The news just goes from bad to worse for jazz fans today: Les Paul, a virtual God of the guitar, passed away this morning from complications of pneumonia at 94, reports the Associated Press.

Paul’s legacy is hard to overstate. He was a pioneer of the solid-body electric guitar, giving his name to a Gibson model guitar that to this day remains one of the best-selling instruments in the world. He is also credited with inventing the multitrack recording, innovating with half-speed and double-speed playback, and creating a device known as the “Les Paulverizer” which was among the first tape-looping technologies.

Over a four-year period in the early 1950s, Paul and his then wife, Mary Ford, had 16 top ten hits. Ford died in 1977.

Paul had not shied away from music in his old age. Until his recent illness, the nonagenarian had been playing every Monday night at the Iridium in Times Square.

The loss is tremendous.

UPDATE 2:40 PM: The Village Voice reports that Ali succumbed after suffering a heart attack. More specifically, the New York Times cites a blocked artery, and adds that he died at New York’s Bellevue Hospital.

Rashied Ali, the great free jazz drummer who was a member of John Coltrane’s last band, has died, according to his website.

In addition to Coltrane, Ali had worked with Paul Bley, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, and John Zorn. Just this weekend, Ali had performed with his By Any Means trio at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Details of Ali’s death are still unclear, but will be published here as they become available.

Some people insist that the newspapers’ current crisis is ultimately good for journalism, including arts journalism. But decreased budgets mean giving ink to the lowest bidders, rather than the best journalists.

Which is how highly regarded papers end up with concert reviews like this one, published last Thursday in the Montreal Gazette. The ignorance and complete disregard for the actual music is exceeded only by the blatant misogyny.

Still wonder why journos are worried?

Wynton Marsalis just gives till it hurts. Last week he was in our own back yard, giving music lessons at the White House and offering up a Kennedy Center tribute to his father Ellis. Today it was a Q&A session on his Facebook page with fans. And, at the end of the session, a surprise from the maestro (which also showed up on his Twitter:

Thanks for joining me for the Q&A. I’d like to give you all a free download of my album, “Here…Now”, which is only available online. Download it here and let me know what you think!

Here…Now is a ballet about the late Olympian Florence “FloJo” Griffith Joyner, choreographed for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 2001 to music specially commissioned from Marsalis. The download page carries a 2007 release date, but in fact it’s never been released on CD or anywhere except online. And it is excellent — some of the best and most original, ambitious, and tuneful work of Marsalis’ career [insert endless arguments about Marsalis' career here].

But even if you hate everything Marsalis stands for, what have you got to lose with a free download?

DCist reported before this year’s Duke Fest began that it had lost $200,000 in corporate sponsorships. Charlie Fishman also reminded me that with moving the festival from fall to early summer, the staff had only seven months to pull the whole thing together, including fundraising and booking. That meant that the festival lost some of its trademark features, including its big events at the Lincoln Theatre, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Voice of America.

It also meant a very heavy reliance, particularly in the first half of the fest, on local jazz musicians—about which I heard a few grumbles, to the tune of “So much of it is gigs that happen every week anyway! Shouldn’t a festival be about special events?”

The local focus should get a pass. The budget difficulties were pretty big for the festival this year; besides, D.C.’s jazz musicians need all the extra publicity they can get. If there was a problem with the festival, it was the 11-day duration—too long. The cushioning of the schedule with local musicians might not have been necessary if there wasn’t so much space to fill.
Read More “DEJF: Postscript” »

Last month, covering the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival, I said this about bassist Esperanza Spalding:

I stand by all of the above. But Spalding nonetheless does consider herself a bassist first, and that work deserves a fair shake when her singing isn’t in the way. That opportunity came today, when Spalding backed trumpeter Nicholas Payton at the Mall and proved herself not only dexterous but exceptional.
Read More “DEJF: Another Side of Esperanza Spalding” »

I’m no Darrow Montgomery or Brandon Wu, but I had my camera with me and decided to document the day’s events in images rather than words.

These photographs were taken during the performances on the Mall by Donald Harrison, Trombone Shorty, and Nicholas Payton. More after the jump.

Read More “DEJF: Jazz on the National Mall, Part 2 (in Pictures)” »

Terence Blanchard. (Photo: Morrice Blackwell.)

1:00 PM
It was immediately clear that the Rebirth Brass Band would be a tough act to follow. Their lineup of three trumpets, tenor sax, trombone, sousaphone, and two drummers were working out their theme song, “Feel Like Funkin’ It Up,” demonstrating rather handily that hardcore funk is not so far removed from New Orleans traditional jazz and marching band styles. They then threw rock & roll into that same mix, making short work of The Rolling Stones classic “It’s All Over Now.”

Watching them, however, the most obvious continuum for the Rebirth Brass Band was that of D.C.’s own go-go scene. The riffs, the party chants, the aggressive rhythms were all there. The audience sensed it too: before the end of the set, the area in front of the stage was filled with men and women holding aloft umbrellas and blowing whistles, dancing and shuffling to their heart’s content. Rebirth was the party band of the day.
Read More “DEJF: Jazz on the National Mall” »

The son of New Orleans jazz polymath Kidd, trumpeter Marlon Jordan works largely in mainstream post-bop — a glut of which has been heard by this second weekend of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. But Jordan rescued it from ennui at Twins Jazz Friday night with some of the most distinctive stylings the fest has had so far.
Read More “DEJF: Marlon Jordan @ Twins” »

Much fun as Yamomanem was, what would a jazz festival with a “Celebrating New Orleans” theme be without a real-deal traditional New Orleans jazz band? Fortunately, Dr. Michael White was at the French Embassy Wednesday night to keep anyone from having to answer that question.

White is a professor of New Orleans music and culture (and, apparently, Spanish) at New Orleans’ Xavier University, but being a scholar of the music goes hand-in-hand with understanding that there’s no place in it for scholarly sterility. So White, in his other guise as a clarinet player, formed his 7-piece Original Liberty Jazz Band to play the music with that sense of authenticity that necessarily includes fun, spirit, and the culture of African-American New Orleans. That’s how we got songs with titles like “Shake It and Break It” and “Boogaloosa Strut” (the band’s first two songs) in the first place, and how the OLJB could craft originals like “Come Together Sunday Morning.”

And, of course, it comes with the great sound of New Orleans polyphony, with White, trombonist Lucien Barbarin, and trumpeter George Stafford—who also sings with an unpolished but smooth and pleasant voice. Each player also turned in folksy solos, by and large embellishments of the written themes; that’s far from a bad thing, as White’s stunning reworking of “Summertime” proved.
Read More “DEJF: Dr. Michael White and the Original Liberty Jazz Band” »