Freddie Hubbard: 1938-2008

Yesterday, jazz lost one of it's last remaining icons, a saint of the solo and a martyr of music who devastatingly split his lip several years ago after decades of adventurous, virtuosic trumpet playing. Freddie Hubbard died in Los Angeles during the morning of December 29, 2008 after a long battle with heart disease . He was 70 years old.

Critic and Hubbard spokesman Don Lucoff: (CNN)
"Freddie Hubbard, in terms of the advent of modern jazz, the birth of bebop, was probably among the five greatest trumpet players that has ever lived ... He's really right up there with Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Lee Morgan, Roy Eldridge, an innovator and great composer...The thing that set Freddie Hubbard apart was he played rapidly, he played soulfully, and he really set the pace for a lot of the trumpet players who have come after him in the last 20 or 30. years."

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis: (The Morning Call)
"He influenced all the trumpet players that came after him. Certainly I listened to him a lot. ... We all listened to him. He has a big sound and a great sense of rhythm and time, but really the hallmark of his playing is an exuberance. His playing is exuberant."

Tenor saxophonist Kenny Garret: (Detroit Free Press)
"What I like about the trumpet is that it's a powerful instrument. I always wanted my saxophone to have that power. Standing next to Freddie Hubbard and he'd go be-do WHEE -- I mean, that's power, so I had to work to get meat in my sound."

Author and critic Joachim Berendt: (The Jazz Book: From New Orleans to Rock and Free Jazz) "Hubbard is the most brilliant trumpeter of a generation of musicians who stand with one foot in 'tonal' jazz and with the other in the atonal camp."

Smooth-jazz trumpeter Chris Botti: (The Morning Call)
"I think that Freddie Hubbard probably is the greatest trumpet player ever — his sound and his phrasing and his approach to the instrument. His prowess on the instrument left him in a league of his own, like a Micheal Jordan or Tiger Woods in sports."

Trumpeter David Weiss of the New Jazz Composers Octet: (LA Times)
"[Hubbard] played faster, longer, higher and with more energy than any other trumpeter of his era."

This video demonstrates Hubbard's astounding ability, as well as his sensitivity and inventiveness as an improviser. His presence will be missed and his talent admired for as long as there are listeners seeking excellence and musicians seeking inspiration.

December 22: "A Change is Gonna Come"

Sam Cooke's immortal "A Change is Gonna Come" was released 44 years ago yesterday. Not only does this song carry a poignant lyrical message of redemption and hope in the face of oppression, but Cooke's voice sweats and bleeds with feeling as he pushes each ragged syllable from his chest, and the simple melody and its delicate orchestration stand for me as one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever recorded.

Critic and historian Peter Guralnick describes the song as "Sam's magnum opus", and says in his linear notes to Sam Cooke: Portrait of a Legend:

"[A Change is Gonna Come] cleary stemmed from a confluence of events: Sam's appreciation for (and envy of) Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind"...; his conversations with student sit-in demonstrators in Durham, North Carolina; and his own arrest in October for trying to register at a segregated Shreveport motel. But nothing can fully explain the majesty or soaring eloquence of the song."

Said close friend and associate of Cooke's J.W Alexander:

"He was very excited, and when he finished it he explained it to me--his reason behind the lyrics. Like 'I don't what's up there beyond the sky'-- it's like somebody's talking about I want to go to heaven, really, but the who knows what's really up there? In other words, that's why you want justice on earth..."

The doubt in the existence of a divine justice and the feeling or urgency for human justice on earth, as is evident in this candid statement, is especially meaningful coming from Cooke, the son of a preacher and a deeply faithful man who began his career with the gospel group the Soul Stirrers. This song not only demonstrates Cooke's incredible songwriting skill and virtuosic singing ability, but also his faith in humanity, his trust in the energy and justice of his brothers as well as that of his God.

Below is an incredible version of "A Change is Gonna Come" from guitarist Bill Frisell and his trio, a moving performance and an apt testament to the power of Cooke's composition. Frisell plays the simple melody repeatedly, as a singer would, manipulating the notes in the same way Cooke manipulated the words. Be sure to watch to the end to witness Frisell's astounding melodic layering on his final chorus-- the effect is uncannily beautiful, like watching the explosions of dozens of fireworks as they burst into glorious light successively, creating a canvas of abstract color across a dark sky of mournful bass and gentle snare drum.

June 16, 2007 Rochester, N.Y.
Bill Frisell: guitar
with Tony Scherr: Bass,
Kenny Wollesen: Drums

I was born by the river in a little tent

And just like the river, I've been running ever since

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

It's been too hard living, but I'm afraid to die

I don't know what's up there beyond the sky

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

I go to the movie, and I go downtown

Somebody keep telling me "Don't hang around"

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

Then I go to my brother and I say, "Brother, help me please"

But he winds up knocking me back down on my knees

There've been times that I've thought I couldn't last for long

But now I think I'm able to carry on

It's been a long time coming

But I know a change is gonna come

RIP Sam Cooke: 1934-1964

Charles Mingus Sextet (feat. Eric Dolphy): "Take the A Train"

Just a cool video. This is Charles Mingus and his group performing the Strayhorn tune "Take the A Train", featuring Dolphy's distinctive bass clarinet and reed-rupturing volcanic breathing, as well as an impressive stride coup d'etat from pianist Jackie Byard.

Personnel: Charles Mingus: Bass
Eric Dolphy: Bass Clarinet
Clifford Jordan: Tenor Sax
Johnny Coles: Trumpet
Jackie Byard: Piano
Dannie Richmond: Drums

UPDATE:




Check this guy out too. This features Dolphy playing another of his slightly unconventional instruments, this time blowing some beautiful flute. Different personnel, unfortunately. Anybody know them? Unfortunately, as seems to be the method of YouTube jazz, this video prematurely evacuates as well. Anyway... enjoy.

Manuel Noriega: "CIA Dope Calypso"

Today marks the 19th anniversary of the U.S invasion of Panama, during which "executive officer" Manuel Noriega was overthrown by the United States' "Operation Just Cause" and replaced by Guillermo Endara. In 1989, as seems to be our habit when we have a president named Bush, we invaded the nation of Panama, killing 325 civilians and loosing 24 U.S GI's. After his removal from power, General Noriega was indicted on eight charges of money laundering, racketeering, and drug trafficking and tried in U.S courts. He completed his U.S prison sentence in September of 2007, but remains detained in U.S custody more than year after the end of his sentence.

