Thursday, November 30, 2017

Albert Murray - "Stomping The Blues" - 40th Anniversary Edition

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


"Murray is possessed of the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling."
—The New Yorker


"Beautifully illustrated with vivid period photos, LP covers, and broadsides of black jazz icons, Stomping the Blues represents the zenith of Murray's writing on the subject."
— Rolling Stone


"One fine lyrical history of the music. Murray demonstrates the central role of blues/jazz in American culture, telling us about the nature of our past, present and future: which of course is exactly what the blues is."
—San Francisco Review of Books


"A flamboyant, insightful examination and evocation of the sources, styles, and mythologies of blues music."
—Newsweek


Jonathan Haidt is a NYU professor of social psychology who specializes in morality and moral emotions.


On November 15th he delivered the 2017 Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute under the title -  “The Age of Outrage: What It’s Doing to Our Universities and Our Country.”


Professor Haidt began his lecture by observing:


“Today’s identity politics . . . teaches the exact opposite of what we think a liberal arts education should be. When I was at Yale in the 1980s, I was given so many tools for understanding the world.


By the time I graduated, I could think about things as a utilitarian or as a Kantian, as a Freudian or a behaviorist, as a computer scientist or as a humanist. I was given many lenses to apply to any given question or problem.


But what do we do now? Many students are given just one lens—power. Here’s your lens, kid. Look at everything through this lens. Everything is about power. Every situation is analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people.


This is not an education. This is induction into a cult. It’s a fundamentalist religion. It’s a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety and intellectual impotence.”


In recent years, Jazz, too, has been afflicted by the Cult of the Single Lens which preaches that Jazz was created by Black musicians and appropriated by White musicians. Some go as far as saying that Jazz as a Black Art was stolen by White impersonators.


Those who hold this viewpoint have promulgated a distorted version of the facts that was shaped by ideas that were ideological before they were musical.


But to many scholars, it is beyond dispute that white musicians have been an integral force in jazz from its earliest days. Above all, they maintain that the idea of Jazz as an exclusively black cultural preserve does not stand up to close scrutiny.


Such matters have been loudly argued, even fought over, and doubtless will continue to be hot subjects for some time to come.


More relevant is the question of the music: Does any evidence support the idea of identifiable "black" and "white" styles? Did it ever?


As Richard Sudhalter points out in his seminal Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945:


“In the early years of Jazz’s evolution, particularly in the 1920s and '30s, there were differences. They came about chiefly because musicians of different races were separated in their day-to-day and professional lives. And it was separately that black and white musicians grappled with the same problems of rhythm, harmony, melodic construction, interaction.


Some of his more extreme views may make Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones) an unlikely source of valuable insight into such matters. Yet he seems right on target when he remarks, in Blues People: Negro Music in White America:


“Jazz as played by white musicians was not the same as that played by black musicians, nor was there any reason for it to be. The music of the white jazz musicians did not issue from the same cultural circumstances.”


In the context of the early years, the distinction is important. Differences in upbringing, environment, and musical training left white jazzmen (especially those who had little personal contact with black culture and its traditions) more likely to intellectualize, emphasizing matters of harmony and structure.


Performances by black ensembles, above all those of the South and Southwest, possessed, in general, a degree of rhythmic freedom, personal interaction, and often a blues feeling and melodic vocabulary rarely found in music by corresponding white bands. Again, Baraka gets it right:


“The white musicians understood the blues first as music, but seldom as an attitude, since the attitude, or world-view, the white musician was responsible to was necessarily quite a different one.”


But, along with other scholars who follow this line of reasoning, he fails to account for those many major black Jazzmen who feel, and display, little or no affinity for the blues and its "attitude." The exceptions they present, in their very numbers, are a counterargument, which cannot be explained, as Baraka tries to do, only as a matter of "Negroes trying to pretend that they had issued from [white] culture."


More likely, it seems, is an interpretation suggesting that mastery of what came to be called Jazz was not a matter of racial or genetic affinity (always a dangerous hypothesis) but of choice.”


