Over the past several years, I posted a series on vital Brazilian female singers who have championed the bossa nova. Unfortunately, JazzWax readers haven’t been able to access these posts because they were scattered in time. Unless you remembered their names, you were out of luck.

Now, I have assembled a handy index to the series. When I post on addition…

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Last week, I received an email from Melodi Graf McCraine. She wrote that she was the daughter of tenor saxophonist Bob Graf and that she had researched her father and created a website to honor him. I said how about an interview? She said, Sure!” [Photo above of Bob Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

Melodi told me that Graf was the first tenor saxophonist in the Count Basie Septet in 1950, thanks to a recommendation by trumpeter Clark Terry. He was soon recruited to join Woody Herman’s Third Herd, and Wardell Gray replaced Graf in Basie’s group. Graf also pops up in recordings with the Chet Baker Big Band, leading a quartet backing jazz vocalist Bev Kelly and with Grant Green in 1960. [Photo above of Bob Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

Then the trail goes cold. I interviewed Mel by email and rounded up my favorite Bob Graf clips so you could have a listen:

JazzWax: How old were you when your father, Bob Graf, died?

Melodi Graf McCraine: He died when I was 15, in 1981, at age 54. For most of my life, his jazz years felt just out of reach. I knew that music filled our house. I knew that people lit up when he walked into a room. But the full extent of his career—who he played with, where he toured and the reputation he had built up before walking away from that life—is something I’m still piecing together through research.

JW: Where was your dad born?

MGM: My father was born in St. Louis in 1927. His mother, Emily, was a telephone operator for Southwestern Bell. His father, Otto, was an executive at a tool-and-die company that held patents on airplane parts. Bob was their only child, and his mother encouraged his love of music.

JW: What inspired him at the start?

MGM: I don’t know yet. What I can tell you is that something got into him early. Just this morning, I found a photograph of him at around age 7 already holding a saxophone. [Photo above of Bob Graf at age 7 courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: Who was his biggest Influence?

MGM: Zoot Sims. His mother had taken him to see Zoot play when Bob was around 13. That concert changed everything but I’m not sure where it took place. What I know is that Zoot was a stylistic influence. Since my father was born in 1927 and Zoot in 1925, they were almost exactly the same age, so it was likely a peer influence from Zoot’s recordings. Their paths crossed when my father was in the Woody Herman band from 1950 to 1951.

JW: How did your dad learn to play?

MGM: His mother got him a saxophone, and he began with formal lessons and learned to read music. He practiced in the bathroom for the acoustics. He loved hearing the sound of his King saxophone bouncing off the tile walls. But his true gift was his ear, which greatly helped his improvising.

JW: What did you learn through your research?

MGM: By digging through the Smithsonian Institution’s archives in Washington, D.C., I learned who he played with and how prominent he was. As for when he began playing professionally in St. Louis and with whom, I’m still piecing that together. What I do know is that he was deeply embedded in the local scene before his first big break.

JW: What was that break?

MGM: Trumpeter Clark Terry knew my father well enough that he recommended him to Count Basie in 1950, when he was forming a small group. My dad was 23. That level of trust between musicians doesn’t happen overnight. In his Smithsonian oral history transcript, Clark recalled recommending my father to Basie when Basie was looking for a tenor saxophonist. Clark said he described my dad as “a young Caucasian kid named Bob Graf.” Basie’s response, Clark said, was “Get the kid.” Bob joined, and the septet opened at the Brass Rail in Chicago.

JW: Who else talked about your dad in the Smithsonian oral histories?

MGM: Buddy De Franco named him directly as “Bobby Graf from St. Louis,” the original tenor saxophonist in Basie’s first group before Wardell Gray.

JW: Your dad must have left Basie pretty quickly, since his first recording with Woody Herman took place on May 5, 1950.

MGM: I suppose so. My dad was recruited at the Brass Rail in Chicago, where the Basie group was playing. Carlos Gastel, Woody Herman’s manager, kept coming into the club and hired him away for Woody’s band. We know the band was on the road in Nashville by June 25, 1950 because my dad and the band recorded in a studio there. This was Woody’s Third Herd, which recorded for Capitol. The late Steve Voce, a longtime BBC jazz broadcaster who wrote for Jazz Journal International for nearly 60 years, did an extensive study of the Herman bands. He identified my dad as the featured tenor saxophone soloist who follows trombonist Bill Harris on the Capitol track Sonny Speaks. Four more sides followed for MGM Records in January 1951. On this session, Bob was teamed with fellow tenor saxophonists Phil Urso and Jack DuLong.

JW: You dad’s jazz recording discography is silent until 1956. Do you know why he left Herman and what he did in between?

MGM: Not yet. I know he worked the West Coast circuit through the mid-50s, including with the Lighthouse All-Stars at Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. But he wasn’t working off his card to join Local 47. St. Louis was still his home. On Oct. 18 1956, he was in Los Angeles recording with the Chet Baker Big Band for Pacific Jazz. He played alongside Fred Waters on alto saxophone, Phil Urso on tenor and Bill Hood on baritone.

JW: What about his family life at this point in time?

MGM: My dad was married to his first wife, Helen. They had two sons—Bobby Jr. and Kirby, who, sadly, took his own life when he was young. Helen never recovered.

JW: What did your father do after his Chet Baker recording session?

