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New Label for a New Sound – WSJ
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http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-label-for-a-new-sound-1419982709?KEYWORDS=dial+records
** New Label for a New Sound
————————————————————
** Dial Records is a missing link between jazz and rock ’n’ roll.
————————————————————
By
MARC MYERS
Dec. 30, 2014 6:38 p.m. ET
1 COMMENTS (http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-label-for-a-new-sound-1419982709?KEYWORDS=dial+records#livefyre-comment)
On the evening of Feb. 26, 1946, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker signed a one-year contract at the Tempo Music Shop in Hollywood, Calif., to record exclusively for Dial Records. The agreement was a breakthrough for the rising bebop star, allowing him to record his improvised blues rather than the frantic jazz style popular back in New York. Over the next two years, Dial’s recordings by Parker and local bebop musicians not only radicalized jazz in Los Angeles but also had an electrifying effect on the city’s “jump blues”—an up-tempo boogie-woogie that would become known formally in 1949 as “rhythm and blues.”
Parker was a big catch for a small label like Dial. His reputation for breathtaking improvisation and agility was already well established prior to his arrival on the West Coast in December 1945, and he was widely admired by the city’s jazz and blues musicians. But signing Parker was still a gamble for Dial. Launched by Ross Russell to help stock the shelves of his Tempo record store, the independent label operated in a highly segregated city where the sizable white market was resistant to bebop. Parker’s worrisome drug habit also presented a liability for Dial, increasing the odds of missed studio sessions and legal trouble.
Charlie Parker at a Feb. 19, 1947, session. ENLARGE
Charlie Parker at a Feb. 19, 1947, session. RAY WHITTEN/COURTESY OF HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
Russell shrugged off these challenges, and between 1946 and ’48 he documented some of the most exciting and influential West Coast jazz of the period. All of these recordings can be heard on “The Complete Dial Modern Jazz Sessions” (Mosaic)—a recently released nine-CD boxed set. Mosaic’s newly restored and remastered box chronologically illustrates the new jazz style unfolding in Los Angeles at the time and unintentionally provides a missing link between jazz and rock ’n’ roll.
Despite the city’s hostile racial climate, Los Angeles was a hothouse of jazz and blues experimentation in the 1940s. During World War II, Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan, Big Joe Turner and other jazz and blues artists settled there and pioneered a rollicking blues style with boogie-woogie syncopation, a strong backbeat and whimsical song lyrics. After the war, shifts in the economy and the music industry’s power structure gave rise to small independent jazz and blues labels seeking fresh talent. On the jazz side, new groups showcased the improvisational prowess of star soloists like Parker, while blues bands began specializing in infectious dance beats and jumpy riffs that showcased horn players famous for their stamina and stagecraft.
When Parker first arrived in Los Angeles as part of the Dizzy Gillespie Sextet in December 1945, the group was booked into Billy Berg’s club for a two-month stay, and local jazz musicians flocked to see them. “It was kind of scary to hear, because they were playing so fast, a lot of notes, that we didn’t understand what they were playing,” said saxophonist Buddy Collette in “Central Avenue Sounds: Jazz in Los Angeles.”
But when club attendance flagged in January 1946, Berg canceled the group’s extended run. Parker disappeared for weeks, cashing in his plane ticket to pay for a drug spree and forcing Gillespie to return to New York without him. In late February, Russell needed recordings for his new label, and the stranded Parker needed cash. A deal was struck, and Parker remained in Los Angeles, spending much of his time in the city’s black South Central district where many jazz and blues artists mingled and exchanged ideas.
Though many of the recordings in the Mosaic box have been issued in various forms on collections over the years, the new restoration and mastering by Steve Marlowe and Jonathan Horwich provide a much brighter and broader listen. Throughout the set, there are crisp and forceful reminders of Parker’s melodic brilliance and fluidity during his Los Angeles stay, including the catchy “Moose the Mooche,” the dramatic “Yardbird Suite” and a thrilling “Ornithology”—which he based on the chord changes to “How High the Moon.” Other examples of bebop’s development in L.A. include recordings by Sonny Berman’s Big Eight—an octet offshoot from Woody Herman’s big band—trumpeters Howard McGhee and Fats Navarro, pianist Dodo Marmarosa, and saxophonists Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards.
There also are pained artistic moments, such as Parker’s July 29, 1946, recording session. Coping with heroin withdrawal, Parker struggled through four songs, including halting and endearing renditions of “Lover Man” and “The Gypsy.” Back at his hotel that night, Parker suffered a mental breakdown and twice wandered into the lobby naked. After setting fire to his bed, Parker was arrested and imprisoned for 10 days before Russell was able to negotiate a six-month stay at California’s Camarillo State Hospital. Released in late January 1947, Parker resumed recording, and his Dial efforts included refreshing, upbeat blues like “Relaxin’ at Camarillo” and “Carvin’ the Bird,” and the breezy “Stupendous,” based on Gershwin’s “’S Wonderful.”
Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon at their June 12, 1947, session. ENLARGE
Wardell Gray and Dexter Gordon at their June 12, 1947, session. RAY WHITTEN/COURTESY OF HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
In 1947, Gordon’s muscular tenor-sax duel with Wardell Gray on “The Chase” and with Edwards on “The Duel” featured chorus after chorus of blistering improvisation. The 78s and Gordon’s live tenor battles at local clubs were carefully studied by the city’s jump-blues artists. Two No. 1 R&B hits in early 1949 were instrumentals by saxophonists—Big Jay McNeely’s “The Deacon’s Hop” and Paul Williams’s “The Huckle-Buck,” which was inspired by Parker’s “Now’s the Time.”
But despite Dial’s efforts to widen bebop’s appeal in Los Angeles, the music never caught on. A growing percentage of the city’s white population had migrated from the South and Southwest after the war, and the region’s suburban sprawl wasn’t conducive to bebop’s grinding intensity. Throughout 1947, Parker, Gordon and many other jazz artists left Los Angeles for New York, where studio and club work was more plentiful. Even Russell gave up on jazz at the end of 1948 and began issuing modern classical recordings starting in 1949.
West Coast R&B became a national sensation in 1949—music that was energized by L.A.’s audacious bebop movement and Dial’s recordings. By the early 1950s, radio stations took notice. Once they realized that white teens were buying significant numbers of R&B records, a new race-neutral term was needed to sell the music to the widest possible audience. They called it rock ’n’ roll.
Mr. Myers, a frequent contributor to the Journal, writes daily about music at JazzWax.com.
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** Blues Queens on TV: Alberta Hunter, Big Mama Thornton, Sippie Wallace, Jeannie Cheatham
————————————————————
The new year did not have a chance yet to proove whether it is going to be good or bad, but I already have the blues. Because while going to the old VHS cassettes of my friend the late jazz researcher Otto Flückiger, I found two wonderful TV documentaries about female blues legends, made in the 1980s. So I have decided to put them up here – although the picture quality is not too good.
The first one is “My Castle’s Rocking”, Stuart A. Goldman‘s beautiful portrait of Alberta Hunter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Hunter) (1895–1984), made around the time she had her comeback at age 82.
The second one is the award-winning PBS feature “Three Generations Of The Blues”, which, made in the early 1980s shows a concert by Sippie Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippie_Wallace) (1898–1986), Big Mama Thornton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton) (1926–1984) and Jeannie Chatham (1937–).
A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
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** Blues Queens on TV: Alberta Hunter, Big Mama Thornton, Sippie Wallace, Jeannie Cheatham
————————————————————
The new year did not have a chance yet to proove whether it is going to be good or bad, but I already have the blues. Because while going to the old VHS cassettes of my friend the late jazz researcher Otto Flückiger, I found two wonderful TV documentaries about female blues legends, made in the 1980s. So I have decided to put them up here – although the picture quality is not too good.
The first one is “My Castle’s Rocking”, Stuart A. Goldman‘s beautiful portrait of Alberta Hunter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Hunter) (1895–1984), made around the time she had her comeback at age 82.
The second one is the award-winning PBS feature “Three Generations Of The Blues”, which, made in the early 1980s shows a concert by Sippie Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippie_Wallace) (1898–1986), Big Mama Thornton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton) (1926–1984) and Jeannie Chatham (1937–).
A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
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Blues Queens on TV: Alberta Hunter, Big Mama Thornton, Sippie Wallace, Jeannie Cheatham | Crownpropeller’s Blog
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https://crownpropeller.wordpress.com/2015/01/01/blues-queens-on-tv/
** Blues Queens on TV: Alberta Hunter, Big Mama Thornton, Sippie Wallace, Jeannie Cheatham
————————————————————
The new year did not have a chance yet to proove whether it is going to be good or bad, but I already have the blues. Because while going to the old VHS cassettes of my friend the late jazz researcher Otto Flückiger, I found two wonderful TV documentaries about female blues legends, made in the 1980s. So I have decided to put them up here – although the picture quality is not too good.
The first one is “My Castle’s Rocking”, Stuart A. Goldman‘s beautiful portrait of Alberta Hunter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberta_Hunter) (1895–1984), made around the time she had her comeback at age 82.
The second one is the award-winning PBS feature “Three Generations Of The Blues”, which, made in the early 1980s shows a concert by Sippie Wallace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sippie_Wallace) (1898–1986), Big Mama Thornton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mama_Thornton) (1926–1984) and Jeannie Chatham (1937–).
A HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY!
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** Video: Sad Story of Jackie Wilson
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http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401bb07cbc2b0970d-popup
Want a sense of just how ugly and predatory the record industry could be in the 1960s, especially on the smaller labels? Dig how Jackie Wilson went from being one of the biggest-selling and highly influential soul artists of his generation to incapacitated and penniless in the 1970s. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_0DGEIyAkU) an ABC 20/20 segment on Wilson from the 1990s…
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Video: Sad Story of Jackie Wilson: jazzwax.com
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** Video: Sad Story of Jackie Wilson
————————————————————
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401bb07cbc2b0970d-popup
Want a sense of just how ugly and predatory the record industry could be in the 1960s, especially on the smaller labels? Dig how Jackie Wilson went from being one of the biggest-selling and highly influential soul artists of his generation to incapacitated and penniless in the 1970s. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_0DGEIyAkU) an ABC 20/20 segment on Wilson from the 1990s…
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** Video: Sad Story of Jackie Wilson
————————————————————
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401bb07cbc2b0970d-popup
Want a sense of just how ugly and predatory the record industry could be in the 1960s, especially on the smaller labels? Dig how Jackie Wilson went from being one of the biggest-selling and highly influential soul artists of his generation to incapacitated and penniless in the 1970s. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_0DGEIyAkU) an ABC 20/20 segment on Wilson from the 1990s…
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Additional Passings: Jim Galloway – saxophonist
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Sad news from north of the border as well, Jim Galloway – saxophonist and founding artistic director of the Toronto International Jazz Festival passed away yesterday evening at the age of 78 ..
In addition to Buddy DeFranco, who passed on 12/24 at age 91:
Charles Moore, trumpeter on the 60’s Detroit scene, died on 5/30 at 73.
Pianist Joe Bonner passed on 11/212 at 66.
And New Orleans saxophonist & clarinetist Al Belletto dieds on 12/26. He was 85.
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Additional Passings: Jim Galloway – saxophonist
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
Sad news from north of the border as well, Jim Galloway – saxophonist and founding artistic director of the Toronto International Jazz Festival passed away yesterday evening at the age of 78 ..
In addition to Buddy DeFranco, who passed on 12/24 at age 91:
Charles Moore, trumpeter on the 60’s Detroit scene, died on 5/30 at 73.
Pianist Joe Bonner passed on 11/212 at 66.
And New Orleans saxophonist & clarinetist Al Belletto dieds on 12/26. He was 85.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=3a12f8adac) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=3a12f8adac&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Additional Passings: Jim Galloway – saxophonist
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
Sad news from north of the border as well, Jim Galloway – saxophonist and founding artistic director of the Toronto International Jazz Festival passed away yesterday evening at the age of 78 ..
In addition to Buddy DeFranco, who passed on 12/24 at age 91:
Charles Moore, trumpeter on the 60’s Detroit scene, died on 5/30 at 73.
Pianist Joe Bonner passed on 11/212 at 66.
And New Orleans saxophonist & clarinetist Al Belletto dieds on 12/26. He was 85.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=3a12f8adac) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=3a12f8adac&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Video: Cafe Montmartre, ’59-’76: JazzWax
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
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** JazzWax (http://www.jazzwax.com/)
————————————————————
————————————————————
Video: Cafe Montmartre, ’59-’76 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSMM24fxW0)
Posted: 30 Dec 2014 09:57 AM PST
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401b8d0b0cef7970c-popup
Oscar Pettiford was one of the great jazz bassists on the New York recording scene in the 1940s and ’50s. Sadly, his name today is slipping into obscurity. In 1958, Pettiford moved to Copenhagen, where he died in 1960 at age 37. He recorded jazz on the cello in 1949, and few could match his strength and speed. JazzWax reader André Growald in São Paulo, Brazil, sent along a link to a Danish documentary on the jazz club Cafe Montmartre. Featured in different segments are Pettiford, Bud Powell, Stuff Smith, Ben Webster, Charlie Shavers, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus and others.
