Sam Noto - Notes to You

Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected, all rights reserved.

Another reposting by way of remembering San Noto who passed away on October 16, 2026.

“ … Sam's playing … embodies his extension of the style that runs from Dizzy Gillespie to Fats Navarro through Clifford Brown. Of all the major trumpet soloists at work today who come out of Clifford, Noto is spiritually and technically most faithful to the source. His production of notes … shows a thorough understanding of Brownie's artistry. Too much, of course, can be made of artistic lineage; no one really plays like anyone else. … Sam's allegiance to the Brown style is important to his conception. But he is too forthright an individual to allow his personality to be submerged beneath even the oceanic influence of Brown.”

- Doug Ramsey, Jazz author, critic and blogger

From 1975 - 1980, the brilliant Jazz trumpet player, Sam Noto, made four LPs for Don Schlitten’s Xanadu record label none of which have made it into broader, digital circulation.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would be fun to highlight Sam and his Xanadu recordings in four, separate postings before combining these into one, comprehensive feature about Sam and the other recordings he played on for Xanadu as a sideman during this period, most notably on one in which he teamed up with bebop trumpet legend, Red Rodney.

Not only are Jazz fans indebted to Don for recording Sam at the peak of his career but also for turning to four knowledgeable Jazz authors to prepare the liner notes to these LPs each of which provide a wealth of information about Sam’s background, his style of playing, the musicians on the various dates and the song selections.

Recorded on December 18, 1977, Sam Noto/Notes to You [Xanadu 144] features Sam along with Joe Romano, tenor sax, Ronnie Cuber, baritone sax, Jimmy Rowles on piano, Sam Jones on bass and Freddie Waits on drums with the following liner notes by Doug Ramsey.

“It was late Spring or early Summer, 1957, and Stan Kenton was playing a dance at the Washington Armory. The band may not have been Kenton's best, but it was by no means his worst. Lennie Niehaus was the featured alto saxophone soloist. Bill Perkins got most of the tenor solos. Red Kelly was the bassist. The trumpet section included two players I thought showed promise as soloists. One was Lee Katzman, who dropped out of sight after the 1950s. The other was Sam Noto. None of the trumpeters got much in the way of solo time from Kenton, he kept them so busy blowing high and loud. But lead trumpeter Noto showed more than power in his scattered few bars of improvisation. He had imagination.

The few of us who had come to listen were grouped at the edge of the dance floor, and I remember one of our number remarking that it would be interesting to hear Noto stretch out in solo. None of us dreamed it would be nearly two decades before that opportunity materialized.

Note's Kenton experience lasted from 1953 to 1960, but for most of that time, he recalls, "there was precious little solo space."

"Near the end, I started to get a lot to play, but it took a long time," he says. "By then Stan had put me on first trumpet and it was kind of hard to keep my jazz chops together, and play that book. It's a different kind of thing. When you play first trumpet, you have to put your air in differently, because you're aiming for projection. When you play jazz, you have to kind of bubble your air in to get the proper inflections. It was hurting me; I wanted to be a jazz player and he was making a first trumpet player out of me. That's why I never went back on the band."

Looking back on the lead experience with Kenton, Noto today realizes its value. It made a professional reputation that helped him land lucrative lead jobs in Las Vegas, where until the mid-seventies he worked in show bands. And the ability developed in the pressure cooker brass section of the Kenton band has made it possible for him to secure more or less steady studio employment in Toronto. Now he uses the Canadian city as a base of operations for his beloved jazz work. It isn't fair, it isn't right, that a creative artist of Noto's rank should have to record jingles and other schlock to subsidize his first love. But it is more fair, more right, than starving.

Starving is what he says he did after leaving Kenton and returning to his native Buffalo.

"After a couple of years of hard times, I got myself together jazz-wise. I began to be able to play the way I had wanted to during the Kenton years."

That meant developing his improvisatory technique. An important component of that was the business of bubbling the air into his horn. Other trumpet players, notably Clifford Brown, have used it, but it is as difficult to explain as it is to master.

"I get four or five calls a week from students at the Humber College music school in Toronto asking how I do it. If I could only get an answer together, I could probably make a good living teaching. I just keep the air going, but I interrupt it, sometimes with the tongue, sometimes without it, but it sounds like I'm tonguing all the time. I picked it up from just listening to Clifford. He sometimes tongued, sometimes slurred, but he kept that air going. He did it in such a way that it became a virtuoso style of playing. It's hard to explain, and you don't do it by thinking about it too much. And you can't really tell how I do it by watching. Trumpet players from the school come down all the time and watch closely, but they still ask how I do it."

