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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Waits elaborated:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​In addition, according to Brothers,
​

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

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

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

I would rank the collective Duke at the top along with Gershwin and Rodgers.
 
As for Duke being, as is often said, jazz’s finest composer, does he now take a lesser place to Jelly Roll Morton or Fats Waller or Charles Mingus or John Lewis or anybody else?
 
All that can be said for certain, using contemporary terminology, is that Duke was CEO, COO, CFO, and President of Marketing and Public Relations of Ellington Inc. for over four decades.
 
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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.
 
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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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the Jazzman of the Year category in the December 1968 DownBeat Reader’s Poll, magazine readers singled out, in order, vibraphonist Gary Burton, trumpeter Miles Davis, composer Duke Ellington, drummer Buddy Rich, and trumpeter Don Ellis. With a few exceptions, that sounded about right.

Gary Burton not only represented a new voice on an instrument few in jazz opt to play, but also put forth a new concept on what he chose to play in a combo setting, as evidenced by his four albums in circulation that year: Duster (1967), Lofty Fake Anagram (1967), A General Tong Funeral (1967), and In Concert (1968). 

The vibist’s two-handed, four-mallet approach spun soft, dreamy aural chords that separated him from his forebears on the instrument: Lionel Hampton, Red Norvo, Milt Jackson, and Bobby Hutcherson. 

Conceptually, Burton chose to synthesize jazz and rock (even country at times), becoming one of the first jazz players to do so, though not as aggressively as later groups Miles Davis, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Mwandishi, Return to Forever, Lifetime, and Weather Report, giving these Johnny-come-lately outfits permission to use rock beats and distorted guitar in a jazz performance. 

The guitarist on Tong Funeral is rising star Larry Coryell. Overall, the album comes across like a soundtrack to a theatrical performance, no doubt influenced by pianist Carla Bley, who would later expand on this construct in her epic Escalator over the Hill (1971).

The Miles Davis Second Great Quintet—sidemen saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist Herbie Hancock, Bassist Ron Carter, and drummer Tony Williams—continued apace with the previous year’s stunning Miles Smiles album by releasing Sorcerer and Miles in the Sky. 

Both received top-rated reviews in DownBeat. The leader once again won top honors in the trumpet and combo categories in both the DownBeat critics and readers polls. Moreover, the trumpeter’s frontline star players also issued notable albums of their own.

​Wayne Shorter received DownBeat’s top rating for Adam’s Apple, a quartet effort backed by his totally telepathic and adventurous piano partner, Herbie Hancock, along with bass and drums. The album is known for its compositions—“El Gaucho,” for example—but especially for the jazz standard “Footprints.” 

With this release, the idea began to build in the jazz community that Shorter was much more than a soloist—indeed, a composer of merit likely to join the ranks of John Lewis, Charles Mingus, and Duke Ellington.

​Herbie Hancock’s Speak Like a Child, an experimental, slithery abstract combining of flugelhorn (Thad Jones), bass trombone (Peter Phillips), and alto (Jerry Dodgion), did not move the needle at the time. 

Today, however, this album with its interesting, simple melody sound clouds has gained an appreciative audience. Another way to put it: Miles Davis had his Birth of the Cool, and Herbie had his Speak Like a Child.

​Duke Ellington and his orchestra followed their 1967 outstanding Far East Suite with a homage to Duke’s composing and arranging partner Billy Strayhorn: And His Mother Called Him Bill. 

Far East Suite is my number one favorite, And His Mother, featuring all Strayhorn tunes, is my number two. In my opinion, Duke’s mid-1960s band is the equal of the maestro’s famed late ’30s/early ’40s Webster-Blanton band and deserves a name unto itself. Perhaps Ellington’s Second Testament band? Nope, that name’s taken by the Basie aggregation.
 
The reason why it’s so difficult to come up with a proper moniker is that it had not one or two but numerous outstanding soloists at or near their peak: Paul Gonsalves (tenor), Johnny Hodges (alto), Harry Carney (baritone), Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet), Cootie Williams (trumpet), Rufus Jones (drums), and, of course, Duke Ellington (piano). Band nickname aside, And His Mother is the Ellington ’60s band at its peak—the same could be said for altoist Johnny Hodges.
 
