When Duke Ellington received the news that Billy Strayhorn, his songwriting and arranging partner of 28 years, had died, Ellington reportedly cried and told a friend, “No, I’m not all right! Nothing is going to be all right now.”

The cancer-stricken Strayhorn passed away on May 31, 1967, and Ellington himself would follow seven years later, dying on May 24, 1974, at the age of 75. But the Duke did not go gently into the good night of his own mortality; he toured incessantly in the last years of his life and produced late-period masterpieces such as The New Orleans Suite and The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse. “Who’s 70?” he said to a reporter who kept bringing up his age. “That’s an awful weight to put on an up-and-coming man like me.”

As his son Mercer Ellington later noted, Duke Ellington took Strayhorn’s passing as an impetus, born of necessity, to increase his own productivity as a writer. His discography from 1967 to 1973 contains numerous points of interest, such as The River (written for an Alvin Ailey ballet), a duet date with bassist Ray Brown (This One’s for Blanton) and a stellar piano-trio concert (Live at the Whitney). Here are five more glowing snapshots from the Ellingtonian twilight.

Copyright 2013 WFIU-FM. To see more, visit http://wfiu.org.

• Chris Potter Quartet At The Village VanguardAudioDownload

Now in his early 40s, Chris Potter is “the most commandingly skilled saxophonist of his generation,” according to New York Times jazz writer Nate Chinen.

Potter and JazzSet host Dee Dee Bridgewater have just come off three months with the Monterey Jazz Festival on Tour, traveling the country by bus. On the bandstand, Bridgewater liked to say to Potter, “I want someone to draw a picture of you and your horn, with cascades of notes pouring out.” She loved working with him. Potter plays what he imagines, and he thinks on his feet. He’s tuneful, soulful and forward-moving.

Chris Potter’s The Sirens is inspired by the ancient Greek tale of exile, The Odyssey by Homer. He’d read The Odyssey in high school in South Carolina. More than two decades later, he read it again, connecting with it even more because Homer’s epic “is all about big themes set in bold relief — romantic adventure and a return to home, temptation and identity, life and death. Things we all deal with today.”

Potter played many times at the Village Vanguard in bands led by drummer Paul Motian (1931-2011). Mid-journey in The Sirens, Potter inserts Motian’s piece, “The Owl of Cranston.” At the end, “The Owl” flutters like powerful night bird, landing.

In The Odyssey, hero Odysseus is held captive on an island by the nymph Calypso. Potter’s “Kalypso” (think Sonny Rollins’ “St. Thomas”) leads to a wonderful jam by drummer Eric Harland and — through Ethan Iverson’s piano — connects to “The Sirens,” the final movement, featuring Larry Grenadier on bowed bass. The saxophonist brings The Sirens to a close with a final, strong melody — a beautiful reading.

Set List

• “Wine Dark Sea”
• “Wayfinder”
• “The Owl From Cranston” (Paul Motian)
• “Kalypso”
• “The Sirens”

Personnel

• Chris Potter, tenor and soprano saxes, flute, bass clarinet
• Ethan Iverson, piano
• Larry Grenadier, bass
• Eric Harland, drums

Credits

Original webcast produced and hosted by Josh Jackson. Technical direction and live audio mix by David Tallacksen, video direction by Michael Downes. Web producer Patrick Jarenwattananon. Surround Sound remix by Duke Markos. Studio engineer Ginger Bruner at KUNV in Las Vegas.

Copyright 2013 WBGO-FM. To see more, visit http://www.wbgo.org.

• Pat Metheny And John Zorn: A Vivid Sound WorldAudioDownload

Guitarist Pat Metheny is revered for his bright, accessible modern jazz. Saxophonist and composer John Zorn is associated with much knottier, often dissonant experiments. Metheny’s new Tap: John Zorn’s Book of Angels, Vol. 20 unites these two known opposites of instrumental music, and the result is often intensely visual. (If for some reason a Hollywood film director asks me to suggest music to accompany an exotic Orient Express railroad caper, I’ll be ready.)

Metheny has been making records for more than 30 years. Whether he’s playing some sunny Brazilian fantasy with his Group, or exploring in a more cerebral mode with jazz legends, he thinks in terms of wide-open vistas. If he were a painter, he’d do landscapes, not portraits.

These Zorn compositions are part of a mammoth series of songs inspired by (and built around) the ancient scales of traditional Jewish music. Zorn started the project in the 1990s. It eventually ballooned to more than 500 tunes, the last 300 written in a three-month period. Metheny selected some of those for this album, and began recording them in his home studio between tours. He plays all of the instruments except drums, which are handled by his frequent collaborator Antonio Sanchez.

The collection begins with “Mastema,” a fitful piece that suggests angry river rapids. The basic theme is provided by Zorn, but as with everything here, what he’s written provides just an outline — it offers no guidance about instrumentation, mood or anything else. Metheny takes what’s on the page and goes to work, conjuring. The result is an ornate, stunningly vivid sound world that neither artist would have found on his own.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

• Sarah Vaughan: A New Box Set Revels In Glorious ImperfectionsAudioDownload

Singer Sarah Vaughan came up in the 1940s alongside bebop lions Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, starting out in Earl Hines‘ big band. Hines had hired her as his singer and deputy pianist, while Gillespie praised her fine ear for chords as she grasped the arcane refinements of bebop harmony. Vaughan put them to good use as a singer, picking notes other vocalists wouldn’t.

