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Local wisdom has it that the population of Moscow, Idaho, doubles during the week of the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. Half of the temporary immigrants seem to be Russian musicians and others from the former Eastern bloc. At the opening concert in the University of Idaho field house, we heard satisfying sets by pianist Leonid Vintskevich and his saxophonist son Nik, who plays soprano and alto. They performed as a duo and with a strings orchestra, playing pieces written by Dr. Lynn Skinner, the founder and executive director emeritus of the festival. Tenor saxophonist Lembit Saarsalu, from Estonia, also played at a high level.
Saarsalu and the Vintskeviches followed the unusual solo guitarist Enver Izmailov, who taps the instrument’s strings, in the manner of Stanley Jordan. He developed the approach in Ukraine never having heard or heard of Jordan. Izmailov’s virtuosity encompasses jazz techniques, blazing speed and harmonic ingenuity, but his artistry is deepened by his incorporation of folk elements and effortless use of time signatures native to his part of the world. Izmailov is a master musician and a master entertainer.
After hours at the main festival hotel there was a jam session that featured a changing cast of Russian music students attending the festival to participate in workshops. None of them looked older than seventeen. All of them played at or near professional level–an impressive element of the festival’s Moscow-to-Moscow exchange program. They are among hundreds of jazz students from elementary, middle school and high school programs who descend on the Hampton festival to learn from and sometimes play with the corps of professionals who come here to impart their knowledge.
The concert’s Nat King Cole tribute brought together Nat’s brother Freddy with Monty Alexander, a pianist profoundly influenced by Nat Cole; drummer Jeff Hamilton, bassist Christian McBride and guitarist Russell Malone. Benny Green was on piano in the rhythm section for a set by three trumpeters, Claudio Roditi, Terell Stafford and Vern Sielert. All were splendid in Lee Morgan’s “Sidewinder” and in Sielert’s arrangement of Kenny Dorham’s “Lotus Blossom,” but Roditi left the most memorable impression with his uncomplicated, heartfelt “Body and Soul” in the ballad medley.
I’ll be writing at length about the festival in a Jazz Times article to appear in a spring issue, and I’ll be posting more here in the next few days. It is snowing now, I have no proper cold weather gear, and have to hitch a ride to the next concert. Later

Thanks to Bill Reed, aka Dr. Chilledair, for alerting us to recent video of Pinky Winters performing. The occasion was a concert during her December tour in Japan. You may recall that in the Rifftides review of her new CD recorded in 1983, I emphasized that she is singing beautifully these days. To hear and see proof, go here. Mr. Reed, in addition to his blogging activity, produces Ms. Winter’s CDs.

No, not that Moscow, the one in Idaho. I’m off later this morning to the Lionel Hampton International Jazz Festival. In its fortieth year, the twenty-second under his name, the festival goes on without Hamp, worse luck, but with an array of peformers including Benny Green, Jeff Hamilton, Christian McBride, Terell Stafford, Tamir Hendelman, Roberta Gamborini, Russell Malone, John Pizzarelli, a number of Russians and “some great surprises,” according to the advance publicity. For the first time, the four-day shebang is under the artistic direction of bassist John Clayton, who has developed a subsidiary career doing this kind of work.
I’ll be writing about the festival for Jazz Times and, of course, for Rifftides. The first postings from Moscow may not be for a day or two.

A benefit is scheduled for next week to help pianist Larry Willis, who was burned out of his home last month. The January 7 fire in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, destroyed the living quarters of the house he shared with a friend. Willis is one of the great journeyman pianists in modern jazz. His resumé includes work with Jackie McLean, Stan Getz, Cannonball Adderley, Blood Sweat & Tears, Branford Marsalis, Carla Bley and Steve Swallow, Roy Hargrove, the Fort Apache Band and David “Fathead” Newman. These days, he leads his own trio.
When I asked Willis his plans, he said, “To reconstruct my life, to find another place to live, and to replace the things I lost–my clothing, my music and my important documents. They were all destroyed in the fire.” The origin of the blaze is undetermined. Willis said he thinks that it was in the old house’s wiring. He was at home when the fire broke out but escaped unharmed.
The benefit, called “Pianists Play For Larry,” will be in New York City at St. Peter’s Church, Lexington Avenue at 54th Street, at 7:00 pm Monday, February 26. Among the pianists scheduled to perform are Randy Weston, Geri Allen, Don Friedman, Bertha Hope and Jean Michel Pilc. A $20 donation is suggested. Larger ones are encouraged.
Blue Fable
As the benefit was announced, High Note records released Willis’s new CD Blue Fable, which reunites him with a childhood friend and early musical partner, the bassist Eddie Gomez. The album also features alto saxophonist Joe Ford, trombonist Steve Davis and drummer Billy Drummond. It opens with Willis, Gomez and Drummond locking into a version of Thelonious Monk’s “Rhythm-a-ning” at a fast pace that does nothing to impede complex interaction among the three players.
Despite “Nardis”‘s and Gomez’s long association with Bill Evans, Willis only hints at his Evans influence and makes the piece his own. His treatment of the ballad “Never Let Me Go” is true to the melody and full of harmonic innovation. A highlight–perhaps the highlight–of the CD, it includes a stunning Gomez solo. The four tracks with Davis and Ford are in the tradition of post-bop quintets in the Art Blakey, Freddie Hubbard, Max Roach mold. Both men are impressive, Ford with his unusually spacious alto sound, Davis for his inventiveness within the Curtis Fuller tradition. Willis’s “Prayer For New Orleans” adds a rich element of spirituality to this fine CD.
It is doubtful that royalties from the album will go far toward allowing Willis to rebuild his life. If you are within walking, driving or flying distance of midtown Manhattan, you might keep in mind the benefit for him at St. Peter’s.

