Groovin’ Hard with the Los Angeles Jazz Institute

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

In May and October of each year, the Los Angeles Jazz Institute [LAJI] presents a four-day Jazz Festival largely made-up of concerts, discussion panels and the showings of rare film footage.

Under the leadership of Ken Poston, its Director, the LAJI commemorates some aspect of Jazz by reaching into its vast repository of collections and using these materials to revisit iJazz history.

This year’s LAJI theme is: Groovin’ Hard: Celebrating the Big Band Renaissance.

Taking place at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott Hotel from October 10-14, 2012, “Groovin’ Hard celebrates the Big Band Renaissance that began in the mid-1960s with the emergence of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, Buddy Rich and Don Ellis among others. Many of the young musicians who had benefited from Stan Kenton’s Jazz Education efforts were beginning to come of age and a whole new era of Big band Jazz was born. Groovin’ Hard gathers an incredible array of star soloists and arrangers who all played significant roles in the Big band Renaissance. …

Concert highlights include the Woody Herman Orchestra directed by Frank Tiberi, the Tonight Show Reunion Band, the Buddy Rich Alumni Band, the Louie Bellson Big Band Explosion Reunion, Richie Cole’s Alto Madness Orchestra, the Don Ellis Reunion Band, Bill Watrous Manhattan Wildlife Refuge Revisited, Tom Scott and The California Express, Chase Revisited, The Creative World of Stan Kenton, Patrick Williams Threshold Revisited, The Ernie Watts Quartet, MF Horn: The Maynard Ferguson Alumni Band, and Pete Christlieb and Linda Small: Tall and Small Band.

Also participating will be the following Jazz All-Stars: Alan Broadbent, Peter Erskine, Bobby Shew, Chick Findley, Bob Mintzer, Jeff Hamilton, Andy Mackintosh, Don Rader, Carl Saunders, Bruce Johnstone, Gary Anderson, Bob Summers, Nick Brignola, Grant Geissman, John Fedchock, Mike Vax, Eric Miyashiro and Ted Nash.”

An optional, bonus event at Groovin’ Hard took place last night, Wednesday, October 10, 2012, in honor of the 100^th anniversary of the birth of clarinetist and big band leader, Woody Herman.

Gordon Sapsed, a regular attendee at LAJI events, generally does a write-up of each day’s proceedings and shares it with members of an internet chat group devoted to West Coast Jazz.

Thanks to Gordon’s generosity, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles will be able to bring you these daily commentaries on Groovin’ Hard: Celebrating the Big Band Renaissance.

For more information on the Los Angeles Jazz Institute including ticket ordering for Groovin’ Hard, please visit www.lajazzinstitute.org

© -Gordon Sapsed.  Used with the author’s permission; copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The 'bonus day' for this LAJI event is a 'Woody Herman Centennial Celebration', which opened today (Wednesday October 10th 2012) with a 'Herdsmen' Panel of Bill Trujillo, Frank Tiberi, Alan Broadbent, Bruce Johnstone and Ron Stout and moderated by Woody Herman Biography author Bill Clancey.

About 150 attendees came along (not an exact count) to the panel and heard tales from various eras of the Herman Herds. Most of the far-back reminiscences came from the audience rather than the musicians, but Bill Trujillo was keen to correct any lack of awareness of the 50's era - which had been prejudiced by the recording ban having denied any lasting musical legacy. Tales that I made a note of included Alan Broadbent's tale of 'first time in Japan' when he ended in hospital after falling down a trap-door hole in the revolving stage. The Japanese doctor following an examination declared his condition 'just the blues'. There was some interesting philosophizing about what makes bands work - with Woody emerging in everybody's memory as 'the greatest leader' and Frank saying how bands are, inevitably ' a mesh of personalities', with Woody having a flair for mixing them and, essentially, letting them loose. Frank is, incidentally now a Professor at Berklee to his own amazement !

Then followed the Premiere of Graham Carter's (Jazzed media) new film "Woody Herman, Blue Flame, Portrait of a Jazz Legend". This film is a superbly constructed mix of footage from six decades of Woody Herman bands, interleaved with live interviews with people important in the Herman Legacy. It is in a similar style to the award-winning Kenton film from the same source and will surely win awards when released later this year. … Graham has done an amazing job bringing together archival footage and good quality TV footage, with his new material. Not to be missed. 

