Straight, No Chaser - January 27 Picks

Straight, No Chaser - The New Music Hour
with Ed Blanco and Mark Hayes
every other Saturday from 8:00-9:00 am
on 88.9 FM in Miami
and www.seriousjazz.org

Song, Album, Artist

Marmelada,” The Bias Project, Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes
The debut album of Brazilian-born bassist Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes is dedicated to the music of Mingus, Coltrane, Parker, Evans, Hubbard and Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal. A burner of a CD with no samba here. (Ed's pick)

“Al Dar Gazelli,” Finn Peters, Su-Ling
Saxophonist and flutist Finn Peters brings a diverse mix of musicians and styles to this release. Steeped in both Brazilian sounds and DJ culture, Peters has appeared on scores of records for other musicians before releasing this, his second album. In 1999, Peters won London Young Jazz musician award, and his eclectic approach and experience comes through. (Mark's pick)

“Lisa,” Second Helping, Luther Hughes & the Cannonball-Coltrane Project
A scorcher of an album from West coast bassist Luther Hughes and his Cannonball-Coltrane Project which includes tenor man Glenn Cashman, Bruce Babad on the alto, pianist Ed Czach and Paul Kreibich on the drums, paying homage to the music of John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderly. (Ed's pick)

“Paths Unknown,” Vector Trio, Paths Unknown
Drums, trumpet, and fretless bass – along with electronic loops and a thoughtful, restrained use of digital effects – combine for uniquely spacey and funky sound that is full of surprises and fascinating textures and tones. An innovative group of experienced musicians who know what they're doing. (Mark's pick)

“Fools Rush In,” My Take, Chuck Bergeron
the latest release from Miami’s own bassist extraordinaire Chuck Bergeron featuring the great baritone vocals of Kevin Mahogany with pianist Phil Strange and New York sideman and member of the Maria Schnieder Big Band, saxophonist Charlie Pillow. (Ed's pick)

“The Fundamentals,” Theo Croker, The Fundamentals
While still in his early 20s, Croker has demonstrated his ability as a trumpeter, composer, and bandleader on this recording debut. Though he might still have some development to make as a player, all the elements of a fine musical intelligence are evident from the first note. (Mark's pick)

“Shangri-La.” Once In A Lifetime, The German HR Big Band
This release captures a lively recording session of the German hr Big Band featuring drummer Jeff Hamilton (Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra) and the Hammond B3 wizardry of Joey DeFrancesco who takes center stage on this disc. (Ed's pick)

“Hydroplaining,” Rodolfo Zuniga Quintet, Premonitions
Drummer and bandleader Zuniga has assembled a group of young players with a confident, distinctive sound. Based in Miami but quickly building a reputation in the US and in Central America, tenor, trombone, guitar and bass join the drummer in creating a blend of stylish, intelligent jazz. (Mark's pick)

Next show on February 10

Visit Ed Blanco's page on All About Jazz

Early Jazz Weekend - Playlist - Sunday

Song, Artist, Album

Offspring, John Scofield, Uberjam
Chubb Sub, Medeski Martin and Wood, Friday Afternoon in the Universe
Dusty McNugget, Brad Mehldau, Largo
Swiss Cheese D, Ben Allison & Medicine Wheel, Riding the Nuclear Tiger
Where's the Moment?, Action Figure Party, Action Figure Party
Big Eater, The Bad Plus, These Are the Vistas
Summer Pudding, Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet, Husky
Big'Uns Get the Ball Rolling, Stanton Moore, III
Temporary Enrollment, Rodolfo Zuniga Quintet, Premonitions
Annie Laurie, Jimmy Forrest with Shirley Scott, Heart of the Forrest
Bolo Blues, Jimmy Forrest, Out of the Forrest
Dance of the Octopus, Gary Burton, For Hamp, Red, Bags, and Cal
Portsmouth Figurations, Gary Burton Quartet, Duster
A Few Good Notes, Bob Mintzer Quartet, Quality Time
Runferyerlife, Bob Mintzer Big Band, Old School: New Lessons
Felonius Thunk, Bob Moses, Time Stood Still
Bright Size Life, Pat Metheny, Bright Size Life
He Said What?, Russell Malone, Live at the Jazz Standard, Volume 1
Blue in Green, Bill Evans, Portrait in Jazz
Blues for the Orient, Yusef Lateef, Eastern Sounds
Bessie's Blues, John Coltrane Quartet, Crescent
House Arrest Blues, Willie Pooch, Funk-n-Blues
Dying Crapshooter Blues, Blind Willie McTell, Original Blues Classics (Bluesville)
One Steady Roll, Bob Brozman, Blues Reflex
Fara, Ali Farka Toure, Savane
Mercy On My Soul, Earl Gaines, Don't Take My Kindness for a Weakness
Get It Right, Joe Louis Walker, Blues of the Month Club
The Torch of the Blues, Ronnie Baker Brooks, The Torch

Early Jazz Weekend - Playlist - Saturday

Song, Artist, Album

Stablemates, Jeff Antoniuk and the Jazz Update, Here Today
Series of One, Dominique Eade & Jed Wilson, Open
'Round Midnight, Charles Tolliver Big Band, With Love
Manoir Des Mes Reves, Django Reinhardt, The Best of. . . (Blue Note)
Corcovado, Sarah Vaughan, The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook
Night and Day, Stephane Grappelli, Live at the Blue Note
Django's Tiger, Django Reinhardt, The Best of. . . (Blue Note)
How Insensitive, Wes Montgomery, The Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook
Air Mail Special, Jay Hoggard, Swing 'Em Gates
I'm Tore Down, Freddie King, The Very Best of. . . (Collectibles)
Woke Up This Morning, Big Time Sarah & The BTS Express, Blues in the Year One-D-One
Red House, Jimi Hendrix, Kiss the Sky
It's The Truth, Oscar Jordan, Mr. Bad Luck
Catfish Blues, Robert Petway, Martin Scorsese Presents. . .
Five Long Years, Carey & Lurie Bell, Second Nature
Gonna Ball Tonight, Mighty Lester, We Are Mighty Lester
Gristle, Carol Fran & Clarence Hollimon, Soul Sensation
Farther Up The Road, Bobby Blue Bland, Greatest Hits V1 - The Duke Recordings
Henry's Shuffle, Canned Heat, The Very Best of. . . (Capitol)
Stand Alone, Kelly Richey Band, Speechless
A Little Meat on the Side, Katie Webster, No Foolin!
Where Is She?, The Beat Daddys, Five Moons

This Week. . .

The blog here has been rolling along nicely -- I try to post reviews or commentary or playlists there at least five times a week. Be sure to check for fresh content or set up your feed. There's a link for Feedburner here.

This week's feature (Friday at 7:06 pm on 88.9 FM or www.seriousjazz.org) is a rebroadcast of "Recovery from Oil Addiction - The 12-Step Program." Some of you might have read this commentary already, but that last time it was broadcast, we had a lot of response. In light of the State of the Union address this week, we're going to run it again. Fresh PN next week!

On Saturday's Early Jazz Weekend (6 to 9 am) we'll be starting off with the Big Six Blues, followed by a little love to this week's birthday boys Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grapelli, and Antonio Carlos Jobim. At 8:00, Ed Blanco will join me for the latest installment of Straight, No Chaser. We'll be listening to new jazz from around the country and around the world.

On Sunday, EJW will have the usual blues set (but in a more mellow mode), followed by tunes from Gary Burton, Jimmy Forrest, Bob Mintzer, and Bob Moses. This should be an eclectic show, and we'll finish up the last half hour with some funk.

Next week, I'll be appearing on Flak Radio (http://www.flakmag.com/podcast/radio.html) to talk about the Superbowl's coming to South Florida. Flak Radio is a regular podcast you can get from iTunes. I have no idea what I'm going to say -- it should be fun to have the guys at Flak tear me apart!

