faine books

Joni Mitchell Joins the Geographical Incongruity Song List

4/27/2023

Joni Mitchell, 1974. Wikimedia Commons.

In Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book Two, we learned of songwriters who, in the dead heat of a California summer, wrote about the opposite: winter in the distant north.

These were no fly-by-night tunesmiths either: Sammy Cahn and Jule Styne (“Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”), Bob Wells and Mel Tormé (“Christmas Song”), Irving Berlin (“White Christmas”), and Jay Livingston and Ray Evans (“Silver Bells”).

Ted Gioia referred to this songwriter peculiarity as “geographical incongruity.”[1]

Well, here’s another.

In 1970, Joni Mitchell wrote “River” with its memorable first line, “It’s comin’ on Christmas.” Ensconced in her Laurel Canyon home in the Los Angeles hills, this girl from the Canadian prairies found herself in a place without snow or ice, wishing for a river to skate away on.

Like many of Joni’s songs, it’s a heartbreaker, a sad song of mourning—not decking the halls and making merry.

Because of this, its popularity suffered for a long time, but no more. It has since been covered by more than 500 musicians and taken its place on numerous holiday playlists.[2]

Most importantly, it is now included on the prestigious Geographical Incongruity Song List.

NOTES

Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah, Book Two: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2018), 17–18; Ted Gioia, The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 138–39.
Davis Yaffe, Reckless Daughter (New York: Sarah Crichton Books, 2017), 136–37.

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Tribute to Wayne Shorter 1933–2023

3/3/2023

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Wayne Shorter. 2006. Photo credit: Tom Beetz.

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When most jazz fans think of Wayne Shorter, they are likely to conjure up one or more of his Blue Note albums (e.g., Juju), and/or one or more of his Miles Davis albums (e.g., Miles Smiles), and/or one or more of his Weather Report albums (e.g., Heavy Weather). My first thoughts, however, run to Native Dancer, that hybridized, outlier collaboration with musicians from Brazil. When the LP came out in 1975, I bought six copies and gave five to friends—I loved it that much.

Wayne had featured several Brazilian rhythm tracks on previous albums. Still, as Shorter biographer Michelle Mercer wrote,

No one was prepared for the deeply affecting sound of Wayne’s Native Dancer recording. It was unlike any Brazilian music most Americans had ever heard. The record’s first few notes introduced a voice, one that had to be the most potent falsetto on the planet [belonging] to Brazilian pop star and composer Milton Nascimento [to which] Wayne married jazz to Milton’s melodies in a kind of holy union that made other Brazilian jazz efforts of the time [Jazz Samba, Getz /Gilberto] seem like one-night stands. (1)

Having first learned of Nascimento from jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, Wayne covered one of the singer/songwriter’s tunes on a Blue Note album in 1970. Inevitability, one often realizes, dictated a shared recording date. With his Portugese wife Ana Maria’s encouragement, Wayne arranged to have Milton and two musical associates stay at his house in Malibu where they lived, and worked for two weeks, going to the studio to record Native Dancer on September 12, 1974.

Shorter recognized that if you have a one-of-a-kind singer, one who had assimilated the bossa nova of his fellow countrymen, along with the Gregorian chants of his remote Catholic church in the hinterlands, into a self-styled alto yodel (some called it) or his female voice (Milton called it), then a hybrid album—not a jazz album, not a Brazilian album—but a hybrid should be made. And that’s what Wayne did.

Along with him and Herbie Hancock, there were three Brazilians:

Milton, Wagner [Tiso], and Robertinho [Silva]. There were also two players from the pop scene, Dave McDaniel, a bassist with Joe Cocker, and Jay Graydon, a guitarist, producer, and songwriter. There was Dave Amaro, [Brazilian singer] Flora Purim’s guitarist, on a couple of tunes, and [husband, percussionist] Airto [Moreira] on most of them. The engineer was Rob Fabroni, who had worked with The Band and other rock groups. And finally, Jim Price, a multi-instrumentalist who had worked with the Rolling Stones, produced the record. (2)

The album opens with “Ponta De Areia,” a singsong, nursery school melody over an unusual 9/8-meter sung by Milton in his liquid, instrumental-like wordless falsetto voice. Heard underneath is a shadow piano melody by Herbie. The other singer on the date, Wayne, enters smoothly on his soprano saxophone, repeating the childlike melody before he joins Milton in a duet. “Ponta” ends as it begins except for Waynish obligatos underneath.

Perhaps fearing the first-track exotica might be a bit much for first-time listeners, Wayne follows “Ponta” with his own composition, “Beauty and the Beast.” A solid toe-tapper that begins with hesitant, funky block chords by Herbie that segues into a strong, melodic statement by Wayne, then alternates back and forth between the two as the tune continues; ostensibly one is “Beauty,” the other, Beast.” At song’s end they are one in the same.

Nascimento sings “Tarde” clearly, softly, yet another display of his tremendous vocal range. For this luxurious mood piece, Wayne pulls out his first instrument—tenor sax—and plays a romantic solo over a Hammond organ cushion. Milton reenters with a sweeping, wordless falsetto behind Wayne’s tenor excursions, pauses for a spell, then returns with an even higher-pitched falsetto.

Hancock later remarked, “After Wayne soloed, when Milton would come back in, you couldn’t even tell it was a voice. Because when Wayne played, it sang, and Milton’s singing has an instrumental quality to it.” (3)

Milton begins “Miracle of the Fishes” wordlessly, wailing away, then slips in some lyrics along with the wail as Wayne, on tenor again, joins in with gusto. The free-spirited pair soar off together, not so much as an energetic vocal/sax duo, but more like a saxophone cutting contest that might take place on the fringes of avant jazz. The backup musicians (organ, guitar, drums, percussion) are exceptional in this unrestrained, up-tempo romp.

