Jazz Blog

That Anniversary Year 2019: Celebrating Four Jazz Centenarians

12/31/2019

Left to right: Nat King Cole, George Shearing, Al McKibbon, and Herbie Nichols

The 100th anniversary jazz birthday calendar for 2019 has three fewer than for 2018—15 total centenarians, oldest to youngest as follows:

Herbie Nichols, Al McKibbon, Israel Crosby, Snooky Young, Buddy Morrow, Nat King Cole, Mercer Ellington, Lennie Tristano, Benny Harris, Ella Johnson, George Shearing, Art Blakey, Anita O’Day, Hall Singer, Babs Gonzales.[1]

Below, I spotlight four jazz legends from this group.

Nat King Cole

Of all Nat King Cole’s signature songs and classic albums, there is one album that is almost universally adored in the jazz community (sadly, less so with the general public), and that is, as Gene Rizzo characterized it, the eternally hip After Midnight (1957).

In the June 2004 issue of DownBeat magazine, a diverse group of 73 jazz singers (21 men, 52 women) were asked to name their top all-time favorite jazz vocal albums. The top 30 were listed; Midnight placed 12th. (Johnny Hartman and Frank Sinatra, the only higher-placed male singer albums, 2nd and 6th, respectively).[2]

In song historian Will Friedwald’s opinion, Midnight is a masterpiece, one of the great jazz vocal albums of all time, and I agree. Interestingly, and surprisingly, it is the only one of Cole’s original albums where he both sang and played piano all the way through. Moreover, his performance was never more free, or loose, like a man on a lark at a jam session with nothing to prove. Friedwald has told us how this gem came about:

[Nat and [his pal, trumpeter Harry “Sweets“ Edison] were at a [Dodgers baseball] game in August 1956 and they were overjoyed when [their] team . . . won, so much so that they had to let off steam by playing. Four calls were then made, first to Cole’s producer Lee Gillette to arrange for studio time at the Capitol Tower, and then to three regular members of his working trio, guitarist John Collins, bassist Charlie Harris, and drummer Lee Young. Upon arrival at the tower, Cole, Edison, and the trio quickly and exuberantly laid down five masters on songs they already knew very well.[3]

The first session was completely spontaneous with Cole, his standard rhythm section and baseball buddy Edison, the most recognizable trumpet voice in jazz—only one note and you know it’s Sweets. Nat played and sang songs already in his repertoire “Sweet Loraine,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon, “Route 66,” and “You Can Depend on Me.”

The songs had been previously recorded in other contexts, of course, and here they were expanded with more and longer solos—jam session style—exactly what Cole wanted. Nat and producer Gillette were delighted with the results and decided to turn the pianist’s impromptu jam into an album project—12 more songs over three more sessions, each with a different guest soloist.

Next up, Willie Smith, a swing era alto saxophonist second only to Duke’s Johnny Hodges. For this session, Cole edged off his jam session perch a touch and recorded newer material: “Don’t Let It Go to Your Head,” “You’re Lookin’ at Me,” and “I Was a Little Too Lonely (And You Were a Little Too Late),” the latter written by Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, the tuner pair responsible for Nat’s breakout hit “Mona Lisa.” The session ended on a jam session favorite with Nat and Willie stretching out on a finger-snapping “Just You, Just Me.”

For the third session, Cole wanted a Latin tinge and brought in Cuban percussionist Jack Constanzo and Ellington boneman Juan Tizol, composer of “Caravan,” which they dutifully played and followed it with the perfect companion piece “The Lonely One.”

Constanzo sat out while Cole and Tizol delivered the best slow ballads on the album: “Blame It on My Youth” and “What Is There to Say.” Freidwald rhapsodized: “Cole has never been more convincingly romantic, and he’s brilliantly supported by both Tizol and his own piano playing. As an interpreter of great love lyrics, the King takes a royal back seat to no one.”

