Archives for January 2006

For the uninitiated: Pee Wee Marquette was a fixture at the old Birdland, known to the club’s audiences for his elecutionary introductions when he left his doorman’s post to be the MC, and to musicians as an extortionist. His nickname derived from his stature; he was under four feet tall. For a Lee Friedlander photograph of him with Count Basie, go here.
Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond, includes an account of one of Marquette’s free enterprise methods. The quote is from Mort Lewis, the manager of the Dave Brubeck Quartet in the 1950s.

There was a black midget, Pee Wee Marquette, who was the master of ceremonies at Birdland. And every act that played there, the musicians had to give him fifty cents and he would announce their names as he introduced the band. Dave Brubeck gave him fifty cents, Joe Dodge gave him fifty cents, and Norman Bates gave him fifty cents. Paul Desmond refused to pay one cent. And when Pee Wee Marquette would introduce the band, he’d always say, in that real high-pitched voice, “Now the world famous Dave Brubeck Quartet, featuring Joe Dodge on drums, Norman Bates on bass,” and then he’d put his hand over the microphone and turn back to Joe or Norman and say, “What’s that cat’s name?” referring to Paul. Then he would take his hand off the microphone and say, ‘On alto sax, Bud Esmond.’ Paul Loved that.

Saturday night, Jessica Williams is going to play a solo piano concert at The Seasons, which is developing into quite the performance hall. Word is getting around among musicians about the magical acoustics, the hip audiences, and the good treatment and respect players receive there. I will have the privilege of introducing Jessica. I’ve been thinking about her, so I visited the blog section of her web site to see what’s been on her mind. Philly Joe Jones, for one thing. She was in his band thirty years ago. She lived in Philadelphia, was newly married, had no piano and went to the University of Pennsylvania campus on Spruce Street to practice.

It was a nine-footer, a Steinway D. And it was summertime, and it was hot. And I had flung open these big windows that opened onto the inner square (the building had a big Liberty Bell in the foyer), so if you passed by these windows you could hear me playing.

That day, I was playing “Put Your Little Foot Out” by Miles Davis, and this cat in short sleeves and a hat stuck his head in the window and said ‘I played that with Miles’ and I knew it wasn’t Paul Chambers or Red Garland, it had to be Philly Joe. He came inside and asked me to play “Tadd’s Delight” (in A-flat, which scared the hell out of me, as I had always played it in F for reasons of sheer laziness) and If “I were a Bell,” which was no problem, since I knew that one really well. That was my audition for the Philly Joe Jones Quintet (which usually turned out to be a quartet for some reason or other). Tyree Glenn was in that band, and a different bass player on every gig. We played the joints… in Camden, Trenton, Hoboken, all the seamy little holes-in-the-wall. I was terrified most of the time. I can’t remember exactly why… probably just totally freaked that I was playing with THE Philly Joe Jones. I mean, gee whiz, kids!

To read the whole thing, go here. And if you happen to be in Yakima, Washington, Saturday night, drop by The Seasons, listen to Jessica, have a glass of good Washington wine and say hello.
For an assessment and appreciation of Philly Joe Jones, see Burt Korall’s Drummin’ Men:The Bebop Years. A sample:

…he had rare, surprising capacities that went far beyond the instrument he played. Jones was an appealingly facile tap dancer, a pianist, a composer, an arranger, and a songwriter. He sang ballads and scatted, improvising on standards and jazz originals. He could handle the bass violin—left-handed—and skillfully deal with the tenor saxophone. Jones read and Interpreted—with little apparent difficulty—transcribed solos by his friend and fellow Philadelphian John Coltrane.

If that weren’t enough, he was, in addition, an entertainer with unusual stage presence and great ability as a mimic and comedian. I commend to your attention his now famous Bela Lugosi/Count Dracula imitation (Blues for Dracula—Philly Joe Jones, Riverside.)

Rifftides reader Jim Brown writes from Chicago:

I’ve made it a habit to visit your blog daily when I’m near an internet connection and not totally overwhelmed by my own endeavors, and have been disappointed on days when there’s nothing new. I’ve finally learned that
periods of silence usually indicate research and writing, with results like the lovely new piece on Bill De Arango. Like your other efforts, this one is going to send me to the record sources for more listening.

Ted O’Reilly writes from Toronto:

Before Christmas (Dec. 22) you had some Plato and Aristotle observations on music. How about adding some good ol’ W. Shakespeare?

