Search Results for: Dave Brubeck

The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings (Fantasy). The first CD of the set reissues Fantasy’s The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album from 1975 and Improv’s Together Again from 1976. It also has two previously unissued songs from the Together Again sessions, “Who Can I Turn To” and a rollicking run through Cole Porter’s “Dream Dancing” In which Bennett blends into the end of Evans’ solo as if the singer were an extension of the piano. Bennett’s delighted laughter at the end of the take symbolizes the rapport between the two. Oddly, in his excellent booklet notes Will Friedwald barely mentions the track.
The second disc contains 20 alternate takes from Together Again and five from The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album. There is nothing in these alternates to suggest that the wrong takes were selected for the original releases, but they are by no means failed attempts. In the case of “You Don’t Know What Love Is,” the two alternates give dramatic evidence of Billie Holiday’s influence on Bennett. Throughout, the alternates provide insights into the variety of Evans’s inexhaustible melodic creativity. Bennett and Evans together are an art song equivalent of Dieter Fischer-Dieskau’s and Gerald Moore’s artistry with German lieder, but we have the added element of Evans’ genius at improvisation.
Daryl Sherman, New O’leans (Audiophile). Hurricane Katrina’s assault on the Crescent City inspired Sherman to record this collection of songs, but it goes beyond the post-disaster blues to touch on many of the aspects that endear New Orleans to the world. Harold Arlen’s “Ill Wind” was an obvious choice. Louis Armstrong’s “Red Cap,” Irving Berlin’s “Shaking the Blues Away,” Henry Mancini’s “Moon River” and Dave Frishberg’s “Eloise” may seem unexpected companions in a New Orleans tribute until you hear how Sherman and her colleagues use them to evoke the city. Rhodes Spedale’s “S’Mardi Gras” needs no enhancement in that regard; it is a tour of Fat Tuesday locations and emotions. Guitarist James Chirillo and trumpeter Connie Jones are Sherman’s best-known sidemen. Reed man Tom Fischer and bassist Al Bernard, misidentified as “Menard,” are in the same league. Sherman plays piano on this drummerless date. The infectious good cheer in her voice will make you grin, except when she makes your eyes moist with “Mr Bojangles” and “Wendell’s Cat.”
Joe Sardaro, Protégé (Catch My Drift). The current short supply of effective male singers with jazz leanings makes the release of a new recording by Sardaro a welcome event. The market is not saturated with his albums. His last one, Lost in the Stars, was a 1986 LP with a combo headed by Shelly Manne. It has never been reissued on CD. The Boston-area Winiker Brothers Quintet accompanying him on the new CD is less widely known but excellent. Sardaro employs his light baritone to pleasant effect in a set of 16 well-chosen songs, some of them rarely performed. I haven’t heard anyone do Charles La Vere’s “Mis’ry and the Blues” since Jack Teagarden’s 1961 recording. It’s interesting to hear it in the company of songs by, among others, Jobim, Kern, Ellington and McCartney. Sardaro is touching in his revival of the Arthur Schwartz-Dorothy Fields rarity “Alone Too Long.” As I wrote in a review of his 1986 album, in the absence of a spectacular vocal instrument, Sardaro uses taste, swing, diction and lyric interpretation. The CD’s title recognizes Sardaro’s debt to Anita O’Day, who encouraged him when he was young and with whom he kept a close relationship for the rest of her life.
Mel Tormé, California Suite (Fresh Sound). This reissue has both versions of Torme’s suite honoring his adopted state, the 1949 recording for Capitol and the 1957 remake on Bethlehem. Tormé fashioned his words and music into a cantata for orchestra, his voice and his backing vocal quartet The Melltones. The 1949 recording with Hal Mooney’s orchestra was well received, but Tormé was never completely satisfied with it. He recruited arranger Marty Paich, with whose dek-tette he had recorded LPs now recognized as minor masterpieces. They revised the work, adding interest to the harmonic structures and investing it with jazz vitality that was underemphasized in the earlier version. As splendid a singer as Tormé was the first time around, by ’57 his voice had taken on added burnish, depth and intensity. Both versions are impressive, but the later one has improvements to the lyrics and an increased rhythmic sensibility. As the first one ends, the listener may wonder why Tormé wanted to take another run at it. When the second version ends, you’ll know.

Carol Fredette, Everything In Time (Soundbrush). This is Fredette’s first CD in more than a decade, and worth waiting for. I haven’t heard anyone do the Bing Crosby feature “Love Thy Neighbor” since John Coltrane in the 1950s. Fredette sings it with joy in her voice to equal the whooping exuberance of Trane’s solo. Her laughing, quacking take on the bossa nova classic “O Pato” is just one more of 15 reasons to admire this classy collection.
John Sheridan, Swing Is Still The King, featuring Rebecca Kilgore (Arbors). Kilgore, one of the purest of singers, is on more than half the tracks, a fine idea. Pianist Sheridan’s dandy mid-sized band includes tenor saxophonist Scott Robinson, trombonist Dan Barrett and drummer Jake Hanna.
Ann Hampton Calloway, At Last (Telarc). The customary question raised in most reviews of Calloway is whether she is a jazz singer or a cabaret performer. That’s a waste of space. She has a big, rich voice and sings beautifully. What else matters? Pianist Ted Rosenthal, bassist Jay Leonhart and drummer Victor Lewis are her rhythm section. Marvin Stamm, Rodney Jones and Wycliffe Gordon are among the guest soloists.
Diana Krall, Quiet Nights (Verve). It’s a familiar phenomenon, the assumption by elements of the jazz cognoscenti that if a jazz artist achieves wide success, she must have watered down the product. Krall is their current favorite target, a position formerly filled by Dave Brubeck, Cannonball Adderley, Miles Davis and Chick Corea, among others. She has never been a great singer or a great jazz pianist, merely very good, and appealing in both categories. Claus Ogerman’s arrangements suit her nicely in this bewitchingly low-key recital. Slipping in a “bonus” cover of the Bee Gee’s 1971 tearjerker hit “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” wasn’t the best idea Krall–or her producer–might have come up with. The rest of the CD is fine, with a touching treatment of Jobim’s “Quiet Nights” (“Corcovado”).
Kelley Johnson, Home (Sapphire). Johnson shines in her singing, composing and arranging on this fully realized recording, a balanced blend of the familiar and the daring. She has prime assistance from her pianist husband John Hansen on some tracks and Geoffrey Keezer on others. Johnson’s and Hansen’s duet on “Where Do You Start” is a highlight. Ingrid Jensen and John Wikan contribute an arrangement that teams Johnson’s voice with Jay Thomas’s trumpet and Keezer’s piano to channel “Moon River” through new harmonic territory. This collection deserves and rewards repeated listening.
To see Singers, Part 1, go here.

