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In the fall of 2006, we posted a piece connecting two important Czech artists, one a novelist, the other a pianist. This week, the story they gave us drew a comment from yet another Czech artist who was there when it happened during the Soviet domination of Czechoslovakia. Here is the original item from November, 2006. I encourage you to follow the first link below, then come back to this page.

In the recent Rifftides piece about Freedom and Josef Škvorecký, I named several jazz musicians from former Communist countries who have risen to the top of their profession. One of them was the Czech pianist Emil Viklický.
The world is small and tightly interconnected. A day or two after the piece appeared, I got a message from Viklický informing me that he knows Å kvorecký “quite well” and that he contributed an important element to a masterly–and very funny–Å kvorecký novel. Emil wrote:

“There is my long letter to him, written in 1974 to Canada, published as a resolution of novel The Engineer of Human Souls.”
The Engineer of Human Souls rambles through life under the Nazis, the Communists, academia and the human condition. In this brilliant roman á clef, the narrator, a Czech professor of literature teaching in Toronto, is Å kvorecký once removed. One of the characters from his Czech past is his friend Benno Manes, described by Viklický in his message as “dirty speaking fabulous trumpetist.” Viklický discloses that Manes’ had a counterpart in real life.
“Å kvorecký of course changed all real names to fictive names. It was necessary back in 1974. The letter describes the death of Pavel Bayerle, bandleader, trumpeter, a close friend of Å kvorecký. I was in army big band in October 1971 when Bayerle died of heart attack on the stage while conducting the band in Russian-occupied army barracks in Olomouc. Bayerle was 47 then. My letter to Josef remained in the novel practically intact. Å kvorecký received my letter just when he was finishing Engineer.
Å kvorecký changed Olomouc army barracks to Bratislava Russian barracks. In Russian barracks, we often played longer improvisations mostly ending in aggresive free music. It was our kind of protest. We knew that Russian listeners didn’t like it that way.”

As it appears in the book, the letter mentions a singer, Miluska Paterjzlova; a guitarist named Karel Kozel, “a big handsome fellow with a green Gibson;” the MC, Private Hemele; and a trumpeter called Pavel Zemecnik who helps the letter writer, “Desmosthenes,” pull the stage curtain closed when Benno Manes dies as he is conducting. They were fictional names of Viklicky’s real bandmates.

“Real singer name was Helena Foltynova, lately married as Helena Viktorinova, still singing some backgrounds for pop stars now. She was Marilin Monroe type of beauty, at the time simply stunning. Guitarist real name was Zdenek Fanta, his Gibson was dark red colour. Private Hemele is well-known actor Jan Kanyza; Trumpeter, who closed yellow curtain from the other side, was Petr Fink. Bayerle died in the 5th bar of letter D of his own song.”
From Viklicky’s letter to the author about Benno Manes’ death in Å kvorecký’s novel:

“The last thing I remember, and I’ll never forget it, was how he was lying there in that empty hall on an empty stage, with his huge belly completely purple, and dark grey trousers, and you couldn’t see his head for the stomach, and all around there was yellow bunting, that awful yellow bunting. Yellow and purple, maybe the bust of some statesman behind it but all I could see when I looked into the hall for the last time was that ghastly purple stomach and the yellow bunting. Then we left for Prague. I thought you might be interested in how your friend died.”

They went on to become friends, the novelist emerging as a major literary figure; the pianist about to leave the army, devote himself to jazz and become one of Europe’s most famous jazz musicians. Viklický adds:

“When my quartet played in Chicago in 1991, Å kvorecký came down from Toronto and stayed with the band for a few days. I think he was fascinated by musicians’ talk, because he stayed through rehearsals as well. Backstage slang in ’91 was probably different than back in the ’40s when Å kvorecký was young. But he seemed to love to listen to it. And maybe put it into his next novel.”

Yes, the world is small and tightly interconnected.

Now, three years after that Rifftides piece, from the Czech Republic comes a comment from Petr Fink, the trumpet player who helped Viklický pull the curtain when Pavel Bayerle died. Mr. Fink’s comment is in Czech. I showed it to Emil, who kindly volunteered to translate it. He included a footnote, marked by an asterisk. The Czech version follows Emil’s translation.

I was there on that evening when trumpeter-bandleader Pavel Bayerle died on stage while conducting his own song “Pohádka a sen,” (“Fairytale and Dream.”). I was the last and the only one, to whom Pavel turned his eyes. I saw his eyes, totally desperate, full of pain. After that there was the fall. He went down. Next, some army doctor jumped on stage with a large syringe* for the heart. But it was the end. Pavel was lying on the ground with large belly. Soldiers didn’t want to cover him, perhaps afraid of dirtying something, but after 15 long minutes, finally they had covered him with some kind of red rug.