A message came in yesterday from a Rifftides reader who did not identify himself except to write, “I am going to be 25 in July and I consider myself not to be like most young people who at my age are probably getting their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.”
The anonymous correspondent said that he had read last September’s posting about Katie Couric’s debut on The CBS Evening News. He went on…

I found it to be fascinating, it turned up when I was doing a search for any information about the program’s new theme music by James Horner. I collect news theme music packages made for television, and as an aspiring musician myself I have been working on things very similar to that music which has been used for news programs. Do you think that this often-times bombastic and urgent sounding music has basically added to the sensationalization of TV news? It’s bad enough that newscasts often report stories having to do with celebrities of questionable morals or display shocking video to be replayed over and over again. I would like your opinion on this.

I thought no one would ever ask.
When I started doing television news, most newscasts had no theme music. Huntley-Brinkley on NBC used the first few bars of the second movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite had some kind of perfunctory opening and closing music, but I can’t for the life of me bring it to mind. Sometime in the 1960s, theme music became de rigueur. The use of music going into commercial breaks during newscasts soon followed. After the discovery that news could be a major profit center and consultants began flourishing, music in newscasts metastisized. It is far from the worst thing about what most television news has become, but it has helped to devalue news and erase the line between news and entertainment.

Nearly a year ago, reviewing The Shadow Of Your Smile: Pinky Winters Sings Johnny Mandel…with Lou Levy, I went on at length about that remarkable release by the vocalist and the pianist. Here is a bit of the review.

Pinky Winters does not scat, swoop, or indulge in any form of “jazz singer” posturing. I have no doubt, given her innate musicianship, that she could embellish up a storm, but–like the man who knows how to play the accordion in Mark Twain’s definition of a gentleman–she chooses not to. She merely sings the song, with impeccable diction, interpretation, time and phrasing, and with intonation that is centered in the heart of each note. Strike “merely;” there’s nothing mere about her kind of artistry. The great bassist Red Mitchell once wrote a song called “Simple Isn’t Easy.” He might have had Pinky Winters in mind.

To go to the archive and read all of that piece, click here. Then come back and get the good news; at the same 1983 concert that produced The Shadow Of Your Smile, Pinky Winters and Levy recorded enough songs for an additional CD, which has just been released for the first time. Called Speak Low, it includes that Kurt Weill song along with eleven others by Gershwin, Berlin, Arlen, Kern, Styne, Blane, Livingston, Loesser–the usual suspects among great American song writers, plus Jobim’s “No More Blues” and Luiz Eca’s “Dolphin.” Assisted by bassist Bill Takas, Winters and Levy perform with the practiced ease of master musicians who know one another’s qualities inside out. Longing comes with no more poignancy than in their treatment of “Never Let Me Go,” joy no more infectious than in their romp through Jobim’s “No More Blues.” And there is plenty of Levy in solo, including his and Takas’s exhilirating duet on an unlkely vehicle, Berlin’s “The Piccolino.” Levy’s work here reminds us what a complete pianist he was.
Like Levy, Takas has been gone for several years. A bassist who sustained notes the way lovers prolong caresses, he was a musicians’ favorite who never got the acclaim he deserved. Winters is in Southern California, singing beautifully and recording for obscure, expensive, import labels. It is obvious what that says about the state of culture and of the recording industry in the United States.

Considering that the last of his last four albums was released in 1966 and only one of them is available on CD, there has been a suprising amount of response to the January Rifftides piece about the music of Rod Levitt. A message that arrived this morning updates the Levitt story.

