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This was first a Rifftides post on March 24, 2006.

Thanks to Bill Reed and David Ehrenstein for calling this to our attention.

Richie Kamuca & Lee Konitz, Live at Donte’s 1974 (Cellar Door)
It’s a hoot to hear the saxophonists channel their hero Lester Young in this recently discovered session recorded at the lamented Los Angeles club. “Lester Leaps In” begins and ends as a unison duet, complete with stop-time breaks, reproducing Young’s 1939 solo on the master take of the piece with Count Basie’s Kansas City Seven. In their own solos, Kamuca and Konitz leave no doubt about where they came from. Kamuca, the tenor player, is clearest in his fealty to Young. Konitz, on alto, is more abstract in his Prezcience, but it has always been a major element in his work. The other tunes are standards in the gig books of musicians of Kamuca’s (1930-1977) and Konitz’s (1927- ) generation—”Just Friends,” “Star Eyes,” “All The Things You Are” and Bobby Troup’s “Baby, Baby All The Time.” Solos are long and exploratory; the shortest track is 7:41. The set has the exhilaration, rough edges, chance-taking and surprises that make for satisfying live performance.
Support for the two Ks is by the solid L.A. rhythm section of pianist Dolo Coker, bassist Leroy Vinnegar and drummer Jake Hanna, all of whom solo to great effect. Vinnegar goes beyond his customary walking bass for a couple of bowed solos and a bit of unexpected wildness in his “Lester Leaps In” solo, to the evident amusement of his colleagues and the audience. Coker, an under-recognized high achiever among Bud Powell admirers, has impressive moments throughout. Hanna cooks along, fueling the swing. Toward the end of the last track, “Lester,” he finally takes a solo. What he saved up is worth the wait. The sound of this session, exhumed from reel-to-reel tapes, won’t turn Rudy Van Gelder green with envy, but it’s perfectly acceptable; you can plainly hear what everyone is doing. Unearthing and releasing it is a feather in the cap of Cellar Door’s Bill Reed. On the CD box, it says, “Limited Edition.” The 300 copies probably won’t last long because there is nothing limited about the music.

Here is the new batch of short reviews —micro-reviews, perhaps—in which the Rifftides staff acknowledges some of the CDs that have attracted our attention lately. It would be impossible to hear all of every album that shows up. Even sampling a majority of them is a challenge. Evidence: these are some, only some, of the fairly recent arrivals. Whoever said jazz is dying hasn’t talked to my FedEx, UPS and USPS deliverymen.