A lot of jazz singing is about consonants — the percussive attacks from which the music swings. With Vaughan, it’s also about the way she rolled out her vowels, reveling in a held note like Miles Davis. Later, her vibrato could get excessive, but in the mid-’50s her taste and control were a marvel. That much is clear from a new anthology of Vaughan titled Divine: The Jazz Albums 1954-1958. (In that period, she was recording pop albums with strings, using some of the same tunes.) It’s six albums-plus on four CDs, recorded live or in the studio with bands big and small. All but one session is sparked by another bebop institution, drummer Roy Haynes. He achieves a springy beat using brushes, and doesn’t overplay.

Vaughan had a gallery of vocal timbres: gravelly to silky, round or strident, white-gloved or blues-drenched. Her pitch range was operatic and her low notes have uncommon power. She drew inspiration from great soloists and gave it right back — notably in a loose session with trumpeter Clifford Brown, with whom she trades phrases throughout “April in Paris.”

Two live albums from Chicago nightclubs are standouts, partly for their glorious imperfections. Vaughan didn’t know some of the material so well, taking lyric sheets on stage, and she sometimes had to improvise her way out of trouble. Recording in the wee hours at the London House, she keeps bobbling the start of the last tune of the night, “Thanks for the Memory” — particularly when she hits the word “Parthenon.” But with every take, her entrance gets more elaborate.

If anything, she sounds more focused and at ease after two false starts — at least till she blows another line, and does her best to spoil the full take. (That just made it more of a keeper.) The live dates in Divine show how a great improviser can always recover from a tailspin. The beboppers were big on that: putting the wrongest note in a context where it sounds like the perfect thing.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

• Listen Now: Rudresh Mahanthappa On Piano JazzAudioDownload

Rudresh Mahanthappa creates an explosive blend of South Indian classical music and progressive jazz. A Guggenheim Fellow who’s been named the Jazz Journalists Association’s “Alto Saxophonist of the Year” for four years running, Mahanthappa makes innovative music that reflects his experience as a second-generation Indian-American. He shares his fascinating style and story on this episode of Piano Jazz.

Mahanthappa was born in Boulder, Colo. He studied at Berklee College of Music and received his Master of Fine Arts degree in jazz composition from Chicago’s DePaul University in 1998. He began his serious study of Indian music under saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath, who used the instrument to explore the Carnatic music of southern India. Mahanthappa has continued to collaborate with Gopalnath on album work and concerts; the pair has also traveled to India on grant-sponsored projects.

A fixture of the contemporary New York scene, Mahanthappa leads or co-leads several projects, including the Rudresh Mahanthappa Quartet with Vijay Iyer or Craig Taborn on piano, François Moutin on bass and Dan Weiss on drums. Mahanthappa has recorded more than a dozen albums as a leader. His latest album is Gamak, with the rhythm section of Moutin and Weiss, and features the work of guitarist David “Fuse” Fiuczynski.

Recorded Feb. 20, 2013.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Charley Patton

• 'High Water Everywhere' and the father of Delta BluesThe Blues Time MachineDownload

Charley Patton is considered by many to be the father of Delta Blues. What does that actually mean? A combination of location, timing and talent, put him at the leading edge of the new musical direction of the 1920’s. He was one of, if not the first, to play what we might recognize as blues.

Patton was a prolific songwriter, a powerful singer, with an aggressive guitar style that had him popping bass strings, banging on the box, and playing behind his back. He brought a bit of vaudeville into the blues as well, and his recordings are laced with vocal asides, as if two people were performing. This passion, talent and intensity made him one of the best-known traveling performers of the time,  perhaps the first real “blues man”. Among the future blues stars who learned directly from him were John Lee Hooker and Howlin’ Wolf.

“High Water Everywhere” was a song Patton recorded in 1929, written about the great Mississippi flood of 1927. It was the most destructive flood in America’s history, with water levels even higher then the disastrous 2010 Mississippi floods.

The aftermath of the flood was one of the things that drove many African-Americans to move to northern cities.

Rory Block has spent much of her career painstakingly transcribing and recreating the intricate guitar work of blues originals like Robert Johnson, Fred McDowell and Memphis Minnie. In the 1960’s she left home at 15 to seek out the living legends of blues—John Hurt, Reverend Gary Davis and Son House. She recorded “High Water Everywhere” on her 2005 CD From The Dust.

Guitar phenomenon Joe Bonamassa has always paid attention to his blues roots.

While he has concentrated on original rock, he stays connected to the blues by including at least one or two blues songs on his CDs, from people like B.B. King, Albert Collins and Buddy Guy. His 2006 version of “High Water Everywhere” is a complete re-orchestration of Patton’s composition, laced with counter melodies and moody harmonies. This is a cool live performance of Bonamassa and his acoustic version of the tune:

Here are the complete versions of “High Water Everywhere” tracked through time:

• Charley Patton“High Water Everywhere, Pts. 1 & 2”  1929Download

• Rory Block“High Water Everywhere”  2005Download

• Joe Bonamassa“High Water Everywhere” 2006Download

Ann Hampton Callaway performs live in the Jazz24/KPLU Seattle studios on May 10, 2013. Credit: Justin Steyer

• Ann Hampton Callaway: Singing the standards, Streisand and making it up as she goesLive Studio SessionsDownload

Vocalist, pianist and composer, Ann Hampton Callaway has had success in the worlds of jazz, Broadway and cabaret. She’s also one of our favorite KPLU Studio Session guests.

We invite her to perform every time she passes through Seattle because, from one visit to the next, we never know what kind of surprises she’ll treat us to.

This time around, with host Abe Beeson and a small audience of KPLU Leadership Circle members, Ann turned Our Love Is Here To Stay into an audience-participation scat-along which was enjoyed by all.

Next, she performed the song she’d written for Barbara Streisand to sing at her (Barbara’s) wedding.

