Focused Profiles on Jazz and its Creators while also Featuring the Work of Guest Writers and Critics on the Subject of Jazz.
Monday, November 28, 2011
Monday, November 21, 2011
Lambert Hendricks and Ross - "Airegin" [Sonny Rollins]
"The word "amazing" is wildly misused in contemporary conversation and writing, but it really does apply to this performance." - Jim Brown, Audio Engineer
The vocalese solos by Jon and Dave on this video will blow you away.
Friday, November 18, 2011
Eli “Lucky” Thompson
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
Detroit is his home town. A graduate of Cass Tech, Lucky was among a
number of remarkably talented saxophonists who were active in the Motor City during the early '40s. Wardell Gray, Teddy
Edwards, Yusef Lateef, and Sonny Stitt would lead the list and it seems likely
that the cross-pollination of ideas so prominent among bebop era saxophonists
affected Lucky less than anyone. Stylistically he has always been his own man.
Paris in the spring of 1956 was, for Lucky, a period of tremendous activity.
He recorded five LPs for various French labels. Also while in France , he sat in with Stan Ken ton. This led to
Lucky's participation in one of the most famous Kenton LPs of the' 50s, Cuban
Fire. Before returning to France for an extended stay, Lucky worked again
with Oscar Pettiford and recorded with him.
“Lucky Thompson was a vastly
under-acclaimed tenor saxophonist.”
- Doug Ramsey
Eli “Lucky” Thompson was born
on June 16, 1924
in Columbia ,
South Carolina ,
but grew up in Detroit .
From a very young age, Lucky was obsessed by music and long before he owned a
horn, he studied instruction books and practiced finger exercises on a
broomstick marked with saxophone key patterns. When he acquired his first
saxophone at the age of 25, he practiced eight hours a day and within a month
he played professionally with neighborhood bands.”
- Joop Visser
“… it seems likely that the
cross-pollination of ideas so prominent among bebop era saxophonists affected
Lucky less than anyone. Stylistically he has always been his own man.”
- Bob Porter
"Like Don Byas, whom he most
resembles in tone and in his development of solos, he has a slightly oblique
and uneasy stance on bop, cleaving to a kind of accelerated swing idiom with a
distinctive 'snap' to his softly enunciated phrases and an advanced harmonic
language that occasionally moves into areas of surprising freedom."
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, Penguin
Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
“There is the history of the
saxophone in Lucky Thompson’s music.”
- David Himmelstein
“Music is the most
interesting thing in the world.”
- Lucky Thompson
“You know I lost my interest
in music. I had to run from place to place at the mercy of people who
manipulated me. I never rejected music; it constitutes a great part of my
soul.”
- Lucky Thompson to Mike Hennessey in
MusicItalia interview
“Thompson's disappearance
from the jazz scene in the 1970's was only the latest (but apparently the last)
of a strangely contoured career. A highly philosophical, almost mystical man,
he reacted against the values of the music industry and in the end turned his
back on it without seeming regret. The beginning was garlanded with promise.”
- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, Penguin
Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
I lived and worked
in Seattle , WA for a while.
Given the city’s
notorious commuter traffic, fortunately for me, it was easy to access my office
at the downtown corner of Fourth and Pike Streets as it was a clear shot into
town on the Aurora Highway [Hwy 99] from my home in the Green Lake area of the city.
It was a point in
my work-life that often found me toiling late at the office.
Because of the manner in which one-way streets configured downtown traffic, I often exited the city along Second Street which is also the home of Tula ’s, a great Jazz club that primarily
features the work of local Jazz artists.
One rainy night - now
there’s a surprise in Seattle ! - I had worked so late that I decided to catch a set at the club
and treat myself to a dinner of its excellent dolmathes and souvlaki
before going home.
Jay Thomas, who
plays both superb trumpet and tenor
saxophone, was Tula ’s headliner.
Besides the great
music and tasty Greek food, I also met up that night with a couple of Jazz
buddies who lived in the nearby Belltown part of the city [a downtown
waterfront neighborhood that overlooks a portion of Elliott Bay ].
We shared a bottle
of red plunk while thoroughly enjoying the music on offer by Jay’s quartet.
All of us still
smoked during those days and, as a result of the club’s ban on partaking of lit
nicotine within the walls of its premises, we found ourselves merrily chatting
and puffing away outside the club’s entrance during the first intermission.