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401bb07cbb462970d-popup
A fascinating remark by Stan Getz, who sheds light on why so many American jazz musicians settled in Europe and Scandinavia. The more tolerant racial climate was a major factor, of course, but there also was the ability to remain at home with one’s family and not be on the road for long stretches to earn a living promoting new albums. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSMM24fxW0) the clip…
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=7ac2de50a6) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=7ac2de50a6&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Video: Cafe Montmartre, ’59-’76: JazzWax
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
** JazzWax (http://www.jazzwax.com/)
————————————————————
————————————————————
Video: Cafe Montmartre, ’59-’76 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSMM24fxW0)
Posted: 30 Dec 2014 09:57 AM PST
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401b8d0b0cef7970c-popup
Oscar Pettiford was one of the great jazz bassists on the New York recording scene in the 1940s and ’50s. Sadly, his name today is slipping into obscurity. In 1958, Pettiford moved to Copenhagen, where he died in 1960 at age 37. He recorded jazz on the cello in 1949, and few could match his strength and speed. JazzWax reader André Growald in São Paulo, Brazil, sent along a link to a Danish documentary on the jazz club Cafe Montmartre. Featured in different segments are Pettiford, Bud Powell, Stuff Smith, Ben Webster, Charlie Shavers, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus and others.
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401bb07cbb462970d-popup
A fascinating remark by Stan Getz, who sheds light on why so many American jazz musicians settled in Europe and Scandinavia. The more tolerant racial climate was a major factor, of course, but there also was the ability to remain at home with one’s family and not be on the road for long stretches to earn a living promoting new albums. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSMM24fxW0) the clip…
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=7ac2de50a6) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=7ac2de50a6&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Video: Cafe Montmartre, ’59-’76: JazzWax
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
** JazzWax (http://www.jazzwax.com/)
————————————————————
————————————————————
Video: Cafe Montmartre, ’59-’76 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSMM24fxW0)
Posted: 30 Dec 2014 09:57 AM PST
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401b8d0b0cef7970c-popup
Oscar Pettiford was one of the great jazz bassists on the New York recording scene in the 1940s and ’50s. Sadly, his name today is slipping into obscurity. In 1958, Pettiford moved to Copenhagen, where he died in 1960 at age 37. He recorded jazz on the cello in 1949, and few could match his strength and speed. JazzWax reader André Growald in São Paulo, Brazil, sent along a link to a Danish documentary on the jazz club Cafe Montmartre. Featured in different segments are Pettiford, Bud Powell, Stuff Smith, Ben Webster, Charlie Shavers, Dexter Gordon, Charles Mingus and others.
http://marcmyers.typepad.com/.a/6a00e008dca1f0883401bb07cbb462970d-popup
A fascinating remark by Stan Getz, who sheds light on why so many American jazz musicians settled in Europe and Scandinavia. The more tolerant racial climate was a major factor, of course, but there also was the ability to remain at home with one’s family and not be on the road for long stretches to earn a living promoting new albums. Here’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFSMM24fxW0) the clip…
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=7ac2de50a6) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=7ac2de50a6&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker – NYTimes.com
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/music/jazzs-year-of-complaint-citing-whiplash-and-the-new-yorker.html?ref=music
** Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker
————————————————————
Photo
Sonny Rollins in Detroit in 2012; this year he took issue with a satire about him and jazz in The New Yorker. Credit Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Continue reading the main story
In the opening scene (http://www.nytimes.com/video/movies/100000003166787/anatomy-of-a-scene-whiplash.html) of “Whiplash,” the breakout second film by Damien Chazelle, the rat-a-tat of a snare drum echoes in darkness, each stroke landing quicker than the last. It’s a rudimentary warm-up made to feel sinister — “like gunfire,” the screenplay suggests — and it sets up a mounting tension that the movie strives to maintain.
I’ve been reminded of that setup recently, whenever my thoughts turned to the past year in jazz. Not just because “Whiplash” achieved the rare feat of putting “jazz drummer” and “Oscar buzz” into the same speculative orbit (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/new-york-film-fest-whiplash-736271) . (Another such film is “Birdman,” though its original drum score, by Antonio Sanchez, was shortsightedly ruled ineligible (http://variety.com/2014/film/awards/antonio-sanchez-saddened-that-oscar-nixes-birdman-score-1201386404/) for the Academy Awards.)
Jazz in 2014 — or more accurately, the discourse around jazz in 2014 — often resembled a crescendo of gibes and gripes, with each new affront calling forth a fresh wave of umbrage. In the end it wasn’t any single skirmish that led to my air of weary resignation, but rather a brisk accumulation of them, quickening into a blur. And what surprised me was the exasperation I felt not only with jazz’s cynical assailants, but also with its gallant defenders, some of whom could seem as starchy and reflexively scandalized as Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers flick (http://youtu.be/C6jmc-qY9Rw) .
Photo
John Coltrane in 1963; a new release of a 1966 Coltrane concert drew praise and criticism. CreditHerve Gloaguen/Getty Images
Jazz’s Year of Complaint (as I’ve taken to calling it) actually began with that single-stroke drumroll back in January, when “Whiplash” opened the Sundance Film Festival (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sundance_film_festival_park_city_utah/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) and won both its grand jury and audience awards. It wasn’t the only jazz-related movie presented in competition this year — in “Low Down,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/movies/low-down-on-growing-up-with-joe-albany.html) John Hawkes portrays the bebop pianist Joe Albany — but the advance word was especially promising.
It was only months later, when Mr. Chazelle’s film reached theaters, that jazz partisans began to express their ire (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies) . Missing from some of the grumbling was that “Whiplash” is a student-teacher psychodrama, no more a movie about jazz than “Titanic” was a movie about iceberg avoidance.
At issue was a problem of representation — and the tendency, on the part of many jazz fans, to regard every turn in the spotlight as a chance for outreach. (By this light, “Low Down” had its own faults: It’s a tale of heroin addiction, based on a memoir by Mr. Albany’s daughter.)
Misrepresentation took on a more literal form in late summer, when The New Yorker magazine’s Shouts & Murmurs blog posted a humor piece, “Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words.” (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/sonny-rollins-words) If you follow jazz, you probably have opinions about this bit of satire, by Django Gold, whose work usually appears in The Onion.
Mr. Rollins, the tenor saxophonist who at 84 is upheld as one of jazz’s greatest improvisers and a living embodiment of its ideals, comes across as rueful and cowed in the piece. “If I could do it all over again,” he says, “I’d probably be an accountant or a process server.” Absurd on its face, the piece was taken seriously by many in the jazz realm, prompting The New Yorker to tag on an editor’s note describing it as satire — and goading Mr. Rollins into a response (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dQ7vZxrXg) , streamed live on the web.
Photo
J. K. Simmons as a music teacher in the Oscar hopeful “Whiplash,” which has received praise but also some criticism from jazz aficionados who consider its depiction of the genre misleading.Credit Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Speaking from a book-lined study at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., he noted that his initial response to Mr. Gold’s piece had been wry amusement; he took it to be a stunt worthy of Mad magazine (to which, he said, he subscribed). Then he realized that the farce was being misconstrued as fact. “Jazz has been mocked, minimized and marginalized throughout its whole history,” he said. Given that legacy, he added, what’s the point of kicking jazz around?
There are fair answers to that rhetorical question — among them, that jazz has clawed its way into the precincts of high culture and presents an easy target — but they were mostly drowned out by surface noise. An opinion piece in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/08/08/all-that-jazz-isnt-all-that-great/) , “All That Jazz Isn’t All That Great,” actually made the claim that Mr. Gold’s satire was “funny because it was true.” Then came the counterarguments, including more than one in The Post itself (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/08/11/all-what-jazz-or-how-to-declare-something-dead-without-listening-to-it/) .
Maybe it’s true that the media has succumbed to a surge in “jazz bashing,” to use the term floated by the critic Ted Gioia (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/02/what-s-with-this-surge-in-jazz-bashing.html) in The Daily Beast. But it seems equally plausible that jazz was just like every other corner of culture in 2014. Two weeks ago Slate posted an impressive package, “The Outrage Project,” (http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_angry_about_on_social_media.html#article_header) that cast outrage as the lingua franca of our social media age. Responding to the barbs, by this light, is simply rising to the bait.
There’s evidence for this mind-set even within jazz’s ranks, judging by the response to an album released this fall by Mostly Other People Do the Killing. The recording, “Blue” (Hot Cup), is a note-for-note reconstruction of Miles Davis’s 1959 album “Kind of Blue,” with an influential essay by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted in the liner notes. A puckish act of appropriation (http://jazztimes.com/articles/143615-the-gig-mostly-other-people-do-the-killing-s-controversial-miles-remake) , “Blue” met with every sort of disapproval: Some in the jazz fold cried sacrilege, others attacked the concept, and still others nitpicked the execution. (In other words, the stunt paid amazing dividends.)
The closest thing to a consensus jazz album this year, according to the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll (http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2014/12/19/371577094/an-upset-either-way-steve-lehman-and-wadada-leo-smith-triumph) , was “Offering: Live at Temple University” (Resonance), which John Coltrane made in 1966, deep into his late avant-garde period. Yet this album too was divisive: “Catastrophic Coltrane,” (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/oct/04/catastrophic-coltrane/) proclaimed the headline of an essay by Geoff Dyer in The New York Review of Books.
What’s worth remembering, against this backdrop, is that jazz still has its common truths. To that end, the movie I hope to be rooting for this Oscar season is “Keep On Keepin’ On,” (http://keeponkeepinon.com/) a documentary about the great trumpeter Clark Terry, now in his mid-90s, and his mentorship of Justin Kauflin, a talented blind pianist in his late 20s.
Directed by Alan Hicks, it’s a stirring portrait of perseverance, positivity and service. And in Mr. Terry, who maintains his dignity and genial sense of humor in the most trying circumstances, there’s a durable jazz ideal, at once in the mix and above the fray.
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
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Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker – NYTimes.com
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/music/jazzs-year-of-complaint-citing-whiplash-and-the-new-yorker.html?ref=music
** Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker
————————————————————
Photo
Sonny Rollins in Detroit in 2012; this year he took issue with a satire about him and jazz in The New Yorker. Credit Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Continue reading the main story
In the opening scene (http://www.nytimes.com/video/movies/100000003166787/anatomy-of-a-scene-whiplash.html) of “Whiplash,” the breakout second film by Damien Chazelle, the rat-a-tat of a snare drum echoes in darkness, each stroke landing quicker than the last. It’s a rudimentary warm-up made to feel sinister — “like gunfire,” the screenplay suggests — and it sets up a mounting tension that the movie strives to maintain.
I’ve been reminded of that setup recently, whenever my thoughts turned to the past year in jazz. Not just because “Whiplash” achieved the rare feat of putting “jazz drummer” and “Oscar buzz” into the same speculative orbit (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/new-york-film-fest-whiplash-736271) . (Another such film is “Birdman,” though its original drum score, by Antonio Sanchez, was shortsightedly ruled ineligible (http://variety.com/2014/film/awards/antonio-sanchez-saddened-that-oscar-nixes-birdman-score-1201386404/) for the Academy Awards.)
Jazz in 2014 — or more accurately, the discourse around jazz in 2014 — often resembled a crescendo of gibes and gripes, with each new affront calling forth a fresh wave of umbrage. In the end it wasn’t any single skirmish that led to my air of weary resignation, but rather a brisk accumulation of them, quickening into a blur. And what surprised me was the exasperation I felt not only with jazz’s cynical assailants, but also with its gallant defenders, some of whom could seem as starchy and reflexively scandalized as Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers flick (http://youtu.be/C6jmc-qY9Rw) .
Photo
John Coltrane in 1963; a new release of a 1966 Coltrane concert drew praise and criticism. CreditHerve Gloaguen/Getty Images
Jazz’s Year of Complaint (as I’ve taken to calling it) actually began with that single-stroke drumroll back in January, when “Whiplash” opened the Sundance Film Festival (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sundance_film_festival_park_city_utah/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) and won both its grand jury and audience awards. It wasn’t the only jazz-related movie presented in competition this year — in “Low Down,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/movies/low-down-on-growing-up-with-joe-albany.html) John Hawkes portrays the bebop pianist Joe Albany — but the advance word was especially promising.
It was only months later, when Mr. Chazelle’s film reached theaters, that jazz partisans began to express their ire (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies) . Missing from some of the grumbling was that “Whiplash” is a student-teacher psychodrama, no more a movie about jazz than “Titanic” was a movie about iceberg avoidance.
At issue was a problem of representation — and the tendency, on the part of many jazz fans, to regard every turn in the spotlight as a chance for outreach. (By this light, “Low Down” had its own faults: It’s a tale of heroin addiction, based on a memoir by Mr. Albany’s daughter.)
Misrepresentation took on a more literal form in late summer, when The New Yorker magazine’s Shouts & Murmurs blog posted a humor piece, “Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words.” (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/sonny-rollins-words) If you follow jazz, you probably have opinions about this bit of satire, by Django Gold, whose work usually appears in The Onion.
Mr. Rollins, the tenor saxophonist who at 84 is upheld as one of jazz’s greatest improvisers and a living embodiment of its ideals, comes across as rueful and cowed in the piece. “If I could do it all over again,” he says, “I’d probably be an accountant or a process server.” Absurd on its face, the piece was taken seriously by many in the jazz realm, prompting The New Yorker to tag on an editor’s note describing it as satire — and goading Mr. Rollins into a response (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dQ7vZxrXg) , streamed live on the web.
