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The Rifftides Staff is off to the The Commission Project’s Swing ‘n Jazz X. I will send reports from the road when possible. In the meantime, please enjoy browsing the archives, which reach back to the beginning of this endeavor, nearly two years ago. That may seem a short time to YOU.

Time out of the writing crunch to hear successive Jessica Williams concerts was time well spent. Williams has taken a liking to The Seasons and returned there with her new trio for two evenings. On Saturday,Williams, bassist Doug Miller and drummer John Bishop played a Duke Ellington program. The repertoire, except for the infrequently heard calypso “Angelique,” was made up of sixteen of Ellington’s most familiar pieces. She opened with “C-Jam Blues,” closed with “Take the ‘A’ Train” and included “I Got it Bad,” “Do Nothing ‘Til You Hear From Me,” “Satin Doll” and…well, you get the idea. A routine Ellington lineup, perhaps, but Williams’ piano playing and her interaction with Miller and Bishop were far from routine.
Williams employed all of her virtuosity; the improbably long fingers executing piston keystrokes, the extended crossed hands passages, the stride left hand, the tremolos, the polytonality. Still, what captured the crowd was the swing, warmth and humanity of the music. Following a distracted start on “Prelude to a Kiss,” Williams called a halt and got sympathetic chuckles from the audience when she said, “If you can forgive others, you can forgive yourself.” She started the song again, soloed with passion and comped like a guiding angel behind a Miller bass solo that was a highlight of the concert. Williams’ concept for the evening was to program it as if the trio were playing for a dance. Indeed, she encouraged people to dance in the area between the front row of seats and the stage. Three couples did, rather tentatively, during “Mood Indigo,” but one of them told me later that the listening was so good, dancing was a distraction. That’s an interesting switch on the old complaint “Why don’t you play something we can dance to?”
Sunday, Memorial Day eve, Williams premiered a new composition, “Freedom Suite,” not related to the 1958 Sonny Rollins piece with the same name. She dedicated the six-movement work to veterans who died in all US wars from the American Revolution to Iraq and Afghanistan. Prefaced with a flag ceremony by women volunteers from a Veterans of Foreign Wars unit, the suite began with an other-worldly piano introduction to Miller’s bowing of “Taps,” its resonance supported by Williams’ impressionistic chords and the shimmering swell of Bishop’s cymbals. The movement called “Night Patrol” surged with modal intensity through piano and bass solos into a Bishop drum solo over an insistent pedal point.
Introducing the “Final Wish” section, Williams said, “I finished writing this one at 3:30 or 4:00 o’clock this morning. I wanted it to be perfect–and so far, it is.” She showed Bishop the bass part she had written for Miller, explaining the varied rhythms she wanted through a series of eight-bar sections. Bishop nodded and smiled, and with only that discussion for a rehearsal, the trio played the piece for the first time. It remained perfect.
Leaning into the piano, Williams stroked the strings like a harpist, setting up insistent three-four time that supported the dirge of the final movement, “Lament.” By way of her virtuosity through an unaccompanied solo that at times suggested an affinity for early McCoy Tyner, she managed to express optimism as well as sadness before Miller and Bishop rejoined her for a final statement of the theme.
This is an initial impression of a work I want to absorb further. We may all have that opportunity. The concert was recorded and could appear on a CD. If that happens, I’ll let you know.

A contributor with the internet handle Astrotype just sent YouTube five videos taken from a 1966 Dave Brubeck Quartet concert in Germany. If you’re thinking of Paul Desmond on this thirtieth anniversary of his death, you may remember him even more kindly as you listen to a “Take Five” solo unlike any other I’ve heard from him, and a four-minute Desmond rumination on the minor blues of “Koto Song.” Brubeck, Desmond, Wright and Morello were in great form, collectively and individually. Rebutting critics who loved to rail against Brubeck, Desmond often praised his friend’s sensitive accompaniments. This version of “Take the ‘A’ Train” offers evidence for the defense. It also has Morello and Brubeck in a spirited, and well photographed, exchange of four-bar phrases.
For Astrotype‘s menu of five Brubeck videos from the German concert, three new ones of John Coltrane and four of Thelonious Monk, go here, and you’ll be glad you stayed home this Memorial Day weekend. Isn’t this more fun than being in a traffic jam?*
*For Rifftides readers in other countries, this American form of expression reaches its fullest flower on the weekend set aside to honor those who have fallen in war. Millions of us pile into cars and trucks (also known as SUVs) and park on the roads and freeways, honking horns and swearing oaths in remembrance.

