THE GIG

Frank Morgan in Tribute

The first album I ever heard by Frank Morgan — the alto saxophonist, rehabilitated junkie and epochal comeback kid — was Mood Indigo, released in 1989 on Antilles. A serenely hushed affair, it features two takes of "Lullaby," the plainspoken ballad by pianist George Cables. As it happens, Michael Connelly, the best-selling mystery novelist, claims "Lullaby" as a theme song for his chief protagonist, Los Angeles police detective Harry Bosch. This interdisciplinary homage, implicit in all of the Bosch novels and stated outright in more than one of them, must be one of the more steadfast and prominent of its kind. (Can you think of another one?)

Pick up a copy of today's paper and you'll find my piece about the Connelly-Morgan connection, occasioned by the news of a forthcoming documentary film, Sound of Redemption.

Carded!

A couple of months ago I presented a paper — "Nice Work: Jazz Agency and the New York City Cabaret Card, 1943-1967" — at the EMP Pop Conference. The abridged, edited-for-mainstream-usage version of the paper appeared in the May issue of JazzTimes, and can now be accessed online. There are a lot of interesting little historical details that didn't make the cut in this version, but I think it gets my basic point across. (Pictured above: Billie Holiday leaving a Philadelphia police station after her arrest in 1956.)

Passport to Dexterity

Tom White for the New York Times

Critics’ Choice: New CDs

Joe Lovano Us Five, “Bird Songs”

RIP Hank Jones

The passing of pianist Hank Jones lit up the jazz Twitterverse this morning, and for good reason: at 91, Jones was one of the last surviving masters of his momentous peer group, and still playing with extraordinary grace. I last heard him just a year or two ago with tenor saxophonist Joe Lovano, his partner on an excellent series of Blue Note albums (find them here, here and here). Here’s the NYT obit.

My first encounters with Jones were naturally on record: albums by Ella Fitzgerald and Charlie Parker. When I finally had the chance to see him about a dozen years ago, I was struck most by his correctness, a quality that suffused everything from his chord voicings to his posture and attire. But as Gary Giddins noted in 2007: “Jones’s playing isn’t all that genteel: mannerly, yes, but at the core resolute and spare.”

Giddins’s take is one of several that I posted earlier this morning. Also see: Ben Ratliff, Howard Mandel, Peter Hum, David Adler.  

And by all means, see the clip below, which features Jones in good company, backing Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Sweets Edison, Flip Phillips and Ella Fitzgerald, in a rhythm section with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Buddy Rich. (Ah, YouTube.)

Making Sense of Michael

Judging by the first waves of remembrance, many of us still don’t know what to make of Michael Jackson. But I want to draw attention to this elegant meditation by Ann Powers, who acknowledges that confusion while keeping a clear bead on the music. This morning, just as I was about to throw something at the TV -- the Today Show, riding the tabloid angle -- Powers appeared onscreen to speak some truth.

Also worth reading (and perhaps debating): this appraisal by Jon Pareles, and this one on Jeff Chang’s blog. There are bound to be many others. Please share them in the comments section of this post.

M.J. was as big a musical force in my youth as anyone, and so far the coverage hasn’t squared with that memory. But then neither had Jackson, for a good long while. This is what we’re grappling with now, as Powers so thoughtfully explicates. 

At this moment, strange as it may sound, I’m reminded of Charlie Parker, whose death in 1955 stirred up an analogous cloud of lurid comment, rampant speculation and abject pity, along with the sad, distant recollection of unequivocal musical genius.