Deep wartime romance, recorded four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor:
I might have heard the music that follows in 1990, but it’s more than memorable to me. Yes, it’s a medley of current hits for the dancers — but what hits, and how gorgeous they sound. I only dimly remembered Tricky Sam being inimitable on TANGERINE, but Ben Webster’s absolutely romantic reading of I DON’T WANT TO WALK WITHOUT YOU by Jule Styne and Frank Loesser is a paean to intimacies, never to be forgotten.
It’s the post-Blanton, post-Bigard, but still celestial Ellington orchestra on an NBC broadcast from the Palace Theatre, in Cleveland, Ohio, August 29, 1942 — proving once again Barbara Rosene’s assertion that everything good comes from that state, even if the band was only passing through.
Rex Stewart, cornet; Wallace Jones, trumpet; Ray Nance, trumpet, violin; Joe “Tricky Sam” Nanton, Lawrence Brown, trombone; Juan Tizol, valve-trombone; Chauncey Haughton, clarinet, tenor saxophone; Johnny Hodges, alto saxophone; Otto Hardwick, alto saxophone, clarinet; Ben Webster, tenor saxophone; Harry Carney, baritone saxophone, clarinet, bass-clarinet; Duke Ellington, piano, arranger; Fred Guy, guitar; Junior Raglin, string bass; Sonny Greer, drums.
TANGERINE (featuring Tricky Sam Nanton) / WHO WOULDN’T LOVE YOU? (Lawrence Brown), / (unidentified interlude for Chauncey Haughton[?]) / I DON’T WANT TO WALK WITHOUT YOU (Ben Webster) //
Anyone can buy tubes of paint and a canvas at the art supplies store; anyone can buy a blank journal at the bookstore. But there’s so much work, contemplation and self-contemplation that must take place before one can become even a fledgling painter or writer. Some divinely talented children create marvels while their driver’s licenses are still new, but I admire those artists whose life-maturity shines through their work.
To me, this is especially true in jazz singing. Anyone can learn the lyrics, learn the melody (from the paper or from hallowed recordings) but what then? Does the singer really understand the meanings of the words and the meanings under the meanings? The finest singers make me feel what it’s like to be dancing cheek to cheek, to be old-fashioned, to make emotional commitments — not only to the imaginary love-object, but to the song, to the songwriters, to the audience.
Barbara Rosene is just one of those artists I admire: she is Growed Up, and it’s not a matter of numbers on her passport: when she sings, I know that she knows what she’s singing about, whether it’s fidelity to an ideal, devotion to beauty, or the hope of fulfillment. Barbara and Jon Davis put on a true master’s class in creating art one evening some months ago at Mezzrow. Here is the example I posted last December: how very touching (even for someone like me, who recoils at every fragment of musical holiday cheer)!
And more. Admire, at your leisure, the deep beauties of Barbara’s voice — but better still are the messages she sends us, complex, easy, and aimed straight at our hearts. And Jon (whom I hadn’t known earlier) is the best partner, enhancing the mood, serving the song rather than saying “Here I am! Look at me!” at every turn — although his solos show off his adult virtuosity as well.
You will find it nearly impossible to locate DREAMSVILLE by using Waze, but Barbara and Jon know where it’s located:
and another adult song, thanks to Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer:
And here Barbara dramatizes hope and the fragility of hope:
Love comes to the rescue, delightfully:
and a wistful yet triumphant Rodgers and Hart opus:
I think it’s lovely to experience Barbara, going her own sweet way. And I trust you know she is also an artist on canvas, her paintings as distinctive as her song.
Beauty is still very much possible: so reassuring.
On September 3, I had the immense pleasure of visiting Mezzrow, that shrine for fascinating rhythms and floating melodies, to hear two sets by tenor saxophonist Tad Shull, pianist Rob Schneiderman, and string bassist Paul Gill. Ted called the group his “Radical Swing Trio,” which to him means a return to the roots: strong melodies, logical emotive improvisations, lovely ballads. And, as I said the first time, don’t be put off by “Radical”: this trio would have been forward-looking but comfortable in the fabled New York jazz past, although they are far from being archaeologists. Listen, and be delighted.