The last session’s four tracks featured the “sainted collaboration” (Friedwald’s term) of Nat with grand swing era violinist Stuff Smith. They teamed up on a laid-back “Some-times I’m Happy,” “I Know That You Know” at race-horse tempo, with ripping piano-violin exchanges, a moderately swinging “When I Grow Too Old to Dream,” and a relaxed treatment of “Two Loves Have I.”

At the time of its first release, Midnight was a one-of-a-kind album, and it has remained as such. Nat King Cole never worked with a small jazz combo of that variety again.

CODA
Comments accompanying the Midnight 12th-place finish:

Grady Tate: “We know he is a genius at the piano but what he does vocally is unbelievable. One can understand each and every word he sings and the phrasing is impeccable. Nat set such a high standard for male singers.”

Tuey Connell: “The juxtaposition of the bop-leaning piano playing and his conversational delivery entices and challenges the listener at the same time.”

John Pizzarelli: “An amazing combination of spontaneity and arrangement. Everybody’s contribution from Lee Young’s drumming and John Collin’s guitar to Sweet Edison’s trumpet and Stuff Smith’s swinging violin perfectly compliment Nat’s swinging ease.”

George Shearing/Al McKibbon

Born blind in London, England, young George began pecking out tunes on the piano at age three. His handicap and precocious talent led to formal training in classical piano and theory. He rejected university scholarships in favor of working in neighborhood pubs that soon expanded to engagements at top London supper clubs, and guest spots on BBC radio.

During WWII, Shearing met American jazz musicians (e.g., Fats Waller, Coleman Hawkins) while they were touring. They assured him of great success in the US. George crossed the pond to New York City, where he began to attract attention on the beboppin’ 52nd Street.

Gene Rizzo, author of The Fifty Greatest Jazz Pianists of All Time—who ranked Shearing ninth—continued the story from there:

In ’49, Shearing formed his famous quintet–a unique blend at the time of piano, vibes [Marjorie Hyams], guitar [Chuck Wayne], bass [John Levy], and drums [Denzil Best]. It became one of jazz’s biggest attractions. The quintet’s tight arrangements were based on the locked-hands style of Lionel Hampton’s pianist, Milt Buckner. Its formula, easily atomized, but less easily executed at fast tempos, featured the piano voiced in four-part chords. The right hand’s top, or melody voice, was doubled by the left hand within an octave. The vibes played in unison with the upper melody, the guitar with the lower.[4]

The initial lineup responsible for the unique “Shearing Sound” recorded for Discovery, Savoy, and MGM. The result—the nigh impossible—a hit jazz record: the immensely popular “September in the Rain,” which sold over 900,000 copies![5] Other not-as-popular singles followed, “I Remember April,” for example.

George continued to soak up the sounds of bebop piano masters Bud Powell and Hank Jones, and the newly arrived Latin rhythms (Latin jazz). He got his first taste of Latin music at the Club Clique in midtown Manhattan when he played opposite the Machito orchestra. He later reminisced: “The sounds were incredible, the rhythm complex, the bass lines were so interesting. I wanted to record Latin music, but the opportunity did not appear until I met bassist Al McKibbon, who knew the roots of Afro-Cuban music.”[6]

Detroit-born Al McKibbon—who shared the same birth year with Shearing—moved to New York in the 1940s. In 1947 he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band and played with Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo. Al learned the fundamentals of Afro-Cuban drumming from Pozo and played on the original recording of Dizzy’s “Manteca.”

Later he participated in the recording Birth of the Cool with Miles Davis. Particularly adept at blending Latin rhythms with straight jazz, McKibbon was at the heart of the Shearing Quintet from 1951 to 1958.[7]

In September 1953, the George Shearing Quintet, which now included Cal Tjader on vibes, Belgian-born ”Toots” Theilemann on guitar, Bill Clark on drums, Al McKibbon on bass, Catalino Rulon on maracas, and Candido Camero on bongos, recorded an album for MGM. Shearing was not pleased with his piano performance. McKibbon suggested he listen to the recordings of Noro Morales and Joe Loco so he could learn to ad-lib the Cuban montuno.