What to add to the hundreds of tributes to Louie Bellson in the wake of his death last weekend? The outpouring of accolades emphasizes what anyone who ever encountered him knows: he was full of warmth, generosity and the largest available portion of human spirit. Dozens of obituaries are quoting Duke Ellington’s assessment of Bellson as not only the world’s greatest drummer but the world’s greatest musician. There are excellent obits by Howard Reich in the Chicago Tribune, Nate Chinen in The New York Times and Don Heckman in The Los Angeles Times. 

The grins on the faces of Hinton and Bellson when Earl Hines was in full flight.

Peter Levinson, the publicist with a parallel career as a biographer of music and show business figures, died yesterday in a fall in his house in Malibu, California. He was seventy-four. Levinson had been suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease, which robbed him of his voice but did not leave him incommunicado. Through the use of a computer capable of converting his typing to speech, he was able to keep working. He had finished a biography of Fred Astaire, which is to be published next spring. He also wrote three other books, biographies of Harry James, Tommy Dorsey and Nelson Riddle. The James book is one of the finest about a jazz artist.

One of the most respected publicists in the jazz field, over the years Levinson represented Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner and Stan Getz, as well as singers Peggy Lee, Mel Torme and Rosemary Clooney, actor Jack Lemmon and films including Fiddler on the Roof and Kramer vs. Kramer.

Peter was the publisher’s publicist for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He and I were friends since our mutual time in New York in the 1970s. I shall miss his earnest professionalism, advice, kindness and companionship. For more about Peter Levinson, see the Los Angeles Times obituary.

 From 1949 to 1963, the Black Hawk was San Francisco’s premier jazz club. It presented a
cross section of the world’s best musicians. Like legions of other fans, I spent some of the most rewarding listening hours of my life being inspired in the Black Hawk’s uninspiring surroundings and have written about it frequently. Here are the opening paragraphs of the notes for volume 5 of Shelly Manne and His Men At The Blackhawk.

During my years of labor at KGO-TV in San Francisco, I never passed the parking lot a block away at Turk and Hyde without regretting the injustice of a world that puts more value on the storage of automobiles than on preserving historical landmarks. To be accurate the Landmark Preservation Commission never actually got around to trying to save the Black Hawk or even mounting a brass plaque at space number five, the approximate location of the door where Elynore Caccienti and Susan Weiss collected one-dollar entry fees and dispensed wisdom. All right: the matter never came to a vote, never even came up for discussion.

Nonetheless, officially recognized or not, history was made in the dust and dimness of that temple of gloom. “I’ve worked and slaved to keep this place a sewer,” Guido Caccienti used to say of the joint he ran with his partner, George Weiss. In the 1950s when the club was in its florescence, Count Basie set a new world record for compacting musicians by cramming sixteen men onto the Black Hawk’s little stand, adding Joe Williams, and still finding room to swing. Cal Tjader’s and Dave Brubeck’s groups were more or less headquartered at the Black Hawk and did some of their best live recording there. The first ten-inch LP by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet was made in September, 1952, while Mulligan, Chet Baker, Carson Smith and Chico Hamilton were at the Black Hawk refining their alchemy. The Miles Davis Quintet with Hank Mobley recorded two albums there, commemorating that regrettably short partnership. Although he recorded it in a hall a few blocks away, it was during a Black Hawk engagement that Thelonious Monk made a solo piano album notable for the beauty and serenity of his playing.

I bring this up because video has materialized that reveals the interior of the Black Hawk in all its–er–glory. The film was made for the pilot of a TV series that never materialized. It features the Brubeck Quartet in three numbers, with an introduction by Mort Sahl, the comic who was a fan of the band and a close friend of Paul Desmond until Mrs. Sahl and Desmond became even closer. That, of course, is another story, discreetly told in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. But, in a cheesy effort to sell a book, I digress. At any rate, the video is slightly misleading about the nature of the club because the producers somehow persuaded Guido that it was necessary to present an orderly aspect. The random distribution of miniscule tables gave way to chairs arranged in rows, as in a concert hall. The chairs are occupied not by casually dressed and relaxed Black Hawk regulars but by properly attired civilians, possibly extras hired for the occasion. Nothing was done, thank goodness, to replace the dust-laden heavy velvet curtain behind the band stand.

The band is the classic Brubeck Quartet with Desmond, Gene Wright and Joe Morello. YouTube doesn’t give us a date, but the repertoire and the appearances of the players suggest 1957 or ’58. The band opens with “The Duke” as background for Sahl’s intro and follows with a splendid “St. Louis Blues” and a perfunctory “I’m In A Dancing Mood.” During the blues we have the opportunity to see as well as hear the camaraderie between Wright and Morello. To see the video, click here.

 Four years ago, another club went up at the corner of Turk and Hyde. Here’s a description from its web site:

222 Club was established in April 2004. It sits on a corner next to a parking lot and lots of action. We are a lounge with a beautiful basement, refreshing cocktails, delicious food, rotating dj’s, live bands and rotating art. Happy Hour Tuesday thru Saturday from 6-9pm $3.00 Well $2.00 PBR Positive Vibes Only~ We are happy people…..xoxoxoxox

The hugs and kisses are a nice touch, but I’ll bet the 222 Club isn’t hiring the Basie band.

George Moore, who runs Dave Brubeck’s office, sent this message:

If you are suffering from bruised or broken ribs, PLEASE WAIT TO OPEN THIS LINK.

Then, rummaging around on the internet, I found this companion piece of video.

Now, no matter what kind of day you were having, you’ll have a better one.

A favorite story about Al Cohn: A friend who hadn’t seen him for a long time ran into Cohn on the street in New York and said, “Hey, Al, where are you living these days?”
“Oh,” Al said, “I’m living in the past.”
I’ve been having a couple of Al Cohn days. As executor of the estate of Jack Brownlow, last week I was going through things in his house. I came across two thick three-ring binders labeled “Letters” and was surprised to discover that Bruno had saved every letter I wrote him over several decades. In them, I found reports of events I had forgotten about. Because some of the letters concern matters Rifftides readers may find of interest, from time to time I’ll post portions of them. The one below was written from Los Angeles following a road trip. It now includes links to some of the people and places it mentions. I have also added illustrations. Some of the opinions I express have changed in seventeen years, and I now have lots of John Corigliano’s music. The puzzling salutation follows the practice Bruno and I adopted of using a first name to set up the use of a last name that more or less resembles another word. Silly? Corny? Sure it is, but that’s how we were.

