Duke Ellington and President Nixon during the Medal of Freedom ceremony in the East Room, April 1969. Harvey Georges, Associated Press.

By his own admission, and attested to by others, Nixon was a classical music devotee. [Moreover, and] no doubt influenced by his early training on violin and piano, his ardor extended to light or semi-classical (Mantovani, Boston Pops, and 1001 Strings) and musical soundtracks (Gone with the Wind, My Fair Lady, Carousel, Oklahoma, and King and I) . . . Nixon told Washington National Symphony conductor Antal Dorati that his favorite composition was the background music by Richard Rodgers for the motion picture Victory at Sea.

 

Nixon pulled an LP from the shelf [in his small private listening room] and handed it to me. It was Richard Rodgers music for the television series Victory at Sea. He said, “I sit here by the hour and listen to that album.” He had several Lawrence Welk albums, some Mantovani, and the Sound of Music, along with Tchaikovsky.
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While taking us around various rooms on the family’s floor, he led us into one where there was an expensive stereo machine with many records and tapes. He proceeded to demonstrate all the audio possibilities—increasing the bass and the treble, one after the other, and showing how well the range was maintained at full and low volume. He was just like a kid with a new toy.
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Tourist Point of View

IN FIVE evocative minutes, Ellington and Strayhorn were able to highlight all the orchestra’s important elements: the scorching trumpet of Cat Anderson; the well-matched burnishes of the trombone section; the burry, shaded timbre of Gonsalves’s juggernaut tenor, rising from the rich textures of the reed section; the unmistakable touch and prominent accents of Ellington’s piano; and the dark energy that characterized much of his later writing. (5)
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​Blue Bird of Delhi (Mynah)

Isfahan

Depk

Mount Harissa

Blue Pepper (Far East of the Blues)

Agra

Amad

Ad Lib on Nippon

​Looking back five decades, we can see that 1966 was a year of living furiously in the pages of the preeminent jazz magazine DownBeat—and by extension throughout the entire jazz arts community.  Storm clouds had been gathering over the previous couple of years, but a thunderclap and a bolt of lightning struck in a DownBeat article by tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp titled “An Artist Speaks Bluntly.” (1) The musicality and validity of avant-garde jazz variously called “free jazz,” “new wave,” and the “new thing” was being questioned by certain critics and members of the fan base, who labeled it “noise” and “anti-jazz.”  ​

Newport Jazz Festival

​It was a shocker to begin with to find Shepp, an avant-gardist of jazz featured on opening night. With a tongue-in-cheek ambience he assaulted the fans with an irritating march, a raucous, blaring segment of Billy Strayhorn’s “Prelude to a Kiss,” and a caricature of his own cerebral style of playing, intermixing it with a poetry reading . . . Part of the audience interrupted his reading and jeered him. “I know you racists don’t like jazz. If you think I’ll go on under these conditions, I won’t.” He finished the poem and played another number to a cheering audience. (2)
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did a set that was perhaps the most perfectly paced and presented of any working group at the festival . . . Gillespie was astonishing throughout, launching solos like roman candles but the moment of truth came in a subdued “Tin Tin Deo,” recapturing the mood of the afternoon duet [with Hackett]. The end of the evening was all Count Basie and his band, part nostalgia, part current. The band backed singer Jimmy Rushing, who was in rough voice, but still packed a punch.
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served as a perfect demonstration of certain basic facts concerning the state of jazz today, and it often became an object lesson in the difference between amateurs [“new thing” musicians] and seasoned professionals [everybody else]. One came away from the artistically uneven but always instructive musical marathon with renewed faith in the permanence and viability of established jazz values and confirmation of certain lingering doubts about the much touted innovators that run counter to those basic truths.
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Monterey Jazz Festival

LISTEN TO BLOGCAST This year we celebrate the 100th anniversary birthday of Charlie Christian, the first great influence on electric jazz guitar. ​Indeed, some say, drop the “jazz”—he is the first great influence on electric guitar, period. Some others say, forget the “electric guitar”—he is the first great influence in jazz irrespective of instrument (with no apologies to Louis Armstrong). Here is some testimony:

Besides being harmonically advanced for his era, the rhythmic time with which he played his notes set him apart from all others no matter what instrument they played—Herb Ellis, guitarist

I don’t think there’s one of us that has come along since then that hasn’t been touched by him, whether we know it or not. And more important than his guitar playing is what he accomplished as a musician. His musical ideas transcend the instrument. His music is timeless.—Bill Frisell, guitarist​

I don’t think there is a guitar player who has come along after him in the field of Jazz, Blues or Rock that hasn’t been influenced in some way by the genius of Charlie Christian.—B. B. King, guitarist
                                    
In his all too brief time, Charlie changed the world of jazz, blues, and everything else besides. It is literally impossible to overstate the importance of his contribution to the development of jazz. His limitless stream of melodic ideas; the many blue shades of his pungently sad, sweet tone, and his irrepressible swing all continue to influence generations of guitarists.—Vernon Reid, guitarist
                                    
Miles Davis told me that he thought Charlie Christian was the original instigator of the bebop movement, Bird and Diz’s main influence. When you listen to his playing today, it’s still inspiring, fresh, harmonically and rhythmically advanced.—John Scofield, guitarist
                                    
On electric guitar, he’s always been the one for me–the originator, the prime source. I don’t think anyone else comes close.—Derek Trucks (Allman Brothers Band)
                        
Without Charlie Christian, jazz and blues wouldn’t sound the way they do today or be nearly as popular. Everybody might still be playing banjo.—Jimmy Ray Vaughan, guitarist (1)
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Christian was . . . the first guitarist to explore fully the use of the single-string rather than chorded solos. His almost orchestral tone fell between the singsong effect of his predecessors (most had used the un-amplified guitar) and the projectile smoothness of his successors. Although he invariably managed to transmit emotional fervor behind his work . . . Christian’s playing was utterly relaxed. In a solo he would often develop a simple, arresting riff figure for a couple of measures, drop in a short connecting phrase, and, after holding its last note for several beats, tip into a long single-note melodic line that elbowed the limits of conventional jazz harmony that might continue for eight or more measures, and then be capped by another sustained note, which seemed to leave the solo hanging precisely in midair. (6)

​​Charlie was inducted in the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1966, and in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990! ​Scott Yanow recommends—as do I—the Charlie Christian 4 CD Box Set for all the great Goodman tracks: “Flying Home,” “Seven Come Eleven,” “Air Mail Special,” and “Solo Flight.” And for the bebop tracks, recorded live at Minton’s in 1941, a must for every jazz collection, After Hours by Charlie Christian, Dizzy Gillespie, Original Jazz Classics, released in May 2000. LISTEN TO BLOGCAST