Shearing later said, “My ears became attuned to the authentic Afro-Cuban music thanks to AL McKibbon, the Machito orchestra, and Armando Peraza and Willie Bobo.” It was the Afro-Cuban whisperer McKibbon who suggested Shearing hire Peraza, who was regarded as a true virtuoso, unequaled as a bongo player and capable of amazing solos on conga drums.

Peraza joined the Shearing band in 1953, an association that would last eleven years. McKibbon declared, “When Armando came into the band, that was a new day.”[8]

Indeed, as Peraza later recalled:

I used to sit down with Shearing and sing melodies to him. He would play them on the piano and develop an arrangement. He was blind but he could see my ideas, my dream. Shearing said he loved my harmonic concepts. He allowed me to compose, to create.[9]

Shearing recorded a number of memorable albums of jazzed-up boleros and mambos. The first one with Peraza and McKibbon, Latin Escapade (1956), sold 80,000 copies, a milestone for Latin jazz! Other albums followed: Latin Affair (1958), Mood Latino (1961), and Latin Rendezvous (1962).[10]

These albums contributed to the general acceptance of the music, along with the quintet’s appearances at jazz clubs, supper clubs, college campuses, and spaces generally off-limits to other jazz groups.

Between 1956 and 1963, I attended five shows: three in Cleveland, Ohio (two at the Modern Jazz Club, one at Public Hall) and two in Columbus, Ohio (one at the Kontiki Polynesian Restaurant, the other at a downtown hotel). Each set featured a Latin segment with Armando Peraza front and center.

Besides being an outstanding classical and bebop-influenced jazz pianist and the leader of an instantly recognizable, one-of-a-kind jazz quintet, George Shearing deserves plaudits for his early contribution to, and promotion of, Latin jazz, a genre that would attain significant popular status in the 1960s and beyond.

Herbie Nichols

A belated shout-out to a most deserving pianist-composer: Herbie Nichols. Jazz critic Gary Giddins writes:

[While] an incontestably modern and unique voice, and despite his own fabled persistence, he was only able to document four tunes for Savoy (1952), two albums for Blue Note (1955–56), and one for Bethlehem (1957) . . . He wrote over a hundred songs, but only 30 were recorded by himself, another three by Mary Lou Williams, and one by Billie Holiday.[11]

Pianist Frank Kimbrough marveled: “It’s bizarre. He wrote twice as many tunes as Thelonious Monk, yet he’s always been famous for being unknown.”

Well, perhaps not so much now. Nichols was inducted into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 2017, more than five decades after his death from leukemia.[12]

NOTES

Jazz Birthday Calendar, 1919.
Frank-John Hadley, “30 All-Time Favorite Jazz Vocal Recordings,” DownBeat magazine, June 2004, 48.
Will Friedwald, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums (New York: Pantheon Books, 2017), 69–75.
Gene Rizzo, The Fifty Greatest Jazz Pianists of All Time (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2005), 35–36. See also additional confirming source: Len Lyons, The Great Jazz Pianists: Speaking of Their Lives and Music (New York: Quill, 1983), 98–100.
Raul Fernadez, Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2002), 82.
Ibid., 83.
Ibid., 82–85.
Ibid., 83, 77, 82.
Ibid., 76.
Ibid., 82.
Liner Notes, Gary Giddins, Herbie Nichols--The Bethlehem Years, Bethlehem Records, LP, BCP 6026, 1976.
Herbie Nichols, “Rightful Honor,” DownBeat Magazine, August 2017, 36.

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Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 2

11/28/2019

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A sample from Edward Faine's jazz LP collection.

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.

Wynton Kelly Trio | Smokin’ at the Half Note | Verve

For Wes Montgomery, 1966 was a breakout year. The most influential jazz guitarist since Charlie Christian, Montgomery was known for his thumb plucking and innovative approach to playing two notes at the same time an octave apart.

