A Breath of Fresh Air
The NEA hands out the nation's highest honor in jazz tonight in Los Angeles, in a hall it moved to after the Kennedy Center, which now says it is on the brink of bankruptcy. Then Sekou tells the night Miles Davis steps outside Birdland for a breath of fresh air and spends the rest of it in a cell.
LioraWhat the NEA calls the nation's highest honor in jazz gets handed out tonight in Los Angeles, in a hall that was not the original plan. Columbia brings back seven sets Miles Davis played in a Chicago basement in 1965. And the night he stepped outside Birdland for a breath of fresh air. It's Tuesday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Tuesday, September 15th. This is The Daily Quintet. I'm Liora. Five stories from the world of jazz, in about ten minutes. Here we go.
One. The Lead: The NEA honors its 2026 Jazz Masters tonight at Walt Disney Concert Hall
LioraToday, a concert, and the room it was supposed to be in.
The National Endowment for the Arts hands out what it calls the nation's highest honor in jazz tonight, at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Free, and it streams.
Four honorees. Carmen Lundy, vocalist and composer. Airto Moreira, drummer and percussionist. Patrice Rushen, pianist and composer. Rhonda Hamilton takes the A.B. Spellman award for advocacy, for her part in the early days of WBGO. Each fellowship is twenty five thousand dollars, once in a lifetime.
Only two will be in the hall. Moreira and Rushen cannot attend, so the night carries performances in their honor. Terri Lyne Carrington and Hubert Laws, both Jazz Masters themselves, play for Rushen.
LioraIt was meant to be somewhere else. The NEA's own announcement last November put this concert on April 18th, at the Kennedy Center. Yesterday NPR reported that the Kennedy Center has told its board it is on the brink of bankruptcy and might close as early as today. A board member's filing calls the building unsafe for continued occupancy.
Two. Listen to This: Columbia and Legacy bring back The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965
LioraToday's record points at tonight's story. The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965, Miles Davis, on Columbia and Legacy.
Legacy has it back as a ten LP box and an eight CD box, the first time on vinyl and CD in thirty years. Seven sets in a Chicago basement club, December 1965. Davis with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams.
Legacy calls it an early pillar of the Miles Davis centennial year. Syd Schwartz writes in the notes that the tapes document a band "revolutionizing improvisation in real time, welcoming surprise, discarding certainty, and turning 'wrong' notes into revelations."
The tip. Start with "If I Were A Bell," sixteen minutes and change, and let it run.
Now the release desk. Blue Note brings Nat King Cole's After Midnight to its Tone Poet series on November 13th.
LioraBroadway and 52nd Street, Manhattan. Birdland, late August, 1959, into the early morning. The headliner is Miles Davis, thirty three years old, near the end of a two week stand. His band that week: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb. About eight days earlier his new record had come out. Kind of Blue. He steps outside for a breath of fresh air. He spends the night in a cell, and it takes nearly five months and two hearings to get the word illegal onto the record. Sekou has the story.
Three. The Bridge: Late August 1959, about eight days after Kind of Blue
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Sekou tells it, I ask the questions. Sekou, where are we?
SekouBroadway and 52nd Street, Manhattan. Birdland. Late August, 1959, into the early morning. The headliner is Miles Davis, 33 years old, near the end of a two-week stand that opened on August 13th. His band that week: John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb. And about eight days earlier, his new record had come out: "Kind of Blue."
LioraAbout eight days. He is the headliner that week.
SekouHe is. He steps outside onto the sidewalk. In his 1989 autobiography he says he had just walked a woman to a cab. The press at the time does not mention her. Jet magazine prints only what Davis told them that week: he came out for a breath of fresh air.
A patrolman named Gerald Kilduff tells the people outside the club to move along. Davis does not move. He says, in words printed that week, "I'm working right here. I just came out for a breath of fresh air."
A plainclothes detective who happens to be passing, Donald Rolker, comes in and strikes Davis with a club. Davis ends that night in a cell, with cuts, bruises, and, by Jet's account, a mild concussion.
LioraThey arrest him.
SekouThey do. Disorderly conduct and simple assault. He spends the night in jail and comes out the next morning on a thousand dollars bail.
Davis denied the claim that he grabbed an officer's club. He answers in print: "I didn't grab the club; he dropped it. If I had taken the club away from him, I wouldn't look like this."
The Manhattan branch of the NAACP opens its own brutality inquiry. Its president, L. Joseph Overton, says, "If we find evidence of brutality, we'll back Davis all the way."
By one modern account, the department revoked his cabaret card, barring him from working in New York City clubs that served liquor.
LioraDoes any of it hold up in court?
SekouNone of it. On October 14th, 1959, Magistrate Kenneth Phipps clears him of the disorderly conduct charge. The ruling is worth hearing straight: "The mere fact that a police officer orders a citizen to move does not mean that the citizen is compelled to move unless it is a lawful order."
Phipps was Black. Weeks later Jet reported that he had received a letter accusing him of being on the payroll of the NAACP for freeing Davis. Jet noted, dryly, that the writer did not know Phipps was also a Negro.
In December, Davis's lawyers petition the city comptroller for a million dollars. And in mid-January 1960, a panel of judges clears him of the assault charge too, and rules that the arrest itself had been illegal.
LioraA million dollars, in 1959.
SekouHe never sees a dollar of it. Accounts differ on why. One says his attorney let the deadline run out; others say Davis dropped it rather than take on the police a second time. And no source I have found shows any consequence for either officer.
Thirty years on he wrote that the night changed him forever, and left him, his words, much more bitter and cynical than he might have been. He wrote that he would have expected that kind of thing back home in East St. Louis. Not in New York City.
LioraHe asked for air, and got a cell. It took nearly five months and two hearings to get the word illegal onto the record, and the sources show no consequence for either officer.
That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Birdland has Eliane Elias, with Dizzy's, the Jazz Showcase and the Dakota also open
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket first.
If I had one ticket tonight, it's the room in tonight's story. Birdland, New York, has Eliane Elias in the Jazz Club, show at nine thirty, forty five seventy six to fifty six oh six.
Now the sweep. Also in New York, Dizzy's Club has the Dayramir González Quartet, seven and nine, sixty dollars with fees and thirty for students. In Chicago, the Jazz Showcase has Petra's Recession Seven, eight and ten, twenty five general admission. In Minneapolis, the Dakota has the Mike Stern Band, seven and nine.
Kansas City is out, and the club says why. The Green Lady Lounge is closed after an HVAC unit caused a fire, with the live jazz moved next door to Black Dolphin.
LioraFour more rooms list nothing tonight: Snug Harbor in New Orleans, Catalina in Los Angeles, Scullers in Boston, and MCG Jazz in Pittsburgh.
Five. One More Note: September 15th holds Jelly Roll Morton's Black Bottom Stomp
LioraSeptember 15th, and a suitcase.
The Smithsonian's jazz calendar puts Jelly Roll Morton's recording of "Black Bottom Stomp" on this date in 1926. The Library of Congress says the drummer, Andrew Hilaire, played on a suitcase, because real drumbeats could knock the needle off the acetate.
Two birthdays share the date. Cannonball Adderley, saxophone, born in 1928 in Tampa. Arvell Shaw, bass, born in 1923 in St. Louis.
Adderley is in the band in tonight's story. Put on "Somethin' Else," the one record he made for Blue Note.
Outro
LioraThat's the Quintet. If today's show earned it, follow The Daily Quintet wherever you listen.
The Daily Quintet is an AI-crafted production, researched and checked by humans. Every listing you heard came from the venue or the festival's own organizer.
That's your Tuesday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.