Chega de saudade, Joãozinho

Last Saturday João Gilberto passed away at age 88, of natural causes, at his home in Rio de Janeiro. Contrary to his reputation of being a recluse and despite his age, only four days earlier he had gone out for dinner with his partner and his attorney, a rather central figure in his life of late.

Since his passing, the outpour of love and recognition from all over the world for the singer and guitarist has been overwhelming. Part of it is due to João's public visibility thanks to his success in the USA in the early 1960s—I'm sure I'm not the only one to play Getz/Gilberto, a sensational record, from track #2 onwards, skipping “The Girl from Ipanema”.

But beyond fame—the one aspect Brazil's current president was able to acknowledge—what made João special? In jazz terms, he was to bossa nova what Charlie Parker was to bebop.

For the love of George

George Avakian, Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins
Newport Jazz Festival, July 6, 1963
©Burt Goldblatt/CTS Images

George Avakian has died. He was 98. He lived a long, good life. For us, music lovers, the important bit is that he was a record producer, and a pioneer at that. Trying to give a fair overview of his whole career is almost impossible, and you will notice that, more often than not, the focus is on less than a decade, from 1950—when he produced Benny Goodmanʼs Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert—till 1958, when he left Columbia Records. Not all eras deserve the same attention, and those years were very intense for Avakian: he signed Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner and a certain Miles Davis into the big time, and relaunched the careers of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. But before that, he established, or helped establish, the concepts of the jazz album and the reissues of older recordings, a paradigm still extant. After those heady times at Columbia, he produced Sonny Rollinsʼs comeback in the sixties, beginning with The Bridge, all the studio recordings of Paul Desmond with Jim Hall—one LP for Warner Bros., the rest for RCA—and launched the careers of Charles Lloyd and Keith Jarrett. And still, this doesnʼt make him justice (Discogs.com, as good as it is, barely scratches the surface).

The man who was there

John Coltrane and Rudy Van Gelder, early 1960s

Phonography is one of the motors of jazz. Without recorded sound, the fast evolution of the music would not have happened. A recording allows however many repetitions necessary to assimilate the music. Without recordings, the contact with remote sonic cultures would be much, much harder.

Besides conveniency, phonography has given jazz an aesthetic. And counter to intuition, given the hundreds of thousands of jazz recordings produced and still available, a large of that urbane, sophisticated, aesthetic is due to a single person: Rudy Van Gelder, RVG, who passed away yesterday morning, aged 91.

RIP Juan Claudio Cifuentes, 'Cifu' (1941-2015)

(For once, this entry is not a parallel translation of its Spanish sister)

After all the arguments and bickering — which, yes, it's better than many other things, but we could do without most of it, really — there is something about intense music fandom, including jazz, that benefits your health. Case in point would be the dean of Spanish jazz commentators, Cifu who, even as a septuagenarian and having survived two cancers, never lost the enthusiasm for the music. I would introduce him to new, unknown, talent with zero commercial value, and, if he liked it, he would push it harder than Samson in the temple. Last time we spoke, it was about Gigi Gryce and his looking forward to doing a series of programmes with the complete recordings of Artie Shaw and His Gramercy Five. We never got around to finishing it.

Cifu by Jaime Massieu, October 2014

Cifu is how friends called Juan Claudio Cifuentes de Benito, who's died earlier today, having suffered a stroke last week. He was husband, father, grandfather, friend... but for a gigantic amount of people in Spain and beyond he was the face and voice of jazz, judging from the reaction in social media (and he didn't even like computers).

They've killed Cabu

Picture: Q. Houdas / DDM M.C.

Still in shock after the massacre in Paris a few hours ago, but as a jazz person I am thinking of Cabu, who would have been 75 next week; his drawings will surely be familiar to any readers who've browsed for records in European shops. Our deepest condolences go to family, friends and all the staff at Charlie Hebdo.

These are some examples of his work.

Kenny Wheeler (1930-2014)

Kenny Wheeler

After Kenny Wheeler passed away last Thursday, the outpouring of admiration and pure love for his music and himself as a person has been astonishing. I never met the man, although I saw him a few times playing live — the last one with an all-star cast at the London Jazz Festival 2012, another wonderful show of love, admiration and great music.

Wheeler is one of those characters that just don't fit in your typical jazz history. From the same generation as Clifford Brown, Bill Evans, Phil Woods, Bob Brookmeyer and all those guys, he was a Canadian who emigrated to the UK in 1952 (the beginning of the Gerry Mulligan-Chet Baker quartet, for instance). He was a late bloomer, his career moved back and forth from large ensemble compositions to free improvisation, not something you'd expect from such a retiring, quiet, sweet man, who once explained his method as "what I like doing best is writing sad tunes, and then letting wonderful musicians destroy them".

Remembering Johnny Winter

Johnny Winter

"I just hope I’m remembered as a good blues musician."

—Johnny Winter, just a month ago, here.

With his mane of white hair and willowy constitution, Johnny Winter was very easy to spot. He was also one of the true electric guitar heroes. He's passed away while on tour in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 16 according to his representative. He was 70.

Given his longevity and visibility, there'll be obituaries everywhere summarizing his life, his ups and downs, and his music. For many, especially the followers of less amplified musics, he could be loud and strident. His mid-1980s LPs, victims to the mastering practices of the time, are a good instance of that brittle, piercing sound. Still exciting blues and rock'n'roll if you ask me. Like so.