Manuel Noriega WORKED FOR THE CIA from the 1950's through the late 1980's, THIS RELATIONSHIP BECOMING CONTRACTUAL in 1967. This is the leader of a sovereign nation, a dictator ruling with the same totalitarianism of U.S-labeled-"terrorist" Fidel Castro, officially working for and receiving payment from a governmental agency of the United States of America, another sovereign nation, while in power. In fact, his official, paid affiliation with the U.S didn't end until February of 1988 when he was officially indicted on drug-related charges by the DEA.




Though published in January '72, some 11 years before Noriega's rise to power in Panama, I believe Mr. Allen Ginsberg's "CIA Dope Calypso" is especially appropriate today...

In nineteen hundred forty-five
China was won by Mao Tse-tung
Chiang Kai Shek's army ran away
They're waiting there in Thailand today

Supported by the CIA
Pushing junk down Thailand way

First they stole from the Meo tribes
Up in the hills they started taking bribes
Then they sent their soldiers up to Shan
Collecting opium to sell to The Man

Pushing junk in Bangkok today
Supported by the CIA

Brought their jam on mule trains down
To Chiang Rai that's a railroad town
Sold it next to the police chief's brain
He took it to town on the choo-choo train
Trafficking dope to Bangkok all day
Supported by the CIA

The policeman's name was Mr. Phao
He peddled dope grand scale and how

Chief of border customs paid By Central Intelligence's U.S. aid

The whole operation, newspapers say
Supported by the CIA

He got so sloppy and he peddled so loose
He busted himself and cooked his own goose
Took the reward for an opium load
Seizing his own haul which same he resold

Big time pusher for a decade turned grey
Working for the CIA

The whole operation fell in to chaos
Till U.S. intelligence came in to Laos
I'll tell you no lie I'm a true American
Our big pusher there was Phoumi Nosavan
All them Princes in a power play
But Phoumi was the man for the CIA

Touby Lyfong he worked for the French
A big fat man liked to dine & to wench
Prince of the Meos he grew black mud
Till opium flowed through the land like a flood

Communists came and chased the French away
So Touby took a job with the CIA

And his best friend General Vang Pao
Ran our Meo army like a sacred cow
Helicopter smugglers filled Long Cheng's bars
In Xieng Quang province on the Plain of Jars

It started in secret they were fighting yesterday
Clandestine secret army of the CIA

All through the Sixties the dope flew free
Through Tan Son Nhut Saigon to Marshall Ky
Air America followed through
Transporting comfiture for President Thieu

All these Dealers were decades and yesterday
The Indochinese mob of the U.S. CIA

Operation Haylift Officer William Colby
Saw Marshall Ky fly opium Mr. Mustard told me
Indochina desk he was Chief of Dirty Tricks
"Hitch-hiking" with dope pushers was how he got his fix

Subsidizing the traffickers to drive the Reds away
Till Colby was the head of the whole wide CIA

"Funny Friday" #1: The Showmanship of Dizzy Gillespie

Let's call this the start of a new feature: every Friday, I'll post something that I find amusing or, at the very least, ironic and entertaining, and I'll ask my couple'la frequent commenters to do the same. Comment with some links, a video, a joke, whatever. As music, specifically jazz, is my number one interest, my little pieces o' funny are normally going to be jazz related. And today, I've got a little bit of Dizzy for your Friday morning.


I presume to think that the great Mr. Dizzy Gillespie needs no introduction, but, just in case...

From Wikipedia:

Together with Charlie Parker, [Dizzy Gillespie] was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. In addition to featuring in these epochal moments in bebop, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz, the modern jazz version of what early-jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the "Spanish Tinge". Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. In addition to his instrumental skills, Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop, which was originally regarded as threatening and frightening music by many listeners raised on older styles of jazz. He had an enormous impact on virtually every subsequent trumpeter, both by the example of his playing and as a mentor to younger musicians.

Dizzy had the unique ability to be proud and brilliant as well as comical. He was known as a teacher, a great theorist and intellectual who's willingness to mentor and instruct younger musicians stood out from the guarded and protective bebop scene. To see him as simply a clown would be to ignore his incredible musical accomplishments; to see him as a cynical, distant genius in the vein of Charlie Parker is to overlook the trait that has given him his longevity as a musician and performer, as well as endeared him to generations of jazz musicians and listeners.

First up, Dizzy imitates Satchmo, another brilliant and jovial man commonly misunderstood to be a simple jester. Hilarious impression. (Courtesy "Trumpet Kings".)



Next, Dizzy appears on The Muppet Show, and plays a fusion-type version of the immortal "St. Louis Blues". Normally fusion stuff isn't my thing, but something about seeing it played by fuzzy multi-colored puppets gives it the sense of novelty it deserves.



Enjoy!

~J

Jazz Review: Kenny Barron and Stefon Harris at Bucknell University

This is a concert review written for a class I am taking at Bucknell University, taught by the incomparable Phil Haynes. It reviews a concert given by jazz masters Stefon Harris and Kenny Barron on campus; for those of you that do not know, the dazzling, international-caliber jazz performances that take place regularly at Bucknell are the University's and sleepy-Lewisburg's best kept secret. There is the often extraordinary "Janet Weis Cabaret Jazz" series (Of which the Stefon-Barron concert was a member) that takes place the last Wednesday of each month during the semester, and Haynes's always mind-blowing "Jazz at Bucknell" series (first Wednesday of each month) that has featured such innovators as Bill Carrothers, Robin Eubanks, Phil Markowitz and Jane Ira Bloom.

Because I couldn't find any acceptable footage of Kenny Barron and Stefon Harris playing together, I have posted two videos of them each playing separately with their own combos. Take the time to watch them all the way through; I am sure you won't regret it.