Photo
J. K. Simmons as a music teacher in the Oscar hopeful “Whiplash,” which has received praise but also some criticism from jazz aficionados who consider its depiction of the genre misleading.Credit Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Speaking from a book-lined study at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., he noted that his initial response to Mr. Gold’s piece had been wry amusement; he took it to be a stunt worthy of Mad magazine (to which, he said, he subscribed). Then he realized that the farce was being misconstrued as fact. “Jazz has been mocked, minimized and marginalized throughout its whole history,” he said. Given that legacy, he added, what’s the point of kicking jazz around?
There are fair answers to that rhetorical question — among them, that jazz has clawed its way into the precincts of high culture and presents an easy target — but they were mostly drowned out by surface noise. An opinion piece in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/08/08/all-that-jazz-isnt-all-that-great/) , “All That Jazz Isn’t All That Great,” actually made the claim that Mr. Gold’s satire was “funny because it was true.” Then came the counterarguments, including more than one in The Post itself (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/08/11/all-what-jazz-or-how-to-declare-something-dead-without-listening-to-it/) .
Maybe it’s true that the media has succumbed to a surge in “jazz bashing,” to use the term floated by the critic Ted Gioia (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/02/what-s-with-this-surge-in-jazz-bashing.html) in The Daily Beast. But it seems equally plausible that jazz was just like every other corner of culture in 2014. Two weeks ago Slate posted an impressive package, “The Outrage Project,” (http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_angry_about_on_social_media.html#article_header) that cast outrage as the lingua franca of our social media age. Responding to the barbs, by this light, is simply rising to the bait.
There’s evidence for this mind-set even within jazz’s ranks, judging by the response to an album released this fall by Mostly Other People Do the Killing. The recording, “Blue” (Hot Cup), is a note-for-note reconstruction of Miles Davis’s 1959 album “Kind of Blue,” with an influential essay by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted in the liner notes. A puckish act of appropriation (http://jazztimes.com/articles/143615-the-gig-mostly-other-people-do-the-killing-s-controversial-miles-remake) , “Blue” met with every sort of disapproval: Some in the jazz fold cried sacrilege, others attacked the concept, and still others nitpicked the execution. (In other words, the stunt paid amazing dividends.)
The closest thing to a consensus jazz album this year, according to the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll (http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2014/12/19/371577094/an-upset-either-way-steve-lehman-and-wadada-leo-smith-triumph) , was “Offering: Live at Temple University” (Resonance), which John Coltrane made in 1966, deep into his late avant-garde period. Yet this album too was divisive: “Catastrophic Coltrane,” (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/oct/04/catastrophic-coltrane/) proclaimed the headline of an essay by Geoff Dyer in The New York Review of Books.
What’s worth remembering, against this backdrop, is that jazz still has its common truths. To that end, the movie I hope to be rooting for this Oscar season is “Keep On Keepin’ On,” (http://keeponkeepinon.com/) a documentary about the great trumpeter Clark Terry, now in his mid-90s, and his mentorship of Justin Kauflin, a talented blind pianist in his late 20s.
Directed by Alan Hicks, it’s a stirring portrait of perseverance, positivity and service. And in Mr. Terry, who maintains his dignity and genial sense of humor in the most trying circumstances, there’s a durable jazz ideal, at once in the mix and above the fray.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=284c5da11e) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=284c5da11e&e=[UNIQID])
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Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker – NYTimes.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/31/arts/music/jazzs-year-of-complaint-citing-whiplash-and-the-new-yorker.html?ref=music
** Jazz’s Year of Complaint, Citing ‘Whiplash’ and The New Yorker
————————————————————
Photo
Sonny Rollins in Detroit in 2012; this year he took issue with a satire about him and jazz in The New Yorker. Credit Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images
Continue reading the main story
In the opening scene (http://www.nytimes.com/video/movies/100000003166787/anatomy-of-a-scene-whiplash.html) of “Whiplash,” the breakout second film by Damien Chazelle, the rat-a-tat of a snare drum echoes in darkness, each stroke landing quicker than the last. It’s a rudimentary warm-up made to feel sinister — “like gunfire,” the screenplay suggests — and it sets up a mounting tension that the movie strives to maintain.
I’ve been reminded of that setup recently, whenever my thoughts turned to the past year in jazz. Not just because “Whiplash” achieved the rare feat of putting “jazz drummer” and “Oscar buzz” into the same speculative orbit (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/new-york-film-fest-whiplash-736271) . (Another such film is “Birdman,” though its original drum score, by Antonio Sanchez, was shortsightedly ruled ineligible (http://variety.com/2014/film/awards/antonio-sanchez-saddened-that-oscar-nixes-birdman-score-1201386404/) for the Academy Awards.)
Jazz in 2014 — or more accurately, the discourse around jazz in 2014 — often resembled a crescendo of gibes and gripes, with each new affront calling forth a fresh wave of umbrage. In the end it wasn’t any single skirmish that led to my air of weary resignation, but rather a brisk accumulation of them, quickening into a blur. And what surprised me was the exasperation I felt not only with jazz’s cynical assailants, but also with its gallant defenders, some of whom could seem as starchy and reflexively scandalized as Margaret Dumont in a Marx Brothers flick (http://youtu.be/C6jmc-qY9Rw) .
Photo
John Coltrane in 1963; a new release of a 1966 Coltrane concert drew praise and criticism. CreditHerve Gloaguen/Getty Images
Jazz’s Year of Complaint (as I’ve taken to calling it) actually began with that single-stroke drumroll back in January, when “Whiplash” opened the Sundance Film Festival (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/sundance_film_festival_park_city_utah/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) and won both its grand jury and audience awards. It wasn’t the only jazz-related movie presented in competition this year — in “Low Down,” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/24/movies/low-down-on-growing-up-with-joe-albany.html) John Hawkes portrays the bebop pianist Joe Albany — but the advance word was especially promising.
It was only months later, when Mr. Chazelle’s film reached theaters, that jazz partisans began to express their ire (http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies) . Missing from some of the grumbling was that “Whiplash” is a student-teacher psychodrama, no more a movie about jazz than “Titanic” was a movie about iceberg avoidance.
At issue was a problem of representation — and the tendency, on the part of many jazz fans, to regard every turn in the spotlight as a chance for outreach. (By this light, “Low Down” had its own faults: It’s a tale of heroin addiction, based on a memoir by Mr. Albany’s daughter.)
Misrepresentation took on a more literal form in late summer, when The New Yorker magazine’s Shouts & Murmurs blog posted a humor piece, “Sonny Rollins: In His Own Words.” (http://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/sonny-rollins-words) If you follow jazz, you probably have opinions about this bit of satire, by Django Gold, whose work usually appears in The Onion.
Mr. Rollins, the tenor saxophonist who at 84 is upheld as one of jazz’s greatest improvisers and a living embodiment of its ideals, comes across as rueful and cowed in the piece. “If I could do it all over again,” he says, “I’d probably be an accountant or a process server.” Absurd on its face, the piece was taken seriously by many in the jazz realm, prompting The New Yorker to tag on an editor’s note describing it as satire — and goading Mr. Rollins into a response (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5dQ7vZxrXg) , streamed live on the web.
Photo
J. K. Simmons as a music teacher in the Oscar hopeful “Whiplash,” which has received praise but also some criticism from jazz aficionados who consider its depiction of the genre misleading.Credit Daniel McFadden/Sony Pictures Classics
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
Speaking from a book-lined study at his home in Woodstock, N.Y., he noted that his initial response to Mr. Gold’s piece had been wry amusement; he took it to be a stunt worthy of Mad magazine (to which, he said, he subscribed). Then he realized that the farce was being misconstrued as fact. “Jazz has been mocked, minimized and marginalized throughout its whole history,” he said. Given that legacy, he added, what’s the point of kicking jazz around?
There are fair answers to that rhetorical question — among them, that jazz has clawed its way into the precincts of high culture and presents an easy target — but they were mostly drowned out by surface noise. An opinion piece in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2014/08/08/all-that-jazz-isnt-all-that-great/) , “All That Jazz Isn’t All That Great,” actually made the claim that Mr. Gold’s satire was “funny because it was true.” Then came the counterarguments, including more than one in The Post itself (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/08/11/all-what-jazz-or-how-to-declare-something-dead-without-listening-to-it/) .
Maybe it’s true that the media has succumbed to a surge in “jazz bashing,” to use the term floated by the critic Ted Gioia (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/11/02/what-s-with-this-surge-in-jazz-bashing.html) in The Daily Beast. But it seems equally plausible that jazz was just like every other corner of culture in 2014. Two weeks ago Slate posted an impressive package, “The Outrage Project,” (http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_angry_about_on_social_media.html#article_header) that cast outrage as the lingua franca of our social media age. Responding to the barbs, by this light, is simply rising to the bait.
There’s evidence for this mind-set even within jazz’s ranks, judging by the response to an album released this fall by Mostly Other People Do the Killing. The recording, “Blue” (Hot Cup), is a note-for-note reconstruction of Miles Davis’s 1959 album “Kind of Blue,” with an influential essay by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted in the liner notes. A puckish act of appropriation (http://jazztimes.com/articles/143615-the-gig-mostly-other-people-do-the-killing-s-controversial-miles-remake) , “Blue” met with every sort of disapproval: Some in the jazz fold cried sacrilege, others attacked the concept, and still others nitpicked the execution. (In other words, the stunt paid amazing dividends.)
The closest thing to a consensus jazz album this year, according to the NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll (http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2014/12/19/371577094/an-upset-either-way-steve-lehman-and-wadada-leo-smith-triumph) , was “Offering: Live at Temple University” (Resonance), which John Coltrane made in 1966, deep into his late avant-garde period. Yet this album too was divisive: “Catastrophic Coltrane,” (http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/gallery/2014/oct/04/catastrophic-coltrane/) proclaimed the headline of an essay by Geoff Dyer in The New York Review of Books.
What’s worth remembering, against this backdrop, is that jazz still has its common truths. To that end, the movie I hope to be rooting for this Oscar season is “Keep On Keepin’ On,” (http://keeponkeepinon.com/) a documentary about the great trumpeter Clark Terry, now in his mid-90s, and his mentorship of Justin Kauflin, a talented blind pianist in his late 20s.
Directed by Alan Hicks, it’s a stirring portrait of perseverance, positivity and service. And in Mr. Terry, who maintains his dignity and genial sense of humor in the most trying circumstances, there’s a durable jazz ideal, at once in the mix and above the fray.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=284c5da11e) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=284c5da11e&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
[JPL] Some Passings of 2014
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
On 12/30/14, 10:03 AM, “George Klein” wrote:
A list of passings, mostly jazz & blues, I have compiled throughout the year as I learned about them. These are just the ones I know about. A long list. RIP all.
George Klein
Beyond the Groove Yard
taintradio.org & RadioFreeAmsterdam
——————————————————————
•Tabby Thomas 1/1 Louisiana bluesman & club owner; 84
•Phil Everly 1/3 Half of early rock duo the Everly Brothers; 74
•Saul Zaentz 1/3 Film and record producer for Verve & Fantasy; 92
•Amiri Baraka 1/9 Writer, activist, author of “Blues People”; 79
•Roy Campbell Jr. 1/9 Trumpeter, composer, bandleader; 61
•Stephen Kenyatta Simon 1/9 New Orleans based drummer, percussionist; 56
•Bud Spangler 1/16 Drummer, bandleader, educator, broadcaster; 76
•Joseph James Evans 1/17 Saxophonist with Jay McShann; 97
•Larry Santiago 1/19 Versatile New Orleans guitarist; 63
•Charlie Bourgeois 1/25 Publicist for George Wein’s jazz festivals; 94
•Pete Seeger 1/27 Legendary folk singer, social & political activist; 94
•Johnny Allen 1/29 Detroit pianist, composer, arranger; 96
•Trebor Jay Tichenor 2/22 Pianist , authority on ragtime piano; 74
•Paco De Lucia 2/25 Innovative flamenco guitarist; 66
•Iola Brubeck 3/12 Lyricist & widow of Dave Brubeck; 90
•Med Flory 3/12 Veteran saxophonist; 87
•Al Harewood 3/13 Drummer w/ Booker Ervin, Shirley Scott, many others; 90
•Ralph Penland 3/14 West Coast drummer; 61
•Wayne Henderson 4/5 Trombonist, founder of Jazz Crusaders; 74
•Fred Ho 4/12 Adventurous saxophonist, composer, activist; 56
•Armando Peraza 4/14 Afro-Cuban percussion pioneer; 89
•Herb Wong 4/20 Educator, advocate, producer; 88
•Joe Wilder 5/9 Trumpeter from Basie onward; 92
•Herb Jeffries 5/254 The Black Singing Cowboy – recorded “Flamingo” w/Ellington; 100
•Maya Angelou 5/28 Poet, activist, inspiring presence; 86
•Alan Douglas 6/7 Producer who recorded many jazz & rock artists; 81
•Ernie Rodgers 6/10 Detroit saxophonist, educator, mentor; 80
•Jimmy Scott 6/12 Singer with small, high voice; 88
•Horace Silver 6/18 Definitive Blue Note hard bop pianist, composer; 85
•Bobby Womack 6/27 Influential soul singer; 70
•Paul Horn 6/29 Veteran flutist; 84
•Charlie Haden 7/11 Master bassist & bandleader; 76
•Johnny Winter 7/16 Versatile blues-rock guitarist; 70
•Lionel Ferbos 7/19 New Orleans trumpeter; 103
•Giorgio Gaslini 7/79 Italian pianist; 84
•Idris Muhammad 7/29 Drummer who explored diverse styles; 74
•Frankie Dunlop 7/31 Veteran drummer with Monk, others; 85
•Kenny Drew Jr 8/3 Versatile pianist; 56
•Joseph Loria 8/3 New Orleans trumpeter; 83
•Jean-Jacques Avenel 8/11 Longtime bassist with Steve Lacy; 66
•John Blake 8/15 Violinist, composer, bandleader; 67
•Warren “Porgy” Jones 8/21 New Orleans trumpeter; 75
•John Ore 8/22 Bassist with Monk, others; 80
•Tim Green 8/28 Eclectic New Orleans saxophonist
•Gerald Wilson 9/8 Venerable bandleader. composer, trumpeter; 96
•Cosimo Matassa 9/11 Legendary New Orleans producer & recording engineer; 88
•Joe Sample 9/12 Pianist & co-founder of (Jazz) Crusaders; 75
•Bruce Brice 9/14 First N.O. JazzFest poster artist; 72
•Jackie Cain 9/15 Jazz vocalist, mostly with Roy Kral; 86
•Kenny Wheeler 9/18 Veteran Canadian/British trumpeter; 84
•Milton Cardona 9/19 Percussionist and conguero; 68
•Rudy Richard 9/22 Louisiana blues guitarist; 75
•Richard Evans 10/5 Bassist, arranger for big band sessions on Aggo-Cadet Records; 81
•Tim Hauser 10/16 Co-founder of vocal group Manhattan Transfer; 72
•Leigh Kamman 10/17 Jazz radio broadcaster; 92
•David Redfern 10/22 British music photographer; 78
•Jack Bruce 10/25 Rock-jazz bass guitarist; 71
•Ray Santisi 10/28 Pianist & educator at Berklee College of Music; 80
•Acker Bilk 11/1 British clarinetist famous for “Stranger on the Shore”; 85
•Chris White 11/2 Bassist, educator; 78
•Buddy Catlett 11/12 Veteran bassist; 81
•Bunny Briggs 11/15 Legendary tap dancer; 92
•Bobby Keyes 12/1 Saxophonist with Rolling Stones; 70
•Paul Ferrara 12/3 New Orleans trumpeter; 76
•Phil Stern 12/13 Photographer; 95
•Joe Cocker 12/22 Hyperactive British rock & soul singer; 70
•Alberta Adams 12/25 Detroit-based blues singer; 97
•Jim Wyse 12/26 Detroit saxophonist & clarinetist; 75
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=4c09796e56) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=4c09796e56&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
[JPL] Some Passings of 2014
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
On 12/30/14, 10:03 AM, “George Klein” wrote:
A list of passings, mostly jazz & blues, I have compiled throughout the year as I learned about them. These are just the ones I know about. A long list. RIP all.
