Readers of this blog know Lorna Sass as a fine jazz photographer. She captures the essence of her subjects and conveys it in a single frame. Her jazz pedigree is impeccable: she admires the living (Wycliffe Gordon, Jon-Erik Kellso, Kevin Dorn, and others) and the departed (Louis, the Brothers Mills, and the Sisters Boswell).
But Lorna is a woman of many talents. She’s an established journalist, travel writer, essayist, culinary historian, medieval scholar, and the author of fifteen award-winning cookbooks. Her specialties are whole grains, quick healthy meals, pressure cooking, and vegan cuisine. In the picture below, she’s on the left (with red eyeglasses) next to Mollie Katzen. The night this picture was taken, both of them had won the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for their new books. Lorna’s was WHOLE GRAINS EVERY DAY, EVERY WAY.
Lorna has just started her own blog — LORNA SASS AT LARGE. You can get to it by way of my blogroll. The web address is http://lornasassatlarge.wordpress.com
Because I admire insightful prose, I’ve been enjoying her essays on Sicily, popcorn, Chinese takeout, and other delicious subjects. And her wonderful photographs. She improvises nimbly over the chords and never turns a predictable phrase.
You might work up an appetite while reading her blog, but you’ll leave it feeling satisfied.
And I promise I won’t be jealous if you visit her blog first.
“His main theme was that you didn’t have to play loud but that you needed intensity to get the listener’s attention. This turned out to be the greatest of all lessons in how and what to play.”
These words come from a fascinating book, now apparently out of print but worth searching out: SIDEMAN: THE LONG GIG OF W.O. SMITH. William Oscar Smith is the bassist on Hawkins’s 1939 Bluebird session, the one that produced “Body and Soul.” That should be enough renown for anyone, but Smith went on to be a generous and respected educator.
Those of you who follow this blog will not be surprised that the quotation is something Smith remembered Sidney Catlett telling young musicians in the early Forties. I’ve included it here not as another tribute to Sid, although who would deny me that? But it’s applicable — in its own way — to current jazz performance practice.
At the gigs I attend, musicians rarely feel the need to outshout one another. Most of the clubs are intimate (read: “cramped”) so that raising the volume of your solo for the sake of loudness isn’t something people do.
But I am always amazed and dismayed by how many musicians unconsciously accelerate tempos, carried away by the intensity of the solos they hear. Musician A plays more intensely, digging into his notes, so B (feeling the spirit alongside him) gets faster and faster. These aren’t amateurs, by the way. Now, I know how hard it is to improvise, and I am sitting at a table, silently censorious as the piece that began as a medium-tempo rock is now a sprint. I also know that some of the greatest live performances rush or drag, and that very famous musicians tended to do this. I will not call the roll in this blog, for, after all, jazz isn’t a metronomic art. It isn’t mechanical, nor should it be.
But the only rushing I approve of wholeheartedly is Jiimmy Rushing.
Like you, I tried to imagine all those players assembled in one place and failed. But everything is possible on YouTube. Melissa Collard called my attention to the Don Redman / Betty Boop clip, circa 1932-33.
Has anyone written a history of Max and Dave Fleischer and associates? I know there are Betty Boop fanciers, but I wonder about Fleischer’s choosing famous African-American jazz musicians and their bands in his cartoons. Did he love the music? Or was it because he could get these bands and players (think of Louis, Cab, and an uncredited Luis Russell ensemble) fairly inexpensively? Anyway, here is I HEARD:
The opening theme is CHANT OF THE WEED — the vipers’ theme song, punctuated by wood blocks and the oceanic swaying on beautifully-dressed musicians. Then we enter the deliciously surrealistic world of the Never Mine — the noon whistle eating its lunch, the beaver cooking pancakes on its tail. Not to mention the whole peristaltic underground travel system. All of this while Redman himself sings HOW’M I DOIN’? I hope he didn’t mind being transformed on film into a canine member of the waitstaff. Betty’s vocal (presumably that is Mae Questel) is also accompanied by a miniature mixed choir who pop in and out of the staircase in time.
When the lunch hour is through (note how that whistle lets everyone know) all the miners reverse their steps — going back under the shower which now rains down filth so they are suitably attired for the mine — to the strains of I HEARD. Don’t miss the cat-telephone-switchboard while Claude Jones, Ed Inge, and Bob Carroll have brief solo spots before Don’s vocal. It’s hard to keep up with the action of a terrifying descent down an elevator shaft (Betty, characteristically, loses her dress for a moment), ghosts playing baseball with a bomb — all the nightmare anyone could imagine while the Redman band plays goblin music. But everything ends well — the bomb does the miners’ work for them and they can go home to the strains of WEED, which is perhaps an in-joke here.
These cartoons happily mix the surreal and the swinging, the wild camera angles anticipating later films.
After that, almost anything would seem sedate. However, an Eddie Condon group (circa 1952) does its best in real time, no animation, working out on FIDGETY FEET with Wild Bill Davison, Cutty Cutshall, Ed Hall, Gene Schroeder, Condon himself, an off-camera Jack Lesberg, and Cliff Leeman. (I was reminded of this and the last clip by Loren Schoenberg.)
The Mob seems to be doing a gig on an aircraft carrier, but that’s of less import than the fine sound and the beautiful interplay of this group. They had performed FIDGETY FEET thousands of times at the club, so the routines are razor-sharp in performance, but what I delight in here is the collective exuberance, particularly that rhythm section. Cliff Leeman!
And watching a very expert and enthusiastic Gene Schroeder makes us remember just how much piano he played, night after night, without anyone paying sufficient attention. (He made one 78 session, four songs, as a leader, for the Black and White label, in 1944, but he deserved more.) And Condon himself, so often slyly categorized as someone who talked more than played and drank more than he talked, shows how he directed and drove this band. Imperishable stuff, fierce and compact at the same time.
Finally, how about seeing — not just hearing — Lester Young play POLKA DOTS AND MOONBEAMS?
The rhythm section on this Art Ford telecast (from 1958, I believe) is Ray Bryant on a terrible piano, a happy Vinnie Burke on bass, and an unacknowledged drummer who sweeps his brushes most respectfully. Yes, the clip is out of synch, but that adds to the poignant dreaminess of the performance, with Rex Stewart wandering in the shot. Since there’s so little Lester on film, this is even more precious.
What follows suggests that no one — at the moment — recognized how beautiful a performance it was, or perhaps it was just that Art Ford (and his passel or posse of jazz critics at home, ready to call in) had to “keep it rolling.” Sylvia Syms, with the same rhythm and a perky Rex Stewart offstage, wisely change the mood. Who would be foolish enough to follow Lester in the same lovely, mournful mood?
The critical eye will find many flaws in the video clip below. It takes place at a jazz festival (not in itself a bad thing) and the cast of characters is stellar: Dizzy Gillespie, Buddy Tate, Harry Edison, Woody Herman, Urbie Green, Jake Hanna , and Al Cohn. But the end result is not all it might be: several musicians seem bored, detached. Tate, during his better-than-average late-period solo, even glances around him for a second to mutely ask, “Aren’t any of you jazz all-stars going to play a riff or a background behind me? Do I have to do all of this myself?” Herman, pursued to his death by the IRS, looks exhausted and frail. The composition, IN A MELLOTONE, Ellington’s line on the 1917 ballad ROSE ROOM, is mis-identified by the translator / subtitler: it’s not BERNIE’S TUNE.
But then there’s Al Cohn, who makes up for it all when he enters, around seven minutes into the performance. In the Forties, Cohn was identified not only as a Woody Herman’s alumnus, but as one of the Caucasian Lestorians — tenor players who memorized all of Lester’s performances and offered them forth in their own way. Many of them apparently emulated Lester’s delicacy. Here, Al’s playing has energy and sinew. He’s onstage to say something important. He doesn’t shout. But his solo has an easy majestic urgency all its own , even though one thinks of Ben, Bird, Herschel, preaching about mellow tones. All of this takes place in ninety seconds. And when the group of somewhat jaded jazz titans hears what Al has to say, they wake up and launch a suitable riff.
That’s one aspect of Al Cohn — inspiring by his fervent example.
But even posthumously, Al is an inspiration.
That’s not an empty phrase, and it’s not limited to tenor saxophone players or to listeners with good music libraries (I am thinking of the Xanadu recording HEAVY LOVE, an imperishable duet of Al and Jimmy Rowles.) Next to me as I write this post is the Fall 2008 issue of THE NOTE, the journal of the Al Cohn Memorial Collection at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania. (The collection’s website is www.esu.edu/alcohncollection, and their email address is alcohncollection@esu.edu.)
