A while back, I had a little write-up about Gordon Vernick and his Jazz Insights radio show that’s also a podcast. Jazz and trombone aficionados should know that in August, Vernick authored episodes featuring five jazz trombone players of the 20s, including Kid Ory, Miff Mole, Jimmy Harrison, Charlie Green and Jack Teagarden. Another good reason to check the show out.

It’s October, and presumably time to start raking leaves. Despite the date on the calendar, though, it’s still getting up to 80º degrees up here in Minnesota! Whoo-hoo!

Gearing up for more incredible content here. In the meantime, an interesting post is (posted) at Keep Swinging, a Dutch blog in (Dutch) but also in English. A lot of other good stuff is there as well.

Recently, while searching the jungle of the iTunes music store, I came across an interesting iTunes U/Podcast by Dr. Gordon Vernick titled Jazz Insights (This is the podcast version).

Vernick, who heads up the jazz studies program at Georgia State University, started Jazz Insights as a 10-minute radio show: short vignettes on the basics of jazz for the uninitiated. Since then, he’s continued the program by covering the work of individual jazz artists and their place in the history of the music.

On a series of shows about J.J. Johnson, an initial mention of the slide trombone’s recalcitrant nature is inevitable. Vernick says:

The Trombone is a very difficult instrument. It’s a very ancient instrument. It’s been around for hundreds, if not thousands of years…

It’ll come as no surprise that Dr. Vernick uses recordings as one of the vehicles to recount a jazz artist’s career and development. Continuing with Johnson — the only trombonist featured so far — Vernick begins with J.J.’s early swing-style playing on Lester Leaps In for Norman Granz’s Jazz At the Philharmonic. Johnson’s emerging be-bop style is illustrated by I Mean You with Coleman Hawkins and How Deep Is the Ocean? with Charlie Parker, before we hear classic be-bop dates with J.J. as the leader. By the end of the 40s, we hear how J.J. cooled off a bit.

While recounting his career in the 50s, Vernick discusses Johnson’s involvement in the somewhat short-lived idea of Third Stream Music (A Mix of Jazz and Classical Music) by playing us some of the rare recording Birth of the Third Stream, while getting to J.J.’s musical connection to Miles Davis. Naturally, there’s also discussion of The Eminent J.J. Johnson Volumes One and Two. Along the way, Vernick includes some other important Johnson recordings, including Jay and Kai + 6 and Stan Getz and J.J. Johnson at the Opera House.

I won’t spoil it by recounting all of Vernick’s show on J.J. here. You really should go give it a listen yourself. Vernick’s presentational style is friendly and geared towards a jazz novice, but it’s still interesting if you happen to know more. In other words, Jazz Insights is aptly named. Plus, Dr. Vernick has recorded programs on Jackie McLean, Thad Jones, Scott LaFaro, Stan Getz, and other artists. Check it out.

Fortunately, it’s always jazz appreciation month on this website. Some jazz-in-April links: Over at Jazzwax, Marc Myers is up for two jazz journalist association awards. David Brent Johnson’s Nightlights radio show featured bassist Scott Lafaro, amongst others. Undated, but musician Danny Barnes wrote a great article about how to play in someone else’s band. Don’t forget Donna over at Elements of Jazz dot com. She’s got the Twitter Jazzerati list over there, as well as other great stuff.

And the weather? It was also too cold for April in Minnesota, even in Minnesota. More soon…

Here’s how I found out about Keybone on iTunes: I had transferred some of the vinyl tracks to digital myself. With the correct track info entered into iTunes, one day iTunes found the Keybone artwork. Voila! — apparently it had been added to iTunes.

Anyway, it’s a fun set of music, and was recorded in 1972 at Seed Studios in Vallauris, France. The rest of the personal includes Eddie Vinson on alto saxophone (Vinson sings on Alimony Blues and Person To Person), Floyd Smith on guitar and Chris Columbus on drums. Check it out.

But wait — there are more geeky details: below is the original LP cover art for J Is For Jazz. Look familiar? The striking photo sets J.J. against a black background, head-on down the length of his trombone slide, just like the art for Kai Winding’s The Trombone Sound (See the last post, which appeared far too long ago).

What you can’t see on the iTunes cover art is the photo credit that exits on the LP versions. Not surprisingly, both of these album cover photos are by the same photographer, Dan Wynn, who died in 1995. Although he had training in art, Wynn began developing technical skills in photography while serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. Out of the Army in 1947, he began focussing his photographic eye on fashion while working for Seventeen Magazine. In his subsequent career, he ended up photographing nearly everything — cars and scooters, food, models, movie stars, and, of course, musicians.

Original LP Album Art for The Trombone Sound

• J.J. In Person
• Blue Trombone
• First Place
• J. J. Johnson, Trombone And Voices
• J Is For Jazz
• The Trombone Sound
• Trombone Panorama
• Jay and Kai + 6

The weird thing is this that while all of the titles listed above appear to be legitimate digital transfers of the original recordings, some are duplicated and have different, non-original album art. That might be fairly innocuous, except for the fact that these duplicate titles might not be first generation transfers from the original recordings. A case in point is the “alternate album art” version of Jay and Kai +6. It’s a transfer from an LP, surface noise, scratches, and all. Thankfully, an aware iTunes store shopper wrote a one-star review which warns, “This is just a phonograph record that has been recorded onto someone’s computer.”

It’s conceivable that you have heard Taylor talk about jazz more often than you heard him play it. His own playing sat comfortably in the mainstream, and while his style didn’t venture into the realms of say, Herbie Hancock or Chick Corea, it did what it needed to do — express Billy Taylor. To bring Miles Davis back into it again, Taylor once said of him that it’s much harder to play with simplicity than it sounds like it might be. So true.

There are many great clips featuring Taylor on YouTube. Below, Billy talks about National Educational Television’s pioneering show, The Subject is Jazz, that aired nationally on NBC in 1957-58. In the original clip, Taylor explains “Cool Jazz,” and the featured group performs a version of Tadd Dameron’s Hot House, and Miles Davis’s Half Nelson.

Another great one:

One year ago, the Ella Fitzgerald box set Twelve Nights in Hollywood was in short supply. Part of the reason was an article in the New York Times discussing its release. Soon, the box set was backordered everywhere.

The newly discovered recordings were taken from Ella’s 1961 (and ‘62) stint at the Crescendo, a small jazz club in Los Angeles. These joyful, lovely, and intimate performances languished in Verve’s recording vaults for years, mostly because Ella’s producer Norman Granz was focussing on other projects the singer was doing at the time. Which projects? Well, two were the Rodgers & Hart and Cole Porter songbook albums, which featured Ella in front of large studio orchestras. In contrast, on Twelve Nights in Hollywood Ella sings with her touring rhythm section, consisting of Lou Levy, piano, Herb Ellis, guitar, Wilfred Middlebrooks bass, and Gus Johnson on drums.

It won’t surprise anyone to hear that Ella is in fantastic form. On these recordings, she lines each tune up and knocks it out without seeming to try, with just a short and appreciative “I thank you” between each number. Ella covers her kaleidoscopic range: there are touching ballads, scatted swing numbers, and even the blues she wasn’t known for. Also, there’s a glimpse of Ella the entertainer, taking audience requests and being a little coy about whether or not she really knows the song, or whether there are in fact any lyrics to sing:

Someone, someone asked for Perdido …
Don’t know how the lyrics go
to this tune called Per-deeedo …

Well, you have to hear it.

This year, Ella Fitzgerald Twelve Nights in Hollywood is just as great as it was last year. Of course, it’ll be just that good in every year yet to come.