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Following a succession of deaths in the top ranks of jazz, it is a pleasure to tell you about an elderly musician who is getting attention because he is alive.The veteran rhythm guitarist and teacher Lawrence Lucie has passed the century mark. Here is an excerpt from today’s New York Times story about Lucie.

On the eve of his 100th birthday on Monday night, Mr. Lucie, sitting in a wheelchair, could not go 20 seconds without receiving an embrace, a pat on the back or a handshake from one of the many jazz connoisseurs gathered at the offices of the musicians’ union in Midtown Manhattan. The well-wishers were there to pay homage to his legacy.
And it is quite impressive.
He is the last living person to have performed with Duke Ellington at New York’s legendary Cotton Club. He played with Benny Carter at the Apollo Theater in 1934, the year it opened its doors to black customers. He played with Louis Armstrong for several years and was the best man at his wedding.

To read the whole thing, go here.

As nearly everyone in the jazz community knows by now, Joel Dorn died of a heart attack on Monday at the age of 65. Joel’s work as a producer covered a broad swath of popular music, but many of us admired him for the integrity of his efforts with jazz artists when he was a key figure at Atlantic Records and in his ventures as an independent producer. Among the musicians who respected him for his knowledge, taste, guidance and quiet, wacky humor were Roland Kirk, Charles Mingus, Fathead Newman and Eddie Harris.

Joel Dorn
Later, with his own label, 32, and for Rhino Records, he set high standards for jazz reissues. Dorn provided CD booklet preambles that were slightly off the wall and always perceptive. Here’s part of one for a Paul Desmond compilation:

To me, he’s always been a painter with a palette full of pastels and a real soft brush.He seems to whisper into the horn, never saying a wrong word. In all the years I was in the studio or hanging out in joints, I never saw Desmond. Never even met him. But then I never ran into Monet in those places, either.

During the 1970s Dorn and I encountered one another now and then in New York. He was a stimulating companion with sharp perceptions and a dry wit. One evening following a record release party, we were walking east on 44th street with the trombonist Eddie Bert and the writer Burt Korall. We were discussing the quality of reviews in Down Beat. I forget who delivered the last installment of the rant before Joel capped it. Affecting a Groucho Marx delivery, he said, “You pay five dollars for a review, you get a five-dollar review.”
Adjusted for inflation, the pay for reviews has gone up, but the Dorn principle still applies to an appalling percentage of them.
For a thorough and, as far as I can tell, accurate, report on his productive career, click here. For examples of his superb reissue work, try this Paul Desmond collection or these surveys of the Atlantic recordings of Rahssan Roland Kirk and Yusef Lateef.
Joel Dorn, 1942-2007.

Frank Morgan, an alto saxophonist who lost and then found himself, died yesterday in Minneapolis, his hometown. He was a few days short of his seventy-fourth birthday. In his last two decades he was productive and relatively contented, rid of his bedeviling habits and living with family members who cared about him.

Here is some of what I wrote about Morgan for one of his last CDs.

At eighteen, fully immersed in the L.A. jazz scene, he recorded with Wardell Gray and in his early twenties made his own album with Gray, Conte Candoli, Carl Perkins, Leroy Vinnegar, Howard Roberts and Larance Marable as his sidemen. His talent and hard work, his adoration and study of Charlie Parker, resulted in his sounding amazingly like his idol. Parker had burned himself out by then, dead of self-abuse in the spring of 1955 at the age of thirty-four. Morgan appeared to be headed for the same end. For the next thirty years, his addiction had him in prison much of the time. He did not entirely disappear from music, but to most listeners he was just a bright young alto player on a few old LPs and an entry in The Encyclopedia of Jazz. He became a featured soloist in bands at San Quentin and Chino and, later, with other recovering addicts at Synanon.
By the mid-1980s, he had had enough. He told writer David Grogan, “I couldn’t be Little Frankie, the child prodigy, forever, and I think I preferred facing defeat by heroin to facing whether I could really cut the mustard. Then I ended up falling in love with my drug habit.” He shook off the habit and wrote finis to his prison career. In 1985, he found himself in a recording studio. It didn’t take long for the first album of the new Morgan era to become a success. He’s been going strong ever since.

Morgan recovered from a stroke in 1998 and continued his career. Late last month, his doctors discovered that he had colon cancer. It was inoperable. He moved out of a hospital and spent his last days at home. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, he knew that he was dying and said to his manager, “Ain’t it great to be alive?”

