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The latest post in Steve Cerra’s Jazz Profiles concerns first-rate musicians who are well known only where they live. Sometimes, Steve points out, that is because they don’t get a break. Sometimes, it is because they want to stay put.

“Every town has one,” he writes. “Whether it’s Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Reno or Seattle. Somewhere in these cities, there is an exceptional Jazz musician who is mainly known only to those familiar with the local Jazz scene.”

Cerra’s case-in-point is the late pianist Jack Brownlow (pictured). Here is some of what he wrote:

People who can play the music, flow with it. Their phrasing is in line with the tempo, the new melodies that they super-impose over the chord structures are interesting and inventive and they bring a sense of command and completion to the process of creating Jazz.

These qualities help bring some Jazz musicians to national, if not, international prominence. Deservedly so. It’s not easy to play this stuff.

We buy their recordings, read articles about them in the Jazz press and attend their concerts and club dates.

But throughout the history of Jazz, be it in the form of what was referred to as “territory bands,” or local legends who never made it to the big time or recorded, or those who only played Jazz as a hobby, word-of-mouth communication somehow managed to inform us of the startling brilliance of these locally-based musicians.

Such was the case with pianist Jack Brownlow who for many years was one of the most highly regarded Jazz musicians in the greater-Seattle area.

For Cerra’s account of the first time he heard Brownlow and to watch the video presentation he created to accompany one of the pianist’s most lyrical recordings, visit Jazz Profiles.

If you enter “Jack Brownlow” in the Rifftides search box at the top of the page, you will find a number of posts about him or mentioning him. This one has a story portraying the Bruno anyone who ever knew him will recognize.

One night in the early 1970s when the Half Note of blessed memory was still in downtown Manhattan and had yet to develop midtown pretensions, Roy Haynes was playing drums with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. Dave Frishberg was the pianist. I think the bassist was Victor Sproles. In the closing tune of a late set, Haynes played a ferocious solo that went on for 20 minutes and was too short. The patrons and the other musicians were spellbound by the intricacy, control and rhythmic wit of his playing. Soaked and smiling, to a roar of approval Haynes came down off the stand behind the bar.

As he walked over to my stool, I asked, “Feel better?”

Haynes locked eyes with me and said, emphatically, “I felt good to start with.”

At 87, touring with a quartet of musicians less than half his age, he still feels good. As indicated in this Rifftides post from February, his inventiveness, power, drive and affirmativeness are undiminished. Here he is last year at the San Sebastian Jazz Festival in Spain. Haynes, David Kikoski and bassist John Patitucci play McCoy Tyner’s “Blues on the Corner.”

Before Chick Webb died in 1939 at the age of 30, he established himself as a model for jazz drumming and his band as a gold standard of swing that humbled even Count Basie and Benny Goodman. In addition, Webb discovered Ella Fitzgerald. He became her mentor, guardian and protector as she developed from a street kid into a great singer. “If it wasn’t for Chick, we wouldn’t have had Ella,” arranger and composer Van Alexander says in a new film bout Webb.

Webb’s importance is firmly underlined in a documentary, The Savoy King, making its world premiere this weekend at the Seattle International Film Festival. I screened an advance of the film today. It is impressive for its research and production values; even more for its sensitivity in capturing the essence of the gutsy little man who transcended poverty and physical deformity to become one of the most admired musicians of the swing era. Seventy-three years following his death, Webb’s influence on drummers continues. His band’s recordings are still thrilling.

Veteran director and producer Jeff Kaufman melds appearances by people who knew Webb, archive footage and photos from the 1930s, and music by Webb’s band and others. Van Alexander, trumpeter Joe Wilder, dancer Frankie Manning and drummers Roy Haynes and Louie Bellson are among those who discuss Webb’s impact on them and on jazz. Director Kaufman uses Bill Cosby to voice Webb’s words, Kareem Abdul-Jabar to speak Dizzy Gillespie’s, Janet Jackson as Ella Fitzgerald, Jeff Goldblum as Artie Shaw, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts as critic Stanley Dance and actors including Tyne Daley, Andy Garcia and Danny Glover as the voices of other figures in Webb’s life and career.