Sonny Rollins has returned home from Stockholm, where he was awarded the Polar Music Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy. Terri Hinte, publicist nonpareil, traveled with him and alerted us to the web site that carries photographs of Mr. Rollins and his co-winner Steve Reich receiving their prizes from the king of Sweden. The site also has a section of pictures of the beautiful people who attended, a history of the prize and its previous winners, and a forty-seven-minute video. I wish you better luck than I had downloading the video.
Each year, the winners are chosen from disparate fields of music. Pairing Rollins and Reich has a nice symmetry; two of the most daring musicians in their not-so-disparate bailiwicks. A collaboration between them could have more potential than if there had been one between the 1995 winners, Mstislav Rostropovitch and Elton John, or between the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and Led Zeppelin last year. The 1993 winners were Dizzy Gillespie and the Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. What a joint project that could have been.

We’re heading into Memorial Day weekend, the thirtieth anniversary of Paul Desmond’s death.

Musically, what I remember about Paul is how hard he could swing in that really understated way. He had the most amazing time feel in his playing. People never really talked about that part of his playing. He could really swing. There’s a lot to Paul Desmond besides that beautiful sound and those beautiful melodies. He was a really strong cat.
–Don Thompson
I more or less said that found him the best company of anyone I’d ever known in my life. I found him the most loyal friend I’ve ever had in my life. I found him the most artistic person I’ve ever known in my life. I said that his leaving will make this planet a smaller and darker place for everyone.
–Jack Richardson recalling his speech at Desmond’s memorial service.

Both quoted in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond
Last year around this time, I was also in the grips of nostalgia and sentimentality.

Posting will be scant and seldom this week. I am still cranking on a flurry of assignments that must be completed before I take off for the Swing ‘n Jazz fiesta in Rochester, New York.
One of the pieces is for the next George Mraz CD, which involves the remarkable Czech singer, violinist and actress Iva Bittova. This piece of video has her with the Stampa quartet in what appears to be the St. Nicholas Church in Prague, performing two Janacek songs. I have listened extensively to Bittova and watched several of her videos. She reminds me of no one as much as Elis Regina, the Brazilian marvel who died several years ago. The comparison is not of idiom but of musicianship and irrepressible spirit.

A message from Rubén González:

I´m reading regularly with pleasure Rifftides from Rosario, Argentina…

Sr. González includes a link to his web site and the story of his encounter with jazz in Dublin, Ireland. His account is in Spanish and English and includes video of three Irish musicians named Buckley playing, and playing well.

In the Jack Sheldon piece (see the next exhibit), I forgot to mention his work on the most recent Tierney Sutton CD. To read about it, go here.
Sheldon brought interesting comments, including one from a man who went to school with him. Click on the “Comments” link at the end of the next piece.

Some time ago, Rifftides reader Steve Sherman wrote, more or less in haiku form:

Jack Sheldon, unpretentious,

one of the best living singers, trumpet players,

always swinging, often touching.
Maybe write something.

I agree with Mr. Sherman’s evaluation of Sheldon. I am happy to write something, but first here are passages from a message that came even longer ago from the trombonist, singer, bandleader and alcoholic beverage maven Eric Felten (he is the author of the the “How’s Your Drink?” column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal). Mr. Felten was responding to what I wrote about a solo that came fairly early in Sheldon’s career.

I am in total agreement with you that the Jack Sheldon solo on “Then I’ll Be Tired of You” is one of the great moments in jazz.

The solo was on the The Hi-Los and All That Jazz (dumb title), a 1958 album that has been in and out of print (mostly out) for decades. Sheldon plays the bridge of the song, eight bars of melody. By inflection and a few grace notes, he makes it an endearing personal statement. I wrote in that 2005 posting:

Inexcusably, Columbia has allowed The Hi-Los And All That Jazz to go out of print, but “Then I’ll Be Tired of You” is included in this compilation.

Here’s more of Eric Felten’s message:

I resisted the urge to mention my own recent disc during the Bill Perkins discussion (though my record is dedicated to Perk, who was supposed to be part of the session and died a month ahead of the recording date) because I enjoy being part of the Rifftides discussion and haven’t wanted to muck that up with self-promotion.

Oh, go ahead, promote away.

