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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Other Places: Desmond On Night Lights And Mosaic

mosaicGood things go around and come around, if we’re lucky. Many good things having to do with jazz show up on the Daily Jazz Gazette of the Mosaic Records website. Michael Cuscuna and the Mosaic staff post stories and performances of lasting value. Their latest alert concerns—for starters—Sir Charles Thompson, Johnny Hodges, Larry Young, Gerry Mulligan, Stanley Turrentine, Cootie Williams, Billie Holiday, the encounters of baritone saxophonists Nick Brignola and Pepper Adams and, I’m happy to say, Paul Desmond. Mosaic links to a 2015 David Brent Johnson Night Lights program on Indiana Public Media. I was a guest on that show. David played a cross-section of Desmond’s recordings from the 1970s, and we talked about Paul.

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To hear the broadcast, go here.

 Click here to explore the Mosaic <em>Daily Jazz Gazette</em>.

 

Other Places: Bill Crow on Dave McKenna

Bill Crow smilingBassist Bill Crow’s column “The Band Room” is an event New York musicians look forward to each month. It appears in Allegro, the newspaper of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians. As readers of Bill’s books know, he is a superb anecdotist who tells stories about jazz artists and, often, musicians in other disciplines. In the current issue, he remembers a pianist whose artistic scope, adaptability, swing and idiosyncratic personality made him a favorite of a wide variety of musicians and listeners. With Bill’s permission, here is the column.

The Band Room
by Bill Crow

Dave McKenna (1930-2008) was a one-of-a-kind piano player. He often denied that he was a jazz player, even though he was steeped in the music. “I’m a song player,” he would say, and he certainly played all the wonderful songsDave McKenna in the American songbook. He liked to group songs in a set by themes. Sometimes a medley would be all songs about rain, sometimes about happiness, sometimes about a color, or once in a while just songs by the same composer. He would explore each tune harmonically, wandering from stride to bebop to romanticism, and usually making everything swing like mad.

I got to know Dave playing jam sessions with Zoot Sims, and then playing with him at Eddie Condon’s club. Eddie’s manager had talked him into only hiring a bass player with his sextet on weekends, so Dave was always glad to see me every Friday. He played the bass lines himself on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, and got to be very good at it. He incorporated walking bass lines into his solo piano style in a very original way.

Dave was a great admirer of food and drink, and when the liquor outbalanced the food, he could be a belligerent companion. He was broad shouldered and strong, and nobody to mess with when in his cups. We lived near each other in Chelsea for a while, and I remember running into him on the street one morning and saying to him, “You were in pretty rough shape last night at the Half Note.” “I don’t want to hear about it!” he growled. Toward the end of his life, physical problems began to interfere with his playing, but he plowed ahead, playing gorgeously even when in pain. He once said to me, “I suppose if I do what the doctor tells me and cut down on the rich food and the booze, I’ll live a little longer. But how will I know for sure?”

I always keep one of Dave’s solo records in my car to keep me company while driving to gigs. He sure knew how to cheer a guy up.

Here’s proof. Dick Gibson introduces McKenna at one of Gibson’s celebrated Colorado jazz parties in the early 1980s.

Bill Crow’s current “Band Room” column includes a story about the actor Paul Newman coming to the rescue of an embattled group of musicians hired to play an outdoor wedding gig. To read it and the rest of Bill’s July column, go here.

Passings: Friedman, Jones, Thompson

The generations move on. It’s a sad part of an observer’s task to acknowledge the deaths of musicians who made important contributions.

Don FriedmanPianist Don Friedman died of pancreatic cancer at home in New York City on June 30. He was 81. Friedman was treasured by fellow musicians for the subtlety and strength of his support as an accompanist and for the daring ingenuity of his harmonies. He was equally at home with traditionalist Bobby Hackett; modern mainstreamers Clark Terry, Chet Baker and Lee Konitz; and free jazz iconoclasts Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy. This Friedman quotation from my notes for his last album, Nite Lites, indicates a major source of his inspiration.

