Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Going Like 80 (+)

Rifftides reader Mark Mohr writes:

Sad about Motian, he was definitely one of a kind. Who else is still playing at 80?

Off the top of my head (more or less):

Phil Woods (80)

Ira Sullivan (80)

Ornette Coleman (81)

Richard Davis (81)

Jim Hall (81)

Bill Henderson (81)

Annie Ross (81)

Frank Strazzeri (81

Barry Harris (82)

Ernestine Anderson (83)

Junior Mance (83)

Bill Crow (84)

Dick Hyman (84)

Lee Konitz (84)

Martial Solal (84)

Jimmy Heath (85)

Med Flory (85)

Bill (William O.) Smith (85)

Eddie Duran (86)

Dave Pell (86)

Chico Hamilton (90)

Jon Hendricks (90)

Dave Brubeck (91)

Marian McPartland (93)

There must be others.

Paul Motian Memorial Broadcast

This just in:

WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University in New York City, will broadcast 24 hours of Paul Motian’s music beginning at midnight tonight (EST). The station is at 89.9 on the FM dial and streams at this site on the internet. To hear it, click under “Live Broadcast” in the upper right corner of the page.

Paul Motian, 1931-2011

It was never my intention that Rifftides be a vehicle for so much bad news, but the losses keep mounting. When a musician of Paul Motian’s importance dies, we must take notice. The great drummer succumbed to a bone marrow ailment early this morning in a New York hospital. He was 80.

Motian and pianist Bill Evans were colleagues from their days together in the Jerry Wald band in the mid-1950 and later in clarinetist Tony Scott’s quartet. When Evans formed a trio that would turn out to influence the course of jazz, he chose Motian as his drummer. With bassist Scot LaFaro, they made some of the most influential recordings of the second half of the 20th century. Motian went on to play in another significant group led by a pianist, Keith Jarrett. He collaborated with a wide cross-section of the most accomplished musicians of his time and became a leader of his own band that featured, among others, guitarist Bill Frisell and saxophonist Joe Lovano.

In a Wall Street Journal appreciation of Motian last July, Larry Blumenfeld wrote:

Mr. Motian is both a peaceful presence and a locus of swirling power. A few cymbal strikes are all he needs to indicate velocity and flow. He employs moments of silence with equal emphasis as bass-drum kicks. He distills jazz’s pulses into pithy implication through rhythmic phrases that sound personal. By now, he is both eminence and enigma: Everyone wants to play with him; no one can play like him.

To read the entire article, go here. In an e-mail message this morning, Larry wrote:

Motian was a real person. The kind you need to meet and sit with a while to understand. And then you get up and leave, feeling better and wiser in ways you can’t yet process. Motian didn’t want to meet with me for the July Cultural Conversation piece I wrote about him for The Wall Street Journal back in July. His stalwart and wonderful publicist, Tina Pelikan, finessed my way in. Motian told me up front how unhappy he was with his decision to do another interview. (“What haven’t I said yet?”) Then, two hours later, I could scarcely get him to stop his soft-spoken, stop-start, painterly flow of words, which were not entirely unlike his drumming.

Motian’s mastery of time and his nexus of subtlety and power gave him the flexibility to be equally effective in free jazz and structured music. Here, he leads his 5-Tet at the North Sea Jazz Festival in Holland in 1995 with Frisell, Lovano, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and bassist Marc Johnson.

JazzTimes.com has a comprehensive obituary.

Funeral or memorial service arrangements for Motian have not been announced.

Russell Garcia, 1916-2011

Composer, arranger and teacher Russell Garcia died yesterday at his home in New Zealand, where he and his wife settled after sailing away from Los Angeles more than four decades ago. He was 95. Garcia is less known than other writers of his era, but his influence is enormous.