Interestingly, the year Montgomery crossed over to the pop market with his R&B hit “Goin’ out of My Head,” he recorded what I (and many others) believe to be his best jazz album with the Wynton Kelly Trio (Miles Davis’s rhythm section at the time).

From the opening 13-minute “No Blues” to “Unit 7” to “Four on Six,” the Kelly Trio mirrored Montgomery’s insistent drive throughout. Smokin’ indeed!

Sonny Rollins | East Broadway Run Down | Impulse!

Rollins surprised many with his 20-minute title track featuring his tenor and extracted mouthpiece, along with John Coltrane’s rhythm section bassist Jimmy Harrison and drummer Elvin Jones with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (on one track).

At the time, many people thought Sonny was about to join “New Wave” pioneers Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry because of the use of just a mouthpiece. But, no, it was Rollins simply saying he could play free if he wanted to, and this was the way it should be done. I agreed, wishing he had done more of it.

Bud Powell | Bud in Paris | Xanadu

Here is recorded proof that pianist Powell’s abilities were still intact well into the last decade of his life. Maybe not on a par with his superhuman playing of the 1940s, but mighty close.

This album presents the cream of his performances between 1959 and 1961, including a driving duet with expat tenor man Johnny Griffin on “Idaho” and “Perdido,” both of them grunting their own throaty comments as the music swirls and swoops. Bud, in a trio setting with bebop drummer Kenny Clarke, essays his own compositions—“John’s Abbey” and “Buttercup”—showcasing his firm touch and unceasing swing at both medium and up tempos. This is a historically significant album.

Kip Hanraahan | Conjure | American Clave

Kip Hanrahan, not exactly your well-known jazzer, has taken a rather eclectic approach to music, regularly assembling diverse groups of Latin, rock, folk, and jazz musicians (and poets) in the studio and recording them for his own American Clave label.

Conjure contains a track with a most unlikely title—“The Wardrobe Master of the Universe”—sung by folk artist Taj Mahal, a bouncy tune that received extensive airplay on my home stereo. The ensemble, with Carla Bley on piano, sets up an infectious Latin-popping groove from the get-go. After Mahal’s vocal, David Murray enters with the most concise R&B, jazz, funky avant bop solo imaginable, all over his horn top to bottom—that was obviously improvised, but so perfect you’d think it had been scored and then woodshedded for years!

Hampton Hawes | Spanish Steps | Black Lion

Post-bop pianist Hawes recorded a lively set in Paris accompanied by the two expats Jimmy Woode (bass) and Arthur Taylor (drums). Two tracks stand out, the Hawes-composed jazz waltz “Sonara” and the lovely Richard Rodgers ballad “My Romance.” The former, buoyed by a loose and fluid rhythm section, is the most infectious jazz waltz ever recorded, bar none.

The lengthy “My Romance” is a Hawes favorite, a ballad that can be played as such or at a medium tempo. He does both here and even adds a ringing block chord segment. Simply gorgeous. There is, as far as I know, no better jazz piano instrumental treatment of this song.

Oscar Peterson | “Satch” and “Josh” | Pablo

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.

Loft Jazz Artists | Wildflowers 1–5 | Douglas

Seldom in jazz history has a new jazz movement been so thoroughly documented as on the Wildflower series. Thirty-two performances by 60 new wave musicians were recorded at the loft home of saxophonist Sam Rivers over seven May nights in 1976.

The music resulted in five separately issued LPs played by a veritable who’s who that included Hamiett Bluiett, Charles Brackeen, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Dave Burrell, Anthony Davis, Ola Dura, Julius Hemphill, Fred Hopkins, Oliver Lake, Byard Lancaster, George Lewis, Jimmy Lyons, Ken McIntyre, Roscoe Mitchell, David Murray, Sonny Murray, Sam Rivers, Henry Threadgill, and Abdul Wadud.

Please forgive the mostly unrecognizable name list—none were household names at the time, even in the jazz community. But that is the point here: this was the first assemblage of wildflowers intent on adding yet another branch to the growing jazz tree.

