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Herb Ellis, 1921-2010
Herb Ellis died last night at home in Los Angeles. He was 88 years old and had Alzheimer's disease. Ellis was most celebrated for his guitar playing with the Oscar Peterson Trio that also included bassist Ray Brown. For more than half a century, he was one of a handful of guitarists recognized as masters of ...
Aren't You Triply Glad You're You?
Skipping along through 65 years of the history of a superior popular song gives us an idea of its evolution as a subject for jazz improvisation. Indeed, our examples provide an idea how jazz improvisation itself has evolved. The song is Johnny Burke's (words) and Jimmy Van Heusen's (music) “Aren't You Glad You're You?" As Father ...
Bernstein and Schuller in the Third Stream
"Third Stream" seems a quaint term nearly half a century after it kicked up a bit of a fuss in jazz and classical circles. Still, it never quite goes away, as the recent Eric Dolphy posting reminded me. Two of the names that remain associated with the movement are Gunther Schuller and Leonard Bernstein. Several years ...
Onward with Ruth Price
Even before the recession, the business side of jazz was struggling. During the worst of the downturn, singer and nonprofit entrepreneur Ruth Price took a double hit when her Jazz Bakery lost its lease. The club is still looking for a home. Reporter Greg Burk tells the story in today's Los Angeles Times. The Jazz Bakery ...
Rebecca Kilgore and PDXV in Concert
Rebecca Kilgore is a singer specializing, although not exclusively, in classic songs of the middle decades of the twentieth century. She loves Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser, Burke & Van Heusen, Dorothy Fields, Cole Porter, Dennis & Adair, Johnny Mercer, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller. Dick Titterington, Kilgore's husband, is a trumpeter who leads a post-bop quintet. Much ...
Correspondence: Jamil Nasser's Memorial
There was a memorial service Sunday night in New York for the bassist Jamil Nasser, who died last month. Among those in attendance was pianist, composer and writer Jill McManus, who sent Rifftides a report. There was a sizable crowd at Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan on the evening of March 21st to honor and remember ...
Jamil Nasser with Eric Dolphy
In a rare instance of Jamil Nasser on video, the clip below shows him performing with alto saxophonist Eric Dolphy in Berlin in 196l. Benny Bailey is the trumpeter, Pepsy Auer the pianist and Buster Smith the drummer. The piece is Dolphy's “245" from his 1960 Prestige album Outward Bound.
Other Places: A Brubeck Jazz Profile
On his excellent blog, Jazz Profiles, Steve Cerra's new subject is Dave Brubeck. He is taking for his text the extensive booklet notes I wrote for the four-CD Brubeck box called Time Signatures: A Career Retrospecitve. When it popped up today, I read the essay for the first time in years. To adapt what Paul Desmond ...
Out of the Rifftides Past: David Newman
Now and then the Rifftides staff rummages through the archives, wondering what was on the blog early in its history. Yesterday we found a review from four years ago, to the day. It discusses an album by a musician whose death in January, 2009 gives the last line poignancy we could not have anticipated when the ...
Catching up with Jovino Santos Neto
For 15 years before he moved to the US from his native Brazil in 1993, Jovino Santos Neto was the pianist and arranger for Hermeto Pascoal, whom Miles Davis is said to have called, “the most impressive musician in the world." Santos Neto lives and teaches in Seattle and travels to Brazil frequently, keeping up with ...
