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Devra DoWrite, of eagle eye and encylopedic knowledge, adds information to the Rifftides item in the following exhibit about a good old Cal Tjader album wth Eugene Wright, Gerald Wiggins and Bill Douglass.

What was not mentioned was a small fact that gives “but of course” understanding to why “everything clicked” — Bill Douglass was Wig’s drummer and they’d been working together alot in the few years leading up to the Tjader recording.

To read all of Devra’s addendum and mild rebuke, go here. Hey, to paraphrase the deathless words of Steven Wright, you can’t know everything; where would you put it? I appreciate the clarification.

At a concert, Louis Armstrong almost invariably said, “And now, we’re going to lay one of those good old good ones on you.” He used variations of that introductory line during his entire career. Here’s an example, on video, from 1933. I’m borrowing Pops’s line and applying it to two albums from the mid-1950s. This fits in with Deborah Hendrick’s (she has a last name, after all) request to suggest CDs she can recommend to friends who are neophyte jazz listeners.
Concord, through its Fantasy, Inc. subsidiary, has just released another batch of RVG Remasters, named for Rudy Van Gelder, the gifted engineer who recorded them and has digitally updated his original work. It includes Walkin’: The Miles Davis All-Stars, two sessions from April, 1954 with brilliant playing by Davis, trombonist J.J. Johnson, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, alto saxophonist Dave Schildkraut, pianist Horace Silver, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Kenny Clarke. Most jazz musicians and many listeners who came up in the fifties and sixties know the album’s solos by heart, particularly those on “Walkin'” and “Blue and Boogie.” The title tune has become a part of the basic repertoire. Davis had yet to make what repeater-pencil jazz writers persist in describing as his “comeback” at the Newport Jazz Festival the following year. He had never been away. He was yet to record the series of Columbia albums that brought him widespread fame, but he was a major figure in jazz. He, Johnson, Thompson and Silver were inspired in their improvisations on the sextet date. Their solos so quickly became ingrained in the minds of jazz musicians everywhere that within weeks of the album’s release, you could hear paraphrases of them in jam sessions and, before long, in other recordings. More than half a century later, they are a part of the lingua franca of jazz.
In the quintet session, the other horn was Schildkraut, whose alto playing so closely resembled Charlie Parker’s that no less a Parker intimate than Charles Mingus thought that he was hearing Parker when Leonard Feather played Schildkraut’s “Solar” solo for him in a blindfold test. Throughout both sessions, the rhythm section demonstrates that perfect accompaniment can be as satisfying as the improvisation it supports. Focusing on Heath’s bass lines alone can bring great rewards. This is a record to go back to time and again for deeper discoveries.
In 1956, Cal Tjader recorded Cal Tjader Quartet, an album that received little critical notice and sold modestly but over the decades has proved one of the most enduring of the vibraharpist’s dozens of recordings. By 1956, Tjader was becoming better known for his role in the development of Afro-Cuban jazz than as the straight-ahead musician who debuted with the Dave Brubeck Octet and later was the drummer and occasional vibist in Brubeck’s trio. In a pickup date while he and his bassist Eugene Wright were in Hollywood, Tjader brought in pianist Gerald Wiggins and drummer Bill Douglass. Everything clicked. They produced a collection notable for its consistent sensitivity and good feeling. Their “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is one of the finest jazz versions of that piece. The album has an engaging balance of swinging peformances with three slower ones that demonstrate Tjader’s seldom-recognized status as one his generation’s most effective players of ballads. His “For All We Know” solo alone proves that, and his playing on Wright’s “Miss Wiggins,” incorporating the “new blues” harmonic changes introduced by Charlie Parker, gives insights into his understanding of the blues.
Wiggins’ comping complements Tjader in quite a different manner than that of the funkier Vince Guaraldi, who was Tjader’s regular pianist at the time. Wiggins’ solos are a delight. He manages to combine harmonic and melodic delicacy with muscular swing. The sturdy, dependable Wright melds with Douglass, one of the great brush artists among drummers, into a mutual surge that floats the entire enterprise. The instrumentation inevitably brings to mind the Modern Jazz Quartet, which was riding high in 1956, but too much has been made of the comparison. This is music with its own flair and personality.
Concord deserves credit for keeping this and other valuable music available in the Fantasy Original Jazz Classics reissue program. But how long the OJC program will last is anybody’s guess. I recommend prompt action if you want to acquire these and other CDs in the OJC series.

Terry Teachout has come up with a terrific idea for his About Last Night blog. I only wish that I had thought of it first.

