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Gunther Schuller wrote two books about the history and development of jazz. The first, published by the Oxford University Press in 1968 was Early Jazz. The second —in 1989—was The Swing Era. They were detailed histories, deeply researched and bolstered with musical examples painstakingly annotated by Schuller as he listened to and analyzed thousands of recordings. Schuller died yesterday at 89 (see the previous Rifftides post). For 25 years listeners, musicians and scholars have been anticipating a third volume about the evolution of bebop and the music that has followed it. In a comment on the earlier post, reader Tom King echoed the hopes of those whose reading of Schuller enriched their understanding of the formative early decades of jazz. “Here’s hoping, Mr. King wrote, “that the book is in the works, or in someone’s competent hands.”

Schuller and first I met in 1969 at Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday party at the White House. The last time I called him, a year or so ago, I asked about progress on volume three. I told him that I was recording the conversation for possible future use. How I wish that the use were under happier circumstances. Gunther’s answer touches on the dilemmas that often confront artists who face the realities of existence.

Look, here’s the story. I have received in the last two-and-a-half years twenty commissions—that’s the term for writing pieces of music for somebody, for a symphony, for a chamber group and so on. That is unheard of in the whole history of music, for a composer in a two-year period to get twenty commissions. I remember when Aaron Copeland and I, one year about half a century ago, each got four commissions in a year. We thought that was unbelievable, and Aaron said to me, “What the hell did I do to deserve this?” So, the conundrum about the jazz book or the autobiography—I also promised a second volume of my autobiography—the conundrum is this: when I compose music I make money. I have not retired. I have to work. I have to write all these pieces, and I need to make money. While, on the other hand, if I start writing a book, I lose money.

To be specific, for example, to write a book might take me six years, especially a complicated one which would like to deal with most of the music that has happened in the period since my second volume ended. Then there would be, maybe, two to three years to find a publisher, then the production of the book. Then, finally, the next year I might get a royalty check for a hundred and twenty dollars and thirty-two cents. So, when I write books I lose money. When I compose music I make money, which, as I say, I still have to.

I’m 88 years old now. I’m very productive. Gunther Schuller is somewhat famous for figuring out how to do things, and he’s done a lot of multi-tasking in his life. And one way or another, unless I get very sick or something, I’m certainly determined to do that extra volume. How I would manage it right now I don’t know, but I will do it, particularly if I live quite a few more years. And mind you, the other problem is that the second volume—The Swing Era book—was totally comprehensive. Anyone I talked to, I wrote extensively about them. I listened to every damn record that Tommy Dorsey recorded (he laughs), and the first four years of Dorsey’s band were not the most exciting listening, until Sy Oliver came in—wow. Anyway, it was totally comprehensive. I cannot do that. I listened to 30,000 records to write that volume, to be that comprehensive. I would have to be more selective, and that’s fine, too. So, somehow or other, I will figure this out before I die.

I know of no evidence that he started volume three.

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Gunther Schuller, who was prominent in classical music and stimulated attention to a hybrid movement in jazz, died today in Boston. He was 89. In addition to his authorship of influential modern classical pieces, Schuller in the late 1950s melded jazz and classical influences and came up with a label for it that stuck: Third Stream. In the l960s and l970s he was president of the New England Conservatory. His classical composition “Of Reminiscences and Reflections” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.

In jazz, Schuller first won prominence playing French horn in Miles Davis’s 1949/1950 Birth Of The Cool ensemble. Later in the fifties, he, Davis, John Lewis, George Russell, Charles Mingus and others made Third Stream music a phenomenon that has left a lasting impression. His “Symphony for Brass and Percussion” is an example his marriage of idioms. In this conversation with Frank J. Oteri of the New Music Box website, Schuller discusses several aspects of his career, including his use of the twelve-tone row in composition and the system in the top levels of the jazz community for endorsing new talent.

For expanded thoughts on Schuller and the Third Stream, see this Rifftides entry from five years ago. I will have more about him in the next post.

