In conversation with kurt elling

By Ted Panken

Kurt Elling by Christian Lantry

Hardcore Manhattanites consider navigating Brooklyn a less daunting prospect than was the case some years ago. Nonetheless, on a rainy mid-June Monday, it was impressive to note that Kurt Elling, in Manhattan from Chicago on “creative sabbatical” for a year, opted to take the subway from a long rehearsal in Prospect Heights to a Fort Greene dinner appointment. Unprepared for the weather, Elling arrived soaking wet, precisely on schedule.

The rehearsal in question was for a four-night Birdland run in support of Elling’s recent release, Dedicated To You [Concord], on which the 41-year-old singer and his working trio (pianist/arranger Laurence Hobgood, bassist Clark Sommers, and drummer Ulysses Owens) plus guest tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts and the Ethel String quartet interpret the program navigated by tenor saxophone icon John Coltrane and baritone crooner Johnny Hartman on their classic, co-eponymously titled 1963 album, and on Coltrane’s companion album Ballads, from 1962. It’s …

A Passage to India

Rudresh Mahanthappa chooses a heritage.

by Gary Giddins March 2, 2009

Mahanthappa is wary of facile Indian-jazz fusions. Photograph by Ethan Levitas.

Jazz musicians have two fundamental goals: creating music that keeps listeners wondering what’s next, and finding a novel context within which to explore old truths. (There are no new truths.) Whenever a musician achieves this synthesis, usually after years of apprenticeship and exploration, a rumble echoes through the jazz world. Such a rumble was heard last fall, when the thirty-seven-year-old alto saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa released an astonishing album, “Kinsmen,” on a small New York-based label (Pi), quickly followed by another no less astonishing, “Apti,” on a small Minnesota-based label (Innova). The breakthrough had been a long time coming, and, curiously enough, it justifies ethnic assumptions that Mahanthappa had for much of his career been working to escape. With a name that may require concentration (second syllables are accented: Ru-dresh Ma-hahn-tha-pa), he has often been presumed to be an Indian-born saxophonist involved in some kind of Indian-jazz fusion, but he is actually as American as apple pie, or Barack Obama. For more than a decade, in close association with a contemporary of similar background, the pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, he had circled classical Indian music with cautious respect, reluctant to exploit a tradition about which he knew little.

Born in 1971, Mahanthappa grew up in Boulder, in one of the very few Indian-American families there. He studied Baroque recorder for two years, then switched to alto saxophone at the age of eleven, coming under the influence of a teacher who exposed him to everything from Sidney Bechet to Frank Zappa. By ninth grade, Mahanthappa was fronting a band that, by his own account, tortured tunes by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, and others he admired. He graduated from Berklee College of Music, and went on to earn a master’s in jazz composition at DePaul University, in Chicago. Through the alto saxophonist Steve Coleman, whose M-Base collective inspired many young musicians in the nineteen-nineties, Mahanthappa met Iyer, and they could scarcely believe that there were two jazz musicians of South Indian heritage with routinely mispronounced names. They learned a lot from each other; Iyer focussed on rhythm and Mahanthappa on melody, and when they heard of an opportunity to play in Toronto they rehearsed for three days and made their début as a duo.

Both men were suspicious of the Indian borrowings that had become commonplace in jazz since the sixties, and which usually produced oil-and-water confrontations or mannerly gimmicks—a tabla in the rhythm section, say. Mahanthappa was also wary of Coltrane’s use of Indian ragas—ancient scales that, unlike Western ones, are wedded to drones rather than harmony, which doesn’t exist in classical Indian music—and of his attempt to invoke the sound of the double-reed shehnai with his soprano saxophone. Moving to New York in 1997, Mahanthappa performed and recorded prolifically with Iyer, producing an impressive series of CDs—including the duo album “Raw Materials,” Iyer’s “Blood Sutra,” and Mahanthappa’s “Black Water,” “Mother Tongue,” and “Codebook.” To the degree that they borrowed anything from South India, it was subsumed by the sheer ebullience they brought to playing jazz—Iyer with his percussive attack, rangy moods, and fastidious wit (a recent composition is “Macaca Please”), and Mahanthappa with his lavish timbre, which places particular emphasis on the often neglected lower register of his instrument, and his ability to convey a state of elation.

