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Generally, I’m against exclamation points. The one in the headline is a justified exception.
If you miss Art Farmer as much as I do, follow this link. The YouTube information line tells you that the rhythm section is Ray Brown, Jacky Terrason and Alvin Queen. It doesn’t tell you that the tune is Charlie Parker’s “Moose the Mooche,” that Art, late in his life, was playing with enormous beauty and power, or that Ray Brown was the boss of the bass. If the shape-shifting video bothers you, close your eyes. This is a gem.

Anat Cohen has not quite taken New York by storm. In this culture, only rock stars or politicians who campaign like rock stars do that. But Cohen has established herself in the jazz capital of the world as one of the bright new reed artists. The story of her becoming a jazz musician in Tel Aviv, her musical brothers, and substantial samples of her music occupied a sizeable chunk of National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Sunday. To hear Liane Hansen’s feature on Anat Cohen, go here.

I value the decades I spent in television news. Helping people to understand the events and issues of the day was important work that brought satisfaction and, at its best, promoted the democratic ideal of an informed citizenry. Now from the Society of Professional Journalists come two items about the state of broadcast journalism that are enough to embarrass me on behalf of the profession, or craft, and make my teeth hurt. I hope these travesties move news consumers in Tyler, Texas, and Portland, Maine, to demand corrective action, but my guess is that the line between news and entertainment has been so thoroughly plowed under that audiences don’t see anything amiss. Viewers have been conditioned by local and national television and cable news to accept a standard of professionalism dominated by the ethics of beauty contests and show business promoters.
Here is the first item, from SPJ’s electronic newsletter :

BOOB TUBE? A television station in Tyler, Texas, has a beauty pagaent queen with no journalism experience anchoring a news show. The woman’s experiences are being chronicled for a reality television program titled, “Anchorwoman.” Cary Darling of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported SPJ President Christine Tatum’s reaction to the station’s hiring decision.

Next: This item from Tatum’s own newsletter. Be sure to follow her link to the television news staff’s promotion of a movie. The first time I watched it, I thought it was a gag, a parody. The second time, I shouted bad words at the screen.

Then, there’s the news team at WGME in Portland, Maine, which appears in one of the biggest assaults on journalism integrity ever to hit the silver screen. But, hey, I give them credit for managing to promote a theater and their newscast while also directing moviegoers to turn off their cell phones and pick up their trash. That takes real talent!
Wake up, people. You’re harming journalism — and looking fabulous as you do so.

I don’t know who the news director is at WGME, but the Radio Television News Directors Association does. The RTNDA should reprimand him or her and the news director at KYTX in Tyler for their breaches of professional standards and for further disillusioning Americans about the reliability of broadcast news.

A recent reimmersion in things Tristano led to the mini-review of the Warne Marsh book in the latest batch of Doug’s Picks (right-hand column). It included several viewings of a video of Lennie Tristano’s quintet at the Half Note in 1964. The picture quality may have been fine originally, but it appears to have been through several generations of dubs. No matter; the sound is reasonably good. Through the murk you get a tour of the beloved Half Note in the days when folks dressed to go out in the evening. Those strips of cloth you will see on the mens’ shirtfronts were called neckties.
In this ten-minute clip, the bartender we glimpse now and then is Mike Canterino. He and his brother Sonny manned the bar. Their father may have had a formal name but his family and the customers called him Pop. He and Mamma took care of the kitchen. The word pasta never crossed Pop’s lips; it was spaghetti. The uncomplicated menu gave jazz club food a good name, a major accomplishment. Mike’s wife Judi and Sonny’s wife Tita helped out. Judi became a singer after James Moody recruited her one night to sing the Blossom Dearie bridge on “Moody’s Mood For Love.” Al the waiter completed the staff. In its original incarnation, the Half Note was among the warehouses and garages of lower Manhattan. In the seventies, the club moved uptown, lost its soul and died.
Tristano often played at the Half Note. To see and hear him, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Sonny Dallas and Nick Stabulas, click here. The piece they’re playing is “312 E. 32nd,” Tristano’s reimagination of “Out of Nowhere.”
For a lovely remembrance of the Half Note by Dave Frishberg, who often played there, go here. Dave paints splendid pictures of Al the waiter and of Mr. George, a dedicated customer for whom Al Cohn named a tune. For Mike Canterino’s story of the night Judy Garland came in, go here.

Alerting the Rifftides staff to this combination, Bill Kirchner wrote, “Yes, you read that right.” There may have been less likely tenor saxophone encounters, but I doubt if they were captured on camera. The third tenor player–the one we see but don’t hear–is Lew Tabackin.
The house of the good old blues in F has many mansions. Here’s proof. YouTube doesn’t disclose the year, but from the youthful appearance of the principals, I’d guess this was a good two decades ago.

