The following appeared in the December 18, 2017 edition of the Wall Street Journal.
From the standpoint of swinging Jazz pianists who also bring lyrical, sensitive and reflective overtones to their Jazz interpretations, today’s Jazz scene is blessed with a host of talented players among them: Fred Hirsch, Brad Mehldau, Aaron Goldberg, Tom Ranier, David Hazeltine, Mike LeDonne, Dado Moroni, Enrico Pieranunzi, Peter Beets, Larry Goldings, Tamir Hendelman, Larry Fuller, Joey Calderazzo, Michel Camilo, Benny Green, Eliane Elias, Christian Jacob, and many more.
To my ears, Bill Charlap has been a consistently brilliant performer who places great emphasis on finding new and different ways to express his pianism in the Great American Songbook such that these familiar melodies take on an entirely new melodicism.
Over the past three decades, I’ve always looked forward to Bill’s latest CD to hear what he’s been up to as he refashions many of my favorite songs and also introduces me to many new ones from the canon that was American popular music throughout most of the 20th century.
Here’s the distinguished Jazz author and critic Terry Teachout’s view on what makes Bill’s approach to Jazz interpretations of the Great American Songbook so unique.
“Jazz pianist Bill Charlap takes on standards and the obscure, playing with a warmly singing tone.”
-By Terry Teachout
“Will jazz ever become popular again? I claimed in this space eight years ago that “the audience for America’s great art form is withering away.” I still fear for jazz, though I also believe (as I did then) that it remains creatively vital. The problem, I argued, was that its transformation from a dance-based popular music into “a form of high art…comparable in seriousness to classical music” inevitably alienated many once-loyal listeners, who turned instead to less complex, more immediately engaging styles of pop music. The result was deftly spoofed in a “Simpsons” episode that poked fun at KJAZZ, a fictional radio station whose slogan was “152 Americans Can’t Be Wrong.”
That’s why it’s such good news that younger jazz musicians like Robert Glasper, Ethan Iverson and Kamasi Washington are integrating today’s pop-music styles into their playing, just as Miles Davis, Gary Burton and Pat Metheny assimilated rock in the ’60s and ’70s. But postmodern fusion isn’t the only way to expand the jazz audience. Jazz instrumentalists can also follow the hugely successful example of singers like Diana Krall by embracing the American songwriters of the pre-rock era, whose appeal remains undiminished to this day. That’s what Bill Charlap does — and nobody does it better.
Born in 1966, Mr. Charlap played piano for Gerry Mulligan and Phil Woods before starting his own trio in 1997. Today he’s a major name in his own right, touring constantly (he’ll be performing in Boston; Sarasota, Fla.; Tokyo; and Tucson, Ariz., in January) and cutting an album a year. “Uptown, Downtown” (Impulse ), his latest release, came out in September to universal acclaim. His admirers include Tony Bennett, who tries to poke his head into New York’s Village Vanguard and sing a song or two whenever Mr. Charlap is in residence there, and Maria Schneider, jazz’s top composer-bandleader, who once described him to me as “one of the few mainstream pianists out there who really moves me — he plays standards with such love and honesty.”
That’s Mr. Charlap’s trademark. He quarries the Great American Songbook for gems, some familiar (“The One I Love Belongs to Somebody Else,” “There’s a Small Hotel”) and others obscure. “Uptown, Downtown,” for instance, is named after a Stephen Sondheim tune that was cut from the score of “Follies” before it opened on Broadway in 1971. He comes by his taste for standards honestly: Moose Charlap, his father, wrote the score for Jerome Robbins’s “Peter Pan.” At the same time, his jazz pedigree is impeccable, and he has an identically sharp ear for overlooked jazz originals like Jim Hall’s “Bon Ami” and Mr. Mulligan’s “Curtains.”
No matter what Mr. Charlap plays, he does so with a warmly singing tone that puts you in mind of the noted vocalists whom he likes to accompany whenever his crowded schedule permits (one of whom, Sandy Stewart, is his mother). It’s no surprise to learn that he knows the lyrics to every song in his vast repertoire. His pellucid balladry, especially at the super-slow tempos that he relishes, is nothing short of exquisite—but whenever he dives head first into an up-tempo flag-waver, he leaves you in no doubt of his ability to swing hard. And while he doesn’t flaunt his technique, Mr. Charlap uses every inch of the keyboard with miraculous facility, popping lower-than-low bass notes with his left hand in much the same way that a drummer might kick a big band into high gear with his bass drum.
