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The Rifftides webmaster received a communiqué from the distinguished songwriter Mickey Leonard (pictured) about the Fred Astaire-Rita Hayworth videos in the next exhibit.

This is the absolute best thing I’ve ever seen/heard with “Stayin’
Alive” & those two spectacular dancers. Bravo for such a wonderful thing to do. Without question, fantastic!!! Thank you from a most appreciative composer who generally doesn’t like anything. THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

Mr. Leonard—described by critic Will Friedwald as “a beloved staple of the jazz and cabaret scenes”—is the composer of “I’m All Smiles,” “Why Did I Choose You” and “Not Exactly Paris,” among other standard songs. His arrangement of Luiz Eca’s “The Dolphin” is the highlight of the 1969 album From Left to Right, in which he collaborated with pianist Bill Evans. Here is what I wrote about that Evans track in a Down Beat magazine review.

Evans’ solo on “The Dolphin” is one of his finest, on a par with his best work in the Portraits and Explorations albums with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. Leonard’s orchestration in the “After” version complements perfectly what Evans and the rhythm section had improvised in the “Before.” The lily is enhanced by the gilding as Leonard harmonizes Evans’ solo for flutes and piccolo, with the improvised piano line in the lead. It is a moment of absolute beauty.

For further appreciation of Mickey Leonard, see this 2011 Will Friedwald article in the online Wall Street Journal.

Article 235, section 17-a of the Web Logger Handbook:

When other duties preclude blogging, inspiration flags or the dog days of summer make you listless and you haven’t posted lately, just tap dance or play a drum solo.

How about both. And how about if I get someone else to do them.

Fred Astaire from A Damsel in Distress, 1937.

On July 17 Lionel Ferbos broke his own record as the world’s oldest working jazz musician. The New Orleans trumpeter is now 102. Ferbos celebrated by playing a gig at the Palm Court, where he has performed for a substantial number of his ten decades. This shot of Ferbos recently won Skip Bolen the Jazz Journalists Association’s photo of the year award.

Associated Press writer Stacy Plaisance’s birthday article about Ferbos (pronounced Fair-boh) quotes him on his longevity.

“Isn’t that something?” he said. “But you know I never dreamed of that. I figured if I could go to about 50 I’d be doing good.”

To read all of Plaisance’s story, go here. For a Rifftides post about Ferbos when he was a mere 99, with a video that ends with his good advice, go here.

This week, jazz lost two artists who made substantial contributions to the music. The vibraharpist Peter Appleyard was one of Canada’s best known jazz musicians. Laurie Frink was a New York jazz community insider, honored as a masterly lead trumpeter, revered as a teacher. Born in England in 1928, Appleyard (pictured left) moved to Canada in his early twenties, established himself in Toronto’s jazz community and became a popular figure on Canadian television. He toured for nearly a decade as a featured soloist with Benny Goodman’s band. Go here for an obituary.

Ms. Frink, born in 1951, excelled as a trumpeter and as a teacher of trumpeters. In addition to her jazz brass section work with Benny Goodman, Maria Schneider, Gerry Mulligan, the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis band and other bands, she was in demand in the orchestra pits of Broadway. Among her students were Dave Douglas, Randy Sandke and John McNeil. Nate Chinen’s New York Times obituary of Ms. Frink quotes Douglas as saying that getting together with her “was like a combination of therapy, gym instruction and music lesson.” To read the article, go here.

The gain: Bill Kirchner is going back on the air as a part of the Jazz From The Archives program originated by WBGO-FM in Newark, New Jersey, and streamed on the internet. After Kirchner’s move across the river to New York, his transportation needs resulted in his leaving the show in January. As he explains in his announcement, that situation has changed. His first program of the new era is about a splendid singer seldom heard these days:

Well, with a lotta help from two engineer friends, I’m back in the broadcasting saddle again. Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for Jazz From The Archives. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).

Mary Ann McCall (1919-1994) is one of the nearly-forgotten great jazz singers. She had her greatest moment of fame in 1948-1949 with Woody Herman’s Second Herd. She then recorded four obscure albums before spending the rest of her career in Los Angeles, bartending and occasionally singing in airport lounges.

We’ll hear McCall with the Herman big band, and then on a 1958 album with an all-star rhythm section (Mal Waldron, Jimmy Raney, Oscar Pettiford, Jerry Segal) alternating with a chamber quartet (Walter Trampler, Charles McCracken, Raney, and George Duvivier) arranged by Bob Brookmeyer, Teddy Charles, Raney, and Bill Russo.

To fill out the hour, there will be two selections by the fine jazz-influenced cabaret singer (and Benny Carter protégée) Felicia Sanders (1922-1975).

