Introduction

Bill Kirchner has been mentioned fairly regularly in my jazz pieces ever since he and I first became friends in August of 2014. This began and has continued mostly in cyberspace as Bill left a couple of comments on my site then followed these up by emailing me personally. He introduced himself, saying he knew of my work with the Boss Brass and commenting that he enjoyed my blogs and admired my writing, which, coming from such an …

I’d hoped to write some sort of Christmas post – a Yule blog, if you will – as in the past few years but a lot of time was taken up with, well…….. Christmas, so I didn’t get to it. At any rate, I hope everyone had a nice one, as I did.

Most of northern North America is caught in a deep cold snap and there’s been plenty of snow to boot – actually, to shovel* – …

To paraphrase a song about another season, it seemed for a while that fall would be a little late this year. But it’s now here in earnest, and then some, and seeing the leaves turn colour and drop off the trees always takes me to autumn songs. There are many of these, but I want to touch on one in particular that has long enchanted me: the lovely old ballad “Autumn Nocturne”.

It’s utterly distinctive even though it shares …

Turning 61 recently, I seem to have entered the early phase of my dotage. Some, such as Mrs. W., would argue it’s not that early, but quite advanced. This comes equipped with a certain amount of woolly forgetfulness and nostalgia, but even when not feeling the effects of these I’m noticing lately that treasured tracks from my long-lost youth have been coming back to me randomly. And at a furious pace, often abetted by free-associating YouTube clips exchanged in …

A while back my good friend Bill Kirchner emailed me an article called “Lead Player”, written by William Whitworth and published in the December 10, 1969 issue of The New Yorker. It was both highly entertaining and very informative in considering trumpet playing generally while also serving as an in-depth profile of one of the greatest lead-trumpeters ever, Bernie Glow.

Whitworth begins by pointing out the physical toll that playing the trumpet can exact, citing instances of lead players …

An account of surely the strangest, funniest and shortest jam session I’ve ever taken part in……..

Anyone who has attended a symphony concert knows the riotous and bewildering cacophony of a full orchestra warming up on stage. It’s noise rather than music because there’s no design or cooperation and nobody is listening to anybody else. While each musician onstage is an expert on their chosen instrument and fully capable of producing a beautiful tone, it’s everyone for themselves during …

Some light went out of the jazz world on June 27 with the sad and stunning news that pianist and educator Geri Allen died at 60, from cancer. Seemingly she wanted to keep her illness quiet, making the loss all the more shocking to her many fans and musical colleagues. That she was so young makes her passing hard to believe, and even harder to accept. How in the world can such a vibrant jazz voice be suddenly and …

International Women’s Day was March 8 and three days later I played an evening of songs with lyrics by the great Dorothy Fields, the first woman to break into the all-male world of big-time songwriting. Both got me to thinking about the subject of women in jazz and the struggles they’ve faced over the years establishing careers in the music, other than as singers. 

Being a jazz musician is tough: this is not a complaint, but a statement of …

OH MY GOD!! Here it is St. Paddy’s already and I’ve completely forgotten to prepare a post for the green day, as I’ve done for the last two years. And me of Irish descent…..I should be ashamed of myself (and trust me, I am, I am……).

I blame Trumpomania, the Adventures of Dolt 45 for my forgetfulness. It’s so distracting and lazy-making – why bother to dream up something imaginative when you can just turn on the TV?

Anyway, …

Since the beginning of January, singer John Alcorn has been presenting a weekly songbook series on Saturday nights at the 120 Diner. The relatively new venue is so-named because it’s located at 120 Church Street, just below Richmond and immediately south of McVeigh’s Irish Pub, a fixture on that corner for as long as I’d care to remember, and maybe even longer than that. As the name and outward appearance would suggest, 120 Diner is a casual venue, but …

“Whatever you think can’t be done, somebody will come along and do it. A genius is the one most like himself.” – Thelonious Monk

The unique and wonderful jazz pianist Horace Parlan died in his sleep on February 23 in the Danish nursing home he had been living in for several years; he was 86 and had been in poor health for some time. Perhaps it’s just as well he went this way, as much that he loved …

This is a slightly expanded version of an article I wrote for the Dec./Jan. issue of WholeNote last year. Where possible, I’ve included samples of some of the harder-to-find and lesser-known music.