For readers many born before this century, THE THINGS WE DID LAST SUMMER (1946) might well be part of our emotional landscape. How could it be otherwise with music by Jule Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn?
I can’t be sure if it is because summer’s “lease hath all too short a date,” or because we have all had a romance that was too brief. But the song is inescapably memorable. If examined coldly, the melody is simple, yet combined with the simple-yet-evocative lyrics it causes me to imagine summers and summer romances I didn’t actually have but still seem real yet off in the distance. “We never could explain / That sudden summer rain / The looks we got when we got back.” The lyrics approach remembered elation and present loss indirectly. Cahn never states openly, “You broke my heart. Where did you go?” but offers a catalogue of pleasures experienced, now gone.
But enough of memories, of sunscreen, watermelon, lemonade, bathing suits.
Instead, evocative music created for us by Harry Allen and Ehud Asherie, masters of emotion in swing, performed at the Cleveland Classic Jazz Party(the party formerly known as Allegheny) on September 13, 2015:
Ah, summer. Ah, romance. And the imagined past, possibly more real than the experienced one. And — for some of us — the music that will happen at the 2016 Party, something to look forward to.
I met and admired the trombonist and singer Todd Londagin several times in 2005 and onwards; he was one of the crew of cheerful individualists who played gleeful or dark music with the drummer Kevin Dorn. A fine trombonist (with a seamless reach from New Orleans to this century) and an engaging singer, Todd is someone I have faith in musically. But when I received his second CD, LOOK OUT FOR LOVE, I hardly expected it to be as remarkable as it is.
On it, Todd sings and plays (occasionally doing both simultaneously, through an Avakian-like graceful use of multi-tracking . . . even sounding like Jay and Kai here and there), with a splendid small band: Pete Smith, guitar; Matt Ray, piano, Jennifer Vincent, string bass; David Berger, drums. Singer Toby Williams joins in on BRAZIL. The presentation is neither self-consciously sparse or overproduced. With all due respect to Todd, the foursome of Pete, Matt, Jennifer, and David could easily sustain their own CD or gig. I had only met Matt (unpredictable) and Jennifer (a swing heartbeat) in person, but this “rhythm section” is a wonderful — and quirky — democratic conversation of singular voices, each one of them a powerful yet gracious rhythm orchestra.
But I keep returning to Todd. And his “extraordinary range” doesn’t refer to the notes he can hit on trombone or sing. It’s really a matter of a deep emotional intelligence, and I can’t think of anyone who can equal him here. (That’s no stage joke.)
Consider these songs: LOOK OUT FOR LOVE / BYE BYE BABY / SOME OF THESE DAYS / BRAZIL / I CONCENTRATE ON YOU / LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY / PENNIES FROM HEAVEN / YOU GO TO MY HEAD / I CAN’T HELP IT / BUST YOUR WINDOWS. The first two songs show off Todd’s sly, ingratiating self — witty and wily on the first (with a neo-Basie rock) and endearing on the second. Those who have to think of Echoes might hear Chet Baker, Harry Connick, Jr., a young Bob Dorough, or Dave Frishberg. I thought on the first playing and continue to think that if there were aesthetic justice in the world, the first two songs would be coming out of every car radio for miles. (Todd would also be starring on every enlightened late-night television show, or do I dream?)
The pop classics that follow are always served with a twist — a slightly different tempo, a different rhythmic angle, a beautiful seriousness (I’ve never heard CONCENTRATE interpreted so well).
Maybe Todd is understandably afraid of being pigeonholed as Another Interpreter of The Great American Songbook — with all the attendant reverence and dismissal that comes with that assessment — so the closing songs are “more modern.” I think he does Stevie Wonder’s I CAN’T HELP IT justice in his own light-hearted, sincere, swinging way.