MGM: He didn’t disappear from music. In January 1958, he performed at Westminster College and Peacock Alley in St. Louis with local musicians Ron Ruff (ts,fl), Jimmy Williams (p), Bob Maisel (b) and Al St. James (d). The gigs were recorded by Delmark Records, produced by label founder Robert Koester. His playing on Street of Dreams was singled out in the liner notes. [Photo above of Bob Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: In November 1959, his quartet backed vocalist Bev Kelly in St. Louis for VGM records.

MGM: Yes, that recording sat unreleased for more than 20 years before surfacing on VGM the year he died.

JW: His final jazz recording was with Grant Green.

MGM: In December 1959 and February 1960, he performed alongside guitarist Grant Green, organist Sam Lazar and drummer Chauncey Williams at the Holy Barbarian Coffee House in St. Louis. In 1963, Down Beat magazine mentioned that he was leading a bossa nova quartet at a St. Louis club called the Fallen Angel. The music never left him. It simply lived in smaller rooms.

JW: When did he meet your mom, Martha?

MGM: He met her at a St. Louis gig, around 1959. She was 12 years younger and completely unimpressed by the Hollywood stories. She told him flat out there was no future if he kept traveling. He had some obligations to finish but he chose her. My older sister, Vicki, was born in 1961. To make ends meet, he started taking gigs in St. Louis but soon went into business repairing instruments full time. He had contracts with local schools covering everything from clarinets to flutes. Occasionally, he played local gigs. That was their deal. [Photo above of Bob and Martha Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: How was your parents’ relationship?

MGM: My parents were married for a couple of decades. My mother passed away nine years ago. She never remarried. He was the love of her life. They had their struggles, but they always found their way back to each other. He died of health complications just months after their last reconciliation. He had lived hard and the years caught up with him. [Photo above of Bob Graf with Melodi, left, and Vicki, courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: And his first wife?

MGM: I believe Helen passed away in the early 1980s, not long after my dad died.Their divorce wasn’t related to Kirby’s death. There was a long period of estrangement between my dad and his first family. I didn’t meet my half-brothers until I was around 8 or 9.

JW: How did your mother take his death?

MGM: It was hard. She talked about him until the end. I remember being in Best Buy with her years ago and coming across a Chet Baker CD. That opened up a whole conversation about those California years. I would show her YouTube clips of his recordings and she would watch quietly and then start talking.

JW: Do you feel now that you know your father better?

MGM: For sure. In a way, my research has given me an opportunity to get to know him through articles and oral history transcripts. I’ve built a full archive of recordings, photographs, personnel lists and source citations at BobGrafMusic.com (go here). He deserves to be remembered. It just took a daughter who wouldn’t let go. I only wish he were still around. I have a zillion questions.

Tracks with Bob Graf:

Here’s Graf in May 1950 with Woody Herman’s superb reed section playing Neal Hefti’s arrangement of Pennies From Heaven, with a vocal by Herman and the Alyce King Vokettes. The band: Conte Candoli, Bernie Glow, Paul Cohen and Don Ferrara (tp); Neal Hefti (tp,arr); Eddie Bert, Bill Harris and Jerry Dorn (tb); Woody Herman (cl,as,vcl); Al Cohn, Buddy Wise and Bob Graf (ts); Marty Flax (bar); Dave McKenna (p); Red Mitchell (b); Sonny Igoe (d); Milt Jackson (vibes) and Alyce King Vokettes (vcl)…

Here’s the Herman band on June 25, 1950 playing Al Cohn’s arrangement of Sonny Speaks. The band: Doug Mettome, Conte Candoli, Don Ferrara and Rolf Ericson (tp); Herb Randel, Bill Harris and Jerry Dorn (tb); Woody Herman (cl,as); Phil Urso, Buddy Wise and Bob Graf (ts); Marty Flax (bar); Dave McKenna (p); Red Mitchell (b) and Sonny Igoe (d)…

Here’s the Chet Baker Big Band on October 19, 1956 playing Phil Urso’s arrangement of Worrying the Life Out of Me. The band: Chet Baker (tp); Bob Burgess (tb); Fred Waters (as); Phil Urso (as,ts,bs); Bob Graf (ts); Bill Hood (bs); Bobby Timmons (p); Jimmy Bond (b) and James McKean (d). The tenor solo sounds like Graf…

Here’s Street of Dreams from Bob Graf at Westminster in St. Louis on Jan. 11, 1958…

Here’s singer Bev Kelly on Nov. 29, 1959 with the Bob Graf Quartet singing Detour Ahead. The fidelity is miserable but you do catch some terrific Bob Graf and a taste of Kelly…

And finally, here’s Bob Graf (ts), Sam Lazar (org), Grant Green (g) and Chauncey Williams (d) at the Holy Barbarian in St. Louis on December 25, 1959 or February 20, 1960 playing The Holy Barbarian Blues…

The quartet featured Grant Green (g), Hank Mobley (ts on all tracks except

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While hitchhiking through Europe alone in the second half of 1979, I spent a great deal of time in pubs, especially on rainy days when rides were spare. My first stop was London and then Wales, for a month. During my journey through the Welsh countryside, I received quite an education in Jamaican rocksteady. Jukeboxes were loaded with singles.

Rocksteady was a popular home-grown Jamaican style that cropped up in 1966 and continues today. It appeared in the wake of Jamaica’s horn-dominated ska of the late 1950s and early ‘60s and before the bass-heavy reggae emerged in the late 1960s.

