Ed Bickert and Lorne Lofsky Ah-Leu-Cha [From the Archives]

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

“I first heard Ed Bickert on a record with Paul Desmond and I immediately thought, ‘Wow! Who’s is that? It was such great harmonic playing.’”

- Lorne Lofsky, Jazz guitarist

“Edward Isaac Bickert in never one to blow his own horn – figuratively – he is one of the most modest and unassuming men in Jazz. But literally – he blows up a storm ….”

- Frank Rutter, The Vancouver Sun

“Bickert’s self effacing style masks a keen intelligence. His deceptively soft tone is the front for a shrewd, unexpectedly attacking style that treats bebop tempos with the same equanimity as a swing-styled ballad.”

-Richard Cook & Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed.

“Lorne Lofsky is a talented cool-toned guitarist in the tradition of Jimmy Raney and his fellow Canadian Ed Bickert ….”

- Scott Yanow, allmusic.com

I have no idea why, but Charlie Parker’s Ah-Leu-Cha has always been among my favorite Bebop compositions.

With its theme stated as a staggered interaction between the two horns – what might be considered as countermelody phrasing – the tune is as much fun to play on as it is to listen to.

It’s a tune that is only rarely heard and not often recorded. Allmusic.com lists 89 versions of Ah-Leu-Cha many of which are alternate versions by Charlie “Bird” Parker and Miles Davis, who was a member of Bird’s group in 1948 when the tune was first recorded.

Jack Chambers, in his seminal work, Milestones: The Music and Times of Miles Davis [NY: William Morrow, 1983/85] explains that Ah-Leu-Cha was included as one of four tunes recorded in October 1955 when the Miles Davis Quintet consisting of Miles, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones made their recording debut for Columbia Records.

Jack goes on to explain:

“Ah-Leu-Cha is Parker's tune, recorded by Davis and Parker in the last days of the original Parker quintet, in 1948; it had hardly been played at all since then by anyone, and Davis seems to have removed it from his quintet's repertoire after the first few months. It deserved a better fate, probably, because it is an affecting up-tempo melody based on a counterpoint chase by the two horns. On this version, Philly Joe Jones plays the melody at the bridge, and Davis solos coolly while the rhythm blasts around him.” [p. 224]

The next time I heard Miles play Ah-Leu-Cha was on a recording that Columbia made in performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival with his famous sextet that included Julian “Cannonball” Adderley on alto sax, Coltrane on tenor, Bill Evans on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Jimmy Cobb on drums.

Remarkably, this stellar group’s performance of Ah-Leu-Cha at the 1958 NJF was a disappointment mainly because Miles counted it out at a ridiculously fast tempo that made a hash of the intrinsic qualities of the tune.

As Jack Chambers describes it: “The sextet’s performance is substandard. Davis’ most conspicuous contribution comes in tapping out overzealous tempos on all tunes, including a breakneck tempo on Ah-Leu-Cha that reduces the ensemble to shambles.” [p. 288]

Miles would make a habit of such “overzealous tempos;” witness what he did over the years with the tempos he counted out to So What, first heard with a slow, lopping beat on the classic Kind of Blue album.

Ah-Leu-Cha needs room to breath. Although it is structured around a basic, 32-bar AABA format, with the “A’s” based on the changes to Honeysuckle Rose and the “B” using I Got Rhythm changes, the counterpoint manner in which the melody is fashioned has to have room for the countermelodies to be expressed.

Over the years, I heard a few other versions of Ah-Leu-Cha, most notably one which has Art Farmer on trumpet on Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi’s Isis CD, but I pretty much left the tune alone after Miles trashed it at the 1958 NJF.

Much to my delight, I recently rediscovered its allure while revisiting Ed Bickert’s playing of it with fellow guitarist Lorne Lofsky on their This is New Concord Jazz CD [4414] with Neil Swainson on bass and Jerry Fuller on drums.

