Archives for June 2013

You might assume that “June is Busting Out All Over,” an exuberant Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune from Carousel, is unsuitable as a jazz vehicle. Two Bennies, Goodman and Carter, might argue—if they were around to argue—that there are no bad songs, only bad interpretations. Benny Goodman recorded “June is Busting Out All Over” with a pleasant vocal by Kay Penton in 1945, the year the show debuted on Broadway. Goodman’s record includes his clarinet solo and a 16-bar interlude by the little-remembered Charlie Queener (1921-1997), whose harmonic resourcefulness belied his pigeonhole classification as a “Dixieland” pianist.

Benny Carter wrote a short take-no-prisoners big band arrangement of the song for his 1958 United Artists album Aspects. It has solos, fully in the spirit of the chart, by Joe Gordon, trumpet; Frank Rosolino, trombone; Shelly Manne, drums; and the leader on alto saxophone. The video accompanying the music is one of Steve Cerra’s tribute productions for his blog Jazz Profiles. We use it here, by way of YouTube, with Steve’s permission, more or less.

The Rifftides staff wishes you a carefree weekend and a splendid June.

Educator and jazz researcher Thomas Cunniffe has posted analysis and additional information about Paul Desmond’s solo on “The Way You Look Tonight” from the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Jazz At Oberlin. It was after correspondence with Tom that I began looking into the disparity between the solo on the original LP issue and that on all reissues. (See the item and comments two exhibits below). In his blog, Jazz History Online, he investigates possible reasons for the cut and aspects of the solo’s content. He also provides comparative MP3 tracks of the solo before and after the edit. To read, and listen to, Tom’s invaluable contribution, go to Jazz History Online.

The death this week in New York of Jean Bach at 94 spurred memories of her role in the jazz community going back to the early 1940s. Ms. Bach was not a musician but an advocate whose enthusiasm for and understanding of the art endeared her to several generations of musicians. Her knowledge of the music and its creators made her unusual among other society figures who sometimes amused themselves by dabbling in the jazz scene. She was known for hosting in her home on Washington Mews in Greenwich Village parties that attracted admirers as varied as Sonny Rollins and Frank Sinatra. In a 1983 New Yorker magazine profile, Whitney Balliet quoted the singer and pianist Bobby Short:

“I was a baby just out of high school and what drew me to Jean was not only her love for Duke Ellington but the fact that she could sing note for note Ben Webster solos and Cootie Williams solos and Johnny Hodges solos. And — she knew my idol, Ivie Anderson.”

Short told Balliet she was, “by far the most elegant and beautiful and sharply intelligent person I had ever met.”

To the public, Jean Bach was best known as the producer of a film inspired by the photograph called “A Great Day in Harlem.” The following Rifftides piece appeared shortly after she revised and expanded the award-winning film.

A Great Day In Harlem: Longer And Better

Originally posted on Rifftides March 6, 2006

Art Kane’s 1958 photograph of fifty-eight musicians in front of and on the steps of a Harlem brownstone ran in Esquire magazine, which called it A Great Day In Harlem. It became one of the best known snapshots in the world, already famous for decades when Jean Bach made a film about it in 1994. Now, in her late eighties, she has expanded the film and brought the picture and its subjects even more renown. Ms. Bach, the brilliant film editor Susan Peehl and director Matthew Seig added nearly four hours of new material to the production. Like the picture that inspired it, the film is not a polished product. It is a rough and ready masterpiece that makes the most of the materials at hand, rather like a jam session solo.

At the IAJE meeting in January, Ms. Bach gave me a copy of the updated two-DVD release of A Great Day In Harlem. Over this past weekend, I finished watching it. One of its most appealing qualities is that, after the viewer has seen the main body of the production, he can dip into the nearly four hours of new features when its convenient, without fear of losing continuity. Navigation is easy by means of menu features that give the option of using alphabetical listings or—for computer users—browsing through the Kane photo with arrow keys and highlighting individual musicians to bring up their stories.

Some of the new segments are interviews with the musicians from the photo who were still alive when the film was being made, among them Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Art Farmer, Bud Freeman, Horace Silver and Max Kaminsky. Most of the others in the picture were gone by then, including Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Red Allen, Pee Wee Russell, Rex Stewart, Thelonious Monk, Roy Eldridge, Count Basie and Sonny Greer. Their surviving colleagues—and sometimes the vital and knowledgeable Jean Bach herself—tell their stories, all fifty-eight of them. In their recollections, Chubby Jackson is effusive, Sonny Rollins thoughtful and writer Nat Hentoff savvy and often amused.

The cumulative effect, whether or not the viewer is a hard-core jazz fan, is a sense of the yeastiness of what may have been the last golden era of jazz. Pioneers of the form were still at work, sometimes on the bandstand with musicians a generation or two, or three, younger. A natural companion to A Great Day In Harlem, the 1957 CBS television program The Sound Of Jazz, illustrates the generational compatibility, respect and understanding that marked the New York jazz scene through the fifties and into the early sixties. Ms. Bach’s film draws from the kinescope of that landmark show for scenes, for instance, of Count Basie listening raptly to Thelonious Monk, of Gerry Mulligan playing with Ben Webster and Rex Stewart.

Bill Charlap and Kenny Washington, who didn’t exist when Kane took the picture, reflect on the legacy of their predecessors in an interview highlighted by Washington’s uncanny impression of the character and mannerisms of Jo Jones, an idol of Washington and virtually all other drummers. The new DVD set also includes a mini-documentary about the making of the film, with hilarious sidebars about the travails of fund-raising, locating musicians and trying to coax accurate information from failing memories. Ms. Bach gracefully and affectionately corrects Art Blakey’s confident representations of facts that are clearly wrong, including his claim to have owned the brownstone that was the setting for the photograph. There is a brief feature about Kane, who committed suicide in the 1990s, apparently because of health worries. In addition, Jean Bach guides the viewer through an exhibit of the many “Great Day” photo imitations; A Great Day In Philadelphia—San Diego—New Jersey—Haarlem (Netherlands), et al—even A Great Day In Hip-Hop.

The film is informative, entertaining and uplifting. Whatever misgivings you may have about where jazz is headed, A Great Day In Harlem is almost sure to make you happy about where it has been.