Category: Music History

Another Happy Musical Accident from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman

9/16/2021

On the basis of the John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman album (Impulse!, 1963), music historian Will Friedwald concluded:

Hartman is a great singer, beloved of fans, critics, and, perhaps, more importantly, entire generations of singers, most of whom have never heard more than six tracks by him [from the Coltrane& Hartman masterpiece album].[1]

In Serendipity Doo-Dah Book One, I discussed how the “My One and Only Love” track from the above album came about as an accidental lapse by Hartman on the first run-through. The singer was so transfixed by Coltrane’s tenor sax solo that he completely forgot to come back in for his vocal at the close of the recording, which necessitated a do-over, resulting in the classic performance now known by everyone.[2]

Another happy accident took place on that date as well. On the ride out from Manhattan to Rudy Van Gelder’s studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, to record the six planned selections, the driver turned the car radio on, and there was the voice of Nat King Cole singing Billy Strayhorn’s “Lush Life.”

Upon hearing the song, Hartman exclaimed, “Man! This is one of the great tunes of all time.”

Coltrane responded, “Do you know it?”

He did.

“Lush Life” was the second tune recorded that day, and not surprisingly, it was a classic, an archetypical reading that used the Cole version as a template in terms of tempo and overall format.[3]

John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman became the one recording that exposed the most people to Strayhorn’s lovely song, all because the car radio was tuned to the right station.

CODA
Coltrane certainly knew “Lush Life”—he had recorded an instrumental version for Prestige in January, 1958, released on his album Lush Life three years later.

NOTES

Will Frieidwald, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), 163.
Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2017), 75–6.
Will Friedwald, The Great Albums, 166–7.

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 7

11/30/2020

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JAZZ SCORES BIG
Ever since the 1930s, jazz has been a staple of the silver screen, spotlighted in countless nightclub scenes, musicals, and film biographies. However, jazz was not used to score feature films until the early 1950s. Two notable examples are Clash by Night (1952) and The Wild Ones (1954). In 1958, more feature films had integral jazz scores than ever.

Not surprisingly, West Coast jazz dominated such film soundtracks, as in Hot-Car Girl (Cal Tjader), I Want to Live (Gerry Mulligan), Kings Go Forth (Pete Condoli), Sweet Smell of Success (Chico Hamilton), T-Bird Gang (Shelly Manne), and Touch of Evil (Henry Mancini).

Two films produced and distributed in France in 1958 not only broke new ground but set the standard for jazz-scored feature films for years to come. And Miles Davis was the talent behind one of them, Elevator to the Gallows (known in the US as Frantic).

Miles and his small group improvised the score to Gallows while watching shots of the film, one of the few times in western cinema history since the silent era this had been done for a feature film. This was also the first time Miles recorded modal (or near-modal) music; the 10 musical segments produced were based neither on written themes nor harmonic patterns.

The other groundbreaking French film of 1958, No Sun in Venice (US title), contained an exquisite jazz score written by John Lewis and played by the Modern Jazz Quartet. Each tune, memorable in its own right, perfectly mirrored the screen visual, making it one of the finest motion picture jazz scores ever written.

Although the film was not widely seen in the US, the soundtrack album received five stars in DownBeat and sold well. The Venice tunes became a constant in the MJQ concert repertoire for the next three decades.

The following year West Coast jazzmen provided the score for the 12th remake of Tarzan, removing once and for all any doubt that jazz was suitable background music for feature films.

Finally, 1958 was the only year that the long-running Newport Jazz Festival was ever featured in a documentary, Jazz on a Hot Summer’s Day.

JAZZ HITS TV WITH A BANG
Of all media in the 1950s, television with its various biases was the least likely to present jazz. True, variety and game shows featured jazz-like show bands, and jazz players appeared occasionally on the Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen shows or, perhaps, on Sunday morning, but that was about it. The TV picture began to change in 1958.

In the summer of that year, a national trial run was given to the West Coast-produced TV show Stars of Jazz, which headlined both West Coast (Stan Kenton) and East Coast (Billy Taylor) musicians.

That autumn, a big breakthrough came in the form of Peter Gunn, a jazz-fan detective who hung around a jazz club called Mother’s. Scored by Henry Mancini and played by West Coast musicians, Gunn was the first TV series in which jazz was fully integrated with the dramatic action.

The Peter Gunn theme even became a hit single! Not surprisingly (and fortunately for jazz fans) the show spawned imitations. Count Basie rushed into the studio to record a jazz theme for M-Squad, and a year later Duke Ellington did the same for Asphalt Jungle, another big-city crime TV series.

JAZZ ON THE ROAD . . . AND CAMPUS
This was the year of the Dharma Bums and the beatniks, the year Jack Kerouac eulogized the “raw wild joy” of jazz in On the Road. Thousands of teenagers sported sunglasses, wore black, toted bongos, and bought jazz albums for the first time.

Coffeehouses sprouted next to college campuses, where students sipped espresso and listened to poetry readings accompanied by jazz. The beatnik movement briefly legitimized the marriage between poetry and jazz. Chicago deejay Ken Nordine captured the passing fad on the best-selling LP Word Jazz for MCA (three stars, DownBeat).

For the first time since the 1920s (the flapper era) and the 1930s/1940s (the big band era), jazz was once again the music of a popular youth rebellion.

For all the above reasons, jazz was big business for the first time since the 1930s. More jazz records were sold than ever, club dates and concert tours were on the upswing, and jazz was on radio and TV and at the movies.

The stage was set for a general jazz revival in the early 1960s. Jazz had recovered from its late 1940s/early 1950s doldrums and survived the initial shock of rock and roll.

By any measure, 1958 was quite a year for jazz, one of its finest ever.

1958 CLASSIC RECORD ALBUMS

Relaxin’
Miles Ahead
Something else
Milestones
Soultrane
Brilliant Corners
Monk’s Music
Something Else!
You Get More Bounce
Way Out West
Meets the Rhythm Section
For Real!
Grooveyard
All Morning Long
Six Pieces of Silver
Sonny’s Crib
Blue Lights
K. Burrell with J. Coltrane
Freedom Suite
Sermon
Getz/Johnson-Operahouse
Roy, Dizzy and Sweets
My Fair Lady
West Side Story
Such Sweet Thunder
The Atomic Mr. Basie
Sing a Song of Basie
Come Fly with Me
Duke Ellington Songbook
Lady in Satin
Brubeck in Europe
Concert by the Sea
Muted Jazz
Burnished Brass
But Not for Me
I Want to Live
No Sun in Venice
Peter Gunn!
Word Jazz

