Portrait of Ella

[Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt (Milton) Jackson, and Timmie Rosenkrantz, Downbeat, New York, N.Y., ca. Sept. 1947] (LOC), a photo by The Library of Congress on Flickr.

I'm with Diz on this one.

Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Milt Jackson, and Timmie Rosenkrantz, New York, circa. Sept. 1947. Photograph by William Gottlieb for Downbeat. (From the Library of Congress archives)

Wanted: Magic Bassist

Spotted this recently on Seattle-Tacoma Craigslist Talent Gigs and had to share.

Established band with a lot of original material and more always being created. Practice in Bellevue at Evolution studios 2-3 night a week. Looking for a solid, creative bass player with his/her own unique voice to add to our music. This IS NOT a hobby band.

The right person for this band will possess a burning desire to be on the road touring, recording albums and playing in front of thousands of people every night. Someone who eats, sleeps and drinks bass would be nice.

For now though, at the local level, we need someone who can be available at a moments notice to play a show and is ready to move quickly when it comes to promotion, getting a video done (whatever is needed) and traveling out of state for a gig (most likely just the west coast for this year)

You must have a job, money, transportation, professional equipment and a vision of the future. You must be the type who never thinks he is good enough and strives to be better, always. You must be willing to work to give the best live experience for the audience that's possible. You must be able to do improvisational jamming.

We don't give a f*** what your age is. We don't give a f*** what you look like. As long as you are an honest, responsible, hard-working musician/person then that's about 40% of the battle.

The remaining 60% is the ability to express yourself through your instrument. If you happen to like guys such as John Paul Jones, Geddy Lee, Phil Lynott and Stanley Clarke then well, I think there is a good chance this will work. Really though, it doesn't matter who you are influenced by. Just be good and getting better.

We prefer to bring someone in the first time to just jam with us. No pre-listening to the music. If we like each other and think it may work we will give you a CD to learn from and we may even show you some tunes while we are jamming. Who knows what may happen. Just be flexible enough to handle it. We will book the room in one hour blocks to get a feel for the situation. If it is apparent within the first few minutes that it won't work we will kindly ask you to leave. No hard feelings. It's just business. And we expect you to do the same. If it feels good and sounds good we will jam for the whole hour.

We are a ROCK band and I like to consider it 70's rock with a heavy groove and modern sensibilities.

No slouches, f*** ups, drug addicts, narrow minds or mooches.

Thanks

No, thank you.

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Image above Air Guitar Hero by DavidDMuir.

Mel on Louis

So I'm on a Mel Torme jag. Sue me.

I'm reading his book My Singing Teachers: Reflections on Singing Popular Music (Oxford University Press, no less, 1994), which includes this anecdote about Louis Armstrong:

I got to know Louis over the years and found him to be a warmhearted, loving man. He had a great pride in himself and his accomplishments, particularly his role as unofficial goodwill ambassador from America to the world.

He had a great sense of humor, sometimes biting, sometimes self-deprecating. I remember once, when I was playing the Paramount theater in New York, he came bounding up the stairs to say hello to some musicians on the floor above my dressing room. I yelled at him: “Hey Louis, what's happening?”

He bounced back into my doorway, grinned that Chinese grin of his, and said: “White folks still in the lead.”

Next book in the stack: Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong.

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[Photo of Armstrong from 1946 by William P. Gottlieb from the Gottlieb Collection at the Library of Congress Flickr Feed.]

Crushing the Velvet Frog

A publicist dubbed Mel Torme "The Velvet Fog" sometime in the late 1940s for the singer's signature smooth style. Torme hated the nickname, but it clung to him like ivy, as the poet once said, like a slug to a garden path, like toilet paper to a shoe, like a dryer sheet to a polyester pantsuit.

Torme would later joke about his "velvet frog voice." So it's hard to tell whether some drudge toiling away deep in the bowels of Amazon.com picked up on Mel's joke (see screen capture above). Or was just being sloppy. Probably the latter (although that person did go to the trouble of adding a diacritical mark to the final vowel of "Torme" up in the title tag, even if it is pointed in the wrong direction. But I obsess, and digress.)

According to my sources at the retail behemoth, this "bug" has been noted in the system and should one day soon be corrected. But maybe it would make Mel's ghost happier to let his joke stand. He does seem to have come to terms with the moniker, later titling his 1988 autobiography It Wasn't All Velvet.