To wrap things up, she invited to audience to give her phrases (some of which included ‘sunshine in Seattle’, ‘home for wayward girls’, ‘basketball’ and ‘snuffleupagus’) which she would then include in an improvised song. The resulting song was clever, humorous, daring and delightful.  Watch below!

• Edmar Castañeda And Friends At The Americas SocietyListen HereDownload

As a child in Bogotá, Edmar Castañeda and his sister took folk dance classes. Their mother made sure of that. Castañeda liked the dancing, but he really liked the live harp accompaniment. In Spanish, the harp is called the llanero. It’s Colombian, not a classical harp.

When the family moved to Queens, Castañeda studied trumpet and discovered jazz, especially improvisation. So he put his loves together, working as a solo harpist in a New York restaurant and teaching himself the music people wanted to hear on an instrument they did not expect to see.

Now in his mid-30s, Castañeda is a world-traveling, collaborative musical marvel. He’s an extroverted, sweet-tempered virtuoso; The Wall Street Journal calls him the “hippest harpist.” A soprano saxophonist from Israel and a drummer/percussionist originally from the Bay Area round out his trio.

In November 2012, this trio and special guests played three nights at the Americas Society in Manhattan. The series fit Americas Society’s mission to a T; both are designed to foster understanding of issues confronting the hemisphere, and increase awareness and appreciation of a diverse cultural heritage.

Castañeda wears a bright red cap, and his electric-blue harp is his orchestra. He walks those fluid bass lines under percussive chords and fast-moving melodies. Saxophonist Shlomi Cohen, born in Tel Aviv, came to New York to study jazz. Cohen plays funk with the Bernie Worrell Orchestra. Castañeda calls Dave Silliman “the man with four hands.” Silliman is ridiculously productive as he paints with brushes on the snare drum, slaps the cajon he sits on and rattles his gourds.

Guest bandoneonist Héctor del Curto from Argentina now lives in New York, where he directed Forever Tango on Broadway. Vibraphonist Joe Locke is made in the U.S.; he and Castañeda played a duo concert at the Tanglewood Jazz Festival that aired on JazzSet. Vocalist Andrea Tierra from Medellín met and married Edmar Castañeda in New York. And Jorge Glem, the four-string guitar player, has won first place in more than one cuatro festival and competition events in his home country of Venezuela. One by one, they join Castañeda.

This series of concerts received support from Chamber Music America’s 2012 Presenting Jazz program, funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (which also funds JazzSet) and the MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series, with the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Set List

• “Double Portion” (Castañeda) featuring the trio
• “Libertango” (Piazzolla) with guest Héctor del Curto, bandoneon
• “Cuarto de Colores” (Castañeda) with guest Joe Locke, vibes
• “Carrao Carrao” (traditional) with Andrea Tierra, vocals
• “Entre Cuerdas” (Castañeda) with Jorge Glem, cuatro

Personnel

• Edmar Castañeda, harp
• Shlomi Cohen, soprano sax
• Dave Silliman, drums and percussion
• Héctor del Curto, bandoneón
• Joe Locke, vibraphone
• Andrea Tierra, vocal
• Jorge Glem, cuatro

Credits

Host: Dee Dee Bridgewater. Recording engineer: Bill Siegmund with Don Fierro and Andrew T. Shire. Surround Sound remix engineer: Duke Markos. Studio engineer: Ginger Bruner, KUNV in Las Vegas. Thanks to Sebastian Zubieta, music director, Americas Society; Jeanette Vuocolo, jazz program director, Chamber Music America.

Copyright 2013 WBGO-FM. To see more, visit http://www.wbgo.org.

Woody Herman in 1946. Credit: William Gottlieb/The Library of Congress

Written by Alan Greenblatt from NPR

Woody Herman was one of the premier bandleaders in jazz, saxophonist Joe Lovano says.

“He didn’t have the same chops and virtuosic approach like Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw, but he told a deep story,” says Lovano, who played with Herman early in his career. “He was a blues player from his heart, and really had a beautiful voice on alto saxophone.”

Born in 1913, Herman would have turned 100 on Thursday. Over the course of a long career, the reedman explored many of the styles of 20th-century jazz, and was one of the first big-band leaders to incorporate melodic lines from bebop.

Herman’s bands were generally known as the Herd — later, the Thundering Herd — and featured a tremendous rhythmic drive. His was one of the country’s most popular musical acts in the 1940s, and respected enough musically to inspire and introduce an “Ebony Concerto” from Igor Stravinsky. His records from that period remain touchstones and still swing hard. (Well, maybe not the Stravinsky.)

Herman was also an amazing talent scout, giving work to not only countless arrangers, but also an unending roster of strong soloists, including Flip Phillips, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Pete and Conte Candoli, Gene Ammons, Sal Nistico, Frank Tiberi and Dave McKenna.

“He heard all kinds of young players all the time, and was attracted by the modern sounds as different generations developed under him,” Lovano says. “He featured cats and let them really be themselves.”

Herman performed nearly all of his life. As a child performer on vaudeville, he was known as the Boy Wonder. Later in life, he kept working long after his health started to fail him, as he sought to pay off a never-ending debt to the IRS.

Here are five songs that sound fresh decades down the road, offering just a sample of Woody Herman’s many sounds.

Woody Herman At 100: ‘A Blues Player From His Heart’

Song:  Woodchopper’s Ball

Artist:  Woody Herman

Album:  Blues On Parade

Herman was still in his 20s when he formed his first band, drawing on players who had played with him under bandleader and composer Isham Jones. No one thought much of this record — a simple head arrangement of a blues — when he first recorded it in 1939. It didn’t sell, but Decca Records, where Herman led the house band, kept reissuing it. Over the period of a few years, it became his biggest hit, selling five million copies and ending up a standard.