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W hile Mahanthappa was at Berklee, his older brother teasingly gave him an album called “Saxophone Indian Style,” by Kadri Gopalnath. As far as Mahanthappa knew, “Indian saxophonist” was an oxymoron, but the album amazed him. Gopalnath, who was born in 1950, in Karnataka, plays a Western instrument in a non-Western context—the Carnatic music of Southern India (distinct from the Hindustani musical tradition of Northern India). Gopalnath, who generally plays in a yogalike seated position, has perfected something that jazz saxophonists have been attempting for decades: moving beyond the Western chromatic scale into the realm of microtones, a feat harder for wind instruments, whose keys are in fixed positions, than for strings or voice. Jazz players, such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler, had gone about it by varying intonation, blowing multiphonics (two or more notes at the same time), or squawking in the upper register, where pitches are imprecisely defined. Gopalnath does none of that. Using alternate fingerings and innovative embouchure techniques, he maintains faultless intonation while sliding in and out of the chromatic scale.

Mahanthappa resolved to work with Gopalnath, using a grant to finance a visit to India. Then he immersed himself in Carnatic music, studying instrumental techniques, the infinitely complex system of ragas, and the talas—rhythmic systems based on repeated cycles of beats. Much as Dizzy Gillespie had wedded jazz chord changes to Cuban rhythms in the nineteen-forties, Mahanthappa wrote music that blended Western harmony with South Indian traditions, searching for a style in which American and Indian players might find a common ground without sacrificing their respective improvisational approaches.

Mahanthappa’s collaboration with Gopalnath débuted at sold-out concerts in 2005 and 2007, and is documented in the spellbinding “Kinsmen.” The album is organized around five extended pieces, usually preceded by brief alaps—rubato improvisations, generally played by a single instrumentalist. The opening one, “Introspection,” uses three guitar tones as a platform for a seductively mournful Mahanthappa solo that exemplifies his ability to stay in tune while employing quarter tones and ferocious dissonances. It’s a disarming introduction to the splendid roar of “Ganesha,” a six-bar blues pitched in B-flat. Mahanthappa plays the main theme alone and then in tandem with Rez Abbasi, a guitarist from California with family roots in Pakistan, while Gopalnath and the Indian violinist A. Kanyakumari play a countermelody. Three things are instantly evident: the music is meticulously ordered; it has a massed density that suggests an illusory approach to free jazz; and it swings like mad. “Ganesha,” like all the longer pieces, moves fast; individual solos are short, and are passed like a relay baton. Gopalnath and Mahanthappa used a traditional series of cues, and when Gopalnath plays a short riff three times it means that he is passing off to the younger man, who, quick on his feet, repeats his sign-off phrase and amps up the tension with a straight blues invention, accompanied only by the mridangam, a double-sided barrel drum played by Poovalur Sriji. When the traps drummer, Royal Hartigan, enters to back the guitar solo, he introduces a march rhythm right out of a New Orleans second line, and when both percussionists back the violinist the rhythm takes on a Carnatic intensity that inclines the listener to an upper-body response—more a swaying of the shoulders than a tapping of the feet.

Every track has equally fascinating intersections, whether deliberated or serendipitous. “Longing” sounds like a bebop ballad or the kind of tune that might have backed a sultry scene in a fifties detective movie, yet it is based faithfully on a raga and plotted with rhythmic vamps. At first, “Snake!” is the most traditional-sounding Indian piece, with Gopalnath, violin, and mridangam playing the melody, while Mahanthappa plays whole notes in accompaniment. But then an abrupt rest signals a shift for the Americans to take over for a wild couple of minutes—culturally diverse ways to achieve the appearance of complete musical liberty. “Kalyani” begins contemplatively and opens into fleet improvisations of uncanny speed and lightness. Alaps by Gopalnath and Kanyakumari are lessons in equilibrium, establishing the gravity of a central note and then going far off into space before returning, over and over again. Kanyakamuri imbues her instrument with vocalized emotions, alternately purring and craggy, building to terrific velocity. But the best is yet to come: the fevered “Convergence (Kinsmen),” configured on a twelve-beat bass line, with perhaps the best solos of the session—including an interlude with Mahanthappa accompanied by drums that suggests some of the inspired interplay of Coltrane and Rashid Ali, and a three-minute episode of exchanges between the two altoists that begin with eight- and four-bar handoffs and escalate to a delirium of echoed phrases, converging on a high D sharp—at which point you may realize that you’ve been holding your breath for some time.