This promotional clip captures some of the flavor of Harlem in the period, and the Savoy Ballroom’s crucial role in Webb’s rise to fame and in breaking New York’s segregation barrier.

The film builds emotional impact through its straightforward, if not entirely unsentimental, account of a man whose constant pain and illness could not overcome the joy he found in music and in life. The premiere is at Seattle’s Harvard Exit Theater, with showings on Saturday and Sunday. I have been unable to find out where it goes from there, but if you are lucky, The Savoy King will come to your town. For more information, see the film’s website.

Whether the mercantile strictures of 21st century television will ever again permit cultural programming of substance on the commercial networks is anybody’s guess. The field has largely been left to public television, which has met the challenge with various degrees of responsibility and effectiveness.

In the medium’s early days, serious music may not have been welcomed with open arms on the major US networks, but it did make it onto the schedules. NBC-TV’s The Subject Is Jazz ran once a week in 1958, during what more than one commentator has referred to as New York’s last golden age of jazz. The program presented prominent representatives of several jazz eras who were at work in the city. Gilbert Seldes was the host, with pianist Billy Taylor (1921-2010) as the viewer’s articulate guide through the mysteries of improvisation, orchestration and swing, among other aspects of the music. Seldes (1893-1970) was a prominent cultural critic whose books, included The 7 Lively Arts and The Public Arts. He had considerable influence on Americans’ understanding of cultural matters.

Seldes may have been a bit stiff on television, but he prepared his questions and comments with care. Taylor exhibited the same relaxation and expertise that later made him an attraction on CBS-TV’s Sunday Morning. Here they are discussing rhythm and leading into a segment that features guitarist Mundell Lowe, bassist Eddie Safranski, drummer Osie Johnson and Taylor in the rhythm section. We hear solos by trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, baritone saxophonist Tony Scott and—in a brilliant bebop chorus from his pre-Tonight Show days—trumpeter Doc Severinsen.

YouTube has several segments from The Subject Is Jazz. To view them and see Ben Webster, Lee Konitz, Bill Evans go here to make your selections.

Last night the Emil Viklický Trio appeared at the small Seattle club Lucid, following up the film screening described in yesterday’s post. Lucid has the intimacy, camaraderie and absence of a cover charge reminiscent of jazz clubs in the 1950s and ‘60s. One significant difference from those days; at Lucid, as at many clubs today, the pianist must supply his own instrument, the kind that plugs into the wall. In the first set, Viklický, bassist Clipper Anderson and drummer Don Kinney concentrated on the pianist’s compositions from his recent Sinfonieta album and others inspired by his admiration for the Czech composer Leoš Janáček.

The second set sitters-in included solo vocalist Berenika Kohoutova from Prague and three other actors from Rhythm On My Heels, the motion picture discussed in the previous exhibit. The music ranged from standards by Victor Young, Hoagy Carmichael and Sonny Rollins to “Bim-Bam,” a Czech popular song from 1941 that is a highlight of the movie. Thanks to photographer Stacey Jehlik for these shots of the festivities.

The west coast tour over, on his way home to the Czech Republic Viklický will play Monday night at Dizzy’s Club in New York City’s Lincoln Center. He, bassist George Mraz, drummer Billy Hart and the Czech singer and screen star Iva Bittová will reprise music from Mraz’s album Moravian Gems.

The central characters in the new Czech film Rhythm On My Heels are young jazz musicians and their friends. They are ensnared in a plot by the communist party’s intelligence wing to concoct a case branding them anti-communist activitsts. This powerful film is directed by Andrea Sedláčková and acted by a vibrant cast. It is based on Josef Škvoreckýs book The Tenor Saxophonist’s Story. Many in the audience for last night’s screening at Seattle’s Town Hall lived through the communist occupation of Czechoslovakia (1948-1990). The emotions of that debilitating period of the nation’s history showed in their faces as they watched the film, which was shot on location in Prague. This paragraph is from the program for a screening last week in New York.

