Grant Stewart continues to be one of my favorite modern tenor saxophonists. He has a huge sound, he's nimble and knows when to turn on the speed, and he loves showing-off on standards. I'm old school—jazz to me is about showing your stuff, competing hard, and having respect for the music's grand tradition. Grant hits all of these hot buttons.
Grant is up on his Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons, Don Byas and Jimmy Forrest. Way back when, leaders understood the need for suspense and wowing the listener. An artist like Ammons might start a run, pause ever so briefly to let the line sink in, and then pick up where he left off—as though hitting pause on a DVD remote and hitting play a few seconds later. It was a crafty way to build drama and let the cool set in momentarily before resuming the heat.
On Live at Smalls, recorded back in April, Grant was joined by a superb rhythm section: Tardo Hammer [pictured above] on piano, David Wong on bass and brother Phil Stewart on drums. Tardo is a swinging, technical monster who also knows his history, David hits the upright's strings with huge authority, and Phil is a master of delicate intimidation.
The tracks here are all standards. Make Someone Happy, Mr. Lucky, Bobby Troup's Meaning of the Blues, Billy May's Somewhere in the Night, Thelonious Monk's Reflections, Tea for Two, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and Get Out of Town.
In each case, Grant adds a twist. Tea for Two is taken about twice as fast as most versions, as is Mr. Lucky and Somewhere in the Night, which gives them a more urgent coloration. Get Out of Town and Make Someone Happy also are uptempo, requiring Grant to make improvising choices on the superfly, demonstrating yet again why he's a standout. And his ballad work on Meaning of the Blues will knock you out. Best of all, Grant never slides into cliches but instead makes all of these battles personal—as it should be.
JazzWax note: Grant tells me he'll be featured with the
Paul Sikivie Quartet at Dizzy's After Hours in New York next week. He'll also be playing the Punta Del Este International Jazz Festival in Uruguay the first week of January with Jesse Davis and Terell Stafford. Then he'll be touring Switzerland with trumpeter John Marshall from Jan 16 to 26. For more on Grant, go here.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Grant Stewart's Live at Small's (SmallsLive) available now as a download at iTunes while the CD will be available here in January. Or you can buy the CD now at the Small's site here.
JazzWax track: Here's Mr. Lucky from Grant Stewart's Live at Small's...
Yesterday afternoon, my Leisure & Arts editor at the Wall Street Journal called with awful news: pianist-composer Dave Brubeck had died. He then asked if I could turn around an appreciation for Thursday's paper. No problem, I said. But after I filed the piece, the national news section wanted it, and the desk had to trim it considerably for space (go here). I loved Dave and his music, so I thought I should share with you my longer, original appreciation...
Pianist Dave Brubeck, who died Wednesday at age 91 in Norwalk, Conn.—one day before his 92d birthday—was jazz’s first LP superstar and one of the art form’s most congenial ambassadors. Seemingly incapable of repressing a wide boyish grin that narrowed his eyes to slits, Mr. Brubeck exuded a sunny optimism on album covers that won over college students and young suburban adults, starting in the 1950s.
As a composer, Mr. Brubeck was a prolific writer of hummable jazz standards that appealed to insiders and non-jazz fans alike. These included “In Your Own Sweet Way,” “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” and “The Duke,” which pianist Marian McPartland has said features the best jazz bass line ever written.
Though Take Five was recorded by the Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1959 and often is assumed to have been written by Mr. Brubeck, the song was actually credited to alto saxophonist Paul Desmond [pictured above with Dave Brubeck], a long-time member of Mr. Brubeck’s group. When this writer visited with Mr. Brubeck in 2010, the pianist voiced disappointment that Mr. Desmond hadn’t shared the credit with him, since the unusual 5/4 time signature was Mr. Brubeck’s idea.
"Actually, the song was a collaboration," Mr. Brubeck said. "I had asked Paul to improvise a melody with a 5/4 tempo, but he couldn't come up with anything. Instead, he had two themes, and I found that by putting them together and repeating the first theme, we could form a song."
