Part two of the birthday boy’s podcast tributes comes with recordings made by Gordon Sumner

himself, tapping into his jazz vein. He was quoted in 1985 when asked why he drafted jazz musicians for his backing band:

"I want freedom and the privilege to surprise people. With this new band, I want to destroy the old stereotypes that have been built around me. I feel very at home with jazz. This new group has a jazz influence, but it's not a jazz band. It has a polarity of all the best of my music. I try to achieve the cross-pollination in music that happened in the 1960s."

With that in mind, let’s listen to that band and a few others such as:

Sting – “Consider Me Gone” from Bring On the Night. When Sting decided to take his initial solo material on the road, he decided his backing band should have a jazz sound. The result was a lineup starring saxophonist Branford Marsalis, pianist Kenny Kirkland, drummer Omar Hakim (formerly of Weather Report), and Darryl Jones, (Miles Davis).

Sting and Gil Evans – “Strange Fruit “ from Last Session. Sting and legendary jazz composer/pianist/arranger Evans performed at the Perugia Jazz Festival on July 11, 1987. The concert turned out to be Evans’ final performance, as he died shortly thereafter. The repertoire for the show was Police hits alongside a wide array of covers ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Tony Williams to this Billie Holiday classic. The 19-piece ensemble featured George Adams on tenor sax, Lew Soloff on trumpet, Mark Egan on bass, and Branford Marsalis on tenor and soprano sax. The recording has never been released in the US.

Frank Zappa – “Murder By Numbers” from Broadway the Hard Way. Perhaps the strangest collaboration of Sting’s career came with Zappa in 1988, when he performed an unusual arrangement of "Murder By Numbers", set to the tune "Stolen Moments” by jazz composer Oliver Nelson, and for some reason "dedicated" to fundamentalist evangelist Jimmy Swaggart.

Sting –  “My Funny Valentine” from Sting at the Movies, Sting has a soft spot for the standards. He has recorded  “Someone to Watch Over Me” and “My One and Only Love”, among others. This track was recorded with pianist Herbie Hancock to play at the end of the Japanese film Ashura., directed by Yojiro Takita in 2005.

Chris Botti featuring Sting – “What Are You Doing The Rest Of Your Life?” From To Love Again – The Duets. Sting has appeared on a number of Botti studio recordings, and was a guest on the trumpeter’s recent TV special turned DVD turned live CD. This classic ballad has lyrics written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and music by Michel Legrand. The recording on a 2006 Grammy award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying a Vocalist, the award shared by Billy Childs, Gil Goldstein, and Hector Pereira.

Herbie Hancock featuring Sting – “Sister Moon” from Possibilities. It seemed a natural choice for Hancock to ask Sting to join him on this CD, which enlisted pop and rock performers to sing with a jazz band, often reimaging their own work.

Rock musician Sting – born Gordon Sumner 58 years ago this month – is one of the jazzier pop stars of the past forty years. Although he reached fame first as the bass player of the punk rock-styled band The Police, his first professional gigs during college and during breaks from being a school teacher were in jazz groups. He played with local bands such as the Phoenix Jazzmen, the Newcastle Big Band, and Last Exit in the Newcastle ara of England.

His songwriting from 1977 to the present has tapped into jazz stylings from time to time, and his solo recordings have usually had jazz musicians involved in the sessions. At least two of his songs, “Fragile” and “Fields of Gold”, have to be considered candidates for New Standards,. The former has been recorded by, among others,  Kenny Barron and  Regina Carter, Billy Childs, The Daugherty McPartland Group, Freddie Hubbard and Cassandra Wilson.

So here is another of my occasional  “Jazz Does Rock” series of podcasts, a “Jazz Does Gordon Sumner” salute, with songs made famous by The Police and Sting, recorded here by: 

Cassandra Wilson – "Fragile" from Glamoured. A poignant verion of the anti-war song that became something of an anthem after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  

Dianne Reeves – “Ever Breathe You Take” from Blue Note Plays Sting. Two separate albums of Blue Note artists playing his music have been released., and Miss Reeves graces each of them with a Sting ballad. Here she sings The Police’s biggest hit, with  solos by Bob Belden (who did the arrangements), Mark Ledford and Kirk Whalum. L

Lynne Arriale Trio - "Wrapped Around Your Finger" from Now. Quietly, the Lynne Arriale Trio has been making expceptional music for a number of years, mixing standards, pop songs and jazz classics. This Police song kicked off the latest CD from Lynne Arriale on piano, Jay Anderson on bass, and Steve Davis on drums.

