Jazz Interviews from the Charlie Rose Show

The Charlie Rose Show has taken a bold step and put many of their interviews online, both for viewing and embedding. Thankfully, he has interviewed many jazz greats over the course of his show history, so I decided to collate them all one one page for your viewing pleasure. Visit the Charlie Rose Jazz Interviews section of our Suggested Viewing section to view the entire selection, all embedded on one page. To get you started, here is the great tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson:

Happy 82nd Birthday, Oscar Peterson

Thankfully, jazz piano legend Oscar Peterson is still with us. My dad used to play The Trio: Live in Chicago in his car when I was a kid -- I got so addicted to that version of "Chicago", going through so many different sections and tempos, I think it was subliminally pushing me to be a piano player. It certainly stuck for a while, but J.J Johnson, Live at the Opera House, won me over (Oscar was on that one, too) and by seventeen I was more a trombone player than piano player. I got to see Oscar with Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, and Jeff Hamilton at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1991, and despite a recent stroke still lived up to my expectations. Still taking care of business after 80 years, all I can say is: Long Live Oscar Peterson!

Collecting Dizzy Gillespie Arrangements

For many years I've longed to play the original arrangements of Dizzy Gillespie's groups from the 1940's, but they are next to impossible to find. A few big bands here and there have transcriptions, but even fewer seem to have the actual charts. Thanks to the miracle of eBay, I've started to find some of them, namely in the form of these charts published in the late 1940's by J. J. Robbins under the title of "Dizzy Gillespie Series for Small Orchestra". Arranged by the great Gil Fuller (who wrote many of the original classics for Dizzy's big band) for trumpet, trombone, two altos, tenor and rhythm, they are all basically small group versions of the original big band charts, Then I discovered another series from the same era, "Dizzy Gillespie Series for Dance Band," (or "Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra Series" if you go by the back cover - some confusion there on the publisher's side) which are, in fact, the same arrangements on the recordings. I managed to acquire "Minor Walk," a lesser known tune from the book, but having read it with a few bands I can state it is authentic to the recordings. I still have quite a few to track down, so if you've got anything like this, I'd be happy to trade copies for copies. The ones I've scanned here I actually own - six charts from the Small Orchestra series and one from the Dance Orchestra series. Again -- these are tough to come by, even on eBay, so if you would like to get these and have some of the ones I don't, please contact me here via comments. I'd also be willing to trade them for some equally rare and special music, too. Here are the cover scans, plus the master checklist from the back of "Minor Walk":

www.flickr.com More of RedRaspus' photos tagged with dizzy

Happy Birthday, Benny Carter (1907-2003)

I've always been a huge fan of Benny Carter, both as a multi-instrumentalist and as a composer and arranger. Oddly enough, I got to know his writing best when I picked up a DVD with a number of jazz animated shorts made by John and Faith Hubley, where Benny Carter had written much of the music. This DVD is called "Art and Jazz in Animation" and should still be available. Sadly, Benny Carter is no longer with us, and he would have been one-hundred years old today. Here are some great videos to celebrate his centennial:

Red Raspus Videos on YouTube and PodShow

As is the case with most web junkies, I've spent my fair share of time on YouTube.  Over the past few months, I've been collecting tons of jazz videos, as well as other things that spark my imagination, but I've had more fun making some videos of live music around Seattle. As I'm also getting my podcast rolling again, I've moved my hosting to the home of the Podfather, PodShow, which is a social site for podcasting and videos, so I'm also posting my stuff there, as well. I'm most proud of the video promo I made for the Seatte Jazzscene podcast:

And so, for your viewing pleasure, are links to the Red Raspus video page at YouTube, and to the Red Raspus Video page at PodShow. I'll be posting updates here to those pages, so check those sites or this blog for new videos!

Happy Birthday, Rahsaan Roland Kirk (1936-1977)

I'll never forget discovering Roland Kirk's Domino in my dad's record collection - finding yet another amazingly unique jazz voice.  I can't remeber if I knew about the whole mulit-instrumental thing or not, but when I got to the track called "Three in One Without the Oil," I knew I was hooked. I got Volunteered Slavery soon thereafter, and I remember spending many drives in my high school years to jazz festivals blasting his chants, manzello, and saxophones. He died far too young at 41, having been paralyzed on half his body from a crippling stroke a year earlier. As usual on birthdays, here are fifteen videos of the great Rahsaan Roland Kirk:

Analogies to Jazz in the News

I always find it interesting when people compare things to jazz music.  I thought I would post a few of the more interesting ones of late that I've found in the news.