As has been widely demonstrated in Richard Sudhalter’s Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945, Jazzmen of the pre-World War II decades, black and white, paid careful attention to each other's work, and that the degree to which such mutuality affected individuals varied immensely.


As he states: “Beginning in the 1920’s, individual musicians and ensembles made choices based on what they liked, even admired, incorporating the results in their emergent solo styles. Choice, above all, quickly became the determinant of what and how a man played, how he constructed and developed a solo, addressed the beat. In this context, as noted earlier, certain traits — tendencies and attitudes — can be identified as "white" and "black" contributions to the mix.”


One such “choice” or to revert back to Professor Haidt’s use of the term “lens” is the use of The Blues as a basis for a musician’s approach to Jazz.
[“I was given many lenses to apply to any given question or problem.”]


And since it was first published in 1977, there has been no better description of how Jazzmen who chose The Blues as a lens through which to solve the problems of rhythm, harmony, melodic construction, and interaction needed to play Jazz at the highest levels than Albert Murray’s Stomping The Blues.


If you missed its original publication, the University of Minnesota Press is currently offering a 40th anniversary paperback edition with a new introduction by Murray-scholar, Paul Devlin.


The following from a University of Minnesota media release is very accurate concerning the tone and tenor of Murray’s landmark study of the blues and its relationship to Jazz:


In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that "the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits, but in the process of doing so it is actually expected to generate a disposition that is both elegantly playful and heroic in its nonchalance."


In Stomping the Blues Murray explores its history, influences, development, and meaning as only he can. More than two hundred vintage photographs capture the ambiance Murray evokes in lyrical prose. Only the sounds are missing from this lyrical, sensual tribute to the blues.”


To carry Professor Haidt’s lens analogy one step further, a reading of Albert Murray’s Stomping the Blues will certainly provide the reader with some clearer views to understand these assertions from Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones) in Blues People: Negro Music in White America:


“Jazz as played by white musicians was not the same as that played by black musicians, nor was there any reason for it to be. The music of the white jazz musicians did not issue from the same cultural circumstances.”


“The white musicians understood the blues first as music, but seldom as an attitude, since the attitude, or world-view, the white musician was responsible to was necessarily quite a different one.”


It’s one thing to say The Blues, but it’s quite another to understand what is meant by it.


Since it publication 40 years ago, Stomping the Blues has been influential in a number of ways as is detailed in Paul Devlin’s new introduction to the 40th anniversary edition.


Perhaps one of the most helpful insights about what Mr. Murray means by The Blues is contained in the opening paragraph of Mr. Devlin’s Introduction:


"’For Paul, Some fundamentals.’ That is how Albert Murray inscribed my copy of Stomping the Blues. Here is one of his most fundamental points: "You don't stomp the blues like this [pounds fist on table] — you stomp the blues like this [snaps with panache on the afterbeat]." Murray used this example all the time in interviews and on panels in order to illustrate that the blues is "stomped" with elegance, not force; with technique, not power; with joie de vivre, not rage.”


Mr. Devlin’s Introduction also contains many other perceptive and penetrating observations about the book that will help the reader gain a fuller appreciation of its significance. For example, Mr. Murray tells us that:


“Blues music has always been good-time music; its function has been the exorcism of despair."


Mr. Devlin parallel’s this with the work of Andre Malraux when he explains:


“To an extent, this is an application of Andre’ Malraux's argument about the workings of the artistic process: that art, primarily, is a response to art, as explained in his book The Voices of Silence (1953), a monumental, profound, and idiosyncratic analysis of the visual arts that Murray studied for decades, and a work not unlike Stomping the Blues in several ways: poetic, written by a learned critic, yet not shackled by the conventions developed or expected by academic or journalistic critics of the form in question, slow and methodical to start, and difficult to put down once it starts swinging.


