In the first part of this blog series, I talked about the collection of 640 jazz LPs I acquired in the 1954–1984 time frame and how I discovered that half of them consisted of multiple buys from 36 artists—30 from trumpeter Miles Davis down to 5 each from saxophonists Chico Freeman and Oliver Lake.

Here, I look at the remaining half of my collection and discuss several of the singular, transcendent albums. They're listed in no particular order.

Oscar Peterson | “Satch” and “Josh” | Pablo
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The “Satch” and “Josh” are none other than Oscar Peterson and Count Basie. Two dissimilar pianists could not have been found on the planet to cut a duo record, backed by a superb rhythm section: Freddie Green (guitar), Ray Brown (bass), and Louis Bellson (drums).

​Peterson’s technique is complex and prolific. Basie’s is simple and sparse. Peterson is arabesques, fluttering appoggiaturas, and grace notes, and Basie is bare bones. And does it ever work. Why? Despite differences, they both share an atomic sense of time and a fathomless understanding of the blues. In fact, 6 of the 10 songs on the album are jointly composed blues, and the rest are standards. A more delightful, one-of-a-kind record is not to be had. 

Woody Herman | Woody Herman–1963 | Phillips

Following on the heels of the big band revival of the late 1950s led by Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Maynard Ferguson, Herman launched the Fourth Herd in 1963, one of several bands he fronted over his musical career.

This latest edition featured aggressive soloists (Bill Chase, Sal Nistico, Phil Wilson) and current jazz standards “Watermelon Man” (Hancock), “Better Get It in Your Soul” (Mingus), and “Days of Wine and Roses” (Mancini). I saw this flat-out exciting aggregation at Basin Street East in New York City on my honeymoon.

 
These are but a tiny few of the exceptional treasures from my jazz LP collection. Nonetheless, I think you’ll agree with my conclusion from part 1: Over a 30-year period beginning in 1954, I was a fan with eclectic tastes, preferring a diverse mix of traditionalists (Powell, Green, Gillespie) and avant-garde musicians (Grachan Moncur III, Loft Jazz Artists, Carla Bley).
 
Thank you for accompanying me on my trip down memory lane. 

From 1954 to 1984, I acquired 640 jazz vinyl LPs before switching over to the more convenient CDs to stay current with the music I enjoyed most. Only recently, with the help of Mike Petillo, did I give a sense of order to my collection by arranging the LPs alphabetically by jazz artist on the online resource discogs.com.

There it was, right before my eyes, my collection history as a young man, a lot of which I had forgotten, largely because as of late, I had only sporadically selected an LP or two every so often to play. Now, thanks to discogs.com, I could take a nostalgic jazz trip down memory lane.

Of course, I remembered that I was the sort of aficionado who would fall madly in love with a particular artist’s music and then snap up every subsequent album he or she produced, whenever and wherever I could. And perhaps, not too much of a surprise, as can be seen below, Miles Davis tops the list with 29 LPs.

​Looking at the rest of the top nine, I discovered a number of—what shall we call them—experimentalists, new thing, new wave, avant-garde musicians. 

Obviously, I fell in love with the music of an eclectic mix of jazz people:

In addition to the above top nine favorites, I greatly admired other choice artists but purchased fewer of their LPs, numbering in the 8 to 5 range as listed below:

​I didn’t provide a breakdown of this support by musical category (jazz, classical, for example). The data for those categories is available at the Foundation Center in Washington, DC,* but coaxing the information out of the files, while straightforward, is inordinately time/labor intensive.

Nonetheless, I was able to obtain jazz and classical funding for selected years, which I share below.
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Summing up, foundation financial support for jazz, while slow to develop, exhibited significant growth beginning in the 1990s and on through the first decade of the new century. Annual outlays that once totaled less than $100,000 in the 1970s, grew to $500,000 in the late 1980s, then to $1.5 million in the 1990s, and finally to as much as $15 million in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

A hundred or so years after its humble birth, jazz had finally received its just due in a currency understood by everyone. 

Looked at another way, foundation monies that more or less kept pace with government support in the early years finally broke away in the mid-1990s, becoming four or five times greater. Jazz had thus become, like classical music, a principality of grants and commissions, prompting pianist Mulgrew Miller to declare jazz “interview music”—shorthand for the process of obtaining funds for musical projects by answering grant givers’ questions. 

But now that jazz is bona fide “interview music,” is it receiving its fair share of foundation largesse? The amount of foundation monies given to symphony orchestras in two relatively recent years, 2003 and 2005, was $156 million and $180 million, respectively. Both nearly 12 times more than jazz received in those years. Twelve times!

While it may not be desirable to compare apples to oranges, the European apple must taste a lot sweeter to foundations than the American orange. If the comparison is made to classical music as a whole (including individual and ensemble projects and opera), and not just to the symphony orchestra component, the funding differential would be some 20 times greater. America’s classical music, it would appear, is still . . . classical. 

