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Correspondence: Frishberg on Dearie and Evans
Dave Frishberg writes with important information on a matter raised in the previous entry.I'm reading the Rifftides discussion about Blossom Dearie and Bill Evans, and who influenced who. I'd like to add my comment: During the late sixties I played a couple weeks solo opposite the Bill Evans Trio at the Village Gate on Bleecker ...
Blossom Dearie
When Blossom Dearie died at 82 over the weekend, we lost a brilliant musician whose subtle artistry and private nature conspired to limit her popularity. There was nothing about her “teacup voice," as Whitney Balliett described it, or her sophisticated harmonic sense at the piano that could have led to mass adoration. Nonetheless, for decades she ...
Troubling Coverups
In the act of playing music, it is impossible to separate the process from the product. Or, it was. In an important piece of journalism, Eric Felten turns a floodlight on the technological airbrushing of live performances in an effort to insure perfection. Felten's Wall Street Journal essay emphasizes that two recent massive public events in ...
Hard Bop, Continued
Response to the Rifftides post on hard bop has created a lively discussion. You can read the comments here. In addition to the Savoy CD called Hard Bop that was, more or less, the focus of the piece, the commenters mention or allude to other albums. If you're thinking of expanding the hard bop (if there ...
Correspondence: Hard Bop
Rifftides reader and occasional correspondent Red Colm O'Sullivan writes from Ireland (where else, with a name like that?):And here's another frequently used term that has no meaning whatsoever: “Hard Bop". I have NO IDEA what that MEANS (as opposed to supposed to mean). That brought to mind something I wrote for a 2000 compilation ...
Recent Listening: Hendelman, Shaw, Dial-Roche
In a posting a few months ago, I outlined the problem that all who write about music must face: keeping up. Nothing has changed, except that more CDs than ever are stacked throughout the office and music room. A colleague says he told a caller demanding to know when his album would be reviewed that his ...
Recent Listening: Aaron Irwin
Aaron Irwin Group, Blood and Thunder (Fresh Sound New Talent). In a tray card photograph, we see the 30-year-old alto saxophonist drinking a glass of milk and looking about eighteen. Irwin's compositions and arrangements have a concomitant freshness about them, and resourcefulness. His writing tends to make his quintet sound bigger. There is no piano; Ben ...
Hank Crawford
Hank Crawford, another of the cadre of Ray Charles saxophonists who went on to their own fame, died on January 29. David “Fathead" Newman and Leroy “Hog" Cooper, Crawford's colleagues in the Charles band, died earlier last month. Crawford's alto, Newman's tenor and Cooper's baritone saxophones were integral to Charles's big band in the 1950s and ...
Recent Listening: Tom Harrell
CD: Tom Harrell, Prana Dance (High Note) The economy, lyricism and ingenuity in Tom Harrell's writing and his trumpet and flugelhorn playing make him one of the most admired musicians in jazz. Not only his contemporaries, but also musicians of younger and older generations are in awe of Harrell's musicianship. When he was a member ...
Armstrong Park Redivivus
As New Orleans makes its slow way back from the devastation of hurricane Katrina and the fumbling federal and state crisis response, there are rays of hope on the cultural front. The jazz journalist Larry Blumenfeld, who has become a semi-permanent New Orleans resident, writes about it in The Wall Street Journal.Once alight with bulbs ...
