November 25 would have been Paul Desmond’s 81st birthday. Less than two years before he died, he made a featured appearance at the 1975 Monterey Jazz Festival. He played Johnny Mandel’s “Emily” with an all-star rhythm section that included pianist John Lewis, bassist Richard Davis and guitarist Mundell Lowe. Exquisitely lyrical, even for Desmond, the performance might have justified his celebrated claim that he had won several awards for playing slowly. To see and hear it, click here.
Archives for 2006
Followup: Bennett’s Arrangements & Voice
In our review of the Tony Bennett TV special, a question arose about the absence of arranger credits. The New York Sun‘s Will Friedwald, reviewing Bennett’s Duets CD, provides a substantial clue that the charts were a team effort:
Mr. Bennett’s musical director and pianist Lee Musiker, string orchestrator Jorge Calandrelli, and horn arranger Torrie Zito (who has worked with Mr. Bennett for 40 years) have collaborated to rewrite or amend classic Bennett charts by Ralph Sharon, Johnny Mandel, and others in a way that preserves the best of the past.
Rifftides reader Mark Stryker, the music writer for The Detroit Free Press, sent the following message with information about Calandrelli and about the eighty-year-old Bennett’s vocal regimen.
I happened to meet Calandrelli in August at the Vibrato Grill, the swanky restaurant-jazz club in Bel Air owned by Herb Albert. I was in Los Angeles working on a couple of stories and went to the place to hear a friend of mine, pianist John Campbell; Calandrelli was there to eat and check out the music after some function at the Mancini Institute, and we were introduced. He seemed to be a very, very nice man. What was weird was that two days earlier I had spoken to Bennett for 20 minutes for a quick-hit story for the Free Press. I mentioned this to Calandrelli, who told me about the CD, though I cannot recall if he said anything about the film.
In my short interview with Bennett, which we ran as a Q-and-A, I asked him specifically about craft and how he’s kept his voice in such good shape. I’ve copied the exchange below. It relates nicely to your observations and those of your D.C. correspondent.
Question: At 80, your voice is still in remarkably supple shape. You’ve taken good care of your instrument, haven’t you?
Bennett: Yes. I had good training and very good teachers. After the Second World War, when I came home, I studied at the American Theatre Wing under the GI Bill and they taught me how to keep my voice in good shape.
Q: What did they teach?
A: Stay very musical and the system of and doing that warm-up, which is very easy, unlike what everybody thinks. I’m not trying to sing like Pavarotti. Just the vowel sounds of A, E, Ah, Oh, OO, and warm up that way because each day it’s a little different. It keeps you in shape, so you don’t have to push.
Q: Do you have a vocal routine?
A: It takes about 15 minutes. Sometimes it’s very intimate and no one can even hear you do it. It’s a matter of breathing properly and when you feel the center — it’s almost like tai chi — you get relaxed and you can see where you are that day.
I do it in bits and pieces. Like in the morning, if I’m shaving, I’ll very quietly hum a kind of flat sound without any vibrato, and then about 2 o’clock in the afternoon I go to it for about 15 minutes. Once I feel that center, I’m ready to perform.
Q: I spoke recently with the great jazz pianist Hank Jones, who just turned 88 and still practices two hours a day. As his fellow pianist Cedar Walton told me, “Preparation is his secret weapon.”
A: Boy, that’s good advice. You know, the late Joe Williams saw me on a airplane once, and we had a chat. He sang with the Basie band in the ’50s. He said, “You know what it is about you? It’s not that you want to sing. It’s that you have to sing.” I said, “You just saved me a lot of money from going to a psychiatrist.”
Q: You’re not a jazz musician, but jazz has clearly had a huge impact on your phrasing, your sense of time, the way you interact with a band.
A: I know how to improvise, and for me jazz is the greatest contribution culturally that the United States has given to the world.
Q: You’re always concerned with getting the message of the song across, but there’s a looseness to the phrasing that makes it come alive in the moment.
