Category: Music History

President Carter’s White House Jazz Festival

3/31/2020

Saxophonist Dexter Gordon and pianist Herbie Hancock on the South Lawn of the White House. June 18, 1978.

In my opinion, the grandest assemblage of jazz musicians at the White House occurred on the night of Duke Ellington’s 70th birthday, April 29, 1969, when President Nixon awarded Duke the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor (as discussed in my book Ellington at the White House 1969).

But others claim that President Carter’s South Lawn gathering some nine years later, billed as the first White House jazz festival, tops the Duke event by a country mile.

Frankly, it’s hard to disagree: Carter’s introductory speech and the gasping, jaw-dropping lineup of jazz stars were exemplary.

The New Orleans Young Tuxedo Brass Band open the festivities.

On June 18, 1978, Carter stepped up on the specially erected stage on the South Lawn of the White House and—facing the 800 people gathered before him (musicians and their families and invited guests)—gave the most enlightened and heartfelt speech by any US president on America’s own music. And he did so extemporaneously:

You are welcome to the first White House jazz festival. I hope we have some more in the future. This is an honor for me—to walk through this crowd and meet famous jazz musicians and the families of those who are no longer with us, but whose work and whose spirit and whose beautiful music will live forever in our country.

If there ever was an indigenous art form, one that is special and peculiar to the United States and represents what we are as a country, I would say that it’s jazz. Starting late in the last century, there was a unique combination of two characteristics that have made America what it is: individuality and a free expression of one’s inner spirit.

In an almost unconstrained way, vivid, alive, aggressive, innovative on the one hand, and the severest form of self-discipline on the other, never compromising quality as the human spirit bursts forward in an expression of song.

At first, this jazz form was not well accepted in respectable circles. I think there was an element of racism perhaps at the beginning, because most of the famous early performers were black. And particularly in the South to have black and white musicians playing together was not a normal thing. And I believe that this particular form of music—of art—has done as much as anything to break down those barriers and to let us live and work and play and make beautiful music together.

And the other thing that kind of separated jazz musicians from the upper levels of society was the reputation jazz musicians had. Some people thought they stayed up late at night, drank a lot, and did a lot of carousing around. And it took a few years for society to come together. I don’t know. I’m not going to say, as President, whether the jazz musicians became better behaved or the rest of society caught up with them in drinking, carousing around, and staying up late at night.

But the fact is that over a period of years the quality of jazz could not be constrained. It could not be unrecognized. And it swept not only our country, but is perhaps the favorite export product of the United States to Europe and in other parts of the world.

I began listening to jazz when I was quite young—on the radio, listening to performances broadcast from New Orleans. And later when I was a young officer in the navy, in the early ’40s, I would go to Greenwich Village to listen to the jazz performers who came there. And with my wife later on, we’d go down to New Orleans and listen to individual performances on Sunday afternoon on Royal Street, sit in on the jam sessions that lasted for hours and hours.

And then later, of course, we began to learn the individual performers through the phonograph records and also on the radio itself. This has had a very beneficial effect on my life. And I’m very grateful for what all these remarkable performers have done.

Twenty-five years ago, the first Newport Jazz Festival was held. So this is a celebration of an anniversary and a recognition of what it meant to bring together such a wide diversity of performers and different elements of jazz in its broader definition that collectively is even a much more profound accomplishment than the superb musicians and the individual types of jazz standing alone.

And it’s with a great deal of pleasure that I—as president of the United States—welcome tonight superb representatives of this music form. Having performers here who represent the history of music throughout this century, some quite old in years, still young at heart, others newcomers to jazz who have brought an increasing dynamism to it, and a constantly evolving, striving for perfection as the new elements of jazz are explored.

George Wein has put together this program, and I’d like to welcome him and all the superb performers whom I met individually earlier today. And I know that we all have in store for us a wonderful treat as some of the best musicians of our country—of the world—show us what it means to be an American and to join in the pride that we feel for those who’ve made jazz such a wonderful part of our lives. Thank you very much.[1]

This enlightened, heartfelt speech electrified all who heard it that day, either on the South Lawn or on the radio, or read it the next day in a newspaper or a month later in a magazine. President Carter’s five-minute speech first touched on a cornerstone of jazz—the blurry line creative musicians walk between freedom and discipline and, by extension, between instinct and theory, individualism and collectivism, improvisation and composition, voice and technique.

He next touched on two of the several reasons that slowed acceptance of jazz as an art form in this country—namely, racism and a musical elitism that categorized jazz as roadhouse or speakeasy entertainment.

