Bud Powell

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Parisian Thoroughfare

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Michelot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Brown_%26_Max_Roach

Max & Clifford: Cherokee

Max Roach Quintet Parisian Thoroughfare
I can't get started

Brownie: Smoke get sin your eyes
Quicksilver
Donna Less: Brownie's very last recording

Prez: Polka dots and Moonbeams

Tina Brooks

Heard a song, on Rhonda Hamilton's WBGO show, featuring his saxophone as I drove to work on Thursday 7 June.

Photo by Francis Wolff © Mosaic Images
Harold Floyd "Tina" Brooks (June 7, 1932 – August 13, 1974) was an American hard bop tenor saxophonist and composer.

78s, Photos, Even Sweat

Another fragment of Louis Armstrong’s legacy is back where it belongs. The Armstrong museum and archive in Queens has received a treasure-trove of rare 78-r.p.m. records, bootleg tapes, five personal letters, candid photographs, European posters, news clippings, discographies, even weight-loss tips — 192 cubic feet in all — from the estate of a Swedish man known as the world’s second-largest private collector of Satchmoiana.

Satchmoiana, now there is a word.


There is also a sweat-stained handkerchief that belonged to Armstrong, who was famous for theatrically wiping his brow between the trumpet solos he blew better than almost anyone else. “We’re excited about it because there might be some valuable DNA in it, what with cloning and all,” joked Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Corona.

One never knows.

The Armstrong Museum's archivist is named Ricky Riccardi; what a hoot.

[Library director] Mr. Cogswell, 58, is a Virginian who played saxophone gigs for a time, did graduate work in both jazz history and library science, and considers his current position his dream job. He shepherded visitors through Armstrong’s house last week, telling them how Armstrong, while on tour, asked his wife to buy them a home, which she did, picking one out in a working-class quarter and paying about $3,500. When Armstrong showed up by taxi from the airport at 3 a.m., he was dazzled by what he thought of as its grandeur, given the stark poverty he had been raised in. “Quit kidding me,” he told the cabdriver. “Take me to the address I gave you.”

Early Chet

One day I decided to look for renditions of "This time the dream's on me" and it was on this compilation. There are 4 CDs to the collection. The first one starts with live pieces, including a couple where Chet played with Bird: the fidelity is poor, but the talent shines through. Discs 2 and 3 have studio pieces. Disc 4 contains a few studio pieces, and a number of live pieces (in which Chet plays with both Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan.

This box set is available for purchase, and is annotated online. For a public library to own it is a gift that, alas, too few will appreciate. Yet it is proof of a wonderful music collection, and the Port Washington Library has that.

Afro-Cuban Jazz

IF there is such a thing as a first family of Afro-Cuban jazz, the O’Farrill clan has a right to claim that distinction. Its members helped invent the hybrid genre back in the 1940s, when Chico O’Farrill came to New York from Havana, and in recent years they have worked to reinvigorate the music despite barriers in both Cuba and the United States. “We’re kind of people caught between two worlds,” said the pianist Arturo O’Farrill, Chico’s 50-year-old son. As such, he added, it’s his obligation to encourage “an evolving relationship between two countries that should never have been separated culturally” and to “pay a debt forward” in his father’s name.

I've long wondered about the name itself: Irish? 

The musical story of the family, which immigrated to Cuba from the British Caribbean colony of Montserrat in the 1700s, begins with Chico, who was studying at a military academy in Georgia in the mid-1930s when he fell in love with jazz. A decade later, after playing trumpet in Cuban orchestras, he moved to New York, where he quickly became an A-list composer and arranger, working with Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Count Basie and Machito, among others.

The Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite is one of the greatest musical compositions I have ever heard, especially when it features Bird.

“Simply put, Chico O’Farrill is the greatest Afro-Cuban jazz figure of all time,” Leonardo Acosta, the author of “Cubano Be Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba,” said in a telephone interview from Havana. “His way of using the orchestra as an instrument, his ability as an arranger and composer and his skill in converting Cuban music into jazz and vice versa gives his work a kind of chemistry that no one else, neither Cuban nor American, has. He achieves another dimension.”

Arturo  on YouTube.

317 East 32nd

Listening to WKCR on Sunday 20 March, a Jazz Profile of Lennie Tristano. One of the selections played was 317 East 32nd Street, which was Tristano address in NYC.

Django 'n Duke

Listened to WKCR's Jazz Profiles last evening, featuring Django Reinhardt. As I got home, before 6, the host began talking about Django playing with Duke Ellington and his Orchestra. It was not a happy relationship for either, it seems. I was amazed that I had never heard of the collaboration, considering how often I listen to KCR, to jazz, and to Ellington.