After the years of getting his style and technique together in Buffalo, Noto went on the road with Count Basie for five months in 1964 and three months in 1965. He found that big band experience considerably different from the one with Kenton. He was featured in solo on only a couple of pieces. But he says he learned something about the Basie men's approach to playing that proved a valuable lesson.

"When I first got on the band, I was sticking out like a sore thumb," he says. "Those cats play differently. They lay back. They play with the time more. A whole section will be in a different time slot than another section. But it all comes out. It's much more relaxed than Kenton. At first with Basie I was playing right on top of the beat, but after a few nights I began to get the hang of it. I really enjoyed it. With Basie, if it doesn't swing, it doesn't mean anything. With Stan, everything was more concerned with harmonic style."

When he left Basie, times were rough in Buffalo, and Sam moved to Las Vegas for several years of financially rewarding but artistically barren activity in the pits of the Strip's show hotels. There were a few Musicians Union trust fund concerts in which Noto and other jazz players attracted by Vegas' plentiful money could express themselves. Otherwise, jam sessions provided the only creative outlet.

"Playing in people's' garages after the gig, that was the only way we kept our sanity."

Among his companions at many of those after-hour sessions was Gus Mancuso, another talented upstate New Yorker who is equally accomplished on piano, vibes, bass, and baritone horn and who has been all but buried in the Las Vegas scene for two decades. The Mangione brothers, Sal Nistico, J. R. Monterose, Don Menza, Frank Strazzeri, and Joe Romano are among the upstaters who developed in the fifties and sixties and who share an indefinable but unmistakable stylistic bond.

"It sure has a certain kind of feel about it," Sam agrees. "Some people in L.A., without even knowing where we're from, can hear us play and know we're from that area. Some Upstate Italian thing, I guess."

Romano and Noto have been doing their Upstate Italian thing together off and on since the early 1950s when Sam was working at a Buffalo club called Boffo's. Romano visited from Rochester one night and sat in.

"I was impressed with Joe's playing that night, always have been. Through the years, we've been associated. When I had my own club in Buffalo, he worked with me."

Joe was a Woody Herman mainstay in the 1950s, recording outside the band occasionally, including a 1957 date with Gus Mancuso that was memorable for Joe's Sonny Rollins-inspired solos as well as Gus's robust baritone horn work. He still likes early Sonny, as you can plainly hear, but what was an almost overwhelming influence 20 years ago has been tempered by Joe's development, and to some extent by the saxophone changes of the Coltrane era. More of the fruits of the Noto/Romano relationship may be heard on Sam's second Xanadu album. Act One (X 127). Sam's first album for Xanadu is called Entrance! (X 103). He can also be heard along with Dexter Cordon, Al Cohn, Blue Mitchell, Barry Harris, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes on True Blue (X 136) and Silver Blue (X 137).

This was the first time Noto had played with Jimmy Rowles, the unclassifiable piano giant from Spokane. Rowles has accompanied virtually every major jazz artist of the modern era, and each of them has been almost unreasonably lavish in his or her praise of Jimmy's sensitivity, inventiveness, humor, and encyclopedic knowledge of tunes. It is quite likely that Rowles knows more changes to more songs than anyone else. He is a major soloist. It strikes me that his solo on Parley is an out and out masterpiece of jazz improvisation, logical, lyrical, constructed with the fluidity of thought and emotion that can be achieved only by a great artist. Producer Don Schlitten notes that "a number of so-called hip musicologists did a double take when they found out that Rowles was in the band, but as you can hear, Rowles is a giant and belongs everywhere."

Sam was thrilled with Jimmy's contribution.

"He was dancin' back there," he says. "He loosened me up. He plays a little less than other piano players. In fact, he's one of the last of the good compers. He comps lightly and in short spurts, where some guys will lay on a chord and force you into a corner with it. And studio playing is something else, you know; he was about 15 yards away from me. But, as I say, he was dancin', giving me those nice little pops to keep me going." Jimmy can also be heard in duel form with Al Cohn on Heavy Love (X 1451).

Sam Jones, one of the busiest and most respected bassists in New York, works frequently these days in clubs and on tour with Cedar Wallon. He is featured on many Xanadu albums and on his own as leader on Cello Again (X 129). He continues the Oscar Pettiford tradition of bass playing, but has long since established his reputation as a major force on his instrument.