In recent months I’ve been posting links to interesting videos that I found on other blogs, but until a few days ago it never occurred to me to experiment with turning this blog into a one-stop portal to the wonders of YouTube. Now I’ve done just that. Take a look at the “Sites to See” module of the right-hand column and you’ll see that it ends with a brand-new roll of selected culture-oriented video links, most of them to YouTube. So far as I know, this is the first such list to appear anywhere on the Web.

Watching Hank Williams, followed by Maria Callas followed by Spike Jones, then Thelonious Monk, is a trip. Please make it a round trip; we want you back. To read Terry’s entire entry and visit his list of YouTube links, go here.

From Washington, DC:

The other morning I was pawing through my CD collection, looking for something to accompany my pre-work meal when I came upon The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival.

I put it on and, in seconds, was reminded why that recording has stayed near the top of my all-time best list for nearly 50 years. For sheer head-long momentum, nothing I have ever heard can match it. Peterson has headed some notable trios, but the Herbie Ellis-Ray Brown edition beats ’em all.

The chemistry among those three guys bordered on the miraculous. And I defy anyone to show me how any other three people ever achieved grooves of that incredible depth.

I bought the LP in the winter of ’57-’58 while stationed with the Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska. My roommate for part of that year was the drummer Roy McCurdy. As wonderful a drummer as he is – and as partial to his instrument as he is – he had to admit that he couldn’t imagine how the group could swing any harder with the addition of a drummer.

As I listened to the trio this week, to tunes like “Gypsy in My Soul”, “Love You Madly” and “Noreen’s Nocturne”, they produced the same reactions in me they did nearly a half-century ago–laugh-out-loud amazement and delight. That, it seems to me, is one definition of great art.

John Birchard

Hey, do you want to read some nifty short stories? Go here. You may get hooked. Don’t forget to come back, please.

Jason Crane writes concerning the Doug’s Picks item about John La Barbera (right-hand column):

If I’m not mistaken, Joe is a co-owner of Jazz Compass with Clay Jenkins, Tom Warrington and Larry Koonse. The label has put out a crop of high-quality releases. It’s refreshing to see the players taking control of their musical destiny.

Mr. Crane is not mistaken. Jazz Compass is an intelligently run independent company, five years old, with a catalogue of fourteen CDs by its owners, as well as John La Barbera and drummer Steve Houghton. With major labels abandoning, downgrading or diluting jazz, companies owned and operated by musicians are helping to keep the music available. They have the laudable effect of also allowing musicians to keep more of the money they earn. Distribution is a problem, but it is one that Jazz Compass, Artist Share and other independent CD organizations are solving by way of the internet.

Deborah, who may or may not have a last name, wrote a few days ago about her encounter with “I Remember Clifford” and followed up with this message.

Thank you for helping to educate me!
Regarding the John Lewis-Wonderful World of Jazz album … I have twice given it to other jazz newbies, but new CDs of the album can no longer be bought in the US.
Please, will you suggest another jazz album I could give as an introduction to the genre for my friends who express an interest?

One place you can buy the Lewis CD in the United States is here, at prices ranging from reasonable to outrageous.
I could suggest a hundred or more introductory albums for your friends, but I like your challenge of picking just one. Tomorrow, it might be another, but today it’s The Lester Young Story, a bargain four-CD box set that contains many of the great records that Young made from his period of genius with Count Basie in the 1930s to his death in 1959.
Why Lester Young? In the development of the art of jazz soloing, he was the link between Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. At his best, he was sublimely lyrical, inventive, swinging and richly satisfying. No one who truly wants to be interested in jazz should fail to become intimately acquainted with Young. John Lewis, by the way, revered Lester and played piano for him in the early 1950s. Many of their recordings together are on this CD, but the comprehensive box set above is the place to start.

Our colloquy on annoying, useless, stupid and redundant words and phrases could probably go on forever, but it won’t. It’s time to wrap it up with these entries from Rifftides readers.

Any time soon.

Ramping up.

Heart-wrenching.

(From Gene Lees)

Add to the list of unnecessary expressions:
“To utilize” means nothing more than “to use.” I can’t think of a single instance where “utilize” would be more clear or more precise than the word “use.” There seems to be no reason to utilize the longer word at all. But I could care less.

(From Dave Frishberg)

Your mention of “data” reminds me of my pet peeve. That word is plural (the singular being datum). People consistently use a singular verb with it though (The data is based on on a large sample size, rather than: The data are …) One last pet peeve: comprise. That word is NOT followed by “of.”

(From Jeff)

I hate marketers who turn nouns into verbs. (e.g. leverage, network, and task). I, like Ted O’Reilly, get NAUSEATED by people who say they are NAUSEOUS.