Kenny Barron and Stefon Harris
Bucknell University’s Natalie Davis Rooke Recital Hall, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania
Janet Weis Cabaret Jazz Series: October 29, 2008, 8:00

The performance of piano institution Kenny Barron and the young vibraphone virtuoso Stefon Harris at Bucknell University was a startlingly impressive meeting of two jazz giants, a performance expansive in its enormous musical scope and dazzling in its astounding display of musicianship. Amidst the setting of explosive bebop and profound balladry a narrative emerged, a clear image of the passion and exuberance of the youthful Harris contrasting the calm stoicism of the elderly Barron, illustrated by their differing sounds and improvisational styles as well as by their radically different demeanors onstage. Harris is a player who, like the naive protagonist of a John Hughes film, can be said to wear his heart-on-his-sleeve, investing entirely in each grimace, each verbal utterance, and each dramatic and devastating movement of his body as he creates each note, moving in abrupt, violent lunges that contort his whole torso as he plays, perpetually darting from each end of the vibraphone and marimba onstage. His movements are like those of a boxer, a complex series of jabs, jerks and fakes given context by the impassioned twisting of his face and tightening of his eyelids as he pours every ounce of youthful romanticism into each stroke of his mallets, his strong voice echoing his improvisations in pleading, broken tones that quiver as he sings. Young romance incarnate, an all-consuming liquid passion that gushes from his every pore as his heart bleeds and his body aches, his passion Biblical in its desperation. Contrastingly, Barron is a reserved portrait of mature musicianship, playing with a quiet, collected passion only allowed to burst forth under the careful scrutiny and precise allowance of a rational musician. He is no less emotional, but infinitely more controlled, sacrificing the spontaneity and heartbreaking honestly of Harris for the suave sophistication and intellectual clarity of a seasoned musician who can rationalize as well as react. This obvious contrast was evident in this performance even in the way they interacted with the crowd, Barron preferring to deliver the obligatory thank-you’s and introductions with layers of gracious cool and an Ellingtonian dignity, while Harris preferred to amuse, speaking loudly and bombastically, cracking jokes and telling stories with the enthusiasm of a child, and when he felt the sopping streaks of his shirt after the energetic first number and looked to the motherly Janet Weis sitting in the first row, it was with a facetious boyish innocence that he cautiously asked to remove his jacket onstage.

The second tune of the evening, an excruciatingly heartfelt rendition of Sting’s slow waltz “Until...”, was a Harris contribution to the set, a tune he noticeably delighted in introducing with a humorous and candid tale of his own marriage and on which he played beautifully, building his melodic solo with the earthy murmur of the marimba and the shining metallic laughter of the vibraphone, his emotive lines drenched in the bittersweet meaning of his deliberate melodrama. Barron supported the young mallet virtuoso with his characteristic poise and grace, breathing a subtle maturity, a cautious skepticism into the reckless emotion that boiled from Harris’s mallets. If Harris was the youthful lover barring his fragile soul through his rippling melancholy melodies, Barron was the paternal safety net, the warm security of home and family that laid itself out in discrete layers of cushioned harmony below the young man’s soul-searching naiveté. Ultimately, it was Harris who lifted the song to its billowing climax, pushing against and prying at the simple atmospheric melody until it became the moving and transformative piece of music he made of it, but it was Barron who caught him as he collided with that delirious point of desperate creation, harnessing his passion in the midst of that intoxicating power and allowing him to gracefully deflate, laying him gently down with dense piano arpeggios that were simultaneously a grateful congratulation and a grandfatherly reassurance, a solid re-grounding of the dreaming artist in the coolheaded intellectualism and predictable inevitability of the tune. The effect was staggering, a breathtaking illustration of the familial dynamic of the duo, and a moment of musical honesty as profound as it was virtuosic.

The two performed a pleasingly neurotic interpretation of Thelonious Monk’s “Well You Needn’t” as the evening’s encore, a tune that fell neatly into Barron’s legacy of intricate bebop pianism. The duo played with an air of relaxed humor and good-natured teasing that had been lost amid the meaningfulness of the evening, playing the typically Monk-ish head in an exaggeratedly careening fashion that made both men laugh onstage-- Harris with a loud excited giggle and Barron with a reserved smile and a few audible exhalations, both men looking across stage at one another with a shared mischief in their eyes. They soloed with similarly exaggerated quirkiness, Barron percussively striking the keyboard with a single pointed finger in Monk’s oddly charismatic way, and Harris waving his arms haphazardly and striking keys with the intervallic insanity of Monk’s most manic of improvisations. When the two traded fours at the end of the tune before the reentry of the head, it was with the same fiery competition of Rollins and Coltrane on “Tenor Madness”, Harris unraveling chaotic lines of athletic intensity as Barron effortlessly matched his speed and power with assertive sixteenth note runs brushed gracefully from the keys. “Economy of motion, kid,” he said wordlessly with his smile.

Before the playful bop competitiveness of Monk’s tune, however, Barron and Harris closed their intended set with the mournful “Requiem for Milt”, Harris’s achingly poignant epitaph for his idol Milt Jackson. Harris played this simple, understated melody with a dignity and solemnity not seen in the unself-conscious extraversion of the evening’s previous playing, allowing the calloused chime of the vibraphone to ring through the high-ceilinged hall, quivering in cold, metallic layers of grief-- the smooth, masculine sorrow of a dignified man. Barron accompanied with cautious, respectful distance, allowing Harris to maintain the solitary religiosity and personal revelation of the moment. For those few excruciating moments, the young musician stood alone in the center of the stage, head bowed and feet stationary for the first time of the evening, a thoroughly modern musician paying homage to his creative fathers.

The musical relationship between jazz masters Kenny Barron and Stefon Harris is one of intense mutual respect and affection, evidenced in the amusement and delight the elder shows in the exuberant energy of his young protégé, as well as the reverence with which the younger treats his mentor. Their shared performance that Wednesday evening was not one of struggle or of generational competition, but one of incredible sensitivity and musical brotherhood, a sonic snapshot of two extraordinary musicians creating, for a few nocturnal hours, their fleeting collage, their immaterial masterpiece of beautiful sound.

Brilliance

Read it.

The Williamsport Guardian: B.B King and Cold War Kids

MANDATORY MENTION: As mentioned earlier, I write bi-monthly music reviews for a local independent newspaper, The Williamsport Guardian, typically reviewing several albums each column, as well as commenting on local musical performances and events. Because I've been receiving a lot of requests for these reviews, and as far as I can tell they are not as yet published online, I've decided to begin posting them here. The newspaper itself is always well-written, attractive, and full of interesting insights-- AND free-- so be sure to grab a copy if you notice it some where.

B.B King: One Kind Favor

The new album from legendary bluesman B.B King, One Kind Favor, is a melancholy meditation on the inevitable arrival of death, a poignant statement of gratitude and uncertainty from the 83-year-old master of the blues. The “one kind favor” of the title is stated in the first track, supported by the slithering percussion and frank lyrics of Blind Lemon Jefferson’s own musing on mortality, in which King repeatedly pleads a reluctant lover to “see that my grave is kept clean”. King’s own guitar is conspicuously absent from the arrangement until a characteristically terse solo toward the end of the tune, only occasionally augmenting his lyrics with licks that seem weary and reluctant, even sickly, in their delivery. His power is again on display almost immediately, though, in “I Get So Weary”, a surprisingly upbeat song that seems to be more about the sorrows of old age than the absence of a spiteful lover.