Gunther Schuller, RIP

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Maria Schneider Orchestra, The Thompson Fields (artistShare)

Maria Schneider leads a band of eighteen of the best musicians in New York and keeps winning awards for being on the leading edge of composers and arrangers. Yet, her orchestra’s first album in eight years does not draw its primary inspiration from big city life or the yeasty New York jazz scene. The music reflects the peacefulness and the sometimes-volatile atmosphere of the heartland where she grew up. Memories of the small southwestern Minnesota town of Windom and its surrounding prairie inform most of the pieces in the collection. Side trips to New Guinea and Brazil and a tribute to a departed band member are consistent with the character of the world Schneider creates in eight compositions. She does not call The Thompson Fields a suite, but its unity of style and its mood of reflection would justify that designation.

Ted Kooser’s poem “November 18” inspired the piece Schneider calls “Walking By Flashlight.” The quiet dynamics of her orchestration support a solo by Scott Robinson on alto clarinet, an instrument seldom used in modern music. Robinson employs it with the intimacy the piece demands. Schneider’s longtime pianist Frank Kimbrough solos in the same mood. Kimbrough later shines with guitarist Lage Lund on the album’s title piece inspired by a farm near Windom owned by Schneider’s family friends the Thompsons. “The Monarch and the Milkweed” features trombonist Marshall Gilkes and flugelhornist Greg Gisbert. Subtle brush strokes painted into the soundscape by drummer Clarence Penn contrast with the intensity of Schneider’s orchestration. Superb engineering, mixing and post-production mastering enhance such nuances.

“Arbiters of Evolution,” the New Guinea excursion, reflects on the competitive displays of male birds-of-paradise. A big piece of orchestral impressionism packed with energy, it features long virtuosic solos by tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin, and Robinson on baritone sax. The two then improvise exchanges suggesting the dazzling exhibitions that male birds perform as they compete for the attention of a female deciding on a mate. Schneider’s album notes describe how she was moved by film of those touching and funny avian performances. Her score and the band’s energy capture both aspects.

“Nimbus” recalls tension, fear and weird beauty in a part of the Midwest subject to storms that bring the sudden violence of tornadoes—and the relief when one passes without leaving a trail of destruction. “A Potter’s Song” memorializes Laurie Frink (1951-2013), who was the Schneider orchestra’s lead trumpeter. Gary Versace is the soloist in the elegy, playing with taste unlikely to generate new accordion jokes. In other pieces, Schneider employs simple accordion lines by Versace as commentary or as artful contrast with the ensemble. One such instance is the introduction to “Home,” a thread of single notes from the accordion. The featured soloist, tenor saxophonist Rich Perry, enters with his pure tone, wafting on hymn-like orchestral chords as he and the rhythm section gather intensity. Schneider’s voicings of the orchestra’s bottom notes in this piece are a highlight of the album.

“Lembranca” is Schneider’s remembrance of the influential Brazilian musician Paulo Moura (1932-2010) and her visit with him to a Rio de Janeiro samba school where he was a hero. Trombonist Ryan Keberle and bassist Jay Anderson have lengthy solos; Keberle’s expansive, Anderson’s compelling in spite of—or perhaps because of—his soft tone. Kimbrough and Versace play important roles in setting the temper of the piece. Penn’s drumming and the work of guest percussionist Rogerio Boccato impart the samba spirit. Schneider’s orchestration uses dynamics to build excitement, and then lets it subside slowly for a satisfying end to the piece and the album.

The Thompson Fields was a major project in these days when economic challenges make it difficult—putting it mildly—to keep a big band together. artistShare fans made Schneider’s album possible through contributions. It would be lovely to think that public demand for music of this quality can guarantee its survival. But in what is still the world’s richest economy, all indicators seem to suggest that the future of serious large-scale creative works may well depend on gifts, whether through the small contributions of crowdfunding or the generosity of major donors.