The story takes place in Czechoslovakia in the fifties and is “a musical tragedy” about love. Main character Danny is the alter ego of Josef Skvorecky himself. Danny is passionate about beautiful girls and jazz, but at the wrong time in a country where communist regime considers this music be way too imperialistic for young people. Danny and his friends form a jazz band and try to live a normal life in a strange world, where one’s destiny is shaped by politics, secret police and undercover agents who might as well be those beautiful girls.

Screened at international film festivals, the film had showings this week in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle. Pianist Emil Viklický, who composed the soundtrack, attended the screening and followed it with a concertby his trio. Six of the young actors from the film joined them to sing the title song and other music from the score. They are Vojtech Dyk, Jan Meduna, Berenika Kohoutova, Marika Soposka and Margareta Hruza. Ms. Kohutova (pictured) also sang a few standards. She has the potential to become a superior jazz vocalist.

Bassist Clipper Anderson and drummer Don Kinney rounded out the Viklický rhythm section. To read about their concert on a previous US visit by Viklický, click here. To read about his connection with Škvorecký, go here.

Wayne Jehlik, the Czech consul in Seattle, reports that efforts are afoot to arrange for US distribution of a DVD of Rhythm On My Heels. For its dramatic content, acting, Ms. Sedláčková’s directing and Viklický’s vivid music, the film is worthy of theatrical release here.

Every May 30 of the nearly seven-year history of this web log I have posted an observance of the passing of Paul Desmond. As the staff and I were puzzling over a new approach on this 35th anniversary of his death, Rifftides reader Svetlana Ilicheva wrote from Moscow with her translation of part of a Russian jazz musician and columnist’s appreciation of Desmond.

Paul Desmond is well-remembered and highly valued here in Russia by genuine jazz lovers. On the Russian portal Джаз.ру (Jazz.ru), trumpeter Alexander Fischer (pictured) in an essay titled “Melodies That Narrate” writes, among other things, about Desmond’s solo on “Tangerine” with the Dave Brubeck Quartet in Copenhagen in 1957.

“…Just Listen how Paul Desmond is doing that on his alto saxophone. You can hardly find in his solo empty notes or passages, gratuitous display of technique or special effects. It seems to me that his musical statement reflects human thought in all its diversity, versatility, flexibility, logic and the presence of nooks, ‘dark’ and ‘light’ places…”

If you know Russian, you can read Mr. Fischer’s complete column here. If you happen to have Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond at hand, you can read along with the “Tangerine” solo on pages 194-199. Pianist Bill Mays and his friend Arne DeKeijzer have transcribed all 13 choruses. In his commentary, Bill writes, “Sequential melodic development is something all improvisers employ in solos—Paul uses it beautifully and liberally throughout.”

At the risk of being obvious, allow me to encourage special attention at 4:30 to an expression of the blues heart that beats just beneath the surface of so much of Desmond’s playing.

Thinking of Desmond at this time of year, I remember what Dave Brubeck told me long ago as his family was gathering at his house for the annual Memorial Day observance of which Paul had so often been a part:

“Boy,” he said, “I sure miss Paul Desmond.”

If you’re ready for four-piano fun, see the reply to the last comment in this Rifftides post.

The photograph is of CDs that have accumulated on my office floor because shelf space is a distant memory. The little yellow things are an effort to create a sense of order, tagging sections of boxes by arrival date. It doesn’t work very well.
With notable exceptions for which I am grateful, the publicity releases inserted in the packages with CDs don’t work very well, either. The surplus of both is a problem that did not exist for reviewers in the days when there was a handful of record companies releasing a few albums a month. Big companies still exist, but now there are legions of independent operators taking advantage of the ease of digital record production. Today, a record company may be your auto mechanic or your dentist who moonlights as a trumpet player on weekends, cuts a CD with his fellow moonlighters and hires a publicist in hopes of getting reviewed. They’re out there by the hundreds. I’ve thought of writing (again) about the phenomenon, but my blogging colleague (blogeague?) Marc Myers of JazzWax beat me to the punch, so why not let him do the work? In his latest installment, Marc leads with a paragraph I might have written.

