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Howard Mandel's Urban Improvisation

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 . . . .”

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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Earma Thompson, unheralded piano jazz star, dies at 86

A Chicago mainstay, whose efforts supported local and touring musicians starting in the early ’40s but who didn’t record under her own name until 2004, Earma Thompson deserves to be celebrated as an outstanding example of how women have participated in jazz often more than is acknowledged, from behind the scenes. As the Chicago Tribune’s Howard Reich wrote in his July 16 obituary of this significant pianist and salon — not saloon — keeper, “Earma Thompson never really had a chance to become famous.”
Earma Thompson
www,JazzChicago.net/jazzfest.html

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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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