Pharez Whitted, Transient Journey (Owl). In his liner notes, Neil Tesser writes of trumpeter Whitted’s playing, “the spirit of Freddie Hubbard hovers nearby.” It certainly does. With his facility and fat, even sound, Whitted does hard bop a la Hubbard to a turn. His own spirit seems to materialize most clearly in his slower pieces, notably the title tune and “Sunset on the Gaza”. On flugelhorn, he is reflective in “Until Tomorrow Comes,” with its samba inflection. Whitted’s sextet includes a rhythm section of fellow Chicagoans. In the front line he has the masterly guitarist Bobby Broom and saxophonist Eddie Bayard, who is from Jamaica by way of Ohio and fits nicely into Chicago’s tough tenor tradition.
Jacám Manricks, Trigonometry (Posi-Tone). A year after his stimulating Labyrinth (see the Rifftides review here), the young Australian based in New York divests himself of the chamber orchestra and pares down to a quartet, adding guest horns on three pieces. The writing skills he displayed on the previous album are in evidence in the smaller context. Using trompe l’oreille harmonies, Manricks voices his alto saxophone, Scott Wendholt’s trumpet and Alan Ferber’s trombone to sound like a larger ensemble. “Cluster Funk,” as audacious as its title, is a prime case in point. It has a beautifully shaped Wendholt solo. As for Manricks’ own playing, it ranges from heart-on-the-sleeve lyricism in “Mood Swing” to a sort of post-Konitz earnestness in “Slippery” to bounds and leaps reminiscent of Eric Dolphy in, among other pieces, Dolphy’s “Miss Ann.” Pianist Gary Versace, bassist Joe Martin and drummer Obed Calvaire are the well-matched rhythm section.
Dino Saluzzi, El Encuentro (ECM). The venerable bandoneónista combines with the strings of the Metropole Orchestra in a suite that alternates languor and drama. Saluzzi marinates four long tracks in the sadness and passion that characterize the Argentine tango tradition, accenting them with contrasting bursts of dance-like joy from his bandoneon. His saxophonist brother Feliz and cellist Anja Lechner—each with a rich, roomy tone—also solo in this beautifully recorded concert performance in the Netherlands. Any piece called “Miserere” obligates itself to carry the emotional weight the title implies. Saluzzi’s “Miserere,” with the profundity of his bandoneon solo section, meets the obligation. Like all lasting music, Saluzzi’s work discloses new facets with each hearing.
Trisha O’Brien, Out Of A Dream (Azica). Ms. O’Brien sings in tune, swings lightly with a good time feel, understands the meaning of lyrics, chooses fine songs and doesn’t scat. She and producer Elaine Martone know how to put a band together. Lewis Nash is the drummer, Peter Washington the bassist. On piano is the sensitive accompanist Shelly Berg, who also did the arrangements. Ken Peplowski plays tenor saxophone on three tracks and has a peach of a solo on “Taking a Chance on Love.” The songs are from what reviewers are required to call The Great American Songbook (anyone with a better name is welcome to submit it). That means we get Porter, Loesser, Berlin, and Burke and Van Heusen, among others. There are latterday entries by Joni Mitchell and Alan and Marilyn Bergman. In “Everybody Loves My Baby,” Ms. O’Brien manages to be both sinuous and saucy, with Peplowski commenting on tenor sax and Washington in a walking solo right out of the Leroy Vinnegar playbook.
More reviews to come. Soon, I hope.

Ending this Rifftides mini-series of videos from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s 1964 appearance on Belgian television is—what else?—the number that became a popular hit in a best-selling album and for Desmond, its composer, an annuity that by terms of his will is still funneling large amounts of money to the Red Cross. The quartet included it in all of their concerts around the world, lest there be disappointed audiences. This version has a brief solo from Desmond, an elegiac one from Brubeck, and Morello more subdued and thoughtful than he sometimes was in this show piece. There are cast and crew credits at the end of this beautifully produced television episode.

A new three-day jazz event joins the roster of festivals that enliven Europe each summer. A musician heads this one. The Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren is organizing an early August festival in his hometown, the historic seaside village of Ystad.
In addition to Lundgren’s trio, the headliners include Benny Golson, Toots Thielemans, Richard Galliano, Jacob Fischer and Paolo Fresu. To see the program schedule and other information, go here.

Inspired by the new Bill Charlap-Renee Rosnes CD (see the review), I sent the Rifftides staff in search of other piano duos. They found this.

Rifftides reader Allen Mezquida writes:

It seems that Pekar had a greater perception about jazz than many
musicians I know. He listened with a rich open mind and a big heart.
I created this animation for him. It was finished about a week before
he died.

Allen Mezquida animates films and plays alto saxophone in Los Angeles.

Harvey Pekar died this week at the age of 70. He will, inevitably, be more widely remembered for his seriously adult American Splendor comics and the movie they inspired than for his jazz criticism. As a writer about music he was—no surprise—eccentric and uneven but at his best wrote with precision and frankness about what he heard in his careful listening. Here is the conclusion of his Austin Chronicle review of the reissue of the Miles Davis Cellar Door Sessions.

Maybe Miles was thinking of himself more as the lead voice of a collectively improvising ensemble than a soloist. He plays in fits and starts, screaming, improvising complex but sloppily executed runs, not making good use of wah-wah effects. His efforts don’t hold together well. The loose group concept might be prime suspect in Davis’ cliché-filled performance, but there’s (Keith) Jarrett, member of the same group, playing so well. Jazz fans tend to think of and evaluate Davis’ fusion recordings as a whole, but actually there’s a wide variation in their quality, and that should be kept in mind when purchasing them.