As you may have surmised from the paucity of substantial postings the past few days, I am still working my way through an accumulation of professional obligations, some connected with music, some not. Nonetheless, I try to give you items that I hope will keep you coming back to Rifftides.
So, here is a link to a rarity–video of the sublime singer Carol Sloane. It was made in New Orleans in 1979. Sloane was in town with her friend Jimmy Rowles, who was the pianist in Ella Fitzgerald’s trio. Keter Betts was the bassist, Bobby Durham the drummer. Ella had the night off from her engagement at the Blue Room of the Fairmont Hotel, so Sloane borrowed her rhythm section and accepted the invitation of the talented director John Beyer to tape a show at WYES-TV, the public station. I’m hoping to track down the entire program. For now, all that is to be found is a clip on YouTube. Ignore the faulty credit blurb; the year was 1979, not 1984. It is probably unlikely that Ella knew Carol was using her musical support staff. All of the above information is courtesy of the gracious Ms. Sloane, who says, “Knowing Ella, I doubt she’d have been upset in the least.” Especially if she could have heard the result.
To see and hear a memorable Carol Sloane ballad performance, click here. I suggest listening to it at least twice, once concentrating on the riches of Rowles’ accompaniment to “My Ship.”
Don’t forget to visit Sloane’s blog. It’s terrific. It is linked in the Other Places section of the right column, but this direct link will take you there. No extra charge.

As noted in this Rifftides post last November, Gerry Mulligan remarked more than once that of all his achievements, the sextet he led from 1955 to 1958 gave him the greatest satisfaction. No wonder. His sidemen in the front line were tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims, valve trombonist Bob Brookmeyer and trumpeter Jon Eardley. The rhythm section was Bill Crow on bass and Dave Bailey on drums.
If it was generally known that film existed of the sextet, the fact eluded me until about a week ago. As if from out of nowhere, three videos of the Mulligan Sextet popped up on YouTube. They were filmed in Rome in 1956. We see the sextet in front of a sizeable orchestra complete with strings. The orchestra is not identified and does not play; its members are an appreciative audience.
In most appearances, on at least one tune Mulligan played piano in his engagingly rustic style, as he does here in “Ontet.” Click on the following links to see and hear living documents of a remarkable band:
Bernie’s Tune
Ontet
Walkin’ Shoes
After being too long out of circulation, all of the audio recordings of the Mulligan sextet are available in a boxed CD set. To find it, go here. The set is also available here. It is called The Fabulous Gerry Mulligan Sextet. The hyperbole is justified.

Nick Moran, The Messenger (CAP). I mentioned Moran’s guitar playing nearly two years ago in one of the first Rifftides postings. The piece was about a visit to The Garage in New York’s Greenwich Village. It included this observation:

Moran is a good young guitarist with a lyrical bebop bent and an alert harmonic faculty. He would benefit from self-editing, but it’s a rare young improviser who would not.

Perhaps because the occasion is a recording, not a jazz club performance, Moran’s solos here are shorter and crisper. It is good to hear him again with Ed Withrington. In this case, however, Withrington’s keyboard is a Hammond B-3, giving the group the fashionable organ trio sound but less of the crisp interplay with Moran that I heard when Withrington was on piano and the group had a bassist at The Garage. Withrington supplies bass lines with his foot pedal. Drummer Andy Watson has a chattery style and a nice feel for snare and cymbal accents.
The repertoire is nine pieces by Moran. Combined with the instrumentation, the uniformity of compositional style produces a restful, if moderately enervating, listening experience. That may be precisely what Moran was aiming for, but this listener would have welcomed relief in pace and atmosphere, perhaps by way of a familiar standard or two or more of the adventurousness the group displays in the final track, “Shorter Steps.”
I’ll be following Moran’s development with interest.

Have you ever wondered why Buddy Rich was called the world’s fastest drummer?
Go here.
Have a good weekend.

Rifftides correspondent John Birchard sent a link to this remarkable video with the comment, “It ain’t jazz, but it is certainly extraordinary work.”
Amen. The playing by an unidentified cellist is extraordinary, too.

The tenth edition of The Commission Project’s Swing ‘n Jazz event in Rochester, New York, was a canny three-day blend of fund-raising, concertizing and education. Initiated fifteen years ago by Ned Corman, the project sends musicians into schools across the country. As I wrote last year in explaining Swing ‘n Jazz,

It is a piece of a cultural mosaic that, for its variety and vitality, would be remarkable in many larger cities. TCP’s mission description reads that it shall foster “creativity through music education by bringing students together with professional composers and performers in schools and communities nationwide.” Swing (as in golf) ‘n Jazz is built around a tournament attracting well-heeled contributors who provide the money that keeps the nonprofit TCP running. Some of the musicians swing both on the stand and the links. But, mostly, they work with students and those who educate students, to improve understanding of how to make jazz.