Another point Murray considered fundamental was his reorientation of how blues relates to jazz: as a matter of the level of orchestration. Indeed, he argues that the process by which pop tunes and show tunes are recomposed as jazz tunes is "precisely" the process by which the folk blues was extended, elaborated, and refined into jazz. Stomping the Blues is fundamental to his vision of existence and a lens through which to view other aspects of culture. …  It expounds a vision of and for life …  Stomping the Blues endures year after year, enthralling readers new and old while provoking debate.”


In a brief synopsis, Mr. Devlin also details the storied, earlier publication history of Stomping the Blues:


Stomping the Blues was published by McGraw-Hill in November 1976 and was celebrated with a midday "Kansas City Jam Session" in the publisher's landmark headquarters in midtown Manhattan, featuring jazz giants Mary Lou Williams, Budd Johnson, Buck Clayton, Eddie Durham, Oliver Jackson, Bill Pemberton, and Doc Cheatham. What an auspicious beginning: an artist saluted by artists he salutes. Stomping the Blues went on to win ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award for music criticism in 1977. A British edition was published in 1978, and subsequent American editions in 1982, 1989, and 2000. In 2016 it was included in the Library of America's edition of Murray's essays and memoirs ….”


Mr. Devlin offers a broader context as well in which to appreciate the influence and effect of Stomping the Blues as its relates to other of Mr. Murray’s writings, all of which have been published by the University of Minnesota Press, when he notes that:


This edition is a result of a collaboration that began in mid-2009 when I pitched what became Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones as told to Albert Murray, to the University of Minnesota Press [2011]. Since then, working with Murray's literary executor, Lewis P. Jones in, Minnesota has published Murray Talks Music; Albert Murray on Blues and Jazz (2016), a collection of Murray's previously uncollected or unpublished interviews and writings on music (edited by me), and a new edition of Good Morning Blues; The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray (2016), the fourth American edition. Murray Talks Music is a valuable companion to Stomping the Blues. These four books together tell an edifying story about American music and culture in the twentieth century: jazz and the blues as thought and lived; jazz and the blues in theory and practice. Stomping the Blues is the masterpiece that led to the other three….”


In the third and final section of his Introduction, Mr. Devlin offers these comments about the reception and influence of Stomping The Blues:


Stomping the Blues was reviewed extensively. Some of the smartest and most perceptive reviews include those by Gary Giddins in New York, John Edgar Wideman in The American Poetry Review, Robert Fleming in Freedomways, Bob Blumenthal in The Boston Phoenix, Stanley Dance in Jazz Journal, and Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone. ...


Many reviewers understood and appreciated what Murray was trying to do. A few years later Nelson George argued in the Village Voice in 1982 that it should be brought back into print and it soon was. George notes, perceptively, ‘the marvel of Stomping is that Murray manages to be both analytically detached and emotionally involved—criticism's most difficult parlay.’


By the early 1980s, and perhaps beginning with the review of the British edition in the Times Literary Supplement in 1978, a certain number of white jazz critics had started misinterpreting and exaggerating the caption on page 197, in which Murray refers to white jazz musicians as being part of the "third line." Third line does not mean third rate, as several critics have claimed or implied: it simply refers to a physical position in the old New Orleans parades, which Murray then used as a metaphor for closeness to idiomatic sources. ….


Stomping the Blues was probably the first work to articulate the connection between jazz, the blues, and locomotive onomatopoeia (or at least the first to do so cogently and comprehensively). Duke Ellington had been orchestrating stylized locomotives since the 1920s and Murray had been talking with Ellington about this since at least 1951 ….


Stomping the Blues had a marked influence on the development of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which Murray cofounded (see Murray Talks Music). The Preface to the Da Capo Press edition in 2000 frames the book in terms of that influence; it is the only previous dition to have an introductory essay. The Preface was written by Rob Gibson, a performing arts executive who was the first director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1991, and in 2000 was its executive producer and director….As of 2000, he writes that Stomping the Blues is a ‘preeminent source’ for people working in the jazz world and that Jazz at Lincoln Center has been able to embody ‘the many ideas that define this treatise.’


Aside from its place in the intellectual foundation of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Stomping the Blues has become a standard text in history of jazz courses, is a foundational text of the discipline of jazz studies, and has been quoted, cited, and discussed in dozens of books and academic articles….