November 13, 1990
Dear Vincent,
I guess it’s about time you were Herring from me. My week in New York was packed with activity–journalistic, foundational, touristy and musical. I’ll tell you only about the music I heard and about the New York Marathon. That Sunday it was false summer. . .77 degrees.. .and the town was full of people from all over the world running in or watching the marathon. It was exciting, like an enormous fiesta, or carnaval in Rio, although I don’t recall seeing any bare-breasted women. I stood at the southeast corner of Central Park and watched the runners come around the final sweep. People were standing six deep along the roadway, shouting encouragement in 17 languages. I shouted encouragament in only six. Why show off?
When an exhausted runner faltered or slowed to a walk, the crowd would shout, “go, go, go,” “vaya, hombre,” “corre, madre,” “lun, lun, lun,” “laufen zie, laufen zie.” Cruel, I thought; it was certainly no laufen matter to the poor guy in agony out there. I stood there for a couple of hours watching. It was fascinating, hypnotic. I was inspired, for a few minutes, to train for next year’s marathon.
The first night in New York, I agonized over the possibilities: Mehta and the NY Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, Dutoit and the Montreal at Carnegie Hall, the Knicks at Madison Square Garden or chamber music at the Merkin Concert Hall. The choice was easy, actually; the first three were sold out. I’m glad they were, because the concert at Merkin was superb. It was a tribute to William Schuman on his 80th birthday and he was there in that 400-seat hall, which was maybe two-thirds full. He chose “In Sweet Music” and “Night Journey.” They were the two pieces of his that he most wanted to hear. He got great rounds of applause after each, standing and blowing kisses to the musicians, who played the music beautifully. Wonderful pieces, too.
Also in the audience was
John Corigliano, who got to hear a fantastic performance of his Sonata For Violin And Piano. Sidney Harth is a big, amazingly fat, man who plays the violin both delicately and with incredible passion. What a performance. I don’t have any of Corigliano’s music, but I heard the NY Phil premier his First Symphony on a broadcast a few weeks ago and liked it . He’s tonal but, within tonality, adventurous as hell, outrageous even, moreso than del Tredici. Good as all that was, the highlight of the concert was the Ives Trio, an astounding piece of music. I’m sure you’re familiar with it. At any rate, it was a thrill to see William Schuman. There was a reception afterward, and anyone in the audience was free to go to it, but what would I have said to Schuman or Corigliano? “Far out, baby. The end, y ‘know? Straight ahead, man. You sure write good for an old cat. You know Hovahness personally?”
So, I went downtown to Bradley’s and listened to Geoff Keezer with Peter Washington on bass and Steve Nelson, vibes. You’ll be happy to know that Keezer is even more impressive in person and that he looks not 21, but about 12. Lots of Bud Powell and Monk in his playing, more than I’ve detected on records. The place was crowded, so I was put at a table near the piano with a couple of guys one of whom took it upon himself during a break to give Keezer advice. Your true calling, he said (based on what I can’t imagine), is to go to Hollywood and write scores for movies. You could outdo Herbie Hancock, he said. Out of embarassment and in fear that Keezer would think I was with this oaf, I stared at the floor and once when I glanced up saw that Keezer was also staring at the floor. Later, after the oaf had left, I said to Keezer, do not go to Hollywood, do not score motion pictures, keep on playing bebop. “Of course,” he said.
Two nights later I went to the Blue Note for a Blue Note Records party. The band turned out to be Jerry Bergonzi, Joey Calderazzo, Adam Nussbaum and Dave Santoro. Bergonzi is a marvelous tenor player who worked with Brubeck a few years ago and has grown tremendously. Calderazzo is a stompin’ young piano player who has worked with Miles on organ and has a couple of records out on Columbia, Santoro is a very good bass player of whom I ‘d never heard. Nussbuam, however, was the star as far as I was concerned. He is a hell of a drummer. He played a sixteen-bar intro to one piece that was pure Blakey. A tribute, I guess, since Art had just died. A surprising and truly enjoyable evening.
The next night Orrin Keepnews and I went to dinner at El Parador, a favorite restaurant, it turns out, for both of us from the days when we lived in New York. Orrin was in NYC from San Francisco to work on some Bluebird reissues for RCA/BMG and to do a Nat Adderley session for his own label, Landmark. We were both staying at the Algonquin. Then we went to the Village Vanguard to hear Clark Terry, who had Victor Lewis, Don Friedman and a bass player whose name I’ve forgotten. All were playing very well, indeed. Clark and I had a reunion, with lots of laughing and hugs.
In the audience was Nellie Monk, Thelonious’s widow, who never goes anywhere, but came out for this because Monk thought so much of Clark. Orrin and Nellie hadn’t seen each other for 19 years and they had a great reunion, as did Nellie and Clark. Nellie told Orrin a lot about Monk in the final years, things nobody knows. I was not a party to that private conversation.
CT asked me if I was still playing the flugelhorn he got for me years ago. I didn’t lie; I said yes. In fact, I played it tonight with a new Tommyy Newsom CD. Tommy Newsom? Yes, his album, with Conte Candoli, Snooky Young, Dave Stone, Ed Shaughnessy and Ross Tompkins. Newsom adored Zoot and plays like him, without quite the passion, swing or harmonic stuff. But he plays well. It’s a nice CD on the LaserLight label.
On Thursday, I went to part of the Nat Adderley session. Nat, Vincent Herring, Jimmy Cobb, Walter Booker and a fine young pianist from Brooklyn named Rob Bargad, who replaced Larry Willis. Herring, especially on “Arriving Soon,” sounded so much like Cannonball it was almost ghostly. Happy ghost. His sound is not quite as expansive as Cannon’s, but then neither, as Orrin pointed out, is his body. Nat and I hadn’t seen one another, except for about three minutes once, since the days when the Adderley band used to spend so much time in New Orleans in the sixties. He greeted me warmly. He and I weren’t as close as Julian and I and the other day he asked me where Cannon and I used to go all the time. I told him I couldn’t remember specifically, but that it inevitably had to do with food. “Well,” he said, “I’d like to have come along.” I think he genuinely had felt left out, and I was kind of guilty about it and told him so and that seemed to make him feel okay. It wasn’t as if we were ditching little brother, but Nat apparently saw it that way. I thought he and (Joe) Zawinul were sometimes leaving us out of things. We humans are a sensitive bunch, aren’t we?
The band sounded good. Bookie is not a great bass player, particularly in terms of sound, but he has a lot of heart, works his fanny off, and Nat digs having him on the band. Which is nice, I think. Jimmy Cobb works as hard as Bookie and is a great drummer. Herring is astounding. I assume you have heard him. He has two or three records under his own name.
As for CDs, I have two of the Blakeys you mentioned. One For All is good. Brian Lynch’s feature is beautiful trumpet playing. Phillip Harper, who is on I Get A Kick Out Of Bu, struggles through every tune. You asked how fusion nonsense gets on otherwise good records. It’s because not only the producer but also the artist believes it will result in money. It is not mere rhetoric when I say that all of that fusion/crossover/new age crap sounds alike. I have sat on my stool in front of the CD player auditioning review copies, playing tracks from dozens of albums because I think that if a record company sends it I have an obligation to at least sample it. So I’ve heard a lot of it. It sounds alike in terms of harmonic structure, rhythmic patterns, sound mix, instrumentation and imbecility. And when a good musician like Dave Weckl or John Patitucci is the guilty party, it’s that much sadder.
I haven’t heard anything lately that I like better than the newest Artie Shaw reissue CD on Bluebird, Blues In The Night, with Lips Page, Roy Eldridge and some incredible Eddie Sauter charts. The digital remastering is masterly, so to speak. Keepnews strikes again.
Cheers,
DR

