Jazz Backstory

The Band Takes a DAT

2009-10-19T10:05:00.002-04:00

This past Saturday my band took a serious dance aptitude test (DAT). We played for a local dance club, an organization that teaches ballroom dancing to couples and has monthly dinner dances where they practice what they learn. The instructor couple had indicated to me how much trouble they had in past years finding bands who could cut the gig. I sympathized with them up to a point, but in the back of my mind I was wondering what the problem was. Was it because playing for dancing has become a thing of the past? This is partly true, but musicians in my generation have spent many hours playing gigs where people dance, most often at weddings but sometimes in clubs. So I wasn’t quite sure what the problem was, until I got the suggested song list, which I requested.

When I received the list I understood their issue with bands. It was easy to see that these dancers would be very specific in their wants. In years past, a band leader could feel comfortable going into a gig with dancers by having a sampling of tunes that covered swing, a few 6/8 ballads, a couple of rock numbers, a waltz, a bossa nova and a polka if requested. These styles could usually get you through any gig.

The list I received from the leaders of this club was more specifically defined. It included all the above-mentioned styles, with the addition of a foxtrot, a bolero, a merengue, two types of cha-chas (a regular cha-cha and a chilly cha-cha), a samba, a rumba, a mambo, an Argentine tango and an American tango. You might guess that I was approaching this gig with a bit more seriousness than was originally anticipated. As I looked through the identified songs that accompanied each style, I surmised an unusual degree of homework lay ahead. The biggest issues were with the Latin numbers. When we are asked for a Latin tune, most musicians think of a bossa nova, like “Girl from Ipanema,” or “Spanish Eyes.” That used to cover the Latin genre. This list made me seriously ponder what I actually knew about the difference between a tango, a cha-cha, a samba and a mambo. I had to admit that I did not actually know a heck of a lot. Adding to my trepidation was the fact that although I had a quartet, I did not have my full band with me. I was grateful, however, to have Tom McGrath on the gig, my A-list drummer.

The gig was a dinner dance and I put a lot of thought into the first tune. We started in our comfort zone and played the bossa nova “Summer Samba,” (also called “So Nice”), and to my immense relief we weren’t four measures into the tune when more than half the audience was on the dance floor, even though they were mid-dinner. I immediately saw that these dancers knew their stuff. As the night progressed I felt better and more confident as the dancers responded to our selections. But in addition to all these styles, we had a flood of requests. We expected the polka and the waltz, but in addition we were asked for west coast swing, “Spanish Eyes,” “The Hustle,” “Mustang Sally,” “The Electric Slide,” and even a song called “Number 720 in the Book.” I admit I had never heard of that one, but we filled nearly every request and apparently passed the DAT by a margin of two standard deviations above the mean.

I often think I missed the era of music I really would have thrived in, the late 30’s through the war years, when the audience participated by dancing, when arrangers could find work with big bands, when there were plentiful gigs for sidemen, and when jazz and swing music was the popular music of the day. I try not to talk about music history that predated me as if I were there, like the 39-year-old who proclaimed in a Ken Burns documentary that in 1940 the Savoy dance club was THE place to be. So I will only say that I had a flash this last Saturday night of being in a dance hall in 1939. We had a stage, a beautiful dance floor, we had the spotlighted globe rotating in the ceiling, and we had 50 couples dancing and dressed to the nines, applauding after every selection with enthusiastic smiles.

If I’d had a roadie to move my gear I would have called it the perfect gig.

"I Must Have Been the Luckiest" — Eddie Locke

2009-09-23T09:36:00.004-04:00

During one of my New York City interview trips back in January of 2001, I had the privilege of interviewing drummer Eddie Locke. Though his was a familiar name from LP liner notes, I can’t honestly say I knew of his work. Other interviewees suggested he might be a good candidate to interview for our archive.

This year, for the first time, Eddie was scheduled to come to Hamilton for our annual Fallcoming event October 2. When he called in July saying he had to cancel the gig, I didn’t realize how sick he was. I wanted to hold the date open for him, thinking whatever illness he had he was likely to overcome in three months. Sadly, last week we learned he passed.

Trying not to be over-the-top with superlatives, I will say that Eddie is our (my wife and my) favorite interview. He was spontaneous, funny, and deeply appreciative of the mentoring he received from Roy Eldridge, Jo Jones, Coleman Hawkins and others. Eddie may have been the youngest musician to have appeared in the famous Art Kane photograph “A Great Day in Harlem,” photographed in 1958. He claims he didn’t belong there; the only reason he was included was because at the time he was hanging out with Jo Jones, sometimes literally carrying his drums. Still, Eddie was there, and he was not one of the random toddlers sitting along the curb with Count Basie. At the time he would have been around 28 years old, and had been in New York City for four years.

Eddie was deeply respectful of what his mentors explained by example; perhaps the last of a group of musicians who learned by mentorship. They dressed impeccably. They carried themselves in a dignified manner. They respected their audience, even when the crowd was thimble-sized. Sharing the stage with musicians of more experience and stature, Eddie learned his craft from the stimulating environment in New York City in the 1950’s. For most of his life he was a sideman, though there are a few LP’s listed under Eddie’s own name.

In our interview, Eddie related his experience of coming from his hometown of Detroit to New York for the first time as one half of the duo “Bop and Locke,” and his wonderment at what imploded his senses at first:

EL: We came here in ’54.

MR: Okay.

EL: But we got booked into the Apollo Theater which was unheard of. That was one of the biggest Vaudeville houses that’s ever been. And we didn’t have no name. We only had played once in Detroit. And this agent saw us there. And we played at the Colonial Theater. And then he submitted us to the Apollo. And they accepted us. And that was really something you know, just to come right from Detroit to the Apollo Theater, in New York City like that, it was like astounding for me.

MR: Were you guys nervous?

EL: Whew. Was I nervous. When we got off the train, we rode the train here, we got off at Park Avenue and 125^th Street. And when we came down those steps I was scared. I never had seen that many people. It was in July. I had never seen that many people on the street before in my life. It was like wooh, I wanted to go right back up those steps man. I was very, very funny to see. And I asked somebody, was it a parade? Because I’d never seen that many people on the street at one time like that. And that was the beginning. And we played the Apollo, and we made the whole week. You know after the first show at the Apollo, Mr. Schifman, he always watched the first show. That was the guy that owned the Apollo. And then if he called you into the office it was usually to tell you that you’ve got to go. He would pay you, but he didn’t want you. If he didn’t like the act you had to go. And after we did our first show, they had a little speaker system you know, they said “Bop and Locke? This is Schifman’s office.” And all the other acts in the other show said, “Oh, man, I feel sorry for you guys, man.” Because usually when he called —. But when we went in his office, you know, he said “you know, you guys got a nice little act, I’ll tell you one thing though, cut out those jokes.” We had some terrible jokes. And you know where we got the jokes from? We sent off for them, you know, years ago in the back of comedy books and things, you could send off for a joke book. That’s what we did. And I’ve still got it.

MR: You’ve still got the book?

EL: Yeah, I’ve still got the joke book. Yeah.

MR: Oh, great.

EL: He said “you can stay, you can do the dancing and the drumming, singing. No more jokes.”

In the ensuing five decades of life in New York, Eddie never lost that youthful enthusiasm and reverence for the music, even as he became an inspiration to other musicians. Here Eddie speaks of his relationship with Roy Eldridge:

EL: I must have been the luckiest — and I thank God for it. I mean I don’t go to church all the time, but I do thank God for it all the time. Because that was really luck. You’ve got to be good but you’ve got to be lucky too.

MR: Roy had quite a competitive spirit, didn’t he?

EL: I’ve never played with anyone that loved to play as much as him. Never. And my greatest story, every time I tell somebody this, they always, they love it, but I’m going to tell this so this will be on film forever. I will never forget, we were playing in a place and there was no one in the place, just like this room we’re in now, with the band. We were up there playing. And I was just like that [scats]. And he turned around and he leaned over the drumset at me and he said “what are you doing?” And I said “well Roy” I says, “there’s nobody in here.” He looked me right in — I mean he got closer — he said, “I’M HERE!” That was the scariest thing, I mean and the way he said it, you know what I mean? But it made a difference in me. He said “I’m here.” Let’s play. Because that’s what he did. I mean I’ve heard him play some of the greatest music I ever heard, in a room just like this with nobody in it. He loved that horn. It was just like — that’s why at his funeral, when Dizzy said, He said “y’all gotta find something else to do now,” he said “because this is the only person that was ever named Jazz.” And that’s what he was. I’ve seen him, I mean Jo Jones told me, he said “one of these days you’re going to be playing with him, man, and he’s going to take you out of that drum seat. He’s going to rip you right out of that drum seat.” I said now that is really deep. I didn’t pay that much attention. But he did. Right up in Toronto one time. Oh God. I had this feature on “Caravan” that we did, and when he got to the bridge one time boy, I mean it was just like it was so dynamic. It was just like I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even play. It just took me away, I’m telling you. It was unbelievable. I never felt nothing like that before in my life. It was just — his presence when he played was just like unbelievable. Unbelievable. Like I said, I heard him every night. I never played with him — you know how long I played with him — but I had played with him before I played in Ryan’s. And never a night — he’s the only person I’ve ever been around like that — it was never a night where sometime during the night I said “wow.” Do you know what I mean? I mean he would do something that I’d never heard him do before. Like this stuff so dynamic that it would be just like woah. That was amazing. He was amazing.

“Lucky” are the young drummers who chose Eddie as their mentor.

WHCL 88.7 FM

2009-09-10T12:09:00.002-04:00

As some of my readers know, I host a weekly two hour jazz show when the college is in session. This semester I can be heard every Thursday from 2-4 PM EST. Today's show will feature new releases from the Arbors record label.

The show is streamed at WHCL.org.

The Best Recording Ever

2009-09-04T12:49:00.002-04:00

Okay, I picked a provocative title, and if you clicked on this blog entry you probably came to it with the understandable attitude that there is no way you are going to agree with my choice for best song ever recorded. In fact I was inspired to pick such a title because I am in the midst of reading a book by music author Elijah Wald entitled How The Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘N’ Roll -- an alternative history of American popular music. If you’re in Borders and you see a book about The Beatles destroying Rock & Roll, there’s no way you won’t pick it up, which I think was the point of the title. (I am two-thirds of the way through the book and The Beatles have barely been mentioned.)

One particular song has fascinated me for years, and I will eliminate other possibilities by narrowing my choice to instrumentals. The instrumental radio hit is almost a thing of the past, becoming rarer as time passes. In the fifties and sixties it was a different story. Instrumental tunes like “Honky Tonk,” “Stranger on the Shore,” “Tequila,” and “Harlem Nocturne” could be heard on AM radio and showed up on Billboard’s Top 100 List, almost always one-hit wonders for the artist. In 1962 Booker T and the MG’s recorded and released an instrumental song called “Green Onions” on the Stax label. I know you’ve all heard it, you might not even be aware what it was called, but this song has musical magic in every measure.

“Green Onions” has received its share of attention over the years. “Rolling Stone” places it #181 out of 500 on their choice of best songs ever. Movie-wise it has been used in the films “Quadrophenia,” and “Get Shorty,” it’s been in numerous commercials, as radio bumper music, and is still played at ballparks across the country.

What makes this song stand the test of time? First of all, Booker T (I will assume), or perhaps Al Jackson, counted off the perfect tempo. It clocks in at 142 beats per minute. It’s not particularly important to put a number to it, but it is a tempo that is upbeat but not too fast to become frantic. You can snap your fingers on two and four with great ease, and even people with two left feet can move back and forth to its insistent groove. The original tempo will not be heard if you visit YouTube to see live performances of “Green Onions” saved on film. As is usually the case, the live performances of recorded songs are considerably faster and you will hear the difference from the record to live versions by Booker T and his band.

On the recording, the introduction starts with four measures of organ accompanied only by the hi-hat, with a little bit of dirt in the organ sound that made the Hammond B3 the keyboard of choice at the time. The form is our old friend the 12-bar blues. People who’ve read this blog know that I’m a great lover of the 12-bar blues and you can see my entry “Why I Love the Blues” from 3/30/09. There is a particular sound to this opening lick and the following 12 bars that I find fascinating. At the risk of getting too musically technical, the bass line, in quarter notes, plays F-F-A flat-B flat, clearly indicating a minor bass line and an overall minor flavor. At the same time, on the top, the melody (if you could even call it that) starts with a beat of rest followed by quarter notes on F-E flat-D, in a descending line contrasting with the ascending line of the bass. While the bass line is playing in a minor mode, the top three chords underneath the melody tones are all major triads: F, A flat and B flat. I’m convinced that this major on top and the minor on the bottom is what gives this song a certain darkness but also an indefinable hip sound, that’s hip with a capital H. There’s no getting around the fact that the song oozes cool.