Next day the band drove by bus to Prague and I was sitting in his front seat, with his civilian clothes on the hanger in front of me. There was a tie, which I took as a memory. Then I was asked to arrange for big band a medley of Bayerle´s most known songs: (“O nas dvou, Pribeh nasi lasky, Pohadka a sen” ( “About Two of Us”, “Story of our Love” and “Fairytale and Dream”). When we played that medley at the funeral ceremonies, people started crying.
Greetings, Petr Fink

Here is Viklický’s observation.

*I certainly doubt that. Russian doctor didn’t have any syringe ready in his pocket. I saw the scene myself. I was closing that yellow curtain and came to Pavel from the other side of the stage, where the grand piano was. The doctor only tried to massage Pavel´s heart. He tried hard. Perhaps later somebody brought him a syringe, but I dont think so.

For those who read Czech, here is Ptr Fink’s message in the original

Jsem účastník (trumpetista) onoho večera, kdy kapelník Pavel Bayerle zemÅ™el na jeviÅ¡ti pÅ™i dirigování své písnÄ› “Pohádka a sen”. Byl jsem poslední a jediný, na koho se v té chvíli obrátil pohledem a já spatÅ™il jeho zoufalé, bolestí zkroucené oči a pak už jen pád na zem. A dále jen jak pÅ™iskočil jakýsi vojenský doktor s velkou injekcí přímo do srdce. Ale byl konec. Vojáci ho nechtÄ›li pÅ™ikrýt, aby se nÄ›co neumazalo, až asi po dlouhé čtvrthodinÄ›, kdy Pavel ležel na zemi s obrovským nafouklým bÅ™ichem, ho pÅ™ikryli nÄ›jakým rudým hadrem! Druhý den se jelo do Prahy a já sedÄ›l v autobuse na jeho pÅ™edním sedadle, pÅ™ed sebou na ramínku jeho civilní Å¡aty s kravatou, kterou jsem si nechal na památku. Byl jsem pověřen upravit pro Bayerleho pohÅ™eb smÄ›s jeho písní (O nás dvou, PříbÄ›h naší lásky a Pohádka a sen). PÅ™i této smÄ›si, kterou jsme s orchestrem hráli, lidé začali plakat.
Zdraví Petr Fink

On the heels of the announcement that he is a 2009 Kennedy Center honoree, Dave Brubeck wrapped up a rare extended club engagement, part of his latest western tour. Sunday, at the helm of the “new” edition of the quartet he has headed since 1951, the 88-year-old pianist and composer played to a packed house for the final set of a four-night engagement at Seattle’s Jazz Alley.

Brubeck has come a long way in his recovery from a viral infection that put him out of action last spring. In conversation earlier in the day, he mentioned lingering tiredness and discomfort in his hands. Neither was apparent that night. Weariness dropped away after he made his greeting announcement and settled onto the bench for “C-Jam Blues,” initiating a Duke Ellington medley. To some listeners who live in the past, the Brubeck Quartet will always be the one with alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, bassist Eugene Wright and drummer Joe Morello. That group disbanded in 1967. Desmond has been dead since 1977. The new quartet is not new. Drummer Randy Jones has been with Brubeck for 30 years, saxophonist Bobby Militello 28, bassist Michael Moore a mere nine.

Renowned for pieces he has written, Brubeck didn’t get around to playing any of them until he and the band entertained one another and the audience with the Ellington medley and a couple of great American song book items. He slid from his spare solo on the blues into “Mood Indigo” and segued from there to “Take the ‘A’ Train,” a central part of the quartet’s repertoire since his Jazz Goes To College days of the 1950s. At Jazz Alley, the vigor of Militello’s attack and uses of key modulations distinguished a solo that set Moore up for the first of three solos in which he used the bow to virtuosic effect that seemed to rivet Brubeck, Militello and Jones. Throughout the evening, the band listened intently to one another, exchanging smiles and glances at meaningful moments. It is an endearing characteristic of this group; without wearing their regard on their sleeves, they don’t mind letting it be obvious that they dig each other. The attentiveness and fellow feeling rub off on the audience.

“‘A’ Train” cooked along on Militello’s energetic solo, gained steam with the riff figures Brubeck set up and came to an abrupt conclusion with a Jones drum tag that could not have been more definite. Then came a staple from Brubeck’s fund of cherished standards, “These Foolish Things. ” He opened it with an unaccompanied chorus into which he managed to fit the “She may get weary, women do get weary” phrase from “Try a Little Tenderness.” That unlikely interpolation clearly surprised and amused Moore. Brubeck began “Stormy Weather” alone, melding into a steady 4/4 left-hand swing that set up Militello for a couple of choruses that disclosed the blues core Harold Arlen put into the song.