One website I found discusses the collaboration, has a narrative, numerous pictures, and links. This picture is from 1939. There are numerous links online, including discographies (included are, amazingly, two computer software companies).

Where a Bird Played Sax,

Kirsten Luce for The New York Times - Judy Rhodes in her East Village row house, once the home of the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker.




There are two signs in front of 151 Avenue B, a row house in the East Village facing Tompkins Square Park.  One is a bronze plaque identifying the building as a former home of the jazz legend Charlie Parker, who lived in the ground-floor apartment from 1950 to 1954.cThe other is a handwritten slip of paper taped to the window of that same apartment, warning, “Please Don’t Knock Before 2 P.M.” Both signs were put up by the building’s owner, Judy Rhodes, who worked hard to get the building declared a city landmark in 1999.

Bravo to her.

As for the “Don’t Knock” sign, Ms. Rhodes said she still favored the “jazz hours” she kept when she was a jazz producer, photographer and hard-core fan. “Nighttime is still the only time I can settle in and take care of my projects,” said Ms. Rhodes, 74, who since 1979 has lived in the apartment Parker inhabited with Chan Richardson and their children. In the life of the saxophonist nicknamed Bird, it was an atypically stable period. Here in this cozy apartment, Parker became a family man. He ate regular meals with the children, pushed them in swings out back and walked them to school. It was Bird’s sanctuary — he once practiced in the large walk-in closet. There is still plenty of bird song in the apartment. Ms. Rhodes has two pet parrots and she takes in injured pigeons she finds nearby and nurses them back to health. She releases the recuperated ones in Central Park or at a bird sanctuary upstate.

She took an interest in the jazz loft scene, befriending avant-garde musicians like Butch Morris, Mal Waldron and Bill Dixon, and producing concerts and booking musicians for jazz festivals and gigs at clubs like the Village Vanguard and Sweet Basil’s. At one point, she brought a Steinway piano into her front room and opened it as a rehearsal space, attracting artists like Art Blakey, Dewey Redman and Don Cherry. “They all thought it was hip to be in Bird’s house. Dewey used to stand in the closet, praying or something. Once when Don was here, he said he had a vision of Bird heading out in a tuxedo.”

There are constant visits from fans of Parker, a pioneer of the bebop style who died in 1955, his body ravaged by drug abuse and alcoholism. “One time,” she said, “a group of Japanese people came in and one of them fell to his knees, crying and kissing the floor.”

Bird lives.

She recalled learning in 1979 that the building was on the market, and the real estate agent who showed her the place pointed out Parker’s 'practice closet.' “I went into the closet and closed the door and I said to myself, ‘I have to have this house,’ ” she said. “I just really liked the idea of living in the place where Bird lived.” She paid $90,000 for the four-story row house, she said, and over the years invested much more in improvements to the Gothic Revival building, which is between Ninth and 10th Streets and was built in 1849.

The place has a Bohemian, jazzy feel, with plenty of African art, and walls covered with jazz photographs taken by Ms. Rhodes. There is still the faded birdcage-themed wallpaper Parker selected as a humorous nod to his nickname, and the same heavy cast-iron tub where Parker — and then Ms. Rhodes — bathed their children.

Jazz greats on the stoop in Harlem!

Listening to Bird Flight this morning, Professor Schaap mentioned his website; looking through it, I found this gem (amnong others).

Master musicians

A series of DVDs have performances by jazz artists, usually broadcasts in European television. The two latest I watched, and enjoyed immensely, were Erroll Garner and Wes Montgomery. True masters of their instruments.

Giant steps

John Coltrane, tenor sax ; Tommy Flanagan, piano ; Paul Chambers, bass ; Art Taylor, drums.

Giant steps -- Cousin Mary -- Countdown -- Spiral -- Syeeda's song flute -- Naima -- Mr. P.C.

I've been listening to it recently; magnificent music.

John Handy III

Heard some of his music today, at 12.30, before heading into work at HWPL. One cut was from his album In the Vernacular.

African Folk Gets a Jazz Infusion

Even for Regina Carter, the extraordinary jazz violinist and MacArthur Fellowship recipient, there's risk when straying from familiar terrain, as she does on her new album, "Reverse Thread" (E1 Entertainment).

On "Reverse Thread," her seventh album as a leader, the 43-year-old Ms. Carter reinterprets traditional and contemporary folk music from Kenya, Mali, Uganda and other African nations; the impact of the continent's music on the Western canon is represented by Papo Vázquez's "Un Aguinald Pa Regina" and "Day Dreaming on the Niger," a song co-written by Ms. Carter and Reginald Washington that first appeared on her 1997 album "Something for Grace."

Nimble Gimble hums along

Getty Images Johnny Gimble performs in Austin, Texas in May 2009

Country music does not usually catch my attention, but this piece did.


