Ella and Norman

© -Jazz Times; Tad Hershorn, University of California Press. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Any book on my life would start with my basic philosophy of fighting racial prejudice. I loved jazz, and jazz was my way of doing that,” Norman Granz told Tad Hershorn during the final interviews given for this book. Granz, who died in 2001, was iconoclastic, independent, immensely influential, often thoroughly unpleasant—and one of jazz’s true giants. Granz played an essential part in bringing jazz to audiences around the world, defying racial and social prejudice as he did so, and demanding that African-American performers be treated equally everywhere they toured. In this definitive biography, Hershorn recounts Granz’s story: creator of the legendary jam session concerts known as Jazz at the Philharmonic; founder of the Verve record label; pioneer of live recordings and worldwide jazz concert tours; manager and recording producer for numerous stars, including Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson.

Excerpted with permission from Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice by Tad Hershorn, an archivist at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University. To be released October 2011 from University of California Press.

The following excerpt appeared in 08/15/11 edition of the Jazz Times. For more information about subscribing to the magazine go here. For information on ordering a copy of the book directly from the University of California Press go here.

Tad Hershorn

Norman Granz, the impresario who made his name at the helm of Jazz at the Philharmonic, was hardly impressed when he first heard Ella Fitzgerald with the Ink Spots in his hometown of Los Angeles in the early ’40s. The singer was equally hesitant about Granz’s vaunted intensity when, four years after she debuted with JATP in 1949, he asked to become her personal manager. Nevertheless, he began producing her records in 1956 with the formation of Verve Records, resulting in some of the most thrilling and enduring vocal sides of all time. The combination of Granz’s business savvy and Fitzgerald’s immense talent elevated her status from one of jazz’s most beloved singers to the international First Lady of Song.

This excerpt from Tad Hershorn’s soon-to-be-published Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice (University of California Press) explores the complex history and sometimes mysterious nature of that legendary partnership.

*****

Jazz at the Philharmonic’s 1953 tour of Japan was still in progress when Norman Granz acquired the Hope Diamond of his career. On the flight between Tokyo and Osaka, he talked with Ella Fitzgerald about taking over her personal management when her contract with Moe Gale at Associated Booking Corporation would expire that December. Gale, one of the owners of the Savoy Ballroom, had been involved with Fitzgerald since the beginning of her career as part of his managing the Chick Webb Orchestra from late 1929. Gale had also delivered the band to Decca Records as one of the new label’s earliest attractions, and had pressed Webb to bring a female vocalist into the band.

“I’d been thinking for years about taking over Ella’s personal management. … Ella was afraid. She thought I was too much of a blow-top,” Granz reflected. “So I told her it was a matter of pride with me, that she still hadn’t been recognized—economically, at least—as the greatest singer of our time. I asked her to give me a year’s trial, no commission, but she wound up insisting on paying the commission. We had no contract. Mutual love and respect was all the contract we needed.” In 2001, he added, “I didn’t claim to be the only manager. I never had a contract with Ella or Oscar [Peterson] or Basie or Duke. I told Ella, if you want the luxury of saying, ‘Norman, I quit,’ you’re off. Go for yourself, but I want the luxury of quitting you, too. So we had a nice relationship. Ella lasted for maybe 40 or 45 years, Oscar well over 50.” After she agreed to go with Granz, he satisfied an IRS debt that Gale had allowed to pile up and that the government was pressing to settle. The changing of the guard was at hand.

Together, they worked to polish her talent and enhance her reputation. Granz had plans to widen her scope musically and upgrade the venues in which she appeared, as well as to get her higher pay that would leave what Granz called “52nd Street money” in the dust. Signs were abundant that Fitzgerald was ready to enjoy a deeper appreciation of her talent. In May 1954, on her opening night at New York’s Basin Street East club, the entertainment elite gathered to celebrate her 19 years in the business. Decca Records presented the singer with a plaque citing her sales of over 22 million records since the Chick Webb days. Newsweek’s coverage of the evening captured the essence of what Granz would capitalize on in the years ahead, when he coordinated her personal management and recording activities. “Other popular singers tend to become identified with a particular musical groove,” the magazine reported. “Ella Fitzgerald plays the field, exerting a talent which, in addition to an unmatched pliability, has demonstrated an uncommon staying power.”

Granz translated that acclaim to book the singer into more prestigious clubs and hotel showrooms that had previously been closed both to black artists and to jazz in general. Granz and Fitzgerald were not alone in thinking that her talent deserved a higher profile. In early 1955, Marilyn Monroe lent her prestige to help broker Fitzgerald’s first appearance at the Mocambo on Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip. The run was extended to three weeks after sold-out crowds brought club-owner Charlie Morrison completely around and led him shortly thereafter to book Nat Cole and Eartha Kitt. Fitzgerald returned to the Mocambo twice more in the next year and a half, generating the club’s largest business after the release of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook in 1956. The success of Fitzgerald’s appearance also helped usher in the opening of integrated nightclubs in Hollywood, among them Pandora’s Box, the Purple Onion, the Crescendo and the Renaissance.

Word of Fitzgerald’s drawing power at the Mocambo spread across the industry, and within a month Granz had booked her for three weeks at the Venetian Room of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, marking the first time the room had ever booked a jazz act. In November 1955 she returned to Las Vegas after a five-year absence for a date at the Flamingo Hotel.

Granz’s campaign for Fitzgerald’s recording contract became more aggressive as the deadline to re-sign with Decca Records approached and her apparent frustrations with her longtime label surfaced. Nat Hentoff conducted a particularly revealing interview published in February 1955, when one can almost hear Granz’s prompting behind her unusually frank and public airing of what she considered missed opportunities with Decca. Granz finally had the opportunity to pry Fitzgerald away 10 months later and swooped in like a hawk. In June 1955 Universal had begun prerecording the soundtrack of The Benny Goodman Story starring Steve Allen as Goodman. Many of the musicians from the clarinetist’s former bands played themselves, along with a handful of contemporary musicians. Decca did not know or did not think it mattered until late in the game that Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson and Stan Getz were all under exclusive contract to Granz. Although Lionel Hampton recorded extensively for Granz, he was not similarly bound contractually. When

Decca finally came to Granz seeking a release for the musicians, he expressed his willingness to negotiate. Ever the wily bargainer, he knew he held all the cards. “I proposed that if they wanted the soundtrack badly enough, in return I wanted a release of Ella from her Decca contract. It was that simple.” The label finally ceded Fitzgerald in the first week of January 1956, barely a month before the film’s release on Feb. 2. Granz, anticipating Ella Fitzgerald’s arrival, announced the formation of Verve Records almost as soon as she departed Decca.

