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Jazz Beyond Jazz

Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

More on live jazz streaming, Chicago to Zurich and beyond

Saxophonist Chico Freeman, a third-generation Chicago jazzman, live-streams his new international band from Zurich on Saturday 2/27 at 2:30 pm ET, and I moderated their Zoom talk of coming together for the first

time in person — a rarity over the past 10 months — with Carine Zuber, artistic director of Moods Digital, as part of their three-day residency.

The perspective and genuine high spirits at getting to collaborate in physical proximity of these extraordinary musicians — besides Freeman, the UK-born four-mallet vibes/marimba player Jim Hart, Tunisian progressive oudist Armine M’riama, Canary Islands percussionist Alberto Garcia Navarro, Swiss bassist Emanuel Schnyder and drummer Luigi Galati — during a break while they’re working up new material for a challenging concert, adds another dimension to the thoughts about online programs and performance voiced by the dozen jazz people in my previous post with two Zooms on how jazz has faced down the virus, often by going online, difficult though that’s been.

(For another example of winning the battle: Chicago boogie and blues pianist Erwin Helfer, who I

blogged about in August re his pandemic-related psychological breakdown, hospitalization and recovery after shock treatment, celebrates his 85th birthday and new album release tonight, Feb 27, with his socially-distanced band webcast live from Evanston’s Studio 5, thanks to The Sirens Records).

But back to Chico Freeman, whose C.V. starts with his being the son with Chicago legend and NEA Jazz Master Von Freeman (nephew of guitarist George and drummer Bruz, grandson of a pioneering black Chicago cop who was pals with Louis Armstrong), then opens to: composition studies at Northwestern University as well as in the early AACM with Muhal Richard Abrams, Fred Anderson, Adegoke and Iqua Colson; journeying with the midwest’s hottest blues and R&B bands; blazing through New York’s disparate scenes — avant gutbucket, Young Lions, loft and Latin jazz, what have you; creative associations with Dizzy Gillespie, Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, Jack DeJohnette, Paquito D’Rivera, among many others;

recording with his dad and Wynton and Ellis Marsalis; decades now as a leader of independent projects, like his previous project for Moods, the gospel steeped Voices of Chicago.

Freeman originally intended to call his new group “Concepts in Jazz and Afro-Cuban music” and that still almost covers it, except with these individuals’ evocative and virtuosic approaches to saxes, oud, vibes/marimba/keyboard and multi-culturally sourced hand-drumming, plus a practiced rhythm team keeping it together, it’s more that Latin jazz, Jazz-Latin music, or any portmanteau fusion. Watch the performance to see and hear how their ambitious project is realized. If you missed it, try Saturday night at 8 pm CST on:
https://stepnorth.com/sndtv
https://stepnorth.com/wfsn-tv
https://stepnorth.com/lifestreamingmoments/live
https://www.twitch.tv/jnancejr
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS6lFIxCIOc
and a variety of StepNorth DTV affiliates.

As for the venue support: As Carine Zuber explained on our Zoom call, the progression of some presenters from ticketed in-person events to digital distribution of concert videos, live-streamed or not, preceded the pandemic.

She cited a colleague whose foresight in 2017 led Moods to acquire top quality recording equipment and begin webcasting shows staged before actual people (!), offered also to remote viewers on a subscription basis (they say they have a revenue sharing agreement with performers that assures post-livestreaming income).

“When the pandemic came, we continued producing live-streams, but without the audience. The feeling of the streaming without an audience is not the same as a concert with audience,” Zuber concedes. “Something is missing. It’s cool that in spite of the pandemic we can follow livestreams, but it will never never never replace a real concert and the physical emotion you can feel being there in the same room!”

But it is cool that in spite of the pandemic we can follow livestreams. And imagine if in the 1950s Monk, Mingus, Roach, Rollins, Dolphy, Coltrane, Miles, Ornette, Cecil and on and on had been documented as fully as the global generation of musicians trying so hard to play and be heard today.

Boogie-man Helfer bounces back from covid-depression

Erwin Helfer, the 84-year-young Chicago pianist of heartfelt blues, boogie, rootsy American swing and utterly personal compositions, has told his tale of covid-19-related profound depression, hospitalization, treatment and recovery to the Chicago Sun Times.

Erwin Helfer and the author; photo by Marc PoKempner

I’m a longtime friend, ardent fan and two-time record producer of Erwin’s, and had lunch with him soon after the article ran. He was in fine fettle — a great relief to me and the rest of the large, devoted community that’s been deeply concerned about his health since April, when his troubles became evident. Shockingly (no pun intended) it took electroconvulsive therapy to get Erwin Helfer back on track.

