SONGS FOR HARRIET: The Jazz Showcase, 806 S. Plymouth, Chicago; Tuesday, November 28, 2023 (8-11 PM).

It wouldn’t have been right to send Harriet Choice off to another — unreachable — neighborhood in a flurry of silence, for she loved words and sounds, community and musical friendships. Her friends and family (the two were often interchangeable) organized a free musical evening in her honor at the fabled Jazz Showcase in Chicago, “featuring many of the musicians Harriet loved and who returned the favor, including trombonist Russ Phillips, saxophonist Eric Schneider, guitarist Andy Brown, vibist Stu Katz, bassist Dan DeLorenzo, drummer Bob Rummage, and vocalist Petra Van Nuis.” Details here — but since not everyone knows how crucial Harriet was to jazz, and not just jazz in Chicago, I reprint the biographical sketch from the Jazz Showcase site:

“Chicago has always been a jazz town, but its oldest newspaper didn’t have a jazz critic until Harriet Choice. In 1968, when she began publishing her weekly column, “Jazz by Choice” in the Chicago Tribune, she also broke another barrier. At that time, you could count on one hand the number of women writing regularly on jazz — and none of them covered the music for a major daily.

Her weekly collage of interviews and reviews, followed by a curated listing of who was appearing in town that week, established the template for writing about jazz in Chicago, and for the next 13 years, her byline constituted a familiar guiding light for the city’s music followers.

Choice did more than write about jazz. A fierce advocate and activist for the music, in 1969 she joined with a handful of Chicago musicians, supporters, and fellow journalist Dan Morgenstern to create the Jazz Institute of Chicago. This not-for-profit organization, dedicated to promoting jazz in all its forms, got a major boost by programming the internationally renowned Chicago Jazz Festival — the first installment of which, in 1979, was assembled by the JIC’s founders on three weeks’ notice. In 1981, having gotten that taste of concert production, Choice produced the memorable “Goin’ To Chicago” concert at Carnegie Hall as part of the Newport Jazz Festival in New York, highlighting her hometown’s historical contributions and continuing importance on a national scale.

After she retired from column writing, Choice continued her long journalism career as a feature writer and executive travel editor for the Tribune, and later as an associate vice president at Universal Press Syndicate, where she oversaw the syndication of such authors as Elmore Leonard, William F. Buckley, Roger Ebert, and President Jimmy Carter, as well as the distribution of Boondocks, the groundbreaking (and controversial) African-American comic strip.

As a “founding mother” of the JIC, Choice continued her involvement over the years, eventually chairing the Institute’s Archive Committee, where she oversaw the recording of oral histories, thus preserving Chicago jazz history that might otherwise be lost. She personally conducted such interviews with, among others, trumpeter Bobby Lewis, multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan, and her fellow JIC founders, AACM visionary Muhal Richard Abrams and Delmark Records founder Bob Koester.

Harriet Choice’s love affair with jazz started in fandom, progressed to journalism, and moved from there into the kind of activism that supports and enriches the art form. Brilliant and opinionated, passionate and adventurous, she will be celebrated on November 28 by some of her favorite musicians and lifelong friends.“

(If I knew the author’s name, I would add it: such a portrait comes from deep admiring awareness.)

And some music — from a number of Harriet’s most regal friends and heroes who couldn’t make it to the Jazz Showcase:

May your happiness increase!

VIC DICKENSON’S COUSINS at NICE: STEPHANE GUERAULT, GENE RAMEY, PHILIPPE BAUDOIN, DUFFY JACKSON (July 14, 1979)

I think I first heard Vic Dickenson on Louis Armstrong’s 1946 recording of SUGAR, and I was entranced; soon after, I encountered the second volume of Vic’s SHOWCASE on Vanguard, then the Blue Note Jazzmen — from then on, if a recording had Vic on it, I bought it if I could. In 1970, I saw him with the World’s Greatest Jazz Band and I followed him around New York City for the next dozen years.

To me, he is the Prince of Sounds, and although I admire Teagarden, Morton, Wells, Nanton, Brown, and three dozen other players alive or dead, Vic is closest to my heart. Writers have celebrated his “wry” humor, his double-entendre tonalities, and more, but he is untouchable on a ballad, and his singular phrase-construction and rhythmic grace reminds me so much of his friend Lester Young. Often he was placed in ensembles that leaned more towards TIN ROOF BLUES than a more expansive repertoire, but Vic was more flexible a musician than some of his colleagues on the stand.