Thus began the second and greatest of the three major phases of her recording career, the last being the Pablo years in the 1970s and 1980s. Granz insisted that her leaving Decca and the establishment of Verve were unrelated. His plan, he said, had been to merge Clef, Norgran and Down Home into a broader-based entity that would include popular music as well as jazz. Rather than being created merely as a vehicle for Fitzgerald, Verve was his solution to another longstanding problem: the hemorrhaging of money from his jazz labels, whose finances had up until then depended exclusively on the tours. Granz said the wider focus of Verve allowed him to design a more effective network of disc-jockey promotion and other activities more associated with pop music.

“Granz will have no connection with Verve except for owning it,” DownBeat reported. “All central operations will be handled by 24-year-old arranger-conductor Buddy Bregman.” The two had met in November 1955 on the tennis courts at Rosemary Clooney and José Ferrer’s home in Los Angeles. Bregman, the nephew of songwriter Jule Styne, had been a fan of Granz and JATP since seeing the concerts at the Civic Opera House in the late 1940s. Granz told him of his plans to begin a new label and asked if he would consider going to work for him. Bregman’s early successes with popular music and his enthusiasm gained Granz’s confidence. Granz may have also felt that Bregman’s youth would make him more affordable, more controllable, and better attuned to the contemporary pop markets than an established arranger. He reported for work at the Granz offices at 451 North Canon Drive in Beverly Hills as head of pop A&R at a weekly salary of $500, plus scale for all orchestrations and sessions. “I started on a Monday, we did not have a name on Tuesday, and by Wednesday, Norman had come up with Verve.”

Granz had wanted Fitzgerald to do a Cole Porter album for many years and had unsuccessfully appealed to Decca to undertake such a work. “They rejected it on the grounds that Ella wasn’t that kind of singer,” Granz said in 1990. “I could understand it from their point of view, because they had one thing in mind and that was finding hit singles. I was interested in how I could enhance Ella’s position, to make her a singer with more than just a cult following amongst jazz fans. … So I proposed to Ella that the first Verve album would not be a jazz project, but rather a songbook of the works of Cole Porter. I envisaged her doing a lot of composers. The trick was to change the backing enough so that, here and there, there would be signs of jazz.”

Granz prepared for the Porter recording with the same methodical zeal that he had shown in producing such pioneering deluxe album projects as The Jazz Scene (1950) and The Astaire Story (1953).

He instructed his main assistant, Mary Jane Outwater—“secretary” would be too narrow a term to describe the role Granz entrusted her with—to track down two copies of every Cole Porter song in publication and then winnow them down to about 50 songs for Fitzgerald to consider. His first choice to arrange the 32-song two-LP set was Nelson Riddle, the former Tommy Dorsey trombonist and arranger who had made his mark in the early 1950s when Nat Cole selected him to oversee his Capitol vocal sessions. Frank Sinatra credited Riddle for virtually reviving his career on the same label. However, Riddle’s manager, Carlos Gastel, was not keen on loaning him out. Finally Granz chose to “take a chance on Bregman. He knew all of the songs and had an affinity for the material.”

Fitzgerald, Bregman and Granz soon got down to work. Bregman’s varied arrangements, played by top-drawer Los Angeles jazz and studio musicians, gave a pop quality to the songs; still, the sessions retained room for jazz feeling and some improvisation, accommodating Fitzgerald’s jazz instincts. Granz also leaned on Fitzgerald to sing all the verses to the songs—“She had to spend time learning the verses and she didn’t want to,” he recalled—to feature the full scope of the lyricists’ art and make the albums that much more distinctive and authoritative. The songbooks required a different approach from what Fitzgerald had been used to, when she went into a studio with a trio and reeled off tunes in two to three takes before quickly moving on. Granz noted, “When I recorded Ella, I always put her out front, not a blend. The reason was that I frankly didn’t care about what happened to the music. It was there to support her. I’ve had conductors tell me that in bar 23 the trumpet player hit a wrong note. Well, I don’t care. I wasn’t making perfect records. If they came out perfectly, fine. But I wanted to make records in which Ella sounded best. I wasn’t interested in doing six takes to come back to where we started. My position has always been that what you do before you go into the studio really defines you as a producer. The die has been cast. I have very little to do other than to say one take is better than another.”

Though Granz and Cole Porter had been friends through Fred Astaire since around the time of The Astaire Story, Granz chose not to involve him in the process, as Porter was notoriously picky about how singers recorded his work. Instead, once the recordings were done, he took a stack of the acetates with him to New York to play for Porter. “He loved them,” Granz said after two hours with the composer at his Waldorf Astoria apartment. Porter was delighted by Fitzgerald’s treatment of his work, including her diction. And if Porter was happy, the listening public was ecstatic to hear the old and familiar “Night and Day,” “In the Still of the Night,” “Begin the Beguine,” and “I Love Paris” side by side with lesser-known songs such as “All Through the Night,” “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye” or “I Am in Love.”

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook took off beyond Granz and Fitzgerald’s wildest expectations, both commercially and artistically, becoming one of the top-selling jazz records of all time. Sales boosted the fortunes of the young Verve and laid the groundwork for the remainder of its signature series in the years to come. When sales hit 100,000 in the first month, the album went to No. 15 on the Billboard charts, and two weeks after its release it was ranked second in a DownBeat poll of bestselling jazz albums. “It was the 11th biggest LP of the year. That was insane for me. Verve put me in the commercial market for the first time,” Granz said of the best selling album of his career.

On Aug. 15, 1956, a spectacular concert at the Hollywood Bowl featured Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars and Art Tatum alongside Fitzgerald, the Oscar Peterson Trio and a JATP ensemble filled out by Roy Eldridge, Harry Edison, Flip Phillips, Illinois Jacquet and Buddy Rich. The album, Jazz at the Hollywood Bowl, became effectively the 1956 volume of the JATP recordings. Granz later received a letter from the Hollywood Bowl telling him that the concert had been the best attended jazz event in the history of the outdoor facility—ironic given that 11 years earlier the Bowl’s management told Granz that they did not want to host any event with the word “jazz” in its title.