But it was Carter’s personal recollection of his early jazz experiences that piqued the most interest. In fact, to many, it came as a shock: Jimmy Carter?! The peanut farmer from Georgia known to be a classical devotee (by those in the know) or maybe a Southern rock enthusiast (by those not in the know)—was a jazz fan? And an avid one at that! Who knew?

And the lineup of talent on the South Lawn that memorable day was beyond “Wow!” From the daughter of bluesman W. C. Handy and 90-year-old pianist Eubie Blake to avant-gardists Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor, and everyone in between. Here’s a full list:

Piano	Saxophone	Trumpet	Drums
Eubie Blake Chick Corea Gil Evans Herbie Hancock Dick Hyman John Lewis George Russell Billy Taylor Cecil Taylor McCoy Tyner Mary Lou Williams Teddy Wilson	Benny Carter Ornette Coleman Stan Getz Dexter Gordon Illinois Jacquet Gerry Mulligan Sam Rivers Sonny Rollins Zoot Sims	Doc Cheatham Roy Eldridge Dizzy Gillespie Joe Newman Clark Terry	Louis Bellson Denardo Coleman Jo Jones Max Roach Tony Williams

Bass	Guitar	Vibes	Singers
Ray Brown Ron Carter Milt Hinton Charles Mingus	George Benson	Lionel Hampton	Pearl Bailey Katharine Handy Lewis

Saxophonist Dexter Gordon awaits his turn as trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie states his case.

President Carter speaks to Cecil Taylor after his performance. "I've never seen anyone play that way. Does Horowitz know about you?"

The country was denied the opportunity to learn just how much of a jazz fan Carter really was when he didn’t win a second term in office. His book White House Diary hit the shelves in 2010, and I quickly purchased a copy to see if he had expanded on his fascination with jazz. Sadly, the president from Plains had surprisingly little to say about the indigenous art form that best represented our country.

He acknowledges “the big event held on the South Lawn” as “the best party we’ve ever had—the Newport Jazz Festival twenty-fifth anniversary. About 800 people came, and we had a collection of jazz musicians that was really remarkable.”

But that’s it, except for the anecdotes about himself and his daughter: “I went on stage with Dizzy Gillespie, and joined him in a rendition of ‘Salt Peanuts.’ It was a high point in my life when the New York Times complimented my singing,” and “Amy performed on the violin, which was a real hit.”[2]

Regarding a jazz concert in the East Room featuring Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan, and Earl “Fatha” Hines, the president tells us: “It brought back old times when I was an avid jazz fan.”[3] Is it possible that the former chief executive was only a fan in his youth, his interest waning as he grew older, subsumed by his burgeoning love of opera and symphonic music?

The president’s ardor for the European import is abundantly clear in White House Diary as he rhapsodizes about classical performers who came to the White House—pianist Vladimer Horowitz, opera singers Roberta Peters and Leontyne Price, and cellist Slava Rostropovich—and takes forays with First Lady Rosalynn to hear classical expositions at the Kennedy Center and Metropolitan Opera.

He also tells us (which many knew at the time): “In the inner White House office, we established a high-fidelity sound system, and for eight or ten hours a day I listened to classical music.”[4]

So which was the best jazz happening at the White House? The Ellington tribute in 1969? Or the Carter South Lawn jazz festival in 1978?

We have the music for the first event available from Blue Note Records in 1969 All-Star White House Tribute to Duke Ellington. Not so the latter. NPR recorded the music but has not released it. So what’s the hold up?

NOTES

Recording courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.
Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), 136, 202.
Ibid., 136.
Ibid., 12.

All photos courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum.

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Peggy Lee: “Is That All There Is?”

2/28/2020

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(Left to right): Pres. Pompidou of France, Mrs. Pompidou, Pres. Nixon, Peggy Lee, and Mrs. Nixon. 1970. Photo: Nixon Presidential Library.

Singer Peggy Lee appeared at the Nixon White House on February 29, 1970, to entertain French President Georges Pompidou and his wife in the East Room after a State Dinner. Halfway through her show, Peggy spoke at length about poetry as an introduction to her surprise hit song “Is That All There Is?”

Adapted from my book The Best Gig in Town:

Is “You know, more serious poetry isn’t that well accepted,” Peggy said. “In fact, to quote one writer, ‘To publish a book of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo. . . . And I know. I wrote a book of verse and I dropped it into the Grand Canyon.’”

