Rudy van Gelder: A Signature Sound

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

I never thought much about the quality of the sound on the Blue Note LPs that I purchased in the 1950s and 60s. I didn't need to.

Blue Note’s sound quality was something that one could take for granted because the now, legendary Rudy van Gelder was the commanding force behind it and, as you’ll come to understand after reading the following interview, he obviously gave it a great deal of thought.

The sound on Blue Note’s albums had a “presence” that wrapped the listener in an audio environment which was dynamic and vibrant.

The sound came forward; it reached out; it enveloped.

Rudy made the sound seem as though it was emanating from musicians who were performing it in one’s living room.

In a way, this is more than an analogy because Rudy’s initial recording studio was the living room in his parents’ home in Hackensack, NJ before he built his own studio in near-by Englewoods Cliffs, NJ.

Rudy doesn’t talk much about himself or his views on the subject of sound engineering.

Fortunately, James Rozzi was able to interview him at length and publish Rudy’s responses to his questions in the November 1995 edition of the now defunct Audio Magazine.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought this rare glimpse of Rudy van Gelder discussing himself and his technical approach to sound recording would make an interesting feature for its readers.

It is hard to imagine let alone conceive of what The World of Jazz would have been like if Rudy Van Gelder hadn’t been around.

© -James Rozzi/Audio Magazine, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Dr. Rudy Van Gelder’s formal education was in optometry, but his heart and the majority of his professional years have been devoted full-time to the recording industry.

Ask any Jazz buff about Rudy, and they’ll name him as the recording engineer responsible for all those classic Blue Note and Prestige Records, among almost countless others.

This interview, one of the very few that Rudy has granted in his 40 plus years in the business, was conducted in his Englewood Cliffs, NJ studio, a gorgeous facility just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan. I thank him for sharing his history and his views.

It’s a given in the Jazz world that you have set the standards for Jazz recordings for the past 40 years. In an ever-changing industry, how do you continue to maintain consistent quality in your recordings?

I prefer to do my own masters, my own editing. By ‘my own,’ I mean, I want it to be done here. It’s not that I influence what it is. It’s just that I need to be involved in the whole process – up to and including the finished product – in order to give my clients what they expect of me, which is the reason why they are coming here. They agree upon that before we can do anything.

This is really the only major stipulation I have, that I do the process. It’s not because it is expensive, because the expense is minimal. I purposely keep it that way because I don’t want the money to be a part of their decision.

The point is that I’d like to have at least some measure of control over the finished sound before it’s sent for replication to the plant.

This is contrary to the way most studios work.

The business, at least from my point of view, has really become fragmented – more like the movie industry. There are engineers who do Jazz recording who don’t own the studio and don’t have anything to do with the maintenance, ownership or operation of the studio.

They just go to a studio as a freelance engineer and use the facility for their own clients. Obviously, this is not the situation here. I own the studio, I run the studio and I maintain it. It’s my responsibility, I’m here everyday, not somebody else. It reflects me.

Being involved in the complete digital post-production is highly unusual for any studio. Would you please explain it?

Once we have gotten to the point of recording and mixing the two-track tape that has all of the tunes the client wants for the CD, the next step is to get together with the producer or the musician, whoever is in charge of the project – and sequence it.

We have to put the tunes in the order that they will appear in on the CD, get all the timings in between the songs precise, and takes all the noises out.

As for the medium for that, the most common medium is DAT [digital audio tape]. Now most people – including musicians and producers, except for those who work here – believe that this is a master tape. That format was not designed to be and is incapable of being a master.

There are other elements required for CD replication that cannot be incorporated into a DAT.

There is just no room on a DAT for the information which tells your CD player to go to track one when you put a CD in and press "play." The information that makes this possible has to be incorporated on the CD. The DAT must be transferred to another medium that incorporates this information. This studio uses a CD-R. Prior to the CD-R, 1630 was the de facto standard. I consider that now obsolete. Most recording studios do not get involved in this process.

If most recording studios don't get involved in digital post-production, then how is it commonly done?

The very fact that most recording studios don't care to do it has created the existence of what are called mastering houses. They don't have studios. They don't even have a microphone. They just put the numbers on there and then transfer from one medium to another.

Why are you so concerned with accom­plishing this process yourself? Isn't the equipment expensive?

Yes, it's very expensive, very difficult to ac­quire and maintain. The problem is that there can be processing at this stage, quite extensive processing.

Intentionally changing the sound from that of the DAT?

Intentionally changing the sound! Chang­ing the loudness to softness, the highs to lows. Yes, it's a very elaborate procedure; it is a part of the recording process that most people don't even know exists.

Who is responsible for making the decision to alter the sound at this late a stage in the recording process?

Whoever is following the course of the pro­ject, usually whoever is paying for it or their representative. I'm now defining why I in­sist on doing everything myself. And you can extend this into the reissue process too. Reissuing is nothing but post-production. The people who were originally involved in the recording are no longer there, or they no longer own it. These mastering decisions on reissues are being made by someone else, someone affiliated with the company who now owns the material.

What are your feelings on issuing alternate takes?