Fitzgerald and Armstrong went into the studio with the Oscar Peterson Trio and Buddy Rich the day after the Bowl concert to record the first of three albums that not only sold well but are thought to be among the finest of Granz’s career. Armstrong was unusually hard to corral given his seemingly nonstop touring schedule, and often his trumpet playing was barely up to par when Granz had the chance to record him: To compensate, Armstrong sang more. His manager Joe Glaser didn’t make it any easier by approving dates for Armstrong at the last minute, leaving Granz with only a day or two at most to prepare, as was the case with all three of the Ella and Louis records from 1956 and 1957. Granz later said that Armstrong, unlike Fitzgerald, with her perfect diction and loyalty to the music as written, “never deferred to the material. He did what he did, and that was the thing I was trying to capture. You could hear his breathing or sighing or, instead of the word, he’d come out with a sound. But to me, that’s its quality.” The contrast between their styles was pure magic. Fitzgerald deferred to Armstrong to make the final choices on the songs and keys. Photographs taken during the sessions show Armstrong and Fitzgerald, dressed in casual summer clothes, thoroughly enjoying one another.

Shortly afterwards, on Aug. 21, 1956, Granz, Bregman and Fitzgerald returned to Capitol Studios to get started on the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songbook and thereby capitalize on the momentum provided by the Porter release. Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Rodgers and Hart Songbook followed the pattern set by the Porter, with big band, band with strings and small-group arrangements. Though the content of the Songbook albums was pretty much set by Granz in consultation with Fitzgerald, there was still give-and-take in the studio when the singer occasionally resisted her manager’s wishes. For example, during the recording of Rodgers and Hart, she refused to sing “Miss,” as in “Have You Met Miss Jones?” Granz recalled, “It was not a woman’s lyric. So she changed it to ‘Have you met Sir Jones?’ I was very unhappy about that, but we were in the midst of recording and Ella was very firm. I had to think of the whole project, and I didn’t think it warranted a stand on principle. I could have eliminated the song, and I considered that. But since it was such a good song and Buddy’s arrangement was good, I gave in.”

The benefits of Granz’s management, which, like Fitzgerald’s singing, found distinctive ways of melding jazz and pop, can be seen in an infatuated review in the Hollywood Reporter of her October 1956 Mocambo appearance. “The contagion grew to such proportions that they wouldn’t let the gal go after 13 songs and 50 minutes. It was a beg-off. … Miss Fitzgerald, spurred on by such idolatrous acclaim (heralded, of course by her smash LP album of Cole Porter songs), has never been in finer form,” the reviewer noted.

“Ella was easy,” Granz said late in life. “All Ella needed was a good manager, which I was for her compared to what she’d had—and the record company, that was total. Decca did good things for her and Milt Gabler was a good producer, but she was one of many artists at Decca. When I formed Verve, she became the artist and she had the advantage not only of someone to manage her, but also presenting her concerts. I was unique among managers, in that I owned the record company and I was also an impresario.” But Fitzgerald told her old friend Leonard Feather that she and Granz had had many confrontations over the years and that she had never been just putty in his hands. Rather, the two of them combined formidable qualities in making their partnership successful. “Granz has an irascible side; Ella says she has learned to live with it,” Feather said. As Fitzgerald explained, “The idea was, get him to do the talking for me and I’d do the singing. I needed that. Sometimes we’d argue and wouldn’t speak for weeks on end, and he’d give me messages through a third party, but now I accept him as he is, or I may just speak my mind. We’re all like a big family now.”

The exact nature of Fitzgerald and Granz’s relationship has long been a subject of fascination, with some believing that Granz exercised a disproportionate and domineering influence over the singer’s affairs. Others who knew her better paint a more complex picture of someone for whom work—and lots of it—was her life. Granz’s focus on Fitzgerald’s career demonstrated the attention to detail he had so fully mastered over the years. Pianist Paul Smith said Granz selected about 99 percent of the music Fitzgerald sang and recorded in the ensuing decades. He also handled the messy duty of hiring and firing musicians, always acting in concert with Fitzgerald’s wishes. “At the very beginning, I turned Ella’s career around by merely dictating different approaches—work at the Fairmont Hotel, not the 331 Club. But that was an economic decision,” Granz said. “When I first broke the Fairmont in San Francisco with Ella, she asked me what she was getting. I told her and she said, ‘But that’s not right. We’re getting less than in a club.’ I said, ‘Yes, but you’re building a reputation for playing the Fairmont Hotel. Next time around, you’ll get 10 times more.’”

Given her insecurities despite her renown, she needed some coaxing to come out of her shell to help Granz promote her career. For example, Virginia Wicks, both a personal friend and her publicist during this period, said Fitzgerald feared interviews partly because of her general shyness around other people. “She knew there were many intelligent people coming to interview her,” Wicks said. “She didn’t think she had the vocabulary or knowledge to deal with them. You almost had to trick her into an interview. It was very important to Norman. Yet Ella would really sulk. But she didn’t do a lot of talking. She kept a lot inside her head.”

Some have charged Granz with overworking Fitzgerald in the giddy years when she began to roam the upper echelons of the entertainment world. But those who knew Fitzgerald better describe someone for whom singing was her life. Her pianist Paul Smith first toured with Fitzgerald in 1960, spending six months in South America and Europe; in 1962, he was on the road with the singer for 46 weeks. “She was fun. How could you not have fun playing with her?” he said. “As far as the amount of work, Norman was kind of trapped in between. Ella would complain that she was working too hard and he would not book her for about two weeks. Then she would say, after about the first week, ‘Why aren’t I working? Don’t people want to see me?’ Norman was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Ella really didn’t have much of a home life. Her home was the stage. When she was onstage, she was loving it.”

Smith acknowledged that sometimes Fitzgerald got extra nervous when she knew Granz was coming in to hear a show and that sometimes Granz imposed his views on her repertoire in ways she didn’t like. For instance, Granz “disliked anything Stephen Sondheim ever wrote” and made sure Fitzgerald didn’t perform it. “Benny Carter wrote a beautiful arrangement of ‘Send in the Clowns,’” Smith remembered. “Norman came in and said, ‘What are you playing this for?’ He made such an issue of it we took it out of the book.”