Tom Harrell, Dado Moroni, Humanity (Abeat). In six duets, the incomparable American trumpeter and the veteran Italian pianist achieve the most elusive of artistic goals, beauty through simplicity. Moroni’s title tune is good company for five classic standards. I’m glad that this is a CD, not a vinyl record, or I would surely wear it out listening repeatedly to Harrell’s solo on “Darn That Dream.”
The Harry Allen-Joe Cohn Quartet, Music from Guys and Dolls (Arbors). Not that he’s ever gone out of style, but musicians seem to be rediscovering Frank Loesser. Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls” songs are among his best. Allen and Cohn do nothing innovative or revolutionary with the songs from Loesser’s unforgettable Broadway musical. They simply improvise on them with affecting verve and imagination. Allen’s tenor saxophone often evokes comparisons with Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Ben Webster. In this collection I hear a substantial Al Cohn component in his playing. Maybe something has rubbed off in his recent intensive work alongside Cohn’s guitarist son Joe. Rebecca Kilgore and Eddie Erickson are guests on several of the pieces, singly and together. Erickson is good. Kilgore is remarkable, one of the best interpreters of superior songs since Frank Sinatra.
Jennifer Higdon, City Scape, Concerto for Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Robert Spano (Telarc). My friend Jack Brownlow had a sixth sense for seeking out first-rate contemporary classical composers. Shortly before he died this fall, he sent me this CD containing two imposing works by Higdon, a protégé of Ned Rorem. He attached a post-it note reading, “24 Stars–a Masterpiece!” Bruno was not given to hyperbole. It’s a masterpiece.
Steve Nelson, Sound-Effect (HighNote). The vibes player with the weightless touch and endless harmonic resourcefulness teams up with a dream rhythm section of pianist Mulgrew Miller, basist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash. The program includes, on the one hand, a lightning “You and the Night and the Music,” on the other Nelson’s impressionist ballad “Sound Essence.” Between those extremes of mood there are Freddie Hubbard’s waltz “Up Jumped Spring,” Ahmad Jamal’s “Night Mist Blues” in an irresistible medium groove, “Desifinado” perking along on Nash’s bossa nova beat, and the lovely, little-known James Williams waltz “Arioso.” A satisfying album.

Marc Myers’ current venture on his blog JazzWax is a conversation with the respected writer Dan Morgenstern, who says:

You have to be very careful not to let the bonds between you and musicians cloud what you’re saying. If you’re a writer, your responsibility always is to the reader or listener. If you shortchange your audience, you’ll lose your credibility. I tried to avoid such conflicts by simply not writing about bad performances unless I had to. At that point, I’d always frame my remarks by saying that the artist didn’t have a particularly good night rather than completely trashing him.

Dan Morgenstern
Morgenstern is director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University. This year, he won a Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, only the second writer to be so honored; Nat Hentoff received the award in 2004. To read all of Dan’s JazzWax interview, which includes news about a Louis Armstrong CD never before issued, go here.

Jazz historian Ted Gioia has launched an ambitious new web site. It is called Jazz.com. It encompasses a blog, a forum and an interview section. Its Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians feature has enormous potential for listeners, musicians and researchers, indeed for the entire jazz community. In its initial appearance, the Encyclopedia is missing a number of notable musicians, but it solicits readers to suggest improvements. As it expands and undergoes refinements, it could become invaluable. Welcome to the web, jazz.com.

Rifftides reader Duncan Reid responds to our recent suggestion that trumpeter Jack Sheldon gets less recognition than his talents warrant.

A thought on Jack Sheldon’s lack of recognition. Like Cal Tjader, Vince Guaraldi, Shorty Rogers, Jim Hall, Conte Candoli, Paul Horn, Jimmy Giuffre and many others, he is white and based on the West Coast. Many critics, mostly on the East Coast and in Europe, have felt and still feel that white musicians do not play authentic jazz. The late French critic Hughes Panassie said just that. Moreover, I was told by the late Al Mckibbon that Leonard Feather’s assessment of Cal was as follows, “Sunny and Californian with no weight at all.”
Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis are among those with that attitude. You’ll remember, as I assume you viewed the film Jazz, that aside from a brief segment on Brubeck and a few passing comments on Mulligan and a few others, Mr. Burns completely ignored West Coast jazz. In my opinion, much of what was said about white musicians was racist and derogatory. For instance, (historian) Gerald Early said that all the greatest jazz musicians are black because, “you got to have that feeling, you know, you got to have that feeling.” (Critic) Nat Hentoff said, “West Coast jazz is white and bland.” Of course, neither man was speaking the truth, just their perception. Wynton Marsalis just avoided talking about white musicians, save for Bix and a brief comment on Goodman. That is quite an accomplishment, considering the film lasted 18 1/2 hours. All of this lit a fire under me and is one reason I started writing a biography on Cal Tjader three years ago. Hopefully I can finish sometime next year.