First music up was a collection of eight Herman alumni being given a chance to blow ahead of more formal performance later. Bobby Shew boasted how they had no rehearsal and were deciding what to play as they went through their hour. Broadbent, Johnstone and Trujillo were joined by Don Rader, Roger Neumann, Paul Kreibich and Kevin Axt, together and in several different smaller groups for a blowing session that included Green Dolphin Street (piano and two tenors), 'Alone Together' (a delightful two-trumpet feature) and Oleo - as a total group.

That session was followed by a 'reception' on the hotel patio, with a chance to meet and chat with musicians and friends.

The main live event of the day was two hour-long sets with a 16 piece alumni band and all those listed earlier added as guests.

The concerts were led by Frank Tiberi who, on this occasion, had former Herdsmen from five decades of 'Herdsmanship'. The format was to use a 16 piece band and add the guests for specific numbers. The 'core band' included Roger Neumann, Mike Brignola, John Fedchock, Mark Lewis and Ron Stout, who have appeared on several occasions with Herman alumni bands at LAJI plus Jerry Pinter and Rob Lockhart on saxes, Bob McChesney and Rich Bullock on trombones and Bobby Shew plus Jay Sollenberger and Jim Oatts on trumpets. Alan Broadbent was at the piano, with Kevin Axt on bass and driving the whole ensemble with incredible verve and enthusiasm - Jeff Hamilton.  Guests Bill Trujillo, Don Rader and Bruce Johnstone bobbed to and fro as required.

Sitting down front cheering the whole event on was veteran Arno Marsh, who was, unfortunately not well enough to play on this occasion but offered his support.

The repertoire for the evening included all the classic from 'Woodchoppers Ball' (rec. 1939) onwards to much favorites from decades later such as ‘Fanfare for the Common Man.’

Of course, that four brothers sound snuck in from time to time and Bruce Johnstone even sang one of Woody's vocal offerings 'I've Got News for You'.

It was also an opportunity to hear some of the less-often heard arrangements such as Bill Holman's 'After You've Gone', various Neal Hefti arrangements, several Ellington’s, Alan Broadbent's beautiful 'Sugar Loaf Mountain - with Alan conducting as well as playing piano.

I was struck by the breadth of instrumentation - a full flute section, bass clarinet, pocket trumpet, frequent use of flugelhorn, Latin percussion - and all in a Woody Herman environment.

Woody's preference for changing with the times was amply evident in these concerts as in Graham Carter's movie.

The highlight of the day for me was the laughing, smiling and sheer joy among the musicians, especially Jeff Hamilton and Alan Broadbent. …."

1950's Jazz LP Covers - A Retrospective of Jazz in Denmark

The following video affords a look back at the vibrant mid-20th century Jazz scene in Denmark courtesy of a montage of LP covers. The music is provided by trumpeter Jorgen Ryg's quartet with Jorgen Lausen on piano, Erik Moseholm on bass and William Schiopffe on drums. The tune is I Didn't Know. Moseholm and Schiopffe would go on to become the rhythm section of choice for many ex-patriot American Jazz musicians who lived and worked in Denmark in the 1960s and beyond including Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Duke Jordan and Brew Moore. Quite remarkably given how well he plays the instrument, Jazz trumpet was only a side-line for Jorgen Ryg who was best known in Denmark as a comedian and as an actor. He appeared in 37 films before his death in 1981 at the age of 54.

David Hazeltine, William Claxton and “Cry Me A River”

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

Written in 1953, Arthur Hamilton’s Cry Me a River is usually associated with vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Barbara Streisand, Joe Cocker and Michael Bublé. Julie London sang it as a torch song and made it into a million-selling record in 1955.

Why in the world pianist David Hazeltine’s version of it evoked the images of Memphis, New Orleans and the greater Mississippi Delta taken by the great photographer William Claxton during his 1960 trek across the U.S.A. is beyond me.

But as you can see from the following video montage – they did.

Maybe it was the way in which David arranged the tune with its additional chords formed into a rolling vamp that gave rise in my mind to the image of the Mississippi’s steady flow to the sea.

Or maybe it was his use of a loping bossa nova beat as emphasized by bassist Dwayne Burno and drummer Joe Farnsworth that conjured up Clax’s down-home and beautifully honest photographs of life and music in the place where Jazz began.

