Mark Stryker

Tucker's "The Early Years" is excellent, but it is written by a musicologist and full of analysis and notated musical examples, so it might not be the best fit for Felser's original query seeking books for non-musicians. However, I'd recommend it if one can at least read music. However, Tucker's "The Duke Ellington Reader" can be recommended enthusiastically without caveats. It's a tragedy that Tucker died so young -- at 46, from lung cancer, in 2000. He would have been the scholar to give us the Ellington biography we want, the culture needs, and that Ellington deserves. On a related front, "The Cambridge Companion to Duke Ellington," edited by Edward Green is mostly excellent. Mostly scholarly but easily readable for non-musicians, though there are a number of essays with notation/analysis.

Obituary by Nate Chinen for WRTI in Philly. https://www.npr.org/2025/04/16/g-s1-60556/francis-davis-jazz-critics-poll-obituary?fbclid=IwY2xjawJspwJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHowZSmqcyS5X-RVEBMZt9tMiiJkTzyCEvYzzMdzZ4rWpyeLAvnfhYdHuPT_-_aem_1IW8_mmM32fUYPcxGfBRsA

I reviewed this record (loved it) for Cadence in the August 1989 issue, not long after it was released. Some of my earliest published jazz writing. It was just Joe's second album as a leader and he was under the radar enough that I could write: “He plays changes with an authority that should make a few more well-known tenorists nervous.” After the review was assigned to me but before publication, Joe apparently had some things he wanted to say to the writer, so the magazine gave him the number at my parents’ house in Bloomington, Ind., where I was living (post-grad school but pre-first newspaper job at the South Bend Tribune). I was 25. So one day the phone rang, and my mom answered and called over to me: "Somebody named Joe Lovano wants to talk to you." I’ve forgotten the details of the conversation, but my recollection is that he just wanted me to know how personal and important a project the recording was to him. A musician of his stature today would never make that kind of a call to a critic — though I hasten to add that in 1989 I was young and still green, and Joe was seasoned but not famous. I combined the review of Joe's record with a review of a Houston Person record and on the same page is my review of the third Quest record (Liebman, Beirach, McClure, Hart). Also, for the record, Joe's call to me in fact came after I had finished the review and had just sent it to the editor, on a floppy disc by snail mail in those pre-Internet days. So the call did not influence the writing in any way. The moral of the story is that I’m getting old.

There is a three-CD set on Acrobat that gets through a lot of music, but the sound is highly variable. Mosaic had a Newton box in the cue a few years back but, alas, Sony apparently withdrew licensing rights at the last minute. Hoping this changes. The world truly needs that set.

I am thrilled to pass along this groundbreaking piece of scholarship about one of my heroes, trumpeter Frankie Newton, written by my gifted friend Matthew Rivera and published today by the New York Review of Books. I am proud to have played a small but consequential role in its development. Here's the backstory: A few years ago, Matthew, a young scholar and archivist whom I had never met, reached out to me after he read the long interview I did with Ethan Iverson in which I talk about my curious childhood interest in Newton, a sui generis trumpeter and political and social progressive. I corresponded with Newton's widow, Ethel, while in high school and later interviewed her in 1985 for a paper I wrote about Newton in a jazz history seminar taught by the sainted Larry Gushee at the University of Illinois. Matthew, a longtime Newton obsessive, asked if I still had the tape. It took me a minute, but I located it. After 40 years, I had forgotten most of the details, but it turned out be a goldmine of information about Newton (whose biography is notably elusive), including his thoughts about music and his life with Ethel as an interracial couple. Matthew has drawn on that interview in his brilliant work here, and there's additional valuable information he'll be able to report as his research expands. He has also dug up an extraordinary treasure trove of newly discovered newspaper writing by Newton himself -- a MAJOR find. Ultimately, that's what this story is about -- the way scholarship expands, how jazz history is being written and revised in real time, and how you never know where bits and pieces of the historical record might be found. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/03/19/frankie-newton-lost-and-found/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2mcS9rEILTzcXYVFckDkJuvwdehv89ntUBlujrEtUKhFK3UOz5W3T8jFg_aem_1GsAmCCPZJfRZz-ERSjLTQ

R.I.P. In the wake of her death, I just discovered this remarkable 30 minutes of footage from 1970. Bassist is David Williams, but I don't immediately recognize the drummer. Anyone know who it is?