Whether the Velvet is Foggy or Froggy, “The Very Best of Mel Torme” is an amazing deal. Fifty songs by one of the greatest vocalists who ever lived (and if his autobiography is remotely accurate, boy, did he ever live), working some of the best arrangers of the 20th century, all for $6.99. Smooth, man, real smooth.

Recommended reading:
"Mel Tormé and the Marty Paich Dek-tette" by Thomas Cunniffe

(Special thanks to Queenie Sunshine for the dryer sheet simile.)

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UPDATE: The bug report was entered on 31 January. As of 8 Feb, the page is still froggy.

Russ Long Rides Again

The music of Russ Long got another public airing recently, this time in Topeka, Kan., an hour west of the pianist's home town of Kansas City, Mo. Arranged for septet by Long's long-time bandmate Gerald Spaits, the bakers dozen tunes included the pianist's most widely known, Save That Time.

Long died just over five years ago, after a long illness, but not before recording the septet arrangements for the appropriately-titled album Time To Go. Here's an interview I did with Spaits shortly after the album came out.

Or listen here:



I did my best to agitate for a performance of Time To Go as part of a Russ Long tribute for the Folly Theater's Jazz Season. Didn't happen. But it still could. And would still be fitting.

Review: Sakamoto Brings the Noise

If you find yourself in possession of Ryuichi Sakamoto’s new album Out of Noise, here’s my advice: Get on a train.

A deluxe edition of Out of Noise is being released in the US by Decca (dropping 28 September) with a companion CD, Playing the Piano, which came out last year. Playing the Piano contains a dozen solo piano versions of earlier Sakamoto compositions (“self-covers,” he calls them, including themes from The Last Emperor, Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and The Sheltering Sky) performed by Sakamoto himself. Despite a bit of banging and pounding here and there, it’s all pretty easy on the ears.

Out of Noise is another matter. The new disc also features a dozen tracks, all exploring the hazy area where noise morphs into music, and music disintegrates into noise.

All of which makes Out of Noise more of a challenge for the ear. I don’t think I helped myself much by loading both Playing the Piano and Out of Noise onto my iPod and attempting to listen to both at a go. Playing the Piano ends with Bolerish, from the soundtrack of Brian DePalma’s Femme Fatale. Out of Noise opens with hibari, a solo piano piece as peaceably formal, at first, as anything on Playing the Piano. But soon the rhythm seems to stutter and notes begin to enter the chords at odd angles. After an hour of flowing melody, I found myself in choppy waters and wanting to crawl ashore.

Out of Noise is a different experience taken on its own terms, something I discovered by chance a few weeks ago on the 7:30 train from Seattle to Portland. As we clicked through a foggy landscape of back yards and parking lots and blurring trees, I started hibari and found it transformed into a meditation exercise. Indeed, “meditation exercise” seems like the best way to describe Out of Noise, one that has the world around us as it’s object.

A few of the tracks feel formally composed. hwit and still life feature the pristine bowing of early music group Fretwork, and to stanford is another solo piano composition, but most feel more like soundscapes where human elements (guitars, voices, etc) are more likely emerge and recede. The most affecting of these, glacier, incorporates recordings of Sakamoto’s 2008 trip to Greenland with Cape Farewell’s Disko Bay climate change research expedition. Sakamoto has involved himself in ecological issues in recent years and it’s hard not to feel, especially in this piece, a painful sense of the climate we know and depend on melting away.

[Here's a video of glacier, complete with climate change factoids]

Curiously, a neighbor's barking dog or a passing truck fit into the flow of this music in a way they wouldn't in a Haydn symphony or even a Philip Glass arpeggio fest. (The first time through firewater I had to pause it to make sure that the barking I heard was indeed the cocker spaniel down the street. Later, I almost missed the pooch.)

It’s inspiring to see a master like Sakamoto continue to stretch himself with new challenges and new collaborators like Christian Fennesz, Keigo Oyamada, multi-instrumentalist Skuli Sverrisson. That said, Sakamoto the composer, Sakamoto the ordering intelligence, is who emerges through all the noise.

Not everything works, at least for me. The track in the red includes samples of human voices--most prominently an older black man’s saying things like, “I just feel like, you know...” and “...a little lost, but...” against a gently pulsing background of ambient noise and a keyboard. Sadly, the intent here is too obvious and isn’t taken far enough. It’s hard not to hear an echo of Primitive Radio Gods’ more overt Phone Booth. Likewise, the Reichian jibber jabber of composition 0919, which closes the album, sounds like something one robot would create to annoy another robot and made me want to break plates, and not in the happy Greek way. Strange too, that minimalism should feel like such a throwback at this point.