“Apti,” a trio album by Mahanthappa, with Abbasi and tabla player Dan Weiss, is something of a sequel to “Kinsmen,” and, with its sparer instrumentation, it also serves as a kind of skeletal breakdown, clarifying “Kinsmen” ’s stylistic juxtapositions. The first track, “Looking Out, Looking In,” is a brief invocation that starts off seeming Indian but ends up sounding very American, and steeped in blues. Similarly, if “Palika Market” favors the asymmetrical steps of the raga, the exquisite “Adana” is tempered by a cool swing feeling. Mahanthappa has said that he didn’t anticipate the enthusiasm these albums have triggered and, with a long jazz career before him, hopes that audiences won’t expect him to build exclusively on this project. His other recent playing—particularly on Iyer’s album “Tragicomic” and in a trio with the bassist Mark Dresser and the drummer Gerry Hemingway, both veteran freethinkers—should indemnify him from such pigeonholing, but “Kinsmen” is a momentous achievement that will be around for a long time to come. ♦

By Adrianne M. Murchison

For the Journal-Constitution

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Local jazz fans have had little to sing about lately.

A lot of music clubs have closed and the smooth jazz radio station, WJZZ-FM/107.5, is no longer on the air.

But tonight there’s some good news. Longtime jazz aficionados can see Grammy Award-winning pianist Ramsey Lewis perform at the Rialto Center for the Arts.

The 73-year-old jazz great has seen music evolve since Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker were household names. Lewis once performed on the same bill as Ella Fitzgerald and has collaborated with Nancy Wilson and Earth, Wind & Fire.

Although jazz music gets less airplay these days, the Chicago native has helped to keep the genre alive and relevant through two syndicated radio shows, “Legends of Jazz With Ramsey Lewis” and “The Ramsey Lewis Morning Show.”

And he’s still writing music. Tonight’s show includes music written for the Joffrey Ballet.

The Ramsey Lewis Trio, which includes drummer Leon Joyce and bassist Larry Gray, will play audience favorites “Wade in the Water” and “The In Crowd.”

Lewis recently talked about the state of jazz music.

Q: Why does jazz appear to be less popular today?

A: Jazz is alive and playing very well. But music isn’t a big deal in our schools or our house anymore. Now we go to our peers to see what’s popular. It’s like getting to eat dessert all the time. Nobody is saying that you got to eat the meat and potatoes, too.

Q: And what is the dessert?

A: Eighty percent of what we call pop music today is over-simplified —- easy to take; easy to leave. There are only a handful of pop/rock artists today who continue year over year. Most are forgotten a year after they come out. The record companies don’t invest in careers anymore and say, “We need to invest in this act because she can really sing.”

Q: Are smooth and traditional jazz starting to merge?

A: No. A lot of smooth jazz is influenced by traditional [jazz] music. And smooth jazz listeners are prepared for the music to move to another level. There is not a large crop of up-and-coming smooth jazz musicians. But in traditional jazz there are teenagers that you can call on now, who are studying the music.

Ravi Coltrane: The Son Also Rises

Jazz Today

[19 February 2009]

by Will Layman

It’s tough being the son of a legend. Just ask Arlo Guthrie. Or, well, George W. Bush…sort of. You can spend your whole career looking to live up to something you had no part of—or running away from a legacy you would like to deny.

In jazz, there have been few famous filial lines. Mercer Ellington worked under his father but never really emerged. Wynton and Branford Marsalis are the sons of Ellis Marsalis, but Ellis did not start as a legend. Renè McLean is a fine reed player and the son of post-bop titan Jackie. Chico Freeman, the son of Chicago great Von Freeman, was briefly ascendant in the 1980s. Vocalist Kim Parker was, well, the stepdaughter of Charlie Parker. The most imposing pair may be Dewey Redman and his son Joshua (featured in this column last month).