I love contemporary modern music,” Don said. “Great classical composers inspire me. I’ve listened a lot to Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinvsky, Prokofiev, Stockhausen, Bartok. They inspire me to try to make sounds like theirs.

Here is Friedman at the Jazz Baltica Festival in 2006 with bassist Martin Wind and a drummer whom YouTube does not identify.

Randy Jones, who played drums with Dave Brubeck for more than thirty years, Randy Jonesdied on June 17 in New York. A London studio musician who moved to the United States in 1973 to work with Maynard Ferguson’s big band, he played with Chet Baker, Buddy DeFranco and the big bands of Bill Watrous and Harry James, among others, before he joined Brubeck. In the Brubeck quartet, he occupied the slot long filled by Joe Morello and, like Morello, specialized in soloing on Paul Desmond’s composition “Take Five.”

Chris Brubeck, Dave’s trombonist and bassist son, played often with Jones in his father’s groups. He told me recently, “Sometimes Randy swung harder than I thought was humanly possible.”

Sir Charles ThompsonThree days following Jones’s death, pianist Sir Charles Thompson died at the age of 98. As talented as an arranger and leader as he was at the keyboard, Thompson was one of the great mainstream eclectics, bridging the swing and bebop eras. A combo he led and recorded in 1945 included bop saxophonists Charlie Parker and Dexter Gordon and swing trumpeter Buck Clayton. Lester Young, dubbed Thompson “Sir’ Charles to give him parity with Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Here, he solos with a band led by tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins that also includes Harry “Sweets” Edison on trumpet, Jimmy Woode on bass and Jo Jones on drums.

Thompson died in Tokyo, where he had lived since 2002.

RIP, all.

Monday Recommendation: John Hollenbeck

John Hollenbeck Claudia Quintet, Super Petite (Cuneiform)

SuperPetiteHollenbeck’s little band has unity of thought, purpose and execution more often found in long-lived classical ensembles than in jazz. The difference, of course, is improvisation. Yet, Hollenbeck’s skills as composer-arranger, leader and drummer are so finely honed that it is often a challenge to differentiate between his canny orchestration and all-out blowing. Listeners who let Claudia’s music wash over them, pick them up and carry them along are likely to disregard the difference and find the immersion rewarding. “Nightbreak,” Hollenbeck’s drastically slowed adaptation of the famous alto break from Charlie Parker’s 1946 “A Night In Tunisia,” opens the album. So profound a transformation deserves the critical attention it’s getting. Indeed, the entire album deserves it. Reed artist Chris Speed, accordionist Red Wierenga, vibraphonist Matt Moran and bassist Drew Gress are superb throughout. Hollenbeck’s multicolored drumming and Speed’s tenor saxophone soar on “Philly.

Happy Fourth Of July

2016 4 July flagAn annual Rifftides reminder

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.—Benjamin Franklin

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.—Abraham Lincoln

Clare Fischer’s “America The Beautiful”

Whatever your Fourth Of July weekend plans, the  understated perfection in the late Clare Fischer’s arrangement of “America Beautiful” will help you to a calm beginning of what can be a raucous, joyous holiday. It’s from Fischer’s classic 1967 album Songs For Rainy Day Lovers.

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To Columbia Records’ discredit, the label has never reissued Songs For Rainy Day Lovers on CD. Copies of the LP may be found here and there on various websites, including this one.

If you’re an American, have a wonderful holiday weekend. If you are not, please give the USA a kind thought as we celebrate our 240th birthday.

Progress Report With Guitar Accompaniment

digital black holeNot to bore Rifftides readers with internet trivia, but two more days of extended conversations with Apple technicians seem to have led us out of the digital black hole that captured us for a few days.

I never had these hassles with my Royal Standard typewriter. Of course, the Royal refused to go online.