Now, to me that's just a sad event which has befallen the record industry. The rejected outtakes have been renamed "alternate takes" for marketing reasons. It's a disser­vice to the artist. It's a disservice to the mu­sic. It's also rampant throughout the land, and I'm just telling you how I feel about it. I would recommend to all musicians: Don't let the outtakes get out of your hands. Of course, that may be easier said than done.

You must be disappointed by much of what has been released as alternate takes.

                                                                                 

Yes, when I hear some of this stuff, I'm re­minded of all the problems I had, particu­larly on these outtakes. It's like reliving all of the difficulties of my life again. So I don't take a lot of pleasure in that because I know I can do a lot better now, and all that does is reinforce my uneasiness. Of course, when it was a recording problem, the music was usually still so good that it was worth it to me. And the fact that it's still being heard— in many cases being heard better than ever before—is an incredible experience. And it's clean, with no noise. I don't like to com­plain too much.

I feel that way very often myself, the way you described, being able to hear the music better than ever. I'm not a person who locks into the sound as closely as I do the music. The music is all-important to me, but sometimes I become distracted by how bad the sound is. It seems that a big prob­lem in translating those old recordings onto CD is the sound of the bass. It be­comes very boomy.

Well, you can't blame that entirely on the people who are doing the mastering. That particular quality is inherent in the record­ing techniques of the time—the way bass players played, the way they sounded, the way their instruments sounded. They don't sound like that now. The music has changed the way the artists play. Now everything has got to be loud. A loud .drum­mer today is a lot louder than a loud drummer of 30 or even 20 years ago. It's all relative. But as far as that certain quality you're talking about, some of it is very good, by the way. There were some excellent bass recordings made at that time because the bass player and I got together on what we were trying to do.

Considering the reverence given to the his­torical Blue Note recordings and the fact that they were accomplished direct to two-track, do you get many requests nowadays to record direct to two-track?

 Usually they say, "I want to go direct to two-track like the old days." And I say, "Sure, I'll do that." I can still do it, or we can record to the 24-track digital machine. As far as the musicians are concerned, regarding their performance out in the studio, that's trans­parent to them. There's no difference in the setup. I sort of think two-track while I'm recording and actually run a two-track recording of the session, which very often serves as the finished mix.

But this is the real world now. The musicians will listen to the playback, and the bass player will say, "Gee, I played two bad notes going into the bridge of the out-melody. Can you fix that, Rudy?" Now, it used to be that when a client asked for a two-track session, I would never run a multi-track backup. They didn't want to get involved in it, for money reasons. They didn't want to spend the money for the tape or didn't want to have to mix it af­ter the session. I went along with that for a long time. But the bass player would still come in, hoping to fix wrong notes, and I'd sit there like a fool and say, ‘Well, I can't do anything about it. The producer didn't want to spend the money for multi-tracking.’

So I decided I wasn't going to do that anymore. I think of it as a two-track date— we're talking about a small acoustic jazz band now, not any kind of heavy produc­tion thing—and I run a multi-track backup. Then when the bass player asks to fix a cou­ple of notes, I look at the producer or who­ever is paying for the session, and that be­comes his decision, not mine. He now has to answer the bass player.

So the final product may consist of both multi-track and two-track recordings?

That happens. Right. And my life is a lot happier. And the producers have come around a little bit too.

How did you first become affiliated with Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records?

There was a saxophone player and arranger by the name of Gil Melle. He had a little band and a concept of writing, and I recorded him. This was before I met Alfred. I recorded it in my Hackensack studio in my parents’ home. So somehow—and I was not a party to it—he sold that to Alfred to be released on Blue Note. And Alfred want­ed to make another one. So he took that recording to the place he was going. It hap­pened to be in New York at the WOR recording studios. He played it for the engi­neer, who Alfred had been using up until that time, and the engineer said, "I can't get that sound. I can't record that here. You'd better go to whoever did it." Remember, I wasn't there; this is how it was related to me. And that's what brought Alfred to me. He came to me, and he was there forever.

Those Blue Note records, they're just so beautiful....

Masterpieces.

Did Alfred and you work at producing those jazz masterpieces? Did he have you splice solos?

Yes, he did. He was tough to work for com­pared to anyone else. He knew what he wanted. He knew what that album should sound like before he even came into the stu­dio. He made it tough for me. It was defi­nitely headache time and never easy. On the other hand, I knew it was important, and he had a quality that gave me confi­dence in him. The whole burden of creating for him—what he had in mind—that was mine. And he knew how to extract the maximum effort from the musi­cians and from me too. He was a master at that. I think one of the reasons our relation­ship lasted so long was because he listened to what other people were doing parallel to our product. I don't believe he ever heard anything that was better than what we were doing. I have no doubt that if he had heard someone doing it better than what I was doing, he would have gone there. But he never did, and that made it possible for me to build this studio. I knew he was always there.

Once you developed that sound, you knew exactly what to do initially. When the mu­sicians walked in, you knew right where everything should be regarding micro­phone placement and all of that. And you went from there. From that point, it was just minor alterations according to that session.

That's very well put, and do you know why that was? Because Alfred used to come here often. He used to bring the same people out in various combinations. They all knew what I was like. Everybody would come in and know exactly where their stand was, where they would play. It was home. There were no strangers. They knew the results of what they were going to do. There was nev­er any question about it, so they could focus on the music.