The lilting rocksteady merged Jamaica’s rhythms with American romantic soul capped with a beckoning Jamaican vocal. The laid-back genre was perfect for slow-dancing and a welcome alternative to the fast-paced, celebratory ska. In jazz, a parallel would be Lester Young’s tenor saxophone playing American songbook ballads.

Rocksteady was romantic, jazzy and hypnotic, music that let dancers rock to a steady beat. In many instances, the rocksteady versions of American soul were equal to the originals. Overall, the music is tranquil and locks into a seductive groove.

Yesterday, I spent the day listening to rocksteady while writing. Today, I’m sharing 10 tracks plus bonus videos that will likely make you fall in love with the music, if you aren’t already a fan.

Here’s Hopeton Lewis’s Take It Easy (1967), which is widely considered rocksteady’s first release…

Here’s Alton Ellis and the Flames’ Rock Steady (1967), the namesake of the genre…

Here are the Paragons’ The Tide Is High (1967), which was covered by Blondie in 1980…

Here’s Phillis Dean, known as the “Queen of Rocksteady,” singing Perfidia in 1967…

Here’s Alton Ellis, known as the “Godfather of Rocksteady,” singing You’ve Made Me So Very Happy, a 1970 cover of the Blood, Sweat & Tears 1969 hit…

Here’s Freddie McGregor singing Sitting in the Park in 1979, a cover of Billy Stewart’s 1965 hit…

Here’s Johnny Osborne’s 1972 cover of Ready or Not Here I Come, a 1968 Delfonics hit…

Here’s Claudia Fontaine’s 1981 cover of Bloodstone’s 1973 hit Natural High…

Here’s Alton Ellis singing his 1993 cover of the Delfonics’ 1968 hit La La Means I Love You…

And here’s Bitty McLean’s 2004 cover of David Ruffin’s 1975 hit Walk Away From Love…

Bonus: Here’s a concert by rocksteady all-stars at the 2009 Montreal International Jazz Festival…

Here’s Freddie McGregor followed by John Holt in concert in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003…

And here’s a documentary on rocksteady…

We listen to jazz today and just assume that because the music wound up on records, everyone in the country took it seriously. That was hardly the case. Jazz was ignored for large chunks of time or viewed despairingly as the music of alcoholics, prostitutes, drug addicts and gangsters. Not until 1957 did jazz achieve a high level of respect nationwide, on par with classical, and that golden era lasted only eight years. [Photo above, from left, Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records; trumpeter Miles Davis, Columbia producer Teo Macero and pianist Dave Brubeck in the early 1960s]

Jazz was first performed in American classical concert halls as early as May 2, 1912, when James Reese Europe and his Clef Club Orchestra played New York’s Carnegie Hall. On Feb. 12 1924, George Gershwin played piano in a performance of his composition Rhapsody in Blue, while Paul Whiteman conducted his Palais Royal Orchestra at New York’s Aeolian Hall.

With the arrival of Prohibition between 1920 and 1933, jazz became the music of speakeasies, sex workers, rum-running mobsters, boozing musicians and privileged college students. In other words, jazz became exotica and music of the underworld and underground.

Big bands adapted jazz for the swing syncopation needed to fill dance halls in the 1930s. Many of the major bandleaders were formally trained on the clarinet, so the works of classical composers were familiar to them. Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn and others recorded classically inspired jazz pieces. On Jan.16, 1938, jazz was performed at Carnegie Hall when Benny Goodman was recorded there with his small group and big band before a packed house.

The big band era gave jazz a much-needed post-Prohibition rehabilitation, but it was happening mostly in New York and a few other cities. With the rise of bebop in 1946, jazz went into clubs, where it became the music of soldiers on leave, smokers, drinkers, hipsters on a first date and college students in the know.

Then three things happened in the 1950s: the affordability of home phonograph consoles housed in living rooms, the widespread popularity of rock ‘n’ roll and the acquisition of television sets.

The phonograph allowed adults to explore different types of music through mail-order record clubs like Columbia House. The music could be consumed at their leisure from their sofas. Rock ‘n’ roll was viewed by parents as corrosive to their relationship with their kids; and the television set established national standards of humor, musical enjoyment and behavior that fed advertising’s American Dream.

How did all of these trends help to boot jazz’s reputation? One could order jazz LPs that were easy for the average ear to absorb and understand at home—including records by Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis.

With the music of Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and others playing adversarial roles in households, parents began looking for music with an edge that made them feel young outside of the classical and pop realms. That was motive enough to begin acquiring a taste for jazz.

And the appearance of TV sets in more households by 1957 led to network television broadcasts that not only entertained but also educated viewers.

Such programming was driven by the wives of executives who ran TV networks, ad agencies and consumer goods companies. Many collected modern art, knew the names of famed architects, attended the opera and ballet and understood the value and excellence of high culture. When it came to the arts, these spouses had no patience for racial discrimination.

NBC aired the Nat King Cole Show (1956-‘57) and the Steve Allen Show (1956-’60), exposing a national audience to jazz and jazz-pop singers and musicians. CBS broadcast Patti Page hosting The Big Record (1957-’58), which often featured jazz-pop singers. The network also broadcast the Ed Sullivan Show, which routinely showcased jazz-pop artists.

But the TV show that allowed jazz to be universally thought of as high culture was CBS’s airing of The Sound of Jazz, the December 8, 1957 edition of the CBS television series The Seven Lively Arts. Also significant was Robert Herridge’s The Sound of Miles Davis, on April 2, 1959.