Their mission isn’t purely archival: they want to “stimulate, enrich, and support research, teaching, learning, and appreciation of all forms of jazz.” One of the ways they have done this — for twenty years now – is by making the collection’s resources available ”and useful to students, researchers, educators, musicians, historians, journalists and jazz enthusiasts of all kinds.” Commendably, they preserve what they have already collected ”for future generations.” The collection includes records, books, photographs, oral histories, sheet music, art,memorabilia, and ephemera. Although their definition of jazz is broad and inclusive, the collection focuses on Al Cohn and his many friends, chief among them Zoot Sims. Other collections draw on the life and music of bassist Eddie Safranski, the rare acquisitions of the jazz scholar Coover Gazdar, and research materials about the history of jazz in the Pocono Mountains.
(As an aside, I sent the collection — some years back — a copy of a private tape where the noble participants were Al, Zoot, and Bucky Pizzarelli. I have some candid jazz photographs that I’ve been saving for them, too.)
I started this second half by mentioning THE NOTE. It’s no sentimental valentine to days-gone-by, nor is it a dry academic wafer. Professionally done, it’s a pleasure to read. The front cover of the current issue is a beautiful color photograph of David Leibman; the back cover a 1985 shot of Hank Jones by the always-surprising jazz photographer Herb Snitzer. In this middle, rather like a jazz fan’s chaste version of a Playboy centerfold, is a two=page candid shot of Al and Jimmy Rowles in concert in Kansas City. In the middle — a long hilarious screed of a column by Phil Woods, who writes as vigorously as he plays. There are also brief comments from Bob Bush, the collection’s co-ordinator, ”Thinking of Al” by Doug Ramsey, and an interview with Manny Albam done by Flo Cohn, Al’s wife, memories of jazz in Disney’s “Magic Village” by Jack SImpson, photos, letters, and hilarious anecdotes.
I can hear my readers murmuring, “How can I get a copy of THE NOTE for myself?” Well, the journal is available free to those who ask to be placed on the mailing list. But enterprises of this sort require some support — so a little contribution (if you don’t have a large one at hand) would be appreciated. Email or send your best wishes and checks to
ACMJC – Kemp Library
East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
200 Prospect Street
East Stroudsburg, PA 18301-2999
And if your basement is crammed with rare tapes, acetates, photos, or charts, call Bob Bush at 570-422-3828.
The first clip, merging DARK EYES and ST. LOUIS BLUES, is from 1936 and features Jerome Darr (guitar), Bruce Randolph (kazoo), Arthur Brooks (piano), Len Harrison (spoons), Harold Randolph (kazoo), Derek Neville (alto sax), and Bruce Johnson (washboard).
In this 1933 clip (very brief), the Serenaders treat us to a wild “A SHANTY IN OLD SHANTY TOWN.”
They didn’t have the finesse of the great bands of the period, but they are incendiary in their own fashion. Thanks to the wondrous singer and musical thinker Melissa Collard for pulling my coat to these YouTube clips.
This video performance of “After You’ve Gone,” taken at a Polish jazz festival last August, is a prize because it captures two of my heroes in performance: the astonishing trumpeter Bent Persson and bass saxophonist Frans Sjostrom. The footage comes to us (via YouTube) courtesy of the generous patron of jazz video Bob Erwig, a fine trumpeter himself.
The band, the Malmo Jazz Kings, is led by trombonist Dymitr Markiewicz, who provided the film for Bob to share.
Bob explains, “Dymitr surrounded himself with some great Swedish musicians. On trumpet we see world renowned Bent Persson playing together with a young trumpet player of great talent who I noticed first with Gunhild Carlings Big Band. Then also from Sweden is Max Carling on clarinet. Another world famous musician is Frans Sjostrom on bass sax. They are backed up by the Polish musicians pianist Wojtek Kamisky, drummer Bobby Sakowicz and banjoist Pawel Tartanus. The free spirit of a jam session comes through, darn good musicians who know the jazz standards. Unfortunately it is so hard to get the right balance in a tent or a small room, both drums and banjo sound somewhat overamplified, but then it is the jazz that counts and these jazzmen certainly know what they are doing.”
Enthusiasm, skill, beauty — who minds a few rough edges? And if you would like to admire Bent and Frans in a more intimate — but no less intense — context, look for a CD on the Kenneth Records label, HOT JAZZ TRIO, which is both a tour-de-force and a casual example of fine chamber jazz.
This beautiful candid study of an intent Tamar Korn of the Cangelosi Cards is the work of Eve Polich, whose Avalon Jazz blog (click it on the blogroll) provides valuable information about not only the Cards but other swing-dance-jazz-unclassificable music opportunities here and elsewhere. The photograph needs a soundtrack . . . so check out the Cards’ schedule and catch them live!
This morning the wind chill was minus-four. I don’t dare think about the economy. So news of a new jazz gig is very exciting. This scoop comes to us from Marianne Mangan, one of this blog’s two roving correspondents:
“Next week the Greenwich Village Bistro (212.206.9777) will host clarinetist Sam Parkins and pianist Pete Sokolow twice in two days. In addition to their Wednesday 12:30 – 2:00 lunch gig with Jim Collier’s Gotham Jazzmen (also featuring Peter Ecklund), Sam and Pete will be appearing on Tuesday night, December 30th, with Ronnie Washam and Friends — the other friend being bassist Dave Winograd. Fans of the Cajun will remember Ronnie as a first-rate vocalist, lovely of tone with an unfailing connection to both the music and the meaning of a song. This foursome has appeared at the GVB already and it’s said that even the young waitstaff knew enough to pay attention to their music.
This may be the start of an every-other-week engagement, but Tuesday, December 30th at 9:00 is a good time to start making it a habit. The Greenwich Village Bistro is at 13 Carmine Street, between Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street.”
Readers who remember the fabled Cajun (between 16th and 17th Streets on Eighth Avenue) before it was eaten by “progress” in 2006 will remember Pete Sokolow, enthusiastically swinging with a thunderous left hand, Leroy “Sam” Parkins, a wonderfully hedonistic clarinetist, and Ronnie Washam, “The Chelsea Nightingale,” who sang with drummer Bob Thompson’s Red Onion Jazz Band. Pete can do a hilarious version of Fats’s “Your Feets Too Big” in Yiddish and drive a band with authentic stride piano; Sam is a deep musician, whose blues come from inside. And Ronnie. Her favorite singers are Lee Wiley and Ella Logan, and she honors them. Not, mind you, by imitating them, but by getting inside a song as they did.
Jazz musicians, these days, have their own CDs that they bring to the gig. But Ronnie has a new one — LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME — recorded with a wonderful little combo (Simon Wettenhall, trumpet; Pete Martinez, clarinet; Hank Ross, piano; Conal Fowkes, bass; Bob Thompson; drums). She comes through whole from the first note, and her colleagues are especially receptive. You could call 212.243.7235 for ordering information — or, better yet, you could buy one at the gig. Don your down coat, go downtown, and prepare to have your spirits lifted!
As is her habit, the Beloved is listening to Jonathan Schwartz’s Christmas show on WNYC-FM, where his guests include Mandy Patinkin, Charles Osgood, Jay Leonhart, Steve LaSpina, Harry Allen, John Pizzarelli, Tony Monte, and Gene Bertoncini. When the chatter comes to a graceful halt, Jonathan offers high-quality seasonal music, including tenor saxophonist Harry’s romp through “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.”
The Beloved, quite properly, was delighted with Harry’s performance. But she asked me, “Do jazz musicians really enjoy playing such silly songs?”
“Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” is well-established in the American cultural landscape, ubiquitous, even. I used to roll my eyes whenever it was played. However, when I found out that it had been composed by J. Fred Coots, composer of “You Go To My Head” and “For All We Know,” I was able to feel more kindly towards the song. Somehow it appealed to me that Coots should have made a fortune on this musical shred — enabling him to live comfortably and write far better songs.
I answered the Beloved’s question by invoking the Sage of Corsicana, Texas, Hot Lips Page, who, when asked a similar question, reputedly said, “The material is immaterial.” And Django Reinhardt, who surely knew something about improvisation, asked for the simplest theme from “Tiger Rag” as material to improvise on at a jam session.
Like alchemists, jazz musicians inhabit a miraculous universe, turning junk into gold, often enjoying the vapidity of a piece of music because its three-chord structure allows them to improvise freely while the F, G7, and C are endlessly returning. Think of the twelve-bar blues as the perfect example. The freedom to create as one wishes — what a blessing!