The only Brubeck composition of the evening came halfway through the set. It was “Dziekuje (Thank You),” which he wrote in gratitude to Poland for giving the world Chopin. His playing was soft almost to the edge of silence, and he built intensity in his solo not through volume but through development of the piece’s exquisite chords. Militello elevated the concentration of feeling, then the quartet brought the piece back to earth. Next, were they really going to play “Melancholy Baby?” No. That was just Brubeck’s eccentric choice of a few bars to introduce another song that’s almost as old. “Margie” (1920), as modern jazz players as various as Jimmy Rowles and Miles Davis knew, has great chords to blow on, and that’s what the quartet did, with Moore delivering a stunning pizzicato solo.

Brubeck must have heard thousands of drum solos on Desmond’s “Take Five” since the first one by Morello in 1959. But after he and Militello worked out on the tune and Jones began developing chorus after chorus in his solo, Brubeck leaned forward on the piano and paid attention to Jones’s permutations, now smiling, now nodding agreement at some variation. It was a fine solo. Brubeck absorbed it. His concentration on the music, his enjoyment of that moment, spoke volumes about what keeps him going in the fullness of his ninth decade.

Following a huge response to “Take Five,” Brubeck told the crowd, “I’m tired and I want to go to bed,” and so the quartet’s encore was “Show Me The Way To Go Home.” They made the most of the song’s earthy chord structure and got another standing ovation. Brubeck waved good night, stepped out the 6th Avenue door of Jazz Alley into a waiting car and went off to bed. In the morning, he and the band were driving across the state, headed toward the next one-nighter

Jessica Williams, The Art Of The Piano (Origin). Williams’ 2800-word liner essay declares renewed and deepened love for the piano and rededicated independence from the strictures and orthodoxies of the music establishment. She cites an internet video clip of Glenn Gould playing Bach as “…a life-altering event” that took her back to “…a music founded on the purity and clarity and infinite tonal colorations of the piano itself.” Those are qualities I have never found missing from her work, but for strength, serenity and pianism in all of its aspects, this concert at The Triple Door in Seattle reaches the heights of any solo performance I have heard from her.
Williams pays exquisite attention to harmonic color, touch, and the uses of time in a program of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” (here called “First Gymnopédie”), John Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament,” and five original compositions. When it was in the development stage in a previous recording, she referred to “Love and Hate” as “my step into the next zone.” This version is more settled at the same time that it is more adventurous in thematic development, with contrasting moods and massive, almost symphonic, harmonic structures. Music being multi-dimensional, she still also occupies a more earth-bound zone. She opens the CD rocking, perhaps nostalgically, in a good old blues in G. “Triple Door Blues” incorporates passages in which Williams uses strings and hammers but not keys, and others that refer to the spirit and four-square swing of Erroll Garner.
“Esperanza” sounds as Spanish as its name. It has deep voicings that might have been written by Granados or Rodrigo, and dance rhythms redolent of Central and South America. A recurring phrase in “Elaine” hints at love songs of more than half a century ago, but the piece opens into a thoroughly modern ballad. “Diane” is another original ballad in which Williams’ delicacy of touch is a central element even as she builds intensity. In the Satie “Gymnopédie No. 1,” a Bill Evans influence on Williams’ interpretation is one color among many. Others are the blues and a brief Satie-like use of the pentatonic scale as in Japanese music. I know of no performance in which a jazz musician has explored the piece more thoroughly.
“Prophets” has the feeling of Coltrane in his late mystical period, with hypnotic modal figures in the left hand and flawlessly executed flourishes on top. Williams does not paint Coltrane’s “Lonnie’s Lament” with the melancholy he gave it as the final movement of his 1964 album Crescent. Still, she subtracts nothing of the piece’s air of profound reflection and brings to it buoyancy that may be an indication of her new state of mind. She seems to have stepped fully into that next zone.