The show will air this Sunday, July 21, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time.

NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at http://www.wbgo.org/.

For many years, among the Other Places on the Rifftides blogroll has been Jason Crane’s The Jazz Session. Crane uses his radio experience, knowledge of music and focused curiosity to help readers and listeners understand jazz and jazz musicians. That is, he did until a few months ago when circumstances ended five years of The Jazz Session. The program had guests—hundreds of them—as varied as Maria Schneider, Sonny Rollins, Marian McPartland, Wadada Leo Smith, Terry Gibbs, The Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Darcy James Argue. Now, Crane is planning a comeback and asking for help by way of a Kickstarter campaign. I asked him what brought about the hiatus and why he’s going public to get the show back on the road. Here is some of his reply:

I took some time off from the show and moved from New York to Alabama for financial reasons. I loved asking questions that got beyond the mechanics and uncovered the passion, the thought, the inspiration behind the music. Why do musicians do what they do? Answering that question was at the heart of the 417 episodes that aired from 2007-2012.

In looking back at the show, I’m still convinced that finding out what inspires jazz musicians is a valuable mission, and I’d like to get back to doing that work. The show had listeners in three-dozen countries and members in two-dozen. It was downloaded more than 2.5 million times. I think that means that people find this work valuable. And that’s why I’m asking folks to support it.

When I was on Crane’s show a few years ago, I thoroughly enjoyed Jason’s company and the experience. Each time I’ve heard The Jazz Session, I have learned from him and his guests. Crane’s page at the Kickstarter website (that’s a link) has a video of his pitch and details about the campaign.

Most of the obituaries of Leonard Garment mention his background as a jazz musician but not the key role he played in arranging White House honors for Duke Ellington. The former White House adviser died July 13 at the age of 89. Garment’s clarinet and tenor saxophone skills helped pay his way through college and law school. His gigs included a stint in Woody Herman’s saxophone section, but he opted for a career in law and public service. For a full review of Garment’s career, see his New York Times obituary.

Before Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968, he and Garment were partners in a Washington, DC, law firm. After Nixon’s election, Garment served in the White House as a special consultant on, among other matters, civil rights and the arts. His most visible role was defending Nixon in the Watergate scandal that erupted in 1972 and in the impeachment process that led to the president’s resignation. Noted for his integrity, Garment convinced Nixon not to destroy the oval office tapes that proved damning in the Senate Watergate hearings and investigation. Ultimately, he played a key role in persuading the president that he must resign.

Early in Nixon’s term, Willis Conover of the Voice of America suggested that the president throw Ellington a 70th birthday party at the White House. Garment and fellow Nixon adviser Charles McWhorter got the president’s approval. Conover assembled an all-star tribute band: Bill Berry and Clark Terry, trumpets; Urbie Green and J.J. Johnson, trombones; Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan, saxophones; Hank Jones, piano; Jim Hall, guitar; Milt Hinton, bass; and Louie Bellson, drums; Joe Williams and Mary Mayo, vocals. Dave Brubeck, Earl Hines, Willie the Lion Smith and Billy Taylor also played. Conover MCed the concert that followed Nixon’s presentation to Ellington of the National Medal of Freedom. The President then accompanied the birthday singalong. The US Information Agency, when there still was a USIA, filmed the event. This clip from an unnamed documentary is all that I have been able to turn up.

Following the concert, the East Room was cleared of chairs. Mr. and Mrs. Nixon retired but invited everyone to stay and enjoy themselves, which many did until 2:45 a.m. A jam session developed. Some of it is described in my notes for the CD of the music released 33 years later, including Garment’s part in it.

During the session, all of the pianists from the concert reappeared. Marian McPartland, Leonard Feather and George Wein also played the East Room Steinway. McPartland joined the Lion in a duet. Billy Eckstine, Joe Wiliams and Lou Rawls traded blues choruses. Leonard Garment, once a tenor saxophonist with Woody Herman, found himself jamming on clarinet with Mulligan, J.J. Johnson, Urbie Green and Dizzy Gillespie. In his book Crazy Rhythm, he wrote,

Years would pass before Benny Goodman would forgive me for not instructing him to bring his horn, but if he played, how could I?

Most of the all-stars sat in, and so did the Navy musicians. At one point, the rhythm section was made up of Marines, looking in their scarlet tunics like a contingent of Canadian Mounties.

There has been nothing like it at the White house—or anywhere else—since.

In his last two decades, Garment devoted much of his time and energy to establishment of the National Museum of Jazz in Harlem. He was its chairman until 2005.