Shorter is back on soprano for the lovely ballad “Diana,” named for the newborn daughter of Flora Purim and Airto, ably supported by pianist Hancock.

Nascimento wrongly titled “From the Lonely Afternoons”—should have been “Lovely” or “Happy.” The singer-songwriter sails a wordless vocal over the band’s jumping, finger-snapping groove that compels Wayne on tenor to spread a Coltraneish flurry of notes over the head-bobbing musical stew. At the close, other voices (members of the band?) join Milton before Wayne declares “Good Afternoon.”

Critic Howard Mandel, who awarded Native Dancer five stars in DownBeat magazine, was especially enamored by the saxist’s homage to his wife “Ana Maria,” writing, "A lovely line is offered again and again with the slightest embellishment, gradually blossoming into a large, encompassing circle that Hancock laces with sweeping and graceful runs.” (4)

As revealed by Shorter biographer Mercer:

Milton sang “Lilia” with wordless vocals [as he did on several others], which was for him a style born of necessity and perfected under pressure. Under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the sixties and seventies, the ruling regime monitored pop music, censoring anything seemingly rebellious . . . When Milton recorded [an album] in 1973, the censors denied clearance on several of its songs. His record company asked him to write new lyrics. But Milton didn’t want to play the military’s editing game . . . So Milton protested by singing without words, using his voice in an instrumental role. (5)

And did he ever on “Lilia.” A trebly “LaLaLaAyeAyeAyeYa-eeea” wail over a bouncy organ-piano-guitar broken 5/4 meter rhythm–his “alto yodel almost indistinguishable from Shorter’s airily ethereal soprano sound, which draws the song to a climax by ringing out one tone against a shifting rhythm bed.” (6) Whew!

Wayne’s soprano settles into a gentler approach on Hancock’s introspective “Joanna’s Theme,” which closes the album. The four non-Nascimento tunes on the recording—this one, plus “Diana,” “Ana Maria,” and “Beauty and the Beast”—are collectively gorgeous and belong on this intriguing album, largely because of the uncanny similarity between the principal soloists’ voices.

This album has little precedent (that I can think of). Jazz musicians have worked with vocalists from the very beginning, but mostly in a backup role, and either way, too. Instrumentalists backing up the vocalist, or the opposite, singers backing up the front line instruments. For example, choral groups have backed up trumpeter Donald Byrd, pianist Andrew Hill, and guitarist Kenny Burrell.

As for the other way around, we can turn to, of course, Duke Ellington and “Creole Love Call,” the Ellington composition best known for its vocal by singer Adelaide Hall. It was the first 100 percent nonverbal scat vocal in jazz. (7) Duke followed up on the use of the human voice as an instrument, especially on “Mood Indigo,” with its famed tri-part opening. In recent times, soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy would often use the voice of wife, Irene Aebi, along with the other frontline instruments.

Simply put, Native Dancer is one of the greatest albums of the late 20th century; and for this alone, Wayne Shorter deserves to be a Kennedy Center honoree.

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NOTES

Michelle Mercer, Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter (New York: Jeremy Tarcher/Penquin, 2007), 164.
Mercer, Footprints, 169.
Mercer, Footprints, 173.
Howard Mandel, Wayne Shorter, Native Dancer review, DownBeat magazine, 1965.
Mercer, Footprints, 171.
Mandel, Native Dancer Review, DownBeat.
Ann Powers, Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black & White, Body and Soul In American Music (New York: Dey Street Books, 2017), 27.

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Brubeck Takes the “A” Train to Moscow

2/26/2023

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Left (from left to right): Dave Brubeck, Eugene Wright, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988 (credit: Dave Brubeck); right: Dave Brubeck Quartet Take the “A” Train album, 1962.

In May 1988, President Ronald Reagan traveled to Moscow to meet with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to begin the fourth nuclear disarmament summit held in the previous three years.

Accompanying him, at the request of First Lady Nancy Reagan, was the Dave Brubeck Quartet (Bill Smith, clarinet; Randy Jones, drums; Chris Brubeck, electric bass; and guest bassist Eugene Wright from the 1960s classic quartet). The group was brought along to entertain the Soviets at Spasso House (the American Embassy) according to diplomatic protocol.

The big day came. The quartet gathered in the Spasso Ballroom along with Soviets and Americans all mixed together at the tables.

As Brubeck’s manager, Russell Gloyd, later recounted:

You could just see and feel that nobody was talking to anybody. [Officials] made the obligatory speeches and Dave was introduced. Then, it was like out of a Hollywood B-movie. All of a sudden, everyone just came alive. Dave started in and the first tune he played was “Take the ‘A’ Train.” It brought down the house. People were up and cheering. I’ll never forget [Senator] Bob Dole—he looked like a little kid. He had his one good hand raised above his head like he was at a football game. He’d turn around, and there was a Soviet general, loaded with medals, doing the same thing. They looked at each other like, “You like Brubeck? I like Brubeck! We like Brubeck!” It went like that for twenty minutes. Dave played the greatest single twenty-minute set of his life.