George Klein
Beyond the Groove Yard
taintradio.org & RadioFreeAmsterdam
——————————————————————
•Tabby Thomas 1/1 Louisiana bluesman & club owner; 84
•Phil Everly 1/3 Half of early rock duo the Everly Brothers; 74
•Saul Zaentz 1/3 Film and record producer for Verve & Fantasy; 92
•Amiri Baraka 1/9 Writer, activist, author of “Blues People”; 79
•Roy Campbell Jr. 1/9 Trumpeter, composer, bandleader; 61
•Stephen Kenyatta Simon 1/9 New Orleans based drummer, percussionist; 56
•Bud Spangler 1/16 Drummer, bandleader, educator, broadcaster; 76
•Joseph James Evans 1/17 Saxophonist with Jay McShann; 97
•Larry Santiago 1/19 Versatile New Orleans guitarist; 63
•Charlie Bourgeois 1/25 Publicist for George Wein’s jazz festivals; 94
•Pete Seeger 1/27 Legendary folk singer, social & political activist; 94
•Johnny Allen 1/29 Detroit pianist, composer, arranger; 96
•Trebor Jay Tichenor 2/22 Pianist , authority on ragtime piano; 74
•Paco De Lucia 2/25 Innovative flamenco guitarist; 66
•Iola Brubeck 3/12 Lyricist & widow of Dave Brubeck; 90
•Med Flory 3/12 Veteran saxophonist; 87
•Al Harewood 3/13 Drummer w/ Booker Ervin, Shirley Scott, many others; 90
•Ralph Penland 3/14 West Coast drummer; 61
•Wayne Henderson 4/5 Trombonist, founder of Jazz Crusaders; 74
•Fred Ho 4/12 Adventurous saxophonist, composer, activist; 56
•Armando Peraza 4/14 Afro-Cuban percussion pioneer; 89
•Herb Wong 4/20 Educator, advocate, producer; 88
•Joe Wilder 5/9 Trumpeter from Basie onward; 92
•Herb Jeffries 5/254 The Black Singing Cowboy – recorded “Flamingo” w/Ellington; 100
•Maya Angelou 5/28 Poet, activist, inspiring presence; 86
•Alan Douglas 6/7 Producer who recorded many jazz & rock artists; 81
•Ernie Rodgers 6/10 Detroit saxophonist, educator, mentor; 80
•Jimmy Scott 6/12 Singer with small, high voice; 88
•Horace Silver 6/18 Definitive Blue Note hard bop pianist, composer; 85
•Bobby Womack 6/27 Influential soul singer; 70
•Paul Horn 6/29 Veteran flutist; 84
•Charlie Haden 7/11 Master bassist & bandleader; 76
•Johnny Winter 7/16 Versatile blues-rock guitarist; 70
•Lionel Ferbos 7/19 New Orleans trumpeter; 103
•Giorgio Gaslini 7/79 Italian pianist; 84
•Idris Muhammad 7/29 Drummer who explored diverse styles; 74
•Frankie Dunlop 7/31 Veteran drummer with Monk, others; 85
•Kenny Drew Jr 8/3 Versatile pianist; 56
•Joseph Loria 8/3 New Orleans trumpeter; 83
•Jean-Jacques Avenel 8/11 Longtime bassist with Steve Lacy; 66
•John Blake 8/15 Violinist, composer, bandleader; 67
•Warren “Porgy” Jones 8/21 New Orleans trumpeter; 75
•John Ore 8/22 Bassist with Monk, others; 80
•Tim Green 8/28 Eclectic New Orleans saxophonist
•Gerald Wilson 9/8 Venerable bandleader. composer, trumpeter; 96
•Cosimo Matassa 9/11 Legendary New Orleans producer & recording engineer; 88
•Joe Sample 9/12 Pianist & co-founder of (Jazz) Crusaders; 75
•Bruce Brice 9/14 First N.O. JazzFest poster artist; 72
•Jackie Cain 9/15 Jazz vocalist, mostly with Roy Kral; 86
•Kenny Wheeler 9/18 Veteran Canadian/British trumpeter; 84
•Milton Cardona 9/19 Percussionist and conguero; 68
•Rudy Richard 9/22 Louisiana blues guitarist; 75
•Richard Evans 10/5 Bassist, arranger for big band sessions on Aggo-Cadet Records; 81
•Tim Hauser 10/16 Co-founder of vocal group Manhattan Transfer; 72
•Leigh Kamman 10/17 Jazz radio broadcaster; 92
•David Redfern 10/22 British music photographer; 78
•Jack Bruce 10/25 Rock-jazz bass guitarist; 71
•Ray Santisi 10/28 Pianist & educator at Berklee College of Music; 80
•Acker Bilk 11/1 British clarinetist famous for “Stranger on the Shore”; 85
•Chris White 11/2 Bassist, educator; 78
•Buddy Catlett 11/12 Veteran bassist; 81
•Bunny Briggs 11/15 Legendary tap dancer; 92
•Bobby Keyes 12/1 Saxophonist with Rolling Stones; 70
•Paul Ferrara 12/3 New Orleans trumpeter; 76
•Phil Stern 12/13 Photographer; 95
•Joe Cocker 12/22 Hyperactive British rock & soul singer; 70
•Alberta Adams 12/25 Detroit-based blues singer; 97
•Jim Wyse 12/26 Detroit saxophonist & clarinetist; 75
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=4c09796e56) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=4c09796e56&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
[JPL] Some Passings of 2014
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
On 12/30/14, 10:03 AM, “George Klein” wrote:
A list of passings, mostly jazz & blues, I have compiled throughout the year as I learned about them. These are just the ones I know about. A long list. RIP all.
George Klein
Beyond the Groove Yard
taintradio.org & RadioFreeAmsterdam
——————————————————————
•Tabby Thomas 1/1 Louisiana bluesman & club owner; 84
•Phil Everly 1/3 Half of early rock duo the Everly Brothers; 74
•Saul Zaentz 1/3 Film and record producer for Verve & Fantasy; 92
•Amiri Baraka 1/9 Writer, activist, author of “Blues People”; 79
•Roy Campbell Jr. 1/9 Trumpeter, composer, bandleader; 61
•Stephen Kenyatta Simon 1/9 New Orleans based drummer, percussionist; 56
•Bud Spangler 1/16 Drummer, bandleader, educator, broadcaster; 76
•Joseph James Evans 1/17 Saxophonist with Jay McShann; 97
•Larry Santiago 1/19 Versatile New Orleans guitarist; 63
•Charlie Bourgeois 1/25 Publicist for George Wein’s jazz festivals; 94
•Pete Seeger 1/27 Legendary folk singer, social & political activist; 94
•Johnny Allen 1/29 Detroit pianist, composer, arranger; 96
•Trebor Jay Tichenor 2/22 Pianist , authority on ragtime piano; 74
•Paco De Lucia 2/25 Innovative flamenco guitarist; 66
•Iola Brubeck 3/12 Lyricist & widow of Dave Brubeck; 90
•Med Flory 3/12 Veteran saxophonist; 87
•Al Harewood 3/13 Drummer w/ Booker Ervin, Shirley Scott, many others; 90
•Ralph Penland 3/14 West Coast drummer; 61
•Wayne Henderson 4/5 Trombonist, founder of Jazz Crusaders; 74
•Fred Ho 4/12 Adventurous saxophonist, composer, activist; 56
•Armando Peraza 4/14 Afro-Cuban percussion pioneer; 89
•Herb Wong 4/20 Educator, advocate, producer; 88
•Joe Wilder 5/9 Trumpeter from Basie onward; 92
•Herb Jeffries 5/254 The Black Singing Cowboy – recorded “Flamingo” w/Ellington; 100
•Maya Angelou 5/28 Poet, activist, inspiring presence; 86
•Alan Douglas 6/7 Producer who recorded many jazz & rock artists; 81
•Ernie Rodgers 6/10 Detroit saxophonist, educator, mentor; 80
•Jimmy Scott 6/12 Singer with small, high voice; 88
•Horace Silver 6/18 Definitive Blue Note hard bop pianist, composer; 85
•Bobby Womack 6/27 Influential soul singer; 70
•Paul Horn 6/29 Veteran flutist; 84
•Charlie Haden 7/11 Master bassist & bandleader; 76
•Johnny Winter 7/16 Versatile blues-rock guitarist; 70
•Lionel Ferbos 7/19 New Orleans trumpeter; 103
•Giorgio Gaslini 7/79 Italian pianist; 84
•Idris Muhammad 7/29 Drummer who explored diverse styles; 74
•Frankie Dunlop 7/31 Veteran drummer with Monk, others; 85
•Kenny Drew Jr 8/3 Versatile pianist; 56
•Joseph Loria 8/3 New Orleans trumpeter; 83
•Jean-Jacques Avenel 8/11 Longtime bassist with Steve Lacy; 66
•John Blake 8/15 Violinist, composer, bandleader; 67
•Warren “Porgy” Jones 8/21 New Orleans trumpeter; 75
•John Ore 8/22 Bassist with Monk, others; 80
•Tim Green 8/28 Eclectic New Orleans saxophonist
•Gerald Wilson 9/8 Venerable bandleader. composer, trumpeter; 96
•Cosimo Matassa 9/11 Legendary New Orleans producer & recording engineer; 88
•Joe Sample 9/12 Pianist & co-founder of (Jazz) Crusaders; 75
•Bruce Brice 9/14 First N.O. JazzFest poster artist; 72
•Jackie Cain 9/15 Jazz vocalist, mostly with Roy Kral; 86
•Kenny Wheeler 9/18 Veteran Canadian/British trumpeter; 84
•Milton Cardona 9/19 Percussionist and conguero; 68
•Rudy Richard 9/22 Louisiana blues guitarist; 75
•Richard Evans 10/5 Bassist, arranger for big band sessions on Aggo-Cadet Records; 81
•Tim Hauser 10/16 Co-founder of vocal group Manhattan Transfer; 72
•Leigh Kamman 10/17 Jazz radio broadcaster; 92
•David Redfern 10/22 British music photographer; 78
•Jack Bruce 10/25 Rock-jazz bass guitarist; 71
•Ray Santisi 10/28 Pianist & educator at Berklee College of Music; 80
•Acker Bilk 11/1 British clarinetist famous for “Stranger on the Shore”; 85
•Chris White 11/2 Bassist, educator; 78
•Buddy Catlett 11/12 Veteran bassist; 81
•Bunny Briggs 11/15 Legendary tap dancer; 92
•Bobby Keyes 12/1 Saxophonist with Rolling Stones; 70
•Paul Ferrara 12/3 New Orleans trumpeter; 76
•Phil Stern 12/13 Photographer; 95
•Joe Cocker 12/22 Hyperactive British rock & soul singer; 70
•Alberta Adams 12/25 Detroit-based blues singer; 97
•Jim Wyse 12/26 Detroit saxophonist & clarinetist; 75
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Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
New post on Rifftides: Passings: DeFranco, Bedford, Belletto
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http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2014/12/passings-defranco-benford-belletto.html
** Passings: DeFranco, Bedford, Belletto
————————————————————
The past seven days have seen the deaths of three musicians who came to prominence as young men and had long careers in the swing, bebop and post-bop eras.
