Category: Album Review

Blue Rose: The Clooney/Ellington Collaboration

2/28/2018

In preparation for Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday tribute dinner at the White House in 1969, President Nixon asked the maestro to submit a list of people he would like to see invited. Ellington submitted 135 names, and the White House sent out invitations to all save one—Frank Sinatra (but that’s another blog).

Five female singers were invited, but only Mahalia Jackson accepted. The gospel diva had crossed Duke’s career path in 1957 when she lent her talents to his reworking of the Black, Brown and Beige suite for Columbia Records.

The songbirds who sent in their regrets:

Contralto Marion Anderson, who had known Duke for decades, and sat with him on President Nixon’s Advisory Council on the Arts
Diahann Carroll, who starred in the 1961 film Paris Blues that Duke scored
Leslie Uggams, who appeared with Duke on several televised variety shows
Rosemary Clooney, who collaborated with Duke and the orchestra on the 1956 Columbia album Blue Rose

Yes, that Rosemary Clooney, the one who starred with Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, and Vera-Ellen in the movie musical White Christmas (1954) and recorded 1950s mega-sellers “Come On-a My House,” “Botcha Me,” “Hey There,” and “Mambo Italiano.”

Clooney was the first singer not drawn from the ranks of the Ellington orchestra to cut a full album with the Duke. Only two other singers had that honor: Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra.

Moreover, the idea for the project came not from Ellington, but from Rosemary. She wanted to break free of her pop chains, and Duke needed a boost in association with a high-flying AM radio and TV variety show pop star. At the time (early 1956) the maestro wandered in a frozen wilderness of public apathy and needed a breakout. Blue Rose, he must have thought, could be the icebreaker.

As it would turn out, Blue Rose would be the first album ever to be overdubbed. Ellington recorded the orchestra tracks in New York, and Rosemary added her vocals in Los Angeles.

This technical first was necessitated by the fact the singer was severely pregnant and unable to fly to New York—which also meant that the album’s designated arranger, Billy Strayhorn, had to fly back and forth between New York and California to work with Rosemary on song selection, setting of keys and tempo, and other musical matters.

The material the two chose consisted of six Ellington standards—“Sophisticated Lady,” “I Let a Song Go out of My Heart,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “I Got It Bad,” “Mood Indigo,“ and “Just Sittin’ and A-Rockin’"—and three lesser known Ellington-Srayhorn collaborations—“Grievin’” and “I’m Checkin’ Out-Goombye” (both from 1939) and “If You Were in My Place” (1938)—as well as three new Ellington tunes, one of which, “Blue Rose,” had no lyrics, but came with instructions: just scat along with it.

Prominent critics Will Friedwald and Gary Giddins had nothing but high praise for the album, the latter declaring “Sophisticated Lady” to be one of the finest recorded versions ever.

To my ears, however, the results are disappointing. Ms. Clooney, known for her sultry voice, is not sultry enough, sounding a mite tense and more like pop icon Dinah Shore than any jazz singer one could name.

Rosemary chose not to stamp her mark on the famed doo-wah doo-wah riff on “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” avoiding it altogether, leaving it to the instrumentalists. Her “ba-bee be-ba be-ba ba-ba” scatting on “Blue Rose” is amateurish, but Friedwald heard it differently, calling it “superlative.”

Nonetheless, one track, “Mood Indigo,” stands out, and could very well be one of the finest on record. Strayhorn rearranged the famous clarinet-trumpet-trombone-unison opening melody for Clooney’s wordless voice plus two trombones, which almost trumps the original.

Rosemary then sings the familiar lyrics in her most relaxed voice on the album. Outstanding solos follow by trumpeter Willie Cook and the two trombones (Britt Woodman and John Sanders) in unison again.

As Ken Crossland and Malcolm MacFarlane opine in their biography Late Life Jazz: The Life and Career of Rosemary Clooney:

[While] mid-1950s sales of Blue Rose were unspectacular . . . its importance in the careers of both its protagonists cannot be overstated. For Ellington, it took him back to Columbia and opened the door for Ellington at Newport ’56, which became the best selling album of his career and launched a resurgence that sustained him until his death in 1974. [Hence, the delayed thank-you from Duke to Rosemary in the form of a White House invitation.]