While the staff catches its breath and hopes for a good night’s sleep, we invite you to enjoy guitarists John Stowell (on the right in the video) and Larry Coryell playing “Someday My Prince Will Come,” not “Waltz For Debbie,” as some misled YouTube contributor tells us in the screen credits. Bassist Doug Matthews and drummer Keith Wilson accompany the guitarists. This was taped in 2011 at the White House, an arts center in Tumucua, Florida. The painter at work in the background is Jerry Hooper.

John Stowell’s latest album, Live Beauty, features a quartet with saxophonist Michael Zilber. More about that later this week—if all goes well.

Monday Recommendation: Charlie Parker

Charlie Parker, Unheard Bird: The Unissued Takes (Verve)

Unissued ParkerCharlie Parker has never disappeared from the consciousness of serious jazz listeners. This two-CD collection, due out on Friday, could go a long way toward helping new generations discover the stunning purity and power of Parker’s creativity. Subtitled “The Unissued Takes,” the album brings together 69 unissued tracks and released masters that the alto saxophonist recorded for the Verve label from 1949 to 1952. For close listeners, annoyance at the stop-and-go sequence of takes gives way to wonder at Parker’s genius. The contexts range from quartet to string orchestra. Emerging jazz players will benefit from immersion in a primary source of modern music. A couple of recent articles have acknowledged Parker’s enduring importance while also pointing out that in the culture at large he is no longer recognized as a seminal artist who remade jazz. To read them, go here and here. Then—Listen.

Weekend Extra: Lockjaw And Friends

Although the engineering department is still working on a permanent fix, the Rifftides computer problem is mostly solved and we seem to be back in full operation (knock on wood). Let’s hope—and celebrate with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.

Here is the tenor saxophone master (1921-1986) at the Jazzhus Slukefter in Copenhagen a year before his death. Davis’s colleagues are Niels Jørgen Steen, piano; Jesper Lundgaard, bass; and Ed Thigpen, drums. The excellent video quality supports the full-screen mode for a close look at Davis in full flight in this exhilarating performance of Billy Strayhorn’s classic train song.

Enjoy your weekend, if it still exists in your time zone.

Rifftides Hopes To Be Back Soon

The notorious Apple spinning rainbow disc has invaded the Rifftides mainframe computer, also known as a MacBook Pro. Several hours of the entire staff’s concerted technical efforts have failed to regain control. We can’t even illustrate the problem with a representation of the spinning disc because when we try to show it—guess what?—right, the real spinning disc disables the system. We will isolate the cause and defeat it as soon as possible. Please check in periodically.

Other Places: Linda Oh In The Village Voice

In the new issue of The Village Voice, Michael J. Agovino wraps three years of observing the bassist Linda Oh into a 4,000-word article about what it takes these days for a leading musician to practice the profession in the world’s jazz capital. Here’s an excerpt:

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Exposure is great, and Oh’s has only increased, but is this any way to make a living?

‘It depends on what people define as a living,’ she says. In her experience, a sideman can make $100–$200 a night for a regular gig, depending. (Others told me $50 a night is not uncommon.) But if you’re the leader, you have to see to it that your musicians are paid, even if you get nothing — even if you lose money on the deal. ‘What I define as a living is not what other people, who earn six figures, do. I have health insurance, but it’s the lowest tier you can get, and I’m still reluctant to even have it.’ She laughs. ‘I don’t have enough money to buy anything. If I choose to have kids, I don’t know how much money I’d have for college. It’s enough to live and be happy and get by…but it’s something I’m really going to have to think about. So much money I save gets invested back in the work.’

Agovino investigates all aspects of Ms. Oh’s professional life—club dates, recording, teaching, everything it takes to survive with dignity.

She’s serious, warm, and gracious. She’s a musician, but she’s not going to do a song-and-dance for you. She doesn’t do shtick.

Agovino’s long piece is full of insight and worth your time. To read all of it, go here.

For a Rifftides review of Linda Oh’s debut recording, go here.