With these facts in hand, the way forward for advocates of America’s own music is to champion for the arts in general and the performing arts specifically, while making the case that jazz has a way to go before it reaches an equitable share of the foundation pie.  

*Coda
The data on foundations is based on my research (both off-line and online) of materials available at the Foundation Center, Washington, DC, which are now available at Candid, the successor entity to the Foundation Center, located in New York City.

Coda Coda
The information provided and the conclusions drawn above are out of date by some eight years. I share this data with the hope someone will pursue an update. Overwhelmed by current projects, I cannot do so. However, I will provide research tips and collected materials to someone interested in so doing. Contact me if you’re interested.
​

​As we learned in part 1 of this blog, director Francis Ford Coppola put the score for the Heart musical in Tom Waits’s hands. The “beyond” singer-songwriter then tapped former collaborator Bones Howe, and together they assembled an all-star cast of Hollywood musicians, mostly jazz guys, notably trumpeter Jack Sheldon, tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards, and drummer Shelley Manne. 

None of the film’s stars—Terry Garr and Frederick Forrest, who play uncertain lovers Frannie and Hank, or Nastassja Kinski and Raul Julia, who play their prospective lures—sing. Instead, like a Greek chorus of sorts, Waits voices Hank (as does trumpeter Sheldon) and surprising choice Crystal Gayle voices Frannie (tenor sax man Edwards does as well, instrumentally). 

Here are the songs, start to finish.

“Opening Montage: Once upon a Town/The Wages of Love”
After a piano intro, Crystal and Tom trade vocal statements on the establishing “Once upon a Town.” They harmonize the closing line, and against expectations, their sweet-and-sour, honey-and-sandpaper voices blend perfectly. Arranger/conductor Alcivar had taken advantage of his Hollywood budget to hire more musicians (than he would have on a typical Waits project) to create a Nelson Riddle–like lush string ambient to surround the singers. 

Tom and Crystal pair again with this advice—“Don’t Spend Your Wages on Love”—backed by a big swing band (orchestrated by Alcivar) that features a driving sax solo by Teddy Edwards. This contrasting medley of Gayle/Waits duets sets the film’s story in motion.

“Is There Any Way out of This Dream?”
Next up, a lovely waltz, a song form Waits had used several times before. This infectious jazz quartet waltz features great brushwork by drummer Manne. Crystal reflects upon the ways in which Frannie’s life has fallen short of expectations and captures the vague discontent that suffuses the film. “Summer is draping its feet / I feel so incomplete / Is there any way out of this dream?”  

​“Picking Up After You” 
​Waits biographer Jacobs succinctly stated:
​

As the love combatants express their growing disdain for each other, trumpeter Sheldon pokes musical fun–a trumpet growl here, a mocking wah wah there—before both singers triumphantly conclude: “Someone I’ll Pick Up After You.”

“Old Boyfriends” 
This lament, piercingly sung by Crystal, and backed by good electric guitar work by Dennis Budimer with bass and drums, makes romantic disappointment palpable. Waits originally wrote it for himself, but sung by a woman, it takes on more power. “In a drawer where I keep my old boyfriends.”

“Broken Bicycles”
Tom, backed only by piano and drums, reminisces about the discarded accoutrements of youth, asking, “Somebody must have an orphanage for all these things nobody wants anymore,” like broken hearts and busted relationships. Tom has said that Coppola shot a separate scene with despondent Hank in the junkyard. They tried “Bicycles” against the scene, and it worked and stayed in the film. Sounds of chirping crickets and a distant train whistle enhance the song’s nostalgic pull. 

“I Beg Your Pardon”
Tom’s lovers’ plea for forgiveness and reconciliation is set in an expanded combo with vibes and harp, on top of an orchestral string cushion. “I’ll give you Boardwalk and Park Place and all of my hotels.” This time the horns are allocated significant solo space, and Sheldon and Edwards admirably exploit the resource.

Both solos are gems, with Teddy effectively using his tenor’s high register to sound alto-like. The horn men improvise simultaneous phrases as the song fade.

“Little Boy Blue”
The spell of sadness is broken by a medium up-tempo jazz romp, organ by Ronnie Barron, finger snapping by someone, as Waits (as Hank’s conscious) prods the moping Hank to get off his ass and get out in the world. Accept it. She’s gone. 

“Instrumental Montage: The Tango/Circus Girl”
Thrilled at the opportunity to do a tango, Waits (or his piano sub Pete Jolly) pounds out some heavy, weird Elton John chords on piano, drummer Larry Bunker kicks the hesitant Latin rhythm as Gene Cipriano on tenor sax raucously boils away in dramatic Argentine fashion. A good time was had by all.