Ed and Lorne play Ah-Leu-Cha at a medium tempo that allows its intricacies to nicely come together while, at the same time, setting up a platform for some interesting improvisations on the tune’s familiar changes.

Have a listen and see what you think of Ah-Leu-Cha as I’ve included Ed and Lorne’s interpretation of this all-too-infrequently heard bebop tune as the audio track on the following video [Ed takes the first solo each time around].

Paul Desmond - The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings- Mosaic Records

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

“Beauty is an undefinable thing. Not everyone even hears it but for those that do, it's probably the main reason they really love the music they love. Paul's playing was never about how he could play the saxophone. He had lots of chops but his playing was always about the feeling and the beauty of the music and I believe that this is what makes him one of the greatest players of all time.”

- Don Thompson, double bass, piano, and vibes

“Paul's longtime associate Jim Hall was his guitarist at the Half Note, but Hall was unable to go to Toronto when Desmond accepted a gig there at the club called Bourbon Street. Hall recommended Ed Bickert (1932-2019), often mentioned with Lennie Breau and Sonny Greenwich as among Canada's finest guitarists. Don Thompson was the bass player in Desmond's quartet at Bourbon Street. A pianist, composer and superb bassist, Thompson is also a gifted recording engineer. Every night at Bourbon Street, he taped the Desmond group. He has worked with Breau and Greenwich and says, "I played with all of those great guitarists, but for Paul and his music, Ed Bickert was the perfect fit. It was a match made in heaven." The heavenly match led to Bickert's being the guitarist on the 1974 CTI album PURE DESMOND, produced by John Snyder and recorded in New York in the fall of 1974 with bassist Ron Carter and drummer Connie Kay. Thus, despite the personnel differences, PURE DESMOND was the prototype of what became Desmond's Canadian quartet.

Thompson had an assignment to capture Desmond's quartet lor the A&M Horizon label. A&M issued the resulting album on vinyl, and later on CD, as THE PAUL DESMOND QUARTET LIVE. He recorded Desmond in March of 1975 and again in October and November of that year. Expanding on Bickerl's compatibility with Desmond and on the guitarist's abilities in general, Thompson said, "Ed was famous for knowing all the tunes in all the keys. We had no music and never rehearsed. There were a couple of endings we discussed before going on, and Paul had a funny little cue that he'd play to let us know the next chorus would be stop-lime. Other than that, we'd go on stage, he'd call a tune and the key, and we'd just play. These are possibly the best recordings there are of Ed Bickert.”

- Doug Ramsey, author, Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond

These excerpts from Doug Ramsey’s booklet notes provide the background for the evolution of Mosaic Records’ latest boxed set - Paul Desmond - The Complete 1975 Toronto Recordings [MD7-269] about which you can locate order information by going here.

Don Thompson, the bassist on these dates who recorded them in performance [Chad Irschich is the Mosaic recording engineer], also provided an overview of these sessions in the booklet that accompanies the set. We wrote to Don and to Michael Cuscuna who produced them along with Don and Chad and requested their permission to reprint Don’s notes on these pages and they graciously gave their approval.

These recordings capture many brilliant performances by Paul less than two years before his passing on May 30, 1977. They are an everlasting testimony to his uniqueness as a musical artist.

“Thompson is now the last survivor of the Paul Desmond Canadian Quartet. In preparation for this Mosaic release, he has restored and remixed his original tapes so they can be heard by Desmond's longtime fans as well as a new generation of listeners. These recordings offer further proof thai the legacies of jazz musicians extend far beyond their mortal lives. They remain with us as long as their music can be heard.”

— Thomas Cunniffe August 2019, Mosaic Set Postscript

 © -Don Thompson/Mosaic Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

“Back in the 1970s there was a club in Toronto that would regularly bring in major artists to play a couple of weeks with a local Toronto rhythm section. I was the bass player (sometimes piano player) in one of the two house rhythm sections and I played there many times with such people as Jim Hall, Art Farmer, Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, James Moody and many others. In 1974 I got a call to play there with Paul Desmond.

