Al Green and Sonny Rollins, now and then

Al Green, age 62, won two Grammy awards last week  -- Best R&B Performance by a Duo for "Stay with Me (By the Sea)" and Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance for "You've Got The Love I Need" -- and of course out-classed Justin Timberlake on the televised award program singing his 1972 classic "Let's Stay Together." 


Sonny Rollins, 78, won Record of the Year in the VIllage Voice's 3rd annual jazz critics' poll, with Road Shows Vol. 1  (which made my 2008 10-best list) and resumes touring in April with concerts in Arkansas, Miami and California.  
Picture of: Road Shows, Vol. 1  Both Green and Rollins are captured at the earlier career peaks by documentarian Robert Mugge -- who I spoke to recently -- in his movies The Gospel According to Al Green and Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus, from 1984 and 1986 respectively, newly available on DVD by Acorn Media. 
Mugge, an independent director and producer who not long ago ended two years as filmmaker-in-residence at Mississippi Public Broadcasting, specializes in American vernacular music, having creating fascinating films about Sun RaRobert Johnson's induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Reggae Sunsplash 1983, among other topics. His films are deceptively casual -- he spent 13 months just getting Green to face him, back in the day, and went to Japan to document Rollins' little- known "Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra"-- and engagingly journalistic. 

Mugge typically weaves interviews and candid moments with musicians and their close associates together with performance footage that is always clearly shot, without distracting edits or voiceovers and selected to exemplify the real arts of the people in front of his camera. Both Al Green and Sonny Rollins reveal themselves dramatically in The Gospel According To . . . and Saxophone Colossus, which were originally funded in the '80s by the BBC's culturally focused Channel 4. In the process Green and Rollins give Mugge and we viewers the greatest gift: the outpourings of their immediate, fully-committed inspirations.

Green, 36 at the time of Mugge's filming, tells the story at meandering and flirtatious length of his conversion from explicitly sensual soul singing to righteous raising voice for the Lord. He shrugs and grins and charms, sitting and standing, stroking a guitar and directly addressing the filmmaker, who remains offscreen but occasional prompts with a question. Green also performs with the choir of his church. He's spirited in both settings. His former drummer and co-producer Willie Mitchell adds wistful comments about his one-time protégé's decision to foresake secular entertainment. Green reunited with Mitchell for I Can't Stop, his 2003 comeback on Blue Note Records that embraces the worldly without obviously discounting the sacred.

"Al's a nice guy but also a bit of a nut case," Mugge said from his home office in Philadelphia. "It took me two trips to Memphis, one to New Orleans and one to New York to get him to do that interview, and he only agreed after negotiation and re-negotiation. I had to sort of trick him to do 'Let's Stay Together'," a sterling moment when the singer explains the song's origin and breaks into it from what seems like casual strumming.

"I tried to put together a 25th anniversary sequel to The Gospel, " Mugge continued, "and amazingly raised the money, got Morgan Freeman to agree to act as host, and we were going to do it in his club in Clarksdale, but at the last minute Al told his booking agent he didn't want to do it anymore, he was too busy this year to make a film. So I don't know if it will ever happen, but it would be so much fun to check in with him now, as he's finally rationalized doing both sacred and secular music with these Blue Note releases." Lay It Down, his second Blue Note album, is the source of both Green's Grammy wins. 

"Sonny is rather shy and reserved," Mugge recalled, "and only did the movie because Lucille [his late wife] pushed so hard for him to go along as a way to get people paying more attention to what he was doing in that period. He's just the sweetest guy in the world and so easy to work with -- except for his reservations about doing things. I was in touch with Sonny recently about using a complete version of the concerto audio as a historical artifact." Mugge had left two of the concerto's movements out of the film.

"Well, he mulled it over and finally told me there were too many mistakes in that version, because it was the first time it had ever been played, and he'd rather we not put it out. He told me that years later the concerto was performed it in Italy, and he liked that version better, but unfortunately nobody recorded it. He and Lucille talked for years about doing it right, reviewing the score and mounting it again. But I wonder if anybody today would be ready to pay what it would cost to record him with a symphony orchestra."  

Though Rollins' concerto was a unique event, the most gripping moments in Saxophone Colossus come during a concert of his regular band at an outdoor venue called Opus 40. Sonny blows his horn during an unaccompanied cadenza with all the vigor, humor and continuous variation his fans crave, concluding by leaping off the stage into a moat-like ditch sep. There's a moment of stunned silence among the musicians -- then the camera locates the Colossus lying on his back. In that position puts his horn back into his mouth and resumes playing. He'd broken his heel in his jump. 

"I felt incredibly fortunate Sonny created such a tremendous work for us that day," Mugge said, specifically referring to "G-Man," a 15-minute tour-de-force, "and it was quite bizarre that he jumped and broke his heel. It gave an additional level to the film, to capture something like that. It was so interesting to me, too, what that said about his sense of perfection.

"I learned he'd recently had the sax laquered, and apparently that can change the tone of an instrument. When he was playing at Opus 40, his horn would sometimes just squawk a note -- he told Lucille it was like playing a vowel and out comes a consonant. Being a great artist, Sonny can't play a wrong note, he builds on what comes. But he was getting more and more enraged by it, and finally jumped because he felt he was having a breakdown.

"When I saw him do that I told the cameras to keep shooting but ran around the structure to ask him if he was ok. When I got to where he was he started playing 'Autumn Nocturne,' lying there. I wanted to use the whole song, but they didn't want me to because the other musicians were so traumatized . . . "

Rollins' leap seems to flow from musical logic, not a breakdown, though you've got to hear and see it to judge for yourself. Which is one reason motion pictures were invented. Thanks to Robert Mugge, we have that scene --  as well as Al Green in Memphis, Sun Ra navigating the spaceways, a host of blues people including Robert Jr. Lockwood, Roy Rogers, Rory Block and Honeyboy Edwards interpreting Robert Johnson's music, portraits of Gil Scott HeronRuben Blades, New Orleans' Music in Exile and several films that have not been issued in any form.