The tango fades off into what can only be described as a circus oom-pah band complete with accordion, harmonica, brass, and reeds. If Coppola wanted a break from the film’s sustained plaintive mood, he certainly got it.

“You Can’t Unring a Bell”
This spoken- word chant, with grunts and throaty laughs, over a walking bass and wildly played tympani by Victor Feldman, reminds one of Tom’s earlier word jazz raps. Yet, in retrospect, this might be Tom’s first step into the percussive, odd instrument realm of his second period. Surprisingly, it comes smack dab in the middle of the most sentimental music he has ever recorded.

“This One’s from the Heart”
This one’s simply gorgeous. Tom and Crystal muse on the splendor and the suffering the character’s relationship encompasses; they know that without each other, life is mundane and colorless and needs to be tempered with the occasional stiff drink.

​Sheldon’s trumpet shadows Tom’s vocal offerings while Teddy’s sax accompanies Crystal’s. Sheldon’s insinuating trumpet reminds one of Harry “Sweets “ Edison, whose Harmon-muted trumpet commentary was so prevalent on classic Sinatra records. Producer Howe remembered:

Howe had it absolutely right. “This One’s from the Heart” was recorded at the last session along with the score’s other centerpiece “Picking Up After You.”  

“Take Me Home” 
​During that final session, Waits recalled: 
​

The song is a gentle call for reconciliation, an acknowledgment that no one is perfect and that only through the eyes of love do our flaws become invisible. Coppola got more than he bargained for. Backed sparingly by Waits’s piano, Crystal movingly sings, “Take me home, you silly boy / Put your arms around me / I’m so sorry that I broke your heart.” 
 
“Presents”
This is a pretty little thing, a coda of sorts, an instrumental paraphrase of “Take Me Home” that features celeste, glockenspiel, harp and bass, only a minute long. The musical story has come full circle.

Despite its considerable charm, Heart was unable to overcome its wafer-thin story and less-than-magnetic appeal of its male leads, sinking at the box office and taking Coppola’s American Zoetrope studio with it. While the film itself was almost universally panned, few had a bad word to say about the soundtrack. An Oscar nomination in 1982 proved the point, but Waits’s score lost out to that year’s box office sensation Victor/Victoria. 

The soundtrack LP was released in 1982 (over Tom’s objection that it was too “commercial Hollywood”) as Tom Waits and Crystal Gayle Sing Music from One from the Heart (Sony), and on CD in 1989, neither release causing much excitement. Finally, in conjunction with a new DVD release of the movie in 2004, the soundtrack was returned to the stores, complete with a couple of never-released bonus tracks.  

The ultimate tribute to the score is the number of times Heart’s songs have been recorded by others. As of 2019, “Broken Bicycles” had been covered nine times; “Take Me Home,” six; “Little Boy Blue,” four; “Is There Anyway out of This Dream?” and “Old Boyfriends,” each twice; and “I Beg Your Pardon,” You Can’t Unring a Bell,” and “This One’s from the Heart,” once.

​Listen to the new CD/DVD, and maybe you’ll agree that nobody can write a more heartbreaking ballad than Tom Waits.

1. Jay S. Jacobs, Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits (Toronto: ECW Press, 2006), 107.
2. Ibid., 108.
3. Ibid., 109.​​​
   

Tom Waits is an American trans-genre original, a category unto himself, neither pop folk nor alternative contemporary nor rock (although he has won Grammys in all three). Maybe he’s jazz. The arc of his career suggests as much—always experimenting. DownBeat magazine deposits him in the beyond category—that sounds about right.

The voice alone is beyond category and, despite best efforts by journalists over the years, beyond accurate description. It has been variously characterized as a scabrous rasp, garbage crusher, low growl (like Satchmo without the joy), smashed foghorn, bullfrog croak, hungover whisper, hemorrhage, cross between a mellifluous baritone and a heavy equipment breakdown, and born old smoking. 

Waits himself has said, “My voice is still a barking dog at best.”

As his fans know only too well, Waits career comes in two parts: the early years (the “complacent years,” as Tom has called them) through 1982 and everything thereafter (the “adventurous years”). No one would disagree with Tom here. Critics have called this later music disembodied ham-radio, savage-yard symphonies, lunatic cabaret, taxonomically confounding vaudeville, and stone-age blues. 

But the early years—the years when we first got to know him—were anything but complacent. Sorry, Tom, but many of your fans respectfully disagree. Except for the first album, Closing Time (Elektra, 1973), the music from this period is a mélange of jazz, heart-throbbing ballads, and neo-beat poetry. 

As the New Yorker magazine said in 1976, his soulful serenades reflected a Kerouac/Bukowski–like landscape

Almost all of his songs relied on pretty melodies, and some were unabashedly romantic. Go back and listen to his early albums, The Heart of Saturday Night (Elektra, 1974) through to Heartattack and Vine (Asylum, 1982). There are one or two love songs on each and every one—songs that wife Kathleen Brennan would call grand weepers (as opposed to grim reapers, the flip side of the Waits coin). 