The arrangements, overseen by producer T. Bone Burnet, are all characteristic of King’s style: large, open palettes featuring the energetic drive of a horn section and the open-ended murmurings of organ and piano. The piano in this case is played masterfully by New Orleans musician Dr. John, a clear devotee of King’s who is both reverent and complimentary in his accompaniment style. King delivers his characteristically reserved, emotive solos frequently throughout the disk, playing as eloquently on upbeat numbers as on slow, morose ones, and with an obvious sense of melancholy not as apparent in the youthful energy of his earlier work.

As is the prerogative of blues singers, King refers to the ambiguous “baby” throughout the album, often in a mournful or accusatory way, but always with a pleading sense of powerlessness. In the slow shuffle of the minor key “Get These Blues Of Me”, King begs an unnamed loved one not to be angry “because I’ve gone away”, and intones “I’m just so tired of worrying, I don’t know what to do”. And when he apologizes in his deep, brooding voice as his guitar roars beneath him, and confesses his fear at what is to come, one can’t help but feel that he is speaking to himself. And when he takes the voice of a deceased lover on the album’s final tune “Haunted House”, singing “I may be dead and gone/But I’ll always be by your side”, one can’t help but feel that he is speaking to us, assuring us of his continued gratitude and reminding us of the indelible footprint he has left modern music. One Kind Favor, though as upbeat and entertaining as any of B.B King’s recordings, is a meaningful artifact of one man’s fear in the face of death, and his wonder at the fragility of life.


Cold War Kids: Loyalty to Loyalty

Cold War Kids play a style of rock music characterized by blues-inflected vocals and a distinctly rural perspective on songwriting, creating loose, multi-sectional songs that seem to careen from one idea to the next in a guttural way full of energy, charisma, and surprising sensitivity. Lyrically, they paint bleak portraits of desperate characters, again taking a deliberately non-urban approach to hardship and poverty, a tactic that is refreshing in its honesty and unique in its insightfulness. Sonically, they seem less concerned with writing traditionally organized rock and roll songs than with shaping textures through their sparse instrumentation and use of ambient sounds, creating songs that are more similar to sonic snapshots than coherent, identifiable pieces of music. Coming from a group with less sincerity, these songs would seem amateurish rather than profound, but in this way Cold War Kids make music that is similar to “found art”, creating their “found” songs from sounds and stories that exist around them, and ultimately molding their environment into a work of art.

On their newest album, Loyalty to Loyalty, Cold War Kids continue this tradition, molding the sounds of blues, folk music, and gospel into a back-woods, truck-stop kind of rock that is beautifully eerie and constantly unsettling. In the atmospheric “Every Man I Fall For”, singer Nathan Willett murmurs quietly over a dark, sultry web of heavily-reverbed guitar and insistent drums, telling the story of a woman left broken by her attraction to danger (“Every man I fall for drinks his coffee black/’Love’ and ‘Hate’ are tattooed on his knuckles and my name is on his back”). Throughout the album, Cold War Kids reveal an intense fascination with the darkness of society and the animalism of humanity, but also a redeeming sense of compassion for the characters they portray. This juxtaposition of light and dark, despair and sensitivity, make Loyalty to Loyalty an intense, profound document of an effortlessly innovative band making rock music that is as vital as it is poetic.

The Williamsport Guardian: Jack and Ben Wright at Raytown

MANDATORY MENTION: As mentioned earlier, I write bi-monthly music reviews for a local independent newspaper, The Williamsport Guardian, typically reviewing several albums each column, as well as commenting on local musical performances and events. Because I've been receiving a lot of requests for these reviews, and as far as I can tell they are not as yet published online, I've decided to begin posting them here. The newspaper itself is always well-written, attractive, and full of interesting insights-- AND free-- so be sure to grab a copy if you notice it some where.

Jack and Ben Wright at Raytown w/ “Black Marble” and Seth Olinski
June 3, 2008

Calculated chaos reverberated through one of Raytown’s wooden rooms last Tuesday, when underground free jazz legend Jack Wright performed with his son Ben, filling the room with their unique style of transcendent free jazz. The elder Wright played his saxophone with the irreverence characteristic of a master performer, showing little interest in traditional saxophone techniques and instead opting to dismantle and reassemble his horn throughout the performance, pushing air through cavities and tunnels not typically used. Similarly, Ben Wright showed no qualms about playing his bass in unusual manners, vehemently slapping the strings, percussively striking the body of the instrument, and calmly bowing the plastic tailpiece. Through this medley of unusual movement emerged ornate tapestries of abstract sound, the musicians focusing not on the obvious musical devices of predictable melody and classical rhythm, but rather on the more sincere tools of call-and-response and musical communication. As the two musicians played, there were obvious reactions to one another, Jack Wright echoing moods or motifs in his son’s playing, just as Ben did the same in response to his father’s unique saxophone lines. One of the most sublime moments of the performance came when local guitarist Seth Olinski (Akron/Family) joined the Wrights for a final piece at the end of the night, treating his acoustic guitar with the same kind of irreverence, and using metal and glass slides, along with a section of cork, to coax broad, sweeping sounds from his instrument. Olinski found the sonic middle ground between Ben Wright’s kinetic rumble and Jack Wright’s impassioned roar, highlighting and ornamenting their sound with observations and responses of his own.

Entirely improvised music of any kind is a rarity in this area, particularly improvised music of this esteem and caliber. Jack Wright began his career as a saxophonist in the improvised music scene of Philadelphia, honing his skill and cementing his artistic vision in the nightclubs and music venues of the East Coast. After a career in academia during the 1960’s and a stint working in radical politics during the 1970’s, he began a string of North American and European tours with various collaborators and sidemen, bringing improvised music to the small towns and villages of the United States and Canada, earning the moniker the “Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music”. As one of the most respected free jazz improvisers performing today, it is an extraordinary honor to have hosted him in Williamsport, and to have had the opportunity to experience his music.