Perhaps the relationship had something to do with tenor saxophonist’s Eric Alexander’s inventions and virtuosity as he spins out some foot-stomping and blues-drenched choruses over the tune’s insistent beat.

Whatever the subconscious associations, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles had fun coupling some poster art from past New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festivals with Clax’s images and making them into a video using the David’s rendition of Cry Me A River from David Hazeltine’s Blues Quartet Vol. 1 Criss Cross CD [1188] as the audio track.

Clax’s great art is enhanced by viewing the video at full screen which you can do by clicking on the directional arrows in the lower right hand corner of the control bar.

Lucas van Merwijk - Genius at Work

Stay with this one if you can - open up you ears - you won't believe your eyes. Lucas makes it all look so easy!

Sonny Clark’s “Conception”

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

“Sonny Clark approached music with joyous abandon. … Note perfect, rhythmically bouncy and always ready with a quirky idea, he was the ideal group-player ….

Appearing as it did in the shadow of Cool Struttin’ [… an immaculately tasteful Jazz album and one of the key documents of hard bop] the March 1959 My Conception sessions never gained the reputation of its wonderful predecessor. This is unfortunate, for here again Clark showcases a wonderful set of originals The result is an immaculately tasteful and sophisticated modern Jazz record.. .”

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

“And don’t forget, Sonny Clark.”

This gentle reminder was offered by a friend during a group conversation on the subject of Jazz musicians who were often overlooked in terms of the body of work they composed.

Also referenced during the course of the chat were pianists Elmo Hope, Russ Freeman and Cedar Walton, trumpeters Clifford Brown and Donald Byrd, trombonists Curtis Fuller and J.J. Johnson, alto saxophonists Art Pepper and Gigi Gryce and tenor saxophonists Hank Mobley and John Coltrane.

Remember, it’s all in a point-of-view with regard to how opinions are formed.

Some in the group seriously objected to Gigi’s Gryce’s inclusion in the obscure composer listing arguing that Gigi was better known as a composer than a player while others strongly agreed that the compositional body of work that Hank Mobley, Clifford Brown and even John Coltrane had put together during their careers was overshadowed by the acclaim they received as instrumentalists.

But when pianist Sonny Clark’s name was mentioned, it was met by a universal acknowledgement that his writing was deserving of much wider recognition and respect.

One person likened Sonny’s obscurity as a composer to that of fellow pianist Elmo Hope while also remarking that “… the consistency and the of quality of his writing puts him right up there with Horace Silver” [the legendary small group leader and pianist turned out such iconic Jazz tunes as The Preacher, Doodlin’ and Senor Blues].

Following this get-together, I went searching through my collection of Sonny Clark recordings and pleasantly rediscovered a number of his terrific tunes, all of which was made even more amazing when one considers that he was a victim of the heroin scourge that gripped the Jazz world from around 1945-1965 and died in 1963 at the age of 32.

Sonny’s all-too-brief career is wonderfully encapsulated and memorialized in Michael Cuscuna’s insert notes to Sonny’s Blue Note recording – My Conception[7243 5 22674 2 2]. We wrote to Michael and he graciously granted his permission to reproduce these notes on JazzProfiles.  

© -Michael Cuscuna: used with the author’s permission, copyright protected, all rights reserved.

“SONNY CLARK is not a name that appears with any frequency in documents of jazz history. He has never been proclaimed a major original pianist. Yet Clark's major influence seems to have been his own creativity. His style was full and rich, yet carried a bright, irresistible swing that swept away the musician and listener alike. He was, to these ears, the realization of the perfect post-bop pianist. By all accounts, the musicians that worked with him regarded him as a source of joy and inspiration. And any listener who stops and really hears his work will be hooked forever.

After spending the first 20 years of his life in and around Pittsburgh mastering the piano and playing vibes and bass as well, Clark ventured out to the West Coast in 1951 with his older brother. He worked the Los Angeles area with Wardell Gray, Art Farmer, Dexter Gordon, Shelly Manne and a score of others. In 1953, Oscar Pettiford came to Los Angeles, formed a band that included Clark and went up to San Francisco. There Sonny met Buddy DeFranco who was leading a quartet with Art Blakey and Kenny Drew. Blakey and Drew left, and Sonny was asked to join. During the next two and a half years, Clark appeared on three DeFranco recordings and toured Europe, the American Midwest and Hawaii with the clarinetist.