The magic and popularity of the Dave Brubeck Quartet rested with the contrast between Mr. Brubeck’s pronounced and percussive piano style and Mr. Desmond’s wistful, sailing approach on the saxophone’s upper register. When they were joined in the early ‘50s by bassist Bob Bates and drummer Joe Dodge, the original quartet’s appeal was immediate and infectious.
The quartet’s upbeat appeal was leveraged on one of Mr. Brubeck’s early Columbia LPs—“Jazz: Red Hot and Cool”—a live recording featuring model Suzy Parker leaning over the piano on the cover. The rapid popularity of Mr. Brubeck’s 1954 albums landed him on the cover of Time magazine in November. In the article—entitled “The Man on Cloud No. 7”—Mr. Brubeck was depicted as a swinging jazz artist who favored country life and clean living.
Throughout the ‘50s, Mr. Brubeck recorded albums that not only broke new jazz ground with classical touches but also sold incredibly well. These Columbia LPs—latter ones featuring Mr. Desmond with bassist Gene Wright and drummer Joe Morello—included “Jazz Impressions of the U.S.A.,” “Jazz Impressions of Eurasia,” “Gone With the Wind” and “Dave Digs Disney,” a 1957 album that he proposed to producer George Avakian in a call from Disneyland after taking his children on the rides.
As a white jazz artist who resided in futuristic contemporary homes and appeared to be financially well-off, Mr. Brubeck often was the target of criticism from musicians who wondered how he managed to prosper. Mr. Brubeck addressed this issue during our 2010 conversation, insisting that he and his wife Iola started out relatively poor and were simply tireless savers and careful spenders.
Like his music, Mr. Brubeck was a study in contrasts. Born in Concord, Calif., the seemingly urbane artist grew up roping cattle on his father’s ranch. Mr. Brubeck attended the College of the Pacific in the early ‘40s, where he met his wife.
Drafted in World War II, Mr. Brubeck almost lost his life twice—once after being plucked from the infantry to play in an Army band before the Battle of the Bulge began, and again after accidentally crossing into enemy territory and raising hair-trigger doubts at the American checkpoint when he nearly forgot the password for re-entry.
“One of the soldiers had a hand grenade in each hand with the pins pulled,” he told this writer. “He did this to show me that if he were shot by us, he would take everyone nearby with him.”
After the war, Mr. Brubeck enrolled at Mills College on the G.I. Bill, studying with modern classical composer Darius Milhaud, who insisted he stick with jazz. After graduation, Mr. Brubeck formed a jazz-classical octet and then a quartet, with Mrs. Brubeck shrewdly lining up concerts at a series of colleges, endearing him and his music to young students.
After a near-fatal swimming accident in Hawaii, Mr. Brubeck teamed with Mr. Desmond in 1951 after his convalescence. The group signed with Columbia in 1954 just as the label was expanding its jazz LP catalog. As the 1950s progressed, Mr. Brubeck and his quartet recorded steadily and appeared regularly at jazz festivals and on television, traveling abroad in the late ‘50s as part of the U.S. State Department’s tours to promote freedom.
In the late ‘50s and early ‘60s Mr. Brubeck and his wife composed “The Real Ambassadors”—a jazz musical featuring Louis Armstrong and other artists. Recorded in 1961, the score was performed only once in 1962. “After Louis Armstrong’s State Department tour in 1960, it was clear that he was America's real ambassador to the world,” Mr. Brubeck told this writer. “He was the person most identified with America worldwide.”
But to the Brubecks’ great disappointment, the musical never made it to Broadway. “Joe Glaser was Louis Armstrong’s manager and my manager,” Mr. Brubeck said. “Joe didn’t want two of his main moneymakers tied up night after night plus two matinees weekly.”