Monday Recommendation: Chris Ziemba

Chris Ziemba, Manhattan Lullaby (Outside in Music)

Chris ZiembaHis abilities honed by studies at the Eastman School of Music and Juilliard, 29-year-old pianist Chris Ziemba is in demand on the New York scene. His debut recording as a leader discloses a varied compositional sense and a canny choice of sidemen. Ziemba, bassist Hans Glawischnig and drummer Jimmy MacBride are a keenly interactive trio. Michael Thomas joins them on alto saxophone for Ziemba’s evocative “The Road Less Traveled” and his boppish “Little T,” and on bass clarinet in the reflective title tune. “Escher’s Loops” seems to concern itself with symmetrical aspects of the work of the Dutch artist M.C. Escher. Ziemba’s keyboard touch and harmonies support the concept. The only piece not by Ziemba is Harry Warren’s 1945 classic “I Wish I Knew.” Ziemba’s arrangement incorporates a bass line leading to a solo in which Glawischnig is simultaneously incisive and relaxed.

Weekend Extra: Roland Kirk

Roland KirkI once wrote about the Roland Kirk of the days—”long before he added ‘Rahsaan’ to his name, before he became famous, when he was a tornado roaring out of the Midwest, totally blind and full of insight, playing three saxophones at once, whistles, flute and siren at the ready on a chain around his neck. Kirk was organized turbulence stirring the air with music.”

From his emergence as a major musician in the late 1950s to his death in 1977, Kirk kept the air churning, but his art was never mere concentrated energy. He kept lyricism waiting just beneath the surface sound and fury. In this piece, Kirk gives us the best of both his sides in Vernon Duke’s “A Cabin In The Sky,” that admirable, neglected song. The rhythm section is Tete Monoliou, piano; Tommy Potter, bass; and Kenny Clarke, drums. This was filmed in Milan in 1962. The saxophone Kirk plays is called a stritch.

Have a good weekend.

Jam Sessions

Jam sessions are not exclusive to jazz. They happen in virtually every genre of music—folk, bluegrass, rock, Indian, Afro-Cuban, freestyle rap, sometimes even among highly trained and disciplined classical musicians, when they think they won’t get caught. In classical music, attitudes toward improvisation have softened a bit.

Andre Previn, Ray BrownAndré Previn told me a story about touring in Europe in the 1990s with his trio that included bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Mundell Lowe (pictured, Previn and Brown). One of their performances was in Vienna’s venerable Musikverein, where Previn had often been guest conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Some of the members of the orchestra attended the concert. Afterward, he said, the lead player of one of the Philharmonic’s sections visited him in the green room backstage.

“Maestro,” the man said, “it was wonderful, but how did you memorize so much music?”

“We didn’t memorize,” André told him. We were improvising.”

In disbelief, the lifelong classical musician said, “You improvised in public?”

Richard Michael doesn’t mind improvising in public. The pianist, educator and founder of the Fife Youth Jazz Orchestra found himself in a pub in Orkney where a group of local folk musicians were jamming on a typical Scottish chord sequence. A YouTube contributor who identifies himself as Keep Turning Left was there with his video camera. He posted,

I was in a bar in Kirkwall when this happened – the locals were sawing and plucking away when this bloke joined them—well I thought it was an astonishing thing to witness.

Following the jam, Professor Michael stayed around to socialize.

Richard Michael was a friend and associate of the late Joe Temperley. To see his extensive comment about the great Scot, baritone saxophonist and stalwart of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, who died in May, go here and scroll down.

Singers—Revisited

Singing mic logo

Spotify, iTunes and other companies streaming music did not exist when the following Rifftides piece appeared. If anything, there has been an escalation of the ability of singers, and of musicians in general, to make themselves ubiquitous.