One from the Heart corked the early-period bottle in 1982. This movie and soundtrack album, like no other in the Waits oeuvre, illuminates the romantic facet of the Waits diamond. Tom got a huge assist from two unlikely sources—film director Francis Ford Coppola and the serendipitous, genre-busting addition of country singer Crystal Gayle, who, with her pure country voice, limned Waits melodies better than he could himself and, in duets with Tom, wedded that tear in her throat with the gravel in his.  

In the spring of 1980, Waits learned that director Coppola, who had just released Apocalypse Now, wanted him to score his latest film, a romantic trifle about Hank (Frederick Forrest) and Frannie (Terri Garr), a couple whose relationship had soured. They drift apart and wind up in the arms of exotic new partners (played by Nastassja Kinski and Raul Julia), but of course get back together again. 

This lover’s tango is set against the glowing backdrop of a Las Vegas Strip that Coppola had constructed on a studio soundstage at a horrendous cost (the same studio where Michael Powell had shot his fantasy The Thief of Baghdad—Coppola’s favorite film—40 years before). Francis did not conceive of Heart as a traditional Hollywood musical; none of the stars would actually sing. 

He wanted a kind of running lyrical explanation to move the story forward. Waits would write songs that expressed the inner feelings of the characters; Tom would sing Hank and (initially) Bette Midler would sing Frannie. It was Waits’s duet with Midler on Foreign Affairs (Elektra, 1977) that inspired Coppola’s vision: a lounge operetta with piano, bass, drums, strings, jazz horns, and vocal commentary.

Waits had contributed songs to films before, Stallone’s Paradise Alley and Altman’s A Wedding among them, but Heart was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Coppola had put the entire score in his hands and told him: “Anything you write that deals with the subjects of love, romance, jealousy, breakups can find its way into the film.”

​Waits elaborated:

Waits first enlisted long-term collaborator Bones Howe, who had produced and managed sound on his first six albums. Together they assembled an all-star cast of Hollywood musicians, mostly jazz guys they had worked with before—notably, trumpeter Jack Sheldon, tenor saxophonist Teddy Edwards, and drummer Shelley Manne. 

Today “legendary” often appears before Sheldon’s name; due in part to his prominent long-running gig on the Merv Griffith Show and his own network TV show, Run Buddy Run. But it is his signature trumpet sound—lyrical, mid-range, striving—that has brought him accolades. His playing is sometimes mistaken for the early-career, romantic excursions of trumpeter Miles Davis. 

Teddy Edwards, a saxophonist in the mold of Dexter Gordon (but mellower) simply got better as he got older, and was playing at his peak at the time of the Waits recording. 

Widely admired for his crisp, precise sound and his ability to create a colorful tonal palette from his drum kit, Shelly Manne was a favorite of Waits, particularly for his drum work behind Peggy Lee on “Fever.” Manne played drums on two previous Waits albums, and their collaboration on “Pasties and a G-String” and “Barber Shop” are word-jazz classics. 

Jazz pianist/vibist Victor Feldman and organist Ronnie Barron, who had appeared on Waits most recent album, came along for the ride, as did Waits newcomers—jazzmen all—vibraphonist Emil Richards, drummer Larry Bunker, and pianist Pete Jolly, who would man the piano chair so Tom could concentrate on his singing. Lastly, as he did on two recent Waits albums, Bob Alcivar arranged and conducted the string orchestra.    

But Heart’s female voice proved to be elusive. Midler wasn’t available. Then God intervened. Kathleen Brennan (who later became Waits's wife) suggested country singer Crystal Gayle, the younger sister of Nashville legend Loretta Lynn. Crystal had 10 albums to her credit and had broken out nationally with her crossover mega hit in 1978: “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” (eventually, astonishingly, one of the 10 most performed songs of the 20th century).

Her voice was undeniably sumptuous (but soulless some said) and seemingly at odds with Waits's grizzled growl and the urban squalor of his whiskey-soaked compositions. 

This didn’t faze Kathleen. She’d recently heard Crystal’s rendition of the Julie London standard “Cry Me a River” off her 1978 release When I Dream (United Artists Records) and was impressed with the strength and purity of the young singer’s voice. 

Check out next month’s blog—part 2—for a list of Waits’s 12 songs in this most underappreciated movie soundtrack, along with the reasons for the film’s disappointing failure at the box office.
​

1. James Stevenson, “Blues,” The New Yorker, December 27, 1976, anthologized in Mac Montandon, Innocent When You Dream: The Tom Waits Reader (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005), 20.
2. Jay S. Jacobs, Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits (Toronto: ECW Press, 2006), 105.
   
   

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​Brothers devotes one half of his book to Ellington, the other half to the Beatles. My review concerns only the former. The author concludes the Ellington section thus:

 
And he didn’t give them credit.
 