Look at what Mugge's done. Is there a better way to thank him?

howardmandel.com
Subscribe by Email
Subscribe by RSS
All JBJ posts 
February 14, 2009 7:09 PM | | Comments (2)

Categories:

2 Comments

Hi There,
Just read your article on the grammy performance of Al Green and Justin Timberlake. I'm in my 50's so I'm not exactly Mr. Timberlakes fanbase but I totally disagree with you. I thought his voice was much smoother then Al Greens. I found Al to be sounding a little rough around the edges. From everything I've read also that performance and Al Green would not even have happened if Justin Timberlake hadn't suggested him to the grammys for a last minute fill in for Rihanna. It was my favorite performance of the night and I was highly impressed with Mr. Timberlake and his later hip hop performance he participated in.

HM:All I'm going to say about it is that Al's voice may be rough around the edges but that high note he hit and held was as gripping as any sung that night.

Susan: I also love Al Green. Always have. I just think Justin Timberlake sounded very smooth and hit the high notes also. I don't think comments some people, although very few, have been making that he should not have been part of the performance are wrong. Especially considering Al Green would not have been performing that night had Mr. Timberlake not suggested him to the Grammy's when they asked him for their help.

Many thanks for your piece. None of this is vital, but I thought you might want to know a few things.

First, the film is called GOSPEL ACCORDING TO AL GREEN. There's no "THE" in front of it. I've actually spent 25 years trying to correct that mistake whenever it's made, because it signals that the film's focus is more on Al's theological leanings than on his turn towards gospel music.

Second, I don't believe that Willie Mitchell played drums for Al Green. His instrument is the trumpet. Al Jackson, who previously played drums with lots of the Stax acts, played drums with Al Green and collaborated with Willie Mitchell and Al Green on the songwriting during that classic period until his own untimely death. As to Willie, he was producer and songwriter for Al Green and the other acts (Otis Clay, Ann Peebles, etc.) at Hi Records in Memphis.

Third, Al Green has actually won lots of Grammys. During the years that he only recorded gospel music, it seemed like he won a Soul Gospel Grammy with virtually every new album.

HM: Thanks for these corrections. I don't know where I got the idea that Willie Mitchell is a drummer and blame me for not fact-checking myself. Also, I didn't mean to imply that Al Green has gone Grammy-less all these years, only that Lay It Down is the source of both his Grammy awards in 2009.

Leave a comment

About

Jazz Beyond Jazz

What if there's more to jazz than you suppose? What if jazz demolishes suppositions and breaks all bounds? What if jazz - and the jazz beyond, behind, under and around jazz - could enrich your life?

more

Miles Ornette Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz






I'll be speaking:

icon_facebook25x25.gif
I'm on Facebook
twitter_icon25x25.jpg
Follow Jazz Beyond Jazz on Twitter


JBJ Essentials


more

All JBJ posts

 Subscribe in a reader

Get new posts by email.
Enter your address:

more

Howard Mandel HM2.for%20web.jpg I'm a Chicago-born and New York-based writer, editor, author, arts producer for National Public Radio -- for more than 30 years, a freelance arts journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association. more

Contact me Click here to send me an email... more

Archives

Archives: 148 entries and counting

Interviews & Articles

Joe Zawinul at 65, The Wire 

Interview with Joe Zawinul, The Wire, 1996

Jazz Festivals 

....good for cities, musicians, audiences. Hear it on NPR audio_icon.gif

The Makers of Jazz Beyond Jazz 
Over the course of three decades, I've been privileged to get behind the scenes and meet heroic creators of jazz as well as up-and-comers, innovators and exemplars of many other genres. Please enjoy these archival interviews and articles.

more A & I

Blogroll

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jazz beyond Jazz published on February 14, 2009 7:09 PM.

Eddie Palmieri sets Jazz at Lincoln Center afire was the previous entry in this blog.

Portland jazz fest hails Blue Note, cancels Cassandra is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

AJ Ads

Introducing
AJ Arts Blog Ads

Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.

Advertise Here

AJ Blogs

AJBlogCentral | rss

culture
About Last Night
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Artful Manager
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
blog riley
rock culture approximately
CultureGulf
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Dewey21C
Richard Kessler on arts education
diacritical
Douglas McLennan's blog
Dog Days
Dalouge Smith advocates for the Arts
Flyover
Art from the American Outback
Life's a Pitch
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
Mind the Gap
No genre is the new genre
Performance Monkey
David Jays on theatre and dance
Plain English
Paul Levy measures the Angles
Real Clear Arts
Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture
Rockwell Matters
John Rockwell on the arts
Straight Up |
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude

dance
Foot in Mouth
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Seeing Things
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...

jazz
Jazz Beyond Jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
ListenGood
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Rifftides
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

media
Out There
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Serious Popcorn
Martha Bayles on Film...

classical music
The Future of Classical Music?
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
On the Record
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Overflow
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
PianoMorphosis
Bruce Brubaker on all things Piano
PostClassic
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Sandow
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Slipped Disc
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds

publishing
book/daddy
Jerome Weeks on Books
Quick Study
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera

theatre
Drama Queen
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
lies like truth
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world

visual
Aesthetic Grounds
Public Art, Public Space
Another Bouncing Ball
Regina Hackett takes her Art To Go
Artopia
John Perreault's art diary
CultureGrrl
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Modern Art Notes
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog