bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Touring the Jazz Museum (JVC 2000)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Is jazz a dead historic thing or is it simply homesick for another era, any other era? The first concert hall ever built to house jazz is about to go up at Columbus Circle; the academy is rapt with attention, building new departments, endowing chairs; statues will follow. But what exactly is being honored: a music of unceasing innovation and achievement, or an archive parsed into its historical components? If jazz in the 21st century is to become what classical music became in the 20th century, an art of reconnaissance and interpretation, then this year’s 2000 JVC Jazz Festival may be remembered as a key transitional event. For the first time in its history, JVC looked backward every night. Two concerts by modern players, Don Byron and Dave Douglas, were canceled for lack of audience interest. But, then, Byron was scheduled to play his score for a silent picture and Douglas has been exploring Mary Lou Williams. It’s as though we were strapped into a time machine without the lever that moves it forward or back: Time marches on, but we are stuck—with our memories.
Zooids New and Old (Henry Threadgill / Roswell Rudd and Archie Shepp)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Schoenberg warned a century ago, during that twilight zone between Wagner and Stravinsky, that the tempered scale was used up—its melodies worn out, its thematic variations a close-order drill going nowhere. Jazz proved him dead wrong by revitalizing the verities with blue harmonies, rhythmic force, and melodies of expressive and exuberant originality. Still, he was right about European classicism, a not insignificant field at the time, and his solution, serialism, forced his adherents to disavow habits and conventions. This produced a whole new musical world, though not many hits. Meanwhile, jazz snubbed its nose at the worrywarts and had a high old time for 50-plus years, until it, too, began to ruminate about habits and conventions, opening the gates to rock ‘n’ roll, which took up the hit-making gap. Now at the dawn of a hiphopping new century, one cannot help but notice that the tempered scale once again seems used up—its melodies worn out, its thematic variations a close-order drill going nowhere.
The One You’ve Been Waiting For (Sonny Rollins)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Last August, at Lincoln Center Plaza, 70-year-old Sonny Rollins gave one of the most exhilarating, inspired, go-for-broke, don’t-look-back performances I have ever seen. Okay, I’ve probably written something like that before, but having missed maybe three of his New York engagements over the last 35 years, I rate this one very high—in the top five, anyway. For one thing, he played two hours and fifteen minutes without a break. You can tell right off when Rollins is feeling cramped because he can’t get out of the heads; on this night, he could scarcely wait to eject himself into improvisational flight. His infallible time reflected a wary, boplike sagacity, a witting agility; as the rhythm section hammered down the beats like pickets in a fence, he alternately stepped back to launch parabolas and charged forward hugging the ground—Calypso Joe roaring and guffawing. For another thing, he introduced more new music than usual: tributes to Harold Vick and Charles Mingus and two forgotten trade-winds ballads so unlikely that no one else would have dared. As the huge mob stood waving like wheat stalks, a woman asked no one in particular, “Did you ever think you would be grooving to ‘Sweet Leilani’?” Not like this.
Billy Higgins, 1936–2001
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Is it spring or the waning days of autumn? The festivals are getting underway, so it must be spring. Yet it feels like a shivery October in the realm of jazz mortality, as every passing week brings news of another loss, beginning late last year with Milt Hinton and continuing with Jack McDuff, Norris Turney, Lou Levy, George T. Simon, Les Brown, Buddy Tate, Ike Cole, Billy Mitchell, and two radiant beacons of the modern jazz movement and all of American music, as players and composers, J. J. Johnson and John Lewis, who spoke for them all when he remarked, “Everybody wants to be in the image of God. That’s why I play jazz.” Unlike many of their predecessors, they at least made it past 70. Billy Higgins, who died May 3 of liver and kidney failure, did not, which is one reason his passing hurts, even though he had been ill for years and was awaiting his third liver transplant. The main reason, of course, is that he gave so much pleasure. When you walked into a club where he was playing drums, you knew you were going to hear good time and have a good time.