Paul had always been a favorite of mine. When I was about 15, still in high school, I had a band (alto sax, piano and drums) and we played a lot of the Brubeck hits of the day including BROTHER CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?, A FINE ROMANCE and PENNIES FROM HEAVEN. I wrote out Paul's solos for my alto player who was not an improviser but was a good reader with a pretty sound.

The first jazz concert I ever went to was in 1957 (I was 17) and there were five groups on the program. Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, George Shearing, Billie Holiday and Dave Brubeck. It was pretty silly having five groups playing about 20 minutes each and the only things I remembered after the concert were Paul's playing and a bongo solo by Armando Peraza who was playing with George Shearing. Paul got to me then as he always has just by playing so pretty and without any show biz jive.

As I understand it, when I got the call in 1974 the Brubeck Band had sort of disbanded a couple of years earlier and Paul had not been playing very much, so he really wasn't that keen on coming to Toronto and working with guys he didn't know. He'd recently done a week in New York with a quartet with Jim Hall and he'd asked Jim if he would come to Toronto for the gig but Jim declined, suggesting he try to get Ed Bickert to play guitar along with me on bass and Terry Clarke on drums. Ed was one of the greatest guitarists in Canada along with Sonny Greenwich and Lenny Breau. All three of them lived in Toronto in the early 1970s and I played with all of them but for Paul and his music Ed Bickert was the perfect fit.

Paul came back to Toronto in March 1975 and this time he asked me to record the gig for a live recording on A&M Horizon. We recorded that gig and another week in October and these CDs are the result of those two weeks. We had no music and never rehearsed but there were a couple of endings we discussed before going on to play. He also had a funny little cue that he'd play to let us know the next chorus would be stop-time. Other than that, we'd just go on stage and he'd call the tunes and the key they'd be in and we'd just play.

Ed was famous for basically knowing all the tunes in all the keys. It was impossible to think of a tune he didn't know and I'd been playing with him for four years so I really knew his harmony. These are possibly the best recordings there are of Ed Bickert. He made quite a few recordings but most of them were either as a sideman or under his own name but with music arranged by someone else, so he was usually reading someone else's chords. Ed had an amazing knowledge and understanding of harmony and with no music to read he was free to play whatever harmonies that came into his mind and all those beautiful chords he played were things that he'd figured out and had been playing since the early 1960s.

The tracks with Rob McConnell came about as a result of Ed's father passing away and Ed having to leave town for a couple of nights to deal with things. Rob had been into the club a couple of times to sit in and he and Paul had become friends so rather than trying to get another guitar player we asked Rob to fill in for Ed for the two nights. Paul and Rob played beautifully together and it often sounds like they'd had a rehearsal but it was the same as it was with Ed. Paul would ask Rob what he felt like playing and Rob would suggest, for example MY FUNNY VALENTINE, then they would play it so beautifully it sounded like they had a worked-out arrangement. All they did, in fact, was listen to and watch one another. Just a glance from Paul and Rob would take over the melody for four or eight bars. Then he'd look over to Paul and Paul would take over the melody and they both knew exactly what to play when the other was playing a solo.

Jerry Fuller was so understated and inconspicuous he was often overlooked, but the fact is his playing was a big part of the success of the whole gig. Jerry was a very schooled musician having studied piano and arranging when he was a student at Westlake in Los Angeles. He was also a very good bass player and he knew all the tunes, too. He had a reputation for shouting the chord changes to a bass player who didn't know a tune they were playing and he was always right. I remember sitting with him on a break one night and a young student drummer came over and asked him what it was like playing with Paul. Jerry thought about it and replied "I try to play everything Paul wants me to play and every now and then I play something I'd like to play." Jerry was known for being a power bebop drummer who's playing came right out of Philly Joe Jones but he'd put all that aside when he was playing with Paul. He always played exactly what the music needed.

