LOUIS and FATS, by SAMMY CAHN

When I was a young boy Louis Armstrong was already a legend.  All these rumors that he was not allowed in the country, that he was a junkie, that he’d married a white (gulp) woman.  Louis Armstrong?  There was no Louis Armstrong.  He was a trumpet and a voice you heard on a record in the middle of the night.  I would listen and listen to those records.

One day Connie Immerman of the Cotton Club — also famous for Immerman’s Hot Chocolates — said he wanted to introduce me to Louis Armstrong.  Connie took me to the Cotton Club, and when I walked in and saw Louis I just gasped.

The first thing Armstrong said to me was, “When were you born?”  I said June 18.  He whipped out this book he had and flipped through the pages to that date.  He turned the book around and showed me the named of other people — famous people — who had been born on June 18.  I hoped some of it would rub off on me.

I found out that Louis was terribly weak at memorizing lyrics.  His wife would place lyrics all over the house — in his socks, in his shoes, any place he couldn’t miss and so at least would have to look at them a lot.

At the Cotton Club most of the songs were written to help work out a piece of business in the show.  They had a little boy for an act and needed a way of getting him into the show.  I had the idea of a shoeshine boy coming forward through the tables — which is how “Shoe Shine Boy” got written.  I wrote a number for Sister Rosetta Tharpe, “I Bring You Religion On A Mule.”  They hired a little white mule.  She came riding in on it.  Two days later Connie Immerman said to me, “You and your ideas!”  I said, “Isn’t the song stopping the show?”  Connie said, “Sure it’s stopping the show.  Everybody’s quitting.  Somebody found out the mule is getting more than the chorus girls.”  I’ve never suggested an animal act since.

I became close to Louis Armstrong.  One night we covered ten joints in Harlem, and each place somebody was doing Louis Armstrong.  In the tenth and last one it was a really terrible imitation.  I said, “Louis, why are we here?  This man just tries to do everything you do.”  Louis said, “He may do somep’n I don’t do.”

I learned that Armstrong’s solos never varied, and I asked him why.  He said, “Is it good?”  I said yes.  “So?”  No argument.

Once I saw Fats Waller at a rehearsal with a quart of gin on the piano.  “That’s a funny way to run a rehearsal,” I primly said.  He answered just fine: “Hey, I get four arrangements to a quart.”

Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller.  Can you top them?

[From I SHOULD CARE: THE SAMMY CAHN STORY, by Sammy Cahn, pp. 223-24.]

IN FRONT OF OUR EYES (Chautauqua 2009)

Here are songs from the very first informal set of music at the 2009 Jazz at Chautauqua, where we watched and heard our heroes create. 

People for whom jazz is a foreign language ask, “How do they do that, I mean, without music in front of them?  How do they know what they’re doing?”  The answer, of course, is a mix of skill, experience, and daring, beyond mastery of one’s instrument: knowing the chord changes to YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY is one preliminary step; knowing how to play whatever comes to mind another; knowing what not to play a third; having the courage to follow one’s impulses perhaps the final and greatest step.  No amount of immersion in the jazz tradition, no amount of studying recordings, can make up for an absence of courage and playfulness.

Inspired playfulness was evident all through the first set — with musicians who don’t always have the opportunity to get together and exchange ideas: Andy Schumm, cornet; Andy Stein, forsaking his violin for the baritone sax; Dan Barrett, trombone; Bob Reitmeier, clarinet; James Dapogny, piano; Vince Giordano, bass; Marty Grosz, guitar; John Von Ohlen, drums.  A close observer will notice a good deal of making-it-up-as-we-go-along here . . . which is not the same thing as uncertainty or tentativeness.  Rather, it is a willingness to invent while the car is in fourth gear, to say, “Let’s try this and not worry too much whether it’s perfect or not.”  That attitude can add up to train wrecks when less inspired players gather; here, it made some great loose playing possible.  You will notice, as a wonderful added benefit, the smiles on the musicians’ faces, their attentive listening to each others’ solos.  Viewers who like their videos uncluttered will have to get used to the backs of people’s heads in front of me — I could identify most of them as friends! — but their rhythmic bobbing and weaving doesn’t distract from the experience: it’s a pleasure to see the audience, attentive and quiet, but having a fine time.   

The first song is an exploration of a Twenties composition, attractive because its twists and turns aren’t overfamiliar: WABASH BLUES.  I admire the rocking motion of that rhythm section, at once intense and cool; Dapogny’s solo (it would have been perfectly in place in a Chicago joint circa 1933), Reitmeier and Barrett, building splendid solos out of logically-connected short phrases; Andy Schumm, rough-housing and tumbling around in his surprising Wild Bill Davison manner, and an especially impassioned Andy Stein — before the ensemble rocks it all out:

A trotting version of THE SHEIK OF ARABY ewcalled a Red Nichols-Jack Teagarden record of 1929, where Teagarden improvised a stirring solo over the band’s humming the straight melody behind him.  SHEIK is sometimes taken much faster; I admire this band’s steady lope:

Dan Barrett, like Duke Heitger, likes to begin performances of YOU’RE DRIVING ME CRAZY with the rather-rare verse, and this performance took off from his outlining the brief melody.  This version tipped its collective cap to Louis and to the Bennie Moten band and its later Kansas City incarnations.  Barrett, suggesting that being driven crazy could be pleasurably romantic, quotes both SAY IT and the verse to LOVE IN BLOOM, with whatever associations imaginable:

I could write more about these performances, but I’m going to watch them again.  You come, too.