Peace,

Mark H

Understanding Jazz: Ways To Listen

Broadcast November 2005

Although relatively young as national cultural institutions are concerned, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, under the direction of Wynton Marsalis, has become the major force in the promotion of and education about the art of jazz. Whether it’s the Center’s the weekly radio program, or its PBS specials, or the regular recordings by its groups, or the innovative compositions it underwrites, or the many concerts and events it hosts up there in its home at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, JALC commands a vast array of cultural and financial resources for a non-profit arts organization.

It is not surprising, then, that the Center has produced a new book about the music, entitled Understanding Jazz: Ways To Listen, is a fine introduction for non-musicians as to how to understand some of what jazz musicians are doing in the midst of a live performance. Beginning with the sometimes paradoxical relationship of the individual soloist to the group – which Piazza explains as the relationship between foreground and background – the reader is taken through the basics, so to speak, of how to listen. Piazza clearly explains, for the lay listener, how the blues and other song forms are structured, as well as how musicians improvise in relationship to those forms and tell a story.

Piazza is most effective in his discussion of rhythm, of time, and of that elusive element known as swing:

“Picture the arc of a common playground swing,” he writes. “Once you get into a regular rhythm on the swing, the amount of time it takes to get from one end of the arc and then back will be the same each time. But your actual speed as you traverse the arc is not constant; in fact, there is a curve of acceleration and deceleration – a speeding-up on the downward motion and a slowing on the upward part.... In a jazz performance,” Piazza continues, "while every bar of music should take the same amount of ‘clock time’ – fill the same period – within those bars and groups of bars there is a constant sense of respiration, of infinitesimal accelerations and decelerations in the actual playing, even though the background pulse, the tempo, remains constant. A large part of the music’s meaning comes from playing with time, this sense of being able to operate flexibly, accurately, and freely within the implied lockstep of chronology—an affirmation, in fact, of the living body against the dead abstraction of time.”

This is all interesting and useful explanation, made all the more interesting and useful because the musical explanations in the book refer often to a companion CD that features seven distinctive jazz tracks. Artists on the CD include King Oliver, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, and Stan Getz – among others. As the discussions in each chapter develop, Piazza very easily slips in specific musical references to Rollins’s “Mack the Knife” or Davis’s “Footprints” to help you hear what he’s writing about. Understanding Jazz is a book you read with the CD player remote never far from your hand. The book would be even better to read with the tracks burned onto a portable MP3 player.

At the end of each chapter on each particular music topic, Piazza also includes a rather haphazard discography, a feature which novices might find useful but will likely distract and annoy more expert listeners. These sections can hardly be called discographies at all -- they're really just rambling lists of stuff to listen to.

Still, all in all, Understanding Jazz is an excellent way for the beginning fan of jazz to make significant steps forward in learning how to listen more carefully to this often complex music and with a more intelligent ear.

Recovery from Oil Addiction - The 12-Step Program

Adapted from a broadcast from June 2006

Around the country this summer, everyone had pretty much gotten used to playing about three dollars a gallon for gasoline. When or if the price would up or down, nobody could say, apparently. But while the price of gas was high, it wasn't high enough to get people to seriously change their habits of energy consumption. We are still in denial about the problems of the coming energy crises.

And so we look for leadership and vision to help us out of our overindulgences. President Bush, of course, who admits, in a previous life, to indulging in the unhealthy consumption of liquid refreshment, called it like he saw it in his 2006 State of the Union address:

“Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology.”

Hmm: The best way to break addiction is through technology. It seems to me that, when the president uses the addiction metaphor, he’s actually steering the argument away from technology. People, like the president – credit to him – who decide to quit drinking often do so without any outside help, professional counseling, or support group meetings. That’s 70 percent of those who quit. No technology involved. So the problem of addiction is as much a psychological, or emotional, or spiritual problem as a material one.

Following the President’s cue, but forgetting his idea of technology, let’s borrow from the literature of addiction to craft a national policy of recovery – recovery from our oil addiction. This recovery program involves, as you might have guessed, 12 steps:

1. We, the people of the United States of America, admitted we were powerless over cheap and plentiful fossil fuels - that our lives had become unsustainable. Price spikes after hurricanes, wars in the Middle East, traffic, pollution, rolling brownouts -- need I say more?

2. Came to believe that an energy policy greater than ourselves could restore us to balance. Bigger than our individual wants, bigger than our consumer society, bigger than our might making it right, we need an approach to energy that shows humility and concern for other nations.

3. Made a decision to turn our future and our economy over to the care of the Earth as science understands things like global warming, population growth, and planetary resources. So let’s get the politics out of science and admit that global warming is happening, and other things that 95 percent of real scientists agree upon.

4. Made a searching and fearless economic and ethical inventory of our energy use. Which means: Do you really need that Hummer for the weekend? Is “one person, one car” a viable transportation model for everybody?

5. Admitted to the Earth, to ourselves, and to every human being on the planet the exact nature of our wrongs. Time to fess up, America. Twenty percent of the resources consumed, five percent of the population. I think that qualifies as gluttony, right?

6. Were entirely ready to elect a government and change our habits to remove these defects of character. This is the tricky part – finding the right person or group of people who can tell the truth in the right way, an offer a vision of a solution that everyone can get behind.

7. Humbly asked each other for the patience to remove our shortcomings. It will take most Americans a long time to get used to riding on buses and trains with each other.

8. Made a list of all the people, nations, and systems on the planet we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Where to begin?

9. Made direct amends to such people and places wherever possible, except when to do so would cause more damage. So, Iraq – sorry about that whole invasion thing. We’re just going to get out of here and turn things over to the UN.

10. Continued to take an energy inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Hey, maybe ethanol wasn’t such a good idea. Nuclear energy, other the other hand, isn’t quite as bad an idea as we thought.

11. Sought though scientific inquiry and social reform to improve our relationship with the planet and with each other, looking for accurate knowledge of how things really work and how we might sustain a balanced relationship with the planet and with each other. Which is to say – let’s not allow this to happen again.

12. Having had an economic and social awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other oil-addicted nations and to practice these principles in all our affairs. China, you’re next.

So I offer this program as a means to get us closer to the root of the problem: that we as a nation are a bunch of lousy oil addicts and we’ll do almost anything to get another week, another month, another year of those sweet sweet cheap fossil fuels. Burn baby burn.

If you ask me, it’s time for an intervention.

Postscript – 1/23/2007

As to President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union goal of having Americans reduce their gasoline use by increasing their consumption of ethanol by billions of barrels per year – well, that seems beside the point. Overall, shouldn’t we be reducing our consumption, not shifting it to another fuel? Is the nation really capable of "capping" its overall fuel usage as it shifts to an alternative fuel?

We can look at the history of other sectors of the economy for example of this supply substitution. I just finished reading Greg Critser’s Fatland: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World. He makes the argument that, faced with rising food prices in the 1970s, the Department of Agriculture – of which the Food and Drug Administration is a part – paved the way for “cheaper” substitutions such as this ethanol-for-gasoline switch. Corn syrup took the place of cane sugar. Corn starch took the place of wheat flour. Fatty palm oil took the place of cooking oils far lower in saturated fats. Who knows what the conversion to an “ethanol economy” will create? And, more importantly, will everything eventually be made of corn?

Here’s one thing for sure: The price of tortillas in Mexico is on the rise, and it appears that our own developing energy needs are part of the problem.

The Future of Music

Broadcast 1/19/2007

Listen to this piece at 88.9 FM Serious Jazz Radio Rewind -- scroll down when you get there, please. Available up to one week after broadcast.