Rod Levitt turned 75 years old in September 2004. In June of that year, after having made contact with him through various friends and acquaintances, I drove up to S. Wardsboro, Vermont where Rod and his wife Jean and their many dogs have lived for years. My purpose was to interview him so I could do a feature on him and his recordings for my radio show, “Jazz from Stuio Four” heard on WGBH, 89.7FM, Boston. The program aired on September 17th, 2004, one day after his 75th.
It took a while to find their house, nestled back on a series of dirt roads that seemed to go nowhere but, voila! There I was pulling into their driveway after making various turns at certain landmarks and mailboxes given to me as signposts (a left at the white picket fence and another left at the falling down garage). The mailbox that looked like a red barn led me up their long gravel road).
I spent the afternoon with Rod. We had lunch and then settled down to work. I brought a DAT tape machine, a couple of good quality microphones and some headphones. Rod’s memory was spotty. Somethings he remembered in minute detail, other times he couldn’t recall the name of someone he sat next to in Dizzy’s band. I myself don’t remember if this was due to his being in the early stages of Altzheimers or Parkinsons. But he ultimately came through and managed to tell me wonderful stories of his days in New York, meeting Quincy Jones, Dizzy and many others and the recordings that he made with them and his own for Riverside and RCA Victor. At times he became very emotional and teary eyed as he recalled a name of location that meant a great deal to him but that he hadn’t thought about in years. He still had his horn and I asked him if he would mind playing something for me. He played the opening notes of “Hollar” from The Dynamic Sound Patterns…
Always Know,
Steve Schwartz
Jazz from Studio Four
Friday, 8p-midnight
WGBH, 89.7FM, Boston
www.wgbh.org/jazz

I have no idea how many recorded jazz versions there are of Cole Porter’s Songs. Hundreds, I imagine, possibly thousands. Think what handsome contributions “Love For Sale,” “I Love You,” Easy To Love” and “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To” must have made to Porter’s royalties income. Of course, melodic evasions like “Hot House,” based on the harmonic structure of “What Is This Thing Called Love,” did not add to his riches; you can’t copyright a chord pattern.
Like most of the classic American song writers, Porter regarded jazz musicians warily when they adapted his creations, but I think he would have liked a forthcoming CD by the elegant Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren. It consists entirely of love songs by Porter. Before he and his trio go into improvisation, Lundgren honors Porter by playing his melodies as the composer wrote them. Preparing an essay for the album, I was reminded of an exchange Porter had with Andre Previn during Previn’s youthful career writing scores for Hollywood films. Previn recounted it in his book No Minor Chords, one of the funniest and most endearing of all motion picture memoirs.

Cole Porter was the most elegant of creatures, his manners as courtly as his dress. Only once did I hear him voice a vituperative opinion. I was working on the film version of Kiss Me Kate, and Cole had interpolated the song “From This Moment On” into the existing score, for use as an elaborate dance number. “I have to warn you about something before you start making this arrangement, he said to me, his voice quite angry. “This tune has been recorded by Woody Herman and his band. Have you ever heard of him?”
I nodded eagerly. “Well,” he went on,” what they did to my tune is absolutely disgusting. It was turned into a loud, strident jazz mess, and the melody is just about unrecognizable. It’s a good example of someone not having any idea what the tune is about!” He stopped, thought for a moment, and grew less choleric. Finally he smiled. “But what am I talking about. Your arrangements are always so theatrical and correct for the occasion, I’m sure I’ll love what you write.” And, indeed, when he came to the recording, he was fulsome in his praise. “That’s more like it,” he said, smiling. “I knew you would understand the song.”
I never told him that I had written the arrangement for Woody Herman as well.

No Minor Chords is out of print, but Amazon.com seems to have plenty of used copies. I wouldn’t dream of giving his tales away, but Previn’s story behind the book’s title and his Ava Gardner reminiscence alone are worth much more than the price of a recycled copy.

The Grammy win last night by Brian Lynch and Eddie Palmieri for Best Latin Jazz Album is also a victory for the proposition that independence can bring rewards. Lynch said goodbye to the oversight of record companies, produced Simpático on his own and released it with ArtistShare, the cooperative venture that allows musicians greater control over their recorded work and a greater share of the profit from it. Even better, it’s a splendid CD. To read last fall’s Rifftides review of Simpático, go here.
The focus of much attention lately on Rifftides, Michael Brecker posthumously won his twelfth Grammy for his tenor saxophone solo on “Some Skunk Funk”.
Congratulations to friend Dan Morgenstern. He won for best liner notes for Fats Waller: If You Got To Ask, You Ain’t Got It, discussed under the current Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column.

Rifftides Washington, DC correspondent John Birchard heard Dave Holland’s new band the other night and filed this report.

Terrace Theater, John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, D.C.

February 9, 2007.

Dave Holland, bass; Robin Eubanks, trombone; Antonio Hart, alto saxophone; Alex Sipiagin, trumpet & fluegelhorn; Mulgrew Miller, piano; Eric Harland, drums.