Waits' credentials can be quickly established by listing a few of the artists he has worked with: Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Ella Fitzgerald, Kenny Dorham, McCoy Tyner, Carmen McRae, Lee Morgan, Mercer Ellington, Stan Getz, James Moody, Milt Jackson, Nancy Wilson, not to mention Captain Kangaroo. The range of abilities implied by that variety of performer speaks for itself. So does his drumming on this session, as well as on The Inimitable Teddy Edwards (X 134).

Ronnie Cuber's first jazz experience was in the legendary Newport Youth Band led by Marshall Brown in the 1950s. From there he went to Maynard Ferguson's incendiary early sixties organization. But, for most listeners, he became a major baritone factor when he worked with the exciting small band led by guitarist George Benson in 1966 and 1967. His sound is large, but incisive. He is a solid anchorman in a sax section, and a soloist who demands attention for his swaggeringly confident improvisations. Cuber's ferocious work on Parley is among his best on record. His own album is Cuber Libre (X 135).

As for Sam's playing, it embodies his extension of the style that runs from Dizzy Gillespie to Fats Navarro through Clifford Brown. Of all the major trumpet soloists at work today who come out of Clifford, Noto is spiritually and technically most faithful to the source. His production of notes, alluded to above in his discussion of technique, shows a thorough understanding of Brownie's artistry. Too much, of course, can be made of artistic lineage; no one really plays like anyone else. Paul Quinichette, for an example, is the most faithful of Lester Young's disciples, but the experienced listener can quickly pinpoint Quinichette's touches. Sam's allegiance to the Brown style is important to his conception. But he is too forthright an individual to allow his personality to be submerged beneath even the oceanic influence of Brown. Listen to his entry on 'Round Midnight, and his controlled lyricism in the first four bars of the melody. No mistaking that for any other trumpet player. His speed and control are much like Clifford's, but his fast work on Notes To You makes it clear that his way of handling those flurries of 16th notes is his own. Brownie was inclined to play uninterrupted strings of 16ths, sometimes to the point of boredom, one of the few legitimate criticisms of his work. Noto alternates the fast passages with stretches of longer notes, imparting a distinctive variety to his solos.

This album also represents Sam Noto the composer. All of his originals here are originals in the true sense. There is one exception. Notes To You is based on the changes of I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire, of all things.

"All the bebop guys used to put new lines to old changes," Sam explains. "We were messing around with those changes one day, and that's what I came up with. But lately all my tunes have had original changes."

Quasinoto and Conclusions were written in Toronto in 1976. Cross Chris and Parley dale back to the early sixties and Noto's Buffalo hiatus.

"Cross Chris was named after my son. He was a hyperkinetic little boy, and he was always angry. Now he's 17, and he's still angry. So it's a turnaround on 'criss-cross' but it has no musical relationship to the Thelonious Monk tune named Criss Cross,"

Quasinoto was one of Sam's nicknames in Las Vegas. "Notes" was another, hence Notes To You, a song and album title definitely not to be taken as an insult.

Sam is moderately pleased with his playing here. Pressed to assign it a value on a scale of one to ten, the perfectionist Noto gives it a 6. He says he has achieved 8 a few times, and is still working for 10. Based on the perfection of his playing on this album, we must conclude that if 10 is achievable, it will be a staggering experience to hear Sam when he gets there.

With three Xanadu albums under his leadership, Sam's Notoriety is growing. After years of solid development, he is being recognized as a major jazz artist. It is gratifying to watch...and hear...his success.”

Notes: DOUG RAMSEY

Cover Photo: DON SCHLITTEN

Recording: PAUL GOODMAN

Produced and Directed: DON SCHLITTEN

A Jazz Conversation with Doug Ramsey [In Memoriam 1934-2026]

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

In the early days of developing content for my blog, a number of esteemed musicians, writers and critics came to my aid by consenting to be interviewed- among them - Ted Gioia, Gary Giddins, Bill Kirchner.

Doug Ramsey was the very first who volunteered to take the time to answer my questions so that I might prepare them as a formal interview for my readers. Once my blog was up-and-running, he would give me a plug on his own blog - Rifftides - if I was running something on my page that interested him.

When I called to thank him, he couldn't say enough nice things about my efforts. Needless to say, given the source, such encouragement meant the world to me.

Doug died in his sleep on May 19th at the age of 91.

I am reposting this interview in memoriam.

Douglas Arthur Ramsey 1934-2026 - Semper Fi, Marine.

I’ll try to keep this introduction brief so that my mumblings don’t detract too much from what follows.

Peter Keepnews succinctly stated: “Those of us who have tried writing about Jazz know what a daunting challenge it can be to do it well. Expressing an opinion about a given musician or recording is easy; explaining what exactly it is that makes that musician or recording worth caring about is not.”