For me the gig was a most beautiful experience. The music was all very familiar to me and all I had to do was just listen and try to do what the music asked me to do. Paul gave me a solo on every tune whether I wanted it or not and there were many times I was just playing and hoping I didn't mess up what had been up to then, another perfect take.

Working on this project with recording engineer Chad Irschick was another amazing experience. We'd worked together on the mastering of the JIM HALL LIVE CDs that came out on Artists Share and the GEORGE SHEARING AT HOME CD as well as many of my own projects. He is the best engineer I've ever worked with and he cares about the music as much as any musician I know. He hears every note as though he'd played it himself and uses his knowledge as a musician and all the technology he has to make the music come alive. There were a couple of tapes that were unplayable because of a buzz on the bass track but one of the young tech geniuses in the studio spent quite a few hours on it and got rid of every buzzing bass note giving us some of the best tracks we have.

I do think that Paul was one of the real giants of jazz and this is a chance to hear him playing live, having fun with musicians he really enjoyed playing with. For me, the thing that makes someone a really great musician is not technique. It's not hip-ness (tricky patterns on D minor, playing in odd meters, all the stuff that kids learn in college). It has nothing to do with those kinds of things. Everyone knows Charlie Parker and John Coltrane had chops to burn but that's not what made them great. For me it's the feeling and the beauty in their playing that sets them apart from the rest. It's how I feel when I listen to Bird play OLD FOLKS or when I hear Trane play I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOU. Beauty is an undefinable thing. Not everyone even hears it but for those that do, it's probably the main reason they really love the music they love. Paul's playing was never about how he could play the saxophone. He had lots of chops but his playing was always about the feeling and the beauty of the music and I believe that this is what makes him one of the greatest players of all time.

I can't think of very many musicians in the history of jazz that would have this kind of continuing popularity 42 years after their passing. He was an honest, pure artist who did it all without any kind of ego or show. I don't think he was ever actually trying to do anything. He just did it the only way he could and I'm truly honored to have been a part of his music.”

— Don Thompson July 2019

RIP, Ed Bickert The great and revered Canadian jazz guitarist died in Toronto on 2/28/2019 at the age of 86.

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

Peter Hum wrote this obituary of Ed Bickert in The Kingston [Ontario] Whig Standard, March 2, 2019.

I’m posting it as a remembrance of Ed on these pages and I’ve added a YouTube video of a full album by him at the conclusion of Peter’s memorial to give you some examples of the inimitable Bickert style.

Ed’s introspectively harmonic style is one that he brought together over a lifetime of experimenting, exploring and examining how different chords, notes and phrases can embellish and expand the music.

Quiet and contemplative Jazz is becoming more and more a rarity these days. Thank goodness Ed put so much of it on record for those of us who appreciate this approach to the music.

“Canadian jazz guitar icon Ed Bickert, renowned almost as much for his quiet, self-effacing personality as for his mellow, impeccable way with his Fender Telecaster, died on Thursday. He was 86.

Until his retirement in 2000, the Manitoba-born musician was Toronto’s top guitarist for almost five decades. His masterful playing, heard with Paul Desmond, Rob McConnell and the Boss Brass, Don Thompson and Moe Koffman, would have cast a wider spell among the world’s jazz fans if Bickert had had a greater appetite for touring and the limelight. “I was born to be a side man,” Bickert once said.

Bickert grew up in Vernon, B.C., in a musical family. His father and mother played the piano and fiddle at country dances.

In 1952, the guitarist moved to Toronto to pursue his career, working initially as a radio station engineer, and then edging his way onto the music scene through session work and playing the clubs.

“Bickert quietly established himself as the city’s top dog guitarist,” said a 2012 Toronto Star profile of Bickert, which marked his 80th birthday. “International stars Bickert accompanied — from alto sax Paul Desmond to vibraphonist Milt Jackson to Rosemary Clooney — inevitably had to talk him into touring and then for only a limited time.”