I am not attuned to contemporary pop culture, except to cringe when I hear loud music coming from the car next to mine, so I had no historical awareness with which to approach BUST YOUR WINDOWS.
In fact, I thought the title would herald some exuberant love song, “My love for you is so strong, it’s going to bust your windows,” or something equally cheerful.
Thus I was horrified to hear Todd sing, “I had to bust the windows out your car,” and all my literate-snobbish-overeducated revulsion came to the surface, as I called upon the shades of Leo Robin and Yip Harburg to watch over me.
But then I calmed down and reminded myself just how much fun the preceding nine tracks had been, and that I would be very surprised if Todd — bowing to whatever notion of modernity — had gone entirely off the rails. And I listened to BUST YOUR WINDOWS again. And again. For those who don’t know the song, it was an immense hit for one Jazmine Sullivan in 2008, and there’s a YouTube video of her doing it. The premise is that the singer finds her lover has been untrue with another (not a new idea) but (s)he then takes a crowbar to her lover’s car so that her lover will know what faithlessness does to others. Tough love, indeed. I researched Sullivan’s music video — where she is threatening to unzip herself to a tango / rhythm and blues beat — and disliked it.
But I had no patience for her rendition of her own song because I had been struck so powerfully by Todd’s — almost a stifled scream of brokenhearted passion worthy of a great opera’s finish before the grieving one, betrayed, commits suicide. Todd’s performance has no tango beat, no intrusive orchestration: he merely presents the lyrics and melody as if he is showing us his bleeding heart . . . as if he has used the crowbar on himself. It is a performance both bone-dry and powerful, understated and unforgettable. I can’t forget it, just as I keep on wanting to replay LOOK OUT FOR LOVE.
You can find out more about Todd here, and after you’ve heard the three samples, I hope you will chase down a copy of this CD. It is wildly rewarding and beautifully-textured music, and it will stay with you when other CDs by more “famous” players and singers have grown tedious. I don’t like “best” or “favorite,” but this CD is magnificently musical in so many ways that it will astonish.
As a player expertly able to fit himself into many kinds of music, Dan Block has added his own flavorings to many sessions led by others. But his finest accomplishments may be the four CDs under his own name: AROUND THE BLOCK (1999); DAN BLOCK PLAYS IZZY BALINE a.k.a. IRVING BERLIN (2004); ALMOST MODERN (2006); FROM HIS WORLD TO MINE: THE MUSIC OF DUKE ELLINGTON (2010). Each of these discs is the result of deep thinking, superb musicianship, intense feeling, wit, and a pungently lively imagination.
The newest one, DUALITY, is a frankly astonishing presentation of duet performances.
On it, Dan plays tenor and baritone saxophones, Albert system clarinet and bass clarinet, among his friends and peers: Catherine Russell (vocal), Ted Rosenthal (piano), Matt Munisteri (guitar), Mark Sherman (vibraphone), Lee Hudson (string bass), Scott Robinson (reeds), Rossano Sportiello (piano), Paul Meyers (guitar), Saul Rubin (guitar), Tim Horner (drums).
The repertoire Dan has chosen ranges from Ellington, Gershwin, Styne, Beiderbecke, Kern, Dameron, from a sweetly ancient pop song to Brazilian chorino to Shostakovich. Each piece and each performance has its own logic and splendor. The music is varied but not self-indulgent; it is beautiful but never merely pretty.
Because creativity is intensely difficult, many experienced improvisers have a series of learned gestures appropriate to the situation they find themselves. “You want me to fit into a 1929 big band? OK, I’ll put on that hat. Back a torch singer? Can do. It’s atonal time? Let me rummage in my case for my special atonal galoshes.” Dan Block never plays by-the-numbers: rather, in the best spirit, he makes it up as he goes along, adapting himself to the circumstances and adapting the circumstances to himself.