When you buy a compact disc from your favorite music performer, chances are that performer earns a royalty of about eight percent. If the artist wrote some of the music or had a producer credit, then the cut might be a somewhat larger. But, generally speaking, if you spend $12.50 for a CD, the artist makes a buck. The other $11.50 cents go to retailers, wholesalers, distributors, marketers, manufacturers, manager, and recording industry middlemen. If you’re in the recording business – that is, the right place somewhere in the middle – without playing or singing a note, you stand to make an awful lot of money. But the full feeding trough is going to be emptier in the years to come.

We are moving, after all, into the digital age – in text, in audio, and in video. In the age of digital content, some providers will adapt, and some will wither away and die. The recent string of lawsuits and increasingly extreme tactics from the Recording Industry Association of America are sure signs of an industry that refuses to change in the face of current trends of how people prefer to find and listen to music. Some business models just don’t work any more. Everybody remember Tower Records?

Maybe you listen to music like I do. I have a portable MP3 player and I legally download music, but mostly I have a real-world CD collection several hundred strong that sits on several shelves in the living room. If you’re old fashioned, by degrees, you might just have the CDs, or some combination of CDs, cassettes, and records. We won’t, however, dwell on the 8-track cartridges. But although I am new member of the old school – or maybe an old member of the new school – I am a music listener of the past.

All these things and more were made much more clear to me after reading The Future of Music by Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard, published in 2005. Actually, I listened to this book after downloading it to my iPod.

The future of music lies in the hands of its future listeners. When I talk to people under the age of 18 – from all kinds of backgrounds -- about how they listen to music, many things are clear. First of all, the laws go out the window. As far as digital music is concerned, it’s finders keepers. And it’s not like, in many areas, the laws make that much sense or are even fair.

As to the listeners of the future, they believe they are asked to pay too much for music. Even at 10 dollars for a CD, or a dollar for a song, the prices are too high -- especially if most of the money doesn’t go to the artist.

They do not have a problem with downloading music for free over file sharing networks.

They do not make an issue with ripping music from friends’ CDs, with burning disks for friends. Sharing and trading music is just what you do.

They rarely own more than a dozen CDs. Pretty much everything is stored on a computer or portable player.

More importantly, they listen to far more and a far more diverse range of music than I did at their age. They have collections of between 1000 and 3000 songs – and they are always looking for new and unusual music. The homogeneous mix on commercial terrestrial radio and even satellite radio doesn’t interest them.

As far as I can see, this musical curiosity is where public radio and podcasting can play a role – in guiding and informing their developing taste far from the influence of commerce or profit. In the end, it’s always just about the music.

The future of music lies in listeners and artists connecting with each other, with as little interference as possible. Musicians upload, listeners download. The technology and the law will work themselves out sooner or later.

I need only point to the legendary tenor Sonny Rollins and his latest release, Sonny, Please. In the material world, it goes on sale January 23, but it’s been officially downloadable from sonnyrollins.com since November 21 of last year. I downloaded the whole album – plus a bonus track – for $10 on September 1.

I have the tracks on my laptop, on my iPod, and burned onto a disc I listen to in the car. And while it’s been great to know that I had the music before almost anybody else, it’s even better to know that my man Sonny got most of my money.

Playlist - Early Jazz Weekend - Sunday

Song, Artist, Album

Tell It Like It Is, Charles Earland, I Ain't Jivin' I'm Jammin'
Brother with the Mint Green Vine, Cyrus Chestnut, Soul Food
Whap!, Jack McDuff, The Honeydripper
Opus Funk, Sweets Edison & Lockjaw Davis, Simply Sweets
Blues in Bebop, Kenny Dorham, Kenny Dorham: Blues in Bebop
The Jitney Man, Billie Eckstine and His Orchestra, Kenny Dorham: Blues in Bebop
Bremond's Blues, Cedar Walton, The Promise Land
The Vision, Cedar Walton, Latin Tinge
Cedar Walton, One Flight Down, One Flight Down
Jitterbug Waltz, Greg Osby, The Invisible Hand
Mr. JJ, Jeff ''Tain'' Watts, Bar Talk
The Impaler, Jeff ''Tain'' Watts, Megawatts
Like This, Roy Haynes & Fountain of Youth Band, Whereas
Sweet George Brown, The Columbus Jazz Orchestra, The Colors of Jazz
Bolero at the Savoy, Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa, Let Me Off Uptown!
Boogie Blues, Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa, Let Me Off Uptown!
Until I Met You, Count Basie & Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie & Sarah Vaughan
Like A Son, The Jimmy Heath Band, Turn Up the Heath
Just Won't Burn, Susan Tedeschi, Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues
Boom Boom, John Lee Hooker, Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues
It's My Own Tears, Coco Montoya, Dirty Deal
What's It Gonna Take, Charlie Wood, Lucky
Crawlin' Kingsnake, Buddy Guy, Can't Quit the Blues
Priviledged Life, Eddie Turner, Pride
You're Going to Need Somebody On Yr Bond, Eric Bibb, Spirit and the Blues
River of Jordan, Creighton Lindsay, Round by Round
False Friend Blues, Ruth Brown, R + B = Ruth Brown
A Fool Never Learns, Johnny Jones, Blues is in the House
Memphis, Lonnie Mack, Memphis Wham!
I'm Looking for a Miracle, Phantom Blues, IndieFeed Blues download

Playlist - Early Jazz Weekend - Saturday

Song, Artist, Album

Come On Baby, Jimmy Smith, Home Cookin'
Milestones, MB3, Jazz Hits Volume 1
Tricky Dick, Ben Allison, Cowboy Justice
Hey-Hee-Hi-Ho, Medeski Martin and Wood, Combustication
Old Funky Gene's, Gene Harris Quartet, Funky Gene's
Express Yourself, Idris Muhammad, Black Rhythm Revolution!
Song For Bad, Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet, Husky
Anthropology, Ari Hoenig, Inversations
On Green Dolphin Street, Eric Dolphy Quintet, Outward Bound
Fingerprints, The Chick Corea New Trio, Past, Present, and Futures
Blue Nile, Alice Coltrane, Translinear Light
Journey in Satchidananda, Alice Coltrane, Journey in Satchidananda
Offering, John Coltrane, Expression
Love for Sale, Dexter Gordon, Go!
Ernie Banks, McNeely/Sill/Spencer, Boneyard
Newest Blues, McBride/Jackson/Cobb/Walton, New York Time
Mystery Train, Paul Butterfield Blues Band, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band
Tin Pan Alley, Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble, In the Beginning
Evalina, Son Lewis, Snake
Ships on the Ocean, Junior Wells, Hoodoo Man Blues
Heartless, Michael Burks, Make It Rain
Diamonds At Your Feet, Muddy Waters, His Best, 1956-1964 (Chess)
When Your Memory Fades Away, The Twisters, IndieFeed Blues download
Tamp 'Em Up Solid, Ry Cooder, Paradise and Lunch
I'm Single, The Billy Gibson Band, Southern Living
Laundromat Blues, Albert King, The Very Best of. . . (Rhino)
Tighten Up the Springs, Michelle Malone, Sugarfoot

This Week. . .

Superbowl in South Florida? What Superbowl?

Anyway, tomorrow's Passing Notes (Friday @ 7:06 pm on 88.9 FM Serious Jazz) concerns the future of music, so to speak. I like to think it's timely in light of recent activities by the Recording Industry Artists of America and similar organizations. Check a sampling of the following news items:

"The RIAA May Send A SWAT Team To Bust Down Your Door"

"Senators aim to restrict Net, satellite radio recording"

"Music industry threatens ISPs over piracy"

"Ailing music biz set to relax digital restrictions"

On Saturday's Early Jazz Weekend Session, we have the Big Six Blues Set from, of course, 6:00 to 7:00 am. Sometime before I finish the show at 9:00 we'll have a set in tribute to Alice Coltrane.

On Sunday's EJW, we'll have sets to say thank you to some of the birthday boys of the week -- Gene Krupa, Jeff "Tain" Watts, and Cedar Walton.

