Mark Stryker

Nice tribute David. I'd encourage everyone to check out the 1957 bootleg of "Tadd's Delight," which precedes his formal debut on record with the Montgomery Bros. He's really sounding like Clifford Brown, but with lots of personality, authority and poise. He would have been 18 or 19 at the time. Also interesting to hear James Spaulding at this point playing tenor rather than alto and not really making all the changes. Of course, you could argue that even later he never really made all the changes either ... The rest of the cats are Al Plank, Larry Ridley, Paul Parker. The lead-in discussion starts at about the 36-minute mark. You can move the cursor forward to get to it directly. Baker mentions in passing that Freddie studied briefly with a trumpet player in the Indianapolis Symphony. Maybe that's commong knowledge in the trumpet world but I had not heard that before. Would be interesting to know who that was and what he did for Freddie, because while Freddie must have had natural chops to play the way he does, and while he certainly practiced like crazy I wonder the degree to which his natural gifts were focused early on with fundamentals. Technique like that can't all be just a freak of nature.

On the "there's way more good music out there than it's humanly possible to hear" front: I haven't heard a single one of your picks, Mark! I sympathize. As much as I'm priviledged to hear a ton of recorded music, there's just so much that passes by unheard. Case in point: Here's a link to the Village Voice Jazz Poll results published this week in which 79 critics voted. If you follow the related content links, you can look at every single individual ballot. Talk about more music than is humanly possible to hear ... but the value of such lists is that it does put stuff on the radar. (In the Voice poll, we were asked to vote for three reissues and best debut, vocal and Latin jazz albums too. One detail about my choices: For the Free Press, I had a hometown-bias change-of-heart and subbed in Detroit-native Bennie Maupin's "Early Reflections" for John McNeil/Bill McHenry's "Rediscovery." ) http://www.villagevoice.com/2008-12-31/mus...zz-poll-winners

I published a top 10 list in yesterday's Detroit Free Press. Here's a link: http://freep.com/article/20081228/ENT04/812280321/1039/ent04

Kenn and Barry were very close; Kenn, like nearly every Detroit musician of his generation, more or less came up under Barry's tutelage. There were some lovely thoughts from Barry in the program for the funeral service today in which Barry said that he had talked to Kenn on the phone in the days before he died and when Kenn was too weak to talk he just had him keep the phone to his ear while he played "I'll Keep Loving You" on the piano for him. In a curious twist of fate, Barry is also playing a concert later this afternoon -- for the last 21 years he has played an annual fundraiser at a downtown Unitarian church at the end of December. So, it's an emotional day for the scene here. Re: Johnny O'Neal. He still lives here when not traveling, though he rarely plays around town. Last time I heard him he was ebullient as ever.

sorry, my typo - fixed above. no relation to Strata East, then? Don't know the exact details but it was to be a partnership of sorts. Strata was first and Strata East was to be the East Coast leg of the organization. It never panned out though they kept the Strata-East name. The Detroit folks would know better than me but Cox and company apparently put on a lot of concerts, bringing out all the heavyweights from New York in the late '60s early '70s. I believe Tolliver and Music Inc performed there and that was the start of this. A shame about Kenny. I spoke to him a few times and he was a really sweet and helpful guy. The band of course was incredible but we've talked about this before I believe...... I have the Strata LP of the group, looser and more electric than the Blue Notes.... Kenn told me the story of Strata over the years but details of how the relationship with Strata-East developed still remain slippery, and I hope to sort some of this out with Charles Moore at some point. But my understanding is, as David says, Strata in Detroit was created first and Strata-East was to be a kind of independent satellite, though it became the more visible and active label with bigger names, distribution, etc. Kenn told me that the official dates for Strata were 1967-76. (Strata-East dates back to 1971 and, again to my understanding, grew out of what Tolliver and company saw when they visited Detroit, but I would want to ask Tolliver or Cowell how this went down.) Strata did put on an extraordinary series of concerts over a lot of years. Kenn told me that some of the groups/individuals included Ornette Coleman, early Weather Report, Jackie McLean, Chick Corea (I have in my mind this gig was with Roy Haynes or Tony Williams, but it might have been the first RTF), Joe Henderson, etc. It's not clear to me if there's a documented list somewhere, but I hope to get a more definitive picture of it all at some point.

