the church’s long, long past in a way that more informal forms of worship do not. But I’m not there to worship liturgy.

Jack Tracy writes concerning Pee Wee Marquette:

PeeWee also was noted for garbling some names, as when he announced the in-house presence one night of “Marlo Brandon.” My favorite, however, was when bassist Teddy Kotick inevitably became “Teddy Kotex.”

John Levy, who is about to receive his award as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, appeared this week on the Tavis Smiley Show on Public Radio International. The former bassist, active at ninety-three as a respected artist manager, discussed his life, career and thoughts about what is happening to jazz. He speaks as he looks, at least twenty years younger than his age and full of enthusiasm. John expresses even tough opinions with a smile in his voice. A sample:

Jazz has been put into a different category. In other words, to be in jazz today, to start out in it, you have to be young, you have to be white and, in most cases, female.

To hear the entire conversation with John Levy and see photographic proof of his youthful appearance , go to the Tavis Smiley archive. Thanks to DevraDowrite for bringing the interview to our attention.
The other new NEA Jazz Masters, as everyone probably knows by now, are Bob Brookmeyer, Buddy De Franco, Chick Corea, Freddie Hubbard, Ray Barretto and Tony Bennett. They will be honored at the IAJE conference in New York next Friday, January 13.
As Devra also points out, Bill Kirchner continues his radio series on WBGO in Newark. He sent a reminder that his show this weekend is devoted to a woman whose talent burned brightly and briefly.

Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From the Archives” series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).

Sometime in the mid-1950s, a young woman from Detroit named Sara Cassey (1929-1966) moved to New York City. For a few years in the late ’50s and early ’60s, while she worked for Riverside Records, her beautifully-crafted pieces (calling them “tunes” doesn’t do them justice) were recorded by Clark Terry (with Thelonious Monk), Hank and Elvin Jones, Billy Taylor, Junior Mance, Johnny Griffin (with Barry Harris), Stan Kenton (with singer Jean Turner), and others. Cassey committed suicide at age 37, and she has been virtually forgotten. But her music still sounds fresh and original, as recordings by the aforementioned artists and others demonstrate.
The show will air this Sunday, January 8, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Standard Time.

NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org

In that excellent Canadian newspaper, The Globe And Mail, J.D. Considine had a column this week that dealt with changes in the way people listen to music. One of his conclusions is that the more music people hear in more places, the less it registers. That development undoubtedly relates to the phenomenon of mindless applause discussed here a few weeks ago. The thread concluded with this posting, from which you may care to trace back through all of the entries about it.
I mentioned half a year ago that I have heard Paul Desmond, “in the Safeway while reaching for a box of Cheerios,” among many other places.

The truth is, I don’t want to hear Desmond, or any other music, in the Safeway, at the gas station, in Starbucks, the Mexico City subway, The Gap or the dentist’s office, certainly not on the street, and not often in my car. I don’t have an Ipod and don’t want one. I want a little peace and quiet now and then.

To read the whole thing, go here.
In the Globe And Mail piece, headlined “An Ipod Can’t Rock The House,” Considine recognizes that there are still audiophiles who demand perfect sound reproduced through perfect equipment perfectly placed.

For most of us, however, dedicated listening has become something of a rarefied pursuit. We hear music all the time — in offices, in shops, in elevators, while driving, while dining, while socializing — and its omnipresence has, ironically, cemented its place as background. Being awash in music most of the day has led to a sort of soundtrack effect, in which we want to hear music constantly but seldom stop and listen.

Perhaps the most poignant example of this effect is in nightclubs and concert halls, where the number of people chatting through a performance testifies to the lack of focus accorded music. It’s not that the audience no longer respects the art of music-making. They simply don’t consider rapt attention to be an essential part of listening.

He doesn’t so much blame technology as bow to the inevitability of it.

Technology eventually makes fogeys of us all. Baby boomers, who snickered at the scratchy sound of their grandparents’ 78s, saw their parents’ hi-fi sets evolve into sophisticated stereo systems, complete with record changers and eight-track tape players. All of which, in turn, seemed strange and old-fashioned to their children, who grew up on CDs and cassettes and thought of LPs as something used only by rap DJs.

To read all of “An Ipod Can’t Rock The House,” go here.