To read the whole review, go here.
Pekar was infatuated with some of the least tethered free jazz. Writing about his avant garde heroes he sometimes went as far out as they did. Yet, he was capable of an open mind and an even keel, as in this observation from a review of the box set reissue that includes Ghosts, saxophonist Albert Ayler’s 1964 collaboration with Sonny Murray, Don Cherry and Gary Peacock.

Here we have characteristic and mature performances by Ayler. In evidence are his honks, above-the-normal-upper-register screams and squeals, lines played so fast they seem to be a blur of notes and a huge vibrato. His original compositions are also unique, so archaic sounding that they seem modern. The influence of both church and martial music is apparent in them.

Unlike some critics of his avant leanings who categorically rejected music of the so-called West Coast movement, Pekar learned to understand Chet Baker.

When I was exposed to jazz in the mid-Fifties, it was as a fan of robust hard bop, musicians like Sonny Rollins and Clifford Brown. The popular West Coast jazz of that time seemed to lack vigor and as a whole was less progressive. Baker was suspect because his trumpet playing was so quiet and introverted; it seemed to lack strength. But after listening to him for years I had to admit that he had a rich melodic imagination, putting his solos together smoothly and swinging gracefully. I grew to like his small, velvety tone, and eventually came to the conclusion that he was an original and admirable performer.

Readers will miss Pekar most of all for the penetrating honesty and sardonic humor of his social observations as a comics writer. They should not overlook his value as a jazz critic. Of the Pekar obituaries I have seen, by far the most comprehensive is the one by William Grimes in The New York Times.

More or less from the beginning of their association, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond had an affinity for blues in minor keys. Three that achieved success to the point of indelible identification with them were “Balcony Rock,” first recorded in Jazz Goes To College (1954), the same theme recycled as “Audrey” for Brubeck Time (1956), and “Koto Song” from Jazz Impressions Of Japan (1964). “Koto Song” was a new entry in the quartet’s repertoire when they played it on television in Belgium in ’64. This is the group usually referred to as the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet, with Eugene Wright, bass, and Joe Morello, drums.

Next time: the final installment of this series of DBQ pieces from Belgium.

Bill Kirchner writes:

Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From The Archives”
series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every
Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3).
Gene Lees (1928-2010) was one of jazz’s foremost essayists and biographers. And he wrote liner notes for a number of classic jazz albums: John Coltrane’s Ballads, Bill Evans’ Conversations With Myself and At The Montreux Jazz Festival, The Individualism of Gil Evans, and Getz/Gilberto, among others.
Lees also wrote memorable lyrics to music by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bill Evans, Milton Nascimento, Lalo Schifrin, Roger Kellaway, Charles Aznavour, Manuel DeSica, and others. We’ll hear performances of some of those songs–some well-known, others obscure–by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Jackie Cain, Rita Reys, Nancy Wilson, and Lees himself.
The show will air this Sunday, July 18, from 11 p.m. to midnight, Eastern Daylight Time. If you live outside the New York City metropolitan area, WBGO also broadcasts on the Internet at www.wbgo.org.

To see Rifftides on Gene Lees, and readers’ comments, go here.

From a DBQ television appearance in Europe, we have the piece that served as the quartet’s concert opener for more than a decade. First, a couple of observations, one from me, one from Eugene Wright:
From me: Whoever decreed that white men can’t play the blues never really listened to Desmond and Brubeck personalize the idiom as they do in their solos here.
Gene’s observation is a quotation in a book about Desmond. The first part of it applies to his relationship with Morello from the beginning of their time together, when Wright joined Brubeck in early 1958.

Right away, Joe and I were as one. It was like Jo Jones and Walter Page with Count Basie. It was right from the beginning. Joe Morello and I locked up immediately. Joe’s out of New York and he had that thing–Ben Webster and all those guys loved him because he had that little extra thing you need. When musicians used to ask me how I could play with that band, I told them they weren’t listening. I told them I was the bottom, the foundation; Joe was the master of time; Dave handled the polytonality and polyrhythms; we all freed Paul to be lyrical. Everybody was listening to everybody. It was beautiful. Those people who couldn’t accept it were looking, not listening.

That was the major blues for this mini-series. Tomorrow, the minor blues.

Dr. Lonnie Smith, Spiral (Palmetto). Smith is a doctor in the same way that Captain Beefheart is a captain, but I’m willing to concede him the title because he knows how to make you feel good. Of the generation of post-bop organists who followed Jimmy Smith, he survived his near-namesake Lonnie Liston Smith, Don Patterson, Jimmy McGriff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Shirley Scott, Jack McDuff and Jimmy Smith himself. At 68, he carries on the tradition employing the Hammond B-3 not only as a blues dynamo—although he is capable of that—but also caressing melodies, as in his title composition and an unlikely choice, the 1963 international pop hit “Sukiyaki,” which he somehow manages to divest of its corn.
Smith exemplifies his tasteful treatment of song book standards in a medium-tempo stroll through Frank Loesser’s “I’ve Never Been in Love Before,” making thoughtful use of space to let the organ and the listener breathe. With Jamire Williams’s drums roiling and guitarist Jonathan Kreisbserg playing ostinato patterns, Smith makes Rodgers and Hart’s “I Didn’t Know What Time it Was” an exercise in compelling forward motion. He flirts with ¾ time in “Sweet and Lovely” without fully committing to it. The resulting rhythmic tension develops a push that energizes his and Kreisberg’s solos. “Beehive,” with its buzzing air of menace, would be perfect for the opening credits in a Stanley Kubrick movie starring Jack Nicholson. Smith takes Slide Hampton’s “Frame for the Blues” at a metronome pace of about 56 that would seem glacial if he and his sidemen didn’t invest it with powerhouse oomph and blues feeling that make it, to these ears, the album’s stealth piece de resistance.

Every traveling jazz soloist knows that playing with pickup sidemen, or sidewomen, is a game of chance. There is a chance that there will be a disaster, a chance that the temporary colleagues will be adequate, and a long outside chance that something special will happen.
Thursday night at The Seasons in Yakima, Washington, Emil Viklický hit that outside chance. The Czech pianist and composer was in the Pacific Northwest for the premier of his Double Concerto for Harp, Oboe and String Orchestra at the national conference of the American Harp Society. Following the performance, he made the trip from Tacoma across the Cascade mountains to The Seasons for a trio concert in that acoustic marvel of a small nonprofit performance hall.

Pat Strosahl, the Seasons founder, engaged bassist Clipper Anderson, who drove in from Montana on his way back home to Seattle. The drummer was Don Kinney, head of the percussion section of the Yakima Symphony Orchestra and a seasoned jazz player. Kinney has distinguished himself at Seasons concerts with other visiting leaders including pianists Alan Broadbent and the Swedish star Jan Lundgren. Anderson and Kinney knew of one another’s work but had never played together. Viklický had played with neither. Viklický had e-mailed Anderson lead sheets for a few of his compositions

Because of Anderson’s late-afternoon arrival following his long drive, the three had time only for a 45-minute rehearsal. They ran through a few standards, and complex originals based directly on Moravian folk songs or on music by Czech national hero LeoÅ¡ Janáček. Janáček is one of the great classical interpreters of the Moravian musical tradition that also inspires Viklický.
At the concert, it was clear after the opening chorus of Cole Porter’s “Everything I Love” that this might turn out to be a memorable evening. It was evident not only because of the single-mindedness of the trio’s swing but also because of Viklický’s grin, which made frequent appearances. Introducing his adaptation of the folk tune “A Bird Flew Over,” he called Kinney and Anderson “my new Moravian musicians.” Several of the pieces were from Viklický’s latest trio record, Sinfonietta, with bassist George Mraz and drummer Lewis Nash. The live versions with Andersonand Kinney compared favorably. It was not just a matter of their considerable technique. The three connected, locked in, listened and reacted to one another on the same wave length. At the end of the concert, when the cheering stopped, the pianist was effusive in his compliments to his new Moravians.

