Denny Zeitlin "Solo Piano, Crazy Rhythm - Exploring George Gershwin"

 © Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Denny Zeitlin has been the subject of numerous features on this blog including a 43 page overview of his work dating back to the early 1960s which you can locate at Denny Zeitlin: A JazzProfiles Retrospective on His Career.

Like most Jazz musicians, Denny is in the moment and while his music is an extension of everything that has gone before it, his energy and enthusiasm are focused on the latest project which in this case happens to be Denny Zeitlin "Solo Piano, Crazy Rhythm - Exploring George Gershwin" [Sunnyside SSC 1693].

As the late, great bassist, composer-arranger and bandleader Charles Mingus once said - “We have to improvise on something.”

So the “something” in this case for Denny’s latest series of recorded improvisation becomes George Gershwin [1898 - 1937], one of the premier song composers in American history.

According to Alec Wilder’s seminal book on the subject - American Popular Song - The Great Innovators, 1900-1950 [1972]: 

“George Gershwin was almost unique among famous songwriters in that his ambition, talent, and search for ever-larger forms resulted in a double career: popular song writer and formal composer. Though well-launched on a songwriting career, and though relatively untutored, he began experimenting with larger musical forms while continuing to perfect the smaller ones.

After having examined nearly all of George Gershwin's published songs, I would say that the writing of his more ambitious compositions did not cause his songs to become too complex for popular appeal. Paradoxically, his last songs became less rather than more complex.

Having heard that he superimposed his songs on opulent harmonic patterns, I expected to find melodies often distorted as the result of the harmonic demands. But though I don't believe he was in the same league as Jerome Kern or Richard Rodgers as a pure melodist. I was considerably surprised to find his tunes seldom needing the harmony to justify their existence. He did have a superb harmonic sense. But his melodies have a life of their own.

He was an aggressive writer. His was the "hard sell," as opposed to the softer, gentler persuasiveness of, say, Kern or Irving Berlin. If I were to compare his songs with Kern's, I'd say Gershwin's were active and Kern's passive. The constant, and characteristic, repeated note found throughout Gershwin's songs is a basic attestation of this aggressiveness. I believe that his most popular melodies contain this drive, while those I consider to be more moving, and more interesting musically, are, for the most part, his less commercially successful, more graceful, delicate melodies.

Gershwin's extraordinary popularity was undoubtedly deserved, yet it should be kept in mind that the advent of radio occurred just as his career was getting under way. The enormous exposure provided by this medium had much to do with the public's enthusiasm for his songs. For the jazz musician liked his songs and, more importantly, so did the dance-band arranger. Between the two a greater coverage was given to Gershwin's songs than to those of most other writers except, perhaps, Vincent Youmans.

There is another aspect of Gershwin's great acceptance which should be mentioned. The years of his greatest popularity were those of the Depression. And since Gershwin was rarely given to sad songs, what could have been a more welcome palliative for the natural gloom of the times than the insistently cheery sound of his music?”

For his Gershwin sojourn, Denny has selected ten widely known Gershwin melodies and one that is extremely obscure.

They were recorded in performance on December 7, 2018 in performance at the Piedmont Piano Company in Oakland, California. The reason for both the solo piano approach and the venue are explained in the following:

“A Note From Denny Zeitlin...

Back in 2014, I made a shift in my annual solo concerts at Oakland's Piedmont Piano Company, and began focusing on the work of single composers: Wayne Shorter, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Billy Strayhorn— and in 2018, George Gershwin. Gershwin (1898-1937) packed amazingly bold and original contributions to classical, jazz, and popular music into just 38 years of life. Jazz musicians have been particular beneficiaries —the structure of his compositions invites reharmonization and reconceptualizing. I wanted to both honor his songs, and breathe new life into them. The wonderful audience vibe, great acoustics, and stellar piano aided my plunge into the depths of the music.”

Denny offers his comments on each of the 11 Gershwin tracks in the CD’s insert notes. 

For this feature, I wanted to offer some additional insights into three of them by way of Ted Gioia’s take on these Gershwin tunes in his The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire [1st Ed. 2012]. Besides being the author of numerous books on various aspects of music, Ted is also an accomplished Jazz pianist.

I’ll parallel Ted’s insights [which are italicized] with my comments about Denny’s take on these three Gershwin songs.

THE MAN I LOVE

“This song had a long, troubled history before becoming a hit. "The Man I Love" initially appeared in the 1924 musical Lady Be Good, where it served as a feature for Adele Astaire — but only lasted a week before getting yanked from the show.

Benny Goodman brought the piece back into the limelight almost a decade later, enjoying a hit with his 1937 quartet recording of "The Man I Love." Goodman continued to feature the work in a variety of settings—with a combo at Carnegie Hall in 1938, …. But equally influential in jazz circles was Coleman Hawkins's 1943 recording, which finds the tenorist constructing a harmonically expansive solo that ranks among the finest sax improvisations of the era. Over the next 18 months, more than two dozen cover versions of "The Man I Love" were recorded—more than in the entire decade leading up to Hawk's session.