After the four-bar intro, the drums, bass and guitar kick in and immediately take it up a notch. Guitarist Steve Cropper found the perfect thing to play over the first 12 bars, as he nails an accented chord on the second half of every beat 4, slightly anticipating beat 1, giving a forward propulsion to the whole affair. Bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn doubles the left hand of the organist in unison on the ascending minor bass notes.

The first 12 bars has to be considered the melody of the song, as simple as it is. After that we launch into two 12-bar choruses of improvised organ solo, single note lines that include a beautifully placed choppy dissonance in the entrance to chorus number two. At the end of Booker T’s first two choruses, someone yells an enthusiastic but barely audible “yeah!” probably picked up by the drum mics. Check it out at 1 minute and 10 seconds into the song.

Al Jackson provides a minimal but forceful beat. These three elements, a unison guitar/bass line on the bottom, a single note solo on top, and the basic backbeat drum groove, may be the ultimate example of the whole equaling more than the sum of its parts.

The guitar steps up in the third chorus and affirms my theory that this song was one-take wonder. When the guitar solo starts you can hear it is significantly too loud, and it takes about five licks before somebody (either the man behind the control board or Steve Cropper himself) fiddles with the volume until the solo balances with the accompaniment. In today’s huge multi-tracking studios and months for making an album, this would never have been allowed. In the final mix there would never be any discrepancies regarding the balance between instruments. Cropper plays his second 12-bars with one lick repeated over and over, transposed up a fourth, back down, up a fifth, etc., in order to match the three basic chords of the 12-bar blues. The organ returns, filling two more 12-bar phrases with single note lines. The song fades out much like the intro. And after 2 minutes and 50 seconds the musical magic is complete.

Steve Cropper credits the name “Green Onions” to an attempt to come up with a title as funky as possible. The fact that Booker T and the MG’s was a quartet that was half black and half white only adds a certain hipness and panache to the song.

It’s nearly impossible to put into words what makes this song so seemingly perfect, and I’m sure there are people out there who think I’ve chosen an odd choice for my nomination for the most perfect song ever recorded. Everyone has a personal short list of songs that belong in “perfect” territory.

Some years ago I was hired to go down to Memphis to provide keyboard parts and string arrangements on a recording for an up-and-coming heavy metal band called “Young Turk.” While I was there one of the engineers happened to point to a Hammond organ sitting in the hallway. “You see that B3?” he said. “That’s the organ Booker T used on ‘Green Onions.’” Do you suppose I succumbed to the childish impulse to run my fingers over the keyboard? I did.

The New Cut of the Jam

2009-08-12T15:32:00.005-04:00

I just returned from a week in Pittsburgh, mostly focused on working with an Aesthetic Education group. I also managed to get some jazz in. Because of that experience, I was mildly curious about the etymology of the word “jam,” and wondered if the Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz had anything to say about it. Indeed they had a brief listing for the word “jam,” and defined it as “to improvise, usually in a group, whence to take part in a Jam session.” Nothing new there, but I would have preferred that the Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz avoided the word “whence.” At any rate, we all know what jam means in a musical context. The part they left out is that jam is usually used in a context of informality. It often takes place with people sitting in, frequently with a band that is not rehearsed, a group of musicians who are just together for this one particular evening. It is not only a jazz word. There is now a genre of rock music attributed to “jam bands.”

I’ve participated in my share of jam sessions over the years, although I rarely seek them out. I acknowledge that I am a bit of a control freak when it comes to playing in a band. I like things to be somewhat arranged. It’s not that jam sessions have to be totally random. There are riffs and little figures that musicians can often come up with on the spot to make the music sound almost arranged. I recall one very memorable moment watching clarinetist Kenny Davern subtly organize the band on the spot using “footballs” [shaping his thumb and forefinger into whole notes to indicate a background riff].

While I was in Pittsburgh someone encouraged me to stop down at an Ethiopian restaurant called Tana on Wednesday night, where a local band is in residence for an open jam session. I took my soprano sax and went, and was immediately welcomed into a very friendly atmosphere. The saxophone player, Tony Campbell, saw me with my case, came up and introduced himself and asked me my name, and said “yeah, we’ll have you up in a while.”

Normally I like to sneak in and check out what is happening and then decide if I want to stay or not, but in this case I was committed. In these situations you can’t help but listen to the group, and size it up. How do you match up with these players? What kind of tunes are they doing? It was clear this band focused on what we would call contemporary jazz, if you still consider the 70’s and 80’s as contemporary.

The next step is to sit there and think okay, if that’s their thing, what do I know that fits in, in case he is kind enough to ask me what song I’d like to play. I was thinking “Cantaloupe Island,” Herbie Hancock’s sister composition to “Watermelon Man” might be a good choice. Just as I’m thinking that, what does he count off to play but “Cantaloupe Island.” So I sat and listened, and went on to my next choice. Of course a blues is always a staple of jam sessions, but rather than just improvise a head it’s nice to be able to mention a blues tune. What’s better than “Blue Monk?” So they ended “Cantaloupe Island,” I heard the sax player turn to his rhythm section and say “okay let’s go to B flat.” He counted off the tempo and guess what he played? Of course. “Blue Monk.” All right well those choices aren’t going to work. I think I should just try to forego the song selection process and just enjoy myself. There was another fine alto player who sat in the first set and I cooled my heels until after their break.

“Well what do you want to play?” And I pulled something out of the hat. How about “Summertime.” He goes “cool, A minor?” I said “sure.” So he goes up to the bandstand and counts off the band into “Summertime” and launches into the counter melody made famous by Miles Davis and later by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. I jumped to my feet, I didn’t even have my soprano out of its case, put on the mouthpiece and picked up on the melody. Now I plan an old Conn soprano. It’s a beautiful, soulful horn. It’s also a bear to keep in tune. After a few moments of fussing with my mouthpiece in between phrases, after unsticking my G sharp and octave key, I finally found my place in the music. Not my best effort, I felt. But the crowd was welcoming. He said “all right, what else you got?” I thought of a Mel Torme/Herbie Mann song “Coming Home Baby.” Cool. He counts off a hip funky tempo, the other alto player joins in, and we do a credible job of creating a spontaneous arrangement. If anybody got blown away I think it was me, although this was not what jam sessions used to be, sometimes called “cutting contests.” This was not a cutting contest. This was totally friendly musicians responding to what I played, people buying drinks, and enjoying each other’s playing, a very jazz friendly atmosphere.

This convivial setting was miles away from the experience that jazz flautist Holly Hofmann described in our interview for the Hamilton College Jazz Archive. She found herself in a situation that was beyond cutting. It was more like “let’s get this chick.” Holly described it as follows:

HH: The cutting session was a nightmare of its own.

MR: Well if you don’t mind, tell me about that. Because I’ve often wondered what that would be like — I’ve never been in I think a real cutting session like that. Was it the tunes they called?

HH: It was the tunes and the tempos. It was a very famous group in New York City who were quite appalled that Slide [Hampton] brought this little flute player in to sit in with them, and they just decided that they were going to see if I could play. Thank God my dad had given me a list of cutting session tunes, like “Cherokee,” and you know the ones that they really do it to you on. And they called “Cherokee,” and it’s one-one-one-one. It’s so fast that they can’t play it, but it doesn’t matter because they want to see if you can play it.

MR: Put you on the spot.

HH: Right. And then the saxophone player who shall remain nameless came over and said “well honey, do you think you can play ‘Just Friends?’” And I said “yes I can.” He says okay, B major, one-two, one-two-three-four.

MR: Get out. He did that?

HH: Yeah. And Slide went over and said “guys, you know, don’t do this, because it’s making you look bad.” And Slide just said — you will stay — I wanted to get off the stage and he said “you will stand there and you will play because this is the tradition. This is what’s been done. This is what Diz did to Miles. This is what has been done to people over the years as long as jazz has been an art form.” So he said just to stay with it and do it, and to do the best you can, and I did okay. And you know, “Just Friends” in B major is a real trip. But thank God I was playing by ear.

MR: Yeah. Thank God you got started when you were five with your father doing that.

HH: And they just kept calling tunes at that tempo. “Cherokee,” “Hot House,” it just didn’t stop for the rest of the set.

MR: And this was in a club atmosphere?

HH: Yeah.

Jam sessions used to be an integral part of a musician’s education and a way of establishing yourself (or not) as a new player on the scene. Throwing yourself into the fire, doing your best in negotiating on the spot was one of the best experiences a young musician could have. The decrease in jazz clubs and opportunities for jam sessions has mostly been replaced by music schools and jazz method books, but is an experience worth seeking out for aspiring musicians. I was glad I made the trip to this Pittsburgh club. The musicians and the audience were welcoming and enthusiastic. There was the traditional exchange of praise and business cards, even though it’s unlikely we will cross paths again. A local musician who I often share the bandstand with is fond of saying “anyone get hurt?” at the end of a challenging tune. There were no injuries that night in Pittsburgh, at least in this particular jazz haven.

The Tip Jar

2009-07-28T19:17:00.002-04:00

Let me say upfront that I’m not complaining about the fact that I can make money while playing the piano. But it sometimes feels as though time is moving backwards during a four hour gig. I do two things to help pass the time. One of them is observing the audience, trying to guess what the best selections are. The other one is to welcome and hope for requests. A relative of mine once said “when you play solo piano, how can you stand it when people come up and ask for songs? I could never do that.” Actually, I welcome it. It’s a challenge, and, let’s be frank, it also helps feed the tip jar.

Last Friday I played a restaurant that I usually work about once a month. It’s an enjoyable gig. There’s always a decent sized crowd and even though they don’t seem like they’re listening, I know they are. It was an active night for requests but it didn’t start on a great note. A young woman came up and asked me if I could play “Somewhere In Time.” All I could remember was that there was a movie of the same name and this was the opening theme. I tried the approach “can you hum a few bars?” This sometimes will work. If a person can hum or sing the beginning of the song sometimes it’ll jog my memory and I can fake my way through it, filling their request. When I asked her to hum a few bars she looked a little puzzled and said “I’ll be right back.” And she went back to the table with her friends. I figured she was going to ask them to hum a few bars and then come back and hum it to me. She returned and said, “okay, how about ‘Mac the Knife’?” Now there’s a transition for you. But yes, “Mac the Knife” I certainly can play.

Afterwards I focused on a Hispanic couple I saw come in. So I did my standard queue to myself, what would I play for a Hispanic couple? This is a game of chance because making assumptions often does not work. In fact, shortly after they sat down the young man approached the piano and I said to myself oh whatever this is I’m not going to be able to get it. In fact, he asked for the “Theme from Love Story.” Sure, I can get through “Love Story” for you. And as I played it I saw them gaze longingly into each other’s eyes, and wondered if he knew that the woman in “Love Story” died at the end? Nonetheless, it made them happy. The next time I looked up he was giving her food from his own plate with his fork. This couple was tight. His next trip to the piano had me anticipate another cloying love theme. In fact, he asked for “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.” This sent my mind off into all kinds of scenarios as I struggled to get through this not-so-typical pop tune. Perhaps one of them had been away somewhere in the military or incarcerated, and the other one did indeed tie a yellow ribbon around some tree in front of their house hoping for the return. Perhaps they like Tony Orlando because he is Latino.

These musings were brought to an end as the requests for the evening started to multiply. A young man I vaguely knew sat down with his parents and sister and the requests started coming one after another: “Autumn Leaves?” No problem. “Girl from Ipanema?” Sure. “My Funny Valentine?” What key? “Bridge over Troubled Water?” Bingo. I was on a roll and my tip jar looked healthy. Finally I was waylaid by a request from the oldest person at the table, the father. Could I play “Forgiveness” by Don Henley. Awww, an 80’s tune. The closer the decade to the present, the lower my batting average. I couldn’t play it. So I played “Peaceful Easy Feeling” by the Eagles as a consolation.

There’s an interesting social interaction that happens when people make requests. First of all, do they make a request without putting any money in the tip jar? I would say this is a faux pas, even if they don’t realize it. Do they hold the bill, make the request, and then if you say “sure I can play that” THEN put the bill in the tip jar? If they put the bill in your jar and make the request and you don’t know it, what then? Take it out? That has never happened to me. But if a person puts the money in the jar and then makes the request, you do feel a certain pressure to play the song. My experience has been that if you can play the first couple of bars and make it sound passable that most people will be happy and say “yeah, that’s how that goes.”

I’ve previously related how people have come up and made requests of songs that I played just a few minutes before, as if the tune got in their head and they didn’t know what it was at the time, but their mind told them shortly thereafter that that’s what they wanted to hear.