This is a FANTASTIC record. None stop groove, great chemistry among the four.

Is that the first issue of that record?

R.I.P. He made it to 90 -- a long and fulfilling life, but the world will be a far less funny place going forward without him. There was only one of those! If you haven't watched his Hall of Fame induction speech, please set aside time to do so. So many hilarious lines, but two I particularly love: "My kids used to aggravate me too. I'd take 'em to a game & they'd want to come home with a different player." Gene Mauch to Uecker: "Grab a bat and stop this rally."

My dream is the whole video of the show or, at the least, a complete tune on video. But absent that, I'd still love to hear audio of all or part of it. You have this? I'd be in your debt ... Thanks

HOLY SHIT!! I have been searching for years for this Just Jazz broadcast from Chicago because Barry Harris is on piano. While this is just a short clip, it is the only remnant I've ever found. I was in touch with Dan Morgenstern (who coproduced the series), but he was not able to turn up a copy before he died -- but I hold out hope that a copy of the full program exists somewhere. The late Harriet Rosenfeld-Choice, a Chicago journalism legend who covered jazz at the Chicago Tribune before our friend Larry Kart and who was close to all involved, also tried to help me track down a copy of a tape to no avail. Thanks for posting. I would have never known it was buried deep inside this survey program without seeing it here.

So would I. Or like this:

As I often say: If I could do anything in life, it would be play like Sonny Rollins on a good night in 1965. Like this -- 3 minutes of the greatest improvising over Rhythm changes I have ever heard.

Thankfully, his full interview with us for The Best of the Best: Jazz from Detroit is 80 minutes long and will be part of a Jazz from Detroit Oral History Archive that we are creating. Sigh.

Tom Lord Jazz Discography shows only one Bud Powell track appearing on an LP issued on Design. "I've Got You Under My Skin" from the Massey Hall concert in 1953 with Mingus/Roach. This and all other tracks on DLP29 were originally issued on Mingus' Debut label. It's possible that Bob misspoke and meant Debut rather than Design, but Bud on Debut in this time frame only means the Massey Hall quintet performances with Bird/Dizzy/Mingus/Max and the trio portion of the concert with just the rhythm section -- and I would certainly not describe Bud's playing here as erratic.

I think this is a fantastic set -- I absorbed these records in real time in the 1970s and played a good number of these charts along the way. Toshiko's best work is represented here, and I think that's true for Lew too. They hold up really well.

Great record. All-Detroit band too, save Jabali on drums.

The Black working class audience for jazz remained healthy at least until the late '60s, and in some ways into the '70s -- and it still exists here in Detroit, though not to the degree it once did. In any case, here's the great Gerald Early talking about Jimmy Smith et. al. in the '60s in an interview with Ethan Iverson, "You know, when I was growing up, somebody like Jimmy Smith was like God. To black people he was God! It was like a Hammond B-3 was the thing! If Jimmy Smith was God, then he had some acolytes under him, like Richard “Groove” Holmes, and Brother Jack McDuff, and these people. And I didn’t know any white people who really liked this music very much. I’m sure there were some because Jimmy Smith was pretty popular, but by and large this was black music. "At any rate, while they certainly had their detractors and there were some who didn’t like that sound, their importance culturally in the African-American community was quite apart from whatever their worth was as musicians. Those that had this groove style of playing (especially with a Hammond organ) occupied a kind of position that I think was quite apart from how any professional musicians might evaluate them based purely on their abilities as musicians. What they were expressing as musicians was deeply connected to the culture. "And I think that it’s important for any musician that is interested in jazz – or anyone who really wants to understand this music – to understand that aspect of the musicians as well. How the first-generation fans decide how they’re going to translate the music into their cultural lives may have nothing to do with how later listeners see it or what they think it’s about."

https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/louis-armstrongs-america-by-allen-lowe-review-an-original-tribute-to-a-titan-80c47f92?mod=arts-culture_lead_pos1&fbclid=IwY2xjawFgz6tleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHRhEKGUvacR4kTqrkaVEXrtamJiCdirElq7eusZlqdWWENOLmlWm9IDWag_aem_C4IwdsUgImOHSmG-XLsgmg

A zillion stars. Desert Island music.

