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Dear Old Ystad
A new three-day jazz event joins the roster of festivals that enliven Europe each summer. A musician heads this one. The Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren is organizing an early August festival in his hometown, the historic seaside village of Ystad. In addition to Lundgren's trio, the headliners include Benny Golson, Toots Thielemans, Richard Galliano, ...
Correspondence: On Harvey Pekar
Rifftides reader Allen Mezquida writes: It seems that Pekar had a greater perception about jazz than many musicians I know. He listened with a rich open mind and a big heart. I created this animation for him. It was finished about a week before he died. Allen Mezquida animates ...
Harvey Pekar, Jazz Critic
Harvey Pekar died this week at the age of 70. He will, inevitably, be more widely remembered for his seriously adult American Splendor comics and the movie they inspired than for his jazz criticism. As a writer about music he was—no surprise—eccentric and uneven but at his best wrote with precision and frankness about what he ...
Brubeck and Company in Belgium, Part 4
More or less from the beginning of their association, Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond had an affinity for blues in minor keys. Three that achieved success to the point of indelible identification with them were “Balcony Rock," first recorded in Jazz Goes To College (1954), the same theme recycled as “Audrey" for Brubeck Time (1956), and ...
Listening Tip: Gene Lees
Bill Kirchner writes: Recently, I taped my next one-hour show for the “Jazz From The Archives" series. Presented by the Institute of Jazz Studies, the series runs every Sunday on WBGO-FM (88.3). Gene Lees (1928-2010) was one of jazz's foremost essayists and biographers. And he wrote liner notes for a number of classic jazz ...
Brubeck and Company in Belgium, Part 3
From a DBQ television appearance in Europe, we have the piece that served as the quartet's concert opener for more than a decade. First, a couple of observations, one from me, one from Eugene Wright: From me: Whoever decreed that white men can't play the blues never really listened to Desmond and Brubeck personalize the idiom ...
Joya Sherrill
Joya Sherrill, the singer who died in late June at the age of 85, joined Duke Ellington and his Orchestra in 1942 following her high school graduation. One of her features through the mid-forties was the Billy Strayhorn-Rex Stewart collaboration “Kissing Bug." The song received a good deal of radio air play and in its V-disc ...
Brubeck and Company in Belgium, Part 1
Concert videos from out of the past continue to materialize on the internet. Recent emanations include several pieces from a 1964 appearance in Belgium by the classic Dave Brubeck Quartet. The excellent picture and sound quality and the absence of applause suggest that the performances were in a television broadcast. Over the next few days, we ...
Recent Listening: Dr. Lonnie Smith
Dr. Lonnie Smith, Spiral (Palmetto). Smith is a doctor in the same way that Captain Beefheart is a captain, but I'm willing to concede him the title because he knows how to make you feel good. Of the generation of post-bop organists who followed Jimmy Smith, he survived his near-namesake Lonnie Liston Smith, Don Patterson, Jimmy ...
