ON TREASURE ISLAND

No, my title isn’t a reference to Robert Louis Stevenson, or the 1935 pop song recorded by Louis and Wingy Manone.  It’s how I think of the back quadrant of the antiques-and-collectables shop called CAROUSEL on Warren Street in Hudson, New York.  In a previous post, I happily showed off the Jelly Roll Morton HMV 78 I had uncovered . . . but I hadn’t bothered to look down.  What I found was two boxes of 10″ and 12″ 78s and a few 10″ lps — many of them suggesting that their previous owner had far-ranging and excellent jazz taste.  Here are my latest acquisitions, arranged in rough chronological order for the purists out there . . .

Let’s begin with some classic acoustic blues: two Columbias by a famous pair:

This one was fairly dull, but I didn’t expect roaring improvisation.

Well, we live in hope. SUSAN has some faux-hot playing in its final chorus, where potential buyers might not be scared away, but nothing memorable.

I recall this tune from Mildred Bailey’s little-girl version, but don’t know the vocalist.

This 78 is cracked, but this side’s a real prize.  With the song taken at a slower tempo than usual, there’s a good deal of growling from Bubber Miley in the last minute of the record, out in the open and as part of the ensemble.  A find!

What first caught my eye was the lovely UK label . . . then when I saw this and the next ones were mint Bings from 1933, I couldn’t resist.  And Eddie Lang is added to the Royal Canadians.  Legend has it that the British pressings are quiet and well-behaved.  Is this true?

Not a memorable song, but I can hear Bing becoming pastoral as I type these words.

And my favorite of the four sides — a jaunty naughty song about love-addiction, and perhaps other things, too.  I always knew that “I must have you every day / As regularly as coffee or tea,” didn’t entirely refer to Twining’s Earl Grey.

Now you’re talking my language!  We jump forward into the Forties (I left aside a number of familiar Commodores and Keynotes, because of the economy) — with a record I’d only heard on an Onyx lp compilation.  Here’s the original 12″ vinyl pressing, with “Theodocius,” as Mildred called him on a 1935 record, who was under contract to Musicraft at the time.  A wonderful quintet!

And a tune that only one other jazz group (Benny Morton-Red Allen, 1933) ever recorded.

For whatever reason, 10″ jazz lps are even more scarce than 78s, so this one was a real surprise — even without its cover.

Just as good!

The other side of the ideological divide, but equally thrilling.

Did Mingus overdub his bass lines on this issue, I wonder?

Take it on faith that side 2 is exactly the same except for the altered digit.  Now, to conclude — a pair of oddities!

I can see myself listening to this two-sided piece of history once, if that — but the near-mint record and the original sleeve made it an essential purchase.  I’ll also send this photo to my friend, poet Amy King, who isn’t abdicating her throne any time soon.

Finally, a real gamble and entirely irresistible for that reason.  The logical half of the brain says that what looks like “Hawk” will turn out to be “Hank,” singing about his girl Nona, accompanying himself on the musical saw.  The hopeful side of the brain says “Coleman Hawkins, of course . . . ”  Stay tuned!  My next purchase, obviously, has to be a three-speed turntable.

And two antique-store stories, both cheering.  In Carousel, the gentleman behind the counter saw me come puffing up with my armload of precious 78s.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think the store does a brisk business in 78s, so he was happy to see me.  “I have twelve,” I said, with that hopeful expectant canine look on my face that says, silently, “Can you give me a break on the price, especially if I don’t haggle with you?”  His intuition was splendid.  He grinned at me and said, “Looks like ten to me.”  I was pleasantly flustered and said, conspiratorially, “You knew I was hoping for some sort of discount, didn’t you?” and his smile got bigger.  “No,” he said, “I just count better than you do.”  Very sweet indeed!

And a few days before this, the Beloved and I had spent some time in a store in an odd location — where, I don’t exactly remember.  Its owner was even more amiable, even when we couldn’t find a thing to buy in his place, including gardening books and a small stash of vinyl records.  But we had an exceedingly amusing and thoughtful conversation with him about the changing nature of the area, and how it affected local businesses.  We exchanged friendly good wishes at the end, and went outside to get in the car.  A few beats later, we saw him emerge from the store.  “Did I tell you my clown joke?” he said, and we said no, he hadn’t — hoping for the best but expecting something positively weird or terrifying.  (One never knows, do one?)  “Two cannibals are eating a clown, and one of them looks at the other and says, suspiciously, ‘Does this taste  funny to you?”  It caught me by surprise and, after a moment for cogitation, we were laughing loudly.  Now you can tell it to someone else.

TWEETS? NO, THANKS.

Howard Mandel, president of the Jazz Journalists Association and creator of the “Jazz Beyond Jazz” blog, wants to make sure that the recent media flurry announcing the death of jazz doesn’t get accepted as truth.  A good thing. 