From the Rifftides archive: first posted on April 17, 2007

The traditional record industry is imploding. It is impossible to say what will emerge from the turbulence. Some analysts of the music business are predicting that the compact disc will quickly go the way of the LP, the cassette, the eight-track tape, the 45, the 78 and the cylinder. They say it’s going to be an iPod world, an MP3 world. How long will technology allow those new means of music delivery to survive? Are you ready for a digital implant in your brain?

In the meantime, CDs proliferate because they’re so easy, so cheap, to make. The expense and sheer complexity of gettting music from an instrument or a voice into a microphone and ultimately onto a record used to require the resources of a company. Digital technology, the internet and distribution by downloading make it possible for anyone who can raise a few thousand dollars to be a record label. One of the immediate by-products of the transition is that recording “artists” (ahem) are materializing at an incredible rate. Who knew that there were so many jazz singers? The maturing and development of singers once took place through the demanding process of experience, during which those with the goods survived and the wannabees, for the most part, didn’t. Now the wannabees bypass experience and put out CDs on their own labels. Some of those recordings are awful, most merely boring. That is why it was welcome to receive the recent release—in one fell swoop—of nine CDs by survivors of a more rigorous system. These albums from EMI were issued in the 1950s and 1960s on the Capitol, Pacific Jazz and Roulette labels. Some of the singers were more accomplished than others, but all are at or near their best in this series, and it may be instructive for some of the wannabees to study them. One clue to what they might listen for: in nearly every case, the performances are more about the song than the singer.

Sarah Vaughan, Sarah + 2 (Roulette). Vaughan recorded two indispensable albums with only bass and guitar, this one and the earlier After Hours, also for Roulette. Here, the bassist is Joe Comfort, the guitarist Barney Kessel, who may have been her ideal accompanist. In this minimal setting, Sarah powered down and avoided the excesses that sometimes marred her work when she was surrounded by massed strings, reeds and brass. Everything that made her a phenomenon of twentieth century art is in balance–musicianship, elegance, judgment, intonation, control, vocal quality and that astonishing range. If you need to know why an opera star like Renee Fleming worships Vaughan, consult this CD.

June Christy, The Intimate Miss Christy (Capitol). Christy’s strength was her story-telling. Her famously unstable intonation occasionally wanders here, but it is perfect as she gets to the hearts of “The More I See You” and “Don’t Explain.” Her “Misty” is the best I’ve ever heard (yes, I know about Sarah Vaughan’s). Christy should have recorded with small groups more often. Her compatability with guitarist Al Viola is a large reason for the success of this venture.

Sue Raney, All By Myself (Capitol). There’s a hint of Christy in some of this early work by the sublime Raney, but her flawless intonation, time and phrasing are her own. The zest she brings to “Some of These Days” and the longing to “Maybe You’ll Be There,” define those songs. This was her second album for Capitol, made when she was twenty-three. It disappeared for decades. It’s good to have it back.

Chris Connor, At The Village Gate (Roulette). Because she succeeded Christy in Stan Kenton’s band, was also blonde and had a husky quality to her voice, Connor was at first presumed to be a Christy imitator. She never was. In this club date long after her Kenton years, Connor was a powerhouse, nailing every song, creating excitement that rarely surfaced in her better known albums. This is a revelation.

Joe Williams, A Man Ain’t Supposed to Cry (Roulette). This was the first of Williams’s great ballad albums, the one that disclosed him as more than a magnificent blues singer. In a class with Billy Eckstine and Frank Sinatra as a balladeer, Williams finds the soul and meaning of a dozen songs. He and the incomparable arranger Jimmy Mundy include the seldom-heard verses of several of the pieces. Still with Count Basie when this was recorded, Williams was at the apex of his ability.

Irene Kral, The Band and I (Capitol). Nearly thirty years after her death, a substantial cadre of afficianados maintains that Kral was the best female jazz singer of them all. This is the record that made her a darling of musicians and sophisticated listeners. Never interested in scatting, Kral used taste, rhythmic assurance and intelligent interpretation to establish jazz authority. The band was Herb Pomeroy’s. This album was the only time they and Kral worked together. They created a classic.