Christian McBride - "Walking On the Moon" from Sci-Fi. This is one of my favorite albums from the polific McBride, mixing covers of Herbie Hancock with those of Steely Dan and the Police. This version comes across as a ballad rather than the reggae sound of the original, That's Jame Carter with the bass clarinet solo, and Ron Blake on tenor and soprano saxophone; Shedrick Mitchell's piano and Fender Rhodes; David Gilmore on guitar, McBride on bass and Rodney Green on drums complete the band.

Kevyn Lettau - "Message in a Bottle" from Walking in Your Footsteps. In her own words: I first learned about The Police in the early 80's from my sister's old boyfriend. At that point I must admit I was a total Rock and Roll ignorant snob. If music wasn't either jazz, Joni Mitchell or old R&B, I couldn't have cared less! But when I really started to listen, I was blown away by the lyrics, the musicianship and the melodies, not to mention Sting's wonderful voice. I was very impressed, but still stayed with the other styles as far as my own singing and studying was concerned. Band members are led by smooth jazz star Russell Ferrante (Piano),  along with Mike Shapiro (Drums), Jimmy Haslip (Bass), Luis Conte (Percussion) and Gary Meek (Saxophone).

Nancy and I are spending a wonderful weekend in Manhattan. We're going to see Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden, eat at some top restaurants, catch an exhibit at the Guggenheim, and see "A Steady Rain" on Broadway so she can drool over Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.

Yes, the soundtrack would have to be "Autumn in New York".

The song was composed by Vernon Duke in 1934 for the Broadway musical "Thumbs Up!" which opened on December 27, 1934 and was sung by J. Harold Murray. It's become a jazz standard, with a  who's who of jazz greats recording it from time to time.

Click here to listen to Billie Holiday's version of the song, which for my money is the best. It comes from her Solitude album, which featured a backing band of Flip Phillips (tenor saxophone); Charlie Shavers (trumpet); Oscar Peterson (piano); Barney Kessel (guitar); Ray Brown (bass); and Alvin Stoller (drums).

I celebrate my 50th birthday last month, and my brother and sisters presentd me with an area of gifts that turned out to be items that first appeared in 1959. So, I got a cool Barbie Doll, some Jiffy Pop Popcorn, the first season of "The Twilight Zone" on DVD and a burned CD of songs that were on the pop charts at that time.

Music was a little less parochial in those days. The songs making up the top 25 were country, rock & roll, blues, R&B, easy listening, and some oddities in foreign languages. There were, of course, some jazz as well, and so I present the excitement of finding that Sassy herself, Miss Sarah Vaughn, was on the pop charts in the fall of 1959.

 "Broken Hearted Melody" , recorded with the Ray Ellis Orchestra, was her first gold record, and a staple of her concert set lists for years to come. Despite all this success, she allegedly didn't care much for the tune, calling it "corny".  It would be one of her last recordings for Mercury, as she signed with Roulette Records and became, over the next few years, one the label's biggest stars. Her 1960 sessions for Roulette included The Divine One, arranged by Jimmy Jones and a session with Count Basie Band featuring such talents as trumpeters Thad Jones and Joe Newman and saxophonists Frank Foster and Billy Mitchell.

The music was written by Sherman Edwards, and the lyrics by Hal David. David had been writing popular music lyrics since the 1940s for band leaders like Sammy Kaye and Guy Lombardo. In 1957 David met Burt Bacharach at Famous Music in the Brill Building in New York. and began a thirty year partnership, writing some of the most enduring songs in American popular music.

“Ready Freddie” Washington has a resume that would take most artists two lifetimes to accumulate. As a sideman, he’s held down the bass duties for a who’s who of  R&B (Commodores, Stevie Wonder, Isley Brothers), Rock (Elton John, Steely Dan, Leonard Cohen), Jazz (Ramsey Lewis, George Benson, Kirk Whalum), and everyone else in between, including artists as different as Barry Manilow and The Tubes.

It’s because he is so obviously in demand and held in high esteem by his peers that his solo CD, In the Moment, is so disappointing. Simply put, its smooth jazz that never shows any real spark, much less blazes with the kind of sounds Washington can lay down. 

Washington wrote or co-wrote almost all the tunes on the CD, which may account for some of the problems. His all-star guests, like Joe Sample, Patrice Rushen and Gerald Albright, have their talents wasted with bland material, and cluttered by unnecessary background vocals. 