George Shearing | Latin Escapade | Capitol

As percussionist Chano Poso was to Mario Bauza and Dizzy Gillespie, Armando Peraza was to pianist George Shearing on this historic latin jazz album. Peraza was featured on congas and other percussive instruments at every Shearing quintet performance for over 12 years.

My young jazz ears, tuned to odd time signatures and ethnic rhythms from the get-go (don’t know why), delighted in listening to the rhythmic sounds of Armando on this LP, as well as at five Shearing club performances I attended from 1955 to 1961.

Joe Harriott/John Mayer | Indo-Jazz Suite | Atlantic

Yet another time signature mash-up—the first time in history Western musicians (all from the UK by the way) and Indian musicians played together from a written score. Improvising by both sets of musicians took place, especially by alto player Joe Harriott, who played his own brand of free jazz.

Not all fans and critics took to the fusion, but I did. Maybe a little stilted at times, but always exciting and swinging. As Mayer proclaimed, “World Music began here,” and who is to say otherwise.

Bennie Green | Blows His Horn | Prestige

A trombonist most prominent in the ’50s and ’60s, Green was not really a skilled technician. He often relied on a satchel of repetitive licks, but what licks and what a sound, a blues-drenched Tommy Dorsey sound, less vibrato than Dorsey, with a smooth, high-register wail that split the differences between swing, R&B, and bebop. Though many of his albums are out of print, you can still find this early outing. No other like him, ever.

Dizzy Gillespie | Dizzy’s Party | Pablo

In the 1970s Gillespie hooked up with producer Norma Granz on his newly formed Pablo label. After several pairings with jazz masters from his era, Diz implored Granz to put aside all these “history” recordings and let him record something “modern.”

The result: Dizzy’s Party, a hip-shaking Latin jazz album for funk fans, with two electric guitars, drums, and Brazilian percussion to support trumpet and saxophone. Granz should have released a single from what he called Dizzy’s dance album. I saw the band twice, and it was a party.

Curtis Counce | More Bounce with Curtis Counce | Contemporary

The West Coast–based Counce group was one of the great quintets of the 1950s: Curtis on bass; the underrated Carl Perkins on piano; Frank Butler, the cleanest, most impeccable sounding drummer of the era; and two journeymen, Harold Land on tenor sax and Jack Sheldon on trumpet.

Bounce is their standout album. The best track: “Stranger in Paradise” from the Broadway show Kismet. The band never swung harder than on this medium tempo romp, but the standout solo belongs to Sheldon, who overcame his technical limitations (obvious on the other tracks) to produce a perfectly logical and memorable solo.

Had Sheldon played at this level consistently, he would have been a household jazz name, along with other notable middle-register trumpeters like Chet Baker, Miles Davis, and Art Farmer.

Monk Tribute | The Way I Feel Now | A&M

Here is yet another eclectic album where rock, pop, and jazz musicians pay tribute to Thelonius Monk. The Carla Bley track features her 15-piece big band with guest Johnny Griffin on tenor saxophone doing their version of Monk’s quirky “Mysterioso.”

The cut begins with the band in full force sounding like a tool and die shop clanking away at full capacity and melds into a gorgeous contrasting counter theme, a Johnny Griffin solo, a routine but faux ending, a piano trio interlude featuring Bley, and then the REAL ENDING, which is what makes this track so memorable—the band laying down sumptuous chords as Griffin soars up and down his instrument sounding like a baritone, tenor, and alto all rolled into one.

The finale makes me think of other rousing endings: Stravinski’s Sacre Du Temps and Mousorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

Charles Sullivan | Genesis | Strata East

Most jazz fans haven’t heard of New York–based trumpeter Charles Sullivan. Few records to his name, that’s for sure, but on this one, there is a magical moment, a 30-second coda to “Now I’ll Sleep,” a song with a rather depressing lyric sung by a young Dee Dee Bridgewater.