The House That Trane Built by Ashley Kahn

Broadcast 9/7/2006

The leading jazz label of the 60s and 70s, Impulse Records, receives a fitting -- if slick -- history.

Ashley Kahn has already written two books about jazz: Kind of Blue – The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece and A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album. In his latest disc history, Kahn turns his attention to one of the most famous jazz labels of all time in the excellent The House That Trane Built: The Story of Impulse Records.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the entertainment company ABC-Paramount was starting to get into the music business, and jazz, in those days, was still considered as having the commercial potential to be widespread pop music. And so the idea for a new jazz label was cooked up -- featuring a high-end product with carefully chosen artists, well-conceived album ideas, well-financed recording sessions, and slick package design: A black and orange spine, full-color gatefold covers, and a clever trademark: a distinctive i followed by an exclamation point.

The record label was called Impulse, and producer Taylor Creed was its guide during its formative years. Creed made a fine start. In addition to crafting a distinctively sellable package for Impulse, he did very well with his actual recordings.

Impulse’s first half dozen releases featured Kai Winding, JJ Johnson, Ray Charles, and Gil Evans – along with Oliver Nelson’s classic The Blues and The Abstract Truth and John Coltrane’s Africa/Brass –this last album a hint of things to come from the musician who would be the definitive artist of the Impulse label. Although Creed left after a few years, he turned over a strong business to producer Bob Thiele, who developed the label into the high-minded imprint it ultimately became. His method was simple and fairly old school: hire great musicians, put them in the right circumstances, and let them do their thing.

Thiele, originally a fan of swing music, began his jazz re-education largely under the guidance of Coltrane, a musical partnership that led to release of albums by Yusef Lateef, McCoy Tyner, Elvin Jones, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Chico Hamilton, Gabor Szabo, and Pharoh Sanders.

Thiele also had the good sense to let Coltrane follow his own rapid course of development, most notably in the production of Trane’s A Love Supreme in 1964, a pivotal point in the saxophonist’s creative trajectory. And it is Coltrane’s bold, passionate, and intelligent artistic sensibility which left a most lasting imprint on the label, even after Trane’s death in 1967 and Thiele’s departure. For the most part, even as ABC Records began to pressure Impulse for more profits, its later mainstream, avant-garde, world, and fusion projects still maintained a balance of originality, energy, brains, and even political awareness in the work of Shepp and Sanders, as well as Amhad Jamal, Alice Coltrane, Sun-Ra, John Klemmer, Gato Barbieri, Sam Rivers, Dewey Redman, Marion Brown, and Keith Jarett.

Nevertheless, by 1977, the original Impulse Records stopped releasing new material and essentially became a back-catalogue label, with Coltrane’s classics leading the way. But what a run it was, and Kahn’s detailed and carefully-paced book tells the story exceptionally well, with generous helpings of interviews and photographs. And, better yet, the book is interspersed with fascinating mini-profiles of the production of almost 40 of the most famous albums ever released by Impulse.

At its best, Impulse Records was a thought, an idea: Give jazz and jazz artists the respect and support the music deserves, and recognition will follow, as well as profits, however modest.

Kahn puts it best in his closing chapter, a tribute the musician who stood for that idea as much as the label did.

He writes, “John Coltrane claimed on the cover of A Love Supreme that ‘one thought can produce millions of vibrations.’ Time has proven him correct: his own ideas and recordings have vibrated in that very quality. The House That Trane Built – as a record label, a musical approach, and a more inclusive way of hearing the world—continues to stand.”

Gators Attack! (And Other Monstrosities)

Broadcast 7/21/2006

Posted here in consideration of MLK Day.

In one of Aesop’s fables, a scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream. The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too." The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, suddenly, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but he has just enough time to gasp to the scorpion "Why did you sting me?" “Hey,” replies the scorpion: "I’m a scorpion. It’s my nature.”

You might remember one of the regional media’s recent wrongheaded endeavors, the alligator attack stories of few months ago. While, sadly, a number of people were killed in encounters with alligators, there was very little good reporting done on the set of stories, most of which instead seemed to vaguely suggest that the gators were attacking because they were monsters or were evil or had suddenly acquired a taste for human flesh.

No, few reporters – especially the usual local TV Bubbleheads – bothered to venture too far from the safety of the news van to do any real reporting. A reporter asks questions beyond the reach of, “Are you upset that your sister was just eaten by an alligator?” But a Bubblehead drops that bomb into the front yard of the grieving relative and lets the cameras roll. We needed real questions, such as: Was it mating season for the alligators? Did the unusually dry winter have anything to do with gators being so far afield? Could suburban encroachment on gator habitat be putting more people in harm’s way? These obvious questions were usually ignored for the sake of the sexy and terrifying tale of -- GATORS ATTACK! Lock up the kids and pass the ammo, Martha!

Such is the state of the news – especially local television news and 24-hour cable news – increasingly soaked in sensationalism and sentimentality and lacking the patience, courage, and wit to know an important story when it sees one.

Take, for instance – and far less trivially -- the death of 9 year old Sherdavia Jenkins, killed by a stray bullet while playing outside her home in Liberty City on July 1. Or 14 year old Markese Wiggan or 18 month old Zykarious Cadillion, two other South Florida children killed in the last three months in apparently random shootings. For too many people, these stories simply go in one ear and out the other, or the eyes glaze over. Sadly, because of the neighborhoods these children belong to, their deaths don’t count as much as does the violence done to children living in other places. Worse yet, the long-standing and specific problems that create something as shocking as a deadly stray bullet are not the problems that count as much in other South Florida communities – especially in most of the local news media. A stray bullet, after all, is a journalistic cliche for a bullet about which most people don’t care to know the circumstances of its particular velocity or vector.

Oh yes, the moment of violence is sensationalized and the day of grieving is sentimentalized by the Bubbleheads, but at the end of the broadcast day the cameras are turned off and most reporters are on to the next story. Few will stick around and ask more questions, the first being: What sort of factors produce a neighborhood where stray bullets can kill children? Not to point out the obvious here, but further investigation is in order about police presence, about playgrounds and activity centers, about overcrowding and affordable housing, about the displacement caused by gentrification, about guns and violence, about community expectations, and about Miami’s reverse-NIMBYism. Reverse-NIMBYism is that attitude of, “If it’s not it my back yard, it’s not my problem.”

But it is your problem – it is Miami’s problem. If we as a citywide community do not care enough about the killings of children like Sherdavia Jenkins by stray bullets, then what kind of place are we, really? Miami becomes then not the Magic City but the City of Scorpions, stinging and hard, certain to let others go down to doom in the depths that would take us as well.

Let us not be subject to our baser instincts – selfish, narrow, and cold. Let us come back to the painful story of Sherdavia Jenkins and ask the questions that properly address the complicated circumstances of her sad death. Let us, for once, not change the channel or turn the page and move on. Let us stay for more than a moment and be human -- as is our better nature.

Playlist - 88 Jazz Place - Monday

I don't want people to get the idea that all I do here on the PN blog is post playlists. It's just that this weekend I had a very busy time musically -- four out of five days I was on the air, and on Saturday we started with Straight, No Chaser. There will be more reviews and interviews, as well as podcasts, available here in the weeks and months to come. I've only just now gotten started on what the blog is supposed to be -- a place to find cool sounds and words first.

On another note, it certainly was fine to be playing jazz and blues on MLK Day. I felt just a little more connected to the issues and history of what Dr. King stood, fought, and died for -- civil rights, peace, equality, and social justice. I did my best to play a few songs here and there that recognize the tradition of struggle. Have a peaceful day, everyone. Me, I'm spending time with my family.

