Suga' in My Bowl
Memorials
Tuesday 11/12/2019 Show: Harold Mabern Memorial Broadcast
Photo: Harold Mabern and SUga’ host Joyce Jones
Program note: We’re back on air after having the station’s fund drive and programming disrupted by an attempted shutdown by a faction of the Pacifica Network’s national board. WBAI now has an even more urgent need for donations and monthly subscribers to help it recover. We ask that you give anything you can right now and would appreciate that you name our show when doing so. The money goes to support the station’s operating expenses: we don’t get anything from this. Thanks in advance.
The next show will air on Tuesday November 12, 2019 from 10:00 PM – 12 Midnight Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of “Suga’ In My Bowl,” we will be a memorial broadcast for pianist, composer, educator Harold Mabern, who’s also father of Michael Mabern, a former Producer of WBAI’s “Creative Unity Collective.”
Harold Mabern (born March 20, 1936), one of jazz’s most enduring and dazzlingly skilled pianists, was born in Memphis, a city that produced saxophonists George Coleman and Charles Lloyd, pianist Phineas Newborn Jr. and trumpeter Booker Little. He was an unsung hero of the 1960s hardbop scene, performing and recording with many of its finest artists, and only in recent years has he begun to garner appreciation for his long-running legacy in jazz and the understated power of his talent; as critic Gary Giddins has written, “With the wind at his back, he can sound like an ocean roar.”
During his over half-century on the scene as sideman and leader, he has played and recorded with such greats as Lee Morgan, Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, Freddie Hubbard and Miles Davis, just to name a few. “I was never concerned with being a leader, I just always wanted to be the best sideman I could be. Be in the background so you can shine through.”
In more recent years, he toured and recorded extensively with tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander: his former William Paterson University student. Mabern and Alexander appeared on over twenty CDs together. A longtime faculty member at William Paterson University since 1981, Mabern was also a frequent instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop.
Mabern was also a mainstay of the New York City jazz scene, leading a trio in monthly gigs at Smalls and equally frequent appearances at Smoke, often as part of Eric Alexander’s ensembles.
When this program originally aired, Mabern’s “Mr. Lucky: A Tribute to Sammy Davis Jr.” released 2012 on HighNote Records. Harold Mabern is now an ancestor. He transitioned on September 19, 2019.
This program is engineered, produced, hosted and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our “On the Bandstand” segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
Web Extra:
Sunday 8/21/2016 Show: Connie Crothers Memorial
Photo: Connie Crothers at Vision 21 2016 | Joyce Jones. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons CC-NC-BY-ND.
The next show will air on Sunday, August 21, 2016 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This broadcast is a memorial to the late pianist Connie Crothers.
Connie Crothers expressed her musical life as performer, recording artist and teacher releasing feeling–her source–through spontaneous improvisation. This edition is a memorial broadcast in honor of Connie Crothers by guest contributor Chris Becker, who provides an interview he recorded for his book released earlier this year titled Freedom of Expression: Interviews with Women in Jazz. Additional remembrances will be provided by Arts for Arts/Vision Festival organizer Patricia Nicholson Parker, percussionist/drummer Warren Smith and trumpeter Lewis “Flip” Barnes.
As a solo performer, she appeared in the Berlin Jazztage, Jazz at Middleheim when she received a feature article in Knack, the Toronto International Jazz Festival, and at Carnegie Recital Hall, presented by Lennie Tristano. Tristano wrote on her first record, “Perception,” SteepleChase, “Connie Crothers is the most original musician it has ever been my privilege to work with.”
Crothers recorded duo with Max Roach as part of his historic duets recording project–”Swish,” New Artists–and performed duo with Roach in Tokyo, Bologna, New Orleans and at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. They were honored by Harvard University as Visiting Jazz Artists; during the ceremony they performed with the Harvard University Band. For this concert, Anthony Braxton wrote a composition for them.
Bio excerpts from Connie Crothers’s website.
This program is hosted, engineered, produced, and edited by Joyce Jones.
Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
Details for a memorial service haven’t been released yet. We’ll be sure to share them when they are. Watch our Facebook page for details and we’ll be sure to announce it on upcoming On the Bandstand segments, which also appear weekly on our blog.
Web Extras
Watch Crothers talk about the value of art in this short promo clip for the 2015 Vision Festival.
Watch Crothers lead a quartet at Brooklyn’s Roulette in this live 2014 clip.
Watch Crothers and Max Roach in a 2000 live performance from Bologna, Italy.
Hank Williams is assistant producer for Suga’ in My Bowl and produces the weekly “On the Bandstand” segment as well as running the show’s website and blog, where he has reviewed several jazz festivals. His writing has also appeared in Left Turn magazine and American Music Review. He teaches at Lehman and Hunter colleges in the City University of New York system.
Sunday 9/21/14 Show: Joe Sample Memorial
Photo: Joe Sample | Flickr user Tom.Beetz via Wikicommons
The next show will air on Sunday, September 21, 2014 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of “Suga’ In My Bowl” will feature a rebroadcast of a 2013 show with pianist Joe Sample, known to many from his work with The Jazz Crusaders (later The Crusaders), who died on September 12, 2014. You can hear a short preview below.