Because I review CDs each week here and contribute to the Wall Street Journal, I’m often bombarded by publicists trying to pitch me their clients’ CDs. Truth be told, 50% of these e-releases are sent to the trash unread based on their subject lines. Another 20% are trashed within seconds after opening. And another 20% are trashed because they don’t inform fast enough. Which leaves 10% that I actually read.

Marc writes about e-releases and MP3 downloads, but the glut of physical albums and publicity releases stuffed into the CD envelopes is even more difficult to deal with. There is no trash button to push to get rid of the unwanted ones. He goes on:

This post is addressed to musicians who scratch their heads and wonder why they don’t get coverage by the print or electronic media. But I warn you, what follows is tough love about the music-promotion business and the media. My hope is that publicists will pick up some pointers and be better at what they do. And that musicians will come to realize that getting the word out requires more than postage stamps and bubble envelopes.

Here’s what publicists and the media won’t tell you about people like me who review music:

I will steal only the first two of Marc’s 10 points and leave it to you to discover the rest of his post. As usual, he includes imaginative illustrations to illustrate his points.

1. I don’t care about your album. Many musicians and publicists seem to believe that offering me free music is some sort of eagerly awaited prize, like sardines to seals. The truth is I have all the new music I will ever want or need. Good publicists know that reviewers have to be seduced with a great sales pitch.


2. Don’t make me work. Asking me to download music is the kiss of death. Downloads are a pain because I have to break away from writing to download, import into iTunes, and then extract from iTunes if I don’t like what I hear. Way too much time and work. It’s much easier to trash.

For the rest, go to JazzWax.

Two stalwart jazz broadcasters sent previews of their next appearances.

This week on Jazz Northwest, Jim Wilke previews new releases by several Northwest resident jazz artists including Scott Cossu, Pearl Django,and Kareem Kandi as well as sampling some of the musicians featured at next weekend’s Bellevue Jazz Festival. Included are The Clayton Brothers, Hubert Laws, Thomas Marriott and Jovino Santos Neto. There’s also info about other upcoming jazz events.

Jazz Northwest airs Sundays at 1 PM PDT on 88.5, KPLU and streamed at kplu.org. The program is also available as a podcast following the airdate.

Saxophonist, composer, bandleader and radio maven Bill Kirchner writes from New Jersey:

Last February, I did a second show on the ever-expanding art of two-piano jazz. The growing number of CDs in this idiom makes a third show essential.

This third edition will have the greatest stylistic variety: from the virtuoso stride pianos of Dick Hyman and the late Dick Wellstood (from their aptly-named 1986-87 album “Stridemonster!”) to recent post-modern explorations by Brad Mehldau and Kevin Hays, and Andy Milne and Benoit Delbecq.

The show will air this Sunday, May 27, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time.

NOTE: If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.

To whet your two-piano appetite, here are Wellstood and Hyman in 1986 at the Bern International Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, a musician whose artistry erased categorical boundaries, died last week at 86. In his appreciation of Fischer-Dieskau, New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini wrote of the great baritone’s “seemingly effortless mix of vocal beauty and verbal directness.” Here is a gem-like example of what Tommasini described—Fischer-Dieskau and Sviatoslav Richter in 1978, having a great time with Franz Schubert’s “Fischerweise.”

Fischer-Dieskau was perhaps the definitive interpreter of Schubert’s lieder masterpiece “Wintereisse.” To hear and see him with pianist Alfred Brendel in all 73 minutes of “Wintereisse,” go here.

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, RIP.