Jon Hendricks, A Good Git-Together (Pacific Jazz). Hendricks does scat. He knows what chords are made of and takes musicianly advantage of that knowledge. Of the albums he recorded apart from Lambert, Hendricks and Ross during that group’s primacy, this is the most joyous. No doubt his elation had something to do with the company he kept in the studio. His sidemen included Wes, Buddy and Monk Montgomery; Nat and Cannonball Adderley and Pony Poindexter.

Dakota Staton, Dynamic! (Capitol). Staton could be dynamic, all right, earning that exclamation point in the title. She could also go into a cloying sex kitten mode, saccharine to the point of embarrassment. When she concentrated on serving the song, she was often splendid, as she is here on “They All Laughed,” “Cherokee” and “I’ll Remember April.” Among the supporting cast, Harry Edison’s trumpet is obvious, but who are the terrific bassist and the lightning-fast trombonist? The reissue producers might have consulted the original session sheets and listed the musicians for all the CDs in this series.

Julie London, Around Midnight (Capitol). London’s treatments of “Misty,” “‘Round Midnight” and “Don’t Smoke in Bed” are among her best performances. Now and then she glides in and out of tune on a held note, but on balance this may be her finest album. London’s strengths were a bewitching intimacy and her believable connection to lyrics. This is a ballad collection relieved by “You and the Night and the Music” and “But Not For Me” well arranged by Dick Reynolds at medium tempos. London does an effective cover of Christy’s “Something Cool,” despite the distraction of a vocal group behind her chanting “something cool, something cool, something cool.”

Recent Listening: Iris Bergcrantz

Iris Bergcrantz, Different Universe (Vanguard Music Boulevard)

Iris Bergcrantz coverIn an impressive display of her talent as a singer and songwriter, the daughter of prominent Swedish musicians Anders Bergcrantz and Anna-Lena Laurin debuts as a leader, with her parents as members of the band. Iris Bergcrantz’s voice is notable for its sweep from low chest tones to the top of the soprano range and for her flexibility in applying it in a milieu that embraces jazz and aspects of the most adventurous contemporary classical music.

What makes her universe different from that of many emerging young jazz singers is the incorporation of electronic effects. In some tracks, production alterations transform her voice, her father’s formidable trumpet and the keyboard excursions of her mother. Through overdubbing, Ms. Bergcrantz at some points becomes an ethereal choir. In the opening track, “If You Fail, I’ll Always Stay,” the lyric is by her sister Rebecca, who joins Iris to sing harmony. Guest drummer Victor Lewis inflects the proceeding with his customary energy and forthrightness. Stefan Bellinas plays bass on the piece. In the rest of the album Anders Fjelstad is the bassist and Johan Kolsut the drummer.

The audio manipulation In “They Say” makes Anders Bergcrantz’s trumpet into a growling commentator before he and his daughter engage in a passage of comparatively delicate counterpoint. Ms. Laurin’s synthesizer and Fender-Rhodes electric piano occasionally swell into orchestral surges, but in the next moment she may revert to the concert grand piano, and the maelstrom of sound gives way to peaceful resolution. Despite its clarity, Ms. Bergcrantz’s voice now and then seems in danger of submerging in the tidal power of its surroundings. This is a stimulating and in many ways daring album, but it would be good to sometime hear her in a less voluminous context.

In a refreshing reminder of the era before the recording industry’s compulsion to fill albums to their full 80-minute CD capacity, the total time of Different Universe is :35:19. After hearing music of this intensity, time to reflect is welcome.

The album’s promotional video allows you to see the musicians. To view it, click here.