Ladies Day (Billie Holiday)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
How many Billie Holidays are there and which do you prefer? Elated or dour, funny or truculent, sweet or sour, our Lady of Sorrows or 52nd Street’s Queen, early Billie or late, Billie of hope or heartache, Billie with Pres or with strings, Lady Day or Lady Nightmare or Lady in Ermine, Lady Be Good, Lady in Red, Lady Luck, Lady Blue, Lady Divine, the Lady who Swings the Band, Lady Mine—crank up the record machine, listen closely, and take your choice. For Billie Holiday is one of those exceptional artists whose work is a perfect tuning fork for our own inclinations. She echoes our emotions, rehabilitates our innocence, cauterizes our nerves. How she managed so capacious a vision with her slim vocal range and infinite capacity for nurturing demons is a miracle to which generations of interpreters have been and will continue to be drawn. The greatest art never loses its mystery. The better we know hers, the more dreamlike and sensational it seems.
Nashville (Ted Nash)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Eclecticism has been so much the norm in jazz during the past 30 years that you expect just about every player who comes along to have one foot in jazz proper and the other tapping elsewhere: Cuba or the Balkans or Argentina, or if not a geographical locale then a time period, like that of ragtime or swing or r&b, or another idiom entirely, classical or hip hop or gospel. Not to overstate, but has any other work proved more philosophically on the money than Ellington’s posthumously released Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, the suite he said was inspired by McLuhan’s prediction that no culture would be able to retain its identity, and that no individual, in Ellington’s words, will “know exactly who is enjoying the shadow of whom?” Carla Bley deserves credit as an early brewer of musical influences for her work on Gary Burton’s A Genuine Tong Funeral and Charlie Haden’s heartfelt frolic, Liberation Music Orchestra, not to mention her magnum magnum, Escalator over the Hill, which someday I plan on hearing in its entirely, though not yet, Lord, not yet. Bley colonized styles—from Weimar Germany to Spain and Asia—that became standard sources for those who followed, not least Holland’s deft, daft jester, Willem Breuker, who pursued them seriously but also parodied them to expose the eclectic habit as little more than a fad for a disoriented generation. The phrase “world music” had not yet been coined and jazz players, like the peripatetic Zusaan Kali Fasteau, had yet to acquire vast collections of flutes and bells. In those days, you were playing world music if you hired an “extra” percussionist, and world musicians paid homage to every American improviser.
Looking for Better Than That (Diana Krall / Jeanie Bryson / Vanessa Rubin / Etta James / Rosemary Clooney)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Early Tuesday, September 11, conniving for a lead to begin this column, I fancied myself Diogenes in search of an honest singer, squinting through the light of my lamp and defeated by darkness time and again. A meager joke, but at 8:30 A.M., having spent days listening to dozens of new recordings by women vocalists (saving the men for later), jokes were still easy to come by. Those who began the day with the Times were treated to a sidesplitter, as the paper of record inexplicably devoted an arts lead to the book-plugging of two unrepentant Weathermen bombers who said, from their prosperous academic perches, that they would do it again. The punch line was yet to come, of course. I suddenly recalled a promise to an editor friend to write 300 words about Harry Belafonte’s The Long Road to Freedom, so I turned to do that—the easy stuff. Then I discovered a voice-mail message from my assistant Elora, who said she would be late because, apparently, a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and subways were stalled. I had finished Belafonte and returned to Diogenes when a thumping on the door revealed my wife Deborah, aghast and breathless, having just been evacuated from her office in the Empire State Building. Had I heard? Yeah, some kind of accident.
Heir to a Secret History (Jason Moran)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Blue Note Records is turning out to be, of all things, the Blue Note Records of our time—in an unexpected way. Hard bop is not on the agenda. And the label has not yet found a jukebox favorite like Jimmy Smith, Horace Silver, or, briefly-but-big-time, Lee Morgan, though it has come close with Cassandra Wilson, Charlie Hunter, and, briefly-but-mediumtime, US3. Instead, it is flourishing, musically if not commercially, by extending what I’ve come to think of as jazz’s Secret History, that school of resolute, autonomous wizards who swim right of the avant-garde and left of the mainstream, and usually have to wait, as Monk warned, for the public to “pick up on what you are doing—even if it does take them 15, 20 years.” Alfred Lion’s devotion to Monk established Blue Note’s alternative vision; later signings, beginning with Herbie Nichols in 1955, endorsed an ongoing new wave that never quite rolled into shore though it endures as incredibly clairvoyant.
