JazzWax

Piper, Roni and Tiny

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed film legend Piper Laurie (above) on growing up in Detroit and Los Angeles (go here). The actress, who received Oscar nominations for her roles in The Hustler, Carrie and Children of a Lesser God, was abandoned by her parents for three years in the late 1930s along with her older sister. They were placed in a sanitarium because her sister had severe asthma. Piper was sent to keep her company. It was a hard three years, but when Piper and her sister went home in '41, Piper found it hard to resent her parents. Instead, she found that her imagination had flowered. She never found out why her mother didn't reply to their homesick letters or why they didn't show up to visit on her birthdays. We also talked about Paul Newman and Kirk Douglas.

Here's Piper on TV's What's My Line in October 1961. Move the space bar to 19:42...

Tower of Power's latest album is 50 Years of Funk & Soul: Live at the Fox Theater, Oakland, CA, June 2018 here. In August 2018, Doc Kupka and the band were on NPR's Tiny Desk Concert performing three songs—On the Soul Side of Town, So Very Hard to Go and What Is Hip? Here they are...

French New Wave. If you enjoyed my JazzWax Film Festival over the holidays, especially my French New Wave picks, you should know that Raymond Cauchetier (above) died recently. Cauchetier was the photographer on the sets of many New Wave films to take the stills that appeared outside movie theaters in the old days. Except it turned out that he was the only still photographer documenting an important film movement. Here's an obit by the best obituary writer in the business, Robert D. McFadden of The New York Times. Go here.

Camille Bertault. After last weekend's roundup post, I received the following from Jeffery Geraldton in Western Australia:

Hi Marc. I am a jazz fan and also a subscriber to JazzWax which has opened my eyes and ears to musicians I haven't heard before. When I saw your article today featuring Camille Bertault, I knew exactly who you were referring to. I found a clip of Camille singing with the great Dutch jazz big band, the Henk Meutgeert New Jazz Orchestra, and the meteoric pianist Peter Beets. Here it is...

Don Cherry. After posting last week on cornetist Don Cherry, I received the following from Steven Balkin in upstate New York [photo above of Don Cherry by Francis Wolff (c)Mosaic Images]...

Hi Marc. Nice to see you do a piece on Don. He was a sweet, gentle soul. We met 60 years ago while I was at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute, and we hit it
off. The brownstone that I shared with a couple of other artists and musicians had jam sessions at 302 Clinton Ave. Fred Schwab, the bassist, put together an ensemble that also played some very tough clubs in Brooklyn. Pharoah Sanders on saxophone, Don on cornet, Fred on bass, Ron Schwerin on drums and a guy named Bill on trumpet.

Don liked to drop by the brownstone and hang out with me and shoot the breeze. He came by one day to say goodbye. He was leaving on a tour in Europe with John Coltrane. He took out his cornet and hit some notes. It was sort of a wreck held together with adhesive tape. I happened to have a really fine cornet given to me by an old antique dealer whom I helped when I had some free time. I never accepted payment, so from time to time he made me accept a gift. One time it was a cornet. Don returned the instrument to me a year and a half later. Last summer I donated it to a small Jazz Museum in Rejavick, Iceland.

CD you should know about:

Roni Ben-Hur—Stories (Dot Time). Guitarist Roni Ben-Hur is based in New York but his musical interests have always been divided between bossa nova and bebop. On his new album, Roni swings with a pensive groove colored by the uncertainty of the past year's pandemic. Roni's playing is inquiring and insistent, especially when picking, and Ingrid Jensen's trumpet is a perfect partner. The personnel features Roni on guitar, Ingrid Jensen (tp), George Cables (p), Harvie S (b) and Victor Lewis (d), with Magos Harrera (vcl) on tracks 1 and 7, and Tamux Nissim (vcl) on track 5. Bop and bossa meet in Roni's hands and we discover they have much in common—a sophisticated lyricism that is hopeful and driven by melodic narrative. Go here.

Here's Roni and the band in the studio recording Something for Kenny...

Live From Emmet's Place is a live streaming gig each Monday night at 7:30 p.m. (ET) featuring the Emmet Cohen Trio. On most Mondays, they're jamming from Emmet's apartment . You can watch at Facebook here or at YouTube here.

Don't miss Emmet's scene. He's a spectacular player. Here's his March schedule of live streams and special guests...

• March 8: Emmet Cohen Trio + Houston Person
• March 15: Emmet Cohen Trio live from Moscow, Russia
• March 22: The music of Wayne Shorter, featuring Sasha Berliner and Nicole Glover (sponsored by Steve Petrie & Ellen Hexter)
• March 29: Emmet Cohen Trio + Regina Carter (sponsored by Mack and Deborah Roach and anonymous friends from East Lansing, Mich.)