Near the end of the evening, an elderly woman pulled up a chair next to the piano just to watch. “I like your style,” she said. I said “thanks a lot, is there anything I can play for you?” “I’d love if you’d play ‘Stardust’.” STARDUST! “Stardust” is one of those tunes that you really can’t fake, and it’s also one of those tunes that I keep saying I have to memorize. In addition, on this particular night, I kept confusing “Stardust” with “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You.” If you know these two tunes and you hum the first couple bars of each one you’ll find that the ascending melody line is quite similar. Perhaps that’s why I couldn’t get one separated from the other. So I ended up playing what sounded like “I’m Getting Stardust Over You.” She seemed happy. I was aggravated with my own memory.

After my “Stardust/Sentimental” medley I thought the night was over as far as requests. In the last five minutes a guy came up and asked for — you won’t believe it — “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree.” I looked at him and said “are you joking?” He said “well no, I like that song.” I thought he was in cahoots with the fellow from earlier on but — go figure. Two requests for that song in the same evening.

As far as the tip jar, experience tells me to feed the tip jar first. You have to put a couple of bills in there so people know why that jar is sitting on the piano. What denominations you prime it with depends on where you are playing. I usually put in a five and a couple of ones. I didn’t realize that I wasn’t putting the bills in correctly until the veteran hostess at this particular restaurant came over to my tip jar, took the folded bills out, straightened them out with a nice crease lengthwise, and then leaned them against the side of the glass. “Better to see them,” she said. People in New York City or Miami Beach may prime their tip jars with twenties, perhaps even fifties. I think the going rate around here is smaller denominations.

All-in-all it was one of the more enjoyable evenings I’ve played. There were a lot of playable requests and a lot of tips. When I grabbed the bills and stuffed them into my coat pocket they made a nice bulge on the way home. I always resist counting. I let my wife do that. They were all ones.

Interchangeable Parts

2009-07-21T13:08:00.004-04:00

Fortunately it’s been a busy summer gig-wise, with my own band, various sideman gigs, and the occasional stopping in to hear other local summer concerts and club dates. The last couple of weeks a phrase popped into my head that has to date back to junior high social studies, “interchangeable parts.” The phrase was first coined in the late 1700’s when some enterprising inventors figured out how to create firearms, muskets more specifically, using all the same interchangeable parts in case one part broke. Eli Whitney of cotton gin fame played some role in this invention. Somehow the phrase seems to apply both to my own work and what I see from my fellow musicians.

In this area, and I suspect in most music communities, you first get a gig, then you get a band. Unless you have a working group where you can afford to keep the same musicians employed almost full time, a leader is often required to fill in spots with various players. It all works out in the mix: the parts — whether they be drummers, bassists, guitarists or saxophonists — usually will fill the bill and the gig will go more or less as planned. Every musician, especially a leader, has his A list, his B list, and a C list (that hopefully he doesn’t have utilize). Once they get a gig they start making the phones work seeing if they can line up the best possible quartet, quintet, or big band to fill the date. A common exchange between local musicians might go as follows: “Hey I saw Steve the other night at Tiny’s.” “Oh yeah? Who’d he have with him?” There is mild curiosity as to how it would have sounded, and an underlying question as to what list am I on of Steve’s, as obviously I did not get the call.

Non-musicians may wonder how all this works out. If you think of a sports analogy it might make sense. You certainly could put a basketball team together and play a competitive game if you chose a good center, point guard, power forward, etc. They know how the game works. It may not be a championship team but they’ll be able to make a good showing. But unlike machine parts, the level of filling the spot in the mix will of course vary from athlete to athlete and musician to musician.

What gets people on my A list is not only how well they play. It’s almost a given that they don’t make any list unless they play competently. What determines the designated list is often what they don’t bring to the gig. I call it baggage: failure to be punctual, failure to understand what volume level is appropriate for the job, failure to play the appropriate style. If it’s a Rock & Roll date, playing in a progressive jazz style may impress the particular person who’s playing it (they may be self-impressed) but it will not fit the music. So a lot of things go into why you call a certain person, and obviously the player who plays well and does not carry baggage are those who are hardest to get because they’re on everyone’s A list

This process of filling holes for a gig happens at every level. If you’re an avid reader of LP liner notes, as I used to be and still am, you’ll sometimes notice an odd name in the listing for bands like Count Basie or the Duke Ellington Orchestra. If you knew the band you’d say “what’s that saxophone player doing on this LP?” It could be that the second alto player had a dentist appointment when they made the recording session and he couldn’t get there and they had to call a sub. I recall one memorable exchange with saxophonist Jerry Dodgion, who was recently quoted in another blog entry (June 7, “The Power of the Eighth Note”). I noticed Jerry’s name on a Count Basie record, “Hollywood Basie’s Way,” recorded in 1966. There was Jerry Dodgion playing second alto on this recording. Now Jerry Dodgion was never a full time member of the Count Basie Orchestra and I asked him about that. Here is the exchange:

MR: You played on this particular record with Basie [“Hollywood Basie’s Way”].

JD: Oh, that one.

MR: Yeah. Remember that one?

JD: Sure I do.

MR: Nice record. And how did that come about?

JD: Well I knew almost everybody in the band because I’d gone to hear the band so much in those years. And one day Billy Mitchell called me and he said “what are you doing Thursday?” I said “I’m not doing anything, why” He said “well would you like to make a recording date with Count Basie?” I said “that’s why I’m alive.” I mean that’s the dream, I mean unbelievable, I thought that’s never going to happen. Well he said Bobby Plater had to take off, because he was writing a date for Lockjaw that was scheduled at the exact same time so he couldn’t be there, so would I come in and play. I said great. So I got to play with Marshall Royal, with Basie, and that was always a dream too, you know, because [he was] the consummate lead alto player for that band. As Thad used to say, “tailor made lead alto.” That was really a thrill. Wonderful.

I’m positive Jerry did his utmost to act as an interchangeable part, filling the role seamlessly and making sure he stayed on Basie’s list.

Jazz Studies

2009-06-29T19:54:00.005-04:00

Congratulations to JoAnn Krivin for the publication of her stunning book of jazz photography which was captured via front row seats over a period of about 25 years. I had the privilege of writing the introduction for the work. Click on the title above, "Jazz Studies," and you will be transported to JoAnn's website which details the book.

The Saxophone Survives

2009-06-19T09:20:00.004-04:00

If there was ever a period in American popular music friendly to wind players it would have been the Swing era (mid-1930’s until World War II). The average swing band employed up to 15 wind players: saxophones, trombones and trumpets. If you think about the fact that swing was the popular music of the day, the chance of being employed as a saxophonist, trumpeter or trombonist was far greater than in any other period before or after.

Things changed fairly quickly when Swing fell out of favor. Pop music turned its focus on the vocalist: Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Doris Day, and so on. These singers were backed by mostly nameless studio orchestras. Following that, the advent of Rock & Roll further focused the spotlight on the singer/front man and brought the electric guitar to the forefront, an amplified instrument that could rival the volume previously created by the 15 saxes and brass players. Wind players were mostly left to scramble and head to the studios or the school band rooms in the hopes of staying in the business.

For adaptable players, the one wind instrument that survived was the saxophone. The sax became the instrument that best suited the new sounds: Rhythm & Blues and Rock & Roll. For some reason the saxophone was most appropriate for this new raunchy and raw music, perhaps because it is capable of producing a very human sound with growls, flutters, doits, shrieks and the like. Some of the saxophone players who were able to embrace this new sound found themselves quite busy. People like King Curtis and Sam “The Man” Taylor were called upon to come into the studio and create 20 seconds of magic on countless pop recordings. Their sounds are familiar even if their names are not.

We can point to singer/saxophonist Louis Jordan as one of the musicians who managed the transition in fine style and set the table for those to come. Louis created a small jump band using a saxophone and a trumpet that bridged the gap between the large swing bands and Rock & Roll. In addition, the instrumental music of the 50’s and 60’s that managed to find a space on the airwaves was heavily saxophone oriented. Bassist Bill Black, of Elvis Presley sideman fame, went on to form the Bill Black Combo, a group that released numerous albums of instrumental covers with the a nameless saxophonist taking the place of the vocal. Ace Cannon, another saxophone player, found a similar niche playing pop instrumentals that made Rock & Roll palatable to almost every age group. These saxophonists rarely received credit on the recordings, and sometimes received disdain from the strict jazzers, but we can assume they welcomed the work.

Alto players Louis and Ace notwithstanding, the predominant saxophone voice of the day was the tenor. It seemed to best fit the range and match the male vocal, and new entries to the scene included Plas Johnson, Jerome Richardson and Harold Ashby. This is the same Harold Ashby who was in the Duke Ellington saxophone section for a decade, after he was a preeminent sax voice on the electric blues coming out of Chicago on Chess Records.

This trend continued into the 70’s and 80’s. Among the instrumentalists who were able to bridge the world of jazz and rock are the prominent saxophonists Grover Washington, David Sanborn and Kenny Gee, who is now reportedly the largest selling instrumentalist of all time. He surpassed trumpeter Herb Alpert, one of the few exceptions to the saxophone rule. While solos from wind instruments seem to be increasingly rare in pop music, if you hear one in the form of the music of Sting, Phil Collins, or Billy Joel, it will most likely be the saxophone.

Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, focused on developing a hybrid between brass and woodwinds, and he would be pleased that his instrument thrived. Perhaps it’s a little payback for the lack of saxophones in symphonic orchestras. The saxophone’s popularity may explain why typical middle and high school band directors now share a common observation with Professor Harold Hill: “I have saxophones ‘springing up like weeds.’”

The Curious Power of Eighth Notes

2009-06-07T14:13:00.007-04:00

Do eighth notes gets eight beats? Do eighth notes get an eighth of a beat? Those of you who are reading this who know better are aware that an eighth note almost always gets a half a beat. It’s simply based on four. Eight eighth notes equal four whole beats, thus one eighth note is a half a beat.

In music, two eighth notes on the page indicate an even dividing of the beat: the downbeat and the upbeat. Musicians count them in different ways. Most music teachers say one-and, two-and. Some music teachers say tee-tee-ta (two eighth notes and a quarter note). Eighth notes figure prominently in some memorable musical phrases. Think of the opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony: three eighth notes followed by a half note. Think of the chromatic foreboding introduction to the theme from “Jaws,” a series of eighth notes. You will have to decide which of those two is more important in music history.

A curious thing happened along the way to paired eighth notes. Generally speaking, until the beginning of the twentieth century, eighth notes were played as a down and an up evenly. The beat was divided in half, each half getting the same amount of time. When blues, and especially jazz, started to germinate in the southern U.S. around the turn of the century, eighth notes began to be played in more of a skipping fashion, the first half getting slightly more than the second half. We cannot point to one person who started this trend, although Louis Armstrong is credited with teaching the world how to swing more than anyone else. Indeed, the most obvious characteristic of what we now call swing music was the pairs of eighth notes played with the first half longer than the second half. The best example I can think of is Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” If you look at it on paper, it’s simply a series of eighth notes. But the swing musicians learned that eighth notes were not played evenly. Each pair was played with the first half somewhat longer than the second half. When the arrangers and composers tried to write it down they found it was an inexact science. It’s not a dotted eighth plus sixteenth note, that’s too march-like. It’s more like the beat divided in three parts with the first two connected by a tie. It’s too technical to verbally describe, but we can hear it immediately. Swing music is based on “swinging” eighth notes. The eighth notes in classical music resisted the impulse to swing, thus widening the divide.

That’s not the end of the story, however. Curiously enough, after some fifty years of swinging eighth notes in popular music, they started to migrate back to where they started. I think we can point to the beginning of Rock & Roll: Chuck Berry and Little Richard for example as the transition. These musicians had half a foot coming out of the swing and rhythm & blues era, where eighth notes were unevenly divided and swinging. We can hear the transition in the music of Louis Jordan. Fairly quickly (think Jerry Lee Lewis) the eighth notes became straight again, played much like classical eighth notes and exactly like written on the page. This straightening out of the eighth notes became the biggest distinguishing feature between swing and what was subsequently called Rock & Roll. When a musician calls a tune and a drummer is not familiar with it, their first question would probably be “do you want me to swing it or play straight?” In other words, is it swinging uneven eighth notes or straight eighth notes.

I love the offhand comment that saxophonist Jerry Dodgion made about this in 1996. Jerry is a man who grew up in the swing era and makes his living as a jazz and swing musician. He was around to observe the transition and the profound effect it had on the music business and his own work.

JD: In those days the pop music was still jazz oriented more so. Then later on it became more Rock & Roll, even eighth note oriented. So it changes, it’s changing all the time.

MR: Can I just back up? You just said “even note oriented.”

JD: Even eighth note.

MR: Yes. See I never heard anybody quite describe ... we know how swing eighth notes go and how Rock & Roll eighth notes go, but no one ever exactly said the music became even note oriented. That’s very interesting to me.

JD: Well some drummers, if you talk to some drummers, they might tell you that. Because that’s a basic thing. It’s an even eighth note as opposed to the twelve eight, smooth flowing.

