© -Steven Cerra , copyright protected; all rights reserved.
We thought we’d combine it with our earlier feature on the late,
tenor saxophonist, hence the title of this piece.
Order information regarding The Jazz Journal is at www.jazzjournal.co.uk/
© -Gordon Jack /Jazz
Journal, May/2013, copyright protected; all rights reserved. Used with the
author’s permission.
“BREW MOORE by Gordon Jack
On the 8th. April 1949 five of the best young Prez-influenced
tenors assembled in a New York studio to record
original material by Al Cohn and Gerry Mulligan. Allen Eager, Al Cohn, Stan
Getz and Zoot Sims were already well known but the fifth man, Brew Moore was
destined to remain under the jazz radar throughout a fairly brief career. As if
acknowledging his low profile he is the only one to have one of the titles
recorded that day dedicated to him - Four And One Moore by Mulligan.
Milton Aubrey Moore Jnr. was born in Indianola , Mississippi on the 26th. March
1924. After briefly attending Ole Miss (the University of Mississippi ) he started playing in
Memphis and New Orleans burlesque clubs like
the Puppy House and the Kitten Club. He was making $23.00 a week
which was good money for the time playing behind exotic dancers like Kalema And
Her Pythons. He once said that he was 21 years old before he saw a naked woman
from the front.
By 1948 he made his way to New York where he had to wait
six months for his Local 802 union card which would allow him to work in the
city. He was one of the regulars though along with Mulligan, Sims, George
Wallington, Kenny Drew and Warne Marsh who played in private sessions at Don
Jose’s studio, a fourth floor walk-up on West 49th. Street. The studio was
characterised by a red door which became the title of a well known
Sims/Mulligan original and much later Dave Frishberg added a very
hip lyric (Zoot Walks In). He did manage to get the occasional booking in Brooklyn strip clubs with the
young Mike Zwerin who described him as one of the ‘White Presidents’.
In 1949 Brew worked briefly with Claude Thornhill who he said, “Was
some kind of freak genius. He could take the worst, out of tune piano and make
it sound in tune.” The band loved his playing but apparently found him hard to
handle because of his heavy drinking which nevertheless did not affect his
playing. Ironically, Serge Chaloff who had his own personal demons was warned
by his mother (the celebrated Madam Margaret) to keep away from Brew because of
his extreme behaviour. She thought he was a bad influence!
By now he was playing regularly at the Royal Roost and Bop City in a Kai Winding group
which included Mulligan, Wallington, Curley Russell, and Max Roach or Roy
Haynes. They worked as far afield as Tootie’s Mayfair in Kansas City where Bob Brookmeyer
sat in and they recorded no less than 14 titles in 1949. Occasionally trumpeter
Jerry Lloyd (aka Hurwitz) was added. He had played with Charlie Parker and was
highly regarded by his colleagues but his recordings never seemed to do him
justice as a soloist. He composed two fine originals for the group – Mud Bug and Igloo – but by the late fifties he had dropped out of music and was
driving a cab in New York to make ends meet.
Some enterprising label (Fresh Sound perhaps?) should reissue all the material Moore recorded with Kai
Winding because titles like Sid’s Bounce,
Night On Bop Mountain and Lestorian Mode feature some of his
finest work.
In the late ‘40s he began a long romance with Arlyne Brown
(songwriter Lew Brown’s daughter) which continued until 1953 when she became
Mrs. Gerry Mulligan. Arlyne once described him to me as, “A soft, sweet,
southern boy with an enormous talent looking like a combination of Leslie
Howard and James Dean”.
He often performed with Machito’s Afro-Cuban orchestra at Birdland
and the Apollo and he can be heard on their recording of Cubop City . Harry Belafonte once
sat in with the band at Birdland and Brew has a solo on the singer’s debut
recording Lean On Me with Howard
McGhee’s orchestra. Soon after yet another Birdland engagement this time with
Miles Davis, JJ Johnson and Charlie Parker, he returned home to New Orleans
where he apparently lived in a ‘dive’ with Joe Pass and writer William S.
Burroughs. While he was working there he drove up to Baton Rouge for a two week
engagement at the Flamingo with Mose
Allison. The pianist told me that he had heard Brew in many situations, “But
even on the dumbest gig with people that could barely play he always sounded
terrific. He was a very bright, sensitive character who could also write
poetry. He was something of a hero to all the southern guys because he was the
first one of us to work and record in New York”.
He continued working in the south but early in 1953 he was booked
to appear with Charlie Parker in Montreal for a TV performance on CBFT’s ‘Jazz Workshop’. Returning to New York
he recorded with Chuck Wayne and then re-joined Kai Winding at Birdland. The
arrangements were by Tom Talbert and Winding’s group included Phil Urso, Cecil
Payne, Walter Bishop Jnr., Percy Heath and Philly Joe Jones. In an enthusiastic
Metronome review George T. Simon
said, “The soloists are all good notably Kai and Brew Moore who blows some
mighty exciting, moving, well-toned horn. Urso keeps up with him some of the
time (the two engage in cutting sessions now and then) but he has neither
Brew’s ideas nor his drive.”