For more, go here.

Tiny Grimes radio. On Sunday (March 7), WKCR-FM in New York will re-broadcast Sid Gribetz's 2009 Jazz Profiles broadcast on guitarist Tiny Grimes from from 2 to 7 p.m. (ET). Listen to Sid from anywhere in the world by going here.

Ornette Coleman and Bix Beiderbecke radio. WKCR-FM in New York will hold its annual Ornette and Bix Birthday Broadcasts back-to-back on Tuesday and Wednesday (ET) (March 9 and 10) for 48 hours total. Listen from anywhere in the world by going here.

Here's an hour of the Gary Burton Quartet in Oslo, Norway, in 1976, with Gary on vibraphone, Pat Metheny on guitar, Steve Swallow on bass and Dan Gottlieb on drums. Such a happening fusion quartet...

Video: Bill Evans at Montreux '78

On the evening of Wednesday, July 12, 1978, the Bill Evans Trio took the stage and performed an 11-song set in the Casino de Montreux at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Montreux, Switzerland. Evans's face was just starting to show the haggard strains of his regular drug use and tireless touring. His hands weren't puffy yet, a condition that develops after long-term intravenous drug addiction. As a result, his playing at Montreux was still tender and measured, not agitated and rushed. [Photo above of Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1978 courtesy of YouTube]

Interestingly, a live Evans album from the 1978 Montreux Jazz Festival was never produced, but the trio's performance was videotaped for Swiss television (Radio Télévision Suisse), which used just six of the 11 songs. Pierre Grandjean produced. The Bill Evans Trio in July '78 featured Evans on piano, Marc Johnson on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Marc had joined the trio two weeks earlier, and drummer Joe LaBarbera would became a member of the final Bill Evans Trio later in the year.

On the newly uploaded video for Swiss TV, we hear the trio play Johnny Mandel's Suicide Is Painless (Theme from M*A*S*H), Duke Ellington's Reflections in D and Miles Davis's Nardis. Then guitarist Kenny Burrell joins the group for Davis's All Blues, Billy Strayhorn's Take the A Train and Thad Jones's A Child Is Born. A shame we don't have the entire 11 tracks in the broadcast. [Photo above of Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1978 courtesy of YouTube]

Here's the 50-minute video for Swiss television...

A special thanks to Dave Thompson, Yvan Ischer and Peter Levin.

Shirley Scott in 8 Albums and 2 Videos

Naturally, my afternoon with tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine on Tuesday led to an afternoon with organist Shirley Scott yesterday. It was inevitable. Once you get Scottie in your ear, you want her to go on and on. I have virtually all of her albums, but I focused on her 1960s releases, which are loaded with powerful original blues and juicy takes on old and new standards. Scott loved to set the keyboards so the bottom sounded thick as she coordinated her left hand with her feet on the pedals while the top notes were set to produce a high-pitched, bell-like ring. She also had long, graceful fingers that moved on the keyboards like softshell crabs. The result was a piano-like approach to the organ with a sophisticated groove. After all, the organ is a full-body instrument.

Let's listen to a bunch of clips by the Queen of the Organ:

First, here's Shirley Scott live, in one of her rare performance clips, with Harold Vick on tenor saxophonist in 1976 playing Don't Look Back...

Starting in 1958, Scott recorded three Cookbook albums with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis that kicked the organ combo into high gear at the Prestige label. Here's the complete Volume 1, with Jerome Richardson on flute...

Here's the complete Jaws from September 1958, which followed the first volume of Cookbook...

Here's the complete Jaws in Orbit from May 1959, with Steve Pulliam (tb), Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (ts), Shirley Scott (org), George Duvivier (b) and Arthur Edgehill (d)...

Here's Soul Shoutin' in October 1963, complete, with Stanley Turrentine (ts), Shirley Scott (org), Earl May (b) and Grassella Oliphant (d)...

Here's Scott's complete The Soul Is Willing in January 1964, featuring Stanley Turrentine (ts) Major Holley (b) and Grassella Oliphant (d)...

Here's the complete Great Scott!, recorded with Bob Cranshaw (b) and Candy Finch (d) in May 1964...

Here's Everybody Loves a Lover from September 1964 with the same personnel as above and Stanley Turrentine added...

Here's Scott in December 1964 on Queen of the Organ, complete, backed by Stanley Turrentine (ts) Bob Cranshaw (b) Candy Finch (d)...

And here's Scottie with fellow organists Brother Jack McDuff and Duke Jethro in November 1996 at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, with drummer Eddie Marshall....