In January of 1956, Clark settled into a more stationary life, joining Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars. During that year, he recorded in a quartet setting under the leadership of Serge Chaloff with Philly Joe Jones on drums (EMI Capitol) and with drummer Lawrence Marable's quartet which featured tenor saxophonist James Clay (Jazz West). On that album Sonny was not only featured as a player, but also contributed three compositions.

In February 1957, he joined Dinah Washington in order to work his way back East. Referring to West Coast music, he said, "I did have sort of a hard time trying to be comfortable in my playing, the fellows on the West Coast have a different sort of feeling, a different approach to jazz. They swing in their own way....The Eastern musicians play with so much fire.” On another occasion, he was quoted as saying, "Jazz is jazz wherever it's played. The whole thing has to do with the individual and his conception toward jazz. The thing is that my playing is different from the way most of the fellows out West play. I'd rather work in the East because what is played here is closer to the traditional meaning of jazz. They're getting away from the tradition out West — combining jazz with classical music and playing chamber music-type jazz. What they play is really very good, but it's just not the way I want to play. That's why I came back East." And come back he did in April 1957 at the end of the Dinah Washington tour.

He worked at Birdland under the leadership of J.R. Monterose and Stan Getz and gigged briefly with Anita O'Day and Charles Mingus. In early June, he recorded with Sonny Rollins (Riverside). On June 23, he recorded as a sideman for Blue Note on a Hank Mobley session. A month later, he made his first album as a leader for Blue Note. Thus began a long and fruitful association wherein Clark appeared regularly on Blue Note dates with a variety of artists.

In fact, between June 1957 and March 1959, he was in the studio eight times as a leader and another 15 times as a sideman with Mobley, John Jenkins, Curtis Fuller, Johnny Griffin, Clifford Jordan, Lou Donaldson, Lee Morgan, Louis Smith, Tina Brooks, Bennie Green and Jackie McLean.

Then for some strange reason, Sonny was totally absent from Blue Note for the next two and a half years. In 1960 he recorded a trio album and appeared on albums by Bennie Green and Stanley Turrentine, all for Time Records and all very much Blue Note in style and personnel. That two and a half years of relative inactivity is usually credited to his bouts with drug addiction.

In October 1961, he reentered the Blue Note fold on a Jackie McLean date and during the next 12 months appeared on 13 sessions under the leadership of McLean, Don Wilkerson, Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine and Grant Green as well as making his last album as a leader, Leapin' And Lopin', in November 1961. After his final session in October 1962 (Stanley Turrentine's Jubilee Shout), Clark suffered a heart attack. He was released from the hospital in January 1963. He played two nights at a New York club called Junior's and, in the early morning hours, died of an overdose. To preserve the club's image and liquor license, his body was moved to a private apartment before the police were called in. Thus, a short ten years after his first record dates with Teddy Charles and Buddy DeFranco, his career and his life came to an end with the most tragic cliché in the jazz life.

It is through recorded documents such as this one that Sonny Clark continues to live and enrich our lives. This album, made on March 29, 1959, closed the first of Clark's two tenures at Blue Note.

What is most unique and most delightful is the presence of Art Blakey on drums. It is surprising that these two Blue Note regulars only recorded together three times — on this date and on still unissued Tina Brooks and Grant Green sessions. [Note: These sessions have since been released by Blue Note as Tina Brooks Minor Move and Grant Green Nigeria.] The great Blakey is typically superb here in his drive, pacing and taste. Listen to how he literally conducts the flow and dynamics of the music from the drum stool. His shadings and his power pace and inspire each soloist perfectly. And when given the opportunity to trade fours with the horns, as on "Junka" and "Some Clark Bars” he positively erupts.

With the exception of Sonny's first Blue Note album and a trio session of standards issued on 45 singles, bassist Paul Chambers was present on every date that the pianist led at Blue Note. And they were, of course, brought together on many sessions by other Blue Note artists. Clark once said, ‘I met Paul in Detroit in 1954. He was very young and nobody outside the city knew much about him, but I dug him right then. He's very consistent and has superior conception, choice of notes and ability to construct lines. He plays with intelligence and he always keeps it interesting.’ Aside from his typically superb support, Chambers gets off an effective and to-the-point arco solo on "Junka.”