Granz was also irritated, according to Smith, by the idea of Fitzgerald recording with her Verve label-mate Mel Tormé, who was Fitzgerald’s friend and was, like her, a master of scat singing as well as a gifted songwriter, arranger and all-around musician. The mentions of Granz in Tormé’s later memoirs are not entirely complimentary. After a concert tour with Fitzgerald to Australia, which Granz oversaw, Tormé came to the conclusion that “Norman was not one of nature’s noblemen.” Later he wrote, “What Ella needed was direction. She was in danger of falling into the ‘cult singer’ trap, an abyss wherein only jazz fans and musicians appreciated her. This was not the way to gold, and, even though she was solidly committed to singing in her jazz-oriented, jazz-influenced manner, she wanted more out of life than smoky joints and out-of-the-way venues in which to ply her trade. … Her help came in the form of Norman Granz. This Svengali-like handling of Ella has produced astounding results. . . . He had her embark on a series of ‘songbooks’ that elevated her into a new category, a ‘pop-jazz’ singer. These songbooks were landmark recordings and led to Ella becoming persona grata in every part of the civilized world. Her fame spread to the four corners of the earth, and in this country, she played where she wanted to.” Granz, however, disputed the “Svengali” image and the idea that he had begun to totally run the singer’s life from top to bottom.

“None of that bothered me,” he said. “I had a job to do and I did it.”

Granz explained his relationship to Fitzgerald and how he saw his role in a 1987 interview with the record producer and broadcaster Elliot Meadow. “If I’m standing next to Ella Fitzgerald and people want her autograph, and someone in the line says, ‘I don’t know who that tall old man is standing next to Ella, but I think I’ll get his autograph, too. Who knows who he is?’ That’s all right,” Granz said. “My ego’s just as large as any performer’s, because I know my function. … Don’t worry. I know what my contribution was just as much as I know Ella’s contribution.”

Granz’s interest in seeing that Fitzgerald’s artistry and dignity were protected did cross over into her personal life. When Fitzgerald moved to Los Angeles to be closer to the center of the action with Granz, she bought a home on Hepburn Avenue on the predominantly black West Side. But as Granz later recalled, “Finally, when she really made big money, I suggested she move to Beverly Hills. The people who wanted to sell the house wanted the money, and they happened, by coincidence, to be Ella fans. I talked to the real estate agent, bought the house in my name and gave it to Ella in her name. That way, we circumvented the racism that existed. Ella was always shielded from economic choices, but she was always made aware of them.”

“There was a kind of naiveté about her,” Paul Smith said. “She was like a little girl. If she was unhappy she’d pout like an 8-year-old, which, in a way, she was. I always thought of her as a lady who never quite grew up. She always had that little girl quality about her. Her feelings could be hurt very easily. Ella was a very tender lady. She loved kids. She was kind of like a kid herself, inside. She never had a romantic life. Ella was a lonely lady and every once in a while one of those guys would come by and they’d have a live-in relationship for a short while. … Ella’s naiveté permeated her relations with men.”

One of her romances that ended up causing friction with Granz involved a Norwegian man whom she had met while touring Scandinavia with JATP. In July 1957, Reuters reported that she had married Thor Einar Larsen and was staying for the time being in a suburb of Oslo, a rumor she soon denied, although she indicated she might like to see it happen. She maintained an apartment in Copenhagen for four years. Granz, at her request, was working to help Larsen gain a visa to come to the United States. “Ella had called me from Europe, which she didn’t very often do, and said, ‘I’m in love.’ I think there came a point where Norman was losing patience with the man,” recalled Virginia Wicks, who was present backstage one night when the subject turned to Larsen. “There were words between Norman and Ella. I think that Norman realized before Ella did that Larsen was taking advantage of her. Norman tried to explain what was going on, and she was angry with him, saying, ‘You don’t run my life. You don’t run my personal life. You don’t know what goes on.’” As it turned out, Larsen had been convicted of defrauding a previous fiancée and had received five months’ hard labor in Sweden for his offense, so he was not even eligible to enter the United States for another five and a half years.

Phoebe Jacobs met Fitzgerald during the singer’s Decca period in the early 1950s and got to know her better over the next three decades at her uncle Ralph Watkins’ Basin Street East club in New York. “He ruled her life. I remember his buying her a sable coat, and Ella saying, ‘He bought it for me because he thought I should have one.’ Ella could have cared less whether or not she had a Rolls Royce. Norman saw to it she had one. He wanted her to have the best. She was his star.”

Jacobs, now president of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation, continued, “I don’t know whether Norman and Ella were a good pairing. It was truly a professional relationship. They didn’t socialize. Norman was never a great extrovert. Music was the common denominator. He treated her like she was a queen. He was dedicated to presenting her in the atmosphere she should enjoy befitting her talent. He was a very savvy guy and Ella respected and trusted him implicitly.” That trust and love would be the basis of a shared enterprise that would fill record bins and concert halls and create a legend.

Fitzgerald said as much in a brief undated telegram that caught up with Granz in Paris: “Even half asleep, I love and appreciate you. Thanks very much. Ella.”

Monty Alexander - Exhilirating!

© -Steven Cerra. Copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Audiences find Monty Alexander’s music instantly accessible, exciting and exhilarating, and they quickly warm to it and respond to it….”

-Mike Hennessey, Jazz writer/critic

“Monty plays – I mean plays – with Tatum’s grace, Peterson’s richness, Garner’s force, Nat Cole’s wit. And over all, the very real trio conception and brisk charts recall the tight structures of the early Ahmad Jamal trio.”

- Fred Bouchard, Downbeat

“The striking qualities of Alexander's playing are his intimate knowledge of the Jazz tradition, his reverence for the pre-bebop piano legacy, his prodigious technical facility, and his resilient connection to the cultural heritage of his native Jamaica.”

- Derk Richardson, columnist

“Monty continually creates very logical melodic lines and yet the constant surfacing of his improvisational surprises maintains interest no matter what musical context he presents to his listeners.”

- Jerry Dean, Jazz radio host

Whenever I want to experience what Duke Ellington so aptly described as “The Feeling of Jazz” at its best, I play a recording by Monty Alexander.

What a “swinga” this guy is.

Derek Jewel of The London Sunday Times once wrote: “His work is in a sense, a history of Jazz piano … and yet, he distills all these influences into his own style.”