Then when Bob Weinstock of Prestige Records started with you, there was that whole crowd of musicians, sometime cross­ing over personnel.

Well, Weinstock would very often follow Al­fred around, but with a different kind of project in mind. And you know, when I ex­perimented, I would experiment on Bob Weinstock's projects. Bob didn't think much of sound; he still doesn't. He doesn't care. So if I got a new microphone and I wanted to try it on a saxophone player, I would never try it on Alfred's date. Wein­stock didn't give a damn, and if it worked out, great. Alfred would benefit from that.

I've always thought of the Prestige dates as a more accurate indication of what was happening in the clubs. Although I know that after a Blue Note session wound down, the musicians could go out into the clubs and play original tunes, with Pres­tige it was mostly standards. That's what they went out and jammed on. And that deserves documentation as well.

Absolutely. I agree with that, and I’ve said so, though not as well as you did. I wouldn't want the world to be without them. There are people who say that the difference be­tween Blue Note and Prestige is rehearsal. That's just glib. That's bullshit. That's not even a fair way to put it. It resulted in a lot of my favorite recordings. You know, those Miles [Davis] Prestige things ... they can't hurt those things. It's really one of the most gratifying things I've done, the fact that people can hear those. It's really good.

When you were in the control booth listen­ing to the sessions, were you ever aware that those sides would end up as classics?

 Well, you can't see into the future. I had no way of knowing that. But I knew every ses­sion was important, particularly the Blue Note stuff. The Blue Note sessions seemed more important at the time because the procedure was more demanding. But in ret­rospect, the Prestige recordings of Miles Davis, the Red Garland with Philly Joe Jones, the Jackie McLean and Art Taylor, the early Coltrane—sessions like that—turned out to be equally if not more important. I always felt the activity we were engaged in was more significant than the politics of the time, to the extent that everything else that was happening was unimportant. And I still feel that way. I treat every session ... every session is important to me.

Have you done any classical or pop?

There was a long period of time parallel to those years when I was working for Vox, a classical company. I would get tapes from all over Europe and master those tapes for release in this country. I did that for 10 years or more. So I had three things going: Blue Note, Prestige, and Vox. Each of them was very active. And I did some classical recordings: Classical artists, solo piano recordings, a couple of quartets.

How about pop?

A lot of that popular stuff came with Creed Taylor later in the '70s. He was oriented more toward trying to commercialize jazz music. You're familiar with his CTI label? That's another world altogether. That's when we started to be conscious of the charts. I love the sound of strings, particu­larly the way Creed Taylor handled them with Don Sebesky. And I love an exciting brass sound too. Creed is a genius as far as combining these things that we're talk­ing about. I'm not at all isolated in the world of a five-piece be-bop band. As a matter of fact, sonically, this other thing is more rewarding.

What are your feelings on digital versus analog?

The linear storage of digital information is idealized. It can be perfect. It can never be perfect in analog because you cannot repro­duce the varying voltages through the dif­ferent translations from one medium to an­other. You go from sound to a microphone to a stylus cutting a groove. Then you have to play that back from another stylus wig­gling in a groove, and then translate it back to voltage.

The biggest distorter is the LP it­self. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes go­ing simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good rid­dance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engi­neer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium.

A lot of people argue that digital is a cold­er, sterile sound. Where do you think that comes from?

Where does it come from? The engineers. You've noticed they've attributed the sound to the medium. They say digital is cold, so they've given it an attribute, but linear digi­tal has no attributes. It's just a medium for storage. It's what you do with it. A lot of this has to do with the writing in consumer magazines. They've got to talk about some­thing.

What should be discussed is the way CDs are being marketed as 20-bit CDs, but there is no such thing as a 20-bit CD. Every CD sold to the public is a 16-bit CD. You can record 20-bit and it is better than 16-bit, but it has to be reduced to 16-bit before you can get it onto the CD. History is re­peating itself.

It reminds me of when they marketed mono recordings as "re-mastered in stereo." All they did was put the highs on one side, put the lows on the other, and add a lot of reverb to make it believable. Then they'd sell it as a stereo record.

Do you feel today’s jazz musicians stack up to the players of the 1950s and '60s, Blue Note's heyday?

Well, there are a lot of great kids around. You know, technically they're great. I feel they're suffering from a disadvantage of not being able to play in the kind of environ­ment that existed then. You don't want me to make a broad statement saying, "Gee whiz, it was better 20 years ago than it is now." First of all, I don't believe that. I don't even think of it that way.

Do you see yourself as a technician and an artist?

Absolutely. When you mention the techni­cal end, the first thing I think of is making sure all the tools are working right. The artistic part is what you do with them. The artistic part involves everything in this place. There's nothing here that isn't here for an artistic reason. That applies to the studio. The whole environment is created to be artistic. It's my studio and it's been this way for a long, long time, and people like it. It's even mellowed through the years, and people are aware of that. Musicians are sen­sitive to that. Someone came in here only yesterday and said: ‘If the walls could only repeat what has happened here ….’”

Billie Holiday: The Strange, Sad and Sorrowful Life of

“I loved her. It was almost like she grew to be a part of me. Her insides were her outsides, you know? When she passed I was crying, not crying with sorrow, but crying because she was at peace at last. It was so beautiful, she gave so much feeling, it was overwhelming.”

