{"id":8191,"date":"2017-02-20T00:14:44","date_gmt":"2017-02-20T08:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=8191"},"modified":"2017-02-20T23:16:50","modified_gmt":"2017-02-21T07:16:50","slug":"pdx-jazz-festival-heath-bros-jackson-ulmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2017\/02\/pdx-jazz-festival-heath-bros-jackson-ulmer\/","title":{"rendered":"PDX Jazz Festival: Heath Bros, Jackson, Ulmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Heath is 90 years old. His kid brother Albert (Tootie) is 80. They\"\" don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t act”\u00a0or sound”\u00a0their ages. For their concert at the Portland Jazz Festival, the Heath Brothers were billed as paying tribute to Dizzy Gillespie in the 100th anniversary year of his birth. Indeed, they played in the bebop tradition that Gillespie and Charlie Parker pioneered, but most of the pieces were Jimmy Heath compositions. He told the audience that his tune \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Winter Sleeves\u00e2\u20ac\u009d is based on the harmonies of the standard song \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Autumn Leaves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That way,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m the one who gets the royalties.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Jimmy handled the introductions and the verbal and physical comedy, although from behind his drum set Tootie contributed a couple of jibes. With the looseness of a teenager, Jimmy broke into boogaloo moves or hand jive demonstrations to accompany his banter. When the comedy subsided, the fooling around ended. In his tenor and sopran0 saxophone solos, Jimmy demonstrated that he has lost none of his warmth, smooth phrasing and composer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sense of continuity.”\u00a0\"\"Tootie”\u00a0continues as an incisive soloist and one of the most effective drum accompanists in jazz. He melded with bassist Michael Karn and pianist Jeb Patton to form a rhythm section that supported the elder Heath impressively and responded to Jimmy\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s every solo turn. The power and story-telling aspects of Patton\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own improvisations stimulated bursts of applause, notably when he soloed in Thelonious Monk\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153\u00e2\u20ac\u2122Round Midnight\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and Jimmy Heath\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s jazz standard \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Gingerbread Boy.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nReplacing the ailing George Cables, Patton came back for the second half of the double-bill concert led by tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson. In this case the bassist was Corcoran Holt from Washington, DC, the drummer Willie Jones III from Chicago. Jackson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guest was alto saxophonist Donald Harrison. Alumni of Art Blakey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jazz Messengers, the saxophonists
\n\"\" opened with \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One By One,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a staple of the Blakey repertoire. (Jackson photo by Mark Sheldon.) In that piece and in Charlie Parker\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Confirmation,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the group achieved enormous momentum. Long solos were the order of the evening with Harrison indulging himself in an unaccompanied coda to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Misty\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that went on several bars longer than its content justified. Jackson dedicated his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Mr. Sanders\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to the saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders. In his lengthy solo he incorporated passages that may have been inspired by Sanders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free-jazz rambles. Following an incisive Corcoran bass introduction, Jackson brought out his lyrical side for \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When I Fall in Love,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a mid-1950s ballad hit for Nat Cole. Toward the end of the concert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second hour, Jimmy Heath joined Jackson and Harrison for a guest turn on Heath\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153(There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s) A Time And a Place,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a tune frequently covered by other jazz players. It was a strong ending to a concert that was stimulating and\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthanks to the voluble leaders Heath and Jackson\u00e2\u20ac\u201dentertaining.<\/p>\n

After guitarist John Abercrombie found it necessary to pull out of the Portland Festival, the management signed blues singer and guitarist James Blood Ulmer to fill the Sunday afternoon slot. It may have occurred to devotees of Abercrombie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s playing, which grew out of bebop, that Ulmer was an unlikely replacement. Still, he attracted a fair-sized crowd for a concert that resounded with the elements that have \"\"given him an audience. Tall, dressed dramatically in a white suit, seated on a piano bench facing a semicircle of speakers and amplifying equipment, Ulmer gave his listeners ninety minutes of blues, semi-blues and quasi-blues.<\/p>\n

He introduced elements of R&B, reggae, rock, country and what a fellow listener told me was free funk. Worse luck, either Ulmer or the sound engineer added so much distortion to his voice that many of his lyrics were unintelligible. His devilish laughter in a piece called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Poor Devil\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was quite clear. He occasionally executed guitar runs that had distinct bebop or post-bop flavors, but their intriguing musical content never lasted more than a few seconds. It would be interesting to hear him work out some of those ideas on a moderately amplified guitar without distortion. Ulmer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s last-minute festival billing was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Harmolodic Blues Solo Guitar.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d That suggests a relationship with Ornette Coleman, who introduced the idea of harmolodics as a system of composition and playing unbounded by traditional notions of tonality, time and tempo. Fair enough, but a preponderance of what Ulmer delivered this time was muddled by acoustic distortion. And there was precious little solo guitar.<\/p>\n

As always, thanks to Mark Sheldon for his wonderful photographs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jimmy Heath is 90 years old. His kid brother Albert (Tootie) is 80. They don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t act”\u00a0or sound”\u00a0their ages. For their concert at the Portland Jazz Festival, the Heath Brothers were billed as paying tribute to Dizzy Gillespie in the 100th anniversary year of his birth. Indeed, they played in the bebop tradition that Gillespie and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8192,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8191","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-main","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}