Fearless (Tony Bennett)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Frank Sinatra, who later called him the best singer in the business, pegged Tony Bennett at the start of his career when he observed, with apparent astonishment, that Bennett had “four sets of balls.” He was probably thinking of Bennett’s dynamic, nervy, over-the-top attack and vocal range, but he proved more discerning than he knew. Two decades later, the remark might have also referred to Bennett’s challenging repertory, heart-on-sleeve emotionalism, actorly inflection of lyrics, or stubborn idealism, which motivated him to leave Columbia Records and go independent when he felt corporate powers cared more about the marketplace than his musicianship. Indeed, it’s impossible to survey Bennett’s 51 years of recordings—capped this month with the almost absurdly demanding Playin’ with My Friends: Bennett Sings the Blues— and not marvel at the guy’s sheer moxie. His daring was apparent from the beginning, when Bennett made the big leap from Astoria, Queens, to the Village Inn in Manhattan, where Pearl Bailey championed him and Bob Hope invited him to sing in his show at the Paramount Theater. After Bennett finished his number, Hope joked, “Well, I was getting tired of Crosby anyhow!”—another remark with more significance than intended. For two decades, Bing Crosby had ruled the mainstream of pop singing, engendering countless imitators and a genuine rival in Sinatra, all of them casual baritones. Bennett was a tenor and “casual” was not in his makeup.
All Around the Town (Uri Caine)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
With irony now rotting in the grave, Uri Caine demonstrated a prescient sobriety two years ago when he recorded The Sidewalks of New York, which—adapted and abridged—received its New York debut November 3 at the Center for Jewish History. The disc is an audio kaleidoscope, convening singers, spielers, musicians, and sound effects to create a moving sense of the city in all its ethnic motley as the 19th century gave way to the 20th. I know of no other album quite like it—a couple of 1950s recreations of minstrel shows approximate its ambition, but not its reach or achievement. The absence of irony was especially notable at the time of its 1999 release. Caine made his name with Don Byron and Dave Douglas, frequent indulgers in musical caricature, and through adaptations of Mahler, Wagner, Schumann, and Bach that go as far afield as gospel singing and turntabling and serve even at their most honestly affecting (the Mahler works, Primal Light and Mahler in Toblach) as discerning provocations.
Bad Haircut, Good Ragtime (Brun Campbell)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In westerns, the saloon pianist never gets any respect. Always a foil and never once a hero, he’s there in a thousand movies, utterly nondescript in his bowler and gartered sleeve—a professional dweeb who plays “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” too fast and if he’s lucky gets to back Ann Sheridan or Angela Lansbury, but whose primary job is to look nervous when trouble brews and duck as soon as the fists or bullets start flying. Who is this guy? Was he schooled, did he have a wife and kids, did he audition for the gig, could he read music, did he have a day job, was he paid tips or salary, was he a solid citizen or a drifter, where did he find material, did he ever get applause, did he have to supply his own garter? In real life, the job was not without allure. The adolescent Irving Berlin, for one, could think of no grander position.
Laureate (Irving Berlin)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
In the aftermath of September 11, the whole country seemed to be singing “God Bless America,” underscoring Irving Berlin’s unimpeachable place in American song. (Berlin wrote the piece toward the end of World War I, but suppressed it until the outbreak of World War II, fearing that it might be too broad or corny.) No other songwriter has written as many anthems, including “White Christmas,” “Easter Parade,” and “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” No one else has written as many pop songs, period. Yet although Berlin was lauded as a tunesmith of genius as far back as 1911, when he debuted “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” he is often undervalued as a lyricist and said to lack Porter’s erudition, Hart’s interior rhymes, and Mercer’s homespun wisdom. The Complete Lyrics of Irving Berlin, edited by Robert Kimball and Linda Emmet, spans 81 of the composer’s 101 years (1888–1989) and implicitly asks us to reconsider his achievement. In addition to highlighting his gift for economy, directness, and slang, it presents Berlin as an obsessive, often despairing commentator on the passing scene.
