Ray Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

Cover of Alone at MontreuxRay Bryant, Jazz Pianist, Dies at 79 - NYTimes.com

By NATE CHINEN

Ray Bryant, a jazz pianist whose sensitivity and easy authority made him a busy accompanist and a successful solo artist, beginning in the mid-1950s, died on Thursday. He was 79.

His wife of 20 years, Claude Bryant, said he died at New York Hospital Queens after a long illness. He lived in Jackson Heights, Queens.

Mr. Bryant had a firm touch and an unshakable sense of time, notably in his left hand, which he often used to build a bedrock vamp. Even in a bebop setting, he favored the ringing tonalities of the gospel church. And he was sumptuously at home with the blues, as a style and a sensibility but never as an affectation.

All of this contributed to his accomplishment as a solo pianist. His first solo piano album was “Alone With the Blues,” in 1958, and he went on to make a handful of others, including “Alone at Montreux,” “Solo Flight” and “Montreux ’77.” His most recent release, “In the Back Room,” was yet another solo album, recorded live at Rutgers University and released on the Evening Star label in 2008.

Raphael Homer Bryant was born on Dec. 24, 1931, in Philadelphia, and made his name in that city during its considerable postwar jazz boom. Along with his brother, Tommy, a bassist, he played in the house band at the Blue Note Club in Philadelphia, which had a steady flow of major talent dropping in from New York. (Charlie Parker and Miles Davis were among the musicians they played with there.) In short order Mr. Bryant had plenty of prominent sideman work, both with and without his brother.

One early measure of his ascent was the album “Meet Betty Carter and Ray Bryant,” released on Columbia in 1955. It was a splashy introduction for him as well as for Ms. Carter, the imposingly gifted jazz singer. It was soon followed by “The Ray Bryant Trio” (Prestige), an accomplished album that introduced Mr. Bryant’s composition “Blues Changes,” with its distinctive chord progression.

That song would become a staple of the jazz literature, if less of a proven standard than “Cubano Chant,” the sprightly Afro-Cuban fanfare that Mr. Bryant recorded under his own name and in bands led by the drummers Art Blakey, Art Taylor and Jo Jones.

Mr. Bryant had several hit songs early in his solo career, beginning with “Little Susie,” an original blues that he recorded both for the Signature label and for Columbia. In 1960 he reached No. 30 on the Billboard chart with a novelty song called “The Madison Time,” rushed into production to capitalize on a dance craze. (The song has had a durable afterlife, appearing on the soundtrack to the 1988 movie “Hairspray,” and in the recent Broadway musical production.) He later broke into the Top 100 with a cover of Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” released just a few months after the original, in 1967.

But Mr. Bryant’s legacy never rested on his chart success or his nimble response to popular trends. It can be discerned throughout his own discography and in some of his work as a sideman, notably with the singers Carmen McRae and Jimmy Rushing, and on albums like Dizzy Gillespie’s “Sonny Side Up,” on Verve. “After Hours,” a track on that album, begins with Mr. Bryant and his brother playing a textbook slow-drag blues.

Along with his wife, Mr. Bryant is survived by a son, Raphael Bryant Jr.; a daughter, Gina; three grandchildren; and two brothers, Leonard and Lynwood. Mr. Bryant’s sister, Vera Eubanks, is the mother of several prominent jazz musicians: Robin Eubanks, a trombonist; Kevin Eubanks, the guitarist and former bandleader on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno”; and Duane Eubanks, a trumpeter.

________________________________________

Back during the mid and late seventies Ray Bryant used to play piano regularly at a restaurant around the corner from my apartment on 2nd Avenue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan called Hanratty's.  That restaurant has been gone for many years.  Bryant was a funky two fisted pianist who had a winning combination of prodigious technique coupled with a soulful feeling.  He will live on through his numerous recordings.

John H. Armwood

‘Jazz - The Smithsonian Anthology,’ Out March 29 - NYTimes.com

Cover of Art Blakey‘Jazz - The Smithsonian Anthology,’ Out March 29 - NYTimes.com

By BEN RATLIFF

LOOK out: there’s a new jazz canon coming toward you. A boxed set of six discs to be released on March 29, it emanates from the Smithsonian Institution; it is called “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology.” It surveys jazz chronologically, from its complicated beginnings to its just as complicated near-present.

It was assembled by scholars and critics and broadcasters: serious names. It begins with a solo-piano composition by a Texas-born composer whose father had been a slave (Scott Joplin) and ends with a quartet track led by a Polish trumpeter (Tomasz Stanko) who loves Miles Davis. Text drips from the package, an essay for each of its 111 tracks.

You’re energized, right? Your heartbeat just picked up, your amygdala’s plumping out. You want to know what canons usually address: how and where the anthologizers claim jazz started, how they frame it now. And in the middle, how do they really feel about Coltrane, about late Billie Holiday and Lester Young, about Ahmad Jamal, Miles at the Plugged Nickel, Afro-Latinism, cool and free and fusion, live vs. studio, unsung heroes? More: Is jazz a musical language or a philosophy of action, or is it merely a genre, the art that descends from a body of recorded masterpieces? What’s its relation to race, or sensuality, or geography? And what is the deal with its rhythm sections — why do they sound so incredibly different every 15 years? What keeps the music changing? What makes it tick? What is jazz?

I am both invested in and sick of the subject, having written a kind of jazz-canon book myself, 10 years ago. So, caveat lector. But I ask rhetorically, because I’m still working it out: How could such a righteous cultural product, full of so many sublime parts, feel so cumulatively limp?