It’s also inspiring to see Sakamoto sticking to the album concept for Out of Noise, with the separate pieces arranged deliberately and flowing on a set course. It’s inspiring to see any artist do that, although it also feels quixotic to do so in the track-skipping musical landscape we live in. Yet another climate to be saved.

TNLD Podcast 003: Stan Kessler of The Sons of Brasil

The Sons of Brasil have been bringing the bossa (and samba and other styles of Brazilian music) to audiences in Kansas City for almost 20 years. So who cares if none of them are Brazilian?

The Sons of Brasil released While You Were Out, their second CD in 2009. I talked with one of the founding Sons, trumpeter/composer Stan Kessler, about the group's love of Brazilian music, how they got started, and how the group's dynamic has evolved over the years.

Huge tip o' the TNLD hat to Stan Kessler.

Listen:



Download TNLD podcast 003 [right-click, save-as]

Cuts featured in this podcast are:

• Joao (Kessler)
• Bala Com Bala (Bosco, arranged by Kessler)
• Salvador (Kessler)

The Sons of Brasil are:

Stanton Kessler - Trumpet/Flugelhorn
Danny Embrey - Guitars
Roger Wilder - Piano/Synthesizer
Greg Whitfield - Bass
Doug Auwarter - Drums/Percussion
Gary Helm - Percussion
With Luiz Orsano - Percussion

I would love to hear any feedback you have. Leave it in the comments or email it to lowdown@newlowdown.com.

Finally, a loudly hollered thank you to Jake Blanton for our theme music. Jake, wherever you are, you are awesome (but you already knew that).

A Jazzman's Jazzman

From the "Merely the Mockumentary" Department:



Gotta respect a man who takes care of his shoes. Gotta give it up to anyone with the patience for stop-motion animation. Premieres at Seattle's Fremont Abbey on Friday, September 10, 2010

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Tip: PJ at Blog Supremo.

Zubatto Syndicate Passes the Hat

I caught the Zubatto Syndicate's premier last fall at Seattle's Town Hall. The group includes some of the city's top jazz cats in a delightfully reed-heavy mix. (How can you not love a band with a bassoon?)

They're getting ready to record their first studio sessions and could use your help. See below for details. [Full disclosure: I'm a backer, yes I am.]

The Gottlieb Jazz Photo Collection on Flickr

Stumbled upon a treasure trove the other day. According to the Library of Congress Flickr stream, "In accordance with the wishes of William Gottlieb, the photographs in this collection entered into the public domain on February 16, 2010." Well, hallelujah.

Gottlieb covered the jazz scene in New York for Downbeat from 1938-48, when jazz was king. Many of his subjects have since become icons of American culture: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and that skinny Sinatra kid. One of my favorites of this first batch is a shot of a very young Miles Davis brooding in the background while Coleman Hawkins takes a solo.

The first 200 or so are now up, with more to come every month until all 1600 are online. Here's a slide show link to the collection:



Or you can go here to see for yourself. Either way, it will be time well spent.

For the birds

By David Ocker (Tip: Andrew at J:TMOU)

OK, Go ahead and embed

Hadn't intended this to become an OK Go fansite, but oh well. When I got wind of this last week, two days after they'd posted it, there had already been millions of views. And why the hell not?

Now, apart from the fun of the Rube Goldberg mechanism involved, the most significant to note about this video is that it's embedded in this post. As noted in the post about the marching band video for this song, the group's label (EMI) had forbid them from making their videos embeddable (a fun word to say over and over and over). Why? Because YouTube has yet to figure out a way to track embedded videos and EMI wanted to make sure it was squeezing all the sugar they could out of Google (YouTube's parent). The fact that fewer people would see it or write about it or eventually buy it apparently didn't occur to them.

All if took to change EMI's hivemind, apparently, was the screeching of millions fans and an op-ed in the NYTimes by frontman Damian Kulash. Maybe we should turn these kids loose on the healthcare debate.

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Update: OK Go leaves EMI 3/10/2010.

Also: NPR is streaming a pair of tracks from the new album (and has been since January).

Got it covered

She also makes a heck of a floor lamp.
(Add your own caption in the comments.)

