Tom Waits 2011. Photo: Fresh on the Net.

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]
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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]

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]

Tom Waits. 2013. Photo: Andreas Lehner.

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]

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]

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.

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.

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

Willis Conover. Wikimedia.

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

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

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]

Photo: Adobe Stock / JB

Gary Burton

Miles Davis

Wayne Shorter

Herbie Hancock

Duke Ellington

Buddy Rich

Don Ellis

Rahsan Roland Kirk

John Coltrane

Aretha Franklin

Photo: Adobe Stock / Dmitriy Shipilov

Jimmy Blanton

Ellington starred Blanton and his instrument in concerti like “Jack the Bear” and “Bojangles” . . . as well as the highly unconventional duets that he recorded with Blanton—“Pitter Panther Patter,” “Mr. J.B. Blues” . . . his big tone and easy, generous melodic lines mov[ing] like rivers through every record they did together . . . His phrasing was spare and his silences were as important as his notes. He adopted a hornlike approach to his instrument—that is, he no longer just “walked” four beats to the bar but also played little melodies . . . Blanton’s accompanying was forceful; he pushed the band and its soloists by playing a fraction ahead of the beat . . . which lifted the band and made it swing. (2)

Marian McPartland

Hank Jones

Unlike most modern pianists, Jones constantly uses his left hand, issuing a carpet of tenths, little offbeat clusters, and occasional patches of stride. Jones’ solos judge, and they rest far above the florid, Gothic roil that many jazz pianist have fallen into. (6)

Joe Williams

Wayne Shorter. 2006. Photo credit: Tom Beetz.

No one was prepared for the deeply affecting sound of Wayne’s Native Dancer recording. It was unlike any Brazilian music most Americans had ever heard. The record’s first few notes introduced a voice, one that had to be the most potent falsetto on the planet [belonging] to Brazilian pop star and composer Milton Nascimento [to which] Wayne married jazz to Milton’s melodies in a kind of holy union that made other Brazilian jazz efforts of the time [Jazz Samba, Getz /Gilberto] seem like one-night stands. (1)

Milton, Wagner [Tiso], and Robertinho [Silva]. There were also two players from the pop scene, Dave McDaniel, a bassist with Joe Cocker, and Jay Graydon, a guitarist, producer, and songwriter. There was Dave Amaro, [Brazilian singer] Flora Purim’s guitarist, on a couple of tunes, and [husband, percussionist] Airto [Moreira] on most of them. The engineer was Rob Fabroni, who had worked with The Band and other rock groups. And finally, Jim Price, a multi-instrumentalist who had worked with the Rolling Stones, produced the record. (2)

Milton sang “Lilia” with wordless vocals [as he did on several others], which was for him a style born of necessity and perfected under pressure. Under Brazil’s military dictatorship in the sixties and seventies, the ruling regime monitored pop music, censoring anything seemingly rebellious . . . When Milton recorded [an album] in 1973, the censors denied clearance on several of its songs. His record company asked him to write new lyrics. But Milton didn’t want to play the military’s editing game . . . So Milton protested by singing without words, using his voice in an instrumental role. (5)