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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Memories Of Carmen McRae

April 17, 2008 by Doug Ramsey

Carol Sloane’s individualism as a singer grows, in part, out of her adoration of Carmen McRae. In the confusion of the past week, I overlooked Sloane’s tribute to McRae on what would have been Carmen’s eighty-eighth birthday. Here is some of what she wrote:

When she laughed, the room vibrated; when she spewed venom, people, animals and birds hastily fled the scene.

Carol’s assessment nails the yin and yang of the phenomenon that was Carmen McRae. To read all of her tribute to McRae and see the stately photograph she chose to accompany it, go here.

My own encounters with Carmen were few but unforgettable. The first was in 1956. Gus Mancuso and I were in San Francisco for his first recording session for Fantasy. We had just checked into a musicians’ hotel in the Tenderloin, not far from the Blackhawk.
Carmen.jpgWe were in the elevator on the way up to our floor. The car stopped and in walked a woman looking like this. She rode one floor and got out.

“My God,” Gus said after the door closed, “that was Carmen McRae.”

“Why didn’t you say something to her?” I said.

“I couldn’t,” he told me. “I was speechless.”

At the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1968 or ’69, I was assigned to introduce McRae at a concert. Before her set we spent a few moments chatting. After the concert, we socialized briefly with other people. Four years later, I had moved to New York. Late one night after I got off the air, I went up to Harlem where McRae was appearing at the Club Barron with her trio. I arrived as she was starting the last song of a set, went to the bar and ordered a drink. A couple of large men who were not quite sober looked me over, uttered comments that could not have been interpreted as words of warm greeting, and began edging closer.

The moment the song ended, Carmen walked briskly over to me and said, “We know each other, don’t we. It’s good to see you again.” She aimed the power of her glare at the aggressive welcoming committee. “Let’s have a seat,” she said. We went to a table. Before the break ended, Dizzy Gillespie walked in, carrying his trumpet case. He joined us and when the next set started, Dizzy sat in with Carmen. It was an unforgettable collaboration.

When that set was over and it was time for me to go, Carmen asked one of the heavies who had started moving in on me to see that I got into a cab. He escorted me to the street, hailed a taxi and waited until the cab pulled away.

When I next saw Carmen, several years later, I said, “I owe you one.” She smiled softly. And that was that.

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Comments

  1. Carol Sloane says

    April 17, 2008 at 10:27 am

    I really do miss Carmen every day.
    That story you tell of how she determinedly prevented a potentially dangerous situation from erupting in and on your face is typical. She was terribly street smart, and would have smelled trouble even if she was some distance from you. I love the part about Dizzy walking in. They shared a deep brother/sister affection. I remember one memorable telephone conversation with her which she ended by saying: “I have to hang up now because I’m cooking dinner for Diz.” It was clear from the lightness in her voice that preparing a meal for him was to be a true labor of love. Unfortunately, I never did get to ask what was on the menu.

  2. Tom Marcello says

    April 17, 2008 at 8:28 pm

    Thanks Doug,
    I wish that Blue Note would re-issue the fantastic” At the Great American Music Hall” set.
    Birks is on that one also, for a couple of songs.
    (For the uninitiated: Dizzy’s full name was John Birks Gillespie. McRae’s LIve At The Great American Music Hall contains one of her finest performances. Not to be confused with the later album of duets she made with Betty Carter at the GAMH, it never made it out of the LP era and onto compact disc. Why? It’s a mystery. — DR)

  3. Ted O'Reilly says

    April 21, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    Tom Marcello, et alia: That BlueNote GAMH session was released on CD in Japan, in the early ’90s. TOCJ-5880/81. Never anywhere else, and it definitely should be…it’s one of her very best.

Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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Monday Recommendation: Gerard Kubik, Jazz Transatlantic

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Blogroll

All About Jazz
JerryJazzMusician
Carol Sloane: SloaneView
Jazz Beyond Jazz: Howard Mandel
The Gig: Nate Chinen
Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong
Don Heckman: The International Review Of Music
Ted Panken: Today is The Question
George Colligan: jazztruth
Brilliant Corners
Jazz Music Blog: Tom Reney
Brubeck Institute
Darcy James Argue
Jazz Profiles: Steve Cerra
Notes On Jazz: Ralph Miriello
Bob Porter: Jazz Etc.
be.jazz
Marc Myers: Jazz Wax
Night Lights
Jason Crane:The Jazz Session
JazzCorner
I Witness
ArtistShare
Jazzportraits
John Robert Brown
Night After Night
Do The Math/The Bad Plus
Prague Jazz
Russian Jazz
Jazz Quotes
Jazz History Online
Lubricity

Personal Jazz Sites
Chris Albertson: Stomp Off
Armin Buettner: Crownpropeller’s Blog
Cyber Jazz Today, John Birchard
Dick Carr’s Big Bands, Ballads & Blues
Donald Clarke’s Music Box
Noal Cohen’s Jazz History
Bill Crow
Easy Does It: Fernando Ortiz de Urbana
Bill Evans Web Pages
Dave Frishberg
Ronan Guilfoyle: Mostly Music
Bill Kirchner
Mike Longo
Jan Lundgren (Friends of)
Willard Jenkins/The Independent Ear
Ken Joslin: Jazz Paintings
Bruno Leicht
Earl MacDonald
Books and CDs: Bill Reed
Marvin Stamm

Tarik Townsend: It’s A Raggy Waltz
Steve Wallace: Jazz, Baseball, Life and Other Ephemera
Jim Wilke’s Jazz Northwest
Jessica Williams

Other Culture Blogs
Terry Teachout
DevraDoWrite
Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise
On An Overgrown Path

Journalism
PressThink: Jay Rosen
Second Draft, Tim Porter
Poynter Online

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