Jazz was finally invited to the high-brow table, and seeing the genius of Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie and others on TV made the greatness of these artists impossible to ignore, putting them in the same league as the symphony and chamber group musicians.

Also vital to jazz’s transition from low-culture to high culture was Leonard Bernstein, whose songs for Broadway’s West Side Story (1957) wound up on jazz albums, making those LPs more appealing. By then, Bernstein had already composed works paying homage to jazz, including Prelude, Fugue and Riffs and Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety (both in 1949). He also explored jazz in his Young People's Concerts (Jazz in the Concert Hall in 1964) on CBS and his famous What Is Jazz episode.

Others vital to helping jazz become high culture were Nat Hentoff, whose album liner notes, books, album and TV show production helped develop a high-brow taste for and understanding of the music.

Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, whose score for Gypsy (1959) fine-tuned the ear for jazz. Norman Granz, whose Jazz at the Philharmonic tours brought jazz all-stars into concert halls in the U.S. and abroad.

George Wein, who in 1954 launched the Newport Jazz Festival, which created a daytime and evening space for jazz outdoors.

Columbia Records jazz head George Avakian signed Miles Davis to the label and was instrumental in helping to release major recordings by jazz artists in the 78 and 10-inch and 12-inch LP eras.

And radio DJs including “Symphony Sid” Torin, Fred Robbins, Holmes “Daddy-O” Daylie and Arthur “Turntable” Pearce who supported live jazz and played jazz records on the air.

As kids exposed to jazz entered their teens in the 1960s, there was no holding them back from the pop-rock appeal of the Beatles and Rolling Stones and hard-rock lure of Led Zeppelin and the Who. Jazz-rock fusion of the 1970s appealed to college students. And those kids who had been captivated by jazz in the early ‘60s moved on to light pop, soul-jazz and even rap.

All of this left jazz without a young core audience, and the music began its slow shift toward cultural oblivion. This isn’t a jazz obit or an essay on who killed jazz. Nor is it a long attempt to point out again that the New York Times Sunday Magazine doesn’t think jazz was worthy enough to include at least Sonny Rollins or Herbie Hancock in its “30 Greatest Living American Composers” list.

Rather, it’s merely to point out that between 1957 and 1964, jazz became high-culture after winning the respect of Fifth Avenue socialites and Main Street TV-watchers. It was a golden time for jazz, when the color of a jazz musician’s skin was meaningless and integrated jazz groups proved to America that race didn’t matter at all when it came to musical excellence and exceptionalism.

I’ll leave you with this: Here’s Nat King Cole in 1957 singing Tenderly on his TV show backed by Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Herb Ellis. What’s not to love?…

The star on his pursuit of comedy, following in Conan O’Brien’s footsteps at Harvard and his friendship with Mindy Kaling. B.J. He’s known for TV’s The Office and the films Inglourious Basterds, The Founder and Vengeance. He co-stars in The Devil Wears Prada 2. [Photo above of B.J. Novak in Los Angeles in 2025 by Julian Ungano]

If you have a WSJ.com subs…

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This year’s most glaring cultural oversight can be found in a New York Times feature this week entitled The 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters. The very title begs trouble. To pull off such a list successfully with the fewest possible arrows from readers, one would have to proceed with enormous sensitivity, caution and due diligence. [Photo above o…

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The music on their debut album, “Ramones,” released 50 years ago this month, was so primitive that the 14 short tracks took just seven days and $6,400 to record. Though it peaked at only 111 on the Billboard album chart, and its two singles— “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”—failed to chart, top rock critics and the underground press rave…

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The Normal and Ballistic actress on her Rocky Horror Picture Show obsession, her childhood rebelliousness and her many tattoos. The British actress is known for the series Game of Thrones and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, as well as the 300 action-film franchise. She currently stars in the new films Ballistic and Normal. [Photo above of Lena …

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Reencontro com Sambalanço Trio (1965) was the fourth album recorded by the Brazilian hard-bossa group, featuring Cesar Camargo Mariano on piano, Humberto Clayber on bass and Airto Moreira on drums. It’s a gorgeous mix of bossa nova, hard bossa and samba-jazz.

Sambalanço Trio recorded one more album (Lennie Dale & Sambalanço Trio no Zum Zum) before breaki…

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There were two great periods of the jazz organ combo. One was the late 1950s and early 1960s, with gospel-influenced organists such as Jimmy Smith, Shirley Scott, Brother Jack McDuff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Jimmy McGriff, Baby Face Willette, Larry Young, Melvin Rhyne and Big John Patton. The second period in the late 1960s and early ‘70s centered on s…

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Each week, dozens of CDs and download links pour into my mailbox and email, and each week about 80% of what I hear gets tossed. Then I whittle down the remaining 20% to 10%, and the results pop up here each month.

Here are my April favorites:

Billy Childs—Triumvirate (Mack Avenue). Six-time Grammy-winning pianist Billy Childs has a new album out with Matt Penman on bass and Ari Hoenig on drums (except track 8). Childs has a wonderful way of sliding between abstraction and straight-ahead jazz. His chords are graceful and plush, and his swing is sensitive and determined. Penman and Hoenig complement him perfectly. I could leave this one on autoplay all day. To listen and buy, go here.