One eighth note by itself doesn’t make any difference. But two makes all the difference in the world. You can hear the transition happening in the recording studio with some of Chuck Berry’s early music where Chuck is wailing away on straight eighth notes and half his band is obviously swinging. The juxtaposition of the two says volumes more than any music history book can describe.

100 Years of Benny

2009-06-03T16:44:00.003-04:00

Swing fans mark the spring of 2009 as a significant event, the centennial of the birth of Benny Goodman, the King of Swing. After a few years as a studio musician in New York he launched his own band. As the story goes, Benny launched the swing era on the west coast, and young dancers went crazy to his music. Calling anybody the “king” of anything can certainly cause arguments and discussions. I wonder what William Basie and Edward Ellington thought about Benny Goodman being called the “King of Swing.” He certainly was the person who made swing a household word and the pop music of the day, although there were many artists who could have laid claim to the title. Fortunately, William Basie was called the “Count” and Edward Ellington was called “Duke,” so there was enough royalty to spread around.

Benny Goodman was known as a perfectionist, to put it mildly. He thought about his clarinet, his clarinet and his clarinet, and then he thought about the perfect band. He also had a couple of other attributes that swing fans might not have known. One was his astounding absence of a memory. During our interview with Steve Allen he had a first-hand experience with Benny’s lack of memory concerning names. (See blog entry dated February 6, “A Social Hero”). Steve had a great connection to Benny because Steve played Benny’s character in “The Benny Goodman Story” and actually learned to play the clarinet.

Another non-musical attribute of Benny’s was his (let’s be kind) frugal approach to life. He was not a big spender, especially when hiring sidemen. The consummate bassist Milt Hilton shared a couple of stories in a Hamilton College interview that was conducted by our dear friend Joe Williams. According to web references Benny was born on May 30, 1909 in Chicago, but Milt relates otherwise. Milt reminisces about three particular experiences with Benny, growing up in Chicago, at a daughter’s wedding and on a West Coast jazz event:

MH: I’ll tell you a funny story about Benny Goodman. Now Benny Goodman was nine months older than I. July 18, 1923 I took my first violin lesson. My mother sent me to the west side to the Jane Ellis Hull House, every Saturday, where kids could get music lessons for twenty-five cents. And Benny Goodman was right there. There was nine in his family. We were, back in 1923, we were taking music lessons together. And he remembered that. We’d argue and fight, he’d fire me and hire me back again, but we had respect, of a musician, a good musician. He knew what a good musician is. He was a good musician. It was unfortunate that he wasn’t nearly as liked as well as we wish he had been liked, but it was because he had such an insatiable desire for perfection. And you know Benny wasn’t born in Chicago, he was born in Russia, outside Kiev. But when his mother and father came to Chicago, he was a baby in arms. So you can apply for papers for your child, as born in America. I found out that years later. And we kept our friendship to the last. When his daughter got married, he called me up and said “hey, Milt, my daughter’s getting married, you and Mona come on over on Friday.” He’d say “bring your bass.” And he was all dressed up in his finery, so proud of his daughter getting married, and we had George Barnes there, and Bucky Pizzarelli, and a bunch of musicians. And we were over in the corner playing and everybody’s congratulating Benny Goodman because his daughter’s getting married, and his foot is going like this, tapping his foot. And next thing we know he’s got his clarinet and he’s right over there with us. He was an insatiable musician.

JW: Did you hear that marvelous story that Mel tells about him, Mel Powell? He says Benny came out to California in later years and called him up and says “Mel?” He says “Yeah, Benny.” He says “Let’s do lunch.” So Mel says “yeah, all right. You buying?” He said there was a long pause, and Benny said “let’s go Dutch.”

MH: He couldn’t get away from that. I got a funny one. There’s a million Benny Goodman stories. You know he called you up, saying he’d just passed from Concord Records, Carl Jefferson was out there in California, and he was having a big jazz party out there, and he called me up and he says “Milt, I’d like for you to bring a group of major musicians from New York out, so get some guys.” And I say “okay, I’ll get them together.” So I got Jo Jones, Claude Hopkins, Budd Johnson, Benny Morton, Roy Eldridge, and I mentioned Jo Jones and myself. You couldn’t get a more senior group than that. So we were going to go to California to do this concert. So Benny Goodman’s going to be out there. So Carl Jefferson told Benny, “well Milt is going to come out and bring some guys,” and he says, “oh he is? Well maybe I can get them to play with me.” He says, “call him up and tell him that.” So Carl Jefferson says “no, you call him and tell him that.” Now Carl Jefferson is giving me $6,000, a thousand dollars apiece for each one of us to come out there. And Benny Goodman called me up and says “hey, Milt, I see where you’re going to be out here in California at the concert.” I say “yeah.” He says “I’m closing, do you want to play with me?” I say “yeah Benny, I don’t mind playing with you,” I said “what’s the bread like?” He says “will $185 be okay?” I say “oh, wait a minute, Benny, wait a minute” I say. He says, “okay, what do you want?” So I figured out, I got greedy. I say, well I’m getting $1000 already, I’ll just ask him for $500 more. So I say “if you give me $500 I’ll do it.” He hung up the phone on me. He hung up the phone.

Lastly, Skitch Henderson, of “The Tonight Show” fame and New York Pops Orchestra, had his own take on Benny Goodman, who, no matter how perfect the musical situation seemed to be he would be the last person to be completely satisfied. Skitch talked about Benny Goodman’s performance on “The Tonight Show” in New York with Johnny Carson, when Skitch was musical director:

SH: This was a funny night with Goodman. I asked Goodman, I think I must have asked him for two or three years to come and do the show, and he never would do it. Benny was Benny. “No, Pops, forget it, Pops. I’m not going to come down and have to rehearse.” So at last I saw him one day and I said “Benny, I’m going to give you a gift.” I said “I’m going to get all of Fletcher’s old charts and they have been blown up just a bit, there are five saxophones instead of four, and I want you to just — it would be good for you, and I want you to do it for the guys in the band. Because you’ll never have an aggregation like this again.” Anyway he did the show. I asked him who he wanted to play piano, and it’s interesting that he called Marian McPartland, as opposed to Teddy Wilson, which fascinated me. Anyway it was a hell of a night. Now I’m playing, I’m conducting — two years pass, and I’m conducting in Brisbane, Australia. Now I’m not in Omaha, I’m in Brisbane. And the phone rings and it’s Benny. I mean I hear this voice. “Hey Pops, I left my braces in Sidney, do you have any spare braces?” You know, suspenders. So I said “Yeah I guess so.” And then that night after that concert he and I sat and talked in this smelly gymnasium where they played, and it kind of broke my heart because I said, we had a confession period to each other. He was talking to me about his unhappiness that he hadn’t, even though he was a very successful player and guest, he had no placement with a group because nobody would work for him, he was so mean, let’s face it. Bobby Rosengarden, I think Bobby refused the calls, everybody did. They gave up at last. So in this strange night in Australia I said “Benny, I have very few things that ever made me smile on “The Tonight Show” because there was always rankling from upstairs about the clients,” and I said “the band took care of itself and I just had to work out the schedule.” But I said “the night you came on and played it really thrilled me to hear that, that you could have that kind of virtuosity in every chair.” I mean there wasn’t a guy there that hadn’t paid their dues a hundred times over. And there was dead silence and he looks at me and said “yeah, Pops, but it didn’t swing.” And then he launched into a tirade. He had just toured with a British band of five brass, four saxophones and three rhythm, like the old, old Benny, 1936 Benny Goodman Band. And that’s what he was happy with. I’ll never forget that. “Yeah, Pops, but it didn’t swing.” That Bucky Pizzarelli and I talk about. Because Bucky was good to the end. He’d go to the house in Connecticut and play with Benny, just the two of them, just to make him play. But it was strange that he had that.

MR: He wasn’t even happy with perfection.

SH: Yeah. And he was such a perfectionist.

MR: Wow.

SH: “Yeah, Pops, but it didn’t swing.” That was, for me, almost like a curtain coming down in Benny’s life with me. And I told the guys. Of course they thought “what else do you expect him to say?”

Benny Goodman’s music will certainly last forever. In addition, Benny played an important role in racial dynamics in the United States and we wrote about this in the blog entry dated February 6, 2009.

Mercy, Mercy

2009-05-26T19:52:00.003-04:00

We didn’t start the jazz archive project until 1995, so there is a long list of jazz artists we never had a chance to interview. Foremost among them for me was Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. If I had to pick only one musician who grabbed me and who I wanted to emulate, it would be Cannonball.

I can’t recall what the first recording was that piqued my interest in him. I can remember the Glenn Miller that my parents exposed me to, and I can remember Brubeck’s “Take Five” with Paul Desmond having a strong effect on me. With Cannonball it was probably his recording of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” because it was getting significant radio play and had such a great hook. At the end of the buildup in the chorus, Cannon plays a note that drips with soul and joy. Later I can remember singing along to his recording using the smarmy words from the Buckinghams, the classic line “My baby, she’s made out of love/Like one of those bunnies from a Playboy Club.” I wonder how Joe Zawinul, the author of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” felt about that cover version.

Cannonball was a guy who was blessed with just about everything you could want as a musician and an entertainer. He had a huge, flexible sound, comfortable with ballads, bebop or blues; he had a great band, co-led with his brother, Nat; he had two fine composers in the band, Nat and Joe Zawinul; and he always had dynamic bass and drums, first with Louis Hayes on drums and Sam Jones on bass, and later with Roy McCurdy and either Victor Gaskin or Walter Booker. This latter was actually my favorite Cannonball group. Roy McCurdy had a great viewpoint, figuratively and literally, about playing with Nat and Cannon. In our interview we were marveling at the live recording of “Country Preacher” and the reaction from the audience after the dramatic pause in the middle of the song. Here’s what Roy had to say about that, from our 1995 session:

RM: “I was behind them all the time, looking at them. And his brother was short and Cannon was tall. And they had a way of snapping their fingers and moving, and their behinds were both in sync you know. And they would be snapping and the behinds would be in sync. And during that pause, that’s what was going on, you know they had that little sync thing going. And then they’d go back and hit it. Joe would hit it, and the people loved that thing. It was a kind of a follow up to 'Mercy, Mercy.' Yeah it was really nice.”

Along with all this musicianship, Cannonball was among the rare jazz musicians who had what you might call the “gift of gab,” but it was more than gab. He had a way of introducing the band, his songs, and his whole approach to performing brought the audience with him. He was profoundly hip, but didn’t have to work at it. As he was fond of saying “hipness is a fact of life, not a state of mind.” You don’t decide you’re going to be hip, you just are, and he was that.

I had a wonderful moment during an interview with pianist and arranger Shelly Berg. Without my prompting, he expressed better than I could, what made Cannonball so unique. Here’s what Shelly said, from our interview in 2000. I’m happy to share Shelly’s words here because they perfectly sum up what I have felt about Cannonball since around 1966.

SB: “[Cannonball was] the perfect culmination of every attribute. Impeccable technique, impeccable time, as sophisticated harmonically and melodically as anybody of his day, and yet so incredibly soulful and bluesy. And you put all those things together and there’s just no other player for me that’s ever synergized all those things so well. And nobody’s ever swung any more than that.”

I was fortunate to see Cannonball perform on three or four occasions. A couple of times he came to a club in my hometown, Rochester, NY. In one case it was a library concert and I remember discovering the reality of the jazz artist. The band seemed to be running late, and it was informative to watch the band members, Cannonball, Joe Zawinul and the rest, carrying their own drums, keyboards, etc., and setting them up. There was no road crew for those guys.

Later on, at SUNY Fredonia, some very hip music students got together and brought the Cannonball Adderley Quintet to Fredonia for a three day residency, so I found myself sitting five feet away from Cannonball with a small group of saxophonists in a clinic situation. He called “Straight, No Chaser,” to which I happily knew the melody, and asked us each to play a couple of choruses. It was totally a capella, with no rhythm section. I can’t recall what I played. I’m sure it wasn’t brilliant, but it didn’t matter. He was gracious and hip, even at 9 a.m.

Fortunately most of Cannonball’s LP’s have been reissued on CD. Among my favorite recordings that my readers might love I would include:

• “Hamba Nami” from Accent on Africa, Capitol Records, ST 2987.
• “I Can’t Get Started” from Nancy Wilson and the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Capitol Records, SM 1657.
• “Country Preacher” from Live at Operation Breadbasket, Capitol, SKAO 404.
• “Sack O’ Woe” from Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Capitol ST 2663.

Rock & Roll — The New Nostalgia

2009-05-10T15:35:00.002-04:00

First of all I apologize for not having blogged for the past month. We’ve been in the middle of a move which has been a challenge.