My first reaction was that maybe we’ve reached our limit, jazz-canon-wise. In the past one of the primary functions of projects like “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology” was simply to get this music in print, because in some cases you could not otherwise find it: probably not in your local record store or library, not on the radio, nowhere. Back then there was a causal link between a recording’s availability and the possibility of its influence. Now almost every recording ever made is buyable or poachable online: easy come, easy go, and therefore no music needs protection or special pleading. But that’s nonsense. There is still a need for cultural advocacy, even if the culture is easy to find. Meade Lux Lewis’s ferocious “Honky Tonk Train Blues,” on Disc 1 of this collection, was popular in its time and remains easy to locate online. Still, you’ll most likely never hear it unless someone points you there.

Then I wondered if maybe it’s no longer worth exploring what the new jazz reality — say, New York groups like the trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire’s or the drummer Dafnis Prieto’s, or the New York-Los Angeles band Kneebody — might have in common with King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. But of course that’s wrong too. The connections are there, the closer you listen: in instrumentation, in the compressed balance between composition and improvisation, in the spirit of revision. And all those new jazz musicians have studied the jazz tradition. They may run far and wide, but they know who their parents are.

But maybe the true problem is that “Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology” isn’t really a canon at all. It’s a House of Representatives. What’s missing is its desire to be any more than a list, rather than an argument or a thesis.

It does not lack for facts, this hundred-dollar toolbox. It is not underinformed. It does more, for instance, with free jazz and Afro-Latin music than some others have done. It represents both popular taste and scholarly consensus. It is balanced in all things, even in its split between popular choices and critics’ favorites. So there’s Miles Davis’s “So What,” Bill Evans’s “Waltz for Debby,” Getz and Gilberto’s “Girl From Ipanema,” Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ “Moanin,’ ” etc. — as well as solid to questionable wild-card choices like the Clark Terry-Bob Brookmeyer Quintet’s “Haig & Haig,” Mary Lou Williams’s “Virgo” and Cab Calloway’s “Hard Times.” Its final disc stops at 2003 — a minor alarm, though I’m resigned to low hopes for the final chapters of these kinds of things. You’ll always disagree about the music of your own time.

The new Smithsonian anthology is fair minded, which is to say strangely anonymous. Though the essays are signed, one can’t be sure whether the signers chose the tracks, and you won’t find out how the anthologizers, individually or as a body, really feel about anything in particular. (The boxed set was created by an executive committee of five — the scholars David Baker, Jose Bowen, John Edward Hasse, Dan Morgenstern and Alyn Shipton — and 42 more on the advisory panel: 47 ! And that’s not including yet a few more writers, who wrote track notes.) It comes with no particular orientation or obsession; it can seem as if there’s little at stake.

It is chronological, which of course carries its own logic, if kind of a dull one. It contains a few inspired sequences, like its tour of the mid-’50s, winding through mostly nonobvious tracks from Chico Hamilton, Lucky Thompson, Sonny Rollins, Sun Ra, Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong. But in general the individual tracks don’t talk to one another much, or linger on an artist and take a stand; and while the boxed set represents styles and eras and trends, it seldom leads you toward deeper questions.

The act of listening to it can also elicit a retrospective sympathy for past canons, on page and disc and screen. For instance Charles Edward Smith’s in “The Jazz Record Book”; Marshall Stearns’s in “The Story of Jazz”; Joachim E. Berendt, Gunther Huesmann and Kevin Whitehead’s, in the second edition of Berendt’s “Jazz Book”; Ken Burns’s, in the television documentary and CD series “Jazz;” Allen Lowe’s “That Devilin’ Tune,” covering jazz up to 1951 in 36 discs and a book; and Gary Giddins’s and Scott Deveaux’s, in their judicious book-length history and CD-ROM project from 2010, also called “Jazz.”

All these had causes to defend or stories to tell: the development of jazz as a self-conscious art form; the centrality of the music’s prehistory; the importance of prescient or outlying musicians to jazz history; the role of jazz in healing America’s race trauma. But what the new anthology might make you miss the most is the object it has been designed to replace: “The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz,” compiled in 1973 and revised in 1987 by the critic Martin Williams.

The American jazz-education movement was just taking shape when Williams’s “Smithsonian Collection” appeared, on six vinyl LPs. (It was eventually transferred to CD; it’s been out of print for a while.) The Williams anthology became standard for jazz-appreciation classes, and on first inspection it appeared only to help you demarcate a big story and save time. Stealthily, it also advanced theories. Williams, who died in 1992, could write as if he didn’t know what fun was. But he listened with great depth and vigor, and his canon had funk in its step.

It favored rhythmic innovation above all else. It had little time for singers. It acknowledged masterpieces, but not reflexively or out of obligation. It bestowed major real estate to a small group of creators — particularly Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Ornette Coleman — and gave John Coltrane an informed kind of short shrift. If you resented any of his grudges from his writing, you saw them carried over into the anthology. (He found Coltrane tedious and Ahmad Jamal shallow.)

Yet the Williams canon radiated a meta-consciousness of jazz as a creative act. It segued versions of the same song by different people; it knitted together Charlie Christian’s guitar solos from different takes of “Breakfast Feud” with the Benny Goodman Sextet into one long, five-chorus improvisation. And it really engaged with Charlie Parker, presenting pairs of alternate takes of “Embraceable You” and “Crazeology,” cutting them off after Parker’s solo, to demonstrate how true an improviser Parker was. This could seem fanciful or time wasting when telling a big story in a small space; but he picked his spots.

All of that was radical, if not even remix-oriented or bloggy before its time. He seemed to understand implicitly that canon making itself was an act of creativity and revision; that a survey of an art form wasn’t the same thing as a survey of its reception. In any case, Williams’s anthology was argued over because it was worth arguing over.

What I’m saying is: If ever there was a place for style to follow subject, for form to follow function, this is the place. A jazz anthology has got to have spark and tension and originality. In order for jazz to feel like an open subject, we need more challenging suppositions about it, whether they translate as pluralistic or exclusive. But perhaps this just can’t be done by committee. I’ve never heard good jazz from a 47-member band.