The great (term used advisedly) arranger and bandleader Bill Holman celebrated his 85th birthday this week. Steve Cerra posted on his Jazz Profiles blog a repeat of the Holman profile he put together on another occasion. It includes a brilliant assessment of Holman’s work by André Previn, photographs, and a selection of liner notes I have contributed to Holman albums over the years. To see Steve’s post, go here and scroll down the left column until you come to the classic John Reeves photograph of Willis, chin in hand, smiling.

For more on Holman and his music, see this post from the Rifftides archive.

Miles Davis’s birthplace, Alton, Illinois, has announced that it will honor its famous son by erecting a statue. Here are excerpts from the story by Kathie Bassett in Alton’s newspaper, The Telegraph.

Alton Mayor Tom Hoechst unveiled the plan to put a life-sized statue in the heart of Downtown’s entertainment district on Third Street.

This is awesome,” said Brett Stawar, president of Alton’s CVB. “We believe in Miles Davis’ legacy, and I’m excited to see the plan evolve to include a statue that will add another layer to Alton’s visitor experience.”

The initial concept for the statue is that it most likely will mirror the renowned trumpeter’s sinuous pose featured on the commemorative stamp set to be issued on June 12 in New York City, said Charlene Gill, founder and president emeritus of the Alton museum.

To read the whole story and Telegraph readers’ comments, go here.

Miles would no doubt be pleased, but he might very well say, “So What.”

Steve Provizer (pictured, left) posted on his Brilliant Corners blog a treatise on vibrato. He was inspired to do so by Sidney Bechet (1897-1959), the cantankerous genius who made the soprano saxophone a jazz instrument and was the king of vibrato. Steve includes links to performances by celebrated vibratoists, including Bechet, and one by Wild Bill Davison that borders on parody. He also sends us to antivibratoists like Miles Davis, Bix Beiderbecke and Lester Young. You could easily spend an hour just listening to Steve’s links. To see his post, click here.

As sometimes happens in the blogosphere, Provizer’s post inspired Bruno Leicht (pictured,right), halfway across the world in Cologne, to follow up with thoughts about Harry James. James is perhaps not the first trumpeter you would think of if you were in search of vibrato-free playing. Nonetheless, Bruno provides a lovely example of him playing a ballad with a big, fat, nearly vibratoless tone. To hear it, go to BrewLite’s Jazz Tales here.

As for Bechet, here he is in the late 1950s with musicians in France, where he made his home from 1951 until his death. He uses vibrato throughout and with a vengeance toward the end of his long sustained high G or A-flat (or, in this film, somewhere in between).

Judi Silvano, Indigo Moods (Jazzed Media)

As anyone knows who has heard her in duet with her saxophonist husband Joe Lovano, Judi Silvano is capable of dramatic, even eccentric, uses of pitch, harmonic intervals and time. She calls upon those abilities in this collection of cherished standard songs, but her main point in the album is—to borrow Ruby Braff’s phrase—adoration of the melody. In “If You Could See Me Now,” she honors Tadd Dameron’s tune by altering it only with little touches of phrasing and a few vocalise fills. She gives Irving Berlin’s “It Only Happens When I Dance With You” and Billy Strayhorn’s “A Flower is a Lovesome Thing” straight readings, changing nary a note (well, one in the Strayhorn), yet manages to infuse those songs with the piquancy of her style.

For all of her concentration here on melodies, Ms. Silvano is not reluctant to depart from them. Trading fours with trumpeter Fred Jacobs for 16 bars of “If I Had You,” she improvises as skillfully as any instrumentalist. Her wordless vocal chorus in Jobim’s “If You Never Come to Me” (“Initul Paisagem”) captures the song’s Brazilian nature. She brings bluesy variations to “Mood Indigo.” She plays with time and syllables in a Latinized introduction to “Embraceable You.” Still, the album gets its character—her character—through “Skylark,” “I’ll Be Seeing You,” “Let’s Fall in Love,” “But Beautiful,” “Still We Dream” (Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” with words) and the Dameron and Strayhorn songs adorned only with Ms. Silvano’s compelling personality. Trumpeter Jacobs and pianist Fred Tomlinson are her only companions in the album’s 14 songs. They provide support, sensitive accompaniment, tasteful solos and the opportunity for Ms. Silvano to be her very musical self.