Thankfully the
rain had abated, or a least scaled down to a soft drizzle. While the three of
us were standing and smoking by the curbside, we were approached by a street
person who asked if he could bum a smoke.
After we obliged
him and he had continued on his way, one of my friends asked me if I’d
recognized the damp denizen of the night?
I thought I was
making a wisecrack when I answered that “… he looked vaguely familiar.” “He
should,” remarked one of my friends: “That was Lucky Thompson!”
Obviously, my
Belltown buddies had met him before, under similar circumstances.
All of us became
very subdued after Lucky left.
Each quietly
puffed their cigarette which gave us time to adjust to the sense of sadness
that had come over us following the sight we had just witnessed.
Needless to say,
the evening wasn’t the same after that; no more frivolity and jocularity, only
a deep and abiding hurt.
When I returned
home with that chance meeting still on my mind, it occurred to that while I had
heard Lucky’s tenor saxophone sound with Count Basie’s band [my Dad had some
V-Discs by the band with Lucky], on Miles Davis’ famous Walkin’ LP and as part of Stan Kenton’s sterling Cuban Fire album [his solo beginning at
around the 4:00 minute mark of the opening track – Fuego Cubano - always touches my heart], most of his recorded music
had passed-me-by.
For whatever
reasons, I had missed much of Lucky’s discography when he was a force on the
Jazz scene, primarily from 1945-1965.
The following day,
I decided to put that omission right and I began seeking out Lucky’s recordings
which, to my surprise were plentiful, and still readily available.
As is often the
case with chance meetings, it was the beginning of a love affair as Lucky’s
music was engaging, full of marvelous twists and turns, and alive with an
almost effortless swing.
Although it is a later
recording in the Thompson canon, one of my first purchases of Lucky’s music
under his own name was Tricotism [Impulse/GRP GRD-135].
The insert notes
to this CD are by Bob Porter and they contained the following overview and
commentary of Thompson’s career which was very helpful to me as a guide for
further purchases of Lucky’s music.
If you are like me
and not a member of the Lucky cognoscenti, perhaps it can serve a similar
purpose for you.
“The career of Eli
Thompson (6/16/24 ), musician, is one of the most enigmatic
in all jazz. It is an odyssey involving four cities, two instruments, big
bands, small bands, popularity, poverty, stylistic changes, associations with
major names, (Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton), and long periods of
inactivity.
Lucky entered the
ranks of professional musicians when he left Detroit with the Treniers in 1943. An unhappy six
months with Lionel Hampton followed, ending in New York . Shortly thereafter Lucky went into the
brand new Billy Eckstine Band. The Eckstine association was brief, and Lucky
first began to achieve prominence during his year with Count Basic. The
war-time Basic band was a fine organization, and Lucky had considerable solo
space. The V-Disc of "High Tide" is especially impressive.
Lucky left Basic
in late 1945, settling in Los Angeles . One of his first gigs in L. A. was as a
member of the Dizzy Gillespie Rebop Six. Actually he was the odd man out in a
group that featured Milt Jackson, Al Haig, Ray Brown, Stan Levey, and the
leader. Lucky was hired because of the erratic habits of the co-star, Charlie Parker.
Yet that engagement acted as a springboard for Lucky.
During 1946 and
'47 Lucky was the most requested tenorman in the L. A. area. He worked
frequently with Boyd Raeburn, but he also made over 100 recordings as a sideman
during those years. He had recorded for Excelsior and Down Beat and in 1947 he
made four famous sides for RCA, including his masterpiece "Just One More
Chance." He won the Esquire New Star award in 1947. In 1948 Lucky migrated
across country. New York would be his home for the next eight years.
Lucky worked
frequently at the Savoy Ballroom during the early '50s, but the recording slows
had set in.
A couple of
obscure small label sessions were Lucky's only recordings from 1947 to late
1953, when he did a date for Decca. Two dates in 1954 under his own name
presaged another masterpiece: his "Walkin"' solo with Miles Davis.
During the 1950s
Lucky was a close associate of light-heavyweight boxing champion, Archie Moore.
Moore liked to warm up and work out while Lucky
and company provided the music.
Lucky and Milt
Jackson have been close associates since their days in Detroit . In 1956, just prior to the recording of
the music heard on this CD, Jackson and Thompson recorded five LPs together,
under Milt's name for Savoy and Atlantic .