But the reason to read Stomping the Blues today is not necessarily for its influence on Jazz at Lincoln Center, or on jazz studies as a discipline, or because the blues is central to the life of a random person on the street, or can elucidate a crucial response to modernity, but because following the movement of Murray's thought is a valuable experience in itself.  Yet the content of Stomping the Blues is accurate and can be the cornerstone of
an education in twentieth-century music. …”


Mr. Devlin sums up his Introduction with the following exhortation:


“So, if you're buying this book to replace a tattered copy from a history of jazz course, or if you are completing a Murray collection, or if you are discovering Murray for the first time, may it be your discovery of the year, and may rediscoveries be like new discoveries. Happy stomping.”


Paul Devlin
Long Island, New York
April 2017


I would also urge you to read Stomping the Blues because it will afford you with, from the perspective of Professor Haidt, another “ … tool for understanding the world,” -the Jazz World, that is.


Monday, November 27, 2017

"Fans Get Lucky" [Thompson]- by Ron Hart

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


Here’s another of our promised blog features on Downbeat’s 2017 gifts-of-the-season recommendations.

“Tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson (1924-2005) worked in some of the most famous jazz orchestras of the 1940s and early '50s, playing in big bands led by such swing icons as Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. He was one of the first African Americans in Boyd Raeburn's legendary orchestra. Thompson often found himself on the bandstand situated in proximity to such future giants as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Leo Parker and many more. According to jazz critics of the time, Thompson was in the same league as these extraordinary gentlemen, garnering comparisons to modern jazz pioneers such as Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young in the pages of publications like DownBeat and Esquire.

But the intriguing thing about Thompson was that he clearly didn't suffer fools gladly. His quickness to call out club owners or music industry executives who did him wrong earned him a reputation for being difficult, costing him gigs both at clubs and in the studio.

Tired of petty politics, Thompson relocated to Paris in 1956, where he would spend the remainder of the decade honing his craft in the small-band format with some of the hottest players in French jazz. He frequently collaborated with pianist Martial Solal, and he worked with a rotating combo consisting of such young Parisian lions as guitarist Jean-Pierre Sasson, bassist Benoit Quersin and drummer Gerard "Dave" Pochonet. He also shared the bandstand with fellow American expats, like trumpeter Emmett Berry, drummer Kenny Clarke and pianist Sammy Price.

Recorded in mono, the four-disc set Complete Parisian Small Group Sessions 1956-1959 - Fresh Sound Records; www.freshsoundrecords.com - documents Thompson's transition from a blacklisted freelance musician in the States to one of the most respected and in-demand leaders on the Parisian scene. His work in the quartet and quintet formats allowed him to explore the feather-light intimacies of melody, rhythm and texture, expressing himself in a way that would have been difficult, if not impossible, in a big band.

For fans who prefer to hear Thompson in the throes of a large ensemble, there's a companion disc, Lucky Thompson In Paris 1956 (Fresh Sound Records), which shines a light on the saxophonist's All Star Orchestra Sessions. On the first of these sessions, Thompson joined the 10-piece Modern Jazz Group to play five compositions written by pianist Henri Renaud (including "Meet Quincy Jones") and arranged to highlight the newly arrived saxophonist. For the remaining three sessions, Thompson and Pochonet co-led medium-sized all-star groups that played originals like Sasson's "Portrait Of Django" and Thompson's "Still Waters," as well as an arrangement of Count Basie and Neal Hefti's "Bluebeard Blues."

The pleasures of hearing this unsung tenor master overcome the dogma of his homeland and reinvent his legacy as a leader makes these reissues a revelation, especially if you are a fan of the embryonic stage of modern jazz.

Moreover, Thompson's life story illustrates a vitally important lesson: If you are true to yourself and to your beliefs, despite the forces of oppression in your vicinity, you might find another place in this world where behavior once perceived as difficult is considered dynamic.”