Blending Times

(Savoy Jazz; US: 13 Jan 2009; UK: Import)

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But then there is Ravi Coltrane.

The Toughest Legacy of Them All
John Coltrane is probably the most overpowering figure in the history of jazz. What other jazz musician inspired his own church? But son Ravi, born in 1965, is also the son of Coltrane’s legendary wife, Alice, brilliant in her own right on piano and harp. And, to top it off, Ravi plays his father’s instrument, the tenor saxophone. That is a heavy weight of expectation.

This imposing legacy may be the reason that Ravi jumped into jazz relatively late in life. He didn’t seriously study the music until his early 20s, and he would not record as leader until 1998 at the age of 33. Before that, Ravi put in a fine apprenticeship with his father’s drummer, Elvin Jones, and then with Steve Coleman’s M-Base collective. From the very start, Ravi seemed to understand that being compared to his father was both inevitable and impossible. He seemed intent on finding his own sound, no matter how long it took, before exposing his individual vision.

It need no longer be stated that Ravi Coltrane is not a copy of his father. In fact, as a tenor saxophone player he seems distinctly—maybe self-consciously—not in the John Coltrane mode. Rather, he plays with the lyricism and control of Jan Garbarek or the softer and more buffed tone of Joe Lovano rather than the steely and aching sound that his father made so ubiquitous in jazz 50 years ago.

Even so, and despite good critical reaction to his first few outings as a leader, one could hardly have called Ravi Coltrane a vital jazz voice. Until now.

A New Voice Rising: Blending Times
With Blending Times, released on January 13th of this year, Ravi Coltrane has taken a huge step toward relevance and independence. Mostly a documentation of the work being done by his sparkling quartet, this disc suggests how old things can be new again (“Epistrophy”) and how old ideas can be given new ways to thrive. Which is to say that this jazz offspring manages to look backward without seeming stale, and manages to deflect his sound off of his father’s without either outright rejection or pale imitation.

The first really notable thing about Blending Times is that fully half of its tunes are credited as “Improvisations conceived and directed by Ravi Coltrane.” This may seem a bit precious—just as it is surely meant to echo the phrase “New Directions in Jazz by Miles Davis” from the late ‘60s Davis albums—but it gives you a sense that Ravi is up to something big here. He is staking a claim for his independent artistic identity.

The tunes “conceived and directed” by the leader are unlike almost any jazz you have heard. They are not free improvisations in the manner of the first generation free players of the ‘60s or the AACM. Nor are they contemporary free playing in the manner of Peter Brötzmann or William Parker. Rather, they are outlines for improvisation that contain some clear limitations in tonality, rhythm, and form. What distinguishes them from regular jazz compositions is the lack of a horizontally composed melody—a set, hummable tune that follows a set of chord changes from bar one to bar 12 or 32. Rather, these tunes have a vertical organization with a bassline, a groove for the drums, and a tonality for the piano and saxophone to interact in. Thus they don’t proceed from beginning to end and then cycle around in repetition. The result is extremely accessible and melodic for a jazz that allows the players greater freedom in the length and expressiveness of their improvisation without creating the usual alienation in the uninitiated listener.

“Narcined”, for example, allows bassist Drew Gress and drummer E.J. Strickland to play an appealing bottom-heavy funk that would seem very nearly as appropriate on a Grover Washington, Jr. album as on a recording by someone named “Coltrane”. On top, the blowing is free of typical form but not merely aharmonic wailing. In this context, the funk groove is not a cheap gimmick, though—just one of the many grooves available to a jazzman in 2009.

“First Circuit” is a brief but extremely clever tune built as a series of interlocking duets: sax with drums, sax with piano, piano with bass, bass with drums, and drums with saxophone again, going in a circle of free improvisation until the end when the whole quartet plays together in a kind baroque free playing. This group’s freedom, however, is hardly harsh or difficult to listen to. Like most of the younger generation of jazz players, Ravi and his band don’t seem to draw a bright line between playing inside the harmonies and playing freely. Therefore, their unscripted playing on “First Circuit” has a warm smile on its face that gives the impression of children playing a game with no rules rather than angry adults, railing against the jazz orthodoxy.