(From Scott Faulkner)

As a Brit I’d rather not get into a debate about ‘mispronunciations.’

(From Gordon Sapsed)

Disinterested is often correctly brought up in word misuage discussions. I looked up the word today in the American Heritage Dictionary online and learned:
“Oddly enough, ‘not interested’ is the oldest sense of the word, going back to the 17th century. This sense became outmoded in the 18th century but underwent a revival in the first quarter of the early 20th. Despite its resuscitation, this usage is widely considered an error.”
(From Garrett Gannuch)

An odd one is the phrase “is that” inserted without logic or neccessity, creating phrases like:
“What you’re forgetting is, is that I didn’t graduate.”
I call this the double “is.” You hear it all the time in conversations on the radio.
(From Bill Crow)

Being the chief of the language police has some heavy resposibilities for you in this era. One thing that I would suggest is to advise all of your readers to avoid the stock channel (CNBC) at all costs. Today, after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates a quarter of a point, one of the commentators stated that it “was pretty much exactly” what he expected.
(From Charlie and Sandi Shoemake)

I have resigned as chief of the language police. The criminals are winning.
As John Ciardi would say if he were still with us, good words to you.

It was not my intention to open a forum covering the range of abuse of the English language. At some point, we’ll have to move on, but this is too much fun to cut off yet. If we had stopped, I wouldn’t have been able to mention what happened at dinner tonight in Seattle. I thanked the waitress for her good service. She said, “Hey, no problem.” When did we lose “You’re welcome?”
I like this one from Noel Silverman in New York.

High on my list are “any and all,” and “each and every,” both needlessly redundant, except that “needlessly redundant” is itself needlessly redundant, or at very least redundant.
Then there’s “ya know what I’m sayin,” and its partner in obfuscation “ya know what I mean,” both of which seem overwhelmingly to be used by people who either haven’t thought about what they’re saying or, having thought about it, have failed to convey what they mean.
For closers, I would nominate “She goes…then he goes…” in relating a conversation. Then I go.

Ted O’Reilly chimes in from Toronto, expanding the discussion to include pronunciation.

And, if we can get into mispronunciations, the word “patina” is, correctly, PAT’-in-uh, not pa-TEENA’.

All right, I’ll see your patina and raise you one data. Data is of Latin derivation and properly pronounced DATE’-uh, not DAT’-uh, although you wouldn’t know that from listening to most people who work in the data field.
For previous entries in this fiesta of annoying phrases and words, go here and here.

It’s Jazz And Other Matters, remember? We’ll get back to jazz before long. Rifftides readers have my mind on words, and Seattle has my mind on the splendid weather they’re having here and the hike I took around Green Lake. When the weather is good, as it is most Junes, there is no more breathtakingly beautiful city.
Next time you’re here, don’t miss Ravenna Park, an urban treasure even many Seattleites have yet to discover. I pulled into one of the park’s few parking spots, lunched on a Clif Bar and an apple, then hiked into woods so deep, green and dense, I might have been in the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula. For a half hour, the only other living creatures I saw were two crows trying to steal a morsel from a squirrel. The squirrel kept the food and escaped into the foliage. The crows squawked at the bushes for five minutes. It was a good day for a remarkably spunky squirrel. I enjoyed it, too.

A Rifftides reader named Deborah writes in response to the Clifford Brown item:

Ah. The penny just dropped.
I am a fairly new listener to jazz, and sometimes I feel like I’ll never get up to speed. The first album I ever bought was John Lewis-The Wonderful World of Jazz and it remains an all-time favorite.
One of the songs on the album is “I Remember Clifford” by Benny Golson. It is performed by Lewis on piano, Jim Hall on guitar, George Duvivier on bass, and Connie Kay on drums. It is a tender goodbye, see-you-down-the-road kind of song that stops just short of being melancholy.
Was this song composed in tribute to Clifford Brown?

It was, shortly after Clifford died, and has been a part of the standard repertoire ever since. The Lewis album, from 1960, is a classic. That was a fine way to start your listening career.

Reaction has begun coming in to the more or less lighthearted Rifftides posting about annoying, overused phrases. Here’s a note from Bill Holman.

Doug,
Your response to “if you will’ is the same as mine. Nancy is still taken aback when, while we’re watching TV, I blurt “I won’t!”.
How about “as we speak”? (seems to be fading)

Here’s one from Gene Lees.

“If you will” is used by every reporter and anchor I can think of. And in the case of Wolf Blitzer’s show, as much as five or six times in an hour.
Literally, as I heard today in a story about the floods back east: “People were walking literally up to their waist in water.” Disentangle that.
Hopefully, and its cousins such as thankfully, as in “Thankfully no one was hurt.”
If it was up to me . . . .
I wish they would have . . . .