Doug Ramsey has been brilliantly “explaining” the merits of the work of Jazz musicians and the qualities of Jazz recordings for over fifty years.

Doug’s writings about Jazz are so artfully done that opening an LP or a CD and finding that the descriptive notes have been written by him is the metaphoric equivalent of finding a real diamond at the bottom of a box of Crackerjacks.

Ray Avery once said of his colleague, William Claxton, that “some of us take photographs of Jazz musicians, but Bill is an artist.”

Those of us who write about Jazz feel the same way about Doug.

 How and when did music first come into your life?

I don’t remember it’s not being in my life. The first that I recall making music was as part of a chorus in, I think, the second grade. I took piano lessons, without notable success, from age 10 to 12 or so

 Did you play an instrument?

My next instrument, starting at 13, was the trumpet. To be more precise, it was a 12-dollar cornet that belonged to the junior high school band. Eventually, I saved enough from a paper route to buy a used Olds Special, an excellent horn that I still have but rarely play. Much later, Clark Terry got me a factory deal on a CT model Olds flugelhorn. For several years I’ve had the Bobby Shew Yamaha trumpet and the Shew model Yamaha flugelhorn. Lessons with Bobby during my L.A. years were invaluable. I’ve never stopped playing, despite many requests. The black and white picture shows me sitting in illegally at a club called the Crown Bar in the late 1950s when I was in the Marine Corps, stationed in Iwakuni, Japan.

The tenor player in the striped shirt is Sergeant Paul Elizondo, who went on to lead a big band famous in San Antonio, Texas, and become a popular Bexar County commissioner. The drummer was a corporal named, I think, Sears. The pianist and bassist had the gig at the club. Although the base at Iwakuni was headquarters of the First Marine Air Wing, my commanding officer was an Air Force colonel 450 miles north at Far East Network headquarters in Tokyo, an ideal arrangement. My job was to run the Iwakuni radio station of FEN, staffed by Marine, Army and Air Force enlisted men and a handful of Japanese civilian employees.

The commander of the air wing was Lt. General Carson Abel Roberts.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/caroberts.htm

One night when I was sitting in legally at the officers club on base, General Roberts introduced himself as a fellow player who as a youngster had known Bix Beiderbecke. On that thread, an unlikely friendship developed between the war hero three-star general and the greenish first lieutenant. If I had been under his command, that would have been unlikely. We were on a first-name basis; he called me Doug and I called him General. Sitting-in in town couldn’t have been too serious a violation of regulations; one night, General Roberts showed up at the Crown with his cornet and asked if he could play “Green Eyes,” which he did—a bit shakily but with the right changes.

It is my good fortune that there are outstanding musicians in my current hometown, Yakima, Washington, who allow me to play with them. We actually had a paying gig not long ago. Fifty bucks apiece. The way things are going, I know a few guys in L.A. and New York who would jump at that. World-class players come here frequently to play at The Seasons Performance Hall. A couple of Seasons Fall Festivals ago, Marvin Stamm invited me to play a duet with him. Actually, he informed me that I would play a duet with him. Bill Mays wrote a splendid arrangement of Freddie Hubbard’s “Up Jumped Spring” for trumpet, flugelhorn, violin, two cellos and rhythm section (Mays, Martin Wind and Matt Jorgensen). It was fun. No one in the audience threw anything.    

What are your earliest recollections of jazz?

My parents’ small collection of 78s was a mish-mash that included, among other things, records by Frankie Carle, the Andrews Sisters, Rafael Mendez, Eddy Arnold and Louis Armstrong. They had a record changer hooked up to the big Philco console radio in the living room. I played Mendez’s “La Virgen de la Macarena” a lot and wore Armstrong’s “Mahogany Hall Stomp” practically white. I’m not sure that I knew what Armstrong did was called jazz. I was perhaps 10 years old.

 Many conversations about jazz invariably turn to “impressions” and “favorites.” Why do you think this is the case?

As for favorites, most non-musicians and casual listeners develop them early on and maintain them as their standard for the rest of their lives. Here’s how Woody Herman put it when we talked following a dance job in San Antonio in 1974:

“Most of them stop listening as soon as they leave high school. That’s their last really firm connection with music. In that period of their lives, it’s all-important, and from the time of their first responsibility on, it becomes background to everything else, which is very natural and correct, I guess. But then they still want to tell me how the band isn’t making it now and it was so great then. And that really aggravates me. It’s about the only thing that does.”