Buddy DeFranco, who in the 1940s was the first to successfully adapt the clarinet to the complexities of bebop, died the day before Christmas at age 91. In recent years he and his wife Joyce lived in Panama City, Florida. DeFranco was the principal influence onvirtually every major clarinetist who played the instrument in modern jazz. Born in Camden, New Jersey, he http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DeFranco.jpgattended music school in Philadelphia, was a professional at 16 and before he was 20 had worked with the big bands of Gene Krupa, Ted Fio Rito and Charlie Barnet, then with Tommy Dorsey and Boyd Raeburn. His quartet with pianist Sonny Clark, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Bobby White was an acclaimed group in the mid-1950s. He worked steadily until illness slowed him in his eighties. For more about DeFranco, see the obituary (http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-buddy-defranco-20141227-story.html) by Don Heckman in The Los
Angeles Times.
Drummer Ronnie Bedford died Saturday December 20 in Powell, Wyoming, where he had lived sincehttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Ronnie-Bedford.jpg 1986. He and his wife were attracted to the relaxed pace of life in the west after years in New York City. Before and after the move, he worked and recorded with a range of jazz artists including Benny Carter, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Toshiko Akiyoshi , Benny Goodman, Rod Levitt, Buddy DeFranco and Harry Edison. Bedford was 83. For an obituary, go here (http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/ronnie-bedford/article_fbf84efd-2696-5005-be7c-834f4aca4bc5.html) .
DeFranco and Bedford, colleagues in their New York days, had a reunion at a 1990 Wyoming jazz festival that Bedford organized. Reed Gratz is the pianist, Peter Huffaker the bassist.
Al Belletto was so attached to New Orleans that he returned to his hometown in midcareer and spent almost all of the rest of his life there. The saxophonist and bandleader died Friday night at home in the Crescent City suburb of Metairie after a long struggle with Huntington’s disease. He would have been 87 on January 3. No public obituary has yet appeared, but his family prepared one and has permitted us to share it with Rifftidesreaders. We have added photographs, and a bit of music by the Belletto big band.
Al was born in his beloved New Orleans on January 3, 1928. He died at home on December 26, 2014, following a prolonged encounter with Huntington’s disease. His long career in jazz madehttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-w-horn.jpghim one of the city’s best known and most treasured musicians.
The young clarinetist switched to alto saxophone at Warren Easton high school and began working as a professional musician while a teenager. His early experience came with a variety traditional New Orleans bands including those of Sharkey Bonano, Wingy Manone, Leon Prima and the Dukes of Dixieland. Following his graduation from Loyola University as a music major, Al earned a master’s degree in music at Louisiana State University and was an expert clarinetist and player of alto and baritone saxes.
Although he loved the traditional jazz that he played in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the bebop> pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie captured Al’s attention. Many older New Orleans players and fans were cold to modern jazz, but Al got encouragement from a few, among them Monk Hazel, the drummer of the legendary New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He often recalled with a big smile, that Hazel told him, “Just play your horn, baby.” In 1952 he founded the Al Belletto http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-LP-cover.jpgSextet. Encouraged—sponsored, really—by big band leader Stan Kenton, he recorded for the Capitol, Bethlehem and King labels.
The records showcased his sextet’s ability to sing as well as they played and brought Al national attention. No small part of the recognition came because the Belletto sextet’s recording of “Relaxin’” was the theme of Dick Martin’s “Moonglow With Martin” program on WWL Radio. The station’s powerful signal sent the program across half the United States. Martin kept his listeners informed about where the band was playing. Here’s a 1997 remake of “Relaxin’” by the Belletto big band from the Jazznocracy CD (http://www.amazon.ca/Jazznocracy-Al-Belletto/dp/B000003A2E/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=rifftidougram-20) . Al has the alto sax solo.
In several cities, fans filled clubs when the sextet appeared. The group became a part of Woody Herman’s big band for State Department tours of South America in 1958 and 1959. Despite those successes, Al couldn’t get New Orleans out of his system.
He came home in the sixties determined to spend as much time as possible in his native city. Orleanians’ tastes had changed to encompass modern sounds, and through the years as he worked with his quartet, sextet and big band, Al became a major figure in the city’s cultural community. As music director of the Playboy Clubs, he still traveled, but the New Orleans club became his base and he brought major jazz artists and entertainers to appear there.
In the late sixties, Al was a member of the board of directors of the original New Orleans jazzhttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-portrait.jpg festival known as JazzFest. He successfully pressed for a policy guaranteeing not only that many of the city’s prominent black musicians would be presented at the festival but also that they would be paid on a scale commensurate with that of white musicians. In the midst of the civil rights era, it was one of his proudest achievements.
Flooded out in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, Al and Linda moved for a time to Dallas to be near Al’s son Bradley and his family. They returned to their new home in Metairie a few years ago.
Among the members of Al’s bands over the years were such prominent musicians as Johnny Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Carl Fontana, Willie Thomas, Michael Pellera, Don Menza, Richard Payne, John Mahoney and Rick Trolsen. Players who worked for Al had a title for him that reflected their admiration for his musicianship, his leadership and the warmth of their feelings for him. They called him Coach. Along with Linda, Bradley and Al’s countless friends around the world, former sidemen are among the survivors remembering him with love. Plans for a memorial service are to be announced.
We thank Linda Belletto for allowing us to publish her husband’s obituary, and we send deep condolences.
YouTube’s Al Belletto pages (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Al+Belletto) have dozens of tracks from his albums.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=17a8be0d8a) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=17a8be0d8a&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
New post on Rifftides: Passings: DeFranco, Bedford, Belletto
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
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http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2014/12/passings-defranco-benford-belletto.html
** Passings: DeFranco, Bedford, Belletto
————————————————————
The past seven days have seen the deaths of three musicians who came to prominence as young men and had long careers in the swing, bebop and post-bop eras.
Buddy DeFranco, who in the 1940s was the first to successfully adapt the clarinet to the complexities of bebop, died the day before Christmas at age 91. In recent years he and his wife Joyce lived in Panama City, Florida. DeFranco was the principal influence onvirtually every major clarinetist who played the instrument in modern jazz. Born in Camden, New Jersey, he http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DeFranco.jpgattended music school in Philadelphia, was a professional at 16 and before he was 20 had worked with the big bands of Gene Krupa, Ted Fio Rito and Charlie Barnet, then with Tommy Dorsey and Boyd Raeburn. His quartet with pianist Sonny Clark, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Bobby White was an acclaimed group in the mid-1950s. He worked steadily until illness slowed him in his eighties. For more about DeFranco, see the obituary (http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-buddy-defranco-20141227-story.html) by Don Heckman in The Los
Angeles Times.
Drummer Ronnie Bedford died Saturday December 20 in Powell, Wyoming, where he had lived sincehttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Ronnie-Bedford.jpg 1986. He and his wife were attracted to the relaxed pace of life in the west after years in New York City. Before and after the move, he worked and recorded with a range of jazz artists including Benny Carter, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Toshiko Akiyoshi , Benny Goodman, Rod Levitt, Buddy DeFranco and Harry Edison. Bedford was 83. For an obituary, go here (http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/ronnie-bedford/article_fbf84efd-2696-5005-be7c-834f4aca4bc5.html) .
DeFranco and Bedford, colleagues in their New York days, had a reunion at a 1990 Wyoming jazz festival that Bedford organized. Reed Gratz is the pianist, Peter Huffaker the bassist.
Al Belletto was so attached to New Orleans that he returned to his hometown in midcareer and spent almost all of the rest of his life there. The saxophonist and bandleader died Friday night at home in the Crescent City suburb of Metairie after a long struggle with Huntington’s disease. He would have been 87 on January 3. No public obituary has yet appeared, but his family prepared one and has permitted us to share it with Rifftidesreaders. We have added photographs, and a bit of music by the Belletto big band.
Al was born in his beloved New Orleans on January 3, 1928. He died at home on December 26, 2014, following a prolonged encounter with Huntington’s disease. His long career in jazz madehttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-w-horn.jpghim one of the city’s best known and most treasured musicians.
The young clarinetist switched to alto saxophone at Warren Easton high school and began working as a professional musician while a teenager. His early experience came with a variety traditional New Orleans bands including those of Sharkey Bonano, Wingy Manone, Leon Prima and the Dukes of Dixieland. Following his graduation from Loyola University as a music major, Al earned a master’s degree in music at Louisiana State University and was an expert clarinetist and player of alto and baritone saxes.
Although he loved the traditional jazz that he played in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the bebop> pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie captured Al’s attention. Many older New Orleans players and fans were cold to modern jazz, but Al got encouragement from a few, among them Monk Hazel, the drummer of the legendary New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He often recalled with a big smile, that Hazel told him, “Just play your horn, baby.” In 1952 he founded the Al Belletto http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-LP-cover.jpgSextet. Encouraged—sponsored, really—by big band leader Stan Kenton, he recorded for the Capitol, Bethlehem and King labels.
The records showcased his sextet’s ability to sing as well as they played and brought Al national attention. No small part of the recognition came because the Belletto sextet’s recording of “Relaxin’” was the theme of Dick Martin’s “Moonglow With Martin” program on WWL Radio. The station’s powerful signal sent the program across half the United States. Martin kept his listeners informed about where the band was playing. Here’s a 1997 remake of “Relaxin’” by the Belletto big band from the Jazznocracy CD (http://www.amazon.ca/Jazznocracy-Al-Belletto/dp/B000003A2E/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=rifftidougram-20) . Al has the alto sax solo.
In several cities, fans filled clubs when the sextet appeared. The group became a part of Woody Herman’s big band for State Department tours of South America in 1958 and 1959. Despite those successes, Al couldn’t get New Orleans out of his system.
He came home in the sixties determined to spend as much time as possible in his native city. Orleanians’ tastes had changed to encompass modern sounds, and through the years as he worked with his quartet, sextet and big band, Al became a major figure in the city’s cultural community. As music director of the Playboy Clubs, he still traveled, but the New Orleans club became his base and he brought major jazz artists and entertainers to appear there.
In the late sixties, Al was a member of the board of directors of the original New Orleans jazzhttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-portrait.jpg festival known as JazzFest. He successfully pressed for a policy guaranteeing not only that many of the city’s prominent black musicians would be presented at the festival but also that they would be paid on a scale commensurate with that of white musicians. In the midst of the civil rights era, it was one of his proudest achievements.
Flooded out in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, Al and Linda moved for a time to Dallas to be near Al’s son Bradley and his family. They returned to their new home in Metairie a few years ago.
Among the members of Al’s bands over the years were such prominent musicians as Johnny Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Carl Fontana, Willie Thomas, Michael Pellera, Don Menza, Richard Payne, John Mahoney and Rick Trolsen. Players who worked for Al had a title for him that reflected their admiration for his musicianship, his leadership and the warmth of their feelings for him. They called him Coach. Along with Linda, Bradley and Al’s countless friends around the world, former sidemen are among the survivors remembering him with love. Plans for a memorial service are to be announced.
We thank Linda Belletto for allowing us to publish her husband’s obituary, and we send deep condolences.
YouTube’s Al Belletto pages (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Al+Belletto) have dozens of tracks from his albums.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=17a8be0d8a) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=17a8be0d8a&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
New post on Rifftides: Passings: DeFranco, Bedford, Belletto
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/2014/12/passings-defranco-benford-belletto.html
** Passings: DeFranco, Bedford, Belletto
————————————————————
The past seven days have seen the deaths of three musicians who came to prominence as young men and had long careers in the swing, bebop and post-bop eras.
Buddy DeFranco, who in the 1940s was the first to successfully adapt the clarinet to the complexities of bebop, died the day before Christmas at age 91. In recent years he and his wife Joyce lived in Panama City, Florida. DeFranco was the principal influence onvirtually every major clarinetist who played the instrument in modern jazz. Born in Camden, New Jersey, he http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/DeFranco.jpgattended music school in Philadelphia, was a professional at 16 and before he was 20 had worked with the big bands of Gene Krupa, Ted Fio Rito and Charlie Barnet, then with Tommy Dorsey and Boyd Raeburn. His quartet with pianist Sonny Clark, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Bobby White was an acclaimed group in the mid-1950s. He worked steadily until illness slowed him in his eighties. For more about DeFranco, see the obituary (http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-buddy-defranco-20141227-story.html) by Don Heckman in The Los
Angeles Times.
Drummer Ronnie Bedford died Saturday December 20 in Powell, Wyoming, where he had lived sincehttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Ronnie-Bedford.jpg 1986. He and his wife were attracted to the relaxed pace of life in the west after years in New York City. Before and after the move, he worked and recorded with a range of jazz artists including Benny Carter, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, Toshiko Akiyoshi , Benny Goodman, Rod Levitt, Buddy DeFranco and Harry Edison. Bedford was 83. For an obituary, go here (http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/ronnie-bedford/article_fbf84efd-2696-5005-be7c-834f4aca4bc5.html) .