Related articles

• Jazz drummer Morello dies at 82 (bbc.co.uk)
• Music Review: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - Ugetsu (seattlepi.com)

Jazz Columns: Todd Barkan: Taking Care of the Music — By Sylvia Levine Leitch — Jazz Articles

Jazz Columns: Todd Barkan: Taking Care of the Music — By Sylvia Levine Leitch — Jazz Articles

Sylvia Levine Leitch interviews longtime jazz producer and presenter Todd Barkan about his life in service of jazz

In this latest interview in my series, "In the Service of Jazz," Todd Barkan—Director of Programming and, literally, the voice of jazz for Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center, as well as record producer, former club owner and musician—talks about his life in jazz. That life almost came to an abrupt and violent end February 13, 2011, when Todd was involved in a serious car accident driving home to the Bronx on the West Side Highway in New York in his trusty Mercury Sable from a night working with this music he loves. As he recalls from his hospital bed a week later, "An SUV travelling at least 100 miles an hour rear-ended me and propelled my car with such force that it smashed into a tree and landed back onto the highway facing the opposite direction." Todd suffered multiple fractures to his lower leg and to his clavicle, and serious bruises from the force of the air bag. "You know," he shared, "those air bags don't just inflate around you gently. They explode on impact." A kind taxi driver witnessed the accident, called the police, and stayed at the scene to tell what had happened—the SUV took off. And, in an odd twist, Todd's cell phone redialed the last call received before the airbag hit it. So pianist Monte Alexander was treated to a bizarre soundtrack of sirens in the wee hours of Sunday morning, he and his wife thinking it must be one of Todd's latest musical ideas. "They had no idea," Todd chuckled.

More...

Related articles

• Todd Barkan on HammondCast KYOURADIO wishing Todd a Speedy Recovery (hammondjazz.wordpress.com)

Music review: Wynton Marsalis with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

Image via WikipediaMusic review: Wynton Marsalis with Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and Los Angeles Philharmonic at Disney Hall | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

Wynton Marsalis thinks big — and he has the talent, drive and clout to carry out his ambitions. Hence “Swing Symphony” (Symphony No. 3), his latest omnivorous attempt to merge the history of acoustic jazz with a symphony orchestra.

First heard in Berlin, then in the New York Philharmonic’s season-opener in September, “Swing Symphony” reached Los Angeles on Saturday night as Walt Disney Concert Hall’s stage groaned under the combined weight of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. Los Angeles received a bonus: The piece’s fifth movement, which was deleted from the New York performance due to TV time limits, was played here, making this the U.S. premiere of the complete work.

From a jazz point of view, Marsalis’ new work can be heard as a homage to his idol Duke Ellington’s “Black, Brown and Beige” — sometimes rather explicitly in sound. Yet Marsalis is also applying Mahler’s vision of what a symphony should be: an embracing of the world.

Like Marsalis’ “All Rise,” which the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Jazz at Lincoln Center big band performed and recorded in 2001, “Swing Symphony” is more of a suite than a symphony, in which a plethora of idioms jump-cuts wildly from one to the next. Marsalis arranges his six-movement, 51-minute cross-section of jazz history more or less chronologically, from ragtime to the Charleston, the big band era, bebop, Afro-Cubop and John Coltrane’s modal period (the fifth movement) before doubling back to a ballad for Ellingtonian saxophones. Clearly any developments beyond 1961 — the year of Wynton’s birth — remains out-of-bounds on the Marsalis jazz timeline.

Luckily, the piece has an irresistible vitality over its long span, and Marsalis does get the symphony orchestra thoroughly involved. Encouraged by jazz-attuned conductor Leonard Slatkin, the Phil could swing harder than its New York colleagues at times, and there were plenty of scorching solos from the Jazz at Lincoln Center band — including Marsalis himself, seated as always in his trumpet section. But there are many portions — the second movement in particular — in which there is just too much busywork, enough to keep this huge apparatus from fusing, lifting off and finding its groove.

In programming Gershwin’s “An American in Paris” — and what a delight it was to hear it indoors, for a change, instead of through outdoor amplification — Slatkin not only suavely illustrated the lineage of classical-jazz fusion, he let Gershwin make points of the virtues of self-editing, segueing, not overloading the texture, and, of course, one great tune after another. Shostakovich’s spiffy little Jazz Suite No. 1, with its Weill-like marches and impish humor, showed that the Jazz Age spread as far as Russia.

The audience responded wildly; only Gustavo Dudamel gets as big a hand at L.A. Philharmonic concerts as Marsalis got. As an encore, Marsalis launched an eloquently subtle blues jam, in which every member of his big band took a chorus.

Related articles

• Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra developing its own sound (theglobeandmail.com)
• Wynton Marsalis in Cuba to "bring people together" (omg.yahoo.com)

John McLaughlin: On Coltrane And Spirituality In Music : NPR

Image via WikipediaJohn McLaughlin: On Coltrane And Spirituality In Music : NPR

Guitarist John McLaughlin never saw saxophonist John Coltrane perform. The jazz icon died in 1967, before McLaughlin had the chance. But Coltrane's historic 1965 album A Love Supreme has inspired every twist and turn of McLaughlin's career since he first heard it.

"It took me, actually, a year of listening to that record almost every day to finally hear what [Coltrane] was doing musically," McLaughlin says. "The least I can say is that he was very advanced, as a human being and a musician.

"The second thing, and perhaps the more significant, was the poem on the back of the album — the LP, in those days," McLaughlin says. "This record arrived in my hands at a very significant time in my life, when I was starting to ask myself these fundamental questions about life and death, existence — you know, the big questions we all address to ourselves sooner or later. This poem had such a wonderful effect on me. It was so inspiring and encouraging to me as a young seeker at that time, that I knew the music was really, in a more elegant and eloquent way, speaking about what he wrote about. But I couldn't hear it."

Music video for John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension's "The Fine Line."