From the 1960s onward, Mr. Brubeck continued to record and perform at universities, helping to found the Brubeck Institute at the University of the Pacific. In 2009, he was named a Kennedy Center Honoree, and in 2010 he was the subject of a documentary—“In Your Own Sweet Way”—produced by Clint Eastwood. [Photo of Dave Brubeck above by Paul Slaughter]
“When I signed Dave to Columbia in June 1954, I knew he was a fine artist and that his music would appeal to young people,” Mr. Avakian said yesterday. “But I had no idea how big he’d become and how fast. Within weeks, sales of his first album—“Jazz Goes to College”—exceeded his advance. That’s when I knew we had huge jazz star.” [Pictured above: George Avakian]
JazzWax note:Here is my at-home visit with Dave in 2010 for the Wall Street Journal.
To read my interviews for JazzWax with Dave, go here, (this one is a five-parter, so go to the top of Part 1, above the red date, and click on Part 2),here, here and here.
There's also more with Dave in my new book, Why Jazz Happened, which you'll find here.
JazzWax tracks: One of my favorite collections is The
Dave Brubeck Quartet: The Columbia Studio Albums Collection: 1955-1966 (Sony Legacy). You'll find it here.
JazzWax clip: Here's my favorite Dave Brubeck original—Nomad—from Jazz Impressions of Eurasia (1958)...
Lost in the hype that kicked-off the Rolling Stones' 50th Anniversary tour and the wave of newly surfaced band documentaries was the video release of Charlie Is My Darling (ABKCO)—one of most revealing films about the Stones ever made. Through this black-and-white gem, you gain a finer sense of who these musicians were, what was eating them, and why they chose the path not taken from the mid-'60s on.
Filmed during the Stones' second tour of Ireland in September 1965, the film premiered in New York in October 1966 and then disappeared into a net of legal entanglements. Now, for its video release, the film has been beautifully restored and edited, and the results are jaw-dropping—even for non-Stones fans who are curious about the period and why they were special.
The film was the first documentary of the band and easily the most revealing. Filmmaker Peter Whitehead was hired by band manager Andrew Loog Oldham not so much to catalog their daily doings but to acclimate the Stones to movie cameras and media inquisitions—since the Beatles had deftly leveraged both, establishing such navigation as a necessary tool in the British Invasion arsenal.
Most important, the 64-minute film provides a candid and cogent look at the group caught in pop's headlights and not quite sure how to proceed. It airs their doubts, their anxieties and their misgivings—skipping the sex and drugs, which would come several years later as their sallow image ripened. Instead, Charlie Is My Darling—the name of a traditional Scottish song—focuses squarely on the birth of hard rock's first performance-arena band.
Interviews with each of the band's members reveal they all had a fuzzy sense of who they were, why they were together and whether what they were playing was more important than getting a screaming rise out of teen audiences. There is gripping concert footage of the band playing The Last Time, Time Is on My Side and I'm Alright, with Mick Jagger honing his quirky, taunting androgynous stage act. [Pictured above: Charlie Watts]
A quarter of the way through the third song, the rowdy audience surges the stage, making you wonder whether this was encouraged and ignited for the sake of the cameras or whether it was truly spontaneous. Either way, it's a daunting scene, as evidenced by the nervous but steady eyes of band-members. There also are scenes of the Stones backstage ruminating and singing songs by Fats Domino and the Beatles.
From the beginning, the Stones were purposefully positioned as the anti-Beatles—bad boys and the last guys you'd want your daughter to date. And they liked it that way—since the image created a much-needed contrast between them and the seemingly endless pipeline of Liverpudlian hitmakers managed by Brian Epstein.
But if the Beatles were optimistic lads from the flat next door, the Stones were romantically depressive punks, antagonists and enemies of authority figures. Fortunately for the Stones, the Beatles were a bit worn by September 1965. Touring extensively that year in the U.S., the Fab Four had been a raging success but were largely surfing the frenzy, and there was worry about artistic peaking and burnout. Such concerns would be dashed in October and November 1965, of course, with the recording of Rubber Soul, which was released in December. [Pictured above: Brian Jones]
The Stones, by contrast, were just figuring out who and what they wanted to be and why. They had already appeared in the U.S. on the T.A.M.I. Show concert in Los Angeles in December 1964—a dazed albeit intense performance. By the fall of '65, they were starting to come into their own. [Pictured above: The Stones on the T.A.M.I. Show]
Interestingly, from Charlie Is My Darling, it wasn't clear yet who the band's leader was—the charismatic frontman Jagger, who couldn't play an instrument, or the artsy, smoldering Brian Jones, who played guitar. The band's growing pains and unsettled vision clearly were taking a toll and causing them to question whether there was a tomorrow for the band.