Kenny Dorham, Una Mas (Blue Note)

This is a reissue only in the sense that in 1999 engineer Rudy Van Gelder remastered the album he recorded in 1963. There are no newly discovered pieces, no bonus tracks, no alternate takes. There is just Kenny Dorham playing trumpet at the top of his game with his ideal foil, tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, and a rhythm section of Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren and Tony Williams. Dorham did not get his due in his lifetime (1924-1972). A few perceptive young 21st century jazz players have been inspired by the example of his melodic gift and his ingenious use of harmonies, it would be a shame if this essential musician’s life and work were forgotten. KD still has a lot to offer. If you haven’t discovered Dorham, this album is a good way to get acquainted.

For more on Dorham, including rare video of him playing, see this Rifftides archive post.

While the real photographer was setting up for the atmospheric shots used in Bud Shank’s 2001 sextet album On The Trail, I snagged this one of Conte Candoli as he entertained the band and bystanders with the theme from The Godfather.
In addition to Shank and Candoli, On The Trail features Jay Thomas on tenor saxophone and a favorite Shank rhythm section: Bill Mays, piano; Bob Magnusson, bass; and Joe LaBarbera, drums. I was enlisted to write liner notes. When the recording at Raw Records in Port Townsend, Washington, was done, Mays and LaBarbera invited Candoli and me to join them in a game of tennis. We explained that we weren’t tennis players. “That’s okay. We have extra rackets. It’ll be fun,” Mays said.

We found a high school tennis court; two real players in tennis whites and two guys in street clothes. I was wearing sneakers, but Count’s shoes had leather soles. Our mismatched doubles teams batted the ball back and forth to great hilarity as the rank amateurs played like rank amateurs, Candoli’s Guccis frequently slipping on the asphalt. Finally, he made a flying lunge at a ball headed out of bounds, slid out of control, fell and rolled. We all rushed over, determined that nothing was broken and helped him up. Concluding that discretion was advisable, Count and I retired to the sidelines and cheered the survivors.

Less than four months later, Count was dead of a cancer no one had suspected in August. At the center of my many fond memories of him is the day he played so well on the record date and his childlike pleasure in that ad hoc fooling around on the court. His longtime colleague Bud Shank left us in 2009.

Here’s a good way for all of us to remember Count—with LaBarbera, Pete Jolly at the piano and Chuck Berghofer on bass. The piece is Candoli’s “Secret Passion.”

Stan Getz with Eddy Louis, organ; Renè Thomas, guitar; Bernard Lubat, drums, from a 1971 French television program. The piece is “Dum Dum.” Getz’s tone led John Coltrane to say of him, “We’d all sound like that if we could.”

“Dum Dum” is included on Getz’s Dynasty, which Verve Records has dropped from its catalog. The album is on its way to becoming a collectors item.

*la·gniappe (lan-yap), noun

Chiefly Southern Louisiana and Southeast Texas . 1.a small gift to a customer by way of compliment or for good measure; bonus. 2.a gratuity or tip. 3.an unexpected or indirect benefit.

I met a grown man the other day who came right out and admitted that he had never heard Sonny Rollins play “Wagon Wheels.” We were in public and I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I took the only civilized option that sprang to mind. I promised him that if I could find it on the web, I would post the track for him and anyone else similarly deprived. Here it is, with Ray Brown on bass and Shelly Manne on drums, from Way Out West (1957), a basic repertoire item if ever there was one.

“Wagon Wheels” debuted in the Ziegield Follies in 1934. Among several successful recordings over the years were those by—strange though it may seem—Jimmy Lunceford, and Tommy Dorsey with strings. It was a hit for Spade Cooley and Paul Robeson, too, but the record permanently installed for a decade in the jukeboxes of my hometown was by The Sons of the Pioneers. You may find it a contrast to the Rollins version. Click here.