Innovation Within the Tradition
Not all of Blending Times uses this “vertical” approach, however. But even these more conventional tunes, you can hear Ravi both approaching and evading his legacy, using creative tactics at each turn.

The opening track, “Shine”, composed by pianist Louis Perdomo, is strongly suggestive of the old Keith Jarrett Quartet—with a rolling free feeling in the rhythm section supporting Ravi’s genial melody. Gress plays a virtual duet with Perdomo on his solo, while Strickland colors on the cymbals and plays tom rolls somewhat in the style of Elvin Jones. What the first track has in common with the John Coltrane Quartet, however, is a generous use of free time and a sense that the rhythm section is less a swinging unit of propulsion for the soloist than a polyrhythmic conversation that allows everyone to be a drummer, everyone to be a melody player at same time.

The ace-in-the-hole for the group is probably Perdomo on piano. He voices his chords gently with the left and plays keening right-hand lines that seem to arc toward beauty whenever possible. Unlike the John Coltrane Quartet, which often seemed like a stew of titans, each trying to wrestle for control of a group that only Coltrane could dominate, this band feels balanced in a more classical sense, with each voice in its place: contrasting but not battling.

If you’re looking for a clearer father-son connection, you might look to the free ballad, “A Still Life”, where Ravi plays with a distinctive serenity over a loosely swinging Strickland on drums. The way Ravi lays chords on top each other during his improvisation is less evocative of this father than it is part of the common lineage that John Coltrane brought to tenor saxophone improvising. Moreover, “Still Life” highlights the general tone of this group, which is questing and lyrical in a way in which the classic Coltrane Quartet could often be. This is a band that swings, but not in the usual manner.

It’s hard not to smile listening to Ravi’s version of Thelonious Monk’s “Epistrophy”. Of course, we’ve heard it a million times (including versions by Monk with Coltrane the Elder), and it’s commonplace these days to take a Monk tune and give it some twist in the arrangement. Here, Ravi has transformed the familiar herky-jerky A section of the tune into a fast waltz or 6/8 feel with a strong pulse on one and four, then he reverts to a clean 4/4 swing on the bridge. He interprets the melody loosely and playfully, which just adds to the delight. It’s great to be reminded again how timeless Monk’s tunes will always be—the way their distinctive melodies make them immediately recognizable and modern even decades later, and how they continue to inspire improvisations that leap into your ears like jackrabbits.

John and Alice Coltrane

Legacy Father, Legacy Mother
Blending Times is dedicated to Ravi’s mother, Alice, who died in January of 2007. The last track, “For Turiya”, was written by Charlie Haden for Alice and was recorded at a separate session featuring Haden on bass and Brandee Younger on harp. (It was originally recorded in 1976, and was then recorded by Ravi along with his mother and Haden in 2004.) This brand new version is haunting and lovely, and makes clear why Blending Times is dedicated to Alice’s continuing presence in her son’s life. It is Alice Coltrane’s meditative and lyrical spirit rather than the restless spirit of John Coltrane that dominates not only this track but the bulk of the new disc and of Ravi’s jazz career.

Ravi Coltrane is no longer an upstart jazz player, although seeing his name on a recording still seems to spark a sense of wonder in most Coltrane-worshipping jazz fans. In fact, he is 43 years old, and with Blending Times both honors his ancestry and stakes a claim as one of the better jazz players for the new century.

A Final Item
There is one curious—and maybe disturbing—note that comes from looking at Ravi’s latest release with some care. All of Blending Times was recorded in 2006 and 2007. One wonders why music as wonderful as this would spend such a long time sitting on the shelf finding its way to the ears of listening public.

There was a time when the latest jazz record by Miles Davis or Dave Brubeck or, actually, John Coltrane, couldn’t get onto record store shelves fast enough. Today, of course, record stores barely exist and the market for new jazz recordings is limited to the dedicated few and the curious. At the same time, it seems that there have never been more mature ideas, brilliant players, and independent minds at work in this art form. One simply hopes that the economic climate in this country generally, as well as in the record industry, will not slow down the restless imaginations of players like Ravi Coltrane, Louis Perdomo, Drew Gress, and E.J. Strickland.