Ask Mr. Charlap what piano trios of the past he admires most and he’ll likely mention the ones led by Bill Evans, Ahmad Jamal and Oscar Peterson. All three have left their mark on his bright, airy style, but it is the group that Mr. Jamal led from 1957 to 1962 that his own trio evokes most strongly (though never derivatively). Mr. Jamal specialized in an immediately accessible brand of supper-club jazz, mixing tried-and-true standards with jazz originals to crowd-delighting effect. Yet his uncluttered pianism was so arrestingly fresh that Miles Davis, the foremost jazz innovator of his generation, instructed his own keyboard men to “play like Ahmad.”
“The best you can do as an artist, what you ought to do, is be yourself, here and now,” Mr. Charlap once told me. “If that self is avant-garde, so be it. But maybe who you are is something else.” Well, he’s definitely something else: a user-friendly jazz master whose smart, imaginative playing gives equal pleasure to musicians and nonmusicians. After following his career closely for the past decade and a half, I now rank him as my favorite living jazz pianist—one whose well-deserved success fills me with hope for the future of the great American art form.”
—Mr. Teachout, the Journal’s drama critic, writes “Sightings,” a column about the arts, every other week. Write to him at tteachout@wsj.com.
As J. Bradford Robinson explains in the following excerpt from The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz [Barry Kernfeld, ed.]:
“Tristano's music stands apart from the main tradition of modern jazz, representing an alternative to bop which poses severe demands of ensemble precision, intellectual rigor, and instrumental virtuosity.
Rather than the irregular cross-accents of bop, Tristano preferred an even rhythmic background against which to concentrate on line and focus his complex changes of time signature.
Typically, his solos consisted of extraordinarily long, angular strings of almost even eighth-notes provided with subtle rhythmic deviations and abrasive polytonal effects. He was particularly adept in his use of different levels of double time and was a master of the block-chord style of George Shearing, Dave Brubeck, and others, carefully gauging the accumulation of dissonance.
His experiments in multitrack recording and overdubbing, beginning in 1951 with Juju (not issued until 1971), inspired similar performances by Bill Evans (Conversations with Myself) and others in the 1960s. With his groups he also explored free collective improvisation, most notably in Intuition and Digression (1949).
Although he was accused at the time of being willfully experimental, "free" performances of this sort were in fact part of Tristano's teaching practice (many were taped privately by Bauer) and pointed the way to similar experiments by Charles Mingus and Ornette Coleman in the late 1950s.
Tristano excelled as a teacher, demanding and receiving firm loyalty from his pupils, many of whom sacrificed more lucrative careers to continue their work with him. His method stressed advanced ear training and a close analysis of the work of several seminal jazz improvisers, including Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Parker, and Bud Powell.
Because of his knowledge of several instruments and broad minded approach Tristano attracted players of different instruments and schools, among them such established musicians as Bud Freeman, Art Pepper, and Mary Lou Williams. Perhaps more than in his own scant recordings, Tristano's influence is felt most strongly in the work of his best pupils - many of whom also became outstanding teachers — and in his example of high -mindedness and perfectionism, characteristics which presupposed for jazz the highest standards of music as art.” [pp. 1218-1219]
My first introduction to Lennie’s Music came from his 1962 Atlantic LP - The New Tristano [1357] and I more or less worked backward from there to familiarize myself with the earlier years of his career including his recordings with alto saxophonist Lee Konitz and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh.
The most engaging track on The New Tristano is Lennie’s C Minor Complex. It was issued on as part of an anthology on Atlantic Jazz Keyboards [R271596] and Dick Katz, himself an accomplished Jazz pianist, had this to say about Lennie, his music and C Minor Complex.
“Tristano is probably the most gifted, original and influential pianist to never achieve a really large audience. Only Herbie Nichols, whose recorded output was so small, rivals him for undeserved obscurity. True, Tristano had a moment of fame when his 1949 recordings with Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh turned many musicians on their collective ear. Reclusve by nature and a recalcitrant personality, he avoided the spotlight more than any other comparable talent.
Lennie expanded the harmonic and melodic vocabulary of Jazz in many unique ways. The ability to improvise and sustain the perfect line (melody) was an overriding goal. Polychordal harmony an unusual metric groupings (such as 5 or 7 against 4) were common. Perhaps his greatest disciple was Lee Konitz, who, it must be said, has gone his own way for many years now.
Among the other pianists who were influenced by Tristano are Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett. Tristano’s own most obvious influence would see to be Bud Powell, but even though both could achieve a Bach-like torrential quality, they were basically different.
All of Tristano’s aforementioned technical aspects are brilliantly displayed on C minor Complex a tour de force based on the chords to Pennies from Heaven in minor.
This amazing improvisation features a relentless, unyielding single-note bass line from start to finish, contrasted with an increasingly intense and complex single-line right hand.
This builds to a climax via some incredible chordal passages (the bass line never quits) and some amazing toying with the meter. This piece dissolves into more single lines and ends on a satisfying, tranquil note.”
You can listen to C Minor Complex on the following video tribute to Lennie.
As many of you know, Gordon Jack is a frequent contributor to the Jazz Journaland a very generous friend to these pages in his allowance ofJazzProfilesre-publishings of his excellent writings. He is the author of Fifties Jazz Talk An Oral Retrospectiveand he developed the Gerry Mulligan discography in Raymond Horricks’ bookGerry Mulligan’s Ark.
The following article was first published in Jazz Journal October 2017.
“Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan were two of the most original soloists to emerge during the fifties - a decade that has sometimes been called the last Golden Age of Jazz. They occasionally worked together but not always with the happiest of results.
Their first studio encounter took place in April 1949 on a date with Stan as the leader called The Brothers featuring Al Cohn, Allen Eager, Brew Moore and Zoot Sims. At this early stage of their careers the tenors sound very close to their original inspiration (Lester Young) but luckily the sleeve-note gives a solo break-down for ease of identification. Four titles were recorded and Mulligan who did not perform, contributed two originals – Five Brothers and Four And One Moore. He also loaned his baritone to Getz for the ensemble passages on Five Brothers (Classics F1126CD).A little later the musicians’ union became involved because Stan apparently refused to pay Gerry for the charts. On the day of the hearing the case was dismissed when it was found that Mulligan had temporarily allowed his union dues to lapse.
The following month they recorded together in a twelve-piece ensemble titled Gene Roland’s Boppers that included a Four Brothers-style saxophone section - Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Mulligan. Back in 1946 Roland had been experimenting with four tenors to create a light, airy sound very much influenced by Lester Young. This of course became a defining characteristic for Woody Herman’s Second and subsequent Herds when he replaced one of the tenors with a baritone. To put this session into perspective, it took place five months after Stan’s classic Early Autumn solo with Herman and three weeks after Gerry’s second recording date with the Miles Davis nonet. It is possible that the Roland tracks were merely rehearsals and not intended for release because they remained unissued until 2014 when they were included on a Chubby Jackson CD - Uptown UPCD27.75/27.76. One of the titles Sid’s SwingSymphony by Mulligan has an interesting provenance. A contrafact of Godchild it later became known as Ontet for Gerry’s 1953 tentette.
1949 was the year Stan’s genius was acknowledged by Metronome magazine which voted him the Top Tenor. Along with Lee Konitz he was also their “Musician of the Year”. He finally left Woody Herman that year and began freelancing successfully around New York. Early Autumn was constantly on the radio and his quartet recording with Al Haig of Long Island Sound (based on Zing! Went The Strings Of My Heart) also became something of a hit thanks to extensive airplay from Symphony Sid (Original Jazz Classics JCCD 706-2). Fifteen months after the Roland date he was booked into the famous Apollo Theatre in Harlem with his own big band for a week opposite Charlie Parker with strings. The sax section featured Don Lanphere, Zoot and Mulligan and two badly recorded examples of the band’s performances (Four Brothers and Early Autumn) have survived on Zim-ZM1007. Sarah Vaughan was also included on the bill for the engagement. Ken Vail’s fascinating Bird’s Diary has a picture of Parker and Mulligan buying food from a street vendor during a break from rehearsals. Donald Maggin’s Getz biography has a shot of Stan outside the Apollo during a similar rest period.
Unlike Stan, these were difficult years for Mulligan. With his innovative writing for Gene Krupa, Elliot Lawrence and Miles Davis he was recognised by the cognoscenti as an arranger with fresh and original ideas but he was finding it difficult to get regular bookings as an instrumentalist. He occasionally worked and recorded around town in a Kai Winding group that included Brew Moore and George Wallington. He also arranged and played on a stimulating Chubby Jackson date featuring Howard McGhee, J.J. Johnson, Georgie Auld and Don Lamond among others (ProperboxPVCD119) but as he told me in a JJ interview (May/June 1995) “The work was rapidly drying up”. On more than one occasion he had to rehearse a band on the shore of the 72nd. Street lake in Central Park because nobody had enough money to hire a studio. Soon after his first album as a leader (Definitive DRCD 11227) he sold his horns and moved out to L.A. hoping for a change of luck. Flying, driving or catching a train was beyond his means so he hitchhiked there with his girl-friend Gail Maddon. His Walkin’ Shoes is a reference to their mode of travel from the east to the west coast and years later he called this trip, “Living Jack Kerouac’s On The Road – steerage class”. Through Gail’s previous relationship with Bob Graettinger he met Stan Kenton who soon purchased a number of his arrangements. He also started appearing at the Haig - a booking that assumed historical proportions when he formed his first pianoless quartet there with Chet Baker in 1952.
