Weekend Extra: Alec Wilder

Alec Wilder (1907-1980) wrote sonatas, suites, concertos, operas, film scores, ballets, art songs, woodwind quintets, brass quintets and music for French horn. In his composing, he was as prolific as he was ingenious and eclectic, but his work was politically incorrect in the sense that it did not fit the preconceptions of the classical establishment of his time. The individuality, substance and pronounced American character of Wilder’s concert music cannot be denied, but little of it gained widespread peformance or widespread popularity.
A few of Wilder’s songs, however, became standards, including “I’ll Be Around,” “Moon and Sand,” “While We’re Young” and “Lady Sings the Blues.” Those and a few less famous Wilder songs are among jazz musicians’ favorites. It is strange, then, that there have been only a half dozen jazz albums of Wilder pieces. One of the most important has been unavailable for decades. Bob Brookmeyer made the elegant 7 X Wilder in 1961. Verve has never seen fit to reissue it on CD, the same fate the company has dealt several other essential Brookmeyer albums. Jackie Cain & Roy Kral and Marian McPartland recorded Wilder collections, as did guitarist Vic Juris and saxophonist David Liebman.
Recently, a 2002 CD of Wilder songs made its way into my hands. It is Walk Pretty, by the Ben Sidran/Bob Rockwell Quartet. The album is on a small Danish label and worth finding. Although Sidran’s interests cover rock and roll, radio broadcasting, record producing, music journalism and oral history, he is an accomplished jazz pianist and a singer whose qualities may remind you of Mose Allison and Dave Frishberg. Rockwell is an American tenor saxophonist and flutist who moved to Denmark nearly thirty years ago. He remained there and is little known in his native land. The bassist is Billy Peterson, the drummer Kenny Horst. Like Rockwell, neither is famous. Both are excellent.The quartet approaches the Wilder songs with relaxation, fresh harmonies and respect for the melodies.
Alec would have applauded that last point. When he heard a jazz player begin varying his tunes, he would grumble, “My God, couldn’t he at least play it straight for the first chorus.” During my New York years in the 1970s, I was privileged to know Wilder a little. Several of us would gather late at night in the lobby of the Algonquin Hotel where Alec held court. On any given evening, the group might include Willis Conover, Marian McPartland, Paul Desmond and the great French hornist Jim Buffington, all devoted Wilder admirers. The Algonquin was Alec’s only home for a substantial part of his adult life. He loved the place, and the staff loved him for his kindness, his grumpiness and his wit.
“I like to sit here,” he once told a friend, “keeping an eye on who’s coming and going so I can separate the chic from the gauche.”
Alec behaved unconventionally in many ways but dressed in the conservative New England fashion he grew up with, almost always wearing a jacket and necktie. In an article in Down Beat at the height of hippie culture, with its tie-dyes, buckskin and fringes, Wilder said that he found it difficult to take seriously a musician wearing “a feed-bag reticule.”
With the invaluable help of James T. Maher, Wilder wrote American Popular Song, an indispensible work of analysis that is also a great read. Desmond Stone and Whitney Balliett wrote fine books about Wilder. For a short biography, go here. During his lifetime, much of Wilder’s music did not receive the acceptance it deserved, but it is making its way into the repertoires of more and more “serious” musicians. His fellow craftsmen in the songwriting business long ago put him in the Songwriters Hall of Fame. The Sidran-Rockwell recording helps remind us why he belongs there.