DUALITY is a beautiful representation of the many worlds Dan Block creates for us. Each of the eleven performances has the depth of feeling and intelligence one would find in a moving one-act play. The disc becomes a series of gratifying voyages to lands we might have thought we knew — with new beauties revealed to us on the first hearing and on subsequent visits. There is the bouncing curiosity of THE JAZZ SAMBA, the playful conversational jousting of PITTER PANTHER PATTER, the yearning of IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW, the water-pistol fight of LYRIC WALTZ, the shimmering melancholy of IN THE DARK . . . and so much more.
I always think it nearly rude to write, “Go here. Buy this. Put everything else down and listen.” But in the case of DUALITY, I feel myself entirely justified. Dan Block has created music that resonates long after the disc has come to a stop. A brave explorer, he takes us along on his quests.
You can hear excerpts and purchas DUALITY here andhere— and visit Dan’s own site here.
Not every successful jazz group has to have an orthodox shape or instrumentation: in fact, the absence of a crucial or expected instrument often galvanizes the other players into something rich and rare, as was the case on September 17, 2011, at Jazz at Chautauqua.
I don’t know if anyone started out playing with Bix or Lester in mind, but the results summon up those two quiet geniuses most beautifully. And when we remember that Lester learned so much about lyricism — in addition to his own singular impulses — from listening to Bix and Tram records with Eddie Barefield — the connection isn’t far-fetched.
Here we have Rossano Sportiello on piano and quiet aesthetic leadership; Randy Sandke on soaring trumpet; Andy Schumm on hot introspective cornet; Dan Levinson on sweet clarinet and tenor sax; John Von Ohlen on subtly propulsive drums.
I associate MARGIE with Bix Beiderbecke in 1928, with Duke in 1935, and with a wonderful rarity — a collector’s tape of Jack Teagarden soloing over that very same Bix recording. It’s an old-fashioned song that doesn’t get old, and this performance has some of the rattling good humor of the Ruby Braff – Mel Powell – Paul Quinichette – Bobby Donaldson trio recordings for Vanguard:
THESE FOOLISH THINGS, to me, always summons up Lester Young — and Rossano’s piano playing evokes Ellis Larkins and Nat Cole without copying them. Dan’s tenor solo shows that he might be thinking about the President as well:
SUNDAY hadn’t come yet, but this cheerful Jule Styne 1927 hit always evokes memories of the happy past — and the Jean Goldkette Victor. (“Wanna see you next Sunday! Ah-ha! Ah-ha!” or words to that effect). Some stride and a swinging wire brush solo do no one any harm:
Most jazz sets close with something quick, dramatic, loud. If the audience isn’t standing and cheering, what went wrong? But not this evocative group of brave explorers. Rossano started off at a lovely slow tempo — seeming to creep sideways into a slow, slow blues — so reminiscent of the Lester / Nat Cole BACK TO THE LAND. But we’ll just call it a BLUES:
“Heaven on Earth, they call it 211 West 46th Street.”
Last Tuesday, Feb. 15, 2011, at Club Cache in the Hotel Edison, Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks did what they’ve been doing every Monday and Tuesday night for many weeks: they made the past come alive. But last night they also peeked around the corner of the present into the future.
The future didn’t announce itself melodramatically: it wasn’t a larger-than-life baby wearing nothing but a sash. It was a young man, sixteen years old, who plays the banjo in the jazz band led by trumpeter Kevin Blancq at New York’s LaGuardia High School. The young man’s name is ELI GREENHOE, and he sat in with the Nighthawks to play one of the tunes he loves and has learned from his time in the LaGuardia Jazz Orchestra — Duke Ellington’s growly THE MOOCHE. I’ll have that performance for all of you to see and hear in a future posting.
To hear about Kevin’s band — rehearsing in a room with pictures of Benny, Hawkins, and Carter on the walls — is exciting. JAZZ LIVES hopes to pay them a visit, so stay tuned.