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I've been enjoying the antics over at Crap Jazz Covers since getting wind of them a few weeks ago (tip: Uno Blog Supremo). So when I happened across the cover above today on Amazon, it occurred to me to add them to the blogroll. Other recent additions, both tellingly from my new home in the Northwest):

One Working Musician - News and views from tireless trumpeter and jazz entrepreneur Jason Parker. Yeah, Seattle!

Jazz: The Music of Unemployment - Provocative thoughts on musical and cultural intersections from Industrial Jazz Group's Andrew Durkin. Yeah, PDX!

Dogwalk audio: Woodpecker streetlight

A minute of your time, please (literally):

2010: This Too Shall Pass

Where does the time go, he asked rhetorically. Belated New Years greeting, TNLD faithful.

We kick off another year of sporadic posting with something new from TNLD favorites OK Go. (Who told you this was a jazz blog?) Like most of their videos, it's a tasty slice of joy.

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass from OK Go on Vimeo.

Recommended reading (before or after viewing, because it's your choice) is this fascinating um, essay by lead singer Damien on why fans can no longer embed the group's YouTube videos.

We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper.

OK, 2010, here we go!

Show: Sachal Vasandani at Jazz Alley

Is it just me, or does referring to someone as a "crooner" feel like a putdown? Come to think of it, it probably is me.

Back in the college, I auditioned for a spot in the chapel choir. As a nervous sophomore transfer student  - and an admittedly poor site reader - my approach was on the tentative side, rather than the hammy imitation of the Bugs Bunny opera singer I'd learned to do in high school. This started as a gag to do for my friends; much to my surprise, choir teachers loved it. "Why don't you sing like that all the time?" one asked me. Anyway, after I'd stumbled through my Chapel Choir audition piece, the director muttered something about me being "more of a crooner." It was something in the tone of his voice, but I found myself wanting to leap across the room and choke him.

This memory resurfaced the other night at singer Sachal Vasandani's show at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley.The man introducing Vasandani described him as "a great crooner. These words were followed by an audible gulp, after which he hastily added, "...uh, and a first-rate jazz artist." It was the kind of recovery you might hear from a guy on a blind date who announces that Ugg boots are the least flattering footwear ever foisted on the feminine gender, only to look down and see a pair of chestnut brown Sundance IIs, the toe of one tapping ominously. "But they look great on you! Now what's taking so long with that table?"

Or anyway that's how I heard it.

The good news for the capacity crowd that greeted Vasandani - emerging from the back of the house, all movie-star handsome in a sharp suit and tie, gliding to the stage under the adoring gaze of a follow spot - is that the he is, in fact, both a great crooner and a first-rate jazz artist. He can also belt it out when called upon, and scat with smooth assurance.

He's also a gifted songwriter, capable of both adding to and re-interpreting the traditional jazz repertoire. A case in point is "Escape," a new introduction to "There's a Small Hotel." "Escape" not only stands on it’s own, while also allowing you to appreciate the original from a new angle.

Vasandani is touring in support of a new release, "We Move," on the excellent Mack Avenue label. The CD's production is quite lush, at times too much so for me. (I wouldn't be surprised to hear the title track turn up in the background of Grey's Anatomy.) On stage with his excellent young trio (Jeb Patton, piano; David Wong, bass; and the occasionally too loud Jeremy Brown, drums), Vasandani seemed to be having a high old time and exuded the charm and ease of classic Bobby Darin. The droning influence of Vasandani's fellow Chicagoan Kurt Elling, in evidence on both "We Move" and Vasandani's debut recording "Eyes Wide Open" was all but absent. To me that's a good thing.

On the cusp of his 30s, Vasandani is still working out who he is as an artist, incorporating influences as diverse as Sinatra, Jon Hendricks, Joni Mitchell, and Sade. The mix isn't perfectly distilled yet, but he and the trio consistently served up the good turtle soup. Mic dynamics proved to be an issue throughout the night, but I’m not sure whether this was his problem or something that should have been worked out during the sound check. Whichever, it was definitely a distraction.

The crowd (which included a lot of the under-30s everybody in the jazz intelligentsia is so exercised about) seemed to eat it up, but at the end of the set there was no encore. This struck me as odd, but then Seattle-ites are notorious for their polite equanimity.

Where ever the road leads him, Vasandani merits watching. As we passed by the autograph line on the way out, a swoony woman in her 40s standing next to the singer called out to her mortified teenage daughter, “Get over here with that camera and take my picture!”

A certain Canadian crooner whose name rhymes with “poo-flay” would do well to take note.