One customer had asked that night for “Johnson Rag.” Another said to Woody, “Don’t you have any Russ Morgan pieces?”

“And they get some very terse replies,” Woody said, “like ‘No’ or ‘He quit the business’ or ‘I’ll play that when I get to the big band in the sky.’ It becomes a kind of standup routine. Certainly anyone has a right to ask for anything, but I can’t for the life of me think why I have to do those tunes.”

The quotes are from the Herman chapter in my book Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.

Okay, so let’s turn to “impressions; who were the jazz musicians who first impressed you and why?”

Armstrong, of course. The next jazz player I’m conscious of admiring was Muggsy Spanier. He led in a curious way to Charlie Parker. When I was 15 or so, I was in a booth at Belmont Radio & Music in my hometown, Wenatchee, Washington, the Apple Capitol of the World and the Buckle of the Power Belt of the Northwest, listening to Spanier’s Commodore recording of “Sugar.” The son of the store’s owner was the tenor saxophonist Don Lanphere, who not long before had recorded “Stop,” “Go” and those other Prestige 78s with Fats Navarro, Al Haig, Tommy Potter and Max Roach. Don was home for a while, getting well and helping his dad. He opened the door, handed me a record with a yellow label and said, “Here, listen to this.” It was Parker on Dial; “Yardbird Suite” on one side, “Moose the Mooche” on the other. That introduction by Don affected my listening habits, expanded my horizons. At about the same time, I worked up the courage to introduce myself to the pianist Jack Brownlow, Wenatchee’s other great jazz musician, who helped Lanphere develop. I had heard him at high school dances and could sense, even in that context, that he was something special. He asked if I was a musician and invited me to his house to play. It was a disaster. I knew nothing about improvising and proved it. Still, he took me on, gave me ear training, played me recordings of all the right people and explained what they were doing. Among other revelations, he made me aware that Nat Cole was a great pianist—and why. Those listening lessons went beyond jazz. At Jack’s house I first heard Stravinsky, Villa Lobos and Shostakovich. One indelible evening at Lanphere’s, Don introduced me to the Boston Symphony/Charles Munch recording of Ravel’s “Daphnis and Chloe.” I could go on and on about what I owe Jack and Don. They developed the musical portion of my brain.

Staying with your impressions for a while, what comes to mind when I mention the following jazz musicians?

Louis Armstrong.

I’ve been listening to him for more than six decades. I’m hearing new things and rediscovering things that astound me. I recently put up on Rifftides his “Summertime” from the Porgy and Bess album with Ella Fitzgerald. His expression of the melody of that song is an apotheosis of pure music. His introduction to “West End Blues,” which I have heard 4,372 times, still devastates me. When Dizzy said, “No him, no me,” he wasn’t kidding. I’ll take it further; no Armstrong, no jazz as we know it.

Du Duke Ellington

A A magician. An alchemist. There’s a story that some of the most gifted Hollywood film composers were asked to listen to several complex pieces of music and analyze the chords. They nailed them, down to the last e-minor half-diminished 13th with a 9th on top (I made that up). There was an exception, the Ellington example. These composers with ears like sonar could not agree on what the harmonies were made of. Duke kept his band together through low-key leadership and management that are studied in business schools, and—no small matter—through the proceeds of his song royalties. With the indispensable help of Billy Strayhorn, he made his orchestra and its members extensions of himself.  They, in turn, helped to shape him. It is not possible to imagine outside the crucible of Ellington’s band, for example, the Johnny Hodges everyone knows, or Ellington without the inspiration and challenge of writing for his great individualists, Hodges, Cootie Williams, Ben Webster, Harry Carney, Rex Stewart, Paul Gonsalves and all the others.

Dizzy Gillespie

Bird called him “the other half of my heartbeat,” but to a large extent Dizzy was also the brain of the bebop movement. For him, teaching was a calling. James Moody, Jimmy Heath, Ray Brown, Mike Longo and countless others have recounted Dizzy’s patiently giving them insights into harmonies and structures central to the music. On the heart side of the equation, he was the embodiment of rhythm in all of its power, simplicity and complexity. He recognized the catalytic importance of Chano Pozo, and Afro-Cuban jazz became a part of the jazz mainstream. Let’s see, there must be something else. Oh, yes, he was the most gifted and influential trumpet soloist of his generation and a few generations since. No him, no Fats Navarro, Kenny Dorham, Conte Candoli, Miles Davis, Art Farmer, Idrees Sulieman, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Brian Lynch, Ryan Kisor. Feel free to complete the list. It may take a while. When you have time, listen to his solo on “Night in Tunisia” (RCA Victor, 1946). All of those guys did.