Heroes at Work (“Made in America”)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
A new organization called Jazz Alliance International produced “Made in America,” a jazz concert to benefit “the heroes and victims of September 11,” on December 5 at Town Hall. No financial details were supplied about the poorly publicized and sparsely attended evening, except that it raised—obviously not from ticket sales—$260,000, which was given to the Robin Hood Foundation to aid “lower income victims.” Save one mercifully brief speech by the JAI’s president and an equally brief intermission, the program provided three hours of music, as each performer or band appeared for one number and then disappeared or remained on stage to play with the next configuration. None of the music was shabby, which is pretty impressive for an event of this kind; more amazing was the presentation’s overall smoothness. However successful JAI may or may not be at raising money, it already knows how to organize a show; the only failing was the overmiked sound. Rhetoric was reserved for a playbill with musician bios, lists of board members (some 40) and absentee politicians, and a statement of purpose. The musical numbers were permitted to turn like pages in a novel, breezily unmolested, and it was impossible to reenter the night without thinking that jazz is a lot healthier than it’s usually made out to be.
Brutality and Revival (The Best Jazz Records of 2001)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Last year at this time I sermonized about the lack of consensus reflected in best-of-year record lists and tried to pep myself up for the long haul of a jazz post-history in which no one had the stomach for—let alone expectations of—genius or innovation. Kind of Blue was the year’s bestselling jazz album; Louis Armstrong’s centenary was off to a shaky start; and Ken Burns’s Jazz was poised to change everything. What a difference a year makes. Not that anything revolutionary took place, short of a dismantled Taliban and a vanished surplus, yet jazz optimism grew throughout the year, triggered by responses to the PBS documentary (even vitriolic criticism helped keep small-j jazz in the news) and underscored by the sparsely attended but inspiring “Made in America” 9/11 benefit. Kind of Blue continued its box office rule; Armstrong’s centenary was disgracefully neglected by mass media; and the incredible rise in record sales following the Jazz broadcast could not be sustained, especially in a Bush economy, though the show’s long-term effect won’t be known for years—dozens of anecdotes have been reported like the one I heard from a man in a midwestern bookstore, whose 14-year-old came home from Tower with two CDs: Britney and Satchmo. The jazz business is more than ever an oxymoron, so where are the signs of revival? Chiefly in the return of consensus. For the first time in several years, a handful of recordings roused general admiration—many of the same faces make the best-of lists every year, but I discerned a fresh excitement, a shared have-you-heard-so-and-so enthusiasm regarding live performances as well as records.
Reissues by the Box, Singers by the Cut (More Best Jazz Records of 2001)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Reissues and reclamation projects (vintage recordings that never previously saw the light of day) are the oxygen in which jazz, as a living art, breathes. They are the classics, benchmarks, standards, soul, and history of the music. They are proof that an improvised art can defy time; an excuse or demand for re-evaluation; a prize for the curious, the nostalgic, the acquisitive; and an economic security blanket for record companies that can’t count on the sales of contemporary artists to satisfy their distributors or stockholders. Skeptics bewail the constant recycling of the old and reliable, rightly so when the only excuse is pointless tampering— like some of those microgroove remixes by Rudy Van Gelder (his recent work with 78s like Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool is another story entirely) that are sabotaging his reputation as well as the music he so brilliantly documented. Novices complain at the number of reissues, yet 20 years after the CD juggernaut many important performances have never been digitalized—try to find Teddy Wilson’s “Blues in C-Sharp Minor,” Stan Getz’s “Diaper Pin,” The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing, Esq., Miles Davis in Europe, Sam Rivers’s Crystals, Pee Wee Russell’s Ask Me Now, Archie Shepp’s Live at Donaueschingen.