Sometimes I miss New York.

Marc Myers is devoting three days of his excellent Jazz Wax blog to a discussion of the Paul Desmond Quartet with Jim Hall. I have the honor of being his guest discusser. We talk about the RCA Victor recordings and the earlier Warner Bros album of the Desmond quartet. This is a link to the first installment.
I was surprised in searching the internet to see that although the individual RCA albums and single-CD compilations are generally available, the box set of the complete recordings is becoming hard to find. The Warner Bros album, originally titled First Place Again and once reissued as East Of The Sun, seems to be available only as a bootleg import CD. I suppose that is better than not having it available at all. Some recordings, like some books, should be in print forever.
A part of the Q & A with Myers concerns Desmond’s musical relationship with Dave Brubeck. I tried to give some insight, but language is inadequate to describe music. The best understanding of music, and therefore of musical relationships, is gained through listening. In the case of Desmond and Brubeck, this 1959 performance in Rome takes us a long way. The piece is “These Foolish Things,” whioh they transformed together for decades. It is a fine demonstration of Brubeck’s skill as an ideal accompanist for Desmond. Desmond’s solo is so good that when it ends even he seems pleased, a rare occurence.

Home computers and cell phones became realities after Paul Desmond died in 1977. Given his fascination with electronic devices, I am certain that if he were alive, he would be addicted to all things digital. Paul would love the idea of a program shooting through the ether into a computer and onto a compact disc.
Producer Paul Conley alerts Rifftides readers that his National Public Radio Jazz Profiles program on Desmond is now available as a free MP3 download at the NPR Music site. Nancy Wilson is the host. Her guests include Dave Brubeck, Eugene Wright, Jim Hall, John Snyder, Gene Lees, yours truly and, on tape, Desmond himself.
Desmond on Brubeck’s polytonality in their early days:

He would be in fifteen different keys on an out-of-tune piano and there were occasions when I was totally desperate about the situation.

Jim Hall:

Some people moved into the apartment across the hallway from him who were playing sort of garbage du jour, loud, all the time. So one time Paul just lost it and he put on a Bartok record, very loud, went across the hall, banged on the door, somebody opened the door and he said, “You hear that? It’s called music. How do you like it?”

The program was created before research for Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond unearthed new information about Desmond. It perpetuates the story Desmond concocted that he chose his last name from a telephone book. From Take Five, here’s fellow saxophonist Hal Strack’s recollection of the inspiration for the change from Breitenfeld to Desmond. It came at Sweets Ballroom in Oakland, California.

We were listening to Gene Krupa’s band, sometime in 1942. Howard Dulany had just left as the singer. The guy who replaced him had some kind of a convoluted Italian name and they decided that just wasn’t going to work for a vocalist. I mean, it was more difficult than Sinatra. So, he changed his name to Johnny Desmond.* We were standing there listening to the band and discussing the fact that this had happened, and Paul said, “Jeesh, you know that’s such a great name. It’s so smooth and yet it’s uncommon. If I decide I need another name, it’s going to be Desmond.”

Besides, he told someone later, Breitenfeld was too long to fit on a 78-rpm record label. In 1946, he went to the courthouse and made the change legal.
The program has plenty of music, including a fascinating section that illustrates Desmond’s ability to play counterpoint not only with Brubeck but also with himself. To download or listen to the hour-long Desmond Jazz Profiles program, follow this link.

*Johnny Desmond (1920-1985), the son of Italian immigrants, was born Giovanni Alfredo de Simone in Detroit in 1919. As a boy soprano, he won a radio talent contest. The name change quickly followed.

Had he lived, Paul Desmond would have been eighty-three years old today. Jim Hall said it best, “He would have been a great old man.”
Here’s a good way to remember Desmond–having fun with Dave Brubeck, Gene Wright and Joe Morello in 1976, fourteen months before his death.
At CKUT-FM in Montreal, the veteran broadcaster Len Dobbin played Desmond’s music today on his Dobbin’s Den. It was part of the station’s celebration of its twentieth anniversary. The program is archived. You can listen to it by going here. He kindly recommended this book to those who want to know more about Desmond.

News from the publisher: less than two weeks off the press, Poodie James has gone into a second printing. Many thanks to Rifftides readers who have helped to make that possible.
As an excerpt from the novel posted on Rifftides makes clear, Poodie is deaf and mostly mute. After she read that passage, Iola Brubeck sent this comment:

I enjoyed the excerpt. A number of years ago Dave played a benefit for the Theater of the Deaf in Connecticut. They described some of the sensations that you put so well in words….the feeling of the vibrations, both in their feet and in their bodies. Also, at one time, Dave shared a program with the deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who often appears as soloist with symphony orchestras. Her rhythmic sensitivity is unmatchable.