Here’s Thelonious Monk’s Ask Me Now…

Russ Spiegel—Timepieces (Ruzztone Music). Russ Spiegel is a gorgeous acoustic and electric guitarist. His chords are lush and full, his improvisation is lovely and his original pieces are seductive. Pat Metheny came to mind as I listened to Spiegel’s new album. He’s joined by Tal Cohen (p), Vince Dupont (b) and Brandon Lee Lewis (d). His special guests are Hendrik Meurkens (chromatic harmonica on tracks 3 and 9), Jean Caze on trumpet on track 6 and on flugelhorn on track 8, Tim Armacost on tenor saxophone on tracks 6 and 8, and Javier Nero on trombone on tracks 6 and 8. Pure bliss. To listen and buy, go here.

Here’s Spiegel and his trio playing the album’s title track…

Jon Regen—From Left to Right ( JRM/Symphonic). Before he was a jazz-pop singer-songwriter doing well on the charts, pianist Jon Regen led a jazz trio. In 1996, he recorded his first album but it was never widely released. Recorded direct to two-track on Carnegie Hall’s former Steinway Model D at Systems Two Studios in Brooklyn, the album features Regen, bassist Earl May (who played with Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Billy Taylor) and drummer Sunny Jain. The 26-year-old Regen sold copies of the self-produced CD at gigs and used it as a calling card around New York. As you’ll hear, Regen had solid jazz chops early and plays beautifully here with maturity and poise. And to have May along for the ride, how fortunate! Regen just programmed the upcoming NYC Downtown JazzFest and his album Live in London is due out later this year.

Here’s the entire album, track by track…

Jim Robitaille Trio—Sonic (Whaling City Sound). Sonic is a fascinating guitar trio album. Jim Robitaille plays guitar and guitar synthesizer and is backed by bassist Tom Casale and drummer Chris Poudrier. The record has an orchestral sound when Robitaille plays the guitar synth, and the songs are gentle fusion overall. I loved every track. To buy, go here.

Here’s the entire album, track by track…

Ted Nash, Steve Cardenas, Ben Allison—Triological (Sunnyside). Not since the Jimmy Giuffre 3 back in the late 1950s have I heard such superb jazz with this instrumental configuration. The trio features tenor saxophonist and clarinetist Ted Nash, guitarist Steve Cardenas and bassist Ben Allison. The musicians come together neatly and with finesse. Listening to the record is like overhearing a great conversation at the next table. I’d award it a Grammy now if I could. To listen and buy, go here.

Here’s See Forever…

Paulo Almeida—Love in Motion (Dox). Drummer Paulo Almeida was born in Brazil and lives in Basel, Switzerland, so you wind up with a combination of Rio samba and Alpine cool. Almeida is backed by Lorenzo Vitolo (p,synths), Josh Schofield (as,ss), Joan Codina (b) and Paulo Almeida (d,vcl,perc), plus Jorge Rossy (vib) and Lisette Spinnler (vcl). The music is heady and free jazz-y in places, but it’s rich in texture and color, and once you fall into the feel, it’s quite an adventure. To hear and buy, go here.

Here’s the entire album, track by track…

Airto Moreira has never thought small. The Brazilian percussionist has an extraordinary imagination and an outsized gift for rhythm. Rather than add flavor here and there, as most percussionists are called upon to do, he became the center of attention when he began recording as a leader in the early 1970s.

Beginning with Natural Feelings (1970), his fi…

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Resonance Records was founded by George Klabin in 2007, the year I launched JazzWax. He is co-president of the non-profit label with producer Zev Feldman. Resonance is responsible for many high-quality audio releases, most notably a long series of previously unreleased Bill Evans Trio albums. [Photo above of George Klabin]

George has a fascinating background that may not be known to many fans of the label. For example, he’s fortunate to be here. His mother escaped Austria in 1939 following the Nazi occupation in 1938 and resettled in Brazil, where she had relatives. That’s where she met George’s father.

George’s exposure to music and the gift of a Victrola at an early age led to his life-long fascination with recording technology, jazz and the bossa nova.

Here’s my email interview with George…

JazzWax: George, tell me about your early life.

George Klabin: My grandparents on my father’s side met and lived in Lithuania. They left in the late 1890s and sailed for São Paulo, Brazil, to escape the pogroms. One of their children, Mauricio, had emigrated to São Paulo several years earlier and wrote them about the many opportunities to create businesses in that country.

JW: Once in São Paulo, what did the family do?

GK: They eventually started a paper factory that opened around 1899. It was called Klabin Brothers and is today the second largest paper manufacturer in South America.

JW: And your father?

GK: My father, Samuel, was born in São Paulo in 1910. Our family name was originally Lafer, but some family members had changed it to Klabin in Lithuania. It was the name of a non-Jewish man who had died. The family thought they could evade the Czar of Lithuania’s oppression by buying Klabin’s land and taking his name. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop the Czar’s persecution.

JW: What about your mother?

GK: My Austrian mother, Gertrude “Trudy” Gleich, and her mother escaped the Nazis when she was 20 years old. Fortunately, she let go of her budding career as a movie actress ingenue, and they sailed to Brazil in 1939, settling in São Paulo. [Photo above of Trudy Gleich at age 18 in Austria, courtesy of George Klabin]

JW: Why Brazil?

GK: Several years earlier, her two older brothers had emigrated to São Paulo. By the time my mom arrived, one of her brothers, Lutz, an engineer, wanted to build a factory to produce precision ball bearings and pistons for the burgeoning Brazilian auto industry. Lutz had met my father at a party, where my father, 30, confided that he was ready to find a wife.

JW: What did Lutz do?