In an evening of high points, the highest was the Viklický piece he tied to his delighted discovery that he was in the heart of Washington State’s celebrated wine country. He explained that “Wine, Oh Wine” grew out of his and his fellow Moravians’ love of a folk song often sung on special occasions, including weddings and funerals. It concerns the dilemma of whether to drink red or white wine. The correct Moravian answer, Viklický said, is “both.” Then, he, Anderson and Kinney celebrated that idea with a vintage performance that matched or exceeded the song’s natural exuberance. Swing doesn’t come much harder than what they achieved on “Wine, Oh Wine.” Three skilled musicians, the common language of jazz and the chemistry that developed in a chance encounter had, indeed, produced a memorable evening. Viklický’s grin migrated to every face in the house.

Unfortunately, there is no video from the Yakima concert, but here is Viklický with his Czech trio, bassist Frantisek Uhlir and drummer Laco Tropp. The tune is Ray Brown’s “Buhaina, Buhaina.”

Jazz developed in the United States, but it has long been an international music and many of its most prominent players are from other countries. The Dane Svend Asmussen is coming in for even more attention than usual lately. Attention is far from new in the career of the remarkable violinist, but when a musician is halfway through his tenth decade and still swinging, he gets extra notice. One who notices is Will Friedwald. He writes about Asmussen in today’s Wall Street Journal. Here’s the first paragraph.

“How are you doing?” That’s normally an innocuous question, except when you happen to be asking a 94-year-old violinist who is probably the oldest currently active major jazz musician in the world. “I do very well,” answers Svend Asmussen, speaking by phone from his home in a Danish fishing village outside of Copenhagen, “considering my extremely advanced age.”

To read the whole thing, go here. For a Rifftides review of two Asmussen albums, go here.

Regarding the “Where We Are” item below, Rifftides reader Cyril Moshkow writes

Looks like the info is not exactly complete, as many people read
through RSS aggregation (which does not include logging in.) For
instance, I am reading Rifftides in Moscow, Russia, but almost never
directly — it is aggregated in my blogroll.

That’s a good point, Cyril. Unfortunately the site meter doesn’t calculate RSS deliveries, so we cannot know how many people sign on by that means.
Be sure to visit Mr. Moshkow’s excellent site, Russian Jazz—DR

Rifftides reader John Fielding writes from Australia:

I am currently reading and enjoying your book about Paul Desmond. I am a lifelong DB and PD follower after seeing them play in Brisbane, Australia, in 1960.
Congratulations on a great contribution to jazz history and the stories and colors of the era of the 50’s.
Amazing that ‘Take Five’ has been so widely recorded. I thought you might be interested to know that I recently heard ‘Take Five’ on a stay in Beijing. There is a very popular group known as the Twelve Girls (actually, there are thirteen of them and I suspect that the band name has something to do with a pun to which all Chinese speakers are addicted). Their forte is playing Western classical and some pop music on Chinese traditional instruments. They also have an extensive Chinese classical repertoire. They do an interesting version of the song. I subsequently found the song on one of their CDs.
I think that Paul would approve – particularly as the twelve (thirteen?) girls are very attractive as well as talented. Interesting that the erhu (one stringed fiddle that looks like a coffee can with a long handle) actually produces a lovely full-bodied cello style note that suits the song very well.

Thank you and all the best from Australia.
John Fielding

You’re welcome, John. And thank you, but wait a minute; four of those 12 (or 13) girls seem to be guys. Could that be the source of the pun?