From Boston.com, and an article about online poetry contests:

For the past year, QuickMuse has been asking pairs of well-known writers to create poems on a shared topic and posting the results online.

"It's not a competition like a fight to the death," with clear winners and losers, QuickMuse founder Ken Gordon says. "It's a competition like a bunch of jazz musicians improvising together and playing different solos." Gordon calls these contests "agons," an ode to the ancient Greek poetry competitions of the same name.

Ok - I guess I like his saying that there are no winners and losers in jazz... What about this comment by actor Roger Bart regarding Broadway musicals on Pop Matters:

RB: A musical can be so exhilarating ... like playing very sophisticated, complex jazz. When we had a really good audience for “The Producers,” it was me, Nathan (Lane), Matthew (Broderick) and Gary (Beach) up there like a jazz band. You get into melody, phrasing, beats...

Hmm - not so sure about this one. Certainly similar to a well-oiled big band like Basie, Kenton, or Herman. Finally, an article relating jazz music to faith, from Christianity Today:

Like jazz music, which, as Miller observes at the beginning of his book, sometimes doesn't resolve, faith in God is full of unresolved questions. It's this offbeat metaphor of the Christian life that drives the personal essays in Blue Like Jazz. 

Well, I like that one!  It acknowledges a key piece of information about jazz music -- it "sometimes doesn't resolve"! I tire of being told, both as a musician and educator, what jazz music is and isn't, and for me and my money, jazz music doesn't HAVE to resolve -- it's just nice for the listeners every once in a while to throw a bone out there! All kidding aside, I think it is that specific choice of how and when to resolve that truly helps to make jazz music unique, in that it puts that power in the hands of the individual at all times, regardless of the style or genre you are playing.

I'm always keeping an eye out for these kinds of things, so I'll keep you updated when I find some more. If YOU find something you like, please let me know in the comments!

Update on 2007-08-07 21:50 by David Marriott, Jr.

Somehow I forgot this one -- comparing comedian Carlos Mencia to a jazz musician from the Flint Journal:

Mencia said he spent a long time perfecting the mechanics of his comedy, not surprising since he once studied electrical engineering at Cal State University. Mencia is more like a jazz musician in concert, rarely performing the same show twice. He prefers to say what's on his mind extemporaneously, referring to his performances as a "dialogue with the audience."

 Yes! Great improvised stand-up comendy IS like jazz music! Maybe comedians operate much more on the "theme and variation" concept, but I love the idea of "dialogue with audience" as this seems much more about what jazz is: musical dialogue with a present and hopefully interactive and involved audience.

New Book on Louis Armstrong and Hot Five and Seven Recordings

Courtesy of Jazz News, there is a new book out documenting the famous Louis Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens recordings.  Written by Gene H. Anderson, and edited by Michael J. Budds (who wrote one of my favorite jazz books, Jazz in the Sixties), The Original Hot Five Recordings of Louis Armstrong seems to follow the same vein as Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue and A Love Supreme books: documenting the before, during, and after of these famous recordings, with most of the detail paid to the recordings and recording sessions themselves. My copy is on it's way from Amazon presently...

No One Sets Out to Be a Smooth Jazz Musician

This came to me via e-mail the other day from keyboardist extraordinaire Ryan Burns -- enjoy this bit of writing from The Onion!

No One Sets Out To Be A Smooth Jazz Musician

Look, I'm not going to lie to you. Nobody ever just woke up one morning and thought, "Of all the things possible in the vastness that is life,...

Blue Note Jazz Club Joins the Blogosphere

The Blue Note, one of New York's premier jazz clubs, has started blogging with the Blue Note Blog New York, and they've used Google's free Blogger service to do it.  I did a little looking around, and didn't find any other big jazz clubs that have blogs. Village Vanguard? No. Birdland? No. Smoke? No. Smalls? No. Jazz Gallery? No.  What about here in Seattle? Jazz Alley? No. Tula's? No. New Orleans? No. Is The Blue Note "first" to the blogosphere? Do you know of any other jazz clubs with blogs?  We'd love to hear from you! Let us know!