Opening for these free jazz innovators was Black Marble, a local folk duo consisting of Alex Callenberger and Lena Yeagle, both gifted musicians and songwriters writing and performing within the idioms of modern folk and ambient music. The multilayered sound of their harmonized singing echoed through the wide, wooden room, interacting neatly with Callenberger’s artful guitar and Yeagle’s majestic violin lines. The artistry of their compositions is illuminated through the use of their opposite voices, as well as the opposing timbres of their respective instruments, creating a diversity of sound and a broader sonic spectrum than is normally expected in a duo. Innovators in a much different but equally important way, their contrasting musical style was an interesting and appropriate way to set the stage for the extraordinary improvisations of Jack and Ben Wright.

The Williamsport Guardian: Kayo Dot and Erykah Badu

MANDATORY MENTION: As mentioned earlier, I write bi-monthly music reviews for a local independent newspaper, The Williamsport Guardian, typically reviewing several albums each column, as well as commenting on local musical performances and events. Because I've been receiving a lot of requests for these reviews, and as far as I can tell they are not as yet published online, I've decided to begin posting them here. The newspaper itself is always well-written, attractive, and full of interesting insights-- AND free-- so be sure to grab a copy if you notice it some where.

Kayo Dot: Blue Lambency Downward (July 2008)

The intricate arrangements and avant-garde musicality of the incomparable Kayo Dot are beautifully evident in their latest release, the artfully innovative Blue Lambency Downward. The daring fragility and beautiful delicacy of their unconventional pieces, less songs then aural explorations, elaborate experiments in musical sound, give their work an awe-inspiring quality, an epic element that far from making their complex music dense or uninviting, creates a level of beauty that lures a listener in from the first seconds of seductive sound. When faced with these ornate sonic collages, genre seems an irrelevancy and classification an insult, as each piece swells to include aspects of rock, ambient music, free jazz, and classical music, functioning beautifully within each idiom before evolving again into something new.

The second song on this seven-song disk is the alternately tranquil and frenetic “Clelia Walking”, a six-minute barrage of musical styles that is constantly changing, morphing into contrasting musical ideas. It begins with contemplative electric guitar, made heavy by layers of reverb, then incorporates traces of free jazz with the uninterested mumblings of a saxophone before dissolving into a swirling section of distorted guitar and pulsating drums. The song goes on to include sections of calm violins and classical serenity, as well as further experiments with meandering saxophones and ornate guitar, each punctuated by startling segments of dissonant abstraction. This kind of daring innovation is present throughout the album, from the atmospheric uneasiness of the title track to the orchestral arrangement and sonic interplay of the final track, “Symmetrical Arizona”.

Kayo Dot’s latest album is an astounding musical achievement, a record working outside of confining musical styles and instead crafting an entirely unique sound. Chief composer Toby Driver’s decidedly unpolished voice appears regularly throughout the album, adding a vulnerable humanity to the seemingly godlike breadth of his compositions, demonstrating the people behind the innovation and the emotion behind the sonic virtuosity of his music.


Erykah Badu: New Amerykah Part 1 (4th World War)

Erykah’s Badu’s silky, sarcastic voice has been compared to the tuneful sneer of jazz great Billie Holiday, and her vibrant, kinetic music has been classified as “neo-soul”. Blending influences as diverse as modern soul and acid-jazz with hip-hop and Egyptian chant, Badu and her team of producers build slow-moving, atmospheric grooves that span across songs and defy traditional verse-chorus classifications. Often these grooves are lulling and cathartic, open palettes for Badu’s vocals to settle into and spar with, but sometimes become repetitious and exhausting, as on the overwrought “Master Teacher.” Far outnumbering the occasional moments of banality, however, are beautiful moments of musical profundity which solidify the record’s message and demonstrate the talents of its creators.

One of the most profound moments of the album comes at the end of the contemplative “Me”, in which the glossy sheen of modern production is stripped away, leaving only Badu’s unadorned voice singing in unison with a single trumpet, her voice naked and tearful as it stumbles and falters, straining to keep up with the horn’s long, jazz-inflected phrases. Here, and throughout the album, Badu spins tales of innocence lost and childhoods wasted, mourning the lives spent wary and afraid in American ghettos and the deaths brushed off and forgotten by a calloused system of economic oppression. An anonymous male poet shouts angrily at the end of “Twinkle”, a seven minute indictment of urban violence and government ignorance, shouting desperately at the world around him, demanding that his listeners “get mad...and say ‘I’m a human being, dammit! My life has value!” His impassioned words, ornamented by quivering organ and molded by cavernous reverb, contrast sharply with the jubilant profanity and sounds of breaking glass that begin the tune, providing a aural snapshot, a sonic collage that, miraculously, doesn’t sound false or contrived.

The true genius of Badu lies in her courage, in her willingness to take lyrical and musical risks as she creates a broad, cinematic soundscape, a sonic illustration of black life in America-- an angry diatribe of disillusionment and alienation, but one recited with the reverence and sensitivity of a mature artist who can rationalize as well as react. As she proves throughout the record’s eleven songs, she is not out to display her vocal virtuosity as other soul divas have, but rather to craft profound, evocative songs and lyrical images, even diminishing her own vocal abilities when it is necessary to reveal the person underneath. Her readiness to remove the cushions surrounding her singing to reveal the imperfections of her voice is admirable, as is the unabashed candidness of her cultural lyrics. On New Amerykah Part 1, Badu again demonstrates her impressive vocal chops and lyrical sensibilities, as well as creates a continual groove, a seamless experience without gaps or silences, deftly representing the constant barrage of sound and imagery that assails her as a black, urban woman.

The Williamsport Guardian: Kaki King and The Raconteurs

As mentioned earlier, I write bi-monthly music reviews for a local independent newspaper, The Williamsport Guardian, typically reviewing several albums each column, as well as commenting on local musical performances and events. Because I've been receiving a lot of requests for these reviews, and as far as I can tell they are not as yet published online, I've decided to begin posting them here. The newspaper itself is always well-written, attractive, and full of interesting insights-- AND free-- so be sure to grab a copy if you notice it some where. Anyway, here goes:

Kaki King: Dreaming of Revenge (May 2008)