Peggy went on, “But then I couldn’t say that all poetry is not accepted because lyrics are poetry and they are accepted. Although, so many today are sentimental, sad, down. And I, for the most part, prefer the song of the optimist, because without the optimist, the pessimist would never know how happy he wasn’t, right? And then I couldn’t say that all lyrics are poetry because so many things they are writing today are little stories, little vignettes.”

Peggy’s rap on poetry was neither coquettish nor dilettantish; she genuinely loved the spoken word, as one would expect of a lyricist of her caliber. She read poetry regularly on her radio show way back in 1952, reciting William Butler Yeats before singing “These Foolish Things,” for example.

Her emphasis on poetry—and especially contrasting the pessimist with the optimist—was no doubt her way of introducing her current surprise hit song written by chart-masters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. A most unusual pop number, “Is That All There Is?” intersperses morbid spoken verse with a catchy hook, a song that could easily be a turnoff for most on first hearing—as it was in fact for Peggy—but one that gathers meaning upon repeated hearing.

After all, a song where the narrator’s memory is of her house burning down as a child (it happened to Peggy twice), a trip to a so-so circus, and lost love (Peggy knew only too well) but “let’s keep on dancing . . . and have a ball” is the stuff of an Oprah Winfrey book.

So it has a "keep smiling in the face of adversity" side, but on first hearing, it may not be too clear. One would have thought that most in the East Room audience had already heard it. It was the buzz song of the year, helped along by its mysterious quality and the controversy it generated.

The single version of “Is That All There Is?” had been out for a whole year—throughout 1969, Peggy had sung the song at her nightclub engagements and on national TV. An album of the same name had filled record store bins for the previous three months, and the trade press buzzed with speculation that Peggy would win a Grammy for the song (which she did two weeks after the Nixon event).

Yet to the East Room glitterati, the song was a bummer; it received only polite applause. Maybe the spoken opening phrase turned them off. Peggy had uttered in a near whisper, “I remember when I was a little girl, our house caught on fire—and it did, Mr. Nixon.”

After the lukewarm response to the song, Peggy asked, “Well, I don’t want to sing good night right now, if you don’t mind. Do you?”

Only a few in the audience answered no.[1]

Incomprehensible as the song itself was to some people, the songwriters were even more so. Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote all those ’50s and early ’60s three-minute popular rhythm and blues hits “Hound Dog,” “Searchin’,” “Charlie Brown,” “Along Came Jones,” had by the late ’60s become less and less interested in the sounds of Teen Pan Alley.

Leiber, for one, found himself reading the likes of Thomas Mann—in particular, the short story Disillusionment. This literary work inspired him to write loosely connected verses of a disillusioned woman, to be spoken, not sung.

The first verse is about a little girl watching her house go up in flames who asks, “Is that all there is to a fire?” The second verse centered on a day at the circus has the narrator asking, “Is that all there is to a circus?” The third verse about a love affair gone wrong and the fourth about a final disappointment elicit similar questions.

Leiber presented his four bittersweet, cabaret vignettes to Stoller, who immediately wrote music to capture the spirit of Kurt Weil and Bertold Brecht. The pair showed their work to English singer-actress Georgia Brown, who, in need of a song for a London TV special, suggested it needed a chorus, something for her to sing between verses. The two collaborated as usual and came up with the perfect song-saving chorus that included the lines: “Then let’s keep on dancing” and “Let’s break out the booze and have a ball.”

Georgia performed the song on TV, but the BBC didn’t record it. The boys wanted a single and began a search for someone who would be acceptable to a record company. They approached actress Marlene Dietrich, who, in their estimation, would be perfect for a cabaret song. She turned them down: “That song you just sang to me is what I am, not what I do.” They then sent the song to Barbra Streisand. No reply ever came.

Then they thought of Peggy Lee. She had recorded their “I’m a Woman,” which was an across-the-board hit. Jerry handed her a demo of the song at a party. A week later, she called: “I will kill you if you give this song to anyone but me. This is my song. This is the story of my life.”

In January 1969 the songwriters joined Peggy in the studio. “I’ll do three takes” she said, “and no more.” It was a struggle. She did 36 takes; the last one was heavenly perfect. But the engineer had forgotten to push the “record” button. One more take—number 37—is the one the world would come to know.

But then Capitol Records refused to release it. At that point in her career, Peggy wasn’t selling records, and this new one—this existential treatise, Stoller called it—was hardly what the company wanted to hear.

But for Peggy, that wasn't the end of the story.

Capitol Records wanted to promote some of their new acts and hoped to get them on Joey Bishop’s late-night TV show. Joey wasn’t that interested in those artists, but agreed to host them if he could also get Peggy.

