The Accidental Birth of the Modern Jazz Quartet

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

Louis Armstrong played trumpet, but he also sang - frequently. Another trumpeter, Arturo Sandoval, plays piano during his sets. Many big bands turned to vocalists backed primarily by the sax section at various points during a concert. Brass section in big bands became Latin Jazz rhythm sections for a few tunes during the course of a set. The rhythm section in a Jazz combo might all-of-a-sudden become a feature for the piano player heading up a piano-bass-drums trio.

Why these deviations and departures?

Because playing a brass instrument, especially a trumpet can be an exhausting proposition tune-after-tune, set-after-set, night-after-night.

They gotta rest their chops or their face muscles and lips [embouchure] will simply go limp on them or worse still, “get blown [rupture].”  

Enter the coming into existence of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

You can get an understanding of its “accidental birth” from Mike Hennessey’s recounting of how the group first came into existence. These excerpts are drawn from Chapter 10 The Battle of the MJQ in his splendid biography of Klook: The Story of Kenny Clark.

“If the brass section of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band had not had to cope with such a lip-bruising library, it is conceivable that the Modern Jazz Quartet might not have existed. The group started life as a quartet within the Gillespie band, featured to give the brass a break - John Lewis (piano), Milt Jackson (vibes), Ray Brown (bass) and Kenny Clarke (drums).

When the Gillespie band broke up, the combo continued as the Milt Jackson Quartet, with Percy Heath replacing Ray Brown after the latter's marriage to Ella Fitzgerald and departure to the West Coast. Then, in 1952, it became the Modern Jazz Quartet, making its recording debut for Prestige in December of that year. Today, scores of records and a few farewell tours later, the MJQ continues to be a major jazz force, largely because its musical director, John Lewis, systematically converted what was a freewheeling, extrovert, loose-limbed bebop combo into a formalized jazz chamber ensemble whose discreet, charming, well-mannered music had an appeal which went far beyond the community of hard-core jazz enthusiasts.

And therein lay the source of much tension and contention, Both Kenny Clarke and Milt Jackson recognized that by allowing Lewis to take control of the musical identity and direction of the quartet, its chances of commercial success would be enhanced; but the price they might have to pay was the sacrifice of some of their cherished musical principles.

It was soon after his return to New York from Paris in April 1951 that Kenny Clarke had teamed up with Milt Jackson again. Dizzy Gillespie founded his short-lived Dee Gee record label in this year. Kenny had made four tracks for the label, just before leaving Paris, with trumpeter Dick Collins, Jean-Claude Fohrenbach (tenor), Andre Persiany (piano) and Pierre Michelot (bass), of which only the appositely titled 'Klook Returns' was issued.

As soon as Kenny arrived in New York he got word that Dizzy Gillespie was in the studios recording some sides with a small group that included J.J. Johnson, Budd Johnson, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Art Blakey. It was the session that produced The Champ'. 'I headed straight for the studio,’ Kenny said later, 'walked right in and everybody fell out. "You mean you're back?" they shouted. And they gave me a big welcome home.'

On 8 August 1951, Charlie Parker, now at the peak of his career, put together a quintet to record some sides for Norman Granz's Verve label. Klook was on this date, together with Red Rodney, John Lewis and Ray Brown, and it proved to be a vintage recording. Red Rodney recalled, 'It was the only date I ever did with Klook and it was a great experience for me. We did some memorable sides - "Swedish Schnapps", "Blues for Alice" and "Loverman" - and it was one of the most stimulating record sessions I have ever been involved in.'

Kenny Clarke, as it happened, was very nearly not involved in it himself. He told me,

At this particular time in New York I needed money badly and Bird knew it. Originally another drummer was supposed to do the session, but Bird told me, 'Bring your drums, Klook. I don't know what drummer they've got on the date - but he won't be when you get there.' I did the date - and it was a great session. We really cooked.

About two weeks after this date the Milt Jackson Quartet made its recording debut for the Dee Gee label with John Lewis on piano and Ray Brown on bass. Later Milt and Kenny took a quartet into Minton's Playhouse, with Percy Heath on bass. As John Lewis was studying at the Manhattan School of Music, Kenny hired Gildo Mahones, a twenty-two-year-old New Yorker, on piano. Sometimes Horace Silver or Jimmy Foreman subbed for Mahones, and Lou Donaldson played with the group for a while. Donaldson was also a guest soloist on the second date of the Milt Jackson Quartet in April 1952 -this time for Blue Note. By this time, however, John Lewis had already discussed the idea of forming a co-operative band with Klook, Milt and Percy and calling it the Modern Jazz Quartet.