Miles Davis
Miles Davis
Cannonball Adderley
Miles Davis
John Coltrane
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk
Ornette Coleman
Curtis Counce
Sonny Rollins
Art Pepper
Hampton Hawes
Harold Land
Red Garland
Horace Silver
Sonny Clark
Kenny Burrell
Kenny Burrell
Sonny Rollins
Jimmy Smith
Stan Getz/J. J. Johnson
Eldridge/Gillespie/Edison
Andre Previn/S. Manne
Manny Albam
Duke Ellington
Count Basie
Lambert-Hendricks-Ross
Frank Sinatra
Ella Fitzgerald
Billie Holiday
Dave Brubeck
Erroll Garner
Jonah Jones
George Shearing
Ahmad Jamal
Johnny Mandel
Modern Jazz Quartet
Henry Mancini
Ken Nordine

Prestige
Columbia
Blue Note
Columbia
Prestige
Riverside
Riverside
Contemporary
Contemporary
Contemporary
Contemporary
Contemporary
Contemporary
Prestige
Blue Note
Blue Note
Blue Note
Prestige
Riverside
Blue Note
Verve
Verve
Contemporary
Coral
Columbia
Roulette
ABC-Paramount
Capitol
Verve
Capitol
Columbia
Columbia
Capitol
Capitol
Argo
United Artists
Atlantic
RCA
MCA

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 6

10/19/2020

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VOCALISTS LEAD THE WAY
At various times during its history, jazz has surfaced to broad public awareness. The late 1950s was such a time, especially for jazz vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and the Four Freshmen.

It is difficult to imagine today that Frank Sinatra was the premier male jazz singer of the 1950s. The 1950s Sinatra is not to be compared with the later Sinatra of Las Vegas, “My Way,” and “New York, New York” fame, just as the 1960s Louis Armstrong of “Hello Dolly” fame is not to be compared with the 1920s Armstrong.

Between 1954 and 1961, Sinatra recorded a series of classic LPs for Capitol with orchestrations mostly by Nelson Riddle or Billy May.

These recordings, now collected on 15 CDs, rank among the great musical works of the American 20th century along with the Armstrong Hot Fives and Sevens of the 1920s and the Miles Davis recordings of the 1950s. No male singer before or since has ever interpreted the classic Broadway and Hollywood tunes of the 1930s and 1940s—the so-called standards—with such sensitivity and swing.

Sinatra influenced jazzmen like no other singer before or since. When he recorded a song, it soon entered the jazz repertoire, that of Miles Davis, for example. During this period, Sinatra never compromised his musical integrity by playing down to the public, and he thereby brought jazz to a wider audience.

In 1958 Sinatra added the joyful Come Fly with Me and Come Dance with Me albums and the somber Only the Lonely to the classic Capitol series. Each record received rave reviews and sold very well.

Once again, DownBeat readers and critics voted Sinatra Top Male Jazz Vocalist, a position he held longer than any other male singer. Disc jockeys voted Sinatra’s singles “Witchcraft” and “All the Way” Best Songs of the Year.

No doubt about it, Sinatra was at his peak in 1958, as popular with the public as with the specialized jazz audience.

At the same time, Ella Fitzgerald had been recording a series of composer songbooks for the Verve label, interpreting the works of Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, and Rodgers and Hart.

To many people, Fitzgerald’s songbooks are the equivalent of Sinatra’s Capitol series. Her 1958 offering, the Ellington Songbook, a four-LP collaboration with the Duke, earned five stars in DownBeat.

As usual, she won the Top Female Jazz vocalist in DownBeat, an honor she held for eighteen straight years. During her career, she also won eleven Grammys, more than any other female jazz singer.

Other female singers also were on the scene in 1958. Cool jazz singers Chris Conner, June Christy, and Julie London all had sizeable popular followings. Anita O’Day, with several mid-1950s recordings on Verve, was featured at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival—a sign of her successful comeback.

New jazz singers Nina Simone and Mose Allison were heard on jazz radio programs and some juke boxes but had not yet made their marks with the general public.

Significantly, 1958 was the year of Billie Holiday’s last two studio recordings, both with orchestrator Ray Ellis. The first, Lady in Satin, was reported to be one of Holiday’s favorites but received mixed reviews from critics. The DownBeat reviewer, struck by the album’s bittersweet qualities—the life-worn voice of Holiday against lush strings—awarded it five stars.

Others criticized the incongruity of the lush musical setting for her croaking voice. Whatever the ultimate judgment of the Holiday/Ellis recordings, they represent the last testament of one of the greatest singers jazz has ever known.

INSTRUMENTALISTS NOT FAR BEHIND
Jazz instrumentalists had broken through to the general public as well. Dave Brubeck’s name was almost synonymous with jazz in 1958. He rode the crest of the West Coast wave higher and farther than any other jazzman and, in the end, transcended the genre.

His rather unique quartet that contrasted his full, bombastic piano with the dry martini sound of Paul Desmond’s alto, along with his popularity on college campuses and the backing of Columbia, all contributed to his success.

A surprise success with the public was the Modern Jazz Quartet: John Lewis (piano), Milt Jackson (vibes), Percy Heath (bass), and Connie Kay (drums). They played formal arrangements of classical music forms—fugues, concertos, and the like—and dressed in concert-hall attire.

But when they wanted to, they swung harder than any other group around. Arrangements aside, they were a swinging bebop group that endeared themselves to fans and critics alike.

The MJQ won both the readers and critics DownBeat polls for Best Combo in 1958. Nonetheless, jazz purists roundly criticized them for taking on airs of classical musicians and pandering to concert hall audiences. This was mostly a matter of appearances, however. The MJQ swung!

And in time, the quartet became the longest-running musical group with no personnel changes in jazz history.

One issue the author may wish to address comes in part 8 regarding the Modern Jazz Quartet. He writes, "And in time, the quartet became the longest-running musical group with no personnel changes in jazz history." The group did have an early personnel change, from Kenny Clarke to Connie Kay on drums. I’m sure the author knows this and means that AFTER that change, they were the longest-running group with no changes, but he might want to make that clearer.

Three other artists—Erroll Garner, Jonah Jones, and George Shearing—all had albums at the top of the charts through 1958. Unique, rhythmic piano stylist Erroll Garner broke through on the strength of his Columbia recording Concert by the Sea, which remains a continuous seller even to this day.

Jonah Jones, a swing-era trumpeter and the Herb Alpert of his day, struck gold by playing a happy, easy-listening brand of jazz. George Shearing, an accomplished pianist, found public acceptance through his quintet’s smooth blend of piano, vibes, and guitar.

The sound was easy and melodious, with Shearing keeping his piano solos to a minimum. Both Jones and Shearing recorded for Capitol, a company with deep pockets to rival Columbia.

Towards the end of 1958, the small Chicago label Argo released But Not for Me, by pianist Ahmad Jamal, which became an instant hit with the public. Jamal, known to jazz musicians and revered by Miles Davis, had a spare brand of swinging jazz that the critics labeled “cocktail piano.”