Ramsey comments:
I agree that, despite the continued availability of most of his best work, Tjader’s contributions are too little recognized. A thorough Tjader biography would be an important addition to the literature. Whatever animus toward Tjader Al McKibbon may have attributed to Leonard Feather, in the 1960 edition of The Encyclopedia of Jazz, Feather wrote,

Despite his increasing identification with Latin music, Tjader is still active in regular jazz and is a first-class performer with, as John S. Wilson has said, “a light touch and a propulsive approach.”

Certainly, Ken Burns’ Jazz series, for all of its virtures, had willful blind spots, too many to enumerate. To point out a few, Burns gave the slightest acknowledgement of the existence of Jack Teagarden and Bill Evans, white musicians of enormous importance. He was, however, an equal opportunity slighter; he also all but ignored Teddy Wilson and Benny Carter.
Jim Hall and Jimmy Giuffre have not been based on the West Coast in decades. They have both lived in the northeastern United States for more than thirty years. Paul Horn lives in Arizona and British Columbia. Shorty Rogers, Vince Guaraldi and Conte Candoli are no longer alive. But, as Robert Benchley said when he was informed of the death of George Gershwin, I don’t have to believe it if I don’t want to.

Marcus Printup, Emil Viklický Trio, Jazz na HradÄ• (Jazz at Prague Castle) (Multisonic). Trumpeter Printup spent a substantial part of the year touring Europe with pianist Viklický’s impressive group. They reached a peak of intensity in this concert introduced by Czech President Vaclav Klaus. Printup, Viklický, the astonishing bassist FrantiÅ¡ek Uhlíř and drummer Laco Tropp shine in extended performances of four Viklický compositions plus “Dolphin Dance” and “Body and Soul.”
Jon Hamar, Hereafter (Jon Hamar). Authority, power and lyricism from an impressive young bassist, with John Hansen and Dawn Clement sharing piano duties, Jon Wikan and Byron Vannoy alternating on drums. The CD includes John Lennon’s “Julia,” nicely arranged by Clement, and Astor Piazolla’s “Todo Fue,” but Hamar’s compositions predominate. It requires clarity of conception and execution to successfully open an album with an unaccompanied bass solo. Hamar has both. He gets your attention and keeps it.
Alexander String Quartet, Fragments, vol. 2: Shostakovich Quartets 8-15 (Foghorn Classics). In these demanding, rewarding last quartets by the Russian genius, the Alexanders exercise their considerable virtuosity without wearing technique on their sleeves. The flow and passion of their interpretations put this collection on a level with the best performances of what may well prove to be Shostakovich’s most enduring music.

Rifftides reader Ken Deifik writes:

Thanks for pointing out the Bill Evans Newsletter availability. It’s not easy to download the entire set of 26 PDFs, so I’ve uploaded an archive of them to this web site.
They will be available for only a few days. It’s a large archive, over 300 Megs, so dialup users might want to consider just reading the PDFs online.

Thanks to Mr. Deifik for his helpfulness.

Glenn Mitchell’s account of the 90th birthday party for Howard Rumsey a month or so ago at Catalina’s in Los Angeles included this about Jack Sheldon’s appearance with his sextet:

They played a favorite of Rumsey’s, a tune that bassist Jimmy Blanton (his all-time favorite) was remembered in, “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me.” They continued with “Jumping At The Woodside” (same changes as “I’ve Got Rhythm”) and “I Can’t Get Started,” which Sheldon sang very well. Sheldon is not only a great horn player and vocalist but a comedian as well. He roasted Rumsey for a number of minutes, telling stories from the past and kidding him with, “This is your party, Howard, wake up, ” having fun with him about being 80 and surprised with 90 being actually realized. He acknowledged two great qualities of Rumsey — his kindness and generosity.