Source: YouTube

In an interview with Weekend Edition host Liane Hansen, McLaughlin says that the great achievement of A Love Supreme was to integrate a spiritual dimension into the world of jazz music. Now, the guitarist has recorded an album inspired by his passion for Coltrane's masterwork. It's called To the One, and it was recently nominated for a Grammy in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category.

McLaughlin says he didn't intend to make a Coltrane tribute. But once the music on To the One had been written, he says, it reminded him of his discovery of A Love Supreme in 1965.

"About two months following [the composition of the album], I woke up in the middle of the night with the liner notes in my mind, and all the titles of the pieces," McLaughlin says. "I just woke up [with it] all in my mind — very peculiar experience. I woke up and they'd been dictated to me. If you can explain it, I would be very happy to hear it."

Related articles

• He's the one: John McLaughlin's inspiration (theglobeandmail.com)
• Follow Your Heart, John McLaughlin, song by song by Walter Kolosky (musicofourheart.wordpress.com)

Eight Jazz Composers Selected To Have Works Performed By Orchestra : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Eight Jazz Composers Selected To Have Works Performed By Orchestra : A Blog Supreme : NPR

Over the summer, Columbia University hosted the Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, a collaborative effort between its Center for Jazz Studies and the American Composers Orchestra. Around 30 composers in the field of jazz were invited to participate in a week's worth of seminars and workshops to learn about orchestral techniques, as recently reported on Weekend Edition and in an earlier post.

Knowledge may be its own reward, but there was also a tasty carrot for those who attended: Eight of the composers would be selected to have their works performed in public readings by the ACO in June 2011. A Blog Supreme is honored to announce those winners:

Harris Eisenstadt

Mark Helias

Adam Jenkins

Erica Lindsay

Nicole Mitchell

Rufus Reid

Jacob Sacks

Marianne Trudel

Volker Goetze and Joel Harrison were selected as alternates.

In order to be considered, each composer was required to submit a score with a short sample of his or her work-in-progress and a cover letter that served as a proposal. For example, Mitchell explained in her letter that Flights for Freedom, a multi-movement work inspired by Harriet Tubman, will "utilize concepts of improvisation within the orchestra through guided notation that gives non-improvising classical players a comfortable approach." Mitchell further elaborated that the musicians will be given phrases to play "at will and in their own tempo against the time that the conductor will be presenting," reflecting the kind of flexibility and spontaneity that were keys to Tubman's success.

Many of the eight will be grappling with that same issue: how to create new concepts and frameworks for improvisation in the score-bound symphony orchestra. What exactly the pieces will sound like remains to be seen, but, then again, that should always be true. If all goes according to plan, no two performances will ever be the same.

Don Cheadle Might Play Miles Davis - BlackBook

Image via WikipediaDon Cheadle Might Play Miles Davis - BlackBook

Don Cheadle is gunning for a role he seems all but destined to play in a long-planned biopic of the famed jazz musician Miles Davis. Last week, the actor attended a party atop the swank Thompson Beverly Hills hotel for the release of a 40th-anniversary edition of “Bitches Brew” as a guest of the Davis estate. “I was invited by the family,” Davis told us as he looked out over Los Angeles. “We’ve become friends over the years.”

Cheadle and screenwriter Steven Baigelman recently finished a script that seems designed for awards attention - once it’s actually made. “Davis was his own person and his own artist,” Cheadle, long producers’ top choice for the role of Davis, said with the kind of cool detachment the master musician would have approved of. “There were a lot of other musicians in that era who got stuck, but he never did.”

He went on to draw parallels between the craft of acting and Davis’ art, jazz. “You have to be aware of where you are at all times and be able to respond quickly,” he said of performing. “All his music is in heavy rotation in my house,” he said. “I have love for all music: jazz, Hip-Hop, funk, R&B. But Miles was the granddaddy.” So will we see Cheadle in the role anytime soon? That all depends on a studio stepping up and facing the proverbial music.

Related articles

• Don Cheadle: Time is right for Miles Davis Biopic (reuters.com)

Jazz Articles: Jazz Saxophonist James Moody Dies — By Lee Mergner — Jazz Articles

Cover of James MoodyJazz Articles: Jazz Saxophonist James Moody Dies — By Lee Mergner — Jazz Articles

Saxophonist achieved fame as an associate of Dizzy Gillespie and co-composer of “Moody’s Mood for Love”

By Lee Mergner

Saxophonist, flutist and composer James Moody died today at his home in the San Diego area. He was 85 years old. Moody had been suffering from pancreatic cancer and had recently chosen to decline treatment by radiation or chemotherapy.

Funeral services are scheduled for December 18 at Greenwood Memorial Park, 4300 Imperial Ave in San Diego with a morning viewing and graveside service at 12:30 and a celebration of his life at Faith Chapel on 9400 Campo Road in Spring Valley at 2 PM.

Dragan Tasic

James Moody

In February of this year, Moody was operated on have the tumor resected, but according to his wife Linda, it proved to be impossible without endangering his life. The doctors removed his gallbladder and did a double bypass of his digestive system to remove the blockage. He was in the ICU at UCSD Thornton Hospital for almost 8 weeks with life threatening infections and was finally able to come home in May. Since that time Moody rested at home under the care of his wife and a team of hospice care workers, his time spent watching TV, listening to music and playing occasionally.

Once the Moody’s announced about a month ago via his website that he was suffering from pancreatic cancer and awaiting his fate sans medical intervention, the jazz community flooded his site and his e-mail with their prayers and well-wishes. Above and beyond his impact as a jazz musician, Moody was a man who seemed to make friends everywhere he went.

"There's an old philosophy, and it's been said many times, but people don't heed it," Moody told JT’s Bill Milkowski in 2004. "And that is simply this: 'So a man thinketh, so it is.' I think I'm young. My wife says I'm 78 going on 18, and that's very true in a way. That's how I feel."