Trombonists don’t get the attention they deserve, but I rank Vic alongside Ben Webster and Benny Carter: his beauties might require close listening but they are profound.

His birthday was August 6, and this is in the way of a small celebration.

In performance, Vic didn’t often lead groups: I think he preferred to be within rather than out front. So this set, performed at the Nice Jazz Festival on July 14, 1979, is a remarkable and touching exception. His “cousins” included two young French musicians: Stephane Guerault (on clarinet, sounding very much like a musician Vic admired greatly, Barney Bigard) and pianist Philippe Baudoin, alongside drummer Duffy Jackson and the veteran bassist Gene Ramey. Guerault and Jackson are extroverted here, but Vic was a peerless ensemble player and very little bothered him in performance. The absence of a trumpet-leader also allows for greater flexibility for Vic: at points, this set is reminiscent of his recordings with Sidney Bechet as the other horn. Alongside Vic, Ramey — not often seen on film — and Baudoin, a great stylist, shine.

I would guess that someone, probably George Wein, asked Vic what he wanted to call the band and “cousins” is his friendly witty coinage. The performance was slightly edited for broadcast on French television; this is the unedited version. Vic, Ramey, and Jackson have left us. Philippe Baudoin is very much present and he graciously encouraged me to share this video. Google tells me that Guerault, born in 1936, had a Paris gig in 2018, but about his current status I know nothing.

JUST YOU, JUST ME / ROUTE 66 (vocal Guerault) / INDIANA / SUGAR (vocal Guerault) / TOPSY / DO NOTHIN’ TILL YOU HEAR FROM ME / GET HAPPY / CARELESS LOVE (vocal Guerault) //

I offer this in memory of Harriet Choice, Vic’s friend, who left us in July 2023.

and, “this just in,” as they say on the news — a wonderful gift from the multi-talented M. Baudoin, his photograph of Vic in 1968:

May your happiness increase!

TWELVE BARS FOR HARRIET CHOICE

The clock ticks on.

Harriet Choice moved to another neighborhood on July 13. She was 82, a figure that she didn’t like at all.

Others have written already about her making the Jazz Institute of Chicago a reality, her pioneering jazz advocacy for the Chicago Tribune, her travel writing. And a full tribute to her needs to be written. For the moment, this 2020 introduction by Neil Tesser — which Harriet got to read — will do.

I was only one of Harriet’s many friends, and I came late to the party. She found me in 2012 because of our mutual love of the Chicago clarinetist Frank Chace and I have 400+ emails to prove it; we spoke on the phone most recently on June 14. So those are my bona fides. But this is not a competition to be the one who knew her best: that honor would fall to Dan Morgenstern, who no doubt will have his own beutiful evocation.

Writing of W.B. Yeats, Richard Ellmann at first discusses what he called “friend-of” syndrome, when we celebrate someone in terms of their friendships, however glancing, with people even more famous. But in the world of jazz, where musicians are often suspicious or skeptical of “civilians,” the friendships Harriet had and maintained for decades are testimony to how deeply she was liked, admired, and honored as someone genuine and genuinely knowledgeable.

Harriet and I were (hard to not write “are” at this moment) enthusiasts, acolytes, hero-worshippers. So our phone conversations, which I am sorry I did not record at least one as a sample, would begin with her identifying herself in her up-and-down musical voice (even though the 312 area code and her name had already done the job). Then she might ask a question about some record or jazz luminary (even an obscure one) and I didn’t mind being a portable encyclopedia. She might relate some incident her much-loved but reasonably-untrainable dog, Mags, had precipitated.

Or she might speak of some Chicago gig she’d been to: perhaps Petra van Nuis’ Recession Seven, or something at the Jazz Showcase with Stu Katz, Eric Schneider, Andy Brown, or others. She always had news of Dan Morgenstern, our mutual friend and hero, to share, or of Kim Cusack or Andy Schumm (whose last name she rhymed with broom). Some record, new or old, that had caught her fancy, might be the next topic. She would remind me that her entry into jazz was Morton’s Victor DOCTOR JAZZ and ask me if I knew the verse. Morton led to Hines, and Hines to Louis. Case closed! But she loved what she called “bebop,” and admired the AACM.