For Rosemary, it convinced the girl singer from Maysville [Ohio] that she was more than just a chirruping hit-maker. The experience of working with Ellington, she said, “validated me as an American singer. My work would not fade with my generation. I had now moved into a very exclusive group. [As her many late-life Concord albums would attest.]

Perhaps I have been a little harsh in my assessment of the album in question. Take a listen to the recently released Blue Rose CD on the Columbia Legacy label, and you decide.

One thing everyone should be able to agree on is that somebody passed up a golden opportunity to have Rosemary—when her late-life jazz voice had fully developed—to re-record over the original Ellington tracks, assuming the tapes could have been found in the vaults, of course.

Now that would have been something.

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Looking Back 50 Years: Notable Jazz Albums of 1967

12/27/2017

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A half century ago, bandleader and reed/flute player Charles Lloyd was on the rise. He garnered DownBeat’s “new star” on tenor sax and flute in 1965, then busted out in 1966 on the strength of his Eastern-tinged albums Of Course, Of Course and Dreamweaver, and was finally crowned Jazzman of the Year by the magazine’s readers in 1967. Moreover, his Forest Flower album (recorded live at Monterey in 1966) took second place in the Record of the Year category.

Perhaps the most publicized Jazzman of the Year—he even toured the Soviet Union!—he polled well with DownBeat readers on tenor (third) and flute (second), as did his combo, with pianist Keith Jarrett and drummer Jack DeJohnette (second). Fans were far out in front of critics. The best the critics could do in their poll was award Lloyd’s youth-appealing combo first place in the Talent Deserving Wider Recognition category.

That same year also saw the release of three all-time classic albums by upper-echelon mainstays Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, and Sonny Rollins.

Miles’s second great quintet—alto saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams—are at their absolute peak on Miles Smiles. Excellent original themes—“Circles,” “Orbits,” “Footprints”—with the players building a huge creative tension between Shorter’s oblique, churning solos and Mile’s private musings on trumpet within a rhythm section bursting to be free while still playing time.

The interaction between Hancock, Carter, and Williams is so tight, so self-contained that collectively it should be considered the third front line player alongside the horns.

It’s my favorite Davis album period. And by the way, the album won top honors in the 1967 DownBeat Reader’s poll. Read about my encounter with the jazz prince.

This is the one Ellington suite that would make everyone’s top five (my number one and second overall after Newport ’56). Duke’s prominent soloists—Hodges, Hamilton, Gonsalves, Carney, and the maestro himself—are front and center, delivering matchless, impossible-to-duplicate solos. Altoist Hodges’s turn on “Isfahan” is arguably the most beautiful in Ellington’s and Strayhorn’s entire output.

If this one brings a tear to your eye, then “Blue Pepper,” the bluesy flip side of the Hodges coin, will bring a smile to your face. Tenorman Gonsalves shines on “Mount Harissa” with a two-plus-minute serpentine, “please don’t stop” songful moan.

Multi-stylistic pianist Ellington eschews his penchant for dissonance and taps less used keyboard styles to sketch uncommonly beautiful melodies throughout. Check out my full review of the album.

Sonny Rollins surprised many with his East Broadway Rundown offering that featured his tenor and extracted mouthpiece, along with John Coltrane’s rhythm section bassist Jimmy Harrison and drummer Elvin Jones with muscular trumpeter Freddie Hubbard (on one track).

At the time, many people thought Sonny was about to join the “New Thing” movement because of the 20-minute title track. The theme and the interplay between Sonny and Freddie, and the use of just a mouthpiece in sections reminded people of “New Wave” pioneers Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry.

But no, it was Rollins simply saying I can play free if I want to, and this is the way it should be done. On the other two tracks, it’s the old Sonny we all know, especially on “We Kiss in the Shadows.”

From Amazon reviewer Douglass Groothuis:

Few saxophonists can thrive and survive in the stripped down . . . format of drums, bass, and horn . . . The strength of [Rollins’s] tone in every register, the thematic improvizations, the sense of humor and intelligence (including the quotes from other songs, even classical pieces!)—all inspire respect and trigger delight in the soul.

Quintessential swing era big band drummer Buddy Rich reformed a 1930s/40s style big band in 1966. And to no one’s surprise, it hit hard. There was nothing subtle about it—all was speed, bravado, and intensity.

It quickly became a festival crowd pleaser, and an international success. In the 1967 DownBeat Reader’s Poll, Buddy jumped from fourth to first place on drums, and his new band came close to winning.

The two albums Big Swing Face and Swingin’ New Band placed third and fourth, respectively, behind Miles Smiles and Forest Flower. As far as Jazzman of the Year, he came very close—only Charles Lloyd (first) and Duke Ellington (second) ranked higher. Not too shabby.

In 1966, trumpeter Don Ellis forged a new jazz orchestra with an unusual rhythm section—three drummers and four bases fronting conventional instrumentation, four trumpets, three trombones, five reeds, and piano/organ.

The resulting music was rhythmically exciting unmatched by any other jazz orchestra (save possibly for that of Sun Ra).

As critic Pete Welding saw it, the consummate execution of difficult (some said crazy or odd) time signatures, and its effortless way with forceful, emotion-charged rhythmic polyphony of an intimacy and subtlety not heard before, was extraordinary. [1] How about a meter in 9 divided by 2 2 2 3, or 19 divided 33 222 1 222!

The band was enthusiastically received at its inaugural festival performance at Monterey in 1966 and again in 1967 and at other performances in between. The jazz public dug the band, as evidenced by Ellis’s fourth-place finish in the Jazzman of the Year DownBeat Poll and the band’s fourth-place finish in the Big Band category. The band’s Live at Monterey album placed ninth in the Record of the Year contest.

Yet another time signature mash-up (released in 1966 but reviewed in 1967) Indo-Jazz Suite: The Joe Harriott Double Quintet under the Direction of John Mayer—the first time in the history of music that Western musicians (all from the UK by the way) and Indian musicians played together from a written score. (Don Ellis fans might object, but his Hindustan group did not record and tour).

Kudos to composer-arranger John Mayer for making it happen. Improvising by both sets of musicians took place, especially by alto player Joe Harriott, who often moved outside the framework, playing his own brand of free jazz.

Not all fans and critics took to the fusion, but many did.

The Mayer-Harriett Double Quintet toured extensively, playing major concerts and clubs around Europe, and made two additional albums: Indo-Jazz Fusions and Indo-Jazz Fusions II. Maybe a little stilted at times, but always exciting and swinging. As Mayer later proclaimed, “World Music began here,” and who is to say otherwise. [2]

Mercy, Mercy, Mercy! Happy music (soul jazz, some called it) by Cannonball Adderley on alto, brother Nat on cornet, Joe Zawinal on electric and acoustic piano, Victor Haskin on bass, and Roy McCurdy on drums.

Six tunes, including Cannon’s classic “Sack of Woe” and Joe’s late night, slow in-the-pocket “Mercy” groove that became (believe it or not) a pop Top 10 single!

Producer Michael Cuscana: “One of the greatest uncompromising crossover successes in the history of jazz.”

NOTES

Pete Welding, “Time for Revolution: An Interview with Don Ellis,” DownBeat, April 2, 1967, 25–28.
Alan Robertson, Joe Harriett: Fire in his Soul (London: Northway Publications, 2003), 157–73.

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That Anniversary Year 2017: Looking Back 100 Years

12/21/2017

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Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, and Milt Jackson at Downbeat, NYC, ca. Sept. 1947 (Library of Congress)

This is a banner year for 100th-anniversary birthdays: singer Ella Fitzgerald, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Buddy Rich, and percussionist Mongo Santamaria. To top it off, it is also the centennial birthday of the first recorded jazz by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.

DownBeat magazine kicked things off in January with a cover headline: “1917: The Year that Changed the Course of Jazz History.” Feature articles followed on each centennial artist. From my vantage point in Washington, DC, I noted year-round activity at the Kennedy Center with two centenary tributes to Ella and one each for Monk and Dizzy. The Smithsonian Institute held two Ella tributes and five more were held at local jazz venues.

The Apollo Theater in Harlem appropriately celebrated Ella for her breakout performance there in 1935. Ella and Dizzy were honored together at the James Moody Jazz Fest in Newark, New Jersey, and at the PDX Jazz Fest in Portland, Oregon, while the music of Ella, Dizzy, Mongo, and Monk was celebrated at the Symphony Center in Chicago and at the Newport Jazz Festival.

Jazz at Lincoln Center launched a “100 Years of Jazz” series, and a Jazz@100 Conference was held at Darmstadt, Germany. It was a very good year for jazz locally, regionally, nationally, and globally.

John McDonough of DownBeat summed it up this way:

One hundred years ago, jazz was captured on commercial recordings for the very first time, suddenly projecting the music’s reach from the back of the bar to the ends of the earth. [1]

The yearlong celebration of this singular moment focused a brighter than usual spotlight on the monumental jazz artists that were born in 2017. And that’s a good thing.

Original DixieLand Jazz Band (ODJB)

Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology box set is expensive but worth it. Disc 1 has “Livery Stable Blue” by the ODJB and 1920s jazz tracks to compare and contrast.

January 1917 found five New Orleans musicians Nick LaRocca (trumpet, director), Eddie Edwards (trombone), Larry Shields (clarinet), Harry Ragas (piano), Tony Sbarboro (drums) working a two-week engagement at Reisenweber’s Cafe in New York City.

The music was loud and rowdy, variously described as having jagged contours and nervous energy, and unlike anything the city had ever heard. A novelty to be sure, the band drew ordinary folk and musicians from near and far and became the first to record the emergent New Orleans music.

On February 26, 1917, LaRocca and his men gathered in the Victor Talking Machine studio on 24th Street and recorded “Dixieland Jass Band One-Step” and “Livery Stable Blues.” (They changed “Jass” to “Jazz” the following year.)

Within a few days, the 78 rpm disc hit the streets, and driven by the latter tune, sales eventually soared to over a million copies. The ODJB’s popularity soared as well.

With LaRocca leading the way, historian Richard M. Sudhalter tells us:

The ODJB capitalized on its momentum. No one, if he had anything to do with it, would ever be allowed to forget that these five musicians were the first to put genuine hot music on records . . . Would that he had left it at that. In later years . . . he took another tack in a flood of letters, magazine articles, and in personal interviews he accused younger, more prominent musicians of trying to “cash in on his jazz craze started by the Original Jazz Band.” He also expressed contempt for anyone who tried to credit black jazzmen with any part of the creative process. [2]

Larocca’s claims for the ODJB as the originators of jazz was met with a counterclaim that the all-white ODJB could not be credited as being the first to record jazz since—as validated by the historical record—it originated in the New Orleans black communities.

Yet, as Bruce Boyd Raeburn has written:

Comparison of “Livery Stable Blues” with recordings made by Kid Ory in 1922, by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in 1922-23, and by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band in 1923 reveals common idiomatic features: an instrumental playing style couched in small band polyphony and collective “improvisation” (often relying on “head arrangements” worked out in advance) that used stop-time breaks, an insistent 4/4 rhythmic pulse, and a spirit described by one music critic as “Rabelaisian jocosity.” [3]

The ODJB was the first to record jazz—how representative or good it was is matter for historians. Most would agree, however, their music was a credible approximation of fin de siècle New Orleans music.

Moreover, and lest we not forget, as John McDonough wrote in DownBeat:

The band laid the cornerstone of the first important repertoire unique to jazz, a canon of songs developed at Reisenwebers in 1917 and still basic to all traditional jazz: “Tiger Rag.” “At the Jazz Band Ball,” “Clarinet Marmalade,” “Fidgety Feet,” “Jazz Me Blues,” and “Royal Garden Blues.” All originated with the ODJB. [4]

Simply put, the ODJB kick-started the decades long mainstreaming of jazz in America and, ultimately, the world.