Right after the performance was over, Dave and I were rushed over to the hotel where all the international television people had set up shop . . . When Dave walked through, all these hardened old-hands came out and applauded as he headed for CNN. Bernard Shaw . . . asked Dave a few questions about his reaction to the situation. Dave said it was the most incredible moment in his life. Shaw turned to Dave and said, “I have to tell you, on the part of everyone here that watched you, there was not a dry eye among us when you started playing “ ’A’ Train.” We realized we couldn’t have had any greater ambassador from the United States than you.”
The next day, at the Bolshoi, [Secretary of State] George Schultz . . . comes over, and hugs Dave and says, “Dave, you helped make the summit. And today everyone on both sides was talking about it. They found common ground. You broke the ice.”[1]

For the time, there could not have been a better American song than “‘A’ Train” to open a jazz set in what Reagan called the “evil empire.” Duke Ellington and his signature tune were a known quantity in the Soviet Republic.

The maestro and his orchestra had toured the Soviet Union in November 1970. Even more significant, countless Soviets surreptitiously listened to Willis Conover’s daily jazz show on the Voice of America with its “‘A’ Train” opening theme.

As for Brubeck’s well-known tune, his manager later detailed, “When Dave started playing ‘Take Five’ . . . Gorbachev’s translator . . . was poking Gorbachev and saying, ‘See, I told you they’d play it!’ And Gorbachev was mimicking the drum solo with both hands.”[2]

Wrongly or rightly, Ronald Reagan has since been credited with ending the Cold War—with the assist credited to Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington.

NOTES

Fred M. Hall, It’s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story (Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press, 1996), 52–53.
Ibid., 53.

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From Whence Came Philip Glass?

1/29/2023

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Spike Jones and His City Slickers. Credit: discogs.com

NPR All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen once asked modern classical composer Philip Glass to name the song that dramatically changed his life.

Glass said the William Tell Overture (1829) by Italian composer Gioachino Rossini. [1]

Philip Glass in Italy. 1993. Wikipedia

No surprise there, most would think. After all, Glass had written 10 symphonies, hundreds of sonatas, and 12 operas.

But—and here’s the rub—he wasn’t referring to the version rendered by the New York Philharmonic or the Italian La Scala Orchestra, but rather the Spike Jones comedy version.

For those who don’t know Jones, he led a 1930s-era ’50s band called Spike Jones and the City Slickers specializing in satirical arrangements of popular songs and classical selections.

Ballads receiving the City Slickers treatment were punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and outlandish vocals.

Jones’s played the zany version of the William Tell Overture on pots and pans over chirping birds, galloping trumpets, crowd noises, gargling, and featured announcer Doodles Weaver narrating a silly horse race, with puns at every turn: “it’s cabbage by a head, banana coming up in the bunch, girdle in the stretch, and the winner is . . . Feetlebaum.”

Perhaps the distance between classical Glass and comical Jones is closer than you might think. Boilen and I, at least, are in agreement. Both musicians were mavericks, eccentric free spirits testing the boundaries of possibility.[2]

Wheeee! Clank, sput, bang, chink tunk, buzz, hup hup, rattle, popzing, tick wheeee!

NOTES

Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book One (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 120–22.
Bob Boilen, Your Song Changed My Life: From Timmy Pace to St. Vincent, Smokey Robinson to Hozier, Thirty-Five Beloved Artists on Their Journey and the Music That Inspired It (New York: William Morrow, 2017), 125–32.

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The Doobie Brothers’ First Hit

12/27/2022

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Left: The Doobie Brothers in 1976. Right: What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits album, released 1974. Credit: Wikipedia

As we learned in Serendipity Doo-Dah, Book Two, record industry officials are more often wrong than right when it comes to picking a hit single off an album.

Here’s another instance: a Doobie Brothers single, somewhat early on, from their fourth album, What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits. The songs include “Another Park, Another Sunday” and “Black Water.”[1]

Highly qualified and very experienced producer Ted Templeman put “Another Park” on the A-side of the single figuring it would do well—gangbusters, actually—and placed “Black Water” on the B-side just to get Doobie brother Pat Simmons some songwriting royalties off the A-side action, which Templeman believed would be immense.

Brother Tom Johnson, author of “Another Park,” had, after all, been the brothers’ more prolific and successful songwriter.

But not this time. The hoped-for “Another Park” action did not happen.

Sales tanked.

But then—surprise, surprise—something started to happen with flip-side “Black Water.” There was a little radio station in Roanoke, Virginia, and not too far away was an actual river called Black Water River.

The station started playing the B-side over and over, and the local folks loved it. Soon, other stations followed suit and slowly build, build, build. Eventually stations all over the country joined in, and “Black Water” caught fire, as they say.

Did it matter? You bet.

“Black Water” was the first number one hit the Doobie Brothers ever had!

With all due respect to Mr. Templeman and his company, Warner Brothers, when you have a song title that is a person’s name, a place name, a monument name, or something similar, you’ve got a winner.

One example: Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer changed their “Blue River” to “Moon River,” and we all know how that turned out.

NOTES

Tom Johnston and Pat Simmons with Chris Epting, Long Train Runnin’: Our Story of the Doobie Brothers (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2022), 163–66.

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Ella Fitzgerald: The Accidental Singer

11/25/2022

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Ella Fitzgerald performing at the Helsinki Culture Hall in Helsinki, Finland. April 1963. Credit: Wikipedia

Is it possible that singer Ella Fitzgerald’s career was the result of a happy musical accident? You bet. Read on.

It was 1934, and 16-year-old Fitzgerald found herself backstage at the Harlem Opera House, nervously shifting from one foot to the other as she waited to take part in an amateur contest as a dancer.