Caroline Hurley’s reporting is appreciated. Two minor corrections: Erwin was raised on Chicago’s South Side in the late ’30s and 1940s, moving with his family to a north suburb when he was in 7th grade (circa 1948), and he never met boogie-woogie’s founding father Jimmy Yancey (who died in 1951), though he did eventually accompany and record with Mama Stella Yancey, Jimmy’s widow.

Erwin Helfer and Mama Estelle Yancey, circa 1983; photo by Lauren Deutsch,

But Hurley’s main focus is spot on: The coronavirus can have a devastating affect even on those not infected. It can change how we think, and not for the better.

Helfer was beset, I learned back in April talking to him on the phone, with the darkest of demons. He’d never previously struggled with mental health issues, he generally takes care of himself, but he’d come to feel he was doomed — ill, although tests showed otherwise; ruined financially, though there was no reason to think so, and of toxic danger to his friends, a highly diverse coterie, including some of whom live nearby, all of whom were eager to express their love by supportively checking in, doing errands, bringing food, offering transportation and eventually urging him to seek medical help, which at first he resisted.

But it was obvious to associates such as Ivan Handler (mentioned in the Sun-Times) from his weekly meditation group and Erwin’s loyal producer Steven Dolins of The Sirens Records that he’d let his place and himself go. No one seemed able to cut through his insistence that he was dying and would be better off that way. He had lost — well, let’s say “misplaced” — his typically light touch and good-humored centeredness, attributes many people have relied on to enhance our own spirits and peace of mind.

A source of musical fun, originality and continuity, Erwin has for the more than 40 years I’ve known him (and well before) been a warm, modest, generous, open-minded yet tradition-revering entertainer, collaborator, creator and teacher. He’s a mensch, without arrogance or pretensions. Throughout his career he’s encouraged, championed, recorded and recorded with several somewhat obscure but eminently worthy pianists including Billie Pierce of New Orleans, Speckled Red of St. Louis, and most recently Chicago’s Barrelhouse Chuck Goering, who died in 2016.

Erwin has often played benefits for social causes, house parties and the like; most recently he’d brought joy and comfort weekly to audiences at the Hungry Brain, with an 8 pm set requiring no admission fee. His sets feature a mix of tunes he learned firsthand from past-masters such as Cripple Clarence Lofton and Little Brother Montgomery, familiar themes by Duke Ellington and Hoagy Carmichael, eight-to-the-bar renditions of “Swanee River” and “Jambalaya,” and his own melodies, interspersed with reminisces and corny, often ribald jokes. He prefers to play solo, but happily makes music with people he likes and trusts.

At Katerina’s, circa 2012, from left: Lou Marini, bass; ? guitarist; Erwin Helfer, piano;
Katherine Davis, John Brumbach and Sam Burckhardt, saxes. Photo by Marc PoKempner

In March he’d completed recording sessions for what will be his eighth album from The Sirens, and was looking forward to new project in which his original compositions, which imbue blues structures with impressionistic nuances, would be interpreted by some of his admirers among Chicago’s younger, nominally avant-garde musicians.

However, when the weekly gig Erwin often rode his bike to was suspended due to the coronavirus closings, and students could no longer come to his home (on a street the city marks as “Erwin Helfer Way“) for their lessons, Erwin’s isolation got to him.

Erwin Helfer Way album cover, 2013

As a performer usually in intimate venues (he has also concertized at the Old Town School of Folk Music, in Millennium Park for the Chicago Blues Festival, on regular tours in Germany and during annual visits to the Augusta Heritage Center’s Blues Week in Elkins, West Virginia) he’s ultra-adept at reading and absorbing an audience’s vibe, working in the moment with the people around him to maximize pleasure. That kind of interaction, a true give-and-take, is essential to performing musicians.

Don’t discount the “take” part. Performers need audiences. Most of them can (must) learn to shrug off an unreachable crowd or uninspired night, but if no engagement with other people is possible at all it’s like water withheld from someone parched. The thirst just gets worse, and there’s no substitute. Playing for and by oneself may seem solipsistic, pointless, futile.

A lot of nudging from his closest friends led Erwin to be admitted to Rush University Medical Center’s inpatient psychiatry program. After an initial regimen of drugs, he responded well to electroconvulsive therapy, aka “shock treatment.”

“They wanted to give me 12 sessions,” Helfer told me, “but I only had 11. I was okay after eight. They put me out for them — you don’t feel it. I don’t need to go back, like for a booster, but I’m taking medication, and I have a once-a-month phone appointment with a shrink. I feel great — I feel like I’ve been reborn.”