I’ve been in the music business long enough to see a curious turnover. It used to be when a gig was going to be an obvious senior citizen event, the playlist called for “Sentimental Journey,” “In the Mood,” “As Time Goes By” and various collections of swing and ballads written in the 1930’s and 40’s. As I’m dictating this entry I’m on my way home from a gig that had us playing in a huge ballroom for that same demographic. And what did they come to hear? They came to hear a five piece vocal group doing Doo-Wop and various pop hits of the fifties; followed by an Elvis Presley show. Rock & Roll has now become nostalgia for the boomers. It’s as if the Rock & Roll deluge which overtook swing and jazz as pop music in the 50’s has now happened again. The generation who embraced Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey and Frank Sinatra as their pop music is leaving us. Do the math. Kids who were Sweet 16 in 1958 when Chuck Berry sang about being that age are now in their late sixties.

As I looked out in the audience at this gig I was struck by the impression that these songs must have made on them as teenagers. I watched a lady with bluish hair singing along with the bop-bops that come at regular intervals in Elvis’ song “Don’t Be Cruel.” Not only did she know the song, she knew the back-up vocal parts! On the drive home, I picked up an AM station broadcasting a show called “Friday Night Bandstand.” I don’t know about you, but if I hear “Friday Night Bandstand” is coming on I normally expect to hear big band ballroom sounds. Instead I heard “Blueberry Hill” by Fats Domino; “Rock Around the Clock” by Bill Haley and the Comets; and “Who Wrote the Book of Love” by the Monotones.

This particular evening came on the heels of an event that gives the phrase “Rock & Roll will never die” added significance for me. For the last two years I’ve been working with a group that we call “The Roots of Rock & Roll” with this exact thought in my mind, that Rock & Roll has now become the music of nostalgia. At the same time it seems to cut across all generations. Our band recently played three concerts in one day for junior high kids and for primary grades, and you would be amazed at the involvement of kindergartners, first graders and second graders in the music that their grandparents — possibly even their great-grandparents — were listening to as teenagers. There’s something about “Johnny B. Goode” “Don’t Be Cruel, and “Great Balls of Fire,” that seeps into our subconscious, perhaps like no other pop music. Maybe it’s the singalongability, the simplicity of form and the strong backbeat that seems universal for generations. Maybe it’s the tempos that inspire — no demand — that we move some part of our body. It’s fascinating to listen to a song like “In the Mood” followed by “Rock Around the Clock.” They are basically both swing songs, almost the same tempo, based on a 12-bar blues form, and “Rock Around the Clock” will perk up anybody’s ear, no matter what age.

So if you’re a musician and you are playing for a mature audience with hearing aids and canes, don’t be surprised when instead of requesting “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree With Anyone Else But Me,” they ask for “Shake, Rattle & Roll.”

Why I Love the Blues

2009-03-30T11:52:00.003-04:00

Countless people say they love the blues. It’s such an American institution, the same as we love the poetry of Robert Frost and the painting of Norman Rockwell. I wonder though, why many blues artists are not represented extensively on people’s iPods or in their CD collections. If you ask the average listener “who is a great blues artist?” after some hesitation, you will probably get B.B. King and Billie Holiday, even though Billie Holiday rarely sang a true blues song.

I’ve just finished another extensive book about the blues and I have to admit that the stories about early bluesmen — Son House, Charlie Patton, and Robert Johnson — interest me more than their actual recordings, which are a bit too raw and loose for my personal musical taste.

What I do love about the blues is the structure of the 12-bar blues form. It’s the perfect blueprint (pun intended) to play over, to write over, and to use at any tempo. Over the years I’ve compiled a list of songs based on the 12-bar blues, both from a chordal standpoint (the I-IV-V chord structure), and the 3-line verse including two identical lines and a rhyming response. The list is surprisingly extensive. My definition of the blues is probably wider than most, and it came to light for me last week.

I presented a workshop last week at the Common Ground Arts in Education Conference in Albany, New York. The focus of my workshop was using the blues in the classroom as a vehicle for writing poetry, for movement, and for art making. When I made the point that songs as diverse as Big Joe Turner’s “Shake, Rattle & Roll,” and James Brown’s “I Feel Good (I Got You)” are based on the 12-bar blues structure, one participant took issue. She said “don’t tell me James Brown was singing the blues.” The point was well taken. James Brown was not singing the blues. But James Brown was singing about how good he felt, over the 12-bar blues structure. He used the structure to write his song. He sang the first sentence twice and answered it with a rhyming sentence, just as Robert Johnson did and just as Muddy Waters did.

The 12-bar blues has also been the basis for such wide-ranging instrumental songs as the theme for the Batman TV show, for innumerable jazz tunes (from the sophisticated Bebop of Charlie Parker, to the killer swing of the Count Basie Orchestra), and to the most recent contribution, the quirky, former Vonage TV commercial, best described as the “Oo-Oo” song. Also I must mention one of the greatest recordings ever, “Green Onions.”

What I love about all this is that the blues form provides a format, an architecture and a structure over which you can do just about anything. If you improvise over the blues there’s no way you’re going to get lost; it inevitably returns to where it started in a short amount of time, allowing you to relax when playing. It’s the perfect vehicle for teaching improvisation. It’s the perfect vehicle for teaching children to write their own blues lyrics. Lastly, it’s the perfect vehicle for writing in any groove you choose.

Noise

2009-03-04T09:26:00.002-05:00

Because it has come about in such a gradual form, we might not be aware of how much undesirable noise invades our personal space. When I become annoyed by noise bombarded at me, I begin to strategize how I could reside in the boondocks, miles away from all but the noise I choose to hear.

It is true that I live in a commercial zone and have for the last 25 years. A certain amount of unwanted noise is bound to come my way because of this. Even though the house is well insulated, open windows in warm seasons let in more than our share of noise pollution blasts.

In the nineties, car phones ringing via automobile horns was a prime irritation. Even today, a car locking device or locator horn going off while I’m walking by not only startles me but gives me a headache for the rest of the day, probably owing to my years of playing loud Rock & Roll.

I once resided in a duplex apartment where my next door neighbor was frequently picked up by a driver who announced himself with a couple of car horn blasts. The more considerate strategy would be walking a few steps to the doorbell and ringing it. Apparently this approach was never considered — never mind that he may have awakened my toddler from her much needed nap, or disrupted a spell of otherwise meditative time.

Ironically, the reason car horns were created in the first place, for safety in navigation (“LOOK OUT, I’M COMING” or “YOU’RE DOING SOMETHING STUPID”), has been relegated to secondary consideration by air bags. Having recently had the urgent need to use the horn in my car, I found that because I rarely use the horn, I couldn’t find it when I needed it. That’s because the position of the horn was two small buttons at four and eight o’clock on the steering wheel. In an emergency situation if one needs to locate them quickly they may elude you. It is only when the crisis situation has passed that you are then able to re-learn where the horn activation is. What happened to the old semi-circle metal car horns on the steering wheels in the fifties? They were perfectly functional devices. But if the new purpose of the car’s horn is to indicate a locking device, I suppose it doesn’t matter where the manual activation resides.

Jazz bassist Michael Moore spoke on noise pollution being a pet peeve. Here’s the direct quote from my interview with Michael in 1997 :

MR: The amplification issue, it seems like things tend to get louder as years go by. I’m not sure why.

MM: Well I’ve noticed it, the whole society is getting louder, everything is getting louder. If you go to the theater, everything is miced very heavily and I don’t know whether collectively as the human species our hearing is getting worse all the time, which makes everything get louder, which makes our hearing get worse all the time. I’m sure if we went back 200 years we would be surprised at how quiet everything was. But I think, I go to places where I’m going to play and the sound people will have these huge speakers set up beforehand. And they’ll be playing things through the speakers to test them and so forth, and they’re having bands on, even jazz records, and they’re so loud, I can’t hardly stand to be there. And we’re constantly talking over the top of music. I mean if you’re in a night club, you play, you finish playing, as soon as you finish playing, they turn on the music. But when you come into the place the music is going. So the ear is never hungry for music. You’re saturated with sound all the time. And I think there’s a certain amount of fatigue that sets in with that too. And I think it’s detrimental to concerts. I mean if you go to hear a Mozart string quartet, before you sit down, they’re not playing somebody else’s recording of the same Mozart quartet through big loud speakers, that was done in a studio with the optimum equipment and so forth and so on. But you go to a jazz club or a concert a lot of times, you come in, and they’re already playing the best Benny Goodman Big Band recording, all re-done, through these huge speakers. There’s no way number one that you can compete with it in a way, because it’s almost an unfair comparison to make. Plus the fact that your ears are worn out by the time the band starts.

True, you shouldn’t have to be subjected to music as you dine, just as music when you shop, ride in elevators, or get put on hold is also noise pollution. Originally business owners bought “Muzak” for this purpose — music which was created to inspire a feeling — but the word “Muzak” has come to be known as boring, simplistic music. It’s ludicrous to think of putting Muzak over our own personal stereos, so why is acceptable to have to listen to it on elevators or while on hold? I am reminded of the old Lily Tomlin joke: “I can’t sleep at night worrying that the inventor of ‘Muzak’ is thinking of something else to invent.”

If you luxuriate in television viewing and watch anything but the commercial-free channels, noise pollution rises to the felony level. Your show is abruptly cut away, and on comes their product, accompanied by dancing girls, catchy visuals, and increased volume. Thank heavens for the remote control, and your corresponding ability to channel surf, as in “that’s annoying, I’m outta here.” Advertising noise is almost never good, or even acceptable. One exception to this was the old Gap commercials containing 95% entertainment and 5% product push. Created by the Gap’s own in-house advertising staff, a number of dancing, swinging and singing styles create a 60-second show in and of itself, with all the characters uniformly dressed in the sponsor’s clothes. Other clothing manufacturers attempted to copycat this idea, but none came close to the Gap’s success and their ability to continually top themselves.

It’s not a coincidence to us boomers that old Rock & Roll continues to thrive. We all know it when we hear old Beatles tunes which are finally being allowed to be used for TV commercials. Indeed, many commercials are based on sixties and seventies hits. Sixties music stations thrive, and to this day they are great to find when traveling in the car. Those old AM hits we listened to for free on our little AM radios still swing like mad. Yesterday I heard the old Sam & Dave version of “Hold On I’m Coming” on the car radio and it sounds as good as ever, with that fantastic horn section and infectious beat.

Noise pollution in the retail environment often causes me to head directly for the checkout. For some reason advertising analysts have determined that certain music will lull the shopper into shopping longer, as in “gee this music is so entertaining, I think I’ll stay here and shop for another hour.” Maybe they envision their shoppers groovin’ to Motown as they dance down the aisles tossing the toilet paper in the shopping basket. For some reason the ad execs have determined that the boomers, their targets, like sixties music, and original versions of James Taylor or Simon and Garfunkel are frequently projected. On the other hand, many a Beatle tune has been turned into a Muzak experience and one can’t help but wonder why someone perceives this to be an improvement over the real thing.

Young retail clerks who must listen to Muzak or some other piped noise pollution all day long obviously have not developed the musical fortitude to recognize it as an annoyance. Otherwise it would be impossible to ignore and they would all quit and begin delivering newspapers. I marvel at their young, naive wills being able to endure it hour after hour, day after day. It must be that they simply don’t hear it.

Teenagers throughout the annals of time have always operated their car radios at volumes so that other drivers in their cars could share in the musical experience. How thoughtful. How lovely nowadays to be treated to thunderous vibrations of bass grunge as you await the traffic light change. I recall the now-classic opening scene of the movie by Michael Judge, “Office Space,” with everybody stuck in traffic on their way to work, the middle-eastern guy who just wanted to keep his job and remain in the US, the white guy seeing the elderly man with the walker who was beating his car, and the third geek, “Michael Bolton” groovin’ to Rap but rolling up his windows afraid someone would see a white rapper.

Noise pollution, the unwanted subjugation of sounds at you, seems to be almost entirely created by man. Noise arising naturally from nature is more likely to please than annoy you. When seeking out the joyful, quiet noises nature brings, I was in awe of a cardinal family visiting us last summer. The father brought the baby to the feeder, as we watched from two feet away behind the kitchen window. First the father perched at the feeder nervously looking around and sporadically chirping while eating himself, as if to set an example for how to shell the seeds. The mother sat fifteen feet away on the clothesline standing guard and chirping occasionally as well. The baby, sitting with the father, chirps high, long, almost whining and continuous types of chirps while it flutters its wings waiting for the father cardinal to shell the seed and feed it to him. The baby’s chirping and fluttering became increasingly intense until the seed was dispensed. Even if we weren’t standing at the window, we could hear when the family arrived. After a few days of this behavior the baby began to come to the feeder on its own. The baby’s chirps then become more adult-like and not so constant, but still not mature, as the baby learned the difference between the seeds and the spent shells. The father then guards from the clothesline, and the mother is not in sight. Without quiet in the house, and the opportunity to explore the sounds that nature gives us, we would never be able to experience this magnificent display of nature.