Today is the 10th anniversary of Terry Teachout’s weblog About Last Night. For much longer than his digital decade, I have been amazed by the quantity, quality and insightfulness of Terry’s work on the web, in The Wall Street Journal, in Commentary and in his books (his biography of Duke Ellington is on the verge of publication). No one can be that prolific, that fast, that accurate, that concise, that good a writer. But he is. I would be offering him hearty congratulations even if he hadn’t been the one who encouraged and inspired me to start Rifftides eight (!) years ago. In his reflections on the first ten years, he writes,

I’ve posted something–if only an almanac entry–every weekday for a decade. Sometimes it’s a burden, but mostly it’s a pleasure.

It’s always a pleasure to read Terry, and to learn from him. I look forward to his next decade.

The light response stimulated by the news of Bengt Hallberg’s death was puzzling. Go here for the Rifftides post about the great Swedish pianist. In his later years, Hallberg used restraint and conservatism that sometimes disappointed listeners who became devoted to him for his refined bebop sensibility of the 1950s. Nonetheless, he never played with less than intriguing harmonic ingenuity and the rhythmic flow that distinguished his work from the beginning. Those unfamiliar with Hallberg’s work will find revelations in volume 7 of Svensk Jazzhistoria, Caprice Records’ massive survey of Swedish jazz from 1943 to 1969. In a 2001 Jazz Times review, I wrote about Hallberg’s work in the album.

Eleven of the album’s 65 tracks feature Hallberg as leader, arranger or sideman and together constitute perhaps the most complete disclosure under one cover of the extent of his talent. A pianist admired in Europe and the US for his fluency, touch and harmonic acuity, he wrote music with the same sense of discovery that he brought to his solos. His 1953 concert recording of “All the Things You Are” shows how completely Hallberg understood and absorbed postwar jazz developments and blended them into the cool classicism of his piano style. His 1954 “Blue Grapes,” for an octet, is a meld of blues sonorities, folk harmonies and a stately, almost baroque, sense of calm.

Further surprises and satisfactions concerning Hallberg meet our eyes and ears in video of a 1967 rehearsal for an NDR (North German Broadcasting) Jazzworkshop concert. The band is the cream of the Swedish jazz community of the day: Bosse Broberg, trumpet; Palle Mikkelborg (Danish), trumpet & fluegelhorn; Ake Persson, trombone; Lennart Aberg, tenor sax; Arne Domnérus, alto sax; Erik Nilsson, baritone sax; Rune Gustafson, guitar; Bengt Hallberg, piano; Georg Riedel, bass; Egil Johannsen, drums.

The pieces they play are, in this order, “Gubben und Källinge” (Riedel); ‘Vals” (Hallberg); “Ad Libitum” (Riedel); “Refrain” (Hallberg); “Hanid,” which is the 1925 hit “Dinah” (Axt, Lewis, Young) spelled backward; and “Django” (John Lewis). In the last two pieces, Hallberg gives full rein to his arranging craftsmanship and imagination. At the keyboard, he frees his inner Cecil Taylor. It is not our custom to embed long videos, but this was irresistible. If you understand Swedish, that’s all to the good, but you won’t need it to get the drift of the music and musicianship of Bengt Hallberg and his friends.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (it was called New Orleans) I took a break from two television and several radio newscasts a day and also broadcast a weekly program called Jazz Review. It did what the name suggests. Once in a while I deep-sixed the review format and put together a special called “It’s All Music.” The show might consist of recordings by artists as diverse as Charlie Parker, Waylon Jennings, Spike Jones, Percy Sledge, Artur Rubenstein, Jo Stafford, the Juilliard String Quartet and Frank Sinatra. Once I played the entire second movement of Mahler’s 6th Symphony. I did the first “It’s All Music” with trepidation. It turned out that the listeners—and the sponsor— liked it and asked for more. There’s no percentage in assuming that people are not open-minded.

All of that came to mind today when I got a notice that my newest follower on Twitter is the composer Daron Hagen (pictured). Anyone familiar with Hagen’s music is aware that he is open-minded. The eclecticism of his work, from chamber music to grand opera, makes that clear. You can find out about him on his website. But this isn’t about Daron, who—full disclosure—is a friend. It’s about a singing group and a piece of their music I found on YouTube when I followed a link in one of Hagen’s tweets. The group is New York Polyphony. The music is a liturgical work by the 16th century English composer William Byrd. Maybe it struck me because I recently finished reading Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall about the exploits of Henry The Eighth and Ann Boleyn during Byrd’s time. Or maybe it’s because the singing in this short piece is so good and the harmonies are so rich. I thought that you’d enjoy it, too.

It’s all music.