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In the fall of 1965 pianist Bill Evans, alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, bassist Niels Henning Ørsted Pedersen and drummer Alan Dawson toured parts of Western Europe. It was both a time of Cold War tension and a time when jazz enjoyed popularity in every part of the continent. In countries behind the Iron Curtain, jazz devotees risked being caught at their shortwave radios listening to Willis Conover on the forbidden Voice of America. In Western Europe, nowhere was openness to jazz more evident than in Scandinavia, where the quartet played at Copenhagen’s Tivoli Concert Hall.

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Thanks to the readers—far too many to send individual thank-you’s—who responded to the weekend post about Paul Desmond. Your stories made great additions to the piece. The Rifftides staff is lucky to have you all along for the ride. To see the comments, which keep coming, go here and pan down.

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Several prominent trumpet players and other well-known jazz artists are expected to perform next Monday in New York City at a memorial service for the late trumpeter Lew Soloff. Here is the announcement from the Manhattan School of Music.

New York – A celebration of the life and music of Lew Soloff (Feb. 20, 1944-Mar 8, 2015) is scheduled for Monday, June 8, 2015 at the John C. Borden Auditorium, located at the Manhattan School of Music. This event is free to the public and begins at 7:00 p.m. Doors open at 6:15pm for early seating.

Lew Soloff, an essential player in the New York jazz scene since the early 1960s, created numerous musical associations during his career and many of those whose life he touched will come together to share their love and talent on this special evening. The musical program for this celebration is under the direction of Soloff’s close friends Paul Shaffer and Noah Evans, son of the late Gil Evans, Soloff’s “musical godfather.” Some of the artists taking part include; Wynton Marsalis, Randy Brecker, Jon Faddis, Jimmy Owens, Cecil Bridgewater, Chris Potter, Ray Anderson, Gil Goldstein, Danny Gottlieb, Mark Egan, Sammy Figueroa, Manhattan Brass, Jeff Berlin, Fred Lipsius, Jeff “Tain” Watts, Pete Levin and Jesse Levy. More information on the final line-up will be announced shortly. Please visit lewsoloff.com for up-to-date details.

For the Rifftides post about Mr. Soloff’s passing, go here.

Carmell Jones Quartet (Fresh Sound)

Having proved himself in the jazz milieu of Kansas City, in 1960 the 24-year-old trumpeter Carmell Jones (1936-1996) quit his job as a railroad porter and moved to Los Angeles in search of full-time work in music. He was quick to impress bassist Red Mitchell, alto saxophonist Bud Shank and tenor saxophonist Harold Land. His recordings with them, with Gerald Wilson’s big band, and later with Art Blakey were to bring him attention and acclaim. Shortly after his arrival in L.A., Jones worked in a quartet with other emerging musicians—pianist Forrest Westbrook, bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Bill Schwemmer. Westbrook’s apartment served as a studio where he recorded their rehearsals on a reel-to-reel stereo tape machine. For 55 years, those tapes were unheard by anyone but the musicians and Westbrook’s family and friends.

Following Westbrook’s death last year at 87, his daughter Leslie told Jordi Pujol of Fresh Sound Records about the tapes. The result is an album that finds Jones with the imagination and verve that led jazz expert John William Hardy, photographer William Claxton and critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt to issue enthusiastic reports about him after they heard him in Kansas City. Now, we hear Jones in his early west coast days, eleven months before The Remarkable Carmell Jones, his first released Pacific Jazz album as a leader.

In common with a legion of other young trumpeters in the 1950s and 1960s, Jones’s full sound and dazzling technique owed much to Clifford Brown. If he was inclined to an excess of finger-flicking grace notes, he balanced that manifestation of self-consciousness or nervousness with symmetry of phrasing that could be stunning on ballads. The prime example of his lyricism here is on the alternate take of “Willow Weep for Me, in which he uses a cup mute and overflows the Ann Ronell song with blues feeling. With the horn open, the warmth of his tone is remarkable on the first take of “Willow,” “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” and two takes each of “If I Love Again;” “Ruby,” Heinz Roemheld’s 1953 hit from the film Ruby Gentry; and Harold Arlen’s “For Every Man There’s a Woman.”