The day I visited, there was a lot of renewal going on in Helfer’s house. He was having his roof re-done. Katherine Davis, a blues singer Erwin’s worked with for years, was puttering around — she’s taken up residence in his finished attic. Katherine has helped Erwin — an animal lover who titled one of his piano tunes “Pooch Piddle” — acquire a dog and a cat. As we ate sub sandwiches he talked about a how-to-play-blues-piano book he intends to publish, and the modernist instrumentalists he wants to let loose on his songs such as “Day Dreaming,” “Within” and “Stella.”

“I think I’m a better composer than pianist,” he said. “That’s one thing — since my depression I haven’t been playing. And I may not play again. I haven’t been feeling like playing, and I don’t feel it in my fingers. The doctors said my playing might or might not come back. If it doesn’t, I’m okay with that. I think I’ve made my statement.”

“You might have more statements to make,” I suggested.

“What about?” He seemed genuinely curious.

“Maybe you’ve got something to say about what happened to you.”

“That’s a point,” Erwin considered agreeably. “People have been saying to me, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry you had to go through that!’ Well I’m not sorry — I think it’s the best thing that could have happened to me, considering where I am now. Everything seems fresh to me. But how are things with you?”

Since I’ve been trying to learn “Day Dreaming,” I asked Erwin a technical question about the composition. He tried to talk me through the chord pattern, but I told him he was going too fast and I couldn’t match the melody to what he was saying.

“I’ll show you,” he said, and went to the electric keyboard he’s taken to jobs when there’s no acoustic instrument onsite. “Hmmm, it’s not plugged in. Okay, I’ll show you on the piano.”

I cleared a couple boxes off the piano bench, and opened the fallboard so he could get at the keys. He showed me the opening of “Day Dreaming,” an unusual phrase coming up from the bass clef, the execution of which requires both hands.

“Day Dreaming” cover version recorded and posted by Caleb M.

Then I asked him about “After Hours,” a classic he often mentions from the stage was once called the Negro National Anthem. He demonstrated his approach to it, too.

Erwin’s fingers are not especially long, and his reach isn’t particularly broad, but his hands went directly to notes he’s pressed and gestures he’s practiced for eons, moving naturally if not quite precisely to summon the songs. I watched from over his shoulder. He looked up at me. “You think I can get my chops back?”

“Hell yes,” I said. “You haven’t played in four months! Your fingers know where to go, you’re just rusty. Play some, and you’ll be back.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I had that thought, too. I asked the bass player and drummer I was working with to come over. So we’ll see . . . .”

Digging Our Roots videos, speakers inspire engagement

Billy Branch watches Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson II. Photo by Alan Frolichstein
Billy Branch watches Sonny Boy (Rice Miller) Williamson II;
photo by Alan Frolichstein

Nearly 100 Chicagoans (maybe some visitors?) watched Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Junior Wells, Buddy Guy and other heroes of the blues on videos at the Cultural Center Thursday night (5/23/19), with harmonica star Billy Branch and WDCB program host Leslie Keros telling stories and participated in lively interplay with knowing attendees. It was the fifth Digging Our Roots: Chicago’s Greatest Hits “listening session” this spring, co-presented by the Jazz Institute of Chicago and Jazz Journalists Association.

Full disclosure: I sit on the JIC board, am president of the JJA, curated and moderated this series. Let that not invalidate this report! Because since cold last January, our once-a-month, free, public music show-and-tells have drawn a steadily growing, diverse and highly engaged audience to both revisit and discover anew jazz/blues favorites of the distant and recent past, pointing to culture of this city now.

I don’t say that to brag, just to confirm that small budget, low cost, all-ages-and-sophistication-level presentations can raise the profile of local musicians and journalists working together, expose successful (entertaining!) if perhaps forgotten artists to awe and encourage younger music lovers, and generate fine content for posting, such as Mashaun Hardy does for the Jazz Institute’s social media streams by video streaming portions of the proceedings, live — like below:

The economical nature of the production is thanks to the Cultural Center (overseen by the Mayor’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events) providing space and staff, as well as the amazing banquet of video performances online (we watched clips selected by the panelists, including this dynamite performance by Billy Branch and Lurrie Bell with an early version of their band Sons of the Blues).

The Jazz Institute provides promotion online and a staffer or two who help with production, harvest attendee’s email address and sign up new members. I contribute my efforts on behalf of the JJA, and have enlisted members as speakers.