Donald Byrd appeared on Clark's second album Sonny's Crib in October 1957. Two months later, both men contributed admirably to Lou Donaldson's Lou Takes Off. They were reunited in January 1959 on a Jackie McLean date that produced half of the Jackie's Bag album. That reunion undoubtedly led to Byrd’s presence on this session.

Encounters between the pianist and Hank Mobley were all too rare. Clark made his Blue Note debut, as mentioned earlier, on one of Mobley’s sextet albums (BLP 1568) on June 23, 1957. Mobley then participated in Sonny's first album Dial S For Sonny a month later. Clark appeared a month later on a still unissued Mobley album. They did not record together again until this album. Clark once said, ‘I never heard Hank Mobley in person until I came to New York but I listened to his records with the Jazz Messengers and dug him very much. [He] plays in my style and I was very happy working with [him] and very satisfied with the results.’

That is certainly an understatement. If "post-bop" ever spawned two underappreciated figures who were suited to each other's playing, it was Clark and Mobley. Both have a bright, propelling and very individual sense of swing. And both can burn hard with surprising lightness and grace. In the general format of hard bop that can mask the less inventive player, Clark and Mobley always gave their all with subtle, self-assured brilliance. Check out Mobley's astonishing solos on "Junka" and "Royal Flush" and his beautiful reading of the theme of "My Conception." They made quite a team!

"Some Clark Bars" is the only tune on this album that pops up nowhere else in Sonny Clark's discography. "Minor Meeting," the oldest composition, first appears on the Lawrence Marable-James Clay album of 1956, then on a December 1957 Blue Note session (that was issued in Japan on the album Quintets in 1977) and finally on the pianist's trio date for Time Records. "Royal Flush," from the January 1958 session that produced the Cool Struttin' album, was also issued in 1977 on the Quintets album. The version heard here eliminates the introduction used on the earlier date. "Junka," "Blues Blue" and "My Conception" were all given trio treatments on the aforementioned Time album from 1960.

Despite an occasional rough edge in the arrangements or a minor trumpet fluff, this newly unearthed album is a welcome and valuable edition to the legacy of Sonny Clark. Perhaps through such releases the magnitude of Sonny Clark's brilliance will be recognized by the world audience where it has only been truly appreciated by the musicians themselves and the Japanese jazz audience. Sonny Clark's music will long endure.

—MICHAEL CUSCUNA, 1980”

Alan and Art … Barnes and Pepper, That Is

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

'You know, there's honest musicians and there's dishonest musicians. Let me clarify that. An honest musician plays with his heart and soul and gives his all, all the time. And then there's the dishonest musician who plays, and gives you his all, but not all the time. It's like a racehorse. When Art plays, it's all, all the time. I never heard him lay back at any time, and that, to me, is an honest musician. And there aren't too many of them in the entire world.’

- Marty Paich, composer-arranger

Life does indeed move in mysterious fashions?

Are there no such things as coincidences; is the world really operating as chaos theory; are there parallel universes that we can side-step into if we only knew how to do it?

Maybe Rod Sterling was right and the whole thing is a “Twilight Zone?”

One day I’m remarking to a friend over coffee how I can’t relate to the late, alto saxophonist Art Pepper’s music from the closing years of his career. To my ears, Art’s music moved from being smooth, passionate and melodic to one that was abrasive  and harsh – it became a cacophony of sounds; no longer music.

Soon thereafter, I’m having coffee with another friend who is into Jazz and he gives me alto saxophonist Alan Barnes’ latest CD, The Art Trip: The Music of Art Pepper [Woodville Records WVCD 137].

How zany is that?

The first friend urged me to stick with repeated listening of Pepper’s later recordings in order to “get them,” neither of which I’m able to do.

But thanks to the other friend’s generosity, I am now able to take solace in the fact that I am not alone in confronting the quandary posed by Art’s music, then-and-now, so to speak.

Alan Barnes discusses this dilemma in his insert notes to The Art Trip: The Music of Art Pepper.