The album received only two and half stars in DownBeat but the airwaves carried several tracks from the album, most notably “Poinciana.” Jamal’s version of this tune remains definitive.

There is not a piano player alive who doesn’t either quote from the Jamal treatment when playing the song or botches his own version because Jamal’s version is so overwhelming. Jamal went on to prove his jazz mettle to critics and enjoys a reputation today as a singular stylist in the mold of Erroll Garner.

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 5

9/28/2020

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As in any year, the jazz mainstream held steady as fads and trends ebbed and flowed (see part 3 and part 4 of this 1958 blog series). Swing-era stalwarts including Harry “Sweets” Edison and Roy Eldridge (trumpets), Louis Bellson (drums), Benny Carter (alto saxophone), and Coleman Hawkins and Ben Webster (tenor saxophones) released new recordings on the Verve label to a waiting jazz public.

So did the bebop masters of the 1940s: Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Stan Getz (tenor saxophone), J. J. Johnson (trombone), and Sonny Stitt (alto saxophone).

Of the several outstanding mainstream albums that year, two on the Verve label stand out. The first album brought swing-era trumpeters Roy Eldridge and Sweets Edison together with bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie (four and a half stars, DownBeat), while the second paired bebop trombonist J. J. Johnson with the cool tenor saxophone of Stan Getz (five stars, DownBeat).

Beneath the mainstream and surface trends, other obscure musicians toiled according to their own lights to reinvigorate the music. In time, the jazz public would recognize musicians such as Charles Mingus (bass) and Cecil Taylor (piano).

JAZZ COVERS BROADWAY
In 1958, jazz players discovered Broadway and Hollywood musicals in a big way. More jazz versions of shows appeared in record stores that year than any other year before or since. To be sure, jazz musicians had plumbed show tunes since the very beginning of the Great White Way, but they had never devoted an entire album to the tunes from a single show until the late 1950s.

It all began with the surprise smash recording in late 1957 of a jazz version of My Fair Lady by Andre Previn (piano), Shelly Manne (drums), and Leroy Vinnegar (bass) on Contemporary. A classically trained and noted writer of film scores, Previn was a surprisingly good jazz pianist—Bud Powell (sort of) with a romantic tinge.

Previn later conducted the Pittsburgh and other symphony orchestras, but in 1958 he was the star of the best-selling jazz record in history, surpassing the previous top seller, Brubeck’s Jazz Goes to College recorded in 1954. Previn’s My Fair Lady was at the top of the monthly jazz charts all through 1958, falling no lower than fourth.

Although it was eventually surpassed in sales by Miles Davis’s Columbia recordings, My Fair Lady astonished the recording industry. The tuneful score and the popularity of the stage play and movie helped, as did the tasteful drumming of Shelly Manne, but the album’s smash status was well deserved; a darn good jazz trio record (five stars, DownBeat).

Understandably, a rash of similar recordings followed. Previn/Manne released four other show tune albums--Li’l Abner and Gigi in 1958, followed by Pal Joey and West Side Story.

Then came the onslaught: Gigi again (Shorty Rogers), Kismet (Mastersounds), The Music Man (Jimmy Giuffre), Porgy and Bess (Miles Davis), South Pacific twice (Chico Hamilton and Tony Scott), West Side Story twice (Manny Album and Oscar Peterson), and a host of other Broadway albums recorded by the Australian Jazz Quartet, Dick Marx, and others.

Every year has its fads, and this one belonged to 1958.

THE ATOMIC MR. BASIE
On top of everything else that happened in 1958, after a near decade-long decline, big bands surged back to popularity on the brass of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington orchestras.

Duke’s resurrection (he almost disbanded his orchestra of three decades in 1955) occurred around midnight on July 7, 1956, at the Newport Jazz Festival when Paul Gonsalves (tenor saxophone) took twenty-seven driving choruses on “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue,” causing a near rhythm riot among the 10,000 people in attendance.

Captured on vinyl by Columbia, the Newport recording received five stars in DownBeat.

The event was magical, almost mystical, a 1950s Woodstock that catapulted Duke and his band into the national limelight. Within weeks Duke was on the cover of Time, and whenever he was asked his age in later years, he would say only, “I was born in 1956 at the Newport Jazz Festival.”

In 1957, his compositional skills rejuvenated, Duke premiered A Drum Is a Woman on television and recorded Such Sweet Thunder, a series of musical vignettes based on Shakespearean plays (five stars, DownBeat), and a musical portrait of Ella Fitzgerald.

In 1958, in the midst of his revival, Duke and his band toured Europe for the first time in eight years. The following year saw several more Ellington compositions and his first major film score for Anatomy of a Murder.

Duke was back! And so was the Count!

Basie’s comeback, unlike Duke’s, was not mercurial. After reforming his big band in 1953, his popularity steadily grew on the strength of hits such as “April in Paris,” with its “one more once” tag ending; and also “Shiny Stockings,” “Corner Pocket,” “Everyday and Alright, Okay, You Win,” the latter two with vocals by blues singer Joe Williams.

America was ready when The Atomic Mister Basie exploded on the scene in 1958.

This album, the first of 20 on the Roulette label, and many say the best (DownBeat said four-and-a-half stars at the time), featured tunes written by a single arranger, Neal Hefti. Three of the tunes, “The Kid from Redbank,” “Whirly Bird,” and “Li’L Darlin’,” became staples in the Basie book for years after.

The Atomic band of 1958 was a powerhouse of talent to rival any band in jazz history, including Basie’s classic Kansas City band of the late 1930s.

His 1958 band had four trumpets: Joe Newman, Thad Jones, Snookie Young, and Wendall Culley; three trombones: Henry Coker, Benny Powell, and Al Grey; five saxes: Marshall Royal, Frank Wess, Frank Foster, Charlie Fowlkes, and either Billy Mitchell or Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis; and the rhythm section of Basie (piano), Freddie Green (guitar), Eddie Jones (bass), and Sonny Payne (drums).

This band exhibited ensemble power, precision, discipline, and dynamic control rather than the freewheeling, barrier-breaking soloists of the classic late-1930s Basie band. The Count himself said, “I have never bragged on anything, but the band I had [in 1958] was one I could have bragged on.”

Basie followed the successful Atomic with an album entitled Basie plays Hefti. He also benefited by Sing a Song of Basie, the sleeper LP of the year by the vocal group Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. LHR took scat singing to new heights by vocalizing meaningful lyrics to Basie tunes, ensemble passages and solos alike.

This record garnered a five-star DownBeat award and further heightened interest in the band. It came as no surprise, then, when DownBeat readers voted Count Basie and Miles Davis Jazz Personalities of the Year and elected Basie into the magazine’s Hall of Fame.

While other big bands languished in 1958—Stan Kenton’s, for example—the success of the two premier big bands paved the way for a general big band revival in the early 1960s.

