Sunday Session: May 27, 2018

Bennie Maupin

Here's a roundup of various music-related items of interest that have shown up in one of StLJN's various inboxes or feeds over the past week:

* Bird's just a word but if you own a jazz bar it can land you in strife (The Age)
* How the Music Industry Messed Up Legal Streaming the First Time Around (Vice.com)
* It’s OK To Like Free Jazz (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Flow is Everything: Composer Henry Threadgill Dishes the 'Dirt' and More on The Checkout (WBGO)
* 'We Kept The Music Going': Bernard Purdie On Drumming For Aretha And More (NPR)
* ‘There will be a number one song that’s 100% AI-written’ (Musically.com)
* Carla Bley Extravaganza (EthanIverson.com)
* Frank Vignola: Given the Gift of Life (Jazz Times)
* Bennie Maupin Said No to Miles Davis and Survived in Jazz (Westword)
* Reggie Lucas, Guitarist And Producer Of Madonna's Debut, Has Died (WBGO)
* How did music become so unimportant? (GetIntoThis.co.uk)
* Jazz musician Wynton Marsalis says rap and hip-hop are ‘more damaging than a statue of Robert E. Lee’ (Washington Post)
* Jazz Musician Wynton Marsalis Claims Hip Hop Is "More Damaging Than A Statue Of Robert E. Lee" (HipHopDX.com)
* The Beatles' Esher Demos: The Lost Basement Tapes That Became the White Album (Rolling Stone)
* The 50 Best Jazz Bassists Of All Time (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* Sony in $2.3 billion deal for EMI, becomes world's biggest music publisher (Reuters.com)
* Dissonant Intervals & Bittersweet Symphonies: Music’s Past, Present & Future (Medium.com)
* Guitars Are Getting More Popular. So Why Do We Think They’re Dying? (Rolling Stone)
* Looking Back, and Now Forward, As Delmark Records Faces a Crossroads (WBGO)
* Why Are Pop Stars Trying to Be Performance Artists? (The New Yorker)
* Recording Academy CEO Neil Portnow Accused by Fired Staffer of Funneling Funds From MusiCares Charity (Billboard)
* Bach at the Burger King (Los Angeles Review of Books)
* The Father of Gospel Music Wanted to Be a Secular Star (Christianity Today)
* What's That Building? The Sunset Cafe Mural (WBEZ)
* Letter From Saint Petersburg - In 2018, International Jazz Day brings the beyond-politics cultural diplomacy of the U.N. to Russia (Jazz Times)

Sunday Session: February 7, 2016

Maurice White

For your Sunday reading, some interesting music-related items that have turned up recently in StLJN's inbox:

* Esperanza Spalding on Her Alter Ego and Being Inspired 'By Stuff People in Suits Don't Give a Shit About' (Billboard)
* For the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Monday Becomes an All-Week Affair (New York Times)
* Who Should Pay for the Arts in America? (The Atlantic)
* Inside the Strange, Hidden World of Offstage Touring Musicians (LA Weekly)
* The Riffs And Rhythms That Led To Jazz As We Know It (NPR)
* Five Questions With Jason Kao Hwang (Textura.org)
* Cash-Strapped Spotify Is Desperately Seeking a $500 Million Loan (DigitalMusicNews.com)
* All On A Mardi Gras Day: New Orleans’ unique carnival traditions (Offbeat)
* Interview: Trombone Shorty on refining Supafunkrock, the future of jazz, and playing for Obama (Vanyaland.com)
* If Rihanna Can Go Platinum Giving ANTI Away For Free, What Does Platinum Even Mean? (Stereogum)
* The Art of Blue Note (UDiscoverMusic.com)
* SFX Entertainment files for bankruptcy in the US (MusicBusinessWorldwide.com)
* A Conversation with Randy Weston - The African connection (Jazz Times)
* Pianist Aaron Goldberg Tells the Story of How Expatriate Drummer Leon Parker Returns and Begins His Next Chapter at National Sawdust (ZealNYC.com)
* Maurice White, Earth, Wind & Fire Singer and Co-Founder, Dead at 74 (Rolling Stone)
* Maurice White: The Audacity Of Uplift (NPR)
* Good time: the greatest moments of Maurice White and Earth, Wind & Fire (The Guardian UK)
* How David Liebman got the keys to the jazz kingdom (Irish Times)
* Hear the Experimental Music of the Dada Movement: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Century Ago (OpenCulture.com)
* Vinyl revival: Canadian company reinvents the record pressing plant (The Globe and Mail)
* The Biggest Session Drummer Of All Time Is Ready For The Spotlight (Buzzfeed.com)
* Marshall Allen Spreads Enlightenment with Arkestra (DownBeat)
* Bowie: follow the changes (Jazz Journal)
* A Fearless Soprano's Case For Contemporary Music (NPR)

Music Education Monday: The Purdie Shuffle

Sometimes StLJN's weekly "Music Education Monday" feature deals with broad topics, and sometimes, things get very specific - like today's video lesson from famed session drummer Bernard Purdie (pictured), which is all about how to play the beat known as the "Purdie Shuffle."

Produced by Drumeo.com, the video shows Purdie himself explaining and demonstrating the distinctive half-time funk feel he played on Steely Dan's "Home at Last" and "Babylon Sisters," which since has been approximated or imitated on recordings by Toto, Death Cab For Cutie, and numerous others.

You can grab a .pdf of a basic transcription here, courtesy of OnlineDrummer.com. For some more tips on how to play the Purdie Shuffle, consult this .pdf of an article by drummer Jim Payne, originally published in 2010 in Modern Drummer magazine, in which he breaks the beat down into component parts and devises a practice routine with exercises for each.

And should you want to try to program the Purdie Shuffle into an audio workstation or drum machine, this article from MusicRadar.com will get you started.

You can see the video of Bernard Purdie after the jump, followed by a clip of Steely Dan's Donald Fagen and Walter Becker talking about Purdie and then a bit more of the man himself...

Notes from the Net: Miles' sartorial style, the "Purdie Shuffle" celebrated, Bennett and Evans re-released, plus news, reviews and more

Here's the latest weekly compilation of news and links related to jazz, improvisation, and creative music in St. Louis, including news of musicians originally from the Gateway City, recent visitors, and coming attractions, plus assorted other items of interest:

* As longtime StLJN readers know, whenever possible we like to start these news roundups with something about Miles Davis, and this week brings a couple of items indicating Davis' celebrity beyond the musical world.

Specifically, the trumpeter and East St. Louis native was just named a "Style Icon" by AskMen.com: "In 1965, the legendary jazz critic and Esquire style writer George Frazier dubbed Davis "The Warlord of the Weejuns" in the liner notes of a greatest hits collection. A hell of a nickname, even if no one knew what it meant."

Also, Davis' most famous album Kind of Blue apparently turned up last week on the British TV drama Coronation Street, during a scene in which one character lauds the album's timeless quality.

* A track from pianist, composer and St. Louis expat Linda Presgrave's latest CD Inspiration was featured this week on Jazz.com's "Song of the Day".

* Via Blogcritics.com, here's a review of John Zorn: Tradition And Transgression by John Brackett, the new book analyzing the music and ideas of the saxophonist, composer and conceptualist (who once studied at Webster University here in St. Louis).

* Opening the "coming attractions" file, the New York Times had a review of a recent duet performance by John Pizzarelli and his wife, singer Jessica Molasky, at NYC's Birdland. Pizzarelli will be here in St. Louis in two weeks as one of the guest artists for the Greater St. Louis Jazz Festival.

* The Concord Music Group will release the Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings on April 14th. The two-CD collection includes all of the music originally issued on the two albums Bennett and Evans recorded together, plus two bonus tracks and alternate takes from both sessions. Bennett will return to St. Louis to perform at the Fox Theatre on Friday, May 8.