Stefon Harris And Blackout, Urbanus (Concord). Harris is one of the brightest legatees of the vibraphone tradition glorified by Milt Jackson and such of his successors as Walt Dickerson, Cal Tjader and Bobby Hutcherson. The Jackson school played an important part in Harris’s development as a soloist. But, born in 1973, he came to maturity in the 1990s and is under the spell of not only bebop but also the pop culture of his time. The music he grew up with included gospel and R&B, standard inspirations for jazz musicians for decades. Harris was affected, too, by go-go, a funk offshoot that influenced early hip-hop; hip-hop itself; soul music; rap; and influences as diverse as Radiohead, Stravinksy and Stevie Wonder. The musicians in Harris’s band, Blackout, are roughly his age. They think no more in categories than he does and wish to use their music to reach a generation of young people who are likely to find jazz too complex, too intellectual, too fuddy-duddy–the music of their parents and grandparents.
Grabbing the youngsters is an admirable goal, one that relates to web log discussions flaring up in the wake of a National Endowment for the Arts finding that the future of jazz is in danger because its presumed primary audience is aging. (For an interesting development in that contretemps, see fellow artsjournal.com blogger Howard Mandel, who is conducting a public experiment.) No matter how effectively Harris captures his target audience–and I hope he does–for serious listeners of any age the music is what matters. In Urbanus, there is much to like, not least Harris’s rich arrangements for ensembles that expand his quintet to a medium-sized band. Harris’s basic crew is alto saxophonist and vocorderist Casey Benjamin, bassist Ben Williams, drummer Terreon Gully, and Marc Cary, who plays piano, electric piano and assorted other keyboards.
As we have come to expect of him, Harris’s playing is brilliant on both vibes and marimba. I keep going back to his quintet exposition of “Minor March,” Jackie McLean’s great contrafact on “Love Me or Leave Me.” High points: Harris’s quicksilver soloing, his compelling stop-time arrangement, Gully’s not-quite-military drumming during what in another era might have been called a shout chorus, and an ending that brings the tune and the listener up short. There are riveting tempo, time and chord changes in Harris’s “Blues For Denial,” with heated improvisation by Harris and Cary. Working from and beyond the Gil Evans arrangement for Miles Davis, Harris takes Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess anthem “Gone Gone Gone” into funk territory with splashes of electronic keyboards ameliorated by skillful voicings for flutes and reeds.
The vocorder is described in the Urban Dictionary as “An electronic device used to alter the voice. Typically used by talentless ‘musicians’ to try and sound like they can sing.” That is unfair, since its most celebrated user is Stevie Wonder, who is generally credited with being able to sing. Herbie Hancock and Joe Zawinul have also put the vocorder to good, if excessive, use. Benjamin uses it on Buster Williams’s “Christina,” a ballad so gorgeous that it would survive nearly any treatment. He also plays it on Wonder’s “They Won’t Go (When I Go)” and “For You,” a ballad Benjamin co-composed with Sameet Gupta. I would just as soon have heard him play alto sax on those pieces; with continued exposure the vocorder’s campy charm recedes. The soulfulness of Benjamin’s saxophone commenatary over the ensemble on the concluding “Langston’s Lullaby” is a bright facet of the album.
Harris melds his influences tastefully, employing pop elements to attract but not pander to his generation and maintaining substance for experienced jazz listeners. It could be a step toward getting both audiences to ditch labels and think of music as–music.

News flash: Johann Sebastian Bach may have been ahead of his time.
Eric Altschuler, a Bach researcher for more than a decade, was a guest today on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition Sunday. He discussed with host Liane Hansen his proposition that Bach used a twelve-tone row a couple of centuries before Arnold Schoenberg revolutionized 20th century music with the device and, I might add, about 250 years before Ornette Coleman employed the atonal row in jazz. To hear the Altschuler interview, complete with musical examples, click on the single arrow in the player below.

There are countless recordings of The Well-Tempered Clavier. For years, I’ve been fascinated with the interpretations by the young Andras Schiff of Book 1 and Book 2.
If you’re interested in going into Bach beyond listening, a recent book by the Canadian musicologist Marjorie Wornell Engells examines the musical language and emotional dimension of The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I suppose you could go through life without learning to love Bach, but I wouldn’t advise it.

Listening to the Art Pepper CDs for the new batch of recommendations in Doug’s Picks (center column) stimulated memories of time spent with Pepper not long before he died. The occasion was the basis of an article in Texas Monthly. Later, in slightly different form, it ended up as part of a chapter in Jazz Matters. Here it is as a bonus post–or as a marketing ploy for a twenty-year-old book that manages to stay in print–or as an excuse to show you an unusual picture.