Song, Album, Artist
The Impaler, Michael Brecker, Two Blocks from the Edge
Early Autumn, Miami Saxophone Quartet, Midnight Rhumba
High Clouds and a Good Chance of Wayne, Wayne Bergeron, Plays Well With Others
Lotus Blossum, Various Artists, Lush Life: Story of Billy Strayhorn
52nd Street Theme, Dizzy Gillespie, The Very Best of. . . (Legacy)
How Many More Years, Howlin' Wolf, His Best (Chess)
How Happy I Am, Rev. Gary Davis, Heroes of the Blues (Shout)
Counting My Tears, Charles Brown, Trouble Blues
Leaving Trunk, Taj Mahal, The Best of. . . (Columbia/Legacy)
Don't Cry Baby, Etta James, Her Best (Chess)
Basehead, Corey Harris, Greens from the Garden
Blues for Miles (Hip-Hop Bop), Freddy Hubbard, Blues for Miles
Slings and Arrows, Michael Brecker, Tales from the Hudson
The Dark Keys, Branford Marsalis, The Dark Keys
To Be Young Gifted and Black, Nina Simone, The Essential Nina Simone
Park Palace Parade, Sonny Rollins, Sonny, Please
City Beat, Wynton Marsalis Septet, Citi Movement
Thandiwa, Steve Turre, Keep Searchin'
Rhythm-A-Ning, Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Septet, Memories of T
Psychedelic Sally, Horace Silver, Serenade to a Soul Sister
God Bless the Child, Billie Holiday, Lady Day: The Best of. . .(Columbia)
Sunset and the Mockingbird, Tommy Flanagan, The Brithday Concert
Lighthearted Intelligence, Cyrus Chestnut, You Are My Sunshine
Impressions, John Coltrane, The House That Trane Built
Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Nat King Cole Trio, Transcriptions
New Rhumba, Miles Davis, Miles Ahead
A Child is Born, Jones/McBride/Cobb, West of 5th
La Ronde Suite, Modern Jazz Quartet, Django
Mama Too Tight, Archie Shepp, Mama Too Tight
Fables of Faubus, Charles Mingus, Mingus Ah Um
Someone to Watch Over Me, Ben Webster, See You At The Fair
Stars Fell on Alabama, Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong: An American Icon
Bourbon Street Parade, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, Songs of New Orleans
Amazing Grace, Cyrus Chestnut, Blessed Quietness
Portrait of Wellman Braud, Stephon Harris, African Tarantella

Playlist - Early Jazz Weekend - Sunday

Song, Album, Artist

Song for Bilbao, Michael Brecker, Tales from the Hudson
The Morning of This Night, Michael Brecker, Time is Of the Essence
Ezz-thetic, George Russell, Ezz-thetics
Calypso Blues, Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Sextet, Calypso Blues
Four, Conte Candoli, Powerhouse Trumpet
Honeysuckle Rose, Benny Carter, Further Definitions
Stop and Go, Wynton Marsalis Septet, Citi Movement
Four Brothers, Terry Gibbs, Findin' the Groove
The Rich and the Poor, Keith Jarrett, Treasure Island
You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To, Royce Campbell, Trioing
Lookear, Craig Buhler, Capistrano Sessions
Fi Fi Goes To Heaven, Joanne Brackeen, Fi Fi Goes To Heaven
He Who Hops Around, Marc Cary, Cary On
Alternate Route, Ron Carter, New York Slick
Come Together, Lynne Arriale Trio, Live
T 'n' A Blues, McCoy Tyner, The House That Trane Built
Black Coffee, Vanessa Rubin, Vanessa Rubin Sings
Alligator Strut, Anton Schwartz, Radiant Blue
Montono Blues, Kenny Burrell with Coleman Hawkins, Bluesy Burrell
I Want A Little Sugar in My Bowl, Nina Simone, Nina Sings the Blues
Came So Far, Guitar Gabriel, Deep in the South
Roller Coaster, Little Walter, His Best (Chess)
Back To New Orleans, Lightning Hopkins, The Best Of. . . (Bluesville/Prestige)
Vertigo Blues, Sue Foley, Where The Action Is
Black Water, Charlie Musselwhite, Delta Hardware

Straight, No Chaser - January 13 Picks

Song, Artist, Album

“I Can't Give You Anything But Love,” The Young Brothers, Tales of Time
The brand new release and debut album from The Young Brothers Trio has fresh new and exciting interpretations of old standards performed by pianist Tim Young, brother Alphonso M. Young, Jr. on the drums, and bassist Bhagwan Khalsa with guest appearance by saxophonist Ben Boker, vocalist Sara Jones, and guitarist Todd Harrison. (Ed's Pick)

“Infant Eyes,” The Columbus Jazz Orchestra, The Colors of Jazz
From the heart of Ohio comes a big band under the leadership of Byron Stripling, the CJO – and its latest release features a balanced mix of tunes, all arranged with precision and rich textures. The playing is outstanding on every track, and for large group fans, this independent release is as good as you will likely find anywhere. (Mark's Pick)

“October,” Craig Buhler, Capistrano Sessions
The latest release by Washington-based educator and saxophonist Craig Buhler contains eleven new original compositions of light, excellent rhythm-based music featuring Brian Atkinson (vibes, trumpet & flugelhorn), Dave Witham (piano), Joel Hamilton (bass) and drummer Paul Kreibich. (Ed's Pick)

“Summer Pudding,” Skerik's Syncopated Taint Septet, Husky
Seattle-based tenor Skerik leads a group of five horns, organ and drums through a funky, quirky, challenging but ultimately rewarding set of original songs. This release features some surprisingly lush arrangements that give way to agressive solos. An overlooked album from 2006 that deserves more recognition. (Mark's Pick)

“Born Lucky,” Anders Blichfeldt, Born to Be Blue
This collection of songs by Danish Rock star Anders Blichfeldt and the Danish Radio Big Band captures a swinging vocal performance by the singer on a selection of original and blues/rock standard tunes delivered in a bluesy/ jazz setting backed up by a renowned international big band. (Ed's Pick)

“Rush Hour,” Out To Lunch Quintet, Live at the Artists' Quarter
A group of Minneapois musicians take on the performance of Eric Dolphy’s work. A live recording of imaginative and free musicianship before a enthusiastic audience. (Mark's Pick)

"Keep It Simple," Joris Teepe's Groningen Art Ensemble, Jazz In, Jazz Out
This recording is a project by the Hanze University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where internationally renowned bassist and educator Joris Teepe and his New York-based group, Groningen Art Ensemble record an album of varying jazz styles from bop, straight-ahead, classic to funk. (Ed's Pick)

“Psychoscout,” Flat Earth Society, Psychoscout
One of Belgium’s best groups of the past decade takes on the American audiences with its unique blend of jazz and rock in the style that will remind listeners of the best Frank Zappa groups from the 1970s. All that and some fine clarinet playing, too. (Mark's Pick)

“Marmelada,” The Bias Project #1, Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes
The debut album of Brazilian-born bassist Rodrigo Ferrari-Nunes is dedicated to the music of Mingus, Coltrane, Parker, Evans, Hubbard and Brazilian composer Hermeto Pascoal. A burner of a CD with no samba here. (Ed's Pick)

Visit Ed Blanco's page at All About Jazz

Throughts on the First Show

The first ever segment of "Straight, No Chaser" has come and gone, and after weeks of preparation and anticipation, Ed and I were happy with the results. While naturally it wasn't entirely bump-free, Ed was relaxed and as smart as ever on the air. If he was nervous, which he said he was, it didn't appear so to me. From the production side, I had a little glitch with a CD I had (supposedly) burned, but luckily was able to sprint out to the car where I had suitable backup music. Ah, the thrills of live radio.

You'll note in the picture (above right) that Ed and I wore the caps of our respective native baseball teams. Unlike many bandwagon Yankee fans, Ed's been following the Bronx Bombers for decades, so in my book he's all right. He even said some nice things about the Red Sox '04 championship team. And we both agree that A-Rod is a -- well, a person a questionable quality, although I believe we used more colorful language at the time.