At more or less the last minute, I have decided to attend the conference of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE) next week in New York. It is a massive gathering—at least 7-thousand educators, musicians and people from every nook and cranny of jazz as an art and jazz as a business. For three days, the Hilton and Sheraton hotels in midtown Manhattan will be overflowing with concerts, panels, workshops, clinics, lectures, meetings, exhibits, and folks milling around and hanging out. Paul de Barros of The Seattle Times and Down Beat has graciously agreed to let me join the authors on the panel he will moderate.
The panel subject is Jazz Lives In Print. The other biographers in the discussion will be Gary Giddins (Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker), Peter Levinson (Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Nelson Riddle), Ashley Kahn (Miles Davis, John Coltrane) and Stephanie Stein Crease (Gil Evans). The panel will be at 2:00 pm on Thursday, January 12 at the Sheraton New York. The convention program describes it this way:

The last decade has seen a torrent of new jazz biographies, some comprehensive and thorough, others mere hearsay and hagiography. What makes a good jazz biography? What are readers, fans and musicians looking for in a good bio? Personal anecdotes? Musical analysis? Social Context? A little of all three? Four prominent authors of recent jazz biographies discuss how they did their research and made their decisions about what to include (and not to include).

Make that four prominent authors and me. If you are at IAJE, I hope that you will join us. The folks at Parkside Publications have arranged for me to sign copies of Take Five:The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond at the Tower Records booth on the third floor of the New York Hilton at 2:00 pm on Saturday, January 14. I would be happy to see you there.

The Voice of America’s John Birchard writes:

Your Philly Joe material reminded me of an evening back in the early
60s, a Monday Night at Birdland.

Joe had brought a quintet into the club. Following the obligatory
oratory by PeeWee Marquette, Jones—very clean in a hip three-piece Ivy
League suit—slid behind the drums and counted off the first tune, one
of those up-tempo bop jobs that discouraged amateurs from even thinking
of sitting in.

There’s Philly Joe, with one stick tucked under his arm, adjusting the
angle of the cymbals and tightening the head of the snare with his free
hand while never missing an accent on the complex chart with his other
extremities—and smiling a satisfied smile that said, (to me, at least)
“I got this thing covered, baby, stand back!” And, at the exact moment
the band reached the end of the head and arrived at bar one of the first
solo, Philly Joe finished his fine-tuning, put the second stick in hand
and gave his sideman a thunderous press roll as a launch pad. I couldn’t
help but laugh out loud at a terrific piece of show biz.

For the uninitiated: Pee Wee Marquette was a fixture at the old Birdland, known to the club’s audiences for his elecutionary introductions when he left his doorman’s post to be the MC, and to musicians as an extortionist. His nickname derived from his stature; he was under four feet tall. For a Lee Friedlander photograph of him with Count Basie, go here.
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, includes an account of one of Marquette’s free enterprise methods. The quote is from Mort Lewis, the manager of the Dave Brubeck Quartet in the 1950s.

There was a black midget, Pee Wee Marquette, who was the master of ceremonies at Birdland. And every act that played there, the musicians had to give him fifty cents and he would announce their names as he introduced the band. Dave Brubeck gave him fifty cents, Joe Dodge gave him fifty cents, and Norman Bates gave him fifty cents. Paul Desmond refused to pay one cent. And when Pee Wee Marquette would introduce the band, he’d always say, in that real high-pitched voice, “Now the world famous Dave Brubeck Quartet, featuring Joe Dodge on drums, Norman Bates on bass,” and then he’d put his hand over the microphone and turn back to Joe or Norman and say, “What’s that cat’s name?” referring to Paul. Then he would take his hand off the microphone and say, ‘On alto sax, Bud Esmond.’ Paul Loved that.

Saturday night, Jessica Williams is going to play a solo piano concert at The Seasons, which is developing into quite the performance hall. Word is getting around among musicians about the magical acoustics, the hip audiences, and the good treatment and respect players receive there. I will have the privilege of introducing Jessica. I’ve been thinking about her, so I visited the blog section of her web site to see what’s been on her mind. Philly Joe Jones, for one thing. She was in his band thirty years ago. She lived in Philadelphia, was newly married, had no piano and went to the University of Pennsylvania campus on Spruce Street to practice.