- Shirley Horn [vocalist and song stylist]

“A great woman, very cool, and the hippest thing I ever knew.”

- Etta James [vocalist and song stylist] 

“How many Billie Holidays are there and which do you prefer? Elated or dour, funny or truculent, sweet or sour, our Lady of Sorrows or 52^nd Street’s Queen, early Billie or late, Billie of hope or Billy or heartache, Billie with Pres or with strings, Lady Day or Lady Nightmare or Lady in Ermine, Lady Be Good, Lady in Red, Lady Luck, Lady Blue, Lady Divine, the Lady Who Swings the Band, Lady Mine – crank up the record machine, listen closely and take your choice.

For Billie Holiday is one of those exceptional artists whose work is a perfect tuning fork for our own inclinations. She echoes our emotions, rehabilitates our innocence, cauterizes our nerves.

That she managed so capacious a vision with her slim vocal range and infinite capacity for nurturing demons is a miracle to which generations of interpreters have been and will continue to be drawn. The greatest art never loses its mystery. The better we know hers, the more dreamlike and sensational it seems.”

- Gary Giddins

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

I had a fleeting look at singer Billie Holiday, once.

It came in the form of her appearance of The Sound of Jazz, a CBS television “Seven Lively Arts” special that was broadcast on Sunday afternoon, December 8, 1957.

Our television set was positioned in the living room of a third floor bay window out which one could see the streets, tenements and church bell towers in what has now become the fashionable Federal Hill area of Providence, RI.

It was a dreary day with skies that darkened and became very foreboding the way late afternoons could often, suddenly become during early New England winters [these also stayed late].

After two, stirring performances of Traditional or Dixieland Jazz by trumpeter Henry “Red” Allen’s All-Stars, the camera turned to Billie who was seated on a stool with members of pianist Mal Waldron’s group standing behind her and off to her left.

Suddenly, everything on the television screen looked and sounded as though it had become sluggish and subsumed by the murky mood of the day.

When the TV cameras focused on Billie, the view from the television screen appeared to go into slow motion.  In this they were aided and abetted by Billie enunciation’s as her singing was languid, almost lethargic.

The TV cameras panned around the standing musicians in an unhurried manner and tenor saxophonists Lester Young, Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins along with trumpeter “Doc” Cheatham and trombonist Vic Dickenson all took solos interspersed around Billie’s singing that were measured, bordering on being belabored.

Earlier that summer, I had attended the Newport [RI] Jazz Festival and loved being amidst the music and the musicians in what seemed like one continually joyous celebration of life.

But while watching and listening to Billie, I was struck by how strange, sad and sorrowful the music could become.

At the time, I was too young to realize that the television program was trying to achieve a “primitive” aura or that strange, sad and sorrowful were indeed an accurate description of Billie Holiday’s short-lived life [she died two years later in 1959 at the age of 44!].

Some months after Billie’s death, I purchased an issue of The New Yorker magazine and a record album of the music from The Sound of Jazz.. Whitney Balliett’s savvy writing in the former and Eric Larrabee’s liner notes to the latter offered me details about Billie television performance that provided a deeper understanding of what I had witnessed that dreary day in December 1957.

We thought we’d share Whitney and Eric’s essays with you, along with a video tribute to Billie which concludes this piece, as a way of remembering the role that Billie Holiday played in shaping The Sound of Jazz.

© -Whitney Balliett/Lippincott/The New Yorker Magazine, copyright protected; all rights reserved [paragraphing modified].

Miss Holiday

“Toward the end of her life, Billie Holiday, who died last summer, at the age of forty-four, had be­come inextricably caught in a tangle of notoriety and fame. It was compounded of an endless series of skirmishes with the police and the courts (she was shamelessly arrested on her deathbed for the alleged possession of narcotics); the bitter, vindic­tive, self-pitying image of herself established in her autobiography, published in 1956—a to-hell-with-you image that tended to repel rather than attract compassion; and the fervent adulation still granted her by a diminishing but ferocious band of admirers. Her new listeners must have been puzzled by all this turmoil, for she sang during much of the fifties with a heavy, unsteady voice that sometimes gave the im­pression of being pushed painfully in front of her, like a medicine ball. She seemed, in fact, to be em­battled with every song she tackled.

Nonetheless, her admirers were not mad. Between 1935, when she popped out of nowhere, and 1940, Miss Holi­day had knocked a good portion of the jazz world on its ear with a hundred or so recordings, several dozen of which rank with the greatest of non-classi­cal vocal efforts. Part of the success of these record­ings, which have an uncanny balance of ease, con­trol, unself-consciousness, emotion, and humor, is due to the accompaniment provided by small bands made up of men like Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Roy Eldridge, Benny Goodman, and Teddy Wilson. Though their work—in obbligatos that underline the grace of her voice, in exemplary solos, and in tumbling, laughing ensembles—often takes up as much space as the vocals, it is Miss Holiday who continues to astonish.