DeFranco and Bedford, colleagues in their New York days, had a reunion at a 1990 Wyoming jazz festival that Bedford organized. Reed Gratz is the pianist, Peter Huffaker the bassist.
Al Belletto was so attached to New Orleans that he returned to his hometown in midcareer and spent almost all of the rest of his life there. The saxophonist and bandleader died Friday night at home in the Crescent City suburb of Metairie after a long struggle with Huntington’s disease. He would have been 87 on January 3. No public obituary has yet appeared, but his family prepared one and has permitted us to share it with Rifftidesreaders. We have added photographs, and a bit of music by the Belletto big band.
Al was born in his beloved New Orleans on January 3, 1928. He died at home on December 26, 2014, following a prolonged encounter with Huntington’s disease. His long career in jazz madehttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-w-horn.jpghim one of the city’s best known and most treasured musicians.
The young clarinetist switched to alto saxophone at Warren Easton high school and began working as a professional musician while a teenager. His early experience came with a variety traditional New Orleans bands including those of Sharkey Bonano, Wingy Manone, Leon Prima and the Dukes of Dixieland. Following his graduation from Loyola University as a music major, Al earned a master’s degree in music at Louisiana State University and was an expert clarinetist and player of alto and baritone saxes.
Although he loved the traditional jazz that he played in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the bebop> pioneered by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie captured Al’s attention. Many older New Orleans players and fans were cold to modern jazz, but Al got encouragement from a few, among them Monk Hazel, the drummer of the legendary New Orleans Rhythm Kings. He often recalled with a big smile, that Hazel told him, “Just play your horn, baby.” In 1952 he founded the Al Belletto http://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-LP-cover.jpgSextet. Encouraged—sponsored, really—by big band leader Stan Kenton, he recorded for the Capitol, Bethlehem and King labels.
The records showcased his sextet’s ability to sing as well as they played and brought Al national attention. No small part of the recognition came because the Belletto sextet’s recording of “Relaxin’” was the theme of Dick Martin’s “Moonglow With Martin” program on WWL Radio. The station’s powerful signal sent the program across half the United States. Martin kept his listeners informed about where the band was playing. Here’s a 1997 remake of “Relaxin’” by the Belletto big band from the Jazznocracy CD (http://www.amazon.ca/Jazznocracy-Al-Belletto/dp/B000003A2E/?_encoding=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=ur2&tag=rifftidougram-20) . Al has the alto sax solo.
In several cities, fans filled clubs when the sextet appeared. The group became a part of Woody Herman’s big band for State Department tours of South America in 1958 and 1959. Despite those successes, Al couldn’t get New Orleans out of his system.
He came home in the sixties determined to spend as much time as possible in his native city. Orleanians’ tastes had changed to encompass modern sounds, and through the years as he worked with his quartet, sextet and big band, Al became a major figure in the city’s cultural community. As music director of the Playboy Clubs, he still traveled, but the New Orleans club became his base and he brought major jazz artists and entertainers to appear there.
In the late sixties, Al was a member of the board of directors of the original New Orleans jazzhttp://www.artsjournal.com/rifftides/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Belletto-portrait.jpg festival known as JazzFest. He successfully pressed for a policy guaranteeing not only that many of the city’s prominent black musicians would be presented at the festival but also that they would be paid on a scale commensurate with that of white musicians. In the midst of the civil rights era, it was one of his proudest achievements.
Flooded out in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina, Al and Linda moved for a time to Dallas to be near Al’s son Bradley and his family. They returned to their new home in Metairie a few years ago.
Among the members of Al’s bands over the years were such prominent musicians as Johnny Vidacovich, Ellis Marsalis, Carl Fontana, Willie Thomas, Michael Pellera, Don Menza, Richard Payne, John Mahoney and Rick Trolsen. Players who worked for Al had a title for him that reflected their admiration for his musicianship, his leadership and the warmth of their feelings for him. They called him Coach. Along with Linda, Bradley and Al’s countless friends around the world, former sidemen are among the survivors remembering him with love. Plans for a memorial service are to be announced.
We thank Linda Belletto for allowing us to publish her husband’s obituary, and we send deep condolences.
YouTube’s Al Belletto pages (https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Al+Belletto) have dozens of tracks from his albums.
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Count Basie with Buddy DeFranco- One O’Clock Jump – YouTube
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Count Basie, piano; Wardell Gray, tenor sax; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; Clark Terry, trumpet
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USA
Count Basie with Buddy DeFranco- One O’Clock Jump – YouTube
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Count Basie, piano; Wardell Gray, tenor sax; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; Clark Terry, trumpet
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuwUHjM7ys
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Count Basie with Buddy DeFranco- One O’Clock Jump – YouTube
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Count Basie, piano; Wardell Gray, tenor sax; Buddy DeFranco, clarinet; Clark Terry, trumpet
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuwUHjM7ys
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzuwUHjM7ys
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▶ Eddie Jefferson “Body and Soul” backed by the Walt Harper Quintet – YouTube
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1952 recording by Eddie Jefferson. Done in Pittsburgh and backed by the Walt Harper Quintet. The all-local personnel is commonly thought to consist of Johnny Morris (trombone) Nat Harper (tenor) Walt Harper (piano) Bob Boswell (bass) Cecil Brooks (drums) Eddie Jefferson (vocals). George Heid Jr. informs us that it is in fact not Bob Boswell on bass and not Cecil Brooks on drums, but Hal “Brushes” Lee. The sides were recorded in his father, George Heid Sr.’s studio which was located on the Club Floor of the William Penn Hotel (Pittsburgh, PA) and subsequently released on Hi-Lo, which was a subsidiary of the NYC-based Savoy record label. This is Jefferson’s vocalese version of James Moody’s recording of “Body and Soul.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXjtTM0B4mI
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
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269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
▶ Eddie Jefferson “Body and Soul” backed by the Walt Harper Quintet – YouTube
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXjtTM0B4mI
1952 recording by Eddie Jefferson. Done in Pittsburgh and backed by the Walt Harper Quintet. The all-local personnel is commonly thought to consist of Johnny Morris (trombone) Nat Harper (tenor) Walt Harper (piano) Bob Boswell (bass) Cecil Brooks (drums) Eddie Jefferson (vocals). George Heid Jr. informs us that it is in fact not Bob Boswell on bass and not Cecil Brooks on drums, but Hal “Brushes” Lee. The sides were recorded in his father, George Heid Sr.’s studio which was located on the Club Floor of the William Penn Hotel (Pittsburgh, PA) and subsequently released on Hi-Lo, which was a subsidiary of the NYC-based Savoy record label. This is Jefferson’s vocalese version of James Moody’s recording of “Body and Soul.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXjtTM0B4mI
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
▶ Eddie Jefferson “Body and Soul” backed by the Walt Harper Quintet – YouTube
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXjtTM0B4mI
1952 recording by Eddie Jefferson. Done in Pittsburgh and backed by the Walt Harper Quintet. The all-local personnel is commonly thought to consist of Johnny Morris (trombone) Nat Harper (tenor) Walt Harper (piano) Bob Boswell (bass) Cecil Brooks (drums) Eddie Jefferson (vocals). George Heid Jr. informs us that it is in fact not Bob Boswell on bass and not Cecil Brooks on drums, but Hal “Brushes” Lee. The sides were recorded in his father, George Heid Sr.’s studio which was located on the Club Floor of the William Penn Hotel (Pittsburgh, PA) and subsequently released on Hi-Lo, which was a subsidiary of the NYC-based Savoy record label. This is Jefferson’s vocalese version of James Moody’s recording of “Body and Soul.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXjtTM0B4mI
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
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269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
First Person: Walt Harper and Jazz at the Attic | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
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** December 27, 2014
————————————————————
** First Person: Christmas with my dad, jazz musician Walt Harper
————————————————————
** Why my father loved this time of year
————————————————————
By Sharynn Harper
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2014/12/27/First-Person-Christmas-with-my-dad-jazz-musician-Walt-Halper/stories/201412270010
**
————————————————————
Walt Harper at home in 2003
With the Christmas holidays still all around us, I find myself thinking about my beloved dad — the late pianist/jazz musician Walt Harper — and the treasure trove of Christmas memories I love.
When I was growing up in the Harper household in Pittsburgh, Christmas was as important to Dad as his music. About 10 days before Christmas, the rituals would begin with Christmas music filling the house. The mellifluous voices of Dad’s good friends Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson, Carmen McCrae and Mel Torme would waft from the music system, bellowing jazzy renditions of time-tested Christmas carols.
**
————————————————————
Dad loved going out in the cold to find the appropriate fresh pine tree to grace the living room of our five-story house on Clarissa Street in the Upper Hill, which at that time was a nice, family-oriented place to live. I was Dad’s only child, so en route to buy the tree we would stop and pick up a cousin or two who would climb into Dad’s station wagon (this was before SUVs) and turn it into a real family affair. Once the big pine tree was safely in our living room and standing tall, Dad would dig into the archive of family decorations that had been stored and tucked away from years past.
•
Dad was from a large family — he was one of eight children — and music filled the Harper household long before he started his eponymous night clubs Downtown — Walt Harper’s Attic and Harper’s Night Club. Two of Dad’s brothers, Ernie, also a pianist, and Nate, a tenor saxophonist, were also professional jazz musicians.
Ours was a multi-generational household, which included my grandparents — Charles Harper, a building contractor, and my grandmother, Lucinda Harper, a homemaker — my dad and me. We’d lost my mother, Dad’s first wife, in a tragic auto accident when I was young, so my grandparents stepped in. They could not have been prouder and more supportive of their son’s career as a jazz musician.
About a week before Christmas, all the Harper sisters and brothers and their children would begin to descend with their gifts to be placed under the tree.
It was also not unusual for some of the major stars of the jazz world who’d grown up in Pittsburgh to stop by to wish the Harper family a merry Christmas. Saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, vocalist and band leader Billy Eckstine and legendary bassist Ray Brown were all close friends.
For Dad, the traditions of the holiday mattered. He could derive the greatest joy from something small. Gadgets were a big thing with him — musical gadgets, battery-operated gadgets, alarm clocks. I got him more than one pair of battery-operated gloves to keep his fingers warm.
If Dad had a musical engagement on Christmas Eve, he would make sure he got back home in time to play Santa Claus. I always knew when he came in, though, because he was greeted at the door by our menagerie of pets, all with musical names. There was Jazz the French poodle, Tempo the cocker spaniel and Allegro the cat.
When I awakened the next morning, Dad would have neatly arranged under the tree an array of my favorite things: dolls, ice skates, roller skates, games, watches, clothes, books and always a musical gift, such as a Schirmer music book with scales, as a hint that I should practice my piano!
Christmas dinner was always very traditional, with all of my Dad’s favorite dishes — turkey, stuffing, sweet potato souffle, multiple vegetable dishes, rolls that would melt in your mouth and a wonderful fruit ambrosia dish — all prepared expertly by my grandmother.
After dinner, my Dad would repair to the piano to play and sing Christmas songs with the family. There was always “The Harper Family Talent Show” for the kids, which was produced by Dad.
This private side of my Dad was very special and, while he was a born music man and music visionary, he also was a daddy for the ages.
In that great orchestra up above, I know that during this holiday season he is somewhere seated at a piano singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack frost nipping at your nose … ”
Sharynn Harper (shajazza@aol.com (mailto:shajazza@aol.com) ) lives in New York. Her biography “Walt Harper and Jazz at the Attic” is scheduled for publication in 2015.
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
First Person: Walt Harper and Jazz at the Attic | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
** December 27, 2014
————————————————————
** First Person: Christmas with my dad, jazz musician Walt Harper
————————————————————
** Why my father loved this time of year
————————————————————
By Sharynn Harper
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2014/12/27/First-Person-Christmas-with-my-dad-jazz-musician-Walt-Halper/stories/201412270010
**
————————————————————
Walt Harper at home in 2003
With the Christmas holidays still all around us, I find myself thinking about my beloved dad — the late pianist/jazz musician Walt Harper — and the treasure trove of Christmas memories I love.
When I was growing up in the Harper household in Pittsburgh, Christmas was as important to Dad as his music. About 10 days before Christmas, the rituals would begin with Christmas music filling the house. The mellifluous voices of Dad’s good friends Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson, Carmen McCrae and Mel Torme would waft from the music system, bellowing jazzy renditions of time-tested Christmas carols.
**
————————————————————
Dad loved going out in the cold to find the appropriate fresh pine tree to grace the living room of our five-story house on Clarissa Street in the Upper Hill, which at that time was a nice, family-oriented place to live. I was Dad’s only child, so en route to buy the tree we would stop and pick up a cousin or two who would climb into Dad’s station wagon (this was before SUVs) and turn it into a real family affair. Once the big pine tree was safely in our living room and standing tall, Dad would dig into the archive of family decorations that had been stored and tucked away from years past.
•
Dad was from a large family — he was one of eight children — and music filled the Harper household long before he started his eponymous night clubs Downtown — Walt Harper’s Attic and Harper’s Night Club. Two of Dad’s brothers, Ernie, also a pianist, and Nate, a tenor saxophonist, were also professional jazz musicians.
Ours was a multi-generational household, which included my grandparents — Charles Harper, a building contractor, and my grandmother, Lucinda Harper, a homemaker — my dad and me. We’d lost my mother, Dad’s first wife, in a tragic auto accident when I was young, so my grandparents stepped in. They could not have been prouder and more supportive of their son’s career as a jazz musician.