As Brothers documents, with but a few exceptions, Ellington did not write the songs, instrumentals, and extended pieces we associate with him—some 1,500 copyrighted pieces. He borrowed fragments or fully formed melodies from his sidemen without giving them credit.

He poached from nearly everyone in the Ellington camp, from Bubber Miley, Otto Hardwick, Barney Bigard, Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams, Ben Webster, Rex Stewart, Juan Tizol, Lawrence Brown to Billy Strayhorn.
 
And, yes, that would mean some of your favorite songs—“In a Sentimental Mood,” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “I’m Beginning to See the Light”—and many more were written by someone other than Duke.

And that goes for your favorite instrumentals, like “East St. Louis Toodle-O,” “Black and Tan Fantasy,” and “Cotton Tail”—way too many to mention here. For the complete story, I highly recommend Mr. Brothers’s well-researched and well-written book.
 
This is not to say that Ellington never composed anything of value on his own. He did, for example, the famous three-part introduction to “Mood Indigo,” “Solitude,” and “Amad” and “Depk” in the Far East Suite, but as Brothers makes clear, Duke’s compositions were the exception to the rule. 

​In addition, according to Brothers,
​

​So why did his bandsmen all go along with it?

Security.
 
Ellington’s band was not only the most stable over those 40-plus years, but also—for most sidemen—the highest paying. Ellington’s ecosystem, as Brothers makes clear, included “giving raises and privileges to musicians who supplied their melodies, riffs, and pieces. . . . [Duke] preferred to keep the fluid dynamics of interactive creativity in the shadowy background.”

And for the most part, carping aside, his silent partners went along with it. A steady, well-paying job in a world-class orchestra was worth it.
 
The collective Ellington output remains unscathed; all that changes by the revelations in Help! is how we view Ellington. He is no longer the genius composer but the genius collaborator. Sadly, a lesser category with diminished importance and cachet than the former.
 
And it must be said, the new revelations do not tarnish in the least Ellington the conductor, pianist, talent scout, entertainer, agent, mastermind, and advocate.
 
An interesting exercise would be to assume that Ellington was the composer of every piece of music associated with his name. And then compare and rank the entire output with that of his American composer peers George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Virgil Thomson, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Aaron Copland, Harold Arlen, Richard Rodgers, Hoagland Carmichael, and anybody else you would want to name.

I would rank the collective Duke at the top along with Gershwin and Rodgers.
 
As for Duke being, as is often said, jazz’s finest composer, does he now take a lesser place to Jelly Roll Morton or Fats Waller or Charles Mingus or John Lewis or anybody else?
 
All that can be said for certain, using contemporary terminology, is that Duke was CEO, COO, CFO, and President of Marketing and Public Relations of Ellington Inc. for over four decades.
 
CODA
According to Brothers, “Ellington’s career inevitably divides into two parts—before Strayhorn and after”—that is, before Strayhorn joined Ellington in 1939 and afterward.

​But there was a third part—after Strayhorn’s passing in 1967 and before Ellington’s death in 1974—a seven-year period during which the maestro produced at least three major works: The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, Latin American Suite, and New Orleans Suite.

​Brothers did not evaluate or discuss this period, a shortcoming that could be addressed in the forthcoming paperback edition.
 
CODA CODA
It is my hope that Brothers’s in-depth look at collaboration in the Ellington realm will encourage other scholars to do the same for Duke’s peer composers mentioned above—George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, et al. Only then, can we reach a final judgment on Ellington’s compositional identity and practices.
 
To find out more about Thomas Brothers’s book Help!: The Beatles, Duke Ellington, and the Magic of Collaboration, click here.

  
Back during the recording industries salad days—pre-Napster, pre-streaming—when LPs and CDs were still king of the hill, label companies routinely screwed recording artists out of their royalties from album sales. Dorothy Carvello in her recent tell-all book, Anything for a Hit, reveals how one major label, Atlantic, scammed its musician roster and, by implication, how the other big labels did as well. [1]
 
Under the guise of the so-called “free goods” clause in their artist contracts, the royalty thieves conducted their dirty business in broad daylight using three methods.

 
1. CUTOUTS
For those who remember LP jackets with sliced corners—cutouts—found in bargain bins probably never gave a thought as to how they got there. Well, when a label had an album with weak sales performance, they would cut a corner off the album covers or punch a hole in them and give the unsold albums to an intermediary for pennies on the dollar, who would then sell them to retailers.

In turn, the stores would sell them at a discount (relative to list price) and give a percentage to the label, who would pocket the money (sans store share, of course)—but nothing to the artist.
 
2. OVERRUNS
When the pressing plant pressed more LP jackets or CD plastic covers than records, the label would order more vinyl or disc plastic to slip into the jacket or box. As before, overruns went to the bargain bins.