Let me mention my disc to you in the Jack Sheldon context. Jack is on the record and he plays brilliantly. He still has that big fat swaggering sound, and still alternates between broad melodic statements and tumbling bebop lines. And in the studio he keeps everyone in stitches with the bluest jokes imaginable (the sort of jokes that have gotten him barred from a number of L.A. jazz clubs). In other words he’s still Jack Sheldon.
Perhaps because he’s on the West Coast; perhaps because he was so involved in television; or perhaps because of the blue humor: whatever the reason, Sheldon has never received the credit he deserves as an essential jazz musician. But to me he achieves one of the most important things a jazz musician can do — he has an original and distinctive voice. This is a discrete thing, in my mind, from the question of being an “innovator.” As crucial as innovation is, I think that it is just as valid for a musician to find his own distinctive voice even if the idiom in which he is working is not at the cutting edge.

I won’t give you Sheldon’s history as a trumpeter, singer, comic, television star, motion picture actor and swimming instructor. The biography on his web site will supply all of that. I will tell you about a few recordings of the hundreds he has made.
This Amazon.com page has all four of the albums Sheldon made in the 1950s as a member of the Curtis Counce Quintet with bassist Counce, tenor saxophonist Harold Land, pianist Carl Perkins and drummer Frank Butler. He was a brilliant soloist in a brilliant band.
Capable of drive, hard swing and humor in his playing, Sheldon has a quality of wistfulness that has made him attractive to film composers and producers. He is part of the music that made two abysmal movies worth attending. One was The Sandpiper, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and a bird. Sheldon plays “The Shadow of Your Smile.” His treatment of Johnny Mandel’s main title theme is as unforgettable as the song itself. Fortunately, you don’t have to see the movie to hear the sound track. If you’re lucky, you’ll find it here. The other film was The Subterraneans, a Jack Kerouac story about the Bohemian life in San Francisco. It translated badly to the screen, despite the presence of Leslie Caron. André Previn’s score was sublime. Sheldon’s playing in the orchestral portions of the soundtrack is memorable. The directing and acting are not. After I wrote recently about Previn’s music for the picture, he sent a message:

I always liked The Subterraneans score, although the film was dreadful. I am pleased and flattered that you remembered the music so kindly.

Who wouldn’t remember it kindly?
Now available only as a fairly pricey import CD, drummer Shelly Manne’s interpretation of My Fair Lady features Sheldon singing as Henry Higgins, with Irene Kral as Eliza Doolittle. It’s a classic.
Here are a few CDs I recommend from the many Sheldon has made as a leader:
Jack Sheldon All-Stars. Mid-fifties big band with Chet Baker, Herb Geller and Conte Candoli, among others. Sheldon plays ravishing melody on “I Had The Craziest Dream.”
Class Act. Sheldon in duets with the late Ross Tompkins, his piano sidekick of decades. You will have to imagine Tompkins’ deadpan reactions to Sheldon’s beyond-the-edge humor. You’ll have to imagine the humor, too. But the playing is gorgeous.
Hollywood Heroes. Sheldon singing and playing in 1988 in superb form, with a quartet that includes the stompin’ pianist Ray Sherman, a secret too well kept.
JSO Live! Recent Sheldon with his big band. Exhilirating.
California Cool. Even more recent, with his quartet featuring pianist Milcho Leviev, bassist Bruce Lett and drummer Nick Martinis.
Jack Sheldon in New Orleans. This is a DVD made at a club on Bourbon Street with Dave Frishberg on piano, bassist Dave Stone and guitarist John Pisano. There’s nothing quite like Sheldon live, and this catches him at his playing and singing best.

If you never had the good luck to see Ray Nance,
Now, thanks to YouTube, you have the chance.

The item in the next exhibit was, I thought, the last Rifftides posting about Rod Levitt. Then Erik Lawrence sent the following message and his obituary of Rod, which is too thorough, touching and well written not to pass along to you. Erik refers to his late father, the multifaceted saxophonist, leader and educator Arnie Lawrence.