Always cagey, Peggy saw her chance. “I’ll go on the Bishop show,” she said, “if you release ‘All There Is?’ because that’s the song I’m singing on the show!” Capitol capitulated.[2]

The question remains. If the East Room crowd at the Pompidou State dinner had known all this, would it have made a difference? Probably not.

And if that British singer hadn’t suggested the pair’s existential treatise needed an upbeat chorus, would it ever have been a song?

And if comic Joey Bishop hadn’t had a thing for Peggy, would Capitol Records have ever allowed her to record it?

And if Peggy had thrown her hands in the air and walked out after learning the recording engineer had forgotten to push the record button after the perfect take, achieved after a grueling 36 takes in a row, would it ever have been a song?

Probably not, all around. Still, it became a song, a most unusual hit song at that.

Serendipity Doo-Dah!

NOTES

Edward Allan Faine, The Best Gig In Town: Jazz Artists at the White House, 1969–1974 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2015), 51–52.
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller with David Ritz, Hound Dog: The Leiber & Stoller Autobiography (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), 234–46.

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Newport All-Stars: Lost and Found

1/30/2020

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Newport All-Stars play in the Old Senate Office Building in Washington, DC, on June 18, 1962. From left: Ruby Braff (trumpet), George Wein (piano), Billy Taylor (bass), Marshall Brown (trombone), Senator Claiborne Pell, Pee Wee Russell (clarinet), and Eddie Phyfe (drums). (AP Photo)

In a previous blog, I discussed a jazz concert sponsored by the Kennedy White House that was held at the Sylvan Theater on the Washington Monument grounds on the night of August 28, 1962. A gathering of mostly government summer interns heard the classic Brubeck Quartet followed by singer Tony Bennett and his trio. Columbia Records, with prominent producer Teo Macero on hand, recorded the music and belatedly released Bennett/Brubeck: The White House Sessions, Live 1962, on Columbia CD in 2013.

But surprise, surprise, there was another jazz group on the bill that night—the Newport All-Stars—led by jazz festival impresario and pianist George Wein. In fact, they opened the show, and Columbia recorded them as well but did not release the music. The sounds the interns heard that balmy summer night are now available to the public, thanks to the staff at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC (more on this later).

A swing Dixie outfit, the Newport All-Stars had been in existence since 1956 under the tutelage of George Wein. Over the years, numerous talented musicians have cycled on and off the roster. But during the 1958–1963 period, the core slots remained rather stable: George Wein (piano), Pee Wee Russell (clarinet), Ruby Braff (cornet), and Marshall Brown (valve trombone), supported by a pickup bassist and drummer, as was the case for the Kennedy-sponsored gig.

At the time, according to New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett, Wein’s group represented a type of jazz that was rapidly disappearing—relaxed, emotional, unpretentious, and of no school, firming the heart and brightening the eye.[1]

Pianist Wein was a swing stylist somewhere between Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson (Balliett again), though still comfortable in a bebop setting. His playing always amazed and exceeded expectations, especially for one burdened with the managerial complexities associated with staging festivals.

Clarinetist Pee Wee Russell’s playing was, well, a poet’s delight. From Balliett: “hopefully eccentric, squeaks, coppery tone, querulousness, growls, and overall hesitancy—most original stylist in jazz.”[2] And from another, writer/pianist Dick Wellstood, “crabbed, chocked, knotted tangle of squawks with which he could create such woodsy freedoms, such an enormous roomy private universe.” Nonetheless, all would agree that Pee Wee Russell could also coax pure and gentle notes from his instrument when he wanted to.[3]

Cornetist Braff took a pre-Bebop approach to improvisation, perhaps using more embellishment and vibrato than modernists, similar to his idol Louis Armstrong. Overall, he was a relaxed melodist, unique like his frontline companion, and should have been much better known.

Trombonist Brown had earned his festival wings with Wein back in 1958, when he worked his tail off to form the International Youth Band, which performed at Newport. The venture ultimately failed, done in by too many negative critical reviews. A later attempt at establishing a youth band made up of American high school kids succeeded, thereby reinforcing his exemplary leadership and teaching skills.[4]

As a trombonist, Brown never ranked at the top of the jazz polls, his reputation based on being a solid ensemble player. Wein once commented, “Marshall played decent valve trombone, although he never really had a trombone lip.”[5]

The rhythm section for the Kennedy gig consisted of Washington, DC, natives Billy Taylor Jr. on bass—yes, the son of famous pianist Billy Taylor—and Eddie Phyfe on drums.