© -Alan Barnes/Woodville Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Art Pepper first came into my life when I was around 15, through a double album entitled Art Pepper - Discoveries, recorded in the early '50s. I'd never heard of him. It had a painting of a good looking young man with an alto saxophone on the cover and lots of the titles were named after herbs and spices - Art's Oregano, Thyme Time, Cinnamon, Nutmeg - it seemed strange and exotic: I thought at the time, perhaps it was something to do with his being called Pepper

The alto sax playing sprang out of those LPs. It was so clear, virtuosic and accurate - a beautiful, fresh, full-of-life sound that danced over the time in a light and subtle, yet intensely probing way. There was a lonely, yearning quality to his playing on the ballads that really reached out to the listener. Perhaps the most beautiful moments came when Jack Montrose joined the ensemble on tenor and the two front men wove lines around each other. It was just so musical and respectful, each playing so much like themselves but with great politeness and courtesy to the other. I'd heard many of the world's greatest saxophonists on records, and still loved them, but from that moment one this was clear for me, that was how the alto saxophone should be played.

A handful of years later I saw Art Pepper at Ronnie Scott's club, playing with his quartet with Milcho Leviev on piano. The first shock was the different sound of the saxophone. It was darker and thicker in tone with a new emotional depth to it. His lines were sometimes shorter, broken and angular - he would find a set of notes and realy worry them, then break free into long darting phrases that ran effortlessly through the changes. The beautiful clarity, tuning and stunning double timing were still there, but when the music reached a certain, almost frightening, emotional intensity and there seemed nowhere else to go, he would move right out there - playing free, spitting out distorted notes with furious passion. The ballads were raw and tender. I've never seen anyone more involved or determined and it showed what's possible in a jazz performance. He looked like a man fighting for survival. It was riveting, overwhelming, honest, disturbing and quite profound.

These two different periods of the same musician's life were separated by years of drug and alcohol addiction and lengthy stays in prisons and a drug rehabilitation centre. However harrowing these experiences, however long he was off the scene, Art always played superbly well in a series of come-backs throughout his life. His final re-emergence, beginning in 1977, really gathered momentum, producing some of the finest playing of his career and gaining him the worldwide recognition that he had always sought. He continued to perform until he was stricken with a cerebral hemorrhage and died in June of 1982.

Art's career stretched from the late '40s with the bands of Stan Kenton and Benny Carter, through recognition as a 'West Coast Star’ in the '50s and on to triumphs of his later years.

Unlike many West Coast jazz musicians, he wasn't a studio player by day - he always remained resolutely a jazz performer. His life is detailed in his devastatingly honest biography, Straight Life, published in 1977.

This CD is the idea of bassist Al Swainger. As well as playing great bass on this session, he put together the band, booked the studios, picked the tunes and transcribed all the music. In deciding winch material to focus on, Al chose a selection of Art's compositions from both the early and later periods and balanced them with several standards that really showcase the individuality of the man. Making free use of transcriptions, recordings and the individual personalities of the assembled players we hope to have achieved a balance between the old and the new to create something unique for a fresh generation of listeners. It's not an attempt to sound like Art (who could?), just the four of us enjoying the playing his great music and enjoying being influenced by his great musicianship. Craig Milverton on piano has always been a very fine accompanist and trio pianist. He really shines on this recording and plays some of his finest work to date. Nick Millward on drums really worked at getting an individual feel on each track, finding his own way. I think his playing and approach really makes this album.

Art's compositions should be part of any jazz study syllabus, the up-tempo numbers are very witty, articulate and hip, often based on the chord sequences of standards. His ballads are always beautiful vehicles for expression while his Latin and groove tunes are timeless and very much bring to mind his home city of Los Angeles. He really excelled at playing on simple harmonic vamps, sometimes extending the ends of tunes to incorporate one of these and really get into some blowing after the tune was over. Mambo Koyama and the 5/4 Las Cuevos De Mark), for instance, were refreshingly different for us to play on after lots of involved, harmonic pieces.

Personally, it's been a real pleasure to continue studying and playing the music of Art Pepper. Marty Paich, Art's friend and collaborator on many albums, seemed to sum up the essence of the man: 'You know, there's honest musicians and there's dishonest musicians. Let me clarify that. An honest musician plays with his heart and soul and gives his all, all the time. And then there's the dishonest musician who plays, and gives you his all, but not all the time. It's like a racehorse. When Art plays, it's all, all the time. I never heard him lay back at any time, and that, to me, is an honest musician. And there aren't too many of them in the entire world"

- Alan Barnes • September 2011

Here’s an audio-only track from the CD with Alan and the group performing one of Art’s tunes from earlier in his career entitled Chili Pepper which is based on the chord changes to Tea for Two.