She hoped to dance professionally one day, and this was her first opportunity to strut her stuff. Behind the curtain, Ella peeked at the audience. She noticed with alarm that another dance act was onstage.

Uh-oh.

By then it was too late for Ella to bow out. The emcee was calling her name, telling the seated crowd that she was going to tap dance for them.

As the band started playing, her limbs felt like rubber, and she was too petrified to move. The emcee whispered, “Do something.”

Ella’s mind raced. What could she do other than dance? She thought about the music she heard on the radio and the records her mother had around the house. The Boswell Sisters just might work. She began to sing one of their tunes: “Judy.” The band knew the song and began to accompany her.

Her voice grew stronger and more confidant.

When the song ended, the theater erupted into cheers.

Ella offered another Boswell song, and after she finished singing, the audience applauded wildly. The emcee announced she had won a $25 prize.

Soon after, Ella decided to become a professional singer. Her six-decade career traversed the big band swing era, the subsequent bebop era, and beyond.[1]

But ask yourself, had the act ahead of Fitzgerald been anything other than dance—a comic, a ventriloquist, a gymnast, a singer even—would Ella have become, as Peggy Lee said at the Kennedy Center Honors, “the greatest jazz singer of our time," or as Bing Crosby said, “Man, woman, or child, Ella is the greatest singer of them all.”[2]

Serendipity Doo-Dah!

NOTES

Bud Kliment, Ella Fitzgerald: Singer (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1969), 16–19.
Kliment, Ella Fitzgerald, 12, 14.

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Jazz Book Collection

10/26/2022

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Left to right: Duke Ellington (1954), Miles Davis (1955), Louis Armstrong (1955). Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons

In the fall of 2019, I profiled my jazz LP collection (see October / November blogs) and in the summer of 2022, my jazz CD collection (see May / June / July blogs).

Hence, it is only logical and reasonable that I do the same for my music book collection: 709 books strong, with 441 jazz books and 268 non-jazz books (pop, rock, Broadway, other).

Here I present the jazz books, the first of which I purchased in 1965, and the bulk of them I acquired during the 1970–2000 time frame. My acquisition strategy, I hasten to add, was not based on any predetermined notion that focused on, for example, a specific jazz artist or style. Nope, if it was a jazz book, I bought it, pure and simple.

To convey a sense of my overall jazz collection, I list books below in several categories. For the most part, these books center on the life and music of the titular artist, as opposed to a period in jazz (like the ’30s) or a specific sub genre (like hard bop) or a region in jazz (like Kansas City).

What three artists topped the most-books list?

Duke Ellington 15
Miles Davis 13
Louis Armstrong 11

Not much of a surprise there. But how about those artists who played the instrument most symbolic of jazz—the saxophone?

Alto/Soprano Saxophone

Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker, 1962
Bird Lives!: The High Life of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker, 1977
Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker, 1977
Treat It Gentle: Autobiography of Sidney Bechet, 1978
Music Was Not Enough by Bob Wilbur, 1988
Ornette Coleman: A Harmolodic Life, 1992
Ornette Coleman: His Life and Music, 1999
The Art Pepper Companion: Writings on a Jazz Original, 2000
Joe Harriott : Fire in His Soul, 2003
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, 2005
Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter, 2007
Sugar Free Saxophone: The Life and Music of Jackie McLean, 2012
Bird: The Life and Music of Charlie Parker, 2013
Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, 2013
Walk Tall: The Music and Life of Julian Cannonball Adderley, 2013
Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges, 2019

Tenor Saxophone

Bud Freeman: You Don’t Look Like a Musician, 1974
Chasin’ the Trane: Music and Mystique of John Coltrane, 1975
Coltrane: A Biography, 1975
John Coltrane by Bill Cole, 1976
Sonny Rollins: A Journey of a Jazzman, 1983
Coleman Hawkins by Burnett James, 1984
Stan Getz: A Life in Jazz, 1996
Open Sky: Sonny Rollins and His World of Improvisation, 2000
A Love Supreme: John Coltrane’s Signature Album, 2002
I Walked with Giants: The Autobiography of Jimmy Heath, 2010

Women in Jazz

His Eye Is on the Sparrow: An Autobiography by Ethel Waters, 1951
Lena by Lena Horne and Richard Schickel, 1951
Kings of Jazz: Bessie Smith, 1971
Big Star Fallin’ Mama: Five Women in Black Music by Hettie Jones, 1974
Bessie by Chris Albertson, 1974
Billie's Blues: Billie Holiday's Story, 1933–1959, 1975
Billie Holiday Anthology: Lady Sings the Blues, 1976
Mother of the Blues: A Study of Ma Rainey, 1981
High Times Hard Times: Anita O’Day, 1981
American Women in Jazz: 1900 to the Present: Their Words, Lives,
and Music
Billie Holiday by Burnett James, 1984
Ethel Ennis: The Reluctant Jazz Star: An Illustrated Biography, 1984
Sassy: The Life of Sarah Vaughan, 1994
Marian McPartland's Jazz World: All in Good Time, 2003
Miss Peggy Lee: A Career Chronicle, 2005
Fever: The Life and Music of Miss Peggy Lee, 2006
Is That All There Is?: The Strange Life of Peggy Lee, 2014
Queen of Bebop: The Musical Lives of Sarah Vaughan, 2017
Shall We Play That One Together: The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland, 2020
The Lady Swings: Memoirs of a Jazz Drummer, 2021

Piano

The Stardust Road by Hoagy Carmichael, 1946
Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and “Inventor of Jazz,” 1956
Kings of Jazz: Fats Waller, 1961
Jelly Roll Morton Kings of Jazz by Martin Williams, 1963
Sometimes I Wonder: The Story of Hoagy Carmichael, 1965
They All Played Ragtime by Rudi Blesh, 1971
Raise Up Off Me by Hampton Hawes, 1974
Too Marvelous for Words: The Life and Genius of Art Tatum, 1974
Ain’t Misbehavin’: The Story of Fats Waller, 1975
Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow, 1976
Selections from the Gutter: Jazz Portraits from “The Jazz Record”
by Art Hodes and Chadwick Hansen Hodes, 1977
Scott Joplin: The Man Who Made Ragtime, 1978
Music On My Mind: The Memoirs of an American Pianist, 1978
Fats Waller: His Life and Times, 1979
Eubie Blake by Al Rose, 1979
Jazz Piano: A Jazz History, 1982
Oscar Peterson by Richard Palmer, 1984
Jelly Roll Morton's Last Night at the Jungle Inn: An Imaginary Memoir, 1984
Nat King Cole by James Haskins, 1984
Stride, the Music of Fats Waller, 1985
John Lewis by Thierry Lalo, 1991
It’s About Time: The Dave Brubeck Story, 1996
Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings, 1998
The World of Earl Hines (The World of Swing; Volume 2), 1999
Oscar Peterson: The Will to Swing, 2000
Glass Enclosure: The Life of Bud Powell, 2001
Marian McPartland's Jazz World: All in Good Time, 2003
The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time: Ranking Analysis and Photos, 2005
Taylored for Jazz: The Life and Music of Billy Taylor, 2008
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, 2010
Duke Ellington: At the Piano, 2013
The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor, 2013
Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, 2014
Shall We Play That One Together: The Life and Art of Jazz Piano Legend Marian McPartland, 2020
Straighten Up and Fly Right: The Life and Music of Nat King Cole, 2020

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The Kinks: “You Really Got Me”

9/29/2022

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The Kinks in Stockholm during a Swedish tour. September 2, 1965. Credit: Wikipedia

In 1964 a novice, kinkily-named British rock and roll band called the Kinks, formed by brothers Ray and David Davies, struggled mightily for recognition, a task made all the more difficult when teenage attention was hyper-focused on already established bands like the Dave Clark Five, the Turtles, the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, and the Beatles. Tough competition indeed.

The four-man Kinks made some headway when they scored a three-record deal with Pye Records.

Their first record managed to reach number 42 on the charts, enough to get the band a place on a rock-and-roll package tour of England and mention in the music trades.

The second single also flopped.

Pressure mounted. The third single on the Pye contract just had to be a winner.[1] A rock-and-roll band without a number one hit record was like a skiffle band without a tea chest bass. A miracle of some sort was needed, an intervention by the gods, but what?

As the group’s rhythm guitarist Ray Davies told Geoff Edgers of the Washington Post,

One day [in 1963] I saw this little green amp, like two doors down from where we lived. And [I bought it]. I had an argument with my girlfriend that day, and I was in a fit of rage and thought this amp didn’t sound right. So I got a razor blade. I slashed the cone speaker, and not knowing what I was doing at the time, didn’t even expect it to work. But I plugged it in and played and it sounded like a dog barking and I love it. We all grew to really love it and wrote this unusual kind of jazzy riff on the piano, which became “You Really Got Me,” and I started blasting it out through my little green amp. It seemed like everybody hated it when we were doing it, but when the record became No. 1 [in September 1964], everyone said: “Told you so.”[2]

As expected, a number one record was what the group needed to propel them to the top of the rock-and-roll celebrity mountain.

Released in August 1964, the band's third single, “You Really Got Me,” went to number one on the UK singles chart and later in the year to number seven in the US charts.

All it took was a fit of rage, a slashed speaker cone, and a distorted sound from Davies’s little green amp.

The Kinks on the TV program Fanclub in 1967. Credit: W. Veenmanderivative, Wikipedia.

Whether the guitarist or his girlfriend should receive the most credit for this happy musical accident is moot. Guitar distortion of this sort was old hat, invented (or discovered, if you will) more than a decade before in 1951.

That time, the speaker cone, rather than being slashed, was busted when someone accidentally dropped the amplifier on the ground.

On their way from Mississippi to Sun Studios in Memphis, Tennessee, to record their first record, Ike Turner’s band crammed themselves and two saxes, a guitar, and a drum set into a car when the inevitable flat tire happened. In their hurry to dig out the spare, they dropped the guitar amp on the pavement. Uh-oh.

Once they were at Sun Studios and meeting owner Sam Phillips—yes, that Sam Phillips, the one who nursed Elvis to worldwide acclaim—the guitarist plugged in his amp, and it sounded terrible, the speaker cone blown.

Sam pricked up his ears. It would sound different, he told the band, like another saxophone, and he went to the restaurant next door to score brown paper and wadded it inside the speaker.

Problem solved.

The rubbing sound between the saxophone and the distorted guitar in recording “Rocket 88” was instantaneous, the fuzztone taking the bass part, the horns riffing in unison, and Ike’s storming piano cutting through the churning mix.

No wonder “Rocket 88” became one of the most influential early R&B hits ever, as much for its exuberant drive as for its accidental fuzztone guitar that was copied by Chicago bluesmen who tampered with their speaker cones.

Later on, California guitarist Billy Strange used a fuzztone on his guitar. He did so on “I Just Don’t Understand” for Ann Margaret (1961) and on “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” for Phil Spector (1962). And he did it the old-fashioned way by pulling one of the four 6L6GC vacuum tubes out of the back of his Fender Twin Reverb Amp.