Thankfully, in one’s own environment, we are able to create our own mood. Turning on commercial television is an ultimate decision to submit yourself to what other people want you to hear, see and think as well. In recent years I have found NPR, C-Span and Turner Classic Movies to be informative and ear-friendly. The power our own music delivery system gives us to alter our mood cannot be understated. While it is different for everyone, we all can choose the atmosphere and corresponding mindset we wish to create for ourselves. At least in my own home I am able to control the noise environment — if I choose to ignore the ring of the telephones and the doorbell.

Skin Deep

2009-02-17T09:38:00.013-05:00

Sadly another tribute entry is called for. Drumming great Louie Bellson passed away on February 14, 2009. He’s always credited as the only legitimate rival to Buddy Rich for the throne of Best Big Band Drummer.

Born Louis Paul Balassoni, it’s safe to say that a couple of experiences in Louie’s early childhood facilitated his legendary career. He spent a bit of time as a child tap dancer, which I’m sure translated into his prowess with his double bass drum set. Also at a young age he was fortunate to study winds and string instruments along with his drumming, which may have contributed to his ability to become a composer and arranger, as well as a drummer and band leader. When Louie won a nationwide Gene Krupa-sponsored drum contest, I think his career path was set.

Louie was a person who was devoted to music as a positive force. One example is the story of his experience in the early 1950’s as the drummer with the Duke Ellington Orchestra. When the Ellington band was scheduled to do a tour of the south, Duke asked Louie, who was the sole white musician in the band, if he would mind masquerading as a Haitian.

From our interview conducted in Florida in 1996, the following is a memorable section about touring with Duke:

LB: In 1951 they had the Big Show of 1951, which consisted of Nat King Cole, Sarah Vaughan and Duke Ellington’s band. They were the three big stars. Now besides that they had Peg Leg Bates, Timmy Rodgers, Stump and Stumpy, Patterson and Jackson, all these wonderful acts — tap dancing acts, you know. It took us a week to rehearse that whole show, playing with Nat King Cole and Sarah, Duke, and all these acts. So after we finished rehearsing for a week, Duke finally discovered that hey, we’re getting ready to go down to the deep south you know? And in those days, you had segregated audiences. And the whites couldn’t play with the blacks at that time you see. And in those days it was “colored,” you didn’t use the word “blacks.” So now the big problem is, Duke called me in the dressing room and says “what are we going to do? I can’t find a drummer to take your place, because it would be a week’s rehearsal and the guys that can do it, they’re all busy.” So Duke says “you mind being a Haitian?” I said “no, okay, that’s all right.” So we got through it okay. It was a little tense, because the situation was still down there, and the audience, because they told Jack Costanzo with Nat King Cole he couldn’t appear because of the racial thing you know. But some spots it was a little rough you know. But we got through it. I think through Ellington’s peaceful ways and the wonderful attitude that the band had you know, kind of rubbed off on everybody. But still it existed.

MR: Well it’s nice that the music had a part in helping that situation to move along a little faster I guess.

LB: We played a gig in Mississippi and there the townspeople were wonderful, they came to the rescue, where we couldn’t stay in certain hotels in so forth. I mean these people came from wealthy families too. They had Strayhorn and Duke and Clark Terry stay in one house, and Carney and Russell Procope and myself in another house, and all on down the line. Beautiful homes and they fed us. So you know, along with the bad there’s some good too. And these were situations that we got over, we dealt with it. Sometimes it’s almost like a slap in the face but you realize what the situation is and you go straight ahead because you’ve got something to do that’s valued and I think when you do that you realize that none of those things should bother the musicality of something. It’s the fact that whoever’s playing that music doesn’t make a difference, let’s play it and show where the peace and love is.

Louie had early opportunities to hear his own compositions, including the memorable “Skin Deep,” with the Ellington band — not a bad place to premier them.

In the post-big band era, significant numbers of musicians benefited from the fact that Louie was able to do tours and concerts with his own big band. He found it expedient to have a west coast and an east coast contingent, and the recordings of Louie’s band always included top soloists and stellar compositions from Louie himself, and of course enough drum solos to satisfy the most avid percussionists.

In the 50’s, Louie became Pearl Bailey’s music director, then Pearl Bailey’s husband. They enjoyed a significant number of years together, and some time after Pearl’s passing Louie found a second soulmate, Francine. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her and the entire Bellson family at this sad time.

Click on the title, “Skin Deep” and you will be transported to the official Louie Bellson website.

Thoughts on Gerry Niewood

2009-02-15T12:17:00.004-05:00

Most of us have recollections from our youth, those moments of watching or hearing someone and thinking that’s what I want to do. One of my earliest memories was seeing the Glenn Miller Orchestra, a ghost band by that time. In the sixties it was led by Ray McKinley, and when I was in junior high in Rochester, NY, I recall looking at the saxophone section and thinking that’s what I want to do, even though it was long past the era of big bands.

In high school later on, I was able to get to know Chuck Mangione in Rochester, and often went downtown to see his quartet at the Shakespeare Room. The most memorable part of the Chuck Mangione Quartet for me at that time was Gerry Niewood, saxophonist and flautist extraordinaire, and I used to look at him and think that’s what I want to do, though Gerry was only six years older than I. When you are a teenager, six years seems like forever; not so when you’re in your fifties.

Music lovers are fortunate that when Gerry was a young man he stopped in at the Xerox Corporation in Rochester inquiring about a job that would take advantage of his creative mind. When they replied they didn’t have anything like that, he walked down the street to the Eastman School of Music where his career in the jazz world started.

As I recall, Gerry was the perfect sideman for Chuck Mangione in the seventies and for many years after. He was a player who brought a vitality to Chuck’s writing, a consummate artist who raised the level of musicianship in whatever group he graced. Jazz fans, especially in here in Upstate New York, were shocked and saddened to hear of his untimely passing in the February 12 plane crash near Buffalo at age 64.

Gerry had too few recordings as a leader, one in my LP collection is entitled “Gerry Niewood and Timepiece” on Horizon, released in 1976. On this LP is a tune called “Joy,” written by Gerry, featuring his soprano saxophone. It is in one word: joyous. It’s an upbeat, sparkling melody and his transcribed solo is included in the LP jacket. Saxophone players will appreciate Gerry’s fluency and range; high E’s and F#’s on the soprano are far from easy. His solo, while filled with many notes, is a constant stream of invention. Nothing is wasted or extraneous, it’s a perfect example of an improviser’s mind working at full throttle.

Equally impressive is his soprano sax solo on Chuck’s signature song “The Land of Make Believe,” from the Chuck Mangione Quartet in 1972, the LP on Mercury Records. Again Gerry demonstrates the rare ability to improvise beautiful melodies in perfect pitch with a beautiful tone. If J.S. Bach had played jazz saxophone, I think he would have improvised like Gerry Niewood.

A Social Hero

2009-02-06T06:28:00.006-05:00

One can’t turn on the television these days without hearing about the societal leap America made in electing its first black president. And it’s true, January 20, 2009 will forever be known as the date where a giant step was made in race relations. Tracing the history of the integration of black and white into a merged society, one repeatedly comes across the name of Benny Goodman as being one catalyst for the integration of black and white musicians sharing the stage.

Though Benny was known for his quirky business relations and often miserly ways, he refused to understand why he couldn’t have the best people he could find playing with him at all times. The music quality came before any other considerations for him. He wanted the best available. I have chosen two quotes to demonstrate how Benny’s interesting personality forced racial integration, because he insisted it would be so. First, racial mores or racial prejudice weren’t part of Benny’s lexicon; Benny just wanted the best of the best as his sidemen. Second, Steve Allen relates his personal experiences with the “King of Swing.”

The following two quotations were taken from early interviews, Lionel Hampton in 1995 and Steve Allen in 1999. We are fortunate to have such first-hand recollections documented in our Archive, as both interviewees were icons who unreservedly told first-hand stories about their experiences working in the thriving entertainment world of the thirties through sixties:

The first clip, from Lionel, talks about doing his musical homework as a child and his early development on the vibes, which would later catch Benny’s ear:

LH: [W]e got through rehearsals and, which we did, and if you became a newspaper boy, you had to practice, I think it was three times a week. And so in between, after, we’d go to music school, where the Chicago newspaper boys rehearsed at, and they had some xylophones there, and I would play the solos that I had taken off the records that was played by Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman. And it ended up that I liked it a lot. I would practice and play note for note what these stars played.
MR: So you’re really developing your ears for music.
LH: So I got a little head start on jazz, see? So I played something for a song that Louis had made a record on, called “Chinese Chop Suey.” And Louis liked it so well, he said “I’ll tell you, you keep the vibraphone out there, and we’re going to have you record with us.” So Eubie Blake, the big solo player and piano player at that time sent Louis arrangements to record for him. And the name of the tune was “Memories of You.”
MR: A beautiful song.
LH: Yeah, a beautiful song, yes. And so I played on the record, and people was wondering what instrument it was that they heard. And the vibes got very popular on the gig. And I found a new career.
MR: Because you got — your quartet started playing around California? And eventually that led to meeting Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman?
LH: Yes.
MR: So it’s funny how things in your childhood will work. The fact that you got a little experience on that xylophone really paid off later on.
LH: Yeah. Real big. And about the big band, you know I joined Benny Goodman .... And we were the first integrated group, the first black and white group.
MR: Was that ever a problem playing in certain parts of the country?
LH: No, no, because we all played good music. And Benny presented us in a professional way. We were a four in his organization, and it would be noticeable that we were soft. And the people liked that. Some of the ovations that he used to get, it was the sound.
MR: I thought it was interesting that that quartet didn’t use a bass player a lot.
LH: No. Because Teddy Wilson played it in the left hand.

Later Lionel speaks about his actual integration into the Benny Goodman Quartet:

LH: I was the first black musician to play in a white band. See and Teddy Wilson was playing with Benny, but he used to play when Benny used to take intermission, and no white musicians was on stage, then Teddy would play, by himself see? So I was the first one, legally to break that tradition down. But you know the funny thing about it, there wasn’t no black and white playing together no place. Not in pictures, moving pictures, not in baseball, or football, no kind of sports. The Benny Goodman Quartet was the first mixed group and it was, you know.

Steve Allen spoke about working with Benny Goodman, and his often bizarre show business ways. Steve played the title role in the movie “The Benny Goodman Story,” and for that role he learned to play the clarinet. Steve related some insightful stories about his preparation for that part, and a subsequent duet playing with Benny on “The Steve Allen Show”:

SA: As soon as I agreed to do the movie then of course the question was even though I was a musician I knew nothing about the clarinet, so we had to hire somebody to teach me, and somebody knew about Sol, our mutual friend Bobby Rosengarden once said something hysterically funny, he described Sol Yaged as quote the Jewish Benny Goodman. For you young people, Benny himself is Jewish. But anyway Sol was the perfect choice, and a very easy guy to work with, so he gave me several weeks of just basic lessons, you know how to hold it, how to blow and all that stuff. And the reason I did have to go through all that, some people have said well why did you bother? Why didn’t you just go like that and pretend to play? The answer is my fingers had to be on the right holes. Now if you’re taking a shot from the back of a ballroom, it doesn’t matter, you can hardly see my hands. But on a close up I can’t be playing this if the real notes are over here. So I did have to have my fingers, and I did have to learn the instrument, and I learned it well enough to do a little playing in public. I once played a duet with Benny himself on a little tune I’d written. Benny himself that night was in a fog as usual. Benny Goodman lived in a fog. He was Mr. Absent Minded and often didn’t know what he was doing. He’d walk on stage with his fly open and stuff. And through accident, he was just a careless man and didn’t think much about the world. He was just the greatest clarinet player of them all. So just after the movie, NBC and Universal Studios got together to do a little promotion going in both directions, so that meant booking Benny on our show, which was on the air Sunday nights at NBC at the time. So Benny himself played for a few minutes, and naturally was thrilling as always, and then our production group decided that Benny and I would do my little song with the two of us playing clarinets. It was sort of a riff thing [scats], an easy thing to play. So in the script I walked in after Benny had played his marvelous numbers, and I said “Benny that was terrific.” And his line was “well thank you, Steve, say, I see you brought your clarinet, why don’t you and I do something together?” A pretty simple line, and he’d had a whole week to work on it, he had one line with a week to work on it, and he forgot my name. Now it was my show, I was playing him in the movie, you might figure if there was any name he wouldn’t forget it’s mine. He might have forgotten his own. But anyway he did, on the air, and he did what he always did, because he was always forgetting people’s names. He had the world’s worst memory for names. One night parenthetically I’ll tell you about his memory. He was doing a performance somewhere and his usual pianist, who was Teddy Wilson, the great black pianist, was not available that week and so he wasn’t at the instrument. I don’t know who the other guys was … it was some white player.
MR: Johnny Guarnieri?
SA: Thank you. So Benny is saying “thank you ladies and gentlemen, and I’d like to also share the thanks with our great drummer, Mr. Gene Krupa, and the King of the Vibes, Mr. Lionel Hampton,” now he turns to the white piano player and says “and at the keyboard, uhhh, Teddy Wilson, ladies and gentlemen.” That was the only name he could come up with. So that’s how Benny was about names. Anyway, back on my show, thirty million people watching. In those days you did have an audience that large. So I said “Benny that was fantastic, beautiful.” There’s about a two second silence and then he says “oh thank you, uh, Pops, say why don’t we do something together?” So that was the name he used. He called his grandmother Pops, and anybody. If he couldn’t think of a name he called them Pops.