Click here to listen to “Freddie’s Groove”, one of the few tracks that cooks with any real energy. Washington’s bass is out in front, popping and laying down the groove, while Ray Fuller (guitar) and Michael Paulo (sax) take hot solos. By the time the tune is fading out, the synthesized instruments have taken us to the funky place for which we had hoped. 

Maybe Washington needed to get this one off his chest after thirty years of being a stalwart part of other performer’s recordings. Let’s hope it won’t take that long for him to get his groove on with something more memorable.

Poncho Sanchez just turned 58, so he can be forgiven if he wants to spend some time reminiscing about his youth. Psychedelic Blues, his latest release, is a nostalgic look at some of his jazz influences and favorite songs while growing up in the Southwest. He reinterprets material written by John Coltrane, Freddie Hubbard, Horace Silver and others in a decidedly funky manner.

Sanchez, an ace conga player, works with his usual band mates here, including trumpeter Ron Blake. In an effort to shake things up a bit, he recruited Andrew Synowiec, the guitarist from the Gordon Goodwin Big Phat Band, an LA based group that plays everything from funk to big-band charts to bebop. 

Given the high level of the material here, and an ensemble that’s tight as can be, it’s no surprise that the CD is a winner. It’s impossible not to enjoy Sanchez’s tribute to Willie Bobo, a medley of three of the legendary percussionist’s songs, highlighted by a Santana-esque solo by Synowiec and vocals by Joey DeLeon. Herbie Hancock’s “Cantaloupe Island” is given a Latin shuffle beat and a tasty guitar solo that serve as a tip of the hat to El Chicano and Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers, great Latin stars who covered the song before Poncho. The title track was written by Sonny Henry, best known for “Evil Ways”, perhaps the penultimate Latin cross-over song of the Sixties.  

Click here to listen to “Slowly but Surely”, a John Hick composition recorded by Art Blakey in the mid-60’s. The percussion sets a deep groove and soon it’s the pulsating horns of saxophonist Javier Vergara, trumpeter Blake, and trombonist Francisco Torres that drive the song along. Blake’s solo is particularly memorable. 

There is no new ground broken here, but it hardly matters when the band is cooking like they are here. This is one to bring some heat into a cold October evening, a Mojito in hand.

“He’s a genius beyond most young people I’ve heard.”
-Dave Brubeck

Heavy words from a jazz master, particularly when he is talking about 22 year old Eldar Djangirov, a keyboard player whose latest CD, Virtue, confirms that he is among the most talented players on the scene today. Born in Kyrgyzstan (what was at the time of his birth part of the Soviet Union), Eldar emigrated to the US wiht his family in 1998. In a short time, he became the youngest guest ever to appear on Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" show. Signed to the Sony Classical label, he has released four CDs on the label.

 I had the pleasure of speaking with him last week as he readied himself for a multi-night engagement at Yoshi's in Oakland, California, and Podcast 162 presents that conversation along with music from his releases, including:

"Dream Song“ from Re-Imagination. Recorded three years later after signing with Sony Classical, this CD was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. Eldar adds some electronic experiments, including the addition of DJ Logic on a few tracks. This recording is a solo piano piece, showing Eldar’s debt to Oscar Peterson, Chick Corea and Dr. Billy Taylor. 

"Lullaby Fantazia" from Virtue.  While keyboard pyrotechnics are Eldar’s strength, this track shows off his soulful side, as he glides through the track with a graceful left hand and melodic right hand, reminiscent in sound to Keith Jarrett’s solo work. 

“Blackjack” from Virtue. Trumpet star Nicholas Payton joins the trio for this up-tempo number, weaving between the strong rhythm section of Ludwig Afonso (drums) and Armondo Gola (bass). Never afraid to move the number along at an accelerated pace, he adds electric keyboards to the sound, showing why he may be the finest young technician in jazz today.

Jackie McLean was approaching the top of his game when he went into Rudy Van Gelder Studio, in Englewood Cliffs, NJ, fifty years ago today. He was leading a quartet that day composed of McLean on alto sax, Walter Bishop Jr. on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Art Taylor on drums.

He had graduated from Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1957, and was a sought after sideman, working with Sonny Clark (the classic Cool Struttin'), Donald Byrd, Mal Waldron, and starring on Charles Mingus' seminal Blues and Roots, all over the previous 18 months. He was a rising star on Blue Note Records.

The October 20, 1959 sessions (whihc resulted in the album Swing, Swang, Swingin') featured jazz standards ("Stablemates") and standards, like "Let's Face the Music and Dance". Click here to listen to McLean's version of "What's New?", a ballad composed by Johnny Burke and Bob Haggart twenty years earlier. The song had been introduced by Bob Crosby and His Orchestra with vocalist Teddy Grace that year, rising to number ten on the pop charts. Bing Crosby would take it to number two the same year.