When I could get a moment, I’d ask about her health, which was never all that good in the years I knew her, but she didn’t dwell on her problems. From Harriet, however, I learned what one’s ejection fraction was and what it meant. And the medical conversation would always loop around to dogs, and she would remind me that she preferred doctors who had dogs they loved.

Her Judaism was important to her; she was a serious (often indignant) leftist in politics, and she grew irate if there had been a news story where animals were ill-treated.

But the main course would be Stories of Heroes and Friends. The night Bobby Wright played stride piano for Muhal Richard Abrams. Muhal’s happy stint as Woody Herman’s pianist. Vic Dickenson’s magical touch with stuffed pork chops, and the way you knew you were a true friend of his, that he stored some pots and pans at your house and cooked dinner for you both.

George Finola and his NOLA escapades. Her part in getting Gene Ammons out of jail. Her Newport interlude — “under the influence” with Dizzy Gillespie and Bobby Hackett’s part in it all. Her Ellington connections: riding with Duke and Harry Carney, adoring Paul Gonsalves’ I’VE JUST SEEN HER. Roy Eldridge, Norm Murphy, Franz Jackson, Marty Grosz, Truck Parham, Frank Chace, and her long-time companion Wayne Jones. Gerry Mulligan, lightly clad, knocking on her hotel door. Miles Davis, first turning down an interview and then offering one.

Harriet’s friends accepted her affctionate imperiousness as part of the package. Put bluntly, she was bossy — and with me, it took the form of call after call hearing her tell me, over my protests, that my blog-pieces should be a book. I didn’t think I was Whitney Balliett, and said so, and returned to the limits of print media, reminding her that I couldn’t make video-performance leap out of a book. Or she would tell me half a dozen times about someone I should be interviewing, and on what subject. Once I lost my patience and we didn’t speak for a month or two. Another time, I simply said, “You were an editor. I don’t work for you. I’m not your employee.” Without more than an eighth-note’s pause, she replied, cheerily, “Well, you SHOULD be!” I had to laugh, and so did she.

She was gracious. She’d ask how my wife was faring or, before that, how the latest online date had gone. And if I’d written or posted something on this blog that she liked, she would tell me how she had sent it to friends. That was like a hug, and I would put down the phone, grinning. She wanted badly to come to New York and to see Dan. In her last year, she connected with Andy Senior and I urged her to write some of these stories for THE SYNCOPATED TIMES. Before that, I told her that she should have been working on a jazz memoir. But in the last two years, I had the sense of her energy running low. And now she’s gone.

I will miss her, and I know I am not alone.

Harriet was never maudlin, so I won’t “play her out” with a sad blues. But this is what came to my mind when I heard the news: a Decca date under the leadership of Joe Marsala with two of her favorites, Benny Carter and Bobby Hackett, romping on a fast twelve-bar blues. Other heroes are Pete Brown, Billy Kyle, Cozy Cole, and Hayes Alvis. And at the end, Marsala wails over a three-trumpet choir of Carter, Hackett, and Brown, that to me sums up swing.

Harriet always swung.

FAREWELL, HOT MAN

I learned on August 31 that the trumpeter / guitarist / pianist Ted Butterman, much loved in the Chicago area, had died after a long illness. I am not happy when JAZZ LIVES threatens to turn into the obituary pages, but as Linda Loman says, “Attention must be paid.”

I never met Ted, but I have a network of friends who adored and admired him, so the connection, although indirect, is there. It’s also there because an early memorable record that I love is Jim Kweskin’s JUMP FOR JOY, which features him — and it is the way I met him, sonically, perhaps fifty years ago (in the company of Marty Grosz, Kim Cusack, John Frigo, Frank Chace, and Wayne Jones):

I should write first that this post would have irritated Ted immeasurably, because, as his friend Harriet Choice told me, he could not accept compliments; praise annoyed him. So I apologize to his shade, and, rather, embark in the spirit of Ted’s friends, who played YOU RASCAL YOU at his funeral . . . followed eventually by SAINTS, which would have irked him even more — bringing wry levity to a sad time.

And here’s Ted before he came to Chicago, playing hot in San Francisco in 1958:

NASA tells me that the overall temperature of the galaxy drops whenever a hot player moves on: it’s no accident that I had to put on a jacket this morning before sitting down at the computer. (That pale joke is in Ted’s honor: Bess Wade told me he was comical by nature, with a big laugh.)

Some tales, then more music.

Tom Bartlett: He was quite a character and, of course, an excellent musician. Kim Cusack has often said that Ted was the best real musician he ever played with.