For all of that posting, go here.

Again, trumpeter Marvin Stamm was the music director. He and Corman assembled a playing-teaching staff that included well known national musicians. Clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, bassists Jay Leonhart and Mike Richmond, drummers Akira Tana and Rich Thompson, guitarist Steve Brown, trombonist Fred Wesley, trumpeter and composer Paul Smoker were among the volunteer faculty. All of the musicians donate their time and talent. They include a galaxy of performers from the Rochester area, many of them seasoned professionals who teach at the Eastman School of Music and other higher education institutions.

A major concert for the public on Saturday night involved nearly all of the two dozen or so musicians. Smaller fund-raising performances on Friday and Sunday evenings, both at country clubs, entertained donors and prospective donors who keep the nonprofit TCP afloat. At one, called Bassists’ Night Out, Leonhart was in charge of eight bassists accompanied by Brown on guitar with Tana and Thompson alternating on drums. Four of the bassists were the veteran music educator Malcom Kirby, Sr., and his three adult children Caroline, Elliott and Malcolm, Jr. Mike Richmond, Jeff Campbell and Aleck Brinkman also played. The evening may have been bottom heavy, but it was light hearted, especially when Leonhart did a couple of his celebrated songs accompanying himself. I’ve heard him do “Nukular” a half-dozen times, and it still affects me deeply. Unfortunately, President Bush was on his way to Prague to speak of things nuclear and couldn’t be in the audience.

Because they were all scheduled at the same time, I could attend only one of the six Saturday workshops held in Rochester schools. It was at the School of Arts, a part of the Rochester public school system. The perfomers and faculty were Stamm, D’Rivera, Brown, Leonhart and Thompson. In the course of the morning, they played three pieces and coalesced into a chamber group of rare balance and musicality. It was an ad hoc gathering of artists who developed immediate sensitivity to one another.

From the first piece, Cole Porter’s “I Love You,” the quintet melded into a blended perfection that bands seldom achieve short of weeks playing together. In “Morning of the Carnival,” Stamm, D’Rivera and Brown had a mutuality of spontaneous thematic development that sometimes happens in jazz at the highest level. D’Rivera, a brilliant clarinetist, reversed a phrase of Stamm’s and Brown echoed one of of D’Rivera’s, all within the parameters of Luis Bonfa’s ravishing melody. When the solos began, D’Rivera increased the intensity, then Brown imparted a blues feeling. Stamm began his improvisation outside the harmonic pattern of the piece and flowed through his solo with melodic inventiveness and lack of apparent effort that could almost lead one to believe that the trumpet is easy to play. Leonhart bowed his solo, vocalising in unision. He and D’Rivera collaborated in a chorus of counterpoint. Then, harkening back to the idea Stamm had planted, they all joined in a chorus of free playing before sliding back into the closing statement of the melody.

“That was fun,” D’Rivera said. This group should definitely record.

Their singleness of mind and purpose extended beyond the music into discussion with the audience. “What do you think about when you’re improvising,” a youngster asked.
“Motivic ideas,” Steve Brown said. “To me, it’s all about conversation with other people.”
That led, over the course of the morning, to a chain of related ideas.

“It’s an amazing physical, mental and emotional process,” Jay Leonhart said.

“You must listen to all kinds of music,” D’Rivera said.

“If all you know is rock, which is loud music, what you would play in reaction in this setting would not be appropriate,” Thompson said.

“If you don’t listen to this music, to jazz, no matter how much technique you have, you can’t play this music,” Stamm said. “It’s like speech. You learn to speak by ear. You accumulate vocabulary. If you listen to the right music, your phrasing will develop.”
“How do you balance theory and natural musicality?” an older member of the audience asked.
“There is no conflict between intuition and technique,” Stamm said.

“But,” D’Rivera said, “You must read music. You think you can get by on your great ears? Play me Beethoven’s 9th Symphony.”

“The audience knows when you’re communicating,” Stamm said. “You can’t be condescending to the audience.” On the importance of subduing peformer’s ego for the benefit of the music, he returned to Brown’s thought about music as attentive conversation. “There’s no one up here who isn’t ready to give it up for the others.”

That is a music lesson that goes beyond music.

By way of “All the Things You Are,” the quintet demonstrated its point about listening and conversing, and the workshop ended, two hours of wisdom through teaching and playing by five musicians who were uncommonly effective in both areas. It was a small, memorable example of what The Commission Project achieves.