Between 1975 and 2000, Bickert recorded more than a dozen albums as a leader. One of Bickert’s most elegant sideman recordings is the classic 1975 album Paul Desmond Quartet Live, recorded at Bourbon Street in Toronto.

In the liner notes of that album, Desmond wrote that he would often turn around and look at Bickert while on-stage to ”count the strings on Ed’s guitar … how does he get to play chorus after chorus of chord sequences which could not possibly sound better on a keyboard?”

In 1996, he was invested as a member of the Order of Canada for his contributions to the performing arts.

Bickert played small club gigs and festival concerts in Ottawa through the years until his retirement. He told an Ottawa Citizen interview before an early 2000 appearance:  “Some jazz people can just go ahead and do their thing regardless of noise or distractions, but that’s hard for me. I have to have a fair amount of attention and quiet to really play well.’

Bickert was renowned for his harmonic mastery, and confessed to the Citizen interviewer than harmony fascinated him.

”I really enjoy the harmonic aspect of music — not just jazz, but country and classical,” Bickert said. ”The harmony really turns me on, so I try to find things on the guitar that are more interesting harmonically than some of the basic grips.”

Unlike many a jazz musician that plays until the end, Bickert surprised and saddened jazz fans when he quit playing in 2000. He told the Toronto Star in 2012, “In 2000, my wife (Madeline) passed away, and I had arthritis and other problems which I got through. There just comes a time you don’t want to do it anymore.”

There was a star-studded concert in November 2012 in Toronto to mark Bickert’s 80th birthday. Bickert’s guitar was on stage, but Bickert was not. “I would hardly know how to hold the guitar,” Bickert told the Star.

“Jazz is imperfect but Ed gets as close to perfection as it gets,” bassist/pianist Thompson, Bickert’s collaborator for decades, told the Star.

On Facebook Saturday morning, musicians from across Canada paid tribute to Bickert.

Vancouver bassist and guitarist Andre Lachance wrote: “RIP Ed Bickert. An enormous thank you for your artistry and influence and contributions to culture. There literally is a little bit (or a lot) of Ed in every jazz guitar player in this country. Rarely has someone had that kind of influence on the practice of an instrument … true mastery.”

Gatineau, Que. guitarist Roland Doucet wrote: “I had a wonderful opportunity in Halifax around 1980 to hear him five nights in a row, front row centre in a new jazz supper club that lasted only a few months.

“As poor as I was, I was in the front table every night. (Often wondered, when will that cigarette ash drop, and will he ever play a ‘grip’ — his word for chord — that I recognize.

“Amazing artist. Amazing fingers. Best to me when working with a band, but solo was obviously incredible. A master.”

In an interview, Montreal jazz guitarist and Juno Award winner Mike Rud recalled that Bickert was the first jazz guitarist that he ever saw perform, in Grand Prairie, Alta., with Dizzy Gillespie and Moe Koffman, in the early 1980s.

“Jazz guitarists around the world rightly revere Ed Bickert,” Rud said. “But for Canadian jazz guitarists, I think he was the very voice of impeccable musical judgement — when to play, when not to.

“That’s before you even get to his chord approach, which was brand new, science-fiction level technology to all of us. Listening to his chord work, guitarists are left feeling like they are watching someone fill out the New York Times crossword puzzle, all perfectly correctly, and with many deeply satisfying, unexpected twists. Then in the next chorus, he erases all that, and fills it out all again with different, every-bit-as-perfect answers, over and over. Enchanting and infuriating.

“So much so that it’s easy to miss his single-note soloing, the sublime unfailingly swinging storytelling that made him an exquisite bandmate for Paul Desmond.

“All being done on a solid-body Telecaster, from which he coaxed a sound that would be the envy of any hollow-body player.

“I got to meet him a couple of times only, and play just a couple of tunes with him. I still play stuff I saw him play that day practically every single night. He was pleasant and soft-spoken. He’ll be more than missed.”