Peacock, at 25 a veteran of work with Shank, Don Ellis, Shorty Rogers, Barney Kessel and Paul Horn, was deep into the characteristics of technique, timekeeping and harmonic mastery that were to take him to the top levels of jazz, including his three decades in the Keith Jarrett Trio. “His development,” Shank told me in 1998, “was phenomenal. He turned into one of the most creative bass players that ever happened.” Drummer Schwemmer, a friend of Peackock, has a lower profile. His time concept melds nicely with Peacock’s here, his cymbal work is noteworthy, and he has effective exchanges of four-bar phrases on several tracks. He evidently left active playing after the 1960s.

Westbrook’s solos and accompaniments shine throughout the album. In that relaxed second take of “Willow Weep for Me,” he negotiates piquant intervals in the solo melody he creates. He simulates bent notes in a manner reminiscent of Jimmy Rowles, a contemporary whose work Westbrook no doubt knew. The rhythm section plays “Airegin” without Jones. Westbrook is astonishing on the Sonny Rollins tune. He brings together bent notes, unconventional intervals and keyboard touch in a range from delicate to dynamic. His headlong solo has stylistic allusions to Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano. Most of all, it communicates the sense of joy and discovery that illuminates a performance when a player is so inspired that it seems the music is showing the way, taking him along for the ride.

There are other tapes in the Westbrook cache of jam session and rehearsal recordings. This CD is a valuable glimpse into Carmell Jones’s early musicial life. For many it will be a surpising introduction to Westbrook. It is encouraging to think that more music of this quality may remain to be discovered.

Since Rifftides began, every year on May 30 I have posted something about Paul Desmond. He died thirty-eight years ago today. For reasons that I cannot clearly identify, this year I struggled with the idea. Until the last moment I put off the remembrance and finally concluded that the best option was to have Paul speak for himself with his playing.

At the 1954 recording session for the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s album Brubeck Time, LIFE magazine photographer Gjon Mili shot the film you will see. Mili had egged Brubeck into an pugnacious frame of mind by saying that he did not consider that what the quartet played was jazz. That got the result he was hoping for, a surge through the harmonies of “Oh, Lady Be Good” that ended up titled “Stompin’ For Mili.” It’s the piece you hear and see last in the film clip. Brubeck later recalled that producer George Avakian then asked for a quiet minor blues. The preamble here is from my 2005 book The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond.

“I would like,” said Gjon, closing his eyes and raising his hand expressively, “I would like to see Audrey Hepburn come walking through the woods—“
Gee,” said Paul wistfully, “So would I.”
“One,” I said, noticing the glazed expression about Paul’s eyes, “two, three, four. And we played it.”

Mili may not have known of Desmond’s infatuation with Audrey Hepburn, but he could have said nothing more likely to inspire the playing that followed. Paul never met Audrey Hepburn, though he came close many times that summer of 1954. In the Jean Giraudeaux play Ondine, she was an underwater nymph who fell in love with a knight. She won a Tony award for her work in the title role. Ondine played at the 46th Street Theatre, not far from Basin Street.

“Paul would look at his watch the whole time we were playing at Basin Street,” Brubeck told me. “He knew when she would walk out the stage door and get in her limousine, and he wanted to be standing there. So, when I’d see him watching the time, I knew I’d better take a quick intermission or I was going to have problems with Paul. He’d put his horn down, and out the door he’d go, and he’d run down just to stand and watch her leave.”

“Paul told me that,” I said to Brubeck, “and I asked him, ‘What did you say to her?’ And he looked surprised and said, ‘Nothing. Are you kidding?’

Here is “Audrey,” note for note as it appeared on the album

This addendum to the “Audrey” story is also from the Desmond biography.

Brubeck Time became a big seller and “Audrey” one of Desmond’s most beloved works. The recording associated his name with Hepburn’s, but he died twenty-three years later never having imagined that she knew who he was or that she had heard the piece. After Hepburn died in 1993, the United Nations honored her for her international work with children. Her husband, Andrea Dotti, asked Brubeck and his Quartet to play “Audrey” at the memorial service at UN headquarters in New York.