I suspect that it
was no accident that the trio session here included no drummer. If there has
been one aspect of Lucky's playing that has been criticized through the years
it is his relationship with drummers. The hard swinging sessions of the 1940s
and early '50s were giving way to an almost ascetic rhythmic approach. I also
suspect that some critics, in writing about the Jimmy Giuffre Three, (which had
the identical instrumentation as Lucky's group), may have forgotten these performances,
which predated Giuffre by 10 months.
Lucky was the
first major jazzman since Sidney Bechet to adopt the soprano saxophone. He
predated John Coltrane by at least 18 months; but Lucky has never been given
any credit for ushering the return to popularity of the straight saxophone. In
the mid-'60s Lucky returned to the U.S.A. , recording for Prestige and Rivoli. He had
been back and forth to Europe
several times since and did several interesting LPs for Groove Merchant in the
early '70s. He also taught at Dartmouth for a year[1973-74].
When Will Powers
interviewed him for Different Drummer,
Lucky was completing his academic work and thinking of a new city . This time it might be Toronto or Montreal . Always the drifter, ever the search.
It is not my
opinion, but consensus, that says the music on these LPs is the finest
extended playing that Lucky Thompson has produced on record. As noted earlier,
the sessions came at a period where Lucky had been recording frequently. He and
Pettiford were a mutual admiration society and the rapport, even intimacy,
they achieve in the trio tracks is nothing short of remarkable.
This is not to
take anything away from the quintet sides where Jimmy Cleveland shines so
brightly. The presence of Hank Jones reunites a close partnership dating to Detroit days. Yet it is Lucky, with the warmth,
the inner feeling, the depth, the mastery that permeates every groove on these
LPs.
That this music is
able to appear again after years of neglect is cause for celebration. Let's
hope that this release is able to shed new light on the talent of Lucky Thompson.”
—Bob Porter,
Contributor—Radio Free Jazz1975 (original edited liner notes from Dancing
Sunbeam, Imp ASH -9307-2)
A few years after
this meeting, I learned that Lucky had passed away in Seattle in 2005.
With everything he
had gone through, including apparently suffering from Alzheimer’s disease
during the later years of his life, somehow he had luckily [?] managed to live
to be 81-years of age.
And if you are
looking for a comprehensive discography of Lucky’s recordings, you can’t do
better than the one that Noal Cohen has compiled.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Bill Kirchner: Old Friends – New Music
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
Bill Kirchner has
been a friend to Jazz in many ways and for many years.
For not only is he
a Jazz musician, composer, educator and writer, he is also the editor of the
esteemed – The Oxford Companion to Jazz [2000] – one of the best compilations
ever assembled of knowledgeable essayists writing on the subject of Jazz.
Bill has two, new
recordings out and both are available for purchase as Mp3 downloads though www.jazzheads.com via the following links:
OLD FRIENDS
To purchase
"Old Friends," click on this link:
To purchase
"One Starry Night," click on this link:
Bill has kindly
granted us copyright permission to reproduce on these pages Larry Kart’s fine
descriptions of the music on both of these recordings.
We have also
embedded two Sound Cloud audio tracks into the feature so that you can listen
to examples of the music on each of Bill’s new recordings.
© - Larry Kart/Bill Kirchner, used with
permission, copyright protected, all rights reserved.
“At one point Bill
Kirchner played a good many of the reed and woodwind instruments with much
skill -- sopranino, soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, clarinet, bass
clarinet, flute, alto flute, and piccolo. But in recent years the soprano
saxophone has become his instrument of choice and eventually also of near
necessity, and it is on soprano that one will hear him solo on this duo concert
that Bill and one of his favorite musical partners, pianist Marc Copland, gave
on September 23, 2008, in New York City at The New School, where Bill also
teaches.
The setting was a
compact, wood-paneled, lecture hall-recital room (l was there), with fine
acoustics (or it seemed to me) and a lovely piano for Copland to play. Full of
friends, many of them musicians, the audience was attentive to say the least,
and there was a great deal for us to pay attention to.
I said above that
Bill’s focus on the soprano was a matter both of affinity and “near necessity”
because of circumstances that he describes in the liner notes to his 1997 album
“Some Enchanted Evening” (A-Records): “In 1993, it was discovered that I had a
life-threatening spinal tumor. I underwent two operations to remove it, but as
a result was left largely paralyzed on my right side. I learned to walk again,
and have gradually regained most of the use of my right hand.... Happily, I
have begun playing the soprano saxophone in public, thanks in part to the
ingenious Perry
Ritter, who
rebuilt my horn so that I can use alternative fingerings.”