From Bill Kirchner:

Words Frequently Misused By Otherwise Literate Persons:
1) disinterested (when they really mean uninterested);
2) compliment (when they really mean complement);
3) masterful (when they really mean masterly).

Fifty years ago today at The Seattle Times, as I ripped copy from the wire machines my eye went to a story in the latest Associated Press national split. A young trumpeter named Clifford Brown had been killed early that morning in a car crash. My heart stopped for a beat or two. My stomach churned. I felt ill. I was attempting to master the trumpet and, like virtually all aspiring trumpet players, idolized Brown. The life of a majestically inventive musician had ended violently on a rainy highway in Pennsylvania. He was four months short of his twenty-sixth birthday. When I think about his loss, I still feel ill. There has never been a jazz musician who worked harder, lived cleaner, and accomplished or promised more in so short a lifetime. His practice routine encompassed taping himself as he worked out on trumpet and piano. I have listened to some of those tapes. It is moving to hear Brown pursue–and achieve–perfection as he brings complex ideas to fruition through the persistent application of his technical mastery, to hear him sing a phrase and then play it repeatedly until he has polished it nearly to his satisfaction. Like most first-rank artists, he was never truly satisfied with his performance. To listeners, however, Brown’s solos are among the glories of twentieth century music. To trumpet players, his work remains an inspiration. His passion, power, lyricism and flaweless execution constitute a model whose pursuit is bound to bring improvement.
In Today’s Washington Post, Matt Schudel summarizes Brown’s life and contributions. For a fuller account, read Nick Catalano’s biography of Brown. Fortunately, Brown recorded copiously during his few years of playing. Most of his work remains in print. This album captures him at his peak with the group he and drummer Max Roach co-led. This box set covers highlights from his recordings for several labels. If you don’t know Clifford Brown’s work, I suggest that you move immediately toward the nearest CD shop or website.

In 1975, Mike Levy, the publisher of Texas Monthly, and Gregory Curtis, a staff writer, visited me in my office at KSAT-TV in San Antonio. They were on a tour to create good will for the fledgling magazine, which was even then attracting national notice for its quality. In the course of the conversation, Curtis asked me if I would write for Texas Monthly. I jumped at the chance, became a regular contributor, then for twenty-five years a contributing editor, sending in articles and reviews long after I left Texas. Curtis eventually became editor of the magazine and stayed at its helm for nineteen years. We developed a close friendship, as he did with most of his writers. They respected him for his intelligence and journalistic savvy, and for giving a damn about them as well as about their work. During Greg’s run, Texas Monthly won five National Magazine Awards. The Columbia Journalism Review named him one of the ten best magazine editors in the country.
Sometimes, when people learn that I was connected to Texas Monthly, they ask me what made it a great magazine. I have never been able to get beyond cliches; focus, local knowledge, judgment, fact-checking, close editing. Greg, however, understands the reasons for Texas Monthly’s success. I just found on his website a piece he wrote when he bowed out in 2000. He is unsparing of himself for early mistakes, but makes it clear that he knew from the beginning what kind of magazine he did not want.

There was an editorial formula we could have used that would have solved our newsstand problems. In the eighties, I listened in terrified fascination, as if a surgeon were teaching how to perform a lobotomy, to a city magazine editor explaining that he had no choice but to put a yuppie couple on the cover of every issue. “The yuppie couple wants a weekend getaway. The yuppie couple looks for the best hamburger,” he said. “You can even do serious issues: The yuppie couple buys a gun for fear of crime.” When those issues were on the stands, he said, “sales went through the roof.” They may have, but I hated yuppie-couple covers–all those phony-looking models trying to express surprise or pleasure or fear. Most of all, I hated making our magazine look like all the other city magazines in America.

For the whole article, go here. Reading Curtis’s philosophy about shepherding Texas Monthly helps understanding of magazines in general and, in particular, what it takes to make a good one. When you’re through, go to the top, click on “Home,” then roam around Greg’s site. You will discover an editor who can write. In the lower left corner, there are links to several of his pieces. This is from one about horses.

A horse is an animal that weighs half a ton, has a brain the size of a tomato, and is instinctively alarmed at the approach of any predator, including man. Horses can be trained and they can become affectionate toward humans, but they never develop the slavish trust and devotion of dogs. Horses are prey and their trust in us is always provisional, maintained shakily on top of their fear, which can rise up as panic in an instant.

I am adding Greg Curtis’s website to the list of Other Places in the right-hand column. I haven’t mentioned his book. It’s a good one. It’s not about Texas, magazines or horses. It’s about the Venus de Milo.