Like Poodie, Dame Evelyn feels frustration over the frequent concentration by those with full hearing on a deaf person’s deafness rather than on his qualities and abilities. Here is some of what she wrote on her web site:

I hope that the audience will be stimulated by what I have to say (through the language of music) and will therefore leave the concert hall feeling entertained. If the audience is instead only wondering how a deaf musician can play percussion then I have failed as a musician. For this reason my deafness is not mentioned in any of the information supplied by my office to the press or concert promoters. Unfortunately, my deafness makes good headlines. I have learnt from childhood that if I refuse to discuss my deafness with the media they will just make it up. The several hundred articles and reviews written about me every year add up to a total of many thousands, only a handful accurately describe my hearing impairment. More than 90% are so inaccurate that it would seem impossible that I could be a musician. This web page is designed to set the record straight and allow people to enjoy the experience of being entertained by an ever evolving musician rather than some freak or miracle of nature.
Deafness is poorly understood in general. For instance, there is a common misconception that deaf people live in a world of silence. To understand the nature of deafness, first one has to understand the nature of hearing.

To read all of Evelyn Glennie’s “Hearing Essay” and explore her site, click here.

Several major jazz bassists – including Oscar Pettiford, Ray Brown, Sam Jones, and Percy Heath – also played the cello. Ron Carter doubles on cello. For the most part, Carter employs it as a midget replica of his main instrument, soloing by plucking the strings, as did his predecessors. Indeed, Heath referred to his re-tuned cello as a baby bass.
Improvising while bowing the cello is another matter. Fred Katz, who became well known in the 1950s for his work with the Chico Hamilton Quintet, demonstrated that there was a place for the arco cello in improvisation despite the instrument’s challenges, which include its relative slowness. The cello’s small, fast, cousin the violin has had a role virtually from the beginning of jazz. In Roger Kellaway’s glorious Cello Quartet recordings, Ed Lustgarten was brilliant at reading and interpreting the solos Kellaway wrote for him, but he was not an improviser. After the mainstreamers pioneered the instrument, players like David Eyges, Hank Roberts, Trinstan Honsinger and Tom Cora gave the cello a role in avant garde jazz. Recently, Erik Friedlander Peggy Lee, Alisa Horn and Matthew Brubeck, among others, have further helped to move the cello toward the circle of fully-accepted jazz instruments, using all of its capabilities.
If you do an internet search for Brubeck, you’ll get a link that describes the territory he has staked out. It says, “improvising cellist Matt Brubeck’s website.” The youngest son of Dave and Iola Brubeck has a master’s degree in cello performance from Yale and has worked in a range of symphony and classical chamber settings. His recorded debut as a bowing and plucking improvising cellist came in 1991, when he was thirty, on his father’s Quiet As The Moon. His impressive performances included a duet with his dad on a theme from Dave’s mass, “To Hope: A Celebration.” He has worked with musicians as various as Tom Waits and the eclectic Oranj Symphonette, with which he plays an passionate opening cadenza on Mancini’s “Dreamsville.” Brubeck’s resume is sprinkled with mentions of duo associations. The most recent is his partnership with the Canadian pianist David Braid.
In their CD called Twotet/Duextet, the musicians play five pieces by Brubeck and three by Braid. Matt Brubeck’s facility with the instrument, bowing or plucking, seems to allow him to play whatever occurs to him. His full, deep sound takes on an edge of dramatic urgency when he improvises with the bow, as he does to great effect in “Mnemosyne’s March” and several other tracks. In “Sniffin’ Around,” he employs his cello as a baby bass a la Percy Heath, occasionally letting the strings slap wood as bassist Milt Hinton used to do.
I usually rail against debut CDs in which musicians restrict themselves to original material, not only because it gives the listener nothing familiar to relate to, but also because so often the music is weak. In Twotet/Deuxtet, the songs are light years beyond the wispy excuses for blowing that fill so many jazz CDs. Their melodies have strength, the harmonic structures have substance. Even the rhythmic offbeats that open a free piece of instant composition called “Improvisation” develop a melody. It may not be instantly hummable, but it is distinctive. A pair of ballads, Braid’s “Wash Away” and Brubeck’s “It’s Not What it Was,” have melodies that might have been written by Stephen Foster. Brubeck’s “Huevos Verdes y Jamón” has a Hispano-Caribbean lilt worthy of Sonny Rollins or Chick Corea, Braid’s “Mnemosyne’s March” Brahmsian gravity and beauty of line.
I had never heard – never heard of – Braid before Twotet/Deuxtet showed up the other day. Now, I’m compelled to catch up with his previous work, particularly his sextet made up of Canadian all-stars Terry Clarke, Mike Murley, Steve Wallace, Gene Smith and John MacLeod. Braid’s tone, touch, chord voicings and imagination make him one of the most interesting new pianists I’ve encountered in a long time. In researching him, I discovered that I’m not alone. It turns out that when Gene Lees first heard Braid, he wrote, “If Bill Evans were alive, I’d send Braid’s CD to him.”
Alisa Horn is the cellist in pianist Bill Mays’ new group The Inventions Trio. She is a protégé of trumpeter Marvin Stamm, the other member of the trio. I wrote nearly a year ago about Mays convincing classical string players that they could swing when he recruited the cellist and violinist of the Finisterra Trio to perform Bach’s “Two-part Invention #8” with an overlay of Charlie Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha.” Horn has been convinced, too. The conviction didn’t come easily. She is added to the duo in which for several years Mays and Stamm have been melding jazz and classical music. A classicial cellist ingrained with the notion that improvisation should be avoided at all costs because it could lead to (gasp) mistakes, she was terrified at the recording session. Here’s some of what Horn wrote in a news release that came with the advance copy of The Inventions Trio CD.

What if I play a WRONG NOTE? During the session, I almost had a breakdown worrying about a shift that I had “missed” during an improvisation. No one else in the studio even heard the mistake or noticed it at all and these are some of the most experienced and well-trained ears in the business! (I was) almost in tears, worried over this horrible imperfection. Bill and Marvin looked at me and just said, “No one is ever perfect and that isn’t what this is about. Screw it!”
Since that moment, I have a new outlook on my music and the meaning of “perfect” has changed. Now I understand that perfection is an individual’s perception of what the music is and this idea applies to both classical and jazz styles of playing.