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 4

8/18/2020

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In part 3 of this 1958 blog series, we saw that 1958 gave rise to the “cool” West Coast–style jazz, a response to the blues-oriented East Coast style. That led to a reaction from many East Coast musicians, who favored a harder approach.

FUNKY HARD BOP GAINS TOEHOLD
Hard bop was the very antithesis of the West Coast cool style. It emphasized solos, all but discarded arrangements, and adopted blues and gospel devices.

The small independent labels Blue Note and Prestige chronicled hard bop much the same way Contemporary and Pacific Jazz did the West Coast style. Blue Note had such contract artists as Art Blakey (drums), Kenny Burrel (guitar), Sonny Clark (piano), Lee Morgan (trumpet), Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone), Horace Silver (piano), and Jimmy Smith (organ).

Prestige had Donald Byrd (trumpet), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Art Farmer (trumpet), Curtis Fuller (trombone), Red Garland (piano), Jacky Mclean (alto saxophone), Art Taylor (drums), and Mal Waldron (piano).

Contracts were as loose as the music and allowed musicians to record on either label, which they often did.

Taken together, the Blue Note and Prestige recordings shared a common sound: a loose, rough-hewn, raw-edged, dark sound that celebrated individual over collective expression. While most of the musicians knew each other and often played together, they were not, for the most part, members of working bands.

Hence, many albums documented blowing sessions, where soloists improvised at length on the harmonic pattern of the theme. Typically, the musicians recorded only two or three tunes per 20-minute side; even one per side was not uncommon.

For all the hoopla in the trade press about hard bop rescuing the heart and soul of jazz, most of these albums received so-so three-star ratings in DownBeat.

Four- and five-star ratings were rare. Sonny Clarke’s albums on Blue Note--Sonny’s Crib, for example—always contained vital music but never received high marks, at least not from DownBeat reviewers.

Five albums in particular characterized the best of the hard bop movement in 1958. The first, All Morning Long on Prestige—led by Miles Davis pianist Red Garland, with John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Donald Byrd (trumpet), and Prestige house drummer Arthur Taylor—devoted one side to the title track and featured good solos all around (four stars, DownBeat).

Guitarist Kenny Burrell recorded two minor gems, Blue Lights, with a stable of hard-boppers on Blue Note (five stars, DownBeat), and another with John Coltrane on Prestige (five stars, DownBeat), and Horace Silver added Six Pieces of Silver to his gospel-tinged hard bop library on Blue Note (five stars, DownBeat).

Lastly, Sonny Rollins recorded Freedom Suite on Riverside (four stars, DownBeat) with Oscar Pettiford (bass) and Max Roach (drums), which surpassed his Way Out West album on Contemporary.

While the hard boppers found their jazz audience in 1958, they had not yet broken through to the general public, except perhaps for Horace Silver, who was the only hard bopper to appear at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. No hard bop album finished in the top 20 jazz album sales for that year.

The first bop organist, Jimmy Smith, recorded and released albums faster than any musician alive, stocking record bins with his sixth through ninth albums for Blue Note that year. In a few short years, he would be known nationally for his hit recording of the title song of the movie Walk on the Wild Side.

In 1958, the terms “funky” and “soul” appeared regularly in DownBeat articles to describe the R&B, gospel-tinged hard bop of musicians like Art Blakey and Horace Silver.

This music sowed the seeds of the funky, hard bop soul music of the early 1960s, which propelled hard bop musicians to prominence and made household names of Cannonball Adderly, Art Blakey, Ramsey Lewis, Lee Morgan, Les McCann, Bobby Timmons, and Jimmy Smith, among others.

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 3

7/21/2020

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By any measure, 1958 was no ordinary year in jazz. Controversy raged in the trade press over West Coast style, or “cool” jazz, at a time when it was never more popular with the public. As they had since 1955, critics lambasted the West Coast style as intellectual music fraught with overarranging, lame solos, and lifeless rhythm.

WEST COAST JAZZ FIGHTS BACK
Paradoxically, a new and aggressive brand of West Coast jazz, later labeled “California Hard,” emerged just prior to 1958 and resulted in some of the finest recordings by West Coast musicians ever. A 1958 DownBeat article—“West Coast Fights Back”— aptly summarized the situation: “If West Coast [jazz], with its arranging tricks, classical devices, generally constrained emotional content, is being slowly eclipsed by the tougher fibered, blues-oriented East Coast style—and there is a growing realization this is happening—the West Coast is fighting back.”

And indeed it was!

By the end of the year, record bins held three albums by the Curtis Counce Group—the strongest West Coast combo of the 1950s. This quintet featured the swinging rhythm section of Curtis Counce (bass), Frank Butler (drums), and the underrated Carl Perkins (piano), and a two-horn frontline of Harold Land (tenor saxophone) and Jack Sheldon (trumpet).

The group exhibited as much fire and cohesiveness as any quintet of the 1950s, including the classic Miles Davis quintet, the Max Roach–Clifford Brown quintet, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Recorded on the West Coast by the independent Contemporary label, all three albums were well received in DownBeat, two receiving four stars and one five.

The two Contemporary albums Way Out West, with Sonny Rollins (tenor saxophone), Ray Brown (bass), and Shelly Manne (drums), and Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (the Miles Davis rhythm section) proved that West Coast jazzmen could play with East Coast jazzmen (as if there had been any doubt). The former album (five stars, DownBeat) reaffirmed Sonny Rollins as the premier tenor saxophone improviser of the day, while the latter (also five stars, DownBeat) confirmed Art Pepper as the premier improvising stylist on the West Coast.

Art Pepper Meets and subsequent albums also confirmed Pepper as one of the few unique voices on alto saxophone since Charlie Parker.

Contemporary also issued several trio albums by pianist Hampton Hawes, including the famous All Night Sessions, Vols. I–III, and a quartet session, For Real!, with Harold Land. These four- and five-star albums catapulted Hawes to national attention within the jazz community.

His churchy, neo-bop style influenced many East Coast pianists and extended the jazz piano lexicon beyond premier bop pianist Bud Powell.

Two more Contemporary albums--The Poll Winners, with Barney Kessel (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and Shelly Manne (drums), and Grooveyard, with the Harold Land Quintet—also received five-star awards in DownBeat. Truly, 1958 was Contemporary’s year.

Other albums on the Pacific Jazz and World Pacific labels, featuring artists like Pepper Adams, Manny Album, Chet Baker, and Gerry Mulligan, also received excellent reviews in DownBeat. West Coast jazz—cool or California Hard—was a fad that ceased to exist only in the minds of a few influential critics.