My story to share: While playing with the Cubs Band at Wrigley Field, whenever Ted spotted a TV cameraman sneaking up on the band to get a sound bite and often shoving the camera up to Ted’s trumpet bell, Ted always yelled “Rapscallian”. We immediately launched into I’ll Be Glad When You’re Dead You Rascal You. That means that every sound bite on all TV stations in Chicago had the same piece of this tune. That was just one of Ted’s private little jokes, Our little trio HAD to play that tune at his gravesite yesterday in his memory.

Rapscallian? Ted enjoyed a play on words.

Although Ted never lost the innate heat of his playing, later in life he could be so mellow, remembering the Teddy Wilson – Billie Holiday classics of the Thirties. Here’s MISS BROWN TO YOU from a 1980 gig:

That middle-register ease makes me think of Buck Clayton, one of Ted’s heroes, and a story about fashion that Harriet Choice told me: One night Ted was playing at the Gate of Horn, and Buck Clayton walked in, horn in hand, and sat in. Ted noticed that Buck, always an elegant dresser, had a particularly lovely shirt with an unusual collar. After the gig, they went back to Ted’s apartment to swap stories, and Ted complimented Buck on the shirt, and asked him where it had come from. Buck simply removed the shirt, gave it to Ted as a token of esteem, and when the evening was over, Buck walked back to his hotel in his undershirt. Hearing this story some time later, Harriet asked Ted to put the shirt on so she could see it, and Ted flatly refused. “Oh no,” he said, “It’s sacred.”

Russ Phillips simply told me, Ted was so unlike anyone I’ve ever known and played with.

And Kim Cusack reiterated, Ted always played and sounded great, no matter the situation and/or band.  I was awed by his playing the first I got a chance to play with him in the late ’50s and he kept me awed in all the variety of bands I got a chance to play in with him.  Everything he played was exactly what it should have been. 

Here is a long interlude of Ted at work — with Kim, Frank Chace, Bob Sundstrom, Wayne Jones, John Deffauw, Ransom Knowling, Art Gronwall, and others — a 1961 gig tape, nearly two hours’ of on-the-job easy heat, given to me by Wayne. (Full disclosure: Kim told me that he didn’t think this was an outstanding example of Ted, but my feeling is that it is quite spectacular, and I can only imagine the music Kim heard that put this in the shade.)

A quirky energy ran through Ted’s playing — he was deep in the idiom but a listener can’t predict the next phrase — and that same quirky energy seems to have animated his approach to life. Harriet told me that once Ted said, “I think I’ll call Hoagy,” found our hero’s phone number in some way, called him, and they spent an hour talking about music. (Although music wasn’t his sole passion: he was an expert builder of model airplanes and loved electric trains.)

His hero was Louis, she said, which you can hear. Ted led the Cubs band at Wrigley Field for more than thirty-five years, and his was the first “five o’clock band” at Andy’s jazz club. He loved good ballads, and Harriet remembers his rendition of CABIN IN THE PINES with tears. They exchanged emails about records to take to that imagined desert island.

More music, if you please. Ted doesn’t come in until the second half, but his beautiful melodic lead and coda are precious:

I am aware that this is quite an inadequate survey of a singular person and musician. For more music, there is Ted’s own YouTube channel, quietly waiting to be marveled at, and Dave Radlauer’s treasure trove of rare live recordings, here.

For the totality, I think we’d have to gather Ted’s friends and let them share their own tales, “Remember the time when Ted . . . ?” or “Ted always used to . . . . ” I know I have provided only the most meager sample. Readers who knew him or have stories are invited to chime in.

And I’ll close with this recording. “Lucky” is not the way I feel writing another jazz obituary, but we are lucky that Ted shone his light so beautifully for us in so many ways:

May your happiness increase!

ART UNDER ATTACK: RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL JAM SESSION featuring GENE KRUPA, ROY ELDRIDGE, BOBBY HACKETT, VIC DICKENSON, BENNY CARTER, RED NORVO, BUD FREEMAN, TEDDY WILSON, JIM HALL, LARRY RIDLEY (July 3, 1972)

There is a good deal of history within and around the live performance you are about to hear. However, the sound is not ideal — which I will explain — so sonically-delicate listeners may want to come back tomorrow.