GK: My mother was a very beautiful and well-educated woman. Years later, I saw her in a German-language movie made in 1938. I can’t recall the name, but she had a single line. Lutz thought Sam might like Trudy, but he also had an ulterior motive.

JW: Which was?

GK: Samuel was wealthy, and Lutz wanted him to invest in his ball-bearing factory. He urged Trudy to meet him, hoping that if he liked her, they might marry. That union would lead to a factory investment. So Lutz took Trudy to meet Samuel, who fell for this beautiful blonde 20-year-old. [Photo above of Samuel Klabin, courtesy of George Klabin]

JW: She was willing?

GK: Trudy really wasn’t interested in marrying someone she barely knew. Lutz convinced her that Samuel was rich and that she would have a much better life with him, with all the money and prestige of the family name. Not having much else to choose from, and living with her mentally unstable mom in a small house in São Paulo with very little money, she agreed. They were married in 1940.

JW: Was it a good match?

GK: My mother was a very cultured, intelligent woman. Dad, on the other hand, loved to work and wasn’t well-versed in the arts or culture. When he was home, he liked to listen to sports on the radio and read newspapers.

JW: Did they remain a happy couple?

GK: In São Paulo, it was customary for wealthy men to keep an apartment for trysts. Since they never had affairs, occasional sex with paid prostitutes was acceptable in their circles. Apparently, my mother found out about the arrangement and a few years later decided on a trial separation. In 1943, she left for Manhattan and stayed at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street, where painters, writers and musicians had rooms or suites. My mother had visited New York as a teenager and loved it. While at the hotel she met the writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, who wrote the famous “Little Prince” story, and Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote “The Spoon River Anthology” poems.

JW: So your mom remained in the city?

GK: Mom soon started painting and adored New York’s culture. She didn’t want to return to Brazil. My father, however, realized what he was losing and traveled to Manhattan to convince her to repair the marriage by having a child. She reluctantly agreed and returned to Brazil. In 1945 she became pregnant with me.

JW: Where were you born?

GK: I was born on April 3, 1946 in Manhattan, because the best hospital in São Paulo had a 40% death rate for births. My mom had taken a flight to New York from São Paulo. The flight was aboard a noisy DC-3 prop plane that traveled at about 125 miles an hour. Since there wasn’t any radar for passenger airplanes yet, the plane flew beneath the clouds and landed every evening. Passengers then stayed at a hotel and resumed flying only during the day. The trip took five days.

JW: How did she gain entry to the U.S. given she was pregnant?

GK: Mom told me she sneaked me into the U.S. with a tourist visa. She was already showing a belly, but she wore a heavy mink coat to hide it. When she got to the customs clearance, the polite officer asked if she wanted to remove her coat to be more comfortable because it was rather hot. She said no thanks. Once she cleared customs, she got in a cab.

JW: Where did you live?

GK: She rented an apartment in a building on 59th Street and 7th Avenue. That red-brick building is still there. After eight months, she took me to São Paulo. She tried to make the marriage work, but it lasted only about three more years.

JW: Then she returned again to New York?

GK: Yes. We flew back and she proceeded to file for divorce. She was about 30 at the time. She had received a very nice settlement from Dad and we lived very comfortably. In return, Dad had custody of me every summer. Each June, I few down to São Paulo to stay with him and returned at the end of August, until I was 21. I learned to speak Portuguese fluently.

JW: So you were in Brazil around the time the bossa nova started?

GK: Yes, I was 12 then. I also started hearing bossa nova on Brazilian TV and radio around 1960 or ‘61, when it was becoming widely accepted as a new musical style. I recall a few pianists who played bossa, including Pedrinho Mattar, who was quite famous and had his own musical show on TV. Already a lover of modern jazz, I had a good collection of LPs at my New York home.

JW: What did you think of bossa nova?

GK: I was fascinated by the style. It combined authentic Brazilian rhythms with jazz improvisation. The Tamba Trio and the Zimbo Trio come to mind as major influences on my appreciation. I started to frequent a very large record store in downtown São Paulo called Bruno Blois. The owner named it after himself.

JW: Fun?

GK: Of course! At the time the store allowed you to select LPs and play them in special listening booths. I hung out there for hours and always purchased a few jazz and bossa nova LPs released by local Brazilian labels, featuring Brazilian musicians. I collected for eight years. When bossa nova jazz began to be recorded by American labels, I was able to buy some in New York.

JW: Where did you go to school in the U.S.?

GK: The Taft School, a private Connecticut boarding school. I graduated third in my class out of 97 kids. By then, I had started to play piano by ear and learned a few blues and other easy-to-play tunes that I practiced daily in the music department’s basement, where they had piano practice rooms. I also found friends who enjoyed the arts.

JW: What initially interested you in jazz?

GK: My first love was boogie-woogie piano. I learned a few licks to play in that style. Later, as my sophistication level grew, I listened to Erroll Garner, then Oscar Peterson and finally Bill Evans in the mid-1960s. By age 6, I was fascinated by music technology after my father gave me a windup portable Victrola when he upgraded to LPs. I also was given a bunch of 78s. The Victrola fascinated me.

JW: And how did you become fond of recording music?

GK: When the first home tape recorders were sold in the late 1950s, I was given one as a present and played around with it, recording myself as a jazz DJ and making up my own shows. By the time I was in high school, I booked jazz pianist Howard Reynolds and his trio for a concert at the Taft auditorium. I recorded it and eventually had the tape transferred to acetate. That was my first so-called record release on my Kool Jazz label.

JW: Still have it?