In the DownBeat Critics Poll that year, West Coast or cool school musicians still ranked highly—Jimmy Giuffre (#2 combo), Gerry Mulligan (#1 baritone saxophone), Stan Getz (#1 tenor saxophone), Lee Konitz (#1 alto saxophone), Shelly Manne (#1 drums), Barney Kessel (#1 guitar), and Tony Scott (#1 clarinet). The year-end Readers Poll showed little difference, except that cool-schooler Paul Desmond inched out Konitz on alto saxophone.

And it bears mentioning that the first Monterey Jazz Festival was held in 1958—the West Coast answer to the Newport Jazz Festival, which began in 1953.

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 2

6/23/2020

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In the first part of this blog series, we looked at two of the four jazz innovators who came to the fore in 1958—Miles Davis, John Coltrane. Here, we move on to the other two: Thelonius Monk and Ornette Coleman.

THELONIUS MONK
Thelonius Monk, a jazz icon dedicated to his art, finally received his long-overdue recognition in 1958. Monk, who today is regarded as a major composer almost on a par with Duke Ellington, languished in obscurity until 1957. This lack of recognition stemmed in part from the loss of his cabaret card in 1951 due to a questionable drug charge, which prevented him from working in New York City (the jazz capital of the world and his hometown). The neglect was also the result of his highly personal approach to the piano, misunderstood by many musicians and critics alike.

But his recordings didn’t go totally unrecognized. A handful of New York critics consistently championed his work. In 1957, after regaining his cabaret card, Monk played at the Five Spot Café in lower Manhattan six nights a week to capacity crowds. Musicians and critics began to spread the word.

Here was a pianist whose approach eschewed the modern and embraced the traditional, an unabashed melodist—albeit, a quirky one—who embellished and extended the melody like jazzmen of the past, yet sounded “far out,” more modern than modern. Here was a pianist not easily copied or understood at first hearing. As the jazz world soon learned, Monk’s music consisted of more than idiosyncratic, dissonant melodies.

The Five Spot gig was but a prelude to Monk’s discovery as a major jazzman. Some say “rediscovery” because of his early 1940s contributions to bebop, but the truth is that very few Americans had ever heard of him prior to 1958. Monk was profiled in DownBeat that year in an article headlined “Finally Discovered” and was awarded first place on piano—for the first time—in both the Critics and Readers Polls.

With Monk’s discovery, Riverside, his recording company since 1955, heavily promoted his early albums and recorded new ones, often with jazz greats, no doubt to confirm his newfound position within the jazz tradition. In 1959, Monk showcased his music in a big-band setting at a memorable Town Hall concert.

Three years and many club dates later, he signed with Columbia, where he recorded eight well-publicized albums over the next seven years. Monk’s transformation from underground genius to jazz icon was celebrated in 1964 when he appeared on the cover of Time, joining Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, and Frank Sinatra as the only jazzmen to be so honored.

His 40-some composition legacy, which he essentially completed before his public discovery in 1958, equals that of any 20th-century composer.

ORNETTE!
Ornette Coleman also came to prominence in 1958 with an album on the small Contemporary label entitled Something Else! The LP sounded like some quirky brand of bebop and received neither general critical nor popular acclaim, although the DownBeat reviewer gave it four and a half stars.

Besides being the first recorded document of the “free jazz” movement that flourished in the 1960s, its historical significance may be in the album notes, where Ornette stated, “I think one day music will be a lot freer. Then the pattern of the tune, for instance, will be forgotten and the tune itself will be the pattern. . . . I believe music is really a free thing.”

Ornette based his improvisations on the atmosphere or mood of a piece, deemphasizing the melody, the underlying harmonic structure, and the key. His approach to improvisation, not at first really understood by anyone, was variously labeled as modal, thematic, or intuitive. Ornette would later describe it as “harmolodic,” which, he said, “has as to do with the melody, the harmony and the rhythm all equal.”

In 1959, Ornette recorded two more albums, Tomorrow Is the Question! and The Shape of Jazz to Come—considered pejorative titles by most jazzmen of the day—and took New York City by storm, gaining instant notoriety and turning a two-week gig at the Five Spot Café into a three-month stay.

While critics were labeling Coltrane’s music “anti-jazz,” they called Ornette’s “anti-music,” “chaos,” and worse. One critic said, “His is not musical freedom; disdain for principles and boundaries is synonymous not with freedom but with anarchy.” Ornette’s use of an occasional squawky white plastic alto saxophone didn’t help matters either.

While his detractors were legion, his supporters (who swore from the start he was a genius) were among the bigger lights in jazz music and criticism—Leonard Bernstein, Nat Hentoff, John Lewis, Gunther Schuller, and Martin Williams, to name a few.

One of the most controversial of jazz icons to this day, Ornette has never received the public acclaim or the financial reward the others have, even belatedly. In time, he was grudgingly recognized as a major innovator in jazz for launching free jazz and influencing many musicians, including Coltrane.

LASTING CONTRIBUTIONS
The fact that four major innovators of jazz—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Ornette Coleman--came to the fore in 1958 is quite astonishing. Each, it could be said, was a tonal innovator. No one before or since has sounded like Miles, Coltrane, Monk, or Ornette on their respective instruments. It could also be said that each had far-reaching influence—another mark of innovation. Each, in his own way, was a composer, with Monk the most unique; and they all pointed the way to more, not less, freedom in jazz.

More significant, however, are their lasting contributions to musical improvisation, the key ingredient in jazz. Miles blazed the way for improvisations on scales and modes; Monk, on melody; Coltrane, on harmonic structure and eventually modes; and Ornette, on atmosphere or mood of a piece.

While not one of them was the first or only musician to explore these concepts in jazz, they all developed them to the point of universal admiration and recognition in the context of later 20th-century music.

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1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 1

5/26/2020

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Has there ever been a year in jazz like 1958? Jazz was literally in the air—on radio, TV, and the silver screen.

Four jazz icons came to prominence that year. Record bins overflowed with numerous recordings that would become enduring jazz classics. Public awareness of jazz was near an all-time high due to the notoriety of the beatnik jazz subculture, the popularity of West Coast jazz, and the musicality of household-name jazz musicians like Basie, Brubeck, Ellington, Fitzgerald, Getz, Shearing, and Sinatra.

And jazz was big business for the first time since the 1930s.

Four icons—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonius Monk, and Ornette Coleman—came to the fore in 1958, each to a different degree of public recognition and critical acclaim. They not only changed the direction of jazz forever but now rank among the handful of true jazz innovators who preceded them: Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Coleman Hawkins, Earl Hines, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and Lester Young, to name the most prominent.

MILES AHEAD . . . WAY AHEAD
First and foremost, 1958 was the year of trumpeter Miles Davis. Record bins were filled by his prodigious output since his return to jazz in 1954, including his second full-scale masterpiece Walkin’. That album spawned the funky, hard bop jazz of the late 1950s and 1960s, much as his first masterpiece, Birth of the Cool, launched the “cool” West Coast jazz of the 1950s.