Dave Holland made his third visit to the Kennedy Center, leading a band he described as “a relatively new project.” The British-born bassist is coming off a banner year, having been named Bassist of the Year for 2006 by readers of Down Beat, his quintet named Best Jazz Group and his big band voted Best Big Band. On the evidence of last night’s first set, Holland is not resting on those laurels.
The new band can justifiably be called an all-star group. There are no weak links. The audience that filled the Terrace Theater heard a set of originals by the leader that showcased each musician in arrangements that demonstrated freshness and originality. Holland kicked off the evening with a snappy Latin piece that featured Mulgrew Miller and Robin Eubanks.
A tribute to the late Ray Brown, “Mister B”, followed. A loose-limbed, medium swinger, the tune reminded one of Brown and featured Miller again and altoist Antonio Hart, who is not afraid to allow space as he builds a solo and will mine a phrase, repeating it as if examining it first from one side then another, not just stuffing notes in as a substitute for thought.
An up-tempo “Interception” was next, offering an intense Alex Sipiagin whose chops are impressive and tone on trumpet is bright. His fiery playing put me in mind of my youth when Europeans were considered second-rate jazz players. Those days are long gone, thank God. If any proof were needed, the work by Sipiagin and his leader last night were fine examples. The fast, staccato piece came to a close with Eric Harland’s drum solo, which at times sounded like a machine gun with hiccups.
Holland then introduced another of his originals, one inspired he said by a scene from the old movie Cleopatra, in which Elizabeth Taylor made her stately way down the Nile on a barge. He calls it “Processional” and its exotic minor sound and leisurely pace offered a chance to hear Sipiagin’s mellow fluegelhorn state the melody and gave Antonio Hart another pleasing showcase.
The set concluded all too soon with a tribute to the late drummer Ed Blackwell and his New Orleans background, titled “Pass It On”. Holland, who played a 3/4-sized bass throughout, began the tune with an unaccompanied pizzicato solo that featured soulful double- and triple-stops and gradually morphed into a rhythmic beat that had the audience fairly tasting the gumbo of the Crescent City. Harland slid in underneath Holland and showed the Blackwell beat did not die with its inventor. Robin Eubanks offered a fine, raucous solo full of smears and a burry sound appropriate to the tune and Antonio Hart turned up the temperature even more, leading to Eric Harland’s infectious solo and then out.
Dave Holland’s new band is a worthy successor to his previous quintet. At times, the front line reminded this listener of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and at others of the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet. But mostly, the sextet bears the stamp of its leader. It is an uncompromising jazz band with a sound that is anchored in the past and looks ahead with intelligence, taste and imagination.
John Birchard

There have been several interesting comments about the Rifftides Pay To Play posting. Jim Brown’s comment constitutes an essay and gets a posting of its own. He wrote it in response to messages about the Pay To Play piece that appeared on a listserve devoted to west coast jazz. The emphases and the colorful language are all Mr. Brown’s.

I come at this with the perspective of engineer (formal training), jazz fan for 55 years, actively working in and with jazz clubs for the last 30 years, and a background in accounting — both mom and dad were accountants.
In this modern world, our educations are “Balkanized” — that is, we specialize in whatever we’ve chosen to study seriously (usually, but not always what makes us a living), and rarely learn much about anything else — ESPECIALLY anything so venal as the economics (or the politics) of how the world works.
BUT:
You would have to be living under a very large rock to miss the facts 1) that rents for spaces that are suitable for jazz clubs are sky high; 2) sound and lighting to support jazz isn’t cheap; 3) people who make decent waitresses and bartenders for jazz clubs need to be “a cut above” in terms of intelligence and sensitivity, and they deserve a living wage too; 4) it costs money to buy the advertising that fills the club; 5) there are taxes and licenses that a club owner must pay; 6) there are lots of nights in any jazz club I’ve ever been in with lots of empty seats, even with top musical talent and quality management.
The Jazz Showcase in Chicago has tried a bunch of locations over its 60+ years of existence, but not one of them that wasn’t in a high rent location has been successful! What do I mean by successful — fannies in the seats!
While I believe to the core of my existence that Jazz is the greatest artistic contribution of the 20th century, and on a par with the combined output of what we commonly call “classical music,” both classical music and jazz are minority interests to the population at large. The reasons for this reality are a sad comentary on the modern world, but they are a reality, and WE are fools if we ignore it.
We as jazz fans, and those of us who are musicians, all need to do our part as a TEAM to create, nurture, and support the jazz clubs that do exist, the people who make major investments in their time, talent, and dollars to make them run, the technical folk who work in those clubs when they could make lots more dollars elsewhere, and those who make the music. Without ANY of them, the jazz scene is far less rich (and damned well could disappear).
The “pay to play” syndrome that Marvin Stamm talks about is really about the musician sharing some of the cost of a financially unsuccessful gig. It costs the club owner a lot of money to open the club for a night. If it doesn’t come from folks who walk in the door, where does it come from? Especially because running a real jazz club is such a fragile business, you can’t have a lot of those nights and stay afloat.
When I was living in Chicago, I had a long standing offer of $2K to Joe Segal of The Jazz Showcase to book a very well known and very inventive pianist, if only for one night. He never took me up on it — it wasn’t enough, because he didn’t trust the pianist’s drawing power!
On the other hand, someone must promote the gig, and put the fannies in the seats. Usually that responsibility falls to the club owner. If it can be shared with a record company (or the artist), all the better. Veteran singer/pianist Judy Roberts, a stalwart of the Chicago club scene who ALWAYS seems to be working, does her part, in the form of a mailing list, circulating to greet her fans, and doing the things a real entertainer does to keep the audience satisfied.
ALL of us must be continually aware of the economic realities with every element of our contributions to the scene. I’m like Jack Benny in a gas station when I design sound systems or assist a jazz club owner in setting up his or her system. Musicians and jazz fans need to do the same. That includes everyone — musicians, bartenders, clubowners, and promoters working hard to make the audience feel appreciated and “in the scene.” It includes an audience that fills those clubs regularly, buys some drinks, and doesn’t bitch about the cover charge that pays the freight.
I’ll ask a rhetorical question here — “How many nights have readers of Rifftides spent in a jazz club over the past year?” As for the musicians among us, how many nights of a cover have YOU paid to support a jazz club in your community? Let those who answer, “more than once a week” cast the first stone. And the rest of you are full of s—.
Jim Brown