As the song seemingly ends, the recording engineer switches to reverb (the click is heard), and Sullivan switches from trumpet to flugelhorn for a lilting improvised duet with Ms. Bridgewater. Dee Dee’s wordless vocal intertwines around Sullivan’s rich line, first mirroring then contrasting—like a double-helix strand of DNA.

On the same album, another magical duet, this time with pianist Onaje Allan Gumbs on “Good-Bye Sweet John,” a musical interlude repeated three times with increasing volume and bravura—a china-lovely chamber piece evoking simultaneous feelings of sadness and triumph. Countless times I’ve returned home, slapped on the disc, and dropped the needle to hear these two romantic snippets.

Grachan Moncur III | New Africa | Actuel

One of the first trombonists to explore free jazz, Moncur presided over a recording session with a to-die-for lineup: altoist Roscoe Mitchell, drummer Andrew Cyrille, pianist Dave Burrell, and tenor Archie Shepp. One track is transcendent, the 12-minute “When,” the reason why this album should be in every fan’s collection, whether a free jazz devotee or not.

After stating the riff-like theme, Moncur improvises variations on his riff before passing the baton to Mitchell, who in turn elaborates on the trombonist’s excursions. With his Texas R&B roots in mind, Shepp expertly weaves among his predecessor’s instrumental statements.

Excellent solos all, but what makes the frontline commentary delicious is the rhythmic underpinning: Burrell’s steady vamping piano and Cyrille’s churning cymbals produce a recognizable forward motion. In simpler words, this tune swings!

Several decades ago, I hosted a radio program for several months and my opening theme song was “When.”

David Amram | Havana/New York | Flying Fish

In the second half of the 1970s, former President Carter, seeking a thaw in US-Cuban relations, sent jazz, rock, and salsa musicians to Cuba to jam with their Cuban counterparts, often producing collaborative recordings. This LP, organized and produced by multi-instrumentalist David Amram, is one such effort, and it’s a fine one.

Most prominently, it introduced two unknown and exciting Cuban jazz voices—trumpeter Arturo Sandoval and saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera–—to the American public. Soon after, while on tour, both Arturo and Paquito defected to the US, began touring and recording albums of their own, and became US citizens. Arturo Sandoval received the Medal of Freedom from former President Obama in 2013. Viva our cultural exchange programs!

Roland Kirk | 3-Sided Technicolor Dream | Atlantic

What to make of The Case of the 3 Sided Dream in Audio Color (full title)—a double LP with side 4 blank, three-minute-long Kirk-spoken ramblings between tracks, two versions of three songs, and Kirk’s usual accomplished playing of two to three instruments at once? Sounds quirky, but it’s not.

With contributions from keyboardists Hilton Ruiz and Richard Tee, baritone saxophonist Pat Patrick (on holiday from Sun Ra), and drummer Steve Gadd, it’s downright groovy, possibly Kirk’s most broadly accessible album.

The Piano Choir | Handscapes | Strata East

No question, here is a jewel produced by a seven-member jazz piano choir (Stanley Cowell, Nat Jones, Hugh Lawson, Webster Lewis, Harold Maybern, Danny Mixon, and Sonelius Smith).

Recorded live in concert, this two-LP album captured a seemingly unimaginable and otherworldly aural experience. Or as Phyl Garland of Ebony described it, “The torrent of sound springing from70 fingers is so powerful and majestic as to be unlike anything one has ever heard.” The sound produced, especially on the lengthier, driving all-hands-on-deck numbers, is orchestral. On other no less enjoyable tracks, there is at least a sense of familiarity—a theme statement followed by sequential solos by each choir member as in Monk’s “Straight No Chaser.” A stunning album.

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.

John Handy | At Monterey Jazz Fest | Columbia

A standout live performance by altoist John Handy and his unusual group: violin (Mike White), guitar (Jerry Hahn), bass (Don Thompson), and drums (Terry Clark).