Monty comes out of everybody who has gone before him and I mean everybody: from Earl “Fatha” Hines to Teddy Wilson to Nat King Cole to Oscar Peterson; the man is a walking encyclopedia of Jazz piano.

In the insert notes to Monty’s Concord Jazz album Full Steam Ahead [CJ-287], Gordon Raddue wrote:

“Distinguished New Yorker magazine jazz critic Whitney Balliett must have had someone like Monty Alexander in mind when he wrote that the fundamental intent of jazz "is to entertain and recharge the spirit with new beauties."

Indeed, the title of the book from which the above quotation is taken, The Sound of Surprise, serves as an apt description of what Jamaican-born pianist Alexander has been producing ever since he crashed the big-time jazz scene in the late 1960s.

What sets him apart from most of his keyboard colleagues is the enormous range of his musical interests. He not only has paid his dues as a performer but, perhaps more importantly, as a listener as well.

He brings the joy of celebration to his work: a celebration of his life in music and the music of his life. Delightful surprises abound in both the selection of his material and the execution of same.”

Benny Green, the esteemed Jazz writer and critic, offered these comments about Monty in his liner notes to vibraphonist Milt Jackson’s Soul Fusion [Pablo S2310 804]:

“… Alexander is a past master in the art of placing his accompanying chords, and knowing exactly which rhythm to use in defining them.

Some of the exchanges between he an Milt sound so tight as to be telepathic, so perfect is the balance between them. [This is particularly true of the tunes played at slower tempos].

The essence of a performance at this tempo are the silences, and the shapes into which the played notes mould those silences. Alexander is marvelous at this.

It is the sort of thing that no orchestrator could ever achieve, and which classical musicians have trouble comprehending.

It is an intuitive art, born of an alliance between inclination and experience, and is one of those aspects of Jazz which distinguish it from all other forms of making music.

As a matter of fact, Alexander, with whose playing I had not been acquainted before hearing these tracks, is the sort of musician who makes the analyst’s job child-play.

The writer Ford Madox Ford once described how, in his capacity as an editor, he received through the post one day an unsolicited manuscript from an unknown writer called D.H. Lawrence.

Glancing casually at the story’s opening paragraph, Ford took note of this and that phrase, this and that construction; then without bothering to read any further, he tossed the manuscript on to the “Accepted” pile, remarking to his secretary as he did so, “It’s a big one this time.”

Ford, with his enormous experience of the art of literary improvisation, assessed real ability instantaneously.

In the same way the experienced listener of good Jazz will hear a few bars from any one of Alexander’s piano solos, or even a few punctuations from his accompaniments, and will do what Ford did with Lawrence, throw him on to the “Accpeted” pile and tolerate no further arguments on the subject.

It does not take long for a true Jazz artist to assert that artistry, and Alexander does this a thousand times over in this album.” ….

Perhaps you’ll come to the same conclusion as did Benny Green after listening to Monty’s playing on the following video tribute and toss it in your “Accepted” file?

Grant Green 1931-1979: A Tribute

When our earlier feature on Grant Green posted to the blog which you can locate by going here, the following video tribute to him had not as yet been developed by the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD.

We thought we’d put it up on the site for visitors to enjoy. The audio track finds Grant’s guitar in the company of James Spaulding on alto saxophone, Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, Bob Cranshaw on bass and Elvin Jones on drums.

The tune is Joe Henderson’s The Kicker. Just click the "X" in the upper-right hand corner to close out of the ads when these are displayed on the video.

Nat Adderley and Alto Saxophones Players

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

“Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley’s enormous personality and untimely death, together with his participation in such legendary dates as Miles’s Kind of Blues, have sanctified his memory …. But brother Nat was a big part of the band they had together from 1959 until Cannonball’s passing in 1975 at the age of 45.

One of the few modern players to have specialized on the cornet, … Nat was always the more incisive soloist, with a bright ringing tone that most obviously drew on the example of Dizzy Gillespie  but in which could be heard a whole raft of influences from Clark Terry to Henry ‘Red’ Allen to the pre-post-modern Miles Davis of the 1950s.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

“Nat Adderley received top billing in the Cannonball Adderley Quintet from 1959 to 1975. Although overshadowed by his brother Julian "Cannonball" Adderley, Nat's own contribution to the band's success was substantial….

Nat contributed to the quintet as both player and composer. He wrote several hits that became jazz standards, including "Work Song," "Sermonette," and "Jive Samba." His instrumental style bears the influence of Clark Terry, Miles Davis, and, in brassier moments, Dizzy Gillespie.

How­ever, Nat's solos are often highly personal in their use of half-valve (slurred) effects, unusual tone color, and a wry sense of humor.

Without him, the quintet would have been an altogether different, and perhaps more somber, band.”

Len Lyons and Don Perlo, Jazz Portraits

“Nat Adderley became a bandleader in 1975 without really wanting to ….”

- Orrin Keepnews

As I have mentioned before on these pages, business travel was a constant part of my life, especially during the last two decades of my career.

Most of it was national, some of it was international. Occasionally, and much to my relief, it was local.

One such local trip that I made on a quarterly basis involved visiting a client who owned a business based in Stockton, CA, which is about 80 miles due east of my office in San Francisco.

Since the purpose of these visits involved an early morning meeting with the company’s Board of Trustees, I would usually drive out for dinner with my client the previous evening to discuss the agenda, and then stay the night in a nearby hotel. It was easier than battling the morning traffic and the especially-dangerous morning fog.

A big box bookstore was located in the same complex with the hotel, and as I was restless following dinner, I wandered over to it to kill some time before turning in.

The store carried an extensive display of CD’s [remember those?] and while browsing its collection, I came across some music by Nat Adderley’s group featuring “Vincent Herring,” an alto saxophonist whose name was new to me.

I’d always dug Nat’s playing, the discs were being offered at half price and the “kicker” was that Jimmy Cobb was the drummer on two of the three that I purchased.

Boy, was I in for a treat.

When I returned to the room, I popped one of the CDs into my portable player, put on my ear phones and there went my early night as I stayed up half of it being blown away by Vincent Herring.

Poor Nat; here he was with another fantastic alto sax player.

As was the case with brother Julian, Nat more than held his own, but, man, Vincent Herring was somethin’ else [no pun intended].