GK: I do. I have the acetate and my liner notes. When I got to Columbia University in 1964, I became head of the jazz radio department and had my own three-hour show, “Jazz Til Midnight,” every Sunday night on WKCR-FM, the university’s station. [Photo above of George Klabin at age 20, courtesy of George Klabin]

JW: When did your recording hobby turn serious?

GK: I started to record live jazz musicians seriously when I had my radio show in 1965. I wanted to present recordings that could only be heard on my show. I started calling musicians and offered a free copy of my recording of them if they allowed me to play it on the air just once. Most readily agreed.

JW: Who was first?

GK: Pianist Roger Kellaway, with Russell George on bass and Dave Bailey on drums. At the time, Roger was with the Clark Terry/Bob Brookmeyer Quintet and also recorded for the Impulse label. When they played The Blues and the Abstract Truth, I used the radio station’s tape recorder and mics but wasn’t totally satisfied with the result.

JW: What did you do then?

GK: I decided to purchase professional equipment and ended up with a 2-track Crown tape deck, an Ampex mixer, six very good German microphones and a pair of Beyer headphones. I could pack up all of this and transport the gear anywhere easily.

JW: What did you do?

GK: I started recording musicians on Sundays at the Wollman Auditorium at Columbia. It has since been torn down and replaced. On stage, they had a gorgeous nine-foot Steinway concert grand that was always tuned. I could sign up to utilize the concert hall stage for recordings. After a while, I got a reputation for doing these free recordings and even had musicians ask me to record them in concert, for which I charged $50 to $100—good money in the mid-1960s. The rent on my apartment was about $400 a month and milk was 25 cents a quart.

JW: Over time, what happened?

GK: I recorded a wide range of jazz greats in the auditorium for my shows. I also taped with permission at venues such as New York’s Village Vanguard and Town Hall.

JW: Who were some of the musicians you taped?

GK: Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, Gary Burton, Ran Blake, Freddie Hubbard, Sheila Jordan, the Frank Foster Big Band and Bill Evans. I released our Top of the Gate recording of the Bill Evans Trio on Resonance in 2012. Eventually, in 1966, I taped the opening night of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Band at the Vanguard, which I released on Resonance Records in 2016.

JW: Who took you under his or her wing?

GK: I didn’t have any real mentor in my career. I was self-taught. I started Resonance Records in 2007 as a division of Rising Jazz Stars Inc., which had launched a few years earlier to produce live jazz concerts in the Los Angeles area at my studio/performance center. I liked the word “resonance.” Everything that exists has a resonance. It means life, rather than stagnant death. I didn’t want to make a profit on the business, so I filed for non-profit status.

JW: Still involved with radio?

GK: I am. Each week, I produce a 90-minute show called The Heart of Brazil. The shows are posted at our Resonance Records YouTube page. They will remain there for posterity. [To listen, go here and scroll down to “For You,” which allows you to scroll horizontally and see the episodes. To listen to Show #1, go here.

JW: What were your first Resonance releases?

GK: They were CDs released in 2008—one by singer Cathy Rocco called You’re Gonna Hear From Me, and one by pianist Mike Garson called Conversations With My Family. I think of the label as a jazz museum and our recordings as musical versions of important artistic paintings that hang on a wall. We feel we are preserving jazz’s history and the legacy of seminal musicians who played modern jazz. We also record today’s best jazz musicians, such as pianists Tamir Hendelman and Josh Nelson, clarinetist Eddie Daniels and so many others.

JW: A life well lived?

GK: Not bad at all. I’m very lucky my mother made it out of Nazi Germany when she did and that her brothers had left for Brazil years earlier. Otherwise, she never would have met my father.

[Here’s George Klabin’s recording of Bill Evans: Live at Art D’Lugoff’s Top of the Gate on Oct. 23, 1968, with Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums]…

For those of you who don’t know what AI is and why it’s important, neither do I. Then again, my only interaction with artificial intelligence is with ChatGPT and Google’s AI functionality. In short, when you type in a question, ChatGPT and Google AI reaches into the galaxy of all information to produce a concise answer. Remarkable, really.

Now the dark …

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I’m sure you’ve seen Jazz on a Summer’s Day, the 1959 documentary directed by Aram Avakian and Bert Stern, and filmed at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. The color feature was a breakthrough for jazz. For the first time, audiences were given a vivid taste of what top jazz talent looked and sounded like in a bucolic setting.

I’m also betting that you’ve …

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I don’t know how Jordi Pujol of Fresh Sound Records in Barcelona does it, but he’s done it again. As part of his “Rare and Obscure Jazz Albums” series, he has just issued a superb two-fer.

This release shows yet again what a blessing Jordi has been, preserving the music’s expansive post-war catalog. Most other established U.S. labels have all but forgotten or ignored jazz beyond Miles, Duke and Louis.

The new single CD from Fresh Sound features the Bob Tulley Quintet and the Hall Daniels Septet. I’m not ashamed to admit that trumpeter Bob Tulley is new to me, probably because he recorded just one album—this one in 1954—and then disappeared from jazz discographies.

The other LP on the CD is by trumpeter Hall Daniels, who I do know, having posted in the past on Nash-ville: Zoot Sims/Dick Nash Octet. What I didn’t know until now, however, is that these tracks were originally for a Daniels-led date for a 10-inch LP on Jump Records. It was retitled Zoot Sims/Dick Nash for its 12-inch re-release with alternate tracks. As we know, familiar names pull in more buyers.