—Ron Hart



Saturday, November 25, 2017

Pops and Mama Jazz Holiday Gift Guide from Downbeat 2017

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


Downbeat annually does its readers the service of reviewing suggested books, recordings and photography compilations that would make wonderful gifts-of-the-season for family and friends.


This year there are a number recommendations that are so special that I wanted to make it a point to bring them to your attention in the event that you don’t take the magazine. I will do this in successive postings on Louis Armstrong/Ella Fitzgerald, Buddy Rich, Lucky Thompson and Jean-Pierre Leloir.


An additional benefit are the well-written annotations that accompany these gift suggestions by some of Downbeat’s fine writers.


Let’s begin with the recommendations for”Pops” or, if you must, Louis Armstrong, and “Mama Jazz,” the adoring nickname her Italian fans have given to the one-and-only Ella Fitzgerald.


“Glorious Gifts for Ella’s Centennial” - John McDonough


“Every fall, record labels release lavish, extravagant box sets that few of us would buy for ourselves but that cause us to make imperial proclamations of our generosity toward others during the holidays. If you feel generous and wish to emphasize your own good taste as well, check out the lineup below. Why? Because very few Baby Boomers — or their offspring and maybe even their offspring — would not delight in getting a new Ella Fitzgerald or Louis Armstrong collection this holiday season. The gift of Ella's music is a fine way to salute the immortal "First Lady of Song" as her centennial year comes to a close.


In hindsight, it's surprising that Fitzgerald (1917-'96) didn't collaborate with Armstrong (1901-'71) sooner in her career. You'd think they would have found each other quickly. Each had recorded for Decca for a full decade, but their paths didn't cross until January 1946. It might have been the beginning of a productive musical friendship, except that their first session together would be Armstrong's last for Decca for three-and-a-half years. That accounts for the cutoff date on The Complete Decca Singles 1935-1946 (Verve Records/UMe; ume. Ink.to/louiscompletedecca), a digital-only compilation of 136 titles covering Armstrong's most commercially diverse decade, the one that climaxed with his first duet with Fitzgerald.


Armstrong was commercial in a way that fit the Decca model. He was a self-governing sovereign with few musical loyalties. A bandleader in name only, he readily transplanted himself from Luis Russell (his working band) to Jimmy Dorsey to Glen Gray to the Mills Bros, to Lyn Murray — yes, even to Andy lona and his Islanders. (Just imagine Duke Ellington moonlighting with Glenn Miller at Victor or Count Basie with Ish Kabibble at Columbia.)


But Armstrong could breeze through any genre and always be Louis. This collection finds him covering all bases, from humdrum song selections to 18 well-polished re-creations of earlier classics (e.g., "West End Blues"). But this period also generated fresh Armstrong classics that now have permanent pedestals in the canon: "Struttin’ With Some Barbecue," "Swing That Music," "Jubilee" and more, all of which catch the sound of his trumpet at its mature height.


If you'd prefer to wrap an actual box to put under the Christmas tree (rather than a digital gift), the procession begins with the four-disc set Ella Fitzgerald And Louis Armstrong-Cheek To Cheek: The Complete Duets (Verve Records/UMe; us.udiscovermusic.com or Amazon). This is most comprehensive Ella-Louis scrapbook ever compiled. With the Decca and Verve catalogs now siblings under the extended Universal Music parent company, all things are possible.


Still, the old contrasts are striking. Decca was trolling for a hit single in the novelty market, while Verve couldn't have cared less. So the first Verve Ella And Louis album startled us with Armstrong's voice and horn presented in a way no one had ever heard before - close-up and cozy. His rusty growl exposed, almost naked and without  camouflage or the All-Stars.


Verve executive Norman Granz amplified the intimacy by using only the Oscar Peterson trio with Buddy Rich and 11 leisurely ballads, most new to him. Granz told them to take their time, and they did. For Ella, it was home. For Louis, whose trumpet is laid-back and close to the texts, it was a breakthrough to the core of his artistry. A year later, Ella And Louis Again was recorded in three sessions. It captures the same pillow-talk intimacy, but with a wider range of tempos. "Stompin' At The Savoy" seems to combust spontaneously. All the tune sequences here follow the original LPs.