EDWARD LOVETT, TROUBADOUR

One afternoon at Jazz at Chautauqua (mid-September 2009) I was walking through the musicians’ room — no doubt on my way to ask someone a question — when I was stopped abruptly by the unexpected and beautiiful sound of a man quietly crooning a song, accompanying himself on the guitar.  I didn’t know him but when he came to a halt I introduced myself, said how much I admired his singing, and asked if he would like me to capture an impromptu performance for my readers.  Happily, he said yes.  His name is Edward Lovett; he lives in New York; he admires early Crosby and the “transitional singers” of the late Twenties, without imitating them.  He reminds me very much of that old-time ideal of making lovely music all on your own — a Jazz Age troubadour, ready to serenade his lady with Carmichael and Porter.

I asked him what song he would like to offer, and we settled on STARDUST, with the verse.  I apologize for the rippling-waters accompaniment, but Edward’s performance was so complete that I did not want to ask for a retake.  Just imagine that Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm is rehearsing nearby:

Then he revealed previously unknown talents as a satirical contemporary lyricist — beginning his rendition of YOU’RE THE TOP with Porter’s verse before launching into three choruses full of nimble rhymes and social commentary:

 

If he isn’t Talent Deserving Wider Recognition, I don’t know the art of intimate singing.  And Petra van Nuis and Andy Brown, in the audience, agreed with me wholeheartedly (they know!).

SOME THINGS ABOUT LEE WILEY?

It happened at Jazz at Chautauqua. 

I was idling around the tables of compact discs when I heard a woman say to someone else, “Yes, I saw Lee Wiley.” 

I waited for a discreet interval and went over to the woman — and after apologizing for eavesdropping, asked her to tell all.  It’s a brief story.  She was meeting friends for a drink in Newark, New Jersey, about 1953-54, and they had agreed to meet at a swanky Chinese restaurant called “The Hour-Glass.”  A woman was at the piano, playing, and she sang a few songs.  That was Lee Wiley. 

I grilled my Chautauqua informant a bit.  How did she know the woman was Lee Wiley?  Well, she thought there had been a sign on the piano.  I said, “I didn’t know Lee played the piano,” to which the woman said that Lee did, at least on this occasion.  She didn’t recall much more, except that she loves the sound of Wiley’s voice and was sure the woman was Lee. 

It didn’t have the ring of invention, and my Chautauqua friend (whose name is Mary) sounded sincere, enthusiastic, and clear-headed.  Can anyone explain?

A second chorus: while searching online for a new picture to illustrate this post, I found the lovely portrait above, and it led me to a site called “People vs. Dr. Chilledair,” http://people-vs-drchilledair.blogspot.com/ which has posted the Japanese documentary I referred to in an earlier Wiley posting — about a young Japanese actress / singer who searches for people who knew her beloved Miss Wiley in America.  One posting is from February 10, 2008, called “My Lee Wiley” (http://people-vs-drchilledair.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-lee-wiley.html) and a four more postings follow — I gather Bill Reed, the writer and creator of the blog, has made it possible to see the entire documentary.  Bravo!

REDISCOVERED PLEASURES

Of late I have been living in a temporary self-created chaos, attempting to pare down a surfeit of possessions from my apartment.  Today I opened a closet and decided to move a stack of four wooden crates containing about a thousand cassette tapes collected and traded over the past twenty-five years.  Drawn irresistibly to their labeled spines, I thought, “My God, there’s so much music here that I haven’t heard in years — and would delight in — that I really should dig out a half-dozen and enjoy them.”  The cassettes, as well, brought back memories of years of tape-trading with generous collectors, including Bill Coverdale, John L. Fell, Bob Hilbert, Manfred Selchow, Tom Hustad, David Goldin, and a dozen more. 

So this morning, I was driving into Manhattan, exulting in an hour of rare Don Byas (with John Mehegan, Vic Dickenson, Slam Stewart, and perhaps Lem Davis on alto) – including rehearsal versions of INDIANA and I GOT RHYTHM, preliminary to the famous Byas – Slam duets at Town Hall in 1945.  These acetates, by the way, were recorded by Baron Timme Rosenkrantz in his apartment.     

The music pleased me more than I had expected, so I have resolved: the cassettes are coming out into the open, where I can play them (the space in the closet will be filled, easily) and rather than be tempted to buy the first new jazz compact disc that winks at me, I will rediscover some of these treasures.  Not, mind you, as an exercise in asceticism or frugality, but as another way to pleasure.  At this stage of my life, I am not prepared to swear off new compact discs.  I am also not organized sufficiently to have an official rediscovery every day, but since my car still has a cassette deck, these old-time artifacts can enlighten and elevate me during my commute. 

What awaits me?  Lee Wiley.  Louis with Gordon Jenkins on television from 1952, on-location recordings from the Nice Festivals of 1974-5, and more. 

I urge my readers to revisit those treasures they haven’t played in years — whether the stash is under the bed, in the basement, or simply on high shelves.  And if the collection is fertile, you could almost close your eyes and pick “the fifth cassette from the left” and come up with a pleasant surprise.  If you come up with something you dislike, perhaps it means that the particular cassette isn’t worth saving.  Either way, you win. 

I’d vbe fascinated to hear from readers about what delights they find . . . .

TEXT ME TO THAT LAND OF JAZZ

I had an old-fashioned conversation with a jazz friend this afternoon.  “Old-fashioned” means that no electrical devices were used and we were within audible range of each other.  He passed along the newest evidence of the Decline of the West: when he goes to a club to hear a band playing in the idiom this blog celebrates, after the opening ensemble, one or more of the horn players in the front line opens his cellphone or his BlackBerry or iPhone and starts texting.  Someone plays a solo, puts the horn down, and texts someone else.  It certainly gives new meaning to the notion of “collective improvisation,” doesn’t it? 

“Geez, I missed the start of my solo on AT THE JAZZ BAND BALL because my girlfriend just texted me.  She’s on her way to the club.” 

What would Jelly Roll Morton say about that?