 

Song:  Sidewalks of Cuba

Artist:  Woody Herman

Album:  Blowin’ Up a Storm: The Columbia Years, 1945-1947

Like world wars, Herman’s bands were numbered retrospectively. The group later dubbed the “First Herd” was one of the country’s most popular acts in the mid-1940s. It played with exuberance, the horn sections and first-rate soloists supported by energetic, bomb-dropping drummers. This Ralph Burns arrangement features Herman with a Latin tinge, but as critic Gary Giddins once wrote, “The heart of the performance is a crazed ‘Bumble Bee’ and half-chorus trumpet solo by Sonny Berman.”

 

Song:  Four Brothers

Artist:  Woody Herman

Album:  Blowin’ Up a Storm: The Columbia Years, 1945-1947

Here’s a track that leaves you happier every time you hear it. The Second Herd featured a young Stan Getz, who demonstrates the incredible influence Lester Young’s phrasing and tone had on his generation of sax players. The bop-inflected tune (by Jimmy Giuffre) features Getz playing over the baritone sax of Serge Chaloff, with fellow tenor “brothers” Zoot Sims and Herbie Steward taking solos, as well. The unanimity of their approach and the sheer forward momentum of the piece made this recording an enduring favorite of musicians.

 

Song:  23 Red

Artist:  Woody Herman

Album:  Woody’s Winners [Bonus Tracks]

Like a lot of bandleaders, Herman was fronting smaller units by the late 1950s, but he kept putting together big bands. One powerhouse group that played from 1962 to 1965 became known as the “Renaissance Herd,” captured here on a live date in San Francisco. Herman’s bands may have been best known for their sax sections, but three trumpeters — Bill Chase, Dusko Goykovich and Don Rader — are featured on a relentless exchange of choruses in this tune.

 

Song:  Giant Steps

Artist:  Woody Herman

Album:  Giant Steps

There were certain tunes Herman played nightly for 40 years (“Woodchopper’s Ball,” “Apple Honey”), but he kept exploring new repertoire. His recordings of rock tunes have dated badly, but he enjoyed greater success recording tunes by younger jazz composers such as Chick Corea and Thad Jones. Trumpeter Bill Stapleton reworked John Coltrane’s standard for an album that took home a Grammy in 1973 — the same year Herman played halftime at the Super Bowl. In classic Herd fashion, the recording features a dynamic chase between tenors Frank Tiberi and Gregory Herbert.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Written by Patrick Jarenwattananon from WBGO-FM

Subway entertainers are a mixed bag, but in the arts mecca of New York City, they’re often overqualified — so much so that bands and other musical acts need to audition to even set up underground. And those are just the “official” performers.

Gregory Porter has the frame of a football linebacker — maybe because he once was one, for a Division I college — and the rich, booming voice you might expect from a guy with such lungs. It cuts through a crowd with its strength, in the manner of an old-school soul singer; it demands attention with its sensitivity. If Porter weren’t winning over the international jazz club and festival circuit, he’d rise above the din wherever he went.

Of course, it wasn’t the most practical (or legal) thing to actually get Gregory Porter to perform on an operational MTA train. So we asked him if he’d perform for us at the New York Transit Museum in downtown Brooklyn, a collection of vintage memorabilia and reconditioned cars housed in a former subway station. All the better: Porter has a way with vintage suits, and there was a fortunate coincidence about the way it all felt right among the period-specific ads which flanked him. Accompanied by pianist Chip Crawford — who perfectly punches and beds the gaps here — Porter sang his original “Be Good (Lion’s Song),” a parable of unrequited affection (which NPR Music named one of our 100 favorite songs of 2012) and the title track from his latest album.

At the beginning of the video, we scrambled for some visual direction to lead into the singing itself. We were looking for a prop for Porter to be reading, so I dug into my backpack and found the current edition of the New York City Jazz Record, a monthly guide to music in the city. Porter has a new album in the works, and, given the charisma and conviction on display here, he might just make the cover of that publication himself when it comes out.

Credits

Produced by Saidah Blount, Mito Habe-Evans and Patrick Jarenwattananon; Videographers: Gabriella Garcia-Pardo, Mito Habe-Evans, Tim Wilkins; Audio engineered by Kevin Wait; Video edited by Gabriella Garcia-Pardo and Mito Habe-Evans; Special thanks to the New York Transit Museum

Copyright 2013 WBGO-FM. To see more, visit http://www.wbgo.org.

• Balancing Influences: Saxophonist Mahanthappa Blends StylesAudioDownload

When a single review compares an artist’s work to both Mahavishnu Orchestra and The Stooges, hardcore rock music fans sit up and take notice.

That’s the high praise the Los Angeles Times bestowed upon saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa.

You’ll find the Indian-American’s work filed under jazz, but it’s hard to find a style he doesn’t touch. Elements of hip-hop, country, metal and soul fuse with traditional sounds from India, Africa and Indonesia.

And he makes it rock.

Mahanthappa, whose latest album is called Gamak, talks to Arun Rath, host of weekends on All Things Considered, about his influences, Indian rhythms and “embracing” confusion.

Interview Highlights

On Mahanthappa’s recent rock leanings:

“You know, I’m a child of the ’80s, so I grew up with a lot of great rock. I mean, ’80s wasn’t the best, but … I still had access to ’70s rock. And a lot of progressive rock stuff has been very influential: Yes and Gentle Giant and Rush and Genesis. So I wanted to bring that element to more of a forefront with this particular band.”