“I told him,” Brubeck said, “that I had no idea he’d be aware of ‘Audrey.’ He said, ‘My wife listened to it every night before she went to bed, and if she was walking through the garden, she’d listen to it on earphones.’”

“Paul never knew,” Iola Brubeck said. “And he was so in love with Audrey.”

A year or so earlier, Hepburn herself acknowledged what “Audrey” meant to her. The publicist and author Peter Levinson sent the actress a copy of Brubeck Time when the album was first reissued as a compact disc. She responded with a hand-written note.

19 March ’92

Dear Peter,
Thank you for such a lovely gift—I am thrilled to have the Brubeck C.D. with ‘My Song,’ the ultimate compliment. You letter is so lovely, and I am most grateful for all your kindness.

Warmest Wishes,
Audrey Hepburn

At the United Nations ceremony, Brubeck’s new alto saxophonist, Bobby Militello, played Desmond’s solo note for note, inflection for inflection. He had memorized it when he was a boy.

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In an op-ed column in the weekend Wall Street Journal, Jerry Cianciolo urges readers to visit their local World War II memorials—nearly every town has one—look at the names, touch them and think about the sacrifices they symbolize. Hundreds of communities have monuments to American warriors who died in Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Cianciolo writes,

Many young combatants who, as the English poet Laurence Binyon wrote, “fell with their faces to the foe” never set foot on campus. They never straightened a tie and headed to a first real job. They never slipped a ring on a sweetheart’s finger. They never swelled with hope turning the key to a starter home. They never nestled an infant against a bare chest. They never roughhoused in the living room with an exasperated wife looking on. They never tiptoed to lay out Santa’s toys.

Where I live, there is a memorial to men and women who died in Viet Nam. I’ll go there today and remember a friend, as I did in this piece from the Rifftides archive.

There is someone I think of every Memorial Day, and many other days. Cornelius Ram and I were among a collection of young men who accepted the United States Marine Corps’ bet that we weren’t tough or smart enough to wrestle commissions from it. It quickly became apparent to everyone, including the drill instructors charged with pounding us into the shape of Marines, that Corky Ram would have no problem. He was a standout in the grueling weeks of officer candidate competition and then in the months of physical and mental rigor designed to make us worthy of those little gold bars on the collars of our fatigues. After high school in Jersey City, New Jersey, he had served a hitch as a Navy enlisted man, and then got a college degree before he chose the Corps. He was two or three years older than most of us, and a natural leader. He could tell when the pressure was about to cave a green lieutenant exhausted from a 20-mile forced march with full field pack or demoralized after a classroom test he was sure he had flunked. Corky knew how to use encouragement or cajolery to restore flagging determination. He helped a lot of us make it through. The picture on the right is how I remember him from that period.

Unlike most of us who served our few years and got out, Corky made the Marine Corps his career. He served two tours in Viet Nam. Here is the official 5th Marines’ Command Chronology of what happened to him and another officer on his second tour in January of 1971, as the war was slogging to its demoralizing conclusion:

“On 10 January Major Ram (2/5 XO) and Captain Ford (E Co., CO), while attempting to aid two wounded Marines, were killed by a 60mm surprise firing device.”

There’s a bit more to the story. Major Ram, Executive Officer of 2/5 Marines, and Captain Ford (of Glen Rock, NJ), Commanding Officer of Echo Company, were overhead in a command helicopter when they spotted the wounded Marines in the open and in the path of oncoming enemy troops. The helicopter pilot, convinced that the open area was mined, refused to land in the vicinity of the wounded Marines and instead put down at a distance. Major Ram and Captain Ford exited the helicopter and began to cross the open area toward the wounded men. The pilot was right – the area was mined, and both Major Ram and Captain Ford died as a result. At least one of the two wounded Marines survived; he visited the Ram family several years later and described the circumstances.