1952 was also the year Getz recorded Moonlight in Vermont with Johnny Smith. It proved to be hugely popular giving him yet another hit to rival Early Autumn. It also pushed his price to over $1000.00 a week and club owners insisted he perform it every night. The success of Vermont persuaded Norman Granz to offer him an exclusive contract with his Clef label. Bill Crow who was working with Getz at the time told me, “Johnny Mandel played trombone with us. He transcribed some of Gerry’s tunes like Walkin’ Shoes and Line For Lyons because Stan was so keen on the Mulligan quartet sound. Looking back, I don’t think there was any rivalry between Stan and Gerry because they were both in a ‘Star’ position in the jazz world. Getz of course was more difficult than Gerry and he was devious which Gerry never was”.
A little later after Bob Brookmeyer replaced Mandel, Stan took his quintet to California for residencies at the Tiffany and Zardi’s. After intermissions Stan and Bob used to go to the Haig to listen to Gerry’s group and sometimes after work they would all get together. This is how Mulligan explained it to me, “I remember a jam session at somebody’s house where Stan, Bob, Chet and I were the front line and we worked really well together improvising on ensemble things that were great. Stan decided that we should all go out together as a group, only he wanted it to be his group. Musically it was too bad that we couldn’t do it but personality-wise I don’t think it would have worked. Stan was peculiar – if things were going along smoothly he had to do something to louse them up, usually at someone else’s expense.”
Things came to a head when Stan told Down Beat, “I’m going out to the coast and when I return at the end of February, I intend to bring with me Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. With guys who can blow as much as Gerry, Chet and Bob the band should be the end. All three of them will write for the band.” This was news to Mulligan who replied in the next issue, “I don’t know what Stan has in mind here when he talks about adding me and Chet to his combo but it’s not for me. For years I stayed in the background and wrote arrangements for many bands. Now in the quartet I have something that is all mine. I can see no reason for sharing it with anyone.”
Their next little difficulty occurred in 1954 when they were part of a nation-wide tour with Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington organised by Norman Granz. For seven weeks beginning in New York’s Carnegie Hall the package performed in nine cities across the U.S. before concluding at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on November 8th. Getz’s part of the programme there was recorded on Verve 513 753-2 and Duke Ellington introduced him as “One of the leading exponents of the cool school”. His playing of course is anything but on a programme of standards and originals by Johnny Mandel, Al Cohn and Brookmeyer. Pianist John Williams adds considerably to the success of the CD demonstrating once again what an inspiring accompanist and hard swinging soloist he was.
Stan’s quintet over-ran their allotted time on stage so Granz recorded more titles the following night producing enough material for a double album. Instead of his own drummer (Art Mardigan) Getz decided to use Frank Isola who had been on the tour with Mulligan’s quartet which of course led to problems. Years later Frank told me, “Jeru could be pretty stubborn and was upset that I had made the recording with Stan. He said it was unfair to Art Mardigan”. Mulligan remained on the west coast
after the concert so Frank who was anxious to return to his family in New York took the opportunity of joining Stan. The tenor-man had to hire drum kits as they worked their way back east because Gerry had apparently driven off with Frank’s drums in his station wagon.
Just as an aside, Leonard Feather’s 1956 Encyclopaedia Yearbook of Jazz asked 120 leading musicians to name their favourite instrumentalists. Stan voted for Lester Young, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn and Sonny Stitt on tenor. Mulligan was his choice on baritone. Never guilty of false modesty Gerry voted for himself on baritone along with Harry Carney. Don Byas, Young, and Sims were his tenor choices.
Late in 1957 they recorded two fine albums together which for different reasons could have been great ones. The session with Harry Edison and the Oscar Peterson Trio was released as Jazz Giants 1958 and there are several outstanding solo contributions. However Norman Granz’s decision to produce a relatively undisciplined blowing session when he had one of the music’s finest arrangers on hand means the recording falls a little short. Mulligan could have created something far more meaningful for the all-star ensemble to perform than the rudimentary head arrangements heard on the CD (Verve 0602517621320).
Another missed opportunity occurred two months later in October 1957 when they were reunited for the (in)famous Stan Getz Meets Gerry Mulligan date (Verve 392-2). A bizarre decision was taken to have two of the greatest soloists on their respective instruments performing on unfamiliar horns. On three numbers Gerry plays tenor and Stan is on baritone. Granz’s sleeve-note hints that it was Mulligan’s suggestion but Gerry told me, “It wasn’t my idea to switch horns on some numbers – Stan or Norman suggested it. I liked Zoot’s and Brew Moore’s mouthpieces but I never liked Stan’s and I didn’t like the sound I got on it”.