It’s hard to say why this music is still so fresh and mesmerizing. It was novel, for sure, violin and alto, and guitar, but hey, this was the mid-’60s, novelty had been in vogue since the late ’50s. Sounded wonderfully alien to me, peculiar jazz harmonies some said, yet grounded in familiar jazz rhythms. Hard driving with group cohesiveness at its core, this was a memorable, one-of-a-kind performance.

Carla Bley | Escalator Over the Hill | JCOA

The Jazz Composers Orchestra Association (JCOA) was formed by Michael Mantler and Carla Bley to give avant-garde jazz musicians an opportunity to play large, extended compositions normally not economically or artistically viable.

The JCOA tapped the likes of trumpeter Don Cherry, trombonist Grachan Moncur III, violinist Leroy Jenkins, pianist Cecil Taylor, trombonist Roswell Rudd, and trumpeter Clifford Thorton to each create lengthy compositions to record. The best-known project, however, remains the massive opera Escalator over the Hill, produced by Michael Mantler, book by Paul Haines, music by Carla Bley.

Encapsulated in a three-LP box set with illustrated playbill, Escalator was performed by some 40 well-known American and European new wave musicians with contributions from pop stars Jack Bruce, Linda Ronstadt, and Viva. Although not designed for wide audience appeal, this monumental work stands as a defining artifact of that overly ambitious and optimistic decade, the 1960s.

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.

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Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 1

10/29/2019

3 Comments

Photo credit: Adobe Stock/creativenature.nl

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:

29:
23:
19:
19:
16:
15:
13:
9:
9:

Trumpeter Miles Davis
Saxophonist Art Pepper
Saxophonist Charlie Parker
Pianist Abdullah Ibrahim
Keyboardist/bandleader Sun Ra
Tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp
Trumpeter Don Cherry
Pianist/composer Andrew Hill
Art Ensemble of Chicago

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:

8:

7:

6:

5:

Anthony Davis, David Murray, Henry Threadgill

Dizzy Gillespie, Wayne Shorter, Red Garland, Marion Brown, Stan Getz, Ran Blake, Charles Mingus, Roscoe Mitchell

Modern Jazz Quartet, Arthur Blythe, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Art Farmer, Oliver Nelson, Don Pullen, Chico Freeman, Oliver Lake, Thelonious Monk, Mal Waldron

George Russell, Sonny Rollins, Muhal Richards Abrams, Lester Bowie, and Jack DeJohnette

Not every jazz enthusiast will recognize all the names above, but that would also be true for me if I checked out another person’s collection.

Based on the information above, I can see that 50 percent of my LP collection consists of multiple buys (5 and above) from 36 artists. Further, over a thirty-year period beginning in 1954, I was a fan with eclectic tastes, preferring a diverse mix of—shall we say—traditionalists (Parker, Gillespie, Pepper) and avant-garde musicians (Shepp, Art Ensemble, Pullen).

But this is not the whole story.

What about the rest of my collection, the remaining 50 percent that consists of four, three, or fewer per artist, representing a number of singular, transcendent one-of-kind albums?

I'll examine those in my next blog.

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Foundation Funding for Jazz

9/27/2019

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Photo credit: Adobe Stock/Voloshyn Roman

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In my book Ellington at the White House, 1969, I present a summary of foundation and government funding of the arts over the 1985–2011 time frame:

Reproduced from Ellington in the White House, 1969, IM Press, 2013.

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.

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.

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One from the Heart: An Underappreciated Movie Soundtrack, Part 2

8/31/2019

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Tom Waits 2011. Photo: Fresh on the Net.