Were the Davies brothers and the other Kinks totally unaware of this? The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were certainly aware. Paul McCartney used a fuzzbox—an early manufactured device called the tone bender—on his bass guitar on “Think for Yourself” on Rubber Soul (November 1965). Keith Richards used the early marketed Gibson Maestro Fuzztone on “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (May 12, 1965).

What to make of all of this?

While the Kinks lagged behind introducing guitar distortion into their rock-and-roll mix, when they did, courtesy of an accident, it led to that coveted number one song followed by five top 10 singles in the US Billboard chart with nine of their albums charting in the top 40.

Today the Kinks are regarded as one of the most influential rock acts of the ’60s and early ’70s, and are ranked 65th on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

For fans of that breakthrough song, Ray Davies later wrote a poignant origin story that he turned into a song “Little Green Amp” (2013).

CODA
Another lucky break, albeit a small one, came about with a change to the lyrics that helped the initial hit song’s appeal:

At the suggestion of [image consultant] Hal Carter, [Ray Davies] changed the initial address to the song, originally, he sang simply, “Yeah, you really got me,” but Carter urged him to toss in a girl’s name, any girl’s name, to address it personally to the listener. So Ray changed the lyric to “Girl, you really got me going”—changing the song from a vague fantasy to one of direct address.[3]

NOTES

Carey Fleiner, The Kinks: A Thoroughly English Phenomenon (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017), 53–55.
Geoff Edgers, “Q&A with Dave Davies,” The Washington Post, January 31, 2021.
Fleiner, The Kinks, 54.

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Midnight Cowboy: “Everybody's Talkin’ ”

8/29/2022

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Dustin Hoffman (1968), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Jon Voight (1993). Credit: Wikipedia.

James S. Hirsch opened his Washington Post review of Glenn Frankel’s book Shooting Midnight Cowboy[1] with the following:

The director [John Schlesinger] was an insecure taskmaster whose most recent movie had bombed. The producer [Jerome Hellmann] was a lifelong depressive whose last film had also flopped. The screenwriter [Waldo Salt] was a self-destructive alcoholic, the two lead actors [Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman] relatively untested newcomers. Collectively, they were making a movie based on a bleak novel that had sold poorly and was ignored by critics. That was the most improbable genesis of Midnight Cowboy, the 1969 classic of two outcasts who find heartbreak and hope in the kaleidoscope jungle of New York City. [Improbably,] the film would win the Academy Award for Best Picture and the adoration of legions of fans.[2]

After reading the above, you could easily conclude that Midnight Cowboy was a happy movie accident. Indeed, it was. But what about “Everybody’s Talkin’,” the memorable Grammy-winning theme song not mentioned in Hirsch’s review? Did it come about in an improbable fashion like everything else in the movie? Was “Talkin’” a happy musical accident? Read on.

Director Schlesinger liked to edit his film dailies to music. From a pile of new albums, he selected Aerial Ballet by obscure LA singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson. One song, “Everybody’s Talkin’,” caught Schlesinger’s ear. An ideal track, he thought, to guide and pace his edits.

Harry Nilsson in 1974. Credit: Wikipedia

“Talkin’” was the only cut on the album that hadn’t been written by Nilsson. The song had been authored by yet another obscure singer-songwriter and recorded for his self-named album Fred Neil, interestingly, the last song recorded for the album.[3] This fact foretold a glorious future for the song, albeit unknown to everyone at the time and quite frankly to many even today.

Turns out, more often than not, the last-recorded track is usually the album’s biggest hit. Think not? Check out these chart-topping caboose hits:

Coleman Hawkins “Body and Soul”
Frank Sinatra “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”
Deep Purple “Smoke on the Water”
Jerome Kern “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”
Booker T. and the M. G. “Green Onions”
Rupert Homes “The Pina Colada Song”
John Lee Hooker “Boogie Chillun”
Bill Haley and the Comets “Rock Around the Clock”
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer “Lucky Man”

In the fall of 1969, “Talkin’” came to Nilsson’s attention from his recording producer at RCA, Rick Jarrard, who had heard it on his car radio while driving to the studio. Rick quickly purchased the Fred Neil album and played it for Harry, who gave it a thumbs-down; he wasn’t about to add someone else’s work to his Aerial Ballet album. Jarrard doubled down and argued vigorously for its inclusion. Harry finally capitulated, as a favor to his record producer.[4]

As a matter of interest, “Talkin’” was not the first song heard on the radio by a producer that eventually worked its way into a film and subsequent widespread fame. Say hello to “What a Wonderful World” and “Unchained Melody.”[5]

Moreover, talk about serendipity or synchronicity—this very same record producer, Rick Jarrard, working with Jefferson Airplane on their Surrealistic Pillow album, convinced reluctant guitarist Jorma Kaukonen to include his finger-picking acoustic solo “Embryonic Journey” on Airplane’s psychedelic-rock Surrealistic Pillow album. Jorma’s folky “Journey” would be as much a fan favorite as the group’s well-known surreal hits “Someone to Love” and “White Rabbit.”

“Talkin’” was not a shoe-in to be the picture’s theme song, despite Schlesinger’s intentions. Top-flight artists—Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Donavan, Bob Dylan—had submitted songs for consideration. Schlesinger stuck by his daily editing song. United Artist objected. They wanted an original song, one they could own and copyright, release as a single, and on the film soundtrack album. Harry Nilsson wanted UA to use a song of his, not one by Fred Neil! Still, the director tenaciously clung to his choice as the main theme and introduction to the film.