* From PopMatters.com, another review of Returns, the live CD from Return to Forever's 2008 reunion tour, which stopped at the Fox in June.

* An article in the New York Times celebrates Bernard Purdie's signature groove the "Purdie Shuffle" on the occasion of Purdie (pictured) joining the pit band of the revival of the Broadway musical Hair. St. Louis listeners (and drum fanboys) got a rare chance to scope out Purdie in person when he played here last fall at Jazz at the Bistro with the Godfathers of Groove.

* Illness forced Dave Brubeck to bow out of an historic concert performance scheduled for Friday night at his alma mater, the University of the Pacific, in Stockton, CA. Brubeck, 88, was hospitalized with a viral infection and was unable to travel for a scheduled performance of his classic 1959 album Time Out at UOP. The concert went on, with Brubeck's eldest son Darius Brubeck filling in for his father. Brubeck, who played the Sheldon last fall, is under observation at a hospital in Connecticut, but is expected to make a full recovery.

* Finally, a couple items of more general interest, starting with Wynton Marsalis, who was one of several well-known musicians who went to Washington D.C. last week to lobby Congress for more arts funding: "Marsalis said it's critical for the nation to reevaluate its priorities during the financial crisis to ensure the best aspects of U.S. culture aren't lost to younger generations because of scarce funding. The acclaimed trumpet player said he learned key lessons about jazz when he was young by playing with some of the original members of Duke Ellington's band."

* And, last but not least from Marsalis' home town, a hopeful but still cautious report on the state of jazz in New Orleans in 2009.

StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Meet the Godfathers of Groove

This week, we've got four very short video clips featuring the Godfathers of Groove, who are coming to St. Louis to appear at Jazz at The Bistro starting next Wednesday, October 8 through Saturday, October 11. With the well-seasoned veteran Reuben Wilson on organ, legendary session man Bernard "Pretty" Purdie playing drums and Grant Green, Jr., son of legendary guitarist and St. Louis native Grant Green, on guitar, the Godfathers might be thought of as a sort of soul-jazz supergroup, with deep roots in the old-school organ-trio sound.

Unfortunately, there's not a whole lot of video of them online, so we'll have to make do with some brief teaser-type clips. All together, these four excerpts from a performance last December at the Jazz Cafe in London total less than six minutes of running time, but they should provide at least a general idea of the group's vibe and what to expect next week at the Bistro.

Pollstar: Godfathers of Groove to play the Bistro in October

Although the 2007-08 seasons of St. Louis' various not-for-profit presenters still have three or four months to go, the process of booking acts for the 2008-09 season has been well underway for a while. As those upcoming dates are confirmed with the artists, some of them show up on the online concert information service Pollstar even before the local presenters have announced their schedules.

This time, Pollstar is showing that the Godfathers of Groove (pictured) have been booked to play at Jazz at the Bistro from Wednesday, October 8 through Saturday, October 11. The Godfathers are a billed a soul-jazz "supergroup" featuring organ player Reuben Wilson, drummer Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, and guitarist Grant Green, Jr.

While the band has just one CD out as a collective entity, Purdie is, of course, one of the most frequently recorded drummers of the last 35 or 40 years, performing on dozens of gold records and hundreds of acts ranging from Aretha Franklin, King Curtis and B.B. King to Miles Davis, Donny Hathaway and Steely Dan.

Wilson also has had a long recording career as a old-school Hammond B-3 player in the style of Jimmy Smith, Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, et al, and in the 1990s enjoyed a bit of a renaissance thanks to the "acid jazz" movement of that decade. Green Jr., who was raised in Detroit, is a bit less of a known quantity, but is touted as a blues- and funk-influenced player in the tradition of his famous father.

As always, these sorts of announcements from Pollstar, though often reliable, are subject to change, and should be considered unofficial until duly announced by the venue in question. Until those official schedules are forthcoming, StLJN will continue to pass along whatever information comes our way, with the appropriate disclosures & caveats, for your anticipatory and/or speculative enjoyment. .