And guess who pocketed the money? In this instance, however, these were top sellers by big name artists, not low-selling flop remainders. Much, much more lucrative, and the artists didn’t get a dime.

3. CLEANS
According to Carvello, the worst offense was selling “cleans,” albums meant strictly for promotional purposes and often so designated. The promotional cleans were capped by a certain number per the artist contract.

But labels pressed a lot more—who’s to know how many—and funneled them to retailers who sold them at full price. All parties (label, distributor, retailer) got their share except the artists—again, no royalties. [2]
 

With the above in mind, what is the royalty situation today for artists, where some 85 percent of industry sales are by digital downloads of one sort or another, paid streaming subscriptions being the largest component of the total at 47 percent? [3]

​If anyone knows, please let me know.
 
CODA
Ms. Carvello’s book is a frank, insider account of the music biz in the late 1980s to early 2000s. She was the first female A&R executive at Atlantic Records and one of the first at RCA and Columbia. Based on her book, many music business executives of the time were totally oblivious to the woman’s movement that began in the late 1960s and its demands for respectful treatment in the workplace.

Absent a #MeToo movement, Ms. Carvello nonetheless survived to tell the tale and set a path forward for women to contribute to the music industry.

1. Dorothy Carvello, Anything for a Hit: An A&R Woman’s Story of Surviving the Music industry (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2018).
2. Ibid., 57–59.
3. “The Story of the Music Industry in One Chart,” Rolling Stone, July 2018. See my take on this article here.

​

One of the grandest events ever held at the White House occurred 50 years ago on Duke Ellington’s seventieth birthday, April 29, 1969. It began with a banquet in the State dining room, followed by a ceremony in the East Room, where Duke received the Medal of Freedom from President Nixon, who then, at the piano, accompanied guests in a joyous rendition of “Happy Birthday.”
 
Next up, a 90-minute concert by jazz all-stars playing 27 Ellington tunes. This was followed by a jam session (guests, military, all stars) that lasted until two in the morning. A summary of this stellar event excerpted from my White House jazz book The Best Gig in Town appears below.

ELLINGTON ALL-STARS BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE*
On the evening of April 29, 1969, President Nixon awarded the Medal of Freedom to Duke Ellington—the first time in United States history anyone in jazz had been so honored. To pay tribute to the maestro, a stunning array of jazz greats assembled in the East Room of the White House (another first) and performed twenty-seven Ellington songs in a ninety-minute concert.

This stellar evening will undoubtedly be remembered as one of the most glittering in the history of the White House.[1]

Both Ellington and jazz had to travel a decades-long journey to have their music heard at the presidential mansion. Born at the turn of the twentieth century in New Orleans and its environs, jazz spread slowly at first and then caught like wildfire in the 1920s as it swept through major cities, including Washington, DC. Yet one spot in the nation’s capital remained impenetrable to this new music for forty years.

Starting in the 1930s, Ellington took steps to bring jazz to the White House, arranging an audience with President Hoover in 1931. Despite being publicized in the newspapers, the meeting never took place. Three years later, Duke tried again, this time with the Roosevelts, but he was politely rebuffed.

It took nearly three more decades for jazz to make its first appearance: President Kennedy invited the Paul Winter Sextet to perform at the White House in 1962, following their overseas tour. But still no Duke. Then finally, in 1965, during Lyndon Johnson’s tenure, Ellington and his orchestra were invited to give the final performance at the White House Festival of the Arts on the South Lawn. At age sixty-six, he had at last arrived.[2]

Hopes for the jazz precedent set by Johnson, some people feared, would not carry forward under Nixon, who was not known by any stretch of the imagination to be a jazz aficionado. Happily, their fears were unfounded.

As to who initially conceived the idea of a White House party for the maestro on his seventieth birthday on April 29, 1969, all evidence points to his public relations man, Joe Morgen, Duke’s representative for more than twenty years.

After laying the groundwork for this singular event with his Washington contacts, Morgen was distressed to learn that Ellington was cool to the plan. In his memoir, Duke’s son Mercer discloses that his father’s reluctance to accept stemmed from his concerns about allying too much with one political party. “Joe insisted and insisted until ultimately [sister] Ruth indicated that she wanted the party to take place. Then Pop agreed to it.”[3]

To produce a concert of such importance, the White House chose someone with connections, organizational skills, and stewardship: Willis Conover. For the previous fourteen and a half years, as a consultant to the State Department, Conover had broadcast music twice daily, six days a week, worldwide, via the Voice of America.

He was well known to President Nixon—and to the world—as the voice of American music, the voice of jazz. In short order, Conover assembled an all-star band for the Ellington tribute, consisting of a four-piece rhythm section and a six-horn front line, complemented by two singers, three guest pianists, and a conductor.