As for United Artists, the matter was finally resolved when producer Hellman and Director Schlesinger showed the nearly finished film to UA executives. Hearing the music as an integral part of the movie did the trick. Ownership rights be damned, what’s perfect is perfect.[6]

As for the question asked at the outset, “Talkin’” is indeed a happy musical accident, despite director Schlesinger’s unwavering devotion to the rightness of his choice, fighting off all attempts to replace it with something else.

The song came to him in an accidental fashion. An aide brought him a stack of new albums for him to use in his film-editing process. He selected Aerial Ballet at random and became enamored with its last track. He loved the sweetness of the melody and the wistful rebellious spirit of the lyrics that perfectly aligned with the Joe Buck character played by Jon Voight.

Imagine if he had selected any other 1967 release, like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or the Monkees' Headquarters or the Grateful Dead or the Moody Blues or Procol Harum or the Who?

Hard to imagine anything better than Aerial Ballet’s last track. When contemplating this, keep in mind that in 2004, “Everybody’s Talkin’” was listed number 20 in AFI’s top 100 movie songs of all time!

NOTES

Glenn Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy: Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2021).
James S. Hirsch, “‘Midnight Cowboy’ Was a Masterpiece Made of Desperation,” Washington Post, Sunday, April 4, 2021.
Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, 246–48.
Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, 249.
Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book One (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 107; Ray Padgett, Cover Me: The Stories Behind the Greatest Songs of All Time (New York: Sterling, 2007), 42–43.
Frankel, Shooting Midnight Cowboy, 250–51.

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Portrait of a CD Era Jazz Fan: Part 4

7/30/2022

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The Faine jazz CD collection.

Continuing from part 3, here are five more personal favorites from my collection of jazz CDs.

Charles Lloyd | Passin’ Thru | Blue Note

Saxophone/flute player Charles Lloyd burst onto the California jazz scene in the mid-1960s on the strength of (1) albums Dreamweaver (1966) and Forest Flower (1967) featuring his first great quartet Keith Jarrett (piano), Cecil McBee (bass), and Jack DeJohnette (drums), and (2) the group’s appearances at Bill Graham's youth-filled Fillmore clubs.

After several years of pop adulation Lloyd entered into a period of (what should we call it) semi-retirement.

Lloyd’s real resurgence began in the 1990s when he signed onto the ECM label, recording sixteen albums with them followed by a stint with Blue Note into 2020, recording five albums.

The bulk of these albums feature Lloyd’s second great quartet (also known as the new quartet) Jason Moran (piano), Reuben Rogers (bass), and Eric Harland (drums). The best of which, in my opinion, is the highly entertaining Passin’ Thru (2017).

The album opens with Lloyd’s composition “Dreamweaver,” also recorded by his first quartet. The second quartet’s take is longer (by six minutes) and more complex, as Tom Jurek wrote:

"The version commences with a modal, post-Coltrane intro as the saxophonist explores tones and space before the drummer Harland checks into its groove, one that touches on the blues, folk music, a pop-style chorus and gospel before moving off to explore Eastern modalities, post-bop, and (some) dissonances before circling back to its lovely melody."

The following tracks reflect the various genres and styles mentioned above, singularly and collectively.

“Nu Blues” is a be-boppin’ swinger by the Jason Moran Bop Trio. Moran is rollin’ the keys like Bud Powell, Rogers is Ray Brown or Oscar Pettiford walkin’ the bass, and Harland is bebop originator Kenny Clarke keepin’ time on his ride cymbal, kickin’ the bass drum, and adding his own polyrhythmic textures. Tenorman Lloyd joins the Trio and its throwback time to a 1950s Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic concert battlin’ it out with Flip Phillips and Illinois Jacquet.

Well, that’s the way I heard it.

“How Can I Tell You” is about as close the new quartet could get to a late-night slow dance dreamy ballad. Moran’s (almost) cocktail piano and the drummer’s use of brushes sets the mood for the leader’s lyrical saxophone offering to the song’s inspiration, singer Billie Holiday.

On “Tagor” Lloyd stirs the bluesy stew prepared by his rhythm mates with his Eastern sounding flute. At the start Moran strums the piano strings like a guitar, Rogers adds a Motown melodic bass line, and the drummer drives “Tagor” forward with a snare and hi-hat attack.

At the mid-point, with no loss of drive, Moran moves to the keyboard to pound out a funky chording interval over a rock-and-roll backbeat. Start to finish this is a hand-clapper.

The title track opens with unaccompanied bass and then, boom!, the band takes off with a high energy up-tempo dance-like excursion into bop. Moran’s piano and Lloyd’s tenor solo engage Roger’s and Harland’s rhythms with startling athletic lyricism.

Bordering on playful and/or novelty, “Passin’ Thru” is a crowd pleasin’ groove.

The album closes on a respectful note with “Shiva’s Prayer.” A beautiful unaccompanied piano piece by Moran, with lovely arco bass playing by Rogers, and soft drums by Harland.

Then quiet.

Sonny Sharrock | Ask the Ages | Axiom

Scott Yanow in his ultimate guide to the great jazz guitarists opined, "Sonny Sharrock was the first truly avant-garde guitarist in jazz. . . When Sharrock burst on the scene in the mid-1960s, he was not only free in his choice of notes but in . . . his use of feedback and distorted sounds. He preceded Derek Bailey and Jimi Hendrix. During an era when few jazz guitarists even acknowledged rock, Sharrock was playing explosive solos that made him the Pharoah Sanders of the guitar.”