It is impossible to identify them on their alternate horns as Ronnie Ross found when Leonard Feather played Anything Goes during a 1958 Blindfold Test in Down Beat, ”I didn’t know who the players were…I liked the tenor player very much and some of the baritone. It definitely swings. I’ll give it four stars”. The titles where they perform on their customary instruments contain some of their most extrovert, freewheeling work from the period and the extemporised, contrapuntal interplay that bookends That Old Feeling is an album highlight. A sympathetic producer like Dick Bank for instance might have created more suitable environments for them but this was to be their last studio recording together which is a pity.
By the end of the fifties they had become perennial poll winners and although such listings are of ephemeral interest it is worth recalling the 1959 Metronome All Time – All Star poll. The winner was Charlie Parker followed by Miles Davis; Gerry Mulligan; Lester Young; Louis Armstrong; Dizzy Gillespie; Stan Getz; Benny Goodman; Thelonious Monk and Dave Brubeck.
My introduction to the tenor sax work of Jimmy Greene might not have occurred at all except for the fact that a friend who shares my high opinion of the quality of both the musicianship and the recordings that Gerry Teekins produces for his Criss Cross Jazz label sent me Introducing Jimmy Greene: The Jimmy Greene Sextet which Gerry recorded in New York in 1997 [Criss 1181 CD].
Another factor contributing to his gift of this particular CD is that he and I are great fans of the trombonist Steve Davis and Steve appears on some of the tracks of Jimmy Greene’s initial offering on Criss Cross along with John Swana on trumpet and flugelhorn, and a rhythm section made up of Aaron Goldberg on piano, Darren Hall on bass and Eric McPherson on drums.
Thanks to his thoughtfulness, Jimmy Greene’s music came into my life and I have followed his work closely ever since. You can checkout his artist page for all of the Criss Cross recordings he appears on by going here.
At the time of these recordings, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Greene was only 22 and fresh out of the University of Hartford's Hartt School of Music, where he was a protege of master saxophonist and jazz educator Jackie McLean. The previous year he was named first runner-up in the prestigious Thelonious Monk Jazz Saxophone Competition.
Since then, the Connecticut native has performed and/or recorded with Horace Silver, Claudio Roditi, Lewis Nash, Avishai Cohen, Omar Avital, Darren Barrett, Kenny Barron, Tom Harrell, the New Jazz Composers Octet, and the big bands of Harry Connick, Jr., as well continuing to appear with his own group.
On the CD, Jimmy performs in quartet, quintet [with John Swana] and sextet settings. The full sextet plays on Jimmy's ingenious arrangement of Cole Porter's 1942 hit, I Love You, about which Jimmy comments: “It's ironic, in a way, because if you listen to the lyric, it's kind of syrupy. And the arrangement is the opposite mood, kind of a dark, brooding, questioning vibe."
John Swana handles the melody on trumpet over rich tenor saxophone and trombone harmonies. Jimmy's three-horn voicings have a surprisingly full sound, making judicious use of overtones to fill out the sonority.
Ted Gioia has this to say about the Cole Porter tune in his The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire:
“.... performers as diverse as Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane, and Johnny Mathis ... [have offered] up interpretations over the years.
The words do not rank among Porter's best, with their string of deliberate cliches — familiar prattle about birds, daffodils, the dawn — and none of the clever turns of phrase that were his trademark. Porter reportedly wrote the piece in response to a wager with his friend Monty Woolley, who doubted that the songwriter could build an effective song out of the oft-used title phrase. The resulting lyrics retain a quasi-satirical undertone, and the song could be performed ironically — although this is not how it has been typically treated in jazz circles. Rather, jazz players have embraced I Love You for the dramatic interval leaps in the melody and its sweet modulation in the bridge, ingredients that hold enough charm to keep this song in the jazz repertoire more than 60 years after it was written.
This song often gets the "Latin treatment" — a hit-or-miss procedure that can be the jazz equivalent of cut-rate plastic surgery. Sometimes the piece ends up enhanced, but perhaps just as often the result is unintended disfigurement. I suspect that jazz players so often opt for a propulsive rhythm on this chart because Porter inserted so many long-held notes into the melody, starting in bar one and continuing throughout the song. The melody will not swing the song on its own, and actually creates a sense of stasis. Latinizing the proceedings serves as compensation.” [p.173]
The following audio-only file features Jimmy Greene’s arrangement of I Love You and his arrangement of it brings back fond memories of the sextet version of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers that featured Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on tenor sax and Curtis Fuller on trombone.
BOBBY SHEW was born in Albuquerque. NM in 1941. Bobby Shew started playing trumpet when he was a kid, and after leaving the service in 1964. he turned professional. He played with Tommy Dorsey, and with Woody Herman's Herd, and he got his first experience as a lead player on the road with Della Reese. He spent 7 years in Las Vegas, where he played with the Buddy Rich band as well as alf the top show bands, going out on the road as lead trumpeter with Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Tom Jones and many others.