The playlist from SNC is not included in today's other posting from Early Jazz Weekend. You will be able to find the SNC set list along with capsule reviews from both Ed and me on Monday -- maybe Sunday night -- on a regular basis. We took so much time to find the music, we both feel it's worth it to say a little more about our picks.

All in all, we had a lot of fun today. Be sure to tune in two weeks from today (January 27) for the next edition of Straight, No Chaser.

Playlist - Early Jazz Weekend - Saturday

Song, Album, Artist

Caravan, Dr. Lonnie Smith, The Turbanator
Our Father Who Art Blakey, Charles Fambrough, The Proper Angle
5/4 Getaway, Don Ellis, Tears of Joy
Gemini, The Mary Lou Williams Collective, Zodiac Suite: Revisited
Hey, It's Me You're Talking To, Terell Stafford, Fields of Gold
It Might As Well Be Spring, Carmen Lundy, Something To Believe In
This is New, Don Aliquo, Jazz Folk
Come on in My Kitchen, Cassandra Wilson, Blue Light Til Dawn
Heart of the Blues, Marcus Roberts, Blues for the New Millennium
Strollin' with Bones, T-Bone Walker, The Very Best of. . . (Rhino)
Every Day I Have the Blues, B.B. King, The Thrill Is Gone
Shake Your Money Maker, Elmore James, The Sky Is Crying
Sweet Home Chicago, Keb'Mo and Corey Harris, Martin Scorsese Presents. . .
Yeild Not To Temptation, Bobby ''Blue'' Bland, Greatest Hits Vol. One - Duke Recordings
I Won't Cry Anymore, Big Maybelle, The Same Old Story
Luther's Blues, Luther Allison, Luther's Blues
Next Door To The Blues, Etta James, Her Best (Chess)
Downtime Blues, Harmonica Fats and Bernie Pearls, Two Heads Are Better. . .
Three Sides to Every Story, Coco Montoya, Dirty Deal

Playlist - 88 Jazz Place - Thursday

Song, Artist, Album

The Competitor, Ted Nash & Still Evolved, Still Evolved
In Pursuit of the 9th Man, Todd Marcus Orchestra, In Pursuit of the 9th Man
Nutty, Ben Riley's Monk Legacy Septet, Memories of T
Cherokee, Sarah Vaghan, In the Land of Hi-Fi
It's All Right With Me, Lenard Rutledge, Hello World
After the Rain, John Coltrane, The Gentle Side of. . . (Impulse)
Faded Beauty, Steve Turre, Keep Searchin'
Sonny, Please, Sonny Rollins, Sonny, Please
Crepuscule with Nellie, Thelonious Monk, The Composer
Day in Day Out, Diana Krall, From This Moment On
Ruben's Theme Song, David Murray Power Quartet, Like A Kiss That Never Ends
I'm Just a Lucky So-and-So, Tony Bennett, Bennett Sings Ellington
Lester Left Town, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, The Best of . . . (Blue Note)
Chelsea Bridge, Tony Bennett, Bennett Sings Ellington
Berda's Bounce, Terell Stafford, New Beginnings
Roller Coaster, Eric Reed, e-bop
Eighty-One, Miles Davis Quintet, The Best of. . . 1965-68
Cantaloupe Island, MB3, Jazz Hits Vol. 1
Going Home, Frank LoCastro, When You're There
Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans, The Columbus Jazz Orchestra, The Colors of Jazz
My Love, Effendi, Kurt Elling, This Time It's Love
Bemsha Swing, Lynne Arriale Trio, Live
Lil' Fawdy, Terence Blanchard, Simply Stated
Let Me Off Uptown, Anita O'Day, Anita O'Day (Compact Jazz)
Oh, Lady Be Good, Count Basie, Count Basie and the Kansas City Seven
African Cowboy, Warmdaddy Anderson, Live at the Village Vanguard
Duke Medley, Cyrus Chestnut, Another Direction
Project S, Jimmy Heath Big Band, Turn Up the Heath

My Sax Life by Paquito D'Rivera

Broadcast 1/26/2006

Born in Havana, Cuba in 1948, Paquito D’Divera was raised from a very early age – under the close supervision of his virtuoso father – to be a musician of the first order. A child prodigy on the clarinet and saxophone, D’Rivera became famous in Cuba and in Puerto Rico performing in classical concert halls and on television in all sorts of musical styles. While working in the inconsistently tolerant artistic environment of Castro’s Cuba, as a young man, he became one of the founding members and eventually the conductor of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna. D’Rivera was also a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical group Irakere, whose explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical and traditional Cuban music had never been heard before. The group toured extensively throughout America and Europe, won several Grammy nominations and a sole Grammy.

Then, in the early 80s, stepping off a plane in a Madrid airport, D’Rivera left his musical life – as well as his wife and son – behind in Cuba, defecting in hopes of a better life. In very little time, at least professionally, D’Rivera had settled in New York and was performing, recording, and writing music – in both the classical and jazz worlds -- as never before. These days, of course, D’Rivera has reunited with his family and rebuilt his life as have so many Cuban exiles – two million, is it? – around the world.

With talents that reach beyond the world of music, D’Rivera published a novel, Oh, La Habana, and now the English translation of his memoir Mi vida saxual, known to us gringos as My Sax Life. Weighing in at a generous 349 pages, My Sax Life is a bawdy, intelligent, artistic, and unconventional work of autobiography. Without being egotistical or self-indulgent, and with good-humor and a great deal of heart, this book offers more than a poquito of Paquito on every page. Although I’ve never met the man, it seems safe to say that the personality of the author comes across in each anecdote from his native Cuba, each detailed memory of performing, each gleefully recounted practical joke or naughty story, each off-the-cuff rant against Castro and communism. There is rarely a dull moment.

D’Rivera is at his best when he writes about music, musicians, and other artists, as well as when he describes the distinctive qualities of the Cuban national character – if there is such a thing. He is most shockingly entertaining when he permits himself to be profane and even crude. Unfortunately, he can be tedious when, as often and understandably happens, he falls into the one-note political riff so many Cuban exiles are – understandably – prone to.

But, as anyone in Miami will know, you can’t dislike someone like Paquito for long for his politics – he’s just got too much talent and charisma. And My Sax Life is no different. Like any good jazz performance and jazz performer, you won’t know quite where you’re going when you get started with D’Rivera, and you might not like a few things along the way, but when the show’s over you heard some things you’d never heard before and you were glad you came.

Straight, No Chaser featured at AAJ

My radio partner Ed Blanco and I were grateful to see that our new music show, "Straight, No Chaser" was a news item on the AllAboutJazz.com website today. Ed, of course, is a writer for AAJ, so we have an inside track -- but I'm impressed nevertheless. Ed and I have been working since the last membership drive at WDNA to put together what we think will be a worthwhile listening experience.

Ed and I agree that jazz is in a very good place these days, but that, unfortunately, there's still so much music coming out in a given year -- 1000 releases or more -- that few people have time to listen to everything. We don't either, but as critics, hopefully, we can wade through the bad stuff more quickly and keep an ear open for up-and-coming or overlooked artists on small or independent labels, outside of major media markets, or even outside the country.

At any rate, we hope you'll tune in to Straight, No Chaser on Saturday, January 13 at 8:00 am. I'll be on the air for Early Jazz Weekend Session as usual this weekend.

Passing Notes this Friday (10:06 am and 7:06 pm) is a review of the book The Future of Music and some loose comments on the recently announced iPhone.

In other news, I'll be filling in at 88 Jazz Place on Thursday afternoon from 4 to 7. On Monday, MLK Day, I'll be covering the morning spot -- Frank Consola's show -- from 7 to 11.