Best of all, there are quite a few revelations: All of the Stones in '65 are much shrewder and more analytical and intellectual than you'd imagine. Keith Richards was a far better guitarist than you thought. And Jones (who drowned in 1969) and Charlie Watts seem almost ashamed to be part of the popmania enveloping the group. It was below them.
Only Jagger seems to grasp the purpose and possibility, and that pop can indeed be tweaked to have an edge. Only he senses that their original Delta blues approach has rock chops and additional chapters. What you will find in Charlie Is My Darling that doesn't exist in other Stones films is a strange sort of innocence, a green uncertainty about their mission and a band naturally bent to shake things up as much as possible.
And that's where the Stones' genius rests. In these early years, the band made a conscious decision to provide teens who battled their parents with a soundtrack. The more adults despised them, the more certain the band felt that greater success was imminent.
It's a brand they retain to this day—with relish. According to the Nov. 17 issue of Billboard, the Rolling Stones have perfected the tour, and no other band comes close. Said Bill Zysblat, who has been with the Stones since 1975 and is co-partner of RZO productions, which manages the band: "They've either had an impact on or pioneered every single aspect of touring."
What does this mean? To this day, the Stones and their management team control how tickets are sold, how merchandise is marketed, and how sponsorships work. The Stones get a thick slice of it all, which adds up to quite a pot. Billboard estimates that since 1989, the band has grossed more than $2 billion.
The Stones have come a long way since 1965, and now you know why they're back on tour. Not such a drag getting old after all.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is
My Darling (ABKCO) in a variety of formats, ranging from DVD here and Blu-Ray here to a limited edition box set here.
For many fans of Steely Dan, Donald Fagen's snakeskin voice is the sound of college, the start of intellectual life and newly won independence from parents' clutches. Today, he's the overlord of the territory where jazz, R&B and rock intersect. In this bump-and-grind world, horns come and go, a harmonica wails, a rock guitar weeps, an organ mutters, the beat is strong, and lyrics are about sound textures, wordplay and rich imagery.
"There's a crateful of lead-line pipes/A photo of laughing Navy types/On the island East of the Carolines/Lovely island" —Memorabilia
Sporadically, Donald has released four solo albums apart from Walter Becker. These include The Nightfly (1982), Kamakiriad (1993) and Morph the Cat (2006). Last month he released the long-awaited Sunken Condos (Reprise) and it's his best yet—loaded with sauntering riffs, hypnotic melodies and tough-luck characters.
"Four old hippies drivin' in the rain/I asked for a lift—they said: Get used to the pain/They gonna fix the weather in the world/Just like Mr. Gore said/But tell me what's to be done/Lord—'bout the weather in my head." —Weather in My Head
Donald's imagination ages well. As with Steely Dan's Hey Nineteen and many of his solo songs here, lyrics center on older guys and their drive to remain sexually relevant with much younger, tireless women. Song themes dwell in a spongy zone between wolf whistles and AARP cards. On his new album, older guys get lucky but then must live with their Faustian bargains—keeping women half their age entertained and satisfied while listening to them yammer about things that are alien and meaningless.
"We went to a party/Everybody stood around/Thinkin': Hey, what's she doin' with a burned out hippie clown/Young dudes were grinnin'/I cant' say it didn't sting/Some punk says: Pops you better hold on to that slinky thing." —Slinky Thing
In this regard, Donald hasn't gone the way of so many other classic rockers—strutting around on stage in tight leather pants, talking about rehab, or wearing baseball caps. His music fully embraces the male aging process, which is what makes him cool. He's observing—watching girls go by and minding his own business, even in bowling alleys:
"Your move to the lane child/Played on my heartstrings/With your long skinny legs child/And your hoop earrings/When the stakes were sky-high/That's when you'd always shine/The ball would ride a moonbeam/Down the inside line." —Miss Marlene
And then there are songs that drop all pretense and get to the heart of the matter—an older guy caught in a young girl's web. In Donald's songs, guys who took their youth for granted become resigned to the passive role they must play in their latter stages. As if awaking on the back of a wild horse, these guys seem caught off-guard and baffled as they hold on—trapped between what they were trained to want and what they no longer can physically handle.