Art Pepper’s Last Chorus
1982
Art Pepper had been quiet and a little sad all evening. But he grinned at the irony of posing for the Polaroid photographer in the Bourbon Street Jail. San Quentin was on his mind. He and his wife, Laurie, were in New Orleans on a book-plugging tour, and everywhere they went he was asked about the years he had spent in prison on a narcotics conviction. What evolved into his autobiography, Straight Life, began as a series of cathartic tape recordings in which Pepper told Laurie everything he could recall about his unremittingly broken life. His memory was comprehensive, and he spared himself and his readers nothing.
Pepper’s merchant seaman father was twenty-nine and his mother was fifteen when they were married. He was rarely at home after Pepper was born, and she was often drunk. Pepper learned to play the clarinet at nine, the alto saxophone at twelve. At seventeen, he had played in the bands of Gus Arnheim and Benny Carter and was working with Stan Kenton. After two years in the Army, he freelanced around Los Angeles, then rejoined Kenton in 1947. His reputation as a brilliant and original saxophonist became established.
By 1950, when he was twenty-five, Pepper was a veteran of the military, big bands, alcohol, pills and pot. That was the year he became addicted to heroin. He was first sent to jail on a narcotics conviction in 1953. From then until 1966 he spent more time in prison than out. After a short period of rehabilitation, during which he played with Buddy Rich’s band, Pepper reached the depths. Sick almost literally unto death, in 1969 he checked himself into Synanon. There he met Laurie, who, along with methadone maintenance, proved to be therapy and salvation. He resumed playing and recording, and he regarded himself with wary realism. “I’m a junkie. And that’s what I will die as–a junkie.”
His account of the hell of his struggle with heroin puts into miraculous relief the beauty of his artistic achievement. From a childhood of rejection and neglect, Pepper had taken into manhood the only trustworthy and stable element he was to know in his first fifty years. Not until he met Laurie did he have another reliable anchor.
Pepper’s expressiveness on alto saxophone has deepened and broadened, and his recordings after 1976 have been acclaimed as his finest. Finally lauded worldwide as a master soloist, he was, in his cautious way, basking in the recognition and the star treatment. At dinner, between waves of his customary reticence, Pepper allowed that his playing was at a keen edge he had been seeking for years. He said that at last he was often able to accept his performances. It’s a nice memory of Art Pepper. At a sparkling table under the old ceiling fans at Arnaud’s with the woman who helped him gain control of his life, he was content and smiling.
In June, he died shortly after suffering a stroke as he sat at their breakfast table chatting with Laurie. He was fifty-six.

For excerpts from Laurie Pepper’s memoir-in-progress, go here.

Eddie Higgins died yesterday of lung cancer. Those who knew him called him by his given name, Haydn. He was a pianist of uncommon sensitivity, taste, subtlety and adaptability. He was equally accomplished and enthusiastic working with singers (his wife is Meredith d’Ambrosio), traditional bands (he unabashedly enjoyed the Sacramento Jazz Jubilee) and fiery young bebop lions (he wrote “Expoobident” for Lee Morgan and played on Morgan’s album of that name).
His admirer and sometime colleague Ben Riley, the drummer, said, “Eddie Higgins is on the same level of excellence as Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan and the other grand masters of modern jazz piano.” There is evidence on this CD with Riley and bassist Ray Drummond. Higgins worked about as much as he wished to, but was less well known in the United States than in Japan, where American jazz pianists are adored and Higgins had special standing. The Japanese summoned him frequently for tours and he recorded prolifically for the Japanese market. Some of the CDs he made for the Venus label are becoming available in the US; see this item in Doug’s Picks.
There is surprisingly little of Higgins on video. This clip from the 2007 Sacramento festival gives an idea of his quiet, engaging ways and an appreciation of the harmonic life he breathed into everything he played.

Eddie Higgins, RIP

Ronan Guilfoyle is an Irish jazz musician and educator whose blog, Mostly Music, probes issues that concern working musicians as well as academics in institutions where jazz is taught. Those are often the same people. Increasingly, professional jazz players also teach in jazz schools. In part, that is because they need day gigs to support themselves; it should be unnecessary to convince anyone that for all but a handful of stars, there is little steady employment playing jazz. In part, it is because they are dedicated to an educational ideal, helping young musicians develop.
In a recent post titled “In Defence of Jazz Education”, Guilfoyle begins his essay by attributing to “the jazz media” three common criticisms of jazz education. However much one might like to duck it, his scattershot indictment of jazz writers bears enough justification to be taken seriously. Guilfoyle characterizes his triumverate of ignorant assertions as “knee jerk attacks.”

1) Jazz education turns all who partake of it into clones.
2) The proof of jazz education’s failure is the fact that though there are more practitioners than ever before the percentage of great players hasn’t got any higher.
3) What is the point of turning out jazz graduates when there are no gigs?

In discussing the clone argument, Guilfoyle writes:

What a lot of critics forget about is that most high level jazz school courses are staffed and run by professional jazz musicians. These are musicians who deal with the realities of playing the music, and who are aware of the skills necessary to survive in the professional milieu. And it is largely these same musicians who decide the curricula for the schools – not some faceless bureaucrat. So the information that is provided is largely that body of information which professional musicians agree are basic prerequisites for a life as a professional jazz musician. This basic information – harmonic, technical and rhythmic as well as repertoire – is generally agreed by most professionals to be part of the essential toolkit of the contemporary jazz musician.
Yet the writer James Lincoln Collier says:
‘With students all over the United States being taught more or less the same harmonic principles, it is hardly surprising that their solos tend to sound much the same. It is important for us to understand that many of the most influential players developed their own personal harmonic schemes, very frequently because they had little training in theory and were forced to find it their own way.’
So – there we have it, the noble savage syndrome – for the sake of your creativity and originality it’s better to have no training. It’s hard to know where to start with the refutation of an argument this stupid. It’s like suggesting that if you want to become a writer it would be better to to be illiterate and figure out the rules of English yourself, rather than go to school and be taught how to read, how spelling, grammar and syntax work, and being directed towards great writing of the past. Yet this is the bizarre subtext of much of the criticism of jazz education – in order to be creative and original it’s better to be uneducated. But though these writers idealise the self-taught musicians of the past, how many of these same jazz greats would have taken advantage of educational institutions had they been available to them? Most I’d say. And if they had, would it have stifled their creativity? Would Coltrane have sounded like a thousand other saxophonists if he’d gone to a jazz school? To suggest that he would have is to deny his innate genius and originality.

To read all of “In Defence of Jazz Education” and more of Ronan Guilfoyle’s stimulating views, click here.

Jack Brownlow has been dead nearly two years, but stories about him keep surfacing. Among his other attributes, the pianist was admired for his harmonic ingenuity, chord placement, taste and timing in accompanying instrumentalists and vocalists. At Brownlow’s memorial service in the fall of 2007, drummer Phil Snyder told several stories about his musical adventures with the man known to his friends as Bruno. He forgot to tell one, though, and sent it to share with Rifftides readers.

As you know, Bruno could play anything in any key. He knew the lyrics to almost every standard song. If they asked him, he also coached singers and advised them how to be better. That combination helped make him a singer’s dream piano player. But he hated to do it if they weren’t good.

One summer day in the ’70’s, he was in bassist Jim Anderson’s living room accompanying a singer who had stopped by to perform for Jack and consult with him about improving himself. When I walked in, Jack and the singer were in the middle of “On a Clear Day,” so I quietly sank into the beanbag chair in the corner facing the piano. The man singing was someone I had never heard or seen, a handsome guy with dark skin and curly hair nicely coifed. He had a Latin accent. He sang as if he were every woman’s desire, though there weren’t any women in the room, just Bruno and me. The singer used a lot of arm and hand gestures. He was facing the piano and couldn’t see me, but Bruno and I had eye contact.

This guy’s singing was terrible. Bruno was embarrassed and wouldn’t look at me. He turned his head to the left and faced the wall away from the singer. Bruno played no choruses. Finally, “On A Clear Day” was over. Bruno fiddled with the music on top of the piano. After uncomfortable silence, the singer asked him, “What do you think?” Bruno said nothing. “Let’s try something else,” the singer said.” “How about ‘Have You Met Miss Jones?”‘

Reluctantly, Bruno played an introduction and the singing began. It was a terrible rendition, with mispronunciations and scrambled phrasing. Finally, that was over, too. “Let’s do one more,” the singer pleaded. “Let’s do a ballad.” Bruno looked at me and rolled his eyes. With excitement, the singer said, “‘My Funny Valentine?’ Do you know that one Mr. Brownlow?” Bruno nodded. The singer launched into it and gave rubato a whole new meaning. Finally, “Valentine” was over. Bruno sighed and stood up.

“Well, Mr. Brownlow…what do you think?”

Bruno didn’t say anything. He briefly looked at me, and started to shuffle the music on the piano again.

“Mr. Brownlow? What do you think about my singing? “Do you think I have a great voice?”

Bruno had a difficult time telling an untruth about anything musical. At the same time, he didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Finally, he looked at the man and said, “Great voice? No, I wouldn’t say you had a great voice. It needs some work.”

“How about my pitch?”

Still shuffling papers, Bruno stood up, then sat down again.

“Your pitch?”

“Yes! My pitch. You know…am I singing in tune?”

Again an uncomfortable pause. “In tune? No, not exactly. You could
work on that, actually.”

The singer was getting disturbed.

“How about my, how do you musicians put it, my swinging? Am I swinging? I think I was swinging.”

I was sitting behind the piano trying to keep quiet and not break up. Bruno was starting to sweat, which I’d never seen him do before.

“Swinging?” he said.

“Yes, yes, yes. You must understand swinging. Was I swinging?”

Silence. Bruno looked again at me. Quietly, every quietly, Bruno said, “A little bit.” He paused. Actually, I wouldn’t say that. Not swinging…not exactly swinging. No. I’d have to say no on that.”

The singer was upset. Bruno was clutching a bunch of music in his arms as if to protect himself from blows. I was lying back on the beanbag chair, but not comfortably. The room was very tense. Finally, the singer, who at this point was pacing back and forth, mumbled forcefully.