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Will Layman is a writer, teacher and musician living in the Washington, DC area.  He is a contributor to National Public Radio and frequently appears as a guest on WNYC’s “Soundcheck” as a jazz critic.  He is a regular contributor to YankeePotRoast.org, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and several other web publications.

Louie Bellson (first row, third from right) and 35 other jazz greats received the Living Jazz Legends Award from the Kennedy Center in 2007. (By John Abbott — The Kennedy Center)

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Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 17, 2009; Page B05

Louie Bellson, 84, widely considered one of the world’s greatest drummers, who played with Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie, died Feb. 14 in California of complications from a hip fracture he suffered in November.

A six-time Grammy nominee who performed on more than 200 albums and wrote more than 1,000 compositions and arrangements and a dozen books on percussion, Mr. Bellson was the last of the triumvirate of great percussionists who came out of the big-band era. He was a member of Ellington’s band from 1951 to 1953 and was often the only white musician who performed with it before segregated audiences in the South.

His discography spanned six decades. In 1938, while still in high school, he came up with the idea of using two bass drums in his drum set, an addition that became his signature. Two years later, he beat 40,000 others to win a nationwide drumming contest. He joined Benny Goodman’s band before he was 20 years old.

He married singer Pearl Bailey and left Ellington’s band to be her musical director. Over the years, Mr. Bellson performed with such greats as Harry James, Woody Herman, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Louie Armstrong, Lionel Hampton, James Brown, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett, Mel Torme and Joe Williams. Just a year ago, he issued what would be his final CD, “Louie & Clark Expedition 2,” and he was still touring last fall.

Mr. Bellson funded Remo Belli, who developed plastic drumheads in the 1950s and 1960s. He wrote and arranged so much music, embracing jazz, swing, orchestral suites, symphonies and ballets, that Ellington called him “not only the world’s greatest drummer . . . [but] the world’s greatest musician.”

He was considered a total drummer, capable of powerful percussion in solos and expert in setting the band’s beat.

“The best comment I would get from the guys in the band would be, ‘You really swung the band tonight, Louie,’ rather than, ‘That was a great solo,’ ” he told Jazz Connection magazine in 2005. “Solos are fine but a drummer may play one or two solos a night. What about the rest of the evening? It’s how you play the ballads, it’s how you play the bossa novas, it’s how you fit in with the rest of the rhythm section, it’s how you support the band — that’s what makes a great drummer.”

The National Endowment for the Arts named him a Jazz Master in 1994. In 2007, he and 35 other jazz greats received the Living Jazz Legends Award from the Kennedy Center.

Born Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni in Rock Falls, Ill., the son of Italian immigrants, he grew up in the Illinois towns of Peoria and Moline, listening to opera and classical music. His father, a professional musician and music store owner, changed the family name to simplify its pronunciation.

Mr. Bellson saw a drummer in a parade when he was 3 and immediately pressed his father for lessons. By age 15, he studying in Chicago with Roy Knapp, who had taught Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, the other two great drummers of the era.

Mr. Bellson’s father taught him mandolin, guitar, piano, trumpet, trombone and saxophone to learn theory, harmony and rhythm. All those classes paid off; the younger Mr. Bellson began teaching drums in his father’s store when he was a teenager, and he began writing for string quartets and big bands before his 16th birthday.

His drum work on Goodman’s signature “Sing Sing Sing” during a New York gig three months after he joined that band attracted more applause than did the bandleader’s. Goodman fired him, but by the time Mr. Bellson reached Chicago on his way back to Moline, Goodman was on the phone, rehiring him.

Mr. Bellson served in the Army during World War II and played in an Army band at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for his three years of service.

After the war, he moved to Los Angeles to study music composition and joined Dorsey’s band.

“Tommy Dorsey loved the two-bass-drum idea,” he told the Smithsonian Institution Jazz Oral History Program in 2005. They devised a revolving drum stand to show off the double bass drums, then added fluorescent drumsticks. When Mr. Bellson hit one of the tom-toms, the drum would light up.

Mr. Bellson played with the Harry James band. In the early 1950s, when Ellington needed a drummer, Mr. Bellson joined his band. He revered Ellington the rest of his life but noted that it was hard starting out because there were no drum parts written down.