The evening’s mostly youthful audience may not have been familiar with the Newport All-Stars and their brand of “rapidly disappearing” jazz. Their appearance occurred largely because three months prior, Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell, a former Newport Jazz Festival board member, invited the All-Stars to play a concert in the rotunda of the old Senate Office Building in Washington, DC.

The All-Stars played a lunch-hour show on Monday June 18 to some 500 senatorial staff members. It was the first such concert in the rotunda; the occasion was noteworthy enough to prompt the distribution of an AP Wire Service photo across the country. The next morning the All-Stars appeared on the NBC Today Show[6], and the Washington Post featured a front-page photo with the following caption:

Joint’s Jumping on the “Hill.” Sen. Claiborne Pell yesterday was host to the Newport Jazz Festival All-Stars, who conducted a jam session in the rotunda of the Old Senate Office Building. The visit here, which also included a concert last night for the Senate Staff Club, was designed to call attention to the annual Newport Jazz Festival, scheduled for July 6, 7, and 8 at Newport, R.I. In this picture, drummer Eddie Phyfe and bass player Billie Taylor [Jr.] swing out on a hot Dixieland number.[7]

Wein and the boys followed their historic rotunda rendezvous with a series of appearances leading up to the 1962 Newport Jazz Festival, where Senator Claiborne Pell delivered the festival’s opening remarks on July 6.

The remainder of July and early August, Wein busied himself with establishing the inaugural Ohio Valley Jazz Festival outside Cincinnati, and on the festival’s last day, August 26, he joined the All-Stars on stage.[8] Two days later, after opening remarks by Rhode Island’s tireless Senator Pell, the band mounted the Sylvan Theater stage to perform for hundreds of summer interns (some with their parents) gathered on the Washington Monument grounds.

George Wein and the Newport All-Stars performing at the Sylvan Theater on August 28, 1962. Photo: Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

The band played six tunes, a well-paced mix of swing-era standards, four up tempo, one change of pace, and a Pee Wee special. Wein announced the title of each tune:

Up “Undecided” (1938): 5 min.
Up “Indiana” (1917): 6 min.
“Blue and Sentimental” (1938):3 min.
Up “Crazy About My Baby” (1929): 4 min.
“Pee Wee’s Blues” (1930): 4 min.
Up “Saint Louis Blues” (1914): 6 min.

Solos were plentiful on the up tempos numbers with Kansas City style riffs backing the soloist.

Applause from the largely student audience was respectful—if not overly generous—after individual solos and at the conclusion of a song, and then at the close of “Pee Wee’s Blues,” it was lengthy and loud, no doubt helped along by George Wein’s initial setup that promised a historic moment: “Pee Wee’s going to play the blues on the Washington Monuments grounds!” Drummer Eddie Phyfe also drew a huge ovation at the finish of his drum break on “Saint Louis Blues.”[9]

Thanks to the splendid work of Library of Congress staff, especially Bryan Cordell of the Music Division (Recorded Sound), the Newport All-Stars segment once lost has now been found. The entire Kennedy White House 1962 Sylvan Theater concert can now be heard at the Library.

Take a listen if you can, and I’m sure you will agree that the All-Stars proved to be an excellent opening act for jazz headliners Brubeck and Bennett, whose hit tunes (“Take Five”) and (“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”) were well received by the youthful summer crowd.

As previously mentioned, fans can listen to the Bennett/Brubeck segments on a Columbia CD. Additionally, George Wein and the core group recorded in studio on October 12, 1962, which is available on George Wein & the Newport All-Stars LP/CD (Impulse).

CODA
There were only two Kennedy White House jazz events, the one described above and the other by the Paul Winter sextet for 10- to 19-year-old children of diplomats and government officials held in the East Room on November 19, 1962.

Interestingly, we have the music for both concerts, the former on Columbia CD (Bennett/Brubeck) and at the Library of Congress (Newport All-Stars), and for the latter, on Living Music CD (Paul Winter Sextet, Count Me In, 1962 & 1963).

There was only one other White House jazz event for which we have the music: President Nixon’s birthday extravaganza for Duke Ellington in the East Room on Blue Note CD: 1969 All-Star Tribute to Duke Ellington.

And that’s that!

How about all the other jazz events? For Presidents Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and the others? Isn’t it about time the music at the People’s House (as George Washington called it) is released to the people?

NOTES

Whitney Balliett, Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz, 1954–2001 (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002), 174.
Ibid., 76–77.
Robert Hilbert, Pee Wee Russell: The Life of a Jazzman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), xiii.
George Wein with Nate Chinnen, Myself Among Others: A Life in Music (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004), 184–86; 194.
Ibid., 183.
Ibid., 233.
Photo caption “Joint’s Jumping on the ‘Hill,’” photographer Vic Casamento, Washington Post, Monday, June 18, 1962, page 1.
George Wein, Myself Among Others, 432–35; Robert Hilbert, Pee Wee Russell, 241.
George Wein comments, tunes played, and crowd reaction transcribed by the author from the audio: White House Jazz Seminar, Sylvan Theater, White House, 1962-08-28 (digital ID: 2603586), Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

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Looking Back 50 Years: Notable Jazz Events/Albums of 1969

1/20/2020

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The most notable jazz event of 1969—and one of the most notable in all of jazz history—was the Duke Ellington gala held at the White House on April 29. This six-hour event included a banquet, a 90-minute concert of 27 Ellington songs performed by an all-star jazz ensemble, and a jam session with dancing. Hundreds of guests attended the celebration, during which President Nixon awarded Duke the Medal of Freedom.

This was the first time the award was given to an African American and the first time it was given to a jazz musician. This gesture, at a time when jazz was not yet fully recognized as an art form, set the jazz arts community abuzz like never before. Not only did the medal go to the most respected, honored, and accomplished jazz musician in over four decades, but it was as if the award had gone to jazz itself, bestowed at the highest level of government. Greater recognition was bound to follow, and it did.

Jazz received its first federal grant in 1969, which grew tenfold over the next five years and also set the stage for jazz to receive significant grant money from reluctant foundations for the next ten years. Shortly thereafter, jazz was accepted as a fully recognized American art form.

And it all began at the Ellington tribute in the spring of 1969, well described by jazz critic Dan Morgenstern: “Though there were moments of appropriate solemnity, the tenor of the evening was one of cheerful warmth and friendly informality, set by the president himself.”

More in-depth information can be found in my book Ellington at the White House, 1969, and the recorded concert can be heard on All-Star White House Tribute to Duke Ellington, Blue Note (2002).

The “Year of Duke” continued. His orchestra came in first in DownBeat magazine’s critics and readers polls, and he topped those polls in the composer and arranger categories as well. Moreover, his album And His Mother Called Him Bill was voted the year’s best by critics and the year’s fourth best by readers.[1]

Mother Called Him Bill is the maestro’s homage to his long-term composer-companion, Billy Strayhorn, who passed in 1967. The record is notable for its celestial tracks by altoist Johnny Hodges, particularly in “Blood Count,” “After All,” and “Day Dream,” the latter a late-at-night, sob-in-year-beer favorite. Stray’s compositions brought out that special, sensuous Hodges sound. As singer Lillian Terry recently put it, “Heavens, when he blows those long, languid notes . . . it’s an actual caress.”

The flip side of the Hodges coin—the bluesy side—Billy also knew well, as illustrated by “Snibor,” “The Intimacy of the Blues,” and “Acht O’Clock Rock.”[2]

In the year 1969, DownBeat fairly embraced the avant-garde movement while also fully embracing rock. Regarding the former, reviews of new thing musician albums were well represented and, generally speaking, highly rated (there were exceptions, like altoist Lou Donaldson’s scorching article declaring it was a bunch of noise made by amateurs[3]).

For example, albums by Gunter Hamphill, John Carter and Bobby Bradford, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Simmons and Prince Lasha, Albert Ayler, Roscoe Mitchell, and Joseph Jarman were all received. And, oh, the movement’s founding father, Ornette Coleman, was entered into the DownBeat Hall of Fame in 1969.

DownBeat had tippy-toed around rock in years past but dove deep into the music in 1969. Besides establishing a regular column for the first time (by Alan Heilnman), the magazine featured articles about the following rock musicians and groups, as well as reviews of their albums: Tim Hardin, Steve Miller Band, George Benson, Mike Bloomfield, Bob Dylan, Mothers of Invention, Blood, Sweat and Tears (BST), Ten Years After, and Chicago.[4]

The Newport Jazz Festival followed suit, inviting a slew of rockers to perform, including BST, Lighthouse (a BST clone), Ten Years After, Jethro Tull, Jeff Beck, Mothers of Invention, Sly and the Family Stone, and James Brown. In one respect it worked—the festival drew a larger crowd. But it wasn’t a jazz crowd; it included a sizable number of youthful, rowdier fans (think Woodstock), resulting in a host of security problems. Impresario George Wein concluded, “The kids destroyed the event and the experiment was a failure.” The Newport town council concluded, “No rock next year.”[5]