More importantly, record bins held the recorded work of his first great quintet: Paul Chambers (bass), John Coltrane (tenor saxophone), Red Garland (piano), Philly Joe Jones (drums), and, of course, Miles himself (trumpet). In terms of impact, these recordings—five albums in all—can be compared to Louis Armstrong’s classic small-group Hot Five and Hot Seven performances of the late 1920s. Miles’s quintet defined anew the potential for small-group jazz and expanded the emotional range from unbridled joy (Judy Garland) to fierce drive (Coltrane) to alternating complex sorrow and crisp rapture (Miles), often in the course of a single tune.

Miles’s switch in 1957 from the small Prestige label to the international conglomerate Columbia reaped handsome dividends for him in 1958—not only in developing name recognition but in providing the means to produce Miles Ahead, an orchestral suite of 10 seamlessly linked concertos with Miles as the single improvising soloist. With its sustained mood of urbane melancholy, Miles Ahead is one of the first jazz instrumental concept albums. (Honors for the first jazz vocal concept album go to Frank Sinatra.)

A collaboration between Miles and arranger Gil Evans, Miles Ahead featured the gentle lyricism of Miles on flugelhorn supported by a symphonic brass and reed choir. Miles’s use of the flugelhorn not only introduced a new sound to jazz but also rescued that instrument from the relative obscurity of marching bands. The album received the equivalent of a Grammy Award in France and an excellent five-star rating in DownBeat, the premier US jazz magazine of the day.

In late 1958, Columbia released the second Davis/Evans collaboration: a magnificent orchestral version of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Like Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess featured a sustained dialog between Miles and the orchestra. Unlike the previous album, it exhibited a wider emotional range with Miles more dominant, partly because of his use of trumpet. It, too, received a five-star award in DownBeat.

Miles and Gil joined forces again on Sketches of Spain and Quiet Nights, but only Spain would maintain the excellence of Miles Ahead and Porgy and Bess. The Davis/Evans collaborations stand out as major contributions to 20th-century music, almost on a par with the classic small-group performances of Miles's first great quintet. His place in the jazz pantheon would have been assured on the basis of the quintet recordings and the orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans. But Miles had just begun.

In early 1958, he appeared as a sideman on the album Somethin' Else, along with nominal leader Julian “Cannonball” Adderley (alto saxophone), Art Blakey (drums), Hank Jones (piano) and Sam Jones (bass). Miles soloed aggressively throughout and dominated the album, producing yet another small-group masterpiece on par with the classic quintet recordings. Somethin' Else received five stars in DownBeat at the time and is regarded today as one of the all-time great jazz albums.

In mid-1958, Miles formed his first great sextet by adding Adderley to his quintet lineup. The group recorded Milestones and again opened up new musical territory, basing certain tunes and improvisations on modes and scales instead of on the song-form harmonic sequences that had been the favored approach for most jazzmen in the 1940s and 1950s. This time, DownBeat awarded Milestones only four stars.

Soon after Milestones, Miles replaced Red Garland with the introspective Bill Evans on piano and Philly Joe Jones with Billy Cobb on drums and produced the second great sextet. This group played at clubs and concerts throughout 1958 and recorded Kind of Blue in early 1959—one of the most celebrated albums in jazz history. The album expanded on the modal approach first revealed on Milestones and emphasized melodic over harmonic variation. Blue received almost instant universal acclaim and once again brought Miles a five-star award in DownBeat.

Without doubt, 1958 was Miles’s year, creatively, critically, and publicly. He emerged from the jazz underground onto the national scene as the year began with a feature story in Time magazine, a clear sign that Miles had arrived.

In midyear, Life International listed Miles as one of the 14 Black people who had achieved a stature of greatness. At year’s end, he had won first place in the DownBeat Critics and Readers Polls on trumpet and shared Jazzman of the Year honors with Count Basie. With general public recognition came financial recognition as well. He commanded concert and club fees comparable to only a handful of jazzmen—Dave Brubeck, Erroll Garner, and Chico Hamilton—while his albums sold at five to 10 times the norm for jazz.

COLTRANE BREAKS THE SOUND BARRIER
The year 1958 was also good for another jazz icon, John Coltrane. While critical acclaim for Coltrane was not universal—there was even hostility in some quarters—and public recognition years off, Coltrane emerged that year as a new force on the tenor saxophone.

Some saw Coltrane, a key member of the great quintet and sextets, as riding Miles’s coattails to undeserved prominence. But others saw something new in his tenor playing: an extension of Coleman Hawkins, perhaps, but somehow different. Coltrane thought in sixteenth notes, while most players—and critics—thought in eighth notes.

In a DownBeat article in late 1958, Ira Gitler dubbed Coltrane’s multi-note, high-energy solos “sheets of sound,” a label that stuck to describe his playing into the early 1960s. Other than a five-star rating in DownBeat for Soultrane—Coltrane’s third outing on Prestige as a leader—most reviewers criticized his approach to jazz.

They typically said his playing on Miles’s albums flawed otherwise perfect recordings. One critic said of Milestones, “Coltrane records material best left in the practice room.” DownBeat’s reviewer of the Newport Jazz Festival that year claimed Miles was hampered by the “angry young tenor” of Coltrane, another label that stuck. The DownBeat Critics Poll at midyear placed him fifth, behind fellow tenorists Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, and Ben Webster.

The negative criticism continued into the 1960s, some reviewers arguing that his playing was “anti-jazz.” But after Coltrane picked up the soprano saxophone and recorded “My Favorite Things” in late 1960—rescuing that instrument from obscurity as Miles had rescued the flugelhorn—and recorded A Love Supreme in 1964, critical opinion turned mostly positive.

Coltrane’s playing continued to evolve amid controversy until his untimely death in 1967. As is so often the case, only after his death were his contributions to jazz seen as truly revolutionary. While never enjoying the same broad public acceptance as Miles, Coltrane was viewed as an inspirational leader for his uncompromising dedication to his art.

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Jazz and the Summer of Love

4/30/2020

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The junction of Haight and Ashbury Streets in San Francisco was the central location of the Summer of Love in 1967.

Believe it or not, John Coltrane and Miles Davis inspired the hippie Summer of Love in 1967. Here's how.

JOHN COLTRANE
The lead guitarist of the Byrds folk rock group, Jim McGuinn (later known as Roger), transposed the short, choppy clusters of Indian classicist Ravi Shankar’s sitar sound to his 12-string Rickenbacker guitar and melded them to a phrase quoted directly from the intro to jazz tenor titan Coltrane’s 1961 composition “India.”