Occasional Rifftides contributor Jeff Sultanof, a student and admirer of Garcia’s work, outlines for us his career and accomplishments. Jeff is a composer, orchestrator, editor, educator and researcher who has worked with John Williams, Burt Bacharach and many other composers to prepare their music for print. He edited and annotated George Gershwin scores issued in facsimile editions, edited Nelson Riddle’s textbook on arranging and has collaborated with Sonny Rollins, Benny Green, Billy Childs and Gerry Mulligan, among many others.

RUSSELL GARCIA
By Jeff Sultanof

This has not been a good year for legendary composer/arrangers. Pete Rugolo isn’t even cold in his grave when yet another important voice in American music who lived to a ripe old age has finally called it quits. There are important differences between the two men: Garcia was not as well known as Rugolo, and Russell was still writing music up until the very end. However, as we will see, Garcia occupies an honored place in world music for different accomplishments. And perhaps because of them, his influence may yet be greater than many other accomplished creators of music. And thereby hangs a tale.

Garcia was born in Oakland, California in 1916. He began as a trumpet player, later played French horn, and was a prodigy, writing music fluently at a very young age. He was never able to fully remember how he mastered the ability to read music, but never questioned his rare, Mozartean, gift for writing music quickly for any group of instruments. When he was a young teenager, the Oakland Symphony performed his arrangement of “Star Dust.” Eventually he came to study with the best teachers on the west coast—Ernst Toch, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Ernst Krenek and Sir Albert Coates. He also studied every instrument in the symphony orchestra to learn first-hand how each was played. He conducted the West Hollywood Symphony Orchestra for two years.

Garcia was called to take over for the musical director of the radio show This is Our America, remained with the show for two years, and never had to look for work again. He was in constant demand not only for radio, but also for big bands and motion pictures. After serving in World War Two, he returned to more music writing, but with a difference. He joined the faculty of the Westlake School of Music in Hollywood, one of the most distinguished institutions in the country for training composer/arrangers. His students represent a who’s-who of the arranging community in the fifties and sixties. They include Willis Holman, Bob Graettinger and Gene Puerling (musical director of the vocal group The Hi-Los). During this period, he created a text for his students that was later published in 1954 as “The Professional Arranger Composer.”

It is important to discuss this unique volume because the text may be his greatest gift to music, since it inspired perhaps thousands of arrangers to begin their journeys into writing not only good jazz, but any music of the highest quality. At the time of the book’s publication, if you wanted to be a ‘serious’ arranger, you most likely studied the Schillinger System of Composition, a multi-year course in music writing that was so daunting and complex, it could be studied only with a teacher fully immersed in the system. Schillinger was reportedly a brilliant man whose students included George Gershwin (there are many ‘Schillingerisms’ in “Porgy and Bess” and “Cuban Overture”), Glenn Miller and Oscar Levant. For all intents and purposes, this system is pretty well forgotten today, although there are a lot of interesting ideas in the textbooks, and several important composer/arrangers during the fifties and sixties studied and mastered the system, among them Earle Brown, Dick Grove, John Barry and Lawrence Berk, who founded what is now known as Berklee College of Music in Massachusetts.

I don’t know if Garcia ever studied Schillinger, but his book is totally different. It serves as an excellent traditional arranging text for big band, but it includes sections on counterpoint and other ‘classical’ techniques that Garcia knew the ‘modern’ music student needed to know. His goal was to incorporate in pop music and jazz as many of those techniques as he could. Judging just by the contrapuntal mastery of Bill Holman and Gene Puerling’s major innovations in vocal group writing and singing, he succeeded. If a student followed the course Garcia designed, there was enough to fill several years of music training and learning. Imagine telling fledgling big band arrangers that such rigor was only the beginning of their journey; he tells them to write string quartets and symphonies. In an upbeat, encouraging manner, he asks the student to reach for the very heights. Needless to say, his book has never been out of print, has been translated into many languages and has been used as an arranging course text for many years. Some years later, Russ followed this book up with Volume 2, which had more information, advice and upbeat encouragement.