"When I was 15," he recalled in a recent phone interview, "I was working for a radio band in Shreveport. Cliff Bruner, the hottest Texas fiddler of them all, was on the same package shows, playing for Jimmie Davis. I asked him, 'Cliff, how do you play that hocum?,' which is what we still called swing there. And he said: 'Can you hum what you're thinking? Practice till you can play what you can hum.'


"Later, when I was in the Army, in Austria, they didn't play any country music on the Armed Forces radio, just big band, and I'd hear Slam Stewart [of Slim & Slam] humming along with his bass, so I started practicing that—humming some hot licks and then trying to find them on the fiddle. When I got with the Wills band in 1949, Bob would let me hum along on the bandstand. My son Dick sometimes does that playing bass, too, and my granddaughter Emily Gimble can scat, humming along with her jazz piano solos."

Sonny Stitt

A beautiful sax. Touted as Bird's heir, a burden too great for any one, he grew into his own sound. Found this on YouTube; whilst only music, it is a magnificent example of his gorgeous tone.



This second one is a video: JJ Johnson (trombone), Howard McGhee (trumpet), Tommy Potter (bass), Kenny Clarke (drums), Walter Bishop Jr. (piano), and Sonny Stitt (sax) performing Bird's My Little Suede Shoes. Berlin, September 26, 1964.


A gem follows: Bird and Coleman Hawkins in an excerpt of "Ballade" followed by Bird, Buddy Rich, Hank Jones and Ray Brown jamming. It ends with Norman Granz describing the following two pieces (which are not played), which bring in Lester Young, Flip Phillips, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Ella Fitzgerald.


That last one mentioned above is here:

Exodus to Jazz

Listening to Last.fm, Ben Webster & Oscar Peterson radio, Exodus by Eddie Harris came on. I have never heard the song, probably, other than in the movie. Curious, I took a look at his biography.

Eddie Harris (October 20, 1934 - November 5, 1996), was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Although he was one of the most popular jazz musicians of his day (and the first to receive a gold record), his inclusion in his repertoire of types of music other than jazz and his incorporation of comedy into his act led many jazz critics to consider him insufficiently committed to jazz. His experimentation with other types of music sometimes had questionable results, but many still regard him as one of the great jazz musicians.

 Insufficiently committed? What the hell do critics know? And how could they criticize a musician in such a way?

Rahsaan Roland Kirk

Recently I've been listening to Anything goes: the Cole Porter songbook instrumentals. One of the cuts on it is Get out of town, by the Roland Kirk Quartet. I have become utterly fascinated by it, and, of course, by Kirk himself. I remember seeing him in the Fillmore East. An Internet gave me a website that lists the Fillmore East shows.

There it is: 1, 2 & 3 April 1971 Santana, Tower Of Power, Rahsaan Roland Kirk & Vibration Society.

Foolish and intoxicated, we booed him; we were there to see and hear Santana, not this weird music. He got pissed off, and broke the wooden chair he had on stage. Later, off the rock and roll bandwagon, learning about jazz, I began to appreciate him.

 This picture well illustrates his style.


For Rashaan Roland Kirk
Gerald Majer
Callaloo, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Spring, 1999), pp. 333-334


Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3299453

For Rashaan Roland Kirk, by Gerald Majer © 1999 The Johns Hopkins University Press.

This is the first of two pages; Callalloo is "A journal that reports on African and African American arts for the general audience."

This is one of several videos on the Web. Check out Quincy Jones's 'fro.

Django Reinhardt, Omnipresent Icon

When Apple Inc. announced the iPad last month, CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated the device with a surprising choice of music. The first notes publicly heard on the new device were not a snippet of cutting-edge contemporary pop—not Radiohead or Norah Jones—but a jazz classic recorded in Paris 73 years ago. It was "Swing Guitars" by guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stéphane Grappelli, with the Quintette of the Hot Club of France.

 

Possibly Mr. Jobs was mindful that the Reinhardt Centennial had occurred on Jan. 23, just a few days before the iPad presentation. But probably not. The legacy of Django Reinhardt enjoys a currency that those of comparable jazz icons do not. In recent months, the centennials of both Lester Young and Art Tatum came and went almost unnoticed, but Reinhardt is omnipresent—more so than during his lifetime. Tribute concerts have been a way of life in New York and around the world for the past decade. There are also new tribute albums and a new book.

Prez and Tatum, alas, are popular only with a minority of music fans. Then again, they are remembered, and so many other musicians are not.