In 1962, I was working at KYW-TV in Cleveland, before those call letters moved to Philadelphia. Dizzy was the guest host for a week on The Mike Douglas Show, which was produced at KYW. He had the quintet with Moody, the 19-year-old Kenny Barron, Chris White and Rudy Collins. On the show, they played “Chega de Saudade,” the first time I had heard a bossa nova played with that intensity. They were playing that week at the Theatrical Restaurant downtown on Short Mary (I love that street name; had to work it in.) One night after the gig, Dizzy and I got to talking and he invited me to his hotel room to continue the conversation. We shared a bottle of red wine, had a serious discussion about music, acted silly and developed a warm acquaintance that lasted until he died.  

Stan Kenton

He had a great ear for emergent talent among players and arrangers and a dedication to massive sound. The two qualities often conflicted but, as in the Contemporary Concepts period, at their best his bands produced stimulating music of great importance. Kenton was a better pianist than he is generally given credit for, and some of his arrangements from the 1940s and 50s are superb.   

 Shorty Rogers

 He was a brilliant arranger and composer who synthesized the spirit of the big band era and the innovations of the Birth of the Cool band into a highly personal style. Those early 1950s Giants recordings with Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, Shelly Manne and all hold up as well as anything from the period, regardless of coastal origin. His work on the East Coast-West Coast Scene album he shared with Al Cohn, particularly “Elaine’s Lullaby,” is masterly. Rogers’ trumpet and flugelhorn playing was idiosyncratic, beguiling. His Atlantic and Pacific Jazz quintet albums are classics. “Martians Go Home” should have won a special award for economy and humor in the use of “Rhythm” changes.

Gerry Mulligan

His writing made the Kenton band swing regardless of its leader’s inclination. His charts for his own big band were brilliant, but he stretched himself so thin that he didn’t do enough writing for it. His pianoless quartet had a brief existence but is inspiring musicians more than half a century later. Mulligan was the baritone saxophonist who could sit in—and fit in—with anyone. His sextet with Bob Brookmeyer, Art Farmer, Jim Hall and Bill Crow was a great band, and Night Lights is a masterpiece. He was restless in his curiosity and search for knowledge. He was a stimulating dinner companion. I miss him a great deal.

Horace Silver

I’ll refer to what I wrote not long ago on Rifftides about putting on the Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers album as background music to begin the day.

I chose it because I wanted something that had solos I could sing, hum and whistle along with as I fixed breakfast. Every note of Horace Silver’s second Blue Note album, the first by the Jazz Messengers, has been embedded in my brain since shortly after it was released in 1955. My record collection then consisted of 10 or 12 LPs. This was one of them. I played it so often that Silver’s, Kenny Dorham’s and Hank Mobley’s solos and Art Blakey’s drum choruses became part of my mind’s musical furniture. Silver, Blakey and bassist Doug Watkins comprised a rhythm section that was the standard for what came to be called, for better or for worse, hard bop. Dorham and Mobley, with their deep knowledge of chord-based improvisation, constructed some of their most memorable solos. Silver’s compositions—and one by Mobley—are classics.

Horace’s own bands that followed—with Art Farmer, Clifford Jordan, Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, Joe Henderson, the Brecker Brothers and Ryan Kisor, among others—comprise an important chapter in the history of the music. I am sorry to hear that he has been ailing.

Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaborations

Recently I contributed an historical essay to Bob Belden’s pending Miles Español project (http://vimeo.com/14698280). Working on it brought home again that the pervasive influence of the Davis-Evans Sketches of Spain has reached virtually all precincts of music, as Belden’s video and CD show. From his arrangements for the Birth of the Cool band through Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights, Gil’s understanding of Miles’ temperament, inclinations and leanings made it a perfect partnership. I wish that it had lasted longer, but what they gave us will endure.   

Mel Tormé

 A great singer. He sometimes went overboard in the melisma department, but his intonation, swing, diction and lyric interpretation were flawless. His collaborations with the Marty Paich Dek-tette, particularly Mel Torme Swings Shubert Alley, and his duets with George Shearing belong in the vocal hall of fame. Is there a vocal hall of fame?

Maria Schneider

 She learned—absorbed—from Gil Evans and Bob Brookmeyer and developed a recognizable style. Now, she herself is an influence. Like most category-based criticism, assessments that she has gone beyond or outside jazz are meaningless. Forget labels; she writes wonderful music. If you’ve ever watched her work in front of her big band, you know that she is an inspiring leader. Sky Blue was terrific. I look forward to her next album.