The tireless Bret Primack has made the leap from mere blogging into video blogging. His first posting has a sixteen-minute mini-documentary about the late Michael Brecker. It includes Brecker discussing his playing, and an organized jam session with Michael, David Liebman, Joe Lovano and the incendiary rhythm section of Phil Markowitz, Rufus Reid and Billy Hart.
At the bottom of Primack’s page are links to several of his favorite YouTube videos, so I have him to thank for chewing up a substantial chunk of a morning I should have spent writing. No hard feelings, though, because I saw and heard Fred Astaire singing with Oscar Levant (I’m not making that up) and Lord Buckley as a guest on Groucho Marx’s You Bet Your Life. Younger Rifftides readers may think I’m suggesting a trip to fogeyville, but they are likely to discover that true hipness has no age. To find out for yourself, go here.
Be aware that YouTube has a second part of Astaire’s guest spot on the Levant show in which he does a brilliantly underplayed impression of Samuel Goldwyn.

Thanks to fellow artsjournal.com traveler Terry Teachout for mentioning a blog of which I was unaware until ten minutes ago. It is witty, quiet and touching, and I can’t help wondering if that’s how the anonymous blogger known as The Hotel Pianist plays. Here are samples of her writing:

As I’ve written, I don’t often smile while sitting at the hotel piano. I used to smile automatically at guests who walked by, but on too many occasions, my smile was met with a scowl or a stone-cold expression. This hurt my feelings (hey, hotel pianists have feelings, too!), so my default expression is now a preemptive scowl. But if you happen to approach me with a shy smile, I’ll gladly return the pleasantry. (As long as you don’t request certain tunes.)

Comment Of The Night

“Before you were born,” said a wizened man who claimed to have attended high school with Bobby Timmons, “they used to have places like the Blue Note.” (The last time I checked, the Blue Note was alive and well, if a tourist trap!)

I am still racing multiple deadlines. It is late at night. I just finished one piece and am about to start another. There will be no further posting here tonight. So you may as well check in with The Hotel Pianist. Please come back tomorrow.

An accomplished pianist in New York, not famous but not obscure, told me about her attempts to find work. They were discouraging. There seemed to be no work. Then, the owner of an Italian restaurant made her an offer. She could play in the restaurant, but only Italian songs or those associated with Frank Sinatra. Oh, and one other thing: there would be no pay. It was an offer she refused. But look on the bright side. The owner didn’t tell her that she would have to pay him. Many musicians these days aren’t that lucky.
In the last century–not so long ago, really–the best bands in jazz became the best by working together in jazz clubs night after night, week after week. In the 1950s and ’60s, it was not unusual for a group to have two, three and even six-week engagements in New York clubs like The Half Note, The Five Spot, Slug’s, The Village Vanguard and The Jazz Gallery. There were counterparts elsewhere; the Jazz Showcase in Chicago, the Black Hawk in San Francisco, Sardi’s and Shelly’s Manne Hole in Los Angeles, The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach. In the clubs during long runs, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, the Lighthouse All-Stars, the Miles Davis Quintet, Shelly Manne and His Men, Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet, the Bill Evans Trio, the Modern Jazz Quartet, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, Cal Tjader’s quartet and many other groups perfected their music. None of them got rich playing clubs, but they grew together musically. Their exposure and popularity in the clubs led to record contracts and fame.

For Example
Club owners were not philanthropists. They were in business to make money, but they knew that in the long run if a band brought in enough customers, the economics would make sense for all concerned. Well, the long run is back there in the twentieth century, with recording contracts. Like nearly everything else in the most affluent economy the world has ever known, we want results now, the money now, return on investment now. Why should club owners be different? They are not, so many of them devise formulas whereby the musicians who play their clubs guarantee the club owner a profit. If you would like to know more about that, let Marvin Stamm explain it from the musician’s standpoint. He does so in the most recent edition of his excellent electronic newsletter, Cadenzas. Yes, musicians now sometimes have to pay to play in clubs. If that comes as news to you, if it shocks you, wait until you read the details in Stamm’s piece.