Interesting, then, that he would pair up with saxophonist Sanders, along with bass player Charrette Moffet and drummer Elvin Jones in 1991 to record Ask the Ages, the consensus definitive and most essential album of Sharrock’s career.

This is unquestionably a free jazz album, how could it not be with Sonny Sharrock, Pharoah Sanders, and Elvin Jones ripping it up as if it was 1965.

Yet it is something else again, appealing and accessible to a wide range of music fans. Proof of this can be found on google: type in “rateyourmusic.com Ask the Ages,” select the top entry, and read the 45 reviews, and you’ll see what I mean.

Ask the Ages has six original Sharrock compositions: two scorchers “Promises Kept” and “Many Mansions,” two mellow and melodic “Who Does She Hope to Be” and “Once Upon a Time,” and two in-betweeners, “Little Rock” and “As We Used to Sing.” It is the mellow tunes (and secondarily the in-betweeners) that make this album so appealing with “Who Does She Hope to Be” generally favored over “Once Upon a Time.”

But for my money, the latter is the exceptional track.

While each instrument is heard in “Once Upon a Time,” it is the collective daresay “symphonic” — like sound that matters.

Sonny’s guitar, chording Hendrix-like and soloing at the same time (dubbing may have been involved); Pharoah’s tenor sax, offering a repetitive hummable figure; and Elvin’s non-stop striking of his drums with mallets, yes, with mallets not sticks or hands, creating a rhythmically throbbing pattern. Occasionally, Sonny spices the group’s malleting stew with a memorable Santana-like guitar line.

Overall, a never-to-be forgotten, compelling track.

Frank Sinatra | Live in Australia 1959 | Blue Note

While Sinatra’s time capsule albums are Wee Small Hours in the Morning, Songs for Swinging Lovers, Only the Lonely, and a few others, the “Jazziest” is Frank Sinatra with the Red Norvo Quintet Live In Australia 1959.

A rare album where Frank sings his well-known fan favorites, not as originally recorded with a large studio orchestra, mind you, but backed by a small jazz combo live.

From Will Friedwall’s liner notes:

“He just melted into it . . . He took responsibility (like a conductor) he beat off the group and everything, he did his own thing, and the band played great for him . . . [Alto/flute] player Jerry Dodgion elaborated: the informal format also encouraged Sinatra to vary both the program and the arrangements themselves . . . He could be different every night which is more in keeping with a jazz group.”

Some might argue that Sinatra’s performance with Count Basie’s band captured live in Las Vegas tops that in Australia 1959.

For me, Ol’ Blue Eyes' best live album is Australia 1959.

Frank Sinatra | The Concert Sinatra | Reprise

In the entire recording oeuvre of Frank Sinatra there is nothing like The Concert Sinatra, an album of extended performances by Frank and a 73-piece symphony orchestra arranged and conducted by Nelson Riddle.

The recording features eight tunes (lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein on all but one.) These are not the vocal offerings of familiar Sinatra poses, the finger-snappin’ swingin’ bachelor or the down-and-out sad sack propped against the lamppost.

No, this is the full-voiced light classicist in the manner of contemporaries Todd Duncan, Howard Keel, Gordan McRae, or (almost) Paul Robeson.

In other words, Frank gets as close as an American pop singer can to the bel canto style.

On no other album does Sinatra reveal such strength in his lower register and overall dynamic range. This album is in a class by itself. Discussions of what category it belongs to: jazz, pop jazz, pop, or Broadway — are irrelevant.

It’s simply incandescent.

No male interpretive singer of the 20th century other than Frank Sinatra could have pulled this off.

Wilson and Adderley | Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley | Capitol

I bought this CD for two reasons: one, my fondness for the classic Adderley Quintet (Cannonball (Alto), brother Nat (Cornet), Sam Jones (Bass), and Louis Hayes (Drums) with Joe Zawinal (Piano); and two, my piqued curiosity after I read an article in Downbeat magazine in 2004, listing the best jazz vocalist albums chosen by 73 jazz singers (21 male, 52 female).[1] At the top, number one, was the album Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley originally recorded in 1961.

After multiple listenings, I came around to understanding the record’s appeal to the Downbeat singers, helped along by Nancy Wilson’s statement in the album’s liner notes that she considered her vocals on the album “as a sort of easy-going third horn.”[2]

Jazz singers (all singers?) in particular desperately want to be a thoroughly integrated member of the band — not off to the side or out front, but in the mix. And that, in fact, was what Nancy was in this instance and what the DownBeat singers heard and no doubt wished for themselves.

The album is doubly interesting because it is not entirely a vocal album, five of the 12 tracks are instrumentals by the quintet (every one outstanding) especially Cannon’s alto solo on the trumpet warhorse “I Can’t Get Started” and the brothers cookin’ on “Teaneck,” but it is the seven Wilson tracks that caught the ears of the DownBeaters.

Highlights for me are the gentle cornet playing by Nat behind Wilson on “Save Your Love for Me” and Nat’s tune “The Old Country;” and Cannon’s bopish swinging sax duet with Nancy (and Nat) on “Never Will I Marry” and “Happy Talk.”

Sam Jones bass is superb, especially on “A Sleeping Bee.”

NOTES

“Singers” All-Time Favorite Vocal Jazz Albums, DownBeat, June 2004, 48.
Ron Grevatt, original liner notes, Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley, Capitol Records, 2004, Compact Disc, CDP 077778120421.

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Portrait of a CD Era Jazz Fan: Part 4

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