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Results for "Rifftides by Doug Ramsey"
Getz and Sauter: Focus, the Video
A recent discussion among jazz researchers disclosed what to many of us was news, that there exists video of Stan Getz and Eddie Sauter performing portions of Focus. There has never been anything else quite like the 1961 Verve album of Getz soloing over, around and inside Sauter's dazzling score for orchestra. Getz was widely quoted ...
The Shearing Sound Revived
Riding on the popularity of its late mentor, a new jazz group's low profile may be about to get higher. A year or so before he died early this year, pianist George Shearing gave his blessing to vibraharpist Charlie Shoemake's idea of forming a living tribute to Shearing's quintet, for decades one of the most successful ...
Jeff Sultanof on Pete Rugolo
Shortly after Pete Rugolo died this week, Jeff Sultanof offered to contribute a piece putting Rugolo's work in perspective. I was delighted to accept and flattered that he considered Rifftides the proper place for his essay. Jeff is a native of New York City, where he lives and works. He is a composer, orchestrator, editor, educator ...
Recent Listening: Marcus Strickland
Marcus Strickland, Triumph of the Heavy (SMK). In the liner notes, saxophonist Strickland writes, “Playing for a live audience heightens the adrenaline; you don't have the luxury of correcting mistakes. It puts you on a high wire." The second of the album's two CDs, a club recording, captures his trio's risk-taking and underlines the influence of ...
Pete Rugolo, 1915-2011
Pete Rugolo has died in Los Angeles at the age of 95. Rugolo's composing and arranging, particularly for the Stan Kenton Orchestra,had much to do in the 1940s and '50s with the creation of what came to be called progressive jazz. As a discoverer of talent and as a producer, he was responsible for recording a ...
Recent Listening: Cecilia Coleman
Cecelia Coleman Big Band, Oh Boy! (PandaKat). Before she moved to New York 13 years ago, Coleman established a solid reputation as a pianist and arranger in her native southern California. Studies with Charlie Shoemake and Tom Kubis provided a solid theoretical foundation for imaginative charts that she wrote for a variety of small groups she ...
Recent Listening: Fruscella and Moore
Tony Fruscella & Brew Moore, The 1954 Unissued Atlantic Session (Fresh Sound). Fruscella was an enigmatic trumpeter with a deeply personal style, Moore a tenor saxophonist who once said that anyone who didn't play like Lester Young was wrong. At a time when Dizzy Gillespie's fiery playing was the general model, Fruscella was one of a ...
For Fun: Weiss, Most and Co.
Mort Weiss identified himself in a comment here as “the world's greatest out-of-work Jewish bebop clarinetist." That may be, but he found work one night not long ago at Steamers jazz club in the Los Angeles area. Weiss led a band with Sam Most, tenor sax and flute; Ron Eschete, guitar; Luther Hughes, bass; and Roy ...
Frank Driggs, 1930-2011
Frank Driggs, a tireless jazz researcher and historian who collected photographs familiar to millions, died this week at the age of 81. In the1950s as a producer for Columbia Records, Driggs oversaw the organizing and reissuing of historically important recordings by Billie Holiday, Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington and Gene Krupa. In 1991, he won a Grammy ...
Gerry Mulligan's "Jazz America"
Gerry Mulligan, Jazz America (MVD Visual). The film's opening alternates clips of Mulligan smiling, playing his baritone sax and speaking. That brief documentary sequence establishes the good feeling that prevails in this 1981 performance at Eric's, a New York club. From there on, it's all music. Mulligan's rhythm section—pianist Harold Danko, bassist Frank Luther, drummer Billy ...