There have been many milestones in race relations in this country, and, in jazz, we recognize the contribution of clarinetist Benny Goodman, one of our social heroes.

Tempus Fugit

2009-02-01T17:30:00.005-05:00

Two news items and a recent personal experience made me think about how time is fleeting but great art stands its ground. The first item I noted was that Motown Records is 50 years old. Indeed, Motown was formed as a record company in 1959. It’s hard to imagine that some of those classic pop songs are 50 years old. I think they’ve aged remarkably well.

Also 50 years old is one of the largest selling jazz albums of all-time, Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue.” It’s now being celebrated with a 50th Anniversary remastered CD release and a book devoted to the recording, describing it in great detail. I defy anybody to suggest that this music has not aged well, in fact it only seems to be more celebrated with every successive generation. With a cast of characters that included Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane and Bill Evans, it’s perfectly understandable.

Lastly, this weekend at Hamilton College we hosted bassist/violinist Henry Grimes and percussionist Rashied Ali, two forward thinking and adventurous musicians whose duo concert consisted of music conceived and executed spontaneously. These men played with a depth of experience based on two long careers that included paying dues in both Rhythm & Blues and Hard Bop; it was an ear-opening event. Both were young men in the 1960’s when Free Jazz, the avante garde, was percolating in New York City and they played an important role in its development. I had to stop and check my sources to confirm that, like Motown and “Kind of Blue,” Free Jazz is some 50 years old. Ornette Coleman recorded the LP “The Shape of Jazz to Come” in May 1959, soon to be followed by the groundbreaking “Free Jazz.” It’s hard to believe that the music I heard these artists play last night was based on a movement that started a half century ago. It’s also worth noting that both musicians seem to still be on a never-ending quest, even into their seventh decade, for musical freedom as they perceive it. I’m not sure it was everybody’s cup of tea, but clearly some people in the audience were moved by their musicianship and their musical quest.

If Mozart’s music can last some 200 years, it’s uplifting to think that Motown tunes, “Kind of Blue” and many other musical forms will be with us for a long time. It’s hard to imagine how music will be delivered to us in another 50 years, perhaps we’ll be able to hard-wire it into our brains and call it up on demand. If so, I’m fairly sure that selections from “Kind of Blue” and choice number one Motown hits will be included in our personal catalogues.

Talkin' Jazz

2009-01-29T06:08:00.005-05:00

Today I'll resume my "Talkin' Jazz" radio show on WHCL 88.7 FM streaming on WHCL.org. This semester's show will be Thursdays from 2-4 PM EST. As it was last semester, the WHCL only broadcasts when school is in session, and this is the first show of the Spring semester.

Today's show will feature "Music from the Bottom," great jazz bassists and drummers. If the stars align and the weather cooperates, hour #2 will feature an in-studio interview with two legendary musicians, a drummer and a bassist, who are spending three days on campus as Artists-In-Residence.

Hummin’

2009-01-25T06:38:00.013-05:00

My interview with Nat in 1995 on my second jazz interview trip, this one aboard "Majesty of the Seas."

Back in 1995, on my second interview trip, I had the privilege to interview Nat Adderley, Cannonball’s brother, who co-wrote many of the tunes that inspired me in my early years. It wasn’t any trouble for me to prepare for this interview; I was a fan of Nat and Cannonball, and was devastated by Cannon’s untimely death in the mid-70’s.

To begin the interview, I asked Nat about three songs he wrote, inquiring as to their origins. After I asked him about the second song, I couldn’t resist asking him about one final song of personal interest to me: “Hummin’.” The following is Nat’s recounting of the basis of that song. The bonus is his mother’s response to it:

NA: [T]here are many many stories to go along. In other words, as far as I’m concerned, most of the music that I have ever written all has — there’s a reason, for it to be the way that it is. Now you’ve got two. If you’ve got another one, speak up.

MR: “Hummin’.

NA: “Hummin’” — actually, wow. “Hummin’.”

MR: And then I’ll let somebody else talk.

NA: You pick a — “Hummin.’” Boy. Well I guess the only way to do it is to tell you the way that it really was. “Hummin’” was written about an old woman who lived on my street when I was a little boy again in Tallahassee. Miss Sally was her name. Miss Sally. Southern people have strange ways of saying things. But there was Mrs. Coleman lived there, Mrs. Lasser lived up the street and Mr. Lasser. Miss Sally was about 80 years old but she was “Miss Sally” there was no man there. She was a tall, Black woman and I describe it — she looked like they look in “Roots” like the ladies looked. She wore that long dress, as long as an evening gown and she wore an apron, and the apron was as long as the dress. Miss Sally must have been about six feet tall. She was a tall, African-looking black woman. Miss Sally sat in this rocking chair on her porch. And her front porch was of course the houses were boards, little wooden houses. She sat in this rocking chair on the front porch and she had a loose board on that porch. And that’s where she had the rocking chair. And Miss Sally would sit there and rock, and like, for example, shell peas, shelling peas. You take the peas out the shells. She’d take the peas out the shells, drop the peas in the pot that she was holding in her lap, and the hulls in the apron behind the pot. Now and then she’d move the pot and dump the shells on a piece of paper on the floor and then go back to shelling peas. Meanwhile she would rock. And on that loose board when she’d rock forward, the board would hit — bomp. And when she’d rock backwards the board would hit from the front and rear — bu bomp. So she’d be rocking — bomp, bu bomp — bomp, bu bomp — bomp, bu bomp. All us little boys used to come by. We used to like to, because Miss Sally was a bit eccentric — at least I know now that she was eccentric, we just thought Miss Sally was crazy, but after I went to college I learned that there was such a word as eccentricity. Once she’d keep this stuff going, we’d say “Miss Sally you want us to fix that board?” Miss Sally say “get the hell out.” So we’d leave. Now, years, later when I was thinking about that again, I wrote this song. Oh, I left out a part. Miss Sally used to humm little churchy sounding things, [humms], kinda Gospel sounding. Meanwhile, — bomp, bu bomp — bomp, bu bomp.

MR: [to Romy, off camera] You’ve gotta hear this song.

NA: So I wrote the song. A little later on, and this is the addendum to it. I was living in New Jersey and had this big house, and my mother was visiting. And my mother came downstairs one morning, and she’d been listening to the radio at night. My momma said “listen — why don’t you write a song that’s got some meaning, like ‘Stardust?’” She said “you and your brother write them little ittilie boobly songs and they don’t have no meaning.” I had just done it. I said “you know that song I got called ‘Hummin’,’ the new one?” She said “yeah.” I said “you know, Quincy Jones recorded it, Cannonball recorded it, I recorded it?“ I said “you know that song is about old Miss Sally.” She said “what?” I said “you know the rhythm represents that board hitting — bomp, bu bomp — bomp, bu bomp — and melody is something like an old, Gospel sounding thing [humms].” And Momma say “yeah,” kind of skeptically, “yeah, sure.” But that night we were working down in the Village at a place called the Village Gate. Momma came down that night, and we played “Hummin.’” Momma, she called me over to the table: “hey, come here, boy” she said. “You know I listened to that song, and now that you told me what it means,” she said, “I could just see that old woman sitting on the porch and the board hitting,” and she said “you know old Miss Sally been dead about fifteen years now, but we all remember that old board hitting.” So she said “now that I see that, you know, and I’m gonna get off your case.” That’s when I knew Momma was hip. She said “I’m gonna get off your case and I’m going to say, I agree, your songs have meaning.” And that is the one for that one. Now I gave you three examples, let’s get somewhere else.

Click on the title, “Hummin” and you will be transported to the section on my website where you can click “Nat Adderley” that tells about the song “One for Nat” which I composed following this interview. Also there is brief biographical information about Nat and Cannonball.

A Statesman of the Highest Order

2009-01-18T05:18:00.016-05:00

Those who frequent the streets of New York City tell me that Joe Wilder is never seen without a sport jacket and tie. Like many statesmen of his era, Joe’s dignity is unsurpassed, and I consider him a close friend and confidant. Born on the lucky date of 2/22/22, Joe is now 86 years old. He shared a birthday with Claude “Fiddler” Williams, but Claude was born on 2/22/08, so next month will be the 100th anniversary of Claude’s birth.

Joe met his lovely wife Solveig in Sweden when he traveled through Europe in the 1950’s with Count Basie. They married and moved to New York, where they’ve been ever since, and have raised three lovely daughters. When Joe received his honorary doctorate from Hamilton, it was a privilege to meet Solveig and learn of her political activism through her church and other community activities.

Joe told me a story that he had never shared before. As a child, in Colwyn, Pennsylvania, his family used to have chickens in the back yard. When they were little he remembers running around in the backyard without any clothes on and the chickens were trying to peck the little boys in a certain part of their bodies, but he wouldn’t say the word. He started to say “pecker” but he wouldn’t say it. He says “so I’ll never forget that, you know, I never told anybody that.” But, he says, “talk about trying to ‘nip things in the bud.’” That is about as off-color a joke as Joe ever says.

I’ve played many gigs with Joe over the years, and I never miss a chance to bring him to Upstate New York for concerts. It’s especially significant for young listeners to see such a vital and dignified example of someone who has grown as a musician, like most do, and it is inspiring to hear him play the trumpet, an instrument many young players aspire to master.

I was thinking about how it was to work with Joe, and parts of it were a little nerve wracking. Most times I’d suggest starting with “Apex Blues,” (a tune we had previously played), but Joe acted like he didn’t know it. Then I’d remind him, and then eventually I’d say “Apex Blues” and he would go — “oh is that the one that goes de-de-la-de-de-la-de?’” I’d say “yeah.” So we knew that one. Nevertheless, he was a little hard to read because I’d say “is it okay if we do ‘Take the A Train?’” He’d say “oh, okay, that’s all right.” And I never could quite tell if he was happy with the tune selection, but it was fun and challenging on a number of occasions.A couple of times he made minor errors like dropping sections of the song. One time in particular, the first time we played “Seventy-Six Trombones,” he played one A and then went immediately into the bridge. That happened also on “It Might as Well be Spring” when we played during his first improvised chorus. He dropped an A and went to B and I think within one measure the bass player had it and about another two beats later I heard it. It can be identified because his soloing is so well conceived. I’m not sure whether he’s thinking of the specific chords in his head, but even if he’s not he’s playing the changes so well that you’d have to be zoning out to not get it. On one occasion it happened twice within the same song and both times we were right on top of it. And I think the added pleasure of working with this particular group was that I knew that our drummer heard it also. There is a kind of glance of acknowledgment that we all shared that we were still with him.

It’s a daily occurrence of people are always offering to help Joe with his luggage. He brings his horns in what looks like a suitcase, in addition to his cameras and photography equipment which he totes everywhere. He repeatedly says “no, no, no, I’ve got it. If you pick that up you’ll fall to the ground” he would say. He’d say “no, no I’ve got it because this way I’m balanced, I got one in each arm.” And even when we picked him up at the hotel and he’s got this suitcase that must weight 60 pounds, he wouldn’t let you touch it. It reminded me of Milt Hinton. Even in his last years Milt adamantly refused to let anyone help him negotiate his way around with his bass and cameras.
When we played one school gig with Joe I had to bring my P.A. At the end of the gig, of course where is Joe? He’s carrying gear to the car. There can be a lot to learn from behavior like that. How impressive it was to see students crowding around him after gigs and him signing autographs. He struggled to hear their names, and he’d ask them to spell their names for him. He would write a little personal note to each person who requested his autograph. It was interesting also to hear more stories. Some stories he told I had heard before. Nevertheless it was interesting to hear about some of the people he previously played with that he did not enjoy. He mentioned a couple of people who, as soon as they turned into leaders turned into cantankerous personalities. He was only with Lionel Hampton for a short time, but I asked him when he was with Hamp if they were doing some of that show business shtick. I know Hamp used to ham it up and jump into the audience. And Joe said “oh yeah, and we would twirl our trumpets.” Apparently there was this one point in one chart where the trumpet players had to throw their horns up in the air. He said that one night, because of the floodlights above them, he threw it up and either he couldn’t see or the floodlights had him disoriented, anyway he threw it well behind him. At the time the band was on risers so his horn went up and came crashing down on the back of the stage. At that time Hamp said “oh yeah, leave that in the show, leave it.” And Joe said Hamp never gave him a dime to get his horn fixed. It got to the point in later years when Joe would not accept a gig that was going to be with Hamp.