It was as the Modern Jazz Quartet that they made four sides for the Prestige label in December 1952. But the MJQ remained purely a recording group until late in 1954 when John Lewis completed his music studies. Sonny Rollins and trumpeter Jesse Drakes also worked with the group at different times, Rollins recording with them in October 1953. And in the summer of 1954 the MJQ, with Horace Silver on piano, played the first Newport Jazz Festival.

Response to the Modern Jazz Quartet albums was encouraging, and with Lewis now available to tour, it was decided to take the group on the road. Milt Jackson recalls the first public performance being at a club called the Chantilly on West 4th Street in Greenwich Village - but the first major booking was at Birdland on the East side of Broadway between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Reviewing the quartet's performance, writer Nat Hentoff observed, 'If the success of the Modern Jazz Quartet depended only on the support of jazz musicians, this could be the most in-demand unit in the country.’

After a highly successful three weeks at Birdland, the MJQ played two weeks at the High Hat in Boston, three weeks at the Black Hawk in San Francisco and followed with dates at Sardi's in Los Angeles, Town Hall and Carnegie Hall New York, Symphony Hall Philadelphia - and a return four-week engagement at Birdland. Public and critical reaction was tremendously positive. But Kenny Clarke was already beginning to have reservations about his involvement with the group.

By the time we got back to Birdland for the second time, the style of music had completely changed. We had become a chamber group. But I wanted to play music my way. John told me that his way was the best way to make money and I replied that, sure, I was interested in making money, but I was becoming afraid that I wouldn't be able to play the drums my way again after four or five years of playing eighteenth-century drawing-room jazz.

John wanted to be responsible for all of the music, and when I told him that Bags [Milt Jackson] and I were composers, too, he said that he was musical director and that was the way it had to be.

Milt Jackson and Percy Heath, Klook always contended, were also unhappy about the musical direction, but they were perhaps concerned not to forgo the financial security that the success of the MJQ seemed to guarantee.

A further cause for disagreement developed on the day when John Lewis announced that there would be a fifth and equal member of the co-operative: Monte Kay, who would be managing the MJQ. Said Kenny, 'I told John that no manager deserved to get twenty per cent of a band's income. But he said the deal had been done. I was very unhappy about this.’

The motivation for Kenny's decision to quit the MJQ early in 1955, at a time when the group was really winning a high level of public approbation, was probably compounded of a number of elements. And, as was not unusual, he offered different explanations at different times.

He told Helen Oakley Dance that after his disagreement with Lewis over the introduction of Monte Kay into the co-operative, he believed that Lewis mentioned the matter to John Hammond, one of whose children was receiving piano lessons from Lewis at the time.

I think Hammond's response was that, since I seemed to be a troublemaker, it would be best if they got rid of me. Anyway, there was a strange atmosphere when I came to work the next evening. The next day the band was leaving for Washington for a date in the Howard Theater. I went home and thought about it - and I decided not to go. I felt that if John was prepared to fire me on the advice of an outsider, then I really didn't want to go on working with the quartet. So I quit.

In an interview with Crescendo's Les Tomkins, published in August 1968, Kenny said that when John Lewis first outlined his policy for the group to follow, he agreed with some of his ideas - but not all.

I eventually left, not because I felt restricted, but because I couldn't accept the overall conception. It should have leaned more towards folklore than to classical music; it would probably have been more agreeable to the public that way, too. I think jazz forms are more suitable to improvise on than classical forms. Happily, they've succeeded commercially. But I have no regrets about leaving them. None at all. Probably, if I'd stayed they wouldn't have been a success!

John Lewis told me that his understanding of Kenny Clarke's reason for leaving the MJQ was that he wanted to return to Paris.

He was going back to Paris and that was it. He had an opportunity over there and he took it. He always did things like that. I remember in 1937 he was supposed to go with Fletcher Henderson - but instead he took the job with Edgar Hayes, who was not in the same league as Henderson. But I guess he wanted to go to Europe, so that's what he did. Certainly he didn't leave because of the music. He was happy with the music.

Milt Jackson, on the other hand, says that Kenny left the MJQ 'because he was unhappy about the way musicians were treated in New York'. He said Kenny had happy recollections of Europe and wanted to return. (Milt himself left the group for a spell in the mid-fifties because 'even though we were successful musically, and were making a major contribution, it wasn't as financially rewarding as it should have been'. He had another break from the quartet in 1974 when, according to notes left by Kenny, he told him, 'After twenty years I finally got out. The only thing I have against you is that you didn't take me with you when you left.'

In an interview with French writer Francois Postif, Kenny said he left the MJQ 'because John Lewis thought of nothing but making money. He wanted to become commercial and pander to the public. I didn't agree.' And he told the International Herald Tribune's Mike Zwerin that he didn't regret 'leaving the gold mine just before it panned out. Not for one minute. I've thought about that; someone said, "Klook, you should have stayed here and made all that money." But money's only good when you need it.'

In most interviews about the MJQ, Kenny refrained from raising the more disputatious matters that he referred to in the conversation with Helen Oakley Dance. And he told her, true to his general tendency to sidestep controversy for the sake of tranquillity, 'When people ask me why I left, I always say, well, it just wasn't the way I like to play.'

In a December 1963 Down Beat interview Kenny told Burt Korall: 'As for John, his music is a bit too bland and pretentious for me. I fell asleep the last time I heard the MJQ in person.’

On another occasion Kenny recalled an incident at an MJQ rehearsal which, for him, must have been the ultimate heresy. John interrupted the tune they were doing and said to Klook, 'Hey, Kenny, this is not supposed to swing.’ And Kenny replied with a mirthless chuckle, 'Yeah? What's it supposed to do then?'

Bassist Red Mitchell also recalls an incident towards the end of Kenny Clarke's time with the MJQ which would seem to confirm the view that the conflict between Klook and John Lewis over the musical direction the quartet was taking was more than a touch acrimonious.

I was walking on Broadway one day, heading downtown towards the Alvin Hotel which was just across the street from Birdland. As I got to about half a block away from the hotel I heard voices raised in a heated argument. There, on the corner, were Milt Jackson, Percy Heath and Kenny Clarke - and I caught Kenny shouting at the top of his voice, 'Well, let that motherfucker get his own band!'

I'm quite certain that Kenny objected strongly to what John Lewis was doing to the MJQ. And it seems ironic to me that, in the end, Kenny went to France to pursue playing jazz the American way, while John Lewis stayed in the States and Europeanized the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet.

My own view is that the primary cause of Kenny's leaving the MJQ was his increasing dissatisfaction with the musical path that Lewis was following - a factor which, for Kenny, far outweighed any consideration of enhanced financial rewards.

However, I am quite sure that Kenny totally misread the attitude of John Lewis when he believed that he was preparing to fire him. Neither was it the case that Klook left the MJQ because he wanted to return to Paris. He didn't leave New York until some eighteen months after parting from the quartet. The most likely explanation is that he found the Lewis repertoire restricting and not in accord with his musical ideals, and he genuinely didn't want to become trapped by the MJQ's commercial success and the obligations that that would impose. It was yet another escape act for Kenny, and I am absolutely certain that, as he told Zwerin, he never regretted it for one moment.

He told me once,

I stuck it for a while and everybody tried to convince me how much it would mean to me financially - but I tried to think a little ahead, and I realized that it would all add up to being the same. I knew I could get more satisfaction and enjoyment from playing my way.

Among the papers Kenny left behind is an interview transcript with a handwritten note on the bottom, which reads:

I always knew the MJQ would make it because the musicians are sincere and talented, plus John Lewis had a formula for success and a businesslike attitude. Seeing their success, I'm not sorry I left. I'm completely happy with the way things have turned out because I like doing the things I do.

It was signed, 'Kenny "Klook" Clarke, drummer, Paris, France, 1968.’

The Modern Jazz Quartet - "No Sun In Venice"

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

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

It didn’t last very long, but it was fun while it did.

Movies and TV series with Jazz scores written and performed by prominent composers, arrangers and Jazz combos were all the rage for a while.

Johnny Mandel’s score to the movie I Want to Live, Miles Davis’ themes and improvised sketches for  Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud (Lift To The Scaffold, and one that has always been among my favorites, pianist John Lewis’ original film score to No Sun in Venice which he performs with his colleagues on The Modern Jazz Quartet No Sun in Venice LP/CD [Atlantic 1284-2].