Monday Recommendation (A Day Late): Matt Wilson

Matt Wilson’s Big Happy Family, Beginning Of A Memory (Palmetto)

Willson Big HappyThe title belies the pain of the loss that inspired Matt Wilson’s essentially jovial—even jocular—album. The drummer assembled a dozen of his musical colleagues to celebrate his wife Felicia, who died of leukemia two years ago. “Flowers For Felicia” and “July Hymn,” are instances of quiet remembrance amid 17 tracks that embrace the keen musicianship, spontaneity and humor (often raucous) that are core elements of Wilson’s musical and personal style. Pieces like “No Outerwear” and “25 Years Of Rootabagas” match Wilson’s disciplined, outré approach to life and work. The enthusiasm and abandon of his solo on “Schoolboy Thug” typify a philosophy embraced throughout the album by trumpeter Terrell Stafford, cornetist Kirk Knuffke, saxophonists Joel Frahm and Jeff Lederer, bassist Martin Wind and accordionist Gary Versace, among others. In his brief notes, Wilson writes that, “Felica …was all about love.” So is this album.

Correspondence: When Miles Sat In With Mel

Saxophonist Bill Kirchner writes:

For several years In the 1980s I used to sub on occasion in the saxophone sectionBill Kirchner w soprano sax of drummer Mel Lewis’s Jazz Orchestra—originally the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra. When I wasn’t playing, I would often stop in to hear their weekly Monday-night gigs at NYC’s famed Village Vanguard. (A tradition that the band, now the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, continues to this day, after over fifty years.)

On one of those Mondays, a unique event took place. Trumpeter Miles Davis, on the verge of emerging from a six-year seclusion, sat in with Mel’s band. Recently—35 years later almost exactly to the day—someone posted an amateur recording of the event on YouTube.

For the record, here’s the probable personnel of the band that night as best I can remember:
Earl Gardner, Joe Mosello, Simo Salminen, John Marshall, trumpets; John Mosca, Lee Robertson, trombones; Douglas Purviance, Earl McIntyre, bass trombones; Stephanie Fauber, French horn; Dick Oatts, Kenny Garrett, alto saxophones; Bob Mintzer, Rich Perry, tenor saxophones; Gary Pribeck, baritone saxophone; Jim McNeely, piano; Marc Johnson, bass; Mel Lewis, drums; Miles Davis, guest solo trumpet.

In 1997, I wrote briefly about that night in the preface to A Miles Davis Reader, which I edited for the Smithsonian Institution Press:

“I had only one brief contact with Miles Davis…. In the spring of 1981 Davis was preparing to emerge from a nearly six-year retirement, and he spent several consecutive Monday nights visiting the Village Vanguard in New York and listening to Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra. During the last of those visits (at which, to my good fortune, I was present), Lewis persuaded Davis to sit in with the band. Lewis kicked off one of his orchestra’s staples, Thad Jones’s “The Second Race,” and Davis, borrowing in succession all four trumpets from the band’s trumpet section, played an extended blues solo to the delight of everyone in the club. Since he was playing borrowed horns and was still getting his chops back after years of inactivity, Davis sounded rusty, but what he played could have come only from him.

“During the next break, I was sitting at a table with one of the band’s trumpeters, Joe Mosello. Suddenly, Davis approached our table and crouched down next to us. He placed his left hand on my right knee, looked straight at Mosello, and said in his famous raspy voice, ‘You know, you shouldn’t drink beer on the gig. It dries you out.’

He was right.”

Many thanks to Bill for sharing a splendid memory.

Sunday With Adams And Shorter

Mt. Adams 6-12-16

This morning’s cycling expedition took me across a freeway overpass whose height allowed a perfect view of Mount Adams sixty miles to the southwest. When I decided to share it with you, I wondered what music might best go with the picture. A quick staff meeting came up with the answer. All right, all right; the answer has nothing to do with the mountain’s namesake, the second president of The United States, or with his son, the sixth president. It has to do with an excuse to play you Wayne Shorter. Perhaps you won’t mind.

“Adam’s Apple” from the Wayne Shorter’s 1966 Blue Note album of the same name. Can this music this hip really be 50 years old?

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, … [MORE]

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