As Nat described to Alwyn and Laurie Lewis in his March 1992 interview with them for Cadence Magazine: “Vincent plays Vincent; he has the style of Cannonball’s, but he does not play Cannonball’s licks. And that’s why I like him.” [paraphrased]

Elevating, exciting, electrifying - whatever the best words are to describe Vincent Herring - one thing is certain, you can’t expect to listen to his playing and easily go to sleep, afterwards.

Although a little groggy from lack of sleep, I showed up to the Trustees’ meeting the following morning with a big smile on my face. That and saving the client a good deal of money on their reinsurance placement must have won the day as I was able to renew the contract for one more year.

I owe it all to Nat Adderley, at least, the smile on my face, as if it hadn’t been for him, I most probably wouldn’t have discovered Vincent Herring.

Judge for yourself whether it was a worthwhile finding as Vincent is featured on the audio track to the following video tribute to Nat. Work Song is one of Nat's more famous tunes. David Williams on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums and Larry Willis does the honors on piano.

Andy Martin: Professional Musicianship At Its Best

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

How do you make a Jazz trombonist smile?

Have him sit in a big band trombone section when Andy Martin stands up to take a solo.

I’ve seen this happen time and time again.

Whatever the context – Tom Talbert’s Band, the Les Brown Band, Louie Bellson’s Big Band Explosion, the Bill Holman Orchestra, the Phil Norman Tentet, the Carl Saunders Bebop Big Band, the Tom Kubis Orchestra, The Metropole Orchestra of Holland, Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band – Andy’s solos put a knowing smile on the faces of all of his mates in the trombone sections of these bands.

They are all first-rate trombone players, many of whom are excellent soloists themselves and they all know what’s on offer when Andy plays.

A gorgeous tone, flawless technique and musical ideas that just flow seamlessly one after the other; one into the other.

Smooth, pure, powerful: listening to Andy Martin take a solo is the epitome of professional musicianship at its best.

Based on the West Coast, Andy invariably draws comparisons with Frank Rosolino and Carl Fontana, two other monster Jazz trombonists who spent the majority of their careers in and around Southern California.

Andy has done an album with Carl and one that is dedicated to the memory of Frank. You can find more information about these and all of his recordings by visiting his website. It is also a great source for details concerning all aspects of Andy's career.

Distributed in 1998 on Chartmaker Records, I have always been partial to Walkin’ The Walk,  a recording that Andy made with Bill Liston on tenor and a truly superb rhythm section comprised of Tom Ranier on piano [and too rarely heard outside of Southern California], John Clayton on bass and Jeff Hamilton on drums.

Andy’s original composition Line for Lewis is from this CD and forms the audio track on the following video tribute. The tune is based on the melody of the old standard,  Limehouse Blues. Checkout the four bar drum solos that Jeff Hamilton lays down beginning at 3:34 minutes.

You don’t have to be a professional Jazz trombonist to smile when Andy Martin plays. All you have to do is listen; the smile will take care of itself.

A Conversation About Jazz with Ted Gioia

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

Ted Gioia is one of my very favorite Jazz artists.[“Gioia” is pronounced “Joy-a”]

But I've never heard him play.

For me and his many other fans, Ted brings Jazz to life by writing books about it.

And what magnificent books they: grand in conception, well-researched and well-thought out and all are beautifully written.

Thankfully, many of the literary Giants of Jazz are still with us.

In Ted Gioia, it’s great to see a new one coming over the horizon to join their ranks.

If you have yet to read Gioia on Jazz, you are missing out on one of Life’s real joys.

How and when did music first come into your life?

I have a picture of myself seated at the piano at the age of 11 months.  A note in my mother’s handwriting mentions my interest in making sounds at the instrument.  The note says:  “Baby likes to play piano and drink coffee.”  You could still describe me in the same terms today, so many years later.

I didn’t start formal piano lessons until I was in fourth grade, but long before that I was playing by ear at the instrument.   For as long as I can remember, I was drawn to music.

What are your earliest recollections of Jazz?

I didn’t discover jazz until I was a teenager.  It is no exaggeration to say that my first visit to a jazz club was a life-changing event.  Up until that time, I had dabbled in both classical music and rock.  But after my first experience hearing live jazz, I put both of those on the back burner.   From my mid-teens until my late twenties, I devoted around three hours per day to the piano.  It was my great joy and solace—it still is.   

Alas, in my early thirties, I developed arthritis.  This was nothing short of a personal crisis for me—and forced me to change how I saw myself and my calling in life.  I had to limit the amount of time I spent at the piano, and I needed to redirect my energies into other pursuits.  My productivity as a writer is closely related to my inability to put all the hours into musical making that I once did. 

What advice would you give to a younger jazz writer?

I would offer a few suggestions.  

First, always strive for honesty, even if it makes you unfashionable.  Instead of jumping on bandwagons, put faith in your ears and your own emotional responses to the music.  You will be surprised how often the consensus opinion will eventually come to match views of yours that once seemed hopelessly out of touch.  Nothing gets staler faster than the flavor of the month, but music that touches people’s emotions and delights their ears has a way of proving itself over the long haul. 

Second, listen to music sympathetically, and try to understand where the artist is coming from, instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all ideology on what you hear. 

Third, don’t write to try to impress other critics.  Write to serve your reader.  Be suspicious of critics who don’t seem to give sufficient respect to their reader’s enjoyment of music.   I believe David Murray is the person who said it best:  “People don’t want music they have to suffer through.”  Jazz is not a form of penance—it is a means of enchantment.

Fourth, listen, study and learn.   Always try to expand your knowledge and musical horizons.

Five, try to write as well as you can.  Describing music in words is almost impossible, and the only path to success is through total commitment to finding the best words, the perfect phrase, the proper metaphor, the right style. 

Six, don’t be afraid to show your love of the music in your writing.  Sometimes you may get attacked for doing this.  You can wear those attacks like medals of honor. 

What do you mean by finding the “right style” to write about music?

I have changed my writing style for every book.  The proper tone for writing about West Coast jazz is different from the approach needed for the Delta blues.  Listen to the music, and it will direct you to the right prose style. 

Although you write about many topics, what made you decide to become a jazz writer?

I stumbled into being a jazz writer.  I wrote jazz reviews for my college newspaper as a way to get record companies to send me free albums.   I was financially strapped, and this was the only way I could find to get my hands on the music I craved. 