On working with Western musicians on Indian rhythms:

“In Indian music, you talk about cycles of seven beats or 13 beats or 21 beats. And those are constructs that I really relate to. And the best thing is when you feel free within those structures. … Everyone in the band developed a sort of rhythmic vocabulary. They can deal with these structures, and they can internalize them very quickly. Some people think of the beat cycles – the Indian talas – as being difficult, but if you find a way to internalize it, you hear it as if you’re hearing blues, as if you’re hearing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb.’”

On balancing his influences:

“I’m trying to express what it means to be Indian-American, so I’m not interested in doing anything that’s overtly Indian because I don’t feel overtly Indian. I feel Indian and American and neither and both, all at the same time, every second of every day. I feel like the music should reflect that, too. … I think the interesting thing is embracing the confusion. If you own the confusion, then you’ve won.”

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has issued a proclamation declaring Friday “Women in Jazz Day” — an attempt at cultural reform that’s bound to enjoy the same resounding success as banning oversized sodas. Which is to say: Nice try, Mr. Mayor.

Women in jazz certainly deserve to be celebrated. But trying to persuade arbiters of the jazz canon to make room for women as a fundamental, integral part of our history? You’d have better luck extending term limits again.

The mayoral proclamation was occasioned by the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s premiere of The Girls in the Band, a documentary about female jazz instrumentalists from the 1920s to the present. Described by producer and director Judy Chaiken as women’s answer to Ken Burns’ Jazz (the 19-hour miniseries that only spares a minute or two for the contributions of women instrumentalists), The Girls in the Band has already seen its share of festival screenings and won a few awards. Herbie Hancock, who was interviewed for the film, brushed away tears of joy when he watched it, according to a press release.

The Girls in the Band brought a tear to my eyes, too, but only because I wish it had gone deeper and been afforded a little more polish, offering viewers an experience as vibrant and well-crafted as the music these women made.

Historians won’t have trouble nitpicking at the somewhat-jumbled narrative. For example, it doubles back to cover Lil Hardin Armstrong (a 1920s jazz heroine) after WWII. Inevitably, at 81 minutes, it still leaves out very significant players, including vibraphonist Marjorie Hyams, pianist/organist/harpist Alice Coltrane, pianist Marilyn Crispell and violinist Regina Carter. The sound quality is uneven beyond the vagaries that come with re-mastering old media. And uncredited, contemporary musicians blandly fill the gaps between historic gems with piano noodling and knock-offs of “Sing Sing Sing.”

My biggest complaint, however, is with the interviews. Whether they’re with better-known figures (like pianist Marian McPartland, bandleader Maria Schneider and trumpeter Ingrid Jensen) or more obscure pioneers (like bandleader Peggy Gilbert, trumpeter Clora Bryant and saxophonist Roz Cron), the production often renders them as flat as Mayor Mike’s Big Gulp. These are remarkably colorful performers who have a lot to say. I’ve met most of them and, for the record, they’re vastly more engaging than Chaiken’s portrait would have you believe.

I’d still recommend that jazz fans see The Girls in the Band; the film is a respectful treatment of its subject, and the best visual resource available. But if you’d like to get to know this thread of jazz history better, here are some other materials worth exploring.

Viewing

Footage of even the most renowned jazz musicians can be rare, gender aside. Even though the clips in The Girls in the Band tend to be grievously short — brief flashes of technical brilliance that prove these women were as good as the boys, but reveal little else — their sheer number and variety is the film’s greatest strength. You won’t find all of this material in the same place anywhere else, at least not yet, and it’s especially gratifying to connect a name with a performance. For example, Geri Allen never fails in interviews to acknowledge the debt she owes to fellow Detroit pianist and vibraphonist Terry Pollard; how amazing it is to even get a glimpse of her playing in The Girls in the Band.

Of course, if you know who you’re looking for, plenty of bits and pieces are out there on YouTube. Take Pollard’s performance with Terry Gibbs on the Tonight Show in 1956.

Extended footage, films and documentaries are hard to come by, but two have been made recently available on Amazon’s video service. The International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1986) tells the story of this groundbreaking all-woman big band with greater depth and care than you’ll find The Girls in the Band. Tiny & Ruby: Hell Divin’ Women (1989) follows two of the former Sweethearts after the band split up — partners for more than 40 years who became cultural heroes for the gay-mights movement.

If you can wait a few months, producer and director Kay D. Ray’s Lady B. Good should start to make its own festival rounds. A history that covers women’s roles in jazz from its beginnings through the 1970s, it raised $25,000 for a final edit via Kickstarter in April. Fingers crossed that it just might just be the documentary we’ve all been waiting for.

Reading

If you were going to teach yourself the history of women in jazz, you couldn’t do any better than by starting with Sally Placksin’s American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present, winner of the 1983 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award (and, thankfully, about to reappear as a revised second edition). Faced with the monumental task of writing the first history on this subject, Placksin deftly weaves biographical information about major figures together with cultural and stylistic shifts. It’s on her shoulders that all others who write about women in jazz stand.

The golden era for female instrumentalists was during WWII, when horn-toting equivalents of Rosie the Riveter took to the bandstand while the men were away. Sherry Tucker’s landmark study Swing Shift: “All-Girl” Bands of the 1940s (2000) is as eye-opening as it is thorough, based on interviews with more than 100 musicians. If instead, however, you’d like to hear what it was like to be a woman with the otherwise all-male bands — told by a single, unwavering narrator — read Anita O’Day’s autobiography High Times, Hard Times. There’s never been a spunkier, more entertaining broad, as she liked to call herself. You won’t want to put it down.

Interviews provide other opportunities to hear musicians in their own words, fill in historical gaps and showcase more contemporary talents. Wayne Enstice and Janice Stockhouse’s Jazzwomen: Conversations With Twenty-One Musicians is thoughtful and well-executed, as are W. Royal Stokes’ Living the Jazz Life and Growing Up With Jazz, broader collections in which women are amply represented.