Ella Fitzgerald

Ms. Fitzgerald’s visage appears on my imaginary female jazz singer Mount Rushmore. Her three-octave range, flawless diction, high wire scatting, and girlish tone made every Great American songbook rendition definitive.

Frank Sinatra had this to say:

Ella Fitzgerald is the only performer with whom I’ve ever worked who made me nervous. Because I try to work up to what she does. You know, try to pull myself up to that height, because I believe she is the greatest popular singer in the world. Barring none—male or female. [5]

Between 1956 and 1964, Fitzgerald recorded her songbook series on Verve Records, an album each to the songs of Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer, orchestrated by top flight arrangers Buddy Bregman, Paul Weston, Billy May, Nelson Riddle, and Duke Ellington/Billy Strayhorn.

Simply stated, over an eight-year period, Ella illuminated better than anyone the songs of the top seven composers of the Great American Songbook. [6]

These albums have been gathered in a highly recommended box set (16 CDs, 345 tracks) that deserves to be prominently displayed in Tiffany’s window on Fifth Avenue in New York City. If the Tiffany collection is too steep for your pocketbook, then I recommend my personal favorite Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook, which coincidentally, according to two sources, is the 36th and 55th all-time best jazz album ever. [7]

At live performances in clubs and concert halls, a piano trio or quartet usually supported the “first lady of song.” My personal favorite album is Ella in Berlin backed by the Paul Smith Quartet (Smith piano, Jim Hall guitar, Gus Johnson drums, and Wilfred Middlebrooks bass). Ella’s voice is earthier than usual, while her phrasing is as appealing as ever. She’s sublimely tender on Errol Garner’s “Misty,” romantically so on “The Man I Love” and the “Lorelie,” and wonderfully sultry on “Too Darn Hot.”

This recording is famous for her scats, a planned lengthy one on “How High the Moon” and an unplanned one after forgetting the words to “Mack the Knife”—the singer improvised a stealthy camouflage that included an impersonation of Louis Armstrong.

And if you like your Songbook composers live, Ella covers four Gershwin and three Porter songs, as well as one each from Arlen/Mercer, and Rodgers and Hart.

Thelonious Monk

Last year we celebrated the 100th anniversary of guitarist Charlie Christian, the first charter member of bebop’s birthplaces in Harlem, Monroe’s Uptown, and Minton’s Playhouse. This year we pay tribute to two other members, Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.

Monk would become the most idiosyncratic and singular of the early beboppers and one of jazz’s great composers. With its dissonances, its herky-jerky syncopations, and its child-like melodies, his music always swung in its own unorthodox way.

While the pianist occasionally performed in a trio setting, and sometimes in larger groups, he is probably best known for his work in quartets and quintets alongside outstanding tenor sax players like Coleman Hawkins, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Johnny Griffin or Charley Rouse. Most aficionados and critics would likely point to his encounters with Coltrane and Rouse as most noteworthy.

My personal favorites are his collaborations with tenor titans Rollins and Griffin and, in the case of the former, from a critically scorned session that occurred on Friday the 13th. And who in their right mind would ever book a studio for that date? Prestige Records A&R man Ira Gitler did, and, no surprise, the jinx held.

Monk wanted two prominent musicians, tenor man Sonny Rollins and trumpeter Ray Copeland on the date, but Copeland came down with the flu, and French Horn player Julius Watkins, who had never played with Monk and had only recorded a few times in a jazz context, was asked to sub.

To top it off, Monk and Rollins arrived at the studio an hour late—their taxi had skidded into a police vehicle, resulting in the loss of precious studio time. The aforementioned musicians joined outstanding bassist Percy Heath and left-handed drummer Willie Jones, a Monk pick who had never made a record before.

In the remaining studio time left, the quintet recorded three new Monk compositions “Think of One,” “Let’s Call This,” and appropriately “Friday the 13th.” And if you think the first two tunes got their titles from Monk’s inability to come up with more appropriate titles, you’d be right.

“Friday the 13th” was written on the spot and based on a simple four-bar repeating phrase—not because Monk had written it as such, but because A&R man Ira Gitler, aware of the limited studio time, kept frantically waving a hastily handwritten sign that read “MORE” to extend the number to 10:35 minutes.

Prestige released the tunes on an LP titled Thelonious Monk Blows for LP in March 1954. The tracks recorded that superstition-laden day did not become jazz standards as so many other Monk compositions have. Album sales were feeble, reviews were even worse, none of the tunes lit up the charts, and Monk languished in obscurity for another three years. [8]

So what’s to like? Simply, the music produced by three jazz greats at the start of their careers. Sonny Rollins is roundly considered to be one of the top five on tenor saxophone in jazz history. Monk is roundly considered to be among the top five jazz composers ever. And Julius Watkins is the founding father of jazz French horn.

Perhaps, on Monk’s centenary, a reexamination of his mid-1950s music on the Prestige label is in order, including that produced on that most inauspicious day back in 1953.

Likewise, the composer-pianist’s centenary would also be a good time for fans of Monk’s famed Five Spot encounter with tenor titan John Coltrane to reexamine his get-together with another tenor giant at the same venue: Johnny Griffin. His mastery of the horn is exceptional, top to bottom, sounding at times like an alto, sounding like no other, and always, always, swinging.

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie

Promulgators of bebop, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and alto saxist Charlie “Bird” Parker (Diz and Bird), along with key associates (Monk and drummer Kenny Clarke), replaced the tide-worn jazz phrasing with long teeming melodic lines, broke the insouciant flow of the four-four beat into chattering pockets of rhythm, and added fresh harmonies. Whitney Balliett’s take on the music was on the mark:

Bebop was an upheaval in jazz that matched the arrival of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington,
Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young, but it was not, as it is frequently taken to be, a total musical revolution . . . To be sure, it introduced radical techniques, but it stuck close to the blues, which it dressed up with flatted chords and various rhythmic furbelows. The chord structure of popular standards, which provided the rest of its diet, were slightly altered, and were given new titles . . . The music made little attempt at fresh ensemble voicings, but relied instead on complex unison figures. [9]

Over the years fans would sportingly argue who made the bigger contribution, Dizzy or Bird. Both added rhythmic elements, Bird mostly melody and blues touches and Diz harmonic advancements. Producer and Verve/Pablo label owner Norman Granz, who worked extensively with both had this to say:

I’m not sure that Dizzy has ever been given his proper niche in jazz . . . I don’t think that people really understand the contributions he’s made . . . He was the first one that introduced the Cuban rhythm section. I’m not sure Dizzy isn’t more important than Bird. That discussion seems to go on. I think Bird was an incredible soloist, but so was Dizzy. Bird had a big impact, but so did Dizzy. [10]

Gillespie not only introduced Cuban rhythms but continued to employ them (along with other Latin ones) while maintaining close and fruitful collaborations with Afro-Cuban and Latin musicians through the end of his days.

Without question, Dizzy was the major spokesperson for bebop and the best-known jazz trumpeter after Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong. Miles was not present at the creation of bebop, but joined the movement shortly thereafter, playing and recording with Bird.

Miles’s career took off in the mid-1950s, and he became the most talked about jazz trumpeter from the late 1950s through the 1980s, overshadowing at times the doings of the bebop master.

While Davis helmed two great quintets, featuring the likes of star players like John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams, he formed orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans to back his soulful trumpet voice, and then shocked the jazz world when he abandoned the acoustic format for electric-powered rock and roll.

But so did Diz, in his own way, and to a lesser extent, but no matter—somehow it didn’t seem to warrant the same coverage.

Gillespie collaborated several times with skilled orchestral composers and arrangers, notably once with J. J. Johnson for Perceptions, a six-movement suite during which Dizzy improvised over a brass choir, and two with Lalo Schifrin, Gillespiana (premiered at Carnegie Hall in 1961) and The New Continent (premiered at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1962 and later that same year at New York Philharmonic Hall).

The New Continent, a personal favorite, reflected the composer’s use of music from Spain, Africa, and America, to create a challenging multi-metered bedrock to support Gillespie’s fanciful excursions on his instrument.

In the 1970s Gillespie hooked up again with his long-term producer Norma Granz on his newly formed Pablo label. After several pairings with jazz masters from his era (altoist Benny Carter, pianist Oscar Peterson) Diz implored producer Granz to put aside all these “history” recordings, and let him record something “modern.” [11]

The result: Dizzy’s Party: a hip-shaking Latin jazz album for funk fans, with two electric guitars, drums, and percussion to support trumpet and saxophone. Granz himself concluded:

This album is Dizzy’s first dance album–yes, I said dance. But a very hip kind of dancing . . . He, also, uniquely combines once again Brazil and its rhythms (in the person of Paulinho da Costa [on Percussion]) with Jazz Time. [12]

Miles and his orchestrator Gil Evans gave us Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain and Dizzy and Lalo Schifrin birthed Gillespiana and The New Continent, all formidable albums, though the Davis ones are better known. Miles launched a rock and roll band surrounding himself with electric guitars, synthesizers, electric pianos and organs, drums and percussion.

The result: In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, On the Corner, and others, controversial albums in some quarters, well received in others, but still better known than Dizzy’s Party. A record James Brown could have danced to.

The point here: Miles is well known for being a musical shapeshifter—just when you think you know his music, begin to love it, he’s on to something else.

But Dizzy evolved as well. He emerged from the bebop cocoon he created with Charlie Parker, adding rhythmic elements from around the world, fattening his tone, streamlining his lengthy, multi-noted improvisations in a variety of contexts (combos and large orchestras) to fit the times.

Oh, and by the way, Diz and Lalo reunited a year after Dizzy’s Party on Free Ride, a Pablo album composed and arranged by his old partner for a 14-piece orchestra that employed electrical keyboards, electric guitars, and Fender Rhodes piano. Schifrin’s slow-rock arrangement on “Unicorn” created a near hit. [13]

Eat your heart out, Miles Davis.

Mongo Santamaria

Cuban congo player, percussionist, and bandleader Mongo Santamaria arrived in New York City at the beginning of the jazz-Latin fusion era and became, arguably, the most popular Latin musician of the 1960s.

In the jazz world, Santamaria is mostly known for (1) his version of Herbie Hancock’s tune “Watermelon Man,” which became a Top 10 hit in 1963, and (2) his authorship of “Afro-Blue,” a song saxophonist John Coltrane made famous.

One night when Herbie Hancock substituted for Mongo’s regular pianist at a Bronx nightclub, his group worked out a Latin groove underneath Herbie’s new composition “Watermelon Man.” Santamaria quickly recorded it, and the song became the only time that Riverside, a distinguished jazz label, had a song on the Top 10 pop charts. [14] In 1998, Mongo’s “Watermelon Man” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

See my book Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents for more details on how a hard bop, gospel roller (“Watermelon Man”) by an anonymous young jazz pianist (Herbie Hancock) ended up being covered by a small-market Latin band by an obscure Afro-Cuban percussionist (Mongo Santamaria) to become so popular it was covered by hundreds of other bands and thereby enriching both musicians. [15]

Buddy Rich

Here I must admit to a jazz character flaw, and offer my apologies to Mr. Rich’s many fans. I do not have a single LP or CD by the drummer and not one where he appears as a sideman. Moreover, if I were to list my Top 20 favorite jazz drummers, Mr. Rich’s name would not appear. Apologies to one and all.

