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Dick Vartanian’s Little Book
Dick Vartanian, a trumpet player, was one of many San Francisco jazzmen who served in World War Two and returned home to see if they could make a living playing music. He and a clarinetist, Paul Breitenfeld, had become good friends at Polytechnic High School. The war behind them, the young Army veterans attended San Francisco ...
Rare Nick Travis Performance
Nick Travis (1925-1964) played trumpet in a variety of big bands including those of Woody Herman, Ray McKinley, Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Ina Ray Hutton and Jerry Wald; all of those in the 1940s. The list got longer in the ‘50s, when he worked with Herman again, and with Jerry Gray, Bob Chester, Elliott Lawrence, Jimmy ...
Recent Listening: Kenton Alums, Coltrane, Mraz, Among Others
Stan Kenton Alumni Band, Road Scholars (Summit) Before he died, Stan Kenton ruled that there would never be a Kenton ghost band. Nor has there been. Still, 35 years after his death there is considerable demand for the expansive Kenton approach. The 18-piece road band led by former Kenton trumpeter Mike Vax goes a long way ...
Ward Swingle, 1927-2015
Ward Swingle, who founded a vocal group that melded J.S. Bach with bebop rhythm and scat singing, died on Monday in Eastbourne, England. He was 87. The announcement came from the Swingles, successor to the Swingle Singers, many of whose albums were best sellers in the US and Europe in the 1960s. Born in Alabama, Mr. ...
New Red Garland, After All These Years
Red Garland, Swingin’ on the Korner: Live At Keystone Korner (Elemental) A new Red Garland album: a nice surprise from a time just after the pianist released himself from self-imposed isolation. Garland made his name as a member of the seminal 1950s Miles Davis Quintet that also included tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, bassist Paul Chambers and ...
Charlie Haden Memorial On Tuesday
A memorial service for Charlie Haden, who died last July, is set for this week in New York City. Here is the poster. For a reminder of what keeps Haden in the memories of all those distinguished musicians, here is “First Song” performed with his Quartet West: Haden, bass; Alan Broadbent, piano; Gary Foster, tenor saxophone; ...
Monday Recommendation: Edward Simon
Edward Simon, Venezuelan Suite (Sunnyside) Few jazz albums have been devoted to the music of Venezuela. Victor Feldman’s superb The Venezuelan Joropo (1967) was an exception. Latin musicians were impressed with the authenticity that Feldman achieved using Los Angeles colleagues to interpret traditional Venezuelan music. When it comes to authenticity, however, Edward Simon has an advantage. ...
Passings: DeFranco, Benford, Belletto
The past seven days have seen the deaths of three musicians who came to prominence as young men and had long careers in the swing, bebop and post-bop eras. Buddy DeFranco, who in the 1940s was the first to successfully adapt the clarinet to the complexities of bebop, died the day before Christmas at age 91. ...
Recent Listening In Brief…
Frank Zappa (1940-1993), a gifted musician who dipped his toe into jazz, never demonstrated more than a smidgeon of what he knew about the genre. But he left us with the memorable observation, “Jazz isn’t dead. It just smells funny.” A web search shows that lesser wits have adapted Zappa’s line to all kinds of topics ...
Recent Listening, Vinyly: Broadbent, Lowe, Horvitz, Chemical Clock, Kanda
Once during a listening session, I apologized to Paul Desmond for the pops and scratches on a worn LP. “I don’t care if it’s on a cellophane strip,” he said, “ as long as I can hear what everybody is doing.” When it comes to sound quality, high-end audio perfectionists tend to be more demanding than ...