Until she appeared, genuine jazz singing had been practiced largely by a myriad of often obscure blues singers led by Bessie Smith, and by a handful of instrumentalists led by Louis Armstrong. Bessie Smith leveled a massive lyricism at limited materials, while Armstrong's coalyard rumblings, though ir­resistible in themselves, occasionally seemed to have little to do with singing. Distilling and mixing the best of her predecessors with her own high talents, Billie Holiday became the first full-fledged jazz singer (and, with the defection in recent years of Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, possibly the last). She could sing anything, and her style was completely her own. She appeared to play her voice rather than sing with it. In addition to a hornlike control of melody and rhythm, she had an affecting contralto that took on innumerable timbres: a dark-brown sound, sometimes fretted by growls or hoarseness, in the lower register; a pliable oboe tone in the high register; and a clear, pushing, little-girl alto in between.

Her style came in three subtly dif­ferent parts. There was one for ephemeral popular songs, one for the more durable efforts of George Gershwin and his peers, and one for the blues. Since she was primarily an improviser, not an in­terpreter, she was often most striking when han­dling pop songs, like "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town," "It's Too Hot for Words," and "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," which she spattered with a mocking, let's-have-some-fun-with-this air. Thus, at a fast tempo, she might loll back in half time, and not only elongate each word, so that it seemed nothing but vowels, but flatten the melody into a near-monotone of four or five notes. Then, in the last eight bars or so, she would suddenly pounce on the beat, pick up the melody, and close in a here-I-am rush. (If the evil was in her she might stomp such a number all the way through, rocking it relentlessly back and forth and coating it with dead-serious growls.) At slow tempos, she would use the full range of her voice, adding exaggerated smears to her phrases or dotting them with series of laughlike staccato notes. At the same time, she was busy fashioning a deceptively simple and thor­ough melodic variation on the tune, smoothing its wrinkles, toughening up its soft spots, and lending it far more lyricism than it usually deserved. This was accomplished not by superimposing melodic candelabra on her material, in the manner of Sarah Vaughan and her baroque students, but by unob­trusively altering its melodic and rhythmic structure with a flow of marvelously placed phrases that might wander around behind the beat, and then suddenly push ahead of it (each syllable urgently pinned to a staccato note) or slide through legato curves full of blue notes and generous vibratos. Miss Holiday's rhythmic sense had much in common with Lester Young's, who would sooner have gone into another line of work than place a note convention­ally. Moreover, her enunciation of pop songs was a mixture of clarity and caricature, bringing into action that rule of ridicule that the victim be reproduced perfectly before being destroyed. Her "moon"s and "June"s rang like bells, and one didn't hear their cracks until the sound began to die away. The com­posers of the pop songs she sang should be grateful; her renditions ("Ooo-ooo-ooo/ What a lil moon-laight can do-oo-oo"), and not the songs, are what we remember.

Her approach to Gershwin and such was almost reverent in comparison. In a number like "Summer­time," she allowed the emotion that she had spent on lesser materials in sarcasm or near-flippancy to come through undisguised. Ceaselessly inventive, she would still shape the melody to fit her voice and mood, but in such a way that its beauties—and not hers—were pointed up. (The number of popular singers, to say nothing of jazz singers, who have been able to slip inside their material, instead of plodding along beside it, is remarkably small.) "Summertime" became a pure lullaby, "But Not for Me" a self-joshing lament, and "Porgy" a prayer. When there were superior lyrics on hand, she under­lined them with a diction and an understanding that shunted the meaning of each word forward. More than that, she would, at her best, lend a first-rate song a new and peculiarly heightened emotion that, one suddenly realized, its composer had only been reaching for. And the effort never showed.

Miss Holiday simply let go when she sang the blues. She was never, however, a loud singer, nor did she depend on the big whisper of most of her mi­crophone-reared successors; instead, she projected her voice firmly, keeping in steady balance her enunciation, timbre, and phrasing. She was, in fact, a model elocutionist. Free of the more complex structures of the standard popular song, she moved through the innumerable emotional pastures of the form, ranging from the down-and-out to the joyous to the nasty and biting to quiet, almost loving blues.

Then, in 1944, when Miss Holiday started re­cording again (after the recording bans), the magic had begun to vanish. Perhaps it was the increasing strain of her private life, or the mysterious rigor mortis that so often freezes highly talented but un­trained and basically intuitive performers. At any rate, she had become self-conscious. Although her voice had improved in resonance and control, her style had grown mannered. She ended her phrases with disconcerting, lachrymose dips. She struggled with her words instead of batting them about or savoring them. The melodic twists and turns lost their spontaneity. One could accurately predict her rhythmic patterns.

Even her beauty—the huge gar­denia clamped to the side of her head; the high, flashing cheekbones; the almost motionless body, the snapping fingers, and the thrown-back head; the mobile mouth, which seemed to measure the emo­tional shape and texture of each word—implied careful calculation. From time to time, some of this stylization lifted—she never, of course, lost her presence, which became more and more melancholy —and there were glimpses of her old naturalness. After 1950, her voice grew deeper and coarser, and her sense of pitch and phrasing eluded her, and finally she became that most rending of spectacles —a once great performer doing a parody of herself that could have been bettered by her inferiors. Her still devoted partisans clamored on; they would have done her greater service by doffing their hats and remaining silent. …”

© -Eric Larrabee/Harper and Bros./Harper Magazine, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“The best thing that ever happened to television happened on CBS between five and six in the afternoon on Sunday, December 8. At least that was where and when it happened first; the pro­gram may have been run at a different hour and date in your part of the country, and—if there is any justice—it will be repeated, the more often the better. It was an installment in "The Seven Lively Arts" series called "The Sound of Jazz," and as far as I'm concerned you can throw away all previous standards of comparison. This is where live television began to amount to some­thing.