It was also the year of Miles Davis. DownBeat readers voted him jazzman of the year and best trumpeter and combo leader. They also voted his albums Filles de Killimanjaro (FDK) and In a Silent Way the year’s best and third best, respectively.[6]

While not fully appreciated at the time, these two stepping-stone albums represented Miles’s first breakaway from the hard bop aesthetic (and his occasional romantic excursions) that had begun with Walkin and continued from the first great quintet (Round Midnight) and sextet (Milestones and Kind of Blue) to the second great quintet (Miles Smiles and E.S.P.). His breakaway sound would soon be labeled jazz fusion, jazz rock, or electric Miles (Bitches Brew).

Interestingly, neither FDK nor In a Silent Way stirred much controversy at the time of their release—that would come later.

Paul Tingen notes the following regarding the FDK tracks:

“Petits Machins” has its roots in the second great quintet’s hard bop origins, even as it features a lyrical folk melody. “Toot de Suite” also has a graceful, folk-like melody but is underpinned with a straight rock rhythm. The “Filles de Killimanjaro” track has an almost pastoral feel and a strong African influence on the rhythms and a gorgeous theme. The solos and the simple chord changes are to some degree idiomatic to rock music. On “Stuff,” the quintet sounds as if it’s having fun experimenting with funk and soul influences without adding anything new.[7]

“Filles de Killimanjaro” and, to a lesser extent, “Toot de Suite” indicate for the first time a real integration of folk and rock influences, and no one got upset—many people enjoyed it. DownBeat readers loved FDK and selected it as their favorite album of 1969.

The quintet that recorded FDK consisted of Miles on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax, Chick Corea on piano, Dave Holland on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. (Replace Tony Williams with drummer Jack DeJohnette, and this group would have been called Miles’s “Lost Quintet,” a quintet that never made a studio recording).

Cook and Morton describe In a Silent Way, the second stepping-stone album, as a collage using “found objects” put together with a view to the minimum details and coloration required to make an impact—the “found objects” being British guitarist John McLaughlin, Austrian pianist Joe Zawinul, whose “In a Silent Way” became a centerpiece of the album, and Columbia producer Teo Macero, who stitched repeats of certain recorded live studio passages back into the fabric of the music, giving it continuity and a certain hypnotic circularity.

In effect, three new players of electric instruments (Chick Corea on piano, Joe Zawinul on piano and organ, and John McLaughlin on guitar) joined four members of the second classic quintet (Miles Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on soprano sax, Herbie Hancock on electric piano, and Tony Williams on drums) to give the band a sound completely unlike any previous incarnation.[8]

Producer Teo Macero’s post-production role was crucial to the outcome (quite unusual for jazz at the time). Teo edited two hours of recorded music and trimmed it with Miles to 27 minutes of original music. He then expanded it to 38 minutes (to fit two sides of a 12” LP) by repeating certain sections.[9]

Cook and Morton praise In a Silent Way as a beautiful album, touching and centered. The title piece and “Shhh/Peaceful” are among the most atmospheric recordings in modern jazz.[10]

In a Silent Way became an important forerunner of ambient music. Not certain what to make of the album, the DownBeat reviewer awarded it three and a half stars.[11]

Another 1969 album of note featured the venerated Modern Jazz Quartet. Released on Beatles label Apple Records in 1968, Under the Jasmin Tree featured the lengthy three-part suite “Three Little Feelings” and “Exposure,” both poised structured fare with swinging elements, as well as two surprises: “The Blue Necklace” and “The Jasmin Tree,” both based on the Afro-Moorish rhythms of Morocco, with drummer Connie Kay and bassist Percy Heath front and center.

On “The Blue Necklace,” a very active Kay rang his triangle, shook his jingle bells, and tappety-tapped his snare’s skin and rim alternately, and at times simultaneously, while Heath plucked a high-note, clave-like rhythm on his bass.

On “The Jasmin Tree,” Heath held the bottom with a steady boom-boom-boom as Kay maintained a clack-clack-clack, sock cymbal clucking away underneath, a triangle keeping the pulse on top (instead of a ride cymbal), and—the coup de grâce—a tambourine gospel shaking that sounded like the quick one-two hand claps of a church choir.

In the middle of this throbbing stew, John Lewis on piano and Milt Jackson on vibes twined their way through a folk-like ditty, stating the melody, comping, and soloing, first one then the other, back and forth.