A recent listening of this recording prompted me to do a bit of research about the group and how John Lewis came to write and record the film score in 1957.

I must admit that the cover painting by J.M.W. Turner [1775-1851], one of a series of famous Venetian oils he created about la serenissima, may have had a great influence on my purchase of this recording as I had never heard the music of the Modern Jazz Quartet [MJQ], nor had I seen the movie.

Thus began my enamorment with one of the most unique groups in the history of Jazz.

Gary Giddins provided this background on the formation of the MJQ in these excerpts from his masterful Visions of Jazz: The First Century:

Modern Jazz Quartet [The First  Forty Years]

“‘In creating, the only hard thing is to begin,’ wrote James Russell Lowell [Poet, Harvard Professor, Editor of The Atlantic Monthly]. For the Modern Jazz Quartet, the world's most venerable chamber group in or out of jazz, the beginning was a three-year trial. Few people in the early '50s would have entertained the idea that a small jazz band could flourish over four decades, bridging generations and styles. Big bands had proved durable in part because, like symphony orchestras, they could withstand changes in personnel, and because they counted on dancers to sustain their appeal. No jazz chamber group had ever lasted more than a few seasons.

When the MJQ first convened, American music was in one of its many transitional phases. The public's taste changed with frightening alacrity. A decade earlier, the country was jitterbugging to swing. After the war, bop ruled jazz, while big bands struggled for survival and pop songs grew increasingly bland. In 1952, there was talk of a cool school in jazz, while younger listeners were drawn to rhythm and blues. A couple of years down the road, there would be hard bop, soul, and rock and roll. Then the deluge: third stream, free jazz, neo-romanticism, acid rock, new music, fusion, neoclassicism, disco, original instruments, hip hop, grunge, and more.

Yet through it all, the Modern Jazz Quartet persisted and prospered. We do well to remember that the fortieth anniversary of the MJQ in 1992 was only the seventy-fifth anniversary of jazz on records, if we honor as genesis the sensationally successful 1917 Victor release of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band's "Livery Stable Blues” b/w "Dixie Jazz Band One-Step.” Thirty-five years later, on December 22, 1952, John Lewis, Milt Jackson, Percy Heath, and Kenny Clarke met at a Manhattan recording studio leased by Prestige Records and recorded two standards ("All the Things You Are" and "Rose of the Rio Grande") and two Lewis originals with exotic names: "La Ronde," which had its origins in a piece recorded by the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra, and "Vendome," which prefigured the merging of jazz and fugal counterpoint that became an abiding trademark of the MJQ. The records were widely noted, but less widely embraced. With Lewis spending most of his time working toward a master's degree at the Manhattan School of Music, the first session was — notwithstanding a gig in an obscure Greenwich Village bistro called the Chantilly — an isolated foray.

The world was a different place that chilly day. At the very moment the quartet cut those records, President-elect Eisenhower was at the Commodore Hotel a few blocks away, meeting with a group of Negro clergymen to whom he expressed "amazement" that discrimination was widely practiced; he promised to appoint a commission to study the matter, adding that he was determined to abide by the law even if every Negro in America voted against him. Also in the news: the Soviets accused the U.S. of murdering eighty-two North Korean and Chinese POWs; allied fighter-bombers strafed Korean supply depots; more than seven hundred protesters staged a rally for the Rosenbergs at Sing Sing; Sugar Ray Robinson announced his retirement from the ring. The New York Times''s music pages noted a concert by George Szell and Guiomar Novaes and two debuts by Stravinsky, but, as was customary, expended not a word on jazz or popular music, and devoted twice the space to radio listings as to television.

In jazz, 1952 is best remembered for the formation of the MJQ, but it was also the year Count Basie (a profound influence on Lewis) returned to big band music after leading an octet for two years; Gerry Mulligan started his pathbreaking quartet; and Eddie Sauter fused with Bill Finegan. Norman Granz took Jazz at the Philharmonic to Europe, where Dizzy Gillespie's sextet was also on tour. Fletcher Henderson died, and trombonist George Lewis was born. Clifford Brown went on the road with an r & b band, while John Coltrane played section tenor for Earl Bostic and Cecil Taylor matriculated at the New England Conservatory. Louis Armstrong had two hit records, "Kiss of Fire" and a remake of "Sleepy Time Down South"; George Shearing introduced his "Lullaby of Birdland"; Thelonious Monk recorded with a trio for the first time in five years. Charlie Parker didn't record in a studio, but he kept busy, performing "Hot House" with Gillespie on TV, leading his strings at the Rockland Palace and Carnegie Hall, and working Birdland with four musicians who, one month later, would make their recorded debut as the Modern Jazz Quartet.”