It was a nine-footer, a Steinway D. And it was summertime, and it was hot. And I had flung open these big windows that opened onto the inner square (the building had a big Liberty Bell in the foyer), so if you passed by these windows you could hear me playing.

That day, I was playing “Put Your Little Foot Out” by Miles Davis, and this cat in short sleeves and a hat stuck his head in the window and said ‘I played that with Miles’ and I knew it wasn’t Paul Chambers or Red Garland, it had to be Philly Joe. He came inside and asked me to play “Tadd’s Delight” (in A-flat, which scared the hell out of me, as I had always played it in F for reasons of sheer laziness) and If “I were a Bell,” which was no problem, since I knew that one really well. That was my audition for the Philly Joe Jones Quintet (which usually turned out to be a quartet for some reason or other). Tyree Glenn was in that band, and a different bass player on every gig. We played the joints… in Camden, Trenton, Hoboken, all the seamy little holes-in-the-wall. I was terrified most of the time. I can’t remember exactly why… probably just totally freaked that I was playing with THE Philly Joe Jones. I mean, gee whiz, kids!

To read the whole thing, go here. And if you happen to be in Yakima, Washington, Saturday night, drop by The Seasons, listen to Jessica, have a glass of good Washington wine and say hello.
For an assessment and appreciation of Philly Joe Jones, see Burt Korall’s Drummin’ Men:The Bebop Years. A sample:

…he had rare, surprising capacities that went far beyond the instrument he played. Jones was an appealingly facile tap dancer, a pianist, a composer, an arranger, and a songwriter. He sang ballads and scatted, improvising on standards and jazz originals. He could handle the bass violin—left-handed—and skillfully deal with the tenor saxophone. Jones read and Interpreted—with little apparent difficulty—transcribed solos by his friend and fellow Philadelphian John Coltrane.

If that weren’t enough, he was, in addition, an entertainer with unusual stage presence and great ability as a mimic and comedian. I commend to your attention his now famous Bela Lugosi/Count Dracula imitation (Blues for Dracula—Philly Joe Jones, Riverside.)

Rifftides reader Jim Brown writes from Chicago:

I’ve made it a habit to visit your blog daily when I’m near an internet connection and not totally overwhelmed by my own endeavors, and have been disappointed on days when there’s nothing new. I’ve finally learned that
periods of silence usually indicate research and writing, with results like the lovely new piece on Bill De Arango. Like your other efforts, this one is going to send me to the record sources for more listening.

Ted O’Reilly writes from Toronto:

Before Christmas (Dec. 22) you had some Plato and Aristotle observations on music. How about adding some good ol’ W. Shakespeare?

Lorenzo:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.

(Merchant of Venice, Act V)

You just did. Thanks.