When the big night arrived, the guest of honor, accompanied by his sister, Ruth, stood with President and Mrs. Nixon in a reception line to welcome the quests. After the banquet in the State Dining Room, everyone moved en masse to the East Room, where Nixon presented the Medal of Freedom to Ellington. Much to the audience’s surprise, the president sat at the piano and led everyone in singing “Happy Birthday.”

It was now time for the concert. As master of ceremonies, Conover introduced the Ellington songs—from “Take the ‘A’ Train” to “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” to “It Don’t Mean a Thing”—performed by such jazz giants as Dave Brubeck, Earl “Fatha” Hines, J. J. Johnson, Gerry Mulligan, and Clark Terry. The audience responded with booming applause throughout the evening.[4]

At the boisterous jam session that followed the concert, guests danced to the music of marine, all-star, and guest musicians, including jazz notables Dizzy Gillespie, Marian McPartland, and Willy “the Lion” Smith. The party lasted until sometime after 2 a.m.

The excitement of Duke’s birthday bash no doubt influenced Nixon to schedule subsequent jazz soirees. At some point, after listening to the featured musicians that night, he told Leonard Garment, “If this is jazz, we should have more of it at the White House.”[5]

This singular White House jazz event reverberated throughout the jazz arts community like none other before. It was about recognition, about respect, and about honor. It reverberates still.

Ellington’s tribute also had an enormous impact on the African American community and on the millions worldwide who viewed a USIA documentary of the event (a White House first) and listened to radio broadcasts over Voice of America on Willis Conover’s daily jazz program.

Jazz critic Leonard Feather, one of the after-dinner guests, later wrote this about the evening:

*Excerpted from The Best Gig in Town: Jazz Artists at the White House, 1969–1974.

To learn more about the tribute, read Ellington at the White House, 1969. Packed with details and photos, it not only covers that amazing evening, but also presents a history of early jazz at the White House.

1. For a full account of the Ellington tribute, including details about the jazz all-stars and the music performed during the concert, see Edward Allan Faine, Ellington at the White House, 1969 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2013).
   
2. A short clip of the Paul Winter Sextet at the White House on November 19, 1962, is available for viewing here under “Count Me In.” The sextet was, in fact, the first entertainment of any kind filmed at the president’s mansion; Harvey G. Cohen, Duke Ellington’s America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 498–99.
3. Mercer Ellington with Stanley Dance, Duke Ellington in Person: An Intimate Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 186.
4. The recording of the all-star concert is available on CD: Duke Ellington 1969: All-Star White House Tribute, Blue Note, 2002.
5. Terence M. Ripmaster, Willis Conover: Broadcasting Jazz to the World (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007), 142.
6. Leonard Feather, From Satchmo to Miles (New York: Stein and Day, 1974), 57.

Thomas Brothers in his biography Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism draws an interesting parallel between two landmark jazz recordings: Armstrong’s West End Blues (1928) and Duke Ellington’s Black and Tan Fantasy (1927).

Compositionally, the two are near identical, and the Pops biographer suggests Ellington may have had a hand in West End Blues, although there is no direct evidence for such.
 
Brothers characterizes Armstrong’s West End Blues as resembling “a ‘fantasy’ or a ‘rhapsody,’ a type of piece that makes no pretense of integrating the parts into a coherent whole but, rather, offers delight in the unpredictable unfolding of different sound images, one after the other.”
 
He would have characterized Duke’s piece in the same way. Brothers further suggests (tongue in cheek, perhaps) that if Armstrong had been interested in crafting an image of himself as a composer (as Ellington certainly did), he would have named his opus West End Fantasy.
 
The structural similarity in the compositions, however, in my opinion, did not require a direct or indirect influence one way or another. It resulted from a common understanding the two composers had about the music they were creating—one with more variety and discontinuity than the unity and coherence prevalent in the then dominant Eurocentric music and one with an African foundation that came out of an American experience.
 
CODA
Armstrong would become the central figure in the history of jazz for his solo playing and singing. Ellington would become its finest composer. His musical creations often used “the unpredictable unfolding of different sound images, one after the other” to the consternation of his critics, but to the delight of his many fans.

Jazz fans expect transparency. For example, in its annual, long-running Critics Jazz Poll, DownBeat jazz magazine identifies the critics by name, as does all such magazines with similar polls.

In a brief forward, Mr. Rizzo characterizes the results as racially and demographically diverse. An interesting observation, I suppose, but why make such a statement? It smacks of experimental bias and suggests a planned outcome. If all 70 greats were black, so be it; if half were black, so be it; if 30 were septuagenarians, let the chips fall where they may.