For instance, in April photographer/writer/visual artist and saxophonist Michael Jackson joined tenor saxist Juli Wood to celebrate the Chicago Tenor Tradition represented by Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin and Von Freeman (pianist Michael Weiss, at the Jazz Showcase that week with saxist Eric Alexander to celebrate Grif’s birthday, sat in). John McDonough, a longtime writer for DownBeat and the Wall Street Journal, created a medley of historic versions of “King Porter Stomp” for a presentation of Jelly Roll Morton’s classics in February with roots Americana pianist Erwin Helfer performing two of Jelly’s tunes.

Veteran broadcaster Richard Steele, just hours back from a tour of Cuba in company of trumpeter Orbert Davis, talked with saxophonist Eric Schneider about the collaborations and careers of Earl “Fatha” Hines (with whom he’d toured) and Louis Armstrong. Ayana Contreras, producer for WBEZ and Vocalo Radio, provided in-depth commentary about the jazz influences and nuances of Curtis Mayfield, Minnie Riperton and Earth Wind and Fire in the March Digging Our Roots, which climaxed gloriously: as keyboardist Robert “Baabe” Irving III played EWF vamps on the Cultural Center’s piano, audience members started singing along, Maggie Brown (Oscar Brown Jr.’s daughter) rushed to the stage, grabbed a mic and started wailing — dancing erupted! It was grand.

At the May session, Branch spoke admiringly of the musicianship of his elders he had known, especially including Sonny Boy Williamson II, as slyly understated harmonica man Rice Miller called himself while touring from the Mississippi delta to the capitols of Europe, having appropriated repertoire and reputation of John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson, who had hit records but was murdered in 1948. Keros introduced an excerpt of a film of Maxwell Street, Chicago’s fondly remembered outdoor market at which Blind Arvella Grey, guitarist Robert Nighthawk, Big John Wrencher (don’t the names summon their images?) held forth.

One fan corrected my impression that Bill Broonzy was playing from his own doorstep — actually the clip was from a film shot by Pete Seeger. Another suggested that the way to return blues to popular music today is have a deejay/producer grab it for presentation to the EDM audience. Apparently that gent was unaware of previous attempts to turn that trick, such as the Elektric Mud Cats — Chuck D and Common with guitarist Pete Cosey — doing a number on Muddy Water’s “Mannish Boy.”

The next Digging Our Roots session, at 6 pm on Saturday June 29, highlights Chicago’s singers, starting with Dinah Washington, Oscar Brown Jr and Johnny Hartman. The panelists are Aaron Cohen — former DownBeat editor and author of the forthcoming Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power — and singer Bobbi Wilsyn. The venue changes to the Logan Center, in Hyde Park on the edge of University of Chicago campus, which is hosting two free days of Jazz Institute programming, noon to 10 pm, as a 50th anniversary Birthday Bash reveling in the breadth of JIC and our local scene’s concerns and activities.

As part of the JIC’s year long 50th engagement and fundraising campaigns, a series of jazz movies programmed by the Chicago Film Society kicks off Monday, May 27 with Mickey One (starring Warren Beatty, directed by Arthur Penn, with music by Stan Getz, shot in Chicago) at the Music Box. Further flicks include Ornette: Made in America, Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues and Les Blank’s Always for Pleasure.

The drift is: Mutually beneficial partnerships for free or modest-fee events featuring local celebs at readily accessible venues can advance the mission of medium to small not-for-profit arts groups (like the Jazz Institute and the Jazz Journalists Association). Knowledgable people who have insights into pre-recorded media can offer curious listeners and viewers an interactive experience (all Digging Our Roots sessions included q&a time) that bonds most everybody present, like any successful performance. I’m thrilled to present music I love to anyone who’s got the time and inclination to enjoy it and hope to continue this series in autumn in Chicago.

Billy Branch, Leslie Keros, Howard Mandel;
photo by Alan Frolichstein

Might I suggest Digging Our Roots-like programs as a model for arts journalists and arts organizations spotlighting arts-near-us, contemporary or historic? All you need is a public space, time, date, and speakers able to be enlightening about great content. That last is the main thing. We’re lucky here to have such enduring jazz and blues.

Gospel (not my usual bag) keyboards revelations

I’ll never be an avid fan, much less an aficionado, of gospel music — but imgres-3Lift Me Up, Chicago Gospel Keyboard Masters, new from The Sirens, a local independent label, is clearly full of joy and inspiration. It also is notable for documenting a seldom spot-lit but obviously thriving American roots music scene.