Bill De Arango, the guitarist who died at eighty-five the day after Christmas, might have become famous. While his colleagues Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie invited audiences into the new territory they had all opened together, he left New York in 1948 and went home to Cleveland. The next generation of guitarists, which included Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow, gained followings that De Arango helped make possible. Even his contemporary Remo Palmier, who stayed on the New York scene longer, was better known. But considering his short time in the big leagues, De Arango appears on a surprising number of records.
His playing was characterized by technical skill, digital speed and canny application of harmonic understanding to create memorable melodic inventions. With Parker and Gillespie, De Arango was a part of Sarah Vaughan’s first recordings under her own name, but did not solo on them. A few days later in the spring of 1945, he recorded with bassist Slam Stewart’s quintet, which included Red Norvo and Johnny Guarnieri. With daring intervals in his improvised lines, on the Stewart sides De Arango bridged the divide between swing and bebop, notably in ”On the Upside Looking Down.” After recording in the swing mainstream with saxophonists Charlie Kennedy and Ike Quebec—both in 1945—he joined Gillespie’s seven-piece band for recordings that accelerated the pace of bebop’s acceptance. De Arango’s choruses on “Anthropology,” “Ol’ Man Rebop” and particularly his luminous solo on the second take of “52nd Street Theme” demonstrated why Gillespie, Milt Jackson, Al Haig and Don Byas, the other soloists on that landmark RCA Victor date in early 1946, accepted him as a peer.
De Arango appeared on four Trummy Young sides the trombonist cut in April, 1946. In May, two weeks apart, came two magnificent recording sessions that De Arango and the magisterial tenor saxophonist Ben Webster split as leaders. De Arango’s sextet session was a swing-to-bop transitional affair with Sid Catlett on drums, bassist John Simmons, clarinetist Tony Scott and trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, then still known as Leonard Graham. Argonne Thornton (aka Sadik Hakkim) was the pianist. Webster’s quartet date had the same rhythm section, except that Haig, another bop pioneer, took over the piano. De Arango and Webster made a glorious team and produced eight tracks that are among the best from a period when musicians of different styles and races mixed without a thought for the phony war some critics were promoting between bop and all other jazz. “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good” and “Blues Mister Brim” are sterling examples of the empathy between the two. Both sessions are reissued under Webster’s name.
De Arango next recorded with Eddie Davis, in the days before Davis appended the nickname “Lockjaw.” They did two blues and two “I Got Rhythm” variants, typical of quick record dates, with superior solos from De Arango. A favorite of tenor players, he was soon back in a studio with Webster, Scott, Haig, Simmons, Catlett and Sulieman for four septet sides under his own name on the Signature label. They seem never to have been reissued. In March, 1947, he joined Charlie Ventura in an all-star group with trumpeter Charlie Shavers, trombonist Bill Harris, pianist Ralph Burns, drummer Dave Tough, and bassist Chubby Jackson. They recorded four tracks, including “Stop and Go,” with De Arango’s electrifying solo the very definition of early bebop fleetness. A week later, the same group with Curley Russell on bass and Sid Catlett spelling Tough on one piece, played a concert at Carnegie Hall. It was recorded, but the only CD reissue seems to be in a gigantic Jazz At The Philharmonic box.
By 1948, De Arango was back in Cleveland. He opened a music store. He gave lessons. He continued to play—brilliantly, by all accounts—until illness prevented it in his last few years, but he was out of the spotlight, rarely recording. In 1954 he made a ten-inch LP using Stan Getz’s rhythm section of pianist John Williams, bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Art Mardigan. It has not been reissued. De Arango returned to New York for a short time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, playing what his Cleveland colleague tenor saxophonist Ernie Krivda described as “heavy metal jazz.” An album he recorded in 1993 with Joe Lovano as a sideman gives the flavor of his playing in that period. But it was his dazzling work of the mid-forties that made him a model for other guitarists. If you follow the links in this posting, you’ll find nearly everything De Arango recorded when his talent flowered during a vital phase of jazz history.

In the right column, under Doug’s Picks, you will find three recommended CDs, a DVD and a book. You will notice that Jim Hall is involved in two of the picks. And why not? He had a birthday this month.

Quick, before it’s over, let’s wish the stalwart bassist and jazz anecdotist Bill Crow a happy birthday, his 78th.
After he saw the lingual postings below, Bill wrote to say:

And a happy Saturnalia to all!

Then he followed up on the recent Rifftides ski postings (here) and (here) to reminisce about his own ski adventures as a struggling youth.

I empathize with your efforts on the ski slope. I grew up in Kirkland, WA, where there was rarely any snow, and on trips up to the Cascades I had to borrow skis, being a depression kid. The skis I borrowed just had leather toe straps…no bindings…and on our hike back from the cabin that we had reached on a cross-country ski, one of my straps broke. On the flat I could skid it along, but on inclines I had to push the crippled ski ahead of me while sinking up to the hip on that leg. Thought I’d never get back to the car.

Bill was a drummer and valve trombonist around Seattle before he took up the bass, moved to New York and ended up playing with Stan Getz, Claude Thornhill, Terry Gibbs, Marian McPartland, Gerry Mulligan, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, Quincy Jones, Benny Goodman, Clark Terry, Bob Brookmeyer and—well, you get the idea: everybody.

A Rifftides reader named Hatta writes from Russia about the multi-lingual Christmas greeting posted early today:

Well, you should wish that for Russian readers too 🙂
We don’t generally celebrate Christmas on December, 24, — in Russia it is celebrated on January, 7, so you could wish us a Happy New Year for now (in Russian that’s “С Новым Годом”) 🙂

Merry Christmas!

И к всему доброй ночи (And to all a good night).
Greetings in all languages will be happily accepted and posted during the holiday period. Tagalog? Swahili? Sanskrit?