Biographies also offer a wealth of information that escapes the standard histories. Tammy Kernodle’s Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (2004) is a standout, as is Paul de Barros’ recent Shall We Play That One Together? The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland (2012). One of the most curious and powerful — and my personal favorite — is Diane Wood Middlebrook’s Suits Me: The Double Life of Billy Tipton (2008). A compassionate and sympathetic account, the book tells the story of the cross-dressing saxophonist, who was only revealed to be a woman upon her death.

Listening

If you were to look at the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, you might get the false impression that there are no women instrumentalists in jazz, save Lil Hardin’s presence on a couple of her husband’s tracks. Sadly, there is no equivalent compilation that chronologically traces women’s contributions, and female instrumentalists were typically under-recorded. But here are a few recommendations to get the ball rolling.

Valaida Snow, Hot Snow: Queen of the Trumpet Sings & Swings (1982): Rosetta Records, run by Rosetta Reitz, collected singles by early jazz women into compilations, released on vinyl and cassette in the 1980s. Admired by composer Mary Lou Williams, singer and trumpeter Valaida Snow starred alongside Josephine Baker in Sissle and Blake’s Hot Chocolates musical. Rocked by scandal for marrying a younger man, and the only African-American to be held in a Nazi concentration camp (for 18 months), her life is worthy of a biopic.

International Sweethearts of Rhythm, International Sweethearts of Rhythm (1984): Another Rosetta Records compilation from the group widely acknowledged as the finest of the all-woman big bands of yesteryear.

Mary Lou Williams, The Zodiac Suite (1945): It’s tempting to list some of the great Mary Lou Williams’ youthful large-ensemble arrangements here; of course, they were written for and recorded under the name of bandleader Andy Kirk. Arguably her most ambitious compositional work, this spare trio rendering, with one movement per astrological sign, is dominated by Williams’ muscular piano.

Leonard Feather Presents Cats vs. Chicks: A Jazz Battle of the Sexes (1954): Leave it to producer Leonard Feather to initiate this battle of the bands. Trumpeter Clark Terry, trombonist Urbie Green, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, pianist Horace Silver, guitarist Tal Farlow, bassists Oscar Pettiford and Percy Heath, and drummer Kenny Clarke square off against trumpeter Norma Carson, pianist Beryl Booker, vibraphonist Terry Pollard, harpist Corky Hale, guitarist Mary Osborne, bassist Bonnie Wetzel and drummer Elaine Leighton. All you need to know is “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better.”

Hazel Scott, Relaxed Piano Moods (1955): How did Max Roach and Charles Mingus wind up on an album titled Relaxed Piano Moods? A trio outing by the Juilliard-trained pianist with chops to spare, it takes off with “The Jeep Is Jumpin’” and “A Foggy Day.”

Joanne Brackeen, Fi-Fi Goes to Heaven (1986): Can I go, too? An intelligent and quirky record from the pianist, this mix of standards and original compositions is buoyed by Terence Blanchard and Branford Marsalis.

Geri Allen, The Gathering (1998): It’s awfully hard to pick a single album by this powerful and distinctive pianist. The Gathering feels weighty and vast, thanks to its selection of complex arrangements. Still, you’re never uncertain about who’s at the center of it all.

Maria Schneider, Sky Blue (2007): Over the years, I’ve heard a number of men say quite dismissively that they don’t like Schneider’s music. What I’d like to know is if there’s something wrong with them. Easily the most creative big-band composer of the last two decades, Schneider won a Best Instrumental Composition Grammy for her gorgeous “Cerulean Skies.”

Jane Ira Bloom, Mental Weather (2008): Bloom proved her mettle with Mighty Lights (1982) and broke new ground with her incorporation of live electronics in the 1990s. But this is the album I play over and over again; it’s lovely in its use of gesture and saturated by Bloom’s plumulaceous tone on soprano saxophone. It’s also notable for pianist Dawn Clement.

Matana Roberts, COIN COIN Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres (2011): Somewhere between the Georgia Sea Island Singers and the AACM, the saxophonist’s earthy, ghostly music has a way of working on you long after it’s gone. Roberts’ COIN COIN project journeys through African-American memory while embracing a heritage full of dissonances.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

• Listen Now: Jane Monheit On Piano JazzAudioDownload

Vocalist Jane Monheit visits Piano Jazz, as host Marian McPartland accompanies her on a hour of first-rate music from the Gershwins, Duke Ellington, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and more.

Monheit grew up on Long Island. She began singing at an early age, which comes as little surprise given the musicality of her family: Her grandmother and aunt were professional singers, her father played banjo and her mother was involved in musical theater. At school, Monheit studied clarinet and music theory and participated in local theatrical and musical productions. After hearing Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, she realized that she wanted to be a jazz musician.

Monheit started working in clubs on the South Shore of Long Island while still in high school. Her formal vocal training began at age 17 at New York City’s prestigious Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Peter Eldrige, a founding member of the vocal group New York Voices. While in New York, Monheit moved into the cabaret scene in Village piano bars before her boyfriend convinced her to sing at the head of his jazz quintet.

In her senior year at the Manhattan School of Music, Monheit won the first runner-up prize at the 1998 Thelonious Monk Institute Vocal Competition. (The top award went to Teri Thornton.) Carl Griffin, head of artists and repertory for the multimedia company N2K, heard her there and offered her a record contract when she finished college in June 1999. Her first album, Never Never Land, was released in 2000, followed by Come Dream With Me in 2001 and In the Sun in 2002.