But back to seasonal matters. Between now and Christmas, I am always tempted to equip myself with a pair of earplugs when I go out in public. I would be thrilled to hear Bing’s “White Christmas” once a day, but “The Little Drummer Boy” performed with funk underpinnings raises my blood pressure alarmingly. So I propose two aesthetic alternatives for the season.
One is the best, most jubilant jazz Christmas CD I have ever heard: Mark Shane (and his X-mas All-Stars, including Jon-Erik Kellso) on the Nagel-Heyer label, WHAT WOULD SANTA SAY? It’s a CD I enjoy all through the year.
The other piece of music is accessible online, as I found to my delight. It’s a 1944 record made for the Savoy label, featuring the delightfully accomplished pianist Johnny Guarneri and the irreplaceable bassist Slam Stewart. A truly irrepressible pair!
The song — apparently improvised impromptu in the studio – is called SANTA’S SECRET, a jolly evocation of Fats Waller, who had died less than a year before. It answers the pressing question, “What makes Santa so jolly?” Whether Johnny and Slam were Tall when they recorded this I leave to scholars more erudite than myself.
If you visit http://www.musicalfruitcake.com (which bills itself as offering the worst Christmas songs ever recorded — a position I don’t hold) and search for “Guarneri,” all should be revealed. The link is genuinely troublesome, but it is alive and worth pursuing.
In this holiday season and beyond, I hope that you are as happy as Johnny and Slam seem to be on that record. And that you get to display your very own alchemical wizardries, even if you don’t play an instrument.
Jonathan Schwartz has been broadcasting on WNYC-FM (New York City’s NPR station) for a long time now, offering remarkable music and deeply informed commentary. Every Saturday and Sunday from 12-4, Jonathan plays a large variety of moving and intriguing music – Fred Astaire, Ruby Braff, Becky Kilgore, Tony Bennett and many others.
Jonathan’s program also appears on Sirius satellite radio and his WNYC shows can be heard online, but I am listening live as I write this.
Unlike other radio personalities who delve deeply into American popular song and jazz, Jonathan is more interested in presenting the music than a barrage of archival data. And his program isn’t a museum, for he plays recordings by young performers who keep traditions vigorous.
When I first heard his WNYC program, years ago, my musical range was deep but narrow. I knew as much as I could about 1938 Billie Holiday, about the partnership of Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden, about the sounds of Jo Jones and George Wettling. I loved Bing Crosby. But I was an impatient listener, fidgeting until Jonathan played a song or a musician of whom I approved.
And I didn’t understand Jonathan’s deep fascination with Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was everywhere in my childhood and adolescence, and he seemed one-dimensional, someone trying to be hip for the young’uns and a sad tough guy for the people who watched the Ed Sullivan Show. Louis was always Louis, no matter what he sang or played. Sinatra seemed so busy selling repackaged versions of himself. When “Ol’ Blue Eyes” came back, it meant nothing to me — had he ever been away? The performances I saw on television seemed consciously mannered: “Look how deeply I feel,” he seemed to be saying, which I did not find convincing.
But I am writing this to say that even our most cherished artistic convictions need to be reinspected now and again, to see if they are valid. Or if they ever were. The Beloved listens to Jonathan’s WNYC program faithfully, so I have heard him more often and more regularly than ever before.
More than a year ago, Jonathan played a Sinatra recording I had never heard, from the Capitol sessions with the Hollywood String Quartet, which appered on vinyl and CD as CLOSE TO YOU. The song was a collaboration of Gordon Jenkins and Johnny Mercer, “P.S., I Love You.” I had heard Billie Holiday’s sweet-sour Verve version — but Sinatra’s singing, tender, unaffected, wistful — brought tears to my eyes. The next day, I bought the CD and still think of it as supremely romantic music, superbly realized. That singer in the Capitol studio didn’t care whether he struck the best I-don’t-care pose for the photographers. He was inside the music, selling nothing but conveying everything.
I was suspicious. I looked into the mirror while shaving. Was I turning into a Sinatra-phile, one of those people who reveled in every note their hero had sung? I already had enough musical obsessions, thank you. So I kept close watch on myself and played CLOSE TO YOU in the car, thinking that it was one atypical occasion when Sinatra had allowed himself to merge with the music.
But it happened again when Jonathan played another Capitol Sinatra, the arrangement by Gordon Jenkins. Perhaps it was ”Where Are You?” And, against my more suspicious self, I was staggered by the depth of feeling in that record. I bought it and played it. And then there was the slightly angry “Oh, You Crazy Moon,” from THE MOONLIGHT SINATRA. And the tragically world-weary Sinatra of “I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out to Dry.”
So this is to say, “Thank you!” to Jonathan Schwartz for enriching my musical and emotional experience. I now think it is possible to play a great Sinatra recording alongside one of the Billie Holiday Verves and to hear that both singers are — in their own way – considering the mysteries of the human heart.
Some readers might be thinking, “Isn’t this a jazz blog? Sinatra wasn’t a jazz singer!” Those categories don’t matter when the art moves us. As he was in mourning for his life, drinking cognac, Lester Young played those mournful Sinatra records over and over. “Frankie-boy,” Pres called him. If Sinatra moved Lester Young, who knew everything about elation and despair, that’s good enough for me. I am sorry that it took me this long to find the inward-looking Sinatra, but I am deeply indebted to Jonathan Schwartz for making it happen.
No, I haven’t utterly lost my ability to proofread. The title of this post is, however, a nearly unforgivable pun. I couldn’t resist.
YouTube is neck-and-neck with potato chips as an addictive pleasure, and while looking around for something else jazz-flavored, I came across this. Or, properly, I tripped over it — turning it on simply because I couldn’t believe it. Perhaps you should turn it on before I describe it, as it might seem indescribable at first. For the skeptical reader, I assure you, there’s a solid underpinning of jazz here: Bix Beiderbecke’s recording of SORRY.
The performer is Mike Penny, someone I knew nothing about except that he seems a string virtuoso with a hot attack and a swinging terminal vibrato. And the instrument? YouTube says that it is a Tsugaru shamisen. It has three strings and no frets, and to me it resembles a boxy banjo.
Perhaps Mike Perry is somehow channelling Snoozer Quinn’s dextrous ghost? Stranger things have happened! But I went to his MySpace page and learned that he lives in Valencia, California, and is a master player of this instrument in every genre imaginable. In fact, you can hear him play GRACE ANE BEAUTY there, too. Check him out!
Thanks to jazz scholar and old friend David Weiner, I encountered this glorious photograph two nights ago. Gjon Mili is known to most of us as the man behind the 1944 film JAMMIN’ THE BLUES, but he made his primary mark as a still photgrapher, shooting many pictures at jam sessions staged for LIFE. Now that Google has made the picture archives of that long-lived weekly magazine available, we can all enjoy such lively archaeology.
If you can’t wait to see previously unknown pictures of Mildred Bailey, James P. Johnson, Eddie Condon and friends, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, and others, the link to the site is http://images.google.com/hosted/life and I’ve already spent a good deal of time there. It is fascinating not only for the jazz players, but for the glimpses of what is, for most of us, a lost world — where, as John Cheever once wrote, all the men wore hats. If you enter the search term “jam session,” always a good idea, you will find 183 images including everyone from Gene Krupa to George Wettling to Dizzy Gillespie and Vic Dickenson.
The picture above is a wonderfully odd mix of players: the man at far left, holding a glass, might be drummer Zutty Singleton. To his right, the altoist has been identified as a young Leo Parker. Then there’s Hot Lips Page at the microphone. Nearly hidden behind him is clarinetist Buster Bailey and bassist Al Lucas. The drummer (in Navy uniform) is Kansas Fields, the pianist Teddy Wilson. And, inescapably, in the back, clarinet at the ready, is Mezz Mezzrow. Any guesses about the other players will be appreciated — and I’m indebted to the discussion already held by members of the jazz research group moderated by Michael Fitzgerald for the additional identifications above. This jam session and one other was recorded for V-Disc, but legend has it that the recordings were rejected because the assembled multitudes were having a noisy good time. Given these musicians, I would have shouted, too.
Here’s another from the same session:
My long-time myopia holds me back here, but I see Eddie Heywood at the piano, Buster Bailey again, and the wondrous pairing of Dizzy Gillespie and Vic Dickenson, at a time before producers, clubowners, and other people had decided that one played “bebop” and the other one “Dixieland.”