It was opened and closed, and from time to time interrupted, by John Crosby as "host," but mostly it was musicians playing jazz—in a bare studio, dressed in whatever they liked (hats, sweat shirts, it didn't matter), smoking, talking to one another, or just walking around. Each group was introduced and then away it went, with time enough (in nearly all cases) to get the music going, while the camera roamed over the faces of participants and spectators. There were no phony or elaborate explanations. As the executive pro­ducer, Jack Houseman, remarked approvingly to the music critic Virgil Thomson, during the dress rehearsal: "This is the first program about jazz that doesn't say it started in New Orleans and then went up the river."

Technically "The Sound of Jazz" gave the appearance of being very (as they say on the Avenue) "primitive." You knew that you were in a studio and that these people were being televised. If it sounded better to have a micro­phone right in front of a man's face, there the microphone would be; and if one cameraman got in another's way he didn't scurry ashamedly out of it. But this impromptu effect, of course, took a deal of contriving. The musicians couldn't be­lieve at first that hats were really okay, and Billie Holiday had to be persuaded to appear in slacks and pony-tail instead of the gown she had spe­cially planned on. The air of casualness was in fact the end product of months of work.

THIS milestone was primarily made possible by Houseman, his assistant Robert Goldman, and the producer for this show, Robert Herridge, who had the unbelievable courage and good sense to hire good taste and turn it loose. They found two jazz critics with some ideas, Whitney Balliett and Nat Hentoff, and after the usual round of con­ferences and memos, gave them complete artistic control. Balliett and Hentoff, from the start, had the kind of program in mind that they eventually produced—one that would concentrate on music. When I asked Balliett at what point they had decided in favor of visual realism and informality, he thought a moment and said, "I don't think it ever occurred to us to do it any other way."

They got the musicians they wanted, whether currently well known or not and whether or not "485" (the address on Madison of the Columbia front office) would have made the same choice. They were able to assemble combinations of musicians whose booking arrangements usually keep them apart, and also let an old-timer like Pee Wee Russell play side by side with a modern­ist like Jimmy Giuffre. The name of one performer made "485" nervous, but Balliett and Hentoff put their feet down—and they won. Let it be written that as of 1957 there was still some decency left, and somebody willing to fight for it.

As "The Sound of Jazz" came into the final weeks before air-time, it began to make other people uneasy, and for better reasons. Since there was so little of the normal panic on the surface, everybody panicked inside. The director, Jack Smight, found that he was twice as jumpy with­out actors around to worry about; and when "485" found out in the last few days that there really wasn't any script to speak of it began to emit angry noises: "What are you doing down there?" Balliett and Hentoff could only answer that everything was going to be fine, the musi­cians would turn up, and there would be some music. They hoped this was true.

THEY needn't have worried. If you were lucky enough to have seen "The Sound of Jazz" I don't have to tell you how great it was and, even if you weren't, what I'd want to do anyway is sell you an explanation of why it was great. The cornerstone of live television, class will please now repeat, is the human face—with its spon­taneity and tension, its halo of contradictions, its hints of life lived and life to come. Of course the TV camera is merciless; it draws on the person behind the face for all the resources that it can find there. It is not one eye but millions of eyes; it has high expectations and asks that the person before it be poised in the balance, somehow challenged or tested, so as to bring forth the most meanings from the ever-changing interplay of expressions in the face.

What made the jazz musicians extraordinary, when the camera put their features through its harsh examination, was how much it found there. Children and animals make the best movie actors, as Douglas Fairbanks said, because they are un-self-conscious and unable to fake. No more could these musicians be anything but themselves, for they are committed to independence and to a headlong attack on the cosmos. It showed; here— and no kidding—were individuals of stature and profundity, of flesh and substance, of warmth and bite. The music was good, yes, but what lifted "The Sound of Jazz" to a level hitherto un-attained was the sight of it being made. As a lady in White Plains sat down and wrote CBS as soon as the show was over, one so seldom has the chance "to see real people doing something that really matters to them."

Neither Balliett nor Hentoff expected the visual effect to be as sensational as it was. They knew that director Jack Smight "dug" jazz, but they would never have dared anticipate the deft and intricate camera work that enabled him to cut from one shot to another as skillfully as though he were a movie editor, working with developed film instead of a live show. The cameramen simply outdid themselves (for the record, and giving them a credit line they should have had on the air, they were Bob Heller, Harold Classen, Joe Sokota, Jack Brown, and Marty Tuck). Balliett and Hentoff's long and careful planning had made it possible for the musicians to extemporize; now the cameramen and director could extemporize too, with the freedom to smudge the edges—leave that head half in the way—of practiced talent, the artistic intelligence that dares to risk a blunder because it knows precisely what it is doing. Jazz is like that, and as a result the two effects of "The Sound of Jazz"—on the eye and on the ear—were miraculously in tune with each other.