This song's popularity has never waned in later years…..

In truth, the melodic material employed here is quite simple—many of the phrases merely move up and down a half or full step before concluding up a minor third. Gershwin employs this device no fewer than 15 times during the course of a 32-bar song. Yet the repetition of this motif contrasts most markedly with the constant movement in the song's harmonies. The contrast gives added emphasis to Gershwin's repeated use of the flat seven in the vocal line, an intrinsically bluesy choice that transforms what might otherwise sound like a folkish nineteenth-century melody into a consummate Jazz Age lament.”

Denny employs a hard-charging, rhythmically direct and up-tempo vamp with ostinato overtones and bell-like chords to frame the opening of his version of the tune. There’s a clarity and expressiveness to his treatment which not only reinforces the repetitive motif in the song that Ted references, but also serves to expand it. With the bass overtones in the ostinato, the strong rhythmic pulse and the upper register chording, Denny creates the impression of a full piano-bass-drums trio all performing the tune simultaneously. Often interpreted as a languid ballad, Denny’s superb pianism generates a continuous excitement very reminiscent of the orchestral approach Erroll Garner employs in his interpretation of the song.

FASCINATING RHYTHM

“In the early 1920s, the jittery rhythms of jazz were starting to show up in popular songs but generally in very rudimentary forms. "The Charleston" was a hit around this time, and built its hook on a syncopation so easy to feel that you could teach kindergarten students to clap along with it. Other popular songs of the era, such as "Limehouse Blues" (written by British theatrical composer Philip Braham) and "Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye" (composed by Ted Fio Rito, the Newark-born son of Italian immigrants), showed that tunesmiths of all lineages were now borrowing jazz phrasing for their pop melodies.

But no one moved more aggressively in mixing popular song with a jazz sensibility than George Gershwin. Yet also give credit to his brother Ira….— 

In any event, the brothers' efforts for the 1924 show Lady Be Good, the first major Broadway collaboration by these songwriting siblings, include some of the jazziest songs they would ever write. "Fascinating Rhythm," a hit song from the production, builds its hook from a metric displacement—the fascinating rhythm of the title, I would suggest—that is very much out of the jazz playbook. In fact, I could easily imagine this melody having come from a New Orleans cornet player or a Chicago school clarinetist, so perfectly does it match the sound of hot jazz of the era. The song was, in turn, easily adapted to the needs of jazz bands. In many ways, its melody construction anticipates the riff-based charts that would usher in the Swing Era.”

A jabbing left hand, rhythmically punctuating bass chords in the manner of a stride pianist with the right hand emphatically stating the melody creates a fascinating introduction to this song. It’s almost as though Denny is purposely conjuring up a musical play-on-words on the song’s title. The challenge of playing music well is something that Denny always honors in his performances, but this one, especially reminds us, too, that music should be fun.

HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN GOING ON?

“The challenge facing jazz musicians when playing popular songs from the 1920s is that most of them sound like quaint period pieces today. This makes them fine for deliberately retro interpretations, but somewhat resistant to fresh perspectives and adaptation to newer musical approaches. Even if one does update, say, "Sweet Georgia Brown" or "Ain't She Sweet" or "Little Orphan Annie," the resulting flavor can be a discordant postmodernism — one that has potentially damaged, or ridiculed, the song in the process of reworking it. From a Darwinian perspective, many of these once-fashionable songs are not sufficiently adaptive to survive as jazz staples today.

But then I consider "How Long Has This Been Going On?" and marvel over a composition that seems perfectly malleable to a modern sensibility. Ira Gershwin's words could easily serve as the basis for a current movie theme or pop song, the chords have an appealingly open and uncluttered feeling rare for that era of harmonic maximalism, and the melody is very soulful without the singsong phrasing so popular during the Jazz Age. If your first introduction to this standard was Ray Charles's 1977 recording, you might have thought that it had been composed with him in mind. 

I am hardly surprised that the broader public periodically rediscovers this song.” 

This is Denny at his interpretive best. Sometimes I think this is what the piano - with its keyboard that contains the entire theory of music in its 88 keys  - was invented for; a musical conversation between it and the audience that can be provided by no other single instrument. Denny‘s approach relies heavily on the melody - “a composition that seems perfectly malleable to a modern sensibility” - which he surrounds with embellishments that reveal the beauty in the construction of this straightforward and simple composition.

Recordings like this don’t come along very often. Here we have a major artist interpreting the work of a major composer and giving his work new life by complementing it with thoughtful and expressive reinterpretations.

Denny brings the weight of his 60+ years of experience and expertise to Gershwin’s music and helps us to hear nuances, subtleties, and shadings that only a musician with his skill and refined sensibilities can bring out.

Exploring Gershwin with Zeitlin is a unique opportunity that gets more intriguing and satisfying with each listening of this precious, preserved recording.

A great American musical composer as defined by the artistry of a great American musician; it's his gift to us, not only of Gershwin’s legacy but his own.

George Gershwin is one for the ages and so is Denny Zeitlin.

Don’t miss this treat.