Rizzo further says, “With apologies to the women’s movement, there is only one female entry [Mary Lou Williams at number 47],” and then ranks the top10 women players in a separate category. But jazz piano playing is not professional sport. Women are just as capable as men on the keyboard. Why rank women separately? In the recent 2013 DownBeat Critics poll, for example, Jane Ira Bloom is ranked fifth, Anat Cohen sixth among their peers on soprano saxophone. Anat Cohen, Nicole Mitchell, and Regina Carter all came in first on their instruments, clarinet, flute, and violin, respectively.

Maria Schneider ranked second in the Big Band, Arranger, and Composer categories. On piano, Geri Allen tallied seventh, Hiromi 15th. The polls in DownBeat, Jazz Times, and other jazz magazines do not separate the sexes by instrument (except vocalist for obvious reasons). So Mr. Rizzo, what’s with this “separate but equal” women’s category with its implied inferiority? (Mary Lou Williams and Marian McPartland are listed in the top 70 greats and the top 10 women).

The book also provides a list of jazz piano players that were considered for the main body of the book before they were consigned to the status of honorable mention. Trouble is, the “honorable” list has 158 names—how credible is that! It’s hard to imagine how the “original jazz minds” considered 236 pianists before granting 158 of them an honorable mention. Sorry, Mr. Rizzo, your “honorable” list is simply not credible; it’s a cop-out list. I imagine you saying to a pianist who didn’t make the top 70, “Oh, hey, don’t fret, you made honorable mention.”  

As with any lifelong fan, my jazz antennae quivered as I read the book hoping to find mention of my personal favorites, those who occupy a special place in my heart and in my record collection. I found many. But there were significant others completely missing, not even given an honorable mention:

The above pianists weren’t considered! In my book, some are top 70 candidates (•), some top 50 (••). So what happened here? Did the “original jazz minds” have a large hole in their jazz sieve? Could there be some explanation?

Many of the above pianists came of recording age during the early dark decades for jazz (1960s, 1970s). Many recorded for obscure labels (still do). Many spent more time overseas than on US shores. Many are not solid swingers in the mode of an Oscar Peterson or Gene Harris (Number 12). Many were (and still are) outcasts, new thinkers, avant-gardists.

Many are less derivative than they are original. But so are several of the pianists listed in the book. So I’m stumped. Lacking the identity of the “original jazz minds,” I can go no further.  

Now to the most egregious error: pianist Cecil Taylor was consigned to honorable mention. I, like many others, consider Taylor’s music difficult, devoid of swing perhaps, its beauty often lost in a barrage of sound. But his talent is undeniable. He has forged a dramatic percussive style like no other in the history of jazz, a style that has already influenced many, if not whole cloth, in snippets and swaths.

His is a unique voice, and in jazz that counts for a lot, trumps mechanical skill by a mile. As tenor saxophonist Bud Freeman said in Jean Bach’s film A Great Day in Harlem, “A hundred years from now, we’ll hear more of [quirky clarinetist] Pee Wee Russell’s playing than of Benny Goodman’s, who was truly a great artist.” Maybe, maybe not, but the point is well made. In jazz, voice or individual sound matters as much as or more than technical mastery of one’s instrument. Cecil Taylor has both.

One last point: noted jazz critic Len Lyons in his book The Great Jazz Pianists (Quill, 1983) listed and profiled 27 greats that included Cecil Taylor and three from my above list of unmentionables (Ran Blake, Paul Bley, and Jaki Byard). Okay, that was 32 years ago, and Mr. Lyons is only one “original jazz mind.”

To bottom line here, I would bump six pianists from Rizzo’s top 50, all excellent, mind you, but nonetheless derivative—namely, Andre Previn (number 7), Dick Hyman (32), John Bunch (35), Al Haig (44), Derek Smith (45), and Ralph Sharon (46)—in favor of singular voiced, overlooked innovators Anthony Davis, Muhal Richard Davis, Andrew Hill, Don Pullen, Cecil Taylor, and the songful Abdullah Ibrahim.

It bears mentioning that Muhal Richard Abrams and Andrew Hill came in sixth and 10th in a recent DownBeat Hall of Fame voting. Cecil Taylor, of course, has been a member of the Hall since 1975, not to mention his NEA Jazz Master award in 1990.

My mother always said, “If you say something bad about somebody, make sure you say something nice as well.” In that spirit, Mr. Rizzo’s accompanying profiles of the 50 greatest, as well as the top 10 women pianists, are insightful and informative without bogging down in the usual biographical detail.
 
Reservations aside, the book is recommended for long-term fans as well as novices. Aficionados can compare their own greatest list with Rizzo’s, slip some old albums on the player and rediscover an old friend or two; even reconsider a keyboardist previously dismissed. After all, favorite lists are fun (at least for the fans). Would you, for example, rank relative newcomer Benny Green number 6 and Herbie Hancock number 42?  

For those just coming to the music, Rizzo’s recommended CDs for pianists on the list would be a wonderful way to enter the world of jazz piano, which would likely lead to other artists on (and off) the list, and a lifetime of musical pleasure.