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Elliott Carter, 1908-2012
Elliott Carter went his own way writing music that was often difficult to play and, for many audiences, difficult to hear. Eventually, he captured listeners and became one of the most honored American composers. Carter died yesterday in New York at 103 in the Greenwich Village apartment where he had lived since the 1940s. In an ...
Clifford Brown, 1930-1956
Today is the 82nd anniversary of Clifford Brown’s birth. Here is what I wrote in Rifftides on June 26, 2006, half a century following his death. Fifty years ago today at The Seattle Times, as I ripped copy from the wire machines my eye went to a story in the latest Associated Press national split. A ...
Remembering Anita O'Day on Her Birthday
Anita O’Day was in Chicago born 93 years ago today. From my notes for the 2009 O’Day Jazz Icons DVD, this is a summary of her importance: Anita O’Day was the last of the great female jazz vocalists who emerged in the swing era. She survived Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee and Carmen McRae. She ...
Start Your Week with Hampton Hawes
By the time Hampton Hawes' third trio album appeared, his piano playing had me in thrall. I was so taken with the LP’s cover that I traced its portrait of an alligator transported by music, inked in the outline, colored the gator with an Asparagus green Crayola and framed the copy. I have been carting it ...
Von Freeman, 1922-2012
Von Freeman had everything it took to be a world-famous tenor saxophonist. He chose, instead, to remain in his native Chicago for his entire career. Appearances at a few jazz festivals in the US and abroad were the main exceptions. Freeman’s death on August 11 was announced today. He would have been 89 on October 3. ...
Three Swedish Tenors
The 250 listeners of a certain age who filled Per Helsas gård on Friday got what they came for—reassurance that solid mainstream jazz is alive and well in Sweden. The courtyard surrounded by venerable half-timbered buildings rang with the brawny music of three of the country’s best-known tenor saxophonists, Nisse Sandström, Krister Andersson and Bernt Rosengren ...
Recent Listening in Brief: Quincy Jones
Preparing for my public conversation with Quincy Jones (two items down), I’ve been reading his 2001 autobiography, chatting with people he knows and listening to his music. The inventiveness, sparkle and audacity of Jones’ arrangements in the 1950s and early ‘60s gave his music freshness that was notable when he was in his twenties. Now that ...
"Solar" (Davis) or "Sonny" (Wayne)?
A long-running discussion (or argument) about the authorship of a major jazz tune may have been resolved once and for all. The tune is “Solar,” copyrighted in 1963 with name of Miles Davis as composer, nearly a decade after he recorded it. It is a 12-bar piece based, with certain departures, on the harmonic structure of ...
Encore: America the Beautiful, Eddie Higgins
Two years ago on July 4, we presented this performance by the late Eddie Higgins. When it didn’t appear in 2011, we heard from disappointed Rifftides readers. Perhaps we should establish it as an Independence Day tradition. We’ll make up for last year’s oversight by bringing on Mr. Higgins a day early. Happy birthday, United States ...
Herbert L. Clarke on Jazz
In 1921, 16-year-old trumpet student Elden E. Benge of Winterset, Iowa, wrote a letter to Herbert L. Clarke (pictured, right), asking advice. Clarke (1867-1945) was the most celebrated cornet soloist of his day, a veteran of John Phillip Sousa’s band and leader of his own concert bands. His recordings of marches and adaptations of classical pieces ...