As Nelson Riddle was to Frank Sinatra and as Lester Young was to Billy Holiday, Billy Strayhorn was to Johnny Hodges. Stray’s compositions brought out that special, sensuous Hodges sound. As singer/author Lillian Terry recently put in her book Dizzy, Duke, Brother Ray, and Friends, “Heavens, when he blows those long, languid notes . . . it’s an actual caress!” 

Yes—as on Hodges’s tribute to Strayhorn on “Blood Count,” “After All,” and “Day Dream,” the latter a late-at-night, sob-in-your beer favorite. The flip side of the Hodges coin—the bluesy side—Billy knew all too well, as illustrated on “Snibor,” “The Intimacy of the Blues,” and “Acht O’Clock Rock.”

​Buddy Rich and his big band remained hot throughout the year with both the jazz public and DownBeat readers, who awarded the drummer a second place finish in the Album of the Year category for his appropriately titled The New One.

​Riding high on his 1967 breakout year, Don Ellis received 1968 Album of the Year honors for Electric Bath from DownBeat readers. Critic Harvey Siders, who awarded the album five stars, described Ellis’s chart for his orchestra as nervous, frenetic, and exciting—unconventional meter, the acoustic incense of Eastern rhythms added by “now” twang of sitars, tape loop delays, and sometimes abrasive clash of quarter tones. 

Other critics heard it differently and did not characterize the band as exciting. Magazine subscribers sided with Siders.

​Multi-instrumentalist Rahsan Roland Kirk—tenor saxophone, manzello, stritch, flute, and other assorted instruments, like the oboe played individually or two or three at a time—released The Inflated Tear, another energetic carnival of sound, and one of his best albums of the ’60s.

​John Coltrane, who passed in 1967, took his place in the upper echelons of jazz immortals, alongside Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and Charlie Parker. 

Two of Coltrane’s albums, the now classic Impressions and Om, were reviewed in DownBeat in 1968; the former received five stars, the latter four. The torchbearers, the tenor men closest to him stylistically and personally, forged ahead with new albums: Albert Ayler (In Greenwich Village), Pharoah Sanders (Tauhid), and Archie Shepp (In Europe). ​

​Lastly, singer Aretha Franklin passed in August of 2018. Fifty years ago, DownBeat published a feature article on Aretha. In its Reader Poll issue, the Queen of Soul finished second to the one and only Ella Fitzgerald in the female singer category. For a magazine primarily focused on jazz, this was high praise indeed.

In my book Serendipity Doo-Dah Book One, I included a short piece on Ms. Franklin, covering her rise to prominence when she switched to Atlantic Records in 1967 and her recovery from her mid-career slump in 1977. Read it here.

The 100th anniversary birthday calendar for this year is chock a block with 18 total centenarians, oldest to youngest as follows:

Money Johnson, Marian McPartland, Sir Charles Thompson, Howard McGee, Sam Donahue, Peanuts Hucko, Hank Jones, Rusty Dedrick, Eddie Jefferson, Arnett Cobb, Ike Quebec, Jimmy Rowles, Gerald Wilson, Tommy Potter, Jimmy Blanton, Bobby Troup, Joe Williams, and Jimmy Jones. (1)

I will single out four, each with a Duke Ellington connection, three of whom performed at the White House tribute to Duke Ellington on his 70th birthday on April 29, 1969.

Jimmy Blanton, who was just 21 when he joined Duke in 1939, was the first modern bassist. He had a big tone and unshakable time and was the first jazz bassist capable of “melodic” improvising. Blanton stayed with the band until late 1941 (he died in 1942).

In that brief time, according to Whitney Balliett,

Now known as the Blanton-Webster band, Ellington’s orchestra of 1939–1941 is thought by many to be his best ever.