In the tall of 1972 Bobby had had enough of Las Vegas, and so he packed his trumpet and flugelhorn and left. He was determined to crack big-time L.A., and eventually managed to make the wedding between the business of music and the art of music. As a studio musician. Shew was on call constantly.
From 1975 on, he recorded and played with groups led by jazz greats like Frank Strazzeri, Horace Silver, Don Menza, Bud Shank, and Carmen McRae, and with the big bands of Louis Bellson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Juggernaut, Buddy Rich, Gerald Wilson, Woody Herman, and Maynard Ferguson band.
After enjoying success as a sideman, in 1978 Shew started a prolific career as leader with all kinds of albums, from small groups to large orchestra, while also leading his own highly successful combo for many years.
Recognition has come to him in the form of acclaims and accolades, but maybe Dizzy Gillespie's praise sums it up best: "The only guy who could play flugelhorn in the high register and make it sound good is Bobby Shew."
I’ve always considered Jordi Pujol, the owner and proprietor of Fresh Sound Records, a latter-day Norman Granz sans the personal management dimension [Norman managed such notables as Ella Fitzgerald and Oscar Peterson and was the impresario for the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts both at home and abroad].
And like Norman, who made possible a treasure trove of recorded Jazz on various labels for which Jazz fans everywhere will forever be in his debt, Jordi has brought to the digital world an immense catalogue of Jazz that was initially released on small, independent labels, many of whom became extinct after a few, short years in the business.
As a case in point, Jordi recently sent along three CDs which he has released on his Fresh Sound label featuring the music of Bobby Shew, Sal Nistico and Martial Solal all of which he has rescued from obscurity and given new life in a digital format.
The first of these recent digital reissues is Class Reunion - The Bobby Shew Quintet [Fresh Sound Records FSR CD 946] which came out in 1980 on Sutra Records [LP SUS 1002].
In addition to Bobby on trumpet and flugelhorn, the band consists of Gordon Brisker on tenor sax and flute, Bill Mays on piano and Fender Rhodes, Bob Magnusson on bass and Steve Schaeffer on drums.
As one of my Jazz buddies recently remarked to me via email:
“Bobby has long been a favorite of mine and sorely under-appreciated by the general public - as a straight-shooting teacher, clinician, musician and generally very funny guy.”
Bobby is one of the few Jazz trumpeters who can meet the exacting requirements of playing in the lead trumpet chair as well as taking on the Jazz or solo trumpet assignments.
About BOBBY SHEW -
Born in the picturesque musical wasteland of Albuquerque, New Mexico, on March 4, 1941 Bobby Shew started guitar at age eight but switched to trumpet at age ten. There was no history of music in his family. His stepfather, however, kept a borrowed trumpet in the closet, which he brought out when Bobby was around 8 or 9 years old. "He played Red River Valley for me," Bobby fondly recalls, "which was all he could remember. I thought, 'Gee, that's beautiful. That's really a hip toy."'
Because the trumpet was left in a closet, he couldn't play it, "But when they used to leave me with a baby sitter, I could hardly wait for them to get out the door so I could sneak in the closet and get that trumpet out." When he was eight, he tried country and western guitar picking. The strings were "four miles above the board, of course, which bloodied up my fingers and destroyed my left hand and my initiative — plus the fact I couldn't stand to hear another song about a guy falling in love with his horse." In the fifth grade, Shew talked his stepfather into letting him use the closet trumpet to try out for the school band. Bobby bought a trumpet book, sat down with his stepfather for two hours, and learned how to read music and blow and finger the horn.
"That night I could play everything in the book. I always had a natural cosmic vibration with music. It just lit my body up. Behind music, my whole being came to life." With that one lesson behind him, he won second chair in the 36-piece horn section the very next day. "I was so unexposed to music that I had not had anyone tell me how difficult it was to do. It was just music. It was so simple, before anyone could get their hands on me and convince me how hard it was going to be to play trumpet, I already had it going."
When he was 12, he was asked to play in a dance band, "but I said no, because I didn't know how to dance. I didn't realize that a dance band wasn't a bunch of guys who played and danced." After he was properly informed, he began playing local casuals, weddings, and dances, becoming exposed to improvisation — which opened a new world for him. The love affair with jazz started there and became the driving force in Bobby's life.
"During a rehearsal break one time, I jumped in and started playing on a blues jam, making the music up in my head. The whole place stopped and listened. Boom! Everything came out. It was a completely natural thing. I've never had to study, and I still haven't studied privately to this day. It was a revelation for me when, many years later, I realized what I had accomplished." Jazz influences were hard to come by in Albuquerque, because "there just was not a great deal of black music available. The record stores in that town were places that sold pianos, accordions, trumpets, trombones, violins, and maybe back in the corner they had a few records. I mean, they didn't exactly say, 'We gotta make sure we get all the Blue Note stuff in!'"