(Your piece was) So well put. I knew Rod when I was a child, as my father played alto in the last incarnation of the Rod Levitt Orchestra. Years later my family and I moved to Vermont and heard he lived nearby. We met and despite the beginning of his declining health he became very excited about a recreation of his music. I put together a group and we performed it twice in honor of his 75th birthday. I even convinced him to join the local ragtag big band, which he really enjoyed.
Jean called me as well and asked that I write an obituary based on an article I’d written about Rod in January 2006. I’ve copied it below.
I was blessed to know Rod and Jean. Bringing him and his music back to the stage stands as one of the greatest things I’ve ever done.
In Peace,
Erik
——————
Rod Levitt, In Memoriam
By Erik Lawrence
Rod Levitt, jazz trombonist, composer and arranger, 77, died quietly in his sleep late Tuesday night, May 8th, 2007 at his home in Wardsboro, Vermont after a courageous battle with Alzheimer’s Disease.
Born in September 16th, 1929 and raised in Portland, Oregon, Rod took his love for jazz and his trombone to the University of Washington. It was there he studied music theory, harmony and arranging. Many top bands come through the city of Seattle. It was there that he met a talented a young trumpeter, still in high school, named Quincy Jones. This association put Rod to work in young Quincy’s band, which featured another young jazz artist, singer Ernestine Anderson.
Four years in the Air Force allowed Rod to hone his arranging skills. He played piano and trombone and arranged for the 722nd Regiment Air Force band. They would play dances 5 or 6 nights a week.
Upon finishing his military career Rod made his way to NY, found an apartment and started picking up work as a versatile trombonist, continuing his graduate education at Mannes School of Music. The musician’s union building, local 802, was the place to meet other musicians and bandleaders and find out about work. On his way there one day he bumped into his old friend Quincy again. Quincy quickly offered Rod a gig on the road with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. And Rod was on his way.
He spent a year touring with Dizzy Gillespie, the “clown prince of bebop”. This included several recordings. Dizzy In South America offers a recorded interview with Rod and saxophonist Benny Golson. When asked recently whether Dizzy’s joking and showmanship caused his music to suffer Rod quickly said no. “You can’t hear that on records!”
Rod’s association with Gillespie carried on throughout much of his own career. But upon returning from this first tour he began to find work in town and his reputation brought him into the elite rank as a strong player with many tools, reading, improvising and arranging. Evidence of his work is clear on recordings from that time with Dinah Washington, Billy Eckstine, Benny Golson, Gil Evans and many others. A television show is now available showing Rod playing in an ensemble “in the round” under the direction of Gil Evans, featuring the groundbreaking quintet of Miles Davis with John Coltrane.
In 1958 Rod took a job playing in the symphony orchestra at New York’s famed Radio City Music Hall, which he maintained for thirteen years. In 1959 he caught the eye of the newest member of the legendary Rockettes. “Who is that man with the Trombone?” she asked on her very first day of work, “Rod Levitt!!! I have all of his records!” Rod and Jean Levitt were married in 1962. They never stopped giggling like school kids about meeting and finding one another.
With a good job and a strong work ethic Rod found opportunities for writing more and more for various musical settings. The recording industry was based primarily in New York and was still in infant stages of technology. Talented craftsmen were responsible for using skills creatively to make recordings that would stand the test of time.
The field of television was blossoming and work was available for musicians who could play and write for commercials (called “jingles”), theme music and soundtracks. Rod found he liked the challenge and diversity of writing music for commercials and moved in that direction. In this setting he had the opportunity to write for an orchestra or flute choir, a playful ditty, or a steamy jazz piece. He would make use of the best musicians and singers available. In a very challenging and competitive field, he was in demand as a top writer, creating the music for thousands of commercials for every product imaginable. The ad men who hired him would not always understand what was and wasn’t possible with music. Quoting Rod, “Sometimes they told you what they wanted, now that was dangerous!”
Despite the years and advancing Alzheimer’s, he could always sing the music he wrote and tell you exactly when he did what and with whom. Much of this is quite interesting. Once he flew to Chicago to record Mahalia Jackson in her living room. Another time he used the brilliant blind reedman Rahsaan Roland Kirk for a spot for Chemical Bank. During this time he also scored music for the film score Bush Doctor, featuring Hugh O’Brian.
This dedication to excellence and strong work ethic also produced the Rod Levitt Orchestra in the 1960’s, perhaps his crowning achievement. This eight piece ensemble earned its title of orchestra with the brilliant arrangements and the virtuosity it demanded of his players as strong readers, the ability to play several instruments, thus expanding his palette of musical ‘colors’ and top level improvising.
From 1962 through 65 Rod wrote prolifically for this group and recorded four celebrated albums. His Dynamic Sound Patterns is currently available on CD. These recordings put him in the pantheon of jazz arrangers. Jazz is a collective art form and only a very few receive the popularity and success they deserve. Critically a hit, he never was able to get enough attention with this ensemble. Though they never released a recording after 1966, the dedicated members played his music and he continued to write for the Orchestra for at least a decade more.
Soft spoken and very wise, Rod had done the nearly impossible in music many times over. He made a fine living, he stayed on a clean path of health, raised a family and he even retired! He lived out his last few years in rural Vermont with his bride Jean. When asked what retirement is like for a musician, he responded; “I practice every day. I pull out my arrangements and check them over (author’s note: these arrangments were perfect forty years ago). In fact I wrote a method book for the trombone. I call it Sure Way to Chops in 20 Minutes a Day. That’s the hawker in me coming out!” he said in an interview in January, 2006, harkening back to the jingle days.
Mr. Levitt is survived by his wife Jean, of Wardsboro, Vermont and son Barry, of Miami, Florida.