Newly married to trumpeter Jimmy McPartland and freshly settled in the US from Great Britain, the aspiring jazz pianist acquired her first gig at the Embers nightclub in New York City. As scary as that was for the British expat, it was but a prelude to her opening at the 52nd Street Hickory House steakhouse in 1952, affording her the opportunity to mingle and play piano for numerous jazz greats—to both learn from them and gradually gain their acceptance.

One of the first reviews she received as a jazz pianist at the Hickory House was by Leonard Feather in DownBeat magazine: “Marian McPartland has three strikes against her, she’s English, white, and a woman.” (3) Ten years hence, by the time her trio’s weekly stint at the Hickory was over, Marian had gained a measure of respect for her talents.

Her career for the next 10 or so years or so continued apace, performing at concerts and clubs, traveling extensively, and making one or two records every year.

Marian is probably best known for her Piano Jazz radio show that aired on NPR starting in 1978, where she interviewed and performed with hundreds of jazz (and some pop) singers, pianists, and other instrumentalists, continuously for 23 years. It won the coveted Peabody Award in 1984, the ASCAP–Deems Taylor Award in 1991, the New York Festivals Gold World Medal in 1988, and the Gracie Allan Award in 2001, presented by the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television.

McPartland was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), received a Lifetime Achievement Award from DownBeat magazine, and a Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Award. (4)

Not too shabby for a white English woman, eh, Mr. Leonard Feather?
    
As a lifelong admirer and friend of Duke Ellington, Marian was a shoo-in to be invited to perform at the maestro’s White House tribute on April 29, 1969. The Nixon administration went out of their way to make sure she did. They provided a limousine to shuttle her between the White House and her gig at nearby Blues Alley in Georgetown, managing to get her to the East Room in time for the late night jam session after the all-star band concert.

Duke greeted his Hickory House friend upon her arrival, and, fearing Willie “the Lion” Smith would monopolize the keyboard all night long, Duke urged Marian to take her turn at the grand piano. Once she was on the riser, the Lion said to her, “I suppose you want to play.”

“Yeah, I’d like to,” Marian responded, moving in a little.

“Okay,” Willie said as he walked off in a sulk. Ellington stood nearby chuckling to himself.

After a decent interval at the keys, McPartland zipped back to Blues Alley, where she greeted her guests with, “Sorry I’m late. I’m also doubling at the White House.” (5)
​

A member of the famous jazz family that includes brothers Thad (cornet) and Elvin (drums), Hank Jones grew up listening to virtuoso pianists Earl Hines, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum. But like so many of his generation, Hank embraced the bebop style in the 1940s, though perhaps less so than his contemporaries.

From there, he became a Jazz at the Philharmonic mainstay (1940s), an accompanist for singers like Ella Fitzgerald (1950s), a CBS staff musician in New York City (1960s–70s), and the pianist on a thousand and one record dates. By then, his style had coalesced

But his velvet-touch, cloudlike chords that seem to drift one into the other are what linger in the mind long after he has finished playing. He remains preeminent among the “soft touch” pianists to whom he could be compared: George Shearing, Marian McPartland, and Bill Evans.

From the 1970s on, although Jones freelanced as before, he became widely regarded as the dean of jazz pianists through his recordings in the trio format—for example, Great Jazz Trio with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Tony Williams—and his duos with pianists Tommy Flanagan and John Lewis, bassist Charlie Haden, and guitarist Bill Frisell.

His rise in stature is evidenced, in part, by his NEA Jazz Master Award in 1989, his 19th-place finish in Gene Rizzo’s book The Fifty Greatest Jazz Piano Players of All Time (Hal Leonard, 2005), and his career-topping National Medal of Arts award bestowed by President George H. W. Bush in 2008. (7)

Along with guitarist Jim Hall, bassist Milt Hinton, and drummer Louis Bellson, Hank was a member of the all-star rhythm section that backed the all-star front line at Duke Ellington’s 70th-birthday celebration at the White House: trombonists Urbie Green (“I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good) and J. J. Johnson (“Satin Doll”), altoist Paul Desmond (“Chelsea Bridge”), baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan (“Sophisticated Lady”), trumpeters Bill Berry and Clarke Terry (“Just Squeeze Me”), and the whole band on a raft of Ellington tunes.

No solos for Hank. Nonetheless, the pianist chorded the patented opening vamp Duke had crafted many years before on “Satin Doll,” and the East Room crowd reacted immediately—they knew what was coming—and trombonist Johnson delivered the familiar melody. (8)
​ 

His versatile baritone voice made Joe Williams one of the signature male vocalists in jazz annals, responsible for some of the Count Basie band’s main hits in the 1950s: “Alright, Okay, You Win,” “The Comeback,” and what would become one of his most requested tunes, “Every Day.” The classic Count Basie Swings and Joe Williams Sings (Verve) album from that period was ranked 17th all-time favorite jazz vocal album by jazz singers in a DownBeat magazine June 2004 poll.

Starting in the 1960s, Williams was a vocal soloist fronting various piano trios. He continued to expand his range, becoming a superior crooner and exhibiting a real depth of feeling on ballads. Recognition of this growth came in 1974 when Joe won DownBeat’s Critics Poll as best male vocalist—winning nearly every year thereafter for more than a decade. His stature as a polished and complete singer came in 1993 when he received the NEA Jazz Master Award. (9)

At the Ellington White House tribute, Joe sang three songs backed by the all-star band, starting with “Come Sunday,” which Gary Giddins has rightly crowned the Duke’s supreme contribution to the American hymnal. The spiritual theme was first introduced in 1943 at Carnegie Hall in Black, Brown, and Beige, Ellington’s first voyage into extended composition.

Williams loved singing Ellington songs and included at least one in nearly every performance. In his repertoire for some time, he sang “Sunday” at an earlier Ellington tribute in the summer of 1963 in New York City and again on record in 1966: Presenting Joe Williams: Tad Jones/Mel Lewis (Blue Note).  

Mahalia Jackson’s rendering of this lovely hymn is unsurpassed. But on the male side of the ledger, no one has come close to matching the depth and poignancy that Williams has lent to the song. One of the critics in attendance the night of the tribute, Leonard Feather, characterized Joe’s version as “deeply moving.” Critic Morgenstern concluded, “Williams [is] singing as movingly as I’ve ever heard him.”

William’s brought the same amount of conviction and richness to “Heritage,” also known as “My Mother, My Father” as he did to “Come Sunday.” He sang slowly and thoughtfully, with the feel of an elegy. According to Doug Ramsey, there wasn’t a dry eye in the East Room when he finished.

As with “Come Sunday,” Williams would revisit “Heritage” in a studio date for Fantasy Records accompanied by the Cannonball Adderley Quintet (Joe Williams Live) and again, memorably so, at Duke’s funeral on Memorial Day 1974.

A swinger from the satirical musical of 1941 of the same name, “Jump for Joy” closed out the All-Star band concert in truly joyous fashion. Joe’s caramel baritone perfectly enveloped the song’s gospel ardor and secular esprit. He had previously recorded “Jump” in 1963, and must have sung the song a hundred times after that 1963 studio date.

Whether it was this past familiarity with the tune, or Joe’s and the band’s sensing the concert finish line, Joe was out front but still solidly “in the pocket” for an all-out swinging climax to the concert. (10)

1. Jazz Birthday Calendar, 1918.
2. Whitney Balliett, Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954–2001 (New York, St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 478–79.
3. Marian McPartland, Marian McPartland’s Jazz World: All in Good Time (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 1.
4. Ibid., 166.
5. Edward Allan Faine, Ellington at the White House, 1969 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2013), 138.
6. Balliett, Collected Works, 837.
7. Faine, Ellington, 60.
8. Ibid., 93–133.
9. Ibid., 66–67.
10. Ibid., 126–30.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nascimento wrongly titled “From the Lonely Afternoons”—should have been “Lovely” or “Happy.” The singer-songwriter sails a wordless vocal over the band’s jumping, finger-snapping groove that compels Wayne on tenor to spread a Coltraneish flurry of notes over the head-bobbing musical stew. At the close, other voices (members of the band?) join Milton before Wayne declares “Good Afternoon.”
​
Critic Howard Mandel, who awarded Native Dancer five stars in DownBeat magazine, was especially enamored by the saxist’s homage to his wife “Ana Maria,” writing, "A lovely line is offered again and again with the slightest embellishment, gradually blossoming into a large, encompassing circle that Hancock laces with sweeping and graceful runs.” (4)
   
As revealed by Shorter biographer Mercer:

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

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

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

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

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

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

​

A personal tribute to 2018 Kennedy Center honoree Phillip Glass from my book Serendipity Doo-Dah: True Stories of Happy Musical Accidents, Book One (pages 120–22):

Fortuitous happenstance is endemic to all human endeavor, not just music, and not just to specific music genres. Classical, for example, is not immune to the Midas touch. Case in point: Philip Glass.

By 1967, the post-modern “minimalist” composer-performer Glass had completed not only his post-graduate studies at the Julliard School of Music but also his “post-doctoral” education with two masters: eminent composition teacher Nadia Boulinger and Indian classicist Ravi Shankar. After a bit of world travel, he settled in New York City and began to compose music for himself and others, and to schedule performances at art galleries and studio lofts in SoHo.
 
He had gotten married, had two kids, and supported the family not with his music, but with odd jobs such as moving furniture.

In 1971, Glass composed a new work he called Music in Twelve Parts, referring to twelve separate instrumental parts in a single piece. He took a recording of his new composition to a musician friend, told her the title, and played it for her. Afterward, he asked her, “How did you like it?”

“I like it very much,” she said. “What do the other 11 parts sound like?”

Initially taken aback, Philip realized she had misunderstood the title, but then, an epiphany. He immediately began to plan eleven more parts. The scope of his long-form work would be a summing up of his decade-long attempt to integrate all three elements of music—melody, harmony, and rhythm—into one overall structure.

The earlier parts would emphasize the repetitive, the rhythmic, while the melodic aspects would rise to prominence in the middle or transitional parts, the latter parts introducing greater harmonic movement. If this new extended work was a painting, a gallery curator might call it a mosaic.

In time—some three years—a performance of the completed work was in order. It was time for a bold move. Glass, who had never drawn an audience beyond 150 at a gallery or museum space, or 400 at a university auditorium, threw caution to the wind and rented out the 1400-seat town hall in midtown Manhattan.

Fortune smiled, the concert sold out. Over the three years Glass took to write the piece, as each part was finished, it was performed in a loft or gallery space. The idea began to grow that these parts would become a larger work. People anxiously awaited the next parts to come out. Glass built expectation for the completed work in much the same way Charles Dickens did some 140 years prior when he serialized his first novel Oliver Twist.

Manhattanites anticipated a new part from the Philip Glass Ensemble every two or three months, much like Dickens's dedicated readers eagerly anticipated the next monthly installment. No wonder Town Hall filled to capacity to hear the 12 parts back-to-back.

With the success of his ambitious extended work, Glass made his point, to himself, and to everyone in a few short years, when he launched a full-scale opera he called Einstein on the Beach.

During the latter stages of Twelve Parts, Glass had begun to work on the opera blueprint with theater director Robert Wilson. Moreover, during a loft performance of part 6 of Twelve Parts, a fortuitous visit by a Frenchman resulted in a commitment, seemingly frivolous at the time, to fund the composer’s next work.

Two years later, that visitor became France’s Minister of Culture, and followed through with an offer to stage the Glass/Wilson Einstein opera at Avignon, France, and to help establish a subsequent tour of six European cities. The tour set the stage for a triumphant return back to the Metropolitan, the American citadel of high culture for a much-acclaimed, two sold-out performances of Einstein in November 1976.

All told, there were 35 performances of the opera. None played to an empty seat, yet the tour ended in debt, some $100,000 in the red. Both Glass and Wilson were saddled with a debt that dragged on for years. While Einstein didn’t make any money, it made the composer’s career. He was now a “successful” opera composer. But he still had to drive a taxi at night to support his family.

He would not make a living working full-time as a musician-composer until 1978, when, at the age of 41, he was commissioned to compose Satyagraha for the Netherlands Opera. From that point on, it was full-steam ahead—no more nighttime cab driving—nothing but total concentration on music composition and performance.

He would become in the words of the New York Times “the most prolific and popular of contemporary composers,” amassing over 220 compositions in eleven different categories (operas, symphonies, concertos, film scores, ballet, chamber ensembles among them.)

In such a productive, accomplished life, there had to be numerous crucial moments that propelled Mr. Glass forward on his path to greatness—perhaps none more meaningful than when his musician friend innocently asked, “What do the other 11 parts sound like?”

This past July, Rolling Stone magazine introduced its new 8/3/4” x 11 3/4” glossy format with a most interesting two-page spread visually encapsulating the music industry’s sales evolution over four decades (1975–2017)—a colorful graphic chart showing the rise and fall of the vinyl LP, cassette tape, CD, digital downloads, and the new dominant paid streaming subscription service. Please find the issue on a magazine rack somewhere if you can or at your local library.

Rolling Stone subtitles the multicolored chart as “The Story of an Industry in One Chart.”

The annual sales figures given are unadjusted for inflation. Nonetheless, one can accurately examine the interplay of the various recording methods for a specific year as I have done.

Take the start year 1975, for example. The industry pulled in $2.4 billion, roughly split 80/20 between vinyl and 8-track, with the newly introduced cassette tape picking up a few crumbs.

Now jump a decade ahead to 1985 and 8-track is a thing of the past, but vinyl has a new rival. Cassette tape has taken hold, scarfing up two-thirds of the $4.4 billion industry total. Skipping ahead fifteen years to 2000, we learn that the once lowly CD is now king, commandeering over 90% of the $14.4 billion take.

Practically speaking, goodbye vinyl, goodbye cassette tape. What a change in only 15 years! But nothing like what happened in the next seven years, taking us to the situation we have today.

Fare-thee-well, CD, hello to digital downloads, digitized and customized radio revenue, on-demand streaming, other ad-supported streaming, and especially paid streaming subscription service, the latter attracting 47 % of the $8.7 billion total.

Based on industry sales figures for the past two years, Rolling Stone concludes that the industry is poised for a comeback. That’s a bit much for me, based on what’s happened over the past four decades, as their chart so amply demonstrates.

I am incapable of projecting the future for this industry. I didn’t see any of this coming. Contact me if you’d like to take 700 exceptional jazz vinyl LPs off my hands.

Photo: Adobe Stock / rodri_goplay

When President Nixon awarded Duke Ellington the Medal of Freedom in 1969, it was only the seventh time the nation’s highest civilian honor had been awarded to a musician. And, of course, it was the first given to an African American and to a jazz musician. And that was truly special!

Since 1962, after JFK awarded the first to Pablo Casals, US presidents have been handing out Freedom Medals like they were Cracker Jacks prizes, dispensing them to more than 500 individuals, an average of more than 10 per year. Unwittingly or not, our chief executives have devalued the citation. Clearly, we can all agree, the award today is not as special as the one Duke received.

In December 2013, President Obama continued the top medal largesse, awarding a total of 16, one to former President Clinton, as if he needed another trophy. In Obama’s defense, all presidents prior to Clinton got one too, save for Nixon.

One went to jazz trumpeter and Cuban émigré Arturo Sandoval, an obvious act of political correctness. The ethnic breakdown of the other 15 honorees: one Asian, four black, and 10 white. Gender wise: 10 men, five women.

Sandoval is a mighty fine trumpeter and composer. But how many long-term jazz fans would select him over saxophone masters Sonny Rollins or Wayne Shorter, for example? Very few. And how many jazz fans would select reedman Charles Lloyd or saxophonists Joe Lovano or Ornette Coleman or pianist Keith Jarrett over Arturo Sandoval? The body of work and influence of the aforementioned living jazz alternatives far exceeds that of Mr. Sandoval.

Who would you have given the medal to?

For the record, the below lists past jazz recipients of the Medal of Freedom, by year: