- Dick Cavett with Oscar Peterson.

A few photographs...

- Photos of Dizzie Gillespie, Shelly Manne, and the Stan Kenton Orchestra, all from the late 1940s, all taken by William P. Gottlieb. Found here, a site with a large number of excellent jazz photographs.

When I turn on the radio, I would like to hear something beautiful.

- Elvin Jones, 1927-2004. 

America's Chopin, 1972

- an excellent set by Bill Evans (a redundant phrase if there ever was one) with Eddie Gomez and Marty Morell, from 1972, including some interview footage. Goddamn do I wish I could turn on the set and see Bill Evans.

The best Basie

"He lighted a cigarette and tossed the empty pack into a grey-violet wastebasket. He looked at a yellow-stained radio with a phonograph annex. Then he found himself glancing at the record albums grouped in a yellow case beside the yellow-stained cabinet. "I see you go in for swing," he said. From another room she said, "Legitimate swing." ...

Dragging at the cigarette he stooped over and began going through the record albums. When he came to Basie he frowned. There was a lot of Basie. The best Basie. The same Basie he liked. There was Every Tub and Swinging the Blues and Texas Shuffle. There was John's Idea and Lester Leaps In and Out the Window. He...decided to play Texas Shuffle....He switched on the current and got the record under the needle. Texas Shuffle began to roll softly and it was very lovely. It clicked with the fact that he had a cigarette in his mouth, watching the smoke go up, and the police didn't know he was here."

- from David Goodis' tobacco-stained novel Dark Passage, 1946.

Mingus, Haynes, Monk, and Parker. From here. 

From here

- the genius of modern jazz plays Bach, from The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 3, 1957. 

photo from here. 

"Then Roach, Morrison, and I and the boy went out on to the terrasse with the panorama splendide in the late twilight and pulled up chairs around a couple of tables. The clarinetist put his feet up on his table, tilted his chair back, and announced that he was going to play "Dans l'Ambiance" - or, as he translated it, "Een de Mud." Then he lifted the clarinet to his lips and played "In the Mood"... [it] sounded better than any other music I've ever heard. The clarinet gloated over the routed Ostrogoths. The thin sound, wriggling up toward the old Tower, woke birds that had turned in for the night. M. Bertrand's son, a slight youth of eighteen, said the Germans had disapproved of jazz, regarding an interest in it as evidence of Allied sympathies, and had forbidden it to be played  in public places. The zazous, or hepcats, however, were not discouraged by this from playing at dances but, instead, amused themselves by working out musical arrangements that began as Viennese waltzes, then switched to jazz and back again before any Germans present could call  the turn. The zazous also affected le genre jazz in their clothes, the Bertrand boy said; they wore what Americans call zoot suits. There was nothing much l'Occupant could do about that."

- A.J. Liebling, Normandy Revisited, 1955.

Early Deaths of Jazz Musicians Part IV

Doug Watkins died in an automobile accident at 27 years old on February 5, 1962. Traveling from Arizona to California to meet Philly Joe Jones for a gig, he fell asleep and crashed into an oncoming truck. Strangely, Watkins was a cousin by marriage to Paul Chambers, who likewise was from Detroit, likewise played the bass, and likewise died young. Watkins was among the crop of Detroit musicians that included Milt Jackson, Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones, Donald Byrd, and Tommy Flanagan that made such an indelible and profound mark on '50s jazz. Watkins would have been the cream of any city's crop. His tone tended to be unassuming yet virile, sometimes reaching towards something beautiful or discovering someplace unforeseen. Watkins' most memorable recording might be "Saxophone Colossus", possibly the best album to come out of Prestige, in which, it might be said, his audacious poise provides a counterpoint to Rollins' tremendous ferocity of invention.

 The aptly titled "Fin de l'affaire" with Hank Mobley, Art Farmer, Horace Silver, and Art Blakey, 1957:

T. Monk's Advice

Advice from Thelonious Monk, transcribed by Steve Lacy. From here. 