[Connie Kay replaced Clarke in 1954 and remained in the drum chair with the MJQ until his death in 1994.]

In reviewing the MJQ’s recordings from 1955-onward that have been released as CD’s on Prestige, Atlantic and Pablo Records, some of the qualities that make the Modern Jazz Quartet’s music unique are described in Richard Cook and Brian Morton’s The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:

“Frequently dismissed - as unexciting, pretentious, bland, Europeanized, pat - the MJQ remained hugely popular for much of the last 30 years, filling halls and consistently outselling most other jazz acts. The enigma lies in that epithet 'Modern' for, inasmuch as the MJQ shifted more product than anyone else, they were also radicals (or maybe that American hybrid, radical-conservatives) who have done more than most barnstorming revolutionaries to change the nature and form of jazz performance, to free it from its changes-based theme-and-solos cliches. Leader/composer John Lewis has a firm grounding in European classical music, particularly the Baroque, and was a leading light in both Third Stream music and the Birth Of The Cool sessions with Gerry Mulligan and Miles Davis. From the outset he attempted to infuse jazz performance with a consciousness of form, using elements of through-composition, counterpoint, melodic variation and, above all, fugue to multiply the trajectories of improvisation. And just as people still, even now, like stories with a beginning, middle and end, people have liked the well-made quality of MJQ performances which, on their night, don't lack for old-fashioned excitement.

The fact that they had been Dizzy's rhythm section led people to question the group's viability as an independent performing unit. The early recordings more than resolve that doubt. Lewis has never been an exciting performer (in contrast to Jackson, who is one of the great soloists in jazz), but his brilliant grasp of structure is evident from the beginning. Of the classic MJQ pieces -'One Bass Hit', 'The Golden Striker', 'Bags' Groove' - none characterizes the group more completely than Lewis's 'Django', first recorded in the session of December 1954.

The Prestige [The Artistry of the Modern Jazz Quartet]is a useful CD history of the early days of the band, but it's probably better to hear the constituent sessions in their entirety. Some of the material on the original two-disc vinyl format has been removed to make way for a Sonny Rollins/MJQ set ('No Moe', 'The Stopper', 'In A Sentimental Mood', 'Almost Like Being In Love'), which is a pity, for this material was long available elsewhere.

Connie Kay slipped into the band without a ripple; sadly, his ill-health and death were the only circumstances in the next 40 years of activity necessitating a personnel change. His cooler approach, less overwhelming than Clarke's could be, was ideal, and he sounds right from the word 'go'. His debut was on the fine Concorde, which sees Lewis trying to blend jazz improvisation with European counterpoint. It combines some superb fugal writing with a swing that would have sounded brighter if recording quality had been better. Though the integration is by no means always complete, it's more appealing in its very roughness than the slick Bach-chat that turns up on some of the Atlantics.

The label didn't quite know what to do with the MJQ, but the Erteguns [Ahmet and Neshui, brothers who emigrated to the USA from Turkey] were always alert to the demographics and, to be fair, they knew good music when they heard it. One of the problems the group had in this, arguably their most consistent phase creatively, was that everything appeared to need conceptual packaging, even when the music suggested no such thing. Chance associations, like the celebrated version of Ornette's 'Lonely Woman', were doubtless encouraged by the fact that they shared a label, and this was all to the good; there are, though, signs that in later years, as rock began to swallow up a bigger and bigger market share, the group began to suffer from the inappropriate packaging. Though home-grown compositions reappear throughout the band's history (there's a particularly good 'Django' on Pyramid), there are also constant references to standard repertoire as well and some of these are among the group's greatest achievements.