That triggered a vision from the past. In 1954, I drove from Seattle to Southern California on spring break from college. On a Sunday afternoon in Hermosa Beach I visited the Lighthouse, where Rumsey headed the famous band of all-stars named after the club. Between sets, he and I struck up a conversation. Rumsey said, “Be sure to stick around. A kid from the neighborhood is going to sit in. I think you’ll like him.” The kid was Jack Sheldon. I liked him. Ever since, I have wondered that a trumpet player so accomplished, so admired and respected by other musicians, has never got his due from critics or the jazz audience at large. Maybe it’s because of his comedy, which can be beyond raunchy. Maybe it’s because he sings. Maybe it’s because he has an acting career on the side. But make no mistake, for half a century Sheldon has been a formidable trumpet player.

Jack Sheldon
Here is a rare video example of his singing and playing. It was at a club in New Orleans. The rhythm section is Dave Frishberg, piano; Dave Stone, bass; Frankie Capp, drums; and John Pisano, guitar.
Googling, I found a promo for a documentary about Sheldon. I’ve turned up no information about when it will materialize.
Sheldon is the trumpeter who breaks your heart with the beauty of his playing in the main title and recurring “Shadow of Your Smile” theme of the motion picture The Sandpiper, a film whose only distinction is Johnny Mandel’s music. To hear some of it, including Sheldon’s solos, click here.
Jack Sheldon turned seventy-six a few days ago and seems to be flourishing. Hooray.

Rifftides reader and Bill Evans specialist Jan Stevens alerts us to a trove of Evans material that until now existed only in print archives. He reports that Win Hinkle, editor of Letter From Evans, has made all issues of his newsletter available free on the internet. Hinkle’s subscription newsletter was published from 1989 to 1994. It included interviews with Evans, transcriptions of his solos, reviews, and contributions from or interviews with musicians close to Evans. Among those musicians were Chuck Israels, Kenny Werner, Hal Galper and Jack Reilly. For details, go to Mr. Stevens’ website, The Bill Evans Webpages.

Here is a listening tip for Friday, December 7, gleaned from a Dave Brubeck Quartet listserve:

To celebrate pianist Dave Brubeck’s 87th birthday, Alyn Shipton introduces part of a conversation with Brubeck recorded during his quartet’s 40th anniversary tour of the UK, in which he selects some of his favourite recordings from a catalogue that includes over 100 albums.
As well as such perennial favourites as “Take Five” by his historic quartet with Paul Desmond, Brubeck also looks at his collaborations with Gerry Mulligan, the London Symphony Orchestra and his present day band with saxophonist Bobby Militello.

That will be on BBC Radio 3 at 10:30 pm London time. In the US that’s 5:30 pm EDT, 2:30 pm PDT. For internet listeners, BBC 3 has streaming audio.