One of the works he composed for the Ellington band was “Skin Deep,” a piece that Mr. Bellson played in Washington in 1999. A Washington Post reviewer said he “commanded rapt attention from the house when he brought his virtuosic skills to bear. . . . The piece was punctuated by a drum solo of orchestral dimensions, marked by vibrant colors, subtle accents and sweeping rhythmic momentum.”

Two other works he arranged for Ellington, “The Hawk Talks” and “Ting-A-Ling,” became staples of the oeuvre.

He met Bailey at the Howard Theater in Washington while he was playing there with Ellington’s band. After he left Ellington to be Bailey’s musical director, Mr. Bellson continued to play, touring Europe with Jazz at the Philharmonic in the mid-1950s and started his own band in 1967.

He toured Europe with Norman Granz’s all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic and performed with Basie, Peterson, Art Tatum and the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra and did special projects with Ellington, including his Concerts of Sacred Music.

Many of his early recordings with Verve Records have gone out of print, but in 1987, at the Percussive Arts Society convention in Washington, Mr. Bellson and Harold Farberman performed a major orchestral work, “Concerto for Jazz Drummer and Full Orchestra,” the first piece written specifically for jazz drummer and full symphony orchestra.

Bailey died in 1990. One of the two children they adopted died in 2004.

Survivors include his wife of 16 years, Francine Bellson of San Jose, and a daughter.

February 18, 2009

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The Facebook Terms of Service Uproar

It’s been the talk of the social web in recent weeks. If you haven’t heard, Facebook recently updated its Terms of Use. Many bloggers who paid attention to the details were outraged. One of the more popular posts on the topic (Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever”) has been viewed more than 550,000 times.

But just today, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted the following message, which demonstrates a smart move for the growing company — and the power of citizen voices in corporate policy:

A couple of weeks ago, we revised our terms of use hoping to clarify some parts for our users. Over the past couple of days, we received a lot of questions and comments about the changes and what they mean for people and their information. Based on this feedback, we have decided to return to our previous terms of use while we resolve the issues that people have raised.

Many of us at Facebook spent most of today discussing how best to move forward. One approach would have been to quickly amend the new terms with new language to clarify our positions further. Another approach was simply to revert to our old terms while we begin working on our next version. As we thought through this, we reached out to respected organizations to get their input.

Going forward, we’ve decided to take a new approach towards developing our terms. We concluded that returning to our previous terms was the right thing for now. As I said yesterday, we think that a lot of the language in our terms is overly formal and protective so we don’t plan to leave it there for long.

More than 175 million people use Facebook. If it were a country, it would be the sixth most populated country in the world. Our terms aren’t just a document that protect our rights; it’s the governing document for how the service is used by everyone across the world. Given its importance, we need to make sure the terms reflect the principles and values of the people using the service.

Our next version will be a substantial revision from where we are now. It will reflect the principles I described yesterday around how people share and control their information, and it will be written clearly in language everyone can understand. Since this will be the governing document that we’ll all live by, Facebook users will have a lot of input in crafting these terms.

You have my commitment that we’ll do all of these things, but in order to do them right it will take a little bit of time. We expect to complete this in the next few weeks. In the meantime, we’ve changed the terms back to what existed before the February 4th change, which was what most people asked us for and was the recommendation of the outside experts we consulted.

If you’d like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we’ve created — Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I’m looking forward to reading your input.

Congrats to Zuckerberg for his honesty and for responding to the people who have made Facebook the success it is. And a big Thank You to the bloggers and Facebook users who rattled the cages enough to get the attention of those in charge.

-Bob

Let me tell you about the Skylark Lounge. I really dig this venue. The owner, Scott Heron, has a great thing going on at the Skylark. There are two floors at this club. The newest section is the Pair-o-Dice Poolroom on the second floor, and it has a very hip feel with vintage pool tables and pinball machines. Here is a pic:

Like I said, hip. We played downstairs and it has a great retro feel with a large horseshoe bar area with plenty of stools, a large outdoor patio at the front door , and a nice stage area. The staff was cool, The dance floor was full, and Scott was very helpful to the HD2 folks and to us. It was a very comfortable situation considering that we had never played there before.