The past few years have been good ones for Reinhardt's legacy: The French label Fremeaux finished its epic "Intégrale Django Reinhardt" series, which ultimately consisted of more than 800 tracks contained in 20 double-disc CD sets; Oxford University Press published Michael Dregni's definitive biography, "Django: The Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend"; Tony Bennett sang his own lyrics to "Nuages," Reinhardt's most famous melody, calling the result "All for You"; and Woody Allen lovingly mythologized Reinhardt in his 1999 film, "Sweet and Lowdown."

Listen to clips of songs by Django Reinhardt:

• Swing Guitars, with Stéphane Grappelli
• Limehouse Blues
• Minor Swing

Within a few generations, jazz improvisation would become a given, but back then, soloists like Reinhardt refused to take it for granted. Every solo he played sounds like he's battling to justify the very concept of improvisation. Reinhardt was never completely removed from his beginnings as a street musician, and he always sounds like he's trying to entertain an audience, rather than just to amuse his fellow musicians. He knew how to make an entrance and he knew how to leave us laughing. If we're still using the iPad, or its spiritual descendants, even for half as long as we'll be loving the music of Django Reinhardt, Mr. Jobs will have really accomplished something.

Ella rediscovered

Herman Leonard Photography L.L.C./CTSimages.com - A Herman Leonard photograph of Ella Fitzgerald performing at the New York nightclub Downbeat in 1948. Watching rapturously are Duke Ellington, center, and Benny Goodman, in glasses behind Ellington.

Ella is one of those few people who is instantly recognizable, and who needs but one name. Her voice is unique.

Verve has just released “Twelve Nights in Hollywood,” a four-CD boxed set of Ella Fitzgerald singing 76 songs at the Crescendo, a small jazz club in Los Angeles, in 1961 and ’62 — and none of it has ever been released until now.

These aren’t bootlegs; the CDs were mastered from the original tapes, which were produced by Norman Granz, Verve’s founder and Fitzgerald’s longtime manager.

The story in the Times has full audio stream of three songs; well worthwhile listening. I shall look into having HWPL buy the CD set when I get back from Mexico.

There’s nothing rare about a joyous Ella Fitzgerald recording; the woman exuded joy in nearly every note she sang. Yet the level on these sessions soared higher and plumbed deeper.

Why these tapes stayed locked in the vault for nearly half a century — and what it took to set them free — is a tale of a producer’s neglect, a jazz sleuth’s obsession and a string of happy coincidences.

Norman Granz was recording Ella a lot that year. The tapes were vaulted after a dozen of them were issued in an LP, and did not do well. For a quarter century the tapes were forgotten.

Then, in 1988, Phil Schaap, a dogged jazz scholar well known for excavating long-lost treasures from studio archives, was contracted by PolyGram (which had recently bought Verve) to compile a discography of all the recordings — issued and unissued — that Fitzgerald ever made for the label.

Our intrepid Mister Schaap.

Early on in the task, riffling through PolyGram’s vast tape facility, then in Edison, N.J., Mr. Schaap unearthed the never-released tapes of a 40th-birthday concert that Fitzgerald recorded at the Teatro Sistina in Rome on April 25, 1958. He urged PolyGram’s executives to release them. When they did, as an album called “Ella in Rome,” on the concert’s 30th anniversary, it soared to No. 1 on Billboard’s jazz chart. Stephen Holden, in The New York Times, hailed it as “a treasure for the ages.”

It was soon after this triumph that Mr. Schaap came across the tapes from the Crescendo Club — not just the tracks that Granz had picked for “Ella in Hollywood,” which was long out of print, but the other reels, which nobody had unspooled for nearly three decades. Mr. Schaap listened to all of them and thought that here was another trove of hidden jewels.

Max Roach always spoke very highly of Phil Schaap and his historiographical efforts.

But by this time Verve was busy producing CD reissues of Fitzgerald hits. There was no appetite for sifting through what appeared to be the rejects of an old flop. And there things stood until late last year, when Mr. Seidel was re-reading a biography of Fitzgerald by Stuart Nicholson. In the back of the book was an expanded version of Mr. Schaap’s discography — 61 pages long — as commissioned by the author.

Mr. Schaap has listened to hundreds of Granz recordings over the decades, including the released master takes and the unreleased alternate takes. Granz, he said, was “a great man of profound vision,” but as a record producer, he “infrequently dwelled at length on what takes should be issued.”

Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies and a former good friend of Granz, agrees. “Norman was maybe the most lavish record producer there ever was,” he said, but he was often “unconcerned or careless” when it came to preparing and issuing the albums. (Granz died in 2001.)

Herman Leonard, the great photographer, once took a picture of Duke Ellington sitting at a front-row table in a small New York nightclub, beaming at Fitzgerald while she sang. More than any other album, “Twelve Nights in Hollywood” gives us an idea of what Ellington was smiling at.