“HOW’S YOUR LOUISNESS?” (January 1, 1947)

To celebrate the publication of his book REALLY THE BLUES, Mezz Mezzrow was the star of a concert at New York’s Town Hall on January 1, 1947 as a benefit for the American Committee for Yugoslav Relief.

The basic band was Muggsy Spanier, Sandy Williams, Sidney Bechet, Mezz Mezzrow, Sammy Price or Art Hodes, Wellman Braud, Baby Dodds.  Later in the evening Bob Wilber’s Wildcats were added: Johnny Glasel, Ed Hubble, Bob Wilber, Dick Wellstood, Charlie Traeger, Eddie Phyfe.  Coot Grant and Kid Sox Wilson also performed.  The concert was recorded on twelve-inch acetates on two machines (hooray!) and ten performances were issued on lp — Jazz Archives JA-39 — but what follows was not.

Quite simply, it is an exultant hymn of praise to Louis.

It’s a life-changing performance of WHEN YOU’RE SMILING by Johnny Windhurst, unlisted in Tom Lord’s discography, with Bechet, prominent, and Dick Wellstood on piano.  My guess is that the veterans gave place to the Youngbloods, but it’s Windhurst who catches our ears and our hearts.  Rather like Hot Lips Page in his prime, Windhurst seems energetically lit from within, and just when you think he might have had enough or done enough, he takes another chorus.  Radiantly.

After Mezz’s announcement, the roadmap (to my ears) is one ensemble statement of the theme, one chorus by Bechet; one chorus by Wellstood; one by Eddie Hubble, trombone; two choruses by Windhurst with Bechet and the ensemble joining in. The tape I was working with was a copy of a reel-to-reel tape where the plastic had started to decay, alas, so there is some distortion and tape squeal.  But if you can turn away from Windhurst’s shining Louisness because of these flaws, we don’t have much to say to each other.

Incidentally, the question, “How’s your Louisness?” is, I believe, a co-invention of two of my favorite people, Riley and Clint Baker. . . . it is another way of saying, “How’s your internal spiritual compass?” and “Have you spread some joy today?”  They do, and certainly young Mister Windhurst does.

Play it again, and feel the warmth of that smile.

May your happiness increase!

 

ANOTHER TUNE FOR THE TIMES (March 8, 2020)

This commercialized mirth might strike you as extreme, but bear with me.

Perhaps this will resonate more effectively.  The OKeh sleeve makes me smile.

And this.

This song has been turned into a terrible cliche through ninety years of routine performance, but this effort from March 8 — which seems like ages ago! — takes me right back to Billie and Louis. The cheerful creators here are Danny Coots, drums; Steve Pikal, string bass; Brian Holland, piano; Jacob Zimmerman, clarinet; Marc Caparone, cornet; special guest, Riley Baker, trombone. All this goodness took place at the 2020 Jazz Bash by the Bay in Monterey, California.

As an aside, I’d always thought of SMILING as a post-Wall Street crash song, but not only was Louis’ recording before the market imploded, but the first recording, by Bill Carlsen’s Orchestra, dates from May 1928 in Chicago.  (Thanks to Charles Richdale for this prompt answer to my research query.)  So the suggestion that smiling built community where tears did not was in its own way timeless.  I hope readers can find reason to grin.

In the process of assembling this blog — which often feels like a small-town newspaper — I encountered this sweet 1928 recording, new to me, which I include because it begins with the verse.  And I admire Seger Ellis.  SMILING has gotten criticized by the “true jazz connoisseurs” as saccharine, over-simple: a song that needed improvisers to raise it above the mundane.  I’d disagree: sometimes a sweet uncomplicated tonic is just the thing to settle one’s nerves.

May your happiness increase!

A LESSON IN SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY FROM THE MASTER

The urge to share this ecstatic experience came upon me yesterday because of a conversation I had with the thoughtful, surprising art historian Claudia Cage.  We drifted sideways into the question about our power and ability to perceive (and thus inhabit) our lives.  Some people can’t help but view their saga as tragic, and often they have very solid evidence to support this darkness.  But others — like Claudia and myself — choose to look for joy, for laughter, as salvations.

Those who know my turn of mind might not be surprised at the music that I sent her, then the Beloved, my friend Gretchen, and now you.  It is that most wondrous expression of art and power, a performance that makes me cry — with joy, with exultation, a whole complexity of emotions — every time I hear it.

WHEN YOU’RE SMILING is fairly thin melodic material, and jazz groups tend to romp through it faster and faster, as if to conceal how little there is to work with.  But not our hero, who understood its deep message and the operatic possibilities of those long held notes.  I would love it if every singer or everyone who wanted to sing was able to study the vocal chorus (which begins with a scatted version of the trumpet break — talk about beautiful structures!) — its warmth, its casual seriousness, its great human compassion.  Louis isn’t insisting that his moral message is the only one; he is not up in the pulpit.  Rather, his is a gentle arm around the listener’s shoulder, saying sweetly, “Hey, man, I know this world is hard.  It can wear you down to nothing.  But if you welcome joy and live it, then — who knows? — things will get easier.  You have nothing to lose by smiling, man.”

And then the trumpet solo, an angel from on high sending us his golden clarion message: do your best to be happy, and all will be well.  Amazing music out of a deep, wise, jubilant soul.

For anyone who still holds to the tired view that Louis Armstrong’s creative life sputtered and died after 1928, I prescribe a course of repeated listening.  And, rather like antibiotics, you can’t stop taking the joy-medicine even if you feel better.

On that note, I will say that I live in a Long Island suburb; my apartment windows face a four-lane main road.  Across the street from me, a new exercise studio opened a few months ago, and they feature Zumba to music so loud that I feel it in my socks; it makes the windows vibrate.  I wish them no harm (although I do regularly ask them to turn it down a bit) but I secretly wish I had a cosmos-rattling sound system in my apartment.  I would open my windows, duck down where I could not be seen, and play this version of WHEN YOU’RE SMILING so that everyone’s windows rattled . . . but with joy, with delight, with the feeling that it is better to be alive while you have the chance.  (Once a day only, and my goal would be that I would then pass people on the street and some more of them would be smiling, perhaps some one even humming the song.)

In this very unpredictable century, I find it comforting that this video has been seen nearly four million times on YouTube.  Send it to someone you love; it beats anything that comes in a box and it is much easier than a trip to the mall.  I wish with all my heart that someone could play this performance for the Dalai Lama — who already knows its truths — as a loving embrace.

Love your life with all its imperfections and it will love you back.   It may not be possible to make the whole world smile with you, but you can spread joy as you go on your daily rounds.  Louis did, and modeling oneself on Louis is a pretty good choice.

May your happiness increase.