The result: the 1966 hit single “Eight Miles High,” which signposted a future for psychedelic music—variously labeled raga rock, acid rock, space rock—that would dominate American pop charts from 1967 to 1970.[1]

McGuinn was a fan of North Indian folk music, particularly that of Ravi Shankar, but so was John Coltrane. The latter’s interest, however, began several years earlier as he explored folk music from other countries, along with listening closely to the recordings of sitar virtuoso Shankar.[2]

Coltrane’s “India” was recorded at New York’s Village Vanguard in November 1961 and released on the Impressions album (Impulse!) in July 1963. This track, which also featured Eric Dolphy, was Coltrane’s attempt to incorporate everything he had recently learned from his folk studies.

The source of the melody line McGuinn borrowed for “Eight Miles High” was a Vedic chant (recitations from the Indian Vedas, religious scriptures dating back as far as 3,000 years) that Coltrane had heard on the 1952 Folkways LP Religious Music of India.[3]

So—from a 3,000-year-old Vedic chant to Coltrane’s tenor solo to McGuinn’s 12-string offering to God’s ears. How cool is that? Rock on!

Interestingly, “Eight Miles High” never climbed to the top of the charts during its release year, perhaps because it was too complex, too long, too fraught with controversy, and too tepidly promoted. But it had major influence on Laurel Canyon musicians Stephen Stills, David Crosby, Neil Young, and others during the 1967 Summer of Love.

The song has aged splendidly. In 1991, it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked it number 151 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and in March 2005, Q magazine ranked it number 50 on its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks Ever.

MILES DAVIS
Just as “Eight Miles High” was based on a venerable religious sound by way of a prominent jazz instrumentalist, so too was “White Rabbit.” This 1967 counterculture anthem was based on a centuries-old Spanish religious processional song by way of trumpeter Miles Davis and orchestra arranger Gil Evans from their album Sketches of Spain. In this instance, the interpreting rock composer was Jefferson Airplane lead singer Grace Slick.

A year before she joined Airplane, Slick wrote “White Rabbit” at home on an upright piano at the end of an LSD trip during which she listened to Sketches of Spain and its “Saeta” track for 24 hours straight.[4]

“Saeta,” as described in the album’s liner notes, is:

One of the oldest religious types of music in Andalusa, [the“Saeta,” or “arrow of the song”] is usually sung without accompaniment during the Holy Week religious procession in Seville. It tells of the Passion of Christ and is usually addressed to the image of the crucified Christ that is carried in the march. . . . The singer is usually a woman, stands on a balcony overlooking the [stopped] procession . . . while the “Saeta” is being sung. A fanfare of trumpets gives the signal to move on.

Gil Evans has recreated the [music for] the street procession, and Miles has the role of the woman aiming the “arrow of the song.”[5]

Unaware of the above, Grace Slick set lyrics to “Saeta” around Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, aligning Alice’s dream world with the drug subculture Grace knew all too well—a hookah-smoking caterpillar, pills that make you smaller or bigger, and a mind-altering mushroom.

She took her cleverly titled “White Rabbit” to her Great Society bandmates, and they quickly developed a six-minute version for their stage shows, replete with the Spanish march and echoes of Ravel’s crescendo-building bolero as implied in Sketches of Spain.

Grace soon left Great Society for Jefferson Airplane, taking her “White Rabbit” (and commanding siren voice) along with her, just in time for her new band to record a 2.7-minute version of the song on their second album, Surrealistic Pillow.

Released in January 1967, the album climbed the charts, reaching number three in August—not bad, considering the year’s dominating album was the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The “White Rabbit” single was released in May. According to Rob Hughes of Classic Rock magazine, the song was meaningful to the time:

If one song came to define the Haight-Ashbury counter-culture itself, it was Airplane’s “White Rabbit.” Released in the loved-up summer of ’67, its heavy allusions to the altered states in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, along with its exhortations to “feed your head,” seemed to invite a whole new generation to trip out on the pleasures of psychedelics. For those for whom love, peace, and LSD were inseparable, it became an anthem.[6]

Nonetheless, the song’s reception was somewhat lukewarm and it spent a limited time on the charts, peaking at number eight, perhaps because it was controversial and not a hot dance number (try boogieing to a bolero march). “White Rabbit” fell to the bottom of Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, landing at number 478, but like “Eight Miles High,” it too has enjoyed a profitable afterlife, largely due to its many uses on Hollywood film soundtracks[7] and its tie-in with one of the great literary works in the English language.

All of this makes for a fascinating juxtaposition, most would agree: Miles Davis as the “Saeta” singer in Sketches of Spain, and Grace Slick as the “White Rabbit” voice in Surrealistic Pillow.

CODA
For those interested in a transcription of Coltrane’s “India” improvisation from the Impressions album, please contact Coltrane expert Andrew White at Andrew’s Musical Enterprises Inc., 4830 S. Dakota Ave., NE, Washington, DC 20017. Ask for Coltrane transcription number 198.

NOTES

Rob Chapman, Psychedelia and Other Colors (London: Faber & Faber, 2015), 153.
Lewis Porter, John Coltrane: His Life and Music (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1998), 209.
Ibid; Chapman, Psychedelia and Other Colors, 154.
Rob Hughes, “The Story Behind the Song: White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane,” Classic Rock, March 5, 2019.
Liner Notes, Nat Hentoff, Miles Davis—Sketches of Spain, orchestra arranged and conducted by Gil Evans, Columbia Records, CD, CK 40578, 1960.
Hughes, “Story Behind the Song.”
Ibid.

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President Carter’s White House Jazz Festival

3/31/2020

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Saxophonist Dexter Gordon and pianist Herbie Hancock on the South Lawn of the White House. June 18, 1978.

In my opinion, the grandest assemblage of jazz musicians at the White House occurred on the night of Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday, April 29, 1969, when President Nixon awarded Duke the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor (as discussed in my book Ellington at the White House 1969).

But others claim that President Carter’s South Lawn gathering some nine years later, billed as the first White House jazz festival, tops the Duke event by a country mile.

Frankly, it’s hard to disagree: Carter’s introductory speech and the gasping, jaw-dropping lineup of jazz stars were exemplary.

The New Orleans Young Tuxedo Brass Band open the festivities.

On June 18, 1978, Carter stepped up on the specially erected stage on the South Lawn of the White House and—facing the 800 people gathered before him (musicians and their families and invited guests)—gave the most enlightened and heartfelt speech by any US president on America’s own music. And he did so extemporaneously:

You are welcome to the first White House jazz festival. I hope we have some more in the future. This is an honor for me—to walk through this crowd and meet famous jazz musicians and the families of those who are no longer with us, but whose work and whose spirit and whose beautiful music will live forever in our country.

If there ever was an indigenous art form, one that is special and peculiar to the United States and represents what we are as a country, I would say that it’s jazz. Starting late in the last century, there was a unique combination of two characteristics that have made America what it is: individuality and a free expression of one’s inner spirit.

In an almost unconstrained way, vivid, alive, aggressive, innovative on the one hand, and the severest form of self-discipline on the other, never compromising quality as the human spirit bursts forward in an expression of song.

At first, this jazz form was not well accepted in respectable circles. I think there was an element of racism perhaps at the beginning, because most of the famous early performers were black. And particularly in the South to have black and white musicians playing together was not a normal thing. And I believe that this particular form of music—of art—has done as much as anything to break down those barriers and to let us live and work and play and make beautiful music together.

And the other thing that kind of separated jazz musicians from the upper levels of society was the reputation jazz musicians had. Some people thought they stayed up late at night, drank a lot, and did a lot of carousing around. And it took a few years for society to come together. I don’t know. I’m not going to say, as President, whether the jazz musicians became better behaved or the rest of society caught up with them in drinking, carousing around, and staying up late at night.

But the fact is that over a period of years the quality of jazz could not be constrained. It could not be unrecognized. And it swept not only our country, but is perhaps the favorite export product of the United States to Europe and in other parts of the world.

I began listening to jazz when I was quite young—on the radio, listening to performances broadcast from New Orleans. And later when I was a young officer in the navy, in the early ’40s, I would go to Greenwich Village to listen to the jazz performers who came there. And with my wife later on, we’d go down to New Orleans and listen to individual performances on Sunday afternoon on Royal Street, sit in on the jam sessions that lasted for hours and hours.

And then later, of course, we began to learn the individual performers through the phonograph records and also on the radio itself. This has had a very beneficial effect on my life. And I’m very grateful for what all these remarkable performers have done.

Twenty-five years ago, the first Newport Jazz Festival was held. So this is a celebration of an anniversary and a recognition of what it meant to bring together such a wide diversity of performers and different elements of jazz in its broader definition that collectively is even a much more profound accomplishment than the superb musicians and the individual types of jazz standing alone.

And it’s with a great deal of pleasure that I—as president of the United States—welcome tonight superb representatives of this music form. Having performers here who represent the history of music throughout this century, some quite old in years, still young at heart, others newcomers to jazz who have brought an increasing dynamism to it, and a constantly evolving, striving for perfection as the new elements of jazz are explored.

George Wein has put together this program, and I’d like to welcome him and all the superb performers whom I met individually earlier today. And I know that we all have in store for us a wonderful treat as some of the best musicians of our country—of the world—show us what it means to be an American and to join in the pride that we feel for those who’ve made jazz such a wonderful part of our lives. Thank you very much.[1]

This enlightened, heartfelt speech electrified all who heard it that day, either on the South Lawn or on the radio, or read it the next day in a newspaper or a month later in a magazine. President Carter’s five-minute speech first touched on a cornerstone of jazz—the blurry line creative musicians walk between freedom and discipline and, by extension, between instinct and theory, individualism and collectivism, improvisation and composition, voice and technique.

He next touched on two of the several reasons that slowed acceptance of jazz as an art form in this country—namely, racism and a musical elitism that categorized jazz as roadhouse or speakeasy entertainment.

But it was Carter’s personal recollection of his early jazz experiences that piqued the most interest. In fact, to many, it came as a shock: Jimmy Carter?! The peanut farmer from Georgia known to be a classical devotee (by those in the know) or maybe a Southern rock enthusiast (by those not in the know)—was a jazz fan? And an avid one at that! Who knew?

And the lineup of talent on the South Lawn that memorable day was beyond “Wow!” From the daughter of bluesman W. C. Handy and 90-year-old pianist Eubie Blake to avant-gardists Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, and everyone in between. Here’s a full list:

Piano	Saxophone	Trumpet	Drums
Eubie Blake Chick Corea Gil Evans Herbie Hancock Dick Hyman John Lewis George Russell Billy Taylor Cecil Taylor McCoy Tyner Mary Lou Williams Teddy Wilson	Benny Carter Ornette Coleman Stan Getz Dexter Gordon Illinois Jacquet Gerry Mulligan Sam Rivers Sonny Rollins Zoot Sims	Doc Cheatham Roy Eldridge Dizzy Gillespie Joe Newman Clark Terry	Louis Bellson Denardo Coleman Jo Jones Max Roach Tony Williams

Bass	Guitar	Vibes	Singers
Ray Brown Ron Carter Milt Hinton Charles Mingus	George Benson	Lionel Hampton	Pearl Bailey Katharine Handy Lewis

Saxophonist Dexter Gordon awaits his turn as trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie states his case.

President Carter speaks to Cecil Taylor after his performance. "I've never seen anyone play that way. Does Horowitz know about you?"

The country was denied the opportunity to learn just how much of a jazz fan Carter really was when he didn’t win a second term in office. His book White House Diary hit the shelves in 2010, and I quickly purchased a copy to see if he had expanded on his fascination with jazz. Sadly, the president from Plains had surprisingly little to say about the indigenous art form that best represented our country.

He acknowledges “the big event held on the South Lawn” as “the best party we’ve ever had—the Newport Jazz Festival twenty-fifth anniversary. About 800 people came, and we had a collection of jazz musicians that was really remarkable.”

But that’s it, except for the anecdotes about himself and his daughter: “I went on stage with Dizzy Gillespie, and joined him in a rendition of ‘Salt Peanuts.’ It was a high point in my life when the New York Times complimented my singing,” and “Amy performed on the violin, which was a real hit.”[2]

Regarding a jazz concert in the East Room featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, and Earl “Fatha” Hines, the president tells us: “It brought back old times when I was an avid jazz fan.”[3] Is it possible that the former chief executive was only a fan in his youth, his interest waning as he grew older, subsumed by his burgeoning love of opera and symphonic music?

The president’s ardor for the European import is abundantly clear in White House Diary as he rhapsodizes about classical performers who came to the White House—pianist Vladimer Horowitz, opera singers Roberta Peters and Leontyne Price, and cellist Slava Rostropovich—and takes forays with First Lady Rosalynn to hear classical expositions at the Kennedy Center and Metropolitan Opera.

He also tells us (which many knew at the time): “In the inner White House office, we established a high-fidelity sound system, and for eight or ten hours a day I listened to classical music.”[4]

So which was the best jazz happening at the White House? The Ellington tribute in 1969? Or the Carter South Lawn jazz festival in 1978?

We have the music for the first event available from Blue Note Records in 1969 All-Star White House Tribute to Duke Ellington. Not so the latter. NPR recorded the music but has not released it. So what’s the hold up?

NOTES

Recording courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 136, 202.
Ibid., 136.
Ibid., 12.

All photos courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.

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Another Happy Musical Accident from John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman

NOTES

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 7

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 6

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 5

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 4

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 3

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 2

1958: The Best Year in Jazz, Part 1

Jazz and the Summer of Love

NOTES

President Carter’s White House Jazz Festival

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