Total Toots

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

Sometimes we like to re-visit the music of artists about whom we have developed video tributes to in association with the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD.

Recently, we have developed a new affiliation with StudioCerra Productions that we hope will enable us to add additional visual and audio dimensions to these efforts.

In order to welcome StudioCerra Production to these pages, we thought it might be enjoyable to reprise the four video tributes that we have developed which feature the music of Toots Thielemans.

Jazz is supposed to be about fun and no one brings more joy to the music than Toots.

[Click on the “X” to close out of the ads when they appear on the Soldier in the Rain video].

The Origins of Gene Lees’ The JazzLetter – The First Jazz Blog?

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles subscribed to The JazzLetter for many years.

Its author, Gene Lees, who died in April, 2010 at the age of eighty-two, published The JazzLetter in monthly editions of 6-8 manuscript-sized, printed pages and mailed them to his subscribers.

Gene would often get behind in his efforts to put it out on a monthly basis and a clump of them would sometimes arrive in one envelope.

Who cared. Whenever one or more copies of The JazzLetter hit my mailbox, it marked a joyous occasion as I was about to be transported into some aspect of the world of Jazz and its makers by Gene Lees, whom Glen Woodcock of the Toronto Sun once labeled: “… the best writer on Jazz in the world today.”

Although, Tim Berners-Lee devised the first web browser and server at CERN and launched the World Wide Web in August, 1991, about ten years after Gene began publishing The JazzLetter in 1981, the publication never made an appearance on the world-wide-web.

Irrespective of the fact that The JazzLetter never went digital, I have always thought of it as the first Jazz blog.

Perhaps after you read this account from Gene’s introduction to his Cats of Any Color compilation on the origins of The JazzLetter you, too, might agree that the publication deserves to be considered in this fashion.

Also, when you read Gene’s account of how it all began, you may get a sense of nostalgia at the thought that such a time will never come again.

© -  Gene Lees/Da Capo Press, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Often it will be found that someone speaks a third language with the ac­cent of the second. My Spanish, for example, has a French accent. Gene Kelly spoke French with a slight Italian accent. He grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Philadelphia.

Over the years, I have also observed that anyone who has had two profes­sions practices the second with the disciplines and outlook of the first. You can see this in movie-makers. Directors who were first actors elicit fine work from their performers—for example, Richard Attenborough. Consider the miraculous performance he got from Robert Downey, Jr. as the English Charles Chaplin. Or the performances Robert Redford gets from actors, as in Ordinary People and A River Runs Through It. Or Sydney Pollack and Mark Rydell, both of whom had been actors, in any number of pictures.

Alfred Hitchcock, who early manifested a skill in things mechanical, went to work for a telegraph company, then broke into the film industry as a tide-card illustrator. His pictures were always visual, mechanical, and short on great acting, no matter the idolatry toward his pictures fashionable in film circles. He was quoted as saying that actors should be treated like cattle, and his movies look like filmed storyboards. David Lean began as a film editor, and though his films—The Bridge on the River Kwai - for example— reflect prodigious gifts for working with actors, they also reveal his first training in that they are magnificently, meticulously photographed and edited.

I was trained as an artist, but my first profession was journalism. I had been a newspaper reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent for ten years before I became the editor of Down Beat in April, 1959, and a thirst for factuality would stay with me. I looked the magazine over and sent a memo to staff members and contributors saying that its first duty was to be a good magazine, literate and readable. If it did not fulfill that obligation, it could not serve its subject matter well. I also urged a concern for factuality, in contrast to the opinion-mongering that comprised much, even most, of jazz criticism, and still does. To say something is exciting or boring or touching or disturbing is only to confess what excites, bores, touches, or disturbs you. It is not a fact about the work of art in question, it is a fact about the critic, a projection of his or her own character and experience.

I did what everyone did at Down Beat: I wrote record reviews. Project­ing your opinions in print is the fastest way in the world to alienate the vic­tims of your inescapable subjectivity. In any case, unless you are like Addison DeWitt in All About Eve and enjoy causing pain, writing criticism ain't your thing. So I fired myself as a record reviewer soon after joining the magazine. I have written very, very little jazz criticism, which is why I was in early years discomfited to see myself referred to as a jazz critic, later em­barrassed, and finally resigned to it.

