Arrested for a Dedication
Blue Note shares a second song from Joshua Redman's record for Sonny Rollins, out November 20, and Christian McBride's new band Ursa Major arrives on Mack Avenue with Terrace Martin producing. Then Silas tells the story of a bassist who dedicates one song in a dictatorship and meets the political police at the airport the next day.
LioraSonny Rollins died in May. The day after, Joshua Redman started calling friends, and yesterday Blue Note put out a second song from what they made. Later, a bassist dedicates one song in Portugal, and the political police come for him. It's Saturday. Let's go.
LioraIt's Saturday, October 31st. 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: Blue Note published a second song from Joshua Redman's Sonny Rollins tribute
LioraBlue Note put out a second song yesterday from Joshua Redman's record for Sonny Rollins.
The album is "If Ever You Would Leave Us," with "we play for Rollins" in the parentheses. Redman's third for Blue Note, eleven pieces from Rollins's repertoire, out November twentieth.
Rollins died on May twenty sixth. Blue Note says Redman started calling friends the day after, and that the New York sessions came together within a couple of weeks.
The new song is a standard, "If Ever I Would Leave You," which Rollins cut on "What's New?" in 1962. Redman plays it as a quartet. Kevin Hays, piano. Larry Grenadier, bass. Marcus Gilmore, drums.
The first song out was "Grand Street," from "Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass." The label points out who played drums on the original. Roy Haynes. Marcus Gilmore's grandfather.
LioraRedman on the loss: "He certainly felt like a musical father, grandfather and godfather, all rolled into one."
And on the start of it, at ten or eleven, in the Berkeley Public Library: "I saw this album, Saxophone Colossus. That was my eureka moment."
Two. Listen to This: Christian McBride and Ursa Major put out "Points of Light" on Mack Avenue yesterday
LioraToday's record came out yesterday.
Christian McBride and Ursa Major, "Points of Light," on Mack Avenue, twenty seven ninety nine.
Mack Avenue says McBride steps into what can only be described as his "Art Blakey era." The band is Nicole Glover on saxophones, Mike King on keyboards, Ely Perlman on guitar and Savannah Harris on drums.
Here is the tip. Listen for the synthesizers. Terrace Martin produced the record, and the credits put him on Korg Kronos, Mini Moog, Oberheim and vocoder. McBride is the associate producer.
Eight tracks, cut at Sear Sound in New York in September of last year.
One warning before you go looking. Several sellers spell the band Ursa Minor. The label prints Ursa Major.
LioraAnd one more date. ECM dates the fifth and last volume from Keith Jarrett's final European tour, "Roma," to November sixth. Recorded in Rome on July twelfth, 2016.
Now the hard one. Portugal, 1971. A bassist steps to the microphone in front of thousands and dedicates one song to the liberation movements in Africa. The next day the political police come for him at the airport. Silas has it.
Three. The Bridge: A bassist steps to the microphone in Portugal and dedicates one song to liberation
LioraOne true story from this music's history, every day. Silas tells it, I ask the questions. Silas, where are we?
SilasCascais, Portugal, a town on the coast just west of Lisbon. November 20th, 1971, the first Cascais Jazz Festival. Portugal is a dictatorship, with a political police, the PIDE. Charlie Haden, the bassist, is here with Ornette Coleman's group, on what he called a Newport Jazz Festival tour. Miles Davis's band is on the bill too. By one Lisbon daily's account, Haden didn't want to come at first. What decided him was the chance of a protest, in Cascais, under the dictatorship.
LioraA protest. From a bass player?
SilasFrom a bass player. He talked it over with Ornette first. A producer, Paulo Gil, remembered decades later that Ornette agreed, but on Haden's own responsibility. Then, before a tune he wrote called "Song for Che," Haden speaks to the crowd. In his own words, he dedicates it to "the Black peoples' liberation movements in Mozambique and Angola and Guinea-Bissau." A Lisbon daily's list adds Cape Verde.
LioraHow does the crowd take it?
SilasThousands of people are there. The counts differ. Haden said the young students up front, in the cheaper seats, started cheering. In his words, "You couldn't even hear the song, there was so much cheering." DownBeat says the dedication got a standing ovation. Haden also said "police were running around with machine guns and trying to get order." By his account, they closed the stadium.
LioraIs that when they arrest him?
SilasNo. Some retellings have him arrested on stage. That's legend. Haden and a Lisbon daily both put it the next day. Haden said it happened at the airport. Officials pull him away from Ornette's group, take him to an interrogation room, and say he's going to PIDE headquarters. He said they held him in a dark room with no lights, then moved him to a room with "really, really bright lights." By his own account, when he refused to sign a statement, they threatened him with violence. Only Haden tells that part. The questioning, he said, went through the night.
LioraWas he afraid?
SilasIn 1983 he told Terry Gross, "I was very frightened and very scared. And I guess that's the most frightened I've ever been." Here's how he got out. Haden said one embassy diplomat first refused to help, citing American economic and political interests with Portugal. Then the U.S. cultural attaché got him released. A Lisbon daily says the same about the attaché. Not Ornette Coleman, as some retellings claim. One organizer, the fado singer João Braga, recalled being woken before dawn for a forced meeting at the PIDE office. Gary Bartz, in Miles's band, recalled that every musician on the tour knew right away. Each of those memories has one source. One Portuguese account also says a recording of the night survived. It came out later as "For A Free Portugal."
LioraOne sentence before a song, and a night under bright lights for saying it. That's The Bridge. Back to today, right after this.
Four. On the Road: Jon Cleary plays the third of four nights at Jazz Alley in Seattle
LioraTonight, coast to coast.
Tonight's ticket is in Seattle, the third of four nights.
Jazz Alley bills Jon Cleary and the Absolute Monster Gentlemen. Two sets, half past seven and half past nine, doors at half past five. Forty three dollars plus a twelve fifty handling fee. Behind Cleary: Cornell Williams on bass, Pedro Segundo on percussion, Thomas Glass on drums.
Now the sweep.
In Nashville, Rudy's Jazz Room runs a Halloween double, Stephanie Adlington's "Witching Hour," at half past five and at eight, twenty two and twenty five dollars in advance. Then the Geoff Pfeifer Quartet at eleven, ten at the door.
LioraIn New York, the Halloween parade moved Smalls. The club canceled its own afternoon jam and pushed the first set back to six. Then Joe Block's quintet at nine and half past ten. Then Eric Wyatt's quartet, filed from five minutes to midnight until four in the morning. No price printed, and a one drink minimum per set.
In New Orleans, Preservation Hall has six sets tonight and five of them are gone. What is left is the Preservation All-Stars at a quarter to nine.
Five. One More Note: Illinois Jacquet and Booker Ervin were both born on October 31
LioraTwo tenor players share this birthday, and the Library of Congress files a wrong spelling of each name.
Illinois Jacquet was born a hundred and four years ago today in Broussard, Louisiana. His file carries the variant Jacquette, off an Erskine Hawkins label credit.
Booker Ervin was born ninety six years ago today in Denison, Texas. His file carries Erwin, with a W, off the container of "Mingus Ah Um."
Jacquet died in Queens in 2004. Ervin died in New York in 1970, at thirty nine.
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 Saturday. I'm Liora. See you tomorrow.