Jason Moran, Ten (Blue Note)
It is possible that Jason Moran is the messianic paragon that the tide of jump-on-the-Bandwagon critical enthusiasm proclaims him. I am willing to cede that judgment to the leavening passage of time. It is no abandonment of restraint, however, to agree that Moran is an original thinker and a hell of a piano player. If there were no other reason to make that concession, I would be convinced by his treatment of the late Jaki Byard’s “To Bob Vatel of Paris.” Byard recorded the variation on “I Got Rhythm” changes in his breath-taking 1972 solo LP There’ll Be Some Changes Made. The album was briefly reissued on CD as Empirical. Then, absurdly, it was allowed to go out of print and is now available only at outrageous collectors prices.
In his tenth CD on Blue Note, Moran takes his cue for “Vatel” from Byard, with whom he studied. He begins alone, parahrasing and bending the stride style Byard used in the piece. Then, Moran and his longtime sidemen, bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer, Nasheet Waits work their way into the kind of swirling, nearly aharmonic improvisation of which Byard was a master. Standard metric time all but goes out the window for a while, but swing does not. When they have wrapped up the tune six minutes later, they have run it through a kaleidoscope of shifting shapes and colors.
There is much else in the CD to enjoy or wonder at. Moran manages to combine his loves of hip-hop and Thelonious Monk in “Crepuscle With Nellie.” He expands on the spirit, energy and blues core of Leonard Bernstein’s “Big Stuff,” and melds it into the next track, “Play to Live,” which Moran wrote with the late Andrew Hill, another of his teachers. “Pas de Deux,” an unaccompanied piece with the mystery and solemnity of a nocturne, is from a ballet for which Moran wrote the music. There are fast and slow versions of “Study No. 6,” one of the eccentric composer Conlon Nancarrow’s pieces for player piano. “The Subtle One” lives up to its title with reflective piano and bass musings and finely etched brush and cymbal work by Waits.
“Gangsterism Over 10 Years,” bluesy and packed with references to pop dance idioms, is the latest iteration of a theme sketch that the trio, known as The Bandwagon, has been developing since its founding. The bonus track, hidden at the end and not included in the CD’s play list, is “Nobody,” the signature song of Bert Williams, a hero of black vaudeville memorialized in 1940 by Duke Ellington in “A Portrait of Bert Williams.” Moran, Mateen and Waits handle it with the mixture of tenderness, exuberance and irony that characterized Williams’ own approach to the song.
“Nobody” is not all that’s hidden. There is no clue to the musical value of embedding samples of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix’s feedback behind the trio’s lovely musings in the track called “Feedback Pt. 2.” They don’t do a “Feedback Pt. 1.” That’s okay.

In New Orleans, street musicians in the French Quarter are a tourist attraction. According to city law, they are also a nuisance. The contradiction has roots in jazz history and city tradition. It puts police and the administration of the new mayor, Mitch Landrieu, between residents of the Quarter who want to get some sleep and musicians like these outside Jackson Square who want to make a living or, at least, pick up a few bucks.On the web site truthdig, Artsjournal.com blogger Larry Blumenfeld posted an exhaustive report about the controversy. He connects it to situations portrayed in the hot new cable television series Treme. Here is an excerpt that grew out of his conversation with a civil rights lawyer named Mary Howell.

Section 66-205 could be construed to prohibit a lone guitarist strumming on a corner or someone playing harmonica to no one in particular in the street. Same for Section 30-1456, which, curiously, pertains to a stretch of Bourbon Street filled mostly with bars that blast recorded music well into the night. Add to this, Howell explains, that in 1974 the city passed a zoning ordinance that actually prohibits live entertainment in New Orleans, save for spots that are either grandfathered in or specially designated as exceptions. Those interior shots in “Treme” faithfully depicting the vibe at Donna’s Bar & Grill and Bullet’s Sports Bar? Grandfathered in, or they’d be technically illegal. Current zoning restrictions could, without much of a stretch, be construed to prohibit band rehearsals, parties with musical entertainment, even poetry readings. “It’s a draconian ordinance,” says Howell, “and a blanket over the city.” The very idea is mind-boggling to those who live outside New Orleans: a city whose image is largely derived from its live musical entertainment essentially outlawing public performance through noise, quality-of-life, and zoning ordinances.

To read Blumenfeld’s entire piece, go here.

Vincent Herring & Earth Jazz, Morning Star (Challenge). The rhythm section known as Earth Jazz is electrified, funkified and synthesized. Collaborating with them, Herring looks back to the heyday of ’60s and ’70s soul, with stylistic references to Herbie Hancock, early Weather Report and tinges of Azymuth and The Crusaders. His customary power and tonal perfection on alto and soprano saxophones are intact, even as he adheres to the limitations of the setting. The title tune eases up on the back beat, allowing Herring the balladry at which he excels. It’s a welcome break from the funk formula, as are his echoes of Hank Crawford, and Anthony Wonsey’s acoustic piano work in the concluding “You Got Soul.”