Recorded for Skylark Records in Hollywood over two days in August 1954, the Bob Tulley Quintet featured Bob Tulley (tp), Nash Maez (ts), Hunky Page (p), Paul Binnings (b) and Hank Milo (d). What’s most interesting about the eight tracks is that they were arranged by Willie Maiden.

Maiden, of course, is best known for his playing and arranging for Maynard Ferguson’s big bands in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. His very first recording as an alto saxophonist was on Perez Prado’s 1955 LP The Voodoo Suite. Who was he sitting next to in the band? Nash Maez, also on alto.

Even more interesting for Ferguson fans is that Maiden’s arrangements of Jeepers Creepers and Imagination for Tulley sound almost like demos for his charts of the same songs on Ferguson’s Boy With Lots of Brass in 1957. While the Jeepers Creepers arrangement of the Ferguson album was originally credited to Al Cohn, my guess is that this was an error and that Maiden handled it given the Tulley tracks.

All of Maiden’s arrangements here are terrific. The same goes for the playing. Tulley had a West Coast meets Miles Davis style on trumpet, while Maez sails along on tenor like Bill Holman. According to the original liner notes, the entire quintet was working with Ferguson at the time on live dates. One big happy family.

The tracks:

• Aladdin’s Dilemma (Bob Tulley)

• Jeepers Creepers

• Imagination

• Jazz Mambo (Bob Tulley)

• Jaywalker (Bob Tulley)

• Mood Indigo

• Skylark

• Midnight Romp (Bob Tulley)

Overall, the arrangements and playing are top-shelf examples of early West Coast jazz. That means lots of counterpoint and a laid back feel. You can really feel the warm, salty air coming off the Pacific and smell the ocean and pier pilings here. Given how good the album is, I can’t help but wonder why Tulley never recorded jazz again.

To buy, go here.

To listen, go here.

Here’s the Bob Tulley Quintet playing Jeepers Creepers with Maiden’s arrangement…

Here’s the Maynard Ferguson band’s 1957 rendition with Maiden’s arrangement…

Here’s Maiden’s arrangement of Imagination, featuring Irene Kral on her first big band date…

And here’s the Ferguson band playing Maiden’s chart, with Maiden taking the alto saxophone solo…

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Manny Albam was a New York jazz orchestral master. Today, sadly, his name and the popularity of his standout leadership albums are fading, which is unfortunate. They swing and are superb.

The musicians who who made their living recording primarily in New York remembered Albam fondly when I interviewed them in the 2000s. Hal McCusick, Bob Brookmeyer, So…

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In 1960, pianist Oscar Peterson was in the fourth of his many remarkable career peaks. There was the early duet peak for Clef/Mercury (1949-1951), the first trio peak for Clef/Mercury (1951-1953), the 1950s classic 12-inch trio peak for Verve and the touring trio recordings of the late 1950s and the early 1960s.

The year 1960 has long included a sizable gap in the discography of Peterson, Ray Brown (b) and Ed Thigpen (d). In March and April they toured extensively in Europe. In July they performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and then Baker’s Keyboard Lounge in Detroit. By then, Peterson was one of jazz’s most acclaimed and in-demand live trio performers and as fluid as can be.

Yet for years, the Baker’s Keyboard live performance tracks appeared in the Oscar Peterson Trio’s discography as “unissued” and the tapes simply sat in Verve’s vaults. It’s unclear why that was the case. Now, Verve has finally issued the complete 27 tracks recorded on April 19, 1960 as The Oscar Peterson Trio: Live at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge: The Complete Recordings. It’s quite a marvelous set.

Opened in 1934, Baker’s Keyboard Lounge sits at 20510 Livernois Ave. in Detroit and is considered the world’s oldest continuously operating jazz club. Yep, it’s still hosting artists today.

Founded by Francis Baker, the location began as a beer-and-sandwich restaurant in May 1934. After his father Francis’s stroke in 1939, Clarence Baker (1910-2003) took over management and turned it into a jazz club.

When the workload became overwhelming for him in 1996, he sold the venue to ex-bar owner Juanita Jackson, formerly of Juanita’s Lounge in northwest Detroit, and her partner, John Colbert. Then Hugh W. Smith and Eric J. Whitaker bought the club in February 2011.

In the early 1950s, Art Tatum reportedly picked out the club’s seven-foot Steinway that to this day gets tuned every week. Also in the 1950s, interior designer Blain Ford crafted the famous keyboard-shaped bar. A more in-depth look at the historic club’s evolution and design can be found here.

What sets this Peterson touring period apart is the pianist’s relaxed and steady pace. Thanks to the rhythmic guardrails created by Brown and Thigpen, Peterson works calmly, without overdoing his signature flourishes.

Later in the 1960s, he would begin what I call his rococo phase, when tempos increased and his piano playing became heavier and loaded with knotty fireworks. For me, that approach is exciting for a track or two before the layers of runs and his glissandi become oppressive. Not always, of course, but often.

On the Baker’s Lounge recording, Peterson isn’t darting here and there; his approach shows off plenty of technique, but it’s also one that the ear, brain and heart can absorb effortlessly. Pure joy.

Oscar Peterson died in 2007 at age 82.

The Oscar Peterson Trio: Live at Baker’s Keyboard Lounge is available in multiple formats: The complete recordings are on vinyl (three LPs), as a digital download and streaming. There also is a single LP with nine tracks and a single CD with eight tracks. You’ll find the formats here.

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