YouTube says that 42,793 people have seen a clip of Clare Fischer (1928-2012) conducting what seems to be a master class. I came across it this evening while looking for something else. I abandoned the something else; Fischer was more interesting. At the piano, he plays Duke Elliington’s “I Didn’t Know About You” to set up an observation about the quality of Johnny Hodges’s alto saxophone playing. Without mentioning it he also demonstrates the quality of his own harmonic conception. In the second video, we hear Hodges confirm Fischer’s point. The person who contributed the video was obviously at least as concerned with the audiophile setup as with the music.

The YouTube uploader offers no details about the Hodges recording; who’s playing with him, for instance. My wild guess is that it is from the 1958 Not So Dukish session on Verve, with Billy Strayhorn, piano; Jimmy Woode, bass; and Sam Woodyard, drums—stalwarts from the Ellington organization. Out of print for years, Not So Dukish has been reissued on CD.

Oh, yes, this is the uploader’s description of the audio system. I presume that his or her fellow audiophiles will understand it.

THORENS TD 124 + WE MC STEPUP(PHILIPS RESISTOR) + BLACK CUBE SE + WE 80A +10 SE + LOWTHER PM6

Bengt Hallberg, honored as one of the finest pianists in modern jazz, died today in Uppsala, Sweden, of congestive heart failure. He was 80 years old. Hallberg’s keyboard touch and harmonic inventiveness came to the attention of musicians and listeners outside his native Sweden on Stan Getz’s 1951 recording of the traditional song “Ack Värmeland du sköna,” released in the US as “Dear Old Stockholm.” He made a further impression internationally with his playing on Quincy Jones arrangements for Clifford Brown, Art Farmer and a group of Swedish all-stars in a 1953 recording. Hearing a tune from that album in a 1955 Leonard Feather Blindfold Test when Hallberg was still little known, Miles Davis said:

The piano player gasses me – I don’t know his name. I’ve been trying to find out his name. He’s from Sweden. . . . I think he made those records with Stan, like “Dear Old Stockholm.” I never heard anybody play in a high register like that. So clean, and he swings and plays his own things…”

Jan Lundgren, inspired by Hallberg and considered by many his successor as Sweden’s leading jazz artist, said today:

“Hearing his Hallberg’s Surprise record when I was a young teenager made such a deep impression on me. He is one of the reasons I play jazz. His playing, at his best, was in a class matched by few others. Bengt Hallberg was the most humble man you’re likely to ever meet with a talent unsurpassed. Teddy Wilson is said to have stated that there were two musicians in Europe on a level with the very best Americans—Django Reinhardt and Bengt Hallberg.”

Hallberg and Lundgren appeared together in a two-piano concert at last year’s Ystad Jazz Festival in southern Sweden. For a Rifftides review of that concert, go here.

Through the 1950s and ‘60s, Hallberg was closely associated with Arne Domnérus, Lars Gullin and other leading Swedish musicians. Formed in the 1980s, Trio Con Tromba‘s recordings with Hallberg, trumpeter Jan Allan and bassist Georg Riedel remain popular. Hallberg composed extensively, writing for jazz groups as well as string quartets and ballet companies. He remained active in music until shortly before his death. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Here is Hallberg with Stan Getz in the recording that established the pianist as a major soloist when he was 19 years old.

Another pianist, primarily noted for his impeccable accompaniment of singers but who was also a soloist of wide ranging abilities, died today. Paul Smith was 91. He was probably best known for his work with Ella Fitzgerald. He also played for Mel Tormé, Sarah Vaughan and Doris Day, among others. Early in his career, he worked with Ozzie Nelson, Les Paul and Tommy Dorsey. For a quarter of a century, he was the music director for Steve Allen’s television program. With his 1954 album Liquid Sounds, Smith crossed markets, achieving success with both jazz and easy-listening audiences. As a leader, he recorded dozens of albums.

Singer Lyn Stanley, a friend who studied with Smith and whom he accompanied, told Don Heckman of The Los Angeles Times, “Paul was a perfectionist and worked every day to improve his art. When you worked with him, he expected the same of you.” To read Heckman’s obituary of Smith, go here.

Here is Smith playing for his family on his 90th birthday, April 17, 2012.

As of today, of Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond begins its new existence as an ebook. The hardcover edition has sold out. Used copies are going for as much as $150 on book and auction sites, but new hardbound copies are history. The electronic transformation is good news on several counts:

The book will continue to be available. For now, it is on Kindle. Publisher Malcolm Harris of Parkside Publications tells me that he plans to have it up on Apple and Barnes & Noble within a week or so.