That's all for now. I need to get my sleep and rest up for the end of the week!

Playlist - Early Jazz Weekend - Sunday

Song, Artist, Album

Little Walter Rides Again, Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood, Out Louder
Slightly Monkish, Jimmy Smith, A New Sound. . . A New Star (Vol 1-3)
Straight, No Chaser, Thelonius Monk & Gerry Mulligan, Mulligan Meets Monk
Naima, John McLaughlin, After the Rain
Letter from India, DeLucia/DiMeola/McLaughlin, The Guitar Trio
1 Nite Stand`, The Free Spirits featuring John McLaughlin, Tokyo Live
Green Al, Ben Allison and Medicine Wheel, Buzz
Handsonit, Avishai Cohen, Lyla
Slick Willie, Reuben Wilson, Movin' On
Maynard and Waynard, Wayne Bergeron, Plays Well with Others
Lush Life, Diane Reeves, Lush Life: The Untold Story of Billy Strayhorn
The Preacher, The Columbus Jazz Orchestra, The Colors of Jazz
Nardis, George Russell, Ezz-Thetics
Manteca, Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, Dizzy Gillespie: Career 1937-1992
Tin Tin Deo, Dizzy Gillespie Sextet, Dizzy Gillespie: Odyssey 1945-1952
Cubano Be / Cubano Bop, Dizzy Gillespie and His Orchestra, Dizzy Gillespie: Career 1937-1992
Flying Home, Ray Mantilla, Good Vibrations
Gemini, Jimmy Heath Big Band, Turn Up the Heath
Blues in Una Sea, Tom Harell, Live at the Village Vanguard
Cannonball, Antonio Hart, For Cannonball and Woody
Blues in Hoss' Flat, Gene Harris Quartet, Funky Gene's
Blues at Midnight, Catfish Keith, Jitterbug Swing
Sack O' Woe, Van Morrison with Georgie Fame, How Long Has This Been Going On?
Raggedy Ride, The Four Blazes, The United Records Story
Roll Em Pete, Joe Turner & Pete Johnson, The Story of the Blues
I Want a Tall Skinny Papa, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, The Gospel of the Blues
Church is Out, Charlie Musselwhite, Delta Hardware
Killer Joe, Lionel Hampton, Hamp's Blues

Playlist - Early Jazz Weekend - Saturday

Song, Artist, Album

Dear Old Stockholm, Lin Halliday with Ira Sullivan, Where or When
Happy Times, Tim Hagans & Marcus Printup, Hubsongs
The Prophet Speaks, Milt Jackson, The Prophet Speaks
Delaunay's Dilemma, Modern Jazz Quartet, Django
Bags' Groove, Milt Jackson, Wizard of the Vibes
Grant's Tune, Grant Green, Solid
Jackie-ing, Larry Goldings, Quartet
Black Fire, Andrew Hill, Black Fire
Sunset and the Mocking Bird, Stefon Harris, African Tarantella
Blue Train, John Coltrane, Blue Train
Sophisticated Lady, James Carter, JC on the Set
Nuages (Clouds), James Carter, Chasin' the Gypsy
Oleo, James Carter Quartet, Jurassic Classics
Park Palace Parade, Sonny Rollins, Sonny, Please
I Remember Clifford, Roy Hargrove & Antonio Hart, The Tokyo Sessions
The Vail Jumpers, Don Braden, Workin'
Lady Charlotte, Zane Massey, 50 Years of Jazz and Blues (Delmark)
Indian Red, Donald Harrison, Indian Blues
Royal Garden Blues, Windy City Six, 50 Years of Jazz and Blues (Delmark)
Rock Me Baby, Etta James & the Roots Band, Burnin' Down the House
We're on the Road, Luther Allison, Serious
Boot-Leg, Booker T & the MG's, The Very Best of. . .(Rhino)
I'm Sorry, Lynn Noble / Rob Friedman Band, Good Girl Blues
Walk the Walk, Eric Bibb, Home to Me
Samson and Delilah, Charlie Parr`, Rooster
Dying Crapshooter's Blues, Blind Willie McTell, Original Classics Samples - Bluesville
Gone Too Long, Charlie Musselwhite, Delta Hardware

Interview with Karen Russell

Karen Russell, author of the story collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, sat down for an interview at the 2006 Miami Book Fair International.

Mark Hayes: Were you a writer when you first started coming to the Miami Book Fair and what sort of impact did this event have on you?

Karen Russell: I was always writing, but I don’t think I was a writer just then. I was writing these pretty terrible stories – I still write pretty terrible stories sometimes – but when I was a kid I started writing at about the time I started reading. I remember seeing Dave Barry, who was actually a really huge influence. People have asked me which South Florida writers influenced me and he’s the one, which is sort of funny. He’s not really a fiction writer – he’s written some fiction – but what I remember is really identifying with Dave Barry Turns 40 for some reason. I was this 12-year-old kid and I was like, “It’s so true!” I really thought he was hilarious, and for a long time I just wanted to make people laugh the way that he did.

MH: How would you describe your background?

KR: I always feel like there should be more of a story to this, like my family were hot air balloonists or we have some wacky background. My dad is from Ohio, and his dad was a schoolteacher in Sarasota, so he just sort of drifted down here. And my mom grew up in Miami Springs, so they’ve both been around here for a while. I grew up in the Coconut Grove area until I was 18, and then I wanted to see the seasons so I went to Chicago. I was here and it was a pretty great childhood. I think the stories might mislead people into thinking I was a real outdoorsy kid. I suppose we sort of tromped around a lot, but I was not particularly good at the outdoors. My dad would take me fishing, but I would scream like any girl confronted with a squiggly thing.

MH: Do you think Miami provided some sort of exotic background material for your stories?

KR: When you grow up here, in the midst of all this mix of natural and artificial and different cultural groups, it wasn’t until I left that I realized how marvelous and truly strange it is. But it all seems to matter of fact. “I’m going to go help my friend’s father send fire trucks to Ecuador today!”

MH: Did you spend a lot of time in the swamp?

KR: I think I ended up getting drawn to the more natural settings. In my work there’s less urban Miami. There are no recognizable parts like South Beach. These stories ended up being set a couple of degrees South of what people might recognize as a South Florida reality. I think growing up near the water had a tremendous pull. There’s a lot of aqueous stuff going on in the collection. Maybe growing up with all the fiberglass dolphins around does something as well.


MH: What sort of writers do you admire? Are you drawn to magic realism? Who did you read that influenced your work?

KR: That was one of the best things about my undergraduate education. I remember reading “The Dinosaur Story,” this Calvino story narrated by a dinosaur who survives extinction. To that point I had been reading wonderful stories, but just straight realist stories, but the idea that this thing could be a story too was incredible to me. And George Saunders is a contemporary writer who I just adore. Kelly Link is doing some really neat things. So people who are stretching the boundaries, where the fantastical stuff rubs shoulders. Joy Williams is another writer who I think is at the top of her game doing that kind of thing. And some of those Southern Gothic ladies I would like to invite. They would make things interesting, I’m sure.

MH: One of the themes that runs through the stories, especially the title story in St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, is that of being an outsider. Is that connected to your own Miami experience?

KR: Most of my best friends are Hispanic or from different backgrounds. I think it was pretty much me and Robert McDonald in terms of representing [our backgrounds]. I think for some of my youth I did feel, like many people probably, like an outsider. I remember going to quinces and dancing with a robotic stiffness. And also I think I was a strange, romantically inclined bookish kid from the age of 11 on, and that can be hard.

MH: What has it been like coming back to Miami as a writer and doing a reading like this?