So he spent summers after high school in New York City listening to the great jazz masters, and attended the first two years of Stan Kenton's Summer Jazz Clinics in Bloomington, IN. In 1959 and 1960, he got a chance to study under jazz greats Don Jacoby, Conte Candoli, Johnny Richards, Sam Donahue, John LaPorta, Shelly Manne, etc.
Life went on, and after that Bobby attended UNM for two years, studying Architecture and Commercial Art. He was drafted into the Army, and assigned as jazz soloist to NORAD BAND in Colorado Springs, where he recorded and toured extensively, playing with people like Phil Wilson and Paul Fontaine. "I'd never heard guys play like that except on records. Being in that band was probably the turning point forme. I went in there pretty naive yet confident at my level, but that band showed me guys who could really play."
Leaving the service in 1964, Bobby Shew turned, professional. He joined Tommy Dorsey, and in spring 1965 he replaced Larry Ford in Woody Herman's Herd, travelling in July to France, to appear at the Festival de Jazz d'Antibes. About his time with Herman, Bobby, wrinkling his brow recalled: "That was traumatic for me. I thought Woody's band was the greatest band ever, but when I got there, I ended up on the wrong chair. It was the third chair. Bill Chase was playing lead, and Jerry Lamy was splitting it with him. Dusko Gojkovic and Don Rader were doing the jazz. I was stuck with nothing to do for a year, and it drove me crazy. I wasn't mature enough to know how to deal with it."
So he left on the road with Della Reese and began getting experience as a lead player. He settled in Las Vegas for 7 years. He played with the newly-formed Buddy Rich band for a year and a half, originally joining Buddy as a jazz player, then shifting to lead. "It was easy for me to play with Buddy, because he plays drums like a lead trumpet player, and when I play trumpet in a big band I approach it like a set of drums, really whipping and bashing, working tight with the drummer. Buddy and I worked together great. It was like having two drummers in the band."
After leaving Buddy, Shew played Las Vegas top show bands, sometimes going out on the road as lead trumpeter with Elvis Presley, Barbra Streisand, Steve Allen, Paul Anka, Connie Stevens, Tom Jones, Terry Gibbs, Robert Goulet and Vikki Carr. He then took a year off, because, "My chops were cut to shreds. I got to the place where I couldn't stand Vegas any more. They can sit in those house bands making $325 a week and just die. There's no incentive to do anything."
In the fall of 1972, Bobby packed his trumpet and flugelhorn and, with his wife, left Las Vegas on a shoestring. He had had it with Vegas stagnation. He was willing to scuffle if he had to, but he was determined to crack big-time L. A.
"I had been in and around Vegas for nine years, and my frustration level had risen til my eyes were turning red. I just couldn't take it anymore. I just came home to my wife in 1972 and said, 'Let's pack up and get out.' We left town in four days and came here to L.A.
"When you go to Vegas, you see, the music is just hard, high, pounding, hammer as hard as you can for hours. It's just like breaking rocks. There's never any light taps. It becomes a thing of brute force. Never a delicate, musical, sensitive, colored thing. As far as jazz playing goes, there's about five guys there holding on to a thin thread for dear life. They have to do it in the garage. I didn't even get to play eight bars of sensible music for six or seven years. "When I came down here, my chops were hard and stiff, so I had to once again learn how to play with some delicacy and sensitivity to be able to walk in a studio and play a movie or a Dixieland feel.
"That's where the versatility of studio work comes in, and you need that versatility to play in this town. You might walk in an nine o'clock in the morning and have to play Stravinsky, then a rock date for Motown with those merciless high F's and G's and endless vamps, then go play with Bud Shank's quintet later that night. You have to be able to do the whole thing. And since I never had classical lessons, I was ill-prepared to play some of the tricky classical-like things that showed up, especially double and triple tonguing which I never learned."
Shew managed to make the wedding between the business of music and the art of music. When he was a child, he loved the aesthetics of music. But as he learned the professional ropes, he learned to play to make a living. "If you're lucky," he said, "the two can dovetail together." As a studio musician, Shew was on call constantly.
As an artist, he played regularly with Louie Bellson's big band. "And I played with Art Pepper's quintet for half a year; I play with Bud Shank occasionally; at one point I put a seven-piece band together of my own; and I just recently did an album with piano player, Frank Strazzeri: a giant, a monster, an incredibly underrated player, a complete genius." Bobby also enjoyed the thrill of playing both lead and jazz with Toshiko's big band, "because the chops and the studio versatility all come together from an artist's point of view, not a business point of view."