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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:

The film’s core story is set out in the duet “Picking Up After You,” which is as trenchant a breakup song as Waits has ever recorded. It is essentially a full-length musical argument. Each singer casts blame, identifies the other’s unbearable habits, vents anger, yet the melody all of this is couched in is so sweet and tender that the potential for healing seems to exist even as the rift widens. [1]

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:

Toward the end, Tom started getting cold feet, saying, “Well you know, [Crystal’s] really vanilla and all.” I said, “Tom, you know something? Everybody knows what great lyrics you write. But nobody knows the great melodies you write because you just don’t do them justice. You have somebody who really sings those melodies so you can hear them.” [2]

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:

Toward the end, Francis said, “Everything’s so sad, we need something with hope in it.” That’s when “Take Me Home” came about. The musical idea came early on, but the words were some of the last ones I wrote. I tried to sing it and it sounded real soppy, so I gave it to Crystal. I sat down at the piano, played it three or four times for her, then she cut it. I liked the way she did it. [3]

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.

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NOTES

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

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One from the Heart: An Underappreciated Movie Soundtrack, Part 1

7/30/2019

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Tom Waits. 2013. Photo: Andreas Lehner.

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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

that is bleak, lonely, contemporary: all-night diners, cheap hotels; truck stops; pool halls; strip joints; Continental Trailways buses; double-knits; full-table rail shots; jumper cables; Naugahyde luncheonette booths; Foster Grant wraparounds; hash browns over easy; glasspacks and overhead cams; dawn skies “the color of Pepto-Bismol.” His songs—mostly blues—are not everybody’s cup of Instant Nestea, but they range from raunchy to beautiful. [1]

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:

There was never any gospel script. There was a blueprint, a skeleton . . . Before I started writing anything, I met Francis in Las Vegas. In a hotel room, he took down all the paintings from the walls and stretched up butcher paper like a mural. Then he sketched out sequences of events and would spot, in very cryptic notations, where he wanted the music. I was able to get an idea of the film’s peaks and valleys. [2]

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.

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NOTES

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.
Jay S. Jacobs, Wild Years: The Music and Myth of Tom Waits (Toronto: ECW Press, 2006), 105.

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Book Review: “Help!” by Thomas Brothers

6/30/2019

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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:

At age twenty-seven, the failed composer discovered a new way to generate music by extending material from his soloists through framing and conceptualizing, nipping and tucking, harmonizing, and arranging and enhancing with contrast and form. . . . [He got] the best of their arranging ideas, the best of their editing, the best of their creative use of timbre, and the best of their fully framed compositions.

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,

Noncrediting was part of Ellington’s ecosystem for sustained big-band success. First, it would have cost him massive streams of revenue [from lost song royalties], and second, it would have undermined his carefully managed image as a composer-genius unique in the sprawling field of jazz.

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.

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Royalty Thieves

5/30/2019

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Photo: Adobe Stock/Luaeva

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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.

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NOTES

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

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50th Anniversary of the Ellington Birthday Tribute

4/29/2019

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The White House tribute to Ellington began with Nixon reading the Medal of Freedom citation. Credit: Ollie Atkins, National Archives.

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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]

Willis Conover. Wikimedia.

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]

Mary Mayo singing the familiar “Mood Indigo” backed by trombonist J. J. Johnson. Credit: Ollie Atkins, National Archives.

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.

Ellington and Willie “the Lion” Smith sharing a piano bench at the jam session following the all-star concert. Credit: Harvey Georges, Associated Press.

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:

It would have been easy to write off the whole affair cynically as a political ploy. True, it redounded to the president’s benefit . . . nevertheless, what took place that night transcended questions of either politics or race. . . .

Respectability was the name of the game, and respectability is what Ellington, more than any other man living or dead, had brought to jazz in his music, his bearing, and his impact on society.[6]

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*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.

NOTES

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).
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.
Mercer Ellington with Stanley Dance, Duke Ellington in Person: An Intimate Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978), 186.
The recording of the all-star concert is available on CD: Duke Ellington 1969: All-Star White House Tribute, Blue Note, 2002.
Terence M. Ripmaster, Willis Conover: Broadcasting Jazz to the World (Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2007), 142.
Leonard Feather, From Satchmo to Miles (New York: Stein and Day, 1974), 57.

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Armstrong and Ellington: Two Masters of Modernism

3/30/2019

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Louis Armstrong (left, 1953) and Duke Ellington (right, 1954)

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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.

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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.

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