I don’t want to blow my own horn (so to speak) my brothers and sisters, but we rocked!

I had all my old friends on the gig; the best boogie woogie piano man around and my old friend Moses who also shared the vocal duties with me, T-Bone burned the guitar up, Bruce Crisman played the drums and I am here to tell you that  there is not a style that this man can’t play and play unbelievably well! We had a bass player named Kalin Capra on the gig last night and he was excellent. We all look forward to working with him in the future. I hope this group starts playing out on a more regular basis. Thats it from the field, stay tuned for more about the biz!

Peace!  Jason

With a dismal failure rate of more than 75 percent among restaurants, you must be sure you do everything you possibly can do to promote your restaurant through free publicity. Here are 16 tips that will boost your publicity efforts and help you finally get noticed–even if you don’t have a big advertising budget.

1. Call the advertising department of every newspaper and magazine you want to get into and ask for a copy of their editorial calendar. It’s a free listing of all the special topics and special sections coming up during the calendar year. It will tip you off to sections where your story idea would be a good fit, so you can query the editor weeks and even months ahead.

2. Call the food editor or columnist from your local newspaper and invite her to lunch or coffee—or to your restaurant. Offer yourself as a resource. Ask “how can I help you?” Feed her tips and story ideas. Become such a valuable source that she keeps coming back to you for more information and eventually writes about you.

3. Produce your own television show on your cable TV company’s community access channel. The station will rent you the camera equipment for about $20. You can produce either one show or an entire series of programs, from how to cook with fresh garden produce to a show on how to buy fine wines. Air time is free. Call your cable company for details.

4. Build a network of other restaurant and food industry professionals—even if they are your competitors. Agree informally that you will refer reporters to each other whenever the media calls. Often, reporters want more than one source for a story. It’s a chance for all of you to get additional publicity.

5. Whenever someone asks you to write for their electronic newsletter or online magazine, visit their web site first and see if they have a resource section where you would be a good fit. Ask to be listed for free, in exchange for providing an article.

6. If you publish an interesting print newsletter with information about new trends in your industry, helpful tips for your employees or interesting stories about things that happen in your restaurant, send complimentary issues to local and national food columnists, food reporters, restaurant industry trade publications and other publications whose audiences you want to get in front of. You’ll be amazed at how many reporters start calling you for interviews.

7. Don’t forget newspaper and magazine columnists. They’re always hungry for fresh ideas. Keep in touch with them and feed them ideas regularly. Tell them about trends you are seeing in your industry.

8. Call local radio talk show hosts and invite them to call on you when other guests cancel. They will be thankful you offered. Write articles for industry newsletters. My favorite resource is the Oxbridge Directory of Newsletters, which lists more than 18,000 newsletters by topic and includes detailed information on the type of audience and subjects covered. Most larger libraries have this resource directory.

9. Contact your trade association and ask them to refer reporters to you. Many reporters who don’t know where to find sources start by calling trade associations.

10. Always refer to yourself as an “expert” in your marketing materials, at your web site, in your email signature file, and in your media kit. The media always seek out experts and interview them.

11. If you receive a favorable restaurant review, reprint it on placemats, or frame it and post it in your restaurant wall. Quote from it in your paid ads. Post it at your website.

12. If you have found innovative ways to attract and retain employees, let the media know. The labor shortage in the restaurant industry is a hot topic.

13. Suggest profile stories of employees who have interesting hobbies or participate in outstanding community service projects. The reporter will ask them where they work—and that’s more publicity for you.

14. If your restaurant is a tourist attraction, pitch a story idea to in-flight magazines.

15. If you attend trade shows for the restaurant industry, hook up with reporters who are covering the show and pitch story ideas about trends in your industry, or an idea about your restaurant.

Joan Stewart, a.k.a. The Publicity Hound, shows you how to use the media to establish your credibility, enhance your reputation, sell more products and services, promote a favorite cause or issue, and position yourself as an employer of choice. She publishes “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week,” a free ezine on how to generate thousands of dollars in free publicity. Subscribe at her website at http://www.PublicityHound.com and receive by email the free checklist “89 Reasons to Send a News Release.”

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