And the Nighthawks always excite! Here’s some of the hot music the boys offered last night — that’s Vince on vocals, bass sax, tuba, and string bass; Ken Salvo on banjo; Peter Yarin on piano; Arnie Kinsella on drums; Mike Ponella and Jon-Erik Kellso on trumpets; Harvey Tibbs on tronbone; Alan Grubner on violin; Dan Levinson, Mark Lopeman, and Peter Anderson on reeds.
You can’t go wrong with Benny Carter, who remains the King. Here’s his 1934 EVERYBODY SHUFFLE (which bears some relationship to KING PORTER STOMP, I believe): the original recording drew on Fletcher Henderson’s men and I recall a typically slippery Benny Morton trombone solo:
The nightly jam session — always a rouser — was BLUES MY NAUGHTY SWEETIE GIVES (or GAVE, if you’re lucky) TO ME:
Something for Bix and Jean Goldkette and Joe Venuti and a very young Jule Styne, SUNDAY:
Who knew that Ellington had written two compositions called COTTON CLUB STOMP? This is the later one, from 1930:
In honor of the Bennie Moten band (with Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham, Count Basie, and Jimmy Rushing), OH, EDDIE!:
And since Vince and JAZZ LIVES always try to bring you something old, new, and futuristic all at once, here’s a Nighthawks premiere of arranger / composer / reedman Fud Livingston’s IMAGINATION (from 1927). Readers with excellent memories will recall that I posted the piano sheet music for this advanced composition on this site some time back at https://jazzlives.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/imagine-this/. If you can open two windows at once on your computer, why not play along on your piano!
More to come!
DROP A NICKEL IN THE SLOT TO HEAR THE MUSIC PLAY! ALL MONEY GOES TO THE MUSICIANS:
There’s a Stephen Sondheim song — BOUNCE — from the musical of the same name. I heard it many times on Jonathan Schwartz’s show on WNYC-FM. It’s a cynical paean to the ability to re-adapt, to get up off the floor, to reinvent yourself, sung by two brothers who have seen a great deal.
I thought about it, however irrelevantly, when the young jazz pianist Joe Alterman sent me a copy of his debut CD, PIANO TRACKS (VOLUME ONE). Young? He’s twenty-one. Credit for my knowing about Joe is due to the energetic Marc Myers, of JazzWax: read his December 2009 post on Joe here: http://www.jazzwax.com/2009/12/joe-alterman-piano-tracks.html.
Joe admires the lyrical, singing, propulsive styles — they’re timeless — embodied by Hank Jones and other giants.
Joe’s also got his own personal blog, where he writes about meeting Hank Jones and Jimmy Heath, studying with Don Friedman, and more — humble, funny, and to the point. It’s http://joealterman.blogspot.com/
But back to the CD at hand. It was recorded last year, and it is a comfortable kind of music: swinging without being self-conscious, embracing the past without being restricted by “repertory” conventions. Joe is a melodic player — someone who respects the compositions he sets out to play (Arlen, Johnny Green, Styne, Gershwin, Mancini) and is also an adept composer. I’ve heard some contemporary pianists recently who seem to believe that their improvisations must be aggressive to be compelling, so they rampage over the keyboard as if they were annoyed by it. That’s not Joe’s style. He knows the virtue of space, of letting lines breathe. And he knows how to swing naturally in the fashion of Red Garland and Ahmad Jamal. Some of the infectious bounce of this CD is due to bassist Scott Glazer and drummer Justin Varnes (on one track, they are replaced by Sam Selinger and Tiffany Chang), but with all due respect to them, I think Joe could swing on his own. He understands the possibilities within “medium-up-tempo,” and the CD has its own rocking momentum. And several of his originals deserve their own life — the moody THE FIRST NIGHT HOME, and the naughty blues (BEFORE YOU BRING ME MY CORNBREAD) SLAP SOME BUTTER ON THAT BISCUIT, which surely has lyrics waiting to be sung.