A: That’s the whole thing. It’s the interpretation of going behind the beat or in front of the beat, and it changes every night. You might be singing the same song but there’s a vitalness that the musicians feed me and I feed them. I’ll make a turn of phrase and all of sudden they’ll change the chords, embellish it and make it better.
Q: There’s such optimism in your singing and the way you interpret a lyric. Are you you really that happy?
A: No, it’s a gift. My life is absolutely gorgeous. Imagine the things that are happening to me. I’m 80 years old and it’s really the greatest year that I’ve ever had — becoming an NEA Jazz Master and the Smithsonian Institute has accepted one of my paintings and it’s in there permanently, along with John Singer Sargent and Hopper and Winslow Homer. I’ll never get over that.
–Mark Stryker
Thanksgiving 2006
This is an important American national holiday. To those of the U.S. persuasion, the Rifftides staff sends wishes for a happy Thanksgiving. To readers around the world: we are thankful for your interest, attendance and comments.
Tony Bennett
Our occasional Washington, DC, correspondent John Birchard sent a message that included the following observations about Tony Bennett, An American Classic, the special that ran on NBC Television last night.
I thought The Old Man outclassed all the other performers. Bennett is in astonishingly good shape, vocally. The last few years, he seems to take more liberties with the melodies, adding nice little alternatives that freshen the songs he’s sung so many times. (example: “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which also featured lovely accompaniment from Bill Charlap)
My major complaint about the show is that it seemed like the camera never stopped moving. I suppose the director and/or producer deem that necessary for today’s media-saturated generation, but I find it tiresome. Also, it seemed like the camera seldom settled on Bennett in close-up… there were mostly medium- and long-range shots, or hazy, atmospheric closer pictures of him. Are they afraid we’ll see how old he is?
But, all in all, it was good to see and hear an hour with Bennett. The word “icon” is
used altogether too often on so many of today’s suddenly-arrived stars, but it seems
appropriate for somebody who’s stood for so long as a model of taste and integrity
in the notoriously changeable pop music world.
Hope you had a chance to catch the show. –JB
Yes, I watched it, amazed that a network would do something like that these days. The Las Vegas segment was godawful, but we speculated that, as a spoof, Rob Marshall, the director, made it as faitfhul as possible to one of those dreadful Vegas hotel productions. I had never before heard Elton John sing an actual song. He was in tune, and his phrasing wasn’t bad. K.D. Lang sang well.
Bennett looked and sounded fine, with only a couple of intonation slips. His phrasing and interpretation of lyrics have improved over the years, and they were good to start with, even on that terrible song that made him famous, “Rags to Riches.”
The rapport I’ve seen in the past between Diana Krall and Tony didn’t quite materialize. Stevie Wonder’s harmonica solo was the instrumental highlight of the hour. His singing drove me nuts. It always has, but he’s written two or three good songs. Christina Aguilar? That was a joke, right? Bublé? Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Charlap got a solo chorus on “San Francisco,” but they covered him with meaningless b-roll shots, about twenty of them in half a minute. Television, like the movies, is infected with the quick-cut disease. God forbid that a director should let the audience get used to a shot for longer than three seconds.
Let’s see, who else was there? Oh, Streisand, at the beginning. She sang beautifully. I wish that the show had maintained the taste and simplicity of that opening song, but any network getting away with presenting palatable music in 2006 must satisfy the MTV generation and those with MTV tastes. When Bennett is gone, what popular singer of classic songs who has taste, ability and a repertoire of standards will have the clout to get a network television program like this?
Do you know who wrote the arrangements? I tried to catch that info during the
closing credits, but missed it – if it was there. — JB
I went here to get arranger credits. The arranger(s) got no credit. Hooray for Hollywood.
For a review that ran in advance of the broacast, go here.