About a week before Christmas, all the Harper sisters and brothers and their children would begin to descend with their gifts to be placed under the tree.
It was also not unusual for some of the major stars of the jazz world who’d grown up in Pittsburgh to stop by to wish the Harper family a merry Christmas. Saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, vocalist and band leader Billy Eckstine and legendary bassist Ray Brown were all close friends.
For Dad, the traditions of the holiday mattered. He could derive the greatest joy from something small. Gadgets were a big thing with him — musical gadgets, battery-operated gadgets, alarm clocks. I got him more than one pair of battery-operated gloves to keep his fingers warm.
If Dad had a musical engagement on Christmas Eve, he would make sure he got back home in time to play Santa Claus. I always knew when he came in, though, because he was greeted at the door by our menagerie of pets, all with musical names. There was Jazz the French poodle, Tempo the cocker spaniel and Allegro the cat.
When I awakened the next morning, Dad would have neatly arranged under the tree an array of my favorite things: dolls, ice skates, roller skates, games, watches, clothes, books and always a musical gift, such as a Schirmer music book with scales, as a hint that I should practice my piano!
Christmas dinner was always very traditional, with all of my Dad’s favorite dishes — turkey, stuffing, sweet potato souffle, multiple vegetable dishes, rolls that would melt in your mouth and a wonderful fruit ambrosia dish — all prepared expertly by my grandmother.
After dinner, my Dad would repair to the piano to play and sing Christmas songs with the family. There was always “The Harper Family Talent Show” for the kids, which was produced by Dad.
This private side of my Dad was very special and, while he was a born music man and music visionary, he also was a daddy for the ages.
In that great orchestra up above, I know that during this holiday season he is somewhere seated at a piano singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack frost nipping at your nose … ”
Sharynn Harper (shajazza@aol.com (mailto:shajazza@aol.com) ) lives in New York. Her biography “Walt Harper and Jazz at the Attic” is scheduled for publication in 2015.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=94b396edbf) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=94b396edbf&e=[UNIQID])
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
First Person: Walt Harper and Jazz at the Attic | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
http://www.jazzpromoservices.com/
http://twitter.com/#!/jazzpromo https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jazz-Promo-Services/216022288429676
** December 27, 2014
————————————————————
** First Person: Christmas with my dad, jazz musician Walt Harper
————————————————————
** Why my father loved this time of year
————————————————————
By Sharynn Harper
http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2014/12/27/First-Person-Christmas-with-my-dad-jazz-musician-Walt-Halper/stories/201412270010
**
————————————————————
Walt Harper at home in 2003
With the Christmas holidays still all around us, I find myself thinking about my beloved dad — the late pianist/jazz musician Walt Harper — and the treasure trove of Christmas memories I love.
When I was growing up in the Harper household in Pittsburgh, Christmas was as important to Dad as his music. About 10 days before Christmas, the rituals would begin with Christmas music filling the house. The mellifluous voices of Dad’s good friends Nat King Cole, Nancy Wilson, Carmen McCrae and Mel Torme would waft from the music system, bellowing jazzy renditions of time-tested Christmas carols.
**
————————————————————
Dad loved going out in the cold to find the appropriate fresh pine tree to grace the living room of our five-story house on Clarissa Street in the Upper Hill, which at that time was a nice, family-oriented place to live. I was Dad’s only child, so en route to buy the tree we would stop and pick up a cousin or two who would climb into Dad’s station wagon (this was before SUVs) and turn it into a real family affair. Once the big pine tree was safely in our living room and standing tall, Dad would dig into the archive of family decorations that had been stored and tucked away from years past.
•
Dad was from a large family — he was one of eight children — and music filled the Harper household long before he started his eponymous night clubs Downtown — Walt Harper’s Attic and Harper’s Night Club. Two of Dad’s brothers, Ernie, also a pianist, and Nate, a tenor saxophonist, were also professional jazz musicians.
Ours was a multi-generational household, which included my grandparents — Charles Harper, a building contractor, and my grandmother, Lucinda Harper, a homemaker — my dad and me. We’d lost my mother, Dad’s first wife, in a tragic auto accident when I was young, so my grandparents stepped in. They could not have been prouder and more supportive of their son’s career as a jazz musician.
About a week before Christmas, all the Harper sisters and brothers and their children would begin to descend with their gifts to be placed under the tree.
It was also not unusual for some of the major stars of the jazz world who’d grown up in Pittsburgh to stop by to wish the Harper family a merry Christmas. Saxophonist Stanley Turrentine, vocalist and band leader Billy Eckstine and legendary bassist Ray Brown were all close friends.
For Dad, the traditions of the holiday mattered. He could derive the greatest joy from something small. Gadgets were a big thing with him — musical gadgets, battery-operated gadgets, alarm clocks. I got him more than one pair of battery-operated gloves to keep his fingers warm.
If Dad had a musical engagement on Christmas Eve, he would make sure he got back home in time to play Santa Claus. I always knew when he came in, though, because he was greeted at the door by our menagerie of pets, all with musical names. There was Jazz the French poodle, Tempo the cocker spaniel and Allegro the cat.
When I awakened the next morning, Dad would have neatly arranged under the tree an array of my favorite things: dolls, ice skates, roller skates, games, watches, clothes, books and always a musical gift, such as a Schirmer music book with scales, as a hint that I should practice my piano!
Christmas dinner was always very traditional, with all of my Dad’s favorite dishes — turkey, stuffing, sweet potato souffle, multiple vegetable dishes, rolls that would melt in your mouth and a wonderful fruit ambrosia dish — all prepared expertly by my grandmother.
After dinner, my Dad would repair to the piano to play and sing Christmas songs with the family. There was always “The Harper Family Talent Show” for the kids, which was produced by Dad.
This private side of my Dad was very special and, while he was a born music man and music visionary, he also was a daddy for the ages.
In that great orchestra up above, I know that during this holiday season he is somewhere seated at a piano singing “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack frost nipping at your nose … ”
Sharynn Harper (shajazza@aol.com (mailto:shajazza@aol.com) ) lives in New York. Her biography “Walt Harper and Jazz at the Attic” is scheduled for publication in 2015.
Unsubscribe (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]&c=94b396edbf) | Update your profile (http://jazzpromoservices.us2.list-manage.com/profile?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=911f90f0b1&e=[UNIQID]) | Forward to a friend (http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3186fe64133adb244b1010be2&id=94b396edbf&e=[UNIQID])
PLEASE NOTE: IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE ON THIS MAILING LIST PLEASE RESPOND WITH ‘REMOVE’ IN THE SUBJECT LINE. IF YOU ARE RECEIVING DUPLICATE EMAILS OUR APOLOGIES, JAZZ PROMO SERVICES ANNOUNCEMENT LIST IS GROWING LARGER EVERY DAY…..PLEASE LET US KNOW AND WE WILL FIX IT IMMEDIATELY!
Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA
Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies – NYTimes.com
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** Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies
————————————————————
Photo
The clarinetist Buddy DeFranco in 1982. Credit NBCU Photobank, via Getty Images
Continue reading the main story
Buddy DeFranco, the innovative clarinetist who rose from the remains of the swing era to forge new and lasting prominence as the instrument’s pre-eminent interpreter of bebop, died on Wednesday in Panama City, Fla. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Joyce.
From 1939, the year he graduated from a high school music program in Philadelphia, until just a few years ago, Mr. DeFranco was rarely off a stage, large or small.
After a decade of roadwork with big-name dance bands, Mr. DeFranco — tall, handsome and not yet 30 — was poised to inherit the throne shared for years by Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, and Artie Shaw, the King of the Clarinet. But by the time that moment arrived, the big-band clarinet realm had diminished significantly, overtaken by the saxophone and modern jazz.
Captivated by the complex, challenging new sounds and increasingly aware that the music market was evolving, Mr. DeFranco moved quickly to carve out a fresh career in bebop, a perilous undertaking on an instrument that requires nearly superhuman skill and dexterity to keep up with bebop’s sometimes freakishly fast tempos.
“Buddy is unique because he was really the only clarinetist who caught on to the new jazz language,” Dan Morgenstern, the jazz critic and historian, said in an interview in 2012. Unlike Goodman, Mr. Morgenstern said, “he had an ear to deal harmonically with modern jazz” — and unlike Shaw, who ultimately gave up playing, he was more consistent and more disciplined.
Over a 70-year career, Mr. DeFranco became a perennial fan favorite, winning Down Beat magazine’s annual popularity poll 20 times and drawing fresh audiences with his warm tone and effortless technique. In a business known for the volatility — even mortal dissipation — of its stars, Mr. DeFranco was noted, and occasionally needled, for his relentless daily practice regimen. On the bandstand he was focused yet easygoing, preferring to showcase fluid playing over instrument-waving histrionics.
His first big job was playing alto saxophone and clarinet with the band led by the trumpeter Johnny (Scat) Davis, followed by stints with Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey. From the late 1940s on, he became known for his more intimate collaborations with other greats, among them the pianists George Shearing, Count Basie, Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson and the drummer Art Blakey.
After a brief, unsuccessful stint as the leader of his own big band in 1951, he moved on to small-group performances around the country until 1966, when he returned to swing and a steady income, taking charge of the still-popular Glenn Miller Orchestra for eight years.
Mr. DeFranco’s crucial career change did not come all at once but evolved through the ’40s, as the saxophone, long the stalwart of big-band woodwind sections, moved into greater solo prominence and even greater stature as the driving sound of bebop, with the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker as its prophet.
“DeFranco, unbearably challenged by Charlie Parker, attacked bebop head-on and mastered it,” Whitney Balliett wrote in a New Yorker magazine profile in 1990. “He developed such fluency and invention and speed that he was considered the supreme jazz clarinetist. His work has never faltered, and he has kept the instrument alive in jazz simply by playing it so well.”
Mr. DeFranco’s goal, he told the jazz writer Ted Panken in 1999, was putting his own stamp on whatever music he was playing “so that you become an original, so that people will say, when they hear your record: ‘That’s who it is. That’s Bird. That’s Art Tatum. That’s Oscar Peterson. That’s Buddy.’ ”
“I had about six careers during the last 60 years,” Mr. DeFranco said. “Periodically, I’ll envelop a new concept on the clarinet, stay with that for a while, almost discarding what I was doing before, though not quite. I gradually wound up with a sensible mixture, combining whatever new thing I was doing with my earlier way of playing.”
But dealing with the ferociously fast rhythms and chord changes of modern jazz is often trickier on a clarinet than on the more forgiving saxophone. For one thing, the saxophone is an octave instrument; if you press a key to go up an octave, the fingering is still the same. But a clarinet goes up 12 tones, and the fingering changes, a challenge Mr. DeFranco often mentioned in interviews (http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/26/arts/de-franco-and-clarinet-coming-back.html) .
“For a clarinet to keep pace with a big band, or with a rhythm section, takes a lot of energy,” he said in The New York Times in 1982. “It could take 20 years off your life.”
He added, “Young people say to me, ‘I didn’t know you could play modern jazz on a clarinet.’ ”
Boniface Ferdinand Leonardo DeFranco was born on Feb. 17, 1923, in Camden, N.J., and grew up in Philadelphia, one of five children. His father, Leonardo, an immigrant from Italy, lost his eyesight to an infection and eventually trained to be a piano tuner. He was also an amateur guitarist who played with a band called the Jovial Night Owls, whose members were all blind.
Mr. DeFranco’s mother, the former Louise Giordano, who worked in clerical and factory jobs, was, he recalled, frail and high-strung and was committed to a state mental hospital, where she died after 35 years. With their father struggling to make ends meet, the children were taken in by an aunt and uncle.
When Buddy was 5, his father coached him on his first instrument, the mandolin, which he played by ear, but by 8, he had switched to the clarinet and the saxophone. He continued his musical education at the Mastbaum School of Music in Philadelphia (now the Jules Mastbaum Technical/Vocational School). He graduated at 16 and was hired by Scat Davis shortly after that.
Mr. DeFranco was married three times and divorced twice. After a brief first marriage, he wed Mitchell Vanston; they had a son, Christopher, who died in 2001. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1975, he is survived by their son, Charles.
Mr. DeFranco recorded dozens of albums; his 1958 album “Cross Country Suite” won a Grammy Award (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/grammy_awards/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) for its composer-arranger, Nelson Riddle. An avid experimenter with musical styles and instrumental combinations, he also collaborated with the virtuoso accordionist Tommy Gumina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0xS4uYRt0) in the 1960s. Through the ’80s and ’90s, Mr. DeFranco and the vibraphonist Terry Gibbs often performed together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW3MSbXyatY) .
He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the country’s highest honor for jazz musicians, in 2006. But his quest to conquer the clarinet and its challenges never ceased.
“You know, this is all tricky stuff,” Mr. DeFranco told the jazz critic Howard Mandel (http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/?read=mandel19) . “Once I was doing some school clinics, and one of the great symphonic clarinet players, Daniel Bonade of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was doing another clinic in the same school. I used to pick the brains of as many clarinet players as I could, to see how they got their sound, what reeds they used, everything. So I went to hear his clinic, and at the end I sidled up and said, ‘When do you finally master the clarinet?’ And he said: ‘Master the clarinet? That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.’ ”
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Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies – NYTimes.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/arts/music/buddy-defranco-versatile-jazz-clarinetist-dies-at-91.html?_r=0
** Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies
————————————————————
Photo
The clarinetist Buddy DeFranco in 1982. Credit NBCU Photobank, via Getty Images
Continue reading the main story
Buddy DeFranco, the innovative clarinetist who rose from the remains of the swing era to forge new and lasting prominence as the instrument’s pre-eminent interpreter of bebop, died on Wednesday in Panama City, Fla. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Joyce.