Jane Monheit’s latest album, her 11th, is The Heart of the Matter, an eclectic collection of favorites spanning from Hoagy Carmichael to Lennon/McCartney to a Monheit original.

Originally recorded Oct. 16, 2003.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

• Listen Now: Donny McCaslin On Piano JazzAudioDownload

Tenor saxophonist Donny McCaslin got his start at age 12, when he began playing in his vibraphonist father’s band in Santa Cruz, Calif. That group played the Monterey Jazz Festival for three years. In 1984, McCaslin took a full scholarship to the Berklee College of Music in Boston; while there, he performed regularly in the area with Ken Schaphorst’s True Colors Big Band.

McCaslin then joined with another vibraphonist, Gary Burton, and toured the world with him for four years. After moving to New York City, he performed with the group Steps Ahead, and has also played with the Gil Evans Orchestra, Danilo Perez, Maria Schneider, John Medeski, the Dave Douglas Quintet and many others.

McCaslin has recorded 10 albums as a leader. His most recent release, Casting for Gravity, fuses jazz with electronic textures influenced by artists such as Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Fife and drum players

• Early blues with fife & drumThe Blues Time MachineDownload

Written by John Kessler

In 1942, Alan Lomax discovered a community of musicians in North Mississippi, who played their own hybrid music that was unmistakably African-sounding. Called “Fife & Drum” music because of its military background, it hearkens back to post Civil War days, when this special and local tradition originated.

Although drumming is a central element of African music, drumming was generally banned during the slavery era. With restrictions easing after the War, and the availability of one-time military drums, Fife and Drum music became a key part of North Mississippi culture.

Ed & Lonnie Young were some of the most active Fife and Drum performers when Alan Lomax recorded them playing “Chevrolet” in 1959. Though the subject matter may be modern, it’s likely their music is very similar to what would have been heard in the late 1800s. Luckily, Lomax also filmed them, because simply listening to the music does not convey its full power. The musicians are in constant motion while playing, dancing throughout the performance. Here is a short film of Ed & Lonnie Young from 1959:

In the mid-1960’s The Jim Kweskin Jug Band were popular folk music revivalists, specializing in tunes from earlier eras. In the band at the time they recorded “Chevrolet” in 1967 were Geoff Muldaur and Maria D’Amato, shortly before their marriage.

Taj Mahal has been a major force in Blues since he started making records in the 1960’s. He’s always embraced and embodied music from many different cultures and regions, while at the same time being very creative and original with his presentation. His musical travels have led him to the Caribbean, Hawaii, West Africa, and to the many varieties of American folk, blues and jazz. His 1967 recording of “Chevrolet” is a funky, electric re-invention of the song. Here’s Taj Mahal performing the song with The Black Crowes from 1995:

Derek Trucks is a modern day guitar hero and bandleader. With the Derek Trucks Band, the Tedeschi Trucks Band and the Allman Brothers he is known for his fiery and soulful “voice” on the slide guitar. In some ways Trucks has taken after Taj Mahal, looking for ways to bring ethnic sounds and music into his original music.  His 2006 recording of “Chevrolet” features Mike Mattison on vocals.

Here are the complete versions of “Chevrolet”:

• Ed Young“Chevrolet” 1959Download

• Jim Kweskin Jug Band“Chevrolet” 1967Download

• Taj Mahal“Chevrolet” 1971Download

• Derek Trucks Band“Chevrolet” 2006Download

• Sexmob In ConcertAudioDownload

The band Sexmob specializes in a distinct strain of deconstructionist improvised music: jazz that aims at fun by bouncing off the walls. The quartet has tackled James Bond music, rock covers, Duke Ellington, the Macarena and exotica, plus originals from leader Steven Bernstein. The antic trumpeter, who brings out the slide trumpet with this group, counts on exceptional musicianship from Briggan Krauss (saxophone), Tony Scherr (bass) and Kenny Wollesen (drums), making Sexmob a sort of cover band in the mold of the Ornette Coleman quartet. Its latest album, Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti, takes on music of the film composer Nino Rota.

Sexmob opened for Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom onstage at 92Y Tribeca in downtown New York City as part of the WBGO concert series The Checkout: Live. WBGO and NPR Music presented a live radio broadcast and online video webcast of both sets. For the full concert archive of this series, visit npr.org/checkoutlive.

Set List

All performances based on the compositions of Nino Rota.

• “Amarcord”
• “Il Teatro Delle Suore” (from Juliet of the Spirits)
• “La Strada”
• “La Dolce Vita”

Personnel

• Steven Bernstein, slide trumpet
• Briggan Krauss, alto saxophone
• Tony Scherr, electric bass
• Kenny Wollesen, drums

Credits

Producer and Host: Josh Jackson; Audio Engineer: David Tallacksen; Production Assistant: Michael Downes; Video Director: Stew Nachmias. Recorded May 8, 2013 at 92Y Tribeca in New York, N.Y.

Copyright 2013 WBGO-FM. To see more, visit http://www.wbgo.org.

• Eddie Palmieri At The Kennedy CenterAudioDownload

Eddie Palmieri has been a force for Latin jazz since the 1950s, when he hosted the legendary mambo shows at New York’s Palladium Ballroom. His groups, including the renowned La Perfecta, revolutionized Latin music in the 1960s and ’70s. His records number more than 30 as a leader, and he’s won nine Grammy Awards. At 76, Palmieri is still a foremost ambassador for the music he loves.

Palmieri was born in New York City, in Spanish Harlem. Music from a variety of cultures -– Puerto Rican, Cuban, African-American -– was right on his doorstep. His first professional work came playing timbales as a teenager in brother Charlie Palmieri’s band. Eddie says he’s still a drummer at heart, but realized the piano –- which he’d studied in this youth –- was the instrument for him. Palmieri is a pianist in the grand manner: He plays the whole keyboard, and he’s not shy about throwing an elbow or forearm to get the effect he needs. He also plays some of the most beautiful romantic music you can imagine, as heard on this installment of JazzSet.