“Now wait a minute. Let me get this straight. You said I don’t have a good voice. Isn’t that right?”

Bruno looked away. “Well, that might be overstat… ”

“And then you said that my pitch was wrong, that I was out of tune. Right?”

“Well, I didn’t put it quite that way, but yes…”

“Then Mr. Brownlow, you said that I am not swinging at all. Isn’t that also what you said?”

Bruno, now terrified about what this guy was going to do next, tried to ease his pain.

“Well, well, a little bit of swinging, I suppose…toward the end there…”

“STOP!” said the singer.

Again there was uncomfortable, really uncomfortable, silence in the room. Bruno didn’t move. I didn’t move. The singer quit pacing, looked at Bruno and said,

“I come here to sing for you and for you to judge my singing. You tell me that my voice is bad, my pitch is bad, and my rhythm is bad. What else is there?”

Again, there was a pause. Bruno was trying to find something positive to say. Finally, he blurted,

“Your posture is EXCELLENT!”

For more on Jack Brownlow, go here and here.

If I had known of Ethan Iverson’s conversation with Lee Konitz about Lester Young, I would have included a link to it in the previous exhibit. On his blog, Do The Math, Iverson, the pianist and polymath of The Bad Plus, posts what amounts to a Prez master class with Konitz. The alto saxophonist has been intimately familiar for more than sixty years with Young’s early work, so familiar–it turns out–that as he and Iverson listened to the recordings, he could sing along with most of Prez’s classic solos from the Count Basie years.
Here is part of their discussion after they had listened to Lester’s solo on “Twelfth Street Rag.”

Lee sang this longish, fastish solo impeccably. He looked quite sad at the end.
LK: How can you talk about these jewels? Each one seems better than the next. Ethan, why are you exploring Lester Young now?
EI: I’m trying to fill in some holes in my playing. But also, the more I listen to Lester Young, the more I hear how amazing he is.
LK: Same thing here. I love him more all the time.
EI: This tune is corny, in a way, but they make it so hip.
LK: When you can play like this, the material becomes almost less important – it’s just a springboard for pure improvisation and pure music.

Iverson includes in his blog piece transcriptions of Young solos and MP3 players that allow the reader to hear them. Unfortunately, the only way I could hear and see them at the same time was to open two copies of the blog and position them side by side on the screen. It is worth the effort. Even if you are not a skilled sight reader, it is fascinating to follow along on the manuscript as Prez unrolls his creations. To go to Do The Math and Iverson’s comprehensive 10-part Lester Young symposium with Lee Konitz, click here.
Here is a final thought about Lester Young–for today, at least. It comes from the late tenor saxophonist Bill Perkins and has to do with Prez’s subtle trailblazing harmonic approach. It suggests a lineage that may surprise conventional thinkers. When I spoke with him in 1996 as I prepared notes for his superb CD Perk Plays Prez, Perkins said:

Harmonically, Prez was getting outside, in his way. In “Taxi War Dance,” for instance, he gets into a whole different mode, scale-wise. He was the first man I knew to use, rather than third scales and triads, fourths and fifths and big jumps. I can’t think of another player who did that. Everybody does it now, but he was unique with that. Bix Beiderbecke used some very interesting jumps in his melodies–big jumps–and his sound was beautiful. I think that might have had an influence. Prez loved Bix.

Lester Young was born 100 years ago today and died in his 49th year in March, 1959. Billie Holiday called him the president of the tenor saxophonists. His nickname became Prez, and he called nearly everyone else Prez. There is an endless list of musicians who played as they did mostly because of Young. It includes soloists as various as Parker, Artie Shaw, Paul Quinichette, Paul Desmond, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon and Brew Moore, to name a few of hundreds. Moore carried his discipleship so far as to declare, “Anyone who doesn’t play like Lester Young is wrong.”
Among Lester’s stylistic children are virtually all of the Brothers who came through the Woody Herman band, starting with the tenor players of the first Four Brothers section–Zoot Sims, Stan Getz and Herbie Steward–and continuing with Al Cohn, Bill Perkins, Gene Ammons, Richie Kamuca, Dick Hafer, and on and on and on. No one could count the grandchildren and great-grandchildren because Young’s inheritors are players of all instruments, whether or not they are aware of their gifts from him. His way of playing is part of the lingua franca of jazz.
Here are a few observations in a book I wrote called Jazz Matters:

In the early 1930s, Lester Young was removed from the Fletcher Henderson band for not playing like Coleman Hawkins. But from his first recordings with Count Basie in 1936, Young’s lightness, buoyancy, rhythmic daring and harmonic subtlety established him as a hero of forward-looking musicians. He provided an evolutionary step between Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker in the freeing of the jazz soloist from the arbitrary restrictions of time divisions. In his solos, Young flew weightlessly over bar lines. He saw deeply into chord changes. He helped lay the rhythmic and harmonic keystones of bebop.