Four months later, McLean would enter the same studio with Freddie Redd to record the music most closely associated with the first part of his career, Music from "The Connection", an off-Broadway play which featured McLean playing and acting onstage.

Sidemen sometimes just don’t get their due. Plenty of the best jazz musicians in the world are constantly in demand by headliners for their recording sessions or concert tours, but to the average jazz fan, they labor in relative obscurity.  Luckily, every once in a while they get that chance to step out and draw some attention to themselves. Case in point – Mark Soskin, who shines on his latest release as a bandleader, the aptly entitled Man Behind the Curtain.

His list of credits as a sideman reads like a who’s who of jazz from the last forty years – Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Randy Brecker, Billy Cobham, Stanley Turrentine, Herbie Mann, John Abercrombie, and Gato Barbieri, just to name a handful. Soskin has a strong feel for Latin Jazz, having been an integral part of Azteca, a group in which Soskin's keyboard, writing, and arranging talents were showcased, and trumpeter Tom Harrell and percussionists Pete and Sheila Escovedo was the core. 

Soskin has spent 14 years with Sonny Rollins, and still found time to release seven CDs as a leader. The new CD is a top notch quartet session, featuring Ravi Coltrane on tenor and soprano sax, Siskin on piano, Jay Anderson on bass and Bill Stewart don drums. Five covers, including classics like “Heather On the Hill”, vie with three Soskin originals for the listener’s attention. All are exceptional performances. 

Click here to listen to “Little One”, the Soskin composition that ends the CD. His piano languidly begins over slow cymbals from Stewart, leading to a give and take between the two musicians. Coltrane enters a minute later, playing a gentle melody that is accented by the rhythm section with subtle but definite flourishes. Slowly Coltrane’s sax begins exploring new ground, and then Stewart’s cymbals signal a solo for Soskin, a greater part for bassist Anderson, and then a group resolution. All in all, a lovely ending to a notable album.

Ramsey Lewis hasn’t recorded in a true piano trio format for almost five years. Not that he hasn’t been busy, mind you. Instead, he has worked with vocalist Nancy Wilson (Meant to Be and Simple Pleasures), redone some of his hits with a supplemented group (Time Flies), recorded a terrific live gospel album (With One Voice), and dabbled in funk (Don’t It Feel Good). He also recorded with his smooth-jazz band Urban Knights, leaving after their fifth record was released in 2003.

Songs from the Heart: Ramsey Plays Ramsey marks a return to the instrumental format that made him a cross-over hit in the 1960’s. However, this music couldn’t be further from the R&B influenced sound of “The In Crowd” or “Wade in the Water”. Collaborating with his long-time sidemen Larry Gray (bass) and Leon Joyce (drums), the album marks the recorded debut of music Lewis composed for two collaborative concerts he played at the Ravinia Festival just outside of his hometown of Chicago. Eight of the pieces come from the score he wrote for the Joffrey Ballet Company, while the remainder was created for and performed with the Turtle Island Quartet in a concert entitled “Muses and Amusements”.

The CD is not an inconsiderable statement from Lewis, who many – this listener among them – saw treading water after a lengthy career of making exceptional music. Instead, this is trio music at its highest level. A band together this long works almost telepathically at their best moments. Listen to Joyce’s drum work near the end of “To Know Her is To Love Her”, or how he colors “Sharing Her Journey” with cymbals. Or how Gray works his bass in and around the others on “Touching, Feeling, Knowing”.

Lewis steps out alone on four tracks, most notably the romantic “The Glow of Her Charm”. At the age of 74, he has lost none of his ability to play long, melodic lines without becoming saccharine. At the same time, Lewis isn’t afraid to move into darker territory on “Exhilaration”, where he begins with a Monk-like piano line and then plays off the rhythm section with grace.

Lewis and his new label, Concord Jazz, are to be commended for making sure that this music is recorded for posterity, allowing an audience outside of the Windy City to enjoy it. Here’s hoping that Lewis will continue this level of artistic output, and that we haven’t heard the last of this trio.

Every year, the Jazz Standard in New York presents a Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT), conceived and cu­rated by acclaimed player, composer, and bandleader Dave Douglas. This year’s FONT honors the great Bobby Bradford, who will travel from the West Coast to appear on at the Jazz Standard with different combos in weekend performances October 1-4, 2009. Other trumpeters appearing to salute Mr. Bradford will be Jeremy Pelt, Ambrose Akinmusire, Avishai Cohen, Eddie Henderson and David Weiss.

