Making my way home from Monterey, I’m in Seattle for meetings. The city is at its best in the late September sun. People downtown walk around with smiles on their faces, not thinking about the rainy season to come. Many of the hundreds of coffee places have tables on the sidewalk, and the tables … [Read more...]

In Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, I included a long letter from 1949 in which Paul told his father, in precise language, why he did not want to be another Charlie Parker imitator. Two excerpts: The question of to bop or not to bop has been a gnawing one ever since I began … [Read more...]

I've been away. It's been days since I checked into what my ArtsJournal.com colleagues are writing about. Martha Bayles is the movie person, but she's also perceptive on my former calling. I'm probably the one who ought to be writing about the performance of television (and cable) news in the … [Read more...]

It was good weather for jazz in Monterey over the weekend, and the Monterey Jazz Festival was a good place for an author. Leroid David and Pete Leon, honchos at the Tower Records booth on the old fairgrounds, said that the signing session for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, … [Read more...]

I am off to California and a book signing at the Monterey Jazz Festival Saturday afternoon from 3 to 6 pm at the Tower Records booth. See you there, I hope. What book? Glad you asked. It's Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, still available after all these months. Desmond and … [Read more...]

A knowlegeable reader has caught me in an error in yesterday's Bill Evans posting. It was John O'Hara, not Robert Benchley, who said of George Gershwin's death, "I don't have to believe it if I don't want to." I have heard the quotation attributed to Benchley so often that I didn't doublecheck it. … [Read more...]

Bill Evans died twenty five years ago today. To borrow what John O'Hara said when he heard of George Gershwin’s death, I don’t have to believe if I don’t want to. His music is here through dozens of recordings, but his presence goes beyond aural artifacts. Evans is part of jazz today because … [Read more...]

The town in which I spend most of my time—Yakima, Washington—has several physical attributes that help make it a good place. It has air that cannot be seen, sunshine nearly every day, seasons, mountain views and hundreds of vineyards that produce world-class wines. It has apples, cherries, … [Read more...]

Tom Stites, a former editor at The Chicago Tribune and The Kansas City Star, also edited the fine magazine Jazz, which published from 1976 to 1981. Jazz featured some of the best writers on the subject, including Dan Morgenstern, Ira Gitler, Tom Piazza, Bob Blumenthal, Leonard Feather, Sy Johnson, … [Read more...]

Freddie Schreiber was making a mark in Cal Tjader’s quintet when he died, far too young, in the 1960s. I remember him in Seattle in the mid-1950s as an aspiring bassist and an extremely witty man. He struggled to master the instrument, not with notable success. Later, within a period of two or … [Read more...]

Rifftides reader Eric Bruskin reacts to yesterday’s quote from Bertrand Russell: Was this before or after Yeats put it much more memorably: The best lack all conviction while the worst Are full of passionate intensity ... That is not the only memorable line in William Butler Yeats’s The Second … [Read more...]

My ArtsJournal confrere Terry Teachout is writing a biography of Louis Armstrong. If you have read his big biography of H.L. Mencken and his small one of George Balanchine, you know that Terry is a superb chronicler of lives. He is also a skilled musician who understands from the standpoint of … [Read more...]

As we all should know by now, there are many Katrina relief scammers attempting to profit from human kindness at the expense of the storm’s victims. Caution is in order before you give to any organization or person about whose credibility and honesty you are not certain. I knew and trusted … [Read more...]

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. —Bertrand Russell … [Read more...]

In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Jesse Hamlin has an article about Paul Desmond. In it, I am happy to report, he is kind to Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond and mentions that I will be signing copies of the book a week from today at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Hamlin … [Read more...]

The Jazz Refugee Project in Phoeniz, Arizona, is offering relocation aid for musicians displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The project, set up by the drummer R. R. Phaneuf (aka DrSnazzy), makes this offer: Once you are part of the Jazz Refugee Project, we will help connect you with shelter, food, … [Read more...]

Dick McGarvin writes from Los Angeles: Your blog about watching the silent television images of the New Orleans disaster while listening to Miles' recording of "Basin Street Blues" was quite moving. And, having played that recording many times, I could hear it without even taking the album off the … [Read more...]

Richard Tabnik writes: heard the 'new' bird and diz? amazing...if that had come out 60 years ago, the entire concept of saxophone would be different whew! From the August 8 Rifftides posting: Throughout, Gillespie’s control, range, harmonic ingenuity, melodic inventiveness and time—above all, … [Read more...]

For a while last night, I watched the latest images of New Orleans with the television babble turned off. From the CD player came the 1963 Miles Davis recording of “Basin Street Blues,” its muted trumpet solo a long, slow memory of loss, Victor Feldman’s piano choruses laced with hope. The … [Read more...]