Black Arthur’s Return (Arthur Blythe)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Arthur Blythe’s story may not make a movie, but it certainly works as jazz allegory. He came to New York from San Diego in the magical mid’70s, and on his second night out sat in with Elvin Jones. Although he had been critically neglected at home, at 34 he was hardly inexperienced—having studied with, among others, the 1940s Lunceford saxophonist Kirtland Bradford and bandleader Horace Tapscott, in whose groups he had played for a decade—and he came East complete with the attention-grabbing sobriquet Black Arthur Blythe. Far more impressive was his wholly original approach to timbre. He made the saxophone sound uniquely fat and pungent: round as Benny Carter, ardent as John Coltrane. Along with Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake, he put the alto back into contention. His hard-riffing, economical phrases were girded by a fast, edgy vibrato that at its best cut like a Ginzu and at its not-best vibrated with the whining nasality of Al Jolson. The phrases, too, were original, punchy with a fastidious lyricism. When in 1975 he performed at a loft concert with the no less distinctive 20-year-old David Murray, it seemed as though western winds were, at last, blasting jazz out of its long night in the doldrums.
Enchantment (Johnny Hodges / Rex Stewart)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
A masterpiece, by definition, ought to be singular, or at least uncommon as regards an artist’s accumulated work. Yet during his 50 years in recording studios, Duke Ellington often produced two or more classics at a clip, particularly in the early 1940s: “Ko-Ko” and “Jack the Bear” one day, “Concerto for Cootie” and “Conga Brava” another. And yet even by his standards, the sessions of November 2, 1940, and July 3, 1941, were astounding. On each of those enchanted afternoons, Ellington directed two seven-piece ensembles, respectively starring and nominally led by saxophonist Johnny Hodges and trumpeter Rex Stewart—creating no fewer than four masterworks by each group on each occasion: eight per date, 16 in all, like falling off a log. When RCA-Victor began transferring its ‘40s Ellington trove to LP in the 1950s, it focused on his big band, and the small-group achievements faded into memory for two decades. Not until 1966 were the Hodges and Stewart recordings finally reclaimed in RCA’s two-year-old Vintage series. Things Ain’t What They Used to Be was greeted with much fanfare, in part for Don Miller’s subtly faithful mastering. Vintage had renounced artificial stereo, which at that time had become the bane of every jazz lover’s existence; it actually respected RCA’s superb prewar engineering, cleaning and enhancing the originals without sacrificing warmth and intimacy. This was essential because the Hodges and Stewart sides are deceptive: They are painstakingly scripted, but sound casual, even conspiratorial, as though made up on the spot.
Continuing Education (Marian McPartland)
Authors: Giddins Gary 
Published: November 2023

Abstract
Marian McPartland’s learning curve is apparently infinite, an Escher-like, Velcro-covered loop that keeps picking up incremental details as it winds its way through jazz for six decades, turning what began as a generic approach into something personal. Her early ‘50s records, made at the start of her eight-year engagement at the Hickory House, reveal a gifted pianist with accomplished technique and a passable understanding of contemporary currents. But her playing was often polite—stylish without suggesting much individual style. Yet even by that time, Margaret Marian Turner of Windsor, England, had wended her way through much music history, forging her approach with at least as much stubborn persistence as natural talent. She was born in 1918, and began playing by ear; years of formal study followed, but in her early teens she discovered jazz and begin imitating records. “I just played everything,” she told me a few years ago, on the occasion of her widely celebrated 80th birthday: “Duke Ellington was my big inspiration, and then I tried to play like Teddy Wilson.” She won a few scholarships, including one that enrolled her in London’s Guildhall School of Music, which she abandoned before graduation to go out on a tour in vaudeville. In 1944, while entertaining troops in Belgium, she met trumpeter and Beiderbecke acolyte Jimmy McPartland. Stationed deep in the Ardennes, he came to her rescue by commandeering a grand piano from a family of Nazi sympathizers so that she could play a concert. They married and settled in New York in 1946, and though her work with Jimmy was Dixieland, she instantly began to soak up the forces of modernism, asking and receiving advice from Bud Powell and Lennie Tristano, among others, and leading her own trio with Bill Crow and Joe Morello.