NOW there is talk not only of a repeat but of a series, and no one could better deserve it than this new-found team. But one wonders if the miracle can happen twice. Part of the reason that Balliett and Hentoff were let alone was that no one in high authority really understood what they were up to. Now the secret is out and thpre will be many hazards. As I sat with them in producer Robert Herridge's office, going over the first day's mail, the phone rang and Herridge answered it. He listened, laughed explosively, and hung up. "Lawrence Welk," he said, "de­mands equal time."

—ERIC LARRABEE

Copyright, 1958, by Harper and Brothers. Reprinted by permission from Harper's Magazine.”

The personnel and solo sequence for the Billie Holiday video tribute are -

Fine and Mellow—Billie Holiday with Mai Waldron All-Stars including: Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, tenor sax; Doc Cheatham, trumpet; Vic Dickenson, trombone; Mai Waldron, piano; Jo Jones, drums; Danny Barker, guitar; Jim Atlas, bass.

1st chorus: Holiday

2nd chorus: Young

3rd chorus: Webster

4th chorus: Holiday

5th chorus: Cheatham

6th chorus: Hawkins

7th chorus: Holiday

8th chorus: Dickenson

9th chorus: Holiday

10th chorus: Holiday

Art Van Damme

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

“Art Van Damme, in his prime years, played so many gigs in clubs, hotels and concert stages across the USA and Europe that it is said that he never needed to do any practice. He was constantly in action, developing and honing his skills and repertoire, pioneering the use of the accordion as a jazz lead instrument.

So influential was Art’s playing style that he has influenced most of the western world’s jazz accordionists. One musicologist made the following neat comment: ‘The hippest cat ever to swing an accordion, Art Van Damme dared go where no man had gone before: jazz accordion.’”

- Rob Howard

In an earlier JazzProfiles two-part profile of guitarist Peter Bernstein which you can locate by going here and here, we shared how the guitar and the accordion seemed to be everywhere present during our growing up years in an Italian-American household in Providence, RI.

The world-class accordionist Angelo DiPippo was a graduate of LaSalle Academy in the near-by Elmhurst section of that city and often gave performances in various local venues.

Also available courtesy of my Dad’s record collection were the Capitol recordings that accordionist Ernie Felice made with Benny Goodman’s small groups.

Every so often, Art Van Damme would make an “appearance” at our house in the form of NBC radio programs, television shows hosted by Dave Garroway and Dinah Shore and long-playing records on the Columbia label.

The Columbia LP’s featured Art’s quintet which, because of his use of vibes and guitar and the way many of the groups arrangements were “voiced,” reminded me of pianist George Shearing’s combo.  A few of these albums also featured guest artists such as vocalist Jo Stafford or legendary Jazz guitarist, Johnny Smith.

Whatever the setting, Art’s music was always very melodic and featured arrangements that were very hip and swung like mad. Lasting little more than three minutes in most cases, each tune was a musical gem: the epitome of taste and perfection.

As was the case with Shearing’s quintet, nobody took long solos, but when Chuck Calzaretta played one on vibes, or Fred Rundquist took one on guitar or Art improvised on accordion, one knew immediately that they were good players who knew what they were doing on their respective instruments.

Because I was so accustomed to hearing accordion and, more importantly, to hearing it played well, I could never understand why the instrument became the object of so many jokes that unmercifully ridiculed it.

That is until I started gigging on a regular basis and ran into so many terrible accordionists which only served to make me appreciate the like of an Art Van Damme even more.

However, even among those who held most accordionists in contempt, the mere mention of Art’s name brought a grudging approval that he was “… a class act although I can’t stand the sound of the thing.”

Although you would be hard-pressed to find anything about him in any of the manuals about Jazz, in a conversation that I once had about him with pianist and composer Mel Powell at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA, Mel referred to Art as “one of the most-talented musicians I’ve ever heard – regardless of the instrument.”

Not surprisingly, there’s plenty of information about Art in publications, blogs and websites that cater to accordion. In such circles, he has rightfully assumed legendary status as one of the instrument’s greatest performers.

It was to one such publication that we went in search of the following overview of Art’s career. It also contains particular reference to many of Art’s recordings. A number of these are available should you wish to seek them out.

At the conclusion of Steven Solomon’s article on Art, you’ll find a video tribute to him as developed by the ace graphics teams at CerraJazz LTD. The audio track is Art’s quintet with guitarist Jimmy Smith performing “Gone With the Wind.”

© -Steven H. Solomon/Accord Magazine, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

ART VAN DAMME

Written by: Steven H. Solomon  Publication: Accord Magazine, USA. Reprinted courtesy of owner/editor Faithe Deffner. Back copies available.  Date written: Spring 1983

"At first glance, Art Van Damme seems like countless other successful West Coast residents. He is married, has three children and six grandchildren, and heads for the golf course every chance he gets. What makes his career unusual, however, is that he earns his living by playing the accordion.

Hold on a minute, you say. Since the accordion was invented about 150 years ago, thousands of musicians have put bread on the table by playing professionally. What is it that makes Van Damme so special?

It's simple. Van Damme is among an elite group of only about a half-dozen virtuosos who have been able to find just the right blend of technical and creative ability needed to be successful on the international level. This is what places Art Van Damme in a league all by himself.