That no allowances
need be made for Bill’s latter-day soprano playing is obvious from this
concert; these are among the most striking recorded improvisations on this
tricky instrument, which in the modern era is too often played so as to be thin
and piping in tone. There is, by contrast to this unfortunate norm, a top,
middle, and bottom to Bill’s sound, and he can vary its breadth and volume for
expressive purposes in virtually any register. Is his sheer facility, his
ability to place a great many notes in tight places, quite the same as it once
was? Probably not, though he always was a lyrical player, not a flashy one. In
any case, as I believe I said to him
a few years ago,
kidding on the square, “Now you get to play only the good notes.” Further,
there are the words of his former teacher Lee Konitz when they were playing
together not long ago: “You can always simplify." “One of the profoundest
things any improvising musician has ever said, to my knowledge,” Bill adds.
If only, but not
only, because of the duo format, Copland is quite prominent here. (The
Copland-Kirchner partnership goes back to 1976, when both men were living and
working in Washington , D.C. They both moved to New York in the early 1980s and have continued to
work together frequently.)
Originally an alto
saxophonist, talented enough to be hired by Chico Hamilton, Copland underwent a
quite unusual conversion in his mid-20s, from altoist to pianist. As he told Gene Lees in an interview: “When I was coming up as
a saxophonist, the ideal was to burn out -- to play really intense. All of a
sudden here was this Impressionist-lyrical thing going on inside me that I had
known nothing about.... It was so strong that it took me all the way over, not
so much because I wanted to play piano -- although I grew to love it -- but
because I had to do something with that feeling.”
What Copland has
done with that feeling is to become a simply ravishing and quite individual
jazz pianist -- technically, harmonically, in terms of both long-range
“orchestral” thinking and quick-witted response. He’s in the line of Bill
Evans, but speaking as someone who found Evans (and finds many of those he
influenced) to be rather formulaic at times, the sheer freshness of Copland’s
ideas, the unapologetic emotional openness of his
“Impressionist-lyrical
thing” is a delight. Another thing, and far from a little
thing -- he really
swings; does so, as does Kirchner here, even when the time feel is more or less
rubato. I think, in addition to the usual sources, that this has a lot to do
with Copland’s harmonic thinking -- “coloristic” though they may be, his
choices there always have clean, lucid rhythmic implications (those bass
lines!), and serve to guide the speed and “plane” with which the performance
advances through time.
Because there are
only two musicians involved, and their thinking is so clear, I won’t try to
verbally mirror that much of what I think is happening during these
seventy-seven-or-so minutes of music-making. But I do want to focus on some
passages that seem to me to be at once representative and remarkable.
On the first
piece, Bruno Martino’s “Estate,” note how fluid yet “right there” the time feel
is; the virtual outburst of lyricism that comes from Copland at the 7:19 mark
and then leaps back to life at 7:52; the delicacy of Bill’s thread-like
oscillation between two adjacent notes at about 11:29, and his almost fierce
power in the passage that follows.
“Autumn Leaves” is
a piece, says Bill, “that Marc and I have played every few years for over
thirty years; it's ‘our song.’ Funny story -- in 1981, we did a duo concert at
one of the Smithsonian museums in Washington , D.C. [The late jazz critic] Martin
Williams was in the audience, and afterwards he complimented us on our
arrangement of ‘Autumn Leaves.’ I thanked him while resisting the temptation to
ask, ‘What arrangement?’ We were just playing the tune.”
Well, yes,
literally, but also no. An arrangement for saxophone and piano that lasts for
more than fourteen minutes and hangs together as this performance does would be
difficult to envision. For instance, check out what happens at the 10:24 mark, as Bill enters after Copland’s solo.
Holding a single note (a concert G-flat) for what seems an eternity while Copland
dances above and below him, highlighting the way that held note alternately
clashes and blends with the harmonic framework of the song, this to me is Bill
in excelsis, a sterling example of
Konitz’s dictum: “You can
always simplify.”
Speaking of
Williams, in his book “Where’s the Melody?” he famously answered that
common-at-one-time question with something like, good jazz improvisers tend to
make up melodies that are better than those of the songs they started out from.