It might be difficult for younger readers to imagine the excitement that I and my jazz friends greeted the Newport Jazz Festival in New York in 1972. It was the Arabian Nights — a cornucopia of concerts where we could see and hear musicians who, for the most part, had been sounds coming out of a cloth-covered speaker grille or posed on the cover of a long-playing record. My friends and I, specifically Stu Zimny, bought tickets to the concerts we could afford — we were college students — and I brought my cassette recorder with the more exotic Shure microphone attached. I don’t remember the ticket prices at Radio City Music Hall, but for people of our class, it was general seating which required climbing flights of stairs. I looked it up today and the hall seats just over 6000.

I think we might have scored seats in the front of the highest mezzanine. Our neighbors were two exuberant women from Texas, younger than I am now, understandably ready for a good time. They’d brought Scotch, offered us some, which we declined, and they politely declined our offer of Cadbury chocolate. I kept silent because I had a cassette recorder in my lap; the Texas contingent gave out with appropriate exultations. The audience in general was excited and excitable, although they paid attention to the solos. (One of the women, commenting on the applause, can be heard to say, “You like something, you tell ’em about it,” and who would disagree?)

The players were a constellation of heroes: Gene Krupa, drums; Larry Ridley, string bass; Teddy WIlson, piano; Jim Hall, guitar; Red Norvo, vibraphone; Bud Freeman, tenor saxophone; Benny Carter, alto saxophone; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Bobby Hackett, cornet; Roy Eldridge, trumpet.

The first set offered four long songs, and HONEYSUCKLE ROSE / JUMPIN’ WITH SYMPHONY SID were the closing pair, with Gene, whose health was not good, playing only those two, taking over for the younger Bobby Rosengarden. (Gene would die fifteen months later.) There is some distortion; my microphone was not ready for 6000 people; the engineers seemed only partially aware of how acoustic instruments might sound in such a huge hall. The ensembles are not always clear, and the applause can drown out part of a solo, although this excitable audience is tame when compared to some recorded at JATP concerts. Even in substandard sound, the music comes through, the individual voices of the soloists, and their pleasure at being on this stage together. Our pleasure you will have to imagine, but it was substantial then, perhaps more so now.

Consider for yourself, with or without Scotch or chocolate:

The Festival concerts were reviewed regularly in the New York Times. Here are the opening paragraphs of Don Heckman’s review, “MIDNIGHT JAM SESSION AT MUSIC HALL,” in the New York Times, July 5, 1972:

The jam session, that most venerable of institutions, is still at the very heart of the jazz experience. Rare though it may be in these days of musical eclecticism, it continues to be a kind of proving ground for musicians, in which they can test and measure themselves against their contemporaries.

The Newport Jazz Festival had the first of two scheduled Midnight Jam Sessions at Radio City Music Hall Monday at midnight. The first group of the session, a mainstream‐oriented ensemble, included Bud Freeman, Gene Krupa, Bobby Rosengarden, Jim Hall, Larry Ridley, Vic Dickenson, Benny Carter, Roy Eldridge, Teddy Wilson and Bobby Hackett. They bounced happily through a passel of swing standards, with Carter, Eldridge and Freeman sounding particularly energetic.

Then the old gladiator of the swing drums, Gene Krupa, was announced and the proceedings went rapidly down hill. Krupa dashed buoyantly on stage and proceeded to hammer away in a style that would have been more appropriate for a Blaze Starr strip show than for the backing of some of the finest jazz players in the world. Yet his reputation and his flair for showmanship sustained him, and every tasteless clang of the cymbal was met with shouts of approval from the overflow audience.

I know Mr. Heckman (born 1932) is widely-published, has a musical background, and is well-respected. Several of my readers may know him; others may find nothing extraordinary in his prose. After all, “Aren’t we all entitled to our opinions, Michael?” But I am amazed at what he heard — balanced against what readers in 2021 can hear even on my murky tape — and by his positioning himself above the artists and above the audience. His three sentences read as contempt for Krupa — a hammering gladiator who would have been more appropriate playing for a stripper — and for an audience too foolish to know, as did Mr. Heckman, that they should have sat silent in disapproval.

That kind of self-aggrandizing disapproval makes good copy, but it is to me a repellent attitude towards the art one is supposed to depict and evaluate. I know that if I had been able to ask Gene his reaction, he might have sighed and said, “Chappie, these fellows do it to sell papers. I don’t take them seriously,” and he told Harriet Choice that the wild applause was because the young audience perceived him as an icon of marijuana culture — which I think says more about his deep modesty than anything else.