Corky Ram was one of 13,085 Marines who died in hostile action in Viet Nam. I knew others, but he was the one I knew best. More than once, I have stood gazing at his name on the wall at the Viet Nam Memorial in Washington, DC. When Memorial Day comes around, he symbolizes for me the American service men and women who have died in the nation’s wars. What we and all of the free world owe them is beyond calculation.

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Following yesterday’s post about recently deceased musicians, a Rifftides reader who identifies himself only as Derrick sent a message:

I just heard that Ron Crotty, the original bassist of The Dave Brubeck Quartet, died just a few days ago, too, but I have not seen anything written about it. Which leads me to ask, has Ron passed? Or is it another case of the internet burying someone who is still with us?

The sad report that Derrick heard was accurate. Evidently, nothing has been written in the jazz press or in general news outlets about Crotty’s death. Guitarist Tony Corman, his frequent playing companion in recent years, confirmed it for us by email.

Ron was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on his 87th birthday, Apr 2, and passed three weeks later. He’d been treated for cancer two years ago and came through a rather grueling treatment pretty well, and we resumed playing our steady Sunday gig at the Oakland Museum. He was gardening again and had a new love relationship, really was doing fine, and then started feeling lousy, went to the doc, and, well, there you are. We’re looking to do a remembrance at the Oakland Museum on June 28, 3 – 5 PM. I couldn’t find an obit either, nor were we told of a funeral. Ron has one daughter, who lives I think in D.C. She was (and may still be) out to see him at the end and, I presume, take care of his affairs.

Six years before his death—nearly to the day—Rifftides posted a piece about Crotty. It contained video of Crotty, guitarist Corman and bass trombonist Frank Phipps playing at the Oakland Museum. With the elimination of a bit of introductory rambling, here it is.

Ron Crotty was the bassist in the Dave Brubeck Trio of the late 1940s and early ’50s and the quartet that Brubeck and Paul Desmond formed in 195l. On the cover of Brubeck’s celebrated Jazz at Oberlin from 1953, he is lounging in the lower right of the photograph. Crotty’s influences were Jimmy Blanton and Ray Brown. At the age of 80, that’s how he plays today, with solid time, a big tone, the best notes in any given chord, no acrobatics high on the finger board, no triple stops and no blinding double-time passages. With Crotty on the new CD are men he plays with in his gigs in the café of the Oakland Museum, the clubs called Anna’s and Sadie’s and other spots around the Bay Area. They are bass trumpeter Frank Phipps and guitarist Tony Corman. How many important bass trumpeters can you name? I can think of two in addition to Dizzy Gillespie, who dallied briefly with the instrument. They are Cy Touff and Johnny Mandel. Mandel played bass trumpet briefly with Count Basie, then went on to other work. Add Phipps to the list. Cat can play. So can Corman. Phipps has a lovely way of alluding to extracurricular tunes without quoting them outright. Why is he shown on the cover playing a trombone? I don’t know.

The CD, cleverly titled Crotty Corman And Phipps, is on the Auraline label, as new to me as are Phipps and

Corman. All of the tunes are standards, except Corman’s samba “Rosa Rugosa” and Phipps’s “Ron’s Muse.” I was absorbed by Crotty’s straightforward bass line on “I Got Rhythm” changes in “Ron’s Muse.” “Rhythm” changes can be abused and they can be boring, but in the right hands they are never outdated. Other highlights: the languor of Corman’s out-of-tempo introduction to “Rosa Rugosa;” Phipps’s muted sound of a friendly walrus on “How Deep is the Ocean;” the way the three use the changes to create a new melody from the beginning of “Ghost of a Chance,” never disclosing the tune until the bridge of the final chorus; the unperturbed spunk of “My Little Suede Shoes;” the rolling swing of “Tangerine.”

In this clip from YouTube, they play “Witchcraft.” The sound is on the verge of distortion, but the video gives you a look at the group. Corman goes beyond allusion in his quote from John Lewis’s “The Golden Striker,” but he makes it fit so nicely that he can be forgiven.