And better, longer melodies, too. Unless I’m imagining things, on “I Fall In
Love Too Easily,” the improvised melodic line that Bill begins at about the 2:56 mark remains essentially unbroken until 4:31 rolls around -- and that, believe me, is a
long time to sustain a meaningful melodic arc at this ballad tempo. And don’t
miss the child-like
Ravelian quality
of the coda that Bill and Marc devise.
Miles Davis’
“Agitation” is the most overtly swinging performance here – a virtual surf ride
-- while the misterioso reading of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” is a particularly
fine example of Copland’s aforementioned way of turning harmonic choices into
rhythmic ones. And Johnny Mandel's "Keester Parade" is here approached
by both players with a delicious, droll slyness--quite unlike the mini-big band
fervor, topped off by a hellacious shout chorus, of bass trumpeter Cy Touff's
original 1955 octet recording. (I should mention that “Keester Parade” is not
Mandel’s only venture into verbal trickery; he also gave us “London Derriere.”)
My favorite
performance of this evening, though, if I had to chose one, would be the duo’s
version of Victor Young and Ned Washington’s “My Foolish Heart” -- a song that
I believe Bill Evans introduced to the jazz repertoire, and bless him for that.
From the tender hesitation that Bill introduces into the opening melodic line
to the final near unison pianosoprano restatement of the theme, this is,
indeed, music of the heart.
Larry Kart, author
of “Jazz In Search of Itself” (Yale University Press)
MARC COPLAND,
piano
1) Estate (Bruno Martino/Bruno Brighetti) 13:45
Universal Music
Publishing Ricordi SRL, ASCAP
2) Autumn Leaves (Joseph Kosma/Jacques
Prévert/Johnny Mercer) 14:33
Morley Music,
ASCAP
3) I Fall In Love Too Easily (Jule
Styne/Sammy Cahn) 11:09
EMI Feist Catalog
Inc./Music Publishing Co. of America , ASCAP
4) Footprints (Wayne Shorter) 11:19
Miyako Music, BMI
5) My Foolish Heart (Victor Young/Ned
Washington) 11:40
Anne Rachel Music
Corp./Catharine Hinen/Patti Washington Music, ASCAP
6) Keester Parade (Johnny Mandel) 8:00
Marissa Music,
ASCAP
7) Agitation (Miles Davis) 6:16
East St. Louis
Music Inc./Jazz Horn Music Corp., BMI
Recorded at The
New School Jazz Performance Space,
Recording
Engineer: Christopher Hoffman
Mastering
Engineer: Malcolm Addey
Cover Photo: Ed
Berger
Graphic Design;
Javier Chacin and Judy Kahn
“Something that
should become quite apparent as one listens to these performances is the sheer,
securely grounded intelligence of Bill Kirchner’s musical thought, his learned
though utterly natural and relaxed craftsmanship. Taught directly by such
celebrated arrangers as Rayburn Wright and Mike Crotty (who arranged “I Concentrate
On You” for the Nonet) and by example and assimilation by such figures as Thad
Jones and Bob Brookmeyer (Bill was a frequent sub with Mel Lewis and the Jazz Orchestra
at one time), Ellington, Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Eddie Sauter, Gary McFarland,
and Mike Abene, Bill simply (or not so simply) knows a great deal about
voicing, instrumental colors and blends, linear logic, long-range form,
contrapuntal possibilities, you name it. And he knows these things not only in
take-it-apart-and put-it-back-together analytic terms but also in the collective,
on-the-stand, “let’s get it done” sense that brings jazz, one of the quintessential
performance arts, to life.
Consider, for
example, the rather bright tempo chosen for the first piece of the Chicago concert, Sergio Mendes’ “So Many Stars.”
Right for the tune itself, it’s also perfect for the first tune of a set.
Pushed close to the limit, bass trombonist Douglas Purviance’s solo is truly
inspired, as is that of pianist Marc Copland (Cohen at that time); and the
from-the-first-note briskness of the performance “sells” the band as a whole
immediately, which is of the essence when one is leading a non-big-name
ensemble and facing an audience of 60,000.
“The chart,” Bill
adds, “is in a quasi-rondo form, and alternates between a vamp and the song
form with chord changes. Douglas solos on the vamp, Marc on the changes.”
Also, don’t miss
the purity of tone and agility of Bill’s piccolo work in the ensemble toward
the beginning of “So Many Stars,” with the flutes of Ralph Lalama and Glenn
Wilson. It’s one of those details that distinguishes his arranging, exquisite
in concept and execution but always in service of the piece’s storytelling
flow.