Lorenzo:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted.

(Merchant of Venice, Act V)

You just did. Thanks.

Bill De Arango, the guitarist who died at eighty-five the day after Christmas, might have become famous. While his colleagues Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie invited audiences into the new territory they had all opened together, he left New York in 1948 and went home to Cleveland. The next generation of guitarists, which included Jimmy Raney and Tal Farlow, gained followings that De Arango helped make possible. Even his contemporary Remo Palmier, who stayed on the New York scene longer, was better known. But considering his short time in the big leagues, De Arango appears on a surprising number of records.
His playing was characterized by technical skill, digital speed and canny application of harmonic understanding to create memorable melodic inventions. With Parker and Gillespie, De Arango was a part of Sarah Vaughan’s first recordings under her own name, but did not solo on them. A few days later in the spring of 1945, he recorded with bassist Slam Stewart’s quintet, which included Red Norvo and Johnny Guarnieri. With daring intervals in his improvised lines, on the Stewart sides De Arango bridged the divide between swing and bebop, notably in ”On the Upside Looking Down.” After recording in the swing mainstream with saxophonists Charlie Kennedy and Ike Quebec—both in 1945—he joined Gillespie’s seven-piece band for recordings that accelerated the pace of bebop’s acceptance. De Arango’s choruses on “Anthropology,” “Ol’ Man Rebop” and particularly his luminous solo on the second take of “52nd Street Theme” demonstrated why Gillespie, Milt Jackson, Al Haig and Don Byas, the other soloists on that landmark RCA Victor date in early 1946, accepted him as a peer.
De Arango appeared on four Trummy Young sides the trombonist cut in April, 1946. In May, two weeks apart, came two magnificent recording sessions that De Arango and the magisterial tenor saxophonist Ben Webster split as leaders. De Arango’s sextet session was a swing-to-bop transitional affair with Sid Catlett on drums, bassist John Simmons, clarinetist Tony Scott and trumpeter Idrees Sulieman, then still known as Leonard Graham. Argonne Thornton (aka Sadik Hakkim) was the pianist. Webster’s quartet date had the same rhythm section, except that Haig, another bop pioneer, took over the piano. De Arango and Webster made a glorious team and produced eight tracks that are among the best from a period when musicians of different styles and races mixed without a thought for the phony war some critics were promoting between bop and all other jazz. “I Got it Bad and That Ain’t Good” and “Blues Mister Brim” are sterling examples of the empathy between the two. Both sessions are reissued under Webster’s name.
De Arango next recorded with Eddie Davis, in the days before Davis appended the nickname “Lockjaw.” They did two blues and two “I Got Rhythm” variants, typical of quick record dates, with superior solos from De Arango. A favorite of tenor players, he was soon back in a studio with Webster, Scott, Haig, Simmons, Catlett and Sulieman for four septet sides under his own name on the Signature label. They seem never to have been reissued. In March, 1947, he joined Charlie Ventura in an all-star group with trumpeter Charlie Shavers, trombonist Bill Harris, pianist Ralph Burns, drummer Dave Tough, and bassist Chubby Jackson. They recorded four tracks, including “Stop and Go,” with De Arango’s electrifying solo the very definition of early bebop fleetness. A week later, the same group with Curley Russell on bass and Sid Catlett spelling Tough on one piece, played a concert at Carnegie Hall. It was recorded, but the only CD reissue seems to be in a gigantic Jazz At The Philharmonic box.
By 1948, De Arango was back in Cleveland. He opened a music store. He gave lessons. He continued to play—brilliantly, by all accounts—until illness prevented it in his last few years, but he was out of the spotlight, rarely recording. In 1954 he made a ten-inch LP using Stan Getz’s rhythm section of pianist John Williams, bassist Teddy Kotick and drummer Art Mardigan. It has not been reissued. De Arango returned to New York for a short time in the late 1960s and early 1970s, playing what his Cleveland colleague tenor saxophonist Ernie Krivda described as “heavy metal jazz.” An album he recorded in 1993 with Joe Lovano as a sideman gives the flavor of his playing in that period. But it was his dazzling work of the mid-forties that made him a model for other guitarists. If you follow the links in this posting, you’ll find nearly everything De Arango recorded when his talent flowered during a vital phase of jazz history.