KR: This was the first one I’ve done in Miami, and it was terrific to see everybody, but at the same time it was also overwhelming, like a wedding or a funeral when you don’t get too much time to spend with people you’d really like to thank. And it’s sort of a “This is Your Life” feeling. I saw one girl I haven’t seen since the first grade. It’s a funny feeling to have the book out in the world, because even my parents had never read anything that I’d written. It’s its own entity now. It’s sort of like a literary striptease. There’s this totally imaginary world that I’m showing. It happens to me on the other end, when I read things that my friends have written. It’s dizzying to know that this world’s been going on inside this person the whole time without your knowledge. It’s a little scary and embarrassing too.

MH: What are you working on now?

I’m working on this novel called Swamplandia! It grew out of the first story in the collection. It’s a multigenerational story, a weird story about this family of alligator wrestlers in this mythical Everglades kind of theme park.

MH: Have you read Katherine Dunn?

KR: Geek Love was one of those books I read in one sort of fevered sitting.

MH: What’s the most common question you get asked? Is it about being so young?

KR: It’s sort of funny. Because I’m not really that young – maybe if I were ten years younger. I feel that there’s a novelty to it, sort of like a seal wrote a book. “Hey, this seal honked out a book on its horn!” I worked very hard and sometimes I worry it won’t be taken as seriously as I’d like it to be taken because of the age thing.

Can I tell you the worst question I ever got? I was doing this reading at a bar, and I don’t think the people at the bar knew there was going to be a reading. I think these were people who were on their commute home to New Jersey who just wanted to stop and drink gin and then they were going to catch the train. You should have seen the look of true horror on these people’s faces when I ascended the stage and sat on a stool and started reading to them. And the lighting was such that you couldn’t see people’s faces, so it was this jury of shadows listening. I found this one bald man, and his head was like a beacon. I just had to keep focusing on it so I wouldn’t fall backwards off the stool. So I read this story. I could tell these people are antsy, and they just want to continue boozing or to actively flee. At the end there’s a Q & A, and it’s dead silence for a whole minute. And this drunken man in the back finally raises his hand and asks, “Izz – Izzit a pome?” “I’m sorry sir, is your question ‘Is it a poem?’” “Yeah, izzit a pome?” “No, I’m sorry sir. It was a 20 minute story.” So that was the worst question I’ve ever got.

Later This Week

My wife and I just completed a Miami to Mississippi to Maine to Mississippi to Miami trip over the past 15 days, so I'm going to take a day or two to get back to the usual routine. I'll post if I can. . .

On Friday's Passing Notes broadcast (88.9 FM in Miami or online at seriousjazz.org) I'll be talking to Miami-born writer Karen Russell, whose story collection St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves was published earlier this year. That feature will air at 10:06 am and 7:06 pm. I'm working on acquiring server space to host all of the PN broadcasts in MP3 format, as well as delivering them as podcasts after the morning airing.

Saturday's Early Jazz Weekend Session will take its cue from a pair of notable jazz birthdays of the week -- Milt Jackson and James Carter.

Sunday's EJW will feature two more birthday boys, John McLaughlin and Chano Pozo. Both of these shows run from 6:00 to 9:00 am, so tune in.

Next Saturday at 8:00 am, South Florida jazz critic Ed Blanco and I will host the first ever broadcast of Straight, No Chaser: The New Music Hour, during which we'll be playing and talking about the best of the latest jazz from around the world.

Chasin' the Bird

Charlie Parker, arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time, was born in Kansas City, Kansas, in 1920. After that, it seems, the details begin to get fuzzy.

In his biographical study of Parker, Chasin’ the Bird, the Life and Legacy of Charlie Parker, author Brian Priestly tries to clarify some of the facts about the often confusing, contradictory, and catastrophic life of one of jazz’s most notorious figures. As with any cultural figure who achieves iconic status – history has become legend, legend has become myth. Sooner or later, the fragile truth’s of a person’s life become lost amid the babble of historians, critics, and fans.

Priestly is the co-author of The Rough Guide to Jazz and has written biographies of Charles Mingus and John Coltrane. He is a prolific critic and a respectable jazz pianist as well. His knowledge of jazz is both broad and deep, and his Chasin’ the Bird examines the life and work of Charlie Parker with intelligence and restraint. It is not an encyclopedia of all things Charlie Parker. Rather, the bulk of the book traces what can be known for sure about his life, his music, and his personality.

There’s a fine bibliographical chapter for folks who would care to do their own research. Given Parker’s relatively spotty, impulsive, and often-bootlegged recording career, the book’s sixty page discography will no doubt be useful to serious collectors. Overall, Priestly seems comfortable with presenting you with what he admits is an incomplete and imperfect portrait of the man. In the end, though, readers will likely appreciate the limits on authorial self-indulgence.

Most people making an effort to get to know the life of Charlie Parker –more than most usefully listening to his music – will have seen the Clint Eastwood film Bird, starring Forrest Whittaker as the legend himself. But because Bird’s own life was such a mess, the movie creates more problems in point of view and chronology than it solves.

A few things are clear about Parker’s life. He had a challenging childhood; he was a musical genius, a virtuoso reedman and, essentially, the inventor of bebop; ; he yearned for larger material success and cultural recognition; he was an addict and an alcoholic; he was a victim of racism; some of his peers facing similar problems overcame them and prevailed; other peers could not overcome and succumbed to mental illness and drug abuse.

This is why, as Priestly suggests, the music is the most important thing to pay attention to. Those fast, brilliant, perfect lines tell you almost everything you need to know. Charlie Parker could fly in ways that folks never imagined before.

Monk with Coltrane - The Complete Riverside Recordings

On more than one occasion in the mid 50s, John Coltrane was kicked out of Miles Davis’s band. The final time, in 1957, drinking heavily and using heroin on a regular basis, Coltrane also got himself slapped by Miles in front of a packed house one October night – apparently Miles had had enough of Trane’s unprofessional nonsense. One of the people in the crowd who witnessed the incident was pianist and composer Thelonius Monk, who thought it was a shame to knock down Trane’s talent for the sake of personal problems.

Monk, who had, a few years earlier, signed a record deal with Riverside, was recording regularly and offered Trane a chance to play with him. A genius composer with an eccentric but unshakeable command of the piano, Monk himself had spent almost a decade trying to find enough gigs to support himself when finally the Riverside deal made him a star. To that point, many bebop players assumed he was crazy.

As 1957 went along, and Trane played with Monk, he eventually experienced, as he put it in the liner notes to his masterpiece A Love Supreme, “a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life. At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” In and around recording for Riverside with the clean and sober Trane over the spring and summer, Monk’s band then got a long-playing gig at the Five Spot club in New York. Trane, who was mentored by Monk and inspired by the advanced harmonic ideas in the composers, music and, seems to have almost perfected his improvisational approach in a few months.

The big news jazz release of 2005 was the rediscovered concert recording of Monk and Trane at Carnegie Hall, featuring a band in fine form and Coltrane sounding every bit his mature self on tracks like “Monk’s Mood,” “Blue Monk,” and “Epistrophy.” The Carnegie Hall concert happened in late November of 1957. The next month, Trane rejoined Miles Davis in the bandleader’s first great quintet. So the total amount of time Trane spent with Monk is seven months – a little over half a year in which the tenor saxophonist kicked his drug habit and found his voice as a musician.

Now, there’s nothing truly new on the new two CD release – Thelonius Monk with John Coltrane: The Complete Riverside Recordings. If you have the 15-CD master set Riverside released a few years ago, you already have what’s in this new package. But if you are a fan of Coltrane and want to hear the studio side of the musical story of Trane’s rebirth, then The Complete Riverside is a fine investment. On these tracks, Monk and Trane are joined by Wilber Ware on bass, Shadow Wilson and Art Blakey on drums, and Coleman Hawkins on sax. On two takes of “Ruby, My Dear,” listeners can find a very clear contrast between the sound and style of Coleman Hawkins and Trane. So, for you Trane fanatics, you have a fine complement to last year’s Carnegie Hall concert recording.