Bill’s chart on
Andy LaVerne’s aptly titled “Maximum Density” is another gem. Dig Copland’s
coat-of-many-colors comping behind Lalama’s probing, serpentine solo, Ron
Vincent’s intensely propulsive yet transparent drumming, and the way the
ensemble at first steals in toward the end of Lalama’s stint and then briefly,
kaleidoscopically erupts -- as J.R. Taylor once said of another Kirchner
arrangement, “The band seems to swell to twice its actual size.”
Years ago, I
mentioned to Bill how much I liked Lalama’s solo on “Brother Brown,” one of the
tracks from the Nonet’s 1982 album “What It Is To Be Frank” (Sea Breeze).
Agreeing that it was exceptional even by Lalama’s high standards, Bill said
something like, “Yes, I set it [the chart] up so Ralph would play that way.”
The tone with which this was said is tricky to convey, but in addition to some
wry pardonable pride, it basically was an expression of the genuine pleasure
Bill took in having showcased so effectively a fellow musician he deeply
admired. The bandleader’s genetic makeup at work. And another little, or not so
little, point about band-leading: Bill gives his soloists just the right amount
of solo room -- when they do play, they get to play.
To Sheila Jordan’s
portion of the program. Still quite active today, almost 25 years further on,
Jordan was in particularly exuberant form on this night -- stimulated by the
size and enthusiasm of the audience (she works it like a show-biz master) and
of course by the sounds of the Nonet behind her. Judd Woldin and Robert
Brittan’s “Whose Little Angry Man Are You?” from the musical “Raisin” (based on
the late Lorraine Hansberry’s play “A Raisin in the Sun”) is a seldom-heard
song that Jordan has made her own – dig her flowing, saxophone-like phrasing
and her unique scat-singing style, which seems akin to the sound of Native
American vocal chants, as though there were tuned drums in her chest and
throat. Some of Jordan 's ancestors, in fact, were members of the
Cherokee Nation.
Next is
“Quasimodo,” Jordan ’s expansive ode to her idol Charlie
Parker, with an initial glimpse of Parker’s version of “Embraceable You,” the
song on which his “Quasimodo” is based. There’s a remarkable, whip-like snap to
Jordan ’s phrasing here, and Bill Warfield’s
cup-muted trumpet solo is drenched in the bebop ethos. Cole Porter’s “I
Concentrate On You” is a song that Jordan was born to sing, and it features a
brilliant trumpet solo by Brian Lynch. Kirchner emphasizes how important it was
for the band to get the rhythmic feel of this Mike Crotty chart just right for
Sheila. “If it wasn’t ‘in the pocket,’ it wouldn’t have worked for her.”
We finish with
another Porter song, “You’d Be So Nice to Come To,” which begins with Jordan's
Native American-like scatting -- here almost shocking in its emotional
immediacy, with bassist Mike Richmond virtually singing alongside her. Then
comes a pleading, preaching solo from baritone saxophonist Glenn Wilson,
propelled by Vincent’s cooking drums; more of Jordan’s scat-singing (hers is
essentially vocal invention, I think, not an attempt to imitate an
instrumentalist); and finally a glimpse of the leader’s soprano saxophone,
entwined with Jordan’s voice, the only solo spot that Bill affords himself. A
magical night -- I was there.”
Larry Kart, author
of “Jazz In Search of Itself” (Yale University Press)
RALPH LALAMA,
tenor saxophone, flute, clarinet
GLENN WILSON,
baritone saxophone, flute
BRIAN LYNCH,
trumpet, flugelhorn
DOUGLAS PURVIANCE,
bass trombone
MARC COPLAND,
piano
RON VINCENT, drums
SHEILA JORDAN,
vocals
1) Opening Announcements 0:44
2) So Many Stars (Sergio Mendes/Alan & Marilyn Bergman) 7:41
Spirit Two Music
Inc./Threesome Music Co./W B Music Corp., ASCAP
3) Maximum Density (Andy LaVerne) 6:23
Kranmars Music,
ASCAP
4) Whose Little Angry Man (Judd
Woldin/Robert Brittan) 5:47
EMI Blackwood
Music, Inc., BMI
5) Quasimodo (Charlie Parker/Sheila
Jordan) 10:34
Songs Of Universal
Inc., BMI
6) I Concentrate On You (Cole Porter) 8:11
Chappell-Co. Inc.,
ASCAP
7) You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To (Cole
Porter) 12:23
Chappell-Co. Inc.,
ASCAP
8) Band Credits 0:19
So Many Stars and
Maximum Density arranged by Bill Kirchner.