Later I wrote my first book, a quirky work called The Imperfect Art.  I saw this book as a work of cultural criticism, but almost everyone else saw it as a jazz book.  From that moment on, I was perceived to be a jazz writer—which was fine by me.  That said, I still see my interest in jazz as one part of a larger concern with issues of society, art and culture. 

My recent book The Birth (and Death) of the Cool was, to some extent, an attempt to return to the approach I had followed with The Imperfect Art—namely to use jazz as a platform for discussing bigger cultural issues.

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

I fear that I am out of touch with the rest of the modern world.  I prefer to write long essays, but the marketplace wants short articles. I have learned the new rules, and have figured out to blog and tweet.  Still, my main interest is in writing in-depth works of criticism.  

Conversations about jazz invariably turn to “impressions” and “favorites.” So let’s turn to “impressions;” who were the jazz musicians who first impressed you and why?”

The first jazz recordings I purchased were by Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans and Duke Ellington.  Around this same time, I also developed an interest in ragtime and early jazz.  During my mid-teens I learned a number of Scott Joplin rag pieces, and also studied the music of Jelly Roll Morton.  But before my twentieth birthday, I began focusing on modern jazz.  That included an intense immersion in bebop.  Later I turned my attention to a wide range of post-bop styles.  To some degree, I learned the jazz tradition in chronological order—starting with the earliest ways of playing jazz, and working forward.

Many jazz players would eventually influence my personal approach to improvisation, but I would call particular attention to Lennie Tristano, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Keith Jarrett, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Paul Desmond, Chet Baker, Clifford Brown, Bud Powell, Art Pepper, Herbie Hancock, Paul Bley, Art Tatum, Lenny Breau, Denny Zeitlin and Wes Montgomery—as well as some of the names I already mentioned, especially Duke Ellington, Bill Evans and Miles Davis.

I also listen widely outside of the jazz genre.   Tango, Brazilian music, blues, contemporary classical music, movie soundtracks, singer-songwriters, choral music, you name it….I am always on the lookout for fresh new sounds.

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

Louis Armstrong?

Armstrong may well be the single most important individual in the history of jazz.   To understand his impact, you need to listen carefully to jazz before Armstrong, and then gauge what Louis added.  Compare King Oliver’s “Dipper Mouth Blues” from 1923 with Armstrong’s “Potato Head Blues” from 1927—and marvel over how far the art of jazz improvisation was pushed forward in just four years.  And almost entirely due to the contribution of a single person.

Duke Ellington?

I continue to return to Ellington’s music for inspiration.  I especially admire the music he made between 1938 and 1943.  During this period Ellington set a standard for jazz composition that no one has surpassed.

Lester Young?

As you know, I have a maintained a lifelong loyalty to the musical values of cool jazz.  And my allegiance is undimmed by my realization that jazz has always been primarily a hot art form.  Those who pursue a cool aesthetic must have the courage of their convictions—both because it is bloody hard to live up to its demands on the bandstand, where one invariably gets caught up in the heat of the battle, and also because the critics and opinion leaders in jazz have often been indifferent, if not actually hostile, to the cooler approach.  So Lester is more than just a musician for me; he is also a kind of hero and role model. No one did more than Lester to shape the values of cool jazz, and he did it in the face of intense opposition. 

Musicians today could learn a lot from him—particularly in his ability to make a complete and satisfying musical statement in just 8 or 16 bars.   I also hazard to say that jazz would have a larger audience nowadays, if younger musicians came to grips with what Lester could teach them. 

Dizzy Gillespie?

If you haven’t heard what Dizzy did in the 1940s, you won’t understand bop, and you won’t adequately comprehend how much he raised the bar for everyone else.  His playing on “Salt Peanuts” from 1945 may be the most exciting trumpet solo I’ve ever heard.

Shorty Rogers?

A beautiful player, an underrated composer and a lovely person.  I consider myself fortunate to have had the chance to meet with him and talk about his life and music. 

Gerry Mulligan?

Another pioneer of cool jazz.   Gerry played the decisive role in establishing the cool aesthetic on the West Coast.  To some extent, critics began perceiving California jazz through the prism of Mulligan’s contribution.  This had an unfortunate side effect of obscuring the work of West Coast players who didn’t fit into the cool pigeonhole, yet you can’t blame Mulligan for that.   He had a fresh, uncluttered approach—as with Lester Young, Mulligan could be a valuable role model for jazz players even today. 

Lennie Tristano?

I didn’t pay much attention to Tristano until I was in my early twenties.  But when I was studying at Oxford University, I performed in a quartet with a British saxophonist named John O’Neill—he later wrote some very well-known sax and flute method books—and he was a Tristano devotee.  John opened up my ears to Tristano.   The more I listened to Lennie, the more I became convinced that he was a hugely important figure who had never received his due.   I still feel that way.  In many ways, Lennie was decades ahead of his time, especially in his concept of phrasing.

 

Miles Davis – John Coltrane?

I’m sure many jazz insiders are tired of hearing about Kind of Blue.  In the parlance of the music business, it is perhaps “over-exposed.”  Yet I still think this might have been the most talented jazz band to ever perform as a working group.  Miles and Trane each represent what sociologist Max Weber would have called “ideal types,” and to hear them perform together is magical, and will always be magical. 

Bill Evans?

I cherish the 1961 Village Vanguard recordings made by Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian.  This would be one of my desert island disks.  

Wynton Marsalis?

Wynton gets a lot of criticism, but I believe he has made a substantial contribution to the music.  His best work will still be heard and admired many years from now.  He has also matured into a fine ambassador for jazz, and a caring mentor to younger musicians. 

Dave Brubeck?

Dave is an intensely creative artist who believes firmly in the process of improvisation—I suspect that he seeks to surprise and astonish himself when he plays, and this openness to the inspiration of the moment is one of the reasons why his recordings still sound so vital decades after they were made.   I admire his music, and I also admire him as a person.  Mr. Brubeck is a class act.

The Imperfect Art: Jazz and Reflections of Modern Culture is your first published book. What is the main theme of this work; how and why did this book come about?

I came up with the idea for this book while studying philosophy at Oxford.   I had the crazy idea that jazz could elucidate key issues in philosophy and aesthetics.  I began writing the book the day after I finished my final exams.  