Joe was a classically trained trumpet master, and his father lived to the age of 99. We can hope that Joe gives us many more years of his peaceful presence, as we need more statesmen like him to set pristine examples for young players.

Click on the title, “A Statesman of the Highest Order” to go to the Hamilton website and see a clip of Joe talking about his experience in the 30’s playing with Lucky Millinder, and what it was like in the south traveling with an integrated band.”

Congratulations from the Hill

2008-12-17T06:23:00.007-05:00

Yesterday it was announced that former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, from Hamilton's class of 1972, is on-deck to be President-elect Obama's Agriculture Secretary.

Monk and I join the Hamilton community in wishing Governor Vilsack a long and productive tenure in President Obama's cabinet.

Old Meets New

2008-12-12T06:12:00.021-05:00

Click on the above title, Old Meets New, to see pictures of Oriskany native Sam Kininger returning home and visiting the Hamilton jazz archive for the first time with his old high school jazz mentor, Monk. The pictures show a clinic Sam conducted on December 7 with Monk's new crop of Hamilton students, and the subsequent jam session.

It's Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup

2008-12-06T13:46:00.009-05:00

This month marks the second anniversary of the abrupt passing of Kenny Davern, at age 72 at home of a heart attack. Kenny had only returned to his home in New Mexico two months prior, after attending his annual trek to Hamilton for our Fallcoming concert.

From before the jazz archive even existed, archive benefactor Milt Fillius hand-picked musicians to come to Hamilton for a special concert for the Hamilton community. Kenny always came, usually as leader, but in addition, Milt chose the best of the best. We were treated to the finest free jazz concerts, and Milt brought them to us! They always were, and still are, remarkable annual events. Kenny played the clarinet, and he maintained his amazing chops right until the end. Once Monk made an offhand comment to Kenny saying “I’ve read you’re considered one of best clarinetists alive,” to which Kenny directly replied, “Who’s the best?” I loved Kenny. It wasn’t just about his “sweet” jazz playing, though there was that. He was a realist and never sugar coated things, at least not with us. He also had the most caustic wit, on the bandstand and off, and said exactly what was on his mind. One time a Hamilton trustee rose to leave the event mid-set. Kenny addressed him by saying “got to go to bed? Got to go watch ‘The Tonight Show’?” The trustee returned to his seat. Kenny had no idea that the elderly person was a Hamilton VIP. Of course Kenny knew Milt and Monk and I, but for him, his yearly treks to Clinton, (via a minimum getting on three planes to make the connections) were simply a great gig.

I once told Kenny that the musicians Milt picked were Milt’s absolute favorites and Milt got such a kick out of choosing all the musicians he wanted to hear play together, never-minding the dynamics of what such combinations meant to the musicians. It was amazing to see Milt, year after year, sitting plumb in the front row of in the building known as the Fillius Events Barn and grinning ear to ear, watching his friends perform. He used the college as the venue, and he would have probably done it from his home in San Diego if he could have, but Milt liked to share his passion with others. When I told this to Kenny, that Milt was hand-selecting his own band and footing the entire bill for the weekend, it seemed to make more sense to Kenny. Of course Milt never consulted the musicians about who they would like to play with. Milt assumed that the musicians would happily come together as professionals do.

There are two videos of Kenny at Hamilton. Part 2 is a sit down he did at the college with Monk in 2001. We have found that many times interviewees either don’t watch the videos, or squirrel them away somewhere and never share them with their families. Bereaved families, however, are usually thrilled to discover them after the musician passes.

During interviews, very few musicians spoke their mind on tape as clearly as Kenny did. Usually once the camera went on there was a huge reluctance to say anything negative about anybody, especially fellow musicians. It’s after the lights are turned off and the camera is shut down that the musician’s true feelings are revealed. The musicians are usually uptight on camera for about the first 15 minutes of any interview. They are nervous, being that this is being conducted by a college, that they will be intimidated by professorial questions. Monk speaks as a bachelor’s-level-educated musician first, and as an improviser and composer. It only takes a short time before the interviewee warms up. The interviews themselves are directed by the conversation, not by a list of prepared questions Monk researches beforehand. In preparation for interviews, Monk buys recent CD’s of interviewees’ recent work and often consults The New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz tomes before the session, so he sits down fully prepared about personal style and past relationships.

From the first moment Kenny sat down with his friend Monk, the wit was revealed and the stories are all there. We are sad that Part 2 was only an hour in length.

I will never forget the first conversation I had with Kenny, it was a personal coup. Kenny was on a break at the Hamilton concert, and went outside to smoke. This was around 1997. I asked Kenny about set list decisions, the implication being because all six musicians didn’t ordinarily play together, and finding common ground seemed so effortless. He said there was usually some kind of sit down where they’d decide before the set. I said to him “Oh so on stage, you don’t just get up there and call ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ in E, right?” He stared at me for a minute, then turned to Monk and said “I like this girl.” Once I had heard Monk mention that he was afraid because he was backing up Joe Williams for a few tunes on piano when he was at the college, and he was apprehensive because Joe was nonchalant about telling Monk in advance what tunes he wanted to sing and in which keys. Monk said to me “I’m afraid he’s going to say ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ in E.” Thus I filed away Monk’s comment, then later used the same comment with Kenny, and from that moment on Kenny and I had a warm relationship.

Kenny always invited Monk to come to the stage for one song at every Fallcoming, and Monk got to choose the tune. Once Monk said “how about ‘Summertime’” and Kenny said “no way, I own that tune.” That was Kenny’s signature song and he didn’t want to share it. So Monk decided instead on “Wabash Blues,” from a recent album Kenny had released. Nearing the end of the first set Kenny would point to Monk in the audience with his clarinet and say “get your horn out, boy,” and Monk would pull out his old Conn silver soprano sax and saunter to the stage. Monk never had to fumble with opening his case, putting his horn together or preparing his reed. To me, it looked like he belonged with the group. I always took pictures, as did the college.

Monk, Kenny, and James Chirillo on guitar, Fallcoming 2005

Chuck Riggs, the drummer on Kenny’s last gig at Hamilton, called after he passed and wanted Monk to know that he thought we had videotaped the last concert Kenny ever played. We aren’t sure if this is true or not, but when he returned home to New Mexico, Kenny did call and I could hear Monk on the phone talking to him about the final performance. Kenny seemed unhappy about his own performance, after receiving the videotape in the mail, and I heard Monk saying that the micing process wasn’t all that great as it was done from a camera in the balcony of the Fillius Events Barn. Kenny and Monk reviewed the concert song by song. I think Kenny was his own worst critic. He never failed to amaze me with his facility and how strongly he was able to maintain it and not compromise his playing due to his age as so many musicians do who develop physical problems. Kenny told Monk that he was unhappy with the final note Monk played on, “Wabash Blues,” and how he kept wanting Monk to get off that note. Monk told me after he hung up the phone that he knew at the time that the note he should have been on was a physical impossibility on the soprano sax, and that Monk knew at the time it was wrong, but Kenny called it to his attention later on. Jeez, these musicians sure can be picayune about things, can’t they? It’s doubtful anyone in the audience noticed it, but Kenny and Monk both did, enough so that it was a topic for later conversational dissection.

When Kenny did a clinic at the college at that same last visit in October, 2006, Monk went to the small class with him so that he could accompany Kenny on piano. Monk considers himself an adequate pianist, not a top-flight soloist. When he came home he beamed as he told me that Kenny had given him the supreme compliment after the clinic, that he really knew what he was doing in the art of accompaniment (presumably not playing too much or too little but just right). Since piano isn’t Monk’s first instrument, it really meant a lot, coming from Kenny.

We went out to a restaurant for lunch before the concert that day of Fallcoming, just the three of us. I was unable to attend that final concert, as one of my daughters needed me to be in Rochester for that weekend. Anyway, I was looking at the menu and Monk and I brought up something we have often discussed between us. Pasta is usually described as “al dente,” but what’s the opposite of that? It isn’t like when you order your steak rare or well done. So we posed the question to Kenny, what is the opposite of al dente? Without missing a beat, Kenny said “it’s Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.” We both cracked up at the instantaneousness of his response, thus forever putting this question to bed for both Monk and myself.

I’m not sure if Kenny ever knew what an unlikely place Hamilton is for the jazz archive to be located. Hamilton is a northeastern liberal arts college with a small music department. Milt Fillius, ’44, being the huge swing era supporter that he was, provided the initiative for the creation of the jazz archive starting around 1992. This project went around and around for three years, much to Milt’s dismay, before Mary Kopcza from the Communications & Development department at college finally called Monk in 1995 and asked if he’d be interested in coordinating the project. At that time Monk was reluctant to get involved because although he was an adjunct instructor on saxophone, he was Artistic Director for the Arts in Education Institute at the Stanley Center for the Arts. Monk agreed to stick his big toe in the water in 1995 to see what this would all be about. Monk was not interested in “coordinating” the project (providing all the research, questions and contacts for someone else to use to conduct the actual interviews). In March of 1995, Milt Fillius attended the first interview trip to Scottsdale, AZ, and he said he wanted Monk to become the Director of the Jazz Archive. So since nearly the beginning, it’s been Monk who conducted the interviews.

And through this position, Monk travels to do presentations on jazz history — at SU, and Rutgers — and makes presentations before groups, such as the Society of American Archivists in New Orleans, and, before the International Association of Jazz Educators went down last year, Monk made biannual presentations or we wrote papers for IAJE conferences. He’s often invited to give presentations which include interview clips with commentary.

When Kenny passed Monk dedicated his next radio show to Kenny. He usually transfers these to CD, and he sent the CD to Kenny’s lovely widow, Elsa. Monk did the same thing when Bob Rosengarden passed recently, and sent it to Bob’s widow, Sharon, a longtime friend of ours. Bob, or “Rosie” as he was nicknamed, was a longtime friend of Milt and was his Fallcoming drummer of choice. Bob let us know in no uncertain terms when we first met him that he preferred being referred to as Bob, not Bobby, as he was often identified on album covers. He came to the college many times. Bob used to be the music director of the “Dick Cavett Show,” and provided all the ta-ta-booms after the jokes Dick Cavett delivered. Bob was incapacitated by Alzheimer’s for the last several years of his life, and Sharon often called either myself or Monk to share stories about Bob and his use of the minimal drumset. Sharon attended Fallcoming with Bob when he attended his final public performance also, and at that time Sharon told Monk and I “this will be the last concert Bob ever plays in public,” as she saw Bob’s early Alzheimer symptoms. When Monk sent Sharon the CD of his radio show after Bob passed, she called us and said “it was lovely to hear Bob’s voice again, it had been so long since I heard his voice.” The “voice” of course, were the clips Monk had selected to augment the radio show.

It was fortunate that Milt Fillius and Monk had seven years of active interviewing gathering, enough time to get this archive to where it is, for which we are very proud. And in the process, the education that has come as a fortunate byproduct of doing the interviews, for Monk, has been an invaluable resource for Monk’s personal development.

Here’s one final funny story about Kenny which to mind as I recall his trips here. In 2005, Kenny had a new cell phone. He was never one for gadgets or computers or email. That year, one of Kenny’s flights was delayed. He called our home phone and got our answering machine and started ranting and raving about how he couldn’t figure out how to “work the phone” and swearing about the flight being delayed, and then finally leaving the message about when his flight would arrive in Syracuse. We got the message and Monk adjusted his schedule for the later pick-up. Monk too tends to be quite challenged when it comes to all things cellular, and when Kenny finally arrived at the Syracuse airport at 11 PM, the airport was dark and effectively “closed.” The two of them wandered around the airport apparently just missing each other, for about 45 minutes before they finally connected. Monk knew the flight had landed. Anyway, they couldn’t find each other. Apparently it never occurred to the two of them until the next day, well after the crisis was resolved, that they simply could have called each other on their cell phones to connect with each other. My daughters were laughing hysterically when they were told about the scenario, as us old fogies never seem to think of using technology first, to solve problems. Later Kenny profusely apologized to me for having heard his rant on our machine. He was sincere in his apology, but I thought it was the funniest message I ever heard on our telephone. We miss Kenny and we mourn his passing at such a young age. We take solace in the fact that he maintained his finest form right up until the end. And he left such a remarkable body of work, including his album “My Inspiration,” Kenny’s personal favorite. Click on the link of the title of this article, “It’s Campbell’s Chicken Soup Noodles” and you will be transported to the Hamilton website where there is a clip of Kenny and Monk’s interview from 2001. Coincidentally on that site, just below Kenny’s clip is also one of Bob Rosengarden, so you will get double the fun.

Romy