Jazz Foundation Of America
Nat Hentoff is a champion of the Jazz Foundation of America in its efforts to help aging musicians who lack the resources to provide for themselves. In his latest column in the Village Voice, Hentoff makes it clear that jazzmen and women who find themselves in want are not always those who failed to make it to the top of their profession.
Jazz musicians do not have pensions, and very few have medical plans or other resources. Pianist Wynton Kelly, for example–a vital sideman for Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie–died penniless. I was at the first recording session of pianist Phineas Newborn, whose mastery of the instrument was astonishing. As jazz musicians say, he told a story. His ended in a pauper’s grave in Memphis.
At last, 17 years ago, in New York, a group of musicians and jazz enthusiasts for whom the music had become essential to their lives formed the Jazz Foundation of America. Its mission is to regenerate the lives of abandoned players–paying the rents before they’re evicted, taking care of their medical needs, and providing emergency living expenses.
To read all of Nat’s column, learn of Dizzy Gillespie’s crucial role in the foundation and find out how to help, click here.
CD
One More: The Summary, Music of Thad Jones, Vol. 2 (IPO). To name the players is to indicate the quality of this project: Eddie Daniels, Richard Davis, Benny Golson, Hank Jones, James Moody, John Mosca, Jimmy Owens, Kenny Washington and Frank Wess. Assembling all-stars is no guarantee of success, but most of these men worked with Jones in the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, love his music and deeply understand it. They give “Little Pixie,” “Three and One,” six other Jones compositions and Jerome Richardson’s “Groove Merchant” everything they’ve got. They’ve got plenty, and it is as much in evidence here as it was in Volume 1 with a slightly different cast.
A Tsunami Of Muck
Like many blogs, Rifftides is under seige by lurkers filling the Comments bin with messages having nothing to do with Rifftides. Some days there are hundreds. The strictest filters do little to stem the tide of these unsolicited links to hard porn sites. In an attempt to delete en masse a batch of this filth, we may have inadvertently deep-sixed a few legitimate comments.
We want to hear from you. The Rifftides staff will don gas masks, hip boots and rubber gloves to wade through the sludge and find legitimate communiques. Please keep your comments coming.
CD
Ruth Naomi Floyd, Root to the Fruit (Contour). Ms. Floyd is a Philadelphia church singer whose jazz connections and finely tuned musicianship are as organic to her art as are her Christian convictions. In her fifth album, she leads ten musicians including saxophonist Gary Thomas, drummer Ralph Peterson, bassist Tyrone Brown and the incredible flutist James Newton. Songs like “Mere Breath” and “The Bottle of Tears” disclose her as a solid composer and lyricist whose work holds up well in the company of pieces by Randy Weston, Mary Lou Williams and AntonÃn Dvořák. The control, phrasing and inflections of her creamy mezzo-soprano voice make Ms. Floyd one of the most compelling singers of the day, regardless of idiom.
CD
BED, Bedlam (Blue Swing). BED is the acronym for vocalist Becky Kilgore, guitarist Eddie Erickson and trombonist Dan Barrett. The group also includes bassist Joel Forbes, but the name BEDJ wouldn’t make much sense. What does make sense is Ms. Kilgore’s sunny, flawlessly in-tune singing and the way she interacts with the easy-going playing and occasional singing of her three co-conspirators in the art of delivering fine songs. BED’s repertoire includes great standards and some unusual entries: a banjo medley of tunes from “Oklahoma,” for instance. And when is the last time you heard “My Canary Has Circles Under His Eyes?”
DVD
The Heath Brothers, Brotherly Jazz (DanSun). Part documentary, part concert, this engrossing film about the celebrated Philadelphia brothers was shot a year before elder brother Percy Heath died in 2005. Their life stories are varied–Percy the fighter pilot who became a major bassist–Jimmy, the saxophonist who transformed himself from an addict into one of the great arrangers–Tootie, the drummer who says his older brothers saved him from a possible future as a doctor or lawyer. They play for producer Danny Scher’s cameras in one of their last gigs together. Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock and Percy’s fishing buddy Peter Jennings make appearances. The archival footage includes film of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, early colleagues of the Heaths.