At this late date, I am offended by Heckman’s paragraph, for the sake of this holy art. Sneering is not art criticism.

It was and is a blessing to be in the same room with these players.

May your happiness increase!

“A TRULY LOVING PERSON”: DAN MORGENSTERN REMEMBERS LOUIS ARMSTRONG (May 24, 2019)

I’ve had many beautiful experiences in my life, but being able to hear Dan Morgenstern talk about Louis Armstrong — the man, seen at close range — is one of those I treasure now and will always treasure.  We spent an early afternoon a few days ago, sharing sweet thoughts of our greatest hero.  I invite you to join us for tender memories and some surprises.  I have intentionally presented the video segments here without annotation so that viewers can be delighted and surprised as I was and am.

These segments are emotionally important to me, so I saw no reason to wait until July 4, July 6, or even August 1 to share them with you.

And just a small matter of chronology: Dan will be ninety on October 24, 2019.  Let us start planning the parades, shall we?

a relevant musical interlude:

Part Two:

some life-changing music:

Part Three:

Dave and Iola Brubeck’s SUMMER SONG:

Part Four (and before one of the JAZZ LIVES Corrections Officers rushes to the rescue, I am sure that the funeral Dan refers to as the ideal was Ellington’s):

Part Five:

The blessed EV’NTIDE:

A very brief postscript, which I whimsically began by telling Dan I was going to throw him a curveball, which he nimbly hit out of the park:

SUN SHOWERS:

Dan and I owe much to the great friend of jazz and chronicler, Harriet Choice, who encouraged us to do this interview.

And a piece of mail, anything but ordinary:

 

Early in the conversation, Dan said that Louis “made everyone feel special.”  He does the same thing, and it comes right through the videos.  That we can share the same planet with Mister Morgenstern is a great gift.

May your happiness increase!

DUKE WITH A DIFFERENCE, NO, SEVERAL DIFFERENCES

Jack Hylton meets Ellington at Waterloo Station, 1933

This disc pictured below is a serious Holy Relic — a RCA Victor Program Transcription with autographs — Harry Carney, Johnny Hodges, Hayes Alvis, Rex Stewart and Ivie Anderson.  The seller candidly says, “E- condition. Rough start on ‘East St. Louis.'”

The price is $400, but shipping is a bargain: “Buyer to pay $5.00 shipping (which includes $1.00 for packing material) in the United States. Shipping discount for multiple 78s. Insurance, if desired, is extra.”

Here‘s the link.  Too late for Christmas, but always a thoughtful gift for the Ellingtonian in your house.

And perhaps you don’t have $405.00 for this.  There’s no shame.  I don’t either. So here’s the music:

and here’s the “stereo” version.  This was created in the Seventies, I think, when Ellington collectors discovered two versions of this performance, each recorded with a different microphone setup, then stitched them together to create a binaural recording. No autographs, though:

This post is for my dear friend Harriet Choice, who always knows the difference.

May your happiness increase!

“MY DREAMS ARE ON PARADE”: DAWN LAMBETH, KRIS TOKARSKI, LARRY SCALA, MARC CAPARONE, HAL SMITH, NOBU OZAKI at the SAN DIEGO JAZZ FEST (November 26, 2017)

“A tender plea” is what the fine writer Harriet Choice calls this Sammy Cahn / Saul Chaplin song.  PLEASE BE KIND speaks of the vulnerability of love — the way we say “Here is my heart” to the person whose love we gently ask for.  When the plea doesn’t work, we could feel as if we’d painted an archery target on our t-shirt.

But when neither person has arrows or bow, happiness is possible, blossoming out of mutual understanding.  Kindness becomes the common language, enacted more than spoken.

I’d heard many great versions of this song, by Mildred Bailey, Frank Sinatra, Carmen McRae — but this version, performed at the San Diego Jazz Fest just a few days ago (November 26, 2017) is slower, more tender, and infinitely more touching than any of the more famous ones.

Dawn Lambeth sings it from her heart, as if it mattered, which of course it does.

I’ve known Dawn’s music for nearly fifteen years, thanks to the blessed and much-missed Leslie Johnson, of The Mississippi Rag, who offered me a copy of her first CD, MIDNIGHT BLUE, to review.  And from the first notes of “If I Were You,” I knew I was listening to a splendid artist: someone who understood the words, who knew how to swing, whose voice was a gentle warm embrace of the song and the listener.  And although it might be rude to speak of an artist “improving,” the emotional riches Dawn offers us now are lasting gifts.