Kaki King’s innovative approach to guitar playing—percussively striking the strings and body of the instrument as well as incorporating techniques typically associated with the electric guitar into her acoustic playing—is shadowed only by her innate melodic sensibility, allowing her to create music of staggering beauty while at the same time displaying her technical virtuosity. On her newest album, the dazzling Dreaming of Revenge, King explores areas of sonic experimentation only hinted at by her past endeavors, incorporating strings, electric guitar, and vocals into her largely acoustic music. Unexpectedly, from this experimentation emerges the most accessible album of King’s career, the dramatic strings and deft guitar playing joining to create music that defies typical industry classification, but remains uniquely melodic and approachable. Like her 2006 album, ...Until We Felt Red, Dreaming of Revenge sees less of King’s characteristically percussive acoustic guitar, and more of her virtuosic fingerstyle playing, employing the rich sounds of undistorted electric guitars in pieces such as the plaintive “Can Anyone Who Has Heard This Music Really Be a Bad Person” and the atmospheric “Sad American”, sacrificing her typical displays of technical prowess for the more solemn illustrations of melodic motifs. Her technical virtuosity is represented, however, as throughout the album there are dazzling displays of instrumental inventiveness and technical skill, most notably in the excited “I Need a Girl Who Knows a Map”, a three-minute guitar opus that sees King revisiting her characteristic techniques of frenetic fingerstyle and percussive tapping, showcasing both the technical artistry of her playing and the inspiration of her compositions.

Though her shy, self-conscious voice has been present in her music since 2004’s Legs to Make Us Longer, King really emerges as a singer on this disk, lending her plaintive, wavering voice to several songs, including the more traditional acoustic ballad “Life Being What it Is”, a striking departure from her regular repertoire that finds King singing delicately over a bed of acoustic guitar, arpeggiating softly while occasional organ flourishes and slide lines highlight the fragility of the arrangement. King sings with the reluctance and insecurity of an untrained vocalist, her quavering, uncontrolled singing lending innocence and authenticity to her calm, confident guitar playing. On the melancholy “Saving Days in a Frozen Head”, King layers her voice in the same way she layers her guitars throughout the album, creating delicate harmonies that settle softly over her carefully orchestrated guitar.

Though revisiting some of the musical ideas she has explored in the past, Kaki King remains refreshingly original, combining influences as diverse as electronica, folk, and ambient music with virtuosic mastery of her instrument to create music that defies typical song structure and industry expectations. Dreaming of Revenge is a document of a master working within her art, making music that is astoundingly unique and compositionally innovative, but also entirely approachable and comprehensible, and with none of the usual esotericism of other avant-garde artists.


The Raconteurs: Consolers of the Lonely

Like their debut album Broken Boy Soldiers, the Raconteurs continue their campaign of garage rock revival on Consolers of the Lonely, again combining the pop sensibilities of Brendan Benson with the raw modern blues and off-color humor of Jack White. When coupled with the band’s explosive rhythm section, this odd pairing leads to the bombastic humor of “The Switch and the Spur”, an ironically dramatic ballad that employs mariachi trumpets and mournful piano, as well as to the sparse blues of “Top Yourself”, an impassioned Delta shuffle modernized through White’s scratchy distortion. The title track, a mismatched collection of conflicting riffs and opposing personalities, is deliberately careless in its composition, celebrating its indecisiveness with aggressive drums and heavily distorted guitar, the radically different voices of White and Benson playfully conversing with one another through conflicting melodies and skewed lyrics. The organ-dominated “Rich Kid Blues” sarcastically laments the unique plight of a man who’s never known hardship, cycling through energetic garage rock, Allman Brothers influenced improvisation, and weary blues. The adventurous ballad “Carolina Drama” is cinematic in its scope and daring in its musicality, as overdriven slide lines and dramatic organ surges complement the raw, sneering quality of White’s vocal before dissolving into the eerie sensitivity of the refrain, then intensifying as White continues his story of violence and revenge.

Although never taking themselves too seriously, the Raconteurs have again created a unique experiment in modern blues and early rock-and-roll, infusing their musical experimentation with swatches of humor and playfulness. Consolers of the Lonely is a bold step towards merging the musical traditions of an antique generation with the standards and conventions of contemporary music, modernizing the classic blues and rock-and-roll of a lost era through biting distortion, impressive musicianship, and the melodic sensibilities of pop music.

November 29: Billy Strayhorn and "Lush Life"

It was 93 years ago today, on November 29, 1915, that great American composer, songwriter, and Ellington collaborator Billy Strayhorn was born in Hillsborough North Carolina. Gay, black, and brilliant in a society intolerant of all three, Strayhorn grew up alienated and dejected, discovering peace and comfort in his grandmother's piano and Victrola records. As an adult, even the world of music betrayed him, as his race proved an insurmountable barrier to his success in the white world of classical music. His rescue came in the form of the innovative virtuosity of pianists like Art Tatum and Errol Garner, and in the joyful, liberating sounds of orchestras like Fletcher Henderson's famed ensemble. He was especially enchanted by the suave sophistication of Duke Ellington and his orchestra, and after speaking with Ellington and sharing with him some of his music, the famed bandleader feel under the spell of the gifted young composer. This proved the start of a decades-long collaboration that would produce some of the most innovative and enduring music of the era, including the tune that would become as close to theme as the Ellington orchestra ever had: Strayhorn's own "Take the A Train". Strayhorn's reserved, quiet calm was the antithesis of Ellington's flamboyant cool; Strayhorn was shy and intellectual, homosexual and a loner, while Ellington was social and boisterous, a lady's man whose personal and professional relationships defined his life. But the men found an eerily perfect connection in the music they both loved, and the two geniuses shared an intense emotional love fed by their shared creativity and shared passion. Said Ellington of Strayhorn, "[He is] my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brain waves are in his head, and his are in mine."

While still a teenager, and years before his tenure with Ellington, Strayhorn penned the heartbreaking ballad "Lush Life", a musically and lyrically sophisticated tune heartbreaking in its devastating honesty. Posted below is the John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman version of the tune, a beautiful recording and poignant tribute to one of America's great geniuses. (The picture shown in the clip is largely irrelevant.)



"I used to visit all the very gay places
Those come what may places
Where one relaxes on the axis of the wheel of life
To get the feel of life...
From jazz and cocktails.

The girls I knew had sad and sullen gray faces
With distant gay traces
That used to be there; you could see where they'd been washed away
By too many through the day...
Twelve o'clock tales.

Then you came along with your siren song
To tempt me to madness!
I thought for a while that your poignant smile was tinged with the sadness
Of a great love for me.

Ah yes! I was wrong...
Again, I was wrong.

Life is lonely again,
And only last year everything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful again,
A troughful of hearts could only be a bore.
A week in paris will ease the bite of it,
All I care is to smile in spite of it.