Between tunes, Palmieri shares the history of his music and states his intentions: “The music that you heard tonight, it’s the fusion of the 21st century called ‘Latin jazz.’ We play the structures of instrumental mambos. The mambo era in the ’50s [featured the] great orchestras of Machito, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and my brother, Charlie Palmieri. They were the pioneers of utilizing a jazz composition or a standard or Broadway showtune to turn that into very exciting dance composition. The tension and resistance within that composition was certainly going to excite the dancers and the great teachers that were teaching at the greatest ballroom, The Palladium Ballroom. The main thing is that these rhythmical patterns originated from African captives brought into the New World. I don’t guess that I want to excite you with my music; I know it.”

Personnel

• Eddie Palmieri, piano
• Jonathan Powell, trumpet
• Louis Fouche, alto
• Orlando Vega, bongos
• Vicente Rivero, congas
• Jose Claussell, timbales
• Luques Curtis, bass

Set List

• “Crew” (Eddie Palmieri)
• “You Dig” (Eddie Palmieri)
• “Iraida”
• “Palmas”
• “Picadillo” (set 1) (Tito Puente)

Credits

Thanks to Kim Smith and Eddie Palmieri Jr. for arranging this recording. Recording engineer Greg Hartman; Surround Sound mixer is JazzSet technical director Duke Marko. Onsite producer and script by Mark Schramm.

Copyright 2013 WBGO-FM. To see more, visit http://www.wbgo.org.

Joan Osborne performing live with The Holmes Brothers in the Jazz24/KPLU Seattle Studios on April 19, 2013. Credit: Justin Steyer

• Joan Osborne and The Holmes Brothers are a recipe for soulLive Studio SessionsDownload

Want a good recipe for soul music?

Here’s what you do: Start with vocalist, Joan Osborne, who has had pop music hits, performed on The Grand Old Oprey, toured with members of The Grateful Dead and yet never strayed from her roots in rhythm ‘n blues music.

Now add a good, solid dose of The Holmes Brothers (Sherman Holmes, Wendell Holmes and Popsy Dixon), who have been playing their own unique blend of blues, gospel, soul and R&B since the late 1970’s.

Once you have assembled all these ingredients, all you need to do is stand back and listen.

Great soul music will begin to happen instantly, as it did in this Jazz24/KPLU Studio Session hosted by KPLU’s All Blues Host, John Kessler.

Some music festivals are known for certain specific things; others are known for a broad assortment. The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is known for everything. The city’s arms are just that wide.

Every performer is welcome. This year, singer Patti Smith held a crowd spellbound in the mud just as easily as Billy Joel lifted his audience off dry ground. Jazz stylist Diane Reeves sang a Fleetwood Mac song on the first weekend just as compellingly as Fleetwood Mac sang its own songs the following weekend. And artists across nearly all of the stages played Allen Toussaint songs — including Toussaint himself.

If you missed it, well, you missed it. But there’s always next year. With any luck, you’ll get to see my neighbor, jazz trumpeter Lionel Ferbos, who received a standing ovation at the Economy Hall tent. Ferbos is a heck of a horn player, and this summer, he’ll make 102.

Yes, in southern Louisiana, we make our ages, a vestige of the French that used to be spoken more widely here. But there’s truth in the English translation. We make almost everything worth having in these parts, especially a good time. If there’s not a name to describe what we sing or chant or dance to, nobody worries. The crowds and the artists prefer it that way. It’s just homemade. “Obliterate category,” Taj Mahal told me in an interview Sunday. “Just play music.”

So the artists make the headlines and the people make the fun — gathering outside, in the rain if necessary — to shake our you-know-whats. A body has to feel at home to do a thing like that. And it takes a million little graces across the entire city to make upwards of 400,000 people feel safe enough and free enough to, as the New Orleans standard says:

Shake it

Break it

Hang it on the wall

Throw it out the window

Catch it ‘fore it falls

The festival grounds were at the center of a much wider celebration. Late into the evenings, the city’s nightclubs bulged with talent. On Saturday night, Allen Toussaint played Frenchman Street to a sold-out club in Marigny, the neighborhood adjacent to the French Quarter; that’s like seeing a polar bear in the veldt. Midweek, Dr. John played the city’s most treasured bowling alley in a tribute to Bobby Charles, whose hits included “See You Later, Alligator.” Troubadour John Boutte and trumpeter Wendell Brunious played their last-day-of-the-Fest set list more than a week earlier, at yet another club on Frenchman Street. Boutte, who wrote and performs the theme song to the HBO series Treme, turned the bar into a cathedral with a haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.”

Then, in the middle of Jazz Fest, there was Chaz Fest — a one-day event in the Bywater neighborhood with food, swag and New Orleans singer-songwriter Alex McMurray. In rare form that day, McMurray sang with the Valparaiso Men’s Chorus, which specializes in sea shanties. That’s right, sea shanties. St. Claude Avenue may never be the same.

As of Wednesday, New Orleans is officially in the afterglow. But then again, we’re making time for Delfaeyo Marsalis and the Uptown Jazz Orchestra, Walter “Wolfman” Washington and the Roadmasters and jazz singer Meschiya Lake with the great New Orleans pianist Tom McDermott. That’s a whole lot of homemade talent playing venues around town — and it’s only Wednesday. The Wednesday after Jazz Fest.

Gwen Thompkins is host of the public radio show Music Inside Out. She can be reached at gwen@musicinsideout.org

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.