Word: saxes
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What Makes Sense. Playing with Coleman, who uses a white plastic sax with a warmer tone than the conventional metal instrument, are Charlie Haden (bass), Edward Blackwell (drums) and Don Cherry (trumpet). They all seemed to be going their own ways. The direction of any tune might change from bar to bar, depending on which musicians happened to have "the dominant ear at that moment." The drummer repeatedly shifted his rhythm, forcing concessions from the other players. At best, the result evoked an abstract expressionist painting whose dots, slashes and blobs are miraculously knitted into a pattern...
...days, back in Cleveland's Modern Jazz Room, enthusiastic crowds of perhaps six couples used to gather to hear Cannonball (alto sax), and his brother Nat (cornet) launch into one of their driving versions of Cannonball's own Sermonette or I'll Never Stop Loving You. The crowd at the Workshop last week was closer to 200, and instead of sitting reflectively in their chairs, they were standing on them screaming. On the bandstand, Cannonball looked like a large, comfortable Buddha, sleepily contemplating some secret pleasure. But when he raised his hamlike right hand and with popping...
Cannonball got his name not from his propulsive style but from his gigantic appetite: a friend who saw him wolfing down steak nicknamed him "Cannibal," which in slurring repetition gradually came out "Cannonball." Born in Tallahassee, Fla. 31 years ago, Cannonball played trumpet in high school, switched to sax in college, spent several years as music director at Fort Lauderdale's Negro high school before forming his own group. He was "hung up on technique," Cannonball recalls, and his style was far more frenetic. Then he spent a couple of years with Miles Davis, from whom he learned "control...
Kanin's hero (Tony Curtis) is a young sax maniac from Milwaukee who has come to Manhattan to blow the town down-he stands for Innocence. The heroine (Debbie Reynolds) is a hoofer who expected to wrap show business around her pretty little figure, but after two years of tryouts is still suckering sailors in a dime-a-dance hall-she stands for Experience. And the villain of the piece is the great big city, a sort of cold-water Sodom populated by pimps, prostitutes, land pirates, tourist trappers, gay young switchblades, softheaded bartenders and hard-nosed landlords...
...surprise, the festival's standout was the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Blending classical and jazz traditions with a masterful touch, Milhaud-trained Pianist Brubeck (TIME cover, Nov. 8, 1954) and his mates (Eugene Wright on bass, Joe Morello on drums, Paul Desmond on alto sax) made each number sound like a theme and variations. The quartet usually started with well-known tunes (These Foolish Things, St. Louis Blues), then varied the tempo (from 4/4 to 5/4 and back to 3/4) as it injected its own sometimes loud, sometimes soft designs. The solo lead flew like a badminton bird from...