Whose Little Angry
Man, Quasimodo, and You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To
arranged by Bill
Kirchner and Sheila Jordan.
I Concentrate On
You arranged by Mike Crotty.
Recorded at the Chicago Jazz Festival,
Grant Park, Chicago , Illinois , September 4, 1987 .
Mastering
Engineer: Malcolm Addey
Graphic Design;
Javier Chacin and Judy Kahn
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Remembering the Lighthouse Café – A Photographic Essay
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
We try to pay as
much attention to “the look” of the blog as we do about its contents.
After all, the
site is part of a visual medium and the overall enjoyment of the pieces that
appear on it should be enhanced by appropriate, absorbing and artistic images
and graphics.
So, when it
recently came to the attention of the editorial staff of JazzProfiles that the
famed Lighthouse Café on 30 Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach , CA was scheduled to undergo a major renovation
under its new ownership, we thought it might be fun to develop the following photographic retrospective
of the famed club as sort of a “the-way-we-were” moment.
Most of these snaps
are from the “glory days” of the club, ca. 1949-1969, when it was a leading
contributor to the West Coast Jazz sounds.
You can access our
previous written previous feature on the Lighthouse Café by going here.
Our video tribute to the club and the musicians who performed there over the
years can be found at the conclusion of this piece.
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
The Art of Jazz Trombone
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
There are times
when I enjoy just hearing the music while visualizing it through the use of
“videos” developed with the help of the world-class graphics team at CerraJazz LTD .
As I’ve noted
before on these pages, there is a limit to how effectively writing about Jazz
conveys what’s going on in the music.
And, although it is
inherent in the nature of blogging, it’s difficult to write about Jazz all the
time.
Trying to maintain
a steady stream of written content on the subject sometimes makes me feel like
E.B. White of The New Yorker when he
said: “Life's meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I
love it just the same.”
Perhaps the Pulitzer-prize
winning Mr. White will allow me to rephrase this marvelous insight to read: “ …
Jazz’s meaning has always eluded me and I guess it always will. But I love it
just the same.”
When I’m feeling
this way, I find solace in listening to and “looking at” Jazz.
From time-to-time,
then, I stop, collect a bunch of photos, album covers and graphics, add an
audio track of splendid Jazz, and sit back and savor it all.
My latest
undertaking in this regard is The Art of
Jazz Trombone:
Gunther Schuller’s
essay, The Trombone in Jazz, in Bill
Kirchner, ed., The Oxford Companion to Jazz [New York : Oxford University Press, 2000] provides
an excellent overview of the history of the instrument in Jazz. Here are a few excerpts:
“The trombone is
the only instrument in the Western music tradition that is virtually unchanged
in its basic construction (shape and size) and technical function since its
first appearance in the late fifteenth century. All other instruments—whether
the violin, the organ, or even the trumpet—have experienced important changes
or physical additions (such as valves on trumpets). Although a valve trombone
was developed eventually in the early nineteenth century, it never replaced in
classical music or in jazz the so-called slide trombone, the instrument with
which this article will be primarily concerned.
Thus, given the
trombone's stable and venerable history, it is somewhat ironic that it was
originally developed as an offshoot of the Renaissance slide trumpet, in use in
late medieval music, extending the brass family's registral range to the tenor
and baritone regions. Moreover, from its very beginnings the trombone, with its
inherent agility of movement and potential freedom from fixed pitches (a limitation,
for example, for valved or keyed instruments), was considered no less versatile
than a violin or cornetto. This goes a long way toward explaining the
instrument's central and consistent place in the music literature of the last
five hundred years.
This intrinsic
versatility also accounts for the prominent role the trombone has played in
jazz from its inception and even in its prehistory, rivaled only by the
trumpet and possibly the clarinet. Late nineteenth-century ragtime ensembles,
the concert bands prevalent all over the United States and the Americas, and
especially the brass and parade bands so popular in New Orleans around the turn
of the century all featured the trombone in a variety of musical functions,
ranging from soloistic to accompanimental, from individual to ensemble roles.