Art arising from or meant to beget religious transcendence makes me uncomfortable, but many others aren’t so biased, and all kudos go to Steven Dolins, The Sirens producer and my co-religionist, who says, “[G]oing back to Thomas Dorsey (Georgia Tom), Chicago gospel is also about community and passing down the tradition.  . . . I appreciate gospel is an acquired taste, but the gospel melodies are a lot more interesting to me than 12 bar blues.  I love the thick, rich gospel chords and the bluesy melodies.  Also, I look at the lyrics like love songs.”

Especially resisting gospel vocals, I gravitate to the instrumentals on Lift Me Up, of which there are plenty. In “Swing Chariot,” “Walk with Me Lord,” “I’ll Say Yes to the Lord,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “He’s My Everything,” “I’ll Overcome Someday” and “The Lord Is Blessing Me,” keyboardists Richard Gibbs, Bryant Jones, Terry Moore and Eric Thomas switch off between organ and piano (Elsa Harris and Lavelle Lacy play piano only), engaging each other in energized interactive duets, backed by drums, tambourine and (on two tracks) bass. The performers are all expert professionals with impressive credentials and affiliations, if any certification is required beyond what they play. Their squishy chords, driving left-hand parts, filagreed right- hand runs, pronounced backbeats and rhythms building chorus by chorus are the raw materials of r&b, rock ‘n’ roll and much pop, brought out of the church by the likes of Fats Domino, Ray Charles and Charles Brown, demonstrably still able to get people to move and testify. This spirit is nearly irresistible and certainly infectious.

Regardless of its godliness, gospel music is the opposite face of the blues coin (as Dolins mentioned above, Thomas A. Dorsey earlier in his career was “Georgia Tom,” playing bluesy hokum with Tampa Red). My personal tastes run deep for secular boogie-woogie, blues, stride and ragtime piano styles, celebrated by The Sirens in its other current releases: imgres-1Last Call by pianist Erwin Helfer (full disclosure: I’ve proudly considered Erwin a friends for decades) — and Remembering The Masters by his close associate Barrelhouse Chuck.

Eighty-year-young Helfer’s album includes three historic tracks with singer Mama Estella Yancey, dating from 1957 and 1979 (further disclosure: in 1983 I produced Maybe I’ll Cry, Yancey’s last recording — she was 87 — on which she’s accompanied by Helfer, for Red Beans Records). He also features his longtime tenor saxophonist John Brumbach and vocalists Katherine Davis and Ardella Williams, but my favorite track is his introspective solo version of “St. James Infirmary.”

In contrast to Helfer, Barrelhouse Chuck is generally gregarious, and sings imgres-2as he plays with warm confidence. He’s also accompanied by guitarist Billy Flynn, and generously turns over two tracks to fellow pianists Lluis Coloma and Scott Grube). Remember The Masters has the loose feel of party blues recordings made decades back by such important mentors to Chuck as Sunnyland Slim, Pinetop Perkins and Little Brother Montgomery.

Until a recent health setback when he was on tour in Sweden, Chuck was playing on Wednesday evenings upstairs at Chicago’s Barrelhouse Flats. Helfer has taken over the gig, with his acolytes and students sitting in. Producer Dolins laments that other than Erwin, Chuck and some “record copiers,” there are no Chicago blues pianists left. I hope he’s wrong — as Muhal Richard Abrams, a founder of the AACM, once said, if you’re from Chicago you’re expected to play some blues.

Whether or not you can or do, Barrelhouse Flats on Wednesday nights is the place to delve the eternal verities and infinite variations of ten fingers over 88 pitches grouped around a three-chord progression. The music’s happy even when it’s sad. Note: Erwin Helfer, Barrelhouse Chuck and at least some of the Chicago gospel keyboard masters on Lift Me Up will concertize at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Saturday, September 10 — shows at 6 and 8 pm.

 
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Howard Mandel

I'm a Chicago-born (and after 32 years in NYC, recently repatriated) writer, editor, author, arts reporter for National Public Radio, consultant and nascent videographer -- a veteran freelance journalist working on newspapers, magazines and websites, appearing on tv and radio, teaching at New York University and elsewhere, consulting on media, publishing and jazz-related issues. I'm president of the Jazz Journalists Association, a non-profit membership organization devoted to using all media to disseminate news and views about all kinds of jazz.
My books are Future Jazz (Oxford U Press, 1999) and Miles Ornette Cecil - Jazz Beyond Jazz (Routledge, 2008). I was general editor of the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz and Blues (Flame Tree 2005/Billboard Books 2006). Of course I'm working on something new. . . Read More…

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