Moody, who preferred to be called by his last name, was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 26, 1925. It is little known that Moody was born partially deaf. As a result when he was young and unable to hear the teacher, he was labelled mentally deficient and ordered to attend a school for the mentally disabled. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to Newark, New Jersey, where he attended public school. Eventually, his hearing problem was diagnosed and he was sent to the Bruce Street School for the Deaf He later attended Arts High in Newark, N.J.

His uncle gave him an alto sax when he was 16. After hearing Buddy Tate and Don Byas perform with the Count Basie Band at the Adams Theater in Newark, New Jersey, Moody switched to the tenor saxophone. He was just 18 years old when he was drafted into the Air Force in 1943 during World War II. Unable to play with the white Air Force band, Moody played in an unofficial Negro Air Force band for three years. He was disturbed by the segregation that was prevalent in the military service at that time. Incredibly, he met Dizzy Gillespie while in the Air Force, as Gillespie came through for a performance on the base. After he got out of the service, in 1946, he joined the recently formed Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, one of the most important jazz groups at that time.

In a piece in the March 2004 issue of JazzTimes, Moody told writer Bill Milkowski that Dizzy Gillespie had an enormous impact on his life. "Diz influenced me from every standpoint. He was a friend, a father, a confidante, just everything to me. I'm 78 years old and I'm still realizing how much he affected me. And man, a lot of times I'll see something, and I'll remember what Diz told me and I'll go, 'Ah, that's what he meant!' Diz, boy-he was just a nice guy, a good man. And he was a child, too; he never grew up. But he was a child like a fox. I'm just thankful to him every day for giving me a chance because he knew-he must've seen something in me to let me be in the band for a minute." In turn, Gillespie once said of his frontline partner, "Playing with James Moody is like playing with a continuation of myself."

He stayed with Gillespie for two years and appeared on several key recordings from that period, including "O.W.," "Oop-Pop-a-Da" and "Two Bass Hit."

[Note: The rest of this article is excerpted from Bill Milkowski’s feature on Moody from 2004.]

In 1946, Moody was also a member of the Bebop Boys, an all-star group led by Ray Brown and featuring Dizzy and Dave Burns on trumpets, John Brown on alto sax, Moody on tenor, Hank Jones on piano, Milt Jackson on vibes and Joe Harris on drums. (Moody's first-ever recordings in the studio come from a September 25, 1946, session with the Bebop Boys, which also produced the blazing tenor feature "Moody Speaks").

In 1948, Moody made his recording debut as a leader for the Blue Note label-James Moody and His Modernists, featuring arranger Gil Fuller and Art Blakey on drums along with such regular Gillespie sidemen as Ernie Henry on alto sax, Cecil Payne on baritone sax, Dave Burns and Elmon Wright on trumpets, Chano Pozo on bongos and vocals, Nelson Boyd on bass, James Forman on piano and Teddy Stewart on drums.

In 1949 Moody moved to Europe, and in Sweden that year he recorded his tour de force of improvisation on the Jimmy McHugh Tin Pan Alley tune "I'm in the Mood for Love" (which can be heard on James Moody & His Swedish Crowns on the Dragon label). Back in the States, pioneering vocalese artist Eddie Jefferson penned lyrics to Moody's exact solo on that tune and dubbed it "Moody's Mood for Love."

Meanwhile, an unknown singer named Clarence Beeks-aka King Pleasure-heard Jefferson sing his vocalese version of Moody's masterpiece at the Cotton Club in Cincinnati. Beeks promptly committed the performance and song to memory-the lyrics, phrasing and all of the nuances. In November 1951, Beeks sang Jefferson's signature vocalese offering at the Apollo Theater Amateur Hour, winning first prize along with a contract to record the tune for Prestige. The 1952 release of King Pleasure's debut recording, "Moody's Mood for Love," became an instant hit, to the utter surprise of Moody, who found himself an "overnight sensation" when he returned to the States that same year.

"It was amazing!" he recalls, "because I had no idea what a hit it was. So when I went to play a gig somewhere I'd be shocked at how packed the place would be. Suddenly I was being treated like a star or something. I never will forget the record company guy calling me up and asking, 'You want a Cadillac? You want a Buick? Whatever you want, I'll buy it for you.' And when I told my mother that, she said, 'Son, people do not give you anything for nothing. Watch out!' And she was right. There were all kinds of come-ons in those days but my mother-God bless her, man-she hipped me to a lot of things."

Today, Moody still includes "Moody's Mood for Love" in every set he plays. "Yeah, and if I don't, I might as well not come to the gig," he laughs. "It's like Tony Bennett with 'I Left My Heart in San Francisco.' He still sings it and loves singing it, and I'm still singing 'Moody's Mood.'" (On a side note: After King Pleasure's version of "Moody's Mood for Love" became a smash hit, Jimmy McHugh sued for copyright infringement and won a partial victory in court, ultimately splitting proceeds with Moody on sales of any versions of the tune.)

Upon returning to the States in 1952, Moody worked with vocalist-hipster Babs Gonzales until they had a parting of the ways a year later. As Moody explains, "Babs was talking about 'I want more bread,' and I thought he was getting enough 'bread,' as he called it. So he said, 'Well, then I'm leaving.' And I said, 'Bye.' After Babs split we went to Cleveland and the word was out that I was looking for a singer to sing 'Moody's Mood for Love' with the band. And Eddie Jefferson came back and applied for the gig. I had no idea that he was the one who wrote the lyrics to 'Moody's Mood,' so when I found out I said, 'You got the job, man.' And it was cool from then on. Everywhere we would go we'd have to do that tune two or three times a night. I'd have to play it, and Eddie would have to sing it. And it was wonderful."

Jefferson remained a fixture in Moody's group through 1962. In 1963, Moody rejoined Gillespie and performed in the trumpeter's quintet for the remainder of the decade, but by the outset of the '70s he had lost his enthusiasm for the road. As he recalls, "My daughter was born, and I wanted to see her grow up. I didn't get to see my other children grow up since I was always away. So I finally just said, 'Aw, the heck with this.' That's when I went to Las Vegas, and I stayed there for seven and a half years."

Moody's tenor-playing pal Harold Land is the one who hipped him to the steady gig opportunities in Las Vegas. During that lucrative period, from 1971 to 1978, Moody worked at the Flamingo Hilton, where he played shows with Leslie Uggams and Sandler & Young, and also at the bigger Las Vegas Hilton, where he played with a host of big-name entertainers including Elvis Presley, Ann-Margret, Liberace, Milton Berle, Bill Cosby, the Rockettes, Lou Rawls, Ike and Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, Charlie Rich, Connie Stevens, the Everly Brothers, Steve and Eydie, Eddie Fisher and Bobbie Gentry.

He was back in New York by the early '80s, and Moody's career received a boost with a Grammy nomination in 1985 for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance for his playing on Manhattan Transfer's Vocalese. He then signed to RCA/Novus, and Moody's 1986 debut for the label was the straightahead quartet date Something Special featuring pianist Kenny Barron. His follow-up was Moving Forward, and in 1989 he was reunited with his friend and mentor Dizzy Gillespie on "Con Alma" and "Get the Booty" on Sweet and Lovely.

On March 26, 1995, a 70th birthday celebration for Moody, hosted by Bill Cosby, was held at New York's Blue Note club. Telarc recorded the show and released it as Moody's Party: Live at the Blue Note. He followed that up with two tribute recordings for Warner Bros.: 1996's Sinatra tribute Young at Heart and 1997's Moody Plays Mancini.

He made several recordings during the last decade of his life, including Homage, Moody 4A and Moody 4B, the latter two for IPO. Moody 4B was recently nominated for a Grammy award.

"I have a goal in life, and my goal is to play better tomorrow than I did today," Moody says. "I'm not in competition with other musicians because there's too much going on, you can't be into that. So I'm in competition with myself. I just want to be able to play better tomorrow than I did today. And I've got to hurry up and play better because it seems like when I practice and I think I got something, I go outside and everybody else has got it and gone. So I'm still working at it because I haven't found it yet. It's a never-ending search. It's the old thing of I'll never get it but it's worth trying."

Moody’s 2004 album for Savoy, Homage, featured tunes specially composed for the record by some of his friends. Here's what a few of the composers had to say about Moody, for the piece written by Bill.Milkowski.

Kenny Barron: "He's just an amazing person for so many reasons. Number one is just his boundless energy. Number two is his humility. He's just a great musician and a really great guy. We spent four years together with Dizzy and what used to amaze me is that he would eat these chord changes up and then come back and say, 'Man, does that sound OK?' And I'd say, 'Come on, Moody, are you kidding?' He's like the eternal student of music, and he keeps on getting better. The other thing I can say about Moody is I wanna be like him when I grow up. The piece I contributed was just a blues because that's something that Moody excels at, and he can put any kind of twist on it-it could be very modern, it could be gutbucket, whatever it is, whatever it calls for. He's just a real open-minded cat, and he brings so much to the music. He's open to what the younger guys are doing, interested in finding out what it is and how they're doing it. So I really take my hat off to him. And I really would like to be like that when I'm 78-always ready to learn."

Marc Copland: "I found working with Moody to be a humbling and humanizing experience. This is the kindest person I ever worked for, and he became the godfather of my son. Here's a man who played with the greats, yet he doesn't carry an attitude or rest on his laurels. All he talks about sometimes is how much he needs to practice, how far he still has to go in this music. As a human being, he's old enough to be my father, and over the years we've had a deep exchange of musical and personal ideas. He once said to me with a twinkle in his eye, 'Marc, sometimes I'm the father, and sometimes you're the father. I know!' My personal homage to Moody is this: Every time I play, every time I travel, I hope to play with the same spirit that he does and hope to treat other musicians with the same kindness and respect that he does."

Chick Corea: "James is a treasure of an artist and musician. He makes me smile every time I meet him and every time I hear him play. His work with Dizzy will remain unforgettable."

David Hazeltine: "What's amazing to me is that at his age, after all the music that Moody has performed and recorded, he remains a serious student of jazz, always looking for new ideas and interesting, innovative ways to articulate the chord changes."

Henry Threadgill Zooid: This Brings Us To – Vol II – review | Music | The Guardian

Image by volume12 via FlickrHenry Threadgill Zooid: This Brings Us To – Vol II – review | Music | The Guardian

Henry Threadgill, the Chicagoan saxophonist and composer, is by no means a jazz celeb, but he's a hero to many influential insiders for his adventurousness with structure and instrumentation, and for explorations of timbre that transform the jazz sound, while still leaving familiar clues from its roots. Threadgill's quintet Zooid has been his principle vehicle throughout the noughties, bringing rhythmically multilayered approaches to input from contemporary classical music, Latin jazz, free jazz, gamelan and the blues. The distinctive Liberty Ellman's guitar is sonorous and elegant on the moody Lying Eyes, before José Davila's trombone and the leader's airy flute lines strike a typical Threadgill contrast over a scurrying avant-funk pulse. On Polymorph, the composer's influence on both Tim Berne's conception and alto-sax sound are very clear. Sometimes Ellman sketches wraith-like lines around Stomu Takeishi's bass before Threadgill's imploring alto-sax swirls in; at others the leader fires atonal yelps across rhythm- patterns jointly established by tuba and drums. It's an economical and ascetic kind of music-making, but packed with the implications of its fast-shifting relationships, and warmer, more animated and accessible than you might expect.