“Little” Jimmy Rushing was larger — both musically and physically — than the nickname, most memorably so. But I found a little Jimmy Rushing in a five-and-ten-cent store, well, a bookstore . . . for $3.24.
I had never seen this long-playing record (Columbia, momo, circa 1960) nor did I know about it. FREEDOMLAND, USA, seems to have been a musical production put on at the New York amusement park that was in operation 1960-1. (Do I sense the presence of the Cold War here?)
Music by Jule Styne, lyrics by George David Weiss (whose name I associate with some pop songs given to Louis Armstrong late in life to record). Other participants include Johnny Horton, Earl Wrightson, and the orchestra of Frank DeVol. Jimmy has one song, SO LONG MA (Headin’ For New Orleans).
Hearing him sing this song will have to wait until I am reunited with my turntable . . . but I couldn’t let Jimmy go unnoticed any longer in that otherwise unremarkable bookstore. I am not anticipating a dazzling jazz performance, but spending a dollar a minute to hear Jimmy Rushing sing something I’ve never heard before seems like a good deal.
This performance — faster than usual, happily so — took place last night, Sunday, June 21, 2009, at The Ear Inn. Wedged into their usual corner were that night’s brilliant edition of The Ear Regulars: Jon-Erik Kellso, trumpet; Matt Munisteri, guitar; Harvey Tibbs, trombone; Dan Block, clarinet; Jon Burr, bass. The song — written by (among others) Jule Styne in 1927 — is usually taken at an easy lope, but the Regulars tore through it as a change of pace.
To look at this band, you’d think them entirely involved in giving and receiving pleasure: they listen in a kind of rapture to each other’s solos; they construct witty, pointed, empathic backgrounds and riffs. And the communion, creativity, and joy we sense are obviously coming from deep inside them, individually and collectively. But there’s a paradox at work in this performance: everyone on this bandstand had only learned that day of the death of trombonist Joel Helleny — someone they had all respected, played alongside, and known. One way to handle their grief might have been to refuse to play, to go off somewhere to grieve in solitude. But these artists chose to heal themselves by offering their energies as only they could. Their spirit and their choruses healed us.
I’m indebted to Flemming Thorbye, whom I’ve never met, for video-recording these two songs and putting them on YouTube, where they held me transfixed through several viewings. The performances might look informal, but it takes a great deal of hard-earned mastery to be so casual. Thorbye captured this band at the Bix Beiderbecke Memorial Jazz Festival in Davenport, Iowa, July 2005.
The band was officially billed as Spats Langham and his Rhythm Boys, but this ensemble has a democratic strolling feel: routines are improvised on the stand and no one monopolizes the stage. Even at a distance, you can see the players grinning at each other’s solos, which is not as common as you might think.
The Anglo-American players — what players! — are Thomas “Spats” Langham, guitar and vocal; Tom Pletcher, cornet; Paul Munnery, trombone; Norman Field, clarinet; Jeff Barnhart, piano; Frans Sjostrom, bass sax; Nick Ward, drums.
The first song was one of Jule Styne’s earliest — “Sunday,” whose lyrics make the trek through the week to arrive at the one day when romance can flourish. Bix recorded it as a member of the Jean Goldkette band — with an enthusiastic, cheery vocal by the Keller Sisters and Lynch. Apocryphally, Lynch was the Sisters’ brother, but that might be too confusing a fact to incorporate.
I know “Sunday” from years of listening to jazz sessions that took place on that day: it was and is a comfortable tune to begin with. Ruby Braff and Bobby Hackett did it often, and Jon-Erik Kellso continues the tradition now.