What made you decide to become a jazz writer?

I’m not sure that I decided. It happened. In the eighth grade, a teacher told me that I should be a reporter. I considered law and architecture, but ultimately majored in journalism. The junior year at the University of Washington School of Journalism was total immersion in the newspaper process. We put out a daily paper. Music was one of the beats the editors handed me. I wrote frequently about jazz. I’ve never stopped, although three years in the Marine Corps slowed my output. My career has been in newspapers, broadcast news as an anchor, correspondent and news director; then as an educator of professional journalists. I have had a parallel career or sub-career as a writer about jazz and free press issues and as a novelist; one novel so far.

Is there a form of writing about jazz that you prefer: insert notes, articles, books …?

 No.

If you could write a next book about jazz on any subject, what or who would be the focus of such a book?

 I’m working on a book that will be, essentially, a collection of liner notes, which, done right, is a form of journalism. I’ve written a few hundred sets of notes. Some of them hold up.

You’ve accomplished many wonderful things in your life both personally and professionally. Why is it that jazz has continued to play a role in your life?

 Because it goes to the core of what I value: individuality, freedom of expression, human interaction, beauty.

Switching to the subject of “favorites:”

Why must we have favorites? Why not evaluate every book, film, composition, solo, or painting on its merits, without ranking it? For that matter, why must we have favorite musicians, actors or newscasters? (Gene Lees ‘ unisex term for them was “anchorthings.” Boy, do I miss him). That thought leads to popularity contests or, as the magazines call them, readers polls and critics polls. If publicity about winning poll results in more work, record sales and income for deserving musicians, perhaps polls are worth something, but I don’t trust them much; I get too many e-mail messages from musicians and their publicists pleading for votes. I have voted in many critics polls, but I’ve become increasingly skeptical of them.

I’ve come to dislike the very word “favorite,” but I can’t come up with a suitable synonym.

What are some of your favorites books about jazz?

There you go again. All of Whitney Balliett’s books, all of Martin Williams’, Gene Lees’ and Nat Hentoff’s. Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz and The Swing Era. I’ve been waiting for years—make that decades—to Schuller’s book on bebop. Both of Louis Armstrong’s autobiographies. Dan Morgenstern, Ira Gitler, Gary Giddins, Andre Hodeir, Ted Gioia, Stanley Dance, Joachim Berendt, Francis Davis, Albert Murray, Larry Kart, Royal Stokes, Stafford Chamberlain, Jeroen de Valk, Ashley Kahn, Bill Crow’s books of anecdotes, Mike Zwerin. Wait a minute, this is a trap, you know. Sure as the devil, I’m leaving out 10 or 15 valuable writers about jazz.   

 What are some of your favorite jazz recordings?

Talk about traps! I’ll name 10, with the understanding that I could name 50 or 100. If you asked me tomorrow, it could be 10 others. Not in rank order:

Bill Evans: Portrait in Jazz

Duke Ellington: And His Mother Called Him Bill

Louis Armstrong: The Hot Fives and Hot Sevens

John Coltrane: Blue Trane

Dave Brubeck Quartet: Jazz at College of the Pacific, Vol. 2

The Sarah Vaughan 1950 Columbia’s with George Treadwell and his All Stars: Miles Davis, Benny Green, Budd Johnson, Tony Scott, Jimmy Jones, Freddie Green (or Mundell Lowe) and Billy Taylor.

The Curtis Counce Quintet albums on Contemporary, with Harold Land, Jack Sheldon, Carl Perkins and Frank Butler

“Flamingo” from Charles Mingus’s Tijuana Moods, with its perfect Clarence Shaw trumpet solo

Chick Corea, Now He Speaks, Now He Sobs

Ravel, Daphnis and Chloe (Munch, Boston Symphony)

You’ll notice that there is nothing recent on that list. Maybe it takes favorites a few years to develop.

Who are your favorite big band arrangers?

 (Not in order) Eddie Sauter, Fletcher Henderson, Bill Holman, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Gil Evans, Mike Abene, Jim Knapp, Frank Foster, Bob Brookmeyer, Darcy James Argue, Don Redman, Duke Pearson, Gerry Mulligan, Maria Schneider, Benny Carter, Ralph Burns, Slide Hampton, Bill Kirchner, Quincy Jones, Johnny Mandel, Sy Oliver, Gerald Wilson, Melba Liston, Neil Hefti, Oliver Nelson. This could go on a while. May I stop now?

Who are your favorite Jazz vocalists?

Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday, Anita O’Day, Carmen McRae, Jimmy Rushing, Helen Merrill, Nat Cole, Carol Sloane, Bill Henderson, Peggy Lee, Joe Williams, Ray Charles, Jack Teagarden, Teddi King, the young Ethel Waters, Mark Murphy, Meredith d’Ambrosio, Karrin Allyson, Fats Waller, Nancy Marano, Jeri Southern, Jimmy Rowles, Mildred Bailey, Chet Baker, Rebecca Kilgore, Johnny Hartman, Carol Fredette, John Pizzarelli, Nancy King, Daryl Sherman, Mel Tormé, Maxine Sullivan, Ray Nance, Blossom Dearie; Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. That’s the short list.

Who among current jazz musicians do you enjoy listening to?

An incomplete list: Ambrose Akinmusire, Bill Charlap, Steve Wilson, Kirk Knuffke, Bill Mays, Sonny Rollins, Diana Krall, Kenny Barron, Miguel Zenón, Jessica Williams, Wadada Leo Smith, Ed Partyka, Branford Marsalis-Joey Calderazzo duo, Gretchen Parlato, Matthew Shipp, Matt Wilson, J.D. Allen, Alexander String Quartet, Dubravka Tomsic and everybody on Bob Belden’s Miles Español project.  

 Of all your writings about jazz over the years, which ones are you most proud of?

 Recently, the notes for the MJQ Mosaic box and that Miles Español piece, but overall, probably the Desmond biography and the non-jazz novel Poodie James, because so much of my blood, sweat and being went into them.

What are you thoughts about blogs and websites devoted to jazz?

 It is clear that there are no rules for blogging. My conviction is that the standards of accuracy, fairness, thoroughness and reliability that go into any responsible writing must apply to blogging. Opinion should be plainly identified as opinion, if only by context and usage. The medium offers wide possibilities for sound, photographs, video, even a certain degree of interactivity. Many jazz blogs just sit there looking like pages out of an academic journal or a thesis.    

If you could host a fictional “jazz dinner,” who would you invite, and why?

 Good conversationalists. Most jazz musicians are good conversationalists.

If you could put on an imaginary three-day jazz festival in Yakima, WA, how would you structure it and who would you invite to perform?

 Fortunately for Yakima, it has The Seasons Performance Hall, which in addition to its regular schedule has a week-long festival in the fall. The festival has included James Moody, Jessica Williams, Bill Charlap, the Brubeck Brothers Quartet, Tom Harrell, Ernestine Anderson, Tierney Sutton, Marvin Stamm, Karrin Allyson, Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band, Eric Alexander, David Fathead Newman and the Bill Mays Trio with Martin Wind and Matt Wilson. The Seasons Fall Festival also incorporates classical elements. Maintaining quality hasn’t been easy because of the economic morass we’re in, and in recent regular bookings The Seasons has resorted to lesser music in an attempt to pay the bills, a familiar story in the arts these days. As a pro bono adviser to this nonprofit hall, I advise them to hang in there and aim for the standard of quality implied in that list of names. As for structure, The Seasons Fall Festival has always been linear. It does not put artists in competition with one another, a la Montreal, New Orleans and other festivals that have morphed into huge parties. You wonder how much they have to do with music.

If you were asked to host a television show entitled – The Subject is Jazz –  who would you like to interview on the first few episodes?

Sorry, Steve, Gilbert Seldes and WNBC-TV took that title half a century ago. We’ll have to choose another. How about The Steve Cerra Show? I would ask Sonny Rollins, George Wein, Branford Marsalis, Bill Mays, Dave Brubeck, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Miguel Zenón, Benny Golson, Marian McPartland, Cedar Walton, Gerald Clayton, Darcy James Argue and Matthew Shipp. That’s the first 13 weeks. Do you think we’ll be renewed?

 What writing projects about jazz have you recently finished? Are there any that you are currently working on?

I put up a new Rifftides post this morning. I recently wrote the Mosaic MJQ notes just mentioned, and a lengthy historical analysis of the musical connections among Spain, Africa, the Caribbean and New Orleans for the Miles Español project. There is another jazz book in the works, but it has a long way to go. A second novel that I started some time ago keeps calling to me from the depths of the computer, where it has been imprisoned.  

You have done a lot of writing over the years on the subject of jazz. Have you given any thought to “collecting” these and leaving them with a college or university library for future reference?

Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers is a collection. So, more or less, is the next book. That’s one way of making the work available beyond the moment. No university has been pounding on my door but all reasonable offers will be considered.