One of the many jazzmen who started out playing hard bop but went electric during the fusion era, Joe Sample was, in the late ’50s, a founding member of the Jazz Crusaders along with trombonist Wayne Henderson, tenor saxman Wilton Felder, and drummer Stix Hooper. The Crusaders’ debt to Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers wasn’t hard to miss — except that the L.A.-based unit had no trumpeter, and became known for its unique tenor/trombone front line. Sample, a hard-swinging player who could handle chordal and modal/scalar improvisation equally well, stuck to the acoustic piano during The Crusaders’ early years — but would place greater emphasis on electric keyboards when the band turned to jazz-funk in the early ’70s and dropped “Jazz” from its name. Though he’d recorded as a trio pianist on 1969’s Fancy Dance, 1978’s Rainbow Seeker was often described as his first album as a leader. In contrast to the gritty music The Crusaders became known for, Sample’s own albums on MCA and, later, Warner Bros. and PRA have generally favored a very lyrical and introspective jazz-pop approach.
Unsurprisingly, there are several Sample obituaries. For starters, we recommend the ones by Peter Keepnews in the New York Times, Steve Chawkins in the Los Angeles Times (who notes The Crusaders’ and Sample’s appeal with the activist community), and Andrew Dansby in The Houston Chronicle (who notes his return to Creole music at the end of his life).
Show engineered, produced, hosted, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
Web Extras:
Watch Sample and Randy Crawford perform their classic “Street Life” live in Japan in 2008.
Watch Sample perform “Chain Reaction” live with the Crusaders in Germany, 1987.
Sunday 7/20/14 Show: Charlie Haden Memorial
Photo: Bruno Bollaert, Jazz Middelheim – 8/16/2009
The next show will air on Sunday, July 20, 2014 from 11:00 PM – 1:00 AM Monday Eastern Standard Time on WBAI, 99.5 FM in the NYC metro area or streaming online at wbai.org. This installment of the program will be a memorial to bassist, composer, and former yodeling cowboy Charlie Haden, who died on July 11th. As a tribute to this great artist, we’re re-broadcasting our interview with Haden and wife/musical collaborator Ruth Cameron, originally aired on April 10, 2011.
Born in Shenandoah, Iowa, Charlie Haden began his life in music almost immediately, singing on his parents’ country & western radio show at the tender age of 22 months. He started playing bass in his early teens and in 1957 left America’s heartland for Los Angeles, where he met and played with such legends as Art Pepper, Hampton Hawes, and Dexter Gordon.
In 1959, Haden teamed with Ornette Coleman to form the saxophonist’s pioneering quartet (alongside trumpeter Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins). In addition to his still-influential work with Coleman, Haden also collaborated with a number of adventurous jazz giants, including John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny.
In 1969, Haden joined forces with pianist/composer Carla Bley, founding the Liberation Music Orchestra. The group’s self-titled debut is a true milestone of modern music, blending experimental big band jazz with the folk songs of the Spanish Civil War to create a powerfully original work of musical/political activism.
An acoustic bassist of extraordinary gifts, Haden’s talents as a musician have been in constant demand by his fellow artists. As a result, he has collaborated with a genuinely stunning array of musicians, including Hank Jones, Don Cherry, Dewey Redman, Paul Motian, Jack DeJohnette, Michael Brecker, Kenny Barron, and Pat Metheny (with whom Haden shared a 1997 “Best Jazz Instrumental Individual/Small Group” Grammy® Award for their Beyond the Missouri Sky).
Haden’s love of world music has also seen him teaming with a variety of diverse international players, including Brazilian guitarist Egberto Gismonti, Argentinean bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi, and Portuguese guitar giant Carlos Paredes. In addition, Haden has explored diverse streams of American popular music with both his acclaimed Quartet West, as well as on such recent collections as 2002’s inventive alliance with Michael Brecker, American Dreams.
Haden was invited to establish the jazz studies program at California Institute of the Arts in 1982 and has earned countless honors from around the globe, including and the Los Angeles Jazz Society prize for “Jazz Educator of the Year”, two Grammy Awards (alongside a multitude of nominations), myriad Down Beat readers and critics poll winners, a Guggenheim fellowship, four NEA grants for composition, France’s Grand Prix Du Disque (Charles Cros) Award, Japan’s SWING Journal Gold, Silver and Bronze awards. Montreal Jazz Festival’s Miles Davis Award.
On Friday, July 11, 2014, Charlie Haden left this world. He is survived by his wife Ruth Cameron, his four children, Josh, Tanya, Petra and Rachel, a brother, Carl, a sister, Mary, and three grandchildren. Tanya Haden is married to singer and actor Jack Black.
Show engineered, produced, hosted, and edited by Joyce Jones. Listen for our On the Bandstand segment with NYC metro area appearances of Suga’ guests at the end of the first hour with Associate Producer Hank Williams.
We’re not aware of any NYC Metro area tributes or memorials to Haden at this time. Follow our “On the Bandstand” segment on air and on our blog and we’ll pass on info as we get it.
Web Extras:
Watch Haden and Pat Metheny perform live in 2008.
Watch Haden conduct (and play with) the Liberation Music Orchestra in this 1987 performance with Dewey Redman live in Africa.
Suga' in My Bowl 