Related articles

• Henry Threadgill at Roulette in November (avantmusicnews.com)
• A Language of Their Own, Tinged With Funk (nytimes.com)
• Henry Threadgill makes name for himself among jazz's elite (avantmusicnews.com)

Randy Weston Links 'African Rhythms' To American Jazz : NPR

Image via Wikipedia
I have had the wonderful experiencing of knowing Mr. Weston since 1981.  He is one of my teachers.  He is truly a great man.Randy Weston Links 'African Rhythms' To American Jazz : NPR

Pianist Randy Weston grew up surrounded by some of the greatest musicians in jazz. But it was his deep connection to Africa that inspired his personal style of music.

Weston recently sat down with NPR's Neal Conan to discuss the link between West African music and American jazz in his autobiography, African Rhythms. Traditional histories trace the history of American jazz to New Orleans, but not Weston.

"African people were taken from Africa, and taken to the States, and they came in contact with European culture and instruments," he says. Then, they "created a different kind of music" — jazz and blues.

Weston says he gives credit to his father for connecting him with music and the continent of Africa.

"He told me you have to study African civilization — when Africa was great," Weston says.

More...

Related articles

• Greg Thomas On Randy Weston's African Rhythm Trio (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Randy Weston's 50th Anniversary Concert Celebration (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Cornel West, Randy Weston and Terrance McKnight Talk Books (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)

Lou Donaldson Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard : NPR

Image via WikipediaLou Donaldson Quartet: Live At The Village Vanguard : NPR

By the time he started his latest weeklong run at the Village Vanguard, alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson was 84. He'd been based in New York for 60-odd years, during which time he became a jazz legend — the kind who made albums that are still remembered today, who recorded lines memorable enough to be sampled years later, who toured the country's back rooms back when a jazz musician could post up for two weeks at a time in, say, Dayton, Ohio. It bred in him a style that was solid, soulful and swinging, with a charismatically salty wit to match. It hasn't broke, and he hasn't felt the need to fix it.

When "Sweet Poppa Lou" descended into the basement and ascended to the stage, there were the japes, the blues singing, the exemplary straight-ahead jazz he's pursued for decades. ("No fusion, no con-fusion," he said — twice.) WBGO and NPR Music will be there to broadcast and webcast the first Nov. 3 set live; it will also be recorded and archived online on this page.

Since recording with organist Jimmy Smith in the late 1950s, Donaldson has often worked with a rhythm section of Hammond B-3 organ, guitar and drums. That instrumentation allows him to dish on funky, danceable grooves; not coincidentally, it was responsible for some of his most famous appearances on record. He reprised some of those greatest hits — "Blues Walk," "Alligator Bogaloo" — and called some favorites from the bebop and hard bop eras. He even sang some blues: his trademark "Whiskey Drinkin' Woman," with many embellishments by way of prologue. With him at the Vanguard was his current working band: Pat Bianchi on organ, Randy Johnston on guitar and Fukushi Tainaka on drums.

More...

Related articles

• Jazz Listings for Oct. 29-Nov. 4 (nytimes.com)

Nine Women In The Room: A Jazz Musicians’ Roundtable : The Record : NPR

Nine Women In The Room: A Jazz Musicians’ Roundtable : The Record : NPR

Over the summer, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington brought together some pretty high-profile musicians from all over the world to record The Mosaic Project: pianists Geri Allen, Helen Sung, and Patrice Rushen; bassists Esperanza Spalding and Mimi Jones; percussionist Sheila E.; woodwind players Anat Cohen and Tineke Postma; trumpeter Ingrid Jensen; violinist Chia-Yin Carol Ma; flutist Hailey Niswanger; and vocalists Dee Dee Bridgewater, Cassandra Wilson, Dianne Reeves, Carmen Lundy, Nona Hendryx, Patricia Romania, and Gretchen Parlato. Activist and author Angela Davis even contributes spoken word to one track.

You may have noticed they're all women. That was both the point of the session — and not the point.

After a full day of recording, eight of the musicians sat down with Lara Pellegrinelli for a conversation on the topic of women in jazz. They shared some of their own experiences and discussed the media, the music business, audience, mentors, and role models. But Carrington eventually broke in with a request: could they stop talking about gender issues and talk about the music?

The conversation illustrates some of the tensions in being a woman in jazz. At the same time that these players seem ready to celebrate the obstacles they've overcome, they say that the music itself comes first — it doesn't care if you're black or white, young or old, male or female. Could it be that this conviction, central to jazz, has made it difficult for women to speak up about the prejudice they've faced, as much as it has given them the faith that they will be heard?

You can read an edited transcription of the full conversation here, or download a PDF by right-clicking this link and selecting 'save link as'

More...

Related articles

• Esperanza Spalding: Chamber Music Society | CD review (guardian.co.uk)

Jazz Articles: Jazz Saxophonist Marion Brown Dies — By Lee Mergner — Jazz Articles

Cover of Marion BrownJazz Articles: Jazz Saxophonist Marion Brown Dies — By Lee Mergner — Jazz Articles

Known for his association with Archie Shepp, Amiri Baraka, Ornette Coleman and other bright lights of the 60s avant garde jazz community, Marion Brown died on Monday, October 18, in Hollywood, Florida. He was 79. Brown had been ill for many years and had not performed publicly in a long time. Brown recorded over a dozen albums as a leader for Impulse!, ESP, Black Lion and ECM, but is perhaps best known for his appearance as a sideman on two seminal records of the ‘60s: John Coltrane’s Ascension and Archie Shepp’s Fire Music.

Brown was born in the Atlanta area. He left high school in the 10th grade and enlisted in the Army, where he quickly became a member of the Army band and was stationed for 18 months at Hokkaido, an obscure island of Japan. After he returned home to Atlanta, Brown enrolled at Clark College to major in music education. He went on to study at Howard University in Washington, DC and it was there that he became immersed in the new music played by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Amiri Baraka, Archie Shepp and others. Within a few years, several of these artists would become mentors or associates of Brown. Disenchanted with his academics at Howard, Brown moved to New York in order to play this new music professionally.

More...