Young was drafted in 1944, even though he was in bad health and admitted he had used marijuana for the past decade. The Army confiscated his horn, refused to let him play in the camp band, and later arrested him on drug charges. He was dishonorably discharged, but first he was imprisoned for ten months at an Army base in Georgia, an experience with devastating emotional consequences. In spite of his experience in the military, his attempts to recover from its dehumanizing effects, and his efforts to build his own withdrawn world of sweetness and love, Young was capable of playing tenor sax with inventiveness, relaxation and swing never achieved by any other jazz soloist.

Although Louis Armstrong may have been the first soloist to erase bar lines and smooth out jazz improvisation with long, logical, flowing passages, Prez is the man who brought total relaxation to the process and yet managed at the same time to extend the boundaries of rhythmic propulsion. No one had ever done more swinging while creating beautiful ideas.

YouTube does not allow us to embed their video of Lester as featured soloist with the Basie Band at the Randall’s Island jazz festival in 1938. He is in the silent film but the sound track dubbed in is one of his great solos with Basie on “I Got Rhythm” chord changes. Click here to see and hear him.
Toward the end of his life, Young’s oblique approach to melodies and his ultra-relaxed rhythm could create the impression that he was having trouble finding his way. To the contrary, his habit of lagging behind the beat was the product of assurance and of comfort with his surroundings. There are wonderful instances of that in this new compilation of latterday Lester. But there is no more memorable example than in his 1957 reunion with Billie Holiday, whose deep friendship and musical empathy with Young went back to the 1930s. Creating just twelve uncomplicated bars of music, Prez finds the essence of beauty and the blues. This is the famous “Fine and Mellow” from the 1957 CBS-TVprogram The Sound of Jazz. Ben Webster has the first tenor saxophone solo, Lester the second.

In the e-mail today came yet another news release using one of the favorite clichés of record company publicists. It announced the release of “the sophomore album” of a young saxophonist. A sophomore is a second-year student at a high school, college or university. You could look it up. The word is not a synonym for “second.” The saxophonist’s fourth release, I presume, will be his senior album, the fifth his post-graduate album, the sixth his post-doctoral album.
Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is still available. Their 12th principle of composition is, “Use definite, specific, concrete language.” Please.
This concludes today’s rant.

The world may have known about it, but I just stumbled upon a rich cache of Elis Regina video clips on YouTube. They come from a 1973 Brazilian television special. The program seems to have been available on a DVD that quickly disappeared from the market. Amazon, CD Universe, Netflix and several other sources say it is currently unavailable and, according to Amazon, “we don’t know when or if this item will be back in stock.” That is a pity, because in the clips Regina, at age 28, is brilliant in every song, giving clear evidence why she was beloved in Brazil and idolized by singers and musicians throughout the world.
The video of “Ladeira da Preguiça,” a happy song, is a good introduction to the series of 20 clips. They run the range of emotions and expressivity that Regina commanded to an extent equaled by few musicians in any idiom. The trio is headed by pianist Cesar Camargo Mariano, her second husband and the father of her daughter Maria Rita, now also a star in Brazil. The bassist and drummer are not identified. Elis Regina died in 1982 at the age of 36.

This is a link to the complete Elis Regina YouTube collection from the TV special. Be prepared to fall in love.

Browsing the works of my fellow artsjournal.com bloggers this morning, I discovered in his blog Overflow a piece by Harvey Sachs that illuminates the condition of American popular culture in the new century. Mr. Sachs, the distinguished biographer of Arturo Toscanini and Artur Rubinstein, recently repatriated to the US after decades overseas. He posted this item nearly two months ago, but it has a long shelf life. Here is an excerpt:

I had heard of Michael Jackson, knew that he was an entertainer — knew, even, that he was odd looking and that he had a sister who had bared a breast, accidentally or otherwise, before the television cameras during some sort of sporting event. (None of my friends in Europe, where I was living at the time, could understand why this had created a scandal. “Was her breast ugly?” was the closest any of them, male or female, could come to fathoming the issue.) What I did not know, however, was that at some point during my long absence from the country this Jackson fellow had replaced Jesus Christ as the primary object of worship for most Americans.
Fortunately, I was traveling in the Midwest from Friday until Tuesday morning, thus I had the incredible privilege of taking in an enormous quantity of television “news” in hotel lobbies and breakfast rooms, in restaurants, and in a few private homes. My imagination was fired by the rare chance to see how the early prophets of a new religion manipulate the masses. And on Saturday, when I realized what was about to happen, I began to tremble all over.

To read the whole thing, click here.
Welcome back to the United States, Mr. Sachs.