Horn is exquisite in the trio numbers on the CD, which include Debussy’s “Girl With The Flaxen Hair and “Mays’ three-movement “Fantasy for Cello, Piano and Trumpet,” an important new work. She is impassioned in Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise,” and has a stunning introductory moment in the first movement of the “Fantasy.” Mays and Stamm, collaborators for years, have developed an empathy that verges on the mysterious. Their duo numbers on this album are among their finest work. In the trio pieces, Alisa Horn complements their magic. She does not sound like a newcomer to improvisation.
The Inventions Trio will be a part of The Seasons Fall Festival next month, along with James Moody, Miguel Zenon, David Friesen, Karrin Allyson, Matt Wilson, Martin Wind, the Finisterra Trio and the Yakima Symphony Orchestra. I look forward to hearing them in live performance.

2007 is turning out to be a bonanza year for a Charles Mingus sextet that existed for a few months forty-three years ago. All of the band’s members are dead. Its music is gloriously alive. The high point so far is a remarkable two-CD set capturing a performance that might have been forgotten except for a lucky discovery. On a neglected shelf, Sue Mingus, indefatigable preserver of her husband’s legacy, found tapes of a concert the sextet played at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, in March of 1964. Blue Note has released the music as Charles Mingus Sextet with Eric Dolphy: Cornell 1964.
With the promethean bassist were pianist Jaki Byard, saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Clifford Jordan, trumpeter Johnny Coles and drummer Dannie Richmond. They were red-hot and full of joy at the Cornell engagement, which took place nearly a month earlier than the Town Hall concert that launched the band’s celebrated European tour. Fresh from eight weeks at the Five Spot Café in Mahattan, Mingus had whipped the sextet and its repertoire into shape, achieving a combination of togetherness and abandon that can result only from long, steady work on the bandstand. This is a further reminder that the restrictive 21st century economy of the music business robs jazz of opportunities for creative development. When is the last time a major jazz group had a two-months’ run in a club?

Charles Mingus, 1964
Mingus’s emotional downs were often horrendous, hard on his sidemen, his listeners and himself. I once wrote:

If Mingus rose to towering rages, he also reached the sustained joy achievable only by musicians of the highest rank. It is a fact that all the musicians he abused, all those he screamed at and humiliated in public — even those he assaulted — forgave him, worked with again, and in most cases gave him credit for their development.

His ups could generate glory, and that’s what we get in the Cornell concert. Mingus and the band are happy, even giddy. Their virtuosity is wrapped in good feelings. Exuding raw energy in his bass work, Mingus is the coach and cheerleader urging everyone on.
“Stride it now, baby, take it back a few years, uh huh,” Mingus mutters to Byard during the pianist’s second solo chorus on “Take the ‘A’ Train.” His urging is additional fuel for the stride and boogie woogie fire that Byard builds before he slides into bebop time. Clifford Jordan follows with five hallelujah choruses levitated by Ellingtonian unison puncuations from Dolphy and Coles. Dolphy delivers one of his patented bass clarinet solos, full of wild interval leaps, inflected with speech patterns and intimations of birdsong . Coles, a great trumpeter who never got his due, begins the round of “‘A’ Train” solos reflective and thoughtful, with a touch of irony in his quotes. The performance includes a bass-drums conversation between Mingus and Richmond, as remarkable for its hilarity as for its intensity. In the midst of it, one of them exclaims, “Ya-hoo,” an emblem of the elation this track–indeed, the entire concert–generates. Byard’s swirl of solo piano on “ATFW You,” a tribute to Art Tatum and Fats Waller, opens the concert and sets the tone of exuberance.
The state of grace remains throughout the CDs, even in half-hour versions of “Fables of Faubus” and “Meditations,” Mingus compositions that arose out of his frustration and anger over political and social conditions in America. He performed “Meditations” with the sextet at Town Hall, then almost nightly during the month-long tour of Europe in April of ’64, and later that year with different personnel at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco and at the Monterey Jazz Festival. It was recorded on several of those occasions, but I have never been more moved by its solemnity and power than in this concert debut. The other premiere at Cornell was “Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Blue Silk,” a piano piece that Mingus refined for the sextet during the Five Spot gig. As for “Faubus,” the racist Arkansas governor inspires ridicule and good-natured derision rather than anger in this performance loaded with punning quotes that include Mingus’s allusion to “Pick Yourself Up” and Byard’s whimsy in a series of variations on “Yankee Doodle.”
Mingus wrote the blues “So Long Eric” to wish Dolphy godspeed. Dolphy was to leave the group following the European tour. He and the others could not have known that in three months their astonishingly gifted colleague would be dead at thirty-six of a heart attack brought on by diabetes. Dolphy’s mercurial flute work is the centerpiece of “Jitterbug Waltz.” Mingus features Coles as “Johnny O’Coles, the only Irishman in the band” in a fast ¾ version of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” The news that he is going to play that unlikely tune and be the only soloist seems to come as a surprise to Coles. He scuffles a bit at the beginning, but by the end solves the piece’s Gaelic mysteries in a powerful chorus. It’s all great fun. And great music.
Rifftides reader Don Frese writes that he had the good fortune to hear the band live:

God, I was so lucky to see this group once at the 5 Spot just before the tour. It was a wonder the joint was still standing after, the performances were so intense. The second set was Parkeriana, the pastiche of Dizzy’s “Ow” and other tunes associated with Charlie Parker, and the last set was “Meditations.” I was in tears at the end.

Mingus Observed
Mr. Frese also provided a link to a video clip of the sextet rehearsing a portion of “Meditations” in Stockholm during the tour. To see and hear it, click here.
Mingus The Icon
Ten days from now, the Jazz Icons series of DVDs will release a new set of seven discs including the Mingus sextet videotaped during the ’64 tour of Scandinavia. Other DVDs in the release feature John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Dexter Gordon and Wes Montgomery.
Mingus’s Basses
Shortly after The New York Times article in late July about the widows of Charles Mingus and Art Pepper, Nigel Faigan, a Rifftides reader in New Zealand, wrote on the Jazz West Coast listserve:

I was interested to read about Susan Mingus and unreleased tapes. BUT I was dismayed to read that Mingus’s Bass is leaning in a corner of the apartment. CM owned a beautiful French bass – if that is sitting unplayed for all those years, it may be suffering. Could someone find out whether the bass is being played. Like any instrument, it will suffer from disuse.

The Rifftides staff asked Sue Graham Mingus. This is her reply:

Charles’s lion’s head bass is being played by Boris Kozlov, and has been for the past six or seven years. One bass was given to Red Callender and another to Aladar Pege, the Hungarian bassist. The only other bass here is the one whose right shoulder was cut off and reversed by a master Italian bass repairman who lived down the block from Charles’ studio on East 5th Street in the late Sixties and who accomplished this feat over a period of six months. Charles came up with this astonishing idea in order to facilitate bowing — this was his “bowing bass.”