Wes Montgomery, Live in ’65 (Jazz Icons). Anyone interested in guitar at the highest level will be fascinated by this DVD. If you are intrigued by the democratic, cooperative nature of jazz, you will relish the first segment. Sitting in a television studio in Holland with a rhythm section he is apparently meeting for the first time, Montgomery walks pianist Pim Jacobs through a tune whose name the guitarist doesn’t know. The song turns out to be “The End of a Love Affair.” Montgomery is relaxed and articulate. He is definite and specific about the altered harmonic progression he wants, spelling out the chords both instrumentally and verbally.
As Pat Metheny emphasizes in his erudite liner notes, this is not the instinctual primitive genius of the myth that has been built up around Montgomery’s memory. Montgomery knows what he is doing and articulates it in specific musical terms. He and Jacobs negotiate the nature and placement of the chords, and the band comes to agreement about how to proceed. Montgomery is at ease with Jacobs, Pim’s bassist brother Ruud and the energetic young drummer Han Bennink, who was becoming the ubiquitous and eclectic force in European music that he remains today. They clearly adore Montgomery and seem a bit stunned at finding themselves playing with him. But play they do, soaring on the energy and thrust that Montgomery inspires with his virtuosity. They nail not only “The End of a Love Affair,” but also a fine version of “Nica’s Dream” and a spontaneous blues. From his smiles, it is clear that Montgomery is pleased.
Two days later in a TV studio in Belgium, Montgomery is with a familiar rhythm section, pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Arthur Harper and drummer Jimmy Lovelace. If there were runthroughs, we don’t see them. The quartet cooks through five pieces including Coltrane’s “Impressions” and Montgomery’s challenging “Jingles.” As in Holland, excellent camera work and direction give the viewer vantage points from which to observe Montgomery’s celebrated use of his thumb rather than a pick. His unorthodox technique, his octave lines, his polyphony, his harmonic and rhythmic daring have merged into standard jazz guitar language, but forty-two years ago they still seemed revolutionary. This is a rare opportunity to observe details of his approach. Guitarists will be studying the closeups of Montgomery’s hands on the strings and fingerboard for a long time.
The final segment on the disc is from March, 1965, recorded in London under somewhat contrived conditions. Saxophonist and entrepeneur Ronnie Scott, with his back to Montgomery, explains the musician and his music as Montgomery sits like a studio prop. Scott does his part to perpetuate the legend of Montgomery as unable to read music. If that was technically correct on some level, Montgomery was fully schooled in detailed understanding of harmony, as he proved in Holland. A bit more subdued than in the earlier segments, Montgomery nonetheless plays beautifully with the rhythm section that was accompanying him at Scott’s club; pianist Stan Tracey, bassist Rick Laird and drummer Jackie Dougan. There are versions of “Twisted Blues” and “Here’s That Rainy Day” to compare with those a month earlier in Belgium. We also see and hear workouts on “Full House” and “Four on Six,” Tracey’s solo on the latter disclosing his appreciation of Thelonious Monk.
One of the most telling sequences showing Montgomery’s thumb at work comes behind the DVD’s closing credits as he plays “West Coast Blues.” This disc is a highlight of the superb second batch of Jazz Icons DVDs.

Have you ever wondered what happened to Hal Gaylor?
Oh. You don’t know about Hal Gaylor.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Gaylor was one of the most respected bassists in jazz, working with a range of musicians. Here is what I mean by range; his colleagues included Chico Hamilton, Paul Bley, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Clark Terry, Roger Kellaway, Lena Horne, Mel Torme, Anita O’Day, Jeremy Steig and Benny Goodman. There were many others of equal stature. Later, he was in the rhythm section that backed Tony Bennett. For a time, his trio with Walter Norris and Billy Bean collaborated with Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry. Here is what I wrote about The Trio when its only album was reissued on CD in 1999.

Of the many groups that have caused ripples on the surface of jazz and then sunk out of sight, none was more intriguing or seemed to have greater musical possibilities than The Trio. It was a cooperative group whose members poured all of their considerable abilities into creating a piano-guitar-bass group that was much more than just another wannabe Nat Cole Trio. Conceived by bassist Hal Gaylor, it was also an outlet for pianist Walter Norris and guitarist Billy Bean. The trio’s intricacies were reminiscent of Cole at times but also of the Red Norvo Trio and of adventurous groups like those of Lennie Tristano. Not long after this recording, Bean disappeared into his native Philadelphia. Gaylor left jazz to become a certified drug counselor. Only Norris remains active in music. The Trio is a valuable reminder of a splendid group.

As Robert Gados reported over the weekend in the Middletown (New York) Times Herald-Record, Gaylor did not leave jazz on a whim.

THE MUSIC STOPPED FOR GAYLOR, who lives in Scotchtown, in 1973, when a virus left him deaf in the right ear. He was 44 years old. He went to a doctor in San Francisco because his ear was clogged. The doctor told him, “The cochlea is dead.” Tough news to hear for anyone; for a top jazz musician, a professional death sentence.

To read all of Gados’s story, go here.
Then go to Gaylor’s own web site to read more details of his life as musician, architect and artist, and to see his portraits of musicians.

Hal Gaylor wearing
his portrait of
Ornette Coleman
I asked the writer Gene Lees and the pianist Roger Kellaway for a few words about Gaylor.

Lees: I first knew him in Montreal when we were kids, twenty-three or twenty-four years old. He was already established. I was working as a reporter and hanging out in the jazz joints. He was a great man and a great musician. We have been extremely close friends from that time ’til this. An amazingly multi-talented guy. He’s like a brother to me. I haven’t seen him in years, but we talk on the phone all the time.

Kellaway: Hal was in my first recorded trio, when he was with Tony Bennett. I just loved his playing. He was a fabulous bassist, very musical, and swung his ass off. We’ve made the masters of those recordings into a CD. We haven’t released it.

That’s something to look forward to.