To learn more about Erik Lawrence and hear the cavernous sound of his baritone saxophone, go here.

It was a phone call I wished never to receive and knew was inevitable. Rod Levitt’s wife Jean called to report that he died peacefully in his sleep the night of May 8. A composer and arranger of inventiveness, warmth and resourcefulness, a trombonist whose kindness and humor radiated in his playing, Rod had Alzheimer’s. He was not warehoused in an institution, as so many Alzheimer’s patients must be. Jean kept him with her at home in Vermont. She said that although much of his past had slipped away, he kept his horn near and played it this week even as he was declining.
“You know, his trombone, his music, were his life,” Jean said. She left out the most important element in his life, Jean.
Mrs. Levitt said that they kept printouts of the Rifftides pieces about him in a neat stack on his desk and that he often asked her to read them to him. She said he was moved by the comments from Rifftides readers. For background on Rod and links to his music, see this item from January, and this followup from Steve Schwartz about Rod in his final years. Here is a little of what I wrote about the importance of his albums:

They comprise a body of recordings that are fresh, evocative and enormously entertaining forty years later. The writing was daring, finely crafted and marinated in wit.

The bassist Bill Crow knew Rod more than a decade longer than I did. He sent this recollection.

When I got out of the Army in 1949 and returned to my studies at the University of Washington, I soon discovered the afternoon jam sessions that went on in the U.’s music annex. I was a bebop valve trombonist and sometime drummer in those days. I met Rod Levitt at one of those jams, and we hung out a little together on the Seattle music scene until the winter of 1950, when Buzzy Bridgeford, a drummer from Olympia, invited me to go with him when he went back to New York. I kept hearing about Rod, but when he came to New York, he didn’t hang with the same people I was interested in at that time. Whenever our paths crossed, we had a nice reunion, and he called me to play on a couple of his projects, which I enjoyed very much. I liked his playing and his writing, and always appreciated his sunny disposition.

Rod Levitt would have been seventy-eight in September.

As if our friend and fellow artsjournal.com blogger Terry Teachout weren’t polymath enough, he’s extending his cultural breadth. On his blog, About Last Night, he announces:

I’m writing an opera.

What?

I’M WRITING AN OPERA.

That’s what I thought he said. To get the details, go here.

Confession: Until recently, I could not get with Robert Schumann. I found him dull. The nineteenth century composer and pianist is, by general agreement, in the front rank of German romanticism, so I assumed that the shortcoming was mine. I was right. I wasn’t paying attention. What caused me to turn the corner on Schumann was “Waldesgesprach,” a piece of his lieder based on the work of the poet Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff. I heard the song for the first time at a recital by Phil Grothaus, a tenor, and Andrea Prentice, a pianist, who live in my town.
Sub-confession: I’ve also never cared much for lieder, art songs set to poetry, usually German. That began to change a few years ago when I acquired a boxed set of Schubert lieder sung by the astounding Dieter Fischer-Dieskau with Gerald Moore at the piano (This CD is a generous sampler). I had always loved Schubert, but was put off by anyone’s lieder. Fischer-Dieskau turned that. Now, I am hooked on “Waldesgesprach” and warming to Schumann because of Mr. Grothaus’s and Ms. Prentice’s charming negotiation of its intriguing harmonies, which to my ear put Schumann far ahead of his time. He wrote it in 1840 during a flurry of lieder composition.
This experience helped me to understand why composers whose harmonic palettes I admire, among them Brahms, Faure and Elgar, were inspired by Schumann. I can’t imagine that Debussy and Ravel did not also study him. Go here to listen to recordings, in their entirety, of several artists’ interpretations of the song. They include Fischer-Dieskau with Alfred Brendel at the piano. See how you like it. If you think it took me too long to open my ears to Schumann, you’ll be right.
What does this have to do with jazz? Nothing, unless you accept that there is no such thing as jazz harmony. All harmony in jazz was first used by the great composers from before Bach to Stravinsky. To extrapolate loosely, you might say: no Schumann–no Tadd Dameron.
For a comprehensive biography and a nifty picture of Schumann, go here.
This CD has Fischer-Dieskau with his ideal accompanist Gerald Moore (every classical singer’s ideal accompanist) singing “Waldesgesprach” and several other pieces of Schumann lieder even better than he did with Brendel.