–Sue Mingus

A Mingus Book

Further reading: Tonight at Noon, Sue Mingus’s absorbing account of her life with Charles.

The Rifftides Lead Of The Week Award goes to Steve Greenlee of the Boston Globe for this entry:

NEWPORT, R.I. — News bulletin: Major theft this weekend at Fort Adams State Park during the JVC Jazz Festival. Description of subject: Elderly gentleman, white hair, thick glasses, walks and speaks slowly, but plays piano like a madman. Date of birth: 12-6-20. Item stolen: the show.

Greenlee was describing Dave Brubeck. To read all of his review of Sunday at the Newport Festival, go here.
In the interest of survival, jazz festivals everywhere have loosened the admittance requirements for musicians and modified the already indistinct definition of jazz. There are no rules determining who qualifies as a jazz artist, so the Newport management might defend on business grounds its inclusion of B.B. King. Let’s call it a borderline compromise. But I must share Greenlee’s surprise at the presence on the Newport stage of the blues-rock-folk, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink performer Bruce Hornsby.
Next year at Newport: Ricky Skaggs, The Grateful Dead?

It was the kind of success that resists analysis, but it undoubtedly involved the contrast presented by (Dave) Brubeck and (Paul) Desmond, the pianist openly touching on the pensive, the boisterous, and the bombastic, the saxophonist a self-effacing master of a coolly detached, liquid lyricism.

–Stuart Broomer, pianist and critic, Amazon.com review

The word bombastic keeps coming up, as if it were some trap I keep falling into. Damn it, when I’m bombastic, I have my reasons. I want to be bombastic. Take it or leave it.

–Dave Brubeck, quoted in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.

allaboutjazz.com is out with its annual April 1st collection of reviews covering previously undiscovered jazz albums. It contains several surprising disclosures, including this one from Ken Dryden’s review of Paul Desmond’s Autumn Leaves: The Lost Vocal Session.

It was recorded during the making of the album 1975: The Duets with Dave Brubeck. Desmond, who at the time was seeing a young lady in her early twenties, wanted to make a special recording just for her. So the alto saxophonist sang for the first and only time on any record, something that he intended for her ears only, with Brubeck as his sole accompanist.

Dryden also unearthed Tonight At Noon, a buried CD of Jane Monheit singing works of Charles Mingus.

With a strong supporting cast of European musicians, Monheit tackles the difficult works of Charles Mingus on stage at Ronnie Scott’s in London. She nails “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat,” the moving tribute Mingus wrote in memory of Lester Young, offering a powerful interpretation that will silence earlier critics. She shows off her playful side with her adept scatting through the brisk arrangement of “Boogie Stop Shuffle,” trading licks with trumpeter Harley Herald.

And who would have guessed that Jerry Lee Lewis recorded an album in tribute to one of the great boogie-woogie pianists, The Killer Plays Boogie Woogie Classics by Meade Lux Lewis.
To find all of the AAJ April Fool’s reviews by Dryden, Jack Bowers, Jim Santella and others, click here.

Welcome to the final installment of messages from Rifftides readers sharing with all of us what you have been listening to.

·I enjoy reading your blog. The following is what have been listening to recently.
Dave Holland Quintet, Prime Directive. I have been listening to this album for the last few weeks. It makes me smile.
Tom Jobim & Elis Regina, Elis and Tom. I got this after I saw your link to the YouTube video of them singing “Waters of March”. Thank you for introducing me to this music.
Vanitha Ragunathan
Melbourne, Australia

·Recent music (5-CD changer):
Carmell Jones, Mosaic Select #2
J R Monterose/Tommy Flanagan, A Little Pleasure
Blue Mitchell, Blue’s Moods
TD (prefer anonymity)
Hardenburgh, NY (rural Catskills), USA

·Three most recent iPod additions:
Mahavishnu Orchestra, Inner Mounting Flame
Jose Gonzalez, Veneer
Los Lonely Boys, Diamonds EP
Jason Crane
Rochester, New York, USA

·Paul Desmond: Bridge Over Troubled Water. (A&M, now a
Japanese import). With Herbie Hancock playing dreamy
Rhodes piano, Ron Carter, Airto on drums (!) with Don
Sebesky arrangements, “Scarborough Fair” in 5/4!, all
tunes by Paul Simon. In my car: Bill Evans and Bob Brookmeyer (on two
pianos!) The Ivory Hunters, with Percy Heath and
Connie Kay.
Jan Stevens
Passaic County, New Jersey, USA

·Being old-fashioned and fond of fine rhythm sections, I have been
enjoying The Swing Kings, led by pianist Ray Kennedy, with Bucky
Pizzarelli on guitar and Ken Peplowski on clarinet. For a more mellow clarinet, I’ve enjoyed Easy to Remember, by Ken Peplowski, which has some soothing ballads, a vocal by Bobby Short and a nice version of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face,” a tune I’ve always liked.
Tracy Warner
Wenatchee, Washington, USA

·”Rising Sun” from the Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz Impressions of Japan.
Owen Cordle
Cary, North Carolina, USA

·I am currently listening to the Ray Charles and Betty Carter duet album and also to Ralph Sharon Plays the Harry Warren Songbook. Enjoy the blog very much.
Alonso Jasso
San Antonio, Texas, USA

·Skerik’s Syncopated Taint Septet
Ted Allen
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

·The Bill Holman Band Live What an arranger. What a band.
Dave Ramsey
Wenatchee, Washington, USA

Spent the weekend listening to Bird. Every time I return to the Master, I’m amazed at his music. The Royal Roost broadcasts kept taking my breath away all weekend.
Bird Lives , indeed!
– Jeff Rzepiela

·Here’s what I’m wearing out this summer.
Branford Marsalis, A Love Supreme Live
Branford Marsalis, Eternal
John Coltrane,Transition
Buddy DeFranco, Quartets w/Sonny Clark (Mosaic) [Out of print – DR]
Larance Marable,Tenorman
Brad Mehldau, Day is Done
Pee Wee Russell, Swingin’ with Pee Wee
Messiaen, Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus (both the Serkin and Aimard recordings)
Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time (Tashi)
Over the Rhine, Ohio
Over the Rhine, Drunkards Prayer
Meshell Ndgeocello, Comfort Woman
Zoot Sims At E.J.’s
Zoot Sims, Two Jims and a Zoot [Out of print. I demand an investigation – DR]
It’s been a helluva summer so far. I can’t get enough of this stuff.
I’ve been on the road a lot and I’ve absolutely worn this stuff out on my
iPod. I resisted the iPod for a long time but it is a beautiful
convenience for travel.
Sam Stephenson
Pittsboro, North Carolina, USA

That flurry ends our survey. You brought to my attention music I didn’t know existed; Over The Rhine and the Brad Mehldau-Renee Fleming collaboration, for instance, not to mention Skerk’s Syncopated Taint Sextet. I hope that you made discoveries, too. Maybe we’ll do this again sometime, but not until the Rifftides staff’s fingers, eyes and patience have recovered from entering the code for all of those links.
Thanks to everyone who responded. Good listening to you all.

Terri Hinte has been fired by Concord Records. Her name will not mean a thing to most of you, but her work has indirectly benefited serious jazz listeners for decades. The news of her dismissal is of intense interest to many writers because Ms. Hinte is the very model of what a record company publicist should be– deeply knowledgeable about the music and its players, intelligent, responsive, resourceful, helpful in countless substantive ways. She went to work for Fantasy, Inc. in 1973 and was its director of publicity since 1978.

The Fantasy complex of labels contains much of the most important recorded jazz from the 1940s on, as well as significant collections of blues and pop. In addition to Fantasy itself, Prestige, Riverside, Milestone, Contemporary, Pablo, Debut, Galaxy and Stax are under the Fantasy umbrella. Among the artists on those labels are Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Cal Tjader, Dave Brubeck, Paul Desmond, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Sarah Vaughan and Dizzy Gillespie. The list is much longer, but those names give you an idea of the importance of the Fantasy catalog.

Far from simply sending out review copies and news releases, as many companies do, Terri Hinte made it her business to know the extensive and varied catalog inside out and to understand the importance of the hundreds of musicians who recorded for its labels over more than five decades. Her newsletters and advisories were light years beyond the puffery that passes for publicity in too many precincts of the music business. They contained news that writers about the music, and those who broadcast it, could and did use, resulting in better informed listeners. Her phone calls often brought writers valuable story ideas. The catalogs she produced are valuable reference works packed with information.

Concord bought Fantasy eighteen months ago, fueling speculation among jazz professionals and listeners about what would happen to the invaluable recordings in the Fantasy archives. The dismissal of Ms. Hinte has only increased nervousness about Concord’s intentions concerning the future of those treasures. Concord’s timing was interesting; it let her go on the eve of her recognition with a special A-Team award from the Jazz Journalists Association, which named her “De Facto Curator of Fantasy Records.”

In the current issue of Billboard, reporter Dan Ouellette quotes Concord President Glen Barros.

“We’re committed to jazz and the jazz catalog we’ve invested in.” He adds that he has “tremendous respect” for Hinte as “a great caretaker, proponent and spokesperson” for jazz. “However, when companies merge, there are unfortunate consequences,” Barros says. “But I don’t think Terri’s departure means that we have any less respect for the Fantasy catalog.”

Many musicians, including Sonny Rollins, came to depend on Ms. Hinte for counsel and guidance. She has been Rollins’s only publicist for twenty-eight years. Now, she plans a career as a free lance writer, editor and publicist, continuing to work with Rollins. The Rifftides staff wishes her well.

For a sample of Ms. Hinte’s considerable writing ability, on a subject you may not expect, go here.

Twenty-nine years ago this weekend, Paul Desmond bid his girlfriend goodbye as she set off for London, urging her to have a good holiday. That was on Friday. He would be fine, he told her; he had friends coming the next day. But his only companion was the lung cancer that had ravaged him during the past year. His housekeeper found him dead on Monday, Memorial Day. Marian McPartland said, “It’s just like Paul to slip quietly away when everyone’s out of town, not to bother anybody.” Details of his passing—and his life—are in this book.
In a coincidence for which I am grateful, this morning I received a message guiding me to a newly discovered video clip of Paul playing “Take Five.” It was made at Lincoln Center in 1972 in a concert reuniting him with Dave Brubeck. Alan Dawson is the drummer, Jack Six the bassist. Unlike most of the videos of Desmond that pop up here and there, this one is in color. It lingers after the piece ends while Paul bows and thanks the audience. I have watched it three times. I gave up hard liquor many years ago, but I am going watch the clip once more tonight, make a toast and have a sip of Dewars. If you would like to join me, go here.

Jackie McLean
Jackie McLean died in Hartford, Connecticut on the last day of March. He was 74. When he was a teenager, McLean’s goal in life was to sound just like Charlie Parker on the alto saxophone. Despite his determination to be a Bird clone, he became one of the most recognizable of the post-Parker alto saxophonists. There was a distinguishing cry in his playing, achieved in part by tuning his horn a tad sharp and in part by building on his deep love of the blues. His first recording was with Miles Davis on the Dig date in 1951. McLean worked with Davis through the early 1950s, was on a memorable album as part of George Wallington’s quintet in 1955, recorded on his own for Jubilee and Prestige and in 1959 made the first of his thirty-one albums for Blue Note.
If you have yet to discover Jackie McLean, the few albums listed here will constitute an introduction to his adventurous and exhuberant music.
Lights Out
Jackie’s Bag
A Fickle Sonance
Destination Out!
Let Freedom Ring
Oscar Treadwell
On March 10, we reported that the exceptional jazz broadcaster Oscar Treadwell had returned to the air in Cincinnati and on the internet. The news staff of WXVU, his station, sent this report, dated April 2.

Long time Cincinnati jazz host Oscar Treadwell has died. He began his career in 1947 in Reading, Pennsylvania. His longtime love of jazz led to friendships with many musicians including Dave Brubeck, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Thelonious Monk wrote a song for him called “Oska T.” Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie wrote “An Oscar for Treadwell” in honor of their friend. OT began broadcasting in Cincinnati in 1962 on WZIP. He also broadcast on WNOP and WGUC. His Sunday night program on WVXU has been on the air since last August. He often weaved poetry and vintage interviews into his program. Tonight at nine you can hear an interview Lee Hay did with OT when he was returning to the airwaves. His regular Sunday night program will follow that interview tonight. Treadwell was 79.

To hear the interview and then Jazz With OT, go here at 9:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time tonight. The station also has an archive of Treadwell’s broadcasts.
For more about OT, go to the Oscar Treadwell website.