I'll forget you, I will
While yet you are still burning inside my brain.
Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
And there I'll be, while I rot
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too..

Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life in some small dive...
And there I'll be, while I rot
With the rest of those whose lives are lonely, too.."

Thanksgiving 2008

Thanksgiving is a shining example of what Howard Zinn calls "American exceptionalism", a concept that states that by the sheer goodness of our nation all its deeds are acceptable and necessary, regardless as to how atrocious. This exceptionalism is the erroneous mindset that allows us to ignore our centuries-long history of genocide toward Native Americans and instead celebrate our fictitious "brotherhood and cooperation" with a national holiday, and in fact is the same belief that allows us to think that we will be "greeted as liberators" upon invading a sovereign nation. It is similar to the "divine right of kings" endorsed by monarchical Europe that similarly led to genocide and fearsome oppression. Howard Zinn describes "American exceptionalism" as it relates to Thanksgiving by recounting the events of the Plymouth settlers (whom American school kids learn incorrectly to call "Pilgrims") and the Pequot tribe (known similarly incorrectly as "Indians") just one year after the first Thanksgiving. From "The Power and the Glory", in the Boston Review:

The notion of American exceptionalism—that the United States alone has the right, whether by divine sanction or moral obligation, to bring civilization, or democracy, or liberty to the rest of the world, by violence if necessary—is not new. It started as early as 1630 [one year after the first Thanksgiving] in the Massachusetts Bay Colony when Governor John Winthrop uttered the words that centuries later would be quoted by Ronald Reagan. Winthrop called the Massachusetts Bay Colony a 'city upon a hill.' Reagan embellished a little, calling it a 'shining city on a hill.'

The idea of a city on a hill is heartwarming. It suggests what George Bush has spoken of: that the United States is a beacon of liberty and democracy. People can look to us and learn from and emulate us.

In reality, we have never been just a city on a hill. A few years after Governor Winthrop uttered his famous words, the people in the city on a hill moved out to massacre the Pequot Indians. Here's a description by William Bradford, an early settler, of Captain John Mason's attack on a Pequot village:

Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword, some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so as they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived that they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and the gave the praise thereof to God; who had wrought so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.

November 27, 2008: 20 Years After Harvey Milk

“If a bullet should go through my head, let that bullet go through every closet door.”

~Harvey Milk

"Without hope, not only gays, but those who are blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors-- the us-es. Without hope the us-es give up. I know that you can't live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living. And you, and you, and you, and you have got to give them hope."

-Harvey Milk, 1978

Wikipedia: Harvey Milk
TIME 100 Heros: Harvey Milk

November 16: Seven years after Tommy Flanagan

Today marks the seventh anniversary of the death of pianist Tommy Flanagan, a preeminent talent and true "jazz poet" who remained one of the most respected pianists in the world from the chaos and testosterone of the 1950's to the modern sounds and free improvisation of the 1990's. Throughout his career, Flanagan supported such singers as Tony Bennet and Ella Fitzgerald with grace and beauty, led his own series of piano trios and two-piano duets with subtle darkness and graceful soloing, and famously gaffed John Coltrane's "Giant Steps" when asked to sightread the tune's prohibitively complex changes on the record date. Performing extensively as a sideman and as a leader, Flanagan left an important mark on the jazz piano tradition, cooling off and calming down the frenetic bebop of Bud Powell while maintaining the elegant swing and sophisticated musicianship of Ellington and Tatum.

Says critic Peter Watrous of the pianist's influential style (New York Times, September 3, 1992):

Mr. Flanagan, a preternaturally graceful pianist and one of jazz's finest improvisers, arranges his material to extract the fullest meaning from accents, breaks, unison bass and piano lines and metrical changes.

And of a set from the pianist at Condon's in August of 1992, he says:

...the 62-year-old Mr. Flanagan showed why he is considered a dean of jazz piano. He has absorbed a lifetime of jazz's tools, and his soloing reveled in ease and relaxation, even at faster tempos. Underneath the veneer, something darker was occurring. Mr. Flanagan is a master at swing, and he would vary his approach, from legato phrases to a sharply attacked series of notes... he casually flicked off notes, then moved into a set of phrases that curled at the edges, like burning paper, and that drove the band on.

Critic Pete Kelly (Jelly, 1997) sums up the pianist's uniquely transformative quality, saying:

...the ideas flow, chorus after chorus, song after song. It’s like reading a good book. Each song has its own shape and logic, its own pace of unfolding, its distinctive tone and feeling. Flanagan is the jazz musician as raconteur, a virtuoso with wit and imagination, an intellectual who likes to entertain, a historian who tells great stories. Imagine Spaulding Gray with a piano.

And imagine this. Flanagan live in Germany in 1991, ten years before his death in 2001. Watch and listen:

Doc Mach and the Field Surgeons: "This is Not a Bomb"

(To appear in The Williamsport Guardian, Fall-Winter 2008)

Doc Mach and the Field Surgeons: “This is Not a Bomb”
Album Release Show
Site B, October 25, 2008 w/ The Damage and Via Drive-Thru

Doc Mach and the Field Surgeons are a tremendous group of young musicians creating unabashedly innovative music in the Williamsport area. Their dense, multi-layered sound is characterized in part by the powerhouse drumming and rhythmic fearlessness of drummer Jeff Mach, the rock-steady pulse of bassist Joe Marchese, the lush and sensitive stylings of guitarist Deron Johnson, and, most obviously, the contrasting vocal styles of singers Josh Hines and Nico Salvatori. Hines sings with a trained voice that is alternately softly melodic and bombastically forceful, while Salvatori barks in an intense, authoritative shout that exudes youthful exuberance and righteous anger. The two singers blend their distinct voices artfully, creating a vocal sound larger than the style of one singer and more expansive than traditional vocal harmony, a deliberate sonic contrast that finds both singers weaving in and out of one another’s respective aural territories, creating an intricate tapestry of guttural roars and soaring melodicism.