The joy of Horace

Horace Silver pictured in 1989 by Dimitri Savitski (Wikipedia)

Since back in 2007 when bassist Christian McBride made a passing comment on Horace Silver's Alzheimer, his passing yesterday was not unexpected news (so much so, that a rumour became news and spread like fire earlier in the year).

There are very fine obits around (like this one) about Silver's wonderful life, so we'll skip that.

His legacy, what remains after the man's gone, is phenomenal. As a piano player, his style was very rhythmic (watch out for that left hand, which can also be heard in contemporaries such as John Williams and Eddie Costa) and somewhat sketchy, as if he was dotting down ideas for new compositions as he was playing them. A prolific composer and a tasking leader, his music was lively, bluesy, gutsy, churchy, with feeling.

RIP Joe Wilder (1922-2014)

Joe Wilder at IJS
(Photo by Ed Berger)

Ed Berger, his good friend and biographer, reports the passing of Joe Wilder earlier today. Wilder, somehow like Hank Jones, was a gentleman, a dedicated craftsman in his instrument, from which he extracted the most beautiful sound, soft yet slightly brassy. With him gone, yet another window to the past is closed, but at least we have Berger's biography, which is already available. And we'll always have the records.

This is an article about Wilder by Berger. Here, he's at Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz on NPR.

This is Wilder taming an old warhorse.

Paco de Lucía: an introduction in tangos, and a PS

In the obituaries devoted to Paco de Lucía, the comments have focused on his adventures beyond Flamenco and its fusion with other musics, but in actual fact he never strayed too far from his roots and the vast majority of his recordings can still be sorted in the palos, the different forms of the genre. As he himself said "there are other musics I admire, but they don't make me feel like Flamenco does. It just breaks you."

Paco de Lucía and Camarón de la Isla (picture by José Lamarca)

Among those palos, tangos — which, like Camarón and Paco, come from around Cádiz — must be the easiest to enjoy for anyone used to the 4/4 ever-present in pop, rock and a great deal of jazz. It not only shares the four-beat signature, but the accents also tend to fall on beats 2 and 4, where your typical hi-hat or snare drum wouldn't be so out of place.

RIP Federico García-Herraiz

For those of us who got into jazz from a small village in a remote corner of Europe, before the internet, cheap flights, and other luxuries we now take for granted, the bi-monthly arrival of Cuadernos de Jazz to the local public library was something we awaited anxiously. Reading it, like listening to the few records we could afford, was a process as fast as the disappearing of water in dry land.

In those years when learning about new music was not only a musical but also a sentimental education, Federico García-Herraiz's was one of the bylines I mulled over in great detail. Although we would, in time, be colleagues in the same magazine, I never met him. I did see him several times, always with his  walking stick despite his apparent youth, but that was before I joined Cuadernos and I was too shy to walk up to him, say hello and thank you.

Federico left us just about a week after Raúl Mao. I don't have any pictures of the latter, but I've found this one with Raúl, taken at Jazzaldia in 1999. In many ways, those were happier days.

With Max Roach and Raúl Mao in San Sebastián, July 1999

RIP Raúl Mao (1944-2013)

Raúl Mao died on February 8th. He had been ill for some time. He was the heart of Spanish magazine Cuadernos de Jazz, the main reason for its record-breaking 20 years in print, plus three as a web-only publication.

We first met back in 1998, after a concert by Brad Mehldau in Madrid.

He's already missed.

RIP Bob Brookmeyer (1929-2011)

Bob Brookmeyer has died three days before his 82nd birthday. He was an absolute favourite of mine, possibly my favourite musician in all jazz. Why? Because I liked the way he swang, and his sound, and his arrangements, and his wit, and his intellect, which he applied to arrangements and to solos full of ideas and melody. The previous post mentioned a couple of tunes worth checking out with Stan Getz, "Rustic Hop", an original that will lift your spirit unless you're dead, and "Varsity Drag", where he begins his solo with a very simple phrase (first he plays a major third, then a minor third) that will swing your socks off.

There are already some voices wondering why he was not given more recognition. I'd say that, beyond jazz, because this music doesn't amount to much. Sad but true. But within jazz, and this is even sadder, possibly because his long career didn't fit any styles, those very rigid boxes critics and fans of this music, allegedly of a progressive and open-minded persuasion, have created and are so comfortable with.

I already wrote about Brookmeyer some time ago, and you'll find some interesting video footage there. Some years ago I spoke briefly to him, and he told me that Gloomy Sunday was his favourite among his own recordings, where he shared the arranging chores with some esteemed colleagues, such as Ralph Burns.

You can also tune in to Indian Public Radio's David Brent Johnson's Night Lights devoted to Brookmeyer for a nice selection of his work by David with a little help of yours truly. Even better is the NPR Jazz Profile on his 70th birthday, produced by Bill Kirchner.

Bye, Mr. Brookmeyer, and thanks for so many good moments.

Blues for Paul Motian, 1931-2011

Eddie Costa on piano
Wendell Marshall on bass
Paul Motian on drums

- 1959 -



***

George Shearing (1919-2011)

"I adapted Milt Buckner and Glenn Miller"




RIP, George Shearing (1919 - 2011)

Obituaries: Peter Keepnews, Doug Ramsey