After a few cinematographic shudders, we settle down with Pletcher’s firm, nuanced lead — helped immeasurably by neat improvisations from Field and Munnery. The limber rhythm section moves things along: Sjostrom, as always doing the work of two or perhaps three men, playing rhythm and soloing. After Tom ends his solo with a “Holiday for Strings” lick, Munnery comes on like a supple Harlem trombonist c. 1931, with easy grace. Pletcher’s solo outing is full of Bix sound-castles, beautiful architecture, but I would also have you listen closely to Nick Ward’s rocking choke-cymbal (and then his accents behind Field on what Jo Jones used to call “elephants’ nuts”). Feld is deep into the idiom, but he doesn’t copy anyone’s phrases. Spats (at Pletcher’s direction) takes a winsome vocal, backed by Barnhart and then Sjostrom. When Frans solos, it’s easy to get swept away in his pure sound — but on a second listening, one comes to admire the shapes of his phrases, echoing the whole reed tradition. Jeff Barnhart drifts into some nifty Zez Confrey flourishes in the middle of his solo, paving the way for a fervent but still measured ensemble, driven home by Nick once again.
“Roses of Picardy,” a sentimental favorite from the First World War, is even better. It was the last tune of the set, and (as often happens) all the horns and the players and their instruments had warmed up. I can’t connect Bix with this song, but it was a popular favorite of his teens. Everyone is even more lyrical — Frans, Tom, a very Russellish Field, Langham blending Django and Lang, and Munnery, leading into the final ensemble. Although the audience drowns out Nick Ward’s break, we know it was there, so that will have to do. What great ease!
Some discographical comments:
I first heard Nick Ward, Spats Langham, and Norman Field on a Stomp Off CD, THE CHALUMEAU SERENADERS (1394) which also features the reed wizard Matthias Seuffert in the front line. Spats appeared on only one track — a vocal on a song I associate with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, “Okay, Baby,” but his singing was so wonderful that I sought out the two Lake CDs he had made under his own name — a duet with pianist Martin Litton called LOLLIPOPS (LACD 226) and a small band — also featuring Norman! — THE HOTTEST MAN IN TOWN (LACD 228). The duet album has its serenely beautiful moments; the small band is cheerfully frisky. Norman shows off his beautiful alto work as well on these CDs. And Nick Ward is a quiet powerhouse, rocking the band without getting loud or louder.
I apologize for my not having any Paul Munnery CDs to report on — but a bit of online research suggests that he is a Higginbotham – Nanton man on CD, so I will look for his smaller group, SWING STREET, and his work with a big repertory band, HARLEM.
Jeff Barnhart has made many CDs with multi-instrumentalist Jim Fryer, and he’s also recorded a lovely solo piano CD for Arbors, IN MY SOLITUDE (19324).
I’ve praised Frans Sjostrom elsewhere in this blog and will continue to do so: search out his extraordinary HOT JAZZTRIO on the Kenneth label (CKS 3417) with Bent Persson, and he also is an essential part of the ensemble on I’M GLAD: TOM PLETCHER AND THE CLASSIC JAZZ BAND (Stomp Off 1353). Tom has appeared on many earlier vinyl issues with the Sons of Bix — have they made it to CD? But most recently, he has impresed me deeply on CD, not as a player, but as a writer and annotator of a most special kind. Many of you will know of Tom’s late father, Stewart (or Stu or even Stew) Pletcher, a wonderfully lyrical player whose most notable recordings were made as a member of Red Norvo’s Thirties orchestra and combos. I was delighted that the Jazz Oracle label issued THE STORY OF STEWART PLETCHER (BDW 8055) in 2007. Marvelously researched as always, it gives a thorough picture of Pletcher Sr.’s playing — through rare recordings, of course, from 1924 to 1937. That would be enough for me. But I was tremendously moved by his son’s essay on his father. It is loving yet candid, a tribute to a man much-loved but not always easy to know. I do not overpraise it by calling it an affecting memoir, honoring both father and son at once.
If you don’t know these players, I hope I’ve given you reason to regret your previous ignorance and repent yourselves of it as soon as possible.
P.S. The espression “What fun!” comes from Liadain O’Donovan — of Kinvara, Dalkey, New York, and San Francisco — and I hope she doesn’t mind my borrowing it.
JAZZ LIVES 