{"id":5029,"date":"2013-08-26T15:59:22","date_gmt":"2013-08-26T22:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/?p=5029"},"modified":"2013-08-26T22:47:45","modified_gmt":"2013-08-27T05:47:45","slug":"other-places-de-barros-and-mcpartland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/rifftides\/2013\/08\/other-places-de-barros-and-mcpartland\/","title":{"rendered":"Other Places: de Barros And McPartland"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/a>A week after her death at\"McP<\/a> 95, Marian McPartland is still on my mind. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be there for a long time. In his biography of the pianist published earlier this year, Shall We Play That One Together?<\/em><\/a> Paul de Barros did a splendid job of blending the facets of McPartland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s personality. He contrasts her famous elegance and charm with determination and crudeness never evident on Piano Jazz<\/em>, the radio program that made her famous. As de Barros tells it in a Seattle Times<\/em> blog post, getting Marian\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s confidence and trust was a long and often frustrating process. Here is an excerpt:<\/p>\n

On the radio, Marian is self-deprecating, gracious and genteel, but in person she could be imperious, demanding, highly critical \u00e2\u20ac\u201c sometimes even derisive and mean \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and certainly not shy about sharing what was on her mind. Her conversational style was combative. If she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a good answer, she would offer a clever quip instead, or answer questions with questions. She was particularly vague about dates \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a biographer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nightmare \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and when I would press her, she would argue, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Does it really matter?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or if she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know a precise date, she would sometimes just make one up. In published interviews, she had variously said she moved to New York in 1949, 1950 and 1951. I explained that writing a biography without dates was like playing a tune without the chord changes. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the map, Marian, the timeline is the map.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d But she honestly didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I never knew when I did all these things I would be required to remember them,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she complained sarcastically.<\/p>\n

Marian also had the habit of correcting my pronunciation. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Dee-lius,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she jeered, when I first mistakenly called her favorite composer \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dell-ioos,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d After two weeks of such browbeating, I was so frustrated I was ready to abandon the project altogether and fly home.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

de Barros stayed around. McP came around. The resulting book is one of the best of all jazz biographies. To read Paul\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s account of what it took to make it work, go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then come back and listen to McPartland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 1956 recording of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I Could Write a Book\u00e2\u20ac\u009d with Bill Crow on bass and Joe Morello on drums.<\/p>\n