Marvin Stamm
Here is an excerpt:

Many club owners refuse to take any chances with musicians and their groups, and are rarely willing to expend an effort to develop any kind of working relationship with them. The artist is expected to assume total responsibility; rarely do you find a club willing to share any of the risk. This is a very sad situation, particularly for some of the newer groups or lesser-known artists, because it places many clubs more or less off limits except for an off-night or those times when or if the musician shows a willingness to “pay to play,” a practice with which I strongly disagree. The “pay to play” syndrome is something I don’t remember occurring when I came to New York in 1966. It now seems to have been going on for a good while and exemplifies what I have been writing about.

If an artist or group is new or unknown, some clubs – even the larger clubs – will ask that the artist or group’s record company guarantee that the club will break even. If there is no record company to back the artist, then he will probably have to guarantee this himself. An example of this is something I was told recently by someone close to me about a young saxophonist approaching the booker or owner of a club about bringing his quintet into the club on an off-night. The club agreed to pay the quintet five hundred dollars, but the musician had to guarantee the club attendance by thirty people for their performance – at twenty-five dollars a head, or a total of seven hundred and fifty dollars. If the artist didn’t draw those initial thirty people, the difference had to come out of his pocket. So, in essence, the leader of the quintet had to “pay to play.” Sad! Disgusting!

That is a small portion of a long, troubling article. To read the whole thing, go to Cadenzas and scroll down to “New York Jazz Clubs.” Fortunately for Marvin Stamm, talent and forty years of hard work have elevated him to a place where he doesn’t have to depend on night clubs to make a living. But he is worried about the next generation. It has never been easy for young musicians to find places to polish their art and be heard. Now, it’s even tougher, and they may be forced to pay for the opportunity.

I have just wrapped up a project that gave me enormous pleasure, writing the notes for Jessica Williams’ next CD, recorded in a solo concert at The Seasons. I’ll let you know when it is available. Talking with Jessica, I learned that her music and her life are changing and that another remarkable pianist, Glenn Gould, is playing a major role in the transition. (See this Rifftides posting involving Gould).
It seems unlikely that one of the major living jazz pianists will leave the field, but that’s how Ms. Williams is talking, and how she recently wrote about jazz in her web log.

I now avoid the word. I bracket it in quotation marks. I have come to dislike the word. The word itself derives from roots that hold disrespectful and flatly barbaric connotations for me. I do not feel like a jazz musician. I do not know what that is anymore.

Perhaps I am too sober. Being a non-drinker and a non-smoker, having left all of my nasty little vices and habits behind, I don’t often feel comfortable around true “jazz buffs”. When I play festivals (which I do with much less frequency than before) I feel as though I’m at a really big, loud party where everyone is having an absolutely great time but me. The wine is flowing and the smoke is blowing and the drums are banging and the bass is twanging and I feel totally displaced.

I have either moved away from it or it has moved away from me.

There is much more about this in Jessica’s blog piece. I, for one, would be disappointed if she left jazz behind, but I will listen to anything she plays. There are indications of her new direction in that forthcoming Seasons CD, along with generous portions of–you should pardon the expression–jazz. There were no banging drums at the concert. There was no twanging bass. Wine did not flow, but it was sipped. Everyone did have an absolutely great time. Maybe even Jessica Williams.

Whitney Balliett
Writing about jazz generally takes one of two paths, analysis or appreciation. Whitney Balliett was not a musicologist, but one of the field’s most gifted appreciators. His descriptions of what he heard, saw and felt in music are among the best twentieth century English prose in any field. Consider this passage about Thelonious Monk.

His improvisations were attempts to disguise his love of melody. He clothed whatever he played with spindly runs, flatted notes, flatted chords, repeated single notes, yawning silences, and zigzag rhythms. Sometimes he pounded the keyboard with his right elbow. His style protected him not only from his love of melody but from his love of the older pianists he grew out of — Duke Ellington and the stride pianists. All peered out from inside his solos, but he let them escape only as parody.

Musicians and academic analysts often found more poetry than accuracy in some of Balliett’s lyrical descriptions of performances and called him to account for evaluations like his contention that Max Roach didn’t swing. But it was easy to forgive him anything when he created sentences like these from an account of Pee Wee Russell’s clarinet playing.

By this time, his first chorus is over, and one has the impression of having just passed through a crowd of jostling, whispering people.

In his final chorus, he moves snakily up toward the middle register with a series of tissue-paper notes and placid rests, adopting a legato attack that allows the listener to move back from the edge of his seat.

Balliett’s skill at describing music was matched by his ability to capture the those who make it, as in this passage about Earl Hines at the piano.

Hines–tall and quick-moving, with a square, noble face–is a hypnotic performer. His almost steady smile is an unconscious, transparent mask. When he is most affected, the smile freezes–indeed, his whole face clenches. Then the smile falters, revealing a desolate, piercing expression, which melts into another smile. He tosses his head back and opens his mouth, hunches over, sways from side to side, and rumbling to himself, clenches his face again, tears of sweat pouring down his face. His face and his manner are his music–the sort of perfect, non-showman showmanship that stops the heart.