Five days later they began their magnum opus, the deluxe two-LP Porgy And Bess. If the first duets achieved warmth, this one aimed for grandeur. Russ Garcia's orchestrations swell and shrink with a theatrical flamboyance. Armstrong's horn, soft-spoken before, has as a concert-hall stateliness, though sometimes uncertain of the new terrain. Of the 17 songs only four are actually performed as duets. But among the many Porgy and Bess treatments, this one remains a unique achievement—a splendid rivalry between Gershwin's operatic aspirations and the sui generis imprints of Ella and Louis at their best.


The surprises come on the fourth disc, which gives us a peek into both the fun and frustration of the creative process. Armstrong moves through eight takes on "Bess, Oh Where's My Bess" without nailing it. The issued version ended up being an overdub Louis recorded several months later. There are also several trumpet rehearsals of a piece called "Red Headed Woman," which is not listed in any Armstrong discography. It is actually the instrumental section interpolated into "There's A Boat That's Leavin' Soon For New York."


The crown jewel this season is the six-LP set Ella Fitzgerald Sings The George And Ira Gershwin Song Books (Verve/UMe). Michelangelo carved his monuments in stone. Granz used vinyl. And when he considered something of particular value, he draped it in a luxurious wardrobe of packaging, lest no one misunderstand its consequence.


The Fitzgerald-Gershwin project was perhaps Granz's most enduring achievement. It was an authentic work of art. Uncluttered by commercial intent, the cover art announced itself without a syllable of copy, only a bold French Impressionist face and the imposing signature of Bernard Buffet. Universal has now restored this masterpiece to its original vinyl magnificence and physical presence. Holding one of the shiny, 12-inch discs is like cradling a specimen of Dresden porcelain. Even those without a turntable may covet this limited edition for the sheer privilege of exhibiting an objet d'art. Those who do have one can experience the 53 original recordings with Nelson Riddle as Granz intended, plus a sixth LP of bonus items previously issued on The Complete Ella Fitzgerald Song Books in 1993.


With the Fitzgerald centennial winding down. Universal and others have been busy with smaller monuments as well. Two live discoveries are notable. Ella At Zardi's (Verve/ UMe) will likely create a similar buzz to the singer's Twelve Nights In Hollywood set from 2009. It captures two sets from the night of Feb. 2, 1956, just after the formation of Verve and just before the Cole Porter songbook work began. Timing alone makes it a career landmark, and "Airmail Special," "Bernie's Tune" and a slow "My Heart Belongs To Daddy" add to the musical surprises. She sings "I've Got A Crush On You" to Riddle, who was in the audience.


More for the hardcore fan is Ella Fitzgerald: Live At Chautauqua, Vol. 2 (Dot Time Records; dottimerecords.com), a previously unreleased concert recording made in 1968 at Chautauqua Institution Amphitheater in New York state. The 46-minute set concludes with a historically important tune, "He Had A Dream," a moving tribute to Martin Luther King. (This album, part of Dot Time Records' Legends Series, is a companion to Live At Chautauqua, Vol. I, which was released in 2015.)


For those who prefer a one-stop overview of at least two-thirds of her career, the four-disc set Ella Fitzgerald, 100 Songs For A Centennial (Verve/UMe) provides a 50/50 mix from the Decca and Verve periods that highlights the contrasts between sales-driven Decca years and the high-art plateaus Fitzgerald reached on Verve — although the work she did with pianist Ellis Larkins in 1950 is as complete as anything she produced under Granz.


One of those pieces is part of Someone To Watch Over Me (Verve/UMe), in which several of her more small-scale combo works from the Decca and Verve years are augmented by newly recorded London Symphony Orchestra accompaniments. The original sparse backing leaves plenty of room for the orchestrations to breathe without tripping into any background bottlenecks. Thanks to the magic of digital recording technology, Gregory Porter joins Fitzgerald and Larkins on their 1954 rendition of "People Will Say We're In Love."


—John McDonough