Thus it cannot come as a surprise that in the earliest manifestation of jazz
(i.e., the New Orleans collective ensemble style) the trombone was a
preeminent, indispensable member of the so-called three-instrument front line:
cornet (or trumpet), clarinet, and trombone. In that typical formation the
three instruments were assigned quite specific roles, with the trombone
providing commentary asides, countermelodies, and harmonic fill-ins to the main
tune played by the cornet and the clarinet's high-register obbligatos, in
general providing a link between the melodic/thematic material and the rhythm
section, even occasionally and intermittently participating in both areas.
Much of the earliest "jazz" in the first two decades of the century—before
it had even acquired the name jazz
and before the advent of jazz recordings in 1917—was played outdoors, at
picnics, church functions, fraternity dances, or funeral processions and on advertising
wagons, with the trombonist usually positioned at the back of the wagon so that
he could freely manipulate his five-foot-long slide. This type of playing
acquired the name tailgate. It
featured a copious use of glissandos, a sliding effect endemic to the slide
trombone and not particularity practical on other wind instruments; it later
became an overused cliché in Dixieland bands and the 1940s New Orleans revival.
In the earliest
decades of the century, the musician who contributed most to the evolution of
the trombone in jazz was Kid Ory. An early specialist in the tailgate style, he
developed stylistically along with the advances in jazz in the 1920s, working
effectively with such jazz greats as Louis Armstrong (Hot Five) and Jelly Roll
Morton (Red Hot Peppers). A fine example of his playing can be heard on
"Ory's Creole Trombone/Society Blues," recorded in 1922 in Los Angeles as Ory's Sunshine Orchestra (incidentally
the first black New Orleans-style jazz band to be recorded).
Two other fine
early trombonists were George Brunis (originally Brunies) and Jim Robinson.
…
… [Many of the
earliest Jazz] musicians were essentially self-taught and initially non- or
semiprofessional, playing in simple, relatively crude personal styles. But
under the influence of a number of dramatic developments in jazz in the 1920s,
musicians—trombonists, of course, included—began to rise to new challenges. It
was during the early 1920s that jazz developed into the major dance and
entertainment music of the country and became a viable profession in music
(even for blacks); the initial small groups in jazz (quintets, sextets,
septets) expanded to ten-and twelve-piece orchestras; composers and arrangers
gradually created even more sophisticated performance demands (both in terms
of solo improvisations and ensemble work); and, even more compelling, major
innovative virtuosos, such as trumpeters Armstrong, King Oliver, and Jabbo
Smith and trombonists Jack Teagarden and Miff Mole, challenged the whole field
to reach out to new technical and creative heights….
The 1920s saw a
number of other outstanding trombone players come to the fore, among them
Claude Jones, Vic Dickenson, J. C. Higginbotham, Benny Morton, Dicky Wells,
Sandy Williams, Trummy Young, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, and, last but not
least, the three remarkable players associated with Duke Ellington's orchestra:
"Tricky Sam" Nanton, Juan Tizol, and Lawrence Brown. Although most of
these players were not major innovators, technically and creatively, they did
build in various personal ways on the advances of their immediate brass-playing
predecessors. …
Another remarkable
trombone section, totally different from Ellington's was that of Stan Kenton's
orchestra. Beginning in the mid-19408, its style initiated and set by Kai
Winding, it revolutionized trombone playing stylistically, especially in terms
of sound (brassier, more prominent in the ensemble) and type of vibrato
(slower, and mostly lack thereof), as well as by adding the "new
sound" of a bass trombone (Bart Varsalona, later George Roberts). The
Kenton trombone section's influence was enormous and pervasive, and continues
to this day. Although the section's personnel changed often over the decades,
it retained an astonishing stylistic consistency, not only because such
stalwarts as Milt Bernhart and Bob Fitzpatrick held long tenures in the
orchestra, but because incoming players, such as Bob Burgess and Frank Rosolino
and a host of others, were expected to fit into the by-then-famous Kenton brass
sound.
But the biggest
breakthrough on the trombone toward full membership in the bop fraternity was
accomplished by J. J. Johnson, who essentially proved convincingly that
anything Gillespie could do on the trumpet could now also be matched on the
trombone. Johnson is regarded as the true founder of the modern school of jazz
trombone, developing astounding (for the time) speed and agility on the instrument,
and thus becoming a charter member of the bop evolution/revolution. ….”
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