Balliett was not enamored of the avant garde of the sixties, writing that “It depends not on mere emotion but on an armored passion.” Nonetheless, he went to hear its leading figures and gave it a balanced assessment.

At its worst, then, the new thing is long-winded, dull, and almost physically abrasive. At its best–in the hands of Ornette Coleman or (Cecil) Taylor–it howls through the mind and heart, filling them with an honest ferocity that is new in jazz and perhaps in any music.

Balliett was the jazz critic of The New Yorker for forty years under its brilliant editor William Shawn. The magazine’s new owners forced Shawn out in 1987. As the editorial leadership went through changes, Balliett was downgraded, finally reduced to doing short profiles. Not long after he was relegated to a quickie sketch of Barbra Streisand, he disappeared from The New Yorker altogether, one of the magazine’s greatest assets flung away. In his last decade, he wrote occasional articles for other magazines and a few memorable pieces for The New York Review of Books.
Most of Balliett’s work for The New Yorker was anthologized in books. Two of the most recent are American Musicians II: Seventy-one Portraits in Jazz and Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2001.
After having read him all of my adult life, I finally met Balliett in 1997, prepared to tell him what his work had meant to me. He derailed me with kind words about something I had written. I managed to get back on track with praise that embarassed him. We had occasional encounters when I was in New York. After our last conversation, I had no doubt that The New Yorker’s rejection had done serious damage to his spirit.
Yesterday, I learned with sadness that Whitney Balliett was ill. Today, he died. He was eighty years old. I shall miss him.

The second half of a remarkable concert I told you about last October is going to hit the airwaves and cyberspace this weekend. Here is the announcement from Jim Wilke:

Jazz meets classical music in Part 2 of a concert by The Bill Mays Trio and members of Finisterra on Jazz Northwest on Sunday February 4 at 1 pm Pacific time, 4 pm Eastern time, on KPLU. The New York based jazz trio is joined by members of a Seattle chamber group in music by Ravel, Bach & Bird as well as original music by Bill Mays and Matt Wilson. Narrator Doug Ramsey joins the group on two selections, one including the poems of Carl Sandburg. The concert was recorded last Fall at The Seasons in Yakima. Jazz Northwest is produced by Jim Wilke exclusively for broadcast on 88.5, KPLU and kplu.org

A rehearsal with the Mays trio and Finisterra. I am
lurking behind Mays at the piano. On seeing the photograph,
Matt Wilson sent a message: “Man, do I have a gorgeous left
leg or what???”
You can hear the program at 88.5 fm in the Seattle area, or in KPLU’s streaming audio on your computer.

The Rifftides staff is awash in deadline assignments that yield even more than this blog pays, so we’re bound to keep at them. When the waters subside, my plan is to begin surveying some of the CDs that have come in on the tide recently (is this aquarian metaphor getting out hand?). For now, please roam the archives (see the right-hand column) for items of interest that you may have missed.
Oh, yes; the headline up there is “Kenny Barron.” He is on my mind because I’m going to introduce him this weekend in his solo concert on the nine-foot Steinway at The Seasons. For an idea why I am anticipating the prospect of hearing Kenny live after too long a dry spell, check out this video clip of his solo on “I Can’t Get Started.” The band is the Stan Getz quartet with Barron, bassist Rufus Reid and drummer Victor Lewis in Vienna, probably in 1989. Getz smiles (!) and prompts Barron to take two bows. No wonder. The video quality is blurry. The sound is not. You’ll be glad.

Mark Stryker, the jazz columnist of the Detroit Free Press, read the Clifford Brown posting and wrote:

Given Soupy’s Detroit connections, I once wrote a story about Soupy and the Clifford tape not long after it first surfaced in 1996. There’s no link but I’ve copied some details below, as well as some of Soupy’s other memories.

Comedian Soupy Sales, a television pioneer, began rooting around his Beverly Hills garage in 1994 at the request of a documentary producer at the A&E network. Eventually, he exhumed a film canister containing a handful of episodes of “Soupy’s On,” his five-day-a-week, late-night variety show, which aired live from 1953 through ’59 on WXYZ-TV (Channel 7) in Detroit.There, nestled among the pie-in-the-face comedian’s collection of goofy characters like Wyatt Burp and Ernest Hemingbone and Charles Vichysoisse, was five minutes of priceless jazz history — the only surviving film of Clifford Brown, one of the greatest trumpeters in jazz.

The film features Brown — or “Brownie” as he was known to friends and fans — roaring through the Eubie Blake ballad “Memories of You” and George Gershwin’s “Lady Be Good” in early 1956, just months before he was killed in an auto accident on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the age of 25. Brown segues between the two tunes without a break, and the segment concludes with a brief interview with Sales. “When we’d come into Detroit, we’d play the Rouge Lounge at that time, but we’d always do maybe five minutes or so to promote the gig on Soupy’s show,” says drummer Max Roach, who, with Brown, led an influential quintet from 1954-56 and also played on Charlie Parker’s seminal bebop records in the ’40s.”In this particular instance, Clifford just ran down and did it with the rhythm section that was on Soupy’s show. But it’s an unusual tape in that all you see is Clifford from different angles. You can see the way Clifford’s chops and embouchure are and the way he used his right hand; it’s a fabulous study in the way Clifford dealt with the the trumpet. It’s just unbelievable.”