Pianist Kris Tokarski’s little band is just spectacular — Kris on piano, Larry Scala (who set the magnificent yearning tempo) guitar; Jonathan Doyle, tenor saxophone — showing his heart utterly as well; Nobu Ozaki, string bass; Hal Smith, drums; Marc Caparone, trumpet.

I know that comparisons are precarious, but this performance hits me gently where I live — as Louis and Lester do.  Allergies are not the reason my eyes are suddenly damp.

This performance quietly says to me that even in the darkest moments, when I might think all is harsh and hard, “No, kindness and beauty and subtlety have not been lost and will not ever be lost.”

I hope you watch and re-watch this performance, that you go away with words and melody in your mind and ears, and that you, too, make the choice to be kind. It always counts.

May your happiness increase!

DAN MORGENSTERN REMEMBERS, CONTINUED (July 8, 2017)

Our good fortune continues.  “Tell us a story, Dan?” we ask, and he kindly obliges.  And his stories have the virtue of being candid, genuine, and they are never to show himself off.  A rare fellow, that Mister Morgenstern is.

Here are a few more segments from my July 2017 interlude with Dan. In the first, he recalls the great clarinetist, improviser, and man Frank Chace, with glances at Bob Wright, Wayne Jones, Harriet Choice, Bill Priestley, Pee Wee Russell, Mary Russell, Nick’s, Louis Prima, Wild Bill Davison, Art Hodes, Frank Teschemacher, Eddie Condon, and Zutty Singleton:

Here, Dan speaks of Nat Hentoff, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Charles Edward Smith — with stories about George Wein, Stan Getz, Art Tatum, Sidney Bechet:

and a little more, about “jazz critics,” including Larry Kart, Stanley Dance, Helen Oakley Dance, and a little loving comment about Bunny Berigan:

If the creeks don’t rise, Dan and I will meet again this month.  And this time I hope we will get to talk of Cecil Scott and other luminaries, memorable in their own ways.

May your happiness increase!

DAN MORGENSTERN’S CHICAGO DAYS (July 8, 2017)

Readers of JAZZ LIVES know the esteem that we who love this music hold Dan Morgenstern in, and I continue to be pleased and honored that he permits me to ask him questions in front of my camera.  We had another little session on July 8, 2017, and I asked Dan to tell us all about his days in Chicago.  Here are three interview segments, full of good stories.

First, stories about DOWN BEAT, Don DeMicheal, Robert Kaiser, Bobby Hackett, Vic Dickenson, Harriet Choice, John Coltrane, Joe Segal, Dexter Gordon, Art Hodes, Gene Lees, and others:

and more, about Art Hodes, Jimmy McPartland, Pee Wee Russell, Norman Murphy, Marty Grosz, George Grosz, Wayne Jones, AACM, Muhal Richard Abrams, Jim McNeely, Harriet Choice, John Steiner, Edith Wilson, the Brecker Brothers:

and, finally, tales of Rush Street, Tiny Davis, the blues, Muddy Waters, James Cotton, Little Walter, Buddy Guy, Howlin’ Wolf, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Harlem:

The warmth of Dan’s being comes through in every word.  And who else on the planet has had first-hand encounters with (let us say) both Edith Wilson and the AACM?  I have several more segments from this afternoon to share with you, and Dan and I have a return encounter planned for more.

And because a posting about Dan has to have some relevant music, here is the JUST JAZZ program he produced with Robert Kaiser, featuring Bobby Hackett, Vic Dickenson, Lou Forestieri, Frankyln Skeete, and Don DeMicheal:

May your happiness increase!

DAN MORGENSTERN REMEMBERS STAN GETZ (March 3, 2017)

This is the sixth part of a series of video-interviews the irreplaceable Dan Morgenstern sat for on the afternoon of Friday, March 3, 2017.  The previous five parts can be found here.

In those segments, Dan shares remarkable stories about the people he’s heard and met and become close with: everyone, including Lester Young, Jimmy Rowles, Tony Fruscella, Tommy Benford, Brew Moore, John Carisi, Nat Lorber, Coleman Hawkins, Jimmy Rushing, and two dozen more.