Brew worked fairly steadily at the Open Door in Greenwich Village usually with Don
Joseph or Tony Fruscella along with Bill Triglia and Teddy Kotick. There were
always a number of drummers available like Nick Stabulas, Al Levitt or Art
Mardigan and Freddy Gruber kept his kit there when he was not working. Charlie
Parker was often the featured attraction and on one occasion he and Brew
‘goosed’ each other as they slowly ambled around the dance floor. They finished
up serenading a large piece of chewing gum stuck to the floor. Another of
Brew’s favourite haunts in Greenwich Village was Arthur’s Tavern where Parker often held
forth. Once when the great man didn’t have his alto, he borrowed Brew’s tenor. Arthur’s Tavern opened in 1937 and is
still going strong – no cover charge, minimum one drink per set.
Some time in 1955 folk singer Billy Faier drove through Washington
Square shouting “Anybody for the coast?”. Brew’s gig book was anything but full
so he joined Billy who also had Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Woody Guthrie in the
car. Brew left them in Los Angeles and took the bus to San Francisco which was to become
the centre for the new beat culture.
The years spent in California were busy and productive ones. He
worked regularly at the Black Hawk
and the Jazz Cellar where Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Rexroth gave poetry readings. It was probably at one
of these clubs that Jack Kerouac heard him because he mentions listening to
Brew in his book Desolation Angels. He had a popular two-tenor group with Harold
Wylie at The Tropics and he recorded
with Cal Tjader for Fantasy. He also appeared at the 1958 Monterey Jazz
Festival with trumpeter Dickie Mills and he sat in for a set there with Gerry
Mulligan.
He always said, “I go where the work is” and in 1961 he emigrated
to Europe . He did six months at The
Blue Note in Paris with Kenny Clarke and
appeared at the Berlin Jazz Festival with Herb Geller who told me, “He was a
wonderful, natural player like Zoot. It was strictly talent and intuition with
both of them. I was very fond of Brew”. He worked extensively in Sweden and Denmark throughout the sixties
but often returned to the States doing casuals in Manhattan . He played at the Half Note with Bill Berry and on one
occasion there Anita O’Day and Judy Garland were also on the bill. He was
featured at Newport in a jam session in
1969 which was the year he played Danny’s
Restaurant and The Scene with Dave Frishberg. John Carisi
sat in at Danny’s and Dan Morgenstern ’s Downbeat review said, “Brew is incapable of playing a dishonest
note. His music is just pure and loving and a joy to hear.” Ira Gitler was similarly
impressed at The Scene, “Moore ’s brand of emotional,
romantic, hard swinging music captivated the waitresses and bartenders as well
as the regulars. Brew was beautiful.”
The story of how Brew Moore died in Copenhagen in 1973 has become
an established part of jazz folk lore but not all the details are well known.
He gave a party to celebrate an inheritance and during the festivities fell
down some stairs and broke his neck. Mose Allison filled in the gaps for me a
few years ago – “Brew had been staying at Carmen Massey’s house in Biloxi when
he heard he had inherited all this money. He had been scuffling on the fringes
of the jazz world all his life and never made much at all. He left for Europe
and discovered he had lost a good luck charm he had been carrying around for
years. He wrote to Carmen asking him to check if he had left it at the house.
The next thing Carmen hears is that Brew had died and a few days later they
found Brew’s lucky charm. That story sounds like something out of Truman
Capote.” As Herb Geller once said, “It could only happen to a jazz musician.”
Brew Moore : A Wandering, Soulful
Tenor Saxophonist
© - Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all
rights reserved.
“Moore
was a terrific, but star-crossed tenor player, at his best as good as Getz and
Sims, but never able to get a career together as they did. He left only a small
number of records behind him ….”
- Richard Cook and
Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.
If, as Louis Armstrong’s states – “Jazz is only who you are” – then
the inventiveness and spontaneous nature of tenor saxophone Brew Moore’s music
was certainly reflective of his wandering and constantly searching lifestyle.
Mark Gardner, the distinguished Jazz author offered these insights
about Brew in the liner notes to Brothers and Other Mothers [Savoy
Records SJL2210].
“Milton A. Moore Jr. was a drifter, a born loser, a hero of the
beat generation and a brilliant saxophonist. Yes, he once remarked that any
tenorman who did not play like Pres was playing wrong-that was the extent of
his admiration.
One day in the 'fifties Brew casually took off for California . As Moore told it, "Billy
Faier had a 1949 Buick and somebody wanted him to drive it out to California and he rode through Washington Square shouting 'anyone for
the Coast?' And I was just sitting there on a bench and there wasn't s***
shaking in New York so I-said 'hell, yes,'
and when we started off there was Rambling Jack Elliot and Woody Guthrie."
After Woody heard Brew play at the roadside en route he refused to speak again
to the saxophonist.