"When we go out dancin'—she's always the star/When she does the Philly Dog—I gotta have CPR/She put on a dress last night made of plastic wrap/It was off the hook—crazy sweet/What everybody's wearin' on Planet D'Rhonda" —Planet D'Rhonda
Like guys who yearn for a Nedicks hot dog or an Orange Julius—fine things that once existed but don't any longer—Donald's characters are rooted in '60s nostalgia but set in today's bitter reality. And throughout the songs, a baritone saxophone barks, trombones and trumpets sigh, the bass bounces, a marimba mocks and the ubiquitous older dude gives his leather jacket a tug and is on his way. It's Donald's world. We just age in it.
JazzWax note: All lyrics above by Donald Fagen (c) 2012.
JazzWax tracks: Donald Fagen's Sunken Condos(Reprise) is available here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Good Stuff from Donald Fagen's new album Sunken Condos...
By 1960, bassist, composer and leader Charles Mingus wasn't a jazz musician in the traditional sense. He was an activist, and if the new Charles Mingus: The Jazz Workshop Concerts 1964-65 (Mosaic) box is any indication, his music was two years ahead of Huey Newton's Black Panthers and the Black Power movement in general—both of which were launched in 1966 to draw an assertive line on white racial terrorism.
Mingus's activist roots likely date back to September 1951, when he found himself unable to join Red Norvo and Tal Farlow behind vocalist David Thorne on WCBS-TV in New York. The official reason was that Mingus didn't have a Local 802 union card. Mingus viewed the ban as racism and left the trio after the incident.
Fast-forward to 1957, when Mingus, along with the rest of the country, watched on television as federal troops were dispatched by President Eisenhower to protect nine African-American students attempting to enroll at Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas. They were being blocked by the Arkansas National Guard, state police and local toughs. Despite the U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1954 giving African-Americans that right, many states and cities found ways around the decision through intimidation and worse. This was a watershed moment.
Mingus's response was Fables of Faubus, a song that took Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus to task for his unconstitutional segregationist stance. First recorded in 1959 on Mingus Ah Um (Columbia), the track did not feature vocals. Lyrics came a year later in October 1960, when the vocal track behind the instrumental was recorded on Charles Mingus Presents Charles Mingus for the Candid label, produced by Nat Hentoff.
By 1964, when the first concerts on the new Mosaic box were recorded, racial tensions in the U.S. were ratcheting up. Martin Luther King Jr. had delivered his I Have a Dream speech in August 1963, President Kennedy had been assassinated in November, the Beatles had arrived in February 1964 and were a national sensation, Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay) also was putting on a brazen media show in his Miami training camp that month in advance of his first fight with Sonny Liston, and Malcolm X was giving bold, strident speeches advocating for African-Americans' separation from white society.
If jazz had a musical version of Ali, King and Malcolm X—exceptional African-Americans who were speaking out forcefully against segregation and racism—it was Charles Mingus. You really can't listen to this Jazz Workshop box without a sense of the period during which the material was recorded and the highly charged atmosphere framing the concerts.
Without this context, the music will sound jarring, heavy and at times annoying. But with the overlay, you hear much more—the sounds of justified complaint, frustration over slow change, and general anger over the absence of fairness and equality nationwide.