Too many players to list them all (even if I recognized everyone) but I’ll bet that the musical atmosphere was both festive and creative when Mili clicked his shutter:
How about Mezz Mezzrow, Muggsy Spanier, bassist Al Hall, Dizzy, and Duke?
Then, there’s a less ecumenical gathering: drummer George Wettling (who could play in anyone’s band), the irreplaceable PeeWee Russell, and a bassist who might well be Al Lucas once again.
A rare early portrait of Vic Dickenson, with Heywood at the piano.
Properly at the center of things — he could shape a jam session like no one else — is William Basie. You know, the fellow from New Jersey?
I had to stop myself before posting more than a dozen images on this blog, although I will return to this site for uniquely posed evidence of the lost Golden Age, the Eden that very few people now alive got to visit. Thank you, Gjon Mili! And thank you, LIFE, which I once thought hopelessly middlebrow: these pictures prove me wrong.
The connection between rhythmic music and inspired, graceful motion is surely an ancient one. Logically, it carried over into jazz performance, whether the dancers were wiggling along in their own fashion while a street parade went by, or if they were doing the belly-rub at Funky Butt Hall. Later, it was the Lindy Hop at the Savoy Ballroom. Jazz musicians have always been cheered by people dancing to the music. Even though opportunities to dance to live jazz are fewer, and the dancers have to practice to the strains of recordings, both the dancers and the band get wonderfully “sent,” to use the old adjective, when they’re together, responding contrapuntally. Trombonist Jim Fryer (more about him later) tells his students that dancing is jazz made visible, and that playing jazz is dancing on their instruments.
All of this was splendidly enacted by Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, who played a three-hour “tea dance” in honor of the holiday season at the Park Avenue Atrium, the home of Chartwell Booksellers.
This edition of the Nighthawks was splendid. Vince’s bands always have fine players, but this was an all-star outfit, packed with leaders, internationally famous jazz players. The trumpets (or cornets) were Randy Sandke and Randy Reinhart; the aforementioned Jim Fryer was a trombone section all by himself; the saxes were Dan Block, Dan Levinson, and Mark Lopeman; the rhythm section was Peter Yarin on piano; Alan Grubner on the Stroh phono-violin, Ken Salvo on banjo and guitar, Arnie Kinsella on the drums and percussion, and Vince on vocals, bass sax, aluminum string bass, and tuba. Sitters-in included a mystery clarinetist and singer Daryl Sherman.
And in the audience were Bix-scholars Albert Haim and his wife, Rob Rothberg, Dan Morgenstern, art historian Evie Joselow, and musicians including the pianist Dick Katz and singer Molly Ryan.
The Beloved and I were there, gleefully transported, dancing to the slower numbers. Here’s what I captured of the music — but not only the music. The Nighthawks and a handsome bunch in their tuxedos, but I kept turning Flip towards the dancers, as you’ll see. What I saw through my tiny viewfinder had — for me — the flavor of the film clips of the Savoy lindy-hoppers, or (better) the exuberant crowd at the Randall’s Island Carnival of Swing in 1938.
A note on what passes for the cinematography: even though he’s a tiny fellow, Flip sends out unseen come-hithers across the room. It’s the only explanation I have for all those people who are compelled to stand in front of me. But I know they can’t help it.
When we walked in, the brilliant Mark Lopeman was offering subtle variations on “Body and Soul” after Coleman Hawkins. I was so entranced by his huge sound (the room acoustics were wonderful) that I stood listening rather than videotaping. You’ll have to come hear the Nighthawks at the Hotel Edison some Monday night and make a special request.
The first performance I captured was the old Rodgers and Hart classic YOU TOOK ADVANTAGE OF ME, done Bix-and Tram style (their roles played by Randy Sandke and Dan Block). But Randy Reinhart leads us in, and I call your attention to Peter Yarin’s enthusiastic piano “paddling,” keeping everyone afloat. Incidentally, performances like this draw on the original recorded performance for their inspiration, but they open up the original — this is a live, inventive band.
Peter Yarin, having a very good time, was called upon for pianist Claude Hopkins’s theme song. Depending on whether the singer is deeply committed or more realistic, the song is titled I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR YOU or I WOULD DO MOST ANYTHING FOR YOU. Draw your own conclusions! For those of you who cover your eyes when the scary part of the movie is near, I offer a small warning: the picture lurches alarmingly two minutes in. Your fearless cinematographer was trying to get closer to the band but without looking down, and there was a flowerbed (full of pine bark) some inches lower than the floor. I did the best I could . . . .
Viewers will notice, however, that as visually striking as the Nighthawks are, that Flip kept being drawn to the dancers on the floor. At first, it was for glimpses of cutie-pie moppets bouncing around, but there was something far more compelling. Watch for the couple — the man dressed nattily in a tweed three-piece suit and two-tone shoes; his partner in green, with a thoroughly delicious cloche hat. They are Heidi Rosenau and Joe McGlynn; they are married; they are exquisite dancers! Yes, the floor was filled with more moppets, some young pairs loosely jitterbugging, a stately young woman all in black — but you will see a good deal of Heidi and Joe in these clips, and they deserve both attention and praise.
(The woman in black was slender and arresting in the way professional dancers are, and when I asked her if she was one, she smiled and said, “No, I’m Italian! Italians know how to sing and how to dance!” She didn’t finish the sentence with “and everything else worth knowing,” but it was very clearly implied.)
At the end of this performance, you’ll see a vigorous older man with a clarinet who couldn’t keep still or keep from playing, even though he was seated on the sidelines in between his own feature numbers. That’s Sol Yaged, eighty-six years old, and raring to go. I don’t know why the woman sitting in back of him looks so puzzled, but her face is a study in incomprehension. Music is supposed to be a universal language, but one never knows, do one?
What came next was a dazzling (but controlled) mini-jam session on SOMEBODY STOLE MY GAL, influenced by both Bix and his Gang and by Fats Waller and his Rhythm. It didn’t turn into a long series of solos, but rather three quick, intense, friendly conversations between Randy (Reinhart) and Randy (Sandke), then Dan (Block) and Dan (Levinson), leading me to the conclusion that this edition of the Nighthawks was truly a Randy Dans band. But I digress.
When it came time for the trombone section, Jim Fryer rose to the challenge, and then he sat down again, playing a brief open-horn solo standing and then alternating with himself by playing his response into the megaphone. It is hilarious, inspiring, and no doubt exhausting — when Clark Terry did such capers, he had only to swivel his head from trumpet to fluegelhorn. No wonder Jim looks so fit! And Heidi and Joe gave a visual commentary to Arnie Kinsella’s stomping drum solo.
After that, everyone had to come back down to earth, and the Nighthawks did this with another Bix-inspired song, I’LL BE A FRIEND WITH PLEASURE. Those who know Bix’s life always hear this song through a veil of sadness, because he recorded it late in his short existence. The original record labored through an emasculated vocal chorus by Wesley Vaughan, but Bix and Gene Krupa and friends redeemed it.
IF I HAD A TALKING PICTURE OF YOU brings us back so long ago that the “talkies” were a startling novelty, thus giving rise to this song where the lover imagines himself having a sound film of his Beloved to watch over and over again, applauding each time she says “I love you.” Sweetly innocent now in the days of cellphone cameras, and, of course, Flip. This performance was inspired by another Whiteman record, where a young Bing Crosby sings about having a “talking pitcher” of you. The dancers are in rare form, and Vince does mighty work on his aluminum string bass, evoking the splendid Steve Brown.
A song that goes even deeper into jazz history is the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s CLARINET MARMALADE, taken up by Bix and Tram in 1927, and the Nighthawks, Heidi, and Joe once again cut loose on it. (What dance or dances are they doing? My very informed readers must know.)
Then, Vince and “the boys” reminded us that there was an elegantly gutty hot band at the Kentucky Club and the Cotton Club in those years, led by Duke Ellington. OLD MAN BLUES was featured in the 1930 Amos ‘n’ Andy film CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK. Ken Salvo keeps things going by playing vigorous banjo, and the soloists evoke Tricky Sam Nanton, Johnny Hodges, trumpeters Freddie Jenkins and Cootie Williams, Wellman Braud, Sonny Greer, and the indefatigable Harry Carney.
Composer Willard Robison never got the fame he deserved, even though singers Jack Teagarden and Mildred Bailey made loving recordings of his songs. The Nighthawks returned to another Bix-Whiteman classic, ‘T’AIN’T SO, HONEY, ‘T’AIN’T SO, with Dan Block on baritone sax sounding remarkably like Frank Trumbauer on bassoon. Here, as on the other performances, Vince’s light supple voice is just right, sincere and swinging.
The last two performances of the tea dance –and there was free Lipton’s — say a great deal about the Nighthawks’ range. (I didn’t capture the Viennese waltz they played, but it was delightfully authentic.) Vince is a true scholar of many kinds of music, and he has a particular affection for Cole Porter and for the less jazz-inflected dance music of the period. He offered a Porter rarity, LET’S FLY AWAY (with witty lyrics, of course) its arrangement from an Anson Weeks radio transcription. I knew the song from a Lee Wiley – Bunny Berigan record, but enjoyed hearing Vince sing it here. And the solo chorus split between a muted Randy Reinhart and Jim Fryer is a wonderful interlude.
The Nighthawks admittedly are a band devoted to the past, but for their idea of it doesn’t end in 1930. They performed an old song, THERE’LL BE SOME CHANGES MADE, in an arrangement done for Artie Shaw, presumably in the late Thirties. On the dance floor, you’ll see the enthusiastic jitterbugs and the lithe Italian as well as Heidi and Joe — and then the afternoon’s enchantment ended with the ritual playing of GOODNIGHT, SWEETHEART, although it had just stopped being the afternoon.
It was a wonderful experience! I tend to avoid “holiday” festivities because of my dislike of the traditional pop music, but this was an uplifting occasion. Free, too! (That’s courtesy of Barry Singer, who has enabled these celebrations for a quarter-century. May his days be merry and bright, that’s all I can say here.)
Hearing the Nighthawks is a holiday in itself, whatever the calendar tells us.
Here’s a wonderful review of the two-CD set THE INFLUENCE OF BIX BEIDERBECKE, which collects rare American and European records — made while Bix was alive — that show how deeply he affected musicians worldwide.
I am reprinting this courtesy of its source, the magazine VINTAGE JAZZ MART (www.vjm.biz) and through the gracious permission of its jazz scholar / editor Mark Berresford. Readers of this blog will find the VJM site and the magazine itself both highly rewarding. I am also very pleased to be able to reprint this review by Rob Rothberg, who knows the music deeply.
2 CD SET: THE INFLUENCE OF BIX BEIDERBECKE. Jass Masters JMS1001. Available from Jass Masters, 71 Chalk Hill, Watford WD19 4DA, England. www.bixbeiderbecke.com. £15, E20 or $30 including p+p.
In the September 1932 issue of ‘Rhythm’ magazine, Hoagy Carmichael wrote that Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet solos were “food for plenty of thought” and “something the younger generation can study for ideas even in composition.” In the wake of Bix’s death in 1931, Hoagy lamented that the “almost total lack of recognition of one such as Bix is beyond my understanding.”
But Bix’s influence on other musicians began early on and spread widely – even to Europe, despite the fact that Bix himself never set foot there. In the two-CD set “The Influence of Bix Beiderbecke,” Nick Dellow and his associates set out to demonstrate Bix’s influence during his lifetime through 51 rare recordings principally from 1924 through 1931, a period that roughly encompasses Bix’s brief recording career.
Volume 1 concentrates on American recordings, starting with George Olsen’s 1924 recording of You’ll Never Get to Heaven With Those Eyes, on which Red Nichols interpolates Bix’s solo from the Wolverines’ recording of Jazz Me Blues, recorded four months earlier. This early replication of a recorded Bix solo on another musician’s recording was not an isolated event; the California Ramblers’ record of Tiger Rag is another example, re-enacting Bix’s solo from the Wolverines’ record.
More interesting is the way in which Bix’s contemporaries absorbed aspects of Bix’s style and created something of their own. Sterling Bose emulates the bell-like tone and driving lead of the Wolverines-era Bix (including a break taken from the master’s record of Davenport Blues) on the Arcadian Serenaders’ The Co-Ed, recorded after the Serenaders had begun playing opposite Trumbauer’s band with Bix at the Arcadia Ballroom in St. Louis. Jimmy McPartland gives us a rough-sounding, scrappy version of Bix on the Original Wolverines’ A Good Man is Hard to Find, McKenzie/Condon Chicagoans’ Liza, and the Hotsy Totsy Gang’s Out Where the Blues Begin (on which he stays too close to the melody for my taste). Andy Secrest’s ability to sound like his bandmate is well known, and he sounds so good on the Mason-Dixon Orchestra’s Alabammy Snow that Max Easterman wonders if Bix is present, as a soloist or otherwise. (I think Secrest is underrated, but I don’t hear the pride of Davenport soloing or in the ensemble.) The softer-toned Bob Mayhew blows up a Bixian storm on The Eyes of Texas by the Carolina Club Orchestra and on Broadway Rose by Dick McDonough (or is it Mickey Bloom?), the last from an unissued test pressing with great sound. Red Nichols evokes Bix beautifully and without copying on Crazy Rhythm with Miff Mole’s Molers. Dub Schoffner, who evidently was far away from the microphone for the Casa Loma Orchestra’s Little Did I Know, displays some Bixian phrasing in a Gene Gifford arrangement clearly influenced by Bill Challis.
Manny Klein, the Zelig of jazz trumpet, is heard on Lou Raderman’s Why Do I Love You (Bixian tone, but too many notes for Bix) and on Bill Challis’s arrangement of The Blue Room, written for the Goldkette band but not recorded until this 1933 version by the Dorsey Brothers, on which Klein evokes both Bix (in the opening phrases) and Bunny Berigan in a derby-muted solo. The technically-accomplished Klein is almost certainly the creative, confident player behind the derby on Roger Wolfe Kahn’s When a Woman Loves a Man as well.
In addition, Volume 1 gives us territory bands, including Perley Breed’s Shepard Colonial Orchestra (Where’s My Sweetie Hiding), Jimmy Joy’s St. Anthony Hotel Orchestra (Riverboat Shuffle), Hitch’s Happy Harmonists (Cataract Rag Blues), and Marion McKay’s Orchestra (Doo Wacka Doo). Fred Gardner’s Texas University Troubadours display admirable drive on Papa’s Gone and No Trumps, and their trumpeter Tom Howell shows a Bixian lilt and a large, lovely sound (albeit with some technical insecurity). Andrew Aiona’s Novelty Four, whose identity is a discographical mystery, gives us Hula Girl, which will have you imagining Trumbauer’s band transplanted to the beach at Waikiki.
Along the way, we hear Bix’s influence on Jimmy Dorsey, on alto (the California Ramblers’ Davenport Blues) and clarinet (the Original Memphis Five’s Jazz Me Blues). Even players not known for sounding Bixian get into the act, such as Tommy Gott on the Jazz Pilots’ Wedding Bells, on which an unidentified scat singer channels the spirit of Harry Barris.
You’ll want to listen with Max Easterman’s splendid notes at your side. They offer a wealth of interesting detail not just about the recordings, but also the personalities and places involved. No matter how much you’ve read about the era, you will learn things that will enhance your appreciation of this music.
There are many rare photographs as well.
In Volume 2, we cross the pond to Europe, where Bix’s music exerted its influence directly, through recordings issued principally on Parlophone, Columbia and HMV, and indirectly, through emissaries such as Bix’s colleagues Adrian Rollini, Chelsea Quealey and Sylvester Ahola, who were ensconced in British bands. (Rollini even tried to recruit Bix in 1929 for Fred Elizalde’s band at the Savoy Hotel. Had he succeeded, one wonders if Bix would have lived longer.)
To my ears, Bix’s British disciples were his best. Norman Payne captured Bix’s chime-struck-with-a-padded-mallet tone and emotional reticence, particularly at slow and medium tempos. Young Norman solos in an uncharacteristically assertive fashion in Jay Whidden’s A Dicky Bird Told Me So, then settles into a more lyrical mood for the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra’s Every Day Away from You, Jack Hart’s The Song of the Dawn and I’m Singing My Way Round the World, Spike Hughes’ Kalua, the New Mayfair Orchestra’s Follow A Star Selection, Harry Shalson’s With My Guitar and You (here with especially gorgeous tone), and the Night Club Kings’ Whispering. So effective is his evocation of Bix’s tone that he imbues the NMDO’s South Sea Rose with Bixian spirit merely by leading the ensemble (and also by ending the record with a break indebted to Bix’s introduction to Baltimore).
Jack Jackson tends to be underappreciated among jazz collectors, possibly because of his stint as the leader of a mostly sweet dance band in the mid-1930s. Here, however, we get Jackson the sideman, whose best work displays beautiful, pure tone, a Bix-like decisivene ss, and great technical mastery. On the Crichton Lyricals’ 1927 record of Somebody Said, the teenage Jackson begins his solo by quoting Bix’s second break in Trumbauer’s recording of Riverboat Shuffle, then proceeds with a modernistic, multi-noted solo that bows mostly to Red Nichols. (This acoustic recording has always struck me as a British counterpart to Bix’s acoustically recorded Broadway Bell-Hops date.) By the time of Jack Hylton’s Forget Me Not (note Poggy Pogson’s Bixian oboe solo!) and especially Oh! What A Night to Love, Jackson had rather less Nichols and more Bix, and was saying more with fewer notes. Night, on which the brass section crackles and Jackson alludes to Bix’s solo in Ostrich Walk, is a fine all-round performance that ought to be better known. We also hear Jackson on Spike Hughes’ record of A Ship Without A Sail, where Jackson and alto saxophonist Philip Buchel create an atmosphere that can make you wonder if you’re hearing a newly-discovered Trumbauer side.
Naturally, Sylvester Ahola is here as well. We know he was a great admirer of Bix, but he is, I think, mostly his own man, a great technician who showed a Bixian tone sometimes but Bixian ideas only rarely. Above all, Hooley is not, to use Paul Whiteman’s description of Bix, “a note miser.” He can remind you of someone running up and down a flight of stairs, as on the Rhythmic Eight’s There’s a Cradle in Caroline. When he restrains himself and slows down a bit, the results can be Bixian (e.g., Harry Hudson’s Some Hauntin’ Tune) or not. On the Night Club Kings’ In the Moonlight and particularly Spike Hughes’ A Miss is As Good as a Mile, his playing is very exciting and moving, but the aggressive, rangy style and strident tone aren’t Bixian.
But wait – there’s more. Max Goldberg does himself proud on Jay Whidden’s little-known record of Louisiana in a derby-muted solo modeled after Bix’s solo on the Whiteman record, although Bing Crosby need not worry about competition from Whidden’s stiff vocalist, Fred Douglas. (It would have been nice to have Max’s Bixian outing in Spike Hughes’ record of The Boop-Boop A Doopa Doo Trot as well.) Chelsea Quealey is heard with Fred Elizalde on Sugar (a Bill Challis arrangement also featuring Bobby Davis and Adrian Rollini, recorded a month before the better-known Whiteman version featuring Bix), an unissued take of Dance, Little Lady, and the Challis-influenced arrangement of I’m Glad, a lovely, hitherto-unknown performance from a recently-discovered test pressing that is issued here for the first time. We also get to hear England’s mysterious Frank Wilson (who left the music business to take up religion in the early 1930s and was not heard from again) on an unissued take of Nobody’s Fault But Your Own with Jack Payne; France’s Philippe Brun on Gregorology by Gregor et ses Gregoriens; Sweden’s Ragge Lath on Helge Lindberg’s record of Minns Du?; and Tiger Rag by the Original Capitol Orchestra, an American band in London with whom Bix had played aboard the steamboat S.S. Capitol. These are not records you see every day, at least in New York! Throughout, we are guided by Nick Dellow and Mark Berresford’s scholarly notes on the European tracks, with yet more rare photographs.
Care has been taken not to duplicate the tracks on Sunbeam’s Bix Restored, Volume 5. Nick Dellow’s careful digital restoration gives each recording vivid new life while respecting its 0riginal sound. As a result, even the tracks that a dedicated Bixophile might have heard before deserve another listen. (Full disclosure: I provided the source material for two of the European tracks here. Fuller disclosure: having listened to the records in question side by side with Nick’s transfers, I’m mpressed by what he has accomplished with them.) Apart from all of that, Bixophiles will be glad to have these recordings, packaged with perceptive commentary, in one convenient, affordable place, saving the significant cost of buying them one or two at a time on scattered CDs (not to mention the even more significant cost of buying the original records, if you can find them).
Profits from this set initially were contributed to a fund established to help meet the medical expenses of Richard M. Sudhalter, the Bix-inspired trumpeter and celebrated author of, among many other things, the books ‘Bix, Man and Legend’ (in 1974, with co-author Philip R. Evans) and ‘Stardust Melody: The Life and Music of Hoagy Carmichael’ (2003). (One of the CD set’s booklets includes a heartfelt tribute to Sudhalter from Bixography proprietor Albert Haim.) After Sudhalter’s death in September 2008, the profits were redirected to the Jazz Foundation of America, an organization that aids thousands of jazz musicians in crisis annually, and that helped Sudhalter during his illness. Thus is this musically worthy endeavor made even more worthy.
All in all, this set is a feast for Bixophiles. I’ll bet Hoagy would have loved it.
Readers who find that ruminations make them itchy are encouraged to turn away, with my compliments. Come back soon. This posting has Dave Tough as its apparent subject, but its real theme is human nature.
Several days ago, celebrating Dave Tough’s life and mourning his death, I wrote several posts about him. Kevin Dorn, who knows Tough’s work deeply, approved, which pleased me.
Then I found a comment from someone new, a European blogger I’ll call Mr. Easy. He wrote that Tough was underrated, and continued: “Although he was an alcoholic like me, his range was very wide, in my humble opinion.” And he closed with a polite thank-you.
Mr. Easy’s candor took me aback for a moment, but I admired his sentiments and responded in agreement. Curious about him, I found his site, full of jazz video clips of players I also admire. Reflexively, I added his site to my blogroll so that other like-minded souls could visit it. This is common practice — a mutual tipping of hats among bloggers, who are always looking to bring more readers to their sites.
This morning, I found a comment (posted on my site) from Mr. Easy, displeased that I had added his blog to my website.
I have edited one word for politeness: “Who gave you the permission, you —-? Did I ASK you to do so? You are very presumptuous!!! My site is only for jazz connaieseireurs!!”
I thought that I was also a “jazz connaiesireur,” but enough of that.
However, I am not used to being called “a —-” on my own blog. I thought that our conversation had reached its end. So I wrote Mr. Easy, politely saying that he needn’t have been so offensive, that I had deleted his site and his comments, and that he could now go away.
His response took me by surprise, because the people I have met through this blog have been generous, smart, funny, encouraging, kind — obviously a rare bunch — and I am honored to have them.
And, when I think next of Mr. Easy, an old comment of my father’s will come to mind, when one of his friends met him on the street and asked how everything was: “Oh, things are tough all over.”
For some people, they are. And the reference isn’t to Dave Tough, alas.
I know the title sounds like some Monty Python sketch about jazz among the aristocracy, but it’s what begins this fascinating short film — dating from 1961, featuring trumpeter Emmett Berry, alto saxophonist Earle Warren (two stalwarts of the Count Basie band and of Buck Clayton’s Basie-inflected combos), the fascinating pianist Sir Charles Thompson (knighted by Lester Young), drummer Oliver Jackson, and Gene Ramey on bass. It was nothing special for these musicians to create a medium-tempo blues with such easy intensity . . . but it seems special today. And the impish-looking trombonist who pokes his head in at the end is, of course, Dicky Wells. Thanks to YouTube, and to one of jazz’s quiet benefactors, Bob Erwig!
I include these artifacts here for their iconic value. Religious people used to marvel over the bone that was reputedly the thighbone of a saint. I please myself by contemplating more secular items: the only Dave Tough signature I’ve ever seen, the angular calligraphy of someone who knows what he is doing and what effect it might create, and (below) the record label from the only session he ever led. I think that Tough would have regarded bandleading with much the same disdain that he afforded drum solos, but at least this group was a fine quintet, especially for the presence of the luminous trumpeter Joe Thomas and the underrated pianist Bernie Leighton.
P.S. The Jamboree session has the look of a Harry Lim endeavor for Keynote; is this the case or was it simply that the A&R man at Jamboree had liked the Joe Thomas – Ted Nash combination and wanted some for his own label? Jamboree didn’t last long, but they also recorded Don Byas and Buck Clayton, so the label’s good taste was evident.
This is what I found on my blog — visually lovely and cheering in addition. I am very grateful to know that these pages are being read in Japan, a country where intelligent awareness of jazz is far higher than at home. I salute you!
BILLIE HOLIDAY Thanks DOC CHEATHAM and HOAGY CARMICHAEL Thanks DICK CARYビリーホリデーのおかげでドキュメントチーザムとカーマイケルHOAGYおかげでディックケアリー
May 15, 2008 2008年5月15日 · No Comments コメントはありません
Two particularly endearing compact discs have arrived, and I haven’t stopped playing them.特に2つのかわいらしいコンパクトなディスクに到着しており、私は彼らの再生が停止されていません。 They’re on the Swedish Kenneth label, the jazz-child of the jazz scholar and producer Gosta Hagglof, who also happens to be one of the world’s most fervent Louis Armstrong fans and specialists.彼らは、スウェーデンのケネスラベルにして、ジャズ、ジャズ学者生産Gosta Hagglofと、子供でも起こるのか、世界で最も熱心なファンや専門家のルイアームストロングする。 (His site, “Classic Jazz Productions,” is on the blogroll to the right.) （彼のサイトは、 “クラシックジャズプロダクションは、 “右のブログロールにあります。 ）
For forty years now, Gosta has been producing records and CDs of heartwarming jazz, featuring Maxine Sullivan, Benny Waters, Kenny Davern, Doc Cheatham, and others, alongside Swedish jazz stars, including the quite spectacular cornetist-trumpeter Bent Persson, reedman Claes Brodda, and others. 40年には、 Gosta 、マキシンサリバン氏は、ベニーウォーターズ、ケニーダヴァーン、ドクチーザムなど、かなり壮観なcornetist -トランペッターベントパーソン、リード奏者クラースブロッダを含むスウェーデンのジャズスター、一緒に備えて記録し、心温まるジャズのCDを製作されていますなどがあります。 These sessions have an inimitable looseness, somewhere between live performances (think of the St. Regis jam sessions without Alistair Cooke) or the slightly more formal Teddy Wilson Brunswicks, lyrical and propulsive.これらのセッション、ライブパフォーマンスの間のどこか（アリステアクックなく、セントレジスジャムセッションを考える）や、少しフォーマルなテディウィルソンBrunswicks 、叙情的で独特の緩みを推進している。 Here’sa much younger Gosta greeting Louis at the airport in 1965: the warm feeling passing back and forth is immediately evident.以下に多くの若いGostaあいさつ空港で1965年にルイ：温かい気持ちを前後に通過すぐに明らかにされています。
Now, Gosta has issued Dick Cary: The Wonderful World of Hoagy Carmichael (Kenneth CKS 3410), and A Tribute to Billie Holiday: Doc Cheatham and his Swedish Jazz All Stars featuring Henri Chaix (CKS 3407).さて、 Gostaディックケアリー発行しています： カーマイケルの素晴らしい世界Hoagy （ケネス中正3410 ） 、 トリビュートビリーホリデー：ドクチーザムと彼のスウェーデンのジャズ全て星印アンリChaixをフィーチャー （中正3407 ） 。 You might initially think that there have already been more than enough tributes to Hoagy and Billie, but these discs are stirringly good.まず最初は既にHoagyとビリーするのに十分な貢納物以上されているが、これらのディスクの心を動かして良いと思うかもしれない。
Before my time, Long Island was a hotbed of jazz — Miff Mole was born in Freeport, and there were thriving colonies of jazz musicians in Queens: Louis, of course, in Corona; James P. Johnson, Fats Waller, Milt Hinton, Roy Eldridge and many others. Red Allen had a steady gig at the Blue Spruce Inn in Roslyn.
When I first became aware of jazz, like love, it was just around the corner. Louis and the All-Stars came to the Island Garden in Hempstead in 1967; I saw Jimmy McPartland, Vic Dickenson, Joe Wilder, Milt Hinton, Dick Hyman, Buddy Tate, Jo Jones, Dill Jones, Budd Johnson, Connie Kay, and Teddy Wilson in concerts, usually free ones in the parks. Teddy, Roy Eldridge, Wilbur Little, and Joe Farrell played hour-long gigs in the shopping center Roosevelt Field in 1972. The International Art of Jazz had wonderful concerts — I remember a quartet of Ruby Braff, Derek Smith, George Duvivier, and Bobby Rosengarden. Ray Nance did a week in a club in Hicksville!
Some years later, a traditional jazz society whose name now escapes me held concerts in Babylon, with Peter Ecklund, Dan Barrett, Joe Muranyi, Marty Grosz, and others. Nancy Mullen told me of evenings when Ecklund would show up in a little Port Jefferson spot and play beautifully. Sonny’s Place, in Seaford, had name jazz players for years.
Now, I know that most of the musicians I’ve listed above are dead. Try as I might, I can’t make Red Allen come back to Roslyn. But I wonder: Is there any Mainstream jazz on Long Island? Could it be that it has retreated utterly to safer urban refuges? I would be grateful for any information on some place(s) where the band strikes up a familiar melody to improvise on. It could even be “Satin Doll,” although I would hope for better.
Or has the region I live in given itself over completely to cellphone stores, nail salons, and highways? Say it ain’t so, Jo (Jones, that is).
The ideal jazz club experience, if you were to take fabled movies as a guide, is an exuberantly chaotic spectacle. One trumpet player vanquishes another by playing higher and louder; two drummers pound away in grinning synchronicity; musicians magically get together in thunderous ensembles. Everyone knows what the song is and what key they are playing in; musical routines miraculously coalesce without rehearsal. Inevitably the audience is on its feet, cheering. Long live the new king of jazz! Everybody join in! (Consider, if you will, “Second Chorus,” “The Glenn Miller Story,” or “The Five Pennies,” and other deliciously unreal episodes.)
I doubt that many of these fanciful scenes ever happened away from the soundstage. Even if they did, hey aren’t my idea of pleasure. Everything is too loud, and the movies assume that everyone in the crowd is hip, attentive, listeners unified into an appreciative community. I wonder if this audience ever existed, although in Charles Peterson’s glorious photographs of 52nd Street jam sessions, no one is texting or even reading a newspaper.
For me, the ideal scenario is quieter: a small audience, paying attention, in a quiet club — quiet enough so that I can hear the music. And the improvising shouldn’t be self-consciously exhibitionistic, one player trying to outdo another. My dream, rarely realized, needs an intuitive connection between players and audience. It happened often in the sessions Michael Burgevin led at Brew’s, featuring Joe Thomas, Vic Dickenson, Ruby Braff, Sam Margolis, Jimmy Andrews, Kenny Davern, Dill Jones, Rudy Powell, Herb Hall, Marshall Brown, Wayne Wright, and others.
Last night (Sunday, December 7) was frigid and the winds were unkind — perfect weather fo staying indoors. But I made my way to the Ear Inn to hear the EarRegulars. Because Jon-Erik and Jackie Kellso are off somewhere around the Mexican Riviera, the Regulars were led by the brilliantly soulful guitarist Matt Munisteri. He arrived first, his hands cold, looking harried but greeting me pleasantly.
Next in the door was the fine, surprising tenor saxophonist Michael Blake, whose playing I had appreciated greatly on the only other occasion I had heard him — also at the Ear. Bassist Lee Hudson and trombonist Harvey Tibbs completed this quartet. Matt, Harvey, and Lee have all played together at the Ear and I would imagine other places, so they know and respect each other.
Michael, about whom I wrote some weeks ago, fit in immediately. By his playing, I would guess that he isn’t one of those deeply archival types who thinks, when someone mentions a song title, “Oh, yes, Billie recorded that with Bunny and Artie in 1936. In two takes.” But when either Matt or Harvey called Walter Donaldson’s IT’S BEEN SO LONG as their first tune, I could hear Michael listening intently for the first few measures, perhaps to remind himself. Then he, like Lester, leaped in. His jazz radar is exquisite. Someone said of Milt Gabler, the Saint of Commodore Records, that he “had ears like an elephant.” Michael deserves the same accolade: he is a peerless ensemble player, finding countermelodies, call-and-response, and harmony parts while everything was moving along at a brisk tempo.
Harvey Tibbs, resplendent as always in white shirt, was in execptional form as well: several songs began with trombone-guitar duets, beautiful vignettes. Like Michael, Harvey can fit himself into any ensemble, galloping or loitering. He has a wonderful musical intelligence, which he displayed on James P. Johnson’s OLD FASHIONED LOVE, which had a truly churchy ambiance to start — helped immeasurably by Matt’s delicate single-note lines, music for a troubadour under his Beloved’s balcony. Lee Hudson kept lively, limber time, saving himself for an intense solo on WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS in the second set.
A lively JUST YOU, JUST ME followed James P.’s paean to the more seemly days of yore; here, Blake exploded into his solo, sounding at times like a supercharged Lester Young with modern sensibilities. Michael’s tone is often consciously dry instead of pretty, and he approaches his lines in a sideways fashion (his phrases begin and end in surprising places). A phrase might have an audacious shape — a Slinky tumbling down an irregular staircase — but each one landed without mishap. I could hear the whole history of jazz tenor in his work — not only Lester, but Lucky Thompson and Al Cohn, Sonny Rollins as well. He and Harvey took off on a song I didn’t expect — JAZZ ME BLUES — their version harking back not to Bix but to Glenn Hardman or to some imagined jam session in the afterlife, with Bird sitting amidst the Dixielanders at Copley Square. Although Tom Delaney’s Twenties classic is full of breaks, Blake bobbed and weaved in the ensembles. A moody WHAT IS THIS THING CALLED LOVE? followed — suggesting that the four players were really considering that question on the tiny square of floor they claim as the Ear’s bandstand. Finally, in deference to inescapable holiday music, someone called for a Bird-and-Diz version of WHITE CHRISTMAS, and it joyously closed the set.
A long pause for the quartet’s dinner ensued, but a noble visitor, his tenor saxophone at his side, joined them: none other than Dan Block. The two players had a good time, playing their solos while standing at the bar, one listening deeply to the other, or forming a loose circle.
Harvey, perhaps, called for the Basie classic 9:20 SPECIAL to begin the second set, then they all became optimistic (the only way to face the economic news) with WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS, then, in honor of the gales outside, a trotting GONE WITH THE WIND. They ended with a jubilant IF DREAMS COME TRUE, where Blake got so caught up in the vehemence of his double-time phrases that he was almost kneeling on the floor as he soloed.
It was an extraordinary night of music. Perhaps it would have seemed insufficiently dramatic for the movies, but my jazz dreams came true for a few hours.
P.S. The delghtful jazz singer Barbara Rosene was also in the audience. Her new Stomp Off CD, “It Was Only A Sun Shower,” is perhaps her finest recording to date. A new one is in the works, devoted to naughty double-entendre songs from the Twenties, where the He-Man (whether Handy or Military) always stands at attention, can trim any girl’s garden and make her coffee boiling hot. What delights await us!
Although the Cangelosi Cards have a well-earned and devoted following, I think that sometimes they have been hard to find for people who weren’t, as we say, in the know. This situation has just improved. Thanks to Eve of Avalon Jazz, I found this listing of the places the Cards play on a weekly basis. Being of an anxious disposition, I would still check with the respective clubs before saddling up for a Cards gig, but this is more information than we’ve been used to in the past.
And did I mention that the Cards are the closest thing to an unclassifiable melding of a hoedown, a jam session, a fiddle convention, a wondrous interstellar excursion, a mix of Minton’s 1941, the Quintette of the Hot Club of France, old-timey music seventy years ago, the Savoy Ballroom, ecstatic rituals and more? I did? Well, it bears saying again — especially since my musical sage and scout, Jim Balantic, whispered to me that Tamar Korn was trying out some Boswell Sisters repertoire with a small group. Short of the reincarnation of the entire 1938 Basie band, I can’t think of anything better.
Impatient readers will want to scroll to the bottom of the page, where the elegant homespun calligraphy will greet you. Others, more prudent, will find themselves attracted by all the information about Eli Smith’s Down Home Radio Show. Whichever type of information-gatherer you are, you’ll find this schedule invaluable:
Autumn Swing Dance
Friday, October 31st – Saturday, November 1st
Monroe Arts Center in Monroe, Wisconsin
For details go to autumnswing.com
“The Cangelosi Cards are one of the best bands I’ve seen anywhere. They have a great live show, perfect for dancing! I envy any one who has not yet seen them because you now have the chance to see them for the first time! They keep it strictly real, playing traditional New Orleans style jazz, but continue to see at as a living tradition- and as such bring in influences from outside the cannon, such as country, blues, and early popular music. The level of musicianship is brilliant, bring your dancing shoes.”
Flip and I went to see Ehud Asherie last night at Smalls, where his duet partner was the Russian-born altoist Dmitry Baevsky, someone you should know. I’ve heard Dmitry shining through Joe Cohn’s RESTLESS (Arbors), but was even more impressed by him in person. The interplay between the two musicians — they’re long-term friends — should surprise no one who’s been reading this blog. Ehud, modest about his own playing, listens deeply, thoughtfully commenting, answering, anticipating, smoothing the way.
Here’s the duo on Bud Powell’s STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL.
Dmitry is a special pleasure. Many alto players born in the last sixty or so years have fallen under the great avian enchantment of Charlie Parker. Even if they don’t adopt his familiar repertoire, they work towards his brilliant tone and great facility — which translates into rapid flurries of notes aimed at the listener. More recent altoists, perhaps falling under Coltrane’s and Ornette’s spells, have chosen to break out of bebop’s conventions — often with a harsh tone, a nearly aggressive approach to their material.
Dmitry is well aware of what has taken place in jazz, and he’s no reactionary, tied to ancient points of view. But he loves the sound of his instrument, and he enjoys its singing possibilities without falling into sticky-sweetness. In his playing, I hear the bounce of Pete Brown in some turns of phrase, the pensive quality of a Paul Desmond — but mostly I hear Dmitry, which is a wonderful thing indeed. That tone!
And both of these players know how to convey deep feeling through their instruments. Here they approach POOR BUTTERFLY with tenderness, even reverence.
Smalls is reminiscent of someone’s suburban basement or “rec room” in the Seventies — but the casual intimacy of the place inspires the musicians who play there, as you can hear. I couldn’t stay on for long after Ehud’s duet set, but he was followed by Tardo Hammer, then by Sacha Perry and Ari Roland — a cornucopia of world-class jazz for a $20 cover.
These words come from a fascinating book, now apparently out of print but worth searching out: SIDEMAN: THE LONG GIG OF W.O. SMITH. William Oscar Smith is the bassist on Hawkins’s 1939 Bluebird session, the one that produced “Body and Soul.” That should be enough renown for anyone, but Smith went on to be a generous and respected educator.
“Next week the Greenwich Village Bistro (212.206.9777) will host clarinetist Sam Parkins and pianist Pete Sokolow twice in two days. In addition to their Wednesday 12:30 – 2:00 lunch gig with Jim Collier’s Gotham Jazzmen (also featuring Peter Ecklund), Sam and Pete will be appearing on Tuesday night, December 30th, with Ronnie Washam and Friends — the other friend being bassist Dave Winograd. Fans of the Cajun will remember Ronnie as a first-rate vocalist, lovely of tone with an unfailing connection to both the music and the meaning of a song. This foursome has appeared at the GVB already and it’s said that even the young waitstaff knew enough to pay attention to their music.
One is the best, most jubilant jazz Christmas CD I have ever heard: Mark Shane (and his X-mas All-Stars, including Jon-Erik Kellso) on the Nagel-Heyer label, WHAT WOULD SANTA SAY? It’s a CD I enjoy all through the year. 
Jonathan Schwartz has been broadcasting on WNYC-FM (New York City’s NPR station) for a long time now, offering remarkable music and deeply informed commentary. Every Saturday and Sunday from 12-4, Jonathan plays a large variety of moving and intriguing music – Fred Astaire, Ruby Braff, Becky Kilgore, Tony Bennett and many others. 
And I didn’t understand Jonathan’s deep fascination with Frank Sinatra. Sinatra was everywhere in my childhood and adolescence, and he seemed one-dimensional, someone trying to be hip for the young’uns and a sad tough guy for the people who watched the Ed Sullivan Show. Louis was always Louis, no matter what he sang or played. Sinatra seemed so busy selling repackaged versions of himself. When “Ol’ Blue Eyes” came back, it meant nothing to me — had he ever been away? The performances I saw on television seemed consciously mannered: “Look how deeply I feel,” he seemed to be saying, which I did not find convincing. 
I include these artifacts here for their iconic value. Religious people used to marvel over the bone that was reputedly the thighbone of a saint. I please myself by contemplating more secular items: the only Dave Tough signature I’ve ever seen, the angular calligraphy of someone who knows what he is doing and what effect it might create, and (below) the record label from the only session he ever led. I think that Tough would have regarded bandleading with much the same disdain that he afforded drum solos, but at least this group was a fine quintet, especially for the presence of the luminous trumpeter Joe Thomas and the underrated pianist Bernie Leighton. 
Harvey Tibbs, resplendent as always in white shirt, was in execptional form as well: several songs began with trombone-guitar duets, beautiful vignettes. Like Michael, Harvey can fit himself into any ensemble, galloping or loitering. He has a wonderful musical intelligence, which he displayed on James P. Johnson’s OLD FASHIONED LOVE, which had a truly churchy ambiance to start — helped immeasurably by Matt’s delicate single-note lines, music for a troubadour under his Beloved’s balcony. Lee Hudson kept lively, limber time, saving himself for an intense solo on WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS in the second set.