Unfortunately, Westlake closed its doors, but Garcia was still in constant demand. Henry Mancini asked him to help out on the score to The Glenn Miller Story. That resulted in Russell’s remaining at Universal Pictures for 15 years. He started making albums under his own name for Bethlehem and Kapp Records and arranging for Frances Faye, Mel Torme and other singers. When the Liberty Records label began operation, he joined up and wrote for Julie London. One of his classic albums was a major groundbreaker. “Fantastica” was billed as “Music From Outer Space” and featured original compositions for orchestra with taped sounds that were manipulated as part of the orchestration. Happily it was reissued by Basta Records in 2008 and must be heard to be believed. Producer/Director George Pal heard it and immediately hired Garcia to compose the music for the motion picture, “The Time Machine.” He later wrote the score to “Atlantis, The Lost Continent.” Garcia was also very active for Verve Records during the late 1950s. He arranged for Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Margaret Whiting, Stan Getz, and Anita O’Day. And he always made time to teach: along with Johnny Richards, he was part of the arranging/composing faculty at the 1960 National Stage Band Camp, with Stan Kenton’s orchestra in residence.

In 1966, he sold his home and bought a boat, and he and his wife Gina set sail. In 1969, Garcia moved to New Zealand, where he lived until his passing. Between composing, writing and lecturing, he and his wife were teachers of the Baha’i faith.

I’ve read just about every arranging text written, from Arthur Lange on (still worth reading if you have an interest in vintage big band music of the twenties) to Mancini, Grove, Riddle, Russo, Deutsch, Delamont, Nestico, Wright and some of the newer Berklee books. All are good to excellent, but Garcia’s is special. To this day, when I revisit both volumes, I feel that a man who really cares about my music has his arm around me, helping me feel safe as he is guiding me. He is in the trench with me, encouraging me to go as high and as deep as I can as a composer/arranger. I’ve hit a few high points in my own career, but he reminds me that there are many others to aspire to, and that they are possible.

And for that reason, he may well be the Godfather of arranging teachers. I believe that to be his greatest accomplishment. Good teachers are undervalued and generally underpaid. Happily he had money, and was certainly valued by anyone who read his books. Thanks to those books, his teaching will always be with us, as long as someone is crazy enough to want to write for a bunch of winds, strings and percussion.

Many thanks to Mr. Sultanof for providing his insights, enthusiasm and vast knowledge.

To hear an exquisite Garcia arrangement for Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, go to this Rifftides post from last summer.

Jeff Sultanof’s previous contribution to Rifftides was about the late Pete Rugolo.

The Lick, The Lick, The Lick, The Lick, The Lick—

Here’s a YouTube clip that is no doubt going to show up on every jazz blog and website in the world. I certainly don’t want Rifftides to be left out. Thanks to record producer extraordinaire (retired) Dick LaPalm for calling it to our attention.

Update: Help For Jim Knapp

The fund-raising effort to aid composer, arranger, trumpeter and bandleader Jim Knapp is progressing slowly. Knapp recently lost his right foot and part of his lower leg in an operation to combat diabetes. In a message, he writes, “My recovery is going well. I have a prosthesis now, so I am bipedal again.” His financial recuperation is less stable. Friends and fellow musicians headed by saxophonist Steve Griggs have set a goal of $30,000 to defray Knapp’s medical expenses, which far exceed his insurance coverage. A performance of Knapp’s music earlier this month helped, but Griggs reports that the total is $4,485, more than $25,000 short of the target. He and his group have set up a donation website here.

The benefit concert November 2 at Seattle’s Triple Door included this performance of “Secular Breathing,” the title piece of a 2003 Knapp album. The soloists are Mark Taylor, Steve Treseler and Stuart MacDonald, tenor saxophones; John Hansen, piano; and Jon Hamar, bass.

The other members of the Knapp Orchestra were Jim Dejoie, baritone saxophone; Jay Thomas, Brad Allison and Vern Sielert, trumpets; Tom Varner, French horn; Jeff Hay and Chris Stover, trombones; and Matt Jorgensen, drums.

Other Places: Lucky Thompson & Dave Brubeck

In his Jazz Profiles blog, Steve Cerra’s stock in trade is—logically enough— profiles of musicians. He copiously illustrates them with photographs, album covers and sound clips and often adds personal reflections or anecdotes to enrich the mix. The lead story that Steve put up today is about the late tenor and soprano saxophonist Lucky Thompson.

Thompson worked in the 1940s and ‘50s in Dizzy Gillespie’s sextet and with the big bands of Billy Eckstine, Tom Talbert and Count Basie. Hank Jones, Oscar Pettiford and Milt Jackson were among the colleagues who cherished their relationship with Thompson. He made a notable impact on Benny Golson in the early 1950s as Golson formed his style. Half a century later, the young saxophonist Chris Byars adopted Thompson as his model. Go here for the Jazz Profiles post, which includes Steve’s album cover photo essay to the tune of a gorgeous Thompson ballad. It also has Bob Porter’s informative notes about Thompson.

While you’re visiting Cerraville, if you scroll down the left-hand column you will eventually come to Steve’s recent posting of an essay I wrote some time ago to accompany the Time Signatures box of CDs tracing Dave Brubeck’s career from his college days to the 1990s. It has a lot of reading and a lot of pictures.

For video of Lucky Thompson in action in Paris in the late 1950s, see this Rifftides archive piece.

Correspondence: A Granz Film

Reacting to the Norman Granz item in the following exhibit, Alan Broadbent writes:

I’m sure you and your readers must be aware of this precious film, but for the record here it is. Is it from the legendary Granz vault?

Yes. Granz produced, wrote and narrated the film In 1950. He titled it Improvisation. The photographer was Gjon Mili, who had collaborated with Granz six years earlier on the short subject Jammin’ The Blues. The players recorded the music in advance. For the filming, they synchronized fingering and breathing to match the recorded track—some with greater success than others. The synching efforts seem to account for the amusement among the musicians. This cast of players is typical of those Granz assembled for his Jazz At The Philharmonic concerts.

Collective personnel: Charlie Parker, 
Coleman Hawkins, Hank Jones, Ray Brown, Buddy Rich, Bill Harris, Lester Young, Harry Edison, Flip Phillips, Ella Fitzgerald.


That clip, outtakes and a good deal of subsidiary material, exist on this DVD.

The Granz Memory

Tadd Hershorn’s biography of Norman Granz (see Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column) is full of instances of the mental acuity and toughness that helped see the promoter and record executive through countless challenging situations as he presented jazz and fought discrimination. He had a memory that was legendary among the musicians he worked with. Here is a story not in Hershorn’s book.

When I was a college student in Seattle in the 1950s, I became acquainted with Percy Heath, the bassist of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Following a Jazz At The Philharmonic Concert, Heath asked me to accompany him to a party at the home of a buddy from his days as a World War Two pilot in the Tuskegee Airmen. I met Heath and Ray Brown in the lobby of their hotel. As we were preparing to leave for the party, Granz walked by. Percy introduced me to him. We all chatted for perhaps 30 seconds, the impresario, two famous musicians and an anonymous student.

Flash forward. In the 1980s when I was living in San Francisco, I went to hear Dizzy Gillespie in the Venetian Room at the Fairmont Hotel. After his last set, I went backstage to greet Dizzy. As we talked, I noticed a figure seated at a table in the shadow of one of the ballroom curtains. Dizzy said, “Come over here and say hello to a friend of mine.” The friend, I saw, was Norman Granz, whom I had met just that once, in passing, in 1956. As Dizzy spoke my name, Granz said, “Oh, yes, we met in Seattle.”

For more on Granz, here’s a video that popped up on YouTube a few months ago. Described as a “taster,” it is apparently a promo for a documentary, but I have been able to learn no details about the full program.

Weekend Extra: Peterson and Cavett

Not that I’d dream of turning Rifftides into an educational institution, but here’s a chance to learn from a great pianist as he plays and talks about his music. Over the years, Dick Cavett has hosted his show on six networks. These two clips come from his period with the Public Broadcasting Service, 1977-1982, long before PBS began dumbing down its prime time programming with vapid fund-raising specials. But I digress.

Here, Cavett’s guest was Oscar Peterson (1925-2007). The first video recently showed up on the web and has been seen by few viewers. It is of marginal video quality but acceptable in the audio department. It has the standard promotional sildes with which Pedro Mendes starts and ends all of the videos he puts up. But who’s complaining; he puts them up. The second clip—crisp and clear—is a YouTube hit seen by more than 140,000 surfers. It continues the conversation. This is OP with Cavett in 1979.


Have a good weekend.

Kenny Burrell, Octogenarian

Kenny Burrell has joined the parade of major jazz artists entering octogenarianism and performing at a high level. The guitarist is of a generation of Detroit musicians including Tommy Flanagan, Pepper Adams, Elvin Jones, Roland Hanna and Louis Hayes that made a significant impact on jazz. Burrell’s 80th birthday was a week ago. He is preparing for a concert next weekend. Here’s more from a Scott Zimberg profile of the guitarist in The Los Angeles Times:

Part of what’s kept Burrell afloat over the years is musical focus. Music, he says, “has to be a balance between heart and mind. The thing is to not let your technique or your analytical side overshadow your feelings. There’s one more thing you’ve gotta do — you’ve got to be consistent. That takes work, it takes concentration, it takes focus, it takes dedication.”

He’s often praised for qualities like taste, discipline and aversion to musical cliché. “I sometimes think that phrasing is a lost art in jazz, and perhaps especially among guitarists,” Gioia says. “But Burrell knows how to shape a phrase, where to place the proper emphasis, how to construct a solo. He has unerring instincts — like a great boxer, who has a feel for the right move at the right moment.”

Burrell sees jazz soloing as a conversation between musician and listener. “If I was talking too fast, or not taking breaths, not giving you time to take it in — it would not get across very well.”

To him, the blues — which can lead lesser players to volubility — is about understatement. Music begins and ends with silence, he says. “In between, it’s up to you. You should make a statement. And when you’ve made your statement — which should be important to you, you should mean it — you should stop.”

To read all of Timberg’s article, which traces Burrell’s career, go here.

Burrell appeared on Japanese Television in 1990, with bassist Bob Magnusson and drummer Sherman Ferguson, playing Duke Pearson’s “Jeannine.”

And Don’t Forget João Gilberto

The great Brazilian bossa nova pioneer turned 80 in June and will be giving a concert in Rio de Janeiro on November 15, Brazil’s Republic Day. For details, go here. If you don’t read Portuguese, just enjoy the graphics and his singing in the background.

Then watch this video of Gilberto performing one of Antonio Carlos Jobim’s greatest hits, accompanied by the composer.

Maybe 80 really is the new 60.

A Birthday Twofer: Geller and Woods

Two alto saxophonists who came to prominence in the second wave of bebop celebrated birthdays on the same day this week. On Wednesday, November 2, Herb Geller (on the right) turned 83, Phil Woods, (left) 80. Geller has lived in Hamburg, Germany, since 1965. Woods lives in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania. Both have active international playing careers. Geller’s daughter Olivia wrote that her dad was “gutted” when the day before his birthday he got the news of pianist Walter Norris’s death; their association went back to the early 1950s. His spirits soon came up, she wrote, and he played two gigs this week, Thursday at a Greek restaurant and his birthday concert last night at the Hamburg Birdland: “So no big celebration or anything out of the ordinary,” Olivia said, “just his usual not-showing off personality.”

Here’s Geller at a mere 82 not showing off last February at the Blue Lamp in Aberdeen, Scotland, with Paul Kirby, piano; Martin Zenker, bass; and Rick Hollander, drums.

In the fall of 2010, Woods traveled to Spain for a performance with the Barcelona Jazz Orquestra. This video gives us a polished rehearsal of “My Man Benny,” Woods’s tribute to Benny Carter. I cannot identify the tenor saxophone soloist. The pianist is Ignasi Terraza.

On November 13, Woods will be knee-deep in the Zoot Fest honoring Zoot Sims and Al Cohn at East Stroudsburg University in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania.

Happy birthday, gentlemen. Many more, please.

Compatible Quotes: On Being A Musician

If I can’t play music, what am I gonna do? Music keeps people sane. When you enjoy yourself, most of the time the people who are listening to you enjoy it.—Zoot Sims

My life has always been my music, it’s always come first, but the music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay it on the public. The main thing is to live for that audience, ’cause what you’re there for is to please the people.—Louis Armstrong

I’ve never known a musician who regretted being one. Whatever deceptions life may have in store for you, music itself is not going to let you down.—Virgil Thomson

New Recommendations

Immediately below and in the right-hand column under Doug’s Picks, you will find the Rifftides staff’s current recommendations: CDs by a bassist leading his first big band, a saxophonist who melds his American and Indian influences, and a timeless mainstream cornetist. Also, a DVD with Zoot Sims at his most relaxed and eloquent, and a book about a man who changed jazz and challenged society to do the right thing.

CD: Ron Carter

Ron Carter’s Great Big Band (Sunnyside)

The venerable bassist’s first recording at the helm of a big band has style, depth and power. The playlist of jazz standards may suggest that Carter and arranger Robert Freedman are plowing old ground, but they produce a crop of fresh ideas. They transform “Opus One,” “Con Alma,” “Sail Away,” “The Golden Striker,” “St. Louis Blues” and eight others. Harmonically and rhythmically, Carter leads. He solos, but does not dominate the album, leaving space for Steve Wilson, Greg Gisbert, Wayne Escoffery, Jerry Dodgion, Mulgrew Miller and Scott Robinson—a few of the 17 top-flight members of the band.

CD: Rudresh Mahanthappa

Rudresh Mahanthappa, Samdhi (ACT)

This is the latest chapter in the alto saxophonist’s accommodation of his Indian cultural heritage to his American jazz ethos. Or is it the other way around? He combines electric guitar, electric bass, drums, the astonishing South Indian percussionist Anantha Krishnan and discreet post-production manipulation. Guitarist Dave Gilmore is a stimulating foil. The demonic “Killer” and the electronically multiplied saxophones of “Parakram #2” may require conventionally attuned ears to adjust to the Mahanthappa ethos. Relaxed pieces like “Ahhh,” “For My Lady” and “Rune” bring contemplative satisfactions.

CD: Ray Skjelbred, Jim Goodwin

Ray Skjelbred & Jim Goodwin, Recorded Live in Port Costa (Orangapoid)

A couple of years ago I wrote about the night I discovered Jim Goodwin’s cornet playing and became an instant fan: “His solos had echoes and intimations of Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Ruby Braff, Max Kaminsky and Wild Bill Davison. He wrapped all of that into a style of great individuality, intimacy, forthright conviction and humor.” This CD captures Goodwin and pianist Skjelbred in 1977, 32 years before Goodwin’s death. His solo on “Russian Lullaby” is pure joyous intensity, “Black and Tan Fantasy” a distillation of early Ellington and Bubber Miley. These previously unissued club performances come as a surprise and a treat.

DVD: Zoot Sims

Zoot Sims, In A Sentimental Mood (MVD)

We see the tenor saxophonist sitting on a couch telling bassist Red Mitchell about his treasured old horn. Then the two and guitarist Rune Gustafsson play “In a Sentimental Mood.” Sims tells about Benny Goodman stealing his apple, and they play “Gone With the Wind.” For nearly an hour, we eavesdrop on a superb trio in an intimate setting, sharing stories and music. Like The Sound of Jazz, it is a video rarity—musicians allowed to be themselves, cameras and microphones capturing the proceedings without contrivance. It was November, 1984. Four months later, Zoot was gone. This is a treasure.