Mingus was always about action art and control. In the mid-50s, he had formed his own publishing and recording companies to protect and document his growing repertoire of original music. He also founded the Jazz Workshop, an ensemble that gave young composers an opportunity to have their original works performed in concert and on recordings. [Photo above: Ray Avery/CTSImages.com]
Five Jazz Workshop concerts were held—at Town Hall in New York (April 1964), in Amsterdam (April 1964), two at Monterey, Calif. (September 1964 and 1965) and in Minneapolis (May 1965). Many of the pieces performed had a stormy, freewheeling feel that drifted between expressionist performance and more traditional forms of jazz. In nearly all cases, the Civil Rights movement is an uncredited member of the band.
For example, Meditations on Integration, recorded in Monterey, is a 23-minute action piece featuring Jack Nimitz on bass clarinet and Buddy Collette on flute. Or the nearly 31-minute, uptempo Fables of Faubus, which by the dates of these concerts no longer needed lyrics to get its point across.
Not every piece included in the boxed set was distinctly political, of course. The Duke Ellington Medley (Monterey), Arts of Tatum and Freddie Webster (Monterey) and Cocktails for Two (Minneapolis) are among the straight-up jazz works that are in stark relief with the heft of the statement works.
Perhaps the track that captures the time period best is A Lonely Day In Selma/Freedom (Minneapolis), which conveys the blues and agitates for change. But like many of the pieces here, Mingus is no longer asking politely. This is big, bossy music—fit for a time when racial hostility was growing and putting a musical finger in the listener's chest. It was the only way to get the point across. Musically, that is.
JazzWax thanks to Sue Mingus, Charles Mingus's widow, for offering Mosaic unreleased Mingus tapes in her archives. According to Mosaic's Michael Cuscuna, in a press release accompanying the box, "Of the seven discs in this set, only one of them has ever been available on an authorized CD. Almost two full CDs have never been available on CD at all, and more than two hours worth of music include the new discoveries—appearing for the first time in any form."
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Charles Mingus: The Jazz
Workshop Concerts 1964-65 (Mosaic) here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Don't Let It Happen Here, from September 1965 at Monterey, Calif., featuring Jimmy Owens on trumpet...
Last week, in support of my new book Why Jazz Happened (University of California Press), I was interviewed by Jeffrey Siegel for his Straight No Chaser online jazz show (go here) up in Massachusetts. You can listen for free to the podcast, though you may have to crank up the volume a bit, since the interview was conducted by phone. Jeff knows his stuff, and he featured quite a few jazz tracks to illustrate the periods we discussed and the points being made. [Cover photo of Dizzy Gillespie by Herb Snitzer]
With the holidays approaching, now's the time to buy a copy of Why Jazz Happened for yourself or family members and friends by going here.
Andre Previn, comic foil. Following my post last week on pianist, composer and conductor Andre Previn, Philip Andrews sent along this humorous clip...
Kickstarter star. Just weeks after I posted on Jessica Ferber's drive to raise funds for her book on the late jazz photographer Bob Campbell, she's closing in fast on her
financial goal. When we first spoke, Jessica had 77 backers and a total of $8,000. Now, with less than a week remaining, she has over 180 backers and is just a few hundred dollars short of her $23,000 goal. Bam! The power of JazzWax! Go here to view Jessica's Kickstarter video and make a last-minute donation.
Rhythm and Blues Revue update. After posting about the Rhythm and Blue Revue, a TV film that aired in 1955 but clearly was made earlier based on my analysis, I received the following insightful note from Stan Jones...
"While I am sure you are correct about the date of the Basie segments, my impression is that the film is actually a composite of segments that Snader filmed at various times and locations. For example, the Lionel Hampton segments probably were filmed in Los Angeles in September 1951.
"Tom Lord in his Jazz Discography has an entry for Snader Telescriptions in that month and Hampton was in Los Angeles in the fall of 1950 while Basie was doing his Snader Telescriptions at the Apollo in New York. Lord also lists dates of 1951-1955 for Sarah Vaughan's Snader Telescriptions but does put them in New York.
"The thing that clinches the various dates idea for me is that Shake, Rattle, and Roll, sung by Big Joe Turner, wasn't written until 1954. Turner's first recording is also from that year. Ruth Brown did record Teardrops from My Eyes in 1950, but I don't think that is Budd Johnson (who did the tenor on the record), playing in Paul Williams' band behind her in the film.