Guthrie didn't dig jazz. "But we were the only juice heads in
the car so Woody would say to Jack or Billy, 'Would you ask Brew if he'd like
to split a bottle of port with me, and I'd say, 'You tell Woody that's cool
with me.' Then they let me off in L.A. and I took a bus up to
San Francisco ."
Before that fantastic journey. Brew had worked around with his
buddy Tony Fruscella, a beautiful trumpeter who was also over-fond of the
juice. Allen Eager was also a regular playing partner of Fruscella's. Brew
stayed in Frisco for about five years, played all over town, made a couple of
albums under his own name, recorded with Cal Tjader and drank a lot of wine. He
was seriously ill in 1959 but recovered and in 1961 moved to Europe and for three years
drifted around the Continent.
Twice in the 1960's he returned to the States but there was still
no s*** shaking and nobody bothered to record him properly (a date as a sideman
with Ray Nance was the only evidence of the final, unhappy return). His parents
were very old and his mother sick. Brew was far from well and didn't look after
himself. Friends kept an eye on him and tried to ensure that he ate regularly
but Moore was almost past caring.
When he decided to split back to Scandinavia via the Canary Islands where he played at
Jimmy Gourley's Half Note Club in Las Palmas , some of his admirers
in New York produced a four-page newspaper called
"Brew Moore News," in which Brew wrote a touching little verse:
Love I feel, but
longing much;
Thy face I see, but
cannot touch.
Your presence in heart
is good, I know,
but hand in hand-it's
greater so.
Time was running out for Brew. There was one more album - a great
set made at a Stockholm club [Stampen] where Moore really grooved. Then
came the news that he had died after falling down a flight of steps in a
restaurant.
The final irony: Brew, who had scuffled and scraped for cash almost
all his life, had just been left a substantial sum of money, to give him
genuine security, by a relative who had died. It happened too late.”
“Scuffling” is very much the byword when talking about Brew as one
has to jump here and there to find the few scraps of information and opinion
that has been written about him in that Jazz literature.
Jazz author and critic, Ralph J, Gleason, had this to say about him
in the insert notes to one of Brew’s best recordings – The Brew Moore Quintet [Fantasy
3-2222 –OJCCD 100-2]:
Mainly main idea is to get back to simplicity.' says Brew Moore of
his work these days. "I like a small group—such as the quintet we have on
this album—where there is no other front line and I can let myself go. The
biggest kick to me in playing is swinging-freedom and movement. And with a
small group, I can do this more easily.
"Music must be a personal expression of one's own world and
way of life. When everything else gets to be a drag there is music for
forgetfulness and also for memory and or a reminder that there is more good
than bad in most things. The idea of playing for me is to compose a different,
not always better I'm afraid, melody on the tune and basis of the original
song, rather than construct a series of chord progressions around the original
chords. I feel that in several spots in this group of tunes we attain the
rapport necessary for good jazz. I hope so."
And when you listen to these numbers, you will agree that Brew …
has done what he set out to do. These all swing and even Brew, who is most
critical of his own work ("I guess I never have been happy with anything I
did") had to say of this album, "It swings. You can say that."
Brew has two absolutely golden gifts. He swings like mad and he has
soul. These are things you cannot learn by wood-shedding [practicing], or in
any conservatory. You have to be born with them or learn them by living. Brew
had them and he also has a priceless gift for phrasing.
"Everything he plays lays just right," one musician put
it. It certainly does. … When Brew says
it, he says it simply, but it rings true. That's the best way there is.”
“After high school Moore began a peripatetic
career that brought him little fame but gave him a heady taste for life on the
move. …
By the time he moved to San Francisco [1954], Moore had achieved a
reputation for excellence among Jazz insiders …. Jack Kerouac depicts a Moore performance in Desolation
Angels, where Brew (or Brue, as Kerouac spells it) starts his solo
with, the beat prosodist tells us, "a perfect beautiful new idea that
announces the glory of the future world.”
This future glory eluded Moore to the end. His
quartet and quintet albums on Fantasy, made during his California years, were his last
commercial recordings in the United States . These along with his
sideman recordings with Tjader, find the tenorist at absolutely top form, stretching
out over standards with an impressive melodic and rhythmic inventiveness. In
1961, he moved to Europe , where, except for intermittent appearances in
the United States , he lived until his
death in 1973 as the result of a fall.”
To give you a sampling of what’s on offer in Brew Moore’s music,
with the help of the crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD , we put together the
following video tribute to Brew on which he performs You Stepped Out of a Dream with Swedish baritone saxophonist Lars
Gullin [who also did the arrangement], Bent Axen [p], Niels-Henning
Orsted-Pedersen [b] and William Schioppfe [d]. The music was recorded in Copenhagen in 1962.
Very interesting read about Brew Moore. Made me search my racks and I found a compilation with radiorecordings from jazzclubs from Stockholm broadcasted by radio Sverige in the years 1961 and 1971.
ReplyDeleteWillie