(Image pilfered from Mack Avenue Records.)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Show: Sachal Vasandani at Jazz Alley - Seattle - November 11, 2009

Set list:
That Old Black Magic
Escape/There's a Small Hotel
Don't Worry About Me
Please Mr. Ogilvy
Medley: Royal Eyes/There Are Such Things/My Dear
All The Way
Ring Road (Back to You)
Monk's Dream
Every Ocean, Every Star
We Move
No More

Viddie: September

Earlier this month I realized that I'd let the entire month of September go by without blasting Earth Wind and Fire's "September," which is just wrong (and a sign of how little I listen to commercial radio these days, even in the car). So there was something cosmically satisfying in the fact that a college friend of mine posted the video above on Facebook.

Who is Pamplamoose? Hell if I know. The Bay Area twosome have a dedicated following on the hipsternet and have posted similarly delightful light-handed covers (Single Ladies, Mrs. Robinson, for example) on their YouTube channel, along with songs of their own. On his music blog Pampelmoose, Dave Allen, the bass player for Gang of Four says:

Artists like Pomplamoose who embrace the social web are not a subset of savvy marketers, they are disrupters and re-purposers who break the record companies business models. This is a good thing.

All of which seems a little ponderous to contemplate on a drizzly Friday. One thing I'm sure of is that one mark of good cover is that it reminds you of what was great about the original (like when EWF covered the Beatle's "Got To Get You Into My Life," for example). And adding a dancing granny never hurts.

So enjoy the video. And while you're at it, enjoy the original.

TNLD Podcast 02: Rhythm and Ribs Flashback

Drum roll, please…

The New Low Down podcast is back!

This time around we take a trip back in time to the 2007 Rhythm and Ribs Festival in Kansas City, MO. Why? Because I was there, microphone in hand.

And why now? Sadly, the 2009 edition of the festival was canceled. But TNLD wishes the organizers the best of luck in 2010.

Also in this podcast, new summer mood music from The Sons of Brazil, Kansas City's longest-gigging Brazilian jazz combo. Their sunny 2009 release While You Were Out is available for order from Stan Kessler's website.

Listen now:



Download the podcast | Subscribe on iTunes

You'll also be interested to know that my friend Michael Byars, who appears in this podcast, has a weekly new music podcast of his own called The Mailbox. TNLD says check it out!

Notes on TNLD Podcast
I plan to get these podcasts onto a regular schedule, which will take a little doing. The logistics of equipment and editing and feeds and so on, have proven to be a big time suck, particularly when I've got paying work to do. So while that's all getting sorted out, I thank you for your patience.

Comments please
I would love to hear any feedback you have, either in the comments or emailed to lowdown@newlowdown.com.

Finally a loudly hollered thank you to Jake Blanton for our theme music. Jake, wherever you are, you are awesome (but you already know that).

New: Ben Allison's "Think Free"

"Think Free," bassist/composer Ben Allison's next album drops officially on October 13, but the whole shebang is available for download and/or streaming on the Palmetto Records site.

[Palmetto's embeddable player doesn't seem to work on my browser, but here goes:]


The album is the third in a cycle that started with "Cowboy Justice" (2006) and "Little Things Run The World" (2008). "I wanted a band that rocked," Allison says, and he clearly got his wish. The first two albums featured a fusion (note the lower-case f) of the rock and jazz idioms, marked by the pairing of Steve Cardenas's guitar with Ron Horton's trumpet over the rhythm section. Think Free continues the theme with Shane Endsley replacing Horton, but Allison ups the ante by adding violinist Jenny Scheinman to the mix. It's a brilliant choice.

The first two albums were direct, often angry responses to the George W. Bush era (with titles like "Tricky Dick" and "Man Sized Safe," Allison didn't exactly qualify as a Bush Ranger). Think Free carries a lot of the same rage, but it seems to be resolving into something more hopeful. By the time you reach "Green Al," the final track, you get the sense that things may be looking up. Let's hope.

New: Ghosty's "A Mystic's Robe" EP

Just finished listening to Ghosty's new three-song EP "A Mystic's Robe."

TNLD verdict: two thumbs up (one for each hand, see?). It's everything you depend on from the Kansas City band: Peerless pop construction, beautiful harmonies and tasty lyrics. My only complaint would be that there isn't more.

It's available for streaming or download now. Do yourself a favor and lend your ears.

Related post: TNLD interview with Ghosty's Andrew Connor