As word of Sales’ Indiana Jones-like discovery spreads through the jazz community — and videotape copies of the Brown film are traded like talismans — speculation has become rampant among musicians and fans: What other treasures lie buried in Soupy’s archives? The answer, tragically, is almost nothing, even though Soupy’s On featured the most remarkable collection of jazz talent in television before or since.A short list of the jazz giants who performed on the program includes: Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Ella Fitzgerald, Stan Getz, Lee Konitz, Illinois Jacquet, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Earl Hines and Thelonious Monk. Miles Davis, who lived in Detroit for five months in 1953-54, was a regular, as were Detroit-bred stars such as Pepper Adams, Tommy Flanagan and Yusef Lateef. But these were the days before videotape, and unless a program was shot on film or saved via a kinescope — a film of the TV screen — it simply vanished. That was the fate of “Soupy’s On,” except for a few episodes that Sales had a friend film in order to document his comedy characters. It’s serendipity that Brown happened to be on a program that survived. “Don’t forget, you’re talking about 1955, and nobody ever thought about taping stuff like that in those days,” says Sales, 70, speaking from a hotel in Huntington, W.Va., where he was performing.

Other than Brown, the only jazz musicians captured on Sales’ private films are pianists Eddie Heywood Jr. and Erroll Garner; Heywood is a minor figure, and film of Garner is plentiful. Even the shows near the end that were actually videotaped were all erased in the ’60s by the station in order to recycle tape.

Sales was the biggest TV star in Detroit in the ’50s, making a reported $100,000 a year by 1958. His noontime show for kids, “12 O’Clock Comics,” was so highly rated that he replaced “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” on the ABC network for eight weeks during the summer of 1955.”Soupy’s On” ran from 11 to 11:15 p.m. in the early days, growing eventually to a full 30 minutes. Each show featured sketch comedy, talk and a healthy dose of jazz. The show’s theme song was Charlie Parker’s bebop anthem “Yardbird Suite.”Detroit’s thriving club scene ensured a steady stream of top jazz performers, who Sales says were paid scale — $25 — to appear on the show. There was never any rehearsal. A soloist would choose a standard and a key that everyone was comfortable with and just play, says Jack Brokensha, who played drums and vibes with the Australian Jazz Quintet in the mid-‘ 50s and left the road to become a staff musician at WXYZ during the final year of “Soupy’s On.””It was live TV, and you only got two or three minutes per tune. And I remember one night Thelonious Monk played ‘Round Midnight’ and you couldn’t stop him, and we had to roll the credits over him,” says Brokensha of Bloomfield Hills.

Though not a musician, Sales was an aficionado who hung out in clubs and knew jazz like an insider. The show’s original producer and director, Peter Strand, remembers that Sales’ knowledge of the music led to the kind of incisive interviews you never see today.”It was not idle chat. Soupy knew why they wrote what they wrote, so they opened up and could be themselves,” says Strand, now of Glenview, Ill.Sales says he knew at the time that the nightly parade of jazz stars was special. “That always occurs to people who star in their own shows . . . and it’s only afterwards that everybody else says, ‘We should’ve saved that.’

Soupy Sales remembers a few of the jazz greats who appeared on “Soupy’s On.

“Ella Fitzgerald, vocalist: “Ella was wonderful. She was just the sweetest lady who ever lived. She was like sugarcoated; you just wanted to hug and kiss her. Anything you wanted she did.
“Duke Ellington, bandleader: “With Duke, you were in the presence of greatness, you know. He sat down and played “Satin Doll” and “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

Chet Baker, trumpet: “There you’re looking at a potential big movie star. He was like another James Dean had he kept himself straight. He had such a beautiful face, and he was really a nice guy, a great personality, and he could sing. It was a shame to watch a man destroy himself in front of your very eyes.”

Billie Holiday, vocalist: “Some people had a concern when we had her on. They said, ‘You gonna let that junkie on?’ And I said: ‘Listen, I have her on ’cause she’s a great singer. I don’t care what she does in her private life.’ She came on and sung her ass off. . . . She sang ‘Fine and Mellow’ and ‘Lover Man.’ I’ll never forget that.”

Stan Getz, tenor sax: “He was so whacked out. He said, ‘Just let me know when you want me to go up there.’ And he’d play, and we could not get his attention ’cause he played with his eyes closed. He got through and said, ‘How was it?’ And I said, ‘We went off the air five minutes ago.’ “

Milt Jackson, vibes: “He once was doing the show, and he pulled out a glasses case, and a joint fell on the floor, and I stepped on it. Afterwards, I said, ‘You look underneath my shoe, you’ll see something you dropped.’ He said, ‘Oh, thank you so very much.’

Thanks for keeping the blog — it’s become part of my everyday routine.

Mark Stryker