I was on vacation last week when this awful news came down and wasn't able to write for the paper until today. Here's a link to an obituary/remembrance. I loved Kenn. We first met, by the way, years before I moved to Detroit. My wife and I had driven from South Bend to Chicago in 1993 to hear Jackie McLean live for the first time in Chicago at the Showcase -- it was his first gig in the midwest in forever. We arrived way early because I was so jazzed, but we were second in line. Kenn was first. http://www.freep.com/article/20081223/ENT04/81223006

I have greater sympathy for Ethan's point here. It's about control of the material and context. There is a difference between having the ability to play time at the highest level but choosing to play clunky for a musical/expressive reason and simply playing clunky/super loose because that's how you play -- or leaving the impression of doubt because it's just not solid enough or clear enough that you're actually making the choice to play "amateurish." And context matters. Like McCall's approach to swing might (or might not) sound more convincing to some on the "In The Tradition" records he made with Arthur Blythe than on "Air Lore" because the specifics/demands of the style and material allow greater leeway or flexibility for certain kinds of interpretation. But the question is: how do you as an artist convince me that your authority over your materials is so great that I'll believe you and then follow you when you start to fuck around with the rules and be delighted, intrigued, wowed and emotionally moved by the authority and creativity with which you break with convention. It's like the issue of Braxton playing changes. I love Braxton's best music -- the Mosaic box was my top reissue of the year and the implications of his ability to navigate between notated and improvised systems, building in such an ideologically open way on free jazz, post-Webern European classical influence and everything else, from Sousa and Ives to Bird/Tristano, Cage and minimalism, is truly profound -- but I think he sounds terrible playing standards, because somehwere between his stiff approach to time and his idiosyncratic approach to harmony it all just sounds random. I don't trust it. I get Larry's point that the ambiguity toward the past is built into the AACM approach, but the line that Ethan is talking about here is real and it's entirely possible to slip over it in some contexts (Air Lore) and not in others (Open Air Strut). A couple of things: In part I was reacting to what seemed to me to be the context of EI's own doubt/uneasiness about his own, in his view, culturally cloistered and terribly "white" upbringing (FWIW, and to the degree that this involves EI's view of WM artistic stature and role, I'd say that EI stands somewhere in a very long line of guys who are WM's age or younger who are more interesting jazz musicians than WM is -- not that there has only been one WM; I'm thinking more of the music of WM since he became a professional role-model who touches little kids from "West Chicago" (he means from the West Side of Chicago) on the head and tells them The Truth. Next, I was reacting to the clip from "Air Lore" that EI attached. It's from a performance I've know since it came out, and I've never had a "problem" with it for a minute. I'm not saying I'm right or EI is wrong about that, just that when I encountered in its original context, it worked for me and still does. By contrast -- yes, I'm among the ones that can't take Braxton on standards by and large. But I think it may be a mistake to put so much emphasis on "trust" and "doubt" in what I sense may be a "Are these guys, or is Braxton in particular, conning me/us?" framework. In particular, I'd say that there's a fairly simple, useful answer to this: "But the question is: how do you as an artist convince me that your authority over your materials is so great that I'll believe you and then follow you when you start to fuck around with the rules and be delighted, intrigued, wowed and emotionally moved by the authority and creativity with which you break with convention." First, that the "how do you ... convince me that your authority over your materials is so great that I'll believe you" stance sounds rather judicial, as in black robes and white wigs and gavels. Second, my experience has always been that when I'm convinced by a work or act of art, I'm convinced pretty much right away by some form of the pleasure principle. If I'm not convinced like that, if I'm not interested in and of myself, no exercise of/appeal to "authority over materials" is going to mean much. The question of whether I as an individual have enough good sense and experience/context for my particular responses to mean much to anyone else always remains open of course, and I'm certainly willing to learning more about what I think I already know and what I don't know. But in this art in particular, after spending 55 out of 66 years with it, I think I'm a reasonable version of the proverbial canary in the coal mine -- in part because I believe that (like that canary) I'm not predisposed to chirp or keel over for reasons other than the actual quality of the atmosphere. BTW, I'm not saying that you are that way, Mark, but I do feel that EI shows signs that under certain kinds of stress, he may be. Good points, Larry. Didn't mean to evoke wigs and gavels and all that -- though I would suggest that, by and large, this board is a rather judgmental group, yes? More seriously, I think when I listen I go with the pleasure principle first too. If I'm pleased, that's a byproduct of the artist's command and conviction and my readiness to receive the message. If I'm not pleased, then something has gone wrong either with the artist's intent or command or my ability or willingness to perceive. That's when the analysis kicks in. Why is this music working for me or why not? I don't think I frame the issue completely as a question of whether I'm being conned or do so in a fashion more than is healthy, but it probably factors in my mix at some level. I understand the danger. Also, there's no question that's always been an issue for a lot of musicians -- "I think they're jiving, baby" was Roy Eldridge's comment on Ornette -- who have an attitude and relationship toward craftsmanship and the technical and musical knowledge demands of their preferred style that can make it hard for them not to hear music outside that style through the trust/doubt/con prisim. Too much of that way of thinking can cut you off from a lot of great art. .