By the same inverted snobbery that demands standards rather than 'pretentious classical rubbish', it's long been a useful cop-out to profess admiration only for those MJQ albums featuring right-on guests. The earlier Silver collaboration isn't as well known as a justly famous encounter with Sonny Rollins at Music Inn, reprising their encounters of 1951, 1952 and 1953, which were really the saxophonist's gigs. Restored in a fresh mastering, it's clear how much Sonny was an interloper on an already skilled, tight unit. Most of the record is by the MJQ alone, including one of their delicious standard medleys and a brilliant reading of Lewis's 'Midsommer'. The two (live) tracks which Rollins appears on aren't entirely satisfactory, since he cannot make much impression on 'Bags' Groove', already a Jackson staple, and sounds merely discursive on 'A Night In Tunisia'. Overall, this set very much belongs to the MJQ.

Lewis's first exploration of characters from the commedia dell’arte came in Fontessa, an appropriately chill and stately record that can seem a little enigmatic, even off-putting. He develops these interests considerably in the simply titled Comedy, which largely consists of dulcet character-sketches with unexpected twists and quietly violent dissonances. The themes of commedia are remarkably appropriate to a group who have always presented themselves in sharply etched silhouette, playing a music that is deceptively smooth and untroubled but which harbours considerable jazz feeling and, as on both Fontessa and Comedy, considerable disruption to conventional harmonic progression.

Given Lewis's interests and accomplishments as an orchestrator, there have been surprisingly few jazz-group-with-orchestra experiments. More typical, perhaps, than the 1987 Three Windows is what Lewis does on Lonely Woman. One of the very finest of the group's albums, this opens with a breathtaking arrangement of Ornette Coleman's haunting dirge and then proceeds with small-group performances of three works - 'Animal Dance', 'Lamb, Leopard' and 'Fugato' - which were originally conceived for orchestral performance. Remarkably, Lewis's small-group arrangements still manage to give an impression of symphonic voicings.

Kay's ill-health finally overcame him in December 1994 and the following February, the MJQ issued in his memory a concert from 1960, recorded in what was then Yugoslavia, a relatively innocuous destination on the international tour. Whatever its historical resonance, it inspired (as John Lewis discovered when he auditioned these old tapes) one of the truly great MJQ performances, certainly one of the very best available to us on disc. It knocks into a cocked hat even the new edition of the so-called Last Concert. Jackson's playing is almost transcendentally wonderful on 'Bags' Groove' and 'I Remember Clifford', and the conception of Lewis's opening commedia sequence could hardly be clearer or more satisfying. Dedicated To Connie is a very special record and has always been our favourite of the bunch, ….”

Gary Kramer provides this explanation of the turn-of-events that brought about the occasion of John Lewis’ film score for No Sun in Venice in his insert notes to The Modern Jazz Quartet No Sun in Venice LP/CD [Atlantic 1284-2].

“In December 1956 the globe-trotting Modern Jazz Quartet found itself in Paris. Among the enthusiastic Parisians who flocked to St. Germain-des-Pres to hear the group was Raoul Levy, producer of the film And God Created Woman and other international cinema hits. Levy did not come over to the Left Bank merely to spend a pleasant evening digging jazz sounds, but to make John Lewis a business proposition. He was about to produce Sait-On Jamais, a film to star Francoise Arnoul, and wanted to know whether John would be free to write the background music and whether it would be possible to use The Modern Jazz Quartet to make the soundtrack.

John consented to write the score and worked on it assiduously during his scanty leisure hours while he and the Quartet were touring the United States in the first months of 1957. Despite the fact that some of the music was written in Los Angeles, some in Chicago, some of it in New York, the score has structural unity and a high degree of internal organization. It was John Lewis' first film score and represented a special challenge. As he put it, "Jazz is often thought to be limited in expression. It is used for 'incidental music' or when a situation in a drama or film calls for jazz, but rarely in a more universal way apart from an explicit jazz context. Here it has to be able to run the whole gamut of emotions and carry the story from beginning to end."”

Sait-On Jamais (a literal translation of which is One Never Knows) was released in the United States in 1957 as No Sun In Venice by Kinglsey International Pictures.

As I write this feature almost fifty years later, I still have not seen the movie. I noticed that it is now available on DVD, but at $60 bucks, I think I’ll pass.

However, in the intervening half century, I have listened to John Lewis’s score to the film many times and I highly recommend it to you.

The following video contains lots of sunny images of Venice as set to the Cortege track from John Lewis score to One Never Knows.

Connie Kay's use of triangles, finger cymbals, tambourines, open high hats and mallets on cymbals to create gong-like effects almost adds a forbidden sense of joy to this dirge.