I take some pride in the fact that many people consider this one of the strangest jazz books ever written.  It definitely has maintained a cult following—I still hear from readers who respond favorably to its strangeness. 

When you wrote West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 [published 1992], this style of jazz had not been in practice for over 25 years. What motivated you to research and write a book-length treatment on the subject?

I grew up in Southern California, and felt a personal affinity to the West Coast jazz music of the 1950s.  I had heard too many smug critics dismiss this music as some sort of marketing gimmick.  I disagreed vehemently with the conventional wisdom, and decided I wanted to try to change it.  So when my editor Sheldon Meyer asked me to write a follow-up jazz book to The Imperfect Art, I decided to make the plunge and write the history of modern jazz on the West Coast.

This was a brash decision.  I was too young to write the story of this period.  There were many jazz critics who had been active on the West Coast during that period, and they would have been in a much better position to write a book on the subject.  But people like Leonard Feather and Ralph Gleason had no intention of tackling this subject—like many of their peers, they were somewhat scornful of the West Coast tradition.  I stepped in to write the book, because the history needed to be documented and dealt with on its own terms.   This book was a true labor of love.

I think the book had an impact.  In the years following the publication of West Coast Jazz, fewer and fewer critics offered up smug rebukes to this body of music.  The musicians associated with the West Coast started to get a larger dose of respect.  I like to think I played a part in this change.    

What is the premise of your book The Birth (and Death) of the Cool? How did you arrive at the idea for this book? What are some of the consequences of the “death of the cool?”

Ever since I wrote my West Coast jazz book, I wanted to write a related book of cultural criticism that dealt with the nature of “cool” as a social force.  When I finally sat down to write the book, and pulled together my research—which I had been collecting for more than fifteen years—I came to the surprising realization that the essence of cool was under attack in the current milieu.  

This forced to me recalibrate my entire book.  Instead of writing a book on cool as a timeless concept—which I had originally envisioned—I needed to chart the rise and fall of cool over a half century period.  I studied this shift via motion pictures, books, television show, music, politics, business, religion and other spheres of our modern life. 

The basic premise of the book is that post-cool attitudes and lifestyles are on the rise, and changing our cultural landscape.  As a nation, we are losing our cool, so to speak.  The Birth (and Death) of the Cool has both fervent fans and detractors, and may be the most controversial thing I’ve ever written.

The New York Times labeled it “… one of the 100 notable books of 2008;” The Economist considers it to be “… one of the best books of 2008.” Talk a bit about why the subject of your book Delta Blues is so compelling and important?

When I was delving into jazz during my teens and twenties, I paid insufficient attention to the blues tradition.  I had concluded—mistakenly, I now realize—that blues was simple music.  But as I matured as a music writer, I came to realize that the early blues was much richer and deeper than I had ever suspected.   During the course of the 1990s, my interests gravitated more and more toward traditional African-American music.  I wrote a book on work songs and another book on the use of music in healing and ritual, and these projects further reinforced my sense of the power and depth of pre-commercial musical values.  At a certain point, I decided to make the plunge and immerse myself in the blues heritage.  My Delta Blues book was the result of that process.  

Why did you decide to take on a book-length study of the History of Jazz? As Ken Burns found out, somewhat to his amazement let alone his consternation, when his television documentary on the subject aired on PBS, jazz fans seem to take exception to almost all aspects of his work, especially in terms of the artists he included and those he decided to leave out of his retrospective. How did you approach the project? Did you have a particular theme in mind?  What segments of the history are you particularly pleased with and are you satisfied with the reception the work has received from its reviewers?

I don’t think I would have had the courage to write an all-encompassing history of jazz without the support and encouragement of my editor at Oxford University Press, Sheldon Meyer.  He had confidence that I could rise to the demands of the project, and I worked hard to live up to his expectations.  I was fully cognizant that Sheldon had served as editor for many of the finest jazz writers of recent decades—Whitney Balliett, Martin Williams, Gary Giddins, Gunther Schuller, Francis Davis, Stanley Crouch, Richard Sudhalter, Gene Lees, Ira Gitler and many, many others.  His advice and support were crucial to the whole endeavor.

How did I proceed?  I based my work on deep, intensive listening and aimed to convey to readers something of my own joy in the music, but also took seriously non-musical factors—I was always striving to place jazz in the proper socioeconomic and cultural perspective.  I aimed for scrupulous fairness—even when I presented revisionist views, I put them in the context of opposing perspectives, so readers could judge for themselves. Above all, I worked hard at my writing—I wanted the work to read like an unfolding story, and not just a compendium of facts. 

I will leave it up to readers to decide on the ultimate success of the venture.  But clearly the response has been sufficiently positive to justify a revised and expanded edition of the work, which came out a few months ago.    

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

My next book will be a study of the jazz repertoire.  It will be called The Jazz Standards.  This will be a fairly big book—a 200,000 word manuscript.  Oxford University Press will be the publisher. 

Of all your writings about jazz over the years, which ones are among your favorites and why?

I have always written from a passion for the music.  I would be a more commercially successful writer if I paid more attention to what publishers and editors want, but I find it hard to operate that way.  My focus in writing has changed over the years, based on whatever I am most passionate about at time.  I pick subjects that delight me, even if everyone else tries to dissuade me.  Because of this approach, I usually am most enthusiastic about whatever I am writing about on any given day.  

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

I visit the leading jazz websites almost every day.  As the mainstream media cuts back its coverage of jazz, blogs and web forums are filling the gap.   If you checked out the jazz bookmarks on my web browser, you would probably find around 40 jazz websites that I visit with some regularity.  

I realize that your interests are wide-ranging, but could you please conclude this “interview” by talking a bit about what excites you as you look out over the current jazz scene?

I try to listen to some new music every day of my life.   Some days, I may listen to as many as four or more new CDs.   This is an excellent practice, and I would recommend it to other music writers…and music lovers. 

If you practice this kind of expansive listening, you will find that there are countless talented and exciting artists out there—and not always on the major labels.  Indeed, nowadays, they usually aren’t on the major labels.  I am especially struck by the global spread of jazz talent. Promising artists and interesting music are everywhere—but you need to put out the effort to find them, since you probably won’t hear them on the radio and you almost certainly won’t see them on TV. 

In short, if you put in the time and energy necessary to hear what is happening right now—this year, this month, this week, this very day—you won’t be disappointed.