School systems under budget pressure eliminate music and arts programs first. That has been the case for a couple of decades. It is damaging the United States and it is an indictment of priorities and values in our society. The Commission Project is doing something about that failing. It deserves substantial help. I have seen the program in action two years running, watched the light go on in young minds. Go to the TCP web site and learn where you can send support. The Commission Project is a national program. It is based in Rochester, but there is no reason that most of its financial support should come from there. Your help will be welcome. The children need it.

The eminent trumpeter and early morning runner Marvin Stamm responded to the recent Rifftides post about T.S. Eliot and television.

I couldn’t agree with you more. you are right on the money – 4:00 am or no. Beautifully written!
I will take issue with you regarding Stewart and Colbert. Sid Caeser, Jackie Gleason, George Gobel, et al, were a different ilk. Unbelievably brilliant, but in their way, with what they do. So, too, in my opinion, are Stewart and Colbert. They are just very different, doing what they do in very different times. Wouldn’t it be great to see how Caeser, and the others would do today!

If Caesar were around, anything he might do would be fine with me. As you watch this sketch with Caesar and Nanette Fabray, keep in mind that it was done live before an audience, not on videotape. You don’t have to know much about television production to admire not only the obvious genius of Caesar and Fabray but also the skill and timing of the director and cameramen, who were wheeling enormous RCA studio cameras on massive carriages.

The young veteran broadcaster Jason Crane podcasts from his interesting site The Jazz Session. During my visit to Rochester, he was kind enough to ask me to join him for an extended conversation about jazz, news, Rifftides and other things. To hear it, click here.

Flying east, two experiences melded into a thought around a phrase. Forty-six years and ten days ago, Newton Minow spoke at the annual meeting of the National Association of Broadcasters, the organization of people who ran television and radio in the United States. Minow was the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates broadcasting. Today broadcasting seems to regulate the FCC, but that’s not my point. Here’s the section of Minow’s speech that contained the phrase.

When television is good, nothing — not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers — nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and loss sheet or rating book to distract you — and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.

A wasteland. The waste land. Hardly an original construction. It’s in the bible, and it’s in an eighty-five-year-old poem.
My flights from Seattle to New York City and New York to Rochester constituted an agreeable first experience on Jet Blue. That airline is still often called an upstart, although its startup was years ago and it is quite successful, give or take the occasional snowstorm snafu. One of Jet Blue’s points of pride is its seat-back television sets featuring forty-one channels transmitted to the plane from a satellite. In preparation for a book group discussion later this month, my plan for the trip had been to read T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, along with an analysis of that nearly impenetrable1922 poem. After an hour-and-a-half of Eliot, I was ready for something simpler, so I watched television. Full disclosure: I made my living in television news for twenty-five years, but life is full of other pursuits, and I rarely watch TV.
I agree with Minow’s first line about television. When it is good, it is magnificent. At the time of his speech in 1961, color television was six years old. So was the TV version of Gun Smoke. Video tape was even younger. Viewers could still see live drama on television. The Andy Griffith Show was brand new, years away from perpetual reruns. The Huntley-Brinkley Report and the CBS Evening News were fifteen minutes long. They delivered the news of the day; the misdeeds of people famous for being famous were not on the menu. The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents were among the prime time dramas. All of those programs were, to apply Minow’s strict standard, good. Yesterday on Jet Blue’s seat-back console, I found nothing of those programs’ quality. Nothing. That includes newscasts from the BBC and CBS. It includes the prime time series, which were uniformly centered on fiery deaths, incest, in-your-face adultery, summary executions at close range and, for comic relief, now and then a car chase. The Daily Show and the Colbert Report showed flashes of wry intelligence, but little that matches the penetrating wit of Sid Caesar, Steve Allen, Ernie Kovacs, or even of George Gobel.
The shows devoted to standup comics were beneath criticism. These people claim to be descended from Lennie Bruce? Give me a break.
Eliot’s The Waste Land is a difficult poem. It is packed with references and allusions to the bible, Greek mythology, Chaucer and Fraser’s The Golden Bough, among other sources reflecting his classical scholarship at Harvard. He tried to explain parts of it in a series of notes, some of which merely muddied the waters. Some critics say that the poem is Eliot’s effort to purge himself of the desolation he felt when he contemplated the state of humanity following World War One. In any case, its forecast is of a world whose prospects are for further moral and spiritual decay.
I tend to be an optimist. Nothing I saw on Jet Blue’s screen last night encouraged me, but a long time ago I decided not to let television define the world. On the return trip, I’ll ignore the seat back monitor and read a book.