My education in jazz came not from magazines and books but from studies of composition, piano (with Tony Aless, among others), and gui­tar—and from long, rich conversations in such places as Jim and Andy's bar in New York with Phil Woods, Gerry Mulligan, Ben Webster, Cole-man Hawkins, Hank d'Amico, Will Bradley, Jimmy McPartland, Lockjaw Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, J.J. Johnson, and many more. I found that jazz history, as it was generally accepted, was to a large extent a fiction that has been agreed upon, as Voltaire said of all history. It dawned on me that, since such founding figures as Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines were still with us, I had met nearly all the great jazz musicians who had ever lived, and knew some of them, such as Bill Evans and Woody Herman, intimately. At the same time, because of my activities as a lyricist, I met and in some cases came to know many of the major song­writers who had inspired and influenced me, including Howard Dietz, Arthur Schwartz, Harold Arlen, Johnny Green, Hoagie Carmichael, Mitchell Parrish, Harry Warren, and particularly Johnny Mercer, some­one else who became a close friend.

After leaving Down Beat toward the end of 1961, I settled in New York and devoted myself primarily to songwriting. I spent the early 1970s in Toronto, then settled in 1974 in Southern California, where I have re­mained ever since, the climate being one of its blandishments. By the end of the 1970s, my songs had been recorded by Mabel Mercer, Frank Sina­tra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan (my dear, dear friend!), Ella Fitzgerald,Nancy Wilson, Joe Williams, Carmen McRae, Peggy Lee (another dear friend), and so many others that my royalties, at least in theory, made it possible for me to retire, and I tried. I soon found that I missed my friends, among them all the jazz musicians I had come to know since 1959.

On a morning in May, 1981, I sent a questionnaire to several hundred persons, asking whether I should start a letter—not a newsletter, giving record reviews, nightclub listings, and current news, but a letter on matters of interest to all of us. I specified that it would contain no advertising. Within a week, I had a mailbox full of letters urging me to do it, some of them containing checks. I realized that I was committed. Broadcaster Fred Hall and composer-pianist-arranger Roger Kellaway gave the Jazzletter its name. I still remember the list of early subscribers. It included Phil Woods, Gerry Mulligan, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Shelly Manne, Benny Carter, Jimmy Rowles, John Lewis, Art Farmer, Kenny Wheeler, Kenny Drew, Sahib Shihab, Rob McConnell, Henry Mancini, Johnny Mandel, Julius La Rosa, Jackie and Roy Kral, Robert Farnon, and Audrey Morris, such record-company executives as Charles Lourie, Bruce Lundvall, and Ken Clancy, and a number of critics and jazz historians, including Whitney Balliett, Doug Ramsey, Grover Sales, James Lincoln Collier, Philip Elwood, and the late Leonard Feather, as well as academics.

The Jazzletter addressed a list of subscribers almost all of whom I knew personally. It was written for musicians, dealing with matters that concern musicians—jazz musicians to a large extent but not exclusively. I did not de­sign it to exclude laymen, and indeed whenever technical discussions proved necessary, tried to make them as clear and brief as possible. But in general, the publication assumed a measure of knowledge in its readers. I asked gui­tarist and composer Mundell Lowe what he thought the limits of Jazzletter subject matter should be. He said, "Anything that is of interest to us"

And what was of acute interest to jazz musicians was the history of the music and its makers, whether one of the older players and the era he or she had lived through, or younger ones, anxious to know about the times they did not know. And given that I faced no limits in length, I was able to write extended pieces that simply would not be practical in most mag­azines for structural reasons. I soon found that I was recording the life stories, derived from extended interviews, of musicians who might de­serve book-length biographies but were unlikely to get them, the nature of publishing being what it is. I found myself writing what I came to think of as mini-biographies.

In time, Oxford University Press published four anthologies of these essays, each of them gathered loosely around a central theme. Cats of Any Color was the fourth of these collections. Cassell has published a fifth, Arranging the Score, Yale University Press is publishing a sixth, and a sev­enth is pending. I know of no other publication that has produced a comparable quantity of anthologized material. Two of the books received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award.”

Thanks to the collective efforts of many Jazz bloggers, the spirit of The Jazzletter lives on today in a variety of digital formats.

But for those of us who looked forward to that thud hitting the front door mat announcing that Gene had sent out another batch of his inimitable Jazzletter essays, musings and commentaries, there will never be anything quite like it again.