Instead of playing just local clubs and whatever casual work is available, Van Damme routinely jets overseas for concert tours that draw thousands of fans. For those not lucky enough to get a seat at one of his sold out performances, he can be heard on European television and radio.

"Most of my work now is in doing concerts and clinics," Van Damme said recently when asked about his gigs. "This I enjoy more than doing club work, because the audience is more attentive and listens more intensely."

Van Damme prefers to be in front of the crowds, especially large ones, rather than while away his time in small clubs or in front of cameras and microphones. He believes that it all boils down to creativity.

"For recordings to be played on the radio, time is a very big factor. It is preferred that recordings be in the two or three minute category," Van Damme explained. "So when I do a concert I get a chance to stretch out, as they say. I get a chance to play quite at length."

To see a list of the countries Van Damme has visited with his accordion, you would think he was some kind of career diplomat making the rounds. He has toured in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia, France, Belgium and Switzerland, in addition to his considerable work in the United States.

Asked about his appearances in 1982, Van Damme replied, "I did the Grand Prix in France, a concert seminar and a radio show in Geneva, two concerts in Colorado and a month long tour back in Sweden. This included concerts, television and another album called "And Live at Tivoli with Quintet". By the way, that was my 20th tour and trip to Europe!"

Not bad for someone who was nine years old before he heard an accordion for the first time, on his parent's Victrola. He asked for and received lessons on an instrument not nearly as flashy as the ones played by his idols Ray Brown, Buddy Rich and Benny Goodman.

At an age when most boys like to play nothing but ball, Van Damme liked to play nothing but the accordion, up to four or five hours a day. He landed his first paying job, a not-too-prestigious booking at his home town theatre (but nothing to be ashamed of either), when he was a seasoned 10 year old pro!

"When going to high school I started a trio with accordion, guitar and bass, and worked with this group in night clubs for a couple of years and then added a fourth man," Van Damme said. "We did many things with two accordions but I preferred the sound of accordion, vibes, bass and guitar, so I discontinued using the two accordions and added drums a short time later. I felt this was the sound to go with."

His group covered the Midwest for several years when they were booked into the Sherman Hotel in Chicago for what turned into a six month job. NBC must have recognized a sure thing when they heard it, because the quintet landed a contract for radio and TV that was to be the start of a long term relationship.

"Besides doing our own shows, we worked with many top name entertainers of the time on programs like the Dave Garroway Show, Ransom Sherman Show, Bob and Day Show to name but a few," Van Damme said.

"And besides doing solo spots, we did a lot of background playing for top singers and instrumentalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Dizzy Gillespie and Buddy DeFranco."

It was during this time that Van Damme had a record contract with Capitol Records, releasing "Cocktail Capers" and "More Cocktail Capers". Columbia Records signed Van Damme from 1952 to 1965, releasing no less than a dozen albums, among which were "The Van Damme Sound", "Martini Time" and "The Art of Van Damme".

"I left NBC in Chicago in 1960 after working for them for 15 years," Van Damme said. "Live TV and radio had been on the downgrade or downward trend. Sure, I've done TV and radio shows since then, but only on a guest artist appearance basis."

Van Damme opened a music studio and store in suburban Chicago after he left NBC, and appeared with the quintet as guests on the Today Show, Tonight Show, Mike Douglas Show and Lawrence Welk Show. It was at this point that Van Damme realised he no longer wanted the headaches of leading a band.

"I personally don't care to have the responsibility of having a regular group anymore. Original men from the quintet are all still situated in Chicago and I do work with them on occasions when in that territory," Van Damme said. "But as of now, I am not carrying a regular quintet. My work takes me all over and I use local men who I am familiar with."

In 1965 Van Damme signed with MPS Records of Germany and has recorded 16 albums during that time. He has been voted top jazz accordionist for ten consecutive years in the annual Downbeat poll and for four consecutive years in the annual Contemporary Keyboard poll. His radio and TV appearances, seminars, tours and clinics in the United States and Europe since then number in the hundreds.

What this rich background means is that Van Damme is today considered a top jazz accordionist. Some of his feelings on the subject provides much food for thought. For example, he thinks the accordion is not the ideal jazz instrument.

"The fact that we have two separate keyboards, as such, controlled by one force, is a problem. I refer to the bellows, which is the source for both sides, and should be used in the same vein as a trumpet player or sax man as a breathing device," Van Damme explained. "A pianist is free to use either hand as he pleases, but not the accordionist. This naturally only scratches the surface, but I feel this is a basic problem in playing jazz."

Van Damme is equally outspoken when it comes to assessing his field. He is not afraid to name names. "(Leon) Sash, Mat Mathews, Pete Jolly, (Ernie) Felice, (Tommy) Gumina, they are all good friends of mine I'm happy to say and each in his own style is great. They all have something to say on their instruments, helping to take the polka sound out of the accordion," Van Damme said. "Unfortunately, there are not too many really good jazz accordionists, but I do feel we are progressing." 

For the future, Van Damme seems likely to be just as busy as ever. He recently completed a pilot for a one hour live radio show with quintet and Roberta Sherwood on vocals that he expects to be syndicated. Plans call for a guest vocalist each week.

"After 38 years I'm going back to radio, which shows that if you live long enough, anything can happen," Van Damme said."