The ebook edition has all of the features of the hardbound, including the nearly 200 photographs, the chapter notes, the solo transcriptions, the discography, the extensive index and Dave and Iola Brubeck’s foreword.

The ebook edition is easily portable. The most frequent complaint about the five-pound, 10-and-a-half-by-11-inch original was, “How am I supposed to read this thing on an airplane?” Now you can, after the pilot says it’s okay to fire up your Kindle, iPad, Nook or Sony Reader.

 The ebook sells for less than a third of the list price of the original hardcover edition.

Among other honors, Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award and the Jazz Journalists Association Book of the Year Award. Here are a few of its plaudits:

Scrupulously researched and written with an attractive combination of affection and candor, it casts a bright light on Desmond’s troubled psyche without devaluing his considerable achievements as an artist. “Any of the great composers of melodies—Mozart, Schubert, Gershwin—would have been gratified to have written what Desmond created spontaneously,” Mr. Ramsey says. Strong words, but Take Five makes them stick. —Terry Teachout, The Wall Street Journal

The telling is lyrical, funny, nostalgic, provocative, and allusive — just like a Paul Desmond solo.”
 —Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of its Second Century

Doug Ramsey, the saxophonist’s friend for 20 years before Desmond’s death in 1977, constructs the full person as well as digging out much more of his writing than was known. A major piece of jazz scholarship, the book cuts no corners. —Ben Ratliff, The New York Times

Every jazz musician should be lucky enough to get a biography as thoroughly researched as Doug Ramsey’s new tome about alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. —Paul de Barros, The Seattle Times

When I learned that Doug Ramsey was writing a biography of Paul Desmond, I was pleased and relieved, because I can think of no one better qualified to do so. Ramsey has the distinct advantage of being a musician, someone who understands how a jazz musician thinks and how amazing Paul’s talent really was…
 —Dave Brubeck (from the Foreword to Take Five)

Doug Ramsey’s Take Five is an invaluable addition to jazz literature—by an especially enduring writer on the music. I knew Paul Desmond, but I found so much more I did not know. —Nat Hentoff, author of American Music Is

The detail of the research is astonishing. The writing is exquisite. I’ve never seen a biography like it.
—Gene Lees, author of Portrait of Johnny: The Life of John Herndon Mercer, 
and publisher of The Jazzletter

Doug Ramsey has illuminated Paul Desmond’s life and music with insight and compassion, gleaned from diligent research and genuine friendship, and offered with the touch of a true storyteller. This is the finest biography we’ve had of an important jazz figure. —Dan Morgenstern, Director, Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies;
 author, Living with Jazz

This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable artist who turns out to have been not at all easy to know. It is a rare and valuable book largely because Doug Ramsey (who began with the advantage of having known Desmond about as well as anyone ever did) has approached his subject with skill, sensitivity and — above all — the ability to thoroughly involve himself in the project. When Ramsey lets us share his conversations with people who played important roles in Paul’s life, it is as if we were there with them, not just reading, but listening and learning. 
 —Orrin Keepnews, veteran music producer and author, 
founder of Riverside and Milestone Records

To order the Kindle edition, please go here.

Five years ago, I started what I intended to be a series of Rifftides pieces about little big bands. This was the rationale:

Six to eleven pieces allow arrangers freedom that the conventions and sheer size of sixteen-piece bands tend to limit. Medium-sized groups have been important since the beginnings of jazz.

For reasons I don’t remember—sloth, possibly—the series stopped after this installment and this one. A new ten-piece band has reignited the idea.

The tentet’s leader is Oliver Groenewald, a trumpeter, composer and arranger educated at Hochschule für Musik in Detmold, Germany. Groenewald studied trumpet with Art Farmer in Austria and Willie Thomas in the US, composition and arranging in the US with Chuck Israels. He has written extensively for World Brass, Canadian Brass and other ensembles. He now lives on Orcas Island in Puget Sound near Seattle. He is rehearsing a band of Pacific Northwest stalwarts that includes stars of the Seattle Repertory Jazz Orchestra. Here, they run through Groenewald’s arrangement of “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” Brad Allison has the flugelhorn lead. Jay Thomas is the alto saxophone soloist. The video closes with names of all the players.

There was a sort of followup to the Medium But Well Done venture. To see it, go here. If you would like more on the topic, let me know, and we’ll put the slothful Rifftides staff to work on it. To send an email message, click on the word “Contact” in the blue band at the top of the page, or submit a comment using the “Speak Your Mind” box at the end of the post.

Just for fun, here’s World Brass with a witty Groenewald arrangement of “The Flight of the Bumblebee,” of all things. Let’s hear it for the drummer.