As a teacher, Shew has taught numerous clinics over the years. He was also Chairman of the International Association for Jazz Education for sixteen years,associate Professor of Trumpet at USC for eleven, worked at California State Northridge for eighteen, and at the California Institute of the Arts for three. "I love it. Part of being an artist is just doing things creatively, and I don't think anything can be more creative or more challenging than sitting down with 5 or 500 kids who say, 'How do I play jazz?' or 'How do I play high notes?’ The kids are so alive and enthusiastic that they're an inspiration to me. I learn a lot about playing by teaching.”
"I just love music. I've had a love affair with music for my whole life. Music is my wife, my mistress, my food and my drink. My wife Lisa understands me and music, too. She wakes up in the middle of the night, and I'm lying there sleeping, but I've got my hand on her arm and I'm fingering scales and solos. Ninety-nine percent of the dreams I have are working, practicing, figuring out lines. It's a total way of life for me.
"Music is my religion, a spiritual thing. Even though you're doing studio calls, you're still thinking creatively. You're still trying to take what may be a dumb thing and make it something beautiful, still trying to put some icing on a fallen cake, you know? The constancy of the creative and spiritual feelings which come out of it are definitely religious in kind and quality."
Recognition has come for him in different forms and shapes through the years. Dizzy Gillespie himself said that the only guy who can play flugelhorn in the high register and make it sound good was Bobby Shew. "Dizzy seemed to dig my playing a lot."
From 1975, he recorded as sideman and played with such groups lead by Frank Strazzeri, Horace Silver, Don Menza, Bud Shank, Carmen McRae, among others, and with the big bands of Louis Bellson, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Juggernaut, Buddy Rich, Gerald Wilson, Woody Herman, and Maynard Ferguson band. And from 1978, Bobby started an active and prolific career as leader, with all kinds of albums, from small groups to large orchestra, and leading his own highly successful combo for many years.
Among his studio work he played in such shows as Mary Tyler Moore, Bob
Newhart, Mork and Mindy, Love Boat, Hawaii 5-0, Streets of San Francisco, plus countless movies scores and pop recordings with everyone, from Neil Diamond to George Harrison to Sarah Vaughan to Willie Nelson. He then retired from studio work to concentrate on doing strictly jazz music and teaching at numerous Universities, Colleges, in addition to a great many Music Conservatories throughout Europe, Canada, South Africa, Asia, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
He was elected into the New Mexico Music Hall of Fame, and has received three Grammy nominations. In 1982, he earned the Jazz Album of the Year award from RIANZ (New Zealand), and in 2014 he was chosen for the Lifetime Achievement Award for Performance and Education from the International Trumpet Guild, as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award for Jazz Education by the JEN group. More recently, he received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from Elmhurst College in Illinois.”
Notes compiled by Jordi Pujol
Bobby Shew on CLASS REUNION
“There's a bit of a brief story behind this Class Reunion recording. I had been playing with several different groups in the LA area, i.e., Horace Silver quintet, Art Pepper and Bud Shank's quintets, Frank Strazzeri’s quintet and Frank Rosolino's group but suddenly they weren't very active and I felt that empty need to play. I was doing a film session that also included pianist Bill Mays with whom I had played many times especially in Shank's band. I mentioned my emptiness to him and he said, "Why don't you put together your own group?" My reply was, "Who would play with ME?" He said, "I WOULD!" That simple statement was the incentive to form the group. We had been rehearsing a bit and played a couple of gigs and one day I got a call from trumpeter-engineer Jim Mooney who said he had bought a new board for his Sage and Sound Studios and would we mind rehearsing in his studio so he could check out the new equipment. And we DID. AND... he recorded our rehearsed tunes.
After we started listening, we realized they sounded good enough to release. After mixing, I mentioned it to producer Dave Pell who then contacted another producer in New York named Jack Kreisberg who was looking for product for SUTRA Records. End of story. It was a strange but fruitful beginning of the group that stayed together for many years and recorded many albums that we were all pleased with to include our first Grammy nomination.
I was very surprised but very pleased that Jordi Pujol had interest in re-issuing this recording. It was around 40 years ago and we have all grown but it still sounds good! I hope you enjoy it. And thank you, Bill Mays!
Of the tunes recorded on Class Reunion, three were written by our great tenor sax player, Gordon Brisker. They are the title tune Class Reunion, She's Gone Again, and Run Away. We included the great standard A Child Is Born written by Roland Hanna & Thad Jones. The final 2 tunes were my compositions. The first is Kachina. A Kachina is a Native American spiritual doll that is kept in the homes for various spiritual reasons. My home is cluttered with them! And Navarro Flats is an obvious tribute to the great trumpeter Fats Navarro, from whom I gained great inspiration in my early years and still do.”
—Bobby Shew (September 2017) For order information or to view the current Fresh Sound catalogue please click this link.