Here’s his latest idea:

“A grass roots group of jazz journalists and broadcasters, websites, bloggers, and presenters have launched a #jazzlives campaign on Twitter, using the social networking platform to demonstrate that recent reports of jazz’s demise are, in the words of Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated.  According to data from a 2008 survey of audience participation in the arts released by the National Endowment for the Arts and featured in recent articles in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, fewer people are hearing jazz live, and fewer of them are young, that at any time since World War II. Yet on the basis of “anecdotal evidence” and observation at jazz events, the survey may have overlooked significant segments of the jazz-enjoying populace.  So an informal circle of jazz activists is trying this experiment to generate new numbers: Get people at live jazz events in the next weeks — including but not only the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival (NYC, Aug. 29 -30) and Labor Day weekend fests in Tanglewood, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Aspen, Vail, Philadelphia, Chapel Hill, etc. — to add #jazzlives to tweets about who has been heard, and where.  So far principals of AllAboutJazz.com, JazzCorner.com, Jazz Promo Services, the Jazz Journalists Association, the Tanglewood Jazz Festival, the Angels City Jazz Festival, the Chicago Jazz Festival, the Detroit International Jazz Festival and WBGO have signed on to promote the #jazzlives campaign. So have bloggers Larry Blumenfeld, Nate Chinen, the Jazz Police, Willard Jenkins, James Hale, Don Heckman, Peter Hum, Howard Mandel, Plastic Sax, Doug Ramsey, Hank Shteamer and A Blog Supreme (NPR), among others.  Including the “hashtag” #jazzlives will allow tweets to be searched and collated on Twitter, TweetDecks and other digital devices. A campaign widget which can be embedded in blogs and websites will exhibit the tweets as they roll out in real time.  For the widget or more information on this campaign, write tweetjazzlives@gmail.com. For this campaign, “jazz” is defined loosely — as each listener who tweets chooses to define it. To participate, tweet about who you hear perform and where the performance was, adding the hashtag #jazzlives and whatever else fits in Twitters 140 character limit. Tell jazz-listening friends to do likewise to prove jazz lives.”

 — Howard Mandel jazzmandel@earthlink.net www.HowardMandel.com www.ArtsJournal.com/jazzbeyondjazz

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Although I am publicizing this campaign, you’ll notice that this blog isn’t included in the list above.  That’s my choice.  When Howard asked me to join this campaign, I told him hat I didn’t believe in Twitter.  I’m not in favor of compressing any variety of expressiveness into 140 characters.  That’s too small for sound-bites.  It’s more like intellectual plankton, too little to survive on.  

I also find it oddly coincidental that this campaign has the same name as my blog.  Of course, JAZZ LIVES is a phrase too common to be copyrighted, and many writers had used it before me. 

I hope the loosely defined jazz-loving masses, tweeting under my window, don’t wake me up in the middle of the night. 

LESTER YOUNG’S GRIEF

Today would have been Lester Young’s one-hundredth birthday. 

His centenarybecame a media event weeks ago.  Smithsonian Magazine and the Wall Street Journal carried articles celebrating Lester’s life and art; Ted Gioia has written what looks like a fine book proposing that everything that was once outsider cutlure, “hip,” “cool,” the property of only a few trend-setters, originated with Pres.  Online, there are sites devoted to the occasion (I could send someone a Pres e-card this morning, or I could subscribe to a jazz video site that promises me a new one emailed every day). 

All these celebrations seem good omens that our culture, typically ignorant or dismissive of jazz, is paying attention to a heroic figure. 

Would the attention have pleased Lester?  I hope so.  I have in my mind’s eye the account of a birthday party given in his honor at Birdland in the Fifties, where Lester cut the obligatory first piece of cake for the photographers while holding his horn in the other hand, playing I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TIME IT WAS, both witty and apt.

And I was cheered by the blogpost written by Fernando Ortiz de Urbina, where he states the heretical but resounding truth that Lester’s influence outweigh’s Charlie Parker’s.  You should read it here: http://jazzofftherecord.blogspot.com/2009/08/lester-young.html — his blog, not incidentally, is named EASY DOES IT, in Lester’s honor.  And as I write this, WKCR-FM is playing Lester’s music — for free — and it can be accessed online at http://www.wkcr.org. 

But I wonder how much posthumous affection and attention we would have to give Lester to make up for the hurts he suffered.  His feelings, once wounded, stayed that way.  His father threw him out of the family band because he couldn’t read music (although he played his part magnificently by ear); later, his section-mates in the 1934 Fletcher Henderson band mocked him because he didn’t sound like their idol Coleman Hawkins, and insisted that Fletcher get another tenor player; John Hammond discouraged Count Basie from raising Lester’s salary although Lester was that band’s star; he could not make a success of his own small band; the United States Army did its best to destroy him; a legion of “grey boys” played his phrases back to him in clubs and concerts for more money; he ended his days in New York, sitting by his window, playing mournful Frank Sinatra records, drinking cognac. 

It is no accident that some of his most unforgettable solos — BLUES IN THE DARK, I LEFT MY BABY, FINE AND MELLOW — sound like a heartbroken man trying to hold back tears.  Can love that comes too late make up for its absence?  I don’t think so.