This contrast between the primal and the elegant is a reoccurring theme throughout the band’s performances, as the graceful, sensitive playing of guitarist Deron Johnson locks with the solid heft and powerful momentum of the rhythm of section of Mach and Marchese. Jeff Mach is a drummer of both amazing intensity and intelligent musicianship, augmenting his solid, energetic rock style with a rare rhythmic intuition and complimenting the band’s musical unpredictability with abrupt dynamic changes and frequent, virtuosic fills that echo the rhythmic phrasing of Marchese and Salvatori. The power and energy he brings to the music have a profound effect on the other musicians, his playing lifting their own sonic constructions still higher as he violently urges the sound onward. Joe Marchese’s crisp basslines offer a steady pulse to the band’s constantly shifting music, providing an anchor for Mach’s rhythmic curiosity and lending Johnson’s melodic excursions a sense of grounding and rhythmic coherency. Marchese’s bass fills a similar role as would a second guitarist; far from simply doubling Johnson’s guitar lines, Marchese’s low-end rumble fills the sonic and harmonic space the guitar can not, adding an essential color to the band’s multi-layered sound.

Like Marchese, guitarist Deron Johnson plays artfully and melodically, avoiding the senselessly heavy distortion that is a crutch characteristic of other rock guitar players. Instead, he carefully cultivates his full, diverse tone, crafting a broad palette of moods and colors from a floor of effects, and when he solos, he solos not with the distorted scream of other guitarists but with a more evocative, cleaner tone: a lush, overdriven sound that cuts through the band’s dense arrangements in a much more effective manner than would a heavily distorted tone.

One of the most memorable moments of the album comes in the record’s adventurous closer, the eleven minute opus “From the Pulpit”, in which the layers of heavy guitar and waves of kinetic drumming abruptly fall away, leaving only Hines’s prayerful, fervent voice intoning wordlessly over a melancholy bed of soft piano and understated guitar. The tune progresses into a section in which Johnson plays alone, soloing over a sparse accompaniment created by loops, maintaining the delicacy and fragility of Hines’s harmonized song while adding a more obvious sense of urgent immediacy. Johnson plays with a warm, gentle tone that breaks and distorts as it sustains, crumbling and dissolving as it lingers over his own arpeggiated accompaniment-- a chillingly breathtaking soundscape of crumbling cities and cautious reverence that is as primal as it is sophisticated; the work of an artful and gifted musician. As this moment was recreated onstage, Johnson stepped forward while the rest of the band retreated slowly, Mach taking his sticks into one hand and exhaustedly leaning forward onto his snare drum, Marchese rested his weight on the sturdy frame of his bass as the singers slowly settled onto the drum riser, sitting cautiously as they caught their breath and brushed the hair from their faces. It was a lull in the performance, a portrait of the dignity and humanity of the band members as they rested briefly, a snapshot of incredible power sitting still and stationary. And when Mach reentered cautiously with a soft touch on the cymbals and Marchese followed solemnly, it was a graceful act of gratitude and congratulation, a demonstration of the band’s incredible capacity for poignancy as well as power.

This intricately illustrated conflict between urgent intensity and profound humanity is the nature of Doc Mach and the Field Surgeons, the rare quality that makes observing their concerts and absorbing their album such transformative experiences. Behind each athletic cymbal-stroke from Mach, each impassioned utterance from Salvatori, and each moment of collective artistry from the band as a whole, there is a deep and honest understanding of the purpose of each note, each lyric, and each song. In each performance, there is a deeply human connection to the power and meaning of music, a connection that is cultivated rather than smothered by the virtuosity of the performers.


Please support this great local band by purchasing their record “This is Not a Bomb”: 47 minutes of music for the cheap price of $5.00! To purchase the album please contact the band through www.myspace.com/docmach or at joeymarchese@gmail.com.

September 7th: 78 years of Sonny Rollins

Friday marked the seventy-eighth year of life and music for one of the most enduring jazz legends of our time-- the versatile and supremely gifted tenorman Sonny Rollins, a musician whose evocative improvisations contain all the power of John Coltrane's enraged meanderings and all the heartbreaking sensitivity of Billie Holiday's tearful wail. Into his singularly melodic lines, Rollins infuses a unique style of playful exuberance, a buoyant, excitable method of playing that is as welcoming as it is evocative. Rollins' playing is childish in its enthusiasm but entirely mature in its execution, and one need only hear the deliberately stumbling, drunken playing on his slurred interpretation of "On Green Dolphin Street" to become aware of the tremendous humanity evident in his music. Said esteemed critic Stanley Crouch of the still living giant:

"Over and over, decade after decade, from the late seventies through the eighties and nineties, there he is, Sonny Rollins, the saxophone colossus, playing somewhere in the world, some afternoon or some eight o'clock somewhere, pursuing the combination of emotion, memory, thought, and aesthetic design with a command that allows him to achieve spontaneous grandiloquence. With its brass body, its pearl-button keys, its mouthpiece, and its cane reed, the horn becomes the vessel for the epic of Rollins' talent and the undimmed power and lore of his jazz ancestors."

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Though his perpetual presence on the international stage is expected today (something quite astounding considering his age), Rollins made jazz history in the late 1950's when, at the height of his career, he abruptly dropped out of sight, retreating off the stages and away from the clubs that had been his haunting grounds throughout his entire adult life. Said Rollins later,

"People have speculated that the competition from John Coltrane was what drove me from the scene, and then hearing Ornette on top of that.... But it was really just my usual effort to improve my playing-- that was the main thing. I was suddenly getting a lot of publicity and being hailed my the critics, which is fine, except I almost felt like they were setting me up, because I felt like I wasn't delivering."

Rollins retreated into the privacy offered by the shocking anonymity of New York City (at one point, he enrolled in music classes at the New School, finding that only one of his professors recognized his name). Rollins found the privacy he needed to practice in the beautiful solitude and cathedral-like echo of one of the bridges over Manhattan's East River, blowing endless choruses among the silver beams and walkways of his metal hall. Jazz lore has it that during the years spent on the bridge, Rollins worked only on phrasing-- blowing a single line repeatedly and incessantly for days, reinterpreting it thousands of times with the subtle rhythmic manipulation so characteristic of his style.

Rollins' anonymity would be cut short after only several years when, in 1961, critic Ralph Berton published a supposedly fictional story in Downbeat magazine. In this story Berton described he and his wife stumbling upon "expert, first-class jazz tenor sax" while crossing one of Manhattan's bridges. The man Berton described

"paced as he blew, turning this way and that, bent his knees and spread his feet, blowing always, usually a single phrase over and over, smoothing out a sequence of triplets, superimposing a cresendo, riding the pulse of a non-existent rhythm section."

New York's jazz fans were not fooled by Berton's ambiguous information and use of a pseudonym, and Rollins returned to the recording studio shortly afterward, releasing the aptly titled "The Bridge". And Sonny Rollins, the master himself, has graced us with his music for almost half a century since.