Bradford, who at age 75 stands at perhaps our greatest living avant-garde trumpeter, is best known for his work with saxophonist Ornette Coleman and clarinetist John Carter, both major figures in pushing the limits of their respective instruments. He has also led his own group, the Mo’tet, and been a part of Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra. As an educator, Mr. Bradford has taught at Pomona College in California for four decades. His most famous student may be noted saxophonist David Murray, who will sit in with his former teacher on October 3rd and 4^th. 

Bradford will perform with a quintet and an octet, but he indicated when we spoke last week that the different band size would not create any special problems. “The music is not scored for a particular instrumentation, so the tunes we play will be the same tunes each night. The additional players are really strong, and they enhance the performance considerably.” He added that finding scores for some of the music he played with the John Carter Octet was difficult, with a certain discrepancy existing in some of the written scores. The band – which each night will include Bradford on trumpet, Marty Ehrlich on saxophones and clarinet, and Andrew Cyrille on drums, supplemented by others – will get just one rehearsal on Friday afternoon, “That’s asking a lot for anyone. No disrespect for New York players – these are the best you could have, but we want to play pieces like (John Carter’s) ‘Castles in Ghana’ and that takes work.”

I spoke with Mr. Bradford last week regarding the upcoming gigs, and while a scheduling error made a recording impossible, Podcast 162 is a tribute to Mr. Bradford and his music, including quotes from our interview and musical selections:

Ornette Coleman – “Down by Law“ from The Complete Science Fiction Sessions. Mr. Bradford chose “Down by Law” as a track he particularly liked from the CDs. However, he didn’t care much about the remastered sound of the set. “I’m not much of what you would call an audiophile, when they change what we had before. I’ve listened to the original over the years, and played in my classes. So since those are the only records I made with Ornette, I’m glad people who weren't familiar with the originals can discover the music.”

The core of the Coleman band had been trumpeter Don Cherry, saxophonists Coleman and Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden, and drummers Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins. For these sessions, pianist Cedar Walton, guitarist Jim Hall, trumpeter  Bradford, vocalist Asha Puthi, and poet David Henderson, who narrated “Science Fiction” were added. Mr. Bradford was pleased these sessions were reissued, but not because of the remastered sound. “I’m not much of what you would call an audiophile, when they change what we had before. I’ve listened to the original over the years, and played in my classes. So since those are the only records I made with Ornette, I’m glad people who weren't familiar with the originals can discover the music.”  

David Murray – “Woodshedetude” from Death of a Sideman. The record is under Murray’s name, but Bradford wrote all the music, a suite in memory of his long time collaborator John Carter. He spoke fondly of this recording, which featured Murray on sax, Bradford on trumpet, Dave Burrell on piano, Fred Hopkins on bass, and Ornette alumnus Ed Blackwell on drums. 

John Carter & Bobby Bradford’s New Art Jazz Ensemble – “Rosavita’s Dance” from Seeking. A 1969 session adding Nate Morgan on piano, Louis Spears on bass and Ndugu on drums to Carter’s clarinet and alto sax and Bradford’s trumpet, creating a quintet to perform this driving Bradford composition. This album has not, to the best of my knowledge, been released on CD. Thanks to Inconstant Sol for the rip. 

John Carter & Bobby Bradford - on “Portrait of J.B.G.” and “Circle” from Tandem 1. A duo concert recorded  live at the  Piedmont Center for Arts in Worcester,  on April 30, 1982, the evening gave two giants of their respective instruments a chance to play separately and together. Here is a cornet solo by Bradford on “Portrait of J.B.G.”, followed by a duet.  Who or what is “J.B.G.”. Bradford set me straight – “John Birks Gillespie”.

Were live duo performances exceptionally difficult for the two men? “Well yes, but you know we had spent hours playing together in that context. We didn’t have that many gigs, but by playing together we developed a repertory of tunes to play. We didn’t just start blowing! We had a book ready. In fact, we performed with a music stand in front of us many times.”

I asked Mr. Bradford what advice he had for young jazz musicians. “Take a serious look at it (a career), and if you are going to narrow down the type of music you play you have to be ready to miss out on a lot of money. You can be real good in jazz, but there is no guarantee that you’ll get the work you need to pay the bills. There are a lot of great musicians who would be deliriously happy if they could make $50,000 a year playing jazz. There’s a lot of competition. Even when you’re not working, you have to practice. If you’re lucky enough to work in someone’s band, you are still expected to rehearse for free, even when there’s no gig.”