I agree with the notion of the transformation being so convincing that it wipes away other frames of reference. However, the rub (or at least one rub) is the context. "King Porter Stomp" establishes one frame of reference and "Naima" establishes another, so the standard by which we judge how convincing the transformation is can be variable depending on the material and setting. It's slippery. I have mixed emotions about Blythe's "In the Tradition" Columbia LP with Cowell, Hopkins, McCall; I like some things but still have reservations about how McCall-Hopkins are dealing with the time, groove and form. But when I heard that band live at the Vanguard in the spring of 1982 and I didn't have any reservations at all, because in a club, with the air moving in the room, it was simply overwhelmingly great and the fact that time some spots was so loose it slipped into sloppy was simply irrelevant to the imagination on display and the emotional impact of the music. 'Course I was also stoned at the time, so a few dropped eighth notes become less crucial under those circumstances too ...

I have greater sympathy for Ethan's point here. It's about control of the material and context. There is a difference between having the ability to play time at the highest level but choosing to play clunky for a musical/expressive reason and simply playing clunky/super loose because that's how you play -- or leaving the impression of doubt because it's just not solid enough or clear enough that you're actually making the choice to play "amateurish." And context matters. Like McCall's approach to swing might (or might not) sound more convincing to some on the "In The Tradition" records he made with Arthur Blythe than on "Air Lore" because the specifics/demands of the style and material allow greater leeway or flexibility for certain kinds of interpretation. But the question is: how do you as an artist convince me that your authority over your materials is so great that I'll believe you and then follow you when you start to fuck around with the rules and be delighted, intrigued, wowed and emotionally moved by the authority and creativity with which you break with convention. It's like the issue of Braxton playing changes. I love Braxton's best music -- the Mosaic box was my top reissue of the year and the implications of his ability to navigate between notated and improvised systems, building in such an ideologically open way on free jazz, post-Webern European classical influence and everything else, from Sousa and Ives to Bird/Tristano, Cage and minimalism, is truly profound -- but I think he sounds terrible playing standards, because somehwere between his stiff approach to time and his idiosyncratic approach to harmony it all just sounds random and, for me, doesn't swing. I don't trust it. I get Larry's point that the ambiguity toward the past is built into the AACM approach, but the line that Ethan is talking about here is real and it's entirely possible to slip over it in some contexts (Air Lore) and not in others (Open Air Strut).

The simple answer to what happened to James Newton is that his career took a left turn into academia in the early 1990s, when he started teaching at the Univ. of Calif at Irvine and focused his attention on (more or less) classical composition. There's a very interesting recording on New World that documents these activities, "As The Sound of Many Waters," which came out in 2000. I'm not sure where/if he's still teaching. His website seems to indicate that his last academic job was at Cal Intitute of the Arts-LA and ended in 2006. Nor do I know how the impact of the suit. I've lost track of him. But FWIW, I reviewed that New World CD back in 2000. Here's what I said: In case you were wondering whatever happened to flutist James Newton (b. 1953), one of the most compelling left-of-the-mainstream instrumentalists to emerge in jazz in the late '70s, here is the album to get you up to speed. It turns out that about a decade ago, he quietly traded a life in the maelstrom of vanguard improvised music for the relative serenity of the academy, where his focus has become primarily composition and the intriguingintersection of the experimental jazz tradition and contemporary classical music. Not that life at the University of California-Irvine has dulled Newton's creative fire. The music here -- including pieces for solo flute, solo violin and small combinations of winds, strings, percussion and soprano -- encompasses unusually diverse compositional strategies, though almost everything pulsates with energy, surprise and the kind of clarity and craft that enhances the emotional thrust of the music rather than dulling it. The 14-minute title track is a tour de force solo performance by Newton. There are brilliantly improvised passages in which glissandos and multiphonics (playing more than one note at a time by singing through the instrument and false fingerings) add monumental weight to the cavernous vocal sound of his tone. His quick reflexes and the freedom of his phrasing suggest his jazz background, but there is also a fleeting yet telling quote from Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta." "Violet" for flute, clarinet, cello, piano and two marimbas is a highly rhythmic work reflecting African roots music but transformed by the imagination of a Western composer too smart to merely go slumming in the music of another culture. The layered polyrhythms, repeating cells, brief but memorable melodic gestures and the luminous tonal colors all suggest, for those looking for a classical reference, the music of Olly Wilson. But Newton doesn't sound like anyone but himself.