Should be here: https://www.detroitjazzfest.org/live/

Thanks for the heads up. Great stuff.

I just need to co-sign this. Duke was a fucking brilliant and original pianist, both as a soloist and as an accompanist. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either misinformed or hasn't done the listening. And while I'm at it, Basie was a great pianist too. When I think of folks who play "composer's" or "arranger's" piano, I think of people like Tadd Dameron, Gil Evans, and MANY cats I know who play other instruments but can sit down at the keyboard and comp changes in time and perhaps even solo too, some well enough to play gigs, but with limited technique and a narrow expressive range compared to "real" pianists (like Duke and Basie).

Just jumping to say that this is a fantastic set and I listen to it constantly. Truly some of the best Stitt on record -- "Sonny Stitt and the New Yorkers" (1957) might be the greatest single Stitt record of them all --and all the early dates are gems, especially "Plays the Arrangements from the Pen of Quincy Jones" (1955). The early Roost sides are fairly difficult to find. Highly recommended.

Hindal Butts (note first name spelling with one "l" is correct) was on the scene in Detroit for decades. As near as I can tell, he died just a couple of years ago at 91, but I never met him and never heard him play, so I don't know what his scene or health was like in the last 20 years. His heyday was the 1950s and '60s but he was definitely active in the '70s. In the 1950s, he worked extensively with Kenny Burrell in the guitarist's various groups, including Kenny's band The Four Sharps with Harold McKinney on piano and Paul Chambers on bass. and bassist Paul Chambers. At one point, Tommy Flanagan replaced McKinney, who was drafted in 1954, and Elvin Jones eventually succeeded Butts as drummer. There's a 1953 club ad for "Kenny Burrell and his Sharps " reproduced in Bjorn and Gallert's "Before Motown" that lists the personnel as Burrell, Frank Foster, McKinney, Chambers, and Hindel (sic) Butts. Kenny's first record as a leader, a 78 single on the JVB label c. 1954-55 consisting of "My Funny Valentine" (a Burrell vocal) and Kenny's Sound" (the latter is a 32-bar tune based on I Got Rhythm with a Honeysuckle Rose bridge and an A-section melody that's a direct ripoff of "Dexter Digs In." Yusef Lateef play flute and tenor of these sides , Billy Burrell is on electric (!) bass, and the vibraphonist is almost assuredly Abe Woodley (aka Nasir Hafiz). I used to think it was Butts on drums, and that was Kenny Washington's guess when I played him these sides; but I've come to think more recently that it's Elvin on drums based on the beat and the way the player slaps the brushes on "Kenny's Mood." (The Tom Lord discography lists this session as c. 1950 and says Tommy Flanagan is on vibes: That's incorrect.) One of Joe Henderson's first jobs in Detroit was as part of a Butts-led quartet in 1957. In "Before Motown," Butts is quote as saying that it was drummer Johnny Cleaver -- that's Gerald Cleaver's father -- who first told him about Joe. In the '60s during Aretha Franklin's Columbia days, Butts toured and recorded with her. He's the drummer on her jazz-oriented "Yeah" taped in 1965. The rest of the all-Detroit group behind Aretha here is Burrell, Teddy Harris Jr. (piano), and James (Beans) Richardson (bass). A few tracks with Butts are also Franklin's "Take It Like You Give It." The Lord discography lists Butts on a 1956 Louis Jordan session on the Bear Family label taped in New York. He's also listed as the drummer on Betty Lavette single on Atlantic cut in 1962 ("You'll Never Change"/"Hear I Am"). I've seen Detroit newspaper ads where he's listed as working the clubs in Detroit in the early '70s backing up folks like Jimmy Witherspoon. I don't really know much more about his later life and career. I regret that he was not on my radar screen in my early days in Detroit when I might have been able to meet him and forge a relationship.