"If it is various independent segments, then they did a good job of having Willie Bryant tie it all together as emcee (though it looked to me as if the audience shots were looped and at some point Bryant changed his tie)."
Shaynee Rainbolt and Donn Trenner. The singer and legendary pianist will be performing together at the Metropolitan Room on December 11 at 7 p.m. They also will be there on December 9, 15 and 16 at 4 p.m. This will be Trenner's first New York major engagement in 25 years. For more information, go here.
Bonnie Bowden. In Los Angeles on December 9, singer Bonnie Bowden [pictured above] and the Paul McDonald Big Band will be at Vitellos, performing at 2 and 5 p.m. Arrangements by Sammy Nestico, Nelson Riddle, Tom Kubis, John Clayton, David Berger and more. For more information, go here.
DVD discovery of the week. If you dig Woody Herman, you're going to love Blue Flame: Portrait of a Jazz Legend (Jazzed Media). This documentary traces Herman's various bands and herds from the "Band that
Played the Blues" onward, touching on his sad end—being hounded by the IRS for back taxes. Though the 110-minute DVD runs a little long (multiple talking heads say virtually the same thing in places), kudos to producer-director Graham Carter for finding amazing footage of all the bands. Here we get to see and hear Lemon Drop from The Ed Sullivan Show in 1949, featuring bop scatting by Herman and vibist Terry Gibbs as well as solos by baritone saxophone soloist Serge Chaloff and trombonist Earl Swope. A sharp and potent portrait of the big band era's third clarinetist and, along with Dizzy Gillespie, a paternal figure who mentored quite a bop brood.
CD discoveries of the week. Houston Person seems to be everywhere these days. The tenor saxophonist often tours and records with jazz masters, but he also uses his down time to encourage, record and perform with younger artists. On his new release, Naurally(HighNote), he's joined by pianist Cedar Walton, bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Lewis Nash. The album features a gorgeous spread of standards—including That's All, How Little We Know, It Shouldn't Happen to a Dream, Namely You and Sunday. Person's big rich tone is on display here, as always, but as you listen you realize he's also a wizard of pace—knowing exactly how fast or slow to take a tune to tease out its natural juices. Each tune on the album is cradled or jettisoned just right, proving yet again that Houston fully understands a song before he even starts to blow lines.
California surf music had a fairly long run—from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. Unlike the contrapuntal West Coast jazz scene of mid-decade, the stripped-down surf sound relied on the sharp attack of the electric guitar and bass and a drummer who could keep a frantic, bongo-like beat. Much of this shift
by the Pacific Coast youth culture from laid back to laying it on thick was a result of surfing's rising popularity and the proliferation of fast cars. As you listen to Surf-Age Nuggets: Trash & Twang Instrumentals—1959-1966(Rock Beat), a four-CD set, you quickly realize that the Beach Boys were really the Glenn Miller Orchestra of this genre, that most of the one-off Vox bands had a much harsher, garage sound. From the Velvetones and Rick-a-Shays to The Five More and The Elite UFO, the salt-water, strip-mall sound is here in all its amplified glory.
Most people come in contact with Portuguese only when listening to Brazilian ablums. But Portugal also has a thriving music scene. A prime example is Fado em Si Bemol's new
release, QB (Vidisco). The quintet consists of guitarists Miguel Silva and Paulo Goncalves, vocalist Pedro Matos, bassist Nuno Campos and percussionist Manuel Santiesteban. This is acoustic music with passionate vocals and an Iberian folk identity. Sample Fado and Matilde. I have no idea what the lyrics mean, but it doesn't matter. The music is fascinating.
Oddball album cover of the week.
I have no idea what tracks are on this one, but the whole package seems mighty blue. The roads are empty except for this lone rig, and the guy (or gal) driving is working on Christmas Day (one would assume). What's more, I'm not quite sure how they expected the long-hauler to listen to this one while wheeling along the interstate. Then again, I guess this cover, with missing apostrophe and all, beats an image of a driver dining alone at a rest stop.
Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