Related articles

• Alto saxophonist Marion Brown dies (variety.com)
• RIP Marion Brown (avantmusicnews.com)

Music review: Trumpeter Tom Harrell's potent brew SF Gate.Com

Image via WikipediaMusic review: Trumpeter Tom Harrell's potent brew

Conflict and resolution. Tension and release. Contrast. Jazz students learn these concepts as the basic building blocks of musical expression. Few artists embody these concepts both inwardly and outwardly more starkly than trumpeter Tom Harrell, who brought his quintet to Yoshi's San Francisco on Wednesday night. It was refreshing to see a great many aspiring young musicians in the audience being schooled by one of the living masters of modern jazz.

Juxtaposition is not confined to the music at a Tom Harrell show. Harrell suffers from schizophrenia, and the sheer effort and courage required for him to take the stage and maintain his composure over the course of a performance are at once inspiring and unsettling.

On Wednesday, as always, Harrell emerged from behind the curtains slowly, deliberately, dressed in black, and made his way to his position onstage in silence. He opened a manila folder containing his charts and spent a few minutes organizing his music just so, then finally stood up straight, eyes closed, head down, still, though trembling slightly.

It is at this moment of every Tom Harrell show I've seen that I wonder if he'll be able to summon the inner strength to go ahead with the performance. Then, with a subtle tap of one foot, he cues the band, puts his trumpet to his lips, and as the first few notes flow out of his horn a miracle occurs.

While playing, and only while playing, Harrell is in complete control of his world and his surroundings. All symptoms of his illness disappear, replaced by one of the most recognizable, sophisticated and mature voices active in the post-bop tradition.

More...

Bobby Watson & The UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance Concert Jazz Orchestra - The Gates BBQ Suite - Lafiya Music - Audiophile Audition

Cover of Bobby WatsonBobby Watson & The UMKC Conservatory of Music and Dance Concert Jazz Orchestra - The Gates BBQ Suite - Lafiya Music - Audiophile Audition

Bobby Watson has both good taste in food and in the jazz he has brought to the public for many years, ranging from his time as musical director during his period with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers all the way up to his recent reformation of Horizon with Terell Stafford, Edward Simon, Essiet Essiet, and Victor Lewis. I had the privilege to see Horizon over Labor Day weekend in Detroit, and it was a treat.

Speaking of a treat, you can’t do much better than chomping on barbeque ribs while listening to your favorite hard bop or soul jazz tracks. When Bobby returned to his hometown, Kansas City, in 2000, to direct the Jazz Studies program at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, he was also returning to the food of his youth. His grandparents ran a barbeque restaurant in Merriam, Kansas. Further to Watson, Kansas City is “the Napa Valley of barbeque, and Gates Barbeque stands alone as king of the valley.”

It wasn’t much of a stretch for Bobby to get the inspiration for his seven- part extended big band work that celebrates his love both for this lip- smacking food and his upbringing in the area. After being away from Kansas City for 25 years in New York City, writing this suite must have been a labor of love.

More...

Related articles

• Review: Bobby Watson- The Gates BBQ Suite (therestandstheglass.blogspot.com)
• Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola Sets New Jazz Festival - WSJ.com (armwoodjazz.blogspot.com)

Wynton Marsalis in Cuba to "Bring People Together" - ABC News

Image via WikipediaWynton Marsalis in Cuba to "Bring People Together" - ABC News

Reuters

HAVANA

U.S. jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center orchestra will play concerts in Cuba this week with what he said on Monday was a simple goal -- to bring people together through music.

His is the latest in a growing series of cultural exchanges between the United States and Cuba as the two countries grope for common ground after five decades of hostility.

The New York-based jazz orchestra, making its first trip to the communist-led island, is set to play concerts Tuesday through Saturday and give classes to young Cuban musicians.

Marsalis, 48, said he was honored to be in Cuba, with its own rich musical history rivaling that of his native New Orleans, the birthplace of jazz.

He told of how, when he was 12, his father, pianist Ellis Marsalis, brought him an album featuring Cuban jazz great Chucho Valdez and said, "Man, this is what cats are playing in Cuba."

"Then he put the record on and every time something would happen, he would go 'wooooooooooo.' He was always 'woooooooooo,'" Marsalis said.

He eschewed any overtly political overtones to the Cuba visit, saying the message of jazz was universal.

"Our tagline is 'uplift through swing.' We raise people's spirit all over the world through the art of swing," he said.

"In our music, swing means come together and stay together, even when we don't want to."

Marsalis said he had played and recorded music over the weekend with Cuban musicians including the pianist Valdez and Buena Vista Social Club singer Omara Portuondo, both of whom accompanied him at Monday's press conference.

More...

Corea trio powerful, playful

Image via WikipediaCorea trio powerful, playful

hen a jazz concert doesn't get off the ground, some times too much rehearsing is to blame. The music becomes more about executing than searching, more about musicians reciting than listening to each other and throwing off creative sparks together.

But when Chick Corea and his trio played in Dominion-Chalmers United Church on Sunday, the first thing the 69-year-old pianist told the crowd was, "We're going to rehearse on you a little bit." A set of powerful, playful music resulted, from three of jazz's most recognizable players.

Corea was punchy and romantic, florid and fantastic, unleashing hand-over-hand feats at the keyboard. Bassist Christian McBride impressed with his big-as-a-house beat and the virtuosity of his solos. Drummer Brian Blade personified in-the-moment creativity and commitment, and when he swatted his cymbals it felt like the musical equivalent of "Amen!"

They were all like mighty orators, and their concert's best moments happened when they spoke with one spontaneous voice.

Serenity, a Joe Henderson piece, seemed like a subdued start to things. But the music grew more vivid with every tune, perhaps with the musicians becoming increasingly comfortable with the acoustics and with the audience.

More...

Related articles by Zemanta

• Music Review: A Musical Home With Three Sides (nytimes.com)

Search Amazon.com for chic corea