Here he speaks lovingly of the magnificent Stan Getz — including an anecdote of one way to deal with noisy spectators at a jazz club:

I would have you notice — as well as Dan’s eye for the telling detail (that quality that makes great storytellers as well as novelists) — that even his retelling of incidents that might be painful is shot through with kindness.  These interviews are not a settling of scores; rather, they are graceful homages to the giants and friends he has known — and Dan continues to make friends in 2017.

Here, for those who have other thoughts about Stan, a sweet yet little-known 1954 performance by him, Jimmy, Bob Whitlock, and Max Roach, of the early-Thirties song, DOWN BY THE SYCAMORE TREE:

Dan refers to Stan’s PARKER 51:

and one of Stan’s duets with Kenny Barron at the end of his life:

I look forward to a second set of interviews.  Dan has hinted that he has tales of Cecil Scott.  Who could resist such knowledge?

May your happiness increase!

DAN MORGENSTERN REMEMBERS LESTER YOUNG (March 3, 2017)

Last Friday afternoon, I had the great privilege of sitting with Dan Morgenstern and hearing his priceless stories — priceless not only because they are real, first-hand experiences, but also because of the accurate eye and feeling heart that animates them for us in 2017.  He is a great storyteller for these reasons. Here is the first post, with three video segments.

Dan and I share a mutual friend, the great jazz journalist Harriet Choice, who wrote “Jazz By Choice,” memorably, for the Chicago Tribune — she’s also a founding member of the Jazz Institute of Chicago.  When Harriet and I talked about interviewing Dan, she urged me, “Have Dan tell his story about Lester Young!”  I didn’t need any encouragement.

In this first segment, Dan focuses on Buddy Tate, but his thoughts go to Lester, who sat next to Buddy in the Basie band.  The first anecdote is about Lester’s kindness; the second, later, is about Lester the peaceable gladiator of swing.

and this.  Prepare to be moved by something as wondrous as a Pres slow blues.

Blessed are those who create joy: Lester and Dan.

Dan’s evocative and candid essay about that night at Birdland, “Lester Leaps In,” can be found in his invaluable collection, LIVING WITH JAZZ, published by Pantheon (491-495).

May your happiness increase!

A FRIEND OF OURS: JIM BRANSON REMEMBERS GEORGE FINOLA

Cornetist George FInola (1945-2000) didn’t live long enough, but was loved and respected by many.  (Hoagy Carmichael was a fan.) He spent his life in Chicago and New Orleans, playing gigs and advancing jazz scholarship — helping to establish the Jazz Institute of Chicago.

I had only known of George because of his 1965 debut recording — where he is paired with notable friends Paul Crawford, Raymond Burke, Armand Hug, Danny and Blue Lu Barker:

and, just because they exist, here’s a Finola autograph:

and a matchbook ad for a New Orleans gig:

My friend Harriet Choice, the esteemed jazz writer, had spoken to me of George — “a very dear person” — but I had never met anyone who had known him, not until September 2014.

Jim Branson and I later found out we had been at many of the same California jazz events (Jim and his wife live in Berkeley) but until Jim said something about George from the audience of the Allegheny Jazz Party, I had no idea of their close and long-term connection.  On my most recent visit to California, Jim very graciously told me stories of a precocious and singular friend.  And it seemed only appropriate to have George’s record playing in the background:

Later, Jim remembered this: When George taught himself to play cornet he learned the incorrect fingering, holding down the third valve instead of the first and second for certain notes and correcting by altering his lip pressure slightly.  This is the same mistake that Bix reputedly made when he taught himself to play.  Did George do it by mistake, or did he do it on purpose because he knew that Bix had done the same thing?

Randy Sandke had crossed paths with George as well:  George and I went to different high schools in Chicago but both grew up on the South Side, him in South Shore and me in Hyde Park. I met him at Bob Koester and Joe Siegel’s record shop, Seymour’s. I put on a record and he came over and said “is Bix on that?” After that we became friends and discovered we both played cornet. We met and jammed together and also exchanged reel-to-reel tapes of 78s we had that at that time had not been reissued. I saw him in New Orleans a few times after that. I always enjoyed his playing and he has a lot of friends from NO that I still see, so his name comes up in conversation. I was very sad to hear of his premature death. More people should have heard him play and known who he was.

Other people who have stories of George are New Orleanians Banu Gibson, David Boeddinghaus, and Connie and Elaine Jones . . . perhaps there will be more tales of this beautiful player and intriguing man — and I am sure that some JAZZ LIVES readers knew him too.

May your happiness increase!