Book
Debra DeSalvo, The Language of the Blues (Billboard Books). From “Alcorub” to “Zuzu,” Ms. DeSalvo combines solid research with humor, insight and straightforward description to explain the often arcane terms that populate blues songs. You may have an idea about the various meanings of “easy rider,” but how about “faro,” “biscuit,” “cooling board?” “Mojo” gets two full pages. The book is more than a dictionary; it’s a lesson in the Southern black culture that took root in rural blues and spread throughout the world. That’s no woofin’ (page 158).
Quote
I never thought that the music called “jazz” was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all other dead things that were once considered artistic.
Miles Davis
Miles Davis: The Movie?
For years, there have been reports that there would be a feature film about Miles Davis. No film has appeared. Pat Broeske writes in Sunday’s New York Times that two such motion pictures may actually be on the drawing board. One would have a screenplay by Quincy Troupe, who co-authored Davis’s autobiography and later wrote a memoir about his friendship with the trumpeter. Another, according to Broeske, would be a picture “authorized” (the quotation marks are Broeske’s) by the Davis estate. That leaves the impression that the Troupe version would be unauthorized. Given the dark, scatological nature of the autobiography, it’s not hard to see why. To read the Times piece, go here.
The challenge of containing in even a long picture the contradictions in Davis’s character, the variety of his music and the complex web of his relationships could make film biographies like Ray (Charles) and Walk The Line (Johnny Cash) seem simple assignments. The shortcomings of Bird (Charlie Parker) and earlier movies about Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman suggest that Hollywood has room for improvement in jazz musician bio flicks. It will take a director of extraordinary skill and insight, and an exceptional actor, to fairly portray the creative son of a middle-class family who at twenty reached the apex of jazz with Parker and later decided to cloak himself in the image of a dirty-talking gut-punching street fighter.
People who were close to Davis tell of not only his toughness but also his warmth, humor and sensitivity. I was not close to him, but I have a small story.
In January, 1961, I was in New York for a week interviewing for a correspondent job with CBS News. It was a near thing, but ultimately the news division president, Richard Salant, wisely decided that I needed seasoning. “Come back in a year or so,” he said. I didn’t, but that’s another story. That night, moping around Manhattan, I ended up at The Jazz Gallery in Greenwich Village, where Miles Davis was operating a sextet. Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane had moved on, but Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers were still aboard. Philly Joe Jones was temporarily back with Miles. The horns were Davis, Hank Mobley and J.J. Johnson. Teddy Wilson’s trio alternated sets with Miles’s band. The story of my encounter with Davis first appeared in notes for the LP reissue of some of his early Prestige recordings and later in Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers.
Aside from the distinct recollection that Miles, Philly Joe and J.J. played superbly that night, two memories of the evening survive. Between sets, Miles sat at a table in front of and slightly to the right of the piano and listened to Wilson intently and with great enjoyment. During a later break he came to the bar and took a stool next to mine. I had heard all those stories about Davis’s surliness and wasn’t about to get him riled up by coming on like the hick fan I was. But he initiated a conversation and for maybe twenty minutes we made small talk, little of it about music. The freezing weather came up, as I recall, the New York newspaper strike, foreign cars, and Teddy Wilson. There was no handshake, no exchange of names. Then, as Miles got up to return to the stand, he asked where I was from. No place he’d ever heard of, I said, Wenatchee, Washington. He paused a moment, then said:
“Say hello to Don Lanphere.”
Don was pleased.
If there is a movie, I hope it includes that thoughtful facet of a complicated man.
Jazzitude
The Rifftides staff has added Marshall Bowden’s Jazzitude web site to Other Places in the right-hand column. Befitting its Louisiana origin, Jazzitude is a gumbo of a site. On the menu: news, reviews, features and history sections. If the free enterprise road to the internet future is advertising, Bowden is paving it with a profusion of links to books, DVDs, CDs, posters, instruments, equipment and sheet music. His menu doesn’t trap you in the ads, though. It allows navigation to what interests you.
Old Brubeck Blues
Good old video keeps surfacing. The new Jazz Icons series of DVDs (about which, more later) is a prime example. Short clips show up on YouTube, Google, Yahoo and whatever new video sites have materialized in the past half hour. A recent addition to the YouTube gallery is a 1961 performance in Holland by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. They play “St. Louis Blues,” for years Brubeck’s concert opener. All hands solo at length following Brubeck’s introduction, beginnning with Paul Desmond’s five choruses overflowing with invented melodies and a couple of borrowed ones. This is prime Desmond about halfway through his nearly two decades with the quartet. Sound and video quality are good. To see and hear the DBQ when “Take Five” had made them even more famous, click on this link.
Watch for terrific closeups of Eugene Wright, smile in full flower, reacting to Brubeck’s solo then continuing to smile through his own. Listen to Desmond make “The Lady in Red” almost fit behind Brubeck’s penultimate sixteen bars before the coda. These guys did have fun.
Bob Brookmeyer: Spirit Music
Like Brahms and Bartók late in their careers, Bob Brookmeyer has achieved increased profundity by clarifying his musical palette. The tensions and conflicts that continued to roil his compositions as he emerged from a period of electronics and experimentation in the first half of the 1990s may not be gone, but if they linger they do not dominate.
Spirit Music, Brookmeyer’s new recording with his New Art Orchestra, includes moments that recall his advanced mainstream writing in the 1960s for the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band and the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. “Silver Lining” does that. Brookmeyer’s splendid solos on that ebullient piece and the reflective “Alone” leave no doubt that he is still the leading valve trombonist of his time.
On the CD’s five additional tracks, he lays his horn aside and speaks through new compositions for his eighteen-instrument ensemble. “Silver Lining” may suggest the harmonic structure of “Blue Skies,” but his other pieces are compositions in the full sense–not dependent on pre-existing chord patterns or on riffs, but arising from one of the most original minds in the eight-decade history of big jazz band writing. Titles like “New Love,” “Dance For Life” and “Happy Song” indicate that Brookmeyer’s psyche has taken a turn toward tranquility. The music reflects that greater ease, but it has the gravity of experience and wisdom. Brookmeyer approaches his 77th birthday next month with his insights sharpened and his creativity expanding.
The members of the New Art Orchestra, most of them Europeans, all of them supremely talented, “phrase and interpret my music perfectly,” as Brookmeyer puts it in his album notes. Among the impressive soloists are trumpeter Ruud Bruels and tenor saxophonist Nils van Haften. In “New Love,” van Haften creates a dreamy tenor saxophone solo that suggests he is a direct descendant of the Stan Getz of “Early Autumn.” But all of the solos, including Brookmeyer’s own, are in the service of his writing, which has deep textures, pulses with subsurface rhythms, and reflects a passionate soul.
When listeners consign art to categorical boxes, they achieve not exclusivity but exclusion. If they eschew Brookmeyer’s recent work on grounds that it is not jazz as they define it, or as he used to play and write it, they turn their backs on the larger world of music in which he lives, and they miss great satisfactions.
Other Matters
GREAT MOMENTS IN AMERICAN LITERATURE
The pig pen smelled like pigs.
–William Faulkner
The Sound and the Fury
Compatible Quotes
Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.–Maurice Ravel
I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.–Igor Stravinsky
It’s the way you play that makes it . . . Play like you play. Play like you think, and then you got it, if you’re going to get it. And whatever you get, that’s you, so that’s your story.–Count Basie
Correspondence: On Emphysema
Phil Woods responds to John Birchard’s review of his recent Washington, DC, concert:
Hey Doug,
Upon reflection, I think the reviewer missed the point of emphysema – it is Nature’s way of saying – “Stop playing all those 16ths and find a whole note that means something.”
Phil