Early Deaths of Jazz Musicians Part III

Paul Chambers died of tuberculosis January 4, 1969 at 33 years old.  His thoughtful, patient tone and his deep and beautiful timbre consistently surprises and delights the listener. One's surprise at the sheer amount of albums with his name on the cover is only surpassed by the realization that a majority of them are first-rate. Some of them, a surprising amount, are among the finest recordings in jazz; music that will persist, music that will endure. Here then is a small list of albums ineffably enriched by Chambers' presence:

Early Deaths of Jazz Musicians Part II

Scott La Faro died in a car crash on July 6, 1961 when he was 25 years old. The handful of albums that he made with Bill Evans and Paul Motian in the year or so before his death comprise a body of work almost unparalleled in beauty and influence in jazz history. There seems to be no live footage of this trio extant.

- From the album "Waltz for Debby", recorded June 25, 1961 with Evans and Motian.

Le Faro is at left, sitting next to Evans and Motian, sometime around their immortal live recording "Sunday at the Village Vanguard".

 A wonderful pre-trio album of La Faro's from 1958, from when La Faro was 22:

Early Deaths of Jazz Musicians Part I

Clifford Brown was killed in a car crash on June 26, 1956 when he was 25 years old.

- From 1953, with Gigi Gryce, Charlie Rouse, Percy Heath, John Lewis and Art Blakey, "Brownie Eyes"

Brown seems to me to be simultaneously the most trenchant and the most lyrical jazz trumpeter, and I think his music is some of the most beautiful jazz ever recorded.

La Paloma Azul

- The Modern Jazz Quartet with Paul Desmond, Christmas, 1971.

Le Duc

America's greatest composer was born Edward Kennedy Ellington 113 years ago today in Washington D.C. A few stories about him:

"At a White House party on Duke Ellington's birthday, President Nixon pumped Cab Calloway's hand with such special warmth that Cab assumed that the President was a fan of his. Then Nixon said, "Mr. Ellington, it's so good you're here. Happy, happy birthday. Pat and I just love your music." Cab thanked him and stepped on down the receiving line."

Part I of an 1963 interview for Swedish television:

"Duke loved the company of women, and had a number of stock lines with which he charmed them. He'd say, "I can tell that you're an angel; I can see the reflection from your halo shining on the ceiling." Or "My, but you make that dress look lovely!" When he spotted a female to whom he hadn't been introduced,he would usually say, "Whose little girl are you?" ...

Duke's band was booked on a concert with Louis Armstrong. Louis's vocalist at the time was Big Maybelle...Harold Baker said that when Duke first encountered Maybelle backstage he automatically raised his eyebrows, turned on his 1000-watt smile, and murmured, "Well! And whose little girl are you?" Maybelle snapped back indignantly in her stevedore's voice, "What the fuck you mean, whose little girl am I?" The whole band nearly died laughing as Duke graciously backpedalled and moved on to chat with someone else."

Part II:

"Paul Gonsalves, Duke's star tenor player after 1950, was a liberal user of alcohol, among other things. When a critic deplored Gonsalves's condition on the bandstand one night, Ellington defended him, claiming that Paul was a war veteran who had served in the South Pacific where he had contracted malaria. Jimmy Jones described some incidents involving Gonsalves: "Paul fell down on the stand at the Sands in Las Vegas, and he was sober as a judge that night. Just fell off his chair. He stood up and held his horn up to let everybody know he was all right. And Duke walked to the mike and said, "Isn't that amazing? This man doesn't even drink!"

- Bill Crow, Jazz Anecdotes, 1990.

A World of Piano

– Phineas Newborn, Jr., with Al McKibbon and Kenny Dennis in a superb performance from 1961. One of the finest jazz pianists and, next to Bud Powell, Bill Evans and Sonny Clark,  my own personal favorite. Like Clark, he is tragically under-recorded, and like Clark he had a rough life and died too young.