John McDonough, “Dizzy, Ella, Buddy & Monk: The Year that Changed the Course of Jazz History,” DownBeat, January 2017, 5.
Richard M. Sudhalter, Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz, 1915–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 16.
Liner Notes, Bryce Boyd Raeburn, “Original DixieLand Jazz Band,” Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology (Smithsonian Folkways Recording, 2010), 27.
John McDonough, “Dizzy, Ella, Buddy & Monk,” DownBeat, January 2017, 29.
James Kaplan, Frank Sinatra: The Chairman (New York: Anchor Books, 2015), 214.
Some 17 years later, in 1981, another, and the last of the series was added: Ella Abra Jobim: Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook, on Pablo Records.
According to Jazzwire and New Yorker magazines, respectively.
Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents (Takoma Park, Maryland: IM Press, 2016), 50–53.
Whitney Balliett, Whitney Balliett Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2001 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 84.
Tad Hershon, Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011), 131.
Personal recollection.
Back cover notes, Dizzy’s Party, Dizzy Gillespie Sextet, Pablo Records, 1977, LP.
Dizzy Gillespie with Al Frazer, To Be or not . . . to Bop (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 522.
Ben Ratliff, “Mongo Santamaria, 85, Influential Jazz Percussionist, Dies,” New York Times, February 3, 2003.
Edward Allan Faine, Serendipity Doo-Dah, 72–74.

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“To Duke” from Matthew Shipp

2/9/2017

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My quick search reveals 37 instrumental album tributes to Duke Ellington, 12 by pianists—from Billy Byers to Oscar Peterson to Abdullah Ibrahim to Tommy Flanagan to Monty Alexander, to the most recent by Matthew Shipp.

Shipp with trio-mates Michael Basio (bass) and Whit Dickey (drums) pay homage to the maestro by offering four original dedications and seven familiar classics: “In a Sentimental Mood,” “Satin Doll,” “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good,” “Take the A-Train,” “Mood Indigo,” “Prelude to a Kiss,” and “Solitude.”

For the most part, Shipp eschews the usual approach to these standards—theme, improv, theme—in favor of his own idiosyncratic approach where theme and improv seem to simultaneously coexist in space and time.

Shipp has a somewhat difficult-to-categorize playing style all his own, at least for me, so I won’t try, except to say others have hung a free jazz label on it, reminding them of Cecil Taylor, Andrew Hill or Thelonious Monk, or Vejay Iyer at times. Nonetheless, he has recorded a credible album (with some reservations) dedicated to the music of one of the most important musicians of the 20th century.

Personally, and I hate writing this, I wish Shipp had dropped the originals and given us his take on other ducal masterpieces and, more importantly, recorded them solo (as he in fact did with “Prelude”), asking his rhythm mates to take the day off. The busy, bass/drum chatterbox underneath Shipp’s keyboard explorations interfered with my listening at times.

In general, tempos are taken a mite faster than the originals, and the two “Mood” pieces—“Sentimental” and “Indigo”—are more “red” than “blue.”

“A-Train” and “Doll” are both up and at times manage to swing. The pianist’s treatment of “Doll” should bring a smile to most faces; the familiar melody is always recognizable, though not always fully stated: imagine the “Doll” lyrics with several syllables left out: “Out . . . in’ / My Sa . . . Doll.”

Further imagine this head-wagging toe-tapper being played by a Bavarian marching band, or some such. That’s how it ends. I would venture Duke, from his lofty perch on high, would be chuckling and nodding, especially at Shipp’s somewhat bombastic use of the lower 88. As would McCoy Tyner. As would Cecil Taylor.

Mr. Shipp’s solo rendition of “Prelude” joins the many other outstanding keyboard tributes to Duke’s lovely ballad.

Recommended for its engaging interpretations of the classics, To Duke bears repeated play for best appreciation. Should the avant pianist decide to record a follow-up album of nothing but Ellington tunes (there are numerous others to choose from) without accompaniment, then sign me up.

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“To Duke” from Matthew Shipp

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Blue Rose: The Clooney/Ellington Collaboration

Looking Back 50 Years: Notable Jazz Albums of 1967

NOTES

That Anniversary Year 2017: Looking Back 100 Years

Original DixieLand Jazz Band (ODJB)

Ella Fitzgerald

Thelonious Monk

John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie

Mongo Santamaria

Buddy Rich

“To Duke” from Matthew Shipp

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