Tayor is a maverick. He graduated with honors from Harvard with a degree in Math. He won the bronze medalist at the Van Cliburn competition in 1993 when he was in his early 20s. He played the Goldberg Variations at the competion (highly unusual repertory choice) and it's clear that the reason he didn't win that year was because he didn't fit the standard competition pianist mold. Since then he's built a teaching and performing career on his own model -- he's not at a big conversatory but at the University of Wisconsin (nothing against UW; I'm just saying), he's written scholarly articles on philosophy and instead of doing standard rep with big orchestras he focuses on recitals and modern and contemporary repertoire, from Ligeti and Messiaen to Bolcom (though he still plays Liszt, Beethoven, etc.) Generally, I think he's brilliant, though I found a program of standard repertoire he played in metro Detroit earlier this fall a mixed bag interpretively. Here's the review. There were two concerts, one with a quartet that tackled Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" and the second a solo recital. Also, though it's not mentioned in the review because of space, it's almost surely the case that the more conventional program he played was influenced by the presenter, which is notoriously backward when it comes to contemporary music -- I've bashed them in print many times over this. http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article...ENT04/810060366

A big strong HELL YEAH on that one! Thanks for the heads-up. I'll add this to my list. I looked at it on Amazon a moment ago and there's no real info. I don't recognize the cats. Also, where's the Cellar?

As good as some of the recordings are, I'd encourage anybody to try and hear McPherson live -- the melodic ecstasy and rapture of his phrasing and the luminosity of his sound really make their best impact when you can feel the air move in the room. He doesn't play licks -- though he's totally coming from the vocabularly of Bird and Bud (and his mentor, Barry Harris). To me, Charles' best stuff is rooted in the go-for-broke spirit you hear on certain live Bird recordings and the elaborate melodic and rhythmic drapery of Bird on "Just Friends." Re: "The Child of Death" I did a piece about Charles a few years ago in which the premise was that I played various recordings -- most of which he played on -- to get his reaction and use it as a jumping off point to talk about his life and music. One of the pieces was "The Chill of Death." Here's that section of the story: McPherson joined bassist-composer Charles Mingus in 1960 shortly after arriving in New York. He and Hillyer were recommended to Mingus by former Detroiter Yusef Lateef. Mingus auditioned them at an afternoon jam session at a coffeehouse, hired them on the spot and had them report to work that night. Mingus' aesthetic was gloriously chaotic. Lush Ellingtonian colors collided with roiled textures, searing intensity and extended forms. Mingus also loved Charlie Parker and in McPherson found a fresh disciple to fold into his sound world. Recorded in 1971, "Let My Children Hear Music," a masterpiece with an expansive ensemble of winds, brass and strings, includes a Mingus recitation of his own heart-of-darkness poem to dense and brooding accompaniment. McPherson then improvises freely against a hallucinatory backdrop. "Oh, wow," McPherson says softly at the sound of Mingus' voice: The chill of death as she clutched my hand/ I knew she was coming so I stood like a man. McPherson, who was given no music at the sesson, was told to react to the abstract sound around him. "This is pretty good," he says. "It didn't make me cringe. What I'm consigned to do is not easy. There's no standard harmony or sequential construction. And look what this is about: The emotions are foreboding, mystery and fear. How do you play that? I don't know if melodicism is what you need. Dissonance might be what's called for. I did some of this fairly well, but there were some areas where I think I get too tonal. If I did this now, I'd be less concerned with trying to be melodic. I'd think about how to melodically handle dissonance."

Well, that explains that. Thanks. I don't really know much about Coleman. Looks like a world-class bon vivant -- something to aspire to.

Playboy's Penthouse was on for a couple of years 1959-60, maybe 61. Playboy After Dark was a late '60s reincarnation of the show. Those of our more, um, mature board members may have more specific memories. At least in the early years, jazz (and cabaret/adult pop cousins) was integral to the party concept of the show, just as jazz was central to the original Playboy philosophy. Here's some youtube evidence: Sammy Davis Jr. (at 34, with the whole schmear: full band, singing, dancing, clowning, impressions; when he keeps his focus, it's swinging.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPhdzxytTcU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXnkkK5oldk...feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY-9AbLFewQ...feature=related Lambert, Hendricks and Ross with Count Basie Trio (with Tony Bennett in the audience) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StDLnFrbi78 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqmUgDUx7o0...feature=related Cy Coleman (singing "Witchcraft" with a second half chorus that I've never heard. Was this part of the original that Sinatra's arrangement just passed on?)i ("The Best is Yet to Come. Anybody know who the trumpet player is? ) Ella Fitzgerald: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XxhmV5-9pw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWWph2FxwwU And, good God, just for fun: James Brown on "Playboy After Dark" (dig all the white chicks chanting "I'm black and I'm proud.")

Not fascinating at all. The whole point of Playboy was that it was supposed to be a sort of road map to sophistication for the postwar male. Jazz was a part of that sophistication. What IS fascinating is that the mastermind who dreamed this up now surrounds himself with a bunch of bimbos with boob jobs and bad plastic surgery. I thought he had better taste than that. To be clear, what's fascinating to me are the specifics discussed by the participants, the perspective from the trenches in 1964 viz. our view today and the fact that jazz has slipped so far off the radar of popular culture. I get that Playboy in its early years offered a road map to sophistication for the post-Eisenhower male; what's intersting is how/why/when jazz fell out of the equation as far as the wider culture was concerned and the degree to which it could/should be restored.

In the Nat Hentoff thread down below, I mentioned a 1964 round table discussion on the state of jazz with a stellar panel (Dizzy, Cannonball, Schuller, Mingus, Brubeck, Russell, etc.) that ran for an amazing 17,000 words in Playboy. I found a copy online so I thought I'd post a link here. (I don't think it's been posted previously.) Fascinating on many levels, including the realization that jazz was still considered relevant and interesting enough to the wider cultural dialogue that a general circulation magazine like Playboy would devote so much space to such a rarified discussion. Such a thing would never happen today. This was, by the way, billed as a special Jazz & Hi-Fi Issue on the cover. FWIW, I found my copy in a used bookstore down by the University of Chicago (forgot the name of the store; it wasn't Powell's) about 6 years ago. No wisecracks, please. The issue just happened to be sitting on the top of a stack in the corner. I really did buy it for the articles! The unnamed moderator is Hentoff, who also wrote a separate overview piece. Anyway, here's the link: http://www.cannonball-adderley.com/article/playboy2.htm

To return to the original intent of the thread, I found this to be a really terrific CD, with an emphasis on the poetry of bebop, even on the uptempo tunes. Think of the lyricism inherent in Dameron's music or a song like "Con Alma" -- that's the spirit of the album. There's a nice cross-generation vibe in the band too, with bassist Todd Coolman and drummer Adam Nussbaum.

Assuming I'm not missing an element of sarcasm, I can't remember a post I found so infuriating or boneheaded (with all due respect). Everyone has a right to their opinion, so let's leave aside the evaluations, dubious as they may be in my view, that Moody will only be remembered for "Moody's Mood" and that Hank will only be remembered for his famous brothers; this drastically underestimates Hank's gifts as an individual stylist, profound synthesizer of pre-bebop and modern styles and influence on several generations of pianists. Instead, let's focus on the abhorent ageism, mean-spiritedness and spleen behind salvos relating to the irrelevance of their music because of their age and that, really, both of these guys just should quit or die. For me, players like Moody and Jones are among the biggest inspirations that music -- hell, life -- has to offer. The fact that at their age they are not only playing with such energy, creativity and especially a sense of wonder at the possibilities of music and learning and a commitment that their best work is still ahead of them -- well, that's what I want to be like at their age. Shit, that's what I want to be like now at half their age. Hank still practices two hours a day, and Moody, well, here's a quick story: I was introduced to him for the first time backstage at the Detroit Jazz Festival a few months ago after he had played with the Dizzy All-Star Big Band. As we were talking, an awestruck kid who played saxophone with the Temple University band earlier in the day came up and stammered a few things to Moody, who still had his tenor around his neck. He told the kid, "Just practice, practice, practice, practice. And the more you learn, the more you'll realize you don't know." Then, excitedly, he asked the kid if he had seen Jerry Bergonzi's latest book. ("Hexatonics"). "You gotta get that book!" he said, shoving his saxophone stand and music into my hand so he could play for the kid. He started running a sequence of triads that weaved in between C and D major up and down the horn. To see an 83-year-old so geeked about the latest wrinkle he had learned about harmonic motion, and to see him breathe musicianship and inspiration into a young musician he had just met and to have heard him 20 minutes earlier play with a ferocity and a frankly more modern edge than the other saxophonists in the band was to witness the life force at its most compelling. Jazz needs more of this not less.

Valid points all around. Consistency demands that I should have called Larry on the posting issue, but, frankly, I didn't even notice, probably because I was responding to the original Weill post and the infraction occurred in a secondary follow-up and it was a first-time offense. But Larry got overheated, apologized, says he won't do it again and offered a pint of fluid. Let's grant absolution. For the record, my position on posting entire articles has not changed, and let me thank everyone for their efforts in recent months on following the rules. Still, everyone is entitled to one inadvertent fuck up. As I said previously in this thread in another context, no harm no foul. Let's move on.

I see what you mean. This might be a good time for a few days of R&R.

Larry, I'm surprised that two logical explanations seem to have eluded you as an old newspaper man -- either it was the damn copydesk that screwed it up or carelessness on the writer's part induced by deadline pressures, distractions or the many varieties of gremlins that have a way of getting between your brain and your best-intentioned copy. I'm guessing that Tony meant to write "composed in France" -- a factually accurate statement that makes sense to note in the context because Weill was on the move in those years -- but instead wrote "composed in French" and then never caught the slip, reading over it because we often don't notice our own typos. If that's the case, then 99 out of 100 copy editors would not have questioned the phrasing. Alternatively, Tony may have written something awkwardly (or not) and in making a change, the copy editor condensed it to "written in French" and introduced the problem. Of course, it is possible that Tony meant to write what he did, but we all have brain cramps. No harm, no foul.

I've really been enjoying everybody's contributions. Thanks to Bill for starting the thread. Jazz Times' Top 50 LPs from the 35th anniversary issue. Sept. 2005 Woody Shaw, "Little Red's Fantasy" (Muse, 1978) As a freshman at the University of Illinois in 1981, I asked my parents for $90 to buy football tickets. Rah-rah and all that. It was a ruse: I bought records instead, among them trumpeter Woody Shaw's "Little Red's Fantasy," a blistering and profound 1976 quintet date that defines mainstream modal post-bop. It has also become my default response to the canard that straight-ahead jazz died in the 1970s. I was an American history major in 1981 but also a budding alto saxophonist. At 18, I knew my way around bebop tunes like "Confirmation," "Yardbird Suite," and "Oleo." But modal harmony was a mystery. When I tried to tackle the Jamey Aebersold play-along set devoted to Shaw's music, the music's formal riddles proved way too complex for my elementary skills. I was speaking one language; Shaw spoke another. I bought Little Red Fantasy because I recognized three tunes as beguiling Shaw originals that had stumped me, and I was intrigued by the presence of Frank Strozier, an alto player unknown to me. Pianist Ronnie Mathews, bassist Stafford James, and the late drummer Eddie Moore complete the group. Still underrated, Shaw was the next link in the trumpet chain after Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little. He applied the lessons of Coltrane and Dolphy to hard-bop roots, and the result was an angular but swinging style spiked by dissonance, pentatonic scales, wide intervals, and a disciplined inside-outside approach anchored in history but never limited by it. Shaw's music speaks of the eternal quest. Each tune here is a melodic and memorable journey. Execution snaps to attention. Shaw's corpulent and burnished copper tone and Strozier's darkly plangent sound merge into thick expression; the splashy rhythm section creates a tidal-pool churn. Side 1 is given to the exploratory vamps of Mathews' waltz "Jean Marie" and James' lyrically edgy bossa "Sashianova." Side 2 opens and closes with Shaw's steeple-chase structures "In Case You Haven't Heard" (with solos based on a revolving series of four Lydian Scales) and "Tomorrow's Destiny" (intervallic melody, shifting Latin and swing rhtyhms, pedal points, advanced harmony). Shaw weaves in and out of chords like a Manhtattan taxi barreling down 7th Avenue, creating tension and release through chromatic side-slipping, clipped ferocity and maniacal spikes of volume and range. Strozier compliments him with deviously original phrasing that should have made him a star. The title track, Shaw's signature ballad, exposes his psyche with a gentle melody framed by a heart-of-darkness bridge. Issued on Muse in 1978 as Shaw was reaching peak visibility with a newly minted Columbia contract, "Little Red's Fantasy" remains the definitve document of his art. The record is thrilling, brawny, soulful and sweeping in its aestheic field of vision. Head, heart, tradition and innovation are held in alchemist proportion. Nearly 30 years later, the music remains state-of-the-art. It helped teach me to play modern jazz--and it still has much to teach us all.

I liked this record quite a bit, though I'm sure it won't be to everyone's taste. High-quality crossover, with a lot of imagination, variety and very lovingly and smartly produced. Here's a link to a review -- you have to scroll down (classical fans may want to to take note of the essential Leon Kirchner string quartet set discussed at the top.) http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID...361/1039/ENT04) Back to Tim. He's local for us in metro Detroit so I've written a lot about him over the years. Sweet guy and a great post-bop player. In 1999, shortly after he got the gig with the Rolling Stones, I wrote a profile that included the following sidebar about the day he got the job. It's quite a tale: Feb. 21, 1999 CALL CAME WHILE SAX MAN WAS HOBNOBBING WITH CLINTON BYLINE: MARK STRYKER Free Press Music Writer Tim Ries was on his way to the White House in November when he got the call from the Rolling Stones. He was going to perform with a quartet of Broadway singers -- James Naughton, Patti LuPone, Jennifer Holiday and Brian Stokes Mitchell -- in a concert PBS is to air later this year. Ries never tires of telling the tale: "The day I left I got a call from the trombonist in the Rolling Stones band. This is a guy I do a lot of work for in New York -- jingles, movie dates -- so I've played with him for years. He says, 'There's a possibility that Andy won't be going out on the next tour. Do you want the gig?' "I was like, 'Are you kidding? Yeah!' He said, 'You can't say anything because nobody's told management, and I've got to set this whole thing up before they tell Mick. "The next day we're at the White House. We rehearse. We get the cameras set up. I'm in my tux. And it's time for the photo op with the president. We're in the East Room. There's about 20 people lined up, and my wife and I are in the middle. A door opens and we see Yasser Arafat in the other room. The Clintons walk in. The president goes to each person and shakes their hand. "He gets to me, and I had my saxophone around my neck. He looks at my horn and he knew it was a Selmer; it's old, beautiful and pristine ...He said, 'What's the serial number?' and I said, '49,000,' and he said, 'Oh, 1950.' "Turns out he knows every serial number from the Selmer series, which dates back to 1922. If you tell him a number he knows exactly what year it was made. I don't even know this, and I'm a saxophone player! We started talking about horns and it was wild because, all of a sudden, 15 minutes had passed and we're still talking about instruments and mouthpieces and reeds. It was just like we were two kids. "Finally, it was time for the show and as I'm heading for the stage my cell phone rings and it's the guy from the Rolling Stones: 'Tim, you got the gig. We cleared it with Mick and we just have to check with Keith. It's 99.9 percent but don't say anything. We don't want news to get back to New York until it's final.' "Meanwhile, the pianist I'm playing with is from New York and has a gig starting in February for six weeks that I'm supposed to do. After the concert, Clinton comes up and gives me a big hug. Again we started talking about saxophones. Then we go into the reception room and we're eating shrimp and it's like a wedding except that you're with the president. I gave him my CD, and we talked about my mouthpiece, which was specially made for me in Belgium, and he asked if I could please have one sent to him. "So he's writing his address and it's Bill Clinton, c/o Betty Currie. He looks at me and says, 'That's my secretary,' and I thought, 'Yeah, I've heard of her.' Then he asked what other gigs I was doing. I said, 'Well, this is an incredible day. I'm playing at the White House and I just got a call to play with the Rolling Stones.' "And I didn't say, 'Shh, don't say anything,' because I figured who's he know that I know? A second later, he walks over to get a picture taken with the rest of the band and he yells across the room: 'Hey, saxophone player with the Stones! Come here!' "The pianist looks at me, like, What?! I said, 'Oh boy, I have to talk to you.' "It was one of those days I wished I'd bought a lottery ticket because if they come in threes, that would've been the day I won the $4 million."