Music is an essential part of Christmas and with that time of year upon us, I thought I’d offer a look at some records that might enhance our enjoyment of the season. These are all personal favourites and most, but not all, are jazz-oriented. Hopefully there’s something …

“Ever since the world ended, I don’t go out as much.” – Mose Allison.

Mose Allison won’t be going out as much as his world ended on Nov.15 at his Hilton Head, S.C. home, just four days past his 89th birthday. I don’t mean to strike a facetious tone or make light of his death with the above quote. While not unexpected – he’d slowed down considerably in the past few years – his passing came as a personal …

This year in which so many notable musicians have died continued with a rough patch lately. Leon Russell and Leonard Cohen, and in the jazz world, bassist Bob Cranshaw and more recently, Mose Allison. As pop stars, a lot has already been written about Russell and Cohen, to which I can’t add much except to say that the band Leon Russell assembled on short notice for Joe Cocker’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” tour is still a model of what …

After issuing my last post about the Jim Hall-Barney Kessel duo and Barney’s amazing “I Took A Trip On A Train” solo offering, I got to remembering some other good stories about him I wish I had included. I’ve added them to the first post so that it’s all of a piece, but for those who already read that one, I’m issuing them separately here.

When Barney was giving his little train-salon solo concert, I had no way of …

The other day, a friend sent me a remarkable YouTube clip of Jim Hall and Barney Kessel in duo, taking “You Stepped Out Of A Dream” apart. I hadn’t heard it before, or even about it. And it’s not something I would have ever searched for or even imagined, because, while their paths certainly must have crossed often enough in Los Angeles after Hall’s arrival there in 1955, they’re not two guitarists one would naturally throw together.

Nonetheless, it’s …

My apologies for posting this story a few days late, but Halloween and the days leading up to it were very busy, plus there was an ‘exceeded bandwidth’ issue on this site which made access to it impossible, even for me. This was not as serious as it looked, and my site administrator Citizen X had it fixed within five minutes of being notified. X told me that congratulations were in order because I’d gone from “Basic” to “Gold” …

Two important musicians – pianist Don Friedman and trumpeter Erich Traugott – died in late June. I was late in hearing about both because I was unconnected for a few days, off playing at the Rochester Jazz Festival. It’s often said that bad news comes in threes, but in this case these two losses were counteracted about a week later by some good news: major donations of jazz material to the Sound and Moving Images Library and the Clara …

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy” – William Shakespeare, from Hamlet.

Yesterday a friend sent me a YouTube clip of Paul Gonsalves and Chick Corea playing Corea’s signature “Windows” in 1966, with Aaron Bell on bass and Louie Bellson on drums. No, that’s not a typo………. even before listening to it, I was astonished by its mere existence. I mean, Paul Gonsalves and Chick Corea?!? They’re not a pair …

In honour of St. Patrick’s Day, embedded below is my favourite version of “Danny Boy” ever, a 1962 solo piano reading by Bill Evans. Evans was from Welsh stock on his father’s side and Russian on his mother’s, an interesting combination reflected in his playing, which was both romantic and intellectual.

I thought I knew how great a pianist Evans was until I heard this track about fifteen or twenty years after first encountering him. It made me realize …

My last post about Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie’s electrifying version of “Blue Moon” got me to thinking about another surprising encounter with “Little Jazz” on a record, some 25 or 30 years down the road. If there’s one sure thing to be learned about Roy from various sources – reading about him in books, listening to his records or hearing other musicians tell stories about him – it’s that he was probably the most competitive trumpeter who ever …

Whether you’re a young musician in training or a fan in the making, the early days of jazz discovery are heady ones, not unlike Christopher Columbus landing on the shores of the New World. There’s so much to hear for the first time, so the musical slate is blank and your ears are fresh and unspoiled, just waiting to be thrilled on a daily basis. Reading about jazz in books and magazines fuels the curiosity and helps along the …

The Mike Murley Trio – Murley on soprano and tenor saxophones, Reg Schwager on guitar and yours truly on bass – played a concert on the evening of February 5 at The Fourth Stage, a newish performance space at The National Arts Centre in Ottawa. It was part of the city’s newly-founded Winter Jazz Festival, which in turn is part of its annual celebration of ice and snow, “Winterlude”. Although this year, “Interlude” might be more like it, as …

Jazz cornet master Warren Vaché will be appearing for three nights at The Jazz Bistro Feb.25-27, accompanied by a fine local rhythm section consisting of Mark Eisenman on piano, Terry Clarke on drums and some guy named Steve Wallace on bass.

This is a musical event not to be missed as Warren, though no stranger to local fans in recent years with regular appearances at The Toronto Jazz Festival and various Ken Page Memorial Trust events, has not played …

As Christmas Day arrived, Bill Kirchner sent me a YouTube clip of a classic version of “Embraceable You”, recorded for Commodore on April 30, 1938 by Eddie Condon & His Windy City Seven. It was very thoughtful of him and as nice a Christmas present as any I received. Bill stumbled across it after not hearing it for years and knew I’d love it, which I did – repeated listening to its delightful four minutes made the immediate, concrete …

In my last post (so to speak) about days-of-the-week songs, I mentioned how much trouble I had thinking of a tune for Tuesday and that Bill Kirchner came to the rescue. I also predicted that if I’d gone ahead using “Ruby Tuesday” as originally planned, various record-collector savant types would have come out of the woodwork and pointed out all sorts of jazz Tuesday tracks I should have thought of. I would have needed a big spatula to scrape …

After the extended psychodrama of the Christmas season, the calendar has clicked over to a whole new year and we’re still getting used to writing 2016 instead of 2015. And many of us are back to the grind after having been off work or school for a few weeks, so we’re lucky if we even know what day it is……Actually, this is a problem for me at the best of times. With all this temporal disorientation in mind, I …

Back in the good old days when there was still an actual music business, all musicians worked New Year’s Eve. I mean everybody, except for the elite guys who didn’t want to, or have to. It didn’t even matter if you were any good or not; demand was high enough that you had some kind of a gig that night even if you weren’t ready, if only to provide a semi-warm body on a bandstand somewhere. These ‘general business’ …

Years ago around Christmas time, I was hanging out with John Sumner and some other musicians after a gig, listening to some records and having a few tastes. We got to kidding around, combining Christmas carols with jazz tunes to form song-title puns. As I recall, “Joy Spring To the World”, “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing, Sing, Sing”, “Silent Night In Tunisia”, “Sippin’ At Jingle Bells”, “What Child Is This Thing Called Love?” and “O Little Rootie Tootie Town …

Other than people living in extremely remote areas untouched by media or technology – if they even exist anymore – I may have been one of the last to hear of the recent appalling attacks in Paris.

As my wife Anna would say, this is “not a good story for me”, although she learned of the tragedy even later than me, and only after I told her of it. But there was at least an understandable reason for our …

A shorter and slightly different (i.e. cleaner) version of this piece on Archie Alleyne appeared in the September issue of WholeNote magazine, v. 121 #1.

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June of this year brought a rash of deaths which rocked the jazz community – locally, bassist Lenny Boyd and drummer Archie Alleyne – and internationally, jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman and third-stream-composer Gunther Schuller. I wrote memorial blogs about Coleman, Schuller and Boyd, who was my bass teacher. I held back in Archie …

Guitarist Jim Hall died well over a year ago, but I’m still in a state of mourning and semi-denial about it. For ages now, Hall has been an essential part of my jazz listening on reams of classic records with other great musicians. In countless settings, he delivered so many indelible, perfect little musical moments that I can scarcely believe he’s gone. Thankfully his prolific recorded legacy lives on, meaning I can bring him into my living room whenever …