From 1939, the year he graduated from a high school music program in Philadelphia, until just a few years ago, Mr. DeFranco was rarely off a stage, large or small.
After a decade of roadwork with big-name dance bands, Mr. DeFranco — tall, handsome and not yet 30 — was poised to inherit the throne shared for years by Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, and Artie Shaw, the King of the Clarinet. But by the time that moment arrived, the big-band clarinet realm had diminished significantly, overtaken by the saxophone and modern jazz.
Captivated by the complex, challenging new sounds and increasingly aware that the music market was evolving, Mr. DeFranco moved quickly to carve out a fresh career in bebop, a perilous undertaking on an instrument that requires nearly superhuman skill and dexterity to keep up with bebop’s sometimes freakishly fast tempos.
“Buddy is unique because he was really the only clarinetist who caught on to the new jazz language,” Dan Morgenstern, the jazz critic and historian, said in an interview in 2012. Unlike Goodman, Mr. Morgenstern said, “he had an ear to deal harmonically with modern jazz” — and unlike Shaw, who ultimately gave up playing, he was more consistent and more disciplined.
Over a 70-year career, Mr. DeFranco became a perennial fan favorite, winning Down Beat magazine’s annual popularity poll 20 times and drawing fresh audiences with his warm tone and effortless technique. In a business known for the volatility — even mortal dissipation — of its stars, Mr. DeFranco was noted, and occasionally needled, for his relentless daily practice regimen. On the bandstand he was focused yet easygoing, preferring to showcase fluid playing over instrument-waving histrionics.
His first big job was playing alto saxophone and clarinet with the band led by the trumpeter Johnny (Scat) Davis, followed by stints with Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey. From the late 1940s on, he became known for his more intimate collaborations with other greats, among them the pianists George Shearing, Count Basie, Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson and the drummer Art Blakey.
After a brief, unsuccessful stint as the leader of his own big band in 1951, he moved on to small-group performances around the country until 1966, when he returned to swing and a steady income, taking charge of the still-popular Glenn Miller Orchestra for eight years.
Mr. DeFranco’s crucial career change did not come all at once but evolved through the ’40s, as the saxophone, long the stalwart of big-band woodwind sections, moved into greater solo prominence and even greater stature as the driving sound of bebop, with the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker as its prophet.
“DeFranco, unbearably challenged by Charlie Parker, attacked bebop head-on and mastered it,” Whitney Balliett wrote in a New Yorker magazine profile in 1990. “He developed such fluency and invention and speed that he was considered the supreme jazz clarinetist. His work has never faltered, and he has kept the instrument alive in jazz simply by playing it so well.”
Mr. DeFranco’s goal, he told the jazz writer Ted Panken in 1999, was putting his own stamp on whatever music he was playing “so that you become an original, so that people will say, when they hear your record: ‘That’s who it is. That’s Bird. That’s Art Tatum. That’s Oscar Peterson. That’s Buddy.’ ”
“I had about six careers during the last 60 years,” Mr. DeFranco said. “Periodically, I’ll envelop a new concept on the clarinet, stay with that for a while, almost discarding what I was doing before, though not quite. I gradually wound up with a sensible mixture, combining whatever new thing I was doing with my earlier way of playing.”
But dealing with the ferociously fast rhythms and chord changes of modern jazz is often trickier on a clarinet than on the more forgiving saxophone. For one thing, the saxophone is an octave instrument; if you press a key to go up an octave, the fingering is still the same. But a clarinet goes up 12 tones, and the fingering changes, a challenge Mr. DeFranco often mentioned in interviews (http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/26/arts/de-franco-and-clarinet-coming-back.html) .
“For a clarinet to keep pace with a big band, or with a rhythm section, takes a lot of energy,” he said in The New York Times in 1982. “It could take 20 years off your life.”
He added, “Young people say to me, ‘I didn’t know you could play modern jazz on a clarinet.’ ”
Boniface Ferdinand Leonardo DeFranco was born on Feb. 17, 1923, in Camden, N.J., and grew up in Philadelphia, one of five children. His father, Leonardo, an immigrant from Italy, lost his eyesight to an infection and eventually trained to be a piano tuner. He was also an amateur guitarist who played with a band called the Jovial Night Owls, whose members were all blind.
Mr. DeFranco’s mother, the former Louise Giordano, who worked in clerical and factory jobs, was, he recalled, frail and high-strung and was committed to a state mental hospital, where she died after 35 years. With their father struggling to make ends meet, the children were taken in by an aunt and uncle.
When Buddy was 5, his father coached him on his first instrument, the mandolin, which he played by ear, but by 8, he had switched to the clarinet and the saxophone. He continued his musical education at the Mastbaum School of Music in Philadelphia (now the Jules Mastbaum Technical/Vocational School). He graduated at 16 and was hired by Scat Davis shortly after that.
Mr. DeFranco was married three times and divorced twice. After a brief first marriage, he wed Mitchell Vanston; they had a son, Christopher, who died in 2001. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1975, he is survived by their son, Charles.
Mr. DeFranco recorded dozens of albums; his 1958 album “Cross Country Suite” won a Grammy Award (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/grammy_awards/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) for its composer-arranger, Nelson Riddle. An avid experimenter with musical styles and instrumental combinations, he also collaborated with the virtuoso accordionist Tommy Gumina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0xS4uYRt0) in the 1960s. Through the ’80s and ’90s, Mr. DeFranco and the vibraphonist Terry Gibbs often performed together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW3MSbXyatY) .
He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the country’s highest honor for jazz musicians, in 2006. But his quest to conquer the clarinet and its challenges never ceased.
“You know, this is all tricky stuff,” Mr. DeFranco told the jazz critic Howard Mandel (http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/?read=mandel19) . “Once I was doing some school clinics, and one of the great symphonic clarinet players, Daniel Bonade of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was doing another clinic in the same school. I used to pick the brains of as many clarinet players as I could, to see how they got their sound, what reeds they used, everything. So I went to hear his clinic, and at the end I sidled up and said, ‘When do you finally master the clarinet?’ And he said: ‘Master the clarinet? That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.’ ”
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
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269 State Route 94 South
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USA
Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies – NYTimes.com
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/arts/music/buddy-defranco-versatile-jazz-clarinetist-dies-at-91.html?_r=0
** Buddy DeFranco, 91, Versatile Jazz Clarinetist, Dies
————————————————————
Photo
The clarinetist Buddy DeFranco in 1982. Credit NBCU Photobank, via Getty Images
Continue reading the main story
Buddy DeFranco, the innovative clarinetist who rose from the remains of the swing era to forge new and lasting prominence as the instrument’s pre-eminent interpreter of bebop, died on Wednesday in Panama City, Fla. He was 91.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Joyce.
From 1939, the year he graduated from a high school music program in Philadelphia, until just a few years ago, Mr. DeFranco was rarely off a stage, large or small.
After a decade of roadwork with big-name dance bands, Mr. DeFranco — tall, handsome and not yet 30 — was poised to inherit the throne shared for years by Benny Goodman, the King of Swing, and Artie Shaw, the King of the Clarinet. But by the time that moment arrived, the big-band clarinet realm had diminished significantly, overtaken by the saxophone and modern jazz.
Captivated by the complex, challenging new sounds and increasingly aware that the music market was evolving, Mr. DeFranco moved quickly to carve out a fresh career in bebop, a perilous undertaking on an instrument that requires nearly superhuman skill and dexterity to keep up with bebop’s sometimes freakishly fast tempos.
“Buddy is unique because he was really the only clarinetist who caught on to the new jazz language,” Dan Morgenstern, the jazz critic and historian, said in an interview in 2012. Unlike Goodman, Mr. Morgenstern said, “he had an ear to deal harmonically with modern jazz” — and unlike Shaw, who ultimately gave up playing, he was more consistent and more disciplined.
Over a 70-year career, Mr. DeFranco became a perennial fan favorite, winning Down Beat magazine’s annual popularity poll 20 times and drawing fresh audiences with his warm tone and effortless technique. In a business known for the volatility — even mortal dissipation — of its stars, Mr. DeFranco was noted, and occasionally needled, for his relentless daily practice regimen. On the bandstand he was focused yet easygoing, preferring to showcase fluid playing over instrument-waving histrionics.
His first big job was playing alto saxophone and clarinet with the band led by the trumpeter Johnny (Scat) Davis, followed by stints with Gene Krupa, Charlie Barnet and Tommy Dorsey. From the late 1940s on, he became known for his more intimate collaborations with other greats, among them the pianists George Shearing, Count Basie, Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson and the drummer Art Blakey.
After a brief, unsuccessful stint as the leader of his own big band in 1951, he moved on to small-group performances around the country until 1966, when he returned to swing and a steady income, taking charge of the still-popular Glenn Miller Orchestra for eight years.
Mr. DeFranco’s crucial career change did not come all at once but evolved through the ’40s, as the saxophone, long the stalwart of big-band woodwind sections, moved into greater solo prominence and even greater stature as the driving sound of bebop, with the alto saxophonist Charlie Parker as its prophet.
“DeFranco, unbearably challenged by Charlie Parker, attacked bebop head-on and mastered it,” Whitney Balliett wrote in a New Yorker magazine profile in 1990. “He developed such fluency and invention and speed that he was considered the supreme jazz clarinetist. His work has never faltered, and he has kept the instrument alive in jazz simply by playing it so well.”
Mr. DeFranco’s goal, he told the jazz writer Ted Panken in 1999, was putting his own stamp on whatever music he was playing “so that you become an original, so that people will say, when they hear your record: ‘That’s who it is. That’s Bird. That’s Art Tatum. That’s Oscar Peterson. That’s Buddy.’ ”
“I had about six careers during the last 60 years,” Mr. DeFranco said. “Periodically, I’ll envelop a new concept on the clarinet, stay with that for a while, almost discarding what I was doing before, though not quite. I gradually wound up with a sensible mixture, combining whatever new thing I was doing with my earlier way of playing.”
But dealing with the ferociously fast rhythms and chord changes of modern jazz is often trickier on a clarinet than on the more forgiving saxophone. For one thing, the saxophone is an octave instrument; if you press a key to go up an octave, the fingering is still the same. But a clarinet goes up 12 tones, and the fingering changes, a challenge Mr. DeFranco often mentioned in interviews (http://www.nytimes.com/1982/02/26/arts/de-franco-and-clarinet-coming-back.html) .
“For a clarinet to keep pace with a big band, or with a rhythm section, takes a lot of energy,” he said in The New York Times in 1982. “It could take 20 years off your life.”
He added, “Young people say to me, ‘I didn’t know you could play modern jazz on a clarinet.’ ”
Boniface Ferdinand Leonardo DeFranco was born on Feb. 17, 1923, in Camden, N.J., and grew up in Philadelphia, one of five children. His father, Leonardo, an immigrant from Italy, lost his eyesight to an infection and eventually trained to be a piano tuner. He was also an amateur guitarist who played with a band called the Jovial Night Owls, whose members were all blind.
Mr. DeFranco’s mother, the former Louise Giordano, who worked in clerical and factory jobs, was, he recalled, frail and high-strung and was committed to a state mental hospital, where she died after 35 years. With their father struggling to make ends meet, the children were taken in by an aunt and uncle.
When Buddy was 5, his father coached him on his first instrument, the mandolin, which he played by ear, but by 8, he had switched to the clarinet and the saxophone. He continued his musical education at the Mastbaum School of Music in Philadelphia (now the Jules Mastbaum Technical/Vocational School). He graduated at 16 and was hired by Scat Davis shortly after that.
Mr. DeFranco was married three times and divorced twice. After a brief first marriage, he wed Mitchell Vanston; they had a son, Christopher, who died in 2001. In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1975, he is survived by their son, Charles.
Mr. DeFranco recorded dozens of albums; his 1958 album “Cross Country Suite” won a Grammy Award (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/g/grammy_awards/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) for its composer-arranger, Nelson Riddle. An avid experimenter with musical styles and instrumental combinations, he also collaborated with the virtuoso accordionist Tommy Gumina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7P0xS4uYRt0) in the 1960s. Through the ’80s and ’90s, Mr. DeFranco and the vibraphonist Terry Gibbs often performed together (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW3MSbXyatY) .
He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master, the country’s highest honor for jazz musicians, in 2006. But his quest to conquer the clarinet and its challenges never ceased.
“You know, this is all tricky stuff,” Mr. DeFranco told the jazz critic Howard Mandel (http://www.jazzhouse.org/library/?read=mandel19) . “Once I was doing some school clinics, and one of the great symphonic clarinet players, Daniel Bonade of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was doing another clinic in the same school. I used to pick the brains of as many clarinet players as I could, to see how they got their sound, what reeds they used, everything. So I went to hear his clinic, and at the end I sidled up and said, ‘When do you finally master the clarinet?’ And he said: ‘Master the clarinet? That’s the funniest thing I ever heard.’ ”
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Copyright (C) 2014 All rights reserved.
Jazz Promo Services
269 State Route 94 South
Warwick, Ny 10990
USA