About three-quarters of the way through, the gospel-ish rhythm came to a halt, and a new but related melody (Moroccan folk song) was introduced, played in unison by piano, vibes, and bass. Following this interlude, it was back to the Moorish church, and the tune concluded as it began.

DownBeat magazine awarded five stars to this welcome departure from a much-revered group, which, by the way, also played the White House in 1969.[12]

NOTES

Critics Poll, DownBeat magazine, August 21, 1969; Readers Poll, DownBeat magazine, December 25, 1969.
Edward Allan Faine, “Faine Favorites: Top 10 Alto Sax Albums,” Jazz Blog, August 31, 2018.
Lou Donaldson, scorching review of new thing music, DownBeat magazine, February 1969.
All issue review of both avante-garde and rock music coverage, DownBeat magazine, January 9–December 25, 1969.
Coverage of Newport Jazz Festival, DownBeat magazine, August 21, 1969.
Readers Poll coverage of Miles Davis, DownBeat magazine, December 25, 1969.
Paul Tingen, Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967–1991 (New York: Billboard Books, 2001), 46.
Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 7th ed. (NewYork: Penguin Books, 2004), 408–409.
Tingen, Miles Beyond, 60.
Cook and Morton, Penguin Guide, 66.
DownBeat magazine, October 1969.
Edward Allan Faine, The Best Gig In Town: Jazz Artists at the White House, 1969–1974 (Takoma Park, MD: IM Press, 2015), 27–32.

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That Anniversary Year 2019: Celebrating Four Jazz Centenarians

12/31/2019

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

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

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

Below, I spotlight four jazz legends from this group.

Nat King Cole

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CODA
Comments accompanying the Midnight 12th-place finish:

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

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

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

George Shearing/Al McKibbon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Indeed, as Peraza later recalled:

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

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

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

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

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

Herbie Nichols

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

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

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

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

NOTES

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

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Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 2

11/28/2019

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A sample from Edward Faine's jazz LP collection.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sonny Rollins | East Broadway Run Down | Impulse!

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

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

Bud Powell | Bud in Paris | Xanadu

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

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

Kip Hanraahan | Conjure | American Clave

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

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

Hampton Hawes | Spanish Steps | Black Lion

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

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

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

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

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

Loft Jazz Artists | Wildflowers 1–5 | Douglas

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

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

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

George Shearing | Latin Escapade | Capitol

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

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

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

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

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

Bennie Green | Blows His Horn | Prestige

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

Dizzy Gillespie | Dizzy’s Party | Pablo

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

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

Curtis Counce | More Bounce with Curtis Counce | Contemporary

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charles Sullivan | Genesis | Strata East

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

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

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

Grachan Moncur III | New Africa | Actuel

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

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

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

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

David Amram | Havana/New York | Flying Fish

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

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

Roland Kirk | 3-Sided Technicolor Dream | Atlantic

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

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

The Piano Choir | Handscapes | Strata East

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

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

Woody Herman | Woody Herman–1963 | Phillips

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

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

John Handy | At Monterey Jazz Fest | Columbia

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

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

Carla Bley | Escalator Over the Hill | JCOA

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

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

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

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

Thank you for accompanying me on my trip down memory lane.

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Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 1

10/29/2019

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Photo credit: Adobe Stock/creativenature.nl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8:

7:

6:

5:

Anthony Davis, David Murray, Henry Threadgill

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

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

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

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

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

But this is not the whole story.

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

I'll examine those in my next blog.

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Foundation Funding for Jazz

9/27/2019

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Photo credit: Adobe Stock/Voloshyn Roman

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

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

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

Nonetheless, I was able to obtain jazz and classical funding for selected years, which I share below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

8/31/2019

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Tom Waits 2011. Photo: Fresh on the Net.

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

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

Here are the songs, start to finish.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The song is a gentle call for reconciliation, an acknowledgment that no one is perfect and that only through the eyes of love do our flaws become invisible. Coppola got more than he bargained for. Backed sparingly by Waits’s piano, Crystal movingly sings, “Take me home, you silly boy / Put your arms around me / I’m so sorry that I broke your heart.”

“Presents”
This is a pretty little thing, a coda of sorts, an instrumental paraphrase of “Take Me Home” that features celeste, glockenspiel, harp and bass, only a minute long. The musical story has come full circle.

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

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

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

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

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NOTES

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

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

7/30/2019

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Tom Waits. 2013. Photo: Andreas Lehner.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Waits